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+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ OPTIMIZING VISIBLE RESULTS IN SEARCH MARKETING ********************* Catch and cache past installments of SearchWrite SearchNews in the http://www.searchwrite.com/Pages/searchnews.htm ********************** Flush with $45 billion in unspent Yahoo takeover cashback savings, Microsoft Live Search is back with another idea -- Cashback -- "The Search That Pays You Back!" The mighty MS wants to buy your allegiance if it cannot beg, borrow or steal it. With Cashback Search, users "will be able to earn cashback savings based on a percentage of the product prices that turn up in Shopping queries." Cashback savings will be paid to you via your choice of a deposit to your PayPal account, direct deposit to your bank account, or a check in the mail (it is unclear whether it will be signed by Bill Gates). Cashback only applies to products displaying the Cashback gold coin symbol, and only for US residents with a Windows Live ID. How did it come to this? In October of last year, Microsoft bought Jellyfish, a comparison shopping site with a unique reverse auction business model that offered consumers deals and cash back on products and charged marketers a fee on those products actually purchased, using a CPA model, rather than PPC. Live Search Cashback is built on the same Jellyfish concept (and system) of offering consumers incentives from merchants and charging those merchants for a small piece of the transaction. While Google has experimented with CPA in AdSense this is the first time a CPA model makes its way into paid search advertising. Microsoft claims it has more than 720 merchants, building on Jellyfish, already participating in the program. Microsoft was widely criticized when, a couple of years ago, it floated the idea of sharing paid search ad revenues with users as a way to create incentives to use Live Search. But this is that very idea, more elegantly packaged and presented. It's coherent in a way that the earlier idea wasn't because it's tied directly to products and commercial search. How will Google and Yahoo respond to Microsoft's CPA model? Unlike the leaders, Microsoft is not staking gobs of PPC revenue the way that Google would be if it did something similar. <http://search.live.com/cashback>
Google has added a Personal Health Profiler to the portfolio of services available to Google account holders. Users can create their own electronic profile by entering their personal info and compiling their records from pharmacies and labs. They then will be able to decide if they want to share their information with doctors or providers. According to Google, "Google believes that you own your medical records and should have easy access to them. The way we see it, it's your information; why shouldn't you control it?" If your hospital or pharmacy is a Google Health Partnert, you can request that they send copies of your medical records or prescriptions to your Google Health profile. While interactive advertisements aren’t being tapped as a revenue stream yet, Google hasn’t ruled out the option. For now, Google said it hopes the service will boost its bottom line by driving more users to its search engine (and search engine advertisements) more often. WebMD and Microsoft also offer ways to organize health records online. <http://www.google.com/health>
Seeing through the black box that houses the Google's Search Quality algorithm is the stuff for MRI scans or X-ray vision. Fortunately, Google leaves tell-tale clues along the fronteir trail and this week a new interview with Google Engineering Chief Udi Manber created a bit more transparency. * Google is secretive about their algorithms for competitive reasons and for search spam reasons. * PageRank is still used in the algorithm, but not as exclusively as it once was. * Google conducts evaluations typically in three manners, (1) automated evaluations every minute, (2) periodic evaluations of overall quality and (3) evaluations of specific algorithmic improvements. * In 2007, Google released "450 new improvements, about 9 per week on the average," to the algorithm alone. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Yahoo has made some nice changes to the YSM user interface. Here's what's new on your digital dashboard. All names of objects (campaign, ad group, keyword, etc.) that are offline are now displayed with red text for easy recognition. The Top Campaigns and Watched Campaigns tables on the Dashboard page now include a Status column to help you identify if and why any campaigns are offline. Minor updates to the Campaigns page have been made, including a new Status column, the ability to filter by Status when using the Advanced Search function, and replacing the Campaign On/Off button with individual Pause and Unpause buttons. New status settings have been added on the Search page, under the Campaigns tab. The ability to Export (using the Download button) account information has been added to account-level Ad Group and Keyword pages, under the Campaigns tab.
Ready to tweat your own horn but not sure how to sign up, set up or follow up with Twitter? Read up on this handy Beginner's Guide, the twist on Twitter in just one page. <http://www.webguild.org/2008/05/beginners-guide-to-using-twitter.php>
"For a metric to be useful, it must be actionable. If you can’t influence it, for good or ill, it’s makes no difference.” Microsoft adCenter explains the few, the proud, the most actionable Key Performance Indicators, and does it right here: <http://adcentercommunity.com/blogs/analytics/archive/2008/04/21/kpis-an-actionable-few.aspx>
Amazon.com has launched the Amazon MP3 Clips Widget, which enables affiliates and bloggers to access song samples from Amazon’s catalog of more than 5 million DRM-free MP3s available at AmazonMP3.com. The widget is free and affiliates and bloggers can earn up to 10% in referral fees from them by joining the Amazon Associates affiliate program. Affiliates earn commissions when a visitor to their site clicks through the Amazon widget to Amazon.com and makes a purchase. <http://widgets.amazon.com/Amazon-MP3-Clips-Widget/>
Hosts and registrar’s have different responsibilities. They both have supreme control your visibility online, and one should not use the same company for both - ever. A host’s duties are to make sure your website is up, running, responsive, and give you support when something goes wrong. A registrar’s duties are to keep your domain name safe, alert you when there are problems, and keep you in the loop on anything strange going on with your domain names. We’ve all heard stories about hosts who suddenly turn off a site and put the domain name on hold. If you host with the same company as is your registrar, you can lose both in a single moment. If you keep your host and registrar separate, then if the website goes away, you can easily setup your site somewhere else (assuming you make regular backups) and change the DNS at your registrar. If you have many websites, use multiple hosts and keeping your website backed up at another host (behind a login so it can’t be spidered). If the site goes down at one host, change your DNS at your registrar and your site should be back up in a matter of hours (these days it takes a max of 24 hours for a DNS to re-propagate, and sometimes you can see it in a matter of a couple hours). If your registrar freezes your domain, you’re in big trouble. Always keep another TLD or two of your site (and it’s good practice to own the .net, .com, etc of your websites) so that you can use another version why you work out the problems. Use more than one registrar for those alternate TLDs. If you keep the .com name with your favorite registrar, the .net with a second registrar, and the .org with yet a third - you can usually recover while the resolution process is ongoing. Own the alternate versions of your domain (at a different registrar) name pointing to your website. Make sure that those domain names 301 to your site and do not get indexed (you don’t want example.com and example.net both indexed with the same content as that will cause many SEO issues). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A call to action is the words or phrases that induce your audience to take action. The desired behavior may be to call you, click-through to enter a contest, enter a survey to win a free prize or purchase a product. Too many websites forget to ask for the visitor to take the desired action. Don’t let yours be one of them. Use the list below as inspiration to create your own call to action. 1. See examples of our widget work with widget lovers.
Social media networking can help you learn about your audience in new ways by watching how they interact. Several new tools have emerged to assist with keyword research by showing you how popular your keyword is in social conversation, who discusses your keyword and how (the context it is used in), and what are the keyword synonyms and related terms used. TweetVolume <http://www.tweetvolume.com/> will show you how much your keyword is discussed and also compares its stats to other neighboring terms. Two other Twitter applications, TweetScan <http://www.tweetscan.com/> and Summize <http://summize.com/> will show you who is talking about your keywords right now and what they are saying (you can also subscribe to the RSS to track your key terms daily). Del.icio.us <http://del.icio.us/> will reveal your keyword related terms and most popular bookmarks about it. The recently launched Facebook Lexicon <http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/> reports what is discussed throughout Facebook's "discussion walls." It is great for comparing related terms and analyzing the latest popular trends. ***************************************** Catch past installments of SearchWrite SearchNews in the |
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