 ............................................................................................................................ |
 |
 |
|
|
|
********************* Catch and cache past installments of SearchWrite SearchNews in the http://www.searchwrite.com/Pages/searchnews.htm ********************** +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A U.S. Senate Committee takes up the question of the Google-DoubleClick acquisition today. The committee is reviewing whether the merger will pose a threat to competition in a rapidly shrinking online ad market. At the same time, privacy groups are concerned that combining the Google and DoubleClick databases will put consumer data at risk. The Google-DoubleClick deal precipitated a wave of consolidation in the online advertising industry, including Microsoftís acquisition of aQuantive, a DoubleClick rival, and Yahooís acquisition of Right Media, which runs an online advertising marketplace. But while those last two deals were quickly cleared by antitrust regulators, the Google-DoubleClick merger has drawn more intense scrutiny by the U.S. Congress as well as by the European Union. The Judiciary subcommittee is chaired by Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, who has been critical of major mergers like satellite radio's XM and Sirius. The FTC plans to hold a two-day town hall meeting starting Nov. 1 to address consumer protection issues raised by the use of targeted advertising based on consumer purchase history. Google on Friday submitted comments to the FTC requesting that the agency address the rapidly changing online ad market during its town hall meeting. The search engine giant also asked that the FTC look at how targeted ads affect the small business community. <http://ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/ehavioral/index.shtml>
Which was the bigger event for Microsoft this week? The launch of the Halo 3 click-and-blast video game and the chance to have bagged an autographed copy from Bill Gates at Bellevue Wa.'s Best Buy? Or the three-hour Searchification event at Microsoft's headquarters in Mountain View, CA, where MS debuted a new version of its search engine, dubbed Search Live 2.0? It was only a year ago that Microsoft rolled out the first version of Windows Live to mixed reviews. Now Microsoft realizes they need to step up. While Live Search attracts 69 million searchers in a month (vs. 104 million for Yahoo and 142 million for Google), they have only 11% of queries (vs. 23% for Yahoo and 56% for Google). This year's edition showcases a raft of improvements. What's new? Do a search for digital cameras on the new Live Search and you'll uncover not just product details, but also product reviews. You can preview videos online simply by hovering your mouse over any screenshot and it will play a brief intro without delay! For search marketers, this is yet another example of why it is important to optimize all types of Web files ñ images, news, video, and audio. A new vertical Microsoft is focusing on is entertainment with an xRank celebrity ranking feature that will let you track the movers and shakers. Is Paris Hilton more popular this very moment than Britney? Live Search will tell you. What could be more important? Microsoft's version of Google's Webmaster Central toolset is on tap for November. The initial version of the tools include a robots.txt validator, information on what pages of the site are most important to Live Search, what pages link to and from the site (ranked in order of importance), and when the site was last crawled. They say they'll tell you if they find you're spamming, although details were sparse. You can also submit a sitemap or ping Microsoft when the sitemap has changed. No announcement has been made about the $10 billion Microsoft is rumored to be contemplating for a Facebook acquisition. The new video site is here: <http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us> Check out the changes here: <http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=live+search&mkt=en-us&scope=&FORM=press> Thanks to Vanessa Fox for her reporting.
Google has introduced a new AdWords feature: the Conversion Optimizer beta. Conversion Optimizer helps you meet your ROI objectives by automatically managing your bids according to a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goal. By automating the bidding process, this feature helps you minimize your conversion costs while saving you time. Here's how Conversion Optimizer works: Simply specify a maximum CPA bid and the Conversion Optimizer does the rest. It uses historical information about your campaign and automatically generates optimal CPC bids for each auction. You still pay per click, but you no longer have to manually adjust your bids to reach your CPA goals. Since the Conversion Optimizer can choose a new bid for each auction, you're provided with the additional benefit of spending money only on the search queries and sites where your ads are likely to convert. In order to accurately predict your conversion rate and optimize your bids, the Conversion Optimizer requires that your campaign currently uses AdWords Conversion Tracking and has at least 300 conversions in the last 30 days. The Conversion Optimizer tries to keep the cost of each conversion below your CPA bid. However, if the actual conversion rate is lower than Google predicts, your CPA may exceed your CPA bid. There are now two ways to bid using CPA: The Conversion Optimizer and Pay-Per-Action (PPA) beta. PPA lets you pay only when an action you define occurs (e.g. a newsletter sign-up or a purchase on your site). PPA ads are only shown in specific places on the content network -- a majority of PPA ads appear on publisher sites that use Google referrals, and a small portion of these ads also show up in AdSense for content ad units as part of a beta test. If you use the Conversion Optimizer, your ads can appear on both the search and content network.
Digg has rolled out a massive update to help users of its service connect more easily and to make the service more social overall. Right now when you want people to pay extra attention to a story that you submit to Digg, you have to try to contact them outside of Digg. With this new update, you will be able to send your links to friends (ìshoutingî) along with messages. You will also be able to post your stories to a message board of thoughts (think Facebookís wall feature) so that you and your friends can discuss it there. Enhanced profiles are another new feature. Previously, your profile page could only contain some very basic information: your user name, real name, avatar, location, IM user name and one link to a Website. With the update, you are able to create a much richer sense of who you are. You can have multiple photos, a bio, information about your personal interests, and links to your own various websites. This is a huge departure for a site in which many people protect their real identities like closely guarded secrets. One note, much like Facebook, you will also be able to determine who sees what (friends vs. non-friends, etc). The bottom line: If I want to get a story on Digg's homepage, the first thing I would do is to get a Non-Power User to submit it. Non-Power Users can get to the homepage with fewer friends voting on the submission. Then I would get tons of Power Users to promote the story via the Shout It feature. Granted, you need to know Power Users for this to work. So start Digging! <http://digg.com/>
Assailed as being a cobweb, bordering on irrelevancy, and positively glacial in responding to new Website inclusion requests or updates, the Open Directory Project (ODP) has managed to survive the emergence of the <NOODP> meta tag that lets sites bypass the human-edited, ODP description that was used in their Google search results. And suddenly, the giant awakens. The Project has just launched the official DMOZ blog. The first blog post explains that DMOZ wants to use this blog to do three things. 1. Provide authentic messages about DMOZ and the efforts of our volunteer community. 2. Highlight enhancements, both current and future. 3. Allow editors to showcase their categories and describe, in their own words, why DMOZ is so important. DMOZ would also like to recruit new editors. But most importantly, they want to use the blog to get feedback from the community. If you have access to the Web and are passionate about a category, you can find out how to apply to be an ODP/DMOZ editor at the site.
Ask has announced it will launch its new Sponsored Listing platform October 2. ASL 2.0 - in keeping with the world's love for the 2.0 extension - promises improvements in cost and budget controls, and other benefits. The addition of average positioning information should help determine how much to bid. The allowance of multiple ads will help test different creatives against the same keywords - though the delivery will be optimized only - there will not be the ability to opt out of the CTR impacting the delivery.
Clicky gives bloggers and smaller web sites a more personal understanding of their visitors. With its refreshingly clean and simple interface, innovative features like Spy and RSS feeds, and an unrivaled per visitor level of detail, you also get real time stats, outbound link tracking, download tracking, IP tagging, custom data tracking, and much more.
You may be familiar with the concept of using the nofollow tag for external links. That is where you tell a spider not to recognize any endorsement of the link you are specifying, to assign neither credit nor blame. But do you know why you may want to use the nofollow for internal links? The main reasons is because it can reduce duplicate content as well as control what pages you want to assign more weight to. You only have so much link juice that you can spread throughout your site, so why not spread it to the pages that count instead of wasting it on unimportant pages. Here are some of the things you should consider applying nofollow to internally: Privacy Policy If this sounds at all superfluous, here is what Google's Matt Cutts has to say about it: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g. a link through to a page that is robot.txtíed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for folks to use. Thereís no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollowíed links are dropped out of our link graph; we donít even use such links for discovery. By the way, the nofollow meta tag does that same thing, but at a page level. ******************************************
|
||
 |
|
Search Services | SEO News | SearchFolio | Search Tools | Contact Us |
Seattle24x7 | Site Map | | Glossary |
|||||
|
SearchWrite 2 0 6. 8 4 2. 5 4 2 0
Content Copyright 2007 SearchWrite All Rights Reserved |
|||||