October 7, 2008

Legally Speaking: Recent Legal News About Search

Posted by Virginia Nussey

Jeffrey K. Rohrs, our moderator, is a "recovering attorney" but he still likes to moderate these types of panels. I agree that legal issues can be very interesting and, of course, important.

Mark Rosenberg, Of Counsel, Sills Cummis & Gross P.C., says that there are a lot of legal issues being addressed at the moment. The press and politicians are starting to care about the legal ramifications of search marketing.

Privacy Concerns in Behavioral Marketing

There's a general squeamishness about private user data being collected and there was a Congress committee hearing recently. We'll probably see a consent or opt-out mechanism coming out of this.

Google and Antitrust Scrutiny

Google has 60 percent of the search market and may have as much as 80 percent of paid search, so they're a large presence. The words antitrust and monopoly are being used by the media in reference to Google. It's only when the market position is abused that antitrust regulations come into play. The current scrutiny will only increase if the Yahoo deal goes through. In anything it does, Google probably realizes that everything they do will be scrutinized.

Trademarks and Search Marketing

There hasn't been an alignment between Internet commerce and brick and mortar commerce. According to a growing number of courts, search marketers can use their competitors' trademarks if certain qualifications are met. Trademark law says that the use of a trademark that will likely cause confusion is prohibited. Usually it's a simple matter of asking yourself why you're using someone else's trademark.

Why and How Am I Using Someone Else's Trademark?

The following are permitted ways to use another's trademark:

• To identify a product or serviced offered on a site
• To let users know that a site offering a product or service
• To make a comparison
• To let a user know the site selling a generic version

It will likely be okay if there is no other readily identifiable way of identifying the trademarked product or service.

Courts don't care if Internet users cannot see the trademark. Most courts believe that Meta tags are the most important factor in search marketing and so consider use in a Meta tag to be infringement. You may think that a user that ends up clicking on the ad and getting to your landing page will be savvy enough to realize where they are. Initial user confusion, however, is not acceptable. There's an exception in Michigan, but I'm personally not going to worry about that. Sorry Michigan readers!

Improper Trademark Use

These are the ways you can't use another's trademark:

• Overuse
• Overly claiming
• Causing confusion
• Using the logo
• Something that suggests affiliation or sponsorship

Fake Articles

He hasn't seen any cases on this issue but his guess is that courts will find such action to be confusion.

Jonathan Hochman, Founder and President, Hochman Consultants, will share with us a cautionary tale. The names have been changed to protect the innocent! So Violet runs a home security business. She installs alarms throughout the U.S. Nemesis is her competition. Benedict is who Violet hires to build her site and manage a PPC campaign. They start small and nobody bothers with a contract.

Then, Benedict realizes that Violet is making lots of money. He starts looking for a better deal. Benedict meets Violet's competitor, Nemesis, and they start to work together. One day Benedict locks Violet out of her AdBlurbs PPC account. Violet goes to Bobble, the search engine, and asks for help. Bobble says, sorry, but we're not here to dictate ownership. Then Benedict clones Violet's AdBlurbs account, providing multiple copies to Nemesis. Violet sues Benedict and Nemesis. Violet got a preliminary injunction granting custody of the AdBlurbs account and removal of the copies. Then, Bobble asks Violet to pay her balance due for AdBlurbs. Violet shrieks that Bobble must pay high damages for denying access to her account.

The judge had never heard of PPC advertising, but she figured it out within ten minutes. Ancient legal concepts like property and agency can be applied to online assets. Common sense prevailed and it's decided that the person who pays the search engine and who pays the manager probably owns the account.

Evidence Cited

As an expert witness for this case, Jonathan cited the following evidence:

• Domain registration info of landing pages
• AdBlurbs change history. Transactions are logged and date-time stamped.
• PPC account peculiarities, such as misspelled keywords and account structure, are like fingerprints.

SEM Assets

PPC accounts are valuable business assets that may include trade secrets:

• Keyword performance history
• Ad version test results
• Quality score

Replacing these assets can be expensive.

Four Important Questions

1. Do you have a contract with your consultants/clients that specifies who owns what? Is your relationship work for hire?
2. Have you read the search engines' Terms and Conditions?
3. Who has access to your SEM accounts? Can you revoke access? Can you get locked out?
4. If you leave your agency, can you take your accounts with you? Are they portable?

Protect Your Property

• Google: Create your own account and allow the manager to link via My Client Center.
• Yahoo: Create an account and add a revocable login in for the manager. Don't use a sub-account.
• Microsoft: Create own account. Give your login to the manager and hope they are honest. Don't use a sub-account.
• Ask: Create own account and a login for the manager.

Roy Shkedi, Founder & CEO, AlmondNet, will be giving us an operational perspective of using behavioral targeting and where it fits in the law.

Consumer Behavior

Behavioral targeting is the delivery of ads to a person, wherever they go, based on their observed online behavior. Post-search behaviorally targeted ads are delivered based on purchase-intent data. Use searched trademarks to behaviorally deliver your ad to your prospect on the sites he or she spends 95 percent of their online time on.

BT Legal Challenges

Data ownership:

• Who should be rewarded for the valuable data?
• Who owns the data?

Data is owned by whoever the consumer gave the data knowingly and willingly:

• Visited sites
• ISPs

Are data owners allowed to share data with others? The sharing of PII (Personal Identifiable Information) requires data owners to task for consumers' permission (opt-in)

Privacy is the biggest challenge faced the behavioral targeting industry. BT requires data scale. An opt-in solution historically does not generate a very large scale. Data scale requires an opt-out solution. What determines when opt-out is enough and when opt-in is required? As a rule of thumb, if you have PII you need to ask for opt-in.

Who monitors the implementation of privacy safeguards? So far, the industry does through the NAI (Network Advertising Initiative). But congress is watching. He believes self regulation of the industry would be better and a behavioral targeting initiative is seeing some adoption.

Deborah Wilcox, Partner, Baker Hostetler, LLP, will be looking at two cases that have caught her eye.

To the Top of Google

Punchclock.com owned a federal trademark registration for "punch clock". It was for time clock and computer payroll software. Punch-clock.com was Canadian but sales were in the U.S. as well. The U.S. company sent a cease and desist in 2001. In 2007, they filed a lawsuit in Florida federal court. The defendant punch-clock.com ranked higher on Google. Alexa traffic rank was much lower for the plaintiff than for punchclock.com.

The Canadian defendant did not defend the litigation and just ignored the lawsuit. The judge found trademark infringement, cybersquatting and unfair competition. The judge transferred punch-clock.com to the plaintiff and awarded $100,000 in cybersquatting statutory damages, plus $30,000 in attorneys' fees and costs.

The judge also awarded over $1 million in corrective advertising damages. They figured that it would take $136 per day to purchase keywords from Google for seven years for the following keywords:

• Punch clock
• Punch clock software
• Punchclock
• Punch clocks
• Punch time clock

The $1 million was reached because the judge multiplied the number you get when you multiply $136 per day for seven years by three since it was considered a willful violation. Today a search for any of the terms doesn't show punchclock.com because the company actually isn't bidding on the terms.

Acknowledgement Page

TrafficSchool.com and eDriver were both referring drivers to traffic schools. eDriver was using the domain DMV.org and designed the page to look like an official government page. At the end of the page was a small disclaimer that says it's not owned, operated or affiliated with a government agency.

DMV.org saw 70 to 80 percent of its traffic coming from top search engine placement. The consumer confusion led to the finding of false advertising.

The court found that the plaintiff also had "unclean hands" because it had also registered DMV domains. So, no money damages went to the plaintiff, but the court ordered a mandatory acknowledgement page for the defendant. Now, before anyone can get to the site there's a page that states that the site is a private site not affiliated with a government site. They also had to redesign the site. DMV.org dropped in the Google rankings.

Takeaways

Courts are still grappling with search engine marketing and how to remedy infringement. Businesses need a careful legal review of:

• Domain names
• Content
• Consumer confusion (this is key)
• International issues

Posted on 10/ 7/08 at 4:43 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, liveblog, smxeast2008

Googleopoly

Posted by Virginia Nussey

Finishing out the day on the Issues Track, let's take a look at Googleopoly! Our moderator is Jeffrey K. Rohrs, VP, Marketing, ExactTarget, and he'll be the one asking the questions. Our speakers are: James Grimmelmann, Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School; Shelly Palmer, Managing Director, Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC; Kevin Ryan, CEO and Founder, Motivity Marketing; and Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikia Search.

What does it take to be considered a legal monopoly?

James says a monopoly is simply when you're the only one selling something. There's nothing illegal about having a monopoly. The thing is, you can't do unfair things to get one and once you have one, it's not legal to exploit it to discourage competition.

Are you hearing concerns from advertisers regarding the Google Yahoo deal?

Of course advertisers are concerned because they assume a partnership between Yahoo and Google is intentionally vague so as not to be understood. The world doesn't know what it doesn't know, and people generally don't know that having one source of information on the Internet is a bad thing.

Does Google's growth in the domestic market concern you?

Chris thinks we're going to see competitive responses. In China, Microsoft revealed a new suite of tools that they're going to have which show quite a bit of transparency. He doesn't think that Google's monopoly is bad, and he sees competition coming about.

Hitwise is reporting that Google has a dominance in the video space, which appears to be propped up by the search space. Is that concerning?

Shelly says there several things to think through. First, Google is an ecosystem and it's not likely to go anywhere. The chart shows that Google, if left unchecked, is pretty much unstoppable. But not only is Google a medium, it's a metric. That's a new place advertisers are finding themselves. Google is the metric of how to do other media that has become ingrained and will be hard to unseat. He's only concerned from the perspective of how advertisers will handle the circumstance after never having seen this kind of shift before.

Now Jeff pulls up the Wikipedia page for "Googleopoly" and it's a sad little page. (Go at it, marketers!)

Share your thoughts on Google growth and how it fits into your view as a competitor.

Jimmy says that search doesn't trend naturally toward monopoly. Like big brand spaces, there are reasons why some are going to be big and others are going to be small. He says if he can launch a search engine he's going to be super thrilled to get even 2 percent of the market. To launch in the advertising space is much harder.

Jeff shows a chart of one company's client's paid search spend for Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Google is up at the 70 to 80 percent line, Yahoo is around 15 to 25 while Microsoft is hovering around 5 percent. So what does this mean for the monopoly issue?

James says that from a market share perspective, Google is crossing the point of being considered a monopoly. At around 75 percent, some could start seeing monopoly, but the real question is if they are doing anything to clobber competition.

Jeff asks the audience who is an advocate for the deal, no one raises their hand. Almost everyone raises their hand when he asks who is a skeptic.

Advocates

• 11 members of Congress (CA)
• Ayn Rand Center
• Google
• Overstock.com
• Publicis Group
• Randall Stross (Author, Planet Google
• Yahoo

Skeptics

• American Antitrust Institute
• ...

Ugh, the slide is gone and I missed the whole skeptics list. You'll have to forgive me. :( I did notice that the list of skeptics was longer than the list of advocates.

Are you a skeptic or an advocate of the deal?

Kevin likes Google's culture and admires how they've added to the working environment. He doesn't see people being thrown under the bus. Part of him says that that's a great thing and maybe life would be better if we could all join collectives. The other part of him sees Android, Chrome, and many more things pointing to one dominant source of information, and he views that as a bad thing.

Shelly says that personally he could care less if the deal goes through or not. But, speaking as a representative of advertisers who need to buy advertising, it's not a good thing because the mash-up will take the advertiser's ability to target the distinct differences of the two audiences. As a buyer and a planner he can't be effective. But Yahoo wouldn't do the deal if they didn't think they need to do the deal. Advertising has always competed to the death, but that's not done in technology because there's no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Jimmy says that Yahoo made a huge mistake by not being bought by Microsoft. It looks like this deal is the alternative to the failed Microsoft deal. To Yahoo this is a like giving up on something that should be a core part of their functionality. But his concerns for monopoly factors are that if you're big enough to be a player you don't want to sign everything off to the biggest guy.

Chris says that the deal has been suspended indefinitely. He also heard news today that Yahoo's and AOL's talks about merging have heated up. He doesn't think the Google Yahoo deal will ever occur.

James says that it makes him sad that some large center of innovation has folded. While Yahoo lost the edge years ago, the recent effect is that someone else out there who was figuring out a good way to build tools for advertisers is now lost.

Shelly says that a combined Yahoo AOL would be a content behemoth, but they still can't translate that value into wealth. To the level that Microsoft could buy that combined entity is funny. He also thinks it's funny that the evil empire talk used to be reserved for Microsoft.

Kevin says that Google built everything organically while Yahoo tried to build through acquisition. He thinks we're comparing apples to Buicks (hah!) because the two follow totally different strategies.

Is Google using their market power in organic search to propel YouTube, Google Maps and its other products in a disproportionate way?

Kevin says that Google's acquisitions came fewer and slower. We're going to see a lot more of search and behavioral targeting coming together because it's a means of collecting all kinds of information.

Shelly says that the practical thing is that some things require a certain scale. When the DOJ decided to break up Microsoft, not a whole lot changed because no one understood what a browser was, what an operating system was, or any of the basic terminology that was needed to talk about Microsoft.

Jimmy says that it only occurs to us to be shocked by the idea of the deal because it doesn't match what we understand about Google. Search is a report on the world, like a form of journalism. If people begin to sense that Google is promoting their properties over others, people would be suspect.

What is Google's responsibility to ensure accuracy?

James says that Google doesn't have any responsibility there. Shelly reiterates, saying that Google is a pipeline. It's like blaming radio waves for what's playing on the radio.

If Google knows everything about us, should we be more concerned about the aggregation of this data because of what the government could do with it?

Shelly says that it comes down to it, the electronic footprint that everyone leaves (completely apart from Google) is huge. Jimmy says that one of the interesting things about this is that if you're someone of intense interest, the government will be able to subpoena all that data, but for most people most of the time, it's not likely.

What does the Android phone do to the conversation of Googleopoly?

James says this is one of the best moves for openness in the telecom technology area. This is a great development in the mobile space because it's holding Apple's feet to the fire. Jimmy agrees and says it's good that there's something that will drive innovation.

Do you think the government is wise to look at Google for antitrust issues, or are there other places that they should be directing their attention that bear a far more negative impact on us as consumers and citizens?

Kevin says that they should look toward Google to figure out how to make money (hah!). James thinks we should worry about the ISPs first.

That was a fascinating conversation and I sometimes found myself entranced listening to the panelists instead of typing. That said, you can always check out alternative coverage. I saw Tamar Weinberg blogging away for Search Engine Roundtable, so if you like what you read so far, check it out!

Posted on 10/ 7/08 at 4:26 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Google, Yahoo, liveblog, smxeast2008

Personalized and Customized Search

Posted by Virginia Nussey

Moderator Danny Sullivan says that it was very hard to get speakers for this topic because many people aren't sure what they're doing yet as far as personalization and customization are concerned. But Bryan Horling, Software Engineer, Personalized Search, Google, is hoping to give an overview of what's going on, what changes to expect and the history behind personalized and customize search.

Here's an example using "dinner" as a query. The top two results are a Wikipedia article and a site with recipes. Basically, the results will help you research what dinner is or find a site that requires additional work. In a personalized version, there's a result for a manicotti recipe and a result for an area restaurant. This shows the difference between what a user might want and what is being provided, and the two are miles apart. If every person was to write out a list of what they'd expect from the query "dinner", everyone's would be different, so it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. [I've heard that about personalization somewhere before... --Susan]

Why personalize? You get the user to the right information as quickly as possible. Many searches are inherently ambiguous, so they can be a challenge to answer correctly for the individual user.

He won't be talking about: search preferences, iGoogle, custom search engine, subscribed links, and Google Desktop, although these things can all affect a user's search experience.

Early personalization history at Google

• Kaltix acquisition (2003): Three guys from Stanford wrote some cool things about personalizing PageRank.
• Personalized search on Google Labs (2004): Explicit, specify your interests.
• Personalized search launched (2005): Implicit, based on your Web history.

Web history records a user's queries and clicks and gets a good idea of what the user is actually interested in. It's better than models where users enter their interests because sometimes people don't answer in the way that best shows their interests.

Principles of Personalization

User privacy is key. Without the trust of users, no one's going to allow their information to be used. This is done through:

• Transparency: Inform when and what changes are made.
• Security: Sensitive info, including personalization based on that info is only available when signed in.
• Control: Users can edit or delete underlying data or turn the service off.

Web History

On the search results page, click on "Web History" for a page that displays Web history. The date and time of all activity is shown, and there's a calendar where heavy search days occurred as well as a place that categories are sorted, from images to news to blogs and videos. This is the transparency arm.

Web history control is letting the user remove or pause Web history. Individual items can be removed from the history. A user can also clear their entire Web history. This has been around for a few years.

More recently, there are customized results for locations. By clicking on the "more details" link, there is info shown for the location and you can compare results if the Web history was not applied.

Ranking Changes

Localization is:

• Using the searcher's geolocation to affect search.
• Different levels of granularity.
• Both explicit and implicit information.

Country level localization will serve results that apply to the country you're in. He uses the query "got talent" as an example, and in the UK the result is Britain's Got Talent while in the U.S. the result is America's Got Talent.

Regional localization is, again, intuitive. When querying "metro" in D.C., you'll get results for public transit, but if you search in San Francisco, you'll get results for the publication.

City localization will show local results, especially for queries with strong local intent, like "pizza". That query will result in local business results for pizza in your town or city.

Personalization

• Using the searcher's personal context to rank results
• Recent searches (short term)
• Web history (long term)

Recent searches - Disambiguation

Searching for "jordans" would probably result in the sneaker, but if their recent queries were about furniture, the results will show Jordans the furniture store. Generally, it results in a re-ranking that still includes shoe results.

Web History - Disambiguation

A search for "galaxy" will mostly show pages about space for non-personalized results. But if the searcher has been looking at soccer sites, the LA Galaxy will show up more proficiently.

Web History - Refinding

A result that is visited previously will show that it has been visited and that site's listing may possibly rise in the position it shows up for.

What does this mean for SEM?

Half empty:

• Collecting metrics
• Seeing how your pages rank

Half full:

• Easier for people looking for your service to find you.
• Easier to retain customers who prefer your business.

The top position is not winner-take-all. To take advantage of personalized search:

• Create compelling and interesting content.
• Appeal to users, not search engines.
• You can control personalization for your searches. Use search details. Disable it by appending &pws=0 to searches.
• Sign out.
• Firefox extension, greasemonkey script.
• Edit or turn off Web history.

Q&A

If I want to create personalization on my site itself, how can I do it?

A lot of what we try to address with personalized search is ambiguity, but within a particular site, there's probably not the same need.

What's the percentage of people that are actually using this on a regular basis?

All Bryan can say is "a bunch".

How does this all tie into local business accounts?

He doesn't know a lot about local business, but the issue is what if you're looking for a result in an area that you don't live? We probably aren't serving those as well as you might in the short term. But in the long term, Web history would help resolve this as it figures out that you like to visit some place. Of course, if you're looking for something out of town, you'll probably make it a town specific query. There's nothing stopping searchers from refining queries.

Could personalization help a site that seems like another site?

People with similar interests will see similar results.

Do you need to have a Google account to be served personalized search results?

Previous queries and geo-based queries don't require a Google account.

Posted on 10/ 7/08 at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Google, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, liveblog, smxeast2008

Search & The U.S. Presidential Campaign

Posted by Virginia Nussey

So I chose to cover this session out of primarily selfish motives, but I bet there's going to be some broad takeaways that can be applied to company's marketing campaigns. It's a large panel of excellent presenters, so this should be fascinating.

Here's the killer lineup.

Mindy Finn, Partner, former director of e-strategy for Mitt Romney '08, Engage
Eric Frenchman, Chief Internet Strategist, McCain-Palin 2008, Connell Donatelli Inc.
Peter Greenberger, Team Manager, Elections & Issue Advocacy, Google
Justine Lam, Former e-Campaign Director, Ron Paul 2008, Ron Paul for President
Diane Rinaldo, Political Advertising Director, Yahoo
Tracy Russo, Chief Blogger and Deputy Director of Online Communications for the John Edwards for President Campaign, Russo Strategies
Don Steele, Director of Digital & Enterprise Marketing, Comedy Central (and Colbert for President Campaign!)

Moderator Sara Holoubek explains that this panel will cover a timely issue where we're seeing online marketing play a big role. This year seems to be the time that politics "got search." In 2007 it started as politicians started using digital tactics and it's also been seen in the media coverage.

We're at the point where technology and politics are mixing. Which came first?

Peter says politics came first. He'd been working for Democratic campaigns for years, then the opportunity at Google came up it and seemed to be a good way to mix some of his interests.

Diane says politics came first, and she wouldn't recommend getting into it unless you're passionate about it. She was in retail first, but says it's a lot like politics.

Eric was working on the Internet first and fell into his role as a good fit.

Justine says technology came first. This was her first presidential campaign (and maybe her last!).

Mindy says technology and online communications came first.

Tracy says that technology came first, as she started blogging in high school. She eventually got a job in a campaign and it was common sense that technology would make her job easier, while some saw it as strategy.

Don says technology came first and it's a tool used to gain visibility.

What might be different with technology marketing in politics?

Tracy says that politics are four or five years behind corporate America. Political campaigns aren't giving any budget to digital strategy, and when they start trying to adopt it, they're looking for talent in corporate America because political insiders don't usually get it.

You mentioned that there's not a lot of dollars going to digital marketing. Is it changing?

Peter says there's going to be growth and that it's moving in the right direction. He's working hard to convince the decision makers to flow more dollars to the Internet because there's a shift in the audience, who are spending as much time online as watching TV. Diane says that any decision maker wants to know that the advertising is effective. Corporations can decide to put a budget into it and research the ad effectiveness, but in politics, every dollar counts. Tracy says that outside of top-tier campaigns, there's no one to staff those races that know how to do that.

Who's the ultimate check signer?

Eric says it's the campaign manager. They stay very in tune with what's happening on the Internet. He says that they understand it more than the general public gives them credit for. Mindy says that there is education going on to educate the political sphere, but more is needed. Until they understand it they'll turn to what they know. Justine says that she suggested SEM to her campaign manager and he didn't understand it and wasn't willing to try, preferring to stick with traditional tactics.

What about the ability to target locations and demographics, or microtargeting?

Tracy says that being able to explain to decision makers that micro-targets can be reached is the key. People get more comfortable when it can be explained. Peter says that no matter how many times he pitches to political people, the ability to geotarget amazes the crowd. It amazes people that targeting can be done by state, region and direct ads. The challenge is to speak to them in micro-targeting terms that they understand. If we do a good job explaining that they realize there is no more effective or efficient way to target people they'll adopt the strategy. Mindy says that those that are "married to TV" see that people can target a specific audience and that's the selling point. Eric says that during the primary season he made a lot of use of geotargeting and micro-targeting.

To what extent are you tailoring ads or do you have the time?

Eric says that it's very tailored. If you search for McCain in Jersey, you'll see an ad about protecting the shore. If you see a generic campaign ad, it's on purpose. Mindy says that a lot of people that are just trying it aren't going to dedicate a lot of time to it, and they might be afraid to tweak it too much. This is where the education plays out. Peter says that it's similar to corporate markets. There are still instances where corporations are missing out on online opportunities. Presidential campaigns also don't always have the resources to dedicate.

Have you tied together the television and other media with search?

Eric says that the creative and the tactics are integrated. The messaging and the landing pages and video ads are integrated, and on the back end they are measuring to see how people are getting to the site. They know what keywords are driving what traffic and use the information. The test is seeing if it ends up in an election. Mindy says it'll be helpful to get to the point where the TV people do their comparative testing online.

In regards to BT, did any of your campaigns explore that?

Eric says that all candidates are interested in behavioral targeting. Each targeted group has a different strategy and is targeted specifically. Diane says that the most-seen targeting is geotargeting, but there's also other user targeting going on.

How does search tie into email marketing because there's a lot of email marketing going on?

Tracy says that all the pieces have to be integrated and search has to touch all the areas. As the cycle evolves, you'll see a lot more and there's some creative stuff going on in senate races where people have more freedom to try different things. Mindy says that campaigns often know how many emails they want to send, but the subject is often decided as issues come up, so it's not decided beforehand and tied together. Peter says that campaigns are also using search to "correct the record" or do rep management.

Is there going to be RSS integration on the district level?

Diane says that as far as going to the district level, when there's enough demand they may consider it. Peter says he gets this question frequently and their general response is asking what's the cost-benefit analysis and the interest, but it's going to get there.

What are your primary conversion goal metrics, besides the typical more information request?

Mindy says that campaigns have different goals. Grassroots campaigns look at interaction with elements on the site, volunteering, and, of course, donating. The goal is driving eyeballs to video landing pages and driving video views. It's purely about awareness. Peter says that in the last few weeks there's been a shift where we're seeing a lot more persuasion search advertising, not only for campaigns but also from issue groups. They're not looking for the traditional dollars but to persuade. Diane says that she's noticed that people are thinking that politicians can raise a lot of money online, but most can't. Approaching search as though it's an ATM is a mistake and she wants to make sure that campaigns are educated and the right expectations are set. There's a lot of opportunity but the immediate online donations is not something that should be their priority in search marketing.

Are there political and philosophical criteria involved in doing the jobs that you on the campaign level can do? Do you need to be a true believer?

Mindy says that the point that you should be passionate about politics is true because it can be intense. Campaigns do want to feel that you're interested in what they're doing and that's something that's hard to fake. Tracy says that as a consultant there's definitely a blue-red divide that dictate where a person will get hired.

Let's talk about SEO and social media. To blog or not to blog (for a candidate)?

Tracy says that it's hard to come up with something that's worth reading. The Obama campaign hired a blogger that put out compelling, engaging story telling. If you can do that, that's good. But if you're just putting out press release and pictures of kissing babies, it's going to get boring. Working with bloggers is important, not necessarily blogging yourself. Mindy says that content is king, so it can be a very powerful connection tool. Justine says that blogs was a great tool for listening and finding out what could be done better in the campaign. Tracy also feels the community that is developed is priceless and can be extended after the campaign.

How effective is microblogging as a tool?

Mindy says that like all tools it's all about mass, but even though Twitter is small, it's a hyper-active community. They're doing everything and those are the highly-influential hyper media users. If there's something you want to filter out to the community, Twitter is a good way to do that.

Have you ever been in a situation where there's a suggested tactic that's a negative tactic, but you thought that it wouldn't work?

Tracy says that saying no is very important. Not all ideas are equal, they should be debated and in a healthy campaign that can be decided. Now digital strategists are taken more seriously and they will be listened to when they say no. Don says that the decision has to be made at the end of the day that, even though Comedy Central is all about humor, there's still a line that they don't want to cross. He represents a brand and wouldn't want to associate the wrong things with it.

How effective is Facebook for campaigns?

Don says that the Colbert for President Facebook group was started by a high schooler, but it took off as a way to reach out. Justine said she didn't think FB was effective in her campaign. The most effective areas were informal forums, where people were coming together to talk about what they're interested in. FB is not as conducive to collaboration and community. As a badge it's great but it didn't get people as activated.

Sum up the Ron Paul money bomb?

Justine says it was a recipe. There was a unique message. YouTube allowed the message to get out and help with brand awareness. Throughout the summer supporters were taking more active role in creating things for the campaign. On forums, people were talking about what people wanted to do for the campaign. They let go of the reins and the supporters were creating ads. Then the campaign decided to go transparent with the campaign, and were talking about who the donors were. People got excited to see their name on the site when they donated. They would post screenshots to the forums and urged people to donate as well. Then the campaign decided to go fully transparent, which was unheard of. They made a goal of $4 million in a month, which resulted in a graphic that was really hard to see individual names in. The campaign was thinking of ways to fix the graphic, but people in the forums figured something out -- they all decided to donate on the same day so that they'd all show up on the graphic. In a single day they got $4.2 million.

What reputation monitoring tools do you use?

Eric says that he personally uses Google Alerts and Google Trends, while the campaign has an entire war room. There are rooms of researchers keeping up on what's being talked about. Tracy says that some of the tools that are being made available aren't producing good interfaces because they don't understanding how campaigns would actually use it. Peter says that related searches are an indicator of what else is being talked about. Diane says Yahoo Buzz is similar and shows the overlap of what terms are being searched and there's a map of what search terms are hot in what areas.

What are you monitoring?

Peter says the data's only as good as the use you put it to. The question is whether it is affecting the offline mentality of the campaign. Too often, campaigns are flying by the seat of their pants. Mindy says that early in the election cycle, rep monitoring was more of a concern, but now there's so much out there, flooding the zone is the best strategy. If you see a trend you can do search campaigns to head it off.

What does the investment in search, video, and social mean for corporate America going forward?

Tracy says campaigns are learning from social media, but Peter points out that Howard Dean may be credited with making the blog mainstream. He's excited by the attention it's getting and hoping it will trickle down to other candidates. More experimentation and different strategies being tested will be good. Diane says that an ad effectiveness study about display or search advertising in campaigns will be a powerful influencer to corporate marketers. Eric says that rapid communication and not being afraid to turn over the brand will be lessons learned. The paid side will learn to be faster and faster. Corporations can learn to do more regional and local advertising. Peter says that as one of the first Internet elections, it's been fascinating to watch in his space. It will end up coming down to who turns out to vote, but there's a good chance that the Internet will have played an important role and that will probably spur corporate adoption.

Which campaign is doing a better job with online marketing? Or is the blue-red divide just too great to answer this question?

Eric says that he's only going to answer one way, while Diane says she just may not answer the question she was asked (hee!). Don says that he's amazed at how little media companies are using political terms. Media companies have a chance to use it more effectively, say more and use online marketing more. Point goes to InDecision 2008!

Posted on 10/ 7/08 at 11:18 AM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Branding, SEM Events, Social Media, liveblog, smxeast2008

SMXE Keynote -- Tim Armstrong

Posted by Virginia Nussey

Welcome back to SMX East. I expect nothing less than awesome after yesterday's great sessions and the rocking IMNY Charity Party. And we're kicking it off strong with Google's Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce, North America, & Vice President - Google, Inc.

Danny Sullivan: We're at the point where people are starting to wonder if Google is getting too big. Is Google a monopoly?

TA: Our answer is definitively no. When I started there eight years ago, Google had virtually no market share. But the core thing we focused on over time is getting information to people. Google's also been very innovative in transparency. We're doing anything in their power to make it open. We're an important part of the industry environment, but we're by no means a monopoly.

DS: The review by the DOJ was supposed to be a voluntary thing, but if they say don't do it, will you follow them?

TA: One of the things that some of the larger advertisers haven't like about it is that Google has allowed all sizes of companies to play on an even field. There are a lot of big companies that are used to having pricing power over the smaller competitors. So some people are making arguments in their best interest. In general, we'll see what happens over the next few weeks.

DS: The ANA is opposing the Yahoo ad deal. Is the ANA like 30 big advertisers?

TA: Most of the ANA are customers of ours. There are different levels of understanding about what our advertising is. Overall, the vast majority of them have great relationships with both Yahoo and Google. One of the things we've been offering the ANA is an open town hall. We want to talk about the deal with people in public. In general, they're great customers of ours and we'd like to have them understand the deal better, because I think overall they'll support the deal if they understand it.

DS: There's a concern with advertisers that you're going to dictate the prices. Are you guys going to get together and decide that any ad is going to start at $10 per click?

TA: For us it's really about user quality. From my past experience in media, the whole point is to help customers and sell ads. But the respect around end users is always in the conversation. It's in many cases a way to make sure the highest quality bids show up. But whether it's landing page quality or loading time, it's all about the end user. Google wouldn't set bid pricing because our focus is on user quality.

DS: What else are you doing to aid transparency?

TA: From Google Analytics to Google Trends to setting your own bid price, the planning stage of what you're going to buy from Google through the delivery stage of what you get - it all has transparency. Transparency slices through the auction, and the Google model is probably more transparent than traditional media. As we try to define what quality is for advertising, there's a responsibility on Google's side to make things more transparent. A big help is listening to customers. We don't have a specific plan for transparency, but I think people will see it over time.

DS: What's behind the idea that you're both working with and competing with ad agencies?

TA: I think there's no conflict because we work with them. If you're a big agency and you have a big client and you don't know what you're doing in search marketing, you may want to start to call us names. I think the market has really reset and Google's got a growing number of relationships with agencies. As the search market becomes bigger and more sophisticated and starts to bleed into other areas, search marketers are the only people to be able to connect all the changes together for their clients. The notion that Google is a frenemy or a froe is outdated and I think many of our clients would say that we're a great partner and have helped agencies grow to an extent.

DS: When clients go directly to you and bypass their agency, it has led people to ask "Who owns the client?"

TA: I think the clients own themselves. I don't think that Google owns the clients. I think agencies are the best people to connect clients to Google, eBay, Amazon -- they're the only people that can help companies connect all the dots together. They can figure out how to optimize across the board. When you look at the examples of what people are saying when they make this point, it's usually because the client had a specific question or were trying to solve a specific issue.

DS: What's the relationship between Google and Publicis?

TA: We started talking to them about a year ago. The Publicis clients were looking to Google and together we decided to get closer together. There are a few basic principles behind how we work together. First, people need to understand what the other company is doing, so we've been swapping employees. On the systems front, Publicis has a tremendous amount of information and they want to mix their data with Google's data, so we need to figure out the format to do that. The other question is how does Publicis add the most efficient value to their clients. We're working on all these things and I would expect us to work with more agencies in the future. Email me at tim[at]google.com if you're interested in working together.

DS: Is there anyone left that doesn't get search?

TA: The good news for us is that there are still many people that don't understand search. When we start showing people statistics about how many divisions of a company are taking advantage of search marketing versus how many are signed up for Google Analytics and trying to understand search traffic, it's sometimes a shock to them because there are people in the company hungry to understand how to get more traffic and people to their site.

DS: Are their big areas that are still going to blow up in search? It's been the year for mobile for the last five years.

TA: If you look back five years, there's a lot more available online now. But local is still a big opportunity. Mobile 1) works really well and 2) is sometimes more important than online search. It's going to happen but the question is when. We tested mobile in Japan and it was a big business success. I don't know when the year of mobile is, but it's coming. The other area is video. Search on video has the potential to be like AdWords in its long term value. It's important now, from a traffic perspective.

DS: Sometimes it's hard to keep track of everything Google's doing in video.

TA: Video is a few different markets. There's the traditional model (banners), there's version 2.0 (overlays) and also version 3.0 (promotion for what people are searching for). Engagement level is probably going to be very high considering the opportunities available on YouTube.

DS: Is AdWords for video still running?

TA: Going back to user quality, when an ad comes up in search results we try to deliver the best available ad at the time. We're testing to find out when is the right time to serve videos as ads. We don't have any findings to report, but it's what we're looking at.

DS: There was an honest to goodness banner ad on Google images. What's going on?

TA: We decided to finally test serving banner ads and we figured Google image search was the best place to try that.

DS: You've got Yahoo doing banner ads across the Web that are influenced by search profiles. Then Google is saying "we're not doing that", other than maybe not showing the same ad twice.

TA: We've thought about behavioral targeting for a long time. It's beneficial for both advertisers and end users. But we'd want to watch the area carefully before we do that, if we do that. We're watching BT be successful and it's on our radar, though we don't expect to do anything with that now.

DS: Audience, how many are worried about the Google Yahoo deal?

[Just a few people (I can see about five hands) are and most aren't (more like 50 hands), although many think it will cost more for advertising. Tim's glad to get the feedback.]

Audience member: It looks like you've tried to purge some poorly performing advertisers. Do you think you got everyone off you wanted to and is this a process that needs to be repeated every so often?

TA: We've never targeted specific advertisers and as we've grown, we've had to look at how to scale quality controls. But quality is not something we're ever going to stop addressing. Are we done? Have we reached the pinnacle of quality? No. I think you should expect us to keep ratcheting quality up over time and on a daily basis. You can expect us to continue to do more quality-based changes to the system. There are also times when we've done a bad job of letting more ads into the system, so you've seen us do both, but there's constantly a back and forth.

Audience member: What happens if the DOJ investigation takes a number of months?

TA: We'll patiently wait, I think. We're committed to seeing the right outcome so we're working with them to figure out what they're figuring out. I don't want to comment for the DOJ because they're on their own time table.

Tim wants to know if anyone has anything they'd like to see.

• Business search options (as opposed to consumer search)
• Grand Central
• Purging Maps spam

DS: You've been at Google since 2000. What's the most significant thing you've seen happen to the company?

TA: Some things haven't changed at all, so the biggest surprise is that I'd expect more change in the fundamentals we concentrate on. But one thing that's been surprising is that I thought search quality and ad quality would be something we'd master overtime, but it's actually an ongoing task. Also, it's surprising that the rest of the market hasn't caught onto ad quality. We treat ads like information, and a lot of the markets haven't adopted that, which is really surprising. Targeting criteria and ads targeting hasn't bled into the rest of the market and I think that's a huge advantage for us in general. Those early hard choices we made about letting end users choose the best ads are something we're proud of. The general culture hasn't changed. We've got great people and great projects. It's still exciting to go to work and that hasn't changed.

[ Awww ;) ]

Posted on 10/ 7/08 at 8:54 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Google, SEM Events, liveblog, smxeast2008

October 6, 2008

Keynote - Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society

Posted by Virginia Nussey

Danny Sullivan introduces the first keynote speaker of the conference, Bill Tancer, General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise, a Time Magazine columnist, and author of Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society. He says that we spend a lot of time wondering about who to market to in search. But oddly enough, for these machines, these search engines that have changed so much of our lives, there's relatively little information on how people interact with search. Bill's book tells us the behavior of people and shows us what they do.

Bill Tancer says that at his very first speech (which was for SES) he didn't know yet what he was going to say. It was standing room only and it was a data heavy presentation. He started off by saying that he loves data. In science camp as a kid he recited Pi to 200 digits. That's how much he loves data.

"To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something." --Walker Percy

In Percy's book, he says that the most interesting thing about going into town is not getting there but the search involved in getting there. Bill's found something he likes even more than data, and that's the idea behind the click. Think outside the box. Think of what you can do with the data beyond buying search terms. Start thinking of all that's possible with search term data.

The data he's going to be using is based on the largest worldwide sample of Internet users (25 million). He and his team once did a test. They compared the top fears reported by people who were asked to the fears most searched for.

Reported fears:

1. Bugs, mice, snakes
2. Heights
3. Water
4. Public transport
5. Storms
6. Closed spaces
7. Tunnels and bridges
8. Crowds
9. Speaking in public

Most searched fears:

1. Flying
2. Heights
3. Clowns
4. Intimacy
5. Death
6. Rejection
7. People
8. Snakes
9. Success
10. Driving

He saw this as a great insight into what people are willing to claim in traditional market research versus how they really feel.

The Economy, Porn and Bigfoot

Search term data provides insight into how we react to the economy. They found that when there was a new high in the gas prices, there was a spike in visits to gas related sites. But the searches would taper off in a week, even if prices continued to rise. But over the last six months the searches have gradually been going up. He thinks this represents a lasting sensitivity to gasoline prices.

He's been quoted a lot about porn. He's found some interesting insights into adult Web sites. Over the last five years, every summer is the low point of visits to adult Web sites. However, there was no dip this summer. Looking at the demographic data for visits to these sites shows that households earning under $60,000 were visiting the most. His theory is that during times of economic downturn, people turn to diversionary sites like adult sites.

Search data can also show some of the popular Halloween costume ideas. Bigfoot is the most searched costume this year, and it could be because of the Bigfoot hoax a few months ago.

Stacy Keibler, Sarah Palin and "Hot Photos"

As he was putting together a presentation, he was watching a news story about Dancing with the Stars. It was the season where Drew Lachey, Jerry Rice and Stacy Keibler were the final contestants. Knowing that viewer votes count for half the score, he decided that the most-searched celebrity would be the winner. Stacy Keibler was getting significantly more searches. He predicted Stacy would win, but was wrong.

Trying to find out what actually happened, they looked at the breakdown of the searches. It turned out that many of the searches were for hot pictures of Stacy Keibler. It's likely that these searchers weren't actually voting. (Surprise!) These findings led to the Stacy Keibler Correction Coefficient. Because of market conditions, people were not searching for the intent the researchers expected.

"Searching for Palin's 'Hot Photos'" was a Time column that Bill recently wrote. The week after Sarah Palin was named to the Republican presidential ticket he started gathering search data. There was a huge spike that week in searches for "Sarah Palin" but the searches were very Stacy Keibler-esque. People were looking for "hot photos" of her.

His research shows that here are three segments that adopt online technology before the mainstream: Young Digerati, Money & Brains and the Bohemian Mix.

Watching Search Trends

Specific trends of the early adopters:

• Cam-based social nets
• Personalization
• Tattoos
• Deal sites (resurging)

The Google Chrome team asked Bill to do the same analysis on the browser. The findings showed that a group designated Executive Suites was the main group adopting the browser. The theory is that this is because Chrome is only available for Windows, and not Mac OS or Linux, while early adopters likely prefer Mac OS and innovators seem to prefer Linux.

There's a few ways to learn more if you're interested. Visit the Hitwise Intelligence Blog, www.ilovedata.com. Read his column on Time.com: The Science of Search. And read his book, Click: What Search Activity Tells Us About Society.

Posted on 10/ 6/08 at 3:19 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Analytics, liveblog, smxeast2008

Link Building Fundamentals

Posted by Virginia Nussey

I knew I would screw up before the day was out. But after setting up in the wrong presentation room, I got myself over to the right place. Time to jump right in. Links building is a critical part of SEO and links have become increasingly important in the Web 2.0 world. It's time to break down link building basics in this boot camp session.

Debra Mastaler, Alliance-Link, starts us off.

Why links are valuable

Links connect the Web and are the way search engines and users find things. Link building isn't rocket science, but there is rocket science behind link building. Back when the U.S. space program was just beginning, the group of scientists came together from across North America and realized that there was no way to share their information. That was what started the development of the Internet. Over time, search engines and directories were started. Some fizzled while those that improved their algorithms survived.

What is link popularity? Link popularity measures the quality and quantity of links pointing to a Web site. All the major engines use it. It's considered an off-page factor. Some of the terms include link juice, link pop and link love.

Quantity, quality, anchor text and relevance are the four factors that play into link popularity

Link quality is determined by the authority of the host sites and the sites linking to them. Quality flows from one site to another. PageRank is the most popular of these factors. PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by Google to determine the quality and quantity factors a page and its inbound links.

Anchor text is a query ranking indicator and endorsement of what's to come. Anchor text is the clickable part of the link you see. It's also known as link text. Off all of the components behind the concept of link popularity, anchor text is probably the most powerful. We know this because just based on anchor text, rankings can occur (i.e., "miserable failure"). Use keywords in your anchors for maximum ranking effect. It's better to hyperlink your keyword phrases as anchor text.

Relevancy helps establish where you belong. Search engines read the text around links. Linking out and being linked to establishes a connection, helps classify your site and where it belongs. Build links within your neighborhood. Links to and from contextually relevant or thematically-related sites convey more authority.

Authority sites are those that rank well or are well known within your niche or in general. They have strong inbound links and are insulated against algorithm fluctuations. Spend the most time and greatest resources securing authority links. Focus your inlinking efforts on securing as many solid, quality authority links using keyword rich anchors as you possibly can.

Ranking influences

Link factors to avoid:

• Control your rate of link acquisition. Build slowly, increase content and vary link types.
• Repetitive anchor text should be avoided. Avoid using same anchors and URLs. Deep link when possible.
• Don't use the same tactic over and over. Implement a wide array of linking tactics.

If you do these things, these links will be ignored. For optimal linking success:

• Screen partner sites carefully. Avoid partnering with sites hosting "excessive" reciprocals and site-wides.
• Place links in content areas. Avoid navigation and sponsored areas. Perception is everything.
• Understand that all links have value. Even nofollow links are good because the traffic will follow it. Also, when content is scraped, the link's nofollow will not be copied.

For optimal linking success, remember that redirected links or links passing through third-party sites (affiliates) will not pass link popularity. Avoid losing PageRank by being consistent in the way you link (i.e., www and non-www).

Link Building Tools and Learning Resources

Blogs:

Webmaster blogs by search engines:	googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000343.html blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/
Matt Cutts blog (SEO feed only):	www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/feed/
SEL Link Week:	www.searchengineland.com/lands/link-week.php
Search Engine Roundtable:	www.seroundtable.com
Search Engine Guide:	www.searchengineguide.com
Search Engine Journal:	www.searchenginejournal.com
SEOBook blog:	www.seobook.com/blog

Link Building Tools:

Link Harvester pulls back all the information in an Excel spreadsheet. It gives you the number of unique linking domains, the number of unique Class C Block, the number of .edu/.gov/.mil links and how many are linking to the home page versus deep in the site. She recommends using the tool on competitors.

Hub Finder compares the backlinks of two or more sites and points out their co-occurring back links.

The Langreiter Tool compares Yahoo and Google rankings and where they agree or disagree.

Search Status Tool turns all links using nofollow pink. It cuts your time down so you don't have to go to the code source to find out if the page nofollows links.

The Bad Neighborhood Tool will give you an idea of links coming from risky neighborhoods.

Google Alerts is a discovery tool that will let you know anytime one of your articles has been used and you can go there to see if they've linked to your site.

The Utility Linking Tool will pull up directories and forums that you can submit your URL to based on your keyword.

[ED: These are my best guesses at links for the tools referenced. Hopefully Debra will drop by and correct me if I got them wrong. --Susan]

Link building tactics

In the evolving Web, everything still works but link building strategies using content generation are the ones to focus on because they will get you the most value for your effort. This includes link bait, article writing and content targeting.

When looking for authority links you must first identified the key players in your niche. You'll want to mine their back links and take advantage for the sites linking to them. Separate their back links by media contacts and editorial/commercial sources. Media contacts, like publishing press releases, can get expensive. Use the majority of your time on the editorial and commercial type links.

Find top reviewers at large retail/comparison sites like Amazon and Epinion. There's probably someone out there reviewing products like yours.

Directory submission is still a good way to get links. There are directories for everything (general, niche, RSS, article, podcast, blog, wiki, local). Avoid directories hosting excessive search ads because it detracts from your listing. Check pages for nofollow and robots.txt blocking. Niche directories tend to be less scrutinized. The ISEDB is a directory for directories.

Article writing is a traditional source for links. Write a long version for your site and use a shorter version for article directories. Pull topics from customer service questions. Add RSS to your resource center. Include a bio with each article, including those on your site.

Content networks let you publish content on any topic. They distribute content to engaged participants. Blogger outreach also works well in getting your content with your links out there. Offer to write a guest post.

Link bait is content created and submitted to the social news sites. Submit to sites like Digg and Propeller. The power behind the social news site isn't in the individual links you'll get from each profile, but from the community within. Linking is driven by motivating content. Look for niche social media sites.

What you really need to know before link building:

• Look at partner sites carefully, avoid those with excessive reciprocals and sponsored links.
• Link slowly and add content at the same time.
• Use several different linking tactics.
• Spend resources on obtaining authority links.
• Focus on traditional content generation tactics.
• Notify the media when you've added sizable content.
• Find an alert service you like and use it.
• Use the social media sites to spread emotional content.
• Find your niche community and use it.

Eric Ward, EricWard.com, says he's glad to be back on the speaker circuit. He retired for a while but he's excited to be back at the podium. Things have changed quite a bit since he started link building. The Google algorithm changed it all. Links now serve multiple purposes and audiences. You have two audiences. People who click on links and search engines that count, analyze and judge links The best kind of link will help your traffic and your ranking.

The link building and content publicity required for any given site will vary based on each site's focus, content and intended audience. Eric says you should remember these closing thoughts:

• Since the link building approach required for any given Web site will vary dramatically depending on that site's focus, content and intended audience. Each site deserves it\s own link building and content publicity plan or strategy.
• Your links tell a story about your site, like a transcript or "rap-sheet". Engines now use that story to decide where you should rank. You're not going to be viewed through a single link. Google will judge you on your overall body of work.
• The easier a link is to obtain, the less useful that link is likely to be for a person or a search engine.
• If you aren't sure why you are doing it, don't do it.
• The future of links and rank can't be guessed, but we can figure that the sites trying to manipulate link popularity will be devalued in the search engines while the trustworthy sites will continue to pass signals.

He's made his presentation available at www.ericward.com/smx.

Posted on 10/ 6/08 at 2:18 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization, liveblog, smxeast2008

What's New with Video Search Marketing

Posted by Virginia Nussey

Lunch was tasty, and a full belly usually renders me a naptime drone. Lucky for me there's some action happening at the front of the room. Moderator Danny Sullivan runs in, looking like he's been awfully busy. He tells us that he rescued the conference center WiFi! Props are in order as the whole room applauds!

Michael Benedek, AlmondNet, will start us off with a presentation on the synergies of behavioral targeting and online video.

Introduction to behavioral advertising

Behavioral targeting is the delivery of ads to a person, wherever they go, based on their observed online behavior. Some examples are conducted searches, browsed content and clicked ads. Post-search, behaviorally-targeted ads are delivered based on purchase-intent data (i.e., recently-conducted searches or recently read product reviews). Actions speak louder than demographics.

The behavioral advertising opportunity

A study based on 5600 million post-search ads delivered over a three-year period revealed that:

• Click-through rates for behavioral ads are similar to click-through rates for untargeted ads.
• Clicks originating from post-search convert 5 to 10 percent better.

Introducing online video advertising

Online video advertising is advertising delivered within or surrounding online video content.

• Linear video ads (i.e., pre-rolls) are presented before, in the middle, or after the video consumed by the user.
• Non-linear video ads (i.e., overlays)
• Companion ads

The online video advertising opportunity

With 67 percent of all Internet users viewing some form of video advertising at least once a month in 2008, the audience has reached critical mass. Online video ad spending is projected to grow to $3 billion by 2012.

Post-search consumer behavior

People spend 5 percent of their time declaring purchase-intent online. They spend 95 percent of their time browsing ad-supported content on other sites where display inventory is unsold or sold for less than $1 CPM. Most searchers complete their purchase-related research two or more weeks before handing over their credit card numbers. There is a tremendous opportunity for marketers. Use the following steps to take advantage of the post-search opportunity:

Step 1: Aggregate data

When a search for "health insurance" is made at a search engine, they place a cookie on the user's browser and record and categorize the search in one of 40 relevant behavioral categories.

Step 2: Identify users

The person that searched for "health insurance" is viewing video content on a large site or ad network site a few days later (viewing and untargeted ad).

Step 3: Deliver targeted ads

The delivery of a targeted video ad is enabled either directly or in cooperation with a distribution partner (ad network, publisher, ad exchange, etc.).

Online video implementation challenges

1. Standardization: We've got a long way to go to develop standardization. Video players are different across the Web.
2. Scalability: When you cookie a user, you then need to go find that user wherever else they are.
3. Video content categorization (via category-specific tags): Most advertisers are most comfortable knowing the content the ad is going to be displayed next to.

Behavioral advertising and video advertising are among the hottest and most promising ad-focused areas online. Notwithstanding implementation challenges, tremendous benefits will accrue to those that can leverage the benefits of behaviorally-targeted video advertising.

Gregory Markel, Infuse Creative, is going to share insider info with us -- info that companies pay millions for. So what's the most-viewed YouTube video? He says it's Avril Lavigne but wants us to think about if they're actually real views.

Building the case for video optimization

Video is extremely popular (24 million YouTube.com home page impressions a day alone).
Branding and rep management is effective and provides Google search engine result presence.
It's free! There is no submission cost or cost per click for a YouTube result.
iPhone users are looking for videos.

What are we watching?

• News: 10%
• Comedy: 7%
• Movies or TV: 3%
• Music: 4%
• Sports: 3%

Optimizing for YouTube gets you into Google video results, which gets you on the iPhone. Video is influencing regular search results via Google's blended search results. We're seeing more and more video based result sets for a wide range of keyphrase searches.

There are new video audiences. They're not just viewing on YouTube and Google. iPhone apps like Truveo are growing in popularity. Videos are viewed in increasing numbers through iPhone video and the iPhone App Store. The T-mobile Google Phone, Nokia 5800 and Blackberry Storm will all try to compete with the iPhone video experience.

Submission and optimization types

1. Video on your site: There are a few video crawling search engines.
2. Upload engines optimization: YouTube just upped their allowed file size. This is going to change the way people serve content. They're going to tell different stories. Optimization at YouTube is all about community factors. Community and social factors weigh heavily in determining rankings on many video search engines (ratings, favorites, playlists, comments, honors, views, embedding, response videos and linking)! Tip: Click on a competitor's video watch page "Statistics & Data" tab and analyze the factors contributing to the video ranking success, then meet or beat it!
3. RSS/Media RSS: This approach requires that you submit your content via an .xml file.

7 basic steps to success

1. Define and set success metrics, goals and tracking requirements.
2. Analyze the competition at both YouTube and Google.com
3. Research keywords and write keyword rich and compelling Title, Description and tags.
4. Add/modify "in video" branding, call to action, and URL.
5. Decide submission strategy/type.
6. Spread the word, encourage community, and remember mobile.
7. Monitor and track your progress and tune. Tubemogul.com is a free tool that will help you do that.

Video marketing tips

• Know what's popular: From the home page, start typing in the keyword and search suggestions will tell you what's popular. You can also type a keyword related to your content, then "sort by" view count. Piggyback on their success.
• Submit beyond YouTube: Submitting beyond YouTube will get the most visibility.
• Use YouTube annotations: YouTube now allows you to add popup text in the video.
• Create a response video: Watermark every frame of your video with a URL or brand. Lead with an active description in your URL

Eric Papczun, Performics, asks the audience who has seen the new Google Audio Indexing (GAUDI) and just a few raise their hands. Google has indexed all the words in the YouTube political channel videos with their speech recognition technology.

You can navigate directly to parts of the video where your search term was mentioned. The keywords are marked with yellow markers along the video timeline. There are also the direct quotes written out as well with links to listen to that part of the video.

Candidates control the content in GAUDI based on the videos they uploaded to their YouTube channel. YouTube political channels are just the first step for GAUDI. It's a Google Labs project in beta.

How does it work? Google uses its own speech recognition technology to transform spoken works into text. Videos are ranked by:

1. Spoken keyword relevance
2. YouTube Meta data
3. Freshness

However, rankings are sure to shift as they are still just testing and will change the ranking factors. Speech to text is still not perfect.

YouTube is a powerful tool for video SEO. The best chance publishers have in getting their videos indexed and ranked high on Google.com is to upload to YouTube. Google and Yahoo have an easier time reading YouTube video Meta data than they do reading video housed on a native site. Ad revenue share can be gained from your YouTube channel.

Tom Wilde, EveryZing, is going to talk about how to actually do video optimizing at scale.

Online multimedia objectives

• Increase consumption of online media: Grow audience reach by attracting incremental unique visitors across online properties. Increase site engagement and media consumption through improved content access.
• Create multimedia advertising inventory: Fill inventory with targeted ads to provide a relevant customer experience and optimal monetization.
• Control and protect content distribution: Retain control over content distribution to protect core business model and guarantee monetizable reach.

How do I make sure the content is findable? Text drives discovery. Search engines have historically had very little to work with in terms of properly discovering and indexing multimedia content. Publish across the query curve to show up for long-term queries.

How do you create a good target for search engines? Use properly formatted page Titles and URL structures. Related topics should link to additional, similar topic pages, driving the crawler discovery process. Multimedia snippets derived from speech processing provide relevant text for GYM crawlers and algorithms. Use a dynamic media player with "Jump To" functionality. Populate the page with multimedia and articles relevant to the topic or entity.

Posted on 10/ 6/08 at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, liveblog, smxeast2008

SEM for Small Businesses

Posted by Virginia Nussey

As much as I love New York, this Cali girl needs her warm weather. Thankfully, for the first time today I'm not freezing cold in this room. Little blogger fingers do much better when not afflicted with the early stages of frostbite.

This session is sponsored by SEMPO and our moderator is Greg Hartnett, Best of the Web. He's going to start the presentations even though one of the speakers is apparently stuck in cross-town traffic. Half the room nods in understanding.

SEMPO is a great resource for Internet marketers with lots of free stuff, online courses and webinars available. If you haven't already, you should check it out.

Lauren Vaccarello, LVLogic, will be presenting on the cheap, free and easy tools available to small businesses. Small businesses don't always have the resources to pay for the new tools coming out. But, they're faster and more flexible than large businesses.

Competitive research is the backbone to every site. Find out what your competition is doing well and what they're failing on. There's no reason to start from scratch when you can learn the flaws and strengths and build from that.

Compete.com has a competitive research tool, but it can get expensive if you're doing a lot of queries. SpyFu.com is a low-cost alternative at about $13 a day. A free option is the SEObook Firefox Extension. You'll find out how many links there are and get an idea of what's needed to reach the top of the rankings for those tools. SEODigger is another free tool that shows the sites ranking for keywords. Xenu gives you you're Alexa ranking, backlinks and ranking pages.

Now that you've got the competitive research done, it's time for keyword research. Wordze is a great tool at about $40 a month and will give you keyword information. A free alternative is Keyword Discovery has a free and paid version. It gives you the volume of search terms.

For backlink tools, SEOmoz Backlink Analysis, at about $50 a month, will give you lots of info. But for a free tool, try Comment Hunt. It will let you know how to get some comment links. Tattler will let you scrape backlinks. Similarly, Link Harvester will tell you the age of backlinks and will give you an idea of who to contact.

For project management, try Solo SEO if you're the only one in your business. This tool shows you the top subpages of a site you're looking at getting a link from. Basecamp is a great tool for multiple people working on a project.

Reputation management is critical because you don't want to start after it's too late. TrackUR, for $18 a month, will let you know what people are saying about your company name, product names, C-level names, etc. Keotag will give you search results for a variety of sources for free. Monitor This lets you subscribe to 20 different search engine feeds to monitor your brand name.

Her key takeaways are to: take advantage of all the low cost resources out there; take advantage of your competitors' mistakes; stay organized; and monitor your reputation.

Avi Wilensky, promediacorp, starts with a picture of a juicy burger on the screen. He's going to do this presentation case study style, using the company Pocket Change as an example. Pocket Change is a luxury lifestyle newsletter and blog covering NYC and LA. They wanted to increase subscribers, page views, branding and new advertisers.

Promediacorp came up with a big idea for going about this. They decided to come up with the most expensive burger ever created and sell it at a New York restaurant. After a while, a few patrons blogged about the "Richard Nouveau Burger" they saw on the menu. Other bloggers noticed the $175 burger on the Menupages. These initial bloggers began the buzz. Pocket Change ran the official story on their Web site and in the weekly newsletter. It included a video they produced for less than $5,000.

Soon, larger NYC blogs picked up the story from the Pocket Change blog and newsletter. Previous bloggers' posts reinforced the story's validity and links and traffic was coming from all over the Web. The story went mainstream as it was picked up by CBS and other news stations. When it got picked up by Yahoo.com, they got tens of thousands of unique page views. The burger story was even featured on the Colbert Show.

Results:

• Record number of traffic and ads served.
• Hundreds of natural backlinks to Pocket Change from high authority sites
• 5,000 references of "Richard Nouveau Burger" on Google.
• Built brand in local market, blogosphere and mainstream media
• Press relationships for future releases
• Increased visibility to new advertisers

Go to http://promediacorp.com/burger.ppt to download his Power Point presentation.

Q&A

Do affiliate links have any value on raising you on organic search rankings?

Greg says that they are valuable because people are directly getting to the site. It's a dampened effect but there's still value. Nofollow links are the same way. He says that as long as they're not going through a third party, there's still an effect.

You obviously don't want to burn the budget on competitive research. What would you suggest for a balance of budget spend on a project?

Lauren says that after the initial research is done, the resources should go to building links and great content. Just because you're a small local business doesn't mean that you can't come up with a great idea, as illustrated by the burger story. Avi says that you have to keep trying because for every burger story there are many stories that didn't go big. There's no set balance, but leverage your resources.

How do we stay on top of the changes that Google makes to the algorithm?

Lauren explains that it's always going to be changing. She doubts even Larry and Sergey know all 200 parts of the algorithm, and there's no way to keep up with every single change. That's the horrible and the great thing about SEO. There's no way to be ahead of the curve, but in general, the only way that Google will know you exist is through links. As much as Google changes the algorithm, there's no way they're going to stop giving value to links. Greg says that his best advice is not to let it be obvious if you're buying or selling links.

For small business folks busy running a business, do you have any tips for how to develop content?

Greg recommends starting a blog and outsourcing it. Freelance writers are a good way to do it. Avi says that good content is all around you. A good example is when he posted a picture of the first outdoor paid public bathroom in NYC that was quickly picked up by larger sites. Lauren says that pictures are golden. People like pictures and people don't see it as commercial so they're eager to link to it.

How does Google view the paid directories?

Greg says that it all comes down to whether Google feels those directories exhibit editorial integrity. That's the difference between a link farm and a worthwhile directory. Are they rejecting sites or are they accepting every site that pays? When you go to the site, how does it feel to you? Does it smell like a link farm? The four directories general Web directories he would recommend linking to are DMOZ, Yahoo, Best of the Web and Buisness.com. Then there are also the industry specific directories.

What do you think of links coming off of social networks, like Twitter?

Avi says that the recent change to Twitter to nofollow links in the bio section was pretty controversial, but as it stands, the Twitter links are now not passing link equity. Greg says that, despite that, a link is a link is a link. Don't worry about the nofollow attribute too much. As far as social networks, outsourcing is the best way to go about it. There are some marketers that have built up power accounts and their effort will go much farther than the efforts of a small business owner just starting up an account. You'll get a better return on your investment if you outsource.

Is there a pay for performance type of arrangement for SEO?

Avi says that they have an e-commerce client that they do this for. Three Dog Media also does this type of payment model. SEMPO has a job board that you can make this kind of request on and vendors will contact you.

As a small business SEO, I'm having trouble managing expectations.

Lauren says that education is the initial step. Explain what paid is, what organic is, what to expect and over what timeline. Setting up ways to track the effectiveness, like click to call or another phone number posted on the Web site, will help set reasonable expectations.

Should I be submitting to a directory like SuperPages?

You absolutely should if you're a brick and mortar. Make sure the data listed in Local.com, YellowPages, etc., is correct because all the directories pull from each other. Google trusts the local listings sites, so you want to be present. Localese, Axciom, InfoUSA are some of the main originating points for local listings. If there's an error in the data, go to them and correct it.

Posted on 10/ 6/08 at 9:30 AM | Comments (1)
See more entries in SEM Events, SEO Tips & Tricks, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization, liveblog, smxeast2008

Search Integration: Are We There Yet?

Posted by Virginia Nussey

Welcome to the Big Apple, ladies and gents, for the first annual Search Marketing Expo - SMX East. To kick off three days of search, I'll set the mood with this first session that will cover how well search is being integrated in overall marketing efforts today.

Robert Murray, iProspect, says that integration is key and it's key to offline channels as well. Here's the background. Search marketing doesn't exist in a vacuum. Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard this before: integrate or die. What are marketers doing about it? What techniques are they using? And if they aren't integrating with offline channels, why not? These were the questions they asked in a study they did.

An earlier study conducted among consumers found that 67 percent of searchers are driven to search by an offline channel. Once exposed to some form of offline messaging they were compelled to search online. Furthermore, 39 percent of users ultimately make a purchase from the company that initially drove them to conduct a search.

The second study they did was done between April and June 2008 among 289 qualified search marketers. Their objective was to uncover the extent to which search efforts are integrated with offline marketing channels.

The findings:

Only 55 percent of search marketers coordinate or integrate offline channels with search marketing.

• Direct mail: 34%
• Newspaper or magazine ads: 29%
• Television ad: 12%
• Radio ad: 12%
• Outbound telemarketing: 7%
• Billboard or sports venue sign: 7%

The big disconnect: If 67 percent of the audience are driven by offline marketing and 45 percent fail to integrate, there's an opportunity being missed.

What's preventing the integration?

• Don't advertise in offline channels: 24%
• Lack of budget: 19%
• Lack of human resources: 15%
• Simply didn't consider the option: 13%
• Lack of senior management buy-in: 11%
• Separate people manage offline channels: 11%
• Don't see the benefits of coordination/integration: 9%

What techniques are people using when integrating?

• Included company Web address prominently: 84%
• Included company name prominently: 66% (Robert thinks that this technique and the above technique aren't truly integration, but rather coordination)
• Use same colors offline that were used online: 41%
• Used same keywords online and offline: 26%

What does this mean for you? The implication is that failure to integrate is a competitive disadvantage.

So how can marketers make it happen? The CMO is in the unique position to make integration and cohesion possible. The CMO needs to:

• Create a strategic plan
• Break down silos
• Share data
• Reward integration

Sharing data is one thing, but integration gets results and should be rewarded. Even if you're not the CMO, there's something you can do. Walk down the hall and share your findings with your offline counterparts. The offline people need to come to the table as well. They need to share the product messaging and ad copy with search. Think about the time and money saved and the improved results that will come from testing online.

The bottom line is that we're all in the game to win. The marketers that are doing the best job integrating search with all other forms of marketing are the ones most likely to find success.

James Lamberti, comScore, sees how brands are dealing with integration. comScore researches consumer behavior online. So is the search industry there yet?

Advertising is coming from all sides. Offline, digital, social media and friends and family all have an influence on a consumer, but they all come together through search. It's the one place that's left that's simple for the consumer and the marketers. Consumer search activity is on the rise. There has been a 25.3 percent year-over-year increase in queries. If that's the case, why isn't search marketing integrated? How can search marketers make sure that search marketing catches the activity of the offline messaging?

Retail buyers' total searches: 55 percent are generic, 45 percent are branded.

This is notable because the emphasis on the trademark is missing out on the value of generic. Searchers want information and help making a purchase decision. Missing generic means missing your market. There's a huge percent of your market that's never going to search in branded terms. These consumers needed to be treated as a separate bucket.

The CMO can relate to reach, frequency and GRPs. Marketers can make an impression through this common language. Marketers are generally looking at search as a direct response tool. They're starting to see it's also a latent response tool. In 2006, PWC estimated that more than 50 percent of all sales were impacted by search.

Market mix modeling, or attribution modeling, shows that the search data can be modeled into mix model marketing. The results will almost surely show that more needs to go into search.

• Establish common ground: Apples-to-apples GRP, audience composition and ad effectiveness media comparisons are now possible and will engage the CMO.
• Measure the full value: Measuring the link to online sales and the inherent value of impressions is key.
• Measure search as a desired outcome: Training your organization to view search as a logical, desirable outcome will help with integration.
• Treat organic and trademark as unique efforts: Most organizations ignore generic and forget a huge part of the market.

Peter Hershberg, reprisemedia, believes that integration is hugely challenging, especially for enterprise brands. Microsoft will be the example, and we'll be focusing on the Vista product for this demonstration. Vista is being marketed pretty aggressively.

There are multiple products, multiple stakeholders and multiple goals for Microsoft Vista. So how do you even approach it?

Challenges:

• Coordinate efforts of 5,000+ marketers with individual search budgets.
• Create universal process for budgeting, management, and reporting.
• Tie campaign metrics to marketing goals.

Strategy:

• Contributed to Search Center of Excellence to share best practices and processes in search. This is to share the best practices with the whole team.
• Launched "Search 101" training series, tailored to needs of each Microsoft department and its line managers.
• Established a uniform 3-phased approach for taking fully-integrated campaigns from concept to launch over a 5-week period.

While reprisemedia is only working on the search campaign, it's critical to understand and effectively share assets with the other departments. Advanced knowledge about campaigns makes it possible to predict the "unpredictable". Knowing what the new ads were going to be about, they bid on some of the more obscure keywords, like "shoe circus", "warm churro" and "conquistador".

It's important to note that the efforts in search marketing have helped overall corporate communications. There was close coordination of paid search efforts and PR that resulted in improved Vista campaign results.

Aligning goals with the channel must be done through reach and frequency. This is finding answers to the question of "How many of my customers saw my message and how often did they see it?" The goal of reach and frequency must align with site engagement, or "What did my customers do once they visited my Web site?"

By analyzing search traffic and behavior, you can gain insight that can influence the entire marcom mix:

• Marketing messaging: email, banners, on-site
• Media selection
• Communications strategy
• Site experience
• Competitive insights

The lessons learned:

• Educate all stakeholders.
• Establish repeatable process for effectively sharing assets.
• Recalibrate goals to match strengths of the channel.
• Repurpose search learnings to inform overall marketing program.

Don Steele is up next to give us the client perspective. MTVN Entertainment Group is a group of MTVN Brands aimed at adult/male audiences. The sites are both marketing tool for brands and home to original content. They are ad-supported sites. He's not an expert on "Are we there yet?" but they've been working on it and invest a lot in online marketing.

Why they market:

• Branding
• Awareness
• Target
• Interaction and sampling

How they market:
The slide has a picture of the Daily Show billboard that says "Welcome, rich white oligarchs".

Why search:

• Branding: Search engine space is the new billboard and they must be there.
• Awareness: search allows them to gain visibility for shows and content while users are expressing interest in it.
• Target: Deliver a timely and fluid message to users who are expressing an interest in it. Search is much stronger in this area than traditional marketing like billboards.
• Interaction/Sampling: A smart search campaign should encourage interactive behavior where a brand is delivering upon a user's expectation.

Here's an example. TV Land recently got the rights to The Cosby Show. They've been buying the appropriate keywords, and this is the best way to target a broad swath of people. Likewise, the show Chocolate News with David Allen Grier is a new show on Comedy Central. They've centered the campaign around Grier's name and bidding on the keywords is inexpensive.

How they have been able to sell it:

• Core audience
• Reporting
• Self selection
• Evangelism

Reporting is good, but know the audience you're reporting to. Many of the upper-level execs may not want to see a 40-page report on all the search terms people are using. It's also important to be willing to speak to anyone who's interested.

The real challenge is that billboards (traditional) and search (new) are not equal. Don't look at search as one thing to check off the list. It's a fluid medium and the audience's expectations shift.

Moderator Sara Holoubek wants to know if search is really being viewed as a branding mechanism, considering how often the panelists mentioned reach and frequency. Peter says that search is not being used as a stand-alone channel, and when it comes time to allocate advertising dollars, reach and frequency is discussed because it's how execs see the world. James says that the key is the impression has value. Even if they don't click at that point, they've been made aware that that site has something related to what they were looking for. Don says that search is a tool to get recognition of the brand.

Looks like we're just getting started, both in search marketing integration and this great content and info we'll be getting from these conference sessions. I've got my fingers warmed up, so watch for more coming your way!

Posted on 10/ 6/08 at 9:11 AM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Branding, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, liveblog, smxeast2008

October 3, 2008

SEO Bailout or Digital Initiative

Posted by Guest Author

Christopher Hart is Director, Eastern Region Operations of Bruce Clay, Inc. Welcome to the blog, Chris!

It's been impossible to miss what's going on in the American economy today. If you aren't watching it on the news, you're feeling it on the bottom line. Along with the lessons we'll inevitably learn about how the country can better manage finances, there are lessons to be learned for Internet marketers and corporate executives navigating companies through the upcoming business evolution, as well. To illustrate this, I am going to draw a parallel between SEO and the current banking bailout.

For the purpose of this conversation, let's just agree that the main goal of the bailout is to provide credit to the banks so they can lend money and keep the flow of credit within our economy moving. Let's also agree that SEO has the same main goal as the bailout, and that is to keep the flow of credit within your economy moving, a.k.a. company growth. So for your business the "flow of credit" is the sum of all departments functions as they connect, touch and influence your digital strategy. Likewise, "economy" represents the elements that go into your ROI calculations and your final profit.

The key concepts to remember are flow and economy, and simply put, if you want to get the most out of your business you need to keep things moving along smoothly.

So why, when it comes time for companies to develop their digital strategies, do executives allow their organization to mutate into territories of business functions that do not work together and often fight each other, and not into elements of a system working together?

See, in my view the banking collapse occurred because as long as people were making money they did not want to ask any questions. And as long as no one asked any questions the banks were happy to keep doing what they were doing without any oversight. Now this is oversimplifying the issue, but I am not here to fix that problem. Instead, I think that the lessons we're learning from the financial crisis can help you look within to help fix your company's digital strategy.

Let's turn the focus to your digital strategy -- or lack of one. Before we were all rudely awakened by today's economic predicament, it almost seemed easier not to develop a digital strategy. If you saw positive results, you could tell your out-of-the-loop boss that some Web thing you made did some stuff. You were more than happy to do just that and move on. Fast forward to a time of crisis where the flow has been disrupted and everyone is looking at your work. Now you are feeling the pinch.

What has happened over time is that, without an effective system of communication, almost all of the company's processes and procedures were only mentally documented by a few individuals. There were a bunch of people, with no clear leader, each working from their own opinions of how to best use their technology/information/process to protect their own role in the company. There was nothing designed to systemically support the overall needs of the company and protect it from danger.

Along comes what you feel is your digital strategy bailout, a.k.a. SEO. There's a good chance you view SEO as black box hocus pocus, in part because no one took the time to explain it to you or maybe because you did not take the time to learn about it.

So to help put you on the right footing, make no mistake: doing business online is just that -- a business initiative. As with any revenue generating function, the online business needs a full time manager, an individual that is focused on the needs of the project in sum of all it parts. This person must work with all the different teams that have input in the digital initiative. This person must be charged with the specific function to coordinate all of the efforts into a successfully flowing economic system and to be empowered to prioritize goals and act as the final word in all aspects of the company initiative. It must be their mission to make the elements of your digital initiative work together and in support of each other.

It turns out that SEO is not just optimization for search engines, nor is it a bailout of any kind. It is education, planning and communication. SEO is measuring all the functions across your company that go into your online business initiative. SEO helps you to maximize the ability of your company to communicate and to distribute your products and services through search engines to the end users which are your prospective clients.

So like the banking issue, we are here mostly due to our own issues and any solution that is not forever monitored and allowed to mature over time is bound to fail.

It will likely take some time before we find ourselves climbing out of the current crisis, but in the meantime, I'd like to invite you to come say hello. At SMX East next week, I'll be hanging out in the Bruce Clay, Inc. booth and I'll also be speaking at Scary SEO mini-con in Florida at the end of the month. Hope to see you there!

Posted on 10/ 3/08 at 4:34 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization

Friday Recap

Posted by Susan Esparza

Boy, that feels weird to write. But it's Friday, lads and ladies. And this is a recap. So I guess it's still accurate. You'll have to forgive me, I'm a little out of sorts today. I think I'm coming down with a cold. I've been ODing on Vitamin C since I woke up and the other writers periodically dump disinfectant over me and my desk.

Why can't I be like these crazy healthy ladies over on CNN? Apparently they never get sick. Hmm, tip one is to get a massage? Maybe that's my problem. Does anyone know if my insurance covers this? It's preventative care!

Speaking of health issues, everything's coming up rosy on Twitter as people change their avatars pink to support Breast Cancer Awareness. No jokes here, just a reminder for all our readers that neither youth nor gender exempts you from getting breast cancer.

You know what else is in October? Halloween! I'm so excited! As you all know, Halloween's big around here. No, I'm not going with another Batgirl costume this year. Stop asking, seriously. Perhaps I'll take Keri Morgret's suggestion and win the geekiest costume award when I show up in my snazzy 404 page costume? [Update: The writers decided to go as the Misfits for Halloween! How very scandalous! -Virginia] Break out the AquaNet!

Something I'm totally not doing? Hanging fake tears from my eyes. Ew! Is it just me or is it a terrible idea to put wire in your eyes?

Before we can get to Halloween, though, we've got a lot to do! Next week is SMX East.

What's that you say? You're not ready for the big bad city? Don't worry! Streko's put together a great survival guide to NYC for SMX. Just what all the first time SEMs are going to need. Print it out, laminate it, keep it in your pocket. Just stay safe out there. We want you to make it back home.

While you're at SMX, keep an eye out for the BC team. Virginia's going to be our roving reporter. Watch out for her on the floor between sessions, she'll be looking for people to come on the radio show and give away some pearls of wisdom. Bruce is speaking in the Ask the SEOs session on Wednesday. Make sure you wish him a very happy birthday. Don't bother with a gift; you'll never top what we got him: a new SEOToolset.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Posted on 10/ 3/08 at 3:57 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Fun Stuff, SEM Events

October 2, 2008

Will Microsoft SearchPerks Pique Searcher Interest?

Posted by Virginia Nussey

A few months ago Lisa predicted that the Live Search cashback program was destined to fail. Well, now Microsoft's started its newest rewards program, Live Search SearchPerks.

It's not the first attempt by a search engine to woo users and build trust by appealing to the purse strings. Over at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan rounded up a great list of incentive-based search programs that Microsoft is running or has run, along with the now-defunct rewards programs from some of the less-utilized engines like iWon and Blingo. Anyone else see a pattern? Stupid question.

Okay, but seriously, let me take off my trendy skeptic hat for a moment. While my gut tells me that incentive-based programs are ruses to buy my allegiance, I actually just signed up for SearchPerks. If you haven't yet read about how the program works, you basically download this little counter that lives on your IE6 toolbar, and the counter keeps track of how many searches you do with Live Search. Every search you do on Live Search gets you a ticket and you can earn up to 25 tickets per day. The deal ends April of next year and at that point you can cash out your tickets for prizes or hand them off to charity. Just for signing up you get 500 tickets. For perspective, 250 tickets get you 100 frequent flyer miles, while 525 tickets are good for five music downloads. I'll have that racked up by the end of my first day.

It turns out that I'm not the only one willing to sell off a time-share to my soul. Or maybe just a one-month lease. Truly, there's no long-term value to bribing customers if the service isn't up to par. But since signing up for SearchPerks, I've been using Live Search exclusively and the results I'm receiving are relevant and, in many cases, include exactly what I was looking for. Keep that up and they may just get some converts.

That's not to say it's been easy. From a user perspective, the SearchPerks program has a few things going against it. First, there's my habit of searching through my toolbar, and I've yet to change the default to Live Search. This is mostly because I'm not convinced that Live will be my long-term search solution. Seeing the little "G" in the corner of my browser reminds me that if my new relationship doesn't work out, I'll be taken back with open arms. Then there's the fact that for searches to count toward tickets, the search has to be done through IE6. Here I am with five extra windows up than I'd usually have on my screen, since there's no tabs in IE6 and I'm not about to stop using Firefox. It's making me dizzy. And then, privacy advocates may not like that the SearchPerks software records the number of searches you do, the types of searches, the number of ads you click on and any toolbars installed.

Of course, if they expand the apparel prize category to include shoes and bags, it'll be totally worth it.

Posted on 10/ 2/08 at 4:35 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Live Search, Microsoft

October 1, 2008

SEM Synergy Extras

Posted by Virginia Nussey

Long before signing on to the blog, I was in charge of another bit of media here at Bruce Clay, Inc. -- the WebmasterRadio.FM show SEM Synergy. It's long been a goal to tie the two formats together but, before now, I thought I had enough going on without regularly writing blog posts. What did I know?

SEM Synergy is a weekly radio show broadcast through our friends at WebmasterRadio.FM and available to stream from SEMSynergy.com. WebmasterRadio also makes the show available for podcast shortly after the initial airing on Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, noon Pacific. With Bruce at the helm, the hosts (including yours truly) talk about organic search optimization, paid search optimization, branding, design, analytics, industry news and events -- you name it. We cover them all, along with the places they intersect, due to our belief that the most successful Internet marketing campaigns are a result of a multi-faceted strategy in which a variety of mediums come together for a synergistic effect. SEM Synergy. Get it? (Sometimes I should really stop while I'm ahead...)

Over the course of programming the show, I pull together a number of resources on the topics of that week's show, and many of these will often go by the wayside during the actual recording. Not that they aren't necessarily interesting or useful, but thirty minutes goes by fast. It's just not possible to cover all the happenings of a week, talk to an expert guest, and come up with mind-rattling analogies (i.e., this week's canasta reference) in that short time. [Much better than my usual analogies. Why don't you stop me when I start talking crazy? --Susan] Because it's