Internet Marketing
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October 29, 2004
SEOToolSet Newsletter Launched
The inaugural edition of the SEOToolSet newsletter has been sent out. If you missed it, you can still read our October 2004 SEO newsletter online. Topics include:
If you would like to subscribe, contact us through our form and indicate that you are interested in the Newsletter.
Posted by on 10/29/04 at 3:42 PM
See more entries in SEOToolSet
October 26, 2004
Peek into New Look of MSN Search
Gary Price posted an exciting peek into the new look of MSN search on the SEW blog. If MSN decides to keep their user–friendly Search Builder, it will be interesting to see how the public will respond to being able to search by:
- backlinks
- domain
- varying levels of freshness
- varying levels of popularity
- and varying levels of text matches.
If it takes off, this would be just another indicator that the days of measuring your success as an SEO professional by rankings attained (as opposed to traffic or conversions gained) are numbered.
Posted by on 10/26/04 at 11:03 AM
See more entries in Branding
SMA-EU Today. SMA-US Tomorrow?
Search Marketing Association EU starts up, using the exact same design template as SMA-EU. So when is SMA-US going to launch? Tomorrow? Barry Lloyd already owns it. However, http://www.sma-au.org is completely available for any of you Aussie SEOs to snap up.
Posted by Guest Author on 10/26/04 at 10:45 AM
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization
October 25, 2004
SMA-UK — New SEM Association for the UK
Search engine marketers in the UK have announced their plans for their own industry association: Search Marketing Association UK. A few interesting things that set them apart from SEMPO:
- They are starting with a working group to grow their base and determine their mission from the ground up.
- Political lobbying is already on the table as a potential use for the association.
- No mention of fees (yet).
It will be interesting to see what direction this will take...
Posted by Guest Author on 10/25/04 at 5:01 PM
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization
October 22, 2004
Yahoo Acquires Another Email Startup
Yahoo acquired Oddpost, a web–based email and news aggregator in July. Yesterday, they acquired Stata Labs, the producer of an excellent antispam desktop email called Bloomba and an antispam filter called SAProxyPro. It seems like some serious improvements to Yahoo Mail are coming down the turnpike. Maybe free email with excellent antispam blocking and a news aggregator built in? (By the way, can you guys add an RSS feed aggregator to the new email, too? I know it’s already available in My Yahoo, but it would be nice to have a one–stop shop for everything, no?)
Posted by on 10/22/04 at 3:29 PM
See more entries in Email
October 21, 2004
Google Revenues Up and Looking Forward to Future Advertising Growth
Hats off to Google. Google’s third quarter revenue more than doubled, exceeding analyst expectations for its first quartly earning reports after their IPO. Then again, they have been busy lately, unfurling their desktop search and plotting to increase their number of advertisers by 372,000 in the next four years:
- 2004 - 280,000
- 2005 - 378,000
- 2006 - 472,500
- 2007 - 567,000
- 2008 - 652,050
Looking at that advertiser chart, our pay-per click team couldn’t be happier.
Posted by Guest Author on 10/21/04 at 4:51 PM
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization
October 6, 2004
New Yahoo Releases: Local, Personal and RSS - Will 301 Fix Be Next?
Yahoo went release–happy in the past week or so, rolling out:
- an updated beta version on My Yahoo! emphasizing getting personalized content through RSS and Atom feeds and letting the user manipulate the content placement and look of their My Yahoo! page. In honor of their My Yahoo! update, we have added an add to My Yahoo! button to the sidebar of the SEOToolSet blog. Simply click on the button to read our headlines on your My Yahoo! page.
- the official launch of Yahoo Local Search, which seems very similar to Google Local, but more accurate (which is a little forgivable since Google’s Local is still in beta). Hint from some friends up north: Based on Google Local’s advice, you might want to avoid the dentists up in Palo Alto (or just go to Yahoo Local for a more balanced view).
- a beta version of Yahoo’s personalized search. Like MyJeeves and A9, this encourages users to create and search a personal index of websites. However, the new thing that Yahoo brings to the table is making it possible for users to block certain websites from appearing in their search results. Seems great, but it could bring about problems for people purchasing a domain name that was abused by its previous owner. The big question is: how will Yahoo be using the information derived from its personal search?
Hopefully, now that all of these development–heavy projects have been rolled out, Yahoo can fix its main web search’s problem with following 301 redirects. At SES in San Jose, Tim Meyer from Yahoo finally admitted that Yahoo had a problem and said that they were working on fixing it. The consensus over here is that it looks like a server header check issue that shouldn’t be too difficult to fix. Hopefully, the problem will be fixed sooner rather than later. The natives are getting restless and starting to come up with some "creative" workarounds.
Posted by on 10/ 6/04 at 1:32 PM
See more entries in Branding
The Proper Use of a 302 Redirect
Regardless of your political views, you have to give internet marketing kudos to the Democratic supporter who set–up the temporary 302 redirect from FactCheck.com to GeorgeSoros.com after Vice President Dick Cheney improperly cited FactCheck.com as a resource to look at regarding his record at Halliburton. He meant to say FactCheck.org, an independent fact–checking organization which duly noted the mistake this morning. I guess this whole episode also reinforces how important it is to have a .com domain for getting word–of–mouth referrals.
Posted by on 10/ 6/04 at 1:20 PM
See more entries in Fun Stuff, SEO Tips & Tricks
October 4, 2004
MSN to Launch New Search Engine
Before our trip to the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose in August, many people had seen a flurry of activity on their sites from a new spider: MSNBot. Yes, a new MSN crawler. There have been speculations for a long time now that it was really only a matter of time until MSN created their own engine. Well, now rumor has it that they will launch the new search engine before the next SES in Chicago in December. In fact, they are listed as a Premier Plus Sponsor of the conference. Never in the history of SES has MSN been a sponsor of the event.
At the SES session "Meet the Crawlers" in August, an MSN representative invited everyone to try out the new crawler based search engine and to provide feedback. Many did and thousands of bug reports were submitted. The beta version was only available for a few days following the conference. With the preview of the search engine and the numerous "bad" results for simple searches, it seemed that they had a long way to go before launch. But today, MSN just announced a second beta is available to try out. (sandbox.msn.com) So finally, almost two months after the first beta, we are again able to try out their new search technology. (Although it seems they are getting hit so hard today, the server is timing out.) And with MSN as a big sponsor of the next SES in December, its rumored that they'll be ready to launch before the conference.
One of the bigger questions with the new search engine is who is MSN really targeting in this new space? Is it Google? With the launch of a beta of their Newsbot it would seem their ultimate target is more likely Yahoo!
Regardles of their ultimate goals, the search engine world is definitely going to see some changes throughout the next year with MSN introducing their own technology into the space.
Posted by amanda plummer on 10/ 4/04 at 5:51 PM
See more entries in Branding, Rumors, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization
MSN Tech Preview - Round Two
Microsoft announced Technology Preview 2 for the upcoming MSN Search’s algorithmic search results and so many people are logging on that we haven’t been able to see the new system yet. Once we have, we’ll provide a full review. In the meantime, you should check it out yourself and send Microsoft feedback at srchptnr@microsoft.com.
In related news, we have updated our antispam page to include the new MSN guidelines regarding search engine spam.
Posted by Guest Author on 10/ 4/04 at 5:35 PM
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization
