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December 23, 2005

Newsletter and News

Happy Holidays to everyone! We're sending out our SEOToolSet Newsletter a little early this month because we here at Bruce Clay, Inc are shut down next week. But before we sign off for the year, we'd like to wish you all the best.

In this month's newsletter, we're taking a look back at the year in review and starting an indepth look at competitive research. Look for big changes coming to our newsletter in the new year. We're going to be starting a Question of the Month section. Got a good question? Send it in to Newsletter@BruceClay.com and we'll get you an answer. Ask us anything! If we don't know it, we'll find out.

Here's a sample (and a late introduction to yours truly):

What is your name?
I'm your intrepid reporter, Susan Esparza.

What is your quest?
I'm a technical writer here at Bruce Clay. I seek the news, rumors and tips to keep you up to date on the crazy world of search engine optimization.

What is the capital of Assyria?
Nineveh.

What the heck is up with the dispute over Dr. Kai Fu Lee these days?
MSN and Google reached a settlement in the case, according to Red Herring. No details of the deal have been released.

And that's it for today! Have a safe holiday, everyone and we'll see you next year.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/23/05 at 12:13 PM
See more entries in Fun Stuff, Google, Live Search, Microsoft, SEM Events, SEOToolSet

December 21, 2005

Google/AOL deal done

CNN/Reuters is reporting that the much talked about $1B deal is now a reality and the contracts are inked.

The most talked about part of the deal--that AOL has talked Google into using graphical ads on their otherwise pristine search results pages is discussed in the CNN article as "[allowing] AOL to sell graphical ads to Google's fast-growing ad network." Google's ad network, of course, is AdSense not AdWords. Either the NYTimes got it wrong when they claimed that AOL wanted Google to show ads on Google's SERPs or CNN doesn't know what the ad network really is. Hopefully, clarification of this will be forthcoming.

Either way, Google just achieved a major coup. As was pointed out a little while back, AOL has been pivotal in several wins over the last year. Though they're never the main reason for anyone to do anything, AOL often serves as the tipping point that makes a deal just that much better. AOL's walled garden and loyal user base bring incredible traffic. Furthermore, part of the agreement deals with how AOL will be working to make their internal pages more accessible to Google's spider, increasing Google's already impressive index even more in a way that the other search engines can't compete with.

Some aren't so sanguine however. Investor Carl Icahn rated the deal "disastrous" because the deal could undermine a merger later on for the two companies. Mr. Icahn's group holds a 3.1 percent stake in Time Warner, the parent company of AOL.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/21/05 at 10:38 AM
See more entries in Branding, Google, Search Engines

December 20, 2005

Yahoo! Helps Advertisers Measure Offline Results

Yahoo has teamed up with Marketing Management Analytics (MMA) to provide their clients with the ability to measure ad performance not just online but also to compare them with their offline ad campaigns such as radio, TV and print.

The new service, reports Marketing Vox, is based on econometrics which use statistics to create predictive models of marketing situations. Also taken into account are the various factors that influence sales including brand, seasonality and competition.

According to the press release:

“Marketers need to be able to measure and make decisions about online and offline marketing campaigns with a holistic view,” said Wenda Harris Millard, chief sales officer, Yahoo!. “Providing this new service with MMA is a key step in Yahoo!’s continued commitment to providing marketers with leading tools to enhance and optimize their marketing spend.”

Pricing for the new service has not been released there will be some kind of fee. The inclusion of metrics for offline advertising makes this service extremely valuable. An April survey with MMA and Forrester Research indicated that 61.5 percent of marketers believe that advertising accountability should be defined and measured but only 19 percent were satisfied with their ability to do so.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/20/05 at 12:20 PM
See more entries in Analytics, SEO, Yahoo

December 19, 2005

Yahoo! Sponsored Search listings shortened

Guest Entry by Cindy Turrietta, SEM Analyst--Bruce Clay, Inc

Yahoo has made an announcement that they will soon (January 18th) be changing the max character lengths for ad descriptions. Initially they will automatically shorten them and over time they will fine tune the exact character count that they believe works best for advertisers and search users.

I highly recommend reviewing your ads to see what effect truncating them will have. Yahoo suggests beginning your description with the most important information in the first 70 characters. Other than that, since Yahoo’s partner network will still be showing the longer descriptions, you may want to leave them as is until Yahoo determines the best character count, and then revise them. But that is up to you.

Here is an excerpt from Yahoo's email:

How this change impacts your listings:

* Yahoo! will display shorter descriptions for Sponsored Search listings

* You don't have to make any changes to your listings; they'll be automatically shortened for you when displayed on Yahoo!

* If you'd like to optimize your listings for Yahoo!, begin your description with one short sentence that includes your keyword and focuses on your most important information in the first 70 characters

* Over time, we will fine tune the exact character count that we believe works best for advertisers and search users

* Most of our partners, including MSN, CNN, ESPN and Infospace, will still display longer descriptions for your Sponsored Search listings, though the exact length may vary from partner to partner.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/19/05 at 3:25 PM
See more entries in Pay Per Click, Yahoo

December 15, 2005

Search by the numbers

It's tough to ever be perfectly accurate about how much market share each search engine really has but here are the numbers from October anyway. Mediapost reports that Google was once again the top with 48% of the search requests performed--2.4 billion. Yahoo! came in second with 21.8% of all searches and MSN took 11.3% of the market share.

Trailing the big three are the Google-powered AOL engine with 7.2% and Ask Jeeves marketing campaign starts to pay off, nearly doubling their traffic to rise from 75.81 million searches to 133.93 million searches.

Hat-tip to John Battelle

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/15/05 at 9:16 AM
See more entries in Branding, Search Engines

December 14, 2005

Super Secret Data Center?

One of the best blogs out there is Barry's Search Engine Roundtable and here's the reason why. While most blogs glean from the headlines and comment on them, Barry goes into the forums, wades through the irrelevant and comes back with gems like this thread over at WebmasterWorld where they're discussing the possibility of Google having a secret DC over at 64.233.179.104.

Matt Cutts said there was a test data center that Google used to test algorithms, could this be it?

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/14/05 at 11:51 AM
See more entries in Branding, Google, Rumors

December 12, 2005

SES Chicago 2005 from the exhibition floor

Guest Entry by Cindy Turrietta--SEM Analyst, Bruce Clay, Inc.

SES Chicago 2005 was my first visit to the “Windy City”, and although I didn’t get much time to enjoy the great outdoors, I did get to wear a winter coat, gloves and scarf a couple of times as we dashed to and from cabs. Most of our time was spent indoors at the Expo, answering questions about Bruce’s search engine optimization training and our SEO tools mostly, although curiosity about the Google sandbox was also prevalent. Attendees expressed concern about the recent Google updates (Jagger) and how the rankings they once had were now gone. It appears that buying links, briefly all the rage, is now a thing of the past as they do not hold the same value as natural links. It is apparent that as our industry matures, so does the public’s general knowledge as more and more people are interested in learning best practice search engine optimization. This said, Bruce’s tools and training took center stage for us at this event.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/12/05 at 10:51 AM
See more entries in SEM Events

December 9, 2005

More on Pubcon

As promised, Matt Cutts elaborated on the Organic Site Reviews panel at Pubcon. In his blog post, Matt states that his purpose in the session was to make it clear "that in 1-2 minutes, it was easy to tell whether a site was (over)doing reciprocal links or trying to buy links." Yikes.

The entry skewers the practice of reciprocal linking and buying links and touts the importance of site architecture and spiderability. Like most people, Matt likes object lessons and that's pretty much what the entire session was. Very educational and exactly what we've been saying all along.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 9/05 at 3:47 PM
See more entries in SEM Events, SEO, SEO Tips & Tricks

Sweet Searches

Google SERPs related to the holidays ([Christmas], [peppermint] and [candy cane] all work) are showing a red and white striped candy cane next to the paid listings in place of the usual blue line. It's a cute gesture and more importantly, it's eye-catching. I'd really like to know if the click-through rates go up for those searches. Anyone out there who sells Christmas-related merchandise willing to share?

Hat-tip to Phillip over at Google Blogoscoped.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 9/05 at 9:31 AM
See more entries in Fun Stuff, Pay Per Click, Search Engines

December 8, 2005

Partyless in Chicago?

Thanks to a case of "I thought that was your job?", not a single one of the search engines managed to schedule a party for this conference. Those looking unwind after the conference were not left out in the cold however. Since it isn't an SES until at least one party has been thrown, several of the vendors came to the rescue. WebmasterRadio, Bruce Clay, Inc and several other companies banded together for a party that was wall to wall entertainment. All that fun should help to combat the freezing temperatures as the conference winds down and everyone heads back home.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 8/05 at 10:10 AM
See more entries in Fun Stuff, SEM Events

December 5, 2005

The Horse's Mouth

Just in case you missed the significance of this rather unassuming entry on the Organic Site Reviews panel at Pubcon, check out Matt Cutts saying that it was that panel that was his favorite. Considering Barry referred to that panel as "scary" and emphasized the "public display of 'We know who you are, what you did and why you did it'", the fact that it was Matt's favorite says a great deal about what Google wants from the rest of the web.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 5/05 at 2:38 PM
See more entries in SEM Events, SEO, SEO Tips & Tricks, Search Engines

Very Busy

Just like everyone else, things get the busiest here in the last quarter. With SES starting today, an update going on in Yahoo, the holiday season starting and of course, lots and lots of work to do, it's hard to keep up on all the news.

Luckily, that's why we have the newsletter. The November edition was published on the 30th and contains articles on conducting a successful link campaign as well as a look at the new 1st Certified email system. And of course, we always cover the news of the month, hitting the hot topics and dishing the dirt on who is teaming with whom these days.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 5/05 at 9:42 AM
See more entries in SEOToolSet

A Google blog here, a Google blog there, Google blogs everywhere

If it feels like every time you turn around there is another official blog for some Google service or another, you're not alone. Danny called for a master feed or at least a master blog, echoing the thoughts of so many of us who don't want seventeen new feeds to track on. While Google hasn't yet responded, over at Google Blogoscoped, Phillip Lessen rose to the occasion and created a webpage that splices all the official Google Blogs together (plus a few notable others, like Matt Cutts's as well as the official Yahoo and MSN search blogs). It updates every thirty minutes.

There is also an RSS feed.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 5/05 at 9:41 AM
See more entries in Branding

Happy Birthday, Search Engine Roundtable.

Speaking of SER, congratulations to Barry on two years of fantastic SEO forum coverage. Barry is an invaluable resource in the industry, mining the forums for all the rumors, tips, thoughts and controversies. Just as important is his peerless coverage of industry conferences including Search Engine Strategies and WebmasterWorld. As of their anniversary on Friday, SER has published 2,782 entries (and that number keeps going up.)

Here's to many more years and we'll be looking forward to coverage of SES Chicago.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 5/05 at 9:32 AM
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization

Update at Yahoo!?

According to Search Engine Roundtable, there's an update going on at Yahoo and it's not popular at all at WebmasterWorld. So far most of the replies are quite unhappy.

There's more discussion going on at SEO Chat. The folks there aren't any happier and are reporting much lower counts returned than usual. The other interesting thing they're discussing a Yahoo cookie that blocks you from looking up your own site using the site: command. Very strange…

Posted by Susan Esparza on 12/ 5/05 at 9:19 AM
See more entries in Search Engine Optimization