Well, if you want to win market share as a revamped search engine, that would be Microsoft’s promotion of Bing!
The question is, what search engine is so good and has more meaningful features that you would actually switch from using Google? And, with Google having almost a 70 percent market share of the search engine usage, that calls for some stiff competition.
comScore recently released some early indications that are somewhat positive for Bing, and although the initial trials were favorable, it will be interesting to see if these turn into market share growth.
So let’s get back to the question why Microsoft is spending that kind of money on advertising in this economy. Seems as if local search represents a huge, relatively untapped revenue source. There are numerous estimates out there that are saying that the local search industry could eclipse 15 billion dollars in the next several years … I guess spending $100 million just might be worth the investment if they can get a good enough percentage of that return.
Any guess as to why Microsoft chose to name their search engine “Bing?” Supposedly the name was “memorable, short, easy to spell and would function well as a URL around the world. Also, the word would remind people of the sound made during “the moment of discovery and decision making.'”
Google officially acknowledged the relevancy (pun intended) of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, last year and now Google has gone and audited itself. Google has made its “SEO Report Card” available to the public. It appears to have only evaluated itself on some basic criteria, but it’s fascinating how poorly they score in several key areas. You can download and view all 49 pages. This validates some standard SEO best practices that have been in place for some time, but it’s always good to hear it from the horses mouth.
Do you know how well your site would score in an SEO report card?
A fairly accepted advanced practice within the SEO community called PageRank Sculpting has been undone by Google. I won’t get into all of the details but the important thing to remember is that if your site was making use of PageRank Sculpting (or your SEO experts said they were) then you better find out how that’s going to impact your site.
Essentially all of the links on your website and back to your website from other sites have been equalized. That is, they now each bear about the same amount of credibility where as in the past certain links were more valuable than others. Some still are, but a lot of them won’t be.
This just underscores how important it can be to keep up with the rules the major search engines like Google and Yahoo ues to determine what the “best” sites are for any given search phrase. It also shows that it’s important to know what type of SEO service you’re getting: is it “black hat?” Are your search engine optimization specialists using under-handed and non-sanctioned tactics to improve your site’s ranking? If so, a change could come out at any time and wipe your site’s ability to rank on Google or Yahoo at all. Ever again.
If you don’t know the answers to any of the questions above, it would probably be worth it to have your website examined to be sure you’re not in danger of violating any new rules from the search engines and determine the things you may not be doing that would be well worth it.
As posted in a lot of other places, Google has very publicly announced that it is no longer censoring Google searches in China and is prepared to leave the country if the Chinese government doesn’t like it. Most people in the US seem to be hailing the move as a victory in human rights in a country that has a bad history of denying them.
TechCrunch is arguing that it’s as much a business move as a humanitarian one, but I’m not buying it. The same 3 reasons they provide for why this is true could be argued as reasons for them not to do this. Either way, it’s a win for progress in an area lacking some basic civil liberties.
DARPA placed 10 red balloons randomly throughout the US and issued a challenge: find them using the Internet. A team of MIT researchers used a custom-built social media platform that integrated info from Facebook and Twitter to find them. How long did it take? Only 8 hours.
Here’s an interview with one of the MIT researchers:
There were an incredible amount of electronic paper devices – or ebook Readers – in 2009 although you probably wouldn’t realize it. You’ve probably heard of Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader and perhaps seen the new nook device in Barnes & Noble stores, and maybe you’ve seen the Sony ebook readers at Borders and Best Buys across the country. But also released, somewhat quietly, were at least 10 other similar devices from all sorts of different companies. There are even more in development that will be released next year.
All of these devices have some big things in common: 1 – they only display black and white print and are very poor at rendering graphics; 2 – they’re intended to use almost strictly for books (and some newspapers). As everyone is scrambling to create the killer device to read books on, no one has focused specifically on creating a device for displaying magazine content digitally. Well this has changed as Time Inc. magazine and Bonnier Corporation, publishers of many publications including Popular Science, Field & Stream and the TransWorld sports series, are developing devices geared specifically to reproducing print magazines on dedicated electronic devices.
Bonnier is working with European design consultancy Berg who just released some photos and a video of the planned device in action. You can see the still photos and read more about the device on their blog, but here it is in action:
Pretty amazing stuff, and it will be equally impressive if they actually pull this off without the device costing $1,000+
What the heck does this have to do with internet marketing? Well, as they describe in the video, advertising will also be present on the device and because it’s electronic, it’s trackable. In the not-too-distant future we could track and report on the effectiveness of magazine and other print ads like never before – similar to how we track online campaigns. We could know exactly how many people viewed an ad, whether they shared it with a friend and maybe even if they made a purchase as a result. This kind of tracking is unprecedented in the print world and could do a great deal to prop up sagging advertising revenue in this industry. Although that may never recover to the levels it has been in the dead-tree world, it’s an exciting prospect nonetheless.
Email marketing, a re-marketing tool, can be a very effective means to build loyalty and drive new business from existing clientele. Using it to generate new business from prospective customers who have no idea who you are, however, is a sketchy proposition. Purchased or rented lists typically do not provide as good a response or return. This is due to everyone’s extra sensitivity to spam and also to the differences in mindsets between the offline (print) world and online engagement. But it’s also due to the way email providers, and especially Internet Service Providers (ISPs), identify and filter emails that are marketing-oriented.
ISPs use one or more of several methods to identify unsolicited email but none of them are perfect. Unsolicited email still makes it through and requested marketing (e.g. email newsletters) sometimes get wrongly dumped into the junk folder. Even if you send mass email pieces through only trusted sources, it can be tough to ensure those messages make it to someone’s inbox. And it’s going to get tougher.
A new(er) method, called “Domain Reputation,” is being implemented by some of the major ISPs with more likely to follow. This method looks at the actual website name that the email came from to determine whether it should be spared from the spam folder. In the past this hasn’t been the case so it was easy for really malicious marketers to keep sending email from the same website by moving that website to different servers. Now your website domain, as displayed in your email marketing pieces, will be evaluated on its reputation for sending emails. If you’ve sent emails before that have gone into a user’s junk folder, that counts against you. If someone hits the “Mark as Spam” button on one of your emails, that counts against you. More specifically, it all gets totaled up and counted against your domain.
It can be tough keeping up with all of the new ways that email marketing is filtered. However, the fact is that double-opt-in emails, those delivered only to people who have requested it (and confirmed their request, hence the “double” part), are still safe and will be for the foreseeable future. In fact they’re not only safe, they are still an excellent way to keep yourself in front of customers and provide a valuable service (such as an email newsletter with really great advice). If you’re providing something that people have proven they want, you shouldn’t be too concerned about the rise in use of Domain Reputation filtering by ISPs and email providers.
This is an interesting bit of information coming out of a report from eMarketer – by the year 2013, 43% of global mobile Internet users (607.5 million people worldwide) will be accessing social networks from their mobile devices!
“In the US, mobile social networkers will total 56.2 million by 2013 and will account for nearly half (45%) of the mobile Internet population,” says eMarketer.
This is exciting and impressive, however, the real question will be how can marketers use the social networks to reach and engage their target audience? Who are the mobile social networkers and do they include the right consumers that are interacting with your brand through this medium?
Well if you’re interested in finding out the answers to these questions, you’ll need to come up with $695 in order to access the report – no doubt, depending upon your product/service it might be a worthwhile exercise.
Earlier this year we commented on an upcoming update to Google’s rules for ranking websites codenamed “Caffeine.” This update actually changes how Google analyzes web pages significantly but current rankings, for the most part, should remain stable per our tests in the Developer Preview. Google is now launching Caffeine starting with 1 data center by the end of this year, and then a full rollout next year.
We’ve also discussed Google’s increasing emphasis on web page load times. We knew it was a factor for Google’s Pay-Per-Click ads (slower sites will be penalized, requiring more money to show up higher) and hinted that it will probably become a factor for every website in Google’s “natural” or regular (non-paid) search results. Well as you can see from this interview with Matt Cutts, that’s probably going to become a reality sometime soon. Google has launched a place with tools for testing your site’s load time at code.google.com/speed. These tools are free to use and we strongly recommend you find out exactly how long it takes your web pages to load so you can start streamlining them asap for the impending update to protect against any penalties against your website.
How do you accomplish this? Unfortunately because this agreement was just recently announced between Google and Twitter, there isn’t much data from a search engine optimization standpoint. As always, trial and error seems to be the key and, more importantly, relevancy and a website’s ‘authority’ are critical components as well to Google.
How do you gain relevancy and authority within your Twitter profile and your tweets? The same guidelines apply in your tweets as apply in optimizing copy on your website. Use your desired keywords throughout your Twitter profile page and tweet content; build up followers (in-bound links); generate in-bound links via other sources to improve the authority of your profile; and, encourage others to share your Twitter content.
So let’s get back to the question why Microsoft is spending that kind of money on advertising in this economy. Seems as if local search represents a huge, relatively untapped revenue source. There are numerous estimates out there that are saying that the local search industry could eclipse 15 billion dollars in the next several years … I guess spending $100 million just might be worth the investment if they can get a good enough percentage of that return.
If you’re a tweeter you should be interested in this news. It’s official – 