Online Marketing Blog

Gary Price from Search Engine Watch posted a nice collection of search related papers from the WWW 2005 Conference in Japan. It’s not my belief that you need to read all of this to be great at SEO, but good information is priceless with algorithmic search. Gary had previously posted this collection of papers regarding search engine spam, or at least some theories about identification of it.

I am sure there will be some review and analysis within the search marketing community on some of these. I know I’ll be taking a look and posting here what I find useful for organic SEO. Of particular interest to me outside of implications for SEO, are news search papers. Here’s an interesting news search site created for testing and implementing improved news search methodology: ComeToMyHead

MSN blog posted an entry with links to the start.com/1 RSS aggregator and start.com/2 bookmarking tools. I first noticed these bloglines.com as far as web based feed aggregators go.

Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has been running a search engine relevancy challenge through a new search site he’s set up called RustySearch. Search results come anonymously from the major search engines and you can rate each on relevancy. Over 5,000 searches have been rated so far. Here’s the official results page. You might be surprised at the results so far. I’m not.

Visit RustySearch now and help out by rating searches to see which search engine provides the most relevant results.

eMarketer has issued a new report on blogging for businesses: “The Business of Blogging”

The report “looks at the implications of the blogging phenomenon for businesses, scans the corporate world’s blogging activity, and offers recommendations for business users.”

Interestingly, “just 4% of major US corporations have blogs available to the public ¬ó and even fewer produce active sites with the link and feedback features that most readers associate with true blogs.”

The rate of blog readership in general is not growing as fast as it was during the political race last year, but as a business communication tool, business blog creation and readership is definitely growing. Read Anita Campbell’s post, 10% of Small Business Marketing Plans Include Blogs where she describes a study by HP on small business owners.

There has been a lot of talk in the web world about RSS lately and there are lots of web sites that tell you what it is, however I’m going to try and explain it in an easy to understand way.

RSS means “Really Simple Syndication” which is basically a way for a web site or blog to provide content in a standard format that you can subscribe to using a RSS reader. There are hundreds of RSS readers out there for Mac and PC. Some are based online, like Bloglines, others are programs you run from your computer. [Mac Readers] [PC Readers] [More Readers] Some free, some cost a little. I use Sage RSS reader as part of my FireFox web browser. It’s free and works on both Mac and PC.

http://www.golexa.com
Offers an impressive array of data on each search result including: Google PR, Alexa and Yahoo rank, link popularity on 6 engines, keyword density, spider view, and lots more. Via threadwatch.

Tags: SEO Tools, search engine optimization

I’ll be honest, I had not heard of Dodgeball.com before and they offer the service here in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Google has acquired Dodgeball as of today. Basically, it’s a mobile social networking service using your text-messaging-enabled cell phone/pda/whatever.

Here’s a description of Dodgeball from New York Magazine:

“When Dodgeball users “check in” at a given locale by sending out a text message, it goes to all their preselected friends, as well as any friends of friends within a ten-block radius. A photo is sent along with the alert-which helps with identifying near strangers. Introductions are made, beer is poured, and then hookups can occur-casually, and in a low-pressure environment, all under the guise of knowing someone in common. It’s Friendster, except in real time and in the real world.”

A recent article in InfoWorld references an interview with Blogger’s Biz Stone regarding enhancements to the Blogger service.

Updates may include:

• Enterprise blogging
• Create private groups
• Image uploading directly to blogger.com
• Integration with Gmail

The article also mentions efforts made to improve the performance of blogger as well as the recent Yahoo is the latest company to create their own music store. Yahoo’s music store offers unlimited downloads of 1 million songs for $6.99 per month or $60 for an annual subscription. However, you don’t own the songs. You can’t burn them to a CD or even play them if you cancel your subscription. If you want to own your songs, it’s an extra 79 cents per song.

The Yahoo music service will be directly challenging iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster with thier subscription based music store. It sounds like a better, cheaper, deal than Napster, however I don’t believe it can compare to iTunes, non-subscription, non-restrictive service.

The New York Times is changing with the times and updating their Business Day section.

“On Mondays, Business Day will focus on media and marketing news, with technology included as it relates to those industries. David Carr will write a column on new media; the world of blogs will be covered as a regular feature.”

Search Engine Relevancy Challenge – Search RustySearch and rate to see which search engine is most relevant. Early results show a dead heat.

DNS issues bring Google.com down via SEW – Only 15 minutes, but not the 15 minutes of fame Google was probably looking for.

Yahoo! case study indicates display ads influence search behavior via ClickZ – Results imply positive effect on both natural and PPC listing clickthrough rates.

Tags: RustySearch, Google, Yahoo

Rocketboom Vlog. Most recent entry includes an interview with Microsoft blogrockstar, Robert Scoble right here in Minneapolis. Nice interview talking about video blogging.