Online Marketing Blog

In the spirit of the Subservient Chicken viral campaing for BK by Crispin Porter, Fuel Industries has created a similar feature to promote the Family Guy DVD called Stewie Live. Enter commands and see what he does. Have some fun with: gun, pig or chicken. via AdRants

Om Malik points out that the recent offering of the Opera browser for free is due to a referral deal with Google. Opera has also signed referral deals with eBay and Amazon.

In comparison, he notes that the Mozilla Foundation, makers of the FireFox browser, bring in about $30 million a year from such deals. Seems like a pretty good incentive to me.

Now what are those folks building the Flock browser up to?

Tags: Online Marketing, Opera, FireFox, Flock

I noticed that I’ve been posting links more than longer blog posts or articles. I’d rather not do that, but hey, it’s busy! I should be back on track with some excellent interviews next week. In the meantime, here’s some interesting search engine and SEO news for today:

Search Engine Blogs as PR Tools – Article by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal

SOLD! iMedia Connection has been bought by the same company that purchased ad:tech (DMG) – via MarketingVOX.

Traffic Power Suit against SEOBook continues to backfire. Will they ever get it and just back off?

ComScore report on comparison shopping engines – iMedia

Web CEO 5.6 released – Lots of upgrades and improvements.

A post Andrew Goodman on Traffick made about Google working on a space program reminded me of several good humor spoofs and April fools jokes Google has put out and that others have done about Google over the last few years. Here are several of my favorites:

Google Mentalplex – This one goes waaayyyy back. Search by thinking.

Pigeon Rank – Expose on how web pages are “really” ranked on Google.

Google Moonbase is Hiring – Ah, life in the Googlunaplex .

Google Gulp – “…a line of “smart drinks” designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty.”

Undergoos – Google Underwear

Google Moon – Look closer. No, closer.

My favorite photo of Google Founder, Sergey Brin

Google WiFi Security Download – FAQ – I am using this now. Am I more secure?

Yahoo enhances search results – Yahoo Search Blog

Opera browser is free. Well, banner free at least.

Authors Guild Sues Google – Google Blog

Google sent out another survey to some AdWords advertisers recently. Most of the questions centered around satisfaction with AdWords along with solicitation for feedback and improvements.

There were also several questions that allude to possible enhancements that Google is considering for the Google Advertising Professionals program. These include:

• Ability to have Google bill your clients directly and pass on a service fee to you for managing their AdWords accounts
• A Microsoft Windows-based tool for more easily uploading and downloading AdWords campaigns
• Technical support by phone for a fee
• Ability to add your company?Ǭís logo into reports within My Client Center
• Directory listing of all Google Advertising Professionals on Google.com
• In-person training on Google Advertising Professionals testing curriculum for a fee

Automatic SEM – Reprise Media

GoogleNet is the real deal – Om Malik

Are you banned on Google? – Search Engine Watch

Google and Microsoft courting AOL? – News.com

Top Three Search Marketing Trends for 2006 – Marketing Sherpa (pdf)

Aaron Wall has built a new Meta Search Engine called Myriad Search.

Aaron was nice enough to let me know about the tool last week. Here’s a quick Q&A we had on Myriad Search:

Lee: What prompted you to make this meta engine?

Aaron: Well I wanted to create a authority finder like a tool that cross referenced the engines and then I got thinking it was only a few more tweaks to make it a meta search service.

Lee: Are you presenting this mostly as an authority finder or as myriadsearch? or both?

Aaron: Well I think the myriad search will appeal to a broader audience. It is more of a power search tool than an seo tool.

Lee: Myriad power search!

While listening to a WebmasterRadio.fm podcast with Detlev Johnson and Todd Freisen recently, I noticed a comment Detlev made about bringing back the I-Search discussion thread he moderated several years back. I-Search was a tremendous resource for information on search engine optimization and marketing for years. I contacted Detlev to see if this was indeed still the case and he confirmed.

If you’re in the search marketing business, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Detlev. He’s known as one of the top technical SEO experts and has been a moderator at Search Engine Strategies conferences since forever, and has been active in organizations like the Search Engine Marketing Council, previously part of AIM and now the DMA, and was previously moderator of the critically acclaimed I-Search. He is currently VP at Position Tech.

Flock is a new Web 2.0 browser based on Firefox that is stirring up some attention: Om Malik, TechCrunch, Wired and Scoble. Nice job, Voce.

I first read about Flock on SearchViews last week. Comments about Flock from their web site:

“We started Flock to build tools that empower people and smooth out some of the more hairy parts of living and working online. As it is, we live and breathe this stuff everyday and wanted better tools to do the things that we love doing online.”

According to the TechCrunch review, social bookmarking and a wysiwyg blog writing tool are two features that make this a super social browser.

The company initially started as Round Two, developing extensions for the Firefox browser. Ideas started popping and investors came along, and walla, Flock was born. Lots of fun Flock photos here.

If you’re taking the time to create a business blog, you can improve your blog marketing effectiveness by considering three critical components: content, frequency and distribution.

Content - Your blog posts must be interesting and useful to your readers. Develop your unique voice and don’t be afraid to post things others will not agree to.

Frequency of posts are important as there is a direct correlation to blog popularity and the number of times it’s updated. Post 3-5 times per week at a minimum. Blogs that are updated many times a day can get included in the Google News index which is updated daily. That means getting your content into Google search results the same day its posted to your blog. This may not be as likely since the launch of Google Blog Search though.

Microsoft Considers Acquiring AOL Search – Count on it: death, taxes and changes in the search industry.

Google Zeitgeist 05 – Cats and Dogs living together, but don’t talk about it.

SEO Benefits Of CSS – The devil is in the details and this post has the details from SEJ

Forbes hires SEO Firm – If Forbes is going to do it, then get off your ass and sign up!