Online Marketing Blog

Photo Credit Jim Boykin

Keynote presentation at Search Engine Strategies New York with Danny Sullivan and Barry Diller of IAC. Diller’s company acquired Ask Jeeves in 2005, now rebranded as Ask.com.

Diller: I have always liked Ask.com. I just felt they needed to drop the Butler (drop baggage). The butler limited the opportunity for Ask.com as a mass market player in search. He does not intend to change the “Ask” brand.

If it’s like everyone else, it doesn’t have a reason for being. Like when he started Fox, Diller didn’t want to make another of the same big networks. He Wanted to make something different.

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“Why Media Buyers Must Understand SEO” by Tessa Wegert over at ClickZ addresses how blogs and viral marketing are effective linking tactics and therefore important for search marketing.

Increasingly, I am seeing the creative aspect of search marketing growing in importance. SEO grew out of IT because so many technical issues existed causing sites not to rank well. Now search engines are better at indexing a wider array of file formats and more sophisticaed urls. Off page factors such as links are just as or more important as technical SEO.

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According to a recent study by Wells Fargo and Gallup, small businesses prefer to rely on word of mouth over paid advertising. Out of the small businesses that are looking to advertise, 57 percent said they anticipate spending on internet advertising this year. - Via iMedia Connection

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Despite a cancelled flight, re-route through Detroit and 2 hours on the tarmac before taking off, I was very happy to make it home by midnight yesterday from New York. I know some folks ended up staying overnight at JFK and flying out in the morning.

For the majority of the Search Engine Strategies conference, I covered sessions for Search Engine Roundtable with Barry, Ben and Chris and it was a good time. Since I picked what to cover last, I sat in on sessions that I might not normally cover. And you know what? I am very glad I did.

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Google Sitemaps announces new features including average top position, top mobile search queries and more download options.

Lower cost Google Mini offered at $1,995.

Porn site’s lawsuit against Google

Google News now on mobile phones

Microsoft search better than Google? Riiiiiiiight

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I just received my beta test acceptance to Google Gmail for domains. The domain name I’m using is marketingblog.com and there are 50 accounts to start. The process to get set up once you’re accepted into the beta seems pretty straightforward.

Features include:
A control panel where you can, “create new users, modify or suspend accounts, create aliases and lists, and customize the look and feel of Gmail for marketingblog.com. You can even upload whole lists of new users with the bulk upload feature, and assign administrative rights to multiple accounts.”

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Today I received emails from two different SEO firm ranking lists that have ranked my SEO firm, TopRank in the top 5. One from topseos.com where TopRank was ranked #4 and the other from PromotionWorld.com where we were ranked #4 again. Bruce Clay did quite well in both as well.

At first this seems pretty cool, but I am wondering how potential clients preceive it? I know it pisses some SEOs off, which most lists are prone to do. But I really don’t care what other SEO firms think. What comes to mind is how subjective such rankings are. Here are the editorial/review policies for both lists:

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There were several after-conference events last night at SES NYC. Marchex held a bash and there was a small, invite only thing for MSN AdCenter as well. I did not make it to either, but instead dropped by the DoubleClick DART Search Launch party that was held in the pentouse loft at Rockefeller Center. Lots of agencies and search engine reps were in attendance. Here are a few photos from my truzty Razr:

Business and pleasure.

Director of Marketing for Reprise Media, Anthony Iaffaldano.

View from the penthouse garden.

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Yesterday at the New York Search Engine Strategies conference I ran into Brian Prince, CEO of Best of the Web (BOTW.org), who clearly have plenty of fans as evident from all the black, long sleeve t-shirts worn by conference attendees. In fact, they ran out the first day of the conference and had to get more.

A few months ago, BOTW.org launched a new blogs directory. Yesterday, they took the next step and added search to the directory. You can search by posts, tags or blogs.

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