Online Marketing Blog

I just had a chance to watch part of the webcast of Google’s Searchology presentation with Marissa Meyer, Craig Silverstein and others.
Software Engineer Ben Gomes talked about PageRank:

Kerry Rodden talked about usability testing:

and the various Google search products were also discussed.

Danny lists links to live blogging of the event from TechCrunch and AppScout.

While there were hints by a few blogs that have been talking about Searchology day that an announcement of some sort would be made, my “in and out” viewing of the web cast did not catch anything in particular. However, if something of note was presented, I’m sure Search Engine Land will cover it.

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Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim has announced the five finalists in the 2007 SEM Scholarship Contest. There were 20 entrants, each tasked with finding ways to attract the most unique visitors to their article hosted at the MP blog using any combination of SEO, PPC, social marketing, word-of-mouth, etc in 4 weeks.  Out of those participants, the following articles made the cut:

• AIDS Clickathon – A Viral Marketing Strategy to Fight the HIV/AIDS Virus in Africa - Paul Steinbrueck
• Have Your Top Competitors Do Some Of Your SEO For You - CK Chung (aka Kid Disco)

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Here are a few new items plus some things I’ve been meaning to link to for a while that may be of interest:

ISEdb launches Digg style news site for search marketing:  ISEdb Scoop.

Check out Jeremy Shoemaker’s AuctionAds

Videos of all Search Insider Summit sessions

Danny defending SEO (again). I’ve seen Danny do this in comments on other blogs and you have to appreciate the effort he puts into standing up for our industry.

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Due to the generous networking opportunities at last week’s conference, it was easy to meet a variety of people even though the event was fairly small. One person I met was John Fernandez from Accoona. You may remember Accoona from their launch event with past President, Bill Clinton. I hadn’t heard a whole lot about Accoona lately and was interested to hear their take on running a search engine in a Google dominated world.

There were enough things going on with Accoona that I challenged John to write up five things you don’t know about Accoona and I’d post it to OMB. John came through and so now I am as well.

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Normally when related queries are suggested after doing a search on Google, they appear at the bottom of the search results page (SERP). I noticed this weekend Google is testing the display of other Google categories as well as related search queries above the right side column ads. (Outlined in red)

The example above shows a link to Google Products. However, other keyword queries generate links to other Google search products: Google News, Scholar, Blogs, Books, Video, etc. I am only able to create these results on Firefox using Google, not via MSIE or Opera browsers.

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The phrases “search engine optimizaton” and “rankings” have gone hand in hand since the start of the search marketing industry. Agencies have gone so far as to use “rankings” as part of their name such as Jill Whalen’s High Rankings, David Wallace’s “Search Rank” and of course, our company “TopRank”.

With the advent of personalization and impending changes with the interface of search results, the notion of ranking seems to be on it’s way out. In the past 3-4 years, most SEO consulting firms have been focusing on traffic and especially the past 2-3 years on conversions. Standard search engine rankings as a proxy to sales will become irrelevant, especially as other channels of search have emerged in popularity.

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This week was my first MediaPost Search Insider Summit event and I was glad to have been able to participate. I’ve been a reader of MediaPost publications on and offline for several years and have been a big fan of the Search Insider, which is pretty much the only email format search marketing content that I’ll actually read outside of my ClickZ subscriptions.

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Whenever I look at our huge list of search marketing blogs, I think several things, one of which is “so many blogs, so little time”. One way to cut through the clutter is to use a mashup or aggregator. There are many of these and I’d like to find out which of the search marketing mashups/aggregator sites below you like best.

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Normally we don’t really cover a lot of industry news here at Online Marketing Blog.  We leave that to the experts at Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal and Marketing Pilgrim. However, when a search engine reaches out with a particularly interesting message, we can make exceptions.

For example, the new “Ultimate Connection” contest from Yahoo Search Marketing which involves Ivanka Trump. I had to read that twice and thought it an interesting choice of celebrity.    Whenever I hear about search marketing contests involving essays, I always think of Marketing Pilgrim’s Scholarship, but such methods of promotion have been around a lot longer than SEO blogs.

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Competitive Intelligence — One of the most powerful aspects of search engine marketing is the intelligence you can gain from it, both about your own brands and your competitors. Just how much can you find out about the competition? What tools and strategies should you use? Here you’ll learn how to gain or retain your competitive edge.

This session featured Patrick Lopez from iCrossing, Tom O’Grady from AdGooRoo, LeeAnn Prescott from Hitwise, Matt Roche from Offermatica and moderation duties were handled by Cam Balzer from DoubleClick Performics, who I interviewed early in the conference.

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I went the lazy but entertaining route and took some video of the “Search Insiders Tell All” session yesterday afternoon that included David Berkowitz, Aaron Goldman, Bob Heyman and Gord Hotchkiss.

Here the “Search Insiders” about personalization, brand stewardship, Google DoubleClick and the disparity in standards applied to search marketing that are not applied to TV or direct response marketing.

Here is a discussion of video search, advertising and marketing.

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Day two of the Search Insider Summit was full of great presentations and commentary, so be sure to read the frequently updated MediaPost Raw blog.

Since many of the attendees of the Summit are the kinds of companies, marketers and agencies that employ various types of marketing channels, both on and offline, the opportunity to present examples and case studies of integration with search was ideal.

Some of the high level takeaways from this session include the importance for company marketers to set expectations when enegaging in an integrated campaign as well as the importance of coordination. Larger agencies that are capable of managing multi channel programs including search may have an easier time than a situation where a company uses multiple agencies to manage their various marketing programs.

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