Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

I had a chance to try out the latest version of MSN’s Start.com this am and noticed the “Search for feeds” option under the “Add Content” area, which is basically a blog search. Results are not bad.

This is the Online Marketing Blog/2005/06/msn-startcom-v30.html”>Start.com Version 3 that was in beta earlier this summer where you were supposed to take a quiz to access it.

In order for your added content to be saved, you need to login using Microsoft Passport.

MSN Start.com Blog notes several other improvements.

Google Turns 7 Today – Search Engine Roundtable

Google Synonym Patent – Better search for Google? And potential optimization strategies in response – Threadwatch & Search Engine Watch

Blog Link Tracking – Ranking, tracking and discovering blogs. Technorati has been sucking a lot lately, so who’s up to the task? – Blog Herald & WSJ

Phishing OK with Yahoo? – Search Engine Journal

Google Backlink Update and Yahoo Updating – So what? “A watched pot never boils.”

Since yesterday was a U.S. holiday, I did not see Andy’s email until today that his beta Multilingual Search Blog that I posted about back in Online Marketing Blog/2005/04/multilingual-seo.html”>April has just gone through a major upgrade and has launched as www.multilingual-search.com

Andy Atkins-Kruger who is the Managing Editor has this to say about the launch:

“We felt there was a gap in the information available to search marketers who are targeting the non-English speaking world in particular. Very quickly we discovered there was a lot going on which was under-reported. Using local search marketers ?Ǭñ we can get the news worldwide as it happens. The blog user can choose to view posts by country which is something marketers asked us for to facilitate their planning and research efforts.”¬î

At the last SES conference in San Jose, Chris Pirillo interviewed long time SEO guru, Jill Whalen where she talks about how she started out in search engine optimization and what she’s doing with her newest initiative, Search Creative.

Jill’s High Rankings Forum is one of the first Forums I started interacting with. Actually, I had been following Jill’s threads at Kim Krause’s Cre8asute Forum prior to that. When Kim announced Jill was starting her own Forum, I made sure to sign up. Jill is known for her practical and straight forward communication style. She has always promoted long term, content driven optimization tactics.

Unlike a lot of big SEO firms who tout their awards, company size, blah blah blah, her site has ranked first page for phrases like “search engine optimization” on Google for as long as I can remember. That’s impressive.

I had not noticed this until today so I am not sure how new it is. There is a new tab on Technorati called Blogs Beta for a new blog search tool called Blog Finder.

When you login you can now do several more things with your claimed blogs including: Edit the blog description, add or edit Blog Finder tags and edit the embeded display.

Blog finder tags are pre-populated once you login. but once you edit them, you can see the difference in the Blog Finder search results within minutes. I think Dave Sifry‘s Technorati development team might think about putting a timer on that, or at least limiting how often a blog can edit it’s tags. Seeing search results change this quickly harkens back to the days of old school SEO and Infoseek.

By now you’ve certainly read about the BS lawsuit Traffic Power has issued against Aaron Wall. The Wall Street Journal, Slashdot and many others have picked up this story.

Aaron has a Online Marketing Blog/2005/08/this-is-just-wrong-traffic-power-sues.html”>LOT of support. Looks like he’s standing up for principle and going to fight it. Threadwatch has a post about those details and about how you can contribute to this cause.

Somewhat Frank has posted some very useful links regarding what blogger rights. Also, I don’t want it misconstrued that my support for Aaoron means I think it’s ok to defame or libel companies on blogs, because I don’t. The issue here is that there is a big difference between explaining your personal opinion and experience and doing the things TP is alleging.

Every day I get emails from PR people or companies that are letting us know about products/services they would like mentioned on the Online Marketing Blog. Sometimes it’s a great match and you can tell they’ve read the blog at least a few times. Sometimes I’m left wondering, what in the world does that have to do with marketing online?

Anyway, here are links to a few of those from this week as well as some search engine news:

Audio video live support chat – PLMEDIA

Bluetooth marketing – Cool Demo – Jellingspot

Reputation marketing – iKarma

MSN offers blog search commands – Search Engine Watch

Top 40 blog related searches – ADS ON BLOGS

Blog Survey – Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing VOX writes via AdAge that several TV networks are using paid search with Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture) to generate traffic to previews of fall shows.

Here’s an example for the show Prison Break. Networks are certainly feeling the effect of shifting audiences and finally realize search engines are where larger numbers of potential audiences are spending their time.

In fact, here are some numbers for you: Internet usage in the US is currently at 68% penetration with 223 million users as of July 2005 according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Simultaneous Web and TV usage is up 72% according to the last “Media in Mind” survey by Universal McCann.

Big media giants are waking up to marketing online including search. Kevin Ryan makes some interesting predictions about the result:

I know many of the people who read this blog (thank you!) also have their own web sites or blogs.

Please consider donating ad space on your site to help out Katrina victims via the Red Cross.

Thank you,

Lee Odden

Metroblogging New Orleans – Flickr Images – Clusty Blog Search

Barry at Search Engine Roundtable posts a Code of Ethics that prompted me to do some thinking.

Search Engine Roundtable Code of Ethics:
(1) We try to cover public forum threads and quote from public information within those threads.
(2) We will never quote anyone without explicit permission in the following cases:
— Phone conversations require explicit permission to quote
— Email conversations require explicit permission to quote
— IM chat conversations require explicit permission to quote
— In person conversations require explicit permission to quote
(3) We will quote any publicly posted and available content from forums, content sites, blogs and so on.
(4) Anything said during a public presentation at a conference (not at the bars or in the hall ways but rather, what is said on the podium) is quotable as well.

While I was updating my list of sites to advertise or post SEO Consultant positions to, I thought it might be useful to make a list of several niche web sites and resources for recruiting and job search within search engine marketing/optimization.

At the last few conferences I’ve attended, one of the most consistent issues I heard my peers in SEO/SEM talk about was recruiting talent. Since SEO is such a unique combination of skills, I think there’s some opportunity here for a service to be created that recruits into other disciplines and offers training for a career in SEO/SEM. Hmmmmm.

These are in no particular order.

• Jobs in Search – Mostly UK, but is actually world wide.
• Marketing Sherpa – Updated every Wednesday.

On NPR this morning John Gordon had a piece on how Microsoft and MIT are working to develop a more personalized search method.

The method considers the content of your e-mail, documents, blog content, and Internet history to allow personal interests to influence the final search results presented to the user.

The interviewee, M.I.T. doctoral candidate Jaime Teevan, claims that the Google and Yahoo personalized search tools are based on a lightweight user model because they use data that the user provides and the pages they’ve already visited. The Microsoft/MIT personalized search would take into account more than just the web pages recently visited to include other documents and information on a user’s computer and re-rank search results accordingly.