Online Marketing Blog

Chris Pirillo and Jake hit up Search Engine Strategies New York and did a number of interviews which you can hear at his SES 2006 Archive page. Interviewees include:

• Copernic on Desktop Search
• David Sifry on Technorati and Entreprenuership
• Lee Odden on Blogs and Search Marketing (More “umms” and “ahhs” than you’ve ever heard in one conversation!”
• Jay Budzik of Intellext on Watson Contextual Search
• Jim Lanzone of Ask.com on Search
• Joshua Stylman and Peter Hershberg of Reprise Media on Contextual Advertising
• Danny Sullivan on SES, Tags and Googlefasting
• Meet Joe Spammer – Confessions of a Search Marketer
• Matt Cutts of Google on Search Engine Spam

Some good stuff in there, check it out.

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Chris Pirillo gets the goods on search engine spam with an interview of an anonymous “search spammer” at the New York Search Engine Strategies conference. The voice is decidedly European, possibly German – yes, it’s German.

“At SES Chris interviewed one search spammer who asked to remain nameless while providing some interesting details about the inner workings of the search spamming world. On one hand the interview reveals some of the motivations for spamming the search engines. More interesting are the search spamming tactics these black hat marketers won’t employ because even they are annoyed by the end result.”

One of the areas of online marketing and PR that continues to gain interest is buzz marketing through blogs and similar consumer generated media. Blogs are many things including marketing tools and also voices to be heard. Consumer voices that provide insight into your marketplace. The availability and ease of communications and creative tools make consumer generated media a force to be reckoned with.

Today I noticed that Al Gore’s Current TV is looking for consumers to create commercials for its commercial sponsors (AdJab). I think you’ll see more of that as marketers and comsumers embrace the medium.

At the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York last week, Rebecca Lieb moderated a session including Dave Balter from BzzAgent, Pete Blackshaw from Nielsen BuzzMetrics (Intelliseek) and Jim Nail of Cymfony who presented on creating and measuring buzz using blogs.

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.

Ask is differentiated by the way it works from the other engines. Market share doesn’t matter, relevancy does. Diller invites people to try Ask.com and see for themselves.

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.

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.

I didn’t stay long, but it was a good mix of people. I am doing my best to follow Jim’s advice and pace things, but will most likely drop by the Hitwise event tomorrow night.

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.

I agree with Brian that the blog search engine problem really hasn’t been solved yet. Technorati and Google Blog Search are the two I use most, but the emphasis on recency as an indicator of relevancy muddles the search results. Plus there’s so much blog spam. To their credit, Technorati has released some new features recently, including favorites and a “relevancy” slider tool, which shows they are continuing to improve.

Last night the Ask.com party named Code Red was full of interesting people and a few stormtroopers here and there. Lots of LOUD music and celebration of Ask.com and the retirement of the butler as well. I didn’t get a shot of it, but they had the Ask butler displayed as if frozen in a big hunk of metal, ala Han Solo in Star Wars. There’s a photo of that on Names@Work blog.
I’ve never seen so many red wigs in one place. But then again, the party was themed “Code Red”. Nice job to Ask.com and their PR team

I’d like to say thank you to the people who have somehow recognized me and came up to say hi. It’s great to meet people in person and to get feedback. Jim has some good thoughts about the fun of networking at SES events.

DoubleClick has announced the launch of their new keyword management, bid management and reporting tools, called DART Search that integrate with the DART Ad Management Platform.

Adding DART Search enables clients the ability to manage their paid search campaigns as well as tracking their display, rich media and search advertising from one location.

There’s quite a few bid management tools out there and I think DART Search is focused mosted on existing DART Ad Management clients. Although, adding the keyword and bid management tools may allow DoubleClick to win over clients that are currently outsourcing those services elsewhere.

At Search Engine Strategies NYC on the Agency & Branding Track, the sessions “Putting Search Into The Ad Mix” on Wednesday and “Getting On Top In Paid Search” (covered by Chris Boggs over at Search Engine Roundtable) on Thursday that will be worth checking out. I will also be covering the “Ad Agencies and Search” session.

Barry Diller is giving the keynote this morning at SES and it will be available live from my favorite internet radio station, WebmasterRadio.FM. The keynote is at 9am EST so be sure to visit WebmasterRadio.FM and click the “tune in” button. A podcast of the SES keynote with Barry Diller will be available shortly after.

I ran into Daron Babin last night and there are few, more enthusiastic (or experienced) search marketers/entreprenuers in our industry quite like him. He and Brandy Shapiro have done some amazing things with WebmasterRadio.FM the past 2 years, and there’s more in store.¬† Hopefully, I’ll have details on that in a future post.

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IAC’s Ask.com has launched the new, clean version of their site sans butler today. New features include:

• A new homepage design
• The Ask.com Toolbox, a new feature on the homepage that provides shortcuts to more than 20 search tools
• New and improved Maps and Driving Directions
• Encyclopedia search
• Web-based Desktop search

The “edit tools” feature is pretty slick actually.

Requisite press release quote:

“Today’s launch is a pivotal moment in our history, ensuring a well-known and much-loved search engine continues at the forefront of the evolution of the Internet search market,” concluded Lanzone. “With the new Ask.com, coupled with the backing of our parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp, we have developed a platform for the future of search where new search tools and content will be increasingly integrated within the search engine to meet consumer demand.”

I just got into my hotel room at the Hilton in Manhattan (nice room too) and I must say it’s been an interesting few hours. First, I got up at 4:30am to catch a 7am flight. Of course I decided to buy a new laptop last night and was up until 1am updating/installing, yada yada. This new Vaio with dual Centrino processors is very cool I must say.

So after not being able to get MS Office working, I opt for Thunderbird instead of Outlook. Thunderbird imported my pst file without a hitch. Firefox bookmarks and sage feeds transferred just fine.