All about the intersection of search engine & social media marketing, optimization and online public relations.
For some good humor, check out the following posts by Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo and Matt Cutts from Google. Jeremey points out a striking similarity between the Yahoo and Google MSIE splash pages. Google has changed the splash page to something else by now.
Matt responds in that very politically correct and polite way that Matt does and then he points out how Yahoo has been copying Google’s PPC ad layouts.
Checking out the expo hall, there are always a few great deals and lots of free iPods to sign up for. I skipped most of the iPods this year as I was a afraid of all the follow-up emails and/or sales calls.
However, here is some good swag that I did pick up.
Click the image for layover descriptions.
In the tradition established this summer at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, there are more video interviews here in Chicago with interesting people that work in the search marketing industry. I’ve been shooting short videos with my trusty Sony Cybershot which you can see below.
First up is Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro who discusses a few details of their most recent eyetracking report which compares Google, Yahoo and MSN search results. Online Marketing Blog did a short review of this report in November.
You can find out more about Enquiro here and Gord writes a handy blog over at Out of my Gord.
Lately I’ve noticed a few mainstream web publications making concerted efforts to solicit user generated content. Enabling consumers to submit news gives media access to millions of potential stories they might otherwise not know about, or not have a scoop on. I know our local (and likely national) public radio station has been soliciting user generated content and news stories for at least a year and so do some TV stations. Also, Topix.net allows users to interact with news stories on their forums which, according to Topix.net founder Rich Skrenta, has enabled a big boost in traffic.
Yahoo Search Marketing sent out an email today announcing changes. Some of the manage bids information will be removed and replaced with “Estimated Average Position” and “Bid Range for Top Positions”.
Here are the details from the email:
In early December 2006, some of the information on the Manage Bids page will no longer be available. We will be removing the “Top 5 Max Bids,” “Position” and “Your Cost” columns from the current account interface. The View Bids tool will also be removed.
These columns will be replaced with two new columns of data:
Wow, what a party! Yahoo had a very private, invite-only party last night at the Palms Towers in the Playboy suite.
Thank you to Yahoo PR for letting me bring Karen and Jolina from the TopRank team. This was their first conference and Karen’s fist time in Las Vegas. There were only 100 or so people invited to this party from a conference of several thousand, so it made quite an impression.
The Playboy Suite was quite a place. Here are a few photos:
Manoj over at Web Analytics World blog has announced the release of a new eyetracking study by Enquiro that takes an in-depth look at interactions with Google, Yahoo! and MSN using eye tracking methodology. Many search marketers are familiar with Enquiro’s original eye tracking report on Google. (pdf)
The new Google/Yahoo/MSN whitepaper covers:
Via TW, Fortune reports that Yahoo may be resuming talks with AOL about an acquisition as a play against rival Google.
“FORTUNE has learned from multiple sources that Yahoo! recently approached Time Warner (parent of FORTUNE’s publisher) about buying America Online - essentially trying to jump-start talks that broke down a year ago. A source close to Yahoo disputes that Yahoo approached Time Warner and says that there are no active conversations between the two companies.”
The story also offers speculation about what Yahoo’s next moves might be:
Yahoo has launched a snappy new blog today for Yahoo Search Marketing. Call me crazy, but purple is my favorite color after all and the look/feel of this blog is consistent with many of the newer and more progressive blog designs coming out.
With the launch of Yahoo’s new platform (Panama) it makes sense to offer a communication channel specific to Yahoo advertising options. I am very interested in the media side of this:
When I attend or speak at conferences, I always, like to visit the exhibit areas to see how they’re laid out, scope out which search marketing agencies are exhibiting and to visit friends from other companies and search engines. While checking out the Interactive exhibit hall here at DMA06, I noticed a few things:
There were hardly any search marketing agencies. Kevin Lee was there with Did-It and I believe I saw iCrossing. That was it. Apparently SEOInc had a booth in the other monstrous Exhibit hall that was made up of list brokers, direct mail companies,etc.
I guess it’s the night for emails from the search engines. Yahoo sent out an email to Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers with a notice that Yahoo is now allowing them to request an invitation to upgrade. That’s an interesting spin isn’t it? Have your advertisers ask to upgrade? What it really means is a phased approach at rolling out the new program:
“Invitations will be sent in stages to U.S. advertisers over the remainder of the year and early next year. You’ll be notified of your upgrade date at least two weeks in advance. You’ll also be able to access a preview of what your account will look like after the upgrade.”
Yahoo gives a new weather report that they rolled out a search index update but not any more detail than that.
There’s a particular phrase that’s very competitive on Yahoo that I spot check every time an update is announced (286,000,000 search results) and we have 2 of our sites in the top ten for the phrase. With this most recent Yahoo update, we dropped from #1 to #3 and the second listing moved up to #5 which is fine, but Yahoo is completely ignoring our 301 redirects and showing the wrong domain names.
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