Posts filed under 'Newsworthy'
The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) (of which I am a member) opened its cyber doors to the SEMPO Institute yesterday with an online course on search engine fundamentals.
Just about anyone is eligible to enroll which can be done at the SEMPO Web site right HERE. There are currently two course - SEM Fundamentals which is ready to accept students now and SEM Advanced. The advanced course will be released in the spring.
I’m proud to say that I wrote a module for this course (check me out in the list of SEMPO Institute Authors, Executive Team & Contributors) here. My Lesson is on Search Branding and Campaign Integration, but authors are not being listed with the actual courses they wrote because the entire project is a collaborative effort. Still, couldn’t resist plugging my module on my own blog now could I??
Danny Sullivan’s Blog, Search Engine Land, has a nice concise list of what’s included in the Fundamentals Course. Good stuff.
January 24th, 2007
There are two interesting new deviations to Google’s search results pages that Nick (a friend who sells hot sauce online) and I noticed yesterday. Here’s what Nick (located in Manhattan) saw:
The search results page now displays the additional search links at the left side of the page. So Nick’s search for “hot sauce” gives him the typical results in the main window, but at the left he can choose images, maps, news or whatever he finds relevant to help in his (ever present) quest for hot sauce on the Web.
At first glance, my Google results were the same, but upon closer inspection - here’s what I (located two hours north of Manhattan) saw:
See the little pop up window which lists some additional links for different types of search results?
Personally, I prefer the first layout better since it’s much easier to navigate and there’s room for Google to add morel inks. The pop window can get mighty long, plus it may confuse some less web-savvy souls.
As far as I can tell, no one is saying much about this on their blogs, although I’m not totally crazy because this guy noticed it too back in March.
September 1st, 2006
This recent article in the New York Times discusses the long-anticipated launch of Yahoo’s new paid search software - Project Panama. Â
“Project Panama” is the term being used in the SEM community to define the complete restructuring of the ancient Overture DirecTraffic Center (DTC) which falls way behind Google in terms of usability and campaign management effectiveness. The new ad platform will also seek to improve ad targeting of Yahoo paid search results by incorporating ranking criteria such as a keyword’s relevance to its related ad copy and landing page. These factors, along with the bid amount, will determine where the search ad appears on the search results pages or if the ad appears at all.
More relevant search results will translate into millions of dollars in ad revenue for Yahoo. According to the New York Times, “Yahoo will increase search-advertising revenue at least 20 percent right away - about $125 million in the fourth quarter of this year and $600 million next year.” Wow. I’d say that’s definitely worth the “tens of millions” that Yahoo has invested in the tool.
All I can say is, it can ONLY be a good thing. Project Panama is Yahoo’s promise of redemption for a clunky user interface that can make managing a campaign a frustrating chore. I hope to see some of the features I know and love in Google:
- Assigning multiple ads to the same keyword list
- Assigning multiple display URLs to the same campaign
- Better reporting and more historical campaign data (currently Yahoo’s campaign data only goes back three months.
- An easy way to download bulk listings, make changes and then upload them in bulk (without using a third-party tool)
- Better campaign results are always nice too.
So that’s just some of the stuff that would make my life easier.
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June 1st, 2006
Google announced the release of Google Trends today, prompting a fellow search geek to advise me to “blog the news” as quickly as I can. So here it is folks! Google Trends has been launched. WOO HOO!
Okay, so what is it and how does it benefit my clients?
Google Trends, as defined by Google, enables you to “compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics.” The tool also, “displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often. “
Sounds pretty cool - so I gave it a try. Many of the campaigns I work on are health-related, so I typed in “pelvic pain” and “endometriosis” as my first simultaneous search. The graph I got showed me that a lot more people search on the former term and that the highest search volume comes from two locations in India. The third highest volume comes from Chicago in the U.S. (where my client is located).
Can this help campaign strategizing in any way? Well, my feeling is that it doesn’t really provide a lot of useful information on campaigns I’m already working on - I have mountains of data from these campaigns and I know what keywords are working. Although the info about India is certainly interesting, as are the handful of articles about endometriosis.
Where I really see this tool helping me is in the preliminary research phase of an online marketing campaign. At least, I’ll know that more people are searching for “eczema” than they are for “toe fungus” over the past two years - and believe me, that looks great all graphed up in a PPT presentation! (the trends not the toe fungus).
The best part of the service (in my opinion) are the links to the articles which appear next to the trend chart. It’s very interesting to see news stories that correspond with spikes in search activity, and it seems like a good way to quickly get some background information on a given topic.
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May 11th, 2006
