The Bond Between Microsoft and Facebook Strengthens
Thursday, August 28, 2008
It seems as though the bond between Microsoft and Facebook has strengthened in recent days, with Microsoft announcing that Live Search capabilities will be brought to the widely used social utility site by the end of 2008.
At the end of July, Microsoft was said to be “In Quest for Search Ad Dollars” and partnering with the most used social networking site was Microsoft’s way of competing with Google for search query volume. Search queries from Facebook’s 90 million users, will now produce search results and paid search ads generated by Microsoft’s search technology. This may be a step in the right direction for Microsoft, who back in July described its search business as “mission critical”; however 90 million users is still quite small compared to Google, who experiences 500 billion search queries a year...More on Microsoft Facebook Advertising.
Posted by Kelly Robertson on 08/28 at 06:00 AM(1) Comments • Permalink
2D Bar Codes
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
A new technology is on the distant horizon for North Americans who use their mobile phones to surf for information.
2D Bar Codes, a growing technology which has been on the scene for quite some time in Japan, is gaining momentum in North America. These bar codes can encode significantly more data compared to their conventional counterparts and can be scanned with devices with cameras (such as a cell phone) and “clicked” on to seamlessly connect to relevant online content.
Citysearch, an online guide for restaurant, event, and night club reviews and directions, has been testing this technology out with 580 restaurants in the San Francisco area. These 2D bar codes were posted in the windows of these establishments, and when a user scanned the bar code, they were taken to a Citysearch review of the establishment. This beta testing is currently being watched by the country’s largest cellular carriers.
There are countless ways this technology could be used. For example, in the real estate sector, properties for sale could be displayed with signs with these 2D codes on them, so that when a house hunter drives by, they could easily pull over and scan the code onto their cell phone to obtain information on the listing. Google already uses this technology in their Newspaper Ads as a call-to-action.
This technology means that online retailers will be able to facilitate shopping from cell phones, a segment which was featured on Good Morning America; retailers in the states are already starting to use 2D bar codes to capture revenue from their customers while away from lap-tops or PC’s. As mobile browsing and technology becomes more advanced, ensuring that online marketing campaigns follow through to incorporate mobile tactics will be the difference between being an “old school” or “new school” online retailer.
Posted by Kelly Robertson on 08/26 at 06:00 AM(0) Comments • Permalink
Privacy Mode for IE
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Apple’s Safari has it, now Microsoft wants some privacy too!
In a meeting with the press this week, Satya Nadella, VP of Microsoft’s search, portal and advertising group, explained that Internet Explorer will now come with a private browsing mode. This comes after a Microsoft blog post in June stated that privacy is one of the major elements of “trustworthy browsing” for IE 8, due out later this year. Nadella went on to say “The larger challenge here is notifying users clearly about what sites they’re disclosing information to, and enabling them to control that disclosure if they choose”.
It seems Microsoft’s IE, which is the most used Internet Browser in the world, decided to go down a different road than their closest web-browsing competitor, Mozilla’s Firefox. Back in June when Microsoft was blogging about adding their Privacy Mode, Firefox blogged ”Firefox 3 Won’t have ‘Private Browsing‘ “. Johnathan Nightingale, Firefox’s Security User Interface Designer said, “We looked at ways to do this, but the problem is that it touches a lot of code...Because there are such rich interactions with Web sites and mashups and things like that, we didn’t want to put in something that was half baked.”
Read full story on Microsoft Privacy Mode...
Posted by Kelly Robertson on 08/24 at 06:00 AM(0) Comments • Permalink
Changes To The Way Quality Score Is Determined
Friday, August 22, 2008
Back in July of 2005, AdWords introduced minimum bids for keywords based on Quality Score. This system allows Google to show very high quality ads to “Googlers”, while also giving advertisers control over their keywords. Since 2005, Google has improved Quality Score in many ways, such as the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time as factors.
Announced today, Google released that they have made further improvements that they will start to introduce in the coming weeks. Some details about the coming improvements:
Read the full article
Posted by Kelly Robertson on 08/22 at 12:20 PM
(2) Comments • Permalink
noodp meta and noydir meta: Why the fancy tags?
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Recently The Big 3 of Search: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, all made great posts on their blogs clearing up exactly how their search engines all respond to robots protocol commands. Now if you dismissed this as old-hat ‘web 1.0’ tech knowledge then you might have missed a couple of interesting tidbits. Within all the other, better known robots protocols were:
<meta name="robots" content="noydir">
and
<meta name="robots" content="noodp">
What do these tags do and why are they important for a complete SEO campaign?
When displaying search results, search engines grab a description of the site called the snippet, highlighted here:
Normally drawn from the Meta Description field, this snippet is increasingly being sourced from other areas by search engines. This can be troublesome as it prevents site owners from putting forward their best sales pitch, and best optimized text where a direct appeal to users counts the most: in the search engine results.
Because of the level of review and trusted status of the ODP / Dmoz and Yahoo! Directory, descriptions of a site will often be taken from these sites, if it is present. Although a site owner has some control over the site description these two directories use, it can often be a long and winding process to change it.
To avoid this, adding the following code:
<meta name="robots" content="noydir">
<meta name="robots" content="noodp">
to your website will tell search engines specifically not to use the difficult-to-change descriptions on those sites, and instead use the carefully crafted text in your meta description field.
This will help your site, or your clients’ sites present their best face to the public, draw more attention, and get more conversions - which makes everybody happy!
Posted by Quentin Muhlert on 08/19 at 07:37 AM(0) Comments • Permalink
Google Updates Content Network
Monday, August 11, 2008
Google has announced that it’s Content Network will be receiving an update of new features in the coming weeks. This update said to be part of the ongoing implementation process of DoubleClick, the digital marketing technology company which was bought by Google earlier this year.
Some of the new features the Content Network will be receiving are:
- Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.
- Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.
- Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.
- View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.
This functionality will be made available by the implementation of a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the entire Google Content Network...Read more on Official Google Blog
Posted by Kelly Robertson on 08/11 at 06:00 AM(0) Comments • Permalink
Google Global & Customized Search
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Google recently rolled out their version of “Customized Search” using geographic location, previous and recent search queries as well as web history to affect the results a user will see. So what does this mean your internet marketing clients with localized businesses?
There are a few ways to view the search results you are looking for, as well as some really neat ways to check the rankings of clients with localized business in different countries.
Customized Google Search
Here is an example of how Customized Search works. Say I have a client who sells indoor chairs to the US and Canada. A search for “indoor chair” on Google.com from my computer yielded these results:
However, a search for “indoor chair” on Google.com from the US would yield these results:
To get these second results, simply use this URL: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=ca&q=indoor+chairs&btnG=Search and replace the “ca” with “us”, “uk”, “de”...etc. depending on which country your client is trying to rank for.
Google Global
The second really neat way to view search results from a location where you are not is called “Google Global”. This tool allows you to create custom settings to view search results. So, if you have a client advertising locally in New York, NY, you can see the search results as if you were searching from that IP:
Google Global is available as a Firefox plugin available here
Posted by Kelly Robertson on 08/09 at 06:00 AM(0) Comments • Permalink
Customized Google Search Results
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Google is rolling out, or has just rolled out, their new “Search Customization” where geographic location, previous queries/recent searches and web history will affect the results a user will see. The days of everyone viewing the same search results are going to be gone!
With this new feature, if someone searched for the term “Zoo” and lived in Seattle, they would be shown customized search results for the Seattle area and be shown results for the Seattle Zoo instead of possibly seeing results for the San Diego Zoo. But what happens if you’re looking for local information but outside the area you’re interested in? Override Google’s customized search and you’re able to see regular search results.
In the movement towards being more “transparent”, Google hopes releasing this information will give a more in-depth “behind the scenes” look at the way they customize search...Read more.
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