Archive for February, 2010

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comScore Launches Platform To Help Publishers Optimize Ads

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

comScore announced today that the comScore Audience Advantage is now available. It’s being described as a “digital audience optimization platform” that lets publishers provide advertisers and media planners with the ability to reach their most valuable audiences.

“Audience Advantage offers significant value creation for the online advertising ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders,” said Erin Hunter, comScore executive vice president.

“Publishers will be able to demonstrate higher value in the campaigns they deliver, thereby justifying higher CPMs, while advertisers will be able to minimize wasted impressions and reduce the total cost of advertising outlays. It is truly a win-win for the digital advertising industry.”

comScore’s tool can determine a predictive score for various audience segments. Publishers can take this score to anonymously identify and deliver to advertisers “look alike” audiences from the behavior they observe among their own site visitors.

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Google Writes the Buzz Handbook 5 Tips at a Time

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Since the launch of Google Buzz, Google has been offering tips for using Buzz more effectively. Last week, five tips were offered:
1. Format your posts
2. View a summary of you own Buzz activity
3. Use an @reply to send a post directly to someone’s inbox
4. Try keyboard shortcuts to fly through buzz
5. Mute posts so they don’t get sent to your inbox.

Today, five more tips were offered:

1. Post by Email
2. Prevent your boring chat status messages from being posted to Buzz
3. Look for the yellow line to see what’s new.
4. Link to a post
5. Follow the Buzz team in Google Buzz.

Google probably could do more in promoting the usage of Buzz and get people more interested. These tips were offered in hopes of doing just that, but how many Gmail users actually keep up with the blog where the tips were posted? Google Buzz is an entirely different product, yet doesn’t have its own blog?

Google has positive hopes for Buzz and it appears that the industry is taking an interested to it.

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Google Expands Maps Into Much More of Africa

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Google is expanding Google Maps into 30 African countries where it wasn’t available before.

“One of the things we spend a lot of time thinking about at Google is how we can make the world’s information more accessible and useful to people all over the globe,” Google says. “This includes providing rich local geographic data because, after all, a huge number of search queries have a geographic component. Our efforts to start putting Africa on a map kicked off back in 2009 when we announced the launch of Google Maps for Kenya. Not long afterwords, we announced that users across 45 African countries could build and edit maps in Map Maker. Most recently, we launched Google Maps for South Africa.”

Google Maps launched domains for 30 more countries, this means not just scenery and roads for these countries, but also local business listings. Doing so can drive a lot of business to brick and mortars. Search engines have almost replaced print yellow pages for a lot people, and businesses in these countries should feel the effects of that as the listings grow.

Google is encouraging users in the new countries to get involved and help them make the maps better. “You know your local area better than we do, which is why Map Maker is on offer. With Map Maker, any user can create or edit map data, ranging from schools to local businesses, national parks to taxi stops. If you know your local area, or you’ve seen something that’s missing, take up the opportunity to get mapping! As we’ve pointed out before, maps are also invaluable for governments, NGOs, universities and entrepreneurs, who can visualize, plan and market the areas and projects that they work on.”

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Update: Google’s Annual Revenue at $497 Million

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Update: Ben Edelman left a comment on Web Pro News where he wrote, “Surely it’s not Google’s fault that some people misspell. But our study [shows] that typosquatters register more domains targeting companies in sectors with high PPC prices. That tells us that PPC funding is *causing* and *exacerbating* typosquatting. Without PPC payments, there would be fewer typosquatting registrations — much less reason for squatters to register these domains. Google’s payments put the system in motion; squatters register domains exactly in anticipation of getting paid by Google. Google knows where it’s showing ads. (Example: Google shows Expedia ads if you misspell Expedia, but Travelocity ads if you misspell Travelocity!) So it’s natural to look to Google for resolution of these problems.”

Original Blog: Many people hate typos and find them annoying. I can be one of those people. Seriously, it only takes one second to hit the backspace key and fix the typo. With Google, however, typos can mean big business as Benjamin Edelman and Tyler Moore have estimated that typos make the search engine giant $497 million per year.

Edelman and Moore both wrote a paper titled, “Measuring Typosquatting Perpetrators and Funders.” In a blog post summarizing it, they stated a few sets of data and wrote, “According to our analysis, 57% of typo sites include Google pay-per-click ads.”

Then they took a comment about the effect of Google’s connection: “Combining our observations with financial reports and others’ estimates, we conclude that Google’s revenue from typosquatting on the top 100,000 sites is $497 million per year.”

Google’s is most likely the only search engine they point a finger at, since not nearly as many ads from Yahoo and Microsoft appear on typosquatting sites.

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Links Not Always the Best Indicator of Relevance

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Google’s Matt Cutts posted a YouTube video where he talks about creating tags and categories on blogs for SEO purposes. He pretty much states that this isn’t needed.

“Google is pretty good at saying, ‘You know what? The first time you say a phrase, it’s interesting, and the second time you say a phrase, it’s still a little bit useful,’” said Cutts. “After a while, we sort of realized, ‘okay, you’ve said that phrase, you don’t have to keep repeating it 8, 9, 10 different times.’ So there are certainly some blogs (including some really popular blogs) who have like an entire paragraph full of tags. And they have clearly spent a lot of time, almost as many, you know, minutes writing tags out as they have the actual content of the post. And I always laugh at that because it’s not really that needed.”

He also said that most of the time, tags are words that are already in the post and the tags aren’t necessary.

Google is about giving users the most relevant results to get the best user experience. These types of results aren’t always featured near the top of results, which is considered as an area where Google isn’t really delivering the best results.

Links are only one of the many factors Google takes into consideration for its rankings; the ranks are one of the biggest. The tag pages will show you that links aren’t always the best indicator of relevance.

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Yahoo on Search and Advertising Post Microsoft Deal

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Now that Yahoo and Microsoft have received DoJ and EU approval on their search and advertising deal, Yahoo is discussing what the deal means for its search engine and its advertisers. The two companies have a Search Alliance page set up that gives insight about what to expect.

Once the Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. Yahoo and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments.

For advertisers, Yahoo says they will reach more customers, save time and effort and benefit from “rapid innovation.” According to Yahoo, the “alliance” will help advertisers reach up to 150 million searchers and get about 62% more search volume. There’s been a lot of talk about what will happen to Yahoo Search BOSS and SearchMonkey after the new deal takes effect.

“With the implementation of the search alliance, the BOSS team is excited to examine the Microsoft web, image, and video search technologies in more detail,” says Yahoo’s Ashim Chhabra. “Yahoo may continue to offer the BOSS service, which would integrate some Yahoo services and content with algorithmic results provided by Microsoft. The team is exploring what a future offering could consist of, with some services powered by Microsoft and unique content provided by Yahoo. As we finalize details for any changes to the BOSS service, we will give developers plenty of notice.”

“Also, prior to the announcement of the Yahoo and Microsoft search alliance, we shared our intention to explore a fee-based structure for BOSS,” Chhabra adds. “We continue to explore an appropriate revenue model as we work to define the future of BOSS in the context of our new search alliance. We know BOSS is important to your business, and any conclusions on strategic direction and roadmap for the service will be shared with developers as soon as possible.”

Both companies sharing ideas about how to “advance” SearchMonkey. The companies saying “advance” must man that it will still have a place in Yahoo’s search strategy.

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Introducing the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Yahoo and Microsoft received regulatory clearance to form a search alliance. This is a major and exciting milestone and the first step in their combined effort to help you reach even more customers with greater ease and efficiency.

What’s to come?
No immediate changes will be made to your Yahoo Search Marketing account. Both companies are committed to making it a seamless and beneficial transition for you as much as possible. Their goal is the best quality transition of advertisers and partners in the U.S. before the 2010 holiday season. Though you might have to wait until 2011 if they decide that this will be more effective. You will get more information three months in advance about what to expect.

How the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance Will Benefit You
Once implemented, the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance will enable you to:

Reach more customers

  • Reach up to 150 million searchers and get approximately 62 percent more search volume than on Yahoo alone through the new and unified search marketplace combining the Yahoo and Microsoft networks.
  • To help drive future growth in search volume, Yahoo will continue to significantly enhance the search experience on its leading web properties

Save valuable time and effort

  • Just log into one place, Microsoft’s adCenter, to manage campaigns for greater efficiency and a better ROI.
  • With just one buy you can reach other users on Yahoo and Microsoft sites, as well as other premium partner sites.

Benefit from rapid innovation

  • Yahoo will deliver new features and innovations to the world’s favorite online destinations, content and web products used by hundreds of millions of consumers to connect to the people and things that matter to them most.
  • Microsoft will innovate the underlying technologies that drive high quality algorithmic and paid search results.

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Sony Ericsson CEO Admits Nexus One Snub

Friday, February 19th, 2010

The CEO of Sony Ericsson raised a few eyebrows when he admitted that his company declined the opportunity to manufacture the Nexus One.

Google translated Sydsvenskan.se’s comments for those who don’t speak Swedish. It implies that the CEO felt that the Sony Ericsson didn’t need Google’s help.

“It would be in itself an alternative way out to the market, but we’d rather by their own efforts on the important U.S. market,” Nordberg supposedly said. Meanwhile, the title of the whole Sydsvenskan.se article is translated as “Sony Ericsson refused to build the Google Phone.”

This could be a sign that Android doesn’t have as big as an appeal as people thought it did. Maybe Google is trying to convince corporations of the operating systems worth before the company can woo the consumers on a bigger scale.

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Firefox Mobile For Android Due Out This Year

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Android users can expect a new way to get around the Web should debut this year. Jay Sullivan, Vice President of Mobile at Mozilla, has indicated that Firefox Mobile for Android will be available sometime this year.

The nonexistence of this product might have troubled some fans of Mozilla and Google fans were not happy about the product not existing just yet and it’s not secret that these two companies have been growing apart since Chrome came out and Mozilla’s director of community development endorsed Bing over Google.

Sullivan, who’s worked at Mozilla for about two and a half years, told Gareth Beavers that the big challenge with Firefox Mobile for Android was the rift between C and C++ code and Java.

He seems pretty happy about Android and about what Mozilla has in the works. “It’s a modern OS, and it’s a great fit with us,” Sullivan said. “It’s the type of platform that has a high affinity with the early adopter, and it’s seen a lot of uptake.”

Expect to see Firefox Mobile for Android “late this year.”

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Monitoring Your Reputation Through Google Buzz

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Google Buzz is the newbie in social media, but like a lot of the social networking Web sites, it’s been around for a while now. Just like these sites, Google Buzz is critical to reputation management.

In an interview with Web Pro News, Google’s Rick Klau said that Buzz’s monitoring is “definitely” just important as important as monitoring another critical component of reputation management, Google Blog Search. “As a product manager on Blogger, I regularly monitor Twitter and Buzz in addition to blog comments to look for users having problems or sharing interesting ideas,” he tells us. “It’s important to go where the users are – otherwise you’ll miss out on conversations that are happening, and miss the opportunity to help solve a problem, learn about an issue that needs attention, or share a tip that deserves a broader audience.”

“The real-time nature of tools like Buzz, along with the ease with which users can share and redistribute info, makes the amplification of information even more powerful than it was before,” adds Klau. “News has the opportunity to spread virally, very quickly.”

“That’s great if it’s good news, but potentially damaging if it’s bad news,” he says. “That’s why it’s so important to both look for conversations happening about topics that matter to you, and to engage where appropriate. When users know you’re listening, and in a position to help, they can go from angry to appreciative pretty quickly.”

Are you using Google Buzz as part of your reputation management strategy?

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