Search Engine Strategies San Jose just wrapped up last week, and the SES Conference Channel on You Tube has over 20 videos posted from the event.  Great stuff for all marketers.  One segment I really enjoyed was Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy One, discussion with John Mulligan of SEO-PR how external marketing agencies and in-house marketers have to be their own advocates to sell a search marketing strategy.  Those of us in the interactive agency world know all about the challenges that Brian mentions in hte interview.  Check it out:

Back in 2007, Yahoo’s MyYahoo startpage was the first to let its users check their email accounts, including GMail, via Yahoo Mail.  This was a smart move on their part because at the time it helped curb user attrition to Google via GMail dependence.  Google then followed suit last year and allowed Gmail users the chance to not only check other email accounts, but even send email through their Gmail interface as long as the other email account did not require SMTP authentication.

Google is using similar aggregation tactics, with its video search for example; it’s more efficient to search for You Tube or Meta Cafe videos on Google than on the sites themselves.  And with the new Google Wave project (beta), Google looks to be the central place to communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Their is no comparison with Yahoo for Google’s tools and application efforts, like Wave.  Google continues to  make their API code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to build more unique tools.  One recent example is Tweety,  which signs into your Twitter account and lets you fetch your Twitter timeline and post tweets from Google Wave.

If that wasn’t enough, Google Sites accounted for nearly 90 percent of the 21 percent growth in search query volume from the previous year on the five core search engines.  This accounts for much of  AdWords dominance in Paid Search.

So, what does Yahoo still do better than Google?  Here’s a roundup:

1. Yahoo Finance
2. Yahoo Answers : Q&A
3. Backlink Reporting via Yahoo Site Explorer: Even with the improvements in Google Webmaster Tools
4. Flickr : Photo Uploading & Sharing
5. Local Search : Still too tough to update Google Local Business Center listings
6. Entertainment
7. Privacy

Can you think of anything else Yahoo does better than Google?

PS:  As of 12 noon today, Yahoo Finance showed Google stock trading at $469.05.  A 51% increase YTD.  Yahoo is at $15.02, which is just a 20% increase YTD.

This week,  Google brought out the final fact in their  Quality Score series.   The facts are great resource for both marketers and agencies executing AdWords campaigns.

Here is the official post courtesy of  Dan Friedman,  Google Product Marketing Manager:

Quality is given extra consideration when determining which ads appear in the top positions. For ad placement in top positions above Google search results, we use the same Ad Rank formula as we do for all other search ads, based on your Quality Score and CPC bid. However, in order to ensure that the highest-quality ads show above search results, only ads that exceed a certain Quality Score and CPC bid threshold are eligible to appear in these positions. The CPC bid threshold for these positions is determined by the matched keyword’s Quality Score; the higher Quality Score, the lower the CPC threshold.

Keep in mind Google Ads are positioned on search and content pages based on their Ad Rank.  The ad with the highest Ad Rank appears in the first position, and so on down the page.  The CPC bid threshold is determined by the matched keyword’s Quality Score; the higher Quality Score, the lower the CPC threshold.

As most of you know, up to three AdWords ads are eligible to appear above the search results (as opposed to on the side). Only ads that exceed a certain Quality Score and CPC bid threshold may appear in these positions. If the three highest-ranked ads all surpass these thresholds, then they’ll appear in order above the search results. If one or more of these ads don’t meet the thresholds, then the next highest-ranked ad that does will be allowed to show above the search results.

The formula is as follows:

Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

From Google’s official AdWords help content:

The Quality Score for Ad Rank on Google and the search network is determined by:

• The historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google; if the ad is appearing on a search network page, its CTR on that search network partner is also considered
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
• Other relevance factors

Make sense?

Most people haven’t noticed but Google recently tweaked their AdWords so that they appear closer to the organic and map listings.

Based on the changes, it’s probably safe to say that Google is testing the efficacy of the new ads. Do they produce more clicks? Do they produce more quality clicks?

There’s an interesting comparison to be made to Bing in this regard: when research firm User Centric performed an eye tracking study comparing Bing to Google back in June, it found that Bing’s sponsored search results on the right side of the page caught the attention of 42% of the participants while AdWords ads on the right side of Google SERPs only caught the attention of 25% of the participants.

While one of the reasons for this may be that Bing is new and users haven’t had time to develop the same level of ad blindness they have with AdWords, User Centric found that ads above the organic search results above Bing and Google received a similar amount of attention, hinting that ad blindness wasn’t all there is to it. You’ll notice that when it comes to the ads on the right-hand side of the page, Bing’s ads are placed much closer to the organic search results than are Google’s. Therefore it seems logical that the proximity does play some role here.

Given that Google generates billions of dollars in revenue each quarter from AdWords, if Google’s experimentation with AdWords placement proves effective, the impact could be quite significant.

I don’t usually like to promote the competition but here is a must read for any agency and marketer– Razorfish’s “Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report” .  Among other things it discusses the ten  steps companies need to take to control their brand on Twitter and establish a successful social media presence.

Quoted from Razorfish senior strategist, Diane Stepner:

1. Become familiar with Twitter by reviewing, or following, the activities of successful brands such as Dell (dell.com/twitter), Zappos (twitter.com/zappos) and Comcast (twitter.com/comcastcares).
2. Listen to what is already being said on Twitter about your brand.
3. Identify initial objectives for using Twitter, including what would qualify as a Twitter success story for your brand.
4. Look into competitive activities and potential legal considerations, especially if there is already a Twitter account that uses your brand’s name or other intellectual property associated with it.
5. Use the findings to decide on the appropriate opportunity — such as offers or community building, tone of voice and method of engagement — that may be right for your brand.
6. Since Twitter is an ongoing activity — even if your company is only listening in — dedicate a resource to monitor the conversations and competitors.
7. Map out a plan for the content you will share, including valuable initial content to pique user interest.
8. Integrate your Twitter account throughout your marketing experience, by embedding it as a feed on the company Web site, including its URL in communications and so forth.
9. Maintain momentum by following everyone who follows you, responding to queries and joining in conversations without being too marketing oriented.
10. Provide ongoing direct value through your tweets by continuing to listen, learn and fine- tune your Twitter activities.

The importance of points five, six and seven cannot be stressed enough. Brands that create an account but do not respond to followers’ posts have found their reputation tarnished for not using Twitter in the best way. On the flip side, brands that have entered into Twitter with the right attitude are reaping the rewards.

Courtesy:  Diana Stepner, Senior Strategist, Razorfish

Twitter has not replaced instant messaging or other social media offerings.
Instead, the short status updates (or “tweets”) of 140 characters or less are complementing, and often being consumed alongside, other media — from TV to social networks to email.

Big buzz in the interactive agency world this morning as Sean Corcoran from Forester Research released his latest Interactive Agency ratings for Q3 2009.  The report is titled “The Forrester Wave™: US Interactive Agencies — Strategy And Execution, Q3 2009″ (read excerpt).  In the report, he discusses how the market is now ready to take a big step to join, and in some cases even replace, traditional agencies for leading brands marketing strategy.

OgilvyInteractive, Sapient Interactive, R/GA, VML, Wunderman, Razorfish and Organic scored best and were named category “leaders” by Forrester.  Corcoran praised OgilvyInteractive’s breadth of services and ability to run integrated campaigns using Ogilvy’s broader resources.   Sapient’s tech prowess was noted, and R/GA was cited for having a clear mission as the “agency for the digital age” and excelling in new technologies and trends.

Ironic that the Forrester report comes out on the same day that Publicis announced they will be buying Razorfish from Microsoft for $533 million.   Acquiring a top-rated digital agency serving the only growing part of the advertising industry today is strategically smart.  Publicis now owns the world’s top two digital agencies by revenues having bought Digitas two years ago, further separating themselves from WPP, Omnicom, and Interpublic.

The Forrester report can be purchased from their web site for $1749.

The Google Webmaster Tools team has code names for each update they release. The most recent update is  named “Summer Shine”.

Here are a few highlights:

• Site selector now lists all verified sites that you own, and allows you to search as you type.

• You can now block non-homepage sitelinks. Before today if you owned example.com, you couldn’t block sitelinks for example.com/email.

• You can now see URL removal requests submitted by other users for any sites you own, and revoke them if necessary.  In the past, if another webmaster for your site mistakenly removed a URL on your site and left for vacation it was a difficult process to undo the request.

• The “Home” page is much easier to navigate with a clear distinction between verified and unverified sites.

Courtesy:  Sagar Kamdar, Product Manager, Webmaster Tools

There are numerous coding errors or omissions that can adversely affect the way the bot collects information about a site.   We will review a couple coding errors  in this post.  First, the meta data:

• Missing, empty, or duplicate <title> tag
• Missing, empty, or duplicate <meta> description tag
• Missing, empty, or duplicate <h1> tag

These tags are key locations in the page for using keywords and key phrases to associate for relevance with your content. The <title> tag is required in HTML and XHTML documents, and the other two might as well be (all of them are very strategic for SEO). Each one is to be used only once per page, and all must have text (no images or just blank spaces!) between the tags. That text in those locations is considered important keyword text by the bot (for it defines the content of the page), so make the most of it. Don’t duplicate text strings between these tags, either. That’s a wasted opportunity for defining more keywords.

What about 302 redirects?  We talked about 301 redirects in previous posts, and how to strategically use them. 302s are only temporary redirects, and unlike with 301s, no link juice credit is passed to the redirected page. Using a 302 redirect is not a coding error per se, but much of the time it is a strategic error from the perspective of SEO. Unless you have a genuinely temporary need to redirect a page, stick with 301s as an SEO best practice.

Watch for more tips in future posts.

(AdAge, 4/27/2009)

Coke has recently announced that it will push the advertising industry to adopt value based pricing models as a standard practice. And, this call-to-action is likely to force a change in SEO and online marketing pricing models quickly.

The argument made by Coke, and supported by other heavy hitting advertisers like Anheuser-Busch and Procter & Gamble, is that effort doesn’t necessarily equate to value. Even companies with marketing budgets in the billions want to see maximum return for each dollar spent, and they don’t want to pay for anything short of success. Is the economy forcing the marketing and advertising industry into a new era of accountability?

Let’s look at how Coke is breaking from their old advertising compensation methods:

“BEFORE: Agencies and Coke negotiate in advance how much profit the former will see on a given project.

AFTER: Agency is guaranteed only recouped costs, with any profit coming only if certain targets are met.

BEFORE: Agency decides what Coke should pay for a project based on the time it expects to expend on it.

AFTER: Coke tells agencies how valuable a project is based on strategic importance, whether other agencies could deliver the same outcome, and other factors.”

Coke’s agencies include some of the most creative in the media and agency worlds, including Wieden & Kennedy, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Starcom MediaVest Group and Mother, among dozens of others. Some agency executives, speaking privately, said they couldn’t argue with the theory behind the shift, but had concerns about how it might work in practice.

Read the entire AdAge article here.

One of the early promises of the internet was that national marketers would be able to target on a local level with greater precision (not to mention with interactivity featuring sight, sound and motion) than existing offline media such as community newspapers, radio stations, direct mail, telemarketing and, in larger markets, local TV.

The newspaper model of advertising is almost gone due to declining readership and shuttering of daily papers.  In mid-July the Ann Arbor News ceased daily publication, though a smaller staffed web site and twice weekly print product will remain.  The Seattle Post Intelligencer published their last edition in March.  The company, however, said it would maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.

Network and local TV has seen viewership loss to cable, streaming video sites like Hulu.

Radio listeners have also turned to the web and satellite radio.

Direct mail and telemarketing?  Good luck with those in this environment.  Here is a chart from IAB:

What about local blogs?  There are millions of blogs out there, but which ones can deliver results for an advertiser?  How do you get a decent audience?  Most blog sites have no salespeople to deal with and getting an ad buy can be painfully long process.    Amagalmating ad buys across a series of blog sites can be an even bigger pain, but you almost have to do it to get a decent sized audience.

The most reliable way for national marketers to deliver messages into local markets is through local market websites (or the localized content sections of the portals, such as weather). If you think about the local sites in your area, many of them are poorly trafficked blogs or community/municipality sites that give you information about parks, schools and the library.  The sites that really get traction are companion sites to local media properties: radio, newspaper (i.e. www.annarbor.com, www.mlive.com, etc.), TV stations.

This, then, is the reason why ad networks that specialize in helping national advertisers target locally have grown up by aggregating numerous local media sites. If you have the ability to sell some inventory for a couple of local TV stations and radio stations and the newspaper, you can deliver an audience that is pretty reliably local.

Publishers realize the problem too.  AOL and Citysearch signed local content and advertising pacts in February.    Companies like ZEvents are now getting inventory from their local event partners so advertisers can access all of their local brand sites.

If you’re a national or regional marketer, then you’re familiar with the concept of media fragmentation, or the continued splintering of target audiences as they move away from a handful of large media publishers/sites towards many smaller, niche ones.  It makes finding and communicating with your audiences a lot harder, as the number of media outlets through which to reach them has grown exponentially.   You may want to consider Ad Networks.

Open a browser, type in “fedex.com”,  the page that resolves is not what you would expect.  I would expect the FedEx main site, www.fedex.com, not the FedEx Express International Shipping home page.   I would assume most users would agree.

This is a canonical domain issue.

So, what is a canonical url anyways?

That’s what they call it at Google.   Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:

• www.example.com
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.asp

But technically all of these urls are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the urls above.  When Google “canonicalizes” a url, they try to pick the url that seems like the best representative from that set.

What to do???

Pick the url that you want and use that url consistently across your entire site. For example, don’t make half of your links go to http://example.com/ and the other half go to http://www.example.com/ .   Instead, pick the url you prefer and always use that format for your internal links.

FedEx needs to do this.

You can make your webserver so that if someone requests http://example.com/, it does a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.example.com/ . That helps Google know which url you prefer to be canonical.  Adding a 301 redirect can be an especially good idea if your site changes often (e.g. dynamic content, a blog, etc.).

If anyone from FedEx is reading this, tell your IT department to do these things:

• Redirect non-www and IP address to www.
• Canonicalize FedEx index pages (redirect “/index.html” to “/”)
• Do all of the above using a single 301-Moved Permanently redirect
• Read the Google Webmaster Tools blog post about Canonical Domain issues.

They can simply add this <link> tag to specify the preferred version:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.fedex.com” />

inside the <head> section of the http://fedex.com/is/ URLs.

There is a brand new Google Webmaster Tools error for Sitemaps files. The new error or warning is named “Duplicate URL” and has been springing up for many webmasters recently.

The first reports of such an error being received by webmasters was on June 29th, Wednesday. The error basically tells the webmaster that they have the same URL (a duplicate) listed in the Sitemap file and they should probably remove it. In some cases, Google is wrong about what is duplicate and what is not. For example, if domain.com/page/ is technically a different page from domain.com/page/index.html, Google will still consider that a duplicate listing.

John Mu from Google has an explanation:

“This is a new warning message we added to inform you of this issue. This does not mean that we treat your Sitemap file in any way differently, it’s just for your information (and this information wasn’t shown to users before). In general, it makes little sense to submit duplicate URLs in a Sitemap file, which is why this message was added.

There is one item which may lead to confusion here though – Google’s Sitemaps processing generally simplifies URLs in ways that make sense on a whole. This includes removing “/index.html” from the URL if that’s the last part. In general, that makes sense, since you want to show users the relevant part of the URL (and since most servers will automatically check “index.html” when the root page is requested).

However, there are some cases where “/index.html” is a relevant part of the URL and can’t be removed. In these cases, we’ll generally discover those URLs through our normal web-crawl. At the moment, it’s possible that our Sitemaps processing will show these warnings in those cases – but since this does not signal any change in the processing of your Sitemaps files, you can safely ignore these warnings.

In short: these warnings are new, but the processing of your Sitemaps files has not changed.”

Remember my blog post from several weeks back on owning your Google Maps listing.  Here is another example.

So, I tweaked my back playing hockey this past weekend and wasn’t doing well this morning and wanted to go to an Urgent Care facility in Ann Arbor.  Naturally, went to the web, Google, “urgent care clinic ann arbor” was my query.  The results showed 10 Google Map listings and 49,000 search listings.

So, I selected the first map listing, Ann Arbor Urgent Care, close fit with what I wanted.  But wait, link brought me to a link farm page, not good.  Mosak Domains & Hosting, was what I saw.  Not what I want though.

I am looking for a local urgent care facility.  Hours, insurance accepted, location, phone number, etc.  Then I went back to the Google SERP, and scrolled down to an organic listing, MLive Business Directory.  Click.  There is the Ann Arbor Urgent Care Clinic again, but wait, two separate listings and two phone numbers:

Which is which?

Am I making my point?   Businesses need to be sure they own ALL their listings on the web, beyond just the  Google Local Business Center.   Don’t forget directory sites as they will typically rank well for local business searches.

Also, note that only one local provider appeared in the sponsored results and they are located over an hour away in Canton, Michigan.

So, starting my search over again.  Ugghh.