Written on November 23, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: seo
Posted by randfish
The long tail of search demand has been around since the dawn of web search and, since that time, search marketers have been attempting to tap into the powerful stream that high quantities of unique content can provide. I recently came across some great data from Hitwise (about 1 year old, but still highly relevant)
Written on November 11, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: Object
There’s a lot of news today coming out of Bing headquarters, perhaps most notably that the long-rumored partnership with Wolfram Alpha is finally coming to fruition.
Bing’s announcement today explains that the collaboration will cover two specific areas: nutritional information and mathematics.
Nutritional Data
With help from Wolfram Alpha, Bing says it can now help users make smarter [...]
….
Read more here:
Bing Launches Wolfram Alpha Collaboration & Several New Search Features
Written on October 14, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: Advertising, marketing
Last month, Yahoo announced the slogan for its new advertising blitz (perhaps hoping to replicate Bing’s blip of search share success): “It’s You!” On September 28, they premiered the first TV commercial for that campaign.
In our totally nonscientific comments section, people were 2:1 against the ad, either because it didn’t sell Yahoo’s products or because the commercial sucks. Personally, I cringe every time I see it—and I’m not alone. As MediaPost reports, YouGov’s BrandIndex “found Yahoo’s buzz score had tumbled from 35.4 on Sept. 22 to 25.5 as of Monday.”
YouGov measures buzz by asking respondents “Have you heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, was it positive or negative?” The precipitous drop over the last three weeks stands in sharp contrast to their upward buzz trend, running since May.
Like many of our commenters, BrandIndex SVP Ted Marzilli said he thought the first commercial visually impressive, but not so good at conveying what’s new and improved about Yahoo. “There just seems to be a bit of disconnect between consumers and the campaign,” he said.
Yahoo, on the other hands, says they’re in this for the long haul (so obviously consumer reactions don’t count). In a statement, they said, “We view our brand revitalization efforts as more of a marathon, not a sprint, so we’re focused on the long-term trends of Yahoo!’s audience size and user engagement metrics.” Meanwhile, Alexa shows a slight downward trend for Yahoo over the last few weeks (here’s a grain of salt).
As MediaPost says, the survey is based on “interviews of 5,000 people each weekday from a representative U.S. population sample of 1 million. A score can range from 100 to -100, and is compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.”
What do you think? Should Yahoo be worried about these early indicators? Or do you think they’re seeing enough positive signs internally that they can ignore the rest of us?
Original post:
Yahoo, It’s Not Me. It’s You.
Written on October 14, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: Advertising, marketing
Have you ever seen one of those people who spends so long studying a group, they begin to believe they’re part of the group? If not, you can now: Technorati has launched a new design/mission/layout, and it looks like the once-awesome blog search engine has been assimilated. As they put it:
While we’ll still track and link to the top blogs, posts, and tags, the unique content written by hundreds of bloggers will complement what the rest of the world is saying. In addition to this, each of our channel editors will be writing a daily column called Blog Focus, in which the top story of the day is told through the eyes of the blogosphere’s varied and eclectic authors.
That’s right: now instead of just following and measuring blogs, Technorati’s now going to be writing them, too. As they announced last month, they’re taking applications for writers for “blog reviews, news, tag page articles and commentary on any of these subjects, or most anything else interesting and well-written,” though there’s no mention of payment (aside from “the more you contribute, the more you’ll get back”). However, this probably isn’t because they’re strapped for cash—they just raised another $2M in venture capital. CEO Richard Jalichandra says this last round of funding should get them and their blog ad network to profitability.
Other changes in this redesign include changes to the Top 100, probably the most popular feature on Technorati. Says TechCrunch:
Until today, the top 100 blogs were determined based on unique links from other blogs during the previous six months. The top list was fairly static. Now they are focusing much more on recent data within the last month and giving blogs an authority rank between 1 – 1,000. Scoring factors include posting frequency, context, linking behavior and “other inputs.” The result, says the company, is a lot more volatility in the lists as blogs surge up and down.
Yeah. Translation: people thought the Top 100 was impossible to break into and not current enough.
Other changes include the capability to publish your content directly on Technorati, and the layout of the Technorati Topics pages, including the content published on Technorati.
Technorati had two redesigns in 2007, but since then they haven’t made any drastic changes as they declined in popularity and relevance (unless you count jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.) Mostly they’ve focused on creating an ad network in the interim.
What do you think? Is this change enough to save them from oblivion? Or are they a useful tool, despite losing out on the hype cycle?
View original here:
The New Technorati Thinks It’s a Blog
Written on September 17, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: book, marketing, seo
So it looks like Twitter has entered some rarefied air for sure. According to ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch the micro-blogging juggernaut is moving into an exclusive club by securing a new round of funding ($50 million) based on a valuation of $1 billion (yup, it’s a b). No doubt, this will begin to stir the supporters and detractors alike. Unless we have ridiculously short memories or just think that this time will be different one has to wonder how a company that no one can figure out revenue wise can be valued at that much.
While I am not an analyst I did think about staying at a Holiday Inn Express over the past year so I qualify for jumping into the fray, right? Let’s hear what the RWW folks had to say first though.
While it’s unlikely that Twitter CEO Evan Williams was wearing a Dr. Evil costume when he delivered the news, he had the pleasure of announcing his company’s $1 billion dollar valuation today at an all hands meeting. According to TechCrunch, the company has raised a $50 million dollar funding round and the money will be in the bank shortly. Given the fact that Twitter turned down an offer to be purchased by Facebook earlier in the year, it appears the two are about to tango.
So of course, this conversation wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without bringing Facebook into the mix. Facebook is starting to look almost like IBM compared to Twitter. What with actual revenue generation plans and actually having the audacity to be cash flow positive one begins to wonder if Facebook is going to actually merit its own valuation. Master of the Universe, Mark Zuckerberg, has something to say in the Facebook blog.
We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.
So is Twitter in for the long term? They certainly still have the buzz going and now there appears to be a a real Facebook faceoff looming for the foreseeable future.
In the past, ReadWriteWeb has looked at Twitter’s platform potential. The service has already been used to create meme trackers, emergency alert services, news feeds and brand monitoring tools. As the infrastructure and search have improved, Twitter has become the go-to site for real time media. But can the company make a Facebook-like leap?
Facebook has added Twitter like features so why not? So what’s your take? I bet there at least a billion opinions on this one.
Read more from the original source:
A Billion Reasons for Twitter to be Happy
Tags: appears-the-two ,because-it-sets ,book ,conversation ,foreseeable ,ibm ,infrastructure ,long ,money ,past ,social ,there-at-least ,universe ,year
Written on June 1, 2009 by admin
Now that the tide has turned, economically speaking, and with SEM budgets focused more on profitability than volume, it’s time to take another long look at SEO and how to use it to your company’s advantage. ….
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Plan For The Long Run With Data-Driven SEO
Written on June 1, 2009 by admin
Filed Under: Object
For those of us who work in local search optimization, it’s clear that Google PageRank is less and less important as a factor in result rankings. It’s not difficult to find instances where businesses with lower PageRank are listed higher than competitors in the local 10-pack, and some like Matt McGee point out cases where companies with no website at all are ranking well. These cases show that in Google’s local searches, PageRank has been pushed aside in favor of a ranking process that’s often…
Continued here:
Has Google Maps Switched From PageRank to “BizRank”?
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