September 2005
Branding with Search…
Posted by Aaron on 28 Sep 2005
Can paid search be an effective branding tool? There has been much discussion on this topic, and many search conferences include a panel or two on brand marketing with search.
Search Marketing, especially in the travel industry, is usually measured (or tries to measure) based on concrete conversion numbers. I spent this much per visitor, I made this much per visitor; I paid so much on a term, I had this many sales from traffic generated by that term.
Savvy search marketers have always suspected that they’re doing more for brands than click-to-buy metrics can reveal. But, those metrics are the only way we’re generally measured by the clients we serve. I suspect that as more and more traditional advertising agencies start to “do” search marketing and are courted by the major search companies, branding will become a large part of search marketing initiatives. This will be good for large companies with large budgets, but has the potential to drive up search term costs for the rest of us.
So, what is the future of branding with search? Is there a future? Yahoo! seems to think so. They’re testing a whole new set of tools and metrics to help brand advertisers use and make sense of it all.
ClickZ has a piece on the new Yahoo! tools, you can read the entire article here:
Yahoo! Testing New Branding Metrics for Search
Bookmark:
Tagged as: Search Engines, Marketing, SEM, SEO, Online Marketing
The Pam Anderson Decade - Remembering Dragonball, JFK Jr. and OJ
Posted by Aaron on 21 Sep 2005
Lycos has posted their top 50 searches for the last ten years. No big surprises, but it sure is fun to reminisce… Oh, Anna…
The Pam Anderson Decade: The New Lycos 50
Bookmark:
Tagged as: Search Engines, Lycos
Confirmation of the Google Sandbox…
Posted by Aaron on 21 Sep 2005
The Google sandbox theory is something that SEMs and webmasters have speculated on and argued about for a while. There has, for at least a couple of years, existed this notion that Google will “sandbox” your NEW site - meaning not let it get any decent rankings - for the first several months, up to a year, of its existence. The theory, which has never been formally confirmed by Google, is that this keeps masses of spam sites from getting into Google by forcing new sites into a “probationary period” until they can rank well on their own by generating natural incoming links, generating traffic, etc.
Some have said all along that it didn’t exist. But, most have speculated that something was happening. I’ve experienced it myself. I’ve created new sites that almost instantly rank well in Yahoo! but take up to a year to get any meaningful positions in Google.
Well, several bloggers who attended the recent Search Engine strategies conference in San Jose are talking about a conversation with Google Engineers who seem to confirm that the Google sandbox, although they don’t call it that, does exist. It’s still not a formal confirmation, but I think we can assume that there is some type of probationary period that Google is applying to new sites in its index.
Here is a post on Search Engine Watch that is covering the action:
Confirmation From Google That The Sandbox Does Exist
Bookmark:
Think You’ve Been Banned by Google?
Posted by Aaron on 20 Sep 2005
If you think that you may have had a site banned by Google, it can be pretty scary — lost sales, upset clients, angry bosses, etc. — and getting back in has always been something of a mystery. Being banned in Google is not as common for most of us as some would leave you to believe. If you’re developing good content and not trying to “trick” the search engines or the end user, the chances of being banned by Google for your SEO practices are pretty slim.
But, it does happen from time-to-time. Maybe you received bad advice on SEO, maybe you hired an unscrupulous SEM firm who has succeeded in getting all of its clients tossed out of the Google index.
Google is beginning to take some of the mystery out of being banned and is starting to test sending emails to webmasters informing them of their unfortunate status.
Ok, so let’s imagine that you have been banned by Google… What now? Google Engineer, Matt Cutts, has posted advice on reinclusion on his blog. You can read the entire post here:
Filing a reinclusion request
Bookmark:
Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, SEO
Another Beta Tool from Yahoo!
Posted by Aaron on 15 Sep 2005
Yahoo! has released another search “tool” in beta form on their Yahoo! Next site. It’s called Instant Search. Is that anything like instant pudding? No, probably not.
It doesn’t work for a lot of queries at this point, and I wonder how the tool will eventually be implemented by Yahoo!. Maybe in the Yahoo! tool bar? It seems especially useful, at this point, for Yahoo! Shortcut queries such as weather reports, addresses, etc.
Bookmark:
Tagged as: Search Engines, Yahoo, SEO
