Check this out, this digg front pager greeted me at 5am on a Saturday morning. I noticed out of the 20 other front pagers there were 7 stories similar.As you can see, none of my friends dugg. But what is interesting is I cannot see any of the usual suspects. Friends of ours. Kinda sounds [...]
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Google launched the set geographic target feature in October of last year. Since then, many webmasters began experimenting with it and I have personally not seen too many complaints about it, which is always a good thing. Google's Webmaster Central team said they have been receiving some questions on the tool, so they have decided to produce a video to answer some of those questions.
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I've now compiled the latestsearch popularity stats from Hitwise, Compete,comScore, andNielsen Online. That means it's time to put them all togetheronce again, to see what a "panel" of ratings services agree on -- and don't agree on -- in terms of search engine popularity.
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Google CEO Eric Schmidt took an indirect shot at comScore paid click data during Google's (stellar) Q1 earnings call this week, referring to the inaccuracy of "third party data" that led Wall St. analysts to reduce earnings estimates for Google based on softness of the paid search advertising market.
This afternoon, comScore CEO Dr. Magid Abraham fired back, defending the validity and accuracy of comScore aggregation of Google paid click data.
"When Google announced strong Q1 earnings last week, some financial and media analysts wrote that comScore??™s reports of slowing growth in Google??™s paid clicks missed the mark. That conclusion is patently false," said Abraham in a statement to the press. "Following several historical quarters of strong sequential domestic revenue growth (including the seasonally equivalent Q1 2007), Google??™s Q1 2008 revenue growth was essentially flat, which represented a significant change for Google??™s domestic business."
The trend comScore identified shows the relationship between comScore??™s domestic paid click trends compared to Google??™s domestic revenue trends.
The comScore chart isn't a "perfect correlation" because comScore doesn't account for changes in Google??™s average CPC (cost-per-click). Nor does comScore data include paid clicks from partner sites (AOL, Ask, Washington Post) or from the AdSense network, where Google paid out $5.4 billion to publisher sites in 2007 based on Google Content Advertising click volume.
Abraham warns (analysts) against extrapolating from a single data point. That's excellent advice for bloggers as well.
Earlier, comScore provided an apples-to-apples comparison of the data sets. Google doesn't release specifics on paid click data or partner revenue. Nor does the search engine giant provide guidance to Wall St. analysts.
The key takeaway: only Google can verify the accuracy of comScore data, and Google will never do so. So third party data (such as Google Analytics) is crucial for marketers to track.
Google paid click data for comScore did not include international paid search click data so Google's strong global growth (supported by comScore research on increased paid search spending in non-U.S. markets)
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Yahoo is creating some wide open spaces for web developers. This is no API playground, people. It??™s a zoo.
SearchMonkey will let developers go hog wild with search results. Simple links are so old school. Listings could now include photos, reviews, ratings and contact information via developer mashups. Want portability? You got it.
And if you don't want it, you should. Yesterday, I reported that search is integral in finding social media results that affect a consumer's opinion about brands. SearchMonkey should be a tremendous tool to help influence your online reputation.
The launch party for SearchMonkey is May 15th. Here are the details:
When:May 15, 2008, 5:30 ??“ 8:30 p.m.
Where:Yahoo! Headquarters ??“ Url??™s Caf?©, 701 First Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089
RSVP: Register at upcoming.org AND send your full name and company name to searchmonkeyevent@yahoo-inc.com. Space is limited.
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The Live Search blog has announced the xRank Celebrity, which according to the post is a ranking of all celebrity related searches done on the Live Search portal. Yes dear readers, its a celebrity search zeitgeist, complete with links to images, video, biography, albums and movies of top ranking celebrities based on searches conducted using [...]
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Is your website sick?
In many ways, SEO consultants are like doctors, only instead of analyzing your personal health symptoms, we analyze the overall health of your website. It's true we're not working with life or death situations the same way doctors do, but having a website that is not receiving all the targeted search engine traffic it could be, is a sign of a sick website.
When working with a new client our first task is to research their website's symptoms of underperformance. Once we diagnose what the problems are, we can provide a "cure" that will make the website perform better. As with human health, there are varying degrees of website unhealthiness; for people it might range from those that just need to get more exercise to those who have an all out deadly disease. For websites, it can vary from those that can't even get their pages indexed by search engines (and thus are not able to receive any organic search visitors), to those who are receiving lots of organic traffic, but could be obtaining more.
In all cases, a sick website is leaving money on the table.
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