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Interesting Quotes From Google’s Search Lead, Amit Singhal

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:12:59 +0000

Amit Singhal is the man who is responsible for Google web search. All the searches done on Google are technically under his watch. So when an interview was posted named The human search engine, where Mark Prigg from the London Evening Standard interviewed Amit Singhal, I got excited.

The interview shares some insights into Amit’s role at Google, how Google tests new algorithms, and what the future for Google search is. I though it would be fun to categorize the quotes into those three groups and simply quote the story:

Amit At Google:

I came in and said ‘I’m a search academic, why don’t you let me practise that?’ I didn’t really read the Google code, and wrote a parallel version, telling them, ‘This is how I would do it.

My original algorithm has become a foundation on which we have an even more beautiful building.

Google Tests Algorithms:

We have the entire web in a sandbox that only our engineers can see, and our engineers can take their new algorithm and see it change millions of queries. If it works, we send it to testers, whom we pay, but we don’t tell them what they are testing.

Then we take a tiny slice, one per cent of our users, and expose them to this change. We measure things such as where on the page they click, when they click higher – that’s good for us.

Concurrently we have approximately 100 ideas floating around that people are testing – we test thousands in a year. Last year we ran around 20,000 experiments. Clearly they don’t all make it out there but we run the process very scientifically.

We look at that with a group of senior people who come together every week, and we decide if it’s good for users, the web ecosystem and for our systems.

Future Of Google Search:

That team is doing such amazing science, and bringing me closer to my childhood dream – how does it get any better?

But still the ultimate aim for Singhal is to build the Star Trek communicator of his childhood. “The key to this is when you can have a Star Trek Googlephone, where you can say, ‘Google, tell me how Alfred Nobel made his money’.

You can seek any knowledge on demand. How much more productive would humanity be if we can achieve this? “Today I feel more excited about my dream, it is almost within grasp,” says Singhal.

Survey: People Largely Negative About Google’s Personalized Search Results

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:12:55 +0000

Earlier this month market research tool provider Ask Your Target Market surveyed 400 US adults about their attitudes toward personalized search on Google. The results were reported today in eMarketer’s email newsletter. We went back to the source to check out the survey and discovered that the majority of respondents expressed ambivalence or outright dissatisfaction about Google’s new more personalized search results.

The first question asked was about the primary search engine used by respondents.

Primary search engine:

Source: AYTM, n=400 (1/12)

Then the survey explored respondents’ attitudes toward search personalization and Google+ participation.

Do you like the idea of personalizing search results based on past searches and info from your social networking sites?

Source: AYTM, n=400 (1/12)

A minority said yes (15.5 percent) they liked search personalization. But a clear majority were ambivalent or hostile to the idea (84.5 percent). Within that majority 45 percent said they did not want search results personalized at all. Of the three types of responses the “nos” were the dominant category.

There were two other survey questions fielded by AYTM about Google+:

Do you use Google+?
Would you be more likely to use Google+ if you knew you would get more tailored search results?

To the first question (Do you use it?) 19.3 percent responded “yes,” and another 20.3 percent said they had accounts that were not really used. The other 60.4 percent said they did not have Google+ accounts or said that they didn’t know what it was.

In terms of whether more people would use Google+ if they knew it helped personalize their results, 7.5 percent said “yes” they would be more likely to use it. However 44.4 percent said “no” and 48.1 percent said “maybe.”

It’s important to point out that this is just one survey and it’s not clear how representative the survey population was of the entire US adult population. It’s also important to observe that people often react negatively to change. However these results, if they can be generalized, represent a pretty strong negative reaction to the new direction Google is headed.

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/WM_X6hXDOmI/survey-people-largely-negative-about-googles-personalized-search-results-110840

How To Make Unstructured Data Actionable In Display

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:12:49 +0000

I wrote recently about the new era of display marketing, and how real time bidding and other advances are bringing the precision and performance of search advertising to display. Well…a new era of unstructured data is also upon us.

A widely cited 2011 IDC study found that the amount of data in the world is now doubling every 2 years. This trend is especially apparent in marketing, as massive amounts of data are being created by ever-increasing numbers of search queries, SKU views, social signals, page visits, and more.

Unstructured Data Volumes Exploding

Traditional paradigms for managing data are struggling under this tsunami. In addition to the sheer volume of data, the fact that so much of it is “unstructured” creates special challenges.

AdExchanger.com recently quoted John Iwata of IBM as stating that 80% this data is “unstructured”. This means that it doesn’t come pre-packaged in neat segments, fitted into a cascading taxonomy of some sort.

Instead, the data is hugely varied and constantly evolving. As an example consider search, where new terms and groups of terms are continually being formed as new artists, politicians, products, companies, and other evolutions take place.

The Old Way: Creating Static Segments

A traditional way of dealing with large amounts of unstructured data is to…you guessed it…add structure.

This typically involves spending lots of time analyzing data and then grouping various data elements (e.g., search terms, SKUs, pages visited, etc.) into segments that are then used for analysis, targeting, and other marketing activities.

This approach has drawbacks, however. For starters, it is time consuming and often requires the attention of experts in the data type. In addition, creating opaque segments often reduces the effectiveness of the data. This is because once data elements are grouped into a segment, the individual data elements within the segment are treated as if they are the same.

Search Marketers Know Better

Search marketers would not group dozens, hundreds, or thousands of keywords into a segment, and then be content with not knowing the individual impression volumes, click through rates, cost per clicks, and conversion rates on each keyword.

Search marketers know that keeping data at its elemental level (in the case of search, at the keyword level) is necessary to optimize and achieve the best performance.

Search marketers know from experience that some data elements (again, keywords) are far more effective than others, and they want the ability to pay more for the keywords that perform well and less for those that do not.

We also see this in search retargeting, where performance often varies greatly between similar keywords that would seem to belong in the same segment.

Elementary, My Dear Marketers

So how can display marketers take advantage of the rising tide of unstructured data, and leverage what search marketers already know?

The solution is elementary. Targeting at the data element level not only reduces the time and effort required to create and populate segments, it also provides improved performance, and deeper insights.

The improved performance comes from the ability to allocate budget to the best performing data elements. This can be done either manually or automatically.

In fact, the automated algorithms that make decisions on how much to bid on each impression are more effective when they are fed more granular, element-level data.

Element level targeting provides deeper insights by enabling marketers to analyze the performance of each keyword, SKU, page, or other data element targeted. From these insights marketers can develop future creatives, offers, and campaign criteria.

Making Unstructured Data Actionable In Display

Unstructured data is already actionable in search, which provides keyword level bidding, optimization, and reporting.

For marketers looking to take advantage of unstructured data in display, the latest generation of Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) provide several options that enable managing, bidding, and optimizing to data at the element level. These include:

Keyword Level Search Retargeting – Keywords are not grouped into segments, but instead targeted at the individual keyword level. Campaigns can target over 100K individual keywords and maintain bidding, reporting, and optimizing at the keyword level.
Keyword Based Contextual Targeting – Instead of targeting ads to pages about fixed contextual categories, custom contextual categories are defined by a list of keywords. Bidding, reporting, and optimizing is then done at the keyword (element) level based on which pages contain which word.
Element Level Site Retargeting – Instead of grouping visitors to a site into just a few segments, ads are targeted based on the individual incoming search terms, individual pages visited, individual SKUs viewed, and/or the products that have been put into shopping carts.
Element Level Behavioral Targeting – Campaigns target a set of behaviors while maintaining transparency into the volume, pricing, and performance of each individual behavior and/or site where the behavior is measured. This enables more spend to be allocated to the best performing behaviors.

This list will surely grow as the display advertising eco-system evolves. In the meantime, online advertisers can look forward to a day when opaque data segments are nothing but memories of a bygone era.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Search Display

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/6Dr0sD03dWc/how-to-make-unstructured-data-actionable-in-display-110765

Bing Testing New Search Results Design

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:12:45 +0000

Bing is testing a new design for the search results layout. The new design seems a lot cleaner, fresher and more organized compared to the older design.

Jason Hart tipped us off listing out the key differences:

Vertical tabs removed
Top and bottom search boxes widened
Search button icon changed
Several links removed from header
Location information no longer displayed
Icons used instead of text for rewards and preferences
My smiling face added to the page instead of just my name
Related searches moved from left rail to under the search box

Here is a picture of the new design:

Here is a picture of the old design:

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing User Interface

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/LCWI8ZtcpJI/bing-testing-new-search-results-design-110879

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 8, 2012

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:12:39 +0000

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Bing Testing New Search Results Design
Bing is testing a new design for the search results layout. The new design seems a lot cleaner, fresher and more organized compared to the older design. Jason Hart tipped us off listing out the key differences: Vertical tabs removed Top and bottom search boxes widened Search button icon changed Several links removed from header [...]
How To Make Unstructured Data Actionable In Display
I wrote recently about the new era of display marketing, and how real time bidding and other advances are bringing the precision and performance of search advertising to display. Well…a new era of unstructured data is also upon us. A widely cited 2011 IDC study found that the amount of data in the world is [...]
Survey: People Largely Negative About Google’s Personalized Search Results
Earlier this month market research tool provider Ask Your Target Market surveyed 400 US adults about their attitudes toward personalized search on Google. The results were reported today in eMarketer’s email newsletter. We went back to the source to check out the survey and discovered that the majority of respondents expressed ambivalence or outright dissatisfaction about [...]
Why Does Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine Hate Rick Santorum?
US presidential candidate Rick Santorum pulled off a surprise last night, winning caucuses and primaries in three states. So what’s with Bing listing an anti-Santorum web site first in its results in a search for his last name? Does Microsoft have some type of liberal agenda! Wait, you didn’t realize Rick Santorum has a “Bing [...]
The Neuroscience Of Search Conversion
The one thing all of your search traffic brings with it is a human brain. It’s easy to think that our search visitors aren’t coming with any brain at all. How can they possibly decide against what we have to offer? If they weren’t going to take action, click on the ad? It turns out [...]
Apple’s Siri Drives 25 Percent Of Wolfram|Alpha Queries
Yesterday knowledge engine Wolfram|Alpha announced an intriguing new paid service Wolfram|Alpha Pro. Gary Price wrote an overview of the new service, which will likely appeal to academics, data geeks and a range of other specialized users. Wolfram|Alpha is by no means a mainstream search engine, yet it has managed to establish something of a beachhead [...]
3 Steps To Optimize Your B2B Informational Assets
Does this situation sound familiar? Due to the success of your SEO program, organic traffic to your website is increasing. However, visitors aren’t engaging with specific aspects of the site and aren’t taking the desired actions. Why? Many B2B marketers fail to include informational assets in their overall SEO strategy. Information presented on your website [...]
adCenter Releases Features Aimed At Improving Advertiser Time-Efficiency
The adCenter team recently released some features aimed at improving Advertiser Time-Efficiency. These features are live right now, though they may not be officially announced at the time this post is published. During a recent trip to adCenter headquarters, Eric Enge was able to get some insight into these new features, and what we can [...]
Interesting Quotes From Google’s Search Lead, Amit Singhal
Amit Singhal is the man who is responsible for Google web search. All the searches done on Google are technically under his watch. So when an interview was posted named The human search engine, where Mark Prigg from the London Evening Standard interviewed Amit Singhal, I got excited. The interview shares some insights into Amit’s [...]
Google Screenwise: New Program Pays You To Give Up Privacy Surf The Web With Chrome
Google is quietly taking requests from web users who want to get paid to surf the web using the Chrome browser while sharing data with Google. The program is called Screenwise and, though we’re not aware of any official announcement, Google has a signup page at www.google.com/landing/screenwisepanel. The page explains that Google wants to create [...]
Wolfram|Alpha Goes Pro With Powerful Data Analysis Presentation Tools
Wolfram|Alpha (W|A) is launching a new fee-based service named Wolfram|Alpha Pro. In today’s highly competitive environment, you may wonder why W|A would ask people to pay for what many think should be free. Read on: you may decide to willingly open your wallet when you see what’s available. Since Wolfram|Alpha launched in 2009, I’ve often [...]
Google Clarifies: No, Ads Shouldn’t Help Rankings No, SEO Isn’t Bad
“SEO isn’t good for users” and “It’s a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads, and Google is trying to fix the bug” are two quotes from a Google employee that go directly against things Google’s said before. The real truth emerging? More like a new Google employee who doesn’t seem to [...]
New: Google Sitelinks With Small Arrows
Google has confirmed that they are rolling out a new look for their one line sitelinks. The new look has a small arrow on the left side of where the sitelinks begin. Here is a picture: A Google spokesperson confirmed that these are indeed new and are “currently rolling out everywhere this week.” Google has [...]
SEMPO Announces 2012 Board Of Directors Nominees
SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Profession Organization, has posted their 2012 nominees for the Board of Directors. There are currently 38 nominees for the 2012- 2014 Board, with a total of 13 seats to fill. SEMPO members can vote electronically between February 14 through February 22, 2012. Votes must be submitted by Wednesday, February 22 [...]
Google: 41 Percent Of Super Bowl Ad Searches Were Mobile
A wide range of social and mobile data are being reported by various sources in the wake of last Sunday’s Super Bowl game. For example, ad network inMobi said 39 percent of survey respondents “used their mobile device in response to a TV commercial during the game” (discussing commercials, getting more information or watching TV [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications Portal Features

Faster browsing, safer downloading, Google Chrome Blog
Why Techmeme now lists events, and how to get your event listed, Techmeme News

Business Issues

Former Google exec: Facebook, Twitter are killing search, ZDNet
Google Invited These People To A Super-Deluxe Resort Last Week To Talk About The Future (GOOG), San Francisco Chronicle
Google Said to Plan to Assure That It Will License Motorola Patents Fairly, Bloomberg

Local, Maps Mobile

New 45° imagery available for 24 cities, Google LatLong
AdMob auction enhancements, Google Mobile Ads Blog
Finding places on the go has never been easier – check out the new Explore for your phone!, Foursquare Blog
Google Places Thinks Jack In The Box Is A Vegan Restaurant, SEO Igloo Blog
Long Awaited Google Places Quality Guidelines Changes, OptiLocal
Many Google Places Search Results Are Showing an Increased Radius For Search Results, Mike Blumenthal

Link Building

Building Up The Pages That Link To You With Links, Search Engine Roundtable

Paid Search Contextual

Top five policy resources to know, Inside AdSense

Searching

Internal Site Search: How Diagnose Problems Maximize Conversions Today, internetmarketingninjas.com
Yandex Direct Geotargeting Options Explained, Russian Search Tips

SEM Industry

SearchFest 2012 Mini-Interview: Rhea Drysdale, sempdx.org

SEO SEM

10 Ways Paid Marketers Can Leverage Inbound Marketing, SEOmoz
Increase Your Click Through Rates In Google By Changing Your Google Authorship Profile Image, Search Engine Roundtable
Invalid Click To Call On Google AdWords, Search Engine Roundtable
Let’s Stay Together: Merging AdWords Analytics Reporting, PPC Hero
The Time For Content Marketing Is Now, distilled

Social Media

Pinterest is quietly generating revenue by modifying user submitted pins., llsocial.com
Lady Gaga’s New Social Network Resembles Pinterest, Reddit [PICS], mashable.com
QA: Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley on What He’s Learning From Twitter and What’s Next, Read/Write Web

Video, Music Image Search

Live Matrix, The “TV Guide For The Web,” Acquired By OVGuide, TechCrunch

Web Analytics

Google Analytics has learned 9 new languages, Google Analytics Blog
How To Exclude Brand Search Terms Keywords In Google Analytics’ Traffic Sources Reports, seoroi.com

Related Topics: SearchCap

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/wt8c5hhuQf4/searchcap-the-day-in-search-february-8-2012-110890

adCenter Releases Features Aimed At Improving Advertiser Time-Efficiency

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:12:44 +0000

The adCenter team recently released some features aimed at improving Advertiser Time-Efficiency. These features are live right now, though they may not be officially announced at the time this post is published.

During a recent trip to adCenter headquarters, Eric Enge was able to get some insight into these new features, and what we can expect from adCenter in the near future, which he shared in his recent post Can Bing adCenter Bring More To The Table For Large Advertisers?.

Here is a quick synopsis of the new features:

Browser Compatibility with Safari and Chrome, and mobile devices
Mobile Device Targeting
Ad Description Lengths Increased

Browser Compatibility With Safari Chrome

Status: Live

AdCenter silently released browser compatibility with Safari and Chrome this week, including mobile device support for iPad and other devices. Compatibility with Mozilla Firefox was also improved.

From our sources and anecdotal testing, the support appears complete and fully functional. This release supports adCenter’s efforts to increase the ease of access of the online marketing platform by enabling Advertisers to access the site from a wider variety of browsers and devices.

My Take: Manage adCenter from your iPad!

Manage adCenter from whichever browser or device you prefer. While this feature doesn’t seem at first like core functionality (like a change to Negatives or Device Targeting would be), it is one of the top-requested features on adCenter’s Feature Suggestion Forum for good reason; as Advertisers we want to maximize our time efficiency.

Advertisers want to work where we are comfortable, and this helps us do that. Many of us have come to expect ubiquitous access from a premier online business as a matter of course, but those of us who use Chrome / Safari, or who have ever wanted to check on a client off-hours from the nearest mobile device that is handy, will probably appreciate this release the most.

I also see this release as more evidence that adCenter is really listening and taking steps to actively improve the adCenter experience.

Device Targeting

Status: Live

AdCenter silently released support for device targeting recently. Device targeting enables Advertisers to choose which Devices their Ads will, or will not, appear on.

By offering this functionality, adCenter empowers Advertisers to create separate Campaigns to bid on devices with different Bids, Keywords, and Ads optimized for each Device.

Device targeting support now includes:

Smartphones

Android
BlackBerry
iOS
Windows
Other

Tablets

Android
BlackBerry
iOS
Other

Barry Schwartz previously reported on this release: Microsoft adCenter Increases Ad Description, Adds Budget Widget More Mobile Targeting Options

My Take: Include this in your 2012 plans

Mobile search is growing rapidly, there is no denying that. I tend to take future predictions with a grain of salt though, as the atmospheric trend lines tend to imply there will be more mobile searches than grains of sand on the planet Earth sometime during the next President’s term of office.

What I do know is that amongst my clients, mobile devices account for roughly 10-15% of our searches happening today, and that number is growing.

Mobile device traffic can have a wildly different Cost Per Acquisition, and may represent a prime candidate for optimizing your bids accordingly. You could also try different Keywords, Ads, etc., and you might be in a unique situation where you actually only want to target one Device vs. another.

For the majority of Advertisers considering carving out separate Mobile Campaigns and weighing that against the cost of implementation and long-term manageability, I’d recommend something like the following equation:

Potential = ((% of total Account Value) * (% increase in Value for new Campaigns)) – Cost of Implementation and Management

Of course, you will have to define what value means for your business. You might start with PPC Profit, Conversions, etc.

Ad Description Length Increased To 71 Characters

Status: Live

AdCenter silently increased the Text Ad Description character limits to 71 recently. This feature makes importing Ads from AdWords easier by accounting for the extra punctuation often required to import Ads from AdWords to adCenter.

My Take: The Little Things Really Do Matter!

Many Advertisers develop on AdWords first then copy to adCenter. Working with AdWords first is a simple matter of prioritizing time and focusing on what will deliver the biggest bang for the buck. This feature fixes a problem you have most likely come across if you have ever imported Ads from AdWords to adCenter.

When you import a Description Line 1 and 2 from AdWords, adCenter adds a space between them to form the single Description used in adCenter. This space accounts for the fact that usually AdWords Ads are crafted to work with a line-break in between them.

However, if you have two Descriptions from AdWords totaling 35 characters each, the extra space brings the total to 71 characters, and ultimately causes the Ad to be rejected in adCenter.

For a process that was supposed to be easy (importing from AdWords to adCenter), this was quite interruptive. Many Advertisers found that it necessitated maintaining different sets of Ads for the two platforms, or adjusting the Ads on AdWords to make room, etc. Going forward, this problem goes away.

In my opinion, this is more strong evidence that the adCenter team is making progress towards making our lives easier and increasing Advertiser time efficiency.

Resources:

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Microsoft: adCenter | Search Headlines

About The Author: Crosby Grant is a Principal Search Marketing Engineer at Stone Temple Consulting. Crosby has extensive experience in search engine marketing including growing small accounts to multi-million dollar success stories at companies such as QuinStreet.com and JustAnswer.com. See more articles by Crosby Grant

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/kWwz8jno77c/adcenter-releases-features-aimed-at-improving-advertiser-time-efficiency-110547

3 Steps To Optimize Your B2B Informational Assets

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:12:35 +0000

Does this situation sound familiar? Due to the success of your SEO program, organic traffic to your website is increasing. However, visitors aren’t engaging with specific aspects of the site and aren’t taking the desired actions.

Why? Many B2B marketers fail to include informational assets in their overall SEO strategy. Information presented on your website such as press releases, case studies, newsletters, white papers, product demos, and how-to videos are all great ways to engage prospects, generate leads and acquire customers.

But, if they aren’t readily found by searchers, they will not realize their full SEO potential.

Here are three steps to fully capitalize on the SEO potential of your online informational assets.

1. Select Specific Keywords For Each Asset

Just like your website’s overarching SEO strategy, your online assets must also include targeted keywords. The keyword set may be more specific and will likely contain long-tailed terms.

I encourage you to perform keyword research specifically around the topics of your press releases, studies, etc… to better understand your prospects’ online behavior and intent.

Review your analytics data as well and take a look at the specific search queries prospects use to find your site and access various information. By targeting the right set of terms, your marketing assets will become powerful tools to engage prospects.

For example, a B2B market research company is optimizing many of their webpages for target keywords such as “local market research”, “market trends”, and “consumer research”.

In addition to website SEO, they are also optimizing a research study that addresses the topic of green consumers. The SEO plan for this downloadable asset focuses on much more specific keywords such as “Green consumer research” and “eco-friendly market research”.

This comprehensive approach to SEO allows the main pages of the site to rank well for general terms while the research download ranks well for more specific search queries.

2. Optimize Webpages Asset Content

Optimizing online assets is not much different than optimizing the rest of your website. Specific tactics may vary based on the format in which the information is presented, but here are some general rules to follow:

Use keywords in the URL structure of the page that promotes the asset. For example: www.mysite.com/market-research/green-consumers is much more effective than www.mysite.com/downloadresearchstudy

Use keywords in the page title and META descriptions for the page

Within the body of the asset, insert keywords into headings.

Incorporate key phrases into the text links throughout the body copy.

For example: Click here for more information is not nearly as effective as Click here for more local market research data

Apply keyword-rich alt tags to all images

3. Utilize Social Channels

Blogs provide a wealth of content to your site, which is exactly what the search engines look for – current, up-to-date content. Blog posts can range from fun, light-hearted topics, to more serious, industry related topics. Your corporate blog is also a great way to promote downloadable assets.

By optimizing blog posts you make them more visible in search results.

Blogs should be used to:

Provide a snippet of a press release
Summarize a downloadable research report
Promote a product video or webinar
Preview a case study

Use other social media channels to promote optimized assets as well. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ should all be part of your integrated SEO strategy to optimize and promote informational assets.

If You Have Online Assets – Optimize Them!

Don’t forget to include marketing assets and informational downloads in your B2B SEO strategy. Capitalize on all the online tools at your disposal including press releases, case studies, product demos, white papers and webinars.

Create a specific SEO Plan and Keyword map for each asset and use your corporate blog and social channels to drive searchers to these optimized assets.

B2B marketers may actually have an advantage over consumer marketers due to the wide range of assets at their disposal. Informational pieces like webinars, white papers and product demos provide great channels to expand and enhance your B2B SEO strategy.

The goal is to not only for the main pages of your website to rank well in search results, but for your online assets to appear at the top of the results too. Remember that Google displays “everything” in the search results, including images, blogs, videos, news, etc… so the more assets that are optimized, the more opportunity your site has to rank well.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/C_4ixUKPn2E/3-steps-to-optimize-your-b2b-informational-assets-109931

Apple’s Siri Drives 25 Percent Of Wolfram|Alpha Queries

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:12:31 +0000

Yesterday knowledge engine Wolfram|Alpha announced an intriguing new paid service Wolfram|Alpha Pro. Gary Price wrote an overview of the new service, which will likely appeal to academics, data geeks and a range of other specialized users.

Wolfram|Alpha is by no means a mainstream search engine, yet it has managed to establish something of a beachhead and has a growing fan base. It owes some of that to Apple’s Siri, which chose Wolfram|Alpha as one of two structured data providers that tie directly into the personal assistant. The other is Yelp.

Wolfram|Alpha gets about 3.7 million daily page views and 17.3 visits per month in the US, according to Alexa data the site itself provides when you ask it about its own traffic.

According to an article in the New York Times tied to the Wolfram|Alpha Pro launch, “Siri accounts for about a quarter of the queries fielded by Wolfram Alpha.” However the company receives no branding on those results. Here are some examples of how Siri presents Wolfram|Alpha content:

Apple and Siri’s relationship with Yelp and Wolfram|Alpha are a kind of template for how the personal assistant will likely work with other third party data providers in the future.

Related Topics: Apple: Siri | Search Engines: Wolfram Alpha

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/zygOiD3Lujo/apples-siri-drives-25-percent-of-wolframalpha-queries-110731

The Neuroscience Of Search & Conversion

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:12:25 +0000

The one thing all of your search traffic brings with it is a human brain.

Photo courtesy FastCompany

It’s easy to think that our search visitors aren’t coming with any brain at all. How can they possibly decide against what we have to offer? If they weren’t going to take action, click on the ad?

It turns out that they do have brains, and the people at NeuroFocus know. They use neuroscience to see these brains at work with amazing brainwave measuring devices.

They’ve watched brainy humans as they surf the Web, and we can all learn something from what they see. Their findings can be found in a new report The Premium Experience: Neurological Engagement on Premium Websites.

What They See In Brainwaves

When you’ve studied a whole bunch of brainwaves, you apparently start to see patterns – at least these folks do.

There are three responses that they can recognize when test subjects visit a webpage. When deciding what to put on our landing pages, it may be helpful to consider how well our pages will deliver these responses.

Attention

They can detect sustained focus and shifts in focus when people are looking at a site.

When we design landing pages, we seek to sustain our visitors’ focus and avoid page elements that cause it to shift. This is why we remove things like site navigation, images that move, and make the most important parts of the page the most visible.

Emotional Engagement

This is the intensity of a persons emotional response. These folks apparently can tell if the response is positive (“approach motivation”) or negative (“avoidance motivation”).

This is something that good copywriters can accomplish with headlines and text. It is also why we try to avoid stock photography, as it generally offers little emotional juice.

Memory Retention

Detects when visitors find something that is personally relevant. It is “activated automatically for experiences that are personally meaningful and provide an opportunity for learning.”

It is important that your landing pages carry on the message that made the searcher click on your ad or organic listing. This response bears out the importance of teaching the visitor something along the way.

Sizing Up Sites

The NeuroFocus people wanted to know how these three response metrics – Attention, Emotional Engagement, and Memory Retention – changed when people visited different kinds of sites.

They chose three sites: The New York Times home page, the generic (non-personalized) Yahoo! home page, and the test subjects’ Facebook news feed.

NOTE: Facebook was a cosponsor of the study.

The Relationship Between Attention Emotional Engagement

All three sites garnered high attention scores. However, their emotional engagement scores were significantly lower. The study authors point out that in general, there is an inverse relationship between attention and emotional engagement.

This is interesting.

All of the pages required a significant amount of attention due to the number of choices and items on the page – including ads. The amount of energy it takes to process all of this detracts from the emotional engagement.

This reinforces a truism of landing pages: if you want to engage a visitor emotionally, keep it simple and help them digest your page visually.

The Facebook page had the highest level of emotional engagement of the three.

The Relationship Between Relevance Memory Retention

Of the three sites, the generic, non-personalized Yahoo! home page scored lowest on the memory retention scale. The study concludes that Facebook and the New York Times score high for different reasons.

The Facebook page scores high on memory retention because of the personal significance of the content. The New York Times page, on the other hand, scores well because of the new information it offers and opportunities for learning.

In other words, brains find relevance in personal content as well as new, informative content.

This may not be a great surprise, but it’s reassuring to hear it directly from some real brains.

Priming Visitors

The NeuroFocus people also wanted to know how these sites primed visitors, making different messages resonate with them. They exposed test subjects to three “messaging words” before and after viewing the sites and measured how much these words resonated with their brains.

Connecting

This would indicate a socially-oriented messages.

For-Me

Did the site make visitors more likely to resonate with the word “FOR-ME?” This would indicate the visitor is open to messages that are personalized.

Advice

This would indicate a predisposition toward informational messages.

It is probably no surprise that Facebook visitors resonated more with the connecting message after viewing the site, but had the smallest response increase to advice. The New York Times had the smallest increase in visitors’ response to connecting. Yahoo! showed an average increase in all three areas.

They were all seen as “For-Me” sites by the test subjects.

The study goes on to expand these metrics for men vs. women. It also compares online advertising to TV-based commercials. I’ll let you explore these on your own.

Lessons Learned

You don’t have to study neuroscience to understand some important relationships between our search ads and the sites to which they lead.

1. Our ads will prime our visitors for a certain kind of message on our landing pages. Ads that ask visitors to “join” might do well to include social proof on their landing pages, for example. Ads that offer something educational for the searcher should avoid talking about the product or company on the landing page, and keep it to For-Me benefits.

2. If we want our message to have an emotional impact on the visitor, we should keep things simple. This may be why home pages perform so poorly as landing pages. It takes too much attention to process these pages to gain an emotional connection.

3. Relevance is the key to memory retention. If we are remarketing to those who abandon, we want our ads and landing pages to have personal relevance or opportunities to learn something new.

NeuroFocus: The Premium Experience: Neurological Engagement on Premium Websites

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Search Conversion

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/8vbSwGVreu4/the-neuroscience-of-search-conversion-109950

Why Does Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine Hate Rick Santorum?

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:12:19 +0000

US presidential candidate Rick Santorum pulled off a surprise last night, winning caucuses and primaries in three states. So what’s with Bing listing an anti-Santorum web site first in its results in a search for his last name? Does Microsoft have some type of liberal agenda!

Wait, you didn’t realize Rick Santorum has a “Bing problem” that’s exactly the same as his well-documented “Google problem,” where a search for “santorum” lists a web page defining that word as the by-product of anal sex above Santorum’s official web site?

He does. In fact, Santorum’s had his Bing problem for months, if not years. It’s just that everyone fixates on Google. Even Santorum does when he gets asked about it, such as telling Politico last year:

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle but I suspect that’s not true.”

It’s A Search Engine Problem, Not A Google Problem

In the wake of Santorum’s win, and no doubt eventual questions in some quarters about why Google still isn’t “fixing” things for him, I thought it was worthwhile to flip things around and discuss his Bing issue.

It’s worth stressing that this isn’t just some gay-loving-Google-liberal-leaning-hates-Santorum thing and more a general problem Santorum has with the major search engines. In particular, it’s a problem that’s ultimately down to Santorum’s anti-gay views.

Santorum Bing: Just Like Google

Here’s what Bing currently shows for santorum:

You can see that just after the special news area that Bing inserts above the regular results, the first listing that the arrow points to is for SpreadingSantorum.com, with a description that reads:

Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum

Santorum’s own official site, RickSantorum.com, appears third on the list.

Over at Google, which gets all the attention, the same issue happens:

Google’s news box appears further down on the page, probably because of the special election results box that appears at the top. Spreading Santorum, the anti-Santorum web site, appears as the first regular result. The official Rick Santorum web site appears fourth in the regular listings, one further down than with Bing.

The news is better for searches for Rick Santorum’s full name, rather than just the word “santorum.” In that case, his official site ranks tops. Here’s Bing:

And here’s Google:

Does It Matter?

It’s becoming clear that Santorum’s Bing problem, as with his Google problem, isn’t stopping many Republican voters from selecting him over other candidates. So should Google or Bing really worry about trying to somehow fix it, especially when any type of change like that opens them up to accusations about censorship or political favoritism?

Perhaps.

The SafeSearch Solution

The biggest issue to me might be the fact that as interest in Santorum grows, you’ve got more children in schools likely to be searching on his name. Getting a fairly explicit description in their search results talking about “lube and fecal matter” and “anal sex” might not be what a lot of parents want them seeing.

Both Bing and Google have a SafeSearch filter that is set to “Moderate” by default, which means it only filters out explicit images. Setting this to “Strict” will keep the Spreading Santorum site from appearing in text listings. That’s something parents and teachers can use.

It’s Not An Irrelevant “Google Bomb”

How about a manual intervention to solve this problem, which has mistakenly been called a “Google Bomb.” Didn’t Google do something like that for President George W. Bush?

“Liberal leaning” Google did. The Google Bomb fix wasn’t specifically designed just for Bush, who found people were linking to his biography in a way to make it rank tops for “miserable failure.” It was meant to fix any type of case where people tried to make pages rank for odd phrases that they weren’t relevant for. But questions about the prominent Bush listing helped prompt the fix.

The Spreading Santorum site isn’t ranking because of some type of Google Bomb campaign. It ranks because it is entirely relevant for “santorum.” It was created years ago as a protest against Rick Santorum’s anti-homosexual views. Those views are entirely relevant, in fact arguably more relevant the further Santorum advances as a candidate to be president of the United States.

To drop the site, Bing and Google would actually be making the type of political move that Santorum seems to think that Google is already doing (he clearly doesn’t seem to think about or care about Bing).

But How About A Disclaimer?

There is something that Google is long overdue to implement. Consider what it used to show when you’d search for “miserable failure” and got the George W. Bush biography:

See the ad above the listings that the arrow points to, which say:

Why these results? These results may seem politically slanted. Here’s what happened

The ad led to an explanation at the official Google Blog. Google does a similar thing today, for a search on jew, which brings up an anti-Jewish web site:

It’s long past time for Google to do something similar for searches on “santorum.” They are going to confuse some people, who will assume Google’s trying to advance a political agenda with its search results.

I’d say Bing should do the same thing, but Bing’s never even tried to have explanations like this. Maybe it should consider it.

But Spreading Santorum Is Here To Stay

As for Rick Santorum, as I wrote before, the best way to solve his Google and Bing problems would be to change his views on homosexuality or make a donation to a gay marriage-rights group. That’s what Dan Savage, who created the Spreading Santorum site, told Mother Jones in 2010:

Savage has not forgiven Santorum for his seven-year-old comments: “Rick would have prevented me and my partner from being able to adopt my son,” he points out. But Savage does have a deal for the politician. “If Rick Santorum wants to make a $5 million donation to [the gay marriage group] Freedom to Marry, I will take it down. Interest starts accruing now.”

That’s unlikely to happen, so Santorum will have to continue living with the Spreading Santorum site showing up alongside his own.

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/sDJxobZNiNo/why-does-bing-hate-rick-santorum-110764

Google Screenwise: New Program Pays You To Give Up Privacy & Surf The Web With Chrome

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:11:41 +0000

Google is quietly taking requests from web users who want to get paid to surf the web using the Chrome browser while sharing data with Google. The program is called Screenwise and, though we’re not aware of any official announcement, Google has a signup page at www.google.com/landing/screenwisepanel.

The page explains that Google wants to create a panel of people to help it “learn more about how everyday people use the Internet.” It explains that panel members have to be at least 13 years old, have (or sign up for) a Google account and use the Chrome web browser. They also have to be willing to let Google track their web surfing activity:

As a panelist, you’ll add a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them. What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.

In exchange for that, panel members get a $5 Amazon gift card code for installing the browser extension, and then can earn another $5 Amazon code for every three months that they continue in the Screenwise program. The sign-up page advertises a $25 max total payment, but the fine print says Google will decide later what payment, if any, will be given for panelists who continue longer than a year.

Amazon isn’t involved in the promotion; Google says it’s using the online research firm Knowledge Networks as its “panel management partner” for Screenwise.

The timing of this program seems odd, especially considering the backlash that Google has faced over the upcoming changes to its privacy policy. Even though this Screenwise program is completely opt-in, some critics are bound to question why Google needs more data about web searchers and the websites they visit.

We’ve reached out to Google for more information about the Screenwise panel/program and we’ll update this article if we learn more.

(tip via @centernetworks)

Related Topics: Google: Chrome | Google: Privacy | Google: Web Search

About The Author: Matt McGee is Search Engine Land’s Executive News Editor, responsible for overseeing our daily news coverage. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. See more articles by Matt McGee

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/n7uDvP1X87A/google-screenwise-panel-open-110716

Volunia, A Social Search Engine, Says The Web Has Come Alive

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:11:59 +0000

Google might be synonymous with the word search in most of the world, but that hasn’t dissuaded others from bringing new search engines to the market, usually aiming to innovate in an area where Google has somehow let up its guard. Volunia, launched this week, promises to help searchers with three distinguishing features:

High level site previews in search results
A multimedia search within a site function
A social layer which, among other things, allows Volunia users to share information and connect to one another

My sense is that it is the social layer which will be most appreciated by Volunia users. Let’s look at each.

Volunia Search Result Previews Offer A “Fly-Over” Site View

During his launch presentation, (in Italian, starts at 40 minute mark) Volunia founder Massimo Marchiori described search users as similar to chickens, trapped in cages and incapable of flying.

Users have been forced to choose search results by consulting one of those classic 10 item title, summary and link lists for too long. Wouldn’t it be nice if users were freed from their cages, and not only, were actually able to fly over a site, viewing a visual or a grid map, before committing to visit it?

Volunia, perhaps from volare, to fly, offers two types of high level site map previews, potentially freeing users from commitment tyranny. The first type, a visual map, aims to group areas of a site together in neighborhoods.

Figure 1: Volunia search result site fly-over: visual map

The second site preview map is in the form of a grid, reminiscent of computer folders. The expectation is that this format will be more useful to people searching from devices with small displays, like smartphones.

Figure 2: Volunia search result site fly-over: grid map

Interactive drill-down versions of the maps are also available from a Volunia menu bar which is visible while navigating a site. Site owners can improve the maps using a Volunia provided sitemap editor.

Figure 3: Volunia sitemap editor

Result previews aren’t exactly a new concept – Ask.com introduced their binoculars feature in 2004.

Where Volunia differs is in their choice to show a site map preview instead of a page preview. Many searches are indeed navigational in nature, one reason Google provides their sitelinks for some queries.

Volunia may be on to something.

Volunia Wants To Surface Multimedia Otherwise Hidden In A Site

Initially the primary focus in Web search was on textual documents, particularly the html kind, rich in semantic structure with their glorious title, heading and paragraph tags.

Oh, I didn’t mention the links between documents, did I? Other Web content formats, from PDF files to images and then video posed much greater obstacles to search engine indexing for a number of reasons.

Today, major search engines like Google offer navigation links to enable a user to search just images or video.

Ambitious searchers can usually find an advanced search syntax page which allows them to limit their searches to specific sites and file types, but for the most part major search engines have taken the “don’t make me think” approach, providing searchers with a blend of media types in search results, what Google calls universal search.

Volunia on the other hand wants to make it easy for a user to discover the multimedia richness hidden in sites like NASA by providing a very visible multimedia site search filter.

Figure 4: Volunia’s multimedia search filter

The Web Has Come Alive, Says Volunia: Volunia’s Social Layer

Volunia’s second area of innovation is in adding a social layer to their search results and subsequent website navigation by the Volunia user.

In search results, users can select a site based on what other Volunia users are viewing right now. Volunia displays the number of page and site visitors.

Figure 5: Volunia visitors currently viewing the page and the site

It isn’t immediately clear how useful this feature will prove to be: after all, even if we want to follow the “wisdom of the crowd”, there’s no way to know if the site’s current visitors from Volunia are actually happy with their choice, nor would it be clear to what extent one searcher’s expectations for a page align with those already visiting that page.

The same visitor counts are also available as layers on the site navigation maps.

Seek Meet: Interact With Other Volunia Users

What might arguably be Volunia’s greatest innovation is in letting fellow search travelers to a page interact with each other, what Volunia calls seek and meet, a feature which feels very reminiscent of Google’s now closed Sidewiki, albeit with two key differences. The first is that users can interact in realtime.

Figure 6: Volunia seek and meet interactive site chat

This birds of a feather real time information sharing might prove useful in a number of situations where people are looking for pre- and post- purchase information.

In the pre-purchase phase, a searcher might want to interact with other users to better understand the product or service they’re considering, not to mention to discover what alternatives others are considering.

Sometimes, it’s nice just to have confirmation that we’re making the right choice. In the post-purchase phase, searchers might be able to resolve support issues by consulting with other searchers – potentially reducing a company’s support costs while providing interactive peer to peer support 24 hours a day.

Each Volunia user is able to fill in a personal profile, much like any social network. The matchmaking possibilities are clearly endless, but I suspect it would be best if I don’t go there….

It isn’t rare to see glowing online reviews written by someone with a connection to a product or service, and equally harsh reviews from competitors or ex-employees with an ax to grind. It doesn’t take much to imagine people attempting to scam the system by introducing fake search users to interact with other searchers.

It remains to be seen if “seek and meet” really is something people will take to. Real time search collaboration will well depend on a critical mass of socially oriented searchers congregating on the same sites at the same time, no easy feat for a niche search engine.

Site owners will undoubtedly be pleased with the second apparent difference to Google’s Sidewiki: commenting can be disabled if desired, something Google didn’t allow.

Volunia, The Company, And A Few Volunia Tidbits

According to data published by Italian business paper Il Sole 24 Ore, Volunia was founded in 2008 by Massimo Marchiori and entrepreneur Mariano Pireddu, with Pireddu providing €2 million in funding to date. You might not immediately recognize Massimo Marchiori’s name, yet as an academic Massimo has been working on the theoretical issues of Web search for years.

His seminal 1997 paper, The Quest for Correct Information on the Web: Hyper Search Engines, would serve as one of the sources of inspiration for two Stanford students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who would acknowledge Marchiori’s contribution to their own work, Google.

During Volunia’s beta phase, over 100,000 people are being invited to become “power user” beta testers. The Volunia user interface is in 12 languages but Marchiori said during the launch presentation that the actual index coverage isn’t limited to those languages.

The Volunia team has ideas for Volunia “extensions”, i.e. new functionality, which will be added to the core, the hard part which has already been done. Advertising will be added to the service.

Marchiori Says Social Needs To Emerge In Search

In an introductory video, Massimo notes that Volunia stems from an idea he’s harbored for several years, an idea for a “different perspective of what the search engine of the future should be”. In the Il Sole 24 Ore report Massimo said “The Web is a living place, there’s information, but there’s also people. The social dimension, already present, just needs to emerge”.

Bing, which started incorporating social signals from Facebook in 2010, and Google, which launched its social search in 2009, would probably both argue that the social dimension to search has already emerged. So would upstart blekko and to a lessor degree, the Russian Yandex.

Armani, Chianti, Ferrari… And Volunia

Volunia is based in Italy, not in Silicon Valley as one might have guessed. Italy actually has a history of search engine excellence. Google may well power most Italian portals today, but the talent behind a now defunct Italian search engine, Arianna, led Ask.com to locate its European RD headquarters in Pisa.

The Reality Check: Search Isn’t Easy: Volunia Faces Many Challenges

The basic task of a search engine, finding, indexing and retrieving the world’s information, is a complex one. The size of the Web is immense. There’s the problem of searcher intent: we know what we’re looking for when we type a brief search query, but those few words are often open to multiple interpretations.

Google has conditioned searchers to expect lightning speed and mostly fresh and relevant results. Volunia will have to perform well on all these fronts and navigate thorny issues of privacy.

Many start-ups have nonetheless tried to compete with Google and Bing. Some, like Cuil, ran out of funding before gathering significant market share; others like blekko, with far greater funding, are still working hard to win over hearts and minds. Whether Volunia will be able to pull this off remains to be seen.

Kick The Volunia Tires Yourself!

Volunia has a sign-up form for those who want to try it out. Go kick the tires and support the underdog! From messages that I’ve seen on Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook, very few have actually had a chance to actually use Volunia, credentials are only dribbling out, most likely in an attempt to avoid problems similar to what Google faced when they first opened Google Analytics to too many people at once. I based the considerations made (and images) in this article on demo videos released by Volunia in order to give you a preview of what to expect.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

About The Author: Sean Carlos is President of Antezeta Web Marketing, based in Milan Italy. As a web marketing teacher and consultant, Sean Carlos helps companies optimize their business results online. He is particularly interested in International SEO, Social Media and Web Analytics. See more articles by Sean Carlos

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/By-YOF9t_6c/volunia-a-social-search-engine-says-the-web-has-come-alive-110462

New: Google Sitelinks With Small Arrows

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:11:51 +0000

Google has confirmed that they are rolling out a new look for their one line sitelinks. The new look has a small arrow on the left side of where the sitelinks begin.

Here is a picture:

A Google spokesperson confirmed that these are indeed new and are “currently rolling out everywhere this week.”

Google has changed the look, layout, and number of sitelinks under a search result drastically over the years. This change is pretty minor, only showing a small little arrow on the left side of the sitelinks.

Google Clarifies: No, Ads Shouldn’t Help Rankings & No, SEO Isn’t Bad

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:11:46 +0000

“SEO isn’t good for users” and “It’s a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads, and Google is trying to fix the bug” are two quotes from a Google employee that go directly against things Google’s said before. The real truth emerging? More like a new Google employee who doesn’t seem to know much about his company.

The employee is Jonathan Rockway. Google confirms he’s a new Googler — or Noogler — as new employees are known. He started in early January. Google didn’t explain what his job is, but he doesn’t appear to be involved in Google’s web search listings process.

SEO Isn’t Good?

That didn’t prevent Rockway from making comments about SEO and ads in a discussion on the Hacker News web site. While sticking up for his new employer, and its move to bring more social content and signals into its search results, Rockway said:

If the social features are relevant, though, then users are getting a better experience. And that’s a good thing, even if individual pages get less traffic from Google. Instead of being able to SEO the entire Internet, businesses can now only affect the search results for a tiny percentage of users. That’s a good thing because SEO can’t scale, and SEO isn’t good for users or the Internet at large.

I’ve bolded the key part. SEO isn’t good for users? As you’d expect, that’s got the attention of some SEOs. Aaron Wall highlighted Rockway’s comments on his SEO Book blog. So did Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable. I’ve also see references to Rockway’s comments making the rounds on social media channels I follow.

Google Says: SEO Isn’t Spam

Google’s official stance is that SEO isn’t bad. The company has repeatedly said this over time. In fact, last October, the head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, did an entire video on how Google doesn’t see SEO as spam. You can watch for yourself:

Google confirmed to me today that the video above “accurately protrays Google’s position” on SEO, rather than what Rockway said.

Ads For Ranking Well?

Perhaps more worrisome, however, was Rockway’s comments about ads. He said:

If you look at the Google experience from the standpoint of customers, it’s pretty good. Users get relevant search results and ads. Advertisers get their content on top of everything else. It’s a good compromise between advertising and usability, and it works really well. It’s a bug that you could rank highly in Google without buying ads, and Google is trying to fix the bug. Manipulating Google results shouldn’t be something you feel entitled to be able to do. If you want to rank highly in Google, be relevant for the user currently searching. Engage him in social media or email, provide relevant information about what you’re selling, and, generally, be a “good match” for what the user wants.

Again, I’ve bolded the key part. That comment suggests that Google is working to change things so that if you want to rank well on Google, you need to be buying ads. That’s pretty loaded stuff.

It’s also not something that seems reasonable. Yes, perhaps this new employee managed to slip-up about the grand master plan. Far more likely, he simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Ads Don’t Matter

Three days after his original comment, Rockway made a 180 degree turn:

I shouldn’t have mentioned ads here. Position on the results page should only depend on the quality of your content; if your site has the best content on the Internet for the user’s search terms, you should be the top result. You shouldn’t be able to change your position in the organic results any other way, like by exploiting bugs in Google’s ranking algorithm. The specifics of the ranking algorithm may change, but if your site is the best, you won’t have to worry about it.

That took care of the ads issue; it still left SEO looking like some type of exploit.

For the record, Google told me this:

As always, Google search rankings are completely unrelated to Google’s paid advertising services and other partnerships, and there is absolutely no way for a webmaster to pay money to increase search rankings.

When it comes to SEO, many owners of high-quality sites can and do get their site listed well in Google’s search results without any outside help. Some site owners prefer to have someone else check and optimize their sites, and for these folks we’ve published some guidelines relating to evaluating SEO companies.

Overall, I’d agree with Cutts, who commented on Twitter that it’s nice to see more Googlers communicating. But I’d say I want that communication from Googlers who actually know what they’re talking about. That didn’t seem to be the case here.

Related Topics: Features: Analysis

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/Wz19o5PTw6I/google-clarifies-no-ads-shouldnt-help-rankings-no-seo-isnt-bad-110673

Wolfram|Alpha Goes Pro With Powerful Data Analysis & Presentation Tools

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:11:42 +0000

Wolfram|Alpha (W|A) is launching a new fee-based service named Wolfram|Alpha Pro. In today’s highly competitive environment, you may wonder why a W|A would ask people to pay for what many think should be free. Read on: you may decide to willingly open your wallet when you see what’s available.

Since Wolfram|Alpha launched in 2009, I’ve often wondered if the company would allow users to use their extremely powerful computing infrastructure to analyze their own data along with data sets available on the open web.

Well, they have and that’s what Wolfram|Alpha Pro is all about. As I wrote a few week’s ago, I’m a frequent W|A user and long-time admirer of the company and it’s founder, Stephen Wolfram. I think they’ve scored again.

The service has an introductory rate of $4.99/month with a reduced rate of $2.99/month for students. The company offers pricing for the enterprise. So, what does this initial launch offer?

Wolfram|Alpha Pro: Key Features

Ability to Analyze Your Own Datasets
Input of upload a data set and let Wolfram’s technology automatically recognize and analyze the data. For example, a timeline of your email, your credit card expenses, or a data set obtained from Data.gov.

Data in more than 60 file formats can be uploaded and analyzed. From an XLS spreadsheet to an HTML document to the audio in a WAV file. Image files (in many formats) can also be analyzed. As you would expect, many science and math formats are also included.

Access to extended keyboards like the one available with the Wolfram|Alpha mobile apps.

Visualized and interactive results using the CDF (computational data format) that Wolfram launched last July.

What’s not available today is the ability to publish and compare, comment on or share results. According to Stephen Wolfram, these options are forthcoming.

I’ll can say now that while some of what Wolfram|Alpha Pro has to offer might not be for everybody today it very likely will be in the future as the amount of data available to analyze (personal data and publicly available datasets) continues to skyrocket.

In other words, Wolfram|Alpha pro is getting in on the ground floor of personal data analysis with a powerful but at the same time very easy to use tool that will appeal to everyone as data analysis moves out of the lab and office and into just about everyplace else.

About The Author: Gary Price is a librarian, author, and an online information analyst based in suburban Washington, DC. He is the co-founder and co-editor of INFOdocket and FullTextReports.com and prior to that was founder/editor of ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. He has worked for Blekko, Ask.com, and at Search Engine Watch where he was news editor. In 2001, Price was the co-author (with Chris Sherman) of the best-selling book The Invisible Web. See more articles by Gary Price

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/HJIYRBTKdBE/wolframalpha-goes-pro-with-powerful-data-analysis-presentation-tools-110653

SPONSOR MESSAGE: Re-Targeting: What You Need to Know to Maximize Conversions and Improve ROI

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:11:20 +0000

Feb 7, 2012 at 3:00pm ET by Search Engine Land

Brought to you by Acquisio, this pre-recorded webcast “Retargeting: What’s
Your Strategy?” featuring The Trade Desk’s Jeff Green will show you:

Why re-targeting/re-messaging is the biggest opportunity in online advertising
Why buying display ads through Google is not enough
How display advertising can lower PPC costs while increasing conversions
The direct benefits of adding display to search

View the pre-recorded webcast now!

Related Topics: Sponsor Messages

About The Author: Search Engine Land is a news and information site covering search engine marketing, searching issues and the search engine industry. Special site announcements and occasional sponsor messages are posted by Search Engine Land. See more articles by Search Engine Land

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/A0FZWXDJn8M/sponsor-message-re-targeting-what-you-need-to-know-to-maximize-conversions-and-improve-roi-109885

SPONSOR MESSAGE: Re-Targeting: What You Need to Know to Maximize Conversions and Improve ROI

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:11:20 +0000

Feb 7, 2012 at 3:00pm ET by Search Engine Land

Brought to you by Acquisio, this pre-recorded webcast “Retargeting: What’s
Your Strategy?” featuring The Trade Desk’s Jeff Green will show you:

Why re-targeting/re-messaging is the biggest opportunity in online advertising
Why buying display ads through Google is not enough
How display advertising can lower PPC costs while increasing conversions
The direct benefits of adding display to search

View the pre-recorded webcast now!

Related Topics: Sponsor Messages

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/A0FZWXDJn8M/sponsor-message-re-targeting-what-you-need-to-know-to-maximize-conversions-and-improve-roi-109885

Did Super Bowl Advertisers Take Advantage of Search Interest?

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:11:13 +0000

Over the past couple of days, numerous stats and figures have been published about how Super Bowl advertisers took advantage (or not) of social media this year. But commercials also drive people to search engines, which in turn (when things go right) can lead potential customers to advertiser web sites where rather than talk about a brand as they can on social media sites, they can watch the commercials again, cementing brand messaging, and take a closer look at the products being sold. (Which is presumably why a company would spend $3.5 million dollars on a thirty second spot in the first place.)

Commercials Drive Searches

Since the 2009 Super Bowl, I’ve monitored how the ads influence search interest, and every year, the trend has been the same. As people watch the Super Bowl, they search for everything they’re watching: teams, players, performers, and of course, commercials. The trend continues the day after the game as people talk about the commercials and turn to Google (and Bing) to watch them again. Take a look at the spiking searches for February 7th, the day after the game according to Google Trends:

Nearly every search is Super Bowl related, and searchers are clearly seeking out the ads. As you can see from search #8, commercials often cause people to search for the brands directly. Google Insights for Search shows that brands that advertised saw significant search spikes on Sunday. See for instance, the search volume for [bud light platinum].

They seemed to have really liked those ads in Iowa.

Google reported that searches for [super bowl ads] were 122 times higher this year than last year and that the big search winners were Acura, GoDaddy, and MMs.

Where Are Advertisers Sending Potential Customers?

As I do every year, I took note of what advertisers included in the commercial. Did they include a web site URL? A Facebook page? Did they seem to even be aware of this crazy new thing called the internet? And then I looked at the advertisers’ search visibility. I was looking for the following flow:

Last year, many only paid attention to a flow like this:

I understand that Super Bowl commercials are about branding, not necessarily instant purchases, and I realize other positive outcomes exist (discussions on social media and the like). I’m just saying that if someone is searching for you, you may as well show up. And if you’ve gotten potential customers to view your commercial, you may as well make it easy for them to view more information about your products.

This year, many advertisers simply included their domain name in the ad (33 of the 53 advertisers I tracked did this). This approach can help cut out the search step, although as the response to the Dockers ad during the 2010 Super Bowl showed, advertising a URL causes people to, well, search for the URL. So you can’t always cut out the search step, no matter how hard you try.

Last year’s Super Bowl ads were all about Facebook fan pages (that often were impossible to find; don’t say “find us on Facebook” unless that’s an achievable task). This year, only fourof the ads included a nod to Facebook and all used actual URLs. Pepsi Max even went with an easy to remember redirect to Facebook: pepsimax.com/facebook.

Four commercials advertised Twitter hashtags (last year was the first year for this, and then it was mostly only for movie trailers). I was astonished to find that when a hashtag was included in a commercial, people instantly started using it to tweet about the commercial and the hashtag began trending. (As you can see, even the bands with songs in the commercials started trending.)

Of course, there’s a risk in this strategy. Things may go really well, as Audi found with #SoLongVampires, or very awry as Bud Light found with #MAKEITPLATINUM. (Did people really even use the same capitalization in the hashtag as was used in the commercial? Amazing.)

What began trending on Twitter also tended to show search spikes. For instance, take a look at searches for [echo and the bunnymen]:

So what we talk about, we also search for.

The Future is… QR Codes?

It may have seemed like GoDaddy used the same tired formula as always in their ads (although, apparently sex does sell, so I can’t knock sticking with something that works), but in fact, they tried something new this year: including a QR code in the ad.

The online version of the commercial includes the QR during the entire length of the ad, but when aired during the Super Bowl, it appeared only briefly at the end, so I’m not sure if anyone managed to pull up the QR code reader on their mobile phone, rush to the TV, and scan it before it disappeared from the screen. Including it in the online version seems even more nonsensical though, as the idea seems to be that you’re watching the ad on your computer, see the QR code, scan it with your phone, and are brought to the godaddy.com site on your phone. I would guess that including a link to the web site in the commercial so that you can simply click and access the web site on your computer would make entering your credit card information for all those domain names quite a bit easier.

Scoring Search Visibility

So how did advertisers do in search? It’s difficult to come up with exact search coverage percentages. For instance, if a brand advertised multiple products and ranked well in search results for one product but not the other does the tick mark for that brand go in the yes or no column for search visibility? What if the product showed up for its name but not for its tagline?

For the purposes of the stats below, I used the following guidelines:

I counted each brand once, even if they aired ads for multiple products
If they ranked organically for at least one of brand, product, or tagline queries, I put a yes in the organic search column
If they had a paid search ad for at least one of brand, product, or tagline queries, I put a yes in the paid search column

In a follow up column, I’ll point out some interesting choices, but for now, let’s just look at how well advertisers thought out web sites, search, and social media.

Of the 53 brands I tracked:

33 ended the ad with a URL to the brand site, 4 went with a Twitter hashtag, and 4 sent viewers to Facebook.
44 bought a paid search ad
51 ranked organically for the brand name (although far fewer ranked for the promoted taglines or hashtags)

Chrysler and YouTube

Last year, Chrysler’s Eminem ad was one of the most popular commercials of the game. I found it odd at the time that although they designed their site’s home page to tie in quite well to the vibe of that ad, they bought search ads to the commercial on YouTube. I felt they lost an opportunity to further interact with potential customers and lost some control of the experience (related videos could easily be to competitors, for instance). Their flow looked like this:

That’s not a bad outcome, but I thought that if they had used paid search to drive visitors to the commercial on their site, they might have been able to better leveraged the opportunity. This year, Chrysler once again had a much-talked-about ad, and they decided to mix things up a bit.

For [chrysler]-related searches, the paid search ad points at their home page, which is a great tie in to the commercial. But for other searches, they’ve once again chosen to promote YouTube.

This time, the YouTube link makes a lot more sense as it’s to the channel, so there are no competitor links and the entire page is focused on getting votes for the YouTube AdBlitz, engaging socially, and even includes an ad for the car featured in the commercial. All in all, I fully support this approach. They keep the branded searches pointing at their home page (after all, not everyone searching for the brand is searching for the commercial), which is tightly-integrated with the campaign, and they send those looking for the commercial to a page designed to specifically engage with them. What a difference a year makes.

2012 Paid Search Ad to YouTube:

2011 Paid Search Ad to YouTube:

Acura NSX vs. Bud Light Platinum

We’ve already seen that the #makeitplatinum hashtag strategy both worked and didn’t work for Bud Light (they definitely got it trending, but for perhaps the wrong reasons). What about organic search visibility? Sadly, the brand web site doesn’t appear at all in Google for searches for [bud light platinum] (although they have bought a paid search ad to the YouTube page).

Acura NSX, on the other hand (which was a spiking search on Monday), does an excellent job with organic search, taking the top spot with a page devoted to it. (Although including the commercial on the page would have been a good idea.)

Overall, I felt brands did a much better job of keeping things simple and driving viewers to interesting, relevant pages that engaged them. Watch for my next post in the coming days for some specifics on what went right and spectacularly wrong.

About The Author: Vanessa Fox is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. She shares her perspectives on how search impacts marketing, user experience, and web development at ninebyblue.com. Her book, Marketing in the Age of Google, provides a blueprint for incorporating search strategy into organizations of all levels. Follow her on Twitter at @vanessafox. See more articles by Vanessa Fox

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/ommJBOyEWiQ/did-super-bowl-advertisers-take-advantage-of-search-interest-110444

Did Super Bowl Advertisers Take Advantage of Search Interest?

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:11:13 +0000

Commercials Drive Searches

They seemed to have really liked those ads in Iowa.

Google reported that searches for [super bowl ads] were 122 times higher this year than last year and that the big search winners were Acura, GoDaddy, and MMs.

Where Are Advertisers Sending Potential Customers?

Last year, many only paid attention to a flow like this:

What began trending on Twitter also tended to show search spikes. For instance, take a look at searches for [echo and the bunnymen]:

So what we talk about, we also search for.

The Future is… QR Codes?

Scoring Search Visibility

For the purposes of the stats below, I used the following guidelines:

I counted each brand once, even if they aired ads for multiple products
If they ranked organically for at least one of brand, product, or tagline queries, I put a yes in the organic search column
If they had a paid search ad for at least one of brand, product, or tagline queries, I put a yes in the paid search column

In a follow up column, I’ll point out some interesting choices, but for now, let’s just look at how well advertisers thought out web sites, search, and social media.

Of the 53 brands I tracked:

33 ended the ad with a URL to the brand site, 4 went with a Twitter hashtag, and 4 sent viewers to Facebook.
44 bought a paid search ad
51 ranked organically for the brand name (although far fewer ranked for the promoted taglines or hashtags)

Chrysler and YouTube

For [chrysler]-related searches, the paid search ad points at their home page, which is a great tie in to the commercial. But for other searches, they’ve once again chosen to promote YouTube.

2012 Paid Search Ad to YouTube:

2011 Paid Search Ad to YouTube:

Acura NSX vs. Bud Light Platinum

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/ommJBOyEWiQ/did-super-bowl-advertisers-take-advantage-of-search-interest-110444

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 7, 2012

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:10:57 +0000

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Did Super Bowl Advertisers Take Advantage of Search Interest?
Over the past couple of days, numerous stats and figures have been published about how Super Bowl advertisers took advantage (or not) of social media this year. But commercials also drive people to search engines, which in turn (when things go right) can lead potential customers to advertiser web sites where rather than talk about [...]
Volunia, A Social Search Engine, Says The Web Has Come Alive
Google might be synonymous with the word search in most of the world, but that hasn’t dissuaded others from bringing new search engines to the market, usually aiming to innovate in an area where Google has somehow let up its guard. Volunia, launched this week, promises to help searchers with three distinguishing features: High level site [...]
Guide To Finding Linkbuilding Targets With Social Media
There’s been a lot of debate in the SEO community lately regarding social media versus traditional linkbuilding methods. While some SEOs argue that social media links are the wave of the SEO future, traditionalists staunchly maintain traditional, authoritative links from quality sources are still the best way to go. Whatever your stance, I think it’s [...]
Do I Change My Site In The UK To Comply With New Cookie Laws?
People are generally vaguely aware that debates have been taking place in Europe over new legislation which principally affects the use of “Cookies”. European legislation is inevitably more complex than elsewhere because of the way it is drafted by the European Commission and then individually interpreted, translated and re-drafted by each country. Today, I’m focusing [...]
9 Free Tools For Link Discovery Content Creation
Every day it seems that there’s a new tool out there to monitor, measure, track, and suggest what we should be doing. Many of these are free or offer free trials, which I love, but finding the time to test out a new tool in order to see if it suits you isn’t always easy. [...]
Google Still #1 Traffic Source For Most Of Top 30 Websites — Report
This may surprise no one: Google is the leading source of traffic for 23 of the top 30 websites. That’s according to Citi analyst Mark Mahaney in a document released yesterday to clients. Based on underlying comScore data, the report analyzes visits to the top five websites in several verticals: Media, Retail, Travel, Auto, Finance [...]
The Characters In Google’s Charles Dickens Logo
Google is honoring the life of of Charles Dickens with a special Google Logo, aka Doodle, for his 200th birthday. The logo contains several characters from some of his more well known works. The characters include: Nell and her grandfather in the The Old Curiosity Shop Several characters from Little Dorrit Oliver and his friends [...]
Under Threat Of Being Blocked Google, Facebook Comply With India’s New Internet Censorship Rules
After China and the US, India is the third largest internet market in the world. But India has philosophically aligned itself more with China in pursuing a policy of censorship toward publication of content deemed “offensive” or “objectionable” by individuals, groups or the government. A recently enacted law seeks to remove all such content from [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications Portal Features

Introducing Chrome for Android, Official Google Blog
January in Review: Styles, Sparklines, Google+ sharing, and more, Google Docs Blog
Product Pulse- February 7th, 2012, Yodel Anecdotal

Business Issues

Google Loses Bid to Exclude E-Mail From Oracle Trial, BusinessWeek
Four Yahoo Board Members Depart, 2 New Ones Arrive and 3 More Coming, AllThingsD
Hijacking WeSolveForX.com Under Google X-Labs Nose, beu blog
LinkedIn Is Acquiring Contacts Start-Up Rapportive, AllThingsD
Mandeep Mason Joins Microsoft Advertising as Director of Mobile Advertising Sales in EMEA, Microsoft Advertising Blog
Yahoo! Releases Chairman’s Update for Shareholders, Yahoo Press Releases

Local, Maps Mobile

Yelp Ads Are Not A Rip Off, You Pay To Seal The Deal, TechCrunch
And that makes 40! Google Offers launches in Oklahoma City and Omaha, Google Commerce
Apple Promises A Crack Down On Those Who Manipulate App Store Rankings, paidContent.org
Was 2011 really the Year of the Mobile?, periscopix.co.uk

Link Building

How Google detects paid links, SEOprofiler Blog

Searching

Consumers Concerned About Personalized Search Results, eMarketer
What’s your X? Amplifying technology moonshots, Official Google Blog

SEM Industry

Googler Claims SEO Is Bad For The Internet, Search Engine Roundtable
Queen of Link: Interview with Debra Mastaler, SEO Copywriting

SEO SEM

10 Immutable Laws of SEO, evergreensearch.com
Building a Technical SEO Process, SEOmoz
Checking the False Promises of Google+ Optimization, SEO Theory
Future of SEO: Change, Convergence, Collaboration, Search Engine Watch
Hair Club garners 30:1 return on investment using Google mobile ads, Google Mobile Ads Blog
How to Avoid 7 PPC Analysis Pitfalls, Search Engine Watch
Love Me Tender: Uploading Negatives Into Bing, PPC Hero
New Panda Poll: Did You Recover From Google’s Panda, Search Engine Roundtable
Print Publicity and Organic SEO – A Comparison, Pandia
SEO exam questions: A sample, Conversation Marketing
The Challenge of Selling SEO Forgetting the ‘Human Ranking Factor’, SEOptimise
Why don’t 404 pages disappear immediately from search results?, YouTube

Social Media

8 Ways Employees Can Improve Your Company’s LinkedIn Presence, blueglass.com
Those Millions on Facebook? Some May Not Actually Visit, New York Times

Video, Music Image Search

Video Search Online Versus Connected TV Search Discovery?, reelseo.com

Related Topics: SearchCap

Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/Jy6dmUqSusc/searchcap-the-day-in-search-february-7-2012-110614

Search Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing (SEO & SEM) Blog» SEO

Interesting Quotes From Google’s Search Lead, Amit Singhal

Amit At Google:

Google Tests Algorithms:

Future Of Google Search:

Related Stories:

Survey: People Largely Negative About Google’s Personalized Search Results

Do you like the idea of personalizing search results based on past searches and info from your social networking sites?

How To Make Unstructured Data Actionable In Display

Unstructured Data Volumes Exploding

The Old Way: Creating Static Segments

Search Marketers Know Better

Elementary, My Dear Marketers

Making Unstructured Data Actionable In Display

Bing Testing New Search Results Design

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 8, 2012

adCenter Releases Features Aimed At Improving Advertiser Time-Efficiency

Browser Compatibility With Safari Chrome

My Take: Manage adCenter from your iPad!

Device Targeting

My Take: Include this in your 2012 plans

Ad Description Length Increased To 71 Characters

My Take: The Little Things Really Do Matter!

Resources:

3 Steps To Optimize Your B2B Informational Assets

1. Select Specific Keywords For Each Asset

2. Optimize Webpages Asset Content

3. Utilize Social Channels

If You Have Online Assets – Optimize Them!

Apple’s Siri Drives 25 Percent Of Wolfram|Alpha Queries

The Neuroscience Of Search & Conversion

What They See In Brainwaves

Attention

Emotional Engagement

Memory Retention

Sizing Up Sites

The Relationship Between Attention Emotional Engagement

The Relationship Between Relevance Memory Retention

Priming Visitors

Connecting

For-Me

Advice

Lessons Learned

Why Does Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine Hate Rick Santorum?

It’s A Search Engine Problem, Not A Google Problem

Santorum Bing: Just Like Google

Does It Matter?

The SafeSearch Solution

It’s Not An Irrelevant “Google Bomb”

But How About A Disclaimer?

But Spreading Santorum Is Here To Stay

Related Entries

Google Screenwise: New Program Pays You To Give Up Privacy & Surf The Web With Chrome

Volunia, A Social Search Engine, Says The Web Has Come Alive

Volunia Search Result Previews Offer A “Fly-Over” Site View

Volunia Wants To Surface Multimedia Otherwise Hidden In A Site

The Web Has Come Alive, Says Volunia: Volunia’s Social Layer

Seek Meet: Interact With Other Volunia Users

Volunia, The Company, And A Few Volunia Tidbits

Marchiori Says Social Needs To Emerge In Search

Armani, Chianti, Ferrari… And Volunia

The Reality Check: Search Isn’t Easy: Volunia Faces Many Challenges

Kick The Volunia Tires Yourself!

New: Google Sitelinks With Small Arrows

More Sitelinks Articles:

Google Clarifies: No, Ads Shouldn’t Help Rankings & No, SEO Isn’t Bad

SEO Isn’t Good?

Google Says: SEO Isn’t Spam

Ads For Ranking Well?

Ads Don’t Matter

Wolfram|Alpha Goes Pro With Powerful Data Analysis & Presentation Tools

Wolfram|Alpha Pro: Key Features

SPONSOR MESSAGE: Re-Targeting: What You Need to Know to Maximize Conversions and Improve ROI

SPONSOR MESSAGE: Re-Targeting: What You Need to Know to Maximize Conversions and Improve ROI

Did Super Bowl Advertisers Take Advantage of Search Interest?

Commercials Drive Searches

Where Are Advertisers Sending Potential Customers?

The Future is… QR Codes?

Scoring Search Visibility

Chrysler and YouTube