May
31st

1 in 2? I Need Better Odds Than That!

Posted by Vern on May 31, 2006 at 3:33 pm

According to a recent Nilesen/Netratings Inc. analysis, Google’s market share is now 50%. That’s huge! One out of every two searches is a Google search. If you’re in the paid search marketing game, my advice might be to keep your search marketing simple and advertise only on Google. You’ll be exposed to half of all search traffic.

One out of two is great odds. How can you go wrong with a strategy like that? Why even bother advertising on any other search engine when success is practically guaranteed? We can look to the current NHL Stanley Cup playoffs for the answer.

Being from Michigan and a hockey fan, of course I root for the Detroit Red Wings. The Wings were the best team in the NHL during the regular season and expectations were running high for another championship. The Red Wing franchise is a juggernaut. Great ownership, well funded, a huge fan base, and arguably the most talented players in the game. A real power play!

If you follow the NHL you know it all went terribly wrong for the Wings in the playoffs this year. They drew the lowly Edmonton Oilers, the #8 seed, in the first round. Pundits predicted a sweep for the heavily favored Detroit squad. Well guess what? Detroit lost to Edmonton in the first round. The Wings are now practicing chip shots and doing yard work instead of heading to the Stanley Cups finals like the Oilers.

How could this have happened to the vaunted Red Wings? They ran up against a team of young, motivated, well-coached, never-say-die players with a burning desire to beat the best. That sounds like a new player in the SEM game to me.

Microsoft AdCenter has Google in its sights and aims to chip away at Google’s audience share and someday dominate the paid search market. Google, Yahoo, Ask, and now more than ever, Microsoft are the significant players in search marketing as I see it. Sure Google dominates, but it needs to react to the competition and improve its performance to stay #1. Underestimating the threat of competition, especially a young upstart with a heritage of success, could prove fatal.

A word of advice to paid search marketing practitioners: maximize your results by using the other teams in search as well as Google. Improve your odds by betting on more competitors than the favorite – Great advice in search engine marketing or hockey. Come to think of it, how’s Barbaro feeling these days, eh?

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May
30th

A Fly to Dung

Posted by admin on May 30, 2006 at 4:42 pm

I’ll be honest. I judge books by their covers, and I have since I was little. The true reason why is because I am a designer. I have more books on my bookshelf than I would care to admit that are completely void of plot or character… but they sure do have quality cover artwork. It always happens when I’m at the bookstore and I “want something different”. If I know what I want before I go to the bookstore, I’m ok, but if I’m just browsing, I’m in serious trouble. The little blurb on the back of the book sounds so much more enticing when it’s paired with a well designed cover and a no name writer from the area.

This goes for books, albums, and now podcasts. I find myself looking for something new and cool, relying on looks and ending up disappointed. For example, I was looking for a fun poker podcast and came across Poker Punk. The title was catchy, and I dig mohawks, so I was set. It wasn’t until I actually listened to the podcast that I discoverd the audio quality was remedial at best, content was lacking, and the annoying phaser sound effect was icing on the cake.

So I have learned my lesson… it really is about the content, and not the design. But then again, what got me there? For successful books and podcasts to ads and flash banners, you need both.

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May
25th

eBay Fever – A Newbie Goes Shopping

Posted by Anne on May 25, 2006 at 10:43 am

Okay, you’re right! I finally succumbed to peer pressure; I’m purchasing my unmentionables on the web! Breaking promises and a core belief that shopping on the internet would never enter the realms of my simple existence, I agreed to try it once. With sweaty palms and first date jitters, I asked eBay to be my companion for the evening. Now to most of you reading this blog, eBay has been around as long as bottled water. To me, however, the act of purchasing products online violates an additional commandment: “Thou Shall Not Make Purchases on the Internet with a Credit Card.” I mean, c’mon, we’ve all heard of identity theft and once you lose your identity, some say you lose your mind!

In spite of my biased values, I proceeded into the vast unknown of eBay bidding. I remember the lonely, cold, spring night like it was yesterday – the blue, glowing hue from my PC (they were called IBMs in my time) beckoned me to its keyboard, the mouse inched towards my right hand ready for me to take command. A friend of mine told me that the deals on eBay are phenomenal. I thought; let’s try it, just this once.

With a new haircut in order, a flat iron hair straightener was in the forefront of my purchasing mind. Amazingly, a “hair straightener” search revealed 14 pages of straighteners to select from. What’s this bid button and confirm button? I decided to try it out and see; low and behold, I won my first bid! With the words CONGRATULATIONS skipping across the screen, I was thrilled. Pay Pal had instantly become my new friend, my new confidant, my new-found pal. We would be friends forever. But what’s this? United Kingdom? My hair straightener is from the United Kingdom? How did that happen? Could it be that eBay is global? It was never mentioned on the home page – didn’t they know I was a newcomer to the world of online commerce? This just can’t be; it should have been in the description. Great, I’ll just use my back button, read the description, e-mail the seller and just let them know that I can’t use this in the United States and retract my bid. Wrong again eBay bidder, you buy it or your reputation is tainted forever. You will be tossed out of eBay world, never again allowed to return to the eBay family. Well at the risk of being rejected by this new-found market, I resigned myself to the fact that a lesson learned is just that, a lesson learned.

Now an experienced online shopper, I sometimes wonder what might happen to this market if there are not enough sellers out there, but plenty of buyers? You know the simple rule of supply and demand – prices rise and the whole concept of saving money by buying online evaporates. Maybe eBay needs to develop a few incentives to entice sellers to list items on its website – just something to think about, eBay.

Well, I hear the eBay howl calling me. I’m running through the alphabet and have almost completed my letter A searches. Tonight I’m searching for adapters; my new hair straightener just arrived. After that bid, I’m moving on to the Arbonne MinC RE9 Set, can you believe it, Arbonne on eBay too. As my fingertips roll across my keyboard, I hear those four keywords from my hubby, “Honey, time for dinner.” My stomach tells me it’s time for a break. There’s no need to search for another letter A word – I think I’ve already found addiction.

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May
24th

Microsoft adCenter – Foxes Need Not Apply

Posted by admin on May 24, 2006 at 12:13 pm

I’ve been excited about the opportunities that exist with the much anticipated release of Microsoft adCenter and recently got a chance to take the reins for the first time. My initial idea behind this post was to share my adCenter paid search marketing experience, however that didn’t happen. In fact, I didn’t get much past the main login page before becoming frustrated. What lead to my frustration you ask? Allow me to explain.

Around here, the majority of us use Firefox as our primary web browser, as do many people in the tech industry. Naturally I opened up adCenter in Firefox, entered my login and password and was prompted to make my next selection. Upon making my next selection I received a nice caution message from Microsoft, telling me, “You do not have a valid session or your session has expired. Click OK to get automatically redirected to login.”

What? Wait a minute, didn’t I just login and select a campaign?

After selecting OK, as Microsoft prompted me to, I was taken back to the main login page. Thinking that this was just a fluke incident, I tried to login for a second time. Again, same sequence of events, followed by the nice Microsoft error message. After a couple more tries, I became familiar with the bright yellow triangle and exclamation point, thinking it would be a nice addition to the Microsoft Office Assistant.

After multiple failed attempts at logging in, I gave up and turned to the web community for help. A very brief search proved that Firefox is not compatible with Microsoft adCenter. Let’s just say I wasn’t the least bit surprised. However, after a visit to the adCenter FAQ page, I was surprised to find out that not only does it not support Firefox, adCenter doesn’t support Internet Explorer 7 (beta) or Safari.

I was coming to the realization that I must once again, kick the tires and light the fires under Internet Explorer to accomplish my tasks. After my day-long rant and rave about the incompatibility of adCenter with Firefox, I ran across a helpful tool that solved my dilemma, saving me from running two browsers at the same time – the IE Tab 1.0.9 found in the top extension downloads for Firefox. This handy tool allows me to use Microsoft adCenter successfully, without exiting Firefox.

Approximately 10% of web visitors worldwide use Firefox. I believe it’s safe to say this 10% is comprised of many tech savvy individuals. That said, wouldn’t Microsoft want to allow these individuals to sign up for services? After all, it’s money in their pocket. Just before publishing this, I read a recent post in the adCenter Blog that briefly addressed this issue, moving Firefox and Mac support up on their priority list. Though this puts my mind at ease for the time being, how long will it really take for Microsoft adCenter to take action on the cross browser compatibility issue? We can only wait and see. Until then, set your frustrations aside; download the IE Tab Extension for Firefox.

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May
23rd

The Niche Search Market

Posted by Chip on May 23, 2006 at 12:26 pm

The major players of the search engine world are constantly tweaking their algorithms in an effort to improve their results. While each one would like you to think that their results are more relevant than the next, I can’t help but wonder if this is where the true opportunity lies.

While I agree that some engines are clearly better than others at what they do; whether they return better results, have a more user friendly interface or simply do a reasonable job filtering spam, this is not what this post is about, and so I will keep these opinions to myself.

What I would like to explore is the potential opportunities of niche market search engines. After all, the major players can tweak their algorithms over and over and when it’s all said and done there is only so much they can do in regards to relevancy. While I don’t want them to stop improving their results, there will inevitably come a day when our answers aren’t always going to be found within the 10 results that are generated on the page of text we call search results. We are no longer in a world with a limited internet, and search engines can not always provide the best information for each type of query.

Not to say that niche market engines don’t already exist; there are many already trying to establish themselves in their associated markets and more are popping up all the time.

A few notables include:

Kosmix.com: This search engine allows users to select specific topics that include health, finance, travel, US politics and even video games to perform a search within.

ZoomInfo.com: This search engine is designed to provide information specifically about people, companies and relationships.

Vast.com & Oodle.com: Both of these allow users to search classified listings throughout the country.

Big.com: This search engine doesn’t target a niche market, but rather a niche demographic. Displaying search results in a larger format, Big.com is sure to gain in popularity as we all continue to age.

Become.com: This, along with many others, is a vertical shopping engine that allows users to find consumer products on e-commerce sites by a variety of different criteria.

Scirus.com: For the scientific community, this search engine provides a portal to the world of scientific information.

Globalspec.com: This engine is specifically for engineers and targets information and products relevant to the scientific and technical markets.

CitySearch.com: In their words, “Your Guide to Everything Local”, this engine allows you to search for products, information and services specific to your geographic location.

Of course we can’t forget the already popular travel industry related search engines including, but not limited to, Expedia.com, Orbitz.com and Travelocity.com.

I guess the fate of these engines will come down to good old marketing, as it always does, though. While they do provide a good resource for these niche markets, success will only come after people begin to find them. Once discovered by their target audiences, these niche engines will surely get used, get bookmarked, get recommend to peers and get the opportunity for prosperity and longevity within the competitive world of search.

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