Nov
18th

Google Image Search – To Steal or Not to Steal

Posted by Quillen on November 18, 2008 at 2:07 pm

It’s a graphic designer’s dirty little secret. A plethora of images of anything you can think of, all for free! That’s right, good old Google Image Search. Well, if you’re thinking of pulling an image from some random site via Google images, think again my friend. Though it is a useful resource, just because an image appears in a Google image search does not make it free for the taking.

computer crime

According to Google:

The images identified by the Google Image Search service may be protected by copyrights. Although you can locate and access the images through our service, we cannot grant you any rights to use them for any purpose other than viewing them on the web. Accordingly, if you would like to use any images you have found through our service, we advise you to contact the site owner to obtain the requisite permissions.

In other words, the original creators of the images own the copyrights. When you click on an image and are redirected to their website, it will hopefully provide more information on the image’s copyright (or the lack thereof). Specifically, look for a copyright statement somewhere (usually on the bottom) or a Terms of Use section.

Images published in the U.S. are automatically copyrighted by their owners, even if they do not explicitly carry a copyright warning. Therefore, you may not reproduce copyright images without their owner’s permission, except in fair use cases, or you could risk running into a lawyer’s warnings, cease-and-desist letters, and copyright suits.

Recently in Germany, Google has learned that there is “kein fairer gebrauch” or “no fair use”. The internet search giant lost two German copyright decisions, as the courts ruled that the thumbnail images that appear in Google Image Search violate German copyright law. The company said in an email that it believes “that services like Google Image Search are entirely legal and provide great value and critical information to Internet users.” “Today’s decision is very bad for Internet users in Germany,” Google added.

What does this mean for U.S. citizens who use Google Images? Nothing different yet, but many sources say this will most likely start a chain reaction and could possibly spread to the U.S.

There are millions of pictures on the internet, and the odds are pretty good that no one will care if you use one for non-commercial purposes (like a personal blog). If someone does end up caring, they will most likely ask you nicely to take it down before taking any kind of legal action… hopefully.

For more information about copyright as it stands in the United States, be sure to check out: Copyright.gov

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Nov
17th

SEO? Check. PPC? Check. What's Next?

Posted by Teal on November 17, 2008 at 11:37 am

With the gloom of the current economic struggles upon us, it’s common for companies to wonder what else can be done to capitalize on marketing budget already spent.

If investments have already been made to improve organic search listings and steps have already been taken to optimize pay-per-click campaigns, it’s time to think about what can be done to make the most of this financial and time investment.

Image: 311 Steps by glennharper

Specifically related to capitalizing on search marketing campaigns, there are a couple of things you can tighten up to ensure that the dollars spent in this channel are performing optimally.

First and foremost, if you haven’t already, make sure you have accurate and dependable tracking/analytics in place. Sadly, it’s all too often that money is spent with no real data to prove return in investment or worse, to prove lack of return on investment. Oneupweb clients and project managers use ROI trax—our proprietary search reporting tool—to track ROI on search marketing campaigns. By having access to precise data you will be able to make educated decisions about what your company should do next to make the most of this marketing channel.

Secondly, and only through accurate reporting can this truly be determined, your team should take a good hard look at the numbers to see what users are doing once they get to your site. If search campaigns are driving relevant traffic to the site, what’s happening when they get there? What’s the conversion rate? What’s the bounce rate? Is there evidence that your website is delivering the data needed for visitors to move to the next step? If the data shows that your website has a low conversion rate, some simple alterations could make a big difference. Speaking with an online marketing expert will help you determine if usability or conversion improvement services are right for you.

As always, if you have any questions about what’s next in online marketing for your company, please contact Oneupweb. We’re ready to chat!

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Nov
14th

Spam on the Run – Email Spammers Get Shut Down

Posted by Christopher on November 14, 2008 at 2:17 pm

Subject Line: Is it you? Anja here…

Body: I am lonely girl from Eastern Europe who found your email and who is thinking ‘what is not love if not two people be happy and for respect?’

Oh, Anja. I feel it. I do. Because what is not love if not two people be happy and for respect?

What is not love if I’m not sending myself, from my own email address, helpful savings on Cialis? How thoughtful of me! I must know something I don’t know. What is not love if I’m not IMMEDIATELY HELPING a member of Nigerian royalty claim his rightful inheritance?

What is not love? Not love is what dropped like fifty tons of wet cement all over McColo Corp., a web hosting firm based in San Jose, California, as of Tuesday.

After a lengthy investigation into spam-related activities, the Washington Post’s Security Fix contacted McColo’s ISP providers, Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric. After reviewing the overwhelming evidence of super-economy sized spamming, McColo was promptly shut down.

Thus, the factory churning out more spam than Hormel (zing!) grinds to a halt, and a jillion Viagra-laden image-based missives dissolve into simpler particles.

spam by cursedthing
Image: SPAM! by cursedthing

McColo, it is reported, was responsible for 75% of the spam blasted to email addresses world-wide. Say that slowly: seventy-five percent. Holy schmokes, that’s a whole lotta spam. And, in a rare instance of ensuing reality nearly matching expectations, in the days that followed the amount of junk email, globally, dropped by roughly two-thirds. Spam filters worldwide, anthropomorphized, breathe a huge sigh of relief as what was once a seemingly unstoppable onslaught becomes a mere trickle.

“We can handle this,” say the spam filters. “You guys rest easy…”

But should we? As we speak, the throne of the King of Spam sits vacant, but the minions are restless. How long before someone else picks up the gauntlet? The thing about spam is that, even in an age this jaded, it works. I don’t condone it but spam works. People respond. People buy. It’s strafe-bomb marketing. You only get one hit in a million emails? Then send out a trillion. Still not enough? Then send out a trillion every minute. It’s getting blocked? Change the format. Then send out a trillion. Every minute.

Spam is the cockroach of digital communication. For every one you kill, a hundred hatch. After the apocalypse all there’s going to be left are cockroaches, rats, and email spam. And, just like any other profitable mutation, it has its own beauty. The love letters written by robots. The gut-punch appeals to raw human need. It’s pure marketing, unencumbered by conscience.

But not, apparently, by repercussions.

PS – Please feel free to sing the first part of the title to the tune of “Band on the Run” by either Paul McCartney and Wings or the Foo Fighters (your choice). I did.

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Nov
13th

SEO Helps Small Companies be the Big Fish

Posted by admin on November 13, 2008 at 1:38 pm

One of the benefits of working at Oneupweb is our location here in Traverse City, Michigan. Not familiar with northwest lower Michigan? Check out the Our Area page for a small photo sampling.

Oneupweb is located at the southeast corner of Leelanau County, which makes our office a great starting point for after-work and weekend excursions. One-stop-sign towns are scattered throughout Leelanau County, and are nestled in and around natural and man-made landmarks such as the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and the Grand Traverse Lighthouse.

Leelanau County is the kind of place that thrives on tourists and summer residents from May through September but turns peacefully silent the moment the last orange leaf blows off the maple tree.

Following the great exodus, the million dollar question many Leelanau County locals try to answer is how to make a good enough living to allow for the opportunity to live here year around. As a result, a handful of enterprising individuals have created businesses specializing in niche products with a Leelanau County flair.

For the most part, these companies rely on internet mail order, local and national word-of-mouth (tourists are great at word-of-mouth), catalog mailings, the holiday gift show circuit, holiday gift giving and pleading with those Oprah people in Chicago to get in on some list.

Some of these companies have done an amazing job with these marketing techniques and are distributing their products all over the world, while others are still trying to get off the ground. Locally these companies are big fish in a small pond, but nationally they are small fish in a big lake.

So how does search engine optimization (SEO) fit into this?

I ran a few of these local companies’ product keywords through the old Google machine and with the exception of one company that is a giant in the cherry products industry, none of them placed very high on a search engine results page (SERP).

After poking around a few of their websites, it didn’t take long to start finding substantial mistakes which hampered their ability to place strongly on a SERP. Not good for the little fish.

Now this is where SEO can turn that little Yellow Perch of a Leelanau County business into the proverbial King Salmon.

What gets me excited about SEO is that it can give a small mail order company with an incredible product the opportunity to have a large presence in its given market.

Marketing departments, in companies large and small, need to consider how SEO can help give them the exposure that they are working so hard for.

Don’t be the little fish in the pond. Learn how SEO can give you the opportunity to be the big fish.

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Nov
12th

A Mom's Buying Cycle – Catalog to Search Engine to Store to Website

Posted by Duncan on November 12, 2008 at 2:57 pm

I want to share the story of how my wife recently acquired our Burley Honey Bee baby bicycle trailer. It was a beautiful blend of direct mail catalog, search engine research, in store kicking the tires, and ultimately a website purchase.

2008 brought us our wonderful new baby girl. She is growing up so fast! It has been fun to shop for her, and even more fun for me to watch her mom, my wife, do the shopping online.

Yes, as a longtime search/online marketer, even my wife becomes a case study to me.

I know what you are thinking – Mom must get pretty sick of me looking over her shoulder every time she goes online to shop for the baby. You’re right. I have to be stealth about it, or she’ll stop shopping until I have left the room.

We are avid outdoors people. But this year we hardly touched our bikes through the spring and summer. The time had come to go beyond the walking and jogging strollers. Fall was here and there was still some good weather.

We’d been thinking about getting a baby trailer for our bikes for awhile. Then it came – REI’s latest direct mail catalog. Before I had a chance to toss the catalog in the recycle bin, my wife was flipping through the sales pages and found Burley’s Honey Bee trailer.

Magic. Just what we have been waiting for.

My wife realizes that I require due diligence and shopping comparison for any item that has a price tag over $100. So she went to the search engines to see if the direct mail catalog price for the Honey Bee was competitive.

Here’s a glimpse at what she found in Google:

google search screenshot

You can see that the REI website was listed high in the organic search listings, and also had a paid search ad on the right side of the page. As Burley is a popular brand, it was no surprise to see several other advertisers in the paid listings. Google also provided a few Shopping Results that helped with price research.

After clicking on all the relevant sites, we determined that REI’s print-catalog sale price was indeed the best price anywhere. We then factored in shipping costs and any REI.com coupons we could find to determine the final price. It still looked like the best deal.

I would also like to give REI credit for having the same price on the website that it had in the catalog.

Next step was to make sure we liked the trailer enough to buy it. We went to Burley’s website to find dealers near us, then hopped in the car and drove to a local bike shop to look at the Honey Bee. The trailer seemed tough enough for us, but the local shop’s price was not competitive with the online offers, even when you figured the shipping cost. Also, the local shop wasn’t willing to give us the REI price. We went home. (I need to mention that REI’s closest brick and mortar store is about a 4 hour drive. That’s too far to shop in-person for us.)

Later that day we went back to the REI website and made our order. My wife mumbled a few “I told you so’s.” I think she just wanted to order it from the catalog without bothering with all the research. In this case we would have been fine, but we may have discovered a better deal, and the research wasn’t hard to do.

From a direct mailed catalog, to a search engine, to a brick-and-mortar store, and back to the website for purchase. This is how people shop now. Marketers should be aware of the trend and make sure their online and offline promotions match up.

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