From: google.com

If you want to grow, you need new customers. And if you want new customers, you need three things:

1. A group of possible customers you can identify and reach.
2. A group with a problem they want to solve using your solution.
3. A group with the desire and ability to spend money to solve that problem.

You’d be amazed at how often new businesses or new ventures have none of these. The first one is critical, because if you don’t have permission, or knowledge, or word of mouth, you’re invisible.

The Zune didn’t have #2.

A service aimed at creating videos for bestselling authors doesn’t have #1.

And a counseling service helping people cut back on Big Mac consumption doesn’t have #3.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/LYq4PgpP3Ko/three-things-you-need-if-you-want-more-customers.html

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From: searchenginewatch.com

President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress on last night contained a number of revevantmessages to the delegates planning to attend SES New York next month.

For example, President Obama said, “We have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperty.” And the search engine marketing industry has lived through years when it was easier to launch pay-per-click campaigns than it was to launch search engine optimization programs.

In fact, Fredrick Marckini, the chief global search officer of Isobar, made this point during his keynote speeches at SES London 2008 and SES Toronto 2008. According to Marckini, “Paid search alone does not constitute a search engine marketing program. I interviewed Fredrick a year ago about the importance of natural search in search engine marketing campaigns, which is still a potent issue as we wrestle with a global recession.

<iframe class="embeddedvideo" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3aeYYJqMzT4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></iframe>

Greg Jarboe & Fredrick Marckini on SEM at SES London 2008

Another line by President Obama that still resonates a day later is this: “The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest working people on earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still posess in ample measure.”

And today, I received an email from Search Engine Strategies that said, “Bad news can easily derail you from your goal. Don’t fall flat on your Q2 achievements. Stay on top of your marketing plan and learn how you can ride through the troubled economy and stand tall in the end. Search Engine Strategies New York is your survival guide to the unsteady economy. From Web 2.0 strategies for small businesses with small budgets to winning online campaigns on a dime.”

And the email backed that up with specific suggestions of conference sessions to attend at SES New York:

• The Impact of Today’s Economy on the Search Landscape

• Survival of the Fittest 2.0

• Every Day, In Every Way: Search Marketing as a Business Activity

• Publishing: New Business Models for Changing Times

• Lower Your Marketing Costs with Vertical Search

• Four Paths to Success in a Tough Travel Economy

Or, take a close look at the SES New York conference agenda and you’ll discover more sessions that “confront boldly the challenges we face.” This includes:

• The Dozen Most Common Search Marketing Mistakes That CMOs Make

• Search on a Dime

• 8 Things You Aren’t Doing That Will Boost Your SEM Results

• Extreme Makeover: Live Ad Copy & Continuity Clinic!

• SEO Tools of the Trade: What’s in YOUR Toolbox?

• Google Website Optimizer: Radically Improve your Conversion Rate!

And if you register for SES New York by March 6, you can save up to $200. Plus, you have a chance to win an extreme makeover of your website in real time during SES New York! And there are other bonus offers.

So, if you think “the time to take charge of our future is here,” as President Obama does, then check out the conference agenda for SES New York, which will be held March 23-27, 2009, at the Hilton New York. To borrow a phrase, “So often, we have come to view these documents as simply ... laundry lists of programs. I see this document differently. I see it ... as a blueprint for our future.”

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/547062781/090225-174051

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From: searchenginewatch.com

It’s hard to read and write the news about Google’s Toolbar 6 for Internet Explorer without thinking of how it must result from their official position siding with the EU against Microsoft’s bundling of IE with Windows.

One of the major updates for the new IE toolbar is the Quick Search Box. This places the Google logo in the IE taskbar for a widget that enables a quick query with search suggestions. Obviously, Google isn’t waiting around for regulations to help them maintain their search market monopoly share.

IE toolbar users will also get the personalized tab page that Firefox toolbar users got a few weeks back. The page loads the most visited pages of the browser user. (Google says they do this without gathering data. Instead, the data resides on the PC.)

Interestingly enough, yesterday’s Safari browser update offers similar personalized funcationality.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/547033448/090225-152243

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Marco Boerries, Executive Vice President of the Connected Device Division at Yahoo! has announced his resignation. Boerries cited personal reasons. Apparently, he has some family issues that has his time being split between the Bay Area and Germany.

Boerries spent four years as Yahoo!’s top mobile exec.

Here are just a few of the stories that happened on his watch:



Yahoo! to Launch New, Comprehensive Mobile Portal

Yahoo! Adds Features to oneSearch Shortcut, Including Voice Search and Auto-Locate

Yahoo! oneSearch Selected as Mobile Search Service for T-mobile’s Web2go

Yahoo Unveils Upgrades to Mobile Search Platform

Yahoo Uses Windows Mobile To Escalate Yahoo Go Reach

Yahoo Signs Mobile Search Deals with Six Asian Carriers

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/547026722/090225-142647

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From: searchenginewatch.com

This afternoon, Search Engine Strategies announced that five new members are joining the SES Advisory Board. The new advisory board members are: Matthew Bailey, President, SiteLogic; Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder, Future Now, Inc.; Andrew Goodman, Principal, Page Zero Media; Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media; and John Marshall, CTO, Market Motive.

The five new members join eight current members, who will continue to serve on the SES advisory board, which is chaired by Kevin Ryan, CMO, WebVisible, Inc:

• Ron Belanger, Vice President of Agency Development, Yahoo Search Marketing;

• Jeff Ferguson, Director of Online Marketing, Napster;

• Chris Henger, Vice President, Affiliate Marketing, Performics;

• Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink;

• Jeff Levick, Director, Global Industry Development and Marketing, Google;

• Pauline Ores, Senior Marketing Manager, Community and Collaboration Strategy, Global Small & Midmarket Business, IBM;

• Erynn Petersen, Senior Manager, Advertising Platform Evangelism, Microsoft; and

• Randy Peterson, Search Marketing Innovation Manager, Proctor and Gamble.

In a press release, Matt McGowan, the Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group, which includes Search Engine Strategies, Search Engine Watch and ClickZ, said, “Over a year ago we created an advisory board consisting of individuals from the industry and beyond to help our programming and operations teams guide the direction of future conferences. The board has made significant contributions to the success of SES. We want to thank seven of the original advisory board members, who are now rotating out of the lineup, as well as welcome five new members who are joining the board members as we chart our way in this rapidly changing industry.”

The members of the originaly advisory board who are rotating out include:

• Sandeep Aggarwal, Senior Equity Research Analyst, Oppenheimer & Co.;

• Jocelyn Griffing, Senior Vice President, Online Media, Icon International;

• Steven Kaufman, Senior Vice President, Media Director, Digitas;

• Carol Kruse, Vice President, Global Interactive Marketing, The Coca-Cola Co.;

• James M. Lamberti, former Senior Vice President, Search and Media, comScore Networks;

• Jeannie Moran, eCommerce Marketing Director, AutoNation; and

• Gregg Stewart, Senior Vice President, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/547011804/090225-140246

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Google is siding with the European Commission in its disapproval of Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Google says that Microsoft has an unfair advantage in the browser market as a result of this practice.

But will such a stance come back to bite Google in the butt? In 2007, Google released Android, a mobile operating system, and then last year Chrome, an internet browser. In the next year or two, Android will begin being released on netbooks (aka small laptops). Google could use that opportunity to bundle Chrome and increase their browser market share, but they’ll now face criticism if they do.

And as one smart commenter on the Google Public Policy blog pointed out, there’s no criticism of Apple bundling their Safari browser with Mac OS (not to mention the constant requests to do so for Windows users who have downloaded iTunes).

Sure, Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on the browser market with Safari (and there’s a good reason for that until perhaps yesterday’s updated release of the browser), but what other purpose would they be attempting to achieve with the bundle?

Of course, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt currently sits on the board of Apple, so it wouldn’t be prudent for them to criticize Apple for the same practice. But things are bound to get a little dicey on all fronts as Google also competes with Apple, maker of the popular iPhone.

Siding with the EU is also an interesting move just months after they canceled a partnership with Yahoo! which would have increased their dominance in the search advertising field.

Google has yet to master politicking, and watching them in this regulatory space should be interesting indeed.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/547006883/090225-131442

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From: sitepronews.com

Psst. Hey, marketer! Trying to figure out your social media strategy before the boss asks again? I gotta few tips for you. Many social media challenges can benefit from hard won lessons we’ve learned through email marketing.
1. It’s not free. There are plenty of free social media tools out there. You can certainly [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

What Social Media Can Learn From Email Marketing

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/02/25/what-social-media-can-learn-from-email-marketing/

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From: sitepronews.com

For people to find your web page, you need high-quality keywords. A high-quality keyword is a keyword that many people are searching for but few other web pages are using. You need to battle past your competitors to get to page one of the search engines, so the fewer the competitors, the better. [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Finding Quality Keywords Free: How To Do A Keywords Search

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/02/25/finding-quality-keywords-free-how-to-do-a-keywords-search/

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From: sitepronews.com

As of August 2008, mobile handset penetration in Italy was at 140%. You read that right: there are now more mobile devices than people in Italy. According to Engadget, some studies are predicting 100% mobile phone penetration in the United States within 4 years; at present, it’s estimated at around 84%. Some research indicates that [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

5 Ways to Make Your Website Mobile (And 1 Reason You Might Not Want To.)

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/02/25/5-ways-to-make-your-website-mobile-and-1-reason-you-might-not-want-to/

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Last fall, Google Analytics began rolling out 7 major updates. One of those updates was Advanced Segmentation, which allows users to dig into subsets of data. Now, one of those subsets that users can check out is iPhone traffic.

To access the iPhone segment, click on the Advanced Segments drop down menu (the box next to the words “Advanced Segments") and choose “Visits from iPhones.” If it’s difficult to decipher the percentage of visits from iPhone, turn off “All Visits” to get a better picture of your iPhone traffic.

Related Reading:

Advanced Keyword Research Checklist: Using Multiple Datasets

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/546938020/090225-085928

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Google’s Map Maker allows users to create and enhance maps all around the world. It’s kind of like the Wikipedia of mapping. As a result of the diligence of the Map Maker community, 16 countries are being added to the main Google Maps.

They are:

• Bhutan
• Bolivia
• Cambodia
• Dominica
• Dominican Republic
• Guam
• Iceland
• Mauritius
• Paraguay
• Philippines
• Senegal
• Seychelles
• Sri Lanka
• Tajikistan
• Vietnam
• Zimbabwe

Anand Srinivasan, Lakshminath Bhuvanagiri and Jessica Pfund, of the Map Maker Team commented on the milestone on the Google LatLong blog:

This launch is a testament to the spirit of map makers who have taken it upon themselves to map entire neighborhoods—and in some cases entire cities and counties. We have observed many users add more than 1,000 edits to maps and a few have even made 10,000. Even in countries where not many have access to high-speed internet, we have found expatriates and caring users living abroad helping map countries they are far away from. Hats off to all you map makers out there!

Expect more great things from Google Map Maker in the future. Last week, 27 languages were added to the tool. Additionally, Map Maker maps were made available to the Google Maps API.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/546933326/090225-084056

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Microsoft Research introduced search projects at its annual TechFest in Redmond, Washington. If you’re not aware, TechFest is an event where Microsoft employees share research and ideas for technological progress via computing.

The search ideas put forth include:

• Geolife 2.0 - a GPS-data-driven social network on Microsoft Virtual Earth
• Opinion Search - collecting, storing and organizing opinion data such as user reviews to help searchers more easily make informed purchase decisions
• Renifang, Web Scale Entity Summarization - a web-mining summarization system that extracts information about particular entities (such as a person or product) from billions of Web pages to reduce the number of pages a searcher has to comb through to find the information they are looking for.
• Color-Structured Image Search - a new image search interface that uses rough color layouts to indicate searchers’ intent (instead of using keywords only)

These projects were introduced by the Research team and are not (yet?) part of Live Search.

Related Reading:

Microsoft Research Unveils Three New Search Projects

Microsoft Moves on from Yahoo Again; Talks Internal Search Innovation

Microsoft to Build Search Technology Center in Europe

Microsoft Launches Beta Release of SearchTogether Plugin

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/546929920/090225-081705

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From: google.com

Search has gone mobile. Smart phones with large screens, decent keyboards, and wi-fi connection finally makes it fun to surf the web from a hand held device. But still, the browser window is rather small. Entering a query and browsing the search results in Safari is cumbersome. Web search apps make this easier and many of them integrate multiple search engines and services. I have tested iPhone web search applications and reviewd our five favorites.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pandia/vfbc/~3/rFxeSu9CP_4/1306-top-5-iphone-search-apps.html

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From: feedburner.com

Posted by Stephen T

I really like Google Analytics - the interface is easy to use, the information easy to interpret and it’s free. You can do great tricks with filters to slice the data in different ways. I do wish that less of the reports used sample data and it’d be nice if you could label points in your data to cross-reference with your SEO activities. But the one thing that really bugs me about Google Analytics is that the JavaScript you tag your site with is broken.

OK - it’s not completely broken but it is brittle. Brittle enough that the standard version doesn’t work at all when I access sites at work. On every page I visit on Twitter (which uses Google Analytics) I see something like this:

See that long dashed line at the bottom of the page that looks like a very long JavaScript comment? Let’s have a look at the source code:

What is missing here is the JavaScript include reference to google-analytics.com/ga.js. It has been replaced with the long JavaScript comment. This is how it should look:

The long comment also causes a JavaScript error. Here is one from Distilled’s site (who also used Google Analytics):

This error is saying that the browser is not able to find an object called _gat and so it is not able to execute the _getTracker() method on it. In effect this means that my visit to this site is not being tracked.

Interestingly enough, if you get the very latest Google Analytics JavaScript it includes a

try { } catch (Exception e) {}

block around the whole section that does the _getTracker() bit. This will suppress the JavaScript warning but is a bit like burying your head in the sand.

So what is happening here? The _gat object is set up in the ga.js file that should have been loaded, but the line that loads this file has been commented out. Why has that line been commented out? Well, I don’t know exactly, but I’m pretty sure it is some form of filtering going on by the firewall in the network at my work. I imagine the same filtering is happening on other networks with the same firewall.

If you are still following me (I know this is quite techie - I will show you a solution to the problem soon), you might be asking, “Why would a firewall block this piece of JavaScript?” My hypothesis here is that the firewall is taking issue with the combination of [removed] and unescape to dynamically include the ga.js JavaScript file. This is probably because it matches the signature of JavaScript attacks such as cross-site scripting.

So why does the JavaScript do a dynamic include using [removed] instead of just using a simple <script> tag? Let’s have another look at the top of that [removed]

This script is basically looking to see if the page is being served from a HTTP or a HTTPS page and then loading the ga.js JavaScript file from either the HTTP domain (http://www.) or HTTPS domain (https://sss.) for google-analytics.com. The reason for this is to stop those warnings from your browser you get on HTTPS sites that part of the page is not secure. Loading the JavaScript from a secure host will stop this warning.

So what is the solution? Well, if your site only uses HTTP then you don’t need that bit of JavaScript to work out where to get the ga.js file. All you really need is the following (substitute your Google Analytics account number as appropriate):

If you use a mixture of HTTP and HTTPs, I suggest you do the calculation of which domain to load the JavaScript from server-side. Here is an example in PHP:

I am not guaranteeing this JavaScript, but it certainly works for me - the JavaScript include is no longer replaced by a comment and there are no more JavaScript errors in the browser.

Now, whilst I’m at it, this JavaScript still doesn’t fill me with confidence. The problem I still have with it is that, due to the asynchronous way browsers load external resources (JavaScript files, CSS files, images), there is still a chance for there to be a JavaScript error on the _getTracker line. This would happen if that line were executed before ga.js was downloaded from google-analytics.com. With the try/catch block around it you would never know it happened (silent failures are one of the worst things to happen in code).

Most JavaScript for other analytics providers do things the other way around--they set up the variables required to identify the account and the other information about the page in JavaScript before they include the external JavaScript file. Here is an example for Quantcast:

This script sets up the analytic options in a nicely scoped JavaScript associative array (_qoptions). It then loads the external JavaScript file (quant.js), which does the equivalent of _getTracker().trackPageview(). Omniture HBX does a similar thing.

Hopefully this technical look into the issues with Google Analytics has been interesting and helpful. Google - if you’re listening - try taking some hints from what I’m saying, remove your head from the (try/catch) sand and fix it once and for all.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Read Original: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seomoz/~3/547017451/google-analytics-javascript-is-broken

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From: google.com

Okay, so Amazon’s Kindle is cool and it’s gaining in traction and people who have one buy a lot of books. 10% of Amazon’s book sales are now on the Kindle. [For books where both versions are available].

But it could be so much better. Here are my newest riffs for Jeff and Co.:

1. Give publishers (throughout this post, when I say publishers, I also mean self-published authors) the ability to insert passalong credit with a book. So, if you buy a book, it might come with the right to forward it, for free, to two other people who also have Kindles. Three clicks and you just spread the book.

Let me log in with Facebook Connect and send certain books to all my friends who also have a Kindle.

Let me see the list of the fastest-spreading books. Or fastest spreading among my friends.

2. Give publishers the ability to send free samples of new books to people who have opted in. For example, I could have a master setting on my Kindle that said, “for any book I finish, give the publisher permission to send me up to six free samples.” This creates a lever for successful authors and an asset for successful publishers. It lets them start publishing books for their readers instead of trying to find readers for their books.

What happens when Malcolm Gladwell sends a note to all his readers recommending a new book?

3. Anytime I send someone a book (see #1) or recommend a book, let me (with the other person’s consent) see the comments they write in the margins of the book as they read it. Imagine being able to read a novel this way with your book group, or a sales manual with your department.

4. Create dynamic pricing. As a book gets more popular, allow the publisher to give a rebate to the first # of readers… either all or part of a book. If I get good at reading hit books first, I’ll end up paying close to nothing but be rewarded for my good taste and ability to sneeze ideas.

5. Let anyone become a publisher with just a few clicks.

6. Demolish the textbook market as soon as possible by publishing open source textbooks for free. It’s only natural that profit-minded professors will work to replace this by using #5.

7. Give publishers the ability to insert quizzes or feedback. This creates a certification or continuing ed or textbook opportunity far bigger than a book can deliver.

8. Allow all-you-can-eat subscriptions if the author or publisher wants to provide it. Let me buy every book Seth has written, or all the business books I can handle, or “up to ten books a week.” Remember, the marginal cost of a book is now the cost of the bandwidth to deliver it, so buffets make economic sense.

9. And my last one, which I think I mentioned earlier, but it’s so good, I’ll mention it again: ship the Kindle with $1000 worth of books on it. I’m willing to contribute a couple of titles, and my guess is that most authors would.

It’s pretty simple: many book publishers look at this new medium and ask, “how can I use it to augment my current business model.” I’d like Amazon to challenge that thinking and say to the world, “how can you use this platform to create a new business model?” Jeff had a very funny appearance on Jon Stewart (it’s not easy being funny with a professional comedian) but it would have been easier to tell the story if the Kindle was about community and connection too.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/m-8nofzFYWE/reinventing-the-kindle-part-ii.html

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