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CPC Data for April
Efficient Frontier recently unveiled the average cost-per-click information, by vertical, observed during April 2008 in the U.S. The "mortgage" category saw the biggest change from March, followed by "auto finance". More...

Not So Long Tail
August of this year will mark the four year anniversary of Google going public, in many ways the tipping point for Internet advertising as we know it today. Four years ago, what existed? Internet life focused around... More...

Nielsen Online: Google Stagnant
The latest figures released by Nielsen Online show that while more queries were conducted in March 2008 compared to February, Google’s share of the search pie remained the same, while Yahoo! and MSN/Windows Live grabbed bigger shares. More...

Only 1% Say They Have Clicked on a Mobile Banner Ad
A recent study conducted by Forrester Research revealed that the mobile advertising market still has a ways to go before marketers can depend on it the way they have come to depend upon traditional Web marketing. More...

Google is Not Done Dominating the Search World
While Google remains a virtual equivalent to anything related to the word or idea of “search,” it might be easy to overlook its current moves to ratchet up its dominance both in the states and overseas. More...

Bird’s Eye View of the Web in March
Nielsen Online and comScore Media Metrix offered various rankings and data concerning the Internet, from a broader perspective More...

Searchers: Smarter, Lazier, Both?
A recent study published by iProspect (in conjunction with JupiterResearch) reveals that searchers are feeling less and less adventurous in their pursuit of good search results. More...

Google is Stronger Than Ever
The most recent figures released by Hitwise show that Google’s dominance in search has reached its highest peak. More...

Finance Category Sees CPC Increase
It’s expected that major economic trends will be reflected in various types of online data. Average cost-per-click (CPC) data from March 2008 released by Efficient Frontier confirms this, as various finance-related categories saw relatively large month-to-month jumps. More...

Engagement and Conversational Advertising On Social Networks
I came across an article on CCNMoney.com earlier this week relating to slide.com which was founded by Max Levchin. More...

Yahoo Answers Handles Majority of Questions Asked Online
Hitwise recently reported on the traffic details for question and answer Web sites. Not surprisingly, Yahoo! Answers received the bulk of this traffic, with a few other sites lending a hand to curious users looking to take advantage of user-generated wisdom of crowds More...

Power to The People - Part 2
Despite it being the largest corporate employer and having no shortage of detractors, Wal-Mart doesn't come close to qualifying as a monopoly. Granted, in many areas, especially rural, their presence has greatly reduced the number... More...

Yahoo, Google, Microsoft are Top U.S. Web Properties
The latest figures released by comScore indicate that Yahoo was the Web property that attracted the most unique visitors in January 2008 in the U.S. More...

Baidu Begins Testing Hi
While Baidu holds a strong leadership position in China’s search engine market, holding a 60.1% share at the end of the fourth quarter of 2007 (to Google’s 25.9% share), it has yet to set foot in the instant messaging market in its homeland. More...

Google Tops U.K. List in January
A recent report released by comScore World Metrix showed that Google Sites attracted the largest audience of unique visitors in the U.K. during the month of January. More...

Google, Yahoo, Ask.com Gain in January
January brought no surprises for the top seven search engines in the U.S. Of course, if you're like the vast majority of online searchers, no rankings have changed, though market share figures have fluctuated slightly. More...

Google Topples Microsoft in Canada
Recent numbers released by comScore Media Metrix indicates that Google was the most visited online property in Canada in January More...

Made for Yahoo Feed Sites Under Scrutiny
In addition to the writers strike ending, the flurry of activity surrounding the potential acquisition of Yahoo also pushed another, and in this case much more relevant to our industry than the writers strike, piece of news to the... More...

Click Fraud Grows
Click Forensics, Inc. recently released its Click Fraud Index for the fourth quarter of 2007. Click fraud for the pay-per-click industry reached 16.6% during the last quarter of last year, the highest rate observed since the index was launched at the end of 2006 More...

Top Gaining Internet Properties, Categories, Search Engines in 2007
Recent figures released by comScore highlight the top gaining Web properties, categories, and search engines. More...

Yahoo! Amidst Ad Appeal
Amidst all the hoopla concerning Microsoft's proposal to Yahoo, and Google's ensuing response, it becomes easy to forget what all the fuss is about. More...

Google is Top Parent Company, FullTiltPoker.com is Stickiest
According to recent figures released by Nielsen Online, Google remained the top parent company in the U.S. in December, while FullTiltPoker.com continued to be the stickiest brand. More...

Baidu is Top Dog in China, Third Worldwide
Baidu is to China what Google is to the U.S. In other words, while Google has a stranglehold on the U.S. search market, it has nothing on Baidu in China. More...

Google’s Search Share Drops in December
Google handled 56.3% of all U.S. search queries in December, which was a drop from November’s 57.7% share. Its searches per user also decreased from 40.8 in November to 37.9 in December. More...

Mobile Search: The New Frontier
Recent figures released by The Kelsey Group expect U.S. mobile search revenues to reach $1.4 billion by 2012. In 2007 this figure was $33.2 million, and 2008 is expected to see a figure of around $102.3 million. More...

Wikia Search Disappoints, Wales Defends
Regardless of who is responsible for the incredible hype that surrounded Wikia Search, the search engine that has been anticipated for over a year was welcomed with frowns and disappointment. More...

Google Tops November Rankings
According to the latest figures from Nielsen Online, Google retained its familiar spot atop the search engine rankings for November 2007. More...

Search Engines Attract Self-Searchers
A recent report released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project indicated that 47% of U.S. adult Web users have searched for information about themselves More...

Yahoo Trumps Google…in Japan
According to comScore World Metrix, Yahoo! finished above Google to be hailed as the top Japanese online property in October 2007, in terms of unique visitors. More...

Evolution of the Arbitrager
The beauty and curse of the internet, especially internet advertising, arises from the little to no barriers to entry. More...

Britney, WWE, Paris Top 2007 Yahoo Searches
Yahoo! has released its top ten search terms for 2007, and Britney Spears has retained her throne at the top of the list. Her public downfall ... More...

Google Increases Its Lead in October
The most recent comScore figures show that Google led the search engine rankings yet again in October 2007. More...

G.cn = Google.cn
Apparently, Google’s minimalist approach to search does not pertain exclusively to its home page. In China, Google has slimmed down its Google.cn domain name to G.cn. More...

Google’s SearchMash Uses Flash and Snap
For those who are unfamiliar with SearchMash, it is Google’s small, relatively unknown alternative search engine. More...

Worldwide Search
Recent figures released by comScore’s qSearch 2.0 service shed some light on the global state of the search realm. It should not be a surprise that Google is faring quite well in areas outside of the states. More...

Google Wins in September
Google topped the list of search providers in the U.S. during the month of September, once again dominating the field. More...

Yahoo Lists Top Costume Searches
It may not be nearly as significant or interesting as the monthly search engine rankings, but Yahoo!’s listing of the top TV-related Halloween costume searches is revealed to the public for the taking. After all, it is nearing that wonderful time of tricks and treats. More...

Top Search Terms for September
The latest Hitwise figures concerning the top 10 search terms in 10 categories were released recently. MySpace and PayPal appear to be holding onto their popularity. More...

A Local Dilemma - Part 2
If you read Part 1, you will have learned of a great gym, but more importantly, of a challenge that it and many local businesses face, especially service based ones where foot traffic alone won't make the... More...

Yahoo Should Take Drastic Measures
Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, thinks that Yahoo! would be worth a lot more if they either broke apart their online businesses or conducted a facelift, which might even include turning its back on its search engine mainstay. More...

Google Leads Search Field in August
According to the latest figures released by Nielsen//NetRatings, Google handled the majority of all Web queries online in the U.S. in August. Yet again, the list was absent of any surprises. More...

Google Performs “Poorly” in the U.S.
Uptime monitoring company Pingdom recently listed Google’s downtime in 32 countries, and to some people’s surprise, the U.S. fared relatively poorly. Brazil, of all countries, experienced the least downtime, while Sweden experienced the most. More...

Google Ready and Willing to Comply With Canada
In August, Privacy Commissioner in Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, expressed major concern over Google’s Street View venture in major Canadian cities. More...

Google CPA Optimizer
Google has entered an arena which comes as no surprise but still a slight shock. The company has made billions of dollars off click based advertising, literally billions. In fact, they make more than a billion dollars... More...

B2B Search Marketers’ Budgets Unaffected by Competition
B2B search marketers keep close watch of their competition’s activities. That, of course, is obvious. But a new study released by Business.com takes a closer look into the details and finds that though these search marketers... More...

Google Tops Search Engines in July
Recent figures released by Nielsen//NetRatings shows that Google is, once again, the top search provider in the U.S. The numbers collected for the month of July 2007 show that Google handled 4.1 billion queries during the month, or... More...

Moms Rely on Search Engines
According to DoubleClick Performics’ recent "Searcher Moms - A Search Behavior and Usage Study" (which was conducted with help from Microsoft and ROI Research) moms are heavily dependent on search engines as a... More...

ComScore Unveils qSearch 2.0, Google is Happy
A few weeks ago, Nielsen//NetRatings decided to shift its focus from page views to the length of visits on Web sites. On Monday, comScore followed up with a change of its own by introducing qSearch 2.0. Google in particular will... More...

Popular “How To” Queries in the U.S. and U.K.
Search engines have essentially become guides for living life for many people all over the world. They might help find a Web site, or an image, or shed some light on "how to" do just about anything imaginable. Two people at Hitwise... More...

Guilty By Association
As a fan of the Simpsons, if I were to head to the movies right now, I would see that, or perhaps Transformers, except that it might no longer play in one of the nicer cineplex theaters. Perhaps, I'd start with the... More...

Wikia Search Engine Picking Up Steam With Grub
Last Friday, Wikipedia founder and Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced that Wikia had acquired Grub, a Web crawler that utilizes unused computer processing time on users’ computers to crawl the Internet’s pages. Users can... More...

Privacy Becoming the New Battleground for Search Engines
Last week, Microsoft added Ask Sponsored Listings to its adManager Beta search advertising service, which is part of its Microsoft Office Live platform. This week the two companies linked arms again, but this time concerning... More...

PPC vs. Affiliate Arbitrage - Part 2
Perhaps not quite a soft spot, but we have long followed and had a strange affinity for various forms of arbitrage. It is, in many ways, a representation of life at large - the pursuit of easy money, the ultimate cat and mouse... More...

Only Microsoft Gains in June
According to the most recent numbers released by comScore, Microsoft was the only one of the five major search engines to actually gain ground in June 2007. Even the almighty Google lost a few points during the summer month. More...

Google Testing Mobile AdSense
Google has its enormous eye on just about every arena of life out there, and the mobile arena is definitely no exception. With about 3 billion mobile handsets in the world, according to Dilip Venkatachari, director of product... More...

Checking in on Yahoo
The stock market doesn't ever tell the full story, but it often can tell a great story. Such seems the case for Yahoo. Jerry Yang succeeded Terry Semel on June 18th, and investors rewarded the stock with a modest 3%... More...

Google Gains, Yahoo, Ask and AOL Lose in May
May was another good month for Google in terms of its share of the search market. According to the latest figures released by comScore’s monthly qSearch analysis, Google owned 50.7% of the total search market in May... More...

Breaking Down Paid Search, Part 1
Google has long seemed to have a love/hate relationship with the affiliate marketing company. That is to say, they seem to hate affiliates and love to make their lives difficult. Two weeks ago we... More...

Google Says “No” To Essay Writing Services
In a controversial move, Google recently made it known that it would no longer run advertisements for essay writing services on its AdWords platform. Universities and those employed in academic fields applauded the move... More...

Google Hoping For Stronger Presence in South Korea
While it’s no secret that Google absolutely dominates U.S. search, it’s also no surprise that Google lags behind domestic competitors in various overseas markets. South Korea, where about 70% of homes have high-speed Internet... More...

Affiliate Arbitrage
Generally, when Google makes a change to its quality score algorithm, we find out the same way Apple Store employees learn of their new products, from an announcement on the web site. At the time of... More...

Google Dominates Search in April
Figures released by Nielsen//NetRatings on Monday indicate that to no one’s surprise, Google is tops in the search market once again, and the competition is very far behind. More...

Search Arbitrage Strategies
Those not in the direct marketing space tend to have an antiquated notion of what it really means and associate search engine arbitrage only with affiliate marketers, generally in a negative light. Search engine arbitragers span the... More...

Google Adds To Its Lead
Another month, another confirmation of Google’s dominance in the search engine realm. March only revealed what we already knew about Google’s share of the search market pie: it’s big, and it’s growing. More...

A Beginners Guide To Search Advertising Part 1
We here at the Digital Moses Confidential have been covering the online advertising industry for over 3 years now. We have a combined 8 years of search engine advertising experience. Our years of search engine advertising... More...

Yahoo and Google Alter Ads
The past few days have been eventful for Yahoo! and Google ads, with the former announcing future word limits and the latter altering some colors, functionalities, and formats. More...

Google Benefiting From Advertisers’ Ignorance
Jon Morris is the founder of Internet Marketing Initiative, which is a search engine marketing firm. He claims that if advertisers using Google’s ad platform knew what they were doing, they would save themselves $2.1 billion... More...

Google Gains, Everyone Else Loses
February was a tough month for every search engine whose name did not start with “G.” The most recent figures released by comScore’s qSearch indicate that Google... More...

Google Drops the C-bomb
My heart almost stopped when I saw the subject of the Inside AdWords email sent, "[Inside AdWords] Pay-per-action beta test." That almost reaction almost doesn't make sense though. We work in the CPA space. We spend countless... More...

Microsoft and UC Davis Examine Search Engine Spam
Spam is a problem that has primarily been known for its unwelcome presence in e-mail inboxes across the world, but the average Web user also knows that spam is a large inconvenience to their online search experience. Microsoft... More...

Jury is Still Out on Panama
A couple weeks ago, comScore indicated that Yahoo!’s new search ads, delivered on the new platform called Panama, saw a jump in click-through rates. Yahoo!’s stock has reaped the benefits, growing more than... More...

One Edu Company's Big Day
Those who follow online lead generation, especially those who follow and /or operate in the online education lead generation space quickly circulated the news surrounding Vantage Media. Had you not known of Vantage Media, you... More...

Yahoo Ads Seeing More Clicks
By now, many people know the power of online advertising. Google derives virtually all of its financial strength from it, site owners across the globe are making good money from it, and online tricksters everywhere are doing their... More...

Quality Score Released and Publisher Quality Thoughts
For the first time since the introduction of the Quality Score in August of 2005, advertisers now have a glimpse into their Ad Group’s score. Advertisers learned last week that they could enable a Quality Score column as part of a... More...

Here We Go Again - Quality Score Update
Oy. The body of the email that I received yesterday had written in it just that one word, a sign of exasperation, almost frustration, if not resignation. What could have caused such a response? A quick look at the forwarded message... More...

Top Search Terms for January 2007
Earlier this week, Hitwise released their listing of the top 10 search terms for 10 categories for the month of January 2007. More...

Google Presently on the Attack While Mobile Foes Loom
In the midst of all its other morsels of juicy happenings, Google has inadvertently (or cunningly) reminded the Web of its seemingly inevitable dive into the office productivity suite realm. This time it’s a presentation product... More...

MySpace Top Term in 2006
Hitwise recently released their "Top US Search Lists of 2006." This list gives us a different perspective compared to other lists concerning what Web users were interested about last year. More...

My Favorite Session at Affiliate Summit West: The Confluence of Search and Affiliate Marketing by Kris from Pepperjam
I apologize for not posting frequent, live Affiliate Summit West event coverage as I meant to. After a late, exhausted arrival I was playing catch up the whole time and didn’t get to blog as much as I’d hoped-I’ll try my best to do a better job of this at future events. More...

Site Age in Rankings - The New Toolbar PageRank (in a bad way)
No, I don’t mean it’s the new “most important” component of the Google algorithm. I mean it’s the one that probably isn’t that important but causes people to OBSESS. Just like toolbar PageRank has done for years. More...

Google, Yahoo Gain Ground in December
According to the most recent numbers released on Monday by comScore Networks, Google and Yahoo were the only two of the five top search engines to gain ground in December 2006. Microsoft, Ask, and Time Warner all fell a... More...

Wazap Headed Stateside
Don’t look now, but another search engine with a specific target audience is looking to make its way into the U.S. market. More...

ChaCha Receives Funding, Hints at New Stage of Search
Google may be the undisputed king of search, but for some reason new search engines keep popping up. And probably for good reason. There are niches and methods of delivering information that just can’t be bottled up in a... More...

Matt Cutts - The Voice of TrustRank
The man, the myth, the legend. To black hat SEOs he embodies the dreaded arch enemy. To white hats, he is the source for authoritative, accurate advice you can trust. More...

Evil Google in 2007?
“Don’t be evil.” This has been Google’s long-standing motto, and is supposed to embody what the search giant is, but with a recent blog post by Firefox co-founder Blake Ross, there is more than a subtle indication that Google... More...

Search Marketing Gets More Expensive
According to the DoubleClick Performics 50 Search Unit Trends Report, search marketers saw their costs rise during the third quarter of 2006. The average cost to a search marketer who purchased a keyword for the quarter... More...

Top Search Terms of 2006: Four Different Takes
The line “Top Search Terms of 2006” has a certain ring to it. It’s always interesting to get a glimpse into what searchers were most eager to see or read about online, and top search terms are a nice way of summarizing that... More...

Google Not Embraced in Booming Russia
Though Google is a search and advertising behemoth stateside, it has had its share of problems mimicking this dominance overseas, and Sergey Brin’s own motherland, Russia, is no exception. More...

Beauty of Arbitrage
Those in the direct response space see the world differently. They get paid when something happens and only when something happens. Those in the direct response space come in many shapes and sizes. They include... More...

Baidu Plans on Entering Japan Search Market
So, what do you do after you’ve experienced the number one spot in China’s search market? According to the country’s leading search engine, Baidu, the answer is to head over to Japan. More...

One Goal, Two Approaches
An interesting bit of news made the rounds the past two days, that of the four-year old Google Answers shutting down. In theory, it made for a nice compliment to the company’s core product - a purely technology based... More...

Google Still Hogs Search Share
Google is still the king of search, no matter who you listen to. According to figures released by Nielsen//NetRatings, more than 3 billion searches were conducted on Google in October, which was about 49.6% of the total search... More...

Evolution of the Quality Score - Part 2
With the Quality Score, Google has found a masterful way to make more money from its advertisers in the name of more relevant ads. As an advertiser, it comes down to one thing, the higher the Quality Score, the lower the actual... More...

Evolution of the Quality Score - Part 1
A little more than a week ago, beginning November 6, 2006, Google unveiled its fourth Quality Score announcement. If you don’t advertise on Google, this might not mean to much to you, but if you do advertise on Google, especially if... More...

Calling Dr. Google
Reports surfaced a few weeks ago indicating that Web users were relying on the Internet for answers to their medical queries and concerns. A report titled “Online Health Search 2006” was released by the Pew Internet & American Life... More...

AOL Unveils FullView
AOL has been quite active in recent times. They announced a big business model shift, enhanced its e-mail product, and notched deals with big media companies to offer various movie, music, and television videos for download... More...

Google Continues Dominance, Yahoo! Falters
September was a good month for Google’s search share. It increased its share by 1% from August, hitting the 45.1% mark, according to comScore qSearch. Nielsen//NetRatings was even more optimistic, indicating that... More...

Testing for the Masses
Yesterday, Google quietly unveiled its newest product. It doesn’t have the glamour of last week’s billion dollar purchase of YouTube. In fact it has nothing do with video, recent acquisitions, or Web 2.0. Google’s new product, dubbed... More...

Keyword Advertising - to police or not?
On September 28th a judicial decision was handed down in Google’s favor, a decision impacting the multitudes of businesses that engage in paid search advertising. This decision, believed to be the first United States court ruling of... More...

Local Search’s Growth Bolstered by Google, Yahoo
According to recent figures released by comScore Networks, local search is continuing its ascent. The study for the month of July found that about 109 million people in the U.S., or about 63% of the American online population, performed local... More...

Search Engine Marketers to See Big Holiday Season
According to DoubleClick’s affiliate network arm, Performics, online marketers could be in for a huge holiday season. This is assuming that a general rule remains true to form. More...

Yahoo and the Internet, Part 2
As we saw in Part 1, Yahoo’s stock price has seen better days. In the beginning of this year, the company announced guidance that met expectations only to be treated with a double-digit percentage decline in their... More...

Yahoo and the Internet, Part 1
If this were baseball, Yahoo would not be going to the playoffs. And, if the adage, “three strikes and your out” applied, then the current number two in search would have even bigger worries. At the beginning of last week, Yahoo... More...

Google’s Search Share Jumps Again
According to Hitwise, Google attracted 60.29% of the total U.S. search volume for the four weeks ending September 9th, 2006. This sets a new high for the year, jumping slightly above the previous high of 60.23% reached for the four... More...

Google Tinkering with Sponsored Results
Would someone who never clicks on sponsored results when searching on Google be better served if those blue ads on top of the search results were moved to the right side of the page? More...

Google More Popular in Europe than in U.S.
The latest report from comScore indicates that Google was visited by 75% of the European online population in July. Interestingly enough, this exceeds the 60% of the American online population that visited Google’s properties in the... More...

Google Loses Search Share
According to comScore Networks’ monthly qSearch analysis of search engine activity released on Sunday, Google actually saw its share of online searches decrease in the month of July 2006, while Yahoo!, Time Warner, and Ask each... More...

Consumers Unsatisfied with Portals
According to the most recent study conducted by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, customers in the U.S. are becoming less satisfied with major portals and search engines, Google included. More...

Lycos and the Importance of Linguistics in Search
Remember Lycos, the search offspring dot-com bubble poster child CMG Information Services, Inc? Well, Lycos is still around, quiet, but still around after changing hands a few times. Now Christopher Mohn, heir to the... More...

To BMT or Not To BMT?
When mentioned among SEMs (Search Engine Marketers) in a casual setting, Bid Management Tools, which will be referred to as BMTs in this article, often dampen conversations, like talking property tax law at a cocktail party. This is... More...

Health Search Engines Wanted
According to JupiterResearch, 71% of online consumers run queries through search engines in order to find answers to health-related questions, but only 16% of them find the information they want. This seems to indicate that there... More...

Quality Score Update - CPC to PPC Arbitrage Parade
In April, I wrote about a site that had jumped from zero traffic to an Alexa reported almost 15 million page views per day. The site peaked towards the end of June at more than 20 million page views and achieved a rank that More...

Twisting Your Keywords in the Wind
While studying the creatives of competitors throughout my years in the paid search industry, as any self-respecting SEM should, too often have I witnessed the same thing: It seems as though countless search engine advertisers use the same... More...

Leaders in Alternative Search
There is a search engine based in Pasadena, California called Snap.com with a stated desire to become “The other way to Search”. All it takes is a click and a search or two to see how Snap.com is a true alternative to the norms of... More...

Search Marketers Are Getting Smarter
New findings released by DoubleClick’s Performics indicate that search marketers are becoming more adept at handling fluctuating marketing conditions and are running more effective campaigns... More...

Google goes CPA
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to present, as part of a panel at DM Days, my thoughts on the changing search landscape. My piece focused on CPA search, a topic that fascinates me in no small part due to the arbitrage activity taking More...

Google’s Voice Recognition Possibilities
Using hands and fingers to carry out various tasks is becoming more and more tiresome for many consumers around the world. As technology has advanced, so have expectations and desires for further levels of convenience... More...

Ad Scheduling Introduced to AdWords Users
Late Thursday night Google unveiled ad scheduling (or dayparting, as many people call it) to its AdWords users around the world at no charge. This new feature will allow a campaign manager to optimize their return on investment... More...

Google Users in China Must Choose Between .Com or .Cn
Google has fallen in with the ranks of other Western companies that have bent their knee to China’s censorship requirements. Google’s main site, Google.com, is still accessible in China, but at a much slower speed than the... More...

Google Captures 50% of April Searches
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Google garnered 50% of all searches conducted in April, once again proving their dominion over the search realm. Yahoo! was second with 22%, while MSN was third with 11%... More...

Google Making Headway into Video Ads
Last week Google announced that they would begin selling click-to-play advertisements to advertisers in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. It will be a computerized auction service that will allow marketers to place these video... More...

Microsoft’s Entrance to AdCenter: Google and Yahoo, Be Prepared!
Let’s welcome Microsoft’s AdCenter to the PPC advertising field. A quick question, though, why is AdCenter here? Microsoft, the juggernaut, sat on the sidelines for quite awhile and watched as first Overture (later bought by Yahoo... More...

Google Sandbox Plays the SEO
A few weeks ago, I presented myself with a challenge - to do some Internet sleuthing and get to the bottom of this perplexing condition that newly search engine optimized websites (that’s SEO) face known as the Google... More...

Delving into CPA Search
There are few online businesses that I would want to create less than a new search engine. Unless it involves China, user generated content, and/or video, chances are the media and others will treat the launch about as serious as... More...

8.5 Percent of Sponsored Links “Risky”
According to a recently published study conducted by McAfee SiteAdvisor, 8.5% of sponsored links on major search engines led users to “risky” sites, as opposed to 3.1% of natural results. The study tested results of popular... More...

U.S. Department of Justice: IE7 Not a Problem
Despite Google’s cries of foul play, the Department of Justice has found nothing wrong with the default search box settings in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7, which is still in beta. Back in early May, Google filed a complaint... More...

Image Search
The use of search engines in locating information has become so central to our daily lives that it is hard to imagine a world where one cannot simply “google” driving directions just before heading out to the car. This availability of... More...

24/7 Real Media Sees Rising Revenues
24/7 Real Media, Inc., surprised analysts by beating their estimates with $41.7 million in revenues for the first quarter of 2006. The company did have a GAAP net loss of $0.16 per share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $0.01 per share in... More...

AdWords to Use Local Times
For those not living on the west coast and who have been using Google AdWords accounts, it has become a subtle but annoying task to continually remind yourself of how far your local time zone is to the Google’s Mountain... More...

Yahoo Plans Changes to Ad System
On Monday Yahoo! revealed long-awaited changes to its online advertising platform, which will be implemented in three phases. This comes in the face of waning hope that Yahoo! can keep up with Google’s online advertising... More...

Google Fears IE7
A story in the New York Times on Monday indicated that Google was talking to the U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission about Microsoft’s beta version of Internet Explorer 7. According to Google representatives, the... More...

Search in the Far East
To stay relevant or even solvent, a company must keep itself informed. That’s why research, of both the in-house and outsourced varieties, is essential. At ConductSearch.com keeping tabs on who’s doing what in the marketplace is... More...

Google Keeps on Growing
According to a report issued late on Monday by ComScore Networks, Google enlarged its share of the U.S. search market for the eighth consecutive month in March. Of the top five search engines, Google and Ask (formerly AskJeeves)... More...

Users Only Willing to Give Three Pages of Their Time
Jupiter Research and iProspect conducted a survey involving 2,369 participants from an online consumer panel in the U.S. to study search-related behavior. To no one’s surprise, the study concluded that most search engine... More...

Is Click-to-Call what Local Search Has Been Waiting For?
Click-to-call is an emerging contextual advertising format that will help spark the growth of localized search. It links online users to offline advertisers by combining Internet telephone capabilities. Although it has yet to hit its stride... More...

Some Adwords Basics for Beginners
Google’s Adwords is still the yardstick by which other search advertising platforms measure themselves. This isn’t merely an industry observation, but a respectful sentiment that I share... More...

Almost Half of February Searches Were Googled
February was just another month in search that was dominated by Google. According to individual reports issued by Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix, Google held on to its top spot in the share of the overall U.S... More...

Yahoo Involved in Click Fraud?
Ben Edelman, a PhD candidate at Harvard and a spyware researcher, has recently come out with some new follow-up information about his research in August of 2005 concerning spyware vendors receiving payments from... More...

Yahoo! Updates Toolbar
Yahoo!’s updated Yahoo! Toolbar includes improvements for both IE and Firefox users. For users of IE 5 or 6, tabbed browsing capability has been added to appease users until IE 7 is released. The Toolbar for Firefox users... More...

Google versus Yahoo by the numbers - Part 2
Last week we featured a column titled “Marketer’s Unite - Open Up the Kimono.” The better title and the one used on my blog, is “Google versus Yahoo by the numbers.” This week, we continue the fascinating look at... More...

AdCenter : What Would Jack Bauer Say?
Listen to me, okay? What I’m going to tell you is very, very important: being top banana in search doesn’t mean anything. Don’t click away, I’m serious, you’ve got to believe me. Quick, run a check on Excite.com - you must, no one else... More...

Refining Your Keywords For Better Results
Mom never taught us this and our teachers certainly didn’t, but sometimes it’s good to have a negative attitude, at least in paid search. With apologies to the memory of the great singer Bing Crosby I’ll try to explain a little something... More...

Yahoo! Publisher Network Updates Terms and Conditions
On Monday, the Yahoo! Publisher Network sent an e-mail to its publishers about updates to its terms and conditions. Compared to the prior version of the terms and conditions to the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, there... More...

Marketers Unite - Open up the Kimono
The same day that Apollo Group announced its partnership with Advertising.com was the same day that an article in AdAge told of “a war of words” as “as search-marketing vendors went toe-to-toe with Google and... More...

Local Search to Approach $1 Billion in 2006
In a new Borrell Associates report entitled “2006 Local Search Advertising,” Borrell projects that the local paid-search market will reach $987 million this year, which is more than double the $418 million it earned in 2005. This figure... More...

As Search Engines Grow Smarter, Will You?
As search gets smarter, tricks get cheaper and we get nearer to coming full circle to an original goal of Internet search: that content is, indeed, king. It cuts across the grain of some notions we’ve held in the industry for some time, that... More...

Google-Gov’t Impasse Resolved: Well, For Now
The issue of Internet privacy rights in America has been a hot topic of late. The latest flashpoint was a showdown in San Jose, CA pitting the Department of Justice against the giant search engine Google. Essentially, the Department of... More...

Campaign Optimization
So your pay per click campaign is up and running, now what? After your campaign has been running for a while and the data has begun to flow in, the next step in effective pay per click management is... More...

Nielsen//NetRatings: Search is Fine
Contrary to earlier reports by comScore Media Matrix, Nielsen//NetRatings indicated that search volume actually increased 39% in January compared to the prior year. ComScore’s findings indicated that search grew at just 11%... More...

Privacy for Personalization?
At the relatively small Search and Privacy track at last week’s SES conference in New York, the Fourth Amendment was a source of major discussion. In light of the recent subpoenas being sent to the four major U.S. search... More...

SES NYC(Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo): A Bustling Conglomeration
Coursing through the carpeted hallways of the Hilton NYC convention center, thousands of people from every demographic were either entering or exiting the various lecture halls. This was not to say that the traffic at the booths was... More...

Search is Losing Steam
As users become more familiar with their favorite sites, it logically follows that they will have less and less use for a search engine. In fact, comScore’s 4th quarter 2005 survey found that it was the first quarter since this data has been... More...

Beyond Keyword Development
Get organized. Whether it be in categories (Yahoo!) or AdGroups (Google), it is important to have all of your keywords placed in logically themed groups. There are endless ways to group keywords, but usually, I see keywords... More...

Is PageRank Still Significant?
PageRank has garnered a lot of attention, and the continuous updates to PageRank seem to indicate that things are going through a slight change. Sites that were once ranked lower have risen, while sites that used to be More...

Keywords are KEY (Part 2)
So you’ve developed a core list of keywords to bid on, now what? Filter what you currently have. After I develop my core list of keywords, I like to go through my list to double check that I do not have any keywords that... More...

Demand Service With Your On-Demand Software
On Demand! We want it here, we want it now. Hell, we want it yesterday. Considering the instantaneous nature of the Information Age, these requests are reasonable to make of any technical solutions provider. More...

Google Under Fire, But Search Is Strong
Could the Sports Illustrated Jinx, where teams and athletes featured on the cover famously floundered soon after publication; have spread to their fellow Time, Inc. More...

Search Engine Revolution on the Horizon?
The words “search engine” have become virtually synonymous with Google and maybe even Yahoo! and Microsoft. These Web leviathans have dominated the search engine scene and it is difficult to imagine it any other way. But is there a revolution that will usurp these three kings of their thrones? More...

The Super Bowl of Earnings
For analytical types, the last two weeks in January are like this Sunday for football fans. It’s during these times that the public companies, including those in our space, announce their fourth quarter earnings. All the guessing ends More...

Google.cn: The Internet As Beijing Sees It
In November I wrote an article and referenced a trip that ICMediaDirect.com’s VP of Business Development, Diana Lee, took to China. She participated in Shanghai’s inaugural ad:tech conference. It was a great trip and our More...

Google News No Longer Beta
In September 2002 Google News was launched in beta mode with the hope of giving readers the ability to read not only one perspective, but many, on whatever topic of news was out there. Over three years later Google News has More...

Yahoo! Leads By Conceding
Last week, Yahoo! admitted that Google has a stranglehold on the search engine market and that they can not do anything to change that. Essentially, they announced that they were content with being #2 in the search engine More...

Google Owned 46% of Searches in November
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Google captured 46.3% of search queries in November 2005, while Yahoo! trailed behind with 23.4%. Approximately 2.4 billion searches were done through Google’s search engine, while about... More...

Chasing the Search Tail
Although popular search words garner all the attention and adoration in the news, they only make up about 50% of all searches, according to Google estimates. The other 50% is made up of unique searches using specific... More...

Google Surprising #1 in China
Baidu, not Google, is China’s leading search engine in terms of market share. Baidu holds 51.5% of the market, while Google trails behind with 32.9% of the market. So it was a surprise when a recent study done by Keynote Systems... More...

What Do I Do For A Living?
Reunions of any sort follow the same template. People who have lost touch ask the same questions. Of the top three asked, the one that I have recently had to answer the most was “what do you do?” And with that, I confidently reply “I work for... More...

Welcome to “The Long Tail”~the Search Marketing
If we took all the movie buffs of the world, grouped them according to favorite movies, and made a graph of the head-count starting from largest to smallest numbers, we would end up with a line gently sloping down from the box-office smashes to contemporary... More...

Yahoo! Publisher Network Gains Momentum
“Based on demand from online publishers, we are opening our Publisher Network to the broader publisher community. Through the expanded platform, we plan to offer unique products and services to publishers of all sizes... More...