Internet Marketing Blog

Be Evil

I conceded the notion that privacy exists years ago. Considering how much I publish online, considering how much of my activity takes place online, I probably have far fewer things that are private than most people.

But when you take a moment to think about it, the degree two which we entrust faceless organizations with the intimate details of our daily lives is scary. Perhaps no company knows more about us than Google. And let me point out at this point that I am a big fan of Google.

As I've detailed previously, Google tracks everything from my search activity to my blog posts to my daily reading habits to my travel destinations. Google has captured me on their StreetView mapping service, and their satellites can conceivably track my every move. But they don't need to because I've got Google search and Google Maps on my phone.

What is scary is that example after example has proven that if a company wants to, it will exploit the private information they collect. And it really isn't a matter of being evil or not. The problem is that in large institutions--government, nonprofits, or corporations--the structure of the organization itself makes such exploitation easy.

Ethical behavior within such structures really comes down to the choices that individuals make. But those ethical dilemmas are more easily glossed over due to the pressures of maintaining employment and an infrastructure that provides easy outs.  People are often responsible for just a portion of the overall decision to follow an unethical path, so that decision doesn't appear irresponsible at all.

Earlier this month, the Sydney Morning Herald published a story that quoted Google's Vice President apparently distancing the search company from their famous motto, Don't Be Evil:

"It really wasn't like an elected, ordained motto...I think that 'Don't Be Evil' is a very easy thing to point at when you see Google doing something that you personally don't like; it's a very easy thing to point out so it does get targeted a lot."

Well, yes it is and that's entirely the point and the brilliance of the motto.

Search Engine Land points out that "Amit Patel, Google employee number 6 and one of Google's first engineers, coined 'Do Not Be Evil' in 1999 when the engineers became afraid of the pressure they might receive from the business units of the company."

If organizations are ultimately institutionally incapable of ensuring ethical behavior, than what will? A public motto that pledges ethical behavior.

Patel's brilliance is his long-term vision. As an engineer, he was in a better position than most people to understand the vast trove of data a company like Google could compile on individuals. Such information stores could potentially invite abuse.

Do Not Be Evil. The phrase is simple and unambiguous and, in the end, gives Google no choice but to maintain the motto because the alternative is...evil.

Google's Odd Abbreviation Algorithm

I believe I've stumbled upon a previously unknown aspect of Google's algorithm: Abbreviations.

I discovered it after doing a search for Minnesota Internet Marketing Company to see how my e-strategy.com site was ranking. In the screenshot below, you'll see underlined in red the thing that caught my eye:

You'll notice that the underscored portion of the search reveals that only the letters CO are bold in the .com domain suffix. It sure looked to me like Google was highlighting an abbreviation of the word "company."

It's no secret that Google looks for keywords in domains as one of its ranking criteria, but I've never seen Google highlight the domain suffix within searches and I've never seen Google look for what appears to be an abbreviated form of a search keyword.

I tried another search to try and verify that Google was looking for abbreviations. A search for Minnesota public affairs company confirmed my suspicions:

Again, I've highlighted the relevant portions of the search results and in this case, you'll see the abbreviation for the word Minnesota, the letters MN, are bold in the domain names in addition to the letters CO in the domain suffixes.

One last search further confirms the abbreviation algorithm, this time for Minnesota public relations company:

As you can see, the abbreviation for Public Relations, PR, is also in bold within the domain names. And, the case of the link for Tunheim.com, the page listed does not have the abbreviation in question on the page, not even within the META DESCRIPTION or KEYWORD tags.

The odd part is that Google is including the .com suffix. A .com domain, after all, often is no sure indicator that a given web site is one owned by a company. It also does not appear that Google has included any of the other domain suffixes, such as .org, .net, .edu, .gov, or .us. These domain suffixes would seem to be more certain indicators of relevance.

Since .edu, .gov, and .us domains can only be issued to certified educational institutions or governmental bodies, you can be certain of the nature of the organization that owns a given domain.

Perhaps Google is just testing out suffix domain searches. Has anyone else observed any similar behavior by Google?

How Search Engines Work Video

Though this is a 2005 UC Berkley lecture by Dr. Marti Hearst, most of the lecture is entirely relevant and up-to-date today because search technology has not fundamentally changed since then. The lecture is entitled Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business:

Microsoft To Acquire Yahoo!?

The New York Times is reporting that Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion.

If Yahoo! accepts the offer, the deal is not merely significant, it's a blockbuster.

Google has been far and away the dominant search engine since, what, 1999? That market share dominance has translated into enormous search engine advertising riches that has allowed the company to expand into many different areas.

Google currently claims 77% of the search engine market share pie, with Yahoo! a distant second at 12% and Microsoft's two properties, MSN and Live.com, at a combined 6%.  That would give the combined companies a modest 18% share, but that's enough to worry about how your search engine rankings will fare post-merger.

More significant, though, is the ability to leverage combined assets. If the new entity consolidates their search functions into one search engine, they can cross promote that engine among all their other properties: Yahoo Mail and Hotmail, Yahoo Local & Local Live, Flickr and del.icio.us and MyWeb and Live Spaces and within Microsoft's software itself.

Only fools count Microsoft out because this is how they do. If they can't compete on their own terms, they buy their way in. Just ask Netscape.

Search Behavior During Breaking News - Benazir Bhutto Assassination

  Benazir Bhutto 
  Originally uploaded by catman_1966

It will come as no surprise that people turn to search engines to find information about breaking news events. But thanks to Google Hot Trends, which highlights searches that have sudden surges in popularity, we can see just how they search for such information.

The assassination of former Pakistani president prime minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27 provides some insight into search behavior during such a crisis. News of the assassination broke around 4 a.m. PST and people immediately turned to the search engines for more news.

Among the top 100 most popular daily search terms that Goolge Trends tracks, 14 of them were related to the assassination. In the list below, the number preceding the search phrase denotes where the phrase ranked within the 100 most popular; the time following the search phrase indicates when that search phrase peaked in activity.

1 -      benazir bhutto - 6 a.m.
6 -      bhutto assassination video - 8 a.m.
7 -      bhutto assassination - 7 a.m.
22 -    pakistan news - 6 a.m.
25 -    martyred - 7 a.m.
39 -    zulfikar ali bhutto - 6 a.m.
53 -    pakistan assassination - 7 a.m.
56 -    benazir bhutto assassination video - 7 a.m.
66 -    asif ali zardari - 10 a.m.
70 -    butto - 6 a.m.
71 -    map of pakistan - 8 a.m.
77 -   musharraf - 7 a.m.
84 -    pakistan map - 9 a.m.
100 - bhutto pakistan - 5 a.m.

Based on volume, most people searched for information about the specific event in general, so we see a lot of searches that include the main subject's name: Benazir Bhutto. There was also a high interest in video of the assassination, which would indicate either morbid curiosity or simply the fact that the initial media coverage of the story lacked video. Finally, we see searches that indicate an effort to flesh out the story, illustrated by queries like "martyred," searches for information about Bhutto's father "zulfikar ali bhutto," husband "asif ali zardari," searches for Pakistan's current leader "musharraf," and for maps of Pakistan.

The following is the same list of search queries sorted sequentially by the time of day during which the query had its peak volume:

bhutto pakistan - 5 a.m.
benazir bhutto - 6 a.m.
pakistan news - 6 a.m.
zulfikar ali bhutto - 6 a.m.
butto - 6 a.m.
bhutto assassination - 7 a.m.
martyred - 7 a.m.
pakistan assassination - 7 a.m.
benazir bhutto assassination video - 7 a.m.
musharraf - 7 a.m.
bhutto assassination video - 8 a.m.
map of pakistan - 8 a.m.
pakistan map - 9 a.m.
asif ali zardari - 10 a.m.

Consider that, in the US anyway, weekday mornings for most people begin with a quick breakfast (with, perhaps, a morning television news show on) and a drive to work (probably while listening to the radio). With news of the assassination breaking at about 4 a.m. PST, most Americans heard of the news the first thing in the morning, thus you see a surge of general search queries from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m., the general time most people get up in the morning.

The one query that stands out among the 5 to 6 a.m. time frame is for Bhutto's father, which would probably indicate that most of the reporting on the story mentioned that Benazir Bhutto was the daughter of former Pakistani president and prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., people begin searching for information to flesh out the story, including searching for video, for information about Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, and for maps of Pakistan.

The only query in the 10 a.m. hour is for Benazir Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari. This is likely a result of the news media's continuing coverage with stories about Asif Ali Zardari's arrest on charges of blackmail in 1990 and his subsequent imprisonment.

Curiously, no related queries appear within Google Hot Trends after 10 a.m. I don't know why this is. Maybe people had simply informed themselves to the point that, absent any new news after they returned from work, they simply didn't feel the need to know more.

The following is a screen shot of Google Hot Trends sometime in the morning of 12/27/07 (click the graphic for the full sized version):

Christmas Season Search Engine Use

I did a bit of keyword research on Christmas-related searches just to see if I could glean any particular trends for these types of searches.

Christmas Eve Search Behavior

On Christmas Eve, the top Christmas searches were for the Norad Santa Tracker tool to track Santa's progress on Christmas Eve. These searches imply family search activity as kids and their parents follow Kris Kringle's gift deposits.

Additional family activity type searches include queries for Christmas carol lyrics and popular holiday entertainment such as "It's A Wonderful Life," and searches for Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart.

Cooking-related searches are also very popular, so grocery stores and other recipe providers would do well to optimize their sites for these queries.

Other types of searches include queries for store hours for those last-second shoppers--demonstrating the importance of including your store hours on your web site and within your local online listings.

Christmas Day Search Behavior

Christmas Day searches, not surprisingly, are heavily populated with post-Christmas sale-related searches as well as store-, and especially restaurant-hours searches.

Cooking-related searches are also popular.

Christmas Day searches also give an early glimpse into the gifts that were popular. This year Zune and iTunes searches were popular, as were Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band searches.

Christmas Searches Start Early, Real Early

When looking a historical search trends for Christmas-related queries, the one thing that stands out is that people appear to start thinking about and, presumably, then, researching Christmas gifts as early as August. That's when Christmas-related searches begin to spike upward.

This behavior is quite consistent from year to year, as this Google Trends chart of Christmas-related searches from 2004 to 2007 demonstrates:

This can be seen most clearly looking at at single year, as the following Google Trends charts shows:

And as the following Christmas searches chart from KeywordDiscovery.com confirms:

There is an obvious opportunity for online retailers in particular to engage customers long before the Christmas season even begins by examining and optimizing search campaigns targeted at these summer searches.

Is Search Engine Advertising Trustworthy?

Eye-tracking heat maps of search results pages generally reveal that most searchers' focus is on the top, left hand third of the natural search result links rather than on the spaces devoted to search engine advertising.

It begs the question of whether search engine advertising, as opposed to natural search engine marketing, is effective at all.

A 2007 Nielsen study (via Micropersuasion) offers some data that would seem to support that assertion.  The study found that the most trusted forms of advertising are:

1. Recommendations from consumers - 78%
2. Newspapers - 63%
3. Consumer opinions posted online - 61%
4. Brand websites - 60%
5. Television - 56%

Conversely, the least trusted forms of advertising are:

1. Email I signed up for - 49%
2. Ads before movies - 38%
3. Search engine ads - 34%
4. Online banner ads - 26%
5. Text ads on mobile phones - 18%

I have always emphasized natural search engine marketing over search engine advertising for the very reason that people consider the links in the natural search results to be more credible and therefore more trustworthy and as a result they will be more likely to click on those links.

The fact that few people consider search engine advertising trustworthy while many people trust brand websites is a compelling argument for emphasizing natural search engine marketing over paid search advertising.

That does not mean that I think search engine advertising doesn't work, though. Clearly, Google would not be thriving due to its search engine ad revenue if the service didn't produce results.

While people do trust natural search results more, the same dynamic is probably at work as it is with traditional advertising.

People do not tend to pay attention to advertising until it's relevant to them; that is, until they are in the market for what is being advertising. I'd love to see a study on it, but I'd be willing to bet that as people move closer to a purchase decision, the search engine ads would increasingly be perceived as more and more trustworthy.

Facebook Business Pages

There has been nearly no coverage of Facebook's new business pages feature.

Inside Facebook reported on the feature in early November, but I hadn't heard a peep about it until a colleague stumbled upon the business pages feature yesterday.

Facebook, wisely, requires its users to represent themselves honestly when they open an account by using your real name, which then becomes your account name, which you cannot change after the fact. Because the accounts are based on individuals, it makes it virtually impossible for an organization to have an individual page without lying about it and thus violating Facebook's terms of use and, more importantly, the spirit of the community.

The problem I've been struggling with is that if I wanted to create a Facebook Group for a client, for administrative purposes at the very least, that Group had to be attached to an individual's account because that's the only way you can create a group.

So who, then, within a given organization, controls the Facebook account that created the group? The only real choice is the owner and/or CEO or Executive Director of the organization because they would be the least likely to move on to another job, thus avoiding ownership/access issues.

Happily, Facebook's business pages obviates that issue.

I'm testing out the service now with an e-Strategy page I just created.

At set up, Facebook offers you an array of choices for organization type (business, nonprofit, government, etc), brand or product pages, or even band, artist, and writer pages, for precise categorization.

The pages themselves have much the same functionality and features as an individual's pages, including the ability to plug in an RSS feed to automatically populate your Notes section with blog posts.

Facebook Business Pages Search Optimization

Business pages also are viewable outside Facebook's walled content garden, so a limited version of the page is viewable without having to log in to Facebook. The limited pages include a logo, a listing of "fans," a link, your description, and Wall postings.

That makes Facebook business pages also search engine readable, so expect more Facebook links to begin appearing in search engine results.

The ability to search engine optimize business pages is limited to including the account name within the HTML Title tags, external links to web site(s), and the Company Overview,  Mission, and Product text boxes.

Search Engine Branding

The description text that accompanies the links within search engine results are often overlooked for their persuasion and branding potential.

The purpose of that text, first and foremost, must be to persuade the searcher to click on your link. That requires creative, search optimized copy that is informed by the search phrase that you are targeting.

But people don't always click. When people search, they are exposed to 10 to 20 messages that are associated with the links on the results page. Even if people don't click on your link, they can still be exposed to your message through the link text and the description text below the link. This is search engine branding.

The pages of your site should be optimized to produce a "micro message" through these search results that, even if the searcher doesn't click, helps to brand your organization.

The following is an example of a branding problem I had with e-strategy.com.

Taking Control Of Your Meta Description Text

As is often the case, your own work usually gets pushed down your list of priorities "until you have time."

Such was the case with the search engine listings for e-strategy.com. The rankings for the site were fine, but the search engine branding of the site's rankings were not being displayed as I wanted them.

The problem was in the Yahoo! rankings for the site, specifically for the snippet text beneath the link of my listings. Search engines will usually gather text on a given web page to be used in the text snippet below the link for their search engine results pages. But if your site is listed in the Yahoo! Directory or the Open Source Directory Project, search engines may use text from the description of the site in the directory.

That is precisely what was happening with e-strategy. com. Unfortunately, the text I provided for the description of the site when I first submitted it to the Yahoo! Directory has long since become outdated.  This is what the listing looked like with snippet text drawn from the Yahoo! Directory (Click on the graphic to see a larger version):

I didn't want the text to say "catering to the small business and nonprofit markets" anymore, so I needed to change this. If I cared enough, I'd pay the $300 and resubmit the site to Yahoo with an updated description but I just don't think the costs justifies the little traffic I'd likely get from directory listings.  Fortunately, there's a less expensive way to address this.

The three major search engines, Google, Yahoo! and MSN all support the NOODP robots meta tag that tells search engines not to use description text from the Open Directory Project. The code is to be placed within the <HEAD></HEAD> tag set of your page: <meta name="robots" content="noodp" />.

Unfortunately, only Yahoo! supports the NOYDIR robots meta tag that tells search engines not to use the description text from the Yahoo! Directory: <meta name="robots" content="noydir" />. Fortunately, my only problem is with Yahoo! anyway, so that suits me just fine. Here's what my listings look like after implementing these tags (Click on the graphic to see a larger version):

You'll see from the third listing, that the snippet text now reads "e-strategy.com is a search engine and Internet marketing firm based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota."

That's more like it.

And because search engines first look to the Meta Description tag for snippet text, you have far more control over how that text looks by prohibiting directory descriptions.

Black Friday Search Queries

I posted a piece yesterday examining people's Thanksgiving-related search behavior so I figure today is an appropriate time to examine people's Black Friday search behavior.

As you can see from the Google Trends chart below, a day after the 100 most popular searches are dominated by Thanksgiving-related queries, Black Friday is all about shopping; and about shopping for specific products in particular. Six of the top ten search queries are for specific products. Two of the top ten searches are for sales or coupons and only two queries are unrelated to shopping:

The obvious search engine marketing conclusion here, is that online store owners should do their keyword research and ensure that their individual product pages are search optimized and traditional retailers should ensure their sites are optimized for such words as "deals," "coupons," "sales," "shipping," "directions," etc.

Thanksgiving Day Searches

People perform Thanksgiving-related searches near that holiday, so we see predictable spikes in query volume for such searches.

Thanks to the magic of Google Trends, this is the search volume for the top Thanksgiving-related searches since 2004 (click on the graphic to get a larger size):

This is how the search volume grew for those same search terms within the past 30 days:

And this screenshot shows the 100 most popular search terms today:

All Roads Lead To Rome...Online

Colosseo
Originally uploaded by sebatl

Just as all roads led to Rome during the Roman Empire, all online roads must lead back to your client and their message, if you are to have a successful comprehensive Internet marketing strategy.

Think of your client, your product, or whatever it is you are marketing as the city of Rome. You must make it as easy as possible for people to find you and travel to your city. The map must be clear and the roads easy to travel.

One of the primary reasons for the construction of Roman roads was to move the empire's armies quickly for their many military campaigns. Likewise, you too must build your online roads for your Internet marketing campaigns.

Multi Channel Marketing

The use of the word "channel" in the subheadline is deliberate, evoking, as it does a television metaphor and its content channels. Especially cable channels with their narrowly focused content; ESPN for sports, Comedy Central, the History Channel, and so on.

Internet channels define content as well: The Daily Kos for left-wing politics, ProFootballTalk.com for NFL football gossip, and engadget for consumer technology news. But Internet channels also define types of content: Technorati has blog posts; YouTube has videos; Flickr has photos, and Twitter has text messages.

Internet audiences are fragmenting because of hugely popular, deeply engaging sites like MySpace and YouTube. People are no longer spending a majority of their time at search engines, using them as portal to their final destinations. Now many people are going directly to their favorite online communities and spending a lot of time there. The word "community" is the operative word here because the most important thing most of these sites have in common are some sort of social networking feature.

All of these channels boast large, self-defined audiences: sports or history lovers; online video or photo enthusiasts. They give us the ability to reach the people who are most likely to want what we've got.

We know a lot about the audience already by the mere fact of them being there. MySpace users probably want to hook up with one another for whatever reason and because of the large presence of musicians and bands there, MySpace users are more likely than not music fans. YouTube users want to watch video; Flickr users want to share and look at photos; Technorati users want to read blog posts.

If you want to reach your audience online most efficiently, it is essential that you establish a presence at the online channels where your target audiences hang.

When In Rome

But, because of the social networking/media aspects of these channels, merely establishing a presence at these channels is likely not enough.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

The lingua franca of YouTube is video; for Flickr it is photos; for MySpace it is "friending" and comments. Take a look at what content you own and/or produce and match it to the medium. If you produce audio, upload it to Odeo. If you blog, make sure you feed your posts to Technorati. If you establish a YouTube account but don't upload and share your video, what's the point?

It is not just content type but also the tone of your content that matters.

Formal, Corpspeak on MySpace pages and comments just sounds weird. It's not in tune with the MySpace culture. Your blog posts that proclaim rather than discuss, announce rather than engage will fail; it's just not how the blogosphere works.

The Search Engine Glue - It's All In The Metadata

While, as I said above, people are spending more time at centers of online gravity, search remains a central function that serves as the glue that holds your comprehensive Internet marketing strategy together.

People don't abandon searching once they leave their favorite search engine; more often than not, they continue searching at the destination site. Search is, in fact, the primary and most efficient way of finding content at YouTube and Flickr and Technorati.

In order to reach the self-selected audience that search provides, you shouldn't forget to search optimize the content you provide these centers of gravity sites.

Finally, as I discussed in a previous post about blended search results, the content from the YouTubes and Flickrs and MySpaces of the world often rank well in Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.

If you're skilled and a bit lucky, many of the links will lead to Rome.

Protecting Your Online Identity: The MPR In The Loop Interview

The interview I did with Minnesota Public Radio producer Julie Siple about online reputation management aired yesterday on the Morning Edition show.

I thought she did an excellent job with the story: You can read it here and listen to it here (in RealPlayer format).

The interview is for a show called In The Loop that includes a live audience component and the show has its own Gather page, Public Radio's social networking service. Unfortunately, the story doesn't include any of the live audience portion. UPDATE 10/16/07: Listen to the full In The Loop show including audience participation.

I realize this was a story for radio and therefore needed to be edited accordingly, but, at the risk of sounding egotistical, as I've mentioned before, I would've liked to have seen the unused portions of the interview put online to provide more depth to the story. I didn't say anything particularly profound during the two interviews, but there were plenty of things that would have been helpful to people worried about managing their online reputation.

Such a practice would be easy and wouldn't require much additional labor. If the interviewee had offered some comments off the record or only for background, that would have to be edited, but aside from that, I don't see how it would be that tough to do.

Regardless, it was a fun interview and interesting to hear the final story. And, oh yeah, she did take my advice and dot-commed herself: juliesiple.com.

An Open Letter To Ask.com - Where Is It?

Dear Ask.com:

I've been watching your most recent television ads that show off your blended search results by demonstrating a search for "eagles of death metal" and felt compelled to write a blog post about the commercial.

First, of course, I had to try out your demonstration search. So I typed "eagles" and out popped some search suggestions from the search box but as I continued to type and my search filled out to "eagles 0f"..., you no longer had any suggestions for me:

Really?!? No suggestions, even though you're currently running an ad using "eagles of death metal" as a demonstration search? Couldn't you have reasonably expected that people would conduct that search as a result of your TV commercial?

I admit I've been critical of you in the past but this time I was planning on writing about your new ad and that you too are offering blended search results.  So I went to YouTube and searched for the new ad but all I got were old TV spots. I widened my search by doing the same at Google Video. No luck. I tried iFILM and Yahoo! Video and DailyMotion and MetaCafe. Still no luck.

Then I had the belatedly brilliant idea of searching you, Ask.com. Surely you would be able to find the video for your own TV commercials. Not so much:

Not only did you not find your most current ad for me, you found none of your TV ads at all, at least not as blended results.

It's not that I don't like you, I'm just disappointed in you, Ask.com. You told me how great you are at finding stuff, but you can't even find stuff in your own backyard.

There are a zillion people smarter than I who can help you improve your algorithm but I could lend you a hand on the video marketing side of things.

Give me a call.

See Also:

• Ask.com TV Ad Targeted To SEMs?
• Yahoo Upgrades Search Engine, Blends Search Results

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

I find myself explaining Search Engine Optimization so often, I thought I'd post this video from SEM Basics to which I can refer people for a basic understanding of SEO:

Yahoo Upgrades Search Engine, Blends Search Results

Yahoo! has just unveiled upgrades to their search results after Microsoft had done the same late last month for their search engine, Live.com.

One of the primary upgrades is Yahoo!'s Search Assist function that tries to anticipate what you want as you type your search query by offering related alternative search phrases in a similar but more comprehensive way than Google's preceding service, Google Suggest.

Here's a screencast of Yahoo!'s Search Assist in action:

Search Dominance With Blended Results

Search Engine Land provides a good rundown of Yahoo!'s new search features but for our purposes, the one I'm most interested in is that they've added blended search results. That means they are including within the search results page links to  audio, video and photos as well as web pages. For video, they are actually including an in-line player, so you can watch the video directly on the search results page.

Google, of course, has been doing just that for some time. The following screenshot shows Google's in-line video player for the search results for "joe mauer batting tips." (Click on the graphic for more detail):

That same search, "joe mauer batting tips," is going to help me demonstrate the importance of not just search engine optimizing your own web sites, but also uploading and optimizing your own content to other online centers of gravity where large audiences congregate and share such as YouTube and Flickr.

We uploaded and optimized a 14 minute training video that comes with the Mauer's Quickswing batting training product at many of the popular video sharing sites such as YouTube, Google Video and iFILM. We also opened a Flickr account and uploaded and optimized photos of the Mauer's Quickswing. We did this long before Google rolled out their blended search results feature.

But when they did, the result of that work was that the preponderance of the links on the first page of results for "joe mauer batting tips" lead to content that we provided, either through optimized web sites or optimized content on other sites.

Now that the other two major search engines offer blended search, the same dominance of the search results holds true for both Microsoft's Live.com for "joe mauer batting tips":

...as well as at Yahoo! for "joe mauer batting tips":

The happy end result was that the vast majority of the links went to either the client's site directly, or to essentially product placements, with either photographic or video demonstrations of the Quickswing product.

That's search saturation.

Google Trends Gets MUCH More Useful For PR Pros

Google's tool for tracking search term popularity, Google Trends, just got a lot more useful by updating their search term data daily rather than monthly, reports Mashable.

The upgrade to Google Trends also includes a Hot Trends tracker that shows you the 100 most popular search phrases for a given day and even look deeper at individual search phrases. 

For example, the third most popular search phrase on September 24, 2007, the eve of the Halo 3 video game release, was "g4tv.com/halo." By clicking on that phrase's link on the Hot Trends page, you can see the details of the search data for that phrase.

The upgraded Google Trends also includes a Hot Trends gadget to add to your iGoogle start page and an RSS feed for Hot Trends so you can subscribe to them with your RSS reader.

The most useful new feature is the ability to change dates on the Hot Trends so you can view historic data. This feature will give us the ability to track the life cycle of searches and search types as well as to better understand search behavior, particularly event-driven or media-driven search surges.

I've noticed, for example, that people search for football-related information on Sundays and Mondays, the days of the games. The last two Sundays have a high proportion of NFL players' names among the most popular searches.

The September 17, 2007 Monday Night Football game pitted the Philadelphia Eagles against the Washington Redskins. The top searches for that day included "hyperbaric chamber," "andy reid," and "charles barkley."

Andy Reid is the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Monday Night Football broadcast team discussed his sons' recent legal problems. The broadcast team also mentioned that one of the football players playing that night used a hyperbaric chamber to help with their game. And finally, former basketball great Charles Barkley was "in the booth" of the Monday Night Football team.

Clearly, viewers were turning to the Web for further information that they heard about on the broadcast.

Google Trends is now an invaluable tool to help Internet marketers and public relations professionals gain insight into how offline media and events affect search behavior.

Search Traffic Convinces NY Times To Adopt Pure Ad Revenue Model

The New York Times announced yesterday that they would discontinue their TimesSelect online subscription program and open up nearly all of their content to the online world for free.

For $49.95 a year, subscribers had access to the paper's columnists' articles and the archives. There will be fees "for some [archive] material from the period 1923 to 1986."

Though TimesSelect had 227,000 paying subscribers from a base of  787,000 users, and earned the paper about $10 million a year in revenue, the volume of abandoned visitors from the search engines convinced the Times that they would make more money through online advertising than they would through web site subscription fees.

NYTimes.com gets 13 million unique visitors a month and figure they can use that volume coupled with registered user demographics and visitor behavior statistics to offer advertisers the ability to buy behaviorally-targeted advertising.

I've got to think that the decision to optimize the site for search engine marketing coupled with the buying of search engine keyword ads for breaking news helped drive traffic to the site. When they looked at their bounce rate--the percentage of users who abandoned the site when they bumped up against the paid content wall--they realized the pure advertising revenue model might just work.

I would not be surprised if the Times' next step would be to make more of their content embeddable and shareable online to drive traffic from blogs and online bookmark services and to add a commenting feature to articles to encourage visitors to stay at the site longer.

(Not So) Daily SearchCast - Search Engine Marketing Podcast

Danny Sullivan
Originally uploaded
by dannysullivan

I've been remiss, dear readers. Last month I said I was going to do