What Did I Miss?

By Betsy Carpenter, Coordinator, Marketing & Strategic Partnerships

For those of you who don’t read various industry blogs, or the world of search is not your entire passion, or even if it is, here is a brief taste of what you might’ve missed over the past few days. Hopefully, you can fill the silence by the water cooler now – enjoy!

• Google Search Options: Last week, Google released a variety of new search options to help aid as you wonder the web through search, including my favorite, the wonder wheel. According to some screenshots released to illustrate their creative process, they might have released too much. Find out what might be the next steps in Google search – unless someone beats them to it!
• Microsoft has made several updates to adCenter in the areas of account and campaign management, content ads, and their desktop (beta). Learn how to use the new features on Microsoft’s What’s New in adCenter page.
• Hitwise released a new study showing not only that lead referrals from search are on the rise in most industries, but traffic coming from natural search vs. paid search is also booming! Is it the economy or are marketers just getting smart? Which came first the chicken or the egg? Whatever – it’s good news!
• Is Google in trouble? Last Week, the Obama administration declared they would toughen antitrust enforcement. The New York Times and many others speculate that this administration is going to be a lot harder on web giants and technology platforms like Google.
• Facebook may be looking to cash in as Ad Age estimates revenue from app developers on Facebook falls between $300-500 million. And why wouldn’t the social media giant with numbers like that? Among the top Facebook apps are LivingSocial, RockYou Live, and MyCalendar.
• Twitter is big enough for even the small fishes. Naked Pizza of New Orleans conducted a study on sales coming from Twitter and found that even a small business can benefit from the power of the tweet. Over the course of a day, after a special twitter exclusive promotion, the Pizza shop recorded 15% of its sales coming from Twitter. This is something small businesses should start “following.”
• Google has now opened their trademark policy – allowing for advertisers to use trademarks they don’t own in their ad copy. Check out the exact policy to see where the line is drawn.
• Accidents happen…to EVERYONE. Yesterday, Google reported a traffic jam due to an error in their system that ultimately caused much data to be routed through Asia. All is well now, and Google apologizes for the delay. Check out this traffic jam chart provided by Wired.com.

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That’s all for now – happy searching!