Find Resolution: Resolution Media Query Marketing Blog: Brooke Nichols

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What does the QueryMatrix Mean to Me?

What does the QueryMatrix mean to me? A lot.

This is my final Find Resolution post, as I leave my position as Senior Marketing Manager and my throne as the QueryMatrix Queen.

The day is definitely bittersweet. Being a member of Resolution Media has been one of the best experiences of my life and the thing that has kept me excited to come into work every morning is, by far, the people.

As I reminisced at lunch over all the fun and crazy events of the past year, the QueryMatrix Contest, “What does the QueryMatrix Mean to Me?”, was one of the highlights.

The QueryMatrix is the core of our organization and it sets the course for how we navigate the immense and evolving search marketing landscape. So we decided to have a party dedicated to it. Everyone presented what it meant to them in any form they deemed fit. We had rappers, poets, bakers, singers, artists – you name it – we had it, all for the QueryMatrix.

So, as my goodbye to the readers of Find Resolution, I’d like to share one of my favorite memories from that day…

Thanks to Matt Ballek, film maker extraordinaire.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Senior Marketing Manager (signing off)

Resolution Media’s Star Bowling Team

Last week at the 2nd Annual Yahoo Agency Battle of the Bowlers, Team Resolution Media brought their A-game to the lanes for an evening of search and strikes!

The team of Brian Yamada, Matt Ballek, Grant Parker, John Malysiak, Todd Silverstein and Steven Bauer went into the evening’s competition with the goal of representing Resolution Media’s fine crew of search experts and sports aficionados.

Relive the magic of the bowl-off and check out the big (computer) screen version from RM's Matt Marshall and Matt Ballek:

Our team was a fierce competitor and wildly successful, yet Mindshare Interactive came out the evening’s winner, beating RM by about 30 pins. But a good time was had by all, and RM did score Best Uniform (2nd year in a row!).

Thank you to all the fellow RM folks that came to lend support to the RM Team. And thanks to Yahoo! for another awesome event.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Sr. Marketing Manager

“Last 7 days” in Search

While tracking the top performing search bylines this week, these titles caught my eye. It’s a somewhat random smattering of smarketing news for your Saturday or Sunday. Enjoy!

The Fine Line Between Search And Discovery
Discovery online can take a number of forms. It’s generally offered as a counterpoint to searching. With search, users enter a query and ideally find exactly what it is they are looking for (even if the search needs to be refined), while discovery presents new information to the user at a time when there’s no explicit interest expressed. Much of the reason for the divergence of discovery and search stems from some people citing how consumers spend only 5% of their time online searching, so the rest of their time online is undervalued. Yet often searching is the best way to discover something, whether it’s a new site, new information, or new products.

Is There Room for Another Free Analytics Tool?
Get your free analytics tools here. Here... Or here.

As I've said on a number of occasions, never have search and analytics been so closely aligned. Which is probably the reason that Yahoo recently purchased IndexTools (Disclosure: My company has been a long standing partner of IndexTools). Quite a lot has been written since the announcement was made at the beginning of the month. But this is the first opportunity I've had to give it any thought.

Microsoft Sees Ad Growth, Shrugs at Yahoo
Microsoft will get along in the online ad space, with or without Yahoo under its wings. That was one message conveyed in this afternoon's earnings call with investors. The company's Q1 results pleased analysts, though its net profit fell to $4.39 billion.

"With or without a Yahoo acquisition, Microsoft is focused on the online advertising market," said SVP and CFO Chris Liddell, mirroring comments made earlier this week by Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer.

Online Advertisers’ Task List
In 2006, WebVisible hired Nielsen//NetRatings for a benchmark survey examining Internet consumers' use of search engines to find local businesses, particularly those in the service industry, such as dentists, plumbers and carpet cleaners.

Holy Mother of Linkbait
This past Tuesday night (and, eventually, Wednesday morning), Rand and I sat down and "wrote" a post that we were quite sure was rather amusing.

We had stumbled onto a linkbait idea that hadn't been done before and that people seemed to enjoy. As of right now, the post has received 2489 diggs in just over twenty-four hours. It went hot while Rand and I were flying back from Long Beach, where we'd attended SMX Social Media. When we'd boarded the plane, the post had 150 Diggs. When we checked it again after arriving back in Seattle, it had 1800.

Web 2.0 Expo - Creating a Social StrategyLee Odden's Web 2.0 Expo coverage discusses "the importance of not jumping into social technologies and applications just because the competition does, but to have specific objectives and measurement with defensible results."

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Sr. Marketing Manager

Bryson Meunier at MobileMonday NY

As you know, Bryson Meunier is Resolution Media’s resident expert on all things mobile. As such, he’s been asked by Mobile Monday, an organization that promotes the mobile industry, to come to New York and moderate a panel discussion including panelists from several companies active in mobile analytics and social search. See below for details…

April 28th at MobileMonday NY: Social Search & Mobile Analytics
This month’s event, “Optimizing the Mobile Experience and Increasing Visibility with Social Search and Mobile Analytics” is sponsored by taptu.

Bryson Meunier, Resolution Media: To demonstrate how rapidly the mobile web and mobile search is developing these days, ten months ago David Harper said at the Mobile Monday NY dedicated to Mobile SEO:

“There is a real lack of analytics, as far as traffic or benchmarks. Many analytics tools don’t understand mobile traffic.”

Today, however, there are many analytics packages in place to optimize mobile campaigns, including Amethon, Bango, Mobilytics and Quattro Wireless. The fast-paced world of mobile search has also brought Taptu to the forefront in the last six months with their mobile social search engine, which many have called a serious competitor to Google in mobile search.

Other variations in mobile search and discovery are also emerging in the US, such as QR codes and mobile visual search. For webmasters, search engine marketers and advertisers still thinking of mobile optimization in terms of links, title tags and traditional web analytics, there is much to learn today about the opportunities available in the medium.

Fortunately, Mobile Monday NY is hosting a free event on April 28th to discuss the new opportunities available in mobile search and discovery since that Mobile SEO panel just ten months ago. How can marketers best leverage social search and mobile analytics to bring visibility to their brand today?

Representatives from several companies active in mobile analytics and social search, including Amethon, Bango, ESPN, Quattro Wireless, Mobilytics, Resolution Media, TigTags, and taptu, will be on hand to discuss. RSVP here

Moderator:
Bryson Meunier, Resolution Media

Panelists:
Dean Collins, Amethon
Joe Cuccinelli, Quattro Wireless
Dan Mason, ESPN Mobile Web
Adam Kerr, Bango
Greg Harris, Mobilytics
Stephen Ives, taptu
Stan Wiechers, TigTags

Your Hosts:
Lubna Dajani, Stratemerge
David Harper, Winksite

When:
Monday, April 28 2008 at 7:00 PM (until 9:00 PM)

Where:
Samsung Experience
Time Warner Center - Shops at Columbus Circle
10 Columbus Circle, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10022

Cost:
FREE, please just RSVP here.

About Bryson Meunier
Bryson Meunier is the Product Champion for Natural Search at Resolution Media, an Omnicom Media Group Company. His position gives him the opportunity to drive SEO strategy for some of the world’s top brands, and to share some of his learnings at BrysonMeunier.com. Special interests include linguistics, semantic search, and all types of content syndication strategies, including mobile SEO and video search optimization. He has previously reviewed the major mobile analytics vendors in his Mobile SEO’s Guide to Mobile Analytics.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Senior Marketing Manager

Hey Sunshine… Here’s Another Weekly Recap!

It’s Friday afternoon and the sun is finally shining with warmer weather here in Chicago – so, forgive me, but my mind is on the weekend! That does not mean, however, that I’m not keeping up with the latest news. To help you stay up to date, here are some top titles from the industry press.

Does Google Regret 'Don't Be Evil' Motto?
The Sydney Morning Herald's Asher Moses says that Google VP Marissa Mayer tried to tiptoe away from the company's much-maligned "Don't be Evil" motto in an interview last week. "It really wasn't like an elected, ordained motto," said Mayer, who was Google's 20th employee. "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 (the motto) is good PR but really it's empty because it's questionable whether shareholders will care (whether Google is evil or not)," she said.

NBCU Forms Unit to Create Brand-Centric Digital Content
The new NBC Universal Digital Studio aligns with Omnicom Media Group Digital as its first agency partner.

"It's really going to be a co-developed process," said OMG Digital CEO Matt Spiegel, explaining brand integration will go way beyond product placement. Rather than weaving a brand into a pre-determined storyline, "the idea here is to have brands in the storyline be the lead."

Learning to share (or give) analytics data
For many marketers, it is hard to remember what life was like before Google Analytics. So profoundly useful, few will recall that it was just two and a half years ago that the service arrived on the scene, providing free tracking to anyone who knew how to copy and paste code. Last year, a major update added multiple bells and whistles, including an easy-on-the-eyes interface and scheduled reporting. And most recently, Google Analytics launched a data sharing and benchmarking service.

Yahoo Takes on Google in the Analytics Game
Search engine marketers rely on Web analytics to tell them which key words are working -- and which ones are not. So when Yahoo launched a "Full Analytics" option within its new Panama search-marketing system, it turned a few heads.

Big Implications for Poor Google ResultsAs you probably know by now, Internet bellwether Google will deliver its earnings after today's close amid mounting anxiety that the search giant bombed the first quarter. As Bernstein Research analyst Jeffrey Lindsay says, "There's a lot riding on (these results)," as Google "is such a big part of the Internet that if it's doing well, it doesn't necessarily mean the other guys are doing well. But if Google's doing badly, it means everybody's doing badly." Indeed, such is the search giant's importance that a miss would likely weigh on the entire stock market, Bloomberg says.

Search in Pictures: Yahoo! Bomb, iGoogle Artcafe & Yahoo Exec Faceball
In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Senior Marketing Manager

Scandal, Intrigue… and Search!

So, what do the industry trades and news sources have in store for you this week? A search soap opera that keeps us glued to those glowing screens a few inches from our faces… A scandalous SEO plot to rid hopeful marketers of their ROI… Search results on a universal magnitude…

Yep, all of the above. Enjoy this weekend, as the search world turns!

Like Sands Through The Hourglass...
The plot thickens in the salacious story of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft and the story line tends to read more like a daytime drama than tech business coverage. The recent juicy developments in the Google, Yahoo and Microsoft love triangle have industry pundits and marketers glued to their computer screens and gossiping at the water coolers.

SEO Mos Def Busted by WA State Atty General: $450,000 Penalty Looms
Chalk this up as one more log on the "SEOs are snake oil sellers" funeral pyre. Washington-based Internet Advancement has been barred from selling or advertising any SEO services to new customers by state Attorney General Rob McKenna. The firm fleeced customers out of a "set-up fee" (typically between $1,000-$3,000) and $150 monthly fees, all while guaranteeing them that their Web site would appear within the first 25 links on the major search engines.

Internet Advancement is also no longer allowed to recruit new SEO clients, though the company can offer Web design services (as long as they don't involve meta tags, keyword insertion or submission to the engines). But as Kevin Heisler notes, the firm's Web site is still online--and it still mentions organic search marketing. Doesn't that constitute advertising to new customers?

How Yahoo! buying IndexTools changes Web Analytics
Eric T. Petersen argues that while there have been a number of major buys and mergers in the Web analytics industry, Yahoo's IndexTools grab has the potential to be the "permanent game changer."

The popularity of IndexTools' analytics suite stems from the quality of its functionality and support--at a fraction of the cost of some of the bigger solutions, Petersen says. Meanwhile, Google has already established an analytics consultant network--which, in theory, could serve as a ready-made distribution channel for a Yahoo-branded IndexTools solution. Petersen says that those two factors combined with the vast reach (and rich demographic data) of Yahoo's network are a recipe for an analytics industry transformation.

Online Retailers Try New Approaches
For online retailers, search and e-mail marketing continue to be the most popular tactics, though they are becoming increasingly interested in social networks and video, a new study indicates. That shift in tactics could be a risky endeavor, however, caution executives involved with the study.

ComScore’s Google Universal Research Findings
In my last Search Insider article, I briefly mentioned comScore’s Universal research presented by James Lamberti on the Orion panel at SES NYC. Considering that this may be one of the most significant studies on Universal Search queries to date, I think it is worthy of sharing some of their findings with Search Insider readers. Here is an overview of methodology and findings taken from both Lamberti’s talk, and data from the PPT presentation.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

Tomorrow’s Strategies from Today’s News

Of course it’s beneficial to keep up with the latest news and trends within your particular industry. However, what you do with that news is even more important than what you know.

Take for instance the topic of search marketing analytics; you realize its potential impact to your marketing initiatives, but are you using your data-driven insights to improve your online marketing efforts? Are you applying those learnings to your offline marketing efforts? Are you using it in innovative and strategic ways that drive value beyond those typically employed by most marketers? If not, I hope you get the most from this week’s search news!

Google To Sell Performics, Eyes Expedia And Skype
Putting questions about possible conflicts of interest to rest, Google announced Wednesday it will sell search marketing and optimization firm Performics, which it acquired as part of DoubleClick. Meanwhile, travel giant Expedia's shares were up in late afternoon trading amidst rumors that Google was eyeing the company for acquisition. And buzz persists about the search giant's intentions to gobble up eBay's beleaguered Internet chat division, Skype.

Do People Care About Your 'Green' Message? Yes
Nielsen Report Shows Perils of Exaggerating Ecological Good Deeds – As if you didn't know this already, a new report from Nielsen Online proves it: When it comes to going green, companies just can't fake it. When it comes to conversations about "greenwashing," the most popular blog topic is the contradictory actions of companies, comprising 25% of all discussions on greenwashing in 2007.

Integrated Paid Search Makes Dollars and Sense
In uncertain financial times, marketers return to the basics -- accountability, flexibility and cost efficiency. These, more than any other online marketing strategies, typify paid search marketing. They also explain the remarkable growth of paid search (pay-per-click, display and other contextual ads). To make the most of this growing marketplace, marketers need to integrate paid search campaigns to generate greater effectiveness and ROI.

Retailers digging deeper with search marketing analytics, expert says
With new sets of analytics tools designed for search marketing campaigns, online retailers are beginning to dig more deeply into the clickstreams between search ads and purchases and finding new ways to improve conversion rates, says Christopher Knoch, principal consultant for Omniture Consulting, the professional services arm of web analytics provider Omniture Inc. “After a search campaign hands a visitor off to a retail site, there’s a lot of information about what the visitor does that most marketers don’t have,” he says.

Yahoo Adds Voice Technology To oneSearch
Frustrated with constantly having to type away on your mobile keypad? Voice search could be the answer. Not only does it give your hands a rest, but it's also faster: Imagine how nice it would be to press a single button and simply tell your phone what you're looking for.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

Special Delivery: A Second Look at Search News

From privacy policies to understanding how data is used, the experts added their insights into this week’s popular topic. Beyond the privacy theme, the search news was as varied and plentiful as always…

And although this message may not be relevant to your query, and it might be interruptive to reading your fill of the week’s news – I’d like to say ‘Congratulations’ from all of Resolution Media to Aaron Goldman who became a proud papa today! That is, indeed, a special delivery.

Privacy Policies And Search Engines
Do search engines care whether or not a web site has a privacy policy? Is the content of a page less relevant or more relevant if there's a link on it to information about how any data collected about visitors might be used? Probably not.

But it's possible that a search engine might consider that the source of content is more trustworthy and more authoritative if it does include such a page. And that may make a difference...

Peeing Into The Privacy Wind
If it manages to pass into law, the net effect of Richard Brodsky’s bill — which mandates that the likes of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft provide the ability to opt out from tracking — is likely to be minimal.

Before moving forward with any laws, we need to consider the ability to opt out and the ability to manage personal history and data security standards and the benefits of personalization and behavior tracking.

Comcast To Stop Slowing Peer-to-Peer Traffic
Faced with pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, cable company Comcast said Thursday it will end its practice of slowing traffic to peer-to-peer sites. The company said it will work with BitTorrent to develop and implement a new "protocol agnostic" system for handling Web traffic by the end of the year.

Landing page optimization: Testing your way to higher profits
In the online marketing world, a lot of time and resources are spent driving traffic to a Web site or landing page. You analyze campaign performance with almost religious fervor in order to extract the last penny of revenue and profit possible from each Internet visitor. But all of your hard work comes down to the few precious moments that the Internet visitors spend on your landing page.

If Black Hat Equals Cool, Then White Hat Equals Paid
Affiliate marketing is a search industry niche that often gets a bad rap from both the engines and search pros--warranted or not. Chad Frederiksen wonders whether the benefits of being a "black hat" affiliate are worth the time spent evading discovery and the possibility of having all that work nullified. "People seem to associate black hat as the 'cool guys,"' Frederiksen says. "But the ultimate question to me is what is your goal? To be cool or to make money?"

I Want My Empty TV: Google's Play For Broadcast 'White Space'
Days after losing a bid to acquire a valuable portion of U.S. broadcast spectrum auctioned by the U.S. government, Google has called on federal regulators to gain access to another, "unused" part of U.S. TV signals to provide wireless Internet access. Google called the signals, known as "white space" in the TV industry, an "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans."

Loladex: Local Search On Facebook Steroids
Loladex is a local search application that runs within Facebook and taps into your contacts' recommendations to rank results. The engine crawls through some 16 million business listings, including restaurant info from OpenTable, and combines voting and notification features to create a highly social, local search experience.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

It’s a Good Friday for Some Search News

It’s Good Friday and hopefully that means the beginning of a good weekend (and possibly the end of this eternal winter for us mid-westerners). This week, it looks like the search world is keeping an eye on net neutrality and looking for some r-e-s-p-e-c-t for S-E-O!

What if Microsoft Bought Time Warner Instead
Microsoft apparently wasn't too impressed with Yahoo's latest pronouncement that its rosy future warrants a bid of at least $40 per share, or $9 per share more than Microsoft's original offer. However, Microsoft might ultimately have to raise its offer, especially if Yahoo hits the targets set out in a press release. Paying $40 per share would add $12 billion to the $41 billion Microsoft originally offered. At that price, the software giant would be better off buying AOL parent Time Warner.

FCC Schedules Do-Over For Net Neutrality Hearing
With complaints still pending against Comcast for blocking traffic to peer-to-peer sites, the Federal Communications Commission is taking the unusual step holding a second public hearing about network management practices.

Why SEO Doesn't Get the Respect It Deserves
Marketing professionals who specialize in legitimate SEO (define) don't get a heck of a lot respect.

Five factors why search engine optimization pros have a tough job. Hint: it has nothing to do with black hats or Jason Calacanis.

Google Sees "Watershed Moment" For Mobile Usage
Google is now reporting that it is seeing a rapid increase in mobile Internet search and usage on several platforms. According to an interview with Reuters, Google mobile product manager Matt Waddell said, "We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage. We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating."

Measuring the impact of offline media through search
Search is a great marketing channel to help you better understand the ROI of your offline media.

Because search captures demand generated by other media, it can help you determine the ROI for your offline marketing efforts. Tracking branded and relevant non-branded traffic to your site before and after your offline launch will allow you to determine the effectiveness.

Search In Pictures: Snoop Dogg, St. Patrick's Day & Danny Exposed
In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

Finalist for the ad:Tech Awards

We found out today that Resolution Media is a finalist for the 2008 ad:Tech Limelight Awards! The Resolution Media 2007 FedEx Super Bowl campaign is contending for the title of Limelight Winner, which will be announced at the award show in San Francisco on April 15th. Resolution Media also presented this case of successful Super Bowl advertising integration at the Yahoo! Searchlight Awards in February.

Again, we are extremely honored to be a finalist and very proud of the hard work that Resolution Media consistently puts into our clients’ Query Marketingsm programs.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

Worthy of the Weekly Wrap-Up

More news from the net to keep your brain busy this weekend. I recommend the article on the semantic web, which reminded me of Aaron’s Search Insider article on the MyLifeBits project. These are the kinds of innovations that will carve the path to truly personalized search and ambient findability...

Future: "Semantic Web" Google might have developed an effective way of searching for Web pages on the Internet, but its achievement pales in comparison to what is possible on the "Web of the future," says Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founding fathers of the Internet. He says the Internet will allow any piece of information, like a letter or photo, to be linked to any other. Social networks, for example, would be superseded by networks that connect all kinds of things through something called the "semantic Web." Berners-Lee says this marks the next phase of the Web's development.

Mobile search is not online search (and why that matters)
There's a lot of buzz around the mobile Web and mobile search these days. Early metrics have been impressive: Last year, The New York Times reported a mobile traffic increase of 600%, ESPN reported that its mobile traffic surpassed that of its Web site, and mobile ad company AdMob has posted impression volumes north of 2 billion per month.

Microsoft's Rapt Acquisition Enhances Ad Offerings
Microsoft took another stride in its race against Google today with the acquisition of Rapt, a company that helps Web publishers manage their advertising.

By acquiring Rapt, Microsoft continues its efforts to compete with Google to provide Web publishers with a full suite of ad serving technologies. Rapt's services are comparable to those of DoubleClick's Dart for Publishers and Google's Ad Manager, a beta version of which the search giant unveiled yesterday.

Keep Competitors From Seeing Your Data Competitive analysis is par for the course in search--but Bill "IncrediBILL" Atchison offers up a list of tools you can use to help keep your competition from stealing your SEO secrets. You can block the archive.org crawler, which will keep competitors from scraping your archived pages--preventing them from seeing how your site evolved over time. Add archive.org and the Xenu (a link sleuthing tool) to your .htaccess file and you'll keep snoopers out. You should also block bots, speeding crawlers and other unauthorized tools with your .htaccess file.

Eight Search Sites To Watch
When the research analysts at Hitwise, Nielsen, and Compete release their monthly search engine rankings, you can sometimes feel their pain in covering the same story over and over again. Check out Jeremy Crane’s latest post on Compete’s blog where he tries to lighten things up by talking about his wife’s birthday (happy belated, Mrs. C.!) and laments in the headline, “Microhoo gets boring.” I feel your pain, Jeremy. That’s why we’ll mix it up a little this week and focus on eight search-related startups

Search In Pictures: American Airlines Google Billboard, Yahoo's Birthday Party & Chris Gardner @ Yahoo
In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

RM’s RGyle Day

Innovators of both Query Marketingsm and fashion, employees of Resolution Media have passionately embraced the all-too-attractive checkerboard uniform – Argyle. So, to celebrate our love of the classic tartan pattern, we enjoyed office Argyle day.

The Clan (Jeff) Campbell

Checkmates

Stylish Stockings

What’s a search pirate’s favorite sweater? ARGHyle!

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

It's Official, GoogleClick is in Effect

Google announced that it closed the acquisition of DoubleClick today. In the announcement, Google proclaimed that, through the union, it will focus on ‘uniting search and display online metrics and on improving the measurement and execution of media campaigns.’

Eric Schmidt, Google's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed. With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising for users."

So, will all of the speculation on the effects of this acquisition prove true? Will our fears be realized or all for not?

To appease some of the anxieties that GoogleClick outsiders may be feeling at the moment, the announcement did address a couple key topics of concern:
- At the moment, the offerings and services will not change, nor will the DoubleClick team.
- Data confidentiality remains a DoubleClick and Google priority.
- Ad serving encompasses a set of critical technologies that will get more support and resources after the close.
- DART tags will be introduced into the Google content network.

And, again, the underlying theme of the message is that there will now be combined efforts to truly enable campaign integration across all channels. So, while it’s still too early to determine the impact of this new milestone in Google’s progress, rest assured that the partnership will play a significant role in the future of digital marketing.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

Willing to Share? Get Industry Insights in Return

From Marketing Pilgrim:
Breaking: Google Analytics Adds Industry Benchmarking and Trends

In response to the multitude of requests, Google Analytics is today adding “industry benchmarking” as a beta feature to its web analytics tool. What does it do? Industry benchmarking will allow you to see how your individual web site traffic compares to aggregated data from other sites in your industry/vertical.

In order to use industry benchmarking–and in order for it to work–Google needs users to “opt-in” their analytics data. Using new data-sharing settings, you can opt-in and share your data, while having access to industry benchmark data.

Read the whole story…

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager

News for Smarketers?

I was reading a white paper from Omniture today that referred to professionals engaged in Search Marketing as ‘Smarketers’. While I’m not going to use the term on a regular basis, the similarity in sound to my favorite society from childhood, the Smurfs, does have a slight appeal. That said, I hope you'll enjoy some smarkety articles below!

Innovation Vs. Execution
Much of the press coverage focusing on the possible Microsoft-Yahoo buyout has cast the story as a kind of fable in which a fading, mature technology company uses its raw financial power to scoop up a scrappy, but besieged innovator. According to this narrative, the real thing that’s at stake here is innovation itself, and if Microsoft wins, we all lose, because there will be less innovation, fewer choices, and less competition. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that innovation, while important, isn’t really the make-or-break factor that determines success in the technology business: a view that’s supported by even a cursory look at the history of the major players in interactive marketing.

Sitemaps Play Nice Across All Engines Now
The Sitemaps protocol has been upgraded to allow Webmasters to use one Sitemap (a file that contains URL info and meta-data for all the pages on a Web site) to support multiple sites on different hosts--and submit all the data on a single platform. Before, Sitemaps had been required to be on the same host and path as the URLs they contained--now, they can exist where the site owner chooses to host them, making them much easier to manage. Webmasters will need to add a line to their robots.txt file to direct crawlers to the differently-hosted sitemap--but that's about it.

Google AdWords Launches Limited Beta Test Named "Automatic Matching"
Automatic Matching is a way for Google to help the advertiser utilize their full budget towards keywords that they may have not been targeting. So if they have used only 50% of their ad budget, Google can detect that, and expand the advertiser’s keyword list based on their current keyword list and past history.

There has been a lot of heated debate about this beta product. Many feel Google doesn't have the right to automatically expand one's keyword list just to deplete an advertiser's budget. But it can be a useful and profitable feature for many advertisers who don't have the time or talent to expand their own list.

Increasing conversion rates for b-to-b search marketing
Ask business-to-business marketers their top marketing challenges and you'll hear "generating leads" and "improving lead quality." One way marketers generate leads online is by running pay-per-click ad campaigns that link searchers to landing pages with registration forms.

Search In Pictures: SMX Bowl, Google Jeans, Bart's Chalk BoardIn this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

Posted by: Brooke Nichols, Marketing Manager