• by Rob Garner , December 19, 2007

It's getting late in the year, and I realized yesterday morning that this is my last column for 2007 (my next round in the Search Insider rotation will be on Jan. 2.).  I produced 25 columns and about 20,000 words for Search Insider this year, so for this wrap-up I'm going to focus on a few select columns that you may still find useful, interesting, or entertaining.  Happy holidays to all.

If Search Engines Could Talk: Confessions Of A ChaCha Clickstream  I put this engine to a test for the term "bass" -- it was amusing, to say the least.  If an engine could talk in 2007, it might sound like this.

Search in The City Of Dallas I sat on the Search 2.0 panel of the Search Engine Watch Live conference in Dallas in January.  This column covers the show, search people and history of the search engine marketing industry in Dallas, and also covers an interesting conversation I happened to overhear in 2001 that sheds light on the origins of SEMPO.  Thanks again to Elisabeth Osmeloski for bringing the SEW show to town.

Yes, Co-managed PPC and SEO Campaigns Work  Results of the iCrossing paid search and natural search synergy report found that, yes, there is indeed lift across multiple metrics when appearing in both the paid and natural results for the same query.

Day One of SES NYC 2007.  Thoughts and observations on the opening of Search Engine Strategies in New York, on a cold spring day in April.

Should Online Newspapers Buy Keywords Related to Tragic News Events?   In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, an AP writer discussed some of the nuances of search during a tragic news cycle.  As I monitored various major breaking news stories in the SERPs this year, I found that most relevant placement for the critical early spike was in the paid results, though the Universal news placement is a close second.  But online news orgs are still slow to pick up on PPPC as an advertising medium for news.

Five Questions for Danny Sullivan  Danny Sullivan offered his thoughts going into SMX Advanced in Seattle, his first search conference after Search Engine Strategies, the search show he originally founded back in 1998.

Many Cite 'Creepy Factor' in Personalized Search  At SMX in Seattle, a group of advanced SEMs attending the personalization panel were far less concerned about optimizing for personalized search than they were in trying to figure out how to turn it off.  Hard to tell if they were spooked on a user level or an optimization level, but my impression was that they did not approve of the lack of transparency in how Google is tampering with "their" search experience.

Public Data Gone Wild: The Google Public Sector Initiative  Google is giving out SEO advice to government agencies, and the implications for searchers are free and open public data access, and possibly reputation management issues for some individuals and businesses. Google's JL Needham speaks candidly about Google's mission for Public Sector, and a Search Insider reader comments that maybe Google is again going against its old "do no evil" mantra in the process.

TV Commercial Optimization in a World of Universal Search  It was early in the life of Universal when I took a dive into the brand SERPs to see what videos were showing up for major brand terms.  In the new digital advertising paradigm, traditional agencies and search engine optimizers are now joined at the hip, and this article suggested that the two need each other now more than ever, as search engines have become a direct distribution point for video, particularly for primary brand terms.

Yes, You Should Still Optimize Press Releases.   Features 10 press release optimization tips, and an outline of the benefits of press release optimization.

 

The GoogleBalt's Great American Road Trip: Five Street-View Optimization Tips. In light of Google's brilliantly surreal and unprecedented experiment in deploying a physical search engine, it occurred to me that we now need to start optimizing ourselves, and our property.  Street View Optimization (SVO) is born.

The Death Of Street View Optimization Less than a week after I invented Street View Optimization (SVO), word is leaked back to Mountain View, and Google mounts a campaign to nip this one in the bud, lest they have another pesky SEO-like problem to deal with. 

Google had just rolled out Dallas Street View results into Google Maps last week, and I was able to find a picture of my own home and neighborhood.  It occurred to me that maybe I should have done a little bit of tree-trimming optimization before their Chevy Cobalt drove down my street.  Maybe SVO isn't so far-fetched after all.

The Unfolding Search Story Of Bodog.com A major online entity has its domain yanked out from under it, and gets things moving in just a couple of days to a new domain -- no small feat.  Imagine if this happened to Google, Amazon or you.  This story is still unfolding, and there may be implications on the rights of all .com registrants.                     

 

A Search Column about Search Columns Features a round-up of quality search blogs and bloggers.

Essential Tools For The Search Engine Marketer   A list of essential tools for all search engine marketers, as compiled by the DFW SEM Association. Includes a link to the full PDF presentation at the DFWSEM Web site.

 
'Search-Engine-Friendly' Copywriting Style Is Often Not Very Friendly To Humans   At this writing, this column ranks no.1 in Yahoo for the phrase "search engine friendly copywriting", no. 1 in Google, and no.3 in MSN.  Read it and find out why.

Google Zeitgeist 2007: The 'Fastest Rising' Social Network is... Webkinz Maybe we marketers are a bit too "grown-up"-centric in our incessant ravings over Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.  Kids are social networkers too, and guess what -- they have the "fastest-rising" social site for 2007, at least according to this year's Google Zeitgeist.