• How SEM Agencies Can Communicate Their Value
    There is much discussion among members of the search engine marketing industry on client satisfaction and imminent churn.Simply put, it boils down to setting realistic expectations.
  • The Extreme Makeover of Integrated Search Planning
    This week, I was in New York, talking about integrated search planning. It's one of those industry phrases that you gloss over, not paying much attention to it.
  • Menu for Local Search Success
    It's hard to withhold the schoolgirl, doe-eyed celebrity worship when meeting Menupages.com founder Greg Barton for a drink. He gets that reaction a lot. It's amazing how excited people get over menus.
  • The Paid Search Blockade Strategy
    What is a blockade? It's exactly what it sounds like -- a barrier to prevent your competition from appearing in the top search results. This technique typically is used only in very competitive markets.
  • What's Brand Got to Do With It?
    Search engine optimization and marketing is often thought of as solely a direct marketing media, with branding often forgotten. In fact, branding and brand awareness are significant elements of search.
  • Google vs. Grandmom
    My poor grandmother. She survived the Nazis, the Russians, and the Poles. She braved postwar anti-Semitism in Germany. This woman has known hardships the likes of which I could never imagine. Now, with my help, she's trying to fulfill her greatest challenge: mastering the Internet.
  • If I had $4 Billion Dollars, Part Two
    If you were Google, you had access to $4 billion in cash, and you were taking on Microsoft on their home turf, what would you do? That was the question I posed to you two weeks ago. After sorting through the self-serving e-mails from various CEOs suggesting that Google should buy their companies, there were some very interesting strategies put forth. Let's see if they're listening in Mountain View.
  • Updated Four Bedroom 2.5 Bath With Winter Search Views
    First, I'd like to respond to the handful of replies from my last Search Insider article of Aug. 17, "How Motley Crue Saved Search." Some of you criticized the column for its use of Motley Crue as an example of umlauts in popular culture, rather than Husker Du, which as one reader claimed, "would resonate much better with the 30- 40-year-old search engine crowd." Olaf Sorenstam, an organic search engine marketer from Faribault, MN, states that "32 percent more search marketers prefer Husker Du than Motley Crue."
  • Searching In Katrina's Aftermath
    Coming to grips with Hurricane Katrina is impossible. The loss of life, the destruction of a city on a biblical magnitude, and the survival struggles for the masses of uprooted countrymen is beyond my comprehension. Though I can't make sense of it, I can take a more detached view, and look at how Katrina is represented in search results.
  • A Google Scenario
    The media industry has been abuzz recently over Google's foray beyond the Web and into the brokering of print ads. The size of the trial is miniscule, as far as anyone on the outside can tell, but the possibility of what's to come is where things get really interesting. Search industry watcher Danny Sullivan wrote on his blog last week, "Not only doesn't the move surprise me, but I personally expect we'll see more of it." I happen to agree.
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