Don't forget offline when you're doing search campaigns. That's the gist of two studies that conclude a combination of offline with online usually works best. One of the studies, done by Yahoo, shows that shoppers who see search and display ads before going to the store are more likely to shop 'til they drop once they get there. These so-called pre-shoppers spend about 41% more in the store compared with consumers who didn't see the online ads beforehand. The second study, by local search agency TMP Directional Marketing, found a surprisingly strong interplay between online and offline ads …

Some experts are saying the unthinkable -- Microsoft will win the search battle. At a recent invitation-only Microsoft Ad Champs Conference, the computer software company wowed the crowd with a new program called Ad Excellence Certification (wonder what this does), among other top-secret projects. Participants left with the desired positive glow about the company's prospects in search marketing. Not invited was Tony Wright, vice president of client services for interactive marketing firm DexterityMedia. But that didn't stop him from commenting on the new ad excellence program and offering a few suggestions on how MSN can triumph in the …

Google may be the all-knowing source in the U.S., but not in China. The title there goes to Chinese startup Baidu, founded by a U.S.-educated Chinese entrepreneur about the same time as Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched their search algorithm on the Stanford campus. But Google is not about to surrender the fast-growing Chinese search market to Baidu, even though the online advertising market still is tiny there. Check out this video clip that's going round in China. Though Google's market share in China is less than half, this clip claims the U.S. search engine is the …

Google has had some success integrating its search software with mobile phones in the more advanced European market, but not yet in the U.S. That's likely to change soon, as the search giant gears up to launch its own cell phones within a year. Not to be confused with the newly launched iPhones, Google phones will have built-in search engines and Web browsers. It's hard to imagine fitting many ads on the tiny screens of mobile phones, but leave it to innovative Google to find a solution. Google recently spent $4.6 billion to buy wireless spectrum in the …

Anyone calling themselves a consultant in the search business ought to have no trouble answering the first 10 questions posed in a recent seomoz.org post. This is not really a quiz since the experts answer the queries one by one online. But check it out anyhow to find their explanations to these perennial queries, including: "What is the long tail of search? Why are Alexa traffic rankings an inaccurate way to estimate traffic? What is the difference between local link popularity and global link popularity?" Search guru Danny Sullivan tacked on a few extra questions to …

Now that Microsoft co-founder and venture investor Paul Allen has gotten into search, look for even more action. Allen's investment firm Vulcan is a financial backer of a Seattle-based startup called Hypertext Solutions that's focused on making information on the Web more intelligent. Now his portfolio company has paid $3.6 million in cash to buy some mind-blowing search technology appropriately called InFact from Seattle data analysis provider, Insightful Corp. Here's what InFact does: analyze the syntax, semantics and structure of every sentence to uncover relationships and trends, then sort and summarize the results. It's done through …

Don't get too dependent on search engine algorithms to drive traffic to your site. That's the message from Web site operator Answers Corp. Its Answers.com saw traffic fall by 28% after Google adjusted the mathematical equations that have typically drawn users to the site. CEO Bob Rosenschein said he is looking to find ways to drive traffic directly to the company's sites. For example, the newly acquired Dictionary.com would tend to attract more direct visitors.

Chris Boggs, a search strategist with Avenue A/Razorfish, gives the latest on SEO tools for enterprise projects from his agency: the SiLC, short for Super-intelligent Link Crawler. He points to a case study for U.S. News & World Report that showed how SiLC helped the magazine get additional search traffic organically. By using the agency's tool, the magazine found that many of its Web pages were being tracked as duplicate content and not being ranked in search engine results. With the new link crawler, the problem - which had to do with printer-friendly versions of the pages -- …

What to do if your Web site is invisible to search engines? Easy, comes the reply from a Manchester, U.K.-based web design and consultancy called "And then there was light." (I am not kidding). Paul Brooks, who works there, says some sites that use a lot of flash or other animated features don't get picked up by search engines. That's because, of course, search engines look for keywords, not images. Brooks says the secret is to use animation and images combined with text that can be read by search engines. That way you score two highs -- with an …

Search marketing consultant Jon Rognerud has some tips on how to maximize links to drive traffic to your Web site. First read his blog, and second digest this. A good link strategy to score high in relevancy, rank and traffic should include links not just to partner sites or social networks but also to 10 top directories he names "link love." Apply the link to these Top 10 within related categories, he advises, and make sure the directory is indexed by Google. Rognerud goes on to list the 10, which includes dir.yahoo.com, along with their prices, ranging from $39 to …