• Kick 'Em While They're Down: MSN Headhunts Yahoo Employees
    Henry Blodget's got the scoop on Microsoft's opportunistic (or ruthless) recruitment team, and how they're sending "Worried about your job? Come check us out" e-mails to a few select Yahoo employees. One such promising candidate sent Blodget the letter in its entirety, which he shares in the blog post. Although there is no mention of an actual position, the headhunter goes in for the kill relatively quickly, writing: "I know a lot of people from Yahoo have been reaching out to us lately because they are nervous about pending layoffs. I wanted to give you an opportunity to …
  • How Much Does Buyer Motivation Affect Conversion?
    As per Nielsen Online data, The Popcorn Factory, L.L. Bean and Abebooks took the top three spots in terms of conversion rates for online retailers during the holiday season. All three e-tailers converted at least 20% of their site visitors into sales, and the remaining seven (of the top 10) all had conversion rates in the teens. Bryan Eisenberg's list of these e-tailers sparked a discussion in the comments stream about whether common best practices like writing persuasive copy and improving site usability are really important for getting conversions. Some readers wondered how a site …
  • ICANN's Anti-Domain-Tasting Plan Could Deter Scammers
    The domain-tasting issue (or the practice of domain registrars giving buyers a five-day window to renege on keeping a particular Web site) has seemingly come to a head. Shortly after details of Google's plans to ban Web sites that are less than five days old from participating in its AdSense program went public, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced a proposal that could end the practice altogether. Right now, the domainer's trade association levies an additional 20-cent surcharge on every domain that's registered--a fee that's refunded if the buyer fails to actually claim the …
  • Search Market-Shares Worldwide
    Baidu is revving up its presence in Japan, relaunching its search/portal www.baidu.jp, aiming to garner search share that's comparable to its 60%-70% (as per varying sources) share of the market in China. According to comScore, Baidu is the third largest search engine in terms of search volume and market share worldwide. Out of more than 66 billion searches globally in December 2007, Baidu snagged 3.4 billion, for a market share of 5.2%.   Google and Yahoo take the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, respectively, and combined, they account for a 75% search market share worldwide. Meanwhile, Korea's NHN …
  • Content Network Tips (Straight From The Googleplex)
    Google always has increasing advertiser ROI in mind, even as its strategists cross-promote their own products--after all, why else would they offer such great content network tips on the Inside AdWords blog? From the importance of creating separate search and content campaigns, to tips for creating the best call-to-action phrases, to making sure that your contextual ads lead to the right landing page--the giant has many of the best practices for working within its content network covered. In addition to suggesting that advertisers test the myriad ad formats (including text, image and video), the Inside AdWords …
  • Using Search Trends To Predict Google's Next Move
    While forecasting Google's next game-changing move can be tricky (who would have thought they'd get into developing renewable energy?), Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins has a strategy for predicting which particular industry the giant might choose to make waves in next. By looking at clickstream data, Hopkins finds categories where Google sends large amounts of traffic, but doesn't have its own established property. The giant has properties in all but two of the top 15 categories visited after a user searches on Google.com--including "shopping and classifieds" (Google Base and Google Product Search), "education - reference" (Google Knol, Google Scholar, Google …
  • The Pros and Cons Of Editing Archived Blog Posts
    If you maintain a blog, chances are that you have some older posts that are in need of updating--be it for factual corrections, in relation to breaking news or other reasons. While there are no hard or fast rules governing the editing of archived posts, Raj Dash says you should ask yourself a few questions before you take the time to make the changes. First, what impact will changing the blog content have? If it's a popular (traffic-driving) post, will making changes force the blog platform to create a new URL? If it does, your readers may not be …
  • Still More Insight Into Millennials' Search Habits
    Much has been made of the workplace habits and shopping behaviors of Millennials--or the generation born between 1980 and 1995--but lately there have been a number of reports focused on their search activity. Jennifer Osborne's post is likely culling insights from one of these reports, as she aims to illustrate why targeting Millennials with search means aiming squarely for the long tail. Millennials don't "category search" like their older counterparts. There's no need for 20somethings to know the ins and outs of category-based search platforms like the Dewey Decimal System or even paper Yellow Pages--because they're used to …
  • Three Examples Of Stellar Social Media Optimization
    The networks have seemingly embraced online video full steam--but just porting TV shows to the Web isn't enough to generate the kinds of traffic, buzz and viewer loyalty needed to help offset the high production costs. Brian Brown illustrates how ABC, CBS and NBC have each used social media to create strong online communities around "Ugly Betty," the "CSI "franchise, and "The Office," respectively. On the "Ugly Betty" site, viewers can watch full episodes, check out character bios and interact via message boards, as well as create their own, personalized "scrapblog," complete with show content like video clips …
  • 2008 SEMPO Board of Director Nominees
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