The gloves are off when it comes to advertising for the upcoming elections, and while the debate is still on about how much the candidates will spend on Web ads, Google is already banking on snagging megabucks for paid search. With $10 minimum bids for state-targeted, generic phrases like "2008 elections" and "2008 senator election"--one can only imagine how expensive national-facing phrases like "presidential primaries" or "presidential election" are. The problem is that the giant's predictive tools can't even offer up a preliminary guess for how much traffic such terms may generate. Greg Meyer has some …

Not as much as you might think it does, according to Kevin Gold. His theory is that for particular kinds of purchases and emotionally charged offers, the initial ad copy can be compelling enough to cause customers to "plow into a landing page with tunnel-vision seeking only to take the offer." Using two examples, Gold aims to illustrate that searchers often don't pay attention to the images, calls-to-action and other carefully chosen landing page elements after clicking on an ad. In one instance, the company was featured on the popular TV series "Extreme Home Makeover," and sought to …

Now that all of the major IYP providers have rolled out some form of video product, small and medium businesses (SMBs) have a plethora of options when it comes to reaching the masses with online video. But Mike Boland notes that for the tech-savvy SMB owners who want to go it alone, blended search has made it much easier to maximize the benefits of online video content. SMB owners can create how-to videos, produce their own commercials, or even shine a spotlight on some of their favorite customers--and if the video is optimized properly, they can wind up …

Housing recession--says who? Certainly not Roost, the newest real estate search engine to hit the market. Unlike hybrid home buying info sites like Trulia and Zillow, Roost is focused on search, plain and simple, with an interface that is quite similar to travel search engine Kayak. Users will find data from various local listings services and real estate agents, and can sort it according to criteria like price, school district and number of bedrooms. Currently in public beta, Roost covers 14 markets, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston and Portland, as well as various locales in northern and southern …

UK-based Video Search News will host the first annual Video Search Summit on April 8 and 9 in San Francisco. Speakers like Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin and Suranga Chandratiilake, CEO of Blinkx, will be on hand to discuss the myriad issues that Webmasters face when trying to maximize the impact of online video, including indexation problems, legal battles, as well as the search vs. browsing debate. Discussions at the Video Search Summit will also address tactical issues, like how to incorporate Flash-based clips in search, how to broker syndication deals, as well as how to optimize videos for …

Traffic, traffic, traffic, Anthony Kirlew says that before you even address the "how do I get more traffic to a Web site" question, you need to answer some fundamental questions about the site itself, starting with "Why would someone want to visit it?" Whether it's a blog, an e-commerce site, or just a company boilerplate and some management profiles, every site needs a purpose. So if you don't have products to advertise, and can't or don't see a need to develop articles, then create a customer review section or throw up funny pictures of the COO--in other words, …

Phil Bradley reviews Galaxy IT, a new search engine currently in alpha phase that aims to visualize search. Specifically, the Fresno, Calif.-based company presents search results as a set of 8 boxes that surround your query. You can refine results with tabs like video, images and news, and zoom in or out to see more clusters of results (each in groups of 9 boxes). The problem with this interface, Bradley says, is that it quickly creates a cluttered screen with no room for the necessary info like URL or description. You can mouse over the boxes and …

Knowing how to set boundaries is not just a must for a healthy personal life, it's important for businesses as well--particularly when it comes to the scope of SEM projects. From creating a new PPC campaign (complete with keyword research and testing), to optimizing blog posts, to tweaking the copy on a specific landing page--every task needs to fit into the scope of work for a client, or the effort expended can quickly outweigh the service fees. Including a "Goals and Scope" document with every client's contract can go a long way toward helping account managers and strategists …

Are you helping your clients understand how seasonality and factors like breaking news are affecting the amount of site traffic they're receiving? Janet Driscoll Miller offers a quick brush-up on how using tools like Yahoo Buzz and Google Trends can be a great way to illustrate the correlation between news stories and search volume. Monday was the MLK holiday, so naturally, searches for "Martin Luther King" spiked, but just two days later "Heath Ledger" took the lion's share of searches, after news of the actor's death hit the wires. If your client had blog posts or other content …