Brand name auto manufacturers (or automotive OEMs) are some of the biggest PPC spenders in the world, but according to Tad Miller, spending a lot doesn't necessarily mean fully leveraging the power of search marketing. And in the case of automotive OEMs, Miller says that their search campaigns are faltering for two main reasons: unclear goals and a lack of budget accountability for their search firms. Since accountability is at the heart of the paid search value proposition, it seems counterproductive to think that a search firm would be mismanaging the budget. But a majority of the …

Marketers in search of an example of the ultimate link-bait strategy need look no further than GodTube, a Christian video site that Debra Mastaler calls "a YouTube clone sprinkled with holy water." GodTube doesn't just rest on its laurels and expect users to visit or create inbound links simply because it's amassed a wealth of clips. One of the first smart moves is that GodTube has an entire section translated into Spanish. "Since the US Census puts the Hispanic population at 47.8 million in 2010, or 15.5% of the US population, offering your site in Spanish makes sense," …

Imagine seeing a PPC ad addressed directly to you for a product you'd been looking for in the past few weeks, or better yet, something you'd been emailing a friend about. Does it appeal to your marketing side, but spark your "creepy meter" as an Internet user? For Jennifer Slegg, it's a little bit of both. She cites a recent New York Times Bits blog post as proof that it's a possibility: "Google told me that they 'might' have the technology be able to serve such ads that show your Google user name, and that they have no current privacy …

Whether it's fair or not, Wikipedia pages still tend to snag high organic rankings for keywords across multiple categories. So what is it about the entries that make them so attractive to the engine's algorithms? "The English version is most people's idea of a perfectly optimised site," says Patrick Altoft. That means strong on-page SEO--like entries having engine-friendly file names, title tags and meta descriptions, not to mention the wealth of crawlable, keyword-rich text. The internal linking structure is also one of the most robust on the Web--as every entry that references another article turns the title into …

Speculation is still swirling about whether Ask will still be a viable alternative in the core search space--and what the market would look like if the "Little Search Engine that Could" folds or hands the reigns over to Google. Loren Baker argues that a new alternative would step in to fill the void--kind of like Fox did in the '80s, when TV viewers only had the big three networks to choose from. Baker serves up a dozen alternative search engines that could feasibly pick up Ask's slack. AOL for example, has bulked up in terms of multimedia search …

Xcavator is not your average image search tool--it's geared toward pros that need stock photography from companies like Fotolia and 123RF. With over six million images, Xcavator allows designers and art directors to compare stock photo prices from multiple sources to find the best deal--but the site's image search technology is what's really worth exploring. Xcavator uses a combination of text-based and visual search to help users sort through the images. It starts with text-based search, as you add a query to the search box, and Xcavator brings up images related to the term. The Pandia team chose …

SES typically sparks dozens if not hundreds of blog posts full of key takeaways, session reviews and insights from the attendees' perspectives, but not many from the exhibitor's point-of-view. Jody Nimetz chats with SES NY exhibitor Manish Chowdhary, founder and CEO of GoECart.com, about his expectations for the conference and what keeps his company coming back year after year. Chowdhary says he expects this year's conference to have "record attendance," and anticipates quite a bit of speculation about the future of search as a result of "the potential Microsoft-Yahoo merger, Ask.com re-branding and Google's slowing growth rate." …

Microsoft's adLab showcases some of the advertiser and publisher tools that the software giant's engineers are working on, and today's post offers an overview of two tools from the Keywords & Content category. The Entity Analysis tool "breaks down complex user queries into separate entities making it easier for the delivery engine to serve the most relevant ad," says Mel, an adCenter Community team member. So users searching for "needle," would no longer see ads for Seattle's "space needle," while a query for "cheap flights to Paris," would be analyzed in terms of "cheap flights" and "Paris." …