Glenn Pingul says that video should be a core search marketing tool, and gets to work debunking some of the most common myths that small business owners seem to have about the medium. First off, video doesn't have to be expensive--nor does it have to be a clip of live action. Repurposing 30-second spots is great if a company already has them, but creating high quality how-to videos, interviews and even photo slideshows set to music can be just as effective. But video--just like all searchable content--must be fresh and updated. "Now, the timeframe of what …

In early 2007, Shimon Sandler asked his AdWords rep for some benchmarking data for click-thru rates (CTRs) on a by-industry basis. In the midst of spring (soon-to-be summer) file cleaning, Sandler found the slide she'd prepared for him, and decided to share it with the search community. "I was told that these are from large comprehensive PPC campaigns from industry leaders," he says. "I don't think this can really be used as representative data for the Avg CTR for each of these industries. But, it's interesting data anyway." Indeed. For example, average CTRs for the banking/savings …

In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Macy's CMO and Chairman of the online division Peter Sachse gave a vague response to the question of how the retail giant was measuring the effectiveness of its search marketing efforts. "It's not as precise as we would like it to be," Sachse said. Then he used the example of a shopper searching for "perfume," and said that Macy's could track back to search if the consumer bought it online, but not if they'd actually come into the store. His ambiguity sparked Jonathan Mendez' curiosity--after all, shouldn't the head …

Kayak CEO Steve Hafner went on the record with PhoCusWright President Philip Wolf during the Travolution Summit 2008 in London, and William Bakker has posted a video of the discussion, in addition to a rough transcript. Hafner discussed the future for Kayak, which bought rival travel search aggregator SideStep in late December. "Our goal is simple," he said. "We want to be the number-one travel site for consumer information world wide." In terms of volume, Hafner said that the company would round out the month with about 45 million queries. "That's more than Priceline, but half …

When Google announced its Automatic Matching feature, many marketers were concerned even about the possibility of letting the search giant run ads for keywords and queries on its own--essentially burning the budget on words and even categories that they wouldn't have chosen themselves. Now that the giant has begun rolling out the practice, reports of how well (or not) Automatic Matching works are rolling in. Hanapin Marketing's Amber Benedict gives the rundown on the results of a week-long test--and the outcome was a little underwhelming. "I've had a full week in running the new feature and …

LinkedIn has rolled out Business Profiles, which let companies create a page (in the same way that their individual employees can) and use it for recruiting and lead generation purposes. While the actual links (back to the homepage or company blog) created by LinkedIn would seem like a boon to a company's SEO strategy, Erik Dafforn argues that the social network has some hurdles to clear before it can be utilized as a real search tool. One problem is the flexibility that LinkedIn gives profile creators. Not all employees may know the company's official name and URL, and "with …

After all, paid search is still Google's cash cow. In a recent interview with German pub Faz.net, Google's CEO said that the giant continues to focus on improving search technology and targeting because "there's no limit for search marketing." Still, Eric Schmidt did say that much of Google's future growth would stem from mobile search and advertising. He was less optimistic about social media ads, though, echoing Larry Page's remarks about the glut of inventory being difficult to monetize. "We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we …

StumbleUpon gained the attention of the search community (not to mention eBay execs, who decided to purchase it for $75 million) last year, but since then, some of the fervor for the toolbar-based, social discovery engine has died down. Ian Lurie explains the top reasons why StumpleUpon's popularity has waned. "Links from Stumbleupon.com don't help with SEO," he says. "They 'nofollowed' everything a long time ago to prevent spammers from overrunning the place." And as for the traffic, Lurie says it "looks lousy. Lots of visitors, but their average time-on-site is so low you wonder if the visitors …

Fresh from the International Search Summit in London, this post is a recap of a presentation by Tor Crockatt, in which the editorial operations manager for adCenter Europe offers up tips for keyword research no matter what the language. One idea is to think of your keywords as questions that searchers are asking--and then use your site to answer them. So, a search for "tub cleaning supplies" might stem from "where can I get tub cleaning supplies in Carson City?" Your Web site, offering tub cleaning supplies online, as well as the directions, contact info and hours of …