Diane Aull manages to make lederhosen (and the fictional company that sells them) engrossing in this post, which is all about using everyday experiences as fodder for product- (or service-)specific Web site articles. Whether it's a quick blog about how to get schnitzel and sauerkraut stains out of lederhosen without harming the leather, or a section on how to accurately measure oneself for the best-fitting lederhosen, the most effective content blends some kind of personal experience with product knowledge, and of course, a call to action, Aull says. The last detail is integral to crafting content …

Advertisers with extra marketing dollars to spend don't have to reinvest their entire surplus with Google or Yahoo, or even Live Search or Ask. The Internet yellow pages (IYP) providers also offer PPC ad platforms, and Bill Hartzer reviews a number of them in this piece. First up is Yellowpages.com, which averages 100 million monthly searches. Basic listings (for stores with physical locations) are free, and the company also offers "YPclicks!" which allows business owners to buy PPC ads on a monthly basis. Meanwhile, Superpages.com also offers free basic listings, in addition to PPC and pay-per-call …

Ah yes, yet another social media-oriented search engine. This time it's Scoofers, a Netherlands-based service that pulls in data from social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit to help rank the results. Scoofers offers a number of query refinement options, allowing users to drill down by categories like celebrities/gossip, reference/Wikipedia and even by demos like senior citizens or teens. The engine uses aggregated social bookmarking data to determine which categories a given page should fall under. Four vertical search engines (travel, electronics, party & dining, and fashion shopping) are accessible from the Scoofers.com main page as …

Larry Becker takes a deep dive into site search functionality and why it's a vital tool for online retailers in particular. "Tune it up, and it has the potential to be one of the most ROI-positive investments you'll make in your site," he says. "Site search needs to help your visitor choose and buy, as well as find." Evaluate your site search from the consumer perspective. Is the search box easy to find and on every page? Is it clearly labeled and distinctive from an email sign-up box? Next, try running a simple search and examining the results. Are they …

UrbanSpoon has rolled out a local restaurant search and discovery application for the iPhone. Users enter variables like cuisine and price and then "shake" the iPhone to get a random selection. The Magic 8 Ball-style app uses GPS and the iPhone's accelerometer (or the feature that can tell whether it's upright or on its side) to come up with results. "We looked at all of the other apps which were either games or practical applications," said UrbanSpoon co-founder Ethan Lowry. "We thought it would be good to do something that is a hybrid of both." Mike Boland likens the app …

More marketers are using paid search for branding than direct response, according to stats from the latest SEMPO "State of the Market Survey." Some 61% of advertisers surveyed said brand awareness was their primary objective for SEM spending in 2007, while 58% said it was for direct sales. More than 800 advertisers and search firms completed the survey, and according to Ellen Keohane, the data also showed that SEM budgets continue to "poach" dollars from offline channels, including print, direct mail and TV ads.

Li Evans' latest online video tutorial centers on optimizing images and short video clips for Flickr. She takes viewers through the process step-by-step, from creating a Flickr profile and uploading the images, to crafting good descriptions and tagging. Evans also reminds viewers about the importance of photo titles and descriptions for SEO. For example, a San Diego tour guide service may have pictures of lion cubs from the San Diego Zoo, and want to optimize them so that they show up in searches for "San Diego Zoo" or even "family fun in San Diego." If the company uploads the pictures …

Hakia has opened up its platform to third-party developers. The semantic search engine rolled out a set of APIs that will allow techies to tinker with its natural language search technology and develop applications. Mobile video firm Berggi, for example, has already tapped Hakia's index for a mobile app called Berggi search.

During the Presidential primaries, paid search became a key tool in the candidates' marketing arsenals. So it's likely that Congressional candidates and other politicos will follow their lead in come November. But Greg Meyers says that waiting until the last minute to unleash PPC campaigns would be a big mistake as there's no "off season" when it comes to search. There's just time to build account history with the engines, test ad copy and content network exclusions, and develop the best-performing keyword list. "When a new campaign launches PPC, no matter how relevant you make the ad groups, Google will …

The Vertical Measures team serves up a review of the Link Harvester link evaluation tool. "It allows deep database querying of the Yahoo! Search database via the Yahoo! API," the team says. "As far as we know, it is the only link tool on the market which specifically specializes in allowing you to easily and quickly query beyond the Yahoo 1,000 search result limit." You plug in the domain of a competitor's Web site and get info on the number of unique domains that are linked to it, their IP addresses, as well as the breakdown of links that come …