PC World
Apparently, Google's VP Marissa Mayer had something to say about the search deal struck by Microsoft and Yahoo earlier this week at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit in Palo Alto, Calif., according to Stephen Lawson. The effect of the deal is being debated across the tech industry, but Mayer suggests the deal reduces the three major players in the search market to two. This could lessen search innovation, leaving consumers and the search industry with limited choices. Mayer attended the AlwaysOn conference to join a panel discussion about innovation, where she talked about how Google develops and cultivates …
Google AdWords
Austin Rachlin tells us the new AdWords interface has made a difference for business in time saving by allowing quick editing, reporting and account navigation. That's according to feedback Google has received from companies like ClickTime. Marketers at ClickTime admit that using AdWords to improve campaign performance has increased click-throughs by 31%. In the past month, Google released spreadsheet editing to support bulk changes to keyword lists, and location extensions to simplify the local advertising process. The new AdWords interface is built on an infrastructure that lets Google develop features more quickly than in the past. There are …
ClickZ
Kevin Lee weighs in on the recent deal, writing that the potential downside for advertisers is bid escalation caused by the merging of Yahoo's and Microsoft's keyword auctions. For example, certain verticals and business sectors in AdCenter may not have experienced significant competition in the past. Lee asks a number of analytical questions, including, how will premium search advertisers transition between the Microsoft and the Yahoo teams? And what happens when a self-serve advertiser becomes large enough to be a premium advertiser?
PPC Hero
Looking for a new PPC management firm? Amber suggests 10 questions to ask about your potential new hire. She also reminds those who think they can handle their PPC account just fine on their own, that maybe they can make more money by hiring an agency. Among those questions are: How do you know this firm is legitimate? Is the pricing accurate for what they're providing? She also provides the best answers you should anticipate.
SEOmozBlog
Rand Fishkin believes the Microhoo deal could have both negative and positive influences on the SEO landscape. Companies should optimize sites for Microsoft Bing because the search engine will likely take 15% search engine market share, he writes. The deal could take some serious time to implement, depending on regulators. Fishkin suggests companies get prepared now, though full implementation for Yahoo may lag up to 24 months behind regulatory approval, according to Fishkin.
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
Matt Cutts attempted to poll the search community Wednesday to determine the big winner in the Yahoo and Microsoft search deal. As of about 9:30 p.m. Pacific there were 61 comments on the site. Some people left serious responses with details on who they thought did the better deal, but many more touted Google as the big winner.
Search Engine Watch
If you're attending the Search Engine Strategies conference, Greg Jarboe suggests you bring a book bag. More than 20 authors will be on hand to sign books on a variety of topics, from business and marketing, to PPC and SEO. As a new author, Jarboe has become addicted to tracking where he ranks on Amazon.com, a pastime almost as addictive as tracking where your site ranks on Google. While Google guidelines do not recommend the use of products to check rankings, Amazon welcomes them. For example, Rankforest provides sales rank tracking for authors and publishers to view historical …
Search Engine Journal
Former Howard Stern intern Chelsea Blackman looks at the state of adult entertainment and its influence on search trends, video and online advertising. It's clearly growing at a slower rate compared with the overall population of people going online. And while porn isn't growing in the number of page views, the industry is expanding through long tail keywords, Blackman writes. With so many subcultures and genres, porn sites have been doing an amazing job catching specific interests. She tells us that in word tracker, the term "dirty" produces a list of 100 most-searched-for keyword terms.
aimClear Blog
Marty Weintraub warns of the latest wave of "predatory SEO creeps" that provide "blatantly false information camouflaged by pretty blue reports." He dissects a free SEO audit that one of his clients received from an SEO company trying to sell its services. Weintraub provides a few "scary highlights as a warning for future report card recipients," detailing major mistakes the company made, such as wildly underreporting the number of pages of his client's site indexed by Google.
SEMGeek.com
An interview with Craig Danuloff, ClickEquations founder and president, delves into questions such as the reasons why he thinks ClickEquations is "more valuable" than Google's AdWords Editor, and how the company is handling the overall decline of PPC budgets. PPC professionals looking for details about ClickEquations's tools might want to dial into the interview, but nuggets that give insight into the state of the industry are sparse.