• Buzz Continues Re: Brand Perception, Click Fraud, Local Search
    Whenever I find myself speaking on day 4 of a Search Engine Strategies conference, I enjoy pointing out that attendees who have lasted that long are now qualified to start their own search marketing practice. I say that partially in jest, but also because the only way you fill four days is to get so far into the weeds that you can't help but spend most of your time learning the nuances of every angle of search.
  • In Search Of B To B Landmarks
    This week (actually, right about the time you'll be reading this column) I'll be talking to the American Business Media Publisher's Summit in Chicago about online opportunities, from a user's perspective. As I was getting ready for the address, I realized there's a substantial piece of the B to B market that's missing online. I call it a market enabler.
  • Five Tips For Assessing The Value Of Natural Search
    Whether you are trying to justify natural search during a site redesign or domain move, or even pitching to open up your paid content to the crawlers for free, here are five ways that natural search provides value, and can help you appeal to various people in your organization who have an impact on natural search performance.
  • Social Search: It's Not Who You Know...
    Everyone wants to be social these days. Given the hype around social networks and social bookmarking, it's little wonder that search wants to be social too. The problem is that when you refer to "social search," the odds are that whoever you're talking to will have a very different idea of social search than you do.
  • BuzzTracker Is The Real Yahoo!
    Two Fridays ago, Yahoo acquired news aggregator / blog search platform BuzzTracker for $5 million Yahoo also made Alan Warm, CEO of BuzzTracker's parent company Participate Media, the new general manager of Yahoo News. Yahoo is also hiring the entire Participate workforce. The message in all of this is simple. Yahoo is finally getting comfortable in its own skin
  • Will Yahoo Deliver Something New With Its Ad Quality Filtering?
    In the ever-evolving world of search engine marketing, staying idle can be deadly. The ongoing cycle of updating and re-launching is something that all the engines seem to accept as the price of doing business and that search marketers, who must respond to all these updates, know all too well as their daily routine.
  • How Should I Compare Thee To Google?
    At first glance, asking if Facebook can beat Google is a bit like asking if a penguin could beat an aardvark. Beat it at what? What's the contest? Or, perhaps more appropriately, asking whether your neighborhood can beat your table saw. Talk about comparing apples and oranges -- and at least those are both fruit. Facebook is a community and Google is a tool. But the question may not be as farfetched as it seems, because undoubtedly, as each grows and explores new monetization opportunities, more common ground will emerge between the two.
  • What Does MyLifeBits Mean to Marketing and Search?
    Today I'll continue my trip down the MyLifeBits wormhole. In a nutshell, MyLifeBits is a Microsoft project devoted to digitizing and indexing an individual's entire life -- online/phone chats, media consumed, pictures of people/objects encountered, etc. -- and, in turn, making everything searchable. Assuming the challenges to creating and scaling such a tool can be met, let's ponder the implications for marketers of a widely adopted MyLifeBits platform.
  • My Search Engines
    It's time to step down from the lectern and take a break from the futurism and pontificating. This column's about search, so this week attention shifts to "search" as a verb. Here's a quick review of personal picks for the most useful search engines for a range of specialized searches that can come up day to day, grouped by the overall goal these engines can help accomplish.
  • 3 Ways Google Could Lose
    After a mediocre Q2 earnings call and attacks from both piracy victims and privacy defenders, Google is still the online king. Can anything bring it down? I think the answer is yes, for a lot of reasons. This week I'll list just three areas of risk that Google faces.
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