King of all things Google search, Matt Cutts, has posted a list of questions that his readers have asked him recently. The questions range from the interesting to the frivolous.

Two of the more important questions in my mind are:

Q: "Is Bigdaddy fully deployed?"
A: Yes, I believe every data center now has the Bigdaddy upgrade in software infrastructure, as of this weekend.

Q: "Now that Bigdaddy is out, will there be a new export of PageRank anytime soon?" and "Will the deployment of BigDaddy stabilise the rolling PR issues we are experiencing at present?"
A: I'll ask around about that. If there aren't any logistical obstacles, I'll ask if we could make a new set of PageRanks visible within the next couple weeks. I'd expect that as Bigdaddy stabilizes everywhere, the variation in toolbar PR for individual urls is more like to settle down too.

Make sure you take a minute to read through all of the questions.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

There is a new keyword trademark infringement case to keep an eye on; this one is Edina Realty vs. TheMLSonline.com.

This case could be the one to set more specific rules when it comes to trademark infringement through keyword bidding.

See the full News.com story here or check out a fantastic analysis from Eric Goldman, assistant professor of law at Marquette University Law School here.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We have been given some invites to the MSN AdCenter program and we wanted to offer them up here for anyone who is interested.

If you are an affiliate and are doing PPC, you should get an AdCenter account. While the interface leaves much to be desired, it seems like the amount of traffic coming through the system is on its way up, and the prices are very reasonable.

We are running this offer on a first-come, first-served basis. We do have a good amount of invites but the number is still limited. We do need to submit the invites in groups of 10, so once we have 10 people lined up, the invites will go out.

Please email me if you are interested in getting an invite or if you have any questions. My email address is jomdahl@insureme.com.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(File this tool under kinda cool but not likely to be useful.)

May I present to you the Yahoo vs. Google Web search tool.

Basically the tool looks at the results from Yahoo and Google, finds the similarities and then gives you a graphical display of what results are in both search engines.

Here is a screenshot:

The big takeaway from this for me is that there are some queries that are pretty close on the two engines and some that are totally different. This illustrates that optimizing your site for both engines is not a very easy thing to do, but not impossible.

Enjoy!

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's Friday, and with a bit of digging I have yet to find anything new that really has gotten me excited enough to post about.

That is good news for you because I can't stand missing a post. So instead, enjoy this picture of InsureMe's staff accountant Eric and me.

Have a great weekend!

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

What does Yahoo! put on it's toast? Jam?

There is some forum discussion taking place that calls out some pay-per-click (PPC) tactics being used by Yahoo!. In the simplest definition, "jamming" is positioning your click-bid to force the advertiser ahead of you to pay the most possible amount for clicks.

Does it happen? Yeah. Is it an efficient practice? Not if you consider the time required to monitor this tactic in order to ensure your fellow advertisers do not counter-atack by lowering their own bid just below yours. That does not leave much opportunity to grow campaigns and research new methods. There are other ethical questions that I will leave for you to ask yourself....

An interesting point was presented by "rustybrick" at Search Engine Roundtable: "Yahoo! Finance is a completely separate division from Yahoo! Search Marketing. Yahoo! Finance, as well as Yahoo! Real Estate and so on, are all huge online advertisers. I am 99% sure they run on separate budgets and have very little to do with each other, outside of being under the same company name. Keep in mind, Yahoo! Search Marketing was once Overture, it was then bought by Yahoo!".

Posted by at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One thing I have learned as an affiliate manager here at InsureMe is that there are just as many interesting stories as there are affiliates out there. We have affiliates who used to sell insurance, play music professionally, and even owned mini golf courses.

People's stories fascinate me, and I think many of our readers would be fascinated to hear these stories too. So I would like to find out more about you. I want to hear about your background, how you do your business, and what you enjoy about being an affiliate.

I will start conducting email interviews with people in the affiliate/search marketing business and post them here at the affiliate blog. This is just an experiment for now but, if it goes well, we'll make it a regular "thing."

Here is how it will work:

1. Send me an email letting me know you would like to be interviewed.
We will talk and find out a bit more about you and make sure you are legit :).
I will send you an email with a list of interview questions.
You answer the questions.
We will do any necessary editing and follow-up questions.
Once we have both agreed on the content, I will publish the interview on this site.

You don't need to be an InsureMe affiliate to be interviewed, just someone in the search marketing business. ( I cannot guarantee that everyone who applies for an interview will get their interview published...sorry about that!)

Oh yeah, and as a little incentive, we might be able to plug and link to your Web site from this blog, if it is appropriate. (That's right, a free link!)

So, if you are interested, send me an email and let's get this "thing" going!

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As an update to James' post back on Feb 15th, MSN is involved in a "search for charity" campaign in the UK.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) "will receive a donation every time users carry out an MSN search via www.clickscount.co.uk." Apparently, MSN plans to add more charities in the near future.

There are no details on how much will be donated or what constitutes as a search. Will UK'ers switch over to MSN en masse? Would you? How will this improve the search engine's relevancy?

Posted by at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that Google is public, they have to be a little more forthcoming when it comes to their company information. A great example of this is the 10-K filing by Google that just came out.

I am sad to report that they have not published the secrets to getting top rankings on Google; but they do give some interesting info on the following topics:

• Google products
• AdWords and AdSense
• Pagerank
• Search result ranking
• Possible threats to their business

If you are more like me, Jim Hedger writes a good summary of the filing over at Search Engine Guide - it will give you the general idea and save you from the embarrassment from being found asleep and drooling in your chair.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whenever I speak with new affiliates about marketing through pay-per-click (PPC), I always try to mention that the click-through-rate (CTR) of their advertisements will make or break them on Google. And with the change-over to a CTR-based model coming for Yahoo! Search Marketing (Y!SM) in Q3, I figured it was a good time for a few tips for raising your CTR.

This post will focus on tips for Google, but I am sure the suggestions here will translate over to Y!SM in Q3.

So, how can you make sure you are getting the best CTR possible?

Well, first off, there is no guaranteed way to get "the best" CTR - at least not that I know of (if you know how, send me an email :) )

So here are my tips for improving your click-through-rate on Google:

• Whenever possible, use the keyword in the title of the ad - By doing this you get your title bolded, making it stand out. You can do this automatically in Google by putting {KeyWord:Health Insurance} into the title of your ad. What this does is tells Google's system to use the keyword as the title and if the title is too long, use whatever is after the colon, in this case, "Health Insurance."


• Look at the top-performing ads - Looking at the advertisements that are ranked at the top of sponsored results will give you an idea of what is working. Analyze the ads and see what seems to be working - and then create your own ad using the best tactics used in the top-performing ads.


• Stand Out - Ok, so I did just tell you to copy best practices, but that does not mean copy the whole ad. If you can think of a way to be different and stand out from the other ads, do it. Whether this is a special offer ("10% Off"), a good product claim ("Save Hundreds!"), or a call to action ("Start Saving Now!"), make sure you stand out.


• Capitalize - Make sure you capitalize the first letter of each word in your ad text. "Get Free Quotes Today" will make more of an impact than "get free quotes today."


• Make sense! - If your ad makes no sense, people are not going to click on it. A great example is one of those ebay ads you might see that says "Get your Scarlett Johansson at ebay today!" That makes no sense - you can' t buy Scarlett Johansson on ebay. Actually, you can't buy her anywhere. Trust me, I looked into it.

So, to sum up, use the keyword in the title, study your competitors, stand out in a positive way, use a call to action, capitalize, and remember—you can't buy Scarlett Johansson.

Questions?

Posted by James Omdahl at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A company called Kinderstart has decided to sue Google because their Web site dropped in Google's natural rankings.

That's right, they are trying to stick it to the Google man for losing their Web site ranking.

I mean, we have all been there (OK, some of us have been there): your Web site is ranking well for a great keyword on Google, and then one day you lose your ranking. You are mad, and you don't think it is fair. You blame Google and its "evilness."

So it is good that Kinderstart is taking on the man. "Way to go Kinderstart!" you say.

But don't get too excited; it looks like Kinderstart.com, while marked as a search engine focused on children zero to seven, has a bit of a dark side—and most likely an ulterior motive.

In the forums over at Search Engine Watch, a commenter named Unreviewed commented:

"I checked out the web site (the one suing Google) and it somehow got a popup past my blocker and offered to install a spy ware program. This is a site aimed at children for goodness sake ...."

and Inlogicalbearer says:

"I've found in less than 5 minutes casino links, diet pills links, drug pills link and even piercing links."

I personally did not get a pop-up or an offer to install spy ware, but I did find links to sites not suitable for children. The links looked like part of a big 'ol link farm,*ahem* I mean directory.

So there is a pretty good chance that Kinderstart got nailed by Google for being naughty and breaking the Google webmaster guidelines.

So why would Kinderstart even try to sue Google if they are bound to lose?

I think BradBristol nails it when he says:

"I don't think your missing anything John."

These guys have a sub-par Web site that uses some 'shady' methods, and they are blaming Google for not listing it at the #1 spots they want.... (Like, I never heard that story before, working as an SEO.)

Those Kinder folks are gonna get their butts kicked in court.

But they are gonna get millions and millions in free advertising....

I gotta agree with Brad. When you look at the quality of Kinderstart.com, you quickly realize that this company is not afraid to use this lawsuit as a way to get links, visitors and free publicity.

Now the big question is, will Google try to crush Kinderstart or let them live and invite hundreds of similar lawsuits?

Stay tuned :)

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rand Fishkin has uncovered what he is calling the "Holy Grail" of search operators on MSN. Why is he so excited?

Well, per his example, you can type in:

(linkdomain:kennedyfunding.com linkdomain:hardmoneyfunding.com) (-linkdomain:avatarfinancial.com)

and you will get a list of sites that link to both kennedyfunding.com and hardmoneyfunding.com, but not avatarfinancial.com.

Why does this matter? When you do a search like this, you can find Web sites that could be potential linking partners. It also gives you the ability to see what links might be propelling competitor's sites higher than yours.

Rand has also found that this type of search operator is effective on Yahoo! Search as well - which is great, since many people feel that Yahoo! shows the best results for backlinks.

Of course, if you are too lazy to type in the search operator, you can also use Hub Finder, which does a similar type of search on Yahoo! and/or Google.

Happy link hunting!

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years...."

There is a report out highlighting the comeback attempt of the Netscape browser.

The Time Warner Netscape will morph into a "social networking Web site, in which news stories and other items can be freely traded." No particlar Web site name was mentioned.

Valleywag is cited as a source in the report. The Valleywag site is a pretty cool place to frequent for "tech gossip".

What affiliate marketing possibilities will this create? Time Warner will be getting a one billion dollar investment for Google's stake in AOL.

Posted by at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the name of the article is "Facelift For Yahoo's Home Page". The word "facelift" is what jumped out at me.

What does a "facelift" mean? Are we trying to re-focus something that was already beautiful? Or are we putting fix-a-flat in a busted tire?

"The latest design changes help promote some of the shopping features for Yahoo, as well as make some of Yahoo's personalization features more prominent"

Will this add to the user experience? Will this grow the "shopping community" it desires?

Posted by at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I firmly believe that the NCAA men's basketball tournament, March Madness, is one of the greatest sporting events of the year: 65 teams; win and move on; lose and go home. This year will offer something extra special: free streaming internet broadcast.

CBS paid $6B for the tournament rights back in 1998. What kind of revenue stream is created by allowing viewers to watch the games for free on the internet? Advertising!

CBS knows that the NCCA tournament has a built-in audience. This audience will watch...this audience will go mad during March trying to watch as many games as possible. Advertisers will pay to be there as well.

How big of a deal is this? According to Larry Page, president of CBS digital media operations, "we've built enough capacity to exceed any other planned event in the history of the Web." For the sake of "research", I'll visit the game stream on Thursday; however, I'm off to watch the real thing on Friday. The Internet: pretty cool.

Posted by at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think anyone who is in the search marketing business has a love/hate relationship with Google. Today, for reasons I will not elaborate on, I am hating the big GOOG. But enough about my personal problems...

Search engine guru Danny Sullivan has put out a list of 25 things he loves about Google and 25 things he hates about Google. Both are worth a look - because when Danny talks, (sometimes) Google listens.

Thanks to Threadwatch.org for the link.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Did you know that every time you performed a search on Google, they make $0.12? Now multiply that by 2.7 billion for the searches Google performed in January 2006. Yeah, I know...I couldn't think of anything funny to say either. The screen on my calculator cracked. This info comes via a BBC report that outlines the search engine battlefield.

As many may already know, the search engines make the majority of their coin from sponsored advertising. So what are the search engines doing to protect their revenue stream?

They are always on the look-out for the returning salmon. What do you mean, Jack? Well, they are purchasing companies that have a built-in, batteries-included audience: Flickr, Del.icio.us, MySpace.

Check out the article and let me know what you think. I really enjoyed the knowledge, and I hope you get something out of it as well.

Posted by at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Search Engine Watch has an interesting article on PPC "drafting" and "hijacking" that is worth checking out. See the article here.

For those who want the Reader's Digest version - here are the definitions:

Drafting - where an advertiser conducts a search marketing campaign and a competitor takes advantage of the traffic by bidding on related terms

Hijacking - when a competitor outranks an advertiser's campaign by outbidding them

But seriously, the full article is like 13 short paragraphs long, so read it already!

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It appears that Google is attacking one of the key features of MSN AdCenter - demographic targeting of ads. On the 8th, Google rolled out their new demographic targeting feature.

Google's demographic targeting engine allows even more control over your demographic ad placement than AdCenter. In addition to age and gender (like AdCenter), Google offers demographic filters for annual income, ethnicity, and children. Search Engine Watch has a great breakdown of the demographics available in the new system.

While on the surface this sounds like great a new feature, there is one fundamental problem: the feature only works on site-targeted campaigns that are served through AdSense. This means that the demographic feature is currently useless for advertisers who do not use content match or site targeting.

Another problem is the process of ad placement. All demographic information for Google demographic targeting is pulled from comScore networks. The ads are targeted to Web sites that fit advertiser's selected demographics from comScore, not targeted to the profile of an individual user. This basically means that, while on average you might be able to target the right market, there is no guarantee that you are really hitting the demographic you want.

Hopefully, Google will continue to refine this logic and start to target by individual demographics. I can see this becoming a very useful tool for affiliates and companies who are looking to increase profitability by filtering out unprofitable consumers.

For more on demographic targeting, visit Google's explanation of the program.

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

One of the big questions today: how and where do I get a piece of the Google $90 million

• "Is anyone eligible to claim part of the $90M?"

According to the official Google blog, the "agreement covers all advertisers who claim to have been charged but not reimbursed for invalid clicks dating from 2002 when we launched our "cost per click" advertising program through the date the settlement is approved by the judge."


• "What does one need to do to prove and collect for click fraud?"

The current process will remain in effect for reporting suspected click fraud. You will need to contact the click quality team and submit your case.

The reimbursement will be in the form of a credit that will be applied to your current campaign(s). However, the total amount of all credits & expenses from this settlement (i.e. lawyer fees) will not exceed $90 million.

I'll keep our scouts out on the streets on overtime to turn in any updates! If you need any info, just ask :)

Posted by at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Microsoft has announced a new search interface called Windows Live at www.live.com. The interface will go through a period of testing and then be swapped out with the current MSN Search interface. Some of the notable features of Windows Live are:

• a search slide bar that allows you to increase or decrease the amount of information that is displayed in the results (from titles and URLs only to longer text descriptions.
• a "smart scroll" that allows users to search through hundreds of results without having to go to new pages
• the ability to save search parameters as a macro so you can go back and conduct the same searches again or share search parameters with people of similar interests
• support for tabbed web browsing

The features are really pretty cool, however there is still one problem...

The results for MSN Search are still HORRIBLE! Conducting a search in the insurance vertical shows numerous spam or blogspot sites that provide very little value to users.

Leave it to Microsoft to add whistles and bells to a product that is fundamentally broken and then tell us all how great it is.

Case in point, MSN AdCenter - home of the worst user interface in the PPC world. In their latest release, advertisers were hoping that many of the usability issues of the old site would be taken care of. They were not. Instead we got prettier graphs - graphs that really don't mean all that much to PPC advertisers.

So, will MSN fix their search engine before they start promoting the new skin on a broken product?

I'm not holding my breath.

I think Jupiter Research's Joe Wilcox says it best in his interview with the Associated Press:

"Conceptually it sounds good. Execution will tell all."

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In some breaking Yahoo! News (interesting how fast this was flown to the top of the flagpole), Google will settle a "click fraud" case and pay advertisers a $90 million settlement.

The news arrived late Wednesday amidst the lawsuit that alleged Google attempts "to conceal the magnitude of click fraud to avoid making refunds."

"Mischief makers and scam artists repeatedly click on specific advertising links even though they have no intentions of buying anything. The motives for the malicious activity known as click fraud vary widely, but the net effect is the same: advertisers end up paying for fruitless Web traffic."

Click fraud...that uncle of the Internet world who always creates a commotion at family reunions....

What are some thoughts out there on the scope of this issue? Is it an unavoidable risk of our world, or is it something bigger?

Posted by at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Did-it.com, home of the frog blog, has released a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Conversion Index.

Did-it.com's VP of Technology, Craig Wood, stated, "Some are abandoning search and that concerns us.... I would love for a takeaway from the index to be, 'Here's a way to rethink my campaign.'"

The current data encompasses several months of data, and Google has steadily remained as the champion converter (sounds like something i would buy at an auto parts store) throughout the testing. MSN has been a recent conversion climber as well since December.

Read the entire article here.

Who is gonna step up and challenge the crown of Google? Does your own reporting validate this info?

Posted by at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A French professor and his students had a task to perform...which search engine is most accurate? Well, the results are in—and Google & Yahoo! tie.

Among the results:

• even though Google and Yahoo! tied for first place in user satisfaction, all search engines tested received less than 50% user satisfaction rate.

What do our SEO peeps think? Agree?

Posted by at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have two confessions:

• I am really into blogging.


• I often forget that most everyone else on the planet is not

Most blogs allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed. RSS or "Real Simple Syndication" is basically an XML format that allows a Web site to share, or syndicate, content and headlines. For example, a news Web site could use RSS feeds from the BBC, Associated Press, and other news sources to publish a Web site that combines all of the feeds into one easy-to-read Web page.

In the blogging world, RSS feeds are an easy way for blog readers to stay connected to multiple Web sites by using one interface, rather than having to visit multiple Web sites.

RSS feeds can be read by a program or Web application called an RSS feed reader. I use a Web application called NewsGator to view my RSS feeds. In my NewsGator account, I can stay connected to the newest content on multiple blogs, news sites, etc. by going to one place.

This makes reading blogs a much more convenient thing to do.

To subscribe to a blog's feed, you first have to get a feed reader. Once again, I use NewsGator (the version I use is the free one).

Once you have gotten an RSS feed reader, you need to find out where you can add a new feed. This is different for all feed readers, so find it on your own.

Once you have found out where to add a feed, get the site's RSS URL. To find this, simply look around the navigation on the site. On this site, for example, you can see it is on the right hand side, near the bottom of the navigation (where it says "Subscribe to this blog's feed").

When you click on this, you will see what looks like a big jumble; that is the XML RSS feed reader. Once you are at that page, copy the URL and paste it into your feed reader. Then hit "add," "submit" or whatever option you're given.

Viola! You are now subscribed to your first blog feed! Congrats.

By using an RSS feed reader, you will be able to get the true value out of reading blogs. Give it a shot, and let me know if you need help getting it set up.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have not run across this video yet, take the 48 minutes to watch it.

The video is Seth Godin, author of numerous marketing books (and marketing guru IMHO), speaking to Google at the 'Plex last week.

Seth explains his belief that Google's success is because of marketing, not technology. He also talks about the challenges Google faces as it continues to grow. Seth goes over many of the key concepts from his books "The Purple Cow" and "All Marketers are Liars."

There is a lot of buzz about this video on the Web, and it is a great way to spend an hour.

Enjoy!

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Times Online reports that Google's top executives did a great job calming investors' fears last night. This comes after a stock sell-off sparked by CFO George Reyes' comments about slowing growth rates (from 100% to 60% a year).

How did they do it? Simple: they announced their plan to become a player in all forms of media within the next few years.

That means there will be Google radio ads, TV ads, print ads, etc. Basically, Google is getting into the traditional media business and wants to be a $100 billion a year company.

The implications are huge for the advertising industry, which is already seeing online marketing eating away at traditional media budgets. Now, with Google's sights set on their market, what do you think traditional ad agencies are going to do to survive?