search marketing blog: ambergreen

Another interview but no headphones required this time. This interview sees Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting talking to Shashi Seth - Google’s Product Lead of Search and directly responsible for Google’s new Custom Search Engine, Google Co-op

Discussing the problems inherent in algorithmic search, especially when it comes to context and intent, as well as Google Co-op, the new customisable search engine which was discussed here last week, this interview takes a wide ranging look at some of the issues Google faces, as well as future steps and hurdles.

Another one of those ‘earphones essential’ interviews for you, as Matt Cutts talks to Cindy Turrietta of Affordable Search Engine Ranking on the eMarketing Talk Show broadcast by World Talk Radio.  These podcasts have some great guests and can be interesting information sources, so why not also have a look at the archive?

In this show Matt Cutts discusses whether Google consider SEO a bad thing, ways to increase traffic, and the future of search marketing & Google.

According to an article at the Search Engine Watch blog, a case taking place in New York Federal District Court at the moment Rescuecom v. Google, has seen the Judge allow a motion to dismiss on Google’s behalf, finding that keyword advertising isn’t a use in commerce.

Essentially it seems thnat the federal court doesn’t see the sale of Google Adwords including a trademark as a use in commerce. This has all recently been entirely contradicted by a New Jersey Federal Court which does consider the purchase of Adwords including a trademark as a use in commerce.

Have a look at the article and see if you can figure this one out – and please let me know if you do!

A new thread over at WebmasterWorld has an interesting discussion on whether Google’s site:www.domain.com command is becoming more accurate. Previously the number of pages could be skewed, but there is a bit of a debate going, with Matt Cutts, amongst others, giving us his view of the situation.

Having attended the Blogging 4 Business event at e-consultancy last week, Heather Hopkins of Hitwise has posted some interesting blogs findings over at the Hitwise blog.

It seems that social networking sites are responsible for most of the traffic reaching UK blogs, with community sites accounting for more than a quarter of upstream UK visits, with search engines accounting for 22.1%.

With some interesting information on upstream and downstream traffic trends, this information shows just how important social networking communities are to brands, given that brands are mentioned on blogs every day one in every 200 UK internet visits went to a blog last week.

Another report has shown that both online and offline sales are affected by the influence of the internet, with a new study by the Consumer Electronics Association and Yahoo showing that 77% of electronics purchases are researched online before customers buy on the high street.  

Researching the purchasing habits for cell phones, computers, digital cameras, mp3 players and televisions, the US study showed that online research time increased in line with product prices, with the most expensive products prompting the most research time prior to purchase.

$32 billion of electronics purchases were measured in the survey, and showed that a staggering $25 billion of offline sales was influenced by online research, informing 77% of overall purchases. 

It is bizarre to consider that most of the sales started online finished on the high street, and while this backs up prior research to a degree, it is the amount of offline sales conducted in light of online research which is interesting. 

73% of those surveyed said that they preferred to compare prices online as it was easier than offline, and gave fast access to a wide range of products.  

Most of those consumers who then went on to buy offline did so for a variety of reasons including trust, security, brand loyalty, avoidance of waiting for delivery and the ability to see and touch the items when buying an expensive product.

Following an algorithmic change Google has updated it’s guidelines on using the “&id=” as a URL; previously these pages weren’t indexed, but modified their webmaster guidelines and now index pages that contain that parameter. URLs containing a large number of parameters are still problematic however, so encouraging the use of user friendly URLs is still recommended.

As the Panama paid search system makes it mark, Yahoo! has launched a search marketing blog which opens up a channel of communication with advertisers.

The Yahoo Publisher Network launched a blog back in April this year, so it may be that Yahoo! was waiting for the launch of Panama to push the advertising blog out.

There is a discussion thread going on over at Webmaster World at the moment which has a bit of a debate on how to optimise for Microsoft’s Live Search. The thread looks at the iimportance of content, freshness page size and weight, as well at the usual basic SEO principles.

As Yahoo! makes moves to improve and modernise its paid search platform, Webmaster Radio presents an interview with Steve Mitgang, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the global team, as he talks about how Yahoo! are moving forward, as well as the new Yahoo! Search Marketing blog which has just launched today, offering a great communication channel for the company as Panama rolls out.

Webmaster Radio is a fantastic site offering a range of radio streams from industry leaders such as Danny Sullivan, Dave Naylor looking at the important issues for search.