Search Engine Marketing Archive

I often use Google Alerts to give me the heads up on what people are saying on blogs and forums about Microsoft adCenter, Live Search and Microsoft in general. It’s a great way to measure the buzz in the market place and judge the temperature of opinion.

My own name is on the list because I do a lot of speaking and while it’s good to get feedback, not everyone emails me and says they’ve written about the presentation or lecture.

This way you can measure your online reputation and get to know pretty much instantaneously when someone’s published some sentiment about you or your company.

However, as you can see from above, even Google throws up some spurious results!

I’ve been following online conversations about “Faile”, the New York street art collective, because I recently bought one of their pieces.

You’d be surprised how many people spell “failed” wrong when talking about dismal exam results on their blogs and in chat rooms! 🙂

Was dragged kicking and screaming to see Mama Mia The Movie on Saturday after my cricket match was rained off.

It’s actually a really good movie!

The cast is just perfect and it’s nice that Pierce Brosnan can’t sing a note because the guy he’s playing probably couldn’t sing either.

Meryl Streep should get an Oscar and, as usual, Colin Firth stole the show with a perfect rendition of the bumbling English fellow who’s got more to reveal than he first looks like he possibly can.

Sadly for me, one of the highlights was when Streep’s son-in-law-to-be – Sky – says he wants to set up a web site for their Greek Villa Hotel to help get more paying guests.

He utters something like, “if I market it well, I’m sure we can do some really good business!”

Nice to see blockbusting scriptwriters understanding that it’s not just good enough to have a web site but that you need to market it as well!

Check out The Mama Mia Web Site for more fun and frolics 😉

The Live Search guys have announced a new homepage design on the Live Search Blog!

The above design is just the first in a number they’ll be rolling out. I’ve seen a couple and I can only describe them as gorgeous.

What makes them better is the inclusion of “hotspots” that pop up on hover with different facts, or possible searches that can take the user to services on Live Search that they may not know about.

This hotspot clicks through to:

And this one:

Leads to:

It’s only being released in the US right now with other countries to follow.

If you want to see, just change your Live Search country setting to United States here:

Like it? I do 🙂

So it’s been a few days and we’ve had reaction here, here, here, here and here.

Oh and here, here, here, here and here, and my favourite being here!

Most, if not all the feedback and comments have been less than positive and I’m sure the management team have not been sleeping easy, nor have the investors.

I said on Monday we needed some time to assess the relevancy, and was reserving judgement as I’ve been involved in launching big profile products and it’s not for the faint-hearted!

So when is a good time to launch a new service with such huge press fanfare? How ready does it have to be?

I would suggest that it should be able to cope with a huge tug on servers, and that “about” & “feature” pages should return information and not 404 errors.

But what of the rest? What is the baseline for pushing the button? What are the “go/no go criteria”?

And how long will you give it before you try Cuil again?

I’m in the middle of the adCenter Analytics Beta refresh fever at the moment so have only had a brief look at Cuil.com

I notice some folks have said they do or don’t like the layout of the results. It does give you a bit more info to go on plus some universal search-type images. But whether it’s to your taste or not it’s not that new as Tafiti.com was experimenting with a similar kind of layout when it when that launched last year.

Categories are an interesting one as I thought they went out with the LookSmart directories many moons ago. Guess they supposed to be like Related Searches on Live Search?

A search for Google throws up some employees but alas no Matt Cutts 🙁

As Danny says it’s difficult to measure relevancy on just a few searches so I think they should be given some time to tweak before diving in properly.

The long anticipated deal with Facebook to provide its users with Live Search functionality has happened.

In an announcement this morning Satya Nadella has announced the extension to the deal in the US to provide search tools powered by Live Search and Ads powered by Microsoft adCenter.

No news on them looking to evolve the deal internationally, but with 45% of the UK market it’ll do very nicely over here thankyou very much!

This is great, great news!!!

My first job in the online marketing industry was at BTLookSmart, a $100m joint venture between BT and the San Francisco based LookSmart.

I started in 2000 as the Shopping & Travel Editor reviewing 55 websites a day for insertion into the LookSmart Directory.

After a couple of very happy years BT pulled out in 2003 and a few of us stayed on as LookSmart UK.

By that time I was revenue manager and we were selling PPC links on MSN.co.uk

In late 2003 LookSmart decided to pull the plug on the London office after MSN decided to drop the deal.

We had three months to wind the office down.

Below are some photos I took on the last day.

I had the privilege of being asked to turn out the lights…….

View From My Window

All Gone

Tidying Up Loose Ends

Tears…

No Tears…

What Are You Staring @?

Time’s Up!

Dunno if it’s an urban myth but I just heard a story by the printer about a guy who was being interviewed for a job in search engine marketing.

The prospective employer asked him to prepare a presentation on “Pay-Per-Click”.

Obviously in need of a hearing aid, the guy turned up with a presentation on “paperclips!”

Wonder if he got the job?

Listening to the BBC Radio 1 Chart Show just now (re-living my youth) something one of the DJs said really struck me.

Referring to a new boy band, young Reggie said:

“If you’re listening online right now, go to any search engine and type in their name, check out their site and let us know what you think.”

The words “any search engine” seemed very deliberate as if they’ve been told not to mention the G verb on air.

Think that’s the case or is Reggie simply  “informed”?

Written a couple of pieces on the adCenter Blog and the Analytics Blog

Keyword Research Tips With Tor Crockatt

How Loyal Are Your Visitors? – Assessing Website Engagement Using Web Analytics

Enjoy!