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Gain Efficiencies with a Global Search Center of Excellence

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:00 GMT

A central search team can help drive your search marketing success and minimize the number of search crises you encounter each day. ...

Google Highlights New Search Ad Formats

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:25 GMT

Google has been experimenting on various search ad formats for the past couple weeks now but it is only now that they decided to put up a post explaining each one of them. Actually it makes sense, with Google hoping to get some headway on the upcoming Thanksgiving Black Friday Sale which will see more users searching for great shopping deals. The new search ad formats are more interactive, more visual and perhaps engaging. However user reactions to these search ads may vary – that is it may result to better click-throughs for ads or lesser since some users might get totally annoyed with it.

So in brief here are the new search ad formats that Google has been testing out.

Ads with video trailer:

Ads with more links:

Ads with product extensions:

Location-based ads:

Comparison Ads:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Highlights New Search Ad Formats

Product Extensions for U.S. AdWords Advertisers

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:57 GMT

Google has just rolled out a new feature of AdWords – product extensions which shall be available for all U.S. AdWords advertisers. Product extensions are new ways by which you can add more relevant and specific information to your Google product ads.

AdWords' product extensions let you use your existing Google Merchant Center account for highlighting products directly in search ads, so that when your AdWords text ad appears and your Google Merchant Center account contains products that are relevant to the searcher's query, it will display images, titles and prices of your products in what Google calls as plusbox located under your ad.

Succesful transactions resulting from AdWords product extensions are charged to your account on a cost-per-click basis. Meaning you won't be charged if a user simply expands the plusbox and did not click through your site. Product extensions could improve your ads' CTR (clickthrough rate).

In addition, since product extensions are charged on a CPC basis, it will only display if your ad is triggered by one of the keywords in your product extensions enabled campaign. You can even select which products are to be displayed when a user's query triggers your ads.

To add product extensions to your Google AdWords ads, simply log in to Google Merchant Center and add your AdWords customer ID to your Account. Then visit the campaign settings tab under your AdWords account and click on the “Ad extensions” option. You will then nee to select “Use product images and information from my Google Merchant Center account.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Product Extensions for U.S. AdWords Advertisers

Enrich Your Google Search Results Page with Kikin

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:32 GMT

I never grow tired of reviewing more and more tools that expand the possibilities of Google search. I already took a look at tools that allow to see Twitter search results within Google SERPs and a few addons that generate relevant results from other sources (like Wikipedia, Youtube and other).

And here's one more tool that retrieves search results from more sites: Kikin is the FireFox addon that “enriches and personalizes your browsing and search experience by adding results from your preferred social media websites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, eBay, etc).

Install:

Just click “Download”, allow FireFox to show you the pop-up from this site and install the tool. Re-start the browser and you are done.

Customize:

Go to TOOLS FireFox menus and select “My kikin“. You'll be taken to the the kikin website where you will be able to customize your settings. To always see results from sources, select the green button. To only see results when they are relevant to your search, select the yellow button. To never see results from a source, select the red button.

Note 1: you will need to allow access to Kikin Facebook application to get the results from Facebook.

Note 2: you will also be able to search your Twitter stream if you connect the tool to your Twitter account.

Use:

Just search for anything that you are interested in and notice a cute box above the Google search results. Click through the tabs to see relevant results from the sources you set up in the options:

Warning:

The tool won't work for me when I am using Google toolbar to search. I am not sure why. So if this happens to you, try deleting extra URL parameters in the Google search string appended by the toolbar. Hopefully, this bug will be fixed or clarified.

The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Enrich Your Google Search Results Page with Kikin

Black Friday Ads Online : Sites to Check Out

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:01 GMT

Happy Thanksgiving Week to our American readers of Search Engine Journal. This week will be marked with stuffing ourselves on turkey & dressing, watching football, napping and for most importantly for some, Black Friday shopping the day after Thanksgiving.

Not all of us want to brave the 5 am morning rush to get deals at Best Buy, Walmart and other stores; as the greatness we know of the Internet and online shopping can ease our pain, and let us shop online while others are standing outside in the cold and chaos.

Here are 4 online destinations to check out for finding great Black Friday deals both online and offline :

Bfads.net : Probably the absolute worst domain of all of the Black Friday Online sites, BFads.net is one of the longest running Black Friday sites and has highlighted Black Friday flyer adscans for years. The site is kind of a mix of online deals and brock and mortar ads now, and still serves as an authority hub for finding Black Friday deals. You'll also find some great Black Friday Forum interaction at bfads.net
BlackFriday.com : A newbie to the mix, BlackFriday.com lauched this year on a golden domain and offers all kind of online deals updates and tips for Black Friday shopping, complete with a history of Black Friday.
BlackFriday.info is again, a collection of online ads and offline information about the sales that the local Wal-Marts and Targets in different areas are having the morning after Turkey Day. Notice a trend here? A lot of these sites serve as resources, communities and affiliate sites and BlackFriday.info is no exception.
FatWallet's Black Friday : If you like saving money and tips for online shopping, then be sure to visit FatWallet and their Black Friday page. The great thing about FatWallet.com is that it's powered by a great social community and has been around for a long time, so even after Black Friday, the site will still be around and still be of use. Offers.com is also a similar yearlong discount site which offers Black Friday 2009 Online Deals.

This week, the Mrs. and I are packing up to head over to Dave Snyder's parents' home for a Thanksgiving Feast and then a day of shopping over at Sawgrass Mills Mall, so unfortunately, I won't be shopping from the peace and quiet of my home. But I hope that you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday, whether you be enjoying it from the Mall or Amazon.com

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Black Friday Ads Online : Sites to Check Out

More (Alleged) Detail On The GooglePhone

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:36 GMT

In October TheStreet reported a rumor that Google was building its own mobile phone. That was repeated again recently by TechCrunch, which said emphatically that Google was building a branded phone — despite Android founder Andy Rubin's denials that Google was going to design its own hardware. Now we get the Times of London with lots [...]

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Weekly Search & Social Coverage: 11/24/09

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:12 GMT

Welcome ot another edition of ‘7 Days of Search and Social‘ – I hope you are well and getting well into another week in the trenches. Last week was a particularily busy one in the blogosphere which made it even harder to try and keep the list managable. Even in the world of patents it was a busy one. I sure hope you have your reading caps on because this edition is a HUGE one. As such we're also not going to have a ‘lead story' as there is so much to cover and nothing really stood out as the ‘big story' for me…

Anyway, let's get on with it shall we?

Talk of the town

21 Link Builders Share Advanced Link Building Queries – was a great post from Garrett French over on SEL which the gang at the SEO Dojo were put to use in giving some input on. If you’re a fan of link building and Google dorking, this is a must read.

How Google News uses click data for rankings – is an interesting piece that looks at some of the statements made recently by a Googler on using query analysis and click data in the News SERPs… always an interesting topic.

Hidden H Tags by Google – funny stuff here.. Google using some hidden tags? Yikes… say it ain’t so! Go get ‘em Irish!

What is Whitehat Automation? – Rob Adler is taking a stab at the world of white hat SEO by bringing some of his dark-side automation over to the other side. You know U want to play with us Rob, nice stuff brother!

5 Worries that can kill your SEO campaign – Stoney uncovers some common issues that can bring a search campaign to its knees.

Linkbait vs. Linkbuying – Paul Carpenter takes us through the ins-and-outs of link bait V buying. As long time readers would know, I am a baity’ kind o guy. Why buy what you ca get for free?

Does Reading Level Matter in SEO? – David Waterman over at The Search Agents played with an interesting theory of how reading level might affect rankings, or at least how it relates when studying existing rankings. Fun stuff… tin foil likely required.

Keyword Research: A Proven System – friend of the FireHorse, Garrett Pierson dropped a post over at Search Engine People. While it’s not the most in-depth piece ever written, it contains the concept that KW research is one of THE most important aspects of SEO; something I believe in and not enough peeps state it as such… so it’s worth noting.

Do More Domains Help SEO – was the question being asked AND answered (sort of) by Michael over on the ‘best SEO blog’. I liked this one as it highlights the problem with ANY question in SEO; it depends on the situation and reason for doing so. Nice one MM!

10 Resources: SEO Going Underground Again – is a bit of a rant from Tad on the joys of being pegged as an SEO out in the online world. He relates his experiences and the venom faced by many of us in social circles.

Three Pages from the Same Domain in Google SERPs? – Alan was noting some interesting 3 page listings (main and 2 indented) and why there hasn’t been more buzz about it. Dear Alan, methinks it is because this only happens with navigational searches, so it really doesn’t affect most of us… m’kay?

Building Links “Outside The Box” – as always Debra has some interesting perspectives on link building methods beyond the every-day. Of particular interest this time out, is actually building links by identifying your target demographic – kudos as always Deb!

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents -

Search Geek Central

Search Stuff

Search Taxonomies and Search Engines: Answering Questions vs. Indexing Webpages - SEO by the Sea

How Google Might Insert Artificial Named Anchors into Web Pages – SEO by the Sea

Exploring Exploratory Search – Noisy Channel

FacteryLabs Launch FactRank Engine – Search Engine Watch

Information Glut, or Information Gluttons? – Haystack Blog

Random linguistics – the Lousy Linguist

Social Search

Local-Social Search: A Powerful Marketing Channel For Small Businesses – SEL

Ask Making A Bigger Bet On “Social Search” Or Q&A – Search Engine Land

Yahoo Adds Fresh, Social Content to Search, Twitter Included – SEJ

Collecta Powers Real-time Search for Identi.ca – Alt Search Engine

Local SEO

6 Ways Local Domains Crush Dot Coms In International SEO – Search Engine Land

The 3 Variables of Google Local Search – Search Engine Guide

Mapsicle 1.0: Annotating Street View Panoramas – Google Geo Developers Blog

How to use multiple sitemaps on one domain for geo-targeting – Search Cowboys

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents

Videos

Marketing in the Age of Google – Web Pro News

Bruce Clay on the Business of Local Search – Web Pro News

Fliqz Launches Online Video SEO Tool - SEW

Google’s new KW research Tool – Jim Stewart

Cutt’s Corner

Matt on Load speed and Caffeine

Why would an FAQ page rank above a site's homepage?

Weapons

3 SEO Browsers to Evaluate on-Page SEO – SEJ

How to Track Competitor Search Engine Rankings with SEJ Tools

Use Google Speed Tool to Speed Up Site – RustyBrick

Google Analytics Filter Best Practices – Search Engine People

Playing with Google Analytics Intelligence – Blog Storm

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents -

Search Patents

Google

Artificial anchor for a document

Agent Rank

Microsoft

Multi-modal search wildcards

Multi-modal query refinements

Ranking functions using an incrementally-updatable, modified naive bayesian query classifier

Yahoo

Search Results with a Word or Phrase Index

Search results with most clicked next objects

Search processing with automatic categorization of queries

Indexing information and providing results for a search including objects having predetermined attributes

/end SOSG session

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Local SEO – Videos – Tools – Patents -

‘7 Days of Search and Social’ is a joint effort from Search Engine Journal and the SEO Training Dojo to bring you the latest in SEO and Social Search news. Each week (on Tuesdays) we’ll be posting the highlights of the most recent (SEO Geeks) newsletter here on Search Engine Journal.

Be sure to grab the SEJ feed for the latest or sign up to the SEO Dojo newsletter to get it straight to your inbox.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Weekly Search & Social Coverage: 11/24/09

Yahoo’s Search Box Gets Smarter

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:00 GMT

Yahoo has announced a new set of features for its Search Assist service that makes the Yahoo search box a lot smarter. Perhaps the main innovation here is the inclusion of content and information right inside the Search Assist dropdown. For example, do a search for a company's stock symbol, and Yahoo will show real-time [...]

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3 Tools to Optimize Websites & Blogs for Mobile Phones

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:01 GMT

It is no news plenty of people access the Internet via their mobiles – still, sadly, most websites are absolutely non-optimized for mobile devices.

I looked back at all the tool overviews I did previously and found I never did one on tools for mobile devices optimization, so I am listing here the three best ones:

mobileOK Checker

This tool, based on the mobileOK Basic standard, identifies problems a given Web page would create on a mobile browser.

If you are interested in basic tests the tool is using, be sure to jump to this part. And here's a summarizing list of all Best Practices with indicates whether each has a corresponding test in mobileOK Basic.

Best Practice	mobileOK Basic
ACCESS_KEYS
AUTO_REFRESH	X
AVOID_FREE_TEXT
BACKGROUND_IMAGE_READABILITY
BALANCE
CACHING	X
CAPABILITIES
CENTRAL_MEANING
CHARACTER_ENCODING_SUPPORT	X
CHARACTER_ENCODING_USE	X
CLARITY
COLOR_CONTRAST
CONTENT_FORMAT_PREFERRED
CONTENT_FORMAT_SUPPORT	X
CONTROL_LABELLING
CONTROL_POSITION
COOKIES
DEFAULT_INPUT_MODE	X
DEFICIENCIES
ERROR_MESSAGES
EXTERNAL_RESOURCES	X
FONTS
GRAPHICS_FOR_SPACING	X
IMAGE_MAPS	X
IMAGES_RESIZING	X
IMAGES_SPECIFY_SIZE	X
LARGE_GRAPHICS	X
LIMITED
LINK_TARGET_FORMAT	X
LINK_TARGET_ID
MEASURES	X
MINIMIZE	X
MINIMIZE_KEYSTROKES
NAVBAR
NAVIGATION
NO_FRAMES	X
NON-TEXT_ALTERNATIVES	X
OBJECTS_OR_SCRIPT	X
PAGE_SIZE_LIMIT	X
PAGE_SIZE_USABLE
PAGE_TITLE	X
POP_UPS	X
PROVIDE_DEFAULTS	X
REDIRECTION	X
SCROLLING
STRUCTURE
STYLE_SHEETS_SIZE
STYLE_SHEETS_SUPPORT	X
STYLE_SHEETS_USE	X
SUITABLE
TAB_ORDER
TABLES_ALTERNATIVES	X
TABLES_LAYOUT	X
TABLES_NESTED	X
TABLES_SUPPORT
TESTING
THEMATIC_CONSISTENCY
URIS
USE_OF_COLOR
VALID_MARKUP	X

The tool also has a handy bookmarklet to quickly check any page you are currently at: drag the mobileOK bookmarklet to your toolbar to quickly check pages: mobileOK check

MobiReady

mobiReady is partially based on the mobileOK Basic standard but it represents the information in a more entertaining way by building graphics and charts:

Page size and estimated load speed;
Frames usage;
Test compliance (visualized with different colors: green-passed, orange – warning, red – failed, grey – not found). Click on each link to see the test details:

Opera Mini Simulator

Opera Mini Simulator will just give you an idea how your site might look like to Opera Mini users. You may want to make sure your most important website elements are on top of the page before the scroll:

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

3 Tools to Optimize Websites & Blogs for Mobile Phones

Update Several Blogs From One Dashboard with SEJ Tools

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:09 GMT

Most of us contribute to more than one blogs – therefore it is so useful to unite all our dashboards in one to be able to log in only once and do all our work from one place.

SEJ tools give you such an opportunity with its “Blog Manager” feature:

Navigate CONTENT > Blog Manager and click “Add blog”,
Provide your blog URL;
Provide your blog wp-admin login details;
Make this dashboard “Global” (Check to make this blog available across all profiles) or “Private” (For agency accounts, you can hide this blog from other users in your agency. However, agency admins will still have access.)

Note: Before adding a blog you will need to configure your own blog to allow automatic posting: go to your blog wp-admin, then to Settings -> Writing, then check the “Enable XMLRPC” checkbox and save your settings.

Now, you should be able to login to your blog right within SEJ tools dashboard and see the list of all current posts:

Click “Add Entry” to be taken to a handy Editor where you can:

Write a post;
Select the categories to publish in;
Add new categories;
Publish post;
Schedule the post to go live on a set date;
Save the post as a draft.

Now, the best thing is that you can add as many blogs as you want – and update all of them from one dashboard – just go back to Blog Manager and click “Add New Blog”. Then, when adding a new entry, just select the blog you want to update from the drop-down:

This proves really helpful and time-saving for those running multiple blogs – what do you think?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Update Several Blogs From One Dashboard with SEJ Tools

Google In Data Deal With TiVo To Find More Willing Audiences For TV Ads

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:04 GMT

Google is doing some very interesting things in TV and video advertising these days. Not long ago it licensed Nielsen's PRIZM audience segmentation data for enhanced audience targeting through TVAds. Google also recently introduced “skippable” pre-roll ads on YouTube. The idea is to find willing audiences and make advertisers (potentially) only pay when someone watches [...]

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Under The Hood: Google News & Ranking Stories

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:00 GMT

Forget PageRank, at least if you're a news publisher looking to do well in Google News. Google's news service doesn't rely on the same algorithm used by “regular” Google, of which PageRank is a part of. Instead, Google News taps into its own unique ranking signals, which include user clicks, the [...]

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