July 8th, 2011 by Josh
I’ve blogged before about how to interpret CTR and what conditions are necessary for a valid comparison of two ads. In one recent case we created two identical ads that went to different landing pages so that we could test the effectiveness of each landing page. The assumption is that each ad — being identical — [...]
March 30th, 2011 by Josh
Google is working on a mechanism for collecting and sharing users impressions of search results. The system is called +1. It allows users to give a virtual “thumbs-up” on sites that they like by clicking on a small symbol next to their listing in search results. This applies to both ads and natural results. The [...]
February 15th, 2011 by Josh
Microsoft has announced that as of March 3, 2011 they will no longer review keywords for trademarks. This comes almost a year to the day after we explained why limiting keyword usage is unfair to advertisers and inconsistent with most other interpretations of trademark protection. It also makes trademark usage roughly consistent between Bing, Yahoo, [...]
February 9th, 2011 by Josh
When Ikea wanted to build awareness of a new store in Malmö, they used Facebook as the basis for a viral giveaway campaign. This video provides the details. Basically they posted photos of “rooms” within the store, and then gave away items within each room to the first person to “tag” that item in the [...]
December 22nd, 2010 by Josh
Google just gave some free, basic SEO advice for non-profits that actually applies to every website. As we’ve been saying in various posts for years: Use good page titles. Write good page descriptions. Properly apply heading styles. Use ALT text for images. We’re here to help. Contact us if you have questions about these suggestions [...]
December 16th, 2010 by Josh
I have recently joined the board of People for Puget Sound, one of the most well-known and respected environmental organizations advancing the cause of protecting and preserving Puget Sound. It is very important to me to contribute personally and professionally, through both action and financial support, to an organization that improves the quality of life in [...]
November 19th, 2010 by Josh
Yahoo! Clues is a new tool that offers insight into search trends. Think of it as a version of Google Trends that only provides a month’s worth of data. It does try to provide additional demographic information such as gender and income breakdown, but this data almost certainly only applies to the very small portion [...]
November 18th, 2010 by Josh
With a recent announcement that some searches will result in up to 4 links to a single domain, Google has made it harder to gain traffic through competitive search engine marketing techniques. If Google determines that a domain is particularly authoritative for a search, as many as the top four search results could be for [...]
October 28th, 2010 by Josh
A friend recently pointed me toward an article that says “SEO is Dead” because of the rise of Social Media Optimization, or SMO. The article is wrong, and here’s why: First, search traffic is still growing. People still use search to find products and services, background information, reviews, and competitive pricing. People may get ideas [...]
October 19th, 2010 by Josh
When optimizing for local searches, it’s important to recognize the difference between two distinct user segments. Bruce Clay defines these as “recovery” and “discovery.” When someone knows your business but needs contact or location information, they will be searching on brands and company names. E.g. “Bob’s Widgets Seattle” The discovery group will search on unbranded [...]