Why search marketing matters in 2018

From SearchEngineWatch:

First let me ask you: how many unread emails are in the “promotions,” “updates,” and “other” tabs of your inbox? When I got to work on Monday morning, there were 248. How many of those did I read, you ask? Three at best, and only because they were already my favorite news roundups. The others? Didn’t stand a chance. “Marked as read,” “deleted,” and otherwise wholeheartedly, happily ignored.

Long story short, consumers these days are drowning in emails. We have promotions, “we’ve missed you!”s, “rate our product!”s, and 100 other types of unread newsletters pouring from our inboxes and never getting close to our attention.

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Yahoo Plans Return To Search Engine Roots

Yahoo Plans Return To Search Engine Roots

Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, it seems, is a fan of basketball and baseball. Per latest reports, she has given the nod to projects "Fast Break" and "Curveball" that are aimed to help the company get a foothold in the search engine market. 

Kara Swisher of Re/Code reported, based on information from Yahoo insiders, that the two initiatives are expected to work hand in hand to revive Yahoo's search engine business that has been struggling for years. 

"Sources said the plan is being done as part of a contemplation of how Yahoo can accelerate the end of - or actually end - its longterm search and advertising partnership with Microsoft. Currently, Yahoo only has control over the search experience, but Mayer clearly wants more purview over the business," wrote Swisher.

Google's Matt Cutts: Guest Blogging Best Done In Moderation

Google's Matt Cutts: Guest Blogging Best Done In Moderation:

“Guest blogging seems like it’s the fad of the month,” said Cutts, but he says it is best done in moderation. “It shouldn’t be your full-time job.”

He emphasizes that if guest blogging is all you are doing to drive traffic to your site, you’re probably not doing any favors for your site’s reputation.

10 Quick Time-Saving Excel Shortcuts for Search Engine Marketers

10 Quick Time-Saving Excel Shortcuts for Search Engine Marketers

4 LinkedIn Recommendations For The B2B SEO Professional

LinkedIn tops the list as the most effective social media platform for delivering content.

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Yahoo overtakes Google in US web traffic

In an earnings call last month, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer noted that page views were rising after more than a year of declines, citing recently refreshed versions of Yahoo mail, weather, sports, news and Tumblr, both on desktop and mobile."

Yahoo overtakes Google in US web traffic - Telegraph: "

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Does Not Fear Foursquare

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Does Not Fear Foursquare | Adweek:


Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman is on a serious roll. While second-quarter revenue rose 69 percent year over year, the nine-year-old social review site is expanding in myriad ways. Yelp just launched a mobile app that lets users post from their smartphones as well as a food-delivery service. It also acquired software that lets you make restaurant reservations. And with European traffic soaring, Stoppelman now has his sights set on Latin America and Asia. Always opinionated, Stoppelman spoke frankly about the company’s expansion plans—and didn’t hold back on his own review of a certain rival.

July 2013 U.S. Search Engine Rankings

U.S. Explicit Core Search

Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in July with 67 percent market share (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by Microsoft Sites with 17.9 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 11.3 percent. Ask Network accounted for 2.7 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.2 percent.

comScore Explicit Core Search Share Report* July 2013 vs. June 2013  Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Explicit Core Search Share (%)
	Jun-13	Jul-13	Point Change
Total Explicit Core Search	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google Sites	66.7%	67.0%	0.3
Microsoft Sites	17.9%	17.9%	0.0
Yahoo! Sites	11.4%	11.3%	-0.1
Ask Network	2.7%	2.7%	-0.1
AOL, Inc.	1.3%	1.2%	-0.1

*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not 
reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.

comScore Releases July 2013 U.S. Search Engine Rankings - comScore, Inc

Google Display Planner With Contextual Targeting & Placement Tools

Google announced they are merging three of their popular tools, the Contextual Targeting Tool, the Placement Tool and the Google Ad Planner into a single tool under the Google Display Planner.

Google said this should make "everything easier" having all these tools in one place. I'd have to assume that some of the functionality will be lost but hard to say at this point.

Google said on Google+ that the Contextual Targeting Tool and the Placement Tool will be sunsetted in the next few days, and Google Ad Planner will be deprecated sometime in early September.

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Inside AdWords: Boost your results with Dynamic Search Ads, now av...

Inside AdWords: Boost your results with Dynamic Search Ads, now av...: Last October we introduced Dynamic Search Ads , an efficient new way to target relevant searches with ads generated directly from your websi...

Online ad division costs Microsoft $6.2B

Online ad division costs Microsoft $6.2B - Market Day:

Microsoft is absorbing a $6.2 billion charge to reflect that one of the biggest deals in its 37-year history turned out to be a dud. 

The non-cash charge announced Monday could saddle Microsoft Corp. with a loss for its fiscal fourth quarter ended in June. Analysts polled by FactSet had predicted Microsoft would earn about $5.3 billion for the period.

Become a Google power searcher

Become a Google power searcher | Official Google Blog:

You may already be familiar with some shortcuts for Google Search, like using the search box as a calculator or finding local movie showtimes by typing [movies] and your zip code. But there are many more tips, tricks and tactics you can use to find exactly what you’re looking for, when you most need it.  

Today, we’ve opened registration for Power Searching with Google, a free, online, community-based course showcasing these techniques and how you can use them to solve everyday problems. Our course is aimed at empowering you to find what you need faster, no matter how you currently use search. For example, did you know that you can search for and read pages written in languages you’ve never even studied? Identify the location of a picture your friend took during his vacation a few months ago? How about finally identifying that green-covered book about gardening that you’ve been trying to track down for years? You can learn all this and more over six 50-minute classes. 

New Facebook Design a Copy of Google Plus?

New Facebook Design...Copy of Google ?

Google HotelFinder

As has been expected for some time, Google is making it's own play for a piece of the hotel booking industry. While it's still in "experiment" mode, Google Hotel Finder offers a service many are used to through services like Hotels.com, Booking.com, Expedia, Orbitz, etc. Users simply need to input the city and dates and they are given a list of results. Further fine-tuning of the results is available by price and hotel class/user rating.

It's a fairly basic tool. I personally don't see myself using this anytime soon though, Without an "amenities" filter, there's no easy means of filtering out, say, hotels without pools, hotels that don't permit pets, etc.

...Read more on Google HotelFinder

Top 20 Google AdWords Keyword Categories

Insightful article by MarketingProfs, listing the most expensive and top Adwords categories:

The top five high-volume keyword categories that demand the highest costs per click are as follows:

1. Insurance. Top CPC: $55 (example keywords/keyphrases are "auto insurance price quotes" and "buy car insurance online)
2. Loans. Top CPC: $44 (examples: "consolidate graduate student loans" and "cheapest homeowner loans").
3. Mortgage. Top CPC: $47 (examples: "refinanced second mortgages" and "remortgage with bad credit")
4. Attorney. Top CPC: $47 (examples: "personal injury attorney" and "dui defense attorney")
5. Credit. Top CPC: $36 (examples: "home equity line of credit" and "bad credit home buyer")

And what it means? Read the original article to see: http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2011/5489/where-does-google-make-its-money-top-20-google-adwords-keyword-categories#ixzz1SlGMuVN4

Automatically Update Facebook and Twitter from Google+

One of the first complaints I had about Google+ was that it meant having to manually input items multiple times as Google+ was isolated from the other social sites. Facebook and Twitter, despite competing in the same general social space, played nice and allowed one to easily sync their accounts: you update in Twitter, it can can automatically update your Facebook page (and vice-versa).

But with Google+, that isn't the case.

They do give you the option to "share" on Facebook and Twitter, which most of time would be enough.


But if you're anything like me, you might not want that manual effort each time and instead want it done automatically.

Luckily, there are some ways to make your life easier, freeing you from having to copy/paste across multiple platforms.


Here's a system I put together that seems to do the trick, taking my posts on Google+ and automatically updating Facebook and Twitter.


Give it a read, try it out and let me know if it suits you.


http://matt.peloquin.info/2011/07/google-to-facebook-twitter.html

Google Plus Launched This Week

So as expected, Google has launched the initial phase of their "Plus" project this week. Since the project is still in beta, not too many people are fully on board to use all it's features. The goal is to turn the project into some sort of Facebook alternative. As it is now, you'll already find the "+1" buttons on various websites, including this one. Once a user clicks the button, the site button will have an increased number. More importantly, search results (including paid ads) will also have that +1.

But those are only the features that everyone has access to. For a more detailed breakdown of all the features available to those in the project, click here.

Google Search Globe

Google has recently released the Search Globe, a new visual display representing one day of Google searches around the world—visualizing the curiosity of people around the globe.


Worth a look...

The Evolution of Email

...in an image. At least from Microsoft's perspective. Click to enlarge...

80% Of AOL's Revenue Is Subscribers, 75% don't know they're still paying

Photo Credit: Jonathan Volk

I'm a week late in sharing this as the news came out on 1/21/11. The number seems to actually be 43%.

But it's worth noting: take a look at your credit card statements and make sure you're still not paying for AOL, a decade after you likely though you cancelled. There are numerous horror stories about people trying to cancel and not being able to, even when speaking to a person on the phone.

A quick look at the numbers:

In 2010, AOL generated $564 million in revenue. That means at 43%, $242 million was made off of people thinking they cancelled or forgetting they paid for the service. Ouch.