So everyone was talking about Cuil today, the newest search engine on the proverbial block.

Created by some ex-Googlers eager to whittle market share away from the search behemoth, Cuil (pronounced “kool,” like the menthol cigarettes I sometimes smoked in high school for that coveted fresh breath/nicotine buzz combo) bills itself as “the world’s biggest search engine,” claiming to index three times as many pages as Google.

What else is new with Cuil? Seemingly a lot. Not only does the SERP look quite a bit different than anything you’ve seen before – think columns, sort of like a magazine page – but the company claims to be ranking on site content, not popularity (i.e. links). (more…)

Google Trends has always been an intriguing service. In essence, it shows search volume on specific keywords which you can select. Using Google Trends is easy - simply specify one or more keywords (separated by comma) and click “Search Trends.” This is a great way to see if Britney Spears is still a popular topic for net users, a time line of news stories related to her and which countries find her the most interesting.

Because Google Trends measures, well, trends, there aren’t any numbers associated with the graphs. Google keeps this information hidden for competitive reasons.

Now, Google Trends has become even more interesting.

Instead of looking at keyword trends you can now get site traffic trends. Let’s say you wanted to know which news site was the most popular between CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the uber popular Huffington Post. Simply go to Google Trends and type in those site urls separated by commas and click search.

The search reveals that CNN.com is on top of the heap, which personally isn’t surprising to me. What is surprising, though, was that MSNBC was more popular than Fox, and that the Huffington Post, one of the world’s popular blogs, barely registered.

I’ve been hunting around directories lately for a search client who has two properties - The Peshtigo and Roosevelt Square - both with Chicago condos for sale. (Wow - it’s difficult getting quality anchor text and links in our own blog! Imagine what it’s like everywhere else!

Anyway, because they are based in the Chicago area specifically, they’re good candidates for local search options, yellow pages or other localized directories.

What I keep seeing as I look through these, (and I won’t give any link love to these jokers,) is that nearly all of them require some form of payment for their listing. If you have a business in Chicago, IL, and you feel your Chicago condos site fits into their listings, you should not have to pay to get into them.

Understand that you are helping them to have fuller, more up to date listings when you inform a directory of your business. By buying into their listings, you are really only paying for whatever traffic you manage to get off of that site. Google knows that these sites charge for listings, so they devalue the link that comes through.

Remember, if a link costs you money, and you’ve never heard of that site before, the link is bunk just keep looking.

Let’s face it. The economy is taking on the distinctive, sickly pallor of a post Mardi Gras Keith Richards, and even if we’re not officially in a recession, most economists believe it’s coming.

Generally, recessions hit the advertising business with the ferocity of a rabid wolverine, and the last one trimmed overall ad spending by 9% according to market researchers Veronis Suhler Stevenson. The wolverine in question mauled and devoured online advertising, which plummeted 27% over two years during the last recession.

This time it will be different. Not only will online marketing survive, it may actually thrive during the lean times, continuing its inexorable theft of ad spend from traditional media tactics.

Online is far more mature and proven now, and there are five specific reasons why it will be the go-to tactic among increasingly budget-conscious marketers.

Money Talks
First, online is typically less expensive than many other marketing tactics, and a sizable and impactful online effort can be undertaken more quickly and cost-effectively than can an offline campaign.

Wiggle Room
Like an Elizabeth Taylor marriage, online doesn’t require much long-term commitment. PPC ads can go up and down on a day-to-day basis. Email can be sent (or not sent) based on financial considerations. Even banner ads can usually be negotiated with an advantageous cancellation clause of 72 hours or so. Try that with your local TV station or newspaper. Other than keeping your Web site up to date, the only core online tactics that require substantial ongoing effort are organic search optimization, and Web site analytics and testing.

More Juice for the Squeeze
With diminished outbound marketing budgets, companies will shift focus toward increasing revenue from current customers, either through more frequent purchases, or larger ones. Email marketing is the perfect vehicle for communicating with customers and incentivizing additional purchases. Customer lifecycle marketing (persuasively combining email with direct mail, voice mail and text messaging) will gain favor as companies strive to close a higher percentage of a reduced flow of leads.

Waste Not
There is meaningful financial waste associated with advertising to people who have no interest in your product or service. The superior targeting ability of online marketing will enable companies to focus their reduced marketing dollars solely on likely prospects. This will accelerate the trend toward use of behavioral targeting and retargeting in online ad placement.

Behavioral targeting mines a person’s Web page visits and search terms to serve relevant ads. If a prospect reads several pages on Yahoo! about Nissan Altimas and does a search on Yahoo! using a related term, an ad for Valley Nissan dealers can be served up just in time.
Retargeting (a nascent industry led by local company Fetchback) takes the concept one step further, enabling companies to advertise only to people who have visited their Web site previously without making a purchase. With average conversion rates hovering around 2%, this is an ideal way to reach the other 98% that have taken the time to visit your site but haven’t yet converted.

Additionally, search marketing will continue to expand since it is the only tactic (other than Yellow Pages) that puts the marketer in the middle of the consumer’s purchase psychology funnel. I expect heavier bidding on specific, “long tail” search terms that often correlate with greater intent to purchase.

Numbers Don’t Lie
Online marketing of all types offers superior measurability and trackability in comparison to traditional tactics. This is of course due to the Orwellian nature of the Web, where every mouse click is tracked, usually anonymously. While the availability of this data may give you the same creepy feeling you get when gazing upon Joan Rivers, it makes for effective marketing.

When implemented correctly, banner ads, organic search, paid search, blogs and social media, email, lifecycle marketing and all other online marketing tactics provide a user by user scoreboard that can be utilized to ascertain precise return on investment metrics for each campaign.

In this way, online marketing provides companies the ability to test a wide array of tactics, evaluate which generates the best response, and then adjust the marketing program accordingly.

The old saying is “I know half my marketing dollars are wasted. I just don’t know which half.” This problem is even more acute and painful in a down economy when advertising dollars are curtailed. The inherent cost, targeting, and tracking advantages of online marketing make it more likely to succeed (or at least able to minimize losses from a failed campaign). And when a wolverine is at your door, that’s the type of assurance you want from your marketing strategy.

I am starting to wonder if social media – blogs, bookmarks, profile pages, wikis – are getting a little too much press.

That sounds terribly backward, I know. I’ve been talking people’s ears off about how cool all of these things are for years now. While I won’t take personal credit for it, the attention of the world is slowly turning to this new revolution in publishing, in our lifetimes seconded only to the Internet itself. A study by Universal McCann recently showed how social media networks are increasing in use worldwide, which would on its own seem to indicate that we SEOs should just pack up our bags and move to Twitterland.

The problem is that there are still so many people who don’t use social media in their daily lives. If you ask family members where you can find their blog, or for their Twitter name, or even what their eBay rating is - a stretch, but still, technically social - they will give you a blank look. The majority of Internet users have only recently become aware of what blogs are. Their kids probably have Myspace accounts, sure. The rest just know what they hear about it on the news.

There are exceptions of course – YouTube is the favorite site of just about anyone with a high speed data line and time to kill. Blogs have also become good ways of gaining customers, though to the average web site viewer there’s nothing “social” about them. To a visitor to this site, this blog is simply more outstanding, quality content.

It is safe to say the majority of these applications are popular with… well, people like us: Marketers and computer professionals who know “neat” when we see it. I will go so far as to say that whatever responses are made to this very post, they will be made by a blogger or someone with a Twitter account – but probably not our spouses and almost surely not our parents.

For example, if one were to try and promote a company using only Twitter, and was wildly successful at it, that message would still only reach those of us who use Twitter. The rest of the world would never encounter it. Our spouses and parents might only become customers if the wave of Twitterers went out into the world espousing the company’s gospel. (Unless what you are selling is distinctly online product, like an e-mail list or visitors to your AdSense site.) It would seem a better use of time and money to optimize the company’s website for search.

For now, the best application of these social media programs is to get an idea of what the world – social media converts and not – is saying about you. It’s like an iceberg: The bit you see above water is a mere fraction of the rest of it that’s underwater. Similarly, if 70% of 100 blogs are bemoaning something your company did, chances are good 70% of everyone else is doing the same thing. Then you can go about the business of reshaping that opinion. While social media is still a few years away from being a place to generate sales, it is a Godsend for public relations.

Keep in mind, I still love this stuff. All of these social applications are a great new way to reach out to the world, and then to hear back from it. This is the promise of the Internet made when it first came onto the scene. And with the number of people worldwide with broadband connections at 300 million and growing, the day when a majority of the population can be convinced to buy something because of what they read on a blog or saw on Flickr is enormous.

Acting as though that day has already come though, I fear, makes us lose site of that goal. We should use these tools for what they are capable of doing now, not what they have the potential for doing someday. Today, if you want to make a sale the best place to be seen is the first page of Google results.

There has been some controversy lately about the Google Toolbar update.  Basically, it’s been updated and people are unhappy with their “new” PageRank. Google says that they use their own internal PageRank when ranking sites, so don’t worry. I say, who cares! Keep doing what you do! If there hasn’t really been a change to PageRank, then there is no need to change anything. (Read the article here.)