This story is so incredible to me, I don’t have anything to add to it, frankly.
Though I do wonder:
Danny Sullivan recently wrote an article for Advertising Age about Google giving marketers more options for ad placements, including banner ads on Google Image results pages and Promoted Videos on YouTube.
Google has been able to take advantage of the downturn in the economy by offering a wider variety and, in most cases, a cheaper way to advertise than traditional advertising. With marketing budgets being slashed by companies that do not understand the power of marketing through a recession, online advertising via pay per click and banner ads is still pretty desirable, since it is usually on a cost by click (CPC) or cost per thousand impression (CPM) basis, and online advertising is easily and accurately measurable. I feel that as long as Google does not over saturate themselves with ads on every search no matter what Google product you are using, then Google has yet again found another way to increase their revenues during our slowing economy.
A desktop version of analytics just recently came out that is available as an Adobe AIR application. It’s nifty because it saves all of your login information as separate profiles and loads much faster than the web interface. Since it’s an AIR app you need to download the AIR runtime environment first and then you can download the application.
When you go to the site it’s in the bottom right hand corner called “Analytics Reporting Suite”
Adobe AIR Google Analytics - The Google Analytics Reporting Suite enables you to use Google Analytics in your desktop. You can track your visitors, referrals and campaigns, view your AdWords ROI metrics & more.
Download AIR from here
http://get.adobe.com/air/
Download the GA app from here
http://www.aboutnico.be/
Rumors now abound that Best of the Web (BOTW) will try to buy the Mozilla Directory (DMOZ), and Internet advertising agencies everywhere are talking about it.
This is a big deal in the search marketing world for two reasons. The first is that very little ever seems to change in the search engine marketing world. When news like this might be happening, Internet marketing agencies rejoice, if only too have something new to talk about. It’s rather like living in Mayberry and hearing that Opie’s been caught cooking crystal meth.
The other reason Internet advertising agencies are so chatty about this is… well, complicated. Let me roll out what is known before I get to that. If you already know this stuff, feel free to skip down to, “But I already know that!”
It has long been known that Google looks to DMOZ to supplement its own rankings. Internet advertising agencies that get their clients a listing in DMOZ’s golf section for instance, improve their clients’ chances of turning up in a golf-related search on Google. Doing well in Google means a lot more visitors, a lot more sales, and a lot more money.
DMOZ is a free service - but devilishly hard to get listed on. The reasons for this vary, with a lot of bitter SEMs saying it has to do with getting the right bribe to the right DMOZ editor.
Personally, I think that anything that will help a site’s Google ranking is going to be bum-rushed by Internet marketing agencies everywhere, and that will certainly mean DMOZ’s work load gets a little backed up.
For instance, DMOZ wasn’t accepting submissions for quite a while due to technical reasons - only to open up for business again at the end of 2007. I was able to get several of our clients listed on DMOZ in very short amount of time then, betting that they didn’t have any other sites to review and would therefore get my clients up in no time. I was right, but after word got out that DMOZ was processing submissions again, all of the other Internet advertising agencies submitted all of their clients too, and things went back to taking 6 months or longer to get listed. It still takes this long, if you can get listed at all.
BOTW is a paid inclusion directory - if you want on, you get charged for it. Their listings aren’t really worth having, since few people go to them first to find something.
Google has long had a policy against sites paying for inbound links in order to help their search placement. Since DMOZ is free, they’ve been a trusted source.
“But I already know that!”
Okay, so, the second reason, then, is that if a paid search directory buys the free search directory, there’s a very good chance the free search directory wouldn’t be so free anymore. Google would either have to alter it’s policy, which is unlikely, or abandon DMOZ as a supplement.
This opens up all sorts of comments from search bloggers who bemoan Google’s policy. “Why can’t I just pay for placement already!?! I need visitors! Stop making my life hard!” Google’s job has never been to make the lives of Internet advertising agencies easier. It is only interested in improving results for users.
If Google did accept paid links to judge natural search results, then the highest placing sites would almost all be businesses who could afford to buy the most links. Consumers wouldn’t get very good search results, and they would move on to somewhere else.
“Somewhere else” would likely be the next search entity to ignore paid links, so that natural search results are actually “natural.”
To be honest, I doubt DMOZ would sell itself to BOTW. This rumor may have started at BOTW so they could get people to learn who they are for all I know. The story originated at the ShoeMoney blog, so you can read the story there and judge for yourself. If DMOZ were for sale, though, I would bet Google would top the offer just to keep the site free.
This all assumes, of course, that BOTW changes DMOZ’s business model. After all, AOL owns DMOZ now - and they haven’t charged for inclusion.
If DMOZ were made a paid inclusion directory, its value would certainly evaporate. ANY directory that requires you to pay to be part of it, isn’t making money from the people visiting it - and therefore isn’t worth being a part of.
If they were abandoned by Google because of paid links, there would be no reason for SEMs to kill themselves trying to get listed - removing the need to pay for a listing. Now, BOTW would make money charging people who didn’t know there was no more value in DMOZ for a little while, but eventually everyone would wise up and DMOZ’s importance would be a memory.
Google just launched a genius feature to its natural search results to enhance the user experience:
Looks like a regular listing, right? Wrong. Notice the [Skip Intro] link to the right of the title. This allows Google users to go straight to the site, without having to wait through the loading and then watching of irrelevant flash intros companies occasionally place in front of all the content on their site.
My questions is this: If even Google deems Flash intros as unimportant, why do so many companies feel compelled to use them? I understand that Flash looks pretty, however, a lot of times Flash is overused and can actually lower a user’s overall site experience.
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…)
Arizona Highways magazine, an award-winning publication for the past 78 years, needed to increase online sales and subscriptions while reducing cost-per-sale through their online store.
Internet marketing continues to heat up locally, with interactive agency Mighty Interactive recently signing six new clients including several well-known Arizona brands.
