 Using Live Search In Australia? You Could Win An iPod
Search Engine Journal
Ninemsn is Microsoft's joint venture with PBL Media (parent company of the Nine Network) in Australia. And the company seems to be following in lock step with Microsoft's quirky tactics for gaining search market share in the U.S. Arnold Zafra has uncovered a promotion in which ninemsn is giving away prizes for using its search engine--including iPod Nanos!
Each time a user searches, three cards (from a set of five) will flip over to reveal various prizes. If all three cards match, the user wins said prize. The promotion is in the vein of the Club Live campaign in the U.S., which enticed searchers to use Live Search by playing casual games. While Microsoft's Zune would be an obvious prize choice (particularly since it competes directly with the iPod), the portable mp3 player isn't yet available in Australia. - Read the whole story... Reviewing The Digg For Women: Boudica.com
SEOmoz
Rebecca Kelley reviews Boudica, a social news site for women. Currently in beta, Boudica.com is the brainchild of Lorna Harris (search guru Danny Sullivan's wife) and is aimed at creating a less sexist, more female-friendly news community than some of the currently available properties.
First the pros. Kelley says that despite being a women-focused site, Boudica isn't "stereotypically girly." So while some of the stories highlighted are about "Sex and the City" and summer diets, others are about technology, travel tips and other topics found on sites like Digg. Boudica also offers greater opportunities for interaction than some of the other social news sites, with blogging options and discussion boards.
Still Boudica is bogged down by some usability issues (the tag clouds didn't seem to be working well at the time of Kelley's review), and the navigation tabs at the top of the screen don't seem to be well-labeled. "At this point I can't tell the difference between the News, Arts, House, Time-Off, and Talk categories," Kelley says. "They all seem to list submissions. 'News' and 'Arts' could be different subject categories, but what's 'House'? Are they stories that deal with home matters? That are appealing to housewives? Is it a category entirely devoted to Hugh Laurie?" - Read the whole story... Still More Analysis Of ICANN's Domain Change Rules
Find Resolution
Dave McAnally dives into the new domain name parameters from ICANN in this post. "The reason I think this is a big deal is threefold," he says. "First, this opens a whole new set of opportunities for micro-site branding. Second, it's one more way to increase keyword visibility. Finally, it changes the international internet entirely."
The branding benefits are obvious, as behemoths like Apple can shill iPods on their very own .ipod domain, while one lucky travel agency could snag an insane amount of mindshare (and traffic) with www.cheap.travel. There's also the opportunity to boost keyword visibility and search rankings by creating a domain out of a client's chosen terms.
"Finally, you'll notice another major advancement is that URLs no longer need to be restricted to Latin based character domains," McAnally says. "So now for companies doing business in China, Russia and other countries using a different character system, they will be able to register and administer domains in the country's native character set. This is huge for many of RM's clients since markets like China represent tremendous potential." - Read the whole story... Search And Social Media Q&A With Mike Moran
BtoB Online
Mike Moran, former search evangelist (and distinguished engineer) at IBM, became the chief strategist at Converseon, Inc., a search and social media-focused marketing firm last month. Carol Krol sat down with him to discuss the challenges that b-to-b marketers sometimes face in adapting to search and social media practices.
"In b-to-c, social media tends to be entertaining and funny," Moran said. "That's not necessarily true with b-to-b. The best b-to-b social media solves problems." He said that the trick for b-to-b marketers was to become an expert in solving the problem that plagues their target market.
Moran also said that social media and search were great b-to-b tools because they allow business owners to find out about available products on their own time. "A lot of b-to-b products are complex and require a lot of information to understand," he said. "The least favorite way for b-to-b customers to learn how to solve a problem is to have a salesperson in their face pitching them. It's time-intensive and it puts them in an uncomfortable social situation where they may have to say no. [It's] better to engage them online through search and social media. You'll get many more people to engage with that type of message than the salesperson can." - Read the whole story... Two Alternative Engines To Play With
StraightUpSearch
Before launching into reviews of TasteKid and Evri, two alternative search engines, Alex offers the following disclaimer: "I am not saying that the following search engines are going to by any means make a ploy to take over Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, GooHoo, or any combination."
Emmy the TasteKid is a recommendation engine that helps you "explore your taste" in books, movies and music. Enter a keyword or query and Emmy suggests related bands, books or flicks from its rather impressive index. "You probably won't get any real answers out of Emmy, or even the titles of CDs or books by the artist or author you are inquiring about, but TasteKid can help you build a new list of artists, movies, or perspectives to explore," Alex says.
Meanwhile, Evri is another semantic/social search engine hybrid. Unlike Mahalo, it relies purely on algorithms to parse the results. But unlike Google and other core engines, the technology focuses on the relationships between the actual words searchers enter and their related concepts. - Read the whole story... |
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