 Baidu: Now The Third-Largest Search Engine
TechCrunch
"Google keeps gaining search market share in the U.S., but its global dominance is not as great as previously indicated," says Erick Schonfeld. According to the latest comScore stats, the search giant's global search share actually declined by almost four points from June to July.
Meanwhile, Baidu's share increased by about five points during the same time period--based almost entirely on its strength in China alone. "That makes Baidu the third largest search engine in the world after Yahoo," Schonfeld said.
The market share fluctuations were largely due to changes in the way comScore measures Web traffic in China, Brazil and Russia. And Schonfeld argues that it's an indication that Google's spot at the top of the search heap isn't guaranteed, particularly when it comes to the global landscape.
- Read the whole story... SES San Jose Spotlight: How NOT To Sell Your Services
Creative Search Media
"Having read all the hype surrounding the Search Engine Strategies event in San Jose, we jumped into the car yesterday morning excited about the prospect of discovering something new," says Julia Hyde. "Unfortunately, we were disappointed. Wandering around the event we all came to the same conclusion: Every search marketing agency sounds the same."
Hyde recounts the experience she and some of the other members of the Creative Search Media team had at their first SES, including snippets from the various media kits they picked up while trolling the exhibit hall. And for the most part, she's underwhelmed by the lack of creativity in sales pitches, hyperbole in the marketing literature, and what she sees as an overall inability for most search and search technology firms to effectively market themselves.
"It appears the search marketing industry has some homework to do," Hyde says. "While there's often talk about how the traditional advertising and marketing agencies don't understand what's going on in search marketing, the opposite is also true. If I was a prospect looking for an agency to represent my company, I'd throw my hands up in the air and make the decision to handle search marketing in house." - Read the whole story... How Do You Measure Your Search Campaign's Success?
Search Engine Journal
Ann Smarty outlines the pros and cons of using three of the most common metrics to gauge the success of a search campaign: keyword ranking, rise in search traffic and conversions.
SERP ranking may be the most report-friendly metric, as it's easy to analyze, visualize and explain to clients, but high rankings don't necessarily translate into site benefits. "Ranking should not be the end goal of any project," Smarty says. And because they move up and down naturally, SERP rankings may be a hard metric to keep track of.
Traffic is another metric that's easy to keep track of--and one of the easiest goals to hit. But, "traffic doesn't mean more sales or customers (the quality of traffic is what really matters)," she says.
And conversions are the ultimate metric, as they're tied directly to the client's goal of selling something (or getting subscriptions, etc.) Still, you likely won't be able to track (or influence) conversions unless you're performing the full suite of search services for said client, including SEO, PPC, usability testing, etc., she says. - Read the whole story... Using The AdWords Keyword Tool For Blog Titles, Topics
Problogger
If you're developing blog content for SEO's sake, then Darren Rowse has some tips for using the AdWords Keyword Tool to help develop search-friendly blog titles and post topics. He also explains how to use the tool to find out which blog posts may garner the most advertiser attention (as determined by the volume of advertisers bidding on specific words and variations).
"It is worth stating that using the AdWord Keyword Tool to help you choose keywords for your blog will have different impacts upon different blogs - depending upon how well they already rank on Google," Rowse says. "If your blog is new you might not notice much difference in the traffic no matter what keywords you use (simply because your blog is yet to build a ranking in Google yet) - however in time, as your blog accumulates links from other blogs and sites, it will certainly pay off." - Read the whole story... iNET Scoops Up Search Marketing Standard
Web Host Industry News
iNET Interactive has snapped up Search Marketing Standard, the print and online magazine dedicated to search and Internet marketing. Founded in 2006, Search Marketing Standard had grown to amass more than 50,000 subscribers, and included sister sites like SEMCompare.com (a comparison service for companies in need of search firms) and PayPerClickUniverse.com.
The pickup marks iNET's biggest push into the search marketing space, as the media company already owns and operates a number of web worker-themed properties, including Web development and hosting sites like Webhostingtalk.com and Hostscripts.com. - Read the whole story... At-a-Glance View Of AdWords Quality Score Factors
Bg Theory Using Google's Ad Planner To Better Understand Your Site
Occam's Razor |
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