Ironvine Search Marketing

CHANNELADVISOR ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF RICHFX

Acquisition Helps Internet Retailers Offer Increased Usability, Improve Conversion Rates with Fewer Clicks via Rich Media Applications

Research Triangle Park, NC– July 16, 2008 – ChannelAdvisor, the leading provider of e-commerce channel management solutions, today announced the acquisition of RichFX, further increasing its multi-channel offerings to online retailers. A leader in the rich media image space, RichFX’s rich media solutions have been helping retailers design, implement and manage effective rich media across online channels since its inception in 1997.

The combined companies will offer three new rich media products for Internet retailers with proven abilities to increase website usability and improve conversion rates with fewer clicks. ChannelAdvisor’s myRichFX™ is a hosted rich media platform that enables retailers to quickly implement and manage enterprise-scale rich media image, catalog and circular solutions including:

• RichImage™ – The Rich Imaging solution allows retailers to manage their digital assets and add dynamic merchandising to their e-commerce products. In addition to standard zoom and pan functionality, comprehensive merchandising solutions are possible such as builders, configurators and more.
• RichCatalog™ – For retailers that have a printed catalog, the catalog can now be brought online with a much richer and integrated experience. Consumers can click through the RichCatalog experience directly into the e-commerce site.
• RichCircular™ – For retailers with regional circulars, RichCircular brings the regional circulars online. Buyers can now search, click and view multiple regional circulars and then buy the products online or order them for in-store pick-up.

RichFX has over 200 retailers as customers, including over 45 that are included in the coveted Internet Retailer 500 list. RichFX’s customer list includes Wal-Mart.com, Disney, Saks, Lillian Vernon, Men’s Warehouse and Brooks Brothers. RichFX customers report a 10%+ increase in online conversion when their online merchandising is enhanced via one of the RichFX offerings.

“MyRichFX provided a cost effective way to help me dramatically increase clicks and conversion rates,” said Anthony Johns, Web Merchandising Manager of Lillian Vernon. “I was amazed at the platform’s usability and flexibility right from the start. The rich media experts proved that they cared about my results with insights and tips after the sale, and provided personal attention throughout the implementation and incorporation processes. A great overall business decision.”

“As we’ve worked with thousands of retailers to manage their e-commerce channels, we have become convinced of the advantages of conversion enhancement technologies,” said Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor. “We are constantly looking for ways to open up more multi-channel functionality to our customers to help them succeed. With rich media’s ability to enhance website interactivity and attract more conversions, RichFX appeared to be a natural extension of ChannelAdvisor Complete core capabilities.”

ChannelAdvisor plans to aggressively offer rich media solutions to its existing customer base. In addition, ChannelAdvisor will extend its ChannelAdvisor Complete e-commerce solutions for search, comparison shopping engines and marketplaces to the existing RichFX customer base. Several integration points are being developed as well. ChannelAdvisor is also working on solutions tailored to SMB and mid-tier internet retailers. Before the ChannelAdvisor/RichFX combination, world-class rich media Internet solutions were out of reach for mid-tier and SMB retailers.

Eoin Townsend, RichFX CEO, will join ChannelAdvisor as General Manager and Vice President of the RichFX business unit.

“At RichFX, we’ve been dedicated to finding innovative ways to help our customers increase conversion rates. That’s why partnering with a company like ChannelAdvisor who is equally committed to customer care seemed to be a perfect fit” said Eoin Townsend, General Manager and Vice President of ChannelAdvisor. “We see this combination as an ideal opportunity to apply our understanding of the elements of enhanced conversions with a like-minded focus on expert services to increase the multi-channel sales opportunities for our customers.”

To learn more about the new rich media Internet solutions, ChannelAdvisor will host a webinar for existing ChannelAdvisor customers and prospects on Wednesday, July 23 at 3:00 pm EDT. To sign up, visit http://www.channeladvisor.com/richmediawebinar.

About ChannelAdvisor Corporation
ChannelAdvisor Corporation provides technology and services that enable leading online retailers to maximize their products across multiple e-commerce marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon.com and Overstock.com, comparison shopping engines such as Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Nextag and Google Product Search and search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In 2007, ChannelAdvisor managed over $2.1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) on behalf of its customers. ChannelAdvisor solutions combine best practices, on-demand software and integration technology to help retailers sell more products, faster, by automating labor-intensive, manual functions so they spend less time optimizing campaigns and more time solving marketing and business issues. ChannelAdvisor’s customers include GSI Commerce, Brookstone, Abebooks and Motorola. ChannelAdvisor Corporation is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, NC with offices in Atlanta, New York, Seattle, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and Germany. For more information, visit http://www.channeladvisor.com/.

As I posted last week over at SearchMarketing.com, Yahoo has done a good bit to give more insight into what it is doing to combat click fraud.

While there is not a lot of everyday usefulness in the update, they are making a good faith effort to combat the very controversial topic.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Search Marketing, Click Fraud, Ironvine

Here’s an eBay PayPal coupon promo code for someone to use:

eBay/PayPal Coupon: 10% off purchase up to $100

Here’s how to redeem this offer:
1. Start shopping on eBay. Be sure the seller accepts PayPal.
2. Pay for your item with PayPal before the expiration date: June 30, 2008 11:59:59 PM PDT.
(Make sure the email address on your eBay account is also on your PayPal account. Find out how.)
3. Enter the redemption PayPal code: CJUNE0810P

Technorati Tags: eBay, PayPal, Coupon, Ironvine

Back in March Google announced that there would be a new factor in the Quality Score algorithm, landing page load time. With this, not only does the quality of the page content affect your ranking, the speed of which it is displayed will come into play.Last Thursday (May 8, 2008) Google added a new feature to help facilitate the management of landing page load time and its affect on your keywords.

On the Keyword Analysis page you will be able to find the load time evaluations and from that data take appropriate measures to help increase that performance on your site.

You have a little bit of time to evaluate your page situation and get any changes done before the landing page load time will start affecting your Quality Score. The implementation for the algorithm change is scheduled for mid-June 2008.You can read more about how load time will affect your landing page quality in this AdWords Help Center article.

Technorati Tags: Google, Landing Page, AdWords, Ironvine

I know we’ve probably all used these but I thought I would toss them up here when I found an article with them all included.

Word Tracker http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
With Wordtracker you type in one keyword and can get up to 100 top keyword variations and approximately how many searches each one receives. They also have an ‘adult filter’ you can use to eliminate any adult orientated search terms that might be related to your keyword.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
The Google Adwords keyword tool is great! You can type in as many keywords as you like to start with, and Google will literally give you hundreds of keywords to choose from including different variations of your keyword to misspellings. They also give you much more information than just keyword variations. They can show you advertiser competition, search volume per month, average search volume total, average CPC , ad position and much more.

SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
The  SEO Book Keyword Research Tool is very cool for many reasons. Mainly, it shows the estimated number of daily searches for each Google, Yahoo and MSN. They’ve also recently added an export to CSV feature, so you can now export the entire list of keywords into a spreadsheet to share with others or to use for future references.Keyword Discovery http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.htmlThe free Keyword Discovery tool is great for giving many different variations of keywords and their estimated number of searches performed. The great thing about Keyword Discovery is that they collect data from all major search engines. I do feel however that on some keywords they estimate a very low number of searches .

SpyFu http://www.spyfu.com/?kw=keyword%20research%20tool
 Spyfu is pretty cool in the fact that they give you more than just variations of keywords you are searching for. Spyfu gives you such information like, an average cost-per- click, cost/day, clicks/day, the number of advertisers also bidding on a particular keyword and the number of search results listed. In addition, they will list out top related terms, related concepts and keywords that competitors bought. What’s even more cool, they will also list out the top 5 (although you can view more) advertisers who are advertising for this keyword, their domain and ad text, both in paid search and organic. Now that’s a lot of info!

MSN Keyword Forecast Tool http://adlab.msn.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx
This tool doesn’t necessarily give you variations of a keyword you type in, but it gives you traffic forecasting information as well as demographic information. For Example, for the keyword ‘catheter’ I found that that majority of people tying in this keyword are women ages 50+. This will help me understand my target audience better as well as allow me to set up correct demographic settings within my accounts. It also gives me an estimate of when searches on this keyword are highest and lowest so I know when to expect more traffic and when to expect a drop in traffic.

Technorati Tags: SEO, SEM, Keywords, Tools, Tips, Marketing, Search, Ironvine

Erin wrote a nice reminder about getting your paid search accounts ready for Mother’s Day. This is typically a great period for female demographic targeted sites. My typical advise is to give holidays a 1 month lead time in marketing (more for larger holidays). Don’t wait for those last minute shoppers!Pump Up Paid Search for Mother’s DayThis week is the time to start preparing your paid search campaigns for Mother’s Day if you have an applicable product or service. Trend reporting for popular Mother’s Day gifts show a historic spike in traffic starting around April 15th thru May 9th.written by Erin Gordon — erin.gordon at channeladvisor.com Technorati Tags: SEM, Marketing, Mothers Day, Ironvine

Here is a first look at a new visual search engine at searchme.com.Searchme does look good, resembling a mashup of Google with Apple’s popular Cover Flow three-dimensional graphical user interface used on its iTunes service, with a little of Ask.com’s categories thrown in.For now, Searchme is only going into private beta, adding users by invitation only.To create the page-riffling effect, Searchme has been working with Adobe. The top screen, after a search term has been entered, then creates a stack of pages to represent the page links on a list below.Technorati Tags: Searchme, Searchme.com, Search, Engine, Google, Apple, Ask, Ironvine

Google Closes Acquisition of DoubleClick

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., (March 11, 2008) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has completed its acquisition of DoubleClick, a company that offers online ad serving and management technology to advertisers, web publishers and ad agencies.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed. With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform, which will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising for users.”

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

About DoubleClick, Inc.

DoubleClick is a premier provider of digital marketing technology and services. The world’s top marketers, publishers and agencies utilize DoubleClick’s expertise in ad serving, rich media, video, mobile, search and affiliate marketing to help them make the most of the digital medium. From its position at the nerve center of digital marketing, DoubleClick provides superior insights and insider knowledge to its customers. Learn more at www.doubleclick.com.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including statements relating to our ability to improve the performance of digital media and the relevance of internet advertising. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ include, among others, risks related to our ability to identify and pursue the technologies necessary to achieve these goals, as well as those risks and uncertainties included under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, which is available on our investor relations website at www.investor.google.com. All information provided in this release is as of March 11, 2008, and Google undertakes no duty to update this information.

Media Contact:

Ellen West

212.565.1986

ewest@google.com

Investor Contact:

Maria Shim

650.253.7663

marias@google.com

Technorati Tags: Google, DoubleClick, News, Search, Marketing, Ironvine

Today CNN published an article about some major changes in the way Ask.com is going to be doing business moving forward. They are changing their focus from an all inclusive, interactive search engine and adapting it to target a specific audience.

With the change it will return to its roots by concentrating on finding answers to basic questions about recipes, hobbies, children’s homework, entertainment and health.

The decision to cater to married women primarily living in the southern and midwestern United States comes after Ask spent years trying to build a better all-purpose search engine than Google.

While I am fully supportive of them creating a niche market to provide specific answers, this comes as a strange choice to me. Thinking economically that demographic isn’t among the stronger per capita income areas. They are going to have limited influence in the market base with advertisers who will also be constrained by their focused market.

It seems as this is yet another down turn in the search competition world, Ask.com is starting to fade away into its own corner and returning a small portion of the market share back into the search pool.

You can read the full article at CNN - Ask.com gets a makeover, lays off 40

Technorati Tags: Ask.com, CNN, Search Engine, Marketing, Search, Ironvine

Here is some interesting news for all those web developers out there from www.mysqlconf.com

We are pleased to announce that on February 25, 2008, Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL. This is great news for Sun, MySQL, the open source community, and the 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo.

Technorati Tags: MySQL, Sun, Ironvine

***Upcoming Workshop: ChannelAdvisor’s Scot Wingo Shares Tips for Great DSRs***

We would like to invite you to attend the following workshop next week:

How to Improve Your Detailed Seller Ratings
This workshop will be held on Tuesday, February 26th from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Pacific time.

In January, eBay told the selling Community that “great service will mean the difference in 2008.” Detailed Seller Ratings are an important factor in eBay’s new seller standards and incentives. Please join Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, for an hour covering some DSR Frequently Asked Questions, as well as proven ways sellers can improve their DSRs.

Steven Terjeson of ChannelAdvisor is accredited as an official Microsoft adExcellence Member. A Microsoft adExcellence Member has completed comprehensive online training on managing Microsoft adCenter search engine marketing campaigns and has demonstrated expert knowledge by passing the Microsoft adExcellence accreditation exam.

This completes my suite of certifications, Google, Yahoo and now MSN.

Technorati Tags: adExcellence, Certification, SEM, adCenter, ChannelAdvisor, Ironvine