Yahoo Search Marketing Blog
New updated news on the YSM (Yahoo Search Marketing) Blog. Again they are touting the intent of the new blog to be a win/win place for marketers and the yahoo staff to learn and grow with their new product. It will contain updated news on the YSM platform and all updates planned and implemented. "Bottom line: if advertisers win and publishers win, then Yahoo! users win, and we win, too."
Some of the changes you’ll see in the short term include:
* A new control panel
Using this completely redesigned, easy-to-navigate control panel will help you see what’s working and what’s not.
* Really fast ad activation
Your ads should now go live within minutes.
* Easy ad testing
You’ll be able to test multiple versions of an ad to find the message that works best.
* Accurate geo-targeting
Target your customers broadly or narrowly on a geographic basis, and customize your ads to control costs.
* Campaign budgeting, forecasting and scheduling
You’ll be able to create, budget and schedule your individual advertising campaigns for greater control over your advertising strategy and spending.
* See-through visibility
The new interface will help you understand how well your ads are performing relative to your competitors’.
Article Publication
I have had my Ironvine Search Marketing News - October 2006 edition published on several article sites.
Here are a couple links:
http://www.articleblast.com/Computers_and_Internet/General/Ironvine_Search_Marketing_News_-_October_2006/
http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/se-tactics/ironvine-search-marketing-news-october-2006.html
http://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm/164330?articleid=164330
Feel free to view, use or vote for the articles if you like.
Google SketchUp
SketchUp is one of Google's lesser publicized applications that it offers for free online (for personal use).
SketchUp is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program that enables you to explore the world in 3D. With just a few simple tools, you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects - even space ships. And once you've built your models, you can place them in Google Earth, post them to the 3D Warehouse, or print hard copies.
This is a downloadable product and not an online tool, similar to Picasa. You can do some really neat drafting and design with this tool, and for basic users who want to build a tool-shed in the back yard, you will be hard pressed to find anything close for the price (free!).
Maximize Holiday Sales with QuickLaunch
We haven't talked about Microsoft's adCenter in a while so here is a nice update about the QuickLaunch service that adCenter provides.
If you can spend at least $30/day on adCenter, check out QuickLaunch and get your holiday campaigns rolling.
This can be especially helpful during the busy holiday shopping season with all the new products you can find online. Don't miss your chance to make those holiday sales and let your competition beat you out!
Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog
Today Yahoo! unveiled its new Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog. This comes in the wake of the new Panama release, Yahoo's latest search marketing platform. Their initial blog post explains why they are just now opening a search marketing blog to keep marketers up to speed with happenings at Yahoo!.
During the first few months, we’ll use the blog primarily to inform and educate you about the many features and benefits of our new platform, and the important administrative details that you’ll need to know before your upgrade date. We encourage you to bookmark this page, or better yet, subscribe to the blog via RSS, so you can have all the info you need to hit the ground running.
I look forward to reading the current to-do at Yahoo Search Marketing and getting the tips and update news similar to those found on the Google webmaster blog. Yahoo is definately making some positive changes in their online marketing strategy and product support. I look forward to seeing new and better things in the future.
Google Alerts
Google has added the ability to have Alerts sent to your email that now include blogs, news, web, groups and a comprehensive report of all the options. I have had news and web alerts set up for about a year now, but today I got my first email that included a blog report.
Set up your own Google Alert, including blogs news web and groups, here and don't forget to create one that includes search terms for ironvine.
Google Webmaster Guidelines Change
Google has changed its algorithm and updated the webmaster guidelines. Previously in the Google webmaster guidelines it stated:
Don't use "&id=" as a parameter in your URLs, as we don't include these pages in our index.
They have removed this requirement and will now index dynamic URLs that use the &id= parameter. But, again, they still stress that long strings of parameters in a URL will cause indexing problems and recommend that you have those URLs changed to something more user-friendly. This can be accomplished with techniques like the mod_rewrite engine for Apache servers.
Search News
Welcome to Ironvine Search Marketing (http://www.ironvine.com/blog/), providers of quality content including search engine optimization tips, search marketing, search industry news and programming tips with code samples. Today we will cover some of the latest news and happenings in the world of search.
This weeks topics:
Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) Released
Google Custom Search Engine
eComXpo Online Search Marketing and Affiliate Tradeshow
URL.com Reviewed
Yahoo! Search Marketing - Panama
Google AdWords - New Tools
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Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) Released
Microsoft Corp. launched it's latest version of Internet Explorer (7) on Thursday Oct. 19, 2006. It is being touted by Microsoft as being more secure, user friendly, and full of new features including tabbed browsing, RSS reader capabilities, pop-up blocker and automatic phishing filter.
As with most Microsoft launches it was met with bugs and a security problem. I have read several people's reports, including one from Danny Sullivan where IE7 seriously messed up the system, including system restore. I also had several issues while installing IE7 that took about 2.5 hrs to resolve and lots of manual operating system fixes / configurations.
After testing IE7 throughout the beta and RC releases there has been some improvement in the functionality and compatibility with current internet standards, but I feel there are certainly some compatibility and stability issues.
Read more about my Internet Explorer 7 installation experience.
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Google has released a custom search engine that you can add to your own web sites. You are able to customize the search parameters to a fairly decent functional level you would expect from a custom search box. Currently the sign-up page is opening under the Google Co-Op Beta banner, so it may be being added as a splinter application of that program.
Earlier this quarter Yahoo! released its version of a custom search box, Yahoo! Search Builder, you can configure and place on your own site. It includes tracking and reporting on the performance of the search box you add as well.
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eComXpo Online Search Marketing and Affiliate Tradeshow
This fall's eComXpo started yesterday, October 23, 2006. eComXpo is an online virtual tradeshow where search marketers, affiliates and specialists can all attend the show free along with special guest speakers covering about 8-15 topics each day of the show.
Attendees can meet with company employees via chat or send emails with vcards attached. There are over 140 contests and giveaways you can also find while browsing the vendors booths.
You can find companies at the show including Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Microsoft, Webmaster Radio, Clicksor, and many more search marketing companies and affiliate marketers.
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Url.com is a new social search engine that pulls the top 10 results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The interface is pretty well done and allows users, once registered, to respond to resulting search pages as either a good result or bad. You are able to promote your site or any others you feel deserve it.
Interestingly enough a search query on url.com for Ironvine Search Marketing comes up as #5 result on MSN and you are able to click it and vote on your url.com result page. While using it I did get a "Application error (Rails)" error on going back to the results page from the url.com frame bar. It seems there are a few bugs yet to work out for the developers, but it seems to be a decent service overall.
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Yahoo! Search Marketing - Panama
Yahoo! this week has started integrating it's latest paid search interface codenamed "Panama." Most of the new interface won't be applied to general users of Yahoo Search Marketing until first quarter of 2007, but Yahoo has released several previews and tutorials as well as an option to request to be included in Panama as soon as possible.
This update is a long awaited upgrade to a system that was beginning to lag behind both Google AdWords and the new adCenter from Microsoft in tools, features, speed, and usability.
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Last Friday, Google AdWords announced on it's blog that 3 new features have been added to Google AdWords. These additions include:
- 'Last thirty days' date range for reports
- Graphs for weekly and hourly reports
- Ad format filters for the site tool
Read the official announcement on the Google AdWords Blog.
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About: Ironvine Search Marketing (http://www.ironvine.com/blog/)
Author - Steve Terjeson - Online Marketing Specialist for Sesame Communications with over 10 years assorted programming, marketing, sales, and computer experience.
eComXpo Virtual Tradeshow Starts Tomorrow
eComXpo Opens - October 24th, 2006 @ 9:00 am ET
I have attended the two previous eComXpo virtual tradeshows and found them to be interesting and a decent amount of good information from the presenters. There is generally a lot more content for affiliate marketers than for the strict SEO/SEM professionals. However they usually have a decent 25-30% share for the technical or optimization side.
It is also a good way to interact with fellow online specialists, exchange contact information, and get contacts with other companies (all be it mostly with the sales teams). Still, I enjoy getting to browse around and see what other companies are offering, what specials and programs are currently out there and just generally get a glance at the e-commerce marketplace.
I look forward to seeing you at this fall's eComXpo October 24-26, 2006. I think you can find me as either Steve Terjeson or my user name "sfalcont"
Internet Explorer 7 Launch: Reviewed
Yesterday Oct. 19th Microsoft launched its latest version of Internet Explorer, IE7. There have been lots of radio spots, radio ads, and news articles going out to let everyone know IE7 is live. It is being touted by Microsoft as being more secure, user friendly, and full of new features including tabbed browsing, RSS reader capabilities, pop-up blocker and automatic phishing filter. The microsoft.com homepage has a 400x400 IE7 graphic to announce the launch and provide an easy link to the download section as well.
So, now everyone knows all about IE7 going live and knows where to go to download it. The question is: Should you and what issues does it have?
To answer whether you should or should not download IE7 is basically personal preference in my opinion. Developers and hard core internet techies will find it somewhat of a pain compared to the much more stable and equally powerful FireFox 2 RC3. For the casual internet user IE7 has a few more features than IE6 which keeps it up with current trends like blogging and RSS feed readers as well as general security updates.
Are there issues with IE7? Oh yeah.
I installed IE7 today, replacing the IE 7 RC2, which replaced the IE 7 RC 1 which replaced the IE 7 Beta 2 and 3. Honestly IE 7 Beta 2 and 3 have been the most stable versions of the lot.
Issue #1 - Today's installation (#1) went in fine, then restarted my computer as goes general Microsoft installation packages. On reboot IE7 spent about 5 minutes downloading and installing updates before it would even let me into Windows. That was a bit of a frustration and pain, they could have at least warned me it would update on reboot.
Issue #2 - All my active desktop and application links have changed from opening with FireFox 2, to now open with IE7. I have my browsers specifically set to use Firefox as the default. No matter how I set them IE7 took over and stayed in control. I had to resort to going into folder options and specifically setting the URL: http and URL: https settings to use firefox.exe directly. Honestly how many people are going to know how to do that?
Issue #3 - Internet Explorer 7 likes to lock up. It has locked up on me 3 times just trying to close the browser window after general use. No special tricks or specific web page. Just in general hard application lock up. End Now. Times 3.
Issue #4 - In attempts to fix Issue #2 I uninstalled IE7 completely, which restored the system back to IE6. That actually worked well. Had to redownload IE6 security patches however. Reinstalled IE7 a little while ago. They had changed the IE7 download page so you could select your OS version now and I didn't have to go through the secondary patching. Thanks for the mid-launch update!
So, I have my computer back to general use after about 2.5 hours of installing/fixing IE7. Firefox 2 became my browser of choice around IE 7 RC1 and so far is staying on top in my usage.
Google Webmaster Central Update
This week sees a nice update to the Google Webmaster tools. Vanessa Fox posted on the Offical Google Webmaster Central Blog describing the recent additions and updates. These updates seem really useful and a big bonus for the webmasters who need to micro manage bandwidth, manage the crawl rate and get more detailed information about how Google sees and interacts with their websites.
Some of the updates include:
- Number of URLs submitted - See how many URL's are submitted in each sitemap.
- Enhanced image search - You can now opt into enhanced image search for the images on your site which enables our tools such as Google Image Labeler to associate the images included in your site with labels that will improve indexing and search quality of those images.
- Crawl rate control - Slow down the crawling of Googlebot! If Google thinks your site can handle more it will offer the option to use faster crawling as well. The change lasts for 90 days, choose wisely.
- Googlebot activity reports - Cool charts depicting the number of pages Googlebot crawled from your site per day as well as the bandwidth used! This is a cool feature for those who need regular and frequest updates!
Google Announces Website Optimizer for Landing-Page Testing
This week, Google revealed a new tool at the Emetrics Summit in Washington, D.C. Called Website Optimizer, it is designed to help AdWords advertisers test different landing pages in order to determine which one drives the highest number of conversions.
Multi-variable testing for landing pages is something that has become more popular over the last couple of years, as advertisers look to tweak different aspects of their campaigns - looking for a competitive edge.
According to Google...
The beta launch of Website Optimizer is a limited release that is offered to AdWords advertisers on a sign-up and acceptance basis. Website Optimizer is fully integrated with Google AdWords and is free to AdWords advertisers...It is a self-service tool that enables non-technical users to set-up and run multivariate landing page experiments. Website Optimizer uses Google Analytics technology for tracking and reporting which landing page variation had the highest conversions.
Article from SearchWrite SearchNews -- Optimizing Results in Search Marketing