Google launches SearchWiki - Personalised Search Feature

Google has announced SearchWiki, which is a new set of functionality that users with Google accounts can use to customize their results on any given search. SearchWiki allows users to move specific results up or down in rankings so that they appear in the preferred order when the same search is done in the future.

SearchWiki also allows you to post comments on results, such as notes to yourself, but you can also see what other people have said about them as well.

In addition, you can add and remove sites to your liking. So for example, if I want to search for my own web presence, but want to filter out other Anirban Das that aren't me, I can do so.

To get a better idea of how this thing works, watch the following video:

Search Gets More Dynamic
"This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives," says a post at the Official Google Blog. "We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learnings into this release. We are constantly striving to improve our users' search experience, and this is yet another step along the way."

What About Rankings?
Google makes it a point to mention that this will in know way impact rankings when other users do searches, so before anybody gets all worked up, don't worry about that. But, this certainly does play into the personalized search scenario that can affect how those with Google accounts see search results. It seems that if they have already set a number of results to their liking, they are less likely to see results that would otherwise appear toward the top.

A New World of Search
The release of SearchWiki makes it pretty clear that Yahoo isn't the only one doing compelling things with dynamic search. I think the next year or so is going to be the most interesting one we've had in a while when it comes to how we use search engines to get our results. With Yahoo obviously stepping up their efforts to change the game, I think we're going to see some very cool things come out of the competition between the top two search engines.

Google Chrome blocked in Syria, Iran

Someone informed me that Google Chrome is blocked in a number of counties. It appears Chrome is not only blocked from download from these locations, but also will not run if it’s used from this IP space even if downloaded by proxy. Google is following U.S export controls and economic sanctions in not allowing the download of Google Chrome in Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan. It’s difficult to see the harm in enabling people from these countries installing a browser that is free to the rest of the world.

It seems like a strange move for a company that has focused so intently on the Middle Eastern and North African markets, with versions of Knol, Blogger, iGoogle, Docs, and, most recently, Chat in Arabic.

Remarkably, the block wasn't the work of the Syrian government -- which has banned numerous sites in the past, including Facebook, Skype, and several blogging platforms -- but that of Google itself. Google had this to say:

“In accordance with US export controls and economic sanctions regulations, we are unable to permit the download of Google Chrome in Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan.”

Users are presented with this, and no further explanation:



It's not the first time that Google has taken such action. Last year, the company justified restricting access to Google Earth in Sudan with practically the same statement.

Nor is Google alone. The Register reported in November 2007 that Yahoo and Microsoft removed Iran from the drop-down list that lets users choose their country of origin when signing up for web mail. Yahoo also referred to U.S. law in explaining its decision: "Because the United States restricts U.S. businesses from conducting business in certain countries, Yahoo also ensured that these countries do not appear in the drop-down menu."

In the late 90s that some version of browsers came with licenses limiting their download to people in the United States because they contained certain levels of encryption, which the US government classified as weapons munitions. We don’t know why Google isn’t allowing for the download in the countries listed above. Is it an issue involving encryption? Is there some other reason?

Poverty has many causes, and shows many symptoms. Poverty is a lack of opportunity and education, an inability to receive fair treatment and a chance to grow and develop, a struggle to find food and clothing and shelter and medical care.

Access to information can make a positive difference for those who face poverty, and for those organizations that fight poverty, in many places around the world. I found myself pausing and wondering why Google would impose a limit on a tool that they offer that can allow people to access that information.

It seems silly to block the download of free and widely available software like Chrome, but we can't blame companies for trying to comply with the law. However, information travels fluidly on the Net, so the law has a hard time keeping up. And that's troubling, because the U.S. can be seen as inhibiting access to information or possibly even stifling free speech in the very countries whose censorship and repression it condemns.

Advertising Despite Blocks
Another curious aspect of this is that though Google blocks Syrians and Iranians from accessing these programs, it still serves them ads. Google AdWords ads appear on websites and blogs in Syria just as they do elsewhere.

Export Administration Regulations do restrict the dissemination of software that could, say, help build weapons, but make exceptions for "publicly available" programs, "the idea being that people are unlikely to disseminate free of charge the really significant technology," according to the Harris Wiltshire & Grannis review. But review author Cecil Hunt explains: "For Iran and Syria, the availability of this exception is likely to be moot, due to the pervasive embargo administered by [the Office of Foreign Asset Controls] OFAC." OFAC administers U.S. trade sanctions programs.

What Do the Blocks Accomplish?
So what if Syrians and Iranians can't use Chrome? There are a lot of other browsers and software out there not subject to U.S. law. Google, which had earned a reputation to be the good guys gave the impression that they depart from the big corporation mentality and attitude, which gave them credit in this part of the world. For that reason you don't hear of someone boycotting a Google service or product.

It is a pity that a technology which could help understanding among people and help one to educate himself is submitted to the shortsightedness of today's politics.
Google was created by a bunch of "cool guys". They turn to be less and less cool and more and more in the surveillance industry.

SEO or PPC - the argument continues . . . . .

Still not sure about search engine optimization (seo) or pay-per-click (ppc) programs? Well, you’re not alone. There is lots of companies who want to promote in internet are confused. Its one of the most ridiculous arguments you will sometimes see on business forums is that of SEO vs PPC. Some PPC specialists will argue that what SEO may deliver is so vague, that PPC is the only way to go because it’s easier to measure. Some SEO specialists that SEO is more cost effective, therefore SEO in the only way to go because it has a lower CPA. Both arguments are based on empty bias, and to rely on just a single marketing channel - not least SEO - is a precarious way to engage in marketing. SEO and PPC are both valid marketing channels, and as such, a company looking to market on the internet should ideally look to leverage PPC and SEO campaigns, amongst others.



Search engine marketing consist of two basic forms, SEO or search engine optimization and pay per click advertising or PPC. While many passionately claim one is better than the other the simple facts can be hard to come by. For any business owner who is new to search engine marketing, it is easy to get overwhelmed and lost in the argumentation or just avoid the choice all together.

Some experts believe that businesses get more out of paying for the targeted traffic that comes to Web sites from a pay per click advertising campaign, others point out that SEO or search engine optimization impacts where a Web site ranks naturally in the search engines and can thereby increase the credibility of a company. Fortunately, there is one thing that the experts all agree on: if a company has a Web site, they need a way for potential customers to find them on search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN who control nearly 80% of the search market.

Ask ten companies whether they have a search engine marketing strategy and nine will say No. Ask the same people how they find information for the products and services they need and they’ll tell you they use a search engine. So why do they expect their prospects to be any different? A research found that search engines and directories provided over 40% of all sites surveyed with 50% or more of their traffic. Furthermore, these visitors represent a targeted highly qualified prospect that likely would not have found these sites if a search engine marketing program had not been implemented.

OK, you’re now convinced that search engines are important. So should you spend your scarce marketing dollars on optimizing your website to achieve higher rankings? Or should you use the pay-per-click paid listings programs? What about doing both?

The SEO versus PPC “controversy”
On the one hand some argue that search engine optimization and paid inclusion is a waste of time. Optimization firms can't do much to improve a Google ranking and with search engines having prominently positioned paid results SEO will be a thing of the past.

Others argue that while search engine optimization may take longer to achieve results and can’t guarantee placement it is a long term, very cost effective investment much like public relations and should be an important part of your marketing mix.

If a person had asked me a few years ago whether SEO is complimentary to paid search or asked a SEO professional whether a person must even do PPC (Pay Per Click aka SEM aka Search Engine Marketing), I am sure both of us would not have given a positive opinion of the other.
One reason for this could have been that SEO is the grandfather of search and it is nearly as old as the search engines themselves, while PPC is only less than six years old. Many SEO professionals detested search engines for introducing paid search and firmly believed that it was a temporary phenomenon – if the SEO firms would have truly supported paid search from the beginning, specialist paid-search companies would have found it difficult to prosper.
The following discussion will help settle the controversy.

Traditional search engine optimization
First let’s define traditional SEO. Search engine optimization is the process of fine tuning (i.e. optimizing) your web site to reflect specific keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business and for which you want to attract visitors to your site who are searching for such words.
This optimization relates to a variety of elements, not only on your web site's homepage, but its sub pages as well. Those elements can include things like meta tags, link structure, link popularity and the content of the site itself.

Once your web site is properly optimized, the goal then is to make sure that each of the top crawler based search engines find your site and add as many pages as possible in their indices. These engines will usually start with your home page and then work their way to other pages of the site.

Search engine optimization also involves making sure your site is listed in the major directories such as Yahoo and Open Directory to name a few. Other elements of SEO include monitoring you’re positioning in the search engines, making adjustments as necessary to your site to stay in the top positions and submitting to new engines or directories that come along as well.

Pay Per Click
Pay per click or PPC is a service in which an advertiser selects specific keywords or phrases and then creates a listing that will show up when someone searches for that phrase.

The advertiser selects an amount they are willing to pay for each click on their listing that results in a visit to their site – thus the term “pay per click”. If other advertisers have selected the same keyword or phrase as yours, you then compete against them for the highest position. Whoever is willing to spend the most shows up first with the others following in order.

What makes PPC attractive is that paid listings are distributed (syndicated) to other partner sites. In fact, if you bid for one of the top three positions at Overture (as an example), your listings will also show up at some of the leading search engines including Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, HotBot, Infospace, iWon, Lycos, and others. Therefore if you bid for top placement at Overture, you will show up at these partner sites as well.

What PPC has allowed you to do is instantly “pay” your way to the top whereas traditional SEO takes time and effort.

The Case For SEO
First of all you must understand that PPC will never help improve your positioning in the regular editorial search results. PPC results always appear in a "Sponsored or Featured" area, which is usually at the top or side of the regular search results.

While it is nice to “show up first” there are still a lot of users that do not click on the "paid" listings but rather will search through the regular editorial search results. The only way to get optimized (high) rankings in these regular editorial results is through an effective SEO program. In most cases, once you have good positioning in the regular search results, you will continue to receive “free” traffic. Obviously, when you stop paying for PPC, it disappears and so does the traffic it brings.

Consider search engine optimization the same as you would word of mouth advertising or public relations. It’s exposure that comes with a very high degree of credibility and trust. Traffic coming from traditional search listings tends to have high conversion rates.

There’s another advantage to traditional search listings. They are considered unbiased and non-commercial. Traditional search performs very well at certain points in the buying process. When consumers are gathering information about a purchase, they show a marked preference for traditional search listings. When they are ready to buy online, they seem to have less bias against paid placement listings and their likelihood to click on one of these listings increases.
Perhaps the most compelling reason not to exclude SEO from your online marketing strategy comes down to dollars and cents. The following case study provides a very compelling argument for traditional SEO:

This Company has been an aggressive search engine marketer for a number of years. A few years ago they discovered Overture and aggressively bid for keywords.
About a year ago, they were ready to drop their traditional SEO campaign, feeling that it wasn't really effective given the new PPC environment. Before they did that they decided to continue with SEO and to track the traffic coming from traditional SEO compared to the PPC traffic. The results were surprising.

In one thirty day period, for the company received a total of 5,538 visitors from search engines. 2,552 of these came from his PPC advertising on Overture, Google AdWords and other engines, which cost a total of $2,169.20 for the one month. The average cost per visitor? $0.85. With his traditional SEO, he received 2,986 visitors, at a monthly cost of $533 (including all related submission fees), and an average cost per visitor of $0.18. What's more, the traditional SEO visitors had a higher conversion rate than PPC visitors, at 2.3% vs.1.4% respectively. This client is now a firm believer in the power of SEO.

While in the example above it is clear that SEO was the better performer, there are two major drawbacks to traditional SEO. It often takes a number of months to achieve initial results and it’s not an easy strategy to control. That said, while it may not be quick and easy, it is still possible to influence search engine rankings (even Google’s). How? By simply giving the search engines what they want to see.

Don’t let a web designer dictate your marketing strategy. Web site designers often have no idea how search engines work or what their capabilities are. They have other goals in mind when designing their sites, such as:

• Presenting the site in an interesting and unique way.
• Getting the maximum impact from the available screen real estate.
• Using available design techniques to get their message across.
• Handling content in an efficient manner.

All very important objectives, but often at cross purposes with effective “search engine friendly” design.
Designers will often use Flash, java or DHTML navigation tools, frames, dynamic content management or other techniques to get the most out of their site design. Each of these presents a challenge to search engine spiders. Most of the sites we look at have not even considered the basics in search engine friendly design during their construction. Content is completely hidden from search engine. Search Engine Optimization can help you maintain the site’s appeal while improving its performance with search engines.

A final advantage of search engine optimization is that a better site and more extensive content will make it more likely it is found not just for your primary key words but also many secondary key words. This incremental traffic doesn’t have the same conversion rates as the traffic that comes looking for your main words, but it’s also free.

The Case for PPC
While SEO does not put you in the driver’s seat, Pay per click (PPC) gives you the ability to have complete control over your search traffic. With PPC programs you select the keywords and write the listings. You control where you’re listed and what the listing says. You decide what your budget is and can adjust your spend rate based on results or events (e.g. announcements, promotions).

By tracking results from a PPC campaign, you can build up a knowledge base with respect to your business, including which messages perform the best, which search terms have the best conversion rates, and what destination URL is best for specific users to land on. Over time, this knowledge can help you to improve and define your business.

Tracking also allows you to understand your ROI from a specific marketing initiative and gives you confidence to spend money and drive volume. You may have thought that spending $10,000 a month on a PPC campaign is way outside your budget, but once you measure the ROI, you may realize that it’s well worth the investment.

Check out many of the search providers (e.g. MSN, Alta Vista, Lycos) and you have to do some scrolling before you can find their editorial (i.e. free) results. Their first page is dominated by their own and Overture’s paid listings. Search engine providers depend on advertisers for their revenue. Paid search listings will continue to command more and more real estate on search results pages across the web because they make the search engines money.

Why would a user click on a paid result when they could be clicking on an unpaid (more objective) result? While it’s often true that when a user is searching for information they may prefer unpaid results, when that user is interested in acquiring a product or service a relevant paid result is just as appealing, if not more appealing.

Finally, PPC programs give you immediate results. Once you’ve selected your keywords and written your copy it is only a matter of hours or days before your site is placed and the leads start coming in. And you can terminate the listings anytime you want.

PPC or SEO?
Actually, that depends. If you need to improve the quality and quantity of your lead flow as soon as possible then PPC is the right answer. If you want to insure that you have the highest ROI, enhance your branding and get an optimized conversion rate then SEO makes a lot of sense. For most companies it will be a combination of the two. SEO and PPC are complementary. In fact, a PPC program can help identify the most successful search terms, copy and call-to action and can then be used to optimize the site. PPC budgets can be adjusted up (and down) based on results, including the improvements delivered through SEO. The bottom-line is that you should spend your marketing dollars on the venues that deliver positive ROI. A campaign that includes both PPC and SEO helps you to saturate search result pages with your listings. As long as both remain profitable (which is easily trackable), both should remain a priority.



The Bottom Line
Search engine marketing, Whether through SEO or PPC or both, should be a fundamental component of your overall marketing mix. Search engine users have chosen to use the Internet to research an issue or solve a problem. They are the ultimate in qualified prospects. These visitors are well along the sales cycle as a result of having taken the initiative to use a search engine to solve their problem. These are buyers.

After spending tens of thousands of dollars or more developing a website, businesses often discover that the site is invisible to the major search providers. Failing to take your website's visibility into consideration when making development decisions is expensive mistake, both in real dollars and opportunity costs. By recognizing both the importance and the need of search engine marketing in the development of your website, you hold a significant advantage.
Only one of two outcomes is possible each time a prospect performs a search:

• They will find your website.
• They will find a competitor's website.

I think I know which outcome I’d prefer.

Email Marketing - 5 Ways to Increase Email Deliverability

I have been away from this blog for nearly more than 1 month. The work pressure was killing me and even in my dreams i visualized site traffic graphs. I kept mumbling keywords in my dreams, my wife has testified that. I am trying to optimize my life so that it can come on top results of keyword "peace of mind".

I was surfing as usual and dashed through a report on email marketing effectiveness. Email marketing is still a far fetched route of marketing in India. Every comapny have email campaigns but dont focus on that much. And still people think email marketing ROI is less than all the othet modes of reaching out to the customers, its like knocking on the door of a potential customer and yell like a vegetable vendor (in india vegetable vendors walks down the neighbourhood to sell vegetables by yelling at their top of the voice, mouthing wierd pronounciations of names of vegetables and in deifferent frequencies.) and say "Alloo le lo, swasth sunder sodol aloo le lo".

These days, just about every profession and industry has an email marketing campaign. What is the thing with email marketing? Why is everyone exploiting the seemingly cheap opportunity of advertising? Recent estimates have shown that email marketing is one of the cheapest forms of advertising that has ever existed. Next to "word of mouth" which has an intensely exponential viral effect, email marketing take sits in its rightful place. Almost everyone has an email these days. What is the cost of the email? Sometimes, nothing. Currently, over 186 million people have email addresses in the United States and an estimated 1.2 billion worldwide. This means that approximately one in every six people on earth has an email. The potentials of email marketing are staggering. Never in the history of mankind has such an avenue to sell and market one's products to a huge audience presented itself as it has this time. As a result, people are harnessing the potentials of email marketing which is still growing.



The report on email marketing which I mentioned in the second paragraph had quite interesting facts. According to the study, e-mails sent from "legitimate" e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56 percent. 20 percent were rejected; 8 percent filtered out of the inbox. The rest — 16 percent — were bounces.

So nearly half of the time, e-mail marketers' messages don't get through. But there are ways to increase deliverability. Here are five:

1. Make sure your e-mail server—or ESPs—is configured correctly. If you maintain your own e-mail server, it's crucial that it's set up correctly. This means making sure your reverse DNS settings, which map an IP address to a host name, are correct and use your domain name. You don’t want to have a big string of numbers. You want it to say, 'mail.domainname.com'. Otherwise you may be classified as an illegitimate server.

2. Keep your unknown user rate down. When you send a message to an illegitimate email addy, the ISP or server handling it keeps track of that delivery attempt. Log too many of those attempts and you might be put on a blacklist — worse still, blocked at the server level.

If either of those things occurs, none of your emails to that domain or ISP will get through.

Fake emails aren't the only worry. This can also happen when e-mail recipients change jobs or don't log in to their email address frequently. Your best bet is to check for unknown users after every mailing and remove them immediately. Your IT person or ESP can provide you with a list of bounced e-mail addresses and help you remove them.

3. Track your reputation. Many email deliverability services track email senders' reputations based on information like inclusion on blacklists, complaint rates and e-mail volume. Keeping a vigilant guard of your reputation score gives you a better sense of your deliverability rates; one tends to correlate with the other. It’s definitely a case of the higher the score, the higher the deliverability.

4. E-mail often. If you don't email your list often enough, addresses go stale and you may end up with a higher number of undeliverable messages. And even if some messages do get through, recipients may forget they signed up for them and report you as a spammer. Reach out to your list at least quarterly, but monthly is better.

5. Don’t get caught in a spam trap. ISPs and large domain holders sometimes set up "spam traps," placing email addresses that don’t belong to anyone on their homepage or around the web to thwart spammers engaged in email harvesting.

You might inadvertently mail one of these addresses if someone maliciously puts one on your list or if a legitimate e-mail address is entered incorrectly. There are two ways to prevent this problem: implement a double opt-in so every email address on your list is verified; or send double opt-in messages from a separate domain and a separate IP address.

Double opt-in also serves as a handy defense against blacklisting: If you do hit a spam trap and get on a blacklist, you can go to the ISP or the domain owner and say, 'This is my confirmed opt-in welcome stream. I can't control what people input. That's why I have a double opt-in in place'.

The ISP sees you're trying to do the right thing and, as long as you provide some evidence that that's what you’re doing, you won't have a problem getting off the blacklist. And at the same time, the rest of your e-mail list is safe.

Hope these 5 points will help you all who are refrained from magic of email campaigns.

Through The SEO Kaleidoscope: U.S. Presidential Election 2008

Now that the Democrats have finally picked Barack Obama to run against Republican John McCain in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, I thought it would be a good idea to baseline the two candidates' Web sites from a SEO perspective. I also thought we could look at some famous search terms of the past, and examine the Google SERP landscape to see who's spending money or holding trust in the results right now for relevant terms.

In order to kill the suspense right now: the "libtards" are slightly ahead of the "neocons."

"The Next President"

A few Googlebombs made the rounds during the 2004 presidential election season. The Googlebomb was victoriously defused in early 2007, removing the White House site as the top result for "miserable failure."

Many SEOs, myself included, believed the Googlebomb "fix" involved not crediting high instances of inbound anchor text unless the text was also visible on the page. This theory was supported a short period after the "defusing," when the White House site was back on top for "failure," simply because the word was included in the headline of an article on the home page, which immediately "validated" the links. The word was removed et voila, no more number-one rank.

Other than this being a great story to tell people who don't understand the power of links, or SEO in general, it's testament that anchor text works. Will this year's candidates use a more self-directed approach and try to rank for election-related terms or phrases? Obama's official Web site ranks ninth in Google for a search for "next president." John McCain's site is nowhere to be found.

I won't focus on paid search listings in this article, as both candidates are likely to ramp up in that area over the coming months. However, a glimpse of the variety of sites that will be bidding for relevant terms is evident in the search for "next president."

Two paid results appeared for me: one purchased by Asia Society with the title "Advice for Next President" and the description: "Obama, Clinton or McCain - Find out who Asian leaders prefer." The other leads to a Generation Engage listing urging you to "Learn about the 2008 Election" with the description: "Who is your candidate? - Watch GenGage Candidate Videos." These people better enjoy the five-cent clicks while they last.

Using Multiple Domains

An early strategy of the Obama team (including possible non-solicited evangelists and supporters) may also be to use a reputation management style of SEO and target multiple favorable domains for election-related terms.

I was researching the 2004 election and used the search "Kerry 'next president' website," and found an interesting listing at number four: kidsforkerry.org. The intriguing part was that the Google SERP title for that domain says "Barack Obama For President!! Time to put some dignity back in this..." It turns out that the site is now housing pro-Obama content, and that Google is pulling an "h3" header for the title, since the kidsforkerry.org home page simply uses "Home" at the Page Title. The description is more Obama supporting text from on-page.

Either the Obama team has contacted the owners of kidsforkerry.org and made a deal, or the likely Democratic Webmaster has chosen to evangelize Obama. In either case, this is just one of many sites that could possibly keep negative sites about Obama down in the listings.

When performing a brief analysis of the backlink anchor text of the Obama site, we can also see a number of links using the term "Barack Obama Muslim rumor." This is evidence of reputation management being undertaken, in order to help push down the hate sites and other drivel being put forth by some more aggressive anti-Obama entities.

Fortunately, many of the racist sites already have enough negative factors associated with them that they likely can't overcome the primary Obama site.

Content on Obama's site that refutes the Muslim rumor ranks at number seven in Google for the term "Obama Muslim rumor," and likely will rise as more people link to the Obama domain.

Where is McCain?

John McCain does pretty well for a search of his name. Of the top 10 sites, none are obviously negative, and it takes to the second page to find a decently constructed anti-McCain site at number 13. However, many of the terms that I checked that are relevant to the election yield zero McCain results on the first page.

In a head-to-head battle, John McCain ranks on the first page for "2008 president," just behind Obama. Obama also has a second listing at number 20, and two sites of candidates that aren't even in the race anymore (Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney) are potential fodder for page title changes that would support their endorsed candidate.

This article was meant to briefly scratch the surface of the landscape for organic listings related to the 2008 election. In a few months, I'll follow up with a more in-depth article, and I'm sure other writers are planning similar topics.

In the meantime, share your thoughts on strategies for the presidential hopefuls at the Search Engine Watch Forums, or if this really fired you up, apply for a job on Obama's team.

Frank Watson Fires Back

Timely topic, mate. I see there are three paid ads for McCain, but Barack has eight, and they're even up for his wife -- though that could be broad matched. Interestingly, over at Yahoo all the ads are selling shirts and banners, etc. No official paid search there. Guess this is a Google election.

You can get new McCain and Obama from eBay Express. I wonder if that will be in place after the election so we can buy ourselves a replacement, if we need one?

Obama has an ad at the Search Engine Watch Job Board looking for someone to run their online optimization. My advice to whoever takes the job: run ads on Yahoo and Microsoft. I think you'll get the vote of many Google users. Yahoo and Microsoft users are the old-school set, and may be the ones to win over.

source:- search engine watch

What to Expect from Your Internet Advertising Company

In order to attain better visibility and a broader approach in internet business, you need to first have a proper approach towards your marketing strategy. Internet advertising is an important tool of online marketing that helps bring your website to a wider alley of public viewing. The best source to attain this is by appointing one of the many Internet advertising companies that provide a package of advertising gimmicks for websites.

But before you hand over the task of promoting your website to your internet advertising company, it is also important that you understand what these companies are going to do with your website. It is essential for you too to have a fair knowledge of what are the various advertising mediums, how they work and what all do they do.

There are various tools that are used by a internet advertising company to promote your website. You must be aware of these tools and how they are beneficial to your website. There is no harm in regularly interacting with your internet advertising company in order to add on some tips, suggestions or advices which you feel can be of some use to your website.

You can also go about doing your own research on how to become more visible in the web space and what latest tool you can use which can be helpful in increasing your web presence. Apart from the banner and contextual ads that your advertising company is providing to your website, you could also try using some of the free advertising sites that also help in generating traffic to your website.

Being part of blogs, forums, and other community sites will also help in becoming more knowledgeable and shall give you essential input to what is good and what is bad in internet advertising of your website. Gaining expert thoughts and comments is beneficial to both you and your website.

To sum it all, there is truly no technique which is good or bad in a website. They are either working for your site or they are not working for your site. The only successful way to find out what is working and what is not working for your site is to try the trial and error method on them. If a technique clicks it is working and if it does not then the answer is quite natural. But your task does not end here, it is also important that you find out why a particular technique is working or not working for your website.

Doing this will not only give your internet advertising a personal touch but it shall also make the job of your internet advertising company more focused and targeted.

source: ezine articles

Run a Reverse Phone Lookup on Google

Google is by far the most popular search engine on the internet, and has been maintaining this status for years. One of the secrets to its success is the fact that it is easy to use, free, and extremely complete. Furthermore, it has many added features that allow you to search for specific kinds of results, such as images, videos, and phone numbers. The phone number searches offered by Google aren't just forward searches, but also include reverse phone lookup options. Therefore, if you have a telephone number and you'd like to know who owns it, you simply need to plug it in to Google's service, and you'll be provided with the results page.

Though you can perform a lookup using the main searching page at Google, the best place to get the results you're looking for is within the Google people directory. To find that page, simply go to Google and type "Google people search" into the query box. You can also simply enter the number into the query box. Either way, the results that will appear when you click "search" will be headed by the Google directory.

Always make sure to include all ten digits of the telephone number when you're performing a search, because any reverse phone lookup site will require both the area code and phone number for accuracy.

If your search is successful, and you've looked for a number that is listed with Google, your results page will include the name associated with that telephone number, as well as the street address, city, state, and Zip code.

If your search to find out who owns a phone number is not successful, it could be for a number of reasons. Google lists only American numbers for residential and business landlines. This means that unlisted numbers, cell phone numbers, and international calls (including those from Canada and Mexico) are not among those listed in the Google directory.

For those kinds of numbers, you will need to find reverse phone lookup sites that are specific to them. Those sites are not hard to find using the Google search engine, but simply are not available within the Google phone directory itself.

source: ezine articles

How The Death of SEO Will Play Out ?

what is the definition of SEO ?

Basically everyone is on the same page as me SEO is the human interaction with a website that makes it rank than it naturally would have. Yes that is a huge broad definition… I know.

Lets take a step back. Back in the days of altavista and webcrawler it was pretty much a spamfest. Until one day this pretty badass search engine came out named Google.

Google’s mission has always been to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Back in the early days Google claimed that there was no such thing as spam in their search engine index and if there ever was then its algorithm had failed. Then one day Google found itself very very deep in spam. Also legitimate mom and pops had no chance against the spammers who were back in action kicking Google’s butt just like they had done to every search engine before.

Google needed help. They needed a hero. It was now in their best business interest to let humans influence their search engine. Give them a bit of help on how they can better crawl their sites. Enter GoogleGuy. Google appointed a person dubbed GoogleGuy to police the forums and social sites like Slashdot and help the legitimate webmasters (in Google’s opinion) rank better in Google by the use of SEO. This worked pretty well and Google saw quite a business value in allowing humans to influence their algorithm. The only problem for Google was that this was not a long term solution.

Enter the Toolbar. This was (in my opinion) the single biggest thing that Google did to improve their search engine and they obviously saw value in it. They were paying people 1$ per install to keep track of what they were doing on the internet. Not to mention the half billion dollar deal with Firefox. With the toolbar they could tell exactly where users are going and there experiences with those websites. This mixed with Google Analytics (another awesome service) and they are getting much more valuable data about the websites.


The start of the death of SEO:

As Google started getting more and more data on sites the need for webmasters to help them greatly decreased. This Googleguy disappeared from forums but about the same time a engineer from Google named Matt Cutts appeared. His blog soon became the voice of the Google search team and instead of really giving tips and answering questions he laid down the law. In particular to paid links and paid reviews as well as other items which make Google look stupid.

The death of SEO is not going to happen overnight but it is close. I personally believe that Google will achieve their original goals and not allow humans to influence its algorithms. I know it sounds like SEO… well actually the definitions are the same thing. The difference between SEO and spam is what Google allows. There is no future in SEO and we will very soon all go back to being spammers. There is no black or white there is only SEO.

So what is the future on how sites will rank? I personally believe AdWords will be your entry point so that Google can get data on users experiences for key phrases then rank you organically accordingly. That seems to make sense.

source:- shoemoney.com

Google's Fun Facts

Google sorts billions of bits of information for its users. Here are some little-known bits of information about Google:

* Google’s name is a play on the word googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. Google’s play on the term reflects the company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

* Google started as a research project at Stanford University, created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively (a combined 47 years old).

* Google receives more than 1,000 online marketing professional resumes a day.

* Google’s index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of billions of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.

* Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

* Users can restrict their searches for content in 35 non-English languages, including Chinese, Greek, Icelandic, Hebrew, Hungarian and Estonian. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth’s orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface just in case.

* Google has a world-class staff of more than 2,668 employees known as Googlers. The company headquarters is called the Googleplex.

* Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices, and has made it possible to enter a search using only one phone pad keystroke per letter, instead of multiple keystrokes.

* Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world’s largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.

* The basis of Google’s search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an “importance” value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that’s not why it’s called PageRank. It’s actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

* Googlers are multifaceted. One operations manager, who keeps the Google network in good health is a former neurosurgeon. One software engineer is a former rocket scientist. And the company’s chef formerly prepared meals for members of The Grateful Dead and funkmeister George Clinton.