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Facebook was the top-searched term overall in 2010—as it was in 2009—accounting for 2.11% of all searches, according to an Experian Hitwise analysis of the top 1,000 search terms for 2010. Moreover, Facebook was the top-visited website (for the first time) in 2010, accounting for 8.93% of all US visits, ... more
"Over the last dozen-plus years, unscrupulous SEO [companies] have given the entire search engine optimization industry a bad rep," writes Stoney deGeyter at Search Engine Guide. "It seems like every few months some high-profile person in the Internet world says something about how SEO is snake oil, sending ripples throughout ... more
Yahoo Sites comprised the top-ranked Web property in November 2010 with 181.0 million unique visitors, followed by Google Sites with 178.7 million, Microsoft Sites with 175.7 million, and Facebook with 151.7 million, according to comScore Media Metrix service. more
More than three in five Americans (63%) say they ignore or disregard Internet ads, according to a new Adweek Media/Harris Interactive Poll. Internet banner ads are the most ignored (43%), followed by search engine ads (20%). more
In a recent Search Engine Land post, Matt McGee reports on Google's experiment with new metatags designed to help identify original sources of online content found through Google News searches. Google's blog post refers to the use of the new syndication source and original source metatags as an experiment: The company ... more
Google Sites led the US explicit core search* market in November 2010, accounting for 66.2% of total searches conducted during the month, followed by Yahoo Sites with 16.4% and Microsoft Sites with 11.8%, according to data from comScore qSearch. more
If you market your business online, chances are you've bought more than one domain name over the years. It's important to periodically review all your domains, even the old ones pointing to an old microsite promotion. If you don't, you may be losing out on traffic or money—or, even worse, ... more
With most companies focusing their social media marketing efforts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, over one-third (36.1%) say they've been able to make a conversion from initial connection to sale via such social channels, according to a new survey from R2integrated. more
"Sometimes I hear the sound of crickets when I stumble across certain blogs written by small-business owners," writes Samantha McCormick at the OrangeSoda blog. "At first glance, the content is good, thorough, and up-to-date, but the page rank is 0 and there are a dozen signs leading me to believe ... more
"When you perform a search at Google or Bing, the results are significantly influenced by your physical location, even on queries where you don't specify a location," writes Ray Comstock at Search Engine Watch. "So if you're in New York and you search for [pizza], or [hot tubs] or [DMV], ... more
Global ad spending is forecast to reach $449.6 billion in 2010—up 4.9% from a year earlier—and continue to grow between 4.6% and 5.2% over the next three years, fueled by digital media and strong ad growth in developing markets, according to projections by ZenithOptimedia. more
Most high-tech companies understand that SEO is a critical channel for driving new clients, revenue and brand exposure. Organic search results are used widely by software buyers to find and evaluate products. New research from iProspect finds that organic search, more than paid search and online display advertising, offers the ... more
So, you want to improve your online visibility, but you're not an SEO expert. Never fear. C.B. Whittemore from the Simple Marketing blog has a basic SEO primer for you. As a "fierce practical" marketer, Whittemore seeks to understand how applying SEO to an array of digital content—website, blog, press releases, a ... more
Large retailers can count on Black Friday to turn their books from red to black, and online retailers have Cyber Monday to cash in afterward. This year, though, we also have Small Business Saturday. So how can a small business get the upper hand on these three monumental shopping days? more
Whether you're a site owner attempting to rank higher in search results, or a Web developer or designer working with a marketing team on a cool new project, it's more important than ever to understand how Microsoft's Bing works. So advises John Pring in a Six Revisions post. Why is a ... more
"You're sitting at your desk and the email lands in your inbox with a thud," writes Michael Brenner at B2B Marketing Insider. "[S]omeone important in your company just did a search in a major search engine on a keyword they thought was important, and your paid ... ad didn't show ... more
"As a marketer, and one who works for a digital marketing agency that manages a lot of CRM programs for a lot of clients that includes a lot of email, Priority Inbox both excites me and scares ... me," writes Jonathan Richman at Dose of Digital. In essence, he notes, Google ... more
"What's the hottest trend in search-engine optimization that you've never heard of (yet)?" asks Christopher S. Penn in a recent post at the Awaken Your Superhero blog. It's LDA, he reports. Penn cites a series of SEOmoz posts on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)—a context-based algorithm for determining search relevance. According to ... more
Exposure to impressions of organic search results, paid search results, and online display advertising—and specific combinations of such media—produces both a measurable lift in brand favorability and likelihood to purchase, according to a study by iProspect and comScore. more
On the Web, customers want details, facts, comparisons, and feedback from other customers. They avoid the fluff and waffle and marketing hype. What the Web represents, more than anything else, is a shift in power: away from organizations, toward customers. Brands, politicians, even popes are being questioned more than ever. more
"Heresy alert," writes Jason Amunwa at The Zest blog. "I've been struggling with a dark secret recently; you see, I realized that I really dislike SEO. "To me it's like health insurance: I hate dealing with it, I intensely dislike paying for it, and its benefits are difficult for most ... more
Small-business advertisers spent on average $2,373 on search advertising in the third quarter of 2010, up 43% from the $1,658 spent in the same period a year earlier, and up 6.4% from the $2,231 spent in the second quarter of 2010, according to a WebVisible study based on its small-biz ... more
MarketingProfs blogger Helena Bouchez shares web-development insights from an interview with Mark O'Brien, president of web-development company Newfangled. more
Although most online campaigns seek to drive conversion-based goals, many still use the click or CTR as the primary metric—mainly because it has been traditionally used to measure success and because it's easy to measure. But that's no excuse for making a mistake that's costing marketers $1 billion a year. more
Still wondering how Google Instant—the new enhancement that shows results as you type—changes search marketing? Well, Google promises to shave 2.5 seconds off each user's search, with the end result of 10-percent faster searches. In a recent post at the Daily Fix blog, David Felfoldi cites the benefits of this change, ... more
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