A big thank you to all of you who completed our UK Search Engine Marketing survey earlier in the year (we had over 1000 respondents!) and to those of you who came along to our pre-launch event at the Hospital...
Even though news volumes are up, searches for generic terms are down by what appears to be almost 25% since 2004. This ties in nicely with other studies showing increasing sophistication on the part of search engine users, longer search...
It took a full two years longer than I'd expected but finally they've done it, Microsoft has made an offer to buy Yahoo!, and that so called analyst can choke on his Chateau Latour. The deal is worth $44.6 Billion...
I'm fed up with "Social Media". Not with the mediums themselves; sure Digg users can be a bit moronic, but the block button is handy (I'm sure my rants have been blocked by several) - I'm more annoyed with the...
Mike Grehan blogged the following on the ClickZ Network: "With search and PR so intrinsically linked, what are we likely to see happening in the immediate future? Will SEO shops retrain or bring in marketers to take on a more...
Mike Moran whom I was on a panel with at SES once talks on the YSM Blog about what he thinks are the three biggest mistakes a newby search marketer can make - focusing on rankings, using the wrong metrics...
Enquiro have just released a 'B2B Purchasing Behavior Whitepaper' based on a survey of over 1000 B2B buyers, I haven't had the chance to read it fully yet but I usually like the quality of research from this SEM based...
The Neutralize (*\*) / E-consultancy UK Search Marketing Benchmark Report is now available, and you can buy a copy from e-consultancy or download it for free if you are a member – as they have so much great research available...
An increase in the reliance and trust of search marketing techniques will see online marketers spend more in the area, according to new research. Internet Retailer questioned 245 online marketing professionals and found that most are allocating an increasing amount...
Figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau have revealed that the search engine giant made £872m in the UK, taking it to the top of the online spending chart for 2006, according to the Guardian. This is an increase on 2005,...
Via John Battelle, Microsoft is supposedly offering enterprise companies credits for pushing MSN Live on their desktops. "Employees search the web daily with tools from Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo. OEMs and web sites are already earning credits based on searches...
According to Linus at e-consultancy around 700 marketers have now taken part in the UK Search Engine Marketing survey carried out by E-consultancy in association with us - Neutralize (*\*). The survey is live until Thursday 22 March and covers...
Online marketers hoping to speak to a British audience could do well to target websites with a .uk domain name, according to new research. A new poll by YouGov has discovered that the vast majority of internet users believe sites...
Some major shake ups going on at Yahoo! this week, a number of department heads leaving the company, and a new structure based around two customer-facing groups, 'audiences' and 'advertisers and publishers'. Another additional group will focus on technology. "The...
Last year we built MySERP which got a bit of fan fair because of all the affiliate spam clogging up the results pages however when Google demo'd a 'remove' feature in Nov 2005 we canned our R&D as they appeared...
Google has changed COOP to make it easier to create a custom search engine, so I have created this search engine of search engine marketing websites, that searches the most important websites in our industry. Please feel free to collaborate...
Sorry for being a bit slack on the blogging front, but I have had rather more important things to deal with like my new daughter 'Coralie' born 12th Sept, 8lbs 2oz. Mother and baby are well and happy.
BBC Click Online did a piece about online advertising and thankfully didn't mess it up by leaving out search engine marketing altogether, in fact it actually gets some credit for once. Tim Phillips: "It's the dirty secret of online advertising....
Martin Dinham our business development manager talks about "Search Marketing and the Long-Tail" with Linus Gregoriadis from E-consultancy. E-business Briefings from E-consultancy feature insight and opinions from top e-business consultants, CEOs and senior management on the issues they are facing...
Wow, it's amazing what you can find on Google these days. All that travel information. Actually that's not a real screenshot, it's a mockup based the great services the Google has been providing for ages; but if they did do...
Funny, but scarily on the ball with many peoples privacy fears.
Want to read the latest publication for our industry to hit the shelves in the US? We've sorted out free copies of the Search Marketing Standard for the first 100 of you that can make it along to the Neutralize...
For the last year there has been a lot of discussion about Google 'becoming a portal' but if their low performance on the portal battle front is anything to go by...like they said in their own press day, I'd stick...
I know it came out last week, but please can we get some raw data? I'll even settle for a table that I can scrape. If you haven't seen it yet, check out search term trend data at http://www.google.com/trends Just...
The secrets out. No more little round buttons and centralised logo :-( We have seen screenshots of tests popping up all over the web for the last few months but finally you can see the official preview of the new...
The Brand Strategy Search Engine Marketing Round Table is available online. The other month at the Gay Hussar in SOHO, over some delicious Hungarian food (5 stars the duck was awesome) I was fortunate enough to don my Search Marketing...
According to the IAB UK online ad spending increased £1,366.4 million (£1.4 billion) and now accounts for 7.8% of total advertising market share. Search recorded the biggest increase - 79% or £338.7 million - of all online advertising formats as...
Check out this one, I think it feels a bit cramped. Barrys site has the instructions for how to activate it. http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003559.html
A report from Borrell Associates Inc says local search will grow into a $1Billion market by the end of 2006, which is two years ahead of the 2008 target estimated by Overture (now Yahoo! Search Marketing) the other year. The...
Shout out to PromotionWorld for their spooky web to mail timing. There I was looking at their website for the first time ever last night, as it seemed we had been ranked in the 10 Best SEO Companies in the...
I was chatting with Mike Grehan at the SMA-UK committee meeting about what you could get for SEO for under $1,000. Mike, while searching ebay for google I have found a beauty, check the thumbnail: $9.95 - GOOGLE ADSENSE WEB...
To save you having to pick through what is worth reading from the Search Engine Strategies New York writeup 'cause I did them all last night. I have organised them by team. Pay Per Click + Targeting Search Ads By...
I don't consider myself that out of touch with the youth of today, but I just sat through three interviews with prospective employees, all currently degree students, 2 of which claimed AltaVista was their favourite search engine.
It looks like Yahoo! and MSN Search have realised their main hurdle in the serch engine war is getting users to actually adopt their search engines as primary choice, and they just can't wait to throw money at us in...
We're mostly interested in the UK marketplace so this WebSideStory survey that has been linked from down below in MyWeb 2.0 for most of today should be taken with a pinch of salt. It does however highlight what we know...
Great coverage on BBC Radio 4, "Business update" with Greg Wood this morning. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco, all got a really solid going over. You can get hear the broadcast via the BBC Radio 4 website .
I see Yahoo! are playing with a new design and layout, check it out here . Yahoo! design dudes if you read this what I really, really want is a one click option to permanently turn your homepage into a...
OK. It's no great revelation Paris Hilton, came out top in the Lycos 50 for 2005 but at least it's a good excuse to put a picture of her on the website (although I did have trouble finding one where...
While we absolutely hate trying to guess a websites conversion rate for campaign estimation purposes, it seems our figures are smack in line with a new study from WebSideStory, and the good thing, search comes out with flying colours compared...
Boris Mordkovich's (thanks for the chocolate at Christmas by the way) company MordComm, Inc are launching the first magazine dedicated entirely to the search marketing industry. “Search Marketing Standard” is expected to set a benchmark in the industry by offering...
Definitely one to watch: THE MONEY PROGRAMME The World According to Google BBC Two: Friday 20 January 1900 GMT For foreign viewers check out the summary and the extended interview with John Battelle on the BBC website : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4598090.stm
I had a debate with Nico Brookes at Atlas Search last year whom we work with quite closely, where we were deliberating what might be the percentage of users who used search engines as straight forward navigation. IE. Instead of...
Yahoo! and Google shares prices fell in the US on Wednesday after fears of profit growth slowing, after Yahoo! posted disappointing results. There was also an unwelcome ratings downgrade in Google from a number of investors. Notice how the Yahoo!...
Making a big commitment to search marketing Microsoft has unveiled its adCenter Incubation Lab, or adLab, which will be based in Beijing, China. Believed to employee 50 researchers from MSN and Microsoft, the adLab will work on developing their MSN...
Yesterday the business section of the Sunday Telegraph led with the headline Google shares to reach $2000, after last week Caris & Co, a US stockbroker, made a $2000 forecast meaning Google could become the world's most valuable company, with...
Without getting into the nuts and bolts of serious enterprise SEO the handling of redirects (302 page jacking) and canonicalization (http://www.website or http://website) has been something of an issue for most search engines, so it is good to see that...
At the finals for the CNET Technology Awards last year I happened to be sitting next to an analyst who specialised in search technology for one of the big banks. During our rather interesting discussion over dinner (extremely different views...
It’s the first day back at work so while we trawl through our stack of enquiries I've gotten the team to send me their ‘blue sky’ predictions for 2006. Paid search spend to overtake display advertising spend for the first...
I've long deliberated over the idea of search engines as utility or infrastructure, what with the internet progressively becoming an major part of the economy and search engines the critical thoroughfares of commerce and information. Perhaps search engines are the...
SEMPO have just released some highlights from their latest Annual State of Search Survey. Interestingly it looks like businesses are finally factoring search engines into the cost of their website projects. SEM was a $5.75 billion industry in North America...
Yahoo! is getting in on the 'search as command line' act and has launched an open shortcut service following the lead set by YubNub, meaning you can create your own search commands and run them through their search engine. Shortcuts...
Congratulations to our MD Lucy Cokes who was a finalist for the Demeter category at the prestigious 2005 NatWest everywoman Awards. She beat hundreds of women entrepreneurs for a top three position for the IBM sponsored Demeter Award that honours...
Finally the Google Personalisation features are out of BETA. I guess that means I can finally consign MySERP our own test search personalisation project to a burnt CD on the back of the software shelf. The new Google service provides...
A swicki is new kind of search engine that allows you and your community to control the results and it uses the power of social search to improve them. Providing a cool tagcloud interface and easy website integration visit http://swicki.eurekster.com/...
'Start the Week' BBC Radio 4's best programme presented by Andrew Marr, discusses the cultural agenda in the UK, but also provided me an extremely welcome break from a terrible drive through thick fog on Monday night. Listen to the...
64bit neural networks and all that good stuff. It’s not the most recent news on the planet but finally I found some time to watch the Channel9 interview with Andy Edmonds, lead program manager, and Erik Selberg two of the...
In what seems to be a bit of a trend Google has yet again stopped signups for a major product just a short time after launch. Google Analytics has experienced extremely strong demand, and as a result, we have temporarily...
Google has relaunched Urchin as the free Google Analytics suite and integrated it with the Adwords interface. In our opinion it was always predictable that this would happen from the moment they acquired Urchin, however it's going to have an...
Congratulations to Lucy Cokes our MD who guided Neutralize (*\*) into a top 10 place in the Deloitte and Touche FAST 50. She was also the only female MD in the list of fastest growing companies. The Technology Fast 50...
Microsoft has launched its new live.com and start.com websites seemingly both directly aimed at Googles recently launched personalised homepage google.com/ig. I had a play with both today, and have been toying with the Google features for a while and it...
The Register have just run the funniest article I've seen since their spot the black helicopter gaff (although beging able to look down at a nuclear missile base via Google Earth played more on my Peter Sellers / DR NO...
Google is serving flight booking boxes in the Onebox (this is the area beneath the PPC ads but above the organic results). Check out: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dublin+london (UK users, your browser may default to our local datacentre. When it does go to...
A bit of a brouhaha has started over an Inquirer journalists coverage of Mike Grehans presentation at the Netimperative Directors dinner the other evening. Opening his article with a title like "Google days over and done with" indicates the evening...
Google Base http://base.google.com briefly made a public preview, but has now been changed to 403 – Forbidden rights so it cannot be accessed. Some newspapers are suggesting that Google Base will put Google into direct competition with Ebay, other auction...
Yahoo! has acquired UK geolocation company Whereonearth to help improve its local search and mobile phone services. See my other article on local search and its importance, estimates cite the number of searches containing or pertaining to a location to...
A report released by Cherry Hill Research that I have finally had time to sit down and read concludes that for Microsoft the Search Engine War was over before it even started. There will be no great war between Microsoft...
Frapper a cool new hack of the Google maps service, which allows you to create groups and add your location and some other details on to the map have had a big uptake from the SEM community. To view the...
The growing threat of bird flu across Europe has resulted in a dramatic increase in searches online in the UK, according to Web monitoring firm Hitwise. In the last 4 weeks, searches on the term ‘bird flu’ have increased more...
Mike Taylor has added an option for recruiters to post audio files to his Jobs in Search website. I've never seen this before, but from my own experience of trying to recruit well for our own search teams I reckon...
There are some seriously flustered feathers over the Google ETP when it got announced, knocking the IPA off its perch before it knew what had happened. Media journalists in the UK have leaped on the story with the primary headline...
Barry Dillars IAC the owners of Ask Jeeves want to axe the butler, a bastion of stability and integrity, ex Ask Jeeves employee launches campaign to save him. http://savejeeves.blogspot.com
I attended the e-consultancy online PR round table the other evening with attendees from E-consultancy, immediate future, Market Sentinel, Net-A-Porter, NTL, Prudential, Signet and TradeDoubler. The discussion that took place in United Business Medias offices with stunning views over the...
Just found this article from the BBC announcing the growth of online advertising, in which they completely forget to mention search. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4307856.stm Quote: Recent growth has been fuelled by the increased take-up of broadband internet connections, which are now used...
AD:TECH London 2005 was a great show, if you didn't make it along you missed excellent speakers and a good mixture of UK and International exhibitors. In his own inimitable style Tom, who had to turn down an invite from...
It was an exciting announcement if you're a JAVA fan. Sun and Google have begun a strategic relationship to promote and distribute their trail-blazing technologies. As part of the agreement, Sun will include the Google Toolbar as an option in...
The world seems to be abuzz with news of a collaboration between Google and Sun Microsystems. Speculation is that Google might announce a productivity suite of its own based on Star Office to rival MS Office, else it's all an...
Yahoo! announces book-scanning project of its own in the form of the Open Content Alliance (OCA). http://www.opencontentalliance.org/ Avoiding the copyright issues that have recently plagued Google the Open Content Alliance will focus on works that are already in the public...
In the opening keynote speech at AD:TECH London this week, Nikesh Arora Vice President European Operations at Google announced a new programme for search marketing agencies (SEM's) due to launch in the spring of 2006 which the Search Marketing Asociation...
Finally this week it arrived on the shelves at UK bookstores, 'The Search' by John Battelle. How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. I've been waiting tentatively for months for it to arrive...
There seems to be more and more of a battleground for search engine marketing business is between the "traditional" agencies and the raft of specialist, dedicated Search Engine Marketing (SEM) agencies. With the huge increase in paid search engine spend...
Couldn't believe my ears. We just got a phone call from a recruitment consultant trying to head hunt for a European SEM Manager role for Google... SEM's (search engine marketing agencies) are people who put in the serious ground work...
I read more and more about the Silicon Valley brain drain flowing into Google, but this is an awesome acquisition to their team. Vinton G. Cerf (born June 23, 1943 in New Haven, Connecticut) is commonly referred to as the...
Internet marketing publisher E-consultancy has released a survey-based report called ‘Managing an E-commerce Team’ (http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/managing-ecommerce-team/), it found that SEM/SEO is the number one outsourced e-activity, with paid-search second top. Yet 60% manage search in-house, while almost a third totally ignore...
What an exciting time, the major search engines have all been seriously broadening the way they think about ‘search’, from social, map based to fully integrated business solutions. Has the sleeping dragon at Yahoo! finally woken up? Not only did...
Yahoo! stole the show with their Caberet and cocktail bar at Search Engine Strategies 2005 in London. Their performance definitely managed to get the attention of some of our staff.
Wow. That's a first. Google has actually bowed to industry pressure and withdrawn the Web Accelerator product they released on the 4th of May on the 12th. It seems that the Web Accelerator caused a number of security issues by...
E-consultancy have just released their updated Search Engine Marketing – A Buyer’s Guide (2005) It's got all the usual suspects from this side of the pond. What is interesting, is that the companies I might personally have viewed as serious...
This question does the rounds a couple of times a year, and I've just been asked it yet again. What should a brand owner do with affiliates advertising on search engines using the owners brand names? The bottom line -...
Tips for Getting Listed within Google Local: The fastest way to get your listings to show within Google Local UK would be to submit through Yell.com, you should be able to apply for a free listing? As yet, Google Local...
Just received my invite to nominate in the SMA-UK elections, and its good to see a pretty decent representation from the leading companies in the sector in the UK, on the nominee list. Having been part of the working group...
