Thursday, December 21, 2006

MSN Pulls Sexually Charged Content Image Ads

Seems one of MSN's trusted partners got a little too explicit with one of their ads and the sexual innuendo was just too much. The ads have been pulled.

Oh! what were they..... lol. The ad for an online Pink concert said: See the Real Pink!

The ads set to run as content ads in blogs were pulled by the company, Control Room who were doing the promotions as part of a joint venture with MSN and Ford for the Pink concert.

Hey if you read this blog early enough you can even catch the concert!

Monday, December 18, 2006

Predictions For 2007

Okay everyone loves these. They give us insight into what experts think will occur in the future. So I did a little searching and come up with a few. Worth reading just for the fun of it.

Nick Carr's Predictions

Threadwatch Weighs in

MediaPost

John Cook Ventures a Guess

Praized Get Predictive

Customer World

An Impressive Array of Forecasters

I think I will wait a little longer for my own predictions.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Another SEO Joins The Ranks

Canadian SEO firm Search Engine Optimization Toronto are new to the space but are looking for someone to push their site. Hey here they are.

The site gives some interesting information about SEO and seems like they know what they are doing. I particularly like their blog. It has some detailled information about different aspects of SEO, as well as an honest and open telling of the company's development.

If you are looking for an agency in Canada they could be the people to talk to. The Canadian market is a competitive one and the Canucks have infiltrated the US ranks in our industry with great success. The ones that are still at home must have an interesting time competiting with one another.

The web site's look could use with some revamping but the text shows knowledge of the industry. Spend a little time on your layout guys, otherwise people will be hesitant to get in touch with you.

Friday, December 15, 2006

SEOmoz Cartoons Chicago SES

Without a doubt the creative team at SEOmoz have outdone themselves with their cartoon overview of the recent Chicago SES.

Rand and Rebecca did seem to get everywhere and have enough time left over to attend a few sessions, talk on a bunch, help out doing interviews, attend special lunches and dinners... damn I want to know what vitamins they take.

I feel honored to be part of the story - it was one of the best SES conferences I have done in a couple of years. Miami and Chicago are now my favorites.... who needs a Google Dance.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

The Party Is On At Google In A Couple Of Ways

The non-executive employees over at Google are getting a chance to cash out of their options. Sure it will help retain and getting more employees. The idea is novel, yet reminiscent of Google's entre into the financial world.

The workers get to sell their vested options by auction with the option good for two years. So the auction is actually of the future of Google.

May as well do it while all things Google are still of a premium in the world. Though the move to possibly being Big Brother seems less like a futuristic movie.

Funny as I watch this Craig is doing his monologue and he calls the compuetr the Google box to a solid laugh!

Funny how Google has disallowed gambling sites advertising in PPC yet have just partnered with a gamblers lifestyle video network. The network has been allowed to provide sponsored video content.

No doubt the Players Network is having a party of their own!


MySpaces Tops Yahoo As Most Visited Site on Web

According to comScore Media Metrix data, MySpace has topped Yahoo! as the most popular destination on the web. Wow... impressive job and the boss is an Aussie.

While we are on MySpace - they have tied into helping rid predators from online social networks - there is new legislation being sponsored by McCain and Schumer in the Senate, and Virginia legislators will vote on in the new year.

More Deaths at Panama Build

Just like the original deaths building the canal... this iteration of Panama gave notice of more recent deaths in an email I just received:

We wanted to remind you that when you log into your Sponsored Search
account today, you will notice some important changes to your Manage
Bids page. We are making these changes in order to provide all
advertisers--whether they have upgraded to the new Sponsored Search
or not--with consistent bidding information.

As we previously announced, some of the information on the Manage
Bids page is no longer available. We have removed the "Top 5 Max
Bids," "Position" and "Your Cost" columns from the current account
interface. The Bid tool has also been removed.

These columns have been replaced with three new columns of data
(Please note that while we previously announced the addition of two
new columns, we are actually adding three, to provide you with even
more information to guide your bidding decisions):

Latest Available Bid Range
This column displays the latest available bid range for the positions
at the top of the search results page for each of your keywords. To
see the bid range for each keyword, click the View Bids link.

Average Historical Bid Range
This column uses historical data to show you what the bid range for
the positions at the top of the search results page has been for each
of your keywords over recent days and/or weeks.

Estimated Average Position
This column displays an estimate of the average position your listing
may achieve on the results page, based on the historical bid
range. If you enter a new bid in the Max Bid column and click Update
Bids, the estimated average position will also update.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Google Response To Comments About Self Advertising

There have been some comments lately about Google using their own AdWords for their own products with suggestions that they have the upperhand. Their Inside AdWords blog has responded to this.

ThreadWatch has weighed in, Zoli Erdos has some good points, CentralDeskTop gives the perspective of an effected competitor and there have been a bunch more.

Funny how there was so little comment when this happened right after Google launched Google Analytics (the former Urchin product they bought and renamed) and the other analytics companies were crying foul.

SearchEngineLand Having Coding Problems

Postscript: They had it fixed in a few hours so it must have just been a transitional thing.

Well I now know that the backend of SEL is written in php while their hosting's cgi is having problems with it.

I got a cgi error page when try to click on any link on the homepage.

CGI Startup Error

The CGI script program could not be started. The internal error message is:

file is writable by others: (/var/www/html/se/searchengineland.com/061208-091420.php)

See this article on our support pages explaining how to set file permissions to learn how to fix this problem.

If you are the owner of this site and you are unable to solve the problem based on the error message above, please report this issue to support@tigertech.net.

Come on guys I know it's Sunday but the world is waiting to read your stuff. Guess they will have it fixed by tomorrow when they offically launch.

New Search Engine ChaCha Pros and Cons

I first noticed this engine at SES Chicago. Someone was walking around the exhibit floor handing out T-shirts with an interesting name and font style on them - ChaCha whose logo has a touch of the CocaCola font style.
The engine itself actually uses search guides who intercat with you through a chat box to help you with your search needs. Fine if you don't mind the 30 second or so time it takes to get a response (which is fairly quick for a personal assist).
The engine, itself however, is stacked at the top with Google PPC results.
Along with regular search results, when the PPC ads are gone, there are results that its guides have added. These results can be rated by the user - Bad, Ok or Great are the options.
From the few guide results I saw it seems the engine started its push some time in October.
There is an extensive about page for more information about the site.

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Vanessa Fox Clarifies Google's Webmaster Tools

WebProNews did a great job at the recent SES in Chicago getting a bunch of industry leaders to share information on video.
The one with Google's Vanessa Fox - with guest interviewer Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz - was insightful and well worth taking a look at. While not disclosing the Google algorithm, Ms Fox helped clarify a few issues I had with Google methodology.

Supbowl MVP Tom Brady Suing Yahoo!

Okay the Smoking Gun site has the story. New England Patriots QB Tom Brady is suing Yahoo!
Apparently Tom does not have enough money. Yahoo! as is mentioned in the Smoking Gun article is the largest fantasy football platform and have used Brady's pic in some of their advertising - guess Brady did not get a check.
But Yahoo! had an agreement with the NFLPA which I thought has the ability to use any of its players - guess both Yahoo and the NFLPA will soon find out.

Most Incriminating Shots of Yours Truely

Okay I am slowly going through the numerous pics taken of me this week at Chicago SES. No one seems to have posted any of the panel I was on - though it has gotten some good comments on various blogs that I will try and list later.
So far the persistent HatBait seems to be winning - Search MarketingGuru's Li worked hard. She has two questionable shots of me.
This one is the winner. Or maybe this one.

Burning Down The House: Microsoft DataCenter Fire

Barry Schwartz over at SEORoundTable has the information on a recent fire that caused damages to one of the Microsoft data centers that had access to the AdCenter interface offline for quite some time.
Guess rerouting back ups were not in place. When the blackout in the east coast occurred in August 2003 we were able to reroute our customers to one of our back ups and were down maybe 90 minutes and we had no phones and communication to our other offices in other parts of the world took us a little reaction time. Guess Microsoft had not thought God may occasionally intervene!

PostScript: AdCenter reps have denied there was any fire and a search of news engines do not show any stories apart from the ones started at WebMasterWorld and Digg. I will see what can be found out on Monday.

Sunday, December 3, 2006

Look Who's Blogging Chicago SES Sessions

Okay we all know about the changes at Search Engine Watch. Danny has started his new entreprise at Search Engine Land. The regular bloggers are moving with him and since most have been working with him over the last few years this is not surprising. But as has been mentioned in many places, SEW will continue and Elisabeth has reached out to Chris Boggs and myself to help out maintaining the well received overviews of the sessions. No doubt Barry and crew will have them over at Search Engine Roundtable, but SEW wants to continue the tradition inhouse.
Hopefully I can live up to the professional job that has been done in the past. Barry you set a high bar - which also means I will have to step back from the open bars a little early each night and be rested and functional early each morning... the spared brain cells are thanking you Elisabeth.

Friday, December 1, 2006