Get Ready For YouTube Ads

Now Google believes it finally has found the formula to cash in on YouTube’s potential as a magnet for online video advertising and keep its audience loyal at the same time.

The company said late Tuesday that after months of testing various video advertising models, it was ready to introduce a new type of video ad

read more | digg story

Anatomy of a Successful Viral Video

there was a video post (Trust Me Im A Professional) that hit the front page of Digg.com today, where in a video supposedly shot in 1984 a motivation speaker talks a woman into doing a trust fall where she smacks her head on the floor. — It is called a viral video. Made specifically to fool you into talking about it.

read more | digg story

Google Maps can now be integrated using HTML

searchenginewatch.com

Google announced today that they have simplified the method for integrating Google Maps on to your web site. The new method allows Google Maps to be integrated using simple HTML. As a result, integrating Google Maps no longer requires a knowledge of Java Script, and you no longer need an API key to do it.

This should enable smaller site owners without programming expertise to leverage Google Maps. For example, a business could integrate dricing directions onto their site. The process now consists of 3 steps:

1. Pull up the Google Map you want
2. Click on the “Link to this page” link
3. Copy and paste the resulting HTML into their site

I don’t think that this is an announcement that will impact users of Google Maps that have already mastered the Java Script and Google API Key challenges, but it should enable a lot of new sites with less programming expertise to take advantage of Google Maps.

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Five Ways to Get Your Boss to Stop Talking About Alexa

searchenginelowdown.com

Every time I hear some new stat about Alexa, it makes me want to stab myself in the eye. The only thing worse is to hear a client confidently quote their statistics.

IMO, if enough of us stop acknowledging Alexa, maybe it will go away.

First of all, I’m telling Noah about the flood when I say that the data is skewed beyond recognition. If one portion of the target market is using Alexa’s toolbar, then their data completely alienates the other 99.9999999999% of the population who realize that the toolbar has little to no value to the user as compared to other browser companion applications. Okay, maybe now I’M exaggerating numbers a bit, but no credible statistician would risk his/her reputation on Alexa figures. So why does Alexa continue to get any traction?

Simple. Because every once in a while, a CEO, CMO or VP of Marketing learns about Alexa and turns to their Online Marketing Manager to ask, “Why is [insert competitor Web site here] above us in Alexa’s rank?”
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Gmail storage free upgrade phishing email, looks real. Don’t fall for it!

If you received an email supposedly sent from Google offering free storage upgrades for your Gmail account, do not enter your Google Account credentials! The embedded link gmailupgrades.com redirects to a website that looks exactly like Gmail. If you entered your account info, change your password immediately.

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Google Rankings Drive Sales - SEO Expectations

By: Barry Welford

searchnewz.com

Google Rankings Drive Sales. Thats what a caller told me this morning. Lets call him Chuck, from Massachusetts, to preserve his anonymity.

A year ago his website was at #1 in Google for an important keyword in a somewhat competitive consumer market and now its dropped to #3. His sales during the same period had seen a 20% decline. He asked me whether I could help to correct this situation.

By coincidence, Sandra Niehaus has just published a related post entitled, Why Isnt EVERYONE #1 on Google? She wrote it for all those SEO professionals who have been asked whether they can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Theres some excellent advice there. It all relates to Setting Client Expectations for SEO and what it can achieve. Part of that included what might be called Reasonable Expectations

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Dodging Google sheriff

theage.com.au

IT MAY now be the most coveted real estate on the web - the top ranking in Google for a competitive search phrase. But even the world’s richest marketers cannot lease this inventory.

Google’s goal is to deliver the most relevant information for any search query, and if it happens to be some teenager’s blog rather than a corporate website, that is how the cyber cookie crumbles.

Relevance is not for sale.

But early on, a small group of webmasters and marketers discovered that search relevance could be altered by exerting control over the hundreds of variables that search engines use to rank webpages.

During the past decade, this effort to improve a site’s ranking has gained a name. They call it search engine optimisation (SEO) and, according to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), it was an industry worth $US9.4 billion ($A11.7 billion) in 2006.

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Defending Your Site Against a Google Proxy Hack

From SeoBook.com

Dan Thies published a post about how people have been hacking Google’s search results using proxies to get the original sites nuked as duplicate content. He also explained how to defend sites against the problem using free PHP scripts developed by Jaimie Sirovich.

Read More at seo book

If Everyone Uses Incorrect Data, Is It Still Wrong?

Seth Godin points us to Quantcast, IMO a combination of HitWise and Alexa. It’s a very intriguing interface with some easy-to-understand graphs and charts.

Now, I’ve never made any secret of my dislike for Alexa. My issue is related to the integrity of their data. And unfortunately, I have a similar concern with Quantcast. Specifically, they collect their data through some of their partners, as well as the sites themselves. So, where Alexa relies solely on the users to drive traffic numbers (causing an obvious skew); Quantcast requests site data in order to refine their results. Far from perfect, but at least they admit it. So, there’s at least an upside.

This got be thinking about ratings in general. Forget the Internet for a minute. TV, radio, newspaper, outdoor advertising, etc. all rely on rate cards derived from measurements that are inherently flawed.

• TV rankings are often based on sweeps week, where networks change times of shows and put their best foot forward. Certainly not a representation of every week.
• Arbitron relies on a user-generated written diary to track shows. I can’t imagine how this is truly accurate.
• Newspapers rely on circulation and readership, which certainly doesn’t measure whether or not the reader looks at your half page ad in the middle of the finance section.
• Billboards measure an average of daily estimated circulation. Is that with or without the omnipresent chance of a traffic snarl?

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The Saboteurs Of Search

forbes.com

If your online business, like thousands of others on the Web, relies on Google searches for traffic, then Brendon Scott is a good person to have on your side.

For a price, he can boost a site to the top of Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) search results for lucrative search terms, attracting crowds of customers. And better to have Scott working for you than for your competitors. Because occasionally, Scott says, he takes a less friendly approach: reducing a competing site’s visibility to searchers–or making it seem to disappear from search results altogether.

Scott offers what he and some other search marketers call “negative search engine optimization” or “negative SEO,” a harmless-sounding term that amounts to sabotaging a Web site’s ranking in search engine results. Sometimes negative SEO is performed for reputation management, tweaking online content so that it floats to the top of Google or Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) results, thereby pushing a critic’s negative comments to a lower ranking. But in rare cases, Scott says, negative SEO involves more nefarious means, convincing Google or Yahoo!’s search algorithms to bury a competitor’s site deep within search results, where its traffic practically evaporates.

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