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CONTACT US Search Engine
Optimization Group |
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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IN THE MAY ISSUE...
GOOGLE SEARCHES FOR QUALITY NOT QUANTITY Barry Fox, New Scientist magazine Google has plans that will
dramatically improve the results of internet news searches, by ranking them
according to quality rather than simply by their date and relevance to search
terms. The ambitious system is revealed by patents
filed in the At the moment the company's search engine
throws up thousands of "hits" in response to simple entries such as
" This means that articles carrying more
authority, say from CNN or the BBC, can be ousted from the first page of
results, simply because they are not as recent or as relevant to the keyword
entered in the search line. Now Google, whose
name has become synonymous with internet searching, plans to build a database
that will compare the track record and credibility of all news sources around
the world, and adjust the ranking of any search results accordingly. The database will be built by continually
monitoring the number of stories from all news sources, along with average
story length, number with bylines, and number of the bureau cited, along with
how long they have been in business. Google's
database will also keep track of the number of staff a news source employs,
the volume of internet traffic to its website and the number of countries
accessing the site. Google will take all these
parameters, weight them according to formulae it is constructing, and distil
them down to create a single value. This number will then be used to rank the
results of any news search. The patent
also reveals that the same system could be roped in to rank other search
results, not simply news. So sales and services could in the future be listed
on the basis of price and the reputation of the company involved. OVERTURE BECOMES YAHOO! SEARCH MARKETING SOLUTIONS Yahoo! Official Press Release Overture Services, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo Inc.
announced that it will be re-branded Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions and
will bring together its sponsored search offerings and Yahoo!'s
listings submit products under the new banner. Through Yahoo! Search
Marketing Solutions, advertisers of all sizes will enjoy convenient access to
the industry's most comprehensive suite of search marketing and related
products and services. Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions' suite of offerings will include
the following products:
The group will also continue to enhance and expand Yahoo's
network of sponsored search distribution sites. In conjunction with Overture's re-branding, Yahoo! will launch a
new “Our mission is to be essential to marketers of all types
around the world,” said Ted Meisel, Senior
Vice President, Yahoo! Inc. “Unifying all of our search marketing and
related products under one banner and one common approach reflects our
commitment to integrate and simplify online advertising, allowing businesses
of all sizes to take advantage of the Yahoo! search marketing solutions that
best fit their marketing goals.” Overture will formally change its brand in the MSN SHOWS OFF NEW PPC AD PLATFORM Kevin Newcomb, ClickZ News Following
several days of media hype predicting MSN's imminent launch its own
pay-per-click ad network, Microsoft today will reveal more modest plans. The
company will demonstrate a prototype of a new paid search advertising
platform at an event for ad clients in At
the sixth annual MSN Strategic Account Summit, Microsoft plans to show off to
500 of its top customers the new MSN adCenter, a
platform that will eventually be used for ads throughout its network. The
first component of adCenter is the paid search
piece, which will be piloted within the next six months in "We're
rolling out the pilots to demonstrate and learn what value software can add
to the search platform," said Eric Hadley, senior director of
advertising and marketing for MSN. "Right now, everybody thinks search
is just about clicks, but it's about more than that. It's about connection
with the customer." The
platform promises in-depth analytics and audience intelligence, including
geographic location, gender, age group, lifestyle segment and time of day.
Advertisers will be able to access this information before placing their ad,
so they will know what to expect before launching their campaign. "This
will really help drive ROI and the effective results of a search campaign
beyond just knowing if
somebody clicked on it, but to know if someone is likely to click on it. We think that's a huge step forward in
this category," Hadley said. While
the full-scale deployment of the platform is not likely to happen before the
end of the year, MSN is getting some early praise for providing advertisers
with more control over their campaigns. "Microsoft
has laid out a roadmap for a product that looks to be a leap forward,"
said Fredrick Marckini, CEO of iProspect.
"By raising the bar, we're likely to see Google
and Yahoo! raising the bar to keep up." Providing
advertisers with more variables for targeting will potentially make campaigns
more efficient, Marckini said. For MSN, an
unintended side effect of increasing efficiency may be to reduce revenue --
with fewer wasted clicks; advertisers pay less for the same number of
qualified clicks. "Having
inefficiency in search is a moneymaker," Marckini
explained. "But improving efficiency by doing what's technologically
possible, despite it being slightly less profitable in the very short term,
is real long-term thinking because great results will ultimately attract more
advertiser dollars." "Advertisers
are looking for control, and one thing is clear, Microsoft is looking to
provide advertisers with more control," added Kevin Lee, executive
chairman of Did-it.com. MSN's
agreement with Yahoo! to provide ads alongside its search results is set to
expire in June 2006. MSN renewed the deal in November, extending the
three-year-old agreement, which previously ran through June 2005. A
key element of the new deal allows Microsoft to begin selling and displaying
its own ads on search results pages, a move that allows it to begin ramping
up its ad sales program while still maintaining service levels and garnering
revenue from Yahoo!-supplied ads on its site. Microsoft already offers a
fixed-price featured ad unit that appears above the search results. YAHOO! SEARCH MARKETING TO TEST GRAPHICAL ADS Pamela Parker, ClickZ News Yahoo!
Search Marketing is planning tests of graphical banner ads to be displayed on
its pay-per-click contextual ad network, a spokesperson said. Implementation
of such a feature would allow advertisers to incorporate more visual,
brand-oriented imagery into their contextual ads, and perhaps let them craft
messages designed to reach people earlier in the purchase cycle. "A
lot of details haven't been determined, but we are testing," said Gaude Paez, a spokesperson for
Yahoo! Search Marketing, formerly known as Overture Services. The
portal player follows Google's lead in making the
move. Google has long offered static .GIF ads and
recently announced plans to roll out animated .GIFs
to CPM-based advertisers. In
Yahoo!'s case, the testing process will begin in
the next several weeks and will take place across the Yahoo! network.
Variables being considered include placement, banner size, and creative
constraints. The
company has yet to determine which advertisers' creatives
should be displayed in the banner space -- whether only the highest bidders
should be involved or whether others should be given a chance. Yahoo! will
also consider whether to take advertisers' existing text copy and create
graphical ads on their behalf, or whether advertisers should submit their own
creative. Currently,
the company is considering a standard banner-sized placement that would begin
as a graphical ad and then morph into a text creative. That change could be a
fade or a flip, for example. The
tests come as Yahoo! is expected to broaden its contextual ad network to
include smaller publishers, or launch a new network to encompass those sites.
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