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If you uploaded pictures of your family on Christmas Day to Facebook - or updated your status to dish on all your new goodies - you weren't alone.

For the first time ever, Facebook ousted Google for most visited site in a day. Or at least, so tweeted Hitwise.

It makes sense. No longer were people frantically searching for presents. The big day arrived and it was time to be social, not searching.

via Mashable

Indeed is a job search aggregator. If you conduct a job search on Indeed, it will pull opportunities posted to a variety of job boards including Career Builder, Dice, etc. as well as corporate sites.

Today, they've revealed the fastest growing job opportunities for 2009.

1. Twitter
2. Cloud Computing
3. iPhone
4. Facebook
5. Corporate Social Responsibility
6. Blogger
7. Pediatrician
8. Hospitalist
9. Social Media
10. Speech Language Pathologist (SLP)

With high unemployment rates in the past year, many have chosen to look at new careers. This list may help you find a new path if you're struggling to find work.

Google thought it had a right to own Groovle.com, so it took it's case to the National Arbitration Forum (NAF). (The NAF is an international arbitration service accredited by ICANN.)

But the NAF didn't agree with Google that Groovle could be confused for the search giant. Groovle does use Google's custom search. It also provides a service where you can skin your Google homepage with a photograph (similar to Bing without the hotspots).

Still, Groovle just didn't sound or act enough like Google to warrant the domain being handled over to the folks at Mountain View.

StumbleUpon has had quite a year. They bought themselves back from eBay and launched a URL shortening service, among other things. Now, they're revealing the most stumbled sites for their historic year that was 2009.

Here they are, broken down by category:

Arts

Jim Jarmusch Quote - 278K Stumbles
Aled Lewis Illustrations - 253K Stumbles
Pepsi Logo Response - 229K Stumbles

Bizarre/Oddities

99 Things You Should Have Seen On The Internet - 471K Stumbles
Scary Good Facepaint - 374K Stumbles
Slightly Warped Curiosities: Gibraltar Airport - 352K Stumbles

Food/Cooking

26 Cakes Perfect for Geeks - 290K Stumbles
Pasta Pie Recipe - 231K Stumbles
Hasselback Potatoes Recipe - 231K Stumbles

Environment

Air Traffic in 24 Hours - 130K Stumbles
Free Heat from Old Window and Soda Cans - 113K Stumbles
Think About Your Morning Latte - 112K Stumbles

Humor

Cheat Sheet for Travelling Back in Time - 472K Stumbles
Life Summarized in 4 Bottles - 439K Stumbles
As Luck Would Have It... - 369K Stumbles

Music

8 Tracks Mix: Songs that Make You Feel Better - 368K Stumbles
Gizmodo: Proof That Birds are Secret Composers - 313K Stumbles
Fun With Rap Music - 298K Stumbles

Photography

Peter Funch Street Photography - 410K Stumbles
Stunning Wildlife Camouflage - 356K Stumbles
14 Rare Color Photos From the FSA-OWI - 341K Stumbles

Science

Robot/People Art by Kacie Kinzer - 230K Stumbles
Photographs of and from the Hubble Space Telescope - 219K Stumbles
Default Password for Roadside Led Signs - 184K Stumbles

Travel

12 Most Amazing Pools in the World - 196K Stumbles
9 best Train Journeys in the World - 172K Stumbles
Anderson Cooper's Blog: 28 things I wish I'd known before I started traveling - 165K Stumbles

Video Games

Ball Droppings - 292K Stumbles
Amazing Mario Level - 214K Stumbles
Canabalt - 192K Stumbles

The 2009 most searched lists just keep coming, this time from voice mobile search provider, Vlingo:

1. YouTube
2. Facebook
3. MySpace
4. Weather
5. Movie Times
6. Twitter
7. Yellow Pages
8. MapQuest
9. craigslist
10. White Pages

So where are the Michael Jackson searches? Vlingo president and CEO Dave Grannan explains:

Unlike traditional Web searches that focus on specific search terms such as 'Michael Jackson' or 'Twilight,' our data shows that on mobile phones, people tend to search for specific destinations sites and resources. Mobile Web search is very popular on Vlingo, accounting for over 20% of all usage. Based on our users' top searches, we are seeing mobile extending far beyond SMS and voice communications to encompass multimedia and social networking.

Six months ago, Google launched City Tours into Labs. It's basically a virtual tour guide, offering suggestions for walking tours of various cities or whatever search term you've entered. It's not perfect. There's no way I'd recommend people walk down Google-recommended McDowell street in downtown Raleigh when they could - and should - take Fayetteville Street. But hey, it's still in Labs.

Now, City Tours is getting a few updates:

Show complete walking directions. Previously, Google estimated the time it takes to get from one destination to the next. Now, the directions offer complete routing information, taking into account such things as bridges, bodies of water, etc.

Import a My Map as a tour - Create a map of the things you want to see. Then import it into City Tours, which will attempt to schedule a visit to every place on your map.

User interface improvements These were designed to make City Tours behave more like Google Maps.

LinkedIn updated their iPhone app this week. Here's a visual tour of what to expect.

The homepage features icons that enable users to easily navigate the app:

One of the coolest things you can do is find people near you on LinkedIn. Just make sure Bluetooth is enabled on your phone. When you're out networking, this is an easy way to automatically add new people to your network.

The app also lets you view items you're more familiar with on LinkedIn.com, such as updates from your network:

Find your contacts on the go...

Make sure your own profile is intact (click on your name at the bottom of the app)...

Use the invite button in the top right corner to invite contacts to LinkedIn directly from the app:

And choose a color theme....

The Nexus One aka Gphone will only be sold by Google when it is offered to the public next month, according to T Mobile. The two companies will share support for the phone and T Mobile will be the carrier for the phone.

This should provide an interesting test of Google's ability to sell a physical product and manage support for it. Given the limited support for their other products, this could be the challenge of the year for Google.

Consumer Watchdog and the Center For Digital Democracy contacted the FTC to halt Google from buying AdMob on anti-trust and privacy grounds, according to Tech Crunch.

Tech Crunch includes a letter written to the FTC co-signed by representatives from Consumer Watchdog and the CDD. The highlights of the letter include:

The proposed deal would substantially lessen competition in the increasingly important mobile advertising market.

In addition to the anti-trust issues, the spectre of the combined Google/AdMob raises substantial privacy issues.

Google amasses a goldmine of data by tracking consumers' behavior as they use it search engine and other online services. Combining this information with information collected by AdMob would would give Google a massive amount of consumer data to exploit for their benefit.

How this will impact the approval of the acquisition will make interesting reading in the new year.

Used car retailer CarMax has released the most searched for vehicles on their website for 2009. Honda Accord tops the list for the fourth year in a row, while Jeep Wrangler and Chevy Silverado were new to the list.

"This year's list shows the variety of makes and models our customers are considering when shopping online for a quality used car. Every car in our inventory can be found on carmax.com and it will show the same no-haggle price you'll see at your local CarMax store," said Ann Yauger, director of carmax.com.

1. Honda Accord
2. Ford F-150
3. Chevrolet Tahoe
4. Ford Mustang
5. Toyota Camry
6. Honda Civic
7. Jeep Wrangler
8. Toyota Tacoma
9. Nissan Altima
10. Chevrolet Silverado 1500

CarMax averaged 5.5 million unique visitors per month in 2009, so the list is a good look at the pulse of American car buying - especially in a rocky economy.

Not only does CarMax track these trends, but they're also good at incorporating what they've learned through their on-site search to create a better experience.

"Carmax.com continues to evolve and expand search capabilities based on consumer feedback," concluded Yauger.

One example is when CarMax introduced a Miles Per Gallon search feature in August 2008. Gas prices had been especially high that summer and providing that feature met consumer demand.

On-site search doesn't just provide a better experience, it gives valuable insight to what consumers are looking for.

eBay is seeing a big payoff for getting into the mobile game early. Their iPhone app has been downloaded by 6 million users and they see 175,000 visits a day via mobile apps.

This year, half a billion dollars of transactions were made on eBay via mobile. And it's not just "safe" inexpensive items as people are trying out the apps. Mobile eBay purchases included designer handbags and a $75,000 1966 Chevrolet Corvette.

"Mobile is changing the way people shop this holiday season," said Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay marketplaces. "We see consumers taking advantage of that freedom to find great holiday gifts and deals without sitting at their computer or being stuck at the mall."

This holiday, 1.5 million items were bought on eBay via mobile. That's an item every 2 seconds. Users from 165 countries visited eBay through an app or the mobile web.

"eBay buyers and sellers have rapidly embraced mobile commerce this year, and this holiday season has been a mobile commerce tipping point. Shopping will never be the same again," concluded Norrington.

Google has launched a beta search platform for those certified by the company as professionals who can help manage Adwords campaigns. People can look up by location and amount they want to spend on a weekly basis. and find people who have passed the Google Adwords Professional certification.

Once you go through the initial search you can add other services you may need such as online display advertising, search engine optimization, traditional advertising (print, TV), web design, website analytics, affiliate programs, new media (mobile & social networks), creative and design services, call recording and tracking, auto-optimization tools and marketing consultancy.

I was one of the first 100 who got certified when it was first launched but have not done the recurring tests that Google requires to keep their seal of approval on my site. But with this listing service I guess I will have to.

This directory of professionals may have many individuals and agencies scurrying to get certified and listed and paying the $50 every 18 months. While it is commendable that Google has this program - the fact that it costs money to get listed and requires taking a Google generated test only to pass seems a bit unfair. One wonders what the limitations will be for people taking tests under various names to get listed in major cities. Does this unfairly help agencies over small shops or individuals who can get listed in multiple cities?

Obviously people who manage large spends will get an advantage, but even small shops do get their money back in bonuses that can be used with new clients that are offered to those managed a MCC account.

The Learning Center is thorough and well worth the time of anyone who works with Adwords - even the best of us can learn some things.

Last week, while you were doing your last minute shopping, Google and Bing were going head to head - over their Webmaster FAQs.

First, Bing took to their Webmaster blog to introduce the new, official Webmaster Center FAQ. They already had FAQ content in the help section and in the forums. The new FAQ compiles that content plus additional questions into a downloadable PDF document.

Three days later, Google said "Oh yeah? Me too" with a post about the FAQ on Webmaster Central. It has been compiled and maintained by high-participating users in the forums, affectionately referred to as "Bionic Posters."

The good news for webmasters is that both Google and Bing are working to provide the best information for developing sites and getting them indexed.

Dear friends and colleagues, we'd like to take this opportunity on behalf of everyone at Incisive Media's New York office to wish you the very best during the holidays. And we hope 2010 is going to be productive, profitable and peaceful for you.

The team here is responsible for the day-to-day running of Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and the SES international series of conferences. And we know that everyone will be happy to join us in saying a big thank you to our many thousands of subscribers and conference attendees for your fabulous support during 2009.

And a big thank you also goes out to the leading experts who blog, write and speak for us at our conferences. Far too many to mention by name, but be sure we appreciate the fantastic gift of online marketing knowledge you share with everyone.

As we roll into the next decade there are many exciting changes and new innovations taking place for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and SES. So I should also take the opportunity to thank our first class and tireless team in New York (and external team members) for the huge amount of work going on in the background to make 2010 the milestone year it's bound to be.

Once again, we wish you the very best and hope you have a wonderful time this holiday season.

Cheers!

Matt McGowan & Mike Grehan on behalf of the New York team.

Facebook has identified and compiled a list of the top status trends on its social network for 2009. They're calling it "Facebook Memology" with the word memology referring to the study of memes.

The list includes 15 trends and the methodology is, um, interesting. For example, the first trend is Facebook Applications - but that includes updates about popular Facebook games such as Farmville, where users often are prompted to post updates about leveling up or other "achievements."

Other topics were lumped together such as "sports" and "movies," but Lady Gaga gets her own category instead of being lumped into "music," which doesn't appear. No Taylor Swift? No Kanye West? No Miley Cyrus or Jo Bros? (I'm not endorsing those trends. Except for the Jo Bros. They're so dreamy.)

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson doesn't get his own category, though Celebrity Deaths is a trend.

Lastly, the 15th trend is "I" - is that really a trend?

I'm not a statistician and only a spectator of memology mind you, but after seeing the lists from search engines, this one seems a bit, how should I put this... vanilla.

A few weeks ago, Bing launched a photo contest with the theme "Home Sweet Home." After selecting finalists, the public has voted and the winner is Seattle Skyline by Justin Kraemer.

It's just flat-out gorgeous-amazing-wowsers:

Justin's image will appear on the Bing homepage on January 6, 2010. The Bing team will add some hotspots featuring trivia to go along with the photo.

The new beta feature lets you search captions for thousands of videos across Hulu. Caption Search can be found in Hulu Labs.

When on the Hulu Labs page, scroll down to find the actual projects in Labs.

Along with caption search, Hulu is releasing "heat maps." This graphs user interest along a timeline of a given video that has caption search.

You can find the heat map under the "Captions" tab, located under the video you're watching. Hover over a bar on the heat map to see where it corresponds in the video.

There's no doubt this is an attempt to compete with YouTube, which recently launched Automatic Captions which it hopes will help with search. But Hulu comes out ahead of YouTube on day one, likely because of the ease of getting transcriptions of shows featured on the site.

YouTube also offers a feature similar to heat maps in its analytics feature known as YouTube Insight.

It's nice to see this kind of innovation from a competitor. While YouTube dominates online video, Hulu has made strides in the niche since launch in 2007. Not only does that have implications for web user behavior, but it's also been an eye opener for the television industry as well.

via Technologizer

Image via CrunchBase

But this is also the time to look ahead at the upcoming Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo series in 2010.

It kicks off with SES London, which runs from Feb. 16-19, 2010. The keynote speakers are Avinash Kaushik, Bryan Eisenberg, and Jim Sterne.

Then, there's SES San Diego, which will be held Feb. 25, 2010, in collaboration with the Online Marketing Summit.

Next, there's SES New York, which will be held March 22-26, 2010. The keynote speakers include David Meerman Scott and Avinash Kaushik.

There's a lot more -- but check out the interview below with Matt McGowan, Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media's Interactive Marketing Group, which includes Search Engine Watch, ClickZ as well as Search Engine Strategies.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) 2010 calendar of events with Matthew McGowan, Incisive Media

The app is free and available in the Android Market. It provides access to 15 million local business listings.

Here's what you can do with it:

• Submit reviews on the go
• Share merchant details, reviews and tips via text, e-mail or Twitter
• Search and sort your city via auto-identification of your location using GPS
• Search by keyword, category, distance, cost and Citysearch rating
• Access leading Citysearch content such as user and editorial reviews, editor's picks and featured merchants
• Save time and money with the Tip Calculator and Split the Bill features
• Bookmark "favorites" or "wish-lists" of Citysearch merchants for easy re-discovery
• View recently-viewed merchants and recent searches

Developing applications for Twitter, Facebook, and the iPhone are all the rage right now. These networks and apps have been the driving force behind the real-time web trend.

Of course, what's a good web innovation without a little monetization? Real-time search engine OneRiot is attempting to capitalize on social trends by launching RiotWise Trending Ads, which is based on the RiotWise ad network launched this past September.

"RiotWise is grounded on the premise that users of realtime web apps are trying to find out what's going on right now, said Tobias Peggs, General Manger, OneRiot. "Our ads directly match that intent. RiotWise Trending Ads offers another exciting option for developers to monetize their social web applications."

These ads can be accessed by web developers who can then monetize their apps with the ads. Since the ads will be relevant to the topics users will be discussing, they may be more likely to reach notoriously ad-stubborn social web users. Revenue from the ads will be split between OneRiot and developers.

Hitting the ground running with RiotWise Trending Ads is Digsby, a popular instant messaging, email, and social network application.

"We jumped at the opportunity to implement RiotWise Trending Ads in Digsby," said Steve Shapiro, President, Digsby. "The ads are socially relevant, and add real value to our users' overall experience."

If successful, OneRiot's real-times ads could really be a game changer for so many niches. The industry has really needed solid innovation, and this might just be it.

Visiting MapQuest.com will now mean automatic location detection for Android users with GPS-enabled devices. As long as GPS hasn't been disabled for m.mapquest.com, users will be prompted to use "Current Location" instead of needing to manually type in an address.

The update is for devices using Android 1.1 or higher. There is support for Google Gears, but it will still work on Android 2.0 or higher, which does not use Google Gears.

Lately, data has been showing that Android has been growing at a nice pace. It's smart for entities such as MapQuest to innovate for the increasingly popular mobile OS.

The Google Retail blog has been good at passing along juicy little nuggets of data regarding the holidays. The latest does not disappoint. And it explains why you can't find a parking space at the mall.

As of this past Sunday, the average shopper had 38% of their shopping left to complete. Perhaps, the East Coast snowstorm didn't help. Then again, you could have at least researched gift ideas while curled up on your couch and roasting chestnuts on an open fire.

But noOOooo. 14% of you haven't even started researching. 17% haven't even bought a single gift.

I have a feeling some last minute e-gift certificates will be purchased Thursday night, say, around midnight.

After rejecting Google Voice over the summer, Apple has approved an app for the competition. Ribbit's new iPhone app is now available for download in the App Store on iTunes. The app is free, but you'll need a Ribbit account to use the app.

Unlike Google Voice, Ribbit's service is not free. It will cost you $30 a month. Otherwise, the service offered is the same: call management and voice mail which can be transcribed and searched.

Ribbit's iPhone app directs users to the device's native phone and SMS applications. This is perhaps why it was approved while Google's was not. Apple contends that their reasoning for rejecting the Google Voice app was that it tried to replace functionality provided by native apps.

Hulu will apparently be expanding their online video search from TV and movies to music-related content with a new partnership with Warner Music.

The first Warner artist to be featured is Muse. You can visit their Hulu page at http://www.hulu.com/muse. In the coming weeks, pages will be launched for Jason Mraz and personal fav Paramore.

You may remember that Warner pulled its vids from YouTube after the two were unable to renegotiate their contract. Finally, this past September, they reached an agreement and the music videos were put back up.

The agreement with Hulu may be a reaction to Vevo, a site featuring Universal music videos in a partnership with YouTube.

If you want to avoid the malls, find a good deal or are snowed in, then doing a little holiday shopping online is the way to go. And, boy, did you go there last weekend.

comScore showed a 13% increase for the last weekend before Rudolph guides the jolly man's sleigh. Coremetrics showed a 24% jump for Friday and Saturday and a 20% jump for Sunday.

Still doesn't explain why you still left 38% shopping to complete this week....

I am not asking about high pitched or loud voices, but about the sound of a demo video voiceover.

People often use professional talent to record the script for a demo video. These voiceovers can add credibility and using the right voice can even increase attention and engagement with the demo. However, video optimization firm EyeView Digital asked and answered another question for their client Ginger Software.

Does the accent of the voiceover matter? Would a British accent or American accent improve or hinder the conversion rate?

Ginger Software markets a product aimed at improving your written English. It identifies spelling and grammar errors and is particularly useful for students, people with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, and business people for whom English is a second language.

They A/B tested the voiced over demo video globally, one using an American accent and one using a British accent. The goal was to get more people to download the software.

Overwhelmingly, the British accent improved conversions everywhere (globally around 4% increase) except in the UK and India where an American accent improved conversions.

Does this mean you should swap out the voiceovers on your website for a British accent? That depends, but it sure does mean you should test it.

Image via Wikipedia

At SES Chicago 2009, Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed Brian Boland, Manager, Performance Solutions, Facebook, about the advent of social media. Boland reviewed the social media checklist and addresses the important questions that every business must consider when using social media as a platform.

Boland defined social media as the identity that's online enabling people to share, create and drive connections across media. Facebook users can build pages to build a dialogue and conversation with their audience and develop their customer-base. Users can also take advantage of Facebook ads as a way of promoting their products and drive people to their FB page.

Boland also discussed the challenge companies find when using social media and how it effects their branding. If a business chooses to stay out of the social media conversation, then it can't influence and/or shape the conversation and develop meaningful connections with your customers.

What is social media? Brian Boland, Facebook, elaborates at SES Chicago 2009

Last week, Google launched its own URL shortening service, Facebook began testing its own and bit.ly began offering private label URL shortening services to large publishers.

Now, Google-owned YouTube is getting in the URL shortening game. When you see links to YouTu.be - you'll know they're YouTube videos - and only YouTube videos.

You can access YouTube's new URL shortening service via AutoShare or you can do it manually. Here's how:

1. Take your URL, for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4dgb8lxkRs
2. and replace the "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v"
3. with "http://youtu.be/"
4. You'll have http://youtu.be/r4dgb8lxkRs

Through MapQuest's relationship with CitySearch, over 700,000 new business listings have been added to the online mapping service. The listings include popular categories such as restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels, shopping, and spas.

In addition to the listings, MapQuest has added greater editorial content for their business listings. Such content includes ratings and reviews, coupons, business hours, and restaurant menus.

MapQuest and CitySearch entered into their partnership in August of 2008.

Recent data released by Performics may shed light on some of the trends we're seeing in online shopping this holiday season. Their study was conducted in mid-November and asked questions about the previous 30 and upcoming 60 days.

When asked where they've been finding the best deals recently, 45% of participants chose online.

Where are they having luck finding good deals online? Search came in second at 40%, just after retail websites at 43%. Of course, shoppers may have arrived at retail websites via search. So, theoretically, that search number could actually be much higher.

What happens when shoppers find the deals? What makes them ultimately place an order? Free shipping offers and discounts on the homepage were most likely to drive people to buy.

Young adults are far more optimistic about the future. Older adults were more likely to believe their current economic status wouldn't improve in the near future. Young adults were more likely to spend more this holiday season than in last year's.

You may want to keep that last nugget of data in mind for 2010. Going forward, younger adults are more likely to spur the kind of growth needed for the global economic recovery.

Experts were predicting that last Monday, December 14 would be "Green Monday" or the biggest online shopping day of the year. But things got a tad disappointing when sales actually dipped 1%. Turns out most people must have had a case of the Mondays.

Or a case of the "I'm waiting for my next paycheck."

Tuesday, December 15, 2009 was the first day in history that online sales reached $900 million in a single day.

The total came in at $913 million, according to comScore, and was up a whopping 21% over last year.

The surge in online sales last week was enough to bring the total increase of online sales for the 2009 holiday season to 4%. It's been hanging at 3% for a few weeks now.

eBay has tapped Click Forensics to help them fight fraudulent clicks and low quality traffic on their site.

"It is crucial that we deliver the highest quality traffic to our advertising partners, and working with Click Forensics will help ensure that we are doing just that," said Alexis Van De Wyer, director of advertising at eBay Inc.

The relationship will affect the eBay Partner Network and the eBay AdCommerce Unit. AdCommerce allows merchants to buy cost-per-click (CPC) ads that are triggered by keyword searches.

"eBay is committed to delivering the highest quality traffic to its advertiser merchants," said Paul Pellman, CEO of Click Forensics, Inc. "We look forward to collaborating closely with eBay to continually improve and enhance both our platforms for the benefit of online advertisers."

The tool was is called Browser Size and was developed in the famous 20% time, where employees are free to work on their own projects. When you type the URL of a website into the tool, an overlay displays the percentage of average web users that can view a section of the site without scrolling.

These percentages are based on sample visitors to the Google web page. You might be surprised how many web users are using very old-school browsers or old computers/operating systems.

You'll want to check your analytics before making any drastic changes based on what you learn from Browser Size. If your audience is more tech-savvy, for example, then the percentage of your users seeing more of your website will be higher.

Google Blogoscoped has found a curious listing in the Google Products page. On the right hand side, under "Communicate, show, and share" is a listing for "Google Guru."

Click on it and you'll end up on an error page.

Trying to type a non-Roman language such as Hindi or Russian on a Roman keyboard is not easy. That's because such languages use characters not found on a traditional keyboard. However, those languages can be spelled phonetically and then transliterated into the formal characters.

Google has been attempting to do this through machine transliteration through a tool available in Labs. The tool has a new update that includes 17 languages:

• Arabic
• Bengali
• Greek
• Gujarati
• Hindi
• Kannada
• Malayalam
• Marathi
• Nepali
• Persian
• Punjabi
• Russian
• Sanskrit
• Serbian
• Tamil
• Telugu
• Urdu

The update also provides dictionary lookup and character-by-character composition so you can make sure you're getting the word you want. Also, the tool allows for the composition of richly formatted text (RTF).

While we're on the topic of languages, Google has added one-click translation to its Sites product. If you're not familiar, Google Sites are easy-peasy websites that you can create if you don't have web development skills. Now, visitors to such sites who read a different language will be able to get an quick translation of the site with the integration of the Google Translate Element.

Shravan Goli will be heading up Dictionary.com after spending time at a couple of Ask.com competitors. Goli held several management-level roles at Yahoo! and Microsoft. He most recently General Manager of Media Business at Slide, Inc., a social entertainment company.

"Shravan's hands-on operational expertise and innovative product development talents make him the ideal executive to take Dictionary.com to the next level of success," said Scott Garell, President, Ask Networks.

Goli replaces Doug Leeds, who was promoted to President of Ask.com-US in October. Ask.com acquired Dictionary.com in May 2008.

"It's a great honor to join the Dictionary.com team and to have the opportunity to build on its success as the #1 brand in online dictionaries. I look forward to working together to build the next-generation dictionary experience to empower millions of people worldwide with knowledge and enrich their lives every day", said Shravan Goli, President, Dictionary.com.

Articles from the December issue of SES Magazine are up on ClickZ. This practical advice from search and online marketing practitioners can be found in articles from the most recent issue of SES Magazine; these articles and more have been published at ClickZ.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Fastest Rising YouTube search terms by month (Global):

• January - inauguration
• February - christian bale
• March - the climb
• April - susan boyle
• May - pacquiao vs hatton
• June - michael jackson thriller
• July - michael jackson
• August - usain bolt
• September - kanye west
• October - paranormal activity
• November - bad romance
• December - tiger woods

Fastest Rising YouTube search terms by month (U.S.):

• January - obama inauguration
• February - on a boat
• March - watchmen
• April - susan boyle
• May - pacquiao
• June - michael jackson thriller
• July- wedding
• August - send it on
• September - kanye west
• October - paranormal activity
• November - adam lambert
• December - tiger woods

Most Watched YouTube videos (Global):

1. Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent (120+ million views)
2. David After Dentist (37+ million views)
3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views)
4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views)
5. Evian Roller Babies (27+ million views)

Most Watched music videos on YouTube (Global)*:

1. Pitbull "I Know You Want Me" (82+ million views)
2. Miley Cyrus "The Climb" (64+ million views)
3. Miley Cyrus "Party in the U.S.A." (54+ million views)
4. The Lonely Island "I'm On a Boat" (48+ million views)
5. Keri Hilson "Knock You Down" (35+ million views)

via YouTube blog

Yahoo! has a new update that serves up some personalization into search results. Let's say you're searching for pizza. You'll now get results for pizza places in your area, despite not including a location in your query:

As you can see, there are also links so that you can refine your search to an even narrower neighborhood or town within a greater metro area.

Additionally, Yahoo! will serve up the local biz shortcut when it recognizes you're searching an establishment in your town:

This is a great implementation of personalized search. And it shouldn't be too threatening to SEOs, who should be focused on local search as part of their overall search strategy.

The two tools are Keyword Niche Finder and Keyword Grouper. The concept behind both tools is grouping keywords together for easier search ad management.

The Keyword Niche Finder returns groups of keywords instead of just a long list of keywords related to the term. This is a good place to start if you haven't already done keyword research for the campaign you're working on.

For example, let's enter "Christmas shirt" into the tool. The initial results return various groups:

Click on one of the groups to view the keywords and their frequency:

The only thing I don't like is the inability to access the full list of niches. You would have to delete existing groups in order for groups down the list to appear. You can have the groups emailed to you, so theoretically, you could access all the groups by deletion. But that's very time consuming.

I guess this is to be expected with a free tool that's designed to get you to sign up for a premium product.

If you already have a list of keywords, the Keyword Grouper tool will group them for you. Simply copy and paste your list (and frequency if you have it) into the Grouper tool.

Then you get results grouped, just like in the Keyword Niche Finder.

Both tools work extremely fast and are quite decent for being free. If you're on a super-tight budget, you can use this in conjunction with the Google AdWords keyword tool. The auto-grouping will save you a little bit of time.

If you've been to brick and mortar stores lately, you may have noticed something we haven't seen in awhile - empty shelves. Because of the economy, stores stocked up on lower inventories, anticipating the worst.

As a result, completing your Christmas shopping might be a bit difficult this year. The closer it gets to the big day, the easier it is to just buy gift cards and call it a day. If that's you, you're not alone.

The Google retail blog reports that searches for gift cards are on the rise. This happens, of course, every year around this time. The good news for marketers is that if you have gift cards available - it's a great year to really go after them in your search marketing campaigns. If you have e-gift cards, you can market those suckers all the way up to Christmas Eve.

Nielsen Online has released their search rankings for November 2009. Things remain awesome for Google and Ask.com saw a hop. But Bing gained the most, increasing by an entire percentage point from October. Meanwhile, Yahoo! was down 0.1% and AOL was down 0.2% month-over-month.

November 2009

October 2009

Image via Wikipedia

During SES Chicago 2009, Brent Payne, SEO Director, Tribune, said the recent news about Tiger Woods drove over 1.5 million visits to its site in a single day.

And my friend Katie Delahaye Payne, who writes a regular column at The Measurement Standard entitled, "Can this Reputation be Saved?," says when you google "PR" and "Tiger Woods" you get 12,700,000 results.

So, maybe it's too late to help Tiger get out of the woods. But Payne also did a quick analysis of the 20,100 comments left in response to the statement he left on his website, and the gist of them was: "Come clean and we'll support you."

So, maybe this is a "teachable moment." What can Woods do?

Now, if I was doing PR for Woods -- and I'm not -- then I'd do a search in Google for "Tiger Woods" and see that news results appear in the universal search results. So, my initial PR efforts would focus on Google News.

When I searched for "Tiger Woods" in Google News this afternoon, I saw a story about Tiger Woods being named athlete of the decade in an AP poll. Who knows, maybe his PR guy pitched the LA Times the story that appeared in The Fabulous Forum Blog at the top of the news search results.

But I also saw ads from E! Online and TheFrisky.com promoting their stories about Tiger Woods. When I clicked on the E! Online ad, it took me directly to their story. But, when I clicked on TheFrisky.com ad, it took me to their home page -- where the lead story was entitled, "Nerd Girl Porn: Hot Guys Wearing Bow Ties."

So, I'd spend time talking to the E! Online reporters, because their stories are being promoted effectively with Google AdWords.

Then I'd go back to Google and look at who else was advertising for "Tiger Woods" in additiion to E! Online and TheFrisky.com. And I'd decide to talk with the producers at AOL Television and the editors at Daily Finance, because they are also promoting their stories effectively with Google AdWords.

Next, I'd go to YouTube, which ranks second after Google in properties where search activity is observed. That's right, YouTube. And when I searched for "Tiger Woods" this afternoon I saw a news video from the Associated Press. So, I'd get on the phone to them.

Then, I'd do a search for "Tiger Woods" at Yahoo! News results appear at the top of Yahoo! blended search results, so I'd go through the same drill with Yahoo! News that I did with Google News.

Next, I'd do a search for "Tiger Woods" at Bing. News results appear at the top of blended search results there, too. So, I'd repeate the drill with targeting media that have top rankings there, too.

In parallel, I'd contact Matt Tatham at Experian Hitwise and ask for the top 1,000 search term variations for "Tiger Woods." You know, variations like "Tiger Woods wife & moves out" or "Tiger Woods affair." Then, I'd launch campaigns on Google Adwords, YouTube Promoted Videos, Yahoo! Advertising, and Microsoft Advertising.

According to Tatham, "The most important thing for any company or brand - e.g. Tiger Woods - is to make sure you are buying your brand online. This way you know that you are going to show up - hopefully first - in the search results in order to get your message out there."

He points out that iProspect did a study awhile back that found "68% of search engine users click a search result within the first page of results" and EyeTools released a study showing how the top 5 results on the page get the most clicks. So the more space you can occupy with your message for people to click on the better.

Tatham adds, "Right now TMZ.com is the #3 result on the search result page for a search on 'tiger woods' after his site and his Wikipedia page. Your examples show how media sites will try to get their stories out there simply with a paid search and you can't always count on people clicking on the first organic listing. So buying his name and terms surrounding the accident like 'tiger woods accident' could've helped drive even more traffic to his site early on, instead of having people head to news sites like CNN and Yahoo."

Tatham also recommends that companies and brands should also monitor the searches performed on their name and the variations used. He says, "You want to know if there is a negative association out there with the searches and track the lifecycle of those searches. You can reinforce the brand with a positive association with posts on the 'Tiger Woods being named athlete of the decade in an AP poll' or links to stories covering that announcement - hopefully not mentioning the other recent info. A little work can help drive up this sort of story in the results."

However, there are more than 5.5 million searches a month for "Tiger Woods" and related terms and they cost between $0.05 and $1.77 per click. The average is about $0.34 per click, so an ad campaign might cost $1.9 million a month just for the media.

In many cases, Woods would be competing with media companies and comedians for the top position, but he could bid as high as he needed to in order to rank #1. It would help if his ad content were compelling, because then he might be able to keep his cost per click to a more reasonable level. But the most compelling content out there isn't what Tiger Woods -- or Accenture, Gillette and other sponsors -- want people to see.

So, Woods would need to add $300,000 a month to manage the ad campaign and another $300,000 a month for PR to deal with the 82,333 stories a month that are being written about Tiger Woods. That brings the total cost for online reputation management to about $2.5 million a month.

So, can Tiger Woods do this? According to Forbes, he's worth an estimated $600 million. And according to EA Sports, Tiger Woods can "walk on water."

Tiger Woods 09 - Walk on Water

So, yes, Woods can do everything mentioned above for months and months and months.

But it would have been a lot cheaper to have remained faithful to his wife, Elin Nordegren. And they have two little kids. So, what was Tiger thinking?!?

Hitwise is sharing some pretty interesting data about online searches for offline actions. Querying "printable coupons" and "store locator" have soared in recent weeks.

Last year a similar soar occurred, and while the searches dipped after the holidays - a lift remained and stabilized. This new spike is exceeding last year's spike in a big way.

It will be interesting to see if another lift remains after the inevitable post-holiday drop-off. I'm guessing it will and you'll definitely want to have pages optimized for coupons and store locations if you haven't done so.

In September, Google launched its visual based news platform, Fast Flip, into Labs. This week, they've added 55 new sources from two dozen publishers. Included newbies:

• Tribune Co. newspapers including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune
• McClatchy Company newspapers such as the Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star
• The Huffington Post
• Popular Science
• Reuters
• Public Radio International
• POLITICO
• U.S. News & World Report

Kenshoo is known for their enterprise search marketing technology, but the company is hoping to make its mark in an emerging niche: local search. Earlier this year, Kenshoo raised money from venture capital firms to develop their new local search marketing management technology. Kenshoo Local was unveiled at the Interactive Local Media Conference last week in Los Angeles.

"The new 'local' solution is a natural addition to our growing enterprise search business, and is based on collective feedback from dozens of customers", said Sivan Metzger, General Manager, KENSHOO Local.

The technology is designed to meet a growing need among agencies and retailers alike: maximizing paid search campaigns for the long tail as it relates to local search. As local search grows, the task of manually managing paid search campaigns is canceling out revenues earned through such efforts. Technology such as Kenshoo Local streamlines the process of bid management.

One such process is filtering out which keywords are profitable. Kenshoo Local will automatically determine which long tail keywords are performing best for a campaign and adjust bids accordingly.

Another key aspect of the technology is conversion attribution. Kenshoo acknowledges that there is a process to conversion. People don't usually just search, click and buy. Instead, they research, compare, click here, click there, and then buy. They also may call or visit in-store.

Kenshoo Local offers advertisers the ability to determine what a conversion consists of - and allows attributions to various sources that contributed during the entire process.

Not only does this demonstrate an evolution of the understanding of marketing and consumer behavior within the search industry, but Kenshoo's pursuit of local demonstrates the growing recognition of search as it pertains to the online marketing space as a whole.

"CMO's and agencies can now manage holistic marketing strategies that span their national or global brand strategy in tight correlation with their online marketing execution plan, all the way to the single dealer, franchise or brick and mortal store, by leveraging the tight integration between Kenshoo's enterprise and local solutions," concluded Metzger.

With local search on the rise, driven by both mobile and increasingly web-savvy searchers, companies such as Kenshoo are smart to expand their services. Kenshoo is entering the inevitable rat race early, which should bode well for them when similar companies are jumping on the local search bandwagon in the not-too-distant future.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Association of American Advertising Agencies (AAAA) first released standards for Terms and Conditions in the interactive advertising industry in 2002. Obviously, a lot has changed since then, so the two groups are releasing an update to the standards.

Over 100 legal, sales and buying contributed to the updated standards. The new version, 3.0, includes performance-based advertising and user-generated content platforms. To read the 12 page document and compare it to Version 2.0, click here.

Of particular notice is the inclusion of Data Usage standards. This is, no doubt, a reaction to interest from federal and state politicians who are considering regulating the industry. Organizations such as the IAB have long-held that the industry does a good job of self-regulation. The inclusion of specific standards for how to handle data collected through interactive advertising seems to be an attempt to stave off government intervention.

The new version will be available for public comment until January 29, 2010. There will be two webinars where the public can learn more about the specifics of the new standards. One will be held on January 21, 2010 and the other on January 26, 2010. Both will be held at noon EST.

One of the thing we started doing earlier this year was to hand over the microphone to SES attendees to get their feedback on the conference. And the attendees of Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009 weren't shy about sharing their opinions.

Below are eight, short videos that provide a range of comments about the event and some insights into what attendees think about the only major Search Marketing Conference and Expo in the Midwest.

One person was back after skipping SES for a couple of years. A company brought a team of four to the conference. One person was excited to be able to have lunch with Bruce Clay, author of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies. Another person was delighted that next year's SES Chicago will be held in October.

Check out the videos below. Each one is short.

Kathryn Joy, New England Journal of Medicine, talks about her experience at SES Chicago 2009.

SES Chicago 2009 from attendee Kathryn Joy, New England Journal of Medicine

Jeff Sponseller and Dominic Golembiewski of Miller Weldmaster discuss their experience at SES Chicago 2009.

SES Chicago 2009 testimonials by Jeff Sponseller and Dominic Golembiewski of Miller Weldmaster

Michael Taggart, Envoy Media Group, discusses his experience on attending SES Chicago 2009.

SES Chicago 2009 testimonial by attendee Michael Taggart, Envoy Media Group, Inc.

Rachel Rae of SureHire Inc. discusses her experience at SES Chicago 2009.

SES Chicago 2009 testimonial by Rachel Rae of SureHire Inc

Vinh Chau, VQC Designs, LLC, describes the panels he attended at SES Chicago 2009.

SES Chicago 2009 testimonial by attendee Vinh Chau, VQC Designs, LLC

Nick Sparagis, IntroXL, discusses his experience on attending SES Chicago 2009.

SES Chicago 2009 testimonial by Nick Sparagis, IntroXL

Justin Kimbro, South Eastern Book Company, discusses his experience on attending SES Chicago 2009.

SES Chicago 2009 testimonial from attendee Justin Kimbro of South Eastern Book Company

Chris Konicek, Accutech, on his first time attending SES Chicago 2009.

SES Chicago 2009 testimonial with first time attendee, Chris Konicek of Accutech

Creative Commons Photo Credit
Flickr/KayVee.INC

The session title "SEO vs. PPC: The Ultimate Search Battle" insinuates some kind of inevitable victory of one opponent over the other; despite well-placed jabs delivered from both corners of the panel, the underlying session theme defeated all comers.

The skirmish between SEO and PPC is depends on your current situation and your future goals; there are instances where SEO is the obvious winner over PPC, and vice versa.

During this session, seasoned panelists Christine Churchill, Karen Weber, Rand Fishkin, David Naylor, Michael Gray and moderator Brian Lewis discussed specific areas where it makes the most sense to allocate resources towards SEO as well as scenarios where PPC would be a better alternative.

To begin Brian Lewis, VP of Engine Ready, shared results from studies his company had conducted over the course of a year and a half across various industries. The studies compared ROI and engagement metrics in hopes to identify any trends where SEO outperforms PPC and the other way around.

What's Converting?The first study showed that users referred to a test site from a paid ad converted 2.03% of the time while those visiting from organic results converted at 1.26%.

Who's Spending More?
The second study scrutinized the order-value to see if users coming from paid ads were buying more or less than organic search referrals. It turns out that people coming from paid ads spend an average of $117 compared to $106 via organic.

What's a Visit Worth?
On average a visitor from a paid ad is worth $2.38 while their organic counterpart is worth $1.35.

Who's Staying Longer?
Lastly, traffic coming for a paid source stays on the site an average of 283 seconds, while organic traffic sits around 219 seconds.

Judging by this data it looks like PPC has the leg up! We'll have to see about that...

ROUND 1
In the red corner- Christine Churchill, President of KeyRelevance. She was up first up to the podium to speak in favor of PPC. She began by giving reasons as to why PPC is better for certain sites.

New Domains
If you have a brand spankin' new domain and you have no links, no online presence or no partner sites, PPC can bring you traffic immediately.

PPC generates instant online presence:
- Ads can be up and running within an hour
- Return on investment come in considerably fast
- There is no ramp up time in PPC

Immediacy
If it's fast ROI you're looking for, then PPC is where it's at. PPC is particularly fantastic for seasonal and time sensitive promotions.

Testing
PPC allows you to track the effectiveness of your marketing message or test a new product; multivariate testing helps illuminate how well an ad is received by the market place.

Regulate Traffic Volume
- Sales pipeline empty? Use PPC to push traffic.
- Overloaded? Pause campaigns or cut back on spending.
- Have a limited sales season? Saturate the market while demand is high.

Targeting
Targeting is another great benefit of PPC. If you're involved in regional marketing, you can run tightly focused campaigns; the platform allows you to get in front of your target where and when you need to.

PPC Targeting Advantages
- Control over placement on the search engine results pages (SERPs)
- Enhanced control over titles and descriptions
- Control over landing page/message
- Control marketing spend and reach

ROUND 2
Karen Weber, VP of E-Marketing at Irwin Union Bank was next to defend the argument for PPC. She shared her top 5 reasons why she would choose PPC over SEO... if she was ever forced to choose, of course.

1 - Because it's Fast
- Quickly get into and out of market
- Manipulate keywords to those driving conversions
- Quickly change bid prices

2 - Because it's Flexible
- Easily turn on/off campaigns
- Run seasonal or short-term initiatives
- Test new product launches
- Run time sensitive campaigns
- Change the ad copy or landing page

3 - Because it's Limitless
- Target a much wider range of keywords, including misspellings, brand, competitors, plurals and nearly all other iterations

4 - Because it's Justifiable
- Manage a goal-driven campaign with measurable KPI's
- Adhere to budgets
- Realize an immediate impact in sales

5 - Because it's Controllable
In traditional media, it's often difficult to control who is viewing your ad; with PPC, it's simple. Additionally, PPC allows you to control:
- Budget
- Landing pages
- Ad copy/marketing message
- Geographic targets, day/time
- Duration of the campaign

ROUND 3
After the case for PPC had been made, it was time for SEO to fight back. First to the podium from the blue corner was Rand Fishkin, CEO and Co-Founder of SEOmoz. Rand began by asking the audience a question: "If asked to choose a primary search engine to optimize for whether PPC or SEO, how many would choose Google?"

99% of those in attendance raised their hand.

Creative Commons Photo Credit
Wikimedia/Heilig|1947

But why? Rand noted that Bing realizes 10% of the market place, is easier to optimize for, and converts at a higher rate.

"Why is it that everybody is so eager to jump at a search engine with the majority of the market share?" he asked. Rand pointed out that an imbalance exists in the current SEM market: paid search only receives 10% of all clicks, yet it represents 90% of the budget.

Nearly all in attendance chimed in, agreeing that they would optimize for "the engine with 90% of the clicks (Google)." So why would they want to put all their chips into a market with only 10%?

The referees had spoken. Yes, SEO is more challenging and less controllable, but it allows you to address time sensitive issues, alter ad messages and optimize for better conversions.

Rand's parting thought: The fact of the matter is that people click organic results 10x more than they do with paid ads.

ROUND 4
Next up was Dave Naylor.

"The PPC guys will have you believe it's the quick fix and how you will get a campaign started really quickly."

Naylor was recently working with a client to build their domain from the ground up. When the site launched, it was covered in most of the newspapers and various major online publications. Within the first three months the client received their own YouTube channel by way of the 1.3 million impressions the content had received.

If they had used PPC to traffic the 1.2 million unique visitors they obtained organically, the client would have been in the red from the check they'd have had to write.

Essentially, Dave does believe that PPC is a great tool for testing, but not for a long-term business proposition.

SEO is not about optimizing for one keyword per page; it's about "building rich content and ranking for those keywords by way of a good SEO campaign." A good SEO campaign includes projecting seasonal program needs and addressing those far enough in advance in order to properly execute on a timeline. Think ahead... that way you won't get caught with your pants down.

ROUND 5
Last in the ring was Michael Gray, Owner of Atlas Web Service. Michael made the argument that SEO can actually enhance your PPC. He added a disclaimer: don't follow this quite yet as some accounts have been arbitrarily banned for doing similar tactics. In any case, he laid out how it works.

According to Michael, a couple of weeks ago you could have taken an existing ad and keyword in a given account, pointed it at different domains and receive different pricing based on the organic health of the domain.

Healthy domain = favorable pricing
New domain or mediocre domain = mid-range pricing
Banned domain = highest pricing

What do you think? Make your argument for PPC or SEO in the comment field below. Be sure to keep those gloves up. Ready? Steady? Fight!

This guest post was written by Manny Rivas who is an SEO Account Manager at aimClear, an Internet-focused advertising agency which specialises in demographic research.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Benjamin Ellis, a leading consultant for digital businesses and tech startups in the UK seems to be in the mood for being challenged at the moment. After tackling awareness of prostate cancer with the ritual challenge of movember, he has now turned his attention to online privacy.

In the wake of the storm of blogging reactions to Eric Schmidt's comments on privacy, Benjamin intends to document the results of taking an extreme counter position to CNBC's Mario Bartiromo question to Schmidt, "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they?"

Embarking on a week long experiment to see how one might live if they absolutely did not trust Google and had to block it out of their lives, Benjamin reports from his blog Day 1 of living without Google. You can follow his activities from there.

Amongst other things, what he finds is that Google is deeply embedded in his favourite Mac products and the tension between Apple and Microsoft prohibits him from easily switching to another search engine. What a shame that entrenched rivalries seem to prevent strategic alliances over new battlegrounds.

Whether it is a good time or not to be in the publishing industry right now, is most likely a matter of opinion, probably dependent on the amount of cash in your advertisers pocket, and DEFINITELY dependent on what side of the impending digital divide you are sitting.

However, if you are in search and social media right now i would argue that this has to be hands down the most thrilling time to be working with content publishers.

Why?

Good manners are back
Because all the most successful business models behind the internet millionaires are being made available to everyone. All 'the edge' that search engines, social networks and content voting engines (e.g. Google, Twitter & Digg) have had against publishers is being boiled down into nifty whitelabel solutions. In essence, the unspoken loan of content on the web to technology companies, is starting to be repaid at an application level - with data driven tools.

As i write, I am struggling to contain my enthusiasm for both Twitter and, more so, Bit.ly for what Jeff Jarvis would simply call their good manners to "be part of the web". Both companies have launched business specific microcosms of the products that made them famous.

Many voices, many stories
Twitter Contributors allows businesses to attach multiple users to corporate Twitter accounts (potentially allowing a single update stream to become a tower of babel to it's employees), which in effect will makes customer service via microblogging genuinely scaleable, but most importantly for brands, will add a new dimension of authenticity to online interactions with their customers.

Such a customer service model is great for publishers too, as authenticity is the driving factor of a audience building and reader identification. Arguably, homogeneity of authorship within packaged news products is where blogs and social networks have hit the traditional publisher readerships the hardest. Now, the daily workflow and daily insights of a journalist's investigation can easily be integrated into the brand channel and we can all follow and support our intrepid reporters on their journey of discovery, and... er, factchecking, just like we're accustomed to with blogging.

Many webs, many tribes
Bit.ly Pro may seem to black & white hat search marketers alike as the b*****d son of cloaking with it's "no PageRank passing, referrer sucking, can't even measure it properly with webanalytics" qualities but, whilst as a link it is the very antithesis of good SEO, it effectively intervenes in areas were there was no link juice or interesting data anyway.

The outputs from Bit.ly should allow publishers to create statistically based interfaces that will afford online news readerships a deeper experience of exploration and investigation. Attention metrics from all corners or the web will enable stats 'karma points' and crowdsource-type features that allow users to identify with their tribes from wherever they are. The touchpoints between one eco-system and another will be notable, as they will tell the behaviour of peoples they actually identify with rather than the masses. This may foster a sense of belonging with the brand. Contrary to the granular interface Bit.ly seems to offer, it's not the data that is really interesting to publishers - as always, it's what one can do with it. The clever publisher, or marketer working for them (i.e YOU), should upgrade their most read/most commented lists for new most popular on facebook, most popular on twitter, type lists.

Change is good
Who cares what is popular on Digg, when Bit.ly can plot popularity, over time and across other social networks, with less acne per capita? Bring back the cluetrain. As David Weinberger said of online documents and Jeff Jarvis says in this video, "articles are artifacts on the web, which rot like fruit", but the fact remains that measuring the half life of popularity is interesting in and of itself, and a possible basis of many more social experiments.

Image via Wikipedia

Now, if only I could convince my kids to friend me on Facebook. But I digress.

This is the first year that the social networking Website has been the top search term overall, accounting for 0.67 percent of all searches. In fact, four variations of the term "facebook" were among the top 25 terms, according to Hitwise.

Facebook moved up from the 10th spot in 2008 to the top spot in 2009. MySpace was the second most-searched term in 2009, followed by Craigslist, and YouTube. Analysis by Hitwise of the search terms reveals that social networking-related terms dominated the results, accounting for 2.48 percent of the top 300 searches.

MySpace had been the top term for the previous three years. So, I hope my old buddy Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook COO who became MySpace's CEO in April, can find a way to make MySpace number one again.

According to Hitwise, if you add up common search terms -- e.g., facebook and facebook.com -- Facebook terms accounted for 1.09 percent of all US searches. MySpace terms accounted for 1.02 percent, Yahoo terms accounted for 0.95 percent, Google terms accounted for 0.63 percent, and Craigslist terms accounted for 0.62 percent.

Hitwise also reports that Google was the top-visited Website for the second straight year. Google accounted for 6.70 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009. Yahoo! Mail accounted for 4.44 percent of visits, followed by Facebook (4.26 percent), Yahoo! (3.36 percent) and MySpace (3 percent).

If you add up common properties -- e.g., yahoo.com and mail.yahoo.com -- Yahoo! properties accounted for 10.60 percent of all U.S. visits. Google properties accounted for 9.93 percent, and Facebook properties accounted for 4.26 percent. The top 50 Websites accounted for 39 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009.

Fionn Downhill, CEO of Elixir Interactive, interviewed Tim Kendall, Facebook Director of Monetization at SES New York, 2009. As Mike Grehan would say, it appears that Downhill was having intermittent problems with her microphone, because she seems to have an Irish accent but it seems fine when Kendall speaks.

Tim Kendall, Facebook, discusses Facebook's growth and advertising model at SES New York 2009

Bing has finally and smartly released a mobile search app for the iPhone. And it's pretty durn sweet, if you ask me.

The homepage of the app features a daily photo with hotspots, just like going to Bing.com on a desktop browser. You can navigate the app horizontally or landscape, and the user interface is well-designed.

My favorite part is the Map, which is so smooth. When you zoom in or out, or navigate in any direction, it will hold your current place and then do this fade-in thing that's quite nice. It's also in line with the new direction Bing Maps is going on the desktop browser version.

You can easily search by voice, which is a necessity when you're on the go - or simply don't feel like typing on a small device.

But there's one thing that I didn't love. When I searched for coffee, it returned local results - but not the closest ones to my current location.

Still, other searches bring you exactly what you're looking for - such as the weather:

This is an area where Bing has Google beat. The UI is much nicer, the shortcuts on the homepage are sweet. Navigation is a breeze and maps are in the same app as search.

While Bing has already released apps for Windows Mobile and BlackBerry Curve and Storm, this was a crucial move. The mobile internet market cannot be ignored - and despite the iPhone being a competitor in so many ways - it has a lot of users and has been a game changer for mobile search. It's nice to see Bing truly embrace the spirit of the iPhone with such a gorgeous app.

Image via Wikipedia

There were 138.4 million unique viewers of online video that month. They watched 11.2 billion video streams, or about 81 streams per viewer. Viewers spent 200 minutes per viewer -- on average -- watching online video.

Not surprisingly, YouTube was the top online brand ranked by video streams for November 2009 in the U.S. 106.9 million unique visitors watched 6.8 billion streams on YouTube that month. Hulu ranked second, with 12.5 million unique visitors, who watched 656.6 million streams. That's not a typo. YouTube dominates the category by that much.

I should disclose that I've been out promoting online video usage in general and YouTube in particular. But I'm not alone.

At SES Chicago 2009, Jamie ODonnell of SEO-PR interviewed Topher Kohan, SEO Coordinator for CNN.com, about how to get your videos in the top rankings of search engines.

In 2009, Google announced it would begin using Facebook Share and Yahoo SearchMonkey to make it easier to share and index your video content. Kohan says its all about submitting your video content via XML sitemaps and Media RSS feeds. And the way to get search engines to integrate your video content is by wrapping your videos in some kind of micro format tags and letting the indexes know about it.

Kohan believes that in the next 18 months Google and Yahoo will offer standardized open source set of tags. He also discussed the benefits of using Facebook Share, primarily because it lets you know where your content goes once it leaves your site. When you sign up to be a Facebook developer, you can access reports that show you where your video is being embedded, how many views it is getting.

Check it out.

How to optimize your videos with Topher Kohan, CNN at SES Chicago 2009

The Google Analytics API was launched last April and then updated with a few more features in September. Now, developers are getting access to additional advanced features.

Here's what's included in the API update:

Support for Advanced Segments - Originally unveiled over a year ago, developers are getting two ways to use advanced segements via the API:

1. Create them on the fly by specifying their expression directly through an API query.


2. Use advanced segments created in the Google Analytics web interface through the API.

Goal 5-20 and Configuration Data - Analytics recently increased the number of goals allowed from 5 to 20. Developers can now access 48 metrics regarding goal performance.

Custom Variables - 10 new dimensions are now available to access custom variable data.

Landing page optimization is paramount to a successful enterprise. However, most upper management teams within companies are blind to the fact that their landing pages aren't useful and actually prevent conversion. Is it not obvious that a better converting landing page means more money for the company and isn't that the point of doing business?

Landing pages are created for the customer to convert and need to be designed and implemented with the actions you want them to take in mind. All your traffic sources lead to your landing pages so it makes sense to optimize them to make it as easy or attractive as possible for them to take that action. CPA (Cost per acquisition) is your CPC (Cost Per Click)/CR (Conversion Rate) and who doesn't want a higher conversion rate?

The fact is that CPC ad spending is going up and more people are starting to invest in campaign optimization strategies. The only way to "fight" in this market is to optimize your landing pages. The problem is that these landing pages are not created with the right mindset. Put simply, companies are not creating bang for their buck.

One of the biggest issues plaguing organization's today is the "battle" on who makes the decision in regards to the website. A popular example of this corporate bureaucracy is the camel, often referred to as "a horse designed by a committee". When things are designed by committee's too many people end up having input which results in a monstrosity. If landing pages are created for the customer, then let the customer design them. You must learn to give up the element of control.

Tim Ash provided a few of rules of thumb to successful landing page optimisation: "never let the BPU (Business prevention unit) (IT) make the decisions" and "eliminate the HIPPO (Highest paid persons opinion)". When creating these pages you must follow this golden rule: "Do onto others as they want done to them".

It's nice in theory to let the customer design the page however it's not possible to think like them. The only way we can shed light into the customer's mindset is through landing page analysis and by analyzing that information you can properly optimize your landing pages. Don't let a lack your traffic numbers prevent you from optimizing your landing pages. Even a few visitors can show your 'sins' and you will be able 'repent'.

Now to the 7 deadly sins (which really ended up being 8)

An unclear call to action

When a visitor first looks at your landing page the last question he is supposed to ask himself is "Hmm.... What I am supposed to do?". The required action should be clear and call out to him. This means getting rid of distracting elements such as splash pages and portals is essential to increasing your conversion rate. You should follow the obvious standard "If it's not obvious it's not happening".

Too many choices

People were not created with a large short-term memory so do not overload your visitors with too many choices. These confuse people and that's the last thing you want happening to your site visitors. If you have a large amount of choices present them as categories. This will enable the visitor to follow down the clear path they intended when they entered the site.

Asking for too much information

Most forms visitors fill out require them to enter too much useless information (e.g if I am going to download a white paper why do I need to put in my name let alone my birthday?). Narrow the choices down to EXACTLY what you need and don't let the BPU (see above!) near this choice.

Too Much Text

Every time you place text onto your site be sure to ask yourself, "Do I really expect people to read this?" Too much text can distract people from converting. Negate this issue by employing the inverted pyramid writing style used by journalists. Again, a rule of thumb to decrease the size of your paragraphs is to remove adjectives and unsubstantiated claims. This will make your pages more visually appealing and visitors will be more likely to convert.

Not keeping your promises

When you bring someone to your site promising some information, provide it in a straightforward way. You must make the offer available in an easy to find location so users may come to the site and use your offer. Don't make them jump through any hoops to get what you promised.

Visual Distractions

When people enter your site they often have no idea what to look for or where. Don't pollute your page with visual distractions. It will draw your visitor's attention away from the goal and then they will not convert. When creating a page leave your creativity at the door and design your pages for the users. This does not mean that your pages should be unprofessional but creative distractive visual elements will draw users attention away from the goal, which will not improve your bottom line.

Lack of Trust

People automatically trust popular and established brands. Conversely, when people are presented with a new brand they naturally hesitate to trust it. Many newer brands augment their trust and credibility of their website site by using various logo's and certifications that increase their website's credibility. These certifications are familiar to the visitor and offer assurance about using the site. You must place these trust symbols in a prominent location so people will see them and your sites 'trust rank' will increase in their eyes.

The following tools can help you optimize your landing pages for better conversions.

Attentionwizard.com
Crazyegg.com
Clicktale.com
Google website optimizer
Usertesting.com
Userfly.com
Feedbackarmy.com
Litmusapp.com
Crossbrowser.com

This guest post was written by Levi Gross from Leon & Levy, a firm specializing in SEO consulting.

Coincidence or not, in the wake of Firefox recommending their users switch to Bing, Google launched a nationwide campaign advertising Chrome in the UK today. This follows a recent TV and print campaign in Italy appealing to trendy 'stilisti' (fashionistas) suggesting users gift wrap Chrome for Christmas.

So, is this why Google has been talking up page speed as a ranking factor recently?

Techcrunch has a writeup of how many people Chrome may reach via a cover wrap of the Metro and Journalism.co.uk has a picture which is worth a snigger - Chrome advertised right outside Ruper Murdoch's offices in Wapping.

Meanwhile at Incisive towers, we are tittering to ourselves (ok just me and Darren, our ad trafficker) that Chrome still does not support Doubleclick's Dart for Publishers... we guess Murdoch really won't be switching anytime soon.

Google's had StreetView for awhile and Bing recently introduced Streetside imaging to their maps. Now, MapQuest is entering the ring with their street-level imaging, which they've dubbed "360 View."

360 View isn't available everywhere, so MapQuest is providing coverage maps, similar to what a wireless communications company might provide to show you where you can get a signal.

MapQuest also took great care in pointing out that you don't have to download a non-standard media player (cough, cough Silverlight).

About a year ago, LinkedIn launched a new search platform, which has turned out to be wildly successful. Search activity has doubled since the update. Of course, their membership has almost doubled as well. No word on whether the chicken or the egg came first on that one.

Either way, LinkedIn is improving their search platform with the addition of filters. The filter options are automatically generated and are placed down the left side of the results.

Let's say I want to find someone to network with because I'm interested in a job there. I could click on "San Francisco" because that's where their HQ is (well, near). Then, on 2nd connection (because at least that would be someone in my network who knows somebody). Last, I could check the filter for Autdesk under "currently working." I'm left with 7 people to try and contact. That's much better than sifting through the original 25,000 results!

This is a great update to an already robust search platform. It reduces the need to come up with search refinements on your own, making LinkedIn's search more efficient - and networking a LOT easier.

Image by Bruce Clay, Inc via Flickr

One of those solo presentations, which was given by Christine Churchill, president of KeyRelevance.com, was on keyword research.

So, how many keywords do you need in your paid search account? What keywords are your customers searching for? How do customers find products after they reach your site? Watch the video below to learn how to target the right terms in your paid and organic search marketing, and where these keywords should be used.

How to do keyword research with Christine Churchill at SES Chicago 2009

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The big story is that Newsknife's combined figures for sites owned by Rupert Murdoch put them in second place at a time when Murdoch has declared his unhappiness with Google News. (Methinks the media mogul doth protest too much.)

The Top News Sites of 2009 is compiled by Newsknife from its analysis of more than 311,000 listings by over 7,400 news sites at Google News during the year. Here are the news sources you are most likely to find in Google News:

1 Associated Press
2 Rupert Murdoch related sites - Times Online, UK / Wall Street Journal / FOX News
3 New York Times
4 Reuters
5 CNN
6 Washington Post
7 Los Angeles Times
8 BBC News, UK
9 Voice of America
10 Bloomberg

This is the eighth year of Newsknife's "Top News Sites" ratings.

Newsknife's ratings are based on monitoring the main US-oriented Google News site. Associated Press headed its Top Sites for the first time.

I covered this topic last week in my post, "Living Stories is Google's Way of Telling Murdoch to 'Buzz Off.'" But it seems like a great time to play the interview with Jeff Jarvis again. Hey, he made these comments after his keynote at SES Chicago 2009 -- but before the Newsknife number were available. And he was dead on target.

What would Google do, Jeff Jarvis, slams Rupert Murdoch over Google's role at SES Chicago

Google launched a new URL shortening service, but it has limitations. It can only be used via the Google Toolbar and Feedburner, at least for now. (More on the Toolbar and Feedburner updates in a later post.) The Google URL Shortener uses goo.gl as a root domain.

Meanwhile, Facebook is testing a URL shortening service, using FB.me as a domain. It was first noticed via Facebook's mobile interface. The shortening can be used for pages as well - for example - fb.me/starbucks. (via Inside Facebook)

Last but not least, one of the most popular URL shortening services, Bit.ly, has announced a new Pro feature. This will allow a limited number of large publishers to create custom, shortened URLs. For example, the New York Times' URLs will begin with nyti.ms. Pro users will get access to Bit.ly's new real-time dashboard which will provide analytics on the shortened URLs.

Google has updated its toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox with a sharing feature, which enables user to share any page to a variety of social networks. Additionally, My Location is now out of Toolbar Labs and official on the Google Toolbar.

Meanwhile, if you have the RSS feed on your blog set up through Feedburner, it just got a heckuvalot easier to send your posts to Twitter. Simply go to your Feedburner account, select the feed you wish to Tweet, and then click on the "Publicize" tab to set things up.

The social sharing updates for both the Google Toolbar and Feedburner will use the new Google URL shortener, goo.gl.

comScore has released updated data for the 2009 online holiday shopping season. The trending increase in spending has continued, largely along the same numbers we saw last week:

Analysts expect "Green Monday," the biggest online shopping day of the year, to occur today, December 14. It's possible that the one day total could surpass $900 million. If that happens, it will be the first time in history.

Keeping our fingers crossed....

When you query Google, you'll notice suggestions appear to assist you in your search. They appear as a list in a drop down menu. This feature is known as Google Suggest and became default on the homepage in August 2008. Now, that menu is getting additional, universal features.

Let's say you're wondering what the capital of a country is. As you're typing, the answer may appear directly in the Suggest menu:

Also, you might want to check the weather. So you search and a forecast appears in Google Suggest:

"You can't make money in web analytics just by looking at reports." With that, SES Advisor and New York Times bestselling author Bryan Eisenberg set the stage for the state of analysis in search marketing.

As budgets flow from offline to online, they're moving disproportionately to search. Search has always excelled at accountability, but as the spend increases the bar is being raised.

We all have and know what web analytics are. Data quantity isn't the issue, action quantity is.

Matt Bailey (SiteLogic) summed it up perfectly with the word "velleity". It means "the desire to do something, but not enough of a desire to take action." It describes the feeling of marketers who have been burnt by reporting that isn't actionable.

Over the course of the Analytics, Conversion and Attribution sessions during the first day at SES Chicago, the speakers each addressed three of the core challenges in fighting velleity and taking action on your data:

1. Prioritization


2. Segmentation


3. Process

1. Prioritization
Web analytics has come a long way from the days of log file analyzers used by the IT department. Naturally, people tend to want to make tools bigger, faster and more complicated, however "if you have a tool, everything looks like a nail," says Jim Sterne of eMetrics and the Web Analytics Association.

The problem is "what should I look at?" and "what do you actually analyze?"

Jim suggests you bucket and prioritize 4 ways

1. Revenue that is at risk


2. Anything the boss's boss's boss asks for


3. Requests that do not overwhelm the department


4. Analysis that requires an analyst rather than simply being self-served

Your job is to find a specific process and optimize that, for example a shopping cart, experience from a search campaign or lead generation page. Go to your data and ask "How can you help me optimize the process?"

In another session, Jim reminded us that traditional web analytics tools tell you "where the problem is and which one is most significant at the moment." To really understand why, you have to augment those tools with usability testing and surveys.

In a nod to his upcoming book, Jim also shared a framework for prioritizing analysis for one of the most discussed topics at the conference--social media:

• Reach - How many people could possibly see my message (blog mentions x blog readers)


• Frequency - How often is my message being discussed, ex: comments on a blog post


• Influence - The more authority the author, the bigger the halo effect and potential viral spread


• Sentiment - Having lots of people talk about you is great... unless they say bad things. The tools aren't great yet, so hire interns.


• Outcomes - Did they take the action you wanted them to?

2. Segmentation
Of course, even if you prioritize your analysis, there is no such thing as an average user. People who come to your website aren't looking for the exact same thing. They all have different needs and wants. We can't treat visitors the same. Unique visitors aren't all the same. Segmentation matters. We have to look at what people wanted when they came to the site.

But, as Matt Bailey (SiteLogic) says "analytics dashboards tend to be as usable as Ikea furniture instructions." The cure for dashboards that suffer from average-itis is to segment.

Matt shared his 7 favorite tips:

1. Create Keyword Buckets "Segments" - Start with the big buckets, e.g. digital cameras and then develop smaller buckets, e.g. digital cameras, professional digital cameras, etc.


2. Segment Based On Acquisition (Channels) - Ask "which source is bringing the best traffic?" Matt shared an interesting a pattern that drives engagement: the more engaged a visitor was with a message about your company or product before they got to your site, the more likely they'll be engaged after. Twitter is at the bottom of the this inverted pyramid: Blogs & Articles, YouTube, Forums, Search, Social News and Twitter.
   
3. Segment Your Bounce Rates - Typically if it's high, it's a word that means something totally different in another industry. You have to look at the context. Sometimes it's not just their intent, sometimes it's your design (ex: Fluid width design on a large screen monitor)


4. Segment Your Content - Divide your analysis by Persuasive pages (which ones drive conversions), entry pages, time on page and search behavior


5. Segment Behavior - Divide the behavior on your site, but make it more accessible by giving the data friendly names for the audience your presenting to (ex: someone with "O" in their title would understand)


6. Segment Entry Points - You could have the right ranking on the wrong page


7. Take Action - After you segment, take some action!

In his 21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites (which he will deliver as the keynote of SES London), Bryan emphasized how important it is to also analyze trends by segments in search. For example, focus on "what's changed" reports of keywords that are rising and falling the fastest by CPC or Revenue, instead of just analyzing the top 10.

3. Process
Of course, prioritization and segmentation are both part of a larger web analytics process. As Bryan reminded us, "to do web analytics correctly, you have to make a to do list regularly." An actionable list addresses:

• What marketing efforts or parts of your site have challenges


• What you think needs to be improved


• What things you want to test


• What efforts you should do less of


• What efforts you should do more of

The core of an actionable web analytics process is data driven decision making. Nothing does that better than testing, using the tools that fit your questions and budget:

• Google Website Optimizer for A/B and Multivariate Testing (free)


• Monetate for onsite behavioral target (paid)


• UserTesting.com for usability reviews (paid)


• 5 Second Test for quick voice of the customer (free)

Part of a successful process is optimizing for your conversion rate, which often hovers around 2%. Dr. Phil Mui challenged us to expand by process by asking "How do you measure success for the rest of the 98%?"

First, map out the micro-conversions that fall into that 98% for you business type, for example:

• Ecommerce - product research account signups, contact us


• Non-profits - volunteer leads, promotion of the cause


• Video Sites - Account registration, newsletter signups, premiums account signups


• Blogs - Links to your blog, comments on your posts

It's also important that you optimize holistically in your process. Don't just test elements on your landing page; also test which landing page choice makes sense, for example: a category page vs. a product page.

You can't forget to test what people see before they get to your site. Optimize search creatives for conversion. Test multiple ads and measure which one drove conversion.

Regardless of the tools and process you use, the message every speaker conveyed is that more action is better than more data, so measure, focus, optimize and repeat.

This guest post was written by Alex Cohen (aka DigitalAlex) is the Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations, a paid search management platform for large advertisers and agencies.

Tim Armstrong and AOL employees rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, to signal the beginning of trading - including AOL stock as an independent company.

Wall Street responded by dropping their shares by a 36 cents.

That's to be expected when the future of the company is so uncertain. But they're doing their best to paint a bright picture of what's to come:

"We have a clear strategy, a focused mission and a firm commitment to delivering value to our shareholders, consumers and partners," said Armstrong.

Their main focus is content and advertising. AOL owns 80 niche content sites. 20 of them are ranked in the top 5 of their category in comScore's Media Matrix.

They're looking to local to help drive their content business. Christopher Heine went in-depth on the local focus over at our sister site, ClickZ. AOL is tackling the difficult problem of providing fresh local content, something that's been a challenge for the space.

Their hyper-local platform is called Patch, and it's expected to reach 30 US cities by year's end. In 2010, they'll launch hundreds more.

AOL is already a player in the web advertising biz. Advertising.com, which AOL acquired in 2004, reaches 9 out of 10 consumers online. They'll need to stay vigilant as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! pursue AOL/Advertising.com's #1 position in the display ad field (as ranked by comScore).

Noticeably missing from AOL's plans for the future is search. They rely on Google to power their search and there's no indication that's changing anytime soon.

Last but not least, AOL's new homepage went live today. If you refresh it a bunch of times, you'll see a different image behind the new logo - or you can select one of your choosing from the row of images at the top.

As you can see, the homepage is 3 columns, something we see at Bing and Yahoo! - and that Google has been experimenting with. It's clearly a portal and there's social media integration.

Now, it's just wait and see. Will a former Google executive take AOL to new glorious heights? Leave your predictions in the comments.