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Mark Hendrickson over at TechCrunch has a great post with the 2007 edition of the TechCrunch deadpool outlining a number of startups that failed to make it in 2007. Some noticeable mentions on the list include:
There is some pretty good stuff here. If you missed it the first time, you may want to check it out now. Just a reminder that we had our own little top posts of the year for 2007 that you may want to check out.
I have always been a big fan of Scandinavia particularly of Sweden and Finland. Living in Canada, the closest I came to visiting these countries was during the annual World Junior Hockey Championships over the Christmas break when these countries hosted the event and I would watch the games on TV. The cities look beautiful, the people seem energetic and happy. I would like to visit Scandinavia some time in the future as I have never been out of North America.
So as I was looking up some Internet usage stats the other day, I came across some data from comScore that indicated the most popular search engines in European countries including Finland and Sweden. Think Google is the most popular search engine in Scandinavia? Well think again. To my surprise Microsoft (MSN and Live Search) appears to be the search engine of choice in Norway and Sweden. Google is the top search engine in Denmark and Finland however. Some other interesting points,
The Netherlands and Scandinavian countries have the highest percentage of their populations using the Internet, ranging from 68 percent to 83 percent.
European users average 16.5 usage days per month. Countries that have usage days below the European average are Russia (11.4 average usage days), Austria (12.0), Italy (12.9), Ireland (13.0), Portugal (13.4), Norway (14.7), Denmark (14.7), Switzerland (15.1), Belgium (15.5) and Finland (16.4).
The average Swedish user views 4,019 pages per month and views more pages than any other country – 51 percent above the European average of 2,662 pages per month.
Pan-European and US Breakdown of Online Audiences, age 15+*
In case you missed it. ComScore released their latest search engine marker share numbers for November 2007. Pretty much status quo from recent months with Google leading the pack with a near 59% market share in the US. Facebook
comScore Core Search Report* November 2007
Core Search Entity
Share of Searches (%)
Oct-07
Nov-07
Point Change Novt-07 vs. Oct-07
Total Core Search
100.0%
100.0%
0.0
Google Sites
58.4%
58.6%
0.2
Yahoo! Sites
22.8%
22.4%
-0.4
Microsoft Sites
9.8%
9.8%
0.0
Ask Network
4.7%
4.6%
-0.1
Time Warner Network
4.2%
4.5%
0.3
Looking at the Expanded Search Rankings, Google properties led with 7.3 billion searches a 1.9% decrease over the previous month. An interesting note is that Facebook had a drop of nearly 22% in November when compared to October data. As a result of search activity likely related to holiday shopping, eBay and Amazon Sites both experienced an increase for the month with 489 million and 178 million queries, respectively.
November U.S. Expanded Search Rankings
comScore Expanded Search Query Report November 2007 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch 2.0
As 2007, winds to an end, here's a quick review of some of the top search stories for December 2007. It was a great year in search. Check out our two part review of the year in search 2007.
Here is our final "Top Search Stories" list for 2007. Will Google dominate the charts again this month? Let's have a look at our top search-related stories for December 2007.
#7. SES Chicago - the annual Search Engine Strategies Chicago took place in early December. This is the Midwest's leading search marketing conference & expo covering search engine optimization.
#6. Google Updates Webmaster Tools - Google continues to update their Webmaster Tools providing Webmasters some insight with their Content Analysis.
#5. LinkedIn revamps homepage and service offering - LinkedIn announced a number of new features and has revamped their homepage in an attempt to improve the user experience on the network.
#3. PubCon Vegas 2007 takes place - one of the premier search engine and online marketing conferences of the year took place in early December in Las Vegas. This is fast becoming one of the must attend search conferences in the industry.
#2. Yahoo announces more support of page level exclusion tags - in order to give webmasters more flexibility over which pages and documents are crawled and indexed by Yahoo, Yahoo extended their support of page level exclusion tags -- NOINDEX, NOARCHIVE, NOSNIPPET, NOFOLLOW -- to provide additional control for archiving and summarization of any file type.
#1. The investigation by the FTC regarding Google's Deal to Acquire DoubleClick is finally completed. After an eight month investigation it was decided that the proposed acquisition is “Unlikely to Substantially Lessen Competition”.
Well Google did it again topping our charts for another month. It will be interesting to see if they will continue their domination in 2008.
Here in Canada, December 26th is a big day. You see December 26th is known as "Boxing Day" in Canada. This is a day that shoppers go out in search of super deals and bargains from retailers. According to Visa Canada Boxing Day shoppers will curb their spending this year. The credit card company says shoppers plan to spend 29 per cent less today compared to last year's Boxing Day. A move that could cost Canadian retailers more than 1 billion, on what is traditionally one of the busiest retail days of the year. Online shopping for boxing day sales usually begins on December 24th with many retailers such as Future Shop putting items on sale a day or so earlier to entice online purchases.
Boxing Day sales have recently turned into Boxing Week sales when many retail stores sell their Christmas stock and retired model products with clearance-like sales. Some times the savings are just too good to pass up and you will see people line up in the middle of the night, just to ensure they get the "steals of the century".
So a couple of days ago, I went online to search out the best deal for a new LCD TV. I found a number if exceptional deals on Plasma TVs but was looking for an LCD in the 42 - 46" size area. So I did my homework and found the best deal at A&B Sound. I went online to check out their Boxing Day flyer, and found what I was looking for. They had a 47" Phillips LCD (1080P High Defintion) TV for a great price. In fact the price was over $1000 (yes one thousand) dollars cheaper than the regular price. Wow seemed almost too good to be true. So I went back and did some more research on this model. To my surprise, the TV received great reviews. There were some mixed reviews as well as there always are, but all in all the reviews were pretty good. Some of the great features of this TV include:
Full HD LCD display, 1920x1080p
Pixel Plus HD for better details, depth and clarity
2 HDMI inputs for full digital HD connection in one cable
The Philips dynamic contrast enhancer uses video processing and unique dimming backlight technology.
For its price point, this is a really great TV. So I purchased one. The salesman said that they had 14 in stock, I was his eighth sale of the morning for this TV, when I went back two hours later he told me that they sold everyone of them. My online bargain hunting paid off. I saved over $1000 on this TV. I watched Canada's first World Junior Hockey hockey game (another Boxing Day tradition) on the new TV... it was awesome.
We have previously discussed video optimization by providing best practices and tips for video optimization. Heck we've even provided a list of video aggregator and related sites where you can submit video to. So we thought we would add to the video optimization tips and tricks by discussing how you can make use of Video Sitemaps.
Earlier this week the Google Webmaster Tools blog introduced video sitemaps.
In our effort to help users search all the world's public videos, the Google Video team joined the Sitemaps folks to introduce Video Sitemaps—an extension of the Sitemap Protocol that helps make your videos more searchable via Google Video Search. By submitting this video-specific Sitemap in addition to your standard Sitemap, you can specify all the video files on your site, along with relevant metadata.
However video sitemaps can also consist of a sitemap-like page on your site that list videos that you host on your site or on aggregator sites such as YouTube or MetaCafe. Creating a video sitemap page on your site can be a great way to drive traffic to your videos that are available online. So how do you create a video sitemap?
How To Create a Video Sitemap
The first thing that you will need is an inventory of videos. Of course if you have hundreds of videos, you may be better off at simply promoting your own channel on YouTube, Yahoo Video or the like. However if you have a hand-full of videos that you host of your own site a video sitemap may be just what you need.
Create a Normal html Sitemap-type page - this is simply a page like a normal sitemap that links to all of your video clips (that are preferably hosted on your own site.) The URL for your video sitemap could be something like: http://www/yoursite.com/video-sitemap.html
Place Video Thumbnails on the Sitemap - that link to the actual pages that host your video. Similar to what ASK.com does when they show a video clip on a results page. The screenshot here shows a search for "cnn" in ASK video. When you hover over the "thumbnail" the video actually plays. Setting up your video sitemap in a similar manner can entice more user engagement with the videos on your site and may help keep users on your site for a longer time thereby improving your site stickiness.
Include a Well Optimized Title for the video thumbnail - this can double up as a text link to the video that features keyword rich anchor text. This can be a great way to improve your Inbound Linking Quality Score if the video is hosted on your own domain.
Limit your Video Sitemap 6-10 videos per page - Depending on the size of your video clips you may want to add more providing the load time of your Video Sitemap page is not affected.
With online video becoming as popular as it is, you might want to consider adding more video to your own site. The easiest way to organize and direct users to your video content could be through the use of a video sitemap. So while the video sitemaps that we mention here are different than Google Video Sitemaps, youcan see the value of implementing both.
Over at the ASK.com blog, ASK has posted a great review of their major events that took place in 2007. From the launch of ASK 3-D to ASK Eraser, it has been a great year for ASK. They have been aggressive with modifications to their Search Engine Results Page. All in all I'd say it was a successful year in 2007 for the ASK team. ASK 2007: Year in Review. Let's hope that this was the start to some other great innovations from ASK in 2008.
Various reports in the blogosphere have reported that the highly scrutinized deal between Google (GOOG) and DoubleClick has finally been completed as the FTC has "cleared" the path for Google's planned acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. We originally posted the story of Google's planned purchase of DoubleClick back in April, for an estimated $3.1 billion. In fact the story was so big that it made the top 3 of our year end Top Search Stories of 2007.
According to the FTC, after an eight month investigation it was decided that the proposed acquisition is “Unlikely to Substantially Lessen Competition”. The FTC report goes on to say:
Although interested parties have raised concerns about the proposed acquisition’s impact on consumer privacy, the Commission observed that such issues are “not unique to Google and DoubleClick,” and “extend to the entire online advertising marketplace.” The Commissioners further wrote that “as the sole purpose of federal antitrust review of mergers and acquisitions is to identify and remedy transactions that harm competition,” the FTC lacks the legal authority to block the transaction on grounds, or require conditions to this transaction, that do not relate to antitrust. Adding, however, that it takes consumer privacy issues very seriously, the Commission cross-referenced its release of a set of proposed behavioral marketing principles that were also announced today.
According to the evidence presented,
because the evidence failed to show that DoubleClick has market power in the third party ad serving markets, it is unlikely that Google could effectively foreclose competition in the related ad intermediation market following the acquisition. The evidence also showed that it was unlikely that Google could manipulate DoubleClick’s third-party ad serving products in a way that would competitively disadvantage Google’s competitors in the ad intermediation market.
The other day we posted the first half of what we thought were some notable stories from the World of Search and Search Engines in 2007. Will 2008 be a slower year in Search? I doubt it, I think that we are going to see some great innovations from the major search engines... and not just from Google (GOOG). Microsoft (MSFT) has taken some small steps to improve their search offering and I would expect this to continue. Yahoo (YHOO) has been quiet of late having survived a year that saw a number of changes in their personnel. I would expect them to rebound nicely in 2008 as well. ASK (IACI) continues to be the little search engine that could and has created the best SERP (Search Engine Results Page) in the business. The future of search is looking bright in 2008.
Speaking of the future of search, Enquiro held a recent Webinar with a who's who in the search industry and usability with the topic of discussion being Search in 2010. View our webinar on the Future of Search, by visiting our research site over at Enquiro Research. For those interested, the total webinar is 60 min long (but worth it).
Jumping back to 2007 for a second, here are the remaining topics that we thought were of most importance in the Search World during 2007.
#15. Yahoo Tops Google in Satisfaction Survey - According to a University of Michigan customer satisfaction survey, Yahoo has a 79% consumer satisfaction rate over Google's 78% consumer satisfaction. Could this be a sign of things to come? Unlikely as Yahoo! continued to go through corporate restructuring throughout 2007.
#14. Google Guys Enter Forbes Richest American List- Forbes released their richest Americans list and the Google Guys are at number 5 and number six with an estimated worth of $18.5 billion each. This shows how these two pioneers became very wealthy with a simple concept (based on complex algorithms) in under nine years. The success of Google has been astonishing.
#13. Alibaba Raises $1.5 Billion in the second biggest IPO sales of an Internet company since Google - Yahoo! Inc. has about a 40 percent stake in parent Alibaba.com Corp. Yahoo shares added 24 percent in October based on optimism about gains from the IPO. According to Bloomberg, the final IPO price values the company at almost 54 times 2008 earnings before stock-based compensation for its employees.
#12. Pubcon Vegas 2007 - many feel that this conference from Webmaster World was one of the best in 2007. We tend to agree that is why it is in the #11 spot on our year end chart.
#11. Rumors of Microsoft Building a New Search Engine – Rumors have it that Microsoft has gathered a team of twenty or more “rock star” developers who’ve been tasked at building their next generation search engine.
#10. Microsoft Buys 1.6% Share in Facebook for $240 million - the deal indicated that the valuation of Facebook is somewhere in the ballpark of $15 billion. Are you for real? A kid who was born in 1984 has a social network worth $15 billion... isn't the Internet a wonderful thing? Mark Zuckerberg is probably the nation's richest man under 25.
#9. Google Continues to Update Product Offerings - throughout 2007, there was one area in which Google dominated their competition. Improvements to their existing products. They continued to update Google Analytics by Adding New Features including adWords integration and clickable URLs. They continued with an update in April, where Google Webmaster Tools was improved to allow more insight into anchor text and again in September as Google Updates Webmaster Tools Again.
#7. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel steps down; Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang steps in as new CEO of Yahoo – you knew something was up at Yahoo’s Annual Shareholder’s Meeting when Terry Semel was questioned (in essence) as to if he still wanted his job.He obviously was unable to sell them on that fact that he wanted to remain in his position as he stepped down in June as the CEO of Yahoo.
#6. Yahoo Updates Search Offering with Search Assist - The Search Assist feature released by Yahoo is designed to better understand user intent and get consumers to the results they are looking for in one search. This is very cool as we are strong believers that the focus on the user experience should always be what the engines work towards. Great job by the Yahoo Search team. This was a huge announcement for Yahoo as the search Assist feature is very cool.
#5. Google's Big Announcement about Android and the Open Handset Alliance - Many were awaiting word of Google's Phone Project. Well Google did not announce the birth of the gPhone instead they announced the launch of Android a new operating system for mobile phones that Google envisions as being the foundation for many new phones that will create a new experience for users of mobile phones with new applications and capabilities.
#4. Microsoft Completes Buyout of aQuantive - Microsoft (MSFT) announced that they had completed their acquisition of the digital marketing / ad firm that they had been pursuing for a number of weeks. Microsoft closed out a $6 billion buyout of aQuantive (AQNT) in August of 2007.
#3. Google's purchase of ad firm DoubleClick in it's largest to-date acquisition for an estimated 3.1 billion dollars. With the move Google may account for close to 80 percent of the ads served up on the Internet. The deal continues to be scrutinized as recent as this week a s two technology interest groups on Tuesday reiterated their call for a privacy investigation into the proposed merger of Google and DoubleClick, and threatened to sue the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over possible conflicts of interest surrounding the agency's chairman and her involvement with a law firm representing DoubleClick's European interests.
#2. ASK.com re-launches their search engine with a focus on user experience, blended search results and personalization.ASK’s new SERP interface provides people with a faster, easier, and richer search experience.When ASK began testing their new ASK X interface last December, we thought that it was a prelude to the personalization of search. ASK emerges in 2007 as having the best Search Engine Results page in the business. ASK has been by far the most aggressive engine when it comes to modifying the experience on their results page. So much so that Google has been recently testing slight tweaks to their results pages that are in the vain of ASK's SERP.
#1. Google Unveils Universal Search Results- Google was the first of the major search engines to incorporate blended search results into their main index of results. From images, books and blog posts to news articles and video, the landscape of the search results in Google moved away from traditional blue text links that we are all accustomed to. Universal search or blended search results will play a key role in the future as to how users are served up results. If you opt in to My Stuff in ASK, or iGoogle with Google, you can expect universal search results to show up adding more personalization to your user experience with a search engine. The biggest news of 2007 was personalization with Google's Universal search being a stepping stone to a better, more personalized experience with Google.
Last year we featured a two part series on the top search stories of 2006. The search engine market is a busy one with the one constant being change. The fact is the major players in the search engines continue to focus on innovation towards a better product and improved user experience. With that we thought we would countdown some of the top search engine related stories of 2007.
#27. Google's launch of Web History in the next step towards the personalization of Search. This didn't receive much press but it should have. Google is moving towards personalization of search quicker than most. Behavioural targeting is part of how Google will move more aggressively towards personalization on more types of searches as they will impact more results.
#26. ASK. com joins the "Big 3" and announces support of “autodiscovery” of Sitemaps. The autodiscovery process allows webmasters to specify the location of their Sitemaps within their robots.txt file, eliminating the need to submit sitemaps to each search engine separately.
#25. Microsoft / Yahoo Merger Rumors - one week they are going to form a partnership, another week Microsoft is going to purchase Yahoo, the next week there was never any deal in place.
#24. Citysearch is relaunched with updated look and new features. The updated version of Citysearch now offers recommendations or personalized suggestions based on past search behavior.
#23. Google confirming Acquisition of Feedburner – FeedBurner, a Chicago-based company, provides media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. Its Web-based tools, including an extensive feed and blog advertising network, help publishers promote, deliver, and monetize their content on the Web.More on Google acquiring Feedburner.
#22. Google Releases Actual Click Fraud Data - For the first time, Google has released some hard numbers regarding click fraud. Are they what you expected?
#21. ASK release details about ASK Eraser - ASK Eraser is a new product that will allow users to control their search history. ASK Eraser will in fact allow the user to erase their search history if they so choose. SEO-Space was one of the first sources to break the story.
#20. The inaugural Search Marketing Expo is held in Seattle, WA. – this is Danny Sullivan and his team’s new search marketing conference as he steps away from Incisive’s Search Engine Strategies shows that have dominated the industry over the past few years.The SMX show was considered a success and looks to improve as they progress.For a wrap of the event visit Search Engine Land.
#19. Facebook announces the launch of Facebook Ads - According to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Ads are essentially an ad platform for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want.
#16. Google Dominates Worldwide Search Engine Usage - How long will we continue to hear this? According to comScore data, Google continues to dominate as the search engine of choice for users around the globe. Yet Baidu is the number one engine in China. Rest assured Google will remain the global leader in search for some time.
We will post the second half of the results later this week.
One thing that I am passionate about is simplicity. Sounds so simple huh? What I mean by this, is that it is the simple things in life that appear to make the biggest difference. Whether you are talking business strategy, tactical strategy, everyday communication, writing a song, building a house, creating a website, or performing SEO. The basis for each of these things is simplicity and basic fundamentals. When John Lennon wrote the song "Imagine", it was with a simple but amazing lyric. When Chuck Berry, one of the world's greatest poets wrote Johnny B. Goode and all of his other amazing songs, he wrote simple but catchy lyrics and guitar riffs. When Wayne Gretzky played hockey, he followed a simple philosophy, don't go to where the puck is or has been, go to where the puck will be. When Google created a Search Engine Results Page and redefined online advertising they did it with a simple white results page with blue text links. The point that I am trying to make is that whether we admit to it or not, we respond to simplicity. K.I.S.S --> Keep It Simple Stupid.
When it comes to SEO and people ask me for leading edge online marketing strategies for Web 2.0 and such I tell them one thing. "Take care of the fundamentals first." I am big on SEO fundamentals and basic SEO. Why? Because you would not believe how may people, businesses and websites overlook this fact. Quite often a prospect will come to us and say that they need a social media marketing strategy or need a dynamic online marketing strategy with all of the <insert latest SEO trend here> for more return from their website. Yet you take one look at their site and there are no optimized or unique title tags on their pages, they have less than 50 pages indexed in the major engines, their URLs are a mile long and they have 6 links to their homepage. They haven't taken care of the SEO fundamentals such as basic optimization, content development, URL structure and linking inventories. Perhaps the greatest advice anyone can give to someone looking for online marketing is to ensure that the basics are covered. A recent WebPro News interview with Google's Matt Cutt's and Search Engine Land's featured editor, Vanessa Fox illustrate the same thing about making sure you take care of the fundamentals first when it comes to marketing your site. Which leads me to the actual point of this post.
I need to give props up to Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz. I'm not sure if he had writer's block, but he has decided to put together a series of posts on "Re-Writing the Beginner's Guide to SEO". Actually Rand explains his reasoning here. He has presented some great information in the first four parts of the series which is broken down like this:
Part I: How Search Engines Operate
Crawling & Indexing the Web
Retrieval & Rankings
How Search Marketers Study & Learn from Algorithms & Patent Applications
Part four really contains some critical information that I find, for whatever reason, many webmasters and site owner's overlook. Items such as:
Indexable Content - Making your content available to the search engines. As Rand points out, your content must be in HTML text content. Images, Flash files, Java applets, and other non-text content is virtually invisible to search engine spiders, despite advances in crawling technology.
Crawlable Link Structures - You need to allow search engine spiders to be able to browse the pathways of a website - in order to find all of the pages on a website. Here is a big mistake that we often come across with clients. Using Javascript for links. If you use Javascript for links, you may find that search engines either do not crawl or give very little weight to the links embedded within. Standard HTML links should replace Javascript (or accompany it) on any page where you'd like spiders to crawl.
Great post by Rand as this is great information for people looking to improve the search engine friendliness of the site.
Video optimization is one of the great ways to get your site into blended search results such as Google Universal Search results. The one thing to keep in mind is to optimize your videos so that they will be relevant to a user's query. If you have a video on eye tracking make sure that after you submit your video it is optimized and tagged for "eye tracking" and other eye -tracking related phrases.
So then that brings us to the next question. Where Should I Submit my Videos? Well currently some of our favorite video aggregator sites to submit to are:
YouTube - one of the most popular online video destinations out there right now.
Meta Cafe - Another popular video sharing site, where it is extremely easy to submit video to.
Yahoo! Video - as Yahoo begins to display more blended search results, having optimized video in Yahoo may prove beneficial.
Veoh.com- Veoh.com is an advanced video hosting and sharing site with over 70,000 content publishers.
But guess what there are a ton of other video aggregator sites to submit to. With that here is the definitive list of Ultimate video sites as presented by SEO-Space.
Ultimate List of Video Sites (listed in random order)
Blinkx - the World's largest video search engine where you can search over 18 million hours of video from sites like Google Video, YouTube, MySpace, MetaCafe, and more.
There you have it 70 video related sites that you may want to check out. Now we're not saying that as a business you need to submit your videos to each and everyone of these sites. However if there is a relevant resource for your business, you may want to consider uploading and optimizing your video for that resource. Video is simply another great tool that you can use to intercept your target market and create a buzz about your brand.
Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has made an update to the SEO Book Keyword Tool. With assistance from Wordtracker, the free keyword research tool from SEO Book now includes the following:
Is driven off the Wordtracker keyword suggestion tool. If you sign up for a Wordtracker account they offer many additional keyword research features and tools that are lacking in our basic keyword tool.
Offers rough suggested monthly search volumes by market for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
Links the search volumes to the related global search results.
Provides links to price estimate tools from Google AdWords. That Google AdWords tool shows the necessary bid to rank #1 for 85% of queries, and roughly how much traffic you could expect AdWords to send you based on that bid price and ad position.
Links to Google Trends, Google Suggest, Google Synonyms, Yahoo! Suggest, and Keyword Discovery keyword research results.
Links to various vertical databases like Topix.net, Google Blogsearch, and Del.icio.us to let you know if people are talking about your topic and what types of resources they are referencing.
For a free tool it's not bad. The biggest problem with all keyword tools is the inaccurate search volume numbers that are produced. As pointed out on the SEO Book site,
Tools can only provide helpful information and estimates. Don't let tools make your mind up for you! Don't expect precise quantitative analysis from keyword tools. Use tools for qualitative and relative analysis.
As Vanessa Fox reported yesterday, Google has updated their Webmaster Tools product. There were two main updates that Google has launched which include:
Content Analysis - the section lists issues that Google may have extracting content from pages of the site. This section includes links to the specific pages in question. According to the Help information on this: "... the goal (of content analysis) is to help identify ways to improve the site for visitors, but in many cases, these issues cause problems in the search result display as well. Fix these things, and your page might be a more compelling result for searchers to click on. In addition, Google goes on to say:
The Content Analysis page shows you potential issues Google found when crawling and indexing your site. We recommend that you review this report regularly to identify changes that potentially increase your rankings in Google search results pages while providing a better experience for your readers.
Data that may be included on this page includes:
Title problems: Potential problems with the title tag on your pages, such as missing or repeated page titles. Meta description problems: Potential problems with missing, duplicate, or otherwise problematic meta descriptions. Non-indexable content: Pages containing non-indexable content, such as Flash files, video, or images.
To see the Content Analysis page:
Sign into Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account. On the Dashboard, click the site you want. Click Diagnostics, and then click Content analysis.
Sitemap Details Page - If you've submitted a Sitemap, you'll be happy when you see the additional information in Webmaster Tools revealing how your Sitemap was processed. You can find this information on the newly available Sitemap Details page which (along with information that was previously provided for each of your Sitemaps) shows you the number of the pages from your Sitemap that were indexed.
See the Google Webmaster Tools Blog for more detail on the newly added features to Google Webmaster Tools. To see Vanessa's detailed review of the new features, visit Search Engine Land.
TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft has reported purchased Multimap for $50 million. Multimap is a Global mapping service including street maps of Europe, North America and Australia. According to TechCrunch:
Mapping is a key app for any Web 2.0 player, and will become even more important as applications move to mobile devices. Today Microsoft strengthened its hand in the mapping game by buying UK-based Multimap, which is the second-most popular Web-based mapping service in the UK (between Google Maps and Google Earth). The Times of Londonreports that Microsoft paid $50 million for the tech company, half of which went to founder Sean Phelan.
About Multimap
Multimap is one of the world’s leading providers of online mapping and location-based services. Our company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more businesses and consumers than any other supplier in Europe.
Here's a another post of interest. Sharad Verma of Yahoo! Search gave a quick review of this year's WebmasterWorld conference in Las Vegas. Of particular note was mention of Enquiro's own Gord Hotchkiss and his debate with Greg Boser on the meaning and significance of universal search, particularly with regard to which experience is better.
There was mention of one of the key sessions on SEO and the Big Search. There was some interesting points made by Melanie Mitchell from AOL where she stated:
You can't ignore search. You need people from the top to support you (they have to listen to you). If there's no accountability, there's no success. Be transparent with the data. You have to be willing to do what it takes. It's tough but it pays off. Those who do so become hereoes and so will you.
There was a lot of discussion on social media and how it is impacting and changing our culture, and impacting the way in which SEO can and should be done. As social media continues to evolve and penetrate the search and marketing industry, I anticipate that optimizing for it will be an increasingly critically component of the SEO mix.
Pubcon continues to be one of the best conferences in the industry.
I came across this post and thought that it was interesting. On the particular query mentioned in the post Google included a video on the right rail similar to what ASK does with their dynamic results pages. It is somewhat interesting that Google is testing this out. Are they simply looking to spruce up their results page? Or are they looking to drive eyeballs to the right rail in hope of generating more clicks on the sponsored ads that appear on the right side of a Google search results page?
Is Google simply trying to move Onebox results to the right side of their SERP? Well according to this post, that may just be the case. Many of the engines often experiment with the design of their results page. Yahoo has been known test new look versions of their homepage and search results as well. In this case I would say that Google is doing the same. This is just a random test. Too bad, because I think that Google should improve their search results page.
As I write this, we are completing an exclusive webinar on Search 2010. The webinar featured an extremely respected group of individuals who are experts on usability and search. From Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro to Marissa Mayer from Google to Daniel Read of ASK.com and usability guru Jakob Nielsen, the event was sure to be a good one.
This webinar, Search: 2010 is the follow up to a white paper Enquiro released this past summer. This is where we talked to the people who have literally defined the search experience as we know it:
Marissa Mayer- VP, Search Products and User Experience, Google Larry Cornett- VP, Search Experience, Yahoo Justin Osmer- Senior Product Manager, Live Search, Microsoft Daniel Read– Senior VP of Site Product Management and User Experience, ASK Michael Ferguson(unable to participate in Webinar) - Senior User Experience Analyst, Ask
We also talked to some of the best known industry observers to get their thoughts
Jakob Nielsen- User Advocate and Principal of Nielsen Norman Group Chris Sherman- Executive Editor, Search Engine Land Greg Sterling- Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence. Danny Sullivan(unable to participate in Webinar) - Chief Content Officer, Search Engine Land
There was a lot of discussion on blended search with Daniel Read from ASK.com suggesting that you can expect to see more experimentation in this area. ASK in my opinion has the greatest Search Engine Results Page out there.
Larry Cornett from Yahoo mentioned that they will be working on understanding user intent and that along with contextual relevance is where search is heading. Jakob Nielsen went on to suggest that you can expect to see mobile search become even bigger in the next year and upcoming months. Chris Sherman also echoed the sentiment that the engines will work to gain a better understanding of user intent as they try to serve up the best search results possible.
Greg Sterling mentioned that we can expect to see more personalization and more rich content within the search results.
In terms of the look of the search landscape, we all know that ASK.com has been the most aggressive, while Google has been the least aggressive. This may be due to the fact that ASK is still trying to gain market share in the search space which is currently dominated by Google (GOOG).
Marissa did mention that Google is working on what she called "snippets" to their SERP. Marissa also made a great comment when she mentioned that she has not seen any real innovation in matching user's keywords to user intent as she stated that "... user intent is far more elusive...".
I just attended a Webinar on Web 2.0 for the Enterprise. The Webinar presented by the American Marketing Association and RedDot Solutions discussed new technologies and how they can be leveraged in the Web 2.0 World and how these new technologies enable users the flexibility to access the information only when they want it.
Summary of the Webinar
As online experience expectations rise, Web 2.0 technologies are becoming mainstream on the Web. Blogs, wikis and RSS feeds are gaining popularity as a way to engage and persuade the growing online audience. Figuring out the best way to communicate to your various site visitors can be challenging but with Web 2.0, new experiences can be delivered to provide a participative environment that will generate increased traffic and repeat visitors.
Imagine the possibilities of a Web 2.0 driven Web experience.
Face-lift your existing site with AJAX, RSS, Personas
Attract power users with exposed content through MashUps and Wikis
Optimize the experience with analytical driven content and tagging
Deliver a community with Blogs and Forums
What I liked about the webinar was they discussed a little about the evolution of Web 2.0 and the impact on organizations. There was discussion as to how static websites are beginning to adopt dynamic elements through things such as AJAX, syndication of content through RSS, social tagging and the like. Dynamic rendering of Rich Media provides a clean look and intuitive navigation. Here is a little more of what was discussed:
When delivering content, the options available are not restricted just to the Web. Think mobile marketing and applications for things like iPhones. Some of the benefits of Web 2.0 mentioned in the webinar included:
Offestting lead generation costs
increased Web traffic
database management replaced by wikis
Improved SEO rankings (Universal Search Results)
Visitors can interact with your site looking for general information, further research, or are looking to be persuaded to take an action. The next generation of the Web will be:
Multi Channel
Highly contextrual user experience
Innovation is moving from a top down to an outside-in model. Social computing means attracting outside influencers where the value is shifting from ownership to experience. In addition control is moving from institutions and marketers to influential communities and destinations (Facebook).
When setting up your website, focus on what the visitor really cares about. Collect feedback and address success/failures in an honest manner. Transparency can be a great thing.
Finding a way to effectively embrace Web 2.0
Ask yourself, how can you leverage Web 2.0 in a manner that makes sense for your business? You might want to begin with a smaller section of your site. Start with small things such as setting up RSS feeds.
Wikis - initially use them internally. Allows people to share knowledge (ie sales teams)
AJAX - this is more of an IT item that can improve the user experience with your site
Ratings - allow users to rate items on your website. Is this whitepaper of benefit to me?
Mashups - another IT resource. Taking information that was separate and combining the information together. Help provide all of the information that the user may be looking for whether it's inventory levels, price comparisons etc.
Blogs - the least adopted Web 2.0 item (due to the overhead associated (legal issues etc.) is use of blogs. Blogs give you a direct connection to the users looking for that information. Blogging can engage the user like never before.
Instant Messaging - some companies are adopting this to provide customer service right around the clock. Instant access to customers and employees.
The value of Web 2.0 when combined has a better return on investment. ROI has about a 6-9 month residual. It does take time to see the return. Start off with small steps. Begin with a minor "facelift" to your website (AJAX, RSS). Attract power users with exposed content (more interactivity, Mashups, internal wikis etc.). Optimize relevancy of your content (analytical driven content, tagging). Make use of community driven content with things such as blogs, wikis and ratings. Let the users help you. Consider user driven creation of content.
Keep in mind that first impressions counts. Don't throw up a blog just for the sake of blogging. Take your time with understanding the Web 2.0 items that will work for you. Web 2.0 can be useful when incorporated for usability but try to find a balance with regards to SEO and the user experience.
As numerous businesses and users flock to Facebook to do business, other social networks are having to improve their offerings. Case in point LinkedIn has announced a number of new features and has revamped their homepage in an attempt to improve the user experience on the network. Some of the new features of the redesigned homepage include:
Company News - read the most relevant news articles about your company, your industry, and your competitors through a Company News feed ranked by relevance and popularity within your company network.
Customizable Modules - the homepage has also been redesigned to become your professional dashboard where you can view the most important information you need as a professional. For now, you can add any of the following three modules: People, Jobs, and Answers. You can drag and drop new modules as you see fit.
Network Updates - includes the ability to message your connections on LinkedIn directly without having to open up your email client. In addition, your network updates are arranged chronologically to make it easier for you to understand what it is that your peers and colleagues are up to.
I like a lot of the updates that LinkedIn has implemented. For more information on LinkedIn visit the LinkedIn Blog. To add me as a connection on LinkedIn please go to my profile page.
Well as the holiday season rolls in, I thought that I would compile a list of the top 10 things to get a search marketer this season. Well I guess this is my dream list of "search-related" items that I'd like to receive this holiday season. So without further adieu here are the top 10 things to get your favorite search engine marketer this holiday season.
Top 10 Things to Get Your Favorite Search Marketer
#9. An all access pass to SMX West - more than 50 search marketing sessions over three days in late February.
#8. A $250 gift certificate at the Google Store - I'd like a Recycled Avalanche Fleece size large. (Of course if anyone from Google is reading this .... hint hint...)
#6. 1 Press Pass to SES New York - Search Engine Strategies New York would be a great show to attend. I personally have never been to the show... frankly I've never been to the East coast, so a press pass to SES would be a great gift.
#5. Apple iPhone (for use in Canada) - this is by far the coolest phone out there. Just not available in an affordable manner in Canada as of yet.
#4. A Facebook T-Shirt- just to show the world how geeky you are.
#3. 1 year subscription to Wired - we've discussed the Wired subscriptions previously. Great magazine, but I'll repeat what I mentioned in a previous post: "Heck I wanted to subscribe to Wired magazine but the rate for 12 issues in Canada is $40.00. The US rate is 12 issues for $10.00. (or 24 issues for $20). Shipping costs aside, would someone at Wired care to explain why the cost for Canadians is four times that of our friends to the south?"
#2. ASK Laptop BackPack - I know they exist, I've seen them. They look pretty cool. How can I get one of these? If anyone from ASK.com happens to read this post...
#1. 10 Shares of Google (GOOG) Stock - aw man I still kick myself for not buying any at $100/share. I would love to have just one share just to say that I do.
There you have it. Get something for the search enthusiast in your life.
Anyone who understands search and search engines should understand that search engines love content. The cliche about Content being King still holds true even as we enter 2008. Sure things like Google's Universal Search have changed what we see in search results, but whether it's through video. images, press releases, articles, blog posts or new web pages content is what the search engines are looking for.
It's not secret that the better your content is, the better your search engine rankings will be. It only makes sense that if you strive to create informative and useful content, someone out there is going to appreciate it. It might be the engines, it might be the blogger who links back to your content or most importantly it might be a potential customer who is in need of your product our service.
So why then is it so hard to get site owner's to develop content for their websites? Content is the basis for your website. It's why people come to your site. With the dynamic atmosphere of the Internet, content is extremely important for you to promote your business, your brand or your name. Here are five reasons why I think that site owners are reluctant to develop content:
They Simply Don't Have the Resources - Not Everyone has a team of content writers who they can turn to, to push out informative, useful content.
They Don't Know What to Write About - quite often, some site owners lack the creativity to generate new content for their websites.
They Do Not Have a System to Implement the Content - due to issues with content management systems, IT teams, implementation of content can be difficult to manage for some webmasters.
They Are Worried About Giving Away Too Much Information - in the hyper competitive online space, "giving away the farm" can mean that sensitive information can spread quickly. Offering up too much content for the user can mean that your competition can view this information as well.
They Do Not Understand the Importance of Content as it Pertainsto Search - Ask yourself the question, "How Can I Expect the Search Engines to Rank Me #1 for < insert key phrase here > if my site does not contain any content about < insert key phrase here >? Search results are based on hundreds of factors. More importantly, the search engines are working towards ranking the sites or pages that are most authoritative for a specific query. It's all about relevancy. If I write a page about widget marketing, it better be about widget marketing and not something else that is irrelevant to users looking for information on widget marketing.
From an SEO point of view, content is important as it allows you to:
Improve Keyword Density Throughout your site
Develop a common theme throughout your site
Establish authority for your site
Provide useful information for others to link to (ie. link bait)
Provide product reviews, product comparisons, industry news and the like so that users do not have to visit your competitor's sites to find this information. (Present the users the information that they are seeking.)
Promote Your Brand
If content was not that important, you wouldn't see sites like the New York Times working so hard to get it out there. Content provides information and information is what people seek when they search.
Just a quick note of thanks to Evan Carmichael for including one of our posts on their list of the Top 50 SEO Posts of 2007. Apparently our post on "37 Things to Keep in Mind When Writing Web Content" was appreciated by a number of folks out there. We're in some good company so we are thankful for the mention.
To view the complete list of their Top 50 SEO Posts of 2007 click here. There are some great posts listed including posts by Robert Scoble, Matt Cutts, Lee Odden and Andy Beard just to name a few.
Time for a fun post... I'm driving to Vancouver with a couple of friends to go see Van Halen tonight. The show has been getting great reviews. Van Halen with David Lee Roth is a hot ticket... so hot in fact that Rolling Stone came calling wanting to do a story on the band and put them on the cover of the magazine. Van Halen said no chance.... and that's why this band rocks. They don't conform to industry pressure. Van Halen is the consummate rock band.
So with that we thought that we would countdown our top 20 Favorite Van Halen Tracks from the David Lee Roth Era.
Top 20 Van Halen Tracks (with DLR)
#20. Take Your Whiskey Home - Women & Children First #19. So This is Love - Fair Warning #18. Bottoms Up - Van Halen II #17. Top Jimmy - 1984 #16. Dancing in the Streets - Diver Down #15. Hot For Teacher - 1984 #14. Pretty Woman - Diver Down #13. Feel Your Love Tonight - Van Halen #12. I'll Wait - 1984 #11. Drop Dead Legs - 1984 #10. Ice Cream Man - Van Halen #9. Beautiful Girls - Van Halen II #8. Somebody Get Me a Doctor - Van Halen II #7. Jamie's Cryin' - Van Halen #6. Running With the Devil - Van Halen #5. Unchained - Fair Warning #4. Dance the Night Away - Van Halen II #3. Ain't Talkin 'Bout Love - Van Halen #2. Panama - 1984 #1. Jump - 1984
Chris Copeland has a great post over at Media Post's Search Insider on "Why Google Isn't New Coke -- But Microsoft and Yahoo May Be Pepsi". My favorite quote from the piece: "Say what you want about Ask.com -- but at least the company embraced its underdog role and came to the market with something that is different and created an identity." Here it is in it's entirety:
Why Google Isn't New Coke -- But Microsoft And Yahoo May Be Pepsi by Chris Copeland, Tuesday, December 4, 2007
ONE OF THE GREAT PRODUCT launches of the late 20th century and one of the greatest product failures of all time was New Coke. Launched as a counter to the rise in popularity of the Pepsi Challenge, the new formula of Coke was designed to be a sweeter version of the long-standing category leader.
In his book "Blink," Malcolm Gladwell chronicles the advent of New Coke. Long since the industry leader, Coke found itself in a dog fight in the '80s for market loyalty with Pepsi. Then came the Pepsi Challenge where people were given two samples to try and always seemed to pick Pepsi. Leaders at Coke decided to outdo Pepsi with a new creation called New Coke. Designed to win in taste tests (which it did), the product turned into a disaster when Coke loyalists rose up against the new drink. The reason? Old Coke was preferred over both Pepsi and New Coke in home consumption tests versus taste tests. In fact, Coke was never in jeopardy from Pepsi because while Pepsi gave testers a quick fix due to its composition, over the course of a full can most favored the Original Coke taste.
I was reminded of this part of the book two weeks ago as I assembled with 80 other search specialists from 20 countries within the Outrider search network. Over the course of two days, we heard a variety of search points of views from internal constituents as well as a presentation from each of the Big 3 engines. Three key points struck me as they focused their discussions on the search engine aspect of their business.
Searchers are not the marrying kind. Everyone talks about the big leads Google has in all markets (except China and a few select locations). But few talk about the lack of dedication searchers tend to show to any one engine. Research from Compete.com shows that over one quarter of all Google searchers will go elsewhere for some of their search activity. Yahoo holds exclusivity of searches for less than half of its audience, while MSN barely tops 25% of its users who are willing to go steady.
A 2006 study conducted by a French professor showed across 14 categories that Yahoo and Google have virtually the same satisfaction scores, and no engine scored above-average in the study. Yet Yahoo and MSN seem committed to expanding the base, rearranging the SERP and focusing on new applications and extensions of its portal in an effort to diversify how people use search and get to it. The logical question would seem to be, if the experience is marginal at best and searchers are willing to date on the side given the right relevant information, why not build destinations and expertise in specific areas that could position you as a leader, not a pack player?
Putting the consumer first is a starting point, not a destination. One of the scariest revelations came when an audience member asked Microsoft what exactly they intended to do to increase market share. Now, this was after a 30-minute presentation about what Microsoft was rolling out that would enhance search results. All of the enhancements were either in the space today (just not on Live Search) or were not what you would call a game changer. The response from Microsoft: "We are focusing on the consumer." The audience was so dumbfounded that no more questions were asked. In sports we call that invoking the "mercy rule." Clearly Microsoft, and Yahoo to a lesser extent, mean well, but here are companies in a clear trail position and their big ideas seem to be to play around the edges. Say what you want about Ask.com -- but at least the company embraced its underdog role and came to the market with something that is different and created an identity.
Search needs Microsoft and Yahoo to succeed, not Google to fail. Everybody seems intent on finding the "Google Killer." What search really needs is for Yahoo and Microsoft to rise to the challenge and put out differentiating and attractive platforms. Google holds over 90% market share in some European countries and unless other players give consumers good reasons to shift their searching behavior, then they likely won't. Better maps and integration with video and images are nice, but a year from now if every engine isn't integrating as many digital assets from as many sources as possible, wouldn't we all be extremely disappointed?
When you watch all the players in the space, you would think that Google had the only secret sauce that would sell, and it was better to copy its approach than create a new vision of search results. In 1995, Netscape was the dominant browser, only to be virtually wiped off the map in less than three years by Microsoft IE. Did everyone else get out of the browser business? Of course not. Firefox and others came along and through their streamlined nature, savvy partnerships and highly flexible and customized features created a distinct market for themselves. It is not a big market (think Ask.com size), but it is a loyal, going-steady-and-not-fooling-around type market.
So, why not in search? If you are Microsoft, why not embrace the communities of developers with the ability to better integrate with your Live Search product to create a more targeted and unique platform? Or Yahoo, why not embrace some of the tenants of Google's Open Social movement into search? Use the numerous assets within the social space and the endless content within the network to create a personalized network versus the current status quo.
The desktop search space race is virtually dead. No one seems to want to challenge the Google model, with Yahoo and others touting the race in Mobile, Local and other platforms. But market share and familiarity can do wonders to help Google capture success in those spaces. It is time for Yahoo and Microsoft to decide how they want to be viewed -- as white-labeled knock-offs or industry leaders. They could be, as Pepsi once claimed, the choice of a new generation, or they can keep their formula so similar to the perceived leader that they are no better off than New Coke.
Chris Copeland is senior partner/managing director for Outrider, a search marketing firm headquartered in St. Louis. Contact him at Chris.Copeland@outrider.com.
I've been asked by a number of people for tips on using and submitting XML sitemaps to the search engines. So I thought that I would revisit XML sitemaps and the importance of them for site owners and webmasters.
What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site, along with additional information about each URL. XML sitemaps give Google and other search engines important information about your website, including things such as:
A complete list of all URLs on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by the search engine's normal crawling process (for example, non-text pages or URLs containing several parameters.)
How often the pages on your site change. For example, you might update your product page daily, but update your "About Me" page only once every few months.
The date each page was last modified. - Remember the search engines like fresh content.
The relative importance of pages on your site. For example as mentioned by Google via Webmaster Tools, your home page might have a relative importance of 1.0, category pages have an importance of 0.8, and individual blog entries or product pages have an importance of 0.5. This priority ranking only indicates the importance of a particular URL relative to other URLs on your site, and doesn't impact the ranking of your pages in search results
Google Webmaster Tools has a ton of great information on XML sitemaps including how to create them, proper XML sitemap protocol and how to submit them to Google. The thing with XML sitemaps is that they're not just for Google anymore. The sitemaps can benefit your site by helping the search engine cralwers find your web pages in a more efficient manner.
XML sitemaps are particularly helpful if:
Your site has dynamic content.
Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by search engine spiders such as Slurp, Googlebot or MSNbot during the crawl process - for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or Flash.
Your site is new and has few links to it.
Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.
General Guideline for XML Sitemap Creation
Here are some helpful tips to consider when creating your XML sitemaps.
Compile a list of your existing site URLs
Be sure to include URLs that are deep within your site’s folder structure as these are often the pages that the search engine spiders have trouble crawling
A sitemap can contain a list of URLs or a list of sitemaps
If your Sitemap contains a list of other sitemaps, you should save it as a sitemap index file and use the XML format provided for that file type. A sitemap index file cannot list more than 1,000 sitemaps.
A sitemap file can contain no more than 50,000 URLs and be no larger than 10MB when uncompressed. If your sitemap is larger than this, break it into several smaller sitemaps.
Specify all URLs using the same syntax. For instance, if you specify your site location as http://www.example.com/, your URL list should not contain URLs that begin with http://example.com/. And if you specify your site location as http://example.com/, your URL list should not contain URLs that begin with http://www.example.com/
Do not include session IDs in URLs.
The sitemap can contain only ASCII characters. It can't contain upper ASCII characters or certain control codes or special characters such as * and {}. If your sitemap URL contains these characters, you'll receive an error when you try to add it.
Work with the search engines to ensure that your content is made available to those who are searching to find your content via the Web.
I love these things.... Yahoo has released their report on the top trends in search for 2007. The data is based on billions of searches conducted via Yahoo Search and cover everything from environmental issues, political searches, economic concerns, celebrity searches (yawn) and technological innovations. To come up with the Top Trends of 2007, Yahoo analyzed search queries based on a number of factors, including absolute volume and growth versus previous periods, to see which themes and trends bubble to the surface. In essence these were the buzzwords being search for in Yahoo in 2007.
I would have thought that iPhone, Facebook and Guitar Hero would have all been a little higher. Still, cool category none-the-less. Top Environmental Searches for 2007
A post by Barry over at Search Engine Land illustrates that Windows Live Search may now being displaying additional links under the first results in the organic search listings. In Google, these are called Sitelinks, where Google displays upwards of 8 additional links from the same website that may be of use to the user. Google Sitelinks are sub-listings that sometimes appear under the first listing on the first page in Google search results. Google says that they are random and can change at any time. At this time there is no way to control the sitelinks that appear.
To test this out in Live Search, I performed a search for (what else) ASK (as in the search engine). Here is what I was presented with:
Forget Cyber-Monday, let's talk about Cyber-Week. According to data from comScore, online sales during last week (which started on Cyber-Monday) resulted in more than $4 billion in online sales. According to the report, the heaviest online spending day of the season thus far was Cyber Monday (November 26) with $733 million in sales, marginally higher than sales on Thursday, November 29th.
Note: The term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States.
2007 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days* in 2006
Well this marks marks the moment, we in the search industry, have been waiting for it's SES Chicago vs. PubCon Las Vegas. Enquiro will have team members at both shows, so be sure to look for them and say hello.
As will all of the major engines, Yahoo members with be at both events. Here's where you can find members of Yahoo at Search Engine Strategies Chicago and PubCon Las Vegas this week.
SES CHICAGO December 3 - 6, 2007
Tuesday, December 4 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. Online Maps: Plotting the Direction of Local Search Jeremy Kreitler, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Maps
Wednesday, December 5 10:15 - 11:15 a.m. Digital Shelf: The Search Marketing Opportunity for Packaged Goods Matt Wilburn, Senior Category Director, CPG
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Breaking Down Silos: Specialization With Integration Kelly Graziadei, Senior Agency Development Director
Ad Exchanges are Changing Everything Bill Wise, VP, Yahoo! Publisher Network
2:00 - 3:00 p.m. CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0 & Search Engines Priyank Garg, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Search
