Fri, 30 Oct 2009 by William Hobson
A new feature for Google Adwords aims could help any PPC Agency interested in reaching customers across different language barriers.
Google has added support for its translator toolkit to the Adwords campaign tool for PPC adverts. In a post on the official adwords blog, the company said that it hopes that the service will allow its clients to save time spent on translating the PPC content of their search engine marketing campaigns by automatically transl... Read More.
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by William Hobson
Web addresses may be written in languages with a non- Latin alphabet according to a new ruling by internet regulatory body Icann.
According to a report by the Guardian, Icann has approved plans to allow non- Latin characters such as Mandarin, Arabic, Hindu or Cyrillic script to be used in domain names.
Icann says that this is the 'biggest change' to the way the internet works in its entire 40-... Read More.
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by William Hobson
Google is to substantially alter the search engine user experience for those who opt in to its custom search engine service with a set of new features announced last week.
These include a new integration of the Wikipedia database with google search directly into the browser skin. This allows users to search for information directly linked to the article they are currently browsing as well as browsing all of the possible links on the page.
Other custom-search announcement... Read More.
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by William Hobson
Data from a UK search agency has shown that Google's share of the online search market is a staggering 77 percent according to a report by website Searchengineland.
The data reveals the US search market share percentages for search sites such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing, AOL and Ask.com. It confirms similar reports from other internet analytics companies such as Hitwise or Comscore that Google is dominating the search engine market ... Read More.
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by William Hobson
The Royal Mail strikes could lead to advertisers abandoning direct mail campaigns in favour of online marketing for this Christmas.
A report in the Guardian suggests that advertisers who invest heavily in direct mail strategies such as BSkyB, BT or Virgin Media may be forced to switch their advertising plans if disruption to the postal service continues in to the Christmas sales period.
20% of businesses invested in direct mail marketing ... Read More.
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by Tanisha Sakhawat
Google has got into the groove by adding audio links when you search an album, song or artist, reveals The Official Google Blog. This advantage is only available in the US at present, no doubt getting to the UK soon, and ready for some Search Engine Optimisation treatment. It allows users to search for a song even by using lyric snippets, it will find the song and provide a link to a OneBox widget, which is in association with music sites Lala and Myspace owned iLike. OneBox will then o... Read More.
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by William Hobson
According to a survey commissioned by First Direct, the way the UK population uses the internet has changed dramatically in the last two years with 79% of the population active online at least once a month - twice as many as were online this time two years ago.
Over 50 percent of these users are also taking part in Web 2.0 practices, creating and sharing content online, with one third maintaining a social network profile on the web.
However the key figures in the report for online marketin... Read More.
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by William Hobson
The Yellow Pages group ( YPG) of Canada has announced that it will be partnering with Marchex to bring online performance-based advertising services to the country's small and medium-sized businesses.
By January 2010 the service will be rolled out on a national level, offering small-to-medium businesses ( SMB's) services such as search engine marketing and analytics. The two companies hope to provide the many smaller clients of YPG wi... Read More.
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by William Hobson
The deadline for Microsoft and Yahoo's search engine deal has been extended for an unspecified period after missing the deadline announced this July.
Three months ago the companies announced that the Microsoft Bing engine would power Yahoo's search results, linking the two providers in a partnership that would replace their previous competition. At the time they said that the deal would be finalised by the 27th of October.
However according to a report by TechworldRead More.
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by William Hobson
The Guardian's digital content blog has identified some of the "do's and don'ts of social media" for brands hoping to make effective use of social media in managing their online presence, and maybe trying to influence their Search Engine Marketing.
Contacting marketing executives from companies around the world, writer Mercedes Bunz has illustrated some of the problems that lie behind trying to capitalise on social trends through new media.
Pointing to an incident earlier this year when Ho... Read More.
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by William Hobson
A new form of Adwords has been launched by google which will give users the opportunity to specify exactly what they are looking for and help them to compare offers side by side.
Called Adwords Comparison Ads, this new search engine marketing tool will prompt Google users to view a structured list of sponsored products when searching online for goods and services.
The company is testing the new feature through queries related to the mortgage market, where users are more interested in compa... Read More.
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by William Hobson
A survey by the data research company iCrossing suggests that Google and Disney are the global leaders in effective engagement with online consumers.
Using 65 different criteria, the company has given some of the world's most established brands a "connectedness" score which aims to reveal how successful their online presence has proven with internet users.
Adam Lavelle of iCrossing said that "the connected brands scorecard is designed to help brands quantify their online relations... Read More.
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by William Hobson
An advertising survey by eBay has found that the majority of shoppers are planning to either maintain or increase their internet based purchases this Christmas.
Despite fears of the recession having a devastating impact on holiday spending and the sale of online goods in particular, the survey revealed that 85% of the 5,000 web consumers who participated would not be decreasing the amount of online purchases they made from 2008.
Out of this majority, a further 37% said that they in fact pl... Read More.
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by William Hobson
A report by the digital marketing data company Comscore has shown that Social Networking sites are becoming increasingly important to the online marketing industry.
A study of UK online display advertising for August 2009 has shown that just over a quarter (25.5%) of all display ads viewed online by British users were seen on social networking sites.
The study was only concerned with display advertising in both standard and non-standard IAB sizes, excluding both in-house ads and ads smalle... Read More.
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by William Hobson
The independent industry standards body for the UK alcohol industry, The Portman Group, has published its guide "The Responsible Marketing of Alcoholic Drinks in Digital Media."
This aims to prevent alcohol brands from encouraging harmful drinking or targeting underage consumers through the relatively unregulated area of online marketing. It provides guidance for how companies can stay within the groups existing codes of practice, as well as the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) regulatio... Read More.
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Thu, 29 Oct 2009 by Tanisha Sakhawat
Google has launched a 'Promoted Video' advertising service for YouTube users in Europe, Japan and Australia, based on its AdWords programme. Its users will be charged in turn to gain benefit from promoting their video content on YouTube's site. A cost-per-click (CPC) service will be used for this service, based on defined keywords and the proposal of the advertisers, for priority and listings purposes, will depend on the CPC bids in which they are offered, as well as the relevance to each ... Read More.
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by Tanisha Sakhawat
Scammers working to promote virus infected web sites are succeeding, while legitimate businesses are struggling to master search engine optimisation techniques in trying to get their sites to the first page of Google, according to anti-virus specialist for AVG Roger Thompson. There is evidence that hackers are exerting a high level of SEO expertise, this comes after a recent blog post, which studied how bloggers endeavoured to distribute malware software by infecting the headlines based on... Read More.
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by Tanisha Sakhawat
A new Adwords interface beta is being created by Google engineers, in the hope of providing users with a quicker and easier experience when on the search engine.
The interface will provide more instinctive PPC management processes, making Adwords advertisers gain access to important campaign aspects more effectively. The new features released by Google have included newer content management systems, in-line editing, campaign tree visibility and performance graphs. Though these weren't i... Read More.
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by Tanisha Sakhawat
Social networking site Facebook has made another 'improvement' to its website, by launching an upgraded Ads Manager. This new interface gives the ability to search and edit campaigns and ad creatives.
It will assist bigger agencies and advertisers by boasting a range of new features which allow users to check the performance of ads in real time, similar to Google PPC Adwords it will be easier to navigate between sections and inline ad editing. It now features a top level overview of all ... Read More.
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Wed, 28 Oct 2009 by William Hobson
Social Networking websites are increasingly fulfilling their potential in the battle for public opinion in the digital age.
Recent incidents such as the backlash against Jan Moir column on the death of Stephen Gately in the Daily Mail, or the more dramatic case of the Trafiguara legal action against the Guardian, have demonstrated the momentum that social media such as Twitter can give to public opinion.
However whilst social media is often seen as undermining attempts at damage control on... Read More.
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by William Hobson
According to a recent study by Arbor Networks, the perceived diversity of the net is rapidly shrinking to a world dominated by a tiny number of hosting superpowers.
The company's 2009 Atlas Observatory report revealed information that might shock ordinary internet users.
In 2007 a similar report by Arbor found that globally, nearly fifty percent of internet traffic was accounted for by around 10,000 companies.
However two years later this number has dramatically shrunk to 150, whilst ov... Read More.
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by William Hobson
Search engines, publishers and ad networks are facing a new threat to their revenue from an insidious but unwitting enemy; the hacked computer.
Networks of hacked computers known as 'Botnets' are said to be contributing an unprecedented level of fraudulent clicks according to the company Click Forensics.
Botnets work through hidden malware programs installed onto unprotected systems. As well as sending spam, harvesting user data and providing unwitting distributed resources for denial-of-s... Read More.
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by William Hobson
The venerable web institution Geocities closed its servers forever today.
Following up on announcements made in April this year, Yahoo! have closed down the once-popular free web hosting service.
Though the domain has been declining steadily in both usefulness and popularity since its heyday in the 1990's, many online users are ambivalent about what they see as the end of an era.
One of the unanswered concerns of some forum users at websites like Webmasterworld.com or Digitalpoint.com i... Read More.
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by William Hobson
The latest challenger to the Google throne was announced this month.
Like Wolfram-Alpha and others before it, newcomer Wowd has taken a novel and dramatically different approach to the standard online Search Engine.
Describing itself as "Skype for Search", the company has abandoned the traditional ranking system in favour of a peer-to-peer approach that has the potential to revolutionise every aspect of the search engine market.
The company seeks to gain a headstart on the drive to inco... Read More.
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by Tanisha Sakhawat
Online retailers can boost their SEO strategy by using web links created by journalists, according to online marketing professional Sam Tilson. He argues that this can create a regular stream of viewers to a website therefore provoking more users. Tilson believes this offers more benefits when compared to paid search campaigns, suggesting that an increased number of visitors to sites are noticed in around six months. Mr Tilson commented: "The only way you'll stay on top is if you get natur... Read More.
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