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Foundering search giant Yahoo is said to be looking to offload its “Hot Jobs” employment listing service for “the right price” in the wake of declining search performance and a pending deal with Microsoft to have that company’s Bing search engine take over search functions on Yahoo’s still-popular internet portal.
Reuters reports that company insiders say that Hot Jobs – in addition to Yahoo’s Small Business unit – was on the block for a hoped-for fee of anywhere between $350 million and $500 million.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, speaking at an investor’s conference earlier this week, joked that Yahoo owed a great debt to Tiger Woods for the revelations about the golfer’s personal life that spiked search traffic across the internet. She also confirmed that Hot Jobs was not central to the company’s strategic vision moving forward and could be sold.
Bartz also blamed the company’s declining search numbers – and consequent diminution of relevance to the search engine optimization (SEO) market – on the failure of toolbar deals with HP and Acer that would have seen Yahoo toolbars pre-installed on PCs manufactured by those companies.
Cyveillance says that it has uncovered a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign that has affected more than 260,000 websites.
The scam targets Google search by getting browsers that are linked to sites that attempt to download malware onto their machines. The company said that the common string albums/bsblog/category has been posted in many URLs of several blogs. This inputs several results that lead to malicious sites.
“Readers can simply copy and paste the destination URL into your browser to direct it to the desired Website; you would be taken to [a] boring but otherwise harmless blog posting like those pictured earlier in this discussion,” the company explained. “The attack only happens when the compromised blog site determines that you arrived by way of Google by checking the HTTP referrer.”
Cyveillance said that the infected sites utilized rogue blog publishing to automatically generate new posts with titles like “las vegas rental no credit check” or “uninvited song lyrics alanis morrissette morissette.” These poisoning campaigns are detrimental to legite SEO operations.
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Rich content is now one of the most important techniques for driving consumers to websites from natural search results.
Speaking at the ‘Connect to Content’ session at World Travel Market, Frommer’s Unlimited general manager Joel Brandon-Bravo said natural search had become the biggest battleground for travel companies.
He also estimated that website content requires about half the investment of cost-per-click advertising.
Frommer’s conducted research among eight of its clients to reveal the content costs about 17p per visitor. This compares to the average cost-per-click in travel search of 33p according to US figures from Efficient Frontier released in the summer.
Market figures show 70% of people click on natural (organic) search results.
To get to the 17p cost per visitor, Frommer’s divided the total investment in content against the number of unique visitors brought to a client’s website from natural search. The sample of eight clients included online travel companies, hotel sites and airlines and looked at a mix of syndicated content, custom content as well as a blend of the two.
Brandon-Bravo also talked about the importance of integrating content properly within websites.
“Investing in content is a bit like buying a gym membership, you have to use it. It’s about integrating that content with your products and really making it work. If a customer has to do more than a couple of clicks they are just going to go away.”
Recent research carried out by Frommer’s shows travel companies plan to increase their online marketing budgets next year with social media, search engine optimisation and online content – the three hot areas for investment.
More than three quarters of respondents also said the cost per visitor across their online marketing mix was under US$5.
A tech startup calling itself Leapfish has thrust itself into the search engine market, billing itself as an entry portal into “the living web,” potentially shifting the ground under the feet of search engine optimization (SEO) professionals.
Leapfish’s flagship product is a customizable homepage, which Search Engine Watch describes as being similar to iGoogle. Users can create their own startup pages using a simple graphical user interface to arrange and position various pre-set widgets, predominantly those offering access to Twitter, Facebook and numerous other social media networking tools.
The new search portal has drawn widespread interest from all corners of the world of search marketing, including search engine optimization (SEO). Leapfish adds a new variable into the way in which web users view social media content, and could hamper Google and Microsoft’s expected moves into the social search market.
The two internet giants recently signed separate deals with Twitter to index the popular microblogging service’s content. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals are still trying to figure out exactly how the “real-time web,” as Leapfish calls it, will affect SEO campaigns.
Lost in the widespread hoopla over Google’s acquisition of mobile phone advertising firm AdMob was the company’s concurrent purchase of VoIP provider Gizmo5, which Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling says will make Google Voice a stand-alone service.
Sterling writes that this could put the search giant into direct competition with VoIP market leader Skype, which boasts a worldwide user base of 480 million people. Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals must monitor Google’s move into the VoIP market closely, to ascertain what sort of SEO opportunities present themselves once Google Voice goes public.
Google already offers a Goog-411 service, effectively extending parts of its search functionality onto the mobile platform. This, coupled with the increasingly rapid adoption of Google’s Android cell phone OS, could give the company a solid bridgehead into the mobile market, creating new fields of opportunity for search engine optimization (SEO).
In another article about Google Voice, Sterling notes that consumer privacy advocates are troubled by the further expansion of Google’s data indexing, saying that the extent of the data collection raises questions about the security of personal information.
Business search engine optimization (SEO) is not, according to experts, a simple series of goods that can be purchased for increased performance, but a long-term investment whose benefits are often present but difficult to see.
Writing a guest column at Search Engine Land, Damien Bianchi says that some companies have trouble understanding the costs and benefits of search engine optimization (SEO) because the results are frequently not immediately apparent in the bottom line. Bianchi compares the process to implementing a new content management system: It can be bought, but it might take years for the benefits to become fully evident.
Bianchi says that a good search engine optimization (SEO) program depends on corporate infrastructure, design, localization and content, as well as a thorough understanding of the target search engines. Analytics software and close cooperation with IT departments can also help demonstrate the value of well-crafted SEO to skeptical executives.
Bianchi – among many others – also notes that the world of the search engine is constantly changing, and that successful search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners must always be on their toes for the latest developments.
With local listing being more competitive than ever some firms are finding ways to monetize them. Mike Blumenthal just wrote a short article highlighting the most recent form local map spam. Companies are now obtaining local listings and editing the titles to incorporate such sales pitches like Get Your Firm Here Call Us or Buy This Listing. This is nothing new, people have been spamming the map listings for years.
Simply put, as Google’s Local listings get more advanced with algorithmic changes the map muddlers keep finding ways to temporarily beat the system. Don’t worry about them, their listings won’t survive for ever. I have compiled some local map spam screen-shots so everyone out there can attempt to spot and report these bogus listings.
Experts say that the most successful search engine optimization (SEO) efforts should begin before a character of code is written for a website. Every step of the way, SEO considerations must be addressed.
Keyword research, strategic planning, and a careful eye kept on web development tools are all part of the game for web designers hoping to successfully integrate search engine optimization (SEO) into their project, according to Eric Enge of Search Engine Watch. Enge also warns prospective webmasters that sites with effective SEO will require large quantities of quality content, or at the very least, smaller quantities of superlative content.
Enge recommends that two basic questions be answered before any work is done on a new or revamped website: First, what is the purpose of the website? And how does the firm that owns the website plan to market it? Poorly-planned and optimized sites are one potential consequence of a failure to answer these questions, according to Enge.
Search giant Google recently released an array of helpful tools for web developers, which could ease web design and make for more effective search engine optimization (SEO).
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SAN FRANCISCO — Google has agreed to acquire AdMob, a fast-growing start-up that developed technology to place ads on mobile phones, for $750 million in stock, the company said Monday.
Google said that the acquisition would help the Internet search company to speed up efforts to develop more effective tools for creating and placing mobile ads on smartphones and other devices, a small but rapidly expanding market.
“We see mobile as a huge growth opportunity for us,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said in an interview. “We see an opportunity working with AdMob to really accelerate our efforts in an important industry for Google.”
The all-stock deal is modest for Google, given its roughly $177 billion market value. But it is the third-largest in its history, behind the $3.1 billion deal for the advertising specialist DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.
Ms. Wojcicki said AdMob, which specializes in placing banner ads on mobile phones, would help cement Google’s forays in display advertising, an area where it has lagged rivals like Yahoo.
As Google’s core business of selling text ads has been slowing, the company has been looking for new areas to expand. In particular, Google is hoping to replicate its success in selling Web ads in the mobile arena. Google, which already sells ads on mobile phones, offers a wide variety of mobile phone applications and makes the Android software that some handset makers use to power their phones.
Smartphones, like the iPhone and Android devices, represent a disproportionate amount of the company’s mobile business so far.
Founded in 2006, AdMob calls itself the “world’s largest mobile advertising marketplace.” The company, which has received $47 million in financing from venture capitalists and other investors, refused to disclose its revenue. But Omar Hamoui, the company’s founder and chief executive, said that sales had more than doubled in the last year. The company’s headquarters are in San Mateo, Calif., not far from Google’s. It employs about 140 people.
Google said it hoped to close the acquisition in the next several months. Ms. Wojcicki said she expected the acquisition would be approved by regulators.
“We would not be surprised if there is some regulatory review,” she said. “We think that mobile advertising is a very competitive area and we don’t see a lot of regulatory concerns.”
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We mentioned Google’s new social search in a previous news post, however now we feel we should go into more detail for our readers, as this seems like a hot topic for them.
Social Search – The Basics.
What is social search? For many this is a fairly new concept. Just a few short years ago, search itself was developed to access content easily. Search was effective and efficient and in light of its importance; search optimization at that time was pretty bland. Optimize your web property, setup your keyword list, markup and test ad copy, rinse repeat.
Now search has become much more…strategic. Honestly, without a well thought out search plan, it will be extremely difficult to succeed in the social search world. If you have a well thought out, integrated strategy in place your chances of success will increase dramatically.
Search has moved from a study in two dimensions (paid and organic) to a discipline with at least five or more activities (paid or organic search, video, Twitter, Facebook, and other social tools). With the addition of social networks, another set of dimensions come into play. These networks are driven by content development or client relationships.
Video Search
Frequently we hear that YouTube is the number two search engine. Sure that makes sense, considering the size and diversity of its massive content library, and the rate at which it expands. What’s even more interesting is the content that users are searching for.
Will you create videos that help consumers find and inform of your product? Create viral content videos that will ideally get passed along? Can you do both?
Twitter and Search
The recent PR surrounding the announcement that Google and Bing will be indexing tweets in search results should come as no surprise to anyone. To compete here means you must have a twitter strategy in place
If Google could be teaming with tweets about you or your product, then being involved on Twitter just got moved to the top of the to do list.
The Social Graph and Search
Similar to Twitter search, but highly more encompassing, is the broader category of social search: Social Search is Google Labs newest experiment. Your social graph is defined as the social networks you add to your Google profile. This should be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming months.
ABOUT
My name is Kyle Kazak and I am the CEO and President of Kazak Media, a local Internet marketing firm that specializes in web design, local SEO, and pay per click management. We are located in Petaluma, CA, USA.