Date Archive: October 2006

George Michie on avoiding search hobgoblins: Is your search advertising program healthy? Are you getting as much out of it as you could? How do you know? If you outsource, is your SEM doing the job well?

Can Word Of Mouth Marketing be done well and done honestly?

I’ll be moderating and presenting the panel on “Business Issues For The Big SEM Shop” next month in Chicago at SES.

As the next step in promoting CSE feed standards, we’re having a retailer conference call next Weds November 1st 2006 at 2p EST. Thanks to David Dwek of Etronics for chairing this call.

Jawed Karim speaks on the origins of YouTube and on the history of web killer apps.

Google Librarian Center provides helpful pdf “Google tip sheets” for librarians.

HistoryCrumbs are a line of links atop a webpage showing the last 8 pages visited.

Google offers custom search service.

Prelaunch web organizer site presents itself through YouTube.

Ajax permits entire new online metaphors, and will revolutionize online retail. Four sites worth checking out for ideas: Allurent, YesNoMayB, Shopify, and Wufoo.

AdAge reports the Top 200 brands in terms of ad spend, who collectively spent $24.73 billion in media during the first half 0f ‘06, up 9%. Internet spending among theTop 200 jumped 25.6%, to $1.65 billion. Among the 20 retailers in the Top 200, their online spend was up 152.3%.

Paul Graham examines traffic numbers from Alexa, Digg, Reddit, Delicious and finds the accuracy lacking.

A study by SEMOZ concludes: “based on the evidence we’ve gathered here, it’s safe to say that no external metric, traffic prediction service or ranking system available on the web today provides any accuracy when compared with real numbers.”

Update from Jay Heavilon on the ARTS-NRF CSE initiative.

Barry Schwartz posts notes on new Yahoo platform.

Microsoft now offers the “LinkFromDomain:” operator, showing you all the outbound links from a domain.

Yahoo provides curious list of supposed “top-20″ misspellings.

Alternative energy is good for Google shareholders, good for the nation, and good for the environment.

RKG speaking and meeting at DMA Annual

If your company currently advertises using CSEs — or if your company is thinking about starting -– the ARTS-NRF CSE standardization effort will help you. Here are four steps to support this initiative.

Business Week outs a seemingly independent travel blog about the wonders of working at Walmart.

With all syndication and mashups of content with 2.0, writing straight-forward headlines matters.

Richard Tooker advocates establishing an additional holdout control panel of 50k customers who receive no marketing communication — ever.

Online bait-and-switch sequences destroy customer goodwill. The online ticket sellers like Orbitz, Expedia, and SideStep do this too often.

Ben Edelman on PPC Scams