by Jron Magcale
The Internet can be a valuable tool for your business, it offers so much that it is regarded as the number 1 advertising tool for marketing these past few years. We are now living in the modern computer age, in which everything is relied to a computer. Computer does everything for us nowadays and in business it also helps a lot in terms of advertising, research, resources, tools etc. Right now everything is done in cyberspace; there are online games, online banks, and online parties, everything online, so why not make business online as well? It is something businessmen and investors alike have put a thought on. It is not a joke to invest money in the internet because as reliable as it can be, there are hazards that can damage you and your business as well, so it’ll be wise to hire experts on this and cooperate with them on how you can make your business improve using internet marketing.
Right now there are methods that are used to make your internet marketing see progress. I think that with our era now and the people that continually discovers new things about the great and deep world of internet, it is rather important to give some methods a thought or two. As I’ve said earlier there are a lot of hazards in the internet, like viruses, scammers, spammers, thieves etc. in which can really give you problems, to avoid them it is wise to find companies that expertise on this kind of marketing, doing it yourself can be really risky and if you’re not a risk taker there actually some companies that specialize in these kind of business. They are the ones who makes it all work for you. Right now one internet marketing or advertising that can be used by you is blogging. Yes, it hits big since its introduction some few years back. It offers so much and reaches so many people through internet.
Blogging has now become an integral part of anybody’s internet life, in which they use it in many ways, like posting their personal feelings on a topic, advertising something, posting some news, some sports, some love life, promoting businesses, etc. Blogs reaches people through it business can be really boost progress using it. It is rather a really useful tool for marketing and everything that can help you promote your business. The blogs uses keywords and links that can promote your link by it getting exposures and all that. Keywords are searched from the search engines and if your blog has that keyword it will appear out there and form that people can check it out and see information about your business, really easy and reliable, people can then comment on it and you’ll see what you can do to improve.
It is interactive in which you will have total control on the flow of your blog, you can hire blog experts on doing SEO management on your blogs so that you can reach more audience. It is relatively a good tool that makes businesses reach higher milestones and gives you the added benefit of having an internet marketing strategy that will further help you with your business campaign. I think internet marketing has been doing great and reaching greater heights in no time it’ll be one of the best strategies out there for business.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Google trumpets PageRank for pics
By Cade Metz
Prime yourself for security on the web: Food for thought on how to approach web security
Nearly a decade ago, Google unveiled an algorithm called PageRank, reinventing the way we search for web pages. Now, the company says, it has a technology that can do much the same for online image search.
Last week, at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing, two Google-affiliated researchers presented a paper called "PageRank for Product Image Search," trumpeting a fledging algorithm that overhauls the primitive text-based methods used by the company's current image search technologies.
"Our experiment results show significant improvement, in terms of user satisfaction and relevancy, in comparison to the most recent Google Image Search results," Shumeet Baluja and Yushi Jing tell the world from the pages of their research paper, available here.
Of course, the most recent Google Image Search results are often rubbish. Currently, when ranking images, the big search engines spend little time examining the images themselves. Instead, they look at the text surrounding those images.
By contrast, Google's PageRank for Product Image Search - also known as "VisualRank" - seeks to actually understand what's pictured. But the technology goes beyond classic image recognition, which can be time consuming and/or expensive - and which often breaks down with anything other than faces and a handful of other image types. In an effort to properly identify a wider range of objects, Baluja and Jing have merged existing image processing techniques with the sort of "link analysis" made famous by PageRank.
"Through an iterative procedure based on the PageRank computation, a numerical weight is assigned to each image," they explain. "This measures its relative importance to the other images being considered."
With classic image recognition, you typically take a known image and compare it to other images. You might use a known photo of Paris Hilton, for instance, to find other Paris pics. But VisualRank takes a different tact. Google's algorithm looks for "visual themes" across a collection of images, before ranking each image based on how well it matches those themes.
As an example, the researchers point to an image search on the word "McDonald's." In this case, VisualRank might identify the famous golden arches as theme. An image dominated by the golden arches would then be ranked higher than a pic where the arches are tucked into the background.
Baluja and Jing recently tested their algorithm using images retrieved by Google's 2000 most popular product searches, and a panel of 150 people decided that VisualRank reduced the number of irrelevant results by 83 per cent. The question is whether this could be applied to Google's entire database of images.
At the moment, this is just a research paper. And Google isn't the first to toy with the idea of true image search. After launching an online photo sharing tool that included face and character recognition, the Silicon Valley based Riya is now offering an image-rec shopping engine, known as Like.com, that locates products on sale across the web. And the transatlantic image rec gurus at Blinkx are well on their way with video search.
Prime yourself for security on the web: Food for thought on how to approach web security
Nearly a decade ago, Google unveiled an algorithm called PageRank, reinventing the way we search for web pages. Now, the company says, it has a technology that can do much the same for online image search.
Last week, at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing, two Google-affiliated researchers presented a paper called "PageRank for Product Image Search," trumpeting a fledging algorithm that overhauls the primitive text-based methods used by the company's current image search technologies.
"Our experiment results show significant improvement, in terms of user satisfaction and relevancy, in comparison to the most recent Google Image Search results," Shumeet Baluja and Yushi Jing tell the world from the pages of their research paper, available here.
Of course, the most recent Google Image Search results are often rubbish. Currently, when ranking images, the big search engines spend little time examining the images themselves. Instead, they look at the text surrounding those images.
By contrast, Google's PageRank for Product Image Search - also known as "VisualRank" - seeks to actually understand what's pictured. But the technology goes beyond classic image recognition, which can be time consuming and/or expensive - and which often breaks down with anything other than faces and a handful of other image types. In an effort to properly identify a wider range of objects, Baluja and Jing have merged existing image processing techniques with the sort of "link analysis" made famous by PageRank.
"Through an iterative procedure based on the PageRank computation, a numerical weight is assigned to each image," they explain. "This measures its relative importance to the other images being considered."
With classic image recognition, you typically take a known image and compare it to other images. You might use a known photo of Paris Hilton, for instance, to find other Paris pics. But VisualRank takes a different tact. Google's algorithm looks for "visual themes" across a collection of images, before ranking each image based on how well it matches those themes.
As an example, the researchers point to an image search on the word "McDonald's." In this case, VisualRank might identify the famous golden arches as theme. An image dominated by the golden arches would then be ranked higher than a pic where the arches are tucked into the background.
Baluja and Jing recently tested their algorithm using images retrieved by Google's 2000 most popular product searches, and a panel of 150 people decided that VisualRank reduced the number of irrelevant results by 83 per cent. The question is whether this could be applied to Google's entire database of images.
At the moment, this is just a research paper. And Google isn't the first to toy with the idea of true image search. After launching an online photo sharing tool that included face and character recognition, the Silicon Valley based Riya is now offering an image-rec shopping engine, known as Like.com, that locates products on sale across the web. And the transatlantic image rec gurus at Blinkx are well on their way with video search.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Internet Economy Looks Strong, Some Experts Say
by Grant Gross
The ever-growing Internet economy should be less susceptible to a U.S. economic downturn than many other industries, with more and more people shopping and doing business online, a group of commentators and businesspeople said Friday.
Although many segments of the U.S. economy are slowing, there's little indication of a downturn in online sales, with e-commerce growing four to five times faster than traditional retail, said Rob Atkinson, president of the Washington, D.C., think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. IT, including the Internet, is currently the major driver of economic growth in the U.S., he said at a Google-sponsored event examining the Internet economy.
While some commentators have worried about a second Internet bubble bursting, Atkinson suggested the first bubble in 2000 and 2001 may have been overstated. Many of the companies publicized as failures during that time frame are either still operating or their business models have become successful through other companies.
"The Internet is not a bubble," Atkinson said. "A lot of dumb, bad companies went out of business [earlier in the decade], but the industry continued to grow."
The Google event seemed to be targeted at commentators who have predicted a second bubble burst, particularly following the hype in recent years surrounding social-networking sites.
But the overall state of the Internet economy is strong, even though the percentage of Google searches for things like real estate and luxury goods have dropped off in recent months, said Hal Varian, Google's chief economist. Those Google searches reflect the state of the overall U.S. economy, he added.
E-commerce has continued to grow in recent months, Varian said. "Yes, we are seeing an economic slowdown," he said. "No, we're not seeing an Internet slowdown."
Online retail sales, not including travel, reached US$175 billion in 2007, an increase of 21 percent from 2006, according to Forrester Research. Forrester expects online sales to exceed $200 billion this year and exceed $300 billion in 2011.
While some kinds of advertising may suffer in an economic slowdown, Internet advertising may do better, Varian said. Buyers can measure the effectiveness of Internet advertising, and online ads are often directly linked to a place where consumers can buy the products advertised, he said. Internet advertising based on user behavior can also deliver more personalized ads than traditional mediums, he noted.
While Varian and other speakers sounded optimistic about the Internet economy, venture capitalist Michael Avon, of Columbia Capital, expressed some caution.
Venture capital investing between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 was down about 10 percent in the U.S., he said. However, venture capitalists looking for long-term investments still see good opportunities out there, he added.
Still, Avon urged new companies to diversify their business plans and not depend on one revenue stream. Columbia Capital asks the Internet companies it funds to look beyond advertising for revenue or to branch out into multiple product lines, he said.
New companies should also watch their spending in uncertain economic times. "Just be incredibly careful with cash," he said. "Cash is the number one resource for a startup, and it's never guaranteed."
The ever-growing Internet economy should be less susceptible to a U.S. economic downturn than many other industries, with more and more people shopping and doing business online, a group of commentators and businesspeople said Friday.
Although many segments of the U.S. economy are slowing, there's little indication of a downturn in online sales, with e-commerce growing four to five times faster than traditional retail, said Rob Atkinson, president of the Washington, D.C., think tank the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. IT, including the Internet, is currently the major driver of economic growth in the U.S., he said at a Google-sponsored event examining the Internet economy.
While some commentators have worried about a second Internet bubble bursting, Atkinson suggested the first bubble in 2000 and 2001 may have been overstated. Many of the companies publicized as failures during that time frame are either still operating or their business models have become successful through other companies.
"The Internet is not a bubble," Atkinson said. "A lot of dumb, bad companies went out of business [earlier in the decade], but the industry continued to grow."
The Google event seemed to be targeted at commentators who have predicted a second bubble burst, particularly following the hype in recent years surrounding social-networking sites.
But the overall state of the Internet economy is strong, even though the percentage of Google searches for things like real estate and luxury goods have dropped off in recent months, said Hal Varian, Google's chief economist. Those Google searches reflect the state of the overall U.S. economy, he added.
E-commerce has continued to grow in recent months, Varian said. "Yes, we are seeing an economic slowdown," he said. "No, we're not seeing an Internet slowdown."
Online retail sales, not including travel, reached US$175 billion in 2007, an increase of 21 percent from 2006, according to Forrester Research. Forrester expects online sales to exceed $200 billion this year and exceed $300 billion in 2011.
While some kinds of advertising may suffer in an economic slowdown, Internet advertising may do better, Varian said. Buyers can measure the effectiveness of Internet advertising, and online ads are often directly linked to a place where consumers can buy the products advertised, he said. Internet advertising based on user behavior can also deliver more personalized ads than traditional mediums, he noted.
While Varian and other speakers sounded optimistic about the Internet economy, venture capitalist Michael Avon, of Columbia Capital, expressed some caution.
Venture capital investing between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 was down about 10 percent in the U.S., he said. However, venture capitalists looking for long-term investments still see good opportunities out there, he added.
Still, Avon urged new companies to diversify their business plans and not depend on one revenue stream. Columbia Capital asks the Internet companies it funds to look beyond advertising for revenue or to branch out into multiple product lines, he said.
New companies should also watch their spending in uncertain economic times. "Just be incredibly careful with cash," he said. "Cash is the number one resource for a startup, and it's never guaranteed."
Friday, April 25, 2008
Yahoo outlines plans for world domination
By David Chartier
As perhaps one of the company's largest moves toward distinguishing itself from Microsoft's culture and acquisition intentions, Yahoo today outlined a long-expected plan to turn its empire of web services into a massive social network for world social network domination.
At the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco, Yahoo's CTO Ari Balogh unveiled "Yahoo Open Strategy," the company's umbrella term for a couple of social networking initiatives in mind. At the heart of the move, however, is an effort to unite the myriad of profiles users have to create and manage across Yahoo's various properties. "Right now you manage different bits of personal information in different places and to some extent it is a fragmented user experience" said Neal Sample, Yahoo's chief technical architect, according to Reuters.
Once Yahoo introduces its centralized profile management system, Balogh explained it can then begin drawing the lines between its various properties and introducing social networking features. Yahoo's market-leading e-mail and popular IM services are obvious launch pads for users to begin building their networks, and other socially focused services like MyYahoo and Mash will be rolled into the eventual feature set Yahoo plans to offer. Yahoo's plans to consolidate services and retire others in favor of streamlining the new platform will be key in providing a smooth and appealing experience.
Another key aspect to Yahoo's new social networking strategy will be user-generated applications. Like Facebook's application platform, Yahoo plans to leverage Google's OpenSocial and even its own forthcoming Yahoo Application Platform, allowing third-parties to create apps that interact across its services. In fact, Yahoo wants to clean up its profile system, then work with third parties to build that aspect of the platform, before flipping the social switch for consumers. Considering the ambitions of all this, Balogh says we may not actually see the end results of Yahoo's Skynet social platform until 2009.
You got your social in my privacy
With 500 million monthly active users across its properties, however, Yahoo Open Strategy could become an incredibly powerful and profitable move for Yahoo—if executed correctly. While the company took a strong first step into the social space by purchasing properties like Flickr and del.icio.us years ago, everyone has been waiting to see what the company would actually do with them ever since. Yahoo Open Strategy may be the answer we've all been waiting for.
Another significant obstacle Yahoo faces is the very user base it hopes to leverage with all this. As Facebook had to learn when introducing some of its more controversial features in recent memory, users sometimes have very particular ideas about what they want to share, with whom, and how. If Yahoo Open Strategy isn't executed properly, the company could have millions of e-mail users on its hands who are wondering—or even upset—as to why they're suddenly sharing all sorts of other personal information with casual acquaintances or, worse yet, hostile coworkers.
That said, Balogh did state during his presentation that Yahoo has privacy on the to-do list, and it's paying attention to the way users want control over what they share.
Will you Yahoo?
For a comparison, MySpace and Facebook have around 110 million and 60 million active users, respectively. With Yahoo's stockpile of 500 million users and a virtual warehouse of established brands and services, however, it already has much of the groundwork laid for what could quite possibly become the world's largest social network virtually overnight.
As perhaps one of the company's largest moves toward distinguishing itself from Microsoft's culture and acquisition intentions, Yahoo today outlined a long-expected plan to turn its empire of web services into a massive social network for world social network domination.
At the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco, Yahoo's CTO Ari Balogh unveiled "Yahoo Open Strategy," the company's umbrella term for a couple of social networking initiatives in mind. At the heart of the move, however, is an effort to unite the myriad of profiles users have to create and manage across Yahoo's various properties. "Right now you manage different bits of personal information in different places and to some extent it is a fragmented user experience" said Neal Sample, Yahoo's chief technical architect, according to Reuters.
Once Yahoo introduces its centralized profile management system, Balogh explained it can then begin drawing the lines between its various properties and introducing social networking features. Yahoo's market-leading e-mail and popular IM services are obvious launch pads for users to begin building their networks, and other socially focused services like MyYahoo and Mash will be rolled into the eventual feature set Yahoo plans to offer. Yahoo's plans to consolidate services and retire others in favor of streamlining the new platform will be key in providing a smooth and appealing experience.
Another key aspect to Yahoo's new social networking strategy will be user-generated applications. Like Facebook's application platform, Yahoo plans to leverage Google's OpenSocial and even its own forthcoming Yahoo Application Platform, allowing third-parties to create apps that interact across its services. In fact, Yahoo wants to clean up its profile system, then work with third parties to build that aspect of the platform, before flipping the social switch for consumers. Considering the ambitions of all this, Balogh says we may not actually see the end results of Yahoo's Skynet social platform until 2009.
You got your social in my privacy
With 500 million monthly active users across its properties, however, Yahoo Open Strategy could become an incredibly powerful and profitable move for Yahoo—if executed correctly. While the company took a strong first step into the social space by purchasing properties like Flickr and del.icio.us years ago, everyone has been waiting to see what the company would actually do with them ever since. Yahoo Open Strategy may be the answer we've all been waiting for.
Another significant obstacle Yahoo faces is the very user base it hopes to leverage with all this. As Facebook had to learn when introducing some of its more controversial features in recent memory, users sometimes have very particular ideas about what they want to share, with whom, and how. If Yahoo Open Strategy isn't executed properly, the company could have millions of e-mail users on its hands who are wondering—or even upset—as to why they're suddenly sharing all sorts of other personal information with casual acquaintances or, worse yet, hostile coworkers.
That said, Balogh did state during his presentation that Yahoo has privacy on the to-do list, and it's paying attention to the way users want control over what they share.
Will you Yahoo?
For a comparison, MySpace and Facebook have around 110 million and 60 million active users, respectively. With Yahoo's stockpile of 500 million users and a virtual warehouse of established brands and services, however, it already has much of the groundwork laid for what could quite possibly become the world's largest social network virtually overnight.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Driving Site Traffic With SEO and Paid Ads
by Richard Morochove
You can't simply open a new Web site, sit back, and expect to welcome a horde of visitors showing up at your virtual storefront. If you want your online business to be successful, you must promote your site.
Both search engine optimization (SEO) and paid advertising on search engines can help drive visitors to your e-commerce site. More visitors can ultimately lead to more customers for your online business.
How can you use a combination of SEO and search engine ads to increase your online business and boost your bottom line? I'll give you useful tips on both, based on my real-world experience promoting my sites and those of my clients.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO refers to modifying your Web pages to enhance your visibility in search engine results. If your business sells, say, left-handed widgets, your goal is to be listed near the top of the results if someone performs a search using the keywords "left-handed widgets." Research shows that if your site isn't within the top 30 search results, very few visitors will click through to your site.
How do you reach that coveted high rank in a search engine? You have to learn to think like the robots (also called spiders and crawlers) that search engines such as Google use to find and catalog Web pages. First, learn to describe your products and services at your Web site using words that your prospective customers would likely use in a search (most search engines understand words, not images).
Search engine robots give certain aspects of a Web page, such as the page's title and its major headings, special emphasis. Don't squander the potential benefit by using a nondescript title such as "Home Page of Rick's Online Store" (the search bots wouldn't even notice that). Instead, develop a title that reinforces your search term for that page, such as "Left-Handed Widget Superstore, San Francisco, CA."
Links to your site from other, well-regarded sites can also give you a boost in the search results rankings. I recommend that you contact the Webmasters of related--but not competing--sites for link opportunities. Contact them personally, not through an annoying automated link spammer (which will usually be ignored). How do you tell if a potential link partner site is well regarded? Google's Web browser toolbar offers a PageRank, which rates the popularity of a given site from zero (worst) to ten (best). A link from a site with a PageRank of 10 can be quite valuable to you, while a link from a site with zero PageRank is virtually worthless.
Monitor your progress by checking your site's referer log (yes, that's how it's spelled, typically) to see where your visitors come from, as well as the search terms they use to reach your site. Don't expect instant results from SEO. Because the robots take some time to comb through the millions of pages on the Web, you may have to wait three months or longer before you see the full benefit of your "optimized" site.
After you've implemented the basic SEO measures, you can do even more. The Search Engine Optimization Forum (run by High Rankings, a Boston-based SEO services firm) offers a cornucopia of SEO tips and discusses additional techniques.
Search Engine Advertising
If you don't like waiting months for SEO benefits to kick in, I recommend advertising on search engines for fast results. The paid approach might bring increased traffic to your site within as little as 24 hours.
The most popular type of search engine advertising--and the easiest to set up--is the pay-per-click (PPC) text ad. You write short text ads that display next to the search results for specific terms or keywords that people enter in a search engine. You pay for each visitor who clicks on your ad and is then directed to your Web site.
According to Hitwise, the most popular search engines in the United States are Google (with an overwhelming search share of 66 percent), Yahoo (21 percent), and MSN (5 percent). Given Google's dominance, I recommend that you first consider PPC ads on Google AdWords, since it has the capability to deliver the greatest number of visitors to your site. Running PPC ads on Yahoo and Microsoft, however, will increase your advertising reach and may cost less for certain search keywords.
The cost spans a wide range, from a few cents to several dollars per click, depending on how much a certain keyword is in demand among advertisers. You can set a daily or monthly maximum charge to ensure that you don't outspend your budget.
Crafting your PPC ad is a little like writing a short two-line classified ad with a heading. Carefully consider your phrasing and the keywords you select to attract the visitor you want. Test several ads to determine which works best.
If you sell only locally, use the service's geotargeting capability to restrict ads to visitors from a limited area, such as your city or state. Don't waste money advertising nationwide.
Ad services provide code for conversion tracking, which I recommend you add to your site to measure your results. Just remember that "conversion" means different things to different people, depending on the nature of your business. If you sell $50 widgets online, you'll probably expect your ad to convert to an immediate sale of the widget (make sure you're set up for that on the back end before placing an ad). If you're selling something with an extended or more complex sales cycle, such as long-term consulting services, a successful conversion might mean the generation of a promising sales lead, including contact information for a follow-up call.
Both SEO and PPC advertising have a role to play in e-commerce site promotion. SEO, using a few select keywords, pays off over a longer term. PPC ads cost more but work quickly and can be tailored to target any number of specific market niches.
You can't simply open a new Web site, sit back, and expect to welcome a horde of visitors showing up at your virtual storefront. If you want your online business to be successful, you must promote your site.
Both search engine optimization (SEO) and paid advertising on search engines can help drive visitors to your e-commerce site. More visitors can ultimately lead to more customers for your online business.
How can you use a combination of SEO and search engine ads to increase your online business and boost your bottom line? I'll give you useful tips on both, based on my real-world experience promoting my sites and those of my clients.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO refers to modifying your Web pages to enhance your visibility in search engine results. If your business sells, say, left-handed widgets, your goal is to be listed near the top of the results if someone performs a search using the keywords "left-handed widgets." Research shows that if your site isn't within the top 30 search results, very few visitors will click through to your site.
How do you reach that coveted high rank in a search engine? You have to learn to think like the robots (also called spiders and crawlers) that search engines such as Google use to find and catalog Web pages. First, learn to describe your products and services at your Web site using words that your prospective customers would likely use in a search (most search engines understand words, not images).
Search engine robots give certain aspects of a Web page, such as the page's title and its major headings, special emphasis. Don't squander the potential benefit by using a nondescript title such as "Home Page of Rick's Online Store" (the search bots wouldn't even notice that). Instead, develop a title that reinforces your search term for that page, such as "Left-Handed Widget Superstore, San Francisco, CA."
Links to your site from other, well-regarded sites can also give you a boost in the search results rankings. I recommend that you contact the Webmasters of related--but not competing--sites for link opportunities. Contact them personally, not through an annoying automated link spammer (which will usually be ignored). How do you tell if a potential link partner site is well regarded? Google's Web browser toolbar offers a PageRank, which rates the popularity of a given site from zero (worst) to ten (best). A link from a site with a PageRank of 10 can be quite valuable to you, while a link from a site with zero PageRank is virtually worthless.
Monitor your progress by checking your site's referer log (yes, that's how it's spelled, typically) to see where your visitors come from, as well as the search terms they use to reach your site. Don't expect instant results from SEO. Because the robots take some time to comb through the millions of pages on the Web, you may have to wait three months or longer before you see the full benefit of your "optimized" site.
After you've implemented the basic SEO measures, you can do even more. The Search Engine Optimization Forum (run by High Rankings, a Boston-based SEO services firm) offers a cornucopia of SEO tips and discusses additional techniques.
Search Engine Advertising
If you don't like waiting months for SEO benefits to kick in, I recommend advertising on search engines for fast results. The paid approach might bring increased traffic to your site within as little as 24 hours.
The most popular type of search engine advertising--and the easiest to set up--is the pay-per-click (PPC) text ad. You write short text ads that display next to the search results for specific terms or keywords that people enter in a search engine. You pay for each visitor who clicks on your ad and is then directed to your Web site.
According to Hitwise, the most popular search engines in the United States are Google (with an overwhelming search share of 66 percent), Yahoo (21 percent), and MSN (5 percent). Given Google's dominance, I recommend that you first consider PPC ads on Google AdWords, since it has the capability to deliver the greatest number of visitors to your site. Running PPC ads on Yahoo and Microsoft, however, will increase your advertising reach and may cost less for certain search keywords.
The cost spans a wide range, from a few cents to several dollars per click, depending on how much a certain keyword is in demand among advertisers. You can set a daily or monthly maximum charge to ensure that you don't outspend your budget.
Crafting your PPC ad is a little like writing a short two-line classified ad with a heading. Carefully consider your phrasing and the keywords you select to attract the visitor you want. Test several ads to determine which works best.
If you sell only locally, use the service's geotargeting capability to restrict ads to visitors from a limited area, such as your city or state. Don't waste money advertising nationwide.
Ad services provide code for conversion tracking, which I recommend you add to your site to measure your results. Just remember that "conversion" means different things to different people, depending on the nature of your business. If you sell $50 widgets online, you'll probably expect your ad to convert to an immediate sale of the widget (make sure you're set up for that on the back end before placing an ad). If you're selling something with an extended or more complex sales cycle, such as long-term consulting services, a successful conversion might mean the generation of a promising sales lead, including contact information for a follow-up call.
Both SEO and PPC advertising have a role to play in e-commerce site promotion. SEO, using a few select keywords, pays off over a longer term. PPC ads cost more but work quickly and can be tailored to target any number of specific market niches.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Western Digital Intros Ultra-Fast VelociRaptor Hard Drive
By Joseph F. Kovar
Western Digital on Monday unveiled what it is terming the world's fastest SATA hard drive, a 10,000-rpm model aimed at the enthusiast PC and professional workstation markets.
WD's new WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch hard drive provides up to 300 Gbytes capacity, and is based on the company's enterprise-class drive technology.
The drive is enclosed in WDC's IcePack. IcePack is a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink which the Lake Forest, Calif.-based storage vendor said fits in a standard 3.5-inch system bay and provides extra cooling for high-performance desktop PC and workstation applications.
"We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of WD's enterprise business unit in a statement. "The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."
The new WD VelociRaptor hard drives' performance comes from its 10,000-rpm speed, a 3-Gbytes-per-second SATA interface, and a built-in 16-Mbyte cache. The company said the drives have a mean time between failure (MTBF) rate of 1.4 million hours.
Also included are such SATA features as rotary acceleration feed forward to optimize performance in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis, and SecurePark, which parks the heads off the disk surface while the drive is spinning up, spinning down, and off to ensure that the head never touches the disk surface, the company said.
The drives are expected to be available through WD distributors and solution providers starting in mid-May with a suggested list price of $299.99. However, they will also be available in April as an option to the ALX gaming desktop PC from Alienware, Miami, Fla., which was acquired in March of 2006 by Dell, Round Rock, Texas.
Western Digital on Monday unveiled what it is terming the world's fastest SATA hard drive, a 10,000-rpm model aimed at the enthusiast PC and professional workstation markets.
WD's new WD VelociRaptor 2.5-inch hard drive provides up to 300 Gbytes capacity, and is based on the company's enterprise-class drive technology.
The drive is enclosed in WDC's IcePack. IcePack is a 3.5-inch mounting frame with a built-in heat sink which the Lake Forest, Calif.-based storage vendor said fits in a standard 3.5-inch system bay and provides extra cooling for high-performance desktop PC and workstation applications.
"We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of WD's enterprise business unit in a statement. "The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."
The new WD VelociRaptor hard drives' performance comes from its 10,000-rpm speed, a 3-Gbytes-per-second SATA interface, and a built-in 16-Mbyte cache. The company said the drives have a mean time between failure (MTBF) rate of 1.4 million hours.
Also included are such SATA features as rotary acceleration feed forward to optimize performance in vibration-prone, multi-drive chassis, and SecurePark, which parks the heads off the disk surface while the drive is spinning up, spinning down, and off to ensure that the head never touches the disk surface, the company said.
The drives are expected to be available through WD distributors and solution providers starting in mid-May with a suggested list price of $299.99. However, they will also be available in April as an option to the ALX gaming desktop PC from Alienware, Miami, Fla., which was acquired in March of 2006 by Dell, Round Rock, Texas.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
SEO is Not Free Traffic
by Stephan Spencer
One of the first jobs I have to do as a consultant going into an SEO engagement is to debunk the myth that SEO is "free". SEO has never been, nor will it ever be, free traffic. It takes work, and that comes at a cost. You need to hire staff or allocate internal resources to manage your SEO efforts. You need to enlist an SEO firm or consultant to help identify the opportunities and prioritize them, navigate the minefields, and up-skill your internal team. You need to outfit your in-house team with on the tools of the trade (SEOMoz Pro, Internet Marketing Ninjas, etc.), send them to the conferences (all the SMX conferences, of course!), provide them with training intensives (e.g. SEOClass, SEOTraining), and various other professional development and networking opportunities.
If you are paying a SEO firm or contractor, the cost is obvious. But the time you allocate your internal folks to SEO -- and this includes the IT team, web designers, copywriters, project managers, as well as in-house SEO specialists -- must be quantified and factored in too. Then there are the "soft" costs that are harder to measure, including:
the missed opportunity cost -- Failing to optimize everything leads to lost sales. It's hard to know how much, and which things accounted for what. John Wanamaker famously said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half!". According to an iProspect study, over 66 percent of SEO recommendations go unimplemented a year later. What if that 66 percent represented the good half that John Wanamaker alluded to!
the time-to-market cost -- They say all good things take time, but the inordinate amount of time it takes for large companies to implement SEO initiatives equates to a serious amount of lost traffic. A major online retailer of outdoor gear spent over 1000 hours of IT time implementing URL rewrites and they couldn't even finish implementing them all! How would you know this in advance? It's really tough. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could flip a switch and be optimized?
the cost of competing priorities -- By asking your IT team to dedicate time to extensive SEO initiatives, you change their focus. What if one of their other -- now displaced -- priorities was more mission critical to the business than you or they realized? Having them take their eye off the ball could lead to disastrous consequences.
This all sounds very fuzzy, doesn't it? Hard to quantify, hard to prove in advance. This is SEO's "Achilles heel", and why paid search usually wins over natural search in the budget battles, receiving the lion's share of the search marketing budget. This is a travesty, considering the searcher's primary focus on the natural results and the fact that a searcher interprets a natural listing as an implied endorsement by the search engine.
The allure of paid search is strong in part because of its predictability, but I'm convinced that natural search trumps paid search in overall opportunity. And besides, with paid search, the moment you stop paying is the moment you stop receiving the traffic. Stop investing in SEO and the traffic drop-off will come too, but it won't be as dramatic and sudden as for paid search.
With uncertainty comes risk, and your natural rankings are full of uncertainty, and therefore risk. There's no guarantee that a dollar invested into SEO will net 10 or 20 dollars in return. So take heed, SEO firms: de-risk your SEO offering and you will have the secret to success. Granted you can't control the engines' natural ranking algorithms, however you can introduce more predictability and accountability into your SEO. But it's going to cost you. And it may require a paradigm shift, to a pay-for-performance pricing model for SEO services. SEO firms are starting to embrace alternative payment models, as evidenced by the session on this topic coming to SMX Advanced in June. Indeed, we at Netconcepts have performance-based pricing for our GravityStream technology platform -- natural search traffic on a cost-per-click basis.
After expending some serious effort and cash too, you may finally find yourself ranking for some highly competitive terms, receiving traffic that you aren't "paying for" like you would be for paid search. However, getting there was not free,and guess what? -- neither is staying there. Now that you have that top spot, you have to keep it -- against others who are forever trying to outrank you. This is especially true if the words you are ranking for are competitive. You are still going to need someone to build links for you and keep up with the changing SEO landscape and search engine algorithm updates.
Wouldn't it be great if natural search traffic were free and neverending? Like manna from Heaven... Yet, SEO requires continuing investment. Invest in SEO as an ongoing marketing channel and your natural rankings will surely rise over time. Treat SEO as a one-time project, or dedicate insufficient resources, and you court obsolescence.
Stephan Spencer is founder and president of Netconcepts, a 12-year-old web agency specializing in search engine optimized ecommerce. He writes for several publications and blogs at the Natural Search Blog. The 100% Organic column appears Thursdays at Search Engine Land.
One of the first jobs I have to do as a consultant going into an SEO engagement is to debunk the myth that SEO is "free". SEO has never been, nor will it ever be, free traffic. It takes work, and that comes at a cost. You need to hire staff or allocate internal resources to manage your SEO efforts. You need to enlist an SEO firm or consultant to help identify the opportunities and prioritize them, navigate the minefields, and up-skill your internal team. You need to outfit your in-house team with on the tools of the trade (SEOMoz Pro, Internet Marketing Ninjas, etc.), send them to the conferences (all the SMX conferences, of course!), provide them with training intensives (e.g. SEOClass, SEOTraining), and various other professional development and networking opportunities.
If you are paying a SEO firm or contractor, the cost is obvious. But the time you allocate your internal folks to SEO -- and this includes the IT team, web designers, copywriters, project managers, as well as in-house SEO specialists -- must be quantified and factored in too. Then there are the "soft" costs that are harder to measure, including:
the missed opportunity cost -- Failing to optimize everything leads to lost sales. It's hard to know how much, and which things accounted for what. John Wanamaker famously said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half!". According to an iProspect study, over 66 percent of SEO recommendations go unimplemented a year later. What if that 66 percent represented the good half that John Wanamaker alluded to!
the time-to-market cost -- They say all good things take time, but the inordinate amount of time it takes for large companies to implement SEO initiatives equates to a serious amount of lost traffic. A major online retailer of outdoor gear spent over 1000 hours of IT time implementing URL rewrites and they couldn't even finish implementing them all! How would you know this in advance? It's really tough. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could flip a switch and be optimized?
the cost of competing priorities -- By asking your IT team to dedicate time to extensive SEO initiatives, you change their focus. What if one of their other -- now displaced -- priorities was more mission critical to the business than you or they realized? Having them take their eye off the ball could lead to disastrous consequences.
This all sounds very fuzzy, doesn't it? Hard to quantify, hard to prove in advance. This is SEO's "Achilles heel", and why paid search usually wins over natural search in the budget battles, receiving the lion's share of the search marketing budget. This is a travesty, considering the searcher's primary focus on the natural results and the fact that a searcher interprets a natural listing as an implied endorsement by the search engine.
The allure of paid search is strong in part because of its predictability, but I'm convinced that natural search trumps paid search in overall opportunity. And besides, with paid search, the moment you stop paying is the moment you stop receiving the traffic. Stop investing in SEO and the traffic drop-off will come too, but it won't be as dramatic and sudden as for paid search.
With uncertainty comes risk, and your natural rankings are full of uncertainty, and therefore risk. There's no guarantee that a dollar invested into SEO will net 10 or 20 dollars in return. So take heed, SEO firms: de-risk your SEO offering and you will have the secret to success. Granted you can't control the engines' natural ranking algorithms, however you can introduce more predictability and accountability into your SEO. But it's going to cost you. And it may require a paradigm shift, to a pay-for-performance pricing model for SEO services. SEO firms are starting to embrace alternative payment models, as evidenced by the session on this topic coming to SMX Advanced in June. Indeed, we at Netconcepts have performance-based pricing for our GravityStream technology platform -- natural search traffic on a cost-per-click basis.
After expending some serious effort and cash too, you may finally find yourself ranking for some highly competitive terms, receiving traffic that you aren't "paying for" like you would be for paid search. However, getting there was not free,and guess what? -- neither is staying there. Now that you have that top spot, you have to keep it -- against others who are forever trying to outrank you. This is especially true if the words you are ranking for are competitive. You are still going to need someone to build links for you and keep up with the changing SEO landscape and search engine algorithm updates.
Wouldn't it be great if natural search traffic were free and neverending? Like manna from Heaven... Yet, SEO requires continuing investment. Invest in SEO as an ongoing marketing channel and your natural rankings will surely rise over time. Treat SEO as a one-time project, or dedicate insufficient resources, and you court obsolescence.
Stephan Spencer is founder and president of Netconcepts, a 12-year-old web agency specializing in search engine optimized ecommerce. He writes for several publications and blogs at the Natural Search Blog. The 100% Organic column appears Thursdays at Search Engine Land.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Google shares soar 20 percent to record 1-day gain
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Google Inc.'s stock soared 20 percent Friday, restoring $28 billion in shareholder wealth as Wall Street renewed its love affair with the Internet search leader after weeks of worry about an online advertising slowdown.
Driven by stellar first-quarter results that surprised industry analysts, Google shares surged $89.87 to finish at $539.41. It marked the biggest one-day gain since Google's initial public stock offering in August 2004, leaving the shares at their highest closing price since January.
Google had lost favor with investors as Web surfing data and the faltering U.S. economy raised concerns that people aren't clicking as frequently on the Internet advertising links that generate most of the Mountain View-based company's revenue.
The trend threatened to chip away at Google's earnings because the company typically gets paid by the click.
Although there were signs of decelerated clicking in the United States, Google more than offset any negative effects by expanding its foreign business and tweaking its online ad system in a way that helped reap more revenue per click.
The first-quarter performance reinforced the belief that Google is a "must-own stock," American Technology Research analyst Rob Sanderson wrote in a Friday note.
"While (economic) concerns won't be completely dispelled, we believe the growth story remains intact and investors will again fall in love," he wrote.
Dinosaur Securities analyst David Garrity also is convinced that the worst is over for Google's stock, which was down 35 percent in 2008 before the first-quarter earnings changed investor sentiment.
"We think (Google's stock) has seen its 2008 low. Onward and upward," wrote Garrity, who expects the price to hit $750 during the next year.
Friday's rally still left Google shares well below their peak of $747.24 reached less than six months ago. At that point, Google's market value stood at $235 billion, about $66 billion, or nearly 40 percent higher, than at Friday's close.
Whether Google's stock can get back to where it once was will depend largely on how much more the company's earnings and revenue growth tapers off. With the company's annual revenue headed toward $20 billion, it's becoming more difficult to produce the hefty gains that excite investors.
For instance, Google's first-quarter revenue climbed 42 percent. That's impressive, but well below the 63 percent growth in 2007's first quarter.
Google's profits could be squeezed later this year if it has to spend more money to upgrade the data centers that power its search engine and other online services like e-mail, said Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal. He said he thinks additional investments probably will be needed, given some of the data centers are three or four years old.
Microsoft Corp.'s bid to acquire Yahoo Inc. also could create a more formidable competitor to Google. Recognizing the threat, Google is trying to help Yahoo thwart Microsoft's takeover bid by using its lucrative advertising system to place commercial links on Yahoo's Web site. The potential partnership, in the midst of a test scheduled to be completed next week, would likely face intense antitrust scrutiny.
If nothing else, analysts believe Google wants to delay a combination between Microsoft and Yahoo for as long as possible to give it a better chance to widen its lead in the Internet search market, which currently generates the biggest chunk of online advertising.
Google ended the first quarter with a 60 percent share of the U.S. search market, up from 58 percent at the end of the fourth quarter, according to comScore Media Metrix. Yahoo was in second at a 21 percent share followed by Microsoft at 9 percent.
Despite the challenges ahead, Google still has ample opportunities to grow as advertisers shift more of their spending to the Internet from other media like newspapers, magazines, radio and television.
The Internet is expected to capture about 7 percent, or $44 billion, of the total worldwide advertising market this year. Analysts say the percentage of Internet advertising lags behind the amount of time consumers are spending online, suggesting that marketers will need to ramp up their spending even more if they want to reach potential customers.
Google also has been adding more advertising vehicles to supplement its search engine. Just last month, the company bought DoubleClick Inc. for $3.2 billion in an effort to sell more graphical advertising. And Google is starting to show more video advertising through its increasingly popular clip-sharing site, YouTube.com.
Finally, the first quarter represented a tipping point in Google's maturation into an international company that's becoming less vulnerable to the ups and downs of the U.S. economy. Google collected most of its first-quarter revenue outside the United States, the first time that has happened in the company's 9 1/2-year history.
Besides diversifying its business, the higher international revenue should also help boost Google's profit because it should keep company's tax rate slightly lower than it has been in past years.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt left little doubt he expects the company to prosper as he hailed the first quarter results.
"It's clear we are well positioned for 2008 and beyond, regardless of the business environment we are surrounded by," Schmidt told analysts.
Google Inc.'s stock soared 20 percent Friday, restoring $28 billion in shareholder wealth as Wall Street renewed its love affair with the Internet search leader after weeks of worry about an online advertising slowdown.
Driven by stellar first-quarter results that surprised industry analysts, Google shares surged $89.87 to finish at $539.41. It marked the biggest one-day gain since Google's initial public stock offering in August 2004, leaving the shares at their highest closing price since January.
Google had lost favor with investors as Web surfing data and the faltering U.S. economy raised concerns that people aren't clicking as frequently on the Internet advertising links that generate most of the Mountain View-based company's revenue.
The trend threatened to chip away at Google's earnings because the company typically gets paid by the click.
Although there were signs of decelerated clicking in the United States, Google more than offset any negative effects by expanding its foreign business and tweaking its online ad system in a way that helped reap more revenue per click.
The first-quarter performance reinforced the belief that Google is a "must-own stock," American Technology Research analyst Rob Sanderson wrote in a Friday note.
"While (economic) concerns won't be completely dispelled, we believe the growth story remains intact and investors will again fall in love," he wrote.
Dinosaur Securities analyst David Garrity also is convinced that the worst is over for Google's stock, which was down 35 percent in 2008 before the first-quarter earnings changed investor sentiment.
"We think (Google's stock) has seen its 2008 low. Onward and upward," wrote Garrity, who expects the price to hit $750 during the next year.
Friday's rally still left Google shares well below their peak of $747.24 reached less than six months ago. At that point, Google's market value stood at $235 billion, about $66 billion, or nearly 40 percent higher, than at Friday's close.
Whether Google's stock can get back to where it once was will depend largely on how much more the company's earnings and revenue growth tapers off. With the company's annual revenue headed toward $20 billion, it's becoming more difficult to produce the hefty gains that excite investors.
For instance, Google's first-quarter revenue climbed 42 percent. That's impressive, but well below the 63 percent growth in 2007's first quarter.
Google's profits could be squeezed later this year if it has to spend more money to upgrade the data centers that power its search engine and other online services like e-mail, said Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal. He said he thinks additional investments probably will be needed, given some of the data centers are three or four years old.
Microsoft Corp.'s bid to acquire Yahoo Inc. also could create a more formidable competitor to Google. Recognizing the threat, Google is trying to help Yahoo thwart Microsoft's takeover bid by using its lucrative advertising system to place commercial links on Yahoo's Web site. The potential partnership, in the midst of a test scheduled to be completed next week, would likely face intense antitrust scrutiny.
If nothing else, analysts believe Google wants to delay a combination between Microsoft and Yahoo for as long as possible to give it a better chance to widen its lead in the Internet search market, which currently generates the biggest chunk of online advertising.
Google ended the first quarter with a 60 percent share of the U.S. search market, up from 58 percent at the end of the fourth quarter, according to comScore Media Metrix. Yahoo was in second at a 21 percent share followed by Microsoft at 9 percent.
Despite the challenges ahead, Google still has ample opportunities to grow as advertisers shift more of their spending to the Internet from other media like newspapers, magazines, radio and television.
The Internet is expected to capture about 7 percent, or $44 billion, of the total worldwide advertising market this year. Analysts say the percentage of Internet advertising lags behind the amount of time consumers are spending online, suggesting that marketers will need to ramp up their spending even more if they want to reach potential customers.
Google also has been adding more advertising vehicles to supplement its search engine. Just last month, the company bought DoubleClick Inc. for $3.2 billion in an effort to sell more graphical advertising. And Google is starting to show more video advertising through its increasingly popular clip-sharing site, YouTube.com.
Finally, the first quarter represented a tipping point in Google's maturation into an international company that's becoming less vulnerable to the ups and downs of the U.S. economy. Google collected most of its first-quarter revenue outside the United States, the first time that has happened in the company's 9 1/2-year history.
Besides diversifying its business, the higher international revenue should also help boost Google's profit because it should keep company's tax rate slightly lower than it has been in past years.
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt left little doubt he expects the company to prosper as he hailed the first quarter results.
"It's clear we are well positioned for 2008 and beyond, regardless of the business environment we are surrounded by," Schmidt told analysts.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Google’s paid click growth rates: Reasons for the decline; Earnings on deck
Posted by Larry Dignan
Google’s first quarter results on Thursday will be closely watched for the impact of the search giant’s anemic paid click growth rates, but Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post already has a few explanations.
In a research note, Post outlined the takeaways from five search engine marketers, who tried to explain why Google’s paid click growth rates stunk in the first quarter. The key reasons from Post’s note:
SEMs said that they saw many click arbitrageurs (advertisers who are able to buy cheap terms for lower CPCs and resell those clicks on their own sites) were minimized by Google in the quarter, likely due to tweaks to the importance of the landing page input to Google’s Quality Score algorithm. By minimizing these arbitrageurs, Google may reduce total coverage/clicks, but can raise revenue per click because arbitrageurs were usually paying a fraction of average CPCs. If Google can add one $0.60 click as a replacement for four $0.20 clicks, the impact is much less than implied by click data.
And.
Google has been strategically reducing the amount of searches that return paid ads (coverage) over the past 18 months, and in 1Q it fell to 46% from 52% in 4Q. By improving their algorithms, Google improves the user experience versus competitors, while also improving advertiser ROI which will then flow back as higher bid prices. According to our SEM contacts, ROIs did rise in 1Q and as they rose, advertisers increased their bids to increase volume, particularly less well-branded advertisers.
And.
One SEM felt that Universal Search, including relevant image and video results in search results, was drawing users’ eyeballs away from ads.
Bottom line: Post accepts those reasons and notes that the paid click flap is overblown. He expects Google to top Wall Street estimates. For the first quarter, Google is expected to report first quarter earnings of $4.52 a share on revenue of $3.6 billion.
Other key items to watch when Google reports:
Management credibility: On Google’s fourth quarter conference call, CEO Eric Schmidt and the gang said the company saw no impact from the economy. Later in the quarter, management disputed the paid click data that had folks spooked. Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein says that if the quarter disappoints, Google management may have some credibility issues. “To the extent this quarter disappoints, or the company’s tone changes, we see less investor support,” he said.
DoubleClick’s profit margins: Analysts haven’t been accounting for DoubleClick’s profit margins, which could bring down Google’s. What’s unclear is whether there will be any lasting impact.
Can international revenue save Google’s quarter? Google has a sizeable international business and it’s likely to get a currency bump. Has international growth slowed at all?
Macroeconomic conditions: What is Google seeing in the domestic economy and how is consumer behavior changing?
Google’s first quarter results on Thursday will be closely watched for the impact of the search giant’s anemic paid click growth rates, but Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post already has a few explanations.
In a research note, Post outlined the takeaways from five search engine marketers, who tried to explain why Google’s paid click growth rates stunk in the first quarter. The key reasons from Post’s note:
SEMs said that they saw many click arbitrageurs (advertisers who are able to buy cheap terms for lower CPCs and resell those clicks on their own sites) were minimized by Google in the quarter, likely due to tweaks to the importance of the landing page input to Google’s Quality Score algorithm. By minimizing these arbitrageurs, Google may reduce total coverage/clicks, but can raise revenue per click because arbitrageurs were usually paying a fraction of average CPCs. If Google can add one $0.60 click as a replacement for four $0.20 clicks, the impact is much less than implied by click data.
And.
Google has been strategically reducing the amount of searches that return paid ads (coverage) over the past 18 months, and in 1Q it fell to 46% from 52% in 4Q. By improving their algorithms, Google improves the user experience versus competitors, while also improving advertiser ROI which will then flow back as higher bid prices. According to our SEM contacts, ROIs did rise in 1Q and as they rose, advertisers increased their bids to increase volume, particularly less well-branded advertisers.
And.
One SEM felt that Universal Search, including relevant image and video results in search results, was drawing users’ eyeballs away from ads.
Bottom line: Post accepts those reasons and notes that the paid click flap is overblown. He expects Google to top Wall Street estimates. For the first quarter, Google is expected to report first quarter earnings of $4.52 a share on revenue of $3.6 billion.
Other key items to watch when Google reports:
Management credibility: On Google’s fourth quarter conference call, CEO Eric Schmidt and the gang said the company saw no impact from the economy. Later in the quarter, management disputed the paid click data that had folks spooked. Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein says that if the quarter disappoints, Google management may have some credibility issues. “To the extent this quarter disappoints, or the company’s tone changes, we see less investor support,” he said.
DoubleClick’s profit margins: Analysts haven’t been accounting for DoubleClick’s profit margins, which could bring down Google’s. What’s unclear is whether there will be any lasting impact.
Can international revenue save Google’s quarter? Google has a sizeable international business and it’s likely to get a currency bump. Has international growth slowed at all?
Macroeconomic conditions: What is Google seeing in the domestic economy and how is consumer behavior changing?
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Components of SEO Strategy
Daria Shilpa Evstropieva
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is defined in Wikipedia as "the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines." Most of the businesses which have web pages and participate in online advertising are at least vaguely familiar with this term.
Search Engine Optimization is a sophisticated marketing strategy ultimately dedicated to improving site´s visibility to the internet public. SEO strategy takes into consideration what people search for and how search engine algorithms work, and combines various tactics to increase site´s presence on the internet, and consequently, to generate more traffic.
Technological landscape changes too rapidly to define the strategy and tactics of Search Engine optimization in certain terms because certain algorithms of search engines are subject to frequent innovations. SEO is more capricious than fashion, that what was a new, blisteringly ´hot´ technique may be no longer useful in a month. Search Engine Optimization experts work around the clock to find the loopholes within the system to push their clients up on the search results page, the staff at the search engines computer labs work twice the time to find and fix the loopholes and to determine and discourage any strategy which might be used by the former to gain momentum.
Some of Search Engine Optimization tactics consist of the website´s html code, structure and presentation, unique content which would be interesting to the users and is easily indexed by search engine robots, proper keywords, building external link inventory, and increasing site´s ´stickiness´.
Three most consistent ways of increasing one´s ranking within search engines are creating authority by external link development, useful and compelling site content, and finally, by selecting the right keywords.
Relevant links to your site greatly help you to increase the ranking of your site. Not just any links, however, the highest is the rank of the other site, the higher authority the link carries. Any links from government websites, or other major, ´reputable´ sites of unions and organizations are recognized by robots as the highest letter of recommendation. Links from personal pages, small business, and small websites with low ranking do play a role to a degree, but are not nearly as influential. It is possible to buy links, but this merely increases the quantity and not the quality; for the purposes of high ranking within search engines one link from a reputable source is weights more than a hundred links from questionable sources. In terms of where it will get If your business is to rank well, the importance of having authoritative links from ´quality´ websites cannot be stressed enough.
Whether you are an entertaining site which makes profit from advertisement, a merchant or a service provider you want your visitors to spend as much time browsing your site as possible. As part of ranking the site search engine robots take into consideration the time visitors spend on the site. (Next time you are studying websites of your competitors – try to gather as much information in the smallest amount of time possible. If you have an addictive habit of frequently spending a significant amount of time there, you are increasing their search engine ranking. The more fresh, interesting and relevant your content is – the better. HTLM text copy is considered to be the most search engine friendly. Large images and complicated graphics weight down the site, and make it more difficult for the indexing robots to crawl it properly. To bring your site higher on the organic search listings content rich site is required. Content has to match the your keywords, if you are selling bananas wholesale, content about weather in South America, fruit plantation and history about fruit evolution might be interesting, but is only vaguely related, hence while it might improve the site stickiness, it won´t score high on the relevance scale. Well thought – out content development is a key component of SEO efforts.
Keywords selection is as simple or as difficult as figuring out what words searchers are going to use when they search for your product or services. Keywords serve a dual function; they must bring traffic to your site, and they must be specific enough to bring the targeted audience. If you are selling antique cars, keywords like ´car´ and ´auto´ are fairly useless because they are too broad and do not reflect the nature of your business. They also tend to be very busy – in all likelihood there are hundreds of websites, selling new and old cars, but only a few make it to the first page of the search engine results. Statistics show that searchers generally don´t go past page two – which means virtual invisibility, pun intended, to the rest of the sites under these keywords. The ones who are fortunate enough to be displayed on the first pages of search engine results receive vast majority of all traffic – those who are searching for toy cars, pictures of cars, car history etc included. Should you opt to use sponsored search to promote your business, be aware that the same rules apply and at a price. A healthy balance between cheap obscurity and luxurious greatness is highly recommended.
Successful SEO may require a continuous improvement and optimization of site´s content, HTML coding and keywords. That much is certain. To know what other strategies will be effective in the near future – stay tuned. Today, no expert can predict it with a complete certainty.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is defined in Wikipedia as "the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines." Most of the businesses which have web pages and participate in online advertising are at least vaguely familiar with this term.
Search Engine Optimization is a sophisticated marketing strategy ultimately dedicated to improving site´s visibility to the internet public. SEO strategy takes into consideration what people search for and how search engine algorithms work, and combines various tactics to increase site´s presence on the internet, and consequently, to generate more traffic.
Technological landscape changes too rapidly to define the strategy and tactics of Search Engine optimization in certain terms because certain algorithms of search engines are subject to frequent innovations. SEO is more capricious than fashion, that what was a new, blisteringly ´hot´ technique may be no longer useful in a month. Search Engine Optimization experts work around the clock to find the loopholes within the system to push their clients up on the search results page, the staff at the search engines computer labs work twice the time to find and fix the loopholes and to determine and discourage any strategy which might be used by the former to gain momentum.
Some of Search Engine Optimization tactics consist of the website´s html code, structure and presentation, unique content which would be interesting to the users and is easily indexed by search engine robots, proper keywords, building external link inventory, and increasing site´s ´stickiness´.
Three most consistent ways of increasing one´s ranking within search engines are creating authority by external link development, useful and compelling site content, and finally, by selecting the right keywords.
Relevant links to your site greatly help you to increase the ranking of your site. Not just any links, however, the highest is the rank of the other site, the higher authority the link carries. Any links from government websites, or other major, ´reputable´ sites of unions and organizations are recognized by robots as the highest letter of recommendation. Links from personal pages, small business, and small websites with low ranking do play a role to a degree, but are not nearly as influential. It is possible to buy links, but this merely increases the quantity and not the quality; for the purposes of high ranking within search engines one link from a reputable source is weights more than a hundred links from questionable sources. In terms of where it will get If your business is to rank well, the importance of having authoritative links from ´quality´ websites cannot be stressed enough.
Whether you are an entertaining site which makes profit from advertisement, a merchant or a service provider you want your visitors to spend as much time browsing your site as possible. As part of ranking the site search engine robots take into consideration the time visitors spend on the site. (Next time you are studying websites of your competitors – try to gather as much information in the smallest amount of time possible. If you have an addictive habit of frequently spending a significant amount of time there, you are increasing their search engine ranking. The more fresh, interesting and relevant your content is – the better. HTLM text copy is considered to be the most search engine friendly. Large images and complicated graphics weight down the site, and make it more difficult for the indexing robots to crawl it properly. To bring your site higher on the organic search listings content rich site is required. Content has to match the your keywords, if you are selling bananas wholesale, content about weather in South America, fruit plantation and history about fruit evolution might be interesting, but is only vaguely related, hence while it might improve the site stickiness, it won´t score high on the relevance scale. Well thought – out content development is a key component of SEO efforts.
Keywords selection is as simple or as difficult as figuring out what words searchers are going to use when they search for your product or services. Keywords serve a dual function; they must bring traffic to your site, and they must be specific enough to bring the targeted audience. If you are selling antique cars, keywords like ´car´ and ´auto´ are fairly useless because they are too broad and do not reflect the nature of your business. They also tend to be very busy – in all likelihood there are hundreds of websites, selling new and old cars, but only a few make it to the first page of the search engine results. Statistics show that searchers generally don´t go past page two – which means virtual invisibility, pun intended, to the rest of the sites under these keywords. The ones who are fortunate enough to be displayed on the first pages of search engine results receive vast majority of all traffic – those who are searching for toy cars, pictures of cars, car history etc included. Should you opt to use sponsored search to promote your business, be aware that the same rules apply and at a price. A healthy balance between cheap obscurity and luxurious greatness is highly recommended.
Successful SEO may require a continuous improvement and optimization of site´s content, HTML coding and keywords. That much is certain. To know what other strategies will be effective in the near future – stay tuned. Today, no expert can predict it with a complete certainty.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
What AOL Sees Looking Into Sphere
By Saul Hansell
I’m starting to wonder if AOL is getting a little giddy about acquisitions. Today the company announced it is buying Sphere, a little startup that helps blogs and other publishers provide links to Web content that relates to whatever they are writing about.
AOL has been buying up a lot of advertising companies trying to build on its successful advertising.com business. It also agreed to buy Bebo, an expensive bet on a second-tier social network. But at least there was logic in the link between Bebo and AOL’s instant messaging and video properties.
But Sphere? At best it is a service that is usually provided to publishers for free. And does AOL really want to be in the business of providing widgets and such to thousands of bloggers, not to mention cutting deals with ornery newspaper companies and the like?
It does, said Bill Wilson, AOL’s executive vice president for programming. Mr. Wilson described the Sphere as a media property suited to this age when audiences are fragmented and spread across the Web.
“Sphere has great distribution and syndication all over the Web,” he said.
Sphere’s business model is that it gives sites the ability to have related content displayed in a pop up window. And Sphere sells an ad that appears in that windows. The problem was that it wasn’t selling that many ads.
AOL’s idea then is to keep the small group at Sphere doing what it has done, but to help monetize the company’s product by selling ads better. There is also an opportunity, Mr. Wilson said, in using the service to drive more Internet users to AOL content. This is tricky because Sphere is meant to have an objective search engine that finds content anywhere on the Web that relates to a given topic. If site owners feel that AOL is biasing the links to its own properties, they may drop Sphere. Mr. Wilson said the company doesn’t need to do this as it is already well represented in Sphere’s results.
While most of the attention has been paid to Platform A, AOL’s advertising unit, Mr. Wilson has been busily revamping AOL’s content areas, reformatting all of them as blogs, largely modeled after the company’s successful TMZ.com gossip site. These include asylum.com, for men, and , for women. It is adding similar sites for parenting, home, kids and other topics.
This model, he says, has been profitable already, and has the potential to be more so once AOL digests its advertising acquisitions, merges its sales force, and can turn its attention back to actually selling ads.
Looking at all that activity, you wouldn’t say that what AOL is missing is a service like Sphere. Unlike Bebo, for which it agreed to pay $850 million, Sphere is cheap, limiting the risk of a mistake. The price was not disclosed, but it was probably about $25 million, according to an executive involved in the transaction. Still, if this deal is a sign that AOL has gotten a little trigger happy in the acquisition department, the long term cost to what is still a very fragile business could be very great.
I’m starting to wonder if AOL is getting a little giddy about acquisitions. Today the company announced it is buying Sphere, a little startup that helps blogs and other publishers provide links to Web content that relates to whatever they are writing about.
AOL has been buying up a lot of advertising companies trying to build on its successful advertising.com business. It also agreed to buy Bebo, an expensive bet on a second-tier social network. But at least there was logic in the link between Bebo and AOL’s instant messaging and video properties.
But Sphere? At best it is a service that is usually provided to publishers for free. And does AOL really want to be in the business of providing widgets and such to thousands of bloggers, not to mention cutting deals with ornery newspaper companies and the like?
It does, said Bill Wilson, AOL’s executive vice president for programming. Mr. Wilson described the Sphere as a media property suited to this age when audiences are fragmented and spread across the Web.
“Sphere has great distribution and syndication all over the Web,” he said.
Sphere’s business model is that it gives sites the ability to have related content displayed in a pop up window. And Sphere sells an ad that appears in that windows. The problem was that it wasn’t selling that many ads.
AOL’s idea then is to keep the small group at Sphere doing what it has done, but to help monetize the company’s product by selling ads better. There is also an opportunity, Mr. Wilson said, in using the service to drive more Internet users to AOL content. This is tricky because Sphere is meant to have an objective search engine that finds content anywhere on the Web that relates to a given topic. If site owners feel that AOL is biasing the links to its own properties, they may drop Sphere. Mr. Wilson said the company doesn’t need to do this as it is already well represented in Sphere’s results.
While most of the attention has been paid to Platform A, AOL’s advertising unit, Mr. Wilson has been busily revamping AOL’s content areas, reformatting all of them as blogs, largely modeled after the company’s successful TMZ.com gossip site. These include asylum.com, for men, and , for women. It is adding similar sites for parenting, home, kids and other topics.
This model, he says, has been profitable already, and has the potential to be more so once AOL digests its advertising acquisitions, merges its sales force, and can turn its attention back to actually selling ads.
Looking at all that activity, you wouldn’t say that what AOL is missing is a service like Sphere. Unlike Bebo, for which it agreed to pay $850 million, Sphere is cheap, limiting the risk of a mistake. The price was not disclosed, but it was probably about $25 million, according to an executive involved in the transaction. Still, if this deal is a sign that AOL has gotten a little trigger happy in the acquisition department, the long term cost to what is still a very fragile business could be very great.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Expert Advice for Securing Your Site and Your Reputation
by Erik Larkin
Is your company's Web site hacked? Today, it can be hard to tell. Online crooks who successfully break into a site often sneak in small bits of code that leave no visible trace but can attack visitors who simply view the page.
In fact, according to a Websense Security Labs report, thugs who want to spread their viruses, Trojans and other malware are more likely to hack an existing site than to put up their own poisoned page. Of the malicious sites the company found in late 2004, more than half were hacked sites.
To find out how a company can protect its site and its good name from being hijacked, I talked with Jeremiah Grossman of WhiteHat Security at last week's RSA security conference here in San Francisco. Grossman has made a big name for himself over the last couple of years by getting the word out about common Javascript vulnerabilities in Web sites.
His company helps secure sites by scanning for exploitable holes, but the custom service for his mostly enterprise-level customers doesn't come cheap. So I asked him for tips and suggestions that can help protect all sites, big and small. Here's what he said.
First, know where to look. Grossman says most exploitable vulnerabilities lie in the Web application layer, where custom code handles the communication between the Web server software and the database back-end. This makes sense, because a piece of Web software written by your own software developers isn't going to undergo the same security testing as say, the Apache Web server or an Oracle database (though said apps are subject to plenty of vulnerabilities themselves).
So Grossman says to make sure your developers are using current development tools, such as Ruby on Rails, and not old, outdated tools such as Classic ASP that can introduce holes.
Next, he suggests that you look into using a hosting provider instead of maintaining your own network and Web servers. Again, such companies don't provide guaranteed security, but they're more likely to keep systems up-to-date with security patches than a single, often-overworked systems administrator at a small company. I've worked as a sysadmin, and I know first hand how applying patches can often fall to the bottom of the to-do list when there are fires to fight.
If you only have a simple site with information on your company or your own professional services, you can find a number of free or inexpensive options for building and hosting your Web site, including a new beta offering from Grossman and cohorts at Roxer.com.
Finally, if you do host your own site (or want to double-check the security at your hosting provider), you should at a minimum use free tools or inexpensive services to check for known and commonly targeted holes in your network and servers. Grossman says the free Nessus security scanner I used to use years ago is still a good downloadable tool, and that Qualys (at qualys.com) offers an inexpensive vulnerability scanning service as well. Neither will find flaws in your own custom Web apps, but will help identify red flags like unpatched Web servers.
Is your company's Web site hacked? Today, it can be hard to tell. Online crooks who successfully break into a site often sneak in small bits of code that leave no visible trace but can attack visitors who simply view the page.
In fact, according to a Websense Security Labs report, thugs who want to spread their viruses, Trojans and other malware are more likely to hack an existing site than to put up their own poisoned page. Of the malicious sites the company found in late 2004, more than half were hacked sites.
To find out how a company can protect its site and its good name from being hijacked, I talked with Jeremiah Grossman of WhiteHat Security at last week's RSA security conference here in San Francisco. Grossman has made a big name for himself over the last couple of years by getting the word out about common Javascript vulnerabilities in Web sites.
His company helps secure sites by scanning for exploitable holes, but the custom service for his mostly enterprise-level customers doesn't come cheap. So I asked him for tips and suggestions that can help protect all sites, big and small. Here's what he said.
First, know where to look. Grossman says most exploitable vulnerabilities lie in the Web application layer, where custom code handles the communication between the Web server software and the database back-end. This makes sense, because a piece of Web software written by your own software developers isn't going to undergo the same security testing as say, the Apache Web server or an Oracle database (though said apps are subject to plenty of vulnerabilities themselves).
So Grossman says to make sure your developers are using current development tools, such as Ruby on Rails, and not old, outdated tools such as Classic ASP that can introduce holes.
Next, he suggests that you look into using a hosting provider instead of maintaining your own network and Web servers. Again, such companies don't provide guaranteed security, but they're more likely to keep systems up-to-date with security patches than a single, often-overworked systems administrator at a small company. I've worked as a sysadmin, and I know first hand how applying patches can often fall to the bottom of the to-do list when there are fires to fight.
If you only have a simple site with information on your company or your own professional services, you can find a number of free or inexpensive options for building and hosting your Web site, including a new beta offering from Grossman and cohorts at Roxer.com.
Finally, if you do host your own site (or want to double-check the security at your hosting provider), you should at a minimum use free tools or inexpensive services to check for known and commonly targeted holes in your network and servers. Grossman says the free Nessus security scanner I used to use years ago is still a good downloadable tool, and that Qualys (at qualys.com) offers an inexpensive vulnerability scanning service as well. Neither will find flaws in your own custom Web apps, but will help identify red flags like unpatched Web servers.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
TV networks seek formula for online ads
By RYAN NAKASHIMA
CBS Corp. executives took an unusual risk last fall before its series debut of "Big Bang Theory" — it offered the entire episode online despite the chance it would sap viewership for the TV premiere.
The show, about two geeky physicists and their beautiful female neighbor, got 90,000 views on CBS.com and other Web sites over a week, followed by a better-than-expected 9.5 million for the Sept. 24 on-air premiere.
"The thought was purely to try to find new eyeballs in a medium that generally appeals to younger demographics, and then drive them to put butts in seats to watch on their beautiful plasma-screen TV when the series takes off," said Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive. "It was fairly radical, and we're happy with how it came out."
Looking to tap new revenue through online ads, attract new viewers and keep loyal fans, broadcast networks are making bigger, riskier bets on Internet delivery of their shows. The challenge is to grow viewership online without cannibalizing traditional ratings and DVD sales while making more money on programming seen on the Web.
But online audiences are still limited, a stumbling block that's expected to be a hot topic at the National Association of Broadcasters' annual gathering, which starts Monday in Las Vegas.
According to comScore Media Metrix, ABC.com led the network pack with 8.5 million unique visitors over its entire lineup of shows for the whole month of February, followed by NBC.com with 7.9 million. By comparison, a single episode of CBS's "CSI" recently took in more than 20 million TV viewers in one night.
Still, there are signs that the online experimentation will pay off.
Networks now charge more per thousand viewers online than they do over the airwaves, where the average for a primetime show is about $25. Analysts put the online rate anywhere from $35 to $50 per thousand, though there are millions more potential traditional TV viewers.
Advertisers pay more online because there is a better accounting of how many viewers see the ads and an extra benefit that an impulse to purchase can be acted on with the click of a mouse.
"For an advertiser, you're getting a clear performance result," said Bob Davis, a Web investor and former CEO of search engine Lycos. "No matter what the click-through (rate) they get, it's infinitely larger than the click-through they get on TV. The click-through they get on TV is zero."
ABC, which streams "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" on its ABC.com site after airing on TV, is aiming to tweak its formula to make its online ads as lucrative as its TV ones.
"In order for us to drive the number up to what we get on broadcast, we have to do one of two things. We have to either increase the number of ads that you currently see on ABC.com or figure out different ways to generate value for advertisers," said Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media for the Disney-ABC Television Group.
"We are not at parity yet with broadcast, but the goal and everything that we are doing is to drive toward parity," he said.
The CBS experiment with "Big Bang Theory" was so successful that the network repeated the online-preview formula with two other shows, "Dexter" in February and "The Tudors," on the CBS-owned pay cable channel, Showtime, in March.
ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co., expects to explore the effectiveness of localized advertising in test markets in the next several months, because its media player can detect the location of the online viewer, Cheng said.
Technology companies also are working to style ads that will be more interactive, leading to higher sales — such as making products that appear in shows clickable — or targeting viewers based on what kinds of content they have seen recently.
"Ultimately, where the Internet will really become a powerful source of revenue is that all forms of advertising will work in a highly targeted way," said Steve Mitgang, chief executive of Veoh, a Web site that streams ad-supported shows. For TV shows at least, ad-supported free viewing online has proved more profitable than fee-based video downloads on services like Apple Inc.'s iTunes, said George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer of NBC Universal.
NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., stopped supplying its hit TV shows to iTunes last year. Instead, it teamed up with News Corp. to launch hulu.com, a Web site that went public last month and streams shows like "Battlestar Galactica" and "The Office" for free with ads.
The NBC Universal-News partnership, as well as CBS, are testing a "ubiquitous" approach, making their content available across dozens of Internet partner sites, including YouTube, rather than drawing viewers to a single destination.
It's not clear which model of delivery will prevail. None of the networks disclose how much ad revenue they collect from online show streams, but all have made major investments in what is a growing business.
"We're sort of in the first inning of how some of these digital platforms will develop," said Kliavkoff. "We still don't know what the winning business model will be at the end."
CBS Corp. executives took an unusual risk last fall before its series debut of "Big Bang Theory" — it offered the entire episode online despite the chance it would sap viewership for the TV premiere.
The show, about two geeky physicists and their beautiful female neighbor, got 90,000 views on CBS.com and other Web sites over a week, followed by a better-than-expected 9.5 million for the Sept. 24 on-air premiere.
"The thought was purely to try to find new eyeballs in a medium that generally appeals to younger demographics, and then drive them to put butts in seats to watch on their beautiful plasma-screen TV when the series takes off," said Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive. "It was fairly radical, and we're happy with how it came out."
Looking to tap new revenue through online ads, attract new viewers and keep loyal fans, broadcast networks are making bigger, riskier bets on Internet delivery of their shows. The challenge is to grow viewership online without cannibalizing traditional ratings and DVD sales while making more money on programming seen on the Web.
But online audiences are still limited, a stumbling block that's expected to be a hot topic at the National Association of Broadcasters' annual gathering, which starts Monday in Las Vegas.
According to comScore Media Metrix, ABC.com led the network pack with 8.5 million unique visitors over its entire lineup of shows for the whole month of February, followed by NBC.com with 7.9 million. By comparison, a single episode of CBS's "CSI" recently took in more than 20 million TV viewers in one night.
Still, there are signs that the online experimentation will pay off.
Networks now charge more per thousand viewers online than they do over the airwaves, where the average for a primetime show is about $25. Analysts put the online rate anywhere from $35 to $50 per thousand, though there are millions more potential traditional TV viewers.
Advertisers pay more online because there is a better accounting of how many viewers see the ads and an extra benefit that an impulse to purchase can be acted on with the click of a mouse.
"For an advertiser, you're getting a clear performance result," said Bob Davis, a Web investor and former CEO of search engine Lycos. "No matter what the click-through (rate) they get, it's infinitely larger than the click-through they get on TV. The click-through they get on TV is zero."
ABC, which streams "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" on its ABC.com site after airing on TV, is aiming to tweak its formula to make its online ads as lucrative as its TV ones.
"In order for us to drive the number up to what we get on broadcast, we have to do one of two things. We have to either increase the number of ads that you currently see on ABC.com or figure out different ways to generate value for advertisers," said Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media for the Disney-ABC Television Group.
"We are not at parity yet with broadcast, but the goal and everything that we are doing is to drive toward parity," he said.
The CBS experiment with "Big Bang Theory" was so successful that the network repeated the online-preview formula with two other shows, "Dexter" in February and "The Tudors," on the CBS-owned pay cable channel, Showtime, in March.
ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co., expects to explore the effectiveness of localized advertising in test markets in the next several months, because its media player can detect the location of the online viewer, Cheng said.
Technology companies also are working to style ads that will be more interactive, leading to higher sales — such as making products that appear in shows clickable — or targeting viewers based on what kinds of content they have seen recently.
"Ultimately, where the Internet will really become a powerful source of revenue is that all forms of advertising will work in a highly targeted way," said Steve Mitgang, chief executive of Veoh, a Web site that streams ad-supported shows. For TV shows at least, ad-supported free viewing online has proved more profitable than fee-based video downloads on services like Apple Inc.'s iTunes, said George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer of NBC Universal.
NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., stopped supplying its hit TV shows to iTunes last year. Instead, it teamed up with News Corp. to launch hulu.com, a Web site that went public last month and streams shows like "Battlestar Galactica" and "The Office" for free with ads.
The NBC Universal-News partnership, as well as CBS, are testing a "ubiquitous" approach, making their content available across dozens of Internet partner sites, including YouTube, rather than drawing viewers to a single destination.
It's not clear which model of delivery will prevail. None of the networks disclose how much ad revenue they collect from online show streams, but all have made major investments in what is a growing business.
"We're sort of in the first inning of how some of these digital platforms will develop," said Kliavkoff. "We still don't know what the winning business model will be at the end."
IBM Research Spins 'Racetrack' Nano-Magnetic Memory
By R. Colin Johnson
The advanced storage technique could eventually replace flash memory and hard drives, IBM scientists believe.
A next-generation nonvolatile memory dubbed "racetrack" is expected to initially replace flash memory and eventually hard-disk drives, according to IBM (NYSE: IBM) Corp. fellow Stuart Parkin of its Almaden Research Center (San Jose, Calif.)
Using spintronics--the storage of bits generated by the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge--a proof-of-concept shift register was recently demonstrated by IBM. The prototype encodes bits into the magnetic domain walls along the length of a silicon nanowire, or racetrack. IBM uses "massless motion" to move the magnetic domain walls along the nanowire for the storage and retrieval of information.
"We have now demonstrated a current-controlled, domain-wall, shift register which is the fundamental, underlying technology for racetrack memory," said Parkin. "We use current pulses to move a series of domain walls along a nanowire, which is not possible to do with magnetic fields."
IBM's Stuart Parkin
IBM's goal, based on spintronic patents filed as early as 2004, is to use the same square micron that currently houses a single SRAM memory bit, or 10 flash bits, and drill down into the third dimension to store spin-polarized bits on a sunken racetrack-shaped magnetic nanowire. Using an area of silicon 1 micron wide and 10 microns high, IBM said its first-generation racetrack would store 10 bits compared to one, thereby replacing flash memory. Eventually, it could store 100 bits in the same area, which is dense enough to replace hard-disk drives.
"Racetrack is essentially the third turn of the crank of this new field of engineering called spintronics," said Parkin. "In current solid-state memory devices you store and control the flow of electrical charge. Here, we store and control the flow of the spin of an electron."
Parkin invented a spin valve sensing device in 1989 based on the giant magnetoresistive effect, which was used to increase disk drive capacity 1,000-fold. "Then we invented the use of the magnetic-tunnel junction (MTJ)--a sandwich of two magnetic layers separated by a dielectric--which we used to build the first magnetic random access memories in 1999.
"The third generation is the racetrack, which could replace all nonvolatile memories, including flash memory and hard-disk drives," Parkin claimed.
IBM estimates that an iPod using racetrack memory could store 100 times more information. Unlike flash, the solid-state devices have no components that can wear out.
Racetrack memory injects magnetized domain walls along the length of a high aspect ratio nanowire--only nanometers wide but up to microns long. Spin-polarized current pulses are then used to move the domain walls along the nanowire to store and retrieve bits.
Last year IBM, demonstrated that it could store a magnetic domain on a nanowire, then move it along the wire's length. The new shift register composed of many domain walls can be stored and moved together along the length of the wire. To read-out bits, the device senses a change in resistance in the wire.
The next step is building a fast MTJ read-head at the top of each racetrack, enabling it to quickly read-out any of the up to 100 bits stored on a racetrack.
IBM's current prototype uses a linear racetrack aligned parallel to the surface of a silicon chip. The first racetrack demonstration with MTJ read-heads will use that same approach. Eventually, IBM said it plans to build vertical racetracks by sinking nanowires into silicon. The MTJ read-head would be located at the top of each racetrack.
The advanced storage technique could eventually replace flash memory and hard drives, IBM scientists believe.
A next-generation nonvolatile memory dubbed "racetrack" is expected to initially replace flash memory and eventually hard-disk drives, according to IBM (NYSE: IBM) Corp. fellow Stuart Parkin of its Almaden Research Center (San Jose, Calif.)
Using spintronics--the storage of bits generated by the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge--a proof-of-concept shift register was recently demonstrated by IBM. The prototype encodes bits into the magnetic domain walls along the length of a silicon nanowire, or racetrack. IBM uses "massless motion" to move the magnetic domain walls along the nanowire for the storage and retrieval of information.
"We have now demonstrated a current-controlled, domain-wall, shift register which is the fundamental, underlying technology for racetrack memory," said Parkin. "We use current pulses to move a series of domain walls along a nanowire, which is not possible to do with magnetic fields."
IBM's Stuart Parkin
IBM's goal, based on spintronic patents filed as early as 2004, is to use the same square micron that currently houses a single SRAM memory bit, or 10 flash bits, and drill down into the third dimension to store spin-polarized bits on a sunken racetrack-shaped magnetic nanowire. Using an area of silicon 1 micron wide and 10 microns high, IBM said its first-generation racetrack would store 10 bits compared to one, thereby replacing flash memory. Eventually, it could store 100 bits in the same area, which is dense enough to replace hard-disk drives.
"Racetrack is essentially the third turn of the crank of this new field of engineering called spintronics," said Parkin. "In current solid-state memory devices you store and control the flow of electrical charge. Here, we store and control the flow of the spin of an electron."
Parkin invented a spin valve sensing device in 1989 based on the giant magnetoresistive effect, which was used to increase disk drive capacity 1,000-fold. "Then we invented the use of the magnetic-tunnel junction (MTJ)--a sandwich of two magnetic layers separated by a dielectric--which we used to build the first magnetic random access memories in 1999.
"The third generation is the racetrack, which could replace all nonvolatile memories, including flash memory and hard-disk drives," Parkin claimed.
IBM estimates that an iPod using racetrack memory could store 100 times more information. Unlike flash, the solid-state devices have no components that can wear out.
Racetrack memory injects magnetized domain walls along the length of a high aspect ratio nanowire--only nanometers wide but up to microns long. Spin-polarized current pulses are then used to move the domain walls along the nanowire to store and retrieve bits.
Last year IBM, demonstrated that it could store a magnetic domain on a nanowire, then move it along the wire's length. The new shift register composed of many domain walls can be stored and moved together along the length of the wire. To read-out bits, the device senses a change in resistance in the wire.
The next step is building a fast MTJ read-head at the top of each racetrack, enabling it to quickly read-out any of the up to 100 bits stored on a racetrack.
IBM's current prototype uses a linear racetrack aligned parallel to the surface of a silicon chip. The first racetrack demonstration with MTJ read-heads will use that same approach. Eventually, IBM said it plans to build vertical racetracks by sinking nanowires into silicon. The MTJ read-head would be located at the top of each racetrack.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Nanomachine Kills Cancer Cells
Researchers from the Nano Machine Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA have developed a novel type of nanomachine that can capture and store anticancer drugs inside tiny pores and release them into cancer cells in response to light.
Known as a "nanoimpeller," the device is the first light-powered nanomachine that operates inside a living cell, a development that has strong implications for cancer treatment.
UCLA researchers reported the synthesis and operation of nanoparticles containing nanoimpellers that can deliver anticancer drugs in the journal Small.
Nanomechanical systems designed to trap and release molecules from pores in response to a stimulus have been the subject of intensive investigation, in large part for their potential applications in precise drug delivery. Nanomaterials suitable for this type of operation must consist of both an appropriate container and a photo-activated moving component.
To achieve this, the UCLA researchers used mesoporous silica nanoparticles and coated the interiors of the pores with azobenzene, a chemical that can oscillate between two different conformations upon light exposure. Operation of the nanoimpeller was demonstrated using a variety of human cancer cells, including colon and pancreatic cancer cells. The nanoparticles were given to human cancer cells in vitro and taken up in the dark. When light was directed at the particles, the nanoimpeller mechanism took effect and released the contents.
The pores of the particles can be loaded with cargo molecules, such as dyes or anticancer drugs. In response to light exposure, a wagging motion occurs, causing the cargo molecules to escape from the pores and attack the cell. Confocal microscopic images showed that the impeller operation can be regulated precisely by the intensity of the light, the excitation time and the specific wavelength.
The study was conducted jointly by Jeffrey Zink, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Fuyu Tamanoi, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics and director of the signal transduction and therapeutics program at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Tamanoi and Zink are two of the co-directors for the Nano Machine Center for Targeted Delivery and On-Demand Release at the California NanoSystems Institute.
"We developed a mechanism that releases small molecules in aqueous and biological environments during exposure to light," Zink said. "The nanomachines are positioned in molecular-sized pores inside of spherical particles and function in aqueous and biological environments."
"The achievement here is gaining precise control of the amount of drugs that are released by controlling the light exposure," Tamanoi said. "Controlled release to a specific location is the key issue. And the release is only activated by where the light is shining."
"We were extremely excited to discover that the machines were taken up by the cancer cells and that they responded to the light. We observed cell killing as a result of programmed cell death," Tamanoi and Zink said.
This nanoimpeller system may open a new avenue for drug delivery under external control at specific times and locations for phototherapy. Remote-control manipulation of the machine is achieved by varying both the light intensity and the time that the particles are irradiated at the specific wavelengths at which the azobenzene impellers absorb.
"This system has potential applications for precise drug delivery and might be the next generation for novel platform for the treatment of cancers such as colon and stomach cancer," Zink and Tamanoi said. "The fact that one can operate the mechanism by remote control means that one can administer repeated small-dosage releases to achieve greater control of the drug's effect."
Tamanoi and Zink say the research represents an exciting first step in developing nanomachines for cancer therapy and that further steps are required to demonstrate actual inhibition of tumor growth.
Journal reference: Light-Activated Nanoimpeller-Controlled Drug Release in Cancer Cells. Small. 31 Mar 2008. Doi: 10.1002/smll.200700903
The research team also includes Eunshil Choi, a graduate student in Zink's lab, and Jie Lu, a postdoctoral researcher in Tamanoi's lab.
Known as a "nanoimpeller," the device is the first light-powered nanomachine that operates inside a living cell, a development that has strong implications for cancer treatment.
UCLA researchers reported the synthesis and operation of nanoparticles containing nanoimpellers that can deliver anticancer drugs in the journal Small.
Nanomechanical systems designed to trap and release molecules from pores in response to a stimulus have been the subject of intensive investigation, in large part for their potential applications in precise drug delivery. Nanomaterials suitable for this type of operation must consist of both an appropriate container and a photo-activated moving component.
To achieve this, the UCLA researchers used mesoporous silica nanoparticles and coated the interiors of the pores with azobenzene, a chemical that can oscillate between two different conformations upon light exposure. Operation of the nanoimpeller was demonstrated using a variety of human cancer cells, including colon and pancreatic cancer cells. The nanoparticles were given to human cancer cells in vitro and taken up in the dark. When light was directed at the particles, the nanoimpeller mechanism took effect and released the contents.
The pores of the particles can be loaded with cargo molecules, such as dyes or anticancer drugs. In response to light exposure, a wagging motion occurs, causing the cargo molecules to escape from the pores and attack the cell. Confocal microscopic images showed that the impeller operation can be regulated precisely by the intensity of the light, the excitation time and the specific wavelength.
The study was conducted jointly by Jeffrey Zink, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Fuyu Tamanoi, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics and director of the signal transduction and therapeutics program at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Tamanoi and Zink are two of the co-directors for the Nano Machine Center for Targeted Delivery and On-Demand Release at the California NanoSystems Institute.
"We developed a mechanism that releases small molecules in aqueous and biological environments during exposure to light," Zink said. "The nanomachines are positioned in molecular-sized pores inside of spherical particles and function in aqueous and biological environments."
"The achievement here is gaining precise control of the amount of drugs that are released by controlling the light exposure," Tamanoi said. "Controlled release to a specific location is the key issue. And the release is only activated by where the light is shining."
"We were extremely excited to discover that the machines were taken up by the cancer cells and that they responded to the light. We observed cell killing as a result of programmed cell death," Tamanoi and Zink said.
This nanoimpeller system may open a new avenue for drug delivery under external control at specific times and locations for phototherapy. Remote-control manipulation of the machine is achieved by varying both the light intensity and the time that the particles are irradiated at the specific wavelengths at which the azobenzene impellers absorb.
"This system has potential applications for precise drug delivery and might be the next generation for novel platform for the treatment of cancers such as colon and stomach cancer," Zink and Tamanoi said. "The fact that one can operate the mechanism by remote control means that one can administer repeated small-dosage releases to achieve greater control of the drug's effect."
Tamanoi and Zink say the research represents an exciting first step in developing nanomachines for cancer therapy and that further steps are required to demonstrate actual inhibition of tumor growth.
Journal reference: Light-Activated Nanoimpeller-Controlled Drug Release in Cancer Cells. Small. 31 Mar 2008. Doi: 10.1002/smll.200700903
The research team also includes Eunshil Choi, a graduate student in Zink's lab, and Jie Lu, a postdoctoral researcher in Tamanoi's lab.
Yahoo to test Google AdSense, Microsoft objects
Yahoo, after years of battling Internet rival Google for online advertising, said Wednesday it would launch a limited test of Google's AdSense for Search service.
The announcement drew a sharp response from Microsoft, which warned that a Yahoo-Google partnership would cover some 90 percent of online advertising.
The test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than three percent of Yahoo search queries, Yahoo said in a statement. The program will deliver Google ads alongside Yahoo's own search results.
The Sunnyvale, California-based company said the test will apply only to traffic from yahoo.com in the US and will not include Yahoo's network of affiliate or premium publisher partners.
Yahoo said the testing does not necessarily mean it will "join the AdSense for Search program or that any further commercial relationship with Google will result."
Yahoo is also fighting off a takeover bid from software giant Microsoft, arguing the offer undervalues the Internet firm.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said in a statement: "Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google's hands."
He added: "This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo. We will assess closely all of our options."
Smith said Microsoft remains committed to a 44.6 billion dollar takeover offer for Yahoo.
"Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers," he said.
The announcement drew a sharp response from Microsoft, which warned that a Yahoo-Google partnership would cover some 90 percent of online advertising.
The test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than three percent of Yahoo search queries, Yahoo said in a statement. The program will deliver Google ads alongside Yahoo's own search results.
The Sunnyvale, California-based company said the test will apply only to traffic from yahoo.com in the US and will not include Yahoo's network of affiliate or premium publisher partners.
Yahoo said the testing does not necessarily mean it will "join the AdSense for Search program or that any further commercial relationship with Google will result."
Yahoo is also fighting off a takeover bid from software giant Microsoft, arguing the offer undervalues the Internet firm.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said in a statement: "Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google's hands."
He added: "This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo. We will assess closely all of our options."
Smith said Microsoft remains committed to a 44.6 billion dollar takeover offer for Yahoo.
"Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers," he said.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Yahoo's Flickr expands into online video
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Yahoo Inc. will begin showing homemade videos on its online photo-sharing site, Flickr, in a long-anticipated move that may be too late to lure most people away from the Internet's dominant video channel, Google Inc.'s YouTube.
Flickr's video technology, to debut late Tuesday, represents the latest example of Yahoo trying to catch up to Google in a crucial battleground.
Yahoo's inability to keep pace with Google in the lucrative online search market caused its profits and stock price to sag during the past two years, which in turn triggered an unsolicited takeover attempt by Microsoft Corp. for more than $40 billion.
While trying to fend off Microsoft, Yahoo has continued to develop and introduce services that the Sunnyvale-based company hopes will help revive its earnings growth.
Unlike Internet search, online video hasn't blossomed into a big moneymaker yet. But it's expected to turn into a marketing magnet as advertisers shift more of their spending from television in pursuit of consumers who are watching more entertainment and news online.
Yahoo already operates one of the Web's largest video platforms, but most of its content is provided by media outlets and other outside professionals.
Flickr's new technology is aimed at amateurs and hobbyists looking for a better way to share short video clips with family and friends.
Only Flickr's "pro" members — those who pay for a $24.95 annual subscription — will be allowed to transfer video clips of up to 90 seconds to the site, but anyone will be able to watch them. A privacy setting will allow videographers to limit access to the clips on Flickr if they want.
The video service will be offered in English and seven other languages: French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and traditional Chinese.
Flickr believes its service will offer a more personal touch than the many other Web sites that feature video, and that will help distinguish it. Flickr managers also expect to appeal to people looking to keep their video and pictures on the same site.
"What we are doing is going to meet a huge unmet need in the market," predicted Kakul Srivastava, Flickr's general manager. "Most people aren't showing their personal videos at all right now."
A trio of friends — Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim — created YouTube partly because they couldn't find a spot on the Internet to share their personal videos. Shortly before YouTube played its first clip in the spring of 2005, the husband-and-wife team of Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield sold Flickr to Yahoo for a reported $35 million.
While Flickr continued to focus on photos, YouTube's eclectic mix of professional clips — often illegally posted — and videos of kids goofing off turned the site into a cultural phenomenon.
Since Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion in late 2006, the video-sharing site has become even more popular despite increased competition from major media companies like NBC Universal and News Corp.
In February, 70 million people in the United States watched 2.9 billion video clips on YouTube, according to the research firm Nielsen Online. News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Video showed about 406 million clips to 21 million people in the United States to rank a distant second. Yahoo was in third place with 245 million clips shown to 21 million people in the United States.
Flickr has built a fiercely loyal following in its own right, a factor that should bolster its expansion into video.
The site attracted a worldwide audience of 42 million in February, up 53 percent from the same time last year, according to comScore Media Metrix. Facebook.com, an online hangout popular among younger Web surfers, had the only larger photo-sharing service with a worldwide audience of 65 million, comScore said.
Yahoo Inc. will begin showing homemade videos on its online photo-sharing site, Flickr, in a long-anticipated move that may be too late to lure most people away from the Internet's dominant video channel, Google Inc.'s YouTube.
Flickr's video technology, to debut late Tuesday, represents the latest example of Yahoo trying to catch up to Google in a crucial battleground.
Yahoo's inability to keep pace with Google in the lucrative online search market caused its profits and stock price to sag during the past two years, which in turn triggered an unsolicited takeover attempt by Microsoft Corp. for more than $40 billion.
While trying to fend off Microsoft, Yahoo has continued to develop and introduce services that the Sunnyvale-based company hopes will help revive its earnings growth.
Unlike Internet search, online video hasn't blossomed into a big moneymaker yet. But it's expected to turn into a marketing magnet as advertisers shift more of their spending from television in pursuit of consumers who are watching more entertainment and news online.
Yahoo already operates one of the Web's largest video platforms, but most of its content is provided by media outlets and other outside professionals.
Flickr's new technology is aimed at amateurs and hobbyists looking for a better way to share short video clips with family and friends.
Only Flickr's "pro" members — those who pay for a $24.95 annual subscription — will be allowed to transfer video clips of up to 90 seconds to the site, but anyone will be able to watch them. A privacy setting will allow videographers to limit access to the clips on Flickr if they want.
The video service will be offered in English and seven other languages: French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and traditional Chinese.
Flickr believes its service will offer a more personal touch than the many other Web sites that feature video, and that will help distinguish it. Flickr managers also expect to appeal to people looking to keep their video and pictures on the same site.
"What we are doing is going to meet a huge unmet need in the market," predicted Kakul Srivastava, Flickr's general manager. "Most people aren't showing their personal videos at all right now."
A trio of friends — Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim — created YouTube partly because they couldn't find a spot on the Internet to share their personal videos. Shortly before YouTube played its first clip in the spring of 2005, the husband-and-wife team of Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield sold Flickr to Yahoo for a reported $35 million.
While Flickr continued to focus on photos, YouTube's eclectic mix of professional clips — often illegally posted — and videos of kids goofing off turned the site into a cultural phenomenon.
Since Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion in late 2006, the video-sharing site has become even more popular despite increased competition from major media companies like NBC Universal and News Corp.
In February, 70 million people in the United States watched 2.9 billion video clips on YouTube, according to the research firm Nielsen Online. News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Video showed about 406 million clips to 21 million people in the United States to rank a distant second. Yahoo was in third place with 245 million clips shown to 21 million people in the United States.
Flickr has built a fiercely loyal following in its own right, a factor that should bolster its expansion into video.
The site attracted a worldwide audience of 42 million in February, up 53 percent from the same time last year, according to comScore Media Metrix. Facebook.com, an online hangout popular among younger Web surfers, had the only larger photo-sharing service with a worldwide audience of 65 million, comScore said.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Analysis: Google App Engine alluring, will be hard to escape
By Clint Ecker
Last night at a Campfire One event at Google headquarters in Mountain View, a new service was announced called Google App Engine. Aimed almost squarely at the loosely-coupled Amazon Web Services, Google is betting that developers and startups will opt to host their applications in Google's cloud, taking advantage of Google APIs, and leveraging the nearly unlimited processing power and storage capacity of Google's servers.
In comparison, Amazon's offering is broken out into functional services. You can use Amazon's S3 storage solution by itself, or in conjunction with their computing capacity services, or with their payment service, fulfillment service, or queuing service. While Amazon's services are broad, generalized, and language/platform agnostic, Google's wager is geared exclusively towards web applications and the services developers require to make their applications run.
Google has built an infrastructure that allows developers to create web applications programmed in Python code and upload them to and run on Google servers. Developers are provided with a number of optional Google-related services such as an authentication service built on top of Google accounts, a fast datastore backend based on Google's BigTable project, and Google's infrastructure for delivering e-mail.
The Google App Engine currently only supports the Python runtime for running applications and supports any frameworks that speak CGI or WSGI (with a CGI adaptor). While individuals who are unfamiliar with Python may find this initial requirement a setback, there are a number of web frameworks compatible with the service to make their transition easier. These include Django, CherryPy, Pylons, and web.py. Although many of these work just fine, the App Engine does not support certain aspects of some of these. Most noticeably, Django's models are not supported due to the unique nature of Google's datastore. These have been supplanted with Google APIs for storage, authentication, and more. Google also provides some workarounds for applications that depend on Django database models to function, like a bridge for Django form validation.
Google has also provided its own lightweight web framework called webapp tailored specially for the nuances of AppEngine.
One of the sample apps provided by Google Oh, and by the way, all of this is free.. with certain constraints. During this limited trial, only the first 10,000 registered users will be allowed to participate. Once this period ends, the service will be open to the public, for no charge unless your application goes over the prescribed, hard-and-fast limits that cannot be overaged. These include a 1,000-result limit in queries and a few-second limit on how long your application can take to respond to a request. During this beta period, applications will be limited to 500MB of storage, 200 million megacycles/day CPU time, and 10GB bandwidth per day. The Google FAQ equates this to approximately five million pageviews a month. While these limits cannot be breached during the trial period, at some point in the future, overages will cost the developer money, most likely in a manner similar to Amazon's billing structure.
It's not all good...
The downsides to this program are fairly apparent. First, developers must write all of their code in Python. While Python is a great dynamic language with a robust standard library, and over 15 years of active development, there will be some prospective users who would rather deploy their code in a different language. Google reiterates several times within the documentation that Python is only the first of many, but that they are still in the process of considering other languages for use in the project at this time.
Perhaps the most blatant downside is being locked into Google's platform. Existing projects will have to be ported or written from scratch, and those that rely on traditional relational databases will probably have difficulty making the transition. Even more difficult would be transitioning your application to your own servers if you choose to leave Google's tender embrace. Once you've created an established application on top of Google's authentication service and stored all your data within the company's datastore, removing all this code and data and moving it to another location would appear to a be fairly onerous task.
Why would a developer want to deploy their application on Google's servers and within Google's constraints? First up, it allows you, the developer, to begin coding without having to worry about all the nitty-gritty issues involved with hosting, buying expensive hardware, and scaling your code. You'll also be able to integrate more closely with Google's services, which offers some advantages.
This sounds great to small developers with small sites, but what happens when your cool idea takes off and you've got thousands or millions of users? You'll be paying a lot of money to Google each month—with no easy way out. No matter how much your user base and technology is worth, almost no company will be willing to purchase your idea because of the high cost of migrating that code out of Google.
Everyone except Google, of course.
Although Google App Engine offers some clear advantages and lowers the barriers to entry for startups and independent developers, the potential for lock-in creates risks that could prove more costly in the long-term. The constraints of the service could make it look considerably less appealing than Amazon's more open-ended EC2 service. Without a clean glide-path for moving App Engine web applications out of Google's nest, developers with aspirations of large-scale success might be reluctant to adopt the service.
Last night at a Campfire One event at Google headquarters in Mountain View, a new service was announced called Google App Engine. Aimed almost squarely at the loosely-coupled Amazon Web Services, Google is betting that developers and startups will opt to host their applications in Google's cloud, taking advantage of Google APIs, and leveraging the nearly unlimited processing power and storage capacity of Google's servers.
In comparison, Amazon's offering is broken out into functional services. You can use Amazon's S3 storage solution by itself, or in conjunction with their computing capacity services, or with their payment service, fulfillment service, or queuing service. While Amazon's services are broad, generalized, and language/platform agnostic, Google's wager is geared exclusively towards web applications and the services developers require to make their applications run.
Google has built an infrastructure that allows developers to create web applications programmed in Python code and upload them to and run on Google servers. Developers are provided with a number of optional Google-related services such as an authentication service built on top of Google accounts, a fast datastore backend based on Google's BigTable project, and Google's infrastructure for delivering e-mail.
The Google App Engine currently only supports the Python runtime for running applications and supports any frameworks that speak CGI or WSGI (with a CGI adaptor). While individuals who are unfamiliar with Python may find this initial requirement a setback, there are a number of web frameworks compatible with the service to make their transition easier. These include Django, CherryPy, Pylons, and web.py. Although many of these work just fine, the App Engine does not support certain aspects of some of these. Most noticeably, Django's models are not supported due to the unique nature of Google's datastore. These have been supplanted with Google APIs for storage, authentication, and more. Google also provides some workarounds for applications that depend on Django database models to function, like a bridge for Django form validation.
Google has also provided its own lightweight web framework called webapp tailored specially for the nuances of AppEngine.
One of the sample apps provided by Google Oh, and by the way, all of this is free.. with certain constraints. During this limited trial, only the first 10,000 registered users will be allowed to participate. Once this period ends, the service will be open to the public, for no charge unless your application goes over the prescribed, hard-and-fast limits that cannot be overaged. These include a 1,000-result limit in queries and a few-second limit on how long your application can take to respond to a request. During this beta period, applications will be limited to 500MB of storage, 200 million megacycles/day CPU time, and 10GB bandwidth per day. The Google FAQ equates this to approximately five million pageviews a month. While these limits cannot be breached during the trial period, at some point in the future, overages will cost the developer money, most likely in a manner similar to Amazon's billing structure.
It's not all good...
The downsides to this program are fairly apparent. First, developers must write all of their code in Python. While Python is a great dynamic language with a robust standard library, and over 15 years of active development, there will be some prospective users who would rather deploy their code in a different language. Google reiterates several times within the documentation that Python is only the first of many, but that they are still in the process of considering other languages for use in the project at this time.
Perhaps the most blatant downside is being locked into Google's platform. Existing projects will have to be ported or written from scratch, and those that rely on traditional relational databases will probably have difficulty making the transition. Even more difficult would be transitioning your application to your own servers if you choose to leave Google's tender embrace. Once you've created an established application on top of Google's authentication service and stored all your data within the company's datastore, removing all this code and data and moving it to another location would appear to a be fairly onerous task.
Why would a developer want to deploy their application on Google's servers and within Google's constraints? First up, it allows you, the developer, to begin coding without having to worry about all the nitty-gritty issues involved with hosting, buying expensive hardware, and scaling your code. You'll also be able to integrate more closely with Google's services, which offers some advantages.
This sounds great to small developers with small sites, but what happens when your cool idea takes off and you've got thousands or millions of users? You'll be paying a lot of money to Google each month—with no easy way out. No matter how much your user base and technology is worth, almost no company will be willing to purchase your idea because of the high cost of migrating that code out of Google.
Everyone except Google, of course.
Although Google App Engine offers some clear advantages and lowers the barriers to entry for startups and independent developers, the potential for lock-in creates risks that could prove more costly in the long-term. The constraints of the service could make it look considerably less appealing than Amazon's more open-ended EC2 service. Without a clean glide-path for moving App Engine web applications out of Google's nest, developers with aspirations of large-scale success might be reluctant to adopt the service.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Yahoo promises to 'amp' up ad platform
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Yahoo Inc. believes it's poised to revolutionize online advertising after years of being outmaneuvered by rival Google Inc.
But the slumping Internet pioneer might not get the chance to show off the latest improvements to its online advertising platform unless it can convince increasingly impatient investors that the new approach will produce a bigger payoff than Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited offer to buy the Sunnyvale-based company for more than $40 billion.
Hoping to gain wiggle room, Yahoo is releasing more details about its effort to become a one-stop shop for selling and distributing online display ads — the Internet's equivalent of billboards.
The upgrade, called "Amp," won't be available until some time this summer, and then only on a limited basis among more than 600 newspaper publishers trying recover some of the revenue that the Internet has siphoned from their print editions.
Nevertheless, Yahoo will begin promoting Amp on Monday with an online video demonstration of a system that the Sunnyvale-based company promises will make it easier for advertisers to aim their messages at specific demographic groups across scores of Web sites.
"This is a revolutionary approach that will allow marketers and publishers to deliver a more compelling experience for consumers," said Hilary Schneider, Yahoo's executive vice president of global partner solutions.
Those remarks echo similar boasts that Yahoo's top two executives, Jerry Yang and Sue Decker, made at an online advertising conference in late February. At that time, the new system was still operating under the code name "Apex," short hand for Advertiser Publisher Exchange.
Amp will rely heavily on data that Yahoo collects about people's preferences at its own Web site as well as other online destinations. The practice, known as "behavioral targeting," has raised privacy concerns, but Yahoo — like rivals using similar tracking technology — believes consumers will appreciate seeing more ads tailored to their individual interests.
Yahoo's new platform will be competing against similar technology recently acquired by Google and Microsoft. Google bought DoubleClick Inc. for $3.2 billion primarily so it would have a better vehicle for selling display ads. The same objective drove Microsoft's $6 billion purchase of aQuantive.
Amp didn't cost Yahoo nearly as much. Besides relying on engineering developed by its own engineers, Amp draws on technology that Yahoo picked up by buying online ad service Right Media and Blue Lithium last year for a total of $781 million.
Selling advertisers on Amp may prove to be easier than convincing Yahoo's shareholders that the new platform is a better bet than selling to Microsoft, whose unsolicited takeover offer was initially valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share.
Yahoo maintains its franchise is worth a lot more, partly because of promising new advertising ideas like Amp.
But investors have reason to doubt Yahoo's judgment after two years of disappointing results.
"They have a little bit of a credibility problem right now," Jupiter Research analyst David Card said.
In a sign of the skepticism dogging Yahoo, Wall Street hasn't embraced the bullish optimistic outlook that the company released last month to illustrate why its board of directors rebuffed Microsoft's bid.
Yahoo projected its 2009 revenue, after subtracting ad commission, will total $7.1 billion, up 25 percent from this year. The company expects its 2010 revenue to climb another 25 percent to $8.8 billion.
Analysts have much lower expectations, with their average revenue estimates standing at $6.4 billion for 2009 and $7.4 billion for 2010.
Amp isn't the first advertising upgrade that Yahoo has touted as a financial catalyst. Last year, the company rolled out a much ballyhooed formula called "Panama" that was designed to do a better job of displaying text-based ads alongside online search results.
Although most advertisers applauded Panama as an improvement over the previous system, it wasn't enough to lift Yahoo out of the financial doldrums that have depressed its profits since 2005. The downturn opened the door for Microsoft's bid.
Just how much longer Yahoo can fend off Microsoft remains uncertain.
On Saturday, Microsoft said that if a deal was not reached by April 26, it would launch a hostile takeover at a less attractive price. If Microsoft pursues that option, Yahoo's annual shareholders meeting will be the most likely forum for the showdown. Yahoo must hold the meeting by July 12, right around the time Amp is supposed to debut.
Yahoo Inc. believes it's poised to revolutionize online advertising after years of being outmaneuvered by rival Google Inc.
But the slumping Internet pioneer might not get the chance to show off the latest improvements to its online advertising platform unless it can convince increasingly impatient investors that the new approach will produce a bigger payoff than Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited offer to buy the Sunnyvale-based company for more than $40 billion.
Hoping to gain wiggle room, Yahoo is releasing more details about its effort to become a one-stop shop for selling and distributing online display ads — the Internet's equivalent of billboards.
The upgrade, called "Amp," won't be available until some time this summer, and then only on a limited basis among more than 600 newspaper publishers trying recover some of the revenue that the Internet has siphoned from their print editions.
Nevertheless, Yahoo will begin promoting Amp on Monday with an online video demonstration of a system that the Sunnyvale-based company promises will make it easier for advertisers to aim their messages at specific demographic groups across scores of Web sites.
"This is a revolutionary approach that will allow marketers and publishers to deliver a more compelling experience for consumers," said Hilary Schneider, Yahoo's executive vice president of global partner solutions.
Those remarks echo similar boasts that Yahoo's top two executives, Jerry Yang and Sue Decker, made at an online advertising conference in late February. At that time, the new system was still operating under the code name "Apex," short hand for Advertiser Publisher Exchange.
Amp will rely heavily on data that Yahoo collects about people's preferences at its own Web site as well as other online destinations. The practice, known as "behavioral targeting," has raised privacy concerns, but Yahoo — like rivals using similar tracking technology — believes consumers will appreciate seeing more ads tailored to their individual interests.
Yahoo's new platform will be competing against similar technology recently acquired by Google and Microsoft. Google bought DoubleClick Inc. for $3.2 billion primarily so it would have a better vehicle for selling display ads. The same objective drove Microsoft's $6 billion purchase of aQuantive.
Amp didn't cost Yahoo nearly as much. Besides relying on engineering developed by its own engineers, Amp draws on technology that Yahoo picked up by buying online ad service Right Media and Blue Lithium last year for a total of $781 million.
Selling advertisers on Amp may prove to be easier than convincing Yahoo's shareholders that the new platform is a better bet than selling to Microsoft, whose unsolicited takeover offer was initially valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share.
Yahoo maintains its franchise is worth a lot more, partly because of promising new advertising ideas like Amp.
But investors have reason to doubt Yahoo's judgment after two years of disappointing results.
"They have a little bit of a credibility problem right now," Jupiter Research analyst David Card said.
In a sign of the skepticism dogging Yahoo, Wall Street hasn't embraced the bullish optimistic outlook that the company released last month to illustrate why its board of directors rebuffed Microsoft's bid.
Yahoo projected its 2009 revenue, after subtracting ad commission, will total $7.1 billion, up 25 percent from this year. The company expects its 2010 revenue to climb another 25 percent to $8.8 billion.
Analysts have much lower expectations, with their average revenue estimates standing at $6.4 billion for 2009 and $7.4 billion for 2010.
Amp isn't the first advertising upgrade that Yahoo has touted as a financial catalyst. Last year, the company rolled out a much ballyhooed formula called "Panama" that was designed to do a better job of displaying text-based ads alongside online search results.
Although most advertisers applauded Panama as an improvement over the previous system, it wasn't enough to lift Yahoo out of the financial doldrums that have depressed its profits since 2005. The downturn opened the door for Microsoft's bid.
Just how much longer Yahoo can fend off Microsoft remains uncertain.
On Saturday, Microsoft said that if a deal was not reached by April 26, it would launch a hostile takeover at a less attractive price. If Microsoft pursues that option, Yahoo's annual shareholders meeting will be the most likely forum for the showdown. Yahoo must hold the meeting by July 12, right around the time Amp is supposed to debut.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Hypesphere: nothing to Gates Windows 7 "next year" quote
By Ken Fisher
Reading the mainstream media this weekend, you'd believe that Bill Gates announced that Windows 7 will be released to retail in 2009. The only problem is, he didn't say anything of the sort. What Gates said merely confirmed what we've all known all along: that Windows 7 is being developed on a three-year timeframe.
First, the quote that started it all. It's perfect "Chairman"-speak because it doesn't really tell you anything, but it gets the press and blogosphere hot and bothered, and hey, free press is great. Are you ready for the quote that rocked the tech world, leading scores of publications to say that Windows 7 is coming in 2009 and that Microsoft has turned up the heat on its development plans? Prepare thyself:
"Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version [of Windows]," said Mr. Gates.
That's it.
In a world of tech reporting where one's memory apparently stretches back not to the great Longhorn reboot but instead no further than one's breakfast, Mr. Gates' totally vague comment morphs into a product launch announcement, at least once the blogosphere gets ahold of it.
Nevermind the fact that Mr. Gates has been wrong before about launch timeframes. Nevermind the fact that "the next year or so" does not equate to "next year," at least not in the English language. And nevermind that Microsoft's public relations wing says that Gates' comments do not indicate a change in the development process at Windows. The above quote is surely a sign that we'll see Windows 7 in retail in a year's time. (And if you believe that, I've got a patent on the semi-colon key I'll sell ya.)
Choose your own release adventure: the beta clocker
Gates' comment came at an annual meeting in Miami of the Inter-American Development Bank on Friday. Microsoft has previously and more than once said that "We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer [general availability]. The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release." Nothing has changed.
Those writers out pimping the idea that Windows 7 will ship in 2009 clearly haven't seen any of the currently leaked builds, nor have they paid any attention to Microsoft's typical development cycles. It took an entire year to go from beta 1 to gold master for Windows XP, and it took 18 months to go from Vista beta 1 to gold master. The UI on Windows 7 hasn't been finalized, or even significantly developed from what we can see: currently Windows 7 leaks look almost exactly like Vista. The beta program hasn't fired up, either. Microsoft has, at most, 3 quarters of 2009 left in its "window," assuming the beta process started tomorrow (and it won't).
Yes, Windows 7 is coming. Yes, beta builds will probably come sometime in 2009, perhaps even sometime later this year. But for those of you jonesing for a new release of Windows, there's nothing new here to hang your hopes on. We're likely closer to two years away from a release, not one.
Addendum: many are making a big deal out of the extension of availability of Windows XP for low cost laptops only. That extension is to mid 2010, or one year after the release of Windows 7, whichever is later. IDG speculates that this "implies" that Microsoft is aiming for mid-2009 with Windows 7, with the assumption being that Microsoft wouldn't promise support for a period of time unless it new that it could effectively cap it with a release. This ignores what ISPs need: a long period of overlap between new and legacy OSes in order to segment offerings and transition a new OS in. All this agreement shows is that Microsoft will be giving OEMs support for a minimum of 12 months for XP on low-cost laptops, no matter how aggressive the timeframe. If you need help trying to figure out why Microsoft might want to bend over backwards to keep Windows on low-cost laptops, just recall the EEE PC's success with Linux.
Reading the mainstream media this weekend, you'd believe that Bill Gates announced that Windows 7 will be released to retail in 2009. The only problem is, he didn't say anything of the sort. What Gates said merely confirmed what we've all known all along: that Windows 7 is being developed on a three-year timeframe.
First, the quote that started it all. It's perfect "Chairman"-speak because it doesn't really tell you anything, but it gets the press and blogosphere hot and bothered, and hey, free press is great. Are you ready for the quote that rocked the tech world, leading scores of publications to say that Windows 7 is coming in 2009 and that Microsoft has turned up the heat on its development plans? Prepare thyself:
"Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version [of Windows]," said Mr. Gates.
That's it.
In a world of tech reporting where one's memory apparently stretches back not to the great Longhorn reboot but instead no further than one's breakfast, Mr. Gates' totally vague comment morphs into a product launch announcement, at least once the blogosphere gets ahold of it.
Nevermind the fact that Mr. Gates has been wrong before about launch timeframes. Nevermind the fact that "the next year or so" does not equate to "next year," at least not in the English language. And nevermind that Microsoft's public relations wing says that Gates' comments do not indicate a change in the development process at Windows. The above quote is surely a sign that we'll see Windows 7 in retail in a year's time. (And if you believe that, I've got a patent on the semi-colon key I'll sell ya.)
Choose your own release adventure: the beta clocker
Gates' comment came at an annual meeting in Miami of the Inter-American Development Bank on Friday. Microsoft has previously and more than once said that "We are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer [general availability]. The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release." Nothing has changed.
Those writers out pimping the idea that Windows 7 will ship in 2009 clearly haven't seen any of the currently leaked builds, nor have they paid any attention to Microsoft's typical development cycles. It took an entire year to go from beta 1 to gold master for Windows XP, and it took 18 months to go from Vista beta 1 to gold master. The UI on Windows 7 hasn't been finalized, or even significantly developed from what we can see: currently Windows 7 leaks look almost exactly like Vista. The beta program hasn't fired up, either. Microsoft has, at most, 3 quarters of 2009 left in its "window," assuming the beta process started tomorrow (and it won't).
Yes, Windows 7 is coming. Yes, beta builds will probably come sometime in 2009, perhaps even sometime later this year. But for those of you jonesing for a new release of Windows, there's nothing new here to hang your hopes on. We're likely closer to two years away from a release, not one.
Addendum: many are making a big deal out of the extension of availability of Windows XP for low cost laptops only. That extension is to mid 2010, or one year after the release of Windows 7, whichever is later. IDG speculates that this "implies" that Microsoft is aiming for mid-2009 with Windows 7, with the assumption being that Microsoft wouldn't promise support for a period of time unless it new that it could effectively cap it with a release. This ignores what ISPs need: a long period of overlap between new and legacy OSes in order to segment offerings and transition a new OS in. All this agreement shows is that Microsoft will be giving OEMs support for a minimum of 12 months for XP on low-cost laptops, no matter how aggressive the timeframe. If you need help trying to figure out why Microsoft might want to bend over backwards to keep Windows on low-cost laptops, just recall the EEE PC's success with Linux.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Use SEO to optimize your recession
Posted by Brian R. Brown
Earlier this week I talked about how a recession may be the best thing for SEO. Let's revisit that bold statement and also how to make the most out of a downturn in the economy using SEO.
There will be firms and people within the industry that will feel the same pains of a recession that everyone else will. I'm certainly not claiming that you can sit back and coast in to success. In fact, the statement is less about SEO firms and practitioners, and more about SEO as a tool.
If you are in-house and have been struggling to get the resources or attention you need to make SEO a priority, then this may help to increase the urgency of SEO. Or if your firm provides SEO services, then you may be able to use the concerns and challenges that will come with a recession to get the attention of the decision makers to illustrate how SEO may be a more cost-effective solution.
A recession or economic downturn will lead consumers and businesses to reduce their spending as their confidence in the economy, their business, jobs, investments and/or retirement weakens. While there may be a subset of the market that "quits buying," what we are really talking about is a reduction in spending. There will still be necessities and essentials that must be purchased. Beyond that, we may expect to see purchase adjustments or a scaling back.
For instance:
Rather than buying a new home, some may decide to fix-up or renovate what they currently have with new window treatments, carpeting, or paint. Or maybe they'll add a home theater to not only enhance their home while also reducing the costs of going out for entertainment.
Businesses might forgo expanding into new office space, but invest in new office furniture that better maximizes the current space, or convert unused space into offices or meeting rooms.
Those who eat out a lot may cut back, but may invest in new kitchenware and a cookbook or two to maintain the excitement.
Others might cut back on their daily coffee run by buying a new coffee maker, a couple travel mugs, and a coffee grinder, and instead, buy coffee beans from their favorite java joint as a way to cut back without feeling deprived.
After all, when things get tight, we know it, so we also try to find a happy medium to lessen the pain.
Along with a reduction of spending and a re-prioritization on necessities, businesses and individuals alike will more likely become more selective in the purchases that they make. Depending on the specific needs, they may look for the best deals or a certain level of quality, and in either case, may take longer to make a purchase decision and undergo more pre-sales research than normal.
This may affect the words they use to search, so now is an excellent time to refresh your keyword research. Especially look for modifiers that connect with your target audience--what drives them normally: price, quality, selection, reliability, etc.? To do this, you can turn to the free versions of tools like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker and Google Trends.
Once you have your target phrases, be sure to integrate them into title tags and on-page content to optimize for searches, as well as in the meta description for that extra call-to-action within the search results. Along with optimizing current content, now would be an excellent time to create a section that calls out to searchers based on these types of searches if you don't have it already, e.g., Discount Electronics, Reliable Laptops, and Fuel Efficient Cars.
Next, reach out and connect with your existing customers, and hopefully win new ones. If you don't have an RSS feed for your products, or deals, now would be an excellent time to implement one. Get creative, e.g., offer one hot deal every day or week that is only announced through your RSS feed--when it's gone, it's gone. Of course, don't forget to optimize the subscription page for this feed to begin with.
Don't forget blogging. If you don't have one, get your blog up and running, and provide great tips on how to get the most out of your products or even how to extend the life of them. Use it as a way to create blog posts around heavy searched-for phrases, but keep them relevant to your area of focus. Most of all, keep it fun and upbeat when times get tough.
Every site should be doing this all the time anyway, but now more than ever, create useful information that helps all users of your type of products. Make sure that the content isn't just specific to your products, but to the category in general. The goal here is to create the best, hopefully the definitive, guides on how to select, use, maintain, or anything else related to your category of products.
When you create the best guide on "How to select the best laptop for business travelers," for example, you'll naturally attract links from others, and some of those who come to read your guide will decide to look at your selection of laptops, hopefully you'll have some of them tagged or designated for "business travelers." And you'll probably find it much easier to weave in these powerful search phrases that are less specific to a product and more about a problem your site visitors have or the specific solution they are seeking.
As you are coming up with these blog posts and new content, take a step back and look at what you have to offer from a different angle. Focus less on up-selling from competitors or lesser products, and identify how your products serve as an ideal step down from something else. As an added bonus, a little creativity can go a long way here and lead to intriguing, eye-catching headlines that draw people in.
Finally, use this as a time to gain free advertising. The various media will of course be reporting on the impact of a recession on those within the community. Be the go-to expert in your field with your creative ideas to help people stretch their dollars, which may also earn you some media time and a link back to your site for the rest of your tips from their site.
Ironically, most of these are the same ideas that I'd offer up under any economic condition. It's all about using your Web site in an optimal manner to connect with those who are most interested in what you are offering. Online, those are the people who are searching--they're actually telling you "here I am." Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? It's also about creating a dialogue with your customer and providing additional value, before and after checkout...and that's good anytime.
Earlier this week I talked about how a recession may be the best thing for SEO. Let's revisit that bold statement and also how to make the most out of a downturn in the economy using SEO.
There will be firms and people within the industry that will feel the same pains of a recession that everyone else will. I'm certainly not claiming that you can sit back and coast in to success. In fact, the statement is less about SEO firms and practitioners, and more about SEO as a tool.
If you are in-house and have been struggling to get the resources or attention you need to make SEO a priority, then this may help to increase the urgency of SEO. Or if your firm provides SEO services, then you may be able to use the concerns and challenges that will come with a recession to get the attention of the decision makers to illustrate how SEO may be a more cost-effective solution.
A recession or economic downturn will lead consumers and businesses to reduce their spending as their confidence in the economy, their business, jobs, investments and/or retirement weakens. While there may be a subset of the market that "quits buying," what we are really talking about is a reduction in spending. There will still be necessities and essentials that must be purchased. Beyond that, we may expect to see purchase adjustments or a scaling back.
For instance:
Rather than buying a new home, some may decide to fix-up or renovate what they currently have with new window treatments, carpeting, or paint. Or maybe they'll add a home theater to not only enhance their home while also reducing the costs of going out for entertainment.
Businesses might forgo expanding into new office space, but invest in new office furniture that better maximizes the current space, or convert unused space into offices or meeting rooms.
Those who eat out a lot may cut back, but may invest in new kitchenware and a cookbook or two to maintain the excitement.
Others might cut back on their daily coffee run by buying a new coffee maker, a couple travel mugs, and a coffee grinder, and instead, buy coffee beans from their favorite java joint as a way to cut back without feeling deprived.
After all, when things get tight, we know it, so we also try to find a happy medium to lessen the pain.
Along with a reduction of spending and a re-prioritization on necessities, businesses and individuals alike will more likely become more selective in the purchases that they make. Depending on the specific needs, they may look for the best deals or a certain level of quality, and in either case, may take longer to make a purchase decision and undergo more pre-sales research than normal.
This may affect the words they use to search, so now is an excellent time to refresh your keyword research. Especially look for modifiers that connect with your target audience--what drives them normally: price, quality, selection, reliability, etc.? To do this, you can turn to the free versions of tools like Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker and Google Trends.
Once you have your target phrases, be sure to integrate them into title tags and on-page content to optimize for searches, as well as in the meta description for that extra call-to-action within the search results. Along with optimizing current content, now would be an excellent time to create a section that calls out to searchers based on these types of searches if you don't have it already, e.g., Discount Electronics, Reliable Laptops, and Fuel Efficient Cars.
Next, reach out and connect with your existing customers, and hopefully win new ones. If you don't have an RSS feed for your products, or deals, now would be an excellent time to implement one. Get creative, e.g., offer one hot deal every day or week that is only announced through your RSS feed--when it's gone, it's gone. Of course, don't forget to optimize the subscription page for this feed to begin with.
Don't forget blogging. If you don't have one, get your blog up and running, and provide great tips on how to get the most out of your products or even how to extend the life of them. Use it as a way to create blog posts around heavy searched-for phrases, but keep them relevant to your area of focus. Most of all, keep it fun and upbeat when times get tough.
Every site should be doing this all the time anyway, but now more than ever, create useful information that helps all users of your type of products. Make sure that the content isn't just specific to your products, but to the category in general. The goal here is to create the best, hopefully the definitive, guides on how to select, use, maintain, or anything else related to your category of products.
When you create the best guide on "How to select the best laptop for business travelers," for example, you'll naturally attract links from others, and some of those who come to read your guide will decide to look at your selection of laptops, hopefully you'll have some of them tagged or designated for "business travelers." And you'll probably find it much easier to weave in these powerful search phrases that are less specific to a product and more about a problem your site visitors have or the specific solution they are seeking.
As you are coming up with these blog posts and new content, take a step back and look at what you have to offer from a different angle. Focus less on up-selling from competitors or lesser products, and identify how your products serve as an ideal step down from something else. As an added bonus, a little creativity can go a long way here and lead to intriguing, eye-catching headlines that draw people in.
Finally, use this as a time to gain free advertising. The various media will of course be reporting on the impact of a recession on those within the community. Be the go-to expert in your field with your creative ideas to help people stretch their dollars, which may also earn you some media time and a link back to your site for the rest of your tips from their site.
Ironically, most of these are the same ideas that I'd offer up under any economic condition. It's all about using your Web site in an optimal manner to connect with those who are most interested in what you are offering. Online, those are the people who are searching--they're actually telling you "here I am." Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? It's also about creating a dialogue with your customer and providing additional value, before and after checkout...and that's good anytime.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Intel unveils tiny chips tailored for mobile Internet gadgets
The world's biggest computer chip maker Intel unveiled on Wednesday a set of tiny "Atom" processors it says will give mobile devices desktop computing power.
Energy-sipping Atom chips coupled with graphics technology will be built into sleek "smart phones" and other "mobile Internet devices" (MIDs) that fit in people's pockets, according to the US company.
Atom processing combined with innovation from device manufacturers and software makers "will change the way consumers will come to know and access" the Web," Intel promised.
"Today is a historic day for Intel and the high-tech industry," Intel senior vice president Anand Chandrasekher said in a written release.
"These forthcoming MIDs, and some incredible longer-term plans our customers are sharing with us, will show how small devices can deliver a big Internet experience."
Atom chips with speeds as fast as 1.86 GHz enable quick downloading of Internet pages and playing of rich video and audio files, according to Intel.
Intel's five new chips are described as energy misers, drawing less than three watts of electricity while they work.
The processors should foster "a new class of next-generation" Internet-based portable video players and navigation devices, Intel predicts.
Gadgets embedded with Atom chips will be on the market by August, according to Intel.
Energy-sipping Atom chips coupled with graphics technology will be built into sleek "smart phones" and other "mobile Internet devices" (MIDs) that fit in people's pockets, according to the US company.
Atom processing combined with innovation from device manufacturers and software makers "will change the way consumers will come to know and access" the Web," Intel promised.
"Today is a historic day for Intel and the high-tech industry," Intel senior vice president Anand Chandrasekher said in a written release.
"These forthcoming MIDs, and some incredible longer-term plans our customers are sharing with us, will show how small devices can deliver a big Internet experience."
Atom chips with speeds as fast as 1.86 GHz enable quick downloading of Internet pages and playing of rich video and audio files, according to Intel.
Intel's five new chips are described as energy misers, drawing less than three watts of electricity while they work.
The processors should foster "a new class of next-generation" Internet-based portable video players and navigation devices, Intel predicts.
Gadgets embedded with Atom chips will be on the market by August, according to Intel.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Comcast punches up Net access, but it comes at a price
Comcast, the No. 1 residential broadband service provider, Thursday will give residents of Minneapolis and St. Paul the first opportunity to check out a speedy Internet service that CEO Brian Roberts calls "cable's next big thing."
The service, informally called wideband, can transmit a high-definition movie in about 10 minutes. It would take about 40 minutes to do that on Comcast's most popular Internet service and more than an hour on most cable systems.
"An extreme gamer who wants the lowest (delay) that's available would find it interesting," says Mitch Bowling, Comcast's high-speed Internet general manager. "Also, we are deploying this to our business services customers. There are a lot of uses for it there."
The speed comes with a steep price: nearly $150 a month for residential users and $200 for business customers, who get additional software and services.
But Comcast plans an ambitious rollout at a time when subscriber growth in its lucrative Internet business is slowing, and rivals led by Verizon are making inroads. "Comcast, for better or worse, is in an arms race with Verizon and has to keep pace with the speeds it's offering," says Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett. That could be significant, because "Cable operators generally move as a pack," he says.
Comcast, which has 13.2 million Internet customers, plans to offer wideband to 20% of the 49 million homes in its service areas this year and 100% by the middle of 2010, Bowling says.
The service, informally called wideband, can transmit a high-definition movie in about 10 minutes. It would take about 40 minutes to do that on Comcast's most popular Internet service and more than an hour on most cable systems.
"An extreme gamer who wants the lowest (delay) that's available would find it interesting," says Mitch Bowling, Comcast's high-speed Internet general manager. "Also, we are deploying this to our business services customers. There are a lot of uses for it there."
The speed comes with a steep price: nearly $150 a month for residential users and $200 for business customers, who get additional software and services.
But Comcast plans an ambitious rollout at a time when subscriber growth in its lucrative Internet business is slowing, and rivals led by Verizon are making inroads. "Comcast, for better or worse, is in an arms race with Verizon and has to keep pace with the speeds it's offering," says Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett. That could be significant, because "Cable operators generally move as a pack," he says.
Comcast, which has 13.2 million Internet customers, plans to offer wideband to 20% of the 49 million homes in its service areas this year and 100% by the middle of 2010, Bowling says.
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