PinpointPages.com

06.18.07 Pinpoint Pages

2007-06-26T20:11:00.000-06:00

"You should check pinpoint pages out they are Great" - Weddings On A Short Leash of Lehigh Acres, FL http://www.weddingleash.com/

06.04.07 Hey all u website owners....

2007-06-04T17:17:00.000-06:00

"How valuable is traffic to your business, like the name says...PinpointPages will get you the traffic you are looking for. Do it the right way...call them now and relax, i wanna see you succeed. You wont if you dont call...so what are you waiting for?" - J&J LENDING dba Mortgage Solutions of Irvine, CA http://myloanofficersite.com/jeffersoneggough

05.23.07 Awesome Services!!

2007-05-24T08:51:00.000-06:00

"I am totally excited about building a business relationship" - Winslow Girl Virtual Assistant of Cape Coral, FL http://www.winslowgirlva.com/

04.23.07 Take advantage of the listing and the website promotion Pinpoint provides

2007-04-23T09:31:00.000-06:00

"I like the site and the service. Being listed will increase your exposure... Thanks for providing this service Pinpoint! Lana Thomas - MS Freedom at Home Team of Parker, SD http://www.americanhealthdiscounts.com

04.21.2007 Go Get Listed!

2007-04-22T13:55:00.000-06:00

"Anything you can do to get your name out there helps! Pinpoint Pages offers free listings as well as very inexpensive premium listings, and it's quick and easy to sign up. Go get listed!" Angel's Affordable Web Design of Walsenburg, CO http://www.angelsaffordablewebdesign.com

04.21.2007 Great Work

2007-04-22T13:51:00.000-06:00

"Its great to be of any assistance to such a company/service. Good luck in the future with this. If we can help feel free to shoot us a line." Steve - J & S Roofing and Remodeling of Kannapolis, NC http://www.jsroofingandremodeling.com

04.05.07 Connecting customers and businesses on the web

2007-04-05T19:28:00.000-06:00

"PinpointPages.com offers a great opportunity to connect consumers and businessess, with community marketing. In this day and age, you can't do too much web marketing. Be sure to check them out. " - Island Image of Key West, FL http://www.islandimagedesign.com

03.30.07 Thank You

2007-04-03T10:35:00.000-06:00

"Thank you for providing such a service that is extremely easy to use and place our company website and contact info on!!! " - Accounting Management Advisors Inc. of Lake Worth, FL http://www.cpaservices.org

03.13.07 Thank you very much

2007-03-13T17:56:00.000-06:00

"Hey...we're listed there. Every bit of advertising you can do for your dollar is excellent. Easy and friendly to use. Check it out." - American Capital Advance / American Bancard of Maumee, OH
http://www.amcapitaladvance.com/

03.11.07 Another Great Business Owner in America!

2007-03-13T17:50:00.000-06:00

"Mr. Garcia will do for you what others will not! Fine Business run by a fine business man... Five Star Plus++ " - Ace Aerial Photo LLC of Auburn, AL
http://www.aceaerialphoto.us/

03.05.07 5 Stars "Mr. Garcia has a very prompt response and strong desire to help others."

2007-03-05T18:35:00.000-07:00

"His service is great and I highly recommend it to other business owners!" - Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. of Florida - Spring Hill, FL
http://www.prepaidlegal.com/go/simons

03.03.07 "PinPointPages.com, what a great service!"

2007-03-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Helping Friends LLC - Akron, OH
http://hfcareernetwork.com/

02.21.07 I Give Them An A+ "Mr. Garcia is a courteous professional & a pleasure to work with! -Marliz"

2007-03-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Lexa Contractors - Houston, TX
http://www.lexacontractors.com/

02.18.07 "Great resource"

2007-03-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

"I've just been working with Pinpoint for only a short while but it has already saved me time and put me in contact with two businesses which will be very good for me. You need to visit www.pinpointpages and see for yourself!" Endorsement from RichCatt Green Solutions - Crossville, TN
http://www.richcatt.com/commercial.php

02.18.07 LOST And FOUND "If you want to be found you need to list your web site on PinpointPages.com."

2007-03-05T18:07:00.000-07:00

If your looking for something you need to cheack on PinpointPages.com" Endorsement from Gateway Diner - Newburgh, NY
http://www.gateway-diner-newburgh.com/

02.10.07 "More Free Advertising That Works!"

2007-03-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a quicky to tell you about a relatively new website we just found. It's called PinpointPages.com and it's a very simple LOCAL search engine. This is great if you have a brick and mortar or home based business where you prefer local leads. It's also great for an internet business where you are looking for local partners to work with. People can search for what they want by various keywords or categories and then limit their search within a certain radius of their zipcode.

Best of all, listings are 100% FREE. If you really must have a premium listing (top of results, choose your own keywords, unlimited clicks on your site, etc.), it's gonna cost you a whole buck- yup, $1 per month. Not a bad deal for a link from what will soon be a decently high ranking site. Drop by and join today, it will only cost you a few minutes of your time and the rewards could be great! Endorsement from Steve Ouradnik blogger - Oceanside, CA http://www.blogestates.com/blog/GlobalOpps/2007/02/10/7363#new

01.29.07 Wow "I am extremely impressed with the network. I have already started getting responses from your service in less than 4 hours"

2007-03-05T17:04:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Casual Moments Designs - New Castle, DE
http://www.casualmomentsdesigns.com/

01.16.07 Fantastic! "I just placed my business information on PinpointPages.com. It's fast, accurate, and is so user-friendly."

2007-03-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

"If you haven't done so too, you're missing out on a powerful advertising tool. Thanks, PinpointPages. Your service is truly needed. And thanks for the opportunity to use it for free. " Endorsement from Strike-A-Pose Boutique of Camden - Wyoming, DE
http://www.strikeaposeboutique.com/

01.14.07 Great resource for networking! "Pinpontpages.com works!"

2007-03-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Sun Brite Supply of Maryland - Gaithersburg, MD
http://www.sunbritesupplymd.com/

01.12.07 Excellent! "Works great!"

2007-03-05T16:56:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Bay Perfume - Seattle, WA
http://www.bayperfume.com/

12.16.06 "Just wanted to say thanks for contacting me."

2007-03-05T16:51:00.000-07:00

"I use your site for my business , and find it is the best, and complete,as well as accurate directory that we use." - Endorsement from A.J.C. Communications - Henderson, NV
http://www.ajccommunications.com/

12.14.06 "This is what La Grande really needs - a free websearch for all business. Post your free listing of your business today."

2007-03-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Sudbrock Portraits - La Grande, OR
http://www.sudbrockportraits.zoomshare.com/

12.11.06 "This is a great way to offer my services to a wider audience, and it's free."

2007-03-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Anderson Wesley Dch - Atlanta, GA
http://www.trance-formations.com/

12.11.06 "We at All American Gutter Highly recommend PinpointPages.com for ALL your local websites."

2007-03-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

"So give them a call at Tel: 505-924-2124 or http://www.pinpointpages.com " - Endorsement from All American Gutter - Lemoyne, PA
http://www.allamericangutter.com/

12.04.06 "This site is very easy to sign up on and does a fast search. I would recomend anyone with a bussiness and a website to sign up!!!"

2007-03-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

"It is free and easy!" - Endorsement from Down Home Karaoke & DJ - Ames, IA
http://www.downhomekaraoke.biz/

11.30.06 "This directory is simple, clear, easy to use, and accepts free submissions from local businesses. Great services!"

2007-03-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from www.partycloz.com - Party Cloz and Brides Dreams, Inc - Westminster, CO

11.30.06 "This firm takes care of your concerns, and is an asset! Thanks"

2007-03-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Betty B. www.burialitems.com " - From: A Team Masters - Eastlake, OH

11.28.06 "This guy is all about helping! He was looking for local merchants to help his ailing mom."

2007-03-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

"He wasted valuable time, trying in vain to find a local specialist... His mom eventually passed away. Imagine if there was a specialist in the community but not on search engines. Be found on Online. Get Pinpointed! www.pinpointpages.com" - Endorsement from Apex Mortgage NY-Independent Associate (DDLO8) - Brooklyn, NY
http://www.apexmortgageny.com/

11.28.06 "Thanks for working hard to keep businesses in touch!"

2007-03-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from B Happie Family Entertainment - Perth Amboy, NJ
http://www.bhappie.com/

11.24.06 "Pinpointpages.com is a great way to get connected locally. The next generation of online information."

2007-03-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

"Thanks for your support and your website." - Endorsement from Shrefflers Gifts and More - Danville, VA
http://www.danvillegiftshop.com/

11.15.06 "Way to go, Martin! This is a fabulous idea - I am continuously frustrated by computer searches! Hats off to you! Lisa Halsall"

2007-03-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Eternity Labradors - Galva, IL
http://www.eternitylabradors.com/

10.30.06 "Thanks for the invite. What a great idea!"

2007-03-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Universal Insight - Spokane, WA
http://www.universalinsight.com/

10.27.06 "GREAT CONCEPT. A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON COMMUNITY MARKETING. CONSUMERS FIND YOUR BUSINESS AT NUMBER 1 POSITION AND IT DOESN'T COST YOU A PENNY."

2007-03-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

THEY CAN SEARCH AS MANY TIMES WITH AS MANY SEARCH WORDS AS WANTED AND NOT COST A CENT. WATCH OUT GOOGLE. BRAVO!" - Endorsement from The Suitable Compay - Columbia, SC
http://www.suitable-u.com/

10.26.06 "Quick, easy, online listings for your business."

2007-03-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Cleaning Superhero - Birmingham, AL
http://www.cleaningsuperhero.com/

10.24.06 "PINPOINT , DOES A GOOD JOB WITH THEIR WEBSITES"

2007-03-05T15:29:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from FLOORING SOLUTIONS FACTORY DIRECT - Birmingham, AL
http://www.flooringsolutionsonline.com/

10.19.06 "Great company!"

2007-03-05T15:26:00.000-07:00

Endorsement from Lighthouse Realty LLC - Albuquerque, NM
http://www.albuquerquelighthouse.com/

Pinpoint Pages® Announces Its Unique Equal Opportunity Search Engine for Local Web Sites

2007-02-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

Albuquerque, NM -- Albuquerque native Martin Garcia is creating a totally new type of equal opportunity search engine for local websites. The concept evolved from first hand experience using typical online Yellow Pages directories and big-name search engines who only display results on the first page from out-of-market companies Web sites that have paid to place their listings first. This includes companies that spent big bucks to optimize keywords on their Web sites.

Garcia's PinpointPages.com search engine lists local companies by keywords and categories. The results will come up randomly each time, no matter how carefully worded the listed sites are. He calls this equal opportunity display RandomRank. An additional benefit Pinpoint Pages® offers to businesses is a FREE listing. The free listing appears in one category and includes all the vital contact information, including the listing organization's Web site.

Local business can opt to purchase an expanded ad called a Premium Listing. These paid Premium Listings allow direct click-through to the business' Web site, a space for the business to write detailed information for consumers and a choice of up to seven categories in which the listing will appear. While this buys more space within listing results, it will not affect the random display of search results.

Pinpoint Pages® allows businesses to be in control of their own listing at all times. If a business changes location, the owner can log in and change the company listing immediately. There is no waiting for updates of a directory to provide accurate information to the public. It is so easy to use that Garcia points out a local restaurant could buy a paid listing and use their extra space to show their daily lunch specials. Local businesses pay $1.00 per month for the Premium Listing and can choose to renew on a month to month basis, no long-term commitment. This is more of Garcia's idea about how there should be a level playing field online for local organizations.

Garcia recently made Pinpoint Pages® local websites his full-time business. If it works well in New Mexico, he hopes to expand the idea to every locality nationwide. Several out of state businesses have found the site and are already listed, but consumers choose the city and state they wish to search so there will be no bogus search results.

For more information and a free listing, visit PinpointPages.com local websites.

Is Google overrated? Tapped out? Due for a fall? Two experts take sides.

2007-02-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

This has to be one of the best articles I’ve read in the past five years. Thanks to FastCompany.com for publishing the story. This is a must read for anyone involved in Internet Marketing. Bravo! Google touts its PageRank software is "democratic," retrieving the most "relevant" information on the Web. New, valuable Websites, however, are relegated to Google's penalty "sandbox," far from searchers' eyes.

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2007/02/open-debate-extra.html

Smart Links: Tips for Linking to Other Sites

2007-02-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

By Jennifer Zaino

Small and mid-size businesses can broaden their reach online by understanding the right -- and the wrong -- ways to link with other websites.

"Let your fingers to the walking" was the old Yellow Pages slogan. These days, the more relevant saying for customers may be this: "Let your fingers do the clicking."

As the Internet becomes an increasingly low-cost and effective way to do business, many small and mid-size companies are finding they get better customer prospects by exchanging links with related websites than they do by putting an ad in the phone book.

But there is an art to linking. There are right ways and wrong ways to link and be linked to. It’s not surprising that many businesses are a bit at a loss about how to use links to generate targeted traffic to the company website.

“The primary lead and customer acquisition source is becoming the Web versus traditional marketing sources, and every year we’ve seen our customers make more and more of an investment in online marketing,” says John Enright, vice president of marketing for Affinity Internet, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which provides services ranging from site design to online marketing to hosting and maintenance. In a recent survey, Affinity found that more than 30 percent of its mostly small business customers expect to spend more than half of their marketing budgets on online efforts.

A cheaper way to market online

The good news is that it doesn’t cost much to get links from -- and link to -- other websites; often it’s just an investment of your time to find the right sites and communicate with their owners, or ante up for a software package or service that helps automate the end-to-end linking process. Enright advises small businesses to find potential linking partners by checking out the major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, and looking for the keywords in which they’d like to be ranked highly. Then, reach out to exchange links with those related websites that have a high rank for those keywords. That’s a step to getting noticed by visitors to those highly-ranked sites, and also by search engines. “If you have links to your site from other websites that also have high Google or other search engine ranks, the search engines will think that your content is that much more valuable,” he says.

But don’t make the mistake of trading links with a multitude of websites, whether or not they have anything to do with your industry, just to increase your search engine ranking. In fact, some experts advise that to be successful with linking activities, small businesses should act as if search engines don’t exist. “Focus on your website visitors, not on search engines,” says Johannes Selbach, CEO of Axandra, a German company that manufacturers Arelis, software that helps companies manage their linking campaigns. “A link partner with a low Google PageRank that has a similar topic like your site will bring you much better visitors than an unrelated link partner with a high PageRank.” The less dependent your website is on search engines, Selbach says, the less you have to worry about keeping up with their ever-changing search algorithms.

The do's and don'ts of linking

Linking is a reciprocal arrangement. Businesses are unlikely to drive away traffic by adding targeted links. Since customers are going to leave your website at some point anyway, isn’t it better that they move on to websites that send you their visitors in return? “Carefully chosen links to outside resources can improve the experience of visitors,” says Selbach. “The websites to which you link help your website visitors to put your website into a larger context. If you link to high-quality sites with useful content, Web surfers will associate your website with these high quality sites.”

Here are some other tips about how to link the right way:

Do submit your links to service directories, such as local or industry directories. There’s typically no charge to do this, and they’re a draw for both businesses and consumers.
Look at where your traffic is coming from. “You may find a particular website that you weren’t aware of is producing a lot of traffic for you, and you can go out and talk to them and see if you can increase your exposure there,” says Enright.
Practice Internet etiquette: While you can add links to other sites without informing their webmasters, why miss out on the opportunity to make them aware of your site so they can link to it?
Don’t link to junk websites. Linking to websites that are obvious spammers can hurt your search engine rankings.
Don’t go link-crazy. Linking to too many other websites may cause search engines to identify you as a link directory, and downgrade your ranking.
Fully integrate your link pages with the rest of your website, rather than create link pages just for search engines.
Tools that automate link exchange processes can help you save time, as long as they focus on creating high-quality links. “If you use a tool that gets hundreds of unrelated links in a very short time, then this won't do your website any good,” says Selbach. “You will actually lose time because you will have to fix the damage that these link farm products do to your site.”

Source: http://technology.inc.com/internet/articles/200702/links.html

Google's Personalized Search Shifts SEM Landscape

2007-02-09T22:03:00.000-07:00

With the expanded implementation of its Personalized Search, Google has quietly but significantly altered the search engine marketing (SEM) playing field, according to Search Engine Land (SEL).

Because Google now weighs a variety of new and ever-changing variables in determining what to return for a search, some established SEM techniques no longer apply, or at least must be altered.

Google's algorithm now takes into account searchers' click history as well as their Personalized Homepage when it returns search results. The changes are designed to offer results that are more useful to the searcher, with each new user behavior becoming a new factor in future searches.

For search engine marketers that means the days of trying to divine that one secret formula for scoring high among search results are now gone. Now there are an unlimited amount of variations in search results even for a single search term, because search results in part depend on the click history of each user.

Also being factored into returning search results are the types of sites in users' Google Bookmarks, a social tagging tool analogous to del.icio.us. SEL speculates that Google Reader feed subscriptions or feed click history are not being used for Personalized Search, but the RSS aggregator could provide yet another data set for Personalized Search.

SEL provides tips on how best to approach optimization in this new search world, in general ensuring that sites are optimized for Google's services, specifically, and social search and social networking, in general.

Source: http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/02/09/googles-personalized-search-shifts-sem-landscape/

World's Oldest Newspaper Goes Digital

2007-02-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

AP: Associated Press

Published: February 05, 2007 4:00 PM ET

STOCKHOLM For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. No longer. The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.

The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals.

"We think it's a cultural disaster," said Hans Holm, who served as the chief editor of Post-och Inrikes Tidningar for 20 years. "It is sad when you have worked with it for so long and it has been around for so long."

Queen Kristina used the publication to keep her subjects informed of the affairs of state, Holm said, and the first editions, which were more like pamphlets, were carried by courier and posted on note boards in cities and towns throughout the kingdom.

Today, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, which means mail and domestic tidings, runs legal announcements by corporations, courts and certain government agencies _ about 1,500 a day according to Olov Vikstrom, the current editor.

The paper edition was certainly not some mass-market tabloid. It had a meagre circulation of only 1,000 or so, although the Web site is expected to attract more readers, Vikstrom said.

The newspaper is owned by the Swedish Academy, known for awarding the annual Nobel Prize in Literature. But it recently sold the publishing rights to the Swedish Companies Registration Office, a government agency.

Despite its online transformation, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar remains No. 1 on a ranking of the oldest newspapers still in circulation compiled by the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers.

"An online newspaper is still a newspaper, so we'll leave it on the list," WAN spokesman Larry Kilman said.

Source: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003541952

Krillion Launches First Actionable Local Search Engine

2007-02-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

Unique Localization Technology Changes Way Ready-to-Buy Online Consumers Find Stores and Products

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- February 05, 2007 -- Krillion™ (www.krillion.com), the leader in actionable local search, today unveiled its ground-breaking solution to the problem: why isn't search local today?

Despite the fact that 75% of those who buy big-ticket items do all their research online and make over 90% of their purchases offline, today's search engines typically are unable to find and deliver results pinpointing specific local stores with specific products.

Krillion solves this problem with its unique Krillion Localization Engine™ that scours the Web to find, integrate and present actionable local search results for the ready-to-buy consumer. As of today's launch, Krillion has over 275 million pages of relevant local search results displaying local product information for major appliances in over 40,000 U.S. cities and towns.

"Krillion delivers local search results that combine very specific product information with very specific locality information. These results truly are 'actionable' meaning that when consumers have completed their Internet research, they can grab their keys, hop into the car, drive to the store and buy the product," said Joel Toledano, co-founder and CEO of Krillion.

"We are delivering an inventory of search pages that have never before been available and we see this as a giant step forward for manufacturers, retailers and consumers," continued Toledano.

Category Focus: National Brands, National and Regional Retailers

Krillion delivers search results category-by-category and the first category to be covered is the $18 billion major appliance category: refrigerators, ovens, ranges, washers and dryers, and dishwashers. Moving forward, Krillion will deliver search results for additional categories such as consumer electronics, lawn and garden, seasonal appliances and others. Additionally, Krillion focuses on finding and delivering relevant search results for national brands that are sold by national and regional "big box" retailers. This focus enables Krillion to efficiently deliver usable search results for the majority of consumers.

"One of the historical challenges with local search, and online shopping in particular, is connecting Internet research with offline purchase behavior, which is where the majority of transactions occur," said Greg Sterling, principal, Sterling Market Intelligence. "By offering information about where to buy products locally, Krillion better serves consumers and further confirms that the future of online shopping is offline."

New Local Search Inventory for Advertisers

Krillion is also announcing today the immediate availability of millions of pages of local product advertising inventory, and customized analytics to measure the effectiveness of a Krillion-based campaign. Krillion expects to become the "last-mile" in a national ad campaign, linking the ready-to-buy consumer with the specific store where he or she can purchase the desired product. A click-to-call feature is available so consumers can quickly check on specific product inventory prior to visiting the store.

"Krillion's approach offers the opportunity to significantly redefine the ways in which brands engage with consumers at the local level. It's an innovative approach that will help drive growth in this market and better serve the needs of advertisers," said Torrence Boone, president, Digitas Boston.

Unlike many other local search providers, Krillion does not expect consumers to abandon or change their search habits. Consumers don't need to search directly on Krillion to find results by Krillion; instead consumers can search using their favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo!, etc.) and Krillion results will likely be displayed on those pages. Consumers then click to find Krillion for their local product and store information.

About Krillion

Krillion (www.krillion.com) is the leader in actionable local search; local search that results in consumers taking action to buy. Krillion's mission is to transform the way ready-to-buy consumers find and buy national brands, locally. Based on its unique Krillion Localization Engine, Krillion search results are more accurate than any local search information available on the Internet. Krillion, founded in February 2006, is funded by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

Krillion™ and Krillion Localization Engine™ are trademarks of Krillion, Inc. All other product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Source: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=210889

Craigslist posts satisfaction

2007-02-05T17:20:00.000-07:00

The classified-ad site could make millions more, but that's not the point, its CEO says.

By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Jim Buckmaster wasn't always CEO of Craigslist. First he was a satisfied customer. "I got my current job off of Craigslist," says Mr. Buckmaster, who's been at the helm of the online classified-ad site since 2000. "I put my résumé up on Craigslist in late '99. Craig saw it there and invited me in for an interview."

Craig is Craig Newmark, who founded Craigslist in 1995 and who, according to lore, first thought of it more as a hobby than a business. Today Craigslist is the 37th most popular Internet site in the world, according to Alexa.com, which tracks online traffic. It receives more than 15 million unique visitors per month, people who are placing classified ads or looking for things – jobs, household items, information, tickets, personal connections, and much more.

With a few exceptions, placing ads and responding to them is free. And since Craigslist operates as 450 local listing services in all 50 states and 50 countries, whatever you're looking for is probably going to be nearby.

"We get e-mails from users who've found their husband or wife, and their job, and their apartment or house they're living in, and a lot of their furnishings, and their cat or dog, and a lot of their friends, and some of their social activities, etc., all on Craigslist, all for free," says Buckmaster, summing up why the site keeps growing. "That's pretty powerful."

In a world where companies regularly skyrocket or flame out in a matter of months, Craigslist is a rock of stability and low-key, long-term success.

The company, run by just 23 employees out of a Victorian house in San Francisco, has never paid to advertise itself. Its entry page ( www.craigslist.org) consists of long lists of ad categories – all in lower case (as though bothering even to capitalize would be a frivolous waste of keystrokes). No graphics, photos, or colorful company logo tout the site. (Users, however, often post photos or other graphics with their ads.)

"Fancy graphics really do nothing more than slow down the page loading," Buckmaster says matter-of-factly. "[I]n reality, all of that [graphics] stuff is really useless. It's actually counterproductive."

Despite its under-the-radar way of doing business, Craigslist has attracted a bevy of critics. It's regularly skewered as a "newspaper killer" because it pulls classified ads away from local papers and contributes to that industry's woes.

The site also must fight an ongoing battle with spam and inappropriate ads. Users may enlist themselves in the bad-ad war by clicking a button to flag an ad that violates discrimination laws or hypes illegal goods or services. Spammers sometimes violate site rules (advertisers may not place ads in more than one city at a time, for example).

On the charge of "stealing" ads from newspapers, Buckmaster remains quietly unapologetic. The big newspaper chains continue to be about twice as profitable as the average American business, he says, "so it's not as though they're hurting." Newspapers have become "beholden to Wall Street," he says. "The primary focus is not necessarily on journalism; it's on maximizing revenue.

"Anything that's taking money from newspaper chains in the long run may very well be the most healthy thing that can happen, as far as newspaper journalism is concerned," he concludes.

Perhaps most inscrutably, at least to capitalists who figure that Internet businesses exist to make as much money as possible, Craigslist refuses to "monetize" itself. It leaves money on the table that's there for the easy taking, analysts say. If they ran related text or display ads next to listings, for example, they could add untold millions to their balance sheet.

The privately held company, which doesn't release financial figures, could also sell itself to the highest bigger. Google recently bought the video-sharing site YouTube for $1.6 billion. (According to Alexa, YouTube is the fifth most popular US website; Craigslist is No. 9.)

Why doesn't Craigslist take advantage of these opportunities? Because its customers aren't asking for them, says Buckmaster in a telephone interview. "Our users, up to this point anyway, have not been requesting text ads or banner ads or any of those things. So that's why we haven't been adding them."

Becoming as profitable as possible isn't even a company goal, he says. "The average business operates to see what's the maximum amount of money that can be made, even if that involves taking an adversarial role toward their users or customers. We're not interested in entering an adversarial role with our users."

Craigslist makes money by charging $25 for job postings in six major US cities (New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, Seattle, San Diego) and $75 per job posting in San Francisco. It also charges New York apartment brokers $10 per listing. The rest of the ads, as well as numerous discussion forums on subjects from fitness to travel, are free.

While Craigslist doesn't disclose its income, anyone putting pencil to the back of an envelope can see how the dollars add up. If just 100,000 of the 750,000 monthly job postings were paid for at $25 each, for example, that would generate $2.5 million per month or $30 million annually.

With such a strong cash flow and modest expenses, Craigslist simply may have no desire to change its laid-back approach. And since the company continues to grow, its value will only rise if Mr. Newmark (who continues at the company under the title of "customer service representative" while pursuing outside interests as well) and his co-owners ever decide to sell.

"They've got a loyal audience; people are used to seeing [Craigslist] look a certain way and using it in certain ways," says Barry Parr, an analyst at JupiterResearch in San Francisco, who tracks Internet technologies and businesses. "Very often, tampering with those kinds of business models can lead to unexpected and unpleasant results. There is that old story about the goose that laid the golden egg. And that story exists for a reason."

As Craigslist continues to hover between being a moneymaking business and an online community, where it should go from here may be as much a philosophical decision as a strategic one, Mr. Parr says. "[I]t kind of flows from that idea that you don't turn every successful community into an opportunity to make the maximum amount of money," says Parr, who speaks from personal experience: He's bought and sold things himself on Craigslist and "the experience has been uniformly positive."

Instead of being puzzled that Newmark isn't squeezing every dollar out of Craigslist, says Paul Saffo, a longtime Silicon Valley trend forecaster, entrepreneurs ought to try to emulate him. Newmark is an example of the adage, "Know yourself, and know what's enough," says Mr. Saffo, who adds that he's become "pretty well" acquainted with Newmark, and that Newmark is "a happy man."

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0205/p13s02-stct.html

Online Ad Sites Challenge Google, Yahoo

2007-02-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

The Associated Press
Monday, February 5, 2007; 12:35 AM

SAN FRANCISCO -- Like thousands of other Web sites, EDN.com relies on Google Inc. to handle a lucrative piece of Internet advertising _ the briefly worded links that produce revenue-generating clicks by targeting each individual reader's interests. The relationship has been profitable so far, but the managers of the technology Web site believe they could be making even more money if Google's system stopped serving up ads about potato chips or poker chips when a visitor is reading an article about computer chips.

"We think we could extract more value from our advertising by not mixing potato chips with computer chips," said Stephen Baker, who oversees search-based advertising for EDN and dozens of other Web sites owned by London-based Reed Elsevier Group PLC.

Although he has no plans to drop out of Google's network, Baker said he may try out a new advertising alternative being announced Monday by Fast Search and Transfer, a Norway-based company that specializes in providing search tools for businesses.

Fast is marketing its platform _ dubbed AdMomentum _ as a one-stop solution for Web sites that want to become less dependent on Google and the other large advertising networks operated by Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

"It's like a digital marketplace in a box," said Sue Feldman, an IDC Research vice president who reviewed early versions of AdMomentum. "This gives Web sites an opportunity to become more independent and take more control over their revenue stream."

More money is rapidly flowing into "keyword advertising" _ the industry's description for the intuitive algorithms that quickly analyze search requests or other content displayed on a Web page before deciding which marketing messages to show.

Annual spending on keyword ads is expected to top $10 billion in 2010, up from $6.8 billion last year, based on estimates from eMarketer, which tracks the industry.

With more money at stake, Fast is betting Web sites will be increasingly interested in developing their own ad systems so they won't have to share revenue with Google and the other networks.

"Publishers are not going to want another hand in their pockets every time they are selling ads," said Perry Solomon, Fast's vice president of strategic market development. Solomon declined to discuss AdMomentum's pricing model.

Some Web sites already have embraced alternative channels. In one of the biggest examples so far, Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN.com dropped Yahoo as its advertising partner in September to sell the commercial links on its own, using a platform called AdSonar offered by New York-based Quigo Technologies Inc.

AdMomentum figures to face an uphill battle in a market dominated by some of the world's most influential technology companies.

Mountain View-based Google looks particularly imposing, having raked in $20 billion from online advertising during the past three years. The company shared $6.7 billion of that amount with its advertising partners.

Yahoo has spent the past two years tweaking its system so it does a better job of matching its marketing messages with readers' interests. The Sunnyvale-based company plans to unveil the long-anticipated improvements Monday.

This isn't the first time Fast has challenged Google and Yahoo. For several years, it ran a general-purpose search engine called AlltheWeb.com that never made a dent in the market.

Fast wound up selling AlltheWeb and several other affiliates in 2003 for $100 million to a company that was eventually bought by Yahoo. AlltheWeb now serves as a testing ground for Yahoo's alternative approaches to search.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/05/AR2007020500051.html

YaWho? Exploring the Internet-Defining Brand’s Missteps and its Potential for Redemption

2007-02-05T15:28:00.000-07:00

February 5th 2007 by Chad Little

t times I’ve wondered if Yahoo! should consider replacing the exclamation point at the end of their name with a question mark. In light of some of their decisions and actions over the years, it seems that Yahoo? would be more fitting, as in Ya who do they want to be?

Do they aspire to be a media giant? The leading online ad platform? An information destination? All of the above? Depending on which mission statement you come across on Yahoo!’s website, their mission is either to A) Be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses, or B) Connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world’s knowledge.

Where is Yahoo! going? What do they want to dominate in and why? I’m not exactly sure. If you were to ask the same questions about Google, the answer is clear. Google’s stated vision is to “Organize the world’s information” (and make enough money doing it to finance the creation of a new world). Do I agree with that statement? I’m not sure I do as a lot of their actions aren’t congruent with the statement. I find them to be a large media company looking to utilize technology to distribute their advertisers wherever and however they can…but I digress. Agree with it or not, they at least have a vision statement that is clear and concise and their performance to-date backs it up.

How did Yahoo! arrive at its current place playing second fiddle to Google? There was a defining moment in the history of these two companies that has had ripple effects that we can still see today. In a recent article on Wired.com, Fred Vogelstein suggests that Yahoo! blew it during the summer of 2002 when their $3 billion offer to purchase Google was rebuffed and Terry Semel, Yahoo! CEO, balked at the higher $5 billion dollar valuation of Google.

After that failed merger Yahoo! subsequently purchased Overture. While it was a strategic move they needed to make to compete with Google, Yahoo! was already at a competitive disadvantage. Google was able to build their ad platform from scratch and seamlessly integrate it with their search technology. Yahoo!, on the other hand, had the monumental task of consuming Overture, a company I personally characterize as culturally dysfunctional.

I had business dealings with Overture dating back to their pre-Yahoo! days and one of the common criticisms shared by my peers in the industry was how difficult it was to do business with them. Their culture appeared to be dysfunctional from an outsider’s perspective.

If you’re familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, Overture would have played the role of the other guy – the one that walked past the man in need. They often gave the appearance of a company that would just as soon ignore its partners/traffic providers/customers rather than offer assistance. This isn’t to say that this type of behavior is uncommon for companies that grow to a certain size, but Overture excelled at it.

Now, fast-forward a couple of years to Yahoo!’s hiring of Terry Semel, the Hollywood deal-maker. Yahoo! had its sights set on becoming the next media giant so bringing on a seasoned and accomplished Hollywood insider was the logical choice at the time. In hindsight however, one might question the logic of hiring a CEO with very limited technical knowledge to guide a company that is defined by technology. This lack of technical savvy would be an extremely difficult hurdle for anyone to overcome when leading the merger of two technology-centric companies like Yahoo! and Overture, in addition to the challenge of overcoming the cultural differences.

Here we are almost five years later and Yahoo! has just launched their revamped ad platform named Panama. While Yahoo! touts this as a strategic leap forward, the bottom line is that Panama was a task that needed to get completed just to remain in the game. Early returns have been good for Panama, as evidenced by Merrill Lynch’s positive outlook for Yahoo! stock and their 13% increase in ad-related revenue from one year ago. The response from advertisers has been positive for the most part, however, some smaller companies are finding it difficult to switch platforms and transition their existing accounts. Panama is an important upgrade for Yahoo!, but the battle for dominance in paid search has already been won by Google.

Second place in the paid search industry is certainly not an insignificant position, but the same questions still remain. Do they have the leadership, vision and focus to reassert themselves as a leader, pioneer and dominant force that they once were?

Yahoo! is an amazing company, and a brand that has defined the Internet as we know it, but they have missed the mark recently and lost opportunities to surge ahead. What’s next for Yahoo!? I have my own theories, but they all depend on who is leading the company and if those people can define a clear and concise vision for the future that can take Yahoo! to new heights. I am curious to see what that vision will be and if it will give them the ability to regain the competitive advantage they once held.

Source: http://www.adotas.com/index.php?s=YaWho#

Hijacked on Google, Keyjacked on YouTube

2007-02-02T23:18:00.000-07:00

February 2nd 2007 by Scott McCoy

My first attempt at online marketing was a shocker to this traditional advertising veteran. Even as a beginner it was easy to understand that what I witnessed was unethical and was diminishing the ROI for advertisers both directly and indirectly. Directly the result was to reduce click through rates by pushing down legitimate organic search results and indirectly by reducing confidence in and credibility of both paid and organic search results.

An AdWords test campaign was created to drive traffic to my new website. I evaluated the click results with Google analytics before and after the test campaign began then tested Google search by entering my keywords to observe the paid ad delivery frequency as well as the organic search results. In the organic search results I discovered that my ad’s headline had been HIJACKED verbatim and was generating multiple organic search results for someone else’s commerce sites.

The hijacking must have been automated. I wondered if some form of bot had scanned AdWords or search text rankings, harvesting the text of popular topics and automatically linking to Trojan horse websites. The multiple sites that were linked to my marketing headlines contained lists of links with language and subject matter related to my site and ad indicating that it was either a sophisticated contextual program or worse, a human.

Why would someone choose the ad for my low profile site to hijack?

My site, www.savepluto.com, is dedicated to restoring Pluto, the planet, back to planet status and to sell some merchandise along the way. I bought the domain name and designed the site to support the NASA scientist in charge of the mission currently on the way to explore Pluto. He is one of two scientists who are organizing scientists, educators and other interested people to meet in late 2007 to reverse a decision that resulted in Pluto’s demotion.

To generate awareness for Savepluto.com, I signed up for Google AdWords and chose the headline “working with NASA scientists to bring Pluto back in 2007.” This is the headline that was hijacked to generate fraudulent results.

The demotion of Pluto has been extensively covered in the press and just prior to my headline hijack The American Dialect Society voted “plutoed” its 2006 “word of the Year” the verb, meaning “to demote or devalue someone or something”. Perhaps this bump in media coverage prompted the choice of my site as popular enough to hijack for their nefarious purposes.

Could I benefit from the multiple times that their entries appeared on forward pages on Google search results? Savepluto.com was prominently highlighted on each entry and may have created awareness for my site. However, I had to wonder how many people clicked on their links to find spam and then declined to click on my legitimate link.

The many search results generated by my hijacked text opened to pages containing multiple links to other sites. These other sites included what seemed to be an elaborate pyramid scheme that promised free prizes for generating responses to pop-up offers to sign up for and activate credit cards. Something about this just seems inherently wrong.

Ultimately this has to be a bad development. If the bad guys have chosen my low profile site how many other sites have been hijacked? The multiple search results effectively push legitimate site’s results down on the ranking. They have been “Plutoed”. Being Plutoed effectively reduces the cost effectiveness of good money paid for site optimization and AdWords campaigns.

Keyjacking is also rampant on YouTube where “bait and switch” marketers pilfer audience using that day’s most popular news events as keywords for their unrelated content. Johnnie TV is the king of keyjackers and creates more videos per day than he has teeth. Well, bad analogy if you have viewed Johnnie TV, but you get the point. Keyjacking results in frustration and wasted time and potential reduced sales.

This week, it was announced that click fraud is at an all-time high. Recent lawsuits have mixed results on actions relating to “keyjacking” of trademarks belonging to one business inserted by competitors as search keywords to steal potential customers.

The “wild west” environment created by the rapid migration of significant advertising budgets to online marketing has created this environment of click fraud, keyjacking and plagiarism and should be a concern for all legitimate online marketers.

Source: http://www.adotas.com/2007/02/hijacked-on-google-keyjacked-on-youtube/

Bigger Sites May Not Be Better for Online Advertisers

2007-01-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Advertising on smaller niche sites could make a big difference.

In the glory days of television, when mass media reigned, media planners could buy time on CBS, NBC and ABC and waltz out for a three-martini lunch. Easy as that.

Times have changed, of course. Today, planning multimedia advertising campaigns is far more complex. But media planners would still prefer to keep things as simple as possible. When it comes to the online portion of their budgets, they buy Google, Yahoo! and a few major vertical-interest sites and, often enough, that is about it.

Merrill Lynch projects that both search and branded advertising will grow online next year, up 27% and 21%, respectively.

But continuing to put the bulk of online ad dollars on large sites could be a mistake. Big, particularly on the Internet, may not be better.

According to new research from Media-Screen, when brand managers and media planners are choosing where to place their ads online, they should not ignore smaller sites with less traffic.

The "Netpop | Response" study found that small, long-tail Web sites are indispensable to consumers — and they provide a new way for brands to position ads where users want to see them.

Interest in the products and brands advertised on smaller sites is greater than on larger sites: According to the study, 42% of sites with less than one million unique visitors a month advertise products of interest to their viewers, vs. 39% of sites with more than one million visitors.

The difference is small, but for savvy advertisers looking for an edge, it is worth exploring.

"Consumers have gained control over the content they consume online and advertisers need to adjust their strategies to match," said Josh Crandall of Media-Screen. "By advertising on smaller Websites, those that consumers are visiting based on their personal interests, companies can reach a highly engaged consumer with a message that relates to a subject that is important to them."

Advertisers should consider putting at least some of their online budgets aside for experimenting with niche site placements.

"Search engines are a driving force behind these trends, enabling broadbanders to venture beyond the major brands to the niche sites they previously never knew existed," said Cate Riegner of Media-Screen. "62% of sites that respondents mention receive less than one million unique visitors."

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004465&src=article1_home

Local Online Advertising: Measuring the Potential

2007-01-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

With $1.3 billion spending in 2006, representing only 7.9% of the total $16.7 billion in US Internet ad spending for the year, local online advertising remains more promise than fulfillment. While marketing factors will drive significant this year and next, the boom in local online advertising is not here yet.

Summary | Table of Contents | Sources

Attention: Marketers, Advertising Agencies, Portals, Online and Offline Retailers, Large Corporations and SMEs and Financial Analysts.

The Local Online Advertising report analyzes the burgeoning growth of local online ads, and why paid search is the driving factor behind it.

Just as paid search contributes over 40% to the total US online ad spending market, so it is for local online advertising, where paid search provides over 55% of the local total. These are notable figures, especially when you factor in the relative immaturity of the local search market.

But make no mistake, the boom has not hit yet. Even when local online ad spending jumps by nearly 53% next year to $2.0 billion, that will make it not quite 10% of the 2007 estimate of $20.3 billion for total online advertising.

Key questions the "Local Online Advertising" report answers:

When will local online advertising become a significant channel for national advertisers?

Among web advertisers, who will be the biggest players in local online advertising?

Where does local online advertising fit in the overall advertising picture?

How can paid search become more effective for SMBs in local markets?

Can the US newspaper industry use the Internet to regain advertising relevance?

And many more…

eMarketer Reports—On-Target and Up-to-Date

The Local Online Advertising report aggregates the latest data from marketing and communications researchers with eMarketer numbers, projections and analysis to provide the information you need to make smart business, marketing and advertising decisions for the future.

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Ad_local_jul06.aspx

Yahoo explains its new bidding system

2007-01-16T06:34:00.000-07:00

The New Bidding System

Helpful hints for managing your account

No feature of the new Sponsored Search has garnered more attention in the blogosphere than the bidding system, with its snappy, graphical presentation and dynamic slider-bar functionality.

Kudos aside, we know new things can sometimes be a little bit confusing. So here’s a little play-by-play of how the new bidding system works. Take a look at the screenshot below:

Notice in the lower-right corner (highlighted) that there are two boxes. Each box contains a data tool that corresponds to a specific set of information: Estimated Clicks per Bid and Bid Range for Top Positions.

Bid Range for Top Positions
This bit of data is designed to help you with your bidding decisions at the ad group level or at the keyword level depending on how tightly you want to manage your bids. In general, you may want to manage at the ad group level, as you might find this to be easier. For special, high-priority keywords, however, you may want to manage at the keyword level. (To manage at the keyword level, just click on the keyword itself.) The Bid Range for Top Positions column is designed to offer the latest available range of bids for the positions at the top of the search results page. Want to appear at the top? Then your bid must be within or above this range.

Estimated Clicks per Bid sliding graph

This groovy little widget is designed to help you understand the number of clicks your ad may receive for a given bid. This information is important if you want to see how changes in your bid may affect your results. By moving the slider back and forth to increase or decrease your bid, you can see how your estimated monthly clicks, your position and share of available clicks may be impacted. The estimated number of clicks is calculated using your bid and historical keyword data (such as the previous bids of other advertisers, monthly click volume for your keywords, and other factors).

So which tool should I use?
It depends on what you’re trying to do. If you want your ad to appear at the top of the search results, then consider using the Bid Range for Top Positions to help guide your bidding. If you want to estimate how many clicks you may receive for a particular bid, use the Estimated Clicks per Bid sliding graph.It’s important to note that the Bid Range for Top Positions uses recent data and the Clicks per Bid sliding graph uses historical data, so there may sometimes appear to be a discrepancy between the two data sets. Also, please remember that both of these features use estimates only and are not a guarantee of click volume. Factors other than bid amount—such as the bidding behavior of other advertisers, your campaign settings and your ad performance—may also influence your position.

Thanks and happy bidding!

—The Team

Source: http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2007/01/08/the-new-bidding-system/

Google Security Hole Allows Account Hijacking

2007-01-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

It’s your worst nightmare – someone reads parts of your Google emails, views your docs, modifies your spreadsheets, checks out your reading habits on the Google personalized homepage or Google Reader, and goes through your search history. Yet, by making use of a new Google security hole, Tony Ruscoe was able to do all that with my Google account.

Tony’s not a malicious hacker of course (in fact, the first thing he did was inform Google Security!), but he found a loophole in a new feature Google rolled out recently. Using a proof of concept script targeting this loophole – which I can detail once it’s fixed –, all Tony needed to do was make a user who’s logged into their Google Account visit a page of his, which happened to be on a “trustworthy” google.com sub-domain. I visited Tony’s page, which sent my Google cookies to Tony, which in turn enabled him to:

Get into my Google Docs & Spreadsheets application and read and modify documents I saved there
Read subjects from my Gmail inbox, as well as the first few words of these emails, by adding a Gmail module to the Google Personalized Homepage
View my Google Accounts page
Enter my Google Reader
Read my private Google Notebook
View my complete Google search history (for as long as I had the search history feature enabled in Google)

This is by far not the end of services Tony was able to see in our brief tests. What he specifically was not able to do was to read my full emails, check my Calendar events, or change my Google Account password (which would’ve given him full access to anything, basically).

Now, the vulnerability in question is a very special kind, and Tony, by “claiming” this loophole, also blocked it for other abusers. This means that for the sake of this case, even though Google didn’t yet fix the hole, there is nothing to worry about (except that someone might find more holes in the vicinity of this bug). However, I am posting on this because it’s a worthwhile reminder that no company’s security is ever completely cracker-proof; in very rare circumstances, whatever you saved in Google, or entered in Google, can escape your control and land in the wrong hands. Or, as Tony phrased it on his proof of concept page, “Think yourself lucky that I wasn’t that evil!”

Source: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-01-12-n73.html

The Small Fry Sour On Search Ads

2007-01-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

Priced out by brand giants, the outfits that pioneered the medium are looking elsewhere

For years, running those little four-line text advertisements on Web search engines brought in a profitable stream of new customers to BabyAge.com. But last year, search suddenly turned sour for the eight-year-old online baby products store, which posted about $20 million in sales. Even as BabyAge's $1.2 million worth of search ads got more clicks in 2006, they netted fewer actual buyers, effectively doubling their cost. "We're out of business at this rate," fumes Chief Executive Jack Kiefer. He plans to cut back on search ads this year.

For years, running those little four-line text advertisements on Web search engines brought in a profitable stream of new customers to BabyAge.com. But last year, search suddenly turned sour for the eight-year-old online baby products store, which posted about $20 million in sales. Even as BabyAge's $1.2 million worth of search ads got more clicks in 2006, they netted fewer actual buyers, effectively doubling their cost. "We're out of business at this rate," fumes Chief Executive Jack Kiefer. He plans to cut back on search ads this year.

Kiefer isn't the only one casting a more skeptical eye on what has been the fastest-growing and most lucrative Internet ad market. So are midsize online retailers such as jeweler ICE.com, luggage seller eBags, and consumer-electronics store eCOST.com. Search ads, which run alongside query results on Google Inc. GOOG , Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO ), and other search sites when someone types in "diamond necklace" or "DVD player," used to be the marketing weapon of choice for these outfits. They reached more targeted audiences and could be measured for effectiveness. Now the price per click on those ads is rising--by an average of 31% from a year ago in the third quarter, according to DoubleClick Inc. Some merchants are looking seriously at alternatives--even, of all things, print and radio spots.

Think of it as fallout from a new online land rush. Brand giants from Best Buy Co (BBY ). to Zale Corp (ZLC ). are diverting more and more of their marketing budgets to search ads. They're driving up prices and stealing customers from some of the smaller businesses that have bought the bulk of those ads. Web users have learned to shop around more, and now, instead of clicking on ads from the little guys and buying from them on the spot, they're often buying from the big brands they know well. If many of the small and midsize companies that pioneered this ad medium get disillusioned, search ads could lose their luster.

For the time being, Google's not worried. The rush of ad dollars from big brands into search is more than making up for any cutbacks by smaller outfits. National marketers from General Motors Corp. (GE ) to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT ) are for the first time dedicating branding budgets to search, says Matt Greitzer, search director at Web marketing firm Avenue A/Razorfish. And Google and Yahoo say that even small companies with the right products and message can still trump big brands online. "We're not seeing any erosion of ROI [return on investment] across the board by our customers," says Richard Holden, Google's director of product management for advertising.

Still, many small and midsize marketers are buying far fewer "keywords" and phrases. Merchants are also trying out ads on MySpace and YouTube, or advertising on blogs and niche shopping sites. Says consultant Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim: "The free lunch is over."

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_04/b4018076.htm

Shifting Search’s Black Sheep: How to Propel SEO to the Head of the Marketing Herd

2007-01-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

January 12th 2007 Author by: Gary Angel

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the black sheep in the online marketing herd. Its basic principles, its practice and its economics are all significantly different than pretty much any other marketing channel. One might almost compare it to Public Relations – since with SEO you are essentially competing for eyeballs in a free marketspace. But unlike PR, SEO is a heavily technical discipline – one where a deep understanding of the complex ranking algorithms used by engines like Google and MS Search are the essential ingredients.

One of the most frustrating aspects of SEO is that it is, in many respects, deeply stupid. When a user types “marketing” into Google (a query that will return something like one billion entries), it’s absurd to think that any search engine can possibly pick a “best fit.” Absurd because the task is inherently impossible – there is no best fit. And while the problem is most obvious for the broadest terms, it exists at every level of specificity. Take the key term in our (Semphonics) industry – web analytics.

When a user enters web analytics should they get the site of a web analytics software package, a web analytics consultancy, a web analytics association or a web analytics blog? And between software sites, all of which are essentially 100% about web analytics, how would it be possible to choose between WebSideStory, Omniture and Webtrends (or a half-dozen other vendors)?

It isn’t possible. But the static nature of the returned search page places an enormous value on being in the top position – more, for example, than in the phone book when the alphabetical listing places some premium on being named triple-A but not nearly as much as the top position in an engine.

I think this is going to change dramatically in the next couple of years. The Search Engines are going to have to deliver results in a much richer – Ajax driven fashion. When your search results can be instantly sorted, filtered and categorized, being number one on return is going to be mean much, much less. So I think in couple of years the practice of SEO is going to look more like the rest of marketing. It will be easy to get included in a germane result set. And marketers will have to focus on making their listing as attractive as possible. That should be an improvement in every respect.

But at the moment, the technical discipline of SEO is still very much with us. And since it’s with us, it’s important to do it as well as possible.

In Search Engine Marketing, doing something well is always ultimately about your ability to measure and tune your results. And in this respect, at least, our black sheep runs with the flock.

Yes, measurement. SEO and measurement haven’t exactly been soulmates. But SEO will reward disciplined measurement just as much – perhaps even more – than PPC.

Measure for Problems

So many people get lost in the nitty-gritty of SEO or intimidated by its intricacies that they miss the big, picture staring them in the face. The first place to start when measuring your SEO traffic is to look at the overall organic traffic on your site by search engine. For most sites we work with (classic BtoC eCommerce), Google is going to be the dominant organic traffic source – typically sourcing anywhere from around fifty-percent to as much as seventy or eighty-percent of organic traffic. Yahoo is usually the next largest organic traffic source – typically pushing somewhere between 15-30% of traffic. MS Search is usually number three – with numbers ranging from nearly equivalent to Yahoo to percentages as small as 1-2%. Ask is the most common fourth source – typically with volumes about half of Microsoft.

I’ve expressed these as wide ranges because almost every site will show a different mix. But it’s useful to know the general expected ranges so that you can quickly place your site in comparison. That will give you a good idea of where you have opportunities by engine. If your Google results account for 95% of total organic volume, then you need to concentrate on optimizing for Yahoo, Microsoft and other engines. If Google is sending you less volume than Yahoo, then you’ve got a serious Google problem.

In the main, we find that companies discover issues with Yahoo and Microsoft. These engines aren’t as exhaustive in their coverage as Google, are less commonly optimized for, and are defeated by a wider variety of spidering issues. If you find that your site is under-represented in one or more engines, that provides you with direction both where to look and, in some cases, what kind of problems to look for.

Measure for Opportunities

Looking at the ratio of organic traffic by engine can yield SEO directions, and so, too, can looking at the organic entry rate for pages and content areas on your site. Most web analytic tools will let you track the number of page views, the number of entries (sessions that started on that page) and the number of entries by source – in particular, we’re interested in organic search traffic. Pages that are heavily trafficked on a site but that receive a very small percentage of entries may represent SEO holes – places that search engines have a hard time reaching.

Common reasons for SEO holes include Search-based and Database driven content, complex URL structures and unusual access paths (via Flash for example). It’s often extremely useful to look at groups of pages (content areas) on your site instead of single pages. Particularly when you focus on pages accessed via database lookup or search, each single page may have too little volume to register. But the pages in sum may account for a very large number of page views. And if you can open up access to this content via Search Engines, you can often get a very big, very easy win.

Measure for Success

It may not always be a common practice in PPC, but it is at least common wisdom that you should measure for success not traffic. Alas, SEO as a discipline has yet to see the light. Many organizations don’t even track SEO by traffic. Instead, they focus entirely on artificial measurements like the number of search terms on the first page.

This type of analysis is pernicious – and invariably results in severe mis-allocation of effort. Yes, it is true that the job of the SEO firm is improve the placement of your search listings. But the key question is which terms and where. It’s usually your job to tell the SEO experts what to optimize for – so make sure you’ve thought through what you are telling them. It isn’t unusual to find that having top ten placement on a hundred low-traffic words is worth much less than having #1 placement on a really important search term. If your SEO firm is allowed to measure their success by the number of search terms on page #1 from a big list of terms, then you’ll almost certainly be encouraging them to focus on the wrong terms.

But even measuring organic traffic as the ultimate measure of success is a bad idea. Like PPC terms, SEO terms will vary widely in their level of pre-qualification. Not all traffic is equal. In fact, we’ve frequently measured pre-qualification at one or even two orders of magnitude difference between search terms. That means that a term can be sending 50 times less traffic than another term and still be more valuable!

Where appropriate, you should measure SEO traffic all the way to conversion. Unfortunately, that isn’t always either possible or appropriate. Volumes on many search terms are too low to measure versus Conversion with any level of statistical confidence. And, of course, many sites don’t even have clear conversions on their site. The solution is one I’ve talked about before – using conversion proxies to measure level of engagement. You can measure how deeply visitors engaged with your site based on the search term they entered from – and use that measure to help tune your SEO efforts.

Measure for Competitive Advantage

Measurement is all about context. How good should your organic placements be? That’s a difficult question to answer in the abstract. And in the real world, it’s simply impossible for many companies to be #1 on key listings. So it’s important to be able to compare how you fare when stacked up against the competition. Tools like WebPosition Gold and CampaignTracker and services like Hitwise and CTSE make it possible for you to track how your placement compares to the competition – both at one single time and over a period of months.

These tools will tell you which words your competitors are highly placed on – and which words they aren’t. They’ll also let you track across a wide range of words how many times you and your key competitors are highly ranked.

By monitoring this across category and over time, you have an excellent way to benchmark yourself and your SEO effort versus the competition. Remember, this isn’t a replacement for measuring vs. success. It may be that your competition is creaming you on words that you’ve found out don’t really matter! But measuring your overall placements versus the competition is a great way to help you figure out much upside you have in your SEO program and also to spot potential optimization points you might have missed.

Measure for Discipline

Organizations have struggled to understand SEO. They’ve struggled to deploy it. And they’ve struggled mightily to integrate it into their ongoing business processes. That’s a shame, because however irrational current SEO requirements are, SEO is also an essential ingredient in capturing prospects on the web. Integrating measurement into your SEO program can help an organization get a much better handle on how to drive an engagement and how to think about the potential and upside of SEO. SEO may still be the black sheep in the online marketing world – but with careful measurement – it can be a mighty valuable member of the herd.

Source: http://www.adotas.com/2007/01/shifting-searchs-black-sheep-how-to-propel-seo-to-the-head-of-the-marketing-herd/1/

Web U: How to Measure SEO Success

2007-01-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

by Todd Friesen, January 2007 issue

Taking the mystery out of the metrics

There is a "Simpsons" episode titled "The Springfield Files" in which Homer, after having had quite a few beers at Moe's Tavern, sees an alien wandering through the woods. The alien says, "Don't be afraid," but Homer screams and runs away, obviously terrified of that which he does not understand. The alien preaches peace and love, but all Homer sees is scary, glowing, green skin. I think this is a little bit like the problem people have with search-engine optimization. Despite its high profitability, clients can be nervous about it, because measuring its effectiveness is not as obvious as measuring that of a pay-per-click or media campaign. SEO's success metrics, however, are actually quite cut-and-dry. Once they make sense to you, SEO will become an attractive component in your overall marketing strategy.

You collect PPC data with more frequency than SEO data. If a PPC campaign demands it, you can chart your traffic and conversions hourly. Technically, you can do this with SEO, but it makes a lot more sense to compare data year-over-year, for two reasons: Primarily, so you can average the effects of seasonality. Secondly, SEO campaigns progress in phases, and their data is a lot more relevant when viewed in annual terms. When it comes to revenue-producing SEO (as opposed to brand-building SEO), there are five key metrics we use to define the success of a client's SEO campaign - rankings, traffic, revenue, ROI, and exposure.

>>Rankings. This metric is a matter of determining what words are important to your business and where you would like to rank for them. Because a Web site's total traffic-generating keywords could number in the hundreds of thousands, rankings are typically tracked using a subset list, usually an aggregate of keywords the client wants to rank high for and traffic/revenue-generating words from its PPC campaign. Success is measured by how words climb or drop in search-engine rankings.

>>Traffic. SEO is a phased process, and one of the phases is the fundamental site-optimization. This process is quite technical and involves everything from meta-tags to HTML changes, but the end result is to make your site more relevant to searches. When your search engine referrals increase dramatically over previous years, the optimization was effective.

>>Revenue. Of all the metrics, it is most important to compare revenue generated from natural search annually. It's not completely fair to credit SEO with a monthly revenue gain. However, if your overall revenue is significantly greater in the current month relative to the same period last year, you can give your SEO campaign a pat on the back (or maybe even a budget boost).

>>ROI. True revenue-based ROI is defined by new gross revenue from natural search divided by the cost of the SEO campaign. Say, for example, that last year's additional gross revenue was $12 million and the SEO campaign cost $120,000. The resulting ROI is 100:1- quite a hefty return.

>>Exposure. SEO success is also measured by exposure, or how many traffic-generating keywords your site has. If this increases yearly, your campaign is doing well. Exposure affects all the other metrics; more words mean more traffic, which means more potential sales, revenue, and increased ROI.

Homer Simpson's close encounter became a lot less frightening at the end of the episode, when the alien turned out to be a disoriented (and irradiated) Mr. Burns.

Once they solved the mystery, the characters heaved a collective sigh of relief. Like Homer, once you know how to judge the success of an SEO campaign, it becomes less of an uncertain budget expenditure and more of an effective way to increase your company's revenue. There's nothing scary about that.

Todd Friesen is director of SEO for Range Online Media. (todd@rangeonlinemedia.com)

Source: http://www.rangeonlinemedia.com/

Building Website Traffic 101

2007-01-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

Traffic Makes The Web Go Round!

It also keeps your websites, marketing schemes, or affiliate programs from crashing and burning to the ground! This lens showcases the in's and out's of learning how to increase your website traffic!

Words To Know:

Get to understand a few keywords before you start!

Traffic exchange: What is this?
Search engine optimization (SEO): What is this?
Autoresponder: What is this?
Web traffic: What is this?
Link exchange: What is this?
Internet forum: What is this?
Search engine: What is this?

Where Should I Start?

You can make one of the most professional and eye-pleasing sites ever, but you will have lost precious time and effort if no one is viewing your page. If it is traffic that you want, you will want to try driving traffic using several different advertising tools.

SEO is of the upmost importance when starting out. It is a source of countless "targeted" page views if done correctly, although how to do that correctly is another topic all together. There is a lot that goes with being successful in SEO, most sometimes will not try to utilize it. Even some of those who try to tackle it may not understand it well enough to make it work the way they want. So Beyond SEO What else do those who lack the information needed to run a successful SEO campaign have to use?

It depends on your budget. Little to no budget? Consider free traffic exchanges, posting useful and informative responses on forums, exchanging links with webmasters who own like content websites, submitting to search engines, and writing articles. These are all great resources to use and most are free. If you have a budget, you can use the paid versions of traffic exchanges, google adsense, buying adspace on established websites.

Paying produces quicker results, but its the free tools like writing articles and posting in forums that will be most affective, resulting in long lasting effects. Just keep in mind the more tools you use in your traffic gaining goals the more successful you will be.

Source: http://www.squidoo.com/traffic_building/

Some Google advertisers cutting spending

2007-01-04T23:51:00.000-07:00

Keyword inflation, low conversion rates sending merchants elsewhere

By Ben Charny, MarketWatch

Last Update: 10:58 PM ET Jan 3, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- A growing number of online advertisers are bidding a partial goodbye to Google Inc.

Frustrated by the soaring price of Internet-search advertising and diminishing returns from the ads they buy, mid-sized advertisers say they plan to reduce how much business they do with Google this year -- in some cases, significantly.

Last year, for example, eBags.com co-founder Peter Cobb spent between $5 million and $8 million to peddle suitcases, handbags and other carrying cases online. Google got 75% of that amount.

But this year it will get "significantly less," Cobb said. "The Google percentage has got to go down," he said.

In many cases, the cost of an eBags.com ad placed on either Google's own Web site or one of its affiliates now equals 45% of the price of the product it promotes. That's crimping the company's own profit margins and forcing it to look elsewhere to market its bags.

"We're testing print ads right now," said Cobb, whose company will spend up to $8 million on ads in 2007.

Cobb was among a half-dozen Google customers -- all of whom spent between $4 million and $10 million on search ads in 2006 -- who told MarketWatch they plan to spend less this year to have their ads placed alongside Google's search results.

While losing a few million here or there may not be enough to impact Google's business -- which generated more than $7 billion in sales last year -- those interviewed for this story say their sentiment is not unusual among Google advertisers of their size.

If enough of those companies curtail their Google spending, it could begin to depress the company's annual revenue growth rate, which is already expected to slow to 47% this year from 80% in 2006.

That growth rate is one of the primary reasons that Wall Street analysts cite to justify their price targets on Google shares.

Google is aware that advertisers are closely measuring the return on investment and "adjusting their budget and pending patterns according," Google spokesman Michael Mayzel said in an e-mail.

"As with any advertising medium, some advertisers are going to perform better than others," he added. "The majority of our customers continue to see strong return and value in our ad program."

New bidders driving up prices

To a large degree, the dissatisfaction with Google's advertising is due to the phenomenal success the company has had in persuading other firms to advertise their products and services using Internet search keywords.

In search advertising, companies bid on the right to have their text-based ads placed next to search results generated by specific words and phrases, such as "ski boots" or "diamond earrings," that Internet users type into Google's search engine.

The low cost of keyword search advertising relative to older media like television, radio or even local yellow pages has lured many traditional retailers into advertising online. That's created more competitive bidding for popular Internet search terms, inflating their cost.

While that's helped Google post phenomenal profit growth -- analysts expect that its net income rose 80% in 2006 -- it's made things tougher on many of its advertisers.

Keyword search prices on many terms rose between 40% and 60% last year, according to advertisers like Dan Sackrowitz, chief executive of Bare Necessities, which sells lingerie online. He saw his Google ad budget soar 50% last year.

Jack Keifer, chief executive of baby goods provider Babyage.com, said his search ad costs more than doubled in 2006. As a result, he's refining his online advertising strategy, spending less on Google and more on comparison shopping engines or niche search engines that focus on his product categories.

The experience of Sackrowitz and Keifer has come to the attention of Wall Street analysts, even those who are bullish on Google.

"What has been good for Google has not been good for the companies that buy advertising from them," said Mark Mahaney, Internet analyst at Citigroup who rates Google shares as a buy. "Going forward, we see no convincing reason why online advertising costs shouldn't continue to rise."

Trouble turning shoppers into buyers

Meanwhile, there's also growing dissatisfaction with the return on investment provided by Google ads.

Advertisers pay Google every time someone clicks on their online ad, yet they benefit only if a consumer buys something after being transferred to their Web site.

Most online advertisers are happy if their so-called conversion rate is about 5%.

Yet Shmuel Gniwisch, founder of online jeweler Ice.com, got a conversion rate of less than half a percent for the $750,000 worth of ads he placed through Google during November and December, a key selling season for retailers.

For every 300 people who clicked on an Ice.com ad, only one actually purchased something, Gniwisch said.

"You couldn't get a worse performance," he said.

As a result, he's planning to cut his Google ad spending by 40% or more.

The low yield is a reminder of how many clicks are not legitimate but rather the result of so-called click fraud. While Google officials have inferred that the fraud rate is in the low-to-mid single digits, some critics say it can be as high as 50% for some online ad campaigns.

Still, many Google advertisers say they've accepted click fraud as part of the cost of online advertising. See previous story on Google's click fraud problem.

Changing tactics

Likewise, not all Google advertisers who've seen their costs surge are cutting spending.

Google's expansive advertising network and its No. 1 Internet search engine still make it a necessary part of any online campaign. Saying goodbye to Google and its huge audience is a risky move for advertisers.

Yet even those who will spend at least as much money on Google this year as they did in 2006 say their decision has more to do with improvements they've made on their own, rather than any increased satisfaction with Google's ad service.

Sackrowitz of Bare Necessities said he won't cut Google spending, but only because his company has developed expertise in converting clicks into sales.

"We're getting healthy enough returns, but it's a testament to how we've done a better job of converting shoppers to buyers than our competition," he said. "We'll stay the course, but I wish (keyword) prices were lower."

Ben Charny is a MarketWatch reporter based in San Francisco.

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/google-advertisers-cutting-spending-keyword/story.aspx?guid=%7BE9B9CEA8%2DEA47%2D48C6%2DA91F%2D69F53F018AE2%7D

Tip: Trust is hard to gain, easy to lose.

2007-01-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Call me naive: I think you can make a lot of money, go public, even monopolize a market, and still retain a moral compass that points in the direction of Google’s stated top priority—users.

But Google lost me today:

Google is now displaying “tips” that point searchers to Google Calendar, Blogger and Picasa for any search phrase that includes “calendar” (e.g. Yahoo calendar), “blog” and “photo sharing,” respectively. This is clearly bad for competitors, and it’s also a bad sign for Google. But I generally support anything that benefits users, even if it’s controversial. I believe, for instance, that shipping Internet Explorer with Windows was a good move. So why are tips bad for users?

First, some notes. One, Yahoo and Ask already do this, but they didn’t build their businesses on the promise of being unconventionally trustworthy. I care that Google is doing it because the company’s integrity over the years has impressed me and earned my loyalty. And two, Google has been doing similar things for awhile. Search The Holiday and you’ll get a special box pointing to reviews of and tickets for the movie. The difference is that this is still a filter on the Web; the reviews link to their sources and the tickets link to Fandango. Google may share the Fandango revenue and certainly shuts out competitors, but as a user, I get better service than I would without the box.

The tips are different—and bad for users—because the services they recommend are not the best in their class. If Google wants to make it faster and easier for users to manage events, create a blog or share photos, it could do what it does when you search GOOG: link to the best services. To prevent Google from being the gatekeeper, the company could identify the services algorithmically.

But if that sounds familiar, perhaps that’s because Google already works that way. After all, Google is predicated on the idea that the democratic structure of the Web will push the cream to the top. Search for “photo sharing” and you should already get the highest quality services. According to Google, Picasa is not one of them. These “tips,” then, can only be a tacit admission of failure: either the company does not believe in its own search technology, or it does not believe its products are good enough to rise to the top organically. I’d guess the latter. And if I were on the Calendar, Blogger or Picasa teams, I wouldn’t be celebrating the news that my employer has lost faith in me.

Implications for advertisers

Google has been advertising its own products through AdWords for some time, and I see nothing wrong with that. The protest that unjustifiably erupted three weeks ago questioned the positioning of these ads. As advertisers began making antitrust overtures, Walter H. from Google Marketing stepped in to sooth nerves (emphasis mine):

It’s important to note, however, that our ads are created and managed under the exact same guidelines, principles, practices and algorithms as the ads of any other advertiser…There are no algorithm changes to ’smooth the way’ for Google’s ads.

We’re quite proud of the advertising platform we’ve built and it simply makes sense for us to use it. At the same time, the trust of both our users and our advertisers is of paramount importance. We honor that responsibility, and work hard to earn and keep that trust.

What changed in three weeks?

While advertisers compete to be first in a string of lookalike ads that are often shunted to the side, Google now determines the precise position and appearance of ~~ads~~ tips that are not subject to any of the same rules. Its ads get icons while others don’t, and if you think that’s small potatoes, you are not an advertiser: images boost clickthrough. Google can make a Picasa ad say “Easier to use than Kodak,” but Kodak cannot create an ad that reads “Easier to use than Picasa.”¹ And the kicker: neither the highest quality ads nor the highest quality search results can replace these tips.

In the end, would you rather be Blogger or TypePad on my screen?

A new kind of bundling

Google’s new age “bundling” is less threatening than Microsoft’s because changing operating systems is hard, while changing search engines is easy—so easy that every engine out there is desperately trying to stay in your face. And choosing an alternative to Microsoft’s bundled software used to be prohibitively complicated for the average person, not to mention time consuming—you had to go to a store and buy a boxed copy or spend the evening downloading it. Eventually everyone will be experienced enough to procure applications, and then word of mouth alone will bury the distribution advantages Google and Microsoft now enjoy.

But we’re not there yet, and in many ways, Google’s bundling is worse than anything Microsoft did or even could do. Microsoft threw spaghetti at the wall and hoped it stuck, and likewise there’s nothing wrong with Google’s arbitrary front page ads. The difference here is that Google knows what users want and can discreetly recommend its products at the right time. Microsoft can’t easily hide a program packaged with Windows (and doing so would defeat the purpose), but competitors can only discover Google’s bundling, which might be transient or limited to certain regions, through trial and error searching.

Now let’s put away the tin foil hat and consider this: According to Nielsen NetRatings, the top ten search queries of 2006 were specific services like “Hotmail” (another view). So significant amounts of people, typically novices, use search engines as address bars. Three of the top ten were actual addresses like MySpace.com. If Google decided to show tips for “mail” or “space,” they would appear in these circumstances even though the user is usually en route to a particular destination (working example)².

Would Google complain if Microsoft informed users about Live Search when they typed Google.com into Internet Explorer’s address bar? Don’t roll your eyes: it would just be another innocuous tip presented to a user en route to a destination. Google owns one of the Web’s command lines, and Microsoft owns the other.

Perhaps the most nefarious aspect of this feature is how it operates within our collective blind spots. Advertisers are happy that Google no longer invades the canonical Ad Results. Technology purists continue to see untainted Search Results. But does my mother make that distinction? How much does a result have to look like a Result to cross the line?

Google promised not to be the type of company that needs to ask.

Update: Matt Cutts, a well-known Google employee who works on web search, has posted his views.

Update #2: This post is not a sign that I think Google has turned “evil” as some have suggested. I wrote it because Google has impressed me enough over the years that the slightest deviation catches my eye. You’re welcome to disagree that these tips constitute any “deviation,” but please read what I actually wrote (in the comments as well) before jumping to conclusions. I don’t “hate” Google, nor do I find this the apocalypse. The world is not black and white.

¹ If you’re still not convinced, go to AdWords now and try to create a U.S. ad containing “Picasa”. Google forbids it on the basis of trademark infringement.

² I realize this is already possible with AdWords, but again, Google is no longer subject to the same trademark or style policies as other advertisers.

Source: http://www.blakeross.com/2006/12/25/google-tips/

Flaws Are Detected in Microsoft’s Vista

2006-12-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has spent millions branding its new Vista operating system as the most secure product it has ever produced.

By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: December 25, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 24 — Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.

On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. And over the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.

The browser flaw is particularly troubling because it potentially means that Web users could become infected with malicious software simply by visiting a booby-trapped site. That would make it possible for an attacker to inject rogue software into the Vista-based computer, according to executives at Determina, a company based in Redwood City, Calif., that sells software intended to protect against operating system and other vulnerabilities.

Determina is part of a small industry of companies that routinely pore over the technical details of software applications and operating systems looking for flaws. When flaws in Microsoft products are found they are reported to the software maker, which then produces fixes called patches. Microsoft has built technology into its recent operating systems that makes it possible for the company to fix its software automatically via the Internet.

Despite Microsoft assertions about the improved reliability of Vista, many in the industry are taking a wait-and-see approach. Microsoft’s previous operating system, Windows XP, required two “service packs” issued over a number of years to substantially improve security, and new flaws are still routinely discovered by outside researchers.

On Friday, a Microsoft executive posted a comment on a company security information Web site stating the company was “closely monitoring” the vulnerability described by the Russian Web site. It permits the privileges of a standard user account in Vista and other versions of Windows to be increased, permitting control of all of the operations of the computer. In Unix and modern Windows systems, users are restricted in the functions they can perform, and complete power is restricted to certain administrative accounts.

“Currently we have not observed any public exploitation or attack activity regarding this issue,” wrote Mike Reavey, operations manager of the Microsoft Security Response Center. “While I know this is a vulnerability that impacts Windows Vista, I still have every confidence that Windows Vista is our most secure platform to date.”

On Saturday, Nicole Miller, a Microsoft spokeswoman, said the company was also investigating the reported browser flaw and that it was not aware of any attacks attempting to use the vulnerability.

Microsoft has spent millions branding the Vista operating system as the most secure product it has produced, and it is counting on Vista to help turn the tide against a wave of software attacks now plaguing Windows-based computers.

Vista is critical to Microsoft’s reputation. Despite an almost four-and-half-year campaign on the part of the company, and the best efforts of the computer security industry, the threat from harmful computer software continues to grow. Criminal attacks now range from programs that steal information from home and corporate PCs to growing armies of slave computers that are wreaking havoc on the commercial Internet.

Although Vista, which will be available on consumer PCs early next year, has been extensively tested, it is only now being exposed to the challenges of the open Internet.

“I don’t think people should become complacent,” said Nand Mulchandani, a vice president at Determina. “When vendors say a program has been completely rewritten, it doesn’t mean that it’s more secure from the get-go. My expectation is we will see a whole rash of Vista bugs show up in six months or a year.”

The Determina executives said that by itself, the browser flaw that was reported to Microsoft could permit damage like the theft of password information and the attack of other computers.

However, one of the principal security advances of Internet Explorer 7 is a software “sandbox” that is intended to limit damage even if a malicious program is able to subvert the operation of the browser. That should limit the ability of any attacker to reach other parts of the Vista operating system, or to overwrite files.

However, when coupled with the ability of the first flaw that permits the change in account privileges, it might then be possible to circumvent the sandbox controls, said Alexander Sotirov, a Determina security researcher. In that case it would make it possible to alter files and potentially permanently infect a target computer. This kind of attack has yet to be proved, he acknowledged.

The Determina researchers said they had notified Microsoft of four other flaws they had discovered, including a bug that would make it possible for an attacker to repeatedly disable a Microsoft Exchange mail server simply by sending the program an infected e-mail message.

Last week, the chief technology officer of Trend Micro, a computer security firm in Tokyo, told several computer news Web sites that he had discovered an offer on an underground computer discussion forum to sell information about a security flaw in Windows Vista for $50,000. Over the weekend a spokesman for Trend Micro said that the company had not obtained the information, and as a result could not confirm the authenticity of the offer.

Many computer security companies say that there is a lively underground market for information that would permit attackers to break in to systems via the Internet.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/technology/25vista.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Search Engine Marketing 101

2006-12-28T20:31:00.000-07:00

Search marketing 101

Advertising Age has released a detailed PDF called the Search Marketing Fact Pack 2006 that promises to explain the complex realms of search engine optimization and keyword bidding, to the everyday advertising professional. Advertising Age (free registration)

Source: http://www.smartbrief.com/

Marketers Flout Craigslist Rules to Promote Wares

2006-12-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624306

Marketers Flout Craigslist Rules to Promote Wares
› › › ClickZ News

By Kate Kaye | December 27, 2006

A syndicated article providing guidance on marketing via free classifieds site Craigslist has been making the rounds on various business-oriented Web sites lately. Still, there's no doubt the practice is controversial, particularly when advertisers disregard the site's strict code of conduct. In fact, it's difficult to get some advertisers who post to Craigslist to even acknowledge their use of the tactic on the record.

"[Craigslist] gives you a lot of exposure out there," said one small businessman interviewed for this story who preferred to remain anonymous. The furniture seller said his ad posts have gotten "flagged," or marked as possible spam or illegal postings, but he doesn't blame everyday users for flagging them. "Mainly it's companies out there; they don't like the way you're advertising," he continued, pointing to his competitors as the whistle-blowing culprits.

Browse the "for sale" section of Craigslist, and you're bound to find more than just the average Joe looking to unload that extra video game console or used baby crib. Several online sellers, affiliate marketing sites and local mom and pop shops are there, too, even if they're not really supposed to be.

"Watch Streaming TV on Your Computer: over 2000+ Channels," boasts the subject line of a post added several times to the for sale area of Craigslist's New York site. The text post linked to a Web page where streaming TV software can be downloaded for $24.95.

"I have a few Airline Tickets remaining for $44 each way. Most dates available. Check it out here," reads a cryptic post linking to Travel By Deals, a site laden with Google AdSense text ads, display ads for Priceline and Lowfares.com and snippets of travel-related news articles, making it appear to have been set up for affiliate marketing purposes.

One Viagra purveyor made a preemptive argument in a post submitted yesterday: "This is to help the Criagslist [sic] Community. Why flag?" The post had been flagged and stricken from the site a couple hours after this reporter first discovered it. This displays the dedication of the site's user community, people some believe could become disillusioned by the scourge of commercial posts on the site.

The classifieds site warns users that commercial posts are subject to removal if placed in sections other than the "services offered" area. Its terms of use require that users not post content "that constitutes or contains 'affiliate marketing,'…that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if: posted in areas of the craigslist sites which are not designated for such purposes…[or] that includes links to commercial services or web sites, except as allowed in 'services.'"

Considering the availability of automated Craigslist ad posting software and even a book dedicated to marketing goods and services through Craigslist, it's no wonder some advertisers are flouting the regulations.

George Berz buys Google AdWords ads to promote AdBomber, software he wrote to expedite his own Craigslist postings pushing his site-building services. Berz, who told ClickZ News the modifiable open source software brings in "a few extra bucks," admits AdBomber appeals to "greedy spammers." In fact, a Google search for "Craigslist spam" results in a sponsored link for the software which reads, "Automate your craigslist postings posts like a slave - see video."

Because the software must be altered to automate multiple ad postings at once, said Berz, "that's how I can have my peace with the world."

Craigslist, which has a reputation as a beacon of social responsibility and non-profit-driven Web purity, happens to employ the peace symbol as its logo. The company has not contacted Berz regarding his software product. Craigslist did not respond to a ClickZ inquiry in time for this article's publication.

Google Desktop - yet another security frightener.

2006-12-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Security Insight

Source: http://www.techworld.com/security/features/index.cfm?featureid=3066&pagtype=all

December 28, 06

Google Desktop - yet another security frightener.

Don't assume that a desktop image won't change for the worse behind your back.

By C.J. Kelly, Computerworld

My state agency's intrusion- detection systems were showing some undesirable activity on our network. Upon investigation, we found that several desktop systems were communicating with Google via Google Desktop. I ran a network security scan and found at least 50 computers set up to do this. How was that possible?

All 50 were new Dell machines. I called down to the lab where desktop system images are created. A tech answered, and I asked him if he knew why Google Desktop was installed on the new systems. "Yes," he said. "The new Dell systems came with it installed. We thought it was a useful tool, so we included it in our standard image."

The question that immediately reverberated in my head was, Why weren't the security implications considered? What I said was, "This is a security problem for us, and we have to uninstall it as soon as possible. I'll put together a meeting."

The good news is that I caught this security lapse before all agency desktops were replaced in our current system refresh. In fact, since desktops are being replaced about 50 at a time, I had caught it pretty early. The realisation that the problem could have been worse cheered me up a bit.

Admittedly, the person who decided to leave Google Desktop on the new computers had no reason to suspect that the program could cause a serious security vulnerability. The root of the problem lay in our quality assurance processes. And that means that if I was going to be irritated at anyone, it would have to be me.

I am in charge of all IT processes and had failed to make sure that we had a certification process for new systems. I was focused on auditing the environment. And in the meantime, I made assumptions - one of the surest ways to get myself into trouble. I assumed that the image had not changed. I assumed it would not change. I assumed I would be asked before someone made a change. No way around it, this was my fault.

Several staffers came knocking at my door, having heard about the situation and wanting to know why it was a big deal. I printed out some articles on Google Desktop for their edification. I had filed in my brain the factoid "Google Desktop = security vulnerability" at least a year ago.

But apparently, my staffers don't read the security news. I don't want to make them do that; they work hard as it is. But I wondered whether I should put together for them highlights of the latest in security vulnerabilities on a weekly or monthly basis to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

So, what is the big deal about Google Desktop? At Google's desktop.google.com site, it says, "Google Desktop gives you easy access to information on your computer and from the Web. It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your e-mail, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, Web pages that you've viewed and more." That all sounds pretty good? But, read on:

"Removing deleted files from search results - Some users like the fact that Google Desktop saves cached versions of deleted files in case they need to retrieve them. But we know this isn't for everyone. Don't want to see deleted files in your search results? Just enable the 'remove deleted items' option in your Desktop preferences."

In and of itself, this isn't scary (even though the option should be disabled by default -- in Windows, you can always retrieve deleted files if you have the right utilities). So far, we have an application that indexes everything on our users' computers so they can search them and find information quickly. That is a totally cool feature in an age when we are inundated with so much information we can't think straight. But there's more:

"Search Across Computers enables you to search your documents and viewed Web pages across all your computers. For example, you can find files you edited on your desktop from your laptop. To activate this feature, you will need a Google Account (the same log-in you use for Gmail, Orkut or other Google services). Files accessed on your computer after you enable Search Across Computers will be searchable from your other computers.

"To search your other computers, you must also install Google Desktop on them, as well as enable the Search Across Computers preference using the same Google Account on each one.

"In order to share your indexed files between your computers, we securely transmit this content to Google Desktop servers located at Google. This is necessary, for example, if one of your computers is turned off or otherwise offline when new or updated items are indexed on another of your machines. We store this data temporarily on Google Desktop servers and automatically delete older files, and your data is never accessible by anyone doing a Google search."

The italics are mine, although you probably could spot the security problem on your own. The good news is that this feature isn't enabled by default. If it were, there would be hell to pay. It would allow our users who have Google Desktop and Gmail accounts to share data across the Google servers and wherever else they happened to log into a computer - and that could include data protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

As it turns out, only one of our users had a Gmail account, and the Search Across Computers feature had not been enabled. But when I think about the thousands of computers using this feature and the quantity of data being cached by Google, I get the creeps.

Fine-Tuning Local Search

2006-12-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2006/sb20061226_633901.htm

Fine-Tuning Local Search

Small businesses may soon be able to target their online ads to prospective customers who are within a few blocks of their shops

by Jeffrey Gangemi

Karl Murphy, president and co-owner of Carolina Auto Spa, a car wash and automotive detailer with two locations outside Raleigh, N.C., says his business depends on impulse decisions—no one makes an appointment to wash a car. So the company's entire $4,000 to $5,000 monthly advertising budget is devoted to inspiring high-income prospects in the immediate vicinity to pull in and drop some coin. "Car washes live or die within a five-mile radius. If you put a [compass] and draw around my site, that's where I advertise," says Murphy. "My best friends 24 miles away won't wash at my car wash—and I'd let them do it for free."

A few months ago, Murphy started spending about $300 a month on Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO) pay-per-click advertising. Murphy says the pay-per-click model works reasonably well for his business but it "would be much better if it had more specificity of location." That way, Murphy says he could target more of the impulse purchasers—real estate agents and other "wired" professionals—who may not live in his area but are there for business with time to kill between appointments.

Skyhook Wireless, a small technology company in Boston, is working to target those kinds of prospective customers with a new software tool that—through partnerships with big search engines—will allow advertisers to restrict their ads to Web surfers who happen to be in the neighborhood. The company, which has mapped the 100 biggest U.S. cities, has pioneered a location technology that determines the latitude and longitude of any device with a Wi-Fi antenna, triangulating the location of individual PCs (and eventually other wireless devices), allowing ads to be served within a specific target area.

Bringing It to Small Biz

Skyhook's mapping currently covers 70% of the U.S. Its first location-based Internet search toolbar, called Loki, pinpoints users' locations and uses that information to present services and content that are geographically relevant.

At the moment, the service is geared toward consumers, but Skyhook is working to get its technology adopted by handset makers and major search engines. If they do, it could be a boon for small businesses, because it would mean they could get bigger bang for their online advertising buck. Right now, only about 5% of small and medium-size businesses are using paid search, according to consulting firm The Kelsey Group.

To bring more of the multibillion-dollar small-business advertising market online, Skyhook is working on relationships with Yahoo and Google, and the improved local search made possible through its technology will start to be available to small business over the next 6 to 12 months, says Ted Morgan, the company's founder and chief executive.

While the big search engines have been targeting some pay ads (not search results) for the past year or two, and can often limit search results by city or metropolitan area, they cannot limit ads to users within 5 or 10 blocks of the merchant (see BusinessWeek.com, Spring, 2006, "Search That Works"). With Skyhook technology, they could offer block-by-block control over online advertising so only people within a quarter-mile of a store would see those ads.

Unmet Challenges

Normally, pay-per-click advertising results in a 0.5% click-through rate, but with the help of Skyhook's technology, that rate rises to 4% to 5%, according to Morgan. He's sure the improvement will lure more small-business owners online. "It's going to make more local retail businesses do more effective—and therefore more—advertising online," says Murphy.

The Skyhook technology isn't a cure-all. Small businesses still often have a lot of trouble getting up and running online and maintaining an effective marketing campaign (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/5/06, "Secrets of Online Business Success"). "The challenge for them is how to get from where they are to the Internet—that's what Skyhook doesn't really solve for them," says Greg Sterling, principal of San Francisco tech consulting firm Sterling Market Intelligence (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/21/06, "Building a Web Presence on the Cheap").

But at the very least, small-business owners will be able to feel more confident that they're getting the same bang for their online advertising buck as big companies. "Local restaurants, bars, car washes, health clubs—all those folks have been reluctant to advertise on the Internet. But if they have the tools to just advertise around them, they can see the benefits that the big retailers and franchises have been using for years," says Morgan.

Gangemi is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York.

Ad Costs on the Web Are Rising, but Perhaps a Bit Irrationally

2006-12-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/technology/25ecom.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Ad Costs on the Web Are Rising, but Perhaps a Bit Irrationally

By BOB TEDESCHI

Published: December 25, 2006

MEDIA executives and investors get a pleasant neck ache from watching the skyward path of online advertising revenues. But for those who have to pay for advertising, the trend is bringing some anxiety.

Prices for some online advertising are going up, and some retailers and brand marketers say the big question mark hanging over 2007 is whether publishers will be so emboldened by a strong advertising market that they will raise the prices of ads sharply.

“Everybody’s excited about online advertising,” said Mark Vadon, chief executive of the online jeweler Blue Nile. “But the rates keep going up and up and up.”

Joanne Bradford, MSN’s corporate vice president and chief media officer, would not specify the extent to which her site will raise prices next year, but she said that during the last two years “there’s been unbelievable price pressure.”

For instance, Ms. Bradford said that for the front pages of some popular MSN sections, prices rose tenfold. “That settled down quite a bit, and now we’re starting to see price pressure more evenly spread across the network,” she said.

According to Greg Stuart, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry group that represents online media companies, there are no reliable statistics on average advertising rates, in part because advertising agencies often negotiate special rates with publishers and keep those deals close to the vest. “Rates are going up, but effectiveness is going up too,” he said, suggesting consumers were now more likely to make a purchase or request additional information than in previous years.

Online advertising revenues are expected to grow by 31 percent to $16.4 billion this year, according to a report by eMarketer, an Internet consultancy. That spending represents 6 percent of the overall advertising market. Revenues for 2007, eMarketer said, would most likely rise 19 percent, to $19.5 billion.

But rates are expected to grow at a far lower rate, said Greg Smith, chief operating officer of Neo@Ogilvy, North America, an interactive advertising agency that serves clients like Allstate and Cisco Systems. In popular categories like autos, health, finance and travel, Mr. Smith said, “rates will creep up, whether it’s on Yahoo Health or MSN’s auto sites, since places like that always perform very well.”

Mr. Vadon said the same irrational spending that fueled the rise in online advertising during the dot-com boom was at work now.

“In 1999 it was a rush of venture money that did it. Today you’ve got a rush of corporate money,” he said. “And everyone says the Internet’s great because you can measure everything and track results, but a lot of people don’t measure everything.”

•

Rates for ads on video sites, which are attracting marketers as users stampede toward online videos, have actually shown signs of dropping, said Jordan Bitterman, vice president and media director for Digitas, an online marketing agency. Publishers are offering so many video advertising spots on their Web pages that they are outpacing demand, he said.

Mr. Bitterman agreed that rates on certain pages of popular portals and other sites have risen significantly, particularly in recent months, but he disputed the notion that rates are rising across the board. Many publishers still have “10, 20, 30 percent inventory that doesn’t get sold out, and you can still get a lot of great efficiencies there,” he said.

That is precisely the strategy employed by Matt Coffin, chief executive of LowerMyBills.com, a financial services company owned by Experian. Mr. Coffin said that on publisher pages that attract a general readership, as opposed to readers of a specific demographic, rates have actually dropped.

“We’re a very broad-based advertiser, so we’re able to make things like that work,” Mr. Coffin said. “For other people it doesn’t work to advertise that broadly.”

Not every publisher has an abundance of unsold inventory, of course. According to an online industry executive who asked not to be named to protect business relationships, “for some sites the big focus is to not look like they’re raising prices too fast. They’re 100 percent sold out.”

Ms. Bradford from MSN said that one factor keeping prices down was competition from traditional publishers, who were packaging offline and online advertising more effectively. “We used to not have to compete with them to sell our entry points in different categories; now we do,” she said, referring to the home pages of popular editorial sections.

An increase in inventory is also helping. Ms. Bradford said MSN “is way ahead” of its goal to increase the number of pages viewed by visitors, thanks partly to a new “Men’s Lifestyle” section and other content it has added to other sections.

Meanwhile, rates to advertise on pages linked to searches, a category that eMarketer said would represent 42.5 percent of all online advertising revenue next year, are rising but only marginally. According to Fathom Online, a search engine marketing firm, advertisers paid, on average, $1.44 each time someone clicked on their ad in the third quarter of 2005. For the same period this year, the rate was $1.48.

Mr. Coffin, of LowerMyBills.com, said Google and Yahoo have made it easier for companies like his to buy ads alongside the results of millions of search terms, rather than just the obvious ones like “debt consolidation.” Accordingly, he said, rates for ads that appear alongside results of more obscure search terms, like “electric bill reduce,” have risen.

•

Online advertising still accounts for only a small fraction of overall advertising revenue partly because the big brand advertisers, like consumer goods companies, have not yet shifted a significant amount of spending to Web outlets.

“Every year people say ‘Oooh, brand advertising is going to take over the Web and prices will go through the roof,’ but that just hasn’t happened,” Mr. Coffin said. “They will get there, but nothing ever happens as fast as you’d like.”

Ms. Bradford said that for her site at least, 2007 could yield significant gains on that front. “Every marketer I’ve spoken with is saying that in the next calendar year they’ll increase their budgets by 15 to 30 percent, even the C.P.G.’s,” she said, referring to consumer packaged goods companies like Procter & Gamble and Unilever. “If they spend even close to that, we’ll all have a great Christmas next year.”

Google Finally Explains Quality Score

2006-12-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2006/12/20/google-finally-explains-quality-score/

Google on Tuesday issued a clarification and extensive explanations regarding its Quality Score - used to calculate an advertiser's minimum bid.

The previously vague guidelines now instruct advertisers on how they can improve their quality scores, writes MediaPost. Google incorporated quality scores last year based on prior ad performance and this summer refined its methodology by taking into account landing-page quality.

A new Ad Quality and Performance section in the Help Center offers a Quality and Performance Overview; Quality and Performance Factors; Troubleshooting; and Improving Ad Performance.

"The guidelines…aren't hard-and-fast rules, nor are they exhaustive. However, they do reflect the site quality principles we'll incorporate into factors such as ad approval status and Quality Score. So, following these guidelines, when appropriate, will improve the performance of your AdWords advertising," Google writes

Separately, Google banned AdSense publishers from displaying images near their text ad units - because, it said, consumers were clicking on the ads by mistake, thinking they were associated with the images.

Axandra Search Engine Facts 12.19.06

2006-12-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

All you need to know about search engine optimization in 2006 for Google, Yahoo and MSN. Just to give you an idea on how complicated it really is. (Click on the link below) Contact me if you have any questions regarding PinpointPages.com local websites.

http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter243.htm#facts

Our Vision

2006-12-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

Philosophy: Help people connect with community resources via local websites.

Mission: To market Pinpoint Pages® into a household brand.

Sincerely,
Martin Garcia
President
Virtual Ally LLC

© 2006, PinpointPages.com local websites

What makes Pinpoint Pages® unique?

2006-12-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

Business owners, their local websites and me.

Reviews about Pinpoint Pages®

2006-12-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

I've added reviews done by local business owners across the US. They include a direct link to their local websites. Please visit our website if you have questions: PinpointPages.com local websites

Press Releases

2006-12-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

I added some of the press releases that were done to help spread the word for Pinpoint Pages® local websites. The service I used was prweb.com and it worked out really good. Simple to use and very affordable. Check them out if your working on PR marketing.

Edits to Blogger listing

2006-12-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

Added the following page elements: Reviews for PinpointPages.com local websites on Merchant Circle.com and added Link List for: DesignBusinessEngineering.com & Squidoo.com

Sunday Afternoon

2006-12-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm working on learning the layout options for Blogger beta. I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors made in the future. The truth said formal English is not my forte. Thanks for understanding.

Starting off

2006-12-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

Hello, world. First post with blogger.