Archive for the 'Search Engines' Category
A important news you need to know how this deal will effect your advertising effort moving forward with the 2 biggest Giants of Internet.
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
Yahoo Inc. agreed Thursday to a search-advertising deal with rival Google Inc. just hours after announcing that Microsoft Corp. was no longer in the picture.
Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), based in Sunnyvale, said the nonexclusive pact with Mountain View-based Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) enables it to run Google ads alongside its search results and on some of its Web properties in the U.S. and Canada.
“We believe that the convergence of search and display is the next major development in the evolution of the rapidly changing online advertising industry,” Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang said in a statement. “Our strategies are specifically designed to capitalize on this convergence — and this agreement helps us move them forward in a significant way.”
Yahoo leaders said they hope the deal could generate as much as $800 million a year.
Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo will select the search term queries for which — and the pages on which — Yahoo may offer Google paid search results. Yahoo will define its users’ experience and will determine the number and placement of the results provided by Google and the mix of paid results provided by Panama, Google or other providers. The agreement applies to paid search and content match and does not apply to algorithmic search and also applies to current partners in Yahoo’s publisher network.
Analysts say in essence the Yahoo will be a reseller of Google ads.
Yahoos shares plunged after the announcement that Redmond,Wash.-based Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) walked away from an offer to buy a portion of Yahoo. They dropped 10 percent, or $2.63, to $23.52 by Thursday’s closing bell and declined as much as 7 percent more in Friday trading.
Start building position now as shares of Yahoo are now backdown to before their January earning announcement.
Andy Huang
Earlier in may, Google announced a preview release of the newest addition to its product mix, Google Friend Connect, a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling sites on the web to easily add social features to their websites.
By offering Friend Connect, which can be added to a web property by simply adding a snippet of code to the site, Google removes the technological barriers of offering social applications.
Website owners can now attract more traffic to their sites and keep them engaged utilizing the social gadgets created by Google and OpenSocial developers. Some of the main gadgets offered are member management, message board, reviews, and picture-sharing.
So in a nutshell, Google Friend Connect helps website owners in three major ways:
Increase Traffic -Visitors get engaged and bring along their Internet friends and connections from social networks such as Facebook, orkut and MySpace.
Improve Engagement KPIs - People can get more involved by getting engaged with social features developed by Google and the OpenSocial developer community.
Reduce Cost to Market - With no programming needed, the technological and financial barriers of adding social features to the sites are removed.
Friend Connect can also give Google more insight into the websites’ audiences by mapping a virtual representation of a social user on the web. This will eventually help Google provide more robust advertising through Google AdSense and Placement Targeting by providing demographic and interest segmentation.
This Google application has major implications on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) as it incorporates user generated content to the sites.
Here is a video that shows how Google Connect works:
Have fun exploring this new tool from Google.
Andy Huang
Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.
Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data - the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.
There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.
The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.
The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.
It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.
Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.
If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.
As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.
Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are
exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.
After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor - meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase - the more valuable that keyword is.
However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed - or should I say misdirected - to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.
Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.
Remember, keep track of the data to increase your conversion, without proper analysis, you are shooting in the dark!
To your continual success!
Andy Huang
Google Adwords Deparment will be offering free Webinar over the next two weeks. These Webinar will covering Google Print Ads and Google Audio Ads. Traditional media ads can drive more traffic and conversions to your website, all from customers that are local to your business – in these webinars it will cover different ways to expand the Adwords advertising reach with print and audio ads, including how to get started and best practices to be used once your campaigns are up and running.
Here are links and dates to both of the webinars:
- Google Audio Ads: Wednesday, June 11. Sign up here.
- Google Print Ads: Wednesday, June 18. Sign up here.
To your success!
Andy Huang