Arguably the biggest news in the tech industry so far this year, has been Google’s launch of the Nexus One smartphone. The company rocked the mobile space when it announced that it would be selling the device on its own without the need of a carrier contract (although such contracts are available).

The device has come under fire from some consumers, who complain about poor 3G connections, as well as customer support issues. It has reportedly been difficult for people to get the support they’re after via phone call, with the company apparently preferring online and email support.

Google has acknowledged the problems that exist though, and seems to be taking the position that everything will get straightened out, chalking up the trouble to a new way of doing things. One Google spokesperson is quoted as saying:

"We’ve worked closely with our Nexus One launch partners to make support available through a variety of channels. This is a new way to purchase and support a mobile phone, and we’re committed to sorting out the few kinks that do exist."

Google is advertising the Nexus One hard. For a while, it even had its own spot right on the Google.com home page. As other have noted, the company has been flooding the web with ads for it in general.

The Nexus One is only the beginning of Google’s mobile plans though. In time, the company will release more devices. WebProNews recently spoke with GoogleAndBlog author Michael Martin about the company’s plans in the mobile market (keep in mind this was shot prior to the release of the Nexus One):

The Nexus One has been forecast to sell 5 or 6 million units this year, and generate between $2.6 billion and $3.2 billion. Google is currently selling the phone for $529 on its own, with T-Mobile offering it with a two-year contract for $179. eWeek reports that it costs $174.15 to make, according to iSuppli.

Related Articles:

> Google Unveils Nexus One "Super Phone"

> Nexus One Sales Of 5-6 Million Units Forecast

> New Google Phone Has Tech Community Licking Chops

At SES Chicago, there was an interesting session in which a group of search marketing professionals debated the issue of which is better between PPC and SEO. Participants included Dave Naylor, Chirstine Churchill, Michael Gray, and Karen Weber, and Rand Fishkin.

Does PPC have more benefits than SEO? Comment here.

Churchill pointed to a study from Engine Ready on conversion rates by source of traffic (PPC vs organic). The study found:

- Conversion rates: PPC just barely beat SEO
- Average Order Value: Paid won
- Average time on site: Paid won

She gave the following as advantages of PPC:

- Gives immediate online presence
- Have a new site? Have ads in an hour
- Start getting ROI sooner
- No ramp up time
- Great for seasonal items or time sensitive promotions
- Great for testing
- Easily test effectiveness of new marketing message or site design change
- Quickly gather feedback
- Regulate traffic volume
- Sales pipeline empty? Use PPC to push traffic
- Overloaded? Pause campaigns or cut back spend
- Have limited sales season? Saturate market while demand is high

"PPC is very agile. It’s also has targeting advantages," said Churchill.

For targeting, she says PPC provides opportunity for high visibility in multiple channels (search engines, content sites, mobile phones), expands results beyond search results, and gives you control over placement on SERPs and better control over landing page/message.

It’s often easier to sell PPC to management because the concept is similar to traditional advertising, and provides for direct accountability. It’s easy to track measures of success. It’s an effective way to drive qualified traffic to your site, and it allows you to expand your opportunities.

Weber says the top five reasons why "PPC rules," are: speed, flexibility, it’s unlimited, it’s goal-driven, and it’s controllable. You can quickly manipulate keywords to those that drive conversions, you can quickly change bid prices, and you can quickly get in and out of the market. You can turn your campaign on and off, and change ad copy, keywords, etc. You can target a much wider range of keywords, adhere to a budget, and have an immediate impact on sales.

Fishkin pointed out that PPC gets 10% of clicks, but 90% of spend. He said SEO is more challenging and less controllable, but the spend is there and the fact that people click organic results.

Gray said he believes that PPC could make SEO better, but Google is banning people now, so it makes things more challenging. Naylor said he believes SEO is more "open." Weber and Fishkin both said they would outsource PPC over SEO.

Gray said it’s important to get in the top during the early part of the research phase, especially since Google is personalizing results for everyone now. Churchill noted that Google’s personalization is a better argument for PPC. Like iEntry CEO Rich Ord recently noted, the addition of personalized results could "make people less reliant on organic search results for their traffic and in turn increase their use of Adwords."

Another point was brought up as we recently discussed – that the search engines are pushing organic listings down with mixed media (blended, universal) results.

Certainly there are many advantages to both PPC and SEO, and they can compliment one another. Actually, a recent study from a couple of NYU Stern professors found that organic search engine results can play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked.

Which do you think is more important – SEO or PPC? Share your thoughts here.

WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson contributed to this report.

Related Articles:

> Does an Organic Search Presence Help Paid Result Performance?

> Can You "Rank" in Google if Everyone Has Different Search Results?

> Optimizing for Mixed Media Search Results

As Google’s search engine competitors often bring up, searchers want more than just "ten blue links" these days. Of course it has been quite a while now since search results from any of the big three were only ten blue links for most searches. We are well into the era of blended search.

Google calls this "Universal" search, but the concept is generally the same among Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Results incorporate different forms of online media. Every day, we see image results, news results, video results, local results, blog results, and more sprinkled throughout search results for any given query. That’s just how it is now.

The nature of blended search requires that webmasters not only optimize their sites for search in general, but for separate and individual search engines. As SEO Dave Naylor pointed out at SES Chicago, blended or universal search results can reduce traffic for "traditional" sites. These results usually catch the user’s eye, and may draw them away from organic listings (this is one of the reasons why local search optimization is getting more difficult).

That said, there are tremendous advantages to blended search results, obviously for the user, but even for the webmaster and/or business.

According to Larry Cornett, VP of Consumer Products at Yahoo, who spoke on this subject at the conference, the value of blended, mixed media search results comes from:

- a more comprehensive search experience
- guiding searchers to the right results
- a broader range of SEO opportunities
- taking control of your brand
- increasing qualified clicks

Just break it down by the areas you have a shot at ranking in. Can you get indexed in news search? Image search? Blog search? Forgive me for quoting Too $hort, but "Get in where you fit in." Can you do video and make it helpful and relevant to users? Do it and optimize for video. The more categories of media that the search engines are incorporating into results (that you can justify getting involved with), the more cracks you have at additional results page real estate.

Read these articles for more on this kind of thinking and specific tips on carrying it out:

- How Do Google’s New Search Options Affect SEO?

- Google News SEO Tips – Ranking in News Search

- Get More Traffic from Bing’s Image Search

- Rank in Image Searches and Get Valuable, Untapped Traffic

- Tips For Ranking Higher On and With YouTube

- Critical Local Search Factors To Pay Attention To

- Tons of Tips for Ranking in 5 Other Google Engines (looks at YouTube, Image Search, Google News, Maps/Local, and Blog Search)

Have additional tips or advice? Share here.

Yahoo is discontinuing its paid inclusion service, Search Submit. This was revealed at the iProspect/Range Online Media Client Summit on a panel moderated by Danny Sullivan. Sullivan’s Search Engine Land received the following statement from Yahoo:

We are committing our resources and efforts to our core areas of focus, including improving the search experience and relevancy of our ads to increase user engagement and ROI for advertisers, and as a result, have decided to exit Search Submit. We have stepped up innovation in Search Marketing, recently rolling out search retargeting, Rich Ads in Search and improved matching technology, and in Consumer Search, with enhancements like the new search results page. These enhancements deliver value, control, innovation and relevance to our advertisers, leading to increased ROI.

Yahoo! will exit Search Submit at the end of 2009. Yahoo! is providing those advertisers affected by the decision a sufficient lead time to assist in the transition. In addition, Yahoo! has recently announced a series of important enhancements to its Search advertising business and will work closely with many Search Submit advertisers to provide them with search solutions that will benefit their businesses.

Yahoo told WebProNews at the recent Search Marketing Expo that the company is giving its advertisers more control. In the following interview, Yahoo Director of Product Management David Miller told us that the forthcoming Yahoo/Microsoft deal will open up more innovation for advertisers. He also talks about some things Yahoo currently has going on and will in the near future with regards to giving advertisers greater control.

Miller said that early next year, Yahoo will be launching "network distribution," and advertisers will have the ability to separately bid on campaigns for Yahoo, the partner network, or both. He also discussed a tool (which is currently in beta) that lets advertisers control their accounts while offline.

At the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, WebProNews attended the session on how SEO can help save the publishing industry, a quite interesting topic, considering the controversy the industry has been experiencing of late. Do you think SEO can help publishers save their businesses? Share your thoughts here.

The session looked at challenges, tactics, and opportunities unique to online publishers. It covered solutions for technical obstacles, duplicate content and CMS issues, writing keyword rich headlines, training the editorial staff and updating the publishing culture from print to online. Essentially, the session was designed to educate participants on how to save jobs by leveraging SEO, driving traffic, and putting ad dollars back in publishers’ pockets, as described by SES.

Liesel Kipp, VP Global Head of Product Management at Thomas Reuters shared four tips:

1. Show the value of SEO
2. Data is the key to your success
3. Set goals and show how you will beat them.
4. Evangelize, evangelize, evangelize.

Kipp says Reuters was able to increase its visitors by 500% in 5 years, and that you have to constantly talk about search and SEO. According to Kipp, relationship building is critical, and you should talk about your successes and failures.

BusinessWeek Search Marketing Manager Ulli Muenker offered some more tips on the subject:

1. Spread the SEO Excitement  in Editorial.

- Get the high level buy in
- Find SEO champions in the editorial team
- Create peer relationships to overcome skepticism

How:

- Show projected traffic increase
- Show competitor’s search traffic results
- Demonstrate the before and after effect of page increase

2. Conduct Regular Training

What:

- Run regular individual and small group training sessions
- Train the trainer for new hires
- Engage external SEO editorial consultant

How:

- Limit group training to 10-12
- Create a relaxed environment with cookies, lunch and learning
- Give them what they need to learn

3.  Make Editorial Part of the Success

- Create SEO friendly article headlines.  Online headlines are different than print headlines.  Write straightforward headlines. No puns, sarcasm or jokes online. It just doesn’t work! Just bring in keywords so that people understand the message.

- Write sub-headlines under the headline. Write keyword rich sub headlines. Include keywords, synonyms and derivatives.

- Use keyword-rich link text. Use keywords when linking to other internal pages. Check connecting landing page’s keywords.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution SEO Manager Allison Fabella offered these tips:

- Location, location, location. In your section’s front load your title tags with Location such as "Cobb count News / ajc.com.  The same goes for meta descriptions, url’s, and headlines and sub-headlines. Also, use H1 and H2 tags.

- It is so critical that your CMS is setup to be able to implement these tips. This is key to your success. There are a lot of CMS’s out there… make sure your SEO team approves. Once you purchase your CMS, make sure you stay involved. This may make you unpopular. Also, make sure your sitemaps are part of your requirements.

- Sitemaps are your newspaper’s best friend. Site maps help get along structural road blocks built into bad site architecture. Use both web sitemaps and news sitemaps (Google News). Group your sitemap into different sections. In each sitemap include no more than 50,000 stories. Also, follow sitemap protocols. They make a less than perfect sitemap more perfect!

Tribune SEO Director Brent Payne talked about Twitter for media companies. He said there are 4 account types that publishers should set up. They are:

- RSS feed – Do not follow people back from this account, follow your own accounts.

- Get your celebrities involved. Make it a job requirement to have a Twitter profile. Most of our broadcast personalities are required to make 4-5 social connections per day.

- Let employees Tweet. "I am an example of that. I have the second highest Twitter account of employees at the Tribune." Talk to them about legal issues and ground rules but encourage them to do that. Understand that mistakes happen from time to time. But do not officially endorse these twitter accounts as official voices of the company.

- Building a persona. Tribune created the colonelTribune, which is actually tweets from 4 or 5 of us. Create a character that your audience can connect with personally. Spend time to create a decent avatar. This is our best twitter account with 300,000 followers!

Payne says you then need to promote your Twitter profiles. One way to do this, that the Chicago Tribune did, is to recreate your masthead with the Twitter names of writers instead of the actual reporters. He also says to use the Twitter directories, and to use big ones like Twellow and Wefollow.

Engaging the locals, he says (Twellow’s feature TwellowHood is a great way to find the btw – my words, not his ). He suggests having a Tweetup and inviting top journalists or TV personalities and top referrers and bloggers. He also recommends taking a lot of pictures for "longer promotional shelf-life". "Don’t buy the alcohol," he warns though. Trouble could arise.

Finally, Marshall Simmonds of the New York Times and Define Search Strategies says to define "the almighty tag." He says they ask their editors to "enhance" titles for SEO. They want to see links off the domain in order to become a resource and an authority. He also said journalists didn’t have linking in their head, and that it’s ok to link out.

A couple more interesting items Simmonds shared include:

- "We pushed back our registration wall to 8 clicks and crawlers to 5 clicks. Google quit crawling the New York Times in 2005. Yahoo crawled our registration page 5 million times. They literally kept crawling it."

 - "If you are not keeping in constant communication with your IT Department they are going to screw it up. It is a constant issue. There is also the problem with template roll-backs. We put a lot of check lists in front with the IT Department. This goes for marketing as well. The Ad Department is eventually going to try to sell an advertisement that is going to hurt search traffic as well."

That about does it for that session. Some very interesting tips on SEO education for publishers. Stay tuned to WebProNews for further coverage of the Search Engine Strategies conference.

Is lack of strong SEO tactics a big contributor to online publishing woes? We’d love to know what you think.

You may recall Feras Alhlou, who chatted with WebProNews earlier this year after contributing a guest post to Google’s Analytics Blog about using advanced segments in Google Analytics. Alhlou is the president of E-Nor, and he presented at an analytics session at SES this week.

Alhlou says there is a quote from Albert Einstein that C-level executives, marketing managers and analysts should keep in mind when it comes to establishing and nurturing a web analytics culture in their organizations. That quote is:

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and, not everything that counts can be counted."

With that in mind, Alhlou provides the following seven practical tips:

1. One size fits none

You need to understand and identify what is important to the organization. Time, money, and resources are limited, so you must use them wisely.

2.Know your audience

Don’t try to impress your boss with a radar map or a 5-dimentional motion chart. The following is an example of what not to start off with, unless your management is very "visually inclined."

3. Help your audience understand

Try to help your audience understand the basics. Start off with some common web metrics, and then move into task completion/conversion concepts.

4. Plan to integrate cost data

This refers to click spend, banner ad costs, etc. Have a model for ROI (return-on-investment) calculations.

5. Don’t forget non-web Leads

Your site visitors are not all the same. Some of would buy online or submit a form online, while some just like to call and speak with someone. Bring phone data into the mix.

6. A CRM system

For lead generation sites, a CRM system is must. Classify your leads into categories (high quality leads, junk leads, etc.) and bring this insight back into your campaign conversion and ROI calculations. It’s one thing to get 10 leads @ $1000 from campaign A, it is a totally different picture when 7 of these leads are junk!

7. Tie it all together

Tie it all together into business metrics that C-levels and business owners/managers can relate to. At the end of the day, it is not about visits, pageviews, conversions! It is about revenue and net profits!

I would like to thank Feras Alhlou for sharing these tips with WebProNews readers. There’s no question that analytics can make a great impact on marketing, and if you work in a company that isn’t doing all it should be in this department, these are some good tips to help change that.

One aspect of search that doesn’t get discussed often enough is image search. It’s such a huge part of search and the daily habits of web surfers all over the world, it’s amazing how little attention is actually paid to it when it comes to marketing and optimization. Have tips for optimizing for image search? Share them here.

Some Image Search Stats to Chew On

Google Director of Product Management R.J. Pittman dropped some facts at SES. 300 million digital photos are taken every day. 100 billion images are taken per year. There were half a trillion images in circulation by 2009. That’s the past up to the present. Do you think it’s going to slow down? Pittman says there were 800 million camera phones sold last year, and there may be more images online than web pages.

On Google there are hundreds of millions of image searches every day. Eric Enge, President of Stone Temple Consulting says that image search makes up about 5.7% of all Google searches. "We estimate that up to 15% of all search is image related," he says.

Why Image Search is So Important

If the above information wasn’t enough to convince you of the importance of image search, consider this. When images appear in blended search results (such as Google’s universal search), the images affect what is clicked on the results page. Enge says an eye tracking study proved this, but it makes perfect sense if you think about it. The image is obviously going to catch your eye, regardless if it’s the top result or the 5th.

Todd Schwartz, Group Product Manager for Bing says that engagement is quite high when it comes to image search. Consumers looking for images also end up visiting a lot of web pages. In many cases, images can simply speed up the decision process on the consumer’s part. You can see why this would be effective in eCommerce. "When users are expecting images in a search session it actually increases the speed of a searchers task," says Schwartz. "Images simply speed decision making." He would know. Bing <i>is</i> the "decision engine."

Tips for ranking in Image Search

In a post about ranking in "five other Google engines," I cited some tips from Search Engine Journal’s Dev Basu, who recommended the following for image SEO:

- Add images to your Google Local Business profile
- Enable Google Image Labeler in your Google Webmaster Tools account.
- Add images to local business citation sources.
- Add images to blog posts or news articles for syndication in Google news.

Here is some additional info from Google:

Schwartz says for Bing, you should name the images properly and upload product categories for eCommerce images.

Enge suggested some even more basic tried and true SEO tactics that should still be applied. Include alt attributes in <img source> tags. Name files appropriately, and consider the nearby text, overall page context, links, title tags, etc. This stuff is all good, but you should know that the way search engines are handling images is evolving.

How the Search Engines Handle Images

Pittman says it’s no longer just about looking at tags and stuff, at least at Google. "We now use computer vision and search to find similar images, object recognition, and facial recognition," he says. "We look at everything such as exposure data to help determine the quality of an image. If your image quality is low your photos will not rank as high. If you make only a thumbnail of an image it won’t rank as well as a larger image of the same subject." (Emphasis added.)

Back in June, Google released a fascinating research paper that looked at building a web-scale landmark-recognition engine. The goal is to get computers to recognize landmarks (for example, the Eiffel Tower, the Lincoln Memorial, or the example Google shares – the Acropolis). This is no easy task when the engine has to rely on images of the landmarks, which are incredibly varied by angle, lighting, photo quality, etc.

This was just a research paper, and not a Google product, but one can only imagine where this research will lead with regards to how Google handles image searches.

The image filters that search engines use are worth paying attention to. If you’re trying to sell products especially, it could help to consider where you want your images to rank. Google lets users search images by size, type (face, photo, clip art, line drawing), and color (full color, black and white, specific color).

Bing lets users browse results by size, layout, color, style, and people. That is in addition to the query-specific options you get.

As far as regular web searches, Bing and Google both present a number of options for users to refine their searches. Bing of course has the explore window, which for many queries, provides multiple categories. Google has its search options. Images are included in that.

Just like with any content, there is always concern that stolen material will rank higher than the original source. Pitman was asked about this at SES with regards to images. He said that image search ranking is largely dependant on how often that image is clicked on for the search query being done. He says Google is trying to combat "hotlink spam."

Social Media and Images

Social media accounts for a huge amount of the pictures on the web. Not only do you have sites like Flickr and Picasa, but there are so many people uploading so many photos to Facebook and MySpace, not to mention apps like TwitPic for Twitter.

Believe it or not, real-time search plays a vital role in image search, just as in regular search. People want up-to-the-minute information, and that often comes in the form of images. Some real-time search engines are expanding how they handle media like images and video.

Perhaps the more significant part of this equation is the reputation management factor. Real-time search helps in this regard, when you’re trying to protect your reputation, but good old-fashioned Google searches are vital too.

"Think about the pictures that your employees are putting up on social sites," says Liana Evans, Director of Social Media at Serengeti Communications. "Images can hurt your business reputation."

Social media has a direct relationship with search rankings too. Read up on that here .

Conclusion

There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to images on the web. A couple other things that we didn’t really touch on are SafeSearch filters and Creative Commons licensing. These are things you should explore further if you think they will affect you. There is plenty of info out there about both.

One other thing I’d like to mention is that Google’s Insights for Search analytical tool now includes image search data. This could be a very useful tool for anyone looking to improve their performance in image search.

As a searcher, how often do you use image search? How often do you click through? Tell us.

Are you ready for the future of search marketing? It’s going to creep up on you if you are not. In fact, it’s already creeping. How long have you spent worrying about keywords? Is that all you worry about? Hopefully not, because there’s a lot more to successful online marketing than that, even search marketing.

This is the basic plot of a keynote speech delivered by Charlene Li, co-author of the book Groundswell, and Founder of Altimeter Group, at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.

The big picture is largely about social media and interaction. This is nothing new right? You’ve had social media marketing talk rammed down your throat for a while now, but that’s separate from search engine marketing right? Well, yes and no. Social media may play a bigger role in search engine rankings that you realize, and that could even become truer in the future, and probably will.

Here’s the thing. Searchers want relevant results. It’s all about relevancy. That’s all the search engines strive for, and that’s what users want. As Li says, "There is a new type of relevance called engagement." People must be at the center of your search strategy. Not keywords.

There’s a reason that real-time search is such a hot topic. Some think it’s just a buzzword, but it’s more than that. It’s an ever-growing element into what people want to know.

Now we’re not talking about real-time search taking over traditional search. Right now is not always more relevant than something from three years ago. In many cases, it is more relevant though. User intent might be considered the holy grail.

There’s a reason Google is working toward updating its algorithm to incorporate a faster indexing speed. People want freshness. That’s why Twitter has become such a hot source of buzz that seemingly all radio and television programs cling to these days. It’s up to the minute info about what people are saying.

Facebook is doing it now too, and Li mentioned the importance of this in her keynote as well. One very important thing to keep in mind is that outside search engines aren’t indexing the information that can be found in Facebook updates. Facebook is huge now, by the way – way bigger than Twitter. We’re talking up there in Googleland in terms of users.

Social is an important element of search. We still have to look at it as a thing of the future though, because we are still so early in the evolution of the social web. The major search engines are still trying to make sense of it all. Li noted that the real time web presents many challenges to search engines, because how do you place value on things like retweets, @replies, short URLs, etc? There are a lot of new elements to consider.

Now think about search engine advertising. Li asked, "What if search engines augmented my search ads based on knowing who I am?" Think about data like influence, and number of friends. The number of influential friends could influence search results and search engine ad targeting.

The web has largely become a very social environment, and will continue to become even more so. This is why marketers should focus on people rather than keywords. If you want an example of how this plays directly into Google results already, Li mentioned how the YouTube video called " United Breaks Guitars " ranks number 4 in Google when you search for "united". United doesn’t own that keyword anymore, because people have lifted this video up.

The synopsis of Li’s book reads, "Right now, your customers are writing about you products on blogs and recutting you commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are the elements of a social phenomenon."

Well, it’s the truth. You’ve got to engage out there. There are watchers, sharers, commenters, content producers, and curators. Focus on the sharers and the watchers. Focus on people and relationships, and listen to customers. 

Li says you should also get you back end data in order. By this, she means having a single place where people can sign in to your site, and integrate off-site behavior and data. Figure out the value of specific visitors. Integrating social into your site is a good way to do this.

"Prepare to tap into ‘chain of intent,’" she says. "Google now combines chains of searches to determine intent." (Emphasis added.)

Know that customers can take their social networks anywhere with them at this point. Thanks to all kinds of tools from the networks themselves, as well as browser plug-ins, etc. people always have their social functions a click away. You’re going to have to accept this and realize that you have less control over your brand than ever. That’s why you need to deepen relationships and get engaged. It’s even important than ever for search.

Back in June, Microsoft launched the Bing Toolbox. This is pretty much what you might consider a one-stop shop for Bing webmaster, developer, and advertiser resources. Microsoft described the Toolbox as an organized set of tools for the entire Bing community, and a one-stop portal to all of the services you need to drive traffic and increase engagement with your site and applications.

At the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, there was a Bing Toolbox workshop that went through various tools offered in the Toolbox.

The "toolbox" section of the Toolbox features:

- Add a Site
- Submit Your Sitemap
- Get an AppID
- New Silverlight Tools

The Add a Site feature lets you submit your domain URL directly to Bing. The sitemap feature lets you submit a sitemap file via Bing’s Webmaster tools. The Get an AppID lets you get started with the Bing API, and the new Silverlight tools section takes you to where you can download the Silverlight software developer kit and manipulate search results with the click of a button.

Also in the Toolbox area are snippets from the Webmaster Blog and the Developer blog.
 

setNav(“search”);

The "Developers" section of the Toolbox features:

- A whitepaper
- Access to the Bing Software developer Kit
- Bing Product Guidelines
- Libraries and apps for getting started with the API, the Bing Maps developer center, and Bing Translator
- Related resources for Silverlight SDK for Bing, PowerToys, and the Code for Green Contest
- Bing API Terms of Use
 

setNav(“webmaster”);

setNav(“webmaster”);

The "Webmasters" section of the Toolbox features:

- Bing product guidelines
- Site submission
- Sitemap submission
- Bing API Web Page Error Toolkit
- Malware detection
- SEO toolkit
- Related resources like the Bing whitepaper, Channel Bing video, and Webmaster help guidelines

The "Ads & Campaign Tools" section of the Toolbox features:

- Access to register for the Ads Pilot Program
- Access to adCenter
- Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tools
- Search advertising tools
- adCEnter adExcellence program
- Resource for all ad tools

Beyond these four main sections there are also navigational tabs for support and community, which can be used to connect with Bing and other Bing users. Community provides access to blogs, forums, media, and events, while support gives you access to FAQs, webmaster help, developer help, and Bing API documentation.

"Today search has become an integral part of our life. Search has become a platform," said Bing Principal Group Program Manager Rajesh Srivastava. "Bing Toolbox is a tool that helps you connect with search. What is Bing’s strategy? What are our goals for Bing? We have to deliver the best, most comprehensive experience for users. Bing is about delivering great results. We are also looking at organizing the results to enhance the search experience. If you are doing a search you have a decision making process in mind. Bing is all about making the user get to their decisions quicker!"

This was a sponsored session, in case you couldn’t gather that from such a quote, but Bing is still new to the search block, and webmasters still have questions. This is all the more reason to pay attention to what Microsoft’s doing, and the features they’re offering in this Toolbox.

On a related note, Bing says they have a "treasure trove" of data and are working to get that info to developers via the Bing API 2.0. They say they’re adding more and more pieces of data to the API that users can extract.

Social news is the largest source for igniting campaigns, according to Greg Finn, Director of Internet Marketing at 10e20. This was discussed in a session called Igniting Viral Campaigns: Leveraging Consumer-Generated Content at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.

Social news can come from any social network really. It’s all about who’s using it, when they’re using it, and what they’re talking about. You never know when somebody’s update will really become news and go viral. That is what is so attractive about social media to marketers.

Finn says social news should be as non-corporate as possible, and you should make sure you are part of the community before trying to participate. He also says Digg is not just for video games and gadgets, StumbleUpon is a possibility for all viral content if you use proper categories, and with Reddit you should use subreddits for the best percentage.

With Twitter, you should make it easy to tweet your content, allow for easy retweets, and promote during peak hours. You should also leverage non-corporate Facebook pages according to Finn.

It’s more than just Twitter and Facebook though. It’s about "fanning the viral fire." It’s about execution. Provide alternate ways to share. It’s a no-brainer.

Matthew Liu, YouTube Product Manager also spoke at this session. He says viral videos "just happen" sometimes. Some videos take off in the wild with no marketing involved. The original uploader probably did not think the video would go viral.

He says it’s a good idea to use subtle branding and stealth marketing efforts in guerilla marketing. Seed to news sites and blogs. Use YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to fan the flames. With explicit marketing, you should communicate directly with the YouTube community and use video responses, subscriptions, and comments to engage in dialogue.

Liu also discussed "putting gasoline on the fire" with viral videos through paid marketing. He says to use YouTube promoted videos to seed discovery, home page ads for massive reach, and other ad platforms to drive traffic to YouTube watch pages. Organic traffic often exceeds paid traffic after the initial burst though, he says.

As far as YouTube SEO basics, Liu says titles should be accurate and descriptive. Use keyword tags and avoid keyword stuffing. Community opinion, embeds, and YouTube Insight should all be utilized.

It’s interesting to look at how the web has evolved and continues to do so. Social media (at least in its current incarnation) is still relatively young, yet we have seen a lot of evolution just within this aspect of the web itself. This is highlighted today especially, as we see competition in the real-time search arena really stat to heat up.

Some members of the WebProNews team are out in San Jose at the Search Engine Strategies Conference. This event kicked off with a keynote from Clay Shirky, a writer and educator discussed how communication media has changed over the years, and why and how social media is effective.

Basically what it boils down to according to Shirky, is that "Successful tools today are about channeling existing motivations."

Clay says that in some cases, paying people to do things kills desire. Things that motivate people in social media are feeling autonomous, feeling competent, and feeling connected. Paying people might kill these motivations, he says.

Clay talked about how we’re living in the middle of "the largest expansion of expression capability in history." This couldn’t be any truer. People are sharing more and more about themselves at an incredible rate, which is why real-time search is such an important part of the equation today.

Things evolve.

Clay talked about how we didn’t always have the "many to many" medium. "Back in the 90’s there were all kinds of stories that email was for the young not the Grandparents.. Then it was found that old people did use email. Now young people think email is just for the old! Once email became normal that’s when significant social changes happened."

He says we’re living in a period of "mass amateurization," and professionals think amateurs are just trying to be mini versions of them.

"The sociology of the users’ motivation is the thing that makes social media tools work, not the tools themselves."

To drive home his point about how successful tools are all about channeling existing motivations, Clay points to the first email messages the founders of Linux and Wikipedia sent to their friends. They went something like:

"Linux" I’m doing a (free operation system (just a hobby) I’d like to know what features most people world want."

"Wikipeida" "Humor me . Go there and add a little article. It will  take all of five or ten minutes."

Twitter’s first message went something like:

"I want to have a dispatch service that connects on our phones using text."

These tools channeled existing motivations. That’s what it takes to achieve success through social media. Don’t use Twitter or Facebook just to use Twitter or Facebook. Use them to serve the purposes your business requires. That’s where the successful implementation will come in.

The web has evolved, and it has given us cutting edge tools to get the job done. But a tool is still just a tool. Without the users, the tools are meaningless, and the user must have specific motivations to use the tools effectively.

It’s interesting to look at how the web has evolved and continues to do so. Social media (at least in its current incarnation) is still relatively young, yet we have seen a lot of evolution just within this aspect of the web itself. This is highlighted today especially, as we see competition in the real-time search arena really stat to heat up.

Some members of the WebProNews team are out in San Jose at the Search Engine Strategies Conference. This event kicked off with a keynote from Clay Shirky, a writer and educator discussed how communication media has changed over the years, and why and how social media is effective.

Basically what it boils down to according to Shirky, is that "Successful tools today are about channeling existing motivations."

Clay says that in some cases, paying people to do things kills desire. Things that motivate people in social media are feeling autonomous, feeling competent, and feeling connected. Paying people might kill these motivations, he says.

Clay talked about how we’re living in the middle of "the largest expansion of expression capability in history." This couldn’t be any truer. People are sharing more and more about themselves at an incredible rate, which is why real-time search is such an important part of the equation today.

Things evolve.

Clay talked about how we didn’t always have the "many to many" medium. "Back in the 90’s there were all kinds of stories that email was for the young not the Grandparents.. Then it was found that old people did use email. Now young people think email is just for the old! Once email became normal that’s when significant social changes happened."

He says we’re living in a period of "mass amateurization," and professionals think amateurs are just trying to be mini versions of them.

"The sociology of the users’ motivation is the thing that makes social media tools work, not the tools themselves."

To drive home his point about how successful tools are all about channeling existing motivations, Clay points to the first email messages the founders of Linux and Wikipedia sent to their friends. They went something like:

"Linux" I’m doing a (free operation system (just a hobby) I’d like to know what features most people world want."

"Wikipeida" "Humor me . Go there and add a little article. It will  take all of five or ten minutes."

Twitter’s first message went something like:

"I want to have a dispatch service that connects on our phones using text."

These tools channeled existing motivations. That’s what it takes to achieve success through social media. Don’t use Twitter or Facebook just to use Twitter or Facebook. Use them to serve the purposes your business requires. That’s where the successful implementation will come in.

The web has evolved, and it has given us cutting edge tools to get the job done. But a tool is still just a tool. Without the users, the tools are meaningless, and the user must have specific motivations to use the tools effectively.

Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing product where the search engine company charges fees related to inclusion of websites in their search index. Paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies, the most notable exception being Google.
The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator. Typically, the [...]