Smart Keywords

This snowball is rolling down hill and gaining a lot of weight and speed. I guess the phones over at GoTo central – sorry that was the old Overture – now the new Yahoo Search – are ringing alot and the question of the week is what is going on with the API.
A week and no official response makes this more and more curious.

Web Analytics Association Chairman, Bryan Eisenberg, agrees that it is time for Yahoo to give a definitive answer and has been told one should be forthcoming some time today.

Let’s see if the conqueror’s of Disney will have time to release some insight into what the future holds for SEM companies and analytic tool providers.

Hopefully the reaction to my recent blog entry will show them that their is a large amount of interest in this and the best way to grow is to help the companies that have provided them with business in the past and whose growth parallels their own. Though we don’t need to rely on a particular engine, in the longrun Yahoo should know that if they don’t find those new customers out there offline – when they come back they may have a hard time recapturing the people they have snubbed.

Don’t forget MSN is about to fully jump into the space and to make a serious wrong move now could concede they are willing to become a second tier provider!

Here is the WAA announcement.

I will preface this with the fact that I am a moderator at Search Engine Watch forums – and yet I am really disappointed in the final selections that Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman made for a couple of the categories.

Hey I admit I really like Google, and maybe my opinion is biased by the friendships I have there – but look back through the blog and my posts on SEW and I think you will see me taking them to task as warranted.

The fact that the popular vote for Outstanding Search Service was overruled and given to Yahoo amazes me. I do not know what terms Danny and Chris search for over at Yahoo but please. In my vertical Yahoo is barely better than MSN (Making Search Nasty) – it can be so easily manipulated.

Has it improved over the past 12 months? Yes but hey if that was the criteria why not give it to SearchFeed or BlowSearch….

Hey the Awards should just be chosen by Danny and Chris and I would not have a problem as they can and should be able to use them to recognise companies within the industry that they feel have had winning years.

But to take our votes and then do this:
Just 2 percent of the 490 votes cast in this category went to Jux2, but we thought it deserved to win over the more popular choices. It provides a clean, simple way to see all the results from the most important major search engines. You can easily view what the big three crawlers of Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves agree on — plus the results that are specific to each search engine, as well. There’s no better way to understand the unique voices that each search engine speaks with.

Just says they really don’t care…. why not call the request not votes but opinions or suggestions.

Congrats to all the winners and good job Danny and Chris…

Google’s recently acquired Keyhole product the zoom in on places using satelite photos, is being integrated with Google Maps
Interesting idea though I fail to see any real worth in the move. More a publicity stunt to get people more aware of the Google Maps product and pull users away from MapQuest and Yahoo Maps.
They are also going to eliminate the pricing. Which is promising – as Google does like to provide free solid products to support its search marketing efforts – a method I hope they never do away with!!!

I really think people have developed a “I will wait for you” approach to DMOZ – the Open Directory Project. Site Pro News has an article today that gives this as the best way to submit:
Procedure to follow for a successful DMOZ Submission:

1) Submit site
2) wait for 3 months
3) follow up email to category editor
4) wait for 3 months
5) escalation email to category editor above your category
6) wait for 3 months
7) ask for assistance in the Open Directory Public Forum
wait for 1 month
9) escalation email to DMOZ senior staff & post to various forums seeking help

How to spend a year and get no where is more like it here.

Get on the stick Netscape, force someone to start dealing with the problem on a large scale or the Project will be even further eroded. There is not much time left and an attitude is only going to hurt if editors are not truely willing to help.
This was started to stop the ego, now it is an old-school-tie group.

Seems everyone is on to this story. The people who get money from Google for AdSense are noticing Google is deducting taxes – speculation (and from what I have been able to get from my accountant who is busy right now) is that they are grabbing backup withholding.
Hey any of you who are making money from affiliate programs – this is not a bad thing. True it will be initially missed but it also adds to the SSI you pay and ultimately the amount you will receive when you retire.

All those 20-somethings I guess you are just out of luck, because I doubt if the SS will be available by the time you get to retire…

Seems SEM companies are already marketing their services managing the MSN PPC campaigns for people…. but if they are not advertising in France or Singapore I guess Pomodo is just taking leads for the future.
It seems like they are jumping the gun a little. But it gets them listed in the engines and eventually they will be doing the work.
I may have to enter that I can manage your PPC campaign for the sson to be launched ABDC engine…
Seems this industry has future vision. Anyone advertising with Overture had to have gotten one of those emails asking to increase the amount of money in the account even though you had well over their 3 day limit. And it was always for nearly a month – like they were pimp for bucks.
Accoona even took money for advertising a couple of months before it became popular.
Now we have companies touting themselves as being able to manage an advertising campaign that has yet to roll out in the US.
Je ne parlez pas…

I have used the Google keyword monitor at DigitalPoint.com for over a year and am happy that they have extended this to include MSN and Yahoo.
It requires installing a php script on the sites’ servers but given what you get that is no big deal.
Here is a central point where you can monitor your SERPs for various keywords across 3 engines.
Hats off to the great guys over there. Keep leading the way DP!

I have been working with AOL to add the new currency converter on the revamped site. For a sneak preview try this link.

Looks like the Google newsbot is a little to aggressive for some. The FPA is taking them to court for grabbing and indexing their news and photos… guess the French have not heard of a robots.txt file or a nofollow noindex meta tag.
Here’s the story.

Funny post this and then go to Threadwatch and Google has dropped the content and stopped aleady… ah the power of legal papers.

“We do not see Google and MSN as our competition,” Tom Hochstatter said today, “we look at offline media as our competitors.”

All aboard the Titanic. This senior staffer at Yahoo’s Strategic Programming (their ROI, Tracking and Bid Management/Web Analytics department)spoke with me about the changes being made to their API.

Right now no new SEM/Analytics companies are being allowed in, or the “not no, not now” response. Though he did not confirm it, more pointedly he did not deny that the existing SEM/Analytics/Tracking partners would soon be pushed out as well. “I won’t say if existing agreements will continue.”

I hope Kevin over at Did-It, the guys at Atlas and KeywordMax et al are ready for this.

True they are going to maintain the individual access to the AWS. And he sang the praises of the Yahoo tools, and the company’s desire to develop “bilateral relationships’ while suggesting a new product will be roilling out before the end of the year. Taking the Yahoo products to a “higher level or more involved” in the space.

“We have a strategic position for the web going forward”, he said.

So did LookSmart and when MSN left that engine it rapidly feel to the side. I hope the Yahoo stock does not fall as heavily as that of LookSmart come announcement day.

What it seems to me is that Yahoo does not really care about the granular analytics. They want to move back a step and attract the agencies – the offline media at the moment who really have not embraced the web in a great way.

Ad agencies look more at the bigger picture, at branding and demographics as opposed to specifics. If Yahoo tries to become the portal that gets the agencies and drops the importance of search – they are hoping for a major shift in web behavior. At a time when MSN is changing their method of PPC – it seems Overture (the company that started it all as we are always told by their reps). may be taking over that method.

Yahoo has made a few wrong calls lately in my opinion.

Tom thought the print world etc. was where Yahoo should be getting new traffic and advertisers and had no comment about Yahoo losing their contract with AOL in Europe.
The recent increase in traffic and bids for PPC in Europe has been huge and will only get bigger.

Keep a keen eye on the horizon Yahoo – if you see LookSmart’s CEO sitting on an iceberg out there try and avoid it.