Search Engine Marketing and Internet Marketing News

Google Adwords Editor Version 9.5

2011-08-28T09:43:00.003+05:30

Google Adwords Editor - New Features

Campaign experiment settings:
Version 9.5 includes support for campaign experiments. You can perform the following tasks in

Google Adwords Editor:

Apply and edit an experiment status (e.g. “control only”, “experiment only”, “control and experiment”) at the ad group, ad, or keyword level.
Apply and edit a Default Max. CPC, Display Network Max. CPC, or Max. CPM bid multiplier at the ad group level.
Apply and edit a Max. CPC bid multiplier at the keyword level.
Download and upload experiment status and bid multipliers in both CSV and XML import/export.

Adwords Editor Location extensions support:

Google Adwords Editor now provides support for new and existing location extensions. In Version 9.5, the address doesn’t have to already exist in the account to create the extension.

Create new manual location extensions for any address.
Modify address of existing business locations.
Download and upload location extensions in both CSV and XML import/export.

Adwords Editor Background download:

One or more accounts can now be downloaded in the background while you’re working on another open account. This allows users to save time and continue working while downloading a large account. You also have the option to select and queue up several accounts for download so that you don’t have to start the download process separately for each account.

Adwords Editor - Minor Updates

Adwords Editor - Additional campaign settings:

The following three new campaign-level settings are supported and can be edited, sorted, and imported/exported via XML:

Enhanced CPC (enabled/disabled) -- Applicable to Manual CPC and Budget Optimizer campaigns.
Delivery method (standard/accelerated) -- Standard delivery is applicable to all campaigns. Accelerated delivery is applicable to all campaigns except Budget Optimizer and Percent CPA campaigns.
Ad Rotation (optimize for clicks/optimize for conversions/rotate) -- Applicable to all campaigns.

Adwords Editor - Destination URL links:

You can test your destination URLs when you click the icon located next to the destination URL edit box on all tabs. The destination URL will open in your default browser.

Adwords Editor - IP addresses and non-ASCII characters in URLs:

Display URLs, destination URLs, and placements now allow:

Non-ASCII domain names (e.g. münster.com, россия.рф)
IPv4 addresses in place of domain names (e.g. 12.34.56.78)
IPv6 addresses in place of domain names (e.g. [2001:db8:85a3:0:0:8a2e:370:7334] )

Display URLs and placements will also allow non-ASCII characters in the URL path after the domain name (e.g. münster.com/Käse, yandex.ru::спорт). This is not supported in destination URLs.

Adwords Editor - Unlimited number of search conditions:

Advanced Search now allows you to add an unlimited number of search criteria in the Settings or Performance statistics fields.

Adwords Editor Version 9.5 - Additional image ad dimensions:

Image ads with the following dimensions are now supported:

320x50 (now valid for mobile image ads as well)
300x50
425x600
300x600

Adwords Editor - Revert warnings:

When you revert more than one item, or a new campaign or ad group that contains information, Google AdWords Editor will alert you with a summary of changes to be made and allow you to cancel the revert. A "Don't show this message again" checkbox will allow you to proceed in the future without any prompt.

In addition, in the Tools | Settings dialog, a Revert section allows you to enable or disable the Ctrl-Z shortcut for Revert. You can also enable or disable the revert warning in this dialog.

Adwords Editor - Streamline Add/Update Multiple:

Version 9.5 offers a Preview or Process button in the Add/Update Multiple tool. Preview allows you to preview your data and edit your column assignments. Process will skip the previewing step and will take you to the last step of the Add/Update Multiple tool and display a summary of changes.

On the last step of Add/Update Multiple, a checkbox labeled “Automatically accept all imported changes” is now available. If the box is unchecked, you will be able to review your changes when you click Finish and review changes. If the box is checked, you’ll automatically accept all changes when you click Finish. The checkbox will remember your choice from the last time you used the Add/Update Multiple tool.

Adwords Editor - Item status and disapprovals:

Google AdWords Editor now displays item status in the Status column and allows you to manually pause or enable an item by editing the status icon. In addition, you can now see specific ad disapproval reasons by mousing over the disapproved status.

Adwords Editor - Updated first page bid estimates:

Google AdWords Editor v9.5 supports the updated first page bid estimates, which take into account additional factors when determining your bid estimate.

Adwords Editor - Service announcements:

A yellow alert box will display important service announcements impacting your Editor usage.

How Facebook Traffic Fits in a Multi-Channel Landscape

2011-07-04T14:35:00.000+05:30

While the growth of its US user base may or may not be slowing a bit as it approaches complete saturation, Facebook’s potential to impact ecommerce still has plenty of headroom. Advertising on Facebook is nascent next to paid search and traditional display and online retailers are still learning how to best engage and expand their fanbases. Looking at data across RKG’s Attribution and Facebook clients we can assess how Facebook users are currently fitting into the larger multi-channel picture and offer some insights into who they are.

More @ http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2011/06/29/how-facebook-traffic-fits-in-a-multi-channel-landscape/

New Yahoo Clues Offers Regional and Demographic Data

2011-07-04T14:34:00.003+05:30

Clues, the Yahoo product that provides information on search trends on Yahoo searches, has just gotten a big upgrade. Their new version includes an upgraded interface, regional search data, and trends for separate demographics.

More @ http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2082868/New-Yahoo-Clues-Offers-Regional-and-Demographic-Data

Create Mobile Landing Pages With No Programming Knowledge

2011-07-04T14:34:00.001+05:30

Research Says 51% of consumers are more likely to purchase from retailers that have mobile-specific sites, yet, according to Google, 79% of large online advertisers don’t have a mobile optimized site. Furthermore, according to Google, t 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site that they had trouble accessing from their phone, and 40% go to a competitor’s.

Today Google released a tool allowing even the least programming-inclined people to build professional mobile web pages. Now, there’s no reason that anyone should ever be without a mobile landing page. It’s also free, which means budget isn’t an issue.

More @ http://www.ppchero.com/create-mobile-landing-pages-with-no-programming-knowledge-for-free/

Announcing the June 2011 Microsoft Advertising adCenter Upgrade - adCenter Blog - Microsoft Advertising Community

2011-07-04T14:33:00.001+05:30

The latest Microsoft Advertising adCenter Upgrade includes several improvements that have consistently been requested in the feedback we've received. This upgrade provides easier ways to manage your search and content advertising strategies with adCenter. The changes include improved targeting and enhanced insights.

More @ http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2011/06/24/june-2011-microsoft-advertising-adcenter-upgrade.aspx

Quality Score and a Simplified Daily Budget Option in the Latest adCenter Desktop Beta Release - adCenter Blog - Microsoft Advertising Community

2011-07-04T14:31:00.000+05:30

In addition to the improvements that were released in April, new updates have just rolled out in the latest adCenter Desktop Beta release. With this upgrade to version 7.8, the following additional functionality will be available:

• Quality Score. You can now view Quality Score data from adCenter Desktop Beta. You can also create advanced filters andsorts, and bulk update your keywords to optimize your campaigns based on the Quality Score data.

• Simplified Daily Budget option. Microsoft Advertising adCenter automatically calculates a monthly budget for you when...

More @ http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2011/06/22/quality-score-and-a-simplified-daily-budget-option-in-the-latest-adcenter-desktop-beta-release.aspx

2011-07-04T14:30:00.000+05:30

From Inside Google - Today, innovations in targeting, optimization, and measurement can help you achieve greater performance with your Display Network campaigns. We’re investing heavily in these areas, and we’re pleased to announce several tools that give you better measurement, transparency and value for your display advertising campaigns.

More @ http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/06/today-innovations-in-targeting.html

Google +1 around the world

2011-07-04T14:29:00.001+05:30

A few months ago Google released the +1 button on English search ads and organic search results on google.com. More recently, Google have made the +1 button available to sites across the web, making it easier for people who love your site to help their friends and other users find your content in Google search.

Today, +1s will start appearing on ads and organic search results for Google pages globally. We'll be starting with sites like google.co.uk, google.de, google.co.jp and google.fr, and then expanding quickly to most other Google search sites soon after.

We’ve also partnered with a few more sites in Europe, Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand where you’ll start seeing +1 buttons in the coming days.

More @ - http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/06/1-around-world.html

Video Ads on Ad Innovations - Inside AdWords

2011-07-04T14:27:00.000+05:30

Google offers the world's largest online video audience, based on users of Google.com search, our partnerships with top video publishers across the Google Display Network, and the reach of YouTube, the world's largest video property. On YouTube alone, users generate 3 billion video views daily and upload 48 new hours of video per minute. The online video market is huge for users, and we believe this means it also holds a lot of potential for online advertisers.

For those of you who are already passionate about this large and growing market, we’ve just launched a Video page on Ad Innovations -- your destination for exploring our latest advertising developments.

On this page, you can learn about new video innovations that can help you prepare your campaigns and promote your business.

More @ http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/06/learn-about-latest-in-video-ads-on-ad.html

Social Media Marketing - Tools to Refine Your Visibility, Engagement and Measure

2011-06-24T15:22:00.004+05:30

#1: Socialbakers

Get useful stats from Socialbakers. Socialbakers offers paid services to monitor your Facebook statistics, but it also provides useful free statistics for Facebook and LinkedIn.

#2: Kurrently
Find out what’s being shared on social media with Kurrently, a free, easy-to-use, real-time search engine for results from Twitter and Facebook. “Companies can capitalize on just-in-time marketing and social CRM opportunities like never before.”

#3: Blekko
Select the sites you want to search with Blekko. You can create “slashtags” for groups of URLs, friends, experts and communities and you can “slash in” what you want and “slash out” what you don’t want to search.

Tools to Measure Specific Social Media Goals

#4: Social Mention
If social awareness is your main social media goal, then be sure to check out Social Mention, which allows you to set up social media alerts so you can measure awareness for specific keywords.

#5: Klout
Klout is another tool you can use to measure awareness on Twitter and Facebook.

#6: PostRank Analytics
If customer loyalty is your main social media goal, you can use PostRank Analytics to measure results in improving loyalty.

Tools to Get the Job Done

#7: Blogsearch.Google
Use Blogsearch.Google.com for better search results than Google Alerts. There are many tools to monitor keywords. Don’t forget to use this one!

#8: Twitterfall
Use Twitterfall when you need to show executives how you can monitor what’s being said about your brand on Twitter.

#9: Friend or Follow
Friend or Follow helps you improve your Twitter marketing. It tells you who’s not following you back on Twitter and who you’re not following back.

#10: Wetoku
Sign up for Wetoku to make the popular side-by-side video interviews. All you need to do is sign in and send an invite code by email to the person you want to interview.

#11: Socialcam
If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, be sure to check out Socialcam. Steve says this is the easiest way to share videos with your social networks.

#12: Stupeflix
Use Stupeflix to integrate after-effects and photos to your videos. If you want to do editing without using editing software, this tool is for you.

Google Adwords - Broad Match Modifier

2010-05-12T16:59:00.004+05:30

Today Google Adwords introduced the broad match modifier, a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords that have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match. Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.

To implement the modifier, just put a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword. Each word preceded by a + has to appear in your potential customer's search exactly or as a close variant. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “floor” and “flooring”). Synonyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flowers” and “tulips”) aren't considered close variants.

The graphic below illustrates the relative reach of different keyword match type strategies. As you can see, modified broad match keywords match more searches than the equivalent phrase match keyword, but fewer searches than the equivalent broad match keyword. Match behavior also depends on the specific words you modify. For example, the keyword formal +shoes will match the search “evening shoes,” but the keyword +formal +shoes will not.

During initial tests, advertisers who mainly used phrase and exact match found that adding modified broad match keywords increased campaign clicks and conversions, while providing more precise control than with broad match.

Modified broad match keywords have a traffic potential closer to phrase match than broad match. If you mainly use broad match keywords in your account, switching these keywords to modified broad match will likely lead to a significant decline in your overall click and conversion volumes. In order to maintain these volumes, we recommend keeping existing broad match keywords active, adding new modified broad match keywords, and adjusting bids to achieve your target ROI based on observed performance.

If you're in Canada or the UK, you can log into your AdWords account to start adding modified broad match keywords today. You can also use the AdWords Editor or the AdWords API.

This feature is currently available to advertisers in Canada and the UK as an open beta.

Google AdWords Launches Two New Ad Types

2009-11-08T16:58:00.002+05:30

Google has launched two new ad types in their AdWords service. The first is called AdWords Comparison Ads and the second is a feature called Ad Sitelinks.

AdWords Comparison Ads

As the name suggests, this new service will make it possible for users to compare offers provided by various advertisers.

Google Comparison Ad unit

The basic Comparison Ad allows users to specify what they are looking for, in a bit more detail than is normally possible on a regular search query, and then delivers a comparison of different offers side-by-side.

Users that engage with a comparison ad will now have to click on a promotion listed within the comparison table that they think is of interest to them. If they are not satisfied, they can provide some more details about what they want, to see better targeted ads.

When the user identifies a satisfactory offer, the advertiser can be contacted directly on the phone – making it a pay per call ad – or a quote can be requested.

Google will anonymise the user’s number with a unique code, through which the advertiser can then contact the user. Advertisers will not receive any user information unless the user wishes to release it. Advertisers will pay Google only if a user calls on the phone number allocated for that advertiser or if the user fills out a form requesting a quote.

The comparison ads feature is very speedy, as it provides relevant offers in less than one second, and the ads will only be for real products. There will be no teaser rates or bait and switch offers.

At present, the service is only available to a few users in some states in the U.S.A and it is only for advertisers in the mortgage and refinance field.

Ad Sitelinks

Just like certain organic results include sitelinks, certain ads can now also feature sitelinks via a new feature called Ad Sitelinks.

Advertisers with extremely high quality ads will be able to specify up to 10 links to deeper pages on their site. These can be links to special offers, featured products, support pages or other popular pages on the site.

Up to 4 Ad Sitelinks will show up below the regular ads for keywords that meet certain quality requirements:

1.The ad should have the first position above the organic search results
2.The ad should have a very high quality score, typically 10/10
3.The Ad Sitelinks URLs must direct users to pages that are part of the main website, and allow users to navigate freely

The links can be updated without changing the ads, as frequently as desired. The option to add sitelinks shows up in the campaign settings tab, under the “Networks, devices and extensions” section, and is labeled with the text “Show additional links to my site within my ad”.

Browse what the world is saying on Blog Search

2008-10-04T15:38:00.000+05:30

Did you know that millions of bloggers around the world write new posts each week? If you're like me, you probably read only a tiny fraction of these in Google Reader. What's everybody else writing about? Our Blog Search team thought this was an interesting enough question to look into. What we found was a massive mix: entertaining items about celebrities, personal perspectives on political figures, cutting-edge (and sometimes unverified) news stories, and a range of niche topics often ignored by the mainstream media.

Today, we're pleased to launch a new homepage for Google Blog Search so that you too can browse and discover the most interesting stories in the blogosphere. Adapting some of the technology pioneered by Google News, we're now showing categories on the left side of the website and organizing the blog posts within those categories into clusters, which are groupings of posts about the same story or event. Grouping them in clusters lets you see the best posts on a story or get a variety of perspectives. When you look within a cluster, you'll find a collection of the most interesting and recent posts on the topic, along with a timeline graph that shows you how the story is gaining momentum in the blogosphere.

In this example, the green "64 blogs" link takes you inside the cluster and shows you all the blog posts for a story.

We've had a great time building the new homepage and we hope you enjoy using it. Please give it a try and let us know if you have comments or suggestions. We're launching in English only today, but plan to add new features and support for more languages in the coming months, so stay tuned.

Got an idea to help the world? Here's $10 million

2008-09-26T00:48:00.000+05:30

Got an idea that could change the world, or at least help a lot of people? Google wants to hear from you -- and it will pay as much as $10 million to make your idea a reality.

Google Inc. will award $10 million to solicit ideas it believes could benefit the world.

To help celebrate its 10th birthday, the ambitious Internet giant is launching an initiative to solicit, and bankroll, fresh ideas that it believes could have broad and beneficial impact on people's lives.

Called Project 10^100 (pronounced "10 to the 100th"), Google's initiative will seek input from the public and a panel of judges in choosing up to five winning ideas, to be announced in February.

Google announced the project live on CNN on Wednesday morning.

"These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple -- but they need to have impact," Google said in a news release. "We know there are countless brilliant ideas that need funding and support to come to fruition."

Those are ideas such as the Hippo Water Roller, which Google cited as the kind of concept the company would be interested in rewarding. Developed in Africa, where it is most used, the Hippo Water Roller is a barrel-shaped container, attached to a handle, that holds 24 gallons of water and can be rolled with little effort like a wheelbarrow, making it easier for villagers on foot to transport critically needed fresh water to their homes.

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Impact Your World

See how you can make a difference

People are encouraged to submit their ideas, in any of 25 languages, at www.project10tothe100.com through October 20. Entrants must briefly describe their idea and answer six questions, including, "If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?"

Google employees, with the help of an advisory board, will narrow the submissions to 100 semifinalists by January 27. Between January 27 and February 2, the public will vote online for their favorite ideas. A panel of as-yet-unnamed judges will then review the top 20 ideas and announce up to five winners in mid-February.

Funding, from a pool of $10 million, will be awarded in May. If the judges decide to reward five winning ideas, each will receive $2 million. If only two ideas are chosen, each will receive $5 million, and so on.

A Google spokeswoman was reluctant to set parameters for the submissions, although the project's Web site suggests that successful ideas should address such issues as providing food and shelter, building communities, improving health, granting more access to education, sustaining the global ecosystem and promoting clean energy.

"We don't want to limit it at all. We want a wide range of ideas," said Bethany Poole, product marketing manager at Google, who announced the project Wednesday on CNN along with Andy Berndt, managing director of Google's Creative Lab. "We think great ideas come from anywhere."

To cite Google's own example, Google News began after the September 11 terrorist attacks, when an engineer became frustrated that he couldn't aggregate news sources from around the world in one place.

By opening the project to anyone -- not just laboratories or universities -- Google is embracing "crowdsourcing," the Internet-age notion that the collective wisdom of mass audiences can be leveraged to find solutions to design tasks.

Project 10^100 is not unlike the Google-sponsored Lunar X PRIZE, a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to Earth. The first team to land on the moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million. At least 16 teams are competing.

Those who submit winning Project 10^100 ideas will not be required to have the technical expertise to implement them, Poole said. Google has not determined how winning projects will be sustained financially after the initial prize money runs out, she said.

People may submit more than one idea. Through its online submissions, Google also hopes to connect people with good ideas to charitable organizations who could help implement them, Poole said.

World’s fastest search engine ‘Cuil’ launched

2008-08-03T23:35:00.000+05:30

Pitched as the world’s latest, largest and swiftest search engine, Cuil was launched Monday with 120 billion pages or ‘thrice’ the volume of the Google index. Described as a ’super-stealth search project’, it has been founded and developed by the highly respected husband-wife duo of Stanford professor Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson.

Originally Cuill, pronounced as ‘cool,’ Irish for knowledge, has now been named ‘Cuil’. A report on the web quoting the founders claimed that it is “bigger, faster and better than Google’s flagship search engine in pretty much every way”.

The Internet has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 15 years, speedily outpacing search engines. But Cuil is expected to search more web pages than Google - its nearest competitor - and 10 times as many as the search engine of Microsoft.

Where Cuil scores over rivals is the way it indexes the web and handle queries by users. Both are costly operations, but Cuil claims to have found a way to slash those costs.

A search for dogs, for example, will return category results for “water dogs,” “crossbreed”, “cocker spaniel” and so on. Some of these related terms do not include the term “dog”.

Similarly by clicking on New York, one would get tabbed results for recommended refinements like New York Times, New York City, New York Yankees and so on.

A search for “Harry” would throw up different tabs for “Harry Potter” and “Prince Harry of Wales”. Further, the Harry Potter tab will provide more sub-links devoted to actors, Gryffindor dorm-mates and others associated with the series.

That would permit Cuil’s founders to operate the search engine much more cheaply, even at Google-scale should it ever reach that point. Google incurs an expenditure of a billion dollars every year on running the infrastructure of its search business.

Cuil also works to understand how words are related. Say France - cheese - wine, to get more relevant results. This is a semantic search approach very different from Powerset’s natural language approach.

Powerset uses artificial intelligence to try to grasp what sentences on a website actually mean. Cuil, by comparison, simply tries to categorise and file a web page, even if the category name doesn’t appear on the site.

However, Rafe Needleman, writing on the Cuil homepage, cautioned that “it’s one thing to have a nice interface and show users good results, but the size of the web index that the engine has access to matters a lot as well”.

“Compared with Google’s globe-spanning network of data centres, some literally set up near dams so they can tap hydro power more efficiently, Cuil’s two puny data centres hosting less than 2,000 PCs total will have to run pretty fast to outpace Google’s crawlers.

“As a business proposition, Cuil is obviously a big bet … No other search engine has come close to entering the public consciousness like this. Of course, Cuil doesn’t have to trounce Google on day one. It took Google quite some time to surpass Alta Vista and Yahoo in the search wars.”

by IANS

New Search Engine www.cuil.com to beat Google

2008-08-03T23:32:00.000+05:30

A startup founded by engineers from Google Inc. and other tech giants is launching a search engine that claims to cover three times as many Web pages as Google. Cuil Inc. plans to launch today and is optimistic to deliver better results than other major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Cuil will have better abilities by having an interface that helps clients search across more Web pages and study them more accurately.

The site’s results page resembles an online magazine — a different look and feel from search juggernaut Google’s. “You can’t be an alternative search engine and smaller,” said Anna Patterson, Cuil co-founder and president, and one of the engineers.

Cuil search Engine was developed and being run by the husband-and-wife team of Stanford professor Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson, it’s pitched as bigger, faster, and better than Google flagship search engine in pretty much every way. The difference between Cuil and Google is its ranking system. Cuil does not assign priority to pages based on inbound links as Google does. Cuil analyzes the content of Web pages to divine their relevance to a search query. Cuil results are automatically categorized.

When you search for a common name, Cuil will give you a result page where results for different individuals with that name are groups under tabs. It will also break out sub-topics related to each name. In comparison to Google’s globe-spanning data network of data centers, Cuil’s two puny data centers hosting less than 2,000 PCs total run fast to outpace Google’s crawlers.

The search engine will make its maiden debut today and certainly with its great publicity so far, will rink in the online media and pages as a force to reckon with. However, even before it goes all the way, Cuil is getting the worst consumer dissonance ever. Online surfers have said it’s even worse than Alta Vista and that it’s a pathetic search Engine. But we have to wait and see what these ex-Google guys are offering.

by David M N James

India Yahoo Glue page http://in.glue.yahoo.com

2008-05-08T20:09:00.000+05:30

Wow… Its good to hear that yahoo launched “Yahoo Glue Page”… There so many new things in Yahoo Glue page http://in.glue.yahoo.com

In my short observation/study… they have improved there search results a lot… compare to Google I feel Yahoo Glue is good in user point of view… when I searched with “Kajol” http://in.glue.yahoo.com/?query=kajol&ygmasrchbtn=WEB+SEARCH&fr=glue I can see more results like Related Pages, Actor-Quick Facts, Images, Sponsored Links, India News, You tube, LastFM Top Tracks and all these are specific to “Kajol” or user query… they have not only improved there search results but speed, layout, page side and etc… I think after Microsoft and Google offer Yahoo started work on different permutations to attract users… In my point of view if yahoo makes this as Home page… then the are the leaders in

Search engines. However I am not happy with this query http://in.glue.yahoo.com/?query=porn&fr=glue... it’s another additional feature of India Yahoo Glue Page all results are child free…

Google To Go After Paid Links?

2008-01-27T22:24:00.000+05:30

[editorial] Google appears to be going after paid links, and they want you to do the work for them by reporting such links, regardless of the reason they were bought or sold.

Check out Matt Cutts’s post How to report paid links and notice that he appears not to have responded to the comments that mention Text Link Ads or similar brokers. This will be a huge disappointment to all those small websites that make a bit of money selling sponsored links. Whatever reason the sponsor uses them for is their business, but if they perceive Google’s move to mean ditching the links, then there goes a lot of revenue.

The other problem is that they seem to want us, web surfers, to make the distinction between whether a link is used for SEO or for traffic. If the ad code uses Javascript, according to Cutts, then it’s for traffic because there’s a redirect or nofollow. Any other form of sponsored code means the links were sold for SEO (even if they were free).

So that means that little publishers like me who earn roughly $35-55/mth in AdSense and a bit more from paid links - and work very hard to earn even that much - are going to get screwed by some jealous newbie blogger who thinks the other person is making a fortune because they have a lot of sites. Or if I do a link exchange with a site to get relevant niche traffic, and it’s misconstrued as a paid link. Very nice.

Cutts says in his article that they’re collecting datasets to test some algorithms. He repeatedly refuses to clarify how the information supplied by unpaid tattletales will be used.

Google seems to be going after a monopoly on advertising, telling webmasters what they can or cannot have on their sites. Does anyone else now think it’s a conflict of interest that search engine as powerful as Google is monopolizing advertising?

By the way, SEJ’s Carsten Cumbrowski left a very detailed, rational explanation of why this move cannot possibly work. It’s as valuable a read as any other comment, if not more, and less hot-headed than this post.

Free Big Brand Marketing and Other Facebook Problems

2008-01-14T11:17:00.000+05:30

As a social search engine, Facebook does many things well. With membership growing exponentially, you can find almost anyone who's online there. The Facebook buzz continues to build with brand marketers, consumers, and social media mavens.

Facebook, though, isn't flawless. Case in point: the TripAdvisor Facebook application discussed here. You'll recall TripAdvisor's application generates about 85,000 active users who place pins on a virtual map showing where they've traveled. That's local search at its best.

Show Us the Money

Where's the revenue stream for Facebook?

Facebook doesn't receive a dime from TripAdvisor for this application. TripAdvisor, on the other hand, receives tremendous brand value.

There's e-commerce and now, social commerce. TripAdvisor will receive future "socialommerce" from the Facebook app in the coming weeks. You'll see TripAdvisor integrate specific deals (hotels, airfare, vacation packages, etc.) for the cities people "pin." Users and their friends will have the ability to click directly on these deals to book travel.

Many companies that develop popular applications have started to sell advertising/brand placements within the applications themselves. This isn't small change, either. Popular applications like the "Oregon Trail" (yes the same game many of us played on a Texas Instrument computer) or "Fun Wall" can reach as high as 3,669,000 active users.

Again, the apps generate zero revenue for Facebook, with the social platform cut out of the revenue loop.

Missed revenue opportunities are not the only Facebook flaw. They've put the spotlight on their users commercial transactions, creating a huge backlash.

Why Did Facebook Beacon Users?

Beacon is the marketing initiative Facebook would have rolled out differently. Beacon alerts your friends in Facebook about some of your activities conducted on the Web outside Facebook. The problem? Facebook users weren't made aware of the change.

So Facebook became the Grinch who tried to steal Christmas. Or at least, potentially spoil it.

For example, if you had purchased a Christmas present for relatives in your Facebook network, they had a good idea of what present you bought for them. "Alert: Erik Qualman just purchased the latest Harry Potter book at amazon.com."

Facebook has since adjusted the way users are opted into Beacon.

What's the Best Marketing Play in Facebook?

This is a somewhat complex answer that depends on a lot of factors. If you're new to Facebook as a company, the first thing you should do is perform a search on your brand terms. There's a high probability even though you haven't lifted a finger yet, someone else has. Facebook users may have already set up multiple groups around your brand.

A group page is analogous to a water cooler on steroids (share photos, comments, post information, etc.). A good start: read what discussions are going on and determine why one group is more popular than the next. This will give you good insight into what the users are interested in, many of whom are probably already consumers of your product/service.

The good news: it's relatively inexpensive for marketers to get started in Facebook, a change that occurred only recently. Up until about a month ago, marketers needed to commit a minimum $300,000 media buy with Facebook in order to have a sponsored group page (a group page allows for more marketing bells and whistles).

This media buy was generally money well spent because it drove Facebook users to sign-up to your sponsored group page. However, not every company can risk $300,000.

Build Brand Equity Free on Facebook

Recently, though, Facebook announced the "page" with improved "bells and whistles." It's absolutely free for advertisers to develop. It essentially replaces the sponsored group page.

Obviously, this has caused quite a rift with existing advertisers with sponsored group memberships. They now must move their sponsored groups to a page.

For Apple, with 450,000 members, it's no small feat. These are some of the growing pains that Facebook will learn to understand with an existing base of high profile, big ticket clients. Simple things, like, get your major clients' input first (kind of like asking your users first before beaconing them).

Ultimately, the release of this new "page" capability was well received by the majority of advertisers and users.

As a marketer, while there's no monetary barrier to entry, you'll want to strategically vet out a comprehensive plan before launching something that might damage your brand's reputation. However, you should move quickly. Others will develop their own pages around your brand.

How to Hire Facebook App Developers

Many companies have decided to dive into Facebook with a robust application first rather than developing a more complex page. There are several agencies that now specialize in Facebook application development (e.g., Slide, RockYou). Not surprisingly, these agencies can be quite pricey.

Moving fast, many companies have succeeded by using younger consultants or software developers to quickly launch a high quality application. Speed is of the essence.

Rather than developing your own application, you can find great value in reaching out to smaller application developers. Buy an existing popular application or integrate your brand message appropriately within the existing application.

For example, the popular "Hug Me" application (278,000 daily active users send virtual hugs to each other) is a logical fit for 1-800-Flowers to integrate appropriate offline gift ideas.

Obviously this has less risk because you're associating your brand with an already popular application rather than conjuring up the next best thing.

Whatever your eventual strategy, one point is clear. Start thinking about it today.

Search Engine Strategies (SES) London

2008-01-13T20:39:00.000+05:30

Search Training Classes - Friday, February 22, 2008

Search Engine Strategies presents SEM Training Workshops, including optimization and advertising strategies, tactics and best practices. In order to keep the training intimate, seats are limited, so please register early. Greg Jarboe, Amanda Watlington, Jennifer Laycock, Christine Churchill and Matt Bailey all present onsite to help you grow your business.

Cost:

Full-day registration cost £575. Half-day registration cost £475.

Training can be taken in addition to the SES London conference or independently, as workshops are on the Friday following the event.

8:00am-12:00pm

Optimizing for Universal Search

Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR
Amanda Watlington, Searching for Profit

Reaching Your Audience Through Blogs

Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide

12:00pm-1:00pm

Lunch Break

1:00pm-5:00pm

Making Pay Per Click Pay - Best Practices in Pay Per Click Advertising

Christine Churchill, KeyRelevance

Usability & Accessibility

Matt Bailey, SiteLogic

Students will be provided with guided, hands-on exposure that puts theory into practice in a highly interactive environment. These workshops, taught by world acclaimed search engine marketers Greg Jarboe, Amanda Watlington, Jennifer Laycock, Christine Churchill and Matt Bailey, will provide you with the practices and applications you need to become (and remain!) a top performer in your field. In the end, you will not only walk away with the knowledge and skills you need to be a successful search engine marketer, you will also jump-start your career and enhance your professional know-how.

Whether you are a consultant, site designer, website owner, or in-house marketing professional, you cannot afford to miss this opportunity to experience firsthand the latest developments in search engine strategy. No matter where you are in the SEO & SEM process, you will leave these intensive workshops with the necessary skills and tools to improve your business results and take your search engine marketing to another level.

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Optimizing for Universal Search

Event name:	Optimizing for Universal Search
Event type:	SEO Training
Date:	Friday, February 22, 2008
Status:	Spaces Limited
Time:	8:00am-12:00pm
Description:	Universal search changes everything! The advent of Google's Universal Search has been called "the most radical change to its search results ever." So, how do you take advantage of Google's new approach that blends listings from news, maps, video, and image search among those it gathers from web search? In other words, how do you get found in all the right places? [ back to top ]
Who is this workshop for?	Everyone who promotes Web sites as part of their work should attend this workshop. Web marketers should understand how to optimize and leverage their content and its distribution across news, image,, and video search engines.
How Will I Benefit?	After attending this half-day workshop, you will be able to optimize, distribute and measure: After attending this half-day workshop, you will be able to optimize, distribute and measure: Press releases ImagesMaps Video files RSS feeds, and free submissions for books and products Attendees will also learn strategies and tactics for expanding the audience for their content through Google News, Yahoo! News, Google Maps , Google Product Search, Technorati, Google Image Search, Flickr, YouTube, Yahoo Video and a growing variety of other sites.
What Will I Learn?	During this workshop, you will learn how to: Pick your target keywords for news, image, video and web search engines; Position your keywords in crucial locations; Create original and unique content of genuine value, including text, images and video; Avoid search engine stumbling blocks; Build inbound links intended to help people find interesting, related content; Just say no to search engine spamming; Submit your Sitemap, RSS feeds, and videos to search engines and directories; Verify and maintain your listings; and Go beyond web search engines to include key vertical search engines.
About the Instructor	Greg Jarboe is the president and co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization firm and public relations agency with offices in San Francisco and Boston. He is also a partner in Newsforce, developer of an integrated suite of press release SEO tools. SEO-PR has been praised by world-renowned search authority Danny Sullivan for "focusing on search as a public relations tool." SEO-PR is one of 10 companies that Larry Chase's Web Digest for Marketers named to its Who's Who in SEO Experts. SEOmoz.org has put SEO-PR on its Recommended List of SEO Consultants, Experts, Firms and Service Providers. Greg is a frequent speaker at Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld's PubCon, and public relations conferences. He is also the news search, blog search and PR correspondent for the Search Engine Watch Blog. Gord Hotchkiss, who writes the Out of My Gord blog, has called Greg "the guru of cranking up web visibility through effective optimization of press releases and leveraging news search." Lee Odden, who writes the Online Marketing Blog, has called Greg "a pioneer in the field of using search engine optimization in combination with press releases." And Matt McGowan, Vice President of Marketing for Incisive Media, has called Greg, "the industry's top expert in press release SEO and social media relations." Greg has more than 25 years of experience in public relations, marketing, and search engine optimization at Lotus Development Corp., Ziff-Davis, and other companies. He graduated from the University of Michigan, attended the University of Edinburgh, and worked on his Masters at Lesley College. Amanda G. Watlington Ph.D., A.P.R. Before setting up Searching for Profit, Amanda was director of research for a leading Search Engine Optimization firm. Her consultancy focuses on how businesses can leverage search engines and new media such as blogging, RSS and podcasting to achieve marketing objectives. She has over twenty years of experience as a communications, sales and business strategy consultant, and ten years as a Web marketer. Amanda has developed award-winning print, web, training and presentation media. She has developed patent-pending language-based analytic tools and methodologies to support search engine marketing campaigns. She is a renowned expert on blogs, podcasting, and the language and psychology of search. The clients she has worked with include Fortune 500 companies, search engines, publishers and e-commerce merchants. Amanda is the author of two books. Her most recent book is Business Blogs: A Practical Guide. Amanda is a sought-after presenter and a recognized industry thought leader. She appears regularly as a speaker at Search Engine Strategies and DMA's Annual and Multi-Channel Marketing conferences. She serves on DMA's Search Engine Marketing Council, of which she is the past co-chair. She is the chair of the Web Analytics Association's research committee and has served on the search and research committees of IAB. Her education includes a Bachelors Degree in Classical Civilization from Douglass College in New Jersey, a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.B.A. in Marketing from Eastern Michigan University. She is a member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the Web Analytics Association (WAA), the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and has an APR accreditation.

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Reaching Your Audience Through Blogs

Event name:	Reaching Your Audience Through Blogs
Event type:	Search Engine Marketing Training
Date:	Friday, February 22, 2008
Status:	Spaces Limited
Time:	8:00am-12:00pm
Description:	With more than 71 million blogs currently being tracked by Technorati, the opportunities for businesses to speak with their customers is nearly unlimited. That's why more and more companies are turning to the blogosphere to connect with consumers. Never before have businesses had such effective access to the frustrations and desires of their target audience. [ back to top ]
Who is this workshop for?	This workshop is for marketers and business owners that want to learn more about harnessing the power of blogs to build buzz about their business online. It will cover the use of both internal blogs and third party blogs as we explore what sparks conversation and passion in readers and how to leverage that conversation and passion for marketing purposes.
How will I benefit? What Will I Learn?	After attending this half-day workshop, you will have a solid understanding of concepts that are vital to reaching out to consumers via blogs including: Why blogs are the fastest growing form of consumer generated media How blogs can change the way you interact with your customers How to engage your target audience in conversation and how to put what you learn into action Why blogging works for both B2B and B2C companies How to avoid the most common corporate blogging mistakes Crisis control tactics in case you encounter negative blogging In this workshop, you will gain a better understanding of the concepts, ideas and implementations that are required to launch an internal blog or to market through third party blogs. You'll learn why so many companies are launching corporate blogs and how they are creatively using them to advance their brand and marketing campaigns. You'll also learn how to leverage other people's blogs to build your company's reputation, address criticism and introduce new products. The workshop will give real life examples of both good and bad blog campaigns as well are sharing insight on how your business can build their own blog style based on consumer feedback. During this workshop, you will learn: How to find your corporate blogging voice What resources are needed to launch an effective corporate blog How to balance sales and information to build a more loyal readership Why pitching bloggers is different than pitching traditional media Why companies ignore blog comments at their own peril
About the Instructor	Jennifer Laycock is the Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide, an online publication aimed at educating Small Business owners about search engine marketing, viral marketing, social media marketing and blogging. Jennifer also operates as an independent online marketing consultant specializing in organic search marketing and viral marketing. Her clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings, Highlights for Children and Option-Line, a national crisis-pregnancy hotline. She is also the author of the popular e-books "The Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing" and "Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and Thirty Days." Jennifer is a requested speaker and has served as both a panelist and a moderator at Incisive Media's popular Search Engine Strategies conferences, the eComXpo virtual trade show, Microsoft's Small Business Summit and several local search marketing training seminars. In 2005, Jennifer delivered the keynote presentation at the MIVA Small Business Conference. She has also been interviewed and quoted by a variety of publications including The Financial Times, USA Today, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Entrepreneur magazine.

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Making Pay Per Click Pay- Best Practices in Pay Per Click Advertising

Event name:	Making Pay Per Click Pay- Best Practices in Pay Per Click Advertising
Event type:	Paid Search Training
Date:	Friday, February 22, 2008
Status:	Spaces limited
Time:	1:00pm-5:00pm
Description:	Paid Search is one of the fastest and most effective ways to gain a presence on the search engines. Done incorrectly it can also be one of the costliest. There are many diverse components to a pay per click campaign, but all have to work together to achieve the best return. This comprehensive training program will familiarize attendees with a multitude of paid advertising subjects. The course covers material for both the beginner and experienced advertiser. Attendees will learn about the paid search landscape - the players and the many paid search advertising options available. The course also covers the steps involved in setting up and optimizing a paid campaign to ensure every click counts. This interactive training provides best practices on how to select and evaluate keywords, tips on writing effective ads and optimizing landing pages, and in addition will show you how to establish an overall PPC strategy for bidding and budgeting for campaigns. This training includes guidance on structuring your PPC campaigns for easy maintenance and best returns. Is your company budget conscious? We'll show you ways to stretch your click dollars and alert you to budget disasters. We include a segment on analytics that show you easy ways to monitor performance and capture the information detail you need to make good marketing decisions. This half day training session provides practical real-world solutions and techniques to help you get the most from your paid advertising. [ back to top ]
Who Is this Workshop For?	Anyone involved with marketing and sending traffic and leads to a website will likely benefit from this training workshop. Marketing Directors, search professionals, Internet consultants, CEOs, Advertising Executives, Media Directors, Product Managers, Creative Directors, Webmasters, as well as business owners who want to learn more about paid advertising. Search managers will gain new insight and ideas on how to improve campaigns they manage.
How Will I Benefit?	This is a comprehensive training session that includes real-world information for users and managers. The practical advice and best practices taught in the session will help attendees run more efficient campaigns with higher returns. Attendees will: Enhance their knowledge base about paid search and its many options Understand the components of a good paid advertising strategy Learn proven techniques to select and evaluate keywords that produce results Acquire tips on developing effective ads and landing pages that convert visitors to buyers Discover ways to measure paid search performance and learn techniques to optimize campaigns Gain new insights into bidding strategies and campaign management Increase their skills and comfort level working in the paid search field
What Will I Learn?	PPC Agenda: Introduction to Paid Search Advertising The Search Landscape Major Players and programs Comparison of Paid and Organic Benefits and Uses of Paid Search Marketing Mix Comparison of three big players - Google, Yahoo, MSN Keyword Research for PPC Brainstorming Keywords How to Expand Keyword Lists Evaluating Keywords How to "bucket" keywords Matching Options Negative Keywords Keyword Tools Keyword Strategies Tips on Developing Effective Ads Editorial Guidelines Best Practices Insider Copywriting Tips Testing Ads Landing Page Optimization Components of a good landing page Conversion Tips Quality Score Factor Testing methods A/B Split and Multivariate Testing software Bidding and Campaign Management Strategy Management Tools Tips to simplify management and increase effectiveness Bidding Strategies For Position For ROI Dayparting Geo Targeting Options IP Targeting Geo Keywords Pitfalls and Tips Budgeting and Forecasting Traffic Estimating Click Through Rate Expected spends Campaign Management Strategies Optimization Techniques Tools Available Conversion Analysis Identifying Metrics Tracking Methods Methods to improve conversion Ways to find the weak link in the conversion chain Tools Available Reporting What to track Tools for tracking Reports Ad Types and Networks Search Ads Text Ads Contextual Ads Local and Geo targeted Ads Graphic, Video, Mobile Ads Niche and vertical networks Quality Score What it is and how it works Tips to optimize campaign to improve Quality Score Minimum Bid Price Ad Position Troubleshooting Accounts Common Problems Diagnostic Tools Second and Third Tier Engines The players Different Programs Pros and Cons Click Fraud Symptoms of fraudulent activity What to do when you suspect fraud Legal Issues Related to Paid Search Trademarks Legal concerns Future Trends in Paid Advertising Resources
About the Instructor	Christine Churchill the President of KeyRelevance, is a recognized expert in the field of Search Engine Marketing. She is a strong advocate for ethical search engine marketing, and was a member of the founding Board of Directors of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO). Christine currently serves as the Chairman of the Dallas-Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (DFWSEM). Ms. Churchill holds a Masters Degree in Business and has over 10 years online marketing experience. Christine is a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies, Webmaster World Publishers Conference, High Rankings Seminars, Internet World, and other Internet conferences. In addition, she has written widely on search engine marketing for publications including SearchDay, MarketPosition, Workz, SitePoint, SearchEngineGuide, and NetMechanic, and has taught search marketing classes through the International Association of Webmasters. In addition to running KeyRelevance, Christine is the Search Engine Friendly Design and Usability Moderator and the Pay Per Click Moderator on the High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum.

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Usability & Accessibility

Event name:	Usability & Accessibility
Event type:	Improving Search with Accessibility and Usability Techniques
Date:	Friday, February 22, 2008
Status:	Spaces limited
Time:	1:00pm-5:00pm
Description:	Accessibility is not only the law in the UK, it is good business sense. In the same thought, the slightest usability changes can make a significant impact to your bottom line. The business case for both of these objectives is clear, and taking advantage of the upside can increase the amount of sales, leads, search engine rankings, and attention your website will receive. Accessibility is gaining a lot of attention internationally as major internet retailers like Target,com have been sued over access problems by the National Federation of the Blind in the US courts. In the UK, accessibility is the law, despite being a commercial or government website. With the latest concerns of Government plans to withdraw '.gov.uk' domains from non-compliant sites, this is becoming a harsh reality. Usability is a central theme of a website. Now that people are there, how do you get them to do what you want them to do? Incredibly enough, usability improvements to a website can improve search rankings, conversions, and branding. Many times, simple usability improvements can create the biggest impact in conversions. The reason that usability is so critical is that it focuses on the user experience. Usability is also a critical factor in Accessibility, and is usually overlooked. Combining the user experience of accessibility and usability creates a unique method of evaluating a site, prioritizing the experience into getting to the site and using the site. However, usability and accessibility both require elements that are beneficial to search marketing, thus the relationship among them. [ back to top ]
Who Is this Workshop For?	This workshop is for anyone who is responsible for the creation, management or marketing of a website. Site owners, marketers, managers, SEO's, and development firms wishing to understand the legal aspects of conforming to the Government Web Accessibility Plan, Disability Discrimination Act, Disability Equality Duty, and WCAG. The course will also cover the Pas 78 document for commissioning accessible websites.
How Will I Benefit?	This session will provide practices, advice, and testing procedures than can be immediately implemented. Practical lessons include: Usability Learn the different methods of conducting usability assessments. How to conduct low-cost usability assessments of your website. What to expect from high-cost usability testing. Usability's impact on search engines optimization. Usability's impact on PPC landing pages. Simple usability ideas that will improve your site immediately. Accessibility Learn and discover resources such as WAI, PAS 78, and the RNIB. Absolutely necessary programming to have an accessible website. The Accessibility checklist (in human terms). How to evaluate accessibility with common SEO tools. How accessibility is the counterpart to SEO. Evaluate your site for interoperability on web phones, PDA's and handhelds.
About the Instructor	Matt Bailey is president and founder of SiteLogic Marketing and an internationally recognized authority on search engine marketing, website analytics, usability, and accessibility. As a consulting and training company, SiteLogic focuses on helping organizations take control of their websites and their web marketing plans. Sought after worldwide as a seminar presenter and teacher; Matt speaks regularly for The Direct Marketing Association; Search Engine Strategies Conferences and Training; the American Advertising Federation, and many private training seminars. Matt is known for his conversational, entertaining speaking style and his ability to make technical topics both understandable and practical. Matt oversees The Direct Marketing Association's SEO Training Program and is the trainer for the DMA's Web Marketing Seminar. He has consulted with hundreds of companies including Goodyear, Hilton International, JCrew, Gradall, Moen Faucets, American Greetings, and Samsonite.

Google AdWords 101: Landing Pages

2008-01-13T19:53:00.000+05:30

Launching a PPC (define) campaign is still the best way to advertise online. You can measure your results. You can make changes on the fly. You can control your destiny.

Last time, we looked at the basic steps to set up a Google AdWords campaign. Now let's look at how to test your results with an easy landing page test.

A/B Landing Page Testing

With your paid listings in place, it's time to use A/B testing to perfect them.

In Google, you can have multiple ads in any ad group. When you're ready to do an in-depth keyword analysis, isolate the keywords with the highest CTRs (define) and the largest impression numbers in their own ad groups. This allows you to write two creatives for a specific keyword and test the results. The code is similar to what we discussed last time, www.yourdomain.com/?engine=AdWords&keyword=blue+widget, with addition of "+1" or "+2" (numbering the different creatives) at the end of the link: www.yourdomain.com/?engine=AdWords&keyword=blue+widget+1. This way you learn which ad for this keyword sends the best converting traffic.

The process actually is a little more complicated if you want to do it efficiently. You now have two major numbers to work into a further set of calculations. The first is the CTRs for each term. I usually turn off optimization during the first round of testing, so each ad gets an equal number of clicks.

You then calculate the CPA (define) for each ad. Divide total CPC (define) for the ad by the sales it brings in.

Sometimes the CPA differences jump out at you, making it tempting to let the winner be your chosen ad before looking any further. This could be a big mistake. It's one of the parts many people overlook in the battle to perfect paid listings. When you have a significant difference in the CTR and CPA, you must explore what each can mean to the cost of doing business.

Let's take an example. Blue widget's creative 1 generates 80 clicks from 1,000 impressions at a cost of $0.50. The CPC can vary a little, but for easy understanding and calculating, let's say both creatives have the same CPC and a CTR of 8 percent. Creative 2 generates 40 clicks at the same $0.50 with a 4 percent CTR.

The tracking shows us that creative 1 gets eight sales (conversion to impression rate: 0.8 percent) and creative 2 gets five sales (conversion to impression rate: 0.5 percent). Thus, the CPA for blue widget creative 1 is $5: $40 CPC divided by eight sales. The CPA for blue widget creative 2 is $4 : $20 CPC divided by five sales.

It's true that creative 2 costs less to get a sale. But since creative 1 generates more sales from the available traffic, the question of quantity versus quality must be taken into consideration. As long as both are profitable, you need to do more calculations.

If the gross profit per blue widget sold is $8, the profit per sale is $3 for creative 1 and $4 for creative 2.

But what about the number of impressions? Given the limited number of searches for any keyword, the CTR and profit per sale can be critical.

Let's say there are 50,000 searchers. Creative 1 generates 400 sales at the conversion to impression rate of 0.8 percent. Creative 2 would generates 250 sales from the same 50,000 impressions. Creative 1, then, generates 400 sales at $3 profit per sale for $1,200 for every 50,000 impressions. Creative 2, meanwhile, makes $1,000 from the same amount of traffic. (It gets a little easier the more you do this.)

The next step is to test improving the CTR and the CPA. With advanced Web analytics, you can then do visitor path analysis to see where visitors go on the site as a group when they come from a certain ad set. This allows you to make further changes to links on your page and where you land searchers when they do click.

Any successful PPC campaign has to work with the site it's sending traffic to. The more the two work in conjunction, the better the results will ultimately be.

Local Search Lives or Dies by User Reviews

2008-01-13T19:48:00.000+05:30

Back in the dark ages, referred to by some as BC (Before Computers), consumer opinions regarding personal experiences with businesses were passed around in a practice known as "Word of Mouth" marketing.

Jane tells Mary about how great her new microwave is, or that the service could have been better at the new restaurant in town. Soon enough, word gets around and sales are up for that microwave, and the service is carefully watched at the new restaurant.

The Internet has transformed word of mouth referrals into "user reviews" and "ratings," where consumers can comment on and rate products or services that they have purchased or experienced.

The Importance of User Reviews/Ratings

A study by comScore and the Kelsey Group, conducted in October 2007, found that online, consumer-created reviews have a big impact on prospective buyers. In fact, 24 percent of those who purchase local services -- people searching for restaurants, hotels, and automotive shops -- consult online ratings and reviews before making a choice.

This works both ways though. Consumers not only read reviews to decide what they'll spend their paycheck on, they also write the reviews, and not just to inform potential consumers.

A study by Bazaarvoice and Keller Fay (both user review and WOM marketing experts) found that 79 percent of reviewers write reviews to reward a company for the quality of the product or service they bought, with 87 percent of the reviews being positive in tone.

Reviews: The Good, Bad, and Misinformed

The good news about positive reviews is that according to the comScore/Kelsey Group study, 97 percent of review readers find the reviews they read to be accurate. However, the opposite, and of course more detrimental, could be said about bad reviews.

Advertisers and local business owners alike worry about user-generated content that comes with user reviews. They could be praised or destroyed in front of the public with just the click of a mouse. However, the recent study by Bazaarvoice and Keller Fay suggest that more than half of respondents surveyed usually left positive reviews.

Tone of User Reviews for Products & Services (on Bazaarvoice client Web sites) August-October 2007 (percent of respondents)

User Reviews/Ratings on Internet Yellow Pages, Local Search Sites

Once a rating or review is entered, it's posted near, or directly following, a specific business or product's listing information. Some systems allow consumers the ability to rate a business and/or product on a specific scale, which then factors into an overall ratings score for the business or product. This rating is often used as the determining factor or one of the factors in establishing listing positioning.

In just the past few years, the trend of user reviews and ratings has extended into local search sites. As a result, now nearly all local search sites offer a ratings and review component to their listing information.

YellowPages.com Business Listing Example

By Gregg Stewart

GUIDELINES FOR PPC MANAGEMENT & OPTIMIZATION

2008-01-13T19:29:00.000+05:30

1. Clearly define your goals with finite, measurable objectives.

2. Develop an operational plan that links those objectives with dedicated resources, processes, and relevant technology.

3. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) then set up a method for KPI based performance analysis and optimization of your campaigns.

4. Develop a customer acquisition model that helps meet your objectives through continuous testing of variables, strategies, and management tactics.

5. In real-time, test and analyze interrelated and constantly changing variables.
- Keyword selection
- Keyword matching
- Ad grouping
- Ad placement
- Ad copy tailoring
- Landing page design testing
- Bidding techniques assessment

6. Devote resources to keep up-to-date on the dynamic nature of search engines as well as your competitors.
- Ranking algorithms
- Search engine policies and offerings
- PPC category "share of voice"
- Competitor strategies & promotional offerings

7. While automated tools help to efficiently manage this complex process, nothing can replace human judgment, resourcefulness, and insight – rely on a mix of both.

Strategies to Make Your Pitch Perfect

2008-01-11T00:38:00.000+05:30

Here's a four-part game plan young entrepreneurs can use to present themselves and their ideas with confidence

As a communications coach, I enjoy working with young entrepreneurs because they have energy, passion, and vision. But unless they have a famous parent, amazing connections, or have created a truly game-changing technology like Skype (EBAY), many face the challenge of pitching their ideas to skeptical listeners. Because of this, Tory Johnson, chief executive officer of recruitment services firm Women for Hire and workplace contributor to Good Morning America, recommends that young entrepreneurs perfect their public speaking skills.

"Even if you're pitching the best idea on earth, if you don't come across as confident and knowledgeable, you won't get heard. On the flip side, sometimes an idea that's not so hot—or one that's easy to poke holes in—will likely be considered because you connected personally with the people you were pitching. Don't underestimate the power and importance of these soft skills." I agree with Johnson. Here are four strategies for young entrepreneurs to use to pitch themselves and their ideas with confidence.

1. Follow your passion

Donald Trump has been promoting his new book, and I know millions of people enjoy reading his ideas or watching him speak in person. Trump's key message is not how to get rich in real estate. His key message is simply to "love what you do." It seems as though most of Trump's other principles of success are all based on this key concept. I saw Trump do a recent TV interview where he urged young entrepreneurs to "know their subject" cold. But he also explained that if you're passionate about your subject, you'll do what it takes to learn everything about it. You see, it all goes back to passion (BusinessWeek.com, 8/31/06). I can teach people how to present more effectively, but I can't teach passion. And without it, you will have a much tougher time winning people over to your ideas.

2. Craft a concise, memorable vision

A vision is different from a mission statement. A mission statement is a long, complicated paragraph often created by committee and destined to sit at the bottom of a drawer somewhere. A vision is a concise picture of a brighter future made possible by your product or service. Ideally, it should be 10 words or fewer. Yes, I have actually been told this by prominent venture capitalists. One investor told me that if an entrepreneur cannot describe his product in 10 words or fewer, he's not investing. Period.

Why? Because conciseness actually demonstrates a thorough understanding of a particular problem in need of a solution. Interesting, isn't it? For example, I was once told by an investor at Sequoia Capital that when the "Google (GOOG) guys" (Sergey Brin and Larry Page) first approached the firm, the two young Stanford students had no track record or experience running companies.

But Brin and Page had passion for digital information and a concise vision: Google would provide "access to the world's information in one click" (eight words). The investor said when his team heard this, they understood the vision immediately and were eager to hear more. That's the point of a powerful, concise vision. It may not get investors to open up their wallets, but they will start reaching for them.

3. Follow the 10/20/30 rule

If you're not accustomed to using presentation software like PowerPoint, start practicing now. Investors, partners, and potential customers want to have information presented visually and have a hard copy they can take with them. But keep in mind
presentations (BusinessWeek.com, 4/10/07) can be done well or very poorly. Former Apple (AAPL) evangelist turned venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki, says he listens to hundreds of pitches, the majority of which "are so lousy that I'm losing my hearing." He's tired of useless jargon like "patent pending," "first mover advantage," and other empty terms. When I told Kawasaki that I was working on this column, he reminded me of his 10/20/30 rule.

The rule is simply: When giving a presentation, you should stick to 10 slides in 20 minutes with 30-point font. Following the rule forces you to refine your pitch. If you only have 10 slides, then you must edit the extraneous information. If you only give yourself 20 minutes to actually present your material, it forces you to stick to the most important information, and if you build slides with larger fonts, according to Kawasaki, "It will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well." I have never seen a persuasive presentation that deviates greatly from this rule. It works.

4. Dress like a leader

Your listeners are making judgments within the first 90 seconds of meeting you. That doesn't give you much time to deliver content, does it? That means they are forming impressions based on your body language and what you are wearing. A military hero who was depicted in the movie Black Hawk Down once told me that great leaders always look a little better than anyone else in the room.

Not too long after that conversation, I spoke to a former speech writer for Ronald Reagan. He said, "You know what I remember about Reagan—it might sound funny, but he always looked more 'put together' than anyone in the room." It wasn't surprising to me. Don't just dress to look like your friends, dress (BusinessWeek.com, 1/19/06) but like the leader you want to become.

The creator of TV shows Survivor and The Apprentice, Mark Burnett, once said "all success begins with the ability to sell something, whether it's a shirt or an idea." Selling an idea is tough enough for most entrepreneurs. Young entrepreneurs often have the extra challenge of having little or no experience. A persuasive pitch can help you clear that hurdle and put you on a path to success.

Affiliate Online Marketing A Good Place to Start

2008-01-06T12:13:00.000+05:30

Internet Affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular methods for making money online today because the products or business services have already been created for you. All that is needed is to promote, or advertise them in order to make sells and earn sales commissions which are pre-determined by the owner of the business product or service that you will be marketing.

In a typical affiliate Online marketing set up the merchant provides his or her affiliates with the tools and resources required to sell his product or internet business service. The affiliates use these online resources, such as banners, graphics, or text advertising to post on their sites, or to put in internet blogs. They can also be sent out in emails to create sales of the product or service that they are promoting. The affiliate then gets a percentage of the total price of the product when a sale is made, which is usually 25% to 75% of the total price of the product.

Signing up as an affiliate online marketer is easy. Just find a company that offers an affiliate program for their internet business product or service and fill in their online form with your personal details. Most affiliate programs are free to join and most offer valuable instructions to help you get started in selling their business products. The merchant stands to gain from your success so it is to their benefit to help you succeed with your affiliate marketing business.

AdSense Relevancy, How Google Determines this?

2008-01-06T12:12:00.000+05:30

There are many Adsense publishers that viewing the ads. So I believe you also think same thing like me: How are they going to get the relevant ads?

When attempting to match ads with those pages Google considers:

Entire keyword list associated with an ad group.
You want to use well themed keyword adgroups to help ensure your ads are delivered properly. Including generic words like laptop can make it harder for Google to understand what your adgroup is trying to sell.
Using appropriate campaign negative keywords can also help further target your ads.
Adgroup creative are also used to help understand what ads to display.
Max PPC and click through rate also play into the order of the ads displayed.

Making Profits with Google Adwords

2008-01-06T12:09:00.000+05:30

I was starting my online marketing just 2 years ago and makes some money from the internet. Yeah, little money from my photoshop skills.

I want to try to setup my own logo's website that will create a logo for a blogspot, same like what you see now at ppc-strategy.blogspot.com. So i'll try make up one and will try to promote via Google Adwords (pay per click) and looks how it's going on. With just usd5, it just pay off to try this great tool.

Plus, I'll place google adsense to that web too :P

I know that bigginer like me will lose some money at first, so i need to ask person that more expert s in this area. (maybe by asking/searching to their blog?)

I have read 5 steps to make money with google adwords, taken from adwords-revealed.com:

Steps Number 1: Target profitable two-tier or residual income niche markets.

First, the products or services that you will promote with Google Adwords should target a niche where people have lots of money and are willing to spend it. In other word, think about what people are willing to buy.

Step Number 2: Use effective tools and software for your Google Adwords keyword research.

Use Effective Tools for Your Google Adwords Keyword Research

First, did you know that you can spy on your competitors keywords by using an amazing tool called GoogSpy: http://www.googspy.com

Simply, enter a domain name of your direct competitors and see what keywords they are bidding on. This little-known secret could make your online profits soar instantly.

Second, as you probably know, the competition among advertisers in ppc marketing is fierce. That's why you should avoid using only free keyword research tools like
Overture's Keyword Selector: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

You will miss lots of profitable keywords if you do so. To succeed with ppc the only tool that works is WordTracker: http://www.adwords-revealed.com/wordtracker

You should take at least a one day's subscription when you are ready for your keyword research.

Step Number 3: Get a Domain name, a Hosting Account, and Create a Simple
Landing Page

If you don't have your own web site for your niche product or service that you advertise with ppc search engines, you are leaving money on the table.

Step Number 4: Capture Your Google Adwords Visitors' E-mail Addresses

Yes, you can promote affiliate links directly with Google Adwords. However, this way you will lose lots of prospects that could be contacted later.

Picture this...

When you promote an affiliate link you drive traffic directly to your affiliate web site. If a visitor doesn't purchase the product or service immediately, the chances are he or she will never purchase from your affiliate link again.

Of course, top affiliate programs place cookies on their web site visitors' browsers. This way you get paid even if your referral returns to your affiliate web site later. That's why it is important to select the best affiliate programs from the begining.

If you can achieve 1% visitor to sales conversion ratio (it means 1 sale from 100 visitors) with Google Adwords - you have a winner!

Imagine... What if you could set up a simple opt-in form on your landing page and write a great copy encouraging your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or an e-mail course? You would enjoy not 1% but 20 - 30% visitor to subscriber conversion ratio when driving targeted traffic
to your web site with Google Adwords!

You see, when you capture email addresses, you build a list. And, as they say - money is in the list!

Step Number 5: Follow Up With Your Subscribers and Pre-Sell Your Products
and Services

This step is where you make real profit. Simply, create quality targeted content in your newsletter or ecourse and follow up with your prospects using autoresponders.

It is said that online products and services are sold after 7 - 9 follow up messages. Besides, you can contact your subscribers anytime later as new quality products hit your targeted niche market.

This simple surefire action plan should help you boost your homebased Google Adwords business profit instantly. As you can see, without a web site you cannot profit as much
as you could by simply creating a one-page website.

Now i have some idea!!

SEO Service- Keyword Analysis

2008-01-05T17:05:00.000+05:30

Keyword Analysis & Ranking

Good keyword analysis is the first step in a successful search engine marketing campaign. If you do not choose good keywords, then you never get a rank and your efforts will be washed. But the main problem is How to choose Good keywords. The best key words will be words that have a large search volume but little competitions. Here are some ways to search for such keywords.

· A perfect keyword is list of words and phrases that related to your website and people might type into search engines when looking for your site

· Each page on your site should have one to three related keyword phrases that are site-specific. For example, if your website is related to Shoes, Good phrases to target on this page would be buy shoes, get online shoes, or stylish shoes. They are all related, and they are all pointing at the same general content on the page.

You can use the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool to get an estimation of the search volume of a key phase.

Competition Analysis:

When consumers use search engines, they want results quickly. Many users will stop at the first page of results — maybe even on the first couple of links. If a site isn't near the top of the first page, it will essentially be invisible.

Competition Analysis: Competitor analysis has two primary activities, 1) obtaining information about important competitors, and 2) using that information to predict competitor behavior. Competitive factors include how attentive sites are to optimization issues and the number of relevant inbound links they have received. Clustered meta search engines such as Ixquick and Zworks can provide a quick overview of the competitive landscape on any given search term.

There are few steps for competition analysis.

Firstly, find the main 2-10 keywords of your website. Suppose if you are selling mobile then perfect keyword for that is buy mobile, buy mobile phones, buy cheap mobile etc. After that search, these keywords on search engine like google, yahoo or msn. Then choose two website, which is ranking on top 10. Then make a sheet

You have to compare these things between your site and related competitor website.

· Google Page Rank
· Back links
· Page Index
· Google Ranking on these keywords

Competition Analysis is a method to know website Physical strength. If you want to know how much your website is improving, you can do monthly web site analysis. It’s better option to know your site strength.

SEO Service | Search Engine Optimization | Search Engine Marketing

2008-01-05T17:04:00.000+05:30

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization". It is the process of analyzing your potential design and problems for search engines indexing and positioning. In other words, making your web site and its content attractive, relevant and visible to search engines and web searchers.

There is nothing worse than having a beautiful web site with excellent written content, though you still lose traffic or you even keep potential visitors away, while your site cannot be found.

Before you begin optimizing your pages for Search Engines, consider that the following search engine optimization techniques are SPAM!

* automatically generated doorway pages;
* cloaking and false redirects;
* keyword stuffing;
* hidden text or hidden links;
* pages loaded with irrelevant words;
* duplicated content on multiple pages;
* misspelling of well-known web sites;
* unrelated and centralized link farms;
* other methods that try to trick search engines.

If you use one of the above techniques, you might get short term results, but it's most likely that your site will be banned from search engines, and therefore you will put your business at severe risk.

You will have more success, if you will optimize your site for humans, and not machines.

More about: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

More about "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seo

Don't miss this article too! "Why SEO should be important to you".

An excellent SEO Analysis Tool! .

VALUABLE RESOURCES & TOOLS
Please report broken links or other issues, as misleading information, etc.

SEO Code of Ethics
* Search Engine Optimization Code of Ethics http://www.bruceclay.com/web_ethics.htm

Search Engines Guidelines for Webmasters
* Google Webmaster Guidelines http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
* Yahoo! Search Site Guidelines http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html
* MSN Guidelines for Webmasters http://search.msn.com.my/webmasters/guidelines.aspx
* Ask Jeeves Guidelines for Webmasters http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/policy.html
* Open Directory Editorial Guidelines http://dmoz.org/guidelines/include.html
* Zeal Guidelines Overview http://www.zeal.com/guidelines/overview.jhtml
* Overture's SiteMatch™ Content Guidelines http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/ays/sm_gl.jhtml

* Filing at Google a reinclusion request - howto http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/
* Remove content from Google's index http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35301

Search Engines Spammer Reporting
* Overture, AllTheWeb feedback@Overture.com
* AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/help/contact/search
* Google, AOL http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
* Ask Jeeves http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/contact_tuwyt.php
* DMOZ / ODP http://report-abuse.dmoz.org/
* Lycos http://help.lycos.com/watchdog/watchdog_1_help.asp
* Inktomi, MSN reportspam@inktomi.com
* Teoma ask@teoma.com
* Yahoo reportsearchspam@yahoo-inc.com

Sandbox & Banned Sites Checker Tools
* Google Sandbox Checker Tool http://www.searchenginegenie.com/sandbox-checker.htm
* Google Banned Site Checker http://www.searchenginegenie.com/google-banned-site-checker.php
* Yahoo Banned Site Checker http://www.searchenginegenie.com/yahoo-banned-site-checker.php
* MSN Banned Site Checker http://www.searchenginegenie.com/msn-banned-site-checker.php
* Another Google Banned Tool http://www.123promotion.co.uk/tools/googlebanned.php

Search Engines Information for Webmasters
* Google Information for Webmasters http://www.google.com/webmasters/bot.html

SEO Tutorials
* SEOmoz Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization http://www.seomoz.org/beginners.php
* Do It Yourself SEO, Where Do I Begin http://www.jaankanellis.com/seo-where-do-i-begin/
* Basics of search engine optimisation http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/2005...e_optimisation/
* Website Promotion Tutorials by instantPROMOTION http://www.instantposition.com/website-promotion/
* Google vs Yahoo! vs MSN Search: Defining Search Engine Relevancy http://www.seobook.com/relevancy/

SEO TIPS
* SEO Toolkit 21 part guide to getting a top-10 listing on Google and Yahoo http://www.rlrouse.com/SEO.html
* Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines http://www.highrankings.com/tentips.htm
* Bruce Clay Search Engine Optimization Technical Tips http://www.bruceclay.com/seo-tech-tips/techtips.htm

SEO/SEM Books
* SEO Book - Learn Search Engine Optimization Today
* Search Engine Marketing Book

SEO Desktop Software
* GR Search Engine Optimizer

Free Online SEO Tools
* Page Strength SEO Tool http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php
* instantPROMOTION SEO Tools http://www.instantposition.com/free_tools.cfm
* Sitening SEO Analyzer - A Web Standards & SEO Web Design Page Analyzer http://www.sitening.com/tools/seo-analyzer/
* Reaction Engine Free Online SEO Analysis http://www.reactionengine.com/
* Digitalpoint Keyword Ranking Monitor (Search Engine Positioning Tool) http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
* SEOBook Free SEO Tools http://tools.seobook.com
* AbiLogic Page Keywords Analyzer http://www.abilogic.com/seo/
* SEO Scanner http://www.webmasterbrain.com/
* Keyword Density & Prominence http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
* Meta Tag Analyzer http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/
* Search Engine Keyword Tracker & Keyword Ranking Tool http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
* Web Site Analysis http://www.sitesolutions.com/analysis.asp
* Free Robots.txt Generator http://www.mcanerin.com/search-engine/robots-txt.htm
* Robots.txt syntax checker http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html
* Robots.txt Validator http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/robotcheck.cgi
* Link Vendor SEO Tools http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/
* Bad Neighborhood Text Link Checker http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/
* Free Site Map Generator http://www.freesitemapgenerator.com/

Free SEO Desktop Tools
* WebCEO Download Web CEO for FREE
* Good Keywords http://www.goodkeywords.com/
* Free Monitor for Google http://www.cleverstat.com/google-monitor-query.htm
* SEO Junkie Site Wide Duplicate Content Analyzer http://www.seojunkie.com/2006/05/24/site-wide-duplicate-content-analyzer/
* GSite Crawler Google Sitemap Generator for Windows http://gsitecrawler.com

Web Site Submission at Major Search Engines
* Google http://www.google.com/addurl/
* Yahoo! https://login.yahoo.com/config/login?.src=s...om/free/request
* MSN http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

Web Site Submission at Human-edited Directories
* DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
* Webnauts Net Human and Search Engine Friendly Web Directory http://directory.webnauts.net/suggest-link.php

SEO Discussion Forums
* SEO Workers http://forums.seoworkers.com
* Webnauts Net http://forums.webnauts.net
* Digitalpoint http://forums.digitalpoint.com
* Google Community http://www.googlecommunity.com/
* Search Engine Forums http://www.searchengineforums.com/

Social Bookmarking
* Social Bookmarking (all in one) http://ekstreme.com/socializer/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webnauts.net%2F&title=Socializer

SEO Joke
A declaration of the abbreviation SPAM:
S = SITES
P = PLACED
A = ABOVE
M = MINE

Turn on your loudspeakers to hear the spam hymn: http://www.mailmsg.com/sounds/spam-song.wav

Top Online Dating Sites: Singlesnet takes the lead

2008-01-05T15:36:00.000+05:30

Online personal sites are a lot like social networks; the most critical factor for a site’s success is people. More specifically, the volume and activity level of members needs to be high enough for users to make connections, and for visitors to be enticed to join. But despite the online personals market becoming increasingly crowded with newcomers, the top dogs of the industry seem to be as strong as ever.

The chart below compares total site traffic to total active members for the top US online personal sites. By comparing these two numbers, its possible to see how factors such as acquisition efforts, site design, and audience impact site usage.
10 Ten US Dating Sites: Visitors vs. Members

* Mate1.com and True.com both do a terrific job of driving visitors to their sites, but this traffic simply doesn’t convert. Members represent 13% and 24% of total visitors (respectively).

* HotorNot.com members also make up a small share (21%) of total visitors, but this results from the fact that visitors can rate members (the main draw of the site) without being a member themselves.

* Plentyoffish.com, a service built on ad revenue is a great success for all involved. More visitors become members because the service is completely free, and the site generates an a great deal more money because members consume considerably more pages.

* Niche dating site BlackPeopleMeet.com also sees a large number of members as a share of total visitors (71%) due to a very targeted audience.

Top 10 US dating sites: total member visits

The next step in the love equation is member usage, and if repeat visitation is any indicator, consumers find a great deal of value in free (or at least open) services. The chart above shows overall member involvement (measured as the total number of times a member accessed each site). Since this metric is a function of both total members and member activity, it paints a more accurate picture of each site’s base.

* SinglesNet.com, ranked 4th in terms of UVs, ranks first in total member visits at over 27 million in December. A fairly open platform and free trial membership helps encourage registrations and an average of 10.7 monthly visits per member.

* PlentyofFish.com, despite having around 1/5 as many visitors, nearly ties Yahoo Personals in terms of total visits. The entirely free service encourages users to communicate, and drives Plentyoffish members to visit the site an average of 14 times a month.

* While the represent major dating services in terms of total visitors, both True.com and Mate1.com look like they compete more with Niche site BlackPeopleMeet when compared on the basis of member visits. Aggressive acquisition and sales tactics (such as requiring a subscription for any type of user-to-user communication) are prime factors in their equally low repeat visitation (around 5 times per month per user)

With social networking providing much the same service as a dating site, its interesting that pure online personals sites continue to grow. But then again, “looking for anything I can get” doesn’t really mean anything on Facebook, but it will probably get you a full inbox on Mate1.

Common PPC Mistakes

2007-01-05T16:00:00.000+05:30

As I manage quite a few PPC campaigns I always notice the silly and sometimes not so silly mistakes that advertisers make with their PPC programs.

Mistakes when creating PPC ads, click fraud detection, and lack of testing are just a few of them. Fixing each of these mistakes could mean an extra 70% of revenue or a savings of thousands of dollars every month.

Below is a list (we all love those lists don't we?) of the most common mistakes marketers make with their paid search (PPC) advertising campaigns.

1. Bidding Broad - It's important to not be lazy when setting up that campaign of yours. Every industry has their giant keywords that bring the most traffic but there are many more variation of keywords that are being searched. The more you focus on the "long tail keywords", the less you're going to pay per click. Furthermore, your ads will be ranked higher if the keyword is closer matched. Take your 100 keywords and make them into 200 by just looking at your own web statistics for exact keyword variations people use to search for your product.

2. Fighting for #1 Spot - Most of the time (from my experience), being #1 ad in paid search results is not the brightest strategy, especially if you're paying a lot per click and the keyword is broad. I found that one of THE best ranks in paid search is being #3 (top left side for Google). Look, most people do research before they buy online. Being #1 could mean that you'll attract visitors who might have not used the right keyword for their search or ones that are just starting their research and thus you'll be remembered last when they are ready to buy.

3. Avoiding Geo-targeting - Even if what you sell works all over US or world, people are still more keen on using a local provider or at least a company that recognizes "their state". It's just a psychological thing. Google and other search engines allow you to geo-target your PPC ads by state. Create 50 ads and drop in the state name inside the ad. You will surely get a higher click through rate (CTR) and thus a lower CPC. Furthermore right from the start, your visitor will know that you "recognize" their location.

4. Losing Relevance on Landing Page - Whatever you say in your ad repeat it on the landing page where you're taking the visitor! If you are advertising an 80% sale in your ad, you can be sure that people are looking for it when they land on your landing page. If they don't see it they leave. It's kind of like a scent they pick up on when they read your PPC ad and look for when they land on a page you take them to.

5. Getting Rid of Fraud Networks - Every paid search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, has a network to which they distribute your ads. Unfortunately, many of these networks are fraudulent and do not refer quality traffic. Look into your web statistics and find domain names that bring you traffic with a high bounce rate. Usually it will be around 90%. Google allows you to drop these domains into a "negative excluded sites" folder while Yahoo and others make you call them to address the problem. Doing this will prevent you from paying for garbage traffic.

6. Being Boring - I still see marketers go online, search for a keyword, look at the advertisers (competition) and create ads to fit in with the "community". Silly right? Unfortunately, very true. Anytime you create a paid ad you MUST look at what is already being said by the advertisers and come up with something unique and yet relevant. It's a tough one but you have to identify what is unique about you and why people should buy from you. Just make sure that it's what your target market wants and cares about.

7. Using Telephone Numbers - Using a telephone number within your PPC ad is an eye catcher that's all. Not many people will pick up their phone and dial your number if they see your ad. So what you're doing is just wasting space that can be used for a good message. Tests have been done and this was proven quite a few times get rid of that phone number in the ad.

8. Not Bidding for Your Name - If your competition is targeting your company name as a keyword I'd suggest taking legal actions (if applicable). In our company we send out those legal letters at least every other month to a competitor. If you're in a different situation bidding for your keywords will mean more traffic and another real estate space devoted to you on that search results page. I'd even bid for the company name if there were no competitors at all. You will pay around 0.05 to 0.10 cents per click and see the amount of searches (impressions) that are done for your brand name. A little of extra statistics that shows you the possible growth of your company.

9. Lack of Affiliate Control - The company name is usually the highest converting keyword. Your affiliates know this and advertise under your company's name in paid search. What happens is that not only do you now have to pay your affiliate for the sale "they" brought in, but you've already paid your due with your own advertising methods for that customer to know your name before the search. Be sure to prevent your affiliates advertising in paid search for your company's name. All they are doing there is collecting the cash from your own advertising.

10. Not Separating Content Match from Search Results - This is a mistake 101. Yes it takes time, but any campaign should separate their regular search advertising from content match. This will allow you to get better reporting, set different cost per click, different budget and overall have a cleaner look at both of these campaigns. Just separate into 2 campaigns. Both will have same keywords but one campaign will be created only for "search" and the other one for "content match".

11. Ignoring the Seasonal Copy - It works. Including a seasonal discount or a "holiday special" in your ad copy is a great way to increase your CTR and get more sales. Furthermore, your ad will clearly stand out from the rest. Make it a Christmas special, Spring special, Summer blow out, etc. Make it relevant to "today".

12. Lack of "Exact Tracking" - You must be able to track every visit to your site from PPC advertising by the exact keyword, campaign and ad group used. To do so you can set variables (yourcompany.com/?keyword) or integrate your PPC campaigns with your website analytics software. This is the only way you can really calculate the effectiveness of every keyword you use to get traffic.

13. Paying for Negative Keywords - Google and other search engines allow you to report keywords for which your ads should not be shown. If you're paying for "broad match" keywords, you'll see a lot of visits from people who've typed your keyword with a word "free" or "stock" or "jobs". Do you want to pay money for visitors who're looking to pay $0 for what you sell? Do you want to pay money for visitors who are researching stock info on what you sell? Be sure to use that "negative keyword folder" to get rid of these worthless clicks.

14. Mistaking CTR with conversion rate when testing ads - We love to test and that's great, but what should marketers look for when choosing which ads to keep and which to delete? Looking only at the CTR (click through rate) is a false indication of a better performing ad. If you add a word "FREE" to your ad, you'll see a jump in your CTR but what good will it do?

15. Not Using Keywords in Ad Copy - This is a simple one. Put keywords into your ad copy for which you are serving the ad. Not only will your ad be more relevant but the keywords in it are going to be bold.

16. Not Calling Google - Ok, I am not a fan of being a "rat" or telling on someone, but my friend when it comes to business and playing fair, you have every right to raise a flag when you see a competitor engaging in bad techniques. You'll notice some of your competitors creating multiple accounts and having 2 ads simultaneously on the Google PPC results page. Google has a policy against this. Call Google and let them know if your competitor is doing anything that's against the rules of the search engine. You'll be amazed how quickly they take care of the problem.

17. Avoiding Brand Name Keywords - It is unfortunate, but many companies do not take advantage of their competitors. How do you do this? Bid on their brand / company name. Think about it anyone searching for your competitor could easily be your customer instead. Why not have your ad show up under that keywords? What if they are still shopping around? What if they are searching for your competitor's name because they saw their TV or radio ad. Bottom line is, bid on your competitor's brand names. Most of the time the ROI on those keywords is excellent. If you get a "legal letter" from the competitors and it holds water, I'd suggest comply with it.

Seven Questions Employees Should Ask Before Joining a Startup

2006-11-28T17:20:00.000+05:30

In continuing what is turning out to be my “list of sevens” series (see also: Seven Reasons To Become a Founding Entrepreneur and Seven Founding Sins), I wanted to list seven questions which prospective employees that should ask before joining a startup. While most of the material I’ve written in this blog about startups has been related to founders/entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, most people involved in startup endeavors fall under neither of those categories. They’re employees.

There are many benefits associated with joining a startup as an employee at any level (energized work atmosphere, little bureaucracy, upside), but there are many significant risks coupled with them as well. Of course, a prospective employee should ask numerous questions of both his/her role and the company before joining any firm, but there is a set of questions specific to joining a startup that people should pose. I’ve tried to outline what I think are some of the most important questions below. Keep in mind that this is by no means an exhaustive list, merely a suggested seven to get a discussion going. I encourage everyone to suggest additional questions in the comments section below.

If you are receiving employee options, what is the number of fully-diluted outstanding shares?
Typically, option grants are a key component of compensation in a start-up and are often promoted as such. But the details surrounding stock options are often complex and confusing for non financially-oriented individuals. It is best for employees to understand as much as possible about their option grants (this subject could be the topic for an entire series), but the first place to start is to ask how many outstanding shares there are. From that point, one can calculate the percentage of the company an employee will own and a better gauge of the magnitude of this compensation component. It surprises me how many startup employees I know who are excited to have received a grant of x number of options, but never bothered to ask what relative percentage of the company that translates into.

Has there ever been a down round, a flat round, or a CEO change?
Any of these three events are an indicator that the startup has faced some difficulties in the past and may not be on track moving forward. If one of them has occurred, prospective employees should seek out as much information as they can the context of the situation. After all, there are exceptions to blind the assumption that these are a black mark (e.g. a founding CEO stepping aside to make room for professional management could be an indicator of successful growth). However, if any of these issues have arisen, it is a signal to dig deeper into the health of the business.

What is the burn rate and how much cash is in the bank now?
Even if a start-up is successfully executing, it could still face a cash crunch if it is not yet profitable. Employees should ask to find out how much longer the company will ride without the infusion of another round capital. While the actual answer to this question won’t necessarily provide a definitive answer about the ability for the company to access both cash and capital, it will open up a discussion about it.

What is the plan for exit strategy and its timeframe?
The answer to this question is a soft one with many factors, and can always change depending on circumstances. However, it is best to find out management’s view of a possible exit strategy. Is the company pieced together for a quick flip, building for multi-year significant value creation, or plan on holding for the long term as an eventual cash cow (for founder/investors)? These expectations will affect not only how long employees may be working for the company as it exists today, but more importantly, the resulting surrounding corporate culture.

Could you meet the CEO, the founder(s), and those on the management team?
Start-ups are all about the people involved. And there are a small number of people who are largely going to affect the organization. Even if an entry-level employee is going to work in engineering, I think it makes sense for him/her to meet the VP Sales; likewise, a marketing manager should meet the CTO. Yet it might not happen unless the prospective employee requests it. The handful at the top are going to have a profound affect on the future of the company as a whole and the position (regardless of function), and therefore it is best to meet as many people possible in the company possible before joining.

Are there plans in the next six months to hire anyone along the chain-in-command between your position and the CEO?
Start-ups often have key vacant positions open as the companies expand and grow quickly. I recommend explicitly asking if there is an anticipated change in the reporting structure in the foreseeable future, as any modifications or additions (even those a few rungs up in the ladder) could significantly affect employees’ roles and responsibilities.

How many employees did/does/will the company have six month ago, now, six months from now, a year from now?
Employee count is a strong (but not a perfect) proxy for management’s and investors’ outlook on the business. Start-ups hire ahead of growth (or at least predicted growth), which translate into a viable company, a healthy work environment, and future internal opportunities. Financial figures and projections are helpful indicators, certainly, but are often a distortion of the full picture (especially early on in a company’s cycle). The growth in employee count (or lack thereof) directly signals how much work needs to be accomplished how rosy the expectations are.

Why employees leave organizations?

2006-11-28T15:04:00.000+05:30

Every company normally faces one common problem of high employee turnout ratio. People are leaving the company for better pay, better profile or simply for just one reason 'pak gaya'. This article might just throw some light on the matter...got it as a forward email...

Early this year, Rahul, an old friend who is a senior software designer, got an offer from a prestigious international firm to work in its India operations developing specialized software. He was thrilled by the offer. He had heard a lot about the CEO of this company, charismatic man often quoted in the business press for his visionary attitude.

The salary was great. The company had all the right systems in place employee-friendly human resources (HR) policies, a spanking new office, and the very best technology, even a canteen that served superb food. Twice Rahul was sent abroad for training. "My learning curve is the sharpest it's ever been," he said soon after he joined. "It's a real high working with such cutting edge technology." Last week, less than eight months after he joined, Rahul walked out of the job. He has no other offer in hand but he said he couldn't take it anymore. Nor, apparently, could several other people in his department who have also quit recently. The CEO is distressed about the high employee turnover. He's distressed about the money he's spent in training them. He's distressed because he can't figure out what happened. Why did this talented employee leave despite a top salary? Rahul quit for the same reason that drives many good people away.

The answer lies in one of the largest studies undertaken by the Gallup Organization. The study surveyed over a million employees and 80,000 managers and was published in a book called “First Break All The Rules”. It came up with this surprising finding:

If you're losing good people, look to their immediate supervisor. More than any other single reason, he is the reason people stay and thrive in an organization. And he's the reason why they quit, taking their knowledge, experience and contacts with them. Often, straight to the competition.

"People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. "So much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping good people - in the form of better pay, better perks and better training - when, in the end, turnover is mostly manager issue." If you have a turnover problem, look first to your managers. Are they driving people away? Beyond a point, an employee's primary need has less to do with money, and more to do with how he's treated and how valued he feels. Much of this depends directly on the immediate manager. And yet, bad bosses seem to happen to good people everywhere. A Fortune magazine survey some years ago found that nearly 75 per cent of employees have suffered at the hands of difficult superiors. You can leave one job to find - you guessed it, another wolf in a pin-stripe suit in the next one. Of all the workplace stressors, a bad boss is possibly the worst, directly impacting the emotional health and productivity of employees.

HR experts say that of all the abuses, employees find public humiliation the most intolerable. The first time, an employee may not leave, but a thought has been planted. The second time, which thought gets strengthened. The third time, he starts looking for another job.
When people cannot retort openly in anger, they do so by passive aggression. By digging their heels in and slowing down. By doing only what they are told to do and no more. By omitting to give the boss crucial information. Dev says: "If you work for a jerk, you basically want to get him into trouble. You don't have your heart and soul in the job." Different managers can stress out employees in different ways - by being too controlling, too suspicious, too pushy, too critical, but they forget that workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents. When this goes on too long, an employee will quit – often over seemingly trivial issue.

It isn't the 100th blow that knocks a good man down. It's the 99 that went before. And while it's true that people leave jobs for all kinds of reasons- for better opportunities or for circumstantial reasons, many who leave would have stayed - had it not been for one man constantly telling them, as Rahul's boss did: "You are dispensable. I can find dozens like you." While it seems like there are plenty of other fish especially in today's waters, consider for a moment the cost of losing a talented employee. There's the cost of finding a replacement. The cost of training the replacement. The cost of not having someone to do the job in the meantime. The loss of clients and contacts the person had with the industry. The loss of morale in co-workers. The loss of trade secrets this person may now share with others. Plus, of course, the loss of the company's reputation. Every person who leaves a corporation then becomes its ambassador, for better or for worse.

We all know of large IT companies that people would love to join and large television companies few want to go near. In both cases, former employees have left to tell their tales.

"Any company trying to compete must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee," Jack Welch of GE once said. Much of a company's value lies "between the ears of its employees". If it's bleeding talent, it's bleeding value. Unfortunately, many senior executives busy traveling the world, signing new deals and developing a vision for the company, have little idea of what may be going on at home. That deep within an organization that otherwise does all the right things, one man could be driving its best people away.

Insolvencies reach record levels

2006-11-06T16:11:00.000+05:30

A record number of people in England and Wales went insolvent between July and September, official figures show.

The government's Insolvency Service said 27,644 people went bankrupt or entered into Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) to manage debts.

Overall, insolvencies are 55% higher than during the same three-month period in 2005 and are widely expected to top 100,000 for the entire year.

Experts have blamed greater personal debt for the rise in insolvencies.

Controversial

Significantly, the insolvency figures show that the proportion of people taking out IVAs has risen relative to those going bankrupt.

In total, 15,416 people went bankrupt between July and September. At the same time, 12,228 people entered into IVAs.

A year ago, just over 12,000 went bankrupt and fewer than 6,000 entered into an IVA.
The sharp rise in IVAs has been controversial.

IVAs are heavily marketed by providers, who make money from acting as go-betweens for lenders and borrowers.

Some debt charities have criticised IVA providers for marketing them to people who would be better off either going bankrupt or coming to an informal arrangement with creditors.

"If the current trend continues, the number of IVAs will overtake the number of bankruptcy next year and that is an indication that the IVA solution is becoming more popular than is good for people," said Malcolm Hurlston, chairman of the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS), a debt charity.

Lenders, too, are concerned at the rise in IVAs.

"Several lending institutions have raised concerns at these record levels and have commented on the limited extent to which the advice sector is regulated," Stephen Treharne, head of personal insolvency at accountancy firm KPMG, told BBC News.

In response, a leading IVA provider, Thomas Charles, told BBC News that they were reacting to a real consumer need and not pushing the IVA concept inappropriately.

"If somebody in debt talks to a debt advisory firm, they should be given a full understanding of all the options - including bankruptcy, IVAs and informal arrangement plans," said James Falla, managing director of Thomas Charles.

"The key is, advice has to be measured, correct and well-targeted. Nobody can enter an IVA without the acceptance of the creditors and that ultimately is the backstop," he added.

Rate rise

Problems for debtors may just be about to get worse.

Next week, the Bank of England will decide whether UK interest rates should rise, thereby pushing mortgage repayments higher.

Most analysts predict that an interest rate rise from 4.75% to 5% is on the cards.

Yahoo! engine sparks Browzar backlash

2006-10-20T03:25:00.000+05:30

The man behind private surfing tool Browzar has responded to mounting criticism by assuring users that the search tool on the application's homepage will be dropped immediately.

A major element of the backlash since Browzar's launch last week has been related to its utilisation of Yahoo!'s Overture search engine, which has outraged many users by burying impartial results behind pages of sponsored results.

As a result, some have called Browzar "adware", a claim Ajaz Ahmed - founder of Freeserve and now Browzar - has denied.

Ahmed said on Monday: "We don't do adware. We have Overture and people are not happy with the way that they show their results. As a response to that, the engine is going to be changed." He added that the new engine would be one that explicitly labels its sponsored results as such.

The problems extend beyond Overture, which is the same engine used by websites such as Lycos and Orange. Bloggers such as Scott Hanselman have pointed out that Browzar does not erase all traces of activity as it claims, leaving some pages in the cache of Internet Explorer, the browser on which the Browzar application depends.

Ahmed said on Monday he had been "corresponding with Scott". He said Browzar was "currently investigating that situation" and would "come up with an update to fix it".

Other inconsistencies are also apparent. For example, logging into a Google Account through its homepage then shutting the Browzar application leaves you still logged into Google if you then visit it in IE. Ahmed added: "It's still in beta form. We'd be more than happy to listen to anyone and make appropriate changes."

He also hit back at criticism that Browzar was being touted as a browser, when it is in fact an IE shell application. Although the application's website generally avoids calling it a browser, it is referred to as such in some parts of the site's FAQ section. "We've not tried to hide the fact that it's an IE shell," said Ahmed. "If we need to make that more explicit then we'll certainly change that."

Browzar - which is free to download or run from the company's website - is designed to offer a private browsing experience by avoiding the retention of any cache or autocomplete data.

Ahmed called the response since last week's launch "overwhelming" and claimed the company had already received thousands of congratulatory emails from satisfied users.

Google Debuts 200 Year News Archive Search

2006-10-20T03:16:00.000+05:30

News and history junkies take heart: Google's new News Archive Search lets you search back over twenty decades worth of historical content, including scads of articles not previously available via the search engine.

"The goal of this service is to allow people to search and explore how history unfolded," said Anurag Acharya, Google distinguished engineer, who played a major role in shepherding the new product.

Google has partnered with news organizations including Time, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Guardian and the Washington Post, and aggregators including Factiva, LexisNexis, Thomson Gale and HighBeam Research, to index the full-text of content going back 200 years.

Archived news results can be found in three ways. You can search the news archives directly through a new News Archive Search page. News archive results are also returned when you search on Google News or do a general Google web search and your query has relevant historical news results.

Both free and fee-based content is included in Archive Search, with content from both publishers and aggregators. Search results available for a fee are labeled "pay-per-view" or with a specific price indicated. Google does not host this content; clicking on a link for fee-based content takes you to the content owner or aggregator's web site where you must complete the transaction before gaining access to the content.

Search results look similar to those produced by a search on Google news, with a few additional time-related features.

"Much like news, we are grouping related articles together from a given time period," said Acharya. "The ranking here, as you may expect from a Google service, is based entirely on relevance," with no precedence given to fee-based vs. free content. The mix of fee vs. free links will also vary depending on your query.

On the left side of search results are links to drill down into content from specific time periods. A blue arrow icon points to a "period of particular interest," when an event occurred or "something special happened," said Acharya.

One of the most interesting features of the new service is how it automatically creates a timeline that shows how an event or topic played out over time. Clicking the "timeline" link reorders results in chronological order; you can then drill down to get content from specific dates simply by browsing. There's also an option to limit search results to a single day via the advanced search page, according to Acharya.

This is a fantastic feature for people interested in seeing how a particular historic event played out over time. But it's also useful for simply keeping up with the progress of contemporary events. "We usually see history as a view of the past many years later," said Acharya. "Now we can enable you to search for anything and everything as it unfolds."

The service is rolling out with a U.S. English interface, but there's already a lot of non-English content available. "Our coverage is the deepest in English, but our plan is to expand into other languages fairly soon," said Acharya.

Google has no plans to become a content aggregator itself, or to even offer a streamlined payment system where you can use your Google account to pay for content, according to Google content partnerships director Jim Gerber. "At this point we are focusing on trying to make the content easily searchable and navigable," he said.

Are Google's partners worried about potential future competition? "The response from our partners has been overwhelmingly positive," said Gerber, because Google is currently only providing a link to partner sites where users log in and pay. "They see this as a great source of free, very targeted traffic." Content owners and aggregators not currently in the Google News Archives program can contact Google and request to be included, Acharya added.

As ZDNet blogger Garett Rogers, former SEW news editor Gary Price have pointedly noted, much of the fee-based content in Google Archive Search is available at no charge via many public libraries who subscribe to fee-based services and provide free access to patrons.

Google itself does something similar to this by permitting university users to access fee-based content licensed by the university in Google Scholar results. But for now, Google has no plans to build gateways to content through public libraries.

"Today users can't find this information on Google so we're just making sure we get it into the index," said Gerber.

Don't want to pay a fee for archived news? Check out Topix.net's one-year archive of news that Danny reviewed last week.

View where your ad is showing around the world

2006-09-10T11:31:00.000+05:30

Like many businesses leveraging search advertising, you may be trying to reach customers beyond your physical location. Perhaps this means reaching a neighboring city, or maybe there's another state or even country to which you can ship your products. As you probably know, location targeting options give you the power to reach customers in just those places where you want to promote your business.

However, since you're not in the next city over, or that other state or country, you've been unable to see your locally targeted ads--until now. We've heard your feedback and now have a tool for you to use to preview your ads no matter where they're targeted. Here's how it works:

Visit www.google.com/adpreview

Enter your keyword(s) in the search box and click on the "Search" button
Preview your ads on the search results page that loads or the subsequent pages (click the next link to see more ads on the right-hand side)

The search results and ads are not active, so you can preview at will without accruing impressions or accidental clicks. Best of all, you can refine the results page by adding location attributes and values manually to the URL of the ad preview page. Optional attributes include a target country, longitude/latitude coordinates, regions, and cities. In the U.S., you can also set a target ZIP code or designated market area (DMA).

For example, if you are trying to preview ads for "camping tents" in Chicago, IL, the URL you would use would look like:

http://www.google.com/search?adtest=on&hl=en&q=camping+tents&gr=US-IL&gcs=Chicago

Learn more about how you can preview ads and see what your customers in different geographies are seeing.

Pay Per Click ???

2006-08-29T01:01:00.000+05:30

PPC is one of the four basic types of Search Engines. PPC is also one of the most cost-effective ways of targeted internet advertising. According to Forbes magazine, PPC or Pay Per Click, accounts to 2 billion dollars a year and is expected to increase to around 8 billion dollars by the year 2008.
Let us take a quick look at how PPC Search Engines work.
These engines create listings and rate them based on a bid amount the website owner is willing to pay for each click from that search engine. Advertisers bid against each other to receive higher ranking for a specific keyword or phrase.

The highest bidder for a certain keyword or phrase will then have the site ranked as number 1 in the PPC Search Engines followed by the second and third highest bidder, up to the last number that have placed a bid on the same keyword or phrase. Your ads then will appear prominently on the results pages based on the dollar amount bid you will agree to pay per click.

How do you make money by using PPC into your affiliate marketing business?

Most affiliate programs only pay when a sale is made or a lead delivered after a visitor has clickthrough your site. Your earnings will not always be the same as they will be dependent on the web site content and the traffic market.

The reason why you should incorporate PPC into your affiliate marketing program is that earnings are easier to make than in any other kind of affiliate program not using PPC. This way, you will be making profit based from the clickthroughs that your visitor will make on the advertiser's site. Unlike some programs, you are not paid per sale or action.

PPC can be very resourceful of your website. With PPC Search Engines incorporated into your affiliate program, you will be able to profit from the visitor's who are not interested in your products or services. The same ones who leave your site and never comes back.

You will not only get commissions not only from those who are just searching the web and finding the products and services that they wanted but you will be able to build your site's recognition as a valuable resource. The visitors who have found what they needed from you site are likely to come back and review what you are offering more closely. Then they will eventually come back to search the web for other products.

This kind of affiliate program is also an easy way for you to generate some more additional revenues. For example, when a visitor on your site does a search in the PPC Search Engine and clicks on the advertiser bided listings, the advertisers' account will then be deducted because of that click. With this, you will be compensated 30% to 80% of the advertisers' bid amount.

PPC is not only a source of generating easy profits; it can also help you promote your own site. Most of the programs allow the commissions received to be spent for advertising with them instantly and with no minimum earning requirement. This is one of the more effective ways to exchange your raw visitors for targeted surfers who has more tendencies to purchase your products and services.

What will happen if you when you integrate PPC into your affiliate program?

PPC usually have ready-to-use affiliate tools that can be easily integrated into your website. The most common tools are search boxes, banners, text links and some 404-error pages. Most search engines utilize custom solutions and can provide you with a white-label affiliate program. This enables you, using only a few lines of code, to integrate remotely-hosted co-branded search engine into your website.

The key benefits? Not only more money generated but also some extra money on the side. Plus a lifetime commissions once you have referred some webmaster friends to the engine.

Think about it. Where can you get all these benefits while already generating some income for your site? Knowing some of the more useful tools you can use for your affiliate program is not a waste of time. They are rather a means of earning within an earning.

Best know more about how you can use PPC search engines into your affiliate program than miss out on a great opportunity to earn more profits
i hope this will help you a lot
more you can find at www.ktmonline.com

for your easyness just collected some definations

Bid - The amount that an advertiser is willing to pay for a click on a specific keyword.
Budget - The amount of money that an advertiser sets aside for an advertising campaign. Different publishers allow for advertisers to set daily, weekly or monthly budgets.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR) - The percentage of clicks on a link. This is usually a percentage based on the total number of clicks divided by the number of impressions that an advertisement has received.
Conversion Rate - The relationship between visitors to a web site and actions considered to be a "conversion", such as a sale or request to receive more information: the percentage of people whose clicks have resulted in a sale or desired action in relation to the total number of clicks on an advertisement.
Cost Per Click (CPC) - The cost or cost-equivalent paid per click-through to an advertiser's website.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - The amount an advertiser pays for one thousand advertisement impressions, regardless of the consumer's subsequent actions.
Delisting - The removal of a listing as a result of inaction or poor performance.
GeoTargetting - An advertisement targeted at a specific geographical region, area or location.
Impressions - The number of times an advertisement is viewed by web surfers.
Keywords - Search terms or phrases that are related to an advertisement or ad copy.
Landing Page - The specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking an advertisement. Often, this page is optimized for a specific keyword term or phrase.
Linking Text - The text that is contained within a link.
Pay Per Click (PPC) - Advertising model in which advertisers pay for click-throughs to their website. Ads are served based on keywords or themes.
Rank - How well a particular web page or web site is listed in a search engine or advertising results.
Return On Investment (ROI) - The percentage of profit that results in a marketing or advertising campaign. Naturally, advertisers want the amount of money made to exceed the money spent

Search Engine Marketing Services: Trends and Predictions

2006-08-02T12:32:00.000+05:30

Search Engine Marketing Services: Trends and Predictions

The search engine marketing industry is consistently evolving, sometimes at a pace that makes it hard to believe that search engine marketing services can stay on top of all the latest developments. The one constant for search engine marketing firms, and for the industry in general, is change--usually for the better, sometimes for the worse, but almost always significant. The industry is not for the faint-hearted or those who abhor change. However, savvy search engine marketing firms try to look ahead to anticipate trends. Here are my predictions of issues that search engine marketing services will face in the short term.

More Accountability Demanded from Search Engine Marketing Firms
Search engine marketing firms that use tactics designed to trick the engines into showing results that aren't directly addressing the search query will struggle, as more companies begin to look at the larger goals that lead them to investigate search engine marketing services in the first place. The "traffic-centric" mindset will evolve as companies begin to demand accountability from search engine marketing firms in terms of bottom line increases. Ranking increases delivered by search engine marketing services will be questioned if they do not lead to significant traffic increases, and traffic increases will be questioned if there is no subsequent increase in business generated from the website. This is a good thing for quality search engine marketing firms, since the "snake-oil" practitioners that have given the industry such a bad name will never be given serious consideration by any company that does its homework in the vendor selection process.

Rising PPC Costs and Increasing PPC Frustration
As larger companies with huge budgets continue to jump into the pay per click (PPC) arena, costs will continue to rise. (Average PPC costs have increased 37% from Q1 2005 to Q1 2006.1) These well-funded companies will use PPC as a branding tool as much as a sales tool, which will squeeze out many of the current smaller advertisers. In fact, the top 10 PPC advertising companies, based upon the number of PPC impressions, include such names as eBay, NextTag, Vonage, Time Warner, Orbitz, Target, and Yahoo.2 More large companies will continue to join the fray, many of them throwing ROI out the window and bidding high prices for desirable keyphrases for the sake of branding. This means that search engine marketing firms will find small- to medium-sized companies turning to SEO to achieve results when they no longer can afford PPC.

Increased Interest in Organic SEO
While PPC costs rise, there is also a trend that no doubt disturbs the engines that offer PPC programs. Sixty-six percent of consumers "distrust" paid search ads. Up to 85% of searchers say they "tend to ignore the paid listings", while 87% of commercial clicks take place "on the natural (not sponsored) search results." Three times as many marketers who outsource the management of their natural SEO to search engine marketing firms and who also participate in pay per click advertising recognize a higher ROI from their search engine marketing services than from PPC. These facts, coupled with the fact that Google has recently announced that it will begin to take the relevance of pages into consideration when deciding in what order the ads will appear (which will mean that effective PPC campaigns will need at least some basic organic SEO), point to one obvious result--an increase in the number of companies that investigate organic SEO programs, whether internally generated or provided by outside search engine marketing firms.

Continued Reluctance from Agencies to Pursue Search Marketing
To most, it seems like a perfect fit--traditional advertising agencies joining forces with (or purchasing outright) PPC providers and organic search engine marketing services. However, the average agency is scared to death of search engine marketing services in any form (although some forward-looking agencies have finally jumped on the search engine marketing bandwagon). The reasons are simple: accountability and metrics.

Advertising agencies have for years made money based upon a percentage of what a company spends on advertising. This model has been the accepted norm for decades. However, it raises some ethical issues. What is the motivation for an agency to recommend decreased spending on non-performing initiatives? Moreover, what reasons does an agency have to report on the effectiveness of each of its campaigns? (If an agency's clients dug deeply into any such metrics, they would likely reduce their advertising spend based on the performance of individual campaigns.) Many PPC service providers have adopted this model, even though the goal of a PPC campaign should be to monitor the metrics of a campaign to decrease the spend (eliminating underperforming key phrases, for example).

Good search engine marketing services offer metrics that scare traditional advertising agencies. If these agencies were to present such metrics to their clients, those same clients may start to demand similar metrics for other campaigns (television, radio, magazine ads, etc.). Until the "percentage of spend" model is altered, large agencies will continue to reject search engine marketing services and will not recommend them to their clients.

Continued Focus on Google for Organic SEO
In general, where Google goes, other engines will follow. Smart search engine marketing services will continue to optimize for Google, which currently accounts for half of searches in the United States. However, instead of trying to trick Google by unraveling the latest, ever-changing algorithm, search engine marketing firms will instead need to use the "piggyback" approach. This approach entails learning from the extensive studies that Google conducts of its users (learning by observing the commonalities of the types of sites that consistently rank highly) and applying those same attributes to client websites. In this way, search engine marketing firms not only make sites better for Google, but also for users. As other engines try to close the relevancy gap in search engine results, search engine marketing firms will be rewarded as the tactics they have used for Google success become the accepted industry standard.

Conclusion
The use of search engine marketing services is still a new, "unproven" channel to many companies. Even so, it is changing the way that many traditional advertising agencies must do business. With PPC costs on the rise, and the effectiveness of the PPC channel coming into question, more companies will investigate the hiring of search engine marketing firms using organic tactics for their Internet marketing needs. Smart companies that outsource organic or PPC advertising will no longer say "what have you done for me lately"--they will say "prove what you've done for me lately." Search engine marketing services that are on top of the curve will be more than happy to do so.

Introducing ad scheduling

2006-07-04T21:18:00.000+05:30

Today we released ad scheduling, an advanced campaign management feature that allows you to determine when your ads run. Here's Jon D. from the Advanced Bidding team to tell you more:

Ad scheduling (also known as "dayparting") lets you tell Google exactly when you want your ads to run, and more importantly -- when you do not want them to run. In addition, more advanced users can automatically modify their bids based on time-of-day and day-of-week cycles in campaign performance.

Ad scheduling can also help you improve your ROI by ensuring that your ads run when it makes the most business sense. For instance, a local business may only want to run their ads during business hours, or an online retailer may want to boost their bids during their busier-than-normal lunchtime shopping period.

If you wish to try this new feature, you can enable it via the Edit Campaign Settings page

Google Checkout

2006-07-04T21:16:00.000+05:30

We recently had the chance to catch up with Eric Lange, product manager, to learn more about Google Checkout, a new service that works with AdWords to help advertisers sell more online and process sales for free. Here's what we learned:

Give us some background on Google Checkout. Why this product at this time?

A growing number of people look to online search when they want to buy and we believe Google Checkout can help make the search and buy experience faster and easier. For shoppers, the goal of Google Checkout is to include more relevant information in search advertisements and make it easier to buy from sellers with a single login--that way, users don't have to re-enter their purchasing information every time they buy online. For advertisers, we want to make it easier to attract new customers and process their purchases for free.

So what exactly is Google Checkout and how would advertisers use it on their sites?

Basically, Google Checkout is a checkout process that advertisers integrate with their websites. Customers who visit their sites can use this checkout option to buy from them using a single username and password. And once they do, advertisers can use Google Checkout to charge their credit cards, process their orders, and deposit funds in their bank accounts. We have several integration options for advertisers to choose from.

How does Google Checkout help advertisers attract new customers?

That gets back to the motivation for the product – buyers often start the purchase process by searching online and they're looking for places to shop that are convenient and secure. Google Checkout makes it easier for shoppers to find these places by displaying the Google Checkout badge on the advertiser's AdWords ads. The badge is like a little sign on the AdWords ad that helps shoppers more easily find stores that accept Google Checkout.

You mentioned processing purchases for free. How does that work?

Put simply: for every $1 advertisers spend on AdWords, they can process $10 in sales for free through Google Checkout. For example, if an advertiser spent $1,000 on AdWords last month, this month the advertiser can process $10,000 in sales at no cost. If advertisers exceed their free transaction processing for the month, they'll only be charged 2% plus $.20 per transaction. The processing fees – or lack of them – reflect what we see as a natural relationship between generating leads through online advertising and processing online sales.

Sounds interesting. Where should advertisers go to learn more?

I'd recommend taking a closer look at http://checkout.google.com/sell?promo=sawb and watching this video introduction. We hope this new service helps our advertisers grow their businesses.

The PPC City Never Sleeps

2006-05-16T17:23:00.000+05:30

What can we expect to happen with the quantity and quality of PPC traffic in the not-so-distant future? Has the genesis of the machinery that creates, controls, and disperses traffic reached its plateau, and everything that can be invented has already been invented? It may appear so on the surface.

Consider Overture. The company currently has the widest reach, extending to 80 percent of Internet users, 67,000 active advertisers, and last quarter revenues of $152M. "Key factors that will ensure our continuing leadership position are our long-term contracts with distribution partners, state-of-the art proprietary technology that allows us to operate the business on this scale, and having a very strong international element," said Overture's Wax.

Have the industry leaders become complacent? Make no mistake. "We not only believe that someone smaller than us, or someone currently not in our space, can come up with a great idea that could change our industry and FindWhat.com's standing within the industry," said Thune. "We assume it will happen. And it has recently, with Google's entrance into pay-per-click paid listings."

Currently, the large and small PPC players alike rely on anecdotal evidence of their traffic effectiveness, as provided from time to time by cooperating advertisers - though many advertisers themselves rely on quite unscientific traffic-to-sales conversion information.

To address these issues, 7Search has recently introduced a feature that in the long run can produce a huge impact on the whole traffic industry. The company created an "ROI feedback tool" that sends information on advertisers' sales back to the search engine, where it is used to gauge the quality of affiliate traffic.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of 7Search's approach. Just think, for example, what it can do to the Google's Ad Words program relevancy and rankings algorithms?

"There's targeted traffic, and there's more targeted traffic," said Prestipino. 7Search is also implementing a patent-pending technology dubbed "predictive search" to increase relevancy of advertisers listings appearing as a result of the search.

Search123 works along similar lines, integrating the technology that will assist in matching keyword-based search queries and phrases with users' intentions. "Understanding the dynamics between the buyer and the seller", explains Beriker, "is what it will take to be the leader in this industry."

Search123's website sums it up best: "We're obsessed with traffic quality."

And so are all of us in the business of buying and selling, measuring and analyzing, loving and hating, going broke and making a killing on Internet traffic.

Advantages Disadvantages Of Internet Marketing: The Good The Bad And The Ugly

2006-04-25T15:06:00.000+05:30

The Advantages Disadvantages Of Internet Marketing are many.

A few Advantages Disadvantages Of Internet Marketing are:

* It's on the internet so it's low cost

* Very fast

* And you can reach a global audience

However it:

* Can leave the businessman feeling isolated

* Hard to tell if people are lying because you can't see their face

* And you can be overloaded with information.

There are more Advantages Disadvantages Of Internet Marketing, but I wont cover them all in one article. However I will focus on a few important ones.

Positives:

Low cost:

The internet is made up of electrons, so there is not really anything physically to grab hold of like in a brick and mortar business. This considerably reduces your costs as you don't really need many materials or buildings. Just a computer with world wide web capabilities : )

Very fast:

A great advertisement I saw once said "If you were an electron, you would be there by now". This was an ad at an airport. It's referring to the internet. It's made up of electrons so it's VERY fast. Click a link, and you could be looking at an Australian website, click another one and you could be in America. If you wanted to get information any other way from these countries, you may end up having to go there.The world wide web eliminates the need for this. Go any where you want with the click of a button.

You can reach a global audience:

By this I mean, you don't have to set up shop somewhere and sell to the locals. You can set up an online shop, and sell to anyone in the world. This means a huge increase in potential revenues and a fraction of the cost it would take for you to set up shops all over the world.

Negatives:

Can leave the businessman feeling isolated:

This is very common. Because the world wide web is faceless (In most cases), it can appear cold and inhuman. This can leave you feeling isolated and very inward. Not a nice feeling at all. Everyone likes to socialize and meet people, but in this case, its quite difficult to, in business anyway.

Hard to tell if people are lying:

There is so much information on the world wide web now, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between crap and quality. A lot of the crap is targeted at newbies. Here's an example "Make money fast by doing NOTHING", sound familiar? I bet you've had a ton of emails saying something similar.

Information Overload:

Once again we get to the part of there being a lot of information on the world wide web. There can be too much good information too. There can be a lot of competition for an industry, this can leave you more confused than if there were presented with loads of crap. You might not be able to tell who to chose. If you are a veteran of the net, you wont have much to worry about, however if you're a newbie then this is a problem.

The above are the positive and the negatives. Overall, I would definitely say that if you can do business online, then definitely do it.

How To Write More Powerful Brochures, Leaflets, And Catalogues

2006-04-25T15:00:00.000+05:30

Probably the most interesting thing about brochures and leaflets is that they're seldom read in what we've come to know as the right order - as you would read a book. Rather in the same way that many people read magazines in dentists' waiting rooms, they will flick through brochures and leaflets and stop to take a longer look at bits that grab their attention.

Alternatively they'll flick all the way through and then go back to bits they've noticed and that have interested them. They're just as likely to flick through from back to front as they are from front to back.

What all this teaches us is that despite seeming logical, writing for brochures and leaflets in the form of a story that starts at the beginning, goes through the middle and finishes at the end, is not necessarily the best way forward.

Obviously you can't make every page stand alone with a message on it that says "in case you're flicking through backwards or only want to read this page, here's a summary of our corporate profile again." But there are some tricks you can use to get this random reading pattern to work a bit more effectively for you, rather than against you.

A lot depends on the type and style of brochure or leaflet you want to write, of course. In my experience, generally speaking the more specific the purpose of a brochure or leaflet the more likely readers are to read it properly and thoroughly.

If a leaflet contains assembly instructions, or a brochure contains technical specifications of equipment, there's a good chance that readers will start at least near the beginning and then work through towards the end. Once again, that's because readers will only get their full value from the leaflet or brochure - the "what's in it for them" - by reading it properly. Where you get the worst random grasshopper reading, however, is with the less specific documents like "welcome" leaflets or "corporate" brochures. So let's look at how we can minimize the problems with those.

Despite all of the above, often it is still worthwhile to organize your content in a reasonably logical order. Many people do absorb brochures in the usual order, and even if they don't they still expect to find the introduction at the beginning, the substantiations in the middle and the conclusion at the end. This approach is useful for the moderately subject-specific document, like a leaflet about a new service or a brochure about a new line of garden furniture.

The trick here is to put the main points in as crossheadings (some people call them sub-headings) in bold type, so that someone scanning the document will get the gist of your message even if they don't have time to read the body text.

You should also ensure that the crossheadings make sense in their own right and that understanding them is not wholly dependent on their being read in any particular order. Body text should support and expand on each crossheading and lead the reader towards the next one, but without creating a "cliffhanger" (in case the reader is going in the wrong order).

For the more general subject matter - the most likely to be skimmed, scanned, flicked through, read upside down or otherwise not absorbed properly at all - here's some advice from US writer John Butman from "Writing Words That Sell" which he and I co-authored some years back. This is what John calls "chunking:"

"Chunking means that the story you are writing is not, in fact, a story at all. It doesn't have a sequential flow. It's a string of tiny stories, each with its own message. Each chunk is relatively separate and each page or page-spread is also reasonably separate. This approach means that you need to be careful about antecedents - you can't refer to something mentioned on page one, because the reader may have started reading on page twelve."

I find that John's "chunking" approach works particularly well when there is a lot of visual material, with the "chunks" of text acting almost like expanded captions to illustrations. With "chunking" you may also use crossheadings, but their importance in telling the story by themselves is not as critical. Crossheadings here, then, can be more cryptic or abstract provided that they are relevant.

And a quick word about style, particularly if you are writing a "corporate" brochure or leaflet: this medium, equalled only (perhaps) by the "corporate" website is the most prone to suffer from the curse of "corporate speak." Sadly it would be very easy for me to illustrate what I mean just by including excerpts here from corporate brochures I could find in the offices of both small and large companies based in the city where I live. The curse of "corporate speak" lurks everywhere regardless of the environment, rather like cold viruses or headlice.

Catalogues

Many people fail to realize that catalogues should be written. Often their objective in creating a catalogue is to cram in as many products as they can with descriptive copy kept to a few mis-spelled words in tiny type squashed into a corner. These people are the on-paper equivalent of the "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" species you encounter in retailing.

However in a retail environment customers can usually pick up the products, have a good look at them, read the on-pack copy and find out all they need to know, so the fact that they're in a no-frills environment doesn't matter too much. When a product is pictured in the small, two-dimensional environment of the printed page it's not only no-frills but also very lonely, unless the product has the support of some well-chosen words to inform readers and encourage them to buy it.

Considering that for many businesses and other organizations their catalogue is their only shop window - or at least represents, potentially, a very significant revenue stream - you would think that everyone's attention and skill would be focused on its written content as much as its other elements. But no. All too often catalogues look as though their copy has been written by a well-meaning high school pupil who can look forward to a glorious future as a street sweeper.

Yes, of course some products that get sold via a catalogue do not need a lot of description and the only words you need to include are choice of colours/sizes/quantities etc.

But what about the "how to order" messages?

I don't know about you, but if I'm thinking of buying something from a catalogue there's nothing that puts me off faster than having to spend a lot of time figuring out how to fill out the form, who to make the cheque out to and where to mail it, etc. The same applies if I have to hunt around for website details.

It's not difficult to get the process right. Simply work out the steps you want customers to take, write them down simply, rough out the order form itself, and then try it out on your mother, your brother, your neighbour, the milkman, or anyone else - provided they are not involved with your organization. That's a cheap and fast way of discovering any flaws in the system, especially small goofs that can get overlooked so easily if you're too familiar with them.

And here's another one. How many times have you looked at a catalogue only to find that crucial information you should keep (like contact details for ordering, delivery information etc) is placed either on the order form itself or on the back of the page the order form is on? The result is when you mail off your completed order form you're obliged to mail that important information away with it. Stupid, huh.

There is no mystery about creating good catalogues - only common sense. It's perfectly okay in my view to keep your writing crisp and concise because it helps to use the space more efficiently. But whatever you do, never lose sight of the fact that the way a catalogue is written and designed says a lot more about your organization than you think. If it is cluttered, unclear and illogical, customers will think your company is too. If it is busy but accessible, clear and easy to understand and logically planned, well - need I say more?

Retailers spend fortunes on the design, layout and flow of their instore displays. Supermarkets can increase or decrease their turnover by thousands, simply by moving the fresh produce from the back wall to the side wall or by putting the bakery beyond the delicatessen or by increasing the aisle width by a few centimetres. Think of your catalogue as a paper-based store or supermarket, and you'll find it easier to give it the consideration and respect it deserves.

Instruction leaflets and manuals

A few years ago I bought a new computer, printer, keyboard and monitor all at the same time. I heaved all the boxes into my office at home and unpacked each piece enthusiastically. There was metal and plastic and cabling and cardboard and polystyrene and bubble wrap all over the floor. My two dogs picked their way through it, sniffing suspiciously as if all these items were chickens lying dead and headless after a fox attack.

I sat cross-legged in the middle, leafing anxiously through the instruction booklets, desperately trying to find the English language pages. When I did, I couldn't understand a word, largely because the instructions a) had been compiled by technical people who assumed substantial prior knowledge even though it was a "home" computer and b) whoever had written the UK version must have been taught English by Donald Duck.

And do you think the manufacturer might have supplied a simple instruction sheet telling me how to bolt it all together? No. Every piece had its own awful instructions but as far as the manufacturer was concerned, each item was on its own.

So I phoned my dear computer guru Jason and booked him to come over the next day and sort it out, despite him telling me it was easy and I could do it myself.

"Just read the instructions," he said.

"I can't understand the ****ing instructions," I shouted back down the phone. "You come and do it, I'll watch what you do, then I'll write it down and send the text to the manufacturers with an invoice for my time. At least that way poor so-and-sos who buy this kit in the future will find out how to get it working without having a nervous breakdown."

There's one very strong point that emerges from this true story. When people read, listen to or watch a set of instructions, they often do it in fairly stressful circumstances, in uncomfortable surroundings, in poor light, etc. Accessibility, simplicity, visibility, and clarity are vital.

People who buy products that require instructions, need to know how to use the product as easily as possible. And because many people are technodorks like me, instructions need to be understood by the lowest common denominator.

Logically then, you might think, the best person to write instructions for technodorks like me is someone who knows every last detail about the product, how it was made, how it works, what it does, and what its inside leg measurement is. In other words, an expert. This could not be further from the truth.

Instructions should never be written by experts, because they know too much. What this means is that they are very prone to making the mistake of assuming the reader knows a little bit about the subject matter already. To an expert, the fact that before you begin assembling the bookcase you need to align sections A, B and C with each other may be so blindingly obvious it's not even worth mentioning. To someone like me it's not just worth mentioning, it's absolutely essential if I'm not to spend the next three hours wondering why on earth I can't find any bolt holes that line up.

Wherever practical, instructions should be written by someone who knows as much as, but no more than, the audience. For any form of instructions to be followed by non-technical users, the writer should assume zero prior knowledge and the best way to ensure s/he does that, is if s/he doesn't have any prior knowledge her/himself. Provided that the writer has a logical mind and the ability to write clearly and simply, s/he can't fail to work out and then write good, usable instructions - because if s/he understands them so will everyone else.

Equally, instructions should not be written by the sales people, the marketing executives, the guys in the lab, the production staff, or anyone else - even you - if there's a risk they might have become familiar with the subject matter. Familiarity can breed if not contempt, at least wrongful assumptions about the audience's existing knowledge. For any product to be used by ordinary folks in the street, try to get the instructions written by someone from a totally unrelated department or even from outside your organization. Failing that, get them tested by one or more typical users who have no prior knowledge of the product, and edit them carefully on the strength of the feedback you get.

There is nothing that will blacken the name of your product and your company faster than a customer like me not being able to put your product together easily.

Although customers like me will get over it after taking a cold shower and asking the brainy next-door neighbour to interpret the instructions, we'll probably remember all those bad things next time we're shopping for the sort of products you sell. And we'll buy your competitor's.

Online vs. Offline Advertising

2006-04-25T14:52:00.000+05:30

Let's face it. Email marketing and publishing have became very popular tool for promoting your business, especially in the USA. Many people use email in everyday communication. Email is fast and cheap. What would you like more? Many people subscribe to ezines about Internet, Jokes, Tips, Recipes, Horoscopes... Majority of these emails are free and very quality.

Advertising and marketing online and offline has at least one thing in common - you have to know your target audience. Market segmentation is very important because you don't want to loose your money sending your ads to someone who has no interest in it. Email advertising and online advertising in general is more effective because there are many state-of-the-art techniques which enable that you track every advertising.

Some good services for tracking are:

Web Site Tracking

Stat Counter http://www.statcounter.com
Web Trends http://www.webtrends.com

Email Tracking

Group Metrics http://www.group-metrics.com

In online advertising you can get information where your visitors are coming from, what do they read on your web site, how much is your email newsletter open-ratio, how much is click/thru ratio for every link in your newsletter, also you can get demographic reports about your visitors/subscribers and many other things. Because of that, in online presence you have great options for 1-1 marketing. You can adjust your web site design and content according to your visitor needs.

If you advertise on TV or magazines you can't know exactly how many people actually saw your ad. There are some predictions but not that precise, of course.

One of the main advantages of offline advertising over online is that people still believe more in what they see on TV than on the Internet.

Online promotion has one very big advantage over offline promotion and that is interactivity. In online promotion you can have interactive ads that behave differently based on visitor's behavior. Popular thing in online advertising is making ads like mini home pages. Yahoo! use that technique for advertising their services.

13 Facts About Newspaper Advertising

2006-04-25T14:48:00.000+05:30

Advertising in the paper works for many people in business. The astute merchant understands the newspaper's weaknesses and works to avoid them whenever possible.

Here are 13 facts you should know.

1 Despite declining circulation figures and increasing ad rates, newspapers still reach large audiences, daily.

2 Newspapers are considered the PRIMARY advertising medium by 99.4% of all retailers. Newspapers have been there in every step of the typical store owner's life from the very beginning. Newspapers covered his birth, his high school graduation, his engagement, his marriage, the death of his parents and everything else.

3 Many, if not most, retailers, lay out their own ads. It is said that over the years, merchants have come to believe the only way to get it right is to do it themselves. This thinking has given rise to the new breed of newspaper salesperson. No training, just a list of customers and the daily question "Gotchyur ad ready yet?"

4 There is no proof full page or double-truck ads are more effective than half page ads. The savings can be spent on a concurrent radio campaign or billboards.

5 The same with color. It looks great, but the increased cost many times does not justify the small increase in readership. Forget the color and go with more frequency.

6 The paper is delivered daily, but there is no need for an ad every day as the paper reaches the same readers. 3 times a week works just fine. Spend the difference in the shopper or on a supporting radio campaign.

7 Newspaper coupons will have a better rate of redemption with a radio chaser. Especially if the coupons are NOT in a Sunday paper competing with 85% of all coupons weekly. Think about a coupons on Tuesday with supporting radio to drive them to it.

8 Less than half of newspaper readers read the entire paper. Most are skimmers. How many times through the paper does it take for you to find your own ad?

9 Over half of every newspaper is advertising. Almost as bad as TV where commercial breaks now last more than three and a half minutes. More than two-thirds of the huge and heavy Sunday brick is advertising and stuffers and lap cards (those pesky little cards that fall out when you pick it up).

10 Newspaper rates are climbing faster than any other advertising media. The smallest of ads in the smallest papers can cost over $100. One time, one shot and POW!, its at the bottom of the bird cage or spread out for an indoor dog's emergency.

11 Newsstand and subscriptions prices are rising, too. 75 cents an issue is rapidly losing to 4 quarters.

12 Most papers offer no competitive protection. Your ad can be placed side-by-side with your competition. Get the salesperson to guarantee you separation.

13 Daily newspaper numbers are dwindling. There are less than 1000 daily papers left in the US. Smaller communities must rely on weeklies or papers from another area with a "local" section. In some markets one publisher controls several small town papers, printing them at a central location, changing only the front page for each community.

Newspapers are still a formidable advertising force. Find ways to continue to use the paper to increase store traffic, but do it with other advertising too, so the media mix is efficient. Don't let anyone tell you NOT to advertise in the paper. Just do it better.

How to Write B2B Ads That Catch Customers

2006-04-25T14:45:00.000+05:30

Are your business-to-business ads working for you? If they are not making sales, are they at least generating interest in your company? Are they making an impression on your potential customers by making you stand out in a crowd? If not, then you should take a look at this article and get those ads working hard for you.

Don't just fish for customers, catch them!

1. ALWAYS include your company name in the first sentence, preferably as the first word. Don't start out with 'we'. And briefly state what you do right away. For example: "Solinc designs plastic injection molds." You want them to know who you are right away. Also, many B2B sites don't allow visitors to view the total ad without paying or registering. You want everybody to at least be able to search for you on the Internet. This can also help your ad to appear on some search engines.

2. You need a 'hook' to reel in your readers. There are probably plenty of other ads right next to yours so you need to get them within the first sentence or two. Use some great adjectives. Which is better: "Solinc designs injection molds." Or "Solinc expertly designs high quality, precision injection molds." Now they know who you are, what you do, and why you are special.

3. Ask a question about why your reader should choose you and answer it. Questions such as "Do your customers demand high quality?" "Are you looking for a total solution package?" Then tell them that's what you deliver, you've got what they need.

4. Clearly state what you do step-by-step. Use bullets, numbers or short dedicated paragraphs. Make a list of your products and services. Then tell a little bit about them. Don't forget to use your adjectives here. Give them a 'line' to find the bait.

5. Give them some food for thought. It's time to ask them another question. This time ask them about a problem they might have that you can solve. For example, "Are you completely satisfied with your current supplier?" "Are you frustrated with late deliveries?" "Are you looking for faster and more reliable service?"

6. Give them a call to action. This is your 'sinker'. Offer them the answer to their questions by contacting you today. Don't let them get away.

If you follow these steps you are on your way to catching some customers. But you need a few more pieces of bait to land the big catch.

·Include your keywords and company name throughout the text. This can help your ad land in the search engines. Avoid using the words 'we' and 'it' and 'our product'.

·Use 'you' often. It pays to include your potential customer in your ad.

·Be entertaining or subliminal, but don't be boring! This can be a bit tricky in some areas of business, especially manufacturing. A good trick is to use a product noun as a verb and couple it with an adjective. An example would be for injection molds. Not the most entertaining subject, but: "Inject some speed into your production with high quality molds by Solinc." And you've got a line with pull.

·Be sneaky. Some B2B sites don't allow you to put in your email address or URL in the ad copy. However, if you spell out "dot" or "at" in your addresses your potential customers can find you.

·And finally, be polite. Never use all caps or more than one exclamation point at a time, be careful of poor grammar or bad spelling. Show your potential customers you care.

Don't forget, practicing and proofreading lead to good ad copy, which leads to good sales.

100 Excellent Words and 70 Action Getting Phrases for Ad Writing

2006-04-25T14:37:00.000+05:30

Absolutely.
Amazing.
Approved.
Attractive.
Authentic.
Bargain.
Beautiful.
Better.
Big.
Colorful.
Colossal.
Complete.
Confidential.
Crammed.
Delivered.
Direct.
Discount.
Easily.
Endorsed.
Enormous.
Excellent.
Exciting.
Exclusive.
Expert.
Famous.
Fascinating.
Fortune.
Full.
Genuine.
Gift.
Gigantic.
Greatest.
Guaranteed.
Helpful.
Highest.
Huge.
Immediately.
Improved.
Informative.
Instructive.
Interesting.
Largest.
Latest.
Lavishly.
Liberal.
Lifetime.
Limited.
Lowest.
Magic.
Mammoth.
Miracle.
Noted.
Odd.
Outstanding.
Personalized.
Popular.
Powerful.
Practical.
Professional.
Profitable.
Profusely.
Proven.
Quality.
Quickly.
Rare.
Reduced.
Refundable.
Remarkable.
Reliable.
Revealing.
Revolutionary.
Scarce.
Secrets.
Security.
Selected.
Sensational.
Simplified.
Sizable.
Special.
Startling.
Strange.
Strong.
Sturdy.
Successful.
Superior.
Surprise.
Terrific.
Tested.
Tremendous.
Unconditional.
Unique.
Unlimited.
Unparalleled.
Unsurpassed.
Unusual.
Useful.
Valuable.
Wealth.
Weird.
Wonderful.
70 Action getting phrases.

Act now! Send your name. All sent free to introduce. Amazing literature. Free. Ask for free folder. Bargain lists sent free. Be first to qualify. Booklet free. Catalog included free. Complete details free. Current list free. Dealers write for prices. Description sent free. Details free. Dime brings details. Everything supplied. Exciting details free. Extra for promptness. First lesson, 25 cents. Folder free. For literature write. Free booklet explains. Free plans tell how. Free selling kit. Free wholesale plan. Free with approvals. Full particulars free. Get facts that help. Get started today. Get your copy now. Get yours wholesale. Gifts with purchases. Illustrated lists free. Interesting details free. Investigate today. It's free. Act Now. Literature free. Mail material to: Money making facts free. No obligation. Write! Offer limited. Send today. Only 10 cents to introduce. Order direct from: Order Now. Don't delay. Particulars free. Postcard brings details. Request free literature. Revealing booklet free. Rush name for details. Sales kit furnished. Sample details free. Samples sent on trial. See before you buy. Send for free details. Send for it today. Send no money. Send postcard today. Send 15 cents for mailing. Send today. Send your want lists. Stamp brings details. Stamped envelope brings. Test lesson free. Unique sample offer. Valuable details free. Write for free booklet. Write us first! Yours for the asking. 37-cent stamp for details. $1 brings complete 32-page catalog free.

The key is to combine your words: EXAMPLE: "The Magic Mammoth Miracle"; "The Three 'M' Program". This has already caught the attention and interest of your prospect. Now for example, say: The Money Making Facts Are Free. Simply fill out the form on my website or whatever action it is you want them to take. Fill in with a few details and you have an excellent Profit Pulling Ad. Of course you should be creative, but make sure to build your ads around these words and phrases. Make sure that your follow-up material is as interesting as the ad so you can get orders.

Branding through Search: Strategies & Tactics

2006-04-24T18:10:00.000+05:30

The "Branding & Search" session at featured Cam Balzer of Performics, Jessica Koster of Danskin, Jonathan Mendez of Digital Grit, Ron Belanger of Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Rand Fishkin, of SEOMoZ. The panelists spoke of the new branding trends online, and the as yet untapped potential of search marketing to build and strengthen brand recognition.

The Big Ad Agencies Start to Catch On
This year, marked perhaps most publicly on that galavanza of media marketing Super Bowl Sunday, ad agencies show signs of waking up to the power of Search as a branding tool. They're starting to integrate it with other more traditional media buys. And a few hiccups notwithstanding, they're seeing some pretty impressive results. This heralds some potentially big changes, and big opportunities for those SEMs who are ready to capitalize on this shift.

As deep pockets open their eyes-and coffers-to search's potential for branding, they could change the playing field of paid search marketing as we know it today. One panelist described one big brand client's relationship to capturing the #1 position on the SERP. They were prepared to bid whatever it took, no caps, no limits, and no need to justify the bid costs in relationship to clicks or orders to hold that top spot for the days surrounding their big media drop. Because their intent was brand awareness not sales or clicks.

New demographics are entering different vertical spaces, online. They're up-and-coming consumers, many in the 18-30 age bracket, who may not have been brought up with the tried and true brands of yesteryear's advertising media. Ad agencies need to learn how to find these searchers, know what they're looking for, and test the best messages that will leave a lasting brand impression with them.

Reconfigure Your Goals to Brand (Not Sell) with Search
Rand spoke of 6 basic Search branding goals. Simplistic as they may seem to veteran marketers, these oft-repeated goals are still the pillars of brand awareness:

1. Improve the visibility of your product or company
2. Create brand association with events or product categories
3. Position against competitors in specific market sectors
4. Build buzz for viral marketing
5. Leverage brand awareness to support your natural and paid search campaigns
6. Reach the 18-39 year olds by branding within the online marketplace

Safeguard Your Brand Name
If you've built your brand name over decades, protect your message, look, and feel in the online space. Jessica Koster at Danskin is working to marry their traditional brand with the new online space. As a company that's built its reputation over 100 years, for loyal customers, Danskin means dance. They get over 30% of their online orders from brand related listings.

If You Brand It... They Will Come
Mendez took the audience through a case study with one of the master branders SONY. The campaign goal? Build buzz. Not sell product. Build buzz. The product was a new Vaio notebook and all media pointed to the same landing page. An informational page without a single call to action. Not bad if the goal is to increase awareness but still, you had to really work if you actually wanted to buy the product.

As you dissect current campaigns online, and you find-or design-these four elements, you'll be looking on a solid online branding campaign:

1. Consistent creative messaging
2. One landing page collecting visitors from all media
3. Media or keyword buys in generic product or industry spaces
4. No specifically strong calls to action or promotions

Consolidate Your Message, Work At Higher Levels

Cam Balzer, Director of Search Strategies for Performics, has long been leveraging search for their nationally branded advertisers. Their clients have brand awareness in the public mind. But up until relatively recently, Balzer and colleagues leveraged search for ROI driven goals. That meant they looked for immediate click-through-rates or purchases to measure campaign efficacy.

But as they started to look more broadly at the metrics coming back to them, the behavior patterns indicated by search, and the potentials of this self-selecting medium, they realized Search could easily be used for purposes beyond ROI driven goals. They could extend brands and tap into more of the market and mindshare of the 60 million Americans who use search every single day.

As Cam simply said, "Search is becoming synonymous with being a consumer." As you go more deeply into analyzing large volume of search behavior, an interesting fact is unearthed. Consumers actually depend on search to build awareness, to learn about a brand or product, more than they use search to buy a product.

Work Online Ad Mediums Cooperatively
Ron Belanger of Yahoo! Marketing dropped a few nuggets of insight to wrap up the formal presentation of this session.

As a sign of our more accurate appreciation for Search as branding tool , Yahoo! has changed the names of its display ads. They used to call the display ads Brand Ads and keyword ads Search Ads. Now, more aptly, Yahoo! offers Display and Search ads, working with clients to find the sweet spot where the balance of ad spend in each compliments the other and builds a more robust campaign

Recently Yahoo! has seen, through their larger spend clients, a direct commensurate increase in search demand when clients purchase display, in conjunction with search. So next time your search ad rep calls, and tries to sell you more Yahoo! display, listen up. It might be more worth your while than you thought.

eBay explores 'super union' to thwart Google

2006-04-22T01:19:00.000+05:30

The prospect of a "super-union" between two or more of the internet's most powerful companies was raised today as news emerged that eBay has held talks with Yahoo! and Microsoft over a possible partnership designed to thwart the advance of arch-rival Google

A spokesman for eBay refused to rule out the possibility of a deal, telling Times Online that the company is in regular contact with Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google.

"The reality is we work closely with all these companies. We're always talking to them," he said.

According to the Wall Street Journal, eBay's parallel sets of discussions with Yahoo! and Microsoft began in earnest late last year and were spurred by Google entering into eBay's market with the launch of an online classified advertising site.

The four companies already compete and co-operate on a number of fronts. But there is a growing feeling within the industry that Google is becoming more aggresive.

Julie Meyer, chief executive of Ariadne Capital, the technology venture capital firm, said: "Google is undertaking the biggest landgrab the world has ever seen. We are seeing it exercise its market power, its cash and its brand.

"It probably would take a coalition of major players, a kind of super-union, to stop it and I would not be surprised at all to learn of a whole host of discussions behind the scenes."

Industry observers have noted that Google, which has a cash pile of $10 billion, has recently begun to act as a venture capital firm, investing in a string of online projects and placing bets in a number of areas.

The company's entry into online voice communications last year with the launch of GoogleTalk threw down the gauntlet to Skype, the market leader in internet telephony that was bought by eBay for up to $4.1 billion (£2.2bn).

Google has also been hugely supportive of opensource software developers, such as the non-profit Mozilla foundation, which compete aggressively with Microsoft, the world's largest software house.

Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are all jockeying for position in online search, an area where Google holds a clear lead. Google has also begun a concerted drive to recruit the brightest IT engineering teams across the globe.

Overnight the company announced that its quarterly sales had soared past $2 billion for the first time.

Meanwhile, sites such as eBay's online auction house, the world's largest, rely on Google to drive consumers to them, a relationship that benefits Google's partners but which could leave them vulnerable to changes in policy from the search-market leader.

Rivals will also be mindful that Google, despite being set up seven years ago, has only been operating as a public company - with the huge escalation cash resources that has involved - for less than two years.

Sources close to eBay today noted in conversations with Times Online that eBay and Microsoft already co-operate in some areas - there is a link to the eBay site from Microsoft's MSN portal homepage, for instance. These kind of tie-ups could form the basis of a more consolidated effort to fend off Google, they said.

There has been speculation that eBay could enter a formal agreement over its online advertising spending with a chosen partner and offer information to either Microsoft or Yahoo! on its massive consumer base in return.

Such an agreement could echo that announced this week by Google when it revealed partnerships with seven major IT companies in the field of enterprise search.

Included in those was a deal with Oracle, the IT company, which recently announced its own offering to allow companies to search for digital information stored internally – a direct rival to Google’s offering.

Google executives have said they believe such "co-opetition" will become more common as companies compete for revenues amid the complex web of corporate relationships that have developed in the online sector.

The Journal also raised the prospect of one side in the eBay-Yahoo!-Microsoft triangle taking an equity stake in another. Such a transaction would mirror Google's acquisition of a 5 per cent stake in AOL, principally a portal business that competes with Yahoo!, for $5 billion in December.

However, industry sources discounted that idea, noting that once completed, cross share-holders can be troublesome to unwind. "I doubt these companies have a clear enough vision of where they are going to commit to that. The industry is just changing too fast," one said.

eBay already has close ties with Google in the finely interwoven online marketplace. The auction site spends heavily on Google ads

Google quarterly sales surge past $2bn mark for first time

2006-04-22T01:14:00.000+05:30

THE internet giant Google yesterday reported that its first-quarter revenue had soared past $2 billion for the first time in its seven years.

The company’s introduction of new products such as a finance website helped it to win market share from its rivals Microsoft and Yahoo in internet advertising.

The rise in searches helped to offset Google’s increased expenditure on marketing, new staff and offices.

Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst at Hoefer & Arnett, said: “They’re spending heftily on marketing expenses, but strategically it’s the right thing to do and the underlying reason why revenue growth was so strong.”

The company said that net profit excluding special items rose to $592 million (£330 million), or $2.29 a share, from $372 million, or $1.98 a share, a year earlier. Sales surged 79 per cent to $2.25 billion. This outstripped Wall Street forecasts for growth of 63 to 78 per cent.

Eric Schmidt, chief executive, said: “Google had an exceptional quarter with strong growth and profitability.”

Google shares jumped as much as 4.9 per cent in after-hours trading to $435.51.

The results will help to allay concerns about the company’s health that date from the fourth quarter of 2005, when it missed analysts’ forecasts for the first time. The disappointing results sent Google shares tumbling, wiping $19 billion from its market value.

The company has since experienced a host of problems that have prompted investors to erase a quarter of its market value from its peak at $475 in mid-January.

Google shares slumped in February after George Reyes, the chief financial officer, surprised investors by warning them that growth was slowing.

Soon after, the company accidentally released internal profit targets at a presentation for analysts. Embarrassed, Google admitted in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that the figures were a year old, prompting investors to send its shares lower. The shares recovered when Google joined the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Google has also fought bad publicity for bowing to pressure from the Chinese Government to censor its content, in defiance of the company’s so-called motto, “Don’t be evil”.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google’s founders, had claimed in their listing prospectus that the company would encourage its employees to do good.

Analysts estimate Google controls more than 60 per cent of the internet search market. According to AC Nielsen, 49 per cent of US searches are conducted on Google

GOOGLE’S UPS AND DOWNS

February 1: Google’s fourth-quarter earnings miss analysts’ forecasts. The company blames weakness in the UK market and a higher than expected tax bill. Shares tumble 7 per cent

February 13: Google shares slide after US magazine Barron’s says that they may be overpriced

February 16: Google hauled before a congressional committee over self-censorship of its China website. Congressmen accuse Google, Yahoo! and other companies of “sickening and evil” collaboration with the Chinese Government.

February 28: CFO George Reyes tells investors that advert revenue growth will slow. Shares fall as much as 13 per cent

March 7: Shares slide further after Google admits to US regulators that its finance staff inadvertently disclosed confidential revenue targets to analysts

Dealing with ‘click fraud’

2006-04-20T17:14:00.000+05:30

Last month the newswires were abuzz with news that Google Inc has agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleged that the online search engine leader overcharged thousands of advertisers who paid for bogus sales referrals termed “click fraud”. Google agreed to an out-of-court settlement by committing $90 million to many advertisers who had used Google’s network during the last four years. The lawsuit, filed by Lane’s Gifts & Collectibles on behalf of all Google advertisers, revolves around one of the most sensitive subjects facing Google and Yahoo Inc today.

Years ago I had seen advertisements on the net that said you could make money by merely surfing on certain sites. I instinctively knew that this was a scam but did not link this to click fraud. Now of course we know that scam artists repeatedly click on specific advertising links even though they have no intention of buying anything-driving up advertising costs for companies that pay for each click by a prospective customer. Yahoo!, which was also named in the lawsuit, has decided to fight the allegations.

From Google’s perspective it serves no purpose to open the can of worms. The price to be paid is a meagre 0.8% of revenues it collected over the same four-year period. Even here, a significant portion of the settlement would go towards the plaintiff’s legal fees and not to the advertisers who did not get value in the first place. And the settlement was in the form of credits that can be set off against future advertisements, available to a broad pool of the innumerable marketers who ran ads that might have been affected by fraud over the said period of four years!

Advertising Age, sometime ago reported that the combined advertising revenues of Google and Yahoo! last year rivalled the combined prime time ad revenues of America’s three big TV networks—ABC, CBS and NBC. Google topped the list with $6 billion in online advertising revenue, Yahoo! clocked $4.6 billion and Microsoft’s MSN internet unit generated $1.4 billion.

Now look at the impact of internet at another level. CBS ties up with Yahoo! to feature 60 Minutes, its long running news programme in Yahoo!—its website draws an estimated 126 million users per month, while 60 Minutes show in CBS had an average weekly viewership of 14 million people. Imagine the impact this combined audience delivery would make on the ad revenues.

In India too, quite a few heartening trends have been put out by the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). One survey indicated that the online population in the country is poised to grow to 100 million from the current 38.5 million users by the turn of this decade. An estimated 4.6 million Indian internet users bank online and the number is expected to soar to over 16 million, inclusive of internet and mobile banking, by 2007-08.

Internet advertising is projected to grow at 50%—to Rs 750 crore by 2010 from the current level of about Rs 100 crore. In 2010, it will be the fourth largest media after TV, print, and out-of-home. Radio, with all the expansion that is taking place, would be only the fifth medium.

The traditional cinema medium, which saw a revival, would still be lagging behind despite the delivery of commercials for this medium through the internet.

The other day I was with a media owner who pro-udly told me that Google gives him approximately Rs 1 lakh every day based on click through delivered by online editions of his publications. With increasing growth in the medium, there is little doubt that two things would happen: He will get more income from Google and there will be many click frauds that would be brewing!

Click fraud looms over Google, Yahoo

2006-04-20T15:18:00.000+05:30

Click fraud is to Google and Yahoo what bird flu is to world health -- a problem that's manageable today, but could grow into a crisis without aggressive prevention efforts.

Silicon Valley's twin titans of the Internet era get almost all their revenues from pay-per-click advertising.

Advertisers hire Google and Yahoo to distribute the online equivalent of billboards that take people to the advertisers' sites. But advertisers pay only when someone is interested enough to click on their links.

There are several variants of pay-per-click advertising, but one form is particularly relevant to click fraud: affiliate networks.

Independent Web sites, known as affiliates, sign up with Google, Yahoo or smaller Internet companies and agree to let those companies place ads on the affiliates' Web pages. The affiliates then get a cut of any pay-per-click revenue.

Let's say I set up a Web site called Mike's Favorite Spots in Hawaii, where I regularly post news and tips about vacationing in the most beautiful place on earth.

I could sign up with Google's AdSense program and Google would place ads on my site. Google's computers would detect that my site relates to travel, and would place appropriate ads there.

Advertisers might, for example, pay $1 to Google for each ad clicked on my site, and Google would perhaps pass along 50 cents to me, the affiliate.

Everyone wins: I get advertising revenue, Google gets paid, and travel advertisers reach a relevant audience.

But a criminal could set up a fraudulent Web site and look for ways to generate phony clicks on the ads. The criminal collects ill-gotten gains, while advertisers are paying for worthless traffic.

That's click fraud, and it can be very lucrative.

But if it ever becomes rampant -- say, half of all pay-per-click traffic -- the business models of Google and Yahoo could collapse as advertisers walk away or spend drastically less money.

There's no reliable evidence suggesting click fraud is anywhere close to epidemic proportions, and Internet companies have already figured out how to block unsophisticated forms of click fraud.

But Google and Yahoo aren't sharing enough information to tamp down rising concerns about click fraud.

Among the recent news fueling advertiser anxiety:

Mountain View-based Google last month agreed to settle a class-action suit on click fraud by providing $90 million in credits to advertisers. That's a pin prick for Google, which reported profits of $1.5 billion in 2005, but more lawsuits against Google and other Internet companies are pending.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo was accused earlier this month of failing to catch at least a few spyware companies -- peddlers of software that forces ads onto the screens of unsuspecting users -- who are simultaneously engaging in click fraud.

Ben Edelman, a graduate student in economics at Harvard University who also has a degree from Harvard Law School, uncovered the spyware-click fraud connection. Last week, he told me Yahoo gave him a written response that it will look into the matter. But Edelman said Yahoo isn't willing to concede there's any broader problem with its affiliate programs.

Also in March, federal prosecutors in San Francisco announced the latest in a string of click-fraud criminal indictments.

The arrests highlight a bigger problem created by click fraud: Scammers are secretly taking control of hundreds or even thousands of home and business computers, setting up what are called ``bot nets.''

Bot nets were initially used for extortion, by threatening to overwhelm Web sites with traffic if they didn't pay up, and for stealing credit cards and other personal information. But click fraud is now emerging as another motivator for bot-net criminals.

Despite these red flags, Google and Yahoo are hiding behind a ``trust me'' defense. They keep insisting click fraud is under control, without giving details.

``We have said for some time that we believe we manage the problem of invalid clicks very well,'' said Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel, in announcing the class-action settlement.

Google notes, with some justification, that many so-called experts who claim as much as 30 to 40 percent of all pay-per-click traffic is fraudulent are trying to sell consulting services or software to stop click fraud -- giving them an obvious incentive for overstatement.

Yahoo spokeswoman Gaude Paez told me last week that, ``the rates of click fraud that many software providers claim exist are highly inconsistent with the rates we see on our network.''

But neither company is willing to say what percentage of pay-per-click traffic they are flagging as fraudulent, or the total amount of refunds they're giving advertisers who claim click fraud.

If click fraud really is a small problem, releasing hard numbers will prevent advertisers from getting any more nervous than they already are.

If click fraud is a significant problem, advertisers -- as well as investors in Google and Yahoo stock -- have an ethical and legal right to know.

Both companies, to their credit, say they are considering whether to release more information and might be willing to accept independent third-party audits of click fraud.

As long as any bad clicks are getting through Google and Yahoo's filters, advertisers clearly need more information -- if only so they can direct their dollars toward companies doing the best job of detecting click fraud.

So if Google and Yahoo don't start sharing more click-fraud information voluntarily, unhappy advertisers will probably force them to do it anyway

PPC Bid Management Software Showdown

2006-04-19T19:48:00.000+05:30

If you?ve been keeping up with the search engine industry lately, you?ll know that Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a fast growing trend. Nearly all of the major search engines and directories have now integrated one type of PPC or another into their search results. At the moment Overture.com (formerly GoTo) is the clear leader in the PPC field, with an estimated 90% of the total PPC search market. But others such as FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting are slowly catching on.

Overture currently has partnerships in place with Yahoo, AOL, AV, Lycos, Netscape, InfoSpace, MSN and Excite. People bid to purchase keywords from Overture and the top 2 or 3 bids (called Premium Listings) appear on their partner sites when searches are conducted for those keywords. Most of the time, Overture results appear above regular search results as ?sponsored matches?, so you can see how effective this type of campaign can be when used to draw targeted traffic to a web site. Whenever a viewer clicks on a sponsored listing, they are taken to the advertiser?s site and the advertiser is charged for the click at the rate determined by their bid on Overture.

The main drawbacks to advertising on PPC engines to date have been:

a) The quick exhaustion of funds due to large traffic volume

b) The time consuming nature of bid rank analysis for multiple keywords

c) The impact of bid gaps on cost-effectiveness (when your bid is more than it needs to be to maintain your target rank).

When you are managing PPC campaigns for hundreds of keyword sets for multiple client sites, these problems are compounded. Fortunately, software has sprung up to help people manage their PPC campaigns and automate the bidding process.

We have reviewed eight of these Bid Management Software programs in our effort to find the one right for our client campaigns and thought we?d share the results with you:

(Please note a more detailed version of this article, including a Software Features Chart can be viewed at our site here: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/PPC_Bid_Management_Software_Showdown.htm)

1. Tangare?s Pay Per Click Maximiser www.tangare.com

The Pay Per Click Maximiser is a great product. A downloadable desktop program, no monthly fees, plenty of keywords and a good price for the Standard edition (USD $199 for 500 keywords). It supports FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting in conjunction with Overture US & UK and allows the user to determine the bid update frequency. Other notable features include the ability to export reports to Excel, HTML and email.

My only real problem with this program is the Interface, which tends to be confusing, (all that gray on gray) and not very intuitive. There is a help menu, but on first launch, it is not clear where to start or how to launch a new project. The ?manage search terms? tab is also a little user unfriendly, but once you study the help menu to determine how to set your rank targets and bid limits, you?re off and running. Their free trial download simulates the bid optimization process, but is otherwise fully functional. Score 8/10

2. Click Patrol http://www.clickpatrol.com

Click Patrol claim to be the largest provider of automated Pay-Per-Click bid management services, but I can?t see any redeeming features that differentiate the service from other providers. For starters, it is Internet based, so if you are security conscious, you may not like the idea of handing over your Overture account login details to a third party provider. Then there are the monthly fees, which are the most expensive of all programs reviewed, ranging from $100 to $500, with an extra fee per keyword if you want your bids checked more often than every 24 hours. See the Features Chart for details. They do support seven of the major PPC engines and I hear their ?Auto Position? feature works well to close price gaps, but there is no free trial of their system that I could find, only case studies and a screen capture. Score 5/10

3. Gapster http://www.did-it.com/gapster

With the release of their freeware bid optimization tool Gapster, Did-it had an opportunity to win hearts and capitalize on a thankful market. It sure sounded promising: free automatic bid monitoring & updating for 200 keywords on Overture US & UK, FindWhat and Kanoodle.
Unfortunately, they chose to abuse the privacy of their customers and win enemies for their trouble. As reported by Danny Sullivan in his latest Search Engine Update newsletter, beta users of Gapster allegedly had their Overture account login details published on the Internet last month, care of one of Did-it?s own servers. The security breach was quickly corrected, but the damage to Did-It?s reputation was already done. Mindful of this first impression clouding my judgment, I tried to download the beta version to verify the product itself and give them the benefit of the doubt. But at time of writing the download was unavailable due to the software undergoing an update. Let?s hope their updating their security protocols. Score 0/10

4. Save Per Click http://www.saveperclick.com

Another Internet based program, Save Per Click supports more PPC engines than any of the other products we reviewed, Nine in total, including some I?ve never heard of. They offer a free 7day trial, but you need to have an account already in place at one of the supported PPC engines. This is a fairly straightforward program, but my major gripe is price and the inability to pre-determine bid update frequency, although you CAN choose time of day. The monthly fee ranges from $19.95 to $89.95 for the Standard edition (updates once a day) and $59.95 to $199.95 for the Pro edition (updates once an hour). Price range is determined by number of keywords. See the Features Chart for details. Score 6/10

5. Auto Pilot http://www.managebid.com

Probably the pick of the Internet based programs, Manage Bid?s Auto Pilot software was the only one reviewed that provided unlimited keywords. The hitch is that each keyword will cost you 0.25 USD a month to monitor, with a minimum spend of $25 per domain, per month. Bid updates are done every 24 hours and the program provides support for eight PPC engines (some obscure). There is also an Economy Mode for the penny pinchers, at 0.10 USD per keyword, with a minimum spend of $10 per domain, per month. But economizers must update their bids manually ? see the Features Chart for details. Score 7/10

6. PPC Professional http://www.ppcmanagement.com

Now this one has real potential. You have the choice of purchasing a lifetime version or a monthly subscription and you also have the flexibility of determining how often your bids are checked and updated. Keywords supported range from 50 to 5,000+ with costs staggered from $89 or $12 per month for 50 keywords to $999 or $100 per month for 5000+ keywords (see the Features Chart for detailed pricing). With a ?Smart Bid? feature to ensure your bids are cost-effective and the ability to import keywords straight from Overture, this new product has many features the bigger names don?t. You can print reports or email them directly to customers and the developers claim to keep your login and account info secure. It also supports unlimited Overture accounts for those of you with multiple clients. Currently the software only supports Overture.com, but a new release planned shortly will support other engines and include new features. The 10 day, 10 keyword trial version has a few bugs to be ironed out and the interface isn?t as intuitive as others, but definitely one to watch. Score 7/10

7. Position Guardian http://www.positionguardian.com

Not the most feature-packed product, Position Guardian (Premium) is an Internet based bid monitoring and gap analysis tool that automates the process of checking your bids on Overture and sends you daily notification of bid gaps. Unlike the other products reviewed, Position Guardian does not include automated bid updating, you have to manually change the bids yourself by logging in to your Overture account. Sure it?s cheaper than some, with prices ranging from $7.95 to $57.95 per month depending on keyword numbers, but it still seems like a lot to pay for less than half the work (see the Features Chart for detailed pricing). In their defense, they do provide a free online version that allows you to manually check for bid gaps one keyword at a time ? handy if you?re worried about that all important keyword. Score 4/10

8. BidRight http://www.bidright.net

We have a winner! BidRight was very hard to fault. A downloadable desktop program, no monthly fees, generous keyword limits and a very competitive price for their new release Pro edition (USD $199 for 500 keywords). See the Features Chart for more pricing options. Version 2 supports FindWhat, Kanoodle and eSpotting in conjunction with Overture US & UK and allows the user to determine the bid update frequency from every 60 seconds to every 24 hours. Their interface follows the WYSISYG principle and it was the easiest of all the software to install and start using.

Particularly impressive is the ?Gap Surfing? tool that finds the most cost-effective position from a range of ranks that you predetermine. So if you wanted to remain in the top 5 positions, you choose position 1 as your target rank and enable gap surfing with a range of 4. BidRight will find the largest price gap in the top 5 and slot your bid in there automatically whenever it is scheduled to update, preventing you from overbidding and saving you lots of money in the process. Other new features include the ability to export reports in CSV format, a drop back rank feature when maximum bid has been reached. Combine all this with the ability to customize the update frequency for your most important keywords and you have a very powerful tool that becomes a must for managing any PPC campaign. You can download a fully functioning 15 day demo, with the only disadvantage a five keyword limit. Score 9/10

Well BidRight was the ultimate winner of our Showdown and I was so impressed with the product that I immediately signed up to become an affiliate! If you would like to buy BidRight, you may like to use our affiliate link: http://store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/clink?bidright+NARxJp+index.html. Be sure to mention Coupon Code WR 007 to obtain a 5% discount (we do get a commission if you use our link, so if that bothers you, feel free to use the general link above). Remember you can view the Features Chart for all the software reviewed from the longer version of this article located at our site: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/PPC_Bid_Management_Software_Showdown.htm.

If you are in the market for any kind of Bid Management Software, you may want to keep an eye on current talk about the implications of such software on server load at Overture. Apparently Overture are considering restricting access to their servers from persons using bid management software because the server load is becoming too great. They may block access from certain IP addresses that abuse the system or they may restrict access by software. To reduce the impact on search engine servers, you should use your bid management software responsibly, restricting bid checking to every few hours or daily rather than every few minutes.

The Fundamentals of Web Analytics

2006-04-19T13:31:00.000+05:30

A Glossary of Terms

What's a dashboard? What does KPI stand for? What's the difference between Organic and PPC search results? This glossary provides a handy guide to commonly used web marketing terms.

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z

A
Abandonment: When a visitor exits or leaves a conversion process on a website and does not return later in the session. See also conversion funnel.
Acknowledgement Page: A page displayed after a visitor completes an action or transaction. For example, a thank-you or a receipt page. An Acknowledgement Pages is often important in Scenario Analysis, where it is an indicator of a completed scenario.
Acquisition: The process of attracting visitors to your site.
ACT: After-Click Tracking is the recording the activity path of a visitor to a site after they have clicked on an email link.
Actionable data: Information that allows you to make a decision or can be made use of in any way. See also forward-looking metrics.
Ad: A link that takes a visitor to a web site when clicked on, usually graphic or text. See also banner ad.
Ad Click: A click on an advertisement on a web site which takes a user to another site. See also ad view.
Ad Hoc Query: A non-standard inquiry posed as the need arises. See also query.
Ad View: A web page that presents an ad. There may be more than one ad on an ad view. Once visitors have viewed an ad, they can click on it.
Affiliate Marketing: A method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for providing customers. Compensation could be made based on a value for visits, subscriptions, leads, sales, and so on. See also PPC.
Aggregate Data: A summary of collected information which groups data together without record-level statistics.
Analytics: see web analytics
API: Application Programming Interface is a system that a computer or application supplies to users in order to allow requests for service to be made of it by other computer programs. For example, an API might describe how to draw icons or windows using a library that has been created for that purpose.
ASP: Active Server Pages are a set of software components that run on a web server and let developers build dynamic web pages.
Attrition: The erosion of your customer base over time. The opposite of customer retention.
Authentication: The technique by which access to Internet or intranet resources requires the user to enter a username and password as identification.
Average Lifetime Value: The average of the lifetime values of all the visitors during the reporting period, where each visitor's lifetime value is the total monetary value of a visitor's past orders since visitor tracking began.

Top

B
Bandwidth: Measure, in kilobytes of data transferred, of the traffic on a site.
Banner ad: An advertisement embedded on a web page usually intended to drive traffic to a different website by linking to the advertiser's site. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has created a standard set of banner ad sizes (Medium Rectangle, Rectangle, Leaderboard, Wide Skyscraper) into a set of guidelines called the Universal Ad Package).
Bot: See robot.
Bounce: See bounce rate and email bounce
Bounce Rate: The percentage of entrances on a web page that result in an immediate exit from the web site.
Browser: A program used to locate and view HTML documents (Microsoft Internet Explorer for example.)
Business Intelligence: While some would claim it's an oxymoron, business intelligence refers to a category of software and tools designed to gather, store, analyze, and deliver data in a user-friendly format to help organizations make more informed business decisions. Software types include dashboarding, data mining, data warehouses, and other information systems.

Top

C
Campaign Creative: A "Creative" describes the characteristics of a marketing activity, such as color, size and messaging-for example, a "Buy Now" graphic.
Client: The browser used by a website visitor.
Client Error: An error that occurs because of an invalid request by the visitor's browser. See also return code.
CNAME: A Canonical NAME record makes one domain name an alias of another.
Conversion: An action that signifies a completion of a specified activity. For many sites, a user converts if they buy a product, sing up for a newsletter, or download a file. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who do convert. Cookie deletion can have an impact on your conversion rate because if a cookie is being systematically deleted, repeat visitor rates will be under-counted and new visitor rates will be over-counted, thus skewing the conversion rate metric by which you analyze your site's overall effectiveness.
Conversion funnel: The series of steps that move a visitor towards a specified conversion. See also abandonment.
Convert: See conversion.
Conversion funnel: The series of steps that move a visitor towards a specified conversion event, such as an order or registration signup. See also abandonment.

Cookie: A text file that transmits information to a data collection facility via a 1x1 pixel GIF image request and includes a tracking ID that is used to identify returning visitors. Contrary to some industry speculation, cookies can not be used for malicious use such as privacy tapping. See also first and third-party cookies.
CPG: Consumer Packaged Goods
Crawler: See spider.
CTR: Click Through Rate. A click through rate is the rate at which visitors "click through" from one website page or property to the next. A good indication of an ad's effectiveness.
Customer Segment: A powerful aspect of relationship marketing in which you target sub-section or group of customers who share a specific trait or set of behaviors. See also demographics and psychographics.

Top

D
Dashboard: A web analytics dashboard provides all of your critical metrics in one place to help you understand the health or performance of your business.
Data Warehouse: is a logical collection of information gathered from many different operational databases used to create business intelligence that supports business analysis activities and decision-making tasks, primarily, a record of an enterprise's past transactional and operational information, stored in a database designed to favor efficient data analysis and reporting.
Demographics: The physical characteristics of human populations and segments of populations, often used to identify consumer markets. Demographics can include information such as age, gender, marital status, education, and geographic location. See also psychographics.
DNS: A Domain Name System is an Internet addressing scheme that uses a group of names that are listed with dots (.) between them. See also domain.
Domain: An area in the Internet specified by a URL address. The top-level domain is at the end after the dot and the second-level domain comes before it, and shows where in the top-level domain the address can be found. For example in www.webtrends.com, ".com" is the top-level domain and "webtrends" is the second level domain.
Domain Name: The text name that corresponds to a numeric IP address of a computer on the Internet.

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E
E-commerce: The act of selling goods and services online via a standalone site or through an online auction center.
Email bounce: The number of e-mails that were sent but never reach the intended receiver.
Entry page: The first viewed page on a visitor's path through a site.
Exit page: The last page viewed on a visitor's path through a site.

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F
Filters: A means of narrowing the scope of a report or view by specifying ranges or types of data to include or exclude.
First party cookie: For most business models, first-party cookies are regarded as the most reliable method to measure visitor activity. Whereas a third-party cookie is usually set by an analytics vendor, (an entity with whom the user does not have a relationship), a first-party cookie is set by the business, an organization with whom the Web site visitor has specifically chosen to do business. Because of this relationship, first-party cookies are deemed more secure by the user. Also see cookies.
Form: An HTML page which passes variables back to the server. These pages are used to gather information from users. Also referred to as scripts.
Forward-looking metrics: Metrics that are indicators of future performance. For example an increase in traffic is a good indicator of down-stream conversion performance.
Frequency: The number of times a visitor has visited a site during a reporting period. Average Frequency is the average of frequencies of all the visitors during the reporting period. Frequency is a retention metric and is part of RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) analysis. See also recency and latency.
FTP: File Transfer Protocol is a standard method of sending files between computers over the Internet.
Funnel: See conversion funnel

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G
GIF: A Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap format for images with up to 256 distinct colors. Commonly used on the web for animated banner ads.
GRP: Gross Rating Point is the percentage of the target audience reached by an ad.

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H
Hit: Any request from a file or a web-server. A single page likely contains multiple hits as multiple image and text files are downloaded from the web-server.
Home Page: The main page of a web site. The home page provides visitors with an overview and links to the rest of the site
Home Page URL: The local path or Internet URL to the default page of the web site for which WebTrends reports will be generated.
HTML: HyperText Markup Language is a means of communicating text (and information about that text) that was designed to display pages with hypertext (links) and other information in a web browser.
HTTP: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is a standard method of transferring data between a web server and a web browser.

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I
IAB: Interactive Advertising Bureau (http://www.iab.net/)
Impression: The display of an online advertisement (usually a banner ad) to a web site visitor.
Internet: The Internet is the publicly accessible global system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data via a standardized Internet Protocol. See also World Wide Web.
IP: Internet Protocol is a standard used for communicating data.
IP Address: Internet Protocol address is used to identify a computer connected to the Internet.

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J
JavaScript tag: See page tag.
JPEG: A Joint Photographic Experts Group file format is a commonly used file type for photographic images, especially on the web.

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K
Keyword: Terms entered into the search field of a web search engine. See also organic search and PPC.
KPI: Key Performance Indicators. Key Performance Indicators are typically kept in dashboards and provide customers with an understanding of how the site is performing.

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L
Latency: The average number of days between visits for a given visitor during a reporting period. For example, those who visit on average every seven days. See also recency and frequency.
Link: On a web page, text or an image that has been coded to take a browser from one page to another or from one site to another.
Log File: A file created by a web or proxy server which contains all of the access information regarding the activity on that server. This kind of tracking is available from WebTrends solutions as well as page tagging.
LTV: Long Term Value or Life Time Value. Life Time Value is a metric used to describe the value a specific customer has over the life of their relationship with you.

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M
Marketing Performance Measurement (MPM): Marketing Performance Management drives stronger customer relationships and higher lifetime value, based on a framework of established goals, consistent metrics, constant optimization across the entire marketing organization and across every customer touch point.
Marketing Warehouse: See data warehouse.
Metrics: Metrics are a system of parameters or ways of quantitative assessment of a process that is to be measured, along with the processes to carry out such measurement. Metrics define what is to be measured.

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N
N-dimensional: Unlimited dimensions.
Navigation: The act of moving from location to location within a web site, or between web sites, accomplished by clicking on links. Navigation can also refer to the overall structure of the links on the site, comprising the paths available to the visitor.
Non-referrals: Visitors who arrive at a site by typing a domain into an address bar, using a bookmark, or clicking on an emailed URL. See also referrals.

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O
OCR: Organic Click Rate. See also PPC.
On-demand service: WebTrends Marketing Lab is available as both an on-demand service and a software solution. WebTrends’ on-demand infrastructure provides redundant data collection, multiple co-located data centers and an advanced staging environment for quality control to ensure secure, always-available data.
Opt-in: This permission-based email communication requires customers to verify the opt-in method before their e-mail addresses can be used to communicate with them.
Organic Search: A type of search in which web users find sites having unpaid search engine listings, as opposed to using the pay per click advertisement listings displayed among the search results.

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P
Page: A document provided by the server, including HTML, scripts, and text files. Images, sound files and video are not considered pages. Documents are defined by the system administrator, but generally include all static content, such as complete html pages. Dynamic pages are created with variables and do not exist anywhere in a static form. Forms are scripted pages which get information from a visitor that gets passed back to the server.
Page tag: A piece of JavaScript code embedded on a web page and executed by the browser when the page is viewed. See also log files.
Page view: is generally defined as a request to load a single page of a website. On the web, a page request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on another page that points to the page in question. See also hit.
Parameters: These are located in the URL immediately after a question mark and followed by an equal sign and a return value, known as name=value.
Path: A path is the click pattern a visitor uses as they traverse through multiple pages.
PEF: Personal Experience Factor is the customer's interaction with your website, advertising, or brand.
Performance Indicators: See KPIs.
PIE: Persistent Identification Element is a type of tag that is attached a user's browser, providing a unique ID similar to traditional cookie coding.
Platform: The operating system (such as Microsoft Windows) used by a visitor to the site.
POA: Point of Action is the location of a conversion event.
POC: Percentage of Completion
PPC: Pay Per Click or paid search uses search keywords that cost a certain amount for each customer click on that term in order to get to your site. See also organic search.
Protocol: An established method of exchanging data over the Internet.
Psychographics: Data used to build customer segments based on attitudes, values, beliefs and opinions as opposed to the factual characteristics. See also demographics.

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Q
Query: A question or inquiry used to find answers about certain metrics.
Query Parameter: An individual piece of a query string consisting of a parameter name and a value for the parameter.

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R
Rear-view mirror metrics: Metrics that measure what has occurred. For example campaign response metrics are such metrics that tell you how a campaign performed.
Recency: The number of days since a visitor's most recent visit during a reporting period. See also frequency.
Referrals: The location that visitors come from, particularly the sites, search engines or directories. See also non-referrals.
Relationship Marketing: Relationship marketing is a type of marketing that traces its roots to direct response marketing. It emphasizes building long-term relationships with customers rather than individual transactions. It requires understanding customer needs as they go through life cycles of interacting and purchasing from organizations, and requires that marketers accurately determine customer intent in order to provide them the right message at the right time.
Return Code: The return status of the request which specifies whether the transfer was successful and why.

Possible "Success" codes are:
200 = Success: OK
201 = Success: Created
202 = Success: Accepted
203 = Success: Partial Information
204 = Success: No Response
300 = Success: Redirected
301 = Success: Moved
302 = Success: Found
303 = Success: New Method
304 = Success: Not Modified

Possible "Failed" codes are:
400 = Failed: Bad Request
401 = Failed: Unauthorized
402 = Failed: Payment Required
403 = Failed: Forbidden
404 = Failed: Not Found
500 = Failed: Internal Error
501 = Failed: Not Implemented
502 = Failed: Overloaded Temporarily
503 = Failed: Gateway Timeout

RFM Analysis: Recency, Frequency, Monetary analysis.
ROMI: Return on Marketing Investment
ROAS: Return on Advertising Spending
Robot: An automated process that performs mundane, repeatable tasks to provide information. Search engine robots or bots provide such functions, cataloging the internet for searchers to find information.
ROI: Return on Investment

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S
Scenario Analysis: A report showing the amount of activity at each step of a defined scenario, plus conversion rates for each transition from step to step as well as for the whole process. Examples of scenarios are check-out, registration, or application sequences.
Script: See JavaScript.
Search Engine: A search engine is a program that helps you find information on the web.
Segment: A grouping of customers, defined by website activity or other data, which can be used to target them effectively.
SEM: Search Engine Marketing
SEO: Search Engine Optimization
Server: A computer that hosts information available to anyone accessing the Internet.
Server Error: A fault occurring at the computer hosting information. See also return code.
Session: A session is a record of one visitor browsing through a site.
Sessionization: This is the process for creating a session. Sessionization methods are ways in which you can define a session. Web Analytics solutions have multiple sessionization methods such as cookies, IP Address, IP+ Agent and so on. These methods tell the web analytics system how they should count a series of page requests from the same individual or browsing machine.
SKU: Stock Keeping Units
SmartSource: A trademarked technology from WebTrends. SmartSouce Data Management offers an alternative to traditional web server log file analysis, collecting information directly from the visitor's browser (the client) rather than from server log files, improving data accuracy.
SmartView: WebTrends SmartView is an easy-to-use visual overlay of web metrics displayed right on a web page, which you can use to analyze page performance, providing insight into page conversion, path analysis, and overall web page statistics such as unique visitor counts.
Spider: An automated software program that gathers pages from the World Wide Web.
Suffix: The last part of a domain that can be used to identify the type of organization or location of a site.

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T
Tag: See page tag.
Third-party cookie: Hosted web analytics services track visitor behavior by inserting a small piece of tracking code onto each page of a site. Because the cookie is served by an analytics vendor rather than your own site, the cookie is considered third-party.
Traffic: On the web, traffic refers to the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website.

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U
User: The end-user of a product or device. For example an end user of the WebTrends Marketing lab can be defined as a "user". User typically refers to the end user of WebTrends products.
UNIX: is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy.
URL: A Uniform Resource Locator is a means of identifying an exact location on the Internet.
User Agent: Fields in an extended web server log file identifying the browser and platform used by a visitor.
User Session: A period of activity (all hits) for one user of a web site. A unique user is determined by the IP address or cookie. By default a user session is terminated when a user is inactive for more than 30 minutes. See also visit.
UV: Unique Visitors refers to a measure captured by some web analytics solutions that track the interaction a single user has with a website over time.

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V
Visitor: Similar to unique visitor, visitor refers to an individual that visits a website. A visitor or unique visitor can have multiple visits.
Visit: A visit is an interaction an individual or unique visitor has with a website over a specified period of time or activity. In most cases, if a visitor has left a site or has not executed a click within 30 minutes, the visit session will terminate.
VOD: Video on Demand

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W
W3C: World Wide Web Consortium develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential.
Warehouse: See data warehouse.
Web analytics: The measurement of data as it relates to an Internet site, including the behavior of visitors, the amount of traffic, the conversion rates, web server performance, user experience, and other information in order to understand and proof of results and continually improve the results of a site towards a set of objectives.
Website: A website is a collection of web pages, on particular domain name or sub-domain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. Usually it is made up of a set of web pages created using HTML and accessible via HTTP.
What if: A type of analysis that allows an end-user to pose hypothetical situations against their data to model or predict outcomes.
WIN Partner: The WebTrends Insight Network is a select group of leading interactive agencies, marketing consultants and web analytics experts worldwide that work with customers to maximize the success of their online initiatives through the use of WebTrends solutions.
WML: Website META Language, a free, extensible off-line HTML generation toolkit for UNIX, distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL v2).
World Wide Web: Also called the web, this is a global information space which people can communicate via computers connected to the Internet. Some people use "internet" and "the web" interchangeably, even though the web is a service that operates over the internet.

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X
XML: Extensible Markup Language is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup languages, capable of describing many different kinds of data.

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Y
YoY: Year over Year
YSM: Yahoo! Search Marketing

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Z
Zero Latency: Latency is a time delay between the moment something is started, and the moment one of the effects of that thing begins. When there is no time lapse between the thing and the effect, it's called zero latency. In analytics, this term is used to describe instantaneous receipt of data and the ability to analyze and act on that data.
Zero-page Visit: A visit that included no page views. This is possible if a visit consisted of at least one request for a non-page file (such as a graphic) but no page files (such as .htm, .asp, .jsp, or .cfm.)

A Pay Per Click (PPC) Master-Class

2006-04-18T14:21:00.000+05:30

Round one, gentlemen. The traditional SEO model relies on free traffic after having gained appropriate placement in search results. Why should an SEO undertake PPC? What are some of the advantages PPC offers?

More and more companies are learning the value of search engine marketing. Search engine placement is probably the most effective means of driving highly pre-qualified prospective customers to any web site. The most controllable form of search engine placement is the pay-per-click model.

Pay-per-click search listings allow companies to bid for placement within the search results users select. Those willing to pay more can appear higher in the search results.

Companies bid for the specific search terms that their listings will appear as search results for. When a user searches for, or is using, a search term you have bid for, your listing will be displayed as one of the search results.

Unlike other forms of search engine marketing, PPC is agreeable to all parties. While SEO through tweaking HTML and exploiting loopholes in algorithms is seen by search engines as destructive and damaging, PPC is seen as supportive and healthy.

Basically, PPC is the one way you can get whatever relevant placement you wish on search engines without being an enemy to the engine in question. It does cost more in many cases, but the predictability and stability means that the ROI is also more stable.

PPC is incredibly effective, reliable and cost-efficient compared to other advertising.

Let's put it into context. Say a banner campaign on MSN will cost you $40 per thousand impressions. An average banner may have a 0.5 percent click-through rate, so for every $40 spent, you'll get 5 visitors at your site. If your own site has a conversion rate of 3 percent (which would put you very firmly in the top ten percent of ecommerce sites in the world) you'll need 33 visitors to get a sale, so you'll be spending around $280 to attract each sale. I hope your profit margins allow for that.

Using Overture, I can place my listings on the MSN search results. I can make these listings appear only to people who are already actively looking for something like my product. I can present a Title and a description that let me give a lot more information, specific to their search query, than banners allow. As a result, the click-throughs I'll get are more qualified, and I can fully expect to see my conversion rate rise from 3 percent to 4 or 5 percent.

With the PPC listings I pay nothing for impressions. A thousand people (all pre-qualified by their own search terms) can view my listing and get the branding message and I pay nothing for it unless they click through.

Going back to the higher level of pre-qualification, I find that my conversion rates have risen to 4 percent and so I need, on average, just 25 visitors to get each sale. The search term I want is quite competitive, so even though the minimum bid is just $0.10 on Overture, I have to beat rival bids, and I end up paying $1.00 to gain the #1 place in the results.

Unlike the CPM model of advertising I pay purely for the click-throughs, so my 25 visitors to get a sale cost me just $25.

In actual fact I could probably have gotten my search terms far far cheaper than $1 per click simply by using more specific search terms. Not only does this mean less competition, but as an added benefit, more specific search terms tend to have an even higher conversion rate.

Many companies use PPC very successfully to acquire new customers for under $2 per customer acquisition. That's tremendous value, and that's why PPC is so worthwhile.

I'd rather ask the question "why should [merchant x] do PPC?" to see it through their eyes as entrepreneurs with a multitude of pressures, priorities and marketing opportunities.

If the question were "why should an SEO do PPC," my answer would of course be "they shouldn't - they should leave it to me and I'll send them my SEO business."

So let's take a look at it from the perspective of merchant X - for example a niche catalog retailer who recently contacted me.

Merchant X probably does a million in sales per year right now, and would, within 18-24 months, like this to become $6-8 million. This type of growth is possible if a lot of demand is created, but the question becomes where to start. Some selective use of broadcast, print, and outdoor media might be warranted, but not to the point of incurring further bank debt, since there is already debt associated with carrying inventory.

One obvious method might be direct mail. There are companies that deal in this sort of thing, and some of it is sort of opt-in. But it is a tad spammy, and the web seems to offer something more promising: high-tech targeting that you do yourself rather than relying on some third party's claims that they're selling you a bunch of really targeted addresses.

Ideally, then, a low-risk medium would be found where you can test and target your niche market at a low cost, and track your results.

Pay-per-click search engine advertising is highly targeted and the results are highly quantifiable, particularly when you use sales conversion tracking. The process involves nearly zero risk. No $50,000 media buys. Not even $2,000 media buys. You pay one day at a time.

It's not going to generate negative publicity or "turn off" your market, because, as Danny Sullivan has argued, search engine ads are like a "reverse broadcast network." The consumer or information seeker types a query, so by definition they are looking for something related to that query. In this world of attention deficit and zero tolerance for intrusive advertising, search engine ads are one of the few ways to find people without pissing them off.

If they get to your site and you're too pushy there, depending on your usual sales process it might be a good idea to give them info first, and sell to them second. Just because they found you on a search engine doesn't mean your work of creating a business relationship is done. What happens on your site is vital to that relationship.

For a niche marketer looking to grow quickly and organically, this type of advertising is a godsend. For a larger company looking to launch a new product or test a new market, it's an ideal way to experiment.

So if PPC is good, isn't SEO better? All I have to say to that is, look at the demand. There is a lot of demand for PPC, and no, it isn't out of laziness. Some SEO's act as if paying for targeted traffic is like paying for sex: that you do it because you're somehow not attractive or clever enough to get a "real partner." That makes me laugh. Anyway, from the standpoint of the majority of my clients, at least when it comes to traffic: "whatever gets you through the night." (Have you noticed how popular those online dating services have become, by the way?)

Successful business people do not feel sheepish paying for traffic. In fact, they'd rather pay for it, much the same as they'd rather not clean their own toilet. We should all aspire to this level of greatness. [cue inspiring music]

The ROI of PPC is quantifiable and the advertiser CAN DEMAND something tangible for their dollar. Needless to say, advertisers cannot call Google up and demand ANY sort of special treatment for their pages in the organic Google search results.

And that's what this is, you know. It's advertising. Anything to do with search engine marketing is really advertising, whether you pay for it or not.

Since SEO is advertising, but search engines themselves do not consider search results to be advertising, there is actually an inherent conflict there; a conflict which has led to a long-standing Spy-vs.Spy-like adversarial relationship between SEO and search engine technologists.

Advertisers are better off, IMHO, being in a position where their interests are aligned with the media with whom they're placing their message.

Being found in organic search results is a great bonus. But if you want to start generating leads and sales tomorrow, and have the budget to pay for ads which appear near popular key-phrase searches, you don't wait. You do PPC.

And, of course, you don't rule out other forms of publicity - especially the legitimizing stuff like organic search results, word of mouth, press coverage, etc.

And that all comes back to the most fundamental point. What about your business is remarkable? What about it is *worthy* of word of mouth, press coverage, etc.? Knowing what that something is can actually provide a business with an excellent strategy for addressing consumers more directly through PPC. Consumers are getting good at comparing ads on a page. They can tell immediately what companies stand out.

Well, PPC is useful for a number of reasons. First it can be used as a testing ground for SEO, you can experiment with different keywords/titles/descriptions and when you hit on a winning formula then look to integrate that combo for SEO purposes.
The benefit of this testing, is that because you are paying for the traffic there is no danger of a PR0 penalty if Google don't like your technique.

It's great for filling gaps. Sometimes, it is not going to be good use of your time to have to work to get to the top of a search engine listing, so buying your way to the top can sometimes be useful.

Time sensitivity is another biggie. Many advertisers are running time sensitive events, or promotions and SEO isn't as effective in delivering the 4 P's that any good marketer will tell you about, product, price, place, promotion. PPC is much better at delivering it. Some examples of this might be Christmas, Valentines Day, sporting events, January sales. SEO is not exact for delivering to get the best impact.

Whether you listen to some sages or not, many people chose the Sponsored ads or the Google style ads because they know that the people advertising have paid good money to be their, and it should be both relevant and current. From my own experience of shopping online, I almost always will chose a sponsored ad over a SERP's these days as I find they have a better relevancy more often than not

GPs 'earn up to £250,000 a year'

2006-04-18T13:26:00.000+05:30

Experts say the government got its sums wrong in the contract
Some GPs are earning as much as £250,000 a year after expenses due to a new GP contract, the BBC has been told.

GP wages have risen by up to 25% since the contracts were introduced in 2004, according to specialist accounts.

The figures come from an annual survey by the Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants due out later this month.

Experts have said the contract was ill devised and is partly responsible for current NHS deficits.

The average earning of a GP is now believed to exceed £100,000.

The results of the survey of earnings suggest the average annual income for GPs could rise to £120,000 before tax.

But the figures also give evidence that some GPs are earning up to £250,000.

Overspends

One accountancy firm in the north east of England said it has just under 10 GPs earning between £200,000 and £250,000 a year.

The survey is the first of its kind since the GP contract came into effect between April and December 2004.

Policy experts have said the government miscalculated its sums when it negotiated the deal.

The Department of Health has confirmed the current overspend on GPs is £300m.

Dr Prit Buttar, a GP in Abingdon in Oxfordshire, told the BBC Today programme that the new contract was proving to be very lucrative.

The partners in his practice now earn in excess of £100,000 a year after expenses - a rise of around 20%.

He said, for instance, his practice now received funds simply for carrying out cholesterol and blood pressure checks on a proportion of patients with heart disease.

"It is something that we were doing already. There are elements of it where it is frankly bean counting for its own sake - and I don't think anybody would pretend otherwise."

Complex businesses

However, Dr Hamish Meldrum, lead GP negotiator for the British Medical Assocation, told the BBC average GP earnings were a bit below £100,000 a year.

He said some GPs were earning more money because they were now running a complex business.

He said: "The government has been encouraging GPs to expand to run super surgeries to grow bigger.

"There will be a few GPs who are at the top of these and primarily they are getting that sort of money for actually running quite a complex business rather than necessarily providing health care."

Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, said she was very proud GPs were being paid more - on the basis of the world's biggest health improvement programme.

She said payments were now tied to the work that GPs actually did, rather than the size of their patient list.

"There are thousands of people who are alive and well today as a direct result of this new contract.

"This is an enormous improvement in health care, and it is the kind of preventive health care that the public want."

But she said: "I would be very surprised if there were a lot of GPs earning £250,000 purely from the NHS."

Niall Dickson, from the independent health think tank the King's Fund, said patients were unlikely to support huge pay increases for GPs.

"All the suggestions are that GPs are being paid more money, but overall we have not seen a big increase in productivity, indeed we may have seen a down in productivity because of shut surgeries on Saturday mornings, and no responsibility for 24 hour cover.

"It does not look like a terribly good deal at the moment for the taxpayer and the patient."

Selling an endowment policy

2006-04-17T15:27:00.000+05:30

Selling endowment policies is big business. BBC News explains how you can go about selling an endowment and what are the pitfalls?

When it comes to making a decision on stopping an endowment and surrendering it, it is important to check your policy and make sure there is some value in doing this.

Early redemption can result in making less than you would have if it carried on for its full term, but if you need to have the money, then this may be your only solution.

Of course, continuing to pay money into a poorly performing investment could be throwing good money after bad.

As well as surrendering it back to the company who sold it, policyholders also have the option of selling it to a third party.

This can have the added benefit of getting more for your policy than you would if it was sold back to the original issuer.

Likely returns

Different companies have different requirements when it comes to them buying your endowment.

Usually they require it to be with-profits or a with-profits whole life policy and have been running for a minimum number of years.

Other policies are difficult to sell to investors as they do not give the same levels of return as a with-profits.

Some will also require the surrender value to be at least £1,500. If your policy does not meet the criteria, then they will not be able to handle your sale which means the only option available is what the policy issuer can offer.

The Association of Policy Market Makers (APMM) is the industry body for firms specialising in the buying and selling of endowments.

The APMM runs an investor helpline 0845 8330086 as well as and one for sellers 0845 011 9394, which offers quotes on your policy from eight different market makers.

Getting advice

An independent financial advisor could also be helpful in comparing offers and helping you get the most for your policy.

For doing the work they will charge a fee, but it could save you time and energy and also help you achieve the best possible price.

The main thing to remember with your endowment policy is that it is important.

You should not suddenly stop making payments or cancel the policy without doing research and taking the appropriate financial advice.

If you stop payments on a policy, you may lose any life assurance cover that it offered you - an important consideration for your dependents if you are then taken ill or die without having set up an alternative means of paying off the policy.

Q&A: Endowment mortgage shortfall

2006-04-17T15:17:00.000+05:30

Millions of endowment policies still in force are in danger of falling short of the sum required to pay off the policyholder's mortgage.

Insurers are required to write to endowment policyholders every two years and inform them whether their investment is on track to meet the target sum.

BBC News explains what should you do if you are told that your endowment may not measure up?

How big a problem is endowment shortfall?

In 2003 the government estimated that about eight in 10 of the endowment policies then in force were unlikely to pay off the mortgages they were taken out for.

Since then, nearly 70% of those facing a shortfall have remortgaged, sought financial advice or applied for compensation.

However, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said that about 700,000 people had still done nothing about their endowment shortfall.

Some of these people may find that it will soon be too late to complain.

The general rule is that people must complain within three years of receiving their first "red letter" - outlining a likely shortfall - from their insurance company or lender.

Under industry rules insurers are allowed to ignore complaints made after the time bar comes into play.

What will my endowment statement letter tell me?

The letter tells you whether your endowment is on track to re-pay your mortgage, or whether it is heading for a shortfall. The letters are colour-coded according to the level of potential shortfall.

Those who receive green letters are currently on track to re-pay their mortgage. However, the value of their endowments must continue to increase by at least 6% a year, otherwise they may fall into arrears.

If you receive an amber letter, there is significant risk that your endowment will not pay off your mortgage.

If you receive a red letter, there is a high risk of you being unable to repay your mortgage at the end of the endowment's term.

Experts warn people not to panic, even if they have received a red letter.

Help! My endowment is heading for shortfall - what should I do?

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has banned insurers from giving advice in the shortfall letters.

You should get an advice booklet from the FSA, called: "Your endowment mortgage - time to decide" when you receive the letter.

If you have not received one of these, you can get a copy from the FSA website, under 'Consumer Help.'

Alternatively, you can obtain one by calling the FSA on 0845 456 1555.

The FSA also has an endowment information sheet, which explains how the investments work.

Should I top up my endowment?

Most experts warn people to steer clear of either increasing their payments on an existing endowment or buying a new one.

David Hollingworth of London & Country, a mortgage broker, says this is simply "throwing good money after bad".

How should I go about paying off any shortfall?

If you are prepared to take the risk of investing in the stock market, there is the option of taking out an additional investment, such as a unit or investment trust, within an Individual Savings Account (ISA) to cover any shortfall.

But the safest route, according to Mr Hollingworth, is to change your mortgage into a part-repayment loan.

This means that in addition to paying off the mortgage interest each month, you make extra payments to start paying off the underlying mortgage debt.

This reduces the size of the mortgage, and thus should reduce any shortfall caused by the endowment underperforming.

What about mis-selling?

A Treasury Select Committee report suggests as much as 60% of endowment policies may have been mis-sold.

It added that the time limits within which complaints must be lodged had been poorly communicated and required an urgent review.

But just because your endowment isn't performing well does not mean that you have a case for mis-selling.

If you think you do have a case, you should act on any shortfall before you file a claim for compensation.

What are the grounds for compensation?

The first step is to complain to the company who sold you the endowment.

If the company can not resolve your complaint or has turned you down for compensation, you must approach the Financial Ombudsman.

In June 2005, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) revealed it was receiving 1,300 endowment mis-selling claims a week.

Of cases examined by the FOS, about 40% have been ruled in the claimant's favour - and they have received compensation.

Basically, you should have grounds to complain if:

The product was unsuitable at the time it was sold.

You did not understand what you were buying or the risks involved at the time you bought the policy

The sale was inappropriate given your financial and personal circumstances at the time, for example, if you were told that your endowment would pay off your mortgage when you retired.

For any claim to be successful, the Ombudsman must determine that you have lost out as a result.

It will calculate compensation based on comparing the performance of your endowment with a repayment mortgage over the same period.

Making a complaint?

If you believe that were mis-sold an endowment, you should follow these steps:

Contact the firm who sold you the endowment

If you are dissatisfied with the way the complaint has been handled, or the company has turned down your request for compensation, you should then contact the Financial Ombudsman Service at the address below:
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) South Quay Plaza, 183 Marsh Wall, London E14 9SR Tel: 0845 080 1800

The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not held by the BBC unless specifically stated. The material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal or other form of advice. You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions. Always obtain independent, professional advice for your own particular situation.

Card charges 'push up' EU prices

2006-04-17T15:10:00.000+05:30

Credit and debit card fees are pushing up retail prices by as much as 2.5% in some EU markets, according to the European Commission.

Depending on where customers live in the EU, they could pay up to double in annual fees for a Visa or Mastercard.

Likewise, the fee banks levy on business for processing a credit card transaction - also varies widely across the EU.

The EU Competition Commission said the card market lacked competition.

"The payment cards industry in Europe remains national and some local players are preventing competition from developing," said Neelie Kroes, the EU's competition commissioner.

Ms Kroes said she was "fed-up" with some banks and card providers taking advantage of consumers.

The findings were part of an ongoing EU investigation into competition in the financial services sector.

Ultimately, if debit and credit card providers are found to have breached EU law, they can be fined.

"Let me be clear, European competition law provides a series of powerful tools to bring about more competition," Ms Kroes warned, adding that the "paradise days" were over for some lenders.

In a statement, Visa Europe said that it had to examine the contents of the EU's interim report before commenting further

Many in UK 'have £10,000 debts'

2006-04-17T14:57:00.000+05:30

Almost two million people in the UK owe more than £10,000 on credit cards, overdrafts or other unsecured loans, a survey has suggested.
About 500,000 owe more than £20,000, the survey for debt consultants One Advice found.

About half of those owing £10,000 had taken out loans, about 350,000 had used credit cards, and 83,000 overdrafts. Others owed family and friends money.

GfK NOP conducted 1,910 interviews in February and March.

Most personal borrowing in the UK is in the form of mortgages, where the loan is secured on the property.

But this survey found many people are running up big unsecured debts too.

People aged between 35 and 44 were most likely to have run up significant debts, with around 650,000 people in this age group owing more than £10,000.

But more than 200,000 18 to 24-year-olds also owed at least £10,000 - about one out of 20 people in that age group.

"With many unsecured borrowing products having high interest rates, many people are entrapped in debt, often only paying off the interest accrued every month as opposed to the capital they have borrowed," said Chris Holmes, chief executive of One Advice.

"Those caught in this situation need to take action otherwise it is likely that they will fall further into debt."

IVAs

Last year, about 70,000 people in England and Wales became insolvent - for most, this means being declared bankrupt which can make it difficult to borrow money in future.

However, an increasing number of people are reaching deals with their creditors called individual voluntary arrangements, which involves a partial repayment.

Earlier this month, the government announced it was providing £45m to employ 500 independent debt advisers over the next two years.

The money will be used to help people in England and Wales gain personal advice on how to cope with their debts.

Through the government's Financial Inclusion Fund, it is being channelled to a number of organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureaux.

India deliver knock-out punch in style

2006-04-17T11:49:00.000+05:30

Indore, Apr 15: Indore: India discovered a new opening option in Robin Uthappa who slammed a scintillating 86 on his debut as the hosts hit the final nail on England's coffin to wrap up the 7-match one-day series with an emphatic 5-1 margin here on Saturday.

The 20-year-old Karnataka opener showed no signs of nerves in his 96-ball effort to not only help India record a comfortable 7-wicket victory in the last match but also put enormous pressure on a woefully out-of-form Virender Sehwag.

Chasing a stiff target of 289, the home team had the game in control right through the chase as they surpassed the total with five balls to spare through useful contributions from Rahul Dravid (69), Yuvraj Singh (63 not out) and Suresh Raina (53) on a good batting strip at the Maharani Usharaje Stadium.

Young Kerala speedster S Sreesanth was India's bowling hero with career-best figures of 6/55 which was largely responsible for restricting the tourists under the 300-run mark.

The hosts, who opted to rest their struggling duo of Sehwag and Mohammad Kaif for the match, put up a clinical display to ensure that the beleaguered Englishmen left the country with their morale and reputation in tatters.

The Indians also continued their stupendous run of 16 consecutive wins while chasing, having broken the West Indies world record of 14 wins in the fourth ODI in Kochi.

Put in to bat, England raised hopes of yet another face-saving win by scoring 288 built around a blistering 56-ball 64 by the in-form Kevin Pietersen while Paul Collingwood (64) and Geraint Jones (53) were the other notable performers.

But a solid start, which had been evading India throughout the series, by Uthappa and Dravid ensured there were no jitters for the home team.

The new opening pair unleashed delightful strokes in their stand of 166 runs to enthrall the strong crowd of 25,000.

Uthappa, who virtually struggled at the domestic level this season barring a century in the Challenger series and a 70 in Baroda, hit 12 boundaries and one six to ensure the fans did not miss Sehwag even for a moment.

Uthappa, gained in confidence with each ball in the presence of Dravid but his inexperience showed in the way he was run out. He showed no urgency in scampering back home for the second run after driving Ian Blackwell to the long on, to gift away his wicket.

James Anderson, who saved a four there, threw the ball towards the wicketkeeper's end and Geraint Jones removed the bells with Uthappa failing to ground the bat.

Dravid, who looked composed in the middle, perished soon after as he was trapped leg before by Sajid Mehmood to leave India at 166 for 2, the hosts losing their openers on the same score of 166.

Yuvraj and Raina then steadied the innings with another entertaining 115-run partnership for the third wicket which sealed the fate of the visitors.

Raina was dismissed when just 8 runs were needed for the win, clean bowled by Kabir Ali. The Uttar Pradesh batsman hit two fours and one six in his 64-ball knock.

Yuvraj, declared the man of the series, remained not out and hit six fours in his 58-ball knock. The Punjab left-hander also crossed the milestone of scoring 4,000 runs in what was his 148th ODI appearance.

It was only apt that the winning runs were scored by Yuvraj, a delectable four off James Anderson, to bring the crowd on its feet.

Earlier, England relied on half centuries from Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Geraint Jones to make merry on benign pitch and could have taken the score beyond the 300-run mark but for a late burst from Sreesanth who was later named as the man of the match.

The hard-hitting Pietersen extended his rollicking form in the series, smashing 11 fours and a six in his 55-ball 64.

Collingwood was his usual solid self, making 64 from 84 balls with two fours and as many sixes while Jones provided the lower order thrust with a 50-ball 53 that contained seven fours and a six.

England, at 257 for four after the 45th over, were prevented from crossing the 300-mark by a flurry of wickets in the closing stages of the match.

The visitors were given a reasonably good start by their stand-in captain Andrew Strauss (25) and Ian Bell (32) who put on 43 runs for the opening stand inside the first 10 overs.

But two quick wickets, of Strauss and Matt Prior (2) pegged back the visitors somewhat.

The arrival of Pietersen to the crease, however, changed the complexion of the innings.

The South African-born player found the Indian seamers to his liking and repeatedly whipped them off his legs.

After putting on 63 runs for the third wicket with Bell, Pietersen added another 55 with Collingwood before falling while trying to slog sweep, as usual, with Uthappa taking the catch in the deep off Yuvraj Singh.

While Collingwood kept the scoreboard ticking, Jones picked up the scoring baton handed by Pietersen.

England were cruising at this stage and seemed set for a 300-plus total when the seamers returned to put the brakes.

Jones fell to a superb low catch behind by Dinesh Kaarthick off Sreesanth while Collingwood holed out to Rudra Pratap Singh off Irfan Pathan.

Kabir Ali then became Pathan's third victim before Sreesanth cleaned up the tail off the last two balls of the innings.

Earlier, England relied on half centuries from Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood and Geraint Jones to make merry on benign pitch and could have taken the score beyond the 300-run mark but for a late burst from Sreesanth who was later named as the man of the match.

The hard-hitting Pietersen extended his rollicking form in the series, smashing 11 fours and a six in his 55-ball 64.

Collingwood was his usual solid self, making 64 from 84 balls with two fours and as many sixes while Jones provided the lower order thrust with a 50-ball 53 that contained seven fours and a six.

England, at 257 for four after the 45th over, were prevented from crossing the 300-mark by a flurry of wickets in the closing stages of the match.

The visitors were given a reasonably good start by their stand-in captain Andrew Strauss (25) and Ian Bell (32) who put on 43 runs for the opening stand inside the first 10 overs.

But two quick wickets, of Strauss and Matt Prior (2) pegged back the visitors somewhat.

The arrival of Pietersen to the crease, however, changed the complexion of the innings.

The South African-born player found the Indian seamers to his liking and repeatedly whipped them off his legs.

After putting on 63 runs for the third wicket with Bell, Pietersen added another 55 with Collingwood before falling while trying to slog sweep, as usual, with Uthappa taking the catch in the deep off Yuvraj Singh.

While Collingwood kept the scoreboard ticking, Jones picked up the scoring baton handed by Pietersen.

England were cruising at this stage and seemed set for a 300-plus total when the seamers returned to put the brakes.

Jones fell to a superb low catch behind by Dinesh Kaarthick off Sreesanth while Collingwood holed out to Rudra Pratap Singh off Irfan Pathan.

Kabir Ali then became Pathan's third victim before Sreesanth cleaned up the tail off the last two balls of the innings.

Plea for calm after Delhi blasts

2006-04-15T01:03:00.000+05:30

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- The imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid has appealed for calm after two explosions detonated near his mosque as crowds of Muslim worshippers gathered for Friday prayers.

The low-intensity explosions wounded 13 people and most are expected to survive, Delhi's police commissioner, Dr. K.K. Paul, told CNN's Indian affiliate network, CNN-IBN on Friday.

He contradicted earlier reports that two people had died.

The first explosion went off inside the mosque's complex around 5:30 p.m. (1200 GMT) and the second detonated about 10 minutes later, the imam, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, told CNN-IBN.

The mosque did not suffer significant damage in the blasts.

Both blasts happened near the entrance to the mosque's courtyard, where worshippers wash their feet before they gather inside for prayers.

The courtyard of Jama Masjid can hold as many as 25,000 people.

"People were walking around and suddenly, boom, there was a bomb," Mohammed Salaudi, who was inside the mosque when the first of the explosions took place, told AP.

After the explosions, a crowd gathered outside the mosque complex, shouting slogans.

After the explosions, police cordoned off the area and bomb squads checked for more explosive devices.

Speaking to the crowd, Bukhari said the blasts were a deliberate terrorist attack intended to drive a wedge between India's Hindus and Muslims. He appealed to the crowd to remain calm.

Jama Masjid, one of India's largest and best known mosques, was built in the mid-17th century by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, who also constructed India's most famous building, the Taj Mahal.

Airlines Want ITunes To Take Flight

2006-04-14T23:52:00.000+05:30

Instead of hoarding frequent flyer miles for the possibility of getting a free ticket to a holiday hot spot someday, airlines would like to see those travelers use those miles on something far more attainable.

Should in-flight broadband gain US approval, how will your site target the airborne traveler? Where can you benefit from in-flight connectivity? Hit the WebProWorld link and connect us with your comments.

In-flight Internet has been a service domestic carriers in the US desperately want to offer their passengers. Despite the continued rise in airfares, oil prices have started escalating again, eating into the profits airlines make.

To recoup some of that lost revenue, airlines want permission to offer services like the popular iTunes Store during flights. FlightGlobal.com reported Apple has chatted with Thales, an electronics company that serves the aerospace and other industries:

"We've had lots of discussions with Apple," said Thales vice-president and in-flight systems general manager Brad Foreman last week at Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg. "The key is to get them to see the value of hosting iTunes on an aircraft. Is it a big enough market for them to be interested in? I'd try to do it tomorrow if they said yes."

Panasonic Avionics, part of Matushita Panasonic, likewise would love to see Apple give airlines permission to build iPod docks in seatbacks, and permit those users to browse iTunes through an existing in-flight entertainment system.

Several issues make the prospect of in-flight downloads of the latest Coldplay song from iTunes an unlikely prospect. Apple would have to officially permit and engineer a way for users to move songs downloaded in-flight back to their PCs. That's presently a huge no-no due to piracy concerns.

Users do have alternative methods for moving songs from an iPod to a PC, but they aren't ones Apple recommends at all. Third-party applications like iPodRip or PodPlus enable this, and the Hymn Project allows users to remove the DRM from iTunes purchases so those songs can be played on other systems.

The report also noted how licensing issues would crop up when someone downloaded music from iTunes in international airspace. Those problems include determining which nation's copyright laws would be in effect, and which country should be given credit for the sale for data tracking purposes.

Pricing of the service was not addressed. It is likely iTunes pricing would be what it normally is for terrestrial users per song, or video for the newest iPod models, and the airlines would charge a fee for connecting an iPod to their in-flight entertainment system.

Any pricing system would likely draw the scrutiny of the major music labels. Those companies have engaged in a sometimes-public fight with Apple over the future of song prices. Apple wants to keep the single price model, and the labels want tiers where more popular music costs more.

Apple's only comment in the article was its standard "Apple never talks about the future" line, a fairly standard practice for the high-tech industry.

For iTunes fans with no present plans to fly and a huge bucket of loose coins sitting in a bedroom corner, Macworld said the self-service coin counting machines operated by Coinstar can turn that change into an eCertificate that can be used to make iTunes purchases.

Can Google Beat AT&T?

2006-04-14T23:28:00.000+05:30

Imagining Google's next move has the same dreamy qualities of buying a lottery ticket - a mountain of cash pulls the heavens closer and the term "extravagance" loses its meaning. In short, it's fun to imagine the possibilities, even if a dream, of what Google can achieve.

One of the more interesting dreams is born of sheer perfect timing. In June, the U.S. government will auction off chunks of radio spectrum with bids expected to go as high as $10-$15 billion. The owners of these spectra can, conceivably, set up a wireless broadband network.

Prior to the upcoming auction, so the theory goes, Google and a host of Internet companies, frustrated with seemingly fruitless battles with a Congress sympathetic to telecommunication giants who want to tighten control over Internet access, take a peak at their account balances and realize they can become ISPs. And they can do it rather easily.

These same telecoms that have been muscling anti-Net Neutrality measures into federal and state-level legislatures have also been hounding Google and bandwidth-exhaustive content providers to share the cost of delivery.

But what if Google, either alone or with partners like Amazon and eBay (even Microsoft) could buy that radio spectrum, set up a wireless network, and bypass their struggles with the telecoms altogether? We the people, continuously under the thumb of telecom extortion, would herald them as heroes.

There are two upcoming spectrum auctions. The one in June offers 1710-1755 and 2210-2155 MHz frequency bands. A second one, which could happen as late as 2008, is for a larger and possibly cheaper 700 MHz frequency band.

"A consortium of new media companies could wind up leading the pack to buy that spectrum (700 MHz) and provide a third (broadband) pipe into homes," said Washington Analysis' George Dellinger.

AT&T's Jim Cicconi, in that same Investors.com article, wouldn't be surprised at unusual bidding from companies who don't even have concrete plans.

"It wouldn't shock me to find a range of unusual bidders in the upcoming spectrum auctions," said Cicconi. ""Experience has shown that some companies haven't needed a well thought-out business plan to bid (in earlier auctions)."

NetworkingPipeline's Preston Galla joins us in our dream state:

"Google is already building wireless networks in San Francisco and its home of Mountain View. The company is sitting on top of the biggest pile of cash south of Bill Gates -- probably close to $10 billion after a planned $2 billion new stock offering. It can afford to do it. And when it comes to cash, eBay and Amazon aren't slouches, either.

"So the network neutrality debate may blow up in AT&T's face. When it comes to buying bandwidth, I'll choose Google over the telco dinosaurs any day of the week."

(Applause)

And if you allow yourself to float dreamily down this road, it is easy (in your thoughts at least) to put the puzzle pieces together, dropping each jig-sawed kernel into place. We remember the GEMAYA prophecy (a future projection of one Internet super company consisting of Google, eBay, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, and AOL).

We are aware of the convergence of media, Google's video and audio plans. We've learned of interesting wireless patent applications. We've dreamt and speculated, been immensely disappointed, and then continued on again (once over our heartbreak) to imagine what could be done with all that money.

Google Calendar Wants To Date You

2006-04-14T22:46:00.000+05:30

Months of waiting and leaked screenshots have finally led to the official launch, in beta, of the Google Calendar product. Google Calendar has occupied the minds of Googlites everywhere, dutifully blogging away whenever a whiff of GCal rumors wafted into the blogosphere.

How will Google Calendar change the way you schedule your personal or business life? Are you ready to go online with your events, or does the traditional "scribble on the back of a receipt" approach still work for you? Pencil us in for your opinions at WebProWorld.

"I'm really dating myself now."
"It's not as though anyone else would."
-- an old joke, but not nearly as bad as "Two guys walked into a bar; the third one ducked."

So it wasn't much of a surprise to see a pair of posts from ZDNet blogger Garett Rogers about Google finally launching its calendar site.

After logging in with a Google Account and creating an event for this afternoon, we took the grand tour of Google Calendar. Or at least as much as we could see from the various settings and overview pages Google provided.

Basic preferences allow users to set time zones, date and time formats, calendar views, and declined event and invitation placement in one's calendar. Users can create multiple calendars, share the ones they have, or delete ones they no longer need.

Notifications from Google Calendar to its users can be delivered by email or by SMS when mobile notifications are enabled. People who want to enable mobile notification can do so from the Notifications tab; just enter a mobile number and the carrier, then enter the verification code received on the phone to finish the process.

Users with existing calendars in iCal or Microsoft Outlook can import them into Google Calendar through a simple select and upload process. Those can be imported to any of the calendars the user has created.

Additional users can be assigned rights to calendars. Specific people designated by the user may access those calendars with permission to change events, manage sharing, or simply see event details or free/busy information.

Google probably created this feature to support their Gmail for Domains clients; with Gmail for Domains, Google hosts Gmail accounts for a specific business or institution. Users in groups or organizations tend to desire not only calendars, but sometimes multiple permissions for managing a particular calendar.

Other guests can be invited to an event, and permission for those guests to invite others may be granted as well.

Event creation can be done through a simple process of clicking a desired time within a date, entering some details, and saving it. If that's too complicated, Google also provides the Quick Add feature.

Quick Add takes a natural language approach similar to that used by other calendar services like 30 Boxes. Clicking Quick Add brings up a single box, where the user can enter, "Doctor's appointment 9am Friday," click the + sign on the box, and see the event tossed into the correct date and timeframe on the calendar.

Once entered, events can be edited or deleted as needed. Events can be duplicated, or set to repeat for events like tedious weekly meetings with an overpaid, backstabbing network manager as a purely random example.

The Google Calendar works well in Firefox 1.5 and Internet Explorer 6. Its Ajax interface operates quickly, and the controls seem intuitive enough for new users to quickly grasp.

How to make Smartpricing work to your advantage

2006-04-12T21:49:00.000+05:30

An EPC-based strategy
The most important number to publishers is, as for other businesses, bottom line earnings. But most successful businesses focus on improving other numbers in order to succeed, eg: customer feedback rating, quality measurements, etc.. Many Adsense publishers seem to concentrate on eCPM, valid for some inter-advertising-source decisions, but in this post I’m going to outline a strategy based on EPC that, imho, has a number of potential benefits for those looking at intra-Adsense decisions.
This strategy won’t increase the potential earnings of your site – only additional content or functionality will do that – but it will bring your site’s earnings nearer to its potential. That is, it won’t increase your site ceiling, but it will take your earnings more consistently to that ceiling.

Background
I had significant success last year with an EPC-based strategy. After experimenting with various other approaches, I was prompted to return to this strategy by a recent thread started by Chris999. This proved to be an important piece in the jigsaw puzzle of smartpricing. Since then the pattern of last year has been repeated: earnings have been at a consistently high level, compared with much greater ups and downs previously. In fact, average daily earnings are now running at a record level, despite the slight decline in visitor numbers, normal for my business-oriented site as we approach Easter.

Why focus on EPC?
EPC, indirectly, provides “customer feedback”. Whilst Smartprice has an account-wide element, updated once or possibly twice a week, it also has a page (URL-oriented) element that seems to be updated daily. Although Google don’t provide us with data on conversions and other smartpricing factors, EPC gives us feedback on the impact of smartprice.

If, when measured over a month’s timescale, EPC on a page is in the same ballpark as Adwords prices, then the page is probably not being smartpriced downwards, or not by much. But if the page EPC is significantly lower, then the smartprice algorithm reckons that the page is a problem for some reason, eg: poor conversion rate or content that is not directly relevant to advertisers. That is, EPC (when related to Adwords rates) provides quantifiable customer-feedback on the performance of the page.

As with other businesses, the key to success is to identify where there is poor customer feedback, identify the cause of that poor feedback, and then resolve the problem. When I’ve taken this EPC-based strategy on my site, the benefits have been an increase in site income, junk ads disappearing off the site (removing the need to block them), and an improvement in site stickiness.

There is no guarantee that the strategy works for you, but I lay it out here so that, if you have the time and inclination, you can give it a try. The strategy also has some other spin-off benefits, such as better quality clicks for advertisers, increased income for Google, less income for purveyors of junk ads, and if lots more people did it, a better reputation for the Adsense scheme.

The EPC-based strategy
The first step is to collect relevant information. You need to know:

the EPC over the last month for the most popular pages on which you have Adsense (I monitor the top 200). You can do this by setting up URL channels (specific custom channels can provide more accurate data, but it’s a lot more work and the URL channel information is good enough for this purpose). It is important to collect this information for a month, because that is the period over which smartprice operates. Any period less than that yields increasingly unreliable information.

the current Adwords rates for your niche, or for the various niches covered by your popular pages. You can get this information by setting up an Adwords account and using the traffic estimator.

which pages are being hit hard by smart price. You can work this out by identifying which pages have a very low average EPC by comparison with the Adwords rates (this can be made easier by downloading the CSV file of your URL channels into a spreadsheet, creating a column to calculate EPC, and sorting the list into ascending order of EPC).

The second step is to try to improve EPC on the worst-performing pages. You can do this by following other advice in this forum, eg: moving ads to above the fold, reducing the number of ads on the page, ensuring that the most visible ad block loads first, etc..

The third step is to monitor your changes at least until a couple of days after your next account-wide smartprice update (I’ve described how to work out when that takes place in my Golden Gate post).

The fourth and final step is to remove ads altogether from low-EPC pages. Replace the ads with links to other pages on your site, promoting higher EPC pages. Don’t try to dupe users into going to pages to click on ads, try to maximise the chances that they will find a page relevant to them.

Final comments
This strategy depends on you having a content-rich site, with easy site navigation, and your willingness to spend time optimising your most popular pages. Although it requires an investment of time, it is mostly a one-off investment and will repay your efforts.

MSN Search Outage

2006-04-12T21:44:00.000+05:30

First of all, we’d like to apologize for the lateness of this blog post. We know folks have been concerned about the recent outage of MSN Search, what that means for them and us, and what we are doing to address it. A lot of the team was engaged in technical matters yesterday and today is really the first chance we’ve had to catch our breath and talk more about it. Next time we will be more ready to blog and let you know what the word is.

Second, we’d like to apologize for the outage itself. It’s not the kind of thing you expect from us, and it’s not frankly what we expected either. We are still troubleshooting the cause of the failure at this time, and to assist us in that we have disabled the speller function of Search. Once we are done, that functionality will be restored, but for now, we ask that you bear with us as we figure out what went awry. People are monitoring the servers minute-by-minute, working on this. We know it is important to you. People here feel like they’ve been punched in the stomach when the site goes down – it’s important to us too.

Sometimes we find the answer quickly and sometimes it takes quite awhile to diagnose. Typically the length of time it takes to diagnose correlates to the severity of the outage. Say you are in a car accident – a rear-end collision at 10mph can turn into a 10-car pileup, and the folks at the end of the line have a hard time figuring out exactly why their car was affected. This one is taking us more time, and we wish it wasn’t . We will definitely keep you posted as things progress.

Delighting our customers is our #1 job. Yesterday we didn’t do our job. Everyone here on the search team is dedicated to bringing you the best answer to your query – whenever you ask it. We’re still new to the search business – and in many ways we’re still learning.

Ken Moss
General Manager Web Search

The New Wild West: Your Laptop or Your Life?

2006-04-12T21:08:00.000+05:30

Coffee, tea, or a padlock? That might be the choice for visitors to cafes in San Francisco who want to experience the city's new wireless network. Just one week after the Bay Area municipality announced that it had chosen Google to provide free wireless broadband for city residents, police reports indicate that laptop thefts at wireless cafes are on the rise.

Imagine sitting at a local digital cafe tapping away at your laptop while downing your favorite coffeehouse beverage when two men approach you as if to ask a question. That is exactly what happened to a San Francisco finance manager after stopping at a Mission District coffee shop late one Thursday morning.

"I looked up, and I saw this guy leaning into me as if he was asking a question," the man said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. "I leaned forward and out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone fiddling with the computer cord. I tried to stand up, and as I stepped back, he stabbed me in the chest."

The 40-year-old victim suffered a partially collapsed lung for which he was hospitalized. Adding insult to injury, the two criminals made off with his $2,500 Apple PowerBook. From beginning to end, according to Inspector Robert Lynch of the San Francisco Police Department robbery unit, "the whole thing was over in 15 seconds."

String of Crimes

The incident is the latest -- and most violent -- in a recent string of crimes in which thieves target wireless hot spots, coffeehouses, restaurants, and digital cafes that offer free wireless Internet service. Once a sanctuary for those seeking a little caffeine with their Web surfing, the hot spots are now a hunting ground for ne'er-do-wells.

"Now that we have these hot zones, people are bringing laptops out in the street, using them in public cafes," Lt. John Luftus, an officer with the robbery unit, told the Chronicle.

Police statistics support the alarming trend, logging only 18 laptop computer thefts in 2004. That number rose to 48 robberies in 2005. This year looks to top that with 18 cases reported by the end of March and police estimating that there could be as many as 70 robberies by the end of the year.

"It's a changing culture, and crime is following it," Loftus said. "To the criminal element, this is a valuable piece of equipment that they can quite easily cash in on -- even otherwise law-abiding people are tempted to buy $3,000 laptops for $200 to $300 on the street."

On Guard

While San Francisco is the hardest hit of Bay Area communities, other nearby cities, including San Jose and Berkeley, have reported a few laptop thefts. Palo Alto and Oakland police departments, meanwhile, are reporting no such incidents.

In an effort to prevent thefts in their establishments, some cafes in San Francisco have installed security leashes for laptops and have told employees to keep a watchful eye over customers. Others have taken an even more high-tech approach to the problem, installing video monitors and posting signs to warn their clientele that they are being monitored.

Bay Area police are considering using undercover police decoys in areas where these types of crimes are most prevalent, but the costs of such stakeouts are prohibitive.

"It's a lot of lattes," said Park Station Captain John Ehrlich.

Dr. RAJKUMAR

2006-04-12T21:02:00.000+05:30

The people of Karnataka adore him. They call him with love "Annavaru" meaning beloved elder brother. Dr. Raj Kumar entered the film industry at the age of eight years and got his first break as a hero in film "Bedara Kannappa" in 1954. Thereafter, he went on to work in over 220 films and became a household name in the Kannada-speaking world.

He is known for his simplicity and generosity. A kind-hearted and peace loving person. His contribution to the film industry is incredible. He has served his whole life for the growth of the Kannada Cinema Industry. He is also a famous singer. However, his singing career started when he sang 'yaare kugadali' in Sampathige Savaal. His devotional songs have a touch of class. Needless to say he has created history in Kannada Cinema Industry which will never fade off. He fought for Kannada in Gokak Chaluvali.

He has been awarded numerous State, National and International Awards. He is a Recipient of Padma Bhushan and a doctorate from Mysore University, he has won a number of national and State awards including the prestigious Karnataka Rathna Award recognising him as a ''jewel`` of Kannada films. In 1995 he received prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke award for his outstanding contribution to the Kannada film industry.

He has a large fanfare following him. His memorable films Bedara Kannapa, Bangarada Manushya, Kastoori Nivasa , Kula gowrava,Gandhada Gudi, Sampahige Sawal, Shankar Guru, Babruvana, Bhakta Prahalada, Halu Jenu, Bhagyada Laxmi Baramma, Jeevana chaitra, Akasmika are only a few to name. The list can go on and on and on... Official announcement has been made describing Raj Kumar as a "living legend" of Kannada screen.

Recently he is off from the cinema Industry, but his fans still want him to act expecting his new movies "Nrupathunga" and "Shabdavedi".

Bombay HC lifts ban on dance bars

2006-04-12T20:58:00.000+05:30

The Bombay High Court has lifted the ban on Mumbai's dance bars.

Rejecting the state's argument that the ban was necessary, the court has ruled that the ban violates Articles 14 and 19 of the Constitution.

The state government has eight weeks to file an appeal against the order.

Fresh licences have to be issued to the bars after eight weeks.

Lawyers arguing on behalf of the bar girls' unions have tried to debunk the state's argument that the ban was necessary as existing laws were inadequate to control the menace of dance bars.

Meanwhile, Mumbai Bar Owners Association President Manjit Singh Sethi has been arrested, after the Maharashtra Assembly cleared a privileges committee move ordering 90 days of imprisonment for him.

Moral issue

The dance bar ban, that put nearly 75,000 bar dancers and one lakh others out of work, was largely seen as a victory for Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil.

Patil had claimed the dance bars were a corrupting influence on the youth and a breeding ground for crime.

The campaign began as a crackdown on bars operating without licenses and soon assumed the form of moral policing, later extending to the issue of Bangladeshis working in bars.

As the government pushed for a total shutdown of over 1200 dance bars across the state, thousands of bar girls and NGO workers took to the streets in protest.

But the ban came into effect, prompting concerns that the bar girls may have to turn to prostitution. Three girls also committed suicide.

It was these protests that prompted people associated with the dance bars to file four different public interest litigations in the Bombay High Court on grounds that the ban is against the fundamental right to livelihood.

Kannada actor Rajkumar passes away

2006-04-12T20:55:00.000+05:30

Legendary Kannada actor Rajkumar has passed away in Bangalore. The 77-year-old actor died of a cardiac arrest.

He had been unwell for the past few days.

Doctors pronounced him dead after he was brought to Bangalore's M S Ramaiah hospital. He is survived by three sons and a daughter.

Rajkumar had received the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke award for his contribution to the Kannada film industry.

Illustrious career

He entered the film industry at the age of eight years and got his first break as a hero in the film Bedara Kannappa in 1954.

Thereafter, he went on to work in over 220 films and became a household name in the Kannada-speaking world.

Some of his most popular films include Bedara Kannapa, Halu Jenu and Akasmika.

Meanwhile in Bangalore, grief has turned into anger as Rajkumar's fans set cars on fire and pelted stones at buses.

Amid reports of rising tension, the police are doing their best to maintain order with thousands of fans gathering outside the actor's residence.

Rajkumar hit the headlines six years ago when he was kept hostage by slain sandalwood smuggler Veerappan. He was held in the forests for more than 100 days.

Leonardo: We saved Brazilian football

2006-04-12T01:30:00.000+05:30

Few players have enjoyed quite such a distinguished career as former Brazil midfielder and current AC Milan director Leonardo Nascimento de Araujo.
The classy and versatile playmaker enjoyed successful spells with a variety of top clubs including Flamengo, Sao Paulo, Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan, racking up an extensive collection of honours along the way. Pride of place, of course, is taken by the FIFA World Cup™ winner's medal he picked up with Brazil in 1994, and close beside it is the runners-up badge he collected four years later in France.

Now 36, Leonardo has always been a class act, not only thanks to his graceful, refined style of play and deadly left foot, but also for his objective and intelligent views on the beautiful game. In an exclusive interview with FIFAworldcup.com, he discusses Brazil and Italy's chances of success in Germany, the importance of his country's USA 94 triumph and the merits of Seleção coach Carlos Alberto Parreira.

Brazil are considered strong favourites to win their sixth FIFA World Cup in Germany, but several key players (Ronaldo, Adriano, Roberto Carlos, Dida, Cafu) are currently struggling for form. Does that worry you?
No, not really. Those players allegedly playing below their normal level are also the most experienced players in the squad, and therefore they've overcome difficult situations like this many times before during the course of their careers. But if you look ahead, they'll all have a month to play together before the FIFA World Cup begins, and I'm sure they'll start the tournament in top form. Furthermore, this experienced generation of players will play alongside an exciting and extraordinarily talented generation including the likes of Kaka, Adriano, Ronaldinho, Robinho and Juninho. If you compiled a list of the world's current top ten footballers, then I think at least five or six of them would be Brazilian.

What do you think of Italy's chances of success in Germany?
I think Italy are in the same boat as England, France, Argentina and, given that they're the host nation, Germany. But these teams have a lot to prove when the FIFA World Cup gets under way in June because, at the moment, you can only class them as serious contenders thanks to their pedigree rather than how they've played in recent games. When these big, traditional teams get to the quarter-finals of a competition, then you can label them as real contenders, but they still need to show a lot more quality than they have been doing lately.

Why is it so hard for a non-European team to win in Europe?
I think it was harder in the past than it is now to be honest. Obviously when you play in a country where you don't have the same sort of footballing history and tradition enjoyed by the major European nations, then there are certain things that count in your favour. But when you play in Italy, France or Germany for example, these countries have a proud football heritage and know exactly how to take advantage of their position as the home team, right down to the final details.
Go to the Brazil team page

Playing at home in front of your own fans really gives a team that extra boost. Just imagine the lengths Brazil would go to in order to win a FIFA World Cup on home turf. These days there's not the same gap that there used to be, mainly down to the fact that there are so many Brazilians and Argentinians playing in Europe. Competing in Europe is no longer a new experience for these players and therefore that initial culture shock doesn't come into play.

Many of the players who won the FIFA World Cup in 1994 say that their victory was key to Brazilian football's current good health, having relieved the pressure of 24 trophy-less years. How much do you agree with that and how responsible do you feel for Brazilian football's current standing within the world game?
In my opinion that moment, that victory, saved Brazilian football, and it kick-started the beginning of a new era. Seriously, 24 years without a trophy is an enormous weight on anyone's shoulders, and I certainly remember how tough it was to play with that sort of pressure put upon you. Everything we did was scrutinised, whether it was the players, the style of play, our defensive tactics, absolutely everything, and it was never pleasant coping with people constantly doubting you.

Relive the 1994 FIFA World Cup

From the moment we won, the Seleção were given more licence to play with the freedom of expression and spontaneity with which they used to play and which football fans everywhere have always enjoyed. And things definitely got easier for Brazilian players too. The eyes of the world were focused on Brazil once again, and the big European teams began to take an interest in signing Brazilian players. Before we won the World Cup you'd have only found Brazilians playing for some of the lesser lights in European football in the late 80s and early 90s.

The likes of Juve, Inter, Milan, and Real Madrid had no Brazilian players in their ranks; there was only Romario at Barcelona in 1994. I think a measure of the significance of our victory is that we opened the door for so many Brazilian players to play at top European clubs once again. And I'm not just saying that because I played in that team - it's a fact. Our win was a catalyst for Brazil to go on and reach two more World Cup Finals, and now sees us as favourites to win in Germany this summer.
Is there anyone you see currently playing for Brazil who reminds you of the way you used to play?
I had a fairly odd style of playing really. I certainly don't regret it, but when you're happy to take on any role, as I was, then you end up without an individual style of your own, because you're so adaptable to the team's needs. And that's exactly what happened with me as I played in so many positions - at left-back, in midfield and even as a forward for Milan. To be perfectly honest, I thought it was great because I got to play in a whole range of positions with a variety roles that gave me an excellent idea of how the team should function all over the pitch. But I don't think there’s anyone who plays like that these days.

You played under current Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira in 1994. What makes him the ideal man to coach Brazil? How would you describe his managerial approach?
Firstly, there's a big difference between club and international management. Parreira was an excellent club coach, but success at international level demands a certain sensitivity in your managerial approach. He brings a fantastic sense of calm to the team and he's never got carried away with the fact that he's an international manager. It's like he was born to do the job. And in a way he was, as he was even around in 1970 helping out with the national team in more of a research capacity. That's important, too. Parreira isn't a former player, instead he comes from a more theoretical school of coaching, he's a student of the game. Since then he's been involved with the Seleção several times and is there again now, so it's like he's an ever present and integral part of the national team set-up.

Parreira: Coaching Brazil is a dream

And more than just being a top coach, he's a great decision-maker. He makes the right choices in terms of personnel; he knows how to make a team feel at ease, but is also very disciplined, correct and keen to impose certain values upon the group of players at his disposal. Parreira's a man who is extremely well respected even by those who disagree with him, and as such there's always a sense of impartiality and balance in the teams he sends out.

Australia seek full-time coach to replace Hiddink

2006-04-12T01:28:00.000+05:30

Australia hope to appoint a full-time coach to replace Guus Hiddink when the Dutchman leaves the job after this year's FIFA World Cup™ in Germany.
Football Federation Australia (FFA) wants the new coach to spend a lot of his time in Australia, unlike Hiddink who is combining the role with coaching Dutch club PSV Eindhoven.

"We are keen to have a national coach who is able to be full-time and in between the direct Socceroos commitments we would be looking to tap into his experience in all manner of ways," John Boultbee, the FFA's head of high performance, told reporters on Tuesday.

"We would certainly expect the new national coach to spend a considerable amount of time in Australia beyond the time that the Socceroos are together."

The FFA, which has not ruled out hiring an Australian, said it would be happy for assistant coach Graham Arnold to lead the team in their opening AFC Asian Cup qualifiers if necessary.

"The local candidates are led by the people we've got working for us at the moment, Graham Arnold," Boultbee said.

"We're in a very good situation in that it will be seamless when Guus leaves with Graham Arnold and Johann Neeskens ready to take our teams to the Asian Cup if we haven't totally completed the task of naming a new coach.

"We are absolutely confident that we will be able to attract a coach of a very good calibre," he said.

"The reputation and the performances of the Socceroos has made Australia a very interesting prospect for very high calibre coaches."

Hiddink, who guided Australia to a first FIFA World Cup appearance in 32 years, is poised to sign a four-year contract to lead Russia through to the 2010 tournament in South Africa.

Web Advertising Agency

2006-04-11T01:01:00.000+05:30

A web advertising agency can promote a business web site to the virtual world through a variety of methods that produce incoming, friendly traffic that will in turn, boost sales and consumer awareness. Traditional ad methods are shifting from typical offline mediums to web based strategies that are targeted at the growing number of prospective consumers worldwide. While traditional methods of ad campaigns still have their place in the real world, the Internet has special criteria that must be met for ad efforts to be effective. Web editorial advertising is one of the most popular ways to create interest, develop a purchaser base and offer continued relevance for consumers who may be drawn to a particular product or service offered by a business.

Many traditional ad agencies have continued to cater to their typical client base that may be large mega corporations which require huge branding campaigns targeted at the general public. Billboards, radio, television, print media and mass mailings are more conventional methods used by many agencies that have been successful with promoting these types of companies. Smaller companies in conjunction with the continued growth of online opportunities have made it necessary for more traditional ad companies to develop an effective web advertising agency department as well if they are to stay current. Smaller businesses cannot afford the broad, branding campaigns that large, mega companies are able to subsidize. Most of their ad dollars are more and more directed toward Internet ad campaigns since the newest marketing approaches are heading there.

New ad agencies that understand the trends of Internet methods are popping up everywhere and older, more established companies are developing web based ad departments to meet the heightened demand for effective online advertising. More and more consumers are becoming computer literate and many small businesses operate completely online without any real world store fronts. Mid-sized to small businesses also are generally cutting their ad budgets to save money on traditional, expensive methods that are not as effective as it used to be. Many companies' ad dollars are increasingly being invested in newer, cheaper and more effective Internet ad campaigns. As some companies double their business efforts by adding an online counterpart to their particular product or service, it has become necessary for them to secure the services of a creative web advertising agency.

The shift in necessary ad mediums for web based businesses is taking place at a dramatic pace. That has created the need for new strategies such as web editorial advertising concepts. The buzz word for many Internet ad methods is content, content, content. Editorial ad methods continue to rise to the top of preferred and effective methods because of the popularity of written information on the Internet. The use of RSS feeds, ezines, newsletters, blogs and an assortment of other information driven strategies have proved to be highly effective in drawing in desired consumer traffic through editorial strategies. Promoting a business online through effective advice, research data, factual findings and personal writings continues to be the best way to attract prospective consumers. Web editorial advertising through blogs is at the top of the list for high impact, content driven, ad campaigns.

A small business owner that establishes himself or herself as an expert in a certain field and that provides regular updates in a pleasing format will inevitably draw a customer following in time. Any contemporary web advertising agency recognizes this formula and will attempt to structure strategies that use this method to promote their business clients. In the past, blogs were considered rather casual mediums that businesses were not expected to use. However, in the past few years, many small businesses have begun to use blogs to provide daily and weekly updates written from a casual perspective that is appealing to readers. With the further use of free ebooks, ezines and newsletters, readers are captivated by expert information on any given subject as well as drawn into a consumer/business relationship. "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." (Joshua 1:8)

Establishing a friendly relationship with readers is important in winning the continued confidence and patronage of consumers who will return time after time. Blogs that are written from a casual perspective, offer well written content, contain expert information, and remain fresh are most likely to succeed. Business blogs are considered editorial in nature and are quite appealing to those who begin to follow a certain topic. This method of web editorial advertising is a major cornerstone of any web based business ad strategy. Other strategies that a web advertising agency may include in an overall campaign are banner ads, direct mail, email campaigns and lead generation tools. The Internet has opened up a whole new world for professional advertisers who can no longer see marketing through real world promotional methods, but must now compete for consumer interest in the virtual marketplace.

PPC Search Engine Internet Marketing

2006-04-11T00:58:00.000+05:30

PPC search engine Internet marketing provides high rankings with engines determined by the bid price that a company is willing to pay. This provides a competitive edge to companies who wish to be successful on the Web. Price per click Internet marketing will place a site at the top of rankings if the bid price is higher than other companies and the highest bidder gets the very first spot. The client is charged based upon clicks from viewers. Advertising companies that help with search engine optimization also offer website analysis, keyword research, copywriting, link popularity, and other methods to help companies excel online. Many plans will include researching the competition, finding out who the targeted market is based upon products and services offered and obtaining detailed ranking reports and resubmission of keywords and keyword phrases.

Detailed analyses of products and services, who the target market is and what they are buying is a good place to start with an advertising plan. Analyzing the website is also crucial and will help to provide some insight on keywords and PPC search engine Internet marketing. While a website should look professional and be fun to surf, it should also be easily found by engines through keyword phrases. Some things may need to be minimized or eliminated to help with website design. Limit using frames, long domain addresses, navigational maps, and excessive use of graphics. Search engines are not very concerned with frames and graphics but text is very important. Quality content with changing text and excellent use of keywords are the most important issues for rankings. Navigation on a site should be user friendly and information should load quickly. Adequate linking helps engines to locate all the pages and keywords.

Copywriting is a very important part of having a successful website. Quality and interesting content will make a website popular with consumers. While viewers may not want to hang around that long, they just might, if there is interesting information for them to read while they are looking for products and services. Many advertising companies online offer copywriting as a tool for excellent website design and to help with price per click Internet marketing as well. The power of words can influence in ways that can lead to more sales, more traffic, higher rankings, and provide powerful information that helps to empower others. Do some research online and find out how other companies are using quality copywriting to bring success their way. Quality content can give an overall impression to viewers that the website is of the highest caliber and can be viewed by anyone without having to worry about children seeing undesirable content. "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers" (Ephesians 4:29).

Link popularity puts one's link on others websites and in turn provides a Web presence. It helps with rankings and helps to increase viewer awareness of a website along with products and services. Linking with other sites that offer similar content or products is the best way to participate in the process. Find websites that have quality content to link up with. Some marketing companies have partner sites that clients can link with. Companies that offer these services know the importance of link popularity with PPC search engine Internet marketing and how they are related to one another.

Another popular method of web advertising includes email correspondence and using this form of advertising on the Web is accomplished through newsletters, promotions, invitations, postcards, and stationery. Some companies offer templates for advertising purposes and clients can download templates to quickly create their own copy. Consider using a company that provides price per click Internet marketing for email advertising. Many avenues with email correspondence require building email lists and tracking, not to mention delivery methods. Advertising firms online provide generation lead lists and include opt in and opt out features for prospects. Most advertise good ethic business practices by stressing the point of avoiding spam and giving the prospect or customer the option to unsubscribe at any time. Many firms offer free trial sign up and will give a free quote for services as well as providing detailed reports of tracking and progress.

Acquiring help with appropriate keywords can prove to be a crucial consideration with PPC search engine Internet marketing. Finding the best keywords is crucial but placement of those can be just as important for ranking purposes. Some companies help the website owner control click costs associated with price per click advertising. By tracking performance it is easier to identify poor performing keywords and finding new ones that help to increase revenue. Many advertising firms online offer consultations for specific services. Do a search online and find out the importance of price per click Internet marketing

Debt Management Advice

2006-04-11T00:55:00.000+05:30

Debt management advice can be the most important counsel a person ever receives, because it can help people avoid a lifetime of going from paycheck to paycheck or spending money on foolish investments. This counsel can be gleaned from countless sources--through books, magazines, radio and television programs, and a multitude of Internet sources. Pleading ignorance to helpful information regarding positive financial strategies is no longer a reasonable defense for those who find themselves in chronic, deep debt. This topic is not only discussed, but strategized, analyzed, and publicized from many angles. So if a person really wants to know the ins and outs of how to handle money, access to whatever information a person needs is available at anytime. A good place to start is the worldwide web for topics of particular interest such as loan settlement, money handling counseling, or loan consolidation. For the person who has incurred too much indebtedness and is holding off collection calls by reading his caller ID, now is the right time to get the best debt management advice available!

Helpful and competent debt management organizations, such as the many Christian financial ministries, offer effective seminars based on biblical principles. Through these organizations, biblical principles set the framework for fiscal responsibility and accountability from God's perspective. Other organizations such as Consumer Credit Counseling Services are non-profit agencies that offer advice covering all aspects of financial education as well as programs to facilitate loan reduction or elimination. Businesses and ministries offer seminars, workbooks, hot lines, and phone counselors to provide the needed information.

For the person who is anxious to get his finances under control and find real debt management solutions, the many opportunities on the Internet can help him turn his financial picture around and start managing money instead of having money manage him. In today's changing world of virtual checkbooks and online shopping in a global economy, current debt management advice regarding the many loan relief options is crucial for reducing the financial load. Anyone can easily find free education opportunities in this area. The topics range from investment smarts, money handling, God's view of money, biblical attitudes toward wealth, and good accounting practices.

One of the first principles a Christian will learn when receiving debt management advice is that he must trust God for all his finances. A person who is struggling to manage his finances can contact profit-free groups who will assist in straightening out the problems. The psalmist writes, "In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion" (Psalm 71:1). When you are ready for personal, customized help, there are many debt management sources waiting for you to make the move. Surf the web for the information specialist who interests you most!

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