Archive for Kevin Ryan

Kevin Ryan

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  • An Open Letter to Retailers Concerning Black Friday
    When has organizing a frenzied mass of humans ever ended well in the history of mankind? The wisdom of crowds is an Internet fantasy. Isn't it time to move more marketing efforts online?
  • Yahoo's Next Move
    While many onlookers see Jerry Yang's tenure as CEO of Yahoo as a failure, that's not really accurate. He stepped in to rebuild a floundering machine, and is now making way for the next evolution of the world's most powerful portal.
  • Must We Unlock the Deep Web?
    Search engines are good at what they do, but they aren't especially great at it. Local information, research documents, mountains of medical data, and other information lies buried beyond the reach of GoogleBot and other crawlers. But is any of that information really useful?
  • Suing Google over Yahoo
    Yahoo's last ditch effort to generate additional revenue and thwart a hostile purchase from Microsoft might have provided sufficient impetus for a partnership six months ago, but we're a long way from the world we all knew then. The government, consumer watchdogs, and advertisers are all raising opposition to the Google-Yahoo ad deal. The drama is far from over.
  • Search Trademark Hobby Kit
    Who owns the trademark when it comes to search? A lot of angry litigation stems from the huge dollars that big brands measure from clicks on their trademarked terms in search results. Are they simply misunderstanding the search realm and buying funnel?
  • Vote Obama/Google in '08?
    Google CEO Eric Schmidt hit the campaign trail this week with presidential candidate Barack Obama. Did he cross the line? Is there any merit to Google's statement that Mr. Schmidt's personal beliefs are his own and Google isn't backing Obama, just its CEO?
  • Googloomy Times, Desperate Measures
    Crashing markets, bank bailouts, and government investments in the private sector are the new norm. Let's take a closer look at what you can do to avoid being caught up in the hoopla. If you're smart about it, you might just benefit from the downside and create your own upside.
  • Stop In-House SEO Disasters Now!
    Whether you're in the house or outside it, fighting the good fight is never easy. Though we don't do it enough, hat's off to the in-house SEO practitioners everywhere.
  • In Tough Economic Times, Whither Search?
    The news about our world's economic conditions aren't just bad, they're insane. What will happen to advertising and marketing dollars as a result? Is search insulated from our economic meltdown? The short answer: not by a long shot. The long answer is a bit more complicated.
  • I'm a PC, What Are You?
    Apple is trying to connect with the rest of the world (beyond college students dominating the Mac audience) via great ad campaigns. However, if you can't connect with your audience in the real world, you're flushing all your marketing efforts right down the drain.
  • Launch Google Freedom Now
    How much power should Google have? How much is too much? Why should you care? Would we really be better off in a Google-free world?
  • Rehabilitating SEO -- Part 2
    Time is a precious commodity, especially for search marketers. Every generation of Internet tools and technologies have to pass through time-waster adolescence. As an SEO, you need to recognize where in the continuum you are. Besides that, SEOs can spend entirely too much time heading in the wrong direction, a fact that is the epitome of counter-productivity.
  • Rehabilitating SEO
    Search marketers are some of the most passionate and dedicated people I've ever encountered. Those seeking to advance their position within search results can easily become obsessed (to the point of addiction) with checking results and positioning. When considering how your SEO time is spent, what's important and what isn't so important? What kinds of things are OK to obsess over? Are there ways to improve or correct obsessive SEO behavior?
  • The Beginning of the End? Or the End of the Beginning?
    In the end, searches are still up; search revenues are still strong; and the sky isn't falling. Universal or blended search means lower click volume. The data's right. But why?
  • Search Ad Tools Help Manage Complexity
    Search advertising tools have been unhappily married to search providers since they first appeared on the scene. But increasing consolidation and acquisition of search advertising tools by big holding companies is slowly opening a window of opportunity for independent providers.
  • Woohoo for Yahoo
    Even after the vote re-count, a majority of shareholders voted Yahoo's board in, and Carl Icahn settled for the right to propose two board seats and a spot for himself. At the end of the day, what's more important than rebuilding the Web's biggest brand?
  • What's Wrong With Being Cuil?
    Cuil may be a good search engine...someday. But launching it as a "Google-killer" was a mistake. What have we learned today? First, make sure it works before you launch it. Second, make sure you can live up to your claims or you'll suffer the consequences.
  • The Japanese Search, Why Don't We?
    Should search be turning Japanese? Kevin Ryan really thinks so.
  • Google's Path to Domination
    And you may ask yourself, 'how did we get here?' Today's search landscape is a result of Yahoo trying to integrate large acquisitions too fast, while Google focused on core disciplines, small complimentary acquisitions, and smart build-outs. And today, Microsoft is trying to do the same thing Yahoo failed at five years ago. Think it'll work this time?
  • What's on your Mind?
    Anyone engaged in the practice of search has at one time or another struggled to motivate searchers. Motivation comes in the form of click action, triggered by text. But the action starts long before reaching search results.
  • Yahoo's Judgment Day
    Microsoft was set to save Yahoo from certain death with a solid offer to purchase assets, or so we thought. According to yesterday's shareholder presentation, the deal wasn't such a great idea.
  • Yahoo's Suicide Pact with Google
    Who cares if Yahoo outsources its search advertising to Google? You should. On what planet is having only one place to buy anything a good thing for competitive pricing?
  • Social Networks: We Are All Animals
    People don't talk anymore. They misinterpret information, fly off the handle, and dehumanize the people around them. To them, people on the receiving on end of communications aren't people at all. A lot of human complications could be reconciled by being forced to experience the tears, smell the anguish, and see the bloody devastation that one has created, live and in person.
  • Carl Icahn Can't Save Yahoo
    Last week's public exchange between Icahn and Yahoo management is just the latest round of treating symptoms while ignoring the illness. As is often the case when corporate spats go public, lots of questions remain in the minds of searchers, search marketers, Yahoo shareholders, Microsoft employees, and the general public.
  • Who Owns the Brand?
    For a whole lot of really good reasons, brands (particularly those with resellers) maintain an ongoing battle to protect their brands. And in the online world, they want to hold search engines accountable.
  • Forget Competition, the Search Wars are Over
    Advertisers love competition because (arguably) costs will be driven down. In the single search environment that already exists in many countries around the world, search advertising costs are set by one entity. Maybe we shouldn't count the key competitors out just yet.
  • Yellow Pages and Search
    Yellow pages directories and search engines are hopelessly intertwined as directories feed search queries and search queries feed directories. A new spin on the old book might just connect the dots.
  • Google's Superiority Complex
    In the end, is Google's search advertising system better than Yahoo's, or are they just monetizing better? It sounds like a little bit of both, but we shouldn't count Yahoo out.
  • 100 Million Theoretical Dollars
    In a recent episode of South Park, the characters set out to create a viral YouTube video to earn their millions. While you're waiting for 100 million real dollars, capitalizing on the connection between traditional placement and search can be as easy as lip-syncing Romanian dance music.
  • Visually Impaired Search
    Like search ads, PageRank, and blended search, Google's newly launched VisualRank image search technology has the potential to change the way SEO is done. Start paying attention now.
  • Who Will Cry for the Newbies?
    Search engines now own ways of combining data from ad units and site visits along with the means to deliver ads to consumers. As owners of "one stop" toolkits, these search engines should be taking the same care to actually educate while filling their coffers.
  • Search and Future Think
    The dot-com BS generator meets Futuresearch and the metrics kit hits the brand.
  • Making Yahoocrosoft a Reality
    The quibbling of two secondary competitors, while another lengthens its lead, has resulted in the downfall of many in the past. This week, I humbly offer some advice for both sides.
  • How to Survive a Recession ... In Search
    With a recession looming, at least according to the constant warning bells from the media, you may be looking at ways to weather the coming storm. With these five steps, you can improve the chances of your business surviving, and thriving, during hard times.
  • Search Within a Search: Where's it Leading?
    While publishers get up in arms over a new feature in Google's SERPs, they should be thinking a bit more about the big picture, and Google's evolution into a destination site.
  • Uncovering the Real Universal Search
    There appears to be a lot more non-text results showing up in Google searches than many people expect. The effects this will have on searchers, and advertisers, may be a bit disturbing to some.
  • Q&A with Nicholas Carr, author, The Big Switch
    Carr's new book explores the future of computing and its implications for business and society. He'll discuss some of those topics today during his opening keynote at SES New York.
  • SES New York and You
    If you make it to SES New York, you can make it anywhere in the search marketing world.
  • The Beginning of the End? Or the End of the Beginning?
    In the end, searches are still up; search revenues are still strong; and the sky isn't falling. Universal or blended search means lower click volume. The data's right. But why?
  • The TV Writers -- And the Buzz -- Are Back
    Yahoo Shortcuts and Buzz: powerhouse for marketers seeking to capitalize on the connected world's desire to search and find.
  • Housebreaking the Search
    Housebreaking search research from Kevin Ryan, host of the SES New York Super Session, "How to Train Your Pets to Search."
  • The Search Monopoly Transforms
    Yahoo Cybertrauma, Optimus Google Monopoly, and Microsoft Megatronic Impulses and the fate of the search universe.
  • 2008: Google, Yahoo and MSN Join Together
    Industry insider's view of Internet titans Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Yahoocrosoft.
  • The Day the Agency Model Died
    The agency model died in Paris. No, not Gisele Bundchen or Carla Bruni. Kevin Ryan on Google, Publicis, WPP and the Angel of Death.
  • A Gloomy Searchonomic Forecast
    Freakonomics reigns as Yahoo decides whether to throw in the search engine towel. Here's why it's all over if Yahoo does.
  • Search Doesn't Matter
    Is Google the Microsoft of the new millennium? Does search matter the way IT did four years ago?
  • Local Search Revelations
    The latest local search survey statistics: Who's online and what they're up to.
  • 2008 Wish List: Search Engine Hangover Cures
    2008 wish list: abridged, but uncensored cures for pseudo-search engines, link baiting bloggers, and stupid press release tricks.
  • Google vs. the World
    Round 1 goes to Google/DoubleClick and the U.S. FTC. Round 2: Will the EU strike a blow for global privacy?
  • Yahoo, Facebook, Life and Death
    2008 will be the year of...
  • Google Mobile Search Gamble: Everybody Wins?
    Google gambles on Android dreams: everybody wins?
  • SEM Brand Reputation Management
    How search advertising can save the day...and your life.
  • Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 2
    Search Engine: Land of Opportunity? comScore world tour rocks U.S. search engines' world.
  • Stop In-House SEO Disasters Now!
    In-House SEO. How to become a master of In-House disaster.
  • Understanding the Global Search Marketplace - Part 1
    Global search marketing. Search query growth. Ryan scores exclusive comScore data. Part 1 of a series.
  • Should You Join the PageRank Hysteria?
    PageRank is the SEO equivalent of a stock ticker. How much time do you want to invest watching the PR ticker?
  • Achieving Brand and Affiliate Harmony in Search
    Forget brand vs. brand brawls in the search engines. The new UFC: Affiliate vs. brand at SES @ A4U London.
  • Raising Search Standards and the Compliance Bar
    New IAB/DMA standards will change the way interactive agencies, SEMcos, and solo search practitioners do business. Here's why you need to know what a SEMco is and how your business will change.
  • The Real Impact of Blended Search
    Since the major engines have introduced blended and universal search results, they have seen increased traffic to their video and image sites. Are searchers warming to the blended search concept?
  • The Year Search Makes Contact With Everything
    Universal Search in 2007: The Year Search Makes Contact With Everything.
  • Halo 3 as Meta4 Redux
    Last week, the big launch of Halo 3 enticed gamers in droves; this week, gamers take on a whole new kind of fight.
  • Halo 3 as Meta4
    With the release of Halo 3, it's worth your while to take a look at what we can learn from the big launch. See how you can entice searchers with the right marketing message.
  • Skyrockets In Flight, Google to the Moon?
    Has Google officially jumped the shark? Hey Sergey, are you goofing on Elvis? Searching For Meaning asks if Google has left the building.
  • The Search Marketing Human Capital Problem
    Are you an HR exec hunting for human "search marketing" resources? Or an SEM pro hunted by executive recruiters? Find out what human capital is worth.
  • How Search Will Save Online Advertising... Again!
    The credit crunch might have some casualties, but search won't be one of them.
  • Waiting for Google to Exhale
    Universal search and refined paid search... what are they really changing?
  • Public Relations Train Wrecks
    Kevin Ryan reports in from SES on the press and search optimization controversy.
  • Google vs. the World
    Kevin Ryan is here to tell you that privacy is dead and your future lies in everyone else's hands.
  • Yellow Pages and Search
    A new spin on the old book might just connect the dots.
  • Taking Off at SES Travel Edition
    Kevin Ryan returns from the event with carry on, sage advice.
  • Turning Local Inside Out
    Search providers have been trying to figure out local search since the dawn of the Web defined search as an information vehicle. That is, before content went commercial. Kevin Ryan takes a look at what local search looks like today.
  • Housebreaking the Search
    Kevin Ryan struggles with search marketing for grown-ups.
  • Up Your SEM Knowledge Now!
    Kevin Ryan reviews the importance and provides sources of SEM education.
  • Stop In-house SEO Disasters Now!
    Kevin Ryan’s triumphant return to SEM journalism with an ode to the in-house SEO practitioner.

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