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November 6, 2009

PRSA 2009 International Conference Features Two Online Marketing Heroes

I'll by flying to San Diego this weekend to speak at the PRSA 2009 International Conference next week. Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and a member of the SES Advisory Board, will also be speaking at the annual Public Relations Society of America event.

Odden is speaking on Monday, November 9, at 10:15 a.m. about "Help Google Find Your Releases: Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Tactics for Public Relations Professionals."

Nine out of 10 journalists, reporters and editors use search engines to do their jobs, according to a recent survey by TopRank Online Marketing. In this environment, public relations professionals must understand the ins and outs of search engine optimization (SEO).

So, Odden will help PR people find out how to choose the best key words, optimize their newsroom and press releases, build better links, and sell SEO to decision makers. Plus, he'll share "the No. 1 SEO tactic to implement today."

I'll be speaking on Tuesday, November 10, at 11:15 a.m. with Laura Sturaitis, the senior vice president, media and product services, at Business Wire.

How do you know your press release delivers value? Are there ways to increase a press releases' ROI?

Sturaitis and I will discuss real live examples and techniques to get the most mileage for press releases, especially in the Web 2.0 world. We'll explain why PR people need to work hand-in-hand with their Web team to see how visitors are getting to their site and moving through it. We'll also examine Web analytics for compiling, tracking and measuring activity deriving from the press release via the wires and elsewhere.

If you want a preview, check out my post on the ComPRrehension blog, which is entitled, "Does Your Press Release Deliver Value?"

Odden and I also spoke last year at the PRSA 2008 International Conference in Detroit. Why is this useful information for search engine optimizers to share with their colleagues down the hall in the public relations department? SEO specialists and PR specialists need to work together to handle the opportunities and threats created by Google universal search.

When Google announced universal search in May 2007, Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, said, "The ultimate goal of universal search is to break down the silos of information that exist on the web and provide the very best answer every time a user enters a query."

This radically changed everything we knew about search engine optimization (SEO) and public relations (PR). If your webmaster isn't optimizing content for YouTube, Google News, or Google Images, then who is?

With more than 12.8 billion expanded search queries a month on Google Sites in the U.S., this isn't a rhetorical question. In other words, the SEO specialists and PR specialists need to get out of their silos to ensure that their organization is getting found in all the right places.

As I told Michael Miller, the author of "Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurus," back in 2008, "For a good part of the 20th century, every part of the marketing mix was in a different silo. Advertising had its lingo and its metrics, and PR had its lingo and its metrics, and if you had a group that was focused on trade shows and events, they had their lingo and their metrics, etcetera. One of the things that is sort of a byproduct of keeping people in their silos is that things that the email marketing people learned ten years ago, or the search engine marketing people earned five years ago, the PR people in the same organization haven't learned yet. As a result, they keep doing what used to work but stopped working a long time ago, only nobody noticed."

I added, "To the extent that you can get the PR people interacting with the search people, they will discover that there are lots of things they can do together."

And Odden was also interviewed for Miller's book. So, your PR people will be getting the same advice no matter which online marketing guru they listen to at the PRSA 2009 International Conference -- or which chapter of Miller's book they read.

Odden and I both spoke at SES London 2008. Check out my video interview with him below.

Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing, at SES London 2008

And Odden and I are both speaking at SES Chicago 2009. So, there's no escaping our combined message: Get out of your silo; start interacting with other members of your marketing team.

Get it? Got it? Good.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

October 5, 2009

Go to SES Berlin or SES Chicago for "Four Keynote Themes"

During the past three weeks, I've given you three great reasons for going to either Search Engine Strategies Berlin or SES Chicago 2009. For those who want to catch up, they were "three key trends", "two early birds," and "a ranking in the top three."

This week, I'll focus on a fourth compelling reason -- and it isn't to hear "four calling birds."

You should plan to attend SES Berlin or Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009 to hear "four keynote themes."

Let's start with SES Chicago 2009, where there will be three keynote themes well worth hearing.

On Day 1, the opening keynote is being given by Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? He is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism. He is also consulting editor and a partner at Daylife, a news startup.

Jarvis writes about media, technology and business on his blog, BuzzMachine. A former TV critic for TV Guide and People magazine, as well as the creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly, he has also been assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune and a reporter for Chicago Today.

"My keynote, like my book, isn't really about Google," says Jarvis. "It will be about the profound changes in the economy and society brought on by the Internet -- as seen through the success of the one company that has figured out and exploited them better than any other: Google."

Jarvis adds, "We'll have fun discussing the impact of search and the Google economy on every sector from media to advertising to restaurants to government.

On Day 2 of Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009, the keynote speaker is Peter Morville, author of the best-sellers Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become and Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites. He is also the President of Semantic Studios and blogs at findability.org.

During his keynote, Morville is expected to expand on the themes found in his published works, including the idea of findability and the importance of a navigable and friendly user interface.

"At SES Chicago, this will be my first opportunity to talk about ideas in my new book - about the future of search and discovery," says Morville. "In addition to exploring the relationships between information architecture, ambient findability, and search engine optimization, we'll also be covering mobile search, decision engines, augmented reality, and emerging technologies that will change the way we find everything from answers and articles to products and people."

On Day 3, the keynote speaker is Dan Siroker, the web entrepreneur known for leading the analytics team for the Barack Obama presidential campaign. He also served as the Deputy Director of New Media on the presidential transition team.

Siroker's team of software engineers and analysts were responsible for optimizing the effectiveness of the Obama campaign's online operations that ended up raising over half a billion dollars, registering over 2 million voters, and enabling 3 million phone calls to be made in the final four days of the campaign.

Before joining the Obama campaign, Siroker was a Product Manager for Google Chrome and, before that, he worked as a Product Manager for Google AdWords.

"SES Chicago is, of course, in the President's hometown, so I'm really looking forward to sharing the lessons my team and I learned during the Obama campaign and how these practices can be applied to any data-driven decision," says Siroker. "Whether you're a developer, designer or marketer, if you're building a product or selling an idea, you can use data to do it better."

The fourth keynote theme will be delivered by Bill Hunt, the President of Back Azimuth Consulting and co-author of the best selling book "Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site", who will be the opening keynote speaker at Search Engine Strategies Berlin.

Hunt is currently on the Board of Directors of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization and writes Bill Hunt's Rants & Raves blog, which provides digital marketing commentary from a global marketing road warrior.

Hunt firmly believes that when we understand the searcher's intent, where a searcher is in the buying cycle or even understanding the type of search they are doing, advertisers can better intersect with the current demand for their type of products and services to increase sales. That's a keynote theme worth going to SES Berlin to hear.

Next week, we'll look at more reasons to go to either Search Engine Strategies Berlin or SES Chicago 2009. In the meantime, keep singing "four keynote themes, three key trends, two early birds, and a ranking in the top three."

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 31, 2009

Global Search Market Tops Over 100 Billion Searches a Month

comScore has just released a study of the global search market that shows more than 113 billion searches were conducted in July 2009. This represents a 41 percent increase compared to a year ago.

Google attracted significantly more searches than any other search engine with 76.7 billion searches conducted, giving it 67.5 percent market share. Yahoo! ranked second worldwide with 8.9 billion searches (7.8 percent share), followed closely by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8 billion searches (7.0 percent share). Most of the top search properties worldwide experienced significant growth in search query volume versus last year, with Russian search engine Yandex growing at the fastest rate (94 percent) among the top ten.

It is worth noting that Europe accounted for the highest share of searches at 32.1 percent, followed by Asia Pacific (30.8 percent) and North America (22.1 percent). Among the five global regions, Latin America exhibited the heaviest search behavior per person with an average of 13 search usage days in July and 130 searches per searcher. Europe had the second highest overall search volume per person (117 searches per searcher) while North America exhibited the second heaviest frequency (12.5 search usage days per searcher).

This makes it as important to attend SES Berlin November 24-25, 2009, as it does to attend SES Chicago December 7-10, 2009. Why?

As Mike Grehan, the newly-anointed VP and Global Content Director at SES, SEW, and ClickZ, told me earlier this month, search isn't a static topic. The changes in the industry are accelerating. Can anyone afford to be behind the times in this new era?

Mike Grehan, the new VP and Global Content Director, ties social media to search, SES San Jose 2009

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 19, 2009

People Still Talking About Charlene Li Keynote at SES San Jose 2009

Almost a week later, people are still talking about the Charlene Li keynote at SES San Jose 2009. It was entitled, "How to prepare for the future of search."

If you weren't there, it's difficult to give you a flavor of the discussions that were triggered by Li's comments. But we tried something different and interviewed some of the conference attendees immediately after the keynote -- along with interviewing Li, the co-author of Groundswell, to get her to expand on some of her remarks.

Below is a video that has just be uploaded to SESConferenceExpo's Channel on YouTube. Hopefully, this will enable to get an idea of why SES keynotes aren't always lectures by a sage on the stage. They can also be round-table discussions moderated by a guide on the side.

Marketing is going through a similar change. As Li says, companies must create relationships with users of the social media space in order to foster more trust and authenticity. And Pattie Simone of Womenentrepreneur.com and Lisa Buyer of The Buyer Group discuss what this means to them and their clients.

Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell, and the future of search at SES San Jose 2009

The impact of social media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter on the future of search will be profound. But it's hard to predict. That's what makes this a discussion that extends beyond a specific conference held on any given week.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 1:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 28, 2009

NYC Public Relations Firms: Give PR Jobs to CCNY Students

If top NYC public relations firms are smart, they'll give PR jobs or paid internships to The City College of New York (CCNY) students that I met last week. Why? Because most of these kids know something that most of us don't and it is crucial to our survival as an industry.

Let me explain.

I played reverse hooky last Wednesday afternoon. I attended school when I didn't have to.

Professor Philip Ryan invited me to visit his Introduction to Public Relations class at CCNY. He was covering Chapter 13 of Public Relations Strategies and Tactics, (9th Edition) by Dennis L. Wilcox of San Jose State University and Glen T. Cameron of University of Missouri. Published by Allyn & Bacon in February 2008, Chapter 13 is entitled, "New Technologies in Public Relations."

But, as one of the students in Professor Ryan's class pointed out, "There's nothing in our textbook about SEO PR."

So, I asked for a show of hands. "How many of you use Facebook?" Virturally everyone did. "How many of you use YouTube?" Nearly everyone did. "How many of you use Twitter?" Almost everyone did.

So, I observed, "Well, SEO-PR was founded 2003, Facebook in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. So, just because these new technologies aren't covered in your textbook doesn't mean they aren't fundamentally changing public relations as we know it. I'm speaking at Search Engine Strategies New York this week and these new technologies are all on the agenda along with social media and blogging."

Another student observed, "When I Googled the term 'SEO' you weren't ranked #1."

I replied, "Well, that's not one of my target terms. Now, if you Google the term 'SEO PR', you'll see my firm is ranked #1."

The student countered, "But that's the name of your company."

And I responded, "The term 'SEO PR' gets about 320 searches a month. Not bad for a keyword that didn't exist in 2003. But, if you Google 'blog outreach', you'll also see my firm is currently ranked #1. How many of you think blog outreach is an important part of media relations services, especially with 900,000 blog posts every day?"

Then, I added, "Besides, what I really want you to do is conduct a query at Google News for the term 'Online Marketing Summit' and find the optimized press release that we distributed yesterday for ClickZ."

I think that's when they started cutting me a little slack.

Then, Professor Ryan asked, "How is contextual marketing changing public relations as we know it?"

I explained, "Contextual advertising is targeted to a Web page based on the page's content. This means there is the opportunity to create editorial content targeted at the contextual advertising that you want to attract to your news blog or YouTube channel."

Yes, these were tough questions from sophisticated students and their professor.

Which means these CCNY students are exactly the kind of people that NYC public relations firms need to hire if they are going to survive short-term or thrive long-term.

Yes, they are still acquiring the skill of writing a press release. But they already understand that an optimized press release can get a high ranking in news search engines.

Yes, they are still becoming acquainted with the fundamentals of persuasion and communications theory. But they have already mastered how to make friends on Facebook.

Yes, they are still beginning to recognize how PR relates to other fields of marketing. But they're already familiar with how to upload YouTube videos.

Yes, they are still learning the key ethical issues affecting the practice of PR. But they've developed an appreciation for the acceptable use ofand unacceptable abuse of Twitter.

Unfortunately, most NYC public relations firms won't give PR jobs or even paid internships to these CCNY students?

Why? Short term, the recession is the primary excuse. But even if there is an opening, most of the job descriptions in the public relations industry were written back in the 20th Century. So, these square pegs won't fit into the round holes.

For example, is your HR department trying to hire an entry level public relations specialist? Does the job description read: "Prepares and disseminates information regarding an organization through newspapers, periodicals, television and radio and other forms of media. May require a bachelor's degree in a related area and 0-2 years of experience in the field or in a related area. Has knowledge of commonly-used concepts, practices, and procedures within a particular field. Relies on instructions and pre-established guidelines to perform the functions of the job. Primary job functions do not typically require exercising independent judgment. Works under immediate supervision; typically reports to a supervisor or manager."

So, don't blame your HR department if they aren't looking for someone who can prepare and optimize information regarding an organization through news search engines, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

And who is at fault if someone who doesn't have a bachelor's degree gets filtered out during the screening process even through they could have brought knowledge of new concepts, practices and procedures to the table?

And ask yourself, honestly, do you want someone who relies on instructions and pre-established guidelines to perform the ever-changing fuctions of the job? Or do you really need someone who doesn't typically exercise independent judgment in an emerging field that didn't exist when you went to college?

In other words, are you giving PR jobs to the people you will need in 2009 and the decade after this? Or, is your HR department rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

Now, if I were you, I'd find a way to play reverse hooky at CCNY.

Other "guests" to Professor Ryan's class have included Garrett Glaser, a corporate communications consultant and former reporter for CNBC, and Rena L. Lewis, the Director of Brand Management, Industries & Marketing, at KPMG, and will include David Grant, President of LVM Group.

And television journalism icon Dan Rather will deliver the Spring 2009 Samuel Rudin Distinguished Visiting Scholars Lecture at The City College of New York on Thursday, April 2. Mr. Rather, who was anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from 1981 to 2005, will speak about "Democracy and the 24-Hour News Cycle."

This kind of "higher education" doesn't fit on the normal resume.

That's why it's time to overhaul the job screening process at most NYC public relations firms to ensure that you're giving PR jobs to CCNY students and others like them who are crucial to the survival of the public relations industry.

But, hey, what do I know? I'm not even mentioned in the college textbooks.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

December 31, 2008

50 Most Memorable Moments in Search for 2008

It was one heck of a year for the search industry. The convergence of outside economic forces, a wild presidential election and the 2008 Beijing Olympics were all signs of an industry becoming more and more mainstream and global. Here's a look at the completely subjective biggest stories in search from 2008:

Microsoft Makes Unsolicited Offer for Yahoo! - On February 1, one of tech's biggest companies made a generous offer of $31 a share for the number two search engine. CEO Jerry Yang was defiant in his stance that the company he founded over 10 years ago would remain independent. Yahoo! turned the initial offer down, endured an "ultimatum" from Steve Ballmer, was rumored to have rejected an increased offer of $33 a share, and neglected to negotiate selling off just the search portion of Yahoo!. Yahoo!'s stock price is now hovering in the low double digits, and many analysts think it will be sold in 2009.
Search Advertising Plays Major Role in Elections From the primaries to the general presidential election, it appeared that whoever outspent their competitor headed to the next step. Barack Obama, with his arsenal of cash, went on an online advertising shopping spree and will be inaugurated in a mere 21 days.
Google and Yahoo! Form Search Advertising Partnership, DOJ Antitrust Lawsuit Threat Shuts Down Google/Yahoo! Deal - Google made it quite clear they didn't want to see search engines #2 and 3 integrate. So they offered up a search advertising deal to Yahoo!, who in their desperation to avoid a hostile Microsoft acquisition said yes. After the Microsoft negotiations died, so did the Google deal. It seems the team over in Mountain View wasn't up for a battle with the Department of Justice and nixed the deal just an hour before the suit was served.
Carl Icahn Threatens Yahoo with Hostile Takeover of Board, Later Agrees to Compromise and Joins Expanded Yahoo! Board Investor Carl Icahn wasn't happy with Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft's generous offer, so he threatened a hostile takeover of his own for the annual shareholders meeting. But just before the meeting occurred, a deal was struck. Yahoo would expand its board, adding Icahn to the table.
Jerry Yang Steps Down as Yahoo! CEO After spending just a little over a year in the CEO seat, Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang announced his resignation. He will remain in the position until a replacement is found and then will remain at the company as Chief Yahoo.
Twitter Becomes Agent of Search Whether you deem it a microblogging tool or a mass chat client, Twitter went mainstream this year and the search industry was smack dab in the mix of things. Many users found Twitter useful for the actual conducting of searches, while others found it useful in networking.
Google Completes DoubleClick Acquisition with EU Approval Even though Google announced the DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 and it was approved by US regulators late last year, the deal wasn't finalized until EU approval was gained earlier this spring. Once it was, Google began the great integration. Google also sold the search marketing arm, Performics, to Publicis.
Page Load Time Affects Quality Score In its everpresent goal to improve ads, Google AdWords added yet another factor to Quality Score - landing page load time.
Microsoft and Facebook Enter Into Search Partnership. After rumors of a possible acquisition, Microsoft and Facebook simply expanded their existing partnership, which has the software giant invested in a 1.6% stake in the company, to include a Live Search on the social network.
Yahoo Wins Gold in the Search Engine Olympics. Yahoo was the big search winner when it came to Olympics-related web traffic. Microsoft won big, too, with its partnership with NBC, which covered the big event. Meanwhile, Google seemed to sit the event out entirely.
G1, the First Google Android Phone, Released Through T-mobile
A Judge orders Google to hand over user data in a suit brought by Viacom over YouTube. Later, Viacom agrees to let Google scramble user IDs and IP addresses. A Judge threw out a similar case that IO Group brought against YouTube competitor, Veoh.
Hulu, an online video site for copyrighted work by major networks, launches to compete with YouTube.
Google Adds Ads across various sites
Google launches VisualRank, which is PageRank for images
Microsoft acquires semantic search engine Powerset
Yahoo Indexes Microformats, Opens Up Search Technology with SearchMonkey, BOSS, and Fire Eagle.
Microsoft incentivizes Live Search with Cashback and Search Perks
Yahoo changes minimum bid policy on search ads
Yahoo rebrands display advertising platform AMP as APT and launches
Google Launches Search Within Search Results
Yahoo! acquires assets of the Inquisitor 3 Plug-in for Safari, speeds it up, adds languages and then expands the search suggestion plugin to Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Google sites surpass Yahoo sites in traffic for the first time.
Google, Yahoo & MySpace Team Up for OpenSocial, AOL signs on later.
Cuil launches under much fanfare and then much criticism.
Live Search implements instant answers, Wikipedia into search results.
AOL and Yahoo redesign home pages
YouTube rolled out sponsored videos
Google launches Image Search by content type
Yahoo! acquires analytics company, IndexTools.
AOL buys Bebo and SocialThing
Ask.com to acquire Dictionary.com family of reference sites
YouTube launches Insight, limited analytics for users regarding their uploaded videos.
Adobe Provides Flash Technology to Google and Yahoo for Better Indexing, Google Analytics now tracks Flash Content.
Yahoo, Ask, Zillow conduct layoffs
Google offers video Adsense units.
Compete acquired by TNS.
Googlers Head to Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, and Zillow.
Cable firms collaborate to compete with Google
Visual search engines Searchme, Viewzi launch
Answers sites see increased traffic; Hearst acquires Answerology, Answers.com integrates with Wikianswers.com.
Google AdWords offers TV Ads for everyone.
AOL's display advertising platform, Platform-A, expands to Europe.
Google Trends goes from hourly to daily, launches Trends for Websites.
Google launches Ad Planner, a media planning and buying aid for media buyers.
Time Warner announces AOL split
Yahoo! Buzz opens to all publishers
IAC, parent company of Ask.com, splits into five companies.
Google enables cross-language search for News and Enterprise Search Appliance.
LinkedIn launches new search platform

Honorable Mentions

Microsoft adds Image Hotspots to Live Search
Georgian conflict exposes online mapping weaknesses
Google launches Knol, its own version of Wikipedia.
Google Lively comes and goes.
Yahoo tests Glue Pages in India, then brings modified version to the States

What are your most memorable moments in search for 2008? Leave a comment and let us know!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 29, 2008

Why CafePress Needs Online Ratings

If you're not familiar, CafePress is a site where you can purchase custom-designed apparel and gifts. There are many merchants selling their designs as well. Today, CafePress unveiled its new design, and it looks great.

But searching for a design you like can be a chore. That's why I think CafePress should adopt an online ratings system to help the best designs be showcased first in their search results.

Yes, this can be abused, but it can also create a community, something that is currently only found in the CafePress forums.

CafePress competitor, Zazzle, which has experienced explosive growth in the past year despite higher prices and fewer products. What they do have is a 5 star rating system as well as the opportunity to leave comments on products. I think this helps customers better find what they're looking for. If I had to take a guess, a customer would rather pay $5 for better design at Zazzle than a mediocre design at CafePress.

Don't get me wrong, there are quality designs at CafePress, but finding them organically, like I said, is a chore.

Hopefully the next design update CafePress unveils is a techie-one that improves search.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

October 9, 2008

New Toolbar Makes Searching Content Easier

ChunkIt is a new search toolbar that bills itself as an x-ray for search. What it does is search your choice of the "big five" search engines, and then displays results on the right and the textual content of the results on the left.

Once the results are loaded, users can click on a paragraph in the left hand side, and it will highlight the paragraph - and then load the full page in the right side.

Highlighted paragraph Page loaded in the right hand side

I personally find this to be a great tool for search. But one issue for ChunkIt might be copyright. Google has come under fire from newspapers for the issue of copyright when it comes to indexing their pages. Their argument, which has won over some in Europe, is a poor one since Google primarily provides just links to articles.

So, I contacted Brian Cheek at TigerLogic Corporation, the company behind ChunkIt, and here's what he had to say:

"ChunkIt! is a user-driven device that resides on the client-computer and is not a web service. All processing is handled by and all logic resides on the user's local computer. ChunkIt! does not persist, store or cache information and does not use a back-end server to perform any of its functionality."

Smart companies will see the value in ChunkIt's search tool and not make a fuss over copyright. But expect a few to ignore a good thing when they see it and challenge ChunkIt, but only if and when the tool gets wildly popular.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 1, 2008

Adobe Provides Flash Technology to Google and Yahoo for Better Indexing

For years SEOs have been about the inability of search engines to crawl flash pages. But now Adobe is making an effort to keep Flash in the web development toolbox. They've announced the provision of Flash technology to Google and Yahoo in order to facilitate the indexing of sites and pages created with Flash.

“Until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.”

Over at the Google Webmaster Central Blog, an FAQ was posted offering up more details about the update. Here are some highlights:

Google will now be able to better crawl the text content of SWF files. The content includes buttons, menus, self-contained websites developed in Flash and "everything in between."
Google can use the text it crawls to provide a descriptive "snippet" for its search results.
Links included in Flash content will also be crawled.
If your Flash file is loaded by JavaScript, Google won't be able to read it
If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file or another SWF file, Google will index that separately from the original Flash file.

Google says it can't crawl images, videos or FLV files because they do not contain text content.

What do you think about search engines crawling Flash? Are you more inclined to use Flash on your sites now? Leave your reaction in the comments!

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 31, 2007

Relevance is Relative

Google is perceived by many as being "the best" search engine, returning the most relevant results. But is it really the best search engine for all applications? While some in the general public may think so, most search marketers know that relevance is relative. In today's SearchDay, "Search Quality Depends on Intention," Leapfrog Online's Steve Haar takes a look at results for some random queries across the top engines to see if one clear winner shines through.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 2:13 PM | Permalink

October 15, 2007

Debby From The Block: U Penn Long Tail Blockbuster

No way I could pass on pointing to the Debby Richman blockbuster post.

Wharton says: Online recommendation engines may chop off Long Tail of Search.

Prick up your ears, Chris Anderson Your Long Tail doberman (below) is under attack:

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