Highlights from the SEW Blog: June 11, 2007

We’ve collected all the search marketing news from selected posts to the Search Engine Watch blog in the past week, along with recent search-related headlines from around the Web.

From the SEW blog:

Organic Search

• Ask Launches Ask3D
  Following hot on the heels of the recent announcement by Google of its Universal Search, Ask has now released something with very similar attributes, but significant and interesting differences.
• Ask.com: The Other Search Engine?
  Ask.com is positioning itself as “the other search engine,” making a play to get users to think about Ask in addition to Google when they think of search.
• Google Universal Search: What’s it Mean, Really?
  While some industry-watchers are cheering Google’s recent moves, others are yawning. Range Online’s Phil Stelter digs into what Universal Search really means for Google, and for search marketers.
• Interview of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella at SMX Advanced
  Nadella leads the engineering team for Microsoft’s Search, Advertising, and Commerce platforms.
• NY Times Goes Deep on Google
  An article in Sunday’s New York Times goes in-depth with Google’s Amit Singhal, one of the Google engineers on the search quality team primarily responsible for building, maintaining and tweaking its ranking algorithm.

Search Advertising

• What Are They Selling?
  Deep-pocketed suppliers impact the ad market. The sheer number of direct competitors matters.
• Yahoo Launches Quality-Based Pricing
  Tonight, Yahoo Search Marketing began to roll out quality-based pricing across its sponsored search and contextual listings marketplaces
• No Conversion in Yahoo’s Quality-Based Bidding
  Conversions tracked by Yahoo Analytics are not part of the algorithm determining the new quality-based pricing.
• Yahoo Launches Search Marketing Commercial API Program
  Yahoo is starting a three-tiered Search Marketing Commercial API program.
• AdSense Publishers to Meet Quality Guidelines
  Google will require AdSense publishers to meet the same page quality guidelines it holds its AdWords advertisers to with their landing pages.
• AdWords Bolding Synonyms
  AdWords is now bolding the expanded match terms in the ads.

Linking Issues & Social Media

• SEW Experts: Let’s Go Viral
  Sage Lewis explains that while viral Web marketing can be risky, the rewards are great.
• Yoono Plugin Has Much to Offer
  Yoono Buzz It!, a free social Web clipping and annotation plug-in for FireFox and IE, combines the best features of online highlighters, bookmarks and clipping services on a single web page.

Analytics & ROI

• SEW Experts: Setting Campaign Goals and Metrics for Success
  Tony Wright explains the importance of setting initial metrics for success, especially for those new to search.
• SEW Experts: Making the Case for Portfolio Based Bid Management Tools
  Eric Enge shows why he prefers portfolio based bid management tools to the rules based solutions that evaluate ROI on a keyword-by-keyword basis.
• Portfolio Based Bid Management vs. Keyword Based
  Eric Enge talks with Efficient Frontier’s CTO about how a portfolio based approach provides better results than the classic approach of measuring and acting on the ROI on a keyword by keyword basis.

Vertical & Specialty Search

• SEW Experts: Balancing Video Quality and Search Optimization
  Grant Crowell shows how to create quality video and shorten compression time, using YouTube as an example.
• Info Pros Are Searching
  This week, the Special Libraries Association held its annual confab in Denver. Perhaps the SLA is improperly named now, as this gathering of over 5,000 information professionals are focused on finding and delivering appropriate online resources.
• RSS Mashups – Emerging Tools with Great Potential
  What I’d not considered until the launch of Yahoo Pipes is the employment of mashup tools to filter information, making it possible to spend less time getting more of what I want from the Web.
• Avvo: Web 2.0 For Legal Search
  Like other legal search destinations in this space such as FindLaw and LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell, new legal search destination Avvo offers users search tools to find lawyers in different categories and in different locales.
• AOL’s New Video Search Tools for Developers
  AOL has recently followed a successful industry trend by “giving away the good stuff” to build a following.
• Blinkx to power Ask.com’s video search – interview with blinkx CEO
  Already the world’s largest video search engine, blinkx today expanded its reach an exclusive video partnership with Ask.com.
• Google Adds Transit Data to Maps
  Train, bus or subway stops on Google maps now link directly to more detailed information about a specific station, route, or schedule.
• SEW Experts: Will Google’s FeedBurner Scorch Organic SEO?
  Mark Jackson examines the impact Google’s acquisition of Feedburner could have on search marketers.

Small Business/Big Brand SEM

• Big Brands Shy Away from Social Media
  Many major brands shy away from social media environments because they can’t control them. This creates a great opportunity for smaller players to get high-level attention from the market.
• New Rules of PR Podcast with Greg Jarboe
  One of the big shifts that Greg sees is that there is much more of an opportunity to use PR to talk directly to your end customers.

In-House & Outsourcing

• SEW Experts: Predicting ROI for Future SEO Efforts
  Chris Boggs continues his series on calculating ROI with a look at predicting ROI for future SEO campaigns.
• SEW Experts: Leveraging Big Business Assets for Better SEO Visibility
  Aaron Shear looks at ways to get multiple units of a large business collaborating to improve SEO visibility.

SEM Industry Issues

• Measuring an SEM’s Job Performance
  A new study from iProspect and Jupiter Research finds that more search marketers are able to measure ROI than could two years ago, and more search marketers’ jobs are being measured against both search metrics and overall business results.

Searching/Search Technologies

• Universal Search Boosting Map, Video Traffic
  Hitwise’s Bill Tancer has published an analysis of traffic data on Google’s various properties, comparing them before and after the Universal Search launch.
• Sputtr: Many Search Options, One Place
  For those who like to search using multiple engines, but who are tired of opening multiple browsers or tabs, there’s now a simple, elegant solution.
• Microsoft Planning Next Search Engine?
  Microsoft is rumored to have “gathered a team of twenty or more ‘rock star’ developers” to build its “next-generation” search engine.

More from the SEW Blog

• And now a few words from Kevin Ryan, VP, Global Content Director, Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies
  Kevin Ryan has joined the team here at Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Strategies.
• Pepperjam Signs Exclusive Deal With DoubleClick
  In an interesting move for a large scale agency, Pepperjam has signed an exclusive partnership deal with DoubleClick.
• Salesforce, Google Confirm Partnership
  The rumored partnership between Google and hosted applications provider Salesforce.com have been confirmed, but at this point is little more than a way for Google to sell more AdWords ads to Salesforce.com users.
• 360i in Management Buyout
  Innovation Interactive, which houses search and interactive shop 360i and search tools provider SearchIgnite, has gone solo, via a management-led buyout from Japanese parent company Livedoor.

Search Headlines

We report the top search marketing news daily at the Search Engine Watch Blog. You’ll find more news from around the Web below.

• SEO Is Dead. Long Live, er, the Other SEO, ClickZ
• SES Toronto Opens Tomorrow, SiteProNews
• Viewing Advertising From the Street, ClickZ
• Happy 10th Birthday, Search Engine Watch – A History Of The Site, Search Engine Land
• Taking Care Of Business By Taking Care Of The Customer: Five Tips For Local Search, Search Engine Land
• Barry Diller’s Third Act, CBS News
• Pragmatism and the semantic web, Information World Review
• First Public View Of Powerset Results, TechCrunch
• Working at Powerset, Tim Converse
• The Great Reciprocal Linking Myth, SEO Theory