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Search Engine Strategies New York City, San Francisco & Chicago 2010 Session Pitch : Home Page Title Tag – Hot or Not?

David Dalka — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:13:11 +0000

The following session was submitted to Search Engine Strategies in January, 2010. Hope you enjoy it.

Home Page Title Tag – Hot or Not?

Moderators: David Dalka and either Mike Grehan, Greg Jarboe or Stewart Quealy

The first thing one learns about search engine optimization is about the importance of title tags, especially the home page title tag. Yet when an experienced SEO surfs the web they often must stop and scratch their head at certain home page title tags! It certainly indicates a lack of understanding by senior management teams out there.

In this session everyone is the expert! We will share 30 title tags and URLs in 30 minutes. Everyone gets to tweet their impressions of the title tag for with the Twitter hashtag #sestitle!!! Then we’ll do Q&A and figure out what it all means. The benefits of this session are certain to include venting of pent up frustration, bonding with your fellow search marketers, extreme laughter and far reaching communication of the session to people far and wide not even at the Search Engine Strategies conference! Spread the gospel. Change the world. See you there.

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Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2008: Universal & Blended Search Engine Conversation

David Dalka — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:26:18 +0000

Moderator:
Kevin Ryan, SES Advisory Board Chair & CEO, Motivity Marketing

Speakers:
Dr. Larry Cornett, VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Chris Blakely, Director, Client Services, comScore, Inc.
Todd Schwartz, Group Product Manager, Live Search, Microsoft Corporation
Jack Menzel, Senior Product Manager, Google

This is a live session blog from Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2008, please excuse any typos and/or fragments. Thank you!

Mike Grehan:

You need to think differently.

Vertical creep is pushing organic results down the page.

Eye Tracking shows that people are not scrolling the way that they used to.

This creates a problem, you need to be at the top of the listings.

Local business center creates opportunities for local businesses.

New paid search results like paid results.

Chris Blakely – comScore:

Leverage comScore search data shows traction of universal search efforts.

Feature sets of search expanding. 48% of searchers are seeing different types of blended search results from their queries.

Lower clicks on sponsored links with the exception of ecommerce and travel.

Organic search strategies need to evolve from that standpoint.

Jack Menzel – Google Product Manager Universal Search:

Universal search has the following elements:
Comprehensiveness – Images, Maps, News, Products, Video, Books and more
Relevance – Run every query against every index, decide what to show only after we collect all of the data
Presentation – Summarize the content in the most efficient way possible.

Recently, there have been made into search results pages.

Better Ranking – Universal search is just a subset of ranking.

What’s next?
Keep improving relevance
Help users explore
Improved results summary

What does this mean for web masters?
- Publish the best and high quality content that you have.
- Take advantage of prominent new verticals

Todd Schwartz – Group Product Manager – Microsoft Live Search:

Evolution of Search:
Search – Directories, Keyword Trends, Rich Semantics, User Experience
Market – Immature, Closed Trends, Open Item????
Consumer – Search, Keyword Trends, Actions

Deliver, Simplify, Implement

Showed Samsung lcd tv model – showed elements of a shopping review, rating and engine – an interesting change

Showed weather and Barack Obama examples

More engagement
Better reach
Higher ROI
Update Product and Business Info
webmaster.live.com

Larry Cornett – Yahoo! Search:

Transformed from a static experience to a complete information in one search

Showed several Blended examples using Yahoo! Search:
Kyle Orton – Chicago Bears fantasy sports
Movies – including times and local listings
Beyonce – music videos on the search page
Sushi in San Jose
Barack Obama
Puppy

Richer, more relevant links…

Searchmonkey – publishers collaborate, meaning behind the link, richer experience, relevant and personal, etc.

Yelp is a Searchmonkey partner. (How does this affect Yahoo! Local?)

The infobar – Steve Jobs example

Share structured data: Publishers > Searchmonkey > Tell your users

Why is blended search important?
Unmatched opportunities and control for publishers
Key step for building a smarter search engine with structured data
gallery.search.yahoo.com

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The Future Yahoo! CEO Nominee Discussion…

David Dalka — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:24:16 +0000

OK, Kara Swisher started this discussion(I’m not saying it’s going to happen), but I question her fundamental assertion that Jerry Yang is the person calling the shots. The memo regarding Jeff Weiner’s departure came from Sue as does most of the primary communication messaging. Many think Sue is the one that is in charge for this reason.

I’d acknowledge the relevancy of Sara’s nomination of Dan Rosenweig but will dismiss Marc Cuban as he’s more focused on acquiring the Chicago Cubs at present.

I’d like to nominate my own slate of nominees all would bring dramatic culture change and growth rather than an expense cutting mantra and I’d enjoy being a part of their team if asked:

Dick Costolo – Yahoo! arguably has the world’s largest mountain of content. Dick is one of the world’s thought leaders on distributing and monetizing content. He is also well qualified to build a culture of customer responsiveness. He also might have played a lead role in the recent Yahoo!/Google monetization deal.

Rich Skrenta – His knowledge of search is highly regarded. His new startup could also be lifted out to build a new company to replace many parts of the old one.

Brad Garlinghouse – Many would argue he understands and communicated the challenges to execution that Yahoo! faces better than anyone and is willing to make his case about it as he did in the peanut butter memo.

Jim Lanzone – If given the chance, it would be fascinating to see him have the resources to execute some of the lofty things he tried at Ask on a shoestring budget.

Those come to mind first, am I missing anyone? I’m certain I’ve missed some people out west that should be considered.

I’ll Tag:

Fred Wilson

Michael Arrington (via Crunchnotes)

John Battelle

Carl Icahn (please give me a shout if you read this)

UPDATE: Michael correctly points out that he’s already written this post…my bad…

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Have We Entered The Era of The Functional Web?

David Dalka — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:38:23 +0000

The New York Times has an article on how the potential sale of Yahoo! to Microsoft could be bad for minnows, i.e. small Silicon Valley companies looking to be acquired. I think this is a short sighted viewpoint.

In the late 1990′s dot.com era, the web was slanted too much towards wall street involvement that led IPO’s that were questionable and in retrospect not advisable.

A force outside the web, namely Sarbanes-Oxley in the Enron aftermath, has made the IPO considerably more challenging to achieve and costly to navigate – even for highly legitimate ideas.

In the web 2.0 era, the slant often went way too far to the left in terms of engineering. Some ideas with little actual business purpose have received unwarranted acclaim and without artificial sources of acquisition, some might not even exist.

Before I go onto explain why that development might create an alignment that I’ll tentatively call the functional web, let me state that I think there are plenty of other companies out there that could emerge to pick up the slack such as Fox, Intuit, Apple or any of a number of traditional media companies who “get it”.

This web might emerge even if the Yahoo! acquisition does not take place. If the functional web emerges a place where engineering and business purpose mix in equally important parts instead of the excesses in one direction or another, who potentially gains and who potentially has something to lose?

Potential Gainers:

- Strong Internet business skill generalists with strong system architecture, product management and the ability to network with geeks and non-geeks alike and iterate from feedback will be in higher demand.

- Companies who would like to challenge the big three who would get an opening.

- People who understand how to create revenue models that could provide for great stand alone businesses.

- People pushing for Sarbanes-Oxley reform to reopen the IPO spiggot a tad. They will push even harder.

Potential Losers:

- Funding sources who either fund ideas in a me-too fashion or just because they’ve known the people since the dot.com era and/or those who can’t define and lead a path to monetization or bring strong execution partners to the table.

- Domain name squatters and sellers.

- Passive executive recruiters who will have to actually analyze comprehensive skill sets instead of simply poaching from a direct competitor.

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Blake Jorgensen, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Tim Cadogan of Yahoo! to Present at Thomas Weisel Partners Conference

David Dalka — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:21:23 +0000

Yahoo! to present at the Thomas Weisel Partners Technology, Telecom, and Internet Conference

Blake Jorgensen, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Tim Cadogan, SVP, Search, Listings, and Display Marketplaces will present at the Thomas Weisel Partners Technology, Telecom, and Internet Conference. The presentation will take place on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 at 3:30pm ET / 12:30pm PT

A live webcast of the presentations will be available on the Investor Relations website at:
http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/events.cfm?CalendarID=5

Welcome back Blake!

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The Yahoo! Rumor That Just Won’t Go Away…

David Dalka — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:49:12 +0000

So Michael Arrington got put on the spot on Fox Business News and the age old Microsoft/Yahoo! merger rumor resurfaced. It’s almost as frequent as a Rick Roll YouTube video link.

I’ve written before about how this Microsoft rumor, which dates back to the days of Terry Semel, seems less likely to me than other alternatives such as ATT. Not that it’s even a likely event with the right management moves.

So Dave, why do you think this? Well, it’s commonplace for companies to have long standing alliances before merging. Yesterday, Yahoo! sent out this little noticed press release which stated the following.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), the nation’s No. 1 wireless and broadband provider, and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced a new multi-year strategic alliance that paves the way for an even richer and more innovative online experience for consumers – whether at home or on the go.

This doesn’t mean a Microsoft merger is impossible, I just can’t see a scenario where AT&T isn’t given a chance to match it or initiate it based on 7 years of partnership history.

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del.icio.us Integrated Into Yahoo! Search Results (Finally)

David Dalka — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 05:56:19 +0000

Michael Arrington has broken this extremely important story of Yahoo! integrating del.icio.us results into the search engine results on a test basis.

As many of you might recall, founder Joshua Schachter (who has not yet bookmarked my blog in del.icio.us) sold del.icio.us to Yahoo! in December, 2005 making Fred Wilson a happy man.

Many people in the search engine community tell me at conferences that other search players have actually been getting more value from del.icio.us since the acquisition because they have crawled del.icio.us. If Yahoo! were to hire me as a consultant, it’s something I might want to do some testing and learning with to see how it would affect the competition.

To test this theory, I registered a domain last Summer and tossed it on a host and had a few friends post a del.icio.us entry but gave the site no other links and checked it once a week. The following engines indexed the domain in this order: Google, Live.com/Msn, Yahoo! and then Ask. A few weeks ago I noticed a significant shift in some Yahoo! rankings and now it made sense now that this change is apparent.

Just in case you’re wondering good tags for my blog in del.icio.us are – chicago gsb mba marketing business development startup executive seeking venture capital funding – for a limited time every person who bookmarks me with those tags and emails me (see my Chicago gsb marketing bio for the email) with a the del.icio.us page and their blog, I will add a link to them in the bottom of this post. One exception to this currently would be Jason Calacanis (whom I wouldn’t actually consider linking to until he returned my phone call from October when I was in Santa Monica).

So why did this take so long? This is a good question. You may recall all the hub bub in 2006 about Yahoo! building modular programs that could be easily swapped out. This obviously has taken considerably longer to complete than the initial estimates. But this is a sign of a much needed glimmer of light eminating from Yahoo!

Analysis:

- Good move for Yahoo! overall in terms of relevancy (though this did not need it to be visible?).

- This move is not without a significant risk. What if Yahoo! users were to migrate enmass to del.icio.us and make it their default search engine? It’s not monetized. If this scenario were to occur in the current state Yahoo!’s earnings would take a serious hit. Robert Peck at Bear Stearns should most definitely analyze this scenario.

- The display of the del.icio.us social media result might prove distracting to the user and users may defect to other search engines.

- This may attract more del.icio.us spam activity.

What do you think of this move by Yahoo! to test integration of del.icio.us into Yahoo! search results?

Links from del.icio.us pages project:

- Bryson Meunier from Chicago has bookmarked me in del.icio.us

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Yahoo! Launches Go 3.0 Beta, New Open Mobile Widget Platform, and Mobile Homepage

David Dalka — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:11:26 +0000

Yahoo! Go has several exciting announcements that are launching today:

· Yahoo! Go 3.0 beta:
o New features include:
§ Enhanced user interface, optimized for the mobile phone
§ Improved performance
§ For the first time, consumers will have access to third-party widgets from leading publishers through Yahoo! Go.
o Yahoo! Go 3.0 also includes display advertising from Yahoo!’s major global advertisers. Consumers will be able to interact with these ads by clicking to call the advertiser directly or to learn more about the offer.
· New Open Mobile Widget Platform:
o The platform is an open environment for deverlopers to create mobile Widgets for instant access by millions of consumers.
o Widgets created on the Mobile Widget Platform will be available to consumers from various starting points, including Yahoo! Go 3.0 and Yahoo!’s new mobile homepage.
o The platform will enable developers to write code once and publish their content across Yahoo!’s mobile network, allowing accelerated delivery of a feature-rich mobile experience.
o The platform will enable consumers more control over their experience, as well, by providing the functionality to add and delete Widgets at any time.
o Full-featured SDK for developers to be introduced over the coming weeks.
o Third-party Widget launch partners include, eBay, MySpace, and MTV.
· Redesigned Mobile Homepage
o New features:
§ Completely redesigned and engineered mobile interface from the ground up.
§ Homepage centers around intuitive navigational structure where consumers can tailor content according to needs, interests and location.
§ Available to consumers in the United States on high-end mobile browsers, which are included in devices such as the Apple iPhone, sever Nokia Seies 60 devices, including the N95, and select Windows Mobile devices. Availability across additional devices and countries to come in the near future.
o Key features:
§ Personal Vitality and Status Updates: Provides an at-a-glance update of what’s new since the last visit – including recent emails, Flickr photos from your friends, upcoming calendar appointments and status of Messenger contacts – without moving away from the home screen or logging into a separate application.
§ Customizable Content: Offers a collection of mobile content modules – or Snippets – that provide previews of the user’s favorite content – news headlines, weather conditions, etc – whatever the user wants. In many cases, Snippets are extensions of mobile widgets and can be used to launch a full-featured widget built on Yahoo!’s Mobile Widget Platform.
§ Quick Links: Customizable links at the bottom of the page, providing fast access to the Yahoo! features or sites across the Internet that consumers use the most. Consumers can easily add and remove Quick Links as they desire.

That’s alot to digest! Will 2008 be the year mobile breaks through?

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Some Outstanding Blog Posts…

David Dalka — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 03:46:07 +0000

Andrew Shotland has a nice post on Google Trends Works for SEO…I think hot trends might even be better in certain cases , it’s certainly a thought provoking post that caught my attention and worth some experimentation – it might even prove successful at your next tea party!

Rich Skrenta is doing some interesting blogging lately. Be sure to check out his post Pagerank Wrecked the Web.

Bill Slawski, published an extensive Google patent from 2003, entitled Google Patent on Anchor Text and Different Crawling Rates.

Michael Gray wants Matt Cutts to talk.

And finally Shoemoney wants to know why Yahoo! is asking him to check credit card numbers for validity…

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Happy Thanksgiving 2007

David Dalka — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:16:06 +0000

As always Rustybrick has a great holiday logo summary.

My only add on is the following. Take a minute to read the full history of the holiday – it’s not about a day off and football.

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Microsoft Hotmail Blocking Yahoo! Mail as Spam?

David Dalka — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:33:18 +0000

This is a joke. But all too real. Microsoft meet Yahoo!. Yahoo! meet Microsoft. Now play nice.

Remote host said: 550 SC-004 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your — Below this line is a copy of the message. Received: from [68.142.237.90] by n10.bullet.re3.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 Received: from [69.147.75.182] by t6.bullet.re3.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 Received: from [127.0.0.1] by omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 3742.69458.bm@omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com Received: (qmail 894 invoked by uid 60001); 5 Nov 2007 14:25:18 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com;

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Wouldn’t ATT Acquire Yahoo! Instead of Microsoft?

David Dalka — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:31:02 +0000

I have my reasons, some of which aren’t appropriate to make public…

Please discuss…

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FCF07 – The Role of Mobile Search in Social Computing

David Dalka — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:11:58 +0000

Presenter: Charles Golvin, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

I didn’t get around to posting this last week, these are some high points of Charles’ all too short talk:

Mobile data adoption is growing, but skews young. Many people still have not been exposed to mobile ads.

They don’t trust SMS ads. They also don’t want to pay for something in lieu of advertising. In the current state this creates contradictions.

The most interesting thing he said in his talk was when he showed Google mobile search and then stated, “I think Google imitated Yahoo! in this regard”.

Offline visual codes are powerful mechanisms for simplifying mobile call-to-action. (I’d expand this to state that it will become powerful for creating an effective multi-channel strategy as many people are too focused on mobile alone.)

Mobile should eventually be abbreviated, transactional, measurable and integrated with physical world.

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Yahoo! Onesearch Adds Content and Airline Flight Time Information

David Dalka — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:03:35 +0000

I’ve been informed that Yahoo! Onesearch has added content starting today…

Yahoo! is giving mobile search results a boost by integrating Yahoo! Answers and Wikipedia content into Yahoo! oneSearch results (available in 18+ countries, including all of North America, the UK, a variety of other European, Latin American, and Asian countries). In recent months, Yahoo! has added to the functionality of the oneSearch experience in an effort to deliver instant answers and relevant results to consumers on the go. With this latest addition, Yahoo! is augmenting its mobile search product with community-based information from the largest knowledge-sharing community and reference site on the Web.

Of higher relevancy to me is the addition of airline flight time information via a simple query. This week I rushed to the airport only to learn that my flight would be delayed for takeoff by 90 minutes! Assuming the airline data is accurate at the time of the query this is an example of a highly useful mobile query. A query of UA 90 shows a canceled flight today. It’s great to see incremental improvements like this being made to Yahoo! Onesearch.

To try mobile search on Yahoo! Onesearch visit http://us.m.yahoo.com/

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Will You Attend SMX Local & Mobile Denver Next Week

David Dalka — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:49:29 +0000

I’ll be attending the first ever SMX Local & Mobile conference next week in Denver!!! Chris Sherman, who talks about why he is excited about the event in this post, and Greg Sterling have both put in a tremendous amount of work into researching and programming this highly unique and special event.

You may view the full agenda and you may still register for the event.

I arrive at Noon on Sunday (where is the Sunday pre-conference meetup – The Hyatt?) and hope to meet with as many attendees as possible before and during the event as I look forward to learning about people and seeing the demos in this soon to be revolutionary space.

See you in Denver! I’ll also have room for one or two on the way back to the airport as I’m renting a car while there.

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Yahoo! Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solutions, Usama Fayyad Talks at KDD 07

David Dalka — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 12:36:33 +0000

My friend Bill Slawski posted some links to video of Usama Fayyad, Yahoo!’s Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solutions Talking at KDD 07.

You should probably drop by Bill’s place as he has written an extremely nice summary of the talk. If you enjoy that, you should likely check out the video of Usama Fayyad talking, it gives some rare behind the scenes glimpses into the direction of Yahoo!.

Good stuff, thank you Bill for pointing it out!

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MyBlogLog Migrates to Yahoo ID’s

David Dalka — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:01:56 +0000

Robyn Tippins announced last night that Mybloglog now utilizes Yahoo! ID. That’s quite nice!

I’m waiting and hoping for Yahoo! to do two things with Yahoo! ID:

1) Allow me to be in Yahoo! Mail and one click to Mybloglog or Flickr or whatever and vice versa.

2) Allow me (or anyone else) to change their Yahoo! ID while retaining all of their data, photos, email etc. Many people have Yahoo! IDs that have a combination of spam or that name isn’t relevant to them anymore disease. I’d prefer to change the name and retain all of the data and settings. I’d love for Yahoo! to add this user centric change.

Congrats to the Mybloglog team on the continuing transitions!

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KickStart Solves the Wrong Recruiting Problem

David Dalka — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:22:25 +0000

While I have not seen or used the reported Kickstart, Techcrunch described it in the following manner:

“Yahoo is reported to be working on a new social networking service that matches college students to employers.” (emphasis added)

This is not a knock on Yahoo!, but this is not solving the actual problem that the entire recruiting industry fails to address well – highly intelligent people with excellent life experiences that are applicable in many ways in the secondary market, what some people would call experienced hires. A marketplace that is badly broken and fails to hire the highest potential, most innovative candidates that are capable of creating new paradigms.

The high value problem is the getting the productive utilization of underutilized assets in the US economy in the roles they should be in already. These can be people with resume gaps due to the events of September 11th, the increasing usage of temporary workers using checklists of keywords who aren’t truly qualified to do the screening based on what matters education and competencies, suffer from an out of favor job title due to a reorganization in their company or increasingly can be subject matter experts who research extensively on their own and often write blogs. Or the fact that position searches simply take too long. I’ve been told of companies with some roles that have been open for three years and they’ve been interviewing people all of that time. I have personally have been involved in search that is over 9 months old.

If Yahoo! (or anyone else for that matter) wants to be a hero by building a hiring application, I highly suggest building an application that reduces the insane amounts of friction and dysfunction in the experienced hire marketplace that reduces cycle times. I’m working on a few ideas of my own with some amazing people. It would be a pleasure to be a part of creating the solution in this arena.

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SES San Jose 2007 Day 2 – Images & Search Engines

David Dalka — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:26:50 +0000

I was going to attend this session but I arrived late because I was having a great conversation about his new project.

After yesterday’s speech by Greg Jarboe during the Universal Search session I knew this session would be popular. I had no idea that I could not even get a seat in a really hot room!!! Wow!

Shari Thurow, who just wrote a new book on this subject, and Chris Smith from Netconcepts gave great talks before I escaped for fresh air in the exhibit hall.

Fortunately, other folks that got seats did some great write ups of the session.

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SES San 2007 Jose Day 1 – Universal & Blended Vertical Search

David Dalka — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:59:22 +0000

Moderator:
Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose
Search Engine Marketing Speakers:
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst online
Bill Slawski, seobythesea.com
Erik Collier, Director of Product Management, Ask.com
David Bailey, Engineer, Google
Tim Mayer, Vice President of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Quite likely the busiest session of the day to the fullest house. One can’t help but notice that if Greg Jarboe had gone to Google and designed Universal Search himself he likely couldn’t have designed it to play into his strength areas in news and pr related issues. The implications and transformation for universal search are still evolving, but they are clearly changing the landscape. One other thing that became clear from this event was that Ask is becoming a serious contender in this marketplace.

Greg Jarboe –

Universal search is the biggest event since “Florida” update. 70% of what I used to know is now obsolete. The patterns are not yet clear in personalization.

News results ranked #4 if you searched for the term iPhone on June 29

In the #8 position, was a Youtube video. We don’t know if it was done on purpose.

July 17, Rupert Murdoch – news with image – brings up a whole new reputation management – be prepared to optimize images.

Early chapters of Henry Potter were leaked, the blog results are on page one of results

Investor relations now is moving to the front page of Countrywide. Few companies have complete control of their brands now on Google.

Unflattering images of Hillary Clinton and that vast right wing conspiracy is building links to unflattering results.

Blogs on Hurricane Dean already on front page. Images will likely come next.

All of the rules have been rewritten – how do I research this? Focus on the upper left links. News seems to be on the top left all the time. Search remains #1 way journalist find information about a company.

Newsknife and Google News Report – be checking this. Your PR people aren’t ready for that yet. If you are not giving a jpg file in a release, start now.

Google News right now doesn’t do video news. Likely to create that.

Social mapping tools can help identify most influential bloggers. In certain categories they show up.

A couple of years ago there was vertical creep session here at SES – I now rank for that term. Not a good thing.

You can’t afford to ignore Universal Search Today

Google is making specialized or vertical content more visible through Universal Search

Sherwwod Stranieri, Catalyst Online

This throws a lot of curves into the theme. Ask 3D and Google cut new paths.

Conventional web pages that once rank well are going to move around maybe down. Other things will move updates.

Number of videos is significant in the Youtube world. Are the search engines using comments as an indicator?

We are looking at it as search marketers. Showed client example.

How to look at it: Google PR, Y! Page links, keyword phrases in tags.

Videos ranking correspond well with views, comments, etc.

Bill Slawski

Why does news, images and video show up there.

I’m not sure I see this all as a revolutionary concept. How do we get out content into our results.

Showed examples of screen prints from each engine for the word spider.

Showed the Google patent, oddly looks quite different than Google’s universal search does now.

Google acquired several Infoseek patents.

Discussed Onebox and log file data.

Ranking in Vertical databases – how do you rank for that vertical?

User behavior – key value pairs, be certain definition and being defined. Questions and Answers work the same way. Html formatting may play a role.

Enhancing the user experiences.

David Bailey – Google
Technical lead for the vertical search.

What are our goals?

Make google.com the search box of first resort.

Display special features for special results

Keep it fast. Keep it simple. Above all, keep it relevant.

Showed example: origami crane

This will continually improve and extend to more result types.

It’s still about the web.

But: think about creating quality content in other forms. Expect similar SEO guidelines to apply.

Create quality content, describe it well and we’ll see what happens.

Tim Mayer, VP Product Management

We are transitioning to a better optimized user experience

Freshness and user intent became relevancy issues.

News, local and other verticals – the possibilities are infinite. Federation plays a role.

Some implantation examples:

Music Artist Shortcut

Movie Shortcut

Hotel Shortcut Inline

Consumer Electronics Shortcut

As we go forward, it’s going t be more about the intent of the searchers.

Eric Collier, Director of Product Management

“We are the scrappy innovator of search.”

Ask.com 3D: SERP Design

We moved the content up top and removed the top links.

Large jumps in user satisfaction seen in both the site analytics and surveys

Increase in vertical channel usage

Starting to see a reduction of multiple query sessions around the same keyword term.

Expect to see a larger percentage of SERPs with blended results

User location will play a larger roles in SERPs

Expect to see fewer web results in SERPs

Blogs, Images and Video results will take online reputation into account when ranking

Pay attention to other search drivers

Other coverage of this important session:

RB Digital Boots

Rustybrick

AIM Clear Blog

Lee Odden’s Toprankblog

Bonus coverage:

Lee Odden interviews Tim Mayer

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SES San Jose 2007 Day 1 – Earning Money From Contextual Ads

David Dalka — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:25:14 +0000

Search Engine Marketing Speakers:
Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense.com
Jeremy Schoemaker, Founder and CEO, Shoemoney Media Group Inc.
Bryan Vu, AdSense Associate Manager, Google
Markus Frind, Founder, Plentyoffish.com

Jennifer Slegg –

How to influence ads that appear:
Unique title tags
Meta tags
Alt tags
Proximity
Keyword hints
Stop words – if you are having trouble with public service ads – you need to do this
Use image ads to your advantage:

Enable image ads on Adsense for an image only ad placement. Get paid CPM.

Highest CTR should be first HTML
- Highest earning
- Test with multiple channels

Borders: To be or not to be
Sometime blended are best.

YPN: The eternal beta
Split test Adsense against Yahoo Publisher Network

Labeling as ads can increase CTR
- Avoid compliancy issues
- Don’t blend
- CTR up 1.5%

Adsense for Search
- Volume = $
- Display results on own site

Switch it up
- Ad rotation
- Color variety
- Style variety
- Custom channels

Craft inbound links carefully

Smart filtering
- Use your filer list with caution
- Blocking ads= lower paying ads appearing

One ad unit versus three
One ad unit on a page can make more than three combined
Adsense on forums
Enable image ads

YPN RSS ads

Section targeting

Blog terms in images

Dynamic content problems

Non-content sites
Image & flash heavy sites

Non-associate login ID
Unsecured connection
Raw logs
Ad tracker
Policy changes

If your account is suspended:

If you are warned first:
- 3 days grace
- May block adserving on page site account but login available

Jeremy Shoemaker aka Shoemoney–

When I start using contextual Advertising
- Complete Functionality
- 1,000 Unique Visitors/Day

Innovative or ????? – keep the lines of communication open.

Ads are no longer allowed near images.

Bearshare discussion

People are getting bad.

YPN “Yahoo is a disaster right now”

- Unstable and unreliable after launch

- Horrible targeting still

- Too focused on advertisers

Tools of the trade –

Crazyegg

Google Analytics

Openads – likes the interface – if the users is coming from digg or Firefox – show different ads

Tips for success -
TEST

Don’t Sell Out

Analytics

Heat Maps

Communications

Bryan Vu, Google

Testing branding, Youtube, branding and mobile, etc…

Barry also blogged Earning Money From Contextual Ads

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Seattle – New Search Marketing Executive Mecca?

David Dalka — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:53:36 +0000

The land grab described in the Seattle Times seems to indicate this might be the truth. Seattle and the surrounding region is a wonderful place, I’d love to live there one day either in downtown Seattle or Bellevue. It’s interesting that they are moving locations to where the available talent is. They should explore Chicago once they’ve exploited Seattle’s talent markets fully.

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University of Michigan Consumer Satisfaction Index Report 2007

David Dalka — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:21:09 +0000

The report is out. Greg Sterling has a great write up at Search Engine Land. Congrats to Yahoo! and Ask on their improvements!

However, the numbers are extremely fine and as Greg asked the authors, “Why the disconnect between the satisfaction data and market share?” The other thing that should be pointed out is that these numbers are not that granular in nature. My advice is to take these numbers with a grain of salt as they may of may not result in the market share changes they suggest over the next 12-24 months. Essentially the question is will this report cause people to talk about switching over dinner with family and friends tonight?

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Search Engine Strategies San Jose – Silicon Valley August 19-23

David Dalka — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:08:30 +0000

I look forward to seeing all of my wonderful search engine, mobile search and mobile advertising friends next week at Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose! While I’ll definitely be in Mountain View for the Google Dance (hopefully they won’t run out of XL t-shirts in 2 minutes like last year), I’m unsure whether I’ll make it to Palo Alto, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Oakland, Monterey or Santa Cruz to visit and see some other awesome things. I do hope to make it to Barcamp Block.

Who else will be there and what spontaneous events, product launches and parties are you looking most forward to? I’m getting very close to some of my goals! I look forward to seeing you.

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Yahoo! Launches New Applicant Tracking System

David Dalka — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 14:31:45 +0000

Yahoo! recently launched a new applicant tracking system interface over the past few days. It has a much cleaner interface than the previous one. It also has a box titled concept search, where one could enter educational and leadership qualifications, technical and speaking skills, passions, competencies and blogs to get suggestions of potentially appropriate roles. Changes that were immediately apparent to me include shorter career position id numbers and a smaller set of categories that make it easier to navigate clusters of open positions needing to be filled by qualified applicants.

Below is a screen shot, I wish Yahoo! good luck with the new system!

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adtech Chicago: Redefining Search to Realize Its Full Potential

David Dalka — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:44:59 +0000

August 1, 2007

MODERATOR:
Jeffrey Pruitt, President, SEMPO, and Executive VP, Search, iCrossing

PANELISTS:
Kelly Graziadei, Senior Director, Agency Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing

James Colborn, Group Marketing Manager, adCenter Communications Group, Microsoft

Kevin Willer, Central Region Development Manager, Google

James Colbourn, Microsoft

Kelly Graziadei, Yahoo!

Think about the many different faces of search.

- The Researcher – look at Yahoo! Buzz to create an audience pyramid. Look at other content. Miller Beer Run. Showed a campaign with getting the beer – Yahoo! created the game and got excellent results

- The Reputation Manager – geo-targeting, ad testing, etc. Jet Blue built a campaign to respond to negative news.

- The Brand Manager – 79% introduced to new brands in search and 61% expect brand leaders to be consistently in the top of search results.

- The Great Integrator – TV, web, games, mobile all at the same time.

- The Advocate – Searchers are advocates that build brands through social media – significant in the pre and post purchase mode.

Kevin Willer, Google
- Information silos in the past. You almost needed a search engine for the search engines. Now all the silos are in one universal search.

Google Promotion – search for Bourne – showed how the site with Youtube

Search for PR. – You need to be ready to answer those searches

Search the New Performance Link – showed Motorola example and Presidential campaign data for Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney (He said the

We want to start thinking about search in different ways.

James Colbourn, Microsoft
Search Today: A Performance Tool
- To increase brand awareness
- To Sell Products
- To Generate Leads
- To Drive Traffic To Company Website

How do advertisers measure success?
- Traffic
- Conversions
- Impressions
- ROI

Brand, Awareness, Acquisition Tool and Lead Generator

Search as a research tool is a leading indicator for:
- A Business
- An Industry

Beyond Search
- Media Buying
- Budget Allocation
- PR Activity

The potential for search is higher than current usage…

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adtech Chicago: Search + Video + Contextual Targeting: Is the Holy Grail Upon Us?

David Dalka — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:28:48 +0000

July 31, 2007

Shashi Seth, Head of Monetization, YouTube.com

Rebecca Paoletti, Director, Video Strategy, Yahoo!

Patrick Moorhead, National Manager, R&D Advanced Marketing Solutions, Avenue A | Razorfish

Chris D’Alessandro, Group Director, Customer Insight, Organic, Inc.

Moderator: Curt Hecht, Executive VP, Chief Digital Officer, GM Planworks/Starcom Mediavest Group

Rebecca: Video search is not as important to core clients as media that is relevant to the brand. The off network piece is important as well. Reaching your users wherever they are, walking down the street, whatever…

Patrick: It’s almost the Holy Grail. We need to redefine contextual to mean what the user means at that moment.

Chris: If you are looking at an awareness company, it’s not the Holy Grail.

Curt: How does this scale? How are the agencies? Pre-rolls?

Rebecca: The trend to distribute us towards pre-roll. We are far away from dynamic video smart ads. What they search for. Dynamically delivered video is hard to deliver. Dynamic video is a long ways away.

Patrick: I disagree that we are far away from dynamically generated video.

Curt: Who is digging in on this?

Chris: Emerging and bleeding technology is getting there.

Curt: Are you talking about testing and learning?

Chris: Search is always part of everyone’s repertoire.

Rebecca: Shopping and merchandising makes a lot of sense. We have huge testing and learning going on right now.

Curt: Marketers will have to deal with versioning of creative.

Chris: we’ve had to segment sites. What kind of content do we deliver?

Patrick: We have to measure this stuff from an optimization of media dollars. The same investment can service a much broader audience. Campaign management tools will catch up at some point. Look at things holistically; it’s half about people management.

Shashi: Traditional click through and engagement numbers are not sufficient. We need to come up with standard metrics across the board.

Audience question on pre-rolls and potential attrition to smaller sites.

Shashi: When we announce our ad unit, we will take all those things into account.

Rebecca: We only use it for premium inventory. We balance the pre-roll with the length of the content. We’ve done a lot of testing in this area and found it had no adverse impact.

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Love Danny Sullivan’s Comment on This Article!

David Dalka — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 04:26:45 +0000

Danny’s comment on Kara Swisher’s article is sooooo on the mark!!!

While Danny’s comment above is long, you can’t help but realize it’s a mere fraction of her overcomplicated ethics statement.

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Jerry Yang in as Yahoo! CEO

David Dalka — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:54:40 +0000

Susan Decker also promoted to President.

Read Jerry’s thoughts here on the Yahoo! blog

Official Releases

I can’t say I’m totally shocked by this based on recent events. No need to rehash those – you can read those on the other blogs and outlets.

Although it was clearly emotional and difficult for all, it was unique and class move the way that they did it with Terry participating in the call announcing his departure.

Good luck to Jerry Yang in his new role and congrats to Susan on her promotion. I look forward to hearing from them again with more details shortly.

It would be great if Jerry Yang was to reach out to members of the blogosphere to hear and see their thoughts and it would be delightful to actually share those ideas with him. It should be a top priority if the company is to regain it’s prominence.

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Maybe Yahoo Needs an Injection of “New”

David Dalka — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:44:03 +0000

I missed this post last week on the Internet Marketing Monitor.

It says:

“Maybe an infusion of new thinking, new experiences, and fresh perspectives would be good for Yahoo.”

Then later:

“Maybe employees who weren’t yet ingrained with Yahoo’s past ways of doing things would be able to breathe new, renewed life into the one-time Internet king. “

Time will tell if they wisely chose this path.

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Upcoming Yahoo! Presentations

David Dalka — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:04:11 +0000

Yahoo! to present at the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecommunications
Conference in New York. Hilary Schneider, Executive VP of Local Markets &
Commerce and Yahoo! Publisher Network will present on Tuesday, June 5,
2007 at 2:50pm Eastern Time / 11:50am Pacific Time.

A live webcast of the presentation will be available on the Investor
Relations website at

http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/calendar.cfm?CalendarID=5

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Initial Thoughts on Microsoft Aquiring Aquantive

David Dalka — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:53:15 +0000

Techcrunch had an earlier article. At $6 Billion or $66.50, an ~85% premium over the previous days selling price that creates a price to earning rating of around 52, many people would consider this to be overpayment. With approximately $26 Billion in the bank that shareholders consistently complain is underutilized, it is more likely insurance to prevent a bidding war and a break up of the deal as apparently happened behind the scenes when Microsoft originally tried to acquire Doubleclick.

With headquarters both in Seattle, these partners likely know each other well from the tightly woven Seattle networking community so there is likely a known cultural fit. It is likely clearly friendly due to this and how quickly it came together so quickly after losing the bidding for 24/7 real media. The major question is can Microsoft quickly integrate and leverage these systems with its’ own, some of which have overlap and the graphical side. The other risk is can Microsoft tie up the critical thought leadership staff in an appealing way that maintains the creative culture? Time will tell.

Much like Google’s acquisition of Doubleclick there are conflicts of interest to be resolved. In Doubleclick’s case they own Performics, a search marketing and optimization firm. The Avenue A | Razorfish division performs a significant search marketing and search optimization function just like Performics. Google has yet to state how they will resolve this. Microsoft could score points by stating a plan to deal with this before Google does.

Aquantive has spent $200 Million in the 2004-2006 acquiring Accipiter, iFRONTIER, Franchise Gator, DNA, Amneisa, e-Crusade, GOTOAST, Neue Digitale, NetConversions, Technology Brokers/Media and SBI.Razorfish. While the impacts of these businesses are not yet fully known, Aquantitive prides itself on buying and integrating emerging businesses. Some of these are creating a media exchange like Right Media recently acquired by Yahoo!. Some of the value of this transaction likely lies hidden in these small business lines.

While the integration risk is not insignificant, Aquantive was one of the last premium players available and Microsoft can certainly afford the premium.

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Interesting Techmeme Visitors That Came to Read MyBlogLog News

David Dalka — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:46:32 +0000

There were interesting visitors that stopped by to read my MyBlogLog post! I thought you might like to learn about some of them.

First I wanted to report that this Techmeme only event had an average visitor page view of 3.23 yesterday.

Several months back, I had a major Digg event (Chicago Comcasted) had an average visitor page view of 2.35.

The MyBlogLog post had significantly lower page views overall, but had many other fresh posts written and indication of higher engagement. While you could draw other assumptions here, I’d rather wait to see some other data.

Below is a random sampling of some of the interesting readers that visited the site during the event:

Takuya Misawa, a Japanese Social Entrepreneur

Blog Potato, a site that is trying to build the world’s largest blogroll (feel free to sign up!)

Chris at 10e20, who envisioned a possible version of the rebranding back in January.

Cameron Barrett, someone who has had a blog dating back to 1997 at the urging of Dave Winer.

Stewart Mader, writer of Using Wiki in Education, which is a neat resource.

Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal, who whipped up a great post of his own on MyBlogLog (Always good to see you Loren!)

Roybn Tippins, who originally shared the MyBlogLog info with 100 people.

Ian Kennedy, who writes a blog called Flashpoint – he apparently shares my financial services background from his days at Lehman Brothers and currently works for Yahoo!

Chad Dickerson, who runs the Yahoo! Developer Network seems like a naturally networking and fun guy!

Mark Fulton, who among other things is an authority on domain name investments.

Jacob Share, owner of Jobmob.

Eric Berlin, the Online Media Cultist.

Patrick Schaber, The Lonely Marketer

Dan a “slacker” from Australia who authors The Wrong Advices.

The folks at the Weblog Tools Collection.

Brie from A New Wave of Thinking.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope to get to know you all on a deeper level as time goes by. Please feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed if you have not already done so. Thanks! See you soon.

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MyBlogLog to Rebrand and Make Significant Changes

David Dalka — Sun, 13 May 2007 20:27:00 +0000

At SOBcon yesterday in Chicago, Robyn Tippins, who was recently hired as the MyBlogLog community manager, spoke about several major upcoming changes with MyBlogLog.

There are several changes in the works:

1) The biggest news is that there will be a rebranding of MyBlogLog. The exact timing and new brand were not revealed. (YahooBlogLog or MyYahooLog? Time will tell.)

2) A complete site redesign is on the way!

3) A new “Widget 2.0″ is coming with some hover features.

4) Yahoo! is hard at work to remove the offensive photos so that MyBlogLog would be palatable to more conservative business blogs.

5) Some sort of method to turn off your presence for some types of sites will be added.

As they do not have these changes locked in, Robyn would love your comments and feedback. To not overwhelm her, please drop your comments below.

Analysis: The rebranding is not a surprise move. MyBloglog is really only known amongst the first adoptors and blogosphere and getting the Yahoo! name is front of more people in a soft way is a good move. Yahoo! seems committed to making these changes, while listening to suggestions and making the product more dynamic. Looks like the best is yet to come from MyBlogLog.

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Mother’s Day 2007: A Search Engine View

David Dalka — Sun, 13 May 2007 18:12:16 +0000

Fresh from having a nice breakfast with my Mom on this Mother’s Day, I decided to take a look at the search engine offerings.

Live.com – no offering visible upon my visit.

Ask.com – real nice offering of a heart with a tattoo looking thing that says “Mom”

Google -

Yahoo! – Nice crayon coloring the logo with a nice note. See the full animation by clicking this link.

Winner: Yahoo! who got the meaning of the day put into full action! Congrats Yahoo!

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!!!

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Upcoming Yahoo! Presentations

David Dalka — Fri, 11 May 2007 18:48:52 +0000

These upcoming events will be available for streaming online.

Yahoo! to present at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference and
Goldman Sachs Internet Conference during the month of May.
Tim Cadogan, SVP, Search and Listings Marketplaces will present at the
Deutsche Bank Technology Conference. The presentation will take place
on Thursday, May 17, 2007 at 1:30pm Eastern Time / 10:30am Pacific
Time.

Terry Semel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Susan Decker,
Head of Advertiser and Publisher Group, and CFO will present at the
Goldman Sachs Internet Conference on Wednesday, May 23 at 9:15pm Eastern
Time / 6:15pm Pacific Time.

A live webcast of both presentations will be available on the Investor
Relations website at

http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/calendar.cfm?CalendarID=5.

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Microsoft Strategic Account Summit 2007

David Dalka — Tue, 08 May 2007 14:11:39 +0000

The main parts of the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit are today and Wednesday, here is the schedule. My initial thoughts:

1) I wish it were broadcast online, even the Chris Cornell concert, this is a lost opportunity for exposure to those who can’t be at the summit and build positive PR.

2) We’re going to hear another round of Yahoo! and Microsoft merger talk. Much like Charlene Li, I do not think this is the best path. They would be better off hiring teams of people with experience innovating products and services in different industries. This get past the limiting beliefs of continually hiring passive candidates who demonstrate no loyalty or passion for their present companies.

3) Why is John Battelle the only person at the summit blogging his thoughts? His post is the only one I could find about the opening night’s festivities.

4) I’m interested in information about the people shaping mobile search at the summit, please contact me.

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Flickr to Live on, Yahoo! Photos to be Shut Down

David Dalka — Fri, 04 May 2007 11:43:00 +0000

Techcrunch is reporting that Yahoo! Photos is shutting down.

This a notable and extremely positive event for the following reasons:

1) The users of Yahoo! Photos aren’t being forced to move to Flickr, they can export their photos elsewhere.

2) Reducing the number offerings ultimately makes navigating Yahoo! cleaner and better overall. This not only benefits the user, but it benefits the entire Yahoo! with higher visibility of remaining items.

To Brad Garlinghouse I say, “good job”!

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Earth Day 2007 – A Search Engine View

David Dalka — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 13:53:39 +0000

Yahoo! – The Y is a spinning windmill and the exclamation point as CFL light bulb. Speaking of those, the site 18seconds.org redirects to green.yahoo.com, a list of activities are listed here.

Google has a floating iceberg logo, if you click on it it leads to a list of relevant links.

Live.com & Ask.com – no change in page layout.

Winner for 2007 – Yahoo! with it’s many links out to activities and education. Congrats Yahoo!

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Google Disasterous with the Letter D

David Dalka — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:32:30 +0000

Apparently Google has considerable trouble in regards to the letter D.

First the Dmarc founders left Google.

Now http://www.dodgeball.com/ (dead link 11/2010) founders, Dens Crowley and Alex Rainert (please drop me a note if you read this guys), not only have left Google but they posed for a thumbs down photo that they have posted on Flickr, a Yahoo! property. The photo already has over 26,000 views and appears to have a viral element based on the view count growth, the interesting comments on the Flickr photo and a lot of blogosphere reaction. I’m trying to imagine how frustrated someone must be to post of photo of this nature, announce new project associations and state that they are throwing a party “to celebrate our escape”.

Putting my investment management hat on, I’d like for independent analysts to be allowed on the earning call this Thursday. If allowed to do so, I’d like to ask the following question, “Why is Google having such a hard time with HR and staffing issues, whether it is regarding hiring new employees, retaining pre-IPO employees (see podcast) or integrating acquisitions? Has Laszlo Bock’s background proven not to be the right style of leadership and is it time for a change?” The “all big companies are always ineffective” is a major cop out as there are big companies that are admired and in fact some cases adored.

Ideas on what to do with Dodgeball are everywhere you look. The comments on the Flickr photo are fascinating to read. P.S. When searching for these entries on Google Blog Search I found considerable splog/spam (MFA Made for Adsense) sites – Google should work to solve that issue.

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://www.blogator.com/g/2833510 (dead post 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://www.electrolicious.com/archives/2007/04/did_twitter_kill_it.html (dead post 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://mcmanus.typepad.com/grind/2007/04/two_dodgeball_f.html (dead link 11/2010)

“http://topicstop.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-alert-google_1007.html (dead link 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

“http://ipfreaks.com/dreamscene/?p=2258″ (dead post 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

“http://www.tmesolutions.co.uk/web_design_kent/Marketing+News/2007-04-16/Google+dumped+by+Dodgeball+founders/3800849030″ (dead link 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://yummy.vermontconnect.com/cool/dodgeball-founders-leave-google-and-that-leaves-dodgeball-probably-dead/ (dead link 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://www.teknolife.com/tech-news/disgruntled-dodgeball-founders-leave-google-infoworld/ post removed

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

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Yahoo! Leveraging Flickr Assets Wisely

David Dalka — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:25:31 +0000

Today Yahoo! noticed that some photos taken at the scene of the unfortunate Blacksburg, VA (Virginia Tech) shooting tragedy were posted on Flickr and immediately gave them Yahoo! front page placement as both a slideshow (and raw photos).

It would be nice if Yahoo! used Flickr more in this manner – even when it’s not a tragedy.

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Pet Food Recall Causes Surge in Searches for Related Items

David Dalka — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:26:13 +0000

Yahoo! released some fascinating pet food recall data in this article. It’s quite interesting to see data like this around significant news events like a pet food recall.

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Upcoming Search Engine Investor Conference Presentations

David Dalka — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 03:59:26 +0000

I thought you’d like to be aware of these, it’s interesting that they announed these almost simultaneously.

Yahoo! to present at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference and
Thomas Weisel Partners Internet Digital Media Conference

Terry Semel, Chairman and CEO, and Susan Decker, Executive Vice
President, Head of Advertiser and Publisher Group and acting Chief Financial
Officer, will present at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference. The
presentation will take place on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 at 12:30pm
Eastern Time / 9:30am Pacific Time.

Jerry Yang, Co-Founder and Chief Yahoo!, will present at the Thomas
Weisel Partners Internet & Digital Media Conference. The presentation
will take place on Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 6:15pm Eastern Time /
3:15pm Pacific Time.

A live webcast of both presentations will be available on the Investor
Relations website at
This link on Yahoo! Investor Relations website

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)
announced today that Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer, will
present at the following investor events:

Morgan Stanley Technology Conference
Monday, March 5, 2007
3:15 p.m. ET / 12:15 p.m. PT

Bear Stearns 20th Annual Media Conference
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
8:45 a.m. ET / 5:45 a.m. PT

To access the audio webcasts of the presentations, please visit
This link on the Google Investor Relations website

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Joshua Schachter = Awesomely Helpful Guy

David Dalka — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 02:48:58 +0000

I was having a small problem with del.icio.us, after stumbling around the site, I found a Yahoo! yellow smiley face with his name on it. Not only did he address my issue, we chatted for about 30 minutes. Tremendously nice fellow. It’s nice to see a founder still accessible and working away on his project a year after an acquisition.

It would be nice to get an interview about current and upcoming del.icio.us issues in the form of an interview or something on this blog. Please consider this an open invitation.

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Yahoo Suggestions – Suggestion Deleted

David Dalka — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:41:04 +0000

In my post earlier today on Yahoo! Suggestions, I stated the following (in bold no less):

“If Yahoo! builds the appropriate mechanisms to utilize and respond to this feedback, it could easily be the most important thing they do all year.”

I made a post on Yahoo! Suggestions – “Yahoo! E-mail – please improve the spam filters – too much spam gets through” in the hopes that it would get voted on by other people caring about the issue and that Yahoo! would respond by putting resources on correcting the issue. At mid-afternoon, the entry had 9 votes. Then I got the message below stating it was deleted. As I write this I’m absolutely stunned, how can Yahoo! state that the “Suggestion is not actionable by owners of this Suggestion Board, therefore we are removing it.” If this is going to be the normal procedure of Yahoo! Suggestions, I now have serious concerns about the success of the Yahoo! Suggestions initiative. Hopefully, they will review the procedures and improve this.

Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:48:25 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Your suggestion on the my suggestion board was deleted
From: “Do not reply”
A board administrator has deleted the suggestion you placed on the my
Suggestion Board.
Reason provided: Suggestion is not actionable by owners of this
Suggestion Board, therefore we are removing it.
Suggestion topic: Yahoo! E-mail – please improve the spam filters
Yahoo! E-mail – please improve the spam filters – too much spam gets
through

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My Yahoo! Suggestion Board Launched

David Dalka — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:34:25 +0000

Techcrunch reported today that Yahoo! launched a suggestions site.

If Yahoo! builds the appropriate mechanisms to utilize and respond to this feedback, it could easily be the most important thing they do all year. If Yahoo! does this, Peter Drucker would have been proud of it. I hope they do as this is would be a good way to build a customer focused organization. I like that the interface allows an anonymous entry, it could allow for people who are shy or don’t like making their name public to participate. I made my first wish regarding Yahoo Mail! in this manner just to test it, better email spam filtering! Please support the cause by giving it your vote!

As you know, I have made several suggestions in the past for improving e-mail.

Good luck with the Suggestion Board, Yahoo! This should be your moment to drive innovation and shine.

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Jason Calacanis Accepts Neil Patel’s SEO Challenge

David Dalka — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 21:39:42 +0000

After Danny Sullivan ranted, others checked in, and Neil raved, Jason finally caved in and said, OK, prove it.
This will certainly be fun to watch!

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Arrington’s Post on Email Interfaces…

David Dalka — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:50:01 +0000

Interesting post, notice how the comments are way higher than normal? To me that indicates passion on a topic and need for improvement.

I still wish someone would put signatures on top of replies and that everyone had automated spell checks that worked well.

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Making It Easier for Blogs to Link to Blogs Instead of News Sites

David Dalka — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:24:31 +0000

So Robert Scoble got upset the other day about people linking to major media sites instead of other blogs.

It seemed interesting to me. I started to think about the issues involved, mostly because it didn’t seem like natural behavior. But then it hits you like a brick, all of the major search engines have news and search search from their main pages, while only Ask.com has blog search on it’s home page (they should move it above news). Yahoo!, Google and Live Search do not. In fact Yahoo! and Live Search would have to acquire or develop such technology.

As you may recall, I have a history of suggesting search engine home page changes that become reality.

So, I’d like to please ask all of the major search engines to add blogs as a major top line category (to the left of or above news) and potentially think about creating options to merge blogs and news into one category if a user desires (I would find this helpful). If the Internet is all about user generated content, shouldn’t the major search engines reward and make that the easier default view?

It will look like this (though a little neater, I’m no graphic artist!).

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WSJ Writes Unfavorable Yahoo! Article

David Dalka — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:05:52 +0000

Kevin Delaney wrote a Wall Street Journal article today that rips on Yahoo! for the way it is handling the conversion to customers.

This flies in the face of all the articles and public opinion I’ve witnessed in person and online. I’m starting to think the Wall Street Journal is a bit guilty of bashing Yahoo! while letting the issues of another certain search engine slide completely. This is unfortunate.

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Google Makes Tighter Rules on Usage of Other Contextual Ads on Sites

David Dalka — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:22:51 +0000

Jennifer Slegg offers a post with excellent insight into the issues.

Has anyone done the A/B testing that Jennifer suggested? I’d be interested in the results and to see if that was a driver of this move.

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Yahoo! Unveils OneSearch – New Version of Go for Mobile

David Dalka — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 13:06:02 +0000

See the details here. If Ojas Rege would like elaborate in an interview on this blog, it would be welcomed. Thanks!

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Best Blog Post of 2006 (non-search engine related)

David Dalka — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 03:59:25 +0000

On October 9th, I wrote this about Kathy Sierra’s “Knocking the Exuberance Out of Employees”.

It’s a great post and it relates to a lot of problems in the business world in terms of having innovative customer service. Let’s hope her post prompted some people to realize that operating in this manner is a mistake.

Congrats!

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Q&A With Jimmy Wales On Search Wikia(wikiasari)

David Dalka — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 16:28:25 +0000

Ever since the Times of London first reported Jimmy Wales intention to start a search engine, the blogosphere has been ablaze with speculation and misinformation about the concept (which is much earlier stage than first reported).

While considerable questions remain, Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land did a good job getting some clarification from Jimmy and then giving his opinions as only Danny can.

I think the thing that everyone overlooks here is that Mr. Wales says in response to Danny about ads, “There are no immediate plan to sell ads, so for now we’re not too focused on that. If we don’t build something useful, selling ads on it is sort of a moot point.”

In my opinion, what the search industry should be most worried about is if Mr. Wales built a “good” search engine which was not at all focused on monetization. Now that could be actually quite disruptive if searchers were to migrate to it under some purest movement of some sort. I think the odds of that are considerably more significant than a great search engine killer emerging here.

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Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia Launches campaigns.wikia.com

AI Gateway Accepted to Major University Technology Incubator

David Dalka — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:33:00 +0000

AI Gateway, a development stage search portal and ad network with a truly unique value added technology, was accepted into a major university incubator today. Founder Joe Holcomb put significant work into this effort and gave me a shout to let me know that this goal has been reached.

AI Gateway is currently seeking angel funding and or an aggressive venture capital participant willing to fund a predevelopment concept based on a unique business plan that starts to generate revenue quickly upon completion of a beta product.

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Chicago SES – Day 2 – Duplicate Site Issues

David Dalka — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:28:14 +0000

I came to this session to hear abouts splog and what Google and others were going to do about splog prevention (apparently nothing yet). I was also inerested how feeds affected organic listings as I’ve personally experienced some problems. What I got instead was a bunch of people developing business sites that needed redesign and/or clean up, certainly necessary, but not as interesting to me.

Jon Glick, Become.com

What is duplicate content a problem?

Google, Yahoo, Open Directory Project…

Confusing the Bot: Dynamic URLs

Confusing the Bot: 2 URLs

Don’t confuse the spider – chose one canonical domain and link all internal pages

301 redirects, your hero…

Yahoo! has transparency on whether your site is banned, check it out.
Shari Thurow, Grandtastic Designs

What is duplicate content?

The definition is unclear.

Search Engines do not want duplicate or near-duplicate content in their indices.

Duplicate content filters:
- content properties
- linkage properties
- content evolution
- host name resolution
- shingle comparison

siteexplorer.yahoo.com

example: 3 web pages, 3 unique URLs – robots.txt excludes the duplicate content or meta tag can do the same thing

Duplicate content is often copyright infringement.
copyscape.com

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SES Chicago – Day 2 – Yahoo! Search Marketing Lunchtime Panel

David Dalka — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:57:31 +0000

John Slade speaks to an overflow crowd…

Says “Thank You!” to existing customers

Thanks people who have been early adopters

Web Publishers – everyone is a publisher in some way, even if they don’t think they are.

Consumer Context – Keep it in perspective

The Four Questions:
- How do I reach my desired audience?
- How can I effectively engage them?
- What mix of tactics should I use?
- How do I know its working?

Today’s offer model is a linear model, moves to multiple ad targets & calls to actions

Tip: Always get your keywords in your titles and descriptions.

Build calls to action: It’s a framework to continue

New Tools:
- Dynamic Account Structure
- Ad Testing
- Fast Ad Activation – building more automation and integrity checks into the process.
- Enhanced Geo-targeting
- Alerts – proactive keyword alerts to start shortly
- Share of Clicks and Forecasting
- Quality Index

Rank is determined by its bid and expected performance. Relevance is critical to preventing “ad blindness”

Five Reasons Marketers Should Be Exited:
- Improved user experience: intuitive, speed
- Faster impact and rewards for advertisers that optimize
- Focus efforts on what matters most to the marketer’s business
- Gives marketers the power create, test, and analyze campaigns like never before
- Leverage creative (missed the rest of the slide)

John stressed that one needs to be cognizant of thinking in new ways to get full advantage of the features of the new system.

Graham Harris…gives demonstration. Shows the automated keyword generator. This shows a huge change in magnitude that allows effective campaigns to be created by almost anyone.
Patrizio Spagnoletto speaks…

Upgrading Approach and Schedule:
- U.S. advertiser upgrades have begun
- Advertisers may chooser to upgrade post holidays
- Invitations will continue in stages to U.S. advertisers over the next several months

What to Expect
- Frequent Update
- Cheat sheet

Please look at the tutorials, customer solutions 1-866-YAHOO-98
It’s important to Yahoo! to make this house your home. We are successful when you are successful.

Question/Answer: Minimum bid for the US market is still $.10.

Question/Answer: Bulk submit is available.

International markets will occur sometime in 2007. John Slade said customer feedback was being sought on the best way to roll out.

How do you calculate relevance in a new ad? Dozens of factors drive us to a relevance to an ad, many of these come from Yahoo! search technologists. As data is available, this is factored in as well.

All in all, Yahoo! is demonstrating some positive attributes during this large conversion of platforms. These include a customer focus and taking the time to make a professional and transparent system migration that I believe will serve as a model in how to make a professional and non-disruptive migration. Stock analysts should look at the long term of what is occurring here.

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SES Chicago 2006 – Day 1 – Ads in a Quality Score World

David Dalka — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:47:43 +0000

How do you do better in a quality score world?

Joshua Stylman, Reprise Media

- Quality score is determined by a number of factors
- Google Adwords = CPC x CTR (more relevant copy)
- Why make these changes – control over #1 position
- 2005 – Black Box – CPC, CTR, Landing Page, Ad Copy, others that aren’t transparent
- CTR not a good proxy for relevance, irrelevant landing pages, etc.
- Example of dramatic lowering of CPC once ad had a quality score
- Unintended impacts – artificial CPC inflation, Engine define “quality”, changes affect quality score
- Death of bid management, not really.
- How do you solve for an equation that you don’t understand

Andrew Goodman, Zero Page Media

- Two quality scores – one affects minimum bid, the other affects ad rank
- “Other relevancy factors” – tightness of relationship keyword – ad – landing page
- Relevant ads, ad keyword are critical
- How it works – see the public guidelines, human codes used to train algorithm
- Principles for ad quality raters are derived from user feedback on a large scale
- Adbots crawls landing pages looking for ”markers” a formula will determine score
- QS Ad Rank – CTR still key
- You can fix some of these issues – Advertiser (A sports training facility) using separate page to test response on different domain
- Don’t be foolish
- Cheesy Landing Pages + Deceptive Offers – “There is No Sanctuary”
- Try country variance

Jonathan Mendez, Otto Digital

- Strategic services arm of Offermatica
- What is relevance? Contextual relevance.
- Segmentation + Targeting = Relevance
- Engagment
- Ad needs to be relevant to the keyword and the landing page
- Geotargeting – important to news growth

Brian Boland, Microsoft

- Was there for the question and answer session – Google was invited to the panel but declined to participate

SESChicago2006

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New Yahoo! Maps Release

David Dalka — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:07:12 +0000

I *loved* the old Yahoo! Maps product. Late last week it was replaced with a very “Google looking” map that has a small fraction of the restaurant listings that the old maps product did.

Stated simply, I prefer the old release much, much better. The new release was rolled back once before in favor of the old one and I still find the other one to meet my needs better and I would prefer to use that one.

Fellow blog readers what do you use for maps and why do use that particular one?

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Jennifer Slegg Interviews Yahoo! SVP Steve Mitgang

David Dalka — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 19:53:55 +0000

Jennifer doesn’t put up daily interviews, but when she does, they are interviews that make you take notice.

The interview of Yahoo! SVP Steve Mitgang focuses on the release of Panama. New metrics like assists and number of interesting and many other new items are discussed. The interview lasts about 60 minutes.

Good job Jen!!!

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