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Google has launched a new social media aggregator (of sorts) that seems destined to be a leader in social media tools.

Why launch Google Buzz?

Unlike competitor Yahoo! Buzz, which functions as a news feed, Google has developed a Gmail-embedded tool that aggregates media, information from friends, information regarding Gmail contacts and of course the ever-popular status update.

The reason for launching this Social Media tool, according to Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president for product management is essentially to focus on sharing experiences in real time. These two key themes were core philosophies behind Google Buzz. Not to mention the fact that Google had yet to dive into the Social aspect (I’m ignoring Gmail-chat).

So…It’s just a collective of MY social media?

Yes, essentially. Google Buzz allows you to integrate your email, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, and photos all into the comfort of your Gmail account on your laptop, desktop or mobile phone.

Hey, not a bad idea. In fact, since Gmail represents the third largest email program for users worldwide, the fact that it is conveniently located in Gmail’s interface makes it easier to try and thus easier to adapt and use on a regular basis.

Any Noteworthy Features?

In the mobile interface, you can click “nearby” and see what people are saying – nearby. Good to use if you are at a conference or gathering involving a number of networkers. This can bring on a whole new meaning to “real-time”.

Conversation bubbles will appear on your Google Maps. They are geo-tagged buzz posts, which lets you see what people are saying nearby.

Opportunity for new business?

Currently, the social media landscape is riddled with different tools and programs, all with the same goal – reach the top of the mountain and stay there. Google has the brand recognition and market dominance to really make waves here, and I think they will accomplish a lot with this new feature.

This ‘streaming’ tool that Google has adapted, allows advertisers to focus on one space – conveniently owned and operated by Google. As opposed to spreading efforts across a variety of areas, the one-stop-shop aspect allows a more focused approach and targeted promotion. It remains to be seen how Google will manage the marketing side of things, but I am curious to find out how advertisers intend on integrating into this new tool.

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Is your favorite search engine a “tell” to what your shopping habits and brand preferences are? According to a recent study by a collective of marketing agencies, Wunderman, BrandAsset Consulting, Zaaz, and Compete, what you type into your browser’s address bar says a whole lot about you and your personal habits.

As a Microsoft agency partner, Wunderman’s research has a definite preferential tone. Regardless it provides interesting observations toward users personal habits. The study also broke down certain market verticals, like travel (shown below), separating the users into three types: visitors, shoppers, converters.

Based on that data Wunderman compiled the following assumptions can be made about the users of these different search engines when it comes to automotive, travel, retail, and wireless:

• Google: users tend to gravitate to Target and Amazon for shopping. Other characteristics included leading conversion for services like Hotwire, a preference for JetBlue, and a propensity towards a Lexus. Oddly enough, Google users were described in the study as the average Internet Joe – conventional but open to new ideas.
• Yahoo!: users were described as older, and lacking in imagination, with a strong preference for Sprint and AT&T over Verizon and T-Mobile. They were also considered to be skeptical and cautious of new or untried ideas.
• Bing: users were called the early adopters of technology and innovators. They were more likely to shop at Wal-Mart and Toyota was their automobile of choice. The report also described them as middle-aged, highly educated, tech-savvy individuals who considered themselves to be average and spent more than 10 hours a week online.
• AOL: users felt less intellectual than their peers, are often 55 and or older, spend their money more conservatively, want to blend in with the crowd, feel like they’ve gotten a raw deal out of life, expect less from their future, and still use a dial-up modem.

So what does this mean for marketers? David Sable, vice chairman and COO of Wunderman explained it by stating that, “Search begins with the choice of search engine. What this means if you are managing a brand is this: you need to know how consumers relate to Bing, Yahoo! or Google and how that reflects on you.”

To me, it’s no surprise that Wunderman would hold Bing users in such high esteem. Calling them the early adopters and most tech-savvy of the group lends to their audience being perceived as fearless when it comes to Internet shopping. Sans the finding that Google users tend to prefer Amazon, the other three search engines were made to look like their users are hesitant to make online purchases. Adjectives like conventional (brick and mortar), skeptical and cautious (afraid), responsible spenders (bargain shopping) plant the seeds of doubt when it comes to marketing through these channels.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sable’s comments, and I would like to think that the study holds some merit, however I can’t help but feel it would be more effective had it not involved a firm influenced by any of the search engines involved.

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Search Engine Preference Lets Wunderman See Users Hand

In recent weeks there’s been talk on the blogsphere, especially from a recent ReadWriteWeb post, about the imminent closure of the popular MyBlogLog blogging widget/social network. With the charge being led by bloggers irate that their beloved blog widget might be soon a footnote in Wikipedia’s logs, are they missing the bigger picture?

Looking at Yahoo’s (NasdaqGS:YHOO) financial report for the three months ending 30 September, it’s clear that the troubled search engine is starting to see a ray of light at the end of the tunnel, reporting net income of $186 million on revenue of $1.575 billion, a sharp contrast from last December’s quarterly loss of $303 million.

It would appear that this past July’s tie-up with Microsoft is starting to bear fruit. With Microsoft focused on the technology elements of algorithmic and paid search services,  Yahoo is free to focus on its role as exclusive worldwide sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers (i.e.: adCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing). This is going to consume much of Yahoo’s “system resources” if it’s going to work out.

With a long way to go to catch up to Google’s coattails, especially with its dominant position in both organic and paid search, the top guns at Yahoo appear to be making a smart move  to focus on search engine and its associated pay-per-click income stream. This also means that “side projects” like Yahoo’s integrated communications portal 360 and social network Mash have been canned before they made it out the Beta stage gates. Next on the cards, possibly MyBlogLog.

Having bought the then-startup for a steal at $10 million, it would be  a waste to close it down now, as it had done earlier  with its “Auctions” portal site.

If there’s any doubt where Yahoo’s priorities lie, I’ve known several experienced Yahoo managers internally transferred from their social media positions to the search engine’s core operations or its developer network over the last two years. The resulting voids in the social media business units have been filled by second stringers or new hires. The consequence? The rollout of new features has slowed significantly, or chugged along with decrepit (by internet standards) features. This has ironically resulted in the archetypal “poor user experience” so despised by the search engines themselves. Every iTom, iDick and iHarry has fired up their blogspot or wordpress blogs to post a rant or two, or three.

But if it’s a matter of the internet’s third largest website survive the current state of economic uncertainty, what’s losing a couple of popular websites among friends? If Yahoo management decides to focus on the company’s core business of providing search engine results and bringing in cash flow to keep the business going, what’s a few rants on a couple of popular blogs, right?

Still, it is a pity to see some key features, like MyBlogLog’s Pro Stats, which provided idiot-proof analytics for bloggers with a simple yet detailed framework, listing referring urls, on-site urls and, outgoing urls that the most technophobic and neophyte blogger could comprehend.

Maybe the MyBlogLog development team could have incorporated Yahoo Search Marketing text or image results within its community site or even within the widget itself. But it appears the MBL might’ve been a branding play, hampered by the lack of a viable business model and difficulty with integration into Yahoo’s core search model. As time will shortly tell, MBL might have overstayed its welcome.

A decade from now, historians will gaze back and determine if it was prescience or foolishness for Yahoo to have dropped the MBL ball, even while Google started incorporating real-time social network updates into its search results. I might even look back at my blog logs to see if they are right.

Disclosure Note: Andrew Wee is a member of MyBlogLog’s advisory board

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Back in October of 2008, We Watch Your Website’s security blog reported that malicious hackers were actually using successful SEO campaigns to spread a huge money making bit of malware to unsuspecting victims. The attack was maniacally brilliant. By finding vulnerable sites in the SERPs for the term “Halloween costume”, they infect the legitimate site with malicious code that will silently redirect (redirecting to a different page without changing the Url) a visitor to a site that claims that their computer is infected with a virus that can be quickly and easily removed by purchasing their advertised anti-virus solution. Don’t think this will work? Evidence from Panda Labs shows that the attacks were earning malicious hackers roughly $14 million a month.

SEO Strategies
The foundation of the attack lies in a company’s hard work to earn a decent enough ranking on the SERP for a targeted term. But abusing SEO doesn’t end there. Once the site has been identified and exploited, the attacker actually use keywords that have been optimized for higher search engine rankings in the redirect to help push their infected sites up in the rankings. So by increasing the rankings of their target websites, the attackers are able to create a greater need among their potential customers.
Holiday time attacks
According to Panda Labs, there is also a fluctuation in these types of attacks as the economy makes headlines. With an estimated $168 million a year to be made of this scam, you can bet that there is nothing to suggest this attack to slow down anytime soon. Being the holiday season, attacks are expected to increase as Christmas time is one of the busiest times of the year for malicious hackers. With IT staff taking time to be with family and shoppers more likely to let down their guard as they look for online deals, the holidays are ripe for attacks.

Prevention
As a user, the best way to protect yourself from this type of attack is to ignore warnings that don’t come from your installed security software. If your anti-malware solution isn’t warning you of infection, odds are a website or a pop-up that you have never seen before is there to help you out – no questions asked.
Owners of websites can do their part to protect their customers, and their SEO ranking. A few simple ways to tell if your site has been exploited with this attack are:

• Visitors complain about getting viruses from your site.
• Visitors complain about being redirected from your site.
• Google or Yahoo! have listed your site as a possible harmful site.
• Your traffic dramatically increases or decreases.
• Check the last login logs on your website’s server. If the IP address is unfamiliar, your site may have been exploited.

Of course, visit your site on a regular basis. If you notice a warning about a possible infection when you are viewing your site, you may be the victim of an attack.

Excerpted from:
Website Exploit + SEO = Payday

A measurement by Comscore shows increases in the percentage of searches running through Google and Microsoft servers from September to October. Where did the additional market share come from? Yahoo!

While Google continues to dominate the market accounting for 64.9% of all searches in September and picking up an additional .5% in October. Microsoft matched Google by picking up an additional .5% in October, now accounting for 9.9% of all searches. This is bad news for Yahoo, as they have been steadily declining throughout the year. If these trends continue, we just may see Bing overtake Yahoo in market share by the end of the year.

Here is the original:
Google and Bing Gaining Market Share

Slowly but surely, Bing is building more bang.

For the third month in a row, Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing gained a slight increase in the U.S. search market. Accounting for 9.3% of U.S web searches for the month of August, a .4% increase from its July share of 8.9%, Bing continues to gain market share from its giant competitor, Google.

Similar data indicates that Google remained the leader of the U.S. search and advertising market with a 64.6% market share in August; this down 0.1% from July. Yahoo also dipped from a 20.1% market share to 19.3%.

While comScore reports on Bing’s rising popularity, it still finds that most Google users are still turning to old-faithful. That being said, Bing’s steady rise does present an attractive opportunity to affiliates who might be ready to try their optimization hand with another search engine, which for the time being remains less popular, but perhaps less competitive as well.

Here is what our experts recommend for affiliates that want to experiment with Bing to get more traffic:

1. Experiment with PPC on this engine to test the ‘keyword waters’. How does your keyword performance compare with your current Google campaign or past campaigns you have run?

2. If you own multiple sites you might want to create a site specifically optimized for Bing – remember that this may take some time to determine its success, so be prepared to invest 6-12 months on this project.

3. Set-up your additional affiliate marketing ID’s in your affiliate account to track traffic results and conversions. In Share Results you can create additional site profiles and track performance of specific key words using the ACID ID Tool. Speak to your affiliate manager to learn how you can set this up today!

4. Set-up monitor tools to monitor site performance with your favorite third part analytics account.

Here are some recommendations for merchants wanting to build their business with Bing:

1. Suggestions 1 & 4 that that we made for affiliates above, are equally important for merchants, plus:

2. Make sure your affiliate program is set up to support Bing. Have creatives such as text links featuring products that you think would work well with Bing (for example, your target consumers who would be using Bing), and clear policies about PPC.

By all reports, Bing is doing well—very well. Its user friendly and attractive design and useful way of sifting through information is, if nothing else, turning heads. Who knows if those heads will stay permanently glued to Bing, but the potential is definitely there.

Are you on board with Bing? We want to know!

The Bing search engine was launched by Microsoft in June 2009 and was followed in July by a search tie-up with rival Yahoo .

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Support your favorite pirate today! Yeah, it’s on the 19th this year, but I like to party like a pirate a little early. Never heard of Talk Like a Pirate Day? Only cool people do it, so if you aren’t doing it… Well, you already know you’re ‘that’ guy.  Sad…

Anyhoo!  Javascript insert created by Tom Hughes-Croucher of the amazing team at Yahoo! Developer Network.  Get your own Talk Like A Pirate Javascript code here!

Social Bookmarking

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All Me Posts Are Pirate Speak Now Mateys

A successful affiliate needs the right tools and resources to maximize conversions, and create and maintain a successful online presence. Part of this equation also includes staying in-the-know about important industry information, and keeping abreast with current search news, as this provides the affiliate with further opportunity to target additional market segments.

So when Microsoft and Yahoo! reached a deal whereby Microsoft’s Bing search engine will power Yahoo search, it got our attention. As you know, getting ranked in search engines takes time. Whether that transition period takes an affiliate 6 months, 12 months or longer, it can be a definite advantage to start optimizing now, to ensure you get found later.

There is still so much up in the air, like when exactly this will go live, but here’s what we know for sure.

What We Know for Sure
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10-year license to Yahoo’s core search technologies.
• Bing will become the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites.
• Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
• Microsoft’s AdCenter platform will fulfill self-serve advertising for both companies, and AdCenter will set prices for all search ads.
• The deal is estimated to be worth an extra $500 million in annual operating income and $200 million in capital expenditure savings to Yahoo.

What Yahoo Says
“This deal will make the difference between a great Yahoo! search experience and an awesome one!” Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz. In an interview with CNBC, Bartz talks about the aspects of Yahoo’s strategy, and its value to consumers, advertisers and publishers.

What Microsoft Says
“This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.” Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer.

What this Means for Affiliate Marketing
It’s far too early to draw any conclusions, but we think at the very least that affiliates should start optimizing for both Bing AND Google, and that Bing certainly has the potential of becoming a strong competitor. Especially since Yahoo will be powered by it in the upcoming future.

What We Like About Bing
What is interesting about Bing’s platform is that it focuses on making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business. This kind of platform is great for affiliates, who are often involved in helping consumers make decisions about which products and services they should buy.

And so far the feedback on Bing is pretty positive. It’s still too early to say whether people will make a permanent switch away from Google, but either way, we think the online playing field is changing, and affiliates best optimize now, and Bing later.

What are your thoughts on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal? Will this affect the way you conduct your affiliate marketing?

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Optimize Now, and Bing Later

Marketing Socially: Robyn Tippins from Converge SC on Vimeo.

FYI, the very first of my talk is cut off, but what you miss is my telling you that I started a diaper company in 1998, at age 22, and in month one, using forums to market it, we grossed ~$30k. The video picks up there.

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Robyn Tippins at ConvergeSC

When I talk SEO, most people new to internet marketing want to know what keywords are and how to use them.  Many still think that appropriate keyword usage is just keyword stuffing at it’s best.  ::sigh::

There is never a reason to ‘fool’ the search engines with keyword stuffing, unless you are a Tool.  And, yes, I mean tool as in a clever way to say jerk, not tool as in a useful thing that get’s stuff done.  But, I digress…

Search engines like keywords.  They literally eat them up.  By understanding keywords and SEO, you are helping both Google, and Yahoo!, to provide relevant results (disclaimer, I work for Yahoo!).  Keywords tell search engines what your site is about.  Using keywords in ‘key’ places is what makes your site appear high up in search engine results pages (SERPs).  If I want to rank well for the term SEO, I’m going to use ‘SEO’ all over my site.  But, it’s not just the main word that’s important.  The words that often appear with ‘SEO’ are key as well.  Words like relevance, SERPs, H1 tags, keywords, etc. tell the search engines that they can trust my usage of SEO, because there are other words that usually appear with this word in natural language groupings.

In my daily wanderings, I found this SEO tutorial for the person who is new to SEO.  I hope it helps.

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SEO For Noobs

Wikipedia deep links and images are now being served in Yahoo search as part of an attempt to add more third-party content to its results. Now when a Wikipedia page is served in Yahoo’s search results, four links to sections within the article will be displayed along with an image from the page.

With this new search engine real estate, your company’s Wikipedia page is even more beneficial. Make sure your page has relevant section headers and an enticing picture.

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More Wikipedia Content now Served on Yahoo! SERPs

I’m very impressed to see these thoughtful blogging guidelines from the US Air Force. Corporations should take some notes from these very clear tips, that also leave room for creative response.

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Air Force Blogging Guidelines

It is no surprise that Google reigns supreme as the most utilized search engine based on November’s search query numbers. More interesting, however, is that Yahoo and MSN, the next most popular search engines respectively, were both outnumbered by YouTube searches. The total number of YouTube searches this November was 2.79 billion, more that the total 2.62 billion searches in Yahoo owned sites. Meanwhile, Microsoft and its sites barely stayed in the game with 1.05 billion searches in November.

Of course with YouTube being owned by Google, this is just another step toward Google’s search monopoly.

Credit:
YouTube Now Serves More Search Queries than Major Search Engines

I am not a prude by any means. Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “malfunction” did not shock me. However, the porn photos masquerading as profile pictures for porn spammers that Yahoo allows into MyBlogLog I do find irritating.

The thing is I have to admire their ingenuity. Yahoo states quite clearly that “spam” in their opinion is solely tied to email messaging. It is not tied to profile pictures. So what does a smart spammer do? Create a robot that while active in MBL visits several hundred blogs. Thus their promotional picture shows up on the MBL widget for that community as a “reader”.

Now it would be a different matter if the site was listed as being open to adult content. However this problem occurs on sites, like here at Revenews, which are not listed as open to adult content.

An email to Yahoo’s Customer Service has gone unanswered for three days. Not surprising since Yahoo is notoriously bad when it comes to cleaning up its space own space. I am also reasonably certain that this slow response is not a record by any means.

MyBlogLog has all the elements of a really great tool. Blog owners, especially those whose content is more news orientated, will find the oversight that allows these spammers in as a poor reflection on their community.

Yahoo needs to realize that in certain cases a picture can equal a thousand words of spam. Until then actual readers can get their news and their g-string pictures at the same time.

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MyBlogLog Needs to Wake Up Their Porn Problem

I am not a prude by any means. Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “malfunction” did not shock me. However, the porn photos masquerading as profile pictures for porn spammers that Yahoo allows into MyBlogLog I do find irritating.

The thing is I have to admire their ingenuity. Yahoo states quite clearly that “spam” in their opinion is solely tied to email messaging. It is not tied to profile pictures. So what does a smart spammer do? Create a robot that while active in MBL visits several hundred blogs. Thus their promotional picture shows up on the MBL widget for that community as a “reader”.

Now it would be a different matter if the site was listed as being open to adult content. However this problem occurs on sites, like here at Revenews, which are not listed as open to adult content.

An email to Yahoo’s Customer Service has gone unanswered for three days. Not surprising since Yahoo is notoriously bad when it comes to cleaning up its space own space. I am also reasonably certain that this slow response is not a record by any means.

MyBlogLog has all the elements of a really great tool. Blog owners, especially those whose content is more news orientated, will find the oversight that allows these spammers in as a poor reflection on their community.

Yahoo needs to realize that in certain cases a picture can equal a thousand words of spam. Until then actual readers can get their news and their g-string pictures at the same time.

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MyBlogLog Needs to Wake Up To Their Porn Problem