Search company Ask is preparing to do battle with Google in the online advertising sector with the launch of Ask Related Search.

However, Ask is pitching its ad platform, which will be distributed in the US by MediaJump, as a complement to Google’s AdSense offering.

Ask Related Search focuses on the web publisher and the end user, rather than the advertiser. The service offers various customisation options, the ability to choose targeted keywords and keyword phrases, and a profit-sharing affiliate programme.

Ponn Sabra, founder of EmpowerWomenNow.com, is piloting the service to help attract high-trafficked website owners to try the new marketing method, without taking down their Google AdSense service.

The platform is driven by keyword and keyword phrase selection, rather than content, and is designed to be seen by the web user as a helpful resource rather than an obvious advertisement.

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GROWTH in the online advertising industry shows few signs of slowing, with ads generated by search engines and directories surging ahead of banners, pop-ups and classified ads.

Advertisers spent $294 million advertising online in the first quarter of 2007, according to the first report delivered by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The January-March quarter has always been the weakest and this appears likely to occur again this year, with the market dipping 7 per cent on the preceding quarter. But it was 50 per cent up on the same quarter last year, leading observers to tip the medium will finish the financial year at $1.15 billion.

Search engines and directories such as Yellow Pages continue to pull away from the rest of the pack, with the area pulling in $139.5 million in the quarter, representing nearly half of all the dollars spent online. Display and classifieds share the remainder equally, according to PwC’s Online Advertising Expenditure Report.

But the report by PwC noted that figures were likely to be conservative as, unlike its predecessor, it does not include revenue estimates for publishers who refuse to disclose figures. The one exception it has to make is Google, which with Yahoo! makes up 80 per cent of the search and categories market.

Steve Allen, of Fusion Strategy, said he was comfortable with his forecast that the online ad market would grow by 54 per cent to $1.5 billion by the end of 2007. “Senior figures don’t suggest to us that there is any waning of interest in bookings to the internet,” he said.

He was surprised at the acceleration of growth in search and directories but, because Google refused to disclose its figures, it was still a matter of guesswork.

“The method PWC employs is different … there’s been a debate for some time about what Google is writing in this country and we certainly feel it was being under-reported, but that was in the past. It might be different now.”

Analysts expect Google to write about $300 million in ads this calender year.

A Google spokesman said the company continued to keep its figures to itself.

“However, what we can say is that we are observing strong growth in this segment as more businesses are becoming aware of including search in their marketing. And, we think search has got some way to go in terms of growth in Australia.”

Source: Sydney Herald

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ADTECH has revealed the results of its latest browser analysis indicating that the current click-through rate of 0.18%, representing the lowest since the ad serving technology firm started the measurement in 2004.

Then, the average was 0.33 per cent.

“We know from our regular ad analyses that click-through rates oscillate,“ commented Dirk Freytag, CEO at ADTECH. “They typically take a hit at the beginning of the year and rise with the temperatures and then hold a stable level until the end of the year.”

Freytag continued: “The decreasing numbers overall in my opinion are due to the fact that the users have increasingly gotten used to online advertising during the last years. Banners are now commonplace on the Internet. New formats, such as video ads are needed to draw attention and generate clicks. Layer and Leaderboards in contrast have a high reminder potential even
beyond the Web.”

Click-through behaviour also varies significantly between banner formats andp countries. On average, the majority of clicks results from video ads (4.6 per cent) as well as pop-ups and layer ads at 0.6 per cent. Users click on the traditional full size banner more often (0.2 per cent) than the new large-format ad spaces such as Skyscraper (0.11 and 0.15 per cent) or Leaderboard (0.12 per cent).

The research identified the French and Italians as the most eager to click. Their click-through rates of 0.24 and 0.23 per cent respectively are double the rates of the Danes and Finns (0.1 per cent each).

Source: Netimperative

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Yahoo! is stepping up its battle with Google for internet advertising. Only days after Google bought online ad specialist DoubleClick for $3.1bn, Yahoo! is buying the 80% of Right Media it doesn’t own for $680m. Right Media runs an online advertising exchange, which will make it easier for Yahoo! to place small ads alongside searches. DoubleClick is trying to copy it. Yahoo!, lagging in the race, has found the right direction, at a lower price.

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We have come to expect a lot of search engines.

Type in a phrase, and we not only expect it to find millions of relevant websites, but we also expect it to list the best or most important sites first.

Woe betide a search engine that requires me to click to page two of the results before I find the site I am looking for.

Generally they do a decent job but, up until very recently, if you were to search on the term “miserable failure”, top of the Google search results was the official George Bush page on the official White House site.

Bush trick

This is an example of how even the biggest search engines can be manipulated.

Essentially, the web is a collection of pages, all linking to each other.

If you are searching for something, search engines like Google, Ask, and Yahoo! will first find all the pages they think are relevant.

Then, crucially, they need to decide which order to display search results in. One of the most important factors in deciding how relevant particular sites are is to count how many other sites link to it.

The more references, or links there are to a site, the more important it is deemed to be.

Because lots of people quote and link the BBC website, for example, the BBC site is seen as relevant and a good hit. That is why the site ranks quite highly for many search terms.

An underground movement of bloggers exploited this fact, to create a “link bomb”. They encouraged thousands of their peers to include a link to the Bush homepage in their blogs, and label it “miserable failure”.

With all of these links, the main search engine algorithms were fooled into thinking this was a relevant result for that search term, and Bush was driven to the top of the rankings. Mr Bush had been link bombed.

Politicians have been targeted by bloggers

At first, the search engines ignored it – it was not their job to censor search results, however controversial.

Nor did they censor other link bombs – googling “liar” would show Tony Blair’s homepage first.

Link bombs are usually self-defeating – as they become successful, other popular sites begin to discuss the bombs, and end up becoming more popular than the link bomb, driving it from number one.

Apostolos Gerasoulis, co-inventor of search technology for Ask.com said: “I don’t think this is the problem though. This is just fun.”

“Why we don’t remove it, or why the search engines don’t remove it, is because as long as we give relevant results for most of the queries that you type then we’re OK.

“The impact of this bombing, as it is called, is minimal, insignificant. It might be two or three examples,” he added.

Google decided to tweak its search algorithm to spot link bombs, and the miserable failure dropped away. On other search engines, such as Ask, it remains high.

If they build the right page, it is OK, if they build a great page it’s OK but the problem comes when they really try to cheat you

Apostolos Gerasoulis search expert

The link bomb actually achieved what any business would love to have – the number one search result in their category.

The ideal place to be is in the centre of the search result, the so-called natural search result, online marketer Fadi Shuman, explained.

“You get 80% of the clicks from the natural results. That is where we all want to be. The way to achieve that is through search engine optimisation.”

Optimisation is produced by making the website as visible to search engines as possible and having other sites linking to it.

However search engine optimisation also has a darker side.

Blacklisted

In February 2006, BMW Germany got into hot water over its website.

The problem was that the site was laden with keywords which customers could not see, but which search engines could.

They were there specifically to boost the rankings. Google has rules to guard against so-called black hat methods – specifically, “don’t present different content to search engines than you do to your users”.

Once discovered, Google blacklisted the site and dropped it from their search results altogether until BMW redesigned the site.

Jason Duke, search engine optimiser, said: “We try and persuade people to link to us, whether that be via content, whether that be via methods of creating controversy in the marketplace.”

It is an ongoing battle of sorts, between the search engines and the optimisers who would love to work the system to their clients’ advantage. Although both sides prefer to call it an uneasy truce.

Mr Gerasoulis added: “If they build the right page, it’s OK, if they build a great page, it’s OK. But the problem comes when they really try to cheat you.”

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Wall Street analyst house Pali research said News Corp’s MySpace was now bringing in more than $30m in advertising revenues per month, compared to about $30m annually when the Murdoch empire acquired the site for $580m in 2005.

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There are many opportunities to get a new subscriber when you’re offline, in the “real world:”

* People calling you by phone to ask questions

You can take subscribers by phone. Come up with a short
pitch/explanation of what you’re offering via email
(just like you would on your website) and ask for their
email address.

Put them in a spreadsheet and import the new addresses
daily or every couple of days.

* Visitors to your physical store

Restaurants, bars, doctor’s offices… if you have
people coming in person to see you, ask if they’re
already getting your specials/newsletter/other
information.

If they’re not already subscribed, have a signup sheet
that they can fill out, or give them a card with the URL
of your site/opt-in form so they can sign up there.

* Conferences, Trade Shows, etc.

If you have a booth at a trade show, or are going to a
conference, you’re bound to get a lot of business cards.

Just like on the phone, come up with an “elevator pitch”
for your list.

When you’re talking to someone and they hand you their
business card, make your pitch. If they accept, write
“Subscribe” or “Yes” on the card.

When you get back from the event, import the addresses
of the people who accepted.

Provided by Aweber

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Internet search engine Google said its ability to cash in on web advertising had helped its profits almost triple.

The company made a net profit of $1.03bn (£524.4m) in the last three months of 2006 – compared to $372.2m a year ago.

It said the result, on sales of $3.2bn, was helped by high internet traffic in the holiday shopping season.

Google said its partnerships – such as the purchase of video sharing website YouTube – were “going extremely well”.

Targeted

The firm said it paid out $976 million to websites which featured Google advertising.

This was a figure which was likely to continue growing, it added.

President of Technology at Google, Sergey Brin, said the firm had increased the number of adverts which were produced when searches were made for commercial goods.

The number of adverts on less commercial searches had been cut back, he added.

Adverts were becoming increasingly targeted to what was being searched for, he said.

Google paid $1.65bn for YouTube in October – with analysts saying it looked likely to see a benefit from the purchase.

The move should give it a key spot in the emerging online video market, and help it become a leading provider of web-based video advertising space.

In November, shares in the Google breached the $500 mark and are now trading at around $490.

Google shares have been boosted by strong growth, and expectations that the firm will continue to capitalise on the online advertising market.

It has also benefited from problems at its closest rival, Yahoo.

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John Lewis Direct has implemented search technology on its website to improve service and usability as sales soar and its online catalogue expands.

While search engines like Google have made finding just about anything on the Internet easily possible, a surprising number of retail websites still depend on hierarchical catalogue structures and a list of product groups rather than that a search box using natural language. The result is not only frustrated shoppers likely to abandon the site, but a missed opportunity for making ad hoc and personalised offers based on a shoppers search activity and preferences.

John Lewis Direct – currently experiencing a 78.5% increase in online sales and an increased catalogue of 22,000 product online – has implemented FAST’s Enterprise Search Platform which over the past year has not only proved scalable but has also enabled add-on service offers and information links for customers researching products.

“Our search challenge was one of supporting rapid growth balanced with our determination to offer the best customer service,” says Ian Tansley, head of web selling at John Lewis Direct. “We chose FAST because the technology allowed us rapidly to re-index our growing product catalogue and enabled users to find what they need very easily. In addition, the flexibility of the FAST solution has allowed us to also present relevant service information to customers on a variety of topics ranging from “how to select the right child seat” to “how to manage returns.”

Many retail websites offer little more than basic product categories (bras, jam, v-necks etc) which click through to a catalogue of what is available often in seemingly random order. In addition many search tools work by funnelling requests along pre-defined paths and they can rarely cope with spelling mistakes, free text descriptions or very specific requests. Searching for “a v-neck sweater not plain but patterned” will either confuse the system or simply generate a selection of all v-neck jerseys available regardless of style.

In contrast FAST’s uses product attributes to drive a dynamic navigation engine. There are no pre-defined routes so each search request can be processed and navigated to the most appropriate product. The system can also track shopper’s reactions to search results to deliver more appropriate choices for an individual customer. The system has been available in the US for around three years wand users include such companies as Best Buy and Nordstrom.

“FAST was the only search vendor that really understood our focus on establishing the most intelligent, informative product index,” says Ian Tansley. “We believe that this is a corner stone of providing a high level of customer experience.”

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Brits are accustomed to going straight to .co.uk domains when searching for a site, according to a new survey by YouGov.

Over 60% of the 2000 or so internet users questioned said that the .co.uk ending will automatically mean that the site they’re looking for or visiting will be more relevant to them, while 33% think that local domain names are “essential”.

Seventy per cent of those surveyed said they knew to go straight to Amazon.co.uk rather than Amazon.com in order to find the products they’re looking for.

“The findings show that British internet users are loyal to local websites and have higher levels of trust for the .uk domain name”, said Lesley Cowley, CEO of Nominet, the domain registry service for whom the service was carried out.

“It’s clear that the trust issue is one of increasing importance to the Internet industry, as well as internet users.”

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Web designers and marketing agencies still have no idea how to build websites so they can be found on the Internet, blasts Matt Paines, head of search optimization company XSEO. The startling discovery was made through holding a web design help clinic at a recent trade show.

One of the UK’s leading search engine optimising experts has blasted marketing agencies and web designers for turning out very poor websites which may look good, but stand little or no chance of being found by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Head of XSEO, Matt Paines,(pictured) is dismayed after finding nearly two thirds of websites viewed as part of his company’s Search Clinic at last week’s Technology For Marketing Show (TFM) at Olympia could not be seen by the major search engines.

Of the 88 websites which were tested at XSEO’s Search Clinic at the two day Technology For Marketing Show (TFM), only 52 could be searched online and could be tested. Of those, 32 were deemed so poorly designed that there was little on no chance that search engines could see them.

Paines, who is due to speak at this week’s Search Engine Strategies (until February 15th) conference in London, even spotted that some of the websites of major UK brands needed modifications if they are to perform better in natural search results.

“It is absolutely ridiculous that marketing companies and web designers are still building websites without giving any thought to how they can be optimised,” he said.

“It’s like building a car and not putting the engine in. It’s a fundamental problem but the point is that building search engine friendly or accessible websites is not complicated, in fact it’s relatively easy.”

Search engines use simple programs – which are commonly know as robots or spiders – that crawl the Internet looking for websites and their content. If they can access a website they can begin assessing the relevance to any given search.

Being search engine friendly allows the search engines to enter the site and read the content. So conversely having a site that does not give the crawlers something to read will prohibit them from understanding the site’s content thereby destroying any ability of being ranked highly in a search for a product or service.

Paines, who is one of only two Microsoft Search Engine champs in the UK, is worried clients are losing millions because they are being ill advised by their marketeers and web design agencies.

“We’ve seen some stunning websites which are worthy of winning awards, but they’re virtually useless,” he added. “In some cases the cheapest option is to start all over again because their sites are that badly designed.”

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Internet-based retailers cleaned up over Christmas after spending online surged by 54 per cent to £7.7bn during the period, beating expectations.

In two years, the amount of goods bought over the web has more than doubled, reflecting a push by high street chains to improve their online presence. In the 10 weeks to Christmas Eve, internet sales hit £7.7bn, up from £5bn during the same period the previous year, according to Interactive Media in Retail Group.

Shoppers spent £1bn a week in the first three weeks of December, beating the IMRG’s forecasts.

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A very useful collection of resources for webmasters including SEO, Usability etc.

http://siteadminstuff.com/all.html

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Worldwide advertising spending will rise 5.4% next year, ahead of its average over the last decade, while more money will continue to shift to ads on the Internet, according to a forecast released yesterday. Media buyer ZenithOptimedia’s forecast showed global Internet advertising spending up 28.2% in 2007, while spending in other media will likely rise about 3.9%. The shift in spending toward the Internet has been the hottest trend in advertising for several years, with marketers becoming increasingly comfortable putting more of their money into new media. For 2006, Internet spending is expected to show about 31% growth.

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Google’s $48 billion Print Ads test: Fourth time’s the charm? by ZDNet‘s Donna Bogatin — Although Google is dubbing this latest effort at bringing its “targeted, measurable advertising” magic to the world of offline print advertising, a “alpha test, it is actually Google’s fourth time at bat. As usual, Google is heralding its attempt at grabbing billions of dollars in ad sales as just the latest way that Google is coming to the rescue.

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Steps in [tag]checkout process[/tag] – You don’t need to particularly focus on the number of steps in your [tag]checkout[/tag] process but make sure they are simple & easy to understand. Ease of use & [tag]usability[/tag] is key to making that sale & not losing that customer.

Progess indicator – Let users know how far they have to go to complete the checkout process. The number of steps is not important, the user just wants to know how much is left to do to make their purchase.

Link back – Provide a link back to the product on every page of the checkout process so the user can make any last minute checks before they make the purchase. If you don’t they will have to leave the checout process all together to make simple checks & you could lose that sale!

Product thumbnails – Statistics show that by including a [tag]thumbnail[/tag] image of the product on each page of the checkout process increases [tag]conversions[/tag] as much as 10%!

Display costs early – Display any extra costs such as shipping etc early, don’t give the visitor any reason to leave by springing extra costs on them at the last minute.

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[tag]Split testing[/tag] involves trying different versions of [tag]web pages[/tag], [tag]web forms[/tag], [tag]checkout[/tag] process’s to see which version performs the best, you would alternate evenly each version everytime a new visitor views the page in question. Some software programs allow you to do this eg, PPC engines such as Google Adwords and for email purposes Aweber has split testing functionality built in.

For example, if you were split testing different web forms to see which one attracts the most sign ups you might try:

* A different colour for your headline
* Different headline copy
* Different ad text
* A long & short form
* Different order of fields for the visitor to fill in

Split testing adverts in [tag]Google Adwords[/tag] you might try:

* Different headlines
* Different ad copy
* Different capitalisation of your text
* Different calls to action

Split testing email newsletters:

* Different subject lines
* Using personalisation
* Different newsletter copy
* Different colour schemes
* Different layouts
* Different calls to action
* HTML vs Text
* Which day of the week & time the newsletter is sent

After all doing business on the Internet is a numbers game, track everything you do & see what produces the best results for your business….

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Dont hide your [tag]subscribe form[/tag], make sure its in a prominent position on each page & not hidden away through numerous links.

Make sure people know why they should be on your list, how are they going to benefit by subscribing to your email newsletter ? Insider tips & tricks, tutorials, advice on making money etc.

[tag]SPAM[/tag] emails are a part of every day life nowadays, people learn to live with them but they certainly don’t want to start recieving any more by subscribing to your list. Ensure visitors that you will not be reselling or spamming them when they get on your list.

Keep it simple, don’t ask for their life story! Just get the key information like name & email address. If you need extra information you can get this at a later date once you have built up a trust relationship with your subscriber base.

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What is list building ? [tag]List building[/tag] is a key part in any successful [tag]internet marketing[/tag] campaign. Your ‘list’ is your database of [tag]email[/tag] address’s from people who have requested to recieve information from you & your company via email.

What is a auto responder ? An [tag]auto responder[/tag] is a type of E-mail that automatically replies with a standard message to anyone who sends mail to it. They can be used as E-mail brochures to easily disseminate information to interested customers about specific products, new product announcements, or your company. They can also inform the sender that a message has been received (definition by vitalnet.net).

Why [tag]build a list[/tag] & use auto responders ? Direct marketing studies show that it often takes 7 or more exposures of a marketing message before a consumer makes a decision to buy. What’s happening as those “7 exposures” add up? They are building the credibility, familiarity, and trust with their audience which in turn, bottom line, increases your conversion rates. This is nothing new in the Internet Marketing world nor is it rocket science, but it’s one of the most effective ways to increase conversions & is often overlooked by many [tag]ecommerce[/tag] / [tag]website[/tag] owners.

Thats all for now but look out for future posts on how to fully extract the power of your list!

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[tag]YouTube[/tag] has finally made its first dollar (and about 1.65 billion at that) instead of just losing money. It was acquired by Google. [tag]Google[/tag] hopes that YouTube will do for Google Video what [tag]Google Video[/tag] failed to do for people willing to post their videos on the net. What will change on YouTube? Not much probably, but start expecting more targetted advertising. The co-founders of YouTube, [tag]Chad and Steve[/tag] have a little word for the people that made them rich. You.

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