I recently attended a Search Marketing Now webinar that outlined the “myths and misconceptions” of Google’s Quality Score. Below is the information I found most useful for paid search analysts. While some of these points are well known in the industry, there were many other interesting bits of information throughout the presentation:
First, some background:
Quality Score [...]

Yesterday Yahoo! announced that they will now be including videos, images and custom search boxes in their paid listings to create what they are calling “Rich Ads in Search.”
This new ad format, which has been in testing for the past year, is aimed at increasing not only brand exposure, but click-through rates and conversion [...]

Google SearchWiki was launched in November of 2008 with the purpose of personalizing searches and providing an opportunity to share comments among Google users regarding websites and search results. Since then, many SEM experts have been asking themselves, “where is Google going with this?” As with any new innovation, this new feature comes with pros [...]

Recently I spoke at the OMMA Social Conference on a panel discussing possible business models for Twitter; a highly relevant topic given that a week beforehand Twitter announced hiring a Director of Business Development. “Finally,” I thought to myself. “Twitter’s going to start taking its expansion seriously. Maybe I won’t see as many fail whales.”
The [...]

“Why do I need to pay for clicks on my brand name?”
Does this question sound familiar? The reasoning for asking this question usually follows shortly after and sounds something like, “If they’re already searching for me, won’t they just click my natural search listing?” Clients ask this question far too often, and as tough [...]

The search marketing world is assembled at SMX West today. The irony is that the talk of the conference isn’t even at the show. Instead, he’s sitting pretty back at his headquarters for world domination at PC Mag. He, of course, is John Dvorak.
His article “SEO Fiascoes: The Trouble with Search Engine Optimization,” in which [...]

Apogee Search’s director of product development Ian Strain-Seymour will be speaking at this month’s Web Analytics Wednesday Austin. To help get the most out of this session, post your questions in the comments, and Ian will do his best to tackle these questions on Wednesday.
Not sure what Ian will be talking about? Read on then, [...]

Do you track the conversations about your business meandering through the Internet? You should. They are not only opportunities to connect with your customers and potential customers, but these conversations can act as link bait. The ultimate form of link bait – outside of a viral piece of content – is certainly the engaging and [...]

According to Google Watch, last week Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, was discussing an impressive $5.7 billion in sales during Q4 2009, another indicator that search marketing is still a viable advertising source in shaky economic conditions. During that talk he revealed an enticing forecast about Google increasing emphasis on semantic search technology:
“Wouldn’t it be nice if [...]