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4Aug/100

Google announces a new AdWords trademark policy

“After September 14 2010, Google will not prevent use of trademarks as keywords in the affected regions, advertisers will be able to complain about the selection of their trademark by a third party if they feel it leads to a specific ad text which they feel confuses users as to the origin of the advertised goods and services. Google will then conduct a limited investigation and if we find that the ad text does confuse users as to the origin of the advertised goods and services, we will remove the ad.”

From 14 September 2010, Google will no longer be monitoring or restrict keywords for ads served to users in the regions listed here, in response to trademark complaints.

This change will bring their procedure in line with their current approach to keywords in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland and most of the rest of the world.

4Aug/100

Digital asset optimization beyond search – Next Generation SEO

Companies in most cases have from many digital assets that they can play with when communication their message online, simple things as annual reports in PDF’s and Power Point presentations can be optimized and made visible through either own sites and/or such services as Slide Share.

Images from the last product launch can play an essential role on Google Image search and manuals in word can lower the load on support. Not forgetting social media such as Facebook, Twitter, the Company blog, Digg and Sphinn to mention few.

Implementing Digital Asset Optimization helps the search engines notice all your online content and everything from file names to meta-tags and HTML files to PDF files and Image labelling through Google Webmaster tools plays a role when it comes to holistic usage of the Internet as a marketing and communication channel.

I will be talking about this topic a the upcoming SES San Francisco.

1Aug/100

Successful PPC campaign for a small Car Rental

The Nordic eMarketing team recently launched a new Pay Per Click campaign for the family-owned Icelandic car rental agency, Glacier Car Rental; which has already proven to be a huge success for both parties.

"We had to make those travelling to Iceland aware of us, instantly. And with Nordic eMarketing, this is exactly what happened," said Hallfreður Emilsson, Co-owner and Marketing Manager at Glacier Car Rental.

Through Google Adwords, Glacier was able to penetrate the online marketing space within several hours, "Google boosted orders through our website by over 90%, and there is still visible growth," commented Hallferður.

"We are really happy with the results of this campaign," explained Haukur Jarl Kristjánsson, Project Manager and PPC Specialist at Nordic eMarketing. "Especially because this is a small, local car rental agency with very personal services, and does not have the power of the big brands behind it."

Click on the following link to see this PPC  case study on successfull PPC campaigns and to view other successful PPC campaigns with Google AdWords click here

30Jul/100

Social Mention a real time search platform

I recently found this fantastic tool called Social Mention, a real time search platform.

Been playing around with it and found it to be really useful for several things but mostly to get a feel for the general buzz out there. The tools is limited when it comes to other languages out-side of English, but I am sure that it will be fixed as the tool develops.

I have tested their alert services and they work great take what Google does with their alerts little further adding sites and mentions that Google does not include. Their alert are however limited to only one delivery per day, while Google is quite dynamic and delivers material as it happens.

Verdict: Great tool, worth using and best of all it is free!

2Jul/101

Should you serve Googlebot content-only (cloak) pages optimized for load speed?

Matt Cutts says "Nooooooo" and wishes he could come through the screen and press your ESC key and Ctrl C and Break, funny guy :-)  (he actually is).

What I how ever heard was that they are using other means that the Googlebot to look at sites and evaluate the page speed, what he does not say. I also believe that when Google comes in it's not downloading all the images and javascripts, CSS and so on, Googlebot looks at the content so having good HTML might actually be more important than cloaking content.

According to Mr. Cutts the bottom line is that if you do serve Google one type of content and the user other, it's cloaking and the "Noooooo" was for that reason. So don't serve Googlebot content-only (cloak) pages optimized for load speed.

3May/100

Has Google found a way to fix the Google gap?

Looks as missed hits may be a thing of the past as Google is bringing in a new version of their analytics code that loads at the top of the page, not at the bottom. This should help marketers understand the gap between what Google reports as clicks in their PPC/AdWords campaigns. The code will be placed as the Body tag opens in the HTML instead in the bottom as it closes.

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7Apr/101

Google‘s growing prominence on real-time search within search results

In August 2009 Google famously changed their algorithm and how they value current events, but different from the 2003 Florida update this change to how they value content  and display search results seamed to roll out rather peacefully and in some cases unnoticed.

I have been monitoring how this has changed the search engine and it seems that the Google Caffeine update is to putting growing prominence on real-time search within search results. Specifically on Twitter and other real-time communication tools.

This might explain a post on Search Engine Land that the Caffeine update really had not been rolled out fully and is slowly being implemented throughout Google’s data centres.

But what did this update incorporate? First and foremost it was Google keeping their competitors away, there was a lot of buzz about Twitter’s real-time search options and Microsoft had just rolled out their “decision making search engine” Bing. Real-time search was the thing and Google needed to come out with an update and that they did.

Google had some years back introduced their Google Universal search, were they mixed together various results on their organic results pages, when searching on a topic you could find various channels such as web, blog, news, shop, PPC, image and video being mixed together. What Google did with the Caffeine update was to take this even further and put more emphasis on current events and blend them with the more tradition results in a kind of a “ticker style” where things happened in a more dynamic way.

What they also did with this update was to take the emphasis slightly of inbound links (still very important) and put on good copy, other things we have noticed but I am not sure if we can directly relate to this update is the emphasis on URL’s, that is the text between the www and the .TLD/ccTLD.

According to this update two companies in the same industry, let’s say car rental, one has an URL with their brand in it such as www.alp.is has a handicap when compared with a car rental URL like www.carrentals.is.

Having car rental in the URL gives the later URL more chance of visibility, one more box ticked in how Google values that URL. My research has however shown that Google has a limit on how it values the URL so something like “verycheaprentalcarsreykjavik.is” are likely to rise a spam alert, prompting a Google rep to manually review the site for spam tactics or even worse Google just demoting the site or even removing it from it’s index.

There is a massive opportunity for marketers to look pass their traditional emphasis on their own site but also to use Twitter, blogs, online press releases and other channels that can provide an alternative option to visibility based on how Google now places emphasis on current events.

1Apr/101

The question of a white hat or a black hat

Just came from a session at the SES called Black hat/White hat “Unconferenced” hosted by Matt McGowan, Publisher & head of U.S. Incisive Media and Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES/Search Engine Watch and ClickZ (believe they are merging). Everyone that came to this session was offered a white hat or a black hat to wear, in my case I got the black.

Not that I am a black hat in the sense that I use under the radar none ethical tactics when marketing online, nobe more because that the size of the black hat fitted my head better. Great session that taught me black hats have bigger heads than white hats or that Matt and Mike did not order enough hats for people with big heads, either way fantastic session and great fun!

30Mar/100

JD Sports in the UK comes up in the US but does not have the product

I was recently traveling on the US, speaking at the SES in NY. My eight year old daughter asked me to buy her a pair of shoes, to be exact Apple Bottoms. As I went to Footlocker to buy them I realized that they did not carry them anymore so I decided to Google and see what came up.

First when I searched Footlockers internal search nothing came up and as I have learned through the years Internal search on big sites can by quite faulty so I tested if Google found something but no results. But what happened was that JD Sports came up as a PPC result. JD was most likely not targeting me as I was in the US at the time with my Icelandic keyboard. But as I was searching on Google UK JD came up, with a nice ad saying

Apple Bottom at JD
Get the new line of Apple Bottoms
Women’s ware quick and easy at JD!

When I saw the add I tough to myself well if I cannot buy it in the US I might as well when I am next over to London. But when I clicked on the ad I got nothing, that is I got a page saying “Sorry, we have not been able match anything to your search” it was not a 404 page it was a search result page with no results. Still not sure where to buy the Apple Bottoms for my daughter.

29Mar/100

SEO guidelines for big sites

Firstly what is a big site? Is it 10.000 pages or 100.000 or even 100.000? My experience is that sites that more than 10 .000 to 15.000 pages start to show the same symptoms, the main problem in most cases is the WCMS (web content management system), how it is used to manage the sites content.

This can be how templates are designed to show and possibly reuse content. Little problems within sites that contain millions of pages can occur again and again and grow from being a minor glitch in being a huge disaster that prevents search visibility.