Will Google buy Twitter?
I've been hearing rumblings about a Google/Twitter deal for a week or so. Here's the first article that I've seen that seems to indicate that there will be an ad deal instead of an outright buyout. Not sure I like…
Google launches Ad Personalization
As we've been anticipating for a while now, Google today launched their new Ad Personalization. It's a limited program for the time being. They're calling them "interest based ads" meaning that when you do a search on Google or one…
The Skittles buzz
Very interesting use of social networking by Skittles is all the buzz today. If you login to your Facebook account and then go to Skittles.com, you'll find yourself back at FB but with a floating Skittles box on your page…
Struggling with Analytics
It's an all too common problem... You work to build an online marketing campaign and then are thwarted by a client who won't let you implement analytics. I don't know what's worse, hearing, "Oh, we'll know if it's working!" or…
Americans’ Online Search Behavior Reflects Current Economic Reality
If ever a trend in search was obvious, it's this one, but the numbers are still surprising. An over 200% increase in searches for "unemployment" and "unemployment benefits".
Interesting dichotomy on personalized search
Personalized search... it makes many of us uncomfortable. Knowing that someone is tracking your every move on a site and then using it to serve up targeted ads can be a bit creepy. But apparently the newest data suggests that…
December US Search Numbers Surprisingly Strong
I thought for sure that the number of searches would be down with the economy for December. Less shopping and people being otherwise preoccupied. But the search numbers are actually up 3% and the rank of the major search engines…
Update on Yahoo TOS flap
After my last post, I finally got an email back from my Yahoo rep assuring me that our accounts are opted-out of the automatic optimization program. She further clarified that anyone who wants to opt-out has only to send an…
Has Yahoo lost it?
A few months ago, I received an email from Yahoo about one of our PPC accounts. It stated that Yahoo had created some new ads and reviewed and revised our keyword list for a particular client. We had 10 days…
MSN now crawling JavaScript
Last April, Google began crawling JavaScript to get at more data and now MSN has quietly launched a new spider to crawl JavaScript. This is great for all the sites that use JavaScript in their navigation, but could pose a…