Disclaimer:  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real businesses, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Failure is a key part of success, or at least an important step on the road to becoming successful. When the still-young search industry witnesses a failure of any kind, it seems to revel in exploiting the collapse for personal gain, personal indulgence and the ability to say, "I told you so." Without getting into names and details that will only initiate more drama and, dare I say, schadenfreude, I've noticed an overabundance of loony behavi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Internet Marketing Industry | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Google Enhanced is the online marketing advice-giver's gift that keeps on giving for 2013. By now, everyone touching search has been in several hours of meetings discussing these changes and where they will take us (mostly in the short-term), and has probably written or consumed at least one FAQ, eBook or White Paper on the subject. Feature roll-outs with APIs and a little bit of insanity in trying to get your numbers to match up are all necessary bumps on the road to truly optimizing. This yields the way for Google (and subsequently, every publisher) to ultimately optimize on a person-by-p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google | Search Marketing Column

In case you hadn’t noticed, Yahoo ranks number one for “Yahoo sucks.” Everyone in the digital marketing business knows it sucks, and efforts to turn the place into Google have yet to achieve fruition. Sure, the stock got a bump when Marissa came in, but that’s largely due to her status as one of the original Googlers. Home page redesign and human resource parlor tricks like that free lunch thing aside, Yahoo’s corporate culture is akin to the Balboa camp right after Mr. T pounded the stallion into submission in Rocky 3. Nothing To See Here They need to turn this ship around a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column | Yahoo: Business Issues

When you follow someone on Twitter, you see everything they post. When you follow someone on Facebook, it decides what you see. Which is right? I'd say both, and it comes down to the live TV versus DVR personalities of each service. Should Facebook Show Everything? The issue of Facebook deciding what to show people in their Facebook news feed came up this week when Nick Bilton of the New York Times wrote about how over the past year, the engagement on his posts had dropped, despite his having gained a huge increase in Facebook followers. That echoed concerns from Star Trek alum and soc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Google: Google+ | Internet Marketing Industry: Acquisitions | Search Marketing Column | Social Media Marketing | Twitter

The ad community loves free products, and if those products are effective at meeting goals, it’s only right to eventually pay for them. That was the thesis of my last column, which looked at the outcry over Google replacing organic shopping results with paid ad units. Now that marketers have concluded this is a worthwhile investment, they’re doling out the cash. At least, they’re supposed to be. While Google’s Q4 earnings beat Wall Street estimates, we haven’t seen a Google Shopping line item to see if this was a boost to the bottom line. Based on several conversations I’ve had [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

The latest movie in the "Fast & Furious" franchise is coming, Fast & Furious 6. It's getting a lot of attention because of its Super Bowl ad on Sunday and the debut of its extended trailer today. But, if you're trying to find the official website, Fast & Furious will send you on a chase that leaves the search marketing basics behind and exposes some Google & Bing failures, as well. Missing: The Official Site The official site is nowhere to be found in Google's search results, as this screenshot I took yesterday shows: Of course, there are several ways you could search for [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Much hype, and many public relations wars, has been waged over the last couple of months centering on the physical dynamics of paying your way into shopping results. Most of the attention has been focused on Google, and as often happens in the search community, Big G’s motives have been dissected, reviewed and morally judged, before short-attention-spans took the angry masses off to gripe about something else. The much larger debate, the industry’s familiar old cold sore, is the “pay or no pay” argument. Every time there’s a case where a free product suddenly becomes a pay-for-pla [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Every few months, someone seems to attack search engine optimization. SEOs are often quick to rise in defense of their profession. I've done that plenty myself, in the past. But a barrage of recent cold-call SEO pitches in my inbox even has me hating SEO. Of course, I don't really hate SEO. That's because I know the difference between: SEO and search engine spam SEO and snake-oil promises SEO remains the act of gaining free traffic from search engines, and also to me, gaining that traffic in ways that don't put you at risk of being banned or penalized by those search engines. I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Well, it’s that time of year again: time to squeeze in every little bit of revenue before the 2012 books close; time to take every last day of vacation before they magically disappear at the stroke of midnight on December 31st; and, perhaps most importantly, it’s that time of year when a whole host of year-end roundup articles ranging from the "Top 10 Things We Learned" to articles detailing every well-intentioned, but rarely kept, resolution ever made. I never thought I would write a “Things We Learned” type article because of a dreadful fear that I only recently learned somethin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Features & Analysis | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

2012. Wow, what a year. The world didn’t end, yet. For me, this year was quite different from those in the recent past. I experienced several personal milestones, enjoyed a lovely editorial year (my first with Marketing Land) and my agency continued to grow in spite of my absence for part of the year. Here’s a look back at 2012 via the wide angle lens that is my Twitter feed.  Some of my tweets were related to our industry, while others chronicled brand failures or just the total nonsense our social media culture encompasses at times. I’ve grouped my chronologically-ordered sel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

One of the so-called standard operating procedures we digital marketers espouse most vehemently is "optimization." We believe we've got this practice nailed. Search practitioners coined the term and drove the movement from the earliest days -- wielding a love for data, crude original campaign management systems, Excel-based testing matrices and a belief that optimization was the birthright of search marketers, and by extension, all digital marketers. Therefore, it's long been a constant for anyone in the business. But, unfortunately, the industry started to take this capability for grant [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

We need a new agency. We are thinking of hiring an agency. We’d like to hear more about your agency. Do you do search? We’d like some SEM help. Can you conduct a review of our current program? How many times have you been asked any of the above questions? How far would you go to prove yourself worthy of providing the answers? There is no greater cost to an agency than the cost of acquiring new business. The race to build business in an industry experiencing unparalleled growth has led to agencies rarely stopping to ask if they should be answering those questions and in what context. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

I can’t remember every detail of my first client meeting nearly 15 years ago (I was a newbie working for a search agency), but I can remember a few things:  I remember nearly our entire company going to the meeting (there were only four of us, and three attended the meeting). I remember the client VP sitting at the table alongside their traditional agency. I remember how proud I was of the new grey sport coat I was wearing and had bought just for this meeting. But perhaps the thing I remember most is walking away from that meeting thinking “How could they not get it?”  How c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Silos, while they might be pleasing to the eye in a pastoral setting, are a known negative in the world of business and marketing. We should not organize, manage workflow or report in silos. Nor should we plan and execute in silos. And, never should analysis and optimization of our efforts be done in silos. Yet, the default position is the silo. In many ways, transcending the silo is an unnatural act. It takes curiosity, thought, delving and collaborative instincts to set the course for cross-pollination and collaboration to make those things happen. You've got to have a silo busting [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Let me start this month with the following disclaimer: I despise humble bragging in all its forms. I find the whole process nauseating -- so much so that I have taken to parodying my own tweets that even remotely smell like a humble brag. That stated with the utmost sincerity, I can tell you I recently went through a life change when my car lease came up. I was hell bent on getting something practical, efficient and just downright not another Orange County me-too car. Yet, with all my resistance to trendy and all my good intentions, busy schedules and other priorities got in the way. So [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

A year ago, Google began going dark. Dark in terms of no longer sharing with publishers, in some cases, how people searched for and found those publishers through Google's search engine. The "single digit" percentage of withholding that Google predicted at the time has turned into more than 50%, in some cases. If Google's withholding were an eclipse, more than half the sun is being covered. "Dark Google" is upon us, and it will only grow darker. I'm drawing the term "Dark Google" as a play off the "Dark Social" concept that Alexis Madrigal wrote about recently in The Atlantic. Dark Socia [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Google: Privacy | Google: SEO | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

In all of my schooling, I only ever failed one class: Intro to Mathematics. As I write that sentence, a wave of embarrassment washes over me. Failing Math 101 is pretty hard to do (I mean it was an 8 a.m. class my freshman year in college, so perhaps that had something to do with it, but I digress).  Yes, it was disappointing to my parents, but was it surprising? No. I have never been good with numbers. My brain simply does not work that way and never has. I am a right-brained, creative type that prefers coming up with the ideas rather than figuring out the economics behind them. Tha [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

The road to Facebook's mid-term success is paved with search goodness, many believe. When the stock starts tanking, the top execs apparently believe a good thing to do at a shareholder's meeting is make an opaque reference to building a better search engine. "Build a better search" is an anthem many of us in the search business have been hearing for well in excess of a decade. Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned (among other things) plans to create a better way to connect intent with social subject matter in a way that can be sold to the highest bidder. At least, that's what [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Within all marketing and media,  and certainly digital, where there are intricate moving but measurable parts, testing has become a mainstay. Because we all aspire to better testing, it's a study in progress. Depending on your partners, vendors, systems or tools, much of your testing may be left to your team's raw imagination, discipline and ability to organize all testing in the most clear-minded way. Sound testing takes a sense of order and the willingness to pace oneself. It also requires keeping the right creative and account resources on hand, to continually iterate to service the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Old timers in the SEO world will remember the "Google Dance," if not fondly, at least with some nostalgia. It was when Google's rankings went through a change each month, sometimes dramatically, when a new algorithm was launched. The Google Dance eventually disappeared. Who'd have thought it would ever return? But it sure has, and we're likely to be dancing even more. The Days Of The Google Dance The Google Dance took its name from how the results at Google seemed to "dance" around when it unleashed a new search algorithm -- Google's recipe for ranking web pages -- on the world. A sear [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Google: SEO | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column