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Posts Tagged ‘search’

The One Certainty In Search: Mutation

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 by Reid Williams
Photo courtesy of LSE Library/Flickr Commons

Photo courtesy of LSE Library/Flickr Commons

I am torn between seeing Internet search as a blessing or a curse to those of us in the digital marketing industry. But regardless of how I feel at the end of the day, one thing I remain certain of is that our clients can benefit greatly from the pain we WELDers put ourselves through keeping up with search.

On the one hand, you see, it seems at times that Google’s intention is to never let us search optimizers get comfortable enough to feel as though we understand our jobs. One look at This Week In Search, posted every Friday on the Google Blog, and you can see why.

A year ago, you couldn’t get us to stop talking about “universal” search. These days, our concern is “real-time” search. Has the web search function and experience changed that much?

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The Case For Content: Is It Finally Settled?

Monday, November 2nd, 2009 by Reid Williams
Image by swruler9824/Flickr Creative Commons

Image by swruler9824/Flickr Creative Commons

I’m not sure. Do we need any more evidence? What other statistics do we need so that we can officially and completely transform our mindset from advertising to generate clicks into conviction that storytelling creates bonding and action?

I ask because we’ve been convinced for a while here at WELD. We were pretty sure no one was clicking on banner display ads, and that the small proportion of clicks display ads do receive all come from the same people.

Numbers continue to validate our suspicions.

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And Then Search Engines Indexed Refrigerators

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 by Reid Williams
Facebook privacy controls: Worth getting to know

Facebook privacy controls: Worth getting to know

I just finished spending some time going through my Facebook privacy settings, probably more time than I’ve ever spent looking at them.

It’s not that I’m worried about prospective employers running social background checks or a high school girlfriend with a grudge.

No, I’m worried about what the web’s search engines will see when they come looking through the windows.

And they are coming.

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Search Is Anything But Static

Friday, October 2nd, 2009 by Reid Williams
Image by Untitled blue/Flickr Creative Commons

Image by Untitled blue/Flickr Creative Commons

It was a revelation of sorts for us, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that we have to educate businesses about it, too. Whether it’s a comprehensive digital agency like ours, or a focused search engine optimization consultant, the work and service is not — can not be, in fact — a single transaction or product.

Forgive the colloquialism, but it ain’t like buying an orange.

Internet search, and the work of bolstering your organization’s chances of getting found online, is an ongoing, ever-changing project.

Did you know that Google’s search algorithm is modified, on average, about 90 times each quarter? At any given time, Google engineers are running 20 to 50 experiments in search innovation, according to MediaPost coverage of a recent Google briefing. (more…)

Does Facebook Stack The Eye-Tracking Deck?

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 by Reid Williams
This 'heat map' shows where users tend to look on the page, with the red indicating more looks than green. Image available from Oneupweb in their most recent white paper reporting the study.

This 'heat map' shows where users tend to look on the page, with the red indicating more looks than green. Image available from Oneupweb in their most recent white paper reporting the study.

According to a report on recent eye-tracking studies of user interaction with ads on social network sites, people might be actually, well, looking at ads. On the right side of the page, even.

But this is where I have to crowd-source a reality check:

Is it me, or does Facebook seem to (intentionally, maybe) serve up those ads-targeted-just-for-me before anything else on the page.? Like, at least just a fraction of a second?

I think they do it on purpose. (more…)

Update on Bing (And Our Definition of Search)

Friday, July 17th, 2009 by Reid Williams
Graph by 77Agency

Graph by 77Agency

After a month as the new kid on the block among search engines, it appears Microsoft’s Bing has put a minor ding in the market share of the lookers who are Googling.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist the rhyme there.)

But that’s only in the U.S. — this 1% gain for Microsoft more than vanishes when you look at the global search picture, and it’s worst of all for Bing in Europe.

And on top of that, another poll says all those people represented by that 1% aren’t likely to come back much next month.

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