While doing a bit of searching today, I stumbled across some obvious testing.

A search for “cell phone batteries” brings up a page of results with what appears to be Google products in the right hand column listed under “Sponsored Listings”.

So a few questions immediately came to mind:
Is this actually Google products results?
and..
How much will this affect PPC?

Is this actually Google Products results?

It seems like it is, The first result for the Nokia battery being sold at 6pm.com shows up in a “Shopping” results page, however the rest do not appear on first page. So how is google making the descision as to what is being displayed?

How much will this affect PPC?

We already know that any image or movie shown in SERPs is given more attention and therefore more clicks. That being said I can see PPC campaigns taking a major hit due to this change. Users as it is try to ignore our PPC campigns whenever possible. They now have the ability to just glance at a image vs. reading a couple lines of text before dismissing our ads.

I am on the fence about this one. Google Products is great, its free, and its pretty easy to maintain and acheive results. PPC is of course most sites bread and butter, its a simple process thats been around for ever, spend some money to make some money. That being said seems like a poor business descison on behalf of Google. If this takes hold they will efffectivly be reducing the ammount of PPC overall.

Twitter is leveling up. Biz Stone ( @biz ) recently announced in a blog posting that they are working on a Geo API. Ryan Saver ( @rsaver ) is lead on this project and has been involved with WhereCamp and is enthusiastic about other location tracking services. Biz states that the API will allow tweeters to add the latitude and longitude to their tweets. This feature will be turned off by default so tweeter will have to enable the Geo API to make use of its Big Brother like features.

Twitter’s Working on Big Brother API err Geo API

Biz follows up however by stating:

“However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.“

When I first read that line, I giggled. Sounds like this is what all us marketing types have been waiting for, the ability to target tweeters by location… Duh, thats what the whole new API is for right. So if I take a local dentist on as client whom wants to reach out to his local market, Twitter has just provided the means to make it happen. Sure there has been a few other online tools like NearByTweets and Twellohood, but as Biz blogged, the location field currently can be filled with anything, I could put that I am from the Vatican if I really wanted.

So I see this as a new method of spam for this shady marketers whom will bog down twitter with their short url filled messages that no on really reads. And for us not-so-shaddy marketers an awesome tool to bring local market bases together for a directed reason. Personally I already have a few ideas for this Geo API.

How is it going to change you Twitter marketing?

So there’s currently a bit of an up roar, Microsoft and Yahoo as most everyone should know by now are jumping into bed together. You can read more about it at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/080201-070804/ if your unfamiliar with whats going on or have been living under a rock.

Bing and Yahoo: What About Paid Inclusion?

One of my initial concerns revolves around Yahoo’s Paid Inclusion. It allows you to submit URLs to be listed on the SERPs. There is two tiers being offered by Yahoo, Basic and Pro. Both provide reporting, but the Pro version offers an account manager, the ability to customize title and meta data, cheap category based CPC, and a few other features. Some more about Yahoo Paid Inclusion – Understanding Yahoo’s Paid Inclusion Program.

So hows the Microsoft and Yahoo merger going to effect (in my opinion) the only good thing Yahoo has going for it?

A good pal of mine, Tim Prevost, Sr. Account Manager at Voltage Search Media (www.voltagemedia.com/) had the following to say when I asked about the future:

“Regarding the changes at Yahoo/MSN, based on conversations with Yahoo management, the program is in place and shall remain as such until further notice. There is a great deal of federal scrutiny that should tie up any changes for approximately 9 months with final roll out in 2yrs. Additionally, Yahoo still owns their network/content and display the listings from MSN/Bing in any form they choose, meaning they are likely to include the SSP listings, as a rather significant piece of revenue for Yahoo.”

Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO replied when asked:

“We have full flexibility on what to do within our own sites. Paid inclusion, we’ll decide on that later.”

Loren Baker, Editor at Search Engine Journal (www.searchenginejournal.com) states:

“Yahoo has also done a very fine job of monetizing organic search with paid inclusion. Using Yahoo Search to power the MSN, Live.com, and Internet Explorer networks will expand the Yahoo Search paid inclusion market substantially.”

If Yahoo Paid Inclusion does cease to exisit its going to leave a lot of sites wondering where their traffic disappeared to. Will it harm your sites? How will you “fix” the problem?

Sept. 01 2009 Update:

Jeremy Goodrich Had this to say Aug 24th 2009 over at TechCrunch.com

]]> http://struttonis.com/blog/38/bing-and-yahoo-what-about-paid-inclusion/feed/ 0 http://struttonis.com/blog/36/photoshop-to-wordpress-conversion-tool/ http://struttonis.com/blog/36/photoshop-to-wordpress-conversion-tool/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:04:11 +0000 admin http://struttonis.com/blog/?p=36

Smashing Apps one of the blogs on my daily read list recently wrote about a nifty tool that will make designers lives a bit easier. The tool is named Divine, and like its name, its godly.

by xotoko

I went looking for a Wordpress plugin to that would link to Twitter @usernames and $hashtags. The first result that looked worthwhile was Tweet.

Tweet may lack an original name but that’s quickly overlooked. This is a very simple yet amazingly useful plugin.

Download the Tweet plugin for yourself and take look. UnZip the download file and copy it to your plugin directory, activate it from your Wordpress Admin panel and its ready to go. Simple as that.

Currently if you want comments to be addressed by this plugin you must edit the “tweet.php” file.

Line 42 reads:
//add_filter('get_comment_text', 'tweet', 9);

Change it to:
add_filter('get_comment_text', 'tweet', 9);

Any questions?

First off, my heart truly cries out at the loss of such a figure in our lives. It must be said the he will live forever in his music and his fans. I am sure his family feels otherwise however. They should however take notice that his passing has broken twitter. The cry out from his fans is simply overwhelming one of the largest social networks on the internet. RIP Michael Jackson.

May 19th Google said that they are finally going to listen to all the Adword Professionals that have been pleading to have the “Other Unique Queries” explained. “Other Unique Queries” encompasses all the low volume queries that are reported in the Search Query Performance report. Most users of Adwords will likely be unaffected by these changes but those sites that are bringing in large amounts of paid traffic will finally get to pinch all their pennies and reduce some unneeded overhead.

The
Korea Times is stating that the Conficker is a hoax.

However KISA officials are still stating that it is far to early for computer users to feel safe from any possible Conficker related threats.

My suggestion is to download FSMRT or F-Downadup from F-Secure. It is a free command line removal tool. Instructions for use is included in the download.

So Google has its April Fools Day joke yearly. This year its CADIE. CADIE is a “Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entit,” or something. CADIE claims that she can no longer let humanity ruin that which is Goolge. It is although somewhat happy, cheerful, and free of any of malicious acts right? Sure its just a joke, and everyone knows they should expect it since its April Fools, but the question that poses itself in my mind, “Is this really what the internet is for?”

Should Google the trusted source for “facts” on the internet be playing with the minds of the general public? I don’t think its very helpful in creating a trust relationship.

While doing some of my daily blog reading I happened across a very insightful blog Using Photos to Build Inbound Links written by Matt McGee. This got me thinking of course that it would be extremely helpful to my company to take advantage of Flickr. So I began putting together the beginnings of my “plan of attack.” Select images that the public will make use of, simple enough. Find a tool that will help manage my interactions with Flickr, easy right? Wrong, I have played with many Flicker tools in the past, but all left something to be desired. So I began my search with a specific goal in mind, a tool that would allow me to sync my local images with those stored on Flickr without loosing any of the EXIF or other Metadata. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong. Lets take a look at a few of the Flickr upload/sync tools.

Flickr Uploadr

This is one of Flickr’s hosted tools found on the site. Pros:

• Very simple and easy to understand.
• Drag and Drop image uploading.
• Batch image manipulations and organization.
• Can do most of your image manipulation and organization offline
• Can handle multiple Flickr accounts.
• Resize Images.
• Can connect through proxy.
• Shows monthly MB Limit and overall batch MB size.

Cons:

• Seems to take a long time uploading. Uploading a 24k image will report in the status bar that 68k is being sent? Odd?
• FAQ is online.
• Does not sync with local folders.

jUploadr

Another of the tools offered on Flickr’s Tool page but check the developers page first as it seems to have the more recent version. Pros:

• Simple.
• Drag and Drop.
• Proxy Support.
• Edits all Flickr photo metadata.
• Tag assistance.
• Multiple Accounts
• Multiple Languages.
• Shows monthly MB limit and total MB uploaded.
• Image resize with options for higher quality, slower speed or lower quality, faster speed.
• Bandwidth Throttling.

Cons:

• Cross compatible with Windows Linux and OS X.
• The “Batch Editing” feature is clunky.
• The User Interface is too simple. It needs to have a few more latent options.
• Editing a images data is done through a popup.

FlickrSync

FlickrSync is a image synchronization tool that displays your local folders and your flickr sets. It allows you to manage all your images locally while letting the tool manage them on Flickr. Pros:

• The user interface is great. Double clicking on a image or a folder name will bring of the respective image or folder.
• Ability to delete images from Flickr if they have been removed from the local folder.
• Multiple users.
• Proxy support.
• Logging.

Cons:

• Cannot resize images.
• Does not show monthly MB limits.
• No batch image operations.
• No tag support.

FlickrMetadataSynchr

The developer claims that this tool that you to synchronize your metadata to images stored on Flickr using the original images stored locally. If there is no original on your hard drive, the tool can download the missing pictures for you. The tool can synchronize the metadata 2-way on a picture-by-picture and a metadata field-by-field basis. This tool sounds promising, but it didn’t seem to be functioning. If I can get it working I will update this section.

Conclusion

At the beginning of writing this I was leaning towards FlickrSync as being a “one-stop” tool, but after writing this blog I quickly saw some of the holes in the application. Its feature set lacks a few of the very basic editing functions such as tags or image resizing, but it does synchronize far better than the other tools. I will be using FlickrSync to synchronize and manage my images between Flickr and my local folders and most likely look for another tool to handle the few other editing issues that FlickrSync forgot about.