Google Relaunches Zagat App With Yelp In Mind

Last week, Google killed the Google+ Local mobile app for iOS, saying that all the same content was available in Google Maps for iOS. Today, the company announced the relaunch of the Zagat site and mobile app for Android and iPhone.

All the Zagat content is now free and there’s no registration required. And even though much of the Zagat content is available through Google Maps, the Zagat app and Google Maps are still distinct animals.

The newly redesigned app is being launched in nine cities, with a promise that it will come to 50 cities in the near future:

The new Zagat covers restaurants and nightlife in nine cities, and over the coming months we plan to expand to 50 U.S. and international destinations and cover shopping, hotels and other places of interest. We know that many of you are eager to have continued access to our content in these markets, so in advance of this expansion, we’ll soon make our existing ratings and reviews available on Zagat.com.

Since its more than $100 million purchase of Zagat a couple of years ago — estimates ranged from $130 million to over $150 million — Google has preserved the brand. That brand is now more than 30 years old. How much longer it will last is anyone’s guess, though there are no overt indications that Google intends to shutter it immediately.

Google has largely absorbed Zagat scores into Google Maps and local search results. But without the Zagat brand those scores are less valuable (unless Google can turn them into “Google scores”). And though Google is seeking to bring social data, personalization, recommendations and discovery to Google Maps, Zagat still offers something different: editorial content (and its trusted brand).

In the new app you can search for places, but search is largely de-emphasized. Discovery and “curated” content are front and center: “best of” lists and editorial roundups are the star. Google probably hopes the new app will help it further compete with Yelp, whose advantage over Google Maps is its content depth.

TripAdvisor is another competitor Google probably has in its sights here. Hotels is one of the verticals covered and rated by Zagat. Finally Facebook (Nearby Places) may be on the radar too. The Zagat brand (at least for many) remains a trusted source of local reviews and recommendations vs. Google and other less venerable sources.

Zagat may turn out to be something of a model for Waze, which Google has pledged to maintain as an independent entity. By the same token Google appears to be deemphasizing the Zagat print books, which it will probably discontinue entirely within two years.

Even though print sales are waning, without print Zagat will have substantially less value in the marketplace. Indeed after print is shuttered the independent Zagat brand will probably not live on much beyond that.

#OptimizeBook – An Evening of Laughs, Learning, and Networking with The Top Marketers & PR Professionals In the Twin Cities

The official Optimize Minneapolis book launch is finally upon us.��Tomorrow from 5:30pm-7:30pm over 200 of the Twin Cities top Marketers and PR professionals will gather at Aria in Minneapolis to mix, mingle, and learn a little bit about optimization from Lee Odden.

With the SEO is dead stories coming from�traditional�media, Google making major changes and consumer shifts towards social media consumption and sharing, the notion of what optimization is has really changed. The good news is that Optimize gives readers a roadmap and specific tactics on how to integrate the best of search, social and content into an “optimized state of mind”. �The Optimize Minneapolis book launch will give our friends in the Minneapple a taste of why some of the top marketers in the world are saying such great things about Optimize.

The #OptimizeBook event would not have come together as smoothly as it has without the help and support of our sponsors.��I would like to use this post as a way of recognizing the organizations that helped make the Optimize Minneapolis book launch a reality, in their own words.

#OptimizeBook Corporate Sponsors

Raven Tools: Collaborate, Research, Manage, and Monitor Your Online Presence

Raven Internet Marketing Tools�is an online platform that helps users quickly research, manage, monitor and report on SEO, social media and other Internet marketing campaigns.

Its collaborative, multi-user features and fast, professional reports make it the software choice of thousands of online marketers worldwide. Raven Internet Marketing Tools, a privately-held Nashville-based company, was founded in 2007. �Learn More About Raven Tools

Acquisio: Optimize & Manage Your Online Marketing Strategy

The leading performance media platform for agencies, Acquisio helps agency marketers buy, track, manage, optimize, retarget, and report on media across all channels including search, display, and social media.

Acquisio provides the industry-leading technology for agencies buying ads on any online channel, allowing them to handle all tasks associated with performance advertising, from ad purchase through conversion tracking and beyond, within a single integrated platform. Unlike other solutions, Acquisio hosts its own third-party ad server and employs a single tracking functionality across channels, allowing agency marketers unparalleled conversion and revenue attribution modeling and reporting capabilities.� Learn More About Acquisio

Vocus: Cloud-Based Marketing & PR Software

Vocus is a leading provider of cloud-based marketing and PR software that helps businesses reach and influence buyers across social networks, online and through the media. Vocus provides an integrated suite that combines social marketing, search marketing, email marketing and publicity into a comprehensive solution to help businesses attract, engage and retain customers.

Vocus is used by more than 120,000 organizations worldwide and is available in seven languages. Vocus was a pioneer of the cloud-based business model and today is a public company (NASDAQ: VOCS) that continues to help organizations grow their business through the use of innovative and easy-to-use software. Headquartered in Beltsville, MD, Vocus has been recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in Metro-Washington, D.C. �Learn More About Vocus

Digital People: Your Creative Staffing Partner

Finding a�creative staffing�partner that gets your business� creative strategy, tight deadlines and last minute schedules is important to you. We understand. Digital People has over 25 years of dedicated experience in creative, marketing and new media disciplines.

At Digital People, we believe that finding the perfect client-creative match is important�especially in time-crunch situations. Our highly trained�creative staffing team and recruiters come from creative and marketing backgrounds. They understand the importance of strategy and branding, as well as finding the right talent to enhance your brand. They will ask prospective talent recruits all the right questions on your behalf so that they can pair you with the right creative person. They also keep up with all the current trends such as interactive and social media. In short, our professionals are very familiar with the marketing and advertising industry. �Learn More About Digital People

Unbounce: Landing Pages Made Simple

Unbounce makes it easy for Marketers to create, publish and test landing pages. We developed Unbounce after experiencing first hand the frustration of trying to get effective landing pages launched for our own online marketing campaigns.

It’s important to get things done quickly in marketing, a task made more difficult when you have to rely upon IT resources who have their own priorities and processes.

We also realized that IT doesn’t relish the idea of having to drop everything to develop a landing page, deal with change requests or get involved in the setup and maintenance of a testing environment. �Learn More About Unbounce

Trackur: Monitor Your Reputation & Social Media Online

Trackur is an online reputation & social media monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages�including news, blogs, video, images, and forums�and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.

Using sophisticated social media monitoring and filtering technology, Trackur is your online reputation guardian. It does the heavy-lifting for you�scanning the web for any mention of your name, brands, and products�so you don�t have to. �Learn More About Trackur

Thank You To Our Media Sponsors!Minnesota Interactive Marketing AssociationSocial Media Breakfast Minneapolis / St. PaulMinnesota Blogger ConferenceMinnesota�PRSAMN American Marketing AssociationIABC MinnesotaMN SearchCan’t Make It?

Don’t worry, you can still participate. �Follow the conversation online!

Instagram & Twitter Hashtag: #OptimizeBook

Twiter Handles To Watch For: @TopRank & @LeeOdden

We look forward to catching up with old friends, and meeting many of you for the first time. �Don’t be afraid to share your experience, in fact we want you to. �I hope to see you there. � In the words of our fearless leader Lee Odden – Go forth and Optimize!

How to Diagnose the Health of Your Social Media Strategy

When you’re sick it’s very easy to tell. You may have aches and pains, a fever, sore throat ... the list of symptoms goes on and on.

Online marketing ailments, however, may not be so easy to identify.

You may be posting on a regular basis and growing your list of fans, friends, and followers. But is it really enough?

A healthy social media strategy will take into consideration the needs of your prospects and customers, as well as finding ways to efficiently plan, track, and measure your efforts.

But the question remains, how can you really determine if your social media strategy has a pulse?

Social Media Health ChecklistWhat Do You Know About Your Audience?

If you have ever frequented a particular coffee shop or restaurant, there are likely a few baristas or waitresses that know you by name. In addition to knowing your name, you may find that your coffee is already made and waiting for you by the time you get to the counter. Why? Certain employees have a knack for remembering what their customers like and want to make them feel welcome and special.

Similarly, we can translate these real world in-person examples to our online interaction with customers. While you may not “see” them as often, you should be paying attention to how key prospects and customers are interacting with your social media profiles.

If a large portion of your audience always Likes or comments on images with interesting quotes or taglines, then you should probably be sure to include them regularly (in a meaningful way as part of your larger strategy).

A few key items you should find out about your customers:

What time of day are they most likely to interact?Which social sites do they frequent most often?What types of content seem to be the most engaging?

Score Yourself:

1 – I know nothing about my customers

2 – I know a little about my customers

3 – I know a moderate amount about my customers

4 – I know a lot about my customers

5 – I know everything about my customers

Are Your Fans, Friends, and Followers Engaged?

When you’re sitting around the table with a group of friends or colleagues chances are your dialogue consists of storytelling, fact sharing, asking and answering questions, and so on. Likewise, your social media strategy should involve a compilation of tactics that will appeal to your audience.

Different content types that you might consider sharing with your audience include:

VideosComicsSlideShare presentationsWhite papersLinks to webinarsGraphicsQuestionsRelevant news articles

Discovering what types of information engage your online audience is only part of the battle. To truly have an impact you must keep your eyes open at all times and respond quickly to comments or questions posed by your followers.

Score Yourself:

1 – I never interact with my fans, friends, and followers

2 – I interact with my network occasionally

3 – I interact with my network a moderate amount

4 – I interact with my network regularly

5 – I interact with my customers online everyday

Do You Have a Plan in Place?

In order to determine where you’re going, you have to know where you are. While a portion of your social media engagement should be dependent on sharing breaking industry news with your audience, you can also plan ahead days, weeks, or even months to lessen the daily workload.

Hubspot offers a great social media planning calendar which allows you to input the date and time you would like to publish articles for particular social sites, and will auto calculate the number of characters in your post. Even if you are utilizing a third party service such as HootSuite, Sprout Social, or SocialOomph it is still a good idea to plan out your strategy in a document such as the one mentioned above.

Creating a long-term social calendar will allow for planning that integrates with your overarching marketing and communications plan. By integrating with your marketing strategy you will be able to better target and predict social interactions and announcements.

Score Yourself:

1 – I do not have a social media strategy

2 – I don’t plan my social media posts

3 – I plan some of my posts ahead but most are found the day the publish

4 – I plan many of my posts a couple days or weeks ahead

5 – I already utilize a social media planning calendar

What Are Others Saying About You and More Importantly, How Are You Responding?

A recent Fast Company article describes social media listening as “an active process of paying attention to what someone else is saying.” The article also goes on to share that many companies do not do nearly enough listening because it is more complicated to take that approach, and it requires identifying the context in which things may be said.

Sometimes you may strike it rich and find a lot of positive mentions of your brand that can be reposted on company social profiles and those of participating employees.

Other times however, social media listening proves to be a great way to identify negative feedback or interactions about your brand. If you do stumble upon less than savory mentions of your brand it is imperative that you respond to those that you can instead of simply ignoring or deleting them.

Many organizations large and small have experienced severe backlash from either reacting too strongly to a comment or mention, or removing them entirely.

Score Yourself:

1 – I have no idea what others are saying about my brand online

2 – I monitor my brand occasionally

3 – I monitor my brand regularly but do not respond to comments

4 – I monitor my brand fairly regularly and respond to positive comments

5 – I monitor my brand regularly and respond to most comments (positive and negative)

How Healthy is Your Social Media Strategy?

While the items listed above aren't all of the pieces to the social media marketing puzzle, identifying how you measure up in each of these areas will put you down the path to improving your social strategy. Tally up your points from the sections above to determine if your social media strategy has a pulse, or needs reviving.

1 – 5: D.O.A.

Your social media strategy is practically nonexistent. As soon as you’re done reading this blog post, begin researching your customers and social platforms, and start putting together the makings of a social media strategy.

6 - 10: Barely Breathing

You put a minimal amount of effort into knowing your customers and creating content that appeals to them. While you may be squeaking by at the moment, it will be short lived. You will find that your competition will quickly begin surpassing your social skills.

11 - 15: Clean Bill of Health

You’ve done your due diligence to make yourself aware of who your customers are, what they care about, how to engage them, as well as what the perception is of your brand online. Keep up the good work and continue to evolve your social media strategy as you notice changes in your industry or the habits of your customers.

16 – 20: Perfect Immune System

If you’ve reached this level of social media competence then I want to hear from you. Please share some of your own tips and tricks for maintaining a healthy social media presence in the comments below!

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Sept. 10-13, 2013: With a newly announced, completely renovated agenda,
SES San Francisco could be the most valuable online marketing conference you attend this year. Register today and save up to $200!
*Pre-show rate through September 6.

Search Marketing Blogs Update 060807

Another fine harvest of search engine marketing blogs this week with some chicks, some Danish and ClearSaleing.

SEO Chicks – Julie Joyce, Lisa Ditlefsen and Anita Chaperon are women, or as they prefer to be called, “chicks” who know SEO and PPC. They decided after a few beers during a London conference that it was time to get some female attitude into the SEO & SEM blogosphere and here they are with lots of great photos from the recent SMX conference.TwentySix2 Marketing Blog – Katy Orell and John Waddy of TewntySix2 have joined the search marketing blogosphere offering a nice mix of tips, tactics and industry commentary.Mikkel deMib Svendsen – I have no idea what this blog is “really” about because it’s in Danish and my 9 months in Denmark 14 years ago isn’t helping any. What I DO know is Mikkel from many, many search marketing conferences in his signature bright, and I mean bright colored suits talking about some serious online marketing, not just black-gray-white hat search engine optimization. If you do speak Danish, I’m sure you’re in for a treat. Tak!ClearSaleing Blog – I came upon this search marketing agency blog indirectly and found it to be chock full of great posts with practical advice and clear insight from people who know what they’re talking about without all the pomp and circumstance you see on the prima donna SEO blogs. Well done!

Feel free to add the BIGLIST badge to your blog!

Bing Launches Sitemap Plugin, Ads Traffic Quality Center, News Carousels

Bing has been busy in recent days. The search engine has announced that the Bing Sitemap Plugin is out of beta. Bing Ads advertisers have a new resource with the launch of the Traffic Quality Center. And Bing News has rolled out news carousels.

Bing Sitemap Plugin Out of Beta

If you've been waiting to get into the beta of the Bing Sitemap Plugin tool, Bing has officially brought it out of beta with the Bing XML Sitemap Plugin 1.0. The tool will generate XML sitemaps compliant with sitemaps.org and works for Apache HTTP servers and Windows servers.

The tool will currently ping both Bing and Google whenever the sitemaps are updated. The tool is open source, so you can download both the tool and the source code from the Microsoft Download Center or from the Bing XML Sitemap download page.

Bing Ads Traffic Quality Center

Bing Ads is introducing a new Traffic Quality Center to help their advertisers know exactly how their ad campaigns are being protected from fraudulent clicks, how pricing adjustments happen, and how advertiser credits are handled.

One of the very useful sections includes a knowledge base of exactly where Bing Ads can appear. While ads used to appear either as either search ads or content ads, the past several years has seen an increase in the variety of advertising outlets for Bing Ads advertisers.

There is also a complete section of advertiser resources, with links to articles, as well as useful information such as how to report suspected low quality clicks as well as how to block specific websites and IP addresses.

Also, if advertisers would like to see something added, you can request a feature using their online feedback tool.

Bing News introduces news carousels

Bing News has introduced an interesting feature – a visual carousel when users search for newsworthy people. When you search for a specific person in Bing News, you will be presented with an image carousel linking to relevant news stories and pages about that person. If there are no relevant stories about the person in the entertainment news stories, it will show a visual carousel for top entertainment stories instead.

Additionally, Bing has decided to include news stories that are older than two weeks in their news search results when there aren't any current news articles available. This means that now searchers can easily find news articles on topics even when those articles might be several years old.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Sept. 10-13, 2013: With a newly announced, completely renovated agenda,
SES San Francisco could be the most valuable online marketing conference you attend this year. Register today and save up to $200!
*Pre-show rate through September 6.

Free WordPress Plugins: Respect the Author

Just over a week ago, I read a blog post on ManageWP entitled "Is WordPress SEO by Yoast Broken". The post details three issues the author (Tom Ewer) has with the plugin and his efforts to get support for it. I do not support the post content itself and think there could have been better ways to publish it, but if you really want to it it's here.

Taking these issues aside, the post itself received a lot of comments which, to me, raised more important issues of free plugins hosted within the WordPress directory.

Supply + Demand

After reading the post, I did understand the fact that Tom had issues with the plugin, but thought that (even when they were not resolved) a post on a popular WordPress site was not the way to go, especially when Yoast had no notice it was being published.

While I understand frustrations by unresolved technical support issues, one has to think more about the author's dedication to the plugin and the demand by users of free plugins. I am an author of over 10 plugins in the directory and understand exactly where Joost is coming from.

Having a Popular Plugin is a Burden

All of my plugin users combined as of today come to just under 500,000. That's great, but then again it's also small compared to some plugins such as WordPress SEO which has a download count exceeding 5 million. Now, on average, there are over 15,000 downloads of the plugin each day – around one every 6 seconds.

Having a plugin with this many downloads is bound to turn up some bugs, compatibility issues, and other things that require small tweaks. What good authors try to do is ensure that the plugin works for as many users as possible. For me, this isn't so much of a hassle due to the fact that my plugins are quite concrete and are by no means as extensive as WordPress SEO where there is more of a chance of issues.

WordPress' Own Plugin Support Forum

Within the directory, each plugin has its own support forum which was available from May 2012. This was great in some respects, but bad in others. For plugin authors who already had a popular plugin with lots of downloads found this to be another method for support to come in. Some authors don't log in much and some didn't even look in the forums for a while.

One thing that hasn't been done is that there seems to be no "support community" where it is only the author who is responsible for resolving 100 percent of all queries. For someone like Joost de Valk this is a big problem as he explained to me:

"There's no community picking up on [the support areas], the author is burdened with them. As for plugin devs and their time: people constantly misunderstand the scale of things. Millions of users leads to loads of questions. If they're not giving support it is considered bad, whereas the easiest thing to do would have been not releasing the plugin at all…"

This is a problem that I can relate to as someone who has limited free time, and is sometimes used up dealing with issues that have been covered elsewhere in the support forum or on the plugin homepage itself. Unfortunately Joost had no option but to defend himself in the post and was only met with more hostility.

Beyond the Support Forum

Support forums within the WordPress plugin directory are not the only way authors solve issues. My primary method of support is email. I receive a small amount of support related emails and answer them all; and takes up about 2 hours of my time each week. Rhys Wynne, another WordPress plugin developer spends about a day each month supporting the free version of WP Email Capture said

"Whilst I welcome the support forums for WordPress, it can be frustrating at times dealing with the volume and nature of requests for support on the forum, particularly when questions asked are answered in the FAQ section, or installation instructions. Free plugin support should be seen as a privilege, and plugin developers should be there to fix bugs or answer general questions to the best of their ability, not hold your hand through installation or integrating with your template."Please Have More Consideration

I have known Joost de Valk for a few years now, met him in person quite a few times, and have also had the honor of working on a professional basis with him. It aggravated me somewhat that Joost received the hostility he did knowing how much work he commits to the 38 plugins he is a contributor to. What more users have to realize is that we are all doing this (supporting free plugins) out of the goodness of our hearts and nothing else.

For me it's hard to find those 2 hours every week to support those plugins. You may think that it's lazy but it isn't. I have a full-time job as a director of a company with two offices, I develop new WordPress plugins (both free and paid) and am involved with other startups. I also like to have some free time with my family.

Knowing that maintaining my own plugins is only a fraction of what someone like Joost has to deal with, I think that a plugin that popular is lucky to have that much support for it, even though less than 0.01 percent are unresolved after a couple of weeks.

It's Not Always Me, It's YOU More Often Than Not

Over 80 percent of my plugin support emails are resolved because of a conflict with another plugin or theme that has not been developed well – and the another 18 percent of emails ask questions that have been answered on the plugin homepage. This leaves 2 percent left for genuine support requests that require my attention.

Note that, if you're a user requiring support, please read all documentation from the homepage, FAQ, instructions or even previously resolved support threads within the plugin directory and you'll most likely find your answer. If not, then try disabling plugins one by one and then swapping themes to TwentyTwelve to see if that plugin starts to work. If it does, it means there's a conflict somewhere that needs to be addressed.

So, when asking for support on a free plugin, please consider the author and their time – they aren't just twiddling their thumbs waiting for support requests. Most are probably too busy to read this post.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Sept. 10-13, 2013: With a newly announced, completely renovated agenda,
SES San Francisco could be the most valuable online marketing conference you attend this year. Register today and save up to $200!
*Pre-show rate through September 6.

4 Ways to Rethink a Facebook Advertising Campaign

Facebook performs much more similarly to, say, a content network than a paid search advertising platform (both generally provide display network like click-through and conversion rates). The reason a Facebook ad will likely underperform when compared to a search-based ad is simple: intent.

Search users are typically expressing a direct intent in a product or service and then an ad is displayed. This creates a scenario in which the search user is later in the buy cycle and thus more likely to execute a purchase (especially when compared to a Facebook user that has entered the site to look at vacation photos of high school acquaintances). This means—at least for most companies—that Facebook is relegated to the less profitable brand advertising space and, as a result, generates only $4/user annually (compared to Google’s $24/user).

All of this might appear to be painting a pretty grim picture for advertisers, but it’s important to understand that Facebook is a different medium with entirely unique advantages that include the:

Ability to create a long-term relationship with a customer and thus increasing lifetime value/recurring revenue.Ability create an audience for PR distribution and viral content efforts.Opportunity deeply educate a potential customer and advance them in the buy cycle.

Here are four ways to rethink a paid Facebook campaign.

1. Restructure Your Search Paradigm

Relative to paid social, search is a clean transaction. Typically, an advertiser will have a strong understanding of the earned revenue the very day spend occurs.

Facebook advertising is a very different model than paid search, as the return on investment (ROI) could happen six months after the Like is acquired, if ever. I often recommend the following tactics to “de-search” your paid social campaigns:

Soften Your Call-to-Actions: If we can safely assume the path to revenue needs to be longer than search, doesn’t it make sense of soften your call-to-action (CTA)? Figure out great ways to incentivize your audience. Maybe it’s offering an opportunity to win a really cool prize or maybe it’s a cause-based donation in exchange for a like. Mitigate risk to build the relationship and focus on long-term education.Incentivize Offers: “Like us to get updates about our products and services” just isn’t going to get the job done. Think creatively about what will specifically appeal to your target audience in terms of a sweepstakes, contest, or charitable donation. Ideally, the offering will relate tangentially (at the least) to your product. For example, a travel aggregator might create a “plan the trip of your dream” contest where entrance is contingent upon the Like. It could then be fan voted where the winner receives the trip.Make Ads CTA-based: Unlike search ads, which usually are usually structured as feature/benefit/CTA, Facebook ads should revolve almost entirely around the CTA and its specific benefits. Again, assuming it’s a longer path to revenue, use future posts as the mechanism to slowly educate your potential consumer.2. Don’t Over-Commit Media Spend

For most audiences, it’s helpful to think of Facebook as somewhere between a branding and PR play. Having an engaged audience of 10,000 users is a great way to increase long-term engagement and control the sentiment revolving around a brand, but put social spending in its place: a great tool, but not one for building short-term revenue.

For most companies, I wouldn't recommend pulling +EV (Plus Expected Value) search budget. Instead, peel off some of that branding/PR budget and apply to paid social campaigns.

3. Track Follow-up Marketing

Acquiring a social following is great, but making the decision to continue the investment is dependent upon your pilot results. Use campaign URL tracking to determine the level of traffic and conversions that follow. Additionally, look for additional PR signals that may create ancillary benefits in other marketing channels (see: incoming links from evangelists).

After you’ve completed your pilot test and have acquired 2,000 likes, try 60 days of content dissemination to measure CTR, time on site, and conversions. This can then be used to project and extrapolate ROI on future campaigns.

4. Make Sure Your Company is a Good Fit

If you sell a $39.99 need-based one-off, Facebook might never be the wisest route.

However, if you are selling a service or product that requires recurring revenue (e.g., any consumer staple) in which the lifetime value of a customer will be measured over years, Facebook becomes a significantly more logical play. For services that require constant messaging in order to stay “top-of-mind,” having a massive following becomes extremely advantageous, especially when considering that all follow up messaging will be free/low cost.

Remember

Having 10,000 Facebook Likes is a fantastic audience through which to disseminate content to help lubricate viral sharing. It’s also a transparent and central place to engage customers, build brand, listen to feedback, and earn trust. Just be weary of any company that presents social as a quick path to revenue.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Sept. 10-13, 2013: With a newly announced, completely renovated agenda,
SES San Francisco could be the most valuable online marketing conference you attend this year. Register today and save up to $200!
*Pre-show rate through September 6.

Online Marketing News: Facebook VIP, Twitter IPO, Mobile Search to Dominate, Fake Web Traffic

Analytics firm, BIA/Kelly has predicted that mobile search queries will overtake desktop queries by 2015. Mobile search is an unavoidable part of digital marketing. If brands don’t adapt to consumer behavior, they risk becoming side lined if their competitors are faster to react. And, contrary to long held assumptions, people search for more than just pizza and movie theatre show times on their mobile device.

Here are 30 compelling mobile search stats that will help you determine the kind of mobile search strategy you need to have in place from eConsultancy.

In Other Online Marketing News…

Instagram now lets users (and marketers) post canned video – Up to now, Instagram and Vine users could only upload videos captured in the moment. With this new feature, users can import any 15 seconds of video from their media library. This could be a big bonus for marketers – ReadWrite

On the digital horizon: tech thought leaders look to the next big thing – PRSA asked eight PR professionals what they think about the current social media landscape and what excites them most about the digital future. Here what they had to say – PRSA

Facebook testing VIP app with some celebs – The project, which is in its early days, is another part of Facebook�s push to encourage celebrities to share more stuff on the site. And that�s part of Facebook�s larger push to compete more directly with Twitter for �public� sharing – AllThingsD

128 million+ in the U.S. visit Facebook daily – Releasing regional data for the first time as a way of helping advertisers understand how people use the social network, Facebook�s gearing up for a larger push to go after dollars earmarked for TV commercials – Reuters

Study: fake web traffic is costing advertisers $180 million per year – The study comes as more publishers and advertisers are becoming aware of fake web traffic and taking steps to combat �bots� that are growing increasingly more sophisticated – AdAge

Twitter prepares to fly IPO – currently valued at about $10 billion on $300 million in revenue � Twitter, whose management has denied IPO plans, unintentionally signaled recently that an IPO is in the works when it posted, then yanked, a job offering on LinkedIn for a financial reporting manager �for when we go public� – USA Today

Using the #hashtag to create cohesive brand communications – Using hashtags can be a minefield for brands when done incorrectly says Rohit Bhargava. He offers three potential strategies for how to effectively use hashtags as a part of an integrated digital marketing strategy � PopDitto

From the Online Marketing Blog Community:

Our post on Google supposedly killing PR agencies received quite a bit of traffic and dialogue. Here�s a snapshot of the conversation:

On �Google Did Not Just Kill PR Agencies�, Tara Geissinger said: I love the idea that self-publishing press releases is akin to paid advertising — and that there is nothing wrong with that! I agree! Google removed a small bit of SEO value because people were abusing it. That doesn’t mean that press releases don’t serve a purpose, however. They are still great for building brand awareness, credibility and getting third parties talking about your company (when done correctly.) They are not (and have never been) a silver bullet solution. They are best used as part of an overall marketing campaign.

John Ellis said: Lee…I think PR agencies have to accept that they are not, and never have been “linkbuilding” services. Yet… many sell their releases as such.

I agree with you that the majority of the releases are for small biz. It was one of the ways we used to help grow a presence 3-5 years ago. Not really needed today.

We still send out a PR Web release for a client every so often. We always include 1-3 links for ~ 500+ words. That’s always been my guideline for linking, That and is the link is warranted (useful, helpful, and not just for SEO).

We’ve used that guideline since we started doing on-page SEO. To date, it has never done us wrong. Through all the major algo’s… 500 words, 1-3 useful keyword or related links. We won’t change that unless we see evidence of it negatively affecting rank.

Thanks for presenting the non-sensational version of the story.

On �Business Blogging Ideas � What to Blog About When You Don�t Know What to Blog About�, Cat Fyson�said: Some great ideas here – I find Feedly a good source for pulling together different blog posts and seeing if there’s a fresh spin on them. I can understand the struggle for anyone who is not otherwise a writer when it comes to populating their business blog – but with some of the ideas you’ve listed, and putting a little time aside to invest in something that will ultimately reap great rewards, there’s no reason not to get writing.

What’s Your Take?

If brands don�t adapt to consumer mobile activity, are they doomed to the bottom of the heap? Can Facebook attract celebs and TV ad budgets? Will fake web traffic take over the Internet?

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading!

Google's Search Market Share Shoots Back to 67%

Google is once again gathering more search market share and remains the uncontested top search engine in the U.S. In July comScore reported that Google's market share shot back to 67 percent after having fallen below that mark three months ago.

ComScore's monthly analysis showed Google is up 0.3 points from June and 0.2 percentage points from July 2012.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer earlier this month said "Search is far from over," but Yahoo hit yet another new low, declining 0.1 percentage point in July at 11.3 percent. Compared to July 2012, that's nearly 2 percentage points less than its 13 percent share.

And while it appeared that last month, Yahoo and Bing were merely trading market share, Bing didn't gain from Yahoo's loss in July. Bing's share stayed the same from 17.9 percent in June. This is up more than 2 percent, however, since the 15.7 percent market share it had in July 2012.

Both Ask and AOL declined 0.1 percent in July, with Ask at 2.7 percent and AOL at 1.2 percent. Both are down from this time last year, where Ask had 3.1 percent of market share and AOL had 1.5 percent.

When it came to Google-powered organic searches in July, the search engine held steady from June with 68.6 percent of searches. Bing experienced a 0.3 percentage-point increase at 27.1 percent of searches in July.

Data show there was a total of 19.4 billion explicit core searches in July, with Google ranking first at just under 13 billion (up 1 percent since last month). Bing came in second at 3.5 billion searches, up 1 percent since June, followed by Yahoo, which held steady at 2.2 billion.

Ask was down 2 percent in July from the previous month at 516 million. AOL was also down – 5 percent – at 239 million.

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Google's Search Market Share Shoots Back to 67%

Google is once again gathering more search market share and remains the uncontested top search engine in the U.S. In July comScore reported that Google's market share shot back to 67 percent after having fallen below that mark three months ago.

ComScore's monthly analysis showed Google is up 0.3 points from June and 0.2 percentage points from July 2012.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer earlier this month said "Search is far from over," but Yahoo hit yet another new low, declining 0.1 percentage point in July at 11.3 percent. Compared to July 2012, that's nearly 2 percentage points less than its 13 percent share.

And while it appeared that last month, Yahoo and Bing were merely trading market share, Bing didn't gain from Yahoo's loss in July. Bing's share stayed the same from 17.9 percent in June. This is up more than 2 percent, however, since the 15.7 percent market share it had in July 2012.

Both Ask and AOL declined 0.1 percent in July, with Ask at 2.7 percent and AOL at 1.2 percent. Both are down from this time last year, where Ask had 3.1 percent of market share and AOL had 1.5 percent.

When it came to Google-powered organic searches in July, the search engine held steady from June with 68.6 percent of searches. Bing experienced a 0.3 percentage-point increase at 27.1 percent of searches in July.

Data show there was a total of 19.4 billion explicit core searches in July, with Google ranking first at just under 13 billion (up 1 percent since last month). Bing came in second at 3.5 billion searches, up 1 percent since June, followed by Yahoo, which held steady at 2.2 billion.

Ask was down 2 percent in July from the previous month at 516 million. AOL was also down – 5 percent – at 239 million.

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How to Find Free Images With Google's Advanced Image Search

The general rule of thumb in the Internet world is that at least one image should be used to complement every blog post you create. There are several benefits to doing this, with the most important being to capture the attention of many more readers by giving your words a boost with a little visual appeal.

However, this doesn't mean just importing the first image you come across. It must first, make sense and correlate with what the post is about and second, not infringe on any copyright laws. There can be consequences that go along with this that you won't want to personally come across. The easiest way to find an acceptable image is to change your Google search settings to filter out anything that could potentially bring you repercussions.

Using images is a great way to enhance your blog post and can help to:

Produce a nice thumbnail or featured imageIntroduce your messageBreak up your contentEncourage social media sharingSupport your pointMake your blog more memorableCapture emotionAdd color to your blogImprove SEO by adding Alt tags and keyword-rich file names

Naturally, bloggers will go straight to Google and grab one of the first images they find in the search to use on their blog. Snagging copyrighted images can get you into a heap of trouble.

It's no fun receiving one of these threatening letters from the Legal Department at Getty Images demanding nearly $1000 per image.

Follow these simple steps to find royalty free images using the Google Images advanced search.

Step 1

Enter a search term in Google Images search.

Step 2

Click the Gear icon, then select Advanced search.

Step 3

Scroll down and use the usage rights drop down menu to select free to use or share, even commercially.

Step 4

Click the Advanced Search button.

The image search results will provide you with a plethora of images to choose from.

Step 5

Just to be safe, you want to double check that the image is really "free" to use. There are tools, many free, to check usage rights, like the TinEye reverse image search, that can help you locate additional information or creative commons usage.

This step is highly recommend as other webmasters and bloggers could have removed the copyright and metadata from the image and re-uploaded without the owner's permission.

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May the Fourth Be With You; SEW's Favorite Star Wars Parodies

Last year, ABC News posted a story, leading with the words, "Help me, Google, you're my only hope ... to figure out why everyone on the web is wishing each other a Happy Star Wars Day."

It's May 4th, which is unofficially Star Wars day. However, on the web we may as well agree that today is officially Star Wars day every year, as last year's stats from Google Realtime (now defunct) prove its popularity.

Just look at that search traffic spike for 2012! Star Wars day is the 9th most trendingsearch today, ahead of the Facebook IPO.

The best Star Wars reference made by the search marketing community in recent memory comes from the Google Adwords Thank You Video, when their contraption has some problems with it's "thermal exhaust port". Google really knew their audience when it came to this video - and played off the popular meme of parodying Star Wars.

Why does the Star Wars theme resonate so much with our industry? Try and deny it, young SEO. George Lucas is your father. Search your heart, you know it be true.

Need more proof, just look at their happy, smiling faces!

Is it because most SEOs taught themselves or have their favorite teachers? Or just because Google guidelines are like a code of honor? Are we obsessed with hokey religions? Is it a factor of how much technology we have at our disposal? Or is it a reflection of how tempted we are to spam the search engines? Or is it just that whole black hat/white-hat thing?

Below are SEW's favorite Star Wars parodies and remixes. You may well have seen all of the videos listed, but if not, you are in for a treat. Be warned that swearing and 'almost' nudity follows, so if you are sensitive to that kind of thing you had better adjust your set.

Search Engine Optimization: SEO Wars

This is the earliest mention of SEO wars I could find (that wasn't spammy).

SEO Wars

An "award winning" (almost!) video project from Lisa Myers.

SEO Wars - Planet Linkspace

The sequel to the film by the same name :)

Star Wars iPad Briefing
Almost everything Steve Jobs says gets remixed in some way on YouTube.

Darth Vader Being a Smartass
A golden oldie.

Star Wars Kid: Remix
The original and best remix of this video.

Man Killed in a Street Fight, Jedi Style
Pretty new! You might have missed this one, although it is disconcerting at first.

Chinese Lightsaber Duel
Yay for the Olympic remixes. If you like this, you'll probably love these two Real Sumo fighting videos.

Star Wars Strip Show
Another golden oldie. The pause at the end is timeless.

Eddie Izzard - Death Star Canteen
Famous British comedian, and occasional Hollywood actor's famous Darth Vader skit, visualized in lego.

Enjoy! If there are any Star Wars parodies not on this list, that should be, please leave a message and the URL in the comments.

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Bing It On Challenge Goes Directly to Google ... Kansas

As Google rolls out its Fiber service in Kansas, Bing has moved into Topeka, just a short drive down I-70 with an offer of their own. The Bing it On Challenge has apparently left Google's backyard of San Francisco and have taken the Bing it On Challenge to the front lines of Google's quest to bring speedy Internet to the masses.

Calling it the next wave of the Bing It On Challenge, Bing has tossed out a lot of data suggesting that people continue to be surprised when they realize they choose Bing over Google and how "impressed" they are with Bing's results.

The Bing It On Challenge began last fall. The side-by-side comparison, pitting Bing results verses Google results, was the spawn of a survey conducted by a third-party research firm.

In the original survey, 57.4 percent of the 1,000 respondents chose Bing over Google. Bing followed it up with man-on-the-street live tests in front of rolling cameras in the San Francisco Bay area.

Since then, Bing launched a series of commercials promoting "people prefer Bing over Google." Their message is simple: Bing results are preferred. Break the habit and give them a try. They also released new data around ongoing testing and results.

Selecting the city that renamed itself Google for a day in hopes of winning the bid for Google Fiber, Bing let their test loose on the streets of Topeka. In the video, one man even refers to his city as Google, Kansas.

They've also changed both the BingItOn.com site and the challenge, itself. The challenge site's home page offers other reasons to choose Bing, including their "smart and always fresh" home page, video previews and translation service. The challenge now includes trending searches to get you started, in an attempt to show that that they, too, have up-to-date trends.

It's interesting to note that Bing has added the phrase "for the web's top searches" when talking about how people prefer Bing. The footnoted comment on BingItOn.com notes:

Based on a comparison of web search results pane only; excludes ads, Bing's Snapshot and Social Search panes and Google's Knowledge Graph.

Clearly the campaign is based on results, not the overall search experience. With all the resources Bing has put into their Social Sidebar, it's interesting to see the campaign continue to be strictly results-based. With more social changes expected in the near future, time will tell if the Bing challenge will change to reflect the overall search experience.

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46% of Searchers Now Use Mobile Exclusively to Research [Study]

Mobile is movin’ on up as a preferred device for consumers to perform research on and purchase with in the U.S. This, according to findings in the 2013 Mobile Path-to-Purchase study by Telmetrics and xAd.

Mobile as a Research and Purchase Device

Research from the study suggests more and more, consumers are using mobile devices to complete tasks from start to finish. Fifty percent of respondents said they use their mobile devices to start the search process; 46 percent use mobile exclusively when performing research online.

Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics, says mobile devices are often a staple in any online search.

“For most consumers, even if they are searching on their PC, they still have their smartphone in the other hand to call a business or conduct parallel research,” he said.

Highlighting the ever-increasing importance of mobile in conversions, the study shows one out of every three respondents use a mobile device throughout the entire purchase process. Sixty percent of smartphone users across the categories examined in the study – banking/finance, gas/convenience, insurance and retail in the U.S. – completed purchases related to their mobile activity.

Google’s New Multiscreen World study, published last summer, showed similar stats when it came to how mobile plays into searches online. (The data showed a majority – 65 percent – of online searches began on a smartphone.)

But in Google's findings, the data showed 61 percent continued on a laptop from the smartphone on the path to purchase. Could this new data mean a changing landscape that’s evolving faster than expected?

Opportunities for Brands and Mobile Apps

Where do mobile users go online first when starting the search process on their device? Stats from the study show 57 percent of smartphone users go directly to a brand’s app or website.

This stat reinforces the notion that businesses need to focus on creating their mobile experience. Dinan says brands must continue to look at ways to meet expectations of mobile users, which includes creating apps and mobile-optimized sites.

The Mobile-Local Sweet Spot

Many people on-the-go have specific intentions and expectations when performing a mobile search. According to the report, 60 percent of consumers expect a business to be within walking or local driving distance from their current location. And one out of every three smartphone users search for a business’s contact information.

So how should local business respond to this data? One of the many opportunities is online ads. Dinan cites local relevance as a primary reason for mobile ad engagement. He said it’s crucial for advertisers to include important local identifiers like maps, driving directions, and phone numbers.

But not every mobile user is searching with purpose, Dinan said. “Only half of mobile searchers report they know exactly what they are looking for, so brand marketers have an opportunity to influence the other half,” he said.

Additional findings of the study will be released during the remainder of the year, each focused on each of the four sectors mentioned in this report.

You can also access the general findings infographic of the Mobile Path-to-Purchase U.K. edition here, which paints a slightly different picture than U.S. data.

The Mobile Path to Purchase 2013 study was based on survey feedback compiled by Nielsen of more than 2,000 respondents plus observed consumer behaviors from Nielsen’s Smartphone Analytics Panel.

Here's the full infographic:

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Google Webmaster Tools Expands Query Data to 90 Days

Today, Google has expanded the historical search query data to 90 days. The number of queries reported has increased as well: the report will now list the top 2,000 for each day of the selected date range (vs. the previous top 1,000). This is great news, as this is data not available anywhere else and when looking at trends, the more information, the better. Google has made a few other minor adjustments to this data recently. So if you use Google webmaster tools query data, see below for all the details of how these reports work.

What’s In the Top Search Queries Report

First, a refresher on what this data is all about. The top search queries report (available in Google webmaster tools for sites you’ve verified ownership of by selecting Your site on the web > Search queries) lists the top queries that brought traffic to your site from Google organic search (from all countries and properties).

Summary Data

For the selected data range, the report shows the total number of queries that brought traffic to the site, the total impressions and clicks the site received, and the number of impressions and clicks for the reported top queries.

Query-Specific Data

For each query, the report notes:

Number of impressions�- how many searchers saw the site in search results for that queryNumber of clicks�- how many searchers clicked on the search result for that queryClick through rate�- The percentage of the time searchers who saw the site in search results for that query clicked on itAverage position�- the average position the highest ranked URL for that site appeared in search results for the query across all searchersIn addition, you can find out the change for each of these data points from the previous period. However, the change percentages aren’t available for time periods longer than 30 days. The change details used to be visible by default, but they’re now off by default. You’ll need to click the�With Change�button to see them in the report (although they’ll be included automatically with the CSV download). If you have the change percentage displayed, you’ll need to turn that off in order to expand the date range beyond 30 days.

You can click into any query to get more specific data, including the pages that ranked for the query, and the impressions, clicks, and click-through rate at each position the site ranked.

Country and Property-Specific Data

Use the filters to drill into what queries brought traffic from Google properties (web, video, images, mobile web, and smartphones) and from specific countries.

How the Numbers Are Aggregated

As I explained in a previous post, the numbers can be tricky and it’s important to understand what data you’re really looking at. These reports now list the top 2,000 queries that brought traffic to the site for the selected time period. That means that if a query wasn’t one of the top 2,000 for any days in the selected range, data won’t be reported for it. In the example below, the time period is 30 days, but only 6 of those days have data reported for the query (as illustrated by the dots in the graph).

Generating Data

When generating or downloading the data, keep in mind the following:

The default ending data in the user interface display is today’s date, but reporting is typically 2-3 days behind so check the last date reported in the graph by hovering over the last dot. The default starting date of the range is 30 days before the end date. And because this end date is generally three days ahead of what’s actually reported, the actual date range generally shown by default is 27 days. Make sure you adjust the dates before analyzing data or comparing it to other time periods.Because the default shown date range is 27 days, the download available from the Python script is also 27 days.It’s great that Google is offering more data (both number of queries and length of time). Just be sure that as you use this data, you understand exactly what you’re looking at and comparing (both in terms of data range and date reported per day).

FTC Updates Search Engine Ad Disclosure Guidelines After “Decline In Compliance”

In 2002, the US Federal Trade Commission issued landmark guidelines to search engines, to ensure they were make a clear distinction between their paid and unpaid listings. Now, the FTC has updated those guidelines, saying it has seen a “decline in compliance” since they were first issued.

The FTC posted the news today on its site, along with letters that were sent to over 20 general-purpose and specialty search engines. The move comes just over a year since I wrote to the FTC noting that there were several compliance issues I was seeing with search engines and its guidelines.

In particular, the letters have gone out to AOL, Ask, Bing, Blekko, Duck Duck Go, Google and Yahoo as general purpose search engines and 17 “of the most heavily trafficked” shopping, travel and local search engines, the FTC said. The FTC, when I asked, said it is not releasing what those 17 other services are, nor what sources were used to determine them. They likely include services like Kayak, Yelp and Nextag.

Every search engine got the same letter as the “sample” letter that’s�shown�on the FTC site, which starts out:

After the 2002 Search�Engine Letter was issued, search engines embraced the letter�s guidance and distinguished any�paid search results or other advertising on their websites. Since then, however, we have �observed a decline in compliance with the letter�s guidance.New Guidance On Visual Cues, Label & More

The original guidelines were designed to ensure consumers could know what was an ad or sponsored listing from “organic” or “free” or “editorial” or “natural” results on search engines. The updated guidelines still say the original�principle�of making this distinction applies but gives fresh advice on dealing with new issues that have come up since 2002.�From the FTC press release:

The updated guidance emphasizes the need for visual cues, labels, or other techniques to effectively distinguish advertisements, in order to avoid misleading consumers, and it makes recommendations for ensuring that disclosures commonly used to identify advertising are noticeable and understandable to consumers.

The letter notes that over time, natural results have become harder to distinguish from ads, citing an SEO Book survey from last year that found, in general, about half the time people didn’t recognize when ads were present on search results pages.

Better Background Shading And/Or Borders For Ads

From the letter, concern background shading around ads may be “less visible” or “luminous” and effectively undetectable by consumers, when the purpose was designed expressly to distinguish ads with such shading. As a result, the FTC has suggested:

More prominent shading that works across monitor and device types, orA prominent border, orBothText Labels Above Or To Left Of Ads

The letter generally says that in addition to visual cues like borders or backgrounds, search engines should have text labels that use�unambiguous language that indicates what’s an ad, is large enough to be noticed and is located in an area where consumers will see it.

Search engines commonly do have such disclosure, but clearly, the FTC thinks these can be improved. In particular, it advises that:

Text labels “in front” [the FTC tells me this means "above" the ads] or in the upper-left hand cornerThe same terminology throughout “ads” rather than “ads” in one place and maybe some other word elsewhereSiri, Is That An Ad? Voice Disclosure Required

Very interesting is a requirement that if a search engine delivers results via a voice interface, the FTC wants that voice to tell you if it’s reading an ad:

Further, if a voice interface is used to deliver search results, a search engine should make an�audio disclosure that is of an adequate volume and cadence for ordinary listeners to hear and comprehend itFacebook Graph Search, This Means You, Too

The original guidelines were applicable to any search engine, not just the major search engines that got letters back in 2002. The same is true for the updated guidelines. If it walks, talks, act and feels like a search engine, then these guidelines are applicable to the service, regardless if the FTC has been in touch directly.

That also means that if search results come out of social network, those also have to follow the rules. Facebook Graph Search is an example of this, which provides “natural” listings based on what people are liking on Facebook. The FTC warns that if such listings also include ads, those must be distinguished:

For example, if a social network�were to stream recommended restaurants based on what a particular consumer�s social contacts�have enjoyed, it should clearly distinguish as advertising any information feeds included or�prioritized based in whole or in part on payments from a third partyThe Limbo Of Paid Inclusion Disclosure

In my letter to the FTC last year, I pointed out that its paid inclusion guidelines seemed to be either ignored or open to�reinterpretation�by search engines. Paid inclusion is where companies pay to be included in a search engine, but where payment doesn’t help them rank better — as is the case with paid placement.

Those original guidelines remain in force. However, it’s notable that the FTC didn’t raise any concerns about how disclosure could be improved specifically.�One caveat: the second paragraph of the letter says this

The principles underlying the�2002 Search Engine letter remain the same: consumers ordinarily expect that natural search�results are included and ranked based on relevance to a search query, not based on payment from�a third party.�Including or ranking a search result in whole or in part based on payment is a form of advertising. To avoid the potential for deception, consumers should be able to easily�distinguish a natural search result from advertising that a search engine delivers.

I’ve bolded the key parts. In 2002, the FTC distinguished between two types of paid search advertising:

Paid Placement: listings had to be delineated and�segregated�from non paid listings, along with nearby disclosurePaid Inclusion: listings could be mixed with unpaid listings and disclosure had to be done in way on the search page, not necessarily next to the listings

If paid placement and paid inclusion are now considered one-and-the-same, the updated guidelines could be interpreted as requiring specialty search engines like Google Shopping, Nextag and Bing Shopping to place an “ad” disclosure next to many or all of their listings. As for the background and border requirement, they might have to put a background or border around the entire search results.

The Bottom Line: Search Engines Need To Clearly Disclose

As it turns out, however, this is not likely to be the case. In talking with Mary Engle, associate director for advertising practices with the FTC, she stressed that none of the FTC’s guidance is meant to be absolutely specific. The guidance is offered as general recommendations, but it’s down to each search engine to ensure however it does so, that it is ensuring that consumers clearly understand the role payment plays in its results.

So with paid inclusion, it’s not necessarily the case that each and every listing has to have the word “ad” next to it, if consumers can instead reasonably understand that all the results showing are there because of payment.

“Can they [the consumer] tell this is all paid inclusion. If the answer is ‘no,’ that’s a problem and they [the search engine] needs to fix it,” Engle said. “Putting a little tiny word ‘ad’ on the page isn’t going to be sufficient.”

Ultimately, the search engine has to figure out what it believes is right. If the FTC disagrees, then it has to take action and prove things aren’t as good as they should be:

“The bottom line, and certainly if we were very going to bring any type of enforcement action, it would be our burden to say if that’s deceptive,” Engle said.

Disclosure Is In The Eye Of The Beholder?

I asked�Engle what prompted today’s move, if it was an official response to my letter of last year. She told me that the FTC had received that letter, plus a letter that came four months later from the SEMPO group�and another one from a travel industry group (which group, she didn’t say). That, along with the FTC’s own observations, she said, made the agency feel a review was in order.

She also said that today’s review was “your answer, in a sense,” to the questions I raised in my letter.

That letter was prompted because, as an expert in the search space, I was finding it difficult to tell myself if the search engines were complying with the FTC’s disclosure guidelines. The lack of better specifics or guidance on paid inclusion makes me feel things aren’t that much better with this refresh. On the flip side, I understand the FTC’s desire that search engines make a good faith effort to disclose, rather than getting lost in specifics that aren’t always applicable.

With that, it will be interesting to see if the letters going out and new guidelines help the search engines clean up their acts, in areas where they are weak. We’ll be revisiting that in the near future, using our own judgement to see if disclosures seem to be done in the spirit of the guidelines. Stay tuned.

3 Ways to Find Great Link Building Opportunities in Boring Industries

Are some industries just too boring for link building? This is a very common question.

Amid terrific stories being shared, written about, and linked to every minute, it's easy for link builders to get stuck and wonder how on earth they can come close to competing. But "boring", like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Any industry, no matter how boring on the surface, has interesting stories just waiting to be exploited by a creative link builder.

Every business has customers with problems to solve, every business owner has struggles to wrestle with, and every employee has problems to solve in their daily work. These can all make interesting human stories. Journalists, writers, and bloggers – and their readers – are attracted by human stories.

The first step to uncovering these stories is to kick yourself out of the mindset that the industry you're struggling with is inherently boring. But shifting mindset isn't easy, so a few exercises can help – here are the ones I've developed over the years – they do seem to do the trick.

1. Do a Google News Search and See What Comes Up

If you're working in a boring industry like, say air filters, then you'll probably see a lot of PR platitudes and poor news stories that aren't really news at all. But persevere and read through a few.

In the air filter industry, I came across an interview with the CEO of an air filter company. It wasn't particularly interesting, but in the very last paragraph, I came across a startling research statistic: "the air inside your car is 7 times more polluted than the air outside." Wow, what a statistic! That type of information is of interest to us all but most of us have no idea that's the case.

What link builder worth their salt couldn't make a great piece of link-worthy content around that? It's worth putting the time in to uncover gems like this.

2. Look for Disruptive Companies in Your Industry and Learn From Them

A disruptive company is one that turns an established business model on its head and introduces some long overdue innovation.

So find a disruptive force in your industry and look at what they're doing. What is disruptive about them? What issues do they focus on? What benefits do they offer? What stories do people write about them? What types of sites link to them and why?

Disruptive companies don't get much support or coverage from their own industry because of the threat they pose. And if they do get coverage, it's likely to be negative or, at best, skeptical.

SurveyMonkey is a disruptive influence on the market research industry because they encourage businesses to conduct their own research rather than use market research companies.

AirBnB.com is a disruptive influence on the travel industry because they provide a source of accommodation that is outside the usual travel market.

Such disruptive companies have to be creative in reaching out to other niches, and in establishing a presence and links from within these niches. So doing a link analysis of such sites will give you some very interesting niches and link prospects to explore.

Finding disruptive companies isn't that difficult. If your client can't provide them, do your own research. Fortunately the MIT Technology Review has published an excellent resource, "50 Disruptive Companies of 2013" – they also have 50 companies from 2012, 2011, and so on.

Here's one great example from the current crop that is truly mired in what many would regard as a boring industry. The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) industry hasn't been particularly interesting over the last 70 years or so – until two men who created the iPod and iPad launched a revolutionary central heating thermostat at Nest.com in 2011. According to MIT, "the HVAC industry, a sector as unexciting as the thermostats it sold, was astonished by the fresh ideas behind the device."

The product has been featured in that Wall Street Journal, CNET, Slate, and a host of others. A careful read of the coverage will give you a great idea of what are the hot issues in the industry, and a backlink analysis will reveal a host of sites ready to write about them.

3. Piggyback on Breaking News Stories

Newsjacking, as David Merrman Scott calls it in his book of the same name, is about using breaking news to further your own ends.

In the book he tells the tale of how Wynn Resorts newsjacked a story on the arrest of Paris Hilton by barring her from their properties. Wynn Resorts was then mentioned in nearly every story about the arrest.

As Scott says literally anyone can newsjack, "...if you are clever enough to add a new dimension to a story in real time, the news media will write about you."

And just last week the UK media was buzzing with the story of how Oprah Winfrey was refused the opportunity to buy an expensive handbag from a store in Switzerland. According to Lyndon Antcliff who runs a newsjacking alert service at CornwallSEO.com, this was a perfect story to be hijacked by a handbag retailer or manufacturer (disclosure: I've worked with Lyndon on a number of projects). According to Antcliff, there are some great handbag stories out there to be curated including, "I was handbagged by Mrs Thatcher" on the BBC.

Summary

"Boring" is in the eye of the beholder. In any industry, no matter how boring on the surface, you can find and exploit opportunities for tremendous coverage and editorial links.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Sept. 10-13, 2013: With a newly announced, completely renovated agenda,
SES San Francisco could be the most valuable online marketing conference you attend this year. Register today and save up to $200!
*Pre-show rate through September 6.

Google Scientist: We Want To Be Able To Respond To A Query Like “Book Me A Trip To Washington, DC”

Will the day come that Google can successfully respond when you tell it something like, “Book me a trip to Washington, DC” — walking you through all the queries and answers needed to complete such a complex request?

Will the day come when we’re using devices that only offer voice-based search?

Will the day come when visual search happens continuously via the camera on Google Glass?

Those are some of the search-based challenges that Google is working on, and they’re discussed in a recent interview that offers a peek at what Google thinks search will be like in the next decade. Or maybe “plans for search to be like” would be a more accurate phrase.

Google Research Fellow Jeff Dean discusses these topics and more in a recent interview with the Puget Sound Business Journal. He’s been with the company since 1999 and works in the Systems Infrastructure Group, where they do things like apply machine learning to search (and pretty much all of Google’s other products).

It’s pretty high-level stuff; you won’t find anything about keyword research or SEO or even the basics like “10 blue links” on a search results page. But you will find, for example, a peek at how Google is using machine learning to build out the Knowledge Graph.

We have the start of being able to do a kind of mixing of supervised and unsupervised learning, and if we can get that working well, that will be pretty important. In almost all cases you don’t have as much labeled data as you’d really like. And being able to take advantage of the unlabeled data would probably improve our performance by an order of magnitude on the metrics we care about. You’re always going to have 100x, 1000x as much unlabeled data as labeled data, so being able to use that is going to be really important.

Dean goes on to say that his team is working on “big problems” like being able to use voice and predictive search to answer queries like “Please book me a trip to Washington, DC.”

That’s a very high-level set of instructions. And if you’re a human, you’d ask me a bunch of follow-up questions, “What hotel do you want to stay at?” “Do you mind a layover?” – that sort of thing. I don’t think we have a good idea of how to break it down into a set of follow-up questions to make a manageable process for a computer to solve that problem. The search team often talks about this as the “conversational search problem.”

Google launched conversational search on its Chrome browser earlier this year, and the product is smart enough to follow a spoken sequence of searches like “how old is Barack Obama” followed by “how tall is he.” It recognizes that the “he” in the second spoken query refers to Obama.

Dean also mentions applying conversational search alongside Google Now, its predictive search tool.

Like, if it’s trying to give me restaurant reviews, there’s probably 50 possible restaurants to choose. And they might all be pretty good suggestions because it knows what sorts of food I like, but it’s still a list of 50 restaurants. Again, this would be a place where a dialog would be useful. “Are you in the mood for Italian?” Something like that.

He also talks about having devices a few years from now where voice is the only type of search offered, and about Google Glass offering augmented reality-style search where information is displayed automatically about buildings and signs that its camera sees.

If you want to spend some time thinking about where Google is taking search, it’s an interview that’s well worth reading.

AdWords Editor Update Brings Upgraded Sitelink Management And More

Google released an update to AdWords Editor, version 10.2, that supports upgraded sitelink management and several other smaller feature updates.

Apparently now dubbed upgraded sitelinks,�these new sitelinks rolled out in June just prior to the enhanced campaign roll-out. They give advertisers the ability to include additional details for each sitelink. So far, they’ve been spotted on brand queries only, but perhaps this is a sign they’ll start to display more frequently on nonbrand results.

The new sitelink functions available in Editor 10.2 include:

View and manage sitelinks and settings, including device preference, using the new “Sitelinks (upgraded)” tab.Add, edit, or remove sitelinks at the campaign or ad group level.Copy and paste upgraded sitelinks between campaigns or ad groups.Include upgraded sitelinks in imports and exports.

Other updates to Editor include an increased image file size limit of 150K. URLs on sitelinks and some ads can have destination URLs as long as 2,076 characters (up from 1,024).�You can now enter URLs with the�{ifmobile}{ifnotmobile}�dynamic insertion format�for sitelinks and ads where applicable.�Accelerated delivery also is now allowed for campaigns using automatic bidding.

Google also announced this week that all legacy extensions — sitelink, call, and app extensions –�must be transitioned to enhanced by September 23. After that date, Google will automatically update all legacy extensions in an account, or delete any legacy extensions in an account that already has some upgraded extensions set up.

Google Pays Homage To Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Erwin Schrödinger

Today’s Google logo marks the 126th birthday of Austrian physicist Erwin Schr�dinger. Awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1933 while at the University of Oxford in England, Schr�dinger is considered a founding father of quantum physics.

Google’s logo honors Schr�dinger by highlighting the physicist’s two most enduring legacies to quantum physics: the wave equation and Schr�dinger’s Cat. A fundamental theory of quantum mechanics, Schr�dinger’s wave equation demonstrates how the wave-function of a physical system evolves over time.

Schr�dinger’s Cat , a thought experiment that poses the question, “When does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?” is a paradoxical theory�Schr�dinger used to criticize the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics brought forth by physicists Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and others.

Schr�dinger published several books on scientific theory including his well-known work of nonfiction What is Life? Beyond his Nobel Prize for Physics, he was awarded the Max Planck Medal in 1937 and the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1957. The Austrian Academy of Sciences founded the Erwin Schr�dinger Prize in 1956, giving the inaugural award to its namesake. Schr�dinger also has a large crater located on the dark side of the moon named for him.

After suffering from tuberculosis throughout his life, Schr�dinger died from the disease at the age of 73 in Vienna on January 4, 1961.

AOL Extends Google Search Deal: 5 More Years

AOL announced they have extended their search deal with Google for an additional five-years. This includes Google powering AOL’s organic and paid search results. The deal also added in that Google will power search on mobile search, in mobile apps and content. Also, all of AOL’s video content will also be on YouTube as part of this new extended deal.

In summary, the new five year deal includes:

Search Products: Google will provide AOL with additional features and enhancement to its leading Web search products that will improve the consumer search experience across AOL’s network of sites.Advertising Products: Google will provide AOL with best-in-class ad formats, giving AOL consumers a better, more relevant ad experience.Mobile Search: As AOL renews its focus on mobile apps and content, the companies will work together to expand the alliance to cover mobile search.YouTube: AOL and YouTube have agreed to a content partnership that will bring AOL’s video content to YouTube.Global Focus: The alliance is international in scope and will provide improved experiences to AOL’s worldwide audience.

Tim Armstrong, AOL’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer said:

Today is another important step in the turnaround of AOL. AOL users will be getting a better search and search ads experience from the best search company in the world � Google. After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.

Eric Schmidt, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Google said:

We’re excited to deepen our partnership. This agreement combines Google’s expertise in search and advertising with AOL’s strength in online content. It’s particularly exciting to see our relationship expand into video and mobile. These areas are now at the heart of users’ online experiences and at the core of both of our businesses.

There was a time where rumors were that AOL might go with Bing.

Social Ratings, Reviews, and the Power of Groupthink [Study]

How much do other people’s opinions online affect the way you think about something? According to new research, it could be more than you think.

In findings published from a study led by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, MIT, and NYU, tests show that group mentality online does sway individual opinion and action.

The experiment involved a website similar to Reddit, where users submit articles, can comment on those articles and vote comments up or down. The site requested to remain nameless in order to allow the experiment.

During the test, researchers randomly voted positively, negatively or not at all on comments in more than 100,000 posts. Each comment received a calculated rating by subtracting the negative votes from the positive votes.

From the study’s abstract on the findings (more on what this means after):

Prior ratings created significant bias in individual rating behavior, and positive and negative social influences created asymmetric herding effects. Whereas negative social influence inspired users to correct manipulated ratings, positive social influence increased the likelihood of positive ratings by 32% and created accumulating positive herding that increased final ratings by 25% on average. This positive herding was topic-dependent and affected by whether individuals were viewing the opinions of friends or enemies. A mixture of changing opinion and greater turnout under both manipulations together with a natural tendency to up-vote on the site combined to create the herding effects.

Basically, popular opinion tended to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, according to the research.

Popular Mechanics dove into an interesting aspect of the findings:

Oddly enough, this snowballing didn't work in reverse—nobody was ganging up on commenters unfairly based on a downvote or two. Instead, the researcher's artificial downvote made users slightly more likely to respond positively, essentially negating the researchers' interference.

Sinan Aral is a lead researcher in the study, and stated this phenomenon was “a correction effect.” He says one explanation is that “people will go along with positive opinions but are more skeptical of the negative opinions of others."

Several media outlets reporting on this study speculated on the affect of reviews and ratings on sites like TripAdvisor, Amazon and Yelp – reviews that help people make buying decisions every day, even when some of them could be fabricated or perhaps even subconsciously biased.

Yelp recently tackled the issue of fake reviews in a blog post, assuring readers it has processes in place for identifying those fictional biases that could occur.

But what happens when the popular opinion is purely fabricated by groupthink? According to this study, that’s a likely scenario in many cases online.

Groupthink creeps into almost everything we do. In business, groupthink can be attributed to bad decisions that aren’t grounded in reason. In society, groupthink can evolve into something ugly with detrimental consequences.

As marketers and people in general, we’re certainly wired for a mindset of more popular = better.

Take a blog post, social media update or even a personal brand, for example. More activity, more shares, more engagement, more anything triggers something in many people to believe it’s inherently good.

This is why more shares and more engagement tends to spur more shares and more engagement online; heck, that concept is even part of algorithms in Facebook and Google.

Good or bad, groupthink and the subsequent influence that comes from it goes way deeper than just the tools that help facilitate it today, like the Internet, social media and review sites.

But sometimes, those who go against popular opinion end up being those who are in fact, the most popular. And according to Irving Janis, a pioneer in groupthink research, this element of the unpopular opinion is essential to preventing the ugly side of this phenomenon.

Janis stated there are several things you can do to prevent groupthink when you are part of a decision-making group:

Leaders should assign each member the role of "critical evaluator". This allows each member to freely air objections and doubts.Leaders should not express an opinion when assigning a task to a group.Leaders should absent themselves from many of the group meetings to avoid excessively influencing the outcome.The organization should set up several independent groups, working on the same problem.All effective alternatives should be examined.Each member should discuss the group's ideas with trusted people outside of the group.The group should invite outside experts into meetings. Group members should be allowed to discuss with and question the outside experts.At least one group member should be assigned the role of Devil's advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.

So when it comes to groupthink, what do you think?

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Sept. 10-13, 2013: With a newly announced, completely renovated agenda,
SES San Francisco could be the most valuable online marketing conference you attend this year. Register today and save up to $400!
*Early Bird rate expires August 15.

Google's Patrick Thomas Talks Controversial Content Ahead of SES San Francisco Keynote

One year ago at SES San Francisco, Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts revealed that Google had seen more than 30 trillion URLs. As of 2013, that number is closer to 60 trillion unique URLs, according to Patrick Thomas, a specialist on Google's User Policy team and keynote speaker at this year's SES San Francisco.

Such a massive amount of content creates equally immense challenges – both for Google, as well as marketers trying to stand out. Tough calls and policy decisions need to be made. And Google's User Policy team is at the heart of such decisions as the search engine giant attempts to organize those trillions of pages for users.

During an interactive SES San Francisco keynote on Sept. 12, Design Your Own Search Engine: Lessons from Tough Calls on Content at Google, attendees can ask their pressing questions and get answers straight from Thomas, as well as get an inside look at Google's decision-making process.

If your goal is to create content that will grow your business, this keynote will offer you the opportunity to find out directly from Google just what exactly Google considers "high-quality content" – so you can leave with ideas on how to shape your own content strategy in ways that will make your users and Google happy, and start growing your brand's search visibility.

Ahead of his SES San Francisco keynote presentation, here's a short interview with Thomas, who discusses his role at Google, search spam, mobile, and what SES attendees can expect.

Danny Goodwin: You're currently a specialist on the User Policy team at Google. How did you end up in that role?

Patrick Thomas: I joined Google in 2011 and had previously been working on international economic policy in Washington, D.C. At the time, I wanted to make a transition to the tech industry and to Google in particular. I was frustrated with the rate of progress in public policy and had long been impressed with Google’s ambitions to solve the world’s biggest problems. Being offered a job here was a dream come true.

DG: So before Google, you had a background in politics. How have some of the skills from your pre-Google days translated into your role at Google?

PT: You’re right. Prior to joining Google, I was a senior trade policy advisor at the British Embassy. In that role, I worked with legislators, government officials, and non-governmental organizations to advance an open trade agenda to improve global economic growth and reduce poverty. It was an interesting job that required analytical and negotiation skills, proactivity, and cross functional stakeholder management.

I’ve been able to put those skills to good use at Google. The policies we make have a major impact on how users experience our products, so many people in the company have ideas about what we should do. Google is a consensus-driven company, and it’s often a give and take to make sure everyone is on board for a policy change. It’s well worth the effort, particularly for big or controversial issues.

SEW: When you first began at Google, what was the most surprising part of the job?

PT: The scale at which Google operates! I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about search policies. In search, it’s not enough to solve a problem once. You have to do it in such a way that you can apply your solution algorithmically. Training myself to think about solutions at scale was definitely one of the most interesting aspects of the job, and it makes finding the right solution that much more challenging.

DG: Do you ever see a day where Google, or any search engine, could become "spam proof"?

PT: We hope so! We devote a lot of effort to fighting spam and keeping it out of our search results. In some ways, this is always going to be a cat-and-mouse game between the spammers and our engineers.

But think about another example: email spam. A few years ago, it wasn’t hard to find articles gloomily predicting the demise of email as a useful communication tool thanks to spam overload. Today, email users don’t really worry about it. It’s not that spam went away; indeed, it still makes up a large percentage of total emails sent, but we’ve found effective ways to keep it out of the inbox. That’s what we always strive for in search - a situation where spam has an absolute minimal impact on the quality of the user experience.

DG: As mobile search evolves, with innovations such as Google Glass, do you see any potential new issues that Google may need to address?

PT: The transition to mobile is something we’re thinking about carefully across Google. How can we make sure our mobile offerings are every bit as innovative and useful as our desktop products?

For search, mobile presents new challenges about displaying information and keeping out spam. Spam looks different on mobile, and we have a lot of people working on that as part of our overall spam-fighting effort.

DG: What can SES SF attendees expect to learn about Google search during your keynote?

PT: I’m looking forward to a fun and interactive session. What I hope attendees get out of it is a unique look at Google’s decision-making process for controversial content in search and an appreciation for some of the tough calls we have to make.

DG: Thanks for your time, Patrick!

You can see Thomas' keynote at SES San Francisco 2013 on Sept. 12 at 9 a.m. In addition, SES San Francisco will feature more than 60 sessions covering all aspects of digital marketing (paid, owned, earned, and integrated), a keynote from author and marketing expert Jeffrey Hayzlett, access to the Expo, and some fantastic networking opportunities.

The SES Early Bird rate expires this Thursday, August 15 at 11:59 p.m. ET, so register now to take advantage of up to $400 in savings and experience cutting-edge online marketing.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Sept. 10-13, 2013: With a newly announced, completely renovated agenda,
SES San Francisco could be the most valuable online marketing conference you attend this year. Register today and save up to $400!
*Early Bird rate expires August 15.

Google's Patrick Thomas Talks Controversial Content Ahead of SES San Francisco Keynote

One year ago at SES San Francisco, Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts revealed that Google had seen more than 30 trillion URLs. As of 2013, that number is closer to 60 trillion unique URLs, according to Patrick Thomas, a specialist on Google's User Policy team and keynote speaker at this year's SES San Francisco.

Such a massive amount of content creates equally immense challenges – both for Google, as well as marketers trying to stand out. Tough calls and policy decisions need to be made. And Google's User Policy team is at the heart of such decisions as the search engine giant attempts to organize those trillions of pages for users.

During an interactive SES San Francisco keynote on Sept. 12, Design Your Own Search Engine: Lessons from Tough Calls on Content at Google, attendees can ask their pressing questions and get answers straight from Thomas, as well as get an inside look at Google's decision-making process.

If your goal is to create content that will grow your business, this keynote will offer you the opportunity to find out directly from Google just what exactly Google considers "high-quality content" – so you can leave with ideas on how to shape your own content strategy in ways that will make your users and Google happy, and start growing your brand's search visibility.

Ahead of his SES San Francisco keynote presentation, here's a short interview with Thomas, who discusses his role at Google, search spam, mobile, and what SES attendees can expect.

Danny Goodwin: You're currently a specialist on the User Policy team at Google. How did you end up in that role?

Patrick Thomas: I joined Google in 2011 and had previously been working on international economic policy in Washington, D.C. At the time, I wanted to make a transition to the tech industry and to Google in particular. I was frustrated with the rate of progress in public policy and had long been impressed with Google’s ambitions to solve the world’s biggest problems. Being offered a job here was a dream come true.

DG: So before Google, you had a background in politics. How have some of the skills from your pre-Google days translated into your role at Google?

PT: You’re right. Prior to joining Google, I was a senior trade policy advisor at the British Embassy. In that role, I worked with legislators, government officials, and non-governmental organizations to advance an open trade agenda to improve global economic growth and reduce poverty. It was an interesting job that required analytical and negotiation skills, proactivity, and cross functional stakeholder management.

I’ve been able to put those skills to good use at Google. The policies we make have a major impact on how users experience our products, so many people in the company have ideas about what we should do. Google is a consensus-driven company, and it’s often a give and take to make sure everyone is on board for a policy change. It’s well worth the effort, particularly for big or controversial issues.

SEW: When you first began at Google, what was the most surprising part of the job?

PT: The scale at which Google operates! I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about search policies. In search, it’s not enough to solve a problem once. You have to do it in such a way that you can apply your solution algorithmically. Training myself to think about solutions at scale was definitely one of the most interesting aspects of the job, and it makes finding the right solution that much more challenging.

DG: Do you ever see a day where Google, or any search engine, could become "spam proof"?

PT: We hope so! We devote a lot of effort to fighting spam and keeping it out of our search results. In some ways, this is always going to be a cat-and-mouse game between the spammers and our engineers.

But think about another example: email spam. A few years ago, it wasn’t hard to find articles gloomily predicting the demise of email as a useful communication tool thanks to spam overload. Today, email users don’t really worry about it. It’s not that spam went away; indeed, it still makes up a large percentage of total emails sent, but we’ve found effective ways to keep it out of the inbox. That’s what we always strive for in search - a situation where spam has an absolute minimal impact on the quality of the user experience.

DG: As mobile search evolves, with innovations such as Google Glass, do you see any potential new issues that Google may need to address?

PT: The transition to mobile is something we’re thinking about carefully across Google. How can we make sure our mobile offerings are every bit as innovative and useful as our desktop products?

For search, mobile presents new challenges about displaying information and keeping out spam. Spam looks different on mobile, and we have a lot of people working on that as part of our overall spam-fighting effort.

DG: What can SES SF attendees expect to learn about Google search during your keynote?

PT: I’m looking forward to a fun and interactive session. What I hope attendees get out of it is a unique look at Google’s decision-making process for controversial content in search and an appreciation for some of the tough calls we have to make.

DG: Thanks for your time, Patrick!

You can see Thomas' keynote at SES San Francisco 2013 on Sept. 12 at 9 a.m. In addition, SES San Francisco will feature more than 60 sessions covering all aspects of digital marketing (paid, owned, earned, and integrated), a keynote from author and marketing expert Jeffrey Hayzlett, access to the Expo, and some fantastic networking opportunities.

The SES Early Bird rate expires this Thursday, August 15 at 11:59 p.m. ET, so register now to take advantage of up to $400 in savings and experience cutting-edge online marketing.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Sept. 10-13, 2013: With a newly announced, completely renovated agenda,
SES San Francisco could be the most valuable online marketing conference you attend this year. Register today and save up to $400!
*Early Bird rate expires August 15.