Online Marketing

From the Official Google Website Optimiser Blog posted by Jon Stona, Website Optimizer Team

One question we get asked often is whether Website Optimizer will work with content-management system (CMS) platforms. The short answer is yes: if you get our JavaScript tags onto your pages, Website Optimizer will function with any tool you use to build, manage, or serve your pages.

Of course, there are use cases when a particular CMS platform’s architecture might make it less easy for you to implement Website Optimizer tests. With this in mind, we launched our global Technology Partner Program this morning, to call attention to those specific platforms that are certified as compatible with Website Optimizer.

Although you can still use Website Optimizer on non-certified platforms, our partners make it easier by offering specific documentation and technical support. They can also automate the process of adding Website Optimizer tags, so you can launch experiments faster than ever, with fewer dependencies on your IT team.

We see this program as a win for CMS providers and website-owners alike. CMS platforms of any size can offer their customers a powerful A/B and multivariate testing solution, which might have cost them millions of dollars to develop internally. Site-owners who build and manage their websites through these platforms can in turn launch Website Optimizer experiments more easily to help improve their conversion rates. And perhaps most importantly, the web becomes a more useful place for users since more web pages will be improved through customer input.

Another customer,LA.com has used Clickability’s platform to run A/B tests on their newsletter subscriptions page. They tested two alternate page designs against their original layout and content:

Original Page

Variation 1

Variation 2

By leveraging Clickability’s integration with Website Optimizer, the LA.com marketing team was able to build the alternate pages and launch their experiment in no time. And their first variation outperformed the original by over 18%, while the second actually did worse. All this insight, for minimal marketing and IT work.

If your current CMS provider isn’t yet a Website Optimizer Technology Partner, we encourage you to ask them to join; it’s a free and easy way for both of you to benefit.

Remember the Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback rewards program that we told you about not so long ago? It is now working on a direct-to-merchant system with eBay’s “Buy It Now” program. That means, you’ll start seeing more cashback ads when searching for jewelries to electronics.

Whereas previously, the CashBack rewards program works only on indirect cashback system wherein a user clicks on a Live Search cashback ad and they will be directed to the cashback page before proceeding to the advertiser’s site. But now with the recent tie up between Microsoft and eBay, users will be brought directly to the advertiser’s page. The cashback gleam will follow you as you fulfill a sales transaction and then rewards you with a corresponding rebate.

More information about this new program can be found at the eBay’s Terms and Conditions page for the cashback offer:

Extracted from the Search Engine Journal, written by Arnold Zafra

Google Friend Connect lets webmasters add gadgets or applications that connect their sites to the social networks more easily.

Our readers might be getting a little tired of all our talk about the social web, but there is a fair argument for saying that the social aspect of the web has become an essential part of Internet searching and navigation during the last couple of years.

Google certainly thinks so, and is now facing the threat from the mighty Facebook with a new toolbox of its own.

Facebook has, as you probably know, added software plug-ins or applications that lets users add social interactivity to their Facebook home pages. These could, for instance, be quizzes, maps over countries you have visited etc.

Facebook is a closed system, though. An application developed for Facebook will not work on other social web sites.

Facebook apps for the rest of us

Google Friend Connect is an tool that lets web masters add functionality that will make their web sites more social, and that help visitors to add info that can be transferred to social web sites like Facebook and Orkut.

It is a preview release, meaning that only selected webmasters are allowed to make use of it at the present time.

Preprepared code can be used to help webmasters add

• User registration.
• The ability to invite friends from other social networks.
• Picture sharing and member photo galleries.
• Message posting and product reviews.

and more.

This means that you do not need to be a programmer to make your site more dynamic.

Gadgets from Open Social

Applications developed for other web sites may be used by you if they are made public on the Google Friend Connect website.

Within the framework of the Google Open Social network there have been developed a large number of such gadgets or applications.

The gadgets are put in an iframe on your web site, which means that they are separate web pages integrated into your web pages. Nowadays this is is technology that normally works well.

(The content within these iframes will not be spidered by the search engine spiders, however, a point to keep in mind if you add such apps to strenghten your search engine friendliness.)

Google adds that Google Friend Connect integrates with contact lists for social networks like Facebook, Orkut and Google Talk:

“This means users who join your site are instantly connected with friends who are already members, and can invite friends from other networks to visit. They can opt in to broadcasting their activities to friends in their social networks. A post to your message board, for example, can instantly be visible to people in multiple social networks, along with links leading to your site. These instant networks, combined with the wealth of OpenSocial gadgets, can form potent new online communities, very quickly and very easily.”

Click here to sign up for preview release.

Fully extracted from

Recently, changes to Google Trends have been noticed, and today Google is finally announced a new version of the tool on the Official Google blog. The latest version includes a numeric metric dubbed ‘relative scaling’ and the ability to export trends data.

With relative scaling, the numbers will not provide exact data, but will give you ballpark of how certain terms are trending. Here’s how Heej Hwang of the Google Trends team explained relative scaling:

You’ll notice a number at the top of the graph as well as on the y-axis of the graph itself. These numbers don’t refer to exact search-volume figures. Instead, in the same way that a map might “scale” to a certain size, Google Trends scales the first term you’ve entered so that its average search volume is 1.00 in the chosen time period. So in the example above, 1.00 is the average search volume of vanilla ice cream from 2004 to present. We can then see a spike in mid-2006 which crosses the 3.00 line, indicating that search traffic is approximately 3 times the average for all years.

The export function offers two options: relative scaling or fixed scaling. Fixed scaling is data scaled to a specific timeline.

Previously, users noticed the removal of the ability to view trends hourly.

What do you think of the new Google Trends? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

Fully extracted from Search Engine Watch written by Nathania Johnson

More than any previous election, search advertising will influence the vote of the presidential election. Google, in its ever-present planning for the future, planned for this shift when it employed Peter Greenberger as part of its sales team. Greenberger’s job is to convince candidates that advertising on Google search is essential to political success. Recently, ClickZ’s Kate Kaye interviewed Greenberger for his insights into the 2008 election.

Reading Greenberger’s statements, you get the idea that spending on search ads will make or break the election. He attributes the success of John McCain and Barack Obama to their paid search campaigns. Greenberger also points out that Hillary Clinton was inconsistent in her Adwords campaign, dismantling it for the last two quarters of 2007 and starting it up again only after the New Hampshire primary.

Of course, polls during those times showed Clinton with a substantial lead. It wasn’t until after the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries that a tight race was clear. Some political analysts have suggested that the ultimate difference between Clinton and Obama was that Clinton’s campaign was focused on a top-down strategy while Obama’s strategy was more grassroots, building from the ground up. Looking at campaign strategies in that light, it makes sense that Obama would engage a response-directed campaign. But Greenberger’s job is to persuade the candidates that Adwords is the chicken and not the egg.

Greenberger also talked about how Obama used geotargeting during the Texas primary and how John McCain is ahead of the game in the use of video ads. Read the full interview with Google’s political ad guy, Peter Greenberger, over at ClickZ

Extracted from Search Engine Watch written by Nathania Johnson

Social Search may be the killer app for the new 3G iPhone 2.0 release.

Loopt launched its native iPhone social search app onstage at WWDC, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. The free application will connect users with their friends by using location technology built in to the iPhone, Like Google Maps, Loopt will drop pins onto a map showing users where their friends are.

CNET reports that Loopt also offers other social-networking features, such as calling, texting, and sending invitations to meet up. The example used was seeing if any friends are in your area for lunch. Once you have located friends, you can send them an invitation for lunch, and if they agree, you will be one touch away from directions to their location. As Sam Altman from Loopt put it, “You will never have to eat alone, or at a bad restaurant again.”

Extracted from Search Engine Watch (Blog) posted by Kevin Heisler

Almost two years ago, an award-winning Google paper outlined a way to link a computer with a television to collect real-time data about viewer actions. The implications of the technology Google was working on could spell trouble for Nielsen Media Research, the incumbent, go-to agency providing the data upon which TV ad prices have been based for half a century.

 Google TV Ad Tracking Stats
(Photo Credit: Bp2.blogger.com)

Google continues to march down that Nielsen-busting road: This week Google announced that advertisers now have the ability to track the online impact of Google TV Ads with Google Analytics.

With this new feature advertisers using Google TV Ads can measure impressions delivered, the number of ad plays, the cost, and CPM. Nielsen, of course, has made its own roads into the online measurement roads and has been proactive about creating new, more dynamic ways to measure audiences beyond demographics and audience size.

But one thing, especially as Yahoo also becomes more aggressive with television network partnerships, the audience measurement game is officially a one-horse show no more.

fully extracted from webpronews.com written by Jason Lee Miller

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