Bing Takes Baby Steps Towards Catching Google

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

It’s always the darkest before the dawn.

Whatever the cliché being thrown around in Redmond, it must be working, because Bing’s US search share continues to nudge ever upwards.

According to comScore’s data, Bing climbed from 11.3% to 11.5%, likely stealing that share from the "we’ve given up on search" Yahoo, which dropped from 17% to 16.8%.

The only kink in Microsoft’s plan to catch Google? Google’s share increased too–up from 65.4% to 65.5%.

Take Heart! Google’s Own SEO Efforts Suck Just As Badly As Yours!

You’d think that with all the seo conferences Google sponsors and speaks at, it would have at least some grasp of basic search engine optimization techniques, right?

Yeah….no.

<a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html”>According to a <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/27789378/Google-seo-Report-Card”>self-examination, Google is about as bad at seo as any multi-billion company. In fact, you might argue that Google’s seo efforts are worse than most. After all, pretty much everyone knows that a well structured Title tag format is key to good rankings, right?

Well, apparently not all of us:

OK, let’s stop it right here. I grew up in England, so maybe things are different in the US, but 10/100 only merits a "Needs Improvement"?? If I achieved a 10% on anything in school, it would warrant a smacked bottom and no dessert! Needs Improvement is a little understated, don’t you think?

OK, back to the <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/27789378/Google-seo-Report-Card”>report. It’s worth taking a look, not just because its fun to snicker at where Google failed, but it includes a lot of practical seo advice.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this opened can of worms. If Google’s seo is so bad, how are any of its 100 products able to rank in its own index, without a little manual intervention?

(via)

Cup of Joe: Kick It Up a Notch & Take It Offline!

So you got your client on the front page of Digg. With your seo skills you pushed them to the top of the rankings for all their key terms. You have optimized their PPC campaigns and have drastically improved their ROI.

You are a rock star and everyone knows it!

But the question now is, what’s left? Don’t get me wrong there is never an end to internet marketing, it’s always an ongoing process. But with all of your mad skills are you missing something? There’s got to be something that you don’t know but if you did, it would drastically improve your services. What is this one thing that I am talking about? Public Relations.

Most internet marketers have no history in public relations. For some really weird reason PR and internet marketing (IM) have always kinda existed in separate worlds. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some really amazing agencies out there that do an awesome job at combining the two. But quite honestly the rule tends to be PR people and IM people rarely mix. Most of the home grown IM professionals started out through doing business online, few went from a career in PR to IM.

So you are probably thinking, Why the heck do I need to understand PR? How is PR going to help with all of the things I have to do? Offline media exposure can <a href="http://www.onlineprbook.com/why-old-school-pr-is-great-for-seo/”>dramatically impact your online efforts. TV and newspaper mentions can help build a strong brand and drive traffic to your web properties. Offline media exposure can shift ideas and opinions that can favor your companies agenda. You can even build a better reputation offline to counter an online reputation crisis.

So what kind of skills does a PR guru have?

• Learn to write a killer press release.
• Learn how to successfully pitch a story to local media outlets.
• Build lasting and meaningful relationships with producers and writers.
• Oh, and um most importantly, learn how to communicate offline…..seriously, some of you IM gurus are really bad face to face communicators.

If you can master all of the above and be open to learning more, then you are on your way to becoming a PR guru! So try getting out from behind that keyboard and making your clients shine offline!

You Don’t Have to be Gullible to Work at the BBC, but it Helps!

The UK’s Guardian newspaper demonstrates that intelligence goes out the window, once someone gets drawn in to Twitter.

Apparently banks, politicians, and even journalists are falling for the "this you??" phishing scam. One unfortunate BBC correspondent is apparently blissfully unaware that he is a victim, as you can still find this tweet on his Twitter stream:

And you thought the Brits weren’t great lovers!

Anyway, so you don’t fall for the same scam, this video explains what to be on the look out for…

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Are Google’s European Union Troubles Driven by Microsoft?

The news part of this story is that the European Commission (EC) has launched an anti-trust investigation against Google. I suspect that this is heard with little surprise considering the amount of chatter recently about Google’s dominance in the marketplace. I would think it is safe to say that Google has been preparing for this day for quite some time and suspecting that the first official volley in this war would be from “across the pond” considering the EC’s apparent obsession with controlling everything with regard to the marketplace. Now, Google is being brought to task for imposing penalties on sites and allegedly being a barrier to trade.

The Telegraph tells us a little more

The investigation comes under the Lisbon Treaty’s “abuse of dominant position” powers and is the first time that Google has been targeted by the European Union.

Telegraph.co.uk can reveal that the Commission has written to Google with a series of questions over how its search functions operate and also questioned the way it sells advertising. It acted after complaints from the UK search site Foundem, a price comparison site, Ciao, an online shopping site owned by Microsoft, and ejustice.fr, a French site which details legal cases and solicitor services.

What is of interest is here is who is bringing the complaints to the forefront. Foundem has a history of going after Google and has been “exposed” in some ways as the site that cried wolf since <a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/4456-foundem-vs-google-a-case-study-in-seo-fail”>it can be shown why Google doesn’t think the site worthy of high rankings.

The second in that list though is Ciao, which is a Microsoft owned site. Now, we may be getting to the heart of the matter. While Foundem and their complaints can be seen as whining that they should be at the front of the line despite having little or no merit for the claim, the Microsoft connection in this case gets even more complex as we learn

Ciao was bought by Microsoft in 2008 for nearly $500m (£324m) and is now called Ciao Bing, after Microsoft’s search engine. Foundem is a member of ICOMP, an internet pressure group which receives funding from Microsoft.

A spokesman for ICOMP said that it was backed by a number of companies and was only interested in promoting transparency and fair competition on the web.

Whoa there big fella! Foundem is a member of an Internet pressure group that receives funding from Microsoft? If all of this is absolutely true then this whole thing starts to smell pretty funny and the source of the stench may be traced back to Redmond, WA USA. Oh, and for the spokesman’s line of transparency and open competition on the web? C’mon, we’re not that stupid. It looks more like you are the home for wayward web whiners (is that the European version of WWW?).

Google has responded initially by stating

“We’ve always worked hard to ensure that our success is earned the right way, through technological innovation and great products, rather than by locking in our users or advertisers or creating artificial barriers to entry.”

Google went on to further note that the plight of Foundem could be better addressed if they went out and “foundem” some original content. Hey, is that a secret that Google has been keeping from us all these years? . By the way, the penalties have been lifted and Foundem is claiming that their traffic went up 10,000 percent overnight. Geesh, do these guys sell hyperbole on their site?

So while having a 90% market share in the UK is certainly something to raise an eyebrow is it because Google doesn’t let others play or is it because they have the better mousetrap AND nothing, including a Microsoft owned property, can challenge them? If you put any merit in the comments following the article neither Foundem nor Ciao nor the European Union seem to get a lot of love.

So what do you think? Monopoly by Google or manipulation by Microsoft? Do you think this will go anywhere?

Google Going Transparent with AdSense Revenue Share; Planning an iPad Challenge?

Jeff "Dell Hell" Jarvis sat down recently with an impressive line-up of Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, President of sales Nikesh Arora, search boss Marissa Mayer, YouTube founder Chad Hurley, and counsel David Drummond.

During that meeting, a lot of interesting topics were covered, including a potential new level of transparency for AdSense’s earnings split:

Google told me today that they would consider giving more transparency about revenue splits in Adsense…Arora said that the company was considering more transparency. I confirmed with Google’s people that this was new. I suspect that they’re not going to promise the possibility and not deliver something.

And now that Jarvis–and now us–are blogging about it, let’s hope we can push them forward with this new transparency!

The discussions also included talk of China, Google’s reputation, the economy, and whether Google might build an iPad competitor:

Will they have a tablet? “You might want to tell me what the difference is between a large phone and a tablet,” Schmidt said.

We’ll take that as a "yes" then Eric!

Here We Go Again: Another SEO Trademarker?

That’s right, folks, you’re all once again about to lose your right to use seo to refer to . . . well, anything. Back in 2008, one “intrepid” “seo” decided he’d trademark the term and impose standards on the rest of us. That didn’t pan out, so <a href="http://searchengineland.com/another-person-no-ones-heard-of-tries-to-trademark-seo-34109″>someone else has taken up the case.

Or not. Apparently this person is confused about what, exactly, seo will stand for once it’s trademarked. In the original filing, Search Engine Partners/Shangri-La Boutique filed as seo standing for “Search Engine Optimization,” which the application claimed they first used in September 1996, and first used in commerce in September 1999. The filing also includes a pseudo mark (this is supposed to apply to other words that are pronounced the same way) of “Strategically Elevating Optimization,” which a company SEP acquired used as a slogan on its invoices.

Interestingly, the invoices, from January 1997, are for a 30 keyword seo campaign. (With a money-back guarantee!) However, in the same amendment filing, they claim that “In 1997 the service known as search engine optimization was called web site optimization among several other terms because the process of optimizing websites ‘offsite’ did not yet exist because search engines like Google that look for ranking factors outside of the websites themselves did not exist” (emphasis added). And perhaps most interesting, as a <a href="http://searchengineland.com/another-person-no-ones-heard-of-tries-to-trademark-seo-34109#comment-8510″>comment on the Search Engine Land points out, the invoiced domain would not be registered until seven months after the invoice date.

I love this. Most people rag on seo because they think it’s all on-page stuff. No, no, says this person—seo only refers to off-page efforts! (And if you’d like the history lesson, Google began in 1996 as a Sergey/Brin research project called “BackRub,” which counted backlinks to rank content.) And it’s so effective, we can use it on websites that don’t even exist yet! (I’d check Archive.org, but it says robots.txt has blocked the Wayback Machine for that domain. Good. Job.)

The filing claims that seo was in common use, but it didn’t stand for anything until that year, and no one knows where it came from. The evidence includes a full proposal for the prospective client. Other than on the invoice page, the term “seo” is never used in any form—”web site optimization” is the preferred term.

It’s really tough to choose a favorite part of this case, but if I had to, I’d go with the biography of the filer. Among his credentials listed on his website:

• one of the first published search engine optimizers (seos) and search engine optimization consultants
  • The citation provided as evidence? The URL for the Search Engine Consultants page at Wikipedia. Guess who isn’t listed?
• He already holds the trademark on this term, and has since 1996! Unfortunately, that’s news to the US Trademark/Patent Office. Despite the fact that holds the trademark, “it seems to be between he and a Jason Gambert.” Sadly, he’s not joking
• After 10 years away from the industry, he was recognized by Wikipedia as an seo. Guess who doesn’t even have a page on Wikipedia? And not for lack of trying: the deletion log shows that a page about this guy has been deleted five times for copyright infringement, blatant advertising, and not meeting inclusion guidelines for biographies.
• He created seo 2.0 to deal with Universal Search.
• Nowhere on the page does he use the phrase “strategically enhancing optimization,” but he uses “search engine optimization” many, many times.
• He “managed to optimize his own name so well that Google now recognizes it as a keyword.” And the evidence is a screen shot of Google Suggest, where he’s entered his first name and the first three letters of his last name, which is seven letters long (and the results estimate? 1350).
• Of the 53 citations on his biography, 35 are the URLs for articles in Wikipedia which give definitions for a term (including “Active duty” and “Base (chemistry),” which actually isn’t used in the biography). None of the citations are active links.

I’m not sure we need to worry too much. He’s been working on this trademark application for a year, but it doesn’t look like he’s making much progress.

Here’s the problem: In the US, you can’t register something that’s merely descriptive or generic. (Well, you can register a trademark on something that’s descriptive—if it’s become primarily associated with your business by consumers at large. That’s just not going to apply here.)

In June, the USTPO rejected the application as too descriptive/generic, hence the filings to prove the use of the term in commerce, and the addition of the pseudo mark [as mentioned above, the pseudo mark was included in the initial filing]. The most recent word from the USTPO comes from November 30 (emphasis mine):

While applicant’s response includes arguments and evidence against the rejection in the June 22, 2009 office action of the Section 2(f) claim based on insufficient evidence, it is still unconvincing. The rejection is hereby continued and maintained due to the new issues raised by the response below. As stated in the June 22, 2009 office action, applicant’s arguments and evidence against the descriptiveness refusal were not persuasive and will be addressed pending applicant’s response to the new issue below raised by applicant and when the application is not in suspension. Applicant did not respond to the prior pending applications likelihood of confusion advisory (no response was required yet, and 3 of the 5 potentially cited applications have abandoned) and the information requirement (a response was required). The descriptiveness refusal, the information requirement, and prior pending applications likelihood of confusion advisory are hereby continued and maintained.

The only response so far has been to change address.

Feel free to read the <a href="http://www.trademarkia.com/seo-77643198.html”>250 pages of the filing. It’s not quite as dumbifying as Gambert’s filings—and hey, there are pictures!

Twitter’s New Year Resolutions: 1 Billion Searches a Day & an IPO?

Reading Biz Stone’s op-ed in the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper almost had me snoozing. Not that Biz is boring–he’s actually quite fascinating–but the article was just a recap of stuff we already knew. Then I saw these closing statements:

..It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news…In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. We will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world…

(Emphasis added)

Er, did he just say billion? With a "b"?

Does Google know about this? You don’t need to answer that, I know it knows. But seriously, Twitter’s serving 1 billion search queries a day–and it’s not even a search engine? No wonder Google and Bing rushed to sign partnership deals with the micro-blogging site. No wonder neither of them could find the right price to acquire the company!

According to recent estimates, Google is handling around 300,000 to 500,000 million searches a day–about half of what Biz boasts Twitter is seeing. And, let’s not forget, Google IS a search engine.

I can’t make up my mind the exact reason Biz slipped that into the piece. I’ve narrowed it down to two reasons.

One: Twitter just wanted to fire a warning shot across the bow of traditional search engines. Put them on notice, if you will.

Two: We’ll see a Twitter IPO in the next 12-18 months. Twitter has far more users than Google had when it went public. If it can reveal revenues anywhere close to $100 million a year, then I think investors will be tripping over themselves to buy in.

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Twitter Hackers Warn: “Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples”

Could this be the scariest tweet ever?

Twitter’s blog post explanation is somewhat vague and benign sounding:

Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed. As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while but API and platform applications were working.

Boy, that’s an understatement! Twitter was hacked by a group claiming to be the "Iranian Cyber Army." TechCrunch has the screenshot and additional details:

Iranian Cyber Army

THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA?
WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST
Take Care.

Yowsers!

Clearly, this is some kind of vengeance for Twitter’s active involvement in the recent Iranian elections fiasco–something our own government encouraged.

I don’t know what’s the greater threat here. That something that we rely on so much can be hacked relatively easy, or that I millions of people were unable to tweet "Going to bed, night all."

Scary stuff!

Win Copies of Scott Wittig’s “Holy IT” Book

At some point in your career you start asking the question, "what am I doing here?" Maybe you’re not there yet, but trust me, you’ll get to the stage where you wonder if you’re on the right career path, if you should perhaps change direction, or if you can turn that passionate hobby into something that pays the bills.

Once you discover it, there are countless books that will help you Get Things Done or cram it all into a 4-Hour Workweek. The problem is, how do you discover what your IT is in the first place?

That’s where Scott Wittig’s Holy IT comes in.

Scott is a good friend of mine. We’ve almost launched a company together, discussed our respective careers, and debated the importance of the important things in life. So, trust me when I say, Scott has lived through everything that he shares in his book. With practical steps, case studies, and some humor, Holy IT is the book you should read, if you need to discover your special purpose in life–Steve Martin need not apply.

Anyway, Holy IT is about 100 pages long (short?) and will take you less than 4 hours to read. But, once you’ve read it, be warned! It could change your outlook on life!

Want a copy?

How to enter this contest? Simply leave a comment below and we’ll randomly pick 3 winners (deadline for entry is 6pm ET this Wednesday).

That’s all you need to do! And, if you don’t win, you can grab a copy from Amazon.com.

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