maine web development, web design, internet marketing

We heard about it last year and now we’re finally seeing it action – partly, anyway.  As Amanda pointed out last week, up to 25% of  Yahoo’s organic search results in the U.S. are being powered by Bing and up to 3.5% may see paid listings from Microsoft adCenter.  The difference won’t be noticeable unless you’re one of the lucky searchers to see the “Powered by Bing” badge on the bottom of a results page (they’re currently testing this badge on just some of the results, but once it’s fully rolled out, it will be on the bottom of all the results pages).  I went to Yahoo to see if I could get a glimpse of a Bing-branded results page by performing a million (read: ten) searches but it was not to be.  Seriously, after 10 searches on Yahoo, I had to leave; I felt like a foreigner in a strange land (I’m a Googler).

When will it ALL be Bing?

Microsoft and Yahoo are currently doing tests for organic and paid results and if all goes well, the US and Canada will see all Bing-powered results in desktop and mobile searches as early as August (August/September is the current time frame).  The paid search platform transition to Microsoft adCenter will be undergoing a bit more testing, but is expected to be fully live by October.

Obviously, this is a pretty big transition, especially for those folks who currently use Yahoo Search Marketing for their PPC campaigns.  Yahoo is trying to make this as smooth of a transition as possible, and has a bunch of information regarding the change.  Not only do they have a complete site called the “Yahoo Transition Center” dedicated to it, there are also helpful posts on the Yahoo Search Marketing blog.

What about the rest of the world?

I haven’t read anything yet about when they plan to integrate the Bing-powered organic results internationally, but for PPC, international advertisers should see the move to Microsoft adCenter in early 2012.  Again, this will all be dependent on a successful roll out in the United States and Canada.

On the tail of this news, Yahoo Japan just announced that it plans to use Google’s search engine technology for their organic and paid search instead of Bing.  Although this may be a bit of a blow to Microsoft, Yahoo only holds a minority stake in Yahoo Japan and cannot stop them from using Google as an alternative.  This proves to be an interesting move, considering that comScore’s figures show that Japan has the third largest number of searches conducted as of December 2009 (behind the US and China).  A good portion of Japan’s searches could be Google-powered if everything goes as planned.

Are you excited about this change?  Are you mad because I dissed Yahoo?  Let me know!

Picture it: You’re at Google, searching for more fun facts about Justin Bieber (let’s face it, who isn’t?) and as you look at the search results that are presented to you, you move your mouse over the results as you read.  So could the movements of your mouse determine which of those pages are going to get ranked higher in another search for the same information?

Maybe.

Ranking Factors

Late last year, Matt Cutts (head of Google’s Webspam team) mentioned that there are over 200 variables used in Google’s algorithm to determine how a web page ranks in the search results pages.  We already know some of those variables, such as the quantity and quality of backlinks to the page, use of keywords in title tag and copy, and even how long it takes for the page to load.  For obvious reasons, we’ll never know all the ranking factors and Google changes its algorithm on a daily basis (yes, daily).  However, Google was just granted a patent on something new that could be incorporated into its algorithm: mouse movements.

Why Mouse Movements?

If you use your mouse to help keep you focused on the descriptions that you’re reading in the search engine results, your mouse may be hovering over some search results longer than others because you are more interested in that particular result.  Perhaps you’re even getting an answer to your question in the that text description of the web page, so there’s no need to click on it even though it gave you an answer to your search (when is Justin Bieber’s birthday?!?!).

Part of the patent’s abstract, which was actually filed for in 2005 but just granted last week, states: “Sometimes, a user may review multiple informational items responsive to a search query, moving a pointer over or near each of the informational items that the user reviews. These various pointer activities can provide another way to evaluate the user’s feedback with respect to a particular informational item.”  In a nutshell, the pointer (mouse) may be a tell-tale sign of which results the searcher values.

Is This Really a Good Ranking Signal?

When I first read about this, my reaction was “no way”.  I don’t think that someone moving their mouse along the page as they read is a good measurement of the quality of the results, or the intent of the searcher.  Google also indicates that “a typical user’s behavior is to move the mouse pointer (or any other pointing indicator) over or near a target informational item, keep the mouse pointer there for a period of time while the user reads the item’s information.”  For me, this is not typical behavior.  I keep my mouse to the side of the text and use my scroll wheel to move down the page as I read, and I’m sure that I’m not the only person who does this.  Granted, Google may have this patent and not even want to use it anymore, or maybe they will incorporate it into a more broad consortium of user behavior data they’re collecting.  There’s really no way of knowing how they plan to use this patent.

What do you think, is this a good indication of search result interest?  Do you use your mouse to follow along as you read?  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

This week the internet was consumed with the shirtless Old Spice actor and iPhone’s continuing drama around the iPhone 4. In case you missed it, here is a quick recap of this week’s biggest news-makers.

Old Spice creates a stink on social media sites – Case study exhaustion beware! Every now and then a marketing initiative comes around and it takes everyone by storm. You watch it all happen and then for me, I hear a click in my head, ‘I am going to hear this case study for the next 5 years, over and over and over… damn’. This week Old Spice did something really interesting. They took the actor from their television campaign and had him make personalized video responses to social media power users. He responded to tweets, comments on YouTube videos and more. The funny responses were clever, came in rapid succession and were mostly targeted at higher profile social media users like Ashton Kutcher, Lucretia Pruitt, Guy Kawasaki, Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter) and even a flirty back and forth exchange with Alyssa Milano. To see all the responses you can check out the YouTube channel dedicated to the Old Spice Responses. The marketing effort was clever and won the Old Spice marketers some major pats on the back. Some are of course questioning the ROI of the campaign. No matter what the results, Old Spice had the online world’s attention for 48 hours.

Below is a video response from the Old Spice man to Jason Keath from Social Fresh about his request for an interview.

iPhone 4 press conference – As we have discussed before, the latest iPhone is having some serious problems. The technology darling, Apple, is under fire in a big way, which is new to them. Apple is known for being innovative and is held to a high standard. This debacle has highlighted that Apple and Steve Jobs don’t know what to do in a media crisis. Today, Apple is having a press conference to talk about the iPhone 4. It should be interesting to see what the company has to say and how they plan on fixing the faulty device. Another blow to the iPhone happened when Consumer Reports came out this week and said they could not recommend the new phone because of its known antenna issues. Video below.

Links I liked this week

Gmail allows rich text signatures
Google Tests Multiple Accounts Sign in
B2B Content Marketing Strategy and Practice Is Steaming Full-speed-ahead. Are You Onboard?
12 Favorite and Little Known Tips for LinkedIn

New York City celebrated “Internet Week” this week but just because people weren’t in the Big Apple didn’t mean they were not participating! As many of us internet nerds hoped, the week of tech events led to some new launches and announcements. As opposed to last week’s recap (which was more about making the most with things you have), this week was all about new, new, new. As with most new things it will take awhile to figure out the long term implications of these new advances. I for one am excited about some new opportunities coming my way, opportunities to better use that data we already have and new tools for how we interact with each other.

iPhone 4 announced – This week, as we expected, was the announcement of the next iPhone. The iPhone 4 will be available in the US on June 24th. Steve jobs announced the release at WWDC, the company’s annual conference for application developers. The new phone is a bit thinner, has more pixels, battery life is supposed to be better, better camera with zoom and flash, HD video recording and iMovie to edit video and you can move in between running applications. One of the biggest new features is a front and rear facing camera for better picture taking abilities and to utilize the new video chat functionality. It is also shinier, prettier and you probably need one. If you want to watch a video that may make some of you drool and/or cry here is the official Apple video.

Google Caffeine is brewed up and ready for the public – As Kasi told us a few months ago, Google has been working on a new platform for searches called Google Caffeine. The new indexing system is supposed to make searching faster, more relevant and be able to handle the demand for more real-time search queries. For more information about Google Caffeine you can read about it on the Official Google Blog.

Add your Flickr photos to Facebook – The photo sharing site Flickr has teamed up with the king of social networking sites, Facebook. Now you can automatically add your Flickr photos to your Facebook stream. I recently had a conversation with a client about automating your social media content. Some are violently opposed, others think it is the bee’s knees – I am in the middle. I think it can be done well and be done poorly. I understand all of us are very busy so why not focus on one or two social media sites or blogs and find relevant ways to automatically feed that content to other sites? This new feature is a good example. I know lots of businesses that use Flickr to capture events, conferences, semi-professional shots and more. Now you can have that streamline into your Facebook account. This could be beneficial to some people. A bigger undertone in this news bit is that Facebook and Yahoo (who own Flickr) are getting awfully chummy these days. Wonder what else we will see from this new couple?

Bluesky Factory stomps the yard integrating social media profiles with email marketing campaigns – I came into this career world as an email junky. My last job and starting this one, I was all about email marketing. I have added a few more things to my plate but I have always been interested in how email marketing paved the way for so much that is the norm on the social internet. The relationship between email and social media is a strong one and the guys and girls at Blue Sky Factory have always recognized that – calling email the “digital glue” of the internet. This week the email marketing company announced a new feature to its service, SocialSync, that integrates your most valued business contacts with the social networks THEY participate in. One of the most important parts of businesses participating in social media, is participating in the right networks where their customers already are. How cool is it that with your email marketing service you could instantly have that data available to you? Pretty cool if you ask me.

Google homepage designs caused quite a stir – As I told you last week, Google is now letting people customize their home search pages. The company decided to show off the new feature by adding their own custom designs by artists and photographers for a day. The change was quite unwelcomed and one of the most popular search terms was ‘how to remove Google background’. The background should be back to normal by now but the whole situation caused a bit of frustration with users who claimed to be distracted by the busy backgrounds.

Twitter had a tough week – Twitter was down for a good chunk of the week. Lots of people had no idea what to do with themselves. Twitter has become a large part of how many people go about their day and how they do business. Services like Twitter will only get better with time but this was a friendly reminder to not put all your marketing eggs in one basket. If Twitter does go down, do you have a backup plan? If you ever need information about Twitter possibly being down you can check status.twitter.com for the latest updates.

Office makes web apps – As what seems to be a direct hit at Google Docs, Microsoft Office is rolling our a series of web applications for their products. It was a move that was bound to happen. Now with the updated 2010 Office package users can create, store and share Office documents online. More and more businesses are going to not only want but need more cloud services. As a culture we are getting less and less tied to our desktops and more utilizing documents and the internet on the go.

Bing to search Facebook and Twitter – Bing announced this week that they are now searching Facebook and Twitter updates. The new search section will search only public tweets and Facebook statuses that marked as ‘Share for Everyone’. Now might be a really good time for you to review your Facebook privacy settings to see what exactly you are putting out there to not only your Facebook friends but now to general people searching for keywords and phrases.

That does it for my list this week! As always, let me know if there is anything interesting you are seeing that you want to talk more about!