Search Marketing ROI

Yahoo has decided to join the social search stampede. However, unlike Google and Microsoft/Bing, Yahoo has decide NOT to pull the data directly from Twitter or Facebook.
The company that has been out-developed in Traditional Search (yeah, I call it like I see it), has decided they don’t want to be left behind now that Social [...]

Leading up to Search Engine Strategies San Jose, we plan to interview a number of our search marketing colleagues speaking at or attending the show. Our first interview is with Sean Walsh, VP Online Marketing at LuxuryLink.com. LuxuryLink is the world’s leading luxury vacation and resort website. The company offers 5-star vacation rentals in both auction and fixed-price formats. Sean is [...]

According to comScore, Americans conducted 11.5 billion searches in June through the Big 5 search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask) representing a 7-percent increase versus May.
Searches on the Engines Themselves: Google has continued to increase its dominanace month over month, with more than 7 billion core searches (up 6 percent from May), distantly followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.4 [...]

OK,  so over the next several months, we will be exploring (exploding?) the following 7 misconceptions we encounter over and over again when we speak to both agencies and advertisers.
Top 7 Paid Search Marketing Misconceptions:
1. You can’t brand or raise awareness with Paid Search  - it’s strictly for direct marketing. 
2. Our site comes up just fine when we search [...]

An October 2004 MarketingSherpa study of b-to-b buyers reports that nearly 64% of b-to-b businesspeople said search engines are the first place they look when they are online researching a major purchase. This makes perfect sense since we’ve found exceptionally high click-through rates (2-15%, depending on the key phrase) and conversion stats for B2B campaigns in [...]

Though a numbers of research reports by various research firms have been projecting huge growth for search expenditures, it always seemed like it would happen ”in 5 years”.  Well, 2 years from now Piper Jaffray predicts we are looking at Paid Search as an increasingly mainstream advertising medium, with $33 Billion in ad spend by 2010. 
What’s interesting [...]

For many years, clients, friends, and family have all experienced my propensity for Search Turrets, where I spontaneously break out in search-related oratory at appropriate (and inappropriate) moments. 
All 3 of the above groups have recently asked me to put my thoughts in writing. It is debatable whether they are motivated by a genuine thirst for search wisdom, or just [...]