Recession, recession, recession… I don’t know about you but I have had my fill of this doomsday word! It seems to me the panic caused by this word simply increases the chances of a recession occurring. Recessions, however, have a silver lining because they provide business owners with the opportunity to look long and hard at their expenses and this can provide valuable insight in strengthening the business long after a recession recedes. Some cut backs may become obvious such as eliminating frivolous office expenses and are a wise move but should business owners cut back on their web marketing? Lets look at the circumstances within web marketing where cutbacks may or may not make sense.

When You Should or Should Not Cut Back on Pay Per Click or Search Engine Optimization Campaigns
So what is unnecessary marketing? Logic dictates that any marketing that is not profitable is not worth keeping. That said, how certain are you that a particular form of marketing is not profitable? Perhaps the following questions and notes will help you decide Read more…

Earlier this month Google launched a new function which allows searchers to search deeper within existing authority search results.

When searchers enter a query for certain terms, typically brand names such as “best buy”, an additional search box appears next to the authority listing allowing for a deeper site search. This site search will then search the specified site for your next query. This feature has been available for some time using the Google Toolbar, or by entering the command ” site:domain.com”, but was only recently integrated into the actual search results.

Read more…

Have you ever wondered exactly when and where viewers watch your YouTube videos? YouTube Insight, a new tool has been created by Google’s engineering team in Zurich, to allow users to dive deeper into the statistics behind their posted videos.

Guardian.co.uk reported on the new addition Thursday morning.

“We know a lot of data about video consumption and we want to give some of that back,” Jacobi said. “A lot of bands use the site, and YouTube Insight is a very easy way to work out where in the world your fans are. That’s very important for planning, marketing and touring, and helps tailor their product.” Read more…

Search Engine Roundtable reported Tuesday that Microsoft Live Search, in an effort to “loosen up the spam filter”, has seen a major update. Over at WebmasterWorld however many are annoyed at the apparent level of poor results.

‘caveman’, one of the moderators at WebmasterWorld, made the comment “the net result has been more pages from iffy, third tier sites ranking than I have seen in long while”

If across the board results will continue to be of lower quality, it would not be surprising to see Microsoft roll back the update – either that or watch their market share dip even lower into the single digits; a loss they can’t afford to take.

AOL Time Warner had acquired Bebo, one of the largest social networks outside of North America. Bebo is huge in both the U.K. and New Zealand. It’s the third biggest social network in the U.S. after MySpace and Facebook and for AOL it “positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.” With 4.1 billion supposed to be spent on social network advertising by 2011 it’s understandable why the major players want to secure a spot on these sites.

Myspace mobile has been officially launched and people using this social network can use this site to connect with one another on the go.

Mobile phone search is reaching large proportions and search engine’s are well aware of this trend and are finding new ways of speeding up this process. This article has a good rundown of “a Google search plug-in that puts a search box on the “home screen” of the phone and reduces the time it takes to get there (to Google) and get results.”

Searches on question and answer web sites have risen by almost 1000% compared with use on these sites two years ago. “The popularity of user-generated media has helped to establish a category for social knowledge.” Helping on Q & A sites is also a web marketing strategy where sharing your knowledge of a particular subject can bring traffic and awareness to you because of your good answers.

In order to help curb the possibility of rioting, the Chinese government has blocked all access to both YouTube and Google News to prevent the viewing of news reports and video footage documenting riots and protests in Tibet. Other web properties blocked include giants Yahoo, CNN, and the BBC.

Cnet reported on the blockage over the weekend and many others such as the New York Times have also picked up the story.

Google has before been blocked by the Chinese government. Back in 2002 searches through the internet giant were blocked to the Chinese population leading into a Communist Party congress in November of that year.

In 2002 the Chinese government reported that an estimated 45.8 million Chinese were online. In July of 2007 this number had increased to approximately 137 million. Since then the total of those online has continued to skyrocket. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, and reported at the Register, the communist country, exceeded that of the US and reached an estimated 216 million online users by the end of 2007.

PPC (Pay-per-click advertising) has been around for a while now and many site owners have either experimented with, or have at least heard of the marketing platform but surprisingly, there are still a large number of potential advertisers who have had no exposure to the world of PPC.

After fielding questions from new clients as well as our newest sales representative, I have decided to write an article to explain a few of the basics of what PPC is, some pro’s and cons and provide some insight into how it works.

PPC advertising is a means to let businesses advertise their products or services online, within search results or on other websites participating in an advertising network. The advertiser pays only when a potential customer clicks their ad and follows it to their site. The advertiser competes on ad display and positioning by bidding on relevant search terms. Read more…

Over the past couple years it has been impossible to avoid the buzz about images and their increasing role in search; such as universal search which is becoming commonplace among the major search engines. But universal search is only the most prevalent news and only the baby-steps of a new format of search that is about to take over the Internet. Do I have your interest piqued? I will now lay the foundation of my statement to hopefully get you as excited as I am about this unstoppable search evolution.

Evidence 1) Photosynth
If you have any technology mavens as friends it is likely you saw this incredible video presented by Microsoft at the TED conference last year discussing Photosynth. To quote Microsoft Lab’s Photosynth home page this software

“takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next. In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.” Read more…

With great joy the staff at StepForth want to welcome into this world Emma Marnie Van Achte, the newborn daughter of Scott Van Achte; our Senior SEO at StepForth and friend.

Emma was born March 03, 2008, 5:54pm, at 7lbs, 8oz

Congratulations Scott and Lyndsay! You have an absolutely gorgeous baby girl and we can’t wait to meet her and spoil her silly

Here are more pictures of Scott and Lyndsay’s long awaited day.

Lots of love from your
StepForth family.

1-800-GOOG-411 is now available in Canada! First, I must admit, this may very well have happened a while ago but if it did I must have missed the news; thanks to Garret Rogers at ZDNet for the heads up. Either way, it is cool and I haven’t heard of anyone in my circle of friends that uses it yet but they really should.

Here is an illustration on how Google’s free entirely voice-activated 411 service works:

Read more…