StepForth Web Marketing is excited and proud to announce that on Tuesday, Ross Dunn, StepForth Web Marketing CEO/Founder was named as one of two finalists in the 2009 Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce Business Awards in the category of “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” (pdf).

The award “honours a business owner or founder under the age of 35 who has excelled in business; exemplified leadership and entrepreneurial skills; and demonstrated exceptional vision that has contributed to business success”. The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony taking place April 21, 2009 at the Fairmont Empress. Read more…

Fourth quarter financial results for 2008 are in at both Yahoo (pdf) and Google, and while Google still showed a sizable profit, the numbers show that 2009 may be a tough year for both search giants.

Yahoo
In Q4, Yahoo saw revenues down 1% compared to the same period, ringing in at $1,806 million. While revenues approaching $2 billion sounds good on the surface, when you take away the expenses and the dust settles, they were left with a net loss of more than $303 million!

2008 on the whole wasn’t a total loss for Yahoo. Their revenues finished with a 3 percent increase compared to 2007, at $7,209 million and an overall net income of over $424 million. This number is certainly reasonable, at least by my standards, but when you look at the huge loss in the 4th quarter alone, unless things get turned around, 2009 could show to be a tough year for Yahoo.

Google
Just like Yahoo, Google also took a hit in the fourth quarter of 2008, only their hit managed to remain on the plus side. Compared to the three quarters preceding (all over $1.2 billion) Q4 saw a net income of only $382 million.

While 2008 saw total revenues reach nearly $5 billion more than 2007, at $21.7 billion, Google’s net income for 2008 was nearly identical, only about $20 million more than 2007.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 9, 2008

StepForth Web Marketing Announces Limited Time Offer for Free PPC Account Review

Save time and money with a FREE assessment of your Pay Per Click campaigns. Our PPC specialists will look at your paid marketing efforts to get a sense of overall performance and account management patterns. We will identify a number of key issues which, if focused upon would go a long way towards improving the long term value of your advertising spend. Read more…

I am pleased to say, although I am a little late finding out, that my article “How Glossaries and FAQs Can Improve Search Engine Rankings” was nominated for a SEMMY (Search EMMY). I wish I had known sooner so that I could have spread the news earlier but just the same I feel honored; it is nice when work gets a little link love and additional attention.

By the way, Matt McGee deserves a big thanks. Creating the SEMMY’s is a brilliant way to acknowledge all of the writers out there that work hard to produce quality content. Thank you for your hard work and vision.

According to a press release issued Tuesday morning, metasearch has signed a deal to extend its multi-year agreement with Yahoo, allowing them to continue displaying Yahoo text based advertising (Yahoo Search Marketing) and their organic web search results.

“Yahoo!’s unique partnership with InfoSpace provides an important opportunity for us to help connect advertisers with online audiences that use metasearch for their searching needs,” said Dean Stackel, Senior Vice President Business Development for Corporate Partnerships. “This partnership is a key component of our broader strategy to enable advertisers to efficiently reach highly targeted – and therefore highly valuable – categories of Internet users.”

Infospace includes a number of branded sites including Dogpile, WebCrawler, and WebFetch. The exact terms of the agreement were not noted in the press release.

Google and the state of Florida are collaborating to implement new search features for Floridians, and really anyone looking for government services online, according to a press release issued Monday on Florida Governor, Charlie Crist’s website.

This public-private partnership is an innovative way to improve the accessibility of state information for all Floridians,” said Governor Crist. “I am grateful for this chance to join with Google to further develop Florida’s leadership in delivering open government services to the people of Florida. By empowering Floridians with the tools they need for easier access to state agency Web sites, we are allowing them to truly take ownership of state government”

This new partnership will allow Google to work with the state to gain access and index data otherwise not visible to the search giant. Much of the content searched for by users can not be reached by search engines due to the method used to store information within the database.

Today Priyank Garg of Yahoo announced that some changes to the Yahoo algorithm had been taking place over the past few days and will be completed soon. He has asked for feedback on the results… whether Yahoo will listen is another matter.

As of today Google will allow you to see and optionally disallow which links on your site have been identified as candidates for appearing as “sitelinks” directly in Google search results. (see Google’s press release)

What are Sitelinks?
Sitelinks are shown when a website is considered a leader in a particular search term. The sitelinks are a list of key navigational links on the site and they appear below the standard website listing (see snapshot). Read more…

StepForth is proud to announce that after careful review The Direct Marketing Association, a recognized and respected resource for marketers, has accepted StepForth’s white paper titled “Do it Yourself Social Media Marketing” into its approved marketing knowledge base.

The “Do it Yourself Social Media Marketing” white paper was written to educate business owners on the essentials methods required to harness the immense power of social media marketing. Read more…

In a press release issued by Microsoft Tuesday, the announcement of the first commercially available surface computer was made.

Expected to be released late this year, Surface will first appear in places like Casinos and hotels.

“With Surface, we are creating more intuitive ways for people to interact with technology,” Ballmer said. “We see this as a multibillion dollar category, and we envision a time when surface computing technologies will be pervasive, from tabletops and counters to the hallway mirror. Surface is the first step in realizing that vision.”

Read more…