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Wanted: Internet Marketers… in Sao Paulo Brazil

On my way into work today, I was listening to our nations broadcaster (otherwise known as the CBC) where I heard a fascinating story on Sao Paulo Brazil. It seems that this large Brazilian city has implemented “Lei Cidade Limpa” or “The Clean City Law” for those of you who don’t speak Spanish. The Clean City Law is meant to… well… clean up the city, removing all forms of pollution. To start, the mayor decided to remove “advertising pollution” and ban all forms of outdoor advertising (you should probably see where I am going with this post). As of April of this year, all major billboards, signage, window advertising, outdoor video screens, ads on busses, posters etc have been removed from the cityscape. Even pamphleteering is illegal! To date, almost $8 million in fines were handed out to violators of the new law.

So… If you speak Spanish, would like to re-locate to Brazil, own a scooter, and have some sense of how to market and sell paid search or pay-per-click advertising - I imagine you could snag yourself a job in Brazil.

The cynic/conspiracy theorist in me says Google has their red, yellow, green and blue hand in the middle of this little pie!

Here is a news story with more details

Microsoft Launches Tafiti.com - Experimental Search Site Developed With Silverlight

Is Microsoft becoming “cooler” than Google? Arguably Microsoft has sat back on it’s laurels when it came to the search and browser wars. In fact, they were falling behind with respect to everything internet related. Google on the other hand embraced the web, earned the hearts of the search public and innovated or acquired cool and useful technologies to help their user base.

Although late to wake up to the situation Microsoft is beginning to get their momentum back again. Starting with the release of ASP.NET several years ago, then with the IE7, enhancements to search, then with Silverlight and today with Tafiti.com.

Is Microsoft a sleeping giant just now waking up from it’s long slumber? I think so. I also think that Google’s lustre can’t last forever. Eventually, if Microsoft is persistent and relentless with innovating and marketing they will become a dominant force in the changing landscape of search.

So what’s so exciting about www.tafiti.com? Nothing really - it’s actually not that useful a search product. However, it’s really interesting to use and play around with even though it’s very buggy at this time. There are two features which will give you an idea of the “cool factor”. Watch this video demo to get an idea - the file is large, so just give it a few seconds to load.

Like I said, it’s not that useful if you’re trying to find results quickly and get something done. However, if you’re simply out to do some casual internet surfing - try it out. The experience is certainly different.

So, what does everyone else think? Is Microsoft on a current upward trend in popularity and innovation? Or am I completely wrong and off base?

Google Launches YouTube Advertising - Different From AdWords!

Google has recently launched their YoutTube advertising platform - with video ads overlayed toward the bottom of the screen. Ads appear 15 seconds after the video begins playing. However, this advertising platform is significantly different from the AdWords platform.

Currently the program is being rolled out very carefully across YouTube video as they are individually selecting videos to run the ads againts ensuring ads are not run against copy right infringing content.

For a complete run down of the differences between YouTube advertising and AdWords, see the Seeking Alpha posting titled “Google’s YouTube Ads Different Than AdWords“

The Internet Applications for this are ENDLESS! - Image Resizing

I came across this video through - where else - Facebook. Don’t let the boring video title scare you away, what this University of Israel professor has come up with has some remarkable applications both on and offline. If you don’t have the time to watch the video (it is about 2 1/2 minutes long) here is the concept. Images can either be cropped, re-sized with constrained proportions or re-sized with “squished” proportions. Usually the latter is a hallmark of either bad web design or bad print design. This university has developed a method to resize images by stretching vertically or horizontally and actually reduce what is in the image - but without loosing any of the images’ integrity or subject matter. Sounds confusing/too good to be true? Just watch the video and you will understand what I mean

Yahoo! Site Explorer Now Supports Dynamic URL Rewriting

Recently Yahoo! updated it’s crawler to support dynamic URL rewriting. By managing your site through Site Explorer, you can now instruct the Yahoo! crawler on which URL parameters you want them to ignore, or replace with a static value. It’s a fantastic feature that will make indexing of dynamic sites easier, and increase the index penetration for dynamic sites.

Now that this tool is available we’ll certainly be leveraging it for our clients as needed.

For more on this announcement visit the Yahoo! Search Blog posting.

Microsoft Launches BETA of Webmaster Portal

Microsoft has announced it’s invitation only BETA program for their new Webmaster Portal. Both Yahoo! and Google have had webmaster portals with tools to assist webmasters with the indexing and ranking of their sites. It’s nice to see Microsoft is actively staying in the game.

Microsoft’s announcement comes at a good time as webmasters and SEOs everywhere have been eagerly awaiting an announcement ever since Microsoft took the “link:” operator offline.

Some features of the Webmaster Portal include:

• Troubleshooting tools to ensure MSNBot is effectively crawling and indexing your site
• Sitemap creation, submission and ping tools
• Statistics about your website
• Consolidation of content submission resources
• New content and community resources

For the full blog posting visit the Live Search Weblog.

The Perception of Security Increases e-Commerce Conversions

When evaluating prospective clients sites we always look for Versign Seals of Security, and HackerSafe logos on e-commerce sites. Why? Because it’s a well known fact that these along with some other simple items will increase your e-commerce sales as they reassure potential customers that the site is safe and will now steal their money.

At the recent Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose, one of the sessions discussed this very topic. If you are running an e-commerce site we highly recommend you read this WebPro News posting about this session. It may just help you bottom line!

Leverage H1 and H2 For Search Engine Optimization and Usability

Many of you may be wondering what an H1 and H2 tag are. They are short forms for Heading 1 and Heading 2. In fact, there are multiple sublevels as well, for example h3, h4, etc. However, for most pages the H1 and H2 are all that are necessary. So what exactly is Heading 1? It’s an HTML tag that defines the main heading of any page, and it should be used in conjunction with H2 to define subheadings on a page.

Using style sheets you can define the look and feel of the H1 and H2 to fit within the style of your website.

There are two main reasons why you want to make use of these two special tags.

1. Usability
   We always want to be developing websites to ensure an exceptional user experience both from a content and usability perspective.First time visitors to a page always “scan” the page in a backwords “S” starting in the top left corner. By providing a clear and well written H1 and H2 tag, the visitor can grasp the topic of the page by scanning the headings much like scanning the page of a newspaper. After about 2 seconds of scanning the visitor decides if they’ve landed on the right page or not.It also serves to break up the content of the page into easily consumed sizes making it much easier for a user to read the page, and understand the meaning of each section of content.
2. The second reason is Search Engine Optimization, of course
   Search engine spiders are very sophisticated pieces of software, and continue to get smarter over time. Since the beginning, the’ve been programmed to parse the content of an HTML page and seperate the H1 and H2 tags from the rest of the page. They use the keywords in these tags to understand the topic of the content on each page. The H1 keywords define the most important overall meaning of the content, while H2 Keywords define the topics for those smaller sections of content.By reinforcing your pages most important keyword within these two tags you stand a much better chance of having that page rank well for the keyword.

Have a look at your website and see if your leveraging the H1 and H2 tags. The quickest way to do this is to “view the source” of your home page and do a text search to find “<H1″ or “<h1″ and “<h2″ or “<H2″ without the quotes of course. If you don’t find these tags then your not using them at all. If you find them, read the text between the opening and closing tags - it should be well written to reflect the topic of the page and include your most important keywords.

If you think you can do better - ask your webmaster, IT Department, or SEO firm to make the necessary changes as soon as possible!

Google News To Allow Comments!

Google News has announced that it will begin allowing people to post comments on articles shown on their News search site. Parties mentioned in the story would be allowed to post comments on the story after being authenticated by Google. Exact details on the authentication process have not been revealed. This new feature will likely raise the eyebrows of many people not to mention the newspapers themselves.

Google in recent months has been in some hot water with major newspapers who were frustrated with Google indexing their content. Given the heated waters we’re surprised that Google would consider adding fuel to the fire by launching this new feature.

Well it’s come as no surprise that some newspapers are not impressed. The LA Times story claims “It’s Not Journalism“. Personally, I think the feature is fine, but I won’t be surprised if it lands them deeper in trouble with the papers!

Google and Yahoo! Launch Click Fraud Educational Sites

Google and Yahoo! have launched their own Click Fraud websites dedicated to educating users of their pay per click platforms. The focus of these two new sites is to educate users of their pay per click systems about click fraud in general, what they are doing about it, and how you as a user can improve your chances of not being abused by click fraudsters.

Both sites offer some great information about Click Fraud and worth reading from time to time if you’re a Pay Per Click advertiser. Let’s just take a quick look at how both sites define Click Fraud, and then you can visit both sites to find out what else they have to say.

Yahoo’s definition of Click Fraud:

1. What is click fraud?
“Click fraud” is generally considered to be clicks made with bad faith, or for the sole purpose of generating a charge to the advertiser, with zero possibility of a legitimate site visit or transaction occurring. While we agree with this definition from a technical perspective, it is impossible to determine whether someone is clicking with bad faith. In other words, we can’t read users’ minds.

Instead, Yahoo! Search Marketing has to look at what identifiable behavior may indicate bad faith. In terms of identifiable behavior, we define “click fraud” as detected clicks by illegitimate bots and certain repetitive clicks. We have created sophisticated software, our proprietary Click Protection System, that attempts to identify this behavior and filter out related charges for these clicks, so that you are not billed for them. However, we do not disclose how we define repetitive clicks or the details about our proprietary technology, because we don’t want to educate those who are acting in bad faith.

It’s important to understand that traffic quality and click fraud are two very different things. The term “traffic quality” can be applied to all clicks, those that fall in the “click fraud” category and those that don’t, and refers to how well a click converts for an advertiser. Some factors of traffic quality include how well clicks convert from domestic and international users, and from our various distribution channels and products. We also consider receiving unexpected, increased amounts of traffic or traffic from unwanted sources to be traffic quality issues, and we will work with advertisers individually to address any specific traffic quality concerns, regardless of whether they are directly related to “click fraud.” It is important to us to bring good value to our advertisers, and we are working on many initiatives to ensure that you are getting the most value out of your clicks.

Google`s Definition of Click Fraud:

What are click fraud and invalid clicks?

You may have heard the terms ‘click fraud’ and ‘invalid clicks’ and wondered how or if they’re different. Here’s a definition of each:

• Click fraud refers to clicks generated with malicious or fraudulent intent.
• Invalid clicks are clicks on AdWords ads that Google suspects may constitute click fraud. Advertisers are not charged for these clicks.

While Yahoo! offers an extensive description of the topic, Google opts for their true form of simplicity. In fact, the Google site is actually very simplistic in nature compared to the Yahoo! site. Nevertheless, both sites offer some great information about the topic, and we encourage you to visit the sites and see for yourself.