On August 20, 2010, Google announced a natural ranking algorithm change that yields a large number of search results from a single site for many branded queries. Currently, this change only applies to Google.com. Until now, Google normally only returned a maximum of two results per page from any one domain for any search query. Now, for a branded query like “microsoft windows”, for example, up to eight of the first-page natural search results could be from the same domain.
Effects of this algorithm change:
1. For manufacturers and official brand or product sites, expect Google branded traffic to increase
More of your pages are being returned for your branded queries, which should lead to more site traffic from those terms. Examine which pages are being displayed for the most popular branded queries to ensure you are presenting the most desirable pages to searchers. Full StoryGriswold Index: Predicting The Family Trip From Hell
Posted by Chuck Sharp | August 25th, 2010
Clark Griswold: Despite all the little problems it is fun isn’t it?
Ellen Griswold: No. But with every new day there’s fresh hope.So there I was… 3:00am in the morning driving around Sun Valley, Idaho, with my then two-year-old daughter trying to lull her back to sleep. I was so tired, I think I may have been crying a little. You see, traveling with little kids is painful. I mean, kick you in the groin painful. Or, I need a vacation from my vacation painful. It was that night that I came up with the Grizwold Index. So, this index is for that poor guy you see carrying the pack-n-play and the car seat through the airport. Or those haggard parents you see driving out of town with their minivan packed to the gills. Heaven help them.
The index is pretty simple. It takes into consideration the actual enjoyment the parents are going to have plus the memories the kids will make. This is divided by the hassle factor and cost of the trip. If you end up with a score that is greater than 2 you should go on the trip. A score between 0 and 2 you should travel at your own risk, while a trip that receives a score that is less than 0 should be avoided at all costs. I mean, you should stay home and save your kids and yourself from the mental scaring that will inevitably occur. Full Story
Search Insider: Google’s Shocking Change Of Heart On Net Neutrality
Posted by Dana Mellecker | August 20th, 2010
Rob Garner gives his take on Google’s shocking change of heart on Net Neutrality. When is a network not a network? When it is wireless, according to Google.
According to Garner:
A frequent warning heard from sociologists and network theorists is that “exclusion from networks” represents one of the greatest sociological and economic threats that future global societies could possibly encounter. In light of the recent pact between Google and Verizon on net neutrality, and their combined position that somehow “wireless internet networks are different,” one of the societies now at the crossroads of this dilemma is the United States. Full Story
SXSW 2011 Panel Picker – Poked, Liked & Re-Tweeted
Posted by Ryan Utter | August 20th, 2010
Learn more about one of our panelists, Alisa Leonard, and her panel “Poked, Liked & Re-Tweeted: A Google Love Story”
Here’s a little bit about the proposed panel, from Alisa herself:
For too long SEO and social pundits have battled it out – “social media creates links and visibility in search!” ”social is about conversation and engagement, screw search!” Will there ever be a true synergy between these two? The engines certainly think so and now more than ever search really does need social and social impacts search more than ever.
Click here to read the full post on Alisa’s blog, The Web is Social.
Exercising your right to choose: vote for our SXSW 2011 panels!
Posted by Sarah Gay | August 16th, 2010
South by Southwest 2010 wasn’t that long ago, but the planning has already begun for SXSW.2011! Last year, two iCrossing employees were chosen to speak: Adam Lavelle shared his thoughts on Connected Brands while Alisa Leonard explained the importance of The Synaptic Web.
This year, we’re looking to expand the iCrossing reach even further by hosting six different panels! But to get there, we’ll need your help! We’ve submitted our panel ideas, but WE’LL NEED YOUR VOTES to make sure they get chosen! Read on to check out the panels, or vote at the SXSW.2011 Panel Picker.
Each panelist will be explaining their panel in a video, and we’re kicking it off with the Mayor of Huckelberry Cafe, Heather White Laird: http://www.youtube.com/icrossing
Stay tuned for more videos!Curious what we’re offering? Here’s a brief description of all the iCrossing panels: Full Story
Social Media = Death of Microsites?
Posted by Edmund Wong | August 12th, 2010Have you noticed how brand marketers are driving their campaigns to social media sites more and more frequently? Or actually, these social media pages, tabs and channels are functioning more like campaign microsites.
For example, take Trident Gum. The other day I heard a radio ad for Trident. The call to action at the end? Find us on Facebook.com for more details. Even their banner ads drive to Facebook!
Toyota used YouTube as a major part of its marketing communication strategy for their Sienna minivan for a while. Even their iPad ads drive readers to Youtube.com/sienna. The Swagger Wagon rap videos are pretty hilarious. They have over 3 million channel views! Full Story
Google TV: Ready for Your Close Up?
Posted by Beth Fox | August 11th, 2010
With just a few months until the much-ballyhooed launch of Google TV, it’s time for those of us in the SEO industry to start thinking about how the merging of television and the Web on a single screen may change the focus of our natural search strategy – and the way in which it will impact the best-practices and recommendations we make to our clients. Basically, with Google Chrome (10.1) built in, Google TV will make the process of moving between our favorite websites and TV shows virtually seamless, transforming the television-of-yesteryear into a gaming device, a place to watch slide shows, a music player and much more.
Yes, many a naysayer is downplaying the impact that Google TV will have, even anticipating its inevitable failure, pointing to what seems to be a general disdain for set-top boxes (TiVo. Replay TV, Roku. Vudu, etc.) Conversely, just as many industry insiders believe that it will be a force to be reckoned with in the search market… one that will open up an entirely new can of spiders, so to speak, when it comes to connecting brands with their targeted audiences.
With that said, from a search perspective, there are a few things we may want to focus on leading up to the launch of Google TV:
Better Video Optimization – The melding of a search browser with television will, no doubt, put even more of an emphasis on video optimization. There should be a bigger focus on the quality of the videos themselves, and their ability to achieve higher ranking in search results. During the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle a few months ago, Google guru Matt Cutts encouraged anyone who publishes videos to quickly create sitemaps: Full Story
Google’s Modified Broad Match – Considerations
Posted by Ty Martin | August 6th, 2010
The “modified broad match” feature is a new match type that provides greater reach than phrase match, and more control than broad match. It enables advertisers to place a plus symbol (+) in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword to require that the word or a close variant always appear in the user’s search. This differs from traditional broad match by excluding synonyms and related searches. iCrossing’s internal paid search management system, Merchantize, supported the feature on the day the beta was released in the U.K. and Canada, so our U.K. client teams got a head start in vetting its potential to improve performance. Since the global release on July 14, all of our worldwide offices have been engaged in testing and learning.
As is often the case, Google is leading the way with feature enhancements and we would wager that MSN will follow suit. Initial benefits gleaned from leveraging this in Google will likely pay-off with similar, proportional impact on MSN (which will be powering Y! search by end of year, in all likelihood).
We are leveraging this feature in both our technology and keyword bid differentiation strategy. Merchantize is designed to mirror keywords by multiple dimensions so that we may differentiate bids based on cross-sections of performance, and make micro-investments in areas with the greatest marginal return. The new match type gives us another layer of differentiation to focus investment on the most profitable search queries. Full Story
AT&T and Verizon Joint Venture Gets Serious About Mobile Payments
Posted by Edmund Wong | August 3rd, 2010
According to Bloomberg, AT&T and Verizon are planning a joint venture to accelerate the pipe dream of turning our smartphones into e-wallets. How big is this? H-U-G-E!
First, if it’s enough to get two arch rivals together at the same table (putting aside their red and blue coverage maps), it’s serious.
Second, the stock price of both Visa and Mastercard, who control 82% of credit card transactions, took a 1.5-3.5% hit yesterday on this news because they are on the losing end of such a venture.
Third, smartphone adoption is growing like gang busters. The iPhone 4 is selling like hotcakes despite its antenna issue, and every hot new Android phone (e.g., Droid Incredible, Evo, Droid X) is on back-order soon after launch. Research firm Canalys predicts smartphone adoption will reach 48% by 2013 in the U.S.
Fourth, consumers are getting used to mobile banking. According to Mercatus, more than half of U.S. consumers will use mobile financial services within five years. Full Story
Microsoft Street Slide View
Posted by Reid Spice | August 2nd, 2010
This is actually one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen from Microsoft. Yes, better than Clippy the Paperclip.
Street Slide View presents a clever, well thought-out improvement to the navigation and movement challenges shared by Google’s infamous wi-fi stealing Street View and Bing’s excellent, but not yet widely available, Streetside. By allowing a zoomed-out speedy browsing by-the-block, it’s suddenly easy to move quickly through an entire neighborhood. They’ve also done a nice job overlaying some helpful augmented reality data sources like street names, addresses and store logos (lots of commercial opportunity there, of course).
It’s definitely worth three minutes of your time. At this point, I’m not sure when it will be available but I hope it’s soon. You can read the full story on Read Write Web.
Also be sure to enjoy the voiceover, delivered in a plastic, robotic voice offering fascinating tidbits about “dynamically adapting multi-perspective panoramas.” Sheesh. Full Story
TBL: The Year Open Data Went Worldwide
Posted by Alisa Leonard | July 29th, 2010This post first appeared on Alisa’s blog, The Web is Social.
I love everything about this. #Dataportability
Full Story
Touche: BYU Takes Cue from @OldSpice
Posted by Alisa Leonard | July 26th, 2010This post first appeared on Alisa’s blog, The Web is Social.
Of all the copycats I expected post the @OldSpice hub bub, my alma mater, Brigham Young University, was perhaps the last brand I expected to get in on the meme game. For any of you who might be familiar with BYU’s uber conservative culture, it might be a bit of a surprise, but I have to say well done indeed, copycats
Full Story
Anatomy of Web Analytics
Posted by Stan Pugsley | July 23rd, 2010Web analytics consists of technology and techniques to measure what is happening on a website. It seeks to help improve the site from both a visitor and owner’s perspective.
With the help of several people on the iCrossing analytics team, I created this image to show how it all fits together. Let me know what you think!
Click here to view the full size graphic.Full Story
@Oldspice #FTW
Posted by Alisa Leonard | July 14th, 2010
This post first appeared on Alisa’s blog, The Web is Social.
Did you hear that? Another explosion somewhere out on the interwebs has happened, and this one smells like Old Spice.
Yesterday Old Spice launched, quite innocuously, a campaign that has now reached veritable meme status, where this message appeared quite innocently on the Old Spice Twitter feed:
“Today could be just like the other 364 days you log into twitter,” it read.
“Or maybe the Old Spice man shows up.”What happened next is internet viral gold. Immediately the Old Spice Man, Isaiah Mustafa, began fielding questions from Twitter, Reddit, Yahoo Answers, YouTube, etc, the replies to which were short, pithy video responses created on the fly. The clincher was that of the 115 videos produced, many of them were responses to media, digital influencers and celebrities alike. Major news media, Twitter, the blogosphere, and your inbox are all a flurry with buzz about this campaign. It worked. They got us all talking (and maybe even buying).
It has long been a mantra of the Web and digital advertising that “content is king.” Many of the accolades showered on this Old Spice campaign have been directed toward the content itself, and how engaging and awesome it is; how it is engaging influencers in real-time.
Now while the content itself is great, let us not underestimate the mechanism by which this great content could be surfaced, engaged with and cared about. Full Story
Focusing on Fundamentals
Posted by Dave Corchado | June 22nd, 2010
Note: This post first appeared on infoBOOM.
In the current economic environment, most technology leaders have seen their operating budgets squeezed, or spending for internal projects eliminated. Still, while we are all asked to do more with less that doesn’t mean we have to stop making progress. A downturn presents an excellent opportunity for an organization to look inward, and shift focus back to the fundamentals.
Back to basics
One basic initiative I have taken on over the last two years has been a renewed emphasis on customer service. Some simple ways we have accomplished this goal: Full StoryWhat We Can Learn From MacGyver
Posted by Chuck Sharp | May 27th, 2010
Viewpoint: Embracing analytics will improve creative output.
I recently read a column that claimed “metrics are killing creativity”. To the contrary, I believe this resistance to metrics is killing creativity.
In 2009, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and their members saw the appetite for impression-based display advertising sour. Their response was to blame a new era of analytics. Their argument was that science and math had put a damper on creative potential. Basically what happened is when the analytics stopped supporting their cause, they decided to vilify analytics. What’s funny is that better analytics through attribution modeling was really the answer.
Through attribution modeling, credit can be given to channels that customers touch or see before their last click. For example, if a customer first comes to the site after seeing a display ad, but later converts on a paid search term, an attribution model assigns credit to both the paid search keyword and the display ad. Without an attribution model, the paid search keyword gets all the credit. Full Story
OMS Phoenix
Posted by Ryan Utter | May 21st, 2010
It turned out to be quite an eventful day at the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) in Phoenix yesterday. A couple of the highlights for me included a great presentation by our VP of Strategy, Brian Haven, on “building connected brands in a connected world”, as well as long-time friend and former colleague Mike Corak, speaking on “search + social content strategies”. It was great to catch up with everyone at the event, thanks to all that attended.
If you missed the show, I encourage you to check out this great post-event summary by our SEO strategist, Nick Roshon, “10 Things I Learned at OMS Yesterday”. Full Story
Foursquare Everywhere: You’re on Bing Maps!
Posted by Nick Roshon | May 10th, 2010
I received an email from a colleague the other day alerting me that my “internet celebrity status” has reached new heights. The subject read, “You’re on Bing Maps! LOL”.
Sure enough, my ugly mug was on the map for iCrossing’s Scottsdale office, along with a note that I left for visitors wishing to check in to the parking lot (it really is just a parking lot). The “Foursquare Everywhere” feature was officially rolled out in March according to the Bing Community Blog. However, with all of the various updates to Google, Bing, and even Yahoo!, I must admit I hadn’t heard much about this feature, nor played around with it much, despite being a big fan of Foursquare and Bing. How it works is pretty straightforward: when you open the Foursquare Everywhere application within Bing Maps, little yellow squares will pop up with tips, Mayorship information, and even recent check-ins to certain venues when you click on them. Full Story
Google Search – Web vs. Local?
Posted by Jason Stinson | May 10th, 2010
We all know that Google has the largest share of the search engine market. After all, Google has local domains in more than 100 countries, many of which offer options for searching the entire Web or the local pages only. This poses an interesting question, how many people select the localized pages option when searching the Web? Contrary to what you may think, the evidence suggests that not very many people use localized pages.
The idea stemmed from a client with international presence, posing a question related to their generic visibility, or lack thereof, within the localized pages of Google U.K. While their natural visibility is excellent within Google.com, as well as Google.co.uk (Web), rankings within the local pages are lagging far behind. In order to be visible in the localized results, it would require switching the hosting location in Google Webmaster Tools, thereby risking current visibility within the .com engine. Another option would be to build a .co.uk website that is hosted locally, which would be a quite a considerable investment. Full Story
It’s no longer good enough!
Posted by Stephen Thompson | May 7th, 2010
Note: This post first appeared on Stephen Speaks’s posterous.
A Reminder
In my career I’ve learned how tough it often is to instill new ideas into the minds of others. It takes stubborn and repetitive evangelism to promote new ways of thinking. Personally I get a tad frustrated when, after saying something for a year, someone suddenly perks up with their own personal epiphany of the identical thought I’ve been promoting. But hey, if that’s what it takes…
So the subject of this post is about trying, yet again, to get a principle seared in minds. It’s one more reminder to wake up and have ‘your epiphany’ sooner. Full Story
Google Analytics’s New Ecosystem – Ready for the Enterprise?
Posted by Stan Pugsley | May 6th, 2010
Yesterday, at the annual eMetrics Summit in San Jose, Google Analytics announced its new Web analytics “ecosystem”. My question through the whole presentation was simply, “what’s next?” Is their product roadmap directed toward the small business, non-profit and personal websites that have been the traditional core of their user base? Or are they moving toward a head-to-head battle with Omniture for the enterprise customers?
From their announcements, the direction seems to be mainly towards better support for the small to mid-size websites. Full Story
HTML5 = Death to Flash and Silverlight? Not yet!
Posted by Shiva Vannavada | May 3rd, 2010
Some of my colleagues and friends went to SXSW and came back with a new buzz word “HTML5″. And there were a lot of questions asked: Is HTML5 going to kill Flash? Can you now play videos without using Flash? Can we use HTML5 now? I said, sure why not? When we started the creative design process for a new websites the same concept was coming up, “let’s use HTML5!”. Only this time I said, not today my creative friend, come back tomorrow.
There is a lot of hype surrounding HTML5, and most recently because of Steve Jobs giving his POV on why iPad won’t (or can’t) support Flash. Most people that are trying to compare HTML5 and plug-in technologies (Flash/Silverlight), do not have a clear understanding of what HTML5 is exactly. Full Story
Bye Bye Flashie
Posted by Heather WhiteLaird | April 30th, 2010
Yesterday’s announcement from Steve Jobs outlining the reasons why Apple does not support Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash software on the iPhone, iPod and iPad answered many questions for geeks and technophiles everywhere. However, the clarity he brought those folks only contributed to the confusion and complexity for others, specifically website owners and marketers.
According to Flashmagazine.com, as of 2008, between 30-40% of all sites were written in Flash, although in some countries, such as China, the percentage was much higher, around 67%. And very likely that percentage has only increased in the past two years. This means millions of sites will appear with a blank screen on those devices. Currently Flash has a 99% penetration rate worldwide, so Jobs’s move to eradicate it from Apple products is a bold and daring move. Full Story
A Proposed Brand Architecture for HP and Palm
Posted by Edmund Wong | April 30th, 2010
Now that HP has bought Palm, there is lots of speculation about what will happen to their employees, their webOS, their devices, etc. But I’m intrigued about the brand strategy and architecture for these two iconic brands.
There are a few branding options for Palm:
Palm - Keep it as Palm and change nothing. This is unlikely and is not a good idea. HP should associate its brand with Palm so that it can build greater brand awareness in the mobile space, which is a primary benefit of acquiring a company in a space you don’t have a strong presence in. The other reason why the child brand is left alone after acquisition is if the parent brand is a liability. For example, luxury brands often aren’t closely aligned to a mainstream parent brand. For example, Ritz-Carlton (and Marriott) and Lexus (and Toyota). But Palm is not a luxury brand. Full Story
Tracking Display Impressions in an Attribution Model
Posted by Chuck Sharp | April 28th, 2010Tracking display impressions represents one of the more complicated and important aspects of attribution tracking. So how is it done? Here is a high-level overview:
View more presentations from iCrossing.
Full Story
iCrossing POV: Google Announces Preferred Adwords API Pricing
Posted by Chris Wallace | April 27th, 2010
Google announced yesterday that they will introduce an improved method for managing the fees associated with third party API interactions to Adwords and GCN (Google Content Network) services. Google will offer API partners credits based on the volume of media spend of each partner. Credits will be applied to accrued API usage fees. This improvement will become effective on July 1, 2010.
As an agency or a developer of SEM tools, eligibility requires two qualifications:
- Company is a Google AdWords Certified Partner
- Company’s AdWords API-based tools remain in compliance with the AdWords API terms and conditions, including the required minimum functionalityFull Story
Site Speed in Google Search
Posted by Shiva Vannavada | April 27th, 2010
Last week Google announced that they have incorporated site speed as one of the new signals in their search algorithm. Site speed means how fast the site responds to web request, in this case to Google bot.
There have been few inquiries from internal iCrossing team members, as well as some of our clients on how much impact this new signal is in terms of the overall SEO initiative and if there are any immediate steps they should take so that the ranking does not fall. The simple answer to this question is: there is no need to panic. The site ranking will not slide based on this new signal. The reason is that Google has more than 200 signals as part of the search algorithm, and the site speed carries just one percent of the overall weight. Relevancy of the page, back links and clean markup are still highly valued, and as long as the website is following the best practices recommended by iCrossing’s SEO team, there is not much to worry about this new signal. Full Story
Five Reasons to Display a Google Places QR Code
Posted by Eric Sidone | April 20th, 2010
Yesterday, while updating a retail client’s Google Local information I noticed the option to add a QR Code to the listing. “Eureeka!” I thought to myself as I pondered the value of such information to an actual human. In natural search optimization we tend to think of people in terms of internet users. This means that much of our focus is on consumers who are in front of a computer or on an electronic device. Many of us may be aware of Google’s efforts to tie Adwords into traditional print advertising with QR Codes. Bringing the digital world offline or vice versa is one of the last great digital struggles, and was one reason that Google’s efforts to pull print readers onto the Web was unimpressive. At first glance, this effort to bring QR Codes to Place Pages appears to be one of the standard Google strategies, “rinse and repeat.” The search giant is great at releasing beta products, testing, improving and re-launching them as something else, something better. Full Story
We’re Honored
Posted by Rachel Pasqua | April 19th, 2010
The Webby Awards are always a big deal (it’s pretty much the Oscars of online) but we’re especially excited about the 2010 competition. This year, we’ve been recognized for our mobile work with our social search application for the iPhone, SayWhat? – if you haven’t tried it out yet, now’s the time.
It really started out as a side-project, with a bunch of us talking about searching social spaces on your mobile. We were all frustrated that there wasn’t a single place where we could search our favorite social networks in aggregate so we decided, literally, to roll our own. A handful of us pitched in hours in between other app development projects and we were delighted when we got accepted by iTunes and could actually use it. We were even more delighted when we raked in a few thousand downloads the first few weeks out. If you’re at all familiar with the mobile application space, you’ll know that even getting a few hundred downloads is a challenge. And free, branded apps don’t have much of a shelf life. Months after launch we’re still adding new downloads and seeing active daily users. Full Story
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