Marketing Pilgrim

Nothing quite replaces experience and reputation when it comes to search engine marketing, but not everyone can make that claim. For those that either need some help learning about search or perhaps need some credibility assistance, the DMA has launched a certification program.

Lee Odden has the details.

While at SES in San Jose, one booth caught my attention and it belonged to PressFeed. It wasn’t the actual booth that caught my eye, but the promise of what PressFeed offers.

The company offers a service that allows anyone to quickly convert any web content to RSS. It’s a great opportunity for companies looking at ways of syndicating their content without having to start a blog or hire a developer.

Now there’s no excuse for not syndicating your press releases or new product additions.

TechCrunch is reporting Yahoo has acquired Jumpcut an online video editing service.

Here’s what Jumpcut has to say about the deal…

We have worked hard to pioneer great online video editing technology that can truly enhance the online video world by enabling anyone to become a creator. Joining forces with Yahoo! Video will provide the resources to bring Jumpcut users and our partners more great social media experiences. As part of Yahoo! we’ll be working on bringing video editing and remixing to everyone with an Internet connection.

And they have a cute video too!

Something worth checking out from TLA is the launch of Feedvertising. The new service allows you to control your own ads within your RSS feed. Very cool!

It’s somewhat amusing to read about the online ad industry seeing “slower” growth, then discover that the growth rate is still in double digits.

Internet ad spending is set to grow 26.8 percent this year to $15.9 billion for 2006, down slightly from last year’s rate of 30.3 percent, according to the latest research from eMarketer.

The minor slowing of growth is consistent with the 2.2 point drop from 2004 to 2005, and signals a maturing market, but one that can support sustainable growth, according to Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer.

The industry will only just double its size in the next 3-5 years - we’re all doomed, doomed I tell you!

ClickZ summarizes a new WebSideStory summary that looked at the conversion rate of paid search compared with organic search.

The study looks at traffic and conversion data from 20 business-to-consumer e-commerce sites during the first eight months of 2006. Paid search had a median order conversion rate of 3.4 percent, while organic search results produced a conversion rate of 3.13 percent. The data set included more than 57 million search engine visits.

It’s certainly interesting to highlight the actual conversion rate. However, it doesn’t help us too much because it doesn’t include the entire search cycle. For example, how many of those converting via paid searh, started their initial research by clicking on organic results?

I remember when Wallop was first “beta’d” by Microsoft and to paraphrase Shania Twain, “it didn’t impress me much.”

After being spun-off as its own company, Wallop is re-launching and promising to enhance the experience you get with other social networking sites.

Wallop operates as an invitation-only network and offers free profile customization that doesn’t require a person to delve into HTML code. However, people can also pay for interactive graphics and features called “mods,” created by Flash developers and designers.

Via CNET.

With all the recent buzz surrounding Facebook’s apparent talks with Yahoo, there’s been a lot to read about the social networkig site recently.

To me, I’ve always credited Facebook’s success to the fact that it’s an ultra cool space that is the exclusive ground of those in high school or college. After all, who wants to hang out in the same places 40+ year-olds do?

Now it seems Facebook is willing to risk that exclusivity in favor of more users and, likely, a higher valuation, by opening up the site to anyone and everyone.

It will either be the smartest move they make, or the worst one. Time will tell.

Via Sid.

Google’s taken the opportunity to explain their side of the recent Belgian court ruling.

Here’s precisely why the court case is somewhat ridiculous…

…showing snippets of text and linking users to the websites where the information resides is what makes them so useful. And after all, it’s not just users that benefit from these links but publishers do too — because we drive huge amounts of web traffic to their sites.

I’m not a user of Google Notebook, but if you are, you may be interested in some upgrades Google just announced.

It’s not a big surprise to learn from MarketingVOX that a law suit has been filed against AOL for the recent release of search data. It’s really simple math:

Large Tech Company + High Revenue + Screw-up = Law Suit

The suit, seeking class action status, was filed against AOL on Friday, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, writes CNET. The suit seeks at least $5,000 for every person of the 658,000 whose search data was exposed

And the likely winners? The attorneys!

Greg points to an article at Marketwatch which has created quite a stir with comments suggesting Google plans to downplay Froogle from here on out.

…Google intends to “de-emphasize” its own Froogle shopping search engine…Google intends for Froogle to no longer be a standalone Web site; instead its listings would be absorbed by other search features…

John Battelle manages to get a formal response out of Google on the subject.

Froogle is alive and well. We are continuing to integrate shopping and product search features into Google.com to make it as easy as possible for users to find product information through Google. We don’t have any more specifics to share publicly on how this will look down the line but we will make sure to let you know about any developments.

Reading between the lines, it looks like Froogle’s days as a standalone shopping portal are numbered.