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Serph Expanding Online Reputation Monitoring Beta

posted on January 30, 2007

Over at Pronet Advertising, Cameron tells us that “Serph’s Up”.

Serph is a new reputation monitoring tool, they have been working on for a few months, that was previously in a closed beta. As of today, they’re making the beta more readily available for anyone looking to try it out.

It’s a welcome addition to the toolbox of anyone looking to track their online reputation, but it’s somewhat basic in it’s offering. There’s really not that many features at this point. You enter the keyword, wait a few seconds while Serph scours the various social media sites, then view the results. After that, you have the choice of subscribing to the RSS feed for the query or viewing recommended results for similar queries.

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Google Upgrades Mini Enterprise Search Appliance

posted on January 30, 2007

Google has taken the younger sibling of its Google Search Appliance for corporations, Google Mini, and added a number of new features.

According to the press release, new features include:

– Secure Search

Specially enhanced to support the information-sharing needs inside of small businesses and departmental workgroups, the Google Mini offers document and user-level security across all business content.

– Google OneBox for Enterprise

Introduced last year as part of the Google Search Appliance, the Google OneBox for Enterprise feature lets businesses provide secure access to any information – such as contact and calendar info, HR benefits, sales leads, or purchase order status – through the convenience of a Google search box.

– Site Search Improvements

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Why We Can’t Trust Click Fraud Numbers

posted on January 30, 2007

Back in December, I caused a little bit of a ruckus when I posted information from Google that suggested click fraud rates were a fraction of a percent. The majority of readers and linkers suggested that the rate was far too low and that you couldn’t trust data supplied by the search engine.

Fast forward six weeks and we find ourselves confronted with new data from Click Forensics that suggests industry click-fraud rates have increased to 14.2 in Q4, versus 13.8% in Q3. Bids for amounts over $2.00 achieved click-fraud rates of 20.9%.

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Welcome New Pilgrim Partner – Best of the Web Directory

posted on January 29, 2007

Time for one quick post to welcome the latest Pilgrim Partner and sponsor, Best of the Web Directory.

I’m excited to have such a great company represented on Marketing Pilgrim. BOTW is the internet’s oldest web directory and one of the most authoritative. If your site, or your client’s, is not already listed, you should head over there immediately!

If you’re a blogger, they have a directory just for you too.

We have just a couple of ad slots left, so email me if you’re interested.

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Gearing up for Election 2008: the PPC Campaign

posted on January 29, 2007

Presidential hopefuls for 2008 have already started campaigning online. With websites, blogs, vlogs from everyone from John Edwards to Sen. John McCain, the Internet is beginning to be inundated with ’08′s hopefuls—except in one area: pay-per-click.

Daily Kos reports Sunday on the pay-per-click race so far:

Republicans seem to be first out of the starting gate in the paid search arena.

[Mitt] Romney is clearly the most aggressive advertiser with his name displaying on searches for himself and five other candidates. I wonder if his neglect of the rest of the field (including Gingrich) is a clue as to his opinion of their competitiveness or likelyhood [sic] of entering the race. Romney and McCain are the only candidates to advertise on competitor’s search terms.

The most striking observation is that none of the leading Democrats are advertising at all. Obviously, it is still early, but these ads aren’t expensive and they can generate traffic and help to channel prospective supporters. Republicans are in this game by themselves. [emphasis added]

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CBS Turns Down $50m Booble.com Super Bowl Ad

posted on January 29, 2007

Do you remember the adult search engine Booble.com, which originally launched with a logo that looked very similar to Google’s?

Not only is the site still around, but it offered CBS $50 million to air a Super Bowl ad. CBS – not looking for any fines – turned them down.

Booble claims that their commercial is far “tamer” than the GoDaddy add which ran in 2005, and says their commercial is pretty funny (which Super Bowl ads are not?) and features a woman catching her husband trying to secretly check out a few adult sites (I don’t think many wives would think that’s funny, would yours?). Booble credits the tight commercial restrictions to the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” a few years ago.

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Would You Trust Your Social Security Number to a Search Engine?

posted on January 29, 2007

StolenID Search is a new search engine that claims to tell you if your personal information has been stolen or shared on the web. An offering of TrustedID, StolenID Search scours more than 2 million pieces of information, to see if you’ve been compromised.

Here’s the problem I see with the service. Go and check it out for yourself. All you have to do is enter your credit card or social security number and let StolenID Search do the rest.

Are you frickin kidding me?

Do you seriously think I’m going to enter my SSN into a search engine I know nothing about. Even AOL and Google have a hard time keeping personal data safe, yet you expect me to trust you with my data?