This session looked at ways to better liaise with web developers in the search marketing promotional cycle.

Nathan Buggia – Microsoft

Nathan went through some examples of internal optimisation that the Live team were faced with. One example was that Microsoft had a product that they knew by its full technical name – however online most people were searching for the abbreviated initials ‘Moss’. So whilst originally Microsoft were optimising for the internal long name, the customer base was actually searching for Moss. As a result people searching for ‘MOSS’ were going to affiliate type websites for MOSS and not to the official company pages. Once Microsoft realised what was happening they began to optimise their pages for the keywords users were searching for. The importance of understanding what users are looking for are key whether you’re an in-house SEO or working as part of an agency.

Did you miss it? What do you mean, "did I miss what?" Pilgrim’s Picks of course!

Pilgrim’s Picks was put into comfortable retirement when we launched the new design–it now spends its days playing shuffleboard with Linky Goodness. But, having just got back from a client trip–and today’s news being somewhat shallow, I thought I bring it back for a special edition.

• When was the last time you thought of using Digg? For me, the social voting site is rarely on my mind, but that might change with the rumored addition of a voting toolbar that borrows from StumbleUpon’s success.
• Imitation is the theme of the day, with TripAdvisor launching a travel search engine that will compete with Kayak to find you the best deals on air fares.

In a story that seems to have flown under the radar during this busy week, Google has applied to be a third party as the EU looks into Microsoft’s apparent stranglehold on the browser market. I am not a lawyer so this whole third party idea was new to me. Whatever it is though the WSJ reports that

By applying to become a third party, Google is trying to gain the ability to see the details of the charges against Microsoft and allow it to submit its observations to European regulators.

Google is now placing paid search ads in the news results. Whether it’s a response to the economy of just the next step it probably is considered to be a long time coming. As the search industry takes some hits due to the economy there will be more efforts to put more ads in front of more people. It seems a bit surprising that it has taken this long to happen anyway.

Paid Content tells about the story and points to CNET seeing some glitches early on as it relates to relevancy of the ads. The example that CNET points to is for the search “spring training” which yielded 1 out of three results being in the ballpark. CNET’s use of a search term that can be ‘confused’ with a hot online keyword like training though is playing hardball for sure. I tried a few more normal / regular searches and the ads were spot on regarding relevancy.