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Facebook Home Arrives and Opinions Abound

posted on April 5, 2013

Facebook HomeFrom time to time a new announcement comes around that gets a ton of attention that is all over the board. Yesterday’s announcement by Facebook of a sort of Facebook phone has created plenty of discussion around the industry.

Let’s take a look at what the pundits had to say:

Gigaom’s Om Malik says plenty in the title of his post “Why Facebook Home bothers me: It destroys any notion of privacy“. He also laments:

This future is going to happen – and it is too late to debate. However, the problem is that Facebook is going to use all this data — not to improve our lives — but to target better marketing and advertising messages at us. Zuckerberg made no bones about the fact that Facebook will be pushing ads on Home.

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Google Taking Lion’s Share of Mobile Ad Dollars

posted on April 4, 2013

Mobile advertising is a growth industry. By how much depends on your source of information but no matter the source, if you don’t see a serious growth curve / upside then it’s not likely to be reliable.

Let’s take a look at what eMarketer sees as the future of growth for mobile ad revenue. Nice numbers even if you chopped them in half.

Mobile Ad Spend Forecast eMarketer

With this kind of growth you might suspect that there will be plenty to go around no matter the size of the advertising venue but in this case it will be a case of the rich getting richer. The rich being referred to is primarily Google by a large margin. Look at this chart and you will see that when it comes to mobile advertising Google is making the game quite lopsided.

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Experts Talk About The Future of Search

posted on April 3, 2013

While we know that SES NYC just happened last week we have taken some time (well actually Gareth Davies has) to sift through some of the knowledge that was given during SES London oh so many days ago (February to be exact). At this rate we’ll bring you updates for SES NYC in July but we’ll get better :-) . Thankfully, great information is still great information so enjoy!

Before this year’s Search Engine Strategies in London a question many business owners wanted an answer to was ‘Where are things headed in the next few years?’ Fortunately I had the pleasure of interviewing a number of the guest speakers, and so I asked them to gaze into an imaginary crystal ball.

Content

catherine-toole‘Content is exploding. In nearly 20 years I have never seem so much interest in content. People are finally putting budgets into it and you’ll see jobs like ‘content strategist’ being advertised. It shows no sign of abating and I think it will proliferate. I believe that people who come up with good content ideas that can run and run, are useable, search friendly, cross platform and can be maintained over time, will really have the power.’

Catherine Toole – stickycontent.com

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Is There Life Beyond Rankings?

posted on March 28, 2013

search engine rankingsWhether you call yourself an “SEO”, an “online marketer”, or an “inbound marketer”, you probably still keep one eye on search rankings most days. Unfortunately, the past couple of years haven’t been kind to those of us who watch rankings – personalization and localization have complicated the picture, the rise of (not provided) and Google’s crackdown on rank-tracking tools have taken away useful data, and a diversity of new advertising options and SERP features are pushing even the coveted #1 spot farther and farther down the page.

Is there a better way, and can we imagine life beyond rankings? I’m going to argue that rankings still have an important role, but I think we also have to broaden our view and consider more diverse metrics, including search traffic, aggregate rankings, and traffic diversity.

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The Cost of Privacy Helped Google’s Decision to End Reader

posted on March 25, 2013

google-logo1So for all of the conspiracy theories surroundings Google’s decision to shutter its popular (well, popular is a relative measurement isn’t it) Reader one of the main reasons could be a very practical one: the cost of privacy.

According to report from All Things D

Under CEO Larry Page, Google has made a practice of “spring cleaning” throughout all the seasons so it can narrow its focus. Reader was just a another bullet point on the latest closure list.

But the shutdown wasn’t just a matter of company culture and bigger priorities, sources said. Google is also trying to better orient itself so that it stops getting into trouble with repeated missteps around compliance issues, particularly privacy.

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Why Aren’t Small Business Owners Taking Advantage of Online Marketing?

posted on March 20, 2013

469994_antique_storeAs I travel around the web each day, I see a variety of ads. Many of them are banner ads reminding me of the effectiveness of cookie based technology. (Hey, look at that ad for Old Navy, I was just on their site this morning. What a coincidence.) Then there are the Facebook ads which I hardly notice and when I do, I find them irrelevant. Also the search results I see in Google (now that’s effective advertising) and the emails and social media updates I get from companies I follow.

That’s a lot of advertising and some of it is working because I’ve been known to click and buy things. But when I think about it, I realize that almost all of the ads I see in a day are for big companies and brand names. The last time I saw an ad for a local store it came out of a Val-Pak envelope.

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Mobile Searchers Do It At Night

posted on March 14, 2013

From multiple screens, we move to one screen and how people use their mobile devices to search. The numbers come from a new report called “Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions.” It was put together by Google with the help of Nielsen and it involves data from over 6000 mobile searches.

There’s a lot of data in this report, so I’m just going to touch on a few of the more interesting slides — like this one:

mobile search

Most mobile searches are conducted in the evening. I suppose this has to do with the fact that most mobile searches are personal, not work related. (Those are happening on a PC.) You’re going out for lunch, so you search for a coupon. You’re rushing home late, so you search for pizza delivery. Once you’re settled in for the night, you search for a plumber to fix the leaky faucet, tickets to the movies, and stuff you need to buy.