Posts Tagged ‘search engine’
Monday, December 7th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Have you heard that Google is giving travelers free wireless-network access in 47 airports through January 17? What a great Christmas present! That’s a pretty smart move on Google’s part. They’re making online customers happy and generating publicity at the same time. It’s a win-win scenario. However, there could be something beneath the surface of this goodwill effort.
I read about this interesting development in the CNET News article “Google’s holiday gift: Free airport Wi-Fi.” Google started doing this in November, so that’s two and a half solid months of free Wi-Fi for flyers in those airports. If you want to see if your local airport is included in this promotion, you can check out Google’s Free Holiday Wi-Fi website. It has a helpful map and a list of all of the participating airports.
The airports near Burbank, California and Seattle will get free Wi-Fi from now on through Google. The promotion won’t end at the January 15 cutoff date like it will for the other 45 airports.
Perhaps Google chose those two locations because they are close to Microsoft’s (their biggest competitor) stronghold in Redmond, Washington and their own headquarters in Mountain View, California.
The Google Map containing all of the airports with free Wi-Fi is the copyright of Google.
Tags: Airport, article, google, internet, news, search engine, Submit Solution, Travel, web
Posted in Search Engines | No Comments »
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Happy Thanksgiving! I would love to write an entire blog entry on this wonderful holiday, but instead I’m going to talk about another celebration: Firefox’s fifth birthday.
Imagine trying to beat Microsoft at its own game. Microsoft, the giant of software and Web browsers, seemed all but unstoppable in its dominance of the Internet with its Internet Explorer browser five years ago. However, a small browser, which was originally called Phoenix, debuted on November 9, 2004 and started giving Explorer a run for its money.
We now know this Web browser as Firefox. And it just turned five years old. Better late than never, I’ll wish Firefox a happy birthday!
I talked a little about Firefox in my Submit Solution blog entry, “Google Chrome is the best Web browser.” I mentioned that it’s my favorite browser, even if it’s not exactly as fast as Chrome.
I read about Firefox’s anniversary in the Webware article, “After 5 years, Firefox faces new challenges.”
Many factors led up to the swift success of the Firefox browser. Microsoft got a little lazy on creating new features for Explorer. Plus, viruses were specifically designed to target Explorer, giving Internet users a strong incentive to try something new. Right on cue, Firefox arrived with its innovative tabbed interface, customizability and popup ad blocker. It was an instant hit, receiving 10 million downloads in the first month alone.
You can read the rest of this blog entry in the Submit Solution Web Design Blog on December 1, 2009. It will be entitled, “Firefox fights fresh foes after 5 years.” The photo of the Firefox birthday cake is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Christopher Blizzard.
Tags: Chrome, computer virus, Firefox, google, growth, holiday, Microsoft, msn, search engine, Submit Solution, success, Web Browser
Posted in Web Design | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 20th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Optimizing your website’s content for search engines costs about half as much as relying solely on a paid-search campaign for getting customers to your site. So says a recent study by Frommer’s Unlimited I read about in the Travolution article, “WTM: Rich content ‘more cost-effective than PPC’.”
Of course, the main flaw I saw in this study is that it analyzes SEO and PPC results separately when many ecommerce companies use a combination of the two. SEO and PPC have different strengths and weaknesses. SEO is slower but more cost-efficient while PPC is fast, but each click costs money.
It’s essential for a website’s long-term future for it to have strong content that is designed to attract search engines’ attention and increase its ranking in their search results. But that doesn’t mean PPC is irrelevant or too expensive for companies to take advantage of in their Internet-marketing campaigns.
According to Frommer’s study, it costs about 17 cents per visitor to optimize a site’s content. On the other hand, it costs about 33 cents per visitor through PPC ads.
You can find the rest of this blog entry in the Submit Solution Paid Search Blog on November 24, 2009. It will be entitled, “PPC clicks cost more than SEO.” The photo of the SEO, PPC Scrabble game is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of therichbrooks.
Tags: Ecommerce, Paid Search, PPC, search engine, search engine optimization, SEO, study, Submit Solution, website
Posted in Pay-Per-Click, SEO | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Google Chrome is the best Web browser by far, according to a study by Jacob Gube, the founder and chief editor of Six Revisions. Chrome v. 3 beat Firefox v. 3.5, Safari v. 4, Opera v.10 and Microsoft Explorer v. 8. Take a look at the results below.
You should definitely check out the whole chart by clicking on this link to the blog entry, “Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers.” Fascinating stuff. I’ll discuss some of the highlights and their impact on ecommerce and Internet marketing.
I’m a Firefox user, myself, so some of this study’s results came as a surprise to me. I’m not sure if they will change my mind about which browser I use right now, but it’s definitely helped me think more about why I prefer one over the others. Here are some of the highlights of the study’s findings:
JavaScript Speed
Chrome won this competition with an average download time of JavaScripts in just 542.3 milliseconds. Safari was No. 2 with 863.9 milliseconds and Firefox was No. 3 with 1,230.6 milliseconds. Explorer was last with a comparatively long download time of 6,305.5 milliseconds.
JavaScripts are important because they are heavily used on websites like Digg, as well as in Gmail. It’s no surprise Google is the leader in this category because it definitely wants people to be able to quickly use its own applications.
You can read the rest of this blog entry in the Submit Solution Website Design Services Blog on November 16. It will be entitled, “Google Chrome is the best Web browser.” The graph of the results of this study is the copyright of Jacob Gube and Six Revisions.
Tags: Ecommerce, Firefox, google, internet, Internet Marketing, Microsoft, research, search engine, study, Submit Solution, web, Web Browser, website
Posted in Web Design | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Google could soon change the rules of keyword Internet marketing with the debut Have you heard? Google and Bing are adding new social-media search capabilities to their search engines in an attempt to keep up with these innovative websites. Bing already has a beta version of its new search engine designed specifically for Twitter results while Google is holding back at the moment.
Google and Microsoft are caught in an escalating fight over who will dominate the search-engine market for social-media sites like Twitter and Facebook. I read about this in the PC World article, “Real-Time Search: Google and Bing Rivalry Intensifies on Facebook and Twitter.” This article refers to the Google-Bing rivalry as a chess match. Quite an apt metaphor, in my opinion, because I love all of the strategy that goes into a seemingly simple chess game.
Social media has been a thorn in the side of major search engines for a few years now. Facebook and Twitter are simply updated too often and too fast for search engines to keep up with them. It looks like that might be changing, though.
You can find the rest of this blog entry on the Submit Solution SEO Blog on Monday, November 2, 2009. The photo of the chess match is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of marcusrg.
Tags: article, Bing, facebook, google, growth, internet, Microsoft, news, online, positive, search engine, Social Media, Submit Solution, twitter
Posted in Search Engines, Social Media | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
In September, Google introduced a new way for its customers to buy and sell online display ads. It’s called the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and it allows Internet marketers to find a variety of Web pages to advertise on and quickly make a bid. This speeds up the process for both advertisers and publishers looking for ad revenue.
I heard about this development in a Wall Street Journal article, entitled “Google Unveils Market for Display Ads.”
Google has literally thousands of partner websites scattered across the Web that display its online ads. However, Google has never been very good at display advertising. It bought DoubleClick back in 2007 for $3.1 billion and has been trying to come up with a good way to jump into this part of the paid-search market. This appears to be its big move.
This isn’t the first online-advertising exchange service. Actually, other major search engines, like Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL have had them for some time, though none of them has been able to make them particularly big or useful, yet. Maybe Google will find a way to make this exchange service popular and profitable.
You can find the rest of this blog entry in the Submit Solution Paid Search Blog on October 20, 2009. The photo of the fiery wok is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of liber.
Tags: article, google, Internet Marketing, news, Paid Search, Pay-Per-Click, PPC, search engine, Submit Solution, wall street journal
Posted in Pay-Per-Click, Search Engines | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
By Robert Lockard
The other day, I had an image in my mind of a strange object and I wanted to find a picture of it online. The only problem was I didn’t have a clue what it was called. The image in my head was of a scene in “Superman II” when General Zod’s henchman Non is in the Oval Office and he’s staring intently at something. It’s five metal balls tied to strings in a row and the ones on either end keep hitting the four still balls, causing the ball on the other end to bounce away and come back again.
Maybe you already know what I’m talking about.
I turned to one of my coworkers here at eHarbor, Inc. and asked her to help me. She could picture it, as well, but she couldn’t put her finger on the name. I tried searching for “metal ball attached to strings hitting each other” on Google, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. Luckily, my resourceful coworker found it on Amazon.com, I believe. I could now put a name to an image – Newton’s cradle!
This story illustrates my need for a visual search engine and not simply a text-based one. Luckily, Microsoft and Google are both heading in that direction. I read about their efforts in a CNN article entitled, “Microsoft, Google expand search-engine tools.”
You can find the rest of this blog entry on the Submit Solution SEO Blog on October 6, 2009. The photo of Newton’s cradle is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of ƒяαиcєscα яσsє.
Tags: CNN, Fun, google, image, internet, movie, msn, new, photo, search engine, Submit Solution
Posted in Movies, Search Engines | No Comments »
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Is Facebook starting to die? That’s the topic of an astonishing New York Times article, entitled “Facebook Exodus.” Author Virginia Heffernan starts by pointing out:
The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July. But while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing – some of them ostentatiously.
I’ve written about Facebook several times in the eHarbor Blog, usually noting its strength and rapid growth. Along with Twitter, it is leading the social-media revolution – or fad – that could change search engines and other aspects of the Internet. This article grabbed my attention and demanded I discuss it.
You should definitely check out the New York Times article because it tells five stories about individuals who left Facebook for a variety of reasons. They are all quite compelling. One felt his privacy was violated by Facebook, and another felt she was wasting too much time on the website.
The feelings of privacy violation are completely understandable, and perhaps even unavoidable. Facebook is a social network so its information is not meant to be completely private. Perhaps people’s concerns are just the result of their own carelessness in posting too much information or not studying the rules to keep it hidden. Or maybe it’s a combination of shifting, hidden or hard-to-understand rules, as well as people’s decisions not to read the fine print.
The last paragraph in the New York Times article sums it all up nicely:
Is Facebook doomed to someday become an online ghost town, run by zombie users who never update their pages and packs of marketers picking at the corpses of social circles they once hoped to exploit? Sad, if so. Though maybe fated, like the demise of a college clique.
You can find the rest of this blog entry on the new Social Media Blog on Submit Solution when it is published. The new Submit Solution redesign is almost ready, and it will get most of our Internet marketing blog entries from now on, while the eHarbor Blog will mostly be about eHarbor, Inc.
The photo of the ghost town near Telluride, Colo. is from Flickr, and it is courtesy of Rob Lee.
Tags: article, comScore, eHarbor, facebook, google, internet, new york times, search engine, Social Media, Submit Solution, twitter
Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 31st, 2009
By Robert Lockard
It looks like two Davids are joining forces to take on Goliath. After years of public wrangling over the details, Microsoft and Yahoo finally announced a proposed 10-year partnership between their search-engine and online-advertising departments on Wednesday, July 29, 2009.
“In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo search while Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers,” the official Microsoft news release said.
We’re starting a new blog on the newly redesigned Submit Solution website, which will soon be launched. We’ll be shifting attention from the eHarbor Blog to that one. You can find the rest of this blog entry there when it comes out. Stay tuned!
The Microsoft-Yahoo logo is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of JVManna.
Tags: Bing, Ecommerce, google, Internet Marketing, Microsoft, news, Paid Search, Pay-Per-Click, PPC, search engine, yahoo
Posted in Pay-Per-Click, Search Engines | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 13th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Have you noticed there is no definitive search engine for Twitter? There are certainly many attempts to search this social-networking site, such as Collecta, OneRiot, Scoopler and Twitter’s own search engine. But none of these delivers a structured, comprehensive view of what’s being said on Twitter.
The conversations are simply too fast to keep up with right now.
Google is a great tool for searching most websites, but it’s completely inadequate when it comes to finding or following a conversation on Twitter. Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, is at least making an effort to jump into the social-networking arena, according to an article in ComputerWorld, entitled “Bing beats Google to the punch, launches Twitter search.”
Bing has gone through and selected a number of Tweeters with the most followers and added their most recent tweets to their search results when you search for them. For instance, if you search for “Tony Hawk Twitter” you will find Tony Hawk’s latest tweet at the top of the page.
These are just baby steps into a whole new world of social media. The Internet was a big jumble of information before search engines came along to create some sense of order from the chaos. Chaos seems to rule social-media sites at the moment, but some structure could be coming soon. The algorithms will have to be even more complex and extremely fast to keep up with the instant nature of Twitter.
Search engines will have to find a way to rank Twitter results by the authority of the tweeters, how new the tweets are and how many people are talking about a specific topic, among other things. Important conversations could easily slip through the cracks if no one with much authority is talking about them and search engines focus too much on that aspect in their rankings.
There needs to be a balance between the chaos of conversation and the order or rankings. We’ll see what happens.
You can follow eHarbor, Inc. on Twitter to stay updated on all of our eHarbor Blog entries and other important ecommerce news.
The fake Twitter “Over Capacity” logo is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Mykl Roventine.
Tags: article, Bing, ComputerWorld, Ecommerce, eHarbor, google, Microsoft, news, online, search engine, Social Media, twitter, web
Posted in Search Engines | 2 Comments »
