At a conference titled “Web 2.0, disruption creates opportunity”, Yahoo’s Managing Director of Corporate Development, Simon Levene, revealed that, in reaction to moves made by Google, Yahoo is entering the venture capital market. The conference was organized by FirstCapital and was targeted to an audience of venture capitalists, strategic investors, business angels and entrepreneurs.
For security reasons, some client’s refuse to allow their SEO access to their site. That’s fair, and certainly their right to do so, but that company must also take on the responsibility of making all such changes and bear the blame if the results of the SEO campaign are less than expected.
The introduction of Google Analytics and Google Base add a new dimension to Google as the leading global information provider. They also do one other, somewhat unexpected thing. Combined with other features and tools Google uses to narrow or funnel information searches such as Local search, geo-mapping, and comparison-shopping (Froogle), Google is decidedly staking its turf atop this next wave of search facilitated global-commerce.
In the spirit of helping webmasters and search marketers move site visitors into converted site users, Google is offering its enormously useful site analytics tool, Urchin, free of charge under the re-branded name Google Analytics. The software is designed to help webmasters and marketers understand site visitors and their behaviours. Last year, it cost almost $500/mth to subscribe to.
Conventional wisdom says that most people start with a search engine when looking for online information. It’s also been documented in research that anywhere from 48 to 84 percent of users find Web sites through search engines. We need to know more about
While Google has long had the capability to personalize search with behavioral targeting, up until now it has elected not to do so. That may be about to change, as Google becomes more and more commercially focused.
I used to be a strong proponent of what is often referred to as “common-sense” SEO and a detractor from optimization by “algorithm chasing”. While I still believe strongly in common-sense SEO (now more than ever) my views on algorithm chasing have evolved a certain degree.
The searchable universe has expanded enormously over the past year. From the doubling or tripling of the size of search engine indexes to the evolution of several engines with unique focuses, the amount of data accessible by search engine users has grown faster this year than any other since the dawn of the public, commercial Internet.
The other day someone asked me what sort of information should be in an SEO contract. As I was writing my response, it occurred to me that there were probably a lot of small businesses and consultants who were wondering the same thing. Unfortunately, many people don’t even use a contract, or worse, they may end up blindly signing a contract provided by the client.
There is a lot of buzz and discussion about Web 2.0: what it is and what it means. The debate over its importance and/or relevance has been fuelled by thought leaders such as Tim O’Reilly and Nicholas Carr, but what appears to be getting lost is how viable businesses can be built, and how entrepreneurs can succeed in this changing landscape.