While there are many best-practices that are followed by all SEO experts, some techniques can be tailor made to suit specific occasions. While numerous SEO experts are already planning SEO 2010, let’s not lose sight of the upcoming holiday season and the opportunity it presents to online marketers.

Here are some tips to ensure that your site gets maximum visibility this holiday season:
Remember that a number of holiday centric pages are being added to the net every day.

( Read more )

Recently, Ask.com launched Search for the Cure program, in which the company will contribute to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer charity, whenever users switch over to the new breast cancer awareness themed homepage and answer some questions.

Ask Networks President Scott Garell says, «The Ask.com Search for the Cure program seeks to empower consumers in the fight against breast cancer through an interactive, educational experience that doesn’t cost them a dime or require much time – which we hope will encourage support of this important cause regardless of financial or schedule constraints.”

( Read more )

Recent news leaks raise serious doubts regarding the execution of the deal. In this scenario, it is worth looking into whether Yahoo has a Plan B.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has been doing flip-flops on Yahoo’s position in the search industry. Just before the deal was announced, she said, “Yahoo doesn’t have to do anything with Microsoft about anything,”

After the deal and three months on, she did a U-turn and said that Yahoo is in no position to afford the search business.

( Read more )

With Google News increasing its utility over time for news seekers, it is time publishers take note and tap its potential. It makes sense to accept and exploit the tool that is being used by Net users.
Google News has recently initiated incorporating real-time search suggestions in news search queries. Google shared some of their search engine optimization practices last week through a video. In addition, Google's Maile Ohye revealed more on the topic on Google News blog. It would be ideal for publishers to understand and implement the suggestions.

( Read more )

One of the fallouts of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is the imminent taking over of Yahoo search by Bing in terms of algorithmic ranking. When the deal comes into effect some time next year, do not get caught unawares.

In this scenario, if you want to retain the traffic flowing from Yahoo search, you should optimize your sites for Bing. If you already rank well in Bing, it doesn’t matter. These suggestions are for those who rank well in Yahoo, but not in Bing.

David Shapiro, Search Strategist, iCrossing, gave some tips in a blog post recently. According to him, it is important to find out the keywords

( Read more )

Real-time search is still taking its first steps. Even though the concept is exciting and offers immense scope, much work needs to be done to make it really useful. Relevancy is one factor ignored by real-time search now. The results we get now are based only on time and date.

As time/date and search queries are the only criteria for the search results, let us see how to rank well in real-time searches now.

1. Keywords: Use them not only in the content, but also in titles and updates. By doing so, the chances of the keywords appearing in tweets and Facebook updates go up.

( Read more )

CrowdEye, one of the newcomers in the Search Engine scene, has revamped its features to resemble Google.

CrowdEye is a Twitter-based real-time search engine launched earlier this year. The recent service upgrades includes many features that reminds you of Google. Its customizable home page is somewhat like iGoogle. It has a PageRank-like measurement system. It also has the capability to run ‘site:’ searches like Google.

For a more detailed review of the upgraded features read on…

( Read more )

comScore has released the global search market figures for July and the high spot of the study results is the 113 billion searches per month. Google as usual has topped the list, followed by Yahoo, Chinese search engine Baidu and Microsoft.

The number of searches per month has increased by a whopping 41% in a year, which can be termed nothing short of stupendous. In spite of the best efforts from its rivals, Google received the majority of the increase.

The statistics of the study results is as follows:

1. Google – 76.7 billion searches (67.5% market share)
2. Yahoo – 8.9 billion searches (7.8% market share)
3. Baidu – 8 billion searches (7% market share)

( Read more )

Microsoft ran a set of product placement ads during NBC’s ‘The Philanthropist’. On the onset, there is nothing wrong with this. However, not everyone think so.

The ads have two characters from the show using Bing. There is no doubt about the scene being an ad, though well integrated into the scene and the storyline. Looks good and serves the purpose. Hence, not at all a bad idea.

However, things went awfully awry with the ad agency JWT and the parent company WPP being sued over the ad, AdAge reports. The complainant is a Delaware company named Denizen, who claims to have patented this. They allege that Microsoft ad is an infringement on the said patent.

( Read more )

After the announcement of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s claim that ‘Yahoo was never a search engine’, Yahoo is on a revival mode. This was evident in its latest UI enhancements. These are being tested to a section of US users.

For Yahoo, signing the Microsoft-Yahoo deal, claimed experts, is as good as bidding goodbye to the search game. Once the deal comes through, Yahoo search will be outsourced through Microsoft.

Out of the blue, Yahoo has now come up with changes in the user interface. Is Yahoo trying to garner more market share? Will Yahoo win the search engine race ultimately? These questions demand answers. Let us study the new features and try to arrive at an answer.

( Read more )