aimClear Search Marketing Blog

Our clients ask us about Flash all the time. For years Flash has been the stuff of web design joy and pain, causing frustration for search marketing folks. Those who design and brand absolutely love Flash’s web 2.0 animation, video, and rich media feel. 

SEM types traditionally have avoided Flash for critical organic optimization applications. The technology’s quirky propensity to be indexed (or not by) search engines has led to creative back door methods, sparking dialog and discourse as to whether certain techniques are evil cloaking tactics.Read the rest of this entry »

This is a guest post from Joe Lucas, who many of you know as one of the talented ClickTracks Analytics (now owned by Lyris) Pro Services engineers. Joe is a bright technical mind in the conversion tracking analytics business. We’re pleased to have his take on Knol along with Google’s experimental Personalized Page Rank.

Knol & Personalized Page Rank: Incursions or Future Google SEM Essentials? Joe Lucas—In recent weeks Google has made several well publicized product announcements that may cause alarm for some. Others are quietly optimistic. Read the rest of this entry »

Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience at Google, charmed SES in a dialog this morning with Conference Chair Danny Sullivan. Her demeanor was colloquial, firm, deep, focused and simple.

She discussed Google’s moves in search including recent roll outs which added more personalized and “universal” search results and referred to Google verticals as her “children.” Marissa oversees products ranging from Web Search and iGoogle and was one of Google’s first employees. This is a very powerful lady.Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been hearing about it all week…the Google dance this, the Google dance that. It’s one of the few public after-hours SES San Jose events. Coach buses are piling up outside the convention center to shuttle attendees to the 2007 Google Dance tonight in the Amphitheater at Mountain View corporate headquarters. I’m sure it will be great fun but I didn’t go. Maybe I’m crazy to miss an opportunity to party on Googlers’ home turf but I don’t think so. Here are the top 9 reasons to skip the Google Dance at SES San Jose:

#9) Free beer at the dance?…or Blue Point Long Island oysters, Mixed Greens with Blue Cheese, Walnuts and Balsamic Dressing, Kendall Jackson VR Sonoma Chardonnay, La Crema Sonora Coast Pinot Noir, and Swordfish Palua at The Fairmont Hotel 3 blocks from here?Read the rest of this entry »

As a result of Universal & Blended Vertical Search it’s not just about web pages anymore. Google’s Universal Search aggregates local, news, video, book content, blog search, and a number of other verticals from content “repositories” and displays them in various positions on SERPs. This is especially true for some commercial keywords and can include top results. Google Universal Search Changes Everything.

Not Your Mother’s SERP
It’s a a brave new world and we can expect to see less and less website results on page one. The good news is that the evolution of search always presents opportunities of great proportions for those who research and understand proper methods to get content into the SERPs of the day. Also, classic SEO values remain inalienable and the best content rises to the top. The major difference now is in the quantity and segmentation of focused channels.Read the rest of this entry »

There has been chatter about it for months. Now, fellow SEM Google adWords-watchers are trafficking blog posts highlighting fascinating examples of Google PPC results which are based dynamically, in part, on previous searches. This algorithmic shift, which ostensibly makes commercial search results more relevant to the user, foreshadows upcoming generations of smart-SERPs which take users’ search behavior into account more when targeting paid ads. It’s not hard to imagine scene by scene self-configuring video ads contextually related to a user’s current session and historic inclinations.

Whereas personalized organic search affects only users who are logged in to a Google service like Gmail, the adWords algorithm modification seems to impact sponsored results whether or not the searcher is logged into a Google account.

It’s easy to test for yourself. For instance search for airfare and you’ll see generic airfare sponsored results:


Now search for Minneapolis Hotel. Note that a sponsored airfare ad shows up-NOT a hotel ad:


A new search for airfare returns ads for Minneapolis airfare.

This has far reaching implications over the long haul.Read the rest of this entry »

In early June, Google updated their webmaster guidelines and included specific intent to kill WebPosition as the poster child for Google’s disdain for automated queries. Since WebPosition has been best friend to many (including me) for years, it was a disappointing development.

However before we really get going here, it should be noted that organic prominence reporting, WebPosition’s forte, is dead anyway. The inevitable progression of personalized search, which returns customized SERPs based on individuals’ web history, codifies the deal. Bulletproof conversion and ROI metrics calculated by modern analytics are the only uncontested measures of SEM success.

Clients Understand the Web 1.0 Way.
Many of our search marketing clients still perceive organic keyword rankings as the singular measure. To an extent they are correct in their assessment of value: top rank for a keyword is still a great asset. However, true search marketing experts teach prospective clients the new reality during the sales process and lead existing clients through the adaptive process. Also, WebPosition has other features which remain useful like Link Defender and Page Critic AKA “Beat the Algorithm.”

WebPosition’s Organic Prominence Reporter: The Pathology of Demise
The announcement from Google was cryptic: “As of December 5, 2006, we are no longer issuing new API keys for the SOAP Search API. Developers with existing SOAP Search API keys will not be affected.” SOAP was the Google API feature which allowed access to keyword rankings directly from the Google database infrastructure. On December 6th the SOAP API ceased to function in WebPostion, even for those of us in possession of API keys.

WebPosition blamed it on Google and advised users to turn off SOAP access in WP and switch back to the illegal screen-scraping mode. You see, in the past Google has officially discouraged screen-scraping the SERPs.Read the rest of this entry »

Inside AdWords, Google’s official source for information about AdWords, has been trumpeting the arrival of Click-to-play video ads for AdWords. Yippy Skippy I woke up this morning to find the new video ad serving features in our AdWords client manager account interface!

Video (and image) ads now appear on a high number of Google content match affiliate sites and for goods in the Google Network. Google video ads do not appear in organic SERPS (at least for now). Content provider affiliate websites must opt-in to the image ads program and only then are site’s eligible for video ads. Affiliate content providers are provided with tools to choose preset display formats for ad sizes and shapes to display. It’s only a question of time before these ads are served to cable networks, hotel rooms, satellite TV, and other broadcast streams.

What are Video Ads?
Video ads are first displayed as a static display picture. When a customer clicks the play button (or the placeholder image), the video starts to play by one of two methods:Read the rest of this entry »

Google is deploying the most significant changes to its results pages in history, unveiling “Universal Search,” which aggregates listings from Google news, video, images, local, and book searches with traditional website searches. Vertical searches (specialty search engines) which index images, video, local, news, blogs, etc… will soon be fully interspersed with Google search results.

This Will Have a Tremendous Effect on SEM.
Much will be written about these earth shaking changes in the coming hours, days and months. If your SEM firm is good you’ll be discussing the ramifications in the short-term. Suffice to say that this ranks as one of the major industry shifts destined to have a huge effect on SEO tactics and techniques. The links in this post are required reading for any website operators who earn a portion of their income from Google organic SERPs.

Here is what the authority blogs in the SEM space are saying about Google Universal Search:
Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer
Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience Google

Google’s Universal Search, New interface & More
Danny Sullivan’s Daily SearchCast, May 17, 2007 Read the rest of this entry »

For years prescient industry pundits and sages have been forecasting this happy day of convergence. Google audio radio ads are here and guess what-SEM firms are the new radio media buyers. Yippy Skippy! Tonight I stumbled upon Google Audio’s mass launch of Google Audio Ads in the dashboard of a Minneapolis client’s account.

In April Google announced a multi-year deal delegating them to cut up and sell a guaranteed inventory of 30-second radio spots on more than 675 Clear Channel AM/FM radio stations. Now it’s reality.

SEM Firms are the New Radio Buyers.
The deal makes it possible for Google search marketing platform Internet media buyers (like aimClear) to reach audiences at designated times in geo-targeted areas. Search marketers are now directly in the brick broadcast buying mix with Google radio Ads even here in Duluth, Minnesota.

Since the interface is within the Google online ad platform, creating and deploying radio advertising campaigns is now in the sphere of search engine marketing firms who have been learning to leverage online media buys in this environment for years. For goodness sakes, after the radio ads run Google even offers reports online to provide marketers with real-time recordings of ads as they were originally played.

Why Google Radio?
Radio and Internet together reach 83% of people ages 18-54*. Each day radio and Internet in aggregate reach approximately 83% of folks between the ages of 18-54 which is comparable to the daily reach of television. Also greater than 90% of the population still listens to radio and 21% of people are listening while online. 57% of people listening to the radio while on the Internet actually look up items in their browser after hearing product commercials. *Source: The Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL), 2007.Read the rest of this entry »