Posts Tagged ‘Google Search’

YP.com: Great Domain For Shortening URLs

April 5, 2010

I was speaking with a friend of mine who sat with Randall Stephenson at a recent technology conference.

He was proud that the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of AT&T was born and raised here.

Stephenson has taken great strides in making AT&T more relevant at a time when brands mean less to consumers than since when brands were first conceived.

One brand struggling to remain relevant and retain what value it has left is AT&T’s Yellowpages.com

A Google search for “yellowpages” finds the Yellowpages.com domain and their YP.com brand atop the search results page.

Kind of confusing… which domain is it YellowPages.com or YP.com?

Yellow Pages Search

Yellow Pages Search

Based upon this ambiguous messaging, its unclear to me which brand and domain AT&T actually sends its visitors to let alone which brand its actually using.

Kind of reminds me of the MSN – Live – Bing drama.

Mr. Stephenson – which brand is it – YellowPages.com or YP.com?

Anyway one thing is for certain, if I were running the site I would turn YP.com into a url shortener for both YellowPages.com advertisers and its users so they could share information with each other via their mobile phones.

YP.com looks like the perfect branded url shortening service to me.

I am sure some legal department somewhere could think of a hundred reasons not to do it but from a relevancy stand point – what could make the Yellow Pages any more relevant than deploying its YP.com brand as a url shortening service for its advertisers?

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Posted in Google Search, Marketing Communications, Randall Stephenson, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Marketing Firm, Search Engine Optimization, Search Marketing, Search Marketing Agency, URL Shortener, Yp.com | Leave a Comment »

Google Local Search Results Lotto

September 30, 2009

Mike Blumenthal recently reported several instances of Google delivering authoritative OneBox results for general search phrases.

His “Big Boobs Bounce Back to Top of Google Maps” details how aggressive optimization has been used to produce multiple listing results for the same business yet under different but related general keyword phrases.

As Blumenthal points out. the new spammy results probably weren’t the type Google had intended to produce when they instituted changes to their local search results recently.

Whether Google’s local search results tweak was intended to produce the results it has or not, their changes have introduced a variety of new and different results types for local searches across several different business categories.

Businesses who have received an authoritative Onebox as a result of these recent Google changes might feel they have won something akin to the Google Local Search Lotto.

For those businesses on the other side of an authoritative Onebox result and the now non-existent “more results near” link who have seen their local search presence and traffic disappear the feeling most certainly isn’t mutual.

I came across one such category – luxury apartments – where Google’s new local search results are uneven at best.

Searching for luxury apartments in New York – surely the largest luxury apartment market in America – produces an authoritative OneBox result for a single property.

Luxury Apartments New York

Luxury Apartments New York

The same search in Boston for luxury apartments also produces a single authoritative OneBox result.

In both these examples, the most disconcerting aspect of their OneBox result is that Google has also removed the “more results near…” link to additional listings which are otherwise offered in location specific general category searches.

Luxury Apartments Boston

Luxury Apartments Boston

The same category search for luxury apartments in San Francisco produces not an authoritative Onebox result for a single luxury apartment building but three luxury apartment listings.

Luxury Apartmetns San Francisco

Luxury Apartmetns San Francisco

Same search phrase, different city, different number of results.

Why just one result in New York and Boston, but three in San Francisco?

To complicate matters further, the same search for luxury apartments in Dallas produces a list of ten results.

Luxury Apartments Dallas

Luxury Apartments Dallas

In both the San Francisco and Dallas examples, Google provides links to additional results while in the New York and Boston examples Google doesn’t.

Why do some market category search results produce clear Google Local Search winners while other markets do not?

Have the odds of a finding a business under its respective category in a location specific Google web search grown as long and as remote as winning the lotto?

Or has the presence of authoritative Onebox search results created a new class of local business winners and losers?

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Posted in Authoritative OneBox, Google Local Search Lotto, Google Maps, Google Search | 2 Comments »

Google Maps Search Results and Local Business Center Analytics

July 25, 2009

Drilling deeper into my Google Local Business Center account analytics has produced some unexpected findings.

Long before there was a Google Local Business Center, I became convinced of the importance of having my website appear consistently atop Google search results for heavily searched keywords.

So much so that I spent several years running my first major website: MarketingPrinciples.com as a test site for what worked and what didn’t within Google.

After testing confirmed a particular strategy or tactic, I would then apply it within the site or a client’s site.

Although MarketingPrinciples.com isn’t the traffic generation machine it once was  – with over 500,000 visitors annually – it still generates some interesting results from my original programming.

Most notably – MarketingPrinciples – according to my Google Local Business Center analytics appears first for “google search” in Google Maps queries  – above Google’s office locations.

Google Maps Google Search

Google Maps Google Search

Granted, the search query isn’t exactly a barn burner for producing clients for my marketing consulting practice.

However as a result of my early research and trials, my site and brand are receiving approximately 50,000 impressions from across the United States annually.

Google Local Business Center Analytics

Google Local Business Center Analytics

I think the results are acceptable for a guy and his laptop.

An aside: I searched for “google search” in Google Maps from several different computers with different IP addresses and got the same results.

What does your Google Maps search for “google search” produce?

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Posted in Google Local Business Center, Google Maps, Google Search, Search Terms, Search Traffic | Leave a Comment »

A Novel Bing Marketing Tactic: Buy Ads On Google

June 2, 2009

While checking my email today in Gmail I was somewhat surprised to see the following ad dsiplayed above my inbox:

Microsoft Bing Google Adwords Ad

Microsoft Bing Google Adwords Ad

Microsoft is also buying Google Adwords to promote their new Bing “decision engine” brand in Google search results.

Google Search Bing Ad

Google Search Bing Ad

Bing the brand is also being advertised in Google search results under “decision engine” as well as –

Decision Engine Ad

Decision Engine Ad

“search engine”.

Search Engine Ad

Search Engine Ad

I know its hard to believe but people still search Google.com for “search engine” and “search engines”.

In fact, according to Google – over 5,000,000 people worldwide search for either the single or plural version of the phrase each month.

Search Engine Demand

Search Engine Demand

However, a considerably smaller number of people search for the single or plural version of decision engine.

Decision Engine Search Demand

Decision Engine Search Demand

Roughly 5,000 times fewer searches in fact.

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Posted in Search Marketing | Leave a Comment »

Dialing It In: Getting A New Domain in Search Engine Results Pages

May 15, 2009

For several years I have been experimenting with domains and search engine results pages.

This particular domain SearchMarketingCommunications.com has been in both passive and active trials for several years.

Recently, I purchased the domain redirection option from WordPress for the blog address this domain publishes from cohn:wordpress.com.

Although it hasn’t yet been re-indexed by Google, the new domain is getting published by and distributed within both Yahoo and MSN search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search Marketing Communications

Search Marketing Communications

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Posted in Google, Search Engine, Search Results, Yahoo | Leave a Comment »

Web Search From Within Gmail

May 8, 2009

Searching the web while in Gmail up until now has required launching another browser window or leaving Gmail altogether.

Adam and Drew from Gmail Labs have solved this problem by making Google search available from within Gmail accounts.

Enable Google Search in Gmail

Enable Google Search in Gmail

About Google Search from Gmail Labs:

Displays Google search results inside your mail window, letting you quickly find things and use them when you’re writing an email.

Google Web Search in Gmail Browser

Google Web Search in Gmail Browser

With the addition of Google Search to Gmail, Gmail Labs continues to make Gmail an indispensable web mail app.

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Posted in Gmail, Google | Leave a Comment »

Google Coupons @ Google Code

November 19, 2008

Google offers merchants the ability to provide coupons that will be included in Google search results via their Google Code site.

What better time for brands to distribute their coupons for free via the web – than now?

Consumers can search for coupons on Google, print and then redeem coupons at participating merchants.

Google Code offers businesses five different methods for feeding their coupons into Google’s coupon distribution system.

1. Coupon TSV Feed Documentation

2. Coupon XML Feed Documentation

3. Coupon Feed XSD

4. Basic Coupon Sample XML

5. Complex Coupon Sample XML

Visit the Google Code site to learn more about how to upload and begin distributing your brand’s coupons via Google search.

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Posted in Basic Coupon Sample XML, Brands, Complex Coupon Sample XML, Coupon Feed XSD, Coupon TSV Feed Documentation, Coupon XML Feed Documentation, Coupons, Google, Google Code, Google Coupons, Google Search, Learning | Leave a Comment »

Where To Vote and Google Vote Search Box

October 25, 2008

Yesterday I wrote about Google Maps providing maps for voters showing them where to vote along with location specific voter registration information.

Today Google is giving searchers even easier access to voter information via a Google Vote Search Box under voting related search queries.

Where To Vote

Where To Vote

Voters can locate their polling place and find more information about voter registration via Google searches with these voting related phrases like these: “absentee voting”, “register to vote”, “register vote”, “vote location”, “vote locations”, “vote registration”, “voter registration” and “where do i vote”.

Americans who have internet access and can type a search into Google’s Vote Search Box should be able to find all the voting related information they need cast their vote on November 4th.

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Posted in Absentee Voting, Google, Register To Vote, Vote, Vote Locations, Vote Search Box, Voter Registration, Voting, Where To Vote | Leave a Comment »