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My 2 featured articles for the week ending Jan. 27, 2006:

Archived blogs for the week of January 23, 2006

1088 - January 26, 2006 - 9.35 AM EST

Linkbaiting to improve your search rankings

If you're looking for a simple and effective way to acquire links to your Web site, one of the best ways to do it is with linkbaiting. The idea isn't new and has been around for some time.

The process of linkbaiting is very simple. All that it entails is to offer something that is free to other Internet users, or a free online tool, a research brief on a specific topic or something similar that will encourage others and webmasters to link to your site.

Ever since the Google search engine came about to what it is today, Google has always relied heavily on the number and quality of links pointing to a specific site in order to determine the popularity of that site.

This is called link popularity and can have a drastic impact on how high a site can rank in the major search engines. Learn more on the popular topic of link baiting and what it can do for your search rankings.

Posted on Businessblog™

1087 - January 26, 2006 - 9.16 AM EST

Ask Jeeves launches its German version

Ask Jeeves introduces the beta version of Ask Deutschland, the company's most recent expansion in Europe.

The beta search engine is available now at www.ask.de. "Germany has the greatest number of Internet users in Europe, with more than 42 million people online, and we believe it will be a very important market for the growth of Ask search technology and the Ask brand," said Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Ask Jeeves, Inc.

"By creating local sites in countries across Europe, we can offer users more relevant, localized search results.

Ask Jeeves offers a world-class search experience to consumers, and we will leverage our differentiated approach to offer a superior search product for German Internet users."

Following the launch of Ask Espana in 2005, Ask Deutschland is the first in a number of European launches Ask Jeeves, Inc. plans for 2006.

The Company plans to leverage the strength of its popular brand, its advanced technology, and partnerships with leading consumer media companies to grow share in emerging markets.

Posted on Businessblog™

1086 - January 25, 2006 - 10.09 AM EST

B2B executives have more advertising budgets in 2006

According to B2B Online, more than 60 percent of marketing executives will be working with bigger budgets this year.

Of them, 31.6 percent said their budgets would be the same as 2005. Only 7.7 percent said their budgets would decrease. The optimism is eleven points over last year.

This year, 72 percent of Internet marketers plan to increase online budgets. Within online spending, the specific media that will receive the greatest share of marketers' budgets in 2006 will be Web sites at 30.3 percent, e-mail at 22 percent, search at 20.3 percent and sponsorships at 10.3 percent.

For offline media, 52 percent of respondents said they plan to increase direct mail this year, 40 percent plan to increase event marketing and 33 percent plan to increase print advertising.

Posted on Businessblog™

1085 - January 25, 2006 - 7.25 AM EST

Google Analytics attracts large advertisers

Google is to work with Web analytics firm ZAAZ. For a fee, the two companies will provide services beyond what Google Analytics otherwise offers.

Deckers Outdoor Corp., Ritz Interactive, Carl Kucher Enterprises, Hardees and several other large firms already use Google Analytics.

Corporate America's use of Google Analytics is surprising because longtime Web analytics executives thought only small and midsize businesses would take advantage of Google's free Web analytics service when it was announced in November.

Google charged $199 a month for it previously. "Google is going after a different type of client -- Fortune 1000 companies -- than we are," Lisa Wehr, CEO of SEO firm Oneupweb, Lake Leelanau, MI, told DM News at the time.

However, that may be changing. A Google executive said many large enterprise customers requested Google Analytics so Google decided to outsource some of that work.

"We have a very high interest and demand from the high end of the market," said Brett Crosby, product marketing manager of Google Analytics. "Sometimes the high end moves a little more slowly. I have been surprised how quickly they have moved to Google Analytics."

Posted on Businessblog™

1084 - January 24, 2006 - 1.12 PM EST

Yahoo Publisher Network expanding

Such ’smart growth’ tactics by Yahoo are leading to the monitoring of ROI and controlled reach of Yahoo Search Marketing advertiser ads, as Yahoo is taking the quality approach as opposed to quantity.

For example, Yahoo is following a strict editorial review process which includes:

* editorial review and assessment on quality of publisher
* no hate or adult related sites
* higher standard of quality sites
* size of the site
* how vertical or niche is the site

With somewhere around 3,000 quality publishers currently serving YPN advertisements on their sites and in their RSS feeds, Yahoo has spent the past two quarters planning expansion of the network in what is gearing up to be an active year in the world of site monetizing.

During the Q4 earnings conference last week, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel discussed the vision behind the Yahoo Publisher Network as going beyond the offerings of a normal contextual advertising network.

“We believe that there is significant potential upside as we improve our monetization capabilities and our tools to publishers and advertisers. We have been quite successful in attracting large content partners and have begun to take advantage of the large number of small publishers on the web”, Semel told Yahoo investors.

“During the fourth quarter, we further experienced the beta of our self service Yahoo Publisher Network, which is designed to tap into that segment. The beta is ramping up nicely and we now have several thousand publishers in the program with thousands more requesting invitations.”

Posted on Businessblog™

1083 - January 23, 2006 - 5.31 PM EST

Google improves its news site

Google has added the Recommended and Most Popular features to its News site.

It’s interesting to see Google work on improving their news homepage, even though its lack of ads make it a site with no direct revenues.

How does the Most Popular feature work? As opposed to the Google News homepage, which shows the top stories being published by editors on different news sites, this new category will allow you to see what’s most popular with readers of Google News. In a certain way, it’s Digg for Google News.

At the moment, the most popular news story on Google is “Kelly Clarkson settles ’Idol’ dispute.”

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2006. All rights reserved.

All views and opinions expressed on this blog are those of Serge Thibodeau only and are not representative of any company listed. All slogans, trademarks, text or logo representation used or referred to on this blog are the property of their respective owners.