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Google
News Sitemaps
With the search engine industry expressing a desire for webmasters to employ functional
Sitemaps, it’s easy to see how important these documents can be when it comes
to being indexed correctly. Now Google, who initially launched the Sitemap program,
is offering the same service for those who are already apart of Google News. That’s
right, Google News now has a Sitemap feature.
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Google
Embraces Cyber Monday
In an effort to increase exposure to their fledgling merchant service, Google Checkout, the search giant has announced that starting today (known as Cyber Monday), shoppers using their merchant service will be privy to special discounts based on the amount of money they spend.
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Tueday, November 28, 2006 |
Google's young online payment service, Checkout, is one of the few Google products
to live up to the hype in some time. As of Cyber Monday 2006, Checkout halved
PayPal's market share lead.
Editor's Note: Though PayPal had a market share 96 times Checkout,
as of last week, that lead was cut to 38 times. That's a huge jump. Google's aggressive
promotion, no doubt, has worked for them. Are you using Google Checkout as either
a merchant or to shop at other sites with? Let us know at WebProWorld.
Unlike so many other Google products, which were brought forth and generally orphaned on the Web somewhere, Checkout has been aggressively promoted by the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. Already, that is paying off.
Hitwise's LeeAnn Prescott reports that the market share of visits to Checkout was up 158% in the days after Thanksgiving. But more impressive, PayPal suddenly isn't so far ahead.
Writes Prescott:
"While it still has a long way to go to catch Paypal in terms of visits, Paypal's lead was cut in half in just one week: last week I reported that Paypal's market share was 96X Google Checkout for the week ending 11/18/06 - this week Paypal was 38X Google Checkout in terms of market share."
The bulk of those visits came from ToysRus, offering $10 off $30 purchases if customers used Checkout. Google has similar arrangements with Linens-N-Things, Buy.com, Petco, Dick's Sporting Goods, and Ace Hardware.
But that's not all. Checkout is free to use until December 31st, signifying that Google isn't fooling around with getting this particular brand out there and accepted by the online shopping public.
You'll notice that eBay is not on the partners list. Even when Google Checkout was just a rumor floating around the blogosphere, referred to as Google Wallet or Google Purchase, eBay posted notice about payment services without longstanding customer histories.
So, in effect, there'll be no Checkout at eBay where PayPal has always worked just fine. And judging from the rapid public acceptance, that was a smart, protective move.
But it hasn't been all birthday cakes and butterflies for Checkout. One of the search industry's most prominent Google authorities, John Battelle, posted a scathing review of the product on his blog.
The biggest issue addressed was privacy. Google's usual give-cool-stuff-in-exchange-for-user-information policy is not only opt-out, but is also obfuscated by three different privacy policies.
Coping with that knowledge, Battelle used a test credit card to make a purchase. Checkout took his credit card information, but didn't make the sale.
Writes Battelle:
So I'm starting over. No, wait, this has been way too much of a trial. I'll get back to it later. Or, I'll just go to Amazon.
Sorry Google, but mark this one in your metadata as "abandoned cart."
About
the Author:
Jason Lee Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Are Linkbait Campaigns Hurt By NoFollow?
 By
Chris Richardson
Staff Writer | WebProNews
During the 2006 Las Vegas PubCon, the catch phrase of the week was linkbait. The idea is to create compelling enough content that your niche’s audience (and beyond) will want to link to your work. Most of the time, this content is distributed through blog entries or articles focusing on the subject you are targeting. It’s a simple concept really - create interesting enough content and people will link to you.
Because of the nature of this golden content (blogs, articles and feeds), many links will probably come from social bookmark sites like Digg.com or tag havens like del.icio.us. Members of the blogosphere are also known as being an active linkers to any content they find worthwhile and the same applies to the MySpace and Facebook crowd (great places to attempt viral marketing campaigns).
However, some WebProWorld members are skeptical of links from coming from the social bookmarking scene and after reading through the post, their primary concern comes from the “nofollow” link attribute that sites like del.icio.us are using. What’s the point of targeting the social network scene if tagging hubs (and bloggers) are using a command that tells search bots to ignore the outgoing link?
First off, not all bloggers and tag hubs use the “nofollow” attribute. While it’s true del.icio.us does, other sites like Digg and Reddit do not. Furthermore and like poster incrediblehelp said, not all bloggers use “nofollow”. In fact, it’s doubtful that the majority of the blogosphere even knows what this attribute does, let alone knows how to implement it (of course, a simple Google search rectifies this, but I digress).
About
the Author:
Chris Richardson is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Tracking Click To Call
As contextual advertising becomes more robust and offers more of an opportunity
for user interaction (besides clicks), there should be some additional ways to
track your ROI. One way is through the use of the telephone. That's right, if
you are tired of checking spreadsheet-style data readouts and if your site or
business has a 1-800 telephone number, you can now do so. Bill Hartzer has plenty
of details below:
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|| Chris||
Tracking
Your Online ROI by Tracking Phone Calls
If you've got an ecommerce site then you are probably aware of where your online
sales come from and where people hear about your site. Like many online merchants
use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising as well as other online and offline advertising
options such as print, radio, or television advertising. If someone searches at
Google, clicks on your PPC ad, and comes to your site to make a purchase, then
most likely you’re tracking that information.
But do you have a toll free phone number on your web site? If you have a toll
free phone number, did you know that you can track your PPC campaigns as well?
Voicestar is one company that allows you to track all of the phone calls to your
business and know exactly where you’re getting the greatest ROI, whether it’s
from print ads, organic search results, PPC ads, or even a printed catalog.
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SEO With Todd Malicoat
 Todd
Malicoat is an independent marketing consultant, focusing on SEO and Internet
marketing since 2001... |
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,
Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509
