mThink

  The day’s big news of Google’s precipitous drop in share price concealed the fact that Google’s average CPC is down 15% from a year ago. This decline in one of Google’s key performance metrics has potentially far more long-term consequences than a silly printer’s mistake. Yesterday’s premature release of Google’s disappointing quarterly earnings caused [...]

Want to get the equivalent of $4million worth of paid search traffic per month to your site? Think Google knows how to keep their SERPs nice and clean? Still believe in Santa Clause?

Yandex, Russia’s biggest search engine has not only just signed a real-time search deal with Twitter but has also released its results for Q4-2011 showing over 50% growth in sales and profits year-on-year. Yandex’s share of Russian search now stands at 60.8% and they’re planning for more growth with an aggressive move into mobile.

The trend is clear: Yahoo’s search traffic is on a steep decline.

For the second month in a row, Yahoo lost significant share of U.S. searches, according to ComScore, falling 0.4 points to 14.1%. It has now lost almost a full percentage point in the last two months, and more than two points since last August.

Google’s latest search engine change, known as the "page layout algorithm", is now in effect. It down-ranks websites which dedicate, "a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads." How much real estate is too much? Google won’t tell us and is not providing any analytical tools to provide the answer either. There are a few clues on Google’s Inside Search blog posting.

Over the last seven to 10 years, paid search has proven to be a cost effective channel for affiliates and performance marketers alike to drive high quality leads while maintaining strong ROI. In fact, search engine marketing (SEM) frequently represents an inordinate portion of a performance marketer’s business – often more than they care to admit.

Hamlet Batista, president and CEO of NEMedia, wants to change your content. He wants to change it so much that he can’t wait to get his search team cracking on it. It’s his bread and butter. And like any SEO outfit, he claims he can get your site optimized and ranking rapidly. But he also has a passion for words. He wants to respect your content – the carefully crafted articles, summaries and reviews you painstakingly labor over. “You have to write the content for the user,” he says. “If they don’t like it, they are going to leave.”

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Blendtec. I bet you are familiar with Blendtec and I bet I know how you first heard of their blenders – from their viral video series called “Will it blend?” That series, showing iPods and other unusual items being reduced to powder by a powerful blender, serves a strong branding message: If it can annihilate an iPod, it will make quick work of your smoothie.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau,there are nearly six million businesses in the United States. Think about the enormity of that number.That’s billions and billions of dollars in revenue generation every year. That’s also six million businesses that all require the same basic nourishment to survive – marketing and sales.