Could there possibly be anyone who isn’t aware of how powerful a tool social marketing is? It’s highly doubtful. The one problem that most social networking sites face though is that it’s up to the marketer to target their own audience. That’s not to say that there isn’t some level of targeting, but it’s been more by interest than anything else. There’s nothing wrong with that. Obviously the people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer and the ones you need to reach. However, it’s sometimes helpful to be able to target ads by detailed geographical location.

FaceBook is heeding the call and, in a move designed to enhance its local advertising program, it is now offering advertisers the opportunity to target audiences in a hugely expanded number of cities around the world. This may not be of any interest to those who offer online services since these can be accessed from anywhere. It’s good news though for those with small businesses which handle physical products. Why should FaceBook do this? Local ads are a big part of their revenue system so why not improve on it. As of this point they are not releasing a full list of the new cities they’ve added but you can always check it out to see if yours is one if them.

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Why do people in the UK not like Microsoft very much? Why knows? Well to be fair, no one knows whether it’s an actual dislike of the multi-media giant, but the fact remains that Google holds roughly about 90% of the search market share there. Microsoft has thus far had to be content with a paltry 3%…thus far. Word is that Microsoft is planning a major push in order to increase the popularity of its own search engine, Bing.

The news was revealed by MediaGuardian.co.uk. Apparently Microsoft is set to pump a few million pounds into television ad campaigns. The problem though isn’t that people don’t know about Bing, not with the innumerable number of threads at various forums. They’re just not using it. Google has taken a lot of time to refine their search parameters and they’re always tweaking the system. Perhaps that’s what accounts for their huge lead in the market share.

Microsoft will definitely have their work cut out for them but, should they be able to make some inroads, it could be a good thing for search marketers. After all, competition drives companies to offer better things to their customers in order to keep their business. With this in mind, what could be expected should Google and Microsoft end up in a head to head battle? We’ll just have to wait and see.

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Yahoo has announced that it’s ready to become a major player in the search marketing game. Whether it will score big or go down in flames remains to be seen. At any rate, they’ve just unveiled a new tool which is supposed to allow for the management of multiple search marketing campaigns at the same time. It’s free and here’s what you can do with it.

•    Import third party campaign data in one step.
•    Make mass changes to various settings.
•    Export data to an excel sheet for easy viewing.
•    Use the keyword suggestion tool.
•    Adjust multiple keyword bids.
•    Review statistics for PTC, CTR etc. campaigns.
•    Search for information on any campaign in your account.
•    Easily find and replace text.

This new tool runs on the Adobe Air platform and feedback thus far is that it’s a little slow. It depends on how many campaigns you have though, so you should be okay if you only have a few. Downloading big files is a bit tedious as well, sometimes taking as much as 30 minutes. Is it ready to be a competitor for the features offered by Adwords? Not yet. As with any new program, there are some kinks to work out. Will Yahoo be able to compete with Google? Maybe. Maybe not. But at the very least, search marketers will have more options for running their campaigns.

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Google is known for being a master in the marketing game. They’ve perfected the art of wooing big brand advertisers. They’re constantly tweaking their features to make their system more ads friendly, and that’s why they’ve unveiled what’s being termed as ‘above the fold’ advertising. The fold in this case is the last bit of content which is seen in the browser without having to scroll down.

With this new feature, advertisers can now choose to bid for ad space which only appears within this region. Why is this important? When the last time you scrolled down a page when you could get the information you need right at the beginning? The whole point of paying for an ad is to have it seen by as many people as possible. That’s why strategic placement is crucial, and it doesn’t get much better than on screen.

The concept of ‘above the fold’ advertising isn’t new, but Google has a history of taking old ideas and revolutionizing them. Other sites offering this type of advertising don’t really pay attention to size optimization, the exact positioning of the ads, or how different browsers can affect page layout. The result is something that repels the viewer’s attention instead of attracting it. If Google can get rid of these kinks they’ll be poised to offer a whole new level of targeting to their advertisers.

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Well Google’s done it again. They’ve gotten themselves a picnic basket of sorts, or is that a Picnik basket? Google has recently announced that they’ve bought over Picnik, best known for its integration with the Yahoo-owned Flickr. Yes, it’s that Picnik, the online photo editing service. It seems that Google is set to get their hands dirty in yet another arena.

Google has made themselves into the internet giant that they are by doing one of two things. Firstly, they are constantly tweaking their search capabilities to make it better and easier to us. Secondly, they experiment. This has lead to some costly blunders (can anyone say Buzz introduction) but it has also created some winners. What about this new venture? Photo sharing has become a big deal on the web. It’s even used for marketing in some cases. Can you imagine the potential of a more streamlined version of what exists today?

What if Google were to offer this service completely free? It’s doubtful that they will but even so, it still opens up AdWords and the like to a whole new market. That’s good news for marketers and forums have been, pardon the pun, buzzing. What’s Google going to do next? Maybe Google Chat will become the next Skype. Who knows? That’s one thing about Google, they always keep things interesting.

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Is there any webmaster out there that doesn’t make use of Google’s Webmaster Tools? They’re pretty much the best assistance that anyone with a website can get, given that it’s totally free. Would you believe it’s about to get better? Google has recently confirmed the release of two new features.

The first relates to hacking and spam notifications. This is great because not everyone has the time to monitor every single aspect of their website all the time, especially for something like forums where the majority of the content is use generated. With this new feature webmasters will be notified if there is any abuse of forum pages, large amounts of comment spam, abused user generated content or suspected cases of hacking. Google also proposes to provide webmasters with steps on how to fix the problems the site can retain its search standings.

The other feature is good news for those who have sites which require a collaborative effort to maintain. Previously, to have multiple webmasters for one site, each person would have to create their own account and verify the site. This was time consuming and laborious, but now all you have to do is add the other person’s Google account on the Verification Details page. Removing them is just as easy.

These features are very welcome and webmasters are waiting with bated breath to see what the next additions to Google’s Webmaster Tools will be.

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It seems like not a day goes by that you don’t hear about some new tool, program, or gadget being released by Google.  If it’s not that then they’re making changes to their search pages or tweaking their algorithms. Not all of this is bad, never mind the Buzz debacle. In fact most of it is pretty good, especially for search marketers. Now there’s the news that Google is moving to go even more in depth in terms of the localised searches that they now offer.

At present, if you wish to refine a search, you have to do so via the traditional search box. What Google is proposing is that you can now use a search options facility in order to search local results. You can set a default location and choose to use that for all searches, or you can even enter a custom search area. You can even narrow down results based on region, state or even as confined as by city.

It might be a work in progress but one can instantly see the potential, not necessarily for those who offer online services but rather those with physical stores at different locations. It could change the face of local marketing by offering more targeted results and therefore more targeted ads. Google has a history of fine tuning products until they work so we’ll just have to stay tuned and see if this will be another of their successes.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have heard about the scandal in Italy involving four employees of Google. If you have been away for a while, let’s recap.  In 2006 a particularly disturbing video of some children bullying an autistic classmate was posted on YouTube, a subsidiary of the Google giant. Google’s Vice President Matt Sucherman claims that the video was removed mere hours after being notified by the police. That hasn’t stopped the Italian courts from finding some of those very same executives guilty of privacy violations.

Whatever your thoughts on the matter, it might just be a good thing for YouTube. You see, the crux of the problem is that there isn’t really a way to instantaneously remove objectionable content because the search engine spiders aren’t able to find it. Instead, YouTube has to rely on someone seeing the video and notifying them, by which time it’s already on its way all around the internet. Maybe this is just the incentive that Google needs to fine tune its system and increase its video search capabilities. This will certainly make it easier for marketers who rely on video advertising.

Don’t believe there’s a silver lining to this? What about Google’s fingerprinting technology that allows for the identification of pirated media clips on YouTube? That only came about as a result of legal issues regarding copyright infringements. We’ll just have to wait and see if Google can make the best out of a bad situation.

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First it was Google Wave. Then it was Google Buzz. Now there’s news that Google has acquired yet another site: the social Q & A site, Aardvark. Does Google own the internet? Not quite, but maybe soon. Especially if they can manage to properly integrate the three sites.

Let’s see what they’re working with. There’s Wave, a social collaboration tool. There’s Buzz, which creates a social graph and allows you to keep connected with your contacts via a news feed. Then there’s Aardvark, which allows people to ask questions and have them answered in real time. Are you seeing the possibilities yet? But what’s the point of creating yet another social platform?

Google is primarily a search engine, which makes a whole lot of money from ads. What would happen if people didn’t need to rely on search anymore because they could just log in to their social network and ask a question? The Google team knows this so why not get in on the action so they can keep their users right where they are. That’s not all though. By monitoring the usage of its own social tools, Google will be able to offer highly targeted ads and that’s good news for advertisers.

Will this integration come off as planned? We’ll just have to wait and see. One can only hope, given the Buzz introduction debacle. Hopefully Google learned from that experience and can pull out a winner this time around.

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Does anybody out there use SEO Ultimate? Of course you do, but for those few of you who don’t SEO Ultimate is a free SEO tool designed for use with WordPress Sites. We all know about WordPress. It’s great for setting up sites quickly and keeping them updated. Unfortunately, it can be a bit of a headache when it comes to the proper implementation of an SEO campaign. SEO Ultimate was released to make the process easier.

But what’s the big news? Obviously it’s been around for a while. Well, the latest version (1.7) has been released and it includes a fix for one of those obvious but often forgotten quirks of the WordPress platform. Did you know that, on some installations, the default WordPress settings are set so that search engines are blocked from your site? That’s right. That’s why your site hasn’t been indexed yet. It might seem like a rookie mistake to not change the setting but it’s something that’s actually pretty easy to forget, especially when you’re focusing on getting the content just right.

The new version of SEO Ultimate alerts you if your WordPress site is still operating with the defaults on. It even shows you where you need to go in the WordPress interface to fix the problem. It doesn’t get any easier than that. It might be worth trying out, even if you’re usually on top of your game.

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