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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Well the news is out. Apparently the much discussed search advertising deal between Yahoo! and Microsoft has been given the go ahead by both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Union. Many are heralding that decision as the end of the Yahoo! search market share, which is sad because that’s kind of what Yahoo! has become known for over the years. Sure Yahoo! has their Shopping, Mail and News categories but they’re most thought of as a search engine.

So what does this deal mean for Yahoo! Essentially their free search capabilities will be transferred over to Bing while a paid search platform will become known as adCenter. The justification for this was that the deal would increase the level of competition amongst advertisers. Well this is good news for the companies, but not so much for search engine advertisers since more competition for ad space will ultimately drive those prices up.

So what’s an advertiser to do? The most logical step is to disperse advertising resources across fewer high cost methods and look for effective low cost methods to invest in. One of these is social media, which is possibly the cheapest way to get access to a large number of people. Some SEO gurus are already predicting that 2010 will be the year of social networks, with more and more advertisers moving away from search campaigns. After all, there aren’t that many effective search engines left.

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It looks as thought Google are applying a fresh new image to their site. As you can see from the screenshots below I think it looks a lot better. The image, video, news, maps, are now readily avaliable on the left bar by default. The sidebar also includes a list of similar search queries and an option to filter the results based on the date Google sniffed out the website.

There is still no timeframe as to when and if this will be implemented, but there is a way to see the new design thanks to blogoscope .Paste the following into the address bar of your browser when you are on Google.com and hit return

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

What do you think of it?

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When I have been surfing the internet for the latest SEO news, I came across this unique list on how to rank in Twitter for a keyword entitled “5 Steps to Ranking #1 on Twitter“. But I’m wondering what does the author mean for ranking #1. Rank where? The Twitter directory? The search engine? or the top Twitter user list?

The author of the said article indicated five ways on how to ‘increase the ranking’ of a person. He cited the name, username, bio, account activity and number of followers. I agree with him that to be able to achieve maximum potential in Twitter, one must optimize a keyword in all these areas. But what he failed to point out is the different forms of search on Twitter.

Search on Twitter is not one-dimensional. It is not as direct as search engines. Twitter can be searched in various areas such as trends, hash tags, and directories. I think the author failed to point out in the area on which his tips will be more useful.

I also tried the effectiveness of Twitter in ranking in search engines. I have found out how personalities such as Britney Spears, TechCrunch and Kevin Rose have their Twitter profiles in the top 10 rankings when their name is searched.

I have also tried it on myself and yielded the same rankings.

With this, we can say that Twitter can contribute to ranking for certain brands. But how about keywords? I think this can be effective if you put keywords in your username or bio. With hashtag search, you will be associated with a particular term and you may build your credibility on a certain topic based on Twitter conversations. However, I have only tested the search engines on brand search and not on direct keyword search. As for directories, people can control the niche they are associated with because they can freely choose which categories should they belong to.

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We have been continuously tackling branding here at SEO tops. And we did for good reason. Even if we tried to deny it, branding is now evolving and may become the next ‘big thing’ in the upcoming years. We have seen Twitter expand and how brands have utilized social media for marketing. We have seen Google update its algorithm with the new focus on branding. We have also heard news from major networks that online television and radio advertising will take its toll in the next months. But what is branding anyway?

Branding is not the name nor is it the logo. It is the very essence of the company’s products and services. It stirs emotions, perceptions and impressions. It creates a perspective and triggers the imagination of its target audience. It is way more than having the right domain name or the right image. It is the shared meanings and associations people create with the brand.

As Martin Lindstrom, the author of “Buyology:The Truth and Lies about Why We Buy” said.

Effective branding leverages emotion, interaction, experience, desire, ritual, faith, and our senses (the more the better). The brain scan results from study after study showed that subjects’ brains reacted to strong brands the same way they react to emotional or even spiritual experiences.

So branding is so much more. It is not enough that you get your name out there. You must tell the people what your company stands for and how your products and services will affect their lives. Of course, since you are not perfect, you will not be able to please all. But if you instilled in their minds that you can please them, they will be convinced by that and believe it.

But what does branding have to do with search? As Lance Loveday said in his post in Search Engine Land entitled “Search:Too Boring for Branding“, search is just way too different from branding. He illustrated this through a commercial of Starburst which he saw on television.

It was easy to imagine being the funny-looking guy, chewing the candy yourself (touch), savoring the flavor (taste) and inhaling the aroma (smell) with your llama-esque nose.

But on search, everything is different. All one gets is this advertisement written in plain text. No emotions, no images. Although search have been proven by some people to contribute to the power of branding, it merely strengthens and does not establish the brand. The brand is only established after the click. As Lance Loveday puts it,

It’s what you do “after the click” that really counts

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Every internet user has concerns in one way or the other in disclosing the identity over the internet. They are otherwise scared about whether the search engines or the Internet service providers can actually track their identity by analysing internet habits, the sites they visit regularly etc. This is partially true, as a search engine could potentially identify the IP address of each computer machine and some other details. It is always a worry for everyone whether a dedicated computer savvy hacker can combine all these bits and pieces about your identity to actually identify you as a person.

Ixquick claims to be different from others. The search engine ixquick claim that they have developed mechanisms to protect the privacy of the browsers to some extent. It is sure that they are wisely playing on the concerns of all internet users, but they are doing it very well as well. If this venture of ixquick get clicked, it would prove to be a strong competitor with Google, and yes, competitions played n the concerns of common internet users will turn out to be good for the users. It is expected that ixquick will have different security mechanisms for different kinds of browsing purposes.

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The very latest news from the giant search engine Yahoo is that it is going to shut off its online storage facility very soon. All yahoo users have been asked to clear and remove the files stored in Yahoo’s online store box on or before March 10th. Well, having said that, the majority of users do not find it a great difference in this move of yahoo, since it is hard to find a few who use this facility this time around.

The main drawback of Yahoo online briefcase was that they never bothered expanding or enhancing the facilities of storage. It was the old 30MB storage and there are much better facilities available. Yahoo initiated this storage stuff around 10 years back, and they have not simply adapted to the changes happening in the online media. In fact, people do not find this news surprising.

The official statement of reason by Yahoo says that this facility has been over looked by the users and Yahoo do not find any point in continuing this. They admit that the service is incredibly low, and it gives clear implications of the fact that, they cannot afford continuing this in these trying times. The news that had to be read in conjunction with this is, Google is all set to go for its own online storage media.

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A very recent survey on blogs shows some interesting stats that would encourage blog writers. It is nothing but more than 75 percent of business establishments which include small scale business and large scale business have taken that good step into the blogging world. Not only for the sake of promotion of their business, but these entrepreneurs strongly believe that blogs are the best social media of recent times.

Apart from the very strong reason that makes all businessmen write blogs, there is another good reason to continue them blogging. The fundamental reason is blogging is the best way to interact directly with the customers as it is the easiest and best accessible mode of communication for both the readers and the writers. The best news from the business world is that business bloggers have started learning the tips and tricks behind producing quality blogs. This is in the sense that they have understood the importance of producing search engine optimized blogs. As a matter of fact, optimization techniques have largely been injected into business blogs, and profit is the only thing that will follow. These techniques have helped them greatly to get good page ranks among search engines and hence, their business has started defining new dimensions.

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This New Year, Yahoo brings something special for their readers and users. A team member from Yahoo has come up with a new category of search engine which is specially designed for the purpose of searching news. This was mainly intended at bringing a new innovation in the search world.

This is expected to bring more recent and latest news for the users of Yahoo. The earlier search engine of Yahoo will post news on the basis of the time when it as posted. This is done by stacking the news in a timely manner and displaying according to the latest news. The new search engine overcome all the difficulties due to this and comes up with a new method by which the old news could be updated at any time.

The TweetNews, as this is called will bring matching updates from Twitter tweets and other relevant news from Yahoo news. This will be combined and displayed to the users. This will act as a unique and attractive platform for both Twitter as well as BOSS. This can also act as a ranking signal and can be used to check and confirm the freshness of the news. This is expected to hit the market with great expectations.

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Google is trying to expand the language search. The recent patent from the search engine giant describes the expanded language search engine. This will enable us to search for those pages in various other languages which could be done through the translation of the queries searched with.

This patent is expected to help users to receive various additional results in the user’s language. Users can also search for anything in their traditional language. The search engine will look for results, when these are specified by the searcher. They also return such results in other languages, based on various other factors including the popularity of the language, attributes of the users etc. Search history of the users, subject matter of a query and its relevance, the character type given as input by the user etc will also be considered when displaying results in languages for the users.

The language setting of the browser, search engine domain, user input etc all will be considered by the search engine for determining whether results have to be displayed in other languages. The search engine has to be set up to expand various languages used in selecting the results. This patent is expected to help Google to bring a large number of users.

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