What is Google TV? Here’s how the Times describes it:

The Google TV software will present users with a new interface for TVs that lets them perform Internet functions like search while also pulling down Web programming like YouTube videos or TV shows from Hulu.com. The technology will also allow downloadable Web applications, from games to social networks, to run on the devices.

In many ways, that sounds like what Yahoo announced a year ago with its Yahoo Widget Engine for TVs. But Google’s version also sounds like it may offer more. While Google declined to comment to the Times, the paper cites people “close to the project” who provided these details anonymously:

• the Google TV platform will be open source and based on the Android OS, and developers will be able to build apps for it
• Google has built a set-top box to run this, but the software “may be incorporated directly into TVs and other devices”
• the set-top box is being tested now with Dish Network
• the software will use a version of Google’s Chrome browser
• the project is a partnership between Google, Sony, and Intel, and with Logitech on board to provide peripherals

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google was testing a “TV search service.”

Contacted this afternoon about these reports, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land: “We don’t comment on rumor or speculation.”

The PC World article includes some strongly-worded criticisms about how Google launched its Buzz social networking service:

“Google consistently tells the public to ‘just trust us,’” she said. “But based on my observations, I do not believe consumer privacy played any significant role in the release of Buzz.”

A reasonable consumer would conclude that the launch of Buzz was a “material change” their relationship with Google’s Gmail, she said. “When users created Gmail accounts, they signed up for e-mail services,” she said. “Their expectations did not include social networking.”

Negative reaction to Buzz was quick and widespread after its February 9th launch. Google immediately began changing how Buzz works, and eventually issued a public apology that said Google “failed to appreciate that users have differing privacy expectations.”

But Commissioner Harbour also took exception to that approach during today’s FTC privacy workshop.

“I would like to see the commission take the position of intolerance toward companies that push the privacy envelop, then backtrack and modify their offerings after facing consumer and regulator backlash.”

Harbour, whom PC World says is leaving the FTC next month, also spoke critically of Facebook’s long-running privacy issues, and called for online companies to use encryption more often to protect their users personal data.

Parlez vous conversion?

This is often a hidden issue with sites which receive traffic from multiple languages/countries. Even if you have multiple language websites or multi-lingual sections on your site to help users, you need to check that visitors are using the right language section pages on your site. If they’re not then you might run into troubles. For example, take a look at this screenshot of analytics data from an international company. This is their UK, 100% English content:

In this situation there’s a very strong business case for not letting those little language selection links at the top of the page do all the work—you should consider investing in some geo-based redirection technology to take your non-English users straight to the correct language content.

Play around with auto-emails

Email marketing is a big topic, and an important component of many online marketing campaigns. Often overlooked is that you shouldn’t just consider email marketing as a once/month push (or once/week etc)—you should consider setting up an auto-schedule of emails for new sign-ups to your site. As soon as a new user enters onto your email list they should enter a cycle of emails which get sent out—above and beyond the initial email.

I’m not talking about spamming but some helpful emails can really help users convert. Pingdom does this very well—I signed up for a free trial of their tool and after a week or so I received an email asking if I was ok with everything on the service, asking if I had any questions etc. This kind of thing will help turn those passive users into active users and hopefully customers.

Monitor 404 errors & other site issues

This is web best practice anyway but you should always keep an eye on website issues, whether they’re 404 errors, site downtime (Pingdom has a good tool for this, see above!) or something else. Analytics packages don’t always monitor these things by default so this kind of traffic can often be overlooked. Imagine the (nonexistent) conversion rate of users who see a 404 page! So cleaning up these 404 errors and taking users to a better page can help to increase conversions. If you don’t have big development resources, Google Webmaster Central can help identify 404 errors on your site. If Google is seeing these errors then there’s a good chance that users are too.

If you’re running a dynamic site that runs off an ever-changing database then you should also monitor carefully for situations where a user hits a sub-optimal page. It might not be a true 404 error but if for example you have a dynamic product database then you should look out for any visits to category pages with zero products on. These kinds of hidden errors can often be a source of lost conversions.

Gather more data

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, but in the land of the internet the man with most data is king. So alongside testing your website consider adding some extra data collection to inform your next test. A great place to start is with tracking how far users get through forms. My colleague Duncan Morris wrote a great post on how to easily do this using Google Analytics events. The best thing about that post? It works on any form using auto-binding!

The Bing Maps integration of WW Telescope was demonstrated a few weeks ago by Microsoft maps architect Blaise Arcas y Aguera at the TED conference. (The WW Telescope demonstration is near the end of the video at about 7:04.) It wasn’t live for me as of the time of this writing (the images below are from the video).

Later today anyone using the Silverlight version of Bing Maps should be able to navigate to the Streetside view in Bing Maps, move the cursor to the sky and be able to see “real time information about how the space is moving over the Earth.”

According to Microsoft WW Telescope “is pulling tons of collections from the Worldwide Telescope Community including Constellations, Solar System, All-Sky Surveys, Spitzer Studies, Chandra Studies, Hubble Studies, Astrophotography, Radio Studies, NOAO Studies, Gemini Studies, Messier Catalog, Planets/Moons, Earth (Bing!), Panoramas, and Tours.”

Google offers its own images of space and constellations, Google Sky. However it’s not integrated into Google maps.

This is just the latest “cool feature” to find its way into Bing Maps. We discussed the new Silverlight version of Bing and related map apps in a previous post.

It’s almost a dead certain reality that any inhouse search marketer today will need to develop new skills, if they don’t already possess them. For years, many in the industry have advocated the need to know more than SEO to be successful in SEO. In the near future that will be proven out, and skills beyond SEO will be demanded from anyone trying to make a career as an SEO. Just knowing the basics of SEO is often enough to get you started, and that will remain true – as a statement. The basics themselves will continue to expand, so this becomes a moving target. Let’s just say you cannot be too aware of emerging trends and how they impact your world.

There are undoubtedly many who could claim to have predicted the advent of social media. If you’ve got your head in the sand hoping social will go away, you should dig yourself out and take a serious look around. To state the obvious, social is here, and it matters. Years ago, however, social media was somewhat clunkier than what we enjoy today. The forerunner to today’s “social” activity was more aligned to discussion forums. Remember those? You’d go, post a question and folks would answer in line – no limits on characters.

Those who cut their teeth in those environments learned early on things such as etiquette, respect and how to play nice. Moving outside the lines back then resulted in you being banned from the community. How does this matter today? Well, when you have 140 characters to get your message across, you’d better be careful. Saying the wrong thing, or even the right things in the wrong way, can have big negative effects on your brand. The bottom line is that you need to be careful with social – mistakes in this arena hurt you immediately and can be difficult to recover from.

Mobile matters

So what does the future have in store for us? Let’s look to the mobile movement to set the stage.

To set the scene, I’ll construct a theoretical scenario:

I’m flying into Montreal and want to find a romantic restaurant for dinner on Friday evening.

Sound simple, right? You go to an engine, and search for restaurants in Montreal and look for reviews. And that would work fine, if you have your computer handy. Pretty much everyone carries a mobile device these days, though, so it’s becoming increasingly important to fit this paradigm.

In my personal world, I simple ask my phone to find me exactly what I want. It not only finds the results for me, but ranks them and shows me options to book a table at different times on my desired day. Even today, while this is nascent technology, it’s pretty good. Most time (80%) my system works. That ranks right up there against sitting at my laptop researching results. Plus, I can manage my search anywhere and when it’s most convenient for me.

How does this apply to SEO? Well, these search services, beyond being just plain cool, access dozens of search results to form their “answers” for you. The trick for an SEO then becomes to ensure your products or services rank well across many arenas of search. You simply don’t know when a query will trigger a result returning your information, and skipping things can have a big impact. Imagine if that restaurant found did not have comments and reviews enabled on their website? How would the search service know its “romantic” as I wanted?

Sure, the search systems could rely on plain old optimized content, but the signals from this social commentary mean much more to me than something an SEO stuck in a meta description tag. What if the restaurant didn’t subscribe to an online table booking service? Well, the next result pops to the top and I see a different result. To me, this matters not. I simply need one restaurant with the right atmosphere. I’m sure there are dozens or more in Montreal, so anyone skipping steps simply never appears to me as a result.

If you thought the race to rank in the top three results was tough, try being in the race where being the only one that matters. Are you building and executing a plan wide enough to encompass all the various factors that impact your organic search rankings? Better take another look at your plans, and those of others inside your organization, to make sure all efforts are commonly aligned.

So, do SEOs need to know more than just SEO tactics? Absolutely. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that to be a good SEO today, you need to be an expert in general online marketing, social media, link building, SEO, paid search, conversion optimization, copywriting and trend spotting. It’s a marathon, so pace yourself, and get learning if you don’t already know these areas in depth. The results you will achieve from being able to see the bigger picture will make all the learning worthwhile.

At the right price.

Both Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) and Buyer Hubs/Lead Generation sites offer opportunities to cap the Cost Per Lead and gain some control (which is not as easy in other media, save Direct Response.)

In this case, when I am referring to “Buyer Hubs”, I am not talking about B2B Directory listings (even enhanced listings), but rather sites where buyers go to submit a Request for Quote from multiple vendors. I acknowledge that some sites have a hybrid model of RFQ forms and enhanced directory listings. This is about the leads paid for in the RFQ model.

Examples of Buyer Hubs are BuyerZone and VendorSeek. Examples of hybrid Directories and multiple-vendor lead generation sites are MacRAE’S Blue Book and Bitpipe (Bitpipe is not technically an RFQ site, but leads can be fed to multiple vendors when non-vendor-specific content is requested such as a white paper or guide.) A B2B Directory website example is ThomasNet.

I have seen many situations where the Cost Per Lead produced via a Buyer Hub is significantly less than leads generated via PPC. I’ve seen a few situations in the reverse as well.

But, are all leads created equal?

Consider the following Pros & Cons of each (in relation to generating high-quality leads):

Pros

PPC:

One of the primary benefits of PPC is control, with all of the following advantages:

Buyer Hubs:

• Cheaper – Often hubs can provide a cheaper Cost/Lead than other marketing channels.
• Outsourced Marketing – Hubs exist only if they attract website traffic, and they spend time and resources on their SEO, PPC, and Social Media efforts. You may find that you can allocate your own resources in areas that your hub partners do not dominate.
• Pre-Screened & Pre-Qualified – Depending on the hub, a visitor may have been forced to go through a series of screens where they provided detailed information about their needs. Some hubs may also offer call screening as part of their process, where someone calls and verifies that there is a real company, a real person, and a real need.
• Returns – Hubs will often allow you the opportunity to “return” a lead that you feel was not qualified enough and did not meet your needs as specified in your selection of their categories and qualifying criteria. If successful, you will get the money credited back to your account. There is no ability to do that with PPC!

Cons

PPC:

• Cost – Obviously this will depend on the keyword space, bidding strategies, your offers, landing page optimization, etc., but often leads generated via PPC have a higher Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) than leads provided through RFQ hubs.
• Frequent Management – To achieve great results, PPC requires time and creativity.

Buyer Hubs:

• Your Competitors & Conversion to Sale – When leads are cheaper via a hub than via PPC, it is most likely because the leads are being sold to multiple parties. You may pay only $20 per lead, but your competitors may be paying the same amount, for the same leads. Now you are in a definite bidding for the leads coming through this channel.
• Targeted Messaging Control – The hub may provide some very detailed screening questions that users have to fill out before being allowed to submit their request, but those questions may not be your questions. Without control over your messaging (on the hub and by bringing them to your Landing Pages), the quality of the leads may be less.

The real test

In the end, you should not benchmark your leads by Cost Per Lead. This is a mistake I see all too often, and colleague after colleague confirms that they see the same thing with their clients. You have to take the time to analyze the quality of the leads and determine your Cost Per Sale.

If you don’t take this time, then you may be making the wrong decisions about where to invest your lead generation budget.

Google is not the only search engine with a special logo. Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com all have logos.

I have some additional logos from others in the industry at the Search Engine Roundtable. Also, if you want to see the St. Patrick’s Day logos from the past 6 years or so, you can see them at 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 archives.

So Many Affiliate Programs! Which One Do I Choose?

Ask questions first before you join an affiliate program.

Do a little research about the choices of program that you intend to join into. Get some answers because they will be the deciding point of what you will be achieving later on.

Will it cost you anything to join?

Most affiliate programs being offered today are absolutely free of charge. So why settle for those that charge you some dollars before joining.

When do they issue the commission checks?

Every program is different. Some issue their checks once a month, every quarter, etc. Select the one that is suited to your payment time choice. Many affiliate programs are setting a minimum earned commission amount that an affiliate must meet or exceed in order for their checks to be issued.

What is the hit per sale ratio?

This is the average number of hits to a banner or text link it takes to generate a sale based on all affiliate statistics. This factor is extremely important because this will tell you how much traffic you must generate before you can earn a commission from the sale.

How are referrals from an affiliate’s site tracked and for how long do they remain in the system?

You need to be confident on the program enough to track those people you refer from your site. This is the only way that you can credit for a sale. The period of time that those people stay in the system is also important. This is because some visitors do not buy initially but may want to return later to make the purchase. Know if you will still get credit for the sale if it is done some months from a certain day.

What are the kinds of affiliate stats available?

Your choice of affiliate program should be capable of offering detailed stats. They should be available online anytime you decide to check them out. Constantly checking your individual stats is important to know how many impressions, hits and sales are already generated from your site. Impressions are the number of times the banner or text link was viewed by a visitor of your site. A hit is the one clicking on the banner or text links.

Does the affiliate program also pay for the hits and impressions besides the commissions on sales?

It is important that impressions and hits are also paid, as this will add to the earnings you get from the sales commission. This is especially important if the program you are in offers low sales to be able to hit ratio.

Who is the online retailer?

Find out whom you are doing business with to know if it is really a solid company. Know the products they are selling and the average amount they are achieving. The more you know about the retailer offering you the affiliate program, the easier it will be for you to know if that program is really for you and your site.

Is the affiliate a one tier or two tier program?

A single tier program pays you only for the business you yourself have generated. A two tier program pays you for the business, plus it also pays you a commission on the on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsor in your program. Some two-tier programs are even paying small fees on each new affiliate you sponsor. More like a recruitment fee.

Lastly, what is the amount of commission paid?

5% – 20% is the commission paid by most programs. .01% – .05% is the amount paid for each hit. If you find a program that also pays for impressions, the amount paid is not much at all. As you can see from the figures, you will now understand why the average sales amount and hit to sale ratio is important.

These are just some of the questions that needed answering first before you enter into an affiliate program. You should be familiar with the many important aspects that your chosen program should have before incorporating them into your website. Try to ask your affiliate program choices these questions. These can help you select the right program for you site from among the many available.

Read More

• Affiliate Marketing Rules
• Affiliate Marketing and Pay Per Click
• Affiliate Marketing And Home Business
• Affiliate Marketing Tips
• The Life Of An Affiliate Marketer

Just as it does in other settings, the auto-suggest appears as you type a query. But, with some Facebook content and connections behind a wall, the question is, Where will auto-suggest look for suggestions? Here’s Facebook’s explanation:

Now as you’re typing in a query in the search bar, you will instantaneously see results not only of the people, events, groups and Pages you’re connected with but also the connections of your friends and globally relevant results.

So, from my profile page, I get these results as I start to type the word “search.”

Facebook says auto-suggest is rolling out to all users over the next few days.

Last summer, Facebook began to emphasize search more broadly across its site, and its redesign last month put search front and center on the user interface.