Dear readers: The Search Engine Marketing blog is retiring. I admit to feeling sentimental about it, because this blog was originally created for me by Jason Calacanis, in the early days of Weblogs, Inc, and although I ended up contributing to several blogs in our lineup, this is where it started for me. I'm grateful to Jason, and thankful for the people I met in the SEM and SEO universes, via this blog.

Chris Gilmer, who has been posting here lately, is still with us! You can find Chris writing on Download Squad, our software and online services blog.

Although our editorial priorities have changed over the nearly three years of operation, we do not remove retired blogs. the SEM blog will remain available as an archive (and not a badly optimized one!). Thanks to everyone for reading.

Yahoo! announces its quarterlies after the market closes today, and this piece by Jonathan Berr at TheStreet.com provides a fairly optimistic rundown of the company as an investment prospect. The upshot of Berr's analysis is that Yahoo! is a safer and more conservatvie bet in the Internet and search advertising space.

If there were any doubt that Google is primarily an advertising company, not a search company, that doubt is eliminated today with the news of Google's purchase of dMarc. dMarc provides an automated advertising solution that puts ad spots on radio. dMarc enables advertisers to pick stations, target demographics, and upload digital content. The automated service allows for swift campaign changes and greater accountability than traditional ad brokering on radio. It'll be fasinating to see what Google does with this company and its technology.

I was glad to receive Search Marketing Strategies from Elsevier, which has published a series called "e-marketing essentials." Search Marketing Strategies is authored by James Colborn, a principle at SEM firm Inceptor, whose blog in the PPCA site sadly seems to be abandoned at this time. My copy of the book does not display a cover price, but the Amazon page lists the title for $37.97--startlingly high for a fairly slim volume printed with large type and suffering somewhat from repetition in its pages.

Quibbles aside, Search Marketing Strategies hits a sweet spot between a Dummies-style how-to and a theory book. Colborn does not burn through pages documenting specific features of search advertising products, but does get his hands dirty with case studies and scenarios of failure and success. The book is clearly written for experienced marketers, not for beginning Web entrepreneurs. Anyone buying the book should be fluent in concepts of traffic, conversion, branding, creative copy, and marketing keywords. The book doesn't waste time on background, or on explaining marketing from the ground up.

Somewhat surprising, and certainly of interest, Colborn identifies branding as "Objective I" in search marketing, contrary to the agenda of most SEM firms and their clients. The author cites IAB studies on the effectiveness of SEM in building brand awareness, and the fact that many consumers research their purchases online but actually make the purchases offline. 

The book could have fleshed out the Table of Contents, making it easier for bookstore browsers to glean an overview. Doing so would have shone a light on the the quality within without giving away the store. And in the back of the book, a Resources section is rather thin. But in between, marketers will get a good evaluation of SEM tools, and some interesting tactical and strategic information.

My eye was caught by this interesting account, by Dave Chakrabarti, of working with a nonprofit organization on optimizing its site. Or, more accurately, shoving SEO down the nonprofit's throat. The story resonates with me because my wife worked at one time for a nonprofit agency in NJ, USA, which maintained a Web site and made abortive attempts to publicize its programs on that site. The Web property was a disastrous, nearly invisible thing. During the writing of Building Your Business with Google For Dummies I, with my wife's help, used the agency and its site as one of several test cases in Adwords and in basic SEO. It was a tough sell to an oblivious and resistant group of people, just as Chakrabarti describes in his case.

Resistance to online marketing is not a new story in all business segments, of course. But resistance to SEO in nonprofits is a real shame because it can be so helpful, and it is so free! Just accepting and knowing the basics can improve visibility, enhance the stream of volunteers and job applicants, and deepen community involvement.

It's a testament to Google's influence in the search field that any mention of banner ads on Google pages is met with widespread fear, curiosity, cynicism, reassurance from the company, and further questioning. the further questioning was recently conducted by Danny Sullivan at SEW, who found Marissa Mayer on vacation and tried to clarify how much wiggle room Google has left itself on the question of banner ads. Mayer affirmed, as she had already in the Unofficial Google blog, that banners on the Google home page (as presented to users not signed in) were out of the question, and any reasonable observer would believe this. Google's trust equity would be damaged by flashing ads on the famously pristine flagship page, and nobody knows that more than Google.

Danny did coax Marissa Mayer to acknowledge that the personalized home page is another story entirely, and that targeted ads (text and banner, presumably), are not out of the question there. Not soon, though, according to Mayer.

Launched in November and publicly announced on Christmas day, a new Search Engine marketing blog has joined the fray. Operated by a company called Search Engine Marketing, the blog takes a basic, accessible approach to SEM providers and SEO principles. Nice Wordpress design, too.

The year-end Google Zeitgeist is making the rounds, and is always an entertaining document. I thought I'd test the presumption that popular searches are reflected in the index by voluminous listings. That is to say, there is a rough correlation between how many queries are entered for a search term and how many items match the query. This is a standard search marketing formula; keywords are like hinges that connect search popularity with voluminous online content. Supply meets demand. The formula seems to work when applied to five Zeitgeist comparisons, as listed below. I compared Zeitgeist popularity results (the first term of each pair is the einner, reflecting more search queries) with Google Smackdown results (number of hits for each keyword in Google's index. the Zeitgeist winner matched the Smackdown winner in each case.

the force vs. dark side
yoda vs. skywalker
katrina vs. rita
britney vs. mariah
surfing vs. snowboarding

Rumor in the SEM industry has it that Google is working on a new bidding model in AdWords that would enable advertisers to market directly to the AOL network. Currently, advertisers have a choice of bidding for placement on Google pages, or on Google plus content network pages (AdSense publishers). Many observers (including this one) have clamored for years for finer granularity in advertiser choice--particularly, the ability to isolate the content network or portions of it. AOL is not Google's only large partner, and I'm sure many advertisers would like to concentrate their bidding on other big properties that run Google's ads. But spinning off AOL as part of the new agreement, if that it truly in the works, would be a positive start to greater advertiser control.

At this point it remains unclear what will happen. Reportedly, AOL will sell ads directly to its pages using Google technology, and this initiative will be called AOL Marketplace. That seems to sketch out a different scenario, though, from an AOL-only option within AdWords.

The uncertainty and cynicism that have been swirling around the AOL/Google deal are evidently important enough for some high-profile nipping in the bud. Marissa Mayer, the VP of Search Products and User Experience (formerly Director of Consumer Web Products) has posted  a "trust us" message in the Official Google Blog that clarifies some misconceptions. I can find only three other instances of Marissa Mayer posting on the blog. In this message she reassures everyone that AOL's partnership with Google will not bias search results in any way, and AOL's allowance in AdWords does not exempt it from participating in the system's auction-style competition for placement. mayer also asserts that banner ads will not appear on Google's home page or on Web search result pages. "There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever." Well, that description leaves some leeway for a more modest style of graphical ad presentation, but her point is welcome nonetheless.

Mayer summarizes: "We're looking forward to what AOL can help us do for you..." That's a little opaque. It seems to me that the point of this deal was primarily to save Google's most important single licensing client, and didn't have much to do with us at all--which is fine. Oh well, harmless spin. Here's the take-away point about trust: "...you can continue to trust that we're giving you a result because it's the best one we can possibly provide." that's the core of Google's consumer trust, and Mayer is right to hammer it home in the company's most visible blog.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for ads in RSS, and have said so for months. I have intuitively felt that inconspicuous ads would probably work best, if only because they would piss off readers less than big, loud ads. However, a study from Pheedo indicates the reverse is true, and it's two layers of bad news. First, ads run as separate RSS feed items are far more successful (generating about eight times the clickthroughs) as ads embedded in RSS items. Then, it turns out that blitzing the feed with ads in every other item is the most successful tactic of all. Of course, you might lose most of your readers, but the remaining ones will be clicking your ads.

No official confirmations have emanated from AOL or Google, but word is everywhere that Google has secured its date to the prom with AOL. Or maybe it's an engagement. with 5 percent of AOL transferring into Google's balance sheet I wouldn't call it a marriage, the the preexisting partnership has definitely been strengthened at Microsoft's expense. The triangulated courtship in which Google and Microsoft each wooed AOL (has AOL felt this powerful, this beautiful, this wanted in years?) was a golden opportunity for Microsoft to establishe itself as a dominant force in online advertising, breaking up the imminently expiring, long-standing licensing arrangement between AOL and Google.

Naturally, Google was (it might be speculated) frantic and determined to derail that outcome. Mission accomplished. By all accounts, in cluding a very certain-sounding report from Forbes, Google will fork over $1B to acquire its minority stake, and engage in various unspecified cross-promotional deals and ad-revenue adjustments. the $1B represents about three years of the revenue Google currently earns from AOL in licensing fees. Not a bad price to pay to keep the status quo.

This weekend it's going to be quiet as a library in here. We're doing some maintenance—big, important stuff that I'd tell you about except then I'd have to be killed, and besides, I don't undertand it in the slightest. Posting in this blog will be light to nonexistent, and the comment sections will be entirely broken. Save up your rants and raves 'til Monday morning. Thanks!

Google's new music-oriented search results present a package similar to its movie-specific results, but with crucial differences. In each case, (try gorillaz for music and king kong for movies), Google is likely to recognize the nature of the query and offer a "More" link to flesh out the musical or filmish quality of the its results. But in some cases (try kanye west for music), Google imposes proprietary results to the page, completely eliminating Web-search results. The user must click the Web tab to get normal, organic search results for Kanye West. This seems a bit odd and pushy. Google's full-bore movie results are invoked with the movie: search operator applied to a title or actor. You can do the sasme thing with a music: operator. 

The search industry was rocked on Tuesday by the news that Alexa had opened its search index to developers, or anyone else willing to pay per-use rates to access and manipulate the Alexa index for whatever purpose. As John Battelle put it, Alexa is "turning the index inside out," enabling all kinds of imaginative vertical engines. Alexa put up a topsy-turvy image-search tool as an example; instead of finding images that match contextual keywords, it finds images according to camera metadata such as brand, model, and image size. At first glance, the service seems revolutionary, taking Google's and Yahoo!'s API generosity to a whole new level and opening the door to more complete search-oriented Web services than a mere Google Maps mashup.

Danny Sullivan attempts to debunk the enthusiasm, though, with a historically informed post that makes Alexa's venture seem like old news, and rather expensive to boot. Danny also points out that Alexa itself actually uses Google to expand its search results; Alexa indexes 4-5 billion Web pages, making it a runt compared to the powerhouse consumer services.

The tale will be told by developers. If they are attracted to the deal, and if news-making products and playgrounds emerge from it, Alexa will have a hit, and perhaps will truly roil the industry. It doesn't necessarily matter whether something is new and groundbreaking; it just have to have the right combination of winning elements.