That’s not to say it did a poor job in either respect before; even though I prefer the BBC for some purposes, I still visit Google News many times a day.  But genuine improvements are, by definition, always good things, and on the Google News Blog, Sharad Jain detailed the latest upgrades.

“[W]e recently released . . . a new algorithm to help determine the most recent update to a story,” he wrote.  “In other words, it lets us find something new that’s been added to a breaking story.  So instead of just seeing the most recent publishing activity for a breaking story, we highlight the sources which brought you the information in the first place. Once there’s new information from another source, we update our results so you get any new developments to the story.”

Also, “Another signal we’ve added helps us recognize the importance of local context in a story. . . .  [W]e have started actively promoting high quality local reporting in addition to coverage from foreign sources.  This means we try to find sources at the scene of a story who are doing original reporting.  It may be a national or international story with many sources from around the world reporting on it, but often times one of the best sources of information on a story are those closest to it.”

So the next time you see a local television station – or a source you’ve already read – mentioned in Google News, don’t discount it as some freak accident.  Google’s just tuning the whole timeliness-and-accuracy thing, and we’re thankful for that.

While you can certainly attribute traffic from search, what about conversion? This session will address which search engines convert better, which ones produce more engaged users and which ones drive the most users to niche sites.

Moderator: Dana Todd, Co-founder and Principal, Site Lab International Inc.

Speakers: John Squire, SVP, Product Strategy, General Manger, Search Services, Coremetrics, Robert Heyman, Chief Search Officer, MediaSmith, Isabel Sopoglian, VP of Search Marketing, Cars.com

It’s John Squire of SVP to make the first presentation, he starts off by suggesting how marketing should be conceived, it should be thought of in terms of right visitors and right pages. He emphasizes the need for measurement to check the validity of the decisions we make. Next he deliberates on the considerations you need to make before deciding, how you’re gonna spend the e the marketing money. He gives a couple of figures, out of those who convert, 50% interact with more than 1 ad. Close to 50% click on on a link and then take action. 25% come across 30 channels over a 25 day time period before the conversion takes place. The point to remember is to consider all the influencing factors v/s just the final conversion and think that’s what the cause of conversion is. It’s the multi touch that determines decisions on investment in keyword bids, third parties links, etc. he advises to get a better view of paid search by attribution reports across sessions. It’s also important to find out the groups of low cost per click keywords that lead to sales.

Next it’s Bob’s turn to speak, he suggests that search is something that goes hand in hand with all the other branding tactics, he cites eg of Napster’s Super Bowl spot and how the search figures soared. To observe the link trail till the last click is important, no matter whether it’s a banner advert, email, etc.

Here comes Isabel from search marketing at Cars.com, she says what is it that you consider a as conversion, is it the traffic, the sale, or just the sign up. How worthwhile is your definition of conversion, do you track the keyword levels? Then she moves on the spelling out the types of conversion and what they are, like the internal factors are Keywords, Ad copy, landing page, conversion path, negative keywords, URL blocking. The external she says are traffic quality, click fraud, searcher’s behavior, algorithmic changes, SERP changes, search engine testing. She emphasizes the point with an eg, say impressions increase by 300% for an advert on Yahoo! And the CTRs decreased. When yahoo was asked the reply is results are sometimes out of your hands, and that they’d been running tests.

She then moves on to elaborating more on tracking, suggests what you should be tracking. You should track, your ability to track on keyword level, by search engine, match type, ad copy, landing page version.

And the next is the tactics that lead to conversion are , that you should, only select keywords that are relevant to product, extensive negative keywords, need to use appropriate keyword match types, and don’t mislead searchers with the ad copy, further optimize your landing page and lead path to convert.

She says that there are some advance tactics as well and they are, detect international clicks and demand search engines to block the sources or refund money, block non-performing domains, score traffic quality by source and implement into your bidding, check traffic for click fraud and provide search engine with the evidence. When you judge the conversion data be mindful that the bigger the sample like the quantity of traffic increases the significance to the results.

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The study revealed that ads placed on relevant pages on neutral sites can offer some of the same advantages as those placed on highly relevant sites and have the potential to do as well on those sites in ad and brand recognition.

The study tested a top consumer electronics manufacturer’s ad on Web pages in three different areas. A page on an average consumer electronics site, the technology section of leading newspaper’s site and a page in the online opinion section of the same newspaper.

The ad on the technology page of the newspaper’s site did better than the identical ad in the opinion section of the newspaper’s Web site, including ad recognition and brand recognition. The contextually served ad also did better in communicating information about the product to consumers compared to the opinion page.

Comparing the results between the ad on the technology page of the newspaper’s site to the identical ad on the computer Web site revealed equal performance as the (relevant) computer web site in the ad’s ability to communicate meaningful information, its influence on likelihood to buy or consider the products being advertised, and the consumers opinion of that brand.

(Our on-scene WebProNews staff has passed along this latest news from SES San Jose 2007. If you can’t be there, you need to be here with WebProNews this week, for videos and reports.)

Jennifer Slegg of JenSense.com called banner blindness a growing problem. That doesn’t bode well for the publisher who wants to earn money from advertising.

She suggested rotating ads, and varying the color and style can help. Optimizing ad title colors provides a better chance for higher click-through rates. External-link colors should be consistent with that title color too.

Site publishers should be wary of CPA referral ads. Slegg said she has seen people go and select random ads that aren’t super-targeted to their audience. That leads to poor performing ads.

Filtering represents another potential trap. Site publishers should only filter ads that are for competitors; grossly mistargeted ads; and ads that are inappropriate for the desired audience.

The temptation exists to place more ad units than fewer on a site’s pages. A case study Slegg discussed found its subject had worse performance with three ad units than with just one. Overloading pages with ad units is a beginner’s mistake, she said.

Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney urged publishers to make sure one’s site is complete and functional before dropping contextual ads onto those pages. He suggested 1,000 unique visitors per day as the mark to hit before placing contextual ads.

With contextual ads, publishers don’t make money until people leave. Having a solid base of incoming traffic per day increases the opportunities for ads to convert into clicks, and profit.

Schoemaker has continually experimented with what he does with ad units. Sometimes that has meant operating in a grey area of the terms of service of a contextual ad provider like Google’s AdSense.

"I’ve been warned a half a dozen times in the past 3 years, but I always immediately respond and address the situation," he said.

The temptations of making money quickly can’t be allowed to overcome a sensible approach to using contextual advertising. Site publishers should test ads, and track them with something like Google Analytics, which Schoemaker called "phenomenal for a free product."

Like any other way to make money legitimately, contextual advertising requires some hard work on the part of the site publisher. Building an audience, testing and retesting contextual units, and tracking ad performance can reward that effort over time.

Here’s the first of the two responses:

I do apologize for not being familiar with this feature. I did some research and no one that I talked to was familiar with this feature either. So, I have escalated this to a higher level for you. I am sure we will get to the bottom of this for you. Thank you for being a valued Linkedin Member.

While I didn’t feel that valued, I received one more email that answered enough of my questions for the time being:

I found the answer to your dilemma. The old “Other Contacts” browser (which is still available for users who don’t have Javascript enabled) allowed you to “view recent users first”.  It displayed the LinkedIn members in your “Other Contacts” sorted by when they joined LinkedIn, not when they last logged on. To get to the old contacts browser without actually disabling Javascript on your browser, you can use this link:  http://www.linkedin.com/otherContactsNojs

The specific view you’re talking about is this:
http://www.linkedin.com/otherContactsNojs?
membersOnly=membersOnly&context=
2&sortAction=mid&reset=reset 

I hope this helps. I do apologize for not being familiar with this right away. For the confusion I have given you 5 InMails to use. They do expire in 90 days so don’t let them go to waste. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

This gets into the semantic confusion. The entire time, I thought "recent users" meant "people who used LinkedIn recently." Yet LinkedIn actually meant "newest users," which is still helpful, but nowhere nearly as useful for me. If my contacts were on LinkedIn recently, as I thought LinkedIn implied, then it meant I was reaching out to someone already recently engaged with the site. Yet these were the newest contacts, so I was performing a different service instead, often becoming one of the first people to connect with them and helping them build their networks.

The end result is the same, and I still like being able to sort by newest contacts as one more way to slice and dice the list rather than just alphabetically. I’d love for LinkedIn to amend its privacy policy and allow sorting by recent users additionally, but I’d imagine given the frequency to which LinkedIn is used as a job hunting site, the backlash would be greater than the appreciation by a few of its power users. Granted, if people are actively job hunting, they’re probably suddenly ramping up connections, especially to recruiters, and that will in turn be displayed to others in that person’s network. It’s hard to take advantage of a site like that and use it in complete stealth; a much better practice is to use it consistently, whether that’s daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on your role, profession, and temperament for networking.

Two postscripts:

1) A blog reader wondered if LinkedIn still has the feature where you can view who’s viewed your profile (at least in some vague sense, such as a location or employer) and how many times your profile came up in search results. I saw it about a week ago but don’t see it anymore. Do you still see it? I’ve also asked my new best friend in customer service for more dirt.

2) If we have met or been in contact to some degree, I welcome connecting.

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LookSmart’s technology centers on semantic analysis of page content to determine the relevant topics for ads – the thought being that relevant ads improve ROI for advertisers.

"With the addition of contextual, publishers now have a complete ad serving and revenue optimization solution that they totally control," says Dave Hills, president and CEO of LookSmart.

LookSmart licenses its AdCenter services to some heavy hitters like Ask.com, which uses the service to manage advertiser relationships and accounts.

In April, LookSmart announced an ad backfill capability which uses ad network feeds from other publishers to help increase revenue and bidding activity.

The backfill capability is the most recent addition to a string of releases the company has added as of late, following yield-focused ad serving algorithms, advertiser and publisher APIs, and reporting features.

However, in a recent business meeting, an associate explained their 3 C’s as the following (which was remarkably similar): Content, Context, and Community. I have to say that this resonated with me much more than the other version.

Context

In the first article, it was Content, Contact and Community. The difference is context, which is something that has come around more than once in my writing, analysis, and observation. In my opinion, context is quickly becoming the authority for many aspects of web marketing; as one example, it is changing the field of search engine optimization from rote tasks to truly understanding the site visitor and persuasively presenting the site to them, rather than simply targeting random high-volume words for search engine rankings.

Links and content, by themselves, are the building blocks of a website, but it is the context of both that determines true relevance to a visitor and to a search engine. The context of words on the page is as important as the words themselves. Links are incredibly important, but the context of the link can increase sales, damage a reputation, build relevance in the search engines, or attract a click-through from a searcher.

Context is what provides the overal perspective of a site’s content, links, and architecture.

Essentially, it distills down to a few simple principles of community. The concept of Web 2.0 is successful because it focuses on a community to create content within a strong context.

Context of the Community

While the social media new sites, such as Digg, can create impressive traffic spikes, there is very little common context among the visitors that come to a website from the social news site. The context increases with search traffic, as people are looking for information concepts, and they may find the information on your site. Context increases firther for visitors from related subject forums and industry publications. From continuing analysis of website traffic, the highest levels of visitor engagement are recorded by visitors from blogs. Blogs are especially effective as blogrolls, interlinking, and cross posting create a high level of context within a community that is typically built around a specific niche. A “contextual community” as I have been calling it.

In the contextual community, there isn’t a high level of competition for the reader’s attention. Links are within the context of a “conversation” with only a few selected blogs or publishers, and they are usually relevant to the common context. This is why visitors from blogs are engaged at such a high level. When they follow a link to a new blog or a website – other than a friend’s email, it is the closest thing to a true word-of-mouth referral online.

The bottom line is Content. (links are content as well)

Context of Content

Content is not equal. The same content on a webpage can be irrelevent and valuable at the same time, depending upon who reads it. The value of content is determined by the community and context in which it is presented. This is why directories have become almost useless, even irrelevant, with the increase of blogging – the community has migrated.

Amazingly, old-fashioned marketing principles apply, grow what works. Find your audience and build a conversation with them. If an event happens that gives you instant popularity, such as getting on Digg – ride the wave, have fun. However, be warned that trying to duplicate the wave without first building your contextual community will only provide very short-term results. Ultimately, you need to know your audience, invest in the community, and be a trusted source of information.

Related Posts:
Social Media Under the Microscope
Social Networks to Replace Portals?
The Lost Art of Sales

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