Welcome to the Fathom Blog
News & analysis on digital marketing & analytics
Microsoft Seeing Purple?
The news is out that Microsoft seeks to purchase Yahoo! The search engine marketing world is atwitter with the news. Way too soon to weigh in on whom the big winners and losers would be if this transaction actually occurs.
However, it seems that one of the problems Yahoo! has experienced over the last couple of years is duplication of services because of acquisitions (Flickr and Yahoo! Photos, etc.) and the challenges presented in managing this change.
Microsoft’s transition from MSN Search to Live Search has been…interesting. Will Microsoft buying Yahoo! do anything to improve the competitive environment for both parties? I think I just heard a Mr. Burns “Excellent!” echoing around Mountain View.
Category: Google
Someone is Talking about You
I know, your company isn’t Apple or Google or Enron, right? But right now, consumers and the media are talking about you. They are talking about your company, your executives, your industry and your competitors. And, I bet your marketing director, public relations agency or compliance team doesn’t know about the conversation.
In fact, I’ll prove it. Join Webbed Marketing today at 2 pm EST for a free Webinar on Online Public Relations and learn what consumers and the media are saying. We’ll open up the call to show you real examples, of real conversations, taking place right now about.
Presidential Candidate and Online Buzz
Forget the exit polls, which candidates have the most online Buzz? What candidates are the the media, consumers and bloggers talking about online? Here is how the Webbed-O-Meter ranks the candidates’ sites on a scale from 1-100 in terms of online Buzz.
Barak Obama 60
Hillary Clinton 57.8
John Edwards 54.4
Mitt Romney 48.9
Rudy Giuliani 47.8
John McCain 42
Interesting stuff here. First, the Democrats absolutely lead the Republicans overall in terms of Buzz. But look at the bottom of the list…. John McCain. My bet is that after last night’s Florida win Buzz around McCain will jump and we’ll see him move up in our Buzz rankings.
Live Search’s link: operator turned back on!
MSN removed the option to check on inbound links a while back. My colleague and I stumbled upon the fact that the MSN link operator is back at work. Now, it’s not the typical link operator or as easy as Google, but we’ll take anything.
It took several scenarios to get the results we were looking for, but we have managed to conquer it. We’ve also noticed several ways to form the link operator query, but of course the results were different for each.
The typical operator at Google and Yahoo (link:www.site.com) does not work. Here is what we’ve found works;
link:http://www.site.com
link-http://www.site.com
(link:http://www.site.com)
(link-http://www.site.com)
link site (yes just the word link and your domain name without the “www” or TLD)
Here is a real good one
link www.site.com OR www.site.com (yes you use the word “OR”)
link site OR site
(link site OR site)
The operator is endless and provides interesting results. Go ahead give it a try!
Category: SEO
22 Billion User Generated Video Views in 2007!
eMarketer has a good report entitled ‘Who’s Watching User-Generated Video?‘.
So, good question. Who is watching videos? First, let’s talk about how many videos YOU are watching. 22 BILLION in 2007!
User-generated videos (UGVs) tallied 22 billion views in 2007, up 70% over 2006, according to Accustream iMedia Research’s “UGV 2005 – 2008: Mania Meets Mainstream” report. Paul A. Palumbo, research director at Accustream, told eMarketer that the 22 billion views was a worldwide figure. In other words, user-generated videos on US-based Web sites drew 22 billion views from users worldwide.
There’s no question that people are watching videos online. The bigger question is why they are watching them. Could it be that the writer’s strike is driving more TV viewers online? Could it be that people are just tired of reading? It’s probably a myriad of those things and more.
Good online videos tell stories more effectively than text. Online video provides a unique opportunity for your business to have face-to-face interaction with your customers, even if they are on the other side of the globe.
Category: Internet Video Marketing
Google Universal Plays Hide & Seek With Navigation
Google does many things well, one of these things is maintaining a clean user interface. Part of the benefits of this interface is that it allows for very little confusion. It can be frustrating when navigation jumps around and elements appear on some pages and not others. Being the masters of the clean UI, it surprised me when I noticed that Google Universal search results seem to sport inconsistent navigation links.
I did a search for ”yacht”. (No, I’m not mulling a purchase. Lake Erie isn’t all that hospitable at the moment.)
Notice the highlighted navigation above? The first page of results (when looking at the default ten results) shows Web | Images | Video | Shopping. This SERP has images, a YouTube video and the obligatory Wikipedia entry among the results.
The second page of results has a couple of videos – sort of about yachts – and a Flickr page in the mix. But wait, the same sub-navigation elements are included, but in a different order! This time it reads Web | Video | Shopping | Images.
Ok. What is behind door number three?
This page has one more video, and the navigation has remained the same as the last page. But don’t get too used to it. Page four has one more twist.
This page has no video results, and the video link in the navigation disappears. I guess this makes sense, on some level. If you are looking at a results page with videos, you might think “Let’s see more!” and use the link to refine your search. But this logic fails me when I realize that there have been no shopping results in the first four pages. At least none that are obviously pulled from Google Product Search.
What does all of this mean? Google Universal Search might have results from many planets in the Google universe, but the results are most certainly not universally consistent!
Category: Google
Privacy Issues on Facebook
Near the end of last year, Facebook encountered some backlash over privacy issues. 
When Facebook members bought a book, movie, or gift online the specifics of the purchase were
shared with all their friends through a news feed. This was in line with other changes Facebook has been making but this featured seemed to entirely benefit advertisers and place their interests before the basic privacy rights of Internet users.
Here are some comments from Facebook members on the issue:
"I made a purchase yesterday for my wife for
Christmas…When my wife logged onto Facebook, there was an entry in her news feed
that I had bought a ring from Overstock. It had a link to the ring and everything.
Christmas ruined."
Christmas…When my wife logged onto Facebook, there was an entry in her news feed
that I had bought a ring from Overstock. It had a link to the ring and everything.
Christmas ruined."
"I saw my girlfriend bought an item i had been saying i wanted…so now part
of my christmas gift has been ruined. Facebook is ruining christmas!"
"Facebook, are you kidding me? This is way out of bounds for a program I
never opted into."
On December 5, 2007 Mark Zuckerberg announced a big switch from having to opt-out of new features to having to choose to opt-in. A new permanent opt out feature was also announced.
Facebook's new privacy policy states: "No stories will be published without users proactively consenting.
If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click "OK" to publish or click "remove" to not publish."
It will be interesting to see how other social networking sites learn from Facebook.
B2B and B2C Warming Up to Social
Who has time for new things? It appears that a small but significant number of B2B and B2C businesses do.
They’re finally embracing new marketing channels, including Podcasts, RSS feeds, viral video and more. Social media is worth trying – to a degree.
Successful marketing strategies are detailed in “Harnessing the Power of New Media Platforms,” a report sponsored by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB magazine. Guideline led the research.
Interestingly, webinars came in near the top of the list. You often see a corporate website as the chief marketing vehicle followed by any combination of email, search engine optimization and paid search (all of which are still heavily favored). But webinars (which ranked second) still seem to be for the B2B crowd 54% compared to 27% among the B2C folks.
eMarketer reported on this and other related data today.
Outsourcing Part 3: Opt-in Email Marketing
On the surface, opt-in email marketing sounds a lot like paid search better known as Pay Per Click (PPC).
You make an account, set up your campaigns and start rolling in the cash. If only life were that easy.
It’s virtually impossible for one person to effectively plan, launch and manage an e-mail campaign on his own. That’s why a consulting firm – with a team of specialists – is best positioned to make a project succeed.
If you’re hiring in-house, you need to ask yourself:
Is this person qualified? We’re talking really proficient in this area of online marketing. He doesn’t have to know email marketing inside and out to increase leads, conversions and revenue. But will he perform exceptionally well?
Is he responsible for many other tasks (i.e. natural search engine optimization, PPC, linking building, marketing collateral, etc.)?
Does he keep up with the ISPs and federal standards?
Does he know how to process the knowledge he encounters about email formats and designs?
Is he an outstanding writer – both with ad copy and landing pages?
Is he well-organized?
Is he persuasive and assertive enough to get co-workers to do their part (i.e. help shape messages that must be delivered)?
Are his design skills second to none? Or has he just played around with Photoshop? How do his designs (if he can design) stack up against your competitors’ landing pages. Be very honest. Is design really his vocation?
What delivery and tracking system are you using? How robust are its features?
If you can’t afford to outsource, it’s understandable that you might make the most with what you’ve got. But again, can you really afford not to improve your email campaigns by hiring a pro on the outside?
Sometimes it’s not just about those skills that are hard to find in any one person (the bionic online marketer). It’s also about sense and perspective. Firms like ours have been around a long time and worked with enough clients to get a good handle on best practices.
Sure, you can hire someone who worked for another business. Why not budget some money for an agency that has worked with numerous email clients? When you think along those lines, you’re buying wisdom, not just core skills.
Why I should implement redirects on my old domain to my new one?
I’ve been approach by clients several times about what they should do with their old domain, now that they finally acquired the domain of their dreams. For example, I own “company-1.net” and after 5 years of branding and Google indexing, I finally got “company1.com”. Now what do I do with my old domain?
301 REDIRECT! 
Tamar Weinberg wrote a quick blog on this approach today, “Don’t Let Your New Domain Hurt Your SEO” that I couldn’t agree more on.
The issue is that you should implement a 301 redirect. Otherwise, if both sites rank (as in this case), your redirected site might outrank the site with all the content. In this particular user’s case, an .edu site is outranking a .com. Chances are, the .com was also below the fold and the .edu wasn’t. You certainly don’t want to do it that way.
If you want to minimize your hit with the Engines this is the best route to take. Otherwise plan on it the road ahead being long and bumpy .
Category: SEO, Technical Issues
