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David BerkowitzFiled under: 360i News, POV, Search Engines | Tags: 360i POV, canonical tag, duplicate URLs, SEO
This month, Google, Yahoo and MSN announced their support for a new tag designed to eliminate duplicate URLs for a given Web site in search engine results. The tag marks a select URL as “canonical,” which means that it is the predominant URL for a page, even if there are two or more similar URLs leading to that same page. The word “canonical” (click here for the pronunciation) describes the “master copy” of something.
Here are some examples of duplicate URLs:
• www.example.com
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
With the canonical tag, search engine marketers can more effectively control the URL returned in their search results. More importantly, the page will do better in search results because the master URL will consolidate all of the authority that was previously distributed and diluted between multiple URL versions of the same content.
The new tag can be easily added to an existing site by adding it to the page in the form
<link rel=”canonical” href=”[master URL here]” />. The canonical tag for the previous example would be written as
<link rel=“canonical” href = http://www.example.com/>.
This tag is a long overdue tool for fine-tuning the natural search performance of a Web site, and cleaning up search indexes in general. More information about the canonical tag, its importance and smart ways to use it can be found in 360i’s latest POV on “Canonical Tags & Duplicate URLs.”
POVs are delivered regularly to 360i’s clients. If you’re interested in viewing this or other reports, or for more information, please contact us at editor@360i.com.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Autos, Ford, Ford Motor Company, Mark Fields
- Image via Wikipedia
Our latest contribution to Ad Age’s DigitalNext blog includes an exclusive interview with Ford Motor Company President of the Americas Mark Fields. Here’s an excerpt:
Mr. Berkowitz: You’re making a car sound a lot like a social network.
Mr. Fields: Very much so, when you look at where the trends are going, and people wanting to be connected, and wanting to know where other people are, and what they’re doing, it’s going to become more and more a piece of that – it’s what people are going to expect out of their vehicles.
You can read the full interview at Ad Age and watch the video on YouTube.
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Filed under: David Berkowitz, Search Engines, Search Insider | Tags: Google, Inspector Gadget, Short message service, Web search engine
- Penny, via Wikipedia
After the Consumer Electronics Show this month, where I met with the executives from Ford and heard about their ambitious voice search plans, I kept wondering how the ability to conduct voice searches from their cars will change how people search, communicate, access information, and drive. It then made me wonder about all of the venues and devices people can search from. At CES, Dick Tracy, James Bond, and Inspector Gadget would have had a field day testing out the latest gizmos (if they could avoid Gadget’s nemesis Dr. Claw tricking them into joining a booby-trapped tweet-up).
These new devices aren’t meant to be solely for Inspectors; they’re supposed to be for all of us. Here’s a vision for how searches will differ when conducted in different settings from different devices. In all of these situations, we’ll take the example of a young, female, Dallas-based professional named Penny who’s searching for the best cupcakes.
INDOORS
Home PC
Query: “best cupcakes dallas tx.” Penny has a craving for something sweet after dinner, so she spends a few minutes trying to find recommendations. She uses Yahoo where, thanks to SearchMonkey, reviews from Yelp and Citysearch appear on the search engine results page.
Work PC
Query: “cupcakes plano tx.” It’s her receptionist’s birthday and Penny wants to find something near the office.
ON THE GO
Query: “does anyone have any favorite cupcake places in dallas? I hope sam’s not following me or it’ll ruin the surprise 
” She texts this to 40404 and uses TweetReplies.com to get responses emailed to her.
Filed under: Ad Age, Bylines, Video | Tags: advertising, Bryan Wiener, Television
This viewpoint from Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i, was originally published in Advertising Age.
The recession is happening at a pivotal moment in the evolution of the media industry. The growth of consumer time spent online continues to outpace the migration of brands’ advertising dollars to the web. Because advertising dollars are critical to support the production of high-quality content, the impact of the recession on the evolution of internet brand advertising threatens to cause a downward and self-perpetuating spiral that will continue to hurt marketers, media producers and even consumers if not reversed within the next couple of years.
- Image by TaraLivesOn via Flickr
So how did we get here? Over the last decade, online advertising’s growth has been driven primarily by marketers seeking measurable direct-response goals, rather than awareness and consideration. During this same time period, DVRs and the internet have cannibalized the reach and effectiveness of traditional advertising. Routinely, video segments garner more views online than on TV. For instance, “Saturday Night Live’s” famous sketches of Tina Fey portraying Sarah Palin got 33% of their total viewers on the original live TV broadcasts, while 67% watched online or on a DVR. Yet because of the disparity in advertising allocation, it’s quite likely that NBC made significantly more off the TV broadcast than via online distribution.
First up, 360i’s David Berkowitz travels to Vegas where he will be speaking at Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Jungle on January 7th and on a mobile Web panel at CES on January 8th.
Also this week, 360i releases its first POV of 2009, which takes a look some of the trends we foresee happening across the media and marketing landscape in the year ahead. Each year brings about a wealth of opportunities and challenges and 2009 will be no exception.
POVs are delivered regularly to 360i’s clients. If you’re interested in more information, please contact editor@360i.com.
- Image by TheMarque via Flickr
Have any New Year’s resolutions? How about 20? You can see them all in our latest contribution to Ad Age.
It was actually hard to keep the list down to a blog-friendly level and 20 of the top ones are included. You’ll see the comments found a number of people connecting with the personal resolutions, but there are also thoughts on Google, Facebook, and Barack Obama.
A few snippets:
For the industry: …Don’t call something a viral or word-of-mouth marketing success when its uptake is directly the result of a multimillion-dollar media blitz.
For Google: Add Trends-style charts to Google Blog Search already. Really, you’re on the verge of making other blog search services irrelevant. Just finish the job.
For Facebook: Add a real search engine. This is ridiculous already. And that goes to just about all you social networks. Maybe the reason comScore’s saying you and MySpace are such large search engines is that it takes 20 searches to find anything or anyone on your site.
Care for 17 more? Read them all at Ad Age.
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Filed under: David Berkowitz, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines, Search Insider
Between the economy affecting stock prices and the potential mergers and acquisitions discussed among several of the major search engines, there is a lot of uncertainty as we head into 2009. Yet we can anticipate several shifts in search based on what we’ve seen over the past decade and other signs in the media ecosystem. Here are some major changes to anticipate:Holistic — In Every Sense
The word “holistic” should play out in a number of ways:
First, any significant media campaign or offline event drives search volume, so marketers must capture that demand by integrating search with other media planning.
Next, paid search and SEO should be planned in tandem for the best results. Several studies show that by integrating search engine marketing with search engine optimization, results are greater than the sum of its parts.
Lastly, expect the major search engines and others to push forward with new ways to infuse paid search listings with display and video media. This will make search also about engagement and not just clicks and conversions. To some degree, these new search engine offerings will be motivated by more concentrated efforts to attract large brand marketers . Additionally, given how effective search engine marketing is, the engines and portals will want to have a steady stream of upsell options. In the coming year, consumers may experience the most dramatic shift in the format of search engine results pages since the basic template was established roughly a decade ago.
Search Fragmentation
While the search engine landscape continues to be dominated by one player, new complexities keep emerging as search migrates far beyond the traditional engines.
Now that digital distribution is in the limelight as the alternative to brick-and-mortal retail for independent game developers, we’re starting to see the same old controversies we’ve seen about limited retail space in the past: smaller, independent titles getting overshadowed by more well-marketed mainstream titles.In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Katie Morgan, vice president of sales and marketing for Emergent, a firm that designs and publishes game development tools, said that crowding on platforms like Xbox Live Arcade is a “huge problem”: “What we’ve seen at retail over the last five years, maybe more, will happen to the downloadable store front, so to speak — more content available than there is virtual shelf space,” she said. “Over the last couple of years on the downloadable platforms it’s evident that the merchandising is starting to suffer.”
Just a quick glance at a list of XBLA titles confirms that it’s getting pretty crowded in there, and the interface of the marketplace leaves a bit to be desired. Aside from XBL homepage promotions, the only way to find titles is to find them on a “Newest” list, or to scroll through interminable category menus. But there are digital distribution platforms that handle this problem with much more success than XBL. Steam and Stardock are great examples of services with many different ways to find the games you’re looking for and browse effectively — including top-sellers, top-user-rated titles, and hits with critical acclaim.
Some developers advocate having fewer titles on XBLA, and back in May, Microsoft began removing poorly performing titles from the title list — poorly performing as defined by their demo-to-full-version conversion rate and their Metacritic scores.
But if these are the metrics by which titles are being judged, why not let the users judge them instead of Microsoft as a platform owner? Successful platforms like those mentioned above have already made major strides in solving their shelf-space problems by allowing user ratings and other critical data about titles to be publicly facing. Why can’t Microsoft solve its problem with the same measures? The XBLA platform provides a great space for independent developers to get their work distributed, and by making more information available to consumers, XBLA can continue to provide that without removing potentially good titles that have yet to find their fanbases.
by Chris Hansen
VP of Performance Marketing, 360i
This week, the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) released its 2008 NAI Principles. These principles are designed to provide member advertising networks, specifically those that offer behavioral targeting, a code of conduct for data collection and a set of rules regarding user privacy. The main goal of these guidelines is to create a unified set of best practices for the industry to follow as a means of self regulation and to stave off potential governmental legislation in this area.
So what impact do these principles have on the behavioral programs you may be running? Frankly, for most marketers, there will be no impact. Most large advertising networks, specifically those networks 360i works with, are already part of the NAI and have been working under similar guidelines. The NAI Principles are merely a formal declaration of the rules and best practices that the NAI and its member networks have followed for some time. If you are currently running a program using some form of behavioral targeting, including remarketing or re-targeting, and are working with a network that is part of the NAI, then you are in compliance with their guidelines and should feel comfortable that you are employing industry best practices.
Specifically, these networks will not and do not:
