 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
June 19th, 2009
Dominated by Google, total online US searches increased 20.3% year-over-year, from 7.8 billion in May 2008 to 9.4 billion in May 2009, according to (pdf) rankings of the top search provides fromNielsen Online.
Google, which saw 6.0 billion search queries during the month, captured the largest share of all searches, at 63.2%, and experienced 28.2% YoY growth. Number-two Yahoo grew 22.3% in the same time period, while searches on MSN/Windows Live Search declined 14.4%.
My Web Search showed the strongest growth, at 44.7%, though it only has 0.8% market share.
In April 2009, 5.5 billion searches were conducted on Google.
Top 10 Parent Companies/Divisions
Nielsen also announced that Google remains #1 on the list of top 10 parent companies/divisions in May 2009. Nearly 138 million home and work internet users visited at least one of Google’s sites or launched a Google-owned application during the month. Each person spent, on average, a total of one hour and 52 minutes at one or more Google sites or applications. Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and News Corp. Online round out the top five.
As in previous months, AOL had the most time per user in May, at an average of 3 hours and 37 minutes.
The parent level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single
company or division. The brand level is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content.
Top 10 Web Brands
Google, Yahoo, and MSN Windows Live were the top three web brands for May 2009, with brand unique audiences of 131.2 million, 118.9 million and 101.5 million, respectively. Microsoft and AOL Media Network round out the top five.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization news Internet Site Promotions | No Comments »
June 2nd, 2009
A Peek Into The Phoenix Suns’ Online Expertise
by Kory Kredit , Thursday, May 14, 2009
Growing up as a basketball fan in a couple of small towns in Iowa back in the ’70s and ’80s, my access to news and information about my favorite teams and players was limited to a handful of box scores in the local paper, a periodic feature story in Sports Illustrated and an occasional game on NBC. It was kind of like trying to suck a chocolate Frosty out of that tiny straw at Wendy’s. What little you were able to siphon out of that yellow cup of frozen goodness was extremely tasty, but not nearly satisfying enough — always leaving you wanting more.
Fast-forward 30 or so years and that skinny red straw has been transformed into a raging fire hose of digital information. Thanks to team Web sites, fan blogs and social media applications we now have access to more content then we could ever consume, and I love it!
To get a behind-the-scenes look at what the digital revolution looked like from the inside of a professional sports franchise, I reached out to the Phoenix Sun’s Vice President of Interactive Services, Jeramie McPeek.
Jeramie began working for the Suns 17 years ago as an intern while he was a journalism major at Arizona State University. After graduating in 1995 he was hired full-time and worked in the team’s publications department, overseeing the team’s monthly magazine, Fast Break.
Kory: How Did the Suns initially begin to leverage the Internet as a communication tool?
Jeramie: The NBA launched NBA.com and all of the team Web sites in 1995. I still remember getting the memo explaining what the league was planning to do in putting up this portal on the Internet Super Highway, and I had no idea what they were talking about…. I quickly fell in love with it, though, and thought it was really fun and cool to see the stories that I had written for the magazine also go up on the Web site.
Around 2000, I made the proposal to kill the Fast Break magazine and focus our efforts on Suns.com. We were spending around $200,000/year on the magazine and our season ticket holders would get it six weeks after we had written the articles. The content was outdated as soon as they got it. Our executive staff loved the idea and that was the turning point for us in terms of putting all of our efforts towards our digital products.
Early on the team Web sites consisted of the rosters and the team box scores. It took the teams quite a while to figure out how they could use it and it took the league a while to figure out how much they wanted to allow teams to do. I think we were the first team to really take advantage of our website and put a lot of effort towards it in the late ’90s. We now have an interactive services department and an ecommerce / emarketing department that manages all of our digital media.
Kory: How has social media changed the dynamics of what you do online, and how you communicate with your fan base?
Jeramie: The change has been pretty dramatic. Back when MySpace started to get popular, there were a few teams in pro sports that got on MySpace and YouTube initially. My thought at the time was that Suns.com was our bread and butter. That’s where we want everything. We don’t want to dilute that and start to put out content on these other places because it takes away our page views & impressions from our Web site.
Some time in late 2006 or early 2007 I started to realize that you have to go fishing where the fish are. We’ve got all of these fans that are out there on MySpace and YouTube, at the time, who might never come to our Web site, but they consider themselves Suns fans so we started to change the way we thought about things.
We thought that maybe we needed to go where the fans were and connect with those people to build that relationship and hopefully be able to draw them back to Suns.com for certain great pieces of content that we have.
There was no reason that we couldn’t put out content on some of those sites to communicate with those fans to engage them and grow that fan base. Ever since then we’ve been expanding what we do and now we’re everywhere from iTunes toYouTube to MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. We’re trying to reach fans wherever they are. We also built our own official social network during that time period. We launched PlanetOrange.net in the fall of 2007, where fans can create their own profiles, blog, upload photos and video and make comments on all of the content as well.
One of my favorite stories is about a group of about 10 Suns fans from Australia and New Zealand. None of them knew each other until they got on PlanetOrange.net and connected and became friends on the site. They planned a trip from down under to come overseas and follow the Suns on a road trip for five games from Toronto to New York to Boston and Atlanta and ended up in Phoenix. That was an exciting thing to see that these fans met on our site, became friends and are such huge Suns fans that they decided to follow the team around the world. They blogged about it and uploaded photos on PlanetOrange.net documenting the trip.
Kory: Is there one medium that has been more effective that the other?
Jeramie: YouTube has been really effective for us. Our largest fan base is on Facebook with a little over 42,000 fans on our Facebook page. Twitter has quickly become the one network where we seem to have the most influence in the social media space and the most engagement with fans. I think that is because it is instant. We can send out updates, notes or quotes from our players and we get such an immediate response from fans replying or retweeting or asking questions. We’ve only been on it for six months now, but it’s been the one that I think has had the biggest impact for us up to this point.
Kory: What is the most innovative thing you’ve done online?
Jeramie: Our virtual locker room, SunsLockerRoom.com, that we launched two seasons ago might have been the most innovative thing we’ve done. We worked on that for a period of about six months and got all 14 of our players, our coaches, alumni, dancers, mascot all on green screen for video shoots for our expansive virtual locker room where our fans could click around the locker room to go into the training room, the players lounge, the coaches office, even the shower. We actually won an Emmy award for that site.
Kory: Has there been any resistance to the type of access that you provide online from players or management?
Jeramie: Not really. We’ve been really fortunate that we’ve had such great buy-in from upper management. They really see the big picture and understand the value of what we do. They let us go into closed-door practices and the draft day war room. During the playoffs we’ve traveled with the team and shot video on the team plane. Everything that is closed to the media, we’ve been given access to.
Kory: How do you deal with filtering content that might not be appropriate or does not support your brand?
Jeramie: On PlanetOrange.net, since that is our official social network and it is one of our sites, we do watch that one a little more carefully. We want fans to be able to express their opinions and feelings, but we ask that it be done respectfully.
As far as Twitter, we can’t control what people are saying there obviously. Although, we did launch a site back in April calledSunsTwackle.com. We partnered with Octagon digital to build a Twitter site, which aggregates and displays all Twitter messages related to the Suns. It’s also got some great filtering that keeps out people talking about the actual sun in the sky. That site is pulling in all kinds of positive and negative tweets about the Suns. We do have the ability to remove tweets there or block a user if something is really out of line. We try to let the fans talk about and discuss the team honestly and share their opinions as long as they don’t get inappropriate with their language.
Kory: How do you leverage your digital media outlets to drive revenue?
Jeramie: We’ve done a fantastic job selling our digital properties, Suns.com, PlanetOrange.net, SunsLockerRoom.com. All of those sites have dozens of sponsors integrated throughout them.
The majority of those inventory items are sold as part of a larger package with the Suns that a marketing partner comes in and buys. They get TV spots, signage in the arena, have a promotion on court and then they also have some kind of promotion online that could be banner ads, pre-roll spots before the behind-the-scenes videos or sponsoring our online take show. We have flash intros that incorporate sponsors and our virtual locker room had 12 or 13 marketing partners throughout the locker room. There was a Gatorade cooler sitting on the counter next to Steve Nash’s locker. There was a Verizon BlackBerry Storm sitting on Alvin Gentry’s desk where you could click and read Alvin’s latest tweets, and a Subway sandwich on a table in his office. The majority of these online sponsorships did bring in incremental revenue or were part of a larger package, but the online piece was a key element of that package.
In terms of social media, that’s an area where we are still trying to wrap our arms around and figure out the best way to monetize our social media efforts without annoying our fans or ruining their experience engaging with us.
Tags: Add new tag, internet site promotions, search engine optimization, social network marketing
Posted in Social Networking news Internet Site Promotions | No Comments »
May 29th, 2009
The most effective email list-growth tactics for marketers are on-site registration and capturing information through inbound call centers, while the least effective are outbound call-center attempts to solicit information and list rental, according to research conducted by ExactTarget, Ball State University and the Email Marketers Club.
The study found that the best way to grow subscriber lists is to collect customers’ email addresses during times of high engagement and on occasions when the consumers perceive the marketer as adding value - at the point of sale, during online shopping and in-store via text messaging, reports Marketing Charts. These tactics rated as much as 60% higher than offline methods such as list rental and mass advertising.
Exact Target also reported that email subscription via text messaging is the fastest growing list-building tactic among marketers. The company predicts that mobile capture - enabling consumers to subscribe to emails via their mobile phones - will increase 500%, more than any other growth tactic in 2009.
Marketers also expect the practice of enabling subscribers to share email content with their social networks is expected to increase more than 348% in 2009.
As for the top three email priorities for 2009, the largest number of marketers (51%) said improving conversations was important to them, followed by improving the relevance of emails (41%) and growing email lists (38%). The smallest number of respondents said lowering costs was one of their top priorities (5%).
“The best performing list growth tactics are built on gathering subscriber data rather than hunting for it,” said Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s director of research and strategy. “Whether you are a B2B or a B2C marketer, the best way to grow your subscriber list is to collect information during customer-initiated interactions.”
Previously released findings from the same research show that marketers expect to increase their social networking-related email initiatives by 367%.
About the research: The study analyzed the past performance and future plans of 351 email marketers in various countries and evaluated 18 different list-growth tactics to identify the best, worst and fastest-growing approaches to building email lists. Study results have been compiled into a 30-page report. The 2009 List Growth Whitepaper is free and available for download.
View charts:
List Growth Tactics
Tags: Add new tag, email marketing, internet site promotions, s
Posted in Email Marketing Internet Site Promotions | No Comments »
May 27th, 2009
March 19th, 2009
Another resource offering empirical findings, in this case they’re citing Nielsen, eMarketer, is a great way to keep up with trends.
here’s a piece to share:
According to Nielsen Online, more people in the US and other leading digital countries worldwide are using social networks and blogs than e-mail.
While search and destination sites remain the most popular online activities, social network and blog use exceeded that of e-mail, increasing their reach by 5.4 percentage points.
In addition, time spent on social networks and blogging sites is growing at over three times the rate of overall Internet growth.
Need data for presentations? eMarketer subscribers can download charts instantly — over 50,000 choices.
Learn About an eMarketer Subscription
Regardless, marketers should use caution before abandoning simpler media such as e-mail or search for social network advertising.
A 2008 study performed by IDC found that 43% of social network users never clicked on ads, and only 11% of those who did actually purchased anything. Compare that to nonusers, 80% of whom clicked on ads at least once per year; 23% of those who did click bought something.
Online retailers surveyed in an Econsultancy and R.O.EYE study found e-mail marketing to be very cost-effective in terms of customer acquisition, with affiliate marketing and paid search not far behind.
There is a lot of untapped potential in the social media space. But in a recession, when expenditures are shrinking, e-mail budgets are relatively safe. Shrewd marketers will not stop doing the things that are proven to make their clients money.
Tags: Add new tag, email marketing, internet site promotions, search engine optimization, seo
Posted in Social Networking news Internet Site Promotions | No Comments »
May 27th, 2009
March 16th, 2009
As a subscriber to MediaPost’s SearchINSIDER, -and you should be too- I wanted to share this piece by Rob Garner, from March 11. Not only does he provide trend analysis for the Search Industry, but he also does a great job of looking ahead. Long Tail Search has been a secret to our success for years!
here’s the post in its entirety , any questions contact Internet Site Promotions … search engine optimization and search marketing in Atlanta, Georgia.
Hitwise released a report yesterday showing that Google has posted a year-over-year increase of 8% in its share of U.S.-based search queries, for a total of 72.11% of all U.S. searches conducted over a four-week period that ended Feb. 28. Yahoo, Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 17.04 %, 5.56 % and 3.74 %, respectively, and are down year-over-year at -17 %, -20%, and -10 % respectively. Here is the total search engine share breakout, as provided by Hitwise:
So not surprisingly, Google continues to dominate and increase share, while Yahoo, MSN, and Ask are tanking, which is also not so surprising for Yahoo and Ask since they threw in the towel a long time ago. Two years ago, Yahoo president Susan Decker proclaimed that being tops in search just wasn’t their thing any more;and Ask lost all momentum last year when they said they were ditching the universal approach to become a targeted demographic search engine for women. MSN is at least trying, so there is some hope they could increase their share to 10 % or more in the next few years, most likely through an acquisition of the Yahoo! search property. As long as Google doesn’t violate users’ trust and also avoids a major privacy snafu, expect to see their share continue to increase, taking bigger chomps out of the remaining top tier providers.
I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that Google’s share goes to 85 % or more in the next 18 months. The reason? Very simply, they have better search experience, better search services, better ideas on the backburner, better reach, and no formidable competition. Many of the clients I work with already receive 80 % or more of their traffic from Google, though there are some anomalies where MSN and Yahoo! are besting the averages above.
So perhaps one of the other Google killers may be the candidate to take a chunk of Google’s share? Don’t hold your breath. Any new play in the search space that comes in calling itself a “Google killer” is doomed to failure. A real killer will come unannounced, and most likely not come in the form of a traditional search engine (though this killer won’t be Facebook or Twitter, despite the hype — those comparisons are apples to oranges).
With this news of increased share for the Big G, here is the obvious implication for search marketers that should not really be news at all: When starting a major paid or natural search campaign, your engine of choice should start with Google. That is of course, unless your search plan requires an audience demographic that skews toward Britney.
Longer queries are becoming more common
Hitwise also noted that longer queries - averaging at five to eight words in length - increased by 0% between February 2008 and February 2009. Searches with more than eight words increased by 20 %, while shorter queries of four words or less have decreased by 2%. The majority of searches utilized two words, totaling 23.47 % of all queries.
The other implication from this data is that, if you aren’t already doing so, keep digging deeper into your research and planning efforts, and include those wider, more specific queries. This data follows a consistent trend that searchers continue to become more sophisticated with their queries, and that their expectations for finding what they are looking for are being met.
Tags: internet site promotions, search engine optimization, seo
Posted in Search Engine Optimization news Internet Site Promotions | No Comments »
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
