Under the arrangement, sales representatives from Verizon will be able to offer potential advertisers not only print ads, but AdWords campaigns too.
Google’s latest push into local search embraces a very old-school concept - the salesperson. With Verizon signing on with Google as an AdWords Reseller, Google gets a valuable ally in reaching small businesses it may not reach otherwise.
Call it the Wal-Marting of AdWords. If Google can extend its healthy search advertising business to scores of small businesses with tightly focused campaigns, the volume could cushion drops in large-advertiser revenue.
A Verizon executive illustrated how the new program will work for its advertisers:
“We may have a local advertiser today that has said, ‘I want to spend $200 a month with you with your PPC program,’” explained Eric Chandler, president of the Internet division of Verizon Information Services. “When we look at our inventory, we can only spend $100 a month. This deal will allow us to take that excess budget that we have and plug that advertiser into the Google environment.”
“We know our environment drives the best inventory,” said Chandler. “We’re able to maximize the distribution in our environment. Our interests are aligned with our advertisers.”
CNet reported the deal, which was announced at The Kelsey Group Drilling Down on Local conference. Kelsey Group’s Greg Sterling noted in the article how important the deal is for Google:
Deals like this “are critical to move the local search market forward because these businesses would not go on their own to Google or Yahoo,” said Greg Sterling, managing editor at The Kelsey Group.
“There is a lot of inertia in the small-business market, which relies on sales representatives to call them or visit,” Sterling said.
The report also noted how the Verizon-Google hookup extends to AOL and Ask.com. Both sites display Google’s search advertising.
Google has made other moves that appear to focus on the small-business market. Recently they introduced AdWords Starter, a simplified one-page process for signing up for a Google AdWords campaign.
The deal also helps Google keep pace with Yahoo, which signed a deal with Verizon rival YellowPages.com in January to place its listings on Yahoo’s local search.
Online advertising, particularly in the local search arena, stands to increase greatly in its competitiveness. Yahoo’s Overture unit has been battling Google for some time. MSN ditches Overture in favor of its adCenter service that debuts this summer. Even Amazon.com has been quietly testing an ad publishing service as well, though its intentions toward local advertising are not known.
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What started out as an apparent debunking of an A-list blogger conspiracy has evolved into a made-up word shedding light on the search world. Microsoft’s controversial employee blogger, Robert Scoble, invited readers to use the word ‘brrreeeport” on their blogs as a way to get “Z-list” blogs noticed, while testing the reach of the various search engines.
Scoble’s snarky experiment was in response to the notion of the supposed Blog Club, where A-list bloggers only link to each other and thereby keeping lesser-known bloggers out of the loop of recognition in typical Critical Theory style.
The invention of the word “brrreeeport” and the invitation to put on a person’s blog created a vacuum to Technorati’s blog listings and popular tags. Very soon, the term was listed at the top of Technorati’s most searched word. Two days later, “brrreeeport” is out ranking searches for information on the Dick Cheney hunting accident, and is third on the list of tags.
The original purpose of the experiment worked. Technorati returns some 487 results for the word, leading searchers to blogs they may have never encountered. But the memetic results led to another exploration of the efficacy of various search engines.
At the time this article was written, a search on Technorati returns 487 results; Google’s Blog Search: 452; Feedster: 569. On that information alone, it would appear that Google Blog search is missing an element the other blog engines aren’t. But the more interesting question Scoble brings up on Wednesday, when he compares results of Google, MSN, and Yahoo!
Google’s main page (as of present) says it found 22,400 results for the word. Scrolling through, however, there are only 353 results after similar entries are omitted. Re-searching with omitted results included returns only 979 results, as the other 21,000 are apparently inaccessible.
Scoble calls this an example of “lies that are going on on search engines.” Scoble reports that MSN returns over 1, 369 entries (though my results continue to say 221), and Yahoo! returns over 1,010. The varying numbers does bring up an interesting question as to the veracity of any given search engine’s reach.
One thing’s for certain, many are taking advantage of the memetic appeal of the word, “brrreeeport.” Bloggers have committed to throwing the word onto their blog posts. Even the famous New York City gay and lesbian publication The Village Voice has thrown it into a headline for an unrelated music review.
There are even sponsored links for the word on Google and Yahoo!’s SERPs. On Yahoo!’s system though, it’s not the exact word, but ads served up based on similar keywords.
Whatever the deeper implications, the immediate benefit was for Z-list bloggers who otherwise may have never been found. Someone’s even reserved the brrreeeport domain.
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The Net scence have been buzzed lately, by super-charged individual site owners. Reason being, you may ask, well here is why:
GOOGLE, the Kahuna, is updating their datacentres, their pagerank.
The much awaited update in the world is happening now, the update that can make or break your company.
It has been quietly speculated last week by some marketing well-knowns but have yet to be confirmed. Google themselves have kept mum at the time of writing.
The only evident they are now updating is that their cache have been changing every few hours. Evidently, our website, www.sgwebdesigner.com cache on Google have been going from 81 links, 84 links, 140 links.
The change have been continous. Be very sure that your website, which is highly valuable to your business does not use any blackhat tactics. Else, the update will break you. Google have been known to really crackdown on blackhat tactics; the latest being German car-making giant, BMW. More on that in the next post.
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