Epicenter Network Blog

One of the best ways to keep an edge in affiliat marketing is to keep up-to-date with technology, trends and search engine updates. So on that note, here are the most recent updates at Google (minor changes, but still important to take note of):

AdWords API
New version is now available featuring asynchronous calls, keywords and placement ideas and location extensions previews. Upcoming features will include ReportService, AccountService and the ability to pre-check for errors.

Custom Search
This is now available on smartphones and higher-end mobile devices. Your mobile custom pages can be hosted by Google or you can host them on your mobile site.

Google Search Appliance
Added new Self-Learning Scorer that analyzes employee clicks and behavior to automatically improve its built-in relevance tool.

Google Reader
Just added an Explore section and Personalized ranking. The Explore section will organize new content based on popular and recommended sources. The personalized ranking uses a sort option called “magic” to organize items in your feed based on your personal usage and overall activity.

Google Friend Connect
Now you can strengthen your blog’s community with the Google Friend Connect Wordpress pulgin.

Microsoft’s newest search engine, Bing will go live June 3rd. They are calling it a “decision engine” and claim that it provides more intelligent search tools to simply tasks and help people make more informed decisions. Developers wanted Bing to focus on enabling people to actually use the information they find, rather than just providing them with search results.

Bing is starting out by focusing on four main verticals:

     • Making a purchase decision
     • Planning a trip
     • Finding a local business
     • Researching a health condition

Microsoft says that Bing will replace their Live Search’s core search with advancements such as query intent recognition, entity extraction and expansion and document summarization technology. Virtual Earth will be rebranded as Bing Maps for Enterprise and the cashback program will be renamed Bing cashback.

So what does this really mean when it comes to search? Possibly an increase in impressions. The project was given a bigger marketing budget than Xbox, so many predict it will start off with a bang. Many feel that conversion rates and ROI are almost always better on Microsoft compared to other engines, so the new advances in Bing could make your stats even better.

If you want to find out more before it launches, go to DiscoverBing.com.

So do I think I will start “binging-it” more than googling-it? Hard to say. I can say that it will be hard to compete and overcome such a giant in search.

Whenever I need to do some research, find an image or perform any kind of web browsing, Google is my search engine of choice. I’ve gotten pretty good at finding what I need and modifying search terms to produce more exact results. This is probably why Google captures over 60% of U.S. online searches.

However, it’s important to remember that Google is not the only search engine out there. You also have the other two big players – Yahoo! and MSN – and a handful of up-and-comers looking to offer their own unique approaches to online search engines.

Here are a few to check out.

• Kosmix
This engine is in the “beta-ish” stage and incorporates more real-time search results. Information is sorted by source – ie. If it came from Twitter, Hulu, YouTube, blogs or government – and has about 12 different search categories, or featured searches.

• Twine
This is more of a community search engine where you create an account and receive tailored search results. You customize your interest feeds and are provided with results based on your Web use.

• Searchme
Call themselves the first multimedia search engine. It’s interface is similar to that of iTunes and allows for easier sorting and shuffling through videos, images and music.

• Hakia
Hakia’s search results come from sites that are recommended by librarians – which I guess would make this helpful for school reports. There is a link on the homepage that says “Compare to Google” where you are given the Hakia challenge and you get to see side-by-side search results for the two search engines.

• Wolfram Alpha
This is a computational knowledge engine, so it’s more of a calculator than a search. Even if an answer to your question doesn’t exist online, Alpha will use algorithms to gather data and produce the answer for you.

• Cuil
This start-up has already deemed themselves as the world’s biggest search engine – stating they search three times more pages than Google and 10 times more than Microsoft.

• Scoopler
This is another real-time search engine. It takes updates and feeds from a variety of social networks – like Twitter and FriendFeed – and sorts through them to display results.

When it comes to ranking with SEO, don’t focus entirely on textual content. Many people overlook the power of images and graphics for their attention grabbing and link grabbing abilities. However, with the proper use of image tags and descriptions you can easily take advantage of Google’s ranking system and help bump your site even higher in rank results.

Here are a few steps to follow to ensure that you are getting the most out of your images.

1. Describe your image
Always use the alt attribute when you include an image on your site. Create a short and sweet description of your image and keep in mind the keywords you are targeting. Another thing to consider is that these descriptions are read by search engines and translated to speech readers for the visually impaired. Therefore, this not only helps improve your search results, but also extends your audience.

2. Don’t embed text into your images
Yes, this looks fancy and having pretty text is fun, but try to avoid it. Search engines don’t recognize this text, so it won’t help you. However, if you can’t overcome the urge, be sure to insert alt text and consider using a text description next to your image.

3. Name your files
If you’re in a hurry it’s easy to save an image as IMG1.jpg. Don’t do this. If you are working with a lot of images at once it can be tedious to name each one individually, but taking the time to do this will help out in the long run. Try to include the page title, page content and alt tag into the file name. If someone searches for “all natural weight loss pills”, you are more likely to show up as a result with an image titled ‘all natural RezV supplement’ than you are with ‘IMG1234.jp’.

4. Take advantage of image sharing sites
Upload your images on sites like Flickr, Wikipedia or Picassa and then link them back to your site. The more places your images can be found, the better.

5. Link back to previous posts
If an image or the content related to the image relates to a previous post, link back to it. This follows the same basic idea of linking keywords or phrases to previous posts.

After some months of canoodling, the social networking giant and Microsoft decided to take their relationship to the next level. The two announced yesterday that MySpace will be available for Windows Mobile this summer and that MySpace will be supporting Microsoft’s new Silverlight platform.

While this is exciting news for some, it may be leaving a bad taste in Google’s mouth. This relationship adds a new dynamic to the rivalry that exists between Google and Microsoft and puts MySpace in the middle of a technology-sharing love triangle.

Currently, Google holds a multimillion dollar deal with MySpace and handles their search and other FIM properties. This relationship was formed in 2006 and cost Google around $900 million.

To make matters more complicated, Microsoft also has a $240 million deal with Facebook that was formed back in 2007. This deal gave Microsoft extended control over Facebook’s advertising and took claim to a small portion of their ownership. Google competed against Microsoft for this position, but ultimately lost out in the end.

Will MySpace’s double deal making cause even more problems between Microsoft and Google? Will this new relationship between MySpace and Microsoft break the bond between MySpace and Google? What about the relationship between Facebook and Microsoft? This technology soap opera could end with some big break-ups as each of the players keep bouncing between partners.

The deal between Google and MySpace will expire in 2010, leaving the social network to decide if they will continue the search deal or perhaps move everything over into their partnership with Microsoft.

This week Video Professor filed suit against Amazon for trademark infringement for using the phrase “video professor” in their pay-per-click ads on Google. They claim that the search phrase was directing visitors to a site that sold instructional videos by Professor Teaches and was misleading to the consumer.

Oh Amazon, don’t you know you shouldn’t do that?

VPI (Video Professor, Inc.) explained in their complaint that once the user clicks on the Amazon.com link for the search term “video professor” they are taken to a page with the name Video Professor at the top, but are mislead as the page only sells Professor Teaches CD-ROMS. They claim that the consumer may purchase the Professor Teaches product under the assumption that it is created by Video Professor.

I wonder how well this will hold up in court, since it is a case based on assumptions of the consumer’s behavior. Someone may have Googled “video professor” simply looking for instructional videos, not videos specially made by VPI. Additionally, they may use the same search term to view similar products and to do a little comparison shopping.

Another issue that may work in Amazon’s favor is the fact that both products, Video Professor and Professor Teaches, are featured on the same landing page. Therefore, Amazon could argue that they used the search phrase for legitimate product placement and accurately placed the consumer on the correct page.

When I Googled “video professor” this morning and clicked on the Amazon ad, I landed on a page with Video Professor as the title but didn’t see a Video Professor product until I scrolled down to the 12th item listed.

We’ll have to see who picked the better lawyer.

Amazon isn’t the first to make this mistake, here are some similar lawsuits.

• Geico vs. Google
• American Airlines vs. Google
• Heartbrand Beef vs. Yahoo