ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE!!!

In this corner with Revenues weighing in at $1.9 billion - EBAY. And in the opposite corner with Revenues weighing in at an undislcosed amount - Google!

A feature piece that looks at the ever increasing competition between Google and Ebay. As reported by Bambi Francisco with CBS Marketwatch, "If you're a vendor, you can advertise on a search page, or put up your wares on EBay's bazaar. The question to ask yourself is: Which initiative delivers a customer at the cheapest rate?"

You don't want to miss this one. Check out Ebay vs. Google!

The Linux Journal has some great comments on the state of advertising:

"So what's happening here? Simply put, companies like Google and Overture are blowing away everything the old advertising business holds dear. Beautiful images. Attention-grabbing graphics. Awards. Strategy. Even old conventions like branding--a term Procter & Gamble borrowed from the cattle industry, back when they created mass media advertising in the dawn of commercial radio more than 70 years ago. They're blowing it away by connecting users and advertisers and helping both offer something valuable to each other."

Is your website dependent on Google? You are probably not alone. An article from The New York Times takes a look at how some businesses would be bust without Google.

eMarketer recently released an article discussing Dayparts. What is that? Well, this schnazzy jargon simply refers to online ads that can be delivered at specific times of the day. I guarantee this won't be the last we hear of them - they make sense and they should have been used a long time ago. But there is more worth noting in this article than Dayparts.

"In all three mid-day and early evening time slots from 8 am through 6 pm US consumers use the Internet more than radio, TV or newspapers."

"Research shows the Internet as a greater influencer than traditional media such as radio and magazines."

"The top Web site category during the daytime daypart may not be news and information as some industry observers seem to believe. Instead, search engines and portals lead the pack, at 12.4% of US Internet users."

Read the entire article at eMarketer

We are constantly trying to encourage our clients to look beyond "having a website". It is no longer enough. The site must be an extension of their sales force 24x7. It must draw targeted traffic from search engines and persuade those visitors to take action! Making my case is difficult given the bad pictures that have been painted about "the web" and ".com's". Yes, that bubble burst a long time ago - get over it. Nowadays a company's website - if properly planned, developed, maintained, and marketed - can deliver sales and put cold hard cash in their pockets. Luckily, the folks at Marketing Sherpa recently attended the eTail 2003 conference and have some great commentary that supports my case.

Search Marketing is the biggest new sales driver

The new term on everyone's lips is "search marketing." It's a combo of:

1. Search engine marketing -- paying for listings via Overture, Search123, Google AdWords, and other services that feed search engines.

2. Search engine optimization -- making sure your site pages are copywritten and structured in such a way that search engine robots rank your site high in the no-cost listings.

(Best quote: "PPC search doesn't mean you should exclude search optimization," Eric Sternbach, VP Ad Sales Overture.)

3. Paid shopping portal listings -- such as mySimon, SmartBargains, Dealtime and other middleman sites online shoppers surf.

4. Improving your site's internal search function results.

All of these tactics take advantage of the uniqueness of the Web -- you can put yourself in the path of a shopper at the exact
moment they are looking to buy precisely what you're selling.

Read the entire article at Marketing Sherpa

It is so tough to decipher the moves of Google in its purchase of Blogger. It's been a [in a hushed voice] closely held belief [normal voice] for some time now that Google pays particular attention to Blogs for relevance. I'm unsure of how true this is because rarely do you find blogs within any 'link analysis'.

I believe the purchase has a lot to do with the demographic analysis they can do with the data: what are the people who use the web talking about? What keyword terms do they use? What 'zeitgeist' is taking place within the grassroots web community? Then again, Blogger doesn't own the content so perhaps it's a technology grab for Google. You know, buy the technology so they can bundle it with their search engine technology which sells for a cool 20+ thousand dollars.

Whatever the motive, Google now owns two of the web's most used repositories of information and will benefit by its latest purchase