i think this one is set to grow and grow…
‘Now, a growing number of marketers are using new technology to analyze blogs and other “consumer-generated media” — a category that includes chat groups, message boards and electronic forums — to hear what is being said online about new products, old ad campaigns and aging brands. Purveyors of the new methodology and their clients say blog-watching can be cheaper, faster and less biased than such staples of consumer research as focus groups and surveys.’
tools for blog-watching are also key as a next big thing:
‘Blog-monitoring services typically charge big companies $30,000 to $100,000 a year. They say their technology goes beyond basic tools, such as keyword searches or counting links from one Web site to another, both features available at no charge from online services such as Technorati.com and Yahoo’s Buzz Index.’
a bit techy, but pretty much covers the basics of how the search engines work.
consumer-generated media is a good way of finding prime marketing information.
this site has lots of useful information…
check out the tools, eg google pagerank indicator.
also, a great source of search engine tactics. actually a bunch of articles are really useful for webmasters.
… ‘borrowing’ ideas from other software providers. this time the tabs function from firefox has been incorporated into the latest msn toolbar…
http://toolbar.msn.com/
interesting new mindset feature from yahoo… search and then get the choice of whether you are shopping or researching.
kind of like the sliders that msn offers, but cut-down to a format that is more eminently usable.
“Imagine linking pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns to a user’s stage in the buying cycle. If users are researching products for a future purchase, marketers should be prepared to serve informational ads. If they’re closer to buying online, free shipping or financing campaigns could nudge them toward completing the transaction. If shoppers are headed for a brick-and-mortar store to buy, a local ad could be served to offer a logical purchase destination.”
check out start.com. it’s by msn but looks uncannily like google’s personalised page (http://www.google.com/ig) .
shares in google approach $300… should have seen it coming!
inspite of shareholder commitments, ggl still seems to be banging out innovative, well-built products at a rate of knots.
