Google Analytics is a free, very robust web analytics tool that I’d recommend for implementations both large and small.  In my opinion, though, one of GA’s greatest strengths also serves as one of its greatest weaknesses: it’s so easy to use.  A slick, AJAX-y interface can have the dangerous effect of sending our brains into [...]

OK, so it’s not really shocking at all.
Despite the comparably greater amount of press activity surrounding the spinach E. coli poisioning in 2006 (see bottom row of chart for news reference volume), America was much more bent out of shape over the peanut butter outbreak a few months later.  We weren’t any less upset over [...]

If you take pride in the number of times a day you avoid reaching for the mouse on account of your superhuman shortcut skills, get excited: now there are keyboard shortcut commands for Google search!
Scroll all the way to the bottom of a search results page and you’ll see a link labeled “Try Google Experimental.”  [...]

Offering advanced targeting capabilities at a relatively low cost, Facebook’s ad platform can be a highly efficient means of reaching your target audience.  When setting up a Facebook ad campaign, you’ll have to choose between two pricing models: CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) and CPC (cost-per-click).  In theory, your choice of pricing models would simply depend on the [...]

CTR can be a deceptive little metric in your paid search analytics.  Too often I’ve seen analysts base their entire optimization strategy on this single acronym–unfortunately, to the detriment of the campaign.  Let’s talk about what CTR is, how it is commonly misused in optimization, and how it should be interpreted in analysis.
What is CTR?
Standing [...]

Interestingly, AdAge just posted an article today (Who Had the Better Media Strategy? CareerBuilder vs. Monster) evaluating the marketing tactics of Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com.  The author asserts that Career Builder’s efforts have been slightly more successful than Monster’s.
One fact the author states is that Monster’s 2008 advertising budget was larger than Career Builder’s–2.5x larger, to [...]

A surging U.S. unemployment rate is forcing millions of Americans into a new full-time job: job searching.  How are these job seekers using the internet as a tool in their quest for employment?
1. Search Trends for “Jobs”
The internet has been a key resource in job searching for quite some time now, with search volume for [...]

A colleague recently asked me what my thoughts were on optimizing AJAX content for SEO. Of course, this isn’t a new issue: just run a search for “ajax and seo,” and you’ll see a myriad of articles spanning the past two years addressing this very concern.
For those who aren’t familiar with AJAX, the acronym refers [...]

A little PR can go along way in getting your name searched online.  Of course, this rule holds true for positive and negative news alike.  So what feeds our urge to search more, good press or bad press?  Let’s look at three anecdotes from recent history and see what we observe about human nature.
Alex Rodriguez: [...]

Two days ago I wrote a post about the future of search, and how it will dictate the future of SEO.  In particular, I mentioned the possibility of search moving more toward a social media aggregation model, an end to which Twitter is already working.
Social media-based search would be an interesting shift in our search [...]