Search Sense

Here’s a top tip when you’re posting pictures in HTML - expect many of you know it already. Sometimes, if the original image is too big, it won’t fit properly on the screen. With the iCrossing internal blog, for example, it ends up overlapping the middle column.

If this happens, you don’t need to manually resize the picture itself - particularly handy if you’re linking to one hosted elsewhere. If you use the visual editor on Wordpress or a similar platform, you can simply drag a corner of the image outline to resize it.

If you use an HTML editor, check the line of code that embeds the image, which might normally look something like “img src=’path to image goes here/image.jpg’”. It may also specify “height=’number in pixels’” and/or “width=’number in pixels’”. Take out the height bit altogether, and change the width bit to “width=’100%’”.

This should scale the picture to the full width of your post, keeping the height in the correct proportion. Obviously, choosing a lower percentage will make the picture smaller still.

As an agency with its roots in search, we are very aware of the capabilities of the major engines across all aspects of search but also their growing offerings in display. In fact, we have tremendous success by buying on a CPC basis through Google for our clients, especially in North America.

There is an ongoing discussion within the industry and within our agency as to the direction media buying will take.

On one hand, the growth of Google et al in this sector is likely to increase CPC and even CPA traffic, something that will happen exponentially with the acquisition of DoubleClick and the launch of Google Ad Manager.

However, from another perspective, ‘good’ publishers are in a position of strength and can choose the way in which they sell the first 60-80% of their inventory. What they do with the remaining 20-40% is up to them, but we don’t necessarily want to focus on buying this remnant inventory anyway.

Last week though a major publisher took a big step in one of these directions; ESPN.com has announced it is cancelling its arrangements with its media house and also the ad networks it does business with. Instead they are moving more to a direct model selling what is likely to be more premium custom packages.

Google et al will continue to grow in this sector, but if publishers like this decide not to fuel the ad networks growth then we won’t be seeing an entire CPC marketplace anytime soon.

And it makes sense for publishers to do this. They own the product and if ad networks continue to grow they will hold too much of the power and could lower the overall effective CPM rate that a publisher can achieve.

We finally have the ultimate tool in the search marketing industry…

Yesterday our London office was scaled by the internationally famous human spiderman, Alain Robert. Robert defied the cold to climb the 27 storeys of Victoria’s most ugly office tower, sans cordes, in protest at climate change.

Insane videos galore at http://www.alainrobert.com/en/video.htm.

Spiders, search engines, world-wide-web… forget it!  ‘Tis the season to be silly.

Before I begin I have a confession - I am a Google fan through-and-through. It’s natural results have become the benchmark of the search industry. The results are relevant, it’s intuitive and quick to use and I can’t find a better alternative. But I am also a fan of Wikipedia and Knol worries me.

It’s a no-brainer right? Let’s monetise, sorry ‘organise’, the world’s information.

Since the phenomenal success of the most effective new advertising system for a century, Google Adwords, search engines have been monetising every bit of real estate they can lay their hands on. Yahoo! decided that it’s ‘natural’ results could be bought by advertisers using it’s ‘feed’ system, and everyone tried placing CPC adverts in a variety of locations. Natural results in Google, however, have been left largely untouched and advert-free.

Hmm, well Google does place news, images and videos (via youtube) within the search results - all of which have differing degrees of Adwords penetration. Late last week our friends at Mountain View added a new way of getting into their own search results via Knol. Details as yet are thin on the ground, but we know that select authors are being invited to write articles within their area of expertise ‘to find a way to help people share their knowledge‘… Sounds like a more ivory tower like version of Wikipedia to me.. But with Adwords, and close to the top of the natural results guaranteed?

The guys are Techcrunch are debating this under the heading ‘Google knol a step too far?’ It’s worth a look.

Personally I think that Google will make Knol earn it’s place in natural results fairly but at a cost to commercially orientated websites, many of which have been forced to invest more into the Adwords campaigns over the past few years as a result of algorithm tweaks…

The process of organising the world’s information just got a bit more lucrative, I think.

The latest Forrester report, Europe’s Search Engine Marketing Investment Exceeds €8 Billion In 2012, on paints a very healthy picture of the European search market. With the sector set to grow from a current €4.5 billion to well beyond €8 billion by 2012 and taking half of all online marketing investment all search marketers should be overjoyed shouldn’t they?

In fact the UK’s increase over the period is the slowest of all European markets researched. There are a number of good reasons for this: we’re still by far the largest market, followed by Germany and France and have enjoyed the biggest growth over the past five years and UK companies still invest heavily in search and online.

I wonder, however, whether a slowing market at home combined with media agencies becoming specialists in their own right, and *everyone* joining the search bandwagon, and some clients taking paid search in-house, whether we will start to see some casualties? The 101 search business plan remains: invest in skills, technology and training or be damned.