By Robert Lockard

Google could soon change the rules of keyword Internet marketing with the debut of its new Google Caffeine search engine. Right now, Google is not doing a good job of searching through social-media sites, like Twitter and Facebook. So the company is working on a new version of its popular search engine that will add them to the mix and shake up other sites’ rankings for certain keywords.

The online marketing firm 360i released a study a little while back in a blog entry on Digital Connections, entitled, “6 Things to Expect if Google Decaf Gets a ‘Caffeine’ Boost.” In the post, SEO Group Director Mike Dobbs and SEO Analyst Martha Mukangara noted some pretty surprising findings.

They included 40 retail keywords in their study of the differences between the first three pages of regular Google search results and Google Caffeine search results. The 40 keywords are made up of 10 major brand names (keywords), 10 retail head terms (single keywords), 10 retail torso terms (two-word phrases), and 10 retail long-tail phrases (four-word phrases).

They pointed out six ways the new search engine will dramatically affect online marketers’ strategies. For instance, 15 percent of all first-page rankings were different for the 40 keywords used in the study. Amazingly, the single keywords and two-word phrases saw 50 percent of their first-page results change with the new search engine.

The reason for this big change is the fact that Google Caffeine is focusing more on keyword relevance and it’s steering away from blogs and wikis in favor of social media, video, music, photo and other sites previously outside of its search capability.

Since single keywords are so general, they will face more competition from these new sites being allowed to vie for top ranking. Longer phrases, with four or more keywords, will benefit from the new system because they will be drawn from a smaller pool with a focus on how relevant they are to the searcher’s needs.

All of these changes could have serious consequences for ecommerce marketers. At the end of the article, the study’s authors give the following advice to them:

Marketers will need to keep a close eye on their own set of keywords and determine how results change if a switch-over does takes place… [I]f your keywords shift in rank, you will need to refresh your strategy and focus in on any results drop-offs, or take advantage of subsequent wins.

What an interesting topic. Be sure to keep coming back to the Submit Solution SEO Blog for the latest updates on Google and Bing, as well as other major search-engine trends.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog entry, “Internet marketers brace for Google Caffeine changes.” The photo of the upside-down YouTube page is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of engineroomblog.

By Robert Lockard

In Internet marketing, your website can be your first and best defense against lawsuits or it can be a huge liability. It depends on how strong your disclaimers are and how carefully you check to make sure your statements are all factual and ethical.

I bring this up because I just read an eye-opening article on InfoWeek’s website, entitled “Website disclaimers – yes, they do work.” In that piece, author Guy Burgess describes a recent case in New Zealand where an ecommerce website had given customers the wrong impression about the soundness of some of the companies it advertised.

A customer sued the website owners when he received the short end of the stick on a deal with one of the companies the website advertised. But a judge ruled in favor of the owners because they had included a provision on their website to protect themselves. The judge found the owners to be both negligent in their faulty information and protected by their admission that their site didn’t have all the information customers would want to make a final decision.

We all make mistakes, and it’s unfortunate when others are negatively affected by our errors. If we want strong relationships with our customers, we have to make sure our ecommerce websites are accurate and that our products or services are as good as we say they are.

The InfoWeek article suggests three things every website owner should do:

1. Publish a disclaimer on your website. It can be brief and it should simply suggest customers not just look at your site for credible information on whatever topic is the focus of your business.

2. Be honest. This seems like a no-brainer, but you should try to include the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on your website. Try to make sure you information is as complete as possible and you’re leaving out important details people need to know.

3. Carefully review your website and update it when necessary. It’s hard to catch every mistake, especially as laws change and you introduce new products or services. Make an honest effort and your customers will appreciate your diligence.

This is a complete version of the post on the eHarbor Blog: “Protect yourself with a strong website disclaimer.” The photo of the zombie warning sign is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of rchurch74.

By Robert Lockard

Is Facebook dying? That’s the topic of an astonishing New York Times article, entitled “Facebook Exodus.” Author Virginia Heffernan starts by pointing out:

The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July. But while people are still joining Facebook and compulsively visiting the site, a small but noticeable group are fleeing – some of them ostentatiously.

I’ve written about Facebook several times in the eHarbor Blog, usually noting its strength and rapid growth. Along with Twitter, it is leading the social-media revolution – or fad – that could change search engines and other aspects of the Internet or just peter out. This article grabbed my attention and demanded I discuss it.

You should definitely check out the New York Times article because it tells five stories about individuals who left Facebook for a variety of reasons. They are all quite compelling. One felt his privacy was violated by Facebook, and another felt she was wasting too much time on the website.

The feelings of privacy violation are completely understandable, and perhaps even unavoidable. Facebook is a social network so its information is not meant to be completely private. Perhaps people’s concerns are just the result of their own carelessness in posting too much information or not studying the rules to keep it hidden. Or maybe it’s a combination of shifting, hidden or hard-to-understand rules, as well as people’s decisions not to read the fine print.

Heffernan notes, “As Facebook endeavors to be the Web’s headquarters – to compete with Google, in other words, and to make money from the information it gathers – it’s inevitable that some people would come to view it as Big Brother.”

The part of the article that really took my breath away was when a prolific Facebook poster said the site felt dead to her a few months ago, even though it was still experiencing explosive growth. That struck me as incredibly odd. She noted the novelty of finding people on Facebook is wearing off, and I suddenly started looking at Facebook in a whole new light. Maybe Facebook’s services never really had a future, but they were just a fun diversion – a flash in the pan.

The last paragraph in the New York Times article sums it all up nicely:

Is Facebook doomed to someday become an online ghost town, run by zombie users who never update their pages and packs of marketers picking at the corpses of social circles they once hoped to exploit? Sad, if so. Though maybe fated, like the demise of a college clique.

This blog entry is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post, “Is Facebook Dying?” The photo of the ghost town near Telluride, Colo. is from Flickr, and it is courtesy of Rob Lee.

By Robert Lockard

The other day, I had an image in my mind of a strange object and I wanted to find a picture of it online. The only problem was I didn’t have a clue what it was called. The image in my head was of a scene in “Superman II” when General Zod’s henchman Non is in the Oval Office and he’s staring intently at something. It’s five metal balls tied to strings in a row and the ones on either end keep hitting the four still balls, causing the ball on the other end to bounce away and come back again.

Maybe you already know what I’m talking about.

I turned to one of my coworkers here at eHarbor, Inc. and asked her to help me. She could picture it, as well, but she couldn’t put her finger on the name. I tried searching for “metal ball attached to strings hitting each other” on Google, but I didn’t find what I was looking for. Luckily, my resourceful coworker found it on Amazon.com, I believe. I could now put a name to an image – Newton’s cradle!

This story illustrates my need for a visual search engine and not simply a text-based one. Luckily, Microsoft and Google are both heading in that direction. I read about their efforts in a CNN article entitled, “Microsoft, Google expand search-engine tools.”

None of the Bing Visual Search galleries look like they would help me find Newton’s cradle because they mostly include people, entertainment and electronics. But it’s new, so I’m willing to cut Microsoft some slack. I’m sure they will get better as they get a feel for what people are (literally) looking for.

Microsoft is still trying hard to break Google’s domination of the search-engine market. The CNN article cited a comScore study showing that, in June, about 65 percent of online searches were done through Google, while just 8.4 percent were done through Bing.

I’ve talked about the race between Microsoft and Google to develop a stronghold over a variety of online and software industries before. You can read about it in my blog entry, “Google-Microsoft face-off good for ecommerce.” Their rivalry is bringing great innovations like these visual search engines. I’ll hopefully talk more about Google’s Fast Flip in a forthcoming blog entry. For now, I’ll say adieu.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog entry, “Finding Superman image on Google no easy feat.” The photo of Newton’s cradle is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of ƒяαиcєscα яσsє.

By Robert Lockard

Are books about to take a quantum leap forward? I just read an excellent article on CNN called, “E-books catching on with readers.” I’ve covered this topic before on the eHarbor Blog, and much of what I read in this article harkened back to the thoughts I offered in my blog entry, “Will Kindle hurt book publishers?” In that blog post, I focused solely on the Kindle DX, but now many other companies are jumping into the fray.

The e-book industry certainly looks promising. It’s attracting top booksellers like Barnes & Noble and Amazon, as well as tech giants like Apple, Google and Sony. Technological advances keep coming, making e-books thinner, easier on the eyes and more affordable every year. In fact, according to the article, they could become as thin as a piece of paper within the next five years. That sounds amazing!

The reason I am so excited about this development is that it has the power to dramatically cut printing costs and open the doors to up-and-coming authors to show off their work. Imagine someone writing a great work of fiction and selling it through Amazon at a fraction of the price it would be if it had to be printed, shipped and stored. That author could start earning revenue almost immediately.

This also gives new opportunities to people engaged in ecommerce. Instead of having to mail cumbersome documents about their services to customers, they might be able to offer them in digital form. I know this is already done via email and on websites, but they could become more mobile and they wouldn’t have to be printed out if they could be accessed on an e-book.

Right now, e-books only account for about 3 percent of the revenue earned by the publishing industry. But industry insiders, like Book Oven CEO Hugh McGraw, are expecting their share of the publishing industry to grow to as much as 20 percent in 2014. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the publishing industry.

Aren’t you glad to be living in the future?

This blog entry is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post, “E-books on the verge of explosive growth” The photo of the e-book inside a book is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of timonoko.

By Robert Lockard

It looks like two Davids are joining forces to take on Goliath. After years of public wrangling over the details, Microsoft and Yahoo finally announced a proposed 10-year partnership between their search-engine and online-advertising departments on Wednesday, July 29, 2009.

“In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo search while Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers,” the official Microsoft news release said.

The way I read that sentence, it means they will pool their resources so that Yahoo’s search engine will have the same tools as the Bing “decision engine.” It also means Bing will have access to Yahoo’s superior online advertising services and it can give advertisers better results and a bigger audience.

Right now, Google controls about 70 percent of the online-search market, while Microsoft and Yahoo, combined, only account for nearly 30 percent of all Internet searches. They’ll need a lot more stones in their sling if they hope to take down the giant.

What does this new relationship mean for pay-per-click advertisers? According to the news release,

Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.

Advertisers will be able to take advantage of Microsoft’s online-advertising tools while also receiving Yahoo’s expert service. This new service will hopefully offer the best of both worlds.

“Through this agreement with Yahoo, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said, referring to Google.

Of course, companies and their CEOs want to promote their services as much as possible. Google probably has a completely different take on these events. So what are your thoughts? Is this development good or bad for ecommerce and Internet marketing? This is a complete version of the blog post on the eHarbor Blog: “What the Microsoft-Yahoo merger means for ecommerce.”

The Microsoft-Yahoo logo is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of JVManna.

By Robert Lockard

Have you heard all about how useful Twitter is in building your business, but you have no idea how to get started “tweeting”? You’re not alone, and Twitter is trying to help you learn the ropes with a new Twitter user guide.

I found out about this new guide in a Houston Business Journal article, entitled “Twitter launches business guide, search widget.” Social Media Marketing apparently Twitter noticed many people and businesses would open Twitter accounts, post for a while and then abandon them because they either weren’t seeing results or they didn’t know what they’re supposed to do to with them. This new guide should hopefully reverse that trend.

If you go to Twitter’s guide you’ll find information on how to get started, new vocabulary terms, best practices and case studies on companies that have successfully used Twitter to increase their revenue.

Twitter also launched a new Twitter search widget to allow people to see who is talking about them right now. As I’ve discussed before, major search engine optimization like Bing and Google can’t keep up with Twitter and Facebook’s fast-updating service. It appears Twitter is trying to remedy this situation, but this tool is still limited in its uses. We’ll have to wait and see what permanent fix they or other entrepreneurs come up with. You can read my discussion of Twitter and search engines in my blog entry, “Google can’t keep up with Twitter.”

Twitter can be an excellent tool for businesses to keep in touch with customers, build new relationships and generate new sales opportunities. But it must be used wisely. I’ve talked a lot in the eHarbor Blog about how Twitter doesn’t directly help your site’s search engine optimization, but it does have many strengths. It should be an important part of your Internet marketing strategies if you’re an ecommerce company.

This blog entry is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post, “Twitter tutors tweeters.” The photo of the squirrel reaching is from Flickr, and it is courtesy of snappybex.

By Robert Lockard

With the release of its Magellan Merchant service on August 31, Magellan Commerce has become the first one-stop shop for businesses looking for website, branding and online payment solutions. No company has ever offered both an ecommerce platform and merchant services until recently.

There is a huge demand among online businesses for a simple, low-cost merchant service. That’s why Magellan Commerce combined its expertise at Web design with this new merchant service. Now businesses won’t have to work with several different companies to build their website and then allow customers to pay with credit cards online. It can all be handled by Magellan Commerce for an amazingly low price.

Here are some of Magellan Merchant’s great features:

- No setup fees

- Low transaction rates

- Low, 5-cent monthly fee

- No contracts

- No minimum monthly transactions

- PCI-compliant security protocols to protect against identity theft

Magellan Merchant services are only available to Magellan Commerce customers. Magellan Commerce is an innovative ecommerce platform that specializes in designing websites and logos for small businesses. eHarbor, Inc. is the parent company of both Magellan Commerce and Submit Solution.

To find out more about Magellan Commerce and Magellan Merchant, go to www.magellancommerce.com or call 1-800-925-1647.