Speculation about Cuil.com is rampant. Is it a true Google Killer? Is their format superior? My only burning question is why they picked such a shitty name. If you haven’t heard, it’s pronounced “cool”. That made me dislike it from the start for some reason. “Cool” can never become […]

IACI (Interactive Corp), Ask’s parent company, is currently valued at around $5.5 billion. IAC owns bunch of solid companies - Ticketmaster, HSN, Lending Tree, the list goes on. They’re going to spin off all those companies in the near future, leaving Ask.com as the “core” of IAC, along with some other web properties […]

90% of my time lately has been spent on PPC and Google Analytics. So I’ve discovered some useful blogs and thought I should spread the word:
Top PPC Blogs
Jeff Hudson’s PPC Book - Funny writing, good insight
Gordon Choi’s PPC Blog - Solid advice
Clix marketing blog - another good’un
PPC Hero - More basic, but good
Analytics Blogs:
ROI […]

For the Adwords content network, too many keywords can be a very bad thing. My early and unsuccessful content groups had as many relevant keywords as I could cram in there. Why not? It’s not always worth it to set up a separate ad group for closely-related kws. And it seemed […]

The benefits of Microsoft buying Yahoo sound good in theory - reduced costs, bigger advertiser base, etc. But this deal isn’t likely to be good for Microsoft’s shareholders (stock dropped 6% today). It’s more likely to benefit Google.
I’m still confident that Google’s going to wipe the floor with Microsoft/Yahoo. And the beatdown […]

Everybody knows Google and Microsoft are at war. Microsoft wants to be a big player in search, and Google is making progress with their productivity-software offering. They’re both investing billions. Seems like a good match-up at first glance.
But the odds are heavily stacked in Google’s favor. The only reason Microsoft has […]

Claiming that Facebook is valued at $15 billion makes a great headline, and further feeds the incessant chatter about the Web 2.0 Bubble. But, like many intriguing headlines, it’s largely bullshit. MSFT didn’t pay $240 million for JUST a 1.6% stake of Facebook. They paid $240 million for the exclusive advertising opportunities […]

SEMs have been bashing wikipedia for years, but the trend has picked up steam in the last 6 months or so. Eric’ Lander’s article at SEJ is the latest.
I click on Wikipedia SERPs at least a few times weekly. 95% of the time, I’m very satisfied with the article. I’m in the […]

This one grabbed my attention in Gmail today:
We are woot.com
Our tiny profit is lost
Haiku ads don’t work.
www.woot.com
I like this ad - it’s quirky, geeky, & intriguing. Lately I’ve been studying the art of writing good headlines & sales copy. One of the things I’ve learned is that it’s incredibly important to entertain readers. […]

A while ago, Rae Hoffman posted a thought-provoking piece about behind-the-scenes link purchases, and how they are impossible for Google to detect. I agree for the most part. For now it’s hard for Google to combat discreet link-buying/selling.
But Google has a LOT of ways they could potentially find these purchases; search history, Webmaster […]