Recently Google did a major PageRank update where a lot of sites were downgraded. Many experts believe this PageRank update was Google’s response to link selling - sites which sell links lost points in their PageRank.

Google measures all web pages on a scale of importance from 0 to 10, which is shown in a small green pixel bar on browsers carrying the Google Toolbar. PageRank is “supposedly” measured by the number of backlinks to your site.

Online democracy in action, a link is a vote for your site. The more votes you have the higher your site is ranked. At least that’s how it was supposed to work until a lot of high PR sites started selling links and put a monkey wrench into the whole system.

The latest update may be a smart move on Google’s part to curtail this practice; who’s going to buy a link from a PR2 or even a PR4 site? Besides this could be more than a warning that your site will go down even further if you continue to sell links. (more…)

(PRLEAP.COM) Affiliate marketing has become a crucial area of business for many digital agencies, with 85 per cent of agencies saying that they now manage more affiliate marketing for clients than they did two years ago, according to research by E-consultancy and the UK’s largest independent affiliate network, buy.at. On average, this channel now represents 20 per cent of turnover for those agencies surveyed. The overwhelming majority of respondents (92 per cent) say their agencies will be managing more affiliate marketing in two years’ time, further highlighting the growth of this sector.

Some 90 per cent of respondents believe that affiliate marketing is a way of growing their agency or differentiating it (either ‘definitely’, 39 per cent, or ‘somewhat’, 51 per cent) with only 9 per cent disagreeing.

Almost 100 UK agency respondents took part in the E-consultancy / buy.at Affiliate Marketing Survey carried out in August and September 2007. (more…)

Black Friday has a new — and growing — counterpart when it comes to good deals and kicking off holiday sales: Cyber Monday. In a growing trend, more shoppers are turning to their computers the Monday after Thanksgiving, enough for online retailers to give the day a name.

The term Cyber Monday surfaced in 2005, but the trend has been on the radar for the past five years, said Ellen Davis, senior director of strategic communications with the National Retail Federation.

“Every year on the Monday after Thanksgiving, traffic and sales online would spike,” she said, adding at first the organization wondered if that surge was just an anomaly.

It wasn’t. The trend continued. Davis attributes it to people who don’t feel like braving the crowds the weekend of Black Friday. Or, she said, maybe the trend is driven by people whose shopping time was limited, or who could find the item they wanted or the color they desired before it sold out in retail stores. (more…)

If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or even if you’re just hoping to better your search engine placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition frenzy that took hold among the major search engines.

Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, Microsoft paid $6 billion for Aquantive, and Yahoo paid $680 million for the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own and another $300 million for BlueLithium. The companies purchased are all intended to help widen the advertising range of each of the engines in question, and to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated behavioral-based ad-serving technologies that the acquired companies owned.

What many people failed to realize was that when Google purchased DoubleClick, it now was also the owner of a very large search engine optimization company called Performics, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of DoubleClick. (more…)

Yes, today’s marketing is not your father’s marketing from a generation ago. With emerging online and mobile platforms making a play for ever dwindling advertising dollars, the media landscape is getting very crowded these days—but also very exciting for many practitioners.

Such was the basic current of thought voiced at this year’s ad:tech conference, an interactive advertising and technology event, which ran from November 5-8 at New York City’s Hilton Hotel.

Attracting over 300 vendors in its exhibit hall, the conference drew throngs of attendees, which included marketing/advertising executives, brand managers, media directors, product managers and solution providers. Universal McCann CEO Nick O’Brien kicked things off with a keynote presentation on the “New Media Universe.” Social gadfly Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the popular political blog, Huffington Post, added some celebrity cachet with her appearance on a roundtable devoted to “The State of the Industry,” which encompassed talk on consumer-generated content, social networking, online video and activation. (more…)

Do you know that you can Make Money With Forums? Internet forums are great free online source especially for you beginners. The forums are online community and discussion place for internet users. The forums are a fantastic place to improve your knowledge and skills, to research, to promote your website and to sell your product or service.

The Forums are a great place where Internet Marketers can:

1. Research, find and understand your niche and your niche market. Forums can help you to understand: What customers really want, what customers look for and what problem can you take off their desk. How can you save them time, money, or pain. Visit forums to understand your niche market.

2.Test your ad copywriting skills.You can test different headlines, and body of your adcopy. You will can improve your writing skills to come up with the headlines and your adcopy in the first place. Good ads force you to get to the point right away. A great adcopy should have a clear and attention grabbing title, short description about the product or service, and finally it should have a call to action. (more…)

I found a job at the GAP and a dirt-cheap, off-white 1991 Geo Prizm. A friend from home got a free queen-size bed in immaculate condition (complete with sheets!!!). My other friend sold his iPod, digital camera, and laptop. When you’re hard up for cash, you can visit the ‘barter’ page and find what you need in exchange for whatever you’re willing to give up.

Here, listing upon listing of classifieds for all sorts of needs and desires can be found and met. It’s a web site that now services many countries and cities around the world, but one that also focuses on local and community interaction. What is the thing that can do all of these things and more? Why, my friend, it’s Craigslist.

According to Craigslist.org, the goal of Craigslist is to “provide a trustworthy, efficient, relatively non-commercial place for folks to find all the basics in their local area.” The web site is incredibly simple and easy to navigate. (more…)

Photobucket, a site that serves up photos, videos and graphics for 35 million users a month, is allowing users to tag photos across multiple social networks.

Tagging, a feature common in social networking sites, lets users attach associative words with a person or object. A searcher using a site that enables tagging may find a person by entering his or her alma mater, nickname or other descriptors.

Photobucket previously let users search via photo headlines, but the tagging feature, which started Nov. 8, lets users tag up to 20 names and links in one photo. The people who view the photos can see the tags, click on links and find more photos with the same tags on Photobucket’s site. (more…)

The tone of last week’s Federal Trade Commission hearings suggest that regulation is coming, warned Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, as he opened up day two of the Ad:Tech conference in New York City: “The state of the industry is excellent, yet it’s also at risk: while growth remains strong; growth up 26 percent in first half of the year, which we expect to continue. The online ad industry is on track to hit its first $20 billion year - that’s one-third of the tv ad space after about 13 years of internet ads started.”

He then warned the industry to keep on an eye on Washington and state capitals: “Anti-consumer advocates are out to stifle the industry, including the FTC, which wants complete regulation of cookies themselves and could require opt-in stipulations for all online ads. As last week’s hearings suggest, they feel the time for fact-finding is over, it’s now time to regulate.” Other highlights from the session focused on the rise of platforms and the search for the least disruptive forms of online advertising. (more…)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Americans can watch television shows on anything from a computer to an iPod these days, but media companies and advertisers have yet to figure out how best to take advantage of all the new ways to reach audiences.

So suggested a panel of experts from Google, Dow Jones & Co, NBC Universal and TNS Media Research at a conference in New York on Tuesday, which coincided with the first work stoppage by TV and movie screenwriters in 20 years.

At the heart of the work stoppage is the question of how screenwriters should be compensated in an era of burgeoning digital technologies, such as Internet and hand-held wireless devices, that are changing the face of entertainment.

Those changes were the central topic of conversation during the hour-long panel session — part of the adtech conference in New York — although nobody mentioned the strike itself.

“When you take a show like “Heroes” or “The Office,” that show ran once 30 years ago,” said Ron Lamprecht, senior vice president, digital distribution, at NBC Universal, which is majority owned by General Electric. (more…)