If a French court has its way, eBay will soon have to fork over $2.6 million.  The fine stems from a ban on the sale (or purchase) of LVMH goods, and actually ties to a case that ended in eBay being told to pay LVMH $61 million. LVMH, which is the entity behind luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer, and De Beers, won a major case...

With any luck, Thanksgiving and the long weekend have put you in a good mood.  Perhaps the always-insane Black Friday crowds have given you some confidence in the American economy, too.  But if you're thinking of putting more money into the stock market, it may interest you to know that the manager of a first-rate mutual fund has parted...

This is the third video in our recent Rapid Fire series where you share your most burning questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them!Generally we want to focus on your questions about key metrics and analysis techniques, but this week we get a little technical.In this episode we discuss:How to group referrals from...

We'll admit it: so far, most conversations concerning the Microsoft-Yahoo deal and antitrust issues have related to the U.S. and Europe.  Still, two potential roadblocks were eliminated yesterday when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Canadian Competition Bureau signaled their intent not to oppose the...

Guest Post by Alan K'necht Over the past five to eight years, Search Engine Marketing (”SEM”) professionals have finally woken up to the reality that the goal of their campaigns, be it search engine optimization (”SEO”), pay per click (”ppc”) like Google Adwords or any other effort is not about driving the...

Chris Liddell, who's served as Microsoft's chief financial officer for four and a half years, intends to leave the company rather soon.  Microsoft announced that Peter Klein will be transitioning in over the next month, and then Liddell will depart at the end of the 2009. It should comfort Microsoft fans and/or shareholders to know that...

Let the Christmas shopping begin. Tis the season for hopelessly looking for the perfect present and feeling like you’ll never find it. It’s a difficult time of year but you could put the cheer back into your customer’s holiday season. Many corporations are doing this very thing. Take Urban Outfitters for example. They have an...

Consider yourself forewarned: the official line is that "Facebook has no plans to go public at this time."  Just the same, a financial maneuver the company's performing has raised a few eyebrows since it seems to point towards that possibility. Jessica E. Vascellaro reported this afternoon, "The company is in the process of...

Yahoo conducted a survey of small business online retailers to find out how they think they'll perform this upcoming holiday season compared to previous years. "Surprisingly, based on the current economic landscape, the results show an optimistic outlook, with over 60 percent of the Yahoo! merchants surveyed expecting sales to be the same...

There's no need to start refreshing the Twitter Blog every five seconds; it doesn't sound like any pens are poised over paper at the moment.  However, Biz Stone has made some statements concerning acquisitions that point to more of them taking place in the future. "That is something we are definitely interested in," Stone said at a...

It has been discovered that Google is now showing AdSense ads inside Google Earth. While it is not that surprising to see Google putting ads on another one of its properties, it has raised a few eyebrows, given that Google Earth is a desktop application. Google actually states in its policy that it doesn't allow developers to use AdSense ads in...

Google TV Ads is about to become a significantly more powerful marketing system.  A new pact with TiVo will allow Google to gather (and then pass on) very precise data about which commercials are being viewed, and even (to a lesser degree) who is doing the watching. Mike Steib, Google's director of emerging platforms, explained the...

Google Images has indexed billions of images. If your image can be found for the right keyword, then you will get targeted visitors to your website. We have six tips that help you to get your images on Google's first results page.

I’ve been in the fortunate situation lately where Mediaedge:cia Manchester has been recruiting a number of SEO’s lately. On the back of this, we thought it best to formalise the training for each new-starter in order to aid the induction process and provide additional training. This way we can ensure that each SEO is provided with a...

link report tool - click here Li’l Engine is proud to introduce the new Link Report Tool, a free search engine optimization tool developed to help SEOs and webmasters to identify the link landscape of any web page. The link report tool uses Javascript technology to crawl through any webpage and creates a report on the various types of links...

Google just announced that it is acquiring Teracent, a provider of "intelligent dynamic display advertising." The company considers itself a pioneer in dynamic ad serving and optimization solutions. Google appears to agree. Teracent provides machine-learning algorithms, which can create customized display ads based on thousands of...

Businesses and ad networks are increasingly finding new ways to integrate social media and advertising. This is evident with AdKnowledge's recent acquisition of SocialMedia.com's ad network, and it is also evident with TweetMeme's new AdTweets. AdTweets is a product, which TweetMeme says is designed to reward advertisers for using engaging...

Google's Matt Cutts discussed how the search engine handles sites that that are "in the cloud" with regards to how listings are affected. Matt's explanation was a response to the following user-submitted question: Can moving my website to "the cloud" harm my listings? Say my server's in Germany and I move the website to...

uSocial is a controversial advertising company that specializes in social media.  For a fee, it promises to get stories on the front page of Digg, direct followers to a Twitter account, and/or find someone Facebook fans (among other things).  But Facebook's put at least a temporary stop to the sale of friends. The BBC reported this...

It looks like the eBay-Skype spectacle has finally come to a close.  Despite all of the arguments (legal and otherwise) that cropped up at one point or another, representatives of both companies announced last night that the sale of Skype to an investor group is complete. Josh Silverman, the president of Skype, adopted a rather enthusiastic...

Google's new SERP URL update Over the next few days we should see some changes in the way Google displays the URLs in organic SERP. Currently the URL listed in the search result is a citation based version of a page’s URL. It looks like this update is could be part of the Caffeine rollout, where Matt Cutt’s mentioned will only be...

It's a great week for the Website Optimizer YouTube channel. On the heels of Dan Siroker's talk, How we used data to win the election, we just posted two recorded webinars. The first webinar is Planning and Running your First Experiment with Website Optimizer. David Booth, one of our authorized consultants, gives an outstanding presentation that...

Are you a Google affiliate publisher? If so and you haven’t logged into your account for a while, make sure you log in and select your payment preference in the Adsense dashboard or you might not get paid by your regular date. Google announced this on the GAN blog today: Affiliate publishers have new payment options through the integration...

The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on 136 websites it says were selling illegal or misbranded drugs to U.S. consumers. The FDA says none of the websites are for pharmacies in the United States or Canada. The agency has sent 22 warning letters to the operators of these websites and notified Internet service providers and domain...

Some time ago, Mark Zuckerberg began allowing Facebook employees to make a quick buck by selling their shares through private channels (as opposed to waiting for Facebook to hit the Nasdaq or Dow).  Since then, many have done exactly that.  The interesting thing is that the price of Facebook's stock has risen a whole lot in recent...

As you've more than likely heard by now, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch in an interview last week talked about the possibility of blocking search engines from indexing News Corp. publications' content. While this may or may not actually happen, it is one of the latest (and biggest) examples of a publisher taking the position of search engines...

Yahoo Search is now including a new Twitter feature in search results for select topics that are in the news. For example, if you search for "health care reform," or "obama," you will get a section for news results, which contains tabs for news, photos, videos, and Twitter. The results look something like this: This is...

The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) has launched the Online Media Legal Network (OLMLN) that will offer free legal advice to online journalists and bloggers. Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide smaller online publishers with free and reduced legal help on a broad range of issues, including business formation and governance, copyright...

We're always really excited to see what developers are building with Google Analytics. Here's an amazing visualization using the API from our friends at Juice Analytics. Now, this is what we're talking about when we say this stuff is "Off the charts!" (The API team t-shirt slogan). :-)At Juice, we work with web analytics APIs large and small, from...

Imeem, which was able to declare itself "the first and only social networking service to secure licenses from all four major music companies" about two years ago, now appears to be folding.  Reports indicate that MySpace is set to acquire the business for a rather piddling amount. Imeem was once a fairly successful...

Online video ads perform better in content sites such as news, finance, sports, and music than in social networks or gaming sites, according to a new study by ad firm Eyeblaster. The study found that video advertising increases engagement, doubling Dwell Time (the amount of time users engage with an ad) and increases Dwell Rate (the number of ad...

British police said today they have made Europe's first arrests in the battle against an online Trojan which threatened to compromise thousands of computers in the UK. The ZeuS or Zbot Trojan, a type of sophisticated malicious malware, is believed to have infected and accessed personal information from tens of thousands of computers around the...

A major change has taken place behind the scenes at Xing, the business networking company based in Hamburg, Germany.  Burda Media is now the primary shareholder due to a transaction that saw it purchase a lot of stock from Cinco Capital GmbH. Burda bought a whopping 1,323,041 shares for €36.50 each (which works out to about $72.3...

Update: Yahoo Messenger 10 is now out of beta. Features include: high quality video calling, Yahoo Updates view of your contacts list, and availability in 16 languages. Original Article: Yahoo Messenger Version 10 is now available in beta. New features include enhanced video calling, courtesy of GIPS, friend updates from Yahoo, Flickr,...

A U.S. Senate report has revealed that retailers (a number of which you may already know and trust), have accepted as much as $792 million to share customers' credit-card information with direct marketing companies. Could your card number have been one that was shared? Would you have known? The companies engaging in such practices have been...

Yahoo Go, a mobile application that links users to a number of different services (including mail, news, and weather), is going to cease doing much of anything in the near future.  Yahoo has decided to concentrate its mobile efforts elsewhere. In an email sent to Yahoo Go users, the company announced, "Yahoo! Go will be discontinued on...

The FeedBurner team has just announced an integration with Google Analytics. We know what many of you are saying. "About time!" We'll take it.If you are using both Google Analytics and FeedBurner, you will automatically see campaign attribution for item clicks tracked by your AdSense For Feeds or your Google FeedBurner account. To read more and...

About one month ago, Yahoo launched a new campaign to get people excited about its brand, and as part of the exercise, asked individuals to put their spin on the famous Yahoo yodel.  This afternoon, Yahoo identified the three people who stood out from the crowd. We should note that these three people stood out in a positive way; not every...

Sharing open source software just got a whole lot easier.  The Open Web Foundation has announced the availability of the Open Web Foundation Agreement, and some huge corporations - namely Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo - have given the arrangement their figurative seal of approval. It's important to note that this isn't some...

As you know, Google's ultimate goal is to organize the world's information. With this in mind, it should be no surprise that Google is organizing full-text legal opinions from United States federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts. The company is using its Google Scholar service to do so. "As many of us recall from our...

AdMob, which is being purchased by Google, has unveiled a new interactive video ad unit for the iPhone today. Upon the announcement of Google's acquisition, the highlights of the purchase included SMS, search, web display, and app display ads. Now, video is part of the mix. "For the first time, mobile video is truly interactive as we've...

Depending on the keywords for which you want to get high rankings, you have to employ different tactics. Keywords with less competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition. Two charts illustrate the importance and the effect of different optimization tactics.

There’s a lot of talk around the interwebs about building a business by making passive income. You know — the kind of income that brings sales into your business when you’re sleeping and turns your email box into a cash register — ka-ching, ka-ching! For most people that means they need to become affiliated with another company and...

We just posted a new video on the Website Optimizer YouTube channel that shows the power of website testing. Last month, we held our annual Google Partner Summit where we hosted all of the Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, and Urchin Software Authorized Consultants. One of the keynote speakers was Dan Siroker, Director of Analytics for the...

News Corp Vs Google An epic battle is brewing between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Google, as early as next month we could see News Corp controlled websites disappear from Google’s search results. It all started when Google began to index News Corp websites such as the Wall Street Journal / Fox news and returns to the minute...

YouTube's struck another content-sharing partnership, and it's a big one.  Univision, which is the top Spanish-language broadcast network in America, has agreed to supply the video-sharing site with both short clips and full shows. On the YouTube Blog, Strategic Partner Development Manager Laura Lee explained the importance of this...

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the 2009 update to its ad unit guidelines today. For the first time, the IAB is bringing in creative agencies for input on ad unit recommendations. Historically, these have only come from media agencies and publishers. "By bringing agencies into the process of developing standard ad units,...

Yahoo has launched a new original online series sponsored by ConAgra Foods, called "What's So Funny?" "What's So Funny?" features daily three-minute clips with hosts Mike Bachmann and Shira Lazar, which recap the funniest moments from the previous night's prime time lineup. Viewers can vote on the funniest moments of the...

Another milestone in a significant legal dispute has passed; a revised version of the Google Books settlement was submitted to U.S. District Court late Friday.  It looks like the book-scanning clash isn't nearly over, however, since some powerful groups still have qualms about Google's proposed resolution. Google tried to dial back both the...

Welcome to part three of this three part series on SEO tools and resources. In the last two articles we discussed the variety of Firefox extensions used for SEO as well as an assortment of other free or affordable SEO tools. In this article we'll discuss some of the resources you'll want to access on a regular basis to keep up to date and...

Introduction to the Link Bait concept Introduction to the link bait concept The art of link bait is a combination of creative ideas and great execution; the term linkbait itself refers to the act of creating content for the purpose of acquiring links to a website to increase its search engine rankings. The content itself is considered as ‘...

How would you like to have 24-hour a day access to a dedicated assistant who is focused exclusively on your site's analytics? Your assistant would be so diligent and detailed that they wouldn't miss a thing. Sound too good to be true? We're giving you one. Say "Hello" to Analytics Intelligence.Your new hardworking assistant, Analytics...

The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner of Switzerland, Hanspeter Thür , still isn't happy with Google.  Thür has argued that the Street View program doesn't do enough to protect individuals' identities, and despite receiving a concession or two, is now taking Google to court. Street View was...

Google has released several new features for Google Ad Planner. Google says these are aimed at providing a more granular view of where your audience can be found. Features include subdomain data, ad placements, and reach and relevance at a glance. When Google says reach and relevance at a glance, it is referring to a new interactive graph feature,...

Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site so many people love, announced an important deal today as it named HP's Snapfish its preferred photo printing and gift creation partner.  Thanks to the arrangement, printing pictures is about to become a lot easier for some folks, and for others, this will even be the first time a certain printing...

HP announced today that it is acquiring 3Com, makers of network switching, routing, and security solutions, for $2.7 billion in cash (at 7.90 per share). Both boards have already approved the transaction. HP says the combination of these two companies will transform the networking industry and "underscore HP's next-generation data center...

Update: Intel has now updated its Fourth-quarter financial expectations: As a result of the legal settlement announced today with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel Corporation adjusted its fourth-quarter financial expectations to reflect the impact of the $1.25 billion settlement payment. Intel now expects spending (R&D plus MG&A)...

Google product listing ads have been spotted every now and then for a while now. The company has been testing them, but now the they have announced that US users will start seeing them more frequently on shopping related queries. "Each day we see many users come to Google.com to research products and find where to buy them," says...

Here is another in-depth look at one of our recently announced new features: Advanced Filters (or Advanced Table Filters), written by the excellent team at LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant. For the daily user, Advanced Filters may be the most useful new feature of the bundle of new features, in terms of streamlining your...

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released a list of "best practices" for marketers and publishers who want to monetize their email efforts. The best practices come in a document appropriately titled "Email Monetization Strategies." The IAB considers this part of its ongoing efforts to establish a "solid...

Google has launched a new way to lock SafeSearch. What this accomplishes is, users will have to enter their password to change the setting, and Google Search results will be visibly different than when SafeSearch is not locked. Google demonstrates how to to lock SafeSearch with the following short clip: ...

YouTube has begun testing a new kind of ad format on some of its videos - skippable pre-rolls. These ads let users choose whether or not they want to watch the ad as it appears at the beginning of a video. YouTube says that when it first began testing in-stream ads a couple years ago, abandonment rates on videos were as high as 70%. They found...

Costumes got me thinking about websites and writing. I know, sometimes I have crazy thoughts. Here it is. On Halloween people dress up as witches or the guy with the baby from Hangover. Dressing up is great for Halloween but it would be weird if people dressed up all-year-round. So why are some websites in costume all year long? What I mean by...

caffeine roll out planned for 2010 The Google Caffeine sandbox has been switched off today, replaced by this message. We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox. Based on the success we’ve seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning...

A federal grand jury in Atlanta has indicted eight East Europeans on charges of hacking into a computer network operated by the credit card processing company RBS WorldPay, the U.S. Department of Justice said today. The 16-count indictment alleges the group used sophisticated hacking techniques to compromise data encryption used by RBS WorldPay...

Links from related websites are very important for the position of your own site in Google's search results. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to convince other people to link to your site.

The $500bn global marketing industry is driven by metrics. TVRs, GRs, OTS, TGI, ABC, BARB, CPC, CPA, PI, CPM, frequency, benchmarking, response, reach, hits – the range of measurement systems has exploded as the complexity of marketing continues to increase. Which has led to a gaming mentality among some parts of the industry, where almost any...

It could be said that the Google Books case is becoming the new Microsoft-Yahoo deal, having created all sorts of controversy and dragged on and on.  And on some more, as it turns out, since the involved parties are pushing a target date back again. A revised proposal concerning how Google and its critics could settle their differences was...

Not long ago, Eric Schmidt estimated that Google would start making monthly acquisitions.  Today, it's almost looking like the dial got bumped up to hourly, since following this morning's confirmed acquisition of AdMob, a report has indicated that Google's bought Gizmo5, too. Gizmo5 is a VoIP firm.  Two recent company blog posts are...

Google said today it has signed an agreement to acquire mobile display advertising firm AdMob for $750 million in stock. Google says its acquisition will improve its existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in the growing new area. Highlights of Google's purchase of AdMob...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Monday that his office has stopped social networking site Tagged.com from misappropriating the contacts lists and identities of its members and from sending out millions of deceptive and unsolicited emails. Through an agreement with Cuomo's office, Tagged will pay $500,000 in penalties to the state and...

Social network games - and by extension, social networks themselves - received a strong endorsement this morning as a major acquisition was announced.  Electronic Arts has bought Playfish, a maker of said games, for at least $300 million. Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA Interactive, explained in a statement,...

If you manage many Google Analytics profiles, it can be difficult to stay on top of all your top line metrics across accounts -until now. Trakkboard is a free, easy to use desktop application that allows analysts to create dashboards that pull data across different Google Analytics logins and different Google Analytics profiles to display top...

eBay said Friday that the investor group led by Silver Lake has reached a settlement agreement with Joltid Limited and Joost N.V. that gives Skype ownership over all software licensed from Joltid and ends all litigation against the investor group and eBay at the closing of the acquisition. As part of the settlement agreement, Joltid and Skype...

It looks like some lawyers representing cosmetics giant Mary Kay have removed their figurative war paint.  In early July, Mary Kay sued Yahoo, alleging trademark infringement, but not long ago, Yahoo was able to settle the case. Mary Kay originally objected to Yahoo's practice of adding links of its own choosing to certain emails.  The...

A Joint Committee on Taxation report released today by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) found that regulating Internet gambling would generate roughly $42 billion over 10 years. The report is based on the requirement of a federal license for operators that would allow them to offer online gambling throughout the United States, while keeping the federal...

Google has branched out (or more accurately, built up) yet again.  Simon Hampton, Director of European Policy and Public Affairs, announced today that the search giant's established a Googleplex in Brussels, Belgium. Hampton explained on the European Public Policy Blog, "Until now, our small policy team in Brussels worked from temporary...

Update 2: Here is our exlcusive interview with Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra from the BlogWorld Expo this past weekend:       Update: The State of the Blogosphere report is now availalbe here. Original Article: Technorati's 2009 State of the Blogosphere report is...

Microsoft's CEO isn't getting ahead of himself; for the time being, Steve Ballmer's taking a "first things first" approach.  However, he indicated today that if the proposed U.S.-only Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership goes through, an international agreement may follow. According to Mayumi Negishi, Ballmer said at a news...

This is our second video in our recent initiative to ask you to share your most burning questions via Google Moderator (link: Google Analytics Google Moderator site).This week, Avinash brings his cast (leaving only one good analysis ninja arm) and we sit down to do a rapid fire Q&A to answer your questions.In this episode we discuss:Strategies...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Wednesday, against Intel, the world's largest maker of computer chips. The suit says Intel violated state and federal anti-monopoly laws by engaging in a global campaign of illegal conduct revealed in emails, in order to maintain its monopoly power and prices in the market...

Senior staff in the U.S. Congress and European Parliaments regularly access digital outlets and social media to research, influence and set policy, according to a new study by StrategyOne. Nearly every staffer (96%) uses online resources for public policy research, more than half (54%) reported learning of policy issues for the first time online...

When I was first learning how to submit XML sitemaps to search engines, I found all the information I needed, however, the information was spread out amongst several sources. My intention is to create a quick reference guide on how to submit your XML sitemap to all of the major search engines (in one convenient location). If you have no idea what...

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said today his office has sued online travel companies Expedia and Orbitz for failing to pay the right amount of taxes on hotel room rentals. The lawsuit states that while the companies have been collecting these taxes from consumers all along, they have only been paying a portion of the taxes to the state...

It seems that Google's accounting practices may not be quite in line with accepted Turkish procedures.  In fact, Turkey's government has determined that the search giant owes it a little over $47 million in unpaid taxes. Robin Wauters wrote earlier today, "Local media reports (links in Turkish) teach us that the Turkish government...

Last week, we introduced expanded mobile reporting features in Google Analytics. To help developers, this launch includes features that make it easy to see how people are using specific parts of their iPhone and Android applications. The same Google Analytics reports that provide insights into website traffic and engagement are now available for...

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged an Oregon man and the company he founded, TCNISO, alleging they developed and distributed products that allowed users to modify their cable modems and get free Internet access. Acting United States Attorney Michael K. Loucks, announced that Ryan Harris, 26 of San Diego, and Redmond, Oregon, was charged...

One of the more tedious tasks in my monthly routine is preparing keyword ranking reports. While I enjoy analyzing the numbers and discovering how well our clients have (hopefully) improved over the past 30 days, actually collecting those numbers is a chore I don’t relish. If I can pay a few dollars to have a service perform this task on my...

Many websites on the Internet will link to your website if you pay them for the links. Is this a good method to increase the link popularity of your website or can you get in trouble if you use paid links?

Update 3: Skype and eBay may be close to resolving their issues. Om Malik reports: The ongoing legal scuffle between Skype, a division of eBay, and its founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, may soon see a resolution, according to someone familiar with the situation. The parties are in discussions to resolve the various issues. The talks are...

Amazon.com has introduced "PayPhrase," a new shortcut for making purchases at the online retailer and other websites. PayPhrase works by allowing users to choose their own phrase along with a PIN and then set up their shipping information, which is stored at Amazon. Amazon customers can use PayPhrase to make purchases at any websites...

Update: Amazon announced the completion of its acquisition of Zappos.com today. The Zappos management team will remain intact, and Zappos will operate independently with its headquarters in Las Vegas. Original Article: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh sent an email to Zappos employees today informing them that Amazon is becoming the only shareholder of...