It seems that Borat was not the only one to have a problem with Jewish people. This week Google was involved in some controversy related to their search results for the word “Jew.” The issue is specifically around the anti-Semitic search results that it returns for a site called Jew Watch (which we’ve purposely not linked to). The site is dedicated to the various alleged Jewish conspiracies and other anti-Semitic topics. With sections titled "Jewish Controlled Press" and "Jewish Mind Control Mechanisms" it is clear the site serves the purpose of promoting stereotypes and general hate mongering.

Google has taken the stand that while their search results to do not reflect the views of Google (One of Google’s founders is Jewish) they stand by their results, which are determined by their all-knowing and highly secretive algorithm. The issue that this raises is: Does social responsibility take precedence over unbiased search results…especially when they are prejudiced?

Not long ago, the issue of “Google Bombing” became public knowledge when the search for “miserable failure” returned the result of George W. Bush’s Presidential White House page. This was done by linking to the White House site with the “miserable failure” phrase in the link text, which is an important factor in Google’s ranking system. This resulted in the rankings returning the White House site despite it not containing any of the searched for words. Interestingly, Republicans responded by using the same linking tactic and for a time Jimmy Carter’s White House page moved into the number 2 position. Google later removed the listings from its results, citing that they were not relevant to the search query.

This raises a few alarming questions…
If Google has the power to remove results based on pressure from external sources; does this hurt the relevancy of their search results?

Was there political pressure for Google to respond to miserable failure?

Should Google exercise its power to remove results that they know are socially irresponsible?

To their credit, Google did take a sort-of proactive step by placing sponsored listing when someone searches for “Jew” to explain their stance on this issue.

Article by Olga Mamontov

Affiliates can be a great source of incremental traffic and revenue. The challenge for a marketer is how to best regulate and manage your affiliates. They are an important part of your marketing puzzle, and you want to provide them the right resources as well as make sure that you reap the benefits. Actively managing your affiliates will help you protect your brand and ensure that you maximize every revenue opportunity.

Here are a few helpful tips for how to manage affiliates:

Managing the display URL
All of the Search Engines have what is called a double serving policy. The principle is that if there are two advertisers buying a keyword and driving to the same Display URL, the engine will only allow one ad to show. Since the engines use their ranking criteria to determine which ad to display, you may not have control to appear over your affiliate.

Recommendation
Affiliates should be required to have their own domain name and URL. Their ads should be directed to their site before redirecting to your website. This way they can track the lead, but ultimately send customers to your site.

Selecting Keywords
Depending on your product, there are only a limited amount of keywords that will drive clicks and conversions. This means that you and your affiliates may have similar (if not identical) keyword lists.

Recommendation
Marketers should QA affiliate’s keyword lists in order to review the crossover and allowable CPC. QA’ing also allows you to help manage what competitors’ keywords or negative keywords you may or may not want affiliates to use.

Leveraging the Brand Name
Since brand names will drive a significant portion of the conversions, it is important that they are protected. This allows you to control the messaging as well as ensure that the CPC on your brand is maintained at an appropriate level.

Recommendation
You should allow an affiliate to use your Trademark only if you are prepared to monitor them. If this is the case, set CPC limits for your brand terms to the minimum bid allowed by a Search Engine. You may also want to disallow an affiliate from using your Trademark within their copy. In doing this, your CTR should be higher, which would help you to gain a higher position.

Using Match Types
Google has the most match type options between broad match and expanded broad match. This means that restricting usage of match types for affiliates is imperative. For example, in the expanded broad match, someone who bids on the term “shoe” could also come up as a match for “tennis shoe” or even “sneakers.”

Recommendations
Work with affiliates to use exact and phrase match in Google and MSN. For Yahoo!, it would be advisable to allow them to use standard match. This will help their keyword list to be more focused and efficient.

Understanding CPC Rules
Despite a heavy relevancy model, there is still an element of traditional bidding. If there are multiple advertisers bidding on the same terms, there needs to be a bidding strategy to manage CPC costs. For example, if you are Disney, you have retailers selling your movies, as well as yourself and your affiliates.

Recommendations
Give affiliates a CPC limit when buying terms on Google, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN, Ask.com, Business.com and IndustryBrains.com. Managing it this way will also help you to not compete with one another.

Ad Positioning
Since affiliates are supposed to be driving incremental revenue or leads, a position restriction will allow your advertising not to be hindered.

Recommendations
Require that affiliates have a position no higher than position 3.

Affiliates are useful to companies as they help lift your overall brand awareness while driving additional revenue. However, they are not without work. Upfront work and continued monitoring is the key to building and maintaining a successful affiliate program.

Article by Emma Cockburn

Let's face it, when people look for opinions or information, hitting the library or calling a friend is becoming a thing of the past. Even with this change, there are still certain professions that gravitate towards the old-school method of finding information. One of those professions is healthcare (HCP)…or so we thought. According to a recent Jupiter Research study, HCPs are utilizing social media in their roles. Jupiter reported that 1/3 of physicians connect with colleagues via blogs, networks, professional forums, and message boards for advice, recommendations, or general information sharing. For marketing executives in the online space, this evidence reaffirms yet another invaluable way to reach those that directly influence sales. While this article is focused on HCPs, the lessons here hold true for any regulated or specialized industry.

As an SEO Account Executive, working with several healthcare clients, I face the question of what a client can realistically do or not do on a daily basis. Although social media sites can be quick to not assign link value to some outgoing links, there is still an indirect and important value to having a presence on highly trafficked sites. It’s a great way to get your message in front of HCPs and drive them to your site. This may not seem like an SEO function, but it does cross into this world since we are always researching high ranking sites to promote a clients message. Working through social sites is no longer something that can be ignored by regulated industries.

As the influence of Web 2.0 finally comes to light, interactive marketing and the involvement of search engine marketing is becoming a no-brainer. That being said, Web 2.0 really means bringing the web back to its original origins, meaning a place where we come to communicate, share information, and continue to evolve.

Article by Dan Coe

How much would you need to be paid to not surf Google? According to Search Engine Land, Microsoft may be willing to find out.

Google posted their annual April Fool’s Joke.