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Declining numbers from pay-per-click advertising and an upper level exodus to social networking rival Facebook has Google a bit depressed this year, 36.5% to be exact. The Internet prodigy has analysts questioning whether the decline is from macroeconomic effects or if Google is making its own problems.
As the hint of summer vacation emerges on the horizon, wanna-be travelers begin sifting through travel guides, both real and online, to concoct just the right vacation getaway. Price matters hugely, especially for travelers heading overseas with anemic dollars. But just as important is getting the best value out of a trip.
Google researchers say they have a software technology intended to do for digital images on the Web what the company’s original PageRank software did for searches of Web pages.
There's plenty of attention paid towards social networks today, especially due to the visitor volumes achieved by MySpace, Facebook and other newer entrants. As the social networks become even more popular, they change the typical user "web behavior" and the demographic makeup on certain social network sites.
Link: The Evolution of Social Networks - Search Engine Watch.
Link: Social Media Marketing Tactics & Resources.
With the sheer volume of information sources both online and offline on the topic of social media, it can be difficult for marketers to separate the signal from the noise.
Navigating a sea of strangely spelled site names including, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Technorati can be overwhelming. Talk to most social media experts and you'll undoubtedly be confronted with terms like "conversation", "transparency" and "the social graph". What does it all mean?
Terms like Travel 2.0 and Web 2.0 get thrown about in conversation and it can seem that everyone but you knows exactly what they mean.
Yet push someone for a definition and people come up with all sorts of different explanations or they struggle to define it all.
So this post attempts to give a simple working definition of Travel 2.0. But more importantly, we hope to highlight what that really means for travel and tourism businesses and why you need to care.
Link: Travel 2.0: what does it mean and do you need to care? | Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog.
American Express launched membersknow.com, an online travel community for American Express Cardmembers to share travel insights from their personal travel experiences and knowledge.
Also check out Chatter Guard Social Media Monitoring Service.
Google's opening up trademarked keywords for bidding is one more piece of power shifted away from corporations and toward consumers. I imagine corporations will waste little time heading to court to protect their property. In the long run, I doubt the corporations will come out on top.
The annual Travel Com Conference, produced by the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), featured top-level executives from Forrester Research, consumer brands like Travelocity and Priceline, plus GDS companies and software providers – all providing their unique perspective on the state of the online travel industry, and more importantly, where we’re headed.
IAC, parent company of Ask.com, is planning to launch several new niche sites that incorporate search and social media. First up is RushmoreDrive.com, which has already launched and is targeted at the African-American community.
Link: IAC to Launch a Flurry of Niche Sites [SearchEngineWatch].
