Lodging Interactive Blog

Despite Growing Social Media Activity, U.S. Latinos Ignored by Big Brands - ClickZ

Seventy-eight percent of Fortune 1000 companies are not employing social media sites to market to Latinos, according to survey results released yesterday by Hispanics-focused agency Orci. Hector Orci, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based firm, said some advertisers "are leaving money on the table" while stating that 80 percent of Hispanics use social sites and collectively total $1 trillion in buying power.

via www.clickz.com

Bing Continues Slow Advance in Search Rankings - Digits - WSJ

Two recent reports show Microsoft’s Bing advancing slightly in search rankings — but the surveys differ on who is losing out.

Bloomberg News

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Data from Hitwise today show Bing rising a bit to 9.7% of searches in February from 9.37% in January, while Google’s giant share fell from 71.49% to 70.95%. Yesterday’s report from ComScore also showed a boost for Bing — to 11.5% from 11.3% in January. But ComScore’s data showed that Bing was taking search business not from Google, but from Yahoo, which fell to 16.8% from 17% in January.

via blogs.wsj.com

Search Engine Optimization and Paid Search: What Should Your Philosophy Be?

As a search engine marketing company, we are often asked by clients and prospects if there’s a basic philosophy when it comes to organic search engine optimization and paid search advertising.

“Is one tactic more favorable than another? How do I know which channel to pursue?  Should I do both?”

Without a hard look at your company’s goals and unique situation, there really isn’t a concrete answer to these questions. The true test of pursuing either an SEO campaign or PPC advertising (or both) is knowing that it all boils down to your company philosophy, ROI objectives, budget, and countless other monetary and marketing factors. To determine which, or what combination of both, might offer the most bang for your buck, let’s examine five types of “models” that my search engine marketing company often deals with.

via www.sitepronews.com

The Key To Top Video Rankings On YouTube & Google

Many of us in the SEO community obsess about Google algorithm changes, personalized search, Bing market share growth, and the myriad minutia that affects search engine behavior. But for all of the attention that we give most of the major players in search, it remains a mystery to me why the second largest search engine is routinely ignored. In case you hadn’t realized, in terms of share of search, YouTube remains ahead of Yahoo!, safely in the No. 2 spot behind Google, according to comScore.

via searchengineland.com

Facebook, Twitter Grow More than 100%

The Facebook and Twitter social networking sites both experienced triple-digit growth in 2009, according to the comScore Digital Year in Review.

Facebook surged to the number one position among social networks for the first time in May 2009 and continued its strong growth trajectory throughout the year, finishing with 112 million visitors in December 2009, up 105% from about 55 million visitors during 2008. Twitter finished the year with nearly 20 million visitors to its website, up 900% from just 2 million visitors in 2008. Much of Twitter’s extraordinary audience growth occurred during the first few months of 2009, at one point jumping from 4 million visitors to 17 million visitors between February and April.

Meanwhile, 2008 category leader MySpace has experienced some softening in its audience. However, a new strategic focus on entertainment content is exhibiting signs of success with MySpace Music having grown 92% in the past year.

via www.marketingcharts.com

Yahoo! and Twitter Strike Formal Partnership

Like Google and Bing, Yahoo! has integrated Twitter into their search results. But that wasn't good enough for Bartz and the gang. No, they wouldn't be satisfied until people could conduct some serious Tweeting from Yahoo! itself. And so a deal has been struck.

If you so choose, you will be able to access your Twitter feed from Yahoo! including Mail and the Sports portal. You'll also be able to Tweet to your heart's content, directly from Yahoo!

via blog.searchenginewatch.com

Driving Traffic with MapQuest and its New Search Engine | WebProNews

Local business search is becoming more of an area of great focus by search providers as time goes on. Google, especially, has been working overtime on providing new features that can help users find local businesses of interest. AOL's MapQuest has been working on improving its own business search functionality, which we talked to the company a little about.

via www.webpronews.com

Facebook is now larger than Yahoo in the U.S.

New data released earlier today by web analytics firm Compete.com reveals that there has been a major shift at the top of the web charts: Facebook is now larger than Yahoo in the U.S.

Yahoo for years was the world’s most popular website — its ubiquitous portal has dominated the web since the 90s. Two years ago however, Google vaulted past Yahoo and became the Internet’s most popular destination. Last month, it became Facebook’s turn to knock Yahoo down another peg.

In December 2009, Yahoo garnered 133.45 million visitors in the U.S. Facebook wasn’t far behind with 132.13 million uniques. In the first month of 2010 though, there was a role reversal: Facebook’s traffic rose to 133.62 million visitors, while Yahoo shrunk down to 132.00 million.

Facebook’s shown no signs of stopping its meteoric rise, either. It recently celebrated its 400 millionth user and that number continues to rise in rapid fashion. Now the only website standing between it and web domination is Google.com.

If Google Buzz is any indication though, the search giant isn’t going to give up its throne without a fight.

Explain This: One-Word Searches Up 17% in 2009

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that searchers are typing longer queries into the search boxes on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The evidence I’ve seen in the analytics for the four hyperlocal blogs that my wife and I write support that: On our Richland Real Estate blog, for example, seven of the top 10 referring keywords in 2009 were four words or longer.

But the folks at Experian Hitwise have shared some numbers with me today that suggest otherwise. According to their user tracking, one-word searches jumped by 17% in 2009, while longer searches were generally down.

via www.smallbusinesssem.com

Americans conducted 15.2 core searches in January 2010 - Search Marketing News Blog - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

comScore has just announced its monthly qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace. In January 2010, Americans conducted 15.2 billion core searches.

Image by SESConferenceSeries via Flickr

Google Sites accounted for 9.9 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.6 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.7 billion), Ask Network (574 million) and AOL LLC (375 million).

Yes, yes, we all knew that Google accounted for 65.4 percent search market share. But Microsoft has grabbed 11.3 percent

via blog.searchenginewatch.com