There are perhaps no stranger bedfellows than search marketing and social media. Search, on one hand, is perhaps the most measurable medium to hit the planet. Social media, on the other, encompasses a very large number of tactics with various degrees of measurement. Nonetheless, the two are intricately linked and frequently co-dependent.
The Alaska Air Group, the parent company of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, has hired Omniture, a provider of online business optimization software, to help improve its site's efficiency and effectiveness.
In an effort to give students real-world experience in online advertising and marketing, Google has partnered with universities around the globe to participate in the Google Online Challenge.
The Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) has endorsed Extended Validation (EV) Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates, an emerging standard to help verify site identity and increase consumer confidence in e-commerce and online banking, similar to authentication in e-mail.
Microsoft's acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer last week for $1.2 billion is a development that will significantly alter the search ecosystem in the years ahead. While the media coverage has focused on the fact that Fast has been a strong player in enterprise search (a market that Google has been struggling to get into), Fast's assets include a set of technologies that have the potential for giving Microsoft tactical and strategic advantages as it battles Google on several important fronts.
Affiliate marketing programs are commonly used by large and small companies as a low-risk means of obtaining new customers. However, some affiliate marketers have been plaguing search engine marketers for years. Google will serve only one ad per display URL, and the display URL must match the destination. So what happens when affiliate marketers pick up your offer and start using search to drive acquisition for you? (This article first appeared in the June 2007 edition of the Essential Guide to Search Engine Marketing.)
