Apogee Search launched their new Website Effectiveness Consulting portfolio of services on Tuesday, August 19th and national media outlets have taken notice. Reuters, TMCnet.com, and International Business Times are among several news and news related sites to report on Apogee’s new offerings.

The official Apogee Website Effectiveness press release was released on MarketWire.com. The press release outlines specific offerings of the new practice including Conversion Rate Improvement, Metrics and Analytics, and Testing and Measurement. It also explains Apogee’s new promotion, a free key page review, which is a detailed recommendation of changes to a site’s headings, copy, site navigation, and layout for the purpose of increasing conversion rates.

Last Friday, Yahoo! released sections of their controversial ad agreement with Google to the public. The agreement was part of Yahoo!’s quarterly financial statement which was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Several pages of the agreement have been redacted, including sections of how the deal between the two Internet companies will work. They’ve also left out details about the revenue split and other financial facts.

Under the contract, Google would provide Yahoo! with advertising offerings that will coincide with Yahoo’s web search system. Also, there are plans to merge Yahoo! and Google’s instant messaging (IM) programs into one program.

Yahoo!’s agreement with Google is under a formal review by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is investigating whether or not the deal is a violation of antitrust laws. Congress has held meetings to discuss the Yahoo!-Google deal, even though they have no authority over this matter. According to press reports, Attorney Generals from Connecticut, Florida, and Arkansas are also examining the deal.

Microsoft has spoken out against the Yahoo!-Google agreement claiming that the deal is “anticompetitive” because essentially, two of the three biggest companies in the online search marketing industry are joining forces. “Google already controls 70 percent of the Web search ad market and a Yahoo! deal would give Google control of over 90 percent of the market,” states press reports. Google has fired back stating that the two companies will compete in other areas of the market.

Yahoo! has previously stated that they expect to generate a whopping $450 million in cash flow within the first year of this advertising contract. They have also stated that this deal will give them the opportunity to focus on other aspects of their company.

Whether or not this Yahoo!-Google deal will be enacted remains to be seen. The two companies are currently in a waiting period, but with all the controversy surrounding it, it may never take effect.

Spokespersons for both Yahoo! and Google have not released an official statement about the release nor the redactions.

In terms of daily online activities, search is second only to emailing. Nearly half of users (49 percent) use a search engine to find what they are looking for on a daily basis, according to a study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project. The number of people who search has grown tremendously since 2002 when it was only 29 percent. Pew surveyed 2,251 adults on their web habits this past April and May for the study.

The study also found that 60 percent of users email at least once a day, 39 percent visit a news site daily, and 30 percent check the weather online daily. Interestingly, even with the current rise of social media, only 13 percent of users log onto these sites once a day.

Analysts cite accessibility, speed, and relevance of searches as the main catalysts for the growing use of search. Search engine algorithms are more accurate and are providing more relevant search results than in years past. Additionally, 55 percent of Americans use broadband to access the Internet, which gives them faster a loading time for web pages, increasing the likelihood that they will spend more time online searching.

It should be noted that Google and their creative branding techniques have driven the popularity of search. Google has also designed user friendly software that has been integrated into numerous websites to provide internal site searches. Because Google has become a household name, it is a first impulse for people to just “Google it” when they do not know the answer to something.

This study proves that search is becoming a part of Internet users’ daily routines, which is good news for those competing for top search engine rankings.

Google announced some key enhancements to their content network today. Google formally acquired DoubleClick back in March of this year, and when they did so, Google promised to use this new venture to help “empower agencies, advertisers and publishers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively, and provide a better experience for [their] users.” These new enhancements are proof that Google is sticking to their word.

One of the first changes Google made to their content network was support for third party advertising tags on the Google content network in North America, which was announced in May of this year. Today, Google announced the next step in both their integration with DoubleClick and in enabling standard industry functionality on the Google content network. The following enhancements will become available in the coming months:

Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.

Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.

Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.

View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.

These changes will be made by implementing DoubleClick’s DART ad-serving cookie across the Google content network. This means that DoubleClick advertisers and publishers will not have to make any changes to implement Google’s updates. Implementation of this cookie also means that users will have the ability to opt-out of a single cookie for both DoubleClick ad serving and the Google content network.

Google’s content network enhancements will definitely ensure that users see more relevant ads, and with new features like frequency capping, users will no longer be forced to see the same ads over and over again.

Google’s Street View, a feature of Google Maps that utilizes actual photos for clearer, more precise directions, has been the cause of much controversy with the recent filing of a lawsuit by a couple claiming that Google has violated their right of privacy. Court documents, which have been made public by The Smoking Gun, further explain the motives behind Google’s Street View and explain why the couple is taking Google to court.

The Pennsylvania couple, Aaron and Christine Boring (yes, Boring), claim that Google violated their privacy rights by driving up a “private road” in order to snap a picture. According to court documents, the couple is seeking damages for “‘mental suffering’ and diminished property value supposedly caused by the public accessibility of the photos.”

Google contends that the couple “lives in a residential community in the twenty-first-century United States, where every step upon private property is not deemed by law to be an actionable trespass.” Google also claims that “today’s satellite-image technology means that even in today’s desert, complete privacy does not exist.”

The angry couple is not alone in objecting to the Street View feature. A neighborhood in Minnesota called North Oaks demanded that Google remove all the photos off the web of their town, citing a violation of privacy. Because the roads in the town are considered private, North Oaks alleged that the Google photographers trespassed in order to get the shots. Google’s spokeswoman Elaine Filadelfo claimed that this was the first town to ask Google to remove their photos from Street View.

Really? A violation of privacy would be understandable if Google were to accidentally catch someone sunbathing in their backyard, or walking outside in their underwear to pick up their newspaper. But, let’s face it: taking pictures of roads for the purpose of providing travelers with the most precise information on directions as possible really isn’t an invasion of privacy.

Google has previously stated that unless there is a ‘No Trespassing’ sign or a fence restricting their cars from riding up on driveways to take pictures of the street, the pictures are legal. And Google claims that they have a right to take pictures on “private roads”, and that the Borings have brought more attention to themselves by their active participation in the highly publicized lawsuit.

It can be safe to say that the Borings and North Oaks won’t be the last of the complaints against Google’s Street Views. But, it’s highly unlikely that Google is Big Brother watching America- they are just trying to provide clear and simple maps for the directionally challenged.

On a related note, Google recently gave their Maps interface a minor facelift which included a reorganization of the Directions, MyMaps, Print, Link, and Send tabs. These tabs are now highlighted in blue and positioned at the top of the screen. Also, the Direction fields have been given a slightly cleaner and more attractive look. Google’s cosmetic changes are a likely effort to increase user friendliness and overall function of the Maps feature.

Google is in the process of starting a venture-capital arm, according to the Wall Street Journal.

This announcement comes just days after Google received some new competition from Cuil, a search engine founded by ex-Google employees including Anne Patterson, who originally developed TeraGoogle.

Cuil was founded with substantial financial backing from individual venture capitalists, a few of which are listed on Cuil’s “About” site. Google may be trying to help potential competitors use their energies in conjunction with Google rather than against it.

The new division of Google will be lead by David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, and William Maris, a former entrepreneur who was previously an investor. Several large corporations such as Motorola, Comcast, and Walt Disney have venture-capital arms. These divisions have been specially developed for the purpose of investing in promising start-ups.

Most individual venture-capitalists invest with the hope of a large pay-out when the company is sold or stock prices rise when the company goes public.

In the past, Google preferred to purchase companies rather than invest in them, which was the case with YouTube. Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. The only notable Google investments are Current Communications, a broadband company and Merkai, a wireless-Internet-equipment manufacturer in which Google has invested millions.

It is probable that Google will utilize this new division in conjunction with its philanthropic arm, Google.org. For instance, Google had previously announced plans to invest in renewable-energy, which would be the perfect situation for Google to have its venture-capital arm working together with Google.org.

This new division inherently comes with some risk for Google, as with any venture capital firm. On one hand, Google risks losing a substantial amount of money if its investments prove to be unsuccessful. On the other hand, Google would be able to prevent new competitors from rising up by investing in them before they pose too much of a threat, and later develop them into subsidiaries of Google. This would help Google continue to gain market share in online search by positioning itself to more quickly integrate software breakthroughs into its algorithm.

Google will likely invest in software start-ups and may even expand into services that target small businesses. But, it would be wise for Google to proceed with caution since their current business model has seen unparalleled success.

Cuil (pronounced Cool), a company dedicated to search technology, launched their new search engine on Monday, July 28.

It has been widely editorialized in popular SEO blogs that the likelihood of Cuil overtaking Google is slim due largely in part to Google’s enormous brand popularity. But, Cuil says that they can and will exceed Google for a number of reasons, starting with their massive search index.

Cuil’s “About” page boasts that they are the “World’s Biggest Search Engine”, searching over 120 billion web pages and claiming Cuil’s search index is at least three times the size of Google’s. Cuil states that their searches and ranks are based on the relevance and the actual content of the web page as opposed to popularity. Some of the other interesting features besides the unique relevance algorithm include a large web index, an attractive results display page, and guaranteed privacy for their users.

One of the search features is called a “Drilldown” which allows the user to sort by category, allowing the user to refine their search further, discovering data that the user might have not expected. Cuil also features “Roll-Over Definitions”, giving the user more information about the link so that the user can decide whether or not to click through.

One more interesting quality of Cuil’s searches is user privacy. They state that they do not keep logs of users’ search activity and they do not record a search history on users’ cookies. They also claim that they will not collect a user’s personal, identifiable information.

According to recent press reports, Cuil has been backed by approximately $33 million in venture capital. So, backed by serious brains plus large checkbooks, Cuil’s potential might be something to consider

It will be interesting to see what effects, if any, Cuil will have on the SEO and PPC world since their rollovers may discourage click-throughs and their compilation of results can affect companies’ rankings.

Last week, our good friend Matt Cutts informed us that a Google PageRank update would occur over the next few days. By our calculations, this means that the updates most likely occurred over the weekend. Since Mr. Cutts “figured the SEO industry could use something to discuss, so I thought I’d give people a heads-up about the toolbar PageRanks”, I think we should do just that.

So the first question we have to ask is “How will these updates affect Apogee’s Clients?” And maybe more importantly, “How will this update affect our strategy and link building tactics for clients?” Granted, there is more to life in the SEO world than PageRank, however, it is a very visible and easily accessible way for our clients to identify if we are doing a good job with their site, and therefore requires attention. Specifically, the hunting and gathering that we SEO-ers do could be highly influenced by this shift - if a site’s PageRank bombs, should we steer clear? What if there is a huge jump in PageRank for a site? Maybe we should move the techniques that have proved successful for that client to the front of our link building efforts for others.

In reviewing a portion of our client base, it appears that there have been a few who have seen some positive affects of these new PageRanks. This is good to see. In fact, the Apogee Search website has also been given a new PageRank of 6 (up from the PR4 we had on Friday!). As a direct result, this took a few of our rankings hovering around the top 10, and put them in the number 1 spot (Search on Austin Search Engine Marketing today).

However, we should really be looking for the stories of sites that lost PageRank over the weekend. I am sure there are plenty of people crying in the SEO blogosphere about their losses. If anyone lost PageRank over the weekend, let us know. It would be interesting to see if any conclusions can be found in regards to what new things this PageRank update is taking into consideration so that we can all avoid them, or focus on them, whatever the case may be.

Google announced the launch of their Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program last week on their official blog. The idea of this program is to introduce as many webmasters as possible to Google Webmaster Tools, which launched back in 2006.

The idea of this program is great. Google has made Webmaster Tools more accessible to the average webmaster by allowing domain hosters the ability to use Google’s APIs to get their customers started with Webmaster Tools, and I fully support Google attracting more users to Webmaster Tools.

I highly recommend that all webmasters, new and old alike, tinker around with Webmaster Tools for at least a few minutes, because Google has done an excellent job of helping people further understand search. Webmaster Tools offers important site diagnostics information about when your site was last crawled, popular search terms that are driving traffic to your site, and even who is linking to you. The best part about Webmaster Tools is that Google has made it very easy for beginners to learn what all of this data means. Every section is embedded with links such as “How do I use this data?” or “More information,” and it is also very common to find the following small graphic located next to common search engine buzz words: . Hovering over this image will pop-up a small window with the definition of the word and links to read more about the topic or to see how it relates to your site. These tools are designed to help webmasters understand how to create the most search engine-friendly site possible, and they do so in a way that is easy for even beginners to fully understand…and for free!

Google originally launched the Webmaster Tools Access Provider pilot program for free with Go Daddy users in November 2007.

This session was presented by Tina Schweiger, the President of Spoonbend, Inc. last Wednesday at SEM for SMB, a SEM conference in Austin for small-to-medium businesses.

As Tina and her assistants handed out several fun things including sheets of company logos, legal size paper, safety scissors and glue sticks, I knew that this was going to be a different kind of session. Our assignment was to cut out the logos we liked and paste them onto our sheet of blank paper. She later used examples of attendees’ logo sheets as a tool to help the attendee talk out what they want out of their brand’s identity.

Tina’s goal for this session was to show the small-to-medium business owners how their identity is at the core of your brand, especially online. When evaluating your company’s online identity, creative decisions should be made in relation to website design & increasing conversions.

This notion struck a chord with me as a search engine marketer. In SEO, we focus on optimizing websites, evaluating keywords and attracting qualified leads for our clients. However, while a site may have the best, optimal SEO campaign ever, it’s not going to provide the value it should when qualified leads come to a website with an archaic site design and an unattractive color scheme, causing the traffic to hit the back button while shielding their eyes.

What encompasses a brand identity?
• Logo – Tina called it the “visual nugget” that delivers your brand’s promise.
• Color Palette – The colors chosen to represent your brand can influence and sway your potential customers. Monochromatic color schemes are often viewed as more sophisticated, while colorful palettes can signify excitement and youthfulness. Tina also noted that some businesses need to be aware of cultural responses to color, as correlations do differ around the world.
• Typography – Font style can also visually indicate a level of sophistication.
• Voice/Tone – How content is written sets expectations with your audience.
• Design – The layout of your site needs to help your audience get to the information they need quickly.

Tina suggested re-branding about once every 10 years, which is when design trends seem to turn over. This also allows a business to utilize new technology while re-branding, such as using improved software and web design techniques to help develop an updated identity. Companies should also consider refreshing the brand’s color palette more often. This can be done by keeping the same core colors (if desired) and altering the hues or bringing in a new secondary set of color. Be aware of “micro-trends” when choosing a color palette – just because the patriotic red-white-blue scheme has been popular does not mean it’s the best choice for your brand.

Overall, I was glad I attended a session a little outside the realm of SEM from the others offered because it focused more on branding design, which is a key part of online business success along with SEM. Tina presented her creative process in an accessible, common sense style and left everyone thinking about how their online brand identity influences their site’s visitors.