SMX West 2010: The WebProNews LIVE Interview

Matt Malden Interviewed from the Expo Floor

Our intrepid CEO & Co-founder, Matt Malden, was interviewed from the SMX West 2010 Expo Floor, where we were exhibiting yesterday, by WebProNews LIVE.  Check it out!

The show this year was great.  It kicked off with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan interviewing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in which he toyed with the idea of buying Twitter before saying that taking it “captive” might have the effect of weakening its brand.

Throughout the three-day conference, a wide variety of seminars and learning tracks helped Search Marketing professionals to sharpen skills, challenge one another, and learn new strategies and techniques.  We had the opportunity to meet with hundreds of folks throughout the two-day Expo to talk about how we can help both businesses and their agencies meet all their most pressing search engine marketing…

Yield Software at SMX West in Santa Clara

Matt Malden to Present on Integrated Natural, Paid Search Campaigns

Yield Software is coming to SMX West 2010 in Santa Clara, March 2 -3, 2010.

Our CEO, Matt Malden, will present “Walls Come Tumbling Down: Executing an Integrated Natural and Paid Search Campaign” as part of the annual Search Marketing Expo West.  The session, which will take place on March 2 at 1 p.m. in the main Expo Hall Theater, will demonstrate the benefits of an integrated search marketing strategy, and how tearing down the walls that divide key Web marketing disciplines can lead to lower overall costs of acquisition, as well as improved website traffic and conversion rates.

He’ll also be discussing the state of the market, and explaining why most companies fail in their integration of paid and organic search marketing, with attention to common errors in…

New Reports Feature Live

Now Available: Export via PDF and Excel

Thanks to an awesome and constantly responsive engineering team, we’ve added a feature our customers have been asking for a lot lately: report exports via PDF and Excel.  Now, when you’re in “Reports” view, you have three options for taking your performance data with you: Print, PDF and Excel. For me, the new Excel export feature is the best because (obviously) you now have the flexibility to work with your data and present it in whatever ways you might require.  As always, if you have any questions or issues, don’t hesitate to contact support.

System Maintenance Window on Saturday, February 27, 2010

Yield Software will perform routine systems maintenance on Saturday, February 27 beginning at 9 a.m. PST and ending at 5 p.m. PST.  During this time, all campaigns will continue to operate normally and there is no need to adjust or make changes to live campaigns before or after the maintenance window.  Users of the Yield Web Marketing Suite and Natural Search Optimizer, however, will not be able to access their accounts during this maintenance window.  If you have questions or concerns, please call 1-877-943-5379 or email support[at]yieldsoftware[dot]com.

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DILBERT by Scott Adams

Microhoo Clears Regulatory Hurdles

Combined Bing-Yahoo! Search Partnership Live by December

It certainly took a little time.  But all the bureaucratic issues have been resolved.  Microsoft and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance in the United States and European Union.  What this means, essentially, is that Microsoft’s Bing search engine results will combine in some form with Yahoo’s, and the pay-per-click advertising platform for both engines will be powered by Microsoft’s adCenter.

Though Yahoo’s spin on what comes next seems slightly different from Microsoft’s, there is some agreement on the fundamentals.

According to the official Microsoft announcement, after the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, you will:

Reach more potential customers. Search ad inventory from both the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks will be joined in a new, unified search marketplace powered by Bing, with a combined audience of over…

Aardvark, an Awesome Wave and a Good Buzz

Google’s Social Revolution

Last week’s announcement of Google’s (relatively small) acquisition of Aardvark, the real-time social Q&A start-up, received a fair amount of buzz.  Which was on top of the abundant buzz generated by Google’s release of Google Buzz.  Which, of course, follows last year’s buzz about Google Wave.

Though Wave, a social collaboration tool, is kind of uber-geeky and not particularly intuitive, Google Buzz draws on a now well-known metaphor: the news feed.  And while it has generated some early heat around privacy issues, Google Buzz (in its most current form – they’ve been updating it nearly daily in response to user reactions) draws on your Gmail and chat contacts to form an instant social graph.  That graph enables you to stay connected with your contacts in much the same way you would via Facebook or Twitter (or, more accurately, FriendFeed before…

Synonyms, Search and SEO

Or the “Picture” vs. “Photo” Duel

In the Official Google Blog today, Steve Baker gives some (frankly unusual) insight into how it is Google’s algorithms deal with semantics, specifically synonyms.  As he points out in his post, it’s kind of funny and amazing what computers are good at, and what they’re not:

An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers. We can write a computer program to beat the very best human chess players, but we can’t write a program to identify objects in a photo or understand a sentence with anywhere near the precision of even a child.

But because Google’s primary directive is to produce search results most relevant to the query you typed into the search box,…

Yield Software an OnMedia 100 Winner

(And We’re Pleased as Punch!)

Yield Software has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the 2010 OnMedia Top 100 winners.

Inclusion in the OnMedia 100, the AlwaysOn folks tell us, signifies leadership amongst our peers, and game-changing approaches and technologies that are likely to disrupt existing markets and entrenched players. Yield Software and our flagship Web marketing product, the Yield Web Marketing Suite, was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and industry experts spanning the globe based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

Of course, it’s an honor to have been selected, and we’re proud as all get-out.  Since we launched the Yield Web Marketing Suite last April 1st, we’ve been thrilled to see businesses and agencies of all sizes come on board and even more thrilled…

Predictions for 2010

(Because They’re Just Too Fun To Pass Up!)

With each new year, prognosticators the world over engage in the age-old sport of predicting the next big trends.  While some have a better record than others, it’s always fun to see what might happen and how it will impact both business and consumers.

So, just for the fun of it, here’s a small round-up of excerpted predictions for 2010.

Five Tech Trends from The New York Times Bits Blog:

1. A Third Wave of Mobile

In 2009 we saw the explosion of both app stores and applications for the iPhone and newer entrants such as the Droid. In 2010, expect to see a range of new external appliances for mobile smart phones that extend their utility.  Exhibit A: Square, a device that plugs into an iPhone audio port and turns it…