Tired of the same people looking at your ads and want a more diverse group of Internet users to see your ads?

Google has introduced frequency capping with the DoubleClick cookies. This is great for both advertisers and users because it will help avoid the same ad appearing again and again, giving users a wider selection of ads to view and advertisers a more diverse user base to display ads against.

Nicholas Abramovic

When creating a blog, a key decision is how/where it should be hosted, and what domain structure is used.

Typically, you have several options for hosting, which include:

1. Host the blog on your own website, or
2. Host the blog on some service, such as blogger.com, typepad.com, etc.

For SEO for the blog site itself there is not a big difference between these two options.  In either case you can promote your blog, have a good structure, and create great content so that it can rank well.

For domain usage, you also have several options.  These include:

1. Make the blog part of your website, such as at www.mysite.com/blog/
2. Make the blog a separate website, such as www.myblog.com
   Note that this could be hosted anywhere, including at a blog service that allows you to set up a unique domain.
3. Use a subdomain under your main website, such as myblog.mysite.com
4. Use a subdomain of a blog service, such as myblog.typepad.com
5. Use a directory within a blog service, such as www.blogservice/~myblog

If your blog is part of or related to your website, then it is generally better to use the first option, where the blog is part of the website and uses a directory within that website.  This is because all your blog content is part of the site, and that content and any inbound links benefit your site as a whole.  You can also get the best leverage from internal linking from your blog posts to other pages on your site (”internal page rank flow”).  Also, your blog immediately benefits from the page rank and link popularity of your website, enabling your blog posts to rank better, faster.

If your blog is not related to a website, the second option is generally best, where you set up your own domain name for your blog.  You can do this whether you are hosting your own blog or using a service (at least most services allow this option).  Using your own domain gives you much more flexibility for moving your blog in the future – you can more easily change hosting services and keep control of your blog.

The other options can work OK for SEO, especially if you pay attention to other factors such as good content, keywords, freshness, etc, but generally the first two options above are better.

Ever wonder if the Ask.com sponsored search results appear if you click on Google’s “search network” option for your pay-per-click campaigns?

 In actuality, the sponsored search results that are displayed on Ask.com are through Google’s content network and not search network.

  Nicholas Abramovic 

A quick warning. Google has included Canada as part of the general geo-targeted settings in Google Adwords. Previously only the United States was targeted by default. Though most advanced users may notice this change, it is something easy to miss. New users in Google Adwords may also easily look over this small update or figure it is common practice to target both regions.

Many may respond to my statement above by saying that no one would make such a simple mistake. Believe me, many will. You will be surprised. I can promise you Google will profit quite a bit off of this little change. Even if only 1 out of 1000 people overlook this change, in a pool of 100,000 advertisers, a million advertisers, that is a good chunk of change.

As LeadQual promotes international clients including in Canada, this comes to us as a disconcerting news as it may artificially raise competition in Canada.

Yahoo has always targeted both US and Canada by default.

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - SEM

Google and Yahoo has abandoned their efforts to overcome the objections of the antitrust regulators who have hindered it’s progress because they believe it would give Google too much power over online advertising.

This was announced today [Wed Nov 5]. This could be seen as another hit for Yahoo is currently at $14.02 a share. Yahoo had previously hoped that this deal would give a $800 million boost to it’s revenue line. It was a reaction deal to the shareholders anger over management’s decision to forego the $47.5 billion takeover deal by Microsoft.

Google had previously announced that this deal would have been great for the online world. However Google is not expected to take much of a hit because of it’s dominant hold on search marketing.

“We’re of course disappointed that this deal won’t be moving ahead,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote on a company blog. “But we’re not going to let the prospect of a lengthy legal battle distract us from our core mission. That would be like trying to drive down the road of innovation with the parking brake on.”
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