Imagine being surrounded by thousands of Search industry professionals, all focused around one key objective: discovering the latest and greatest tips and techniques to overcome the ever-changing world of Search. This is the reality of attending a Search Engine Strategies Conference. (more…)

The fanfare surrounding Google+ died down a long time ago (aside from a brief resurgence while everyone threatened to leave Facebook following their redesign in September).  Google’s “Facebook killer” has so far been nothing more than another flop in the line of Google Buzz and Google Wave.  There are a number of reasons why G+ has not lived up to expectations, but one big change yesterday may be Google’s best chance at turning things around. (more…)

Search experts, search clients and web aficionados everywhere took to Twitter as news of Google’s new secure search roll-out broke.  The search giant announced that it would begin encrypting searches by default if people were logged into Google.com via a secure connection, thereby keeping the search query a user enters and any websites they visit afterwards inaccessible to third parties. (more…)

Google AdWords has yet another way to refine your search campaigns called “Audience Targeting”.  Audience Targeting allows advertisers to select Audiences from a list of vertical segments defined by Google.  Using this tool can help advertisers refine their Paid Search efforts to target people based on their interests as established through user profiles Google has compiled. (more…)

Google Analytics is an excellent way to track and analyze on-site traffic.  However, the UI for Goggle Analytics is not mobile optimized, which presents challenges for those who need to see updates on their mobile device.  The Google Analytics Software Design Kit (SDK) and corresponding Application Programming Interface (API) rectify the issue by allowing developers to create their own Apps.  Thankfully, there are several well-built, fast and intuitive Apps available.  I will focus this blog on the App universe for Android powered devices.  While I am inclined to frugality (some might argue parsimony), this blog will present what, in my estimation, are the best available free and paid Android Apps. (more…)

A lot of debate in the interactive media sphere surrounds whether advertisers should bid on their branded terms.  At Rise Interactive, we believe the answer is an unequivocal “YES”. (more…)

On April 3^rd, 2010, Apple toppled the current world of tablets and released for sale their newest device: the iPad. In the nearly 18 months following, every other company from Blackberry (RIM) to Samsung has tried to get their share of the tablet pie. While it seems that no other product has been able to out-sell the iPad to date, there are questions from some on how this will change. (more…)

Among the various intellectual properties at Rise Interactive, PPCR stands out as a significant competitive advantage for paid search advertisers.  PPCR is an automated paid search reporting tool created by the product development team at Rise Interactive.  PPCR combines data from multiple search engines to give all users an aggregated perspective on their paid search advertising performance in one central location. (more…)

One of the first things I learned when I joined the marketing profession is that what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. What worked for one company may be completely wrong for another. Marketing involves continuous learning, testing and an openness to evolution, and we see this illustrated in the growing importance in those whose focus is Marketing Operations. (more…)

If you thought the black bar on Google’s page was the biggest, most jarring change in their recent redesign, then you probably aren’t really keeping an eye on your AdWords accounts.  Now, your paid ads have a new layout and it seems that the humble display URL is getting its time in the limelight.[1] Granted, the new position of the display URL will probably cause users to pay more attention to it and your ad copy writers should now start to focus on making your display URLs more relevant.

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