The story was originally published in the Sunday Times, and is currently in a state of perpetuity, with Google rebuffing the kettle boiling estimate of 7g, down to 0.2g, and with Alex Wissner-Gross a physicist from Harvard University stating “Various experts put forward carbon emission estimates for such a search of 1g-10g depending on the time involved and the equipment used”. The full story can be read here.

Search Marketing Remains Recession-Resistant: While search marketing is not recession-proof, it is recession-resistant, with estimated spending growth in 2009 at 14.9%, to $12.3 billion. Key reasons for search’s strength: Search is highly measurable and will help retain many budgets and increase some others, as advertisers look for secure marketing methods to combat the fear of an economic meltdown. Although search advertising will grow less in 2009 than in any previous year, its inherent strength will mean greater spending gains than for any other major form of advertising, whether online or offline.

Video Ad Spending to Counter Economic Trends: Video ad spending will run counter to overall economic developments, rising by around 45% in 2009 to reach $850 million.

Shift in TV Ad Sales: US TV ad spending will decline 4.2% to $66.9 billion in 2009. This drop in spending reflects  expectations of a continued poor economy as well as a shift in the way television advertising is bought and sold, eMarketer said. Like other traditional media, TV advertising was already suffering, and now the climate will be even tougher. Fragmentation on TV and declines in viewership have made it more difficult for advertisers to reach audiences. Broadcasters will have to redefine their businesses in an increasingly online world. They will focus on expanding programming to the online realm.

Newspaper Companies Become Casualties: Newspaper advertising will decline in 2009 more than any other medium. Industry-wide cutbacks will continue, and there will be some consolidation, while firms will be forced to undertake drastic measures to stay afloat. The industry was limping before the recession and the market can expect more newspaper companies to become casualties.

This follows on from an interesting interview with Ken McGaffin, WordTracker at SES Conference London 2008. The changing roles of journalists, how incorporating keyword effectiveness into online articles, is coming to the fore. Check out the SES youtube channel a great resource for developments within the SEO industry.

All your website content should hold the keywords that you are trying to optimise for. If I want to get to the top for “blue widgets California” I will have to use this keyword phrase a lot in my copy. Imagine you are trying to sell “blue widgets California”. If your content didn’t contain any references to “blue widgets in California” how would a search engine know that your website was all about blue widgets in California? Answer: It wouldn’t. Consequently when writing good website copy, it is always vital to have the keywords at the forefront of your mind. Imagine you are your own customer. You are looking for the products that your website sells. What would you type into Google to find your website? Ask your colleagues and friends. They may come up with something completely different to what you would think. Once you have a selection of 4 keyword phrases, you can start to research the results that come up when you type them in.

Rather interesting piece on Channel Four news last night about the leaking of Google Chrome, Google’s challanger to Microsoft’s IE hegemony…

• http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&;q=furniture+hire&;meta=
• http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&;q=Furniture+hire&;meta=

as you can see the results swap, 4 and 5 both interchange with each other. When you spell furniture with a capital F the website with the title tag; “Furniture hire” goes higher up, and with a lower case f, the website with the title tag; “furniture hire” goes higher up. Consequently writing title tags in lower case, would more accurately reflect the way people type into search engines, although your results will look fairly manky in Google, if phrases are not capitalized in the correct way. Prolly best to write them in Capitals as it will be more eye catching and the power of this over say getting 3 or four links would be negligible.

CaPItaL LETTerS Do mATteR tO GoOglE

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Comment Tag Rules
1. As a general rule − use you comment tag in the header of your html page. The comment tag should go AFTER the robots tag, but before the tag. This way its in the header tag, but not before the title or description tag.

2. Ask your self, how far is the body text (opening text of the page when viewed) away from your HEAD (). If your opening body text is way down the page, in the middle or the page, over 30 lines away, or not present at all. Use the comment tag AFTER the HEADER tag. Place the comment tag like follows: The reason for using the comment tag after the header tag is for the sake of having your keywords present in the opening body of your HTML page. It would stand to reason that having something is better than nothing. If you can’t get your text higher up on the page, then consider a one line opening comment tag to identify your page. We do know that search engines rank text higher up on the page more then text at the bottom of the page. In order to get the max effectiveness of a comment tag, we use the same rule when placing tags in the html code.

3. Use Comment Tags Before Important Content Sections − Use comment tags with your keywords before an important content section. This could be images where text is limited, adult content, flash content, JavaScript, and sections of text you would like to identify for easy retrieval later. This is effective for search engine spiders as well. A small comment tag can go a long way in identifying important tools or sections, otherwise a spider would not be able to identify. From an usability standpoint as well, this is important, because certain browsers are set−up to identify comment tags as indicators of the content in a section. For example, adult content as opposed to gardening tips.

4. Don’t Overuse Comment Tags − Comment tags can be effective and important in your page, they should not be abused. Let me repeat that, should not be abused. Don’t spam your comment tags with too much information. Also, using too many comment tags can muddle the keywords you would like to focus on. Search engines don’t penalize sites using comment tags to boost keyword frequency. Penalties can be issued however for the blatant misuse of these tags. The general rule is not to repeat the same keyword more than 3−7 times in a tag. I try to follow a rule of 2−3 words just so I am too the point for SEO reasons, but use what works best for you in that range.

5. What Search Engine uses comment tags’ At one time search engines factored in comment tags more than they do today. Now at the time of this article, Inktomi is the only search engine that seems to factor comment tags into ranking, or at least index them. Although, I have seen many top 10 ten websites in AltaVista use comment tags to add a little extra push that is needed between the top positions. As far as Google goes, they are spidered by Googlebot and appear in the cache, but as a part of ranking, that will take some more tests. You can decide for yourself on how to best use comment tags for maximum SEO effectiveness on your website. I believe there is no harm in using them for ranking and for usability reasons. If at all, they should help to keep your code organized for quick editing and location, so comment away until you think otherwise.