The most linkable sites are remarkable in some way. This has the important benefit of making them stand out with potential customers (and potential linkers), and helps create brand value. ...

We've just published a new webinar schedule for the next month. In our live webinars, we'll highlight changes you can make to your ad implementation in order to maximize your AdSense revenue. We're also trying something new with our upcoming webinars: we've set up open Google Moderator discussions, where you can raise questions related to the specific webinar topic or vote on questions from other participants. We'll then answer your questions live in the webinar.

To sign up for our webinars, please visit our Help Center. Even if you're not able to attend the live sessions, we'll make sure to upload each webinar recording within 24 hours of the event.

Posted by Siobhán McCormack - AdSense Optimisation Team

There are lots of little ways you can check to see if your keyword optimization efforts are paying off for your Web site. You ll know you re achieving search engine optimization when your traffic increases when you enter the keywords you re using into a search engine and actually find your own site. There are plenty of tools that will help you check this or that so you can fine-tune your site s SEO. But do you really know if your site is optimized for the Web Learn how to use SEO analysis....
Microsoft BPOS - $10 Per User Per Month* *Includes a 12-month subscription. Minimum 5 seats required.

Specific tips for optimizing videos, images, local search, news, shopping, or other rich content. ...

We’re T-4.5 days from the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics Games. Who are you excited to see flying down the men’s downhill course or dancing across the ice? Will you be rooting for your homeland or just your favorite event? Do you know anyone crazy enough to get on one of those luge sleds? Making the trip to Canada or are you planning on enjoying the games from the comfort of your own home? With only a few days before the games begin, it’s time to get prepared.

Whether you’re at the games or watching from afar, we want you to get the most out of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Today, NBC Universal announced their collaboration with MSN and Bing to deliver exclusive digital event coverage to fans online and on-demand. This year’s Olympic coverage is going to be unlike any other year with thousands of hours of video, extensive event recaps, updated medal count info, and commentary from the games, brought to you exclusively by NBCOlypmics.com, MSN and Bing. Check out the MSN blog for more details about MSN’s amazing work with NBCOlympics.com on MSN. 

Bing will be a great place to get quickly to the important Olympics details.  Just search Winter Olympics on Bing for important dates, links to the schedule, breaking news, all brought to you conveniently in the form of an Instant Answer.

  

You can also search for your favorite athlete for a quick look at their country, sport and links to bio, videos and photos.

 

Not familiar enough with the Olympic teams or specific event to start your search? No problem. We’ve also created Winter Games themed Visual Search Galleries, like the image below, so you can explore the athletes and events visually and sort by sport, gender or date of the event. 

 

In addition to providing users with the ultimate search tool for exploring NBCOlympics.com on MSN content, Bing lets users experience and explore Vancouver and Whistler through our Streetside imagery in Bing Maps. During the games we’ll be rolling out and updating additional various features to keep you up to date so be sure to check back here for more updates coming soon.  

We’re looking forward to bringing the best of the Olympic games, right to you!

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

If you’ve tuned into any kind of news in the past few weeks, you know Super Bowl 44 is coming this Sunday, when the Indianapolis Colts play the New Orleans Saints. As excitement builds before kickoff, we’ve seen search spikes by people looking for information on key Colts Peyton Manning and Dwight Freeney, Super Bowl predictions and picks, commercials, and more. For example, people search more for logos of the opposing team!

Here’s a look at some of the search trends around Sunday’s upcoming showdown in at Dolphin Stadium in South Florida:

Kickoff Time – No need to click further – the game starts at 6:25 p.m. EST.

Betting and Predictions –NFL.com’s user poll has the Saints favored to win, and searchers are surely curious about the team. Users are searching for the Saints 53 percent more often than the Colts on the Wednesday before the big game. But if MVP is awarded by search popularity, make that call in favor of Peyton Manning. And for all the single ladies searching for “Peyton Manning married,” we regret to report that he has been married to his wife Ashley since 2001.

Commercials – Searchers are looking for the Doritos and Budweiser commercials, both of which are going to be picked by fans in advance of the event.

Half-Time Show – We’re hoping the set malfunctions clear up in time for the big show, which features British rockers The Who this year.

Past Super Bowls – Bowl trivia is big, especially at parties, so Yahoo! users are digging around for stats on previous big games. Queries are for games from specific years and for “Super Bowl trivia.”

Wallpaper and logos – The Saints are ahead with queries for wallpapers, but more users overall are looking for Colts logos. Interestingly, people are interested in the logos of the opposing team. In Louisiana, searches for the Colts’ logo had a one day jump of 150 whereas Indiana jumped 67 percent on “Saints logo” searches.

Songs – Almost 92 percent of song searches were for the Who Dat song. Catchy lyric? Or, predictor of success? All we can say is that it’s a silent minority looking for the “Colts fight song” online.

Food – Queries on “Super Bowl party food ideas” and recipes are way up as people pick which wings to try out on their pals at parties across the nation. “Super Bowl appetizers” is also a popular query. Here in Yahoo! Search, we prefer guacamole.

Home field advantage – Our sports specialist dug around for some information on what users were looking for in Indiana and Louisiana. He found that “Super Bowl tickets” searches in Louisiana had a buzz score 50 points higher than the same search in Indiana, so the Who Dat Nation may have the home field advantage. If history is an indicator, they can break out the beads on Bourbon Street now. The Pittsburgh Steelers carried the buzz score advantage over the Arizona Cardinals in 2009 by 15 buzz points, and they carried the game. Can anyone translate that into a points spread?

Remember, you can use our sports shortcut on Yahoo! Search to see real time scores and other information about your favorite team. Follow Yahoo! Sports coverage of the Super Bowl on Sunday at Sports.Yahoo.com.

Jessica Hilberman
Yahoo! Search

Last week we had you tune in to Jason Calacanis' web show TWIST to watch Stefan announce the Free T-shirt Friday theme. I was worried no one would catch his #FTF plug to win a free t-shirt or the copy of Brian Solis’s book “Putting the Public Back into Public Relations” but alas, there were a few of you loyal #FTF players that came through.

The winners for last week were @brmore and @jrameau. Please make sure you DM us @bing with your shirts size and mailing address.

• @brmore: @bing The best and worst airport food http://bit.ly/bYQ5qF (expand) #FTF (WINNER OF THE BOOK!)
• @jrameau: @bing The Terminal Tom Hanks http://bit.ly/bOMJ8U (expand) #FTF

This week we sit down with Stefan (finally sans apron) to discuss some of your questions from the forums and to share this week’s Free T-shirt Friday theme which may have something to do with a small sports event this weekend.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

 

Happy Friday!

Kristin Meldahl, Bing

 

Facebook has been a close and valued partner of Microsoft for a number of years. We have worked together on several fronts all designed to create great experiences and services for our users. As we begin 2010, we are stepping up that collaboration yet again.

Here is a sense for what we are up to:

First, we have deepened our joint work together on web search to provide even more compelling experiences to Facebook users with Bing. As part of this expanded cooperation in search, our two companies will soon provide Facebook users with a more complete search experience by providing full access to great Bing features beyond a set of links, including richer answers combined with tools that help customers make faster, smarter decisions.

Second, we are extending our cooperation outside the US, bringing the Bing-Facebook search integration to the more than 400 million people using Facebook around the world.

Lastly, we made the mutual decision that Facebook would take over responsibility for selling display advertisements on its own site. We have been working together on advertising for a long time, creating the best experience for Facebook users and advertisers. Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy. MS will continue to provide search advertisements to Facebook.

Bing will continue to exclusively power the web search results on Facebook. This change will also enable Microsoft to continue its focus on driving strong performing campaigns across our own social media and communications tools, including Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail, and via rich content environments across MSN and Xbox Live.

This is an exciting time for us as we continue to work with Facebook on great new experiences for customers.  As you know, Bing has been very focused on helping customers make important decisions. We believe that counsel from family and friends can be a big part of that process. Going deeper in web search experiences with Facebook, in addition to the collaboration we announced last October about bringing public data from Facebook’s API into the search experience, will enable us to do great things together for our customers.

You will start to see the fruits of our expanded relationship show up in the Facebook experience over the weeks and months ahead. We are very excited about the work we have done with Facebook, and are really looking forward to the amazing things we can together do for our mutual customers in the months and years ahead.

Jon Tinter - General Manager, Bing

Don't leave things to chance when you leave the office for any significant period of time. Here's how to keep your campaigns running smoothly. ...

As you may have already seen, Google has made various efforts to contribute to the earthquake relief response in Haiti. We've heard repeatedly from AdSense publishers on forums about wanting to help, and today, we're pleased to let you know how you can do so with your AdSense earnings.

We're currently accepting donations from AdSense publishers with an unpaid account balance through January 31, 2010. To see what your unpaid account balance is, please visit the 'Payment History' page within your account. Your January earnings will post in the next few days, so feel free to refer to your 'Advanced Reports' page for an earnings estimate until those are finalized.



Working with our teammates at Google.org, we've identified Partners In Health (PIH) as the recipient of these funds. Your funds will go to provide medical aid via PIH and their Haiti-based partner organization. Any contribution you can make will help to ensure that PIH can continue their work throughout this time of great need.

Photo courtesy of PIH

You can donate a portion or all of your entire unpaid balance as of the end of January. Whether you have a balance of $0.10 or $100 in your account, we invite you to participate within the next week.

As you may expect, there are certain restrictions to donating, and all our normal policies still apply -- so even if you're donating, please don't ask others to click on your ads in order to increase your earnings. For more information on how to participate, visit our donation form.

Posted by Elizabeth Ferdon - AdSense Payments Team

As aid workers in Haiti settle into the anything-but-routine work of helping care for a devastated country, people continue to come to Yahoo! Search to find out how to help victims of the earthquake. Just this week, Haiti-related search spikes turned to “tents for Haiti,” which had 1,000 percent more searches than the previous week. The plight of Haiti’s orphans also continues to be on people’s minds as they search for “Haiti orphan rescue,” which buzzed to over 9,000 percent this week as Haitian orphans were taken in by the U.S. and as a scandal erupted over possible removal of children from Haiti.

Yahoo! Search data also paints an intriguing timeline of the 7.0 earthquake that shook the country on Jan. 12. As news of the quake spread, concerned citizens took to the Yahoo! Search to learn the details and to research how to help.

Right after the news of the quake, people turned to their mobile devices for immediate information. In the first two days after the quake, Yahoo! Mobile searches on “Haiti Earthquake” increased 3,300 percent. Popular search themes centered on photos, relief efforts, Wyclef Jean, and current news almost immediately. Several of the top earthquake queries were in Spanish.  As the week went on, people started looking for more contextual information, wanting Haiti maps, asking “where is Haiti”, and looking for information on Haitian poverty and whether the country is cursed.

In Yahoo! Web search, searches focused more clearly on volunteering and donating aid and time. Users were deeply concerned about the plight of Haitian orphans, offered prayers for Haiti, and researched church-based relief organizations. People were also eager to donate their help via text messaging as we saw searches for “texting to help Haiti,” “text Haiti 90999,” and “text Yele.”

Many searches focused on the names mentioned in news reports about Haiti’s earthquake. Searchers looked for former president François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Port-au-Prince archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, and the head of the U.N. mission in Haiti, Hedi Annabi. Haitian president René Préval also spiked as he appealed for aid.

As the immediate shock subsided, Web searchers expanded their interest, looking for information on the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s neighboring country that that offered a lot of aid to migrating survivors. People also want to know more about other large earthquakes, notably the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes in California’s San Francisco Bay Area. They also looked up details about fault lines, causes of earthquakes and tsunamis, and the Richter scale for measuring the size of tremblers.

After learning of the quake, teams across Yahoo! stepped up to help with the relief efforts in a wide variety of ways. Yahoo! employees in the U.S. have donated more than $145,000 to the cause, including corporate matches for those donations. Yahoo! users have donated more than $1.5 million to support Haiti relief and rebuilding efforts globally. You can see more of our efforts on behalf of earthquake victims at Yodel Anecdotal. For up-to-date news about the Jan. 12 Haiti Earthquake, please visit http://news.yahoo.com/topics/haiti.

Jessica Hilberman

Yahoo! Search

The office pool, big screen TV’s, great commercials, the half time show, friends and family.  These are all things that remind me of super bowl Sunday. However no game day is ever complete without a monumental spread of food. Now that we’ve shared some tips and trick to help prepare for the big game, time for the menu. I know in my house Nachos and Buffalo wings are a must to kick off the game and by the half time show we have the Hot Dogs and Burgers on the barbeque . If you are not a hot dog and hamburger kind of crowd then you might want to try out a new recipe for Pizza or Chili. I know that this year I am going to spice things up with our new recipe feature and get creative with Beer. Beer'Garitas anyone?

Whether or not you are a Colts or Saints fan we know that for some of you this Sunday will be filled with some great football to watch, some pretty entertaining commercials, and if nothing else some wonderful food that you hopefully were inspired to make from searching on Bing.

So have fun eating your way through the Super “Bowl”.

Kristin Meldahl

Other posts of interest:

Colts and Saints Can’t Mess with Texas

Cooking up a storm with Bing Recipes

How Many Calories in a Burger? What’s 2^2^2^2^2? Bing and Wolfram|Alpha Have the Answers

 

Today, we're beginning a troubleshooting series to help you diagnose and solve common issues with your ads, search boxes, and account functionality. We're kicking things off with a look at how to correctly implement your ad code and an explanation of why ads may not appear on your pages at times.

First, the best way to ensure ads are served correctly is to copy and paste the code exactly as it's provided in your account. Changing the code and manipulating ad behavior aren't permitted by our program policies, and in most cases will prevent your ad from appearing at all.

If you've noticed that your ad units aren't showing ads, here are a few things to check for:

• Did you just add the code to that page? Relevant ads should appear on your pages shortly after you add the code, but sometimes it can take up to 48 hours for ads to show. This is because our crawler has to visit your page and determine its content so we can serve targeted ads.
  
  
• Does the code on your page match the code in your account? Make sure to copy the code exactly as it appears in your account, and paste it within the body tags of your HTML code. Be sure not to make any changes to the linebreaks of the code (e.g. pasting the code all in one line) as this will break the code and prevent ads from showing entirely.
  
  
• Are you using an HTML editor? Publishers often use a design-enhanced HTML editor like Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage (aka WYSIWIG, "what you see is what you get" software). If you use such an editor, you may see errors if you paste your ad code into a WYSIWYG view such as the "Design" or "Layout" view. For the ads to function properly, you'll have to copy and paste the ad code into the HTML source code of your webpage using the editor's HTML view or HTML insert function. Check for any additional tags inserted by the system or changes in the linebreaks.
  
  
• Are you using a content management system (CMS)? If you have trouble implementing AdSense with a specific content management system, we recommend searching for the name of the CMS (eg. Drupal, WordPress) and 'AdSense implementation'. You can also ask in the forum if other publishers have mastered similar problems, or contact your program provider directly.
  
  
• Are the ads inside nested frames? While you can choose where to position your ads on your pages, be sure to avoid embedding the ad code in excessive div tags or nested frames. Depending on your browser settings, implementing your ad code in this way might prevent ads from appearing correctly.
  
  
• Is JavaScript enabled in your browser? Ensure that you have JavaScript enabled in your browser, as this is necessary to view ads! If you're having trouble seeing the ads, please also check for any conflicting JavaScript on your site that might prevent ads from showing.
  
  
• Is your page dynamically generated? If you'd like to implement AdSense ads on a dynamically generated site -- for example, a site with session IDs or pages behind a login -- you should take a look at this Help Center entry for more information on how to receive targeted ads.

In the next part of this series, we'll provide tips to help you troubleshoot ad relevancy and targeting issues.

Posted by Ulrike Jung - Inside AdSense Team

Search engines are always changing, and so are the ways people search for your products and services. So your keyword list should change as frequently. ...

You use Yahoo! Search to look for information on the Web, Yahoo! mail to keep up with friends, and Flickr to show off your pics. Show your love for your favorite tools by casting your vote for the Yahoo! products nominated for this year’s About.com Reader’s Choice Awards.

Yahoo! has been received 15 nominations in 13 different categories, including Yahoo! homepage, mail, Flickr, and of course, Yahoo! Search in the Best Search Engine category.

Voting closes on Feb. 24 and the winners will be announced on March 1. To vote for us, go to About.com’s Reader’s Choice Awards page to see the categories we’ve been nominated for and click the link for the Yahoo! product nominated for the subcategory to cast your vote.

Good luck to all the nominees!

Category: Desktop Publishing

• Best Source of Free Images – Flickr
• Best Source of Stock, Royalty-Free, or Rights-Controlled Images – Flickr

Category: Email

• Best Free Email Service – Yahoo! Mail
• Best Mobile Email Experience – Yahoo! Mail
• Best Email Innovation 2009 – Apps in Yahoo! Mail

Category: IM

• Best Mac IM – Messenger
• Best IM Feature – Messenger Video Calls
• Best Chat Rooms (on IM) – Yahoo! Messenger

Category: Smartphones

• Best Free iPhone App – Messenger, Flickr

Category: Web Design / HTML

• Best Information or Content Page Design – Yahoo! homepage
• Best Use of Images in Web Design – Yahoo! homepage, Flickr
• Best Overall Web Design – Yahoo! homepage, Flickr

Category: Web Search

• Best Search Engine – Yahoo! Search

Last week, we took a closer look at implementing your ad code, and today, we'll address some of the common issues related to ad targeting.


If you're seeing irrelevant ads or public service ads (PSAs) on your pages after you've pasted the ad code into your HTML source code and waited the recommended 48 hrs, here are a things to check:

• Have you placed the AdSense ad code in frames separate from the main content of your website? If so, you may experience ad targeting issues. In order for our crawlers to match the ads to the content of your website, it is important to place the ad code in the same frame as the main content of your webste. If you're familiar with HTML, and your website is talking about several different topics you could also consider implementing section targeting on your site to highlight relevant content.
  
  
• Do you have mostly dynamic content on your site? Our crawlers currently can't derive meaning from these types of files:
  - audio and video files (.wma, .mpeg, .mov)
  - mp3 files (.mp3)
  - images (.jpeg, .bmp)
  - Macromedia Flash movies
  - Java Applets
  
  To receive more relevant ads, we recommend including plenty of text-based content on your site, including complete sentences and paragraphs.
  
  
• Do your pages use session IDs? A session ID is a piece of data serves as a unique identifier for a session. If your pages use session IDs, you may not receive targeted ads on those pages. Since this session ID - and therefore the URL - changes every time a different user views a page, the URL will not be indexed and will need to be crawled from scratch. Once the URL is crawled, however, the session will most likely have expired. This means that pages seen by the users are rarely in the index. You'll need to remove the session IDs in order to show more targeted ads to your users.

We hope these tips help you resolve any targeting issues you experience with your ads. Next week, we'll take a look at some other reasons why you may see irrelevant ads or PSAs on your site, and how you can best resolve them.

Posted by Ulrike Jung - Inside AdSense Team

This is the third part of an article series that examines and verifies the important factors for ranking in Google. The factors we will examine in this part include keyword use in the domain name and keyword-focused anchor text in internal links....
Virtualization Solutions Optimize, Simplify, & Save Today. Learn About Microsoft Solutions.

I have a confession to make: I’m a Valentine’s Day scrooge. Despite that, Valentine’s Day still sneaks up on me every year and while I might consider saying “Bah humbug” to Cupid, I just can’t. Duty calls, and because I have some very special family and friends in my life, I feel obligated to do a bit more than a drugstore greeting card and a box of stale heart candies.

Whether you’re a scrooge like me or you’re the romantic type, Valentine’s Day can require lots of preparation. Lucky for you, Bing is here to help you put together a romantic evening your valentine won't soon forget. But just because your sweetie pie makes you feel like a million bucks doesn't mean you have to spend every last penny proving it. With cashback you can shop for your valentine and get cash back for yourself. That definitely appeals to my scrooginess – give more to them and get more for me! Shop our Valentine's Day gift guides and find exactly what you're looking. Plus between February 3-10th, you can get even more cashback savings, up to 30%.

Here are a few great Vday deals for you to consider:

· Looking for bling for your valentine? Get 30% cashback from Ice.com by searching for “Ice.com cashback.”

· Flowers are a classic Valentine’s Day gift and there are four retailers for you to choose your bouquets from, including Teleflora at 25% cashback, Flora Flora at 30%, Proflowers at 30%, and 1-800-Flowers at 25%.

· Gap is offering 20% cashback on their brands, including Old Navy and Banana Republic.

· Sumptuous beauty gifts to pamper your valentine are available at Beauty.com or Sephora, where you can get 20% cashback at both

· Prefer to pick up some sweet treats for your sweet? Ghiardelli Chocolates is offering 25% cashback and at 1-800-Bakery you can get 20% plus free shipping!

Whether you’re a die-hard romantic or a Vday scrooge like me, whether you’re looking to make your Valentine’s Day sweet or sassy, or whether you want to pick up a little bling for yourself this February and put cash back in your wallet at the same time, Bing’s got you covered.

So in the words of my favorite grade school Valentine’s card: Won’t you “bee” mine?

Kelly Scott, cashback Product Manager

 

Other posts of interest:

Online holiday shopping tips by Mary Hunt

cashback 101

Don't let your international efforts implode. Make sure you understand your audience, understand search positioning, and get help from local search marketing experts and good translators. ...

The Saints and the Colts may be our super star teams this year, but neither team takes home the title of most searched for on Bing. In fact, the most popular team on Bing didn’t even make it to the Conference Championship game this year. But their hunky quarterback drew enough attention for his actions off the field to make this team super popular on Bing. Oh and they also cut the ribbon on the biggest stadium known to man. If you haven’t guessed already, the Dallas Cowboys racked up the most searches on Bing among NFL teams for the 2009-2010 season. But back to our super star teams.

Despite their 14-2 record and devout fans, the Colts ranked 15th among most searched NFL teams while New Orleans came in 5th  with Drew Brees, Reggie Bush and coach Sean Payton all garnering more searches than Peyton Manning, Joseph Addai and coach Jim Caldwell, respectively. Although not the most searched throughout the year, after the Indianapolis win against the Jets, all eyes were on Peyton and his team with searches for the Colts increasing by more than 350 percent whereas searches for the New Orleans Saints increased by slightly less at 257 percent. So who’s going to be most popular come game day? Let us know what you think.

You only have a few days to decide whether you lean toward New Orleans or Indianapolis, so spend some time on Bing and get to know the team with our player instant answers (try Peyton Manning or Drew Brees) and compare the teams with our head-to-head comparison courtesy of MSN and Fox Sports. Just search for ‘Super Bowl XLIV’ or ‘Super Bowl 2010’ for a quick look at everything you want to know about the big game including game time, and stats on the Saints and Colts so you’re well versed come game day.

We’ll be updating our Super Bowl answer to reflect quarterly updates and game status  – see the example below - so be sure to check back regularly. And for real-time commentary from Super Bowl watchers on Twitter, be sure to visit and follow the Super Bowl on Bing/Twitter.

We’re looking forward to kick off!

Melissa Powell, Bing