• Ever consider venturing away from the main PPC search engines – Google, Yahoo, and MSN? Perhaps you’ve been intrigued with the re-branding and launch of Ask.com, formerly AskJeeves.com. Could this help drive the niche traffic you’re looking for? Perhaps not says George Kepnick over at PPC blog. George gives his firsthand experience with their PPC advertising service.
  • Rand at SEOMoz offers up his analysis on relevancy, coverage, freshness and more on the 4 major search engines. Yes, I said 4. That including the new Cuil search engine which is making its rounds through the blogosphere. The unfortunate news, it didn’t get very high marks from Rand. And who doesn’t trust Rand’s opinion?
  • Is Cuil actually cool? Do you even know what Cuil is? Mike Moran at Search Engine Guide breaks down why search marketers don’t need to worry about Cuil right now. And they may be able to ignore it indefinitely.
  • On a number of occasions I’ve discussed the lackluster quality of ad texts that Yahoo drafts in their account optimizations. The Yahoo folks seem like a smart bunch, but I’ve never been able to put my finger on why their proposed ad texts are so clunky. Until now. Elizabeth at Portant Interative has shed some light on this annoying mystery.
  • I can’t lie: I like Ask.com. But I’m realistic and I know it will never really compete with Google, or even Yahoo. However, it is encouraging to know that Ask.com’s revenue is growing and they are gaining traction (albeit little traction) and search market share. Are you running a campaign with Ask.com? Maybe this is the time to give it a shot.
  • If you need to brush up on relevancy affects your ad position, read this post at the adCenter Community blog.  This is a great summarization of how you can effectively improve ad position through increased relevancy.
  • Kerstin Baker Ash has an “outsider’s” plea for the SEM industry.  Mostly, her opinion is that we all just need to get along!  What I agreed with the most: “Write for the sake of teaching, not to be applauded.”
  • Are you a data junky?  Do you use Analytics in conjunction with your PPC campaigns?  Check out this post at GrokDotCom that shares 5 tips for getting the most data out of Analytics.  Assigning a value to conversions and thoroughly understanding your Traffic Sources are 2 of the best tips in the post.