This is a great news for any Search Marketer from the Middle East region, having an alternative search marketing platform to Google. Yes, I am talking about Ayna.com.

Ayna Corporation Launched in 1997, Ayna is the pioneer of Arabic search engines. Google recently rated it as the second most used search engine in the Middle East (TBC).

Ayna means Where in Arabic. I believe Ayna have a powerful local reach inlcuding their Middle East Maps, along with their local advertising on maps and the content network of Ayna called Shareek Network also will give you a powerful local reach includes very popular and niche websites

Recent article listed in Emirates business post claims that Ayna rated as the second most used search engine in the Middle East. (CRAIG SCARR)

A recent interview with Mr.Husni Al Khuffash (UAE Country Business Development Manager for Google Inc)to Media ME talking about some of the future plans and commitments to Arab World.

Google believes the Middle East has tremendous growth potential in the online world and we are investing heavily in the region. We came to the region because we saw great potential to be able to add value here. We are investing in the region to help users to access information and enable companies to reach their target audience more effectively.

Ultimately we believe that by helping people access information, we give them more freedom more choice and ultimately more power over their lives. So our goal is to continuously work on improving and developing more products in the local languages of the markets we serve. We have already made some great headways in Arabic with the launch of products like iGoogle, Docs and Blogger and Adsense just to name a few but there is tremendous room for growth and we are excited by this challenge.

We are looking to hire Arabic engineers wherever they are to be able to better understand the needs of Arab users. We also support the region through our initiatives.

Read more on Google is investing heavily in the Middle East's potential at MediaME.com

Really great two resources for SEO's and webmasters, if you really need to peek in to Google's Latest Search Quality Secrets, Google is opening up little bit.

At the same time, from SEO perspective some great thoughts and discussions are going on in Search Engine Land. regarding the latest issues came across in the SEO world, new terms like

1. Google Personalized Search Results
2. Universal Search Results
3. Minus -60 Punishment
4. Google Crawler Rate Drop
5. Google Floating Four (My Favourite)

There are more, let me know any one came across any kind of new behaviour from Google.

Are we heading to Search 4.0?

Best,

Aj

Today, Google has announced their Google Content Network is opened for third party ad servers. Now Advertisers and agencies can use the same ad serving system they use for the online campaigns for Google Content Network. Listed below are some of certified third parties ad servers;

1. Double Click
2. Mediaplex
3. Eyeblaster
4. Point Roll
5. Unicast etc...

There are more players coming in, read more at Official Google Blog: Opening our content network to third parties

SEO is Not a Spam by Matt Cutts
Watch this ten minute video from Matt Cutts from Google on the topic "What Google know about Spam" at Web2.0 expo- San Fransisco 2008, especially Web Spam, we call it as "Black Hat" Techniques. Marketers who especially invest money in SEO, please be sure that what they do in each and every process, to make sure that you website is not been spammed by unethical SEO's.



As he mentioned, the recent attack on SQL Injection made 5000's website's down, does any one have more info about this? If yes, please share it here!

Best,
Aj

Yahoo is partnering with McAfee on a system that flags potentially unsafe search results, SearchScan(BETA) helps protect you from viruses, spammy email, and potentially damaging software by identifying websites that may harm your computer.

I was quite unsure about this and this is first kind of experience, how they going to find this from the huge database, so I decided to roll out some queries in Yahoo, SEO, Search Marketing, Dubai Realestate etc... nothing came in to the screen, then had tried some more queries like Virus, Viagra etc... No ways! then last I tried with more regional focused like "Viagra in Dubai", "Virus in Dubai"

See what happens in Yahoo search result, a very well known portal from this region is caught in Yahoo SearchScan and showed red flag, litereally it will effect the Search Engine traffic to the site. I dug more in to this, why it's showed red and found the message "In our tests, we found downloads on this site that some people consider adware, spyware or other potentially unwanted programs"

More detailed analysis shows that this website, is sending regular emails in short period,
McAfee says "we've been receiving an average of less than one e-mail a week, with an average SpamAssassin score of -2"

A great notice for Marketers to protect your Brand in Search Engines!

Note: This is blog is still in his test version, You can call it BETA, BETI or Whatever....!

Did you ever tried a visual search engine? I tried this engine and I had a very new experience and also it has an Apple touch on their interface.

Watch SearchMe Introduction video

Try visual search engine now at www.searchme.com, SearchMe has great 3 features;

1. Visual Search
2. Category Suggest
3. List View

Eg: I searched for "Dubai" and searchMe suggested different categories like;
1. Lodging & hotels
2. Real Estate
3. Business News
4. Work & Career
5. Weather
6. Rugby
7. Stocks
8. Flights

When I clicked on Rugby, and one of the leading website in Dubai came up and it has nothing to do with "Rugby in Dubai". :(

Still, they have a very good system and look at what SearchMe guys has to say
"We’re just getting started on our first step towards creating an entirely new way to search the Web. The quality of our results will vary as we make Searchme better and better"

Best of Luck guys!

Cheers,

Aj

I think it will be a good idea to share this video, from White Board Friday, a very good session on how big brands manage their SEM.


Whiteboard Friday-SEO Agency Insights with Tanya Vaughan from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Manging the Search engine's for big brands is inevitable these days because
"Search is becoming more about marketing, and marketing is becoming more about search”

Thanks

Aj

Search Engine Marketing =

Pay per Click and Search Engine Optimization

(SEM = PPC + SEO)

A common miss-conception about Search Marketing in this region, where people are confused about these terms like, SEM, PPC, SEO,NSO, SMO & etc.........

Abbreviation:

1. SEM = Search Engine Marketing

2. PPC = Pay Per Click

3. SEO = Search Engine Optimization

4. NSO = Natural Search Optimization (Same as SEO)

5. SMO = Social Media Optimization

Recently, I came across a brochure about an Online Marketing conference in this region, where they have mentioned SEO = Organic Optimization and SEM = Pay Per Click), but I strongly disagree.

Search Engine Marketing = SEO + PPC, it’s a combination of both, because from the marketing point of view it’s just another medium where marketers spend money to get the results. It doesn’t mean that you have to only spend in PPC or SEO, to get the best results (ROI) in a long term you need to understand the SEM as a whole, you need to combine these two to generate the best results.

SEO is more challenging than PPC because you’re not paying for the high positions, it‘s completely based on the algorithm of each search engines. To understand this better you need to search yourself for your brand related keywords in Search Engine’s and see the results. Some times you can see you’re partners or competitors are coming in top search engine result pages, that shows your brand have poor visibility. You can avoid this situation quickly through Pay Per Click, but how long you’re going to pay for your brand related keywords, you should have a good organic visibility for a longer run, this is just one scenario, there many examples to integrate these two methods to work better for your brand.

A better way to start with your Search Marketing Campaign is, to understand the current performance of the website, then do an Initial SEO analysis and also a completive analysis in the search environment, based on the results from these two results you can develop a solid search marketing strategy for a long term.

Here is a great opportunity for students who are specializing in marketing to understand the importance of online advertising in the Marketing Mix, especially when it comes to the Global Marketing Challenge.

Google is providing a chance to more than 20,000 students to try Google Advertising platform to gain hands on experience in this new medium. The competition offers student groups to spend a little amount of $200 on Google Adwords, and build a cost effective online marketing campaign for a local business. Team will have to mainly look into the following areas;

1. Develop an Online Marketing Strategy (200$ budget)
2. Run and Optimize the Campaign (3 weeks)
3. Analyze the Results and
4. finally recommendation ideas to carry forward and develop a robust online marketing for the business.

Internal panel will choose the best minds in this challenge.

In the GCC region, it's happening at United Arab Emirates & Saudi Arabia.

United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi:

Abu Dhabi University

Dubai:

SP Jain Center of Management- Knowledge Village - My Neighbors
Zayed University Dubai-


Saudi Arabia

Dhahran:

King Fahad University of Petroleum & Minerals


You can read more at Official Google Blog: Global marketing challenge now underway

Looking forward to see the results in July, best of luck guys!

Thanks

Aj

Check out this kool video promotion for SMX, I am sure Rand will be too careful....

I' ve been looking out some kind of checklist that webmasters or SEO’s can apply to make sure that the system is Search Engine Friendly from the Scratch. Here is the very useful post from Carsten Cumbrowski in Search Engine Journal.

Here are the top touch point areas;

1. Accessibility

2. Navigation

3. Design

4. Content

5. Security

6. Technical Considerations

7. Web Marketing Consideration and more..........

Please read the full post 50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website.

Enjoy reading :)

Aj

The latest comScore Study in December 2007 shows, Chinese Search Engine www.Baidu.com became the 3rd Ranked Search Property Worldwide with 3.4 billion searches, capturing 5.2% percent of worldwide search share.


Baidu recently launched their Japan Language www.Baidu.jp, which will increase their market share eventually.




Here is the Search Market Share BreakDown Chart, dated DEC 2007



















Well, its quite interesting to see an regional player getting in to international level.

Thanks
Ajz

Who is a Smarketer?
I am sure that, lot of us in Search Marketing Industry must have heard about the term Smarketer, but what about others? Especially Marketers!!
I followed this term initially from Omniture's White Paper on 7 advanced steps to more effective search engine marketing , referred as world class Search Engine Marketer.

Let me start with basics of Search Engine Marketing,

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is the Internet Marketing activity of promoting websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine result pages and Search Engine networks.

Search Engine Marketing methods include:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Pay Per Click or Sponsored Links (PPC).

Objective:

The main objective of search engine marketing is to increase traffic to your website. Achieving usability is also important, this means more people will find the Website, which can translate to increased sales and lead generation.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from Search Engines via "natural" ("Organic") search results.

Pay Per Click (PPC) on the other hand, is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website.

Why is it Important?

Search engine marketing provides an effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to your web site.

Numerous surveys have shown that search engines are the most popular method used to find information and websites. More than 80% of internet users rely heavily on search engines as their preferred method to locate websites and information about products/brands.

Every day, more than 320 million searches are made through search engines and directories. 61 billion searches conducted world wide in August 2007(comScore report). Google alone had over 12 million searches per month from United Arab Emirates (Google ME Official’s report). The exponential growth of the Web means there are now billions of web pages, increasing reliance on search engines as the preferred source for information online.

Leading Search Properties

Below the screen shot of the search engines, both internationally and locally;

I will be updating with latest scoops in Search Marketing industry both internationally and locally.

Cheers!

Aj