One of my New Year’s Wishes for 2008 was that Google would introduce a negative market option, much like negative keywords.

In short, I want all of Ontario, but not Ottawa.

Well, the new Google geo-targeting tool comes close, so I guess it’s only a matter of time.

I had the opportunity to use it to day, creating a North American campaign… Well, North America sans Mexico. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Mexico, just not part of my campaign needs.)

Click on North America bundle and viola! Canada, United States and Mexico. Click on Mexico and viola! There it is. Gone.

…and then progress dictated that all things need to be accessible online, so Microsoft (MSFT) created Office Live - a suite of services for small businesses.

Image courtesy www.di.net

Now unlike what the name suggests, this is NOT an online version of Microsoft’s suite of office software such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc, but instead some various services being provided by Microsoft.  Services such as Contact Manager, Document Manager, Workspaces and Project Manager.

Contact Manager allows you to do such things as provide a single view of customers and prospective customers, track contact with customers, check account status and sales opportunities from any location with a Web browser, and send automated “triggered” emails specific to various events such as new sales leads, etc.

In his January video marketing piece, Tom Tsinas reminded us of the importance of incorporating images, audio, and video into our content. He wrote: “As search engine marketers, we all know that content is king and that content is more than just text. Images, video and audio each represent a fantastic opportunity to drive traffic to our client’s sites.” In this post, I’d like to share two examples that demonstrate how important that statement is.

So it would seem that Yahoo is starting to flail around a little bit while under the waiting and patient gaze of Microsoft, who may actually be able to make their purchase for a  better price than what they originally offered!

Smart!

There’s a bunch of shareholder groups all filing suits against Yahoo for not accepting Microsoft’s original offer, and Yahoo is having difficulty finding anyone else to come riding to the charge.

It was my intention to blog on something else today until I chanced upon this article from SearchEngineWatch.com: 48 Practical Questions to Qualify Prospective Search Marketing Vendors by Marty Weintraub.

The 48 questions in question are both enlightening and informative.

And frankly, they should be information volunteered, not solicited. Run the questions around your agency/office and everyone from the receptionist to the CEO should be able to answer any one of them.

Did you know that Google played favourites (Canadian spelling eh?) for a long time?

Its true! For the longest time, American companies were not really given a fair shake in the search results. It wasn’t intentional, rather was just the byproduct of legacy infrastructure, and competing priorities. And don’t get me wrong, this is in no way Google bashing. I certainly understand the problems associated with their dilemma, and why it took so long to rectify.

Let me explain. Being Canadian, we’re obviously very aware of our neighbours (yes I spelled that with a ‘u’, eh) to the south. Until very recently, we understood that there were 3 different sets of Google search results applicable to us:

Ever wonder why some of your competitors frequently seem to get mentions on radio, in newspaper articles, magazine articles, and even occasionally on television (news or local programming)?

Here’s a little strategy I’ve been working on for about 6 months now that has resulted in some great offline mentions, and takes minimal effort.

Here it is in a nutshell:

What You Need:
If you don’t already have an account on Digg, get one. Dedicate some time to it though … build a semi-power account if you can. If not, try it anyway

So how many of you are familiar with Enterprise tools such as Google Search Appliance? Google Mini Search Appliance for example, starts at $2,990 for searching up to 50,000 documents with a 300,000 max document capacity. Google Search Appliance starts at $30,000 for searching up to 500,000 documents with a 30 million max document capacity. (By the way, these are tools used for internal development of infrastructure and intranet and to enable maximum efficiencies between the internal world of information and the internet, among other things, for those of you wondering.)

So, I’m supposed to write about things that are PPC related and today, I get to do that, and more.

How do you measure success?

To me, the ultimate measure of success for ANY company is productivity, not products as some might have you suggest.

But what exactly is productivity? Some people are functionally more productive that others in their work environment. Some people express their productivity in the breadth and depth of their networks… think account executives or bizdev people.

OK, so we all agree that social media traffic converts extremely poorly. However, can it be used help to build authority?

This is the 6th post in the series about Authority Building. The previous 5 are:

1. I Jeff Quipp Am Not an SEO … I’m an Authority Builder
2. What Is Authority, and How Do You Build It?
3. What Type of SEO Client Are You?
4. Authority vs Celebrity … Is There a Difference?
5. Authority Building: Tools of the Trade
6. The Role of Social Media in Building Authority

In this post, I’ll delve into the use of Social Media as a tool in our authority building toolkit.