Wednesday, May 30, 2007

How search engine marketing tools can work for you: or, searching is really all about finding

Summary

This is the second of three articles. Part 1 appeared in the August issue of Information Outlook.

Search engine optimization and marketing covers a wide range of activities, many of which are similar to what a reference librarian, systems librarian, or market researcher does. Although the focus is the World Wide Web, many of the tools that are used have broader applications for special librarians.

Internal corporate processes. Web analytics tools measure and analyze corporate sales, customer preferences and problems, viable products and channels, and other issues that may provide answers for questions received by special librarians.

Competitive intelligence/market research. Keyword research, Web site saturation and popularity tools can provide information on a company's competitors: how they are marketing on the Internet, what they are spending on online marketing campaigns, how they are pricing their products.

Legal issues. Who Is tools can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues. Link Popularity tools can show who is deep-linking to your site. Log files, in conjunction with Who Is tools, can tell you who may be committing click fraud on your paid placement campaigns or spamming your e-mail servers.

Back end knowledge of how Web sites work. These tools can show you what may be keeping search engines from indexing your site and can highlight customer service issues.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FWE/is_10_9/ai_n15890934

GeoTrust updates TrustWatch Search engine

INTERNET BUSINESS NEWS-(C)1995-2005 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Additional features have been added to the TrustWatch Search engine by GeoTrust Europe Inc, a provider of identity verification solutions for e-business and digital certificates.

TrustWatch Search is a free trusted search service aimed at preventing consumers from being victims of identity theft, phishing scams and web-based fraud. It verifies the security of a website by placing a green, yellow or red verification symbol beside each search result and displays CNET's Certified Store rating data, allowing consumers to evaluate merchant sites using additional data.

As well as verifying secure sites for e-commerce and other transactions the service now also verifies a number of content sites.

TrustWatch Search offers a site report facility to include site verification and SSL encryption, store ratings and website reviews, security certification, site attribute information and privacy policies. It enables consumers to evaluate and verify the integrity of a website, review merchants and report suspicious, phishing-related activity.

Feedback is collected and evaluated by GeoTrust, forwarded to anti-fraud organisations as appropriate and kept for potential future use in TrustWatch ratings. The updated TrustWatch Search can be found as a search box in the TrustWatch anti-phishing toolbar from GeoTrust and through http://www.TrustWatch.com as a destination consumer search site.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BNG/is_2005_Oct_27/ai_n15761539