Look out cybersquatters, the rules are changing. ICANN just approved a recommendation that will allow for self-selected top level domain registrations.  The .com’s, .org’s and .tv’s will be expanded to include .brandname, .yourname, and .anythingyouwant.

If you own www.pledgeofallegince.com, which is for sale at Go Daddy’s auction for $312,000, or www.tone.com, which can be yours for only $80,000, sell quickly!  There is going for be a whole new world of competition very soon. While the complete details of the plan won’t be approved by the ICANN board until early 2009, they are opening the door for change.

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Following the announcement last week of “Google Trends for Websites” we are introduced to a new product, Google Ad Planner. Both tools use similar Google technology, Trends for Websites allows you to monitor traffic volume on a site by site basis. Also, Trends allows you to examine similar sites visited by users of the tracked site. Simple information such as this can be used in a multitude of ways, from demographic information, Traffic volume and competitive research.

Advertisers, agencies and researchers have been waiting for this type of move from Google, as it signifies a willingness to release a portion of their data to the public. So, this week in a not so surprising fashion, a new tool for advertisers on the Adwords platform was released.

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Analyzing an industry’s online landscape is crucial to understanding what typical consumers seek and what possible competitors are providing them. The major pharmaceutical companies have many great opportunities to reach consumers at the times when consumers are the most receptive. But are they using the right medium, and using it to their advantage? Our research shows that consumers are using search engines to research this condition but the pharmaceutical companies are not meeting their needs.

Let’s take a look at consumers who are researching Schizophrenia. This debilitating disease affects over 2.2 million people in the United States1. Over 100,000 new cases will be diagnosed this year alone. This clearly shines through in the search engine space with over half a million schizophrenia related searches every month.

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Besides a healthy amount of confusion stemming from Adwords changes and algorithm functionality, there have been a few more “permanent” implementations thrown in lately. The recent “update to the display URL” which restricts to a greater extent how one can play with what the user glances at while clicking on an ad, has, been causing confusion. Here is what Google says about it from adwords.blogspot.com:

In response to advertiser and user feedback, and in an effort to provide more relevant advertising results and a higher quality experience for our users, we have made the decision to no longer allow certain exceptions with regards to our display URL policy. This includes, but is not limited to redirects and vanity URLs. This policy will be strictly enforced regardless of past approvals and will apply to all advertisers, beginning on April 1st.

In line with our existing policy, we will continue to require that your ad’s display URL match its destination URL (the URL of your landing page).

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A presentation given by The JAR Group providing copywriting best practices for online content editors. Topics include copywriting for search, keyword research, seeding content in the social media environment, and the production process. This presentation was given in consideration of specific client needs and geared towards an audience of traditional marketers that was relatively unfamiliar with search.

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