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Google Inc. is selling its abandoned radio advertising business to WideOrbit Inc. The latter agreed to buy Google's technology for automating radio ad placement. However, the financial details for the deal has not yet been disclosed. WideOrbit would inherit 3,600 customers along with an undisclosed number of employees. This is a privately held company based in San Francisco that makes software for the broadcast TV and radio industries.

Google has announced its departure from the radio business in February as part of efforts to cut costs and due to the poor performance of the operations. The search giant has also abandoned an another ad selling business for newspapers this year owing to disappointing returns on the investment. However, Google's television ad service, started in 2007 still continues to cater to viewers' individual interests. NBC Universal, Bloomberg TV and Hallmark Channel are among the networks participating in the service.

Google ventured into broadcast radio three years ago with the purchase of dMarc Broadcasting Inc. for more than $100 million. In achieving certain financial targets, Google would have required to pay an additional $1.1 billion, but the radio business never hit the target!

Now, Google intends to deploy some of the technology for audio streamed on the Internet rather placing ads on broadcast radio. Meanwhile, Google announced that it is buying On2 Technologies Inc., a provider of digital video compression technology in an all-stock deal valued at $106.5 million. The technology compresses video files to move them more easily across the Web. The technology is important given the growing volume of online video.

Twitter is an extremely popular social media site, and many companies are exploring ways to use it for marketing purposes. With all the attention it’s getting, it seems as though anyone who is anyone is posting updates on Twitter. I must not be anyone. I’m a copywriter. Twitter never seemed to apply to me. If you need a copywriter to write a 150 character tweet, you are doing something horribly wrong. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in the marketing possibilities.

MarketingExperiments recently released a report on Twitter usage and trends that detailed a number of ways companies are (or should be) using the platform to reach their customers. Some of their findings create an interesting picture about the type of marketing tool Twitter really is. How is it really being used by businesses compared to individuals? Does personal tweeting prepare you to tweet for your company? Is it really worthwhile?

The MarketingExperiments report cited a few studies about Twitter that present a detailed profile of the network and its users. According to the report in the Harvard Business Review, 10% of Twitter users are responsible for 90% of all tweets. By comparison, in most social networks the top 10% of contributors account for only 30% of the content.

A comparison was drawn to Wikipedia, a platform that doesn’t technically have anything to do with social networking. But it was interesting to note that 15% of Wikipedia editors account for 90% of the edits. These similar statistics could imply that Twitter is becoming more of a one-to-many announcement service, like Wikipedia, than a two-way communication network, as it was intended.

The report offered some other interesting details about Twitter usage. According to The Business Insider, 51% of users don’t even tweet once a month, while 19% will use it once a day or more. And according to Nielson Online, more than 60% of U.S. Twitter users sign up for an account but don’t come back to it the following month.

What does this mean to the average Twitter user? It seems to imply that many casual users just don’t “get it” and that most of the users who stick with it are more tech-savvy and prone to early adoption of new technologies. If your target audience includes this particular type of consumer, you should definitely consider taking advantage of Twitter.

Twitter gives companies the opportunity to monitor, join, or start conversations about their products, services, or the company itself. However, according to some MarketingSherpa research, nearly two-thirds of marketers aren’t monitoring or responding to comments (both positive and negative) about their company. Remember, just because you aren’t initiating the Twitter conversation, that doesn’t mean no one is talking about you.

When consumers tweet about your company, it’s an open invitation for you to listen in on their personal conversations. Monitoring the kinds of tweets going on about your company can provide valuable and usable data on consumer trends and disposition. In a business environment where knowledge is power, this is the kind of information a company can’t afford to miss. And participating in the conversation is a great way to reach out to those consumers.

Once you’ve identified your target users and started building a following, Twitter can become a channel to communicate with your “preferred customers” by offering special deals or insights into the company. Twitter has also become an excellent source for live event coverage, and if you present or attend such events, this is a great way to build followers.

So there are a lot of benefits to using Twitter, but the platform seems to have trouble attracting longtime, consistent users. What does this say about Twitter as an effective marketing tool? Is it really worth the time and effort to get involved?

The only way to answer that question is to stop and really consider whether or not tweeting will increase your revenue (through special offers and sales notices), build brand or equity (by creating relationships and sharing good experiences), and reduce your costs (by allowing customers to address any problems before having to call the company directly). If you can clearly delineate how your company can use Twitter in these areas, then this is certainly a marketing avenue you should consider.

Google is launching a rare commercial campaign in an attempt to boost the sales of its online business applications. The company is leasing billboards along major highways in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston in order to promote a set of business applications that sells for $50 per worker annually. The idea is to display a different message each weekday through August, starting with Monday morning’s commute.

Well, Google has been selling its applications package since 2007, however, it is now when the search giant realized the need of a more aggressive sales pitch. “People don’t necessarily think of Google when it comes to how we can help companies,” said Michael Lock, director of sales and operations for Google’s enterprise division in North America.

While Google is looking up to the newly launched ad campaign, it is keeping itself away from advertising its business applications in other offline media, such as magazines, newspapers, television or radio. With the billboard campaign Google aims at attracting corporate customers away from Microsoft Corp.’s e-mail service and industry-leading applications for word processing, spreadsheets and scheduling. Besides, it is also targeting IBM Corp. more or less.

Reportedly, with an attempt to challenge Google’s commanding lead in the online ad market, Microsoft had advanced a search partnership with Yahoo Inc. The latter has also upgraded its search engine June this year and renamed it Bing, which is being advertised in a $100 million marketing campaign. Contrary to this, Google has not bought advertising to promote its search engine ever since its inception nearly eleven years ago.

Google has always been confident about its word-of-mouth and free media exposure when it comes to establish its search engine as the Internet’s most powerful tool. For the first half of 2009, the advertising connected to the search engine is generating $10.7 billion in revenue. So, it can be said that the strategy proves beneficial for Google! Reportedly, software licensing, including Google’s sales of business applications and revenue from other non-advertising sales accounted for just $365 million in revenue during the same period.

Yahoo! has made a change to the Yahoo! Shortcut.Yahoo! Shortcut appears at the top of the Yahoo Search results page when users search for a local business. It basically shows things like how many reviews or ratings a business has. With the change, Yahoo! went on to include links to information users tend to take interest in, such as actual text of the reviews, photos and driving directions. The content is displayed right on the search results page.

In the above snapshot, you can see new options appear in the form of tabs below the business entry. Users can read the reviews, see the photos or get driving directions by just clicking a tab. The enhancement in the Yahoo! Shortcut will help users see a selection of reviews and images for a business directly on the search results page. Yahoo! hopes this will save users lots of time and help them get required information in one place.

We all know that almost every business has peak times and low times. The great thing about doing SEO and online marketing is that you can very easily find the peak seasons for searches and traffic in your industry.  Once you have that information, you can act on it to keep your business rocking all year long.

Discovering Search Trends

So how do you find what the high and low times are in your industry?  Here are a couple of free tools you can use:

1- Google AdWords Keyword Tool

There are so many things you can use this tool for, and here’s another one! As an example, I did a search for the word ‘camping.’ To see the trends choose “Show Search Volume Trends” from the drop-down menu that says “Show/Hide Columns” and you’ll see something like this:

As you can see, there is a definite high and low time for these camping keywords. The peaks are from May to July, and the valleys are from November to January. Now that we know what the low times are, we can look for other keywords that have a higher trend during those months.

2- Google Trends

This is another great tool from Google. This takes the idea of discovering trends a little further by looking at several years’ worth of data. Google Trends lets you compare multiple keywords side-by-side on the same graph.  Let’s take a look at some of the camping words from above:

As you can see, the data is pretty consistent from year to year for the keywords ‘camping sites’, ‘camping site’, and ‘camping gear’ – they all peak and valley at the same time each year.

If I ran a camping site, I’d want to do something to compensate for these down times.  Let’s take a look at the relationship between ‘camping gear’ and ‘winter camping’:

I know it’s no surprise there is an inverse relationship between these two keywords. It would be advantageous to find some winter camping products, create pages around them, and then optimize for winter-based keywords. Although winter keywords don’t obtain as much traffic as summer camping keywords, they are more likely to convert during winter months and help keep revenues more consistent.

Learning from Trends and Taking Action

Use trends to look for keywords with less dramatic trends and more consistent traffic, or see what the popular terminology is for your industry. You’ll often find that over time one term grows more popular than another.  If you want to see an example of this, check out this graph: SEO vs. Search Engine Optimization.

Chances are your business has high and low times of business and traffic. Take some time to understand when valleys generally occur, so you can compensate. Look for ways to keep your traffic as consistent as possible. Watch your analytics data to see which keywords are converting at different times of the year as well.

By making a few adjustments and watching trends you can have your business making more consistent money all year long!

Google AdWords Blog informs about a new way to run local ads via Location extentions. With the help of this feature advertisers will be allowed to add their addresses to their search ads.

Location extensions allows advertisers to “extend” their AdWords campaigns by attaching your business address to your ads, dynamically. With the introduction of this feature, you’ll be able to create local ads with extensions from scratch or add extensions to your existing text ads.

Users with existing local business ads, will continue running unless you don’t edit them. In case you edit, your ads will be converted to a text ad with the ad’s address attached as a location extension. This new ad will appear in the same spot as your previous local business ads. The creation and management of local business ads will have complete support of the AdWords Editor. The Editor support for location extensions will be released very soon.

Login to your AdWords account to try the local extensions, then click on setting and select Audience section, choose “Show relevant addresses with your ads.” Once extensions are created, Google will dynamically match your business locations to a user’s location or search terms and display the address with your text ads. By setting up specific location extensions for individual ads, you’ll be able to show a specific address in a particular ad.

This new feature will be rolled out in the coming weeks. However, only few advertisers have access to the feature for now. To know more about editing local business ads in the new interface visit Google AdWords Help Center.

One of the main difficulties that most marketers face is to identify best metrics , which will complete a sales cycle or improve customer’s loyalty. In order to help marketers make better business decisions, the Google Analytics team is now organizing an event in Gurgaon, India – “Google Analytics Conversion University.” Google India had earlier organised the Google SearchMasters Conference 2009 for the Indian webmaster community.

Hence, this event is also believed to help improve user’s Google Analytics skills as well as better understand their site’s visitors. Those who are new to this field can get an overview here. For experienced Analytics users Google has incorporated a group of experts in the field, such as in-house Analytics product experts and GA partners (Google Analytics Authorized Consultants). Moreover, they are also brining in Jesse Nichols, a Google Analytics guru.

This event will be held on August 8, 2009 at the Google Gurgaon office. Please visit www.getGAready.in for registration and more details.

The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum names SEO.com as the 17th top young company in Utah at the annual “Top 25 Under Five Awards.” SEO.com was selected because of its rapid growth and strong influence in the Internet marketing industry. The Utah SEO company is also garnering national attention for its search engine optimization services.

PROVO, Utah (July 9, 2009) – The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum awarded SEO.com, a Web site optimization firm, as Utah’s 17th best up-and-coming business in its 10th annual “Top 25 Under Five Awards.”

“We are truly honored and excited to be included in this prestigious list of up-and-coming businesses. We have great plans for the future of SEO.com, and it is really encouraging to receive this kind of recognition early on,” said Dave Bascom, founder and CEO of SEO.com.

Crowds gathered into the Novell building in Provo, Utah to celebrate and honor entrepreneurs and some of the state’s top companies under five years old. In a bright contrast to the current economic struggle, optimism reigned here where companies were boasting both recent and future success.

The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) recognizes the best emerging companies in the state of Utah based on profit, job creation, job quality and growth. The event’s purpose is to promote companies that may become industry leaders in the state, the region and globally. This year’s winner was Zagg, Inc., a designer, manufacturer and distributer of clear coverings and accessories for electronic and hand-held devices. Some of the past award winners include Omniture and Xango.

Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert praised the winners during his keynote address, discussing the strength of entrepreneurship in the state and the positive affect it has on the entire economy.

“I can’t say enough good about the business community here,” Herbert said. “The private sector creates jobs and is the lifeblood of the community. Utah is a great place to live and a great place to do business.”

SEO.com was recognized among the top 20 because of its swift growth, having increased more than 300 percent in the last year alone. Since its launch in June, 2007, SEO.com has hired more than 40 employees and helped numerous clients climb to the top of the search engines. Currently, SEO.com has nearly 100 clients that range from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies.

About UVEF
UVEF is a volunteer non-profit support group linking entrepreneurs to Money, Markets, and Mentors. Celebrating 20 years of new business success, UVEF empowers current and future business leaders to thrive in today’s competitive market. The organization provides real-world, practical educational and valuable resources on how to access needed capital, attract new customers and tap into industry experts. For information on upcoming meetings, speakers, and membership, visit www.uvef.net.

About SEO.com
SEO.com is an Internet marketing firm that specializes in organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising (PPC) management. SEO.com has helped numerous clients climb to the top of Google for their targeted keywords. Clients range from small, startup businesses to Fortune 100 companies.