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News Search Is Influencing Internet Marketing

10/24/2005

The search landscape is changing so fast that half of what we knew a year ago about search engine optimization and marketing is now obsolete, says Greg Jarboe,of SEO-PR who is a regular presenter at SES. Web search versus vertical search was one of the news trends at the San Jose SES and now Jarboe is off to Sweden to present on "Emerging Search Marketing Channels"

The growth of the news search has only come about in the last few years. According to Nielsen/Net ratings, in June 2004 CNN.com was still the #1 online news source with Yahoo not too far behind. By January 2005 Yahoo was #1 with 23 million readers a month. By June 2005 they were pulling out in front with 29 million readers a month.

Google also has a news search section, as does AOL, MSN and Alta Vista. Sites like Topix are drawing viewers looking for great local news.

Studies show that 77 percent of Internet users get their news online now. It's the number one choice for news in the 18 - 54 year old age group. The LA Times reported on the trend, saying that veteran journalists are looking to the PR field for work, now that so many readers are reading their news online.

And since Yahoo News now indexes blog posts in their news, and it's an accepted fact that early adopters look to blogs for news, news search is playing a bigger and bigger role in online marketing.

Another factor is that when there is a relevant and timely article in Google News, if you do a web search on a keyword or phrase, Google will serve you up that news item in the Google 'One-Box' above the #1 position.

So getting your message out in the news search has emerged as a vital part of your search engine optimization and marketing strategy. Optimizing press releases and news articles is no longer a 'nice-to-do one day' idea or 'something we should try.'

You should be all over it right now. Optimize your articles and put them into an RSS feed.

You'll start to show up in the most unexpected places!