Ask Goes NASCAR Crazy, But Why?

Ask.com has partnered with NASCAR and Hall of Fame of Racing to become the official search engine for the sport.

"As part of our strategy to go deeper into the highest-volume categories and provide the best answer, the first time, every time, we want to be the first place fans search online for NASCAR information," said Ask.com Chief Executive Officer Jim Safka.

My only question is why? There are millions on verticals that probably could drive more traffic (serious traffic) to the engine. Is it because of the NASCAR brand? What does that buy you, a little interesting press coverage?

I think Ask is an incredible search engine that is vastly overlooked by the masses for many reasons, but it is hard to keep up and try to figure out their marketing strategy as it is always all over the place and many times makes no sense at all.

I wish Ask would just wake up and:
- Provide more unique opportunities for advertisers
- Updated their PPC platform (come on let the LookSmart platform go already)
- Open up to the SEO community (indirectly that would go a long way to ultimately increasing legitimacy and winning over more search traffic)
- Provide more tools and insights (like Google Insights for Search or Microsoft adCenter Labs)
- Add unique information to search results (like Ask 3D used to - links, video, images, music)

While I do not really think that the NASCAR partnership is going to hurt Ask, it just seems like such a small win that it will probably not have a large impact on the overall search traffic and awareness - just my 2 cents, but I would have invested those bucks somewhere else. Good luck, Ask.

Link to official press release - Ask.com Enters NASCAR With Multi-Faceted Partnerships

Be Careful What Your Post - Online Reputation Management

Just a reminder - what you post can always come back to haunt (or help) you....:-)

Surf the Web Securely

Have you ever wondered if that site you are about to visit (or just visited) contains any malicious code that may try to infect your system? Well your concerns are over (hopefully, but if you are visiting many sites with malicious code you probably need some strong spyware and anti-virus protection also). Just visit Online Link Scan and type in the URL (remember to include the 'http://') and let it run a test on the site for you.

Check it out today at - Online Link Scan

Happy (and safe) surfing...:-)

Check Your PageRank FREE - Great FREE Domain Evaluation Tool

I love nice looking and accurate free domain evaluation tools (as you can probably see from previous posts). I just found this on one a SitePoint Auction for on $14.99 and was thinking about buying the script. The demo site is located here - Check Your PageRank and offers a free look into any domain with very (currently) accurate results (including a descent domain value tool).

This site (tool) will evaluate (pretty accurately):
- Google PageRank
- Directory Status (DMOZ and Yahoo)
- Estimated Domain Age
- Amount of Traffic (Alexa and Compete charts and data)
- Social Bookmarking Status (Digg, StumbleUpon, Propellerand Reddit)
- WHOIS Information
- Amount of Backlinks and Indexed Pages (Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, AlltheWeb
- Domain Value ($)

Check it out now at - Check Your PageRank

Microsoft Makes Bold Moves With Live Search

Microsoft has made some pretty large announcements over the last couple of days that have the potential to really have an impact on their overall search engine traffic.

- First, they are replacing (as of February 2009) Google as the default search provider in the browser and via the Windows Live toolbar pre-loaded on consumer and small business Dell PCs with the Windows OS. This agreement is for a period of three years and is similar to existing current agreements with HP & Lenovo.

- Second, Verizon Wireless has selected Microsoft to provide mobile search and mobile advertising services to customers on its devices effective the first half of 2009. The contract is for a period of five years.

Both of these deals follow the recent (October 2008) agreement with Facebook to provide integrated searches on Live.com into the Facebook search box for all US residents. This is a further extension of the partnership Facebook has with Microsoft that dates back to 2006 when Microsoft first started displaying their ads on the social networking site.

Watch out Google and Yahoo here comes Microsoft!

Keyword Suggestions for Mobile Campaigns

Google recently released a new, highly requested update to their Keyword Tool. Their Keyword Tool now has the ability to offer keyword suggestions for mobile campaigns. Just access the Keyword Tool from within any mobile-only ad group and you'll get shorter, mobile-device specific results. (Note that, at this time, mobile suggestions are not available in the stand alone version of the tool so you'll need to be logged into an account directly.)

For more information check out - AdWords Mobile Ads Help Center

Google Confirms Toolbar PageRank (PR) Update

It is not very often that you actually get a Google confirmation that their toolbar PageRank (PR) has been updated, but recently (actually December 30, 2008 at 10:51 pm) Matt Cutts confirmed that it was.

For more information and to see the actual Twitter comment from Matt Cutts click here - Matt Cutt's Twitter Comment

I thought PageRank (PR) was all but dead, but it seems no matter how hard Google tries to distance itself from its main ranking tool, it never actually gets that far.....:-)