Google recently announced that they have given up on Google Print Ads program. They announced it on one of their corporate blogs that even after getting 800 newspapers in the fold, it just was not hitting expectations and as of February 28, 2009 it would be shut down.

Yahoo, on the other hand also has around 800 newspapers within its APT program and it is reporting that they are doing quite well. In fact in a recent article in WebProNews it was stated that:

In fact, just a couple weeks ago, A. H. Belo became the first media holding company in the consortium to have all its newspapers on Apt. Other points of interest that Yahoo shared include:

- The cross-sell program (newspaper sales forces selling Yahoo! inventory) is seeing some good successes. Several newspapers have already sold $1 million in ads.

- The majority of the newspapers’ weekly sales revenue is now transacted on Apt.

- Apt enables the Newspaper Consortium to aggregate more inventory, and the platform’s superior behavioral targeting capabilities enable the newspapers to charge higher CPMs.

- Behavioral targeting has been accounting for a rising percentage of the Consortium’s total weekly sales, currently 70% to 80% of total sales.

- They’re also seeing a share shift to newspaper online ads, from outdoor and broadcast.

- Small newspapers are faring well, proving that ad revenue is not necessarily tied to circulation.

- To boost traffic to the newspaper sites, Yahoo! distributes local news headline links across our properties. The links take users directly to the full articles on the newspaper sites. As of December 2008, Yahoo! sends an average 17 million referrals a month to the 300 newspaper sites participating in the content distribution program. We’re very close to topping 200 million referrals. This means a wider local audience reach and more inventory for advertisers. A.H. Belo’s Dallas Morning News says that the headline placements on Yahoo.com can account for up to 27% of a day’s page views and up to 65% of a day’s unique visitors.

So, what does this tell us? It may just be a reminder that Google cannot guarantee success with all of their ventures or it may indicate that Yahoo may have lower expectations for their program or maybe, just maybe it says – one point for Yahoo. Game on….:-)

Reference Links:

Google says, “Turning the page on Print Ads” from the official Google Print Ads blog.

Yahoo says, “Yahoo Not Doing Too Bad in Newspapers” from article in WebProNews.

Just a quick heads-up that I have recently made some changes to the blog as it is becoming more and more popular (to date between 100-200 unique visitors a day, if you care). They are listed below:

- I am now allowing anonymous postings, but all postings will be reviewed before being posted and ANY posts with links in them that are not relevant to the post will be denied without any consideration for the comment content (sorry, but I can’t stand the spamming).

- All posts will not have a visible link to any place that is linking to that post.

- Added the ‘official’ Traffic Flow SEO logo into the header (seems to look much better in Firefox than Internet Explorer – will look into that).

- Fixed the RSS feed problem.

I hope that these changes will foster an even better and engaging environment for the readers and participation on post topics.

While this may not be search engine marketing related (directly), it is an exciting day for me (and the world) and I wanted to share it with everyone for better or worse (hopefully most agree and it is for the better). I am a firm believer is CHANGE and am excited about the opportunities that the new Obama administration can bring and think the website is a small, but important reflection of the change that is coming.

Check out the updated site now at – WhiteHouse.gov site

For more on the Inauguration check out – Inauguration Around the Net

While looking at some new online tools I stumbled onto this great site to analyze who is actually hosting a site. I think this may be helpful for people who are looking for a good host and may want to check out who other people are using (especially if they are buying a script and what to see who everyone else is using as a web host).

Here is the FAQ from the site (for more information):

*** Why use Who Is Hosting This instead of Domain Tools, Netcraft etc?

Most webmaster tools struggle with one simple question: who really hosts a website?

Let’s take an example. DomainTools or Netcraft might give you the impression that HostGator.com is hosted by The Planet. Obviously it’s not – it’s hosted by HostGator! – but they rent space in The Planet’s datacenter/IP range.

Knowing the real web host is invaluable if you need to issue a DMCA complaint, libel papers or report a DDoS attack as a matter of urgency.

WIHT uses several data sources to provide more accurate results.

*** Are your hosting results 100% accurate?

As far as we know, there is no way to provide 100% accurate results. However, we use several data sources to find out who is hosting a website, including feedback from users. You can help by reporting bad results for us to investigate.

*** I’m pretty sure these results are wrong…

Most likely, it’s because either:

1. This host is a reseller of a bigger hosting company, or they rent rackspace or an IP range. Our results may sometimes show the IP range owner (not the reseller), but we endeavor to identify both, where possible.

2. The site you requested changed their hosting provider recently and our data has not yet updated.

Found an inaccurate result? Please let us know.

*** I entered a domain, and got that same website as the web host. What gives?

This website is self-hosted, and the company responsible has their own IP range. Some common examples are Amazon and eBay. Unfortunately, we are unable to providemore detailed information about their hosting setups.

Check it out here – WhoIsHostingThis?

UPDATE! – 1/20/09

Found another great site with even more hosting detail information including maps and additional host location insights. The link can be found below:

Click here – Who is Hosting this Site – Khrido Free SEO Tools

I was happy to find an email today from Aaron Wall at SEO Book letting me know about his new SEO/SEM toolbar. While I am not a big fan of toolbars, I am a big fan of Aaron and his site, so I went to check it out.

After a few moments of looking through the capabilities, I downloaded it immediately and have to say I have NEVER seen anything like it. This toolbar literally does EVERYTHING! The list of features is so long that I am not going to even try to attempt to list them here, I am just going to provide link and let you check them out yourself.

Click here for the free – SEO Book Toolbar information and downloads

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

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

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…:-)

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 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!