PRWeb stops free press release distribution

Since last week, PRWeb stopped free press release distribution; the minimum entry level for distribution through PRWeb is $80/-. The other very popular free press release distribution site, PRLeap, obviously considers this an opportunity to take a shot at PRWeb on their blog.

While we respect a business decision (may be the acquisition of PRWeb by Vocus recently has got something to do with this move), the justification from PRWeb ("the cost of innovation") somehow does not sound too good. Google continues to innovate and offer most of its services for free; some other reasonably good press release distribution providers are providing their services for free. I wishe the "innovators" at PRWeb could have thought of another way of monetizing their service (contextual advertising?).

There could be arguments either way whether PRWeb's move is good or bad for marketers. The positive aspect of this is that it "could" eliminate a lot of spam releases and cluttering the Internet with junk content, and thereby getting genuine content in front of the target audience. On the negative side, this move will prevent many small businesses from taking advantage of online PR and getting search engine visibility.

Here's another question that I am faced with: Is PRWeb really the best in its class? I know it appears to be the most popular with the biggest brand recognition; however, when I compare the search visibility for releases distributed through PRWeb, PRLeap and 24-7pressrelease (with the highest contribution paid to PRWeb), 9 times out of ten I've found releases from 24-7pressrelease & PRLeap figure higher in search results on Google than the release distributed via PRWeb. Haven't been able to figure that one out yet...

So, for marketers who don't want to dole out $80 for distribution via PRWeb, don't worry--- try out PRLeap & 24-&pressrelease.

Combining Yahoo! Mail and YPN

Yahoo's latest financial performance was disappointing according to the CEO, Terry Semel. Besides losing the search battle with Google, what must be worrying for Yahoo is that some of its other lucrative revenue streams also seemt to taking a hit.

However, closely following the financial results, Yahoo announced that it has started inviting advertisers in the US to test out the new search marketing platform (code named Project Panama, which had been delayed for some time). Yahoo is banking on improvements to its search marketing platform to ensure that it does not lose any further ground to Adwords and the Microsoft AdCenter (ideally, they'd want to capture some market share).

I wonder if Yahoo is missing out on a big revenue opportunity with search marketing. As we know, Yahoo launched YPN (the equivalent of Google's AdSense program) some time back; it has probably the most popular web-based e-mail system in the world. How come Yahoo hasn't tried combining YPN (or the contextual ad distribution) with its e-mail system, which recently underwent some major changes? True, the free Yahoo Mail is monetized with other banner advertising, but is Yahoo missing out by not displaying contextual text ads, which it should be able to... While I don't know how much money Gmail brings in for Google, with the kind of user base that Yahoo Mail has, there does seem to be a case for experimenting with something similar, isn't it?

SEO thinking..

Here's a little gem from SEOMoz, which should remind some "SEO specialists" that SEO is really about marketing, a simple fact that is often missed or ignored.


"Honestly, at this point in the SEO game, it pays to be a great business strategist, a creative content developer and a phenomenal marketer far more than an analyzer of algorithms"

The future of AdSense

In the last few weeks and months, there's been so much discussion about the future of AdSense, Google's ad syndication product that allows web site publishers to earn a share of the revenue Google generaates from ad clicks in return for the real estate inventory provided by the website publisher. AdSense has created an economy by itself and its future will have a bearing on a very significant population.

These questions are the result of doubts on the quality of many of these AdSense publishers; as there is a greater awareness of click fraud, more advertisers are either opting out of distribution of their ads on the content network or availing of the option to bid much lower. Either way, this is affecting AdSense publishers, raising questions on whether AdSense is dead. Some pundits have gone ahead and proclaimed it so already.

Personally, I believe AdSense is a great concept and it will live on (it's probably too valuable for Google to let go of it). However, with everything that has happened recently, I wouldn't be surprised if Google were to make some changes with the eligibility criteria for publishers and set some minimum criteria (such as traffic metrics, depth of content on the site, age of the site etc.) before it admits a publisher into its network. Of course, if and when that happens, it wouldn't be good news for a lot of publishers---but that's the price that many of us will have to pay for the deeds of several unscrupulous ones that have tried to game the system.

Perennial problems with the Microsoft Small Business Directory

When the biggest software company in the world cannot seem to fix a problem despite it persisting for ages, it really makes me wonder if they even care...The Microsoft Small Business Directory, regarded a good directory and quite inexpensive ($49 annual listing fee) compared to the Yahoo Directory ($299 ]listing fee, has been giving a problem when one attempts to make a payment for quite some time now. As part of our SEO services, we carry out directory submissions on behalf of our clients; the last five or six times we have tried to buy a listing in the SBD, we've gotten an error message.

Almost adding insult to injury, the error message says "If this is a recurring problem, contact us here" (or something along those lines). That would be opening the door to nowhere... as there is no easy way to communicate the problem being encountered nor understanding what is causing it. Just to be sure that it is not a problem with a local machine that is causing this hardship, we've tried these submissions from different computers, different browsers... with the same (painful) result.

One would expect a company with Microsoft's resources and capabilities to have mechanisms to test and fix such problems and address issues of usability. I wish there was some way to get this message across to the concerned folks...