pWebTrends is rolling out a new feature to help web markters and developers track specific analytics. The tool is called TagBuilder. It’s online, it’s free and it generates WebTrends data collection tags, which have been rewritten as standardized, object-oriented JavaScript code./p
pHere’s what you can do with TagBuilder:/p
ulliAccess automated click-event tracking for download links, offsite links, form submissions, image maps and navigation areas/liliAutomate parameter mapping and the capture of information from custom META tags for detailed reporting/liliFlexibly define the site with options for single or multiple first-party cookies and the choice of single or multiple on-site domains for accurate cross-domain tracking/liliIntegrate conversion tracking with WebTrends Ad Director, an automated search marketing optimization service/liliEasily create cookies compliant with the U.S. Office of Management Budget policies for federal government web sites/li/ul
p“WebTrends TagBuilder greatly simplifies one of the most arduous, error-prone tasks of web analytics,” said Eric Rickson, product manager for WebTrends. “This free utility lowers the barriers to rich reporting and analysis by providing our customers with a direct way to take advantage of our innovations in data collection.”/p
pWhat do you think of this new tool? Let us know in the comments./p
pRelated Reading:br /
a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080819-095429″WebTrends Launches New Service to Reduce Wasted Ad Dollars/a/pdiv class=”feedflare”
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pRun, don’t walk, to your favorite bookstore and pick up a copy of a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Search-Engine-Marketing-Inc-Companys/dp/0136068685/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1222785498sr=1-2″Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company’s Web Site/a (2nd Edition). Okay, okay, so most search engine marketers will simply order the paperback on Amazon.com. But, somehow 1-click ordering takes all the drama out of buying the latest book by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt./p
pAnd if you don’t believe me, check out what Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and author of the a href=”http://www.toprankblog.com/”Online Marketing Blog/a, has to say: “With Search Engine Marketing, Inc., Bill Hunt and Mike Moran have successfully updated what is already known in the industry as ‘The Search Marketing Bible.’ With new content, examples, and insight including social media and Web site search, this is a must read book for marketers at companies of all sizes from startups to the Fortune 100.”/p
pI interviewed Bill about the new edition of the book back in August at Search Engine Strategies San Jose. And I’ve been keeping the video interview under wraps — until today. You can watch it below — before getting your hands on your very own copy. And, yes, this will be on the mid-term exam./p
pobject width=”425″ height=”344″param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/01M7qCwuJVchl=enfs=1″/paramparam name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”/paramembed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/01M7qCwuJVchl=enfs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″/embed/objectbr /
a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01M7qCwuJVc”strongGreg Jarboe interviews Bill Hunt about his new bookbr /
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pLast week, a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080926-083258″Google launched a site that explained what they feel are the facts behind their search advertising agreement with Yahoo/a. Now, a href=”http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/ysmmanage/permlinks/yahoo-openad/”Yahoo is doing the same/a./p
pThe site does not offer much new in the way of arguments supporting the partnership. Yahoo reiterates the point that advertisers set the price of search ads through the bidding process, and that there will be no price setting between Google and Yahoo. /p
pBut that argument hasn’t seemed to calm many fears. It’s almost like saying, “Hey, if the price goes up, it’s your own fault.”/p
pThere has been no denying that the price could, indeed, rise as a result of the deal. If there was such assurance, that would mean that Yahoo and Google are, in fact, price setting. That would go against Google’s business model that has brought them so much success./p
pMost of this just chalks up to bad timing. The economy is what it is right now, emotions are high, a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080922-090143″fears are high/a. It’s a bad time to defend this deal, whether it has merit or not./pdiv class=”feedflare”
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Lately I’ve been suggesting 11 points to take a little extra time in the posting process on a blog. We’ve looked at everything from choosing topics, to crafting titles, to calls to action, to promoting your posts.

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pGoogle has launched AdWords API Local Database Sync. This allows you to run reports, store them in a local database, and then query that database./p
pThe AdWords API team says that this should make querying a local database faster and more cost effective./p
pJeffrey Posnick a href=”http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/2008/09/now-available-adwords-api-local.html#utm_source=fyiagencynewsutm_medium=blog”informed/a on the code behind the project:/p
blockquoteThe scripts are written in Python, and make use of the SOAPpy libraries for accessing the AdWords API SOAP service. The Python code is written against the dbapi2 database API, and by default it will use the SQLite implementation and store the report data in a SQLite database file on the local file system. It’s possible to swap out the SQLite libraries for another database library that supports the dbapi2 interface./blockquote
pWhat do you think about Local Database Sync? Share your impressions in the comments./p
pRelated Reading:br /
a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080624-100607″Conversion Optimizer Now Supported by Adwords Editor and API/abr /
a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060515-090241″Google Releases Version Four of AdWords API/abr /
a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060412-100340″Google Adds Pricing Model To Google AdWords API: Opens Commercial Use/abr /
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pimg src=”http://searchenginewatch.com/_imgs/authors/hill_carrie.jpg” alt=”Search Engine Watch Expert - Carrie Hill” style=”border: 1px solid #666666″ height=”70″ width=”70″ hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″ align=”right”When you’re competing with hundreds of other Web sites for the attention of just one user, how can you ensure your site stands out? If you look at what you offer, what you make the most money on, and what people are asking for, you can build your Web site to serve the most profitable aspect of that need. In today’s a href=”http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=sew_experts/small_biz_SEM”small business search engine marketing/a column, “a href=”http://searchenginewatch.com/3631028″The Geometry of SEM — What’s your Angle?/a,” Carrie Hill shows how an angle for your Web site and search marketing can mean all the difference between a successful Web site venture and a failure./p
pfont style=”font-weight: bold; color:#D1E0F0″raquo;/font a href=”http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3631028″font style=”color:#336699″Full story/font/abr /
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pimg src=”http://searchenginewatch.com/_imgs/authors/jackson_mark.jpg” alt=”Search Engine Watch Expert - Mark Jackson” style=”border: 1px solid #666666″ height=”70″ width=”70″ hspace=”5″ vspace=”5″ align=”right”Google’s intentions are good, but we must also remember that they aren’t in the business of helping your Web site rank highly in Google. So when Google advises against URL rewriting in their Webmaster Central blog, is there an ulterior motive? In today’s a href=”http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=sew_experts/organic_search”organic SEO/a column, “a href=”http://searchenginewatch.com/3631027″Tin Foil Hat? I Have Mine On/a,” Mark Jackson weighs the pros and cons of URL rewriting, and explores some possible reasons why Google would rather webmasters didn’t do it./p
pfont style=”font-weight: bold; color:#D1E0F0″raquo;/font a href=”http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3631027″font style=”color:#336699″Full story/font/abr /
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I’m really excited today to announce that I have joined the advisory board of Photrade (picture is by Renee Blodgett and is Andrew Paradies, CEO of Photrade). You can read the press release here - but in short, Photrade is a company that excites me on numerous fronts and crosses two of my passions - photography and blogging.
Let me break it down into those two areas:
Photrade for Photographers
Store, Share, Protect and Make Money From Their Photos
Photrade offers photographers of all levels a number of services. At it’s heart is the ability to upload images to online photo albums where you can store and share your shots with the world - however added to this online albumn space is the option to sell copies of your images and to license them to other websites.
In short the vision is to provide a space for both pro and amateur photographers to Store, Share, Protect and Make Money From Their Photos.
I won’t go through the full feature list here and now (I’m obviously a bit biased and have therefore asked one of my DPS moderators to write up a review for DPS) but I’m excited by what I see Photrade developing for photographers. In the mean time you can check out a first impression review of Photrade at Read Write Web and see what TechCrunch had to say about it here.
Photrade for Publishers
Free Copyright Protected Images for Your Blog
Most bloggers and web publishers know the power of a good image to lift our articles […] Read more »

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pGoogle has opened a new office in Reston, Virginia and staffed it with sales people tasked with getting their products used in the government. Their neighbors include widely known government contractors including Northrup Grumman and Raytheon./p
pTheir challenge is to convince government agencies to shift to a cloud computing method. Of course, when you’re dealing with so much confidential information, the gravity of the challenge seems intense indeed./p
pThere is also a Washingtonian sense that the more complex a program is, the more sophisticated it must be. This works against Google’s success which is largely based on making things easier on the user./p
pWhat works in Google’s favor is that workers want to see the same kind of simple-yet-advanced programs at their workplace that they use in their personal life./p
pWhat do you think of Google’s government aspirations? Let us know in the comments./p
pvia a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/28/AR2008092802216_2.html?sub=AR”Washington Post/a/p
pRelated Reading:br /
a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080923-082716″Larry Page to Keynote White Spaces Advocacy Event in DC/abr /
a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070621-122437″Google Getting Serious About Lobbying U.S. Government/abr /
a href=”http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070618-075637″Google Launches Public Policy Blog/a/pdiv class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~f/sewblog?a=AthsL”img src=”http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~f/sewblog?i=AthsL” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~f/sewblog?a=6S7BL”img src=”http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~f/sewblog?i=6S7BL” border=”0″/img/a
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One of the sessions that I enjoyed most at Blog World Expo (actually it was one of the few sessions I actually was able to get to) was a keynote by Gary Vaynerchuck.
While I’m sure he rubs some up the wrong way his tips on building a successful blog (and business) were refreshingly honest, entertaining and inspiring. Here are 13 snippets/quotes of his keynote that I thought were ‘tweet worthy’.

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