Gastaword's Blog

Chocolate Snowmen &Questions we are often asked about Google

gastaword — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:27:45 +0000

One of the questions we are always asked is why should I use Gasta search and not Google? Well,one reason is local content, also fairer advertising costs as we do not use the often abused Pay per Click model. With Gasta search you can get as many clicks as you like because you only pay for the alloted time you have purchased your advert slot duration. heres an example: If i buy an InstantAd for the keywords ‘Chocolate snowman’ for 3 months, at a cost of 30 Euros (it is christmas) I can get an estimated 300 hits to my landing page, now multiply that by 30 because that is how many keywords you get for one InstantAd on Gasta search. 30 keywords =3 months.

Now is that serving small businesses in a proper way or not? to get the same amount of traffic in one day from Google would cost a company hundreds of dollars. same with our prestige SearchMatch Ad platform

What is SearchMatch?

Gasta Keyword SearchMatch™ offers you the opportunity to purchase a keyword or keyword phrase for up to 1 year. Be seen by up to 20 million users per month on the complete Gasta Adnetwork. Best of all you can control and modify your advert during the lifetime of its campaign When a users searches using your keyword your site will come up in the number 1 prime position. SearchMatch™ makes it easy for you to achieve number 1 rank and you don’t even have to wait as your site will be listed automatically.

SearchMatch allows you to purchase a keyword or phrase with the Gasta Search Network. When a user searches for your term you will be listed as the first result. We help you reach you target audience using our geo-targeting system. You can revise your ad text and links and any time. What is a keyword or phrase? Keywords or keyword phrases are selected by you and should help describe your site, product or service that you are promoting. For example if you ran a jewellery shop and you choose a keyword ‘diamonds’, now when I enter my search term as ‘diamonds’ your ad will appear as a sponsored link. How Many keywords can I purchase? As many as you require, you will only be charged per keyword/phrase. Contact us to buy a bulk listing at a discounted price.

Why do I want to be at the top? When a user enters a search term that matches one of your keywords or keyword phrases your SearchMatch™ Keyword or keyword phrase is displayed. The further up the results page the more likely it is that a user will choose to click on your listing. Where will my ads appear? For an up-to-date partners list go here What does it cost? Rate Card The other reason why people prefer Gasta search instead of Google is a thing called a ‘Filter Bubble’ this is like what Google uses to provide you with results it thinks you like (because it remembers what you searched for!) We don’t do that, period. we believe in your right to privacy and do not in the slightest way manage or manipulate our user searches.

We also do not filter your news or views,all blogs are welcome on our network. We promote web freedom and nuetrality.

We do not accept pornographic adverts, there is a warning on our advertising pages that states Advertising Policy Gasta Search Network does not support the promotion of or proliferation of Gambling, Adult or Gorish Content. Any Advertiser who knowingly cloaks or otherwise disguises adverts to lead to banned content will have the ads stopped will no refund. Gasta Search Networks continuously monitors third party information sources for unwanted and undesirable content. Gasta would like to thank our supports and users for assisting us in our efforts to maintain the credibility and family values of our search network.

Gasta Tech Update: LinkedIn traffic generation ob Gasta shared links

gastaword — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:22:13 +0000

Gasta Tech Update: LinkedIn traffic generation ob Gasta shared links

Gasta Search network Url shorteners and share apps in the search prove a winners with building resources and links from LinkedIn and Twitter.

LinkedIn Has New Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Site
Chris Crum | Staff Writer
April 24, 2010

http://www.WebProNews.com

Some Count LinkedIn as Top 5 Traffic Source

When you think about traffic-driving social networks, LinkedIn may not be the first thing that comes to your mind, and truth be told, there’s a good chance it will not drive the kind of traffic Twitter or Facebook will for your site. However, some sites have found it to be a quite valuable traffic tool, and the company seems to want to further cement its status as such.

LinkedIn reportedly has about 65 million members. That may not seem like much compared to Facebooks 400 million (likely well over that by now in reality), but LinkedIn can bring a different brand of relevance to the table.

Has LinkedIn become an integral part to your marketing?
Let Us Know Here
Earlier this year, we talked to entrepreneur Lewis Howes (who claims that LinkedIn is one of the top traffic sources to his blogs) about how powerful LinkedIn can be for driving traffic. He had written on the subject previously at Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger. “You need to take into consideration that LinkedIn has the highest average household income per user over any other social networking site (even NYTimes.com and BusinessWeek.com readers),” Howes told us. “That being said, these are business decision makers you are targeting with your traffic from LinkedIn. The network is for real, and it will only continue to grow in time…”

What’s New

LinkedIn has announced some changes to its news sharing options, and some of them just may help content spread more like it would on Twitter. Notable changes include:

comScore Talks Mobile, Retail, and Chatroulette
Click Here to Watch the Live Video Now

1. Public vs. Private – Users now get complete control over who sees what they’re sharing (everyone, connections, a group, or one person).

2. Images and article excerpt – Facebook-style images/excerpts that can increase clickthrough potential.

3. See and delete your own posts – preview, edit, and delete options for status updates to prevent typos.

4. Easily re-share – LinkedIn’s version of the retweet – just click a button and share content with connections, groups or individuals. This could be a huge factor for traffic. Retweets are great for making content go viral.

5. Improved off-site sharing experience – Now content sites will be able to offer a similar sharing process for LinkedIn to its own internal re-share feature.

6. The URL shortener (Lnkd.in) – LinkedIn calls this a companion to its Twitter integration.

7. Attribution – Re-shared articles give “via-style” credit by attributing something you re-share to the person who shared it with you.

8. Shared items on your profile – If a user chooses to make shared items public, they will appear on their profile.

Howes told us that people don’t generally associate LinkedIn with driving traffic, and that their perception of it is more like a resume or a way to get a job. “They don’t see all of the powerful tools within LinkedIn that allow you to drive traffic back to your site,” he said.

LinkedIn has recently launched some new integrations that can only help with a user’s traffic strategy – notably, integrations with Twitter and Microsoft Outlook. “The Outlook integration is a way to connect more with your current LinkedIn contacts, and also help you grow you network as well,” Howes noted. The Twitter integration obviously lets you tap into the following you already have on Twitter, which has already proven to be a significant traffic-driving tool.

Gasta White Label viral search

gastaword — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:20:29 +0000

Gasta White label; the amoebic replicant

Gasta the amoebic replicant

Growing faster and replicating itself across the universe how big can Gasta get?

Gasta disseminates information and like an electronic amoeba spreads the information across networks, when a search is made on Gasta the search keyword is collected and collated for popularity, the most popular keywords are then added to the list of Gasta directories; this is all carried out in quantum nanoseconds (on the fly). Web marketers and SME’s then have the opportunity to create an IntantLink ™ to that directory. This is a new innovation in web directories and dynamic linking, and part of the new exciting gasta interface. When designing a new interface a range of disciplines must be used to create the best experience for the interface user, Gasta.com’s new interface is designed to give the maximum use of directories but at the same time make easier to use the search tool. Having morphed from an old school directory like Yahoo, Gasta has now harnessed the minimalist elements of Google and tied these to the directory listing by popular keywords. This is very new and very creative design for the launch of Gasta web2.0 with the additional tools of predictive search assists, playlists, and transparent search history we give the user more power to search faster, and more precisely.

Europasearch & Gasta.com European Search Network

Gasta Tech Update: Hitwise Europe

gastaword — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:19:11 +0000

Gasta Tech Update: Hitwise Europe

Hitwise News On Gasta.com

Feature Article
The brands topping the World Cup sponsorship league
Peroni, sponsors of the Italian team and England sponsors, Carlsberg saw the greatest number of UK Internet searches of all World Cup sponsors during the week ending 26/06/2010. Searches for Peroni, increased by 50% between the week ending June 19 and the week ending June 26, although the Italian team were on their way home from South Africa by June 24. Peroni’s Experian Hitwise World Cup Index score increased from 100 to 150 based upon the volume of searches for the brand.

The promise of a last-16 tie against Germany saw UK Internet searches for Carlsberg increase by a third, while searches for Pepsi, sponsors of the USA, increased by the same amount. Telecoms businesses T-Mobile and Vodafone (down from fourth place in week two’s index) completed the top five, but with a much lower increase in the volume of searches.

The results highlight the relative dominance of drinks brands in generating online buzz in the 2010 World Cup. Budweiser topped the brand index for the week ending 26/06/2010 with a 25% increase in online searches, while in the first week of the tournament, beer companies made up four of the top five performers.

Overall the best performing sector was food and drink, with a 4.8% increase in searches, followed by technology and telecoms with a 2.8% increase.

View the full article and past Brand Indexes.
Brand Index Week 3 – top five performers
Rank Brand Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index, w/e 19th June Experian Hitwise Brand Search Index w/e 26th June Week on week change (%)
1. Peroni 100 150 50.0%
2. Carlsberg 60 80 33.3%
3. Pepsi 49 65 33.3%
4. T-Mobile 110 118 7.2%
5. Vodafone 127 136 7.0%

Fast Movers
LoveFilm – www.lovefilm.com

Position for April 2010 – #134
Position for May 2010 – #89
Positions jumped – 45

Ranking 89th during May 2010, LoveFilm is now one of the top 100 websites in the UK, and the 11th most popular online retailer (putting it ahead of a number of big names including: B&Q, ASOS, Apple, Top Shop, Currys, and HMV). LoveFilm is also the second most visited movie website in the UK after IMDB.

Since taking over Amazon’s DVD rental business in early 2008, UK internet traffic to LoveFilm has increased by 150%. Unlike most other retailers, the DVD rental subscription service isn’t particularly reliant on search engines for traffic (they account for just one-fifth of visits vs. two-fifths for the typical retailer). Instead, other key sources of traffic are social networks (it is the 8th most popular retailer visited after Facebook), email and entertainment websites – with much of the former traffic coming via advertising, affiliates and refer a friend schemes.

News In Brief
Budget 2010: the online response
Given the wide range of changes introduced in the recent budget announcement, it was no surprise that many people went online to research both the key points and finer details. On 22/06/2010 1 in every 179 UK searches was budget related, including 21 of the top 1000 terms. ‘budget 2010′ was the 25th most searched for term in the UK on the day of the budget announcement, making it the top generic term (‘budget’ was 29th overall and ‘world cup 2010′ was 32nd).

After a number of the variations on the word ‘budget’, the next most popular term was ‘capital gains tax’, with tax credits, child benefit, VAT and the disability living allowance also picking up references in the top 1,000. ‘bbc budget’ was the top branded term (‘sky news live’ fell slightly outside of the top 1,000) and George Osbourne was the most searched for politician, followed by Harriet Harman (also falling outside the top 1,000).

As expected, both BBC News and Sky News experienced spikes in traffic following the budget announcement. Taking into account some of the smaller sites that benefited from traffic, Telegraph Blogs experienced the biggest increase (87% increase in UK Internet visits between 21/06/10 and 22/06/10), followed by Telegraph Shares (85%), Yahoo! Finance (74%) and MSN Money (60%).

View the 21 budget-related terms and read the full article.

Promotions
Hitwise 101 Training Webinar
Whether you are new to Hitwise or simply in need of a refresher, this 45 minute pre-recorded webinar will help you get the most out of your Hitwise subscription.

View the recording.

Hot Consumer Electronics List

The Hot Consumer Electronics List is a dynamic Excel-based report which leverages Hitwise’s weekly search term data to produce an on-the-pulse view of the Consumer Electronics sector in the UK. Email marketing.uk@hitwise.com to find out how the Hot Consumer Electronics List helps marketers maximise PPC investment, assess and adjust search strategy to increase profits, maximise content appeal, effectively manage supply chains and improve campaign scheduling.

Media queries at Hitwise
If you are interested in using Hitwise content and statistics in publications and presentations, we encourage you to do so. Please source the content as “Hitwise United Kingdom – www.hitwise.com/uk”.
Additionally, if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact our marketing team at newsletter.uk@hitwise.com.

Posted by Achilles at 6:35 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Labels: 50% rise in sales, aquisitions, Belfastmediagroup, Bill Gates, Gasta search network, Gasta Shopping, gasta traffic., Gasta Twitter

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Gasta Tech Update: Hitwise North America Newsletter

Gasta Hitwise North America Newsletter – June, 2010

Feature Article
Google Share of Searches at 71 Percent for April 2010
Experian Hitwise announced that Google accounted for 71.40 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending May 1, 2010. Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask received 14.96 percent, 9.43 percent and 2.18 percent, respectively. The remaining 78 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 2.03 percent of U.S. searches.

Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, were flat between March 2010 and April 2010. The same time period showed that shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – also were flat from month to month. Two-word searches comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 23.06 percent of all queries, and increased 1 percent in April 2010.

Marketing Forward
Hitwise is Marketing Forward!
There’s a new energy in marketing fueled by the need to gain a more vivid and complete picture of today’s multichannel consumer. As a part of Experian Marketing Services, Hitwise helps clients harness this energy to move marketing forward by leveraging consumer behavior insights to improve marketing effectiveness and empower customers to be loyal brand advocates.

We are excited to help you market forward while continuing to increase revenue and customer loyalty for your business. Learn more.

Search Terms Analysis
Fast Moving Search Terms to Travel
Hitwise Search Intelligence™ data reveals the top fast moving search terms for the Travel industry. The results are ranked by largest increase for the week ending May 15, 2010 versus the week ending April 17, 2010.
Fast Moving Search Terms for Travel Industry for the week ending 05/15/10 versus 04/17/10
Rank Search Term
1. jetblue 10 dollar flights
2. jacksonville nc hotels
3. greyhound bus station locations
4. vacation packages to las vegas
5. bolt bus
6. magic kingdom ticket prices
7. discount airfare websites
8. pet friendly vacation rentals montana
9. wild waves
10. myrtlebeach.com

Fast Movers
Yves Rocher USA – www.yvesrocherusa.com

Rank week ending – May 15, 2010 – 7
Rank week ending – May 8, 2010 – 44
Positions jumped – 37

The Yves Rocher USA website moved up 37 positions in the Lifestyle – Beauty Industry visited by U.S. Internet users (week ending May 15, 2010) to rank number 4 and number 3,339 among all websites. Of the website’s total traffic, 53 percent consisted of returning visitors. The top three websites visited after the Yves Rocher USA website were My Points, secureorder.yvesrocherusa.com and T.G.I Friday’s.

The top DMA® (Designated Marketed Areas) of visitors to the Yves Rocher USA website were from New York, NY (5.76%), Los Angeles, CA (4.15%) and Boston, MA (2.62%). The majority of visitors to the website were female (78%), aged 25-34 years (26%) with a household income of $30-$60K per year (35%) for the four weeks ending 05/15/10. Other websites with a similar demographic profile to the Yves Rocher USA website were BettyCrocker.com, QualityHealth.com and yourAVON.com.

Leveraging Competitive Intelligence
Understanding Competitors’ Advertising Strategies by Comparing to Your Audience

By using Hitwise Demographics and Lifestyle tools, you can identify the differences between your website’s audience and your competitors, industries and overall online population. For example, if you are IngDirect.com and your competitor is Etrade.com, by conducting an audience ‘Compare With’ report you will compare the key differences between two websites. In the chart below, you can see how ING Direct’s audience profile differs from E* Financial by age. The representation index is highest for the 25-34 age brackets, where IngDirect.com attracts 14.17% more of the audience than Etrade.com with a share of 26% for the four weeks ending 05/15/2010. This insight is invaluable for gaining a competitive edge over your direct competitors.

For Hitwise clients who would like to discuss this product further, please contact Hitwise Customer Support. To learn more about Hitwise Demographics, view the Hitwise Demographics Product Fact Sheet.

Category Spotlight
Entertainment – Television
Any sites related to TV are listed in this category, including the official websites of TV shows, television stations, ratings guides, program TV production companies and cable information. The data below is based on All sites – Weekly rankings for the week ending 05/15/2010 – Ranks by ‘Visits.’
Entertainment – Television – All sites – Weekly rankings for the week ending 05/15/10 – Ranks by ‘Visits’
Rank Website
1. The Weather Channel – US
2. MSNBC
3. CNN.com
4. ESPN
5. Hulu
6. Fox News
7. FOX Sports on MSN
8. ABC
9. Yahoo! TV
10. QVC.com

Local Competitiveness Index

97.5%
of traffic to this category was directed at domestic sites.

Top 10 Upstream Industries
Rank Industries Upstream Clicks
1. Computers and Internet 57.83%
2. Search Engines (Computers and Internet) 23.42%
3. Entertainment 17.54%
4. Portal Frontpages (Computers and Internet) 17.15%
5. News and Media 11.59%
6. Social Networking and Forums (Computers and Internet) 10.87%
7. Television (Entertainment) 10.59%
8. Email Services (Computers and Internet) 5.24%
9. Sports 4.55%
10. Broadcast Media (News and Media) 4.25%

Top 10 Downstream Industries
Rank Industries Downstream Clicks
1. Computers and Internet 28.28%
2. Entertainment 25.02%
3. News and Media 17.13%
4. Television (Entertainment) 13.99%
5. Sports 11.83%
6. Social Networking and Forums (Computers and Internet) 10.84%
7. Broadcast Media (News and Media) 8.44%
8. Search Engines (Computers and Internet) 8.14%
9. Lifestyle 6.53%
10. Business and Finance 6.22%

Online Segmentation Snapshot
The Most Popular Real Estate Websites for Hispanic Women
Using Hitwise Lifestyle, which incorporates MOSAIC USA, a leading household segmentation system, you can identify the most popular sites in an industry that attract a specific segment. For example, the top three websites in the Business and Finance – Real Estate category that attracted the largest volume of Hispanic women in the “Nuevo Hispanic Families” segment were Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), MRMLS Central Site and Movoto, Inc for the four weeks ending 05/15/10.

The Nuevo Hispanic Families Type consists of young Hispanic family households living in working-class neighborhoods, and they are generally under 45 years old. They earn lower-middle incomes from jobs as food service workers, retail clerks and construction laborers. As a family, they are frequent shoppers who like to browse stores patronizing retailers that sell athletic attire, such as, Finish Line, Nike and Footlocker. What Nuevo Hispanic Families may lack in money, they more than make up in their passion for various media. They love to watch network and cable television, especially family-friendly fare including Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network. Lifestyle data is available on over 30,000 websites.

To learn more about Hitwise Lifestyle, contact Hitwise.
Top Business and Finance – Real Estate Websites visited by Hispanic Females for the four weeks ending 05/15/10
Rank Site Domain Gender % Mosaic USA Type %
1. Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) www.naca.com 56.14% 5.15%
2. MRMLS Central Site www.imrmls.com 46.64% 4.96%
3. Movoto, Inc www.movoto.com 45.28% 4.57%
4. Westfield Shopping Centres – United States www.westfield.com 49.57% 3.79%
5. RoomMates.com www.roommates.com 52.05% 3.50%

Hitwise Intelligence Blogs
Canadian Searches for Loans and Credit Cards See Gains
June 2, 2010 – Heather Hopkins

Canadian internet searches for loans and credit cards showed gains year over year in the first quarter of 2010, reflecting the financial strain felt by consumers. Year over year, searches for loans increased 19.2% to the first quarter of 2010. Searches for loans showed a quarterly increase (comparing Q4 2009 and Q1 2010) of 42.5% likely a result of consumers searching for post-holiday shopping financial assistance.

This analysis was assembled for the Experian Insight Index that we recently published in the US, identifying key internet search trends against today’s economic backdrop. I posted the first set of findings from the Canadian market a couple of weeks ago.

Media queries at Hitwise
If you are interested in using Hitwise content and statistics in publications and presentations, we encourage you to do so. Please source the content as “Hitwise North America – www.hitwise.com/us”.
Additionally – if you require assistance with statistics or content, please feel free to contact Matt Tatham at press@hitwise.com.

About this Newsletter
This monthly e-mail Newsletter is designed to provide Hitwise subscribers with analysis of new developments, industry trends and competitive activity. The powerful real-time web intelligence capabilities of Hitwise and a continual flow of additional research findings make this an indispensable business resource.

Gasta.com Tech Update: major UK push for Bing

gastaword — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:33:54 +0000

Gasta.com Tech Update: major UK push for Bing

Microsoft launches major UK push for Bing
Big ad campaign urging ‘Bing and decide’By Patrick Goss

Microsoft has announced that it will launch a major advertising campaign to encourage the UK to start using its Bing search engine.

The advertising campaign – which will run across major television stations – will use the slogan ‘Bing and decide’ and is aiming, in Microsoft’s words, to help searchers make more informed decisions.

Microsoft’s UK MD Ashley Highfield spoke to TechRadar last month about the need to up public awareness and get people to give Bing a try rather than sticking with search’s 500 pound gorilla Google.

PR story to tell

“I think that we do need to have a marketing campaign and I think that the promotion we can give to it from some of our assets like MSN is very important,” Highfield told TechRadar.

“We’ve got a PR story to tell. When people have used a product for the best part of a decade they don’t realise that – particularly as ‘to Google’ has become a verb – their Hoover is looking a bit old fashioned next to the Dyson.

“We’re Dyson – we’ve got the better product. Now Dyson came from nowhere and has become the UK’s number one hoover.

“I want people to Google in Bing.”

Tough task

Of course, actually persuading people to move away from a search engine that, for many, has become synonymous with the internet is going to be a tough ask.

“Bing is new, fresh and not another ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ project, concluded Highfield.

“This is trench warfare and it won’t be over in days and months but years.”

UK-Based Gasta Search Engine Network Enters Into Sales / Merger Talks

gastaword — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:32:07 +0000

UK-Based Gasta Search Engine Network Enters Into Sales / Merger Talks

The Gasta search network is a blended search that will deliver web results, news, videos, and images with one single keyword search, then lets users social bookmark search results in their own library. The Gasta search network extends its reach into Europe and USA, has search engines launched in South Africa, China, and Japan.
Gasta is a European trademark and the Gasta search engine was last year’s winner of the PWC award for innovation, it also holds one of the UK most valuable property domain holdings.

Belfast, Ireland – October 09, 2008 – It was announced here today that the Belfast-based web 2.0 Search Engine Network Gasta is in talks with several companies for a possible sale or merger. A well established player in European, US, and Asian search, The Gasta.com search engine network currently consists of 450+ Domains, is translated into six languages, offers a contextualised ad system, powerful SEO options, keyword management tools, and full service administration to create, launch, and quickly deploy new search engines in emerging markets and geographical regions as needed.

Gasta has created a very easy to use back-end admin system that is designed for non technical use, within the admin you can add new keywords, manage ad campaigns, replicate advertising codes, and launch new search index’s and directories in minutes, Gasta has developed its own text based contextualised ad system, InstantAds™ and the keyword direct hit service SearchMatch™ allowing users to buy targeted keywords for the geographic region they do business in. As well as this there are many seo options including InstantLinks™ the free link exchange system that publishes the main directory.” We can launch new search engines in emerging regions very easily, with the rapid deployment platform we have developed” said Higgins. “We can launch in Poland and Malaysia very quickly and have been looking out for possible local partners on the ground in these regions”.

While Gasta.com is well-established in the Search Industry, it has chosen to maintain a low profile and provided state of the art services to its visitors and advertisers. Christian Nielsen, owner of Nielsentech.com, an Internet consulting firm located in the US said he has used Gasta for many years. “Yes, I was submitting client sites to Gasta’s system back as early as 1999 when we started doing SEO and web promotion. They have evolved over the years, and we have keep in contact due to their attitude of service and ethics. Most other firms in the US don’t seem to know about them and that’s been a competitive edge for us.”

Gasta.com owner Francis Higgins believes that now is a ‘good time’ to transition the search engines network due to the convergence of web 2.0 technologies. Higgins said “We believe that we have created great distribution platform to easily explore and rapidly develop new and emerging regions. We have looked into the possibility of partnering with a mobile carrier to deliver local mobile search in which great opportunities are coming in the future, Gasta works well now on mobiles but we would need the expertise of the big carriers to make an impact and monetise the service.

We have worked hard over the past 12 years to improve the reach and the depth of the Gasta network. With the rapid deployment and white label solution we have developed we can quickly launch blended search engines that will bring up web results, videos, news, and images with one keyword. Our brand commands a high level of respect by those that are familiar with us and those that do some research will see our extensive digital footprint built up over the years that shows our quality and consistency and has established our brand’s value in the search marketing industry.”

Contacts
Francis Higgins
Comm Director Gasta Search Networks

Gasta Organic Search Marketing

gastaword — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:55:00 +0000

Organic Search Engine
Marketing – It Really Works! by Brooks Donner

While helping traditional ecommerce companies boost their organic search engine marketing, I realized that the services and techniques we apply to those traditional ecommerce clients can be utilized by Internet marketers anywhere and everywhere, including affiliate marketers!
My realization led me to write this article. My goal here is to outline the general process and techniques we employ for organic search engine marketing.I’m going to construct the body of this article with the following sections:
1. Organic search engine marketing v. paid search engine marketing (PPC)
2. Blogs v. static web pages
3. Long tail keywords v. short head keywords
4. Unique content and Web 3.0
5. Internet marketing and Web 2.0
1. Organic Search Engine Marketing v. Paid Search Engine Marketing (PPC)
Organic search engine marketing is marketing a website to improve the ranking for its web pages in the organic, or natural, search engine results pages (SERPs).
Paid search engine marketing is incorporating paid advertising strategies such as Google’s Adwords or Yahoo’s Search Marketing in order to be listed in the “sponsored” or “advertisement” sections of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
With the increasing costs of paid search engine marketing, advertisers have been suffering from a downward trend in return on investment (ROI). On the other hand, with more sophisticated and proven strategies for organic search engine marketing, the return on investment (ROI) for those who market to rank higher naturally in the SERPs is increasing. Therefore, we advise ecommerce companies, affiliates and super-affiliates alike to shift their resources from paid search engine marketing to organic search engine marketing.
2. Blogs v. Static Web Pages
Blogs have an inherent and distinct advantage over static web pages. Search engines like blogs better. Everything being equal (design, content, page layout, H tags, Alt tags, age, etc.), a blog page will outrank a static web page more often than not. However, all things are not equal! Blogs take advantage of plug-ins, or features, to be very search engine friendly. We create and customize “Power Blogs” for our clients. A “Power Blog” is a search engine friendly WordPress blog with tons of SEO plug-ins. Once we install a Power Blog we use it as a platform for Web 2.0 marketing, a.k.a. social marketing.
The benefits of our Power Blog include:
(A) Multi-Channel Visitor Strategy – Instead of having Google be responsible for 95% of your visitors, now you can also get visitors from all of the Blog Search Engines. Because blogs use RSS (really simple syndication), you will find that other websites are syndicating your content on their websites, bringing you more visitors and links. By having multiple streams of visitors you protect yourself in case one of your traffic streams starts to underperform.
(B) Free Links To Your Site – The amount of links that you have to your site plays a huge role in how highly you rank on Google. By utilizing the Trackback feature in WordPress, you can automatically get other websites to link to you for free.
3. Long Tail Keywords v. Short Head Keywords
Remember, this is called “Organic Search Engine Marketing”…..it’s marketing, and marketing needs a focus. In order to focus in on what to market for, you need to have a solid foundation of the main keywords that describe your business and/or products that you are selling. These main keywords are one to three phrase keywords (or keyword phrases) generally speaking and are more than likely highly competitive. These types of keywords are known as “Short Head” keywords. For example, “car insurance.”
Once you know your short head keywords, you will want to market directly to more specific, longer keywords related to the main short head keywords. These longer, more specific keywords are known as “Long Tail” keywords. For example, “car insurance discounts in Georgia.”
Although the traffic for each long tail keyword is usually much less than its short tail relative, if you add up all the long tail keywords, they will usually add up to much more traffíc and most importantly, targeted traffíc, than the short tail keywords alone.
4. Unique Content and Web 3.0
Once you have targeted the long tail keywords for your business or niche, then you can start marketing for them.
The cornerstone for organic search engine marketing is unique content creation. Whether it’s 500-word articles, blog posts, blog comments, forum posts, social snippets, or videos, you are going to want to be able to create unique content based on your long tail keywords.
Web 3.0 is a term that refers to the future of the World Wide Web. In our opinion, that future includes the “Semantic Web” or web use affected by artificial intelligence. Sounds kind of like Star Wars, Alien and E.T. all wrapped into one big and scary WWW…doesn’t it?! Well, not really of course. Semantic Web in this case just means that search engines will be able to figure out what a web page is all about in a different, more intelligent way. The major idea here is that search engines will take a more encompassing view at a page and understand its meaning rather making a determination based on figuring out which keywords pop up most often. In this new Web 3.0 scenario, a search engine might find a web page on “sun tanning in Florida” to also be quite relevant to “sun tan oil application” and therefore líst this example page in the search engine results pages under both keywords.
What does Web 3.0 mean to you? Basically, when creating your unique content, keep the semantic web concept in mind and use synonyms for your target keyword wherever it’s natural. Don’t stuff keywords in your content, i.e. use a keyword just to use it and not when it should be used naturally…and don’t stuff keyword synonyms either!
5. Internet Marketing and Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is the “Social Web,” so naturally, the concept of social marketing should apply to today’s Internet Marketing strategies.
Social marketing includes posting on social networking, social news and social bookmarking websites.
You can also think of blogging as part of Web 2.0, and of course you’re covered because you have read Section 2 above.
In conclusion, whether you own your ecommerce business and sell your products, or if you are an affiliate or super-affiliate, organic search engine marketing must be on your “actions líst.” In the long run, outranking your competitors in the search engine results pages proves to bring a higher return on investment (ROI) than trying to out-advertise your competitors in paid search engine marketing.
You now have the basic know-how to create your organic search engine marketing strategy.
Brooks Donner
About The Author
Want more visitors to your website? We can help you! Contact TopLine Media Group today to start driving unlímited & free targeted traffíc using our Organic Search Engine Marketing service. Plus, get a no-obligation Free Internet Marketing Consultation at http://www.TopLineMediaGroup.com .

Gasta News :socialmedian election widget

gastaword — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:48:00 +0000

Help us test the socialmedian election widget
By Jason Goldberg on October 28, 2008 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
socialmedian blog readers: I wanted to provide you with a first look at http://election.socialmedian.com, a site we are launching with the Washington Post and other partners like The Guardian to help people track and participate in election 2008 coverage.

We will formally announce the new site tomorrow (Wednesday)…you can use it now but it is still a work in progress.

The http://election.socialmedian.com site aggregates news and user-feeds related to the election and enables users to join in the election coverage and discussion. We created this site with The Washington Post to enable people to track all the election news from thousands of news sources as well as from Twitter feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and more all in one place, and (importantly) to join-in and add their own feeds from their favorite sites to provide user reports leading up to and on election day.

You can sign up for the page immediately and add your feeds. Add your Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog site etc. and we’ll automatically add your relevant contributions on those sites to this page.

Starting Wednesday users will also be able to eaisly grab a widget of this page to put on your own websites and blogs. The WashingtonPost and The Guardian are just two of the first websites that have signed up to use this widget. The widget will highlight user submitted news and reports –> so this is a great way to get your election day coverage on these and other leading sites.

Gasta News:Microsoft, Google and Yahoo

gastaword — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:35:00 +0000

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have signed a global code of conduct promising to offer better protection for online free speech and against official intrusion.
The Global Network Initiative follows criticism that companies were assisting governments in countries like China to censor the Internet.
The guidelines seek to limit what data should be shared with authorities, in cases where free speech is an issue.
“This is an important first step,” said Mike Posner of Human Rights First.
He told the BBC “What this is is a recognition by all these tech companies, the human rights groups and social investors that there has to be a collective response to this growing problem.
“Companies need to step up to the plate and be more aggressive in challenging unwarranted government interference,” he said.
The initiative states that privacy is “a human right and guarantor of human dignity,” and the agreement commits the companies to try to resist overly broad demands for restrictions on freedom of speech and the privacy of users.
They will also assess the human rights climate in a country before concluding business deals and make sure their employees and partners follow suit.
“These principles are not going to be a silver bullet, but the most important point for me is to provide transparency,” said Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“We have joined this initiative because we know that a wide range of groups working together can achieve much more than the company acting alone,” said Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s director of global public policy.
‘Valuable roadmap’
The impetus for such an agreement follows years of criticism that a number of businesses, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have complicity built what has been dubbed the “Great Firewall of China”.
Google has been accused of complying with Chinese government demands to filter internet searches to eliminate query results regarding topics such as democracy or Tiananmen Square.
Microsoft has come under attack for blocking the blog of a prominent Chinese Media researcher who posted articles critical of a management purge at the Beijing News Daily.
Canadian researchers uncovered that a Skype joint venture in China monitored users’ communications.
And a Chinese reporter Shi Tao was jailed for 10 years after Yahoo China provided his personal information to the Chinese government.
Today Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang welcomed the new code of conduct.
“These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted.
“Yahoo was founded on the belief that promoting access to information can enrich people’s lives and the principles we unveiled today reflect our determination that our actions match our values around the world,” said Mr Yang.
While China has been painted as the worst abuser, Colin Maclay of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University said there are other countries and governments all over the world at fault.
“The number of states actively seeking to censor online content and access personal information is growing.
“And the means employed – technical, social, legal, political – are increasingly sophisticated, often placing internet and telecommunications companies in difficult positions.”
‘Business case’
The Global Network Initiative was drawn up by the internet companies along with human rights groups, academics and investors.
Adam Kanzer who is the managing director and general counsel at Domini Social Investments said as well as being the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense.
He told BBC News “When you see the industry being caught up in the tactics of various regimes around the world, the business case is very clear. Freedom of expression and privacy is core to their business.
“They depend on a wide open, freely accessible and secure internet. That’s what they are about. If people don’t trust the internet and believe they are secure, then that is counterproductive to their business.”
The effort is already being seen by some as not going far enough.
“After two years of effort, they have ended up with so little,” said Morton Sklar executive director for the World Organisation for Human Rights USA.
“It is very little more than a broad statement of support for a general principle without any concrete backup mechanism to ensure that the guidelines will be followed.”
Mr Posner of Human Rights First disputes that and said this agreement has not been set up as a “gotcha system” but as a way “to work with companies to get them to improve what they are doing, credit them when they do it and call them out if they fail.”
While it is hoped many more companies will sign up, two European telecommunications firms, France Telecom and Vodafone, are already said to be considering adding their names.

Gasta Gleaning i-information from Search.

gastaword — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:11:00 +0000

Gasta.com important to some, Small regional search networks with strong on the ground support and investment can reach into the factories, the offices and the families of the communities they function in. Google of course is the ‘universal’ search. In fact to some, Google is the ‘universe’ and their latest branding does not try to dispel that myth. but, small tributary search networks are the arteries that serve Google and Livesearch. The IP search information gleaned from Gasta allows advertisers to focus campaigns with laser like targeting, this is a valuable resource to any Global / European company and should be considered when acquisition is discussed.In fact this is information is a vital commodity in the information age, but why buy information of others when you can resource your own?