Been a while. Yes, I’m alive. I really appreciate the emails and support.
When I first started ComparisonEngines, I was just doing a little consulting on the side to pay the bills. Now I’m running SingleFeed, a venture backed start up which is taking off. Over the last 6 months, I’ve had to concentrate on strengthening the foundation of SingleFeed. That left little time for blogging.
While I make no promises on the frequency of posts going forward, there are too many things happening in the shopping search industry not to step back into a role as Analyst.
I’ll probably play around with the style a bit. Not sure exactly what that means. I like Rafat’s comprehensive coverage. I like Om’s incredible insight. I like Arrington’s bite sized morsels. All I know for sure is that my interest has never been in regurgitating press releases and that won’t change.
Welcome to ComparisonEngines 2.0!
-b
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I’m going to leave the details until I can review the transcript, but I’m listening for info on 3P sales, FBA and other Seller facing segments.
I will continue to update this post as I get more info: Update: Q&A session
3rd party units grew faster than Amazon’s retail units.
Active seller accounts grew 18% Y/Y
Amazon Prime, in many cases, uses ground transportation for their 2-day shipping rather than Air, because of the how their distributions centers are distributed throughout the country.
Sellers take customer service on Amazon very seriously and FBA is a key to translating the Amazon customer experience to those 3P sales.
Just my 12%
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Everyday, we hear new stories about a cool new startup and its success story.
Today, It was WalkScore.com. The website offers some great information about which neighborhood/city is more walkable than the rest (San francisco was #1 and Seattle was #6). Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. I think it is a great site for those who are consider moving to a new neighborhood or those who simply like the car-free lifestyle, especially because the gas prices are setting new records everyday.
This Seattle-based innovative startup hit almost all the major newspapers, blogs and websites last week from SF Chronicle to Washington Post, Los Angeles Times Blog to ABC News, From USA Today to MSNBC.
In an email, Matt Lerner from WalkScore says:
We would never have weathered being the #1 story on Yahoo! yesterday if it weren’t for Amazon! THANK YOU!
We’re a […]
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As the price of fuel climbs with every fill up, consumers are looking for ways to drive less and scale back their lifestyles in effort to squeeze the most value from every hard earned dollar. A leisurely Sunday afternoon drive is a thing of the past as cash-strapped commuters are forced to reach deeper into […]
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Are you a Google AdWords advertiser using Google Analytics? STOP! You MUST read this post because you are losing money daily and we are going to help you stop the bleeding.
There is a problem with the default functionality of Google Analytics when used in conjunction with AdWords. Google Analytics (GA) doesn’t report the actual phrase a shopper entered into the search bar, only the keyword phrase you are bidding on.
Let me explain:
- You bid on the keyword ’shoes’ using ‘broad match’
- A shopper searches for ‘blue suede shoes’
- The Traffic Sources > Keyword report in GA shows the search as just ’shoes’
Even worse, Google likes to use synonyms when your terms are under the broad match type (called automatic matching or extended broad match).
- You are bidding on the keyword ‘running shoes’ using ‘broad match’
- A shopper searches for ‘Adidas Gazelle’
- Google shows your ad, but wait, you don’t carry […]
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This is a very important earnings call, not only for Amazon investors, but for all of Wall Street. eBay and others have had so-so earnings announcements recently signaling a slowing down of consumer spending, and the Street appears to be looking to Amazon for the answer.
If Amazon beats estimates and ups guidance for the rest of 08′ than their share price should rise substantially and it would improve sentiment on Wall Street.
eBay stated it was concerned with a slow down in the economy and re-stated guidance for the rest of the year, which caused their share price to decline 14%. If Amazon beats and raises, in this environment the share price would have no where to go but up.
If Amazon has a so-so Q2 and re-states guidance for the rest of the year, the whole market may take bit of a hit — Amazon has become a bell weather stock, […]
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Our last post covered tips on using Google’s free Keyword Tool and how to apply your keyword discoveries to various aspects of marketing: SEO, PPC, site usability and even email marketing.
As promised, today we’re going to dig deeper into negative keyword research. The tools we’ll cover are the Google Keyword Tool, Google Suggest, Google Product Search and some surprises.
Negative keywords explained
If the term “negative keywords” is new to you, it refers to irrelevant or low converting keywords that you add to a pay-per-click campaign which tell the ad system not to show your ad when that keyword appears in a search.
To take advantage of the “long tail of search” (longer query combinations and product searches that are performed infrequently but can convert like crazy), marketers will bid on broad keywords using “broad matching” or “phrase matching.” If you phrase match “learning toys” your ad […]
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I’m getting ready to head over to Amazon headquarters for a meet & greet with Amazon execs and hopefully Jeff Bezos. I understand there will be a Q&A session as well as some focus groups, so this should be quite interesting.
I will write more in-depth tomorrow when I arrive back home, but hopefully I will be able to blog from the meeting. If not I will at least Twitter as much as possible.
Just my 12%
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By now you’ve probably heard the news, Google has made keyword search counts available to all through its Keyword Research Tool (before it only showed relative search volume in little green bars).
There are many free and paid keyword research tools out there, but until this announcement, none were able to provide Google-only data. But like Avinash Kaushik said last week in his Analytics webinar, “The goal is not to collect more data – it’s about extracting insight from this data.”
So today we’re going to go through some tips on how you can tailor Google Keyword Tool’s data to your needs (much like you would with Google Analytics), and how you can apply this research beyond your SEO and PPC campaign to other marketing activities. We’ll also cover the limitations of this (and all) keyword research tool(s).
Google Keyword Research Tool Tips
1. Select Your Countries
Google will share search […]
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We thought of trying out a new idea. Instead of working from our Amazon offices, for a change, we will be work for few hours, every last tuesday of the month, from an offsite.
We like to call it AWS “Office Hours”.
Offsite will be at the StartPad co-working office space in Pioneer Square in Seattle. This will be your chance to chat with an AWS technical evangelist and technical support engineer and get your questions answered. Plus, there is free internet and desk space if you want to camp out for the afternoon.
Feel free to let us know if you are planning to stop by.
When: July 22nd, 2pm-6pm (last Tuesday of each month)
Where: StartPad, 811 First Ave, Suite 480, Seattle - (206) 388-3466
– Jinesh
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