A simple man’s approach to SEM
Posted on: February 1, 2008 by Syzlak Comments
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, don’t sell to Microsoft.
Tags: MSN Filed Under: Uncategorized
Posted on: January 23, 2008 by Search Master Steve Comments
Hey! Search Master Steve here. I’m just checking in to see if I can interest you kids into trying out Live Search for the next 30 days. Why Live Search? I’ll tell you why.
Unlike those pricey search engines (Yahoo, Magellan, Excite…) we’re offering a free 30 day trial to anyone who qualifies.* That’s right, for the next 30 days, you can experience the quality of our Live Search free of charge! Getting tired of seeing Wikipedia listings coming up number 1? Maybe you should hop on over to the Live Search.
At Live Search we don’t pander to Wikipedia. We don’t use Paid Inclusion. We don’t keep our SERPs in the same format, allowing for a familiar experience. We don’t care about retaining you as a user. We don’t have fancy gadgets or predictive text in our searches. In fact, we have a saying around the office:
It’s not for us, whether or not it’s for you!
Want even more proof of how cool we can be? Hop on over and search for dude. I hope you like what we’ve done for ya. That’s right, we’ve made it really easy to find both “hot” and “straight” dudes! Just look to the right, where we offer related searches. Sure, some search engines would put ads there; but at Live Search, we don’t have time for advertisers and revenue — and neither do you.
Want vertical search? Probably not, most people don’t think they do…but you’re getting it anyway! From that same search just hit the image button above the results. No, not above the title: Web Results, above the actual results. No below the search box. Yeah, right there above the first listing.
See, nice eh? Lotsa pictures of fat naked dudes. Tell me how often you see that on Excite!
–Steve
*free trial is restricted to the following: teachers, students, single mothers, and people that still use the Oxford comma. Only those users with a Premium membership to the Windows Live Search will be eligible to become a teacher, or single mother. If at any time any member of the qualifying party becomes both a teacher and student, teacher and single mother, teacher and user of the Oxford comma, student and single mother, student and user of the Oxford comma, or single mother and user of the Oxford comma, they successfully void their former qualifications.
Tags: 3rd tier, MSN Filed Under: search master steve
Posted on: January 15, 2008 by Syzlak Comments
All week I had waited for a package from Amazon. I had ordered the FLCL Ultimate Edition DVD box set, and was on pins and needles in anticipation for the day it would arrive. As it turned out, the package arrived the day after a very ominously thin package from MSN arrived…
Good heavens! What sort of magic could be in this wonderful box???? I mean shit. You’d have to have some sort of magic to make me more attractive to millions of shoppers. I’m a damn fine looking man. Don’t believe me? I can look good eating a cheeseburger.
So, what’s in this box?
Yep, a piece of Styrofoam and a small brochure. Aces!
Lord, really? So, what am I looking at, exactly? Apparently, a “Search Marketing Guide.” Usually, we put these sorts of things on the Web, but I suppose if you’re MSN, that’s just too difficult. Upon further inspection I learn that I’ll be getting tips from “Search Master Steve”
in order to make my business more attractive and “get the most out of adCenter”
Seriously, if anybody out there knows how to get the most out of nothing, please fill me and the rest of the fucking world in on your secret. Also, I find it very hard to believe that with all of Microsoft’s black helicopters, they weren’t able to figure out just how goddamned attractive I already am. Did you really think that Search Master Steve looks better than me? And while I have a minute, how did that guy master search? He can’t even master a comb.
Overheard in an ad exec meeting at MSN:
Ad Exec 1: We need to sell our adCenter product to search marketers that are already signed up with adCenter
Ad Exec 2: Get that guy who looks like the Verizon guy! Utility nerds are so handsome and unassuming!
So what other nuggets of wisdom are found in this manual?
Well, there’s the importance of spelling, 
and the ultra backasswards way that adCenter chooses to use keyword implementation.
Has anyone ever tried to use this? There’s no code for automatic capitalization as there is in Yahoo and Google and they allow you to have something like 3 parameters in addition to the keyword (for sales, shipping discounts, etc.) . While the parameters are a good idea and have come in handy once or twice, all of their codes are very cumbersome and most of us have our own tricks that are much faster than using MSN’s built in tools.
So what have we learned?
