Doubleclick Performics to sell off search marketing division

No, this blog isn't dead. Not yet anyway. I've just been busy. Anyway, I just got an email from Performics that I thought was interesting. I didn't think it was really worth posting on my main SEO blog but might be worth a quick mention here on Search Trends. I found it interesting because back when Google announced that they were going to buy Doubleclick/Performics, there was a huge outcry in the search marketing community because Google was going to own an SEO company. I can see the conflict of interest, but I figured since the search marketing division was such a small part of what Performics offered (and even smaller when you look at the entire DoubleClick offering), I figured they would sell it off to avoid being accused of being evil (heaven forbid).

Sure enough, that's exactly what's going to happen, according to the lastest email from Performics:

As you are aware, Google closed its acquisition of DoubleClick on March 11, 2008. Since that time, we have been actively involved in integration planning for each of our products and business units. We have recently completed this process for the DoubleClick Performics business.

As a result of our planning, we are formally splitting DoubleClick Performics into two separately-run business units - Affiliate Marketing and Search Marketing. We plan to integrate the Affiliate Marketing business into existing Google operations, providing enhanced value and reach for our Affiliate advertisers and additional tools and monetization opportunities for our publishers. We plan to sell the Search Marketing business unit to a third party. In Europe, these plans and their implications for our employees are subject to consultation with staff and employee representatives, where applicable.

During this transition, we will ensure that customers receive the same high level of service that they have always experienced. For those of you who have DoubleClick Performics relationships that include both Search and Affiliate Marketing services, we will assign separate account teams for each service. We will contact you shortly with more information regarding your assigned account team.

The Search Marketing business will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold. All client data will, of course, be kept confidential. Please contact your
Search account manager for additional information.

We plan to continue to aggressively invest in and grow our Search Marketing business during this period of transition, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with each of our Search clients.

Thank you for your continued support of DoubleClick Performics.

So there you have it. Google won't be competing with us SEOs after all. At least not as an SEO/SEM firm themselves. Just like I suspected would happen.

Risk

A few great quotes about risk from today's Quote of the Day email.

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.
- Jawaharlal Nehru, 1889 - 1964

It's better to be boldly decisive and risk being wrong than to agonize at length and be right too late.
- Marilyn Moats Kennedy

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.
- Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides), 1135 - 1204

Fun is like life insurance; the older you get, the more it costs.
- Kin (Frank McKinney) Hubbard, 1868 - 1930

Super Bowl Twitterpation

One other cool thing I saw this morning was the twitter activity graph for Super Bowl Sunday it's interesting to see how tweets correspond with actual events. I didn't watch the game this year, but I did catch the highlights, and I still need to check out the ads on YouTube when I get a few spare minutes...any worth checking out this year?

Presidential Election Predictions and Resources

My guys at SEO.com recently spent some time analyzing Google Trends to predict the outcome of Super Tuesday. So far the results didn't quite match up (Google showed Obama on top after Tues), but it is interesting to look at how search popularity corresponds to the actual vote. We'll be posting a follow up to compared the trends estimates with the actual results within the next few days.

I've come across a few other interesting sites with data related to the election across the web including these:

Google Map/Twittervision mashup for Super Tuesday

This article on Search Engine Land with links to how voters and candidates are using the web this election season

UVEF Panel Recap / Audio Podcast

John Pilmer posted a recap of the UVEF Panel from last week including audio. I thought the discussion was good, I could have talked about that stuff for hours, and a lot of good ideas came out of it, I think. It was interesting to hear the different perspectives from an extremely successful viral marketer (George), genealogy/facebook marketer (Paul), b2b online marketing (Cydni), and SEO (yours truly). There's a lot of overlap in each area, but also a lot that we can learn from each other.

New SEO forum

We recently launched the SEO Forums on SEO.com. Come over and check it out if you have any questions about SEO, or if you already know it all and have something to share. We hope to build this into a thriving community that will add value and maybe a slightly different perspective than the existing forums and communities out there.

Revenge of the Mommy Blogs

Has anyone else noticed that there has been a recent surge in "mommy blogs"? I mean, I know there's a new blog born every second or whatever, but all of a sudden I've seen this huge surge of blogs by people I know. Well I should say women I know. They're setting up blogs (almost all on blogger/blogspot.com) with photos and little anecdotes of what they're up to. Several Christmas cards included a blog URL and I just got an email from my sister in law with their new blog address. It's nuts! Is it just me, or is there new wave of mommy-bloggers coming online?

Google Announces Squidoopedia Clone - Google Knol

From the Google Blog: Google is launching Knol - which appears to be a Squidoo-like service with a little Wikipedia thrown in for good measure. Just another step towards total world domination for the big G.