The Mashable Open Web Awards is the only multilingual (i.e., in several languages) international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 different categories.

This year, Mashable is partnering with over 100 blog partners. For extra security, they’re using Poll Daddy. You might want to also note that they’ve extended the period of voting: you can vote from until Sunday, November 30th 11:59 pm PST. So, if you will do all us a favor, please use the following to vote for the Open Web Awards.

Of course, as an official blog partner I would like to thank the following sponsors of the Open Web Awards:

Platinum Partner

PartnerUp brings small business and social networking together to create a community where entrepreneurs find the people, resources and information to grow their businesses.

Gold Sponsors

iStockphoto is the world’s leading image market and a revenue-sharing social network. Browse 3.5 million images and videos starting at $1 or become a contributor.

With Quintura’s advanced visual-based search and analytics solution, content publishers can increase site usage while creating new ad revenues opportunities

Prize Sponsor

Infinite and Instant, Zazzle is the only on-demand retail platform for consumers and major brands, offering billions of retail quality, one-of-a-kind products, most of which are produced within 24 hours.

There are a lot of nominees this year, and I have to mention that I am amazed by some of the nominees that made it into the competition this year, like this one? HUH? Here’s a screen capture of the favorite Start Page for India:

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1. Search Engine Rankings are Dead. Bruce Clay recently declared that search engine rankings are dead. Pretty soon companies won’t be going to Google to check their rankings for their top 3 most important keywords. They won’t have a need to keep paying for search engine rank checking programs and services that will “check your rankings” every 5 hours. The software developers who write and update those scripts will soon be out of a job. By giving the SEO industry a financial bailout, those who will soon be out of a job will be able to get trained on how to create content. And it will keep them out of the unemployment line.

2. Barack Obama was elected because of Social Media Marketing Barack Obama successfully used social media marketing to get elected. He’s all behind social media and hasn’t spent a dime on Search Engine Optimization. Barack Obama needs to help SEOs with a bailout because everything seems to be leaning more towards marketing in the social arena..and more SEOs need to start to understand marketing in this new social media economy.

3. It helps the Online Retailers indirectly. Bailing out the SEO industry is really an efficient way of directing fiscal stimulus towards the online retailers who really need the cash. Giving money to SEOs will help them be more efficient and will help get better search engine rankings for their clients, the online retailers.

4. It will help the Internet stocks. Ultimately, it helps the Search Engine Optimization companies buy more links. I can’t believe I said that. But, we all know that lazy SEO companies buy links. By bailing out the SEO industry, you’re pumping more money into the internet. It will ultimately help those internet stocks go up.

5. It might be cheaper than the alternative of letting SEO companies fail. If any SEO company fails, then all of those snake oil SEO salesmen will be forced to move on to another industry: and then the government will spend lots of money hiring Federal Prosecutors to go after them. We all know that the FCC and the US Government is not doing much to prosecute all the rip-off SEO snake oil salesmen out there. Bail out the SEO industry and you’ll keep them in the SEO industry: they won’t move on to another industry where they the government will have to prosecute them.

6. Pumping money into the SEO industry will help the internet companies be more profitable. I said it before. By pumping money into the SEO industry the search engine optimization companies and SEO consultants will be able to make those internet companies more profitable. More profitable internet companies mean their stocks will go up.

I can envision a financial bailout that goes directly to the search engine optimization industry and those who work in the SEO industry, including search engine optimizers and the search engine optimization companies themselves. By pumping more money into the SEO industry, SEO companies will be able to hire more writers and web developers to create more content. By creating more content for clients the internet companies will do better: they will then be able to spend more money on paid search campaigns, which will ultimately not only help themselves (the online retailers and those companies that actually have web sites) but it will also help the search engines because they’re paying more for PPC ads.

So count me in on a strategically-oriented bail-out financial package that benefits the SEOs and SEO companies rather than giving money to the auto industry or any other industry that might beg for a financial bailout.

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The Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban has been charged today by the SEC with insider trading. Apparently Mark Cuban dumped his shares in Mamma.com right after he confidentially learned about a stock offering from the CEO of Mamma.com. This was back in 2004.

Immediately after I heard about Mark Cuban being accused of insider trading, I went on over to Twitter to see what people were saying about it. If you didn’t know, you can use the search.twitter.com site to search and find what people are saying about a particular topic. You can also search for your company name or even your name or another keyword. What you might want to do is use the RSS feed of the query to watch or monitor the search query if you need to watch that keyword. I often look for my name and my company’s name to see what they’re saying, if anything.

I also took a look at Google Trends and noticed that the top search phrase is mamma.com:

I am not sure when the last time I went to Mamma.com was, but apparently their traffic is on the rise. Here’s an interesting stat from Compete.com:

Compete.com shows that there were over 1 million people who visited Mamma.com last month; which is a lot less than Google’s 129 million visitors or even Yahoo’s 125 million. But, I suspect that although they’re rising last month (October 2008), this Mark Cuban Mamma.com Insider Trading scandal might be just what Mamma needs to get popular again.

I know that this may sound rather opportunistic of me to say, but sometimes getting mentioned in the news can be something that will bring a brand back into the limelight: and really, it wasn’t anything that Mamma.com actually did, it’s something that Mark Cuban did back in 2004.

Let’s take a look at the search results for Mark Cuban on Mamma.com. By comparing them to the Google search results for Mark Cuban, I see that they really aren’t that bad. Mark Cuban is owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, and I’m seeing search results for the Mavericks as well as his blog and also a page about his appearance on Dancing with the Stars. So perhaps I will start using Mamma.com again. What about you?

Is this additional publicity just what Mamma.com needs to jump start the search engine again?

Update Mark Cuban has issued a statement regarding this through his lawyer.

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Yatinoo, a trilingual (English, French, Arabic) web-based portal, community, and search engine, has launched their search engine today with new search engine technology. Yatinoo’s greatest asset is its focus on the Arabic, African and Asian regions as well as the Arabic, African and Asian people living outside the United States.

Yatinoo’s focus on the African, Asian, and Arabic regions is significant: approximately twenty percent of the 300 million U.S. population have direct African, Asian or Arabic background representing an additional target market of 60 million users only in the United States. Compared to larger competitors in the search engine market, Yatinoo offers tailor-made and highly targeted services that fit its users’ needs and suit their special “look and feel” requirements.

What is interesting about Yatinoo’s search engine is that this is a search solution that allows you to tailor your interest searches through a diverse range of formats, including web sites, images, audio, video, news, blogs and forums. Additionally, unlike other search engines, you can streamline your selections through Yatinoo’s ability to offer color images displayed in conjunction with the search results.

What I like to do with new search engines is take a direct look at their search results. For example, I did a search for search engine optimization at Yatinoo:

I guess I kind of expected Wikipedia’s SEO page to be the top search result. But, I did not expect a page about search engine optimisation to be at the top of the search results for search engine optimization. I know this is a subtle difference, but why mix different spellings?

Yatinoo is a trilingual (English, French, Arabic) Internet based portal, social networking community, and search engine offering various services, tools and content to an international audience which was developed and made available in the Middle East and North Africa region through the introduction of its media properties including Yatinoo.com, which was officially launched in October 2007. Yatinoo.com, in addition to its innovative search engine, email, weather and news, offers videos and mp3 streamings, ecards and forums. Yatinoo also offers specialized websites focusing on games, sports, and personalities in the African and Arabic world.

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The Business to Business (B2B) search engine Accoona has been acquired by the international B2B search engine Masterseek. Masterseek was founded in Denmark in 1999.

Accoona got a lot of press back in 2004 when it launched. I’m not sure if you remember, but President Bill Clinton was the speaker at the opening. Over the years, Accoona has been fairly successful in China, where Accoona has supplied the search function to both Sina.com and Sohu. Accoona has an exclusive partnership with China’s most widely-read daily newspaper, the China Daily News.

In 2006, Accoona was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 50 best websites.

In this latest deal, the Accoona search service and the Accoona domain names have now been sold to the Masterseek Corporation.

As a part of the deal, Accoona will be integrated with Masterseek and they will re-launch Accoona in a few weeks. Until they re-launch, a beta version is available at Accoona.com with a simple company search facility. After the re-launch, a new version will have “a significantly greater amount of company information and more varied search facilities.”

Accoona will initially be re-launched in the USA and China. In January, they plan on launching it throughout Europe in conjunction with the launch of a new expanded search functionality. With the acquisition of Accoona, Masterseek will fortify itself in its fight to become one of the largest B2B search engines in the world. The acquisition means that Masterseek will improve its company data and at the same time significantly increase the number of its users.

Masterseek provides free access to company profiles, products and services from more than 50 million companies in 75 countries.

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Ask.com, a web site that offers search for web sites, images, news, blogs, video, maps and directions, local search and shopping, launched their new “Election Poll Smart Answers” that gives you local polling information in just one click: and it’s a lot faster and easier than any other major search engine.

Ask.com Smart Answers are special search results placed at the top of the Ask.com search results page that have quick facts and links to authoritative content from highly respected sources.

To use the new one-click poll information, go to Ask.com and type in a question like “when do polls open?”

Then, all you need to do is click your state from the drop-down menu:

After clicking “Go”, Ask.com instantly shows the local poll hours and provides quick links to district poll locations and other voting information right on the first search results page.

According to Ask.com, this new Smart Answers feature is part of Ask.com’s mission to provide us with the best answer, the first time, every time. However, it appears that there are a “lot more clicks” required in order to actually find your polling place and where you have to vote. After going through the process on the Ask.com web site, I was then taken to the official State of Texas web site where I had to then perform an additional search at the State of Texas web site:

I hate to be cynical about all of the Ask.com new “one click” Smart Answers feature, but all that the Ask.com feature does is point you to your own state’s web site after you choose your state: that’s hardly “one click”. In fact, there are other helpful things that they could do that would make it easier, like actually recognizing your location and forwarding you directly to your state’s polling information.

What do you get when you use the Ask.com Smart Answers feature when you look to find your polling place and time?

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Quintura, a company that provides a site search, analytics, and monetization platform for online content publishers, has officially launched their Quintura Site Search for publishers who are based in the United States.

Quintura has developed a hosted site search platform that provides an intuitive, visual-based search and navigation for your site visitors. So far, Maxim magazine and the Russian Newsweek and Cosmopolitan in Russia have been the first to implement Quintura’s visual-based search on their websites. So far, more than 1,000 publishers have registered to use the Quintura site search solution. The Quintura network has a monthly audience of 10 million site visitors.

If you own a site that has content (i.e., you’re a blogger or have another content site), then you have yet another opportunity to monetize your site. You sign up for the Quintura service and they will give you some code to put on your site. Then, you’ll have an interactive site search for your site that looks like a search field with a Tag Cloud on your site. Ads are integrated into the site search. You can run your own ads (ads that you sell advertisers on your site) or you can rely on Quintura’s ads.

I’ve added the Quintura tag cloud widget here as a sample. Feel free to test it out:

The Quintura site search can be fairly easily installed on your site to monetize banner ad placements along with sponsored ad links. If you’re a publisher, you can increase your advertising revenues by delivering more ad impressions as driven by users’ behavior as they mouse over keywords in the Quintura tag cloud.

Advertisers Benefit Too
This is a unique opportunity for advertisers. Your company’s small image ads (typically your company logo) are displayed in the Quintura search tag cloud as a small expandable icon. An icon expands out into a full advertisement with a picture and text you mouseover the logo. The ad context matches the user search. Clicking an advertisement brings the visitor to your landing page.

Quintura was awarded their first U.S. patent on October 14, 2008, patent number 7,437,370. The patent is for a “Search engine graphical interface using maps and images”. Here is the abstract from the patent:

A system and method for visualization of search results includes a map displayed to a user on a screen. The map shows search query terms and optionally other terms related to the search query terms. The display of the terms corresponds to relationship between the terms. A graphical image is displayed next to at least one of the search query terms. The graphical image is associated with a URL that corresponds to a search result. The graphical image is a favorite icon that is derived from the HTML script associated with a webpage at the URL, or an animated image, or a video, or a cycling GIF. A plurality of graphical images can be displayed in proximity to the search query term.

According to Quintura, they currently have several other patents pending. Quintura’s entrance into the United States search market allows publishers to monetize their sites and gives a whole set of new features to site visitors. Publishers can monetize their sites but they also get enhanced back-end analytics, as well. The Quintura site search analytical tools give publishers real-time access to their site search information, including search term rankings, trends, and analyses for identifying new content requirements based on search interest.

The site search solution is also available to content publishers who do not wish to use its advertising features as a service, offered on a subscription-fee basis. If you are a publisher and would like to sign up for the Quintura service, go here to learn more and to sign up.

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Texas is about to get the first convention dedicated to domain names and web developers; and I have the pleasure of participating in this great event in early November. Not only is it a chance to find out about investing in domain names, it’s a chance to learn about domain names, an essential part of the online marketing mix: you have to have a good domain name to do well on the web nowadays. Furthermore, it’s not all about the domain name: you need web development and search engine optimization.

Come on! get out of the house, away from your desk, and start networking and start learning more. Don’t forget to bring your laptop and your pocketbook: there are some great domain names being sold during the conference, as well. Did I mention that I’m speaking about Search Engine Marketing at the conference, as well?

The 2008 Texas Domainers And Developers Convention is located in the center of one of the most exciting hotbeds of technology in the United States. With close proximity to Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio as well as easy access from numerous neighboring states including Oklahoma, Arkansas, Lousiana, and New Mexico, we are poised to make a large market impact.

The 2008 Texas Domainers And Developers Convention is an event not to be missed! Held at the Grapevine Convention Center, it promises to be
*THE* event of the year for the web development and domain industries in the South. Activities include:

4 Days of Events
Speeches And Seminars
Live And Silent Domain Auctions
Texas Holdem Poker Tournament (For Charity $20 Per Seat Onsite) Networking $5,000 + in Giveaways

At the 2008 Texas Domainers And Developers Convention you will enjoy meeting with and learning about numerous major provider companies.

Topics to be covered include:

SEM/SEO
Multimedia Development
Branding
PR Relationships
Hispanic Marketing
Programming
Virtualization
Cloud Computing
Security
Tech Strategy
Legal Issues / Concerns
State Of Industry
and much more!

You will enjoy meeting like minded professionals from all over the United States and beyond!

Four days of fun and excitement are waiting for you at the 2008 Texas Domainers And Developers Convention. They will be giving away over *$5,000* in great prizes through free random drawings for convention goers!

Rest assured with the fabulous infrastructure and technology available to you, you will be able to keep in touch with your business while at the convention.

A limited special only found right here, good until November 1, 2008, tickets only $50. This offer will be good until November 1st only. Tickets will then return to full price of $225. Don’t miss this opportunity to network and meet hundreds of industry professionals. To take advantage of this special purchase price click here. For more information on the conference please visit www.tdadc.com

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BrightTalk is hosting a Social Media Marketing Summit asked me to present. At 2:15pm Pacific Time on October 7th, 2008 I talked about Social Media and Search and how your search engine marketing efforts can benefit from social media marketing.

I’ve embedded my presentation right here so you can watch it. If you’re reading this after the event, then you can still be able to view the presentation.

Here are all the details of today’s Social Media Marketing Summit:

WHAT: Social Media Marketing Summit hosted by BrightTALK™

BrightTALK hosts live webcast summits each week around themes that matter to business professionals. At this summit, experts will share information on trends in social media, answer questions, and offer strategies and tips to marketing professionals.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 7, 2008 @ 7:15 a.m. Pacific Time

WHO: Presenters for the Social Media Marketing Summit include:

– Bill Hartzer, head of social media marketing at Vizion Interactive
– Chris Kenton, CEO of SocialRep
– Dave Evans, vice president of social media at Digital Voodoo
– Edith Yeung, vice president of marketing at Clue Market, Inc. and founder of SFEntrepreneur.com
– Frank Cutitta, general manager at IDG Connect
– Jennifer Jacobson, author of “42 Rules of Social Networking for Business”
– Jerry Hart, partner and vice president of sales and marketing at Power to be Found
– Mary Lou Roberts, Harvard University Extension School instructor and author of “DIY-Marketing” and “eBrandMarketing”
– Sean Mulholland, director of emerging media at Atomic Public Relations

WHERE: The Social Media Marketing Summit is available on brighttalk.com:

Here are some additional presentations on social media marketing that you might also want to watch.

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Zvents, the site where you can discover things to do, has secured $24 million in funding from Nokia Growth Partners, AT&T and NAVTEQ. Nokia Growth Partners, is the growth capital arm of Nokia (NYSE: NOK), the world’s leading mobile phone supplier; NAVTEQ, is the world leader in premium-quality digital map data. AT&T (NYSE: T) is the largest U.S. wireless company which, through its YELLOWPAGES.COM subsidiary, is also the leading U.S. internet yellow pages search directory. Zvent’s existing investors, Vantage Point Venture Partners and Red Rock Ventures, also participated in the financing.

Zvents will use the proceeds to expand the reach of its local listings advertising network, which enables both local businesses and national chains to promote their locations with search-targeted events such as sales and weekly specials. Zvents will also further invest in expanding the deployment of its successful local search platform, which currently powers a network of more than 250 media partners.

Paul O’Brien, VP of Marketing of Zvents, told me today that this is “a strategic investment that is notable for the substantial amount, big-name investors, and innovation in local search.” This additional funding has very big implications, showing that local is not going away soon; it continues to grow as people get online and look for things to do in their local communities.

Nokia’s John Gardner said, “We are delighted to have led this round of funding for Zvents, enabling them to bring their world-class local search service to the converged worlds of internet and mobility. We believe that the combination of next-generation mobile devices and powerful server-side search services will be a powerful channel to deliver local information to consumers. Zvents has found an innovative way to connect local search to the marketing needs of local merchants, offering a compelling means of driving exciting, context-based mobile experiences.”

Zvents now powers a local search for a few hundred major media partners, including MSN through City Guides. The great interest stems from the unique ability for local businesses to promote themselves online in ways that match their established media buying patterns - through events listings such as sales and weekly specials that are distributed throughout the network.

Since its founding in 2005, Zvents has built a broad network of more than 250 media, advertising, and mobile partners including: Viacom’s (NYSE: VIA.B) mtvU, Microsoft’s (NYSE: MSFT) MSN CityGuides, AT&T’s YELLOWPAGES.COM, and hundreds of local media and newspaper sites owned by major local media firms including MediaNews Group, Freedom Communications, The McClatchy Company, and The New York Times Company. Zvents is continually growing its network of distribution partners both within the United States and internationally.

Zvents powers a unified international search index for the partner network, on which local consumers everywhere can perform “what, when, and where” searches for millions of events, businesses, performers, and other activities in their areas. This unique search technology platform aggregates data via web crawling and extraction, user- and merchant-generated content, and dozens of data partnerships; and provides localized search relevance and ranking to individual media partners.

Forbes ran an interesting Zvents feature last week in their print mag and online. What I find interesting is that I didn’t realize that local ads are very lucrative and average well over $1.00 per click:

Local ads are very lucrative, averaging $1.20 per click compared to 47 cents Web-wide, but search engines have done a mixed job selling local ads and geographically targeting ads with results. Part of the problem: A third of all searches have the intent of finding something nearby, but only 7% return a location. That limits ad inventories.

In local advertising, though, most small businesses “are still spending the majority of their ad dollars the old-fashioned way, on direct mail and print and online directories. All print and online directories grossed $15.1 billion in ad sales last year; local online search spending was $1.2 billion.”

Commenting on this news, Paul O’Brien has posted some personal thoughts on his own site.

“Zvents has spent four years building a world-class local search service,” said Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO and founder. “This funding will enable us to dramatically scale the value of that service to our network of media partners, local consumers, and local advertisers.”

According to O’Brien, “What Ethan has briefly highlighted is that Zvents is a unique local search engine. Now powering for a network of hundreds of web and mobile partners, including MSN, an index that features event listings to promote your local businesses. Simply, the company enables local businesses, merchants and retailers, and restaurants to submit both free and paid listings to the network.”

From what I am seeing, MSN, Google, and Yahoo! are trying to get into Local, but they’re not necessarily doing a very good job at it. Their core is providing search results for the world wide web, not Local. We’re beginning to see companies like Zvents become strong leaders in Local Search.

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