Click to zoom

Do a search for ‘philippines’. Notice the following:

• WOW Philippines Homepage - guess even .GOV domains can’t be trusted these days. Notice how the official Philippine government tourism site (www.tourism.gov.ph) has been tagged with the ‘This site may harm your computer’ warning label. Hey Matt can you help us out?
• News results for Philippines - funny Google News headlines: ‘Philippines midterm elections declared relatively peaceful’ followed by ‘Violence Reported in Philippines Elections’. Notice also why none of the major Philippine dailies made it to the Google News onebox. One more reason why companies like the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Bulletin and Philippine Star need to focus less on redesigns and more on search optimization.
• Sponsored links - see Aileen Apolo’s personal PPC campaign in action here, here and here. Wonder how much her daily budget and max CPC is.

Smart Communications Inc. is bringing the telco wars to search. Do a search for “globe visibility” (the product name for Globe Telecom’s flagship 3G/HSDPA mobile broadband service) and you’ll see the Smart 3G Adwords ad in the top PPC spot.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been scouring the big local job sites for web designers and I must say it’s not a pleasant experience. Here are a few takeaways from this ongoing recruitment nightmare:
Read the rest of this entry »

Congratulations to Benj Arriola for emerging overall champion of the recently concluded GlobalWarming Awareness2007 SEO contest. One small step for Benj, one giant leap for Philippine SEO :) Here’s to more Filipino success in the realm of search marketing!

More congratulation notes here.