One of our readers, Marc Jones, asked me to update a blog post that I wrote back on March 19, 2007, entitled, “Yahoo! Finance Market Share 52 times Bigger than Google Finance.” Well, ’tis the season.

So, Marc, here’s an update from Matt Tatham of Hitwise:

Business Information Sites Nov-08
Rank Website Domain Market Share
1 Yahoo! Finance finance.yahoo.com 29.63%
2 MSN Money moneycentral.msn.com 10.24%
3 CNN Money money.cnn.com 9.02%
4 Bloomberg www.bloomberg.com 3.81%
5 Market Watch www.marketwatch.com 3.44%
6 Reuters www.reuters.com 3.11%
7 Internal Revenue Service www.irs.gov 2.32%
8 Google Finance finance.google.com 2.31%
9 The Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com 2.29%
10 CNBC.com www.cnbc.com 2.26%

So, Yahoo! Finance is the leader of the pack — by almost a three-to-one margin over MSN Money, which is in second place. But Yahoo! Finance is no longer 52 times bigger than Google Finance. Today, it is “merely” 12.8 times bigger.

Okay, that’s still a “humongous” lead. (Humongous is a term that we bloggers use to mean extremely huge. We don’t get to use it that often when talking about someone who competes with Google. But, we are talking about Google Finance and not Google.)

So, let me thank Marc for asking the question and thank Matt for answering it. And for all of you who are watching your 401K plans become 201K plans, may I suggest that you visit some of the top business information sites to see if one provides you with better insights than the others. And let me know what you find.

All week long, I’ve been reporting on the top 10 stories from each day of Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2008. Generally, they were generated by news coverage of the three keynotes and two Orion Panels, or interviews with speakers at the 63 conference sessions. Hey, that’s just fishing where the fish are.

But there were a couple of other places where I found underreported stories from SES Chicago 2008: SES Magazine, the Expo Hall, the free mini clinics, and the search training workshops.

If you didn’t attend Search Engine Strategies Chicago this year, find someone who did. And “borrow” his or her copy of SES Magazine. There is a lot of content in there – beyond the conference information.

For example, there’s an article by Kate Kaye, senior editor of ClickZ News, entitled “Politics 2.0: Political Change Comes to Search, Too.” It looks at the search marketing tactics that Chicago’s own Barack Obama and his rivals used during the 2008 presidential electiion. My favorite underreported story is how the campaigns employed search to take advantage of hot topics right away.

If you can’t find someone with a copy of SES Magazine, then check out the interview below with Kate, which appeared back in June.

Obama Ads Online: Search Advertising Analysis by Kate Kaye

Meanwhile, over at booth #315 in the Expo Hall, ideaLaunch was giving demos of WordVision, its new SEO software tool that uses a complex algorithm to recommend hot keywords to SEO writers. Yes, that got my attention. And once this content is uploaded to a website, it tracks the contents’ impact on search engine listings so that SEO managers can understand the overall ROI of content assets. Yes, that got my attention, too.

But wait! There’s More!

Over at booth #204, there were a series of free mini clinics. Tim Ash, the President of SiteTuners, ran one called, “Your Baby Is Ugly - Landing Page Mini-Critiques.” David Szetela, the CEO of Clix Marketing, ran another called, “Power PPC Advertising Clinic.” Jonathan Mendez, Founder and CEO of RAMP Digital, ran a third called, “ CPA Optimization Station.” And Brad Geddes, Founder of bgTheory.com, ran a fourth called, “Ad Copy to Landing Page Review.”

In fact, check out what Kurt Scholle, Head Coach of WebAsylum.com, wrote about them at Website-ROI-Guy:
— I Met a Rockstar at Search Engine Strategies/Chicago
— Your Baby Is Ugly - Landing Page Mini-Critiques (SES Chicago)

Okay, so maybe the mini clinics weren’t as underreported as SES Magazine and the Expo Hall stories. But it doesn’t hurt to overreport them, does it?

Finally, there are the six search training workshops, which will be held on Friday, Dec. 12 at the Chicago Hilton. These include:

Search & Analytics Workshop: Using Analytics to Increase Search Effectiveness — Analytics are a gold mine of information, just waiting to be uncovered. The results of campaigns, effectiveness of the website, and the efficiency of your rankings can all be measured with a good analytics program. Unfortunately, many site managers do not make changes to the website without prior measurement, nor do they measure after the changes. As a result, there are many changes to sites that are not based on facts, merely assumptions. Similarly, if changes are not analyzed, then there can be no clear understanding of whether or not improvements made a difference on the site or to the bottom line.

Viral Marketing & Link Baiting — Attendees will gain a better understanding of the concepts, ideas and implementations that are required to launch a viral marketing or link baiting campaign. They will learn why the Internet has created a unique environment that allows for rapid, inexpensive word of mouth marketing and how they can harness that environment to promote their own products and services. The workshop will give real life examples of both good and bad viral marketing campaigns and will share insight on how your business can capitalize on your competitor’s viral disasters. This workshop will also focus on how you can make use of consumer generated media environments like social media outlets, blog marketing, discussion forums and more to both monitor and expand your company’s online persona. Consumer generated media (the very core of viral marketing) is the fastest growing form of media online today. It’s only a matter of time until someone online talks about your business. This course will not only help prepare you in the ways to respond to the conversation, it will help you learn how to shape that conversation to your advantage.

Link Building Tactics, Tools & Techniques — Need links? In order to rank well and successfully promote your online business, you need an effective link building program as part of your overall SEO strategy. This link building workshop will help you to better understand and manage your link building campaigns by providing you with the knowledge to create proven, practical and creative link marketing campaigns. You’ll walk away understanding why you need certain links, how to find them, and how to effectively use links to promote your brand and your search engines rankings.

Advanced AdWords – This session is broken down into two sections. The first section examines how to effectively use keywords, ad copy, landing pages, and the search and content networks to effectively reach your target audience based upon where consumers are in the buying cycle. The second section will examine different bidding strategies you can employ to maximize your campaign’s goals.

Search Engine Optimization Workshop — A search-engine friendly Web site is a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers. In order for a site to be search-engine friendly, it must meet the terms and conditions set forth by the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Ask, etc). Additionally, the site must satisfy the needs of site visitors. Ultimately, the site must be profitable for the Web site owner. Can a single site satisfy all of these groups? This workshop will demonstrate that these skills are essential for building a user-friendly, search-friendly, and persuasive site that converts visitors into buyers.

Optimizing for Universal Search — Universal search changes everything! The advent of Google’s Universal Search has been called “the most radical change to its search results ever.” So, how do you take advantage of Google’s new approach that blends listings from news, maps, video, and image search among those it gathers from web search? This training session will help you get found in all the right places.

The full-day training session is $1,345 and half-day is $745. Register for SES SEM Training at http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago/training.html.

Now, I realize that the search training workshops haven’t even been held yet. So, it may be premature to call them underreported. But trust me on this. Most of the journalists and bloggers who covered SES Chicago 2008 this week have already headed home. So, I’m pretty confident predicting that this, too, will be one of the underreported stories from the conference and expo.

Hey, I could be wrong. As Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC discusses some under reported “Holy Mackerel” stories each evening. Well, I’d like to share a “Holy Mackerel” story from SES Chicago 2008.

I’m one of the speakers at the Video Search Engine Optimization session on Wednesday, Dec. 10, from 12:45 to 2:00 p.m. And tonight, I did a double-check to see if there was any last-minute news about online video that I should be aware of before tomorrow’s panel.

And I read this: “YouTube Attracts 100 Million U.S. Online Video Viewers in October 2008.” Holy Mackerel!

Here are the details: According to comScore Video Metrix, more than 147 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 92 videos per viewer in October. Google Sites attracted a record 100 million online video viewers, or more than two out of every three Internet users who watched video during the month. This means that Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with nearly 5.4 billion videos viewed, with YouTube.com accounting for more than 98% of all videos viewed at the property.

Specifically, 99.5 million viewers watched 5.3 billion videos on YouTube.com (53.2 videos per viewer).

But, YouTube isn’t a video search engine. It is a video sharing site. Which means that YouTube doesn’t crawl the videos on your website. You need to upload your videos to YouTube in order for them to be found when someone conducts a “YouTube Search.”

Fortunately, I have a YouTube case study to present at tomorrow’s session. It’s a follow-on story that I shared at SES San Jose on a similar panel. Li Evans of KeyRelevance interviewed me after that session a couple of months ago. So, you can see that this “Holy Mackerel” story has been told before.

VSEO - Video Search Engine Optimization - with Greg Jarboe

Still, I can’t tell you how many times people ask me how to optimize video for Google Video. Ummm. How do I say this? If YouTube is accounting for more than 98% of all videos viewed at Google Sites, then Google Video accounts for less than 2%. Right?

So, video search engine optimization appears to be round-off error. What is more important is optimizing video for YouTube. That’s what I plan to talk about tomorrow. It may be a little surprising. But no more surprising than the latest data from comScore.

Microsoft’s adCenter is launching a new offer for Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) members: $1000 in free clicks. Campaigns created through the promotion will be placed on Live Search and the MSN portal. Those who wish to become SEMPO members to take advantage of the offer must join the organization by December 31, 2008.

“SEMPO members, both agency and corporate search marketers, represent some of the most knowledgeable and innovative search marketing leaders in the industry,” said Valerie Bolduc, senior global product marketing manager, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions, Microsoft. “Working with SEMPO provides Microsoft with the opportunity to engage and learn from the search marketing community, which enables us to enhance our products and offerings to better serve our mutual customers.”

SEMPO President Jeffrey Pruitt noted, “SEMPO’s continued growth is tied to the strong support of its sponsors. Microsoft has long been our lead sponsor and advocate on several fronts including the SEMPO Training Institute, as well as for special programs like the adCenter search advertising promotion. Our industry association greatly appreciates Microsoft’s strong commitment and ongoing participation.”

Related Reading:
SEMPO Institute to Develop Career Opportunities for Young Chicagoans
New SEMPO Chairperson Dana Todd Has Big Dreams for Organization
SEMPO Selects Officers for New Board of Directors

As of 8 am today, users who will download or upgrade Java for Internet Explorer will be prompted to install a MSN search bar that will set Microsoft’s search engine as the predefined one. The deal, announced earlier today by Microsoft and limited to US surfers only, has the potential to make a very large number of users switch from Google in a matter of just a few days.

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that election day is next Tuesday. Whether you’re observing or you’re breaking out the campaign gear for some hardcore get out the vote effors this weekend, here are some tools to help you keep up with the news and your efforts:

Google Earth

You can download a KML file that lets you search results from past elections, since 1980. The data is broken down and can show you how different regions of the country voted - even by county. I used to work as a political consultant, and let me tell you - this kind of data is heavily relied on. It’s a bit of a late release for campaigns, who already have this data. But it’s great for political junkies.

Google News

Trying to remember what a candidate said on an issue? Just type their name into Google News. If Google has indexed a quote by that person, it will appear on top of the search results in the one box.

Google Mobile

Want to know your precinct location? The Google Mobile team has created a special tool just for that purpose. Go to m.google.com/elections on your mobile phone, type in your address and you’ll be directed to your precinct.

The tool did not point me to early voting locations, which in my state are not the same as Election Day precinct locations.

As cool as that is, always verify with your local elections office. Google even helps you do that. They have a box where you enter your state’s abbreviation, and it will pull up relevant links to voting information.

Yahoo Elections Hub and Political Dashboard

Yahoo makes the most of its successful portal platforms with its Elections Hub and Political Dashboard. The dashboard is a super slick map showing the latest poll results. Hopefully they update it with real time results on election night. I can totally see myself keeping the dashboard open while watching results come in on the tv.

Microsoft Live Search xRank

xRank, Live Search’s buzz tool, has a politician section. It’s no surprise that the Rep and Dem presidential and vice presidential candidates take the top 4 spots today. The rest of the top 20 is filled with senate and gubernatorial races, with Hillary Clinton and George Bush thrown in for good measure.

MSN Election Live Q&A

Q&A is Live Search’s answer product, and over at the MSN Election Guide, you can find the Election Live Q&A. It’s pretty straightforward. You can ask and answer questions about the election in real time.

AOL Elections Toolbar

AOL has a toolbar for IE and Firefox that can keep you up to date with election news. If you like to surf the net while watching TV - this could be an ideal toolbar for you come Tuesday night.

Well, hopefully that’s enough to keep you busy and up to date.

Got any tools to share? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

Related Reading:
Obama is Winning the Internet War
ChaCha Selected by Rock the Vote for Mobile Answers