After all of the speculation and buzz last week, Google Page Rank is back and now displaying in the Google Toolbar. It must have taken Memorial Day weekend off like the rest of us. I bet the Google engineers got a big laugh out of the speculation.

Last week, those who have the Google Toolbar noticed that the Page Rank indicator went dark. Page Rank is a measure once thought to factor heavily into Google search engine rankings. Recently, however, there were rumors that Page Rank had little if anything to do with rankings.

It’s hard to say if this newest development has any significance. Perhaps if Google doesn’t use Page Rank to factor into rankings, they are doing away with it. It’s also a possibility that Google may be preparing to use it again, but want to hide it from search engine optimizers so the rankings can’t be influenced. Time will tell.

Yahoo released Mindset today, a beta version of a new twist on web searches. Like normal, the web user can perform a search, but while viewing the results, the web searcher can use a slider to toggle between varying degrees of “Shopping” and “Researching.” It’s certainly an interesting experiment into filtering out commercial content from search results. It’s also interesting to perform a search, then move the slider in each direction and see how the search results change. Could this be the future of search?

A study released yesterday looked at the e-mail marketing practices of 250 online retailers, including many large national brands. Here are some of the findings:

• 68% are running e-mail marketing programs
• Retailers that send e-mail personalize it 25% of the time
• 23% of retailers don’t offer an e-mail signup on their homepage

If you’re selling online, it’s imperative that you have an e-mail marketing campaign, and it’s less costly than you might think. Let me offer up a recent example to show you how well e-mail performs and how high the ROI is.

I sent an e-mail marketing campaign to customers of an e-commerce site that I manage on the 18th of May. People sign up to receive e-mail in two ways—they can register from the homepage or they can opt in when they place an order. The database is what I would call “mature”—much of the list contains loyal customers who have shopped with this web site for over a year.

Over a three-day period, the e-mail brought in one-fifth of May sales thus far. As you can see, it’s alarming to me that only 68% of online retailers are running e-mail marketing programs. The mailing cost $0.01 per e-mail sent, and the return on investment was over 450%. It took two days to set up the mailing and design the text and HTML versions.

If you’re in the ecommerce business, you need an e-mail marketing program. There are many issues to consider to ensure success, so you’ll need to consult a professional. Contact me and I can help you set up an e-mail marketing program that you can run and manage.

A few new pieces of information regarding e-mail marketing were released in the last day or two.

One hot topic in e-mail marketing recently has been the best day of the week to send e-mail communications to customers. A recent report suggests that there is no longer a favorable day to send e-mail, which is a change from the last report. Of course, Saturday and Sunday are still not popular days to send commercial e-mail for obvious reasons.

DoubleClick released some figures yesterday that suggest a rising trend in orders per e-mail. During the fourth quarter of 2004, orders per email delivered were 0.35 percent, contrasted with 0.30 percent in 2003. I’ve typically seen that 0.5 percent of e-mails delivered generate orders.

Finally, a presentation at the Annual Catalog Conference in Florida yesterday revealed that large ISP’s that filter out images from e-mail messages are having a negative impact on commercial e-mail marketing. As you may know, HTML e-mail generally generates higher conversion rates than plain text messages, but e-mail clients such as Gmail and Hotmail do not display images in e-mail without the viewer’s permission. When you send an e-mail communication, it is probably best to include a message to your subscribers asking them to “display images.”

A new report out today shows that only one in eight Fortune 100 web sites are well-optimized for organic search engine placement. This number is up from last year, however, where one in eleven Fortune 100 web sites were well-optimized for organic search engine placement.

I believe this study is encouraging for the small-to-medium sized business, signaling that they can still compete with larger companies in the online space. Through aggressive search engine optimization, a small-to-medium-sized company can appear higher in search engine results than the larger players.

Companies continue to rely on paid search advertising as their entire search marketing strategy and to supplement organic search engine optimization.