My WebMetrics and Artisitc Diary

Google Hosted Blogger Blogs

2007-01-05T23:39:00.000-05:00

Google is now allowing blogger blogs to resolve to your own website address. According to Google Operating System...

"....If you wanted to enjoy all the features of the new Blogger, but also have your own domain, now you can. Follow these instructions: buy a domain, create a CNAME record for your domain and select "switch to custom domains" in your blog's settings.Google will continue to host your posts and pictures, so you don't need to buy a hosting service. The old .blogspot.com address will redirect to your new domain. This way, you'll keep your visitors and the beloved search engine rankings."

It might be something I'd consider doing one of these days - have to set up a new site first. Right now I'm so busy blogging at Webmetricsguru.com, Artnewyorkcity.com, Smartmobs.com and BigGreenBlog.com that I don't have much time to build something new.

In fact, I need to clean up this blog, get rid of a lot of junk in the right navigation - just make it look better. Wish there were more free templates to choose from on Blogger - don't find the default collection has enough choices.

test of writetomyblog

2007-01-04T18:26:00.001-05:00

Tags: test

Testing FeedBurners new metrics tracking

2007-01-04T15:26:00.000-05:00

I hope to post more often to this blog - it's the only one that I actually control the template of the blog and can test out new code/tracking services. I'm testing FeedBurner's new metrics right now.

Figured out how Avinash Kaushik's blog is rising so fast in Technorati Rank - here's a test

2006-12-08T00:30:00.000-05:00

I just figured out why Avinash Kaushik's blog, Occam's Razor, is rising so quickly in Technorati Rank!!!!!!!! It's so simple....I don't know why I did not see it before - if I was not the "detective type"...I'd never put it together.

Yep - here's part of the Secret of Avanish success - every time I post about Occam's Razor and reference a blog post - my post appears as a COMMENT in Occam's Razor - even though I did not actually leave a comment!

That's SMART . OK Here's the test. I just read Avinash's post on Hiring a Senior Web Analyst? Here’s a Suggested Job Requisition / Description and I'm using my personal Blog - ... does he approve the comment (maybe) or does it show up by itself.

Either way - every time anyone writes about one of Avinash's post ....the way he's got Occam's Razor set up .... it will show up as a comment.

I have to hand it to Avinash Kaushik ..... that was a very SMART plugin you installed.

My first post in 9 months - Stuff Happening at WebMetricsGuru.com - ArtNewYorkCity.com and SmartMobs.com

2006-10-22T13:56:00.000-04:00

This is my personal blog - but I hope someday soon to make it the repository of all my posting activity, because it really should be - I own it and I can control the blog template - I don't control the templates of Webmetricsguru.com, ArtNewYorkCity.com or SmartMobs.

And if any of these blogs goes "belly up" and don't want to lose all my subscribers and have to start all over again, like what happened to Andy Beal.

So I'm going to post more often here, even if it means making a special effort to do so - and to give information that maybe...I haven't put anywhere else - I hope you'll subscribe to Now-Seo if your reading this.

What's going on:
Just got back from the EMetrics Summit this week (I count Monday as the start of a new week - otherwise, it was last week as I got back Wednesday night). I wrote a lot of stuff on that - here's the link to that content on the Emetrics Summit at WebMetricsGuru.com. I also wrote a lot about blog ranking algos and how they differ, depending on how you count them. There was also a lot of interesting stuff going on in the Entertainment Industry and I wrote about it here - record companies spamming .. that's right...spamming .

In the Art world, I did did a 3 part post on Peter Saul, a well known American artist who has been painting for 55 years! I covered the show in 3 posts, part 1, part 2 and part 3, my thoughts on all of it.

I have also been painting a lot myself, driven by circumstances out of my control, things that let me to have to paint again - I had no choice - and now what comes out is not my rehash of Cezanne, or Manet, or anyone else - it's 100% Marshall Sponder. Many of my paintings were first published at WebMetricsGuru, along with other artists I saw, earlier this year. When I began ArtNewYorkCity.com on the Syntagma Blog.

And you can read my stuff on Smartmobs.com

AxROI - New Conversion Tracking Tool -

2006-02-17T01:15:00.000-05:00

I posted information about AxROI at WebMetricsGuru

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Confirming a penalty

2006-02-11T19:55:00.000-05:00

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � Confirming a penalty: "I'd like to address those two points. I can confirm that Google has removed traffic-power.com and domains promoted by Traffic Power from our index because of search engine optimization techniques that violated our webmaster guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. If you are a client or former client of Traffic Power and your site is not in Google, please see my previous advice on requesting reinclusion into Google's index to learn what steps to take if you would like to be reincluded in Google's index.

Note: I'm turning off comments for this post. There are other places that are more appropriate places for discussing this issue. "

I'm glad that Google announced, via Matt Cutts, that it banned Traffic Power. At least now people know - they don't have to wonder about it.

Seth's Blog: Hearing, part II

2006-02-11T19:50:00.000-05:00

Seth's Blog: Hearing, part II: "Hearing, part II
So, of course, the Eata Pita parable below is part of a bigger story.
How many organizations don't hear?
I don't mean the counterpeople and the customer service reps. I mean, how many organizations are organized to actually allow customers and prospects to share their insights and feedback?
Second, how many of those organizations have management that bother to listen to the feedback? Or employees that are empowered to do something with it?
And finally, once an organization listens, does it actually do something about what it comes across?
Insert [political party, relgious order, non-profit, for profit, teacher, school board, insurance company] here. Do they Hear, Listen and then Act?"

The funny part is that I passed Eat A Pita the other day on my way to work when I went to GCT - I imagine I could have bumped into Seth trying to order something there. The place looks seedy....I'd not order anything from there - it's no surprise the workers don't listen - they're apathetic.

Agree with the rest of this post though - most businesses are not set up for feedback or taking action on it.

WebMetricsGuru: Top Search Engine Search Numbers - just posted

2006-02-10T21:35:00.000-05:00

WebMetricsGuru: Top Search Engine Search Numbers - just posted: "Search Engine Traffic share for US searches were just posted yesterday by Nielson//NetRatings. According to ClickZ
'The number of U.S. searches grew 55 percent in December 2005 over December 2004, according to data released by Nielsen//NetRatings. '

Top Three U.S. Search Share Rankings by Percentage Points, December 2004 and 2005
Search EngineDecember 2004 Search Share (%)December 2005 Search Share (%)Change (Percentage Points)
Google43.148.85.7
Yahoo!21.721.4-0.3
MSN14.010.9-3.1
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, February 2006

Most of the sites who i do both Web Analytics and SEO/SEM for show a much greater increase in Search Traffic from Google than the numbers above suggest. In fact, one of my house plans clients had a 300%+ increase in thier Google Search Referral Traffic from Dec 04 to Dec 05.
The data above is actually not the whole story - "

I posted this information in my new blog...www.webmetricsguru.com - where you can read the rest of my post (the formatting also looks better on my other site).

Loyalty Programs for Search (by Jeremy Zawodny)

2006-02-10T14:32:00.000-05:00

Loyalty Programs for Search (by Jeremy Zawodny): "You might not think that web search is a commodity service, but I've seen public and private data that suggests we're headed that way. It was only a matter of time, right?"

Loyality as measured for return visitors via Search would be something interesting to compile for clients.

Greg Boser Says Big Companies Should Spam Search Engines (by Jeremy Zawodny)

2006-02-09T22:29:00.000-05:00

Greg Boser Says Big Companies Should Spam Search Engines (by Jeremy Zawodny): "It's not the first time I've heard this logic, but Greg's done a better job than most by putting it in simple terms:
We'll be allowed to take cuts because search engines want our sites to show up. They want them to show up because their users expect to see them. And those users don't give a shit about what's contained in the source code. All they care about is whether or not they land on a page that matches their search.
Until that fact changes, there will be virtually no risk associated with aggressive SEO for big brands. And as long as the risks are low, managers of big brands would be foolish not to explore potential strategies that will ultimately improve the visibility of their brands simply because a search engine has said they disapprove.
Is he right? Are the big brands (IBM, BMW, Apple, Toyota, Playboy, etc.) so important to search engines (or their users), that they should 'optimize' first and worry about being discovered later?
Put another way, what if every one of the Fortune 500 decided to follow BMW's lead and spam Google? Who win?
Sure, it's an extreme case. But most fun thought experiments are. :-)"

Since I work for IBM and I met Greg Bozer a couple of times at WebMasterWorld Conferences (shady fellow) I found this post of interest to me.

SRC, LLC. WebEx Enterprise Site

2006-01-29T11:38:00.000-05:00

SRC, LLC. WebEx Enterprise Site: " Date & Time Event Panelists Info
January 2006

I found some very interesting presentions on Demographics Analysis at the SRC Website - I'm going to attempt to attend as many of these meetings as I can. I believe Web Analytics and Search Engine Marketing/Optimization can be merged with Demographics Analysis data; in fact, Hitwise has attempted to do this on the high end - but at 18,000 - 46,000 per year for licensing, it's out of reach of most marketers that don't have a big agency to buy those packages.

I'll report back on how these packages can be used for Web Analytics here, so come back and visit often. Feburary should be an interesting month - based on what's being presented (below),

January 31, 2006
10:00 am- 11:00 am PST Introduction to Alteryx

Enroll

February 2006

February 7, 2006
10:00 am- 11:00 am PST HealthCare Demographics
Mandy Tehrani
Enroll

February 8, 2006
1:00 pm- 1:30 pm PST Updates and Custom Reporting In DemographicsNow!
T.J. Heyns
Enroll

February 15, 2006
8:00 am- 9:00 am PST Identify your Target market with Dnow
Nino Pozgaj
Enroll

February 20, 2006
1:00 pm- 1:30 pm PST Real Estate Research with DemographicsNow.com
Tony Thompson
Enroll

February 22, 2006
8:15 am- 9:15 am PST Learn more about adding aerial photos to your account
Nino Pozgaj
Enroll

February 22, 2006
1:00 pm- 1:30 pm PST Learn to Create Custom Maps with DemographicsNow.com
T.J. Heyns
Enroll

February 27, 2006
1:00 pm- 1:30 pm PST Power Up Your DemographicsNow.com with Add-ons
Tony Thompson
Enroll "

Know More Media: I Sneeze For Seth

2006-01-28T01:43:00.000-05:00

Know More Media: I Sneeze For Seth: "Permission Marketing
You have to give something first to people before you ask for something from them. You have to date first, allow each other to get to know each other. Does your business know how many people you have permission to talk to? You REALLY need to know and track that number."

Here's some detailed notes from Seth Godin's recent conference in NYC; I'd love to go to one.

"With all the clutter, the only lasting way to stand out among the noise is to be remarkable. Remarkable means to have other remark about what you are doing."

SiliconBeat: Kosmix raises cash for a new search engine -- to compete with Google

2006-01-28T00:54:00.000-05:00

SiliconBeat: Kosmix raises cash for a new search engine -- to compete with Google: "They are making an audaciously risky bet that they can crack the code on a vexing problem in search: finding the meaning, or at least the topic of a Web page. 'This is an unsolved problem on the Web,' says Harinarayan, from his office perched on the seventh floor of a Mountain View high-rise. His window commands a sweeping view of the valley, stretching out over toward the Googleplex, just three miles away. "

I'm interested in taking a look at Kosmix when it goes live. I have written about finding the true meaning of a page using Pertinence Summerizer; I also routinely use AdWords Keyword Planning tool which pulls out the likely keywords for a site (and a page as well). I'm curious to see what Rajaraman and Harinarayan have come up with.

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO � SEO Advice: linkbait and linkbaiting

2006-01-25T00:53:00.000-05:00

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO - SEO Advice: linkbait and linkbaiting: "Linkbaiting sounds like a bad thing, but especially if it's interesting information or fun, it doesn't have to have negative connotations. I hereby claim that content can be both white-hat and yet still be wonderful bait for links (e.g. Danny's spam email analysis). And generating information or ideas that people talk about is a surefire way to generate links. Personally, I'd lean toward producing interesting data or having a creative idea rather than spouting really controversial ideas 100% of the time. If everything you ever say is controversial, it can be entertaining, but it's harder to maintain credibility over the long haul. "

This post goes along with my last- Matt Cutts is weighing in on Link Baiting and says it can be both a good and bad thing. My interest would be : "is Google going to penalize someone for using Link Baiting"? and the answer appears to be NO.

Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse | EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil News Clearinghouse

2006-01-22T16:32:00.000-05:00

Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse EnergyBulletin.net Peak Oil News Clearinghouse: "Perhaps one of the answers relates to the same obfuscated reasons why the U.S. launched an unprovoked invasion to topple the Iraq government macroeconomics and the desperate desire to maintain U.S. economic supremacy. In essence, petrodollar hegemoy is eroding, which will ultimately force the U.S. to significantly change its current tax, debt, trade, and energy policies, all of which are severely unbalanced. World oil production is reportedly flat out, and yet the neoconservatives are apparently willing to undertake huge strategic and tactical risks in the Persian Gulf. Why? Quite simply their stated goal is U.S. global domination at any cost."

Thanks to Opinionsource.com for bringing me links to this information via it's Blogorama weekly newsletter. Opinionsource.com is also an SEO client of mine for whom I do Pro Bono work.

Anyway, based on what I'm reading we're in for a rocky 2006, especially if the US attacks IRAN. It often feels as if events are moving out of control. In the past there was the US and Soviets - and between the 2 superpowers - things could always be worked out - even if we were always ready to push the nuke button. But now, it's hard to see how we get out of Iraq as the US is planning to attack IRAN.

SEOposition.com Blog � Catch of the Day is Link Baiting

2006-01-21T23:52:00.000-05:00

SEOposition.com Blog Catch of the Day is Link Baiting: "Catch of the Day is Link Baiting
Looking for a different way to build quality links on your site? According to Rob Sullivan, SEO Consultant, Link Bating is a very underused method to try. It is not often used by your run of the mill website, which Sullivan reasons is the name association that the term Link Baiting could be considered a black hat technique and not a legitimate organic tactic."

I've never done anything like this in my link building. My wife brought this posting to my attension because of the reference to Clay Aiken, who she is a an avid fan of.

Look at this:
Contrary Hook: That’s when you take something that an important person in your field has theorized and criticize it. However, instead of being negative for negative’s sake, you will get more out of this hook if you can put your money where your mouth is. A random example: Let’s say that I am a record executive and I say that Reuben Studdard, should not have won American Idol, it should’ve been Clay Aiken. The “proof” being the amount of records sold by Clay as opposed to those sold by Reuben.

Wierd. I think this technique would take some "balls" to try. I probably would not plan on provoking commentary just to get links - but given the way modern media is setup up, particularly FOX news, ClearChannel, NY Post, stuff like that....it cuts both ways (they do it all the time, in my opinion); they Fake news, fake everything, just to get your attension. After a while, people became accustomed to having to fake thier own news just to get some attension. People are so provoked out that don't respond to just average news...it's got to be provoke you.

I probably would never try doing these techniques but I can see why others do.

MSN AdCenter Annoyances!

2006-01-21T14:01:00.000-05:00

One of my clients is a beta test for MSN AdCenter . I found the PPC interface frustrating to use so we don't run ads yet.

I do use it as a research tool and MSN AdCenter has provided some very interesting search demand and demographic data that has never been made available before in such detail (and on demand). However, MSN has opened Pandora's box for me, because now I hunger for more and the data that is provided is not reliable or extensive enough. Here's some examples (below).

Keyword: Southwest House Plans (and associated keywords)
'>href="http://marshall.sponder.50megs.com/images-forever/search_demand.JPG">

The data for December 05 and January 06 (partial) don't match in Search Demand for days of the week or times of the month where there might be Peaks in demand. Now I want that percision but the MSN Beta doesn't provide it. Worse yet, there's no way yet to export the data to Excel so I can improve on it - in fact, only the current and previous months are shown, not enough data.

The location where those who are searching for SouthWest house plans also does not match from last month and this month - though there are overlaps.

'>href="http://marshall.sponder.50megs.com/images-forever/location_dec05.JPG">

'>'>href="http://marshall.sponder.50megs.com/images-forever/location_Jan06.JPG">

Now, Geotargeted PPC might work with this data (target all the locations) but they're giving you the cities only, not the states they are in (there's more than one Arlington and Albany). Again, I need the ablility to export the raw data into a spreadsheet and MSN needs to provide that before they go live, in my opinion. By the way, if we use GeoTargeted PPC, you'll also want to do custom landing pages.

AdCenter has also provided some information on who is looking for Southwest House Plans
'>'>href="http://marshall.sponder.50megs.com/images-forever/age_gender.JPG">

In this case, age and gender are fairly even; for many types of house plan styles, they aren't the same at all, and that should be a wakeup call to anyone that markets anything on the web...audinces can differ from offering to offering on the same website! The "show all and let visitors pick what they want" approach is effectively dead!

Finally, MSN provides demographic clustering information, similar to Claritas Prizm Segmentation System though the cluster definations are not explained anywhere on tbe MSN AdCenter Beta site - frustrating to say the least. So you have to go outside MSN AdCenter to find out what the cluster segmantation means. Also, the information they are collecting from the MSN Toolbar is not yet comprehensive enough (but it's a start).
'>'>'>href="http://marshall.sponder.50megs.com/images-forever/Demographcs_dec05.JPG">

You can see those who searched the most (that MSN can figure out thier cluster) was the "Rural Inheritance" cluster ... except it's not part of the PRIZM system defination, which means that MSN is using another Cluster defination, or worse yet, mixing different companies definations of various clusters. What needs to happen is for MSN to publish the meaning of each of these clusters and they haven't done that yet.

Finally, there's wealth infomation (do people accurately give their income level to MSN?)
'>href="http://marshall.sponder.50megs.com/images-forever/wealth_dec05.JPG">

So now that we have this data, we need more precision and wider data sampling in time, plus the ability to export the data.

I wonder if Google is planning some super stelth version of this right now?

Seth's Blog: Understanding the funnel

2006-01-20T23:32:00.000-05:00

Seth's Blog: Understanding the funnel: "Understanding the funnel"
href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/funnel2s.jpg">
I like this posting about the sales "funnel". I'm wondering how this applies to my own clients.

Not running Google Analytics on any of my clients' sites so I don't have an actual picture of what Seth is referring to, but I can imagine it.

Bush Administration Demands Search Data; Google Says No; AOL, MSN & Yahoo Said Yes

2006-01-19T22:36:00.000-05:00

Bush Administration Demands Search Data; Google Says No; AOL, MSN & Yahoo Said Yes:
"Bush Administration Demands Search Data; Google Says No; AOL, MSN & Yahoo Said Yes

NOTE: We're continuing to update this news through postscripts below the original story."

This is really scary! Not unexpected though. What i did not understand earlier today is Bush already got most of what he was after from AOL, MSN and Yahoo.

John Battelle's Searchblog: Don't Look Now, But It's Happening

2006-01-19T22:31:00.000-05:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: Don't Look Now, But It's Happening: "Don't Look Now, But It's Happening

(This is from John Batelle's SearchBlog)

From my book, written a year or so ago:
As we move our data to the servers at Amazon.com, Hotmail.com,
Yahoo.com, and Gmail.com, we are making an implicit bargain, one
that the public at large is either entirely content with, or, more likely,
one that most have not taken much to heart.
That bargain is this: we trust you to not do evil things with our
information. We trust that you will keep it secure, free from unlaw-
ful government or private search and seizure, and under our control
at all times. We understand that you might use our data in aggregate
to provide us better and more useful services, but we trust that you
will not identify individuals personally through our data, nor use
our personal data in a manner that would violate our own sense of
privacy and freedom.
That�s a pretty large helping of trust we�re asking companies to
ladle onto their corporate plate. And I�m not sure either we or they
are entirely sure what to do with the implications of such a transfer.
Just thinking about these implications makes a reasonable person�s
head hurt.
From the Mercury News, today:
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google Inc. to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content inaccessible to minors.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the re"

B12 Partners Solipsism: Is Abramoff the New Monica

2006-01-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

B12 Partners Solipsism: Is Abramoff the New Monica: "Frank Rich: Is Abramoff the New Monica?
The Jack Abramoff scandal may metastasize from a cancer on Congress to a cancer on the Republican Party in general and this presidency in particular. "

I have to search Technorati so I can now read the New York Times Editorials, like Frank Rich and Paul Krugman.

Then I heard last week that the email addresses used to reach the editioral comumnists was also taken away; it was replaced by an online form you can fill out.

Personally, that might make sense (have one form that everyone fills out to reach a particular editorial columnist) but following putting up the Times Firewall, and charging 50 dollars a year to read this stuff...it feels more like an insult...like "Take That"!

The NY Times is pushing away it's base.

John Battelle Video of talk at Google NY on December 7th 2005

2006-01-14T21:48:00.000-05:00

I found a neat version of John Batelle's presentation at Google NY last December.

Being Fleeced - Being Judgemental

2006-01-14T01:04:00.000-05:00

Spend a lot of time and energy looking at several company sites for problems using Web Analytics and SEO tools; it's much easier to look at other people's issues than my own. I'm reminded of the stories I hear of Doctor's not operating on thier own relatives.

Since last fall I've noticed my energy bills going up by almost 50% in some cases. My typical electric bill last year at this time was around 130.00 a month; it's now 180.00 a month. Natural Gas Bills are around the same, but I noticed a new charge on my bill for "gas-delivery" that I never saw before, effectively doubling the cost for 25.00 to 50.00 last month.

Other utililities are going up too; I noticed my T-mobile cell phone bill had communication charges to cell phones within the same network (one T-mobile phone to another) for 6.99 per month. However, for as long as I remember, communications between Tmobile cell phones was sopposed to be free of charge.

My rent went up also, partly to compensate for the increased energy costs the landlord pays for heating the building I live in.

But most of these charges are being slipped in "under the door" without being explained or approved of beforehand (as if I'd approve a "gas delivery charge" - of course I would not approve it).

I get angry when companies "rob" the consumer. This is how the issue relates to Web Analytics and metics: When it's someone else's problem, it's easy for me to look at it and perhaps make statements, based on the analytics, of my opinion about issues I point out.

It's not at all easy for me to do that for myself though. For example, the same analytic skill that I employ for others should be leading me to compare the cost per killowatt hour last year at this time to now, to see how much it changed. Did I use more energy this year than last? I don't know yet. In fact, I'm afraid to look. I don't really feel like calling the gas company either to find out what the "gas delivery charge" is all about. I did call Tmobile and cut back on a couple of things - and then the service person told me about the 6.99 Tmobile to Tmobile charge.

So, my belief is that someone who looks at others' problems and issues ought to be able to look at thier own problems and issues the same way --- but it's much harder to do so. But I don't want to be too judgemental, too hard on myself. It's human not to be perfect.

New Jersey Search Symposium cancelled

2006-01-13T01:02:00.000-05:00

The search conference that I was going to speak at later this month got cancelled. I'm not surprized as it was announced only 3 weeks before it would take place. I suppose it could have been promoted on short notice, but it's very unusual to plan something like that so close to the date when it's going to happen.

So I was not surprised by the news. IT would have been nice to pick up some of the newest strategies and meet new people - oh well...it'll happen later.

Trending and Tracking the Blogosphere and Newsosphere : SEO Book.com

2006-01-08T15:10:00.000-05:00

Trending and Tracking the Blogosphere and Newsosphere : SEO Book.com

I found this reference to Blog Buzz tools that are free to use; I use them. Like Arron, I can't afford WebFountain, but then again, WebFountain might give me more information than I'd know what to do with.

3-Day Tactical SEO Strategies Symposium at the Sheraton Suites in Weehawken, New Jersey

2006-01-05T20:49:00.000-05:00

I've been working with Robin Nobles and John Alexander for over 2 years as a chat moderator for the World Resource Center. A couple of days ago Robin asked me if I would reccomend a site in New Jersey to hold thier lastest SEO Strategies Symposium. At first they wanted to do it in Newark, NJ; I suggested this location and hotel instead.

color="#000080">Join leading SEO industry educators
Robin Nobles, John Alexander and Dave Barry at the
3-Day Tactical SEO Strategies Symposium
at the Sheraton Suites in Weehawken, New Jersey

Sheraton Suites on the Hudson
500 Harbor Boulevard
Weehawken, New Jersey 07086

Located only a half-mile from Manhattan, the hotel
offers easy access via the New York Waterway Ferry
right outside the hotel door with a spectacular view
of the entire New York City skyline.

Hopefully, I'll be able to attend all 3 days, but I drop by in any case - here's what the hotel looks like; I stayed in this hotel twice about 5 years ago and liked it alot-it's also not that far from where I live so I don't actually have to stay in it this time (though I might consider spending a night there).

Here's the link to sign up for the SEO Straegies Symosium which sounds really, really great. I'm looking forward to meeting Robin and John there, as well as a bunch of other people that I've heard and are well known in the SEO field.

Gates: IBM, Not Google, Top Rival; Shows off Vista Features � MarketingVOX

2006-01-05T12:36:00.000-05:00

Gates: IBM, Not Google, Top Rival; Shows off Vista Features � MarketingVOX: "'The biggest company in the computer industry by far is IBM. They have the four times the employees that I have, way more revenues than I have. IBM has always been our biggest competitor. The press just doesn't like to write about IBM,' said Gates. "

IBM more of a threat to Microsoft than Google? Interesting. Why does Gates feel the press does not like to write about IBM?

Quote from Jill Whalen's latest High Rankings Advisor that I liked

2006-01-04T23:56:00.000-05:00

I read this quote from Jill Whalen that really rang a bell with me. I've seen Jill at several of the SEO/SEM Conferences I've attended but never personally spoke with her; she strikes me as a strong woman with a lot of confidence in herself, kinda sexy actually. I really find most of her newsletters filled with basic stuff. Still, a gem is a gem.

Whether it's search marketing or any other business that you want to getinto, no person, book, website, or seminar can make you successful; not in15 minutes, 15 days, or even 15 years. Only *you* can make yourselfsuccessful, and it can only happen through hard work, dedication, andcreativity. Resources and teachers can point you in the right direction,but being successful is an ongoing, lifelong process that can't be taught.Success comes from doing and -- surprisingly enough -- from making a wholebunch of mistakes along the way. So stop reading those get-rich-quickwebsites, and start trying your hand at doing stuff. The worst that willhappen is you'll have a few mess-ups along the way. As long as you learnfrom them, then you're on the right track. As to opening up an SEO company after taking an SEO training class, I amhaving a difficult time imagining any class that could get you up to speedquickly enough to own a company that gets paid to optimize other people'ssites. Even our own High Rankings Seminar is just a start. You simplycan't learn SEO in a few days. You have to try things, see what works foryou and what doesn't, and then adjust from there. Since results can taketime, you won't even know if you're really good at SEO until you've beenpracticing it (hopefully on your own sites or on those of your friends) forat least 1 year, if not longer.

Microsoft Trying To Buy Yahoo!

2006-01-04T18:40:00.000-05:00

!Microsoft Trying To Buy Yahoo!: "Wednesday, January 04, 2006Microsoft Trying To Buy Yahoo!You and I know damn well that Microsoft wasn't going to go down in search flames without putting up a fight after losing the 'Battle at AOL-burg' to Google. Microsoft has officially thrown the gloves off and pulled out its' wallet. Microsoft, like the rest of us would do, pulled out some billion dollar bills, 80 to be exact, and slid them over to Yahoo in attempt to buy Yahoo Inc. This rumored bid was slightly more then 30% of Yahoo's current market value and they kindly said ..... NO?"

Wow! Microsoft buying Yahoo would be interesting - it would put Yahoo-MSN Search engine with about the equal share of searchers that Google has. But, intergrating MSN and Yahoo are also sure to spur layoffs as there is duplication in both companies that would be eliminated. At the end of the day, I'm not sure if the merger of these two companies is a good thing for the Search Engine world.

Dropping out of MSN Search - the value of conferences

2006-01-04T00:35:00.000-05:00

I have a client whose listings suddenly dropped out of MSN Search. All of a Sudden.

Tried to find someone to talk with, a name, not a form; got nowhere.

Remembered that I heard Eytan Seidman, Program Manager of MSN Search, speak at a couple of conferences. Tried to find his email address by looking at PDF files of his presentation from Webmasterworld in New Orleans that I last attended - no luck - his email address was not on it.

Did not keep his card, but I do recall he had his email address on something I saw over the last year.

If you ever want to know why it's important to attend conferences, this is one of the reasons. When something goes wrong you need a contact and you meet people at conferences, people in charge of things. I still haven't got Eytan's email address, but I left 2 postings in the MSN Blog for him. Maybe I'll get lucky and get a hold of him.

In the future - collect and keep business cards, you'll never know when a contact will come in handy.

Happy 2006!

2006-01-01T01:46:00.000-05:00

Spent the last 10 days working on my own projects, including an interesting demographics study for a non-profit called www.opinionsource.com.

Pulled some very useful information from MSN Ad Center Pilot for some of my clients and while the data MSN is providing is raw, it goes beyound what has been provided by Search Engines previously. This year I see some competition in providing intelligence similar to MSN from Yahoo, and possibly Google.

I also went by the Metropolotian Museum to see the Fra Angelico show; i'll go back before the show closes on the 27th. There was also a show about Occult photography at the turn of last century that I would have liked to have looked at more closely. Both shows were so packed I could not enjoy them as much as i'd have liked.

Another show I saw last month and again on Friday was the Oscar Bluemner show at the Whitney Museum; Bluemner was a great artist but his personality made it hard for him to get along with authority figures and he ended up killing himself.

But getting back to SEO, I picked up Andrew Goodman's book on AdWords PPC that is very insightful and easy to read; i've been enjoying it and going slow. Also finishing up on Juan Enriquez's book The Untied States of America ; I did his blog buzz project and learnt something about blog advertising using BlogAds and similar networks and found the whole thing facinating.

I also gave a chat at the World Resource Center on Developing Blog Buzz and on the 16th I'll be doing another chat on Search Engine Spam Techniques you in the house plans industry.

Finally, my wife's hard drive died and we replaced it; the first time that has happened - I read about it all the time...but it happend. The replacement drive was put in and the OS restored quickly - that went fine. What was more more difficult to restore was the customization that she put into the PC, things that were not backed up.

And after today it's back to IBM, where I work with Search Metrics.

Recent work and a talk with Juan Enriquez

2005-12-18T15:34:00.000-05:00

Recently I did some very interesting work on Blogging connected to the new book the UNTIED States of America, by John Enriquez.

After sending off my reseach on this subject I also spoke to a Viral Marketing expert who verified that what I produced is about as much as one can do with the tools available (ie: SeoElite, OptiSpider, Google AdWords new keyword planning tools for Semantic Analysis, etc).

In some cases, getting interest would be easy - just know the right people; but it's not that simple and sometimes, even asking for that help might present obstacles. More on this later.

"my metrics diary" - Google Search

2005-09-22T13:22:00.000-04:00

"my metrics diary" - Google Search: "My Yahoo! - Add My Metrics Diary
Stay current with My Metrics Diary and thousands of other sources on your personal
My Yahoo! page. What is My Yahoo!? Learn More. ...
add.my.yahoo.com/rss?url=http:/ /feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/INbw - Supplemental Result - Similar pages "

Interesting.....Google is indexing the FeedBurner RSS Feeds I created to subscribe to MyYahoo!

Google WiFi - Secure Access Software (Beta)

2005-09-21T00:03:00.000-04:00

Google WiFi - Secure Access Software (Beta): "http://wifi.google.com/faq.html
Seems Google are gettign ready to launch Google WiFi! "

I just downloaded Google WiFi and it appears to be working using my existing broadband. I'll have to play with this and see if it works anywhere in NYC.

My Metrics Diary is now www.now-seo.com and www.blog-keywords.com

2005-09-17T20:04:00.000-04:00

I decided it was time to get rid of the site that was www.now-seo.com as it no longer reflected me. Last month I purchased a domain called www.blog-keywords.com for which I will eventually develop a site (or another blog) with.

I was puzzled on how my site no longer showed PageRank once the site loaded, but showed PageRank as it was loading; decided it was a coding issue that I did not control and that made me more willing to get rid of the content on marshall.sponder.50megs.com and maybe just start all over with that domain, or just use it for downloads and extra storage, stuff like that.

Looked around for website templates for FrontPage and decided I did not like anything I saw that much. I also looked for blogger templates and did not find as many templates as I would have liked...

Updating My Website

2005-09-17T00:31:00.000-04:00

I feel a hypocrite for optimizing websites of my clients while ignoring my own site. It's much easier to work with a site that already exists and has problems than deciding what to do about www.now-seo.com.

For one thing, when I built Now-Seo, I used 50megs.com as a hosting provider, which was a poor choice because it's really shared hosting. At first I triedmasking the actual address and doing a redirect from the hosting provider so only now-seo.com showed up in the address bar; then I realized that might hurt whatever rankings I might get, so I stoped that. As a result, I make no attemt to mask that www.now-seo.com resolves to http://www.marshall.sponder.50megs.com/now-seo/index.html.

I noticed today that my site does not show pagerank in the Google Toolbar. I became upset and looking at the site I've been ignoring, it's looked ugly and sloppy to me all of a sudden.

Soon, I was Googling for "seo website templates" and "seo friendly website templates" or just "website templates". Here I was, fixing multi-million dollar sites for others, but would not lift a finger to fix my own site over the last 30 months or so.

I found a couple of products that look interesting like SEO Website Builder http://www.seo-website-builder.com/ but I wonder if I'd have the patience to work though the templates. I do SEO/SEM.....I don't want to work though a restrictive system, and the site also says that an experienced Webmaster or SEO would not like this product as much because of the restrictions.

But I don't want to come up with the whole design of the site from scratch...and now I'm back to looking at the website project from the point of view of those who build sites and think more about appearance and message than SEO.

Rather than doing anything tonight, I'm going to step back and let the emotions pass and then take an objective look and see what I want am willing to do about it.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Special Exhibitions: Matisse: The Fabric of DreamsHis Art and His Textiles

2005-08-27T23:43:00.000-04:00

Henri Matisse Show at the Metropolitian Museum

"The impact of Henri Matisse's lifelong interest in textiles is shown in a selection of approximately 75 paintings, drawings, prints, and painted paper cutouts. Also exhibited are examples from the artist's personal collection of textiles, many of which have been packed away in family trunks since Matisse's death in 1954."

I went to the Metropolitian Museum today, for a change, and tried to get away from my SEO work, and back to my artist beginnings. I looked closely at the Watteu's, Rembrants, Cezanne and Manet paintings and the Matisse Textile show.

I really enjoyed the Matisse show and it got me to thinking about how he progressed; I found his early work and middle body of work very satisfying but his later work, much less so. After 1930, there were examples of paintings that had taken several sessions, but looked like they were done in a couple of minutes, much like a sketch.

What's wrong with that? We'll, I think there is something that I don't feel comfortable with, and never have. As an artist evolves, the work through ideas and eventually evolve out of their artform! I belive that's what happened to Matisse; he evolved from a Lawyer to a Artist/painter and eventually became a textile artist! Sure, that's an oversimplifaction, but the same process happened to Picasso, and to many, many artists, even old masters, like Titian.

After you work though an idea, over and over again, we move on to the next thing; and that "thing" might not be as visible as the perfection we achived before. Titian's later works look sloppy; yet the are considered the apex of his art. Rembrant the same, Renoir is the same and Matisse certainly showed that..at least, that's how I view it.

The later works are simply not satisfying, they look like sribbles, however art historians talk about it.

Meet the Google Engineers at SES - including AdSense engineers - JenSense.com

2005-08-06T18:40:00.000-04:00

Meet the Google Engineers at SES - including AdSense engineers - JenSense.com: "Due to the success of the 'Meet the Google Engineers' event at the Webmaster World Conference, we have decided to repeat the event during the upcoming Search Engine Strategies Conference next week. We have decided to host the event as a component of the Google Dance which is being held at the Googleplex on Tuesday August 9th.

Here are the details:
Googleplex
Bldg 40 Temp Tech Talk
7:00p.m.-9:00p.m."

I guess I can't go to all the conferences; Webmasterworld was good, and I'm pretty saturated.

Amazon.com: Books: Search Engine Marketing, Inc. : Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site

2005-08-06T14:32:00.000-04:00

Amazon.com: Books: Search Engine Marketing, Inc. : Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site: "Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

Marshall Sponder, August 5, 2005
Reviewer:M. Sponder (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

I've read just about every book written on SEO/SEM and this is by far the best! Search Engine Marketing Inc. is also about marketing strategy; in fact, there's a wealth of information one would never expect to find in a book about Search Engine Marketing.

The writing style is light, sometimes humorus, making Search Engine Marketing, Inc. an easy read; that's quite an achievement for a technical book.

Bill Hunt and Mike Moran's SEO/SEM book is unique because it tells you how to best set up a search team within your organization. The book also tells you how to evaluate external search vendors in order to decide if the company would be better off running a search campaign in house or by hiring an external vendor. Chapter 15 contains the best set of information on measuring success of any search campaign.

Search Engine Marketing, Inc. is like going to all the major search conferences, absorbing every bit of essential information and writing down the essence in one book. Buy the book.

I wrote a review to Bill Hunt and Mike Morans' book on Search Engine Marketing, Inc. Mine is the first review on Amazon of this book, that is sure to break new ground in the SEO/SEM industry.

Finding the meanings of a page using Pertinence Summarizer

2005-07-17T14:57:00.000-04:00

Been looking for a textual analysis tool for some time and have tried every one I can get my hands on, including Site Content Analyzer, Tropes, and a couple of others that I don't remember offhand.

But I just came accross a Semantic Analyzer that really does work and appears to summerize a html page (or any document) in a way similar to what Google and other search engines might sumerize a page to decide what the page is about and what it should rank for. Best of all, Pertinence Summarizer can be used for free at this link, that allows you to Summerize Google results for any query.

I tested this on two of my clients, http://www.thehousedesigners.com and www.livingconcepts.com, to see what Pertinence Summarizer finds is the essential meaning of the main pages.

For The House Designers, Pertinence decided that "decorate dream house plans", "build dream house plans", "the house designers", "beautiful house plans" "popular home plans" and "designer house plans" were the most meaninful phases on the main page.

These may, or may not be the best phrases for this page to rank for...and we'd want to see what the competition is putting into their pages and compare it with what Google thinks our pages are about. Lets look at the Google Results before going any further:

Google Query focusing on www.thehousedesigners.com results
decorate dream house plans Position # 1 of 194,000 documents found on 7/17/05
build dream house plans Position # 8 of 7,160,000 documents found on 7/17/05
beautifual house plans Position # 3 of 5,230,000 documents found on 7/17/05
popular home plans Position #20 of 22,300,000 documents found on 7/17/05
designer house plans Position # 7 of 2,640,000 documents found on 7/17/05

I found the best level of Sumerization to be between 30% to 10%; depending on how much text is on a page (for a lot of text, 20% works best).

What's important here is to 1) understand what Google thinks this page is about, and 2) experiement and change the copy to what you want it to be, and then have Pertinence read it off your hard drive and get the meanings you want to come accross, then republish your page and watch the results.

Of course, what ever is decided on in the body text, should be supported, somewhat, with backlink anchor text of sites pointing to your own.

Using Pertinence at 20% Sumerization, I came up with these important phrases for www.livingconcepts.com . I don't think these phrases, below, are the best ones to rank for but that's what Pertinence shows are, in fact, what Google thinks their main page is about.

house plans golf Position 1 in 3,000,000 documents on 7/17/05
lakefront house plans Position 3 in 152,000 documents on 7/17/05
product development home building industry

The last phase, "product development home building industry" does not work, and I'd have taken it out of their copy and put it on a different page because Google does not think the main living concepts page is about product development or the home building industry..and if that's something the client wants, they have to re-write the copy to reflect that.

So you can get all kinds of ideas of how to use this summerizer service, which can be used for free, though a license that translates to 145.00 USD, is probably a good way to go if your going to use it alot. For the Google Demo, which opens up Pertinence Summarizer for your use, you'll need to supply them with an email address, and they will supply you with a password.

Happy Semantic Analsyis!

IBM advancing on its search engine project

2005-07-15T01:37:00.000-04:00

Well, I do work for IBM and have been working on Search Engine Metrics, both for the company, and on my own freelance work, things like that. So I guess an article as interesting as this one would peak my interest.

I was suprized an the amount of information contained in the article. I've never seen an actual collection of data, gathered and given meaning my WebFountain. I'd certainly like to see it and I hope I will in the future.

I've been thinking about what it would be nice to have now; what I'm envisioning might not have anything to do with WebFountain. Take for example, the Karl Rove, Joseph Wilson, Valarie Palme case that's rapidly unfolding.

It would be great to have a graphical viewer that did something like this: Software that would allow me to chose a subject and, or story, then datamine the internet and pull related information and catagorize as positive or negative, or you can set up as many states of catagorization as you want.

I keep on wishing I could find a program like that today; but I haven't see anything remotely close. ONly WebFountain sounds like it could do it...but I have yet to see how WebFountain is configured to do this work.

Burning Questions - The Official FeedBurner Weblog: New Awareness Feature: BuzzBoost

2005-07-12T15:07:00.000-04:00

Burning Questions - The Official FeedBurner Weblog: New Awareness Feature: BuzzBoost: "New Awareness Feature: BuzzBoost
If you have several blogs or other sites that have their own feeds, we'll bet a few bottom dollars you've been looking for a way to easily cross-promote them. Or, perhaps you're a podcaster who would like to list your latest podcast postings in a blog sidebar or other handy garden spot somewhere on the web. The bottom line? You've got feeds you want to get out there where people can see 'em, and you'd like to allow people to see the feed headlines (or content itself) in some compact, convenient format.
Enter BuzzBoost. It's the latest publicity and awareness offering for FeedBurner publishers, and it's free. BuzzBoost's job is to redisplay your feed content anywhere you can copy and paste a short snippet of HTML code � in a Blogger or TypePad page template, on a corporate website, or even in a 'signature' block on a message board. BuzzBoost code is just a short line of JavaScript that displays content items and information from a FeedBurner feed according to settings you provide. You get to control how BuzzBoost displays the following elements"

This FeedBurner enhancement is definately worth a look!

Portable Rollable Displays: Foldable Screens That Fit Your Pocket

2005-07-12T14:49:00.000-04:00

I'm waiting for this! I keep thinking about how the portable devices we're using now are still pretty limited. I have a TMobile Sidekick II, I think it's great, but what I really want is what's below.

Robin Good mentioned the Foldable Screen in This Article,while the information about wearable digital camaras came from This Source.

I want one of these today; actually, I wanted one yesterday too!

Google Earth is Addictive!

2005-07-12T00:49:00.000-04:00

I've been using Google Earth quite a lot, both for personal enjoyement and for my SEO work.

One of my clients is an architect (I have several house designers as clients) and I looked at the sales data in one of the channels the architect sells his plans through. Before Google Earth, the address of the people who bought architectual house plans would not have mattered to me much. But look what I did with 6 months of my clients' data!

I was able to home into each address and, in many cases, look at the actual address where the plan was sold. I was also able to search for builders and related types of professions that tend to buy house plans using the local search part of Google Earth.

Amazing Stuff! Thanks Google!

New EyeTracking Study

2005-07-12T00:28:00.000-04:00

I've been reading the New Eye Tracking Study sponsered by Enquiro and Did-it.com; trying to make sense of it.

The "sales letter" for this publication led me to believe I'd find out something conclusive; but I did not really find that was the case. I think I'll re-read it over after I finish the last couple of pages. I don't think a sampling of 48 people is a large enough sampling; they need 10 times that number..

Another thing I noticed was the "Google Effect"; the authors contended that we had been educated to think the top listings in search results were more relevent because Google was sopposed to produce highly relevent results. We look withing the Golden Triange (above) and then the first couple of paid ads. But if we did not find what we were looking for, we quickly lose confidence (in the Google Effect?) and start looking all over the page when we next search on the same query.

It's really hard for me, right now, to decide if this has any long term meaning in my SEO work or not. I have to absorb it and see if it works.

Google hovers as Baidu readies IPO

2005-07-05T09:15:00.000-04:00

Google hovers as Baidu readies IPO: "Google hovers as Baidu readies IPO
Monday July 4, 6:00 am ET
By David Shabelman in San Francisco
As Baidu.com Inc. nears an initial public offering in the U.S., the company appears to be drawing a close look from Google Inc., which sources said could have an interest in acquiring the Chinese Internet search leader. "

Interesting. I've been tracking Baidu closely....it does produce a lot of search traffic.
For Google, it makes sense to aquire it.

Boing Boing: 3D TV (no glasses required)

2005-07-04T11:22:00.000-04:00

Boing Boing: 3D TV (no glasses required): "3D TV (no glasses required)
During the cyberdelic early 1990s in San Francisco, my friend Dan Mapes was one of the rave scene's most dynamic digital video and virtuality evangelists. I hadn't heard from Dan for several years, but today's New York Times reveals that his vision for the future hasn't changed. Dan's now co-founder of Deep Light, a San Fernando Valley-based start-up marketing a high-res 3D TV that delivers the illusion of depth without any clunky glasses. In the Times article, Michael Krantz gives a sneak preview of Deep Light's HD3D, a system based on technology first developed by Cambridge University professor Adrian Travis."

I'd like one of these.

The New York Times > Technology > Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book

2005-07-04T11:16:00.000-04:00

The New York Times > Technology > Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book: "hen he has writer's block, John Battelle, author of the forthcoming book 'The Search: The Inside Story of How Google and Its Rivals Changed Everything,' keeps on writing. But not his book manuscript. Instead, he goes straight to his blog (battellemedia.com).

Mr. Battelle, a founder of Wired and The Industry Standard magazines, sometimes makes quick notes on the blog about a topic related to his book, and other times posts longer essays. 'Writing for the blog is more like having a conversation,' Mr. Battelle said. "

Small world! I met John Batelle briefly at Webmasterworld; told him I have been reading his blog since I am using My Yahoo! as a news aggregator.

Smart Mobs: Foundcity: social mapping tool overlaid on google maps

2005-07-03T15:20:00.000-04:00

Smart Mobs: Foundcity: social mapping tool overlaid on google maps: "Foundcity: social mapping tool overlaid on google maps
Shibuya Epiphany, The Era of Sentient Things
Posted by Howard at 12:38 AM
'Social mapping tools' like Foundcity connect your journeys through the physical world with maps you can tag and access from your desktop or share with your social network. Snap a picture with your cameraphone, add a tag in the message body, and send the message to nyc@foundcity.net (also in Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Los Angeles right now) "

I just signed up.

Gary Stein - JupiterMedia post on using BlogPulse to determine Buzz

2005-07-02T22:52:00.000-04:00

But...I mean...look at this. Really. Who's going to be able to concentrate for the next 3 weeks? I'm doing a session at Ad-Tech on the FIRST DAY IN THE ALPS!

OK. Focus.

Take a look at the chart above, courtesy of BlogPulse. Cycling has enjoyed a pretty incredible in interest these last several years, at least here in the US. The reason is clear: Armstrong is an amazing athlete with an incredible story.

I'm interested in the how Gary Stein used Blogpulse to discover trends. I have decided to do the same thing...but I had not seen too many people explain it as well as Gary did.

RSS Autoresponders: Pros and Cons - Robin Good's Latest News

2005-06-29T10:43:00.000-04:00

RSS Autoresponders: Pros and Cons - Robin Good's Latest News: "Top 10 Reasons WHY 'RSS Autoresponders' Are Becoming A Permission Email Marketers BEST Friend ... and WHY you should Seriously consider the switch if your a Permission Email Marketer. "

Robin Good has published an article on setting up RSS Responders..why we should have them.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with Bill Hunt last week at Webmasterworld in New Orleans.
I mentioned to Bill that feeds need to be kept fresh with several posts a week; he said he did not
have time for that but had a autoresponder that would create posts for him...he just had to
sit down and put the information into the autoresponder.

Yahoo Integrates Personal & Social Search with MyWeb 2.0

2005-06-29T10:35:00.000-04:00

Yahoo Integrates Personal & Social Search with MyWeb 2.0: "In practice, this means your search results with MyWeb 2.0 will be very different than those you get with Yahoo, Google or any other major engine. It also means that your search results will change over time, as your personal web and those of your community expand. Walther says these changes should lead to more relevant results but that depends largely on the 'quality' of members of your community and the web pages they choose to add to your communal web."

Over time, top rankings, as we know it, will become less and less important. One of the goals of personalized search results is to show you only what your interested in...your search results will differ from everyone else. That's the future.

BBC NEWS | Business | Lessons from Silicon Valley

2005-06-27T22:22:00.000-04:00

BBC NEWS | Business | Lessons from Silicon Valley: "So lesson number two is about the new markets created by the internet, the ones making big profits for Google quarter by quarter.
'The 20th Century mass production world was about dozens of markets of millions of people. The 21st Century is all about millions of markets of dozens of people,' observes Mr Kraus. "

Mirco Marketing. Micro Targeting. Geo-Demographics /Psychographics. All these things the internet makes possible now. The rules of success have been modified by the potential of what now exists.

What Other People Say May Change What You See - New York Times

2005-06-27T22:12:00.000-04:00

What Other People Say May Change What You See - New York Times: "What Other People Say May Change What You See

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: June 28, 2005
A new study uses advanced brain-scanning technology to cast light on a topic that psychologists have puzzled over for more than half a century: social conformity.

Dr. Gregory S. Berns
In the new study, subjects were asked to decide if geometric shapes were the same or different.

The study was based on 1950's work by the psychologist Solomon Asch, above. The study was based on a famous series of laboratory experiments from the 1950's by a social psychologist, Dr. Solomon Asch."

This is a interesting article and I'm trying to understand what it means. Does it mean that if your
in group of people and they have one opinion, and you another, that you will actually change the way I see, what I think about the subject in question?

Ballmer: We'll Catch Google In Relevancy In 6 Months

2005-06-27T22:04:00.000-04:00

Ballmer: We'll Catch Google In Relevancy In 6 Months: "Ballmer: We'll Catch Google In Relevancy In 6 Months

We've had Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer make jabs at Google before. However, ZDNet Australia article Google in sight as Ballmer vows .NET push reports a new spin, that 'in the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy,' Ballmer said.
It will be interesting to see how this will be proved in six month's time.

As Danny points out here, trying to determine search relevancy is a difficult thing to do.

That said, if you look at the results from Barry's unscientific but very interesting survey, the difference in relevancy between Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and MSN Search is already very small. "

I'm not using MSN that much; it's a habit. If MSN starts to show itself to be a better experience for me- I'll start using it more.

WebmasterWorld Conference New Orleans Update

2005-06-27T00:22:00.000-04:00

WebmasterWorld Conference New Orleans Update: "Just wanted to thank Brett and crew for a great conference. The hotel was pretty bad, but I won't hold that against WebmasterWorld. :) Had a great time. Really loved meeting online buddies, as well as tons of people I'd never talked to before. Will be leaving the hotel in a couple of hours (thank goodness), and heading home with my head full of ideas. "

I feel the same way about the Webmasterworld Conference. I hated the hotel and we left a day early, right after the Conference, last Friday. The conference itself was great! It was the best SEO conference I've been to. I don't think I want to
go back to New Orleans for a while though....I've seen enough of it.

HitWise Launches Keyword Intelligence - a New Keyword Research Tool : SEO Book.com

2005-06-22T02:50:00.000-04:00

HitWise Launches Keyword Intelligence - a New Keyword Research Tool : SEO Book.com: "HitWise Launches Keyword Intelligence - a New Keyword Research Tool
HitWise launches a new keyword research tool by the name of Keyword Intelligence.
Keyword Intelligence data is based on Hitwise's sample of over 25 million home, work and educational Internet users worldwide and how these people use specific search terms across all search engines to find products and services online.
HitWise has partnerships with various ISPs and search services to track search and clickthrough data. Some of their products are a bit pricey for small webmasters (I believe starting at around $25,000 a year). The Keyword Intelligence offering looks like an attempt to break into the mid to lower market.
Keyword Intelligence has two different subscription plans starting at $90 and $190 a month. It allows you to subscribe to geographic markets and categories and do keyword research from there.

I heard a little about this at the Competitive Research panal today at Webmasterworld. I also spoke with Bill Tanner of Hitwise about the product.

John Battelle's Searchblog: WebmasterWorld Ho

2005-06-21T19:12:00.000-04:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: WebmasterWorld Ho: "I'm at the WebmasterWorld Search conference today, so posting will be light. "

I spoke with John right after he arrived last night to attend Webmasterworld; also was at his keynote address today. I enjoyed listening to the his ideas about Federated Search and the new company he is founding.

The SEO Industry Cathing Up on RSS?

2005-06-21T19:08:00.000-04:00

The SEO Industry Cathing Up on RSS?: "The SEO Industry Cathing Up on RSS?
posted by Rok Hrastnik in RSS Marketing.

With RSS getting more and more coverage, 'traditional' internet marketing industries start branching out in to it. The SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) industry was quite early to catch on, but only in some limited and highly early adopter circles.

But now it's starting to move in to the more 'mainstream SEO' waters. In 2003 I considered myself a late-comer to RSS, but now I guess I'm getting close to dinosaur status. OK, it's not that bad, but I can't get over how the positive aspects of RSS keep getting discovered these days ..."

Not surprised. I have been picking up the buzz for more than a year at the SES and Webasterworld conferences. I'm at Webmasterworld right now, in New Orleans, and there are a couple of sessions that deal with PodCasting and RSS feeds as part of SEO.

TrustRank ALGOs Begin: SearchEngineWatch Page One for Search Engine Optimization

2005-06-19T23:27:00.000-04:00

TrustRank ALGOs Begin: SearchEngineWatch Page One for Search Engine Optimization: " TrustRank ALGOs Begin: SearchEngineWatch Page One for Search Engine Optimization

TrustRank and Good Seed Algos?

Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Marketing

are possible two of the most SEOd terms.

Looking at the three sites added to Page One this morning
from virtually nowhere near the first page previously

Search Engine Watch
Overture
SEMPO

This is possibly the beginning of TRUSTRANK implementation in ALGOs
and GOOD SEED - implementation in LINK POPULARITY

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2004-17

Quote:
Web spam pages use various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings in a search engine's results. While human experts can identify spam, it is too expensive to manually evaluate a large number of pages. Instead, we propose techniques to semi-automatically separate reputable, good pages from spam. We first select a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once we manually identify the reputable seed pages, we use the link structure of the web to discover other pages that are likely to be good. In this paper we discuss possible ways to implement the seed selection and the discovery of good pages. "

This is going to be very interesing! I'm going to be speaking with Google on Wednesday at Webmasterworld..i hope I rembember to ask them.

A New Business for Google: Online Payments

2005-06-17T21:20:00.000-04:00

A New Business for Google: Online Payments: "A New Business for Google: Online Payments
Google is many things to many people. For some, it's a search/media/ad/marketing company. One of these days, according to the WSJ (reg. req.), Google will also be an online payment company that will compete with eBay's Paypal."

Interesting.

Visual Decoder for PageRank: Create An Interactive Link Network

2005-06-16T14:59:00.000-04:00

href="http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002085.html">Visual Decoder for PageRank: Create An Interactive Link Network: "Visual Decoder for PageRank: Create An Interactive Link Network
A tool for the crazed PageRank fan. Thought this tool was quite neat and deserved a quick mention for sheer creativity. This was mentioned on Digitalpoint yesterday. You can do some nifty things with flash, but as far SEO Tools go you don't seem to run into a large amount of them. This little tool is not too much different then a tool that tells you your PageRank, however it allows you to organize your sites (with PR information) in a visual network and then correspondingly connect them with arrows. You can move them around like cards, connect them or not, and even delete them by throwing them in a trash can.
I honestly think this tool should be renamed as the makers might not have thought of its other uses. Having a tool tell your pagerank is pretty boring these days. However, from the standpoint of ease of use in working with external linking networks this tool could be useful with the addition of some more information in creating diagrams for use in SEO. Backlink information could also be useful with this. Overall though a fun tool to play with. "

This looks like a great tool

Blowhard Clients & Bad SEO Leads : SEO Book.com

2005-06-16T11:56:00.000-04:00

Blowhard Clients & Bad SEO Leads : SEO Book.com: "Blowhard Clients & Bad SEO Leads
Bad clients will waste your time and destroy your business. Since SEO can deliever such cheap marketing sometimes it is easy to sell yourself short, taking on bad clients.
The worst prospects I have ever encountered are:

those burned by SEOs who have no trust left

those who used to rank well, feel they deserve free top rankings, and are unwilling to change with the algorithms

those who think SEO should be free marketing"

THIS IS SO TRUE!

DMNews.com | News | Article

2005-06-16T11:47:00.000-04:00

DMNews.com | News | Article: "Recent online search behavior suggests that consumers are as concerned about a real estate bubble as the media.
Searches on the terms 'real estate bubble' and 'housing bubble' climbed to a 12-month high for the week ending May 28, according to online monitoring service Hitwise, New York.
Hitwise said the market share of those two terms across search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN jumped 311 percent and 174 percent for the weeks ending May 28 and May 21, respectively.
'Increased traffic on real estate Web sites is reflective of the sector's growing adoption of Web-based technologies and databases, often used for digital storefronts, marketing, inventory listings and buyer financing,' Bill Tancer, Hitwise vice president of research, said in a statement. "

....Hitwise data indicate that search activity is fast becoming a bellwether of consumer moods.

"Recent Internet search activity suggests that some activity in the category is being driven by curiosity of rising property values and the possibility of a bursting bubble," Tancer said in the statement. "Should we undergo a decline, it will be interesting to see how site traffic and search activity correspond."

It's more and more possible to do research on the web about customer behavior (ie: using Yahoo! Buzz or HitWise). HitWise is a fairly expensive solution that I'd love to have, but it's out of reach of most SEO people.

Omniture: Company Overview

2005-06-15T12:25:00.000-04:00

Omniture: Company Overview: "Omniture Shatters Traditional Web Analysis Boundaries with Breakthrough Omniture Discover� Tool
Fully Integrated with the SiteCatalyst� Suite and the Omniture Data Warehouse, Omniture Discover Drives �Exploration Momentum,� Allowing Companies to Realize Business Value in Seconds, Not Days, for Increased Revenues, Conversion Rates, and Competitive Advantage
OREM , Utah � June 8, 2005 � Omniture, the largest and fastest growing provider of on-demand Web analytics, today announced the launch of Omniture Discover, creating the first and only third-generation on-demand Web analytics solution. Omniture Discover is fully-integrated with SiteCatalyst and the Omniture Data Warehouse, finally making possible the combination of instant-response times with the power to view Web data across any dimension. This highly-effective exploratory analysis leads to the discovery of valuable visitor segments and behavior correlations proven to positively impact business performance. Together these tools establish the third-generation online analytics platform, providing unprecedented levels of intelligence and delivering valuable insight to users of all levels of sophistication throughout the enterprise, from the casual user to the most demanding marketing analyst.
�Compared to Omniture Discover, other Web analytics tools deliver just �reports�,� said Christopher D�Alessandro, Director, Web Analytics for J. Walter Thompson. "

Now all we need is to see the demo.

Eric Peterson - Omniture Discover

2005-06-15T12:24:00.000-04:00

Eric Peterson - Omniture Discover: "Omniture Discover

<< Oh how the mighty have fallen ... | Main

Eric Peterson | June 15, 2005, 11:58 AM
I finally got a chance yesterday to see Omniture's version 12 release and the much hyped Omniture Discover. Interesting product really. It reminds me of Visual Sciences Visual Workstation product, something I first wrote about in our web analytics report (clients only) in October of last year. At the time I referred to Visual Sciences as a disruptive technology in the analytics space.
I guess the disruption was noticed."

Hmm...I'd like to see that demo.

More On AOL's SEO/SEM Campaign

2005-06-15T08:37:00.000-04:00

More On AOL's SEO/SEM Campaign: "More On AOL's SEO/SEM Campaign
AOL.com's Search Effort: Music Visitors Up, So Are Keyword Prices from MediaPost is an update on the story we blogged earlier, that AOL is to do a significant search marketing push to drive traffic to its site. Carat Interactive is heading the campaign and comments in the story. Another follow-up story, Paid Search a Footnote in AOL.com Push from ClickZ, noted briefly that the push is almost entirely on the free SEO side, rather than through buying search ads. The MediaPost article gives some examples of this, as well as how keyword buys from AOL are pushing up the cost of music terms."

I'd be curious to see the organic side of thier campaign, what they're coming up for. Too bad there's not a ranking program where you can put in a url and it will tell you all the terms it's coming up for.

RSS Metrics Focus: Interview With Dick Costolo and Stuart Watson, Part 1 - Different RSS Metrics Approaches

2005-06-14T19:51:00.000-04:00

RSS Metrics Focus: Interview With Dick Costolo and Stuart Watson, Part 1 - Different RSS Metrics Approaches: "RSS Metrics Focus: Interview With Dick Costolo and Stuart Watson, Part 1 - Different RSS Metrics Approaches posted by Rok Hrastnik in RSS Audio Interviews and Conversations

We did an incredible joint interview on RSS metrics last week with Dick Costolo of Feedburner and Stuart Watson of Syndicate IQ, two of the handful of companies that are leading the RSS metrics way.

Feedburner is bringing RSS metrics and some other specific RSS tools to the masses, while Syndicate IQ is more focused on the enterprise level. Naturally, both of these companies have different approaches to RSS metrics and one of our goals was to discover what approach is best suited for what situation.

The interview got so huge and we covered so many interesting topics that we're braking it down in to several parts, with the first one covering the comparison between RSS metrics based on unique RSS feed URLs and RSS metrics conducted through ''static'' RSS feeds.

RSS Metrics Focus: Interview With Dick Costolo and Stuart Watson, Part 1 - Different RSS Metrics Approaches"

I'm going to spend some time listeing to this series of interviews because "metrics" is my business.

Enterprise SEM: Getting a click in the blink of an eye...

2005-06-14T14:32:00.000-04:00

Enterprise SEM: Getting a click in the blink of an eye...: "With the increase in popularity of search merketing these days there are a lot of studies coming out and sometimes key data gets blinded by the big numbers marketers want to hear.

One such piece of data came from Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro that showed people spend an average of 6.4 seconds on a search results page before clicking on a link. What is equally compelling is that in that time span they scan an average of 3.9 search results.
In those few seconds, searchers assimilate an average of 140 words. Gord went on to day that 'Included in those words are between 35 to 60 factors and details we have to consider to make a decision.' These are the semantic relevance that goes into their thinking on what is the most valuable to click

This is the lastest proof point that we must make absolutley sure that our ad copy is the most compelling it can possibley be with a string call to ation as well as a unique selling propostiion that as semantically relevant. "

Well said, Bill. Wish I had a program that would read my snippit, or anyone's snippet/visible text
and tell you how likely someone will click on your snippet (if they see it ...that is).

Duplicate Content Penalty Timespan

2005-06-14T14:29:00.000-04:00

Duplicate Content Penalty Timespan: "For those that are worried about duplicate content issues and getting penalized for them this information might serve useful to you. There is a thread on SEW forums detailing a situation where one of the members had several pages 302 redirected to pages on his site. This caused problems for Google. Fathom, a member on SEW forums posts information about duplicate penalty timeframes for offenses based on first, second and third time offenses. He mentions that:
A dup penalty timespan is based on your offense.
1st Offense: 30 days
2nd Offense: 60 days
3rd Offense: 90 days
So 'if' [for example] you had a 1st Offense and change something and Google detected that and then later found other dup content - you would go to a 2nd Offense timespan.

I emailed fathom to get some verification on where he obtained this information. He posted back in the forums that Matt Cutts of Google at a recent WMW PubCon mentioned it. "

Good information - I have a bunch of House Designers as clients and many of thier pages are duplicates.

Google + Keyhole = Google Earth | newrecruit

2005-06-14T14:26:00.000-04:00

Google + Keyhole = Google Earth | newrecruit: "I don't see anything in the email about being quiet about this so here goes with some cool new mapping features. Friday I received an email from Google inviting me to download the beta of the soon to be replacement for Keyhole. Google Earth.

Compared to Keyhole, you will notice changes right away with the interface. Integrated Google searches and a large number of landmarks that can be turned on and off.

Lets start with the big things first. On selected US cities, you can view a grey scale 3D rendering of the city skyline. Pictures are worth more then words so I'll let the screenshots do the talking. "

I need to play with this; maybe I'll just buy a Keyhole subscription.

Yahoo! & Deep crawling?

2005-06-14T14:19:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! & Deep crawling?: "In Vegas 2004 (Webmaster World conference) Yahoo! talked about the need for creating hierarchies. If you're going to throw in a whack of sitemaps then keep them hierarchical.

Then there's an issue of depth. Yahoo! said that 6 levels deep was probably too deep whereas three was probably fine."

Getting interior pages listed in Yahoo has been a recurring issue that I've noticed over and over again with different clients. This posting from SearchEngineWatch suggests it's possible to achieve a good, deep crawl of a site with many pages, provided the site maps are set up properly.

My impression though, was that Yahoo wants to charge money (alot of money) to crawl your interior urls in their own inclusion program.

Yahoo News Beats Google News In Jackson Verdict

2005-06-13T19:28:00.000-04:00

Yahoo News Beats Google News In Jackson Verdict: "Yahoo News Beats Google News In Jackson Verdict
The fact that Google News uses automation to decide what to feature on its home page versus Yahoo employing human editors is often raised as a issue when comparing the services. In the case of the Michael Jackson trial, it looks like the humans won out. I've been watching both this afternoon to see how they responded to the not guilty verdicts in the case. All times listed are Eastern Daylight Savings Time."

I'm not surprized. Human editors make Yahoo News easier to read, easier to look at, more artistic satisfying, and in some cases, quicker to report the news.

Hacking Google Maps - Sites Exploiting Its Usefulness

2005-06-13T14:10:00.000-04:00

Hacking Google Maps - Sites Exploiting Its Usefulness: "Hacking Google Maps - Sites Exploiting Its Usefulness
Some of yall might have seen some creative uses of Google Maps lately. Came across an interesting article this morning and some cool sites that people are using to hack this Google service. I personally can't get enough of the map interface Google has provided and I use it for everything now on my travels. I am even integrating the satellite map service into one of my own sites, and had the thought the other day that having it in my car would be pretty awesome, however not possible at the moment. There has been a rise recently in the use of Google Map hacks and those sites that are using it innovatively and creatively to accomplish tasks before not possible. A recent article at CNN that came out Friday talks about some of the sites that are taking Google Maps to the extreme. A site that came out a couple months ago using Maps in a very unique way. Housingmaps.com integrates the use of Craiglist listings with a the graphical interface of Google Maps to present where the houses in the listings reside. You can first start by clicking on a city, find house for rent or for sale, and then get a full listing from Craigslist of what is available. Very handy site and an accomplishment in usability as far as I can see. "

Need to take a closer look at this.

Semantic-Knowledge: Semantic Search Engine and Text Analysis

2005-06-13T01:31:00.000-04:00

Semantic-Knowledge: Semantic Search Engine and Text Analysis: "Content Analysis
was never so easy!
Semantic-Knowledge is a leading provider of Natural Language Processing (NLP) software, including Semantic Search Engine, Text Analysis, Intelligent Desktop Search, Text Mining, Knowledge Discovery and Automatic Classification systems."

I found this amazing content analysis software, and this version is free! I don't know exactly how to describe all that Tropes text analysis software does...you'll have to see it to understand it's power. Tropes is one of the most amazing and powerful programs for text analysis I've ever seen...it blows away anything else I've ever used for SEO, any of our cottege tools...Tropes is HOT!

Download the program at http://www.semantic-knowledge.com/download.htm

My CV or Curriculum Vitae Is Up

2005-06-11T14:32:00.000-04:00

My CV or Curriculum Vitae Is Up: "My CV or Curriculum Vitae Is UpWell it's official, I'm now a free agent. As part of being a free agent I did the resume update deal but also created a CV. I did so because a resume is just too narrow a document to describe me and my areas of expertise and interest. Plus, it's more like telling a story and is a lot more fun than a plain ol resume, IMO anyway.

So I know this raises some questions like, why aren't you at WebSourced / KeywordRanking anymore? and Are you still going to do seo? and Oooh, give me all the juicy details of why you aren't at WebSourced.

Well, quite simply, WebSourced and I had differences of opinion and have since parted ways. I wish them the best of luck with everything they have going on and I'm sure they think the same. I'm sorry but there will be no juicy details, quite simply, we were moving in different directions and that about sums it up."

WebSourced got a hold of Mike Gerhan earlier this year (or was it sometime last year). Being director of Search for WebSourced must have been a difficult job. I looked at Jason's resume and it reminded me of my own; he jumped around alot because it appears he was bored; he also appears to have exceptional programming skills. I question why someone who is that good as a programmer would want a Director's position....it's not hands on enough..too many client meetings, too much massaging of results to keep the high profile clients happy. I guess he had enough of it and left the company.

I realize big search firms exist for a reason, and that reason is the big customers who are generally charged 150K and above; these customers have high expectations of search marketing. I also look at the big search firms with suspecion, alot of times the real work is done by contracted employees or farmed out to other countries where workers are paid at a lower rate.

Hidden Links on Financial Times Website. WTF? : SEO Book.com

2005-06-10T20:40:00.000-04:00

Hidden Links on Financial Times Website. WTF? : SEO Book.com: "Ever get the sense that many business models are being challenged by the web? In spite of being subsidized, the Wall Street Journal has been seeing eroding profits. In the most recent issue of the Linking Matters Newsletter Ken McGaffin noted that Financial Times sells hidden advertising links.
That is prettymuch the two largest papers about making money and both of them are getting worse at it, and Financial Times is running a business model based on deception. Can you trust news sites that hide their content and their own business model? "

I'm just wondering who's responsible for putting the hidden links on the pages in question. Maybe it's just stupidity and not deliberate. If it is deliberate, I'd have to wonder who is giving FT this advice.

Very Good Basic RSS Tutorial

2005-06-09T00:26:00.000-04:00

Very Good Basic RSS Tutorial: "Very Good Basic RSS Tutorial
posted by Rok Hrastnik in RSS Marketing
... and it's free to view (yeah, it's video). Covers both RSS for end-users as well as publishers.
Doesn't cover any of the advanced or marketing stuff, but if right now all you want to know is how to create an RSS feed, it's for you."

Might want to look at it.

Another Google Backlink Update

2005-06-08T20:52:00.000-04:00

Another Google Backlink Update: "Another Google Backlink Update
As expected, we are now seeing the last wave of google bourbon updates now. A great tool to do a quick check on backlinks and ranking changes is Mcdar's Tool, opt for the horizontal view.
Forum discussion currently at Search Engine Watch Forums, SEO Chat Forums, nothing yet at WebmasterWorld, more to come..."

I'm looking at the tool right now. There's many tools out there that check backlinks including OptiLink (which is almost worthless now), SeoElite, LinkSurvey 1.4 (a gem for what it does), and online tools like this one. It's what you do with the tools that matter and that's what I concentrate on, pulling the data into Excel and merging it with the output of other programs. I hear alot of people still use Xenu to check broken links (internally). WebCeo Auditior Module does that too.

There are many, many tools, but no tool does everything and no backlink tool is perfect.

Five Across Ships Drag & Drop Web Publishing; Create Rich Multi-Page Web Sites with the Ease of Blogging

2005-06-08T11:30:00.000-04:00

Five Across Ships Drag & Drop Web Publishing; Create Rich Multi-Page Web Sites with the Ease of Blogging: "Five Across Ships Drag & Drop Web Publishing; Create Rich Multi-Page Web Sites with the Ease of Blogging

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2005--Five Across, Inc., the Silicon Valley start-up that launched the world's fastest blogging engine in Feb. 2005 at DEMO@15!, today announced it has extended its technology to enable the creation of multi-page web sites. Available immediately, the hosted service, Bubbler(TM), provides page navigation that is generated automatically; updates text and pages in real time; provides drag-and-drop photo, audio, and video sharing; and has a group model that provides wiki-like collaboration for authorized users. "

Blubber might be an interesting service to look into to. I know I could make this blog look a lot better than it does just by having something like Blubber
to publish it with. It's alot easier to put graphics and just nice things that
people would want to look at.

On the other hand, I'm wondering how well the Blubber sites will work for SEO. My guess is they might work pretty well....but I'd like to see confirmation of that. The other thing: once a person sees they can put zillions of graphics
into the blog/website, won't they get carried away and end up spending 50 bucks a month to have Blubber host the site? I mean, if i can easily
drag all kinds of really nice presentations on to my Blubber Blog that I can't do in my Blogger NowSEO blog, what's to stop me from ending up with
a Blubber bill?

Yahoo! Index Out of Room?

2005-06-08T11:19:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! Index Out of Room?: "Yahoo! Index Out of Room?
A thread at WebmasterWorld named What triggers Yahoo to fully index a site? discusses the issues many are having with having their sites fully or even partially indexed. For many who run large dynamic content sites, Yahoo! is having trouble capturing all those pages and its not necessarily due to the crawler barriers (I know first hand).
One member says; 'IMO for what its worth, i think the yahoo index is full with not much room for new content.' Of course some sites can be penalized but I don't believe this is the case for many of the sites not indexed by Yahoo! I am curious what the next two to three weeks will bring."

I have been noticing that Yahoo will not capture many interior pages of new sites; my take on that is they wanted customers to pay them to deep crawl and index their sites. Perhaps it makes sense in some cases, though I've found it's usually not worth the money.

Bloglines Adding More than 2 Million Articles Each Day to Its Database

2005-06-08T10:41:00.000-04:00

Bloglines Adding More than 2 Million Articles Each Day to Its Database: "Bloglines Adding More than 2 Million Articles Each Day to Its Database
Those of you who track the steady stream of blog, blogosphere, and RSS stats might want to add some new numbers from Bloglines that were released today to your files.

500 million blog and news feed articles are now stored [and made searchable*] in the Bloglines database

Between January and June of this year, the size of the Bloglines index doubled

Each day Bloglines adds 2 million to 2.7 million new blog and news feed articles to the database"

FYI

RSS Security Issues

2005-06-08T10:34:00.000-04:00

RSS Security Issues: "RSS Security Issues
posted by Rok Hrastnik in RSS Conversations
It's quite evident that RSS enclosures are a security threat, especially if RSS aggregator developers don't start automatically (by default) blocking certain types of content item 'attachements'. If they don't, RSS could easily be used to 'infest' trusting people with harmful executable files.
Furthermore, in an IT Manager's Journal article, Richard Stiennon, vice president of threat research at anti-spyware company Webroot, warns against the possibility of profit seekers going further and finding new and new ways of exploiting RSS. Malicious code in full-text content items is the first that comes to mind."

Another thing to worry about. Oh well, I guess there will be a bunch of updates to all the Virus and Spamware checking programs that will say "Will check and eradicate harmfull RSS Feeds!"

Become.com Now Providing Dynamic Search Term Suggestions

2005-06-08T01:14:00.000-04:00

Become.com Now Providing Dynamic Search Term Suggestions: "Become.com Now Providing Dynamic Search Term Suggestions Via Threadwatch and an e-mail from Become.com's CEO and Co-Founder, Michael Yang, news that the shopping research engine is now providing dynamic search term suggestions that can help the searcher create a more precise query (with little effort) even before clicking the search button. "

Interesting; have to try it. Sounds good though most of the keyword suggestion tools I have used, or purchased, haven't really delivered, in my opinion.

Good SEO is Bad to Google. Dareth a Light Flicker On? : SEO Book.com

2005-06-07T16:36:00.000-04:00

Good SEO is Bad to Google. Dareth a Light Flicker On? : SEO Book.com: "Doug Heil, the evangical whitehat SEO, is worried that the new Google Sitemaps offering may remove the USP for good SEOs."

The idea of offering a utility to help with Sitemaps is a good idea. There are many sites that have deep content and/or dynamic urls that are difficult to get spidered.

Intelliseek's BlogPulse

2005-06-07T16:30:00.000-04:00

Intelliseek's BlogPulse: "BlogPulse Trend Tool
As a featured technology in the showcase area, now you can create your own Trend Graphs with the BlogPulse Trend Tool. Internally, we've found this to be an incredibly cool tool. Try it out >"

This is a pretty cool tool; have yet to figure out how to use it for my clients, or for search work. I'll have to set aside some time to take an indepth look on what can be done with it.

Search Engine Lowdown :: News: Google Study Reveals Many Technology Purchases Begin With Search

2005-06-06T20:52:00.000-04:00

Search Engine Lowdown :: News: Google Study Reveals Many Technology Purchases Begin With Search: "Google Study Reveals Many Technology Purchases Begin With Search
Google has released details of a study, conducted with the help of Millward Brown, which demonstrates the importance search plays in the purchase process of business technology products.

The survey of 900 technology decision-makers looked at the sources of information most commonly used during each of the three stages of the buying cycle; Research/Engagement, Consideration/Comparison and Purchase.

Measuring 13 different sources of information, the study demonstrated that many B2B buyers utilize search heavily throughout the entire buying cycle, with search most likely to be used during the research stage."

75 Million RSS Users?

2005-06-06T20:48:00.000-04:00

75 Million RSS Users?: "75 Million RSS Users?
posted by Rok Hrastnik in RSS News
Alex Barnett has a post with a very catchy title: 75 Million RSS Users?
His analysis takes a look at the Jupiter RSS consumption March 2005 research report, which states that 12% of consumers use a variety of RSS newsreader, and the PEW '5% report'.
'Assuming the Jupiter number is overstating reality and Pew's is understating, and we assume the average of these two data points is the closer to reality, we end up with 8.5% of today's internet population using RSS readers (either as a web-based application or local client application). If we take the 235m US & UK internet population as of March 2005 (according to World Internet Usage Stats) to be reasonably accurate that makes at total of 20m RSS users in US & UK alone. If we use the total world internet population of figure 888.6m and assume 8.5% of the total world internet population is using RSS the number comes in at 75.3m.'
If Alex is correct, the reach of RSS is beyond what any of us could have hoped for just a couple of months ago."

I do think RSS is the future, is now.

Waldman to Publishers: RSS, or Possibly Perish � MarketingVOX

2005-06-06T11:11:00.000-04:00

Waldman to Publishers: RSS, or Possibly Perish - MarketingVOX: "Simon Waldman of the Guardian offers a sober overview of RSS and news aggregators - ''Opportunity or Threat?' - based on a talk he gave to publishers at the World Editor's Forum in Seoul (via paidcontent), concluding that 'we are looking at the first moves in a quite profound and permanent shift in the way that people engage with content. And that brings with it both opportunities and threats.' He adds: 'Those who deal with the issues thrown up by RSS and aggregation over the next 18 months will, I believe, find themselves in a much, much healthier shape to face the next set of challenges that the internet throws our way.' The reward, he sums up, is likely to be this: 'Relevance, presence and revenues in a fickle and fragmented world.'"

Been thinking about this too...everything is moving to RSS really fast. First the NYTIMES press release
in March 05 detailing 5.7 million pageviews to the site (NYTIMES had 555 million pageviews, it think it was
Feburary 05 they're talking about). The percentage of change from a year ago was several hundered
percent increase in traffic from RSS Feeds.

Internet Marketing Guru Corey Rudl Dies at 34

2005-06-03T14:52:00.000-04:00

Internet Marketing Guru Corey Rudl Dies at 34: "News comes by way that Two Killed In Crash At California Speedway. One individual killed in that crash was Internet Marketing Guru Corey Rudl. Corey Rudl is the owner of Internet Marketing Center and has written dozens of columns for Entrepreneur's eBusiness section. For more about this legend, please see this detailed Corey Rudl Interview."

I feel sad about this. I never met Cory Rudl but he represented one of the big success stories of internet marketing. In 2002, I spent alot of time looking at internet marketing businesses that made money, that made it. Cory Rudl was on the top, he was the top dog...he was better at it than anyone else. Sad, I'm sorry to see him go.

GoogleGuy's posts

2005-06-03T04:54:00.000-04:00

GoogleGuy's posts: "Google News"

I have to read this...lot of stuff.

Google Using Human Reviewers, Google Launches Google Sitemaps : SEO Book.com

2005-06-03T04:49:00.000-04:00

Google SiteMaps - Want to find out more about this

Google Using Human Reviewers, Google Launches Google Sitemaps : SEO Book.com: "Lazy Crawling:One of Google's major hangups with paid inclusion was that it allows lazy crawling. It appears that is no longer an issue, as Danny spots the free new Google Sitemaps program. FAQs here"

This is pretty, pretty interesting. I'll have to ask Google Engineers about this new feature/functionality, at Webmasterworld.

I'm wondering it this new sitemap funtionality would benifit the deep crawling we're trying to kick off for CREASTWOOD TECHNOLOGY GROUP at the bottom of the page. Over the last month or so, we've been taking some moves forward and some back trying to get up to 11 million part numbers indexed as pages in Google. That sounds CRAZY.....why would anyone
want to do something like that. In fact, it's not so crazy, lots of big companies have
huge parts inventory lists, and would love it if people could just put the part number in
the search box and find the page with that part number....just a page about that part number.

Most Military and Electrical Parts Supply vendors are using a more simple technique, creating pages with thousands of part numbers and getting those pages indexed. Seems to work, though you don't get a page about a particular part number, just
a page with a form on it, and maybe, if the programmer is resourceful, the part number is placed in a query box for locating the actual page on the site.

The GoogleMaps program might be the shortcup around all of this. I'll investigate.

Google Secret Lab, Prelude - Henk van Ess's Search Bistro

2005-06-03T04:32:00.000-04:00

Google Secret Lab, Prelude - Henk van Ess's Search Bistro: "What is it? It's a lab of humans from all over the world (from China to The Netherlands, from Korea to Brasil) They are paid to check search results of Google every day. Most of the employees, called international agents by Google, were recruited through universities all over the world. The aim is to avoid spam, to get the right sites at the top of the listing and to test new features, not shown to the public yet.
I call it Google's Secret Evaluation Lab, but the real title is less adventurous; 'Rater Hub Google'. The coming days I will reveal all I know about this lab - must find the time first to do so. To keep you busy, here's a Flash-movie from a part of the site. Stay tuned, next posting will be tomorrow."

Have you seen the Flash movie that shows part of the Eval.Google.com site?

Come to think about it, two months ago I saw some ads in Craigslist.org for Google Testers to work part time, freelance. Google wanted (and still wants) to hire people who are specialists in certain areas to evaluate content.

Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't think they were even keeping it a secret.

ON one hand, everyone complains the search results are not as relevent as they should be......but when the search engines figure out ways to improve it (by getting humans involved) it becomes a hot issue with some who feel the search engines are getting two powerful and need to be restrained. How else are they sopposed to improve results?

Amazon.com: Books: Google Hacking for Penetration Testers

2005-06-03T04:22:00.000-04:00

Amazon.com: Books: Google Hacking for Penetration Testers: "Google Hacking for Penetration Testers
by Johnny Long, Ed Skoudis (Foreword), Alrik van Eijkelenborg (Editor)"

I did not realize you could do such a thing.

Becasue I was a Unix Admin in a previous life, I understand and am intriqued by using Google this way.

John Battelle's Searchblog: An Example of Search Image Manipulation Via Blogs

2005-06-03T04:06:00.000-04:00

John Battelle's Searchblog: An Example of Search Image Manipulation Via Blogs: "To put it simply, Quixtar enlisted various people to help create dozens of Weblogs that linked to each other and were filled with positive stories and key words. The idea is to help put these newer blogs at the top of search results for phrases such as 'Quixtar success' and 'Quixtar opportunity,' while more critical sites such as Quixtar Blog and Amquix.info would drop down. "

Hmm....where have I seen this before?!

I know the answer and it's work I do for one of my clients. Personally, I don't like the idea of manipulating search results by
creating new content to push down and out, things that certain companies, certain individuals, don't want you to see.

SES New York City Pictures

2005-06-03T03:59:00.000-04:00

SES New York City Pictures: "Kim Krause Berg's Search Engine Strategies New York City 2005 Pictures (ok, some of them.)"

I liked the way she made me interact to see all the pictures. As I was at SES in NY, i remember most of these people. I'm going to Webmasterworld in New Orleans in a couple of weeks, maybe I'll take some pictures this time.

Yahoo! Mindset Review Continued

2005-06-03T03:46:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! Mindset Review Continued: "Using Yahoo Mindset To Your Advantage
One interesting feature of Yahoo! Mindset is that every time you conduct a search or move the slider it indexes every page in your result set. So if you have a site that hasn't been spidered by Yahoo in some time and you want to get your site spidered then you can simply enter the search site:www.marketingshift.com and it will index all the results on the page you're currently viewing. Then, there is a link at the top of the page that tells you to click here to reload the results. Now when the results are shown, any site that had a gray bar next to it will now have a bar with orange on either side of it indicating whether it's research related or commercial. Scanning through each of the pages of results will ensure that at least Yahoo's Mindset app will know about the pages they need to visit on your site.

Now I'm not sure whether or not it means Yahoo's normal spider will index your site or not and I haven't done any tracking to check into that but that's easily done with any decent stats package. If you need help in getting the code done yourself then just ping me and I'll put up a post showing how to accomplish it."

Hmm...have to try that with www.thehousedesigners.com, etc.

Internet Group OKs 'Xxx' Web Addresses - Yahoo! News

2005-06-03T03:42:00.000-04:00

Internet Group OKs 'Xxx' Web Addresses - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - The Internet's primary oversight body approved a plan Wednesday to create a virtual red-light district, setting the stage for pornographic Web sites to use new addresses ending in 'xxx.'

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said it would begin negotiations with ICM Registry Inc., run by British businessman Stuart Lawley, to iron out technical issues and prices for the new Web addresses."

Reminds me of what's going to happen when the .travel domain becomes available. Creating more segmentation (more choices) instead of everything
being a .com, is a good thing.

GoogleGuy's posts

2005-06-02T14:08:00.000-04:00

GoogleGuy's posts

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/29720-1-30.htm

Need to read GoogleGuy's posts regularly.