Search Novice

We're all searching for something.

30 May 2007

Bloggers vs. Journalists

From SeoMoz:

Are Bloggers more Connected than Journalists

I just had to say that I think this post is incorrectly comparing journalists to bloggers. She says that, because bloggers in general have significantly more Plaxo address book contacts than journalists, they are more connected. The post then goes on to speculate about the implications of the fact that bloggers are enjoying higher connectedness than journalists, and what this means for the field of journalism.

However, I think she needs to back the post up considerably, because I don't think this is an indication that bloggers are more connected, as much as it is an indication that bloggers are more tech-savvy with their contacts. In other words, a blogger will be more likely to have all of their contacts in their Plaxo address book, while a journalist might only have his work contacts, or, more likely, might not use Plaxo at all. I think the journalist is more likely to download Plaxo, then forget he has it running, and stick with a system of Rolodex cards. The system of cards isn't broken, so why fix it? Furthermore, it doesn't make him a better or worse journalist.

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Big Brother Google

From SE Watch Blog:

Google Is Big Brother

Looks like Frank Watson has it in for Google. Still. He has a point, yes. Google still seems to enjoy this "golden" status that it had before it was publicly traded. Some interesting points about Google:

Though everyone seems to know that Google is a giant, nobody seems to view Google as being "out to get" the little guys in the business world. This is different from, say, Microsoft, for instance, who seems to be the software world's bad guy for everything.

People don't seem to be averse to giving personal information to Google, as they might be to other personal networking/information portals on the web. Google's tools are increasingly powerful (i.e., checkout, book search, picasa, analytics), but the controversies about invasion of privacy don't seem to stick for Google. Some may disagree, but I don't see Google suffering in the public eye from the insecurities surrounding the proposed DoubleClick deal.

Google seems to be bent toward sincere pursuit of knowledge and advancement in computing. Of course, we all know that they have to make a buck, just like the rest of us, but their continued initiatives seem to be directed more toward advancing their overall field, rather than just their company. This too is different from the perception surrounding most other large software firms.

With all of that said, if things were to suddenly change, and Google were to suddenly seek their own interests above all else, it is feasible that we could see the Big Brother incarnation that Watson is prophesying.

But... C'MON!!!

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The Future of Search - Personalization

Here are two links:

Official Google Blog: Putting Users In Charge

Financial Times: Google's search policy puts the user in charge, by Peter Fleischer

These are links to one Googler exercising some educated speculation about where the future of search (and Google) might lie. Basically, the article on Financial Times website is about how personalization is really the key to the future of search. If search algorithm is not built to remember a user's preferences and history, we can only take search so far. By producing universal results that are the same for everyone, we're never going to solve the problem of intentions behind the search phrases. For example, when someone searches for "Paris", are they searching for the city or Paris Hilton? Nobody really knows, but we will probably have a clue if we know the person.

What if they are looking for pictures of Paris, France? An image search for "Paris" brings up just as many pictures of the woman as the city. Of course, we all know how dangerous an image search can be for any phrase, especially if conducted in a work environment. Just spend a few minutes using city names as search phrases in Google image search.

But that aside, what is this going to mean for the future of the SEO industry? Right now, SEO involves aiming at SERs that are absolute. For example, someone searching for “Paris” in Bogota will see the same thing as someone in Miami searching for the same phrase. However, if SERs suddenly become relative to the user’s preferences and history, the user in Miami might see different results based on his/her perceived age (past searches for myspace, facebook, or other social websites), entertainment savvy (past click-thrus to EntertainmentWeekly.com), or other personal web surfing habits. The user in Bogota may be a college professor (past visits to Google Journal Search, Google Book Search, and click-thrus to university websites). This is similar to the philosophy of Amazon.com’s algorithm, which has been profiled in several new stories as a seriously intelligent marketing machine, remembering users’ past behavior and recommending new products accordingly.

The foremost question for SEOers is, how are we going to optimize pages if we don’t know what users are going to see on the SERPs? How much business are our clients going to loose because of this, and will it outweigh the business that they stand to gain?

But another question is, how is this going to affect advertising on SEs? If I want to make a bid on a phrase on Google adwords – for example, “Paris” – how can I be sure that Google is giving me a proper ROI if some people who type in “Paris” are going to see different things than other people, based on their usage history? On the other hand, will this greatly improve the quality of the impressions I get, when I do get impressions? Will the viewers be more likely to be interested in my ad, if Google is sure that their past usage indicates an interest in the subject matter?

I think I’ve just formed two complete paragraphs with nothing but interrogatives. I’m sure there is a grammar rule against that.

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24 May 2007

A Tour of the Office

It's late in the afternoon, it's Thursday, and I'm leaving tomorrow morning for a 4-day vacation over the Memorial day weekend. Therefore, it seemed good to me to leave everyone with a huge post about the shortcomings of the most popular office supply store websites currently on the web!

Seriously, though, this is a post about web usability. I was flabbergasted yesterday when I set out to buy a few phone accessories for my office - these office websites are so unbelievable hard to use! In fact, my experience was so dissatisfying that I ended up going to Google and finding a completely random online store - www.golinuxshop.com. This website gets my vote, and will also get my repeat business, as it was immensely easy to use, and served up prices that I couldn't beat anywhere else. Prices aside, though, if someone else had been easier to use , I might have never found the deals I did at www.golinuxshop.com.

To start, I was looking for some very common phone accessories - some phone line couplers (female/female), duplex adapters (all female), and triplex adapters (male/female). I thought these ought to be easy to find, since we have tons of them already in the office.

First try - OfficeDepot.com - My first stop was the place where we already have an account. To start, let's take a look at the top menu bar:



Hmmm... Now, how do I know where to look? I'm looking for phone line adapters. Are they "office supplies"? Are they "technology"? I do know that they're not "furniture", but that's about it. So, I go to the search bar.




This is a reasonably usable web search bar, where you don't have to tell the website which categories to search through - it just figures that out for you. However, after multiple searches, I became convinced that Office Depot online did not have exactly what I wanted, and so I was obliged to go elsewhere.

Second try - RadioShack.com - Now, I know you're probably thinking what I was thinking at this point - "Surely Radio Shack carries everything I need." However, when I get to their website, I'm greeted by several problems.

Let's take a look at the top menu bar. My, this would be a hard decision, if I were to try and navigate to my product, or sub-category, from the options on the top bar. They've got one choice for "Phones & Radio Communications", and another called "Cables, Parts, & Connectors". Which one is most likely to have adapters for my phone cables?

I didn't know, but I figured that I would find out if I just quickly moused over each option to see the sub-categories that slide out below. Here are the options for "Phones & Radio Communications":



And for Cables & Connectors:



When I was first viewing the menus, nothing from the "Phones" menu made it obvious to me that my adapters would be there, even though that was where I thought they should be. When viewing the second menu, I've got 2 choices that all seem like they could be good places to look for my adapters - "Wire & cable management", and "Connectors & connectivity". However, my feeling is that neither one of these is what I want, so I just decide to search for the thing, which is what most people would probably do anyway. That's when I happened upon the bar:



There's just too many questions here, as there were with the menu bar. Do I search in a category? The Entire site? Of course, I chose the entire site, but I still think you should not give the user so many search options from the home page, unless the options are all obviously diverse. I believe that by this demonstration so far I've shown that they aren't.

I then typed my search phrase, [duplex phone adapters], into the box, and it showed me something that was similar, but not exactly what I wanted:




Focus your attention on the bread crumbs at the top of the image: "You're shopping in: Home>Phones & Communication>Accessories>Corded & Cordless Phone Accessories>Adapters, Jacks & Plugs". Perhaps it seems intuitive now, but it certainly didn't upon my first visit to the site. Why should adapters be buried underneath 5 layers of categories, when Radio Shack is the go-to for the world's "adapter" needs? Anyway, it wasn't exactly what I wanted, so I decided to move on to Staples.com. Big mistake.

Third Try - Staples.com - This was the worst office website I had ever seen. Just look at the screenshot:


It looks like advertising. The site's content looks like advertising. It's just a bunch of links, with no pictures, and very little explanatory text. The search bar is obscured of its small size and the business of the page.

I'm not even going to try to figure out which category to pick, because it would take too long to look through the long list. However, I did notice the fact that "Ink & toner" has made it to the top, next to "Products". I know some usability specialist must have charged Staples big bucks to tell them that "Ink & toner" is the one thing people visit the website for, but it seems like overkill to me. Actually, it makes Ink and toner the ONLY easy thing to find on the entire website.

But then, I enter a search term, and it asks me for my zip code. Is this really necessary? Radio Shack doesn't need to do that! I realize why they do it, but it seems like the site would be much improved if they could ask for such information at a later time. At this point, they can't be sure someone is actually going to buy - the visitor may be a simple casual browser.

Success! - I'll go ahead and end this long rant, and say I found what I was looking for at GoLinuxShop. It seems like an odd place, and I didn't even know it existed, but it popped up on the Google SERP, and I happend to find exactly what I wanted. Just look at the screenshot:




This is the product SERP, but except for the contents of the center block, it is exactly the same as the home page. The list of categories is a bit long, but the subtitle of the website tells you that the site is for selling computer parts and accessories, which makes you expect a pretty specific list of categories. The images are large, and the descriptions are very brief but informative, making the site very easy to use. The search bar is intuitively placed in the top left corner of the content area. The only better place would be right in the center of the page, but then they wouldn't have room for products.

So, I guess the moral of this story is that the big guys certainly don't have it all figured out. Especially with the "Easy Button" campaign that Staples has been touting, it seems like they are content to throw money at the market and expect customers to come streaming in. I also think there's a failure to recognize that marketing products on the internet is necessarily different from marketing products in a building - especially for Staples (i.e., the whole zip code thing, which is actually an issue at the Office Depot website as well). The internet is international, and people who visit the website do not want to go to the store (unless they're looking for the store locator, in which case they're not going to buy things from the website). Throwing money at web marketing problems doesn't usually work, unless the money hires a usability expert who knows his stuff.

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22 May 2007

A few words about NOFOLLOW

The current post over at search engine master DaveN’s blog has a few words about the NOFOLLOW tag, which are actually more questions than opinions or answers. The great NOFOLLOW initiative, begun about 2 and a half years ago by the big three, has left us all with little more than great questions in general, in addition to a little tag that we can put in our website’s link structure if we want. We’re not sure if it works, we’re not sure exactly how it works. Since the SEO industry is in general behind a great cloud of uncertainty that separates the royals (the googlers) from the peasants (the rest of us), as usual, the original statement of intent from Google was not specific enough to sufficiently describe how the tool is really used. In my opinion, the addition of the NOFOLLOW attribute (sorry if I called it a tag earlier), has added much more uncertainty than functionality to an industry of SEO consultants who are already dealing with considerable uncertainty because of the sheer nature of SEO.

Here are a few issues that we don’t really know:

1. If you use a NOFOLLOW link, we know that the link does not contribute to the recipient’s PR. BUT does the link actually count against the recipient? In other words, is a NOFOLLOW vote actually lowering PR of the recipient?

2. Does NOFOLLOW have any affect on the referrer? If I were ranking a page, and I saw that it had a bunch of links to bad pages (signified by the presence of NOFOLLOW), I would not want to rank the referring page highly. Who wants to see a page with a bunch of links for which it has no confidence?

3. What if NOFOLLOW is used within the link structure of the same website? Can a website drive PR to certain pages by using NOFOLLOW in links to less profitable content?

We actually used #3 at my company, before my tenure here, and I convinced everyone that this was not a good idea, since we don’t have definitive answers to #1 or #2. I felt that we were issuing votes of “no confidence” to ourselves by following this strategy, thereby hurting ourselves in the eyes of Google. In addition to this, I didn’t see the same strategy at work anywhere else on the web, which further eroded my confidence in it.

Personally, I wish that NOFOLLOW had never been devised, or that it had been devised completely differently. The device has added, in my opinion, just one more list of questions for which the SEO crowd doesn’t really have answers.

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21 May 2007

The Bigger, Better Google Analytics

Google has recently introduced a redesigned beta version of its analytics software, touting it as an improvement that takes the application to the "next level," making visitor information more accessible and organized for webmasters than before.

While it seems to do everything short of show you the users' IP addresses, I do have one thing I don't like - again, it's the graph. It seems to waste space, and I don't like the fact that it has to be at least 2 months.

Also, what's the deal with the time intervals always being a day behind? If I'm going to use analytics software that is able to track information in real time, as GA seems to be able to do, I want it to show, by default, today's information.

That aside, I think it is definitely an improvement. The flexibility of the design and layout is now mirroring the flexibility of other Google applications, as well as the new iGoogle.

One of the best improvements is the improved accessibility of information about referring sources. The information was obscured before within the Marketing reports, but now there is an entire sub-section dedicated to "Traffic Sources." It's basically the same information, just organized differently.

More soon; now I must break for the season finale of Heroes. Sylar must die!

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The Future of SE Advertising

With the advent of US, I am wondering what the evolution of paid ads will look like. It seems to me that US will change the visibility of paid ads in the future, since it alters SERs. Second search and US capability are going to make it commonplace for the SE to show the results for the requested search, as well as the results for a more useful search - which, hypothetically, the user would have requested in the first place, if they knew what they were doing. Since we're speaking hypothetically, my hypothesis is that, once US and Second search get going, the SE will start to show ads for the keywords that are deemed "more relevant." Why wouldn't they? If I've got a phrase that I think the user is going to find more useful than the phrase he requested, why wouldn't I display more useful ads, if I thought I could?

Just to make sure everyone understands what I'm talking about, the fallout from this would be that the advertisers who bought keywords matching the less helpful phrase would receive lower placement than the ones who bought keywords matching the more helpful phrase. So, if I, the user, search for [travel northeast], and the SE thinks that a search for [airfares new england] would be more useful, then the ads shown would match [discount airfares...], instead of [travel northeast]. The ads that are most likely lucrative for the SE and the advertiser would be the ones judged as most relevant, in my opinion, meaning that the ads matching the Second Search - not the intended search - will receive higher placement.

Of course, that's just my opinion. You are free to disagree.

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20 May 2007

Universal Search - the best answer

I've been planning for a few days to post about Google's announcement that the next big thing is the so-called "Universal Search." This is the holy grail, judging from posts on Google's official blog. We insiders are excited about Universal Search as only geeks can be. But the Googlers in particular should be excited; after all, it is best answer. The best answer is always the best answer.

I would say that I noticed the changes in Google's UI before I read about Universal Search (US). Here's a quick look at the new SERP:




Click on the image for a larger size. Basically, in the SERP for [steve jobs], the Google team has managed to squeeze image results and natural results, as well as links near the top to News and Video, where there would also be pertinent information about Steve Jobs. A small change, but a change, nonetheless. However, if we were to look at another search,



This time for [new york downtown], notice that there are image results first on the SERP, then a map, and then the natural results come later. This is useful for searches involving place names, which would be better suited for a map search anyway, and are probably tried by less experienced users. This is serving Google's goal of being the one-stop-shop for information for anyone - web savvy or not.

Now look what creeps into the SERP for [darth vader]:



There's a Google video result, about halfway down the first page. The video result would not be as highly ranked, except that Google's new US algorithm judged the video to be just as relevant as the 5th or 6th natural result. Then notice at the bottom:



We've got news results at the bottom of the page as well, in addition to related searches that might be just as useful as the user's intended search phrase.

These are just a few examples to show what Google is striving toward - a truly comprehensive information search, that will let people from all demographics find the information they need, regardless of which search engine or portal they use. Eventually, if US becomes fully developed, people will no longer be limited to a certain type of information when they search. No longer will people need to go to JStor find scholarly publications, or to a news search for current events. After all, if a general search engine has so many categories it is limited from searching, how can it really be comprehensive?

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17 May 2007

A few words about the new Google Analytics Beta Interface


I have to say that I am impressed with the overall functionality that Google has added with its new version of the Google Analytics interface, but it will certainly take me a while to warm up to it. It is definitely an improvement over the old interface, mostly because the new version better reflects the features that make other Google software good.


The only thing I really didn't like was the fact that the graph (pictured above) seems like it must show at least a month of data, no matter if you tell it to show only a week or a few days. Basically, it takes up the entire width of the screen, which makes it seem like they are devoting an awful lot of valuable screen real estate to the graph. It seems like they could have made it a quarter-screen module, and let you see another piece of info at the top of the screen. But anyway, it's annoying to me mainly because my blog has only been running for two weeks, so the first three weeks or so are zeros. Not a huge deal.

The best thing about the new beta is the added flexibility it grants the user. The user is able to add modules to the Dashboard easily, drag and drop them on the screen, and do other things that are reminiscent of the Google Home Page (oh yeah... it's called iGoogle, now that they admit it's a portal).

More commentary will come when I have time to write a proper post. I just wanted to get some words out there before dinner.

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Helping us get our Google on

Google just announced "Second Query" improvements to its search, to which I can only say, "awesome." The new improvements will launch a second query when a user performs a search, if it judges that the user could get more relevant results with a related (second) query. The SERP will then show the results of both queries, giving the user better results.

Perhaps more impressive are the new translation improvements, which will allow Google to translate a query into another language, find results, and then translate those results into the original query language to present to the user.

I think we know that the big wigs at Google and Yahoo are trying to build their search engines so that when grandma tries to search for "gold diamond ring," she gets exactly what she's looking for. It all depends on how they structure the SERP, but this is most likely going closer to that goal.

My question is, "what is this going to do to ad placement?" If you bought a top placement for the 1st query, will your placement be affected because Google judges that a 2nd query would have given the user what they wanted?

Conversely, what if you buy top placement for the 2nd query? Will your results get top billing now, or will the ones from the 1st query get to pull rank?

My gut says that the ads shown will be ones most relevant to the 2nd search. If Google has the opportunity to show ads that are more relevant, then I don't think they are going to pass it up.

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16 May 2007

Not too Late for SEO

It's almost midnight, which means I ought to be in bed, getting rested for another day, but I haven't posted anything today, so I thought I would just leave a tidbit before retiring. The post about search types has me thinking (still) about my adwords campaign, wondering what quantifiable ROI can be gained from paying for ads that show up in "informational" SERPs, versus ones that show up in "transactional" SERPs.

Just to define terms, by "informational", I mean a search for something like "East Indies pictures". For "transactional", I mean a search for something like "Cheap international airfares".

If you are just beginning to start out on the CPC path, looking for a good ROI so that you can justify continuing the cost of continuing an Adwords campaign, then my first thought is that you want to go 100% toward "transactional" SERPs, leaving the other types of searches for later, when you have more experience.

But you also want to think about the difference, if there is any, in user behavior. Do users view a "transactional" SERP differently than an "informational" one? Are they more likely or less likely to click on the paid ads? I would say that they are more likely, because ads on those pages are more geared toward making a quick deal. Basically, ads on those pages are probably more immediately relevant.

However, sites like Google and Yahoo benefit from users merely perusing the pages of the network - regardless of whether they actually purchase anything. So then, do these kinds of sites consider every SERP transactional in nature?

hmmm...

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15 May 2007

Segmenting The Market

Segmenting The Market

Frank over at SEW also wrote about this article, on SEOMoz blog:

Segmenting Search Intent

Randy at SEOMoz is onto something, and it has me thinking about my website a little differently at the moment. Since I'm about to help my company launch a paid-search advertising captain to increase the amount of business we drive to clients. My thinking is, obviously, that we want to be showing up in those "transactional" searches as well as the "informational" ones, and that will influence how we buy keywords. But for Google/Yahoo/MSN, if that influences where they place ads on the page, then that is interesting. I would like to see some research on click patterns and with regard to search types. How do people treat an SERP obtained by an informational search, as opposed to one obtained by a transactional search? Do they scan the SERP differently based on their intent? Do transactional searches yield users who are more likely to scan the adds to the right, as opposed to informational searches? I would assume the answer is yes, but I wonder how stark the contrast would be.

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Google As Big Brother?

From the Search Engine Watch Blog...

Google Submits Patent for Psychological Profiling

Frank Watson at Search Engine Watch is really voicing his opinion in this post, claiming "it's all over," as Google ventures closer to becoming the incarnation of Big Brother.

Let me say first that this is an impressive new use of technology, and the only real surprise to it is that Google did not do this sooner. If it behooves them to know people's tendencies (obviously, it would behoove any marketer), and they are able to do this from using the existing technology, then how do we know they haven't already been doing this for some time now, and are just now submitting the patent for it? Perhaps they've been doing it with imperfect methods until now, and now that they've got everything down, they're trying to patent it. Makes sense to me.

However, this does come with something of a "slippery slope" realization. Is this the "slippery slope," from which it would be difficult - disasterous, even - to return? Remember our current dependence on foreign oil, as an example of another slippery slope, up from which it would be possible, but economically disastrous at our current point, to climb. Only when it is economically less feasible in the short run to continue in our current dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels will be change course.

So, apply this to a Big Brother concept. Certainly, as the science fiction writer said, when and if we ever let ourselves me overtaken by our machines, we will quite possibly look back on the time when the takeover initially occurred, and recall that it happened so fast, and with so much initial advantage to us, that it was irresistible, and even unrecognizable, unanticipated. At that point, it will most likely be possible to revert, at least theoretically, but so costly and disadvantageous that to do so would be certain economic disaster.

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14 May 2007

Don't Knock Wikipedia!

Nicholas Carr on how Facebook and Wikipedia might fit together

The above link is to popular author Nick Carr's article on how he thinks that, from a revenue standpoint, it would make sense for Facebook to imitate a Wikipedia website for the next addition to its network. This suggestion is on the heels of Facebook's announcement that it will launch a craigslist-like site to compete with the minimalist classified ad machine that gets most of its traffic from 20-somethings who are in college (i.e., likely Facebook users).

Of course, his idea makes sense from the point of view of Facebook's bottom line. At least, it does in the short run - the very short run. The problem is that, once the Facebook users, as young and self-involved as they are, realize that they are the only ones posting to the "Facebookpedia" (or "Wikiface" - I think that's a better title!). The wisdom of the crowd is only as good as the crowd from which it draws is big. The bigger the crowd, the more wisdom, obviously. Therefore, wisdom drawn from just 22-24 year olds won't grow near as fast or deep as the real wiki, which means that soon, the Facebook users will simply go back to using the same old Wikipedia, at which point Facebook risks losing its growth in popularity completely. An unimpressive venture that's really a copy of a very successful website would be detrimental for Facebook, in my opinion.

From a user-of-the-web standpoint, I'd also be worried if this idea is successful for Facebook. I personally love the site and the company - I think their open-source approach to their calling is great, and they've allowed themselves to branch out, to their benefit, creating the fastest growing network on the web. Such innovation benefits the cause of the web immensely as the forum for the free expression and flow of though. So, I'd be cautious about anything that might take away steam from something as beneficial as Wikipedia.

These are my humble thoughts. Any other opinions would be welcomed.

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Back to posting

Sorry for my absence; I know I haven't posted since Friday, but (1) I usually won't have the opportunity to post on weekends, and (2) I was writing a paper for a seminary class I'm taking. It ended up being ...eh... not that good, but good enough for the purposes intended. All I have to say is, Kerkegaard is quite inspirational, and truth is subjective! Anyway, more posts will follow soon, once I get the engine running. Later!

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11 May 2007

An Open Source OS that's NOT Linux

Google, if you're listening at all - I mean, I am within your blog-dom - I'm asking you to take up the challenge and move toward offering a complete line of software - including an OS. After buying and setting up computers and computer software for my small office over the past year, I have been overwhelmed by way that Microsoft has gradually attempted to force its software down the throats of small offices and large offices across the world - and I believe it is stifling innovation and competition. The latter is a "no, duh" observation; Microsoft is obviously taking a copyright-and-monopoly approach to software development, trying to use the current laws that protect innovation and authorship to cement its own place in the market for years to come. Their attitude has made it virtually impossible for someone else to spend the amount of money necessary to compete. Impossible, that is, until now.

Google is now the world's largest software company, and they have already ventured into software. Now that they're not afraid anymore, I would be the first to buy a Google attempt at a fully-functional operating system that is user-friendly like Windows, but does not cost a person or a company thousands of dollars to outfit just a few systems. Obviously, this need doesn't have to be met by Google-source - it could be met by any number of open-source developers out there who have the time and money to devote to such a project (*ahem* - are you listening, Mozilla?), but the thing I am worried about is usability. I don't have any interest in a piece of software that's only useful to developers and network administrators, as is the current case with Linux. The obvious problem with having a small outfit develop something is support - someone like Red Hat, though well-intentioned, is not big enough to promote or support its product in the same way that MS is. MS has constant updates and help docs online, which are supposed to alleviate the problems caused by the fact that their software is crappy and is designed to use the monopoly status MS enjoys to coerce offices into spending thousands of dollars per year trying to keep current.

My vision is a system that would cost $100, or would come pre-installed on a new computer, and then would always stay current through an online membership system, which would have an annual cost of something like $50 or $100/year. Imagine the possibilities, if the systems were always updated properly, automatically, and then people enjoyed the same massive technical support that MS purports to give.

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Good News From Google

I saw this article at the Search Engine Watch Blog...

Google cleans up news website

The website Playfuls.com (not worthy of a link here) has been continuing to gain visibility in Google News SERPs, fueling criticism from Google News users. This has caused Google to re-examine its database of "news-worthy" (that is, Google Newsworthy) websites and discard some that seem to be ad-heavy or unauthentic, including Playfuls.com.

I have read several articles myself from Playfuls.com, and I think that I always suspected that I could find the same articles somewhere else if I had tried - that is, the particles at Playfuls weren't original to them - but I never really worried about it. In my thinking at the time, news was news, and if it came up in a Google search, then there were usually at least 10 or 20 articles about the same event, the Playfuls article being simply the most prominent.

So, I'm all for Google reviewing its sources; I'm just saying that if the stories are corroborated, then news is news. Google News users (should) know better than to accept some flaky story out there as fact, if it just came from one lonely article on Playfuls.

But then again, I always thought Playfuls was a strange name for a news organization. I usually thought it was some kind of porno-news website, or something similar, until I saw them coming up in all kinds of searches.

Anyway, once again, here's to striving.

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10 May 2007

Check out the Web 2.0 Awards

Check out the Web 2.0 Awards, handed out by SEOmoz.

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New Earth-blog at Google

From Search Engine Watch Blog...
Google Launches New "Geo" Blog

This seems like a great opportunity for search to expand, and to me seems like a completely new frontier of technology, even. I also think that this is a huge opportunity for Open Source to show us why open collaboration is far superior to the monopoly-and-copyright approach to web and software development. While it is not really producing true "open source" software, Google genuinely promotes the open source movement by opening up its software APIs to the rest of the world. It also promotes the flow of open source by not charging a penny for the use of the software. They do stake a claim on the authorship of that software, but their claim doesn't cost me several hundred dollars per computer per year, like it does with some other companies. (Yes, that was a NOFOLLOW link.)

Again, I am making a play on the "striving" theme. This is definitely something where we will be always striving, never arriving. I don't really think the Web-Earth project will ever "arrive," in the sense that everyone will be satisfied, all at the same time, causing development to cease for a time until we all have holographic computers that display an actual globe in front of us, and then we work on Web Earth 2.1, or "XP". I don't think the striving of the entire community of developers can be held inside of one company - nor can the desires and needs of the world be met by one community of developers. And that's why open source (combined with "Google source") will be the ones to "win" this war by fighting the true fight.

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09 May 2007

Frequency Matters!

I found a very informative and helpful post at ConverStations, the blog of Mike Sansone, a Conversation Conductor who lives in Iowa. What a job. For more about Mike, click here.

Frequent and Consistent Posting Does Matter

In the last few months, I've had customers/prospects tell me that frequent and consistent posting isn't important. Wrong. Especially at the beginning.

They insisted that if blogs are such a great thing, they didn't need to update that often. Sounds like a cob-web strategy to me. Sounds like they either don't want to put in the work or it's just not a priority. But for a blog to be successful, the blogger must put in the work.

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Ok. I know. You're thinking, "duh." Well, we all should be. But his post is pretty true to life, I think. People naturally are going to want more output than input. That's convenience - they call it the American way these days.

Thinking about it from an SEO perspective, pings are never generated when the blog is static, so it doesn't make sense to "strive" for a static entity that will consistently rank highly in the SERPs. The mentality actually goes against everything I said in my inaugural post about the nature of the SEO industry. Nobody ever arrives. It's very existential, very postmodern. Experience is everything, and experiences are by nature fleeting - therefore, SEO does not end. It's the never ending project. That's why you hire a web design team if you're a firm or a company. Or, that's why you become an SEO consultant.


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Google's taking over the newspapers now!

From Search Engine Watch Blog...
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Google Print Ads Now in AdWords Console

Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim has posted screenshots of the new Google Print Ads interface in the AdWords console. Google announced last month that the program would enter an extended beta this month.

The new tab offers advertisers the ability to buy print ads in participating newspapers, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and LA Times. The console includes a date range for the campaign, weekly budget, and the ability to select newspapers by schedule, circulation, or relative cost.

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So what's next?
I think that Google ought to just buy a bunch of little newspapers. That's right - little, suburban newspaper firms that aren't relatively expensive to buy up. For 3 billion dollars, they could probably buy up an entire metro area... or the eastern seaboard. I haven't done any concrete research on the value of small newspaper firms. But anyway, here's the scenario:



  1. Buy 100 newspapers in the same state, MSA, or CMSA.
  2. Consolidate the advertising divisions of all 100 of them.
  3. Consolidate printing of the newspapers.
  4. Sell the ads online mostly, through an auction-based, adwords-style system.
  5. Now that they are all printed at the same place, and Google owns the whole operation, the newspaper ads can be printed alongside articles with high keyword relevance. Ads can be run throughout all the newpapers, instead of clients having to decide which individual newspaper they want to run an ad in. Since these papers cover an entire region, the ads will be run in the most efficient way, across the entire region.
  6. Watch public opinions change, as people are slowly brainwashed by inundation with ads.
  7. Keys to the city are given to Google.


I thought it was kind of interesting, for a theory. Anyway...

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Why list your phone number in adwords?

I posted this in the main Google optimization forum at SEO Chat, with no response, so I'm posting this here, hoping some more interested people will see it and respond...

To anyone who feels inclined to answer:

I was doing some research for my company yesterday morning, and noted that some firms advertising on Google have opted to place a phone number in the ad text.

For example, in a search for "riverside ca plumbing", I noticed the following ad:


Need a Low Cost Plumber?
Midtown Rooter Plumbing. Call Now
818-555-5555 - 24 Hour ER Service
----URL address-----
Los Angeles, CA

There were several others like this in other searches that I tried, and most of them seemed to be from companies that are one-man-shows or at least pretty small.

My questions:

  1. What are the benefits/drawbacks of putting a real phone number in the actual ad text?
  2. Why doesn't Google block this? Or, can they even?

It seems to me (a) that, from a web design perspective, this would defeat the purpose of advertising on Google, since people might be "converted" without actually clicking on the link, and so your click-thru reports would not actually show the real success of the ad. I would think that any web designer would never practice something like this, if they valued the future of their career.

Also, (b) it seems that this is a way for the business owner to get around paying for all the customers he gets through the ad, and therefore Google ought to block this practice if they can.

Any thoughts?

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Opening Day

And so starts the first day of this blog. I have started this blog as sort of a message board for people who are actively engaged in some time of SEO, but still consider themselves novices, as they might not have any formal training, or whatever.


Remaining true to existentialist thinking, my opinion is that we would all do best to consider ourselves novices, recognizing that any progress lies in the struggle itself. That is to say, in the ever changing world of SEO, it seems that no one "arrives" (perhaps with Matt Cutts, and a few others that happen to work at Google as noteworthy exceptions), and that the whole idea is to remain locked in the "struggle" - that is, the day to day striving to learn the latest trend. To arrive would be to exit the struggle, and to exit the struggle would admit defeat.


So that is my philosophical rambling for the day (I would like to thank my mentor, Soren...). Feel free to comment as you wish; I hope that before long I will have the SEO of my own blog up to speed, and the visibility will be high enough for you to actually see this post and comment on it. For more philosophical rambling, visit my other blog - Square Peg.


Jonathan

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