A Web Marketing Tumblelog // Weblog
“CrunchGear’s Nicholas Deleon pointed out that misspelling Cuil – as if that were possible – results in a bit of NSFW action for those who transpose the i and the l (culi.com).”
Completely up-to-date article from the official Google blog.
”[...] Mr Semel mandated Tim Armstrong, the company‘s US advertising and commerce head, to resolve the issues, which he is doing through what is known internally as “Project Spaghetti”.”
The Semantic Web is tentatively the future, but has Google already won the search engine wars? Desperate move by Microsoft to claw back cutting-edge technologies.
More Microsoft interested in Yahoo! stuff from Om Malik.
The most important Google announcement this year. Flash files have always represented an SEO nightmare, this will change things.
“On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.”
Another gem from the undisputed master of Web usability.
“Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult.”
With pages like this everywhere, it‘s no short wonder directories are getting devalued for artificial cross-linking above everything else. Quality over quantity in Google for directory subs. Feel more wary about bulk submissions packages these days.
“In the past few months we have been exploring some HTML forms to try to discover new web pages and URLs that we otherwise couldn‘t find and index for users who search on Google. Specifically, when we encounter a element on a high-quality site, we might choose to do a small number of queries using the form.”
OK, less of the SEO Theory links, as I’ve posted three in quick succession. Easily my favourite SEO blog at the moment though – a breath of fresh air in the face of foo and subjectivism in SEO.
Spot-on article from Michael Martinez, is there really such thing as an “Advanced SEO Conference”? Everything I’ve seen is the same high-level, generic bollocks. Who in their right mind would sit in front of a crowd and divulge their greatest little secrets anyway?
Time on the conference circuit, partying & uploading ‘cliquey’ party photos – or time doing nitty-gritty SEO for your clients…
Motivation research is the type of research that seeks to learn what motivates people in making choices. It employs techniques designed to reach the unconscious or subconscious mind because preferences generally are determined by factors of which the individual is not conscious … Actually in the buying decision the consumer generally acts emotionally and compulsively, unconsciously reacting to the images and designs which in the subconscious are associated with the product.
“We are extremely excited and proud to announce the production release of Magento 1.0. The new community site will be online later this week and feature additional functionality, highlighted by Magento Connect.”
Check out what is one of the prettiest and most functional e-commerce CMS‘s out there.
“The bottom line here is that no one has published a viable test for determining whether PageRank sculpting actually works. You cannot measure PageRank and you have no knowledge of how its awarded, passed around, and received but you have convinced yourself that PageRank sculpting works because you made some changes on your site and you saw changes in the search results.”
Highly amusing post about some naive people who decided to name their online marketing company “Web Predators”. Shout out to Matt Davies for picking this up.
“The Web was intended to connect everything on the Internet without regard for need or quality. People could make their own decisions about what was useful. That day is now dead. We’re now moving into the era of the World Notfollowed Web — it will look very strange because it can only be seen through the lens of the Google algorithm, but everyone will dance to this tune because it’s about to become a standard.”
Another gem find from Jerry West. The PDF download at the end of the post is a must-read and will help raise awareness of the key indicators of spam.
Astonishingly creaturelike movements and the most facinating AI I’ve seen. Amazing that it’s carrying 150kg in the tests too!
“The typical project starts out great but then our motivation and interest wanes as time goes on. It’s natural. Staying interested in a project over a long period of time is a challenge for anyone. The longer the project the thinner the tail. You’re not going to do your best work in the tail.”
From the master of pissing people off (and getting lots of links from it), this is a very insightful post from Jason Calacanis.
“2008 will be the year that hacking and search engine optimization (SEO) collide in a major way. By the end of the year, a nontrivial fraction of blackhat SEO will involve illegally hacking sites for links or landing pages. One webhost will get a significant black eye as hundreds or thousands of customers’ websites are hacked. The growth of illegal-blackhat SEO will leave traditional blackhats with a difficult choice: risk doing something illegal or sit out.”
Sound advice from Shoemoney.
Eye-opening case study about GoCompare.com, a site that has been penalised by Google for shady linking practices.
I would agree that ten sponsored results above the organic results is a bit too far!
“[...] today’s users rarely change their search strategy when the initial query fails. They might modify their first attempt, but they typically stick with the same general approach rather than trying something genuinely new.”
“Given these difficulties, many users are at the search engine’s mercy and mainly click the top links — a behavior we might call Google Gullibility. Sadly, while these top links are often not what they really need, users don’t know how to do better.”
Look at your competitors’ Metadata. Often, it is surprising how many “money” search terms can be derived from looking at five or so decent sites’ Meta “Keywords” tags. In this respect, it can be a disadvantage to list all of your target search terms in your HTML code.
Actually, it’s really not worth doing in 2008.
“It’s not about holding ‘intellectual property’ to yourself. It’s about empowering the client. And there’s no harm in it. Here’s why.”
“Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices — a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software. Therein lies the conflict.”
Interesting stuff!
Beyond Rich Media Advertising with “Websites within Websites”. Think of [Google] gadget ads as mini versions of your website in any AdSense ad size.
Andy Beal at marketingpilgrim.com gives the lowdown on Google’s new interactive, widget-based ads.
From BusinessWeek: “The search giant is unfazed by competition from “natural language” upstarts, but users—and advertisers—may benefit once they get the hang of the new tool.”
Reminds me of a time when Ask (Jeeves) was designed around people typing “natural language” queries in the form of questions.
From ISEdb.com: “[...] many of the requirements [in Yahoo!] for a successful ranking mirror Google’s requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded.”
From Seth Goldstein‘s blog: http://sethgoldstein.wordpress.com/
From Search Engine Roundtable (22 Aug): “Producing video content? There are video search engines that specialize in gathering up your video and making it available to searchers seeking such content. This session looks at how to make your video more visible in these specialized services.”
“We sat down with Mike Belasco, Denver area SEO specialist (www.miketheinternetguy.com) to find out how video can be used to help drive website traffic.”
From Los Angeles Times: “The latest deal is an exclusive agreement to sell advertising on Bebo in Britain and Ireland, where the social networking site leads the market with 11.6 million members.”
Windows 9X = 32bit shell and extensions for a 16bit patch to an 8bit operating system coded for a 4bit processor written by a 2bit company that can’t stand 1bit of competition.
Unlike Aviva Directory, Alive Directory etc., Biz Dir hasn’t been wiped out from the face of the planet by Google. Last time I checked, they’ve since had most of their pages re-included in Google’s index.
From PCWorld.com: “Customers can develop and deploy a wide variety of social media applications with Adobe Flash Media Server 3, including video, audio/video messaging and blogging, live audio/video chat, text chats, datacasting, and multi-user gaming.”
From Search Engine Roundtable. Links to various discussions.
I am always amazed at what people will do for a free tee shirt. I had a client who offered a free company tee shirt to anyone linking to their site. We ran the promotion through their newsletter, email and snail mail list and converted over 22% of the membership. It was a substantial numbers of links.
Aaron Wall of SEObook.com interviews “one of the most well known and creative link builders in the industry.”
Blogstorm’s excellent historical account of the explosive success of SEOmoz.