Category Archives: blogs

Measuring internet “engagement”

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Robert Scoble’s asking a great question today about how to measure “engagement” at a website as opposed to just a visit. This issue was recently addressed at some length in the big debate over Comscore metrics for Myspace that Danah Boyd challenged as questionable.

As I suggested in that debate and Scoble is saying now, there’s an important difference between a user who simply loads a page and leaves the site immediately vs a user who engages with the site.

Experiments are needed, since it may be as simple as taking a ratio of total unique visitors to total time online to get a sense of how engaged the visitors are.

Of course that does NOT necessarily translate into somebody who’ll buy from advertisers which is the type of metric that sponsors are most interested in. We wouldn’t see much Golf on network TV if traffic was the metric, but when you count the fact that golf watchers come from a great demographic for big ticket items it works out for the networks who can sell to a key group (e.g. sell Lexuses, Diamondses, and ringses …..my precious!…..)

Even more complications with metrics are here in the form of RSS syndication, extensive duplication of information (e.g. this blog is auto duplicated over at Facebook), and the new gadgetification of the desktop where mini applications are going to run wild all over the place, making a “page view” less relevant, or irrelevant, for many websites and advertisers and measurers.

Re-Ze-lated:
Funny – ZeFrank on “Rocketbooming” your metrics
RocketBoom says Zefrank is full of Zeerrors.

Danny I was hoping for more – how about a Search UNconference?

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I don’t know Danny Sullivan personally aside from comments at his blog and forums, but all reports say he’s a fine guy and easily one of the top search specialists in the world.

When it looked like Danny would be leaving Search Engine Strategies earlier in the year I was optimistic that he might break those of us in the publishing and search marketing fields out of the ‘same old speakers’ and ‘same old pitches’ one tends to hear at the two main search conferences: SES and WebmasterWorld’s “PubCon”.   However he’s not leaving yet, so I’m happy for him I guess but disappointed he won’t come up with something new.

I think many would agree that Danny’s the guy who could bring something really new and powerful to the growing, global, search marketing human (and information) network. Something that would capture the spirit of “Web 2.0” which is far more collaborative, information rich, virtual, and unstructured than the internet of the 1990s.   Also, there are a HUGE number of case studies now that reflect all the common problems websites have.  Simply examining all these in a conference environment would be far more helpful than listening to yet another SEO guy talk about how he gamed Google’s Algo five years ago.

I don’t want to be too critical of SES and WMW because these are good conferences all things considered. However after attending some UNconferences such as MashupCamp I’m convinced that the UNconference format (or things like Yahoo’s Hack Day) are vastly superior to the old standard where speakers, often with less experience than many in the audience, struggle to speak clearly and make with their weak powerpoint presentations relevant.

UNconferences, like Startup Camp in a few weeks, tend to unleash the power of the audience and ironically the lack of structure creates far more cohesive sessions. I think this is because your brain goes into active vs passive mode.

So Danny after you make your deserved big bucks back at SES over the next year, how about shaking things up for 2007?

Information explosion keeps filling the bomb craters with more info!

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The infinite storage capacity of the internet combined with the searchability of that growing information resource makes the current information revolution unprecedented and perhaps even mind-altering.

In the past knowledge (and stupidity) had significant confines in the form of printed pages which would eventually be relegated to dusty old stacks in university libraries, used book stores, computer hard disks, etc.

Now, infinite storage combines with social networking and search to pour billions of items online every day and make them searchable and accessible to anybody.

It’s hard – in fact impossible – to know how this will shake out.   Is it too optimistic to hope  that as the online encyclopedia becomes almost totally comprehensive and accessible we’ll find new ways to merge people and information, and this will bring a sort of new age intellectual Renaissance where we dispense with many of the human limitations that make sweeping human progress so elusive?

List of SEO blogs

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Aaron Wall’s got one of the best lists of SEO related blogs I’ve run across. Although I think most of the people here know what they are doing I think SEO as a general concept is overrated. There are risks with even moderately aggressive SEO so it’s not clear to me that a business should invest in specialists. Rather in most cases the best approach is to follow the generally accepted good practices and create as large a content footprint as possible.

Hey, here’s another list of SEO blogs 

Aaron’s reply is such a good point I’m going to change my advice and suggest that sites should either get some SEO advice or assign people in-house to review the wealth of *mostly* accurate SEO advice online.

  1. Until you really dig into them it is hard to appreciate how bad off the SEO is even on some of the leading authoritative sites on the web. For many companies SEO isn’t just about taking chances, but is also about minimizing risks and using the assets you have. Sometimes an external consultant is necessary to get a frame of thought to be able to move through a large corporation.Obviously given my brand and market position I have to state that I think SEO is good stuff, but I think there are lots of way to bake SEO into your marketing plan that cost little extra in terms of time or effort, but can deliver large returns. Comment by aaron wall | October 22, 2006

    Aaron that is such a good point I’ll change my advice. It is clear that many companies, even some huge ones, are ignoring even the most basic aspects of optimizing websites. I agree the money they lose due to this is perhaps even hundreds of times what they would pay to have *you* review their site and suggest changes, and thousands of times what they’d pay to buy your excellent SEO Book.

    Part of the challenge I’m talking about however are the growing number of bogus “SEO Specialists”, online SEO scams, and even folks working at the big SEO companies who suck. I ran an interesting experiment last year with a very prominent SEO firm. They did “good” work but it did not boost my traffic and I realized I would likely do better myself simply adding, for example, a blog and more content.

Henry on Google

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Henry Blodget, in my opinion, is writing some of the most thoughtful stuff about Google’s share price and prospects. Ironically he’s precluded from working in securities or offering personal stock advice – I think forever – due to his and other irrational exhuberances of the internet bubble days. Bubble ONE, that is. Bubble two is not a bubble, it’s a YouTubleGoogle Zeitgeisty thing.

Google Gorg replacing Microsoft Borg? Don’t be P/E vil?

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Chris “Factory Joe” Messina of Flock has a provocative post about how Google is …. continuing to take over the internet world.

Although I’m more concerned about the virtual monopoly on search rather than Google’s assualt on Microsoft’s virtual monopoly on operating systems and office applications, everybody is well served to start thinking, as Voltaire sort of suggested hundreds of years ago “Is an all-Google world the best of all possible worlds?”

The answer, of course, is NO. Google’s brought great stuff and should keep on bringing great stuff. Google’s been rewarded with almost unimaginable riches and that’s fine. It may even be true that the Google juggernaut has some juggernauting to do before it needs to be brought in check. Sometimes it’s great to let super clever people just run with things until they run out of steam.

But like Chris I think it’s now clear that stock prices and commercial considerations have considerable influence on Google and their decisions and operations. You don’t have to think Google is running around intentionally doing monopolistic things to worry that if the going gets tougher and they no longer have so much of the search market and are fighting to maintain the stock Price Earnings ratios and options values the “don’t be evil” mantra may be interpreted more as “don’t be P/Evil-keep Google on top”! Wait. I think that Mantra change is already under way.

Google is a great company, but as Chris suggests that doesn’t mean we should stop keeping our eyes on them.

Disclaimer: I’m hardly a market mover but should say I do have stock in Google competitor Yahoo and puts on Google because I thought it was overpriced.

Blog readers vs writers, redux VIII

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My Cicarelli test of a few weeks ago, where I blogged about the top Technorati search term, sent a few hundred  visits total over the two week period.    It’s not clear they were “extra” visits though I think they were, but it would take more analysis than I want to do to determine if placing high for that term meant I was lower ranked for the more common technology themes you’d find on this blog.

 

Technorati still shows that very  interesting imbalance between readers and writers.  In fact I’m again hard pressed to explain many of these top searches without looking them up:

Top Searches

  1. Larry Craig- Congressman accused of having gay affairs
  2. Edelman- Wal-Mart’s Ad Agency accused of fake blogging
  3. In Vodka Non Ve… ?
  4. Barney and Baghdad – Tom Friedman on GW Bush in Iraq
  5. Torbe ?
  6. Youtube- Video sharing bought by Google
  7. Google- HEY everybody knows this one
  8. Video – Generic, presumably YouTube
  9. Internet Explorer – Microsoft.  I’ve heard of them.
  10. Paginas Da Vida – ?
  11. Iraq – don’t go there
  12. Myspace-Social network extraordinaire
  13. Ipod- Apple’s Music Gadget
  14. Second Life- Virtual lives online, Congress may tax this online, somewhat nonexistent world.
  15. Project Runway.  Heidi Klum’s fashion hit

Top Tags –

See, these technorati top tags (below) are really different from the searches, reflecting the tech emphasis of most bloggers.   In fact  I find that I tend to blog about tech stuff in great disproportion to things I find more interesting simply because that’s the most common theme in the blog community and the conferences I blog about.    I’m reading and living that stuff more than, say, political stuff which in many ways is more intriguing.

Blogs and tech sort of “go together”.     I’d like that to change.

  1. wordpress
  2. WP
  3. youtube
  4. Bush
  5. iPod
  6. tagshare
  7. Microsoft
  8. Iraq
  9. web-20
  10. Advertising
  11. rss2
  12. Security
  13. showjournal
  14. China
  15. Yahoo

Wal-Mart. I like ’em!

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Non-disclaimer:

I have NO stock in Wal-Mart.
I don’t work at Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is NOT paying me to blog about Wal-Mart.
I don’t Work for Edelman, Wal-Mart’s Advertising Agency.
I’m not getting paid by Edelman to Blog about Wal-Mart.
I’m not getting paid by Wal-Mart to say I’m not getting paid by Edelman.
I did buy several gallons of paint and some brushes at Wal -Mart, and …
I plan to shop there … again.

Hey, I like Wal-Mart, mostly just for the selfish reason that they are convenient, open most of my waking hours, and have many products at very low prices. I also like the fact that it’s much easier to return things to Wal-Mart than to mom and pop shops.

I’m intrigued that none of the many Wal-Mart detractors I’ve read seems to come up with criticisms that take all factors into account. I want to see people in China, Canada, and Mexico working as well as my fellow Americans. Clearly Wal-Mart’s low pricing, somewhat low wages, and hyper-efficiency make products, and jobs, accessible to those who would otherwise have less. Does the Wal-Martification of commerce lower our averages here in the USA? Perhaps a bit, but not nearly as much as it raises them elsewhere. I’m happy to give up 10% of my standard of living so that India and China standards can rise by 50%. If somebody can direct me to a study showing that Wal-Mart *just looking at the USA job market* puts more people out of work than into work please let me know.

Yes, Wal Mart is going to put some businesses that would charge more for the same stuff out of business, but I think that’s part of the grand plan that’s been working well in the USA for over 225 years. I’ll take a Wal-Mart to a Kim-Jung-Il-Mart any day, any time.

With all the furor surrounding the disclosure that Wal-Mart, via Edelman, funded the “already planned” cross country trip by some bloggers you’d think they’d funded Bonnie and Clyde in a murderous rampage.

I reviewed the controversial blog (now taken down) using cached pages in Google and found it was not only tame, the blog was a high quality, nicely done travelog that reflected the spirit of the road and of American Travel. I’m sorry it’s been taken down!

I think I’m basically in agreement with the points made here by Andrew Young who *does* work for Wal-Mart.

Hey Andrew, when you have a minute can you mix a couple of cans of paint for me?
Whoops – he wound up resigning over wilted lettuce.
I’ll be shopping Wal-Mart, and guess what? So … will …. you.

Guerilla Travel Tips

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A great post by Paul K, who looks spookily like Adam L, with some travel tips. I liked the one about parking yourself outside of an airport lounges for a hit of WIFI access, though if you traveling in more enlighted places like PDX Portland Oregon or MFR Medford Oregon notice that there is WIFI throughout much of the Airport and is … free.

In a little known study – in fact unknown study – it was found that God actually blesses free WIFI Airports with fewer accidents, less terrorism, no crying babies, and happier travelers.

Wal-Marting Across America or RVs parking their blog ethics at the door?

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I’m still confused about what seems like a significant overreaction in the blogosphere to Wal Mart’s PR agency Edelman’s decision to sponsor a couple in their RV trip across America. The blog, now called a “fake” by many but not the authors, is WalMartingAcrossAmerica

Onliners, especially bloggers, get more pissed about this type of thing than about, for example, thousands of far, far more significant issues of global significance and ethics, death and destruction and I find that upsetting, intellectually narrow minded, obsessive, and superficial.

So, a big PR firm sponsors a blog that they see will wind up being favorable to Wal Mart? This is surprising? Unethical? If they’d set up the whole thing I’d see it differently, but that does not appear to be the case. They simply were not transparent *enough*, failing to have the bloggers disclose their financial relationship to Wal Mart.

Sure, they deserved to be chastised and called out on this as a breech of transparency, but is this more of a breech than, say, downloading illegal music and videos? Or, for that matter, building entire companies around concepts of illegal downloading? Those guys get cheers and applause and hundred-million dollar paydays.

That said maybe I’m just not reading this right and it was some major ethical breech by Wal Mart/ Edelman.

Here’s my reply to Edelman’s (too thin) apology about all this even as it becomes the top online story by far:

With all due respect this apology seems too thin, and ironically itself sounds like part of the PR-driven rather than the “blog community” approach to the issue which would outline the scoop for everybody and explain how this got so out of hand.

It’s not even clear to me that you seriously defied WOMMA guidelines assuming that things are exactly as described over at the WalMarting Across America blog. Rather it looks like somebody at Edelman saw an excellent and legitimate opportunity and then chose to fund it in a way that turned this into a blog that was too sponsored to retain credibility.

Sheesh – I think I’m articulating your position at greater length than you are?!