Category Archives: search

More Tech Memes

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James Kim Search Discussion – Click here

Yikes – I leave town for a few days and can hardly keep up with all the interesting tech news items. In addition to the fun Jeremy v. Matt copycat debate we’ve got:

Jason on Digg Rigging This is just a tiny part of the HUGE number of upcoming stories which will showcase how complex the relationships are between SEO, social networking sites, and …. money.   I actually contacted the Digger Jason is effectively accusing of abuse and it does not appear to me he’s taken any money at any time.   Here’s a great summary of that “Digg Ban” case.   But his innocence does not suggest to me that there is not a huge and growing issue with Social media SEO uses and abuses.  At PubCon many were discussing how powerfully social networking can help with organic optimization as well as straight traffic generation to a site that gets “dugg” or creates a compelling (including stupid but popular) YouTube video.

Jim at Microsoft apologizing in a very web 2.0 way. Scoble would be proud of this “naked conversations” approach to corporate blogging. Too bad Microsoft didn’t see how making Robert the semi-official corporate blogmeister with the huge salary increase he deserved for “getting Web 2.0” before the suits did (most MS suits don’t even get it now) would have returned 100x on the investment.

… and speaking of “getting Web 2.0”. Yahoo does but can’t seem to get the mileage they deserve for retooling the corporation as a community internet extravaganza. This set of leaked Yahoo internal documents about the potential Facebook aquisition provides a fascinating glimpse into how big deals are analyzed. As a Yahoo shareholder I think they should save the billion and just get their stupid ass in gear with the excellent social network stuff they already own like Flickr (which should be the template for other social applications, Del.icio.us (OVERHAUL the INTERFACE and yes, you can rename this URL monstrosity! ), Yahoo Video, Yahoo 360, Answers, groups, etc, etc. As I’ve noted before Yahoo suffers from giving people so many options they tire of the decision making and go to Google’s simple interfaces, search, and simpler suite of choices. Google expects us to act like the sheep we are. Yahoo expects us to do too much mental work choosing how we relate to the internet.

Going Techno Postal?

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James Kim Search Discussion – Click here

OK, I’ve really missed ranting about technology things for the past few weeks so I’m going to take a look at what’s going on over at TechMeme.

Jeremy over at Yahoo is always very honest about Yahoo’s shortcomings so it’s good to see him get to take a shot at Google even though the transgression is not exactly earth-shaking, more just a funny oddness that gets internet people all worked up. Google copied Yahoo‘s IE7 pitch page. (It was changed to this today or last night). Here’s a great graphic which shows the smoking gun evidence: http://chir.ag/stuff/yahoo-to-google.gif

Matt Cutts is a totally stand up guy and this is not his department but he’s Google’s ambassador to the blogging masses so it fell to him to address this. Now, you don’t dis Google or Matt may go Inigo Montoya on you. Matt’s lackluster “apology” sounded more like an attack on Yahoo’s own copycat behavior even though he noted that it was Robert Scoble‘s excellent advice – which was totally not taken – that led him to post about this. Robert suggested the Google peeples take out the Yahoo peeple for a fancy lunch in a limo, which would have been a neat PR gimmick.

This is superficially trivial but actually has deeper significance as a measure of the overall online sentiment about Google. Google is still in the driver’s seat with respect to most things internet but I’d suggest that we are now seeing a tendency for the knowlegeable users to reevaluate their relationships with Google, Yahoo, and even Ask and MSN. This reminds me in some ways of the days when Yahoo was totally in the online driver’s seat and Google – with clearly superior search – started to eat Yahoo’s lunch but still had only a tiny market share. Had Yahoo bought Google back then, rather than just using their search algorithm and helping to make Google the online behemoth it is today, the online landscape would sure look different. I’m glad they didn’t though because Google’s new approaches and “techno centric” business models have arguably done more to change the way we all do business than any other recent global business developments.

Ironically in this little debate is the fact that when Yahoo FINALLY figures out how to effectively copy the gist of Google’s contextual ad matching systems (adwords and adsense) we could see a huge change in the online search game as publishers would have more choice in who they align with.

Disclaimer: I’ve got some Yahoo Stock so I root for them to succeed even though I try to post honest comments about what’s up.

Yahoo beats Google at something other than … sports.

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Google is closing down it’s answers feature which has been very inferior in performance compared to Yahoo’s and was missing the point in Web 2-point-0.

Hey, I pointed this difference out about one year ago.   This is actually a very interesting example of how Yahoo is more 2.0 friendly and better at bringing people into the computer equation, and helps disprove Matt Cutts’ recent, mildly back-handed compliment suggesting that Yahoo is only better in sports.

More important is that it’s a small indicator of how the battle lines are getting drawn in what may be the most significant, fun, and interesting corporate battle in the history of commerce.   Who you gonna call . com?    Yahoo as community builder, Google as search behemoth, Microsoft as “where o where did our monopoly go?!”   Who will rule the net?    There’s room for many players so it could even be a combination or companies yet to be invented.

So, how about a price spike in Yahoo stock, which seems to happen with GOOG every time that Google farts.

Hey Wall Street!  Yahoo!!!  Look!  Hey!

Disclaimer:   I own some Yahoo Stock and have some old Google puts that will expire soon, worthless.
Serves me right for betting against brilliance, though I still think Google is priced using an irrational exhuberance stock picking algorithm and Yahoo is … undervalued.

WebmasterWorld Pubcon – Danny Sullivan Keynote

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Everybody in search is wondering what Danny Sullivan‘s going to do after Search Engine Watch. Arguably the most knowledgeable guy in SEO and certainly the best connected, Danny is at Webmaster World for the first time I think.

The answer is: Search Engine Land where Danny, Chris Sherman, and Barry Schwartz will be doing “longer, original content on key events, developments, and issues” in search. Feeds or daily newsletter.

He’ll also continue with th daily SearchCast via WebmasterRadio at Daily Search Cast

Pubcon Las Vegas – Duplicate Content Session with Google and Yahoo

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OK, I lost power and couldn’t blog the beginning of the session which is wrapping up but I’ll try to get a link to the simply excellent presentation by Tim Converse at Yahoo which detailed many aspects of the Duplicate Content issue. This is probably a major problem for Travel site Online Highways despite a huge investment in editing over the years. We still have lots of thin content pages and this appears it could be all or part of our problems ranking at Google and (very recently) Yahoo.

Amanda Watlington, Bill Slawski had good presentations and Brian White of Google also gave a PPT with similar but less detailed coverage. Brian did indicate that the info presented by Tim was in line with Google’s thinking about this complex topic that IMHO affects a growing percentage of the web’s total pages, and kills off many inappropriately. It was suggested that the ideal is thought of as a single page, removing all the duplicate content. [I’d argue that queries are too vague to define things this specifically, and often the “best” site will have hundreds of “similar” pages that are best left to user’s choice. Unfortunately this approach would be too spammable so I think lots of collateral damage ensues.]

RE: Citation tag – sounded like Brian and Tim hadn’t even heard of this tag, so I’m now skeptical it’ll help remove duplication penalties for a site that had been scraped heavily.

Wow – It was just suggested by Tim that in some cases it’s best to start a new site if you’ve been penalized, but first he said to clean up the site and then get it reviewed.   This is the first “official” recognition I’ve seen for the idea that a URL can be so poisoned it must be abandoned.

Great session – Kudos to Tim for a super helpful PPT and other presenters for tackling this complex topic so well.

Pubcon – ad optimizing session

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Jenstar is giving a great talk about the importance of testing, saying it can impact the publishing bottom line by as much as 10x current earnings. YPN vs Adsense –

Most of her testing uses the custom channels at Adsense.

Sometimes borders work better than borderless. Hyperlink blue” is generally the best link color. Second is the same color as other links on page. Try image ads enabled as test. Mix ads up to avoid “banner blindness”. AVOID right upper corner = low conversion.

I missed lots of good info here her blog is great for this stuff.

Cody Sims from Yahoo – What motivates publishers to publish? 4 things:
Lifestyle, Community Aspect, Technology enthusiastics, The “game” of publishing.

Measure of success = maximizing revenue and increasing traffic = same as Yahoo’s own goals.

Article text on the page is the most important in terms of contextual matching. Robots choke on i frames, flash, etc.

About.com as one of the best optimized environments on the web = high signal to noise ratio.

Do’s: Write the way a user thinks. Creates relevant content and ad matching.
Optimize key areas. Keep tags relevant to content.
LIMIT low content pages.
Don’t use unnecessary code.
Limit page to one or two topics.
Walk in the advertiser’s shoes – “would I want my ad here?”
Integrate keywords into URL structure. Permalinks>using IDs in links.
Strong keywords in anchor text.

www.ypnblog.com

Tom from Google: Shift in Media Consumption= opportunity. Approaching 40% of time online which will shift more ad money online soon.
Adsense: 76% reach via adsense publishers. 110 monthly page views per user
—Missed some of this —

Jay from ContextWeb, now 25th largest ad supported property online. Venture backed by same firm that brought Overture to market. Like Federated, looking to better match ads and publishers than can be done by the big players. Decision making engine works on the fly. Keyword sensing plus category taxonomy disambiguates the search. (got that?).

Google is NOT real time, but Context Web is. Dynamic content is therefore better targeted by Context Web. (the Samsonite Suitcase ad at Suitcase murderer story problem)

Quigo‘s introduced by Yaron Galai as another “cream vs milk” advertising optimizer.  I missed his very interesting slide suggesting how crappy publishers are effectively subsidized by current pricing models – hope to ask about that later.   I met Yaron in Boston I think and was really impressed by Quigo, but soured on it after talking with somebody else at SES San Jose who had a negative sort of pitch.  Probably a case where the founder’s a better salesman than the salesman.

John Battelle at Pubcon

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John Battelle, author of “The Search” is talking about “The New Age of Advertising” and making the case that search is the new computer navigation tool.

Search: Allows adverts to focus on “intent over content”. Shifting from pre-search to post-search world is frustrating, but essential, for advertisers. Google is that nexus.

Marketing as dialog. Attention is increasingly controlled by users, not distributors. Content is once again king and landing page is the queen. John says marketing is now an opportunity to engage the customer in a dialog.

Case studies: Microsoft dinosaur heads vs Wifi awareness. Changing the pitch to acknowledge the reader’s interest (wifi aware vs dinos) increased response 60%.

Cisco – Wikipedia happiness from respect by not posting company propaganda, rather waiting for a natural listing to appear.

Dice: Invited surly IT peeps=most IT peeps, to rant. Tech news “hummingbirds” became sticky stickarounds.

Demo of Federated media campaign manager. Hmmmm- keynote as a pitch?
I guess this is OK because John …. has a PhD.
Federated = bundling of quality sites with advertisers who want targeting.
750 million ad impressions from 100 sites booking a million per month in ads, 60% of which goes to publishers [ummm – why is this lower than adsense rev share of about 70%?].
Here’s the answer – they devote lots of staff time to take care of authors needs?

Questions:
How to separate editorial from advertising?: Blogging allows transparency and trust in a way print does not. Disclose and don’t sell words, but OK to blog about things you like/know/use etc. Ultimate test is whether audience stays with you.

Google radio vs Federated CPM advertising. Quotes Beth Comstock from Web 2.0 about needed humans in the equation. FM is in the “cream” biz where Google’s in the milk biz.
Federated will work to make sure every impression on the site is monetized in the best way.

What’s most unique thing you’ve seen a blogger do to increase traffic?
Lists are good. Blogoscoped asked for posts with most comments. But need the core essense of passion. High integrity voices always win.

Jason Calcanis suggests you should do in-house ad sales after 1 million page views (per month?).    John says he does not agree and thinks the Federated model is very viable as an intermediary.

Pubcon – Opera Browser Keynote by Jon S. von Tetzchner

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Jon S. von Tetzchner is giving the last talk today about the Opera Browser, which he co-founded. Opera is used by 39 million (based on this year’s downloads I think). 340 people working *only* on browsers. “We dream about browsers” and have been for 12 years.
Wiki on Opera

Seems to me that Opera is fairly quickly capturing the key growth market in browers which are those needed for mobile and gaming devices. They’ve got the DS and Wii launches shortly. Good going in this explosive niche!

Las Vegas Lions, IMAX, and Chinois at Caesar’s

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Almost time to find something to do tonight after the ASK reception winds up at 6pm.  Sometime during the trip I want to go to the Chinese place “Chinois” at the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace recommended by Zeke at About.com, arguably the best source for Las Vegas info anywhere. He says this might be the best place to eat in the whole city.

Last time here I missed the Lion habitat at MGM grand so I also want to head over there and then to LUXOR for an IMAX show. I’d thought I’d do a big show this time out but nothing looks worth the $50 – $100 price when there are tons of cheap and free attractions, as well as some of the best people watching in the world.

Pubcon – Mega site optimization session

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Andrew from Automotive.com / Primedia. Motor Trend magazine. He’s got some case study info about their optimization efforts in the Auto space.

Website Evaluation.
CMS challenges. No”policing” to make sure writers were optimizing content. Structure problems. (missed some here). “Site was not SEO friendly at all”. As an authority in the space, changes in structure helped a lot. Could use the brand and could monetize immediately …

sorry…too much info to capture here..

Shop.com

Aaron:  Shopping.com