Kiko.com sells for $258,100 on Ebay today. No champagne glasses came with this deal.

Posted on August 27, 2006 by JoeDuck

I feel bad for the Kiko folks even though they are but a handful of the millions of workers who live in the shadow of the search giants, hoping they’ll toss a golden bone or two out now and then. Kiko’s calendar application was probably the victim of Google’s free calendar, as some of the analytics programs are victims of Google’s brilliant plan to distribute Urchin (now google analytics) free to all. Brilliant because it lets you track PPC campaigns and will likely serve to increase Google’s PPC revenues even as people become more savvy about their traffic and PPC spend.

Of course at 258k somebody may be able to turn this around into something profitable. As with Real Estate “fiascos” that go broke sometimes it’s the second team of managers who can come in and, with a much lower capitalization cost, turn the biz around. I doubt it in this case though.

Talent, Oregon Real Estate

Posted on August 25, 2006 by JoeDuck

Here in lovely Talent, Oregon the real estate prices have been going up in spectacular fashion. Until now. As a favor to my pal Jack Latvala I’m helping him set up a PPC campaign over at Star Properties, the closest thing to an official real estate office for Talent we have here. They also cover Ashland Oregon and have a lot of Ashland Oregon Real Estate listings as well as Talent Oregon Real Estate. Jack and Lynn are great to work with and are one of those rare brokerages that are more interested in helping people and the community than in landing the sales commission.

We’ll start with the $50 in free clicks from Google from SES and see if they can get any action from that bidding on terms like Talent Oregon, Talent Real Estate, Ashland Real Estate, etc. I’m very interested in this from a Search optimization perspective as well. Star would very reasonably be considered the most relevant site for Talent Real Estate, but probably not for Ashland Real Estate. However, the listing at the top for Ashland has a PR of only 2 and is not one of the big players there. I’m thinking he may be the cleverest one though as that’s a choice spot. In these “longer tail” areas we see that Google often fails to deliver the type of result you’d get if you asked a very knowlegeable local from Ashland about Real Estate, and I think this bodes well for Yahoo’s more humanized social search approaches.

WordPress noindex / nofollow problem solved

Posted on August 23, 2006 by JoeDuck

Last week I noticed my precious little blog posts, which have been nicely indexed by Google, were dropping out of the index like flies. Of course I should have checked the source code but it took Aaron’s note today to make me realize the blog was placing a noindex/nofollow everywhere, making it impossible to get indexed.

Appears this also happened to the illustrious Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame, and there I learned to flip the “privacy” feature back to allow searches in.

To fix the WordPress NOINDEX NOFOLLOW problem click DASHBOARD > OPTIONS > PRIVACY and select to allow search engines.

I’m still a bit concerned that somebody may have done this maliciously, but never attribute to malice that which can be reasonably attributed to stupidity (or some bug in the system).

Anyway, who would stoop so low? Duck hunters?

Google v. Kinderstart ing over again in September

Posted on August 18, 2006 by JoeDuck

The Google vs Kinderstart Lawsuit was dismissed though judge Fogel suggested that if Kinderstart can show a case of “manual intervention” by Google the outcome might be different and it’s now clear they’ll refile in September, probably as a class action. If the judge means they only need to show that Google’s done manual intervention *in any case* then this is going to get interesting, because everybody in SEO knows that Matt’s spam team routinely zaps sites that violate guidelines from the index. I doubt this was Kinderstart’s problem though – rather a severe algorithmic downranking that many sites have suffered over the past few years. However the Google lawyers may have failed to understand the nuances of the algorithm vs violations and how humans interface with this at Google (I think no single person knows everything over there). Thus if the judge felt Google claimed “no manual intervention whatsoever” then I think he might get pissed to know how often violating sites get killed off.

If this is any indication of the thinking that could guide the decisions I have no idea what’s going to happen here.

Blogging is great even if you don’t get indexed…

Posted on August 16, 2006 by JoeDuck

It’s hard for many people to understand why bloggers who only have a few readers enjoy blogging so much, but I suspect that most writers would understand that it’s fun to just jot things down regardless of the audience. In fact I think I’m a better writer when I’m NOT writing for others, rather to clarify my own thinking or ideas or muddling confusions.

However, I’m noticing my usual readership of 75-150 appears WAY down, probably because Google is not indexing snippets of my posts as of a few days ago. My first guess was some temporary confusion over WordPress blog indexing. However, (and this is a cool thing about blogging) I’ve already got word from Robert Scoble over at his blog – the top wordpress blog – that he’s not seen this before.

Travel peeps – 1 generation = internet peeps

Posted on August 11, 2006 by JoeDuck

Asked about my CA trip I noted that my second Google party was not as fun as the first. Free (good) beer and mini burgers only go so far. I think the magic of Silicon Valley is wearing off – in fact this was my second trip down in 4 weeks with a Virginia reunion in between, a nice trip to the ol’ Virginia roots and relatives in the Shenandoah Valley.
There was a fun highlight of being in on a conversation between Google and Microsoft’s key search guys at the Google Party, though no spectacular SEO insights came out of it other than unmasking the main MSNdude poster at WMW (who was talking to GoogleGuy).

One thing I noted is how travel industry folks tend to be 1) friendlier than internet peeps, 2) older, often by a generation, and 3) lacking at internet events. This may serve me well as I push ahead with some travel ideas where I’ll be mashing up some databases with flickr, google video, and maps. I think the Travel industry is so mired in the mythologies surrounding print and TV advertising that it will literally take a new generation of travel professionals to realize the lost online opportunities. With the new sites I’ll be putting more of my money where my mouth is.

SES San Jose Links

Posted on August 10, 2006 by JoeDuck

SES post has moved to Tech Report

SES San Jose – exhibitors are followers, not leaders

Posted on August 10, 2006 by JoeDuck

Note to middle sized companies that have exhibit staff – you’d probably be surprised to see them in action. Although I’m usually impressed by the people from Google and Yahoo who are typically well informed, enthusiastic, and polite, many of the technology exhibit folks seem poorly informed about the marketplace and too focused on their own pitch and “sale”.

I’d guess that the return on investment is negative for all but a few exhibitors, though perhaps the leads they get at an event like SES San Jose – the world’s top Search related conference – are golden and therefore hugely valuable?

The good news for me is that I now understand *very* clearly that outsourcing any search optimization I want to do would probably be a waste. Some of these places don’t even keep up with the freshest SEO news from Matt , WMW , or even SES. There are some exceptions to this SEO ignorance by SEO companies. I’m always very impressed with Bruce Clay . His approaches reflect recent SEO information. Bruce is always very well informed and helpful even to non-clients. Another exception would be freelance guys like Aaron Wall of SEObook fame. However, I’d say there are only a few hundred people in the world who know enough about SEO to make their insight more valuable than, for example, a clever high schooler who spends a few days absorbing information from Matt Cutts, the Google Guidelines, and Danny Sullivan posts. I’m increasingly skeptical that time spent at WMW and SES forums does more than create noise and confusion. This idea was supported even at a conference party by comments from the real engineers at MSN and Google who post at WMW as “MSNdude” and “GoogleGuy”.

SES San Jose – it’s almost like I’m not … here.

Posted on August 8, 2006 by JoeDuck

I’m sitting in my San Jose hotel room a few blocks from the Search Engine Strategies conference thinking how much better the information about the conference is … right here on my pc … than at the conference itself. I’m not knocking SES (yet), just noting that a broadband connection and good website coverage means that even up in my little Oregon town I can “see” the emerging online world as well – in some ways much better – than hanging out in the middle of things here in Silicon Valley. Microsoft’s MIX06 had more PCs all over the place where SES, like last year, has a long line to check mail unless you want to lug your own pc all over the place. Also an inconvenience if you want to check up on blogs or conference updates. The key point? The virtual 24/7 conference online is rocking, and will only get better over time.

I shouldn’t knock the conference because I’m just an “exhibits only” attendee and SES clearly has emerged as the key search conference. Also, Danny Sullivan is arguably the sharpest SEO observer in the world and based on comments by some presenters I know he treats his peeps well …

YET … it sure seems they have the same tired “Our SEO is the best ever” exhibitors and perhaps as many as 60+% of the same presenters show after show, most pretending they are better at or more helpful with PPC and organic optimization results than … a smart high school kid … which is not supported by much evidence I can see, especially on the organic side of SEO. I do hate to miss Matt Cutts comments and the Eric Schmidt interview but maybe I’ll bump into them at the party at Google tonight.

After going to 3 full Webmasterworld conferences, two SES as exhibits only, and one AD-TECH (where they more-nicely-than-SES allow exhibits people to attend the keynotes which are the best part of that conference), I think Webmasterworld offers the best insights and networking. One presenter who appeared at both told the WMW crowd he had to dumb down the presentation for SES. Perhaps he says the opposite here, but I think SES, at three times the price, is not even as valuable as a WMW conference for all but a handful of niches such as Vendors, who’ll do better at this venue because they are selling things rather than dispensing quality information. (Man there are a lot of SEO clueless salespeeps in SEO!)

Of course personal contacts are important, but I know I’ll find some people I know over at the Google Party later this evening.

Google Party at SES 2006

Posted on August 6, 2006 by JoeDuck

Tuesday is the 5th annual Google Party in Mountain View at the GooglePlex, one of the biggest social events of the internet year. It’s held in conjunction with the Search Engine Strategies conference at the San Jose Convention Center. I was just down in Silicon Valley about 3 weeks ago for Mashup Camp 2, but I can’t miss the Google Party!

One of the highlights last year was a chance to talk to several of the Google Search Engineers. Here I am pestering Kekoa – I think about 302 vs 301 redirection and ranking items:

Matt Cutts is generally in *high demand* at conferences as well as here at the 2005 Google Party webmaster talks, which are held away from the really big crowd outside. In fact in Boston at Webmasterworld he told me he hardly got anything to eat at this 2005 Google bash because he was constantly mobbed. Thanks to my good friend John for shooting these pix. He’ll be joining me again this year at the Party.