iBizDaily

Google is lame...

2010-03-07T16:12:35Z

Just a thought: Google is lame. I mean, Google is great - search for the most part, Gmail, Google maps, and tons of other useful, nearly indispensable stuff... but at the same time, I think that the mantra of Larry and Sergey of "Don't be evil" doesn't hold up anymore, and that in the sprawl of what they are doing (web browsers, high speed Internet access, applications, social networking, etc.) they have really dropped the ball on SEARCH. When they started, yes, we needed to know where the website of a thing we were looking for was, and let's face it, Google worked at that better than anyone at the time. A few years later, a lot has changed on the web, but Google's main search really hasn't. I am really tired of finding 3 or 5 or 7 year old websites for topics where new things are much more relevant. And tired of not finding stuff that sometimes appears (like Twitter results) and sometimes doesn't - based on what? We never know, because too much of what Google does is still secret. Which is sort of a crock anyway - what they did, follow text links to their relevant sites and then rank those sites as most probable to be about what the text link says, is really no big deal (not to diminish the technology and the fact that yes, they made it work). Webmasters and SEOs have been pulling their hair out over this secret formula/algorithm for years - it is a whole industry unto itself now - but for what, really? If your site is relevant, live, legitimate, and people link to it and come to it, unless you have screwed something else up royally, you should be just fine in all matter of search engines after a period of time. In the end, 99% of the other crap webmasters worry about (how many h2 tags does this page have?) is crap.

So what is my point? Google search needs to change - they need to change their results more often, refreshen the index more, give new and news site more credence, and at some point and for some topics they need to admit that the "algorithm" does not know all and do some human, qualitative analysis of their search results. And stuff like Twitter results and in the future perhaps Facebook, etc. (anywhere that is as important as those sites are to millions of web users) should be at the top of the page as an option for a user to search or not - not show up when Google feels like it.

Keep developing, keep striving, but don't forget what brought you to the dance.

Ads Posted on Facebook Strike Some as Off-Key

2010-03-04T13:02:05Z

Ya think?

TECHNOLOGY Ads Posted on Facebook Strike Some as Off-Key By BRAD STONE Published: March 4, 2010 From mainstream companies to others that are more off-putting, advertisers on Facebook are a motley bunch.

There is a lot of crap on Facebook - they should definitely be paying more attention to this kind of stuff.

And so it begins...

2010-02-24T00:42:30Z

Okay so it is Television and not print - and they are still going to be employees - but - digital employees:

"Going forward, the network will rely more heavily on so-called "digital journalists" who produce, record and edit much of their material."

This is it - this is the beginning of the digital/web revolution (okay not really the beginning, it started when Tim Berners-Lee figured out HTML). I am sure there have already been similar cases in the print and TV news world like this, but here it is laid out plain. This is terrible news for employment - not simply because of the actual people getting laid off at ABC, but the precedent. If people like ABC news have figured out that today's technology means a reporter can now write, report, shoot, and edit their own pieces - then all the networks will be right behind them. Hundreds of thousands of jobs may have just disappeared.

Continued consolidation in social shopping sites

2010-02-02T09:05:30Z

Following on the heels of the Stylefeeder deal, ThisNext has announced their acquisition of StyleHive. Good times if you are a social shopping start up I guess, but I wonder if the cashing out by these companies means they were starting to hit a wall on growth and/or operating costs?

Headlines

2010-01-20T22:36:41Z

Couple of headlines, seemingly unrelated probably to most:

Confirmed: Time Inc. Buys Personal Shopping Engine StyleFeeder

The Times to Charge for Frequent Access to Its Web Site

So what is going on here? I am going to guess you have never heard of Stylefeeder. The genius who started it up a few years ago is walking with perhaps tens of millions (the article says, "well into eight figures."). This site (to my recollection) was started up so his girlfriend could more easily share stuff she found online with her friends. Of course now it is called a fancy "personal shopping engine". What it is is pure genius - no inventory, very low cost, community based, and churning out cash sending shoppers to online stores.

And then, the NY Times, instead of ever going forward - stepping back in time and again thinking they are going to charge for content. Really? Why have the people at the Times failed to morph/grow/invent anything new with all the web traffic they have? Why do all these dead tree companies let others innovate, and then pay through the nose (hello About.com!) to try to... to try to do I don't know what. What in the world did the Times ever think it was going to do with About.com? And now you have Time Inc. paying for Stylefeeder, which they'll probably screw up and drive people away from.

But the richest part to me is the absolute hubris of people like Bill Keller (the Times executive editor) - here is how he sees the plan:

"It underscores the value of what we do -- trustworthy, aggressively reported professional journalism, which is an increasingly rare and precious thing," Mr. Keller said. "And it gives us a second way to sustain that hard, expensive work, in addition to our healthy advertising revenue."

This is flat our crazy talk. "trustworthy, aggressively reported professional journalism"? I got two words for you Bill - Judith Miller.

So where am I meandering to? Time Inc. should have been developing properties like Stylefeeder for years now. Again, they already had a huge online presence, well known brands, etc. and instead of having anyone with vision, they are now going out and straddling themselves no doubt with more debt in a race to compete.

The NY Times is even worse - they are absolutely deluded in their thinking that their reporting has unique value because it is done by reporters. That ship has sailed. People are and will continue to get more and more of their news online, for free, from passionate writers who know about their subjects (yes - that dreaded word - bloggers!). The Times should be fostering an independent, vetted, global writing team, sans salaries, that gets paid a portion of advertising revenue based on the revenue their reporting generates. Yes it will need editors and controls, but could you imagine the quality and insights gained from people writing about subjects they know about? (I am sure you can because if you are reading this drivel you probably read other blogs too!).

Something has got to give in the dead tree, brain dead corporate news and infotainment world. Hashing out what and when to charge for your content every few years isn't going to make it!

Lonely Planet's BlogSherpa and AdSense

2010-01-15T10:02:19Z

We are participating in Lonely Planet's BlogSherpa with one of our blogs, Florence Journal. I applaud LP for their efforts to reach out to bloggers and for making the relationship beneficial to us. The LP site has a lot of Google juice, a lot of traffic, and they let you show ads on pages they host with your content using your AdSense account. It is a very fair deal and we are happy to have been accepted in the program.

That being said, it is new and they are trying to keep up. There have been a lot of questions on their list from people struggling to grasp how to integrate AdSense into their BlogSherpa accounts. I wrote the below to help out any people having trouble with the set up:

Log into your AdSense account - you'll see your publisher ID in the upper right hand corner - make sure LP has this number.

Click the "AdSense Setup" tab, and then click "Channels". Under the "AdSense for Content" tab, click "URL channels" and then click "+ Add new URL channels" and enter lonelyplanet.com (this step just sets up your tracking so you can see if people click on your AdSense ads on the LP site).

Finally, click on "Allowed Sites" on the right hand side of the main menu tabs - if "Allow any site to show ads for my account " is selected, you are fine. If "Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account" you need to add the LP URL in the field below.

That's it - just make sure LP has your correct Publisher ID. Sometimes you won't see ads from Google in a spot where you expect for a lot of reasons - your geographical location, your time on the site, your browsing history, etc. It doesn't mean other people are not seeing them. That is why setting up the URL channel is good so you can see the stats for your ads on the LP site.

Hope this helps everyone a bit.

We make websites

2010-01-05T20:30:31Z

Starting in 2010 (so that would be now) we are back in the website business. For various reasons I wasn't taking on outside work (other than that of people I already knew) but for various reasons we are back in the marketplace.

I prefer to focus on things that hold an interest to me personally and fit in with my expertise - destination travel, the Caribbean, Italy, wine, etc. For example, I don't want to make a website for a candle shop - anywhere. We specialize in travel and tourism marketing/destination content, with a sprinkling of food and wine, and some art, architecture and history sprinkled on top.

We prefer to use available tools, are into LAMP, like to try to code to standards, and must work in an environment with a CMS (preferably Movable Type). We can give you everything you need, but we'll work to keep the price real. We can start small and grow with you, from a flat site with a few pages, to dynamic sites with all the latest tools, bells, and whistles. E-commerce is also available at various levels of sophistication. SEO is built in. Reporting is by Google Analytics. Social networking is available.

If you have any interest we opened up a business card type of site here with an example of our work and contact info - I will be adding links to more client work soon.

Happy 2010 -

Anthony

Using press releases to increase organic search

2009-12-30T12:50:13Z

There is a good article up on the increasingly relevant WebProNews site about using press releases: How Press Releases Can Be Great For Search

It includes this handy list, which should be indispensable for all web marketers:

- Business Wire
- PR Newswire
- PRWeb
- 24-7 Press Release
- PR Zoom
- PR Leap
- I-Newswire
- Webwire
- ClickPress
- PR.com
- PR Log
- eReleases
- MarketWire

This is not cool

2009-12-18T14:55:37Z

WebProNews asks: "Can You "Rank" in Google if Everyone Has Different Search Results?"

Answer - I don't want to. I don't want everyone's searched customized - I don't want my searches customized! I want to know what the best, most relevant site is - but I don't want it influenced by each and every person in the world! This has always been an issue for me with Google. I would love to see Google results more qualitative (from a human editorial standpoint) and fresher (I hate searching for an event or something newsworthy and constantly getting things from 3, 4 or 5 years ago - that is ridiculous) - but I want Google to do that. With all the money they make, why can't they let some real people make some editorial decisions? I think they need to stay relevant.

But - what I don't want, is every person in the world getting a different, customized result based on their own past behavior. I can't see how in the long term this doesn't end up making individual searches less relevant, as all you are doing with your searches (by what you eventually click on) will be preaching to the converted (you!). How will you then break out of your own habits and find things that are new?

Anyway - I think this is a can of worms for Google and that letting people opt out of it is disingenuous - they know that 90% of users have no idea how to do anything other than point and click - configuring their Google settings isn't going to happen...

Google Closure?

2009-11-17T11:19:49Z

This http://code.google.com/closure/ needs more investigation...

Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

2009-11-16T13:31:34Z

Yeah - RIGHT! Good luck with that....

There's a chance that the content produced by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a number of other important organizations will soon become impossible to find using Google. Rupert Murdoch indicated in a recent interview that News Corp. may block search engines...
Finally, in response to a question regarding why News Corp. doesn't just block search engines, Murdoch said, "Well, I think we will..."

Full article and video here. Notice how this is quoted by SkyNews... which Murdoch conveniently, you know - what's the word I'm looking for... OWNS.

Look - this is pure crap. And if he really believes he can live without Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc. he is really out of touch. No one is going to pony up for this stuff. What value does any of his properties add? If anything, his news ops are marginalized now by their political alignments. I for one would be happy to have his crap publications deleted from my search results as it is.

Web ads and how you see them

2009-11-09T16:29:16Z

This article starts with the question:

"Do you think you're more likely to look at an online ad if it contains 1) a picture, 2) an animation, or 3) just text?"

I knew the answer - but you should check it out yourself. The story is nominally a review of "Eyetracking Web Usability" by (the somewhat controversial) Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice (I say controversial because some people out there don't buy his "science" of the web and how sites should be constructed, etc.).

It continues:

Then there was the result that most surprised the researchers: Text-only ads received the most looks. Part of that might be b ecause we accidentally think text-only ads are part of the information we're looking for. But as Nielsen explains it, the nature of the Web itself might be coming into play, as well. Unlike television, which is a passive medium, the Web is all about taking action

Hat tip to Ruth at St. John Spice for pointing this article out to me.

I guess Amazon didn't get the memo

2009-11-04T14:57:33Z

New feature in my in-box this morning about being able to tweet Amazon products using your Amazon Associates account... sounds ripe for all kinds of bad stuff to happen:

Dear Associate,
Today we are excited to announce the launch of a new feature called Share on Twitter. You can access Share on Twitter from the Site Stripe and post to your Twitter account from Amazon detail pages in just two clicks.

The Share on Twitter feature is easy to use. Simply log in to your Amazon Associates account and then visit any detail page on Amazon.com. By clicking on the Share on Twitter button in the Site Stripe, a new window will open and an Amazon-generated message is pre populated in the 'What are you doing?' text area of your Twitter account (you may be asked to log in to your Twitter account). That message will include a shortened URL that already includes your Associates ID. You'll have the option to edit this message or simply hit the 'Update' button to post to your Twitter account. When Twitter users click on the link in your post and make a qualifying sale, you'll earn referral fees. That's it.

And I guess Amazon doesn't see any issue with the new FTC rules?

How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro

2009-11-04T14:26:37Z

This recent article from TechCrunch, "How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider's Confession", is really amazing - especially the fact that you have an insider admitting to the massive fraud that is possible for savvy criminals to perpetrate.

I don't think the general public realizes this kind of stuff goes on, and if there are any government or enforcement agencies out there who should be involved they are massively behind the curve.

And the author makes some spot on comments that you most likely will never hear in any mainstream publication, like:

"Here's what ad networks struggle with--to either run what ads make the most money or else be forced out by other ad networks willing to be shadier than them."

It will be interesting to see if the article sparks some debate/action in the online advertising world.

Common Sense Web & Data Design

2009-10-15T19:36:25Z

We are more than 15 years into this web thing. It is about time that amateurs (because that is what you are) start to grasp the basics of common sense.

First of all, most websites are small business websites - people that want to be found to sell their crap to us. So don't forget you have a client, and that they are probably busy trying to run their business and not their website (that is where you came in). When you set up something new, stick to a few basic concepts - like calling things by their names, as in the real world. Don't use cryptic acronyms or abbreviations. If you are making a website and there is geography involved, say states, call them by their names - like newsite.com/new-york/ - not newsite.com/newyk123/ which means nothing to anyone.

Keep that in mind. Then when you name a file, think the same way - the HTML page is about NY? Then call it something like about-new-york.html - not pages1ny76.html

These concepts are not hard, and should extend as far into database creation as possible also. If the URL is eventually going to have to include a query string or data base table name for some reason, at least try to use plain, simple words - with dashes-in-between if necessary.

These little tips can go a long - LONG - way in making whatever you are doing a success, for you, and your client.

Have a nice day.