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• July 03, 2009
• 11:33

  Google Added 25% to Chinese Ad Revenue

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  After their recent skirmish with the Chinese government over Internet porn, Google China is back online. And they’re already optimistic: apparently they’re poised to announce a Q2 revenue increase in China of 25% over the previous quarter. (And in this economy, that’s not just great; that’s phenomenal!)

  Brand Republic reports that Google China will also see operating revenue increases of 45% to 50% over the second quarter of last year. For owning only 30% of the Chinese search market, that seems pretty impressive. And the revenue boost from April, May and June of this year probably wasn’t because of a jump in market share—they’ve only added eight percentage points to their marketshare over the last two years.

  Meanwhile, Baidu continues to dominate the Chinese search market with 64%, according to Brand Republic. And it’s not losing ground to Google, either—Baidu is up six percentage points from two years ago. So it would seem that smaller players in the market are losing market share to the two leaders. Brand Republic doesn’t mention on a similar revenue boost in Q2 for Baidu, but the Chinese search giant did have a strong first quarter this year.

  Google CEO Eric Schmidt notes that the company continues to work with the Chinese government over its pornography concerns.

  What do you think? Is Google betting better at monetizing in China, or are people just suddenly more willing to click on search ads? Do you think Baidu is seeing similar gains?

  

  
• 9:33

  Search Ads Less Helpful than TV, Newspaper

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  The results of a new poll from Harris Interactive indicate that Internet advertising isn’t as effective as search engine marketers would like to think. When asked what medium’s ads were most helpful in making purchase decisions, the 2500+ American respondents indicated that first television, then newspapers, then search engine ads. Internet banner ads fared even worse:

  • 37% said television ads were most helpful in purchase decisions
  • 18% said newspaper ads
  • 14% said search engine ads
  • 3% said radio ads
  • 1% said Internet banner ads

  Perhaps most revealing, however, is the math. Those numbers don’t add up to 100% because another 28% (rounding effects) said that none of those ad media were helpful in purchase decisions.

  The Harris poll also asked about what kinds of ads people ignore. Again, the banner ads didn’t do so well:

  • 46% tended to ignore Internet banner ads
  • But only 17% of people said they ignored search engine ads
  • 13% ignored TV ads
  • 9% ignored radio ads
  • 9% don’t ignore any of those ad media

  The full results (PDF) break out the data by demographic and geography:

  

  

  I’m kind of torn about these results. I’ve long said that as an Internet marketer, I’m proud to have people so subtly influenced by search engine ads that they don’t recognize that influence later. On the other hand, it’d be nice to be considered “helpful.” On yet another hand, since when is the point of advertising to be found “helpful”? Should that even be our goal?

  What do you think? Is this something to get worried about, or should we go along our merry way, advertising or persuading but not “helping” people?

  via

  

  
• 6:57

  Google AdWords & Ad Planner Get the Mary Kay Treatment

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  In addition to some minor changes with the blog search interface, Google has been busy updating both the Google Ad Planner and Adwords interfaces.

  The AdWords updates are in response to feedback Google has received since it introduced a new look last month. About the only thing that appears to be truly an "update" is a new search feature for finding your keywords.

  Searching for keywords We heard many of you are looking for quick ways to search for keywords, ad text, or campaign names within your account. In previous posts, we talked about how you can use filtering to focus on the data that matters to you. While text filters allow you to search and act directly on the data you see, they also take a few clicks to set up for the first time. To help you work more quickly, we’ve added a new shortcut that lets you quickly search by text under the ‘Filter and views’ menu on any tab.

  The other changes are really just things that Google should have done in the first place. It now loads faster, has less horizontal scrolling, and is now compatible with Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5.

  Moving on to Google Ad Planner. The one-year old ad management system gets a complete overhaul–one that will remind you of the new AdWords interface. I guess that was intentional.

  I’m not a user of Google Ad Planner, so I can’t tell you if it’s changed for the better, but it sure does look purty!

  

  

  
• 6:30

  Google Blog Search, Now With Added Mediocrity

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Google has updated the homepage to Google Blog Search, but it seems more like a knee jerk reaction to other web sites, than true innovation.

  Take for example the new “Hot queries” section. It highlights the search terms currently most active on Google Blog Search. It sounds like a good idea, but ends up looking like nothing but a rip-off of Twitter’s “Trending Topics.” Google couldn’t even be bothered to match those hot queries to the topic you’re viewing. Switch to technology news, and you still see “tour de france” and English soccer star “michael owen” in the list.

  The new “Latest Posts” section doesn’t fare much better. In fact, you could argue it’s worse. While you might discover something of interest in the untargeted hot queries, the chances of you finding a post of interest, among those just published, is unlikely. The section does exactly what it says on the tin–displays the latest posts from everyone. Again, some targeting would have been nice.

  Thankfully, the new RSS and Atom subscriptions do change as you switch between topics. So, if you’re interested only in “Video Games” blogs, you can subscribe to updates for the hottest blog posts on that topic.

  It seems to me that Google is suffering from juggling too many balls. When you focus on one thing–and do it well–you tend to deliver new features that really appeal to your target audience. When your focus is split between many different products, you end-up with half-hearted efforts like this.

  Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

  
• 5:55

  Google Book Settlement Officially on DOJ Radar

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Earlier in June we talked about how the Google book settlement reached with Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers was drawing the attention of the Department of Justice. The settlement between these two parties was reached in October 2008. There isn’t even final approval on the agreement and the fairness hearing to determine that approval is still months away. Under the settlement, Google’s plan to make available millions of titles copied from various public sources can move forward.

  Google would have the right to display the books online and to profit from them by selling access to individual titles and by selling subscriptions to its entire collection to libraries and other institutions. Revenue would be shared among Google, authors and publishers.

  The key phrase is the sharing of revenue that until the advent of this service was literally non-existent for many of these titles. Google’s blog post from last October says it pretty plainly

  To date, Google has worked with libraries all over the world to make more than 7 million books searchable through Google Book Search, and we’re just getting started. We believe that ultimately we’ll provide access to many times that number, and if approved, this agreement will unlock access to millions of these texts and make the Google search experience even more comprehensive.

  With this agreement, in-copyright, out-of-print books will now be available for readers in the U.S. to search, preview and buy online — something that was simply unavailable to date. Most of these books are difficult, if not impossible, to find. They are not sold through bookstores or held on most library shelves, yet they make up the vast majority of books in existence.

  Now this settlement, which was reached with the parties who thought Google was getting away with something, is getting the real once over from the Department of Justice according to All Things Digital.

  Since we are on the eve of the day that the United States celebrates our independence isn’t it interesting how the government thinks that maybe we have too much of a good thing with all of this “freedom” especially as it relates to business. Remember the good old days when you could get riled up about the Patriot Act because it was trampling our privacy? If the US government keeps up with its ownership of huge businesses and saying that if they don’t approve then it’s no good, they won’t need Patriot Act like bills. They’ll simply own or have a say in everything. They won’t to ask themselves permission to do anything. Apparently the rest of us are too stupid to handle our own affairs.

  Ok, I admit it. I don’t think the government should be anywhere near as involved any business (not too obvious, right?) So back to the Internet and Google’s plight. The US ‘gub-ment’s’ official statement from Thursday states

  “The United States has reviewed public comments expressing concern that aspects of the settlement agreement may violate the Sherman Act,” wrote William F. Cavanaugh, a deputy assistant attorney general. “At this preliminary stage, the United States has reached no conclusions as to the merit of those concerns or more broadly what impact this settlement may have on competition. However, we have determined that the issues raised by the proposed settlement warrant further inquiry.”

  Let’s read between the lines. What is really being said is that they are going to find or make up ways to get their hands dirty on this one. Good thing Google is ramping up its forces in the DC theater because there will be blood. Any meddling government group worth its salt is sure to have something up their sleeve in order to make a public pronouncement of action taken.

  Google’s response?

  “The Department of Justice and several state attorneys general have contacted us to learn more about the impact of the settlement, and we are happy to answer their questions.

  It’s important to note that this agreement is non-exclusive and if approved by the court, stands to expand access to millions of books in the U.S.”

  If Google had ‘back-doored’ this agreement or simply ignored the pleas of those who represent the authors rights like the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers then their actions would be troubling. What I don’t get is why can’t an agreement be reached that BOTH sides agreed to without the government coming in and determining whether they did a good enough job or not?

  I am done with my rant. Thanks for sticking around. Please celebrate the 4th of July with a bit of reverence for the sacrifice made millions for the freedoms we still have.

  

  
• 5:06

  Twitter Truly Mirroring the Internet

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Well, looks like Twitter has arrived for real. Companies are considering the service for their marketing and customer efforts. There still appears to be significant hype around every time someone at Twitter has gas. Twitter is looking to protect its trademark and is looking to trademark other sounds from nature like chirps and peeps. So what’s next? Well, since it is the Internet what would talking about Twitter be without now mentioning porn and spam?

  Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has said recently that the service will be a success when people stop talking about it and just accept it as a utility. With MediaPost talking about the proliferation of porn and spam that chatter isn’t likely to end anytime soon. That is, of course, unless Twitter does something about it.

  Nude and explicit photographs have become more common on Twitter. While the site has begun to gain momentum for marketing and customer service departments looking to promote products and services, or connect with customers, it has taken a bit of a dark turn into the world of spam, pornography and escort services.

  Needless to say, marketers relying on the site to promote family values tied to goods and services don’t seem too thrilled by the topless photo of Mcdowell407 and the accompanying tweet that talks about how badly one boyfriend treats her. Nor do they appreciate the half-dressed women in bra, garters, stockings and stilettos who promote escort services, such as Taylor, by clicking on the “follow” tag. Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.

  Other companies using Twitter to reach their audiences are feeling the same way as do those who are regular users of the service. While it may be easy to just brush this off as “The Internet is the Internet” Twitter may be called to a higher standard. eMarketer senior analyst Paul Verna says

  “If Twitter builds an advertising-supported model, they will need to develop a way to isolate the content,” he says. “YouTube did. Facebook did it. They had to be tough cops when it came to the content. On the one hand, they try to provide an open platform, but on the other, if they don’t set limits it could backfire.”

  Verna says getting a handle on the spam and the sexually explicit material is another thing Twitter must fix, along with the ability to authenticate celebrity accounts — something they have stumbled with during the last few months.

  While I was once would have been sure that this is no surprise to Twitter I can’t say that with complete confidence anymore. It looks pretty obvious that they will not just be able to act as if it isn’t happening. The first reason for this is that the fix for the problem is not rocket science according to Amichai Shulman — CTO at Imperva, an online security company based in Israel and Redwood Shores, Calif.

  “The information from the feeds is either based on IP addresses or links, and there are services on the Internet that track and send notifications about known distributors of offending material,” he says. “It would be simple for Twitter to interface with one of those services providers to filter out at least 90% of that content.”

  He feels that while the Twitter community is doing good work in policing their territory the onus should fall on Twitter to make more of an effort and it shouldn’t be too much for them to take on this kind of project.

  If Twitter does just turn the other beak and not take the same ‘high road’ of YouTube and Facebook it could end up hurting it’s viability as a business tool. Ben Smith, MerchantCircle CEO cuts to the chase.

  “The problem with this type of activity is that it undermines the trust in the communication channel, which will have a disastrous effect on the channel.”

  So Twitter has another issue to be concerned about that will get the attention of everyone. When you are as successful as they are everyone looks to see how problems like this are handled. Of course, the critics will always want more. Ask Google. Success comes with a high price. Now if they could only make money from someone for something. We’re all still watching for that trick.

  

  
• July 02, 2009
• 12:32

  Facebook Rolling Out New Privacy Settings

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Last week, we saw that Facebook was taking status updates public for selected test users (a la Twitter). Those selected users were ones that had already set their profiles to a high level of sharing—everyone could see their profiles already.

  Now Facebook will make it so that all users will have a very granular control over exactly what gets shared with whom.
  
  These settings can be applied on a message-by-message basis, but there will also be changes to the full privacy settings for every member. As paidContent points out this will eliminate the need to view at least six pages of privacy settings.

  And now Facebook announces that they’ll be rolling out this change to the full site very shortly:
  

  To make it easy for users to set their profiles’ level of “openness,” Facebook will be using a transition tool. Here’s the first step:
  

  While some argue that Facebook is forcing us to be more public, these settings are too complex and the publisher settings should list “custom” first, overall, I think simplifying privacy settings and making them easier to set will help. The transition tool will force users who normally don’t change the default privacy settings to think about how much they want to share, at least once.

  The full presentation (via David Berkowitz):

  Facebook Privacy Enhancements View more presentations from guest5f7bf4.

  What do you think? Is this a step forward or backward for privacy on (and off) Facebook?

  

  
• 9:54

  FeedBurner Adds Custom Email Subject Lines

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  FeedBurner, an RSS management utility that was purchased by Google a few years ago, has long offered an RSS-to-email service. One of its major drawbacks, however, was that as an RSS publisher you could only set one subject line. So every email from your feed (generated and sent daily) had the same subject line.

  The lowly likes of us regular bloggers complaining in the support forums didn’t have much of an effect. The only solution offered until now was logging in every day and manually changing the subject line to match your post—not fun.

  But after Darren Rowse’s open letter to FeedBurner two weeks ago on ProBlogger, things are finally changing. Today, the Google AdSense for Feeds blogs announces that “Happiness is more subject in your subject line.” And it’s true!

  Now the interface under Publicize > Email Subscriptions > Email Branding offers this “hot tip”:
  

  Note the checkbox at the bottom: if you regularly have more than one post a day, the checkbox opens another menu with even more customization:
  

  This subject line is only used if you have more than one item in your feed that day; otherwise, it reverts to the primary custom subject line.

  What do you think? How fast will you be logging in to customize your subject line?

  via

  

  
• 7:07

  Web Advertisers Try to Avert the Government’s Eyes Somewhere Else

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  An important element (read: selling point) of Internet marketing is the ability to know more about consumers and their behaviors. Everything can be tracked on the Internet, for the most part, and there is obvious value to marketers and their efforts. The flip side of this ability to track people is the privacy issue and lately the US government has been raising it’s regulatory eyebrows at the online world. In the past this may not have been such big news but with the current administration’s bend toward a ‘name it and claim it’ government style, web advertisers are looking to self police before they draw any more attention from the feds.

  Yahoo Tech reports on the efforts of a group of advertising associations that have come together to build a set of rules and regulations that the industry can use to give the consumer the privacy they expect and let marketers keep the freedoms that government intervention would likely hinder.

  The centerpiece of these guidelines are the provision of transparency in tracking practices and easier opt-out for consumers. While it is certainly a big question as to how well these guidelines will actually work the hope is that the industry will be less of a focus of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and Congress.

  These guidelines are coming from trade associations that represent 5,000 companies. The consortium comprises the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Better Business Bureau. Their members are some of the nation’s largest companies, including Google Inc., General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp., Coca-Cola Co. and Procter & Gamble Co.

  These guidelines include recommendations that companies

  1. Tell consumers more clearly when they’re being tracked
  2. Educate consumers on how Web tracking works
  3. Give consumers an easy way to opt out of being followed
  4. Provide “reasonable” security for the data they collect
  5. Limit how much data they retain
  6. Get consumer approval before making material changes that would erode privacy protections with specific areas such as children’s personal information, financial data and medical records getting more protection.

  Anyone caught by this new group will be reported to the federal government. This plan should go into effect in 2010. Sounds reasonable enough but of course there are those who feel that this will not be enough.

  Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said the online ad industry’s promise to regulate itself through the new guidelines is designed to undercut the federal government’s increased interest in overseeing online behavioral advertising.

  He fears that the guidelines don’t go far enough and that there needs to be fair rules passed by Congress that ‘online marketing can thrive but consumers have greater control on how the information collected is being used.’

  I am sure that the views of Pilgrim readers regarding government intervention in business are all over the map so we’ll ask you the question: Should the industry police itself or should the federal government be involved? What are the pros and cons of both options? Here’s your chance to form your own policy for people to see and show off your position on government’s role in business. Sounds like a fun and light topic to consider while enjoying the holiday weekend, right?

  

  
• 5:58

  Early Returns for US Search Traffic are In. Bing!

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  What would be the best way for a research firm to get some notice in a market that has two or three dominant players that most turn to? Well, get the first numbers into the market place around how well Bing has performed for Microsoft. Reuters reports that StatCounter, a Dublin based research firm has done just that.

  The company is based in Dublin and has published results that are based on 4 billion pageloads per month monitored through a network of websites. Drumroll please?

  Bing, launched on June 3 but available to some users a few days earlier, took 8.23 percent of U.S. Web searches in June, up from 7.81 percent for Microsoft search just prior to its rollout and 7.21 percent in April, said Internet data firm StatCounter.

  Google lost share slightly, dipping to 78.48 percent from 78.72 percent before Bing. Yahoo Inc, the perennial No. 2 in the market, rose to 11.04 percent from 10.99 percent.

  Cymbal crash! In a nice piece of headline sensationalism, Reuters titled the article “Microsoft’s Bing Search Wins Share from Google”. Good stuff to make you read further but the numbers, at least from StatCounter, don’t really bear out the ‘win’.

  In fact, one might say that even though there was an uptick in Microsoft search traffic (as well as a slight one for Yahoo) the change of ½ a percent is negligible at best and could be accounted for in normal error ranges as nothing positive at all. Now factor in the $100 or so million that Microsoft has assigned to the rollout of Bing and the frequency of the ads seen for the new decision engine it may be fair to say these numbers are a huge disappointment rather than any form of hope. If Bing doesn’t get traction early it may just be a true blip and a non-issue for Google moving forward.

  StatCounter though, really wants to create some sort of competition here.

  “At first sight, a 1 percent increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive,” StatCounter Chief Executive Adohan Cullen said in a statement.

  Underlying trend? After one month? That’s almost as bad as basing company performance on short term (quarterly) results and we all know where that leads. Look, I think Google could really use a strong competitor. It would help the consumer and it would be likely to make Google even stronger by being pushed a bit. These numbers, however, will not make anyone at Google even hiccup. In fact, the re-branding efforts of Yahoo are likely to cause more consternation for the Google because at least Yahoo is realistic about its search prospects. Oh and by the way, Yahoo is still #2 despite the Bing rollout.

  If Bing can overtake Yahoo for 2nd place then that might be news. Nearly one month into this race, though, this kind of result is hard to get excited about and certainly not worthy of the proclamation that Google is losing ground.

  
• 5:53

  Twitter Twademarking Tweets

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Twitter is attempting to gain some kind of control of the use of "Twitter" and "Tweet" in a way that reminds me of Google’s attempt back in 2006.

  TechCrunch got its hand on an email that was sent out to one Twitter app developer:

  Hi,

  Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?

  Thanks,

  That prompted an official response from Twitter’s chief of damage control Biz Stone. The use of "Twitter" appears to be pretty much off limits, but his comments about using "Tweet" have me puzzled:

  We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of "going after" the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.

  I’m not a trademark attorney–if you are, correct me if I am wrong–but if you register a trademark, aren’t you obliged to police it? I was under the impression that if you didn’t prevent others from using your trademark, you risked losing the protections granted by its registration.

  If that is the case, maybe third-party application developers should be worried after all.

  In addition, the above sentiment is how Twitter feels about the situation today, but what about in five years from now? What if it’s acquired by Google or News Corp–and they have a more stringent policy on the use of their trademarks?

  One blog post does not make a legal exemption. I’d be careful of your use of Twitter or Tweet if your product can in any way be confused as an official company offering.

  

  
• 5:33

  Bing Announces Twitter Integration, But Don’t Get Too Excited

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  All of us that have called for more “real-time” search results or better Twitter integration, should have done a better job of spelling out our needs.

  Apparently Bing misread the memo.

  In a move that appears to have more bark than bite, Bing has announced the integration of Twitter with its search results. Before you leap for joy, the announcement is a non-starter.

  What we get is a few thousand Twitter profiles added to the Bing index. Search for “Andy Beal Twitter” or “@andybeal” and you’ll get a box at the top of your results that looks like this:

  

  What you don’t get is Bing tapping into those tweets for its actual search results. Let’s take the text from the second tweet listed above and “Bing” it:

  

  Meh.

  With just a few thousand high profile Twitter users included, and no honest-to-goodness real-time search, I feel kind of robbed. The next time Bing declares it’s “Bringing a Bit of Twitter to Bing,” I hope it bites off a larger chunk!

  

  
• July 01, 2009
• 11:26

  Google to News: Let Us Bleed Your Videos Dry, Too

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  You know how they say “Timing is everything”? Well, apparently so does Google. Less than a week after the head of Dow Jones whines about Google sucking newspapers’ lifeblood like a vampire (no, seriously, he said that), Google helpfully instructs news publishers on how to share their videos with the search giant.

  Thankfully, unlike many newspapers, most news video publishers seem to be a little more “with it.” Google is asking them to become YouTube Partners. In exchange for their original, professional content, Google says its partners gain (emphasis added):

  • Featured Premium Placement. YouTube news partners receive featured placement on the YouTube news page, youtube.com/news, where we feature news videos from partners related to the top news stories on Google News. In addition, if you allow your videos to be embedded, they’ll be eligible to appear on Google News, which means additional exposure to all Google News users.

  • Cut Costs, Generate Revenue. YouTube offers free hosting for all of your video content and allows you to embed your videos anywhere on the web for free. And as an official YouTube partner, you’re eligible to participate in an advertising revenue share program.

  • Viewership Analysis. Learn more about the people viewing and interacting with your videos. Use YouTube’s Insight tool to easily discover troves of useful demographic information and understand what parts of your videos people liked or didn’t like. Geographic information provided can help you focus your marketing efforts.

  • Wider Audience. YouTube and Google News have millions of visitors every day searching for the latest news and information. Raise awareness around your brand and reach new audiences by making your video content available on YouTube and Google News. As a YouTube partner, you can maintain your brand’s look-and-feel with your own customized YouTube channel, and you can also drive traffic back to your own website.

  • Community. At its core, YouTube is a rich social environment that includes thousands of micro-communities. Build one around your content by encouraging people to interact through comments and video responses. Take advantage of YouTube as a social platform.

  Somehow, although I do think most video news sites are more “with it,” I don’t know that they’re quite ready to give over that much control to Google. The benefits are pretty persuasive, but they might not be worth the loss of control.

  However, I’m sure that at least a few video publishers will complain about Google stealing their content, visitors and ad dollars (even though this is completely opt-in. But hey, so is participating in Google News or its index, so hey, why start applying logic now?). To those . . . “forward thinkers,” I reiterate Andy’s advice on dealing with the undead (ie Google):

  Without Google sending millions of daily visitors to newspaper web sites–for FREE–the newspaper industry would have being snuggling up to the Dodo a long time ago. . . .

  People want to read news online. They don’t want to pay for it. They use Google. Google sends you the bulk of your daily web site visitors. Either figure out how to monetize those visitors–like the rest of the world–or block Google via your robots.txt file and shut up!

  What do you think? Do the benefits of partnering with YouTube outweigh the costs? Or should news sites get while the gettin’s good?

  

  
• 9:47

  Meebo Guarantees Engagement with New Popups

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  If you found an ad format that could be up to 900 x 400, feature rich media and guarantee audience engagement for at least 30 seconds—with testing showing average engagement of over a minute—you’d think it was too good to be true, right?

  But that’s the newest ad format and promises from Meebo. In addition to on-site chat and free-standing IM (integrated with popular clients), the instant messaging company powers MySpace IM and Facebook Chat and some forty other good-sized networking sites. Their new ad format already has up to 85 interested websites signed up.

  Reuters reports that new ad format shows up first as an icon on the chat toolbar on a partner’s page. Interested users can click on the tab to open the full ad as an overlay (although in the image below, it says “rollover,” not “click”).

  

  Meebo’s COO, Martin Green, says that because only interested users view the full ad, the engagement is far higher than with traditional ads:

  We have done this in testing and in the last couple of months we get on average over a minute of time spent, which is a massive amount of time with advertisers’ content. Part of the reason is you only get people who are interested in checking it out.

  As shown in the example above, Toyota has already signed on for the new ad format, as has AT&T.

  And as for that guarantee? If you don’t get your audience’s engagement for at least 30 seconds, “Green says the company will make up the time by running a proportional amount of ads to cover the discrepancy.”

  What do you think? Has Meebo found a key to advertising by only appealing to interested parties? Or will the appeal still be so limited that it’s simply not worth advertisers’ time?

  Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

  
• 7:58

  Is Google Taking Steps to Prevent Top Talent from Defecting?

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  What do you do if you no longer need your Chief Technology Officer, but don’t want your rivals to get their grubby mitts on him either? Well, if you’re Google you quietly move him out of that role, give him some other projects to work on, and hope that no one notices.

  Unfortunately, All Things Digital noticed:

  [YouTube co-founder Steve] Chen left his spot as chief technology officer last fall, though he remains employed at Google, which bought his company for $1.65 billion in 2006. “Steve shifted his focus to help with some Google engineering projects. He’s still involved with YouTube and invested in its success,” says YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes via email.

  Still involved with YouTube–except his role of CTO doesn’t actually exist anymore!

  The online video space is a tough market these days. While some companies are thriving, others aren’t fairing so well. Reading between the lines, it seems as though Chen’s not as important to YouTube–now that a whole army of engineers are at its disposal–but he could play a vital role at one of its competitors.

  We’re seeing execs playing a lot of musical chairs these days, so it would make sense that Google would want to try and keep their top talent from defecting to a rival.

  What do you think?

  

  
• 6:50

  谷歌的工具栏现在包括自动语言翻译

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Did you understand the title of this post? Well, if you had installed the new Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, you would have been able to automatically translate it to: “Google’s Toolbar Now Includes Automatic Language Translation.”

  

  The official announcement suggest some pretty handy features:

  If you go to another page in the same language, you will continue to see translations rather than have to translate one page at a time. And if the page has dynamic content, like Google Reader, you will get translations in real-time. Finally, if you frequently translate pages in the same language, Toolbar will let you translate that language automatically without any extra clicks in the future.

  Right now, translation is available for over 40 languages and a Firefox version is coming soon.

  The big questions is: Будет ли кто на самом деле это использовать?

  

  
• 5:23

  Twitter Gets ‘Tweet-itorial’

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Looks like Twitter is not looking the other way as much these days. TechCrunch reports that there is some concern at the social networking company that developers are using the term ‘Tweet’ too much. Twitter, in fact, is claiming that the use of that trademark in the naming of any third party app is something they are ‘uncomfortable’ with. Here is an e-mail that was passed along to the TechCrunch folks relating to the subject.

  Hi,

  Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?

  Thanks,

  The original reason for the e-mail was apparently around a developers attempt to have a UI so similar to Twitter’s that it may have been confused for the real deal. In the hashing out of that information the above e-mail was sent and the questions are starting to flow.

  Apparently Twitter has applied for a trademark . Commentor Rich Hill stated

  I just checked the US Patent Office and Trademark website and “TWEET” trademark has been applied for on April 14, 2009 but has not yet been finalized.

  The link that was given for the trademark application had expired so if you want to find the application visit the US Patents and Trademarks Office and conduct the search.

  So what’s in a name? For the people at TweetDeck, Tweetmeme and many others apparently there is a lot. How will this eventually affect them? Too early to tell and only Twitter can determine just how far they may go to protect the trademark once it is finalized.

  I have to wonder that if they thought the term was so valuable why did they wait until April of 2009 to trademark it? Seems that the more we learn about Twitter and it’s business practices (or lack thereof) you wonder what other landmines are out there for them to step on?

  Well, we’ll just sit back and keep tweeting while we can still use the term tweet without having to tweet the Twitter legal folks to see if our use of tweet is OK by them. Holy tweet.

  

  
• 4:41

  Yahoo’s Branding Push Gets New Blood

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  For a while now there has been a lot of talk of the new and improved Yahoo. Since Carol Bartz took over as CEO there has been a more hopeful buzz around the company than back in the days of Jerry Yang.

  One nagging question that keeps coming up is “What is Yahoo these days?”. Kara Swisher over at the WSJ’s All Things Digital has been keeping a watchful eye on this process. She has had some interesting conversations with Bartz and now tells of the latest addition to the team that will be leading the Yahoo of the future, Penny Baldwin.

  Baldwin became an official Yahoo exec, as SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management.

  Baldwin, said Yahoo (YHOO), “will lead the company’s global brand efforts, and is responsible for developing and executing Yahoo!’s brand marketing approach including brand management, corporate messaging, integrated marketing and advertising.”

  Said Baldwin in a statement, signaling that Yahoo is poised for an important brand makeover: “This is a seminal moment for the Yahoo! brand and for the business overall.”

  As with all things press release related, there is painting of a rosy picture and new opportunity on the horizon (Does anyone really pay attention to the fluff in press releases anymore? It’s really kind of ridiculous. Just the facts please.). Baldwin, who has significant experience at the highest levels of marketing, will be reporting to CMO Elisa Steele. She is replacing Allen Olivo who left Yahoo recently after serving as SVP of global brand marketing and her style is not very ‘Yahooesque’ in the traditional sense. What does that mean exactly?

  …. unlike past Yahoo marketing execs, Baldwin has been described to me by many people at the company as much more colorful and bold in her style, and that she has been advocating more aggressive ideas about reinvigorating the Yahoo brand.

  “Well, Penny is definitely not Yahoo,” said one Yahoo source, joking about the company’s quainter, yodel-focused and purple-toned image. “Which is probably a good thing.”

  So we can expect some changes pretty quickly since the new Yahoo home page is slated for roll out in the fall time frame. There is plenty of work to be done to unify Yahoo’s image and put some shine back on a once high-flying brand that was a front runner and now is more of a reclamation project. As discussed in the past here, just trying to bring the many different Yahoo properties into a more cohesive social networking community is a substantial task from a logistical standpoint . As in many technology situations, it’s easy to outrun reality with marketing and hype so everyone would be better served to see how Yahoo works in reality rather than in the marketing hype that will likely trumpet it’s ‘new and cohesive’ community feel.

  According to Swisher, one motto that is being thrown about is “your home on the web”. There are more apparently. Let’s hope so. If this is the new and dynamic road that Yahoo is embarking on then Ms. Baldwin certainly has her work cut out for her. I yawned halfway through that potential byline for the Yahoo brand. What else is out there, “This is not your father’s Yahoo!”?

  Stay tuned. Yahoo is certainly at a critical juncture in its existence. There is so much potential that has been underutilized to this point, is there enough left in the tank to make Yahoo the Internet powerhouse it once was? How do you really view Yahoo? How do you use it? What services do you use in the Yahoo family? Do you even know what properties are owned by Yahoo?

  Excuse me, however, I have to go check my Yahoo mail that I have had since forever. Maybe today I’ll look around some more and then again, since there is so much more on the Internet to pay attention to, maybe I won’t.

  

  
• June 30, 2009
• 16:56

  Flickr Connects to Twitter – Better Late Than Never

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  VentureBeat reports that Flickr is finally enabling its users to tweet their photos on the service.

  What took them so long? Flickr now has a built-in feature that lets members tweet their photos. “You can upload directly to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, or tweet a photo already on Flickr, using a special short Flic.kr URL,” says the company’s FAQ. It also explains how to post photos from your phone, and how to tweet from Flickr.

  Flickr spelled out the “how to’s” in the following from their PR firm

  To use Flickr 2 Twitter, members need to first authorize Flickr to post to their Twitter accounts. Once authorized, members will be able to tweet photos from the “Blog This” button on their photo page or from their mobile devices.

  Mobile uploading is possible once members enable their Upload by Email settings (unique Flickr email upload address + “2twitter”). After you’ve successfully tweeted your Flickr photo, it will look something like this.

  

  Is there anything else out there that hasn’t joined the Twitter trend?

  

  
• 11:53

  Facebook Nabs New CFO

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Facebook now has someone to watch the cash register as they roll toward setting revenue records for the company. After a several months long search, Facebook has found their man according to cnet

  Facebook has named former Genentech executive David Ebersman to the office of chief financial officer. He replaces Gideon Yu, whose departure was announced at the end of March.

  “We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook.”

  Facebook recently secured $200 million from Russian company Digital Sky Technologies so the importance of having someone in place to make sure that Facebook is moving toward profitability became even more evident. Ebersman will take the reigns in September following about 10 years at Genentech. What apparently was most attractive about his resume was the experience he had at a public company that grew rapidly and was purchased by a much larger company.

  The company (Genentech) was sold to Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Hoffmann-LaRoche in March, shortly before Ebersman stepped down.

  Ok, so let’s connect the dots. Facebook is growing rapidly and has recently put revenue projections for this year at close to double what was originally thought. They do have an eye on being public (when is the real question) AND they would likely be purchased by a bigger fish (at one that could swallow a Facebook recently valued at around $10 billion). Sounds a lot like the path that Genentech took while Ebersman had the top financial position with the company.

  Hey, we Internet folks are never ones to speculate but ………

  
• 10:55

  Hulu Commands as Much as TV, and 10% of Online Video Ads

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  paidContent has two pieces of good news for Hulu in the past week—they’re commanding not only similar ad prices to broadcast television, but also 10% of the online video ad market.

  From a Bloomberg report, paidContent shows that, for some shows, CPMs on Hulu are actually greater than they are for broadcast TV. And when I say broadcast TV, we’re talking primetime, new episode, time-slot-leading network television. (None of that cable syndicated rerun stuff!) Bloomberg’s example:

  Marketers typically pay $20 to $40 per thousand viewers for a prime-time ad. On Hulu, which began offering shows to the public in March 2008, an ad on the animated series “The Simpsons” costs $60 per thousand viewers, Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. wrote in a June 18 report.

  How can the Internet, with demonstrably fewer viewers (another example, the NCAA basketball championship game, drew 17.6M TV viewers and 7.52 Internet viewers), command such high CPMs?

  A couple factors: first, that the Internet is so measurable. As CBS’s chief research officer put it:

  “The reason people are paying such a high premium for these ads on the Internet is they do have a captive audience,” Poltrack said. “You know you have eyes on the screen.”

  Plus, Bloomberg says, there’s an extremely scarce inventory. A typical Simpsons episode on Hulu carries only 37 seconds of advertising, versus nine minutes on television. But that also means that their overall revenues per-episode are far lower, even with more dedicated viewers. Many analysts and networks worry about television companies “cannibalizing their core business.” But maybe their core business should be shifting online.

  Justifying those high CPMs, Hulu commands 10% of the online video advertising market place. Hulu is a distant third in online video viewership, after Google’s properties and Fox’s properties (including MySpace and Fox News). They have only 2.4% of the overall video market and 2.3% of the Internet’s total unique video viewers. So 10% of the online video ad market is pretty impressive.

  

  Screen Digest’s report states that broadcasters direct control 44% of the ad market, while cable operators command 22%. “Other” controls 15% of the market, Hulu 10%, and portals 9%.

  Let’s look at that again—Hulu is the only website singled out there. It commands 10% of the market by itself, while the rest of the categories listed are just that—entire categories of sites.

  So where does YouTube fall in there? Screen Digest says:

  In contrast, third party platforms such as YouTube, Joost and other portals, which have no direct vertical affiliation with major rights holders, nor direct access to premium content rights, will struggle to aggregate ad-supported movies and TV shows. The Hollywood Studios and major rights holders will continue to limit such deals, instead preferring to build their own syndicated ad-supported online video services – such as Crackle, developed by Sony Pictures, and the CBS Audience Network.

  What do you think? Is the Internet, specifically Hulu, the future of television and video advertising? Will YouTube ever be able to catch up to Hulu in terms of monetization?

  

  
• 9:22

  YouTube Videos Getting Off-Site Overlay Links

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Although the latest planned feature for YouTube looks like an ad, for once YouTube’s rolling out something somewhat noteworthy that’s not part of its continue search for revenues. The feature? Overlays, like InVideo ads, that feature off-site links.

  As TechCrunch reports, “you probably thought it was already out there.” But to-date, YouTube hasn’t allowed any links embedded in its videos other than a.) ads or b.) links to other YouTube videos. If you needed to link to your website, blog, Twitter profile, etc., you had to do it in the right-hand sidebar, where it would be largely ignored.

  YouTube ran a similar promotion in March for charity:water. This video from the organization features the overlay:
  

  The move is unique in that this is the first non-advertising off-site links YouTube has allowed. However, the program will only be open to YouTube’s advertisers participating in the CPC Promoted Videos program. TechCrunch says the program is launching today.

  What do you think? Will this result in more people leaving YouTube—or more people signing up as Promoted Video advertisers?

  

  
• 6:59

  Proof that Google is Shrinking in Size?

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  It appears Google is getting smaller in size–the logo, that is.

  Philipp Lenssen spotted YAGT (Yet Another Google Test), this time it appears to involve a slightly smaller logo:

  

  Have you seen this? I’m a little skeptic about its authenticity. Notice how the "Results 1- 10 of…." text is closer to the left in the second screengrab? Same with the login info. That often happens when you reduce your browser window size or screen resolution. That might account for the small looking logo–then again, it could be that Google will show a smaller logo only to those that have smaller screen resolutions.

  Who knows? I just wanted to write a post title that included the words "Google" and "shrinking" — when does that ever happen?

  

  
• 6:43

  Do Trademark Holders Have the Right to a Google Listing?

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Google’s not unused to being sued. Whether it’s because of trademark infringements, AdWords, or simply being kicked out its natural search engine, Google has seen it all.

  Now it’s seeing it all in one law suit–and there’s an added twist!

  Ascentive is claiming–among other things–that "Google’s refusal to list Ascentive’s website in its natural search result listings violates the Lanham Act." I have no idea what that means, but fortunately Eric Goldman does:

  The complaint doesn’t explain this allegation thoroughly, but the theory seems to be that consumers expect to see the trademark owner in organic search results for the trademark and therefore consumers will be actionably confused if the trademark owner doesn’t appear there.

  How’s that for grasping at straws? It seems as though this complaint is a non-starter, but that may not stop some naive judge from agreeing with the plaintiff–at least in the lower courts.

  What do you think? Has Google become so dominant that it has a legal obligation to index the web site of an official trademark holder?

  (hat-tip)

  Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

  
• June 29, 2009
• 14:14

  Bad Review Made Worse by Twitter Tirade

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  I am not an author. I’m a blogger. If I say something that someone disagrees with they can let me have it in the comments section of the blog. At that point, the decision needs to be made how, or even better if, I should fire back. In most cases, I make the decision to let bygones be bygones because comment crossfire usually ends badly (or at the very least awkwardly) and it doesn’t accomplish much in the end. As long as there are no off color comments regarding direct family members or my heritage, I can take it. Most online attacks come from people who are only exercising their Internet muscles anyway (meaning since they never actually have to face someone in person they can look like they have some nerve).

  The New York Times covered an story that turns out to be a ‘how not to handle a situation online” mini case study. It appears that the author, Alice Hoffman, apparently got a bad review of her new book “The Story Sisters” from Roberta Silman of the Boston Globe. Silman’s review included the comment “This new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired.” Apparently Ms. Silman gave away the plot as well. It appears safe to say that this was a less than stellar review and a dwindling number of Boston Globe readers may or may not have seen it. We do know, however, that Ms. Hoffman did.

  So how did Ms.Hoffman respond? With a Twitter tirade, of course. (Note to self: If you feel slighted it may not be in your best interest to write something similar to the following)

  “Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron,” she wrote. “How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.” Ms. Hoffman also lambasted The Globe and went so far as to post Ms. Silman’s phone number and email, inviting fans to “Tell her what u think of snarky critics.”

  Fast forward to the new media version of the stockade; the written mea culpa (a fancy word for eating your mistake whole and in public for everyone to snicker at). Hoffman’s statement through her publisher, Shaye Areheart, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group division of Random House included:

  “I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course, I was dismayed by Roberta Silman’s review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn’t. I’m sorry if I offended anyone. Reviewers are entitled to their opinions and that’s the name of the game in publishing. I hope my readers understand that I didn’t mean to hurt anyone and I’m truly sorry if I did.”

  Oh, and she also took down her Twitter account. Hoffman is just another in a growing list of people who shouldn’t be allowed to use social media. Heck, you need a license to drive a car, what about social media? Until it is recognized that no good rant goes unpunished on the Internet, these online reputation suicides will continue to occur with startling regularity and intensity.

  What is your technique for keeping your emotions in check in online environments? Ever hit the send button and regretted it? I would venture to say that you aren’t truly involved in social media unless you have done that to some degree or another. What separates the online men from the boys is if you let it happen repeatedly and what level of intensity (or stupidity) you allow your emotions to take you to.

  If you remember the TV show “Hill Street Blues” the cops never left their morning briefing without the words of Sergeant Esterhaus saying “Let’s be careful out there”. While not as dangerous as mean streets of some urban center, the Internet carries it’s own set of risks so that people should heed the warning as well.

  

  
• 13:10

  More Twitter Facts for Those Who Crave These Things

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  If nothing else, Twitter sure generates a lot of user data. As to the accuracy of the data there is no way to tell what’s what. When the data comes from Twitter directly, however, do you trust it more or less?

  As reported in the Guardian, Evan Weaver, the lead engineer on the Twitter services team gave a little insight into the inner workings of the service but also told the audience at the QCon 2009 some tidbits like

  • The average Twitter user has 126 followers (no mention as to how many are spam)

  • Only 20% of the Twitter traffic comes through the website. Third party software on smart phones and computers contribute the rest.

  • While the Iranian election has seen some traffic spikes it pales in comparison to the Obama inauguration, which had about 300 tweets per second (and that was at a time where there was considerably fewer users and the real hype around the service had yet to reach its peak)

  While not earth shattering findings it is interesting how Weaver went on to talk about the architecture of Twitter and the myriad tools that are used to make everything happen in the Twitterverse.

  Most of the tools used by Twitter are open source. The stack is made up of Rails for the front side, C, Scala and Java for the middle business layer, and MySQL for storing data. Everything is kept in RAM and the database is just a backup. The Rails front end handles rendering, cache composition, DB querying and synchronous inserts. This front end mostly glues together several client services, many written in C: MySQL client, Memcached client, a JSON one, and others

  With little going on at the start of the Fourth of July week you may want to check just what’s under the hood of Twitter. Just reading that last paragraph alone, however, gave me a headache. I think I’ll go tweet about it.

  

  
• 10:55

  Google: Pay No Attention to the Behemoth behind the Curtain

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  “Competition is just a click away,” Google Senior Competition Counsel Dana Wagner reminds us. “We are in an industry that is subject to disruption and we can’t take anything for granted.”

  I hear him loud and clear. I spend hours a day fretting about the future of Google. (Um, NOT.) But Wagner is doing something few companies have to worry about these days: campaigning to remind us how vulnerable they are.

  Then again, as the New York Times points out, convincing people (or the government) you’re no big deal is kind of a big deal when you’re one deal away from anti-trust proceedings, and
  

  
  [handle] roughly two-thirds of all Internet searches, . . . [own] the largest online video site, YouTube, which is more than 10 times more popular than its nearest competitor, [a]nd last year . . . sold nearly $22 billion in advertising, more than any media company in the world.

  Oh yeah, and that “two-thirds of all Internet searches”? That’s only in the US. In some countries, it’s more like 90%. Yep, totally threatened by their competition.

  The Times says Dana Wagner is just the guy to be doing the convincing, too. As a former DoJ antitrust prosecutor, Wagner is highly respectful of his former colleagues. This is a marked contrast, says the Times, to “Microsoft a decade ago, whose executives would rarely hide their disdain for regulators.”

  But the “boyish” Wagner, with his “aw-shucks grin,” hasn’t been enough to defray government scrutiny of Google’s hiring practices, its agreement with book publishers or ties between its board and Apple’s.

  While Google has been spared a government investigation of its core advertising business, no one is fooled by its pretending to be weak:

  Eyes are rolling, especially in reaction to the idea that Google is a relatively small player in a giant market. “They describe where they are in a market under a kind of a fairy-tale spun gloss that doesn’t reflect their dominance of key sectors,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “Google search is an absolute must-have for every marketer in the world.”

  In the end, Wagner makes no bones about this. “We know we have a lot of people doing searches and we are very proud of that,” he says. “We are not asking for sympathy.”

  What do you think? Does this fall under Google “protesting too much,” or is Google truly vulnerable? Will the government ever investigate AdWords? Will they like what they find?

  

  
• 9:28

  Stronger than Twitter, Faster than Facebook: Product Reviews as a Marketing Tool

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  As a marketer, which of these would you find more useful?

  Tweet: @sumbuddy dont buy the BrandCo table it sux–hasnt stood up at all

  or

  On site review: (2 stars) For what we paid for this table, my husband and I expected something more durable. The wood dents way too easily for a kids’ table. We expected a lot more from BrandCo.

  While both product reviews are negative, the on-site review giving a client’s product two stars might make us cringe a bit more than a single Tweet (even if the Tweet was as specific as the other review). But the on-site review might also be the better marketing tool, at least according to Ad Age today.

  Ad Age contends that product reviews are more useful to companies and marketers than the oft-touted media sweethearts of social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (the triumvirate of YouTwitFace), and the like.

  The big difference between those on-site reviews and the other feedback (aside from the fact that the rest of the feedback is spread throughout the Internet instead of right at the point of purchase)?
  

  
  And while Twitter conversation and Facebook chatter is interesting and important, it’s not structured, and can be difficult for marketers to implement into their processes. Review data, on the other hand, address a particular product — and when a consumer is in the mode to talk about it.

  People do tend to be more specific in on-site reviews. And while site owners can just make negative reviews go away, that doesn’t mean they should. In fact, the Ad Age article gives specific examples of companies that took negative reviews to heart, examined the criticized product and actually worked to improve it.

  The Ad Age article has a sidebar with five techniques to use reviews right:

  • Embrace the feedback—”Both the positive and negative feedback provides hints to what you’re doing well and where improvement is needed.”
  • Figure out who needs to know—Have someone who can react and fix product problems to read the low-rated reviews
  • Tout customers’ favorites—positive product reviews “can make great ad copy.”
  • Incorporate customer service—Let customer service reps know about potential product problems or complaints in reviews
  • Don’t stop there—If your customers really enjoy talking about your products, develop a larger community. Oriental Trading Co., for example, “asks users to help solve each others’ problems and share their stories.”

  We’ve discussed the same phenomenon with five ways negative reviews could actually help your online reputation. Andy’s fifth reason take the use of negative reviews to another level:

  Learn from competitors’ mistakes. Don’t just read your negative reviews, read those of your competitors. If you learn where your rivals keep slipping-up, you can fine-tune your offering to make sure you don’t make the same mistake. Better still, how about reaching out to an unhappy customer of one of your competitors and fixing their problem—you could win a new customer for life!

  What other ways can negative reviews lead to a better product or help companies?

  

  
• 6:45

  Is Microsoft Ready to Shave Off Razorfish’s Conflict of Interest?

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  When Microsoft acquired aQuantive in 2007, it wanted to bolster its ad network. Unfortunately, it also ended-up with a conflict of interest, as aQuantive came with Avenue A | Razorfish–an ad agency.

  Since then, you could argue that about the only good thing to come out of that particular acquisition was the re-branding from the awkward "Avenue A | Razorfish" to the more practical Razorfish. Really, what did Microsoft want with an ad agency anyway?

  Well, the FT has yet another rumor–in a long line of rumors–that Microsoft plans to sell off Razorfish.

  Microsoft has appointed Morgan Stanley to find a potential buyer for Razorfish, its digital agency…In August, two years after the aQuantive deal, more favourable tax implications will provide an opportunity for Microsoft to sell an asset some view as a conflict of interest with Microsoft Advertising, which sells technology to rival agencies.

  So far French marketing firm Publicis appears to be the front runner–with barely a mention that WPP may once again be interested.

  So what’s Razorfish worth? Back in 2008, AdAge slapped a $800 million valuation on the agency, but we’re in a totally different economic climate right now, so FT’s $600m-$700m might be more realistic. But, really, that’s just a very small drop in an insanely large Microsoft bucket. Why bother either selling?

  Well, that brings us back to the conflict of interest issue again. Microsoft has a renewed focus on its own online advertising sales, and so the time might be right to get rid of any distractions.

  

  
• 6:16

  Microsoft Loses Key Bing Developer to eBay

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  It seems that Microsoft’s taking three steps forward and one step back, with its hiring of other companies’ employees. It just lost Hugh Williams to eBay.

  He left Microsoft to become vice president of development for search for the auction site and, judging by Williams’ LinkedIn profile, eBay gains the guy that helped created Bing:

  I was a Partner at Microsoft, and a development manager in the Bing team. I’m proud to say that many of the features of the first Bing release were created by my team.

  I managed the development of all user-facing web search relevance features, including the left-rail explore pane (with its "table of contents"), navigational query treatments, query-biased summaries, "deeplinks", related searches, and whole page results relevance. Additionally, I managed the Powerset team in San Francisco.

  He also played a key role in Microsoft’s development of Internet Explorer 8.

  So, two questions. What damage does this do to Bing, if any? And, what the heck does eBay have up its sleeve?

  

• 3:14

  How Can I Make Money On Line If I Don’t Know That Tech Stuff?

   » ‎ Retired Pay World

  
  

  Glad you asked that question.  Especially if you are a senior citizen retiree as I am, you likely look at some of these Internet success stories and wonder if you were born too early.  All the (mainly) young folks are out there making money hand over fist (or so they say) while you sit home mired in a headache-inducing fog of hi tech buzzwords and techno babble.

  But as you sit,(again, if you are anything like me) you have spent a lifetime learning all sorts of things in life and business … really doesn’t matter what business, they all need what I am going to tell you about below.

  You also are very likely familiar with the town or city where you live, and likely some others as well.  So what good is that knowledge?  Can you parley that into a venture that will put money into your bank account, regularly and legitimately?  Without “hocus pocus” and without tricking someone into signing up for hidden monthly fees or other sad practices that are so common these days?

  Can you empower your retirement, and stop living hand to mouth on a retirement income that you worry won’t be there next year? (ever notice how the current administration keeps tossing millions down the rat hole to “bail out” Wall Street execs and car maker leadership who have already proven themselves to be worthless at the jobs they get paid mega-bucks to do?  Seen any “bail out” plan for senior citizens ballyhooed on your favorite news network lately?  Of course you haven’t.  As far as the big money boys are concerned you are just excess baggage, getting in the way of them feathering their nests).

  Here is just one alternative that absolutely can work for you, provided you know enough about the Internet to find this site … which you obviously do … and enough to make a phone call or send an email to a business owner who wants to improve his bottom line at no risk.

  The tighter times are the better the system will work! because you can drive actual money-in-hand customer sin the door of struggling businesses and make money for yourself by sharing in the profit you send to them … a true win win situation.  You sell nothing, your business clients will be happy to share.

  Am I lying?  I absolutely am not.  But you need to check that for yourself … or you should … trusting me (or any other online guru) blindly is a recipe for disaster.

  Is there an investment involved?  Yes, if you look over the information I am going to send you to .. but it’s small, (under $200 bucks) and it is 100% money back guaranteed, so your risk is zero.

  Will you need a web site or any of those other tricky Internet tech thinks that sort of make your eyes glaze over?  Absolutely not.  You are currently sitting in front of all you need for this business right now … a computer and an Internet connection  … al you lack is the knowledge of how to make it happen.  And I am going to send you to the the source of that empowering information, right now!.

  If you go and watch the short, free, no sign up needed video, which basically explains the whole program, and you decide it is not for you .. fine, you took a look.

  But do go there and watch because, believe me, there is a wealth of side line money making ideas just in their sales literature that might click for you even if you don’t decide to pursue the main offering.  You can not lose a dime if you Click Here!.  More empowerment and profit to you!

  Copyright © 2009 Retired Pay World. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is likely guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@retiredpay.com so we can take legal action immediately.
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• June 27, 2009
• 12:49

  Climbing The Heights Of Mount Google

   » ‎ Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

  Link Building is a fundamental skill for SEO practitioners, but many go about it in ways that could hurt their long term ranking benefit.

  Just over a year ago I wrote my first and only guest post, as an entry into Marketing Pilgrim's annual competition.
  At the time when I published the article, I joked that "I had been robbed", you wouldn't believe the number of comments suggesting a way to get my revenge, file DMCA, report to Google or recover my "stolen" article.

  Climbing The Heights Of Mount Google

  When you set out to climb a mountain, or rank for a competitive keyword
  term, some methods are effective.

  This is a simplistic look at climbing the heights of Mount Google.

  Human Pyramid

  A human pyramid might be suitable for those low hanging fruit, but this
  method is unlikely to help you scale great heights. Not only is it hard to
  gain great height, but the weak construction is easily eroded by
  competitors.

  
  Photo credit: S@TS

  Belay or Blogroll

  Whilst exchanging blogroll links can help lift you up to a certain level,
  they can effectively anchor you to your peers. From an SEO point of view
  they are more about securing your position than lifting you higher.
  If you have achieved a certain height, there is nothing wrong with pulling
  up a few team mates. They can then aid in a push for the summit, which can
  be a very lonely solo trek.

  
  Photo credit: dfinnecy

  Grappling Hook

  This is the "gizmo" mindset, that specific tools can blast your website or
  blog to prominence, maybe as a clown from a circus cannon, or to scale the
  walls of the Vatican in Mission Impossible.

  Whilst I am a fan of some forms of automation, and it can achieve
  significant results, those results are often short-lived.
  Whether it is trackback and referrer spam, automated social bookmarking,
  directory submission software, or other quick fix, the writing is on the
  wall before you even start, only many are too blind to see it.

  Not everyone gets a safety net, or is Ethan Hunt.

  
  Photo credit: Wikipedia

  Teamwork

  Teamwork is often the most effective method, especially if one member of the
  team is already at the top of the mountain, and can pull you up.

  
  Photo credit: JasonRogers

  V.I.P. Ticket

  It might not convey the same bragging rights, or sense of achievement, but
  if you are a "big hitter" working for a major corporation, or have plenty of
  funds to grease the wheels, there are faster ways to the top.

  
  Photo credit: Photo Monkey

  Highest Mountain

  Don't try to climb the highest mountain from the start, it will always end
  in failure. Start on lower slopes, build experience, and if possible gather
  together a solid team to help you scale the higher slopes of Mount Google.

  Then again, who wants to be top of the mountain, and why am I writing a
  guest post ;) Pull me up Andy!

  2009 Competition

  The 2009 Competition has just reached the judging stages – batch 1 & batch 2 – there are some good articles to read on all kinds of online marketing

  Followup

  As a guest article, I was a little disappointed in the results. Not so much my results in the competition, but overall traffic, appeal to Stumbleupon visitors, etc.

  I deliberately chose a different style of article, more images, light weight/broad appeal content, but with a deeper message that might have not quite sunk in for readers.

  I am going to try another attempt at the same article using diagrams and more specific wording soon.

  Tags: Link Building, Linkbuilding, pagerank, SEO Blog
  Related posts

  • Ultimate Tag Warrior SEO Tricks (pt 1) (18)
  • Toolbar Pagerank | Ball Linking (4)
  • Site Structure – SEOs Going Fishing Without Any Bait (22)
  • SEO Linking Gotchas Even The Pros Make (96)
  • Revenge of the Mininet | 3rd Party content | Blog Comments | No Follow (17)
  • PageRank Sculpting Isn't Dead But Comments Can Kill Your PageRank (70)
  • PageRank Is The Primary Google Search Ranking Factor (76)
  • Matt Cutts | Pagerank | Supplemental Results (1)
  • Lowering The Google Red Flag – Sidestep The Cash Hungry Bull (57)
  • Google Pagerank updates are weird (4)

• June 26, 2009
• 14:06

  EU Demands Tighter Privacy Policies for Social Networks

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Man, hardly a week goes by without the European Union getting after some Internet behemoth for bad business practices or invading individuals’ privacy, or both. Usually it’s Google on the receiving end, but this time it’s social networks that are getting scrutiny from the supranational regulator.

  As Facebook begins testing greater and greater publicity, with user controls, the EU begins demanding more and more of social networks’ privacy policies—or, that’s what we think their vague regulations are trying to do, anyway.

  

  There are several specific policies that social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, which both have large European audiences, will have to comply with: automatically setting users’ privacy to the highest level (giving users the option to opt out of that extreme level of privacy), allow users to limit the data shared with third-parties (including advertisers and applications), and limit the use of “sensitive information,” including race, religion and political views, in behavioral targeting.

  However, many of the regulations, like most laws, are constructed broadly. While broad language in laws avoids the problem of overspecificity, sometimes it becomes difficult for constituents to follow the law. I mean, do you want to define exactly what “legitimate purposes” a network must have to collect personal information?

  On the other hand, how could the EU specifically name all the legitimate purposes for collecting data within its regulation? Is targeting birthday-centered promotions from advertisers a “legitimate purpose”? Is enabling your friends to send you virtual birthday gifts “illegitimate”?

  What do you think? How can Facebook balance its users’ (and its own legal) need for privacy with its inherent purpose—friending everyone you’ve ever known since elementary school?

  

  
• 12:50

  Facebook Taking Status Updates Public (A La Twitter)

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  This week, Facebook announced some coming changes to your status updates. Soon, just like with Twitter, you’ll have the option to make them public—but not just to everyone on the world’s most popular social network, but everyone around the world. (You know, with Internet access.)

  

  Because this feature is being implemented on the Facebook Publisher, you can add more to your newsstream than just text updates and links. The buttons below the text area allow you to add photos, videos and announcements or other integrations from your apps that have integrated with the publisher.

  Facebook also gave an in-depth explanation of each level of access:
  

  • Everyone: Anyone, on or off, of Facebook can see it.
  • Friends and Networks: People you have confirmed as friends and people in any school or work networks that you’ve joined can see it.
  • Friends of Friends: Anyone who is friends with a friend of yours can see it.
  • Friends: Only people you have confirmed as friends can see it.
  • Custom: Choose any friend or Friend List to include or exclude from seeing that piece of content.

  According to Inside Facebook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg promised more granular privacy controls recently, and this may have been exactly what he meant.

  Right now, this feature is being tested with users who have chosen to set their profile and status updates to “Everyone,” but for everyone else, the Publisher settings will remain the same.

  What do you think? Will multi-media, real-time updates on a site that already has widespread traction ever take the place of Twitter in your heart (and the media’s)?

  

  
• 12:16

  Second Round of SEM Scholarship Contest Entries Posted

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  We’ve just posted the second round of entries to our 4th Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. They are:

  • You Know You Work In Search When You…
  • 15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started as an Internet Marketer
  • Why Iran, Perez Hilton, and The US Open relate to SEO
  • Game Changing Principles – Enabler SEO
  • 9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design
  • How to Write Hundreds of Unique Articles from One Article with MS Excel – Article Theme Versioning

  That’s all the entries for this year. Remember, the entries have 4 weeks from the date of publication to try and qualify as one of our five finalists.

  I hope you’ll read the posts–you might even learn something new!

  

  Enter the 4th Annual SEM Scholarship Contest!

  We want to help find the brightest minds in search and social media, so each year, we ask you to submit your very best “how to” article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media. Learn how you can win a prize package worth over $10,000!

  
• 12:15

  You Know You Work In Search When You…

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Chelsea Blacker

  You know you work in search when you:

  1. have more logins than you do pairs of socks.

  2. friended Danny Sullivan before you met him.

  3. don’t think you’re a Cuttlet.

  4. typically have at least 3 different browsers open simultaneously.

  5. have considered dating a college student/education professional to get links.

  6. grocery shop and think “my average CPC is higher than that apple/steak/wine bottle.”

  7. get really excited when your map overlay is light green in a 3rd world country.
  

  8. look for house numbers 404 and 300 with the same enthusiasm as house 69.

  9. receive grammatically incorrect emails form India offering to write you copy.

  10. cannot convince your friends you do more than surf the web all day.

  11. were disappointed to learn SEO by the Sea is in Virginia.

  12. have wondered why SEO Quake bothered with an Explorer version.
  

  13. think Gray Wolf was written by Jack London.

  14. won’t shop online without looking at the backlinks first. (@DaveNaylor)

  15. see yellow sneakers and can’t help but think of Rand Fishkin.

  16. hear the term “women in search” and do a mental check list of sphinn avatars.

  17. checked to make sure “c14n” was accurate.

  18. have asked someone if Sexy SEO really looks like that.

  19. cannot watch the Wizard of Oz without the adjectives rust, evil, and green crossing your mind.

  20. can’t imagine not ranking first for your name.

  21. can’t watch softcore without thinking of the opening credits to White Board Friday.

  22. never say “I don’t know” instead you say “just Google it.”

  23. are annoyed with weather reporters who blame technology when they’re wrong for things “out of their control”.

  24. gave up on Chrome because it doesn’t have decent plugins.

  25. know the date your blog received the most traffic & what keywords it ranked for.

  26. pondered whether facebook groups or fan pages send more traffic.

  27. optimized a bad breakup’s name with the term gay, bitch, or sex offender.

  28. covet your collection of free memory sticks from SMX/SES/PubCon.

  29. think SPAM stands for any Site Positioned Above Mine.

  30. see a search party on the news, and get upset you weren’t invited. (@kevgibbo)

  31. know people’s twitter names before you know their full names.

  32. you mentally prioritize your shopping list with a “Top 10.”

  33. can discuss at least 2 custom 404 error pages you found funny.
  

  34. have had at least one username paused by an admin.

  35. praise open source but still picked iPhone over Android.

  36. Google a potential love interest before you even get to the first date.

  37. plot to get family members over 50 years old social media accounts.

  38. introduced yourself in person with “That post/tweet you wrote…”

  39. don’t understand why you can’t click on an ad in a magazine to get to the product. (@JudithLewis)

  40. notice that in late April, SEO Book theme colours are everywhere.

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  

  
• 12:15

  15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started as an Internet Marketer

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Chris Tynski

  For anyone who’s joined and had success in the Internet Marketing world, there are likely a great number of things you have learned over the years that allow you to be successful today.

  This list is compiled from my own experience with Internet marketing,  it consists of the top 5 lessons I’ve learned in 3 areas of Internet Marketing that I believe are essential to success.

  These areas include:

  Mentality/Frame of Mind

  Business Direction

  and Marketing Technique.

  Mentality:

  1. Fake it till you make it.

  When you start out with Internet Marketing, you WILL be overwhelmed.   The breadth and depth of this field is staggering, and it’s changing every day.  Don’t let this deter you. Trust that you will eventually “get it” , it will come together, and you will begin to see the big picture soon enough.

  2. Focus and persistence on one thing leads to success, even if that one thing isn’t the best thing you could be doing.

  One of the most common causes of failure in any particular Internet marketing venture is simply giving up too soon.  Pick an idea and stick with it. Put your heart and soul into it, until you succeed, or are 100% sure it is no longer viable.  Failure to follow through and/or constantly jumping from “brilliant” new idea to “brilliant” new idea is one of the biggest reasons people fail in Internet Marketing.

  3. Let the hype get you excited, but realize that people lie, A LOT!

  Perhaps a success story got you into this business. Images of huge checks from Google, people sitting on their computers on the beach, or images of people watching their bank accounts fill up.   There are a great number of successful Internet marketers  out there that are real, but 99% aren’t bragging about it.  Let the hype get you excited, but don’t buy into anyone or anything that promises to make you rich without a considerable amount of time and effort.

  4. If you’re not learning, you’re falling behind.

  Massive success happens when you can identify an unexploited opportunity, and exploit it. The only way you will ever be able to identify real opportunity online  is to have a broad scope of Internet Marketing, and to understand the working of the Internet as a whole.  Get yourself involved in several forums, top notch blogs like Seomoz.org and MarketingPilgrim.com , stay abreast on as many aspects of Internet Marketing as you can, including black hat methods.

  5. Building your business/brand is your goal, not hits, diggs, rss subscribers, or accolades.

  It can be easy to pat yourself on the back when you see quantifiable goals reached.  Getting visitors, diggs, rss subscribers, or accolades from your peers might feel great, but it’s really only of value to you if it helps to make you money or to build your business.  Visitors do not always equal sales, Diggs do not always guarantee links, RSS subscriptions do not always equal an engaged community; Make sure you are thinking about your true goal.

  Business Direction:

  6. Ecommerce over affiliate marketing.

  Affiliate marketing can be a great way to start when you first begin with Internet Marketing, but don’t be afraid to move beyond it.  E-commerce can provide massively better ROI, if you put in the time to develop your business.  Affiliate Marketing is the renting of the online world, where as E-commerce is purchasing a house.   If you find a great niche, start your own e-commerce store instead of looking for an affiliate program, you’re profit margins will be 30-70% better, no joke.   The reason most don’t do E-commerce, is because they think it is prohibitively difficult to set up.  In reality, it is quite easy.  There are many open source E-commerce platforms you can use for free, and you can hire a programmer to build you a custom site for a very reasonable price. Once you’ve built a site, find a dropshipper within your niche and start marketing.   Not only will you make more money, but every ounce of work you put into your site will be adding value that can be sold later on.

  7. Find and exploit niches yourself.

  If people are talking about a niche being really great, chances are, its already too saturated.   Do your own research and find your own niche. Take cues from the real world.  Find things that sell well offline, and see if you can help bring them online.

  8. Learn all the basics.

  Before you attempt anything in Internet Marketing, learn all the basics.  Until you have a firm grasp on the basics from each of the following, do not move forward:

  • How search engines work
  • Ranking Factors
  • Basic HTML/CSS
  • Basic Site-Side SEO
  • Basic Link-Building Strategy
  • Basic PPC understanding
  • Confidence in your ability to pick out scams, and identify real opportunity/legit knowledge

  9. Crowdsource and outsource everything you can.

  Many of your competitors will not be outsourcing or crowdsourcing their work properly.  Spend time learning this skill and it will reward you ten times over.  Develop processes for every aspect of your business, and figure out ways you can hire people overseas to do them for you.  You can find competent full time employees for 2$ an hour. I’m not joking.

  10. Learn to program, or find someone who can, that you are willing to pay.

  You will soon realize that without the ability to program, or without someone you can pay to program, you won’t be able to accomplish very many of  your goals online.   If this is not your forte, or if you have no desire to learn programming,  get to work finding someone trustworthy and reliable.

  Marketing Techniques:

  11. Brainstorming before almost anything else

  Without a good idea, all the marketing dollars, social media connections, and mounds of traffic will be close to worthless for you.   Spend the required time brainstorming ideas before implementing them. Linkbait and viral marketing will never succeed if the idea is not a good one, so focus your energy there first, then worry about promoting it.

  12. Utilize all channels that make sense, but avoid meatball sundaes.

  Twitter, facebook, myspace, youtube, digg, reddit, and every other possible marketing channel has value, but doesn’t necessarily have value to every marketer, or every marketing situation.  Don’t try to force your business or project to utilize all of these technologies if they don’t seem to fit, it’s a waste of time.

  13. Repurposing already successful content, unique ideas are not always necessary.

  The Internet is huge, and there are thousands of great ideas out there that could be modified slightly, or simply done better.   Find these ideas and make them your own.

  14. Understand and try to build true virility when link building.

  True virility comes when you create something that is shared faster than it is abandoned.   Your goal should be to engage users in a way that encourages or even incentivizes sharing.  When you reach that magical point where more people are sharing your idea than abandoning it,  you will see the true power of the Internet.

  15. Get a few Aces in your marketing pocket.

  The best marketers online don’t do it alone, they have a few Aces in their back pockets.  Sometimes these are tools or programs, sometimes they are people. Visit  black hat forums often, see what the buzz is about. There is an underground most people don’t know about, try to infiltrate it.

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  

  
• 12:15

  Why Iran, Perez Hilton, and The US Open relate to SEO

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Frankie Fredericks

  “There is only now.”  Eckhart Tolle

  A common problem for those who have already optimized their website, and have created a wide array of content across social media outlets and networks is how to fight the traffic stagnation that comes after the initial launch of your comprehensive search engine optimization and online marketing campaign.  The key to fighting this is as true in traditional marketing as it is in search engine optimization and management.  This key is relevancy.

  Whether you are selling a product or service, promoting a mission, campaigning for a politician, or just pushing for internet PR, you must cater to the impeding change of focus from static content of websites to fresh content available on blogs and social networks.  Such things as Twitter Trends and blog search engine WhosTalkin.com.  In short, your content must be relevant to now, as in THIS MOMENT.

  Each of these topics at the title came from Google Trends today, and represent different approaches to making your constant need of traffic relevant to changes.  This is not about using black hat techniques, but legitimately connecting your project to the topics of the day.  Firstly is Iran.  While those of you in the consuming sector may not have it as easy as politicians or organizations, there are examples of companies offering services for free to Iranians, such as proxy servers.  While their website is optimized for their general online needs, having a blog post dedicated to their Iranian promotion, which is optimized with best practices of titling, tagging, and keyword density, is not only good SEM, it is also great PR, and reaches whole masses who haven’t otherwise learn of the company.  To be clear, this is not about exploiting or diluting a movement, it’s about utilizing technology to become a part of it.

  If you are news source this is even more relevant.  The Huffington Post has had such higher traffic because unlike most networks covering the Iranian protests with one or two stories daily, like CNN or Al Jazeera, they are blogging more than once an hour with updates.  Furthermore, the use of social media has completely changed activism at the same time.  Using Marshall Mcluhan’s “hot” and “cool” media philosophy, these constant videos, tweets, and stories are making it impossible for the sort of detachment that occurs with print, radio, or even traditional television.  Now it is real and in your face.  I am using this as an example, because while my day job is working as on Online Marketing Consultant, I am also the founder and Executive Director of an international NGO, and am becoming involved in the Iranian activism online in collaboration with my Iranian friends.

  In a complete departure from the previous section, next we will explore Perez Hilton.  While he is currently in Google trends due to a run in with Will.i.am from Black Eyed Peas, bloggers have become the newest legitimate form of PR.  If you product, organization, or candidate gets blog coverage, utilize that coverage with best practices on your own.  Tweet it, blog it, link to it, etc., because you never know when the blogger is on his way up.  I used Perez Hilton because of my own involvement in the music industry.  While I run an independent record label these days, I used to work as a manager and booking agent, starting off with my client Stefani Germanotta.  She got mentioned by then little-known blogger Perez Hilton under her pseudonym Lady Gaga.  As he become increasing popular, his interest in Stefani also grew.  The growth in incoming links was obviously giant, and his constant coverage was one of the foundational launches of her pop legitimacy, now with several #1 hits.  They attended the Much Music Video Awards last night together.

  The last example is the US Open.  This is where there is little harm done with being less relevant.  Perhaps you can make a promotion with tennis in the title and during the timing of the US Open.  Perhaps you continue this with a PPC campaign as well.  This is fair game, and predates the internet.  But now that SEO exists, the potential for new clients is great considering the huge increase in search traffic.  What would be especially prudent is to come up with something particularly outrageous for viral potential.

  What these are all examples of, is how SEO best practices are not the answer to your online marketing needs, but they are an important tool to your greater marketing campaign.  Too often as an Online Marketing Consultant am I put in the position of translating between a technology-challenged Marketing Vice President and a marketing-ignorant techie.  The end goal of SEO is traffic, with highest conversion to your goal action (e.g. purchases, donations, or incoming links).

  You are also looking for virality.  Viral marketing is word of mouth in the digital age, and thus, the same rules apply as do to traditional marketing.  People want to laugh, be touched, see the underdog win, and be privy to the next best thing.  The best practices are only a means to a viral end.

  Today, as “search engines” as a term is no longer limited to Google and Bing, but includes blog search engines, video search engines, and other new media search technologies, fresh relevant content must be created, and optimized.  So you have an optimized website, great.  Now you have to still engage your target audience, and do it now.  This starts offline, and then the SEO comes into play with using best practices on your blogs.  But beyond best practices, you must evaluate what terms you are using, and how you are backing up your relevance to them offline.  I suggest you implement this in your online strategies… NOW!

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  

  
• 12:15

  Game Changing Principles – Enabler SEO

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Paige Filler

  Let me preface this post by saying: If you don’t take the time to read you will miss out on the massive prizes below. Really. And it’s easy to win, no skills required.

  
  Read on…

  An Experiment in Social Web

  It is starting to feel like the 60s again with everyone ‘experimenting’ (on the web). So, I figure the time has come for a little experiment of my own…(I’m Paige by the way).

  

  Enabler SEO

  So, what is “Enabler SEO”? Well, it is a term I made up especially for you (I am sure it has many other names), but nonetheless it’s a principle, so you are welcome to call it what you want. Here is how it goes:

  The biggest successes on the web all enable people to do something. Simple.

  Chasing Traffic

  For years SEO was *mostly* about chasing traffic and dominating SERPs (of course I know there is more to it). Today, around 50% of the traffic I see comes from social media, blogs and other referring sources, not a search engine.

  Most SEOs now cover much more than engines alone, however the real pros have turned their focus to enabling their customers and visitors rather than just focusing on search indexing, rankings and links.

  

  Great sites create opportunities for their users.

  • twitter enables one-to-many communication, fast.
  • Facebook enables you to control and share.
  • Youtube enables video.
  • Trackur enables you to have a clean image.

  All of these provide valuable services and enable their users to do something (most likely useful and often profitable).

  The better you enable, the more dependent your user-base is on your services and the more likely they are to ensure your continued survival/ growth. Dependency comes not from forcing users or blind growth but from helping people achieve what they want.

  What Does This Mean To You?

  Do you get links for traffic? Are you constantly trying to reach the digg homepage? Are you looking for ‘relevant’ live links? All of that is meaningless if it doesn’t help your users.

  Does your site enable anything or is it an information race with no direction? Now is a good time to think about how you will benefit your visitors in the future.

  

  Putting My Money Where Your Mouth Is

  In order to see if this works, lets see how we can use enabling SEO to achieve results in a real world scenario.

  That means I need to enable a load of people to go on and have success themselves. So, with that in mind, what could I possibly do? Hmmmmm…no time to build another craigslist. I know…

  Enabling You

  I am going to give away the $10,000 in prizes for enabling you to further success. All you have to do is leave a comment stating which prize you’d like and why you think you should get it.

  If you don’t like that, then list the prize and leave an SEO tip (maybe you’ll enable someone else).

  That’s all. No 400 word essay. There are 23 prizes, so you have 23 chances.

  Over $11K In Prizes

  The prizes are worth over $11K in total (they are worth a lot more, but that is what they would cost you outright).
  

  • All Access Pass to SMX East
  • All Access Pass to Pubcon
  • Twelve months of Enterprise reputation monitoring from Trackur.com
  • Free seat to Jill Whalen’s High Rankings SEO Training Classes.
  • Enrollment in a “Certified Search Engine Marketer Pathway” course at SearchEngineCollege.com.
  • Free seat to MarketingExperiments’ 2009 Landing Page Optimization Training Tour.
  • A professional press release–highlighting the winner’s article and expertise–from TopRank Online Marketing.
  • Six months premium membership to SEOmoz.org.
  • Six months premium membership to SearchEngineLand.com
  • A one year subscription to the SEO project management site, SoloSEO.com.
  • One year subscription (ten user license) to blog post management system RustyBudget.
  • Complimentary Conversions and Basic Usability Web Site Review valued at $300 from UsabilityEffect.com/Cre8pc.
  • An autographed copy of Andy Beal’s book Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online.

  The Bonuses

  With all those prizes being given away, I figured I would have to throw in something of my own, so we have 2 more prizes to add:
  22. $300 of professional copywriting from me, Paige
  23. $1000 of Video Ads from MeFeedia (Disclosure: thanks to my friend and client frank)

  The Rules

  The rules of the Marketing Pilgrim Scholarship Contest apply.

  My rules go like this:

  • 1 comment per prize you wish to win. You may try for all prizes once.
  • You may leave multiple comments but a maximum of 1 per day.
  • If you can’t follow the rules, then you are probably not capable of gaining full value from the prizes anyway.

  Prizes will be determined by entering everyone’s comment numbers into a hat and picking 23. Video will be put on social media somewhere.

  The Catch

  Of course there is a catch, but it’s not too bad. This post has to win the contest if you want to win your share. That means it needs more views than any of the others, it needs a low bounce rate and more than 2 minutes spent on this here page. Well, we want to guarantee a victory on all fronts don’t we?

  To help that situation, here is a fun video on technology.

  *RSS readers, click through to see the cool video, you know you want to. Work can wait.

  Or, if technology bores you (huh?), then try this.
  
  *RSS readers, click through for instant entertainment – or click here for more from Remi.

  So please send to your friends, tweet, digg, sphinn, stumble, bing (lol) and help spread the word (within the rules, please).

  A Couple of Points You May Have Noticed

  • The entire competition is a case of Enabler SEO (as is this post).
  • All links open in new windows – bad usability generally, but a good trick in some cases to lower bounce rate and increase time on site.
  • I use SEO in the broadest sense of the word, (Replace with PPC, SEM or any other suitable appendage).
  • This post was automatically written by Yoast’s latest wordpress plugin Auto Copywriter (beta).

  Good luck & don’t forget to leave your comment(s) right below…

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.  [Andy's Note: The prizes listed in the post may not reflect the contest's actual prize package and prizes may not be transferable.]
  

  

  
• 12:15

  9 SEO Tips for Attractive Search Engine Friendly Web Design

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Justin Briggs

  SEO: time-intensive, ever changing, and highly misunderstood. Creating a website design that is appealing, while also search engine friendly, is one of the hardest parts about SEO web design.

  If you’re a designer, are your designs really search friendly?

  A lot of misconceptions about SEO still exist in the web design community and many designers, who have at least some knowledge, are often acting with outdated information. Once a designer understands the value of SEO, there is still the concern of how to keep a design attractive, while also being search friendly.

  Designers love beautiful websites and SEOs love optimized content and code, but neither should fool themselves, because these days, both matter. In that spirit, I’ve put together a list of 9 SEO tips that help keep your stunning website optimized for search engines. Instead of focusing on SEO design basics, I’ll be covering some design-focused SEO tips, to show how SEO and beautiful design elements can co-exist.

  

  1. It’s not the same old SEO

  SEO can be hard to keep up with, because it is always changing. Today, SEO doesn’t mean a site has to be ugly.

  

  First, forget everything you’ve learned about keyword meta tags and keyword stuffing, because those days are over. This is a great thing for designers, because search engines are looking for great content, written in natural language. Metrics, like keyword density, which make sites look hideous, are a thing of the past.

  If you’ve been a designer for several years, start fresh and learn search engine optimization from a source that keeps up with all things SEO. Don’t let out-of-date SEO practices make you think pages have to be riddled with repetitive keywords.

  2. Links talk

  Links tell search engines what pages are about. This holds true on-site as well as off-site. The words you use in your designs to link to other pages do matter. The web has matured and no longer needs to be told “click here”.

  

  This is just another form of the dreaded “click here”. There is an opportunity wasted here, where the designer could link out with the keyword-rich headings like “HR solutions”. The “learn more” link is great for users, but leaves search bots blind to what is on the other end of that link. As a human, we make the connection, and know that this link is about “HR Solutions”, but you’re telling search engines it is about “learn more”.

  CSS can be used to keep the style, but the site would benefit from either linking the major headings, or changing the link text to something like “Learn More about HR Solutions”. This would drastically improve the site’s internal linking, with minimal impact on design.

  3. Design is linkbait

  This is great news for designers. Much of the life of an SEO is focused around baiting links from the link-giving portion of the web. The amazing thing is that this portion of the web loves great looking websites. Great design improves credibility and the user experience.

  If you design great sites, use services like The CSS Gallery List to get your site submitted to CSS showcases across the web, or at least do it by hand.

  4. Look at search bots as browsers

  Earlier I mentioned how using “learn more” leaves a search engine blind. Considering a search bot as a disabled user or another type of browser, is exactly the type of approach needed for search friendly web design.

  Search bots are extremely disabled and unintelligent users who use a dreadfully outdated browser. This user’s ability to understand your site may mean the difference of thousands or millions of dollars for a business.

  One of the best SEO tips I can give a designer is to test as if Lynx was one of the web’s major browsers. If you can properly navigate your site, and understand its content in a browser like Lynx, then you are on your way to being a great SEO web designer. Other tools, like the Web Developer toolbar, really help test a site without elements like CSS, images, and JavaScript.

  Keep up on the Google webmaster guidelines, so you know the limitations of this highly impaired user of your site. Focus on creating beautiful designs that gracefully degrade for this limited web user, “the search bot.” Or, instead of designing the site and working backwards, start with the lowest common denominator (the search engine), and work up.

  Let’s Get Tactical

  5. Smoke some hash

  #

  That little symbol, the hash mark or pound symbol, is an extremely powerful SEO tool in the hands of a developer who knows what to do with it. The hash mark creates an element in the URL that is not considered unique by the search engines, so it is dropped.

  

  There are a lot of great ways to use this. I’ve seen it used well on sections where new pages hardly justify having a unique URL. One example I’ve seen recently is a “people” section where only minor content changes are seen on each page. The designer assigned each employee’s profile with “#name”. These multiple, near duplicate, pages are all seen as one page by the search engines. There are plenty of other great uses for the hash.

  6. Use SEO friendly JavaScript

  Any time you touch technologies like JavaScript, you need to tread carefully. I love Javascript technologies, and all the amazing things we can do with them, but they can create huge problems.

  Traditionally, AJAX is not SEO friendly because calls are made through JavaScript, which cannot be executed well by search engines. The result is that the content is never rendered or indexed by search bots. I like what can be done with jQuery, since you can have html link navigation in place (for search engines), and still have jQuery effects.

  If not done correctly, you can run into problems though. For example, jTip, which is a nice little Jquery Tool Tip, can create some nasty problems. The tooltip is nice and all, but the static html links point to a page that looks like this.

  

  That is the whole page. This page has no title and no link back to the site. This can create multiple near duplicate versions, which can be indexed in the search engines. This also creates many hanging pages on a site. I did an audit on a site recently that used jTip extensively. The site had over 80 pages indexed in Google, with only one sentence per indexed web page. None had titles, and none linked back to the domain.

  Creative design solutions can allow a designer to use jQuery while still being search friendly. Check out Jon Raasch’s post about how he used jQuery to Animate his portfolio in a very search friendly way.

  7. Flash is OK, sometimes.

  Ask your average SEO about flash and you’ll be told how horrible it is for SEO. Ask someone who casually follows SEO news, and they’ll tell you flash can now be crawled. So how should a designer approach flash?

  While Google is improving, you should not depend on Google to figure it all out. Here are some basic Flash rules to keep in mind.

  • Do not include an entire site on one page.
  • Do not use flash as the navigation.
  • Do not include important content in flash.

  Search engines are nearly blind to flash, so do not use it for important page elements. Use of flash for design elements and non-important content is ok.

  Flash can be used in a search engine friendly design. You can enhance web fonts by using slfr. Since the flash does not replace the HTML content, but styles it, search engines are still able to read the titles. It’s even Google approved.

  8. CSS image replacement

  CSS image replacement is one way to make a site look great, while also being search friendly. There are a couple different ways to do this, but the biggest concern boils down to intent.

  Google says:

  “If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages.”

  The two words to focus in on here are “perceived” and “intent”. During a manual review Google will try to interpret your intent; a practice that has come under fire recently when Google profiled SEO.

  I think CSS is a common tactic and a fine solution to SEO web design. If your intent is to improve the visual experience, and you make this intent clear, you should be fine. Do not use this method to stuff keywords or manipulate with hidden content.

  9. Have great linking with footers

  If you have a design that will be compromised by the inclusion of a robust navigation above the fold, a solid footer is a great solution.

  Sometimes footers get the job done, like Yelp’s boring, but effect footer. And sometimes they highlight content you want to rank, like the footer over at We Build Pages. But, they can also look beautiful, impressive, and creative.

  Bonus Tips for Designers!

  Three mini bonus tips that are exclusively for designers to use to promote their business.

  Many designers drop an attribution link in the footer of their designs like so:

  “Website Designed by Creative Company Name”

  Here are 3 Mini SEO Tips

  1. Include a keyword in that attribution link. Stop linking your company name only and at least include the “Website Designed” portion. Even better, use something like “Designed by: Company Name – A New York Web Design Company.”
  2. Once you design a few sites with your keyword-rich attribution link, change the wording. It doesn’t need to be drastically different, but create some variation. Do this periodically.
  3. Create a pre-sale page on their site that features a testimonial and links back to your site. Then, link to this pre-sale page site-wide from the footer of their design. This will help you avoid the negatives of the run of site links, while getting a link from a page with a lot of internal PageRank flowing to it.

  If you’re a designer, I hope these tips help you find some elegant design solutions to common SEO design problems. If you’re an SEO, I hope these tips are something you can forward to your designer.

  I’d love to hear any tips or techniques you use in your designs to handle complex design needs in a search engine friendly manner. If you have any great SEO tips, ideas, or questions please leave a comment.

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  

  
• 12:15

  How to Write Hundreds of Unique Articles from One Article with MS Excel – Article Theme Versioning

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Asif Anwar

  Article Theme Versioning, was chosen as the name for this strategy. Because, you make many unique articles by making version of a specific theme of an article. So, each version contain the same theme. With Article Theme Versioning, you can create hundreds of articles from just one seed article. It involves manual versioning, word spinning, and sentence shuffling. The problem with spinning softwares is that you have to stay on their mercy for quality. But, in Article Theme Versioning with MS Excel you have the total control of your contents.

  Why do you need Article Theme Versioning?

  • Content was the King, but recently unique contents are the new King.
  • Google now uses a duplicate content filter, which filters out your website if you have duplicate contents. Soon the other search engines will follow the same strategy to wipe out Plagiarism.
  • There was a golden era of article promotion and press release submission, when you could gain search engine positions by marketing the same article. But, duplicate content filter slapped this form of marketing. But, Article Theme versioning can revive this marketing technique once again.
  • Links from various sites with varied contents, have proven to be very affective for getting ranks in Google. Even for directory submission with <250 character snippet contents, any SEO professional will advise you to use altered contents. The more altered contents, the better.
  • Google and other search engines like unique contents and can assign authority to your site if you have large amount of unique contents on the same subject.
  • Google understands that gaming their algorithm is easy by creating links with copy-paste duplicate contents or articles throughout the web. Someday, they might treat links from duplicate contents to be commercially generated, not given voluntarily.
  • Writing totally new and unique contents can increase your cost in copywriting and decrease your speed in online marketing.
  • If you already have a compelling Web Copy, then you can add value to it through Article Theme versioning.
  • There are millions of webmasters, bloggers, copywriters that are looking for contents for their websites or blogs. Use their hunger as your Link Baiting strategy and provide them free Private Label Rights (PLR) articles for their use with a deep link back to the source of your compelling article.

  Why MS Excel

  For Article Theme Versioning, traditional content spinning or twisting software isn’t used. Instead, we’ll use the most effective tool, MS Excel. MS Excel is great tool for computation, and has been a companion for Search Marketers throughout the world. It is a very strong string or text manipulation tool and we mostly don’t know the use of it. We’ll use MS Excel to generate hundreds of unique articles from one. Here are the major reasons why I like MS Excel for Article Theme Versioning:

  • MS Excel has many complex formula to handle and manipulate string or text very easily.
  • MS Excel comes with a Thesaurus for Synonyms (easily replace synonyms by Alt + Clicking) which you can replace for getting more spinned sentences.
  • You can spin sentences in Ms Excel faster than any other word processing software.
  • You can automate sentence spinning and shuffling without giving much effort in manually creating unique articles.
  • Since the quality of the articles depends on the input you give, you can have total control of the quality of the contents.
  • You can convert the MS Excel files into XML, which can be used in other software or online tools for content automation or management.

  How Will it Work?

  One thing needs to be made clear. The whole process is manual. i.e. you have to write different versions of the same article and then change each word in the sentence for spinning. However, automated scrambling and shuffling of sentences in the article follow planned patterns to have very little duplicate sentence. Ok, here goes our content versioning, spinning, shuffling methodology:

  Phase 1 – Sentence Versioning

  First, you have to manually rewrite 4 versions of the article and make structural change in the sentences. But, we keep the same semantic meaning (theme) of each sentences.

  For example:
  Version-1: I eat rice.
  Version-2: As a meal, I only take rice.
  Version-3: I usually eat rice every day.
  Version-4: Rice is my staple food.

  This is just sample of a sentence. But, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th versioning is done manually for all the sentences. So, if there is about 40 sentences in one version, then we have 40X4=160 sentences.

  Loading…

  Please triple click each cell to copy the contents in each cell. Keeping all the contents in HTML format will work better for you to keep the formats along with the template.

  Phase 2 – Content Quality Measure

  First, do a spell check, so that the same spelling errors are not replicated elsewhere. Then, make sure that the 4 versions are Copyscape verified. Because, before you start spinning and shuffling, you need to make sure that they are not used elsewhere. If duplicate is found, then rewrite them. Also do a Keyword Density Analysis through various SEO Suites and ensure that the first and last 100 words contains the target keyword with mentions in the article 2-3 times. This will ensure you that you will not replicate the copied contents.

  Phase 3 – Sentence Tabbing

  Now, to utilize the manually versioned articles to create more sentences, you need to spin them. And to spin the sentences, you need to have them in order. Having the words in different cells will allow you to manipulate them easily. To do that, you need to put a Tab between the words in Notepad, and then paste them back to MS Excel. So that, you can easily place the words in cells. For the ease in manipulating the sentences, I’ve divided the sentences in 10 cells. However, you can divide the sentences in as much cells you want.

  Loading…

  Please triple click each cell to copy the contents in each cell.

  Phase 4 – Sentence Spinning

  Last time, we’ve made structural change in sentence manually. Now, we’ll make synonymous change in those sentences within the same sentence structure and create 10 more spinned variation from each sentences.

  For example:
  Version-1: Telecommunications expense is categorized as one of the top five costs for most businesses as companies are losing more and more money these days.
  Version-2: Telecom expenditure is granted as one of the top 5 expenditures for most enterprises as companies are getting less money these days.
  Version-3: Telecom cost is deemed as one of the most significant costs for most companies as enterprises are gradually losing money in recent years.
  Version-4: Call cost is regarded as one of the top 5 expenses for most enterprises as businesses are throwing away more money recently.

  This is the most crucial part of Article Theme Versioning. This phase consumes most of your time, but generates a lot of sentences for you to shuffle. And this phase has most of the quality factors that you should always consider.

  Create separate spinning tab for each manual versions. Pull each sentences 3 times in the Spinning Tab ("Referring Sentences" portion). In the example below, we can pull the same sentence 3 times and then use Alt+Click to replace a word with synonym. While, changing a word or phase with synonym, please keep an eye on the meaning of the sentence.

  Then, using the "Index" formula, you can scramble the words ("Word Scrambling" portion). The below example gives a specific pattern of scrambling. However, if you wish, you can create another type of scrambling pattern. The scrambling pattern is random, not systematic. However, the pattern should not be redundant and you have to make sure that the pattern generates less duplicates. Therefore, the below scrambling pattern is planned in such a way to reduce duplicacy in the sentences and randomize the scrambling.

  This scrambling pattern will generate 9 sentences from the 3 lines in the "Referring Sentence" portion. After the scrambling of words you have to use the "Concatenate" formula to join the words to make the sentences (in "Concatenating Words" portion). Along with the original sentence and the scrambled/spinned sentences, you have 10 versions of the same sentence.

  	Referring Sentences
  	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J
  0	Original Sentence
  1	A1	B1	C1	D1	E1	F1	G1	H1	I1	J1
  2	A2	B2	C2	D2	E2	F2	G2	H2	I2	J2
  3	A3	B3	C3	D3	E3	F3	G3	H3	I3	J3
  	Word Scrambling
  	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U
  1	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,1)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,10)
  2	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,10)
  3	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,1)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,10)
  4	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,1)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,10)
  5	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,1)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,10)
  6	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,1)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,10)
  7	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,1)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,10)
  8	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,1)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,10)
  9	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,1)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,3,2)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,3)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,4)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,5)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,6)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,7)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,8)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,1,9)	=INDEX($A$1:$J$3,2,10)
  	Concatenating Words
  	=IF(A0=0, " ",A0)
  	=CONCATENATE(L1," ",M1," ",N1," ",O1," ",P1," ",Q1," ",R1," ",S1," ",T1," ",U1)
  	=CONCATENATE(L2," ",M2," ",N2," ",O2," ",P2," ",Q2," ",R2," ",S2," ",T2," ",U2)
  	=CONCATENATE(L4," ",M3," ",N3," ",O3," ",P3," ",Q3," ",R3," ",S3," ",T3," ",U3)
  	=CONCATENATE(L5," ",M4," ",N4," ",O4," ",P4," ",Q4," ",R4," ",S4," ",T4," ",U4)
  	=CONCATENATE(L5," ",M5," ",N5," ",O5," ",P5," ",Q5," ",R5," ",S5," ",T5," ",U5)
  	=CONCATENATE(L6," ",M6," ",N6," ",O6," ",P6," ",Q6," ",R6," ",S6," ",T6," ",U6)
  	=CONCATENATE(L7," ",M7," ",N7," ",O7," ",P7," ",Q7," ",R7," ",S7," ",T7," ",U7)
  	=CONCATENATE(L9," ",M8," ",N8," ",O8," ",P8," ",Q8," ",R8," ",S8," ",T8," ",U8)
  	=CONCATENATE(L10," ",M9," ",N9," ",O9," ",P9," ",Q9," ",R9," ",S9," ",T9," ",U9)

  If we previously had about 160 sentences. Now, we have 160 X 10 = 1600 sentences. Now you have to use these sentences to generate unique articles. Here is a sample (look below at the last column for spinned versions of the sentences):

  Loading…

  Please triple click each cell to copy the contents in each cell.

  Phase 5 – Sentence Shuffling

  Now, we actually have 4 X 10 versions of the same sentence among all the 1600 sentences. So, we  now have to shuffle the sentences of the different versions and try to accommodate as many versions of the article as we can with less than 25% duplicate contents. For that, we have to shuffle sentences at a certain level. If we have about 40 sentences, then you can shuffle 10 versions (25% of 40 sentences). This is a simple math, but you can verify duplicate contents with many duplcaite % checking softwares available online and stop at one level when you are generating more than 25% duplcaite contents.

  For that bring all the generated spinned sentences of same meaning in a separate tab and place them in a single row. And organize the various 4X10 versions of the sentences vertically in columns. After you have them in a separate tab, you are ready to shuffle the sentences using the below Shuffling Patterns inside the Concatenate formula to join the sentences of the articles. The organization of spinned sentences should look like the example below:

  Loading…

  Please triple click each cell to copy the contents in each cell.

  Sentence Shuffling Patterns

  For generating the full article, we’ll use various shuffling patterns like:

  • Straight,
  • Diagonal shuffling,
  • Reflecting diagonal shuffling,
  • Alternate diagonal shuffling,
  • Alternate reflecting diagonal shuffling,
  • 2nd alternate diagonal shuffling,
  • 2nd alternate reflecting diagonal shuffling,
  • 3rd alternate reflecting diagonal shuffling,
  • and so on.

  

  Figure 1 – Straight Sentence Shuffling

  

  Figure 2 – Diagonal Sentence Shuffling

  

  Figure 3 – Reflecting Diagonal Sentence Shuffling

  

  Figure 4 – Alternate Reflecting Diagonal Sentence Shuffling

  For articles, prefer Reflecting Diagonal Sentence Shufflings, since it creates lesser duplicates than only Diagonal Sentence Shufflings. However, if the amount of sentences are few (in case of Snippet Contents), only Diagonal Sentence Shufflings are preferred. The alternation in shuffling (2nd, 3rd, 4th …) can go on up to 10 versions (5th Alternate) as was mentioned earlier. In ideal 40-50 sentence articles, going beyond 5th Alternate Diagonal Shuffling will mean duplicates more than 20%. Here, I’ve showed only downard diagonal shuffling. So, you can create more articles by going upward also.

  Phase-6 – Article Theme Versioning Output

  We need to parse the contents into a separate tab, so that we can have all the articles togather. And make output as per requirement, either as raw spreadsheet, text, html or xml versions. In this stage, we should do: spell checking (again), replacing periods (.) with periods with a following space (. ) to eliminate spelling errors made by not using space after period, and then replacing the double/triple/quadruple spaces into single space, etc.

  Loading…

  Please triple click each cell to copy the contents in each cell.

  So here is the output you have:
  Best Quality Content: 4 Unique versions manually rewritten articles
  Better Quality Content: 40 spinned versions with less than 10% duplicate contents
  Good Quality Content: 520 shuffled versions with less than 25% duplicate contents. However, this amount can be less.

  What About Snippet Contents

  For directory submission and small link posting, you also need altered Snippet Contents that are less than 250 characters. However, since the amount of sentences are low, the amount of duplicate contents are more than 20%. However, you can get a huge number of Snippet Contents that are altered using the same methodology. You can create 5000+ versions of Snippet Contents from 10 Snippet Themes and no Snippet Content will be unique.

  Samples

  Loading…

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  

  
• 9:31

  The Reality of Real Time Hits Real Hard

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  It appears that some folks are starting to slow down on the Twype (Twitter hype, of course) and looking at the bigger picture impact that the service is making. Whether Twitter survives and / or thrives is not the point really. It’s a very real possibility that the folks at Twitter may have set the table for other niche players to come in and take advantage of the trend that Twitter has really accelerated; which is real time information retrieval.

  One person who has had significant success in making real time information work is Marc Benioff, co-founder and chief executive of Salesforce.com. Here’s a guy that can sure spot a need (not just a fad or a trend but a real need) and build a solution that meets the need head on. He helped bring the SaaS (software as a service) CRM and sales force automation business to the forefront of business applications and has been the industry leader ever since.

  Over at DigitalBeat there was coverage of Benioff’s presentation at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco. He said

  Customers …. expect everything to happen right away— if they update their data, they expect those changes to appear immediately, not an hour or two in the future.

  “Any concept of batch or delay in development or execution, I think, will not be tolerated by customers anymore,” Benioff said. “Even in development, customers are demanding now that they want to be able to build in that sandbox and deploy immediately, instantly, no delay.”

  Basically, the speed of the real time Internet is now moving into the application world as well. Real time data is the beauty that sits at the center of Twitter. Will Twitter be able to capitalize on it? Who knows? There is a possibility that their free offering that is gaining so much momentum could end up hurting them on the revenue side. But how or if Twitter makes money is almost irrelevant.

  What is more important is a real sea change that is occurring which shows that in business it’s real time or it’s no time. While it may not be practical or even possible to have true real time for everything most companies should be tapped into some form of real time availability of information that occurs outside their four walls. If not, they stand a real chance of being left behind. Now that this reality is hitting the inner workings of core company systems and not just the marketing areas, the adoption of Twitteresque services of the world only stands to escalate more rapidly. One thing is for certain ; Benioff is a Twitter evangelist.

  Many companies haven’t realized this is where things are headed, he said. Benioff recounted attending meetings with chief information officers who all refused to believe that Twitter represents anything significant; they don’t have accounts themselves because “it’s not their generation.” Benioff’s response? He types the name of their company into Twitter search and shows that they’re missing out on a huge part of the conversation.

  I am no Marc Benioff but I have used the exact same technique myself to open the eyes of business people who are in complete denial that there is activity about them on the Internet much more often than they think or want to even know. Of course, they can continue to stick their head in the sand or plug their ears screaming “I can’t hear anything!” That’s their call. The real time piece of the new world order of business is no surprise to many marketers but it may actually be under publicized at this point in time. It looks like most of the business world may need to be slapped into reality. Who better to do it than front line marketers who may have mistakenly thought that everyone is getting it. It’s obvious that they are not.

  For those who decide that this is just a fad or a trend I suggest you hire an executive search firm that specializes in placing high-level executives in dying industries with old school thinking. Once they get bounced from a real world company that is in tune with what is truly happening, they can quietly be put out to pasture and wait for the end. It’ll happen sooner than they think.

  
• 7:02

  One in Three Searchers May Prefer Bing Over Google

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  A study of twelve people is not statistically relevant, but it does make for interesting headlines!

  According to the Catalyst Group, 1 in 3 Google users preferred the search experience of Bing over the search leader. OK, so that was actually 4 of the 12 total people that Catalyst studied in a report obtained by TechCrunch, but hey, Bing will take all the good news it can get, right?

  What is amazing is that when the test subjects were asked to rate Bing on specific criteria (visual design, organization of features, filtering options, and relevance of results), Bing handily beat Google in everything but result relevance. Arguably, that is the most important criteria, but most of the study participants thought that both search engines tied on result relevance. So even though Bing ranked better on design, and tied on relevance, that was not enough for most of them to switch.

  Here’s a breakdown of the strengths of each search engine:

  

  You can grab the full study here.

  Want more marketing news & views? Follow Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal on Twitter!

  
• 6:39

  Amazon Calls NC Lawmakers Bluff, Cancels Affiliate Program Early

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  It appears as though Amazon’s email to affiliates regarding North Carolina’s pending taxes was not a bluff. I just received a follow-up email from the company saying it has decided to shut down its affiliate program in the state, as of today.

  We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date.

  Please be assured that all qualifying referral fees earned prior to June 26, 2009 will be processed and paid in full in accordance with our regular referral fee schedule. Based on your account closure date of June 26, 2009, any final payments will be paid by September 1, 2009.

  In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.

  The North Carolina General Assembly’s website is http://www.ncleg.net/, and additional information may be obtained from the Performance Marketing Alliance at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com/.

  We have enjoyed working with you and other North Carolina-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

  Best Regards,

  The Amazon Associates Team

  It’s interesting that Amazon has shut the program down before the legislation passes. Could it be that the NC lawmakers thought Amazon was bluffing too? Did Amazon close the program early so that affiliates would still have time to ramp up their complaints to the General Assembly.

  Of course, there are plenty of other companies that will keep their affiliate programs running in NC–though Commission Junction doesn’t appear to be one of them–but will there be enough actual affiliate revenue to tax after this?

  Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

  
• June 25, 2009
• 12:46

  Direct Marketing In A Social Media World

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  It has been written that there is nothing new under the sun. Sometimes it feels that way when the talk turns to social media and its impact on marketing as a whole and, more specifically, any Internet marketing efforts. Of course, every bit of marketing is going to be affected by a medium that encourages / celebrates shared information and the ability to color outside the lines. What’s not to like about a communication vehicle that allows the consumer to make decisions based on just about everything other than what is company generated propaganda?

  Mediapost has picked up on a study conducted by StrongMail that examines the developing relationship between e-mail marketing and social media. Once again, when you read this kind of thing you probably say “Well, no kidding, duh.” But sometimes it’s good to see some numbers around the accepted theory.

  In the case of this research (beware the R word, Pilgrims) that was conducted by an e-mail marketing provider, you can guess what might be ‘found’. Here’s some of the findings which are more related to who owns social media than what it does. This data was collected through 500 marketers between mid-May and the start of June.

  • 29% of respondents state that social media responsibility is owned by multiple departments
  • 36% of survey respondents state that the direct marketing department owns social media
  • 9% of the respondents report that social media is owned by public relations departments
  • 5% have a dedicated social media department

  It is still too early in the corporate marketing / social media life cycle to have any clear definition of what department should own social media. It sure makes you wonder, though, what it looks like in some of these companies as they try to implement corporate social media strategies across different departments. Finger pointing may be the most popular activity in those environments. The study then moves into the relationship between e-mail and social media to examine some of the issues around that mix.

  • 55% of respondents report that one of their biggest challenges with integrating social media and email marketing is determining metrics by which to measure success
  • 48% say establishing business goals for the program is the biggest challenge

  These are the same kinds of problems that direct marketers have had forever but it is simply occurring through a different medium. Direct marketing is not so much about mail anymore, for sure. For over a year now if you go to the Direct Marketing Association’s website, among the most popular searches on their site is search marketing. Not exactly like the days of trying to master postal codes for bulk mailings. We talk about the upheaval in traditional industries like newspapers, how about the direct mail industry and the impact the Internet has had?

  So where are you as it relates to direct marketing (traditional and electronic) and social media? How do they play together for your company? What happens if they are not allowed to play together at all? Are they now so intertwined that the real question is which one leads rather than which one survives?

  

  Enter the 4th Annual SEM Scholarship Contest!

  We want to help find the brightest minds in search and social media, so each year, we ask you to submit your very best “how to” article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media. Learn how you can win a prize package worth over $10,000!

  
• 12:19

  Ballmer on Advertising: “We Have Reset and Won’t Rebound”

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was honored as Media Person of the Year at this year’s Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. As he addressed the festival, however, he pulled a bit of a Calacanis (you guys do remember when Calacanis called SEO “bull@#&%” in an SES keynote, right?). Ballmer told the assembled media and advertising gurus that, basically, we can kiss the good old days of rolling in dough goodbye.

  Among other tales of doom and gloom, as reported by the Guardian:

  • “I don’t think we are in a recession, I think we have reset. A recession implies recovery [to pre-recession levels] and for planning purposes I don’t think we will. We have reset and won’t rebound and re-grow.”
  • “There won’t be [only traditional] newspapers, magazines and TV programmes. There won’t be [only] personal, social communications offline and separate. In 10 years it will all be online. Static content won’t cut it in the future.”
  • “Some say that the ad-funded model has not led to profitability. Google’s search site makes money but past Google is there a publisher with an ad-funded or fee-based model that has made lots of money? No.” [Sour grapes there, dude?]
  • The old approach of simply trying to replicate a print newspaper online is doomed to fail, Ballmer added.

  Meanwhile, ClickZ focuses on some of Ballmer’s other remarks, including how much MSFT has increased its advertising spend recently:

  Steve Ballmer said the company’s spending on annual measured media has climbed from $200 million to $700 million over a four-year period, as the company serves up new campaigns for Bing, Xbox, Windows, Internet Explorer, and other products.

  But ClickZ agrees that Ballmer’s bearish on the future of advertising overall:

  Rather, he sees a bigger future for marketing investments that cost less — and will therefore contribute fewer jobs and less money to the economy. “In an economy where the cost of production is close to zero, you get all kinds of changes to the monetizaton models.”

  What do you think? Has the Internet permanently changed the way advertising will work, or will models—and prices—recover to resemble their offline predecessors?

  Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

  
• 12:16

  First Round of SEM Scholarship Contest Entries Posted

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  We’ve just posted the first round of entries to our 4th Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest. They are:

  • The Small Business PPC Art of War
  • Holistic Online Marketing
  • Oh, That’s Right, We Don’t Need SEO Standards
  • SEM & Job Recruitment
  • SEO by You
  • How to Kick Ass with a Mobile Website

  The next round will be published the same time tomorrow. Remember, the entries have 4 weeks from the date of publication to try and qualify as one of our five finalists.

  I hope you’ll read the posts–you might learn something new!

  

  
• 12:15

  How to Kick Ass with a Mobile Website

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Richard Kirk

  People browsing your website via mobile devices are an ever-increasing segment of total website visitors. The proliferation of smartphones and increases in mobile browsing are key trends for 2009, with smartphone shipments worldwide set to grow by 23% this year, (despite a 9.1% decline in the mobile handset market). This not just a western phenomenon; in developing nations the cost of a computer makes a web-enabled mobile device even more attractive. With many companies looking to expand into new markets during the recession, this is an interesting point to note. Importantly, as mobile web use grows, the personal experiences of users are more likely than ever to be shared both online and in ‘the real world’.

  For instance, if Amy finds your site difficult to use on her iPhone, not only do you lose a conversion straight away, but thanks to mobile web’s immediacy, she can instantly tweet or blog about the experience. Worse still, Amy can share her irritation with her mates at the time or when she sees them next by showing them how rubbish your site is, right there on her iPhone. The usual ‘cooling off’ time between Amy’s bad experience happening and the opportunity for her to show her friends on a computer has been eliminated. In short, the potential for brand fails (and wins) based on usability has risen dramatically.

  Right now it’s time to ask:

  • How are mobile users impacting your bottom line?
  • Who’s browsing your site via mobile devices?
  • How can you put together a mobile-specific website that kicks ass?!

  Even if you aren’t technically-minded I’ll discuss ways you can develop a mobile strategy, and if you are technically proficient these solutions combined are a solid base for mobile development.

  **********

  Navigating the full version of a website on a mobile device is likely to reduce conversion rate, primarily due to usability issues:

  • Mobile users are confronted with a small screen, and the difficulties of navigating via buttons or touch controls rather than a mouse pointer.
  • Web pages designed for traditional desk-bound users are often too bloated for our limited cellular network, resulting in laborious / terminally long page load times.

  Users may not wish to complete your full goals (e.g. buy something) when browsing via a mobile device, so you would perhaps see lower conversions / revenue amongst this group. However, they are much more likely to come back and complete these goals via a traditional browser if they could easily find the information they required during their initial mobile visit.

  For instance, John may visit your site via his Blackberry to check out the price of a football shirt, because he is stood in a sports store and wants to know if he can buy it online at your site for less money. If the product page in question is slow to load or impossible to find, you lose the sale he would have completed later at his computer, and probably future price comparison visits, even if it turns out you were cheaper to buy from.

  Understanding Mobile Users: Entry Level

  Even if you feel the implementation of a mobile strategy is a long way off for your company, and you have no technical skills whatsoever, there is no excuse for not starting to try and get a handle on who your mobile users are, and how they interact with your site. This is a customer segment that will grow in the future.

  Demographics You can easily build up a picture of mobile web users through the plethora of surveys currently being released. Here are a few recent stats:

  • 74% of iPhone users are over the age of 25, (31% are 35-49) and more than 70% of iPhone users are male. [see here]
  • 64% of key decision makers in marketing departments are using mobiles to view emails [see here]
  • Leading mobile browsing systems worldwide (May 09) = iPhone/iPod Touch 37.2%, Opera 24.6%, Nokia 17.9%. [see here]
  • In 2008 61% of all smartphone owners had a household income of greater than $70000, compared to just 49% of normal mobile owners. [see here]
  • 40% of “smartphoners” in ‘08 would access the internet at least once a week on their device, (78% for iPhone owners specifically). [see here]

  Behaviour As well as looking at the demographics of people browsing the mobile web, it’s also vital to understand their goals are likely to be different to those of folks browsing on a computer. Conversion points for mobile users are often basic things such as finding a shop location, contact information, or viewing product details. Generally speaking goals are more immediate and information based. More traditional goals such as purchasing or accessing documents will only be undertaken as a last resort where a computer is unavailable.

  Mobile users break down into three rough categories:

  • “Time to burn”: browsing between events / meetings etc: your goal is to offer bite sized chunks of interesting content in order to attract repeat visits later via traditional browsing methods.
  • “Monitors”: Users who browse your site for specific data that changes over time: stocks and shares, sports scores etc. Identify the information on your site which gets repeat visits and make it as easily accessible as possible.
  • “Need it Now”: Live information e.g. running information, store locations, opening hours etc should all be easily accessible from your mobile homepage for those people who are relying on your brand rather than just browsing.

  Understanding the key differences between your mobile and traditional users should directly inform the architecture of the mobile version of your site. For instance: An airline may focus on selling tickets online, but its mobile site should focus more on check in information, live flight times, and airport locations for people who are about to fly. Similarly, a financial services company might view their website as a place for prospective customers to research their products, but their mobile site could add value by offering simple services to existing customers e.g. balance checks.

  With a bit more budget you can start to build up data specific to your organisation. Marketers should be equipped with smartphones, as using a mobile browser is the best way to understand and discover the difficulties and opportunities surrounding your brand and the mobile web.

  Understanding Mobile Users: Intermediate / Advanced Level

  Google Analytics provides a segment for iPhone users, but a broader mobile segment for analysing this traffic would be preferential. The most obvious way to construct this segment is by grouping together the different types of mobile browsers currently on offer, but this list is ever-changing and many of these browsers are poor at executing JavaScript: mobile data will be missed altogether and the segment will be less accurate. [ more info here]

  A better option is to construct a GA segment based around screen resolution, as there is a greater accuracy of data collection:

  • Open a new custom segment within your GA dashboard
  • Select “screen resolution” as the segment’s dimension. You can find this by drilling down on “Systems”.
  • Select the match type “Matches Regular Expression”
  • Paste the following regex into the next field: (^[1-2]?[0-9]?[0-9]|^3[0-1][0-9]|^320)x([1-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]$|4[0-7][0-9] $|480$ )

  For the more advanced technicians amongst you the installation of mobile-specific tracking software is a further option, however this can be costly and difficult to integrate with GA. Bango Analytics, Mobilytics and Amethon are key players in this sector.

  Once mobile users behaviour on your site is isolated marketers are able to analyse top content, entry and exit points, site search, etc. It is crucial to try and understand mobile user’s goals this data. These goals will define the architecture of your mobile site.

  Top Design Tips for Mobile Sites

  Users want a familiar experience, so try to take your design cues from the navigation styles on mobile handsets, not from the standard web experience. On a mobile device, users are familiar with drilling down through menus to access content, rather than having navigation and content crowded onto the same page. This approach should result in a more intuitive mobile site.

  There are a broad range of mobile device screen resolutions: keep design as minimal and linear as possible to optimise the experience for all, whilst keeping page load times down. Ensure users don’t have to jump around the page: many devices still only have up/down functionality and non-linear design will make the user experience a nightmare, resulting in low conversion rates and poor RoI.

  Make the most of your real estate by avoiding large pictures or logos. Page real estate is so valuable on a mobile site due to constraints in screen resolution and the need for large, clear buttons and boxes: images will add little value to most pages. If you wish to use images, do so pragmatically; a pared-down version of your logo atop each page should double as a link back to your mobile homepage.

  Don’t transfer people from the mobile to full website without warning them first. Don’t link to the full site from your mobile homepage: all content important enough to be linked to from here deserves to be redesigned for mobile.

  Form filling on a mobile device is a much more laborious process due to keyboard / screen resolution limitations. For each question on the form ask:

  • Is this question 100% necessary?
  • Can I offer multiple answers rather than making a user type?
  • Could I auto fill a section of the answer (e.g. instead of filling out an address just ask for postcode and house number)

  Conclusions

  You should be trying to understand your mobile users even if you cannot envision a mobile-specific web presence for your brand right now. This group isn’t going to stay small and seemingly insignificant: it will grow rapidly.

  The key difference between a mobile site and a traditional one (especially for service based organisations) should be its core audience. Goals are immediate and simple, bite sized content is key, and rapid access to information is vital. Mobile users may appear not to complete whole conversion funnels “on the go”, however, they will judge your site and you may lose the valuable converting visit later by not bearing in mind the user’s initial experience.

  Users browsing via mobile devices are also highly likely to be early adopters and social networkers; irritating or failing to serve their needs may result in a well publicised brand fail. However, a basic understanding of their goals may lead to the acquisition of a loyal customer base, as the range of good sites on offer to mobile web users remains limited. for now.

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  

  
• 12:15

  Holistic Online Marketing

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Al Scillitani

  You can excel in all marketing channels individually, yet never achieve overall optimal marketing health. Right now you are only feeding each marketing channel breads and grains, but they all need their fruits and vegetables too. Take your next online promotion to the next level.

  I see a lot of articles on improving paid search, SEO, email, or social media, but not many on how these channels must all work together to improve overall conversions of a promotion. Everyone needs to understand that online promotions should work in sync with each other, not independently. By aligning all your promotional efforts in all channels, you are increasing your chances of marketing success. When I write “all,” I mean all: social media, email, paid search, affiliates, and any other channels you are using. Imagine increasing your conversion rates by .5 percent to two percent, or possibly more, in each marketing channel.

  Ever notice when you have a successful email promotion, you get a slight bump in traffic and sales from all other channels? Can you take further advantage of this extra traffic and sales to boost sales even further? The answer is yes, with a holistic online marketing approach.

  Many companies use a non-holistic approach, and if you step back and look at a very high level, you can see how this approach can never achieve the same success as a holistic approach.

  An example of a Non-Holistic Approach “Food” Pyramid

  

  Merchandising is in charge of the promotion and overall responsibility of website product placement, wording, and message. Your design team may have designed an image for your homepage with the email promotion.

  Social media efforts include an informational blurb about a new product that has nothing to do with the promotion. The affiliate team is focusing their efforts on obtaining new affiliates and reviewing reports.

  Your paid search person, whether they are in-house or outsourced, is pretty much out of the loop of each promotion. Your organic search person is evaluating ranking reports and trying to come up with ideas for articles and other ways to get backlinks.

  I see the above scenario over and over. It doesn’t seem like everyone is on the same page. Merchandising is not working with marketing, marketing is not working with design, design has no idea what the actual marketing theme and message of the promotion is. How is this supposed to work? Does this look like the best way to promote your business, your products or your services? I see this as a problem, but I also see this as a huge opportunity.

  The Holistic Approach

  The goal of the holistic approach is to understand that all online marketing channels must work together for maximum results. When a great promotion launches, it starts chatter, online and off. People will mention it on deal sites, coupon sites, blogs, and forums. All of this chatter can be used to further increase your conversions. Also, keep in mind your customers will get an email, yet still type your URL directly into their browser, search in their favorite engine, etc. instead of clicking on the email link. This is why all traffic to your site seems to increase with a great email promotion.

  

  There are several differences between approaches that go on behind the scenes.

  1. With the holistic approach, you should meet as a team to discuss the overall theme and marketing message of the promotion. Who is invited? Merchandising, Catalog, Email, Paid Search, SEO Person, Social Media Person, Affiliate, and anyone else that is involved in your online marketing efforts.
  2. Even though this is a team approach, for accountability reasons, one person should lead the meeting and be responsible for the overall success of the promotion. It appears most promotions are based around an email. If this is the case, and your email manager is in the marketing department, this person may be the Email Manager. If not, the lead should still be part of the marketing department (not merchandising, finance, IT). Once merchandising states what the product/service promotion is, the team should give input as to the actual theme and marketing message. This brainstorming does a lot, not just for a complete understanding of the promotion and getting some great ideas, but everyone becomes owners of the promotion and wants the promotion to succeed.

  Accountability is very important in the Holistic Approach. Before, if the promotion did not do well, no one took responsibility or ownership. While the team brainstorms and decides on the actual theme and wording, the person responsible for the promotion, the marketing lead, is the person who has final say. With one person now accountable, and everyone’s input taken into consideration, they feel as if they are part owners in the success of the promotion. I know there are many factors involved in the actual success of a promotion, such as inventory and prices. If the promotion didn’t do as expected, or did much better than expected, you will start to see everyone investigate why the promotion did not do well or why it succeeded. Keep in mind that as long as you learn from the poor performing promotion, it was not a failure.

  Now that paid search knows what the promotion is, they have time to create enticing ads such as “Free Shipping This Week Only,” “$20 Off Coupon,” or “Father’s Day Closeouts.” Include promotional text on the landing page. If it can’t, try changing the landing page to the home page so customers see the promotion and then can link to the product or service. The best scenario, of course, is to test landing page concepts to see which converts the best.

  Social Media can start the promotion buzz. Organic search can create articles, reviews, landing page text, and more to increase conversions. The affiliate manager can notify the affiliates and coupon sites of the promotion

  One of the largest contributors in the success of the promotion is your design team. If your design team understands the theme and message of the promotion, they can help in many ways:

  1. Create banners and modules to use on the website and used for affiliates websites that don’t just look great, but are designed with the proper message in mind.
  2. Work with paid search and SEO to add banners to the landing page of the products or to the top of every page. How many times have you opened a promotional email, clicked on the link, and have been taken to an interior page with no promotion in sight? This will also happen with paid search. Many of your paid search landing pages go directly to the product or service that is getting promoted. The customer bypasses the homepage with all the details. The customer can easily feel the promotion must have expired and ends up leaving the site.
  3. Set goals for each metric, email open rates, click thru rates, conversion rates, and revenue.
  4. Meet after promotion is over to review metrics. Where did you exceed your goals, where did you not reach your goals? Why?

  Even though many do not place design under marketing, your design team knows their designs have an impact on sales. Their involvement in the results of the campaign will most likely result in increased sales.

  To summarize the Holistic Online Marketing Approach:

  1. Get the search team involved in the promotional theme and message.
  2. Involve Design Team in marketing meetings
  3. Assign accountability, goals, and strive for others to take ownership.
  4. Make sure the promotion is in sync with all marketing channels.

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  

  
• 12:15

  Oh, That’s Right, We Don’t Need SEO Standards

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Marta Turek

  What is SEO?

  “Suppose it’s got something to do with when doing a search, getting the most and best hits back, i.e. no crap.”

  “A practise that improves performance and relevance of result sets for search engines. Never heard of it as a service.”

  “No understanding at all…is it something that makes Google work better?”

  “My guess is that you pay for a good position on the search engine.”

  That is how 4 of 33 respondents in a closed study defined SEO. This very basic study was conducted among tertiary qualified professionals to provide a snapshot of the ‘general public’s ‘ understanding of search engine optimization. All respondents were asked not to perform any research prior to answering the questions.

  Interestingly, quite a few people (30%) considered SEO to be a practice performed by the search engines themselves, such as changing the algorithm to improve performance and deliver more relevant results.

  In addition, a surprisingly high number of respondents (42%) had a basic idea of the practice of SEO, citing that changes would need to be made to a target website to improve its ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

  Putting a PRICE on the SEO service was a problem

  

  There was a very wide gap in pricing expectations:

  • 46% of respondents had ‘no idea’ how much they could expect to pay for search engine optimization services
  • A collective 21% expected SEO to be either FREE (9%) or to cost less than $1,000 (12%)
  • 21% proposed a performance fee structure based on increase in bottom line generated through the SEO. Notably these were professionals from tertiary service industries such as banking, public relations and consulting

  Observation 1: If most people have no idea what to pay for the SEO service while a proportion would hand over potentially $1,000s in percentage based fees this indicates a significant gap in client expectations.

  A website offering services at $200 is as believable as one providing the service for $2,000, because people literally do not know what to expect.

  For SEO to be considered among other professional fields such as law or medicine, the SEO industry has to deliver its services at a certain benchmark standard in order for those services to be valued at a particular price.

  Searching for SEO

  Overwhelmingly, most respondents would use Google (64%) or a search engine (15%) to find out more information about SEO.

  

  So, if people are using Google to research SEO, what do they find?

  Sample of some first page SERP results on Google.ca for phrase ’search engine optimization’:

  • Guaranteed Page 1 or Pay Nothing, Page 1 in Seven Days $69.95/Month
  • Search engine optimization is the way to pull massive amounts of free traffic
  • Get listed on 200+ search engines in 8 hours!
  • 300+ Top 10 And Top 3 Rankings In Every Search Engine For $179.95

  Observation 2: Guarantees! Promises! Refunds! First page Google rankings for a $100 per month! Free search engine submission to hundreds of search engines!

  Search for a lawyer or dentist online and you will not see this type of price undercutting. The focus is on quality, expertise, value and years of experience.

  The SEO industry is diluting the value of its own service with this type of advertising. Searchers form the opinion that SEO is a cheap; easy-to-implement service offering that any SEO business listed on the SERPs can perform.

  Cognitive dissonance begins to form between client expectations and perceived value of the service. Clients expect top rankings to be delivered at a low price point.

  Final Thoughts

  Though the basic study that has been discussed was small and from a statistical perspective has limitations, the insight that just 33 respondents provided is significant:

  • If most people would search on Google for SEO, where can searchers find quality information that will assist them in developing their expectations of SEO services?
  • SEMPO does feature in the SERPs for some search terms and though the website is a valuable resource, does it adequately help shape a searcher’s understanding of why they would pay $100 for one SEO service and $10,000 for another?
  • A standard definition of SEO would help the public understand what to expect from SEO and more effectively find services that suit their business requirements and budget.
  • SEO standards would assist in setting a minimum benchmark for SEO service delivery, which would ultimately increase the client value perception of these services, and so many SEOs would no longer have to feel like they are working for FREE!

  In the words of Ian McAnerin: ‘Standards? We don’t need no stinkin’ standards. But the public does. I think it’s time we grew up and took responsibility for our own profession, before someone does it for us.’

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  Want more marketing news & views? Follow Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal on Twitter!

  
• 12:15

  SEO by You

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Chinmoy Kanjilal

  

  Readers, SEO has always been a field of tough competition and deep interest amongst the netizen, especially webmasters. Today, I will let you in to my biggest SEO secrets related to Technology blogs. One top secret of SEO is the content. And I always prefer it in a compiled manner, point-wise. So here is Chinmoy’s SEO Guide to success.

  • Choosing a good domain (Applicable if you do not have a domain yet)
    

  • your domain will reflect your website content and your niche. Keep it relevant.
  • Check over at www.domaintools.com for availability of your desired domain. Also look at the typo-domains. If they are huge in number with good ranks ,opt out. Chose a different domain.
  • If your domain is available, check for competition in your niche with similar domain names.
  • Keep your domain name easy to remember and avoid any break-up words. Try to keep it a single word.

  • Choosing a good hosting provider

  • Your server can make and break your website. If you chose a slow server, you will either have a low visitor count or a high bounce rate.
  • A fast server offers faster page-loads on server-sided scripts. Chose a fast server to keep a continuous inflow of visitors and aiming for a rise.
  • Visitors remember slower sites, they are reluctant to return-visit slow pages.

  • Choosing a good design

  • A professionaly designed website attracts visitors in huge numbers. Get a professional design and look. Make sure you mean what you claim in your niche.
  • Check for broken designs and browser optimized design. Make sure your design is compatible with most web browsers. Check the css for broken tables or disjunctions.
  • SEO on a light coloured theme is relatively easy. Also, make use of colours wisely. Keep your website soothing to the eye.

  Your readers may come from all sections and ages, but you need to target a specific age group. This needs interaction with your fellow netizen and that needs buildig  a strong social profile and online presence to promote your website. From this point onwards, I will focus on technology blogs.

  • Link building through link exchange

  • Link building is an important strategy to get noticed from search engines and from visitors on other site.
  • the more you are linked from various sites on the internet, the more you get noticed, the faster search engines index your site, the faster you are in competition with fellow keywords.
  • As you get into link exchange with related sites, you get a share of their visitors. This increases your pageviews.
  • With quality links from reputed sites, you get a boost in PR, increasing your google rank,  which is a marker of site content quality.

  • The Content

  • Everything fails without the content. A blog or a site without quality content is like a car without oil. You can only get it so far with pushing.
  • Regular content will keep search engines busy on your site, gettting you indexed faster.
  • If you apply all the other methods without any content, you will have high bounce rates combined with high visits, which is a negative marker.
  • Keep your content comprehensive and make proper use of keywords in the content. The content can be of any length, but make sure it never at one point loses it’s focus on the topic.
  • Check for the readibility and various aspects of the content at http://www.textalyser.net . It helps improve the content.
  • Chose proper keywords. Check for rising trends in google, yahoo and use the keywords. Also check for keyword optimization at google keyword analysis tool and keep optimized content for appearing in top searches and for adsense optimization(covered later).
  • Keep your content in a presentable manner.Use points to make your statement. People are more interested by five point lists nowadays.
  • Keep your final verdict on the research you made on the topic, it not only reflects your hard work, but also your knowledge on the topic.

  • Social Bookmarking

  • Social bookmarking has become very famous in SEO. Social sites like Digg, Stumbleupon alone have sent me hundreds of hits in a single day.
  • Keep your social profile on social bookmarking sites active and get a huge number of friends, this ensures your blog gets through social bookmarking networks and once it is in it starts travelling seeking you more audience, more visitors and higher ranks.
  • Social bookmarking sites are also constantly crawled by serch engines, so posting content to them also gets you indexed faster, as the bookmarking sites have a good pagerakn, you get a share of the PR too.
  • Sometimes, social bookmarks become more famous than the original URL to the post. Even then, it gets you search traffic in an indirect way.

  • Directory Submission

  • Directory submissions are a sure way of getting listed in search faster. Directories are used by search-engines to crawl sites. The more you are present in directories, better are your chances of getting listed in search results.
  • Directories also offer god PR. So, if you want a good PR, a directory service is the best as they do not ask for link back, and submission to them is free. One way back-links are much more valuable than 2-way link exchanges.

  • Writing Guest Posts

  • Writing guest posts on reputed sites gets you recognized as a valuable contributor, and gets you indirect traffic to your blog. It also identifies your content quality as valuable and helps build a strong online presence.
  • With guest posts, you also get a huge following of readers who are directed to your site, as traffic swarms.

  • Commenting on other sites(Blogs)

  • Commenting on other blogs can get you visitors as well.Always be the first one to comment on other reputed blogs. That way, follow-up comments are interested in you and visit your site.
  • Some blogs and sites allow dofollow on the comments. That way, you get a share of their PR as a one way link!
  • Commenting on other blogs also gets your blog in focus, and you get back comments on your posts, thereby getting popularity on posts.

  • Using BB Forums

  • Forums are a great place to advertise your blog. With forums, you can reach thousands of audience with a slight effort.
  • Join a forum from you niche, create a good presence in it.
  • Speak about you initiative, your blog.
  • Get users on the forum to comment and post on your blog, host contests and giveaway gifts.

  • Using microblogging

  • Microblogging is another sphere which can get you numerous visitors in a few days. With microblogging services frm twitter, stumbleupon and others, your blog can reach a new level of SEO. Use it wisely, get a good progile and follow more to get followed.

  • Optimizations

  • Make sure your site is fst enought to handle all the load that is goind to get onto it as a result of this optimizations. Keep your javascript safe for safety on client side.
  • Keep your server sided scripts optimized for faster serving of pages.
  • Keep your database optimized for faster data retrival.
  • Do not plan to host all the data on your server. Keep files like images and videos on a CDN(content delivery network) That will decrease load on your server.

  • Things to do when not blogging

  • Spread the word, really helps if you are in  a company or a college. Spread the word. Let your blog be known. That way, you will get a new stream of local visitors, who keep visiting back out of curiosity.
  • Fire up a technical discussion when amongst friends, quote lines from your blog, refer to your posts.

  That is all you need to do to get an optimized site, so that next time you get a visitor, he sticks around for quite some time. Blogging is  a big addiction and an even bigger knowledge resource. Make use of it if you have it in you.

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  

  
• 12:15

  The Small Business PPC Art of War

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  By Anthony Verre

  If You’re Not An 800 lb Gorilla, You’re Guerrilla

  It’s no big secret: PPC is competitive. And any advantage you can get is always an edge. The hardest part is finding the edge you can leverage effectively, efficiently, and strike a resonating blow. It sounds like war because it is. Pay-Per-Click generals need to find and exploit the weaknesses of competition.

  Small businesses face a number of challenges in the PPC battleground, chief among them being that they have small-ish/smaller budgets than their larger counterparts. Meaning, for highly competitive and general keywords within your vertical, it’s difficult to compete. As such, brute force click-bids are impossible leverage because your competition will effectively price you out. Therefore, small businesses must leverage the one strength that a majority of them possess: small guerrilla marketing.

  Exploiting the Competitor’s Strategy: Research

  You know what your business-centric keywords are. You dredged your analytics for the keywords driving traffic and conversions. You’ve got your negative keywords in place to guard against unqualified click traffic. Whatever words you’ve found, you can bet your competitors found too. Here’s where your research skills come in.

  Who Your Competition Really Is

  Take a handful of keywords you’ve found and search them. You’ll be looking at company names you’ve never heard of before. That’s your market share competition now; those are companies you need to research and create a PPC strategy around.

  To keep trying to outmaneuver Company X because for years it has always been Company X eating up market share, is to waste your online marketing effort and money. Your competitors are those that are competing for your keywords.

  Tools to Find Your Competitors’ Mid-Tail and Long-Tail Keywords

  Now that you’ve isolated the top competitors for each of your keywords, it’s time to find out what other keywords they bid on. And what they don’t. Drop in your competitor’s URLs and/or keywords and get tons of valuable information. From ads to ad spend trend lines to a fairly complete list of keywords each competitor is paying for.

  • iSpionage
  • SpyFu
  • Keyword Spy

  You can find out where you overlap in keywords, especially on larger terms, but more importantly, you can find out what keywords they’re NOT buying. You can adjust your strategy to take advantage and leverage the mid-tail and long-tail keywords your competition may be under-bidding and/or ignoring all together. Additionally, you can adjust your strategy to hone in on the more general keywords you can’t live without.

  Your Secret Weapon: Hubris

  Fortunately for you, most businesses have a major chink in their armor: hubris. It’s something most businesses never protect because their egos won’t let them, or they haven’t actually thought about it: their brand name.

  You can create a competitor campaign that targets the competitors’ brand name. The objective with this type of campaign is simply to draft traffic away and conversions from brands when users/consumers search them and to simultaneously create brand recognition. “18.1% – 28.5% of searchers looked for brand names…only when consumers are close to making a final purchase decision that they enter brand names into search engines.” [Jim Hedger, “Consumers Search Before Buying”]

  Take these examples:

  1. Starbucks
  2. CocoKey Water Resort
  3. Edward Jones

  Bending the Consumer Purchase Funnel

  Since there are no viable competitors, in the examples above, on these brand name keywords, the clicks will be inexpensive with possibility of a huge payoff (it might not be a bad idea to guard your own brand name while you’re at it). At one of the most crucial times in the consumer purchase funnel you have the opportunity to help change their minds and move them in a different direction. And, even if you don’t persuade them, you’ve given yourself brand recognition and the consumer an alternative if they don’t find what they need.

  Ready for Battle?

  This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 4th Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

  
• 10:51

  Bartz Rebranding Yahoo (Hopefully without F-bombs)

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Since taking the helm at Yahoo in January, CEO Carol Bartz has consistently emphasized one of Yahoo’s greatest strengths: its brand.

  But now they may be changing all that—literally. According to BoomTown, Yahoo is looking to revamp its worldwide fortunes with a major rebranding. But for once the company’s strength might be working against it. Says BoomTown:

  Yahoo’s branding campaign will certainly have to be a big deal, given that it is one of the top Internet sites in the world and has massive name recognition.

  And Bartz has been vocal about the importance of touting Yahoo as a well-known brand, even as she has said a lot internally and externally that she detests purple.

  While Yahoo’s main color (as seen in the logo above) has been purple for some time, and its mantra has been “bleed purple,” I wonder how many of its users would really miss the purple. Sure, there would be a few diehards who would mourn the extermination of the eggplant, the majority of users probably are only vaguely aware there’s some sort of purple-Yahoo association. I mean, this is what you see on Yahoo:
  

  Speaking with BoomTown’s Kara Swisher at the D7 conference, Carol Bartz made a statement that could easily sum up the goal of this rebrand:

  The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it. We just have to get our story out there; we have to continue to appeal to the people that come to us, and frankly, at some point people get sick of having us as the underdog and say, “Thank God, Yahoo’s back.”

  Possibilities for the new brand include “your home on the Web.” The rebranding might coincide with the planned homepage redesign, which was pushed back to this fall.

  Given the CEO’s penchant for four-letter words, however, I suppose we should just be grateful none of those figure into the brand’s future. Bartz is expected to address the subject at the company’s annual meeting today.

  What do you think? Is a rebranding enough to reverse Yahoo’s fortunes, or will it take far more to get the #2 search engine going again?

  Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

  
• 7:35

  LinkedIn Names New CEO

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Well, looks like some folks over at LinkedIn are going to be busy updating their profiles. Reid Hoffman’s will now include Founder and CEO of LinkedIn followed by Chairman of the Board of LinkedIn followed by interim CEO of LinkedIn and now landing at Executive Chairman of LinkedIn. Good thing Reid has stuck around to fill in the gaps.

  LinkedIn has now announced the move of making president, Jeff Weiner, the new CEO of the company. Weiner came over from Yahoo in January and this move is not raising any eyebrows. Hoffman had stepped into the CEO role for the past 6 months or so after Dan Nye left in December of last year after two years in the post. Now the transition to Weiner looks complete.

  cnet reports

  “LinkedIn was founded to harness the power of the Internet to create a tool that would help individuals become more effective and successful professionals,” Hoffman said in a release. “Over the past six months, Jeff has done an exceptional job leading the company and I look forward to continuing the work that we have begun together.”

  LinkedIn claims 42 million members which makes their audience bigger than Twitter but far smaller than Facebook’s 200 million plus members. What LinkedIn can claim that neither of the other two can is that it

  hopes to be profitable this year for the second year in a row; it makes money not only from ads, but from premium subscriptions and “corporate solutions.”

  Profitable? For a second year in a row? Not often we use that word here in the present tense when it comes to social media companies let alone talking about starting a ‘profitable year streak’. In the past, Hoffman has expressed the desire to go public and last year was looking for a billion dollar valuation when raising $53 million. If you want to play the “What is LinkedIn worth now?” game go right ahead. In this market it looks like anyone’s guess is as good as the next.

  

  Enter the 4th Annual SEM Scholarship Contest!

  We want to help find the brightest minds in search and social media, so each year, we ask you to submit your very best “how to” article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media. Learn how you can win a prize package worth over $10,000!

  
• 7:16

  Google “Sucking the Blood” Out of the Anemic Newspaper Industry

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton has been bitten by a vampire. He claims that Google is the “digital vampire” that has been “sucking the blood” out of the newspaper industry.

  I totally agree!

  Hinton must have been bitten by a vampire. How else do you explain such nonsense coming from the man responsible for one of the largest publishing companies–and owners of The Wall Street Journal.

  He continues his deluded rhetoric:

  [Google] didn’t actually begin life in a cave as a digital vampire per se. The charitable view of Google is that the news business itself fed Google’s taste for this kind of blood.”

  By offering its content free on the Web, the newspaper industry “gave Google’s fangs a great place to bite,” he continued. “We will never know what might have happened had newspapers taken a different approach.”

  I tell you what would have happened. Without Google sending millions of daily visitors to newspaper web sites–for FREE–the newspaper industry would have being snuggling up to the Dodo a long time ago. It drives me batty (pun intended) when I read about newspaper execs blaming their demise on Google. They seem to believe that the newspaper industry would still be thriving, if it weren’t for the search engine making it easy to serve up their content.

  Let’s think about that, shall we? As a publisher, you’re placing your content on your web site, right? If you didn’t want your online content to cannibalize your printed daily offering, why post it to the web? Oh, I see. You have to, because that’s where people prefer to get their news these days. OK, you want people to find your news story and not your rivals’ right? How are you going to do that? Hmm, seems like there’s one channel that hundreds of millions of people use to find new content each day? Do you remember the name of that place? Ah, yes, Google!

  OK, you get my point, so I’ll stop the sarcasm and get back to the facts.

  People want to read news online. They don’t want to pay for it. They use Google. Google sends you the bulk of your daily web site visitors. Either figure out how to monitize those visitors–like the rest of the world–or block Google via your robots.txt file and shut up!

  (via)

  Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

  
• 6:45

  China Cuts Access to Google’s Porn Gateway

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  It appears that Google and China are playing a game of brinkmanship–and Google’s losing.

  After continued threats from China, Google apparent still hasn’t done enough to prevent porn from being easily found at Google.com. In response, China pulled the plug on access to the search engine.

  Attempts to access Google.com and Gmail from different computers in Beijing started failing after 9pm local time, but the websites could be accessed through proxy servers – normally a sign that a website is being blocked by internet censors.

  Whether the "outage" was a warning shot across Google’s bow or not, we don’t really know.

  Cui Jin, spokeswoman for Google China, confirmed that access was cut but would not speculate if it was linked to the government order on cleaning up its act.

  What we do know is that the outage only affected Google.com, not Google.cn. While Google.com only represents about 5% of all searches in China, it’s an important gateway for businesses targeting Chinese users and also hosts Gmail for Chinese users.

  

  
• June 24, 2009
• 14:28

  Social Media Search Gains; Google Loses Some Ground

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Seeing the hard numbers of how social media search queries on sites like Facebook has gained in popularity is not a surprise to most. After all, many think that real time search could be the wave of the future and could eventually provide the revenue model that a social medium like Twitter needs to be a real player.

  What was a bit of a shock, however, in the comScore numbers reported by Search Engine Watch was the slight step backwards that Google took by recording 2% less search queries in May vs. April of this year.

  Taking a look at the big chart full of numbers, at least from a traditional search perspective Google can take some solace in that they were not alone. The slip that occurred was still smaller than their biggest competitors, Microsoft and Yahoo.

  

  So is a 2% decrease in search queries a sign of real trouble for Google? As is always the case you have to be careful as to where you get your data and how much faith you have in it. Recently Nielsen reported that only Microsoft decreased year over year in May in search queries. What the difference in the year over year numbers v. the month to month numbers truly means is anyone’s guess. One thing is for certain though; social media search is getting more traction.

  So it’s up to the research consumer again to decide who’s telling the truth or which statistic you want to use as the truth. If there ever was a place where there are no absolutes it’s in the search engine research and analytics game.

  Is this finally a chink in the armor of the mighty Google or just a blip in the search/space continuum? Should you start dumping Google shares just yet? What would be the best (or at least the most fun) way to overreact to this information? Chime in please because you may have some other ‘research’ that could set us all straight.

  

  
• 12:30

  Top CEO’s Appear to be Anti Social (Media, that is)

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  With all the talk of social media this and social media that, it’s hard not to feel some pressure to be involved in some way or another. That is unless, of course, you are one of the CEO of some of the biggest companies in the world, as TechCrunch reports on a survey conducted by UBERCEO. Apparently the Top 100 companies of the Fortune 500 have CEO’s that are not getting in the game. Considering some of the press these guys and gals get these days that may be a good idea.

  The highlights

  • Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
  • 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections.
  • 81% of CEOs don’t have a personal Facebook page.
  • Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.
  • Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog.

  So is this a problem? Of course, that is a question that is open to opinion so let me chime in with mine. CEOs who run companies of any real influence should tread extremely lightly in the social media space. If the company is publically traded the risks involved, at least on the surface, seem to far outweigh the potential upside.

  Let’s be realistic as well. Does anyone really think that they are going to become a “bff” of a CEO just through social media? Is this the new way to get from the mail room to the boardroom in today’s corporate world? Not likely.

  Also, there is a better than fair chance that when a CEO is actually involved in this kind of medium, many would suspect that it wouldn’t really be the CEO doing the work. You can’t turn around without hearing the cries of “There are not enough hours in the day to keep up with social media!” so the likelihood of a busy CEO carving out some time to tweet or post or update anything is not real high. One side effect of the ridiculous amount of information that is available to everyone today is the increasingly high level of skepticism that comes along with it. Why have to try to prove that you (if you are that CEO actually making the social media effort) are really the one sending tweets and updating their Facebook page?

  Social media efforts have to be careful to not run too far ahead of themselves. There needs to be a lot of crawling before a full sprint social media effort by anyone is undertaken. Based on that, it might be wise to keep the CEO’s to their regular jobs. A lot of good work can be undone real quickly by one bad moment from the C-suite that is broadcast to the world via social media channels. Why risk that?

  

  
• 11:50

  Finally! Developers Can Make Money from Free iPhone Apps

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  How does an iPhone application developer make money when giving away a free app? Well, before today, they mostly relied on users upgrading to a version of the app with more features–and a price tag. Now they have a new beta program from Google to test.

  Google AdSense for Mobile Applications just launched and application developers–for either iPhone or Android–can apply to join. Already onboard are Backgrounds, Sega, Shazam, and Urbanspoon. The latter shares its story on using AdSense in its iPhone app in the video below.

  I know more of our readers are going to be on the marketing side of his equation, so what are you thoughts? Are you excited about seeing your ads on popular iPhone apps?

  Want more marketing news & views? Follow Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal on Twitter!

  
• 11:17

  Bing’s Paid Clicks Still Up

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Bing’s flash in the pan—supposed to burn out a while ago—is extending every day, at least in one important area: paid clicks. So far this month, we’ve seen that

  • Bing might be making more per query than Google
  • Bing saw an 8% increase in paid clicks and a 20% query volume lift
  • Bing is taking a hardline on click fraud
  • Bing is increasing its searcher penetration and overall share of SERPs (in the post with the best Bing title ever: Pre Bing Sting With a Post Bing Bang?)

  Efficient Frontier is back again this week with more good news: Bing continues to see increases in their paid clicks:
  

  According to our data analysis, Bing expanded its share of paid clicks for the two weeks post launch. Bing’s share of paid clicks is up 13% for the second week post launch as compared to pre-launch. And, it represents an incremental 5% lift over the first week.

  So in many respects, Bing is off to a respectable start. But will it last? What do you think?

  

  
• 11:11

  It’s 2009, Do You Know Where Your Twitter Account Is?

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Do you know what tactics your PR team is using in social media?

  UK furniture giant Habitat clearly doesn’t and it just cost them a huge reputation blackeye in the Twitter community.

  Digital Tip spotted Habitat’s official Twitter account apparently spamming Twitter by placing popular “trending topic” hashtags alongside its own (poorly crafted) tweets.

  

  They even tweeted hashtags used by those protesting the Iranian election, so you can imagine the backlash they’d receive, right?

  

  Well, apparently Habitat was blissfully unaware of the whole scandal. In an open apology letter to the Twitter community, “Claire” from Habitat’s Head Office alluded to the fact the hashtag use had not been approved:

  The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat.

  Er, yes it was. Unless someone hacked into your Twitter account, you did authorize the use of those hashtags. Whether it was explicit or not, that doesn’t matter. If an employee or outside PR firm had your permission to run the account, then you gave them permission to add hashtags. I’m sorry, but unless you show me a document that explicitly outlines the prevention of this tactic, the buck stops with “Head Office.”

  I don’t like to post online reputation management examples just for the sake of it–I’d just add to the noise. So, what can you take away from this?

  As I warn my clients, you can’t just jump into social media without taking ownership of the voice. Where’s the transparency in that? Whether you hand the responsibility to an intern or a PR firm, you need to be fully aware of what’s being said and assume full responsibility. If you’re so hands-off that you have no clue what’s being posted on your behalf, it would be better that you just shutdown that social networking profile right this minute.

  Your stakeholders want to hear your voice at the other end of the social networking “line.” If you’re faking it, then you’ll get called out. In this case, it appears Habitat has learned that lesson the hard way.

  (Hat-tip @Ed)

  

• 11:11

  Google Screws Up My WordPress Ping List

   » ‎ Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

  This post is likely to cause a little controversy, but it is my honest opinion that bloggers have been led astray for long enough regarding how many services you really should send a ping notification to.

  My Advice

  Ignore all the other ping lists published – they are frequently irrelevant and could potentially highlight you as a spammer.

  But read all the article… things are not so crystal clear.

  This is my current WordPress Ping List

  http://ping.feedburner.com/
  http://rpc.blogcatalog.com/

  To be honest, I have only just added Blogcatalog to the list though they have had an interface for a couple of years, as it seems they need a little bit of a nudge on occasion.

  Feedburner Have A Pingshot Service

  Feedburner Pingshot used to provide a list of services to ping. Now you just switch it on

  The Problems With Current Ping Lists

  • Replication – There is no need to ping a whole load of sites, which all then subsequently re-ping all the same services
  • Current – I have seen many ping lists that include services that stopped accepting ping notifications 2 or 3 years ago
  • Safety – You are only sending a ping to Feedburner (plus 2 optional services) and allowing Feedburner to handle notifications correctly.
  • Reliable – despite the occasional problems, over 4 years of blogging I have never had a major problem with Feedburner that couldn't be fixed with a nudge (resync). I would hope their back end is smart enough to cache pings for services that they know are offline, retry problems etc.
    These are things a WordPress plugin just can't effectively replicate.
  • Membership – a lot of the sites featured on ping lists are for members only – you need to have your blog listed before you send them pings.

  Only add to the list if you find a specialist site that isn't covered by Pingshot (but read on… it is important)

  Various WordPress Ping Plugins

  There are various plugins for WordPress that handle pings, preventing a re-ping on a post edit.

  I am going to be frank – rubbish (I kept it polite)

  If you update a post, you want it to be re-pinged unless it is a very minor edit (there is a minor edit plugin). Minor edit prevents the data/time of the post changing on an edit, a much more significant feature for your feed readers.

  If you are using the Tweetmeme plugin, in theory updates are re-pinged – if they don't pick it up, you might need to use their re-ping interface.
  This is important for when the message and title of a story change.

  Ping Lists For Niche Sites

  I wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, use multiple Feedburner accounts, Gmail accounts etc.

  If all you are creating is spam sites, you lose the potential positive signal of Feedburner legitimacy, matching Google Analytics, Website Optimizer etc, plus of course the utility.

  Feedburner's 2 Year Google Screwup

  I suggested a long time ago that Google buying Feedburner was a major disaster for users.

  7+7 Reasons Why Google Buying FeedBurner is a Match Made in Heaven & Hell

  The pingshot feature is one item of many that has been sorely neglected through half-implemented progress.

  Progress?

  The Google Feedburner team supposedly are meant to be implementing an "open directory" of all the services that are supported by Pingshot – that is why they removed the ping list.

  What makes PingShot different from other solutions?

  You mean other than PingShot girl? Well, PingShot is an open directory. Any third party can register to participate.

  And for you publishers, the service is automatic by simply activating it once within the Publicize section – just set and forget it. (You can come back and deactivate it whenever you want.) Also, our super high-powered extra strength feed management technology ensures that only changes in content trigger notification. So, there's that.

  The problem is that the directory has never appeared, so you don't know where they are pinging.

  This isn't new, Google have been talking about this "directory" for at least 8 blinking &*%$$ months

  Every contact link on the Feedburner Help site redirects to this page.

  Support questions regarding Pingshot are totally ignored in the Google groups, and when a member of the community does forward a question to the Feedburner team, no answers come back.

  Feedburner is/was a great service, but Google is killing it. I PAID for Feedburner with a pro account, and would have gladly paid more if they had continued to innovate.

  Google Stealing My Readers

  

  Now Darren might not mind that advert for another of Google's services, but he is not being paid for it. It adds to his subscriber count, but often email subscribers are more responsive than RSS readers, especially with people abandoning RSS in favor of Twitter.

  People don't abandon email totally.

  I don't have as many readers as Darren, but if someone wanted top and bottom placement in every one of my blog posts (in the feed), it would likely cost them $1000+ a month, not that I would do it, and that is based upon my current irregular posting schedule.

  I wouldn't accept Google reader as an advertiser, because it is a negative on my ability to market in the future

  Well… maybe for $5000/month

  Sneaking advertising into email subscriptions could even be looked on as an endorsement. A false endorsement – if Google want me to promote Google Reader, they should pay me.

  Darren had a few other requests / complaints as well, but this is a deal breaker for me. My email is moving.

  If Google don't fix things, I expect I will be pinging Feedblitz instead soon, and I am still undecided on email. None currently offer all I need, which is why I haven't switched, and have constantly encouraged innovation.
  http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?XmlPing

  I am sure Phil from Feedblitz will see this, who if anyone does Feedblitz ping?

  Tags: blog notifications, feedburner, ping list, pinglist, pingshot, WordPress Ping List
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• 9:00

  Twitter Yields Clicks for Entertainment, Big Bucks for Music

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Two recent reports illustrate the power of Twitter in two important metrics—driving visits and purchasing power. Hitwise analyzes overall downstream traffic for Twitter, while NPD Group takes a look at downstream purchases generated by Twitter.

  Hitwise took a look at the most popular categories of downstream traffic for Twitter, comparing them with Facebook, Google UK and Hotmail. Nearly a quarter of Twitter’s downstream traffic goes to entertainment sites, and another ~15% went to social networks:
  
  Source: Hitwise

  Interestingly, Twitter also leads in downstream traffic to news & media sites, lifestyle sites and music sites—and, taken with a new study from NPD Group, that’s good news for the music industry. As Reuters reports:

  active Twitter users buy 77 percent more digital music downloads on average than non-users. Additionally, 12 percent of those who have bought music in the last three months also report having used Twitter, versus 8 percent of overall Web users.

  And that’s not all the good news for the music industry. NPD also found that:

  • A third of Twitter users listened to music on a social network
  • 41% of Twitter users listened to online radio—compared to 22% of all Internet users
  • 39% of Tweeple watched a music video online—compared to 25% of all Internet users.
  • Twitterers were more than twice as likely as average Internet users to visit MySpace Music or Pandora.

  But is all that translating into revenue for record companies? Oh yeah:

  • 33% of Twitter users bought a CD in the last three months—compared to 23% of all web users
  • 34% purchased a digital download—compared to 16% of all Internet users
  • On average, Tweeple purchased 77% more digital downloads—obviously, Twitterers spent more money when purchasing music.

  Clearly, Twitter users are likely to click on music-related links and translate that action into purchases. What do you think—what should the music industry do to get more mentions on Twitter?

  Image credit: Twitter bird

  Want more marketing news & views? Follow Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal on Twitter!

  
• 6:56

  Cuil Goes from “Google Killer” to “Google Beggar”

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Proving that hype will only get you so far–without substance–Cuil is going from “Google killer” to “Google beggar.”
  According to IBD, the start-up is turning to the search engine that it vowed to topple–asking Google to provide ads on Cuil’s pages.

  “That is what we are going to do,” said Tom Costello, Cuil’s chief executive. “We are negotiating with the obvious people, Google and Yahoo, and we are going to decide which is going to be the better fit.”

  I understand the need to make money. After all, at some point Cuil will burn through the $33 million funding it raised, but publicly admitting you’re going cap in hand to Google? Weren’t you supposed to have decapitated them and left them for dead by now?

  To be fair, Cuil has stated that its strategy was to not place ads on its search results until such time as it had built enough traffic.

  “We have had no ads until now because we are building traffic,” Costello said. “You don’t want to put up ads unless you have enough traffic.”

  Smart move. Let’s see how that’s working out for ya:

  

  

  Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

  
• 6:49

  Google Feels the Need, the Need for Speed!

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Google would like you to know that you are slowing down its plans to organize the world’s information. In fact, your lame web site is slowing down the internet in general.

  OK, so maybe not your web site, but enough web sites are still relying on old technology and practices, that Google wants to put an end to it. Accordingly, Google has launched a new resource with best practices for speeding up your web site.

  Some of the recommendations might need your web developer, but most of the advice should be easy enough to implement. If you’re not convinced, Google has developed a brainwashing educational video to help explain the benefits of us all speeding up our sites.

  OK, now it’s time for the cynic in me to be unleashed. Is Google seeing that its indexing technology is unable to scale? Why is Google concerned about the need for speed? Sure, web sites have gotten bloated, but aren’t broadband speeds getting faster? Surely on the user-side, we have enough speed in our download pipe to handle even the bulkiest of web sites? If that’s the case, does this mean that the real issue is Google’s ability to scale its spidering to match?

  What happens if we don’t comply with Google’s plea? Will it grind to a halt by the year 2020?

  

  Enter the 4th Annual SEM Scholarship Contest!

  We want to help find the brightest minds in search and social media, so each year, we ask you to submit your very best “how to” article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media. Learn how you can win a prize package worth over $10,000!

  
• 6:30

  Three Blind Mice Run from Yahoo to Microsoft

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  I’m not about to turn Marketing Pilgrim into a collection of children’s nursery rhymes, but news that three Yahoo employees have defected to Microsoft did bring this to mind:

  Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
  See how they run. See how they run.
  They all ran after the farmer’s wife,
  Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
  Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
  As three blind mice?

  It might be a little unfair to suggest that running into the open arms of Microsoft is akin to a “career de-tailing” but it does make you wonder how bad is it over at Yahoo? After all, they have a new CEO who appears to be saying all the right things–even if some are laced with an f-bomb or two–so why would the following simply bail?

  • Kevin Timmons – vice president of Operations
  • Yongdong Wang – vice president of international search
  • Knut Risvik – former Yahoo chief architect

  Ok, so Risvik had already bailed on Yahoo for a stint at Google, but “two blind mice” wouldn’t have worked for this post. Besides, the fact that Risvik left both Yahoo and Google for Microsoft makes you wonder what it is that the Redmond company is dangling as an incentive. Is it the promise of untold riches, or is Bing really that good?

  Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

  

• June 23, 2009
• 17:36

  If A Single Mom Can Make Money Like This, Why Not You?

   » ‎ Retired Pay World

  
  

  You have to hear this story.  Like everyone, I know your time is limited, but you really should read this lady’s story.

  I am always on the look out for success stories and I love to see average people make it big on the internet, making real, believable money as in this case where her online activities are the difference between raising her son comfortably and living in poverty …

  I never thought I would come across a struggling single mother who went from waitressing, living paycheck to paycheck to now earning $500+ daily online!

  The crazy part is…

  She developed her own system and is now sharing it with only 100 more people. I had to beg her to let me tell you about
  this program because she was about to close it down to new members this week!

  You can read the full story here:

  ————————————–
  Kim Hoffman
  ————————————–

  After digging deeper into this system and talking with quite a few of the members of her program, people are doing VERY WELL with her course…

  By VERY WELL I mean making an additional $150-$250 a day while at work or sitting around the house…

  and…

  The system is laid out in a 60-Day no-fail action plan that tells you exactly what to do each and every day!

  There is no other course out there like it. Usually these programs will give you a boring eBook that only leaves you confused but this course literally holds your hand and forces you to succeed.

  I have to warn you though, there will only be 100 copies of this course sold and as of right now this number could be smaller. All I can I guess, is if you can still get to the website you may have a chance…

  Go now to:

  My Online Income System – 60 Day 100% guaranteed Refund - Zero Risk

  Let me tell you this. As you know, my staff and I write regularly here with mainly “How To” sorts of articles.  I promote very few products … and you don’t get those breathless emails from me, 5 or 10 or 20 a week urging you to buy this or buy that.  This one is special or you wouldn’t see me devoting the editorial space to it.  Plus, the basic method she is using is dead simple and anyone can do it … she sells real products to real people and guides them .. no high tech pie in the sky, not ‘trick Google into sending you millions’ and all those other schlock offers you are so bored with.

  Take a close look and evaluate this for yourself.  But just do me one favor.  Don’t send me an email later that you couldn’t get in because you didn’t take action. This is one of those things that you just need to take advantage of right away or be left out. Why aren’t YOU making money online when so many others are?  Taking action is the difference.  It’s up to you…

  Copyright © 2009 Retired Pay World. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is likely guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@retiredpay.com so we can take legal action immediately.
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• 15:47

  Semantic Search Getting Social

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  And we don’t mean Hakia’s “social network.” Yet another semantic search startup is trying to leverage the power of social networking—but this time not as a social network where you can discuss your queries, but through friends recommending related sites.

  Semanti is a new semantic search engine from someone who gets why previous efforts toward semantic search has failed. As Read Write Web puts it,

  Perhaps the biggest problem with natural language search is that it’s incredibly difficult to try and automate machine-assigned ontologies. Essentially, machines just don’t get it.

  (Okay, okay, we just wanted to see if we could sneak the word “ontology” into two posts today.)

  Semanti’s founder, technologist Bruce Johnson, agreed: “Machines don’t really deconstruct language well. They miss so many of the ambiguities and they often don’t pick up on synonyms.” (Yet another reason why machine translation is usually pretty crappy.)

  So what does Semanti do to combat this? They bring in more humans:

  Most semantic search services are natural language search engines; however, Semanti employs a system of personal bookmarks, a drop-down menu with multiple definitions, and search recommendations pulled from Facebook friends. Semanti actually increases relevancy by introducing human eyes and opinions into the search process.

  Rather than focus on creating and promoting yet another search engine website, Semanti has been launched as a browser plugin for Firefox that integrates with Google, Yahoo or Bing. It replaces the search engine’s suggest feature with suggestions to find the meaning behind your queries. (RWW’s example is [apple]: the brand, the fruit, the Beatles’ label, Gwyneth Paltrow’s baby, etc.)

  Next, Semanti turns to pages you’ve bookmarked with the plugin—pages you’re likely to turn to. Semanti searches the text of those pages for anything relevant. And it learns— the more you search and click, the more relevant its results will be.

  To take it to the next level (and the big, exciting thing you’re all waiting for), you can also use Semanti Social Search which connects with your Facebook friends’ Semanti bookmarks. You can turn this off later if this doesn’t end up being helpful.

  Read Write Web has a video of a Semanti demo . . . but apparently I’m not one of the cool kids. (You can try it for yourself, if you want. I’m going over here to sulk.) (It says it’s a private video and you have to be friends with the creator to view it.):
  

  What do you think—is this harnessing the wisdom of crowds and putting it to work for you, or will it end up being too much noise to signal?

  

  

• 14:47

  Update: FIXED -Bitly Blocked By OpenDNS

   » ‎ Andy Beard - Niche Marketing

  Update – this seems to have been a short term glitch in the fabric of the interweb and corrected itself just after I posted.

  I just went to follow a link on Twitter and discovered it was blocked by OpenDNS

  

  Bit.ly URL SHortener has been blocked by OpenDNS

  I must admit I did smile – I know at least one friend's site that is reported by bit.ly to be a phishing site, notable SEO and ninja link builder Jim Boykin.

  That being said, Bit.ly is the default URL shortener for Twitter, and receives 31% of their measurable traffic from Twitter, thus both are growing like weeds.

  

  What Are OpenDNS & How Big A Deal Is This?

  OpenDNS is like a yellow pages for internet resources, an important internet backbone.

  Just a few days ago they reported serving 14,000,000,000 requests in a single day. That is a lot.

  

  I use OpenDNS because web pages open faster when I use them, and the DNS provided by my Internet Service Provider doesn't recognise when I type in URLs without WWW.

  Looks like I am going to have to use SU.PR or Cli.gs for a while

  Tags: bitly, opendns fail
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• 14:25

  Facebook Triples Advertiser Base

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  I know you’re tired of hearing the same old “the economy is going down the tubes” sob story, so I brought you something different today—a company that’s actually increasing its advertiser base. And not just any company—a social media company (and you know how tough it is to really make money there—you know, other thank from VCs).

  Facebook has tripled its advertiser base in the last year. Yes, tripled. Bloomberg reports on the uptick (comparing it to Google’s first sequential drop in quarterly sales last quarter), speaking with Tim Kendall, Facebook’s director of product marketing for monetization.

  In case you’re wondering, the specific advertising product that’s garnered so much popularity was first unveiled in 2007. Bloomberg describes it thusly:

  The automated ad system . . . lets companies make small edits to their ads during campaigns and suggests words for advertisers to target users. The ads, which appear on users’ Facebook home pages, allow 25 characters in the title and as many as 135 characters in the body of the text and an optional photo.

  And it turns out that Facebook is employing a revolutionary idea to get these and other ad formats (such as their “Engagement ads”) out there.

  Wait for it.

  Wait for it.

  A sales staff. I know, seriously, can you believe it?! Aside from selling advertising inventory, this staff also:

  The company also has been helping advertisers target users when they become fans of certain products or brands. Users can visit fan pages where they learn more about the products and connect with others.

  And if their advertiser base has tripled YOY, it sounds like they’re doing their job—especially in light of recent reports of rampant click fraud on the social network’s ads.

  eMarket Analyst Debra Aho Williamson told Bloomberg, “Everything is starting to solidify for [Facebook]. They’re definitely getting the hang of it.”

  What do you think—is Facebook hitting its stride or does it have a long way to go to catch up?

  

  
• 12:53

  Google Follows China Porn Removal Request

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  As reported last week, China told Google that they didn’t want their pornography. Google filters for pornography on their Chinese site weren’t living up to the standard of the China’s main watchdog, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center, so they were asked to make improvements. In one of the few (maybe the only?) places where Google does not dominate the search landscape it was wondered if they would move quickly to meet the demands or just continue to “work on it.”

  They worked on it and apparently have removed at least some of the issues that were of concern to the Chinese Internet overseer. According to PC Advisor

  …… the search engine has put in place further measures to calm the Chinese government. This includes developing an automated system to remove pornographic links from search results, said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search and the user experience.

  So is all well along the Great Wall of the Internet? Since China is not exactly the poster child for free flowing speech and information its not likely. While making some changes to the Chinese home page

  “Google has been working to remove pornography from our search results in China, in accordance with our operating license there,” Google said.

  “This has been a major engineering effort, and we believe we have addressed many of the problems identified by the government.”

  Google has not made any changes to the Gogle.com home page in China, however, so if there is someone who wants their porn bad enough Google will oblige. China, however, will continue its battle against the flesh with the censoring software, the Green Dam Youth Escort. This software will be installed on every computer sold in China starting in July. The software blocks pornographic and, oh would you look at this, politically sensitive material from getting to the masses.

  One wonders which is more threatening to the Chinese government; pornography or political speech. If they had their choice, I suspect both would be eradicated but for how long?

  

  
• 9:00

  Link Building Q&A with Ben Wills, CEO and Co-Founder of Ontolo

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  I’ve been lucky enough to make some good industry friends over the years. Ben Wills is certainly high on that list and I’ve worked with him at two previous companies–including making him my VP of Operations at my last search marketing company.

  Ben’s search engine optimization experience is second-to-none and he’s always had an (you could say “unhealthy”) interest in link building–being the guy that insisted we include link-building in our services, back when link-building wasn’t popular. Today, Ben’s the founder of his own company, Ontolo, and provides link-building services with a high-degree of scientific analysis.

  I wanted to introduce you to Ben’s company, but didn’t want to just serve-up a recommendation on a plate. Instead, I made Ben spill the beans on his tactics for link building. Here’s the Q&A:

  Your company name, Ontolo, what does that mean? How do you pronounce that?

  My last name, “Wills,” has been mispronounced most of my life (as “Willis,” as in “what-chu talkin’ bout“, so we chose a company name prone to mispronunciation as well

  We (Garrett French and I) decided on “Ontolo”, pronounced ON-tuh-low, which is short for “Ontology.” An Ontology is a philosophical way of organizing things, ideas, and information based on their properties and relationships for the purpose of creating meaningful interpretations.

  Why did you create Ontolo?

  The idea to start Ontolo came from our work at some very successful SEO agencies. We consistently found the same thing out of reach: the ability to make a consistent promise for link building performance. Through several years of conception and discussion, followed by a solid, dedicated year of development and testing, we created a web crawler that looks at hundreds of thousands of web pages related to your industry and keywords. We then present a report detailing immediately-actionable opportunities for acquiring relevant and valuable links.

  We have been using this technology in many ways including research for content-based link building strategies, large-scale link reclamation and good old-fashioned link building.

  What, according to Ontolo, are the fundamental steps for developing a link building campaign?

  After spending the last year diving fully into link building with dozens of projects – making many mistakes and also having many successes – we have designed a fundamental process that we work with in order to more effectively discuss link building. The process is:

  • Define your market using your targeted keywords
  • Discover competitors and allies
  • Prospect for links
    • Competitor and Ally backlinks
    • Link-finding search queries
  • Qualify link prospects by Relevance, Value and Potentiality (Automated and Manual)
  • Segment link prospects based on site type, topic, content type, etc.
  • Link Acquisition

  Having this process has allowed us to design more effective campaigns and to better work through specific link building strategies.

  What advice would you give businesses newly interested in link building?

  The first thing here is to be reasonable and clear about your goals. A goal for a new site to have a PageRank of 5 in three months isn’t exactly reasonable. If you’re new, “being reasonable” might require talking with other webmasters to see what they find to be a reasonable objective and timeline for your business. Being clear about your goals isn’t always about quantity or even quality here; it’s about being effective. Are you looking for rankings or referrals? Are you looking for reputation or traffic? Garrett wrote a great informative piece on SearchEngineLand about how to define link building goals beyond just “getting more links.”

  Next, anyone can search for link opportunities on Google. To be competitive, the ability to work on a larger scale becomes a competitive advantage.

  Use Aaron Wall’s SEO for FireFox Plugin to start with. Export as much data as you think you might need, and then really dig in. Look for the patterns as to what is influencing rankings for your keywords. Is it domain age? Is it Diggs? Is it Yahoo! backlinks? EDU backlinks? Depending on what it is, go get those links if possible. Scale is key here – collect a ton of data, then analyze it for patterns.

  And here’s a tip: If you’re short on domain age (or not), look for high-ranking websites that are “young,” too. Use LinkScape and MajesticSEO to go after those same backlinks.

  Once you have all of your data collected, really dig in and qualify the data. Perform multiple sorts by PageRank, backlinks, Delicious bookmarks, etc, to see what works for you and your business. You will eventually see patterns emerge. Some industries need to focus heavily on quantity, others need to focus on quality. If you have the resources (and the same level of OCD as us), also consider looking at link prospects from the perspective or Relevance, Value and Potentiality. We’ve created a link qualification worksheet that helps to calculate these values for you, thereby prioritizing and qualifying your link acquisition.

  Use your data with purpose. This is one way that Garrett and I continue to push back and forth on each other. It’s easy to simply collect a lot of data. It’s an entirely different problem to make it useful. Take the time to really think about what it means that an interior URL has a lot of backlinks, Diggs, Reddit votes or delicious bookmarks. There’s a good chance that’s really solid content there. There’s also a good chance that it has been marketed well. Study those pieces. Look at what’s working and what isn’t. If it’s been tried and it doesn’t work, let it go. If it’s been tried and works, repeat it over and over and over in all kinds of creative variations.

  Finally, study what the experts are doing. Study Eric Ward, Debra Mastaler, Ann Smarty and Julie Joyce. Read exactly what they’re writing and also read between the lines in each of their articles every week. They’ve been doing this for decades and are a great group of helpful link builders. If they launch a service that does blogger outreach, do you think you should consider doing the same for your website?

  On our end, we have made a fully documented set of service deliverables publicly available as a sample project for REI.com (who is not a client, nor have we ever spoken with them in that capacity), with over 100,000 URLs available for searching and with full reporting. (Click here to see REI’s Backlink Prospecting Report) Study these reports and reports from other link building companies to help design a campaign that works to meet your goals. We want you to have them. Link building has all but seemed like magic for too long. We want to really open that up for people.

  How could our readers setup a great acquisition campaign?

  The first thing that I’m going to say is that link builders are coming on a very exciting time. Soon, you won’t need huge spreadsheets with flashy colors that mean 87 different things for managing your link acquisition and outreach. Two very exciting applications are currently in beta. Both applications are web-based but integrate with your browser. Simply add a bookmarklet, then note them through the bookmarklet. It sends the data back to the management tool and prepares it for outreach. It really doesn’t get any simpler than that.

  The first is from Disa Johnson’s SearchReturn and is called Squid. I haven’t used it, but I have seen the video tutorials for it. It looks like a fantastic way to get your feet wet with using a link management application like this.

  The second is a full-blown Social Media/PR/Outreach CRM application called BuzzStream. I’ve seen a lot of applications come and go. I’ve seen a lot of companies come and go. I’ve spoken with the owners once, I receive no compensation from them, and if I were going to go with a link acquisition management tool, it would be BuzzStream’s application. It’s top-notch, they’re fully committed to making the best application possible, and they have the track record to support that goal. I don’t usually give recommendations like this, but I’m amazingly choosy about the applications I use. (I’ve used over three dozen project management applications and still can’t find one that works for my needs.) When I find something incredibly useful, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

  Finally, a bit of advice that I’ve never heard anyone speak about: How to make compounded use of your link request offers.

  In the acquisition stage, all requests result in one of the following responses: Accepting your link request, Declining your link request, or Countering your link request. Use declines and counters to open conversations to improve your website content. Ask the site owner: “What content would you like to see me create before you would link to my website? What other websites have you linked to and why?” This lets your declines stay as link prospects in the future. Also, by getting someone to tell you what they would want to see – should you build that into your website – you can then go back to them and get that home page or deep link.

  Another key here – and I learned this from sales – is to ask for a referral when you actually get a “yes.” Let them put the link up and when it’s been verified, respond with genuine gratitude. In the same email, you have an opening to request if they know of anyone else (partners, similar websites, etc) who might have website visitors who would also benefit from a link to your website. I caution here, though, that this is a highly delicate request and should be approached very carefully and with a high level of tact. I could write an entire article about crafting the wording of this single sentence that makes the request, not to mention how it should be followed up. I’ll let you do that research and will give you the hint to look at sales training, not link building.

  How do you see the world of link building evolving in the next three to five years?

  We’ve hedged our own bets on using technology, large amounts of data, and highly-targeted analysis. There have always been low-level successes here (link building software), but I expect this area to evolve more significantly.

  One way the industry is seeing technology and large amounts of data is through services such as Majestic SEO and LinkScape. I can say that I’ve used both and they both have different strengths. In the end, they both aggregate huge amounts of link data on the internet. At the same time, they tell you almost nothing about relevance. This is the problem we solve, by crawling all of those backlink prospects (often, millions of them) in an industry, analyzing them, and prioritizing them based on your goals. So, while we think they’re fantastic applications (I couldn’t dream of building them) and are suited incredibly well to specific needs such as working on a large scale, they are only half of the solution for a link prospecting campaign.

  I also think that we will see link building as a whole become less nebulous and more clear. Right now, people don’t know how to talk about it, or how to talk about specific strategies or tactics in a campaign – there is very little cohesive language around link building. It’s all the same, relatively incomplete advice: create linkbait (what’s linkbait?), get social media links (ok..then what?), or buy blog links (and what happens after that?). The ones that are succeeding with link building aren’t talking publicly. I don’t think they’ll be talking more, but enough will be opening up that people will have a clearer idea of all of the ways they can do link building and how to implement those strategies. Look for link building to become more tangible all around.

  Can you tell us about some of the upcoming services you plan to offer?

  One thing I can say is that we have been – publicly – very focused on automating the link prospecting and qualification process.

  Behind the scenes we’ve been working on some content-based link building analysis and reports that we’ll be rolling out soon. Our content-based link building methods are different from link bait, though related so far as their effects. They utilize our internal link prospecting and analysis tool set. In our content-based link building services we’re creating methods to support Eric Ward’s popular vision of link building as PR.

  We may also be working on some other things, particularly using large scales of data combined with more precise analysis…but you’ll probably be the first to know, Andy.

  How does your background in SEO and otherwise help you in running a link building company?

  I have been writing code for over ten years and have run a dedicated Linux server with a 10mbit connection since 2002 when the absolute cheapest servers were $500 a month. In SEO, you and I have worked together at our past two companies. You and I have helped SEO companies grow from 30 employees to 180 and doing millions of dollars in pure SEO business. We’ve done the startup to profit on a cash basis with 23 employees in nine months. We’ve worked with everything from business who (probably unsuccessfully) sold bear repellent, to Fortune 500s and companies every reader has seen and heard of. We’ve seen thousands of SEO problems over the years. At one point, we were managing over 1,400 clients.

  After a while, we noticed some patterns. The value of those patterns and that knowledge are what are built into our link building services.

  About Ben Wills:
  Beginning in 2001 Ben was integrally involved with the growth of the largest search marketing company in the world and in 2005 became the Vice President of Operations in a search marketing startup that had profits on a cash basis of 25% with 23 employees after 9 months. In 2006 he began consulting full time on SEO, social media marketing strategy and link building.

  In 2008 Ben Wills co-founded Ontolo, a link building service that identifies and prioritizes a website’s inbound link opportunities. Ben conceived, architected, built and continues to optimize Ontolo’s link prospect gathering and qualification tools.

  Want more marketing news & views? Follow Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal on Twitter!

  
• 7:14

  Yahoo Brings Custom Display Ads to the Creatively Challenged

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  It only took Yahoo 8 months to react to Google’s AdWords display ad builder thingymajig.

  

  AdAge reports that Yahoo decided not to build its own ad builder technology, instead partnering with Seattle-based start-up AdReady. With Yahoo’s My Display Ads…

  …Advertisers can pick creative off the shelf from more than 800 display ad templates — including dancing cellphones, ads proclaiming "Amazing Values" or countdown clocks — or bring their own…Ads can be purchased on a cost-per-thousand impression basis or as part of a cost-per-click auction. The ad inventory fed into the system includes both Yahoo-owned and network properties through Yahoo’s Right Media exchange.

  Yahoo clearly hopes that it can convince its search advertisers to make the jump over to display ads by making the process a lot easier. If it’s successful, Yahoo’s sitting on a lot of display ad inventory. Maybe it won’t need to worry about challenging Google in search, afterall.

  Interested in learning more? Head over to the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog.

  

  
• 7:02

  MySpace Looks to Close Some Space

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  In the Google, Facebook and Twitter swirl of news and rumors that we all tend to concentrate there is that other guy, MySpace, that is still lurking about. Unfortunately, as news is coming out that there are layoffs and office closings on the international front, it may be appropriate to say that MySpace is limping about.

  MySpace has already trimmed its domestic operations so this move comes as little surprise. TechCrunch UK is reporting this update and has the internal e-mail that was sent to employees regarding the move. (Note to self, nothing – repeat nothing – is private for a company anymore) Here are some highlights.

  From: Owen Van Natta
  Subject: IMPORTANT: PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL RESTRUCTURE
  Importance: High

  Everyone,

  Last week we made a number of changes to MySpace’s domestic structure in order to create a leaner, more nimble organization. Today, we are announcing the next step in our overall restructuring effort – a proposal to streamline our operations abroad.

  Unlike our recent domestic restructuring announcement, what we are announcing today is a formal proposal we intend to implement, rather than an executed plan. As required by laws in countries where we operate, we will not implement the plan until we have consulted with potentially affected employees. As a result, even though the plan we are proposing today would apply to all international divisions of the company, a finalized international restructuring will be put into action over a period of days.

  Similar to our domestic restructuring, our international plan is designed to rein in growth in staff and expenses that we cannot sustain. Our proposal would reduce MySpace’s international staff from 450 employees to approximately 150 employees and close at least 4 of our offices outside the United States.

  …….. As with the domestic changes we made last week, these proposed international reductions and eliminations will be extremely challenging – professionally and personally. These are difficult decisions and they are essential to our financial well-being and the re-establishment of our overall growth strategy.

  ……….. The last two weeks have been tough for everyone. The employees who leave us played an important role in the successes of MySpace in these international markets, and I thank them for their hard and dedicated work. The restructuring steps we have taken have laid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace. I look forward to working with you all and speaking with you in the coming days.

  Thank you,

  Owen

  The potential office closings are among Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain and they will be placed under review. One commenter on the blog has reported that the Moscow office will close as of June 30 but there is no confirmation of that.

  So what’s the deal with MySpace? While they appear to be the red-headed stepchild of the social media space they still have a considerable number of users. I personally don’t know any of them but that doesn’t mean anything (other than the fact that I am not a pre-pubescent kid who is a music fan).

  How do you use MySpace, if at all? Is it still part of your social media strategy or sphere? Let us know. As always, we can talk all we want but until someone who actually is still active in MySpace chimes in, it’s just talk.

  
• 6:45

  Ask.com’s Ex-CEO Talks About His Departure & Company’s Chances Against Google

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  I’m going to say what most people will think when they read the news that former Ask.com CEO Jim Safka is back in the saddle again.

  Did he really leave Ask.com for the stated reason that his brother had died?

  Don’t get me wrong–losing a family member is crushing–but at the time, I couldn’t help but wonder if Ask.com was covering up Safka’s real reason for leaving.

  It turns out that I don’t have to feel too guilty about my theory. In an interview–that appears to focus more on Ask.com than his new company Chegg–Safka reveals that his brother’s death was not indeed the only reason he left the company.

  My reasons for wanting to leave were multifold. I always wanted to work for a company that was at an early stage and closer to my home. (Chegg is based in Santa Clara, Calif, and Ask is about 50 miles north, in Oakland.) It was a little earlier than I expected to leave Ask. But this in my mind was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  Is it just me, or does that last sentence practically spell out that Safka left Ask.com to take the Chegg job?

  When pressed if he left Ask.com because the company was dead in the water, Safka responded in a way that sounds like he signed a non-disparagement agreement on departure:

  Absolutely not. We completely overhauled the technology at Ask. In addition to improving the core search results for customers, we reduced the monetization (by running) fewer ads. So it’s a better user experience. That’s a good long-term move for the franchise. A lot of the metrics at Ask are heading in the right direction.

  Again, this is all my speculation, but reading between the lines, I suspect Safka left to focus on a company that had a chance of being #1 in its market. That will never happen with Ask.com.

  Want more marketing news & views? Follow Marketing Pilgrim’s Andy Beal on Twitter!

  
• June 22, 2009
• 14:16

  Deadline Extended: Search Scholarship Contest

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  To help all procrastinators, we’ve decided to extend the deadline for our $10,000 SEM Scholarship contest until 6pm ET Wednesday.

  You now have an additional two days to submit your 400+ word article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media.

  Please help spread the word by clicking the blue Twitter icon (or any of the social media icons) below this post.

  Thanks!

  Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

  
• 13:12

  Twitter Talks the Revenue Talk but Will It Walk the Revenue Walk?

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  With Facebook talking about reaching their lofty revenue goals for 2009 you would have to suspect that Twitter has to address the issue as well. Bloomberg reports today that Twitter is planning to show revenue in 2009 from clients like Dell, Whole Foods and Starbucks. This is coming from Biz Stone himself but when it comes to the details, well, let’s just say they fall well short of the 140 character limit.

  “The idea is if they are getting value out of Twitter then we could add more value to what they are doing and we could get some revenue,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview today. “We think we’ll get to something this year, however simple, that shows we’re making some money.” He declined to give sales estimates for this year.

  Not exactly the kind of words that you hang your hat on so to speak. Twitter is as much a lesson in hype as it is a lesson in the next level of social media. Sounds negative? Well, what do you believe anymore? If any other company did this “We’ll have revenue maybe, kinda, sorta” dance they would be pushed to the curb. Twitter gets a pass on these things because there isn’t much else to talk about apparently.

  Stone himself realizes that the window of opportunity could go away at just about any time.

  When asked how long the hype around Twitter could last, Stone said he’s realistic about Internet trends.

  “This kind of stuff doesn’t last forever and you have to have a healthy attitude toward it. Far be it from me to say when it would end, that would be a total guess.”

  Predicting Internet trends and the “time to live” on Twitter’s ability to capitalize on revenue opportunities apparently fall into the same category of being a total guess. His descriptions of how the Twitter bird would line it’s nest in San Francisco with cash is just as open ended.

  The San Francisco-based service could make money by verifying Twitter accounts, said Stone, so users “following” brands would know it was really Whole Foods or Coca-Cola Co. sending Tweets, or instant messages that can be 140 characters long. Twitter could also offer statistics to businesses detailing how effective their Tweets are and offer multiple accounts to large businesses with many branches, he said.

  I think people are ready to hear something a little more definitive than Twitter ‘could’ do this or that to make money. There is no denying that many are using the service as part of their marketing mix but how much does a company invest in putting together programs with a company’s service that is not making any money and appears to have no real plan to get there?

  In addition, Stone sounded resolute in the area of acquisitions. The direct quote is that “We’re not having those acquisition discussions, we’re not engaging in them.” OK, that one seems pretty plain and direct. So if that is the case where is the money going to come from to continue growth or to just make sure that the infrastructure doesn’t break under the weight of the new users coming on board?

  Ok, so let’s take off the gloves. What is the best way to monetize Twitter? Is real time search a real time possibility? Unless it was left out of the original article there was no mention from Stone about the thing that many feel could make Twitter a juggernaut. Are they able to deliver on that or are they just trying to redirect attention to other options because search isn’t quite there yet? Will companies pay for enhanced services? Is this all just chasing after the latest and greatest rumored ‘can’t miss’ Internet service? Do tell.

  

  Enter the 4th Annual SEM Scholarship Contest!

  We want to help find the brightest minds in search and social media, so each year, we ask you to submit your very best “how to” article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media. Learn how you can win a prize package worth over $10,000!

  
• 12:00

  Google Maps Tells Us What’s Here

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Just the other day, I was browsing through Google Maps and I saw what is properly classed as a “big ol’ building.” Aerial shots and even Street View couldn’t tell me what said building was, and I wished that Google could just check the repository of the Internet tell me what that building was.

  Well, it looks like my wish really is Google’s command! Google Maps has added a new feature called “What’s here?” Right-click on the USO (unidentified stationary object ) and you have the option of asking “What’s here?”:
  

  In most of the fairly random places I asked about, the answer seemed to be “We dunno . . . um, an address?”:
  

  However, shopping centers and office parks were more helpful:
  
  What, no shop listing?

  
  That’s better. Note that Google’s already integrated the “at this address” feature.

  Physical features also returned some good results. Like the shopping center above, this lake returned user-generated content, such as the pictures that Google layers on its maps:
  

  Interestingly, “What’s here?” takes into account how close you are to the object (in your map view):

  For example, if you’re zoomed in closely on Manhattan, you can get the full address of a point by clicking on “What’s here?”. . . .

  If you’re a bit more zoomed out, you can get larger features, such as the names of the different Islands in the Galapagos Archielago – Isla Fernandina, Isla Isabela, Isla Marchena, Isla Guy Fawkes, and so on.

  In my limited testing, though, sometimes Google could find a business by name, but couldn’t seem to find it for the “What’s here?” listings, no matter where on the block I tried. (And the “big ol’ building”? Google didn’t know.)

  This “reverse geocoding” capability has been available in the Maps API for a few months. what do you think—is this a useful tool or just another fun bell & whistle?

  Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

  
• 11:00

  Google Testing New Product Ads

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  UPDATE: Google Blogoscoped has screen shots of product ads in the wild.

  Google Blogoscoped received an anonymous tip Friday about Google’s next move in search advertising through its Affiliate Network: product ads. According to the email the tipster passed along,

  Product ads are paid product listings that appear [on Google.com SERPs] when users search for products on Google. . . .

  Google product ads will feature product specific information directly in the ad such as price and product image. During the beta program, Google will be testing to identify the most effective ad formats. Google product ads will complement standard text ads on Google.com and will run independently during the beta.

  
  Marketing Pilgrim’s mock up of the potential future of Google

  Testing for the new ad format doesn’t require additional ad creative or campaign management: it pulls information from Google Base and sets minimum pricing at “your standard publisher rate, plus the network fee.” (Google also encourages publishers to increase their CPAs “to maximize your competitiveness.”)

  The email also included an FAQ. The answers provided clarified that the ads are served “when the user’s query matches information provided in your product feed,” and independently of any text ads during the beta.

  Advertisers won’t be able to add keywords to these ads—”Google categorizes and matches the items from your product feed to the user’s search query for you.” Rankings are determined by commission and quality score (which includes relevance, conversion rate of the query and ad, advertiser account history and “other relevant factors.”)

  The Wall Street Journal points out today that this test might be a response to Bing’s “decision engine” challenge. Bing is positioning itself as the place to go for finding the best health, travel, local and shopping “answers.” And WSJ may have a point. I mean, compare these two above-the-fold SERPs for [canon digital camera]:

  

  

  Notice that, at bottom, Bing has no organic results above the fold (the pictures click through to product information and shopping pages on Bing.com). But what kind of clicks do you think they’re getting? When it comes down to it, pictures, prices and product info stand out in a sea of text and blue links.

  What do you think? Will tests be positive enough to get Google to roll out product ads?

  

  
• 8:43

  Facebook and Click Fraud

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Facebook is charging hard toward hitting that $550 million in revenue number that was put in front of potential investors recently. Of course, their pay per click model of advertising is going to be a critical component of getting there. It seems that there have been some troubles with click fraud for the past month or so which as TechCrunch reports, has set off some heated discussion of Facebook and its inability to tell advertisers “what’s on their mind.”

  As initially reported yesterday there were click fraud complaints that up to 100% of clicks were fraudulent. While click fraud is nothing new to pay per click advertisers this was a bit different. Many Facebook advertisers were getting charged for clicks that simply never happened. In ‘traditional’ click fraud (if there is such a thing) the clicks are seen by advertisers but they are ID’d as not legitimate sources thus labeling them fraudulent. Facebook advertisers just were getting charged and there were no clicks.

  While there are always problems with pay per click models it was Facebook’s apparent lack of attention given to complaints until there was recognition of the issue with TechCrunch. Many complaints were found on WickedFire and there was some heated discussion including (in which I have replaced some of the wonderful language that these folks use to communicate)

  This is experienced by not just those that use 202. When in doubt, look at your raw apache logs – which I did. The result: 15% – 20% clicks never make it to my LP. Clearly a case of click-fraud going on. Tested on 3 different servers at 3 different DCs (not a network issue).

  Sucks how high the numbers are today. Its clear the problem is getting worse daily. I’ve moved most of my “%$#^” off facebook for the time being and magically my %$#^ is all positive again. Crazy how that works. There are lots of places to buy traffic, some that will even actually give you the traffic you are paying for. Facebook is never going to admit to whats going on. I can almost guarantee you that.

  Facebook is still reporting 20% more clicks than I actually get. This is bull$#%#. If I were at least getting bot traffic or something that would be one thing, but right now Facebook is simply stealing 20% of clicks that I paid for, which adds up to thousands of dollars. Someone should threaten legal action, this is straight up fraud on Facebook’s part.

  What really got under the skin of the advertisers is the response they had received from Facebook regarding their issues.

  According to the WickedFire posts, Facebook isn’t officially acknowledging the problem or giving any refunds so far. But they are asking some advertisers to send in logs to show the discrepancy. So far, advertisers who go to the trouble to do this aren’t getting the response they wanted: “I was asked to send in my logs so I spent over an hour compiling logs over the time period in question, and they replied with their &^#$ing scripted bull^%#$. I was sooo ^#$%ing pissed, since I took the time to do that and they churn out a 2 second response.”

  So if you are Facebook, what should you do once this becomes something that is more than a few compaints? Well, Brandon McCormick at Facebook chimed into the comment stream over at TechCrunch with

  This is Brandon on the Facebook communications team. I wanted to chime in to make sure that our voice was part of this discussion and to clarify how we are addressing this issue.

  We take click quality very seriously and have a series of measures in place to detect it. We have large volumes of data to analyze click patterns and can identify suspicious activity quickly.

  Over the past few days, we have seen an increase in suspicious clicks. We have identified a solution which we have already begun to implement and expect will be completely rolled out by the end of today. In addition, we are identifying impacted accounts and will ensure that advertisers are credited appropriately.

  TechCrunch has published an update for this post that outlines some aggressive (but apparently not real subtle) attempts to grab some business from Facebook. As with anything in life it’s actually never about the problem. Stuff happens and in the Internet space that is even more prevalent. What is most important is how a problem is dealt with.

  Had Facebook addressed these complaints differently from the start do you think the level of frustration expressed on WickedFire and elsewhere would have been as damaging? Online reputations are just like ‘traditional’ reputations (once again, if there is such a thing) in that the best way to handle any problems is quickly, head on and with transparency. Does it mean you will get a perfect solution every time? Absolutely not. It does, however, give you the best shot at making a bad situation better. So Facebook, remember that when you ask “What’s on your mind?” you have been cleaning up your side of the street.

  

  
• 8:42

  C-Level Executives Under 40 Blog, Tweet, & Click More!

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  Forbes and Google have released a new report called The Rise of the Digital C-Suite: How Executives Locate and Filter Business Information.

  It’s a fascinating read–mostly because it highlights the difference in internet habits of C-level executives,  based on their age. Why is this important? Because those executives that are under 40 will likely, in the next 5-10 years, be the ones taking over the CEO role.

  When they do, we’re going to see a dramatic shift in the way company executives research and contribute to the web.

  

  And there’s good news for search marketers too!

  

  Get your free copy of the report!

  

  
• 8:13

  Small Business Online Reputation Management Advice

   » ‎ Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

  BusinessWeek’s Rachael King specializes in helping small businesses understand technology. Her latest article looks at the online reputation management industry and includes lots of great advice–including some from yours truly.

  A number of free tools also can help you scout the Web, social networks, and online forums for mentions of your company, brand, or products (chart). Google Alerts, for instance, will send an e-mail each time your name shows up in Google () searches. "One of the most important steps is to do an audit of what people are saying about your business," says Andy Beal, a reputation management consultant at Marketing Pilgrim in Raleigh, N.C. He suggests doing a monthly Google search to see what shows up in the top 20 results, which