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Wikia Introduces "Evolution" Toolbar To Expand Reach To Other Search Engines
Like many before it, most recently Mahalo, Wikia Search has introduced a Firefox toolbar, called "Wikia Evolution," to expand the site's reach and engage more users in the process of adding and annotating search results.
In the notes, it suggests that Google is taking a page from its community playbook: "Already, we’re the cutting edge when it comes to incorporating user feedback into our search results, so much so that Google is experimenting with eerily similar features."
Google To Add AdSense Features With DoubleClick Cookies Technology
The Google Blog announced that Google is improving the content network (aka AdSense) by leveraging the technology they have acquired with DoubleClick. First I'll discuss the feature and then I will get into the privacy issues.
Redirects: Good, Bad & Conditional
Whenever you make changes to a web site, one of the most important considerations should be how to use "redirects" to alert the search engine to your changes, to avoid having a negative impact on your search rankings. Whether you're moving pages around, switching CMS platforms, or just wanting to avoid duplicate content and PageRank dilution, you'll want to employ redirects so as not to squander any link juice (PageRank) that your site has acquired. There are multiple ways of redirecting, and it's important you get it right if you want the SEO benefit without risk of falling outside search engine guidelines (such as is the case with "conditional redirects").
Link Building with Customers, Part 2
Avoiding Online Missteps with Generation Y and Millenniums
The It Getters
Posted by randfish
Some people just "get" the web. I don't know how to explain this phenomenon effectively or convey a reasonable set of criteria upon which a person could be judged, but there's no doubt about it. I think back to the first time I heard Greg Boser or Jessie Stricchiola speak at a conference, the first few blog posts I read at MindValleyLabs, the SEOmoz comments I read from Shor, the first time I talked in depth about the business of being online with my friend (and now colleague) Nick Gerner and the first time I met Kelly Smith from Curious Office. Every experience had that same "click" in my head that went something like "hey this person's pretty smart, they really seem to know their.... Oh My God.... They actually get 'it.'"
I spoke with a fellow Seattle startup CEO about this subject just the other day, and he noted that he tries to spend 75% of his time or more coaching his best people, his "it getters," because this produces the highest ROI for the company in the long run. I've heard similar advice from a lot of management coaching books and articles - invest in the best people you can get and they'll drive the business to do incredible work.
From my experience, it seems that the "it getter" scale looks something like this:
In great organizations, it seems to me that there's at least one, and on rare occassion two or three true "it-getters." At amazing companies, during amazing times (like Google over the last 10 years or Microsoft in the '80's and '90's), I'd posit that there might actually be more. Companies filled with "it-getters" are magnets for other "it-getters."
The problem is, companies get big, add staff and eventually, the hiring gets a bit sloppy. Thus, you can accidentally add lots of "doesn't get it" and "causes others to lose it" to your organization, sucking away the ability of others to produce more amazing times.
I'd say this all seems pretty basic and intuitive to most entrepreneurs and even most people who are aware of their work environments. Unless you're on the bottom rungs of my scale, you can probably ID most everyone on this scale fairly accurately. Except... Some people get "it" when it comes to certain topics, but not others. I'll use myself as an example. I think that generally, I get "it" when "it" is SEO. But I don't get PPC, I don't get landing page optimization, I don't get personas or display advertising. I might not even get management - I'm probably in the "sorta" or "mostly" gets it barrel there.
So let me propose a short, and extremely simple set of recommendations for anyone running a company, starting a company, managing a team or planning their professional life:
- Discover what "it" is that you get.
- Apply yourself ruthlessly to "it"
- Become competent at identifying "it" getters in your areas of weakness
- Surround yourself with them
I'd venture to guess that this "simple" process is something very few organizations of any kind and very few people ever get right.
Close your eyes and think of the best meal you've ever had - the one where every piece of every dish sung with flavor and texture. It was probably prepared by an "it" getter. Now consider all the devices you use in your life - your chair, your phone, your laptop, your TV, a set of headphones, a car. That very best one - the one where everything works intuitively and harmoniously to make using it so simple and pleasurable that you recoil at the thought of any substitute - designed by "it" getters.
I'm not saying that competent people can't do good work. I just have this nagging feeling that when the stars align and every piece comes together just right, it's because the people behind it are doing something they "get."
Sorry for getting off the SEO track this week - I'll redirect my writing back to those topics soon :)
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 6, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
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Google StreetView Coverage Grows: Australia, Japan, More US Cities
The Google LatLong Blog announced the expansion of imagery for Google StreetView to include Japan and Australia. The post also said that images have been released for 30 new US cities, including New Orleans. Europe is on the way but privacy hurdles need to be cleared first. Google recently introduced... -
Live Search Webmaster Center Gains Crawl Error and Backlinks Reports
Today, the Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Center is launching its first major update since its initial debut last fall. The Live Search Webmaster Center is Microsoft's hub for their communication with site owners and the tools portion of that center now has new crawl issues reports, backlinks data, and download... -
Looking For The Paris Hilton Campaign Video -- How'd The Search Engines Do?
As much as I've enjoyed comedians poking fun at John McCain's ad that uses Paris Hilton to mock Barack Obama, even better is a new fake ad where Paris Hilton herself takes on McCain. People are clearly turning to the web to find it -- Google Trends shows plenty... -
Google Sells Off Performics To Publicis Groupe
SmartMoney reports that Google has sold off the search marketing division of DoubleClick, Performics, to a French company named Publicis Groupe. When Google purchased DoubleClick, they acquired Performics with it. Google promised to sell off the Performics division, due to the conflict of interest in owning such a company. Today,... -
Pew: Daily Search Usage Approaching Email Levels
According to a new report from The Pew Internet & American Life Project, daily use of search engines is growing and starting to approach email usage levels. New research conducted by telephone among 2,251 US adults, age 18 and older, found that 49 percent of internet users use a search... -
Switching Gears With Paid Search: 6 Steps To Redefining Success For A Branding Campaign
Sweat glistened down his chiseled, tan face. Clad in his trademark gold jersey and black sunglasses, the icon finally put the finish line where it belongs... behind him. Yet despite the obvious missing hardware—his bike—and his dismal 488th place finish, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France considered... -
After Re-Tally, "No" Votes Against Yahoo Board Higher Than First Reported
I must have done something in a past life that now requires me, as punishment, to write about the obscure politics of Yahoo's corporate governance on an almost daily basis. Accordingly, a recount of board votes from last Friday's Yahoo annual shareholder meeting found that the "no" votes against most... -
Google China Launches Music Search
Music 2.0 has shared detailed screen captures and commentary on the launch of Google China Music Search. I personally cannot get to this site ("Sorry, Google is not your region provide you with the services they need" message appears"), but Music 2.0 does have screen captures and calls this Google... -
Local Shopping Coming To A Mobile Phone Near You
For some time I've tried to argue that product search is part of "local search," because 90 percent or more of all products searched for online are purchased in physical stores. This is a neglected part of the local search story, which has heretofore largely been about "plumbers and pizza."... -
Q&A With Rob Crigler, Director Of Interactive Marketing For Orkin
Rob Crigler is the Director of Interactive Marketing for Orkin (NYSE: ROL), overseeing online media, DRTV, web dev, Internet yellow pages, SEO, and SEM. Rob has over 20 years of marketing experience, and he has been working in the interactive space for so long that he can actually remember... -
Using Search Engines To Reach Business Executives
Many B2B marketers are frustrated by their inability to reach executive-level decision makers. Recent research indicates they needn't look further than the internet. Let's explore how marketers can utilize search engines to easily and cost-effectively reach executives online.... -
Google Insights For Search Launches
Google has launched Google Insights for Search, a tool that helps advertisers and marketers understand searcher behavior. The tool offers a comprehensive set of statistics based on search volume and patters. You can compare seasonal trends, geographic distributions, and category-specific searches, and you can group all these variables together to... -
Google Adds Olympics One Box Results
I was chatting with Danny about the Yahoo Olympics Shortcut on the Daily SearchCast and Danny noticed that a search for beach volleyball olympics on Google returns a Google OneBox result....
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
- Anonymous referrers for private sites, Google Sites Blog
- Google Gadgets Under Attack at Black Hat, InternetNews
- Picasa Web Albums prints now available at Walgreens, Google Photos Blog
- When Google Owns You, chrisbrogan.com
Business Issues
- Russian Online Advertising Spending Up 73% in 1H 2008, Quintura blog
- Facebook Stock for Sale, BusinessWeek
- UBS says Microsoft aims for $20 billion buyback: report, Yahoo! News
Local, Maps & Mobile
- Google Says Android's Fine, No Need To Join LiMo, InformationWeek
- Leverage Local Listings in Live Search, WebProNews
Link Building
- Risk Management: Transitioning Away From Paid Links, Stone Temple
- Your Link Here - Link Buying Goes Too Far | Ranked Hard - SEO Comic, www.bigoakinc.com
- SEOs Split On Buying Links Have The NoFollow Attribute, Search Engine Roundtable
- Tools to Explore and Validate Page Outbound Links, Search Engine Journal
- Internal Link Building Update, seoroi.com
- Link Building vs Content Promotion for Links, Online Marketing Blog
Paid Search & Contextual
- Deadline is approaching for adCenter API version 5.1 update, version 4 sunset - adCenter API Blog for Developers, adcentercommunity.com
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool Suffers Temporary Outage, Search Engine Roundtable
- How to Determine if Your Landing Page is Hurting Your AdWords Qualty Score , PPC Hero
Searching
- Diagnosing Search Issues from the Query Box, Part 2, ClickZ
- Google Search Appliance gets bigger, better, stores 10M docs in a box, VentureBeat
- Is ChaCha "Imploding" or Growing?, Screenwerk
- TicketStumbler Aggregates Secondary Ticket Search, TechCrunch
- New News Search Engine: Newsflashr, Search Engine Watch Blog
- AJAX Libraries API Update, Google AJAX Search API Blog
SEM Industry
- Dear SEO Community, It's Not Me, It's You, Sugarrae
- How Many of You Meet with SEO Clients?, Search Engine Roundtable
- Roderick Ioerger: Search Blogger of the Day, The SEO Scoop
SEO & SEM
- Surprising Branding Benefits of Search, Search Engine Guide
- To infinity and beyond? No!, Official Google Webmaster Central Blog
- Google Stopwords Patent, SEO By The Sea
- Is Yahoo Search More Relevant Now? SEOs Claim "More Like Google", Search Engine Roundtable
- Robots.txt vs Rel=Nofollow vs Meta Robots Nofollow, SEO Book
- The Most Valuable Lesson I Learned When Pursuing a Finance Major, SEOmoz
- Thinking Outside The SEO Box, Search This
- WebPosition Ranking Software Being Blocked by Google?, Search Engine Roundtable
- Advanced Tips for Optimizing Your Blog, WebOptimist.com
- Flash and SEO: Like Oil and Water, Search Engine Guide
- The Ultimate Guide To: SERP Click Through Rates, Searchlight Digital
Social Media
- 3 ways to search Twitter, Pandia
- ToAnswer: Twitter Meets Yahoo Answers, TechCrunch
- An Actual "Non Big Brand" Twitter Case Study, Sugarrae
- Twitter Marketing Tools: How to Use Twitter as a Marketing Tool with Tweet Pro, Gray Wolf
Web Analytics
- Google Analytics Auto-Tagging, Shimon Sandler
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
- Nailing the Coffin Shut on the "Don't Link to External Sites" Philosophy
- An Actual “Non Big Brand” Twitter Case Study
- Are people really this clueless? Woman on the Street Interview!
- Google Insights for Search - New Killer Keyword Research Tool
- Questions to Ask a Candidate During A SEM Job Interview
- Google Insights for Search Launches
- 10 Reasons Why Sphinn Makes Me Hate SEO (This headline is one of them)
- SEO Wars - Empire Googletron
- Top SEO Firms Paid for by the Following...
- Find Customers and Backlinks by Adding Your Site to Coupon Directories
- Are The Best SEOs Not Taking on Client Work?
- Dear SEO Community, It’s Not Me, It’s You
- Examining a Search Ranking Fluctuation
Google StreetView Coverage Grows: Australia, Japan, More US Cities
The Google LatLong Blog announced the expansion of imagery for Google StreetView to include Japan and Australia. The post also said that images have been released for 30 new US cities, including New Orleans.
Europe is on the way but privacy hurdles need to be cleared first. Google recently introduced StreetView images for the Tour de France route and was just cleared by British government authorities to launch the service in the UK.
Live Search Webmaster Center Gains Crawl Error and Backlinks Reports
Today, the Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Center is launching its first major update since its initial debut last fall. The Live Search Webmaster Center is Microsoft's hub for their communication with site owners and the tools portion of that center now has new crawl issues reports, backlinks data, and download functionality. The Webmaster Center was first announced at Searchification in September and launched in November 2007 with a blog, discussion forum, and set of tools that give site owners insight into Microsoft's crawl and indexing of their sites. Below more details about what's launched today and how site owners can use the new data.
Google Sells off Search Marketing Division of DoubleClick
Last March Google acquired DoubleClick and it’s affiliate and search marketing arm Performics. That sent some chills up the spine of a lot of companies who saw it as a conflict of interest. Today it was announced that Google is selling a part of Performics, to Publicis Groupe, one of the top four global advertising companies.
Just this June Google rebranded Performics to the “Google Affiliate Network” but seemed to have done little else with the division. That was a relief since Google is the world’s largest search engine and they owned a company who tried to get their clients to the top of search results.
Google’s blog noted they still intended to sell the search marketing division of Performics: “As noted in earlier communications, DoubleClick Performics’ Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performics’ Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clients’ search and affiliate programs.”
Last year Google disclosed that they had been working with Publicis Group. No doubt they are working to bridge gaps between the print advertising and online advertising worlds. Google needs to better service agencies and agencies want to expand their online offerings. Google will continue to benefit from this partnership without the conflict of interest they had when they owned it.
Publicis Group can now offer SEM services (paid search and search engine optimization) to their clients and develop technology to manage this across search engines. Performics has over 150 search engine marketing (SEM) clients, representing over 200 top global brands.
The deal is expected to close at the end of this year.
Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com - Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!
Looking For The Paris Hilton Campaign Video -- How'd The Search Engines Do?
As much as I've enjoyed comedians poking fun at John McCain's ad that uses Paris Hilton to mock Barack Obama, even better is a new fake ad where Paris Hilton herself takes on McCain. People are clearly turning to the web to find it -- Google Trends shows plenty of people seeking it in a variety of ways. A quick look at that below, how easily (or not) the video can be found on search engines and the video itself.
Google Sells Off Performics To Publicis Groupe
SmartMoney reports that Google has sold off the search marketing division of DoubleClick, Performics, to a French company named Publicis Groupe.
When Google purchased DoubleClick, they acquired Performics with it. Google promised to sell off the Performics division, due to the conflict of interest in owning such a company. Today, they sold it to Publicis Groupe.
Pew: Daily Search Usage Approaching Email Levels
According to a new report from The Pew Internet & American Life Project, daily use of search engines is growing and starting to approach email usage levels. New research conducted by telephone among 2,251 US adults, age 18 and older, found that 49 percent of internet users use a search engine on a typical day, compared with 60 percent for email.
In 2002, Pew's data showed that about 30 percent of people online used search daily.
Pilgrim’s Picks for August 6
The big news in Raleigh, NC? The daytime high for this weekend is expected to be 84F! Time to grab a scarf!
Here are today’s delectable Picks:
- Google Search Appliance gets bigger, better, stores 10M docs in a box.
- Google launches free music service in China - when does the US get this?
- Yahoo to update shareholder vote after error–although outcome won’t change.
- Google pushing software to low-cost Linux PCs.
- Google engineer hits street for marriage proposal 2.0.
- Russian online advertising spending up 73% in first half of 2008
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!
Switching Gears With Paid Search: 6 Steps To Redefining Success For A Branding Campaign
Sweat glistened down his chiseled, tan face. Clad in his trademark gold jersey and black sunglasses, the icon finally put the finish line where it belongs... behind him. Yet despite the obvious missing hardware—his bike—and his dismal 488th place finish, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France considered the race a success. He had his reasons.
Believe it or not, search marketers have a lot to learn from Lance Armstrong. For once, the above race wasn't about the win. Instead, the fierce competitor laced-up to run the Boston Marathon for another reason entirely: Awareness for Livestrong, his non-profit foundation for cancer survivors. In the process, not only did he shift gears—from acquisition to branding—he also took the time to redefine success. Similarly, search marketers looking to leverage paid search for branding purposes would be wise to do the same.
New Google Insights: Fact or Fiction? You Tell Me
Google has announced the latest iteration in its quest to provide more analytics–Google Insights. Building on the recent updates to Google Trends, Insights offers better filtering, related keywords, keywords with “rising” popularity, and a global heat map.
It’s a smorgasbord of data.
Google claims Google Insights is…
“…a new product designed with the advertiser in mind. It provides more flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior…”
I think it will appeal greatly to those of us that don’t have access to more comprehensive market research–which is probably 99% of us–but I’d caution building your entire marketing campaign around the data provided by Google Insights.
For example, take a look at this data for the keyword “iPhone.”
You tell me. Does you gut instinct make you question that there’s more interest for the iPhone in Trinidad and Tobago than in the United States?
What about this search for “reputation management.”
Apart from Glen Allsopp, I don’t hear much talk about reputation management coming out of South Africa.
What do you think of Google Insights? Go play around with it some and let me know what you think. A valuable market research tool or just eye-candy for when you don’t have anything better to do?
UPDATE: As Danny Sullivan points out, the data is normalized. What does this mean? As Google explains:
Just because two regions show the same percentage for a particular term doesn’t mean that their absolute search volumes are the same. Data from these two regions - with significant differences in search volumes - can be compared equally because the data has been normalized by the total traffic from each respective region. So, we can assume that users in both Fiji and Canada are equally likely to search for the term hotel.
But, but! Regardless of search volume, Google Insights is suggesting that there is more interest for the term “iphone” in Trinidad and Tobago, than the United States–I’m still having a hard time buying that.
Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!
Woohoo for Yahoo
How Long Should My Landing Page Test Run?
After Re-Tally "No" Votes Against Yahoo Board Higher Than First Reported
I must have done something in a past life that now requires me, as punishment, to write about the obscure politics of Yahoo's corporate governance on an almost daily basis. Accordingly, a recount of board votes from last Friday's Yahoo annual shareholder meeting found that the "no" votes against most of the current board membership, and most notably CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock, had doubled.
Google China Launches Music Search
Music 2.0 has shared detailed screen captures and commentary on the launch of Google China Music Search. I personally cannot get to this site, but Music 2.0 does have screen captures and calls this Google service "more impressive" then many of the international counterparts.