Yearly Archives: 2005

Random

Google is going to start letting advertisers place ads on specific web sites within their network. It’s not out yet, but it will be soon, and the implications are broad: Content will become that much more important; sites that offer a lot of clicks but poor conversion may find that their AdSense revenue drops; and… Read More

Internet Marketing

A few months ago I raised Folksonomies like Technorati as an emerging online marketing venue. Well, now WebProNews has an article talking about Tagvertising. Highlights: – Search engines, from Looksmart to Ask Jeeves, are purchasing folksonomies and trying to integrate the technology into search results. – Amazon.com is also investing. Now, I could say things… Read More

Analytics

Google bought Urchin today. Here’s the link. Yes, I’m patting myself on the back – I’ve always loved Urchin’s product. But what does this mean for Google, and for my favorite web analytics program? My guess is that this is the end for Urchin’s server-side software. I’d be surprised if Google continues to support it.… Read More

Random

Apparently, Google’s going to learn that whole, sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander thing. Mark Pilgrim has written a new add-in for Firefox called Butler. It’s free, and among other things, it removes Google Autolinks from pages you visit. Now, I’m not going to be adding this to my Firefox browser, because it… Read More

SEO

A group of programmers have decided to start editing the content of web pages folks visit without telling them, thereby rerouting them around the Internet. Sounds like a bunch of hackers, right? Wrong. It’s Google. Here’s why it’s bad, why it’s not as bad as it sounds, and why I think it’ll go away soon.… Read More

Random

Yes, it’s true. Overture is changing its name to better reflect its Yahoo! ownership. The implications, for me at least, is that MSN may be moving to their own pay-per-click marketing platform sooner than they’re saying. Why else would Overture rebrand themselves in a way that will clearly ruffle feathers over at Microsoft? I’ll keep… Read More

SEO

I participated in a panel discussion last night at the WSA’s monthly dinner meeting. Also on the panel was Larry Sivitz of SearchWrite, Detlev Johnson from PositionTech, Heather Lloyd-Martin from WebSourced, Inc., and Gary McAvoy of GetToTheTop. It was a great discussion moderated by Bruce Alexander. Here are the highlights… Much of the talk centered… Read More

Internet Marketing

As traditional search engines branch out to include images and other media in their regular results, as competition broadens among those engines, and as new ranking and classification schemes join the web (think folksonomies – if you don’t know the term, Google it!), focusing on keyword-rich text won’t be enough. It’s time to get topical.… Read More

Design & Development

Not sure how I feel about this, but Google is starting to mix photos into their text search results. Search for ‘bicycle’ and you’ll see what I mean. Does this really add value? Or does it clutter up a previously clean interface? Personally I’m not that thrilled with the meaningful results being shoved even further… Read More

Random

I’ll be sitting on a panel at the Washington Software Association’s February 15 dinner meeting, “Key Words, Key Strategies, Key Technologies”. If you’re interested in attending you can read up on the event here. There’ll be some heavy hitters there talking about SEO, keyword research and how the world of search may change in the… Read More

Internet Marketing

Wired Magazine published an article in their last issue about the rise of right-brained thinking. It’s the best case for Conversation Marketing I’ve ever heard. And I didn’t even pay the guy… The author, Daniel H. Pink, suggests that just as analytical left-brained thinking drove the Information Age, balanced, left- and right-brained thinking will drive… Read More

SEO

Wired Magazine has a great article, just posted, entitled Googling the Bottom Line. There are two themes in this article: One, the author’s focus, is that a top-30 ranking is a must if you want to grow site traffic. Duh. The author’s second point is what impressed me most: Unethical search engine optimization techniques wreak… Read More

SEO

Is there really a Google Sandbox? Many search engine optimization pros feel that Google is applying some type of filtering to new sites with certain ratios of incoming links. I’m not sure if I buy that, but I do know that the rules for Google have changed, and that new web sites are languishing for… Read More

Internet Marketing

Google has introduced a new search appliance, and I’m pretty damned happy about it. Those of you who know me know that that means a LOT. So what’s the big deal? Usability… The Google engine is fast, sophisticated and accurate. It also paved new ground in the search usability field. With the Mini, you can… Read More