Grr! Misconstrued Comments! :(

I'm a little annoyed by this - even though I know it may be an over reaction.

Over the weekend (I assume) someone set up a blog to publicly out a large UK finance web site for buying an awful lot of links. This is old news to the UK SEO community.

The single page blog was quickly picked up by a member of the UK SEO community and posted to Sphinn. It went hot quickly and currently has over 50 sphinns and 20 comments.

There are loads of comments on the original blog post too. One of the comments comes from "Big mouth".

Either by accident or by design that name "Big mouth" could quite easily be interpreted as coming from bigmouthmedia or someone in bigmouthmedia.

It hasn't. It didn't.

I've emailed around the whole of the UK, the US and much of France and Germany! I've spoken to all sorts of people in our finance vertical and SEO department (heck; even the PPC department) and no current employee made that comment.

That comment would be against our blogs, forums and networking guidelines. We like to encourage people to read and take part in the Search Community but no one is allowed to represent the company without permission. No one gets permission for that sort of comment! In fact, let me repeat the big warning on the side of this blog - this is a personal blog, my comments here don't reflect the views of my employers.

So, what do you think? Am I over reacting? We don't claim to own the concept of "big mouth" - I mean, that's pretty generic. Do you think someone within bigmouthmedia couldn't resist the temptation to get their two pence in? (But why brand it; badly with a space between 'big' and 'mouth'?). Was it a competitor?

Or just I just go a vent some frustration by trying to play Guitar Hero on Medium level again?

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New Nectar Card. No Brands.

I got my new Nectar card in the post today. The first thing that I noticed confirmed to me that I'm an odd marketing-tech geek type of guy. The big brands who initially sponsored Nectar, notably Sainsbury's, are gone from the card.

My old card had Sainsbury's, Barclaycard, Debenhams and BP logos on the front. My new card is %100 Nectar.

If you're not familiar with Nectar then it's best thought of as a loyalty card. I hand it in when I buy stuff in Sainsbury's or (more commonly) Debenhams, etc, and I accrue loyalty points. In return Nectar learn what I like and I eventually get to trade my points in for free stuff. Along the way I may get special deals where if I buy this or that then I'll get extra Nectar points.

Interestingly, Nectar is also a corporate super affiliate. I can go to the Nectar website and gain Nectar points for shopping at Amazon or iTunes - as if Amazon and iTunes weren't tempting enough. You log into the site using the last 11 digits on your card (as shown in the image here).

Every now and then there's a rumble that Sainsbury's will be leaving Nectar and either doing a loyalty card which is exclusively theirs or ditching the loyalty card concept all together.

I imagine what we have here is a typical affiliate comment - why should I engage in brand building for you? What do I get out of it?

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HMV moving into social media

Early next year (or thereabouts) we'll see HMV launch a social media site.

We have some clues from HMV's e-commerce director Gideon Lask

We've been in extensive dialogue with our core music and film suppliers, to identify cool and exciting content that we hope to include when we launch next year.

The way people discover and consume music and film is changing, and we need to reflect this in what we do.

HMV staff will be the first to explore and report on the site, along with a small number of hand-picked public users who will be identified by Cake.

Agencies LBi and Cake have helped develop the site. I've had one journalist ring me up and really wanted me to dismiss this as another "me too" project. I didn't agree. I suspect that line of questioning comes from Lask saying;

There are so many details we're still finalising - we're not even sure how best to describe the concept, and we haven't settled on a final name.

Although it remains to be seen whether the social media site is successful I wouldn't dismiss this as a "me too". HMV needs to look at the way people find and discuss music these days and this is exactly how they do it. I'd love to see it. I don't think I know anyone in Cake otherwise I'd be pestering them!

If the site is successful then it should help offset HMV's poor PPC strategy which is heavily reliant on burning through tokens and database queries to update bids in line with their inventory. That's a short term strategy and means HMV's clicks are more expensive than competitors. It also means they don't get to use current hits (inventory pending) to drive traffic to the site. A better strategy would be landing pages which cross-sold should the keyword title not be currently available. Not only would that let HMV benefit from the fickle fashion in music but would allow them to bid more cheaply.

So, we've got HMV making a stab at social (there's an irony in a company called His Master's Voice engaging with the voice of the socialnet) but doing badly in PPC. We also have Zavvi (ex-Virgin Megastories) leaving themselves open for annihilation on the SEO front. 2008 will be an interesting year for Entertainment retailers and affiliates!

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Ask.com gets new digital advertising agency

What did you make of Ask.com's "Information Revolution" ad campaign? It was put together and promoted by Fallon and Profero.

Ask.com has given the digital brief to Grand Union now. According to Kate Nettleton of Campaign (sub needed), Profero, who worked on the guerrilla campaign and had Ask.com's business for five years, politely declined to repitch for the work. It isn't uncommon for an agency to refuse to pitch but whenever it happens I certainly take notice.

I gather Hyper (which is the digital arm of Fallon), Agency Republic and Glue (sister agency to iProspect via Aegis parents) did take part in the pitch.

So what's the challenge that Grand Union now faces? It's Google. Search marketing is worth about £1.2 billion in the UK (with current exchange rates that's about a trillion billion* US dollars). Of course, the first step isn't to attract in search marketing agencies but to get users to the search engine. The search agencies will put money where the searchers are. Given that Ask.com (which is how Ask.co.uk is branded) still leans heavily on Google for revenue share on paid search adverts Grand Union will have to drive in the traffic while Ask.com decides on the best way to make money from it.


*Slight exaggeration.

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Benvenuto bigmouthmedia Italy

Yay! Today Italy became bigmouthmedia Italy. Oh. I don't mean that all of Italy has become bigmouthmedia (hmm, think of the food!) but that Global Media has rebranded as bigmouthmedia in Italy.

I'm super pleased. The Italian market is really interesting - a lot of good ideas, some great companies, a nice stream of new media ideas and some established business practices. Everyone of the bigmouthmedia Italians I've met have really impressed me (boy, can they dance well!).

I hope no one's confused about the bigmouthmedia / Global Media merger. It's just bigmouthmedia now. If you walk into one of our offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Scandinavia or anywhere in mainland Europe then you're walking into a bigmouthmedia office.

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Ask.com to boost product search with PriceRunner white label

Over at Revolution, Halyey Pinkerfield brings us the news that Ask.com is going to launch a white label of PriceRunner.co.uk as part of their effort to boost their shopping search.

Let's take a step back here. You might first wonder what Ask.com is doing with PriceRunner.co.uk. Well; over here in the UK Ask.co.uk is branded as Ask.com An easy way to see this is in the Google SERPs were the .co.uk listing has the .com title.

So, we're probably only looking at Ask UK bringing in PriceRunner.co.uk.



Does this boost their shopping search? Not really. Ask aren't enhancing their shopping search system at all - they're getting someone else to do it. However, this will boost their Christmas shopping search revenues and that can only be a good thing for the search engines.

In addition to a bit more cash it also lets Ask UK play around with the best way of integrating shopping search to their site. You could think of the PriceRunner deal as a toe in the water. If Ask can see how much money they could make from shopping search then perhaps that'll help them decide whether they want to invest in their own technology.

The PriceRunner deal is a good idea. I just wish Ask would reconsider its branding a little.

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Hallo bigmouthmedia Germany

I'm really buzzed about this. The talented people in our Munich and Hamburg offices get to be bigmouths!

Today Global Media announced the Germany would re-brand as bigmouthmedia. We even have a shiny new bigmouthmedia.de site. I mention that because the old globalmedia-webmarketing.de site has an impressive PageRank - 8/10. We'll wrestle with getting 301 redirects on those .html pages and see what we can do about scooping that up and moving it over.

I'm bias, of course, but I don't think there's anyone in Germany who come close to touching the hems of our teams. They're that good.

If that wasn't good enough I'm off to OMD in Dusseldorf (no ad:tech London for me) and then on to Munich this week.

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Everyclick hires agencies

Everyclick is a UK based search engine that shares its money with charities. The deal is simple; when people click on the (Ask powered) sponsored links alongside the organic listings, Everyclick gives a portion of that revenue to charities.

They've given £250,000 already to charities and are the UK's eighth largest search engine. I've had noodles with Polly Gowers, Everyclick's CEO and founder, and she's a great laugh - which counts for a lot in my book!

Anyway!

Everyclick have appointed Edelman and Geronimo to make more people aware of Everyclick. This can only be a good thing? They're going to target print and web.

I have to wonder (and hope) that Everyclick run a "feel good" campaign. I think that will contrast sharply against Ask's more gloomy and spooky campaign. I think Everyclick will be more successful.

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Zavvi, Zavvi, Zavvi, oih!

Affiliates start your engines. Race!

The Virgin Megastores chain has been sold - to itself. Branson sold all the UK and Irish megastores to a management buyout team.

Here's the SEO angle. The new team is going to rebrand the stores 'Zavvi'. If you quickly pop over to Google and do a [Zavvi] search you'll see that the number one position is up for grabs. In fact, the whole of page #1 is going to be a land rush.

It'll be interesting to see if any of 'Zavvi's' mainstream competitors - HMV, CDWOW, etc, risk a brand bidding strategy. It's not very ethical but I doubt Zavvi will get the trademark paperwork done in time for launch at Google. It's more likely we'll see affiliates brand bidding and that's a different kettle of fish.

Update: I don't think they have the .com. The .co.uk was registered on the 5th of this month by "Broomco".

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Dopez votre audience

I'm back from Paris. What a great city!

French Googlers are great fun! It was a pleasure to meet so many. I don't think I bumped into any one from Google or Yahoo while I was at the E-commerce Paris expo (just private events after it) but Mirago and MSN adCenter were there. I know Google Analytics did do a presentation too.

Okay! It's time to remind readers that this is a personal blog. These opinions are my opinions and not those of the company I work for. Even with that important caveat in place it is also to true to say that the company I work for doesn't engage in mud slinging or slagging off competitors.

It just so happens that the company involved in this post is involved in search (or, if I picked up the French correctly; referencement).

This post is actually an example of why you need to localise your marketing efforts. What may work in one country may not work in another.

One of the companies at E-commerce Paris were handing out pens that looked like syringes. They had a hi-lite end, an ink end and looked pretty funky.



Here's the catch. The other side of the syringes was less funky (to me and my British ways, at least).



The text says "Dopez votre audience" which is best translated as "dope your traffic".

I get the idea. You want a boost in your traffic - here's a syringe with some performance enhancing dope!

Eek! For the life of me, I can not imagine any search agency attempting such a marketing angle in the UK or the US. The association to cheating in sports is just too strong.

If a sprinter does well - people begin whispering about stamina enhancing drugs. Doping charges. Disqualification.

There's no way that professional sport trainers would waltz around an athletics conference handing out fake "dope your results" syringes. They'd get thrown out.

Why would you want to crystallise all that negative imagery and then apply it to your own brand and the performance of your clients websites?

Honestly, I've not checked out the client base of the company in question but I wouldn't be surprised if I discovered black hat techniques galore.

Given all the doping scandal in this year's Tour de France I'm surprised a French company would be promoting doping a wise way to move forward too.

What they should have done, I think, is talk about SEO health checks, keeping the site fit or even remedies to heal sick sites. Then they could have employed a pair of booth babes to strut around in nurse uniforms and hand the syringes out. Now that would have been attention grabbing and a positive message!

Anyway, if the syringes are currently working for them in France then I hope they change tactic before trying to enter the UK market!

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Bonjour bigmouthmedia France

Woot.

Today Global Media France became bigmouthmedia France. The Paris office in our family of digital marketing experts now get to be as mouthy as the UK, the United States, Norway and Sweden.

We're not going to translate the words "big", "mouth" and "media". It'll be bigmouthmedia. I can't even even pronounce the Swedish!

It seems fitting, then, that this week I'll in Paris for E-commerce Paris 2007. I'll be talking about the changing face of SEO. There was interest in working out when/how/why to try and keep up with the search engines - and do the search engines change the landscape that often anyway?

I've never been to Paris before! I'm looking forward to it. I'm also super keen about France's mushrooming digital marketing scene. Talk about super-charged growth. I think E-commerce Paris will be a good conference.

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An attempt to trademark the word "seo"

I'm about to fly off to our office in Munich but a blackberry scan picked out an interesting email that I've not had time to fully investigate.

What do you do when you don't have time to investigate something as thoroughly as you need to? You blog about it! Okay... that sounds crazy, but that's what I'm doing anyway.

This email alerts me to the fact that a UK company is trying to trademark the word "seo". Actually, they're trying to trademark the phrase "se,o" but the emailer is concerned that the styling is so subtle that the danger is it will apply to standard fonts and therefore the standard phrase.

Here's the link to the trademark request.

The email says there is only until the 30th of August to protest.

What do you think? A legitimate email? A legitimate concern?

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Thoughts on Facebook and its advertisers

The Facebook fallout picked up speed and import over the weekend. I'm glad I got to it on Friday.

The UK's Central Office of Information has also decided to pull its ads from Facebook and social networking sites [sub required, Will Cooper story].

They don't say this is just because of the British National Party issue on Facebook but that's the implication. That's an interesting one because the COI is a government body and the BNP is, in theory, a legitimate political party.

The BNP will argue that it's not racist. In my opinion and in my definition of racism I find the BNP's policies to be racist. (Once again; my opinion.) For my American readers (I know I've some :P I've seen rustybrick and Lisa Barone on MyBlogLog) the BNP would ship foreigners out of the United Kingdom, the darker your skin the more quickly you would find yourself on the boat.

It shows just how unviable the BNP is as an election option if government bodies like the COI do not want to be associated with them.

It shows how bad for the economy it would be if the BNP makes inroads in the election if important companies like Vodafone do not want to be associated with them.

Anyway, back to Facebook. The onus is now on them (and other social sites) to try and apply some sort of filtering. This will be tricky. Filtering based on keyword content is possible ... but filtering based on principles? I wouldn't be that pleased to see adverts for any of my creations appearing beside Creationist propaganda or militant Scottish Independent content. I have no objections to adverts appearing in conjunction with religious or political content, though.

I think the advertisers are in a better position. Look at all this publicity!

If we were advising The AA, First Direct, etc, then I would encourage them back on to Facebook.

I would encourage them to run a banner campaign specific to Facebook, one that mentioned Facebook in the display and perhaps alongside like "Find out why Vodafone advertises on Facebook".

The banner points to a page which quickly surmises Vodafone's equal opportunities, ethical stance, beliefs and other positive light and brand building content. (Using Vodafone as the example here).

This page would then say, briefly, that they support social sites and value consumers who have something to say and something to share online. That's the chance to get to the reader and make them think "Hey, that's me! They think I'm smart. They like me." That's a good message to get into the head of a would-be customer.

As I'm search bias, I would also try and make this page even more linkbait than it already is (right now it would be publicity linkbait). I would go to include something like an electronic petition which readers can sign or email the link to a friend to ... well, whatever works best, a) anti-racism, b) pro-consumer, etc. Alternatively, the page could give a way badges (static widgets) that simply conveyed a positive message (All humans are equal, etc) and the badge/widget would link back to this page.

A key here would be to see how much of this "special campaign" that the brands could get free or discounted from Facebook. That would certainly add to the ROI. That's why including a pro-Facebook message would certainly help.

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How commercial is your blog?

SEOmoz's decision to charge money for access 'premium' content interests me. It's a brave move and I'm going to be really interested to see how or if it works. The SEO world can be bi-polar at times. This move doesn't align easily with the divisions.

You could just about argue that there are two broad types of SEO services; off-the-shelf and the consultancy. Off-the-shelf is often cheap; sites that submit your URL to thousands of directories (don't do it!) or people keen to automated as much as possible (often spammy). The consultancy option can be on the brand-aware side where the full search agency provides copywriters, project managers, synergy with off-line and add-ons like "just for your company newsletters".

Before you even get to examining which style of SEO service the searcher/prospect might be interested you should consider two types of search; research and commercial.

Blogs are typically match with research searches. Agency sites are typically more commercial. Those of you who remember the Florida update will remember a time when Google swung SERPs in favour of research.

SEOmoz's new service sits in the middle of research and commercial. It also sits in the middle between off-the-shelf (you get what everyone else gets) and agency (you can ask questions).

As it happens, according to MSN, different blogs and web sites in general have a different likelihood of being commercially focused or researched focus. Different searches also have a different likelihood of being commercial or research. As it turns out the search [SEOmoz] is one of the least commercial searches out there.

Here's a quick top ten table of blog searches (not URLs) which I watch according to Microsoft.

Commercial Intent in Blog Searches
Marketing Pilgrim	0.8083
Search Engine Watch	0.52685
bigmouthmedia news	0.30985
Bruce Clay Blog	0.052504
Search Engine Land	0.04503
Highrankings	0.037111
SEO by the Sea	0.024741
Search Engine Journal	0.022691
SEOmoz	0.021125
TopRankBlog	0.012143

Microsoft's tool to measure this intent (closer to 1 is stronger) can be found over at their adLabs but be aware it does change.

I found the results interesting. So I took an even wider scatter of other sites I read - I call them "thought leaders" and compared the commercial intent for brand searches. As a rule, the blog searches were more commercial, even compared to the FT.

Commercial Intent in Thought Leaders
Brand Republic	0.47332
ZDNet	0.44741
Dvorak	0.14606
Diggnation	0.081619
FT	0.076693
Techcrunch	0.070139
Search Engine Strategies	0.060776
The Register	0.058502
WebProNews	0.035844
Telegraph	0.021519

It certainly looks like Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim a search term that MSN considers highly commercial. This could well be due to the word "marketing" delimited with spaces. Does anyone have a blog search term that's more commercial? Does anyone have a blog any less commercial than Lee Odden's TopRankBlog?

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Dead Birds - When Life Scuppers Your Marketing Campaign

It was about two weeks ago that I first saw a dead chicken on the way to work. I was pretty sure it was a dead chicken... but, come on, a dead bird? Yuck. The advert had been on the side of a bus which had whooshed past at speed and I was left with some doubt in my mind. Who would be advertising dead chickens on the side of a bus?

A few days later I saw another. A different poster - a brown chicken rather than a yellow one - but clearly a dead chicken. Swiftcovered, heh? At the back of my mind I could vaguely recall a TV advert when a guy trying to arrange his insurance gets very frustrated at a bunch of chickens clucking at him in a call centre spoof. It is the same people.

Current affairs have not been kind to Swiftcover. The deadly Asian strain of bird flu - H5N1 - has broken out at a turkey farm in England this weekend. The news is full of images of dead birds being dumped into large trucks.

The public is worried. The BBC has interviews with Joe Public who all say they'll be steering clear of poultry. Of course, these people are over reacting, but Joe Public has a propensity to do that.

It's just bad timing. Very bad timing. Under no circumstances do you want your brand associated with bird flu. Unless, well, you sell flu vaccinations or health insurance. Unfortunately for Swiftcover they only sell car, travel, dog or cat insurance. I suspect only farmers get chicken insurance.

I should remind you that this is a personal blog and opinions here (I have lots of them) do not reflect the opinions of the company I work for.

My first reaction to the dead chicken advert was a bad one. Sure - it got my attention - but I didn't think "Ah-ah! Swiftcover!" My first thoughts were "Yuck. Was that a dead bird? What on earth?" A negative response. I don't mind being challenged when it comes to important issues like domestic violence, famines abroad, climate change or drugs but my hackles rise when someone tries shock tactics to sell me car insurance.

Given the bird flu outbreak the dead birds seem even less pleasant.

As it turns out this isn't the first time Swiftcover's chickens have been used. The Register has an article dating back to 2005 which explains that despite 800 complaints Swiftcover was allowed to depict call centre workers as chickens (call centre workers in the UK complained). Now Swiftcover are killing those call centre workers off. Another negative association.

I remember the dead birds not the insurance deals. Now the 24 hour news channels are full of H5N1 stories I strongly suspect most of the UK will be noticing the dead birds before they notice the insurance offers too.

I do remember the phrase "clucking call centre" though. Simple word games always stick in my head. If I didn't camera-phone a picture of the Swiftcover advert I would have gone to Google to check for that.


Swiftcover's SEO hasn't done too badly here. They've got the site in at #3 for the search. Swiftcover are doing the right thing by having a page up with their quriky advertising. In fact, I took the chance to review the TV advert I remembered. They should have the videos up at YouTube though. I would have had a web page for every advert.

It's the PPC players who are doing badly here. Swiftcover aren't represented at all and this would have been a chance to build that brand message. Look at all those pro-call centre adverts who really shouldn't be there. "Clucking" should be a negative keyword for everyone of them.

The other "key phrase" is swiftcovered. The name "Swiftcover" doesn't actually appear on the poster (and I'd always encourage people to put the domain in there). What happens if I search for [swiftcovered]?


Ouch. On this search the organic results are not kind to Swiftcover. They're not on page one. I suspect my suggestion of having one page per ad on their site would have helped them out here.

It's the PPC player (or a big affiliate using Atlas Tracking) who get the position right here. If it wasn't for the AdWord then Swiftcover wouldn't be represented at all.

I'm afraid there's not much you can do to future proof your marketing campaign from the random stuff that RealLife(™) throws at you. I suspect some people would encourage brands to stay away from negative images though. All big brands, especially those which live entirely online, need to coordinate their online and offline advertising. When you're creating a buzz phrase or a memorable quote via posters, radio or TV you should be sure you can be found online for the same quote or buzz. It's a must.

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CondéNet and Flip.com

In a few days Flip.com launches. It'll be a great experiment. A very interesting experiment into the power of social media and marketing in this "new age" of user driven leadership.

Of course, for Condé Nast Flip.com is not an experiment. It's a business. One that they hope will succeed. It was only a few days ago that I found myself writing about Condé Nast's Stylefinder.com as a fashionable sister to Reddit. I do wonder if Reddit's lack of style embarrasses the sisters. If you scroll to the bottom of Flip.com (currently in holding page phase) you'll see that the social news site is missing from the list of sister brands.

I like Flip. It's going to be a like MySpace however there's a lot of clever marketing going on. Even with something basic like the banner slot Flip.com is different. As the girls sign up to Flip.com they're allowed to pick and target advertisers who will appear on their Flipbook. Don't like H&M as a brand? Not posh enough for you? Then you'll not let them advertise on your Flipbook.

Oh yeah; Flip.com greatly interests this search marketer but the real target demographics are teenage girls. All too often, teenage girls are too smart for their (and our) own good.

The best bits of Flip and CondéNet's experiement (sorry, business model) is the almost guerilla use of content. There is free image content on Flip. The girls get to scoop up this content and add whatever they like to their Flipbooks. The girls get to show off by having the best Flipbook.

The content is supplied by the advertisers. It's not branded. There's not even a logo. They're simply trying to make fashion merchandise cool. They're trying to get the girls interested. CondéNet charges the advertisers for the honour of supplying content.

It gets better and braver. The girls get to vandalise the images as much as they want. As a Flip.com user you're allowed to scrawl "this sucks!" over anything you want in your Flipbook.

Mike Shields over at Mediaweek has a source which suggests advertisers may be paying between $300,000 and $500,000 per content package.

Some people close to the project are talking. Jessica Ulin from OMD (sister agency of PHD, part of the Omnicom family) who deals with Johnson & Johnson's Clean & Clear has described the approach as the holy grail. In fact, Ulin and I seem to agree that this is an experiment.

“Advertisers are experimenting in speaking to girls in a way they want to be spoken to,”

“The way that advertising is woven into the site is pretty unique,”

“It’s all self-selected. It makes for a more qualified viewer. It’s really the holy grail, when a user identifies with a brand so much.”

As usual I'm left to hope that search engine optimisation and PPC have been thought about from the outset. Flip will use Flash and that's tricky.



(The I support nofollow still enjoys 1 sole supporter.)

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Is SEO Rocket Science? Kevin Lee brings the diatribe to LinkedIn

Over at LinkedIn Kevin Lee has re-stated his Is SEO Rocket Science? What do you think? [log in needed] debate. That was 11 hours ago - at the time of this posting.

He already has six bullish replies. I'm an idiot for adding fuel to the flames. I'm more interested in his use of the SEMPO brand though-out all of this. I'm not interested in the flamebait. Don't people remember the Usenet days?

He'd made sure SEMPO are mentioned in his LinkedIn badge ID.

Is the debate harming the industry's reputation?

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The optimisation of Search Engine Land

Danny Sullivan is moving on from Search Engine Watch and to Search Engine Land. The last industry roundtable I went to had some people sniggering about the name - how long did it take him to think that one up? old hat?

I disagree. Sure, Search Engine Land is similar to Search Engine Watch and the Daily Cap is similar to the Daily Cast but let's take a step back and look what Danny's doing.

There are keywords in the domain; "search engine". They're not hyphenated but they're there. The holding page up on the site now (before December 11, when the site launches) makes it clear that the name of the site is "Search Engine Land" and not "SearchEngineLand". When people link to the site they're likely to do so ala Search Engine Land. There's a 310 redirect away from "www.searchengineland.com" to "searchengineland.com" too.

Danny has reason to echo "Search Engine Watch" too. There is a real incentive for him to remind us that Search Engine Watch was his. He couldn't call the new project, "The Real Search Engine Strategies" for fear of attack lawyers so "Search Engine Land" isn't too bad in that respect at all.

Let's look at what else is he doing.

The site is up now. It's not the real site but there is content on http://searchengineland.com. Thee is content about search engines at this address. Google has begun to assocaite search engine content with that domain name. This is exactly what you should do when launching a new domain name. Fear the "sandbox" syndrome and give your domain name the best start possible.

The site is up now. People are linking to the site. Search blogs and forums are linking to the site. Danny is already growing links. This blog post links to the new domain.

The link biating (or link breeding as I used to call it until Matt Cutts coined a better term) has started. He is running a competition to pick the logo. The logo is designed, people just get to vote on the trimmings but it doesn't matter - it encourages people to talk (link) about the site and to get involved. It's a good move.

Danny's Flickr account is being used to spread the word too. That link to Flickr shows that Rustybrick is helping to advertise the logo/competition too. Good score Danny.

The current Search Engine Land site is yucky. It does thrust a big RSS button at you now. Sign up now! A lot of people will press that button just to remind them that there will be something in this space later. Most of these people will never unsubscribe from the feed. Another good move.

Further down the page there's a host of Social Media buttons - Danny's starting has he means to go on - with a large reader base.

Search Engine Land will be one to watch. That's for sure. The challenge Danny faces is keeping the topic interesting to a wide group of people. Newbies who still want to know about "301" redirects have Webmasterworld. The middle ground is Search Engine Watch's forums (the news stories became adverts many months ago) but the "recycled issue rot" is taking hold there. Will Danny target Search Engine Land to the newbies, to the SME SEO firms, to the named individuals (that American guru thing) or is there a niche for the elite level of SEOers?

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Ask.com bidding on Yahoo.com in Google.com

Ah. Is this a deliberate bid? It has Atlas tracking so it seems professional.

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Why Search Engine Strategies and Incisive Media sold to Apax Partners

Hmm. First off there's a bias in the title of this post; "Why Search Engine Strategies and Incisive Media sold to Apax Partners". Sure, Incisive own Search Engine Strategies but SES is such a small part of Incisive that it's doubtful the brand played any significant role in the decision.

Danny Sullivan's decision to leave Incisive might have been because he knew of the sell out, though, then again, perhaps he didn't and now regrets it.

There's an article on the sellout, from public to private, in Oct 12th's issue of Marketing Week (not always my favourite mag given their mis-quote of us) which sums up the issue;

The advertising and event-driven business model of Incisive has limited its ability to raise significant levels of debt finance as a listed company, and equity-finance transactions have been difficult to justify given valuation ratings within the sector.

You can see why I nearly did Economics at Uni rather than my Computing degrees. What a lot of jargon (not that SEO ever uses jargon). In short - it was too expensive to borrow money. Incisive couldn't drive their offerings forward.

Would you lend money to fund an SES? If the answer is yes then you're almost certainly American or Canadian. SES seems less healthy on this (Europe's) side of the Atlantic. A number of the planned, smaller, specialist SES forums this year have been canceled due to a "lack of interest". There might have been a lack of interest but that's compounded by a lack of advertising... which comes back to cash.

I'm hopeful that Apax -> Incisive -> SES conferences can make the vertical model work. It'll take the SEO industry and mature it into many different models. The SEM agency I work for is large enough to use the vertical model (ie, travel specialists, finance specialists, etc) and so goes Google. I think the model has legs.

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