This is a light hearted post. If you want to insult someone here in the UK - you call them a tool.
Andy Beal, Aaron Wall, Bill Slawski, Cameron Olthuis, Christine Churchill, Chuck Price, Jeremy Schoemaker, Jim Boykin, Jim Gilbert, Jill Whalen, Lee Odden, Neil Patel and Todd Malicoat aren't tools. I'm sure they're all very nice people!
I'm being silly, of course. At the most this AdWords creative from Jim Boykin is an illustration of the sort of culture issues a global AdWords campaign can encounter - even if the language, more of less, stays the same.
I initially noticed the AdWord because the author is bidding on SMX as a keyword. That's a compliement to Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman and his team (they aren't tools either) but if Third Door Media was a client I would encourage them to stop this sort of thing (trademarks and polite 'please stop' emails allowing). You don't want to invest the sort of energy they do in promoting SMX only for a related product, that isn't yours, to come along and ride in your slipstream.
I've not looked at Boykin's Internet Marketing Ninjas videos ($2995 is more than my curisoty budget allows) but - as Andy Beal points out - Jim already has a good reputation in training, and nobody on Jim's ninja list would allow their name to be associated with a poor product. So I'm sure the videos are very good. RustyBrick, who isn't in this set of videos, has also said positive things and Jeff Quip started a popular Sphinn on the news.
My word - a bit of research before posting certainly helps - wikipedia notes that 'tool' isn't just a UK insult as the US army also uses it. The likely first instance of the word being used as a slur may be from 'labor reform resolution drafted by the Female Labor Reform Association in 1845'. Well! We learn something new every day.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Jim Boykin insults Andy Beal, Aaron Wall, Schoemaker, Stuntdubl, himself and others!
Friday, January 04, 2008
Yup! SMX In London in 2008
Good news people. I fired up Gmail today to find a comment from Danny on my No SMX London in 2008 post. Simply put; there will be a SMX in London 2008. We'll get more news soon.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
YahooPeople.co.uk - Too Much Effort For Me
Here in the UK, Yahoo have been promoting Yahoo People through some display advertising (I first saw the ads over at Brand Republic last year) and trying to push it towards viral status.
I think it's a nice idea but it's too much effort to get started and that's why it's not viral.
With Yahoo People you create an avatar of yourself. This avatar lives in the virtual Yahoo People world and as you interact with different Yahoo services your Yahoo People avatar learns new abilities. For example, to teach your Yahoo Avatar to break dance then you muck around on Yahoo Music.
So, why is this too much effort for me? I have no art talent and you need to draw your avatar. You upload a headshot of yourself, resize it to fit on a body and then you're supposed to trace around the image to convert your photohead to a sketchhead. That's beyond me. I've tried, tried and tried - just can't do it. I don't have the mouse dexterity!
The products that Yahoo are pushing via Yahoo People are Yahoo Answers, Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Music. The search engine optimisation crowd will grin because although Yahoo People is a Flash site Yahoo have remembered to include text links to these pages below the Flash. It's also worth noting (with a grin) that the Yahoo Answers, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Music links point to the US address - ie, news.yahoo.com rather than uk.news.yahoo.com. Yahoo Sports points to the European URL of uk.eurosport.yahoo.com.
The banner adverts I've seen for Yahoo People feature different avatars from various participants. What I don't know is whether these Flash banners are static and just chosen at random/with bias for the campaign or whether they're a dynamic element of the Yahoo People viral site itself.
I think it would be much cooler if the system picked the best avatars automatically to appear in the banners. That would then give you a real incentive for your avatars to do well. Just imagine, you could have a dancing Danny Sullivan of Third Door Media capering in the corner of Brand Republic! - that would certainly persuade me to try and draw my own avatar one more time.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Search Engine Land's Secrets : Mining SearchCap
I really like SearchCap - it's the daily summary of events at Search Engine Land and it includes interesting link finds from around the web.
I've been analysing those link finds. I've looked at three whole months of data! That's a lot. That's 2963 links, excluding links to press release wires and sphinn, and a date range from 1st August to the 31st of October.
In this time Search Engine Land has cited 467 sources! Wow. That's a figure you should use when someone tries to claim that bloggers single source or simple repost news from their RSS reader of a dozen sites.
The most influential site is Search Engine Roundtable (182 posts) which easily beats SearchEngineWatch (105 posts). The top ten sites account for 801 posts and that's nearly 30% of the total. Not bad. I actually have a graph of the longtail (though Microsoft's Excel doesn't name every node on the x-axis). This is a very long graph and you need to click and horizontally scroll to cope with it. 
To get these figures I've done my best to aggregate names and sources. For example, Barry Schwartz is sometimes cited as Cartoon Barry, Wolf Howl could be Graywolf or Micheal Gray, etc.
I'm uploading a bunch of visualisations for this research as they're the best way to get to grips with the data. However, Excel can only map about half of the sources that Search Engine Land actually uses and so graphs like the radar to the left of this have been limited to the top 50 or the top 20.
There are some interesting bits of advice if you're interested in getting into Search Engine Land's SearchCap. Looking at the figures you can see that there are days when the editor (Danny Sullivan, Barry or, I suspect, Tamar giving Barry a helping hand) has made the effort to look around the net for a bunch of new sites or the established information feeders are having a slow day (SMX is on and they're all presenting or live blogging). Looking at this 3 month time period there are days when up to 8 sites make their premier appearance in the list of citations. The good news is that once you have the editors eye you're equally likely to get 2 post mentions as you are to get 1. Furthermore, once you break into the roundup you're likely to get mentioned sometime later that week too.
I'm going to do something crazy and post the whole top 467 list! Are you on it? Here goes!
- 1st - Search Engine Roundtable - 182 posts
- 2nd - Search Engine Watch - 105 posts
- 3rd - Search Engine Journal - 84 posts
- 4th - TechCrunch - 83 posts
- 5th - SEOMoz - 70 posts
- 6th - Search Engine Guide - 62 posts
- 7th - News.com - 57 posts
- 8th - SEO Book - 54 posts
- 9th - ResourceShelf - 53 posts
- 10th - Google Blogoscope - 51 posts
- 11th - SEO by the Sea - 42 posts
- 12th - New York Times - 40 posts
- 13th - Google Operating System - 38 posts
- 14th - Read/Write Web - 37 posts
- 15th - Reuters - 35 posts
- 16th - Online Marketing Blog - 32 posts
- 17th - Bruce Clay - 30 posts
- 18th - Googlified - 30 posts
- 19th - adCenter Blog - 27 posts
- 20th - Inside AdWords - 26 posts
- 21st - MediaPost - 26 posts
- 22nd - Marketing Pilgrim - 25 posts
- 23rd - Forbes - 24 posts
- 24th - Google LatLong - 24 posts
- 25th - Official Google Blog - 24 posts
- 26th - Search Engine Watch Blog - 24 posts
- 27th - ClickZ - 23 posts
- 28th - Digital Inspiration - 23 posts
- 29th - PPC Hero - 22 posts
- 30th - Google Earth Blog - 21 posts
- 31st - InformationWeek - 19 posts
- 32nd - Daily SearchCast - 17 posts
- 33rd - Valleywag - 17 posts
- 34th - Wall Street Journal - 17 posts
- 35th - CNN Money - 15 posts
- 36th - Joost de Valk - 15 posts
- 37th - ViperChill - 15 posts
- 38th - ProBlogger - 14 posts
- 39th - ShoeMoney - 14 posts
- 40th - SEOish - 13 posts
- 41st - SEOptimise - 13 posts
- 42nd - Stone Temple - 13 posts
- 43rd - Inside AdSense - 12 posts
- 44th - Pandia - 12 posts
- 45th - Wired - 12 posts
- 46th - www.10e20.com - 12 posts
- 47th - AdWords API Blog - 11 posts
- 48th - Bob Massa - 11 posts
- 49th - BusinessWeek - 11 posts
- 50th - Googling Google - 11 posts
- 51st - The SEO Scoop - 11 posts
- 52nd - Traffick - 11 posts
- 53rd - Vanessa Fox - 11 posts
- 54th - Ask.com Blog - 10 posts
- 55th - Bill Hartzer - 10 posts
- 56th - BlogStorm - 10 posts
- 57th - Cre8PC - 10 posts
- 58th - InsideGoogle - 10 posts
- 59th - John Andrews - 10 posts
- 60th - Pronet Advertising - 10 posts
- 61st - Rimm Kaufman - 10 posts
- 62nd - Yahoo Search Blog - 10 posts
- 63rd - AIM Clear Blog - 9 posts
- 64th - Bloomberg - 9 posts
- 65th - E-Consultancy - 9 posts
- 66th - Hakia Blog - 9 posts
- 67th - Matt Cutts - 9 posts
- 68th - Search Marketing Standard - 9 posts
- 69th - Cartoon Barry - 8 posts
- 70th - Fantomaster - 8 posts
- 71st - GigaOM - 8 posts
- 72nd - Google Maps API Blog - 8 posts
- 73rd - Greg Boser - 8 posts
- 74th - LinkJuicy - 8 posts
- 75th - Official Google Webmaster Central Blog - 8 posts
- 76th - PC World - 8 posts
- 77th - Silicon Alley Insider - 8 posts
- 78th - Times Online - 8 posts
- 79th - Wolf Howl - 8 posts
- 80th - Ad Age - 7 posts
- 81st - Askville Blog - 7 posts
- 82nd - ComparisonEngines.com - 7 posts
- 83rd - David Dalka - 7 posts
- 84th - Eric Goldman - 7 posts
- 85th - John Mu - 7 posts
- 86th - Jonathan Mendez's Blog - 7 posts
- 87th - Official Gmail Blog - 7 posts
- 88th - Reviewlicious - 7 posts
- 89th - SEO Speedwagon - 7 posts
- 90th - Site Visibility - 7 posts
- 91st - Techipedia - 7 posts
- 92nd - The Guardian - 7 posts
- 93rd - The Register - 7 posts
- 94th - WebProNews - 7 posts
- 95th - Yahoo Publisher Network - 7 posts
- 96th - Inside Google Book Search - 6 posts
- 97th - Lifehacker - 6 posts
- 98th - LiveSide - 6 posts
- 99th - mashable.com - 6 posts
- 100th - orkut Blog - 6 posts
- 101st - Performancing.com - 6 posts
- 102nd - SEO Fast Start - 6 posts
- 103rd - Shimon Sandler - 6 posts
- 104th - Small Business SEM - 6 posts
- 105th - venturebeat.com - 6 posts
- 106th - Yodel Anecdotal - 6 posts
- 107th - eKstreme.com - 5 posts
- 108th - Financial Times - 5 posts
- 109th - Google - 5 posts
- 110th - InfoWorld - 5 posts
- 111th - Jim Boykin - 5 posts
- 112th - John Battelle's Searchblog - 5 posts
- 113th - Karl Ribas - 5 posts
- 114th - Los Angeles Times - 5 posts
- 115th - Mercury News - 5 posts
- 116th - San Francisco Chronicle - 5 posts
- 117th - Search Marketing Expo Blog - 5 posts
- 118th - SiteMost - 5 posts
- 119th - SmartMoney.com - 5 posts
- 120th - Webware - 5 posts
- 121st - Wired Blogs - 5 posts
- 122nd - ZDNet - 5 posts
- 123rd - AdWeek - 4 posts
- 124th - Andrew Girdwood - 4 posts
- 125th - DMOZ Blog - 4 posts
- 126th - Google Analytics Blog - 4 posts
- 127th - Google Code - Updates - 4 posts
- 128th - Google Public Policy Blog - 4 posts
- 129th - Hitwise - 4 posts
- 130th - Jennifer Slegg - 4 posts
- 131st - Live Search Blog - 4 posts
- 132nd - Locally Type - 4 posts
- 133rd - McAnerin Muse - 4 posts
- 134th - Pacific Epoch - 4 posts
- 135th - Paid Content - 4 posts
- 136th - PPC Discussions - 4 posts
- 137th - Red Herring - 4 posts
- 138th - SeattleTimes - 4 posts
- 139th - SEO Beginning Podcast - 4 posts
- 140th - The Link Spiel - 4 posts
- 141st - YouTube Blog - 4 posts
- 142nd - AllThingsD - 3 posts
- 143rd - AP - 3 posts
- 144th - Chicago Tribune - 3 posts
- 145th - Compete Blog - 3 posts
- 146th - eWeek - 3 posts
- 147th - Google Gears API Blog - 3 posts
- 148th - Google Mashup Editor Blog - 3 posts
- 149th - Google News Blog - 3 posts
- 150th - Inside Facebook - 3 posts
- 151st - Micro Persuasion - 3 posts
- 152nd - National Post - 3 posts
- 153rd - Oilman - 3 posts
- 154th - Paul Kedrosky - 3 posts
- 155th - Robert Scoble - 3 posts
- 156th - San Jose Mercury News - 3 posts
- 157th - Search Engine College - 3 posts
- 158th - Search Engine Strategies - 3 posts
- 159th - Techdirt - 3 posts
- 160th - Telegraph - 3 posts
- 161st - Threadwatcher - 3 posts
- 162nd - Twitter Blog - 3 posts
- 163rd - Vnunet.com - 3 posts
- 164th - Washington Post - 3 posts
- 165th - Web Analytics World - 3 posts
- 166th - 97th Floor - 2 posts
- 167th - ABC News - 2 posts
- 168th - Ars Technica - 2 posts
- 169th - Ask Kalena - 2 posts
- 170th - Between the Lines - 2 posts
- 171st - bigmouthmedia - 2 posts
- 172nd - Bill Tancer - 2 posts
- 173rd - Blogger Buzz - 2 posts
- 174th - Bloglines Blog - 2 posts
- 175th - BtoB Magazine - 2 posts
- 176th - Carnage4Life - 2 posts
- 177th - Channel Register - 2 posts
- 178th - Chris Pirillo - 2 posts
- 179th - Closed Loop Marketing - 2 posts
- 180th - ComputerWorld - 2 posts
- 181st - comScore - 2 posts
- 182nd - Copyblogger - 2 posts
- 183rd - David Naylor - 2 posts
- 184th - Digg the Blog - 2 posts
- 185th - DM News - 2 posts
- 186th - Docuticker - 2 posts
- 187th - Download Squad - 2 posts
- 188th - Economist.com - 2 posts
- 189th - Engadget - 2 posts
- 190th - Evil Green Monkey - 2 posts
- 191st - Facebook Developers News - 2 posts
- 192nd - Fast Company - 2 posts
- 193rd - Google AJAX Search API Blog - 2 posts
- 194th - Google Docs & Spreadsheets Blog - 2 posts
- 195th - Google Health Ads Blog - 2 posts
- 196th - Google Photos Blog - 2 posts
- 197th - HighRankings - 2 posts
- 198th - JenSense - 2 posts
- 199th - Jeremy Zawodny - 2 posts
- 200th - Joseph Morin - 2 posts
- 201st - juberjabber - 2 posts
- 202nd - Jupiter Research - 2 posts
- 203rd - Justin Davy - 2 posts
- 204th - MacWorld - 2 posts
- 205th - MarketingVOX - 2 posts
- 206th - marketmou.com - 2 posts
- 207th - MarketWatch - 2 posts
- 208th - Mike Blumenthal - 2 posts
- 209th - Muhammad Saleem - 2 posts
- 210th - news.com.com - 2 posts
- 211th - Official Google Checkout Blog - 2 posts
- 212th - Official Google Mac Blog - 2 posts
- 213th - Opera Developer Community - 2 posts
- 214th - PC Magazine - 2 posts
- 215th - Portland SEM Professionals Blog - 2 posts
- 216th - Radar Online - 2 posts
- 217th - Reflections of a Newsosaur - 2 posts
- 218th - Rev2.org - 2 posts
- 219th - Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog - 2 posts
- 220th - Search Engine War - 2 posts
- 221st - Search Marketing Gurus - 2 posts
- 222nd - Search Pulse - 2 posts
- 223rd - Searchnewz - 2 posts
- 224th - SEC - 2 posts
- 225th - SEM Geek - 2 posts
- 226th - SEM Portland - 2 posts
- 227th - SEO Home - 2 posts
- 228th - SEO Montreal - 2 posts
- 229th - SiteProNews Blog - 2 posts
- 230th - Skrentablog - 2 posts
- 231st - Squareoak - 2 posts
- 232nd - Stuntdubl - 2 posts
- 233rd - Tamar Search Blog - 2 posts
- 234th - TorrentFreak - 2 posts
- 235th - Tropical SEO - 2 posts
- 236th - Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search - 2 posts
- 237th - USA Today - 2 posts
- 238th - Yahoo Local Blog - 2 posts
- 239th - 24/7 Wall St. - 1 post
- 240th - AccuraCast - 1 post
- 241st - Adotas - 1 post
- 242nd - AFX - 1 post
- 243rd - AIMS - 1 post
- 244th - All About Microsoft - 1 post
- 245th - Alt Search Engines - 1 post
- 246th - Altogether Digital - 1 post
- 247th - Andy Beard - 1 post
- 248th - Assetbar - 1 post
- 249th - Australian IT - 1 post
- 250th - billing.tmcnet.com - 1 post
- 251st - blog.flickr.com - 1 post
- 252nd - Blogger Blog - 1 post
- 253rd - BloggingStocks - 1 post
- 254th - Bloglines News - 1 post
- 255th - blognation UK - 1 post
- 256th - blogs.cnet.com - 1 post
- 257th - blogs.msdn.com - 1 post
- 258th - Blue Hat SEO - 1 post
- 259th - boston.bizjournals.com - 1 post
- 260th - Brad Geddes - 1 post
- 261st - Brisbane SEO Blog - 1 post
- 262nd - Business Standard - 1 post
- 263rd - Campus Technology - 1 post
- 264th - Catherine "Cat" Seda - 1 post
- 265th - CBC - 1 post
- 266th - CenterNetworks - 1 post
- 267th - Charlene Li - 1 post
- 268th - Chilling Effects Clearinghouse - 1 post
- 269th - Chris Boggs - 1 post
- 270th - Chronicle.com - 1 post
- 271st - CNBC.com - 1 post
- 272nd - Coding Horror - 1 post
- 273rd - Cre8asite Blog - 1 post
- 274th - Cre8tive Flow - 1 post
- 275th - CRN - 1 post
- 276th - Cshel - 1 post
- 277th - Daggle - 1 post
- 278th - Dairies Around The World - 1 post
- 279th - DamnDomainer - 1 post
- 280th - Dan Skeen - 1 post
- 281st - David Airey - 1 post
- 282nd - David Weiss - 1 post
- 283rd - Deutsche Welle - 1 post
- 284th - Dexterity Media - 1 post
- 285th - Digg - 1 post
- 286th - Distilled - 1 post
- 287th - DomainTools - 1 post
- 288th - DoshDosh - 1 post
- 289th - Editor & Publisher - 1 post
- 290th - Ego Food - 1 post
- 291st - E-Marketing Performanc - 1 post
- 292nd - Engine Ready - 1 post
- 293rd - Eric Enge - 1 post
- 294th - eWhisper.net - 1 post
- 295th - Fathom SEO - 1 post
- 296th - F'dGoogle - 1 post
- 297th - FierceIPTV - 1 post
- 298th - FirstMonday - 1 post
- 299th - FTC - 1 post
- 300th - Gadood - 1 post
- 301st - Geeking with Greg - 1 post
- 302nd - Gnucitizen - 1 post
- 303rd - Google Custom Search - 1 post
- 304th - Google Desktop APIs - 1 post
- 305th - Google Reader Blog - 1 post
- 306th - Google SketchUp Blog - 1 post
- 307th - Google Web Toolkit Blog - 1 post
- 308th - googlewatch.eweek.com - 1 post
- 309th - Graphing Social - 1 post
- 310th - Green Marketing Blog - 1 post
- 311th - Groklaw - 1 post
- 312th - Groundswell - 1 post
- 313th - Gspy - 1 post
- 314th - Guardian Unlimited - 1 post
- 315th - ha.ckers.org - 1 post
- 316th - Half's SEO Notebook - 1 post
- 317th - Hamlet Batista - 1 post
- 318th - Hindustan Times - 1 post
- 319th - Hotmail Blog - 1 post
- 320th - HTML Goodies - 1 post
- 321st - IEEE Spectrum - 1 post
- 322nd - I'm Not A Doctor - 1 post
- 323rd - InfoToday - 1 post
- 324th - INQUIRER.net - 1 post
- 325th - Inside Google Desktop - 1 post
- 326th - Intrapromote - 1 post
- 327th - Jabz - 1 post
- 328th - Jack Humphrey - 1 post
- 329th - Jason Bartholme - 1 post
- 330th - Jewess - 1 post
- 331st - Jill Whalen - 1 post
- 332nd - JLH Design - 1 post
- 333rd - John Honeck - 1 post
- 334th - Joost - 1 post
- 335th - Kevin Lee - 1 post
- 336th - Lee McCoy - 1 post
- 337th - LinkedIn Blog - 1 post
- 338th - Linux Insider - 1 post
- 339th - Live Maps Blog - 1 post
- 340th - Lost Art Of Blogging - 1 post
- 341st - Mad - 1 post
- 342nd - Marketing Piranha - 1 post
- 343rd - Marketing Week - 1 post
- 344th - MarketingSherpa - 1 post
- 345th - MarketingShift - 1 post
- 346th - Media Info Center - 1 post
- 347th - MediaWeek - 1 post
- 348th - Mercury News - 1 post
- 349th - Metaversed - 1 post
- 350th - Middle East Times - 1 post
- 351st - Mike Grehan - 1 post
- 352nd - Mike Nott - 1 post
- 353rd - Mike The Internet Guy - 1 post
- 354th - Mitt Romney - 1 post
- 355th - MSNBC.com - 1 post
- 356th - Multilingual Search - 1 post
- 357th - Natural Search Blog - 1 post
- 358th - Netcraft - 1 post
- 359th - News & Observer - 1 post
- 360th - news.zdnet.com - 1 post
- 361st - Newsknife - 1 post
- 362nd - NewTeeVee - 1 post
- 363rd - NMA - 1 post
- 364th - nvestor's Business Daily - 1 post
- 365th - Official Google CPG Blog - 1 post
- 366th - Official Google Enterprise Blog - 1 post
- 367th - Ogle Earth - 1 post
- 368th - Ogletree - 1 post
- 369th - Omniture - 1 post
- 370th - One Man's Blog - 1 post
- 371st - ONLamp.com - 1 post
- 372nd - OUT-LAW.COM - 1 post
- 373rd - Page Zero Media - 1 post
- 374th - PC Advisor - 1 post
- 375th - Pennsylvania State University - 1 post
- 376th - Pipes Blog - 1 post
- 377th - Pocket SEO - 1 post
- 378th - PPC Lab - 1 post
- 379th - Practical Ecommerce - 1 post
- 380th - Pubcon Blog - 1 post
- 381st - Quick Sprout - 1 post
- 382nd - radar.oreilly.com - 1 post
- 383rd - RB Digital Rodeo - 1 post
- 384th - Reality SEO - 1 post
- 385th - RentVine.com - 1 post
- 386th - reportonbusiness.com - 1 post
- 387th - ResearchBuzz - 1 post
- 388th - Rhea Drysdale - 1 post
- 389th - rizzn.com v11.1 - 1 post
- 390th - Royal Pingdom - 1 post
- 391st - roySchneider.com - 1 post
- 392nd - Salon - 1 post
- 393rd - San Jose Business Journal - 1 post
- 394th - Scott Hendison - 1 post
- 395th - Screenwerk - 1 post
- 396th - ScrippsNews - 1 post
- 397th - Scripting News - 1 post
- 398th - Search Engine Blog - 1 post
- 399th - Search Engine People - 1 post
- 400th - Search Tools - 1 post
- 401st - SearchRank - 1 post
- 402nd - Seattle 24x7 - 1 post
- 403rd - Seeking Alpha - 1 post
- 404th - SEM Scholar - 1 post
- 405th - SEM Spot - 1 post
- 406th - SEO 2.0 - 1 post
- 407th - SEO Brien - 1 post
- 408th - SEO Consultants - 1 post
- 409th - SEO Egghead - 1 post
- 410th - SEO Refugee - 1 post
- 411th - SEO Trends - 1 post
- 412th - SEO Wife - 1 post
- 413th - SEOCO Blog - 1 post
- 414th - SEOdisco - 1 post
- 415th - ShadyKing - 1 post
- 416th - shanghaiist.com - 1 post
- 417th - Shylock Blogging - 1 post
- 418th - SiteLogic - 1 post
- 419th - slashdot.org - 1 post
- 420th - smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com - 1 post
- 421st - Small Business Hub - 1 post
- 422nd - Snowboard John - 1 post
- 423rd - Social Media Explorer - 1 post
- 424th - Sugarrae - 1 post
- 425th - Sydney Morning Herald - 1 post
- 426th - Technology Evangelist - 1 post
- 427th - Technology Review - 1 post
- 428th - Technovelgy - 1 post
- 429th - Text Link Center - 1 post
- 430th - The Agency Blog - 1 post
- 431st - The Canadian Press - 1 post
- 432nd - The Dalles Chronicle - 1 post
- 433rd - The DigitalGrit Blog - 1 post
- 434th - The Korea Times - 1 post
- 435th - The Mobile Gadgeteer - 1 post
- 436th - The New York Observer - 1 post
- 437th - The Onion - 1 post
- 438th - The Organic SEO - 1 post
- 439th - The Pownce Blog - 1 post
- 440th - The Red Tape Chronicles - 1 post
- 441st - The Sun Chronicle Online - 1 post
- 442nd - The Unofficial Facebook Blog - 1 post
- 443rd - TUAW - 1 post
- 444th - Twist Image - 1 post
- 445th - US News - 1 post
- 446th - Utah Search Engine Optimization - 1 post
- 447th - V7N Blog - 1 post
- 448th - Virtual Hosting Blog - 1 post
- 449th - Wiep.net - 1 post
- 450th - Windows Live Blog - 1 post
- 451st - Wireless Business - 1 post
- 452nd - www.btobonline.com - 1 post
- 453rd - www.fathomseo.com - 1 post
- 454th - www.internetnews.com - 1 post
- 455th - www.kxan.com - 1 post
- 456th - www.labnol.org - 1 post
- 457th - www.localseoguide.com - 1 post
- 458th - www.pubcon.com - 1 post
- 459th - www.ranksmart.com - 1 post
- 460th - www.sagoodnews.co.za - 1 post
- 461st - www.webbedmarketing.com - 1 post
- 462nd - www.webwereld.nl - 1 post
- 463rd - Yahoo Research - 1 post
- 464th - Yahoo Widgets Blog - 1 post
- 465th - Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog - 1 post
- 466th - Yahoo! Video - 1 post
- 467th - The Venture Skills Blog - 1 post
The graph above shows the inclusion rates of the top 20 contributors. As you can see; it's fairly spiky. Simply put on some days SearchCap includes more citations than on other days. There are days when the top feeders dominate the SearchCap and provide, between them, nearly 90% of the links.
I thought it might be interesting to look at SEOmoz and see how their inclusion has been over the last three months. Does it fluctuate? Yes, it does, but no more than any other site.
Gosh. There are some caveats here. There is an acceptable degree of error here. If this was a work project one of our Search Analysts would have done this, this would have been checked by another before being given to whoever requested the research in the first place (and may be checked again by their line manager). None of that happened here (no work resources was wasted on this project! :) ) so I've bound to have put a tally wrong here or there - but, as a whole, this is accurate enough research.
Update Barry suggested it would be nice to see what the average citations per day was - the answer is 40.8. It's rare to find a site get more than 5 citations. Search Engine Roundtable tends to pick up about 4% which is about 10%.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Selling Links Can Harm Your Site
Danny Sullivan has put together a well written post on Search Engine Land titled Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google.
The title says it all.
Back in March I suggested that Link Sellers are taking a risk with their site. I don't think we'll ever see the black mark I suggested - as Danny points out, this makes it easier to try and successfully buy links - but Google's gone further by actually starting to penalise sites.
What strikes me about Danny's post is how it came about it. We had seen some evidence that Google was acting out against link sellers but nothing that would earn the "Official" tag. Danny writes;
Last week, I noticed the Stanford Daily had dropped from when I wrote the above in April to PR7 today. That's a huge drop that has no apparent reason to happen. Some others were also reporting PageRank drops. So I pinged Google, and they confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links.
That relationship with key people in Google is just one of the many reasons why its worth keeping tabs on Danny and Search Engine Land. I'm hugely busy. I fly around the world - but I always try and keep up with Search Engine Land.
So, now you have two actions you can take when your competitor (or client competitors) start to buy links.
- Report them to Google
- Contact the link seller and point them to http://searchengineland.com/071007-173841.php
I know a lot of SEO folk still think Google is wrong to punish paid links. I know a lot of them still recommend paid links to their clients. Whether you agree Google is right to do this or not, Google is doing this. If you are taking money from people in order to promote their website please have a sit down and a think about your paid link stance.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Sphinn – sphunn and reviewed
Search Engine Land have launched a new social news community called Sphinn. Think Digg and you’re there. This, hopefully, will be a social news site for the search marketing world.
This is a great idea. I’ve signed up already and have put this rapid-fire review together. You’ve already had the first bullet from this review – great idea.
Let’s start at the profile pages. Search Engine Land have kept the emphasis on the search community and blogging habits of their audience. This is both clever and wise.
My profile has links back to this as my personal blog and the bigmouthmedia news page as a work blog. I try hard to keep the two separate, I will not be the only corporate SEO in this situation and so this clear division is welcome!
Towards the bottom of the profile page you’ll find space to link to forum profiles and social media spaces. This helps keep the community. Sphinn includes SearchEngineWatch’s forums in this – Danny Sullivan’s old haunt – and I think it is big of Danny and the SEL team to include the site.
So – what about the actual functionality of Sphinn itself? Well. There’s nothing dramatic here.
You know how the system works. Someone submits a blog post or story by providing a URL and summary. Once you’ve voted for a story you’ve sphunn it. There’s no system to vote down unwelcome stories, though.
Sphinn offers the following categories; Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Search Marketing, Social Media, Online Marketing, Searching and Other. The Ask team will be sulking. The “Live Search” branding team will be sulking too. That said; I wouldn’t really try and argue that Sphinn should change the categories that they’ve started with.
There are RSS feeds too – handy. I’ve already added the “Hot Today” feed to Google Reader and can spot the signature sites of a MyBrand Feedburner option. A rather nice feature is that the RSS includes the number of votes (which I imagine will be re-named to sphinns / sphunns later) so I can see which are the hottest of the hot stories.
Sphinn’s what you would expect from a social news site. There are no new innovations here. So why do I like it so much then?
It’s the community. Digg is hostile to the Search World. Reddit, sadly, seems to be getting a little stale. My great expectation for Sphinn is that it will become the site to find the breaking stories from all the blogs and forums I no longer have time to read. The throughput of stories will be higher than the selections we get from the Search Engine Land editors.
Spam’s a concern. My fear is that the Digg community will be proved right and Sphinn will be hit with a tidal wave of low quality and regurgitated blog content. I admit spam is a concern but my belief is that the SEL/Sphinn team will beat it. Relevancy is perhaps a bigger issue. Sphinn’s brand new and already we’ve a story on blending an iphone to which my initial thought was “is that search or social media?” Social media, perhaps. Linkbait, perhaps.
That then gives us the three bullet points from this review; great idea, basic but solid implementation and already facing challenges of relevancy and scope.
I’ll make the point of doing a “second impression” look at Sphinn in a number of months. The compare and contrast against this very first impressions will be interesting.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
SMX and Internet World
Danny Sullivan is a lucky man. He has set up SMX - a set of search conferences - which should be a daunting and formidable challenge. Of course, you know all about this - many of the key blogs you read are currently running adverts for SMX. Clever. There's no doubt that Danny's up to the challenge.
I'm particularly impressed at the level of support SMX is getting from the search engines. Not sure whether you should go to SMX or not? Google, the world's most powerful brand, suggests:
Come out to SMX Advanced in Seattle and party with Webmaster Central
and
So, we're very excited about an upcoming conference in our hometown, Seattle -- SMX Advanced, June 4-5. Since it's nearby, many from our team can attend and we're hoping to hear more about what you like and what you'd like to see us do in the coming year.
and Matt Cutts is coming!
The Google Seattle/Kirkland office and the Webmaster Central team are hosting SMX After Dark: Google Dance NW on Monday night. We want to say thanks to you for this great partnership, as well as give you the chance to learn more about what we've been up to. We'll have food, drinks, games (Pacman and Dance Dance Revolution anyone?), and music. Talk to the Webmaster Central engineers, as well as engineers from our other Kirkland/Seattle product teams, such as Talk, Video, and Maps. We may even have a dunk tank! Who would you most like to try your hand at dunking?
If I was Danny - I'd be very happy with Google right now!
Sadly, nope, I can't make it. I will be at Internet World though - which is shaping up to be the big conference here in the UK this summer. I get to speak twice! Come see me as part of Brands Reignited where I'll be part of a panel discussing how to integrate PPC with SEO. Then, on the last day, check out Digital Marketing Theatre where I'll be talking about Local Search with 192. Oh yeah - there's an expo too and bigmouthmedia have a stand. Come grab some of our free stuff! :)
Monday, March 19, 2007
Why SearchEngineLand and SERoundtable are heavy hitters
Look at my subscription trends. Brand Republic dominates. Brand Republic is closely followed by the ever cutting The Register and then, after a gap, Search Engine Land.
Okay. That's a big gap. Search Engine Land does not compete with the high volume, high quality professional sites... but compare it to TechCrunch. Search Engine Land, with Danny Sullivan at the helm, out posts TechCrunch who have just hired Heather Harde from Fox to act as CEO. If Danny is the CEO of Search Engine Land he's also the MD and editor in chief. That's a lot of responsibility and you would have to admit that he does very well.
Of course, at Search Engine Land there are other passionate and intelligent contributors - you'll have noted that I've come to really rate Bill Slawski and Barry Schwartz. You know Chris Sherman is a power of support behind the scenes. Slawski does quality. Schwartz seems to dedicate himself to writing about breaking news. A review of my trends shows that he has two - Cartoon Barry and SERoundtable - in my list. That's some achievement!
Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, of course, does well as does UK favourite E-Consultancy. It's a shame that there isn't an US equivalent of E-Consultancy as I find myself only able to review the high level agency activity and the blog level SEO activity. I'm not sure how to classify Marketing Pilgrim. It seems bigger than a blog but also more personal than a news site like Search Engine Land or The Register. However I classify the site - I do get a positive and up-to-the-minute vibe from the site.
What Search Engine Land and SERoundtable do (and bare in mind that Barry Schwartz contributes to both) is to dedicate ample resources to monitoring the internet. They have people watching the Key Influencing Forums and Blogs (*gasp* social media optimisation) and have resources enough to post quick and intelligent replies.
Monday, March 12, 2007
WebProNews: the Return
I had a number of motives when I set this blog up. One of my motives was to rant my frustration at a number of SEO forums and publications. On the publication front I found it intensely annoying that so much poorly written, wrong, speculation presented as fact or just cliquey back-scratching.
Back in 2005 I let loose on WebProNews and an article about “Google Bowling". The article exposed a "loophole" wherein competitors could, as easy as pie, buy a lot of links to your domain and knock you out of Google. Yeah. Right.
It seems like WebProNews has been my whipping boy of rushed and commercial content for years… but I need to set the record straight. In the last few quarters WebProNews has really been winning me over. I've seen a real shift from quantity over to quality.
One of WebProNew's biggest successes has been the appointment of staff writers. Not only can the staff writers actually write – but they are much less partisan than many other contributors. In particular I'm fond of David Utter's articles. Utter writes well. He finds interesting issues to right about. He tends not to write with bias. Utter also writes frequently.
Right now, WebProNew's front page is dominated by David Utter stories.
There are still some things about WebProNews that I would rather change. I dislike the way adverts/advertorials are mashed into the news archive section. I want to use the news archives! I think WebProNews still suffers from authors that clearly have an axe to grind. You can spot this lot because they tend to talk about the same issue or keep on citing the same site/blog/company. The axe grinding effect magnifies when other authors start quoting the axe grinders own blogs.
WebProNews has a strange relationship with some of my other news sources. I would classify Search Engine Land as a competitor to WebProNews (give me brand guidelines and I'll get the spacing right!). Nevertheless, it was Search Engine Land and the daily Search Cap which pointed me at WebProNews today. We have this situation because each of the two news sites get most of their news content by watching what is breaking elsewhere on the internet and by writing it up. Search Engine Land's advantage is that people will news will tend to come to Danny Sullivan first to share it and that whatever Barry Schwartz says can often be influential enough to become news – increasingly the same is true for Bill Slawski.
Google News has the concept of a "Hub". If you're in Google News (and there are less people in Google News than with #1 rankings that they are proud of) and have News Crawl errors you can download the report. The downloaded xls is a little different from the web report and contains the additional Hub column. It's always good to know if Google News considers you a “news hub" or not.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Flickr pushes "Search by Camera" harder
I really like Flickr. I do. I can hold my hands up and admit all the blame for my agency's Flickr account. It was that important to me that we had a presence there.
I'm a little wary of Flickr's Search by Camera feature. Right now it spends a lot of time in bed with Nikon. It is an advert. Yahoo says so but in light grey on white. 
Yahoo have added a Search by Camera call to action on to their flickr search pages.
Yahoo can do this if they want. It's their site. I think it was a wise choice to do so.
It may be worth reflecting just how much Nikon's D80 has with the site right now. Flickr's own stats don't say anything for the Nikon D80. Canon dominate the most common type of camera, the Point and Shoot. In fact, Nikon aren't even on the radar.
In the overall league, Canon have the run-away lead again and the D80 isn't anywhere.
There you go. The news here is that Yahoo is pushing the Search by Camera feature a little harder not that they're doing adverts in a semi-sly way.
I'm reminded of the onebox verus advert debate which ensured Google ended 2006 with a thump. I think Danny Sullivan had it right when, in his fury post, he said:
I really dislike other companies getting free passes when Google is held up to higher standards.
Phil Bradley described Google's tactic as the search engine admitting that they're failing. I don't think Yahoo are failing here. That's not the news. The news here isn't that Yahoo is taking money for a semi-sly advert. The news here is that Yahoo has added an extra search feature.
So Yahoo can run these semi-sly adverts in a way that Google couldn't. I very much doubt any other blog will post on this. If Google slapped a Nikon D80 up on Picas Web Albums then we'd all hear it. I dare say Blake Ross would walk and the forums would buzz for weeks.
Yahoo should exploit this. Why? They can. That's why. It'll make them money.
I think Google are in the mess because, in the past, they've painted themselves whiter than white. It's impossible to be whiter than white. It's a bit like a football coach asking for %110. Quack, quack, oops! It can't happen. Google have done well to move, slowly, away from the "Do no evil". Yahoo are doing well to team up with Nikon and sell more D80s!
Friday, December 29, 2006
Live Search
I'm glad I found time to brush up this blog. I mentioned Bill Slawski by name on my last post and I suspect a Google Blog Alert (which are awfully quick these days) tipped him off. In just a few minutes I had Bill and Danny leaving comments on ARHG. Kudos to Bill to updating his SearchEngineLand post and for his further post on interesting Google patents. Boo hiss to the US Patent Office as I still can't buy the damn things.
Since I found time to update this blog I thought I'd try and pull Search Commands* back into life to. What better starting place than changing the old MSN profile to a new Live Search profile. No where else! So that's what I did. I found time to add in the exclusive LinkFromDomain command and discovered that it's a bit flaky. It had no results for many well known domains. This week Live Search's IP command was also poorly.
Live Search's has also begun to tempt me into setting them as my default search engine is new, though.
SearchEngineLand and the US Patent Office
I often growl at the US Patent & Trademark Office. It's just silly. Today I'm growling at them because their shopping basket is broken. I'm trying to buy Google's Mobile Search Patent and I can't. Grr.
It was SearchEngineLand's SearchCap which tipped me off to this. The email took me to the site and a post by Bill Slawski. It was a succient post which is good in ways. It linked straight through to Microsoft's patent application. It did not link through to Google's Patent Application. To get to that I had to click through to SEO by the Sea which is Bill Slawski's blog. I'm sure it is a very good blog. It's not a blog I happen to read. My SearchEngineLand experience would have been better had the original post linked me to Google's patent application.
I'm sure SearchEngineLand's writers write for free. Kudos to them for that. One of the carrots they get in return is a much a higher profile. Every post Bill writes on SearchEngineLand links back to his profile at SEO by the Sea anyway. If I was Danny (and after a check of my bank balance, I can confirm that I'm not) I would strongly encourage every writer to produce fully inclusive posts. Even if the writer's intent was not to use SearchEngineLand to drive traffic to their blog they shouldn't ever be in the position where people can debate whether that is happening.
Bill's done the very same thing on another Google Patent post - How Google Sitelinks May Work, From Patent Application. Some links to the US Patent Office and a nudge towards SEO by the Sea. Once again, though, thanks to Bill for the Patent heads up.
SearchEngineLand is in Google News too. I'm sure the weight of requests to Google News to include SearchEngineLand justifies this without further inspection. Further more (again from patent applications) we know that Google News is interested in the quality and quantity of the writing team and SearchEngineLand has some trusted and respected names on board.
A quick check of the stories on the home page this morning turns up one quirky figure though. The average word count of articles (body and header, no navigation or footer links) is only 114.5 words. There's not a story linked to from Google News's home page or the first page in news categories right now with less than 275 words.
Monday, November 27, 2006
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?
