Spark Con to Harness and Highlight RTP's Indy Geeks and Business Freaks
I was geeking out in Durham, NC with Ben Wills a couple weekends ago and saw a Spark Con flier at the Bean Trader.

The logo of burning person caught my attention first, and then I read the coverage area: Arts, Indy Business, Technology, Inclusivity.

I signed up the next day - it was only $40 for two days and it looks to be a great chance to meet some great local brains.

From my understanding the Onion Head Monster will be there. I suspect Chris of Raleighing and Lulu will be there as well.

One interesting result of Spark Con will be a book that provides advice and guidance for local businesses and organizations based on conference workshops.

I'll be posting at SEL about what transpires and I may do a little video.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Increase Blog Traffic by Escaping Your Industry's Echo Chamber
Jeremy Swiller IMd me a link to Fishkin's 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic this morning, which we both agreed was a fantastic collection of advice.

These 2 points resontated with me:

from 7
If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view.

from 12
Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.

I also appreciated Chris Pirillo's 10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber for it's refreshing thinking for bloggers who may have gotten wrapped too tightly in their media space. Like me.

Some quotes that resonated for me:

from 1:
"I save my favorite tech friends for “dessert” - catching up with their feeds at the end of the week. Doing this has largely kept me from commenting on commenter’s comments on commenting comments commenting on commenters."

from 5:
"when everybody’s talking and nobody’s listening, what are we really accomplishing?"

from 10:
"The day for blogging about blogging, and podcasting about podcasting, is long gone."

Linkbait, in the search industry, has become a particularly echoey topic.

...I still haven't written my top ten list of top ten link bait tactics ;)

Pirillo's post via problogger, who echoes Pirillos thoughts ;P
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
My Main Concern Over Danny Sullivan's Departure from SEW...
...is that ten years of thorough, insightful and balanced coverage is all we'll get.

Danny Sullivan has been my unwitting mentor since I began covering the search space in 2003. Thanks for being a pioneer and a strong thinker Danny and I look forward to your next project.

To get perspective on what his departure means, check out Reaction from the Search Community on Danny Sullivan's Departure.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Ask Offers Non-Alphanumeric Search :P
Ask's first iteration of non-alphanumeric search is cute. You can type emoticons into the Ask search bar and get back definitions.

Notable in their post today though is the line, "we plan on doing more with non-alphanumeric searching in the future."

This gets me thinking in the search operator direction, and the development of an easier "short hand" for new types of searches at Ask.

Then again maybe they're just going to add new emoticons :P
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Jim Hedger Joins SiteProNews as Senior Editor
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Hedger back in my days at WebProNews - he regularly answered reader questions and submitted thorough and insightful SEO articles.

I received news today that he joined SiteProNews as its Senior Editor.

Congratulations Jim!

SiteProNews owner Mel Strocen talks about his search engine ExactSeek here.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Yahoo Real Estate: it's Creeping into Organic + APIs Improve its Functionality
Yahoo revised its real estate page with map and local APIs and gave its web search a real estate short cut:

websearch:
"you can now find up-to-date local mortgage rate information directly within web search"
Yahoo real estate:
"home valuation shortcut and local real estate search shortcut for ‘[city] real estate’ queries (ex: ‘san Francisco real estate’)."
Yahoo Local and Map APIs:
users can read reviews of schools and figure out drive times to potential residences

(check Yahoo's Searching for Mortgage Rates and Real Estate)

To give you a feel for the importance of this move read Greg Sterling: "Depending on whom you consult, Yahoo! Real Estate falls somewhere in the top ten most visited online real estate properties."

Greg Sterling also notes that: "In my quick and unscientific review of [7 real estate] sites I found the new Yahoo! site to be one of the best user experiences (Trulia was the other but didn’t have as many features.)."

I'm not super familiar with the online real estate marketing space, but this looks like a pretty big deal to me in terms of a layering of appropriate technologies that will make the residence-finding process much easier. This realtor real estate company marketer who follows online real estate in his blog thinks so too: Yahoo Real Estate Delivers A Better Search Experience. (his company has a deal with Yahoo though...)

It's interesting to note the creep of Yahoo Real Estate results into Yahoo's main SERPs. It echoes the Google Base creep and, like Base, will be canabalizing paid search and organic result click throughs.

Unlike most of the Base advances I've seen though Y! Real Estate is a strong, well integrated and mostly-separate-from-SERPs tool.

Real Estate marketers - if you're not already in Yahoo, get there now! This improvement will drive its usage enormously. They provide users with residences for rent as well as purchase.

Other Coverage:
Yahoo Revamps Real Estate Site
Yahoo Searches For Mortgage Rates
Yahoo Real Estate new website and Flickr geotagging
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Greg Linden on Findory and the Relevance of Collaborative Filtering
I began regularly reading Greg Linden's Geeking with Greg because of the questions he asked in Battelle's Gary Flake interview post.

I'd been under his sway for years though, without realizing it. Linden developed Amazon's recommendation engine, which analyzes past purchases, user viewing behavior and makes suggestions based on purchases by others who have profiles similar to mine.

I sent Linden my interview with the task-based relevance engine Watson - because of this line from a post he wrote: "The prize in search will go to those that help people get what they need quickly, effectively, and effortlessly."

I also asked him for an interview - I realized it was time for me to learn more about Findory, Linden's personalized news recommendation service that enables users to cut through the hundreds of thousands of news and information items to the ones that will be most immediately and personally useful.

As a result of this interview I will be testing out Findory's feed reader (I already imported my feeds as favorites - I could also choose to import the public bloglines of others!) as well as Findory's alpha web search offering.

In this interview I sought to better understand Findory and the merits of personalized recommendations, as well as to grasp something of the monumental task of being a one-person startup.

I hope you find this glimpse into the mind of a relevance pioneer useful and interesting in your work - and I suggest you familiarize yourself with Linden's brand of relevance. His and Watson's I think are strong examples of what relevance will be in the future.

(...and thanks to Ben Wills for suggesting that I steal Kawasaki's interview layout format. I will also be working at understanding Kawasaki's incisive questions so that I can shorten my interviews a bit :P)

Getting Started:
1) Question: how have you applied your studies at the Stanford Business School to your work at Findory?

Answer: There have been some direct applications of the coursework from entrepreneurship, accounting, and business law classes, but most of the value of Stanford Business School comes from hearing of the experiences of others and the breadth of the knowledge shared.

The influence of that can be somewhat subtle. I am more able to attack business problems that before may have seemed daunting, I am more confident when networking or negotiating. I have the advice of many on which to lean. It was an enjoyable and useful experience.

2) Question: where is Findory now in your overall vision for it? what stage would you say you're at now?

Answer: Findory is doing well. It now has products in personalized news, weblogs, video, podcasts, web search, and advertising.

Findory is a reasonably popular website as well. It has over 5M page views and 100k unique visitors per month. The site is generating a modest amount of revenue from its targeted, personalized advertising.

The vision for Findory remains the same as it was on the day it started, to help people find the information they need.

Search works when people know what they want and can specify search terms. When people do not know what they want or cannot specify a search, relevant information needs to be brought to them.

Personalization technology can learn individual interests, generate targeted recommendations, and surface useful information that might otherwise be lost. Personalization can help people get the information they need.

3) Question: how would you characterize Findory's growth at this point? who do you see as competitors and why? Findory + Bloglines would be very useful to me; do you see partnerships as a way to continue growth?

Answer: After growing at about 100% per quarter for the first two years, Findory's growth has slowed recently. I believe the primary reason for this slowing is lack of resources for targeting a broad, mainstream audience with new marketing and new features .

Findory's primary competitors are the search giants. Google, in particular, has early features that recommend news stories (in Google News) based on individual search history and a personalized web search that shows different search results to different people. MSN also has an experimental product that recommends news stories.

There are many other sites that might be substitutes for Findory. For example, My Yahoo, Live.com, and Netvibes are customizable home pages. Bloglines and other feed readers are also configurable and customizable. The primary difference is that Findory learns and adapts from behavior. No configuration is necessary. Just read articles, and Findory changes and personalizes to your interests. This is important for mainstream audiences that do not have the tolerance for twiddling and configuring of the geek crowd.

If you would like a combination of Findory and Bloglines, you might try Findory's feed reader. It is known as Findory Favorites and is available at http://findory.com/s/

You can list all your favorite RSS feeds (or load an OPML file) and then get recommendations of interesting stories selected from your favorite feeds. Quite unusual.

4) Question: do you still have plans to do overall websearch? can you map out this process for me?

Answer: Findory recently launched a new version of its personalized web search. It is currently in alpha testing.

Findory personalized web search reorders your web search results based on your search history, clickthrough history, and the behavior of other web searchers. Early analyses showed a modest but useful lift in the quality of the top search results.

More information on the personalized web search and the improvements in search quality can be found in a weblog post: New personalized web search at Findory

5) Question: how many employees now?

Answer: Just one, me. Findory is a tiny, self-funded startup.

Digging into the Findory collaborative filtering engine:
6) Question: how would you describe or characterize the mathematics of recommendation? do you factor in length of page views or how long it takes to click back?

Answer: Findory recommends interesting articles based on what you read and what others have read.

It is a little like social networking sites, the sites where you list all your friends and then share information between the network of friends.

Unlike social networking sites, everything is done implicitly and anonymously. Rather than list your friends, other like-minded readers of Findory are found for you. Rather than explicitly share, interesting things others have found are quietly and anonymously shared behind the scenes.

All the hard work is done by humans. Findory readers find all the good articles. Findory only helps readers share what they have found easily and with no effort.

Technically, the algorithms used fall into the class of social filtering algorithms, though it often can be tricky work to get those types of techniques to scale to large data.

7) Question: Do you see the potential with Findory usage for an echo chamber, personalized insulation effect, where users end up missing important and relevant news? Will people end up reading what they WANT to read rather than what they NEED to read?

Answer: Findory works hard not to pigeonhole readers. It does not seek to show a reader only what they want to see. Findory helps readers discover a wide range of sources and articles that otherwise might have been missed.

Amusingly, of the very few complaints Findory gets, the most common are from people complaining about seeing articles from a viewpoint with which they disagree. The issue here is that Findory does not pigeonhole people, but some readers want to be pigeonholed. Opinion articles are not selected based on a particular view, with the result that people are exposed to viewpoints they might otherwise prefer to ignore.

By the way, it is interesting to compare Findory with traditional, more static front pages. Let's take Yahoo News as an example. Yahoo News shows the same front page to everyone. There are 100k+ articles available, but everyone sees the same thin slice of 20-30 articles. All the depth of information is lost.

Personalization offers a way to show different front pages to different people. Findory plucks the interesting bits and pieces out of a sea of information. Everyone sees a different slice of the news. Readers see new sources, are exposed to new viewpoints, and discover articles they otherwise would have missed.

8) Question: Is news really the best place for recommendations then? What other types of data do you base news selections on for individual users?

Answer: Readers need help finding interesting news. There are thousands of news sources, hundreds of thousands of news articles, and millions of weblogs out there. It is impossible for readers to sort out the good from the bad on their own. People need tools that make it easy to surface what is relevant to them and help them discover information they would otherwise miss.

The personalization and recommendations on Findory are mostly based on clickstream, but there is some analysis of content as well.

9) Question: what other valuable data about what I'm interested in (besides more of the same data) could you provide me? are there ways to spin this info outside of recommendations such as a graph that shows how long I spend looking at types of news on your site? That would hold up a mirror for me regarding my attention data...

Answer: Findory is not doing much of this, but I really like some of what Google is doing here. In particular, the Google Search History Trends at http://www.google.com/searchhistory/trends is useful and clever.

10) Question: what if I hooked findory up to my email account? or what if you tapped into my attention data in some way? I'd love to lift this recommendation piece out of just news and apply it across all the information I interact with daily, even desktop data. what are your thoughts here?

Answer: The goal of Findory is to help with all information overload. Findory eventually will personalize every information stream in your life, including news, search, advertising, events, e-mails, video, and music.

11) Question: what about white papers or Google Scholar articles and such? Could you envision a Findory that's customized to academics? Have you ever considered making a more targeted Findory for specific demographics?

Answer: We have had various requests to license Findory technology to build personalized news sites for narrower categories. As a tiny startup, Findory does not have the bandwidth to pursue these, but it is an interesting possibility for the future.

12) Question: Can you make Findory read my bloglines and then make suggestions from that, creating a sort of techmeme + new recommendations based on what I already read? This could also give Findory a better sense of how to structure the information you provide; for example I don't need a sports section...

Answer: Findory Favorites (http://findory.com/s/) can read in your OPML from Bloglines, but it does not use the articles you have read on Bloglines

I agree that adding some of Findory's personalization and recommendation technology to Bloglines or other feed readers would be fantastic, especially for people who are feeling overwhelmed with the effort of trying to manually skim and filter hundreds of feeds every day.

13) Question: What about books from Amazon or other types of products? the news I'm interested in could be connected to what entertainment or products I like, right? Are you leaving product recommendations up to advertisers?

Answer: Product recommendations are too close to my previous life at Amazon. Though it is a lot of fun, I doubt I would pursue that.

Personalization has been successfully applied to e-commerce by Amazon and others. Findory is trying to go a step further. Findory seeks to personalize information. Findory will help people find the information they need by learning from what people read and recommending interesting other articles.

14) Question: as a user can I rename any of the sections? they seem so broad, and over time I think a new categorization framework will emerge for every user. Yes, no?

Answer: The categories on Findory are purposely broad. They are intended to supplement search, allowing people to narrow their focus a bit when they want to browse. The personalization should focus the page on the most interesting articles and topics.

Other startups are focusing on narrow categories, including fine-grained classification in Topix.net and the tagging in Technorati. Generally, I think narrow categories require too much work from readers to use and, when used for customizable pages, can cause pigeonholing, so narrowing the categories has not been an area of focus for Findory.

15) Question: video recommendations - what data is most useful to making video recommendations? is this harder without user votes on your site?

Answer: The video recommendations use clickstream data, the information about what Findory readers have watched. Yes, recommendations on Findory for video will continue to improve as more people watch videos using Findory.

16) Question: how have you been able to leverage Findory's recommendation algorithm for advertisers?

Answer: Just as Findory's personalization engine matches content to interested audiences, our personalized advertising matches advertisements to interested people.

The current version uses Google AdSense as the provider of the ads but targets the ads using Findory data. Unlike normal AdSense ads, the advertising is not only targeted to the content of the page, but also to the individual behavior of each reader.

Advertising is a form of content. It is useful when it is relevant. When it is not relevant, it is annoying. Too often, advertising on websites is poorly targeted and irrelevant. Findory wants to make advertising relevant and useful.

17) Question: what are your thoughts about licensing your recommendation engine?

Answer: There have been several inquiries, but supporting licensing would be distracting for the company.

The problem in front of Findory is already Google-sized. Personalizing information -- news, search, and advertising -- is already a multi-billion dollar business. Findory has its work cut out for it with its current mission.

18) Question: you focus on anonymous personalization - why?

Answer: Because we can. And I think it is a good example for others too.

Findory does not require registration or login. Readers who come to Findory can just start reading. The more they read, the more Findory targets to their interests. It just works.

Login and registration are optional. If you do not login, you are just a random number to us. We have no idea who you are and no way to tie your browsing back to you.

Even if you do login, the registration requires just an arbitrary login and password (e.g. "donald.duck"); still no personal information is requested.

Mandatory registration is an unnecessary and unpleasant barrier for readers. Readers just want to get the information they need. We want to help them.

19) Question: Amazon (along with eBay) was a pioneer in leveraging user generated media - book reviews; why have you left this out of Findory?

Answer: Findory does not show the full content of articles -- readers clickthrough to read the full article -- so it would be awkward to show forums or comments next to each article. Moreover, other sites, like Yahoo News, are already pursuing this, making it unattractive for Findory to pursue.

It might be interesting here to talk about the general business relationship Findory has with content providers and its readers. Findory shows excerpts of the content from other sources. It is essentially an ad for that content. Readers benefit from discovering useful information. Content-providers benefit from getting traffic, not just any traffic, but the valuable "traffic of intent", as John Battelle calls it. Findory benefits from connecting advertisers with interested Findory readers. It is good for everyone.

20) Question: how would you describe your crawler? is it built any differently in that it stocks an index for a recommendation engine vs. a search engine?

The crawler itself is pretty straightforward. It is custom, but it is a standard multi-threaded crawler.

21) Question: talk about the findory index - does it grow based on findory usage? how do you decide to add new sources to the index? do you allow suggestions by users? what if I want more information about trout fishing? if I search for trout fishing will you start to find sources for me?

Answer: Findory manually examines news and weblog sources before including them in our crawl. At some point, we will switch to an automated process based on usage data.

A huge percentage of weblogs out there are not of interest to a general audience, either spam, junk, or useless. For one example, Technorati claimed there were 19.6M weblogs in October 2005, around the same time the most popular feed reader, Bloglines, said only 37k weblogs had at least 20 readers on Bloglines. Very few weblogs appear to be useful and relevant to a general audience.

Findory's crawl currently includes a few thousand sources and hundreds of thousands of articles. We constantly are adding new sources to expand our crawl.

General
22) Question: what projects are you most excited about - outside of Findory - in online personalization? I mean projects by the big players or new start ups?

Answer: I like what Google is doing. Of the search giants, only Google seems to be aggressively pursuing personalization. They already have personalized web search and recommendations in Google News. I suspect they are also quietly pursuing personalization of advertising.

23) Question: what do you miss about Amazon?

Answer: Mostly, I miss the resources I had while I was there. No doubt about it, startups are hard and lonely. At a tiny startup, you have to do everything yourself, scrounge for every machine, and fight for every bit of attention from press and consumers. At Amazon, I had powerful computing servers, played with massive data sets, could bounce ideas off talented software engineers, and could rely on system administrators, database administrators, and PR and legal teams. It was nice to have a strong team supporting and helping me.

24) Question: what has had the steepest learning curve for you in running your own startup?

Answer: I would say the hardest thing is that what I decide to work on every day is a bet on the life of the company. I have to be very careful in picking my battles and knowing where to focus my attention.

25) Question: at the library this weekend I was confounded and astounded by the lack of user/borrower data to help me make decisions on step parenting books. do you know of any projects in the public space focused on tapping into usage data to help libraries and their patrons learn from others about the books that are the strongest offerings to a given thought space?

Answer: No, but that is an interesting idea! You should mention it to Gary Price. I am sure he would love to chat about it.

Follow Up Questions:
1) Question: How many people are using the Findory API?
2) Question: Can you provide urls of interesting and clever usages that you've seen?
3) Question: How many Findory inline users do you have?

Answer: Findory's API, RSS feeds, and Findory Inline get a substantial amount of traffic, millions of hits per month. Of these, my favorite is the Findory Inline and RSS feeds that let bloggers see articles on other blogs related what they write about.

Some good examples of using Findory Inline are on my weblog at http://glinden.blogspot.com. You can see that Findory content -- weblog articles related to what I write about on Geeking with Greg, news stories about Google, and a snippet of the personalized headlines that I see when I visit Findory -- are placed directly on my weblog, blended nicely with the style of my weblog, and shared with readers of my weblog. Fun stuff.

4) Question: To me this is approaching a Eurekster-type service where I put customized Findory search and news on my site. Is such a Findory service likely in the near term?

Answer: It's a good idea. That could be implemented using the Findory API, though I admit it would require a bit of effort to do it. Perhaps I will expand Findory Inline to offer this feature.

By the way, if you want this feature, you might also check out Google SiteSearch.

It's a cute service that is part of AdSense and does some of what you want.

5) Question: Explain why, given that there's only you on this project, creating a general audience service instead of a niche audience service is the best direction. If you had to pick a niche what would it be?

Answer:Oh, a niche is no fun at all. I like my projects to be big, hairy, and audacious. I like working on things that could benefit tens of millions of people. A niche is no fun at all.

6) Question: You say in response to question 3 "Just read articles, and Findory changes and personalizes to your interests. This is important for mainstream audiences that do not have the tolerance for twiddling and configuring of the geek crowd." However, mainstream audiences are now flocking to services like MySpace, which require a great deal of configuring and twiddling, though of the less geeky sort obviously. What incentives does MySpace provide for "twiddlers?" Would/could these incentives make sense in Findory?

Answer: I think sites like MySpace and Facebook owe much of their success to being used for dating. Sex is a powerful motivator. It will get people to do work.

Sites like My Yahoo have had a lot less success with getting people to configure and twiddle. The vast majority of people who use My Yahoo do no configuration at all; they use the default page. All those people, the mainstream who are uninterested in spending time configuring My Yahoo, would benefit from implicit personalization like Findory's.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Creating Branded Keywords and Driving Their Search Demand Through Buzz
Congratulations to MarketSmart Interactive's Jeremy Swiller for getting published in MarketingProfs!

Creating Branded Keywords and Driving Their Search Demand Through Buzz

Should you read this article? The opening paragraph should give you some idea of who he wrote it for:

If you're marketing in a highly competitive keyword space or are providing products and services that have little or no name recognition, you should consider creating branded keywords and using buzz to drive search demand for them.

I'm honored to work with someone whose SEM thought is this progressive. Nice work Jeremy!

Read: Creating Branded Keywords and Driving Their Search Demand Through Buzz
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Yahoo Blog Search Down for "Retooling;" New Reader Coming?
Matt Cutts noted that Yahoo's blog search is gone.

Lee Odden commented in Cutts' post that Greg Jarboe contacted Yahoo, and said: "“Brian Nelson, a Yahoo spokesperson, called me back to say the Blogs beta had been “temporarily taken offline to retool the offering.”"

Loren Baker speculates and notes that:

"Chances are that given the early success of MyYahoo Feeds and other Yahoo blog oriented offerings which hit the market earlier than most of their competition, Yahoo has not done very much since to launch an all emcompassing blog reader (such as Google Reader) & search offering, which should be integrated into the overall Yahoo experience (in a similar way that Ask.com has with Bloglines).

Steve Rubel adds that he is seeing a new Yahoo referral source in his server logs, reader.yrank.feeds.yahoo.com."

Also see Yahoo Kills Blog Search, New Feed Platform May Be Coming.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Awarded Shopping "Recommendations" Patent Filed in 2001
Bill Slawski, writing in SEWatch, describes his latest Google patent find as: "a way to use past search history and user behavior to rerank search results and provide ecommerce based recommendations."

The patent's titled "Interface and system for providing persistent contextual relevance for commerce activities in a networked environment"

This first sentence from the abstract sums up the patent too:

"A search and recommendation system employs the preferences and profiles of individual users and groups within a community of users, as well as information derived from categorically organized content pointers, to augment electronic commerce related searches, re-rank search results, and provide recommendations for commerce related objects based on an initial subject-matter query and an interaction history of a user."

So it sounds like something along the lines of if Amazon looked at your behavior and the behavior of your community and used that to make recommendations.

Like the Editorial Opinion Parameter patent, this one was filed well before the current "community" craze online. What's up with all these old patents coming through?

This particular patent makes a great deal of sense in light of Google Checkout...

Is this normal? Can you unfile and then refile for patents? Why did it take so long?

Check out Slawski's excellent New Search Patent Filings: August 27, 2006 - Google's Recommendations, IBM's Speedier Pagerank, Napster's Search for more. And, well, read his blog too. I do :)
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Index Updates at Google, Yahoo and MSN
I asked Chris Sessoms, one of MarketSmart Interactive's Technical Analysts, to begin writing regularly about the major index and optimization happenings at the search engines.

Here's Chris:

The major occurrence I noticed was that the top three search engines all had some form of an update occurring to close out the week and the month.

Google underwent a minuscule update to their back links at a couple of their data centers, Yahoo underwent an algorithmic update, and MSN began an update that was then rolled back.

It would seem that the possibility of removing Pluto's planetary status has caused an unbalanced shift in our solar system and an inconsequential but stressful week for the SEO/SEM industry.

The Search Engines are not out there to ruin anyone's business, but new sites are added everyday and with increasing indexes maintenance should be expected.

Sessom's Resources:
Back Link Update At Google.com
Yahoo! Search Update Underway?
MSN Search Bug Due to Recent MSN Update
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Ads on eBay's Non-US Pages + Click to Call on Skype
Swiller just shot me a news story that warped my mind - Google has exclusive rights to sell advertising on eBay's non-US pages.

Further, it appears that eBay Skype and Google Click-to-Call may be working together to drive more commerce on eBay, and it was not clear from the story Swiller sent if this was for outside the US or not.

To be sure, this deal sheds better light on eBay's relationship with Yahoo, which I wrote about here: Yahoo + eBay Tie the Knot!

Now I'm realizing it wasn't so much tying the knot as moving in together to see how things work out ;)

I also find this deal interesting in light of Google Checkout.

Get your world shaken here: Google, eBay sign commerce deal.

I'll be updating through the day as I learn more.

update:
Greg Sterling has a nice write up and coverage snippets from NYTimes and WSJ: Google & eBay Partner for ‘Click to Call’
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Anti-Geekery League Arrests Another in MarketSmart Geekery Investigation
Stephen Ward, an analyst at MarketSmart Interacive, was detained by the Anti-Geekery League on Friday for questioning in response to reports of involvement in geekery. According to an AGL spokesman, Ward was overheard discussing tabletop roleplaying with known geek JP Sherman.

Shortly after his apprehension, Ward confessed. "JP was just inviting me to a one-shot Call of Cthulu game. I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, I play Dungeons & Dragons every Sunday anyway." Ward was thereafter arrested and charged with illegal possession of a Crown Royal dice bag, operating a d20 without a permit, and dragonslaying in the first degree.

Ongoing investigation in the case has revealed a startling development. Anonymous sources have reportedly attested that Ward is, in fact, a Dungeon Master. These kingpins of geekery not only participate in the tabletop RPG underground, but are in fact suppliers who lure unsuspecting victims to such geeky pastimes.

The AGL will be holding a press conference later today concerning Ward's arraignment. Sources from within the AGL have stated that a search of Ward's home made the charges against him likely to stick. Some of the evidence collected included D&D paraphernalia, World of Warcraft material, and several live-action roleplaying costumes. It is expected that additional charges will be filed against Ward once the evidence is fully examined. Ward's lawyers could not be reached for comment.

SEL's second-weekly Geek Trivia Challenge:
"According to D&D 3.5 core rules, what weapon should you use when fighting a cornugon?"

The AGL is pleased to report the success of it's efforts to eliminate geekery, because no one was able to correctly answer last week's Geek Trivia Challenge. The first person to post the answer to this week's challenge will be sacked. The AGL will then apologize for the fault in sacking and those responsible for sacking the person who was sacked will be sacked. Then the winner will receive a free tshirt.
Stephen Ward | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Checkout: US Retailer Recommendations + Review Roundup
I wrote to Brian Smith recently to (finally) learn more about Google Checkout - I needed help working through through the ecommerce ecosystem ramifications so that I could better make recommendations for MSI's US clients and prospects.

He gave me a short reading list:

Shopping.com, Shopzilla, and NexTag BEWARE of Google Checkout
Google Checkout Supports Its Core Search Business

After reading through these write ups along with more recent reports I suggest that you wait and watch. Keep it in strong consideration, however, and if you have the resources try it out at small scale.

What do you think of Google Checkout so far? Please comment your thoughts and reactions at the bottom of this post. And check out more conversation here: Google Checkout - Exaggerated Claims

(Are you outside the US? Google Checkout doesn't love you yet. Join this conversation: Google CheckOut = Blatant Discrimination?)

Here are the key quotes from these and others that helped me fill out my recommendation.

For AdWords Retailers:
If you're a retailer who uses AdWords Google Checkout puts a shopping cart in your ad that will show searchers that they can buy directly from you.

This closes the Google loop, making them a 360 degree marketing and sales machine.

Before you get that shopping cart up in your AdWords though retailers, consider the power Google has in this closed loop...

Potential Dangers - Google Ownership of Client Relationship:
In Google Checkout - The GDS of eCommerce Brian Smith brings up some key issues that cooled off my initial whole-hearted enthusiasm for Google Checkout.

A commenter in this thread crystalizes the very real dangers of Google Checkout, especially in this early stage of roll out:

Another issue sellers should be aware, and one Google must be extremely cautious about, is the potential for Google to solely “decide” that a seller acted fraudulently on a transaction using Google Checkout. Google is on the record saying if they find such fraudulent activity, they can (and seem to indicate they will) ban the seller from ever using Adwords. Thus, along with giving up significant customer control with Google Checkout, there is a potential that a seller could get banned from ever using Google Adwords — which could be the kiss of death for a seller.

Further, there's some name brand hesitations and beta hiccups: "there are a growing number of consumer complaints about delays in how long Checkout takes to process orders."

In Google miscalculates with Google Checkout Donna Bogatin runs through a laundry list of issues Google Checkout's seen since it launched, including the strain on Google's eBay relationship and merchant reluctance due to Google client ownership.

...and here's one strongly negative review from a frustrated buyer - Google Checkout Flunks.

But... the Benefits:
RTP's own Scott Wingo of ChannelAdvisor speaks on the 3 benefits of Google Checkout in From the field: ChannelAdvisor on Checkout Those are, "1. The competitive 2% and $0.20/transaction processing fees. 2. The free transaction processing credit... 3. The Google Checkout badge..."

Google itself, as paraphrased by Smith, suggests that participation will help retailers "1) get better clickthrough rates on Google AdWords 2) increase conversion rate 3) process sales for free (for every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 in sales for free)."

Read the Google Checkout blog for more benefits and early retailer testimonials.

Google Checkout: Watch, Don't Use it Yet
So... in PostBubble style is Google Checkout a floater or sinker?

I'd definitely put it in the sinker category for now, until Google irons out its kinks in the system.

If you're a brave retailer or already involved, I thank you for helping Google learn what it takes to make a great cash register. I think it will be great - give it a few months - and it has cash-register distribution potential like the web has never seen.

One note - if you see many of your AdWords competitors using it I would take Checkout in higher consideration. Too, if you have the time, give it a spin on a small scale.

PostBubble, by the way, floated Checkout.

To fill out your understanding of Google Checkout, here's some ecosystem perspective...

For Major Online Retailers:
"While some may be reluctant to “turn over” the customer relationship to Google, in the end, I think they will try and stick with anything that will result in better conversions."
-Li

That's Li at the time Google Checkout launched. Smith quotes Safa here on the 21st: "Last week we spoke with more than 30 online retailers at the 15th Annual eTail Conference in Philadelphia. 81% of the online retailers indicated that they probably will not implement Google Checkout primarily due to the concern about ceding customer ownership to Google."

For Comparison Shopping Engines:
"The comparison engines will not be able to show the Google Checkout shopping cart icon in their listings (unless some special deal is struck). This means that to effectively compete with the merchants who are displaying the icon, the shopping comparison engines will have to increase their maximum CPC bid, driving up costs."
-Smith

For eBay:
"Will some eBay sellers defect and start using Google Checkout instead? Not if they want to remain fully integrated with eBay AND also offer non-credit card options (which Google Checkout currently does not offer)."
-Li

Google's Angle:
"I believe that it’s actually positioned to solve a perplexing and core problem at Google – how to drive more search ad revenues, especially in the retail sector where search spending is plateauing for top keywords."

Further Reading, in no particular order:
Levi.com checks out of Google Checkout
Google Checkout Flunks
Google Maybe Checkout is perhaps a better name for the service at present.
Google AdWords/ Checkout Glitch
Google miscalculates with Google Checkout
Merchants on Google Checkout: undermines our customer relationships
Amazon's Challenges
Google Checkout vs. eBay Pay Pal: Where is the competition?
One reason I prefer Paypal to Google Checkout: merchant receipts
Suspicious Overabundance of Google Checkout Sellers
Google Checkout PHP Kit
Checking In On Google Checkout
Google Checkout pitch: '1000 dollars in AdWords for 10,000 in free processing'
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Zixxo, Krasilovsky, MerchantCircle on Google Coupons
In Google Enhancing and Monetizing UGM: Blogger, Video, Map Coupons I wondered aloud what Zixxo thought of Google's coupon offering.

Zixxo CEO Mike Hogan (interviewed here) responded in comments:

You asked what ZiXXo thinks about this:
• It validates and draws attention to the market for online local coupons. I assume that the heads of Yahoo, MSN, AOL, IAC, News Corp., etc. are asking what their strategy is for local online coupons. Instead of sitting idly by and watching Google move into online coupons they can partner with us to build a highly syndicated network for online coupons.

• It puts the fear of God into Valpak’s print competitors: ADVO, MoneyMailer, Valassis, News Corp., etc. who will need a solution to respond to Google’s coupons.

• At this point Google’s self-service coupons are extremely simplistic. Our solution is equally simple but much more sophisticated.

• We provide a solution for coupon management as well, including pausing coupons.

• Google’s coupons are pretty well hidden inside the mapping currently. It appears that Google’s strategy is to monetize them by getting local businesses to buy AdWords, which seems convoluted.

• ZiXXo is now in position to partner with both online and offline businesses in order to build a one-stop-shop for online coupons with broad syndication and, through our API, integration right into the content.

• I suspect that Valpak, and other coupon printers, will now need to move very quickly to counter Google, who plans to eat their lunch, with their own self-service and syndication.

In Getting Paranoid About Google’s Move Into Coupons, Peter Krasilovsky writes "Ultimately, I like what online-to-print classified vendor Ad2Ad CEO Jay Schauer says: “Google is just the one to execute this properly. (Its) Dynamic Coupon Management could eventually be tied into ERP and inventory systems as means of increasing flow of slow-moving inventory on the fly….”"

Wow! Now that's vision.

Krasilovsky also points out the reaction in the newspaper space: "Jeff Jarvis goes so far as to say “this is a stake in the heart of local newspapers,” whose only hope has been to go hyperlocal via targeted promotions."

His post has lots of great links for those interested in digging into the coupon space.

In comments on that post MerchantCircle CEO Ben Smith (interviewed here) noted that his merchants have seen coupon results in maps for some time:

"As a number of people have noted, Google has been picking up reviews and coupons as content onto their local maps for a few months now. It was actually pointed out to us by a few bloggers that our merchant coupons were showing up on Google Local searches on the Maps.

Our merchants certainly love when their coupons get picked up this way by Google and other properties. This is why we have made it so easy with the RSS feeds. Based on the current numbers, we see the 20K unique coupon number that ValPak has provided to Google in the near future for MerchantCircle. We also have openly discussed our support of being able to syndicate these as many places as possible including Zixxo as that business develops."

I like to see that kind of Zixxo support by MerchantCircle.

So... marketers. What would an online coupon marketing service look like? Are there marketing agencies that offer coupons as a sort of a standalone service? Anyone had success for clients with a coupon campaign?
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Print Yellow Pages Holding Steady, IYPs Go "Hood," IYP Social Network Likely?
Greg Sterling provides a great write up on YP-funded research in Reports of Print YP’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.

Sterling says:

"The data show a net gain (combined online + print) of 200 million lookups/references in 2005. And they appear to show that print usage — as the industry has emphatically repeated for the past couple years — is basically holding, while online yellow pages are growing."

Peter Krasilovsky notes in IYPs Adding Info by Neighborhood that "Verizon SuperPages and YellowPages.com have signed with UrbanMapping.com to license technology that will enable them to show listings by neighborhood name. The IYPs currently only show geo-information by city name or zip code."

Now... if the IYPs get more social networky and link that neighborhood data up with hyper-local news coverage via Gatehouse Media we could see a new media emerge, sort of a MySpace/Merchant Circle + ReadExpress.

I'll see what Mr. Krasilovsky thinks :)

Update:
Oh yeah - for a proper YP schooling check out: Understanding Yellow Pages vs. Google vs. MerchantCircle: an Interview with Peter Krasilovsky
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
A Picture of Search: AOL's White Paper Raises Search Marketing Questions
I hadn't realized, until reading AOL search data paper, that AOL published a white paper along with privacy-trampling user data (presumably what they used for their paper).

A Picture of Search investigates search usage patterns and makes extensive use of graphs and charts to illustrate its findings.

Some AOL search findings really stood out to me:

28% of all queries are reformulations of a previous query. In such cases, the average query is reformulated 2.6 times.

Questions:
Are you optimizing key pages... or paid search campaigns... along the query reformulation cycle?

Is this cycle similar in any way to the "buy cycle?"

If you start with a searcher's TASK in mind, how would that change how you optimize specific pages? (Read more about task-based relevance.)

What are common query reformulation strategies (in addition to those mentioned in the white paper)?

What percentage of search share is actually reformulation queries?

An estimated 12% to 28% of queries include a local aspect. ...the 12% estimate is drawn from prior work [16], while the 28% estimate is based upon an AOL internal study.

Questions:
What are these local searches? Are they basically yellow pages searches?

To reframe based on previous questions - do local tasks differ at all from whole-web tasks?

Are there different query reformulation strategies emerging for local searches?

Of an estimated 50 million web domains, less than 1% account for half of all user clicks via search results (6.1).

Questions:
What other sites besides MySpace, YouTube and Google?

Your Job Now:
Read A Picture of Search - it's pretty accessible. Write a post, comment, or email me about what stands out to you - I'm curious what people find there.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Awarded "Editorial Opinion Parameter" Patent Filed in 2000
The USPTO awarded Google a patent for a System and method for supporting editorial opinion in the ranking of search results.

Bill Slawski has the best write up I've seen thus far, in Google looks at Query Themes and Reranking Based upon Editorial Opinion.

Before I weigh in I want to quote Bill: "Keep in mind that the processes described in this patent may never be used, or that they could be implemented in different ways than described here."

An Artifact or New Direction?
Another important note: the patent was filed on December 13, 2000. From that perspective, plus knowing Google's preferance for elegant engineering solutions to relevance, I'm thinking that this is more of an artifact than it is a strong indicator of a new direction for Google.

To me the most curious item is that this patent includes an "editorial opinion parameter" by which, from my reading of Slawski and the patent itself, a team of human editors determine whether specific sources are "favored" or "un-favored."

My suspicion is that Google only intended these editors to operate in specific verticals, but its very filing, and in 2000 at that, shows a human-reliance side of Google that's quite uncharacteristic.

Other Reads on the Patent:
Rand, in Favored vs. Non-Favored Sources, points out that "This is also one of the rare times I've seen a patent application from a search engine refer to a "site" or "source" as a whole rather than individual pages."

I'm not sure what this indicates, but speculate that it's easier for editors to think in terms of whole sites rather than individual pages.

In follow up comments on Rand's post Slawski notes that "I've looked at a few industries in enough depth to consider the possibility that something like this was in place before ever seeing this patent, but thought that another algorithm, like a "reranking based upon local interconnectivity" might be partially responsible."

Changes Coming in Google News?
In Steve Bryant's New Google Patent Hints at Direction of Social Search he notes that "What's most interesting to me about this patent, though, is that Krishna Bharat, inventor of Google News, is listed as one of the inventors. Google said recently that it was making some changes to Google News."

I think he's off in his title - I don't believe this patent has anything to do with social search unless the editors the patent refers to represents any Google user, which I don't think they do.

In all, an interesting patent. It will be fun to see the theories that emerge because of it.

See Google News Creator Watches Portal Quiet Critics With 'Best News' Webby for an interview with one of the patent filers. Marissa Mayer was also cited as an author on this patent.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
SEM Football Challenge: join the fray
Ev Roc cck: http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/8/search-engine-football-challenge.cfm
gfrenchwbs: yo yo yo evs
Ev Roc cck: sup buddy
gfrenchwbs: what's this
Ev Roc cck: nothign big, just calling you out! P:-)
gfrenchwbs: ha!
gfrenchwbs: I will get my butt kicked - I don't know anything about football
gfrenchwbs: I mean - I don't even know the positions
Ev Roc cck: haha
gfrenchwbs: I'll play though :-)
Ev Roc cck: nice!
gfrenchwbs: how much is it?
gfrenchwbs: ...
Ev Roc cck: free
gfrenchwbs: I'm in then
Ev Roc cck: blog bragging rights :-)
gfrenchwbs: psh. I'll get the rights to a beating
gfrenchwbs: but whatever
Ev Roc cck: haha
gfrenchwbs: sounds fun
gfrenchwbs: also it would be cool if there was a little tag I could put on my blog that would show my current standings?
Ev Roc cck: hmm thats not bad, ill tell the fleaflicker peeps

Care to join? Comment Evan in this post.

I still want to do the longest beard in SEM contest (scroll to last pic).
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
SalesForce Eats a Golden Child, Purchases Enterprise Search App Kieden for CRM + SEM
In Salesforce.com unveils Google marketing tool Michael Paige reports that "Salesforce obtained the technology for the service, called Salesforce for Google AdWords, by acquiring Kieden Corp., a tiny startup that quietly developed it using Salesforce's AppExchange platform. Terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed."

I spoke with the Kieden creator in May of this year:
Enterprise Search Marketing + Agile Development + AppExchange = Kieden Corporation

I was excited at the time because they sought to tie search marketing directly into the sales cycle. It's an obvious move, and brilliant. Congrats to the Kieden team.

My interview with Kieden creator + Marc Benioff research inspired my respect for AppExchange and this article:
Hey Google: Enable 3rd Party Enterprise App Development Like SalesForce Did

And this little bit of news speaks to the evolution of SalesForce:
SalesForce Lifts AppExchange Free From SalesForce

I remember asking Kraig Swensrud, founder of Keiden why SalesForce didn't just buy the companies that use APPExchange. I remember him saying something along the lines of it would mess with the ecosystem too much.

I guess time will tell now if this is a strong move for SalesForce or not - my concern would be that ultimately the quality of their AppExchange builders could go down if they're all building so that they can sell themselves to SalesForce rather than creating a sustainable business.

Either way this is an important case study for the AppExchange model.

other coverage:
Salesforce.com leverages AppExchange as outsourced R&D...acquires Kieden
Salesforce.com enters search engine marketing space
salesforce.com as center of gravity
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Note to G: Idea for New Market Conversation Article
This article: Political Consultants More Likely to Spend Online, got me thinking about my next article... a companion piece to A Market Conversation Strategy Guide for SMBs: Driving Search Presence through Industry Participation.

Maybe I'll look for a local politician to adopt and write up some strategy for them.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
FaceBook + MSN: MSN Selling Sponsored Links + No Search Ads
This item may interest those who've closely followed the MySpace + Google story:

Microsoft to Provide and Sell Ads on Facebook, the Web Site

The MSN + FaceBook is a 3 year deal, compared to the 3 years, nine months of Google + MySpace and MSN is, according to the NYTimes, "the exclusive seller and provider of banner advertising and sponsored links for Facebook."

A couple of interesting notes from the article:

A slight zinger by MSN:
Mr. Berkowitz said the deal was “not comparable to the MySpace deal because we focused on the right economics for both parties.’’

They made that deal FAST!
Facebook and Microsoft executives said they began their talks late last week. Owen Van Natta, chief operating officer at Facebook, said: “We’ve had a number of conversations with folks about a number of different partnerships.’’

And some slight concern:
As an SEM I have to note that selling "sponsored links" is usually in the domain of, well, link sellers. So will MSN search now be discounting the value of links from FaceBook?

I guess there's a precedent for MSN selling links on their sites?

Also, link spammers, what has been your experience with link spamming MySpace? Is there link value passing out? I know that MySpace blogposts are showing up in results, especially in Technorati. I'm just curious - gosh! Quit thumping your white hat bible over there ;)

news via SEW

update:
ClickZ quotes netratings data saying MSN has the largest unique audience on the web... access to FaceBook page views and users puts them out even farther.

It's further interesting to note that there was no mention of MSN serving search ads.

More coverage:
Microsoft adCenters on Facebook
Microsoft Takes Second Best, Signs Facebook Ad Deal
Facebook Ads, Powered by Microsoft
Facebook one step closer to going down the drain
Facebook Does Ad Deal, But Not With Google
Microsoft in Your Face-Book
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
AJAX GUI for AdWords
Google made available the APIlitAx v1.0.1, an open source AJAX GUI for AdWords.

My guess is that this is API is targeted towards agencies like MSI who have the desire to tweak their interfaces for customized data points. Or something. I'll ask Doug Wilson, our Director of Paid Search.

Check out APIlitAx 1.0.1 Released: AJAX GUI for AdWords.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Yahoo's Raghu Ramakrishnan on Data Mining and Social Search
Yahoo interviewed Dr. Raghu Ramakrishnan, their new VP of something and a Yahoo! research fellow who left Wisconson-Madison to join the team.

To some extent it sounds like he couldn't do the research necessary to fulfill his interests at the university:
"At Yahoo! Research, you can take an idea and build around it, hang your shingle on the web, and get people to come try it out, all the while studying the underlying principles rigorously and addressing the challenges of building dynamic, scalable online systems ... this is not easy to do at a university."

He's a little vague on the specifics of data mining + social search:
"A social ecosystem is growing on the web, so we need to build the apps that facilitate it; managing the information and relationships is a central challenge. Where does data mining come in? Learning from shared activity is a key to effective social search. Equally important, data mining research can suggest ways to detect and prevent breaches of privacy - trust is central to online communities."

And it will be six months before we see his fingerprints on things:
"My main goal in the first six months is to get a clue as to what is going on at Yahoo!"
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000349.html

He articulates the social search concept quite well:
"At the end of the day, people should do what they enjoy, what they need to get done, and the applications (including search) should simply become more effective, thanks to our ability to analyze shared information and use it to help them connect to what they are looking for. The key insight behind social search is therefore to amplify the human element of information sharing by using it to enhance algorithmic search, and vice-versa."

Search Marketers:
Curious about how to start working the social search angle? It's all about creating the content of participation. I outline the basic concepts in A Market Conversation Strategy Guide for SMBs: Driving Search Presence through Industry Participation.

Yahoo PR people:
I've interviewed a number of folks doing fun stuff in the search space. For example:
mpire's CEO Matt Hulett on Scaling Consumer Empowerment Quickly + His DIY PR Efforts
Zixxo's CEO Talks the Start Up Process and Disrupting the Coupon Space
Yokel: Local Shopping Search (Social Coming Soon!)

I would like to start an interview dialogue with the Yahoo social search crew. What do you say? 919-433-3139. selowdown@gmail.com.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Base Data API Paves Way for Map Monetization
The Google Base blog announced the Google Base Data API yesterday.

From a business perspective (if I'm understanding this correctly) it looks like a great opportunity for folks who want to mash up their own Base items with Google maps to help lead local customers to their real estate/yard sales/electronics items/cars/hot date.

I wonder if Base + Coupons would make sense?

I can see lots of yarn, but still can't quite tell if there's going to be a one-stop Google local marketing console (think MerchantCircle + Google...) or if local advertisers will always have to knit their own solutions together. Which will make mom and pop adoption excruciatingly slow.

Maybe Google recognizes the strength of the Yellow Pages...

update:
What could this service mean to local search companies like NearbyNow?

More coverage:
New Google Base API
Google Base API Released
GData API for Google Base released
Google Base API released
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Link Spam Update: Spamming with XSS HTML Injection
I first heard about this particular link spamming method from SEOmoz in XSS - How to get 20 .gov links in 20 minutes.

Schwartz covered it today in SEwatch: How XSS HTML Injection Might Let Others Put Links On Your Sites.

He linked to Da Vanzo in XSS Redirects & SEO.

Da Vanzo linked to Moveable Type Backlink Exploit and XSS, Redirects and SEO

He also linked to Interview with a link spammer from the Register, an interview from over a year and a half ago that offers insight into the link spamming business.

I have no idea how to set up link spam operations as described in the posts above, and at MSI we don't seek malicious tech exploits to drive client success. I posted these links to balance out my build links with great content post.
And ok - spamming still fascinates me :P
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
ComScore: Google May Have Seasonal Search Share Decline
In follow up to Danny Sullivan's post, comScore Figures Show First Google Decline For Nearly A Year, But What To Believe? comScore told Mr. Sullivan:

"...comScore also observed a similar seasonal decline for Google during the same period last year. Fewer work days, more vacations, and reliance on academia could all contribute to Google’s core user group showing lower online activity and conducting fewer searches during this time period. Bottom line – Google could be more impacted by seasonality than other engines."
(strong tags by SEL)

ComScore recently announced they'd seen a decline in Google's search share to which Sullivan responded by digging into their methodologies.

It's a long post. I extracted this bit to sum it up for you:

Crisis for Google? Way, way too early to be saying stuff like that. As I said, I want to see several months of trending data from a particular player before I start issuing panic calls. For all I know, next month comScore will quietly reissue these figures that shows Google doing better.

Read his post for articulated digging, as well as his post on NetRatings search share data from today, which corroborates comScore to some extent.

Update:
Bill Tancer at HitWise commented on Sullivan's post and added some of his own data to the mix in Google's Weekly Search Numbers. He notes:

"In fact the numbers do indicate a slight decline in market share of executed searches for the first three weeks of August. However, I agree with Danny's caveat to wait for longer term trends before jumping to conclusions. While 60% may represent a saturation point for Google, it also may be a seasonal fluctuation."

Thx to the telecommuting JP Sherman.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google's Matt Cutts on Article Marketing and SEO
Matt Cutts illustrates the art of crafting highly useful content in his recent post, SEO Advice: Writing useful articles that readers will love.

In it he details the process he went through to write Changing the default printer on Linux and Firefox:

Notice what I did with keywords. I carefully chose keywords for the title and the url (note that I used “change” in the url and “changing” in the title).

The categories on my post (”How to” and “Linux”) give me a subtle way to mention Linux again, and include a couple extra ways that someone might do a search–lots of user type “how to (do what they want to do).”

I thought about the words that a user would type in when looking for an answer to their question, and tried to include those words in the article. I also tried to think of a few word variations and included them where they made sense (file vs. files, bash and bashrc, Firefox and Mozilla, etc.).

I’m targetting a long-tail concept where someone will be typing several words, so I’m probably in a space where on-page keywords are enough to rank pretty well. I don’t need anchor-text for “linux default printer” or similar phrases; in the on-page space, I’d recommend thinking more about words and variants (the “long-tail”) and thinking less about keyword density or repeating phrases."

The Article Marketing concept and its relevance to branding and search marketing captured my attention several months back in:

Targeting Your Article Marketing Campaign to Your Site's Key Conversion Pages

Adding a Blog to Your Article Marketing Strategy

That work lead me to write A Market Conversation Strategy Guide for SMBs: Driving Search Presence through Industry Participation, which now has me very busy turning theory into action/cash for MarketSmart Interactive clients and prospects.

Aaron Wall expanded on a line from Cutts' post, in Hard Answers Are Easy Links. In it he notes: "If it is hard to find the answer to a question then
* it is probably easy to be one of the best answers
* those who stumble across your answer will appreciate your effort, relevancy, and knowledge"

On ThreadWatch Walls noted, "Cutts recently talked down keyword density in a post that had SEO in it so many times that it crashed Firefox when I tried highlighting the term."

Also on ThreadWatch an excellent historic roundup of linkbait articles: From the Filthy Linking Rich to the Art of Link Bait. Though I must say the endlessly referential linkbait conversation's getting a bit echoey...
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Base Reporting Expands
If you're a Google Base seller/data distributor you'll be happy to know that Base now enables you to track the following:

- impressions (as part of search results)
- clicks
- page views

For marketers who are concerned about Google Base infringing upon their organic placements it might be a good idea now to start feeding the great Google beast at one of its other mouths and see how your organics do vs. your Base vs. your AdWords.

Check Reporting on Google Base for more.

This is one of those no-doi kinds of moves. Kind of like... when the heck will Google Analytics and the AdWords console join in matrimony?
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Anti-Geekery League Outraged by JP Sherman's "Imperial Recruitment" Photo
I had to fight my way through throngs of protesters from the RTP Anti-Geekery League to get inside the MarketSmart Interactive offices this morning.

All because of a simple photo my colleague JP Sherman posted to Flikr, entitled "Imperial Recruitment." In this photo JP is shown smiling, holding his son Grason up between two Imperial Strom Troopers.



When reached for comment Sherman said, "I've always identified with the Rebel Aliance.

However, with my son looking at joining the ranks of the Empire I felt compelled to be a supportive dad and give him the oportunities that planets like Coruscant can offer. Opportunities that just aren't available on Yavin IV."

Based on the signs they're waving outside our offices, I surmise that the AGL's concerned that this early exposure to such high levels of geekery may lead to video games, table top RPGs, and replica collecting.

This is not the first time JP and the AGL have collided. JP once won a trivia contest because he knew the name of Gandalf's sword and was charged with public display of geekery, conspiracy to commit geekery and illegal use of the Force.

SEL's first-weekly Geek Trivia Challenge:
"Who are the descendents of the Númenóreans, whose lands were bordered by the Brandywine River and the Grey Flood, whose lands were burned by Sauron?"

The first person to post the answer in comments receives a stern admonishment from the Anti-Geekery League in the form of a free tshirt.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Ben Wills vs. Garrett French: The "Defining a New Framework for Business Operations" Video Project
I used to work for Ben Wills, back in the days when MarketSmart Interactive was named KeywordRanking. Ben now works at Fortune Interactive, as the VP of Operations.

He's remembered here for his keen SEO insights, his personal warmth and his constant investment in everyone who worked for him.

I know him personally as a bad dancer, a much better rock climber, and an even better friend. He's also building a climbing wall in his garage.

Part of our friendship includes hyper-articulated conversations about business and, especially, new models for management.

He's continuing his passion for building business through innovative management at FI now, and will soon be extending his expertise into a video project that will, in his words, "...better define a new framework for looking at business operations that is based on personal relationships.

These sessions will break down the most important factors of relationships and define key components of this framework that will allow for a better understanding of how and why interactions occur.

With this new framework, you will be able to more powerfully understand both personal and business interactions, and how to most effectively move through them."

Ben offered me the chance to work with him once again on video distribution and figuring out where his contributions will take effective root online.

I'm looking forward to kicking back this weekend with my old buddy and working out some market conversation strategy for his video project. I wonder if he still thinks Google is cool ;)

Check out: Defining a New Framework for Business Operations.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Interview with YurNet: a Meta Search Project with Geek Appeal
I think of YurNet as a swiss army knife of meta search. Click the dropdown bar and you can choose from Comparison Engine, Internet Toolbox, Metasearch and Specialty Search.

Chris, is a network engineer with a fortune 500 company in the IP Telephony sector. YurNet is the evolution of a project that started for him back in 2003.

I typically advise folks to move away from an "everything to everyone" approach to search creation, especially if they're going it solo. "Hyper-niche yourself," I preach. YurNet's creator, Chris, tells me his aspiration's to become the web's "metasource." I'm not familiar enough with the meta search space to know if that's possible, but he succeeded in convincing me that a "swiss army knife" approach makes sense for him at this point.

I say his project has geek appeal because of the internet toolbox, which enables users to dig in with Alexa, whois lookup and DNS lookup from one spot. Plus he's been largely creating it with his geek buddies in mind ;)

I enjoyed emailing and IMing with him - his passion for the project is evident, and he has strong aspirations: becoming the web's "metasource."

Enjoy!

How did you create YurNet?
I wrote a javascript that compared SEs back in 2003 called Yurweb.com (it was mentioned by searchenginewatch at that time and grew to have a loyal following), which is basically the comparison engine of YurNet. Instead of a multisearch page, I wanted to do a metasearch, so YurNet was born. Yurnet metasearch is done in Perl, readily tweaked as I go. I bought a caching software/app to help with the backend a bit (speed things up) as well. I have compiled all the criticisms possible to produce a better search engine.

I do have plans to keep expanding/upgrading my little engine. For example, I will probably add even more engines to the comparison engine and I would also like to expand on what a visitor can do with the queried results on the metasearch engine like save them...maybe for the next time they search etc.

Who do you consider to be your competitors?
My competitors would be ixquick, mamma, dogpile, jux2 etcs of the world even though I am doing this by myself. I do not make any money from YurNet at the moment. Traffic has picked up quite a bit for me over the past month since I have gotten some press...The great thing is that I keep getting return visitors, so I know that some people find my site useful.

Who did you design this site for?
YurNet was designed for the internet public as a research/resource tool so that they don't have to search many single search engines to get quality results. Instead, they find everything from 1 search interface, YurNet.

How many hours have you put into the code?
I don't actually know how long I have spent on this little project, but I have been tinkering with various parts of this engine for the past 4-5 months.

Has anyone else been involved in the project on the code side?
Not with the coding, but I had purchased an engine caching program to help with the backend of the engine a bit.

How many searches per month do you have?
I don't know about the past month, but I have had 20,000 searches in the past 2.5 wks.

How many toolbar downloads per month do you have?
My toolbar has been in existance a little over a week and it has 20 downloads.

How are your results ranked?
My results are ranked according to how many engines find the same top ranked result in common between the majority of the engines my engine queries. I also have a link to each source engine so that a visitor can see where that serp actually resides from the source engine's DB.

Which is the most used search function per month?
Comparison engine...without a doubt...there are search engines out there that do compare results but not up to 3 panes side-by-side and with as many search options. The other search engines are much more limited on the resources (engines) they provide.

How and why did you create the various functions your site provides?
The metasearch engine, Internet toolbox, and specialty searches are done in Perl. The comparison search was coded in javascript.

Who did you design the Internet Toolbox for?
For geeks liks myself...I thought it would be handy for techy people to have this type of search as an option (there is still a bit more development I would like to put into this one...meaning more options). There is a really great site called DNSstuff.com, but it only has the internet toolbox options of what my site provides...it is not a complete search engine. I want my site to be an all inclusive searching experience. I have created it through my eyes and the input of what people have suggested to me, being my friends...more geeks etc.

Why does a search for car on the metasearch bring back 89 results?
I have the search timeout/cache settings configured to query the various engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, altavista, WiseNut, and ODP) cranked to less than a second for maximum searching speed. As well, each search engine is configured to bring in 18 results. Depending on how much is queried in that time will be what is displayed. Based on this one, it appears that 89 unique results were found out of the 108 queried results gathered in the subsecond time alotted for your search.

Do you have advertising?
I do not advertise right now, but if more people like the site and make it worth while for people to want to advertise there, I have some things in mind...like sponsored links etc.

What are your overall goals for the engine?
I would like to grow the engine to become a useful tool based on constructive visitor feedback, professional feedback (such as yours), and my own personal creative visions for it. My search engine is a learning
experience for me as well. I have learned a lot about Perl and Javascript programming. 1 major goal for the future is to develop a cluster search for my engine.

If you had to pick one of your search functions and just focus on that for the site which would it be?
I would never just concentrate on one search option for my site because I feel this is the creative factor of my little engine. There are comparison engines and there are metasearch engines and there are single site engines of course on the internet, but there are not very many that are as multifunctional as mine. I like what Tara Calishain said about my engine...it is a 'metasource'. In fact, I don't think there are any engines
with the full functionality that my site offers at least I have not surfed across any and I am constantly reading about search engines (for the past 6 yrs) from sites like yours, searchenginewatch, searchengineguide,
researchbuzz, about.com, and pandia to name a few.

previous YurNet press:
Yurnet Metasource Search Engine For Your Toolbox
Metacrawlers and Metasearch Engines
Yurnet updated

a suggestion for YurNet:
Provide a better explanation for what each type of search is on your site. It's hard to tell from first glance that you have so many different options for searching, and once I found out I had trouble understanding right away what each section did. Have you experimented with tabs rather than a drop down menu?

If you have thoughts or suggestions for YurNet please comment them - Chris is very receptive.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Search Behavior Insights Extracted From the AOL Data
More lemonade squeezed from AOL's user data gaff in Clickstream Awareness Goes Mainstream by Rob Garner.

He dug into the numbers and noted that:

"Out of 20 million queries and 650,000 users, there was only one search for 'business process outsourcing.'"

"Some searchers show a topical keyword interest over several months, indicating that this search quest may be ongoing, or that it is never fully satisfied..."

"Search intention can't be predicted with 100 percent accuracy. Though she made many queries on health-related issues, these searches were conducted on behalf of friends and family members."

"Satisfying search is a process and not a linear action."

This is interesting stuff in that it reminds us that the mind of the searcher is hard to know.

More sweet AOL lemonade:
New Tool Determines Keyphrase Clickshare by SERPs Rank With the AOL User Data (with links to 3 other tools besides the one in the title.)

Update:
3 AOLers got sacked for their efforts to enrich the search community. At their users' expense.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
2 Free, Beta SEM Tools: HitTail for Organic and AdWords Optimizer for Paid
HitTail for Organic:
HitTail organizes the long tail of the search traffic coming into your site/blog so you can write more content that doesn't pay as much attention to your head. I'm gonna slap it onto SEL and see what happens. If I start writing about Tasmanian water buffalo preservation you'll know why ;)

Here's how the folks at HitTail describe themselves: "HitTail reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results. We present these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on will boost the natural search results of your site."

It's in free beta now but the FAQs indicate that when they leave beta their highly-trafficked users will receive "hearty congratulations, and various reasonable options to continue using HitTail."

I learned about it on MarketingShift, one of my daily reads.

AdWords Optimizer for Paid:
The AdWords Optimizer, brought to my attention by its creator, fixes things so that "Whenever you have an Ad Group that is ready for optimization (i.e. when one ad is outperforming another ad) you will receive an alert with a link to a detailed optimization report for your AdWords account."

According to its creator "This tool is designed to get people to think in terms of split-testing, experimenting and constantly tweaking their ads. And it saves oodles of time. Many early users are already saying it has cut down their Adwords "tweaking" time by 75%."

I would love to hear what PPCLab thinks of this one.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Developing a Task-Based Relevance Engine: an Interview with Intellext's Al Wasserberger and Jay Budzik
It wasn't until reading through the interview responses from Intellext's Al Wasserberger and Jay Budzik that I really started to get the full impact of what they're doing at their core. Somehow in my question-development research I'd not fully grasped what's most exciting in Intellext's Watson downloadable search tool: Task-Based relevance.

The core concept is simple - Watson runs in the background and gives you easy-to-snag bits of information that enhance whatever task you're doing. Such as blogging. Or writing term papers. Or developing code. Or shopping.

This interview digs into much more than Watson though. In our 3,575 word conversation we investigate the contributions of Intellext's venture firms, Stanford vs. Northwestern, the Chicago start up community, social search + Watson, MySpace and attention data.

I want to thank both Mr. Wasserberger and Mr. Budzik for their time, but I also have to pause and give special thanks to Leigh Winter, Intellext's Director of Marketing Communications. Here's why (from her email):

I sat down with Al and Jay on Monday and we went through all your questions. I thought having it as a conversation with them would get you the most natural responses.

I transcribed the conversation as best I could, and now Al and Jay are just looking over the write-up to see if there’s anything else they want to add.

They loved your warm-up question by the way, and thought it was for real at first when I read it! Thanks for putting such thought into it.

Thanks again to everyone involved, including you Ms. Howard - thanks for reaching out. Let your bosses know you should get a raise.

Quick aside: Loren Baker deserves the best from me - I tend to over promise and under deliver to him though. I'm going to state the intention here to send him excerpts from the wonderful thought shared below, and have scheduled time in my calendar for it tomorrow.

Warm up:
Describe the development process surrounding your core business concept of contextually relevant, double underlined links you add to partner sites' content.

Just kidding. Have there been significant or humorous confusions of Intellext and IntelliTXT in the press or anywhere else?

A – Tell me about it – and it’s not just IntelliTXT. We were just down at the CompTIA Breakaway conference, and they were announcing best of show, and as they said “Intel-“ I started to get out of my seat…but they never said the “-lext.” Seriously, though, people identify us and our brand with Watson, but unfortunately Watson Pharmaceuticals, a slightly larger company than us, owns that domain, so we can’t just go by Watson.

Funding:
Intellext is funded by Motorola Ventures, Palomar Ventures, LaSalle Investments, and University Fund.

How do you manage pressures from such a diverse group of funders?

J – Well, at the end of the day they all have the same goals, so they are all aligned around the business being successful.

Motorola Ventures - focus on mobile investments; what is the mobile future of Watson, and what kinds of mobile pressures do you get from Motorola Ventures?

A – I describe it as more as support than pressure. Mobile platforms until recently haven’t had form factors appropriate for delivering this kind of information in this way.

J – Motorola recognized early on that this would change, and we’ve developed infrastructure that would easily port to different forms. Now that mobile platforms have evolved, don’t be surprised to see an offering in the near future.

A – As we evolve into that space, having Motorola Ventures as a partner in the business has obvious advantages.

Palomar Ventures - in their "about us" they sound very hands on. What have been their significant contributions thus far?

J – The partner we work with there is David Curtis, who was one of the authors of CORBA spec. Having a great technical mind like that gives me (and the rest of the technical team) a great resource.

LaSalle Investments - seems to focus on real estate. Why are they investors? What have been their contributions?

A – LaSalle Investments (not to be confused w/ LaSalle Securities) is the investment company run by legendary Chicago angel investor Bob Geras, (recently inducted into the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame (and profiled in Inc. last year: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050701/angels-in-america.html). Bob has invested in more early stage companies than anybody I’ve ever met, he’s constantly a resource for us as we grow. Our regular lunches at Bijon’s always yield good actionable advice, and his rolodex doesn’t suck either.

University Fund - is this a fund from Northwestern? How would you characterize the expectations from this fund?

A – No, it’s not associated with Northwestern, it’s an early stage fund that focuses on investments in technologies that come out of universities. Their expectations are simple – profit.

What in all of the Watson functionality has convinced your investors that they have made a good decision in putting money into your company?

A – All of our investors have one thing in common – they love technologies that have potential to disrupt a large market. Each of them realizes that Watson’s ability to get information for the user without the burden of a search box will change the landscape of the search industry as we know it. Google has proven the scalability of monetizing the search box. Our investors see very clearly the upside to monetizing everything people do outside the search box.

J – And more than just the search industry – the information industry, software industry, computer industry…There are so many areas of impact – publishers, advertisers, and obviously the end users.

What do you invision the core monetization of Watson being? If it's advertising, how do you think Watson could or should change the standard search advertising model?

A – Today we monetize Watson in two ways, advertising or subscription. Most users choose to get Watson free by seeing (and hopefully occasionally clicking) on relevant ads. Business users tend to choose to pay through a subscription or license for the ad-free version, Watson Professional.

J – Advertising will be the core monetization.

A – Jay’s right – in the long run, we predict our model will move more and more to an ad-supported user base. We took a big chance a couple of weeks ago by removing the differences between the ad-supported and subscription versions. Surprisingly, we haven’t seen a big change in the percentages yet – about 10% of our users still opt for the subscription. I think over the next few years, though, as corporations get more comfortable with ad-supported software, that many software packages will be delivered in this fashion, and we’ll eventually have a very small subscription base. The trend is certainly for more applications to be ad-supported; you see it with Microsoft moving their consumer applications in that direction, as well as AOL IM and other products. Ads can be served based on profiles or randomness, and many can be irrelevant and annoying, or they can be served in a way that they are helpful to the user. Our ability to drive contextual ads should make this trend in the industry actually feasible.

A – As for Search advertising, it is exactly that – advertising for when a user decides to search; and it’s only applicable when a user goes to a search website and does a search.

J – Right! This opportunity is huge, because users spend more time not searching than they do searching, and in applications away from the browser. With Watson, that is even more true because they don’t need to search in order to get what they need anymore. Now all of that time can be monetized. Instead of bidding for keywords, advertisers will be bidding for contexts, and the resulting experience for advertisers will be richer because they will be more integrated into what users are doing. And for users the ads will be more valuable and relevant.

A – And advertisers who can be very specific will have very high click and conversion rates when the contextual relevance is high.

What are your measures of success when there's no business model existant?

A – Well, there are business models, we have revenue streams from both our advertising and licensing models that are growing every month. But we do look at more than that – our success metrics are user growth, user retention and buzz. We look at how users interact with the product, we look at the impact of new features on user behavior. We get a pretty steady flow of comments both good and bad from users; our goal right now is to get millions more happy users, all of whom are telling their friends about Watson.

Northwestern:
Northwestern University vs. Stanford. Talk to me. What are the cultural differences? What are the academic differences? Why did you guys choose Northwestern?

J – I chose to go to Northwestern to study with the best in AI and cognitive science and user experience, it was a group of people that I knew I could work with well that were creating something powerful; specifically Kris [Hammond] and Larry [Birnbaum]. Northwestern has a very supportive, engineering-oriented product development environment that encouraged its faculty to have tangible impact on the world instead of just academic impact. The engineering orientation allowed us to focus on building software that worked, instead of just making algorithms that were elegant. I can’t say what the cultural differences are, because I’ve never worked or studied at Stanford. They are certainly very smart, but the practical engineering orientation at Northwestern was particularly helpful in developing the technology and bringing it to market.

What other Chicago tech companies are forming around Northwestern tech talent?

A – There are some great examples. NanoInk and NanoSphere are two good examples of the nanotechnology research being commercialized out of Northwestern. Also, NuCrypt and Nerites have some cool products from NWU research. And no, I don’t think there’s a rule that if you did your research at Northwestern you have to have your company name start with an “N”.

What is the Chicago tech startup community like? How do you feel you have contributed to it?

A – Chicago has a stronger technology community than most people in or outside the city realize. Large companies like Motorola, SSA Global, SPSS, Orbitz, Navteq, and emerging disruptive companies like FeedBurner, 37signals and us. There are also a lot of serial entrepreneurs here. This is the third Chicago-based company I’m building, and there are people like Chris Gladwin who founded Cruise Technologies and MusicNow, and is now building Cleversafe; Gian Fulgoni who built IRI and is now building ComScore; Dick Costolo who built SpyOnIt and is now building FeedBurner. We’ve even organized ourselves unofficially into a regular charity Texas Hold ‘Em game (Crains: The Buy-in After the Bust). Not only is the entrepreneurial spirit strong in Chicago, so is the availability of amazing talent.

Northwestern University, University of Illinois, University of Chicago, IIT, DePaul and others provide a steady flow of brilliant, well-educated technical folks, and business schools like Kellogg, Chicago GSB and DePaul are a great source for leadership talent.

Watson:
how would you characterize the desktop app downloading demographic? How are they different from those who prefer web-based apps?

J – With a downloaded desktop application, the perceived value has to be higher because the level of effort to add it to your desktop is higher, but then after it’s installed, it’s stickier. The bar is higher, we have to add more value than a web-based application. With web-based apps, people can go check it out once and then leave. There are few if any barriers to exit, a service like Google is easy to leave. Google proved that by taking all those AltaVista users, right?

Who are you missing out on by not making this a web-based login app?

J – Well, the obvious answer is all of those people using alternative platforms (Mac, Linux, etc.) that we don’t support yet. They are a vocal bunch! Also, some people can’t install software on their work machines because they don’t have administrative privileges. This functionality couldn’t be delivered in a web-based model, though. People are not spending all their time in web-based applications. Watson lives beyond the browser, helping people in desktop productivity applications as well as browsers.

I like the concept, but I think the SERPs categorization and display lacks vision. I appreciate that it's customizable, but I can't invision a user who could ever create the appropriate categorization there for all of a day's given tasks.

I think a more conceptual overlay would help me more precisely invision the "thought space" of the work I'm doing. Think Ask's Zoom function or Q-Phrase's ConceptQ.

What are your directions for results display?

J – You’re absolutely right – there is no single categorization that applies to every task or every user. We’ve made some progress here by letting users re-arrange the categories in Watson. In the not-too-distant future we’ll also let people set up multiple category “profiles”, so they can switch, for example, between homework, shopping, blogging, and other modes. These types of categorizations cut across information sources, and the content of the document. Instead of organizing the search results based on the contents of the search engine, like you’re suggesting (or like Ask Zoom or ConceptQ), we’d like to see them organized along dimensions that matter for the task you’re performing. This is one of the things we’re working on doing differently, and an area where we currently have a patent application pending. Soon we’ll be able to have the categorization match the task, instead of the type or content of the search results. When a user is shopping, they want to see prices, reviews, alternate products, accessories, people in their network who have bought or blogged about the product. This is different than when they are looking at a contact, where they want to know information about the company that person works for, bios, maybe financial info about the company. The way that information is organized, and even where it’s presented (inside a contact record, or on a webpage, or as a part of the document they’re reading or writing) are all going to evolve in this manner. Don Norman, one of my professors from Northwestern and a noted authority and champion of Human-Centered Design, calls this approach Activity-Centered Design.

Talk about including a human-aided search element. What could this look like?

J – User contributed content is one of the most powerful elements in search these days, but it only makes sense when the tags and ratings can be applied in a context; just because an article is highly rated doesn’t mean it’s relevant to me. We’re adding context to this model.

I see this as having a great impact on your different users - for example the shopping users could notify each other of excellent deals they found. Researchers at a common company could alert each other of relevant or especially useful news.

What other scenarios can you envision?

J – We’ve been working for a while on models based on shared user collaboration. For example, users can leave notes on a context so when others enter that subject area, now they can collaborate based on what they are doing with the people that are relevant to what they are doing. This creates a new channel that’s oriented by content instead of places. We can bring together people with similar and specific interests. Think of it as the next generation of MySpace or LinkedIn – where the people you should meet come to you, instead of you having to find them.

Imagine for me how a more social Watson would change if you made it mobile as well?

J – Just as context can be about what you are working on, context can be represented by a number of different factors, like location. Just as Watson can understand documents, Watson could understand the conversations you are having and help bring you information you need. Or the people near you for that matter – Watson meets Meetro?

I find it hard to understand why start up search companies would focus on a "broadcast" or "mainstream" market.

Your approach is compelling - prefetching the information task performers might need. I'm still not convinced about your intention to appeal "to everyone with a computer."

J – Ok, maybe not everyone with a computer, just those that user their computers to consume or create information.

In the Pirillo interview Budzik mentioned that certain tasks are emerging that Watson seems to compliment especially. What are these tasks?

J – For students, Watson is a great research tool while writing papers. For bloggers, Watson finds great links (other related blog posts, etc.) that help them write richer, more interesting posts. From the start, journalists have told us how Watson finds them great information and new perspectives while writing their articles. And news junkies, simply because Watson does the work of finding and delivering related information from all over so they can devour a topic.

Will you roll out Watson plugins that better target these tasks?

J – Absolutely – we started doing this a few weeks ago with our new add-ons site (http://www.intellext.com/add-ons). For students, we’ve introduced add-ons for SCIRUS and PubMed, plus some social networking ones like MySpace and Friendster; for bloggers we rolled out add-ons for many of the most popular blog search engines (Technorati, Sphere, IceRocket, Feedster, Blogster). Going forward, we’ll be making Watson better at interacting and understanding more of the popular blogging platforms, so Watson can work alongside each and deliver relevant information while the blogger is posting. We’ve got a bunch more add-ons coming, many targeted at students, journalists and bloggers, and some new areas as well.

I think a strong plug in would be an iTunes plugin that enables me to identify MySpace or Friendster members who might make personality matches. Please crush or elaborate on this idea.

J - Great idea, want to see a demo of the prototype?

How did you envision people using the MySpace plug in, and how much of the decision to create the plug in was based on the current popularity of MySpace?

J – We try to develop Watson to deliver the information that people care about. MySpace is a place people are spending a lot of time, consuming a lot of information. We see people using Watson to help them stay connected to MySpace even when they are not on the actual site. Now a user checking out music or movies somewhere else online can look over to Watson and see what the buzz is on MySpace. Watson shifts MySpace from being simply a destination, to being a community users can bring with them as they go about other activities.

Who from MySpace was involved in the process?

We didn’t need to work with anyone there – we just had to build an add-on to search MySpace!

Marketing:
Elaborate on your current blogging strategy and how it fits into your overall business goals.

I wish I had more time to dedicate to it, the good news and bad news is we’re so busy.

As far as the product goes, we’ve found some bloggers that draft posts in Word in order to get additional results from Watson and incorporate them. We plan to develop Watson to work alongside other popular blogging platforms as well, to make this more seamless.

Privacy/Attention Data:
You're very consistent about your respect for privacy. Have you seen privacy concerns diminish since your inception or increase?

Watson will learn quite a bit about what I do during the day. How about you package MY data for me and let me license it if I want to? Why not pay ME for using Watson?

A – At first, there were some users that were really concerned about what Watson could “see” – which is why we have taken such a hard line about privacy. Everything happens on your computer, not our server – so we actually don’t learn anything about what you do during the day – we don’t track what you are looking at, the links you click, the keywords you use, or even who you are. I mean, we can tell that a user somewhere clicked a result that came from MSN or MyScpace, but we have no more insight than that.

J - Some products have to use user profiling to deliver good results, and some use them to target advertising. We don’t have to have any of that data, because Watson knows the full context of what you’re doing. That means we can get you the right information, people, or even ads without violating your privacy.

A – As for letting you sell your profile, it’s a neat idea. Is that a direction that the industry is going to go? Your guess is as good as mine. Do we need to collect info in order to deliver a great product? No. Do we have technology that could do that if we wanted to implement it? Yes. Right now, though, our focus is on driving more value for the user. As soon as we start to blur the line on privacy it opens up a lot of questions; so for now we choose to stay very clearly on the line of not even tracking anything controversial.

Watson would be a perfect partner for AttentionTrust I think. What are your thoughts about that organization's involvement in the attention economy?

A – We are aligned with them in our views on respecting users and privacy. Attention Trust’s primary principle that you own your attention certainly fits with Watson, which doesn’t collect or store any of your attention information. Their model of tracking and letting users monetize their attention is interesting. For now, though, we’ll stay on the side of not storing anything sensitive like attention until we see where this goes.

Update:
Intellext - Dr. Jay Budzik and CEO Al Wasserberger A nice spoken interview from David Dalks.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
101 Ways to Build Links + 50 Top Search Blogs
I felt these two posts, from Andy Hagans + Aaron Wall and Rand Fishkin respectively, were apt partners for a single post.

My extractions from Hagans + Wall's post: 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006

1. Build a "101 list".

9. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign.

13. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.

16. Write about, and link to, companies with "in the news" pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments.

17. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important.

45. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.

47. Comment on other blogs.

For those of you looking to build links you must study Mr. Fishkin's Ranking 50 Top Blogs in the Search Space.

I'm continually amazed by Rand's ability to create high-value posts and resources that both serve his community and generate links. I think his skill lies in outlining and developing his concepts and then taking his time as he puts them together. Or at least being sure to be thorough.

I'd enjoy speaking with him about creating these types of synergies outside of the search and web space though - as I've gotten into more market conversation consulting I've really come to love the research and digging it requires to understand how to really contribute to any given industry's constituents.

He's certainly got the search space pegged.

And thanks for recognizing SEL as an "Elite" Rand... We're honored.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
AdWords Ad in GMail Links to Honda Element's "I Pinch" MySpace Viral Campaign
This ad appeared in my GMail this morning:



It's an AdWords ad in Gmail for a Honda Element viral campaign in MySpace (as the title of this post suggests I suppose...).

I just wonder who's paying whom here.

Does Honda pay for the campaign in MySpace? I suspect maybe, but then again Honda's adding catchy, fun content that makes MySpace a more pinchy place.

Is this a piece of the MySpace + Google deal that wasn't mentioned... that MySpace creative advertisers get AdWords ads?

Or did Honda decide to start a paid search media buy for its viral campaign?

Anybody know?
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
YouTube Down for Tube Maintenance?
I went to go and see how many people have watched my videos and found this on YouTube's homepage:
Kudos for the tube joke.

I wonder what gremlin's they're working out. Maybe the lack of business model gremlins.

Update:
Mr. Baker, who saw this hours ago, has some interesting commentary going on if you're a YouTuber. YouTube Down : Updating?

Update 2:
The Reuters blog states in: UPDATE 2-YouTube confirms six-hour outage was no goof

“We are experiencing a temporary site outage due to a database-related issue,” Supan confirmed in an e-mail to Reuters. “The site has been down since 7:30am (California time/ 14:30 GMT) today and our engineering team expect it to be up and running in the next few hours.”

“To clarify and ensure accuracy, the site is not down for maintenance, the team put up that page mistakenly (it is an old page). “This was an unplanned outage,” Supan said.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Enhancing and Monetizing UGM: Blogger, Video, Map Coupons
A recent spate (last few days) of announcements from Google points to an increasing interest and appreciation in tools that enable the creation and monetization of UGM, or user generated media.

This post investigates changes at Blogger, in Google Video and the just-announced addition of coupons to Google maps.

Blogger: Giving Back to the Bloggers

Since the Pyra/blogspot purchase in early 2003, the only major change to blogger I've noticed is the addition of advertising via AdSense. This did wonders for indie media creators, oh and spammers too. Oh yeah and for Google's bottom line.

Now they're giving back a little to those who still use their now-antiquated platform (such as myself) with the following:

Reader Permissions - set your posts to viewable by Everyone or only by friends. Whose email addresses you add. These... friends... will now be related to you in a very interesting cluster that could possibly appear in its own section on your blog making it eerily reminiscent of... well... MySpace :)

Labels - For my amigos who, like me, are too lazy or who have too many legacy posts to fool with migration to another platform, now comes labels. Which are categories I presume. Which should make it easier to navigate Search Engine Lowdown without the Nav Hacks I added recently.

Subscribe to comment thread - Neat. Good. I like it.

This investment in the blogging community is much welcomed, and gives me a better feeling about being a blogger user. I may start wearing the blogger tshirt again that Dowdell hooked up for me.

Via Beal: Google Launching New Blogger Features

Google Video: Monetizing Passionate, No-Budget Videographers

First off Google Video adjusted its TOS recently to allow for the monetization of its uploaded video. This change connects video creators (and uploaders) with video advertisers along the ridiculously long tail of user created and submitted video. I can't wait til my checks start rolling in for my dance video ;)

Secondly, Google relegated the Froogle tab to a drop down on the Google homepage, and gave Google Video a prime-time position. Loren Baker writes at length about this change in the compelling and thought provoking Google Video is the Future of Google. Thanks for an amazing piece Loren!

Thirdly, investigate Google Video's move towards a social search, YouTube-styled video content navigation. Google's finally leveraging the fact that, sometimes, users really are the best judges of the qualities of a database item.

I wrote some time ago in Navigating YouTube: Video "Social Organization" Trumps Video Search that YouTube was kicking Google's butt.

Michael Arrington wrote in TechCrunch about his read of the Google Video interface. The MySpacing of YouTube, and Google's YouTubing of Google Video points to the power of social networks to deliver engagement.

This item, Fox Selling Video On Demand Via MySpace.com & FIM points more the jumble of interests that Google has ahead of it as it tries to tie in more tightly with MySpace.

Free Coupons in Google Maps: Hey Merchants Jump on This One!

The news that prompted me to write this whole post came this morning. Google Maps Adds Free Merchant Coupons. It hit me hard because I've been saying for some time that maps are the doorway to local.

And I felt fairly justified in saying so when Google changed its "Local" tab to "Maps" Google: Yes Garrett, Maps ARE the Doorway to Local.

The fact that the coupons are free convinces me that local merchants should jump on this in a jiffy.

Further, this points to what I've been saying will come for some time now - the ability for Google Map makers to monitize their efforts.

Coupons are free for now, as Google tests and learns what works well and what doesn't. When they go for-pay I think we'll see Google reach out to its map makers with a compelling financial incentive to create.

I'd be very curious to learn what Zixxo thinks of this development, and whether they see Google as a competitor here considering that Zixxo's offering has a great deal more time on the market and is far-better tuned to the coupon space.

Watch for Google coupons on mobile phones soon. And coupon updates, and subscriptions that could further crush the Sunday paper...

Resources:
Google Maps API2 + Local Search Marketing Checklist
Google Local: Your Image and Text On Google Maps; My Questions
Coupons will start to appear Wednesday on Google Maps
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
MarketSmart Interactive vs. the Durham Bulls!
We work hard at MarketSmart Interactive. ...but we know how to play hard too. Thanks to Cord Silverstein's efforts we had a half-day trip to watch the Durham Bulls play yesterday!

My personal highlights:

• Arriving and finding that the Bulls were up against the Louisville Bats, the team from my home town. I was the only soul in the stadium hollering and clapping for Kentucky. Until I remembered I'd brought my laptop.
• Seeing Tansy getting kicked out of the stadium for *barely* going onto the field to snag a foul ball. This was not a positive highlight, but it brought a certain element of danger and charm to the day overall.
• Free chicken. I ate 9 drumsticks and 3 thighs.
• Shade (where it could be soaked up).
• Getting to actually meet and talk to Alex, who I learned had his own SEO firm in Costa Rica!
• Swiller's sunblock. Thank you Swiller.

I'm inviting everyone here at the office to throw their highlights into the comments section :)

And here's the photo shoot, with thanks to Ginny Hoffman!












Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
SES San Jose 2006 Coverage Round Up
It's been a year for me - I'm really starting to miss SES San Jose. Here's all the coverage I could find in the past couple days. Comment what I missed please.

Scott Karp
The State of Search Marketing: Observations from Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006

Greg Sterling
Eric Schmidt from High Atop the Search Perch

Lee Odden:
SES San Jose Videos
Two Peas in a Pod: Usability and SEO
Search Marketing for Big Brands
Press Release Optimization and Blogger Relations
Blog Optimization - SES San Jose
SES San Jose Day Two
Branding and Search - SES San Jose
Marketing with Social Media
SES San Jose Videos Part 2

MarketingFan (Christoph C. Cemper)
Yahoo on Authority Signals and their Social Search Strategy
4 Tips by Google Engineering For Improving Your Google Coop Subscribed Links
Yahoo on Authority Signals and their Social Search Strategy
Top SEO research papers

Matt McGee:
SES San Jose Day 1 - Morning
SES San Jose Day 1 - Afternoon
SES San Jose Day 2
SES notes: Compare and Contrast - Ad Program Strategies
SES San Jose Wrap-Up

Andy Beal:
Andy Beal Dares to Ask Google CEO About Click Fraud
Google CEO Eric Schmidt at SES San Jose
Search Engine Strategies Photos
Drinks for Links?

Bill Slawski:
Some Pictures from Sonoma, San Francisco, and San Jose
Google as a Recommendation System

Rand Fishkin
Session on Linkbaiting
Rand's Linkbait powerpoint

Shoe Money
What I Did At San Jose SES 2006

WebProNews:
SES 2006: The School Of Link Bait
SES 2006: Pimp That Site!
SES 2006: Search Engines, Friend Or Foe
SES 2006: Importance Of Quality Scores
SES 2006: SERP Sharp-Shooting
SES 2006: Searchonomics
SES 2006: Social Search Overview

Be sure to check out Lee Odden's video interview with Mike McDonald, of WebProNews. Hi Mike.

Party Coverage:
San Jose 2006 Ask.com party pics
Search Celebrities at the Bodog party in San Jose
Search Engine Strategies Party Thread now Posted
Google Dance V Photos
Get Ready for the Google Dance
SES Party Recap
My Bet on WebmasterRadio
Fire Breathing at Ask.com Party
Google Dance Photos and Google Food

SERoundTable: (in case I missed session coverage in the list above ;)
SES San Jose 2006 Quick Link Recap (38 of 39 sessions covered)

And be sure to check out Barry's interview with Lee Odden: Barry Schwartz on SES San Jose

And see Men of SEO. I have my authorial suspicions on this one. Write me and tell me if I'm right. Yes you. I know you're watching who links to you.

Update from comments:
Search Marketing Standard: (Kent Lewis)
APIs and Local Search on Final Day of SES
Google CEO Dominates Day Three at SES
Ask Provides an Answer to Google Dance
SES Sessions Provide Guidance on Search Engine Reputation Management
SES San Jose Drops Search Stats and Social Media Strategies

Update:
I thought I'd pretty much laid down the biggest, baddest roundup of SES coverage. Not by a fraction. Check out Danny Sullivan's round up if you want to fill in the gaps. Nice organization too.

SES San Jose 2006 Recap
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Eric Schmidt on Enabling Google Users to Monetize Their Own Click Stream Data
Lee Odden caught Google's CEO on tape responding to a question from the audience about enabling Google users to monetize - package, rent, sell - their own personal click stream data:

Danny Sullivan and Eric Schmidt (1:15)

This is classic "attention economy" stuff, which obsessed me in late May:
Attention Scarcity: The Economy's Shift Towards Attention as Key Resource

And disappointed me to some extent by early June:
Navigating YouTube: Video "Social Organization" Trumps Video Search

I found it interesting however that the concept had not reached Mr. Schmidt's attention seemingly until the audience member asked his question. He expressed interest and his questioner, off camera, offered to hand over a business card.

Don't expect paychecks for consuming media through Google anytime soon, but I can certainly say that as TV/video comes increasingly online (and with gaffs like AOL's...) the conversation about who owns user data will heat up in short order.

I wonder if the questioner was Ed Batista or Seth Goldstein ;)

For an example of a shopping search engine that arguably pays out based on attention check out Jellyfish Interview: Shopping Search to Disrupt Paid Search as We Know it?

For all of Mr. Odden's video check out the TopRankResults YouTube profile page.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
New Tool Determines Keyphrase Clickshare by SERPs Rank With the AOL User Data
QuadsZilla, SEL's dark hatted colleague from a land that spells glamor with a "u," sent us a link to his new tool that leverages the leaked AOL data to better assess click share.

Expected clicks by Seach Engine and Rank

He agreed to answer a few questions to flesh out our understanding of how the AOL data enabled this tool's creation.

Did you build this tool yourself?
I did all the calculations for Clickshare by search engine and computed the Overture Multiplier. CaseySoftware (CaseySoftware) coded the JavaScript for me in about an Hour.

How does adding the AOL User Search Data to Hitwise and Overture give you more accuracy?
In the past, we did not know what the difference was between ranking #1 vs #5. That information was harvested from the AOL data. We all knew that #1 was the place to be, but now we know by how much. We also know that it is better to Rank 10th for something than to rank 9th. This is likely due to the default of 10 results per page and people's clicking habits. By adding the AOL data to hitwise, we come up with an expected clickshare.

Since Overture tells us how many searches are in Yahoo for a given term every month we can calculate with some certainty how many clicks you can expect for ranking anywhere in the top ten for any search term.

What are your favorite tools for SEO?
Well, if you can call Google a tool - it's my favourite seo tool. For hosted tool, I like talkdigger, and urltrands, and jim boiken (spelling?)s [Jim Boykin] backlink checker. On the black hat side, we have some private tools that find XSS vulnerabilities that is pretty darn useful and some other stuff that we really can't go into that have been custom coded.

Read QuadsZilla's post for more detail if you'd like: Tool: What it’s Worth to Rank in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Aaron Wall links to 3 tools that also incorporate the AOL data for your search marketing pleasure.

QuadsZilla's MySpace explorations and questions encouraged some of MSI's early investigation into MySpace marketing.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Continues to Pummel Web Businesses With How-To Content
I've been cleaning out my Bloglines and realized that Google employees have been quite busy these past few weeks being informationally generous and documenting ideas and tactics for web businesses seeking to make more money online.

I'd like to start us off with the Matt Cutts video series (videos 1-8 here):
Session 9: All about datacenters
Session 10: Lightning Round!
Session 11: Reinclusion requests
Session 12: Tips for Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose 2006
Session 13: Google Webmaster Tools

You'd rather read than watch video? Check the transcripts of Matt Cutts' videos.

The AdSense blog's dropped several million pixels' worth of knowledge for AdSense publishers. Their marketing advice is sound for any site though.

Check out:
The ABCs of A/B Testing
Colors that make cents (and dollars)
For every optimization action, there is a user reaction
Optimization Month, Week 2: Designing Your Ads
Bryan's Tips for Testing and Tracking Optimization

And, for the developers Google proffered:
Google Maps API Tutorial (they link out to Developer.com article series...)
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
AOL Search Privacy Error Results in Personally Identified AOL User
NYTimes picked up on the AOL searcher privacy fracas and dug in with A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749.

This is scary stuff.

Check AOL Shared Private Search Queries for the story and Aaron Wall links to folks who created free web tools with the AOL data (oop - that may not be accurate. I'm not sure if Wall's post is related to the AOL gaff).

Wow.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Yahoo's Project Panama, Slated for Q4 Launch, Unveiled at SES
MVox tipped me off to Yahoo's Project Panama unveiling at SES this week.

Update: check the screen shots at New Yahoo Search Marketing Preview

The interface and new marketing options are, in a single word, astounding. Yahoo clearly feels a competitive advantage in their new offering, an advantage they think they can hold at least until Q4 it seems.

A Q4 launch is curious though, considering that for many marketers this is the busiest time of the year...

Anyways, here are the advances, as I directly quote them from ClickZ's Yahoo Trots Out New Search Ad Platform by Rebecca Lieb:

> this new platform will be much more marketing focused... much more intuitive. This application is for managing objectives.

> In the new interface, advertisers will be able to choose sets of targets, creatives, and calls-to-action.

>We'll be introducing graphics and rich media, coupons, and phone calls. This will be very important in new channels such as mobile"

(what do Zixxo and Merchant Circle make of this?)

>We will tell you if you've run out of money, or if your credit card has expired. You can click a link and take action to correct it,"

>In time, advertisers can set business rules as alerts. Yahoo provided examples such as, "Are new competitors entering the space?" or, "Is the campaign underperforming by 5 percent?"

> the system will allow advertisers to see historical search data, such as original search terms high in the purchase funnel that lead to indirect conversions, based on search research and patterns. "Not only will you take the keywords into consideration that lead to conversions, but everything that led up to that final consideration," said Kim.

Also see Yahoo's Site Explorer Update post as well as the Yahoo Search Builder, very suspiciously similar to Stephen Marder's Eurekster, which powers SEL's search (thx to McRackan for the link).

One quote in particular stood out to me, and showed my how far Yahoo has come in terms of customer relations at conferences: "Yahoo invited those present to join the early migration phase, a move greeted with great enthusiasm."

Great enthusiasm was not the case when Yahoo launched Site Match in '04. Kudos to the Yahoo team for nailing the market's needs!
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Video TOS Update: a Reading, Some Video Marketing Predictions
My earlier post, Google Video Adds User Tags and Comments, One Click MySpace Upload, New TOS was getting longish. I wanted something more focused too as I had several thoughts upon reading the new TOS (from which I have no powers to determine what's actually new).

My non-lawyer reading of the new Google Video TOS is as follows, and may or may not indicate what was actually changed: "we are going to put your video everywhere it might have an audience. if we make money we'll kick you some cash, even if you didn't initially ask to get paid. if we use your video for our own promotional purposes you get squat."

Thoughts for where this could lead:

1) Google enables advertisers to bid on making for-pay videos free to an audience. Advertisers bid to make a certain number of views free to the public.
2) Google enables advertisers to show short ads on free-to-view videos, spawning a new era of no-budget high-value video content.
3) Google double-prongs its video ads so that advertisers post them on search results like AdWords or in content like AdSense.
4) Google video ads show up in MySpace searches. MySpace partners closely and enables its video makers and uploaders to make some cash. YouTube crumbles (well, not really. Bambi Francisco's interview with YouTube's founder Chad Hurley offers interesting insights there...).

I'd like to know what you think...

update: oop, as mentioned previously in MTV, Google Focus on Leader YouTube, Google's in the midst of a major video partnership and monetization push.

Also see Google Video distribution, MTV deal.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google Video Adds User Tags and Comments, One Click MySpace Upload, New TOS
Because of my cinematic contributions to Google Video I received an update this morning with news that Google's moving in a decidedly YouTubian/social direction with updates such as (from the email):

- Instant gratification: A web-based video uploader (http://video.google.com/videouploadform) for immediate upload and playback
(I found their desktop video uploader odd considering YouTube's web-based upload... but I seem to remember a web-based uploader that just didn't work well or something when I was uploading an xmas of angelic proportions.)

- Share your video with the world, or maybe just your friends: Single-click video posting to popular blog services, including MySpace and Blogger
(YouTube has this too.)

- Get involved!: Now add ratings, tags, and comments for all videos
(YouTube has this - it's an interesting step for Google towards social content and rankings. Google's early experience with meta tag spam left them highly distrustful of what people say about themselves ;)

- Zeit-what? Now you can see a "Top 100" list (http://video.google.com/videoranking), updated daily, that shows what people are watching
(This is similar to the front page of YouTube, which shows the day's featured video and enables you to see most viewed, most commented and most favorited videos. My spidey senses tell me that's not new though...).

I find it likely that Google Video and MySpace video will lock horns a bit because of Google's probable technical video search superiority and MySpace video's popularity superiority. If Google makes a YouTube move towards more social interactions and/or personal profiles they'll be scuffing MySpace's shoes.

In addition, there's been some expansion into foreign markets:

- It's "Football", not "Soccer": Google Video now exists in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Poland, and the Netherlands

Further, Google Video offers a peek at the future of monetizing video:

...you may have noticed that we're also been experimenting with making "for sale" content free by sponsoring videos with ads. By doing this we've been able to expose a lot of great video to our users, like content from Charlie Rose (http://video.google.com/freetoday.html).

Because this test has been successful, we're continuing to experiment with using ads to extend content distribution. To do this, we've made some minor modifications to our Terms of Service (TOS) so you can participate in ad programs we may roll out in the future. Please take a moment to review the changes by logging into your account at https://upload.video.google.com and accepting the new terms and conditions. If you don't agree to the new TOS, we will assume you acknowledge and accept these changes, and will include your content in Google Video, as it is today.

Interesting stuff that emphasizes the increasingly complicated future of Google's co-opetitive landscape. I'll be peeking at the new TOS for indications of where they're going with this business and update accordingly.

Update: I'm finding it difficult, lacking a previous TOS, to determine what's new. Still digging though.

Update 2: Loren Baker discusses that Google Adds Video to Related Links, which is probably in part why Google Video updated their TOS. If videos are going to start showing up on contextually-related sites then search marketers need to seriously investigate video as a form of content for search optimization.

Update 3: Check out Google Video TOS Update: a Reading, Some Video Marketing Predictions
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Interview with Become Japan CEO Masahiro Ueno
I recently had the opportunity to interview Become Japan's new CEO, Masahiro Ueno. I became interested in him after learning of his work in developing the Japanese market offering of Overture and his presidency at DoubleClick Japan.

I focus first on "business translation" questions, as this is what most interested me about his work - how one takes an American developed offering and ports it over to another country and culture's market space.

Further on we get into social shopping and what Become Japan has planned there.

Their release:
Internet Luminary Masahiro Ueno joins Become Japan as CEO

Here are my key take aways from our interview, in Mr. Ueno's words:

The Japanese mostly rely on directory services rather than product research and comparison shopping. We see the opportunity to convert users to a more robust shopping experience by using a site like Become Japan. We are also looking at extending our product to mobile services when we roll-out the comparison shopping service in early 2007.

At Become Japan, we invested months in refining Become’s search technology to handle Japanese language queries with precision results. This is an investment that many others in the comparison shopping space have not been willing to make and will be a tremendous advantage for us as we begin our marketing outreach later this year.

Personalization, or group consensus features like Yahoo 360 are services that Become will look into. User referrals like blogs and user and merchant reviews from multiple sources are also increasingly popular in Japan. As we develop our technology, we will look to include user ratings that are aggregated from multiple sources.

You can’t just slap a logo on a company and expect it to work in another country. We are investing in building the Become Japan business for the long term because there is a big market opportunity.

In Become’s case, we have to understand the ecommerce market – size, types of products selling in Japan. For example, Electronics items as well as cosmetics, and gourmet products such as wines sell well in Japan.

Also, in Japan mobile devices are an important part of the e-commerce equation particularly with the younger generation of consumers.

There aren’t any significant leaders in this area currently.

The current Japanese ecommerce market totals approximately $60B. Mobile ecommerce in Japan makes up 15% of that market and is growing. Clearly this is a strong opportunity for Become Japan when it launches its mobile services.

Without further ado I give you Masahiro Ueno, CEO of Become Japan.

What in your professional background and personality makes you optimal for migrating Become to the Japanese marketplace?
My senior executive and marketing experiences at leading Internet companies like Overture Japan, Doubleclick and Recruit have given me a deep understanding of the advertising and commercial markets in Japan. I’ve been both an entrepreneur as well as led the operations at large publicly-traded media companies.

Become.com is great opportunity to apply all that I have learned to building the best and largest comparison shopping and product search company in Japan. There aren’t any significant leaders in this area currently. The strong technology behind Become.com as well as the U.S. and Japan executive teams will help us to achieve success.

You have successfully migrated both DoubleClick's and Overture's offerings into the Japanese marketplace. Please discuss or outline the migration process for each company.
Any kind of service or business must start with understanding the market, and in this case the Japanese market. In Become’s case, we have to understand the ecommerce market – size, types of products selling in Japan. For example, Electronics items as well as cosmetics, and gourmet products such as wines sell well in Japan.

Also, in Japan mobile devices are an important part of the e-commerce equation particularly with the younger generation of consumers. We also need to build partnerships and capture opportunities with other sites. Understanding the distribution market in Japan is critical in gaining access to major merchants and goods providers. For example, distributors are BIC camera and Yodibashi both have online and offline stores.

The current executive team at Become Japan will help me reach out to business partners and merchants, as well as hire more talent as we continue to grow.

What do you project will be the similarities and differences between the DoubleClick and Overture process to building Become Japan’s business?
In all of these businesses, we need to customize and develop products and services to match Japanese customer’s demands and accepted business practices.

In terms of differences, DoubleClick was a joint venture among several Japanese and US investors. Overture is a 100% USA owned company. Become Japan is a joint venture between Become.com and transcosmos Inc, a very strong Japanese IT company with deep understanding and investment in Internet companies

What did you have to add to each company's offerings to make them compelling to the Japanese marketplace?
At DoubleClick, we emphasized enterprise software vs. an ASP platform to suit Japanese customer demands. We also set up channel sales vs. direct sales to match market distribution practices.

At Overture, we launched a mobile search market platform. First full scale launch globally. Set up Ad agency sales channel to match market practices.

At Become Japan, we invested months in refining Become’s search technology to handle Japanese language queries with precision results. This is an investment that many others in the comparison shopping space have not been willing to make and will be a tremendous advantage for us as we begin our marketing outreach later this year.

How have you prepared for the Become.com to Become Japan migration?
Become Japan has successfully hired excellent talent to build the technology product for Japanese services. As noted earlier, Become also invested deeply in our technology conversion to the Japanese language to ensure high quality relevance of search results.

Language localization is a difficult technical problem, but this is an area in which Yeogirl Yun, CTO of Become.com, and other engineers in our company have deep expertise. You can’t just slap a logo on a company and expect it to work in another country. We are investing in building the Become Japan business for the long term because there is a big market opportunity.

There are few companies that are considered competitors with a company like Become. No other company in Japan offers the same quality search service that Become does.

Who have you spoken with the most from Become, what have you had to learn about from them?
I’ve spent a great deal of time with Michael Yang, the US CEO; Yeogirl Yun, the US CTO; Shin Nagakura, EVP at transcosmos. This week, the executives and I have been at Become.com’s offices in Silicon Valley for an intensive briefing on the company technology, business and direction. Everything I’ve learned has shown me that this will be a powerful consumer service in Japan as well.

Discuss the Japanese comparison shopping space - who are the innovators? Who will be your strongest competition? How will Become.co.jp differentiate?
Kakaku.com, EC Navi, Hikaku.com are a few of the closest competitors but nothing is quite like Become Japan. Our technology-based service will enable Become Japan to provide relevant research information, and fresh product information.

Yahoo Japan has the largest auction and portal but Become is the only shopping search site that offers relevant product search.

What is Become’s business model (are those affiliate ads or ppc?) and how will you have to adjust it to fit the Japanese webspace?
Become’s US business model is based on cost per clicks. Become Japan will use this same model for the Japanese market.

While initially we will have only sponsored ads with our search results, Become Japan’s comparison shopping will launch in early 2007, giving us an additional revenue stream.

What has been the biggest challenge thus far?
Our biggest challenge is creating a recognized consumer brand that will be supported by powerful technology & product. We are planning to kick off marketing activities this Fall.

Hiring talent is also challenging because the job market in Japan has picked up because the economy has returned and improved.

What will be the biggest changes you have to make to Become to make it suitable for the Japanese webspace?
As stated earlier, we have taken big steps to make sure that the technology is able to search for and provide the most relevant product results. With that, we are adapting the user interface (UI) to match Japanese users taste and behavior. The Japanese mostly rely on directory services rather than product research and comparison shopping. We see the opportunity to convert users to a more robust shopping experience by using a site like Become Japan. We are also looking at extending our product to mobile services when we roll-out the comparison shopping service in early 2007.

Discussion forums are a fantastic addition to Become.com’s SERPs. I assume there are forums in the Japanese webspace, but are there other forms of online community publishing that you will draw from for product reviews?
Discussion forums and ranked message boards are well perceived in Japanese webspace.

What are your thoughts on making Become.co.jp more open to user input - in giving the users themselves more of a voice in the results pages?
Personalization, or group consensus features like Yahoo 360 are services that Become will look into. User referrals like blogs and user and merchant reviews from multiple sources are also increasingly popular in Japan. As we develop our technology, we will look to include user ratings that are aggregated from multiple sources. We are also exploring adding the capability to allow users to submit their own comments.

The press release states that there is a partnership between Become and transcosmos. Are you personally an employee of Become or transcosmos?
Become Japan is an independent entity created through a joint venture with Become.com and transcosmos. I am an employee of Become Japan.

Become.com is providing the technology and transcomos is helping with the back end/office support. This allows the Become Japan team to stay focused on building the business.

What Japanese online trends surprise you for not having made their way to the US?
Mobile services for ecommerce haven’t yet made it to the US in a big way, as they have in Japan. The current Japanese ecommerce market totals approximately $60B. Mobile ecommerce in Japan makes up 15% of that market and is growing. Clearly this is a strong opportunity for Become Japan when it launches its mobile services.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google and MySpace Investor Conference Transcript + SEL's Key Take Aways
Google and FIM (owner of MySpace) came to agreements on a three year, nine month partnership with a minimum revenue share payments of $900 million. Google will be the sole search provider for MySpace, put AdSense AND a Google search box on all MySpace pages and have right of first refusal for remnant ad space.

Here are my key take aways from all the coverage I've looked at and listened to today:

• MySpace is now paid for. In fact, FIM just paid for 2/3 of its internet investments according to FIM's Levinsohn.
• During the call both FIM and Google CEOs indicated that this deal is just the first step. They made no clarifying statements about future operations, but my best guesses are content sharing and monetization for media such as video (considering Google's recent deal with MTV) and across mobile. Keep in mind that the deal is far bigger than MySpace. It doesn't include Fox Sports however, which still has lucrative deals with MSN.
• There's a MySpace toolbar coming, which will incorporate Google search.
• In one deal Google has gained access to mountains of social media user data, positioning them for gaining a rapid understanding of social networks. Depending on how the partnership progresses, MySpace could help Google in its currently impoverished social media position.
• The deal doesn't start until October.
• MySpace was looking more seriously at building its own video search than text search, an indication of the importance of video to growth.

Thought for Marketers: set aside some of your holiday season marketing budget to experiment with MySpace ads in October.

Danny Sullivan posits:

* Big win for Google? Sure. Lots of traditional players are worried about MySpace, even if the site itself isn't earning that much now, from what I understand. This gets Google in, keeps Yahoo and Microsoft out, and might be a cheap payment to protect Google's front in the social networking wars. In other words, even if Google doesn't make a net profit off of MySpace, the intangibles could be worth the cost. The closer ties also give Google deeper insight into the MySpace traffic, since it will soon see everyone going to these pages. That will be very helpful for Google if it wants to do a renewed social networking effort of its own.

* Big loss for Microsoft and Yahoo? Maybe, maybe not. If social networking is hot, both of them -- unlike Google -- have very healthy communities in several international markets. In fact, that potentially could have been an issue in trying to win MySpace. Revenue-wise, Yahoo indirectly provides ads to MySpace, but current revenue doesn't appear to be substantial, plus Yahoo already would have been giving a big chunk of this to whomever is the unknown middleman.

Here's the official press release:
Fox Interactive Media Enters Into Landmark Agreement with Google Inc.

And here's the call that Google and MySpace conducted with financial analysts and the press six hours after they signed the deal:
Fox Interactive Media and Google Management Conference Call

Battelle's post pointed me to the Google/MySpace call, which he summarizes this way:

In short, Google has guaranteed minimum payments based on expected revenues from search placements on MySpace.

The deal is all cash, there are traffic assumptions that they feel "comfortable" with, the deal feathers back if traffic goals are not met. "Our history is that we agree to these structures, and then we do better because of our synergies," says Schmidt.

Conference Transcript: I listened to the call and took notes. In the process I butchered the names of countless financial analysts and reporters who asked questions.

Included in the call were Tim Armstrong and Eric Schmidt of Google and Ross Levinsohn of FIM.

Q&A from the investment analyst community:
Rich Greenfield - what about video advertising?
FIM: Video not part of this deal, but we will have conversations with Google about future video possibilities.

Anthony Noto - what percent of search queries are sellable on MySpace?
FIM: They're all sellable, metrics indicate that consumers who use our sites gravitated towards Google anyway.

-will inventory be purchasable separately?
Google: Advertisers will have a different set of choices going down from broad to specifically targeting MySpace.
FIM is going to fortune 500, selling normal display ads, small, midsized advertisers can target MySpace specifically or put it in a larger set

FIM: additional opportunity: the real potential homerun is combining Google's technology with MySpace understanding of users.

Jessica Reve-Coehn - have you changed your outlook for digital revenue for Interactive?
FIM: This will help fox's 07 and the guarantee tracks the deal. It will take time to integrate and the deal doesn't start until October.

- you alluded to much bigger relationship - what steps in what time period?
FIM: Both companies had their heads down getting a complicated deal done in a short amount of time. Other than a couple nice conversations our teams haven't had time to dig into opportunities.

Schmidt: Where there are users and growth there are opportunities. MySpace has been gaining users' time very rapidly. This presents many new business opportunities for us to collaborate on. We can follow growth quite well.

Imran Kahn - testing MySpace referral traffic? conversion rates? rps for those customers?
Google: We have a good idea of what's happening to analytically model the growth and financials; the majority of the work of the deal teams was to make sure that the assumptions we made were accurate.

Mike Morris - can you provide detail on the timing of the pay, plus details on what goes over
Google: in terms of revenue sharing - this is a standard rev share detail, we're not going to divulge the specific terms.

Christa Krauls - toolbar distribution agreement? Recent Google video share with viacom, will there be content sharing?
FIM: We have a myspace toolbar that will integrate with Google search. Content sharing not part of the deal, but that could be something we discuss.

Spencer Wang - The $900 million: is that cash or credits or equity? traffic targets? what happens to rev share if not met?
FIM: it's all cash, based on traffic levels that are realistic and achievable. If we fail to make those the guarantee gets reduced accordingly. We aim to exceed them.

Jordan Rohan - Nature of the MySpace traffic; is it global in nature, how many countries, what is the myspace demographic?
FIM: MySpace audience is adding 250,000 new registrants a day (how many porn bot pages in there?). 90% us 10% international. We've launched in the UK and australia, 3 more countries in the next 2 months.

Yusef - Was this deal put out to yahoo and msn? FIM will sell display through the sales force? Google has remnant options across the full network?

We did have conversations with Google's competitors.
Regarding display advertising: IAB sized banners are used for branded sponsorship sales, inventory that's not sold is termed remnant, we currently work with 17 different providers. Google has first right of refusal.

PRESS
Eileen Vandune - which two geographies are the exceptions in the deal, accidentally released AOL research showed that 5% of Google users click through to MySpace; is that accurate?

FIM: the two exeptions - we don't disclose them, have contractual obligations and soon to be contractual obligations. We found that the majority of our users leaving myspace go to google.

AP, Nick Jedanune - what are the competitors that you considered, why were they passed, thought of doing search on your own?
FIM: We won't speak in depth about our competitors. We looked at everyone, extremely competitive environment, totality of the deal, Google was the preferred supplier. This went as smoothly as you could ask for, testament to all the people on the ground.

Schmidt: deals are about people, leadership, principles and mission - we knew pretty quickly that this would be a partnerhips based on collaboration

Bloomberg news, Cecile Deraut - Yahoo's technology used previously? Was it a problem that Google owns 5% of AOL, a MySpace competitor?
FIM: Yes, we used Yahoo, did some of our own work in certain categories in search. The internet has lots of crossovers - it's just sort of the make up of the industry. I'm not concerned about the relationship between Google and AOL.

Ben Fritz - Did you look at aquiring a search engine? How serious were you about building your own?
we were looking more seriously at video search than text search. Our users preferred Google search.

Kim Peterson - When does the agreement between fox sports and MSN end? will sports come to Google?
FIM: We don't talk about contractual terms. Our relationship with MSN is strong and solid in the sports category.

- why did this happen so fast?
FIM: Once you make a decision you want to do a deal as quickly as possible. we didn't want to drag this out.

Schmidt: They'd been chatting with us for a year, on and off. They had a management meeting last week and they set a deadline.

John Hagans - this is a good answer back to people who've expressed scepticism about MySpace. what does this mean financially for FIM from a profit standpoint, in a broad stroke what does this mean?
FIM: We've paid for 2/3 of all of our internet investments. There are 100% margins on this deal and we've paid for MySpace with 70% premium. We were confident in our ability to monetize MySpace and are confident we'll do a much better job on remnants now. We have a new head of ad sales, and have tremendous progress on display.

Other Coverage:
Paid Content's Staci interviewed FIM's Ross Levinsohn.
FIM-Google: Levinsohn: "When Sergey Comes Down, They're Pretty Serious"

Color excerpt:

Google’s push went into gear a couple of weeks ago with a visit to FIM for a broad-based discussion. Last Wednesday, a team led by co-founder Sergey Brin went to Pebble Beach during the News Corp. summit. “When Sergey comes down, they’re pretty serious,” said Levinsohn. Brin didn’t [stay - sic] the whole time; he didn’t have to. The execs involved clicked and by the end of the roughly eight-hour meeting, the deal was well on its way. He thinks the deal would have moved quickly whichever company was chosen.

MySpace, Google Ink $900 Million Search Deal MediaPost
Fox Interactive's Call For A Search & Contextual Ad Vendor Answered: Google; $900 Million Guarantee PaidContent
Google to Syndicate Search and Ads to MySpace ClickZ
What was MSN, Yahoo thinking? Bambi Francisco
Google & MySpace In $900 Million Deal On Search & Contextual Ads Danny Sullivan

more coverage:
Google Deal Will Give News Corp. Huge Payoff NYTimes
Google pledges $900 million for MySpace honors CNet
Google, MySpace Ink $900M Deal Red Herring
MySpace deal gives Google access to "oblivious teenager" demographic SiliconValley.com
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Videos: Fat Tail vs. Chris Anderson, Colbert on Wikipedia, Agency.com's Viral Pitch
I found StarkedSF.com because I monitor who links to my posts here on SEL. There's so much good stuff at StarkedSF, including a glorious link to my SEM post from yesterday, that it's hard to decide where to start poaching.

Since I've been on such a video kick lately I guess I'll start with these two videos, both related to our SEM realm:

Long Tail Commentary
The first video comes from a smart crew that clearly has come to a firm understanding of Chris Anderson's long tail theory and proposes a compelling theory of its own: The Fat Tail theory.

Long Tail, Big Butt

Wikipedia Commentary
The second clip has compelling thought from Steven Colbert, who coins the term "Wikiality" and offers a clear path for making significant changes to reality through the internet.

The Colbert Report Wikiality Aug. 1 2006

Other videos, more tangental
While I'm at it I may as well link you to an interesting interview of YouTube's Chad Hurley by Bambi Francisco.

And coverage/commentary of Agency.com's much discussed "viral video" pitch for Subway: Going to Work for SUBWAY: Part 1

Backlash (I suspect) fueled the roll out of Agency.com's When We Roll We Roll Big site, as well as what appears to be anonymous, positive posts from Agency.com employees at key conversation points.

Two notable parodies exist at this point: Coudal's and some other one that's not funny to me. Maybe because I'm a search guy or something.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Today's SEO Tip Roundup: SEO Secrets and "Assist Clicks"
Would you tell just one secret? in the SEW forums provides a platform for SEOs to proffer up "SEO secrets."

SuperZu says: "Something I did that worked really well in Google was adding a CSS drop-down sitemap-like menu to the home page, in addition to the regular navigation menu."

idahoguy says: "Not to say much... BUT, I have noticed quite a few, I repeat... quite a few referrals from various Wikipedia pages lately"

randfish says: Once featured on the homepage of Digg.com, in a study of almost 400 sites, more than half gained 1000 or more links over the next 2 weeks.

As if these SEO cherries were not enough, ClickZ provides us with Study: Search Marketers Undervalue ‘Assists’, which reports on research that "examines the kinds of search results that were first clicked on by users and the last results those same people clicked on before transacting."

Interestingly, "the study found more than 60 percent of conversions were completed with one click on a marketer's natural or paid listings. The other 37.3 percent of transactions were completed with at least one "assist" click on a marketer's search listings."

Notably, "searchers were more likely to start with a paid result and convert after a click on a natural result."

And MOST NOTABLY, "the most common move was from non-branded to branded searches that led to clicks on natural results."

So people appear to get exposed to branded terms in paid search through unbranded searches and then convert after clicking through on those terms in the organic listings.

In other words, search appears to have some sort of branding effect? I'll shoot this one over to Geoff Lamm, who recently wrote Branding in Search Marketing: Let's Discuss HOW, Not IF.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Matt Cutts Google SEO How-to Video Series Continues: 4-8 Now Live
I started off the week in SEL with a post on Matt Cutt's recent foray into edu-tainment videos: Matt Cutts Answers Webmaster Questions in Google Video.

I linked to a post with 3 videos.

There are now a total of eight videos in the series, and no sign that he's going to let up.

Session 4 Static vs. Dynamic urls, Sitemap hacks, Geotargeting
Session 5: Merging acquired domains with 301s, site architecture themes, split A/B testing
Session 6: All about Supplemental Results
Session 7: GAnalytics in SERPs?, duplicate content, marking pages as porn
Session 8: Google Terminology

I watched several seconds of video 4. Not because I know all that stuff already, but because my brain starts to stretch in uncomfortable ways ;)

Here are the first three:
Session 1: Including qualities of a good site
Session 2: Including some SEO Myths
Session 3: Should you Optimize for Search Engines or for Users?

Resources:
Google’s Matt Cutts on Duplicate Content and More (partial transcript)
New Feature: Embed videos with a specific start point (if you feel like linking to a specific spot on any of Matt's videos from your blog)
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
Google AdWords Audio to Play on XM through dMarc
Google today announced a deal with XM Satellite Radio in which "Google advertisers will now have a simple, automated way to reach XM’s millions of subscribers nationwide and XM will have access to Google’s large and small advertisers to offer relevant, targeted messages to their subscribers."

XM has deals with Toyota, among other auto manufacturers, so we should soon find the very first instance of Google in our cars (the XM deal may edge out the Google + Volkswagon deal). How long before we begin to see targeted podcasts, RSS podcast alerts that we can play as we drive, or voice search through XM?

Well, probably quite awhile on some of those ;)

Regardless, a number of you are likely appropriately interested in experimenting in XM advertising through Google. Rand Fishkin published an account of a trip to the Google Irvine location where the writer reacts to dMarc (NOT XM, just thought this could shed some light). The following excerpt from A Visit to GooglePlex Irvine:

They demonstrated the product and gave an overview of how they are able to dynamically generate and change commercial content according to demographic and what is currently going on in the geographic area of radio stations.

Their example - if its really hot in one area, McDonalds may not want to roll their regular burger ad, but instead an ad for their cool drinks and frozen treats would be played. The overall feel was to make radio advertising more accessible and targeted for everyone.

They cited that most radio advertising campaigns require a $20,000 spend, and when people are not willing to spend that it’s hard for them to break into radio advertising. They said Google AdSense Audio would enable people with a $200 budget to break into radio advertising, making targeted and area advertising via radio, IPTV and podcast more effective and viable for smaller businesses.

The inclusion of reporting and content creation tools was discussed as well as a way to help advertisers track and account for their radio advertising as well as create their own audio content for the system. Below is a picture of the beta interface they were using to demo the product.

This is a queue style layout where the radio content is lined up color coded in the queue along with the commercial content. They said the system automatically knows when to start playing the commercial content by starting after the radio host is finished talking. Also a feature that lets the advertiser’s listen to fifteen seconds before and after recording of the commercial content is played to let them check to make sure their content was actually aired.

Check the post, A Visit to GooglePlex Irvine, for a dMarc screenshot.

Anyone know of written accounts by dMarc testers out there?

Will Sirius snag a deal with Yahoo? Will it be MSN? Could Google wangle a deal with both XM and Sirius?

Sirius tripled revenue year over year and projects year-end subscribers at 6.3 million...

Resources:
Google Serving Advertising Via XM Satellite Radio Loren told me first.
Google + dMarc + XM Cutts showed me the link to SEOmoz.
XM Satellite Radio and Google Deliver Targeted Advertising to Satellite Radio Listeners Google press release.
dMarc
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |

 
August 4th is Your Google Click Fraud Settlement Claim Deadline
August 4th is the deadline for submitting your claim in the recently settled class-action lawsuit, Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles et al. v. Google, Inc. et al., Case No. CV-2005-52-1, in the Circuit Court of Miller County, Arkansas.

The class includes all entities who bought Google advertising on or after January 1, 2002.

If you're not one of the 556 members of the class who post marked their written objection to the case by June 19th then you have effectively decided to submit your information for your portion of the $60 million Google's charged to pay to all members of the class. Or you've decided to do nothing.

Either way, because you did not submit a written objection you have submitted to the Arkansas circuit court's ruling that you are "'forever barred and permanently enjoined' from suing Google over click fraud."

You can claim your portion of the settlement at the ClickSettlement site and get "...funds in the form of advertising credits. These advertising credits may be applied to up to 50% of the cost of future online advertising purchased from Google."

Google at this point has admitted to no wrong doing and the court did not rule on the contentions of either party.

If you are just now hearing about this and would prefer to object rather than seek some advertising credits from Google my best suggestion at this point (I will dig in more shortly) is to have a conversation with Joseph Kinney who's suing both Google and Lane's Gifts in the same Arkansas court.

His website is here: SafeSpaces.com, and he appears to provide litigation consulting for people "concerned with safety and security."

Find Kinney's thoughts about the settlement in Google Sued Over Click Fraud, Again. He is likely to be the next major player in this particular settlement.

Resources:
The best informational page I found regarding the settlement was the FAQs on the court's official ClickSettlement.com site.

This article provided the fullest coverage of the settlement situation: Update: Judge OKs Google click-fraud settlement.

This post provided my jumping off point: Google Click Fraud Settlement Approved.

I did not listen to Danny Sullivan's Google Click Fraud Settlement pod cast, but I suspect it's excellent.

This article, sent to me by MarketSmart Interactive's Diane Pease, gives insight into the market's perceptions of paid search, and should serve as a reminder to advertisers that both paid search and online marketing are still in their infancy and we're likely to see great changes in the coming years: An advertising model that does not click.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |