You may have already noticed my new Google Talk badge in the sidebar. Pretty cool considering all you have to do is copy an iframe and paste it into your code.
Unfortunately, now I’m going to have to turn off my invisibility on Google Talk. It was fun while it lasted.
Popularity: unranked [?]
I really like this PageRank detector for Dig (not affiliated with Digg). The detector pings your site from a number of different services and then displays the I.P. address and the PageRank your site received from each of the sites.
Dig Pagerank in 700+ datacenters
Blogged with Flock
Tags: Googlepagerank
Popularity: 21% [?]
I’ve been reading a lot to finish this summer class and I came across a couple of awesome books:
A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink is a brilliant book that encourages the reader to cultivate the right-side of the brain and develop a greater emotional understanding. I would suggest skipping the first three chapters because I found them lame and I didn’t like the way he generalized about computer programmers. But, the six right-brain talents he explorers are dead-on and I think anyone who is marketing will benefit from this book.
Design: Differentiate and personalize your creations and you will find your job more fulfilling.
Story: People have an easier time remembering and relating when facts are given as a story.
Symphony: People who can grasp the big pictur, find relationships between seemingly unrelated things, and find and assess similiarities in systems are going to be more successful then those who can’t.
Empathy: Empathy unifies people and allows us to relate (and Marketers NEED to relate to their audience).
Play: It’s easier to learn and teach when you make it a game. Besides, it’s healthy.
Meaning: If you can’t find meaning in the things that you do, maybe you shouldn’t be doing them.
The book also offers a variety of good ideas on how to improve these skill at the end of each chapter. Well worth the read. I’m gonna buy like 20 for all my friends and family.
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark is a methodology for developing better advertising campaigns. The main focus of the book is empathizing with your customers and building persona based on these composites that you can relate to, speak to, and sell to. Though it was a bit long-winded, the book did offer a lot of good advice and I would suggest reading it before you start building your next advertising campaign. The book is especially beneficial to search engine marketing professions and offers a whole section on keywords.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Noticed a recent addition to Google Reader to help the consumer identify their blog interests and preferences. The Trends link near the bottom of the Reader navigation opens a new window filled with a wealth of additional information. Most of the items are self-explanatory so I won’t go into great detail (that and I have to go to school).
Popularity: 16% [?]
Found an interesting article on doshdosh about
How to Promote Your Website with $100 and I thought I would expand upon the idea. The problem for most web developers is that they forget the basics when promoting their website. There are a lot of things you can do to promote your site that require time and not a whole lot of money.
1) Submit your website to search engines: Google, Yahoo, & MSN. The process is relatively easy to do and shouldn’t take longer then 15 minutes.
2) Submit your website to a vertical search engine. The most successful engines are subsections of the big boys and finding information about them is relatively easy. Google Product Search (formally Froogle) and Yahoo Product Submit are both well known but for better results try to find vertical searches related to your product field.
3) Use EBay as a lead generator. Rumor has it is that there is more searches done on EBay everyday then there is on Google. Bonus, everyone searching EBay is definitely looking to purchase a product and not for information. Sell a small product that breaks even and harvest the sales information for related products.
4) Use social networks. Some businesses just appear lame on MySpace.com but maybe your business will take off on Linkedin.com. My favorite bar, Mulligen’s Pub uses MySpace exclusively for their advertising. Bonus, linking to a popular social network can be very beneficial to SEO because of the abundence of inbound links.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Smashing Magazine has a fascinating breakdown of how they believe Google PageRank works. Though their conclusions are highly speculative, the information is worth taking into account and considering. The information led me to one conclusion, PageRank is like dating, two “5″s do not make a “10″.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Richard over at golem.de noticed something interesting about Google Image. By adding a short addition to the query string in the URL you can activate the facial recognition app embeded in Google Image.
For example, a search for Paris in Google Image returns a variety of images showing Paris the city.
However, if you add &imgtype=face to the end of the URL, Google Image will return results related to people named Paris.
Popularity: 14% [?]
LifeHacker.com has an interesting article about creating comparisons in Google’s search and finding the results.
Using phrases similar to:
“better then -keyword-”
“reminds me of -keyword-”
“just like -keyword-”
“similar to -keyword-”
“reminds me of -keyword-”
“sounds like -someband-”
You can uses Google’s search engine results page to compare items that meet the phrases criteria.
Popularity: 14% [?]
What is WEB 2.0? A lot of people seemed confused and most don’t even recognize a shift in the way information is presented and authored on the Internet. This is just a short list of examples that seem to encompass the main ideology of the Web 2.0 shift. A lot of these ideas and examples overlap each other and so some examples are used repeatedly.
Web Applications
Social Networks - Large communities of users that can build links to each other and more importantly, customize the content (and the majority of the time) the look/style of their information that other users can then view. A lot of MMORPGs (Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Games) can be considered social networks because of the extent that you can customize characters.
Examples: MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Friendster.com, SecondLife.com, World of Warcraft (software purchase).
Aggregates - A collection of information submitted by users or moderators that is usually discussed or expanded upon on the site.
Examples: Fark.com, Slashdot.com, Sourceforge.net.
Meta-search - Dogpile.com to the next level, sites that search a large variety of related sites.
Examples: Kayak.com, Technorati.com, Isohunt.com.
User-generated Content - Sites that consist of content generated by the users. Almost all social networks can be classified as user-generated content (all khakis are chinos, but not all chinos are khaki).
Example: Flickr.com, Youtube.com, EBay.com, CraigsList.com, Wikipedia.com
Mash-up - A combination of the resources of more then one site to improve a site or create a new site.
Examples: HousingMaps.com (a combination of CraigsList.com and Google Maps) , Photobucket.com and YouTube.com content on MySpace.com.
Social Bookmarking - Tags and ratings added to user submitted or generated content that add relevance and influence position or prominence.
Examples: Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Furl.net
Marketing
New marketing techniques considered Web 2.0.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - Old ideology but making a recurrence due to the way SEO can lower cost of pay per click SEM which has become increasingly competitive.
Paid-Inclusion - Paying to influence organic ranking.
Blogging - Businesses use this method to connect with customers and because blogs make your site more appealing to search engines which will index the site with greater frequency. Blogging also helps with deep-linking, and aspect of SEO.
Sponsoring (Video, Feature, Site) - Why buy a banner ad when you can get your product or message throughout the entire site (including email) or throughout a video. Check out this Business 2.0 Article for more info (fourth paragraph down).
MMORPG advertising - Google buying AdScape, Microsoft buying Massive (TechCrunch Article), now it will be easy to place your ads/products in video games.
Affiliate Marketing - Why market yourself anymore when you can have other people do it, LinkShare.com, Azoogle.com, CommissionJunction.com.
RSS advertising - Place your ads in Really Simple Syndication articles.
Sploging - Spamming blog comment sections to display ads or build links for SEO (already obsolete or will be soon).
Social Network Profiles - Your business doesn’t even really need a website if your profile is crafted perfectly for your market, Mulligen’s Pub on MySpace.com
Podcasting - Ongoing relevant content related to your product (Burton Snowboard videos).
Interactive Banner Ads - Ads that react to user input by expanding, changing color, playing video, etc (check out AdBrite.com).
Technology
Some of the new technology that would be characterized as Web 2.0.
AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML: changes content without reloading page.
RSS - Really Simple Syndication: a condensed way to distribute content.
BitTorrent - Asynchronous and inexpensive way for a host (seeds) to distribute massive amounts of content using multiple consumers (peers).
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets: older protocol that has finally matured. Separate content (HTML) and style (CSS) and you can use an infinite number of different styles to display the same content. Content can then be customized for mobile, large type, cleaner pages, or just about anything else. CSS editors are being included in the Firefox Browser so users can customize the content of any page they want (userstyles.org).
XML - eXtendable Markup Language: a stripped down version of html that is customizable.
Popularity: 14% [?]
USA Today recently released a list of the (25) Things that changed the Internet, or subtitled, “How the Internet took over”. The article details that most important changes to the internet and how it came to dominate all media channels. As search marketers, we find the internet it be ubiquitous with work and everyday life. Beyond our small niche group or SEM and SEO professionals, web developers and designers, and various other E-commerce professionals, It seems there are still a lot of people not browsing Fark.com and the DrudgeReport.com everyday.
A recent article on eMarketer.com called “The Occasional Internet” states that although a lot of people own technology that enables them to go online (computers, cell phones, etc) less then 50% actually use it for more then a “minimal role” in their lives.
Additionally, a recent PEW/Internet survey/report, A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users, seems to backup the data suggesting 50% of the population occasional uses the internet. The report also states that only 8% of internet users can be classified as “avid participants”.
Maybe, web developers need to take a hint from Nintendo’s Wii. Instead of trying to make the internet more powerful and packed with more features, web developers should concentrate on making the internet more accessible and easier to use. It seems like an easy concept but I have to wonder why my gramma still has such a hard time opening her email.
Popularity: 13% [?]
