Many website owners know that their target market utilizes social technologies but few know to what extent and what technologies they should target. Forrester Research has helped by providing some insight into the minds of 10,000 online users within the report "Social Technographics®" released April 19th, 2007. What do they mean by social technographics? The creators and/or readers of; blogs, online videos (i.e. YouTube), podcasts, forums, product review sites, etc.
The complete report will require a modest fee of $279 and is available but a free helpful slidehow by Forrester analyst Charlene Li provides some great data to whet your appetite.
Some statistics from the Social Technographics® slideshow:
33% of the adults polled read blogs, watch "peer-generated video", and listen to podcasts. The average household income of these users is $67,889.
15% of the adults polled use RSS and tag web pages (i.e. "Digg" or "StumbleUpon"). The average household income of these users is $66,475.
Yahoo has launched a Poker enterprise in the UK. No this is not a joke and believe me I thought it was... I kept wondering if I was transported back to April 1st or something. In fact, everyone I checked this news with was equally as shocked.
Personally I think this move is yet another show of desperation on Yahoo!'s part. That said, gambling is HUGE money and by launching their own enterprise they are going to make a fortune if anyone chooses to play on it.
Currently the signup form states "Participation in online poker is illegal in some countries. It is your responsibility to ensure that the laws of the country in which you are resident or are located permit you to play Poker. You must not play Poker on this site where it is illegal or otherwise prohibited in your country." To further impress this upon users they do not even provide "Canada" or "United States" as options in the "Country" drop down menu.
Do you think this Poker enterprise will have a negative effect on Yahoo or do you think it is a smart move? I would love your feedback. So far the responses have been very different from those I have spoken to so far.
My favorite excerpt is "TV needs interactivity like paintings need flavoring"..."Imagine all those people in the Louvre licking the Mona Lisa. It's not very appealing." PERFECT!
Derek van Vliet, a well-known Digg personality, has created a plug-in for Firefox based on the new Digg API.
The new plug-in allows you to automatically see how many Diggs a page has received or to Digg the page. Check out Derek's blog posting or take the leap and download the Digg Firefox Extension now.
Today Microsoft announced financial numbers from the quarter ending March 31st, 2007 scoring a total of 14.4 billion revenue since last year; a 32% increase in comparison to the same quarter 2006. In addition "diluted earnings per share for the quarter grew 72% to $0.50, and included $0.02 in tax benefits and $0.01 in legal charges."
Microsoft will hold an audio webcast at 2:30 p.m. PDT (5:30 p.m. EDT) today for those interested in learning more. "The session may be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/msft. The webcast will be available for replay through the close of business on April 26, 2008."
Back in January it was noted in a blog or two that Microsoft was working on creating an analytics platform in response to Google Analytics. This was a logical move after buying Deep Metrix, an analytics software company, last year. The background information on the Microsoft analytics platform code named "Gatineau" was sparse back in January and I am sad to say it is still sparse to this day. In fact, upon receiving a reply from Ian Thomas today, the lead of the project at Microsoft, I am sad to say the program appears to still be in the Alpha stage; but at least I am in the queue for testing the beta when it is available. Here is a link to the Gatineau login page; don't bother trying to login it doesn't work.
So what do we know about project Gatineau? Nothing but some snippets from Ian Thomas that points toward Microsoft having a few tricks up their sleeves (I haven't heard that before). The following is a quote from a comment Ian Thomas made in response to a discussion on his original blog posting on project Gatineau: "We think there's room in the market for another service of this nature; plus, we have some stuff up our sleeves that we hope you'll like and which will differentiate us from Google's and others' offerings." He went on to note that "we have more resources than DeepMetrix did (development team has more than quadrupled since the acquisition, for example), so hopefully we won't disappoint you."
How will it compare to Google Analytics? On the original blog posting Ian says "the target audience for this project is broadly similar to the target audience for Google Analytics - though it's emphatically not our intention simply to replicate the functionality within that product."
When is Gatineau supposed to become available? Ian stated we hope to release this product during 2007; however, we're extremely keen to avoid a repeat of Google's experience with Google Analytics, so we will be ramping up our user numbers gradually to make sure everyone has a good experience from a performance perspective."
Here's Hoping
I really hope Microsoft can pull off a working analytics program soon for their sake. It has been over a year since their acquisition of Deep Metrix (May 15, 2006) and they are still in the Alpha stage even with a significant sized staff at hand. When they do launch I hope their product offers enough unique functionality that its competitors like Google can't copy them within a month. At any rate, sorry I can't provide anything new or concrete but I look forward to additional news on Gatineau (including a better name) and will post news and replies from Ian as I receive them.
I Need to Vent!
I don't know about you but if I hear another claim from Microsoft that they have something amazing they are working on and they don't deliver I will have had it with them. They have enough money and brains over there that they undoubtedly do have amazing ideas but for some reason their corporate culture just kills their delivery by being too late (behind other innovators like Google) or delivering products too early without enough testing (thinking back to Windows 95 & Millennium). Here's praying that they deliver like they did with Windows XP (their best operating system to date IMHO, albeit late).
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 9:23 AM
In the world of search, Google has been number one for several years now, but when it comes to overall site traffic, until recently Google was number two. Now that the latest numbers are out, we see Microsoft has dropped into the second spot as Google takes the prize of the most visited site on the internet. While the two are separated by only a million unique visits (or roughly one fifth of one percent), it is expected that this gap will continue to widen.
Based on figures taken from comScore, while Microsoft enjoyed a staggering 527 million unique visits for the month of March, Google was a hair ahead at 528 million. Yahoo takes third spot with 476 million followed by Time Warner at 272 million, and eBay rounds off the top 5 at 256 million.
Interestingly enough, while Google has a few more unique visitors, the average user spends less time at Google, an average of 4.6 minutes, compared to Microsoft’s 12.8 minutes.
While Google may only have a lead of less than 1 percent over Microsoft, in the world of search the gap is much larger. According to comScore, figures released last week for March 2007 US online searches by engine, Google had 48.3 percent, followed by Yahoo at 27.5, with Microsoft brining up the rear at 10.9. Microsoft and Google saw increases over February’s numbers of 0.4% and 0.2% respectively, with Yahoo showing a decline of 0.6%.
In March, Americans conducted approximately 7.3 billion searches. Of those Google saw 3.5 billion, Yahoo had 2 billion, and Microsoft saw 798 million.
I'm not going to reinstall it till they drop the lawsuit *AND* issue a formal apology. We provide them their data, without us they wouldn't have a business, and yet they turn around and sue one of us."
From user: Disneynut "I've already cancelled my Amazon Prime membership and am ready to cancel my affiliate membership with Amazon if they don't drop this crazy lawsuit. How can they have a workshop with independent developers while at the same time sue this guy for taking advantage of publicly accessible data... data that Amazon wants people to use to help me Amazon better."
From user: thekohser "The fact that Amazon would sue over being jealous that an outside developer found a better way to render their publicly-released data, means that I won't be buying anything on Amazon for the rest of this year. I'll reconsider in 2008."
There are some heated discussions on the Digg posting which I recommend anyone read who has interest in all sides of this case. The other side makes some good points too but I personally think they are missing the boat; working with Alexaholic instead of suing them would have made far more sense from a fallout and financial standpoint:
From user: IanRReardon "This guy is taking Alexa graphics and data and calling it his own. He is doing it outside the API and violating Alexa's trademark. Did you see his graphic before he changed his name. It was the Alexa logo with "aholic" at the end. Thats like me starting Google2, using googles exact logo and putting a multi colored 2 at the end.
I use to work at a search engine company and I know it cost Alexa MILLIONS to harvest and display that traffic data. This guy is just leaching onto it. Its totally not right. Even though he might have better features and option, it doesn't give him the right to capitalize off of Alexa's 10+ years of harvesting web data.
The API is a gift from Alexa. Alexa is saying, hey developers we're going to give you access to all this data, we just want you to use it this way. What the hell is wrong with that? Google makes you use its API to run programmatic queries. No one yells at google, its the same ."
Amazon's bullying tactics make my blood pressure rise. Alexa (owned by Amazon) has chosen to file a lawsuit against Statsaholic.com for "stealing Alexa's proprietary data by disregarding the rules for Alexa's Web Services–through which Alexa makes certain proprietary data available in exchange for a fee–and instead simply taking the data and graphs he wants without permission." (source: PDF legal filings)
Statsaholic.com which was originally Alexaholic.com had been operating for over a year without issue and, in fact, Geoffrey Mack (Product Manager at Alexa) posted on the Alexa corporate blog that the latest enhancements to Alexa "may not be as cool as Alexaholic, but they are a significant improvement." Furthermore, Alan Graham of ZD Net noted "in the meantime, Alexa continued to make improvements to their site, many of which were seen to be directly copied from Alexaholic."
Well now that the improvements are complete and even though Geoffrey Mack changed his domain from Alexaholic to Statsaholic to avoide trademark issues, it seems Alexa has had enough of him and have filed a lawsuit to crush this enterprising web 2.0 developer. Alexa claims Statsaholic's "conduct has caused and will continue to cause damage to Alexa and an illicit gain of profit to Defendant, and is causing irreparable harm to Alexa for which there is no adequate remedy under the law."
Unbelievable! I salute Alan Graham for his well worded response to this backhanded move by Alexa:
"Excuse me? Little Ron Hornbaker…is causing giant Alexa irreparable harm? And the question that really begs to be asked is that why all of a sudden, over a year later, when Alexa had ample opportunity to address this issue, did they decide to do it now? The simple fact of the matter is that Ron Hornbaker built a better Alexa and as soon as it started to gain traction, and Alexa had already borrowed all the ideas it wanted from Alexaholic, they no longer needed it. Essentially, what Alexa wants from the lawsuit is to take ownership of the Alexaholic domain, stop Ron Hornbaker from accessing their site without written permission, damages which will go well into the hundreds of thousands, pay their legal fees, and crawl into a hole somewhere and never show his head again. ... Is this how we work together in this shiny new world of Web 2.0?"
Apparently Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and owner of Alexa was a bit flabbergasted when the Alexaholic dispute was raised by Tim O'Reilly during a interview in front of a crowd of Web 2.0 companies (the interview will be here soon). In response to Tim's request that Alexa and Alexaholic find a way to get along (because they are both great websites) Jeff seemed to uncertainly stumble through a list of arguments about trademark rights and intellectual property.
All-in-all, I find it beyond sad that Alexa would target a great site like Statsaholic.com for infringement when it plainly compliments their own website. In fact, as was noted in other articles on this topic, Alexa's data (its lifeblood) is compiled entirely thanks to the kindness of volunteers who install their toolbar. So where does Alexa get off torturing a small website that has done nothing but provide improved (and very popular) access to this data? I am sure they could have worked with Statsaholic.com to create an amicable solution. I hope the Alexa staff involved in this suit have some sleepless nights as a result of the inevitable public backlash of their foolhardy bullying.
Related Articles and Sources on the Amazon (Alexa) vs. Alexaholic Story
Om Malik calls this case a part of the "End of Innocence" of Web 2.0 as companies like Google and Amazon begin to reaffirm control over their information after letting Web 2.0 API users innovate for them.
In New York recently I was upset to have missed a seminar on optimizing AJAX websites for rankings. Fortunately Liz Camps of the Big Green Blog took some fantastic notes and summarized the seminar. I highly recommend the read for those who anticipate they will be implementing AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript & XML). I know, it sounds awfully fancy but I expect to see a dramatic increase in use of AJAX by StepForth's clients over the next 2 years.
Here is an excerpt from Liz's synopsis: "If you're planning to use AJAX on your site, or if your web site already contains AJAX, you'll need to take some extra steps to protect your natural rankings in major search engines. As long as you follow a few guidelines, you can make AJAX work without any impact on your SEO. But if you don't follow these guidelines, your search rank can suffer."
As it turns out the search engine un-friendliness of AJAX mirrors many of the disadvantages of FLASH. As a result, the solution to search engine friendly design with AJAX is not to use it as the basis for the entire website but to (much like FLASH) integrate it within spiderable content such as text content and links or other JavaScript-free content.
I highly doubt FLASH and AJAX will always pose such a barrier to search engines but for now and the near future you will need to utilize this technology carefully to allow search engines to access content on your site.
Last week I commented on Google's plan to integrate news results with organic results. Search Engine Land noted the change was suppose to be completed by last Saturday but I have yet to see the integration anywhere.
Is this perhaps a limitation of my region? Is anyone seeing this update completed? I would appreciate any news on this. Search Engine Land is oddly quiet regarding the update so I wonder if they are waiting for the change to complete just as I am.
I found this interesting post from "Dr. Pete" at SEOmoz.org discussing his experience rescuing a client's website from the vastness of Google's supplemental index. Pete provided a great deal of detail on how he succeeded with his particular client. In this case the client was definitely in a bad state beforehand where even the most basic SEO strategies were not in place. The most basic fixes he implemented consisted of creating unique Titles and Meta Description Tags which in my opinion would definitely reduce supplemental results.
The gist of his posting is that the following changes seemed to have the most positive results:
Shortening and increasing the search engine friendliness of the site's URLs
Apparently when a 404 page was discovered it provided search engines with an improper response - essentially that the page was "A-okay" (a 200 server response). They fixed this issue which allowed many 'bad' pages to be removed from Google's index.
On a personal note I noticed this same issue with another client of mine recently by reviewing the client's Google Webmaster Central profile... lots of valuable information can be found within that toolset - be sure to use it!
He implemented a robots.txt file to block various parts of the site that provided duplicate content (such as print versions of articles, etc.). The impact on supplemental results appeared to be profound from his standpoint which makes sense. You see supplemental results will often occur when Google notices repetitive content within a website. After all, the supplemental results is by nature meant for results that are already found elsewhere or for pages that offer little or no value to Google.
If you are concerned that your site has too many pages in Google's supplemental index then I suggest reading and applying the advice in our instructional article "is your website search engine friendly - your personal checklist" because that article digs deep into many of the issues that also cause supplemental index issues. Or if you would like, just give us a call, we have a lot of experience increasing the search engine friendliness of websites for Google and the other search engines. StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. - 1-877-385-5526
Google is treading in dangerous waters right now. The prolific company will inherit its own search engine optimization (SEO) company called Performics after purchasing the online advertising giant DoubleClick on April 13th (takeover due to complete at the end of the year) and so far there is no sure indication of the company's future. Unfortunately, since the purchase it (outwardly) appears business is as usual at Performics and the prospect of that continuing does not sit well with many people. The fact of the matter is a leading search engine like Google who claims to highly value its "don't be evil" mantra will rapidly lose any remaining credibility if it continues to operate a SEO/SEM company.
The Basics: Why is this a conflict? According to Wikipedia, search engine optimization (SEO) is "the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results." Algorithmic results are supposed to be unbiased and highly relevant which is why Google keeps its proprietary algorithm so closely guarded. With the purchase of a search engine marketing company such as Performics, Google is put into the conflicted position of trying to generate profits by providing result-oriented organic ranking services for its own "unbiased" organic search results.
In addition, Performics provides other services within the realm of search engine marketing that add another dimension of conflict. For example, it provides paid ranking campaigns (pay per click, banners, etc.) that are designed to provide quality returns on investment. In their own words, Performics claims to "know which paid keywords convert to sales and optimize ROI on advertising investments with Yahoo!, Google and other paid search engines." Now, this is not an uncommon claim within the paid advertising industry, however, with Google behind the wheel the claim is likely to be perceived as having merit within Google's paid search results.
So What is Next for Google and Performics? Google could run Performics completely above board and without any advantage whatsoever but unfortunately there is no one to police them to ensure that happens and I am certainly not comfortable with Google policing itself. That said, Google seems largely un-intimidated by anyone these days so I figure they will do whatever they want to in the end. However unlikely, Google could even hold on to Performics and try to ensure the world that the SEO company is a far, unconnected arm of the wider corporation. But that would not be a very smart move since the potential damage done would not be worth the benefit of having (comparatively) a trickle of profit from Performics.
When all is said and done, I have little doubt Google will sell off Performics as soon as possible in order to stem any bleeding of Google's hard earned reputation for quality search results. Whatever the result, Google's final decision on the fate of Performics will give some insight into their current level of brazenness. For the moment, however, I bet the conversations between Performics and Google are extremely tight-lipped while the big decisions are being made.
Since Google began ruling the realm of Internet search it has become a major figure in my professional life. As a result, whenever an interview with a key figure of Google is posted I try not to miss it. To that end, John Battelle recently interviewed Google CEO, Eric Schmidt at the Web 2.0 Expo and posed some questions that have been tugging at my imagination lately. I watched the video over at WebProNews and jotted down some of my favorite points in the interview - I did the work, I might as well share it!
Please note that unlike the answers from Eric, the questions are not quotations but are similar to the question asked by John Battelle.
QUESTION A: With the latest introduction of a free online presentation tool Google has rounded off a nice office-like set of applications. Is this meant to compete with Microsoft Office?
Eric Schmidt: "We don't think so and the reason is it does not have all of the functionality nor is it intended to have all of the functionality of products like Microsoft Office. This is really a different way of managing information. It's casual, it's sharing. It seems to be a better fit to how people use the web and we think it is an example of one of the application categories on a web 2.0 framework that we think will be very very successful. And my guess is that there are many companies represented in the room that are building products like this or other variants of this that are using this emergent architecture. You know, this whole story about Web 2.0, which I view is a marketing term, is really an architectural transition from an older architecture to this new web based architecture and that transition which I think is what everyone in the room is a part of, is a fundamental computer architectural transition. Google is one of the companies that is benefiting from it, there are many others."
John Battelle then responds incredulously by stating that Google's toolset is bound to be "exceedingly threatening to Microsoft".
Eric Schmidt: "Well I am sure Microsoft will have a response. They actually have a set of web-based products which they can talk about. The important point here is that for people who are using products that are on the web who need presentation access and sharing"... "they are going to use this or something like this. And I think this is a testament to the strength of web 2.0."
QUESTION B: What areas of technology is Google interested in focusing on into the future? Note: John essentially asked Eric what areas Google might be pursuing acquisitions in. Eric, with caution required rewording and responded with the following.
The 1st noted area of acquisition interest for Google Eric Schmidt: "The biggest growth areas are clearly going to be the mobile space; mobile, mobile, mobile. It is the easiest way to understand it. And the reason is that people treat their mobile phones as an extension of their persons and those mobile phones are very personal, very portable, and having GPS information in them now and this next generation of wireless networks, the 3G and eventually the 4G networks will have tremendous power. So if you look at the mobile space it is probably the biggest wide open space that quite a few interesting companies that we could partner with, and I won't say beyond that, which are building either applications or advertising services that use the targeting that is capable in mobile."
The 2nd noted area of acquisition interest for Google Eric Schmidt: "Another area is in the local space, most of the transactions we do in advertising are really good for local products. Go down a street to buy a car, go down a street to go shopping... that kind of thing. And most search engines"..."don't fully take advantage of the local information that is inherent in the web. That is another big opportunity. There are quite a few companies that have figured out how to mine, target, or advertise in a local context."
Wrapping Up Other questions were certainly asked and I highly recommend watching the interview. That said, I was mostly intrigued by the quotes I placed because they show some indication of Google's future intentions. Nothing was earth shattering. After all, it is no secret that Google Apps is thinly veiled as a competitor Microsoft Office. That is at least for users only requiring basic technology, however, the launch of a presentation application really makes any denial of competitiveness humorous.
Next we come to areas of interest for Google. "Mobile, mobile, mobile" certainly stood out as confirmation that getting into the mobile web scene is a smart move; do it now before everyone else does. Early adopters of mobile will be in a very good position once it catches on. Furthermore, the interest in local search is in perfect sync with Google's desire to provide an enhanced regional experience. After all, the more local their search is, the more profits they can make since advertisers in every region will have their own top 10 listing to bid on. Exponential profit increases must sound mighty tempting to Google.
In a recent update to the Search Engine Land blog, Chris Sherman announced that Google will be mingling the latest news headlines into the main body of search engine results; wherever searches appear relevant to the news. According to Marissa Mayer, VP of search products at Google, "this allows us to rank news according to relevance in search results rather than at top of the page." The Google update will be happening over the next couple of days with a planned completion of the role-out on Saturday. It was not noted whether a organic algorithmic update would also take place but I highly doubt it since they will have enough on their hands with this change alone.
The Ramifications So what will the ramifications of this Google update be? At this time there are no screenshots of how the news headlines will be combined into the results so I can only speculate. That said, I see this change as potentially HUGE. Just consider the following Pros and Cons:
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb
In the world of search, Google has been number one for several years now, but when it comes to overall site traffic, until recently Google was number two. Now that the latest numbers are out, we see Microsoft has dropped into the second spot as Google takes the prize of the most visited site on the internet. While the two are separated by only a million unique visits (or roughly one fifth of one percent), it is expected that this gap will continue to widen.