Spoketh by Greg Niland in SEO
I use Yahoo alot, as in I use Yahoo for business and personal most hours that I am awake. Which is why I am surprised that I didn’t notice all of the small little changes they have been making. After taking a step back and giving the Yahoo SERPs a fresh look I noticed there are alot of changes.
OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW
Yahoo removed the links to the Yahoo Directory. So if your site is in the Yahoo Directory, users will no longer see a link to your category under your site snippet. Yahoo also added a “near you” local feature. Now when you search for McDonalds you can click on “near you” and use Yahoo Local to find one. They also added quick links to key pages on a site. So for all of the bigger websites out there users can skip a few clicks and get right to the where they want to be.
Personally I think these changes are mostly good. Of course I am one of the few die hard directory fans out there and I wish they allowed me to personalize the serps and add back in that link. Often when I am searching for a hard item, it is helpful to find a site in Yahoo’s search engine that is a near miss and then check out the related sites that are in the same Yahoo directory category.
FYI These changes did not happen just today. They just slowly sneaked up on me and I didn’t realize it. Now I am blushing with embarrassment for not being more observant and rethinking if I am up for my next poker tournament. If Yahoo can make multiple changes without me waking up what hope is there for my poker game?
Spoketh by Greg Niland in GoodKarma Radio Show
Microsoft Vista gadgets are a new thing. Imagine a sidebar that is about 2 inches wide on the right side of the desktop screen of all Microsoft Vista users. These users can pick and choose what gadgets they want in there. Like a clock, calculator. Gadgets can use live feeds so you can have a gadget that shows the daily news headlines or stock prices. Gadgets can also be automatically updated. So if you release a gadget then you come out with version 2.0 of your gadget you can update your pre-exisiting users.
Microsoft expects 200 million Vists users within 2 years. If you get 1% of those users to be interested in your gadget and download it you are talking about having real estate on 2 million computer desktops. Now do you understand why everyone is interested in this?
Currently there are few gadgets out there. It is easy to stake a claim and become the incumbent force. Don’t wait too long since sites like http://www.gadgetspark.com are building gadgets for anybody with $600. If you have a business and dont know how gadgets can help you, I am going to offer my brainstorming ability. Just post your details in the comments and I’ll respond with what I would do.
Spoketh by Greg Niland in GoodKarma Radio Show
Last week on my Internet marketing radio show GoodKarma I was discussing affiliate managers and the concept of skimming (the act of not paying affiliates for all valid sales). It seems I might not have been clear and some people might have misunderstood what I meant. My position is that every affiliate manager should know what skimming is NOT that every affiliate manager is skimming. There are many good affiliate managers that DO NOT skim, are very HONEST and are nice enough people I would take them home to meet my mom.
Affiliate managers have a hard job. They need to make sure the affiliates are promoting the program and not damaging the brand reputation. They also need to make sure their technical team is properly tracking sales and paying affiliates on time. Not to mention the many other things a good affiliate manager needs to do.
If an affiliate manager does not know what “skimming” is they can not keep an eye open to make sure it is not occurring. When an affiliate contacts them and wonders why their conversion rate has dropped with no obvious reason, the affiliate manager better know what “skimming” is and be able to truthfully say that is not the cause. I am lucky and have found several really good affiliate managers who do a great job running their programs and proactively finding sales that accidentally fall through the cracks and paying me for them. I have also found the occasional “rotten apple”.
The most humorous incident of dealing with a bad affiliate manager was when my conversion rate kept falling for 3 months until it was almost exactly 1%. When I confronted the affiliate manager, the person claimed to not even know what the concept of skimming was and said it was impossible for me not be receiving credit for all my sales. The next month my conversion rate rose to almost exactly 2%. And he still claimed he was not manipulating my affiliate account. Needless to say I stopped sending him my traffic and spent more time working on projects for the good affiliate managers that I know.
Spoketh by Greg Niland in Conferences
I am very happy to announce that after several months of work SEO Class has been officially launched. SEO Class is an internet consulting workshop that is being presented by Rae “Sugarrae” Hoffman, Michael “Graywolf” Gray, Todd “Stuntdubl” Malicoat, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker and myself. It will be very intimate to ensure our attendees all have a chance to speak with any presenter.
Our first event on March 23rd in New York City is going to be a Pro Bono SEO Workshop - that means it is free but only available to valid non-profit organizations. That’s right we are going to swallow the entire cost of the first conference. Don’t worry we will be charging for the next SEO Interactive Workshop on May 17-18 which is also in Manhattan, NY.
I’ve always been impressed when I worked in the past with Rae, Todd and Michael. I really think this will be a good opportunity to sharpen your skill set and also discover new ways to be successful online. Besides when can you get all of us in a room and be able to ask any question you want to and actually get a detailed answer.
Spoketh by Greg Niland in Stuff
Joost formerly known as the Venice Project is a fun thing I have been beta testing. They are trying to build a television platform on your computer with streaming video clips. Conceptually it is very interesting, especially the social aspects of it. As with all “cool” beta projects it is by invite only. I have a few invites that I can giveaway if anyone is interested in checking it out. Getting get back to watching more tv using Joost.
Follow-Up I’ve given out all the Joost invites I currently have and will let you know when I have more.
Spoketh by Greg Niland in Search Engine News
The guys and gals over at Google are always working hard to make things better. For a while now they have been trying to integrate local information into the Google search results. It makes sense when you search for “new york city plumbers” or “90210 realtors”. Those are likely to be search attempts for local providers and not someone looking for general information. But in my humble opinion I think Google has pushed it a bit too far.
When I searched for SES NY, I wanted to double check the dates of a search engine conference and not have Google show me businessed in NY that match the word SES. Of course it is easier to complain and point out I things that are broken. It is much harder to figure out a solution.
I do not see an easy fix for this. You can create a list of keywords that will trigger the local map and its matches to appear on the search results. But this will surely miss good keywords and thus underserve some users who are looking for local answers. If you keep the system as is you frustrate some users who are NOT looking for local answers. I guess my suggestion would be to leave the system as is and overserve the local answers and collect usage data. Once you have enough data go back and turn off the keywords where the local map and business matches had a low CTR. That would be an efficent way to determine what are search terms that people want the local map and when they do not.
Until Google fixes this we can all have a fun time and take screen captures of funny/frustrating Google serps. Here are some of my current favorite search results with Google providing helpful local data:
- drug dealers ny
- strippers ny
- homeless ny
Spoketh by Greg Niland in Personal
Apparently Internet Marketer/Breastfeeding Maniac Jennifer Laycock has upset the sensibilities of the National Pork Council. Their lawyers have sent her a cease and desist over one of the many funny breastfeeding t-shirts that she sells for a breastfeeding charity Mothers Milk Bank of Ohio.
Apparently they think that the slogan on this fundraising t-shirt “the other white milk” can cause confusion with people who are looking for a piece of meat. Huh? I guess pork can be juicy but I have never confused pork with milk or breastfeeding. Maybe the National Pork Council has some crazy fetish. It’s a funny t-shirt, it helps a good cause and it doesn’t confuse me. Why is the National Pork Council picking this fight?
The best part of their cease and desist letter is the part that says “apparent attempt to promote the use of breastmilk beyond merely for infant consumption.” LMAO (for corporate stiffs that means laugh my ass off). The site is called the Lactivist Breastfeeding Blog and has many writings about the health aspects of breastfeeding BABIES. Wow, my psychology professor had a word for that PROJECTING - in other words maybe the National Pork Council thinks it is about adult breastfeeding fetish because they are regularly think about adult breastfeeding.
Head on over to Jennifer’s Blog and help her out with this good cause and this silly legal fight. If there is a silver lining to all of this at least those silly pig guys have helped draw some attention to a how good breastfeeding is.
Spoketh by Greg Niland in GoodKarma Radio Show
The foxiest lady of search, Vanessa Fox the product manager for Google Webmaster Central graced me with her presence again. Here are some topics we covered and we also took live questions from the chatroom.
-Change in handling of subdomains on Google with the site: operator
-What is the best way to pour concrete
-Overview of how Google is structured (Mountain View office, Kirkland office, search, webmaster, adwords and adsense teams)
-Are Google employees given secret pills to counteract alcohol at conferences
-Difference between Google’s webmaster tools crawl error notices and Adsense site diagnostics error notices
-How many Kirkland ladies have the hots for Rand
-Google’s handling of robots.txt wildcards
-Why did they think it was ok to bring buffy back from heaven
Spoketh by Greg Niland in SEO
As I was poking around the source code of a site I saw this line
!— 3 links expires 9/30/07—
If I was a search bot I think that just might tip me off that those links were bought and should not be fully trusted. It is no secret that I am not an angel in the eyes of the search engines, but even I have to say that it just too lazy/stupid when someone puts the actual link expiration in a comments tag.
PS - If you are interested in buying links make sure you take a look at that sites source code. The link should not be using javascript or iframes. Also it is generally a good idea to take a site they are already linking to and see if it shows up in the Yahoo backlink search. Better shut my mouth now before Captain Sprite comes flying along 
Spoketh by Greg Niland in Personal
In this online industry where 99% of the time you deal with people in cyberspace and not face to face, trust has always been a big issue. Sugarrae had a great post talking about what makes you follow and trust someone. The idea of transference (ie you trust your friend’s friends) made me see potential for an interesting game.
The game is called the Trust Transference Game . The rules are simple. I name someone I trust, that person must then name a person they trust, and so on and so on. Please no repeating of names and you do not need to name the person you trust the most.
You can post your explanation of why you trust that person on your blog and make that person feel all warm and fuzzy knowing that there is at least one person other than their mother that trusts them. I’ll keep updating this thread with all of the responses. At the end of the game we’ll have a long (and probably weird) line of transference, it should be interesting to see where it leads.
Greg Niland
trusts
Rae Hoffman
trusts
Michael Gray
trusts
Todd Malicoat
trusts
Andy Hagans
trusts
Cameron Olthuis
trusts
Jarrod Hunt
trusts
Chris Hooley
trusts
Andrew Wee (honorary mention - SEOmoz peeps)
trusts
Planet Andrea
trusts
Shoemoney
trusts
?????????
