Richard's OLD - UNUSED Blog

Rocky Mountain Homes for Sale, Kicking Horse Mountain Resort

2005-08-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Mountain Homes

I've been going up to the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort for fantastic dry powder skiing for a few years now. We're fortunate enough to have a couple of condos in the family, because of all the places I've ski'ed - Whistler, Tremblant, Switzerland, Vermont, New York, Banff, Lake Louise, etc... this is one of the nicest.

Located just outside Golden B.C. the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort Ski Village (KHMR) is nestled high above the valley. The views are gorgeous, and it's extremely private.

Anyhow, property is at a premium up there - I know people who have been on wait lists for over 2 years, and the list just keeps growing. These two spots came available, and thought I would share them with anyone who was interested. Based on what's been going on in the rest of the resort, they make for a great investment.

KHMR features the best skiing I've enjoyed in years - my son loves going there for a week each year, and playing in the snow!

Alberta may invoke notwithstanding clause over same-sex marriage

2005-07-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

The Justice Minister in the Province of Alberta has announced that he may ask their Legislature to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to allow officials in the province from having to marry same-sex couples.

Alberta's stated goal in consideing this action is to protect officials, including religious officials, from being forced to perform same-sex marriages if it goes against their religious beliefs. Notwithstanding the moral issue of whether or not one supports same-sex marriages, this plan is foolhardy, and sets a horrible precedent for the legal system.

I can understand that religious officials should not be forced to take actions which go against their faith. That's part of the two way street which defines the separation of Church and State. However, this Act would allow government officials who are uncomfortable with same-sex marriage to refuse to perform such a ceremony. That sets a horrible precedent. Government officials must, by definition carry out the law of the land. They should not have the right to interpret it according to their own personal beliefs. It's a right they waive when they choose to work for the government.

A police officer cannot decide when to enforce the law based on personal beliefs. The law is the law, and they have to apply it fairly, and uniformly.

Setting a precedent wherein government officials are allowed apply the law uniquely based on personal beliefs is assinine. Opening the door to permitting any government official to refuse to carry out the law of the land based on their beliefs (which may change over time) is outrageous.

Can you imagine how many potential court cases could be brought by government officials who do not wish to enforce a particular law, and use this precedent to argue that doing so infringes on their personal beliefs? Most of these cases would be entirely without merit and thrown out, but they would be heard, and would uselessly cost taxpayer dollars to resolve. Quebec's use of the Notwithstanding Clause has brought forth numerous court challenges. Those cases were narrowly defined against a law that deprived Rights clearly set out in the Charter. Imagine the cases where the Rights being contemplated are not clearly defined?

I understand that public opinions on the same-sex issue in Alberta are more extreme than in other provinces, and that there is a difference of perspective on the issue right across the land from region to region. I have no issue with the differences of opinion, in fact I respect them. Those differences, and our Nation's tolerance thereof is what makes this a wonderful country to live in. The fact we are even able to debate the issue is extremely valuable.

I would hope that the Government in the Province of Alberta will allow cooler heads to prevail, and not make this socially divisive issue more of a lightening rod than it already is.

I believe that our governments must continue to recognize that religious officials must have the right to practice according their faith. It would be ludicruous to suggest that a Catholic Priest should marry a same-sex couple. That goes against Church teachings and fundamentals. It is also unlikely that a actively practicing Catholic would be in the situation wherein they would make such a request, for their personal beliefs would be completely in conflict with their faith.

I believe that our governments must remain outside the bedrooms, and religious halls of our people. It must ensure that our citizens have the right and ability to practice their faith according to their own beliefs, and to expect and respect the same in others. That respect will sometimes conflict with our own beliefs, but that's part of our choice to live in a free society.

*****

In case you are wondering what the Notwithstanding Clause is, here's a very short explanation:

Many Countries have something similiar to the U.S. Bill of Rights. In most cases, these Bill of Rights do not allow any exceptions. Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which does include an ability for the Provincial (State) or Federal (National) government to opt out, or to make an exception. This clause is known as the Notwithstanding Clause, and is section 33 of the Charter itself. The Charter also forced all Provinces to respect a standardized code. The Provinces which had pre-existing Acts were allowed to retain them, but they could only be applied to further extend Rights beyond the scope envisioned by the Charter, not to lmiit them beyond the scope of the Charter.

The notwithstanding clause allows the federal government or a provincial government to create legislation whcih overrides sections of the Charter that deal with freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. There are a number of other Rights defined in the Charter from which no government can opt out. These 'irrevocable' rights include democratic rights, freedom of movement, and the equality of men and women.

The notwithstanding clause, or ability to opt out, is temporary. Any such legislation automatically expires after five years, or can be repealed sooner. However, it can also be re-enacted indefinitely. It has been applied repeatedly in the Province of Quebec to defend Bill 101, which limits language related rights.

London Blasts - Terrorist Strategy?

2005-07-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

On my way into work this morning, I heard the news of the new round of explosions in London.

Just like the July 7 bombings, these four were near simultaneous, three on the Tube (Subway / Metro), and one on a bus. Fortunately, no one was killed, and only one person mildly injured. These explosions were minor by comparison to July 7, and apparently only were caused by detonators. No additional expolives were involved.

There will of course be innumerable questions that will arise as a result of this 'copycat' attack. Was it related to the first attack, or merely opportunistic? What can be done to prevent another round?

It really does not matter whether or not this is a follow on attack, or an opportunistic copycat action. It will have succeeded in making some people afraid. Sadly, that is the terrorists goal; to seed fear in the populace. Alternately, a number of people will shrug off this attack, and with typical British flair, will comment more on how the bumblers messed up. They'll show a sense of bravado. It is definitely steeling the resolve of people to deal with the the terrorist threat.

The fact is, the terrorists don't need to set off large bombs with each attack. If they keep setting off small attacks, and only occasionally set off a large one, they'll likely succeed in making people paranoid. Hopefully it won't reach that stage though.

Interestingly, and hopefully, the 'success' of this small attack might also work against them. People will become more vigilant. They will learn to watch for signs, they will become more aware of what's going on around them, and the authorities will get more useful tips and information to work with, which will allow them to prevent more attacks.

Having dealt with the IRA for so long, Britian's security forces are more prepared than most for this type of counter-intelligence, and for the infiltration of potential threats. Hopefully, they can learn enough and will be able to identify individual cells based on commonalities or relationships, and shut them down before they can act.

In the immediate future, I hope that the perpetrators of these attacks will hopefully be found quickly, and brought to justice. Hopefully enough can be learned during the investigation to prevent other attacks by realated groups.

I am grateful that no one was seriously insured in these attacks. I hope that Londoners can return to their routines quickly, and that no future incident occur.

Jude Law apologizes for affair with nanny

2005-07-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

What's wrong with the world when:

a) An entertainer feels a need to publicly apologize for a personal indescretion?
b) The item itself is considered newsworthy?

A lot.

I know gossip pages exist, and some people make a living off reporting "The dirt ma'am, just the dirt" But top page news in multiple countries? Give me a break!

MSNBC
CTV - Canada
BBC

When Michael Jackson was being tried, I understand it was newsworthy. It would have been reported had it been John Smith. The fact that it was a high profile entertainer was accused of one of the most heinous acts meant that it was news everywhere. But where is the line? Is it that the line no longer exists? I wonder.

It's a shame that Mr. Law feels a need to publicize his indesrection. It makes it hard for entertainers to request 'private time' when they work so hard to make everything else known.

It's worse that we, the public, buy into their media machines, and even care about what's going on in their lives. Must be something missing from our own lives if we have the time to worry about theirs.

We Are Not Afraid - London Underground

2005-07-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

Saw this post, and image on Warren Kinsella's blog. He's absolutely right on this one - terrorism is all about creating enough fear in people to prevent them from acting. It's like bullying, but on a larger scale.

The image is one of defiance. It's quite powerful in its simpicity. Here's the image:

Winnipeg crowned Slurpee capital of the world

2005-07-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Wow - there's something to be proud of. The article seems to indicate that more Slurpees are consumed in Winnipeg than any other city in the world. While
400,000 slurpees a month is a lot for a city of 650,000 people, I would be inclined to think it may be the per capita leader, not the overall leader by volume. I'm kind of amazed the stat is public, but then, what stat isn't?

Winnipeg is home to some of the nicest people I have ever met. They don't live in "Friendly Manitoba" for nothing! Here's some information on the city and a couple of pictures of Winnipeg, and a nice shot of the Northern Lights.

Exciting Start - the Last Word ( ! )

2005-07-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

So apparently the event, (see Exciting Start comment), made it onto the news earlier tonight. Must have been a very, very slow day on the local scene!

Anyhow, I found out the other half of the "last one was a sausage" comment.

The officer wasn't kidding when he said that at least this one looked like something" I just learned that it turns out the sausage that was called in was a stick of pepperoni that some guy found in his own fridge when he woke up!!! I don't think they needed the explosives expert to help ID that one! :-)

I think that was my best laugh of the day.

Ahenakew stripped of Order of Canada

2005-07-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

It's official.

In follow up to last week's post, I just wanted to share the news that Daniel Ahenakew has been officially stripped of the Order of Canada.

Mr. Ahenakew was awarded the Order of Canada in 1978 for his workas a member of a United Nations committee as well as the World Indigenous Peoples Council. He also served as leader of the Assembly of First Nations.

Here's the essence of what he said. While speaking with a reporter in Saskatoon on Dec. 13, 2002, he said that the Jews were a "disease" and Hitler was trying to "clean up the world" when he "fried six million of those guys" during the Second World War. While he continued on with his tirade, he offended almost every listen with his racist drivel. Fortunately, the moment was properly documented, and the Judicial system handled the matter properly.

After his conviction last week, Ahenakew stated "If an Indian slips a little bit, you are crucified." He also blamed the Jewish community for efforts to revoke his membership in the Order. "This, of course, was the direct result of the pressure put on the [Governor-General's] advisory committee by some of the Jewish community, including a letter-writing campaign and the lobbying by the Canadian Jewish Congress," he said during a press conference Friday. "The decision by the advisory council is a clear indication of where the power in this country lies," he continued.

Utterly despicable.

Fortunately, Canada has both strong Freedom of Speech laws, and strong anti-hate laws. Fortunately, the Judiciary in Canada does act, and enforce these laws. Dealing with these issues in this manner sets the right tone for all to follow. Hatred should have no place at the table of Free Speech.

Exciting Start

2005-07-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

Got to the office at Metamend a little this morning, and things really took off. The phones were blaring, a hundred and one questions flyinng about, and then Todd buzzed me. "Hey, can you come down here for a minute, right away?" So off I went. I figured that he was going to be showing me some progress on one of the projects, or something. I head downstairs, and they tell me he's out back. Now I'm getting really curious...

So there I find him, next to our dumpsters, and he mentions that someone broke into one of the dumpsters over the weekend. Then, he points out a strange looking object, we can't quite see all of it, as part is partially covered, but it's got red tape around it, is sort of swollen, about 8 inches long, and 2 inches in diameter. Part of it looks like it's been blown open. Curious geeks that we are, we look closer and closer. But we still can't be sure what it is. So we ask some more people to take a look. "Curiousity killed the cat," everyone looks at it closely "Ah, I think you should call it in..." is the common remark.

So we call the police, who send a car out. The officer looks at it, and tells us: "You better back away, and I'm closing the road up behind your building." Then another police officer arrives, looks at it, and then they call in an expert to take a look...

As I stand there chatting, I'm thinking to myself, could be kids, could be a weathered out flare.

The police explosives expert arrives. All clear, someone was probably just messing with a flare - but considering where it was found, it's slightly off. They check around a bit more, and don't find anything else. False alarm.

The office mentions it was their second call this morning. Last one was a sausage. (!) At least ours looked like something. Thanks for calling it in, etc...

What a sad world where we even need to be concerned.

Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com

2005-07-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is a cool place to go for a first date - get to know the person without worrying about how you look or sound. Get to know them by listening to them. What a novel concept for people!

Paris, Zurich and Berlin each have a pitch black restaurant. That's right - pitch black. You walk in the door, and then are guided to your table, which is in a pitch black area. I'm not sure how you order ( !!! ) the article mentions that some patrons don't even know what exactly they had for dinner as they pay the bill after leaving the darkened restaurant. While it appears you can also ask for a variety of traditional French and Italian dishes, the surprise menu would be the most fun - figure out what you are eating, and make it part of the fun!

I know that the restaurant wasn't designed for first dates. It has a more serious side - it gives anyone an idea, and an opportunity to experience what life is like without sight. It also, of course, is a restaurant which caters to the blind.

Nonetheless, what a great way to actually get to know somebody... and not worry that you've got a piece of lettuce stuck between your front teeth! :-)

Richard

Ahenakew says he will appeal guilty verdict

2005-07-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

I wrote about John Gibson earlier today. On an ironic note, I just saw that Daniel Ahenakew was convicted of promoting hatred today in Saskatchewan.

Read the news story here

Basically, Ahenakew is the former head of the Assembly of First Nations and a member of the Order of Canada (he was notified recently that he is being stripped of the honor, something which has only occured once before). Since the Order of Canada was created, only one other person has ever been stripped of the honour. (Allan Eagleson for Fraud).

In 2002 he started making speeches wherein he stated that he believed that Jews were the cause of the Second World War. His statements were wild, and filled with hatred. During the trial he was asked:

"So you still believe today, in 2005, that the Jewish people started the Second World War?" Crown prosecutor Brent Klause asked Ahenakew.

"Yes," he responded.

Ahenakew was charged under the Criminal Code with wilfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group.

The other person of note I can immediately recall being tried under this law was Ernst Zundel, who was eventually extradited to Germany.

Sadly, his punishment was merely a fine of $1000.00. He's now 71 years old, and hopefully being totally discredited and exposed will bring some sort of punishment as well. From what I understand, he has largely been ostracized by the First Nations community.

It's not a law which is often used in Canada. Freedom of speech is guaranteed under the Charter of Rights. But hatred is not a form of protected speech.

Tasteless -FOXNews.com - John Gibson

2005-07-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

What a tasteless comment by John Gibson of Fox News:

"The bombings in London: This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics (search) — let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while."

This kind of small minded, racist comment is not all that different from the attitudes which drive the terrorists. But of course, John Gibson is sanctimoniously quite different from the terrorists. He doesn't plant bombs. He's just voicing opinions which plant the seeds of hatred.

Anyhow, we live in great countries where the great philosophers and all the small minded, narrow minded, and misinformed people in the world have the opportunity to share their thoughts. I expect this kind of idiotic commentary from some uneducated teenager who suffers from a lack of empathy and too much testosterone. I'm constantly surprised that a major news outlet would allow this type of commentary to be published under their banner.

Here's the rest of his diatribe, that he still has a job at Fox is a surprise to me, although FoxNews does seem to operate with the philosophy of "any publicity is good publicity" hence, they seem to enjoy their fiar share of controversy.

Here's what he said ....

******

All day long people have been saying to me, "Wasn't it great they didn't pick Paris?" And I've been saying, "No, no, no."

Paris was exactly the right place to pick and the Olympic committee screwed up.

Why? Simple. It would have been a three-week period where we wouldn't have had to worry about terrorism.

First, the French think they are so good at dealing with the Arab world that they would have gone out and paid every terrorist off. And things would have been calm.

Or another way to look at it is the French are already up to their eyeballs in terrorists. The French hide them in miserable slums, out of sight of the rich people in Paris.

So it would have been a treat, actually, to watch the French dealing with the problem of their own homegrown Islamist terrorists living in France already.

What would the French have done about rounding up their own citizens?

Would they have afforded their own terrorists the rights they insist we give the detainees at Gitmo? Not a chance. They'd throw them in the clink, or ship them off to North Africa pronto.

Would they have blocked terrorists at the border with unreasonable search and seizure — precisely what they say we should not do? Of course they would. Anybody looking faintly Arab would have had the gendarmerie on them in a flash.

It would have been a delight to have Parisians worried about security instead of New Yorkers. It would have been exquisite to watch.

But, alas, they picked London. I like the Brits. I like London. I hate to see them going through all this garbage when it would have been just fine in Paris.

C'est la vie. Goes to show the Olympic committee doesn't recognize the perfect opportunity when it presents itself.

That's My (John Gibson's ) Word.
************

Thanks to the Loic Le Meur blog for bringing this to my attention.

German court convicts Sasser worm creator

2005-07-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

A 21 month suspended sentence, about 1 year after unleashing the Sasser Virus on the world.

Proscecuters had been seeking a two year sentence.

I don't think that the term - 21 months - will shock anyone. That's 639 days. The surprising thing is he essentially got 639 days of good behaviour: For the next 639 days he must not be a bad boy! Wow, that's really strong discipline. I'm sure it will deter others from following his lead.

As to why he did it? Apparently, he's admitted everything in court - he wanted to be famous.

So he got his wish, a couple of times over. He's famous for creating the Sasser worm - I would say infamous, but some boneheaded firm will undoubtably hire him because they think he must be good. - He's also famous for getting exposed, tried, and getting away with it.

Too bad all of the companies which lost productivity to his quest are unable to sue for compensation. He might not be able to pay the costs, but having that precedent set might deter some other publicity seeker in the future.

Death toll rises to 38 in London terror blasts

2005-07-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to the radio, and heard the news. I've been away from my desk most of the day, so unable to comment.

Unprovoked attacks of this sort are so incredibly hard to comprehend, and put in perspective. These are callous attacks on innocent civilians, designed to injure, maim and kill. They are also trying to force public opinion to get troops out of Iraq, and Afghanistan. But today we should not worry about that, we should think first and foremost of the individuals. Parents who lost their children, and children who have had the most important people ripped from their lives, and their innocent, wide eyed security forever shattered.

The most wonderful aspect of our society is we have the right to stand up and say what we think, and what we believe. We have the right to believe according to our personal values, and the guiding principles of our governments is to respect our freedom to think for ourselves.

I am fortunate to live in a country where freedom of speech, civil and personal rights, and the separation between Church and State is strongly valued and respected. Our freedoms bring with them rights and privileges we usually take for granted. On days like today we realize how valuable our rights are.

Richard

BBC News

Yahoo adds another television exec to its ranks | CNET News.com

2005-07-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

Convergence. It's still all about convergence.

Smart move from Yahoo! They have now picked up executives from each of the 4 major networks. Google may be the largest 'media company' but when you want online content you go to Yahoo!, or AOL. Both these companies are extremely well positioned for the next change, which will see more traditional content than ever streaming live online, just as Live 8 did on the weekend.

Richard

LIVE 8 - Did you Get It?

2005-07-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

I think many of us have missed the point of the Live 8 event. Many of us focus too much on the immediate parts - the wonderful music, and the meetings this week. In case you missed the broadcast, here's the parts you need to see:

http://music.aol.com/artist/main.adp?tab=songvid&artistid=4348&albumid=0

1) 1985 Live Aid Video
2) Bob Geldof Introduces Birhan Woldu

They really run should be posted as one video - I'm not sure why they were not. That's the part my son watched. He watched it, and he got it. He's 6.

The music was great, but as great as it was, it should only be an excuse to reflect on what we really can do - not necessarily for Africa, but for anything we believe in. Throwing money at problems may not be the answer, but it can fix short term problems. Caring enough to do something meaningful about a problem will matter.

In case you're wondering, the music was great. I really enjoyed the performances by The Who, Robbie Williams, Dido, Barenaked Ladies, and REM. Although I don't get Michael Stipe's makeup.

Anyhow - I know my posts of late have not had much of anything to do with search engines, or search engine optimization. A little while ago, I found I wanted to post about more than just search engine related stuff. I also felt that the s.e. related works should really be housed on the Metamend site - it makes more sense there. So, we're actually setting up an internal blog on the Metamend site. So, between all that and being away on a short vacation and lots of business opportunities, I've really not kept up on the SEO posts. This blog will remain active, but will be more of a general commentary, sometimes philosophical and political in nature. The new blog, which I will point to, and post about search engine related issues much more consistently will allow me to segregate my thoughts into two distinct silos. Hopefully that will make both blogs more useful for any readers.

Man recites pi from memory to 83,431 places - World News - MSNBC.com

2005-07-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

Ok. Why do this?

Is this akin to swimming the English Channel, or floating across the Pacific in a balloon?

I don't get it.

LIVE 8 - My Thoughts - Short Term & Long Term Effects

2005-07-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

I didn't watch the Live 8 concerts on the weekend. I did use my Panasonic DVD-R to record the shows, so after a day of laboring in the garden, planting water pipes, cutting wood, etc, I tuned in and sped through lots of commercials to catch bits of the shows. The feed I got was from CTV (Canada), so mostly I saw the Canadian show, with a few cut outs to the UK, and one or two to the U.S. I won't get into the performances here, I enjoyed them, but that's not what it's all about.

I missed the Live Aid show in 1985, because I was on a summer University course in Poland. I'm Canadian, but had a great opportunity to spend almost 8 weeks travelling freely inside Poland late in the Communist regime. Twenty years later, I watched part of the broadcast with my 6 year old son, who alternated between watching when he heard a song he liked, and playing on the Lego.com site.

SO WHAT'S THE POINT ???

At one point Bob Geldof came out, just prior to Madonna's set, and introduced one of the 'kids' that the original event had helped rescue. My son got it. That's the point. He saw the images of the children with distended stomaches and their living conditions, and he understood how lucky we all are. Many people around the world saw these same images, and for many, it may have been the first time they ever did see them. Hopefully, some of them 'got it' too.

The Live 8 shows won't likely get the G8 to actually raise aid spending to 0.7%. Not next week. The leaders will pay lip service to it with intangible commitments. Countries like Canada will re-announce debt forgivements. These forgivements are meaningful. But that's not the massive change that the artists who participated will really get. The change is in our attitudes, and in our realization that we can all make a difference, somehow.

The Change will come over the next 25 years. People like me, who are in their thirties today were inspired in some way by what happened in the mid 1980's. We know that there are corrupt governments in many of the poorest of countries, that these are not trustworthy, and will not be entirely helpful. But we know there is a way to have an impact. We also know that the world has changed immeasureably since 1985. Thanks in large part to the Internet, and the tools that it brings to all of us.

It's our generation - the entrepreneurs and business leaders under 40 today whose attitudes have been shaped in some immeasureable way by Live Aid, and empowered by the Internet explosion. We are arguably the first generation in history which not only can appreciate the problems that exist, but can collectively collaborate to improve the world, in diverse and often immeasurable ways.

The Internet is the world's greatest educational tool. It is the greatest education tool the world has ever seen. Today, knowledge can be widely, and immediately shared. Like disease, it does not respect physical borders, nor does it move at a predictable speed. It can be stifled and surpressed, but it cannot be eradicated.

The Change that the Live 8 event brings is in our attitudes - that something can be done, the Internet helps us collectively acheive things on a scale which was heretofor impossible.

Searching for knowledge is the business we all are in, or are wittingly or unwittingly in the business of accelerating.

Someone asked me a couple of months ago what drives our business. What's really our goal. Yes, as heretical as it sounds to many, there is more to building a great business than making money. The money is very nice. It pays for our livelyhood. It helps us attain the creature comforts we desire. But there is more.

We do quite a few charity projects each year - we did them when we couldn't afford to do so, and do more now that we are starting to be able to afford to. Pro bono work, charity, civic minded projects, community support, whatever you want to call it - we do some each year. We don't publicize it - this might be the first time I'm writing about it at all. It's not about us. We can't take on every project we come across. But we do what we can.

Because I am passionate about helping, and getting others involved, I have been telling a few people one story in particular recently. A lot of the projects we take on have to do with children. We believe that if we can get it right with children, we will help everyone in the long term. One project we worked on was a summer camp for deaf children. The camp had been around for a while, but was in risk of closing. Their enrolment was too low for their to justify their continued funding from their supporters. It wasn't that there were not sufficient numbers of deaf children to service in the area, it's that they were not reaching them. One of the projects I work through, www.fcip.ca, took this one on. FCIP built them a new site, and we promoted it. Today, they are oversubscribed, and having to expand their programs. Many of the children they now reach live in communities where they are the only deaf person. Imagine for a moment spending your whole life being completely unique, and detached from those around you. People outside your own close circle do not know how to communicate with you. Everyday you face struggles that none of your peers have to handle. Then, for two weeks in a summer, you get to travel to a place where everyone is just like you! Imagine the joy for someone who never met anyone else 'just like me' in their life?

We do it because we hope that it helps the greater good, and its something we can immediately effect. It helps people. As an aside, FCIP is just completing our first project for an educational program in Mozambique. We want to help people all over the world, but we need help to do it. We need more web design firms to agree to do even 1 web site a year. It's been hard finding any which are even willing to do that! But we know they are out there. This year we had about 100 applications. We could only take on 6 projects. (build a website for a charitable organization which needs help, and promote it so that it reaches its stakeholders). If your firm wants to contribute, please let me know.

What's the vision behind our company? We build search engine optimization software to make the information you NEED easier and faster to reach. WHY? Our vision is to make available a fully automated optimization service which anyone can afford, and everyone uses. Our vision is that a fully optimized Internet means you can find the documents and information relevant to your query immediately. Our vision is that relevant information should be immediately available, which means knowledge can be immediately shared - this brings about ever increasing gains and advancements for people around the world. It also means we have helped the greater good, and will leave the world a better place than the one we entered.

Perhaps it sounds a bit simplistic, but it's not that bad. We already proven we can automated 80% of the SEO functions, without getting into any 'black hat' techniques. We've also proven that it works. We have successful clients in 60+ countries which are being found every day based on relevance to prove it. These include quite a few NFP and NGO organizations which are going the last mile to make a difference. We are merely a cog in the wheel that helps them reach their constituency. But it makes a difference.

Until now, that last 20% was the challenge. We're awfully close to bridging 10% of that gap. Can we get the last 10% after that? Yes, I believe we can, and will.

We are making a difference today. We will make a larger difference tomorrow.

Richard

August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)

2005-06-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks to John Battelle's Searchblog , I saw a link to this article by Paul Ford, published in late July 2002, so almost exactly 3 years ago. Great article in its foresight.

Google Said to Plan Rival to PayPal, create Google Wallet

2005-06-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

Interesting move, if true. This story first appeared in the New York Times.

This is just the sort of move Google needs to make to diversify its revenue streams. As my last post suggested commented, a number of people are concerned about justifying Google's ~$300.00 / share price.

The challenge is, and has been that Google's been adding more and more to the search experience, but little to divesifty their revenue stream. This could be the first major step in that direction, and a fast one.

The article comments that, (as we already know), Google and its Froogle shopping service are significant sources of customers for Internet stores.

The creation of a "Google Wallet" would help Google expand its reach by not just helping introduce consumers to the products they are searching for, but also to help they conclude the transaction, by facilitating the payment.

The article speaks of this move not just as if it's a rumor, but rather that it is going to happen, just the timelines and partners are unknown.

So where could this logically lead? PayPal accounted for ~6.0 Billion payment settlements in the first quarter of the year, and over $240 Million in Net Revenue to Ebay. Google could cut significantly into this stream. So it's a good way to expand the overall revenue streams.

But longer term, is this just a step? Could the longer term strategy include hosting the stores themselves, much like Yahoo stores, and making a little bit off each transaction? Could Google be looking at companies like ING and Emigrant Direct, and be considering that online banking is a logical move? It's easy to speculate, but transaction based revenue models certainly are in line with Google's business model, and a logical course for them to keep following.

ADDED at 7:30 a.m.

I just realized - if Google gets into this business, I have even more spam to look forward to!!! While writing the earlier note, I got 3 different invites to 'update my paypal password'; or 'unlock your paypal account' Woohoo, I can't wait!

The Internet Stock Blog: Hussman: Google worth less than $40 per share (GOOG)

2005-06-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

Saw a note about this on Greg Sterling's blog. We were to chat this afternoon about a new technology we've developed, but I had to bail.

There's tons of speculation about 'is Google really worth $300.00 / share?' Well, it's worth whatever someone will pay for it, and right now that's ~$300.00 / share.

Can they sustain that value long term? I don't know, my crystal ball is cracked, and my ouija board burst into flames last time I used it.

My bet is that the people at Google will take a page out of MS's pagebook, and buy up lots of good technology which will help them expand their offerings, and continue to grow their revenues. Whether that means they will manage to keep their stock price up or not is a different question.

The Post Money Value: Sometimes its hard to be an American

2005-06-15T15:57:00.000-07:00

Rick Segal is a good friend of a friend and close advisor of mine, Matthew Dunn, who now runs Predixis - the company Rick was on the way to visit. I've been reading his blog on and off for a while. It's always interesting, and well written.

Today's comment is particularly strong. Sometimes a little perspective helps us all.

blinkx -iFilm deal

2005-06-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I just saw a note about the Blinx / iFilm deal. I've never really thought too much about how Blinx operates in video search. One of my favourite sayings when I'm speaking to SEO is "a picture is worth a thousand words to you and I, but zero to a search engine" - so how does Blinx do what they do?

I'll hypothesize for 2 minutes, and suggest that video feeds that carry subtitles are easy to index. There's text there from the start.

Blinx doesn't actually tell you how they do it, but you can read up a bit about their features on this blinkx page, and in their FAQ.

Richard

Microsoft blocking words on China's Web? | CNET News.com

2005-06-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

Just saw this note come through from the weekend: If you're in China, use MSN search, and enter in any of the words: "deomstration", "democracy", "democratic", etc... you get an error message which says "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Therefore it blocks your ablility to search for information, or knowledge, using these terms.

According to CNET, Microsoft has issued a statement, which states that "MSN abides by the laws and regulations of each country in which it operates." Fair enough - they are not saying they like, or agree with the law, but rather that they will respect it. It's how we should all operate in life - by respecting each other's laws and beliefs.

A truism which I follow is from Voltaire's writings. I quote, very roughly, "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will die fighting for your right to say it." Freedom of speech is a key fundamental in society's ability to live, prosper and grow. Denying the Chinese people this right is only stunting their overall growth as a society, and their country's ability to reach its full potential. However, it's also what will keep the existing administration in power, and we all have seen even democratically elected government go to excessive lengths to retain power.

Whenever I read or hear about the Chinese government's attempts to stifle the free exchange of knowledge within their borders, I think of Plato's Republic, and the Allegory of the Cave. If you haven't read it, go get a copy, please read Book VII of the Republic, and enjoy - it's one of the most powerful stories ever put to text. Does the Chinese government not think that somehow, someday, their people will emerge from "the cave"?

The Internet is the greatest education tool the world has ever seen. Knowledge will get into China, and be widely shared, this just will slow it down a little. Like disease, it does not respect physical borders, nor does it move at a predictable speed. It can be stifled and surpressed, but it cannot be eradicated.

Searching for knowledge is the business we all are in, or are wittingly or unwittingly in the business of accelerating. The amount of information that I was exposed to as a child was breathtaking for my parents in comparison to their own childhood. I can't even begin to compare what I experienced with all which our children now have the opportunity to learn and experience, thanks to the Internet, and search engine's ability to deliver answers to almost any question we pose to them.

Search is the most basic of human desires. I believe that it truly is the 'oldest profession' - after all, curiousity is a reflection of the search for knowledge, isn't it?

I wonder how this Chinese policy can be viewed in relation to their promises and commitments re: Beijing 2008? Do you think that a number of these policies will be quietly lifted before and during the Games?

Not an SEO post -

2005-06-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, this has nothing to do with SEO. But it's very funny. Readers in Canada will get it.

Here's the scoop. Frank Stronach is a long time Liberal (Canadian political party), he's the head of Magna, which supplies auto parts into almost every vehicle manufactured world wide, and has earned him well over a Billion dollars. His daughter Belinda became CEO in her mid 30's and then 2 years ago decided to get into politics. Seeing an opportunity, she ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party, and lost. She hasn't got along well with various other party officials, except the Deputy Leader, Peter MacKasy, who became her boyfriend sometime in 2004.

About 2 weeks ago, Belinda Stronach crossed the floor, and joined both the Liberal Party, and the cabinet.

Anyhow, the more I listen to this, the funnier it becomes....

Richard

The Kelsey Group - Pay for Call Success

2005-06-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

Interesting short note by Greg Sterling. "(...) in the article the interviewee sees pay-per-call as something of an “antidote” to click fraud." I had never really thought of pay per call that way. It's true, but I doubt it was thought up that way in the first plce.

Pay per Click is wrought with fraud. The search engines all know it. Yahoo, Kanoodle and Microsoft have all commented frequently on it, and are all quite vocal about finding ways to eliminate it, or at least to minimize it's impact on advertisers. Google faces the larger challenge, as revenue from pay per click advertising is ~97% of its total revenues. Obviously, Microsoft and Yahoo both have a vested interest in making this an issue. Yahoo is less dependent on PPC than Google. Somewhat. But they know that the damage to Google will be greater than to themselves if PPC fraud is ever truly controlled. Microsoft on the other hand wouldn't really notice if PPC went away tomorrow. But they would notice a lot of competitors gone.

If I were MS, I would be looking at tools to reign in click fraud. They would look like hero's to the business community, and possibly wipe out their biggest online competitor in one feel swoop.

ACLU to challenge Utah porn-blocking law

2005-06-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

What absolute nonsense. The search related question here is that among others targeted by the law are any companies which effectively organize electronic data for profit:

This bill addresses pornographic materials and material harmful to minors. This bill:

requires the Division of Consumer Protection to make public service announcements;
requires the attorney general to establish and maintain a database, called the adult content registry, of certain Internet sites containing material harmful to minors;

(...) and later in the document;

Upon request by a consumer, a service provider shall filter content to prevent the transmission of material harmful to minors to the consumer.
(b) A service provider complies with Subsection (1)(a) if it uses a generally accepted and
commercially reasonable method of filtering.

(to read the whole transcript of the Bill, please glick on the link to "law" above)

So any search engine which automatically crawls the web is required to prevent minors from seeing objectionable content.

NetCoalition, a lobby group whose members include Google, Yahoo and others, have protested, arguing that the legislation could affect search engines, email providers and Web hosting companies.

They are right. But here's two more points;

To loosely quote a Supreme Court Justice Stewart, whose first name now escapes me, and Sen. Goldwater on the subject of pornography: "I don't know how to define it, but I know what it is when I see it." And;
A picture is worth a thousand words to you and me, but zero to a search engine ( I've been using this since 1998 / 9 - I doubt I'm the first one to have said it!!!!)

Even if search engines and email providers wanted to censor all adult material automatically, they could not. They already can put certain sites on 'adult lists', and you need to turn the search filters off to find that data, but all you need to do is say "I'm not a minor" by clicking a button. What a powerful tool. Imagine if liquor stores used similar filters, "Sure I'm 18 / 19 / 21" (depending on your jurisdiction), says the acne faced kid with a cracking voice and peach fuzz lip...

This Bill is unworkable. If it were upheld, and I were running a search engine, I would consider not allowing access to my engine to residents in that territory. It's simply an untenable economic expense; the cost of enforcing such a Bill would be untenable. The only search providers who could meet these terms correctly would be organizations like DMOZ, and even then, they would have to re-review sites on an almost daily basis, to ensure continued compliance. After all, what spammer would not post a legitimate site today, and then morph the content into porn the day after the site passed inspection?

Lastly, I always love statements like "accepted and commercially reasonable method of filtering." They mean nothing. It's a loophole so large the whole State could walk through it. "Commercially reasonable" - I can see it now. Google gets fined, and challenges the fine in court. They send in their lawyer who simply states "Your honor, to comply with this Bill would require the hiring of 100,000 new staff for a period of 6 months at a total cost of $15,000,000,000, simply to review the existing data already in our index. This staff would be required to re-review such content monthly thereafter,....." What would compliance do to Google's valuation?

I believe a few other States have already tried this type of nonsense, and the law has been thrown out.

I've never liked to see government in the bedrooms of the people. Sad, truly sad.

$80 Billion ?

2005-06-09T01:56:00.000-07:00

It seems that almost every day I hear someone talk up the merits of Google. Often the individual is commenting on the price of the stock, and how it just has to go higher, because it's worth every penny. I like Google. But I didn't buy their shares at the opening, at $100, at $200, and certainly not now.

Here's one reason. Today Google has a market cap of approximately US$80 billion, give or take $1B ( !!! ). In comparison, AOL Time Warner, which had 14x the revenue last year has a market cap of $80B. These are both media companies. AOL-TW has a much larger reach between its online and offline business, and should therefore have a much larger historical base of advertisers to work off of. What justifies the fact that both firms have almost identical market caps? Let's not forget, AOL is a large distributor of Google's search results, and advertising. Is AOL TW seriously undervalued, or Google overpriced? Or a combination?

Perhaps Google's stock price is fair? In hindsight, I wish I had bought shares AND sold them - I'd have made some easy money. The market is always right, after all. But how much of its stock price is actually the result of over-eager daytraders who are buying into the myth?

Anyhow, like everyone else in this industry, I'll keep watching their stock, and hoping it doesn't blow up in all our faces one day. The industry, and the market, don't need it to become the new dot-bomb. There is no reason it should, but market perceptions may be hard to manage if / when the stock price gap over earnings starts to slide back to more traditional values.

Syndicated Ads Shown Through Ill-Gotten Third-Party Toolbars

2005-06-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

Interesting article yet again by Ben Edelman.

In it he questions Google's 'Do no evil" policy - and asks how it can be consistent with Google paying out hundreds of millions of dollars annually to companies which spam the Internet? Google's principles clearly set out high standards, and are designed to discourage both Google, and its partners from doing business, directly or indirectly, with companies that violate them.

Directly, he is attacking Ask Jeeve's 'MySearch' toolbar, which has 'mysteriously' been installed on millions of computers recently - and in many cases surreptitiously - without users consent. My son managed to do it to his computer - he's just turned 6, and on Friday he wanted to show me something new on Lego's site. I noticed the new toolbar, and thought it particularly odd, since he doesn't have administrator privileges, and should not have been able to install it. He also usually uses Firefox, so I'm really not sure at all how it arrived! I removed it immediately, and started hunting down where it came from. I was starting to write something on the weekend, but then this article came out this morning, and since it was far more comprehensive than what I had, I decided to blog it instead.

So why is Jeeves doing this? Well, they're not the most popular search engine out there, and they need to find ways to get in front of users. I actually like the results that Teoma delivers. Teoma.com is an Ask Jeeves subsidiary. They just don't have the distribution that Google, Yahoo and MSN have. So they are running far behind the leaders, in spite of having a product which rivals or surpasses some of the others. But since people don't use the engine, they don't want the toolbar. It's quite a conundrum for Ask Jeeves. They have a high quality product that no one uses. They need to get it better distributed, because if enough people start using it, they will get better traction, earn more from advertising, and be able to eat away at the leaders' market share.

Spamming us all however, is not the wisest way to go. It's much more likely to turn more people away than it is to convert them to happy users.

Anyhow, please read Ben Edelman's blog. It's well written, and focused on spyware, spam, etc... It's a good resource to follow.

Richard

Google tests tool to aid Web indexing - Sitemaps

2005-06-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

Google launched a free tool called Sitemaps in Beta yesterday. Simply put, it helps web site operators create a sitemap for their site. It's probably quite simple code. We built such a tool back in 2000 as part of our SEO software tool.

What I did like is that Google confirmed that Site Maps are important. Many SEO's and SEM's have long argues that they have no value, or are only useful in poorly designed sites. We've always found that to be untrue. We build sitemaps for every client we have, just as a safety measure to ensure ALL content is properly reviewed.

Google's tool does not affect rankings. No sitemap does. It simply ensures that all the content is indexed. Our client sites tend to get all their relevant content in the engines. Sitemaps help ensure this. It's a smart move on the part of Google - It helps them ensure that they get into every nook and cranny within a site, and helps them get around some of the issues they have with sites that have Flash or dynamic navigation.

On that note, I bet we'll see many webmasters link to the SiteMap using a dynamic link...

Google shares surge to new highs after stock report - Yahoo! News

2005-06-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

So what do you think? Will Google's shares hit $350.00 by the end of June?

Is it worth it? That's the big question. I have no idea. I don't own any Google stock.

Richard

Yahoo! Mindset

2005-05-30T16:08:00.000-07:00

A really cool BETA tool from Yahoo labs. It allows you to run a search, and then resort your results based on whether you expect a commercial (you're buying a product or service), or informational (you're doing research), result.

What's really interesting is that it gives you a chance to gather some perspective on how your site is viewed. Do Yahoo! (and likely other search engines), 'see' your web site correctly? Do they think your site is informational in nature when you're really trying to sell a product or a service?

For example, or main site; www.metamend.com was viewed as informational, whereas our site for the hospitality industry - hotels.metamend.com was seen as being heavily oriented towards selling. I would say this is a correct assumption; objectively.

Our main site metamend.com is there to sell SEO services. But it's also used to inform people about the search engines, and optimization in general. We've collected and posted so much information over the years, that I can understand why an algorithm would place it has heavily favouring the "informational site" side.

Then I tried something different. I did the equivalent of 'google myself' using Mindset, and got interesting results. This blog was #3 overall. I guess it's relevant. :-) Number 1 was ISEDB That too was relevant. The remainder were articles I had written over the years. I moved the slider around, and the results changed, although it mostly seemed to be based on the site the article was posted to - so the same article might be more valuable on an informational site than on a service based site. I find that to be interesting in and of itself. Pages are not weighted within the site, the over site score is counted. This is a BETA, but this feature does not seem as detailed as PageRank, which varies from area to area within a site.

I then happened to spot a particular article in the results which I had written and published in October 2003. In it I had written:

"Search engines need to keep an eye to new technologies and innovative techniques to improve the quality of their search results. Their business model is based on providing highly relevant results to a query quickly and efficiently. If they deliver inaccurate results too often, searchers will go elsewhere to find a more reliable information resource. The proper and carefully balanced application of usage data, such as that collected by Alexa, combined with a comprehensive ranking algorithm could be employed to improve the quality of search results for web searchers.

Such a ranking formula would certainly cause some waves within the search engine community and with good reason. It would turn existing search engine results on their head by demonstrating that search results need not be passive. Public feedback to previous search results could be factored into improving future search results."

I'm no genius, or psychic. I can't remember Oct 2003 that well, but I'm sure that a lot of people wrote similar comments before and after my article was published. The argument was one that I'm sure many people at the time agreed with, and wanted to see happen. I wrote that article in particular about ways you could use Alexa data to model behaviour, and automatically start filtering results based on prior tendencies.

This route followed by Yahoo! is much on the same lines, except that it doesn't assume they your search tendencies are always relevant - it asks you to decide if you want information or to make a purchase. I like it.

If nothing else, this new tool gives some insight into the logic that Yahoo uses today, and opens new paths for optimization strategies.

Richard

Why smart companies don't use corporate weblogs :: AO

2005-05-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

I saw an article on Robert Scoble's blog earlier that led me to this bit of nonsense. It's an article from a fellow trying to sell us on 'blogworking' since "smart companies don't use corporate weblogs" and "Public weblogs have very low accountability, and they return no information or insight back to the author about their audience." Lastly, the author - Jesse Taylor, claims that "smart companies will continue to avoid traditional weblog publishing, while at the same time, smart companies will to continue to see the financial and customer relations incentives offered by true blogworking."

His premise really seems to be that blogs are not interactive enough, and don't allow for enough 'conversation' Ok, perhaps that is somewhat true. But you'll have a very hard time convincing me entirely of this. First off: I get a few, and very few comments on my blog -- I started it more a search engine marketing experiment - heck I've never even moved it into our site, but I think I will soon -- but most of the comments I do get are emailed directly to me, and not through the site. I've had interesting conversations with individuals based on comments or articles I've posted. I've gotten all sorts of feedback, and I've learned. No one else participated in that conversation, but the blog is not designed for that purpose! If I wanted a discussion, I'd open a discussion board. That's where Jesse Taylor's comments are more applicable. Social blogworking can be the new discussion board / forum format. It makes sense there.

I know lots of companies that use blogs, and use them well. The people who get the feedback are the authors who had the original thought. They should be the ones getting the feedback. They don't want someone else responding to a question about their article, becuase the correct thought is likely not in that person's head. If I had one of our staff answer comments to my blog, or to a presentation I did, etc... they would come to me and ask me "so what did you mean here, when you said XYZ?" Who would benefit there? No one.

Social Blogworking is real. It's smart. It has it's place. Just like blogs.

here's the original article.

Richard

PR dead update

2005-05-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, just back from my last outside meeting of the day - and lunch! - looks like PR is back. I'm still seeing some odd search results, so that must be unrelated.

Richard

Google Toolbar PR Meter Gray Across The Web

2005-05-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

Since late last week, Google's toolbar has been grey.

It would be a good thing for the Internet to leave it that way. Here's two quick observations why, but I'll probably write a longer piece later:

1) Fight spam: It will hopefully cut down on the number of sites which claim high PR page, and just waste everyone's time, including Google's. How many 100's of link spam less would I like to see each day? hmmmmmmm???

2) Stop people from trading links basing on their speculation of which site is an authority site, and trying to link to and from it. Get people concentrating on relevant links. Teoma's system of Subject Specificity in links is stronger anyhow. Links all count for something, but the right links get you into the right neighborhood. Now Teoma's system isn't foolproof. Metamend ranks #1 in Teoma (at least from whereI'm searching) for "web site optimization", but not in the top 200 for "search engine optimization", or "seo service" Yet, we're an SEO service, a search engine optimization company, and a web site optimization service. Just an "ism" I guess. No system is foolproof.

I did see a note somewhere that PageRank (PR) is available in the Google Directory - I'm flying around, and can't verify that data. I also saw a note that Google's started a major index rebuild - I would say this is likely as I've ssen lots of movement in the last few days. Could be that It'll be updated and live once the update is done - no more groaning from people who wonder why they have a PR 7, and rank below PR 3's.

More later....

Richard

AIMS: Vancouver Meeting

2005-05-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

So I went to AIMS Canada's first event in many years in Vancouver last night. Dave Forde, who's the GM of AIMS had asked me to come to the event when I was in Toronto at SES a couple of weeks ago. I lined up a few meetings to coincide with the event, and made the short trip over. It was nice

I met lots of interesting people - which is always the best part of my day - including a few who I've known about for a while, but never happened to meet properly.

Anyhow, there was maybe 40 people there, so not a huge attendance. But I would say that the people there were of high quality, and well connected in the local scene. Many seemed to have the attitude - I'll show and check this out for next time.

One person commented on the low turnout. Which actually brings me to the point of this post.

About 18-20 years ago I was very politically involved. I was attending a French college called Jean-de-Brebeuf in Montreal, and I organized a number of individuals to come through the school to speak. One such individual was a very nice man, who I thought would be a big draw. After all, I believed he was going to be Prime Minister of Canada one day, and I was sure everyone would be interested to hear him speak. There were about 1000 students in this college / CEGEP.

A couple of weeks before the event, I met with this man at his office, and he asked me what sort of turnout I expected. I informed him that the room held about 80 people, and I hoped to have a majority of seats filled. He smiled slowly, and told me he looked forward to it.

The day came, and I was nervous - a number of people promised to come, and did. Some only came for 10 minutes, and left, but about 25-35 people were there constantly. Another 20 people probably flowed through. I felt let down. I had not delivered, and I was extremely disappointed.

The man though was not. He was thrilled. Then he told me a story. When he was a couple of years older than I was at the time, he was at University of Toronto. There was a rising star in Quebec politics called Rene Levesque, (If you don't know who he is, look it up!), whom he invited to speak at the U of T.

He was very excited about his star speaker, separatism in Quebec was just a nascent political force, and its leader was coming to speak at U of T. He was sure the turnout would be huge, and booked the largest available hall for the event. The day came, and he proudly escorted Levesque into the room, and found 3 people in a hall which could accommodate almost 1000. He was shattered. But Levesque loved it - he got to have a good conversation with three very interested, highly educated people who disagreed with his perspective rationally. He benefited from the meeting.

Hearing this story made me smile, and feel much better. It also explained why this individual had smiled when I gave him the expected numbers. About 18 years later, he became Prime Minister of Canada, before that he was Finance Minister in his opponent's government, a government which turned huge deficits into soaring surpluses. He did a great job as Finance Minister.

I have not seen or spoken to him since 1990 - 1991. But when people ask me for my opinion of him, I always say, "Paul Martin is an extremely nice man. Of all the political leaders I have met, I believe that he is possibly the nicest on a personal level."

Richard

BitTorrent Creator Launches Search Engine

2005-05-24T13:04:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many people actually use BitTorrent. I'm sure tons of people did last week to get a copy of the new Star Wars movie prior to its release.

One of the big challenges, from what I understand, is finding all the copies of files out there so that you are not stuck having the program run for hours at a time to download files.

Of course, file sharing of copyrighted material is not entirely legal. A number of web sites which host such material have been forced to shut down.

This new service, available at the BitTorrent site, has indexed over 60,000 files as of launch on Monday. I can imagine that the engine makes it easier for people to find the right files - but also for publishers to track down sites they want to shut down.

We'll see how this plays out.

Richard

Publishers protest Google library project

2005-05-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

You just knew this was going to happen....

A little while ago, Google announced plans with certain Universities to scan millions of library books into it search engine - thus making the sharing of knowledge easier, and allowing it to reach a much wider audience. From a philanthropic standpoint - this is a good thing.

Anyhow, Google now is being challenged by 125 not for profit publishers who claim that the plan involves systematic copyright infringement on a massive scale. Two of the publishers claim to have formally asked Google to withhold their publications from the scanners, but that Google has not complied with the request.

I understand why authors and publishers would not like this. After all, if you only need to publish one copy of the book, then every book would have zero ROI. It's a business after all.

Google, and the libraries want to help information get shared. A lot of University libraries could benefit from this sharing of information. I remember when I was at McGill; many texts were not available in the various libraries. When all you needed from an entire book about certain case laws, all you really wanted was a copy of the ruling - your job was to offer your own perspective. Many times, it was very difficult to find the appropriate rulings, and you were forced to find other texts which referenced the original. McGill is / was a well to do school, but it did not have EVERY document it needed in its library. This program is designed to resolve that issue, so that every student can access the information he or she needs to perform his or her studies, and to succeed. It's knid of like Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and the students can just barely see the light. The program helps them climb out from the cave.

So, I understand both sides of the issue - somehow, authors and publishers need to be compensated for their costs in getting the books out there.

Perhaps a solution is for Google and the Universities to only scan in books that are more than 25 years old? This would still be invaluable to researchers and students.

Richard

Voyager 1 reached the solar system's frontier

2005-05-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

Not search engine related, but very cool. Really it is totally search related, but on a different plane.

Voyager 1 has reached the edge of the solar system and is into the Heliosheath.

Interestingly, Voyager 1 was launched sixteen days after Voyager 2. ( September 5, 1977 (Voyager 1), August 20, 1977 (Voyager 2)).

They are last two spacecraft of NASA's Mariner series, and the first to be sent to explore the outer solar system. Voyagers 1 and 2 were to programmed to perform studies of Jupiter and Saturn, their moons.

Voyager 1's is on a faster trajectory, allowing it to arrive at Jupiter in March of 1979, whereas Voyager 2 arrived about four months later in July 1979. I don't have any clue why that is - perhaps one studied the asteroid belt on the way there?? After both spacecraft studied Jupiter and Neptuen, Voyager 2 was sent on to Uranus (January 1986) and Neptune (August 1989).

Anyhow - they now go off into the heliosphere - headed in different directions to study what is beyond the solar system.

Richard

Link Request Software

2005-05-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

Got to love this link request!!! It's amazing when people can't take 5 minutes to read the simplest instructions!. I took the time to remove the .us and replace it with "dot us" throughout - figured they were so ridiculous, I wouldn't even send them traffic from this blog - if anyone actually reads it!

I especially like the note at the bottom - they couldn't even bother removing the instructions themselves.

"I have provided this sample email only for your reference. I
STRONGLY recommend that you modify the above email significantly
before sending it your link partners - if too many LinkExplore
users start sending the same emails, the effectiveness of each
email will diminish significantly. Also, if too many LinkExplore
users start sending the same emails, and if you send a similar
email, you might be accused of email spamming. "

Anyhow, this spam gave me a good smile!! I almost never read them, so I'm not sure what caused me to stop and read this one....

Richard

Here's the email!

Hi,

I looked at your website - http://www.metamend.com - and I really
liked the [[Enter something that you like about the link
partner's site]].

I own a site that provides [[Enter topic of your site]] -
http://www.winstart dot us. Since your site provides [[Enter Topic of
link partner's site]], our sites are related to but are not
competitive with each other. So, I would like to propose a link
exchange partnership with your site.

My site gets a lot of traffic every day, so a link from my site
to your site will bring in a decent amount of traffic to your
site.

Also, as you probably already know, it will improve the link
popularity and the search engine ranking of your site.

I have already added a link to your site from my site at
http://www.winstart dot us/http://partner.winstart dot us/

I have used the following Title and Description for your site:

Title: Metamend marketing and promotion
Description: World leading search engine optimization firm,
provinding expert web site optimization and marketing services.
Grow your company with an effective SEO service.

I would really appreciate it if you could add a link to my site
in return.

Please use the following information for the link:

Title: Domain name registration, Web Site Hosting, Email Services
Description: WinStart
International Domain and Hosting
URL: http://www.winstart dot us

Here's the HTML source code that you can copy and paste in your
site:
- LINK - Domain name registration, Web Site Hosting, Email Services, WinStart
International Domain and Hosting

If you link back to me, I will be happy to put your website at
the top of my links page (along with other sites that link back
to me).

If you want me to make any changes to the Title or Description of
your link in my site, or if you have any questions about my
proposal, please feel free to send me an email or call me at
[[Enter Your Phone Number]]. Or, if you want, I can give you a
call as well.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best Regards,
Pera Tudt
http://www.winstart dot us

I have provided this sample email only for your reference. I
STRONGLY recommend that you modify the above email significantly
before sending it your link partners - if too many LinkExplore
users start sending the same emails, the effectiveness of each
email will diminish significantly. Also, if too many LinkExplore
users start sending the same emails, and if you send a similar
email, you might be accused of email spamming.

Google -personalization - becoming a portal?

2005-05-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

So every time you talk to a Google representative they state "We're different from Yahoo and MSN in that we're not a portal. We're all about getting you OFF our web site."

Now with personalization, it's hard not to call the new Google with personalization a portal. Yes, they are still trying to get you off their site, but when you go to Google and enter the query "definition of a portal" this is the number 1 result:

"Definitions of portal on the Web:

portal site: a site that the owner positions as an entrance to other sites on the internet; "a portal typically has search engines and free email and chat rooms etc.
A portal is a Web-based application that provides personalization, single sign-on, and content aggregation from different sources and hosts the presentation layer of information systems.
www.questionmark.com/uk/glossary.htm
A term, generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is a major starting site for users when they get connected to the web or that users tend to visit as an anchor site, linking to many other sites. Typical services offered by portal sites include a directory of Web sites, the ability to search for information, news, weather information, e-mail, stock quotes, phone and map information, and sometimes a community forum. Excite is among the first portals to offer users the ability to personalize that web site according to individual interests. Other examples of portals
envision.ca/templates/blank.asp
A Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as email, forums, search engines, and on-line shopping malls. The first Web portals were online services, such as AOL, that provided access to the Web, but by now most of the traditional search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience. www.lazworld.com/glossary.htm"

hmmmm... the new google smells like a portal to me.

To do your own customization (which makes Google look very much like a portal), go to www.google.com/ig

Richard

Tracking...

2005-05-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Came across this and thought I would put it on, and see how many noticed, and commented.

To that end, I have just turned comments on. Don't know if anyone ever will, but thought I would check and see :-)

Google CEO defends privacy policies & discusses a Google Browser

2005-05-19T10:45:00.000-07:00

Eric Schmidt, Googles CEO, quite rightly defended Google's privacy policies today. If information is in the public domain, I would expect every search engine to go out, find it, and catalogue it. If you don't want it out there, don't publish it!

For those of you who want it both ways, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others may respect your robots.txt file and tags, but many search engines won't, and when that information is republished somewhere, Google and the others will find it, and catalogue it.

My home phone is unlisted. Not because I wanted it that way, but because I switched to Vonage. (it works fine for me, and I now have 2 Vonage lines at work). so far, their numbers in Canada have not been distributed. So, I'm not in the phone book. This means I'm also not in the online directories, and thus my home phone number is not public. My old one probably is, (almost certainly is), so maybe I'll get more spam mail, but who cares, it just goes in the recycling bin.

Google's policy of responding to requests for privacy by removing information when properly asked is reasonable, and responsible. It should be emulated, not pilloried.

I found the second part of the article more interesting, when the question of hiring Firefox engineers came up. Does Google want it's own browser? Mr. Schmidt indicated that their interests lay in ensuring their products work well with all browsers. While this is reasonable - heck ever company's web designer should be ensuring their site loads with the last few generations of every major browser out there - IE 3+, NN 4+, Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, etc... But, I believe there is something more to it. You don't need the best Firefox engineers in the world to do that. You don't even need them to build web pages which take advantage of Firefox's features.

Perhaps Google is watching AOL develop Netscape Navigator 9 (yes I know that 8 is about to be released, but 9 is also on the way)? Perhaps they recognize that the browser wars are back, and they want to be ready. Let's face it Firefox has 6-8% market share now. You know AOL is going to make a push with their product. They want to be the player they once were again?

Richard

For more, please follow this link to the full CNET ARTICLE.

The World According to Steve Ballmer

2005-05-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

Interesting comments from Steve Ballmer. While MS was 'a one trick pony' for years (DOS), eventually, they saw other opportunities, and used their strategic advantages to conquer the desktop. Why would Google not be able to follow the same path? Would they want to though?

I am concerned that so much of what Google has been doing, and buying, is search related, and that they have not significantly diversified. But you know what? It doesn't really matter: search will never cease to grow. It's what we as humans have done from day one. Our curiousity and desire to search for anything new is what has driven our civilization to grow. Mostly for the better.

The argument then, (if Google should be criticized for not diversifying), is really absurb when you compare it against another statement Mr. Ballmer makes: "We'll see as much innovation in tech over the next five years as we saw in the past decade." Perhaps Ballmer means that Google, like Oracle will be a one trick pony. If they are, their investors will still be happy.

It must be hard to be Microsoft. No, there really is no sarcasm in this note. It must be hard. They HAVE to compete in almost every area of the Internet and Software. Unlike almost every one of their competitors, they have products in almost every field. Their competitors only need to concentrate on one or two areas, and do their jobs very well to succeed.

I like Microsoft. I really do. I usually like what Steve Ballmer has to say. It's usually interesting and informative. What's referenced below doesn't quite sound like a complete statement or thought. I hope it isn't.

Richard

The World According to Ballmer
Microsoft's CEO was in feisty form at a recent talk hosted by Stanford University. Here are some of the highlights

Never let it be said that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn't competitive.

Speaking to a packed auditorium at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., on May 12, Ballmer trumpeted the ripe opportunities around Microsoft's sprawling business and questioned the ability of Google (GOOG ) to maintain its edge. Clearly alluding to Microsoft's key Internet search rival, Ballmer said: "The hottest company right now -- the one nobody thinks can do any wrong -- may just be a one-hit wonder."

In a speech that spanned topics from what Ballmer would have done had he not joined Microsoft (MSFT ) 25 years ago (probably auto-insurance sales) to the launch later in the day of Microsoft's second-generation Xbox video game console, Ballmer focused most of his remarks on innovation. He predicted that industry-rattling innovation will sweep through the technology markets in the coming years.

MOBILE MANAGER. "I've lost track of the number of times people have said the personal computer has reached its limits," said Ballmer. "We'll see as much innovation in tech over the next five years as we saw in the past decade."

Among the areas most ripe for innovation, according to Ballmer, are digital entertainment and the unification and increased potency of communications devices, from cell phones to instant messaging on a computer. Just two days ago, Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its operating system for mobile computing devices (see BW Online, 5/11/05, "Microsoft's Mobile Initiative"). Software, Ballmer says, will provide a key to "more effectively manage all of the communications you're involved with."

LABOR OF LOVE. The booming search market, in which Microsoft recently unveiled technology meant to better compete with Google and Yahoo! (YHOO ), was also singled out by Ballmer. The way people search and organize information, he predicted, will be vastly different five years from now. "We've only scratched the surface," he says.

The speech was hosted by the Stanford Business School, which Ballmer attended for one year before dropping out to join his friend Bill Gates at software startup Microsoft. Ballmer told the audience he sees himself working another 12 years, which would take him to age 61, before retiring. "I don't have to do what I do," he remarked. On the other hand, "how much better does it get?"

Looks like it will be some time before he tries to find out.

GreaseMonkey

2005-05-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

Greasemonkey seems to be the latest flame (affectionate) for the tech community. It's easy to understand why.

Anyhow, its become so popular it looks like their site keeps going down.... greasemonkey.mozdev.org. So if you don't know about it, you might try Dive Into GreaseMonkey instead.

I particularly enjoyed seeing Google's search results with a Yahoo! tab. Nice.

Richard

Smart Move - Learn from Firefox

2005-05-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

One thing I really like about Firefox is the tabs. Yes, I've used NN, but Firefox just seemed to get it right. I'm looking forward to the new Netscape Navigator which I've been fortunate enough to get some previews / insights into.

Even more impressive is the Netscape Navigator 9 already in development which I've had laid out for me. I'm expecting it will up the stakes for everone again. I understand it is being designed to be the most secure browser on the market, and much more stable than anything else out there. Of course, who knows what will happen by the time it's available to the public.

Anyhow, in the meantime, Microsoft is announcing that the "tabbed browsing experience" will be pretty basic in the IE 7 Beta. I'm assuming that will quickly shift to 'not basic' when the first update is released.

It really is nice using Firefox and not having so many program tabs in the task bar. Imagine if every email box had its own taskbar item? Yeesh! I find it strange enough that each window in Excel and Word (etc) have their own taskbar icon. You used to be able to cycle through them easily enough when you just clicked on the "Window" menu within each program. Switching away from a taskbar item per open document would be a nice improvement in the next iteration of Office.

While MS is at it, (taking cues from Firefox), do you suppose they could also look at some of the more popular plug-ins for Firefox, and make versions for IE? It's pretty obvious people are downloading FF because of the features, not because they despise IE. I use both.

*******

Anyhow, here's the article.

Microsoft has confirmed that its upcoming version of Internet Explorer will include tabbed browsing, a feature made popular by competitors Opera Software and Firefox.

In a Microsoft blog, IE product unit manager Dean Hachamovitch told consumers not to expect too much from tabbed browsing in IE's beta offering.

"The tabbed browsing experience in the upcoming IE 7 beta is pretty basic," he said. "The main goal for tabs in our beta release is to make sure our implementation delivers on compatibility and security. The variety of IE configurations and add-ins across the Internet is tremendous."

Hachamovitch said his team would seek feedback to help iron out bugs in the feature. "We've also looked closely at reported vulnerabilities in other implementations of tabbed browsing," he said.

The IE executive also explained the motivation behind keeping the feature--which has been available for some years in competing products--out of IE until now.

"Some people have asked why we didn't put tabs in IE sooner," he said. "Initially, we had some concerns around complexity and consistency--will it confuse users more than it benefits them? Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don't have tabs?"

Hachamovitch admitted he thinks his company made the wrong decision on tabs--a decision he is happy to reverse.

But the reversal is not good enough for at least one Firefox developer. The open-source browser's release manager and quality assurance lead, Asa Dotzler, posted a response on his own blog to the IE 7 update.

"I suspect that this announcement could be translated to 'we decided late in the game that we needed tabs and they're nowhere near done, so don't flame us when you see them,'" Dotzler wrote.

The Firefox developer contended that Microsoft's motivation in adding the tabbed browsing feature was more related to preserving its software monopoly than providing services to its users.

"Does this mean that the IE 7 user won't benefit? No, not at all. Just because their motivation is lame doesn't mean that the resulting software will suck. But I do think that all software bears the mark of the motivation behind its creation."

"With Firefox, I think our motives are obvious to our users. People understand that we're working to make the Web better for them," he added.

Hachamovitch, however, pointed out that people have been able to use tabbed browsing with the existing version of IE for some time by using freely downloadable third-party solutions like the one provided by Maxthon.

"I think all of these are great," he said. "They demonstrate how extensible the IE platform is. They also provide tabbed browsing in IE on top of Windows versions (like Windows 98) that IE 7 will not support."

Google puts brakes on Accelerator | CNET News.com

2005-05-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

This makes me laugh. I'm not really trying to pick on Google today - (in fact I'm writing this comment on a week old item which I just ran across) - I have a ton of respect for them and Yahoo. Just seems like I'm seeing absurb and/or useless news about them that I feel a need to comment on.

Aside from Blogger running really slowly a lot of the time (note that for now I am using it nonetheless, until we decide to migrate the blog to be internal to you site), I have always found that Google builds quick, efficient and scalable systems. I doubt that there was so much pent up need for an accelerator that the online world overwhelmed Google with download requests that quickly upon release.

I understand that the accelerator is now being referred to as "a limited beta," and that enough copies had been distributed. I don't think I ever saw it mentioned as a limited beta in prior posts. Perhaps it has more to do with all the issues they discovered when people actually started using it. I looked at it when it was released - but I don't need an accelerator - my connections are fast enough, thank-you. I had written this off earlier but then I noticed Jeremy Zawodny's comment, and realized I was not alone in my thoughts...

Richard

Google unveils desktop search for businesses

2005-05-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

More Google news....

A desktop search product for businesses... hmmmm... another desktop search tool. This one's selling feature is the product is encrypted. Shouldn't your corporate network be excrypted anyhow?

I don't know, this doesn't really spark a chord with me. But I find the whole desktop search tool market to be somewhat overblown. Apple's safari is great. (I don't use a Mac, but I've seen it in action) But quite honestly, I almost never run a desktop search unless I'm looking for a .dll. Once every 4 or 5 months I look for a file which I have misplaced - that usually eats up less than 30 seconds of my time. Hardly worth installing a desktop search tool to deal with. I probably could go a year or two until I recovererd my install time - how's that for ROI???

My system is organized in a pretty straightforward way: I know if I've downloaded a file then it's going to be in my downloads folder, if it came in via email, then a copy is in my attachments folder, (I don't use Outlook since other tools seem to work better for this), and if I created it, it's within it's relevant folder. Perhaps if I just saved files at random - press 'save as' and accepted whichever folder popped up - I might see value in such a tool. But do people really work that way?

Anyhow.... As I said, I find the desktop search market overblown.

**** Here's the release **** from CNET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Google Inc. released a desktop search product for businesses late Tuesday.

The company hopes the tool will help workers find information more quickly on the Web, in their computer hard drives and e-mail inboxes, as well as on corporate intranets.

Dave Girouard, general manager of Google Enterprise, said the business edition of desktop search is based on Google's (up $2.08 to $233.13, Research) consumer product but includes features particularly for business users.

Among other things, the free downloadable software is integrated with Google's Search Appliance and Mini -- which search company intranets -- and Lotus Notes, the ubiquitous business e-mail system from IBM (down $0.05 to $74.29, Research).

Additionally, Girouard said, all of the data that is indexed and stored on its enterprise desktop search product is encrypted for security reasons.

Google's Enterprise Appliance customers include Boeing and Morgan Stanley, Girouard said.

Microsoft Corp. (down $0.03 to $25.46, Research), the world's largest software manufacturer and increasingly a Google rival, launched the final version of its desktop search tool this week and said it would also offer it to enterprises for use on corporate computers.

The Kelsey Group

2005-05-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

Good note by Greg Sterling.

I fundamentally agree with him - blogs will never replace traditional media. In fact I think anyone who claims otherwise is out to lunch!

Blogs have been around, as a common tool, for less than 2 years. That doesn't even begin to compare with general media. But they offer an immediacy that traditional media lacks.

CNN has attempted to have reporters within 1 hour of any story worldwide. Blogs are questionably updated within minutes of any event around the world, which is within reach of an Internet connection. Even if CNN is going to send a report to an event 30 minutes away, someone with a blog somewhere will almost certainly report it before they do.

Here's Greg's comments:

The spin being given to a new report by Pew and marketing firm BuzzMetrics entitled, “Buzz, Blogs and Beyond: The Internet and the National Discourse in the Fall of 2004” is that blogs have not displaced traditional media in terms of influence. (That’s the clear expectation based on all the hype blogs have received.)

So blogs aren’t such a big deal after all—right?

Not so fast. That facile conclusion ignores the fact that blogs have been around as a “mainstream” phenomenon for less than two years. In addition, the report looked only at the coverage of a single issue, “Rathergate,” and the relationship between blogs and mainstream media treatment of that scandal.

Blogs will never “replace” traditional media—the more blogs there are the more brand/credibility matters, which favors traditional media—but they may dilute or fragment the audience, which has implications for mainstream media.

In some cases, blogs will also have a profound impact on consumer perceptions (e.g., Star Wars “buzz” in the blogosphere) and thus the bottom line, or on the coverage of a particular news story (Reuters cites a University of Connecticut poll that purports to show eight in 10 journalists read blogs).

And like the complicated relationship between online and traditional advertising, blogs complicate the media landscape, which does appear to be one of the findings of the Pew/BuzzMetrics report.

Posted by Greg Sterling on 05/17 at 12:00 PM

dodgeball.com :: mobile social software

2005-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

On May 11th, Google officially acquired Dodgeball http://dodgeball.com/ a social network.

Dodgeball may not have the visibility of Tribe.net, or friendster, linkedin, or others, but it's designed purely for cell phones. It's where things are going, and ties in nicely to other Google initiatives, such as local search and picasa.

Richard

New Dogpile Web Search Home Page

2005-05-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Dogpile - has released a new look and feel for their site. I can't say I've ever been a huge fan of Dogpile. The premise is fine - take the best results from the various engines, and list them as your own - it just never really seems to work.

I've often wondered how some sites which list in just one engine come out ahead of others that are in 3? Shouldn't the weighting system be a bit better than that?

Anyhow - I do like the new look better than the old - it's certainly more attractive

Richard

Comparing Search Engine Results - My Experiment

2005-04-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I read this excellent comparison analysis by Jason Dowdell the other day. I listened to Jason Speak at the Drilling Down conference earlier this week, but did not have a chance to discuss this report at length. (He had already left for a meeting at Become.com!)

The report compares results from Googe's natural search results, Yahoo's natural search results, MSN's natural search results and Become's natural search results. It's not a shopping comparison, it's a search engine comparison, and an excellent shot in time one at that.

Richard

Drilling Down - Branding and Local Marketing

2005-04-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

So yesterday afternoon I participated on the panel at the local search conference here in San Jose.

I've had a great time on this trip. I had a chance to catch up with some old friends. One friend is Gordon Garb, formerly from Sun and Apple. A great guy, Gordon is extremely knowledgeable about all things going on here in the valley, and in the tech industry. Gordon's biggest asset is he's great at connecting the right people together.

Anyhow, the panel itself was lots of fun. Greg Sterling moderated, and a few people came up at the end and complimented us for having the most lively and entertaining discussion of the conference. I hope they found it informative too! I can never tell when I'm a panelist!

We had an interesting discussion on the direction that search will take going forward, as far as advertising space, etc... I won't post an entire transcript, but I did find that Jake Baillie and Justin Sanger made some very good points about relevance, context and local search. Daniel Boberg from Yahoo, and Mark Josephson ffrom Kanoodle made some interesting points, and I must commend Daniel in particular for being quite open on the subject of Click Fraud, and how Yahoo are trying to deal with it. Yahoo!'s reps at this show were extremely forthright in discussions, and that openness is extremely appreciated.

That's one thing about the Kelsey Group conference that I don't get from the Search Engine Strategies shows. The discussions are much more open, and less guarded. More credible, and important information is shared and discussed, and you leave here with lots to think about. This is what all conferences should be like. Thoughtful, informative, and challenging. The discussions of note are not confined to within the halls, but the amount of information shared within the halls is incredible.

Anyhow, while I won't post a detailed transcript, I will comment on two points that I was involved in directly.

One person asked me a question about the potential use of Avatars in search, when and if natural language and speech became the interface of choice. I answered "I have no idea about Avatars, but I believe that search will continue to evolve driven by consumer desires to make interfacing simpler." Ergo, speech will eventually become the interface of choice. I hope he did not take my dismissal of avatars the wrong way - I just have never considered their place in search.

One thing I did mention which Barbara Coll from WebMamma interrupted me to disagree with was that, Metamend has only had one client in our five years who absolutely wanted to be optimized for, and found under, a key message which was only used internally to their company. Barbara challenged me on this - which was good, because if everyone on the panel just speaks as if making a series of statements without interruption, it gets kind of dry. Barbara's challenge was that almost all her clients want to be found (in organic and paid search results) by terms that only they - inside their company - use. (and that customers don't)

I have to say, we must be very lucky. Our clients are extremely interested in spending money only on being found by relevant terms that their customers use, and deliver a solid ROI. Part of our optimization process is an analysis of the terms they are using, and what the clients use: I have found that clients understand that they should not waste their time and money optimizing for terms no one uses. They also understand that when optimized, they will show up for those marginal terms as a peripheral benefit. After all, if no one is searching for a term, it's probably not terribly competitive in the search space. Thus there is lots of 'inventory' - it's easy to get to the top.

Businesses don't want to spend money for nothing, they expect an ROI on everything. Customers drive our industry (search) to constantly improve, and make things simpler, and more similar to how people think; to make interfaces more natural, and easy to use. Our challenge is to meet that demand, but also to drive the technology forward so that not just the interfaces are intuitive, but that the information that is worked from is increasingly relevant.

Drilling Down on Local

2005-04-19T18:14:00.000-07:00

Just at the Kelsey Group conference. Started today, but I missed the opening remarks. There were quite a few very strong panel discussions. Actually, there were no weak presentations. Everyone here is extremely knowledgeable about their space. If I had to pick out one session, I would say I really enjoyed a presentation on A9 by their CEO.

It was odd - most people here are connected to the local search industry, and yet many of them seemed less than familiar with A9.

There's a lot of discussions here about Pay per Call. Just like the last conference was dominated by 'social networking' discussions, this one seems to be about Pay per Call.

I was impressed that during the discussion on blogs and RSS feeds, one of the panelists made mention of wiki's and how they are sweeping through their company. I realized that I had promised to write an article about wiki's a while ago - I better get on it! Steve Rubel's name came up a few times in the discussion on blogs. I've never met him, but we have corresponded a little after he read, and liked, two articles I wrote a few months ago (September? October?). I'll have to find out what he has to say about wiki's.

Main Page - Organic SEO Wiki

2005-04-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

I think this is the first Wiki I'm linking to... Organic SEO Wiki

Hopefully this Wiki will grow in the way good Wikis do!

The project was setup to collaborate various Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. It will be interesting to see how well used this becomes, and how much good information is shared.

Richard

Press Release - Metamend Search Engine Optimization Wins Award from Chamber of Commerce

2005-04-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

METAMEND SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION WINS AWARD FROM CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

VICTORIA, BC, April 15, 2005 Metamend is pleased to announce that the company, and it's seo service, was the recipient of the Chamber of Commerce's Innovation Award for 2005 at last night's Business Awards ceremony.

Metamend's Richard Zwicky and Todd Hooge were present to accept the award on behalf of the company. Richard Zwicky had the following comment, "It is rewarding as a company to grow, to acquire clients from around the world, and to help make their businesses successful. But it is even nicer to be recognized by our local community for our long term growth and development. We rarely get to meet and sit down with most of our international clients, but we see our local ones almost daily. We feel deeply honored that they would recognize us in this way."

Awards were presented to businesses or businesspersons that have demonstrated a significant and sustained commitment to positive business development, economic growth and diversity within the region. The Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce's annual Greater Victoria Business Awards are an exciting and memorable event for the business community, attended by in excess of 300 participants representing a range of industries.

About Metamend Software & Design Ltd.
Metamend is a world leading SEO firm and Internet Marketing firm. With clients on every continent, and over 60 countries, the firm has successful clients in every major industry.

Metamend's search engine optimization and web site optimization solutions are a popular choice for firms wishing to outsource non-core business services to specialized providers. The company offers web site optimization services direct to end users, as well as to hosting companies and managed service providers via a white label distribution model. The company has been recognized by firms such as Microsoft as the world leader in the field of search engine optimization technology.

Contact

Richard Zwicky
CEO, Metamend Software
Email: press@metamend.com
Web Site: www.metamend.com
Toll Free: 1.866.381.6382

Google launches new cell-phone services

2005-04-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

It was reported earlier today that Google unveiled two new services this morning, both designed so that users could find local business listings and / or get driving directions via the browsers on their mobile phones. Google Press Release.

The web site, Google Local is designed to allow people who have xhtml browsers for wireless devices search for a local business, get directions, and provide a zoomable map of the area.

Users are also supposed to be able to retrieve driving directions via text messages, using Google SMS. Google Local is available in the United States and Canada.

So when I heard the news, I tried it out. I'm on the road a fair bit, and often need to figure out how to get somewhere. This is a tool that I need. I also thought - Great! It should take advantage of our clients who use our GIS technology in their optimization process to ensure their sites get found in such searches. We developed it a couple of years ago, in anticipation of this development, and have been waiting for the search engines to catch up. (No I'm not bragging).

I Figured I would try something straightforward first "Starbucks Oak Bay" - meaning Oak Bay Ave, in Oak Bay, a suburb of Victoria B.C. I also thought there's a few others, so at least 1 of them should be found.

I first tried it on www.google.com via my Treo - The first result was a hardware store on Oak Bay Ave, in Victoria B.C. Looked through the rest of the results, they were mostly from Oak Bay, but I didn't find Starbucks in the results. I wasn't in the local or wireless search area, but wanted to have a comparative set of data to use.

Then I tried the same search in the newly released Google for wireless search. "unable to understand Oak Bay" was the response. Strange. Failure on the first try. Disappointment set in.

Tried "Starbucks / Seattle" - Got a whack of accurate results. We're at 50%! We that's an improvement from yesterday!

I'm headed to Santa Clara / San Jose next week for the Kelsey Group Conference. Figured I would try "Starbucks / Downtown Santa Clara" - "Unable to understand address" - So I tried Santa Clara alone - got a bunch of results. Tried a few other qualifiers, but got the same response. So qualifiers in the query don't seem be factored into their algorithms, and thus don't help much. That's too bad. I rarely know what postal / zip code I am standing in, but I know if I'm downtown, north side, etc...

Moving on, I tried a more generic "coffee shop / santa clara" query - Got a whack of results - but strangely there were no Starbucks in the list! There's a problem - either Starbucks needs optimization, or Google's algorithms don't know that Starbucks = coffee! Interestingly, when I entered Starbucks into the same engine, the results were within 0.5 miles. When I entered "coffee shop" in, the results started at 1.3 miles. I'm sure there's a lot more coffee shops than that within a 1.3 mile radius of the center of Santa Clara!

So I tried "Coffee Shop / Victoria" - "unable to understand address Victoria" hmmm... maybe it's just Canadian cities that are not properly found. I then tried Vancouver. There's coffee shops everywhere in Vancouver. In fact there's 2 Starbucks located kitty corner to each other on the corner of Robson and Burrard. First time I've ever seen that. Apparently they both do phenomenally well, and have been going strong for ~ 10 years! I remember the first one from about 15 years ago, the other one opended a couple of years later.

Anyhow, the closest 'coffee shop' to downtown Vancouver is ~ 1.5 miles from the city center. I don't think so! I can count about 20 of them that are within 2 clocks of Robson and Burrard, which is much much closer to the city center without even trying.

This is extremely disappointing. Some of you have read an earlier article about local search that I wrote : "Local Search - Still a Long Way to Go." Sadly, those local search tools I commented on then are still highly inaccurate. This new tool apepars to be no better, just a new face populated with poor results.

The thing that disturbs me is that local search can be a lot more accurate; and it's not that hard. The information is there - heck, in 2003 our company developed a tool to geo locate any business with a web site that has a physical location that they expect walk in traffic for - to within 3 feet! - why can't the search engines do the same??

Geolocational search, gis search, local search, location specific search, call it what you will, it's not disappearing, it's only going to get more heavily used. But the engines have to start giving people tools that work with lots of relevant data quickly. The one that does it first will keep the wireless search customers for a long, long time.

Become Goes Live

2005-04-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Just got an email, which says in part:

Starting today, you can use www.become.com without having to login.. We are opening our site to the general public with the world's largest shopping index of 3.2 billion web pages from over 40 million web sites. We have many new services in development and will continue to roll out new features in the future. If you would like to stay up to date on our progress, please sign up for our Email Updates service at http://www.become.com/email_updates.html. Otherwise, this will be our last communication with you as a registered user.

Thank you for your interest and support of Become.com.

Thought I would share the news!

Richard

DRILLING DOWN ON LOCAL CONFERENCE, APRIL 18-20

2005-04-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

RICHARD ZWICKY FROM METAMEND TO SPEAK AT THE KELSEY GROUP’S ‘DRILLING DOWN ON LOCAL’ CONFERENCE, APRIL 18-20

VICTORIA, BC, April 11, 2005 Metamend today announced that Richard Zwicky will be a featured speaker at “Drilling Down on Local: The Online-Offline Opportunity,” The Kelsey Group’s upcoming conference, taking place April 18-20, 2005 at the Santa Clara Marriott, Santa Clara, California. Mr. Zwicky will participate on a panel entitled, Branding and the Future of Search Marketing, scheduled at 3:30 on the final day of the conference.

“I am honored to be invited to participate in this conference,” said Richard Zwicky. “This is the second Kelsey Group conference I am fortunate enough to be participating in. The quality of discussions on the subject of search related issues, and both online and offline marketing discussions at these events, is unparalleled at any other search related conference I have attended to date.”

“We have assembled an extraordinary line-up of speakers representing every segment of the industryfrom local search and online directories, to classifieds and wireless, to examine the online-offline opportunity for local commerce,” said Greg Sterling, Kelsey Group analyst and conference chair. “We are fortunate to have Richard among our roster of speakers, and we look forward to his contribution to the conference.”

About Drilling Down on Local
In the world of local commerce, a complex, multi-channel environment is currently taking shape, in which the online and offline worlds are increasingly interdependent. The Kelsey Group’s Drilling Down on Local: The Online-Offline Opportunity examines changing consumer behavior, as well as the platforms, products and players that are emerging and evolving to take advantage of this new online-offline reality in the local market. For more information, contact The Kelsey Group by phone at (609) 921-7200 Ext. 10, by e-mail at tkg@kelseygroup.com, or visit www.kelseygroup.com/dd2005/.

About Metamend Software & Design Ltd.
Metamend is a world leading search engine optimization firm. With clients on every continent, and over 60 countries, the firm has successful clients in every major industry. In 2003 the company developed proprietary technology which could visit a web site and determine whether the web site represented a business with a physical location which would want walk in traffic, such as a restaurant. If such traffic was desired, the technology could embed geo-locational information in the site, to ensure its compatibility with local search tools. The benefits of this technology are included in all of the company's web site optimization packages and search engine marketing services.

Contact:
Richard Zwicky
CEO, Metamend Software
250-381-6382
press@metamend.com

Two Months!

2005-04-08T15:08:00.000-07:00

I had no idea until today that I had neglected this blog for 2 months. I've been traveling a lot lately, and business has been booming, so I have not written any posts for a bit. Not that there has not been a lot happening! I apologize for letting this get stale.

Here's a couple things I would like to say:

Congratulations to my friends at Urchin! I spoke with Brett Crosby recently, and he seems very happy. I'm glad. I first met him back in 2000. I know how hard he has worked at it, and I'm glad to see his hard work pay off.

Congratulations to Google for choosing to buy Urchin. They make a great product which will be put to great use in its new environment. No, I don't know how they will use it.

The algorithms at Yahoo and MSN seem to be getting tighter and tighter. Their results are constantly, and dramatically improving. Teoma certainly seems to get some things absolutely spot on, and others miss the boat, but overall they too are making strides. I'm seeing more irrelevance in Google lately - I hope they don't continue to slip in the organic search wars. That's one battle they need to keep strong in. People trust their advertising network because they trust their search results. If the results aren't great, that link weakens quickly.

Two more Internet suffixes get Final Approval

2005-04-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

ICANN, the Internet's key oversight agency today gave final approval to two new suffixes or extensions. .jobs and .travel. It's pretty obvious how they are intended to be used!

It will take a few months before you'll see many in use however - the companies which will sell them now have to set up their registration and administrative procedures to deal with them.

The announcement came at the end of ICANN meetings in Argentina. Negotiations will still continue on for two other names earlier given preliminary approval: ".post" for postal services and ".mobi" targeting mobile services.

Lastly, the contract to run the ".net" directories expires on June 30. Verisign has had this contract, and it has been recommended that they receive a 6 year extension.

The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > The Times Company Acquires About.com for $410 Million

2005-02-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

Looks like the NYT was the successful bidder for About.com; beating out Google, Yahoo!, AOL and Ask Jeeves.

About is a great name, but did the Times REALLY need it? I've had quite a few conversations about this one with associates and colleagues lately. The logic for NYT to pick it up just isn't there, unless they mimic what canada.com did. The logic for any of the engines is somewhat tenuous, except for local search and news purposes. Imagine any Google or Yahoo! with About.com in their portfolio, and About being their local portal. You would go to About, choose a city or town, and news, maps, reviews, everything would stream directly from the engine. A great way to expand their syndication and revenue stream from local search advertisers, at little cost.

But how will the Times make it fit? While it's easy to come up with a multitude of ways, and maybe a large part is to better tie together all their 40 other web sites - much like Canada's canada.com did with all their newspapers, that strategy worked because only one of their papers had an strong national brand name, and they also tied in all their other media (radio and TV), as well as tying in a national job board, etc...

Perhaps that really is the Times' strategy; to emulate the model of canada.com. Canada.com has been a wild success. If you need ANY information or news; local or national, or international that concerns Canada, you go to Canada.com. About.com could be a similar vehicle for the Times family...

Richard

The Times Company Acquires About.com for $410 Million
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: February 18, 2005

he New York Times Company announced yesterday that it would acquire About Inc. and its Web site, About.com, from Primedia Inc. for $410 million.

Times Company officials said the acquisition would add a fast-growing, highly profitable Web site to the company's portfolio and would increase the company's revenue from the expanding online advertising business.

"This deal provides a very attractive return on our investment going forward, and I feel very comfortable standing up in front of shareholders and telling them that," said Leonard P. Forman, chief financial officer of the Times Company.

By adding About's 22 million monthly users to the Times Company's 13 million monthly users - from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and more than 40 other Web sites - the company said it would have the 12th-largest presence on the Internet.

"This scale is important as content companies compete for market share in readership and advertising," said Martin A. Nisenholtz, named by the Times Company yesterday as senior vice president for digital operations.

About.com uses a network of about 500 experts to write online about hundreds of specialty topics, from personal finance to quilting to fly-fishing. Primedia wanted About.com as a way to provide a link with its many print publications, Web sites, newsletters and video programs.

Kelly P. Conlin, Primedia's president and chief executive, said that selling About.com would help Primedia reduce its debt and strengthen its own balance sheet.

The Times Company's acquisition of About.com comes after it was among the losers in a bidding war in the fall for CBS MarketWatch, the financial news Web site. The site was acquired by Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, for $519 million.

Times Company officials said About.com would help diversify its online advertising base by adding "cost per click" advertising, in which advertisers pay only when a reader clicks on an ad.

Cost-per-click ads are the fastest-growing segment of online advertising. The Times Company said it also expected to market its products to About.com users. "The appeal of About is that it gets the NYT Company into the fastest-growing component of the advertising market place, and therefore it makes strategic sense," said Peter Appert, a media analyst for Goldman Sachs.

"The challenge is that About is very small versus the total scale of the NYT business," he said, adding that About's revenues last year were $40 million, a fraction of the Times Company's revenues. "It represents barely over 1 percent of NYT revenue, so while it's strategically appealing and it's a step in the right direction, it's financially too small to really change the growth story at the NYT," Mr. Appert added.

Times Company officials said the demographics of About's users were somewhat different from those of users of The Times's Web site. The median age of About's users is 37, which is five or six years younger than that of nytimes.com users. About 65 percent of About users are women, while The Times's site attracts more men than women. The average income of About users is $61,000 a year, while that of The Times's online readers is $80,000 a year. And there is little overlap between current About users and The Times's users.

"It adds a huge new base to our mix," Mr. Nisenholtz said.

Click Fraud - A growing problem

2005-02-14T09:26:00.000-08:00

There's more and more article on the scene about click fraud.

The search engines need to find a way to solve the issue. It really is not impossible. The problem for the engines is that 2 of the 3 major search engines derive almost all their revenue from "Pay for Click" advertising. Since both companies are now public, their shareholders demand they maximize earnings.

Search executives obviously play down the issue: "We are always worried about it, but it hasn't been a material issue so far," said Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. (from article below). A little sarcasm will go a long way here... It's not material to anyone except the business person who is paying for 'fake' clicks, earning less, and suffering as a result of this fraud. When I ran my retail stores I used to constantly look for ways to improve margins. This would be like printing a catalogue, but sending 50,000 right to the dump.

Click fraud is a search engine marketing story to watch over the next few years.

Here's the article...

Click Fraud Looms As Search-Engine Threat

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
AP Business Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Like thousands of other merchants, Tammy Harrison thought she had struck gold when hordes visited her Web site by clicking on the small Internet ads she purchased from the world's most popular online search engines. It cost Harrison as much as $20 for each click, but the potential new business seemed to justify the expense. Harrison's delight dimmed, though, when she realized the people clicking on her ads weren't really interested in her products.

She was being victimized by "click fraud," a scam that threatens to squelch the online advertising boom that has been enriching Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and their many business partners.

The ruse has different twists, but the end result is usually the same: Merchants are billed for fruitless traffic generated by someone who repeatedly clicks on an advertiser's Web link with no intention of ever buying anything.

Harrison figures she has spent about 200 hours documenting the mischief that drained her budget and diverted customers to a competitor, costing her an estimated $100,000 in sales.

"Click fraud has gotten out of control," said Harrison, who sells computer software to doctors. "It's stealing money from my pocket. It's just as bad as someone walking into a store and taking a television."

Estimates vary widely on how much click fraud is going on in the $3.8 billion search engine advertising market.

"Click fraud exists, but it's mostly a big paranoia," said Chris Churchill, chief executive of Fathom Online, a San Francisco firm that studies the spending patterns on search engine ads.

Others believe anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent of the clicks are made under false pretenses.

"Click fraud is like a big elephant standing in the middle of the living room," said Lisa Wehr, president of Oneupweb, a search engine advertising consultant. "Everyone sees it and knows it's there, but no one is quite sure what to do about it."

Both Google and Yahoo acknowledge the perils of click fraud, but believe improved internal controls and the increased vigilance of advertisers will prevent the problem from escalating.

"We are always worried about it, but it hasn't been a material issue so far," said Google chief executive Eric Schmidt.

After recently expanding its staff to patrol click fraud, Google broke up a scheme that had generated several thousand bogus transactions, chief financial officer George Reyes told analysts earlier this week.

Yahoo also has been shoring up click fraud protections, said Patrick Giordiani, a senior manager for the company's advertising subsidiary, Overture Services.

Such reassurances from search engine executives aren't surprising, given how much they stand to lose if advertisers curtail spending, said Jessie Stricchiola, president of Alchemist Media, which helps businesses detect problems and negotiate refunds.

"There's some serious positioning and politicking going on," she said. "Click fraud isn't going to destroy the industry, but it's not going away either."

Harrison said she didn't know a thing about the problem until a former employee formed a rival firm and started to repeatedly click on her ads as a competitive tactic. The fraudulent clicks frequently exceeded spending limits Harrison had set, knocking her ads out of the display rotation.

The search engines have issued refunds to cover the bogus clicks, but Harrison says those payments don't compensate for missed sales opportunities.

In November, Google filed a lawsuit that revealed the search engine can't even trust some of its own advertising partners.

Houston-based Auction Experts International never responded to claims it collected at least $50,000 in illegitimate commissions by clicking on the ad links that Google delivered to its Web pages.

But the site shut down and Google won a default judgment against one of its principals.

The suit won't be Google's last to combat click fraud, said Palo Alto attorney David Kramer, who represents the company.

Stricchiola believes it's only a matter of time before advertisers become so exasperated with click fraud that they file a class-action lawsuit against a major search engine.

The incentives for click fraud have increased along with the money devoted to search engine advertising - a concept that didn't exist until Overture Services introduced it in the late 1990s.

Such advertising, Google calls it AdWords, works like this: The search engine auctions off the right to have advertising links displayed when designated words, such as "vacation Hawaii," are included in a search request. The top bids get the most prominent display on Web pages.

Once widely ridiculed, the idea has turned into a fast-spreading craze as more merchants realized substantially higher returns on search engine ads than on more traditional marketing campaigns conducted through the Yellow Pages, direct mail and newspapers.

By 2008, industry research firm eMarketer expects $7.4 billion to be spent on search engine advertising, up from just $108.5 million in 2000.

The success of search engine advertising has substantially raised prices, too.

In mid-1999, advertisers paid Overture an average commission of 11 cents per click. By the end of last year, advertisers were paying an industrywide average of $1.70 for the hundreds of keywords tracked by Fathom Online.

The cost of prized search terms runs much higher. For instance, the top price for mesothelioma, a cancer that spurred scores of lawsuits linking the illness to asbestos exposure, recently stood at $51 per click, Fathom said.

Higher prices have turned click fraud into a cottage industry.

Some swindlers have hired cheap overseas contractors to sit in front of computers and click on targeted links all day.

Others are developing sophisticated software to help automate and conceal click fraud.

On the other side of the fence, entrepreneurs like Dmitri Eroshenko are trying to develop technology solutions to counteract click fraud.

"This has become a real cat-and-mouse game," said Eroshenko, who runs Clicklab in Miami. "Advertisers are going to have to accept a certain level of click fraud as a cost of doing business."

---

Mike Liedtke can be reached at mliedtke(at)ap.org

---

On the Net:

www.clicklab.com

ninetyninezeros - Mark Jen's Blog

2005-02-10T14:17:00.000-08:00

ninetyninezeros

Most of us have heard and read about Mark Jen.

He was fired from Google, and while no one knows for sure what the exact reasons were, it's pretty safe to say that his dismissal was directly related to his blog.

He was employed at Google for just a couple of weeks, and he wrote his blog much like he had at Microsoft. The difference is, he was at Microsoft for quite a while, and knew and understood their corporate culture intuitively. At Google he was the new guy, and obviously Google's attitude towards employees personal blogs, and what can and cannot be written in them is different from what he had experienced elsewhere.

While I will not comment on his dismissal per se, it does strike me as odd that the search engine which portays itself as working the hardest to allow people more access to more information and opinions, should not have the most open policy with regards to personal blogs.

Trojan Targets Microsoft's AntiSpyware Beta

2005-02-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

You have to feel sorry for Microsoft. In the search space they released an exceptionally good engine last week. It's much, much better than anyone predicted a year ago. It is more accurate than Google.

Speaking of Google, they're in the middle of a massive update - so far I've seen good and bad. No one seems to know what's happening. While I have a few ideas, I'm like EVERYONE ELSE.... I don't know... YET.

Here's why you have to feel sorry for Microsoft (in some way at least). For years they are picked on for poor quality software, for shipping delays, etc... It never stops. They put out a great product, no one cheers. Everyone is too busy paying attention to Google's update, and complaining about it. In the meantime, Microsoft is busy working on anti-spyware software. Everyone needs anti virus tools, and ant spyware solutions. Microsoft recognized this, and went out and bought top flight technology and talent. Of course the first real broad media attention that's been brought to their strategy (outside of their acquisition), is that people are detecting viruses and spyware designed to specifically attack Microsoft's new tools...

Heck, it's just a beta. That's the idea - find out where all the flaws are, get people to compromise it, refine it, close all the loopholes, and go to release V.1. I don't know any other company which gets targeted as much as they do.

Trojan Targets Microsoft's AntiSpyware Beta
By Matthew Broersma
February 10, 2005

Malicious programmers are already sharpening their claws on Microsoft Corp.'s anti-spyware software, even before the application's official release. ADVERTISEMENT
On Wednesday anti-virus firms said they uncovered the first malware that switches off Microsoft AntiSpyware, along with its other functions. Troj/BankAsh-A, also known as Trojan-Spy.Win32.Banker.jv and PWS-Banker.j, includes a keylogger and attempts to steal credit card details, turn off other anti-virus applications, delete files, install other malicious code and download code from the Internet, according to anti-virus vendor Sophos plc.

AntiSpyware is based on a well-regarded application from Giant Company Software, which Microsoft acquired in December, and is currently available for download in a beta version. Microsoft is expected to combine AntiSpyware with anti-virus technology purchased this week from Sybari Software Inc. for a subscription-based anti-spyware/anti-virus bundle.

"As Microsoft gets more into security, we can expect to see more attackers targeting its products," said Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley. "This Trojan is notable largely because it is the first piece of malware that targets AntiSpyware."

The Trojan attempts to suppress AntiSpyware's warning messages and deletes all the files within the application's folder, Sophos said. When the user visits particular online banking sites, the Trojan can steal login information using a keylogger or by displaying a fake login page; British online banks such as Barclays and HSBC are specifically targeted.

The program swipes passwords from Windows' protected store and periodically sends the captured information to an FTP site. Troj/BankAsh-A attempts to deny access to a list of security and anti-virus Web sites.

Troj/BankAsh-A isn't widespread so far, but Cluley said Sophos has received a number of reports from infected users. It isn't clear how the Trojan has spread. Anti-virus companies including Sophos and McAfee Inc. have updated their products to detect and block the Trojan.

Microsoft has code-named its anti-spyware/anti-virus bundle strategy A1, and plans to build elements of the service directly into future versions of Windows.

eWEEK.com found the beta version of AntiSpyware to be generally effective, but noted that it allowed some major sources of adware and falsely identified some files as spyware. Click here to read the review.

Microsoft may be pressing ahead with its spyware killer, but wider industry efforts are currently on the rocks. In recent days the Consortium of Anti-Spyware Technology vendors fell apart after three founding members quit, citing disagreements over strategy.

Search Revenue Estimates Soar to Reach 23 Billion by 2010

2005-02-04T15:41:00.000-08:00

The article below is from Media Post yesterday. Analysts are realizing that search is getting much bigger, much faster than they had previously thought. In fact, they are doubling their previous estimates.

Being found in search results is going to continue to become more challenging. The search engines still are faced with more than 10,000,000 new documents being added to the Internet daily. Blog entries are not counted in that total! Of those 10M, approximately 10% make their way into the search engine Indices.

Web design firms, Marketing agencies and search engine optimization firms face an imposing challenge. Many firms derive their revenues from earning a % of their client's PPC spend. There is limited real estate, meaning prices will continue to soar. The search engines derive no revenue from a firm like ours metamend search engine optimization. So our revenue is not accounted for. But they should start encouraging companies to seek out optimization from reputable firms. Good search engine optimization only makes them stronger, and will only work to help them increase their revenues further.

But the better our seo work, the better their organic results become. The better the results are from organic search, the more people use the engine. That directly leads to increased advertiser demand for space, and revenue.

Anyhow, here's the article.

ON NOVEMBER 9, 2004, PIPER Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy dropped a bombshell on a small handful of people at the New York Ad:Tech show. He doubled his search revenue projections for the next five years. And, he bumped these projections less than two years after they originally came out.

Back then, Rashtchy's $7 billion by 2007 revenue projection was quoted everywhere. You couldn't turn around without seeing a reference to these amazing growth predictions. And now, he nonchalantly walked up to the podium and said search revenue in 2007 will be more like $13.5 billion! I was sitting in the audience and my jaw dropped.

But a strange thing happened this time. Nobody seemed to care. In preparing for this column, I scoured the Internet for any mention of Rashtchy's exciting announcement. I found nothing. While it's not surprising that the announcement missed the mainstream press, I can't believe our own industry didn't pick up on it. I finally had to resort to contacting Rashtchy's team and getting a copy of his presentation.

In the process, I asked Rashtchy why the announcement didn't seem to gain attention. His response indicates that the lack of attention means search is now accepted with more credibility: "I think search is now accepted as a big business. You have a $60 billion company on the market doing only search, so people are saying that with these valuations, we expect that you will up your estimates significantly."

Sorry Rashtchy, Better Late than Never.... I think the readers of this column would be well served to get the high points of Rashtchy's announcement, so let me share them with you.

First of all, the growth numbers. In March 2003, Rashtchy estimated that worldwide search revenues would hit $7 billion by 2007. Just a few months later he was quoted as saying that these numbers are likely too conservative. With last November's presentation, he had the opportunity to bump those numbers up.

Rashtchy now feels we'll not only hit that target, but surpass the 2007 - $7 billion mark this year. Next year, he predicts search revenues to top $10 billion, and then hit $13.5 billion in 2007, $16.2 billion in 2008, $19.8 billion in 2009 and top $23 billion in 2010.

Factors of Growth Rashtchy feels there are a number of revenue drivers fueling the growth:
• The increasing use of search by big business
• A second wave of small business just discovering search
• The international growth of search
• Discovery of the branding value of search
• The growth of contextual search, with local search perhaps poised to take over

In addition, he sees four immediate and fundamental drivers of search growth. He collectively refers to them as T.C.P.C.

Traffic - More people doing more searches, especially commercial searches Coverage - Expansion of keyword baskets, monetizing more search terms Price - Increasing prices per click Conversion - As we get better at converting clicks to buyers, advertisers are willing to bid more

Local Search Rashtchy feels that local search could become a significant driver of new search revenue. I know there are mixed opinions about this (I for one agree with Rashtchy on this one and have said so in previous columns), but I think the salient point here is that local search, if successful, dramatically increases the market size for Google and Overture.

It takes search from a global consumer activity and brings it back home. It ties the Internet much closer to our day-to-day shopping activities. It will take a few years for local search to make much of a difference in overall search revenues, but once felt, the impact will be significant.

Search Efficiency - It Still Can't be Beat In comparing methods for customer acquisition, search still comes out far ahead. Piper Jaffray estimates the average customer acquisition cost for search to be between $7 and $10, compared to $15 and $25 for Yellow Pages, $40 to 80 for e-mail and $60 to 80 for direct mail. Search is growing because it works.

Bottom Line Rashtchy summed up with five conclusions that state the future potential of search in no uncertain terms: - Search is likely to become the most successful marketing method for all businesses
- Local search is a huge force that could change the dynamics of search for online-only merchants, putting them at a big disadvantage
- Concepts like broad match could make search an effective soft sell, suggestive advertising mechanism
- Merchants should focus on customer conversion and extending the customer life cycles
- Search providers should focus more on merchant conversion rates and offer lower charges for broad match and contextual search. They should also focus heavily on local and international expansion.

MSNBC - New spammer tool foils filters

2005-02-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

Get ready for a new onslaught of email spam.

You think you get a lot now. Spammers have found a hole in the spam filtering software out there. This software filters out an estimated 8 billion spam emails a day! If you already have a spam problem, just wait, it's going to get much much worse...

from MSNBC.com

SendSafe users "rent" lists of compromised home computers, which are then used as an army of e-mail spam machines. No hard figures are available, but Internet security experts believe that SendSafe and a similar program called Direct Mail Sender are used by a majority of spammers.

Spam fighters beat back these programs by blacklisting the Internet address of infected computers, but it's a tough game of whack-a-mole. Each week, another 100,000 home machine become infected, says Steve Linford, who operates the blacklist organization Spamhaus.org.

But now, SendSafe's authors have installed a new feature that gives spammers another leg up in the spam arms race.

‘Internet users are going to be flooded in spam.’ — Steve Linford
director, Spamhaus.org

Linford, whose blacklist filters out 8 billion spam e-mails a day, says the feature could render services like his useless -- and severely increase the already overwhelming amount of spam Internet users receive

Google - Local now front and centre

2005-02-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that "Local" has been added as one of the tabs on Google's home page. It's up there with Groups, News and Froogle.

I just wish it were as accurate as other areas...

CNN.com - Study: Spam costing companies $22 billion a year

2005-02-03T16:13:00.000-08:00

It would be interesting to calculate how much time is wasted searching through spam in search engines - search results which are irrelevant to queries. I believe that it would rival if not exceed this statistic. Search engines strive for relevance and constantly change their algorithms to try and cut out spam in their databases. This stat shows why.

Richard

From Associated Press:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Time wasted deleting junk e-mail costs American businesses nearly $22 billion a year, according to a new study from the University of Maryland.

A telephone-based survey of adults who use the Internet found that more than three-quarters receive spam daily. The average spam messages per day is 18.5 and the average time spent per day deleting them is 2.8 minutes.

The loss in productivity is equivalent to $21.6 billion per year at average U.S. wages, according to the National Technology Readiness Survey produced by Rockbridge Associates, Inc., and the Center for Excellence in Service at Maryland's business school.

The study also found that 14 percent of spam recipients actually read messages to see what they say, and 4 percent of the recipients have bought something advertised through spam within the past year.

The random survey of 1,000 U.S. adults was conducted in November and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Google now a domain registrar

2005-02-02T15:42:00.000-08:00

In the last few months we've seen Google stories about getting into building the gbrowser - by hiring key engineers behind the FireFox browser, and stories about Google getting into owning dark fibre networks - the backbone of the Internet.

Today we learn that Google has become a domain registrar. No, you cannot visit Google today and buy your new domain name. It's also highly unlikely that the names will be free like gmail accounts! In a statement, a Google spokesperson confirmed that "Google has become a domain name registrar to learn more about the Internet's domain name system," The statement further continued that, "While we have no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results." Along with being a registrar for domains that end in .com and .net, Google is authorized as a registrar for names in the .biz, .info, .name, .org and .pro domains.

The question that springs to mind is: What are they really up to?

Google already has access to the same information that they gain with this move. So do Yahoo and Microsoft (MSN search) for that matter.

No doubt the information that they glean can be used to help them better track down the ring operators, mini-site operators, and other systems used to fool their algorithms into delivering better search engine ranks to irrelevant web sites. As I mentioned earlier though, it is assumed that they already have access to this data. Therefore, perhaps there is some data which they did not receive previously that became necessary to them, or perhaps the refresh times were not frequent enough.

Perhaps this does tie into the dark fiber stories from a little while ago. If you sell the domain names, then hosting them is a logical step too. Owning a darkfibre network is a competitive advantage in that you get quicker distribution of your web sites to end users from your hosting centers.

Google's business model has always been about volume. Adwords aren't individually expensive, but they add up. Same thing with domain names and hosting. Imagine if Google pounces on Microsoft's failure with bCentral. bCentral failed not because it was a bad idea, but the execution was horrible. Google cannot be faulted for poor execution. To the contrary.

Imagine Google with it's own world class backbone network, selling domain names, providing email, template design offerings, and then offering their own PPC management system for Adwords. Of course they can through in "guaranteed addition to the Google search engine within 24 hours" perhaps free, or perhaps for $29.99. No more sandbox, but you have to host with us. Even the rumour that you could speed up your entry into their engine by hosting with them would drive hordes of businesses their way.

Perhaps it's simply a step to getting rid of spammers and 'blackhat SEO' firms. Perhaps it's a lot more.

Google does a lot of things that make you wonder - what are they working on? - As always, time will tell.

MSN Launches

2005-02-01T15:07:00.000-08:00

This morning at 12:00 am, Microsoft officially launched the new MSN search, taking off the beta designation which had been on it for almost a year.

Now, there are really 3 (up from 2) major players in the consumer search marketplace. MSN, Yahoo, and Google. Two years ago Google really was the only game in town. Until yesterday, MSN search was based on the Yahoo! search database. That is no longer the case. Today there are three bona fide competitors hoping you use their interface to search from.

This is great news from the consumer: competition spurs innovation and growth.

It's not so great for many poor quality SEO firms. In the past these firms have concentrated solely on Google. Even when Yahoo launched their own service, (and dumped Google), many of these firms were able to concentrate just on Google. Now however, with three clear choices divvying up the search market, SEO firms have to demonstrate competence with a number of engines. That's great news for the industry. Quality results will be across the board success, which means that the companies that deliver consistently solid results will prosper.

MediaDailyNews 01-31-05

2005-01-31T15:01:00.000-08:00

Everyone recognizes that local search is the wave of the future, here today. The big question is how effectively will the Yellow Pages (superpages, etc...) be able to retain their offline customer in the future? The SBC Bellsouth deal (see blog below), and how it plays out will tell a large part of that story.

Richard

Study: Local Web Spending Will Rev Up In 05

Businesses will increase their online ad spending designed to reach local consumers faster than they increase national Internet ad spending, according to a study released last week by media consultancy and research group Borrell Associates Inc. Specifically, Borrell predicts that businesses will spend $3.9 billion in local online advertising this year--representing an increase of 49 percent from the $2.7 billion spent in local online ads in 2004. By contrast, overall Internet ad spending will increase by 33 percent, predicted Borrell.

"National advertisers were the first to recognize the opportunity with the Internet," said Colby Atwood, a vice president and partner at Borrell. "Now that the technology has improved, and individual business owners are using it at home, it's a natural progression" to advertise more, said Atwood. While Borrell defines local advertising as ad dollars spent by businesses of any size--ranging from multinational corporations to sole proprietorships--to reach a local audience, much local advertising is actually placed by local players, said Atwood.

Internet-only sites will likely benefit from the uptick more than the Web sites of newspapers and TV stations, predicted Colby Atwood, a vice president and partner at Borrell. "We are seeing a certain amount of recruitment, real estate, and automotive advertising migrating out of newspaper package deals and onto pure-play sites, including free local sites like Craigslist," said Atwood.

Paid search will represent only $329.5 million--around 8 percent--of the 2005 local online ad spend, forecast Borrell. But that figure is smaller than at least one other industry estimate: The Kelsey Group predicts that local search will leap to $418 million this year--up from $162 million in 2004, according to Neal Polachek, senior vice president, research and consulting, at the company.

Rich media ads are slowly cropping up on the local level, said Atwood. For example, a local dealer association placed a streaming video ad for a Ford automobile on a Web site. But for the most part, he said, newspapers can't handle streaming video. Atwood estimated that 20 percent of the several hundred newspapers that Borrell advises are capable of running rich media

Torres Talking: Google, MSN, comment spam, and the industry

2005-01-31T11:52:00.000-08:00

Blog spam is a problem. The fact that all the major engines are joining together to try and combat elements of it are a relief to everyone. It also cleans up a problem in a lot of blogs - you and I may not want any third party comments added to your blog. In the past it was likely that the comments would be irrelevant: To many automated bots just cruising to find places to add links back to their site.

Spam comes in all sorts of shapes and colors. It's a nuisance to everyone. The search engines, and good SEO companies, are striving to reach the same goal. Improve the quality of information that the search engine works with, and thus give end users more relevant results faster. This will mean less overall load on the infrastructure of the search engines, and most importantly, it means people will find the information they need faster than ever before. I would love to always get the information I need in under 1 minute, instead of often hunting for hours...

Richard

Google, MSN, comment spam, and the industry

I love to see collaboration like this, especially around something as nefarious and annoying as comment spam. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, we (MSN Spaces) haven't had a rough time yet with comment spam, thanks in large part to our required Passport authentication. But this may not always be the case.

So, as part of the greater industry, we are totally on-board with anything resembling a solution to this problem. And this particular solution (outlined below) looks like it may have the punch necessary to send spammers packing - it basically removes all incentive. Look for us to support it in an upcoming release.

Kudos to Yahoo, Six Apart, Flickr, and everyone else for jumping on-board with this so quickly. And big thanks to Google for not only making this a priority, but for reaching out and getting everyone on the same page.

See what Google and our own MSN Search team have to say about this:

Google Blog, Matt & Jason: "From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists."

MSN Search Blog, Ken: "Paul told me that Google is planning on announcing support for a tag on individual links. Any link with this tag will indicate to a crawler it is not necessarily approved by this page and shouldn’t be followed nor contribute weight for ranking. Our Search Champs suggested this and it has been a part of our plans since, we think it’s a great idea.

I quickly circulated this around our hallway and also to the MSN Spaces team – and we got quick agreement from both teams. Over the coming weeks, our MSNBot crawler will start respecting this new tag, and sometime after that MSN Spaces will start to support this as well."

News.com Article: "The tag provides you a way to flag links that are basically not yours. The reason why that's helpful is because they won't count those links," said Sullivan, who added that the problem won't go away entirely. "It makes the idea of comment spamming less attractive."

eWeek Article: "Comment spam occurs when spammers attempt to dump Web site links into the comment sections of blogs. The spammers often use automated bots with the goal of trying to game search engines by increasing their link popularity. Incoming and outgoing links are a major factor in determining where a site ranks in search results."

Cool...

>

A9 Update

2005-01-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

This story comes from the Silicon Valley News.

I have not written much about A9 to date. No reason really. I think this idea is cool, and could be tied in nicely with a few other features to really give them a boost on competition. Is it the first real shot from A9 to help consumers differentiate them from the rest? Perhaps. If nothing else, it is a cool insight into future directions, and also yet another blow to Google - after all so many of the newest innovations are happening around them lately.

Richard

Amazon.com Adds Photographs to Directory

MICHAEL LIEDTKE

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - Online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. is trying to become a bigger player in the Internet's crowded search engine market with a local business directory that supplements address and phone number listings with a photographic tour covering 10 major U.S. cities.

The free service, expected to be available Thursday from Amazon search subsidiary A9.com, consists of 20 million street-level photographs that will be displayed alongside local search results. Palo Alto-based A9 said it compiled the index by covering tens of thousands of miles in trucks equipped with digital cameras and global positioning system, or GPS, receivers.

The new twist represents Seattle-based Amazon's latest attempt to grab a larger piece of the highly profitable search engine market, which is currently led by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc., with Microsoft Corp., AOL, Ask Jeeves Inc. and a long list of upstarts scrambling to catch up.

As an example of how A9's novel approach works, a Web site visitor who clicks a Yellow Pages tab and searches for Mexican restaurants will see street-level pictures of building exteriors, besides the standard listing information found in other directories.

The new feature includes navigation tools that enable users to inspect the surrounding neighborhood.

"It's like taking a virtual stroll around the block," said Udi Manber, A9's chief executive. "We believe this is going to expand the user experience significantly."

A9 hasn't made much of a mark since Amazon formed the subsidiary in October 2003.

In December, A9 attracted 816,000 unique visitors, ranking it 30th among search and navigation Web sites, according to Internet research firm comScore Media Metrix. Google's search features attracted 71.7 million unique visitors to lead the search pack, comScore said.

With so much ground to make up, A9 desperately needs to make a big splash, said search industry analyst Greg Sterling of the Kelsey Group. "If they are really serious about the search market, they have to step up their efforts to attract consumers. It looks like they have started down an interesting path."

A9's photos initially will span most addresses in these 10 cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, Seattle and Portland, Ore. A9 plans to add photographs of business in other major cities later this year, Manber said.

Besides providing virtual tours of city blocks, A9 also is make phone calls connecting visitors directly to a designated business. That service already is offered by several other Web sites.

A9's new features seem unlikely to boost Amazon's short-term profits because the site isn't charging consumers or the businesses listed in its online Yellow Pages. Most of A9's revenue comes from text-based ads related to search requests - a business channel that could become more valuable if more people start visiting A9's site and clicking on the advertising links.

Although the traditional Yellow Pages and newspapers continue to attract most of the money spent on local advertising, more small businesses are turning to the Internet. The Kelsey Group estimates local advertisers spent $700 million in online and wireless channels last year, and expects the annual volume to more than triple, to $2.5 billion, by 2007.

ON THE NET

http://www.a9.com

Tower of Babbling

2005-01-25T16:04:00.000-08:00

Was chatting with Greg Sterling from the Kelsey Group earlier. We got on the topics of blogs and Greg made a witty comment which I will have to use in an article at some point. We talked about how good blogs were useful and valuable ressources, but Greg pointed out "bad blogs are just Towers of Babbling"

I like that line!

Let The Google Browser Rumors Begin Again

2005-01-25T11:43:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting note reported on at a variety of places about Ben Goodger moving to Google. He's been one of the brains behind the wildly successful Firefox browser.

Of course, this hiring starts people talking about a "Google browser." While it's a possiblity, I would hazard a guess that Google simply is hiring the best talent it could find. This hiring is extemely smart from one other perspective. Like all other search engines, their accuracy depends in large part on the quality of information that their bot is able to grab from web sites. The better the bot, the higher quality of information. Who better to improve a bot than someone who is intimately knowledgeable with a large variety of browsers? After all, a bot operates much like a text only browser.

So while Google may yet release their own browser - SOMEDAY - I would think their first concern would be to look at the competition they are receiving from MSN and Yahoo!, and work to upgrade the quality of their search results, which will directly affect their bottom line.

Richard

Let The Google Browser Rumors Begin Again

Towards the end of last year, it was rumored that Google would be, by partnering with Firefox, entering the browser section of Internet technologies. All parties categorically denied this talk.

However, a recent hiring by Google has the rumor mill spinning again. According to Reuters, Recently, Google hired a lead engineer from Mozilla's Firefox browser department, Ben Goodger. Needless to say, once word of this got out, speculation about a Google-powered or branded browser began again, in earnest. This was no doubt fueled by comments from Ben's blog, which said:

As of January 10, 2005, my source of income changed from The Mozilla Foundation to Google, Inc. of Mountain View, California. My role with Firefox and the Mozilla project will remain largely unchanged, I will continue doing much the same work as I have described above - with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases.

I remain devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general. I'm sure you have many questions. While I will be spending more time at Google, I will work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly as the need arises.

For all questions regarding Google, I ask that you contact Google directly, rather than myself.

What is Google's next move? Are they going to continue to challenge Microsoft, aiming at the way people interact with the web? Or are they merely hiring bright young talent? Stay tuned, because this one isn't over yet...

Google AdWords: News Archive: June 2004

2005-01-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

Corrupt DMOZ Editor

2005-01-18T10:55:00.000-08:00

I saw this blog note about DMOZ. There's been lots of complaining about how long it takes to get into DMOZ for the last couple of years. This isn't the first time someone has made a similar observation about changes within the directory. If you don't know what DMOZ is, here's some basic information about the Open Directory Project.

For better or worse, DMOZ is considered an authority site. Search engines view their directory as authoritative, and being listed therein counts. Unfortunately, the system is fraught with issues. It's extremely difficult to become an editor; you might be extremely knowledgeable, but you still get rejected. I know lots of people who have applied, and been rejected; one had a PH.d in his field, and there wasn't an editor for the category. He still was refused! I've tried too, I've never been approved either. I don't loose any sleep over it; I have lots of other volonteer work I can participate in.

Editors are not paid, they are volonteers. I'm convinced that most of them are well intentioned, and behave objectively Unlike the one (ones ?) referenced in the article below. While well intentioned, it is impossible to know if they are active or not. Unfortunately, many are not. You might be submitting your web site to a category, not knowing that the editor of that category checks submissions once every few months.

Should search engines ignore DMOZ since it is less relevant? Perhaps. Should editors who act maliciously be removed? Yes. Should anyone be so desparate as to act this way? NO! If you do, give your head a shake.

Anyhow, here's the commentary I saw.

Sabotaging a Competitors DMOZ Listing for Fun & Profit

The Wisdom of Weeding Out the Competitors

It's imperative to join DMOZ and sabotage your competitors. No offense intended, but if you don't join DMOZ you are ignoring a fundamental strategy for promoting your website. Your website's viability depends on you getting into DMOZ and sabotaging every single one of your competitors. If your competitors beat you to the editorship your website will be toast faster than you can say, "Am I homeless yet?"

Another corrupt dmoz editor had this to say on the subject:

"My arch competitor had a dupe content subdomain that they set up for traffic overflow and I changed their dmoz listing to the subdomain with duplicate content and it slaughtered their rankings for a couple of months.

Speaking as someone with 4 years of sabotaging experience, switch their listing from www. to non-www from time-to-time. Switch them from www.example.com to www.example.com/index.html, stuff like that."

Everybody is doing it. You should too!

I don't care if you believe me or not. The economics is enough motivation to make it happen. Here are the most common techniques for sabotaging a competitor:

Let it be
Let the site sit in the Unreviewed Queue. Don't edit it. Don't touch it. Never click on the link to visit the site. Just pretend it isn't there.

Across the universe
In the DMOZ editor dashboard you have the option to move the contributed website to a "more appropriate" category. Move it to the lowest level cat you can find, preferably a cat that is not currently edited, and one that has over sixty other websites in it. This cat must be related topically, but not really appropriate. After a year it will probably get bounced to another category and so on, and eventually end up back in your category. Wait six months or a year, then do it again.

The long and winding road
At some point you have to let in a competitor or two. Butcher the submission. Strip the title of important keywords and replace them with useless variations that nobody searches on. Mutilate the description because the last thing you want is for someone to actually click on it. A short and irrelevant description is the way to go. Don't go overboard. It has to be defensible. When your competitor's website reaches the end of the submission road, he or she will wish they never submitted.
AOL/TimeWarner own DMOZ and they treat it like the dollar chasing b***h it really is. And you should, too. Sabotaging your competitors is not simply about deleting their sites from the categories, but a more subtle and ongoing process of destroying their relevance for important keyword phrases.

You have to do what you have to do. The person who ranks at the top of the search engines sleeps better than the webmaster whose site is on page eighty six of the serps. Sabotaging your competitors is one way to get there.

Humorix | Google Introduces "Fake News" Portal

2005-01-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

I saw this article, and thought you might enjoy it too... Everybody is waaay to serious about every Google misstep. They make mistakes, every company does. Unfortunately for them, so many people depend on them for quick and accuarate results, they do not enjoy the liberty of making errors.

The other issue is, (of course), Google is still essentially a 1 product company - they mess up search, and they are in trouble. No one really wants that. Even Google's competitors want Google to continue putting out good results - it helps push everyone. When Google was the only real name in search (2002 - early 2004), you really had very few places to turn if their results were poor. Alltheweb was there, but underused. Now that Yahoo and MSN are back in the game, and soon both will offer really meaningful competition to Google, the game has changed drammatically. We all know Google doesn't get it right often enough. It could do better. We all could!!! I'd love to help them.

Running a reputable SEO that is dedicated to ensuring our clients show up in RELEVANT search results, based on the quality of our clients' information means that I have a different perspective on our industry that people internal to Google (or Yahoo or MSN) do.

I understand why the S.E.'s don't like most SEO / SEM firms. Many of the firms out there don't care about getting their clients to show up in relevant results. They care about getting the clients to show up in any results, or worse, to show up in results the client thinks is important, but are not reflected in the content of the web site. There are a lot of 'simple' adjustments to algorithms that could help the engines develop better relevance. Anyhow, like many, many other people in and around our industry (and unwittingly everyone who uses a search engine), I care passionately about getting good, relelvant, accurate results quickly from search engines.

Now, back to the article at hand, I hope you enjoy it....

Richard

from the funny-ha-ha-or-funny-hee-hee? dept.
SILLYCON VALLEY -- It was only a matter of time. In response to the underground success of its news.google.com service, everybody's favorite search engine/kitchen sink company has now launched an alpha version of "fakenews.google.com", dedicated to showcasing only the finest in fake news stories (in other words, nothing from Humorix).

"It's all here -- The Onion, The National Inquisitor, even the CBS Evening News With Dan Rather," a Google spokesperson explained over a cellphone while relaxing in the Google Massage Parlor & Open Bar Employee Lounge. "We want to open up parody and sarcasm to the world."

Even though the alpha version is only accessible by "invitation only", some bloggers have already taken the time to criticize the new service.

"It's obvious Google Fake News is biased," said the webmaster of MyRapidlyExpandingEgo.com. "I mean, just look at their top headlines -- all I see is parody. Meanwhile, sarcasm is buried five pages away. And there's precious little buffoonery or dark humor."

The Google spokesperson (who by now is dining in the Google Culinary Arts & Gourmet Coffee Complex) explained, "Our current algorithm has difficulty distinguishing between fake sarcasm and real news. If you saw the headline, 'President Bush Outlines Iraq Strategery', would you treat that as straight news or as biting sarcasm?"

He then added, on his way through the Google Zen Garden, "We are definitely aware of the limitations of current AI technology... We have assembled a crack team of Ph.D. graduates who are busy working on the problem in between rounds of poker at the Google Game Room & Procrastination Center."

Google has been tight-lipped about its future plans. "We don't have any timeline for graduating Google Fake News from alpha to beta," the employee said after finally returning to his Office/Relaxation Chamber. "Not that it really matters. The existing Google News site will remain in beta until around 2038, unless one of our brilliant Ph.D. eggheads suddenly finds a way to make money from it."

"By the way," he quickly added, "I was being sarcastic."

Club Intrawest selects Metamend Search Engine Optimization

2005-01-11T16:15:00.000-08:00

Metamend Selected by Club Intrawest For Search Engine Optimization

December 10, 2004 - Victoria, BC - Metamend today announced the firm's search engine optimization technology and website optimization services have been selected by Club Intrawest, for ClubIntrawest.com.

Intrawest is the leading developer and operator of village-centered destination resorts across North America. Thousands of skiers and golfers rate Intrawest among the leaders in the leisure industry. With a network of vacation destinations ranging from towering ski mountains to endless miles of emerald green championship golf courses and unspoiled, pristine beaches, the Club Intrawest network of Club locations has captured the hearts of a loyal and growing vacation club customer base. The private resort club features nine exclusive resorts around the world, each one designed to reflect the culture and architecture of the region. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Club Intrawest is the private resort club operation within the Intrawest Corporation, which is a publicly traded company listed on the New York (IDR) and Toronto (ITW) stock exchanges.

Metamend's optimization service incorporates years of web page optimization skills combined with proprietary website optimization software which together tune web sites to reach their maximum performance within the world's top search engines. Metamend's SEO technology contextually analyzes a web site's content, and uses that data as the base on which to promote the web site. The process is designed to both remove existing search engine barriers and ensure that the search engines can properly index and classify a web site based on its content, thereby maximizing a web site's potential for attracting search engine traffic by achieving higher relevant search engine rankings from organic search results.

Hannah Payne, Manager, Web Services says “We are very excited to be working with Metamend. We believe their SEO technology will significantly improve the visibility and exposure that www.clubintrawest.com gets through internet searches.”

Richard Zwicky, Metamend CEO issued the following statement. "We are very proud to have been selected by Club Intrawest to provide our optimization services to this world class organization. They are a market leading Fortune 1000 company, respected across all industries. Earlier this year we introduced optimization services specifically targeting the hotel and tourism industry, (hotels.metamend.com). The hospitality industry is a highly competitive marketplace, where individual properties are competing for customers not just with direct competitors but also with consolidators, agencies, discounters, and their affiliates. We are witnessing the leaders in the field recognize that the search engines offer a key strategic advantage in reaching potential customers and extending their market reach. We look forward to working with Club Intrawest, and helping drive customers to their properties."

About Metamend
Metamend's search engine optimization service is a popular choice for marketing firms, web design houses, and ISP's wishing to outsource non-core business services to specialized providers. The company also offers hosting companies and managed service provider's white labeled web site optimization services for their clients. The company currently has successful clients on 5 continents and in 54 countries around the world.

About Club Intrawest.
Club Intrawest (www.clubintrawest.com) is managed by Intrawest Resort Club Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intrawest Corporation, North America's leading developer and operator of four-season destination resorts. Club Intrawest's locations include: Whistler/Blackcomb, rated North America's #1 winter resort destination; Panorama, British Columbia; Vancouver, British Columbia; Blue Mountain, Ontario; Tremblant, Quebec; Palm Desert, California; Kauai, Hawaii; Sandestin, Florida and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

For more information and interview requests, please contact:
Jacqueline Voci
Director, Marketing
Club Intrawest

http://www.clubintrawest.com

Richard Zwicky
Metamend

Why Blogs Rank High In Search Engines

2005-01-06T17:52:00.000-08:00

This was a good article I read today by Fredik Walka. I hope you find it useful too.

Why Blogs Rank High In Search Engines

To me blogs are a strategic business communication tool. I usually consider the fact that blogs rank high in search engines to be a positive side effect. But I also recognize that for some people search engine optimization, SEO, is a major reason for blogging - and I have found it to be a good reason for others to start thinking about blogging at all. Here's a list of explanations to why your blog probably will rank high in search engines. And it's more to it than just the links.

Why Do Blogs Rank Well In Search Engines?

The links are important, though. Especially to Google. Yahoo and the MSN Beta seems to give content related factors more weight in my experience. But even with Google the key to your success doesn't lie in links alone. If you want traffic through search engines you must get the basics right too.

So, here's my take on why blogs rank high in search engines.

Keywords, key phrases
Straight to the point
Each post's page structure
Coding
One subject per post
The blog site's information structure
Links then...?

Keywords, key phrases
If I wanted to pick one single reason I would actually choose this one: In a blog you talk. You engage in conversations. You think out loud, in a way. The things you say are (hopefully) everything but the standard corporate bullxxxx. This means you are filling the engines' databases with relevant keywords - relevant because most of us search for the words or phrases we use daily. The same words you use in the blog because you talk instead of
sending messages to the target audience.

Straight to the point
How many blog posts have you seen with this kind of headline: "Our software system solution for world-wide data quality"? How many corporate sites have you seen...? This point is related to the first one but it adds one extra dimension. Not only do we in blogs speak like real, living people in the words we use - we say it directly. Straight to the point. There are certainly exceptions to this, I admit that. But generally speaking I have found it to be true in many business blogs. To say what you want to say as fast as possible is important, which leads me to my next reason.

Each post's page structure
It's more or less standard in blog design to use the post's title/headline as the page's title (together with the blog name). With my two previous reasons in mind you now see how the html title is filled with tasty keywords. And that's the most important place to have them. That's where search engines expect to find the best clue to what your page is about, and they rank the words there high in comparison to other positions in the code. Speaking about code...

Coding
If you use blog templates they will probably be an example of good coding. Most I've seen has been at least. It's often a table-less design, an extensive use of style sheets, correct coding where headlines not only are larger and bold but actual H1's, H2's and so on. It's a clean code - good for browser compability, good for visitors with disabilities. Good for search engine spiders. Here you have a potential risk. If you just use the old CMS templates for your regular site, you may loose this advantage. The solution is of course to redesign all of it in line with this "modern" web design.

Finally, some reasons relating to information structure.

One subject per post
This is all about keyword density, which is the ratio of the word someone searches for against the total numbers of words on the web page. Most blog posts are rather short, and they're often about one subject. That means a good chance of a high keyword density - especially if you compare it to a standard corporate web site where you try to tell about all your products on one page, or very few pages.

The blog site's information structure
Blogs are "flat" sites. They have a first page (level 1), current posts (level 2), about page (level 2), archive pages (level 2) and archived posts (level 3). That's it. It's not clear exactly how important this is. Some claim spiders don't regularly index very deep sites and that low-level pages are given lower ranking, others say this is not a factor to care about.

Links then?Well, they will do you good too. A high Google PageRank is obviously better than a low. But if you don't get the above things right, the PageRank won't mean as much to you as it otherwise would have.

About the Author:
Fredrik Wacka is the author and founder of the popular CorporateBlogging.Info blog which is a guide to business and corporate blogging.

What's The Difference Between Marketing And Advertising?

2004-12-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

I thought this was a good short note: What's The Difference Between Marketing And Advertising? Far too many people seem to confuse the two, including so-called "marketing experts."

From Site-Reference.com

by Marketing Basics
Saturday, December 18, 2004

Many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both components are equally important, they are also very different. Knowing the differences between the two can put your company on the fast track to success. Let's start off by reviewing the formal definitions of each and then we'll explain how marketing and advertising differ from one another:

Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non- personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.

Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.

After reading both of the definitions, it is easy to understand how the differences can be confusing to the point that most people think of them as one and the same. So, lets clear up the confusion.

Advertising is but a single component of the marketing process.

Advertising entails publicizing your business, product, or services you are offering. It involves the process of developing strategies such as ad placement, frequency, etc. Advertising includes the placement of an ad in such mediums as newspapers, yellow pages, television, radio, and of course the Internet. Advertising is the single largest expenditure of most marketing campaigns.

The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is the pie chart. Mentally, visualize breaking the pie chart down into several slices that include advertising, product pricing, distribution, customer service, sales strategy, etc.

Using this method, you can see, advertising only equals one slice of the pie in the marketing strategy. All of these components must not only work independently, but they also must work in unison towards the ultimate goal of publicizing your business and obtaining customers.

Marketing, on the other hand, is simply a process that an organization goes through to facilitate an exchange between buyer and seller.

Google Rumored To Limit Adwords

2004-12-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting article in WebProNews today, by Rich Ord, which discusses the rumor that Google will limit adwords to one ad per page in the new year. (full article below)

If true, this policy change will have a huge impact on search engine marketers. By creating a shortage of inventory, Google is effectively forcing up the bid price on ads, and (I'm sure this is their hope) thereby raising the amount of revenue they earn from adwords.

Think about it. Today there is a limit of 9 ads per search, (at least that's the most I ever see), If all of a sudden the limit is 1 ad per page, there will be a greater competition for those terms. Since the algorithm for appearing on today's list is CPC and CTR, the algorithm will have to be modified. CTR will continue to be important, but it's only realistic that the weight added to CPC will be increased. Therefore, bidding higher increases your chances of having your ad displayed.

By limiting it to 1 ad per page, Google is severely limiting inventory - categories which are in demand will likely be willing to bid significantly more than they do at present for each click; therefore Google will earn increased revenues.

I'm not going to second guess Google on their adwords strategy. I'm sure that many firms will be impacted by this decision, and I'm certain most will be displeased to pay more per click. It will be interesting to see how this policy change affects the number of advertisers that Google retains. Perhaps this is part of their strategy? Perhaps they have too many small advertisers who do not contribute enough to the bottom line? By raising the thresholds they might be effectively dumping their 'unproductive' accounts ( ??? )

From WebProNews
By Rich Ord.
Several sources point to a rumor that Google is going to limit each search result to only one AdWords ad.

MarketingVox in an article today states:

"Michael Wong points to discussion group chatter suggesting that Google may allow only one text ad listing per page starting in the new year. The move would seriously limit inventory for many affiliate marketers and search engine arbitrage firms, but presumably make advertising more effective for those companies that make the greatest returns on the use of the words."

Their take on Michael Wong's blog post mentions affiliate marketers ... but doesn't explain the rumor correctly.

Even worse is Michael Wong's actual post:

"This is not an official announcement, but there is a lot of talk in the forums that Google will be changing its AdWords policy to only allow one advertiser per landing page, after the new year.

The criteria for who gets the ad will be based on rank (CTR and CPC), though back-ups will be in place for when the spend is gone for one so another can come in.

This policy change is going to have a serious impact on search engine marketers, especially affiliate marketers, that use Google AdWords as their biggest source of traffic."

He got his information from the Search Engine Watch forum where posters there apparently got their info from the WebmasterWorld forum. This is definately a story of how the Web can mis-spin a story.

Both MarketingVox and Michael Wong's blog site indicate that Google may only allow one ad per search result. However, reading the forum thread on SearchEngineWatch it specifically states, "Google is going to restrict the number of affiliates that can sned traffic to the same place (tracking/affiliate code not counted)."

At WebmasterWorld, here's what the AdWordsAdvisor (a Google guy) said, "Google's affiliate policy has not been changed. This means that your approved affiliate AdWords ads will continue to run on Google.com. Please be assured that we have no current plans to completely block affiliates from AdWords. If we do make any changes to our affiliate policy, you'll be notified."

Another poster summed up what is presumably Google's position, "Affiliates are neither real sites nor real URLs. As their URLs would not be allowed in natural SERPs, neither should they be in AdWords."

So the issue is not about Google limiting each search result to one AdWord per page ... it's about limiting each search result to a maximum of one affiliate advertising the same product per page.

iMediaConnection: Stay www.Here

2004-12-20T11:09:00.000-08:00

iMediaConnection is a very interesting journal. I provided them with a reworked & updated version of the local search article. I hope to provide them with 1 unique article per month.

Stay www.Here
Monday, December 20, 2004
By Richard Zwicky, Metamend Software

Why local search is becoming increasingly important for the hotel business.
The hospitality industry will be affected faster and more strongly than any other industry by the increasing adoption of local search by Internet users. Local search brings to life what every hotel and restaurant operator dreams of: People will be able to find your property based on your precise location and the products and services you offer. If your hotel is close to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., for example, local search will help drive customers who are visiting the museum right to your door, and if you do it right, it won't cost you a dime.

That the World Wide Web would eventually become a virtual Yellow Pages in your pocket has long been obvious. It is the only natural evolutionary course possible for the Internet. Most Web sites are reflections of traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. As the Internet continues to grow, increasingly it becomes a broadly used, general purpose tool which competes with the Yellow Pages to geographically connect people to products, services and even communities.

So why all this fuss on local search, and why should it matter to you? Because the Internet is now filled with billions of Web pages, representing over 10,000,000 individual businesses scattered around the world. It can supply business and consumer needs for anything except perhaps hot coffee! That's a lot of real estate that you're competing with for visibility.

Today, the number of users online has reached a critical mass. People no longer are automatically turning to the Yellow Pages (now a popular door stopper); instead, they now click over to Google, Yahoo! or MSN. Consumers no longer just use the search engines for research; they expect to find relevant, local, information about their community.

Already today, many people expect to find coffee shops, restaurants, shoe repairs and a plethora of other local services using the Internet. They want to find businesses that cater to their needs, based on proximity to their present position. But mostly still, they use local search for trip planning; for travel. This is only logical; most people travel to a particular destination, and expect to be located close to it. For example, if I'm traveling on business, I'll search for a hotel with proximity to where my meetings will occur as the crucial decision maker; not much point in my flying to L.A. and then commuting. Commuting is for locals. As a business traveler, I need a hotel that is centrally located to my work day. I'll search for it accordingly.

Fulfilling this desire for locally relevant information is a logical step in the development of the search engines. I own a Palm Treo; last weekend I was in Seattle with my family. They wanted to eat ribs at Tony Roma's. I pulled out my Treo and searched for Tony Roma's Bellevue. I found the information I wanted (the address), and drove there.

Like many other people, I also plan ahead. Then I use my desktop. For example, next month I'm traveling to Banff. I'm going to want to take my son dogsledding and also find a place to have a good fondue. I'm not worried about the dogsledding; I know someone who provides that service. I could wait until I'm there and look around for a Swiss restaurant, but I thought I would give the latest local search tools a whirl -- take them for a real world test drive. I tried all sorts of searches, but none of the engines could handle the queries properly. I tried for an hour. Good thing I wasn't using my Treo. I couldn't afford the bill.

Why couldn't I find what I was looking for? What use is local search to you if you can't find what you are looking for?

That's the problem you, as a Web site operator, need to tackle. One of the challenges you need to deal with is to ensure that your property is properly found in local search results.

Right now, the search engine companies are botching their offerings in local search. They are not doing much to ensure your property gets listed. Do you believe that finding search results based on zip code is relevant? Neither do I. But that's the base from which local search is working. Look at how much territory a single zip code covers; it's far too large to be useful. Did you know that it's possible to get a correct location online to within 10 feet? So why don't the search engines do this? That's your piece of the puzzle. This is the part of local search you can help with.

The search engine business model is built on relevance. It's all about getting the correct answers to their customers quickly and efficiently. They want to get them off their site, and on to yours.

So what can you, the Web site operator, do to attract local search customers from the search engines? How can you help the search engines fulfill their mandate? This is where local search engine optimization comes into play.

If your business has a physical location and a Web site, then local search is part of your future. In fact, if you operate a hotel, it should actually already part of your present day operation. The fact that most people have not considered local search yet demonstrates how often overlooked it is as a tool to draw traffic to your business.

Local search can be supported simply by including the proper local information on your Web pages. If your Web page is properly optimized and is also tuned for local search, then customers will be finding it regularly whenever they search for the goods or services you offer. For example, I was in a restaurant recently that served pizza topped with escargots. You don't find that often. But if that's what your customer is craving, wouldn't you expect them to find your eatery when they search online? That's what optimization does for you. Now add localization to the mix and the same people can easily figure out how close to you they are, and how to get to your location.

For a hotel, the opposite is true. People plan their stays based on the destination they are visiting, and the activities they plan on doing. Ensure that the search engines know you are close to desirable activities. List them on your site, but also ensure that your site is properly geo-located.

There are many ways to include localization terms to facilitate the search engines working with your Web site. At the most basic, you need to include your address in visible textual content within your Web pages, (properly formatted to meet the search engine's needs). Assuming the search engines can get to those pages, you're on your way. You will also need to include that information in other areas of your Web site. Include the appropriate meta tags, and where applicable, in link text. There are specific meta tags and XML schema tags for localization. If you don't know about them, get a professional optimization firm to help you. If they don't know about them, then you need a new SEO firm.

Search engine optimization for local search works the same as regular Web site optimization. But by localizing search terms, you are providing additional contextual information for the search engines to do their work.

Optimizing your Web site's content to ensure local attention will not minimize the opportunities your business receives from regular, Internet-wide search engine traffic. Instead, it will supplement existing traffic with increased highly localized traffic, which will likely result in people just walking into your business without ever mentioning that they found your business online. When you ensure your local clientele can find you, you make it easier for them to support you. Ensuring that they find you is the only thing that should matter to your business.

The Fairhaven Village Inn, Like Many Small Hotels, Is In a Battle with A Major Online Travel Agency / December 2004

2004-12-14T12:09:00.000-08:00

The Fairhaven Village Inn, Like Many Small Hotels, Is In a Battle with A Major Online Travel Agency / December 2004: "

Is Goliath Allowing a Fair Haven?

Would you allow a competing hotel to switch on your 'No Vacancy' sign at will? What about the one advertising your status to the entire world on the Internet? No, neither would I. Yet that's exactly what is happening to one hotel in Fairhaven Washington, and to hotels elsewhere throughout the world. I could write about all of them, and maybe if enough approach me, I will write about more of them.

Two months ago, I met an interesting couple with a David and Goliath size battle on their hands, Gene and Connie Shannon of the Fairhaven Village Inn. Their story is worth repeating. I'm sure their situation is not unique, but the lessons learned from it are applicable to any business with an online presence.

As you many have guessed it, Gene and his wife Connie own and operate the Fairhaven Village Inn. Fairhaven is a historic town in Northwestern Washington State, less than a mile from Bellingham. The Inn is right in the old village, and overlooks the Olympic Mountains and the Straits. I was fortunate enough to spend a night at the Inn. It has 22 beautiful rooms, and really is in a great location right in the center of historic Fairhaven, just outside Bellingham. If you ever are in the Bellingham area, I strongly suggest you check out the quaint town of Fairhaven, and if you have a chance, look up Gene and Connie; they’re really nice people, and they run a lovely establishment.

You may wonder what this last paragraph has to do with marketing, and the vacancy sign on your door. It has everything to do with the problem the Inn faces, and how they, and others in the same situation will meet their challenges head on, compete, and succeed.

The Fairhaven Village Inn, like so many other small hotels, is in a battle with the discounters, and consolidators. In this case they are in a particular battle with one major online travel agency. According to Mr. Shannon, the artwork and text featured on the hotel’s web site is being used to display information on the Inn within this agency, and its affiliate’s web sites, for the purpose of booking rooms. So what’s the problem you say? Don’t you want agencies to sell rooms on your behalf?

In this case, the owners made a good faith business decision not to work with the agency in question; they decided to do so would only make reaching a cash flow positive position that much more difficult. Yet, that the materials they created for their web site have been borrowed without permission by this agency.

The larger problem however, is that the agency in question does not just display information on the Fairhaven Village Inn on their web site, and on all their affiliates web sites, they also show up in the search engine listings ahead of the Inn, and most importantly, they always list the Inn as ‘SOLD OUT.’ Mr. Shannon has attempted to get the agency to remove the listing, but to no avail.

Imagine; your business’s web site shows up in the search engine listings behind a major travel agency, and all their affiliates. They list your property as ‘SOLD OUT’ whenever people visiting your town inquire. So, all these potential clients will stay elsewhere, likely at a nearby property which has agreed to work with the agency in question.

How did Mr. Shannon discover what was going on? He had people showing up at his doorstep, asking to look around the Inn, and mentioning that when they were planning their trip they had been disappointed to learn that the hotel was sold out, because they would have liked to stay there. The first few times he thought it was just a mistake, and that there was some confusion. Then he started investigating.

Although the Fairhaven Village Inn is the most central hotel in historic Fairhaven, it is unable to reach its potential clients, because they are being advised by reputable sources that the property is sold out. Since his web site shows up lower than the agency, and its affiliates for most searches, by the time people find his listing, they don’t bother contacting the Inn to check availability; they have already received that information elsewhere.

So the Fairhaven Village Inn faces two dilemmas. First off, it has a major corporation disseminating disinformation about the availability of their product, and second, the web site was not properly recognized by the search engines for its subject matter, and thus is not being relevantly displayed.

The legal challenges for the Inn are huge. It’s a small operation, and thus its cash flow is low. This is in large measure attributable to the two aforementioned dilemmas. But the owners of the Inn are not shrinking violets when faced with a challenge. They know they are in a David and Goliath battle; they are taking on a Goliath in the travel industry. They have engaged counsel, and will seek the appropriate remedies. They have the fortitude of conviction on their side. They are not asking their opponent to cease doing business, simply to modify an unseemly practice, and remove the damaging information which is being used in an inappropriate and in a misleading manner.

The Fairhaven Village Inn may or may not win its legal battle. Victory will likely not depend on a courtroom and a judge; they likely cannot afford that. It’s more likely that someone well placed at the agency in question will realize the error that has been made, and remove the Inn from all their listings. But that’s only half their battle.

Regardless of the outcome in its legal battle, The Fairhaven Village Inn also must rise above all other competitors in the search engine listings. The owners have recognized that this is how most people look for, and find hotels and businesses in areas they are both familiar, and unfamiliar with. For this reason alone, they need to show up, well placed in the search engine results.

The Fairhaven Village Inn’s second dilemma is how to reach their potential customers before its competitors do. As mentioned earlier, when we met, the Fairhaven Village Inn web site did not show up well, or even at all, in the search engine listings, under highly relevant searches such as “Fairhaven hotel” or “Fairhaven Inn.” In fact, when we met, they were not even near the top 100 for those highly relevant terms. The Shannon’s realized they have to reach customers first, and be found under all relevant terms if they are to succeed. The challenge this historic hotel in upstate Washington faced was not unique.

As in every other industry, most small hotels and Inns are not properly listed in the search engines. Their web sites are not properly designed with the search engines in mind. They face the same issue any other business with an online presence does; they have spent a lot of time building a web site which fairly and properly reflects their business. They have put thought into the proper color scheme and images to reflect the experience a guest enjoys when they visit the property. They have included relevant information on their property, and their environs. But they have not done so in a manner which allows the search engines to properly read and understand the material. For that reason, their web site goes unrecognized.

The Inn is a central resource to the entire Fairhaven community; it’s not just in the center of town, all its visitors will frequent the local shops and restaurants. Guests of the hotel are an economic benefit not just to the Inn itself, but to the entire village. This is the case in every community, regardless of size. However, unlike the local bookstore, the Mexican restaurant, and the coffee shop, the Inn is the only one with a web site. It’s the only one promoting itself and the entire community. Yet the search engines have failed to recognize its relevance.

The challenge the Gene and Connie Shannon faced was the same as that any other business does. They needed to be heard and seen by their potential customers. Regardless of your business, this means you need to be visible; you need for your business to be found quickly and efficiently whenever anyone asks a search engine for information, products, or services your business provides. If you fail to ensure your business is visible, you will fail, and it will be no one’s fault but your own; you will have failed to try.

Now two months in to their search engine optimization campaign, the Inn has jumped from nowhere to be found, to top 10 for their relevant search phrases, and #1 in some engines. If they cannot get goliath to back off, at least they will be able to get to the customers first.

The owners of the Fairhaven Village Inn will not fail. They are on the path to success.

Richard Zwicky, Metamend Search Engine Optimization

Local Search: Why IT Matters to Your Property - by Richard Zwicky :: Hotel News Resource

2004-12-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

Local Search: Why IT Matters to Your Property

Local search will impact the hospitality industry faster and more strongly than any other industry. Local search is what every hotel and restaurant operator dreams of! Imagine, people will be finding your property based on your precise location, and services.

If your hotel is close to Legoland in California, local search will drive customers who are visiting that park to your door, and if you do it right, they won't even charge you for the honor!

It has long been obvious that eventually the world wide web would become truly local. This is the only natural evolution course possible for the Internet. While there will continue to be many Internet only operations, most web sites are reflections of traditional brick and mortar businesses. As the Internet continues to grow, it continues to evolve from being a research tool, to a general usage tool which competes with the Yellow Pages to geographically connect people to products, services, and even communities.

I'm sure you have already read lots about local search; it's all over the news, and not just in the business section. About three weeks ago SBC and BellSouth announced that they had jointly paid $100 Million for YellowPages.com - you know they see where the market it headed. I was at the conference where the YellowPages.com announcement was made, and in the halls chatted with a number of people who were in total awe of 'local search.' The latest and greatest! The next BIG thing!

So why all this fuss on local search? Because the market is now filled with billions of web pages, representing over 10,000,000 individual businesses scattered around the world; It can supply business and consumer needs for anything except perhaps hot coffee! The number of users online has also reached critical mass. Users are no longer automatically turning to their traditional paper Yellow Pages, (now a popular door stopper), instead, they now click over to Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Consumers no longer just use the search engines for research, they expect to find information about their community.

In the future, people will expect to find coffee shops, restaurants, shoe repairs, and more and more local services. They will want to find businesses that are close to their present positions. Today however, they use local search for trip planning; for travel. It only makes sense; most people travel to a destination, and want to be located close to it. For example when I next go to Hawai'i, I'll search for a hotel based on my family's interests; proximity to the right dive shop, or to the volcanoes, and so forth. If I'm traveling on business, I'll search for a hotel with proximity to where my meetings will occur as the crucial decision maker; not much point in my flying to L.A. and then commuting; Commuting is for locals!! As a business traveler, I need a hotel that is centrally located to my work day. I'll search for it accordingly.

Fulfilling this desire for locally relevant information is a logical step in the development of the search engines. I own a Palm Treo; When I'm driving around and need to find something which I know is offered locally, I pull out my Treo and search for the item. If it's a restaurant, I look for the particular dish I am craving. But like many people, I also plan ahead. Then I use my desktop. For example, next month I'm traveling to Banff. I'm going to want to take my son dog sledding and also find a place to have a good fondue. I'm not worried about the dog sledding; I know someone who provides that service. I could wait until I'm there and look around for a Swiss restaurant, but I thought I would give the latest local search tools a whirl; Take them for a real world test drive. I tried all sorts of searches, but none of the engines could handle the queries properly. I tried for an hour. Good thing I wasn't using my Treo. I couldn't afford the bill!

Why couldn't I find what I was looking for? What use is local search to you can't find what you are looking for? That's the problem you as a hotel's web site operator need to tackle. One of the challenges you need to deal with is to ensure that your property is properly found in local search results.

Right now, the search engine companies are botching their offerings in local search. They are not doing much to ensure your property gets listed. Do you believe that finding search results based on zip code is relevant? Neither do I. But that's the base off which local search is working. Look at how much territory that covers, it's far too much to be useful. Did you know that it's possible to get a correct location online to within 10 feet? So why don't the search engines do this? That's your piece of the puzzle. This is the part of local search you can help with.

The search engine business model is built on relevance. Get the right answers to customers quickly and efficiently. Get them off your site, and to their destination. So what can you, as a web site operator, do to attract local search customers from the search engines? How can you help the search engines fulfill their mandate? This is where local search engine optimization comes into play.

If your business has a physical location and a web site, then local search is part of your future. In fact, if you operate a hotel, it should already be part of your present day operation. The fact that most people have not considered local search yet demonstrates how often overlooked it is as a tool to draw traffic to your business.

Local search can be supported simply by properly including local information in your web pages. If your web page is properly optimized and is also tuned for local search, then customers will be finding it regularly when they need the goods or services you offer. For example, I was in a restaurant recently that served pizza topped with escargots. Not many of those around! But if that’s what your customer is craving, wouldn't you expect them to find your eatery when they search online? That’s what optimization does for you. Now add localization to the mix and the same people can easily figure out how close to you they are, and how to get to your location! For a hotel, the opposite is true. People plan their stays based on the destination they are visiting, and the activities they plan on doing. Ensure that the search engines know you are close to desirable activities. List them on your site, but also ensure that your site is properly geo-located.

There are many way to include localization terms to facilitate the search engines working with your web site. At the most basic, you need to include your address in visible textual content within your web pages. Assuming the search engines can get to those pages, you’re part way there. You will also need to include that information in other areas of the content of your businesses web site. Include it in the appropriate meta tags, and where applicable, in link text. There are specific meta tags, and XML schema tags for localization; if you don’t know about them, get a professional optimization firm to help you. If they don’t know about them, then you need a new SEO firm.

Search engine optimization for local search works the same as regular web site optimization. But by localizing search terms, you are providing additional contextual information for the search engines to do their work.

Optimizing your web site’s content to ensure local attention will not minimize the opportunities your business receives from regular, Internet wide search engine traffic. Instead, it will supplement existing traffic with increased highly localized traffic which will likely result in people just walking into your business without ever mentioning that they found your business online. When you ensure your local clientele can find you, you make it easier for them to support you. Ensuring that they find you is the only thing that should matter to your business.

Metamend SEO for Hotels

Blogs – Diamond in the Rough

2004-11-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

This is Part II of a blog article that was written in Sept & October. Part I was first published in SiteProNews in early November.

Blogs – Diamond in the Rough for your Marketing?

Blogs are a potential goldmine of insights for readers, provided by business leaders, market leaders, innovators, philosophers, marketers, political commentators, and many other opinion makers who never before have enjoyed such easy access to a simple and unmoderated public forum in which to share their opinions, ideas and insights.

These leaders have taken to using the Internet to publish their thoughts for the same reason they make public speaking appearances; to build credibility for themselves and for their company, and to become recognized as a resource, usually with the expectation that it will lead to sales. Blogging presents them with an easy, non-time consuming, and inexpensive way to quickly reach thousands of interested parties all around the world.

The effect that these leaders have had in posting their thoughts and musings online has helped evolve blogs into powerful viral marketing tools. Blogs allow you to quickly and easily reach people who are not in your direct network, and greatly expand the number of people you and your company reach.

Are you an expert in your field? Do you know things about your favorite subject that you would like to share with others? Do you write articles for newsletters, like this one, and want to help the publisher expand their reach? Then blogging may be right for you.

Have you never looked at a blog? Are you sure? A lot of articles and content on web sites is currently blogged. But if you are looking to see what a blog is, here are some interesting ones to look at.

Blogs.Sun.com
SemanticBlogging.org
BlogHerald.com

If you want to start your own, and your company doesn't offer one, try these tools, and link to them from your site:

Blogger
Blogware

While sometimes you can find blogs that are interesting, some of them simply are not. This happens when the author / contributor either has nothing of interest to say, or has nothing to add to the facts they are recording.

However, blogs that are maintained for extended periods are usually filled with interesting and often humorous commentaries. That's to be expected; the person blogging is enjoying seeing the world, and allowing you to share in their vision; it reflects a joy for living.

So how are blogs a diamond in the rough, ready to be polished and turned into a gem, capping a marketing goldmine?

You might be surprised, but many people have found ways to make money off their blogs, just by making sure it's up to date, interesting and relevant.

Just like any other web site, blogs allow for traditional Internet revenue streams such as affiliate programs and banner advertising, etc... Now, I don't know that you can add a Google adsense banner or any other banner for that matter to your blog if it's third party, but if you are hosting your own, the possibilities are enormous. But that's just one way to earn money from a blog. The best way, is to have it lead to new sales for you and your business.

But for any of these monetary systems to work, you need people to find your blog first.

How Visitors Find Your Blog i.e. How You Can Make Money Off a Blog

As you are building your blog, you need to be conscious of other web sites, and blogs. Remember, yours is not alone. If you read something interesting somewhere then "blog it." In more traditional terms, just link to it. Link to a lot of other blogs and news sites. The people who run blogs, also tend to read their own web site traffic reports, and will notice the traffic your blogs are sending. They will read your blog, and if they find it interesting, they will blog it. If you see a news story in another blog, link to it as your link to the article.

Some people maintain a list of their favorite blogs within their own blog. It helps paint a picture of what the author finds interesting, and also helps your blog gain goodwill from other blogs.

When I first created my blog, one thing I did was submit it to a bunch of blog search engines. I used:

Blog Search Engine
Daypop.
Blog Catalog
Feedster
Ice Rocket
Bloogz
blogstreet
Blogwise

Some of these tools crawl the blogs hourly - so your content will get out there quickly. Others take longer; just like the mainstream search engines!

Many independent blog tools, automatically offer RSS/XML feeds of your blog. You just need to ensure that they are turned on. They make it easy for you to get syndicated.

I saw a note recently that there are now over 4 million blogs around the world with a new blog being added every 10 seconds or so. By comparison, there are 10 million new web pages being added to the Internet daily - or 116 a second. This means that blogspace is less crowded than the rest of the Internet.

So, what are the disadvantages to building and maintaining a blog? Well, they vary from individual to individual, and company to company. But here are my thoughts:

1) You need to contribute regularly. I notice some people make updates many times a day. That's wonderful, but it's also a time commitment.

2) You better have something relevant to say. If you don't keep it interesting, people will not keep coming back for more!

3) Does the person writing your company blogs have good writing skills? Are you happy with the quality of grammar and vocabulary?

4) Are you, or is the person writing the blog for your company, representative of the company's perspectives? Do they enunciate a coherent vision of, and for, your company? That's a risk you take when you assign a blog to someone else. If it's your own blog, are you the right person for the job?

5) Does the blog offer a valuable perspective, or just some ramblings?

In the end, the value proposition in a blog is the same as in any other content you or your company publishes. Is the content valuable? Is the information worthwhile? If not, if you have nothing to say, or add to a conversation, don't speak. Do you enjoy the company of people who just speak to hear themselves? Probably not. If a blog leaves you with that same feeling, then it's probably not going to be successful.

But, if you consistently maintain an interesting blog, people will recognize it, and you. That's where the real value proposition, and the opportunity to make money off a blog lies. The real value in blogs is in getting your word out. If you have something meaningful to say, and the better you do it, the more likely someone is to reference your blog, and eventually your corporation's web site. This will lead to increased sales. Just don't expect it to happen overnight.

I would highly recommend that you have some sort of publishing strategy for your business. Whether it ends up being a blog, or writing newsletter articles as I have done here, sharing good, coherent information with interested parties will help you and your business build credibility. Publishing will go a long way towards building your professional reputation, one word at a time.

About The Author
Richard Zwicky is a founder and CEO of Metamend Software and Design Ltd. (www.metamend.com). Metamend's cutting edge Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technology and software has been recognized globally as a leader in its field. With successful clients on 5 continents, and over 50 countries worldwide, the company has experience in a broad range of markets and marketplaces. Metamend's client web sites rank near or at the top of the search engines for their respective search terms.

White Hat Or Black Hat

2004-11-25T13:47:00.000-08:00

Is MetaWebs White Hat Or Black Hat led me to ponder this question a bit deeper.

What is 'black hat' and 'white hat' SEO? Well, here's my definitions:

'black hat SEO' is optimization work which looks to exploit any hole in search engine algorithms with an eye to artificially inflate the search engine ranking of a web site. No opportunity can be viewed as unworthy or unscrupuluous. It's like a game of Aussie rules football - there are no rules!

'white hat SEO' on the other hand is optimization that is supposed to be limited to only what is certainly acceptable to the search engines. If in doubt, go without, is the rule for those optimizers. This group ensures that anything done to optimize a web site is legitimate, and only relates to the content of the site.

Don't the people who indignantly refer to themselves as practicing 'white hat SEO' realize that no one will claim to be a 'black hat SEO'?? Of course they will refer to themselves as "white hat SEO's" who would do otherwise??

Why is anyone wasting their time with these monikers?? At our company we certainly don't... we're too busy!!!

Take some advice. Don't worry about the moniker. Worry about giving your clients good long term value and benefits. Don't try and spam the search engines; just ensure they get the relevant content from within a web site. Don't spend your time looking for holes, spend your time ensuring the job is done right.

Deliver value to your customers. That will only build your reputation, and people will know that you, and your company, are one of the good guys.

PRESS RELEASE: InQuent Technologies Selects Metamend Search Engine Optimization

2004-11-18T12:44:00.000-08:00

InQuent Technologies Selects Metamend Search Engine Optimization

Toronto, Ontario and Victoria, BC (PRWEB) November 18, 2004 - Metamend and InQuent Technologies are pleased to announce InQuent has selected Metamend as its provider for search engine submission and search engine optimization (SEO) technology and services. InQuent will be integrating Metamend's technologies into its comprehensive suite of services for their Private Label Clients' hosting customers.

InQuent Technologies has been delivering leading edge, private-label hosting solutions since 1997. Its integrated products and services, superior customer support and innovative technology infrastructure enable service providers to succeed in the shared hosting market. Large hosting companies and major telecoms across North America and around the world turn to InQuent for its flexible platform, ease of integration and best of breed services to make the end user web site successful.

Metamend's search engine optimization and web site marketing services utilize proprietary technologies to tune web sites for maximum performance within the world's top search engines. The company's web site optimization software contextually analyzes a web site's textual content within seconds, and 'learns' what the intended key messages are for the web page. It then utilizes this learned information to 'mend' or optimize the web site for search engine friendliness, while also removing barriers to the search engines being able to properly index the site, all automatically. Once optimized the web site is submitted and promoted to the search engines.

Metamend's SEO technology and services consistently deliver premium search engine rankings and results for clients' web sites. Metamend currently serves end user clients in 54 countries and boasts the largest client base of any SEO company in the world. The addition of InQuent's client base should effectively solidify Metamend's status as the top player within the optimization industry.

“We are delighted to be partnering with Metamend,” said Kelly Hagen, CEO of InQuent Technologies. “Our customers will now have the full benefits of Metamend’s search engine submission and optimization technology to drive traffic to their web sites.”

“We are extremely pleased to enter into this relationship with InQuent,” echoed Metamend CEO, Richard Zwicky. “They provide high quality outsourced hosting solutions to some of the most important service providers in the telecommunications industry. When InQuent first approached us, they did so from the perspective of having recognized that for the web site operator, being properly found in search engine results is the single most critical component of a online marketing campaign. Our research showed that InQuent has demonstrated a commitment to offering only the best to their client base. We are very pleased they have selected Metamend as their latest partner.”

About Metamend
Metamend's search engine optimization and website optimization solutions are a popular choice for marketing firms, web design houses, and ISP's wishing to outsource non-core business services to specialized providers. The company offers web site optimization services direct to end users, as well as to hosting companies and managed service providers via a white label distribution model. The company currently has successful clients on 5 continents and in 54 countries around the world, and has been recognized by firms such as Microsoft as the world leader in the field of search engine optimization technology.

About Inquent
Headquartered in Toronto with additional offices in the U.S., InQuent is the leading provider of private label web hosting, email and e-commerce services. InQuent combines a full retail package with high reliability and security in an open platform architecture that gives customers the flexibility and customization to define the product and service delivery structure that meets their business goals.

source: emediawire
webhostdirectory

Social Networking

2004-11-17T15:03:00.000-08:00

This news from the headlines....

Late Tuesday, Yahoo launched Personals Premier, a premium online dating service aimed at attracting serious relationship seekers with deeper pockets. The move challenges eHarmony, a popular online dating site that picks potential 'soul mates' for its subscribers based on results from a lengthy personality test.

Online dating is booming, with the U.S. industry projected to generate $558 million in revenue this year, Yahoo, predicts.

Yahoo Personals is No. 1 in the online dating category with about 21 percent of the market. while EHarmony came in fourth, with about 6 percent market share, after IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s Match.com and MatchNet's American Singles, Hitwise reported.

Dating services, and systems like hot or not, lavalife, jdate, and the like are increasingly popular. They reflect a the evolving concept of community.

One hundred and fifty years ago, your community was likely your home, and anything within a 30 mile radius thereof. You were born there, grew up, were educated, worked, built a family and relationships, and were buried there. Rarely did inviduals venture beyond, and when they did it was considered a 'voyage.' Your work community shared individual membership with your church and social communities, etc...

Then, along came the automobile, and until the 1980's one's community incorporated things within a 2-3 hour radius; people often worked in cities other than those where they resided; families tended to disburse over larger areas within a region; children's sports teams played at regional sporting events rather than local, etc... Increasingly, people had employment communities which were entirely disconnected from their social communities, which also were disconnected from the communities that other family members belonged to. Each community which an individual belonged to could potentially have sufficiently unique participants to make them appear unique. However, they were still, overwhelmingly linked by geography, and thus had regional flavors.

With the advent of the Internet, all this changed again. Many communities became completely disconnected from geography. An individual's work community could be continental, or even global; without them leaving the comfort of their home. Special interests, ranging from support groups to cooking and musical preferences, could be shared with like minded individuals anywhere in the world, on an ongoing basis. The context of community was also radically reshaped. Since the dawn of mankind community has always included some physical contact - physically meeting an individual - This is no longer the case.

The social networking that is occur on the Internet has completely rewritten the concept of community. Communities can now be virtual - meaning devoid of physical being. They allow an opinion to be shared freely on a global scale. What a powerful development for the freedom of speech and thought! Yes, technical wizardry can work to limit access to some of that free communication of thought; but as is always the case, that will be temporary.

I appreciate the networks, and the systems in place. I strongly support the possibilities for an improved flow of information that social networking permits, and I understand the online dating networks, and how valuable they are. While I have never made use of such tools, I have a number of friends who have used them, and continue to do so; and know people who have entered into serious relationships and marriages as a result of 'meeting' online. The power of these tools to allow users to filter out potential relationship partners based on likes and dislikes which would not be immediately obvious on meeting is powerful.

However, the networks that exist are much more than just dating services. Some, such as insiderpages.com, and zerodegrees offer users the ability to provide reviews of local products and services. Need a good plumber and want references? Log on, and find out who is recommended by other individuals in your local community. Want to ensure that these reviewers are legitimate, check out their references. Sure, it's possible to manipulate the data, but not without quite some effort. That effort is unlikely for local services, but less unlikely when you are dealing with national products.

Anyhow.... just a few random thoughts - I'll probably put more together shortly and write an article about social networking and how it affects your online marketing. Actually, while writing, I just thought up a whole new business revenue model around these networks! Perhaps I'll write it down :-)

What are Blogs, and Why Your Business Should Use One

2004-11-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

As published in SiteProNews on November 12, 2004

A few weeks ago I was involved in a very strange conversation with some pretty bright people. One publishes a widely circulated industry magazine, another was an industry consultant, and the last was the CEO of a major corporation in the same industry. I'm not sure how the conversation evolved, but towards the end the consultant mentioned that another journal had done an excellent job syndicating their content through blogs and RSS feeds. The comment was quite unremarkable in and of itself. What happened next was not.

'What is an RSS feed?' asked the publisher; 'I keep hearing the term 'blogs' and 'blogging' but have not paid much attention to them, what is a blog?' asked the CEO. A deep moment of silence ensued, it was broken by the consultant's almost sardonic voice 'Jeez man, an RSS feed means Really Simple Syndication you should know all about it, it is core to your business.' The CEO got off a bit easier.

You know what? They are not alone in their ignorance. Most people don't have a clue what blogs or RSS feeds are. Most don't need to, but a lot of people who use blogs on a daily basis don't even think twice about them, how they work or how powerful they are.
So, before we go any further, here's a definition of what a blog is:

A publication of content and Web links, sorted in chronological order, with the most recent at the top. The content reflects personal or corporate interests, and is almost always written by an individual. Blogs were originally called web logs or weblogs. However, as 'web log' can also mean a server's log files, the term was confusing. To avoid this confusion, the abbreviation 'blog' was coined, and became the common term.

Blog content varies dramatically. While often it reflects what is happening in a person's life, there are many blogs used by companies to distribute content. Some affiliate / reseller programs use them as a way to control what is published about their company and its offerings on partner sites.

There Are Literally Tens Of Thousands Of Blogs On The Internet Today.

The natural question for most is, who started the first blogs, and when? While I have been unable to discover who the first blogger actually was, it does appear that they first appeared in the mid 1990's. However, they only really began to emerge from the 'underground' in 1998. Even at that, they only started to become broadly used in 2001/2002.

Originally, blogs were simply standalone web sites dominated by links and peppered with personal commentaries and observations. They were little more than a person maintaining a personal web site; much like someone would keep a diary, with links pointing to items around the World Wide Web that had caught their interest along the way.

Today, blogs are much more dynamic. Some major corporations' web sites contain internal blogs, where employees can post their thoughts, ideas and more; sometimes they are public, sometimes not. But mostly, blogs are hosted on independent web sites. When using one of these, the diary keeper, or blogger, logs in and starts posting his or her thoughts in real time to the Internet. Witnesses to events can comment on breaking stories faster than the mainstream media, which usually are at least one hour from being 'live on the scene'. Thus, bloggers can publish reports and commentaries live on the Internet, and provide information to the world faster than traditional media, all without a publisher or editor to review or approve their work.

Think about it, Monks used to have to handwrite lengthy text to record events. Then Gutenberg came along, and revolutionized the publishing industry by making it possible to mass produce their work. Systems got faster and faster for a few centuries, and then along came the Internet. It became possible for anyone with a computer and a web site somewhere to publish their work and have it visible anywhere around the world in seconds. Now, anyone can spread their message, instantly. Aspiring and established writers alike can bypass the traditional publishing industry, and disseminate their work directly to the public.

Of course, this lack of editorial supervision means that writers, good and bad, no longer have to fear rejection. No one has control over how or what they write and there's no one looking out for them to keep them out of trouble.

As powerful as this may seem, the real power lies in syndication, which gives any writer the ability to broadly distribute their writings by plugging the content into an RSS feed: Really Simple Syndication.

Like any other communication medium, blogs' effectiveness depends upon quality of content and execution. If you plan on starting one for your business, below are some easy steps to follow:

1. Keep it up to date, a blog which people will consider relevant should be updated every few days. Concentrate on providing the most current information on issues facing your industry, or information of interest to your marketplace at large. Also remember to post any breaking news you come across as soon as you find it.

2. Ask for Feedback: Successful blogs encourage reader participation. If you are afraid of criticism, or don't want to host a debate forum on your ideas, or your company policies, stick to publishing informative articles on your website.

3. Link to numerous outside resources and to other weblogs with like content. It shows your readers that you are keeping up to date on what is going on elsewhere too.

4. Keep it Simple, use very few graphics, and simple color schemes. Focus on the text; that's why people come and read your content anyhow. If you discuss many topics, use categorical sections, and keep archives of older material.

5. Remember, you too were clueless about blogs, possibly not all too long ago. Many of your readers are probably clueless regarding blogs, XML, RSS. In fact, many may not know when they are even reading a blog.

6. Be Patient, expect a small readership initially, and allow your audience to grow organically. The better the content you provide, the quicker your audience will grow.

Whether blogging turns out to be a passing fad, or if it proves itself to be a whole new way to communicate with existing and potential customers, you owe it to yourself, and your company to examine what the potential is for you.

Another good reason to consider blogging is most businesses hit a wall at some point, wherein they have posted so much information on their business online that they struggle to find new items to post about themselves which keep their web site looking fresh and attractive, and encourage visitors to come back. For any businesses that have reached this point, blogs may prove to be an answer.

Content is a necessity for online businesses, because it gives visitors a reason to come back.

There are many ways to build a successful blog. What it really comes down to is offering readers relevant, interesting information, and providing links to resources and news.

To succeed, it is essential that your blog provides readers more than just facts and links. You need to insert observations and commentaries. Your readers can probably get all the information you are presenting elsewhere. What they can't get is your commentary or analysis. If it's good, or humorous, people will remember it, and soon come to consider you an expert in your field.

In part 2, we'll examine blogs at work, and how they are a marketing goldmine.

Local search

2004-11-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

I was at the Kelsey Conference on Interactive Local Marketing and Local Search last week. What a great conference. I did some research ahead of time, and found that some industry commentators were claiming that the paid search market had peaked. What a joke! Search will continue to evolve to for years to come. Organic search will always drive the customers, so relevant results are key, but local search is clearly the next major area for advertising in the paid search market. Locally targeted advertising. Goes to my whole core philosophy that the world wide web will eventually become about mostly local search + then worldwide research. A few major ecommerce companies which operate without regards to borders and frontiers will continue to thrive, but the majority of traffic will be about connecting local users to local businesses.

With a wireless PDA, the search engines really are like having a yellow pages in your pocket. Whether by design or by fluke, the search engines have been penetrating into the yellow pages market with increasing success.

In spite of all this activity, search is still in its infancy. I heard an interesting stat at the conference: only 5% of SMEs have adopted search engine marketing.

The growth that is coming in local search will be a reflection of the growth and usage of search engines in general, as well as a reflection of the increasing number of local businesses online. I remember chatting with a restauranteur a couple of years ago and explaining why they should have a web site. The response I had was "Bah!, people walk in my door, they don't look me up online and then come visit." Six months later he had a web site, and one day he told me "This is great, it works better than the Yellow Pages!" Of course, with the SBC BellSouth announcement, the Yellow Pages want to renew their image and ensure that people like him realize that more and more of their customers are searching via the Yellow Pages online.

My friend was lucky - his site was built with the search engines in mind. I made sure of that. But for most people these types of results take time, and if they don't choose the right firm to help them along the way, it will cost them a lot of money. That means that there is likely to be confusion and frustration in the process. Most businesses, not just SME's don't have the time, to learn about search engine marketing, or search engine optimization. They want customers to find them and they want sales. NOW.

BellSouth and SBC Team Up to Acquire YellowPages.com

2004-11-08T15:56:00.000-08:00

I was at the Kelsey Group conference last week when SBC and BellSouth announced this deal.BellSouth and SBC Team Up to Acquire YellowPages.com

Here's the feeling; $100,000,000.00 for a domain is way too much. But it's a small investment if the long term goal is for the two companies to do the following;

1. Monetize their existing yellow pages clients and gain a share of their online ad expenses.

2. Test the waters, see how well the two companies can work together, and if there are enough real synergies, merge. (cheaper to test it this way than to merge and then find it isn't a match made in heaven)

3. Turn Yellowpages.com into a real business, which makes lots of money each year, and spin if off for a nice profit. The domain name is one of the best ones out there, and it might cost $100,000,000 to get the same brand recognition for a competitive product, so that might justify the price.

PRESS RELEASE: Invision Internet Services to Utilize Metamend SEO Technology

2004-11-08T15:51:00.000-08:00

PRESS RELEASE: Invision Internet Services to Utilize Metamend SEO Technology: "Invision Internet Services to Utilize Metamend SEO Technology
Metamend and Invision Internet Services, Inc. today announced they have entered into a private label agreement to provide Metamend's search engine optimization (SEO) technology to Invision Internet Services client base.
Victoria, BC (PRWEB) November 8, 2004 -- Metamend and Invision Internet Services, Inc. today announced they have entered into a private label agreement to provide Metamend's search engine optimization (SEO) technology to Invision Internet Services client base.

The Metamend SEO solution utilizes proprietary optimization software technology to tune web sites for premium performance within the world's top search engines. This technology analyzes a web site's textual content within seconds, helping maximize the web site�s potential in attracting targeted traffic and higher relevant search results and rankings.

Invision Internet Services is a leading provider of site and community-building products and services. They focus upon both developing high-quality software products and first-class Internet services, with the additional focus on providing value-add business services to meet the needs of any size business. Invision�s popular suites of community management and business services tools are utilized by such organizations as Sony, Yahoo! and AMD.

Invision Internet Services President, John Fisher stated, "We believe that Invision Internet Services has made a strong move in aligning itself to the SEO tools and solutions of Metamend, as it is the perfect compliment to our Community and Hosted Forum offerings. We maintain the idea that online businesses, whether SOHO/NOHO, small business all the way through the enterprise corporation, can increase their customer retention, reduce customer acquisition costs and sustain their customer base through proactive online communities. However, getting the customers there in the first place often relies on an aggressive SEO strategy coupled with strong internet marketing practices. Combining Metamend solutions with our already powerful community and internet business solutions will ensure our customers find even greater success with us."

Richard Zwicky, Metamend search engine optimization CEO had the following statement. "It's wonderful to add another strong partner to our list of formalized relationships. Outsourcing your SEO requirements is rapidly finding industry wide acceptance. Itís much more complicated these days to stay on top of all the search engine changes. Once most firms do the math, it makes complete economic sense to outsource their SEO needs to a professional firm like Metamend. We are proud to have been selected by yet another major organization in the IT Industry to provide our technology and services. We welcome Invision Internet Services as our newest partner and look forward to a long and prosperous relationship."

About Metamend
Metamend's SEO enterprise solution has become increasingly popular for design houses, ISPís, hosting companies, and managed service providerís interested in outsourcing result driven SEO and web site optimization services for their clients. Corporations, independent web site operators, hosting firms, and world leading Ecommerce solution providers have all implemented Metamend's innovative search engine optimization solutions. The company currently has clients in 54 countries around the world.

About Invision Internet Services
Invision Internet Services is a whole new kind of place on the Internet dedicated to the people with Small Businesses, Internet Businesses, and Hobbyists alike. IIS will focuses on providing complete turn-key or ale carte solutions to Infopreneurs, NOHO/SOHO groups, Entrepreneurs and Affiliate Businesses. IIS provides the place where people and their businesses can access Enterprise Level Products and Services at Small Business Prices, with Premier Service and Support backing it all up! We provide direct level consulting services and subject matter experts as personal advisors. Our expectation is you and your business will find greater success via our products and services.

Spam & RSS Ads A Growing Trend?

2004-11-01T10:36:00.000-08:00

Interesting article for anyone with a web site wanting search traffic. It reflects yet another new instance of ways to Spam a search engine. Here's a synopsis:

What would happen if spam started to proliferate through RSS syndication feeds?

Since the popularity of RSS use is growing exponentially, the idea to monetize syndication with ads is also gaining ground. This is natural; whenever any community gathering places become popular, there is a movement to monetize them with advertizing; in one way or another.

But a lot of RSS feeds are being picked up via synidication, and reprinted hundreds if not thousands of times. With popularity online comes SPAM (unfortunately). There have reports of feeds being used to deliver spam. Spammers have realized that placing popular terms in postings will get them picked up. Use the right combination of keywords or the right frequency, and you can gain thousands of RSS subscribers who have feed crawlers which scour the various blogs for those terms. Many of these are automatically posted to other sites, the result being the spam posting, which ends up directing users to irrelevant web sites, is propogated rapidly through the Internet. Irrelevant web sites rise through the search engine listings, making it harder for end user to find the relevant content they are searching for.

Here's the article:
RSS Ads A Growing Trend

Here's, at its simplest, why spam is bad: You need to find relevant results quickly. Spam makes this more difficult. Spam is like an annoying individual who never stops interrupting you while you are speaking with someone else - they interrupt your conversation and your thoughts, making it more difficult for you to keep your train of thought.

MozillaNews - Google's Browser Plans

2004-10-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

MozillaNews - Google's Browser Plans

There is some speculation that Google's rumored browser (dubbed gbrowser) will actually be a google branded version of Firefox.

If you have not tried Firefox yet, you really should look into it at the Firefox web site.
I've had it for a little while, and love it; there's some great add-ins, which are extremely useful.

The Kelsey Group - Strategic Analysis, Research and Events

2004-10-29T12:07:00.000-07:00

Using the Internet to drive consumers to local stores has been around since Day 1. A Kelsey Group Analysis.

Three new sites launched last week, all designed to showcase local retailers. What took them so long???

Google Grabs 3-D Mapping Startup

2004-10-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

Google Grabs 3-D Mapping Startup.

Ok, so Google bought a 3D mapping startup. It's their third major acquisition this year - I see numerous references to two purchases, this and Picasa - but people forget the purchase of a startup in the UK. That firm had some contextual analysis software - much like our own. I wrote an article around the topic a while back - Google Holes, Yahoo Gaps.

In July, Google acquired Picasa, a photo imaging / sharing company. Keyhole is its second acquisition in that space.

For what purpose? Lots of people are asking that question - Google Grabbing??; Neowin discussion.

Here's my two cents; Google has been dominating the search space for quite a while now. But in the last year they've faced renewed competition (Yahoo, MSN coming) which is eating into their market share, and also suddenly become flush with cash (IPO). They recognize that they need to diversify, and have identified the photo imaging market as one which lends itself to their existing model, (you need to search to find the right images), as well as offering standalone revenue streams.

Lets face it, if MS's new search engine is really, really good. Google is in trouble, unless they diversify. Already now, Yahoo delivers results that are as accurate, if not more accurate in some cases. Google isn't generally delivering bad results, but others are delivering ones that sometimes are better. If Google slips up like it did with the bothched algorithm update in Nov. 2003, it will lose market share.

Search is such a vital part of any business operation, people cannot afford to waste time sorting through poor results. If the overall quality of results is not meeting their expectations, or if they discover that they can find better information elsewhere, that's where they will go.

So by diversifying Google is protecting its position. I expect to see further acquisitions, aimed at diversifying its offerings. I also expect it to make moves to acquire other search related firms. Firms that have technology it can use to improve its own tools, or firms which have intellectual capital of note.

ICANN - Two sTLD Applicants Approved

2004-10-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

Two new Internet domain names -- ".post" and ".travel" -- could appear online as early as next year.

ICANN said the decision on ".post" and ".travel" had less to do with relative merit and was primarily based on the level of technical and commercial details their sponsors were able to quickly provide.

The Universal Postal Union in Bern, Switzerland, wanted ".post" for national postal services, post offices, stamp collectors, and private companies such as Federal Express and UPS.

".travel" will be assigned for use by travel agents, airlines, bed and breakfast operators, tourism bureaus and others in the travel industry. It sees hotels, resorts and restaurants as among the suffix's biggest users.

Eight additional applicants are still pending approval. They include .eu, .asia, .jobs, and .xxx.

ICANN Moves Forward in First Phase Commercial & Technical Negotiations with Two sTLD Applicants

Local Search Still A Long Way to Go - Article

2004-10-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I wrote a blog entry about local search; you can see it below. I thought about it a bit more, and then sat down and wrote a whole article. I sent it off to Webpronews last night, and they were kind enough to run it today; it's called:Local Search Still A Long Way to Go. I hope you enjoy it.

They also put a nice picture into the article - nice touch! Here's a copy of it...

Local Search; Still A Long Way To Go

You know, it has not ceased to amuse me watching the various search engines fall over themselves and each other, in their march towards offering 'local search.'

How Effective Is Local Search?

It has long been obvious to anyone with any foresight that eventually, the world wide web would become local. It's only natural. Did anyone really expect the Internet to keep growing as a virtual world, completely disconnected from the physical world forever? Of course not. While there have been some Internet only players, most web sites have been reflections of traditional businesses.

So why all the fuss on local search? Because the market -the Internet - is now filled with billions of web pages, representing over 10,000,000 individual businesses scattered around the world. The Internet can supply business and consumer needs for anything except perhaps hot coffee!

The number of users online has also reach critical mass. Users no longer turn to their local Yellow Pages, they click over to Google, Yahoo, or MSN. But they expect the same quality of results. They expect to find coffee shops, restaurants, shoe repairs, and the like. They want to find businesses that are close to their present positions.

Fulfilling this desire for local search is a logical development for search engines. I own a Treo; When I'm driving around and need to find something which I know is offered locally, I pull out my Treo, log on, and search for the item. Sometimes, if it's a restaurant, I look for a particular dish I am craving. Like many people, I also plan ahead. For example, next week I'm traveling to New Jersey. I'm going to want to find some good Italian food. I could wait until I'm there and look around but it's my first time to that particular area, so I thought I would give the latest local search tools a whirl; Take them for a real world test drive. I tried all sorts of searches, but none of the engines really could handle the queries properly. I tried for an hour. Good thing I wasn't using my Treo I couldn't afford the bill!

Why couldn't I find what I was looking for?

Well, quite honestly, the search engine companies are botching the offerings in local search. Does anyone really think that finding results by zip code is relevant? Look how much territory that covers far too much to be useful. Do you know that it's possible to get the location right down to within 10 feet? Why don't the search engines do that? The technology exists.

Also, does anyone at the search engines do any real world quality control and verify how accurate their local results are? I typed in 'Italian restaurants, veal scaloppine" and the street and town where to search from. What did I get? A SUBWAY sandwich shop!!!???

I tried it with Mexican food too. Imagine what was third on the list? SUBWAY!!!

Then I tried Yahoo! I was not impressed to discover that the closest Italian food to the area of New Jersey I will be visiting... Is in Brooklyn!

The search engine business is built on relevance. Get the right answers to customers quickly and efficiently. Get them off your site, and to their destination. Do that and they will come back for new searches. Make them come back too often for the same search and they will go elsewhere.

So what can you, an independent web site operator do to attract local search customers from the search engines? How can you help the search engines fulfill their mandate? This is where local search engine optimization comes into play

If your business has a physical location and a web site, then local search is part of your future. The fact that most people have not considered local search yet, demonstrates how often overlooked it is as a tool to draw traffic to your business.

Local search can be supported simply by properly including local information in your web pages. If your web page is properly optimized and also tuned for local search, then customers will know to frequent your business when they need particular goods or services. For example, I was in a restaurant recently that served pizza topped with escargots. Not many of those around! But if that's what your customer is craving, wouldn't you expect them to find your eatery when they search online? That's what optimization does for you. Now add localization to the mix and the same people can easily figure out how close they are to you, and how to get to your location!

There are many way to include localization terms to facilitate the search engines working with your web site. At the most basic, you need to include your address in visible textual content within your web pages. Assuming the search engines can get to those pages, you're part way there. You will also need to include that information in other areas of the content of your businesses web site. Include it in your meta tags, and where applicable, in link text. There are specific meta tags, and xml schema tags for localization; if you don't know about them, get a professional SEO to help you. If they don't know about localization and meta tags for local search, then you need a new SEO.

Search engine optimization for local search works the same as regular web site optimization. But by localizing search terms, you are providing additional contextual information for the search engines to do their work.

Optimizing part of your web site's content to ensure local attention will not minimize the opportunities your business receives from regular, Internet wide search engine traffic. Instead, it will supplement existing traffic with increased highly localized traffic which will likely result with people just walking into your business without ever mentioning that they found your business online. When you ensure your local clientele can find you, you make it easier for them to support you.