andreas' blog

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:31:00 +0000

Added a Facebook Group page. You can join that to get updates.

Still trying to get Google Analytics to track my Facebook fan page. If you've done this and it works, let me know how you did this. I'm writing documentation so everyone can do this.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:52:00 +0000

Another Google Social Media Fail?: Google is shutting down FTP access for Google Blogger. They claim only 0.5% of Blogger authors use FTP, but this 0.5% is also the most technical and the longtime users of Blogger.

You can read their comments to Google (Caution: Contains "language".) It's not pretty. Google annoyed yet another core audience. It got so bad that Google shut off the comments.

Blogging is one of the core tools of Social Media. Google desperately wants to become a social media company. So why infuriate their core users?

The alternative? Move to Wordpress. It's free, it has thousands of themes, and since it's hosted on your server, it can't be affected if the company shuts down. Over the next month, I'll look into this and move my blog.

What's next? A migration away from Gmail? Gmail has major design failures, such as the inability to sort email and (this is really weird) poor search capability. I'll wait for Titan and then see where to switch.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:30:00 +0000

Facebook = The Web?: The large companies are setting up websites in Facebook. By using FBML (Facebook Markup Language, similar to HTML), they can build websites inside Facebook.

To see a collection of corporate pages at Facebook, visit CustomFacebook.com and FacebookShowcase.net (thanks to Matt McDougall at Digital Marketing Inner Circle for telling me about the first one).

Up to now, SEO was all about being findable in Google. But now there's Facebook. 400m registered members; 200m log in daily; they spent 55 minutes daily in Facebook. What is your SEO strategy in Facebook? There are no meta-tags, no link counts. How is a company with 100,000 products going to have those products be findable in Facebook? SEO in 2010 is going to be a whole new game.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 06:32:00 +0000

Google Talks about SEO: Google published their Google SEO Report Card. It's a review of the state of SEO for many Google products.

It's not a complete document. It only mentions a few generally-known items. Many SEO factors are not discussed at all, such as the off-page factors.

There are a few interesting items. It confirms (p. 9) that the meta-keyword tag isn't indexed. It also adds that the meta-description tag is not indexed. About half of the 49-page document discusses 301s and canonical URLs.

The report isn't useful for people who aren't expert in SEO. It doesn't explain much. It says nothing on overall strategy, the role of SEO in marketing, or deeper SEO issues.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:50:00 +0000

Marketing 2010: What's Up? I'm speaking March 10 at DMA Palo Alto on the latest in Google, what's up with Facebook,etc. Lots of secret stuff about Google and Facebook. You'll see stuff that you didn't even know existed. Includes a 90-minute workshop. More at DMANC.org.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:04:00 +0000

Facebook sends more traffic to portals than Google.

Compete found 13% of traffic to portals such as Yahoo, MSN, and AOL came from Facebook. eBay accounted for 7.61%. Google was third with 7%.

So... if you want traffic, use Facebook and eBay (13% + 7.61% = 20.61%) over Google (7%).

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:11:00 +0000

Social Media 2010: First it was called Web 2.0, but that was all about tools, so it died.

Then it became Social Media (SM). All about talking with each other. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. SM is actually SMS: you send short update messages to your friends. Google has now joined the party about two years late by adding Wave and Buzz.

So we now have Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Wave, and Buzz: that's five ways to SMS your friends. Or, four too many. Which will die?

MySpace is dead.

Wave waved goodbye; the last Wave in my account is several weeks old.

Twitter's traffic peaked in July and has been dropping. My Twitter account is just an endless stream of press releases, and that's after I've unfollowed the worst offenders. Last month, Google gave up and added Twitter to the search results, but only for a few very-high traffic keywords and now, the lag is several hours. Google doesn't really want to promote Twitter.

Within 24 hours of the release of Google Buzz, there was already a backlash. It's pretty bad when the front page of Fox News joins the attack along with one very angry ex-wife. Google was forced to make a series of major changes within hours to reduce the anger. If you have a Google phone, it will constantly broadcast your exact position. Can't wait to turn off that one.

That leaves Facebook (FB). FB is #2 and will soon be #1 (and worse yet for Google, FB's search engine is powered by Bing). Can Google beat FB? Google is adding social media wherever it can. But it's not looking good. To win, Google would have to reposition itself as a social media site, not a search engine. But I doubt they'll do that.

Google spent two years to develop Buzz, so many at Google use it. That means it's very easy to find a Google engineer, see his list of contacts, and read their Buzz notes. Want to keep up? Just click Follow and you'll get a feed of their discussions. This is a massive security hole into Google. I expect most corporations will ban their staff from using Buzz.

Where's the next battle? Facebook is about to release Titan, their complete email tool. Just like Hotmail and GMail, you can use this for all of your email. FB has 400m users, so Titan will grow fast, which will cut into Google's GMail revenues.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:59:00 +0000

Google now allows image ads in the search results. This is a major policy change at Google: for nearly ten years, they've refused to put image ads in the search results.

So far, the advertisers are major companies. They're allowed to put multiple ads on the page (another policy change...).

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:54:00 +0000

eCommerce in China: Online revenue in China in 2009 grew 30% (74.3bn yuan, $10.9bn). iResearch predicts 2010 online revenues in China from advertising, games, shopping, and other activities will grow 51% to 112.3bn yuan ($16.5bn). (Source: BBC News)

Is Google really going to abandon that?

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:15:00 +0000

Ever wonder why the keywords in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools didn't quite match? Okay, probably not :-) But when you do, here's an explanation.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:41:00 +0000

Google's Real Time Search If you tweet, can you get into the top results at Google? Let's try this.

I searched Google for a hot topic, such as "apple tablet". There were no real-time results (RTR). iphone? SEO? No RTR. No RTR for "global warming".

Let's try "tiger woods." Bingo. Every few seconds, his latest girlfriend.

So, if you tweet about your product, how long will you last at the top of Google? Let's measure... about 17 seconds. After 17s, your tweet scrolls off the page. How many people were looking that moment at your tweet?

Two lessons: 1) Google has very few Twitter feeds. Global warming talks are going on right now in Copenhagen, with tens of thousands of demonstrators. Yet not even "global warming" shows up in RTR. Only Tiger Woods gets a real-time feed. Google talks RTR, but does very little. They're not going to turn Google into a secondary page for Twitter.

2) What company could have anything that can be presented in a feed such as Tiger Woods? His sponsors are laying low right now. And if you had something, you'd get only 17 seconds of placement.

By the way, you can put a twitter feed on your website. Go to Twitter.com/Badges.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:48:00 +0000

What's My Rank in Google? This weekend, Google quietly rolled out personalized results to all users. If you're using your Google ID and you're logged into Google, then your search results are based on your search history and interests. Now, everyone gets personalized results.

"What is our ranking?" "Can we be #1 in Google?" Those are among the most common questions we get from clients. What does the change at Google mean?

There isn't "one Google search result". Every search result is tailored to the user. Let's say three people search for "apple". For me, who uses Unix or Windows, Apple is the Beatles' music company. For Laramie, who is a Certified Master Gardener (look it up), there are well over 700 types of apples. For Emily, Apple is a company that made her laptop computer. Google sees what each of us visit and after a while, Google delivers results that match our pattern. Each person get different results.

SEO is not about "be #1 in Google." There is no more "universal Google". You can't be #1 in everyone's search results. The real meaning of SEO is "be findable by your target audience, wherever they are looking for you."

The good news: Personalized searches make it MORE likely that your page will show up for your target audience. A garden supply store that has Ashmead's Kernel apple trees no longer has to compete for search engine ranking against Apple Corp (Beatles) or Apple Inc (Mac). Know your target audience. Be findable wherever they search.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:43:00 +0000

Here's why you can't burn witches in Denmark! (Thanks to Trygfonden.dk for the image :-)

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:03:00 +0000

Stephanie told me about this collection of 11 case studies that cover how companies in different industries tracked the ROI or results in their social media campaigns. Examples include consumer retail, enterprise, rock concerts, automobile, and so on. They measured their campaigns in social media and public relations (PR). The document includes names of tools and how they did this. See Social Media ROI Success Stories at MarketingProfs.com (I am not affiliated with them. We subscribe to their service.)

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:19:00 +0000

Our book Search Engine Marketing has been published in China by Tsing Hua University Press in Beijing. Tsing Hua, the leading technology university in China, is known as the MIT of China. Many thanks to Maggie Guan (co-author), Stephanie Cota (co-author), Emily Huang (proof reader), Roslyn Layton (co-author of the KPI chapter), Lili Knobloch (coordinator), and Bob Platkin, plus many more. We also thank the team at Tsing Hua University Press and McGraw-Hill China.

Last Friday, we also reached agreement with a publisher in Taiwan.

The China book has been completely updated and revised. We teach SEO, PPC, and analytics in a 3-day in-person course for Search Marketing Professionals.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:23:00 +0000

Dear Web Guy, What do you think of WebSiteGrader.com? It tells me my SEO score. Does that really work? -- Perplexed in Peoria.

Dear Peoria,

In the beginning, SEO was a technical process: put keywords in the meta-tags, sprinkle keywords around the page, get lots of links: bingo, you showed up in Google. Basically, it fooled Google's algorithm. But search engines finally realized users don't want to see the page with the best SEO; users want to see the page with best answer to their query.

This means it's no longer sufficient to get a high rank by using links, meta-tags, keywords, etc. It's entirely possible for a page with zero keywords (no keywords in the meta-tags, the HTML, or the URL) and zero backlinks to rank #1 over pages with lots of keywords and high pagerank scores. (Yes, we know examples of this for highly-contested, highly-visible topics, and yes, we'll tell you how if you sign up for our SEO/PPC course or hire us :-)

As we wrote in our book, Google uses 10,000 humans to evaluate web pages. They look at the user's intent in the query. The Quality Raters choose what goes to the top of the search results page. They down-rank sites that are not relevant.

This means WebsiteGrader.com and similar tools give webmasters a false sense of success ("hey, I have 98 points!") that has nothing to do with how search engines actually rank pages. Ignore WebsiteGrader.com. Write better pages.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:31:00 +0000

Here's a Word Cloud of my blog. Use Wordle.net to create word clouds of a blog, yours or someone else.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:44:00 +0000

I found out about Yahoo Alerts. It sends weather, breaking news, and alerts on any mention of a keyword to your phone via SMS. It's free (in comparison, Google Alerts can't use SMS and it doesn't include news or weather.) Go to beta.alerts.yahoo.com

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:15:00 +0000

The Berlin Wall: The 20th anniversary is coming up (Nov. 9, 1989). I'm getting requests for radio interviews and reprints of my article. Remember the wall? Read my story about the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Five million people were there in Berlin, and I was the only one who wrote about it.

Daryl Heron has a good collection of videos of key speeches by Kennedy and Reagan, plus the events at the Berlin Wall.

Nobody predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not the CIA, the US military... None. The collapse took them by surprise and they had no idea what to do. Bush Sr. spent a year trying to figure out what to do. Thatcher in the UK actively tried to prevent the collapse of the wall.

Could it happen here? Could the USA collapse? For the last 40 years, American economic theory has been based on Milton Friedman. In fact, Friedman's economic theory stated it was impossible for a collapse to happen. Nobody realized Wall Street could collapse as it did in September 2008. We now have no economic model for the USA. Nobody understand why Wall Street collapsed and nobody knows how to fix it. Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize in Economics) wrote a wonderfully clear article about the state of American economic theory.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:08:00 +0000

The Infinite Web. Is the web infinite? Is everything on the web? A squirrel comes to my glass door and taps the glass; I give her a peanut or two. Last week, I saw one of the peanuts looked like a duck. People saw it and said "Hey, that peanut looks like a duck!" Someone joked I could sell it on eBay for $50,000.

So... I typed into a search engine "peanut looks like a duck." Guess what? There's a website for that: ThisPeanutLooksLikeaDuck.com

Amazing. There's a website for literally everything.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:15:00 +0000

BusinessWeek is publishing a series of interviews on how Google manages search results. Rob Hob interviewed Scott Huffman (Director of the search results evaluation team); Udi Manber (Google vice-president of technology for core search); Amit Singhal (Director of the ranking team).

Interesting, but nothing new. They talked without saying anything.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:44:00 +0000

On Adobe's Purchase of Omniture: What does this mean?

Many of you have been through an M&A (merger and acquisition). It's the same story: Adobe already has an HR department, finance, billing, etc., so many of those people at Omni will be fired, despite assurances from the CEOs. That dismays the other employees, so some of them will leave. Some in upper management will cash in their stocks and leave. It will take few months for regulators to approve the merger. And another nine months or more for the anaconda to swallow its prey, er, for Adobe to complete the merger. This means a year of confusion, slow sales, and unhappy customers. The top two enterprise competitors are Coremetrics and Unica, so they'll move in to poach customers, perhaps pick up a few experienced staffers, and perhaps start a FUD campaign.

Why would Adobe buy an analytics company? The purchase doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit into their line of products. Adobe sells end-user desktop design software, such as PhotoShop, fonts, PDF, and so on. Omniture is in an entirely different type of business. Forrester & others think Adobe can embed analytics into Flash. Yes, and you can already use Google Analytics to track Flash and it's free. But whatever. Adobe embeds Omni into Adobe PDF. What then? Will that be free to Adobe users? Or will they have to pay for it? $50 for Adobe PDF and... $30,000 for the analytics? And just exactly who installs this? Omni is not easy to install. Could Adobe offer Omni for free? It's too complex to install and configure for non-experts. If anyone thinks this could be free, they simply don't know what they are talking about.

So what is Omni? Omni isn't really an analytics company. They don't call themselves an analytics company. They say they do "business optimization", i.e., their suite of tools and services are used for global optimizing of an entire business strategy (marketing, leads, sales, etc.). And that REALLY doesn't fit into Adobe's product line. So I don't see a long future for Omni at Adobe. Analytics isn't really an issue for Adobe, so they won't pay full attention to it. But whatever. M&As often don't make sense.

What are the implications for the analytics industry? Not really much. "Adobe Analytics" (or whatever it will be called) will be around at least for a few years. Coremetrics & Unica are focused, so they will be a bit stronger. For the present, no major changes.

So the real issue is to see how Coremetrics and Unica react and adjust their future strategies.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:58:00 +0000

What ever happened to... Geocities? While we're talking about Facebook and Twitter, what about other social sites? Geocities let people create webpages. It became a vast community. In the late 90s, Geocities was #3 on the web and in 1999, Yahoo bought it for $3.6 billion. Geocities will close in Oct. 2009. Gone. When is the last time you visited a Geocities site?

Yes, this means you can have a site with tens of millions of visitors... and still not make money.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:30:00 +0000

China Book: I finally finished the updates and revisions for the China edition of our book. It will be translated and published by Tsing Hua University, which is the MIT of China and the leading Chinese technical university. I'll be in Beijing in late November for the book release.

noreply@blogger.com (Andreas) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:46:00 +0000

Speaking on analytics in Palo Alto at the BMA (Business Marketing Association) on July 9th at 8:30 am (yes, morning). It's a breakfast meeting at Scott's. Here's the event invitation ($15 for non-members).