Technology

While defining web 2.0 as mainly a marketing term Eric Schmidt of Google answers what he feels will me the next evolution of the internet, otherwise know as Web 3.0.

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Not only does Google have the largest search engine today it has started to amass a bunch of businesses and technologies that provide them vital user data and what you search for, what websites you go to, how long you stay there and they even record if actions are taken on those sites. If you are logged into any one of their services like Gmail or personalized search then they even know that it was you that creates certain transactions. When you signed up for Google you probably provided them with your date of birth information, gender and location info. Starting to sound a bit creepy? The truth is that Google has recently stopped public records companies from buying “proper name” search terms. I believe this was to make it seem that they were helping to protect your personal information. Why then is it a acceptable understanding that if you are looking for “dirt” or information on someone that you just “Google” them. How important is your privacy to you? Do you mind that LinkedIn, Wis.dm, Myspace and other social networking sites have opened up your personal profiles for Google and other search engines to crawl and include in their search index?

Google Buys Peakstream - PeakStream develops tools that boost the performance of single-threaded applications on multi-core chips.

Google Buys YouTube for $1.65B - YouTube.com had approximately 19.1 million visitors in August 2006 (Comscore)

Google Acquires Feedburner for $100M - Feedburner.com is a RSS feed management company.

Google Acquires DoubleClick -
DoubleClick, the online advertising company, was purchased for $3.1 billion in cash. Read an article on why privacy advocates are concerned with the DoubleClick purchase: Google-DoubleClick deal

Google Acquisition of Urchin - Urchin developed software to help companies analyze the traffic at their Web sites.

How often are web users using Google for search? According to the latest published stats on SearchEngineWatch, Google generates about 90-100 Million searches a day and has 500,000,000 users worldwide (June, 2007).

Google has collected information from their Feedburner RSS aggregator on what sites are the most popular and what topics are most talked about. I heard that Google can basically analyze their search stream data and tell Hollywood whether a movie is going to flop or not before it even hits the theaters. Google has their own toolbar that I use everyday that collects search and click stream data, they have thousands of websites that are part of the Googe AdSense publisher network that have Google content matched ads. If you use Gmail then you’ll see sometimes that the context of your email messages get matched up with advertisers. If you are talking about an upcoming trip to Barcelona, Spain then you might see an ad that has “Cheap Hotels in Barcelona”

Free Wifi Access Data - Google is beta testing free wifi coverage areas in Mountain View right now. I am pretty sure this will allow them to get ISP-type data on users surfing behaviors.

Google Checkout - Google even wants to know what I am buying and to help me streamline my logins and passwords.

Google Even Owns Domains - A lot of people don’t actually know that Google is also a Domain Registrar and they know when you register a domain name and make any changes to it.

Google Maps Street View - They have now started photographing streets in major cities with cars that drive around and take photos in all directions. Here is a photo that one of the Google’s Toyota Prius camera cars took in SF:

So watch your back because Google surely is. How does that saying go? “Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer.” It is always nice to know how big businesses are growing and who owns what and for what reasons. You all didn’t think that Google was still a garage operation? Google also is in the process of building their own power plant on the banks of the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon.

Now get back to searching and blogging so they can collect some more data from you today.

-Brian

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Here is a top 20 list of SEO Tips and Tricks that I use when doing search engine optimization work for our websites and our clients websites. Some of them are the obvious ones and a few are more creative and gorilla style marketing techniques.

I have them listed in no particular order of importance just so you try them all out at one point or another:

1. Create accounts on social sites like Myspace, Linkedin and Face Book and link to your website. Myspace re-writes outbound links so you don’t get credit for the link back but you can get traffic to your site. Linkedin in has an area where you can edit your profile and specify websites. Choose the other drop down so you can custom name the link. You can put up to 3 websites in your Linkedin profile. (see Brian’s LinkedIn Profile). Make sure you then build your contacts as a dead profile doesn’t do anything for you. Face Book also lets you list a website in your profile. There are a ton of other social sites that have these features. It is important before you go and invest a bunch of time with this to make sure they don’t have “no follow” tags on the outbound links.

2. Create accounts on all of the “Linkerati” websites like Digg, Reddit, Technorati and Del.icio.us and claim or submit your site. Be very clever with your titles and descriptions so you don’t appear to be just spamming their communities. Start engaging with the communities by commenting on articles, posting new topics and voting on stories. Invite all of your office buddies to join your networks as friends too. Add a Del.icio.us button on your home page so people can easily bookmark you in their del.icio.us accounts.

3. Submit your site to the top search engines free submission pages. duh. A list of those can be found here: Search Engine Submission

4. Syndicate your site’s content by using an RSS feeds. Submit your RSS feeds to agregator sites like FeedBurner, Squidoo, FeedDirectory, FeedFury, Feedboy, Jordomedia, FeedBomb, FeedCat, and RSSmad.

5. Write an article related to your sites content, publish it on your site and then submit it to article sites.

6. Get an account on StumbleUpon and get your friends to Stumble your site. Again, you need to connect to your friends to get some traction with Stumbleupon.

7. Create a custom 404 page so that even if someone lands on your site by error they are re-directed to a nicer page with maybe some Google AdSense ads. This is more important for older sites that might have had tons of pages that are now broken or have been removed.

8. Add a link to your site in the signature of any forums or bulletin board communities that you post on. This is also called “Sig-Whoring”. It will also help establish yourself as a trusted source if you are a good contributor to the forums.

9. Don’t worry about Google’s PageRank - worrying about PageRank is as effective as using Alexa to determine your sites popularity online. Google has their own internal PageRank that they use for weighting. The visible PR is mostly to drive SEO people crazy when dealing with their clients. Google PR in the toolbar is all about vanity. We have sites with zero PR that still show up in top organic results.

10. Search Engine friendly design - I said that I wasn’t going to order these by importance but I have to emphasize how important this one is. If your site has a bunch of embedded forms, headers with your address and 800-numbers, javascript drop down navigation links, flash movies, frames, or pages with large images and no text then how the hell do you expect the search engine spiders to crawl the content of your site and determine what relevancy it has to certain keywords and categories.

11. Stay away from 2 and 3-way link trading schemes. Build your link backs organically through a few stragegic link trades with sites that have similiar or relevant content as yours. One way links are the best way to go. Get the technorati’s talking about your site.

12. Get a press release written and sent out on the wire about your site and some special feature or offering you have. Be sure to place a nice anchor link in your press releases back to your site. Anchor links still have a lot of weight in scoring if done properly.

13. Title Tags are KING. Make sure your title tags and H1 header tags are matching or close in context of what your pages content is about. The engines are spidering and indexing meta tags but little to no weight is being assigned to them. (I know this one hurts and is hard to swallow but is very true.) Write your description tags so that they are effective in communicating when a person is reading the abstracts in the SERPs. Make sure your URLs are easy to read too and that they correspond to the title or content of the page. (example: look at the title of this page, the URL and the Header of the article)

14. The Algorithm that Google uses is “Markov Chaining” to help calculate scoring & rankings. Do some research on it online and you’ll understand why they are using an algorithm like this.

15. Do NOT use frames. Funny how people still have sites in frames. Their should be some sort of W3 consortium against frame websites.

16. Do I submit my site to DMOZ.org? I personally think it is a big waste of time and an empty community of about 10 editors that actively approve sites. Who has used a directory in the last year anyways?

17. Create an XML sitemap of your site and submit it to Google, MSN and Yahoo. They are all using the same sitemap protocol. You can submit to Google through their Google Webmasters central and Yahoo through Yahoo Site Explorer. It is a good practice to also have a sitemap linked on your site from the home page to allow users to be able to navigate easily and for the crawlers to pick up your content for indexing.

18. Do your site in CSS and submit your site to CSS communities. CSS goes back to the search friendly design and the engines love how nice CSS renders.

19. Ask the Blog-o-sphere and other websites to review your site and/or products for you on their site.

20. Validate your HTML and CSS. It’ll help ensure your site displays well in all browsers.

What engine should I optimize my site for? Well, that is an easy one since Google receives about 50% of all search queries, Yahoo 25%, MSN and Ask about 10% each.

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I picked mine up on the 29th @ 7PM without waiting by going to one of Apple’s flagship stores (University Village)…the great part is people who waited in a 1000ft line waited for nothing…and it only took about an hour to get through all of them. Anyhow…I picked up the 8GB and went home. Since I was on a Cingular family plan prior to my purchase, when I tried to activate it I encountered some problems; some kind of error because I was on a discounted plan through Boeing.

Since it was after hours, I had to wait until the next day until I could get the phone activated. My first impressions of the iPhone were great. Reading previous reviews, I was hesitant about the touch screen, but after using it, honestly, it’s a wierd thing to get used to but I don’t think I’ll have any problems as I continue to use the keypad.

I was able to sync all my iCals, contacts via Address Book, photos, and music without a problem. It’s unfortunate that the iPhone OS is approximately 700MB…

I was a bit worried when I heard there wasn’t a search function in the address book, but the scrolling in contacts is pretty simple. If you want to scroll slowly, you just flick up and down in the center of the screen, but if you want to scroll by entire letter groups all you need to do is flick the scroll bar up and down.

Animations are snappy and the phone is responsive, just like you see in the advertisements. One thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes the iPhone will forget how it is orientated, especially when I’m using Safari…so I have to wiggle it a few times. The keyboard is much easier to use in widescreen. Real browsers > mobile browsers.

EDGE isn’t SUPER fast, but I can hop on google maps or check email without a problem. 75% of the time I was in a free wifi hotspot today. Wifi really took a toll on my battery life though, and I was able to go through an entire charge before the day was over. My only gripes about the phone are that I can’t run certain things like Mail and Google maps in wide screen. I’d be nice because the keyboard is much easier to use in that format.

Mail is simple, and reminds me vaguely of OSX. One quirk I encountered was trying to set up POP access via Google Apps. Since Apple tries to make the iPhone as easy as possible to use, they may have tried a bit too hard. To log in with my GApps account, my ID is “jon@ngsthings.com”, but since the POP server is pop.gmail.com the iPhone thinks I have a gmail account and proceeds to add “@gmail.com” to my login ID (which would be fine if I was ONLY using Gmail). Obviously trying to log in with “jon@ngsthings.com@gmail.com” wouldn’t work.

To work around this problem, I had to delete all the mailboxes off the iPhone, reenter mail on the iPhone, click “Other” when I was prompted for the type of email I planned on using, THEN I was able to enter everything without the iPhone auto-completing. Only then was I able to get around the problem

I do have some gripes about mail…

1. You can’t select all the messages and mark them as read…so that was a PITA since I have 500 unread messages now
2. You can’t select more than one message at a time
3. I can’t create folders to sort my mail
4. It doesn’t do widescreen

And finally, some gripes about the phone in general:

1. When you type, sometimes you are able to move your cursor to edit your words, but in some places, you can’t do it for some reason
2. No widescreen in all applications
3. Dock connector pinout for audio doesn’t seem to work with my dock connector in the car
   It seems Apple has disabled the lineout for anything other than the included Dock connector! This is a GIANT PITA!
4. Can’t sync via bluetooth

Everything considered…it’s basically the best thing I’ve purchased in a while. This is the Rev A, 1.0; I’m excited for the applications and improvements in the future.

We have some clients that somehow back in the day were able to get their website listed with DMOZ.org. DMOZ has grown to be one of the most inactive and inaccurate directories that some of the engines still seem to crawl and use for their default directory listings and to show as the abstract on the SERPs. DMOZ is also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP.

MSN Search is now recognizing a new meta tag that allows you to request to opt out of showing the DMOZ description field as your search abstract listing. Why would you want to change this? DMOZ editors have been notorious in writing non-sexy decriptions for websites which will hurt your click through rate on your natural search placements.

Since most search engines aren’t even crawling or given any keyword relevancy to the meta description tags, it is in your best interest to focus the messaging on your meta description tag to be more marketing friendly to your product or brand offering.

Here is the “Say NO to DMOZ” meta tag:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”>
or
<META NAME=”msnbot” CONTENT=”NOODP”>

The first meta tag is for all crawlers and the second one is for the MSN Bot specifically. The change should take place once the crawler has re-crawled the page which usually from about one to four weeks.

When will someone just put a bullet in the ODP project please?

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Picking an affiliate publisher network to manage your affiliate program can be tricky depending on what your main objectives are and the budget that you are willing to spend to build up your program.

Here are some of the benefits of using affiliate networks:

- They send out montly checks to your affiliates to save you from additional accounting work.
- They have sophisticated tracking and reporting systems that will tie into your internal reports.
- They have large reach to affiliate marketers that have a tendency to only promote vendors that are part of one of these networks.

Running your own internal affiliate program is another option that many top vendors take on as well. Here are some of the benefits of having your affiliate program in house.

- Lots of flexibility in your promotions.
- You have ownership of your affiliates contact information and have the ability to communicate with them at no cost.
- You can custom tailor reports to your business instead of having to adopt the affiliate reporting interfaces to your business.
- You get the benefit of 1,000’s of inbound links to your site if your tracking system is done correctly.
- You don’t have to pay the monthly management fees and a percentage of sale that most networks require.
- Running with a 3rd party network can cost you around $2,500 - $3,500 alone in service fees as well as the payroll of your affiliate manager.

Here is a list of the top tier affiliate program networks:
OneNetworkDirect.com - Run by Todd Crawford, Former VP of Commission Junction (CJ), they have more then 40,000 clients.
Buy.at - headquartered in London, England with offices also in the US
Commission Junction - (otherwise known as CJ) - Headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA with offices in France, Germany and the UK
Linkshare - located in New York City, NY with offices in Japan and the UK
Performics - Owned by DoubleClick, powered by ConnectCommerce and located in Chicago, IL.
ShareaSale - Currently host over 2,000 affiliate publishers and are located in Chicago, IL
TradeDoubler - Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden with offices all over Europe and Russia.
Zanox - They are the European market leader in performance-based multichannel commerce with a central office in Berlin, Germany and offices in Holland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, UK and the US.
CPAEmpire.com - CPA Empire is more of a performance affiliate network that will run your exclusive offers to their partner sites.

Q: Should we hire an someone to manage the affiliate program?
A: Yes. Yes. Yes. In a perfect world, your affiliate program should be your least inexpensive means of acquisition in your business and should account for anywhere from 20-40% of your overall revenue. This varies depending on your vertical of course but I have seen well run affiliate programs bringing in more revenue and orders then paid search campaigns.

Q: Are there businesses out there that manage affiliate program relationships for you?
A: Yes. Some full service interactive agencies have internal resources to manage affiliate programs. You will usually at least benefit using an agency during your contract negotiations with the affiliate publishers as they are quite familar with payouts and monthly service agreements and know where to push back.

Q: What are some things we should look for in hiring an affiliate manager?
A: Ultimately, the candidate that you select to manage your affiliate program should have worked with one of the two large vendors like CJ or Linkshare before and be very comfortable making calls and working the phones. This person should have the capacity to write newsletters and be organized enough to manage a promotional calendar to keep their affiliates engaged in your program.

Q: What are the downsides to running with the large vendors like CJ or Linkshare?
A: You have to be 100% committed to your relationship with these top tier vendors as their monthly service fees aren’t cheap and you need to be selling enough product/subscriptions a month to cover the fee and still have margin on your business.

Q: What are the upsides to running with the large vendors versus smaller niche shops?
A: Being an affiliate marketer ourselves we are always looking for new vendors to promote in certain verticals and the
large vendors tend to have the bigger higher converting brands.

Q: What are the upsides to running with the smaller niche affiliate publisher?
A: You will get more one on one service as well as a dedicated account manager that will help you grow your affiliate
network.

In the end, I have seen people become very successful with their affiliate programs when managed in house with a good tracking and reporting solution or using 3rd party networks like CJ and Linkshare. I will do a couple follow up blog posts on some tips and tricks to affiliate programs.

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I’ve been really busy lately, but I’ve finally been able to put together a brief review of the TraqMate! Recently, I had the chance to log some data during the novice practices this weekend at Pacfic Raceways…if I had to summarize everything into one word: WOW.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ve put together a little video with commentary. A few people were interested in checking out the data from the TraqMate, here is a 20MB screencast from a novice rain race. It’s a .MOV, so I apologize in advance…but I’m a Mac guy, and that’s the way it is
You can see me start off with one set of data, I proceed to add acceleration/braking, G-forces and a segment analysis. The sgment analsis is AWESOME. You can zoom in/out on the track map to view your position, which is helpful when you are comparing more than one rider or multiple sessions against each other. When I am dragging the 90 degree arrow, I am setting up a segment for the death chute and straight as well as one for T3/T4. Who needs split times when you have segment times for any section you desire. Compared to an AMB beacon, lap times are within 1/10th to 1/20th, depending on the GPS signal.

After I set up the segments, I proceed to remove a some data, then add another sesson. I love how I can overlay data and compare specific laps against each other. I REALLY like the segment analysis because it allows me to break down which lap have the best entry/exit speeds, brake time, brake g forces, etc. I need to find a better mounting location for the sensor unit though, it’s kinda zip tied right now.

Finally I turn on the “brake/zone” map, where I can see a visual representation of gas/brake. Some of it is off since it is relying on GPS data and my sensor unit’s mounting tray is slightly off, the data is not 100% accurate. I have yet to hook up the brake and TPS inputs!

Regarding setup, the basic setup is easy, the unit has a few parts:

• 1. power
• 2. sensor unit (contains acceleratometer and brains)
• 3. GPS antenna

You can hardwire or use a battery pack for power, which is simple on a bike. Mount the sensor unit in the tail section. Mount hte GPS antenna for line of sight. Optionally you can mount the display unit which is used to set start/finish line, displays lap times, etc. but is not necessary.

On my bike, I am tapping the RPM, TPS, and brake light for a more in depth look into my riding, but the unit works w/o all these frills! There’s also room for more digital and analog inputs like brake pressure, oil tem, water tmp, etc! ah I am so stoked. Just recently I’ve been told that the new version of the TraqView software is going to be released in a month or two, I’ve also discovered that the TraqMate logs altitude, ambient temperture
If the package looks like something you’d be interested in, and you are local…shoot me an email. I will be renting the unit to local guys with the option to buy their own!

It’s always a pain in the ass keying nav points into your onboard navigation system. I mean, yes there have been alternative solutions, but they’ve all been kind of cumbersome: key in the destination by hand, or maybe find your address on your comptuer then transfer it via a flash drive; whatever the case, it’s more effort than it is acutally worth.

Now that BMW and Google have teamed up, you can send an address from Google Maps directly to your car. The only thing I am weary of is that damn idrive, I couldn’t use one of them if my life depended on it. Now that we’ve seen the push, I’m curious to see what others do…specifically Audi!

Originally read on NaviGadget