UsableContent - thinking about life and the web

Google Plus Numbers? Basically BS

2012-02-06T09:44:00.003Z

So Google have just released some stats that basically say they have 90 million engaged users ... doubling that they had recently, I won't go into the numbers much but I would definently read the source article -

Google doubles Plus membership with brute-force signup process

I tweeted the link out which I found via @JamesCoyne who retweeted @SilkCharm

note - I am no writer and any typos, punctuation mistakes aren't intentional I am getting my thoughts down!

Oddly there was a bit of defence of Google! So my two pence...!

I work within a business that does social media so I am biased.
I have a GooglePlus account that I lurk within but don't actively post in ...
I use Gmail, Google Analytics, search and more

I believe that Google Plus will be pretty big, I am in circles with most of the people in the office, which oddly enough I am not friends with on Facebook, not because I don't like them but because my Facebook account is dominated by family and old friends, boring child pics!

I don't use Google Plus much and when I log in I personally don't like the experience I see some very good articles by social media / analytics / seo people who somehow I have "aquired" but I don't see 'friend' content in there, no one I know is really sharing in the same way people share Facebook content

For business use it will be massive, until tools are really rolled out I am not pushing for the company I work for to support it as much as Facebook and Twitter.

According to Hitwise Pinterest has more traffic than Google Plus...

http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html

The article does a really good job of looking into the stats and showing that like for like, they are not, read the source article for this information!

Facebook I think is here to stay and whilst I am a predominantly Twitter man, my Facebook account will be the place I choose to share most of my photos / videos, "non proffesionally on brand" humour as well as generally anything of general interest...
Facebook is where I organise parties etc...
Commercially it is easy to manage Facebook accounts at the moment.
The GooglePlus android application is VERY VERY bad and kills battery life in hours on a decent phone!

Should you use it?

Any major company (or brand) should have a Google Plus account
Any serious journalist / news company should be integrating author profiles
If your in a niche, it is probably pretty good (a candidate we interviewed told us it is very good for mixed martial arts)

Will I use it personally

Yes, but more like Twitter than Facebook

Open web?

Google is far more closed than Facebook and Twitter and has a history of not playing nice with other people!

CheckIn CheckOff

2011-11-13T16:40:00.001Z

It seems a long time ago that I started helping a colleague at Adfero with a project "CheckInCheckOff" - a simple idea - a digital challenge / treasure hunt across Leeds ... But with timing, children, developers going missing and a project manager migrating it is unbelievable that it has got this far - now just a week away I am fairly confident that it will not only be delivered but it will be pretty damn successful! We have only got half a dozen teams signed up so far but I know that it will be all right on the night!

It isn't too late to sign up! - checkincheckoff.eventbrite.co.uk

The people have been involved have been awesome and I need to mention a few of them:

Matt Gardner Epiphany Solutions - has done an awesome job of writing up the games

Rick Harrison - after our original developer going awol in a bit of a rubbish way, this guy has turned around and delivered an amazing app that allows multi player teams - this framework should be packaged and sold! If anyone ever needs a web mobile app or well anything developed I fully recommend him! He also happens to be an expert photographer - http://www.fortybelowzero.com/

Amanda Kouwenhoven @ Adfero has been the project manager through out it all and coping with what can only be described as an administrative nightmare - trying to get venues on board cope with the various personalities on the project and generally push this through to execution.

Chris Pool @ Social Loop has also been invaluable experience in event management and promotion has ensured that we have been able to promote this online using a Twitter account that has gone from zero to 400+ relevant followers in a very short time!

The game has been built around QR codes, augmented reality (provided by Feature Media) and should be seriously entertaining, followed by a gathering and drinks at a an awesome venue which unfortunately can't be disclosed as yet! If you think that you can win this why not enter a team?

Serps Number

2011-04-07T09:00:00.002+01:00

Creating a bookmarklet - bookmark any page (even this one) click edit on it, and replace the URL with the below, rename it something useful and bobs your uncle ...

javascript: var r = /start=([\d]*)/i;var myL = window.location; var match = r.exec(myL) ; if(match)startValue=match[1]; else startValue=0;var searchResults=document.getElementsByClassName('l');for ( var i in searchResults ) { var numberSpan = document.createElement("span"); var resultNumber = document.createTextNode((((parseInt(startValue)+parseInt(i))-0)+1)+'. ');numberSpan.appendChild(resultNumber);searchResults[i].parentNode.insertBefore(numberSpan, searchResults[i]);}

Minor rant about rankings ....

People are unfairly obsessed with rankings, my personal feeling is that SEO is more about quality traffic and not about rankings, course ranking for the right terms = quality traffic ...

The 'tail' is usually vastly superior in terms of quality and volume.

Keys to the media ...

2011-03-22T09:52:00.000Z

Creating Facebook pages is very easy, in fact I can not do it in about 4 minutes including a logo pinched from a website ... However if it is your business make sure you know who has the login, on Facebook it is typically a personal login and people do move companies, get fired and sometimes even go ill / die.

Peoples accounts can also be deleted, this doesn't happen too often, but you wouldn't want your page disappearing into the mists just because you can't regain ownership ...

If an agency did it for you, make sure you (company) are also an admin, make sure at least 3 senior people are admins, don't delete the agency til you are no longer in a relationship with them.
If you did it - make sure 3 other people are also admins.
If people leave the company and you can no longer trust them 100% make sure that they can't impact your web presence / reputation

The sad fact is that it is nearly impossible to regain control of a Facebook page once lost .. I tried for a few hours recovering one or two and gave up (control was lost to an unreachable ex-employee).

Where I work we are frequently asked to create Facebook pages for companies who are convinced that they don't have pages, til we find them and show them to them ...

Apps pose another complexity to it all - if you have put apps or FBML pages on your site - where are the images etc.. hosted, if this isn't under your control, who has got control.

Social Sharing

2011-03-01T16:56:00.004Z

Sharing buttons help the lazy amoungst us tweet and post to Facebook far more easily - this in turns creates more traffic to your site, there are plugins for it but using the write implementation for your site actually will give you the best benefits. The information on it is here -
http://twitter.com/about/resources/tweetbutton

Using the available fields will actually increase followers too ...

Authors should have their own branded twitter accounts and they should be in the first box, a second company account should also be in the related box

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-count="vertical" data-via="dergal" data-related="newsreach">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

In this example "dergal" will be mentioned in the tweet, and after they have posted - it will recommend to follow newsreach ...

Two massive benefits, it will improve engagement with journalists who usually love it and secondly it will recommend following your primary Twitter account which is what you really want!

Demo -

Facebook

This is a bit more simple - http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/ - in the past there was a difference between posting to and liking, but very recently it has become the same, liking something will also post to their timeline.

Hope this helps

Gerry

Stuart Baggs the brand Vs Viglen

2010-12-21T17:43:00.001Z

Working in SEO I tend to spend my life looking at and critiquing websites – after watching Stuart Baggs (the brand) vs Bordan Tkachuk (Viglen) I always like to take a look at the actual products of the two of them – anyone out there who knows what to look for, if you look at the sites belonging to the respective companies it seems that Stuart has created (or at least his company) has created a credible, professional web presence that could do with a tiny bit of work, whereas the Viglen website, well quite frankly it is a shambles, if it was a dog it would be taking a one way trip to the vet.

• http://www.bluewave.im/

• http://www.viglen.co.uk/

I am also fairly sure that Stuart knows what ISP stands for Bordan seemed to think it was Internet Service Protocol (I actually checked this fact for myself, sometimes even I get things like this wrong, but in my office I have earned quite a few 20p bets, being the fountain of pointless facts) slightly worrying for a tech guy.

I won't go into details about the sites now, but whereas sites like Lings Cars deliberately look 'special' Viglen.co.uk is a special website basically because it is falling apart, the code looks like it was cut and pasted from everywhere, designed by someone as part of a college course and maintained by, well no one.

I can’t say I would have kept Stuart in as long as Alan did, in fact I was shocked when Liz went, however I did find his firing disgusting, Stuart had achieved a lot in life whereas I am struggling to see what Bordan has managed to do with what was once a very successful company, I think that Stuarts wifi blimp has far more chance of not being laughed at that the famous em@iler...

• http://www.bluewave.im/wifi/blimp.php

• http://www.viglen.co.uk/

Stella seems like someone I would love to work for / with and wish her all the luck in the future, Stuart I can't' exactly say I would like to work with / for him but I honestly believe he has a bright future if he learns to keep 'the gob' in check. Lets face it, compared to Sugar he isn't really that gobby is he?

Play Nice - FB & Google

2010-12-20T15:31:00.003Z

This post is more of an answer to a Twitter conversation that I don't think I could answer in 160 words - "@dergal What is FB's argument for not providing export? I don't know. I'm guessing you can't export all your likes, contacts, etc." http://twitter.com/GuavaMarkeD

Its odd how Google always seems to have an opponent, this year they seem to have forgotten about MS and are going after Facebook - there is an awesome blow by blow here http://www.revenews.com/ctmoore/google-vs-facebook-in-2010-a-blow-by-blow-review/

This is the way I see it - I could be wrong but it is about the information source - Facebook & Gmail are two very different things.

Google say you can export all the information whereas Facebook don't really have provision for it...

Google they are talking about your contacts, this is the information you have entered and is automatically scraped into your account, in fact its actually one big mess until relatively recently I had 20 email contacts for most people and it was hard to clean up.

Facebook, well its your contact information but for everyone else, scraping this information out and putting it into another package? I am not sure I would want my private details copied out and scraped into someone elses package without my knowing... my email address alone is worrying...

One thing I should mention is that somehow my Phone is importing contact, pics & bits out of the phone, isn't this a step in the direction that Google is saying FB haven't taken?

Pics and other stuff, if you have uploaded it, then it is yours, you probably should have another copy of it! If it is of someone else this I personally don't want uploaded elsewhere with a different set of rules that I haven't set, I am not a privacy junkie but I do understand why people are, despite this I was very unhappy when Google published all the people I had been communicating with, I actually have an issue with trusting Google...

I do fail to see Googles point on this one... not sure if anyone can explain it? Or maybe I am confused somewhere....

If I sound like I am a Facebook Fan boy, I am not really - they have created an awesome platform but they won't let me change a Facebook company page to include the name "printing" or let me talk to a human being about it!!!

Canonicalisation - IIS

2010-10-31T21:24:00.000Z

I was following links from SEOmoz twitter account and noticed someone who was asking about canonicalisation in IIS - I am exclusively experienced with IIS and my knowledge of Unix is literally zero, but it got me thinking, I had developed a selection of scripts that were pretty much an SEO toolkit, course I should have productised this and made it more consistent, rather than just cutting and pasting it into every website.

Unfortunately, I haven't really updated my skills since ASP but I am sure the scripts can be re-written, I use a common include on all pages, something that I can put a handful of scripts and variables in (including things like the analytics code variables), so ...

Canonicalisation of 'www' and non 'www'

<%
var liveserver = "www.liveserver.com"
if Request.ServerVariables("server_name") <> liveserver then
  redirect_to = "http://" &_
  liveserver &_
  Request.ServerVariables("url") &_
  Request.ServerVariables "QUERY_STRING"

Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", redirect_to
%>

Of course this is written by a non-programmer, so its probably worth testing it, and I have just re-written it from memory - comments suggestions are more than welcome - this is of course is only really applicable to ensuring a single domain is returning the pages, this is something that is important in SEO, as Google will divide the links to multiple domains, which ideally you would like to consolidate, it should also improve indexation.

Microformats :D

2010-09-06T10:17:00.002+01:00

Been playing with the microformats for Google - its always good for someone in SEO to sometimes get there hands dirty, course this means the client has to update the content - but it will automatically add in the hcard format -

www.thelockinhuddersfield.co.uk/events

For an example of how that would look in search engines take a look here -

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=thelockinhuddersfield.co.uk/events&view=

The site is designed to be "social", all about driving people to Facebook and YouTube rather than leaving them in the site - all the photos are hosted on Flickr and displayed using a jQuery lightbox....

Bounce Rates

2009-11-18T22:50:00.002Z

Most people that have worked with me, will know that if I am allowed to I will rant for hours about KPI’s, the problem is that they are usually taken as well, KPI’s if % conversion goes down its bad even if sales go up… Not my view! PPC may have a higher conversion rate, but I would also like organic traffic.

Anyhow, bounce rates, firstly if you have an ecommerce website its pretty much impossible to sell if they only visit one page, (unless you want them to call some companies do, people convert better and can upsell better). Secondly even on pages which are likely to have a high bounce rate, it can be brought down by good calls to action or followup navigation.

BUT – don’t band it on a site level “above 50% is bad”, take a couple of example sites, if you have a popular article, blog post, or even a video then a one page visit maybe what most of your traffic is going to do! – So without the article you wouldn’t get this traffic, with the article you do – but your bounce rate drops. If your site is predominantly articles (BBC, DirectGov, Politics.co.uk ) and most of your traffic doesn’t start on your homepage, your bounce rate will be pretty high, and this isn't a bad thing, if you have a quality site typically after visiting once they maybe more likely to return.

To quote the Google Analytics Help page -

"...Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimise bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy...."

Good things that can “increase” bounce rates

RSS Feed (for return visitors)
Email marketing (for return visitors)
Well written ‘single page’ content
Blog posts
Ajax (that’s not tracked)
Media including video (again not tracked)
External Links (again not tracked)

This seems like I am defending bounce rates, I am not – if they are on a page such as a homepage, a navigation page or a PPC landing page or any page which is really just the start of a journey– typically you are doing something that needs fixing, but bounce rates should be segmented by both source and page type - (not something easily done in GA, unless it is a part of the URL).

Steps to take to fix bad landing pages: (in Google analytics)

Go to ‘top landing pages’
Click on advanced filter
Filter on bounce rate greater than, well start at 80%,

Not all pages can really be improved, always start with ‘low hanging fruit’ and don’t stress if a page has a high bounce rate if the average visitor is going to come, read the information and go … it may just be the nature of the traffic that page attracts...

Did you know out of the tin Omniture doesn't (or didn't) have Bounce Rates? probably a good thing.

SEO = SnakeOil Salesmen ...

2009-10-19T13:37:00.004+01:00

Firstly I had no idea what snake oil actually is (quick glance on Wikipedia changed that), anyhow it seems that people in the SEO industry are frequently accused of being snakeoil sales people.
Secondly the SEO industry IS filled dodgy salesmen over promising over charging and under delivering.

Whilst the majority of SEO is actually relatively simple - a good seo'er has to understand the psychology of the search team at Google, the users of Google and how to target the market you need. So what does an SEO guy do that makes him actually worth money? He makes sure your market can find your site, this is done by making sure that what ever they are likely to type into a search engine you are likely appear , not definitely, but likely...

Typically an expert in SEO won't be talking about rankings but will understand that good positions in search engines will drive traffic, and he will understand the long tail, it may be better to rank for "compare insurance" than "insurance", maybe not in terms of traffic but in terms of converting traffic.

It maybe common sense (SEO) but brands including Samsonite, McDonalds and NSPCC have failed in some of the basics and someone like me could help them drive a fantastic amount more traffic easily by following some of the basic SEO... I believe that nearly 85% of sites have substantial room for improvement, so I guess this means they need to employ a snake oil salesman?

Personal post ... my daughter laughing -

2009-10-08T22:22:00.002+01:00

Its been pretty cool being a dad at times, though completely exhausting - tonight we gave her a bath, and she wanted to pretty much swim underwater perpetually...

Anyhow some moments make it worth it ...

XML Sitemaps - good idea - badly implemented...

2009-10-04T21:24:00.004+01:00

Firstly - I think that sitemaps are a good idea, badly executed. It seems that most sitemaps are developed with little thought for the actual usage of them.

Why I think they are a bad idea from Google?
Well, they need to be in an XML format which means that a huge number of less experienced website owners can't easily produce them except by using one of the many tools that scans the website and produces a snapshot of the pages. If this snapshot is perfect, its pretty much the same as Google sees your site, if its not then it could potentially be worse - typically people upload these without reviewing them at all ... duplicated warts and all ... Basically there is little point...

For it to work right the page needs to be linked into your CRM and created with time and energy put into getting it right, particularly the 3 optional variables, priority, changefreq and lastmod... these aren't static numbers and should change as the page changes, some pages will be changed regularly, some won't, but this in itself can change (imagine a page on the labour conference, won't change for 10 months, then almost daily for two). The date will need to be changed everytime the page contents changes (NOT the file, the contents, most sites are fed from a database now), and sitemaps shouldn't contain CSS, JS and all the other files except for those you want indexed (including PDF's).

An XML file almost seems like the best option, it fits the description - the problem is the that most of the people who create or manage or websites don't have a clue and so produce websites without any real consideration, a "fire and forget" solution, oddly this seems to include people who are normally quite savvy.

Seriously - the option of just putting up a simple text file of all your pages ... something that is easy for anyone to create and manage - more advanced XML files available to those who can.

Still - I do like the canonical tag, but I have already seen a sites implement it wrong enough that it will cause problems for them (such as including any parameters you put into it - doh!)

Gerry

Google O/S ? and my personal wish list ...

2009-07-08T12:11:00.002+01:00

Firstly, what do they have against MS - it seems that everything they do seems to be aimed at the former monopoly of Microsoft, Google themselves have such a stranglehold on 'online' whilst they claim to "do no evil", or what ever the slogan is (Matt Cutts promises a post on the truth behind it, but as yet hasn't done it) ...

So Google are producing an operating system that will be designed around cloud computing - Great! But there are things that I want to do locally... even with a ligher o/s. I am hoping that apps will still work well enough - this includes:

1. Watch videos either locally, across a network with UPNP support (Media server) or over the internet, but I really do want the option of locally so when I go on the train, I can ...

2. As mentioned above, UPNP type support, for music, photos and video - for what I have in mind for this, it is required.

3. Offline editing - I spend two thirds of my time in front of Excel and Word - this I want at least to have a usable substitute...

I also want "coms" options including video, audio ...

Connectivity with Bluetooth (wifi is a given)

And this if Google brings out the O/S should be an awesome "home" always ready system, that can stay plugged into the TV ready to be switched over to a media centre, communications system that frankly an always on, power hungry system I am just not comfortable with ...

Who knows, android maybe the better system already for this...

Getting the UK out of debt.

2009-05-12T09:54:00.002+01:00

Dear Mr Gordon Brown ...

This is how we could be out of debt ...

1. Politicians who seem to show outrage at greedy bankers should NOT claim for anything but the essentials, the UK is not a massive in profit corporation - where claiming a bit more to top up the salary is acceptable... Please ask all politicians to pay it back before they get 'fired' I would like to vote for the honest politician, but I don't think there are too many left!
Well, unsure how much this will save...

2. Google - stop leaching off the UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6122329.ece pay back the 100m tax you deliberately seem to avoid, it wouldn't be much more than a drop in the ocean...
100 million saved...

3. Reduce the number of nuclear weapons (particularly from abroad)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/25/nuclear.weaponstechnology
3bn saved.

4. Stop the ID card schema.
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1114013_id_cards_to_cost_5bn
5 billion saved

so thats 8.1 Billion saved!

On a quick calculation, is that over 10% of the national deficit ?

My guide to business and MoreCars in Luton

2009-01-19T13:00:00.004Z

I recently bought a car (well about 3 months ago now) paid a bit extra for a warranty, turned out that the MoreCars Luton don't really understand that its not just a bit of paper, in fact they decided that it wasn't worth the paper, I discovered they had sold it to me with a faulty injector - it would stall regularly on the motorway. With a heavily pregnant wife I didn't want to take the risk and with the threat of legal action they decided to buy it back off me - I paid about 2,300 they gave me 1500 (plus an extra hundred if I returned some more paper work) ...

Oddly enough the guy was complaining because business wasn't good - not sure how to explain that if you treat customers like rubbish, they won't exactly promote you to their friends, and any business I have been in which has had customers has been built on "reccomendations", negative reccomendations will loose you more business than positive ones will build!

Well, I learnt three things -
1. never deal with More Cars Luton and to make sure everyone I know doesn't.
2. if you buy a warranty make sure its on paper and ideally third party from a company you are comfortable with.
3. bad customer experience = bad customer reccomendations / retention.

Guess what - the same goes for Three Mobile and TalkTalk both of who have probably lost a large number of customers because of the way they have dealt with me or people I know ...

(quick apoligy to all those people I said that Three and TalkTalk were a good deal - Threes customer service used to be excellent!!!)

BBC iPlayer - Air Version (beta labs)

2008-12-30T23:29:00.003Z

So this is a followup from a previous post where I mentioned that I hated the Kontiki installation, where it had a serious negative impact on your computer and couldn't easily be removed ... since then I haven't downloaded iplayer programs, just watching them online - (on a side note, my laptop battery became seriously poor, so most of the time what was the point!)

However I recently noticed that they had produced an "Air" version, which was Mac and Linux compatible, being a PC user, this didn't really impact me. However it is now installed and I am downloading the programs I want to watch.

Notes:
Good -
- Not peer to peer (all downloaded straight from the Beeb)
- Light weight "Air"
- Controllable and needs to obey Airs rules
- Can minimize down to the system tray

Bad -
- Not HD!
- Just BBC - not 4od etc..
The single biggest annoyance for me at the moment is that I can't as yet play offline content from the Beeb on my iphone (legally)!

Off topic, I have heard that Sky are doing a Silverlight version of their player, that could be interesting ...

Web analytics Wednesday - on a monday, free beer WOOHOO

2008-03-31T20:57:00.002+01:00

Just got back from a Web Analytics Wednesday - Mr Eric T Peterson presented a quick look into the future - more of an industry overview than a technological insight. Not sure if it was the American accent combined with the enthusiasm but it was a very entertaining presentation.

So conclusions
- Web analytics is hard (LOL see previous posts)
- The industry is still consolidating (keep an eye open Mr P hinted that their was still some movements happening
- Google Benchmarking isn't really worth it yet

I have to be honest I can't say too much more that isn't better expressed in his own blog so other stuff ...

Bumped into an old colleague from Directgov - we discussed analytics talked about career options analytics, Omniture, Speed-trap and Google Analytics - the one thing I think we agreed on was that an efficient interface is important as well as good reliable data.

Not a lot of info in this post, but I will hopefully fix that in the next one ...

Software running in the background ? BBC Iplayer, Kontiki and 4od Sky on demand etc...

2008-03-28T08:14:00.003Z

OK - I loved 4od, sky on demand and BBC iplayer, they are all great services in principal and I have nothing against a P2P distribution system.

But this software is just wrong - I have just switched on my laptop and despite explicitly saying 'no I don't want it running when I start the computer' it's there in the background according to the software explorer.

I often use a mobile internet connection so my download / upload limits are pretty low at times and I want to be pretty in control of what services are running. I strongly object to any peice of software that insists that it should be run in the background every time you switch on your PC.

This includes Adobe Reader (I have switched to Foxit, much cleaner) and millions of other bits of invasive software - thanks to Microsoft for allowing us to see these clearly with their Software Explorer application (great for seeing whats running in the background). I am often surprised by how much quicker my laptop will switch on when I disable or remove these applications! Although Ashes to Ashes is a serie I was enjoying, it is more important to me, productivity.

So this is my message to BBC Iplayer, 4od and Sky - great service but allow people to have control over their computers if you want people to leave them installed.

Google - teleporting and evil ...

2008-03-16T12:30:00.000Z

Google have a moto - do no evil, in fact they seem to believe they are the gatekeepers of morality on the web, frankly my feeling is that they are just a little bit 'too much'.

They seem to barge into every area by rapidly buying and being able to mass promote their own services its just not a level, open playing field - oh and I know that this is a Google owned blog, my main email address is a Gmail, that I am reccomend Google Analytics all the time, but I still hate doing that ...

Google may be bringing tools and services to the mass market at a lower price, funded by advertising but they do this by smashing companies and services who can't compete out of the market. Microsoft are sort of similar (confession I am sort of a MS employee, in that they own a company who own a compant who own .... who I work for, its a long chain), but at least Google have never declared themselves as the 'do no evil' company (motto of Google) and what they offer they sell which can compete with free alternatives.

Teleporting
A recent innovation is something called 'teleporting' which is a really daft name for an auto insight search. Very annoying for site owners, especially where sites are based on a search or the search has been painstakenly developed to deliver the most relevant results.

I tried three sites, Autotrader, Directgov and Argos - all three I got better results by using the onsite search... and of coure if you do a search for a specific item you get further google ads.

Frankly I consider heavy promotion of 'teleporting' to be evil.

So what about the buy out of DoubleClick?
Its funny how they claimed to be so opposed to Yahoo being bought by Microsoft, so far as calling it 'evil' in a blog post, when they have such a dominance in all aspects of online advertising, and with the purchase of Double Click (including Dart and even an SEO company) they don't seem to see their own sheer weight of ownership as being wrong ?

Micrsoft aren't so bad - a lot of their products are free and a lot of them are very expensive... but you get a PC, you get a choice of pretty much everything. there are hundred of free alternatives to everything from Operating System through to word processors....

From my point of view, if a company comes in and makes everything we offer at a competitive rate free, whats the point in coming to us? I know that we offer more (a whole heap more) but can we show that? Budget analytics companies are dropping out the market (or being bought by the bigger boys) at a rate faster than you would believe. so what happens next? Google are coming into the mobile O/S market so their adverts are there, they control the web in a way that is quite unprecedented... Oddly they said that that MS would break the web if they bought Yahoo, my feeling is that Google are way ont the way to breaking the web unless they slow down a bit ...

Do your bit - change your default search to someone else ....no? why not ? Googles good at that ? oh - ok ... mmm use a different video sharing website ? no ? oh Stage6 has just closed down... nothing else that isn' coated in prn? mmm....

Privacy & Targeted ads

2008-03-09T21:38:00.000Z

Targeted adverts are great, I don't want to see adverts for stuff I am not interested in - I am interested in techy geeky stuff - so showing my adverts for hair straightners or perfume isn't going to interest me, or going to get me to click on the adverts. I want to se adverts of cool stuff, brand new gadgets and other stuff I am interested in!

Targeted advertising is this regard is advertising that is displayed based on online user habits, what you do on chosen websites and possibly profiles that you give to social websites.

So because I have told Facebook I am interested in crime thriller books, I might see a fairly heavy proportion of adverts for the latest novel from one of my more favourite authors, because I click on it, in the future that proportion might go up. This to me is good!

OK - so why do you mind people using anonymised data to give you better adverts?

web 2.0 - embedded into my life ...

2008-02-25T12:58:00.000Z

I was never really an early adoptor of web 2.0, in fact for a long time, I never got what it was all about, user generated content was something we had been doing for a long time, forums have been around for years, and on-site reviews are a definent must for a good shop, but after a conversation with the missus it was a shock to find out just how much I was interacting with my web 2.0 services...

Blogs, well I have just started this one
Facebook, I am on it once a day, catching up - often on my mobile...
Last.FM, checkout what I listen to, I would share my login, but to be honest its not exactly taste to be proud of..
MySpace, actually did have a profile, but I never got it..

Well, thats about it, but its true that web 2.0 has started impacting my life - but mainly Facebook I am ashamed to say.

SEO - its just basic common sense ?

2008-02-13T21:07:00.000Z

I have never really gone for SEO jobs, because its all pretty much just common sense isn't it? Oddly enough though, developers are never told about this stuff and an increasing number seem to have been brought up with Web 2.0 and dynamic tools almost without the experience in bog standard HTML. So with people utilising Flash, AJAX and other tools, no one ever seems to take that step back and say "hows this going to look to a search engine"

I am often shocked at how often people pay thousands for "site optimisation" before they have done the basics - and this is my list!

Make sure your URL is what you want to be found for (company name, or subject matter)

Titles - ensure they are descriptive and are "keyword rich"

Links - all links within the site are viewable without javascript and don't use 'click here'

Content is still king - make sure the terms people will search on will feature sufficiently in the page ...

Thats it in the onsite stuff, Flash, Ajax and JavaScript are all largely ignored by search engines.

Off site, links are how you will be discovered, and will heavily influence your rank - however its hard to try and get links, most of the time they will come organically over time if you have some real quality.

Finally, PPC - its great to get people to your site, it is relatively cheap and it is an effective way

Metrics is hard ....

2008-02-07T14:43:00.000Z

For those of you that care about the background, two views exist on web metrics - 1. its hard, 2. its not hard but it is complicated.

Its an entertaining war of words between Avanish Kaushak and Eric T. Peterson, and is helping to sell books for the latter!

I personally don't worry too much about this, but in my experience reporting on the basics is pretty easy, especially with an application like Google Analytics - of course where it gets complicated is when things don't quite match, or numbers lie ... or of course someone asks you:
"if I add up all the daily visitors its different to visitors for the same period" - whilst it may seem pretty obvious to you, its not that easy to explain.

Why is it that 90% of the recorded clicks aren't landing onto the site (they were, but they weren't being recorded as PPC - why not ? cause they were hitting a redirect...)

There are hundreds of questions that can be hard to diagnose - especially as the online worlds evolving, Ajax, Flash and more ... Browsers are hitting the market that aren't even recording ... so yes, web analytics is increasingly complex.

"...find me some actionable analytics...."

"....is this number good or bad..."

Some questions are easier to answer than others...

My two pence (english, they are worth more than cents)