Wednesday, November 30, 2005

SEOBook Goes Down and Up

Hey on any other day it would have been slightly inconvenient and things would move on.... today I hear about the ThreadWatch transfer and both sites are down. I call Aaron to poke a little fun and he tells me I should have had kidmercury posting while I was out of the country on a much needed break. Nice turn around mate!

Skaffe Articles Launches

I have seen a couple of blog posts and then received this email:

As most of us that edit on Skaffe.com have websites of our own, we no doubt have all experienced problems of getting good quality content for our own sites for free, unless we write it ourself. You also may have faced issues of reaching audiences specifically targeted for your services, or your site’s, via advertising and the like.



With those types of issues in mind, Team Skaffe is proud to announce a new addition to the family of Skaffe Services - Skaffe Articles. Skaffe Articles may be found at the address: http://www.skaffearticles.com .



Skaffe Articles is a free article distribution and publication directory. Authors may submit their articles and brief bio’s for other users to add to their sites and publications.

Both the publication of the content and the use of the content is free. The service is designed to allow webmasters to obtain quality content from experts in their fields while allowing those experts to advertise their services through their bio’s that are attached to the articles.



Team Skaffe is looking forward to promoting the services and articles contributed through the service. As editors, Team Skaffe wanted to make the service available to you first. At present, Skaffe Articles is in need of content. If you have an article you would like to submit, please consider adding it to Skaffe Articles. This is an excellent way of getting your services advertised. In contrast, if you see article content you think would be beneficial to your site, please feel free to use it. You may also wish to add a RSS feed to your site. We will have more of these added soon.



We appreciate your support in making this free service work for all our users and members of the Skaffe Community.


I think this could be benefitial to alot of people and while needed editorial control will offer some interesting stuff moving forward.

Nick W Sells Industry Standard ThreadWatch

This marks a major shift in the SEM world though the transfer of the helm was done to a fitting webmaster. Nick you will be missed - but no doubt we will see you lurking around or walking the exhibit lanes at SES conferences etc.

Aaron you have the sarcasm to continue the tradition.

The site has some great regulars and no doubt will sail forward with a change in flag only!

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Awesome Google Parody Article

Jack Shafer over at Slate.com has written a witty and scathing article about Google's rapid growth and where it will all end.

Good to see the Australian as the hero.....

I would never have thought that Rupert would be seen as a champion... the guy has killed many other small businesses himself!

Join Here: Google Unrolls New Advertiser SignUp

New Media Report has two interesting news items today:

Google's new Onsite Advertiser Sign-up allows advertisers sign up to advertise on a particular web site directly from that site, without having to go through the AdWords webpage. An "Advertise on this site" link takes potential revenue generators to a customizable page where they can open a new AdWords account and target a site for their ads right then and there. Advertisers will bid for PPI inventory, and compete with the rest of the ads relevant to the site in question.

Google Analytics, the company's free analytics service that debuted only last week, has been swamped by so many signups that new account seekers are now being turned away at the door. Those seeking to create a new account have the option of entering their email and waiting for Google to send them a message once they've finished getting all their data in a row. According to the Analytics signup page, "Google Analytics has experienced extremely strong demand, and as a result, we have temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity." With over 200,000 new accounts to analyze so far, looks like it'll be a while. Oh, the woes of popularity.



Seems Google Analytics signed up more people in under a week than Urchin had done while in business for itself.... so name recognition is everything.
The point on that one is Google may be the reason Analytics is more fully used in our industry finally... the results may take 6 months or so but it should all be interesting to watch develop.

The Sign Up Here Option is another really smart move by Google. It helps the affiliates make a few new dollars and like other good impulse buys it should be quick and painless.

Friday, November 18, 2005

MSN Tops Yahoo Who Beats Google in CPA

We use WebSideStory to measure our conversion and other analytics. They spent a lot of time working with us to customise a method to integrate offline conversions with online marketing.

The results we see now are showing that Yahoo! is outpacing Google in CPA. Granted we do have a larger keyword base at Google - but you would think things would be tighter at Google.... we continue to test.

The other interesting thing is MSN PPC. It is doing really well and given that it represents 25-30% of our Yahoo traffic - they could be the top dog from a CPA stance.

Google has the volume and since we are making money on them all - we will take the traffic. But if we had a limited budget the pecking order would be MSN, Yahoo and then Google.

When Will Google Do An Amazon

I just noticed this and have not seen other people commenting about it so maybe it is new; but Google is now hawking books by the looks of it.
This search and others now push Google Book Search. The initial link is at the bottom of the search results and takes you to the beta Google Book Search - each of those links take you to more specific details about the listed book and the term being searched for.

On the left there are purchase options: how long before Google buys a provider to cash in the traffic?

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Google's Free Urchin will Create Many Urchins As Competition Struggles

Google is walking a thin line on this issue... well thin if you don't want to be called the Evil Empire. Small tracking and analytic companies will be having a tough Christmas thanks to the Grinch That Stole Analytics....

They will get the small guy who really does not have anything in place....
They may get the naive companies - agencies and inhouse alike - who do not know what they are giving up...
They will get the people who do not value their privacy...
They will get ALOT...

Why not give them access to all your information beyond what you do at Google...
Why not let them see where you have successful traffic from publishers...
Why not allow them to develop online activity information on your industry...

THE FIRST BATTLE WILL BEGIN OVER PRIVACY

I have spoken to a lawyer and her reading of the privacy statement and the T&Cs does not restrict Google from using the information you and they are gathering... and as they are hosting the results... possession is 9/10ths of the law....


What is to stop them from using the information about those solid little publishers you have developed... making them offers for a higher return on placing Google Ads.

What is to stop them from using the information to provide your competitors with industry (though obviously not your individually) specific data that ultimately takes the edge off of all that groundbreaking work you have done.

This is one area Google really should have stayed out of... offer a little free bid management and some simple ROI program - Okay it is not too roboust and the vast majority will not use it - it is a curtesy. But to figure here is another area to conquer... knock out the competition and create another huge industry lead... one way of not having to deal with click fraud...

The claim of Church and State I guess only applies to PPC and organic search - not any of the other aspects of the industry.

What is next? Free SEO seminars - hey who better - people would come out of the woodwork to see Matt Cutts give pointers on optimizing hoping to get a glimpse behind the curtain.

Seems Google always has some big surprises around the holiday season.

Blogger is Broken

I hope it is just me... but I have been having a lot of problems with Blogger lately... guess my critique of Google has me blacklisted... nah... but the program does seem to be a little broke...

Anyone else seeing these problems? Is that why everyone is jumping to other blogging software?????

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Yahoo! Ad Reps Beat Google Response Time

Hey it is only fair considering the flack I have dished out to Yahoo! for the slow response times... the eternal waits for editorial reviews... entire bulk uploads halted over a single declined term needing some verification...

This time Yahoo! blew the doors off Google.

We need the tracking code on our account changed.... 2000 plus keywords wrapped in a dozen campaigns and 30 odd AdGroups in Google... but as we know 200 plus individual destination urls in Yahoo! had to be changed.

We expected Yahoo! to take two days or so - not the longer periods that can happen when waiting on editorial as these were mere changes to tracking codes. Google usually gets this done in an hour or so.

Well I guess things are getting busy over at Google - that rapid growth and last quarter jump in income of 96% has them swamped and the response time seems to be effected by it. We are into the second day and still no changes over at Google.... hell we can't even reach a rep - and I have numerous phone numbers.

I know they had their Google Halloween party/parade yesterday.... so maybe things were a bit distracted... pity that excuse does not fly with our customers otherwise I would be holding all sorts of parades.....

Congrats Yahoo! and let's hope this was not just a fluke!