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July 29, 2008
What We're Reading: Summer 2008
Here at Intrapromote, we are constantly reading industry articles and books and discussing them as a team.
Here are a handful of books (plus one) we are currently reading:
- Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web
- The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold
- Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
- Now Is Gone: A Primer on New Media
- The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media
- Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online
- Since it's been so difficult to index Flash content, a virtual cottage industry sprang up with ways to circumvent that disability, including methods like SWFObject, sIFR, user-agent-based delivery of plain text vs. Flash content, and so on. With these techniques becoming more sophisticated and easy to implement, is it likely that sites will abandon them soon?
- It appears that for now, Flash files spawned when users fail a JavaScript test will still be uncrawlable, since engines too typically fail a JS sniffer.
- If you have a SWF file embedded as only a part of a larger HTML page, trust me that you do NOT want only that SWF file being returned in search results. It typically looks awful, lacking both the size requirements you implemented, as well as the critical navigation that resides in your HTML. The Webmaster Central post didn't say that SWF files would be returned in SERPs, so I'm not saying that's what will happen. But I've tested client sites by searching for strings of text that only appear in Flash files, and I've seen it happen. So test with your own site and cross your fingers.
Stay tuned for staff book reviews!
Posted by doug at 08:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 25, 2008
Google's New Cache Look
I may be late in seeing this, but I recently noticed Google is sporting a new Cache file look for sites.
The new cache files for sites look like this:
Posted by sean at 06:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 24, 2008
Google Adwords Certification Exam - More Than Just A User Manual
Last week a colleague and I took our re-certification exams for Google Adwords and we had an 'interesting' experience. Over the last two years there have been countless improvements and additions to Adwords so I was kind of excited to come out of the trenches and learn about some of the newer offerings from Google.
The first clues that this was going to more of a brain teaser than a truly education experience were located in the quizzes which focused on such things as the Irish VAT rules and the details of billing policies etc. Now I know that this is crucial information for lots of various reasons but my question was what does this have to do with managing a Google Adwords account? I know billing issues can be a huge part of the account, and lets face it Google wants the least amount of confusion regarding how it gets paid, but I have to question the relevance of those types of questions as it relates to being Adwords certified.
The second clue was the marketing and sales 'indoctrination' that appeared in the final Learning Center module. Big news has come out of Yahoo recently regarding their affiliate errrrr certification program and quite frankly I think Google took a page from Yahoo's book when it comes to the marketing and sales aspect. I want to learn about Adwords, not how to sell it.
The third clue came when I actually took the exam. In school there were always those people who were good test takers and those who froze up during tests. Well, I was always one of those who was a good test taker but the questions were not just in-depth, they were tricky. I was actually sweating bullets trying to make sure I interpreted the tense of the words correctly because it could completely change the answer. I can appreciate trying to make sure the people who pass are truly qualified, but I kinda wondered if this was modeled after an entrance exam to Stanford.
The 'over-the-top' question came when I was presented with a question that required some calculations based on the data presented. The only problem was there was NO DATA PRESENTED. I was so flabbergasted that I actually took a screenshot of it to show to Google (should I miss passing by that one question ;) ). I made sure to put that in my comments about the test as well as a few other 'suggestions'. I still haven't heard back regarding my feedback but I am happy to report that I did pass (as well as my colleague) so if you ever happen to have any questions about the Adwords Irish VAT rules please feel free to let me know.
Posted by brent at 11:27 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
July 18, 2008
Reputation Management Tool: Omgili
Another cool tool (Omgili) to aid reputation management specialists in finding a plethora of sites that are potentially influencing their clients brands online. I took the site for a test drive today and found a good number of sites that represented one of my clients. You can now monitor a large number of discussion/review sites in one fail swoop and look like a champ to your clients. Omgili describes itself as "a way to find "subjective information". As opposed to traditional search engines, which search for sites and pages, Omgili finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions." This site looks very promising and could be a major player in relation to its quasi competitors Twing, BoardTracker, BoardReader, and Twingly.
Posted by brett at 05:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 14, 2008
Track Corporate Blog Activities Online
There are a variety of paid tools available to marketers regarding what bloggers are saying about their clients. For people looking for a free alternative to seeing what's being said about their clients in the blogging world I would recommend checking out Trendpedia. It is currently in Beta but offers some basic information to help marketers create a benchmark before they conduct social media marketing activities. Trendpedia is a good starting point if you don't have a large amount of money to put into social media monitoring services and need basic data related to your campaigns.
The only major downside to this site is that users can't download the data that's presented when search queries are conducted. Other than that I think this site can be a good resource for people who looking for a snapshot regarding their social media monitoring campaigns. This can be a good to tool to use initially while you are looking for a professional social media monitoring solution.
Posted by brett at 10:18 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 09, 2008
Google Adwords Automatic Matching - BETA
Recently Google Adwords released automatic matching beta. This is a very brave approach to take with advertisers considering Google automatically opts your account into the program. Account holders will receive the message that their account has been opted into the program. Depending on Google to choose related keywords for your ad to display on related search terms removes optimal short term management control of your campaigns. There are specific details on how to opt out of Google Adwords automatic matching.
Here are a few more details about the feature:
•Opting in and out: Automatic matching is applied at the campaign level. You can opt your campaign in and out of automatic matching on your Campaign Settings page.
•Google Network: Automatic matching does not affect your ad delivery on the content network. It does affect your ad delivery on Google and the search network.
•Quality Score: The traffic accrued by automatic matching won't affect your keywords' Quality Scores or minimum bids.
•Ad position: When ranking your ads on search queries acquired through automatic matching, the cost-per-click (CPC) bid will approximate the current average CPC of your ad group.
•Performance statistics: Aggregated performance statistics for automatic matching will appear in each ad group's Keywords tab, in a line item labeled Automatic Matching Total.
•Search Query Performance report: You can see the search queries that triggered your ads due to automatic matching by running a Search Query Performance report. The queries will be labeled Automatic in the Search Query Match Type column.
Posted by charles at 03:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 02, 2008
Google Maps Abroad
The inclusion of Google Maps in natural search engine results is nothing new for queries such as Ohio, Indiana, United States, etc. but I just noticed something new today. Google is now showing maps of foreign countries.
I'm sure everyone is aware of the tension between the West & Iran. Me being a news nut, I went to Google and typed in Iran. Here is what pops up in natural search. What you'll notice is there is an obvious immersion of Universal Search Results on page one, but to stay on point with the post, you'll see a map of Iran at the very top of the SERP. This is the first time I've personally seen foreign maps propagating natural search results like this and I find myself curious if this has been around for some time?
Anyway, after further digging with searches for other countries such as Russia, Iraq, UAE, India, Austria, etc., I noticed something VERY interesting in a search for China in that it's the only country out of about 30 or so searches that didn't have a map in search results and required an additional click on the Maps link to actually get maps of the country. To me it doesn't make any sense why Google would change its map inclusion protocol in search results for just one country out of over the 30 country searches I conducted.
I'm sure there are other orphaned country map examples out there, but why doesn't Google just have a standard for country-specific searches pulling into search results in a similar fashion?
Posted by sean at 08:28 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 01, 2008
Micro-blogging Submission Tool: Brabblr.com
Trying to keep up with friends across the myriad of micro-blogging communities can be quite difficult if you have many profiles created in this space. Rather than trying to go to each one on a daily basis to keep your followers updated wouldn't it be cool if you could log into one location and zip your messages to all of them. Well, Brabblr is now making that possible through its "Alpha" platform, where users can make submissions to the following micro-blogging communities with one submission:
- Twitter
- Pownce
- Jaiku
- tumblr
- Jabber
- Frazr
- Wamadu
- Mambler
- Boomloop
- Wevent
- gmail
- Roundhousekick
Brabblr calls itself a mashUp for the micro-services and looks like a promising solution for people who are on the go and have little time to keep their friends up to date with the changes taking place in their lives. Here's another interesting way to make sense of our busy lives!
Posted by brett at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google to Index Flash Content ... Again
In a post last night entitled "Improved Flash Indexing," the Google Webmaster Tools blog reports that
We've improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash "gadgets" such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between. ... In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, we're also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files, and feeding them into our crawling pipeline—just like we do with URLs that appear in non-Flash webpages. For example, if your Flash application contains links to pages inside your website, Google may now be better able to discover and crawl more of your website.
This brings up several satellite issues:
I chose a somewhat sarcastic post title because ever since search engines and Flash have butted heads, the ability for engines to index text embedded in Flash files has been "just around the corner." In 2002, for example, hearts were briefly aflutter about the Macromedia Flash Search Engine SDK, which was going to be the end of engines' inability to index Flash content. Hear that? The end. 2002.
So I enter into this new era with guarded optimism. Optimistic because Google never releases anything "new" until it's been tested in the wild for months or years. Guarded because the "right" recommendation for clients is never quite as black and white as people think it will be.
Posted by erik at 09:18 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Javascript Redirects = Risky Business
I've run across a few Javascript redirects lately, so I thought I would share a quick reminder with everyone.
If you use a Javascript redirect vs. a 301or 302, don't forget that search engines generally cannot access Javascript, so it's likely that the search engine spider will not follow or index links within the Javascript.
It's also very risky business according to Google. From Google Webmaster Help Center:
"When a redirect link is embedded in Javascript, the search engine indexes the original page rather than following the link, whereas users are taken to the redirect target. Like cloaking, this practice is deceptive because it displays different content to users and to Googlebot..."
Matt Cutts from Google calls Javascript redirects "sneaky" and follows with "Your domains might get rained on in the near future." Yipes!
All very good reasons to avoid Javascript redirects.
Is it time to do a quick audit of your site to see if Javascript redirects are in play?
Posted by doug at 08:39 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack