June 13, 2008
Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse? 
posted by John Lustina in category: SEO Industry News
Sean saw it coming yesterday, and little more than a Month ago I thought it a Yang Threat to balance the Microsoft yin of bluster.
Yet here we have it, and have you ever read anything that made Yahoo suddenly seem more insignificant?:
If the Google partnership passes what's likely to be a rigorous review by U.S. antitrust regulators and lawmakers, Yahoo! intends to use its rival's superior search technology to display ads on its own Web site as well as those of its partners' in the United States and Canada.
Let us all give a collective search way of goodbye to the once great king.
Yahoo to Become Adsense Clearinghouse?
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May 21, 2008
The Ineluctable Organic Moment Gets a Big, Big Update
posted by John Lustina in category: Organic SEO
This is from much earlier in this fleeting year, admittedly, but with most focusing on the average words per search query increase angle of the story, I wanted to make sure and dig out a fine morsel from the very mouth of Google that may have been lost had I not:
14% of Google clicks come from paid search and 86% of clicks are organic.
True in court it may only qualify as hearsay, having come from the Google mouth of Avinash Kaushik to the ear of beu blog before finally being transcribed into print; yet, as you may remember from my earlier quest for a documented source behind that most mythical of numbers in all of SEM, the percentage of overall searchers clicking on an organic, rather than paid, search result, hearsay here surely now trumps unattributed there.
And the alleged statement is said to have come from Google's Analytics Evangelist, folks, so I think we are getting closer...
The Ineluctable Organic Moment Gets a Big, Big Update
Posted by John Lustina at 06:17 PM
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May 03, 2008
Breaking: Yang Googles Ballmer
posted by John Lustina in category: SEO Industry News
Just when it seemed the twain might soon be making their way down the aisle, arm-in-arm, the mere spectre of Google is enough to call off the nuptials: Mashable has the goods, including Balmer's e-mail that is really more about Google than Yahoo:
We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:
He goes on to devote almost half of his e-mail to explaining how bad an idea Yang's Google threat is. I caught this on my Mashable feed as I began watching the original Frankenstein movie with my kids. No kidding.
Breaking: Yang Googles Ballmer
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January 16, 2008
Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?
posted by John Lustina in category: PPC
One of my favorite clients of all time, with us now going on 8 years and powered mightily by the rare, dual client-side SEO strengths of search understanding and inter-departmental implementation influence, recently noticed the same thing Mark Jackson saw in Google's most recent round of Universal Search peekaboo:
Notice the incredibly disappearing PPC Ads? My immediate explication was that surely this must be to prove, in a small test sample, that someone's bad idea from above would be a disaster, indeed.
Mark, though, has made me think again:
Google may succeed in encouraging companies to bid more ferociously for the top two positions. If universal search leads to more searches because it's fun, this could be a win for Google (higher revenues) and users (better experience).
Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine that there is a finite set of clicks on any given day. The business model in a closed set like this, then, must discover what to do to increase the value of the average click within the set on a given day. Mark's point about less ads likelier driving up value per is on target, I believe, but thanks to him getting me to think again I think the test layout in question has less to do about increasing searches "because it's fun" and much ado about that map, an image mind you, kissing the PPC ads at the right corner of the screen and making your eye immediately jump there to focus.
Take a look yourself and see where your eye is drawn, and then check out what eye tracking heat maps are telling us about how pictures affect focus on a search page.
Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?
Posted by John Lustina at 04:27 PM
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December 06, 2007
Old Media Quote of the Day
posted by John Lustina in category: Old Media
I just love it when Old Media can't adapt to Web 2.0 and tries to pass the buck while hubris prevents them from admitting they are passing the buck:
...the Motion Picture Association of America has asked ISPs to act as monitors of movie piracy. MPAA head Dan Glickman says ISPs need to take on that role if they are hoping for any sort of future support from Hollywood.
Actual buck-passing-disguised-as-responsible-parenting quote from Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA:
The ISP community is going to be at the forefront of this in the future because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by not seeing that the content is being properly protected.
Old Media Quote of the Day
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November 28, 2007
SEO Speedwagon Killing In Vegas
posted by John Lustina in category: SEO Humor
Who'd have thought a mere 2.5 years from first post we'd be blogging to beat the band?:
Here's the link for proof this isn't a photoshop job, let's just hope the jump in visits doesn't cause them to wonder what is going on.
I for one am having a T-Shirt made of this, anyone else interested?
SEO Speedwagon Killing In Vegas
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Are You A Canonical Fascist? Stand Tall!
posted by John Lustina in category: Crawling and Indexing
We are sticklers with our clients when it comes to issues of content duplication, sometimes to the point, I think, of being viewed as Canonical Fascists. This can be annoying, much like fascism mostly can be annoying, so it is gratifying to see Mr. Google himself lay out just why such annoyance is worthwhile advocacy, even approaching the subject of PageRank Splitting in the process:
When I did a wget from the Googleplex, I eventually got a 301 from the seomoz.com url to the seomoz.org url. But look at the timestamps: " --09:28:33-- " was the initial fetch and "--09:32:41--" was when the 301 came over the wire. Assuming that I'm reading right, that means almost a four minute delay on getting the 301 from seomoz.com to seomoz.org. Googlebot will wait around for several seconds for a page, but it won't wait four minutes. Instead, the connection will time out and we'll treat those urls as separate (and think that we couldn't fetch the seomoz.com url). So if a bunch of people are linking to your article, and some link to seomoz.org and some link to seomoz.com, that PageRank is getting split between two urls, and the long delay on the 301 response can cause Google to believe that the urls are separate and therefore cause dupe issues.
Hat tip to Randfish for calling forth such manna in his heavily commented comments area.
Are You A Canonical Fascist? Stand Tall!
Posted by John Lustina at 03:45 PM
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November 15, 2007
Tagging The Site Organic
posted by John Lustina in category: tagging
We spend a great deal of time on site structural issues with our clients, and one of the first things we usually do with a new client is try and transition them from thinking of SEO as a page-level concern to more of a holistic, organic discipline, one where we must try and understand the site architecture in its interdependent relationship between the whole and its parts. After all, organic is ultimately the moniker that won the day.
Almost invariably the large sites that we recognize are not living up to their potential are what we call top-heavy architecturally, in that the TLD so dominates all things search that even the main folder levels are all but invisible, let alone deeper, longer-tail-rich pages. As we explain the phenomenon we often find ourselves referring to blog structure, and how we might borrow some of the structural characteristics of a blog in discovering how to flatten out the top-heavy site. There are reasons blogs are so eminently crawlable.
One of those reasons is tagging, and I was pleased this morning to find a fellow tag-appreciator in Stephan Spencer, explaining his tag appreciation more eloquently than I have yet seen done to date:
Tagging isn't just a tool for usability (even though it's typically mostly thought of in those terms), it's also a powerful weapon for search engine optimization. That's because tagging allows you to rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure, flowing the link juice more strategically throughout your site. And because those links are textual and keyword-rich, a tag cloud is far superior in terms of SEO to the traditional graphical navigation bar.
Bravo, Stephan. Long live tag conjunction!
Tagging The Site Organic
Posted by John Lustina at 07:41 PM
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November 01, 2007
Search: Too Sexy for Advertising?
posted by John Lustina in category: Search Quote of the Day
Search Quote of the Day from He of the Great Name:
Search is utilitarian. Search is constantly accused of not being sexy. That drives me nuts. The irony is that in pigeonholing search as being boring and utilitarian, all these brilliant advertising minds are missing the biggest idea of all: search works because it’s the customer driving the process, not the advertiser.
I'm with you, Gord. In our industry, conversions are sexy.
Search: Too Sexy for Advertising?
Posted by John Lustina at 05:06 PM
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October 08, 2007
Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology
posted by John Lustina in category: SEO Industry News
I was quite humbled to see via Link Spiel heute morgen that yours truly unwittingly birthed the SEO Virginia genre long, long ago, circa Summer 2001.
And while they say everything changed after September 11, really the only thing the genre lost in the aftermath was the Really Is convention I thought was authentic at the time. Turns out while I had invented Really completely out of thin air, but not the all-important Is, what we really lost in exactly half of the genre along with our innocence was the comma after the introductory Yes I had faithfully inserted at the time.
SEO Virginia genre history buffs will note Danny Sullivan took less than a year to catch, and correct, his own mistake, the only such self-correction on record. He really is that good.
UPDATE: Reader Brainmuffin e-mails to suggest the genre be officially known as The SEO Virginia Monologues.
Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology
Posted by John Lustina at 03:06 PM
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October 01, 2007
Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles
posted by John Lustina in category: Old Media
Frank and Maureen and Thomas, oh my!
The chipped cement still has yet to be cleaned up fully from the wall being torn down at that historical error known as TimesSelect, and already we are seeing NY Times columnists able to commune with readers freely at point of search, at least at the Frank and Maureen level:
As internet titan Alan Meckler noted in his posting of the Times e-mail to subscribers, search results like these were the driving force:
Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion - as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.
Sharing it, linking to it, and commenting on it are the currency of being able to find it in search, and that might be important to a newspaper if, as the latest surveys indicate, 91% of adults use a search engine to find information and 72% get news therefrom.
Ya think?
LATE UPDATE: We just noticed that similar to 1989, another Eastern Block Web Site is about to topple...
Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles
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September 18, 2007
Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989
posted by John Lustina in category: Old Media
We knew it was coming and we tried to bake a cake for Maureen Dowd more than a Month ago, yet we are still surprised at how search-friendly they are being in their explanation today:
What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.
If you have any doubt that this is the SEO equivalent of 1989 scroll a bit further down the page for this money quote:
The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue.Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online.
Mr. Murdoch, tear down that wall!
Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989
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September 17, 2007
PPC vs. Yellow Pages vs. Direct Mail CPA
posted by John Lustina in category: PPC
Via Chris Zaharias via MediaPost via Piper Jaffray, we get this stark contrast:
Search advertising has proven to be fertile ground for customer acquisition. A recent study by Piper Jaffray & Co. entitled, “The New eCommerce Decade: The Age of Micro Targeting,” indicated that the average CPA for search was $8.50, considerably lower than the CPA for the Yellow Pages ($20), online display ads ($50) and direct mail ($70).
Could you imagine how low the Organic CPA would have been in comparison, had they found a way to incorporate that into the study?
PPC vs. Yellow Pages vs. Direct Mail CPA
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September 07, 2007
Late Friday Flawed Online Argument of the Week
posted by John Lustina in category:
As reported in Just An Online Minute, the now oddly named Department of Justice's argument against Net Neutrality:
Among other arguments, the DOJ says that there's no reason for the government to step in with regulations, because Internet service providers haven't yet taken any steps to degrade service.
Following new Justice logic, then, should there have never been a murder committed in the United States, would it then not be illegal?
Late Friday Flawed Online Argument of the Week
Posted by John Lustina at 03:49 PM
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August 21, 2007
Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II
posted by John Lustina in category: SEO Industry News
It's always seemed strange to look for information on a brand, and to see it appear both in the organic search results and at or near the top of the paid listings. Why spend money on a brand term that's going to deliver a top five organic result for the same query anyway?
If this sounds eerily similar to what many Wagon Riders thought yesterday was a lede of questionable intelligence, then your parotid attention may have kept you from swallowing full gulp. For those caught in the act of mastication, though, it's good to know that the above meme is being pushed by Atlas, owned by Microsoft, neither of which are owned or own or like Google, beneficiary of the great majority of the branded ad spend currently under PR assault.
Here at The Wagon we get the same strange feeling the Talking Point pushes in the quote above when we fix our eyes on a graph like the below:
With search behavior like that, why in the world would you want your brand to appear more than once, let alone a single time, in the same screen space above the fold? Good advice from the originator of democracy of screen space.
Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II
Posted by John Lustina at 10:56 AM
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August 20, 2007
New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks
posted by John Lustina in category:
We sure did have fun with this Quote of the Month while taking The Wagon for a spin this morning. From the magazine that takes itself so seriously it demands all caps, ADWEEK, we are treated to this breathless lede:
New research by Microsoft suggests a big chunk of search ad spending is wasted because advertisers pay top dollar for high ad placements clicked by consumers who are en route to their sites anyway. Listings tied to such "branded" keywords, typically a company's name or products, eat up about half of search budgets, Atlas estimates.
Wasted, indeed. Heard while The Wagon pulled up to fill itself up with coffee:
It's like saying Applebee's doesn't need specific signage or identifiable markings on its building to show out-of-towners where it is, because people are going to go there for dinner anyway. That is exactly how stupid this is.
Isn't this also an argument against any brand advertising of any kind?
New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks
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August 15, 2007
NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade
posted by John Lustina in category: Link Building
As you probably know, the NY Times has been the most prominent experiment in the paid content-behind-a-firewall-yet-at-least-partially-indexable model, and they are indeed now, finally, announcing via trial ballooning they are no longer going to put their most popular columnists behind that magic curtain one has to pay to sweep aside. After the magic show ends and the same fingers which initially drew the curtain are finished being pointed this way and that, this failed experiment will have had much to do with the principles of Link Building.
A party-goer cloaks her content as Maureen Dowd. Found on Flickr. Copyright 485i
First a great quote that helps explain the decision's relevance to our industry:
But the truth of the matter is that you get far more eyeballs when you're not locking away your content from the general public. The reality of Web 2.0 news is that people a rising tide raises all the ships. If you've got good content, and the Times does, people will link to it. When people read a technology blog like Engadget or a political blog like Daily Kos and find links to articles at the New York Times, everybody wins. Keeping your archives, op-eds, and other content locked up means that blogs and news sites won't link to you, won't give you credit for finding a story first, and won't drive up your traffic.
This lack of inbound links to the content-behind-the-firewall damaged traffic to the site not only through a paucity of visitors being able to click on these links to the columns themselves...:
...the share of traffic that the NY Times sends to NY Times Select has been decreasing over the past year – down by 16% year-on-year in July. With NY Times Select receiving more than two thirds (67%) of its US traffic from NYTimes.com, the decline had an impact with US visits to NY Select down 22% in the past year.
...in having to rely far too heavily on the parent site rather than third party links for traffic, but also in the residual effect such had in these columns' search engine visibility. With few third party inbound links accumulating with each new column, in fact from a deliberate online community decision not to link to content-behind-a-firewall, it is also very difficult for each new column to be judged more relevant than similarly themed columns emerging on the same topic that immediately acquire inbound links in the form of the same online community recommending them. It's no wonder the Times Select had to rely so heavily on clicks from the parent site for visits, as a great many of those visits were likely already subscribers. In that situation it is difficult to grow at the rate of the internet. Try these two simple searches for Frank and Maureen alone: nary a column to be found. Haven't they written quite a few?
I think everyone likely to read this blog knew this would happen. But to say we knew it would happen ultimately is not to say we are not happy to see even giants felled by an algorthm rejected, not select(ed).
NY Times Select(s) Death over Charade
Posted by John Lustina at 03:35 PM
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August 08, 2007
Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)
posted by John Lustina in category: Google
I get the feeling that most people, even in our industry, using Google Webmaster Tools for themselves or a client aren't scrolling far enough on the Query Stats page to reach this link:
What you get if you click is rather unwieldy, sure, especially if you are dealing with a very large site, but the payoff is simply as large by the same degree. We are beginning to view it more and more here as a kind of matrix for how Google views your site architecturally, especially in light of GSI now having been moved to an undisclosed location. Actually, now that I've said it I'm a bit afraid it, too, will be taken away...
Download all query stats for this site (including subfolders)
Posted by John Lustina at 02:59 PM
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July 17, 2007
An Ampersand Gets More Results Than All Other Punctuation, Combined
posted by John Lustina in category: Google
This is one of those few demonstrably true things. Even though it might actually be more accurately described as a symbol, in our character-challenged world of SEO Title tags we are more likely to view it in the same manner we view the disappearing punctuation mark.
But Google knows it is a logogram, and treats it as such, differently from the mere punctuation it eschews.
Try each one of these searches yourself and tell me which one is the outlier: [!], [@], [(], [)], [-], [;], [:], [“], [‘], [,], [.], [?], [/]—and—[&]!
& is also so well respected as to have its own eponymous magazine. Now what punctuation can also claim that?
An Ampersand Gets More Results Than All Other Punctuation, Combined
Posted by John Lustina at 03:05 PM
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June 14, 2007
The Google Supplemental Index Inbound Link(s) Threshold
posted by John Lustina in category: Crawling and Indexing
Wagon Rider Pat Fusco penned a great primer this Month on the issue of Google’s Supplemental Results as they are tied to duplicate content, if you’d like to orient yourself first. Our own Wagoneer Doug offers some points on Getting Out of Hell Free (that is, at least, without requiring direct payments to Google), the last method of which involved examining backlinks, and the fact that a great number of pages in the GSI we have examined across the massive sites we spend time with each day seem to share the commonality of zero inbound links.
We are finding, increasingly, that the distance from zero to one in terms of inbound links to a page seems to be much more of a threshold for exiting the Google Supplemental index than, say, 2 to 100. This is not to say that 1 gets you out, bada bing, but that there is a great more deal of love granted from Google on that single giant step from nil to 1 than there seems to be on the next link steps a page takes out of infancy.
A baby’s first steps are much more exciting and remarkable than the subsequent toddling around the room that follows, and it may be helpful to think of Google watching a page with no links in the same manner.
The Google Supplemental Index Inbound Link(s) Threshold
Posted by John Lustina at 08:49 PM
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June 01, 2007
Flash, Javascript, CSS, Ajax, sIFR, and Textual Image Replacement... Oh My!
posted by John Lustina in category: Organic SEO
Not just because I am somewhat easily confused, but as our title today suggests, the overlap, literally and figuratively, among all of these web elements can and often is the nexus of confusion in advocating Best Practices SEO to any client development team, whether in-house or, um... out.
Comes now a Flash Engineer at Google (on the YouTube side) with the most elegant writing to date on the lines of demarcation in what he terms modern web development philosophy:
First off, you need to embrace web standards. Semantic markup and separating content from style and behavior is the only way you should be building your sites. Many web standardistas have been recommending this method of web development for years, and rightly so. However, this post isn’t the place to go into the whys of this type of development, so I’ll skip that part and just say this about how it’s done: There are three areas of front-end web development: Content, Style, and Behavior. You should always keep these three things separated as much as possible.
Content, Style, and Behavior as three separate things. Makes it all much easier to put in place and figure out where one stops and the other begins. The money quote helps even further:
Progressive enhancement is a method of web development that goes hand in hand with Web Standards. You start with your HTML (your content), then add CSS (your look and feel), then add in additional behavior (Javascript, Ajax, Flash, any other interactivity that isn’t handled automatically by the browser).
Content. Style. Behavior. Trot that out next time everyone is looking at each other confused.
Flash, Javascript, CSS, Ajax, sIFR, and Textual Image Replacement... Oh My!
Posted by John Lustina at 11:11 AM
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May 15, 2007
Rosie Now Powerful Enough to Mock SEO Speedwagon in The SERPs
posted by John Lustina in category: Organic SEO
My oh my. We have to admit we were a tad worried here at The Wagon of backlash when we exposed Rosie O'Donnell's exact same URL appearing as result #'s 1 and 2:
What we didn't know, though, was that her media influence extended to being able to poke us in the eye with a self-conscious rejoinder of a description in her now magically changed #2 result:
Never mind that she doth seem to protest too much in her description. The sheer SEO power of this woman is breathtaking.
Rosie Now Powerful Enough to Mock SEO Speedwagon in The SERPs
Posted by John Lustina at 05:25 PM
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May 02, 2007
More Sitelinks Hijinks with Google Duality : A Tail of Two 301's
posted by John Lustina in category: Crawling and Indexing
It's not just Rosie enjoying the new Google Sitelinks Value Meal. FON, that guerrilla Wi-Fi startup knocking at Starbucks doors via their neighbors, is also now seated at the table:
But note in the above the two highlighted URLs, which are indeed the same page, do a bit of a pa de deux with how they serve the language, in this case English. The Sitelinks serving places the language as served from the en subdomain, yet that very URL redirects in this manner:
So that subdomain 301s from its English language subset that the subdomain indicates back to the non-language specific setting at the WWW level, whence it makes another direct turn back toward the language specific:
The whole trail of 301s serving to have moved the language specification in the URL from subdomain to folder level, with a waving pass through nothing. Quelle bonne idée !
Perhaps it is if it's another way to order a Google Sitelinks Value Meal.
More Sitelinks Hijinks with Google Duality : A Tail of Two 301's
Posted by John Lustina at 11:49 AM
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April 26, 2007
Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal
posted by John Lustina in category: Organic SEO
An interesting thing happened on Rosie's way out of the door of The View; her sudden, earth-shattering departure caused a quake of an anomaly in the Google result for her name -- namely, the exact same URL appearing twice as a result, both #1 and #2:
What gives? SEO purists might argue that as result #1 is in the Sitelinks formation and Rosie’s site itself links out in the main navigation to her blog, the URL highlighted above exists as both a shortcut that will save users time, per Google’s explanation of the criterion for URLs selected for the formation--
Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.
--and also exists on its own, as a blog, and thus merits a listing apart from one tied to Rosie's site, ergo the Value Meal Result.
But surely this rare achievement cannot be helped by the fact that Rosie's site itself argues against that very justification with its Title Tag. Aren't those supposed to be quite important, and importantly unique?
Does Rosie's massive influence extend even into the algorithmic sphere?
Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal
Posted by John Lustina at 03:37 PM
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April 19, 2007
Friends Don't Let Friends 302
posted by John Lustina in category: Organic SEO
Our 300 Series expert James sent out an important warning earlier in the year about 302's that aren't really temporary coming back to bite hard, and here at The Wagon we're starting to believe this may be a new Google theme for Spring.
The gist is there is a ticking clock on temporary, in that, we surmise, Google can tell when a 302 started, and it can certainly tell if it has yet to end. This makes sense. The unknown is what period between is given Google's blessing as truly "temporary" in temporal terms, and what then falls outside that window.
In 2007 so far, though, we are definitely seeing instances of the window slamming shut, loudly. And these are not spammers, no -- just, as can often be the case with a 302, used in a pinch with all intentions to return and fix, then forgotten. A promise written in the sand.
Please make sure any 302 you are using does indeed end, ultimately. If not, it likely will be ended for you.
Friends Don't Let Friends 302
Posted by John Lustina at 04:34 PM
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April 05, 2007
Rudy Giuliani Finally Winning the Race to be Himself
posted by John Lustina in category: Corporate Reputation Management
We said we'd keep an eye on Rudy's race against himself, and almost a Month to the day after we noted he was losing, he's now finally pulled into the lead, at last vanquishing Wikipedia as the most relevant Rudy Giuliani on the web.
It is appropriate now, literally, to say the candidate is coming into his own.
Rudy Giuliani Finally Winning the Race to be Himself
Posted by John Lustina at 04:09 PM
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April 04, 2007
If I Could Just Insert Something Here...
posted by John Lustina in category: Old Media
...certainly you will no longer realize you have just been interrupted. That's the latest note in the bittersweet Old Media symphony of interruption marketing rationalizing away the fact that their advertising vehicles, those dinosaurs eying the glaciers in sight, are -- well -- interruptions:
Fox, in a bid to keep viewers watching during commercial breaks, will begin running short, animated snippets of programming between ads.The tiny bits of programming will be about a taxi driver called Oleg, who will share words of wisdom and will chat with spoof versions of celebrities like Tom Cruise and Donald Trump, writes The Wall Street Journal. Two eight-second clips will begin airing on Monday.
The other broadcast networks are working on similar initiatives. At its development meetings with advertisers, for example, ABC showed off an idea that it hopes would make the break between programming and commercials seamless. The idea involves having characters watching an ad on TV. The ad would then expand to fill the whole screen.
Good golly if the characters are watching the ad, shouldn't I?
Allow me to insert here my growing belief that a key distinction between Old Media and New -- with each new brand of trick pulled on customers assumed prima facia breathtakingly dumb and devoid of any critical thinking skills whatsoever, collectively -- appears rather unfortunately to be disdain for the customer.
When an audience is telling you they would rather not be interrupted and rather than alter your vehicle you instead devise schemes to either strap them in or trick them out of realizing the route they choose has suddenly changed, what other could that strategy been born of than contempt?
New Media has a word for these tactics: Spam.
If I Could Just Insert Something Here...
Posted by John Lustina at 02:17 PM
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March 27, 2007
Did You Know WWW and Non-WWW are Two Different Sites?
posted by John Lustina in category: Crawling and Indexing
If you're an SEO you certainly do lest you are malpracticing. And if you're a Cutlett, you've likely concurred here just a little while ago but more likely immediately.
Yet in spite of immediate pick-ups of everything Matt posts and that fact that this is a day later, Good God, I want to highlight his explanation of why, if only to be able to link to this portion of it when I am asked why and do a poor job explaining why:
Some people ask “Why don’t you just assume www.example.com and example.com are the same?? The answer is that they don’t have to be, and for some websites they are different. For example, http://phpicalendar.net/ is a different page than http://www.phpicalendar.net/. This happens more often than you might think; FindWhat has different www vs. non-www pages, for example.
Best and simplest it's ever been put.
Am I now a Cutlett, too?
Did You Know WWW and Non-WWW are Two Different Sites?
Posted by John Lustina at 12:03 PM
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March 15, 2007
The Ineluctable Organic Moment Goes Primetime
posted by John Lustina in category: SEO Industry News
It's one of the most mythical numbers in all of SEM, rarely published, seldom spoken; yet most industry insiders nod and agree, even if furtively, that the organic search share of total search clicks, meaning the percentage of overall searchers clicking on an organic, rather than paid, search result, is somewhere in the 70% - 85% region.
I was quite stunned, then, when by happenstance I came across this line in Macworld, of all places:
Site owners are eager to get their hands on the 75 percent of free Google traffic that is not affected by AdSense and AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click programs.
Still within that magical, mythical margin. Still unattributed. Damn nice to see as a given in a non-industry mag.
The Ineluctable Organic Moment Goes Primetime
Posted by John Lustina at 07:18 AM
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March 12, 2007
Consumer Privacy Can Be SOOOOOO Annoying!
posted by John Lustina in category: Old Media
Perhaps it's simply a matter of having worked so long in a marketing niche that outputs only upon user-initiated input -- and questions seeking answers at that -- individuated down even to the syllable level, transmitted from the mind to the fingertips, each single atomic instance of the exchange a mutual handshake, rather than a phone-ringing, paper-flinging, desktop-hijacking raid.
Perhaps not. Perhaps I value privacy at some hermit-level degree and just haven't left my cave enough to yet realize it. But I find some of the assumptions inherent in this whining blurb about the fictional consumer "Katy" from Do-Not-Mail Movement Gains Traction in State Legislatures to be a particularly offensive note in the bittersweet AdAge symphony of interruption marketing rationalization:
Having clearly established her ability to bad-mouth your brand on her blog, TiVo your TV commercials, stop your phone calls and filter out your pop-ups, now-with the help of the government-she's trying to stop you getting access to her mailbox.
Is this blistering self-parody or have they finally jumped the shark into totalitarianism?
Consumer rights? Let them eat cake!
Consumer Privacy Can Be SOOOOOO Annoying!
Posted by John Lustina at 09:30 AM
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