Andrew R H Girdwood

Running WebPosition Gold? Using RankChecker? Go to jail.

2008-05-17T20:00:00.005+01:00

The story of Megan Meier is terrible and tragic. The poor girl killed herself as a result of cyberbulling at MySpace.

Her neighbour, Lori Drew, had created a fake persona at MySpace and used it to torment her.

It took US prosecutors nearly two years to find a law they could bring to bare against Lori Drew. In the end, they prosecuted Drew for hacking/unauthorised access - creating a fake account at MySpace breaks their terms and conditions for access. The Register express concerns that this could make us all criminals.

Google's terms and conditions expressly forbid tools which use automated queries. Google says in its WebPosition Gold. The same applies to other rank checkers like RankChecker or even PageRank checking scripts. A number of FireFox extensions come to mind as well.

The precedent set by the Lori Drew case means that, in theory, you could be sent to jail for ignoring Google's T&Cs.

Google gets funky in Taiwan

2008-05-16T10:20:00.002+01:00

Today's logo in Google Taiwan

Update: Ha-ha! Said image is also now pretty much world wide! Thanks timezones.

Icahn, CNet and Yahoo

2008-05-15T22:01:00.005+01:00

You'll have read elsewhere that Icahn has popped onto Yahoo's radar. He's put some cards on the table - 3% of Yahoo's shares and a move to put his team onto the board.

Full marks go to Marketing Pilgrim and their lolcat inspired write up - Icahn Haz Yahoo Board!. (Picture Credit to Marketing Pilgrim too) This isn't a news blog so I'm not going to mull too much into the details except to say that the term corporate raider was pretty much invested for Icahn. Er, I mean, Mr Icahn.

In other news CBS bought CNET. Wow. Old schools swoops in and buys new school. Once again I'll let someone else explain why that's odd - how come CNET was sold for less than $2 billion when it was worth nearly $20 billion just a few years ago. This time it's Mr Arrington who's explaining why CNET isn't the one buying CBS.

Here's the thing... Icahn has had some involvement with CNET himself. I think it's an excellent illustration of what Yahoo now face (and a time when Microsoft is lurking somewhere in the shadows...).

In the States there is a law called the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. The Act means you've got to own up and say when you've bought more than 5% of someone's shares. Have you ever played cards with someone only to discover, all of a sudden, they've won the game... they've got rid of their last card and you didn't see it coming. You didn't see it coming because they kept their hand hidden under the table. The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act is designed to stop companies being bought in the same way! With the Act in place no single person can buy a dribble of shares here, a dribble of shares there and sneak into position of strength.

Although; it's worth noting that Icahn (Mr) has 3% of Yahoo and is still in a position of strength.

Given the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act you can imagine CNET's surprise when, all of a sudden, they worked out that someone had managed to sly a full %21 of their company!

No. Icahn didn't lead the charge but he was involved. It is possible for hedge funds to deal with one and other and buy shares for one another. For example, you might buy some Yahoo shares for me - and you'll own them. We'll sign a deal that at a pre-arranged time you'll sell them on to me. We'll work it so that no one looses out if the shares go up or down in value and in exchange I'll pay your a handling fee.

That's what happened to CNET. Mr Icahn was one of the players in the elaborate series of "phantom buyers" who bought shares in the snare the hedge funds circled around CNET.

The New York Times has a more thorough write up than I do.

So Yahoo... Mr Icahn holds %3 of your shares. I wonder how many of your shares his allies hold and have already signed over.

Microsoft promotes Skull Worship

2008-05-13T11:26:00.006+01:00

MSN's popular searches currently include one for Skull Worship.

Have the cannibals taken over at Microsoft?

No. Well; probably not. We may have a US game show that's asked a question about Skull Worship (ah, Indiana Jones - I think you're to blame for this one) and the MSN-using / game-show-watching demographic overlap has gone out and searched for the answer.

Or... it could be one of the search suggestions at Indy Search.

The suggested 'winning' searches may have been enough to move the needle on MSN's over all search volume. That would suggest that Indy Search is being a hit for MSN Live and for Lucas Films.

Of course, if you're cynical you might wonder if this is a 'paid for popular search' - but that honestly that seem unlikely. There's probably not a strong enough tie between skull worship results and the film's search positions in MSN yet.

As a PS; a good place to go look for the 'Big US Game Show Effect' is Google's Hot Trends.

Pmog.com for digital marketing

2008-05-12T14:07:00.002+01:00

PMOG launched today. As a gamer and a digital marketer it interests me greatly.

Very briefly, PMOG is a Firefox extension that follows you around the web and gives your virtual cash for visiting new pages (yeah; it's a tracking program...)

As a user you can mine pages to leave an unwelcome surprise for the next PMOGer to visit. You can also leave a crate with a pile of loot. It is also possible to leave a portal that connects one site to another.

Due to PMOG's event stream I can be pretty certain that when I leave a crate on a site that someone will turn up sharpish to investigate (in fact, I would question whether the event stream is helping the game aspect or not) ... but right now, if I want to bring someone to a newly launched site then I can lure them in with crates.

It took less than 10 minutes for someone to turn up and raid a crate I had left on Andy Beal's twitter profile. So far people have managed to avoid the mine I left on... oh, I'm not going to say who's profile I mined!

I can also build brand association between two sites (not to mention steal a dribble of traffic) via portals. I went to The Register today and found a PMOG portal from a player suggesting I visit SlashDot too. I did. First time in ages.

It's also possible to create 'missions'. Now, missions are just visiting a bunch of sites in order and reading the creator's commentary.

My first attempt was to make one of the pages in the mission a set of Yahoo search results but the PMOG commentary layer wouldn't activate so I had to take the page out of the mission. I don't know whether PMOG have excluded Yahoo on purpose or whether it's a 'feature'. It may be a good idea as people can try and game Yahoo Search Assist by creating artificially high query rates.

PMOG clearly does have something to say about search. The badge at the top of this post is the Indie and is awarded if you avoid Google for a day.

I suspect I'm going to keep PMOG installed for a while and see how the site grows. It seems like an ideal place to launch virals and win the attention of online gamers (who are typically very savvy and often adept at ignoring advertising).

Live Blogging - good, bad or what you make it?

2008-05-09T16:45:00.002+01:00

There's been a bit of banter today on Twitter about live blogging and conferences. One side of the line argues that live blogging is a threat to speakers - all of a sudden the speaker is sharing their IP with a wider audience than just the conference attendees. The other side of the line points out that the speaker is putting their information in public anyway - conferences often make the presentations available online, anyway.

I'm interested in this topic for two reasons, 2) conferences are no longer a place to go if you're already in the industry and are hoping to learn and 1) live bloggers can decide the fate of products.

At an event like E3 there is a lot of live blogging and micro-blogging. Manufacturers have to make a good first impression on the the live bloggers or risk FAIL messages zooming around the internet. I'd say that bloggers could make or break some products within seconds of their launch. Seconds.

That's a scary thought, huh? How long before we see digital marketing agencies / search / social marketing agencies lining up to offer stage and presentation advice? Here's how to launch your product during this expo and in such a way as to encourage positive live blogging.

By the way, I tried live blogging SES New York this year. It's hard work! I managed to do a few sessions. I took notes, re-wrote and published during the breaks. I was exhausted. I've no idea how people like Lisa Barone have the stamina and typing accuracy to make it through the three (plus) days!

Share with Google Reader

2008-05-07T20:32:00.003+01:00

I'm already a big fan of the 'Share a Page' Google Reader Bookmarklet.

Sure people can fake out what the page actually says by re-writing the summary of the page but aren't these people supposed to be your friends? Try that once on me and you're dumped.

I share discoveries a lot by RSS. It is simply wonderful to be able to share single pages; suddently my daily Mixx summary is worth twice as much as it was worth before.

I also have a diverse group of friends. What I'd really like from Google Reader is a tag/label based share system. I want to be able to share some content with people and mark it 'search' so it only goes to the people interested in 'search'. I'd like to be able to share different content with people and mark it 'gaming' so it only goes to my geeky RPGamer buddies!

Increasingly Google Reader is the centre of my universal. My web comes to me in RSS streams and I manage all that via Google Reader. I love the way I can handle the incoming data - I just want more control on my outgoing data!

CPC determined by visit history

2008-05-05T20:20:00.007+01:00

I seem to be having a t-shirt flavoured Gmail AdWords week. This is Google's targetting system; I clicked on one and so now their system is tempting me with more t-shirt goodness.

This could be my favourite AdWord of all time.

The site in question can be found selling Engrish t-shirts here. Don't go clicking on the poor site's AdWords campaigns.

The ad reads:

Engrish.com can help you with our pleasure. Let's shopping t-shirts!

The t-shirt AdWord which first caught my attention this week was for Torso Pants. I liked the site so much that I bookmarked it using my Google toolbar. I'll buy something later.

Here's a thought; I bookmarked Torso Pants via Google. Google continues to show me AdWords for Torso Pants. If more people actually used Google's bookmarking feature then I, as an advertiser, would want an AdWords option which let me decide whether or not to show my ads to people who had already bookmarked me.

I might decide - they know about my niche store already; I don't want to ad serve them.
I might decide - I want to remind them that I'm here; I do want to ad serve them.

In fact, you can take that concept and simply throw away the Google bookmarking feature. Wouldn't it be a good idea if you could set CPC based on whether the searcher had been on your site recently, some time in the past or never before?

Disclaimer: I'm heavily NDA'd by Google but, at the time of this post, I've never talked to them about CPCs determined by visit history. If I had knowledge of CPC/visit history features then I wouldn't be blogging this!

Twhirl or Alert Thingy

2008-05-04T15:54:00.003+01:00

I'm a Twhirl user. I'm in two minds as to whether I like the way they've integrated FriendFeed support. Why the two windows? Why not one?

Using Twist to measure Twitter chat suggests that the battle between the two applications is going to be a close one.

If you don't see a graph here then that means Twist's embed feature is borked again.

Google cleans up Next Blog >> Presses

2008-05-02T15:50:00.003+01:00

Back in January 2007 I did a study on next blog button pushes on blogger and blogspot. Google puts a bar across blogpost hosted blogs which lets users, well, log in, post, search or randomly reach another blog. It's really an advert for the service.

I counted how many button pushes it took for me to reach 100 English language non-spam blogs. It took 241 button pushes. I also discovered a lot of spam; in particular redirects to porn sites.

I've repeated this exercise this week and can say that the random button never once took me to porn at all. On a few occasions it took me to a hard sell site that was essentially a spam landing page.

Google's cleaned up the button. So, it is better? Ah... last year it took me 241 button pushes to find 100 English language sites. This year it took 309.

The difference is in non-English blogs. They've doubled from last year. There are a few reasons for this; Wordpress and SixApart are likely to be clawing market share away from Blogger in the UK, Canada and the USA. The Next Button isn't entirely random it; it's reciprocal and some geographic areas (thus languages) may be more likely to press the button than others.

My chart for 2007 looked like this:

The chart for 2008 looks like this:

Facebook and Slide gets political: Free Tibet

2008-04-27T16:31:00.004+01:00

I'm not checking Facebook nearly as often as I used to. Today I noticed I'd been sent by a political SuperPoke. I'm a little surprised that Slide has gone in this direction.

Time will tell whether this is a wise choice or not. Tibet's a more complex situation than TV reports do full justice too. Annoying China is not a good strategy if you wish to expand into APAC either.

On the other hand, this shows how powerful social networks can be harnessed to promote a positive and peaceful message. I think it's far better to use Facebook to bring attention to the problems in Tibet than trying to disrupt the Olympics is.

Last.fm bad currency

2008-04-26T12:02:00.003+01:00

I know the Pound is annoyingly strong against the Dollar right now... but look what happened when I tried to renew my Last.fm subscription today in Pounds (a valid option from Last.fm's own dropdown menu).

This is a problem that can haunt some start ups. I'm surprised to see Last.fm suffering.

Multi-currency is a digital marketing element that is big in Europe but a non-issue in the States. It's one of the biggest adjustments American or Canadian search marketers need to make when they come to practise anywhere in Europe.

The NMA Marketing Services Guide

2008-04-24T12:56:00.001+01:00

The NMA have released their marketing services guide for 2008. The list charts the largest search agencies in the land. Once again The Search Works tops the list - congratulations guys. We came third.

The NMA list is a bit of a vanity exercise. The size of an agency is their total turnover - and this includes pass through revenue. Pass through revenue includes the money that simply comes in from clients and goes out to Google (or Yahoo or MSN).

In the US you'd never include pass through revenue as a meaningful measurement metric.

As a result PPC agencies (The Search Works) have a much higher turnover because the're passing client money on to Google. As I glance down the list and spy the likes of iCrossing (8th), Propellernet (15th), Tamar (18th), Neutralize (28th) or Site Visiblity (34th) I think to myself… wait a minute, these guys all have significant influence in the UK search marketing scene. I'm just naming a few too as there are other agencies in the list who "move the needle" in my opinion.

I should note too that the NMA points out that Efficient Frontier and Site Visibility exclude search spend from their figures and I respect that.

Here's the challenge. Is there a better metric? Up here in the North the media magazine The Drum had a go. First they required agencies to get enough recommendations from clients to qualify in the first place. Then they looked at revenue divided by staff - so an agency that made £10m a year with 50 staff was doing better than an agency that made £10m a year with 100 staff.

There's a problem with that too. What about those agencies who outsource? Do you count the outsourced staff (are they cheaper?) and how do you do it? If the £10m agency with 50 staff outsource to 150 people as well then perhaps they're not so good.

Perhaps profit is a better metric? After all; you can have a huge turnover (especially if you include pass through revenue) but do you manage to keep any of it? I've seen rival agencies drop their knickers when it comes to prices just to win a contract. I doubt they make a profit.

Agencies aren't going to share their profit figures though. The only time you get to peak at them is when the agency goes on the market and you're large enough to buy them. Even then it's pretty dull reading.

I think a much better way to 'measure' agencies is simply to talk to them. Meet the staff. Visit the office. Go listen to them speak at SMX or SES. Do you like what you hear?

Google blocking Yahoo Pipes - again (again)

2008-04-23T16:18:00.003+01:00

We've been here before but Google seems to be blocking Yahoo Pipes again.

Here's the catch. I think Google likes Yahoo Pipes. Google's even demonstrated how Yahoo Pipes can be used. When I pointed out that Feedburner was blocking Pipes I even had MC pop over to the blog to make sure everything was okay.

So I don't think Google intends to block Yahoo Pipes. I think Google constantly fights off RSS scrapers and sometimes Yahoo Pipes gets caught in the crossfire. The screen grab above shows how it's the blogsearch results that are being blocked.

Am I a Sphinn troll now?

2008-04-18T09:43:00.002+01:00

Have I gone too far? I just desphunn a sphinn that had gone hot. The sphinn in question is Could Mixx Be the Next Digg?

So why was I such a bastard as to desphinn that? We've had countless sphinns about Mixx already. The write up the sphinn posted to was thorough but it didn't add anything new. This wasn't breaking news.

The great thing about Sphinn is that the wisdom of the crowd rules. In this case I think the crowd got it wrong... but Sphinn's robust enough not to let grumps like me spoil things.

I need to go back and look at my micro-Sphinn pipe. It's been silent. It could have been silent for two reasons; none of the Sphinners I shortlisted are sphinning the same submissions (and what does that tell you?) or my sample set isn't large enough.

Setting up the micro-Sphinn was just a quick idea and something I did in Dublin Airport after Search Marketing World! Was it a good idea after all?

I don't want to create a clique of Sphinn elite (I'm very much against cliques). I do want to extract a little bit more from Sphinn though.

Doing the FriendFeed thang

2008-04-17T14:00:00.003+01:00

This is the Twhirl effect. As Twhirl will soon support FriendFeed... I thought it's about time I did too.

So, this morning, it took just a few minutes to set up

The Marketing and Communications department lurvs it when I do that sort of thing

Dear Marcoms; I've created a bigmouthmedia FriendsFeed. Don't worry about it. It'll take care of itself. Oh... you might get some friend emails. Don't worry about this other.

Once again I note that all these efforts to cope with the "decentralised self" work around the single person concept and not that of a company. The very word "friend" is a human concept and rather emotive too. It doesn't seem to suit corporations at all.

MSN flying high, Google and Yahoo doing equally badly

2008-04-17T10:11:00.005+01:00

Ah. A chart that shows MSN kicking Google into touch. How often do you see that?

The chart, of course, comes from Facebook's newly launched Lexicon. It's great fun to play with.

MSN likely does this well because Facebookers will be inviting each other to chat on 'MSN' - meaning Live Messenger.

Here's a chart that was used to try and stoke the heated console debates we're prone to!

Finaly's first comment was, "Can you get UK specific data?". Sadly not. Not yet.

It's a shame because if you could drill into geographies then you'd have a great tool for predicting retail buzz. Which toys are going to be the big sellers at Christmas? Facebook's Lexicon could tell you. I fear it's a little bit of a blunt instrument for the retail vertical now. It should work for travel (to an extent, at least for hotel room prices) and any international topic.

Outbrain

2008-04-16T16:26:00.002+01:00

I've had the Outbrain stars on my blog and vote option on my feedflare for a while. I like the ease of use and I like the anonymous feedback.

I recently got on to the beta to add the Outbrain recommendations widget. You can see the most popular stories (by rating) have been added to the top right of the blog.

I'd encourage you to start rating my blog posts. Why? Outbrain learns what you like and starts to make recommendations for you. Think of it as a personalised and content sensitive widget version of Google News.

There's a catch; it needs enough data before it can start to make recommendations. Does anyone know of any other search related Outbrain blogs? I'm inclined to start reading them so I can start building up my Outbrain profile.

The toughest SEO challenge yet?

2008-04-15T16:04:00.004+01:00

The whiz kids over at bigmouthmedia Sweden have created a fiendishly challenging puzzle!

If you're good at mind challenges then pop over to the bigmouthGame.

The concept is simple enough; slide the blocks around so you can get the large bigmouthmedia block to the red base at the bottom of the rectangle.

Most people give up around the 50 moves mark...

Isabell Wagner speaking at SMX Munich

2008-04-13T10:25:00.005+01:00

Isabell Wagner speaking at SMX Munich, originally uploaded by Bigmouthmedia.

I've uploaded this and a whole bunch of new photographs to our Flickr account.

We've snow in Norway, SMX in Munich, SES in New York, a Marathon in Paris, Ad:Tech in Paris and a party in Milan!

Google's countrty faux pas

2008-04-09T10:03:00.002+01:00

I think this is fairly well documented but Google's "Did you mean..." suggestion can really commit some clangers. This screen grab was sent to me by an annoyed Austrain bigmouth!

My personal 'grrr' at Google is when they personalise my results but insist on telling me that they've 'personaliZed' my results. No Google, no. If you personalise my results then you spell in British English.

My voting policy

2008-04-08T15:39:00.003+01:00

Gosh.

Now that I force myself to post to this blog now and then. Now that I'm on LinkedIn, Twitter and other social sites I'm finding myself in contact with you lot more often.

This is a good thing.

One thing that I've noticed is that I get asked to vote for things rather a lot; mainly on Sphinn but also on other sites.

Hmm.

Here's my policy; Feel free to ask me to vote for something. I'll go to the site, review the latest submissions and vote for all of the ones there I like. I may or may not end up voting for you as I won't vote for anything I don't think deserves a vote. By asking me to vote for something you are, in effect, reminding me to go check in on the site and engage with it.

How does that sound?

A bigmouthmedia video

2008-04-04T23:08:00.003+01:00

Have just discovered this video...

A Lativian blog called it bigmouthmedia and Freddy Mercury so it triggered Google alerts. The inspiration may be from...

or...

And yes. Now that you've finished running in terror - we did do the last two!

Building your own micro-Sphinn with Yahoo Pipes

2008-04-03T19:26:00.002+01:00

I announced to Twitter that I want Sphinn to let me know when people I trusted had started to sphinn a post. Seconds later; oh wait... I think each user has a sphinns RSS and I love Yahoo Pipes.

And so I present the Yahoo Pipe for Micro Sphinn (beta 0.1) which outputs sphinn posts when two or more of the following have voted for the same story.

Danny Sullivan, Rusty Brick, Susan, Patrick Altoft, Philipp Lenssen, Vanessa Fox, Chris Winfield, Bill Slawski, Lisa Barone, SEO Honolulu, Lyndon, Loren Baker, Viper Chill, Chris Cathcart, Sebastian, David Wallace, Spostare Duro, Kevin Heisler, Rach, Mel C and Jeff Quipp

I'll put my hands up and admit - this needs work. I actually probably need to submit more Sphinn users in order to get the "wisdom of the crowds" to work. I can off set this by increasing the 2 or more limit to 3 or more or higher. If you'd like to be added then leave me a comment with your Sphinn URL.

I've also published this Pipe so feel free to subscribe to it or clone and modify! http://pipes.yahoo.com/girdwood/microsphinn

Google: With Safesearch On

2008-03-31T16:46:00.003+01:00

File this under; "I think this is new".

Google's now telling me when safesearch is on or not for normal text SERPs. I imagine this becomes more of an issue as Universal Search ramps up and the basic web search starts to include more images and video.

alternatively, I was doing some work for a cosmetic surgery client on Friday and flicked the safesearch settings on Google Image search on and off a few times to see the difference (wow; what a difference!) and so the appearance of this safesearch banner may well be due to that!