Throwing Ice Cream Cones

Why am I a bringing this up? Well, forget any comparison of the battle between Google and Microsoft, with WWII. My point is that Microsoft is throwing whatever it can lay its hands on, at Google. The latest evidence is the upcoming Internet Explorer 8"being built with a few tricks to try and knee-cap Google.

"We didnt design this with Google in mind," insists Internet Explorer head Dean Hachamovitch.

The new browser comes with a search box in the upper right-hand corner and, just below that, a row of tiny logos for various search destinations, such as Yahoo, Ebay and MySpace. You can select which destinations you want to include hereAnother Google-dodging feature in the new browser: Highlighting a street address on a Web page launches a map, with the default set to Microsofts Live Maps (though you can change this default to Google Maps).

Will it be enough? Not on its own"especially as Mozillas Firefox continues to eat away at IEs market share. But, if Microsoft can throw enough pots and pans new products at Google, maybe it can at least prevent Google from reaching 100% search share.

What do you think? Will IE8 help Microsoft in its battle with Google?

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Improvements Coming!

Were committed to making Google Apps Premier Edition a service on which your organization can depend. During the first half of August, we didnt do this as well as we should have. We had three outages - on August 6, August 11, and August 15. The August 11 outage was experienced by nearly all Google Apps Premier users while the August 6 and 15 outages were minor and affected a very small number of Google Apps Premier users. As is typical of things associated with Google, these outages were the subject of much public commentary.

Through this note, we want to assure you that system reliability is a top priority at Google. When outages occur, Google engineers around the world are immediately mobilized to resolve the issue. We made mistakes in August, and were sorry. While were passionate about excellence, we cant promise you a future thats completely free of system interruptions. Instead, we promise you rapid resolution of any production problem; and more importantly, we promise you focused discipline on preventing recurrence of the same problem.

Given the production incidents that occurred in August, well be extending the full SLA credit to all Google Apps Premier customers for the month of August, which represents a 15-day extension of your service. SLA credits will be applied to the new service term for accounts with a renewal order pending. This credit will be applied to your account automatically so theres no action needed on your part.

Weve also heard your guidance around the need for better communication when outages occur. Here are three things that were doing to make things better:

1. Were building a dashboard to provide you with system status information. This dashboard, which we aim to make available in a few months, will enable us to share the following information during an outage:

     a. A description of the problem, with emphasis on user impact. Our belief is during the course of an outage, we should be singularly focused on solving the problem. Solving production problems involves an investigative process thats iterative. Until the problem is solved, we dont have accurate information around root cause, much less corrective action, that will be particularly useful to you. Given this practical reality, we believe that informing you that a problem exists and assuring you that were working on resolving it is the useful thing to do.
     b. A continuously updated estimated time-to-resolution. Many of you have told us that its important to let you know when the problem will be solved. Once again, the answer is not always immediately known. In this case, well provide regular updates to you as we progress through the troubleshooting process.

2. In cases where your business requires more detailed information, well provide a formal incident report within 48 hours of problem resolution. This incident report will contain the following information:

a. business description of the problem, with emphasis on user impact;
b. technical description of the problem, with emphasis on root cause;
c. actions taken to solve the problem;
d. actions taken or to be taken to prevent recurrence of the problem; and
e. time line of the outage.

3. In cases where your business requires an in-depth dialogue about the outage, well support your internal communication process through participation in post-mortem calls with you and your management team.

Once again, thanks for you continued support and understanding.

Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

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Buzz Is Quite Delicious

Yahoo Buzz is a site where you can vote in a similar way to Digg, although it is likely that there will be more editorial control.

As Darren Rowse explains, Yahoo Buzz will appeal to a certain type of audience and reader and will therefore present different opportunities to different publishers.

The burgeoning expansion of social media websites is almost head spinning. Another popular website with some similarities is del.icio.us or as it has recently been transformed into delicious.com. The delicious blog provides some explanations:

Oh happy day " the new Delicious is here

The new Delicious
Over the past few days weve been transitioning Delicious over to our new platform, quietly starting with RSS feeds and APIs. Today were taking the final step and flipping the switch on the new web site: delicious.com.

The new Delicious is just like the old del.icio.us, only faster, easier to learn, and hopefully more delightful to use and to look at.

Its even more head spinning when you realize that both Yahoo Buzz and delicious are owned by Yahoo. As Michael Porter so wisely said, Of course strategy is hard - its about making tough choices. If Yahoo cannot make up its mind, how are we, the poor consumers, to do so.

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Search Engine Tool Faceoff

"We launched a new look and feel for Site Explorer http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new) that provides a more dynamic interface to accommodate future feature roll-outs. The new interface also includes a new Site Summary page to provide statistics for authenticated sites. On top of this, we're also increasing the number of rules for Dynamic URL Rewriting that you can enter from 3 to 10".

• Find out which of your site's web pages are indexed by Yahoo!.
• Discover and track what websites link to your site.
• Know what subdomains from your site are known to Yahoo!.
• Monitor and manage the feeds you have submitted for that site.
• See when the data was last refreshed by our crawlers.
• Resubmit the feed to let us know that it has been updated.
• Download all 1000 results into a tab-separated value (TSV) file at once (and avoid having to page through the results.)
• Learn additional metadata about the URLs from your site in the Yahoo! index, such as language.
• Delete URLs that you don't want indexed by Yahoo! Search.
• Re-write dynamic URLs to make them easier to index
• Report SPAM.

• Know which of your web pages are indexed in Google
• Uncover which websites are linking to your website (limited view)
• Understand what text is used when linking to your site
• Validate robots.txt files
• Submit and monitor your sites feeds (incl. Subscriber numbers)
• Register and update your websites sitemap
• Understand the top organic queries for your website
• Work out where you feature in the top search results
• Find out when your site was last indexed by the Google crawler
• Understand issues that Google has uncovered on your site
• PLUS...much more

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Revolutionize Search

Currently, advertisers bid to have their ads shown on search results pages depending upon specific keywords that users type into search engines. But Powerset believes that its natural language processing could change the way ads are displayed and enhance the profitability for all parties involved.

"If people aren't bidding on keywords, and are bidding on concepts, it could completely change the ball game," said Scott Prevost, Powerset's General Manager and Product Director.

However, not everyone is a fan of this new natural language search process. This includes Don Reisinger from Mashable. Here is why Don believes natural language search will not work.

"Keywords may not be fool-proof and may tend to make things more difficult for advertisers, but we can't forget that bidding on them works for one reason: it simplifies a process that is extremely hard to gauge.

In Powerset's scheme, companies need to rely upon the intention of those same people and how well it can guess how they interact with a search engine, regardless of the keywords used.

Trying to guess what people will say, as opposed to what people will include in their query, is extremely difficult. Why try to guess a whole sentence or a structured query when you can pick one word and hope people use it?"

What are your thoughts on this, do you think there is a future in search for natural language processing?

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AdWords Improvements

...we are replacing our static per-keyword Quality Scores with a system that will evaluate an ads quality each time it matches a search query

Keywords no longer marked inactive for search

The new per-query evaluation of Quality Score affects you in that keywords will no longer appear as inactive for search in your account. Instead, all keywords will have the chance to show ads on Google web search and the search network (unless youve paused or deleted them)

First page bid will replace minimum bid

As a result of migrating to per-query Quality Score, we are no longer showing minimum bids in your account. Instead, were replacing minimum bids with a new, more meaningful metric: first page bids. First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results on Google web search

This is my translation:

"A more accurate Quality Score" - more revenue for Google.

"Keywords no longer marked inactive for search" - more revenue for Google.

First page bid will replace minimum bid - more revenue for Google.

Ill admit, I use Google AdWords about as often as I wash my car"which is not often"so, if youre a big time AdWords user, please tell me what you thought, when you saw the new Quality Score updates.

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Fighting the Next Battle

...but that you immediately get interested in. It might be a TV show (how many people will visit China over the next few years because of what they are seeing on TV at the Olympics. I bet a ton).
2. Research. Youve decided to buy something, say a new car, but now you need to figure out which one is best for you. Some of the things you do here are to ask your friends, look online for reviews, read Consumer Reports, etc etc.
3. Purchase. Youve decided what you want, now you go looking for the best place to complete the transaction.

Think through to the best businesses on the Internet. Most that I can think of fit into one or several of these three phases.

Google, for instance, makes billions of dollars from advertisers who want to help you complete a transaction. Do a search for digital cameras, for instance, and there youll see ads.

But competing with Google is not really possible, even for a huge multi-billion dollar company like Microsoft.

So, since Google has pretty much locked up the last phase, where is the next Internet monetization battle taking place?

Both Facebook and Google are beating each other up to lock up the next phase: social recommendation and participation.

Google calls this FriendConnect.

Facebook calls this Facebook Connect.

Yesterday I visited Facebook to get an up close look at Facebook Connect. I had previously attended the Google FriendConnect launch and even videoed that with my cell phone.

Its interesting, though, that both of these systems havent gotten widespread use yet. Its also interesting that the teams both struggle to explain why a normal business would use these technologies in their own business sites. At least in language that a normal person who isnt a Facebook addict would understand.

So, let me simplify into a single sentence. Adding social networking features to your corporate sites helps your users through the research phase of the buying process.

These will get widespread use over the next few years as stories come out about successes.

But lets look at one site thats very close to what Im talking about.

Gary Vaynerchuks Wine Library.TV.

Now, Gary owns a wine store in New Jersey that is selling about $50 million per year in wine. That means he has the third phase of the buying process nailed down. Hes the Google of the New Jersey wine market.

So, how is he changing his business? (He calls it bringing thunder to the wine industry).

His website and show are TOTALLY about extending his reach into the other phases of the buying process.

His video show creates the need in your head to try more wine. Todays show gets me to try out some Italian sparkling wine. I had no idea before I watched that show that I needed to try that wine.

Now, notice what happens next. Look at the comments. 136 of them when I wrote this post. You can see the research phase of the buying process happening there. People are recommending different wines than Gary did, or backing up what Gary said, etc.

Now, Gary is WAY AHEAD of most other wine stores. I went to Google and searched for Wine store and found wine.com.

But notice that they dont even get close to creating the need in my head for different kinds of wine that Gary does. Video is unparalleled for creating need for new things.

And, also notice that if you wanted to research Wine that they dont have the same kind of research community that Gary is building.

Now, could wine.com go past winelibrary.tv in the research phase? Yes. They already are tracking top contributors to their reviews. But using Facebooks Connect they could go way further: they could tie their contributors into Facebook itself and add all sorts of interesting interactive features. I know that if a friend of mine, like Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic, buys a paticular wine that itll be good (Loic has great taste in wine).

By making the site more personal and bringing my friends choices into a site like this itll convert me to more wine sales at a far higher rate than it does today.

But imagine if Garys site did that. He already is 90% there (hes always on Twitter interacting with people and his video show is just so much more of a personal experience than reading the reviews on wine.com).

If I were a marketer Id be trying to figure out how to stay up with Gary. Why? Well, do you think his viewers are going to price shop Gary? Hell no. How do you stay up with Garys concept? Google and Facebooks new APIs are the way to do that.

What do you think? Are you thinking of using more social features on your website?

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SEM by the Numbers

Here are a few of the tips & thoughts that were shared:

Craig Danuloff

• Invisibility; what cant we see?
• Every search is a question, every ad is an answer. Keywords simply connectors.
• ROAS is a feel good metric. dont take it seriously.
• Deception - Can you trust what you see?
• Accuracy - Whats the margin of error. Is there statistical significance?
• Banish brand terms as they throw everything off.
• Unlimited power from huge data volumes. Lots of campaigns lots of data and a fluid business environment.
• A change is not a test. Test design, test tracking, scoring test results.
• Apply math and statistics.
• Make a record of changes made to the site.

Brian Cosgrove

• Implementation - Everyone needs to ensure analytics are configured correctly.
• Filtering - Filter out internal traffic or those that come to the site as part of their job.
• Process should be: report, analyze, optimize, measure, repeat.
• How many pages are actually landing pages, how many are not getting visitors?
• Connect landing pages and keywords as a search engine doesnt always drive traffic to what you think is the best page.

Heather Dougherty

• Use competitive intelligence to identify and analyze sem opportunities.
• Identify trends and seasonality.
• Analyze competitors strategy.
• Act upon opportunities.
• Get the calendar ready and stay ahead of seasonal trends.
• Understand paid vs organic search in specific industry.
• Look at competitors. Paid vs organic. Click thoroughs.
• What is the user intent? Example: Purchase an item or news/research.
• Can use analytics for reputation management.

Michael Stebbins

• Whats in your data? Most analytics have bounce rates, average time, page views, but does yours have conversion rate and cost of revenue per visit?
• The Grim Reaper: Find which 10% of ads are not performing and kill them.
• Find ads with high cost, bad ROI, low engagement, low conversion and those will help find the 10%
• They can either be cut or replaced.
• Dont keep them hoping theyll get better.
• Free Research Tool: Microsofts Commercial Intent
• Free Research Tool: Google Adwords Keyword too. With this you can even check age range and sex to help target your ad content
• Free Research Tool: Google Ad Planner

Brett Crosby

• Came from Urchin and helped grow Google Analytics
• Wanted to make it easier for non-geeks to dive in and explore. Aka: The shallow end.
• Always setup goals and funnels.
• Customize dashboard for your needs.
• Customize email reports for different rolls in the company.
• Setup goal value. This will help you see values per keyword
• If you can hook up to eCommerce data, its even better

The session had great speakers from the technical side of things to the beginner side of analytics. It was a lot of information in a short time, but still very good overall.

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Tweaks the SERPS

...a new algorithm altogether, as the SERP rankings are going bonkers.

Here are a few excerpts from the thread at Digital Forums:

I have noticed (including myslef ), Websites are flying up and down the Serps.
For me it started about July 20th, two sites lost ranking for every keyword, then two weeks later came back with worse ranking.

These are not a penalty, when you have a penalty goolge will inform you via webmaster tools. Matt cutts has confirmed this. Also it's nothing to do with the Google dance, the google dance lasts no more than 10 days.

Google wouldn't introduce it so quickly if they were to bring a new Algo in. Think about it.

Definitely some major changes are taking place especially in terms of PR.

I hope so, it's very frustrating, one week i'm ranking 5th page 1, the next i'm page 15.

i have similar problem so donot know what is going on with G. have to do alot on content and link building then wait.

Google did about 450 algo changes in 2007. It means 1-2 changes per week. Do we have a reason to believe that there will be less changes this year? Google does not publish or promote all smaller adjustments.

A major algo change would cause big ranking changes for millions of sites. That hasn't happened.

Yeah i was a PR2 site. I added a ton more backlinks from higher ranked sites PR 4+ and my page rank is now 0 and my SERPs are down a bit..

I have a number of high traffic keywords that are bobbing up and down on page 1 of google. It's always been the case and always will be me thinks.. I really think Google has caught onto wordpress and directory links and the more traditional HTML site links are much more "weighty" these days.'

Well I know its getting frustrating as I had been stable at #29 for over a month then jumped to #4 for almost 2 days now I am #118 and I havent done any changes or added new links so I am confused as to what I am to do to counter this adverse affect in google.

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GraphOn Sues Google

GraphOn, based in Santa Cruz, Calif., acquired the patents through its acquisition of Network Engineering Software, a privately held network software company, in 2005. The suit was filed in United States District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

Will GraphOn win? Define "win."

According to MarketWatch, GraphOn has filed similar suits against AutoTrader.com, IAC, Match.com, Yahoo and many others. In January of this year, GraphOn ended its legal dispute with AutoTrader.com when the classifieds site signed a license agreement. Will Google follow suit or will it fight this all the way? Either way, dont expect an outcome this decade.

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