by Jonah Stein on April 20, 2009
Google is well known for experimenting with on the Search Engine Results Page, but I have seen a couple of strange results this week. The first is the use of related search queries in the middle of the results page, right after the first three results for the query banner design . The screen shot is a little strange because I use the Grease Monkey script to number the results, but the placement is clear. Maybe Google figures if you haven’t found the results in the top 3, you need to modify your query.
The second strange result is on a page that I discovered after Andrew Shotland from Local SEO Guide tweated how proud he was that his post about Youtube SEO is on the first page for smoking crack . Note the very unusual mix of three image results, three Youtube videos and 1 video from The Sun (as pointed out by Graywolf aka Michael Gray) What’s up with so many multimedia results? Is universal search on crack an all video affair?
by Jonah Stein on March 31, 2009
Andrew Goodman wrote a fabulous piece about Twitter, calling Guy Kawasaki to task for his SES New York keynote on gaming Twitter.
I am not going to quote all of the excellent points Andrew makes about using automation (follow bots) to AstroTurf. I have been amused by my (small) army of Zombie followers on Twitter who seem to appear after I post a tweet. I assume most of them must be auto follow bots because I am not that famous and my tweats are frankly not that interesting. Anyone who is following more than about 500 people is most likely not actually monitoring the account at all.
I have mixed opinions about some of the observations about Guy Kawasaki’s self promoting strategies and self-aggrandizing metrics. Narcissism and Twitter go hand in hand. Because Obama and Brittany does it, is it OK? I am not sure, although I give props to those celebrities who actually tweet themselves, I am not ready to absolutely condemn those who hire shills to make announcements for them. Does it matter whether Brittany types 140 characters to announce her tour dates or a radio appearance? Probably not. Does it matter when a well known marketer talks about how to build a list of followers and game the system to spam them? Absolutely.
Where Goodman really nails the issue it is when he talked about the impact on Twitter.
So why do I think that he could singlehandedly ruin Twitter, if its brand, community, and technology aren’t robust enough? I think mostly about how a fashion-forward digital brand can be reduced to a sort of flea market image, just by the actions and presence of a prevalence of certain kinds of members. When that happens, eventually the value declines (think eBay) and the cool kids start scouting around for somewhere that isn’t overrun by hawkers and pitchmen and auto-generated babble. To say nothing of desperate losers trying to build their “downline.”
Andrew, welcome to the crusade against Virtual Blight.
by Jonah Stein on March 30, 2009
The ROIGuy will be presenting the latest installment in my crusade to make publishers aware of the devastating impact of scams, spam and creeps, Stopping Virtual Blight: Hack, Malware and Advertising Scams at the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo. Publishers need to understand the impact of deceptive advertising, comment spam, scams and other manipulation on their brand and to learn to collaborate in the face of a common enemy.
Joining me will be David Dagon, a researcher from Georgia Tech who specializes in monitoring botnets along with Jonathan Hochman of Hochman Consultants
by Jonah Stein on March 7, 2009
This post isn’t about SEO, so skip it unless you are interested in something personal.
Over winter break last year, my wife and I visited Siem Reap. Cambodia has a tragic history, but the Angkor Temples are magical places with a 1000 year old history carved in stone. It is something that everyone should see at least once in their lifetime.
The most striking thing about our trip was not the temples, it was the Cambodian people. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries on earth and you be face to face with swarms of street kids, mine victims and more than a small amount of tragedy. Like any tourist destination, the locals are skilled at working westerners for money, but beyond the obvious hustle, Cambodians are friendly, happy people who seem genuine and warm to foreigners.
Barely an hour after we arrived, we struck up a conversation with a local woman named Ara while we had lunch. She was our hostess at the Khmer Kitchen Restaurant located on Avenue 9. We started chatting with her about the places to see and where to get a guide, arrange a Tuk-Tuk, etc. She offered to set us up with a guide and a driver as well as accompany us to help translate (although many Cambodians speak at least some English). I am not naive, I know that she makes a commission from both the guide and the driver, but that is a small price to pay for having a human recommendation instead of asking our hotel to arrange it for us (and paying more, and knowing the hotel also gets a commission).
Over the course of two days riding from temple to temple in a Tuk-Tuk, we heard Ara’s incredible life story. She was born in 1984, only a couple years after the Vietnamese over through the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. She was abandoned in the hospital at birth, presumably her mother was a “Taxi Girl” and and her father could have been a Vietnamese soldier, a foreign aid worker or a local.
She lived in the hospital until she was three years old, at which point she was essentially kicked out on the street to join the legions of orphans who survived by a combination of begging, selling postcards and books to the occasional tourists and stealing so they would have food to eat. When she turned 10, Ara was taken in by a group of Buddhist Nuns, who raised her until she was 16.
Ara’s life is full of dangers, catch-22’s and contradictions. All of the other girls who she grew up with have died of AIDS, drug abuse or the other consequences of prostitution. Young women (and girls) are frequently kidnapped by human traffickers and poverty is so pervasive that families also sell their daughters into sex slavery. Cambodia is a very traditional society, so there are still very few opportunities for women in business. She doesn’t date because men are looking for women with family status and besides, as she puts it, “who wants to marry a women with no money and wind up with six mother in laws”.
The amazing thing about Ara’s story is not the heart wrenching tragedy or the suffering this young woman has both witnessed and endured. In America her story is the stuff of a lifetime movie special; a voyeuristic portrayal of tragic circumstances and emotive suffering that leads to an unhappy life, followed by the redemption of a Hollywood ending that requires a box of tissues and the complete suspension of disbelief.
In real life, Ara is a happy person. She works three jobs on top of whatever money she earns as an ambassador to tourists. She happily arranges for official tour guides and Tuk-Tuk rentals, takes visitors to local stores and arranges any other activities tourists are looking for. Every month she walks for two hours to carry supplies to the Pagoda she grew up in (the roads are too bad for a motorcycle). Her dream is to own a couple of Tuk-Tuks so she has her own business (of course, she doesn’t want to be a Tuk-Tuk driver, because there is only one female driver in all of Siem Reap and Ara thinks she is “looks and dresses like a man”). She aspires to essential save up enough for an investment of about $2,000 and is content to work three jobs to get it.
We were so moved by her and taken with her that we decided to buy her a cell phone as a gift, in addition to paying her $20 a day for being our guide. The phone cost $50, which is more than a months rent and about what Ara would earn working in the restaurant for a month. Combined, the whole thing cost us less than a dinner with drinks at a decent restaurant in the bay area and about half of what is costs us for a night in the Sokha Hotel (we splurged for three nights at what turned out to be the only five star hotel in Siem Reap).
Hopefully the phone will make it easier for her to get business arranging tours for foreigners. Note that Ara is not a “Tour Guide”, which is reserved for men and requires two years of college and a license that cost $1,200. If you are going to visit Siem Reap to tour the Angkor Temples, be sure to email Ara, Makaralon@ yahoo.com and let her be your Cambodian Hostess.
by Jonah Stein on February 25, 2009
Aaron Wall had another great post today about Google’s Focus On Branding and what phrases actually mean as ranking factors. The post has too many insights to call out, but three points really struck a nerve.
- Proving a HUGE algo change happened on January 18th using reliable third party data from rank pulse which shows major brands suddenly ranking for terms like airplane tickets, auto insurance, health insurance plus more generic queries like boots or diet.
- Observing that while Matt Cutts spends a lot of time NOT talking about the algorithm, Eric Schmidt is telegraphing Google’s next punch to media outlets, investors and any one else who will listen.
If you ask Matt Cutts what big SEO changes are coming up he will tell you "make great content" and so on…never wanting to reveal the weaknesses of their search algorithms. Eric Schmidt, on the other hand, is frequently talking to media and investors with intent of pushing Google’s agendas and all the exciting stuff that is coming out. In the last 6 months Mr. Schmidt has made a couple quotes that smart SEOs should incorporate into their optimization strategies…
- If you haven’t subscribed to the SEO Book membership program, what the hell are you waiting for? $100/month for access to one of the smartest minds in the industry is an incredible bargain!
