Searching for the next search engine June 1, 2004

 

DoubleClick reporting First Quarter Decline June 2, 2004

 

The excellent ClickZ.com website are reporting that DoubleClick are seeing a First Quarter decline in Key E-Mail Metrics.

"E-mail open rates, click-through rates, order size and revenue per e-mail delivered declined slightly in the first quarter of 2004..." - see their full article here.

Interestingly enough, if you go to DoubleClick themselves, their June 1st Press Release begins with the following:

"DoulbeClick Q1 2004 Email Trend Report Shows Continued Stability in Email Performance

Delivery Rates Remained Steady in First Full Quarter Since the Introduction of The CAN-SPAM Act "

And no that isn't my typo. It's theirs.

Are these two articles covering the same facts? Or could there actually be doublespeak in the advertising industry?

 

Web Services cautiously predicted to be "next big thing" June 2, 2004

 

The IDC are predicting that investment in web services may increase tenfold by 2008.

The report points at cost cutting and integration as the main reasons for this growth, yet admits that the architecture has yet to really take off.

Judge for yourself. Buy the report yourself for only $4,500, or read the ZDNet UK article for free.

 

Tune in to SEO June 2, 2004

 

Search Engine Radio is the only Internet talk radio show 100% dedicated to Search Engines and Search Engine Optimisation (or Optimization).

It's aired (or webbed?) every Tuesday at 9 AM Pacific / 12 Noon Eastern time.

It's an interesting idea, and I for one do hope that it'll still be around in twelve months.

 

June 2004 Software Marketing Newsletter June 4, 2004

 

Software Marketing Resource have published their June 2004 newsletter.

In a world with more newsletters than time to read them, this is one that's well worth subscribing to.

 

XP Piracy, SP 2 and Downloading Music June 4, 2004

 

Microsoft have announced that their forthcoming Service Pack 2 for Windows XP will not work with the most widely pirated versions of the operating system.

According to Microsoft, SP2 will check the product ID number during installation.

However SP 2 is also set to cause headaches for some legitimate and licensed users as well, as some of the changes implemented may leave some websites inoperative. Details here.

In other areas, according to the BBC, legal UK music downloads have so far downloaded a wheeze-inducing 500,000 songs this year. The music industry has clearly finally got their act together in the UK, and to achieve this level of demand in a country of over 58 million people, they should be very proud of themselves.

 

Google vs. deceptive Internet Software June 7, 2004

 

Google have listed their proposal to help fight deceptive Internet software, and are asking for feedback.

"At Google, we put a lot of thought into improving your online experience. We're alarmed by what we believe is a growing disregard for your rights as computer users. We've seen increasing reports of spyware and other applications that trick you in order to serve you pop-up ads, connect your modem to expensive toll numbers or hijack your browser from the site you're trying to visit."

Details may be found at Google Corporate Information: Software Principles. Make your voice heard.

 

Inside Google with the BBC June 8, 2004

 

The BBC have a basic but interesting look behind the scenes of Google; Inside the Google search machine.

Be sure to check on the Background And Analysis links on the right hand side of the article too.

Six months ago, I wondered how long Google would hold on to their King of the Search Engines crown. Today I'm wondering who will take their place, and when. My money is on Microsoft, within two years. Watch this space.

 

Reducing message size June 8, 2004

 

Eric Sink's excellent Eric.Weblog() has an interesting entry on reducing the size of your marketing message.

"When entrepreneurs ask me for advice, I usually ask them to explain their product in 25 words or less. Hardly anybody can do it. The software developer is in love with his product and is unaware of the fact that nobody else is."

Read the full article here. It's a worthwhile read.

 

Patenting "to-do" list June 9, 2004

 

ZDNet UK are reporting that Microsoft now have certain rights to 'task lists' in software development environments.

"US Patent No. 6,748,582, granted and assigned on Tuesday to Microsoft, covers the use of a "task list" in a software-development environment." Read the full article here.

Most of us were to some extent affected by the Unisys GIF patent issue, and many of us sniggered at the attempts by British Telecom to patent hypertext links.

But when companies are granted the legal right to ideas like GIF files and links, we shouldn't be laughing, we should worry. And European companies and developers certainly have nothing to laugh about.

 

The Doodles behind Google June 10, 2004

 

For a quick distraction from your work day, read about Dennis, the guy who draws the Google Doodles.

 

Keywords, keywords & key words June 10, 2004

 

Aside from the ever-popular PageRank issue, keywords have to be the most commonly talked-about and misunderstood aspect of Search Engine Optimisation, or Search Engine Optimization, depending on whether you speak English correctly or not!

Four often overlooked points.

(1) Choosing the right keywords is critical.

Don't go making the mistake of optimising your website content for the keywords that you think people are (or should) be searching for to find your product.

Use a service like WordTracker to find out what people are really searching for. The results may surprise you.

And don't only concentrate on the searches that show up in your web logs. These only show you what's working. They won't show you the missed opportunities.

(2) There is more to keywords than the keyword META tag.

We all know that the keywords META tag is largely redundant nowadays.

But keywords should also be used in the title, description, body, alt tags and link text.

And it can't hurt to use them in the keywords META tag either.

(3) Don't pay someone for "top ten position" in the search engines.

On our DaveTalks website, we have an article about PageRank.

With this page, we hold top ten positions on Google for "trickier to answer", "Google's more ingenious strategies", "One of the most fascinating aspects of the web is its dynamism" and "Some of them crumble quickly into dust".

You get the point.

(4) Internationalisation, internationalization & interationalisation.

Different countries and regions use different spellings of certain words. Eg: color - colour, optimise - optimize. And some spelling mistakes are more comon than others.

When people go searching for your product using their spelling, make sure that your website is found.

In our case got so tired of emails "correcting" our British spelling that we addressed the issue head on, with British and American versions of some of our web pages. Both show up in our server logs as entry pages.

 

Time for a vacation June 11, 2004

 

We're taking a week off for vacation.

So please don't think that the Blog is already getting neglected...

We'll be back by Monday the 21st.

Watch this space!

 

New version of Skype June 11, 2004

 

Skype have release a new version of their free internet telephony software.

If you haven't yet tried it, you probably want to.

It's staggeringly simple to use, and the sound quality is astonishingly good.

And it's free.

This is a great example of well implemented, high quality software. It carries out a range of highly complex functions, yet is very simple to use, even for the most novice of users.

For their sake, I hope that Skype continues to keep feature bloat out of future versions, or they'll end up going the same way as ICQ and so many others.

 

What do you want to read today? June 11, 2004

 

ZDNet have an article on some interesting research by Microsoft.

"What if your computer could read the newspaper for you and tell you just what you needed to know? What about 1000 newspapers?

Microsoft research is looking into creating software that can read the whole article--and dozens of others on the same topic--and come up with an accurate summary."

If it worked, this would go significantly further than the Google and Microsoft news aggregation sites and RSS feeds combined.

The underlying issue will be whether the software can really understand the text, and identify what's important.

Forgive me for being sceptical, but I don't think we're at that stage just yet.

Copernic Technologies have an interesting application by the name of Copernic Summarizer. It basically creates summaries of web pages or documents, in theory saving you reading time, without losing any of the important information.

It's an interesting idea, but the last version I saw (admittedly some time ago) wasn't overly useful. It was too heavy handed, and I really couldn't rely on it to be accurate and faithful to the original.

But who knows. Whichever company is the first to get this right would be onto something really useful.

 

Ask Jeeves purchases Tukaroo June 11, 2004

 

As of Wednesday June the 9th, Ask Jeeves have acquired Tukaroo Inc - a San Jose-based desktop search technology company.

Your first thought may be who?

Your second thought may be why?

Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Ask Jeeves Inc:

"We expect that Tukaroo's desktop search and information management capabilities will enable Ask Jeeves to deliver a seamless, end-to-end search experience across the desktop and the Internet." Read the press release here.

The important word here is desktop.

Both Microsoft and Google are reported to be working on integrating searching the desktop and web. Ask Jeeves have now joined the race, and more will follow.

It looks as though the ground is set for the next battle of the Search Engines. And this time it's going to include your desktop.

 

Find.com - business search engine June 21, 2004

 

Find.com, a search engine for business professionals, was launched this week by partners FIND/SVP, Empire Media and TripleHop Technologies.

Find.com is the best place for business people to start their search for the valuable information that will improve the quality of their work. Find.com's results are more targeted to business needs, and are presented in a manner that speeds navigation.

Find.com utilizes the most advanced Search technology on the Web to retrieve documents from all major consumer Search Engines, and combines them with access to Premium Research content from leading Business Information sources.

Premium content from such partners are made available on a fee per-document basis.

Is there room for another search engine? Time will tell. Watch this space.

 

AskJeeves get binocular June 21, 2004

 

AskJeeves aka Ask.com have introduced a new "binoculars site preview" feature, that allows searchers to view sites that show up in the results without having to click through.

AskJeeves are claiming that the number of clicks needed to find relevant results is being reduced by 50-70%.

Personally I like the feature, but will this be enough to make it the search engine of my choice?

I don't think so. For now I'll stick with the speed and accuracy of Google.

 

SEM, SEO and search engine advertising June 21, 2004

 

ClickZ have an interesting article entitled SEM Firms: Search Engine Friend or Foe?

The writer raises some interesting points about whether SEM (search engine marketing) firms might take away a share of potential profits from the search engines.

For anyone working in SEO (search engine optimisation/optimization) the idea is nothing new. We've been trying to keep an eye on how the different engines work for years, and since the introduction of PPC and paid-inclusion, this information has become increasingly difficult to find.

The writer concludes that "if search engine reps and ethical SEMs work together, everybody wins", and I think she's right. The article is a brief one, and well worth a read.

 

Back in business! June 21, 2004

 

Just a quick note to say that we're back from vacation.

Daily postings will now resume...

 

Sick of SPAM June 22, 2004

 

It wasn't that long ago that I used to casually glance at spam, in much the same way that you quickly flit through the junk mail delivered through the postal system.

That was before it became an epidemic.

When we closed our offices for a week, I came back to find my mailbox brimming with over 7,500 emails.

Business may be good, but not that good. Not surprisingly, most of them weren't for me.

My problem is that conventional anti-spam software doesn't work for me.

I receive legitimate emails with content such as online marketing, marketing solutions, selling software online, marketing services and so on. Many anti-spam apps will label these as spam.

The other problem is that spam takes up too much of my time. Even though my existing anti-spam app filtered out many of the junk emails, I manually had to go through all of these just to check. And after checking more than 7,000 subjects, there's at least a small chance that one or two legitimate emails were discarded.

My latest attempt to getting on top of the spam involves using Zaep by RhinoSoft.com.

It was a little fiddly to setup, but well worth the effort, as since doing so (four hours ago) I've had a sum total of zero spam getting through. Watch this space.

 

UK firm patents software downloads June 23, 2004

 

ENN are running a story that a UK firm is claiming to own several patents pertaining to software downloads.

UK firm patents software downloads.

An interesting and fairly worrying new chapter in the silly patents war?

 

14 inch PowerPizza June 24, 2004

 

Human Beans is apparently selling a laptop case that looks like a pizza box. Mainly because it is a pizza box.

Is this a really good or really bad idea?

I just can't picture all the airports and conference hotels being full of people carrying pizza boxes...

 

Follow the leader June 24, 2004

 

Hotmail have announced that they're boosting their basic accounts from 2 MB to 250 MB of storage space, and for paying customers from 10 MB to 2 gigabytes.

I wonder who they're following?

Microsoft also announced that it will start using anti-virus software for its online mail service.

It looks as though the battle is on for the king of the free email services. The consumer can just sit back and enjoy.

 

Comdex cancelled June 24, 2004

 

Computer trade show Comdex, once the world leader in computer shows, has been cancelled this year.

Organisers of the event blamed poor attendance figures and a trend towards specialist IT and consumer electronics shows. The show is expected to return next year.

One of the golden rules of marketing is to keep an eye on what the market actually wants and is looking for, as opposed to just pushing out the product.

None of us know what the future will hold, and none of us can accurately predict what our competitors will do next. But by not keeping an ear to the ground and listening to the market voices, we're only setting ourselves up for failure.

Information = knowledge = strength.

 

Improving Conversion June 25, 2004

 

ClickZ have an interesting case study:

Make a Business Case to Improve Conversion.

The article explains how the conversion rates of one of their websites was raised from single digits to an increase of over 81 percent.

What I found interesting was that such a dramatic change was mainly down to changing the wording of a banner and improved navigation.

One of the main failings of the website in question was that it didn't communicate what the service actually did. It failed to engage the attention of the visitors to the website, and it failed to get across the benefits that they had to offer.

As a result, many targeted visitors were simply leaving the website without going further.

If you take a look at your own website stats, how many people are leaving your main page without going further?

If the figure is high, then chances are that you're doing something wrong.

Are you engaging their attention sufficiently?

Are you pushing the benefits of your product?

Are you selling the product, or just writing about it?

You need to identify why people are leaving your site. Then you need to work out how you're going to prevent them from doing so.

And don't sit on this, or add it to your to-do list. If you can improve this rate, you can improve your sales.

You work hard at bringing people to your website, so make sure that as many of them as possible are converted to downloads and sales.

 

Keeping the downloaders at bay June 28, 2004

 

During a phone call with a company interested in our services, I was directed to download the software from their website.

I opened the browser, entered the URL, and clicked on the appropriate link. Nothing happened. I did it again. The same result.

It turned out that their link was opening a popup, and the software installed on my system was instantly closing it without warning. Having to close the acknowledgement from the anti-popup software would be as annoying as closing the popup. Right? So I disabled the warnings many popups ago.

That was barrier number one.

When I disabled the popup blocking, I was able to click on the link.

I was then presented with a form asking for my name, email address and other details. All of which were required before I could download the software.

That was barrier number two.

The company in question is a serious and professional one. And their products appear to be of high quality.

But their website put up two very serious obstacles to my downloading their software.

If I hadn't been persistent, I would have assumed that the company's website wasn't set up properly. I would have gone to see which other companies offered the solution I was looking for, and the chance of my buying this company's software would have fallen to zero.

But for me the killer was the form.

I understand that the data collected from the downloaders is useful. But they probably have no idea how expensive a price they're paying for it.

If you use a form that forces users to enter their details before downloading, I guarantee that you're losing a significant number of downloads, every single day.

Don't believe me? Try it for yourself. Remove the form from your website for one single week, and see what happens to the number of downloads your server delivers.

Forms that force downloaders to enter their private information means lost downloads. A lot of them. Lost downloads mean lost sales.

Take the one week challenge and see for yourself.

 

Keyword matching with Google and Overture June 29, 2004

 

SearchEngineWatch are running an article covering the differences between running a Broad Match campaign on Google and Overture.

Running a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign on Google and Overture can get complicated, especially now that both networks offer different types of keyword matching options that determine when ads will be displayed. Here's how to avoid trouble and maximize your campaign's effectiveness.

Use Caution when Going Broad with Overture and Google

I'm often surprised as to how many of the companies we work with are not using Google and Overture. Both offer a cost-effective means of pulling in targeted traffic, and although a certain amount of time investment is required to maintain these accounts, it's certainly time well spent.

If you're not yet doing so, then go and open an account with Google AdWords today.

You might also want to take a look at our Guide to Getting Started with Google AdWords.

 

Google vs. Spyware? June 30, 2004

 

CNET are running an article on how spyware is affecting Google and some of the other search engines.

"New strains of spyware attempt to profit from the highly popular search engine and its lucrative pay-per-click advertising program by altering search results pages or delivering pop-up windows with their own lists of text ads."

Google feels spyware strains

With search engine ads considered to be the most profitable sector of online advertising, my guess is that Google are going to stamp down hard, to keep what is rightfully theirs.

The question is how?

With an estimated one in three computers infected with Trojans or spyware, and a fairly diverse assortment of different operating systems and web browsers, they'd have quite a task on their hands.

But Google are expected to generate more than $1 billion in advertising this year alone, so there's no shortage of incentives.

This could be a great opportunity for Google. If they were to develop some sort of anti-spyware/trojan app, and make it freely available for use, they'd have a great PR tool that would not only be used by millions, but would protect their own interests at the same time.

Is anyone from Google reading this?

Remember you read about it here first...