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Search Engine Strategies New York City, San Francisco & Chicago 2010 Session Pitch : Home Page Title Tag – Hot or Not?

David Dalka — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:13:11 +0000

The following session was submitted to Search Engine Strategies in January, 2010. Hope you enjoy it.

Home Page Title Tag – Hot or Not?

Moderators: David Dalka and either Mike Grehan, Greg Jarboe or Stewart Quealy

The first thing one learns about search engine optimization is about the importance of title tags, especially the home page title tag. Yet when an experienced SEO surfs the web they often must stop and scratch their head at certain home page title tags! It certainly indicates a lack of understanding by senior management teams out there.

In this session everyone is the expert! We will share 30 title tags and URLs in 30 minutes. Everyone gets to tweet their impressions of the title tag for with the Twitter hashtag #sestitle!!! Then we’ll do Q&A and figure out what it all means. The benefits of this session are certain to include venting of pent up frustration, bonding with your fellow search marketers, extreme laughter and far reaching communication of the session to people far and wide not even at the Search Engine Strategies conference! Spread the gospel. Change the world. See you there.

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Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2008: Universal & Blended Search Engine Conversation

David Dalka — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:26:18 +0000

Moderator:
Kevin Ryan, SES Advisory Board Chair & CEO, Motivity Marketing

Speakers:
Dr. Larry Cornett, VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search
Mike Grehan, Global KDM Officer, Acronym Media
Chris Blakely, Director, Client Services, comScore, Inc.
Todd Schwartz, Group Product Manager, Live Search, Microsoft Corporation
Jack Menzel, Senior Product Manager, Google

This is a live session blog from Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2008, please excuse any typos and/or fragments. Thank you!

Mike Grehan:

You need to think differently.

Vertical creep is pushing organic results down the page.

Eye Tracking shows that people are not scrolling the way that they used to.

This creates a problem, you need to be at the top of the listings.

Local business center creates opportunities for local businesses.

New paid search results like paid results.

Chris Blakely – comScore:

Leverage comScore search data shows traction of universal search efforts.

Feature sets of search expanding. 48% of searchers are seeing different types of blended search results from their queries.

Lower clicks on sponsored links with the exception of ecommerce and travel.

Organic search strategies need to evolve from that standpoint.

Jack Menzel – Google Product Manager Universal Search:

Universal search has the following elements:
Comprehensiveness – Images, Maps, News, Products, Video, Books and more
Relevance – Run every query against every index, decide what to show only after we collect all of the data
Presentation – Summarize the content in the most efficient way possible.

Recently, there have been made into search results pages.

Better Ranking – Universal search is just a subset of ranking.

What’s next?
Keep improving relevance
Help users explore
Improved results summary

What does this mean for web masters?
- Publish the best and high quality content that you have.
- Take advantage of prominent new verticals

Todd Schwartz – Group Product Manager – Microsoft Live Search:

Evolution of Search:
Search – Directories, Keyword Trends, Rich Semantics, User Experience
Market – Immature, Closed Trends, Open Item????
Consumer – Search, Keyword Trends, Actions

Deliver, Simplify, Implement

Showed Samsung lcd tv model – showed elements of a shopping review, rating and engine – an interesting change

Showed weather and Barack Obama examples

More engagement
Better reach
Higher ROI
Update Product and Business Info
webmaster.live.com

Larry Cornett – Yahoo! Search:

Transformed from a static experience to a complete information in one search

Showed several Blended examples using Yahoo! Search:
Kyle Orton – Chicago Bears fantasy sports
Movies – including times and local listings
Beyonce – music videos on the search page
Sushi in San Jose
Barack Obama
Puppy

Richer, more relevant links…

Searchmonkey – publishers collaborate, meaning behind the link, richer experience, relevant and personal, etc.

Yelp is a Searchmonkey partner. (How does this affect Yahoo! Local?)

The infobar – Steve Jobs example

Share structured data: Publishers > Searchmonkey > Tell your users

Why is blended search important?
Unmatched opportunities and control for publishers
Key step for building a smarter search engine with structured data
gallery.search.yahoo.com

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Have We Entered The Era of The Functional Web?

David Dalka — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:38:23 +0000

The New York Times has an article on how the potential sale of Yahoo! to Microsoft could be bad for minnows, i.e. small Silicon Valley companies looking to be acquired. I think this is a short sighted viewpoint.

In the late 1990′s dot.com era, the web was slanted too much towards wall street involvement that led IPO’s that were questionable and in retrospect not advisable.

A force outside the web, namely Sarbanes-Oxley in the Enron aftermath, has made the IPO considerably more challenging to achieve and costly to navigate – even for highly legitimate ideas.

In the web 2.0 era, the slant often went way too far to the left in terms of engineering. Some ideas with little actual business purpose have received unwarranted acclaim and without artificial sources of acquisition, some might not even exist.

Before I go onto explain why that development might create an alignment that I’ll tentatively call the functional web, let me state that I think there are plenty of other companies out there that could emerge to pick up the slack such as Fox, Intuit, Apple or any of a number of traditional media companies who “get it”.

This web might emerge even if the Yahoo! acquisition does not take place. If the functional web emerges a place where engineering and business purpose mix in equally important parts instead of the excesses in one direction or another, who potentially gains and who potentially has something to lose?

Potential Gainers:

- Strong Internet business skill generalists with strong system architecture, product management and the ability to network with geeks and non-geeks alike and iterate from feedback will be in higher demand.

- Companies who would like to challenge the big three who would get an opening.

- People who understand how to create revenue models that could provide for great stand alone businesses.

- People pushing for Sarbanes-Oxley reform to reopen the IPO spiggot a tad. They will push even harder.

Potential Losers:

- Funding sources who either fund ideas in a me-too fashion or just because they’ve known the people since the dot.com era and/or those who can’t define and lead a path to monetization or bring strong execution partners to the table.

- Domain name squatters and sellers.

- Passive executive recruiters who will have to actually analyze comprehensive skill sets instead of simply poaching from a direct competitor.

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Microsoft Launches Mobile Advertising on MSN Mobile

David Dalka — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:29:53 +0000

Microsoft just announced the launch of mobile advertising on MSN Mobile.

I wish they would have given more details about the release instead of pointing us back to overly dated speeches on the mobile advertising subject. I would have expected to see more examples than just movie tickets.

Microsoft has the potential to lead this market with it’s array of assets if they are integrated in the right manner – see my post on Web 2.0 was NEVER a business strategy for business strategy ideas.

Maybe they will start a larger conversation on this subject once they see this post? We’ll see.

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Happy Thanksgiving 2007

David Dalka — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:16:06 +0000

As always Rustybrick has a great holiday logo summary.

My only add on is the following. Take a minute to read the full history of the holiday – it’s not about a day off and football.

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Microsoft Hotmail Blocking Yahoo! Mail as Spam?

David Dalka — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:33:18 +0000

This is a joke. But all too real. Microsoft meet Yahoo!. Yahoo! meet Microsoft. Now play nice.

Remote host said: 550 SC-004 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your — Below this line is a copy of the message. Received: from [68.142.237.90] by n10.bullet.re3.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 Received: from [69.147.75.182] by t6.bullet.re3.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 Received: from [127.0.0.1] by omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 3742.69458.bm@omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com Received: (qmail 894 invoked by uid 60001); 5 Nov 2007 14:25:18 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com;

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Will You Attend SMX Local & Mobile Denver Next Week

David Dalka — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:49:29 +0000

I’ll be attending the first ever SMX Local & Mobile conference next week in Denver!!! Chris Sherman, who talks about why he is excited about the event in this post, and Greg Sterling have both put in a tremendous amount of work into researching and programming this highly unique and special event.

You may view the full agenda and you may still register for the event.

I arrive at Noon on Sunday (where is the Sunday pre-conference meetup – The Hyatt?) and hope to meet with as many attendees as possible before and during the event as I look forward to learning about people and seeing the demos in this soon to be revolutionary space.

See you in Denver! I’ll also have room for one or two on the way back to the airport as I’m renting a car while there.

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SES San Jose 2007 Day 2 – Images & Search Engines

David Dalka — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:26:50 +0000

I was going to attend this session but I arrived late because I was having a great conversation about his new project.

After yesterday’s speech by Greg Jarboe during the Universal Search session I knew this session would be popular. I had no idea that I could not even get a seat in a really hot room!!! Wow!

Shari Thurow, who just wrote a new book on this subject, and Chris Smith from Netconcepts gave great talks before I escaped for fresh air in the exhibit hall.

Fortunately, other folks that got seats did some great write ups of the session.

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Seattle – New Search Marketing Executive Mecca?

David Dalka — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:53:36 +0000

The land grab described in the Seattle Times seems to indicate this might be the truth. Seattle and the surrounding region is a wonderful place, I’d love to live there one day either in downtown Seattle or Bellevue. It’s interesting that they are moving locations to where the available talent is. They should explore Chicago once they’ve exploited Seattle’s talent markets fully.

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University of Michigan Consumer Satisfaction Index Report 2007

David Dalka — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:21:09 +0000

The report is out. Greg Sterling has a great write up at Search Engine Land. Congrats to Yahoo! and Ask on their improvements!

However, the numbers are extremely fine and as Greg asked the authors, “Why the disconnect between the satisfaction data and market share?” The other thing that should be pointed out is that these numbers are not that granular in nature. My advice is to take these numbers with a grain of salt as they may of may not result in the market share changes they suggest over the next 12-24 months. Essentially the question is will this report cause people to talk about switching over dinner with family and friends tonight?

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Search Engine Strategies San Jose – Silicon Valley August 19-23

David Dalka — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:08:30 +0000

I look forward to seeing all of my wonderful search engine, mobile search and mobile advertising friends next week at Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose! While I’ll definitely be in Mountain View for the Google Dance (hopefully they won’t run out of XL t-shirts in 2 minutes like last year), I’m unsure whether I’ll make it to Palo Alto, San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Oakland, Monterey or Santa Cruz to visit and see some other awesome things. I do hope to make it to Barcamp Block.

Who else will be there and what spontaneous events, product launches and parties are you looking most forward to? I’m getting very close to some of my goals! I look forward to seeing you.

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adtech Chicago: Redefining Search to Realize Its Full Potential

David Dalka — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 22:44:59 +0000

August 1, 2007

MODERATOR:
Jeffrey Pruitt, President, SEMPO, and Executive VP, Search, iCrossing

PANELISTS:
Kelly Graziadei, Senior Director, Agency Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing

James Colborn, Group Marketing Manager, adCenter Communications Group, Microsoft

Kevin Willer, Central Region Development Manager, Google

James Colbourn, Microsoft

Kelly Graziadei, Yahoo!

Think about the many different faces of search.

- The Researcher – look at Yahoo! Buzz to create an audience pyramid. Look at other content. Miller Beer Run. Showed a campaign with getting the beer – Yahoo! created the game and got excellent results

- The Reputation Manager – geo-targeting, ad testing, etc. Jet Blue built a campaign to respond to negative news.

- The Brand Manager – 79% introduced to new brands in search and 61% expect brand leaders to be consistently in the top of search results.

- The Great Integrator – TV, web, games, mobile all at the same time.

- The Advocate – Searchers are advocates that build brands through social media – significant in the pre and post purchase mode.

Kevin Willer, Google
- Information silos in the past. You almost needed a search engine for the search engines. Now all the silos are in one universal search.

Google Promotion – search for Bourne – showed how the site with Youtube

Search for PR. – You need to be ready to answer those searches

Search the New Performance Link – showed Motorola example and Presidential campaign data for Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney (He said the

We want to start thinking about search in different ways.

James Colbourn, Microsoft
Search Today: A Performance Tool
- To increase brand awareness
- To Sell Products
- To Generate Leads
- To Drive Traffic To Company Website

How do advertisers measure success?
- Traffic
- Conversions
- Impressions
- ROI

Brand, Awareness, Acquisition Tool and Lead Generator

Search as a research tool is a leading indicator for:
- A Business
- An Industry

Beyond Search
- Media Buying
- Budget Allocation
- PR Activity

The potential for search is higher than current usage…

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Skype Follow Up

David Dalka — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:23:11 +0000

I was contacted this morning by Chaim Haas, VP of PR at Kaplow, the PR firm that represents Skype regarding my previous post on Skype and Microsoft Outlook interaction.

After sifting through what occurred, we figured this to be the current state:

1) Skype appears to now install as the default setting integration of your Microsoft Outlook.

2) This only displays and you only have the option to change this when you have Microsoft Outlook open.

We discussed my preference for this to be an opt-in with a large text encouraging the opt-in. Chaim said he would pass this onto the Product Management team and get back to me at some point in the future. He also said that Skype has had over 5 million downloads on Windows Mobile platform! That’s alot. We also talked about the N800, if you haven’t checked out my interview with the Nokia N800 product manager Victor Brilon please do so.

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Google Accused of Conducting Smear Campaign Against Privacy International

David Dalka — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 01:44:51 +0000

Privacy International is using strong words like “Google has embarked on a smear campaign within the media to discredit both PI and the report”. It says more to follow. We’ll see if there is any substance to this. One thing is for sure, there is plenty of discussion out there. Thought provoking posts by Danny Sullivan and Donna Bogatin with considerable dirt.

One thing is certain, Privacy International doesn’t think it’s important enough to put out a full reply on a weekend, that means it loses some credibility in my eyes.

The conversation runs 24/7 out there not M-F 9-5.

UPDATE: I take that back, Privacy International just published the new letter which is addressed to Eric Schmidt.

So who is this Microsoft employee? And why wasn’t this person removed from the process before the report was created?

UPDATE #2: Matt Cutts has weighed in on the issues in a thoughtful way.

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Building Chinese Walls for Search Engines and Advertising Agencies

David Dalka — Mon, 21 May 2007 04:24:05 +0000

Danny Sullivan has been steadily beating a drum about the potential conflicts of interest in regards to Google, and now Microsoft, owning the search engine while owning a firm that provides SEO and SEM services.

In yet another area where my expertise from BlackRock would prove to be extremely valuable for immediate consulting or leadership roles at search engines, it is in the building of policies and management controls to build effective Chinese Walls. STOP – read that previous Chinese Walls link completely so that you don’t confuse it with the China Search Marketing Tour)!

If Google and Microsoft are to retain these services fully, they will immediately need to bring in people experienced in working in these Chinese Wall environments and who also understand the Internet space. This is a rare and highly valuable combination! Only this select group is capable of to be able to develop policy and have a Board of Director’s mandate and resources to make it a reality.

I look forward to continuing this conversation, there is much work to be done here to ensure the integrity of the marketplace and it needs to happen quickly!

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Initial Thoughts on Microsoft Aquiring Aquantive

David Dalka — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:53:15 +0000

Techcrunch had an earlier article. At $6 Billion or $66.50, an ~85% premium over the previous days selling price that creates a price to earning rating of around 52, many people would consider this to be overpayment. With approximately $26 Billion in the bank that shareholders consistently complain is underutilized, it is more likely insurance to prevent a bidding war and a break up of the deal as apparently happened behind the scenes when Microsoft originally tried to acquire Doubleclick.

With headquarters both in Seattle, these partners likely know each other well from the tightly woven Seattle networking community so there is likely a known cultural fit. It is likely clearly friendly due to this and how quickly it came together so quickly after losing the bidding for 24/7 real media. The major question is can Microsoft quickly integrate and leverage these systems with its’ own, some of which have overlap and the graphical side. The other risk is can Microsoft tie up the critical thought leadership staff in an appealing way that maintains the creative culture? Time will tell.

Much like Google’s acquisition of Doubleclick there are conflicts of interest to be resolved. In Doubleclick’s case they own Performics, a search marketing and optimization firm. The Avenue A | Razorfish division performs a significant search marketing and search optimization function just like Performics. Google has yet to state how they will resolve this. Microsoft could score points by stating a plan to deal with this before Google does.

Aquantive has spent $200 Million in the 2004-2006 acquiring Accipiter, iFRONTIER, Franchise Gator, DNA, Amneisa, e-Crusade, GOTOAST, Neue Digitale, NetConversions, Technology Brokers/Media and SBI.Razorfish. While the impacts of these businesses are not yet fully known, Aquantitive prides itself on buying and integrating emerging businesses. Some of these are creating a media exchange like Right Media recently acquired by Yahoo!. Some of the value of this transaction likely lies hidden in these small business lines.

While the integration risk is not insignificant, Aquantive was one of the last premium players available and Microsoft can certainly afford the premium.

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Mother’s Day 2007: A Search Engine View

David Dalka — Sun, 13 May 2007 18:12:16 +0000

Fresh from having a nice breakfast with my Mom on this Mother’s Day, I decided to take a look at the search engine offerings.

Live.com – no offering visible upon my visit.

Ask.com – real nice offering of a heart with a tattoo looking thing that says “Mom”

Google -

Yahoo! – Nice crayon coloring the logo with a nice note. See the full animation by clicking this link.

Winner: Yahoo! who got the meaning of the day put into full action! Congrats Yahoo!

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!!!

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Microsoft Strategic Account Summit 2007 – Post 2 SAS

David Dalka — Wed, 09 May 2007 14:27:00 +0000

Search Engine Land has a nice summary of the events yesterday. Barry pointed to a paidcontent.org write up that I had not seen that summarizes things well especially in the online, advertising and video arena. A Media Circus also has a detailed raw summary of the Bill Gates speech.

Again, If you were in attendance, I’d like to hear form you, please drop me a line.

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Microsoft Strategic Account Summit 2007

David Dalka — Tue, 08 May 2007 14:11:39 +0000

The main parts of the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit are today and Wednesday, here is the schedule. My initial thoughts:

1) I wish it were broadcast online, even the Chris Cornell concert, this is a lost opportunity for exposure to those who can’t be at the summit and build positive PR.

2) We’re going to hear another round of Yahoo! and Microsoft merger talk. Much like Charlene Li, I do not think this is the best path. They would be better off hiring teams of people with experience innovating products and services in different industries. This get past the limiting beliefs of continually hiring passive candidates who demonstrate no loyalty or passion for their present companies.

3) Why is John Battelle the only person at the summit blogging his thoughts? His post is the only one I could find about the opening night’s festivities.

4) I’m interested in information about the people shaping mobile search at the summit, please contact me.

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Google Testing New Search Results Layout

David Dalka — Sun, 06 May 2007 15:02:21 +0000

As apparently first explained on Google Blogoscoped and then elsewhere, Google seems to be testing new home page results. If I were designing it I’d move the selector bar a bit to the left as my eye is drawn to it a bit too much, I’d also like to see blogs above news or with the ability to show both results at once.

This “Microsoft” version is interesting as well… http://www.google.com/microsoft#

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Hugh Griffiths Joins Microsoft as Director of Mobile

David Dalka — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:22:59 +0000

Mobile Entertainment reports that “Griffiths will be responsible for the overall strategy and direction of the mobile division within the Online Services Group division.”

It’s interesting to see Microsoft bringing in outside talent for this type of role, we’ll see how this develops. Hugh sounds like someone I’d like to get to know.

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Earth Day 2007 – A Search Engine View

David Dalka — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 13:53:39 +0000

Yahoo! – The Y is a spinning windmill and the exclamation point as CFL light bulb. Speaking of those, the site 18seconds.org redirects to green.yahoo.com, a list of activities are listed here.

Google has a floating iceberg logo, if you click on it it leads to a list of relevant links.

Live.com & Ask.com – no change in page layout.

Winner for 2007 – Yahoo! with it’s many links out to activities and education. Congrats Yahoo!

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Live.com Search Interview and Some Questions I Still Have

David Dalka — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:56:19 +0000

Rob Murray put up an interview with Derreck O’Connell on searchengineland.com. It was a nice interview but it didn’t get some questions asked that I’d love to know the answers to!

When will Live.com have a blog search engine product offering?

In the main Live.com index, many assert that blogs don’t receive as much weight in index as traditional sites based statistics like Hitwise data. What would you state to them?

What are you doing to limit splogs and made for advertising sites in your index? (Especially since these sites often directly benefit your competitor(s) financially)

There are other questions I have about Live.com, but they are outside the scope of what was discussed here that I wish to clarify right now.

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Microsoft Executive Departures

David Dalka — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 15:52:24 +0000

The Wall Street Journal reported today that “Christopher Payne, who most recently served as vice president of Microsoft’s Windows Live Search group(formerly MSN), is leaving the software company, according to people familiar with the situation.

It then goes on to say, “A person familiar with the situation says that Mr. Payne is leaving to start his own company, to be based in Seattle. A spokesman for Microsoft wouldn’t comment. Mr. Payne’s departure comes amid a broader set of changes wrought by Microsoft Senior Vice President Steve Berkowitz, who was hired last year from search engine Ask.com to head Microsoft’s online group. On Monday Mr. Berkowitz named three new marketing managers to the online group, including one who will oversee search marketing.”

The article also states that Vice President of AdCenter, Blake Irving will retire this Summer.

Current analysis: There is evidence in my recent queries that live.com is becoming equal to Google in terms of search result quality. It is my belief that is where the problem resides. They need to be better, different and/or provide unique value by a wide margin to get people to switch. This didn’t happen yet because to date they have hired people from Google and elsewhere to rebuild the same wheel in much the same way. To me, the proper next step is to hire a larger number of people with strong competencies from other businesses that have created world class user experiences in different disciplines to curiously question conventional search industry thought processes to create innovation. To mature fully, successful search companies need to build strong cultures that reward and encourage the hiring of fresh voices with passion to build a product that is differentiated and then be able to communicate that value proposition clearly that resonates with both B2C and B2B audiences.

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Jason Calacanis Accepts Neil Patel’s SEO Challenge

David Dalka — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 21:39:42 +0000

After Danny Sullivan ranted, others checked in, and Neil raved, Jason finally caved in and said, OK, prove it.
This will certainly be fun to watch!

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Arrington’s Post on Email Interfaces…

David Dalka — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:50:01 +0000

Interesting post, notice how the comments are way higher than normal? To me that indicates passion on a topic and need for improvement.

I still wish someone would put signatures on top of replies and that everyone had automated spell checks that worked well.

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Making It Easier for Blogs to Link to Blogs Instead of News Sites

David Dalka — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 23:24:31 +0000

So Robert Scoble got upset the other day about people linking to major media sites instead of other blogs.

It seemed interesting to me. I started to think about the issues involved, mostly because it didn’t seem like natural behavior. But then it hits you like a brick, all of the major search engines have news and search search from their main pages, while only Ask.com has blog search on it’s home page (they should move it above news). Yahoo!, Google and Live Search do not. In fact Yahoo! and Live Search would have to acquire or develop such technology.

As you may recall, I have a history of suggesting search engine home page changes that become reality.

So, I’d like to please ask all of the major search engines to add blogs as a major top line category (to the left of or above news) and potentially think about creating options to merge blogs and news into one category if a user desires (I would find this helpful). If the Internet is all about user generated content, shouldn’t the major search engines reward and make that the easier default view?

It will look like this (though a little neater, I’m no graphic artist!).

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The Praise for Youtube Revenue Sharing – All for Nothing?

David Dalka — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 14:47:00 +0000

Scoble and others (notice the post alludes to experimentation in monetization) are talking about how great it is that Google is sharing Youtube revenue with content uploaders. As you will recall, after I made my top 10 unanswered questions post, I later asked if Youtube was truly a business at all. So I wondered if this praise was truly warranted. So I just went over to Youtube and refreshed 20 times, got nothing but Youtube promotional ads – those don’t make money.

You will recall that in November and again last night I’m seeing Microsoft Live Search as a primary sponsor on Youtube, perhaps you should all be thanking Microsoft for their generosity, not Google?

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CES update

David Dalka — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:01:06 +0000

Robert Scoble held a blogger lunch with Bill Gates at the Consumer Electronics Show, the video can be viewed below and takes 42 minutes to view – I tried to embed it but that link text from Podtech doesn’t seem to be working.

Ed Kohler from Technology Evangelist wants to hear your questions about CES.

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Switching Search Engines is Easy…

David Dalka — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 00:59:20 +0000

“Google’s monopoly power is less threatening than Microsoft’s because changing operating systems is hard, while changing search engines is easy…” – Blake Ross, co-founder of Firefox in his post Tip: Trust is hard to gain, easy to lose.

Interesting read.

(Update – 7/21 /2009 – updated to Internet Archive – http://www.blakeross.com/2006/12/25/google-tips/ no longer is live.)

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Google Changing Monetization Strategy?

David Dalka — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:33:07 +0000

Robert Scoble had an interesting post on this issue. I’ve got to ask one question though Robert! In Naked Conversations, Robert talks about how you should point to your competitors and even talking positively about them. How is a likely non-relevant ad on a map on your web site more of a threat than you saying “company x does well with blah-blah”? I don’t get the logic here, am I missing something?

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AI Gateway Accepted to Major University Technology Incubator

David Dalka — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:33:00 +0000

AI Gateway, a development stage search portal and ad network with a truly unique value added technology, was accepted into a major university incubator today. Founder Joe Holcomb put significant work into this effort and gave me a shout to let me know that this goal has been reached.

AI Gateway is currently seeking angel funding and or an aggressive venture capital participant willing to fund a predevelopment concept based on a unique business plan that starts to generate revenue quickly upon completion of a beta product.

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Chicago SES – Day 2 – Duplicate Site Issues

David Dalka — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:28:14 +0000

I came to this session to hear abouts splog and what Google and others were going to do about splog prevention (apparently nothing yet). I was also inerested how feeds affected organic listings as I’ve personally experienced some problems. What I got instead was a bunch of people developing business sites that needed redesign and/or clean up, certainly necessary, but not as interesting to me.

Jon Glick, Become.com

What is duplicate content a problem?

Google, Yahoo, Open Directory Project…

Confusing the Bot: Dynamic URLs

Confusing the Bot: 2 URLs

Don’t confuse the spider – chose one canonical domain and link all internal pages

301 redirects, your hero…

Yahoo! has transparency on whether your site is banned, check it out.
Shari Thurow, Grandtastic Designs

What is duplicate content?

The definition is unclear.

Search Engines do not want duplicate or near-duplicate content in their indices.

Duplicate content filters:
- content properties
- linkage properties
- content evolution
- host name resolution
- shingle comparison

siteexplorer.yahoo.com

example: 3 web pages, 3 unique URLs – robots.txt excludes the duplicate content or meta tag can do the same thing

Duplicate content is often copyright infringement.
copyscape.com

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SES Chicago 2006 – Day 1 – Ads in a Quality Score World

David Dalka — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:47:43 +0000

How do you do better in a quality score world?

Joshua Stylman, Reprise Media

- Quality score is determined by a number of factors
- Google Adwords = CPC x CTR (more relevant copy)
- Why make these changes – control over #1 position
- 2005 – Black Box – CPC, CTR, Landing Page, Ad Copy, others that aren’t transparent
- CTR not a good proxy for relevance, irrelevant landing pages, etc.
- Example of dramatic lowering of CPC once ad had a quality score
- Unintended impacts – artificial CPC inflation, Engine define “quality”, changes affect quality score
- Death of bid management, not really.
- How do you solve for an equation that you don’t understand

Andrew Goodman, Zero Page Media

- Two quality scores – one affects minimum bid, the other affects ad rank
- “Other relevancy factors” – tightness of relationship keyword – ad – landing page
- Relevant ads, ad keyword are critical
- How it works – see the public guidelines, human codes used to train algorithm
- Principles for ad quality raters are derived from user feedback on a large scale
- Adbots crawls landing pages looking for ”markers” a formula will determine score
- QS Ad Rank – CTR still key
- You can fix some of these issues – Advertiser (A sports training facility) using separate page to test response on different domain
- Don’t be foolish
- Cheesy Landing Pages + Deceptive Offers – “There is No Sanctuary”
- Try country variance

Jonathan Mendez, Otto Digital

- Strategic services arm of Offermatica
- What is relevance? Contextual relevance.
- Segmentation + Targeting = Relevance
- Engagment
- Ad needs to be relevant to the keyword and the landing page
- Geotargeting – important to news growth

Brian Boland, Microsoft

- Was there for the question and answer session – Google was invited to the panel but declined to participate

SESChicago2006

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Windows Live Graphical Ad on Youtube

David Dalka — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:13:33 +0000

Interesting that this appears after Google closes the sale, don’t you think? Props to Microsoft for pulling it off.

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Free $100* AdCenter Offer

David Dalka — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:51:42 +0000

dead URL – http://www.startadcenter.com/lcoff

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Forrester Consumer Conference – Mobile Marketing’s Play In The Channel Strategy

David Dalka — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:36:03 +0000

Charles S. Golvin, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Where do you fit in? Discussed Crest toothpaste mobile campaign example

What tools are available, what is the reach, what are the learnings?

Tools available today:
- Messaging
- Voting
- Promotions
- Search
- Mobile Browser
- Banners
- Interstitial
- Search-based
- Applications and content
- Free / discounted services

New mechanisms are emerging
- Physical proximity
- Coupons and loyalty (Cellfire)
- Using location (opt-in) to improve targeting

Where does mobile fit?
Eyeballs>>Awareness>>Consideration>>Preference>>Personal>>Loyalty

What is the reach of these tools?
1 in 4 receive text messages regularly

Youth see their mobile phone differently

Think Europe is so far ahead? Think again…
- Internet penetration is higher in USA than Europe

What does the data mean?
- Mobile campaigns need to target data adopters

It’s still early
- Most US consumers still use voice
- Mobile formats are small and generally difficult to use
- Ad Standards need to be developed
- Mobile is a unique channel

Compared with the fixed Web, consumers’ mobile experiences are:
- Abbreviated
- Transactional
- More tied to the physical world
- Successful campaigns embrace these differences

Best practices
- Target mobile early adopters
- Immediacy factor
- Tailor content to mobile screen and user’s process
- Use promotions to boost response rate
- Employ creative or ad formats that match product or service
- Time campaigns for maximum business ROI
- Tie mobile to offline marketing

Tomorrow’s mobile marketing next practices
- Integrated marketing campaigns
- Performance-based metrics
- Smart use of innovative functionality
- Location sensitivity

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Danny Sullivan to Continue with SES (Official)

David Dalka — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:54:07 +0000

Incisive Media and Danny Sullivan today announced that both parties have signed an agreement to continue to work together to produce the market-leading Search Engine Strategies series of conferences and exhibitions.

This past August, Danny Sullivan, who has always been an independent contractor, announced his intention to step away from active involvement with SES at the end of 2006. Since then, both parties have remained in contact and have reached an accord to extend their relationship through 2007.

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Just Where is Steven Berkowitz?????

David Dalka — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 07:01:30 +0000

Robert Scoble’s got a nice post about Youtube and Ballmer making comments…the post has some interesting detractors in the comments…I like this part the best he says: “The thing is, YouTube is two SEPARATE things: 1) the technology. 2) the community/brand.” I agree, most people focus too much on the technology.

But here’s my bigger question. Earlier this year, MSN hired Steven Berkowitz, the CEO of ASK. I have yet to see one meaningful interview in a five months now of this man, why hire him at all if you can’t delegate the spotlight properly to him?

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Getting noticed in the new word-of-mouth network

David Dalka — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:48:29 +0000

Robert Scoble: Keynote Speech: Naked Conversations

Talks about history, blogs are best way to get stuff indexed in Google.

There is an informal conversation network. Tells the story about how a few people he told that he was leaving Microsoft. How that spread and then a largely unread blog was the one that first posted it is why you need to pay attention to *ALL* bloggers, not just him.

Talking to bloggers is more important than covering Walt Mossberg.

People who read blogs are far more likely to click and take action.

The auto blog reader is more likely to click through to other auto sites.

Most people understand search engines. Talks about google.com and how people search “Yahoo” and vice versa. It demonstrates that it’s a Google world.

If you pipes are leaking, you need a plumber. So you type in “Chicago plumber leak” and you need to be on the top of the organic search results. Links are important and so are other things. Changing the content every day helps the algorithms. Blogs, due to the frequency of content update are excellent tools to do this.

He talks about the plumber blog that gets link due to the knowledge. Also talks about how he got a ripped off once with a carpet and is blog entry ranked higher than the company.

A dirty secret about Google is that the ad click through rate is lower there du to the higher educational level of a typical Google user.

People will link to audio and video more than they will text. Suggested video press releases. Be different. Hugh’s cartoon’s are different. Video and Flickr and other sites can create buzz.

Talked about the “Dell Hell” issue. (strangely few in the room had heard of it – shows how far we have to go) Tells the well known Jeff Jarvis story.

Talks about how to listen. (I would say this is Robert’s biggest gift)

Then gave examples of how he linked to complaints directly when he joined Microsoft, fascinating!

Currently, HP story is a great example. They have not listened to the blogosphere. It is making the ethics crisis there worse.

Every project should have a story behind it. Talked about channel 9 naming story and how Microsoft built transparency. The PR folks didn’t pay attention to our blogs and Channel 9 until we were in the New York Times. It’s so funny how that works. Tells more about telling good stories and how important that it. It’s all about story telling process.

If you post something it shows up in my RSS aggregator. Using RSS is far more productive!

How do I get my content viewed in new places…talked about second life.

Valleywag recently wrote about a bad pitch. Democracy Now, Z Fank, Ipod can aggregate. Steve Jobs used Rocketboom to do the recent Apple launch.

Again, HP – where is the engagement in the ethical issues?

Ragan PR conferece 2006

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Scoble You’re Cracking Me Up!!!

David Dalka — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 02:14:19 +0000

The other day Scoble posted about how video blogs are superior to text and I disagreed. Well two days later he posts this gem about Yahoo!’s announcement today about slightly lower earnings due to lack of realization of projections and guidance. (Maybe they should take Progressive Insurance’s stance and not give guidance, now there is a positive idea!) Anyway, today, Scoble says banners are discretionary spending while text ads aren’t and Google is winning and will outperform in a recession….blah blah blah…well guess what there is a large home page ad from Ford on Yahoo’s home page right now as I write this. People are talking about this little change in guidance like Ford told Yahoo! to go get completely lost, that is *NOT* the case.

This particular analysis is way too simplistic and there is significant other information to consider:

1. Unless you work at Google in sales or finance (maybe PR like David Krane), you don’t have any idea how this has affected Google this quarter.

2. That Ford ad on Yahoo’s front page is a *branding* ad, a picture of an actual vehicle! Any SEM worth anything will tell you that getting people to see a text ad as good spend for branding is a hard sell.

3. The Auto industry adopted online advertising early in the game. Perhaps they are reaching a penetration point where further accelerated growth is not possible at the same level? To confirm this thought further, a senior Google person I know (who actually returns her phone calls – props to her!) that I met at ad:tech in July recently moved from, guess what the Auto sector to Consumer Package Goods shortly before I met her (her card still said Autos). Maybe Google analyzed these same facts and decided to redeploy a valuable asset, in this case a person, to a place where it woudl get higher ROI. Good for them.

4. I also know that Ford recently hired a SEO firm to do alot of work on alot of sites. Maybe it’s because they realize that SEO and not text ads frequently have a superior return? Hmmm.

5. If text ads were the be all end all, why is Google launching radio and video ads?

6. UPDATE: Regarding financial services, this is all about the housing bust and no more “Own a $1.6 million dollar home for $99/month the first 4 years” text ads. I think this will affect everyone equally in terms of earnings and hoepfully some of those types of ads will never return.

So Robert which is it? Video and/or pictures or text?

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Jim Stroud Gives Me Shelter

David Dalka — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 19:41:25 +0000

I stepped into the Recruiter’s Lounge with Jim Stroud, he interviewed me briefly about my experience with Intellext and my attendance next week at the Online Recruiting Conference here in Chicago.

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Future CEO Hired Outside of Industry

David Dalka — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 02:26:53 +0000

In a smart move, Ford hired outside it’s own industry for it’s next CEO.

Imagine that, hiring someone for their knowledge and competencies, realizing that fresh perspectives are necessary to lead in a different way and solve unique and complex problems. Great article and a better decision. Are you listening search engine and interactive marketing leadership and boards of directors?

Good luck, Alan Mulally, you are taking on an immense challenge.

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I Joined the Internet Explorer IE7 Beta 3 Party

David Dalka — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 13:15:14 +0000

I heard some people say this will change the way we all surf the net. Well after trying it out last night, I like the tabs. What is the best thing about IE7 you ask? The favicon.ico works now in IE!!!

While the tabs make for a more efficient memory footprint, Firefox is still more efficient memory wise.

It has ”feed intergration” all I see is that it allows you to view feeds more easily. I don’t see a storage feature that is in my face as has been described. Am I missing something?

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Catch Up – Interesting Posts Recently

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 12:53:08 +0000

Danny Sullivan has a nice summary post this morning…always in his funny and light-hearted way. Danny is the glue that holds a fragmented community together.

Google Blogoscoped linked to posted video of Danny Sullivan’s interview of Eric Schmidt at SES and Danny also posted full press conference transcript that Google posted - wish I would have known that this was out there – it would have been helpful to me and I’ve bookmarked the page – props to David Krane and his PR team Google for posting that including the retracted comment portion – in other words if you read this please read the whole thing! I would urge him to change the segmentation of this information however as this transcript was not sent out via the normal Google ~~product promotion~~ press release channels like email.

RustyBrick points out an article suggesting that Google has hit the “topping point“.

Easton Ellsworth discusses a few of his favorite blogging promotion concepts.

This includes Andy Hagan’s and Aaron Wall‘s recent 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006.

Steve Rubel is challenging marketers to think like Venture Capitalists.

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SES San Jose Day 4 – Search Engine Q&A On Links

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 03:49:16 +0000

MSN – Ramez Naam

Links – What do they mean?

Discovery – How do you find it?

Reputation – How important is this page?

Annotation – What is this page about?

Key Principal of Links
Short and Readable
Descriptive
Useful and Navigating
In a Useful Location, Font, Color, etc.

Build good content and they will come!

Ask – Kaushal Kurapati

A link is a vote of authorization of the page being linked too.

Ask Approach –
Search the index to collect & calculate global information
Break the index into communities
Collect & calculate local subject-specific information
Apply all pertinent links

- Be cautious of reciprocal links
- Become an authority on a subject

Google – Adam Lasnik

We want links that are useful for humans?

Do your links make sense?

Yahoo! Rajat Mukherjee

Let’s try to think beyond links.

Keywords, meta tags, links, new things are emerging

Ysearchblog.com

Answers.yahoo.com – social search is subjective opinions
Builder.search.yahoo.com – new search experiences

Myweb.yahoo.com

Siteexplorer.yahoo.com – look at your in links, meta data.

Help.yahoo.com/search

Search.yahoo.com – different signals will involve links

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SES San Jose Day 4 – API (new session)

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 03:10:00 +0000

Rustybrick wrote an amazing post on the new SES API session – my PC was in dead battery mode and no plug available mode during this session. Please enjoy his post. He did mis Erynn B. Petersen’s of Microsoft because they accidently went to questions before she gave her speech, which was an awkward moment that she handled amazingly well. I had a nice chat with her afterwards, she is one of the people who really gets what this is all about and for that I appreciate her.

This is a great session that reminds me of how much search is like financial services, where there are a number of vendors that provide mission critical API’s – the fact that API’s are just starting to become transparent to the masses is a sign of how early in all of this we truly are.

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SES San Jose Day 3 – Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Press Conference

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:14:53 +0000

After Eric Schmidt was interviewed by Danny Sullivan, he held a press conference.

But first Eric stopped in the restroom and shook my hand shortly thereafter without washing his hands per reports of an SES attendee (it’s weird learning things like that 2 days later).

Learnings from this experience: Bring your business card, ask a specific and short question or risk having the tough parts missed.

The most surprising thing to me is that he only really holds press conferences about once a quarter. Think about that one of the busiest, hectic and arguably most controversial companies of our time that generates more news in a week than many companies used to generate in a year only has a press conference once a quarter. I wonder what Don Tapscott would think? Hmm, I just checked and actually Eric was quoted on the sleeve of Don’s 2003 book, the Naked Corporation! Think of how much the world has changed in those three years. Wow!

Below is my summary of the finer points of this rapid fire interaction (wish I could type faster) – minus the one area where he retracted a statement after continued pushback. It was very odd because in one way I felt sorry for him for being pounded on in a harsh way and in another way I felt he wasn’t being fully forthright and maybe even somewhat evil… I guess I’m trying to get across that the scene was very tense, terse and emotional.

Reporter: Can you say more on partnerships, Google as the affiliated partner, etc.

Eric: Dmarc is going to go well. Viacom/MTV suggested that taking content and putting video advertising at the beginning. Finding a way to monetize them is the hard part. We are doing well in search and content. Radio is coming out soon. The other two are starting now.

Reporter: Can you discuss the economics…

Eric: The forward commitments are much, much larger.

Reporter: Regarding the Kinderstart lawsuit.

Eric: It’s probably is best that I not comment on that.

Reporter: The AOL thing, how can it be impossible to happen at Google?

Eric: We have very specific plans about it. I’d rather not divulge them. (awkward silence in the room)

Reporter: Many people, do not know the difference between paid and natural search. Could you do more?

Eric: Yes certainly we could although I think most people know. (I’d like to hear more elaboration on this issue as would the reporter that asked it)

Reporter: Can you update us on Adsense policy?

Eric: Sites sometimes don’t follow the guidelines due to third parties. We have been tightening our guidelines.

Reporter: Update on Microsoft…

Eric: General Counsel made some claims. We’ll see where it happens. Google is more efficient, more scientific, etc. We will get more – $12 Billion of a $500 Million industry.

Reporter: Can you discuss video pricing model and cultural trends.

Eric: We will use an Adwords model. Development of social networks as lifetime models eventually. Myspace, it’s of the scale of instant messaging.

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SES Day 1 – Social Search Overview

David Dalka — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:44:17 +0000

Chris Sherman made introduction speech I cant stress enough that he did a really *amazing* job of planning the session and laying out the issues. Major props.

Social Search goes back to the first days of the Internet.

W3.org – first directory.

Directories were the first forms of social media. Spammers destroyed the first directories with spam.

Future – people will be getting these things right

Talent pool is volunteer and free. The scaling is happening due to people participating.

Types – Shared bookmarks (del.icio.us), tag engines (blogs and RSS) and collaborative directories (Wikipedia).

Types of social search – Personalized verticals and collaborative harvesters.

Popurls.com – combines all news sites like dig, reddit, etc in one place.

Scale and scope will be major, tagging, ambiguity of language, human laziness, lack of controlled vocabulary, and of course…idiots!!!

Spammers – new systems create new opportunities.

Chris Sherman is optimistic about social search but is concerned about some issues. Trust networks, increased personalization, etc are great opportunities

Grant Ryan , Eurester speaks:
Flew in from New Zealand and is tired!

Anyone can create their own search engine with Eurester.

Power to the people – socialization of the search technology. Spidering, Directories, Link Analysis, Swickis

Search engines have done everything to avoid

We are a printing press not a publisher. We can decide how it looks and how to make money. We have created 20,000 search engines.

Monetize the printing press the way you want to – chose what is best for your community.

Swikinomics – How can you create vertical search engines. You can own your own Swicki. Property rights are key to motivate people in any economic system.

Anyone can create a valuable asset based on their knowledge

Existing communities and brands can extend into web search to create valuable services

Anyone can organize information on the Internet and get paid for it.

Tim Mayer, Yahoo!

Launching a search builder today – builder.yahoosearch.com

Search breakthroughs come from untapped authorities and rich new sources of metadata.

Yahoo’s mission – “Enrich peoples’ lives by enabling them to find, use, share and expand all human knowledge.”

Obtain a critical mass or high-quality user generated experience.

Nils Pohlmann, Lead Program Manager, Windows Live Search

Live spaces – new release

Ideas.live.com beta release Windows Live Q&A

Windows Live Local – Maps with tags

Windows Live QnA – sign up as qna.live.com

Questions:
Are the demographics different than in a bookmarking versus answers?

Tim – Del.icio.us is tech influencers. Tails of the tags are more mainstream. Myweb are early adopters. The demographic is younger overall.

Subscribers for a tag, Answers, is about contribute valuable knowledge.

There was a question about paying for bookmarking actions and the panel was in agreement that they are leery of going this route.

Regarding Yahoo! – Tim – Builder.search.yahoo.com – create customized web search. Create customized search experience. Reputation and trust are important!

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Introducing nextgoogleceo.com 3.0

David Dalka — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 01:34:07 +0000

Lately, Google has been showing that is it participating in customer listening. This is good! I hope it continues.

Since I’ve started studying search engine marketing these past full months full time, I’ve been applying to Google – even with employee referrals of former co-workers and people I’ve met at Search Engine Strategies, etc. with out the applications executed in a way I consider appropriate – that is the politest way I can say it. I’d like to see that change, I’m presently seeking post-MBA level leadership roles within your Search Services/ Syndication, Advertising Sales, Marketing or other leading areas driving customer satisfaction and impacting revenue as you grow new product lines. Ideally I’d love to work within local, dMarc or mobile. I resubmitted (again) today for numerous post-MBA leadership positions.

So I launched nextgoogleceo.com which is a cute take of HR microsites (and discusses how next Microsoft is obsolete now that google is a common verb in our language), except that I’ve changed the wording a bit to demonstrate my increasingly dynamic understanding of both search and viral marketing and the future thereof. As soon as I hit send, I’m leaving for Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 and look forward to meeting your wonderful business unit leaders speak once again.

I would of course invite aspiring competitors or “next google’s” to come up and talk to me about their ideas as well. I look forward to learning and adding to my large and growing list of amazing people that are making the Internet a special place.

I look forward to seeing all of my fabulous friends at SES San Jose. It’s going to be both great fun and great learning. It’s the 3rd or 4th time I’ll be seeing some of you and I feel like I’m going on a trip to visit family…that is because that is exactly what it is! I look forward to meeting many new folks to and learning many new and great things. Thank you and please travel safely. See you in San Jose!

I leave you with this parting thought: In the book, Creating Customer Evangelists, the chapters on Mark Cuban stand out in regards to the hiring of Matt Fitzgerald as Chief Marketing Maverick: “Instead of selecting a marketing person from the NBA or the sports industry, Mark consciously made a decision to hire someone from outside the industry,” Fitzgerald says. “He believed the NBA marketing community was too in-bred so [Cuban] was looking for a marketing person with a fresh perspective and ideas.”

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Wall Street Journal Says Google “Stumbles” in Video

David Dalka — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:57:50 +0000

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an awesome article about Video ads and discusses MSN’s early dominance. The article states:

“MSN’s early success positions the portal to benefit from the explosion in online video advertising now under way. It also raises questions about Google Inc.’s ability to maintain its stranglehold on Internet advertising.”

“Advertisers say there aren’t enough ad spots to go around. A June study by McKinsey & Co. estimates that 80% of video inventory was soaked up in 2005 and that demand is likely to rise five-fold next year, outstripping current supplies. “Whenever we create more inventory, the sales force can sell it instantly,” says Rob Bennett, general manager of MSN Video. “There’s a tremendous demand.”"

“Jason Zajac, general manager of social media at Yahoo, says Yahoo currently runs banner ads only on the home page of video.yahoo.com, Yahoo’s page for homemade videos, which are vetted by Yahoo editors. Mr. Zajac says that Yahoo hopes to be able to offer 15- to 30-second ads inside user-created videos soon.”

“At the same time, portals are keeping an eye on Google. The search giant stumbled in an effort to move into video early last year.”

It’s interesting to see people questioning Google’s potential in this area so early in the game. Just like mobile marketing, the premise that Google will dominate is being questioned very early here.

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Steve Ballmer Speaks – Should Steve Spin Off MSN?

David Dalka — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:27:23 +0000

There is an interview in the Wall Street Journal today with Steve Ballmer.

First I’d like to say that I wish they would have hired me to do the interview as it was mostly a rehash of many things Steve has already said save the Bill Gates is leaving and how does this affect you.

For example the article says: “Google Inc., meanwhile, has outpaced Microsoft online, poached key Microsoft employees and will likely become an even greater Microsoft rival in years to come. The Internet search company’s rising share price has raised debate over what more Microsoft can do to retain and attract employees.”

An intelligent question about whether MSN needs to spin off a portion of MSN to create a high growth currency would have been nice on this issue.

Asking about Yahoo! when Microsoft just hired the CEO of Ask is just plain silly – especially since this issue has been talked to death. A question about what exactly Steve Berkowitz’s mandate is and whether Ask might be acquired makes a million times more sense than to rehash the Yahoo speculation.

If anyone at Waggoner Edstrom is listening, I would to have one of the first public MSN interviews of Steve Berkowitz, a groundbreaking and unique conversation, you may find my contact information in my about section.

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Shally Steckerl: Leadership Recruiting Innovator

David Dalka — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 03:52:33 +0000

Through my participation in linkedin.com during my amazing transition and discovery period, I’ve gotten to know some extremely interesting people. One of those people is Shally Steckerl (www.jobmachine.net/shally), a leading innovator in use of data mining and reverse viral marketing techniques for recruiting purposes.

Alright David, just why the heck are you interviewing a recruiting guy on your Marketing Innovation and Customer Listening blog? Well, many of the techniques he and his peers are using are strikingly similar to search engine and viral marketing so they are important to learn about. It’s one degree away but there is innovation happening on both sides and we should all be constantly learning from different perspectives. As you know, I love and embrace learning, innovation and process refinement, it’s what makes businesses with healthy cultures interesting!

David Dalka: What are you up to these days, Shally?

Shally Steckerl: I manage the central research team for Microsoft under a newly formed group called S.T.A.R.T. (Strategic Talent Acquisition and Research Team) led by long time Microsoft Staffing visionary Bridgett Paradise. We focus on candidate lead generation and Recruiting CI. I’m fortunate to lead a team comprising some of the most advanced and creative minds in the industry. I’m still maintaining jobmachine.net, blogging, and participating in many online communities and forums revolving around the Recruiting and Internet Research industry.

David Dalka: You are also frequently a public keynote speaker at conferences in this regard…

Shally Steckerl: I’ve been fortunate to be invited to address my peers at conferences like SHRM EMA, ERE, Kennedy and Onrec on topics I’m passionate about like Internet Research and building a recruitment network.

David Dalka: You recently had a seminar about using linkedin.com for recruiting…

Shally Steckerl: I was invited to address 1,500 participants interested in learning more about what LinkedIn has to offer recruiters and how they can best utilize it as a candidate generation resource. I had a great time giving everyone a tour of how I use the website day to day and showcasing some of my “recommended practices.”

David Dalka: What are some of your other favorite resources to target candidates?

Shally Steckerl: I depend heavily on the Internet as a database so I frequently use many of the top search engines like MSN Search, Yahoo, Google, Ask, Exalead, IceRocket and Gigablast to name a few. I also scan many blogs and read search engine results from several RSS feeders. Finally, I make the most out of dozens of online databases. All told there are about 280 places I go looking for leads at any particular point in time though this number grows constantly.

David Dalka: For the previous items, are there differences in techniques when looking for non-technical candidates and if so what?

Shally Steckerl: Some sources are better for identifying candidates for a particular industry. Each of the 280 methods I mentioned has a range of industries. Some types of candidates have a more pronounced Internet footprint than others. I wouldn’t, for example, go looking for Auditors in discussion groups, or Research Engineers in annual reports. Non-technical candidates appear in diverse sources. Just like technical candidate some can be found with simple keyword searches on search engines while others are more easily found in deeper information sources like databases or archives.

David Dalka: Is decreasing the cycle time for hiring clearly competitive advantage?

Shally Steckerl: The clearest competitive advantage is being first in reaching top talent that has not yet considered other opportunities. First we must identify where that talent is, but then we also must quick reach them before our competitors find then. Having the first chance to offer a top candidate new opportunities is much more advantageous than being very fast at reacting to the same candidates that have applied at every competitor.

David Dalka: While I often see you speak on the topic of finding candidates from the recruiters’ perspective, let’s reverse engineer that. What are the best ways for a great candidate to become more visible to the recruiting community both on and off of the web?

Shally Steckerl: I think that candidates need to do the same thing recruiters should do, and that is go directly to the source. A good recruiter knows where the top talent is and goes straight there to get them. A good candidate should know where the best employers are and go straight at them. Make connections and find ways to reach your target audience. Identify your top ten employers of choice and define what roles you see yourself doing there, then do everything you can to meet everyone who could ever have anything to do with those roles. Get as close to the decision maker as you can then make a surgical and decisive move to influence them to create the role you want for yourself. The best jobs are “made to order” not “filled to order.”

David Dalka: What are the most common mistakes candidates make during the interview process?

Shally Steckerl: Quite a bit has been written about this by many recruiters with far more experience than I but I will take a stab at it. In my opinion, the worst mistake is interviewing for the wrong job. If the job doesn’t suit you right from the beginning you are probably not going to get it and even if you do you won’t be happy doing it. I think the second mistake is not visualizing your self in that role. I mean really seeing yourself doing that job day in and day out and being extremely confident that this job will have you leaping out of bed in the morning. To be able to do that you need to prepare well and get to know the role and the company before the interview. However, knowing is only part of it. Feeling it is the other part. The third and final fatal mistake I’ll offer is not asking for the job. That’s right. Many people walk away from an interview never having explicitly conveyed their interest in the position. This leaves hiring managers wondering if the candidate really wants the job. There should be no doubt at all that you are interested and willing to do what it takes to get the job but also get the job done once you get it.

David Dalka: What are some things candidates do best to make themselves stand out during the interview process?

Shally Steckerl: Ask for the job. Ask prepared questions about the role and the long term plan for the role. Look people squarely in the eye and ask for the job while you are shaking their hand. Give concrete examples of something you have done in the past that has given you the tools to competently complete the tasks required for this job. Provide evidence of how you have overcome unpredictable obstacles by learning and applying yourself, going the extra mile to exceed expectations. Oh and ask for the job – did I already mention that?

David Dalka: How do you see recruiting evolving going forward?

Shally Steckerl: Recruiting will become an intertwined ecosystem that brings together the ability to manage project vendors and partners while leveraging technology and applying the ability to understand business needs.

David Dalka: Thank you, Shally, I really enjoyed talking with you. Talk to you soon.

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Being Able to Trust…Even Without Disclosure

David Dalka — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 21:36:20 +0000

I recently read Robert Scoble’s and Shel Israel’s book “Naked Conversations”. It’s a great book. In fact I’m currently writing a positive review for it for a publication due to it being well researched and fascinating in terms of its’ leadership and change management implications. It earned my respect due to the extensive research that went into the book. For the record, Robert didn’t send me a copy of the book and I got it at a public library.

But Robert made this post yesterday about disclosure in relation to payperpost that Richard Brownell, Chris Brennan and David Krug make some extremely interesting points that people should consider in the comments of Robert’s post. I think Robert is not recognizing that creating buzz is in itself advertising whether you keep the product or not – so either you should take what is given to you and be discreet about it or return the items as they arrive if you care about potential ethics issues.

In Robert’s July 2nd, 2006 post you say that you’ve “never really given Sonos a review before”. Yet in his April 8th, 2006 post , Robert stated the following:

“This is much much more cooler than I thought,” says Buzz Bruggeman.

What’s he talking about? The Sonos music system.

First, a disclaimer. They sent me this so I could try it out. It’s one of the things that arrived before I said “no more free stuff.”

I have to admit this is pretty cool. It lets you put a controller in each room in your home.

And you control it over Wifi.

This rocks. We’re playing my iTunes stuff right now.”

Then later in the post Robert says:

“Tomorrow Chris Pirillo and Ponzi is coming over for brunch. It’ll be interesting to see what they think. (Chris always has the coolest stuff before I do, so if it impresses him it’ll impress everyone).”

Let’s compare some statements in this post with the July 2nd post:
1) Robert talks about Sonos (with an outbound link to the product no less) in the April 8th post. You then use the terms “I have to admit this is pretty cool” and “This Rocks” to describe it. Then on July 2nd Robert says, “Well, I never really gave them a review until today.” If alongside an outbound link to the product it’s stated that something is “pretty cool” and that “this rocks” isn’t a review, I don’t know what is.
2) In that post it says that “First, a disclaimer. They sent me this so I could try it out. It’s one of the things that arrived before I said “no more free stuff.”” In the July 2nd post it talks about a new Nokia phone that just arrived. If the “no more free stuff” was truly operational you’d send it back to the shipper immediately or refuse delivery. Which is the true policy?
3) Does one not get value out of something for using it for a few months? In the car industry it’s a called a lease and there are payments involved. Did you pay Sonos or Nokia for value received during usage of these products for a period of time? If not, would you not admit that you got some value out of them?
4) In your April 8th post you said the Sonos might impress Chris Pirillo and go on to say that if it impresses him it will impress everyone. Does one gain any personal value out of impressing people with new gadgets that were sent to you?

Regardless of whether you gave the items away after a few months or not, Robert did talk about them on his blog and if they had not been sent to you likely would not have talked about them. You then gave Sonos even more buzz again by giving it away at Gnomedex as “hundreds of people witnessed it”. Why did Robert choose this high profile place to give away this item instead of quietly giving it to charity anonymously? So regardless of whether you reviewed the product on April 8th, you gave it buzz on your blog twice and in front of an entire conference. That my friend has value to certain people with your increasing public profile in terms of buzz for Sonos. Disclosure or not Robert created significant positive PR here for Sonos by discussing it in his blog – when it arrived and again after giving it away as “hundreds of people witnessed it” at Gnomedex.

While the data from yesterday’s mention is not in yet, I would suggest that this Alexa (yes I know Alexa has flaws) graph showing the spike in traffic in April around the 8th suggests the buzz impact of this mention or review quite well:

As I discussed previously in e-mail with Robert a few weeks back, “Naked Conversations” is about trust (and how certain actions enable trust to occur). If someone were to purposely write something misleading about a Nokia phone and someone bought it and it sucked, that individual would call that person out on it. In other words, the trust is self-policing even without disclosure. I therefore don’t need to be told like a child each time that you got these items for free, as I believe that you would not do something so foolish as to blog positively about a product that you thought sucked. Just lile the “Claire” blog at Vichy, people figured out what was and wasn’t real on their own – without any disclosure.

To summarize, while I certainly can’t speak for the whole blogoshpere, I trust that you are wise enough to not write something positive that you don’t truly believe to be true about a product regardless of whether you disclose that you got something for free or not. Aren’t you worthy of this trust Robert?

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Online E-mail Service Reliability Needs Improvement

David Dalka — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:06:55 +0000

At present, I have 4 web-based e-mail accounts, Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail/Live.com, Yahoo! Mail and my University of Chicago Graduate School of Business “Email4Life” account.

I can now discuss the issue without being accused of favoritism or bias because all four of the organizations above have now done this recently. This is the issue of e-mail reliability and making large changes in the live environment and ignoring the issues of a continuous and positive user experience is a disturbing trend. All of the above providers have had large outages and/or rollbacks to previous versions in the past month. This is not optimal and should not become the “norm”.

I’d like to ask program managers to please consider the following going forward:
1) Reliability of service is paramount and should not be sacrificed
2) Sacrificing long-standing features in new versions is not a good idea
3) Communicating and explaining the feature upgrades transparently is encouraged
4) Asking for user feedback on new features is encouraged
5) If the application operates more slowly using Ajax than it did before, please optimize it before implementing

I would hope that these organizations would understand the potential attrition and retention implications of actions such as these and change their future actions before it adversely affects them.

I’d like to share a glimpse at the top items on my wish list for improvements:
Gmail
- I love the conversation bundling feature, though there are times when I would like to unbundle a conversation and adding the ability to do this would be helpful
- Automatic spell checking (the new Hotmail/Live.com Beta has spell check integrated as you type – this should become the best practice)
Hotmail/Live.com
- In Live.com, restoration of the radio buttons to complete actions on multiple e-mails at once is necessary
- Stability of Live.com needs to be a priority, I switched back to Hotmail for now (you get kudos for the feedback form – though an acknowledgment that shows someone read it would be confidence inspiring)
Yahoo! Mail
- In the new version, restoration of the radio buttons to complete actions on multiple e-mails at once is necessary
- Automatic spellchecking (the new Hotmail/Live.com Beta has spell check integrated as you type – this should become the best practice)
- In the new version, I’d like it to look and feel more like the old Yahoo! Mail – e-mail me if you’d like more detail
University of Chicago
- Build an understanding that Email4life is a critical alumni networking tool and treat it as such
- Communicate clearly with all members of the community and act on their feedback in an accountable manner; In summary, providers need to fully consider the user experience when making changes in their offerings
Do other people have other suggestions or thoughts on this issue?

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The Motley Fool Suggests Google is “Killing the Internet”

David Dalka — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:42:15 +0000

So far this month there have been two noteworthy pieces written about click fraud and related issues.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban blogs that click fraud is “FAR greater” than imagined. Quite an interesting read and one coming from a wealthy Internet pioneer to boot. It’s clear that he has a strong opinion on this subject.

The second article is from The Motley Fool and is entitled “How Google is Killing the Internet”

While I encourage everyone to read the article thoroughly, here are some interesting quotes from Seth’s article:
“Markets don’t correct without competition and information, and I don’t think there’s enough of either here to make a difference. Yet.”

“I don’t know the answers — or even all of the questions. But if this problem is as bad as some fear, it could eventually put a major crimp in Google’s entire revenue model, if not the entire pay-per-click business. I would argue that the explosion of link farms and spamblogs is pretty decent evidence that the click-fraud biz is not only alive and well, but also thriving at the expense of all of us. Except Google. For now, anyway.”

It’s interesting to see such high profile articles or blog posts on these topics. It will be interesting to see where this goes from here.

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I’m #1!!! (literally)

David Dalka — Sat, 27 May 2006 22:41:31 +0000

With the most recent index in Google, my site is now in the #1 position on Google and MSN for the term “David Dalka”. I’m also #2 on Yahoo! It’s impossible to isolate the influence of blog crawlers versus new links to this site, though it would be interesting to know which played a stronger role in my rise.

For the search term “Dalka” alone on Google, I’m now #11, up from like #362 or something like that. That is a dramatic rise!

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If You Were Recruiting An Acoustic Guitar Player…Tommy Emmanuel

MSN eating into Google?

David Dalka — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:56:35 +0000

I read this interesting article discussing MSN and Google.

It would be interesting to hear more comments on this issue.

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My Hotmail is Now Windows Live Mail Beta

David Dalka — Fri, 19 May 2006 14:59:58 +0000

My Hotmail account has switched over to a shiny, new Windows Live Mail Beta account. I had received an invitation for the beta about a week ago and got another e-mail for the switch over this week.

It looks like a really clean Hotmail account with Word merged into it, which is probably pretty close to the reality. Web based spell check now happens as you are typing! This new feature differentiates it significantly compared to Gmail and Yahoo! Mail as they require you to hit a spell check button manually before sending which can easily be forgotten and embarrassing for the sender. Yahoo! Mail has been hinting a new version for some time, so it may soon have this feature.

In terms of ads, there is presently only a large banner ad on the top of the page. At this time, when reading an e-mail in Windows Live Mail Beta there are no text ads on the side as with a Gmail account. It will be interesting to see if it stays that way.

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Kevin Lee Discusses MSN Adcenter

David Dalka — Tue, 16 May 2006 06:00:25 +0000

During the ACCM Show, I caught up with the top frog, Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman and co-founder of Did It Search Marketing. Kevin was in attendance at the recent MSN Strategic Account Summit 2006 and shares that experience and his thoughts on other recent events.

Kevin is among the many people who have been both accepting and helpful to me as I’ve immersed myself into the industry, gone through exponential learning and have looked to define and obtain the role in which I will add the most value to a search engine, digital agency or other area of this vibrant and constantly changing community.

This podcast has been retired due to the aging of the material – If you wish to hear it please email me – June 27, 20007

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