Live.com Search Interview and Some Questions I Still Have

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.

Microsoft Executive Departures

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.    

Jason Calacanis Accepts Neil Patel’s SEO Challenge

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! 

Arrington’s Post on Email Interfaces…

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.

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

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!).

The Praise for Youtube Revenue Sharing - All for Nothing?

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?

CES update

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.

Switching Search Engines is Easy…

“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.

Google Changing Monetization Strategy?

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?

AI Gateway Accepted to Major University Technology Incubator

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.  

Chicago SES - Day 2 - Duplicate Site Issues

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

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

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

Windows Live Graphical Ad on Youtube

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

Free $100* AdCenter Offer

Enjoy.

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

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

Danny Sullivan to Continue with SES (Official)

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.

Just Where is Steven Berkowitz?????

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?

Getting noticed in the new word-of-mouth network

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

Scoble You’re Cracking Me Up!!!

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?

Jim Stroud Gives Me Shelter

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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