Lawrence Gee | Marketing, Internet, Creativity, Strategy

Social Search Results

I came across this post in Danny Sullivan post in Search Engine Land today.  It points out that Yahoo! is testing out Del.icio.us (Social bookmarking site) data being integrated into search engine results.  Basically for search results it will list how many people have bookmarked the site and the tags associated with it. 

The posting points out that Yahoo! will not factor in Del.icio.us data into it’s page rank calculations (as of now).  You have to imagine that if people believe that pages are more valuable a la bookmarking then one could argue that it should be factored in to page rank.  It’ll be interesting to see how much more integration there might be with Del.icio.us or other bookmarking sites in the future.  Google already has a “note this” link which can bookmark specific results into your own notebook.  I can imagine Yahoo! allowing the ability to bookmark directly to Del.icio.us, the ability add tags to page results, or the ability to select specific results to share with other people. 

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Time on Site

Web analytics is definitely an important part of Internet Marketing.  Having tangible data to see trends, set goals, and measure impact of changes is vital to success.  It can lend to much insight into what does and doesn’t work and can shift your overall thinking and strategy. 

Vitally important is knowing what each specific metric means and how it gets calculated.  One metric that I look at on a regular basis is  Time on Page and Time on Site.  They measure how long a visitor is engaged on your site.  The convential thinking is the more time that is spent on a specific page or site as a whole, the better.  I came across a great summary by Avinash Kausisk, a Google Analytics Evangelist that really explains how Time on Page and Time on Site are calculated.  It’s a little bit different that I had originally thought and he dives deep into how opening links in tabs can affect the calculations.  Interesting stuff.

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Are You an MBE?

What’s an MBE?  Apparently its a Multilayer Business Executive according to blogger Maria Popova.  I googled the term and nothing really comes up so it remains to be seen if this term can stick or not.   So what exactly is an MBE and could you be labeled as one?

According to Maria, MBEs are…

“a new-age version of the types who have been running the parade since the beginning of business time. They’re not the old-school conventional “suits.” Many don’t even go to work in suits, if there’s anywhere to “go” in the first place—nursed on new media and technology, this set is comfortable with telecommuting, Web- and videoconferencing, livecasting and all the rest of those new tools that let them control both their time and their business.”

Here’s a simple checklist to see if you qualify:

1. Not in a suit 24/7 - Yep, that’s me.
2. Comfortable and immersed in new technology - Absolutely.
3. Worldly intellectual and a culture-crossers - I’ve been to Asia and Europe.  Mexico, Canada, and the rest of the US sort of counts.  I’ll do a partial nod and a full nod once I eventually make it to Australia and Africa.
4. Have an MBA - Getting one…so check.
5. Quote Christopher Guest movies rather than Peter Drucker books - Well, I have seen Best in Show…
6. Crave luxury and good design, but also socially and enivronmentally conscious  - Wonder why Pinkberry’s and Prius’ do so well? 
7. Excelled at higher education, but they’re uniquely attuned to pop culture - Face me in Trivial Pursuit, I dare you.
8. Have successful business careers, but are also harvesting entrepreneurial ideas or actual projects on the side - Check and check.
9. Have money to spend - Not yet, but hopefully.
10. Great bloggers with something to say - You can be the judge of that.
    

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Link Building Trends and Challenges for ‘08

Part of my daily news reading for the morning, I came across this interesting article, Top 5 SEO and Link Building Challenges for 2008, by Justilien Gaspard of Search Engine Watch.  Paraphrasing, Justilien identifies his top trends and challenges that SEOs, link builders and webmasters will face in 2008:

1. Webmasters Scared to Link Out
2. Overuse and Abuse of NoFollow Tags
3. Neglected Link Building Destroys Top Rankings
4. Google Paid Links Assault: Collateral Damage
5. Scarcity of Link Building Resources

I’ve been working on a couple pet projects and can attest that link building is extremely difficult.  Not only is it time consuming but the hit rate can be also demoralizing.  Perhaps it is the trend that webmasters are scared to link out or the fact (as the article points out) that most people’s lives don’t revolve around search engines.    I can see the value that Google places on these hard earned links.  In my opinion, link building is like having great content on your website - it’s something that takes time and effort to build up,  something where shortcuts do not tend to be effective, and something that must be a focal point for your ongoing strategy. 

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Going Ga-Ga over Maka-Maka

Wow, on the same concept as the previous post, Is Facebook the Next Revolution of E-Mail, I came across this article about Google’s latest initiative called “Maka-Maka”.  Maka-Maka is a social network/matrix overlay over Google’s popular applications like Gmail and Google Maps.  Like Facebook, it looks like Google wants to incorporate more interactivity and interaction amongst the user and their network of friends.  I could instantly imagine recommendations of restaurants by friends on Google Maps, looking at personal profiles through your contact list on Gmail, or giving a status update to your network if you are editing a document on Google Docs. 

This will be quite interesting to see how Google develops “Maka-Maka” but the initial premise seems quite promising — making the web an even smaller and more interactive arena where better conversations can occur.

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