Dodge Caravan Peanut Butter & Jams Kids Concerts

C’mon, you were wondering too. I wanted to make a lyre joke but remembered some people have zero sense of humor.

For those who remember reading Jon Udell in InfoWorld back when everyone in tech read big, ad-laden trade journals, he’s leaping off the fading flower of print for the emerald green fields of the Internet.

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Normally, during most conference sessions that cover linking strategies, the participating audience pays close attention. However, at the link Q&A session during the 2006 Chicago SES, things got a tad contentious - that is until Abhilash Patel and Rand Fishkin got their respective turns at the mic.

Before we go on, I don’t want to paint a picture that the session was filled with arguing between the audience and the panel (which was quite good, consisting of Yahoo!’s Tim Converse; Google’s Adam Lasnik; Eytan Seidman from MSN; and Ask.com’s Vivek Pathak). However, a couple of audience members didn’t appear to like the answers they were being given.

One person in particular decided to argue about the need of sub domains, indicating he knew more about his given field than the search engines did… and perhaps he was right. However, when it comes to sub domains, I always remember something Danny Sullivan said at a previous conference - if a sub domain could stand on its own as an individual site, then creating one is fine. If not, just use the normal web page structure… but I digress.

While this session may have had a tense moment or two, there was still some really solid information provided:

- The panel was asked about relative or absolute links when it comes to internal linking with your site. They all said absolute (while many of you probably know this, it’s good to hear the engines confirm it).

- Contrary to the belief of many, Google is not against the buying and selling of links for advertising purposes. They are against it if it’s done to manipulate rankings and/or PageRank.

- Adam Lasnik was asked why Google doesn’t show more or all of the backlinks during this type of query. His answer was revealing, which I’ve paraphrased below:

Google doesn’t show as many backlinks because they don’t want people to focus as much on the linking aspect. They, of course, want great content, however, they are considering showing more links, but nothing has been confirmed.

The session’s best questions were asked by Rand and Abhilash.  I thought their points added a lot in terms of audience participation. Rand’s question concerned the way the search engines treat pay-per-post blog entries, something he has already blogged about.

Abhilash also had a great question about 301 redirects. He asked whether or not 301s pass the age of the link along with everything else they ferry.

Adam’s reply indicated that he wasn’t sure if every single aspect of the link is carried over by the redirect. 301s will carry the established “link love” and PageRank, but there’s some uncertainty about all aspects of the link being carried over.

Like Rand said in his post concerning pay-per-posts, it’s certainly nice to see the panel being so open and forthright with their answers. The only area that they made off-limits were questions concerning their ranking algorithms and that’s entirely understandable. All in all the link Q&A was again informative even though the atmosphere was a little “hotter” than usual.

Back in ancient times (circa 2002), we all dreamed of web TV. No, not that stupid Microsoft set top box… but the capacity for “real” video on the web.

We pined for low bandwidth, glossy video “goodness” delivered, on-demand, right to our PCs. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m not going to claim that golden time is now (that’d certainly be absurd)… but we’re on the right track.

Back before their titanic “fusion” into the super-mega-unstoppable-colossal-golem of creative software known as Adobe, Macromedia sparked this revolution. Which is not to say they’re completely responsible for the rise of web video… but more than anyone else, they’re driving the technology.

Leveraging codecs by Sorenson and On2, Macromedia introduced us to flv with Flash 6. In its own right, simply control over such media within Flash via Actionscript was revolutionary. Additionally, the quality was astonishing given its relatively small size. With its already vast the penetration into the web, one thing was clear: the porn industry was going to love this… oh, and that maybe web video had finally come of age. No more tinny whines and inconsistent audio, no more awkward, blocky compression blemishes.

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So I don’t sound like a broken record (or a duplicated web page), I’ll briefly go over the duplicate content session at the Chicago SES conference. The reason for my abbreviated entry can be blamed on Lee Odden, who wrote an in-depth article about the same session and its featured on the WebProNews front page.

Another reason has to do with the coverage we provided during the Las Vegas PubCon, which also had a duplicate content session. By and large, the information from Chicago wasn’t that different from the Vegas conference. However, there are some important points that should be reiterated.

First, a great deal duplicate content is accidental and a result of numerous links pointing to the same page. To a search engine bot, this represents duplicate content. If a page has a normal canonical link pointing to it and another, perhaps dynamic link, doing the same, search engines will interpret this a being duplicate and they will act accordingly.

Other tidbits to be aware of:

- Search engines do not want duplicate content because it slows the information delivery process as well as causing unnecessary clutter.

- if you have numerous domains for one page, use 301 redirects

- choose one canonical domain and link all internal pages on the site to this domain

- exclude landing pages for ads using robots.txt

***These tips are courtesy of Jon Glick of Become.com

Additional tips (courtesy of Shari Thurow of Grantastic Designs and Mikkel deMib Svendsen of deMib.dk) to consider:

- use your robot.txt or the appropriate meta tag (for dynamic sites) to exclude pages from being indexed

- dump all session ids in a cookie for all users, this can eliminate the session id duplicate content issues

- mainly, be on the look out for multiple URLs leading to an individual page, don’t wait for the engines to deal with, take care of it yourself…

This last point captures the theme of this particular session. Multiple URLs pointing to one page is one of the major causes of duplicate content because it gives the impression there are multiple occurrences of the same page even if the developer did not have intend to produce duplicate content. Be aware of these URLs and use the appropriate “fixes” to address the situation.

YouTube the Godzilla of online video is embroiled in another copyright controversy, this time with Japan. It seems the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) is not too happy with infringement taking place on the video site.

In a letter sent to Chad Hurley YouTube chief executive officer and Steve Chen chief technology officer the group requests that YouTube put a system in place to remove copyrighted material that is uploaded to the site. Currently rights holders have to find content on the site and then notify YouTube of the illegal material.

In the letter JASRAC said,” Taking into account the current status of your service, we believe that your company should not just wait for rights owners to take the ‘Notice and Take down’ procedures but should bear the responsibility to prevent, in advance, copyright infringements such as illegal uploads and distributions, or to avoid those infringements.” In a previous complaint from JASRAC YouTube removed nearly 30,000 files from their site in October. Still that did not deter users from continuing to upload copy written material to the site.

The Japanese group made specific requests to YouTube. They want a posting on the Web sites homepage in Japanese warning of the legal issues surrounding the uploading of copy written material. They also request that YouTube respond by December 15.

It will be interesting to see what happens in this latest saga over copyright infringement. Japan is clearly not happy with YouTube and how they respond will be the key to a peaceful resolution.

Posted by Mike Sachoff

Staff Writer

Search engine marketing is not limited to SEOing your site to get respectable organic results. Advertising through these engines is also a very effective medium when it comes to getting noticed and capturing traffic. However, there are some ideas and hints you should keep in mind before embarking on any SEM endeavor.

First and foremost, be sure and test the ads you intend to run. Test to see which one will be the most effective and will generate the most response. There are a number of ways to go about testing ads, and thanks to the Chicago SES conference, I can relay a few of these methods to you.

During the Ad Testing: Research and Finding session, Anton Konikoff, CEO of Acronym Media revealed a number of ideas that should assist with any search engine ad testing. Initially, Konikoff reminded the attendees that search engines provide the perfect platform for ad testing and to further this point he discussed a case study and demonstrated how a minor change in a client’s ad copy paid measurable dividends. The change? Adding the phrase “award winning”.

Konikoff also reminded the audience while an ad’s CTR is an important result, the ultimate success of an ad comes from its conversion rate. This means, if you are only successful in attracting clicks, but cannot close the deal, you need to test the effectiveness of your ad’s landing page. These are as important as well-written, catchy ads because what good is an effective ad if the landing page is so bad you can’t close the sale?

There were some other pointers discussed by Konikoff:

1. When testing, sample at least 100 clicks. Ideally, you’d like to shoot for 1000 clicks, but budget constraints may prevent this from happening.

2. For smaller budgets, limit your testing to 3 or 4 ads. However, companies with larger budgets should test 5 or more.

3. Test your ad’s title, which should closely match the content of the ad itself. Keep your title line consistent with the descriptions.

Concerning ad descriptions, develop a number of descriptions to test. Obviously, these should contain the keywords you are targeting, however, there are other ad content ideas to consider during the testing process. For instance, use time sensitive descriptions - phrases like “Act Now” or price point information like “All Time Low Price”. If the product has a coupon, let you audience know.

Once these descriptions have been developed, test them. Find out which one performs the best and run it. However, your job isn’t done once this has been accomplished. Konikiff made sure to point out that ad testing is not a “test it and forget it” endeavor. It is a continuous process and you or your marketing department needs to approach it as such.

Other ad testing considerations (provided by Hugh Burnham of Rare Method):

- create ad groups for general terms as well as specific industry keywords
- shut off campaigns on the weekends to save money
- expand targeted keyword base to include plurals and like terms
- pick client’s brain for a better understanding of their industry’s terms

If you can follow just some of these ideas, it can have some vast, positive effects on a search engine marketing campaign. Do not be afraid to experiment.

So much for the partnership between Google senior advisor Al Gore’s Current TV and Yahoo. The joint effort lasted all of two months before the Yahoo site stopped accepting Yahoo uploads. (more…)

As the use of mobile phones in everyday life continues to grow, using the mobile Internet technology available with most of these services is expected to increase as well. As many of you know, searching is the second most popular Internet task next to email. Because of this, it is little surprise the search engine industry is embracing the mobile generation as well.

While search is indeed a popular activity, search providers are not focusing on Internet search as much as they are local search when it comes to the mobile user. While Internet search is indeed available, companies like Google and Yahoo are focusing on local mobile search and map services a great deal. You can now add Live.com (MSN Search) to that list also.

According to an announcement on the Live.com blog, Microsoft if launching Live Search for Mobile Beta, a local search mobile service offering users 3 different methods they can search with:

Mobile Software – Download an application to your phone for local search, maps, driving directions, and live traffic information in a faster, richer and more interactive user interface. It’s the best way to search from your phone.

Mobile Browsing - Access maps and directions directly on your phone’s browser. Simply enter mobile.live.com/search into your phone’s address bar and select Map. Choose from the scopes of Local, Web, Map, News and Spaces and get Live Search from your mobile device.

Text Messages (SMS)- If you don’t have a data plan, you can simply send a text message to 95483 (WLIVE) with a query like “Toys Chicago, IL” or “Coffee 90210” and you’ll immediately receive a text message reply with the nearest business listings with address and phone numbers.

For more information, visit Live.com’s mobile search about page.

The statistics involved with the AIDS epidemic are staggering. A visit to any AIDS awareness site confirms this. 6000 children orphaned daily because of AIDS… 180,000 in a month… The facts are almost overwhelming. Because of the need for AIDS awareness on a worldwide scale, December 1 is acknowledged as being World AIDS Day.

The search engine industry is also doing their part to improve AIDS awareness by visually supporting today’s cause. Google, Ask.com, and Yahoo all have red ribbon-based images on their start pages. Unfortunately, Live.com (MSN Search) is conspicuous by their absence, which is odd considering how much of a philanthropist Bill Gates has become.

Google’s support of today’s occasion manifests itself in the form of (RED) Campaign support, complete with a logo and a link to the Join Red site.

Aside: the (RED) Campaign supports AIDS Awareness by partnering with certain product manufacturers (Apple, Motorola, Converse to name a few). If an item that’s marked for (RED) support is sold, a portion of the profits goes to The Global Fund.

Meanwhile, Ask.com is sporting a red ribbon that links to an Ask SERP featuring an Answer section reserved for the World AIDS Day website. Yahoo is also supporting the (RED) campaign and their logo links to a Yahoo Shopping page featuring (RED) items and donation links.

It’s refreshing to see the search community reach out in such a manner. When you consider just how much traffic these vessels drive, it’s easier to hope people are at least vicariously coming into contact with this important information.