When I’m Not Doing SEO

Sometimes I Sit and Think: Sometimes I just Sit

This is one of those meme posts. You know what I mean. Someone tags you and you’re supposed to tag someone else. If it’s someone you know well and like, then you don’t like to break the chain. So here we are.

I was tagged by Kim Krause Berg, usability expert and owner of the Cre8asite Forums, who had been tagged by Barry Schwartz, the energetic owner of SERoundTable. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is such a time-consuming activity now, particularly with all the burgeoning social media (Digg, Sphinn, StumbleUpon, Mixx, etc.), that it can expand to fill whatever time window you give it. That’s why it’s important to budget your time carefully and leave time for the things that are really important in life.

I am constantly surprised by what I see around me and like to write about it. We human beings are often eccentric and there’s a wealth of material. I like words so if I’m not writing then I’m often reading and it can be on a host of subjects. I consume detective thrillers rapidly if I merely want to relax.

What I really like to do is to get out into the open air. We now have two senior Golden Retrievers although both of them have their puppy moments. So that ensures two or three long walks a day. Having just moved to British Columbia, we are also intrigued to see the different birds here as compared with those we saw in Québec.

Having now done my duty, I pass the baton on threefold. Over to you
Ruud Hein
Pierre Far
Paul Flanagan

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Group Chat On Gmail

 
Gmail latest news

With more and more people signing on for Gmail, the Chat facility that is available is handy when a telephone is not readily to hand.

As of today, this chat facility can even be used by groups. You can find more on this on the What’s new on Gmail? page.

Just launched! Chat just got better with group chat and new emoticons.

Group chat
Chat with multiple people without multiple windows. Invite your friends to a group discussion. To start a group chat, click ‘Group chat’ from the ‘Options’ menu when chatting.

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Google BlogSearch Is Broken

Lisa Barone writing in the Bruce Clay Blog was kind enough to mention a thread I started over at the Cre8asite Forums suggesting that the Ask.com Blog Search was filling a Google vacuum. She asked, “Who Has the Better Blog Search: Google or Ask?” Her answer ran as follows:

Personally, I think both blog searches need some work. If I had to commit myself to using one and only one, I’d probably go with Ask, but I’m not exactly jumping up and down on the couch over how fabulous they are.
..
Google is top dog when it comes to indexing speed but their index is chock full of spam. Ask takes a little longer to get things appearing in the index, but when the content is there, it’s relevant and better and smelling like roses.

She apparently still uses both. I used to be one of the strongest proponents for Google Blogsearch. However for some time I have been despairing of its quality. As she said it’s ‘chock full of spam’. In addition whatever algorithm it is using does not produce relevant blog posts for the searches I do.

It is not difficult to produce examples to show how broken it is. I wrote a blog post three days ago where relevant keywords were Customer Service, Bell, Rogers, Telus. Given the frustration that many feel over customer service from the telecoms, it’s a topic that is often discussed on the blogosphere. As of today, the Ask Blog Search has the blog post at #1 for that keyword search. Even IceRocket, another blogsearch engine that sometimes works at glacial speed, has the post at #3.

The surprise is that Google Blogsearch does not include the post in the top 100. That top 100 includes quite a slug of the spam posts that Lisa referred to. However the blog itself for a regular Google keyword Web search appears at #20 for these key words. Google has been boasting that it now includes blogs within the regular web search. That’s an improvement. Yet at the same time such posts no longer appear in the Google Blogsearch. That’s not at all logical.

I am not the only one to suggest that Google Blogsearch is broken. Philipp Lenssen raised this although for different reasons. It’s beginning to look as though it’s dropped off the Google corporate radar. That’s a pity. It used to be so impressive.

Related:
Google BlogSearch for Hot News Items
Google BlogSearch, The Neglected Orphan
Google Blog Search Doesn’t Find Many Links
How can I help you? Is that Bell, Rogers or Telus?

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Go With The Flow

facebook.pngAs Rob Cottingham points out, the easiest way to contact people is to go where they are. Clearly the crowds on Facebook can give you huge audiences. How do you get their attention? Well giving something away for free usually works. That’s why the gift-giving application on Facebook is so popular.

 
Green Gifts for the Facebook crowd

That’s the beauty of BC Hydro‘s Facebook initiative. They want to spread the word about energy conservation. In-your-face advertising never works very well, however good the cause. On the other hand accepting a gift from a friend is the most natural thing to do. So BC Hydro offers Green Gifts for you to give. Your friend enjoys receiving the gift and an important message comes with it. That’s the height of Permission Marketing.

Related: BC Hydro’s Green Gifts: Harnessing Facebook Gift-giving Energy for Conservation

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ASK TV Ads Grow Online Traffic

 
Offline TV Ads Can Boost Online Visits

There always seems to be something paradoxical about using offline media to bring more traffic to online websites. Yet, as the ASK blog tells us, they really can be very effective:

Have you seen the latest Ask.com TV commercials? They’ve been in rotation since September and have been getting great response. If you haven’t seen them yet, here’s your chance. Just click the link below to watch them.
ASK TV ads

Perhaps that’s part of the explanation why ASK is not suffering the same traffic losses as Yahoo! and MSN/Live are experiencing under the Google onslaught.

Related: ASK Away

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