Last year I became addicted to The Ultimate Fighter and by association, Ultimate Fighting Championship. I cannot get enough of this competition. The UFC has really turned around from what I remember watching in the late 90’s with Ken Shamrock and Dan “The Beast” Severn. Recently I was trying to get the latest news on the 3rd season of “The Ultimate Fighter” and noticed that the UFC has created individual blogs for many fighters. This is amazing to see. How many NFL teams have created this feature? None that I am aware of. The UFC has always been a grassroots organization with a rabid fan-base and having blogs for fans and fanatics to get the latest news straight from their favorite fighter really brings everything together and creates more excitement.
Archive for January, 2006
Connecting with the fans
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006Bill Gates and the $100 Laptop
Thursday, January 26th, 2006I’ve written about the $100 Laptop more than once on this blog. Kevin Maney tells us that Bill Gates is ‘dissing’ the idea. Gates thinks people in the third world need cheap cell phones before cheap laptops.
Rules for Webmasters
Thursday, January 26th, 2006Google’s rules for Webmasters has a little quote that has been on my mind. When explaining to Webmasters what is reasonable and ethical when optimizing your site for its index, the rules encourage you to ask yourself: “would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?” Their point is that too many sites/Webmasters are letting the search engines drive their design and construction decisions.
Unfortunately, Google’s success makes us all fail their litmus test. It’s not a fair question. They’re building a culture-altering business based upon Web searchers -and- Web advertisers. The impact has been so significant that an aggressive marketer is almost forced to alter their online efforts because Google exists.
I’m all for fair play, but Google’s search formula seems to really reward the folks who play the game well. Try a few searches on some general keywords and notice that a fair percentage of the high-ranking sites are ones who excessively repeat words to a point where the text on pages doesn’t even make sense to a human being. That’s just one of many ‘violations’ that many employ. Yet, they’re rewarded.
What’s needed? More policing? Harsher penalties? From my perspective, the ‘rules’ seem to be in a bit of conflict with the rewards.
Google goes Chinese
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006In a strange coincidence, it has officially been announced today that Google is going to self-censor certain aspects of its index in China as it moves to officially enter the unstoppable force that is China’s economy. What makes it so eerie for me is as I was reading The Search, which discusses Google’s impact on the global economy, last night. I was on the section on how Google was internally conflicted with how to address the needs of Chinese searchers while accommodating the Chinese Government’s positions on human rights.
Google: Shooting Itself in the Foot?
Monday, January 23rd, 2006Christoper Kenton doesn’t create new blog posts all that often (not necessarily a bad thing, by the way), but I usually learn something from his posts when he does. Take a look at this recent post where he discusses a very interesting point: Google’s new analytics product, and the accountability data it provides, may end up deflating enthusiasm for its Adwords program (and the PPC model in general). I have to say that I agree with his assertion.
Fun with Funnels
Friday, January 20th, 2006Seth Godin has an interesting post today about the “funnel” that is customer acquisition. Our work and research in the world of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has left us with many of the same thoughts and questions as the ones Seth seems to be thinking through.
The notion of pay-per-click advertising is a wonderful one. Why pay for a billboard and hope for the best when I can simply pay only for those who express an interest in my product (by clicking on my Google ad)? As long as I am converting a certain number of those folks, I should be fine, right?
It’s not that simple. First, let’s remember that those who click today might not be ready to buy until next week. That said, a Web site should not only sell; it should carry the water through the entire sales cycle. Second, PPC ad copy should limit inappropriate prospects. If a user searches for ‘bass,’ our copy should distinguish between bass (the fish) and bass (the drum). Silly example but true. Also, let’s not forget about click fraud and how that should be accounted for. I wrote about this not long ago.
When it’s all said and done, this entire process should be supported by a glorious spreadsheet. PPC is a science, not an art. Building a good model is our best bet!
What can we learn from a Rhino?
Thursday, January 19th, 2006I have a little folder in my desk where I put hard copies of articles that are particularly thoughtful, significant, or otherwise. I usually put about 2 or 3 articles a year in there…quality–not quantity. I’ve got articles from Harvard Business Review (dating back to the 1960s) and BusinessWeek. I have saved articles from espn.com and GQ…and articles from Christian thinkers.
I’m going to add this one today: The Rhino Principle by Paul Johnson, British historian. It appeared in Forbes this month.
Crash of the Online Economy?
Wednesday, January 18th, 2006This month’s Wired Magazine has a pretty interesting article about click fraud and the potential for it to ’swallow the Internet.’ As most of you know, ‘click fraud’ refers to the practice of falsely clicking on pay-per-click ads in an effort to cost a company money or remove its ads on the basis of artificial or contrived non-performance. Here’s an example of how it works:
Let’s say I go into business selling neck ties on the Internet. I set up a Web site to facilitate the ecommerce and then place some pay-per-click ads with Google to attract visitors. If I happen to notice a competitor’s ad showing up in the list with mine, I could simply click on their ads multiple times to drain their onilne ad budget with Google. Ethical? No. But it is happening all too often with Google ad buyers and sellers alike.
The article lays out a number of derivative schemes being employed by scammers and vaguely describes some of the counter-measures being employed by Google and Yahoo. In the end, I feel that this will be a perpetual cat-and-mouse game between both sides. The article seems to suggest that a lack of improved enforcement could threaten the lifeblood of the Internet economy and cause a crash. Below is a diagram that appeared in the article that does a good job of describing how it works.
Google & BlackBerry
Thursday, January 12th, 2006Google appears to have cut a deal with Blackberry. This is promising to BlackBerry owners like myself, but I am already able to get to Google using its browser. It works very well. I’m sure that the two will be working on even tighter integration (such as IM, etc.), though.
Daily Maintenance
Wednesday, January 11th, 2006Matt Cutts is a senior engineer over at Google working on the core product from Google, search. I read his blog nearly every day as you just can’t get much more direct with Google than this. His blog is an attempt by Google to open up and be more communicative with webmasters. On Friday Matt posted up requesting feedback on how Google could improve their search results and become a more useful tool. He is looking for feedback on spam, quality of results, producs and features, services, and communication. His request doesn’t need to be limited to just webmasters and SEO’s. If you as a user would like a product or feature enhanced, let him know.