Hybrid Cars
Amazon Humor Contest
Can Quality Sites Be Google Bowled & Hurt in Google's Search Results?
Can You Remove a Site From a Country Specific Google Search Engine?
Dear Mainstream Media, Ziggs.com Does Not Tell You Who Searches Your Name on Google
Google Does Not Give Preference to .COM's over .INFO's or Other TLDs
Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Goes Missing for Advertisers
SEO Headlines
According to Yahoo weather, it was 105 degrees earlier in Simi Valley, CA. The palm trees and ocean views don't look so inviting right now, do they? Yeah, I didn't think so. Can I come live wherever you are?
Yahoo Opens Up YMail. Or At Least To Some
For reasons I don't quite understand, Yahoo began offering email addresses under two new domains: rocketmail.com and ymail.com. I guess that's nice. Though I tried to register a ymail email address and Yahoo said I had to wait. I guess they're rolling out the feature slowly and I'm not yet on the invite list. Don't these people know who I am? How am I supposed to secure thelisa [at] ymail [dot] com if they let everyone sign up before me?
But enough about me.
Yahoo says the goal behind the new email accounts is to "attract Web surfers unhappy with their current addresses". They argue that there are plenty of people out there who fe el "stuck" with an "ugly" email address. Yahoo's here to help! Or at least they're pretending that's why they're here. They're really just shouting "ymail is kind of like gmail, right? It sounds the same. Use us! OUR EXECS ARE LEAVING!" Besides sounding a bit desperate, I just don't think it's a good idea. Why fragment your brand like that? And are there really that many people feeling slighted over their email address that they need to create a brand new domain and give life to an old one? Do they realize what a pain it is to switch email addresses in the first place? Who wants to invite that amount of misery on themselves? [Tell me about it. Four years and I still can't get my relatives to stop emailing my hotmail account. --Susan] Just because we're not talking about me anymore doesn't mean we're going to magically start talking about you. No one even likes you. Don't pretend you get email.
Icahn Issues The Ichan Report
Everyone's favorite thorn in Yahoo's side Carl Icahn has launched his own blog to (hopefully) continue to further torment Yahoo with! If only because it's kind of fun to watch Yahoo squirm.
According to the New York Times, Icahn's blog looks to "address the lack of accountability on the part of corporate boards and the myth of shareholder". Sadly, however, it doesn't look like we're going to hear any behind the scenes Yahoo/Microsoft dirt. We're not even going to hear him take Jerry Yang to task. Bummer.
C'mon, Carl. You can't tease us! If you're going to start a blog, give us something entertaining to read. None of this veiled and abstract stuff you're doing. We know you want to bring Yahoo down and get it sold to Microsoft. Use your new microphone.
[grabs popcorn, waits.]
Fun Finds
Jeremy Zawodny announced that he'll be heading to Craigslist in July. Does that no t seem like the most random job shuffle ever?
Barry Schwartz confirms that page load time now is a real factor in Google's AdWords quality score.
Michael Arrington calls out the A.P. for quoting 22 words of his content. He says they now owe him $12.50. Hee. Sometimes don't you just love Arrington?
Defending Your Brand From Shadow Brands & Email Spam
Fight For Your Right To Desphinn
I've come across a few threads on the subject of desphinning and now I'm just plain curious: Do you desphinn your colleagues when you visit Sphinn? If so, what criteria you use? Do you simply have to disagree, find the content offensive, or maybe you only desphinn when something is blatantly spam? Would you desphinn more often if it was anonymous and you didn't have to provide a reason?
Yeah, you would, don't lie!
As most are aware, the desphinn feature was added to the site back in February. At the time, Michelle explained how it should be used as follows:
"You see a topic on the What's New page and you either disagree with it or otherwise think that it doesn't deserve to go Hot - make it to the home page. You click the "Desphinn" button, submit your comment (which is required and will be public) exp laining why you disagree with the post. Then a negative sphinn is applied against the story. For stories on the home page, that have already gone hot, the procedure is the same. "
Cool, but here's the thing, hardly anyone actually uses it. Why?
I'm not the most active Sphinn user, but I do visit the site every day. I subscribe to RSS feeds for both the Hot Topics and the New Topics. I may not vote on every story that comes my way, but I do click through to the site and spend a decent amount of time reading the articles, leaving comments when inclined, and seeing what the conversation is about. In that time I've desphinn'd a total of three articles - two were pure fluff that I didn't think deserved to hit the front page and one was an article that I found offensive and of little value. That's it. Three articles.
And those really are my two tests. I will only desphinn content for the following reasons:
- The content has no real value to the community and doesn't deserve to be listed.
- It's offensive to either me or to my community.
I won't desphinn if it's spam (there's a Spam button for that), if I disagree with it, if it's written by a competitor, etc. I have two reasons and that's it.
Even saying that, I know there are times when I've wanted to desphinn something but haven't and there are reasons for that. Kevin Muldoon was on the same page wondering why don't Sphinn users desphinn. I think the reason for that is pretty clear: no one wants to make enemies or be seen as a jerk. No one wants to offend anyone else. There have definitely been times when I wanted to desphinn something but then didn't when I saw who posted it. Let's not lie; some of us take these things more to heart than others. I don't want to kill anyone's morning.
At the same time, I also don't think walking around on eggshells, leaving comments you don't mean, or turning a blind eye to bad information is good for this industry. If something doesn't deserve to be promoted to the front page, for God's sake, desphinn it. That's why the feature is there. You're not insulting anyone, you're protecting the quality of a social community that hundreds (thousands?) turn to every day for Internet marketing information.
Another thread on Sphinn asks if desphinning something is rude. It's only rude if you want it to be. There's no reason why you can't desphinn something without coming off like a jerk. Simply hit the desphinn link and then state your case like an adult. People should be able to handle that. If not, it's because we hand out too many trophies these days and issue too many unwarranted pats on the back. Realize that sometimes people just have differing opinions. It doesn't mean everyone hates you. Realize that you don't have to Sphinn a post about who Matt Cutts follows on Twitter simply because Matt is mentioned in the title and he's SEO royalty. Matt, I love you, and I'm glad to have you as a follower, but who cares? :)
Part of me really wishes the option to desphinn was anonymous, similar to how you can vote up and down people's comments. I completely understand that Danny is trying to promote transparent and ethical behavior, but what he's really done (with the best intentions) is to create an environment where people are afraid to speak up. People often say that anonymity is what fuels bad behavior on the Web, but it's just as dangerous when people are afraid to act because they don't want to be seen as the bad guy. Rendering people into silence is, in my opinion, even worse than giving an idiot a microphone.
If there's something on Sphinn that shouldn't be there, desphinn it. If you disagree with something to the point where leaving a comment doesn't seem like enough, desphinn it. Some of o ur more sensitive industry faces may get a case of hurt feelings (I proudly admit to sometimes playing on Team Oversensitive SEO Babies), but as long as you're acting professionally, they'll get over it.
Go find something that doesn't belong on Sphinn and desphinn it. It may just make your entire day.
How Much Testing Is Too Much?
I was reading Search Engine Land yesterday (as I'm known to do) and came across Jon Miller's article how about much landing page testing is too much. Jon offers up a highly fancy-looking equation that you can use to determine when you're done testing your landing page. It made me giggle. A landing page test calculator? Really? There are three very easy ways to know if you've done enough testing and none of them include a calculator:
- You've reached the burn rate where the test findings will breed only minimal results.
- When there are other, more critical elements or pages to test.
- When the person in charge of your testing process threatens to quit if you make them run one more darn A/B experiment.
See how easy that was? And no formula involved!
Truthfully, whether you're doing A/B Testing where you test one element or a time or you're using a Multivariate testing tool like Google Website Optimizer, you can test forever. It doesn't matter if you're talking landing pages, new site elements or better copy on interior pages, the iterations can go on forever. There will always be a better way to word something, a better place to put that image, or a new angle that your customers may die for. But at some point, the benefit of conducting the test looks like this:
(I have mad MS Paint skills, eh?)
Most search marketers will know intuitively when they've reached the burn rate for a particular test. It's when you implement the change and find it didn't improve the user experience on your Web site or result in a lower cost of conversion. When you get there, move on and start testing another page or site element. There's no use having one perfect page if the rest of your site is falling by the wayside.
When you're doing your testing, conduct it in one week increments so you take into account any day of week or time of day effects. Your test may run several weeks long or a even solid month depending on what you're testing. You shouldn't end your test until you have complete confidence in the answer it's giving you. Sometimes that means running something more than once.
Make you sure you have enough data when you're conducting your tests and don't ignore your baseline measurements. Your customers may have preferred the "old" way to the new one. Don't be afraid to admit that to yourself.
Once you're confident with your results and reach that elusive burn rate, move on to another page element and start the process again. Search engine optimization isn't about perfection; it's about balancing your "good enoughs".
But don't forget to come back in the future. Once you think you have a page optimized, it doesn't mean you'll have it optimized forever. Your users and what they're looking for change so frequently that it's important to go back and restart old tests. You can step away, but you have to come back and retest and re-measure things like clicks, engagement indicators, user behavior, etc.
