Google has everyone's attention and is the search engine everyone needs. Greg Boser, president of Web marketing consultancy WebGuerilla suggests:

And Google, said Boser, is "the only game in town" when it comes to search results that matter. Google's power is, in part, a result of its agreements with Yahoo, America Online, EarthLink and others to provide those Web portals with search capabilities.

-- [CNet News.com]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

Copley News Service: Spending power

Old people spend more money. And people are getting older. These are things I think we all 'know', but did you know:

Two-thirds of online buyers are older than 40, a National Retail Federation survey indicates.

With 7 million people 50 and older now online (about a quarter of the total U.S. population that's 50 and over) older users are challenging their younger counterparts on the Net, according to Jupiter Research, a New York-based firm that focuses on Internet commerce.

When older Americans go online, they buy. Almost 80 percent of computer owners older than 50 have made a purchase on the Internet, says AgeLight, a consulting firm in Clyde Hill, Wash.

While most older Internet users say they go online to e-mail family members, the senior group is logging on for longer periods of time, according to a recent SeniorNet survey. It showed 70 percent of computer users 50 and older are online for 20 hours a week or more.

The article also covers some great information on what seniors are buying in general and what markets are already catering to them well. As their population grows in the online space, it'll be interesting to see if and how they're targeted...

[MarketingFix]

The Best Practices Database of i-marketing case studies, research and wisdom galore, made live today at Advantage.MSN.com (most of which was written by yours truly).

[MarketingFix]

InternetWeek.com: InternetWeek Readers Desperately Seeking Fix To Spam Problem

It's interesting to look at the survey results of a recent InternetWeek survey about how spam is affecting people's lives, but more interesting, I think, are some of the comments about how it affects businesses. Take this comment for example:

I'm just not able to filter out 100 percent of spam, much of it bordering on the obscene, from our employees' incoming e-mail. Since the e-mail facility is considered a "company asset" (that's how we justify monitoring and fiddling with it in the first place), I'm afraid of what will happen when employees begin to demand better protection from such spam. Some have already expressed concern that the work environment is becoming hostile and sexually intimidating. I'm actually surprised that we haven't had a more formal complaint yet. In such a case, I'd see no solution other than restricting the complainants' e-mail to our internal user group. If more than a few employees went this route, it would have disastrous effects on our ability to efficiently interact with our customers, service providers, vendors, etc.

-- Jack O'Callaghan, systems officer, Martha's Vineyard Co-operative Bank, Vineyard Haven, Mass.

There are a ton more where that one came from, go read a few for yourself if you're a marketer. This is what you're up against.

[MarketingFix]

Here is an indication that Google Inc., feels that their average customers do not know about the services and tools that Google has to offer. Take the Google Tour.

Google now shows a new link on its home page:

New! Take your search further. Take a Google Tour.

They have so many extra features now, and are trying not to make the home page portal-ish, that I suspect they have discovered many people don't know what's available. Looks like a good idea to me.

-- [Webmaster World]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

"Standard.gif"

In Tyromaniac, Alfredo Octavio details the plans he and his brother have put together for Blog Day on January 23rd, the 45 anniversary of the overthrow of their country's last dictatorship. The idea came from PoliticaObscura.

Here's a list of Venezuela's Liberty Blogs.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

Loosely Coupled's glossary is now operational. For the next few days, think of this as a technology demonstration ... [Loosely Coupled weblog]

Google and Fast (AllTheWeb):

I've noticed that once a website is 'Googled' optimized, the site also score high in AlltheWeb, so no double work or contradicting parameter changes. -- [Webmasterworld] [Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

If a new website project was placed before you, and it was your decision whether or not to launch the site before it had been properly optimized for the search engines, what would your decision be? Would you launch the site, or would you wait? [Search Engine Guide]

Here are a few thoughts about where SEO is heading in the new year. Some may be wishful thinking, and some may take more than one year to happen, but these are the trends I'm currently seeing. [Search Engine Guide]

Differentiation Can Be Brutal in the Web Search Business [Search Engine Guide] "Search engine positioning" is no easy feat - even if you *are* a search engine, it seems. So how are the engines positioning *themselves*? As usual, Andrew Goodman hits the mark with his research and commentary. J:L

Targeted Search Engine Traffic Is More Important Than Ever -By John Alexander - January 19, 2003

[Search Engine Guide]

 

Weblogs have proven it, and it has been demonstrated on many good websites that content is King. We are reminded again how this works:

One of the most important aspects of ranking for Google and other search engines is good content. Google wants their search engine users to find what they are looking for, a successful search experience for their users. The keywords included in your site are important; after all, those are the terms your potential visitors are searching for. Now not only do you have your catalog pages and ordering information, but you also have a more in-depth treatment of the topics you have addressed in your articles, book reviews, and other materials. More keywords in more places means you have a better chance of matching a potential visitor's search.

So how can you "rise above" the other online gardening bookstores out there in the search engine listings? Link popularity can be the next important piece that allows you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. All other things being equal, search engines that pay attention to link popularity will list your site higher in their results if you have more links coming back from other sites which have a focus related to yours. In other words, if your gardening bookstore has a number of backlinks pointing to it from the websites of gardening clubs, nurseries, and so forth, your site will be seen as more authoritative. The more authoritative a website looks to Google through link popularity, the higher that site will rank. After all, if all these other gardening- related sites point to your site, they are demonstrating that you have something important to say. That is another reason why it is important to have your material published on other websites.

Conclusion

Maintaining good content is a stepping-stone for your visitors to delve in deeper to your website. Taking the time to build your content and provide for your audience will pay off in good search engine ranking and returning visitors.

-- [Search Engine Guide]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

Google managers not happy with Search Engine Optimizers. This is the feeling I have sensed all along, that SEOs are not really needed. They form a barrier between Google and the websites. I am not surprised by this reactions listed here in this article:

Search engine optimisers have always had a tenuous relationship with search engines. This year a Wired article featuring Sergey Brin, Google's "conscience and head policymaker", claimed "the way Brin sees it, the optimizers are co-opting Google's bond of trust with its users. He regards optimizers the way a mother grizzly might regard a hunter jabbing at her cub with a stick". However, Brin is probably not unhappy with those SEO's/SEM's who have reportedly poured large sums of cash into the Google coffers via AdWords and other paid placement programs.

-- [Search Engine Blog]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

Search Engine Optimizer Attitude of Google Management. The way I see it is that SEOs are not really working on the right stuff, and in fact they do themselves out of a job if they do their stuff properly. It is not about building links, doorway pages and all that stuff, it is about building good solid knowledge filled sites that attract attention of people. If you have the right stuff, choose a gap in the keyword market, you get good results.

The anti-Google might also be more amenable to the growing business of "optimization," the altering of Web sites so that they rank higher in search engine results. For a fee, there's help for a Dallas plumber who's unhappy that his site is on the 17th page of results when someone types "Dallas plumber" into Google. An optimizer will tweak the site in such a way that boosts it to, say, the 3rd page of results.

To pull this off with Google, an optimizer needs to understand how the company's search mechanism works. Google uses 100 or so closely guarded algorithms to determine its search results. The best known of the lot is called PageRank, which allocates relevancy to a page according to the number and importance of pages linked to it, the number and importance of pages linked to each of those pages, and so on. One ploy is to create "link farms," in which an optimizer gets clients to link to one another, racking up relevancy points. In general, optimizers make a living by guessing what Google regards as important. The way Brin sees it, the optimizers are co-opting Google's bond of trust with its users. He regards optimizers the way a mother grizzly might regard a hunter jabbing at her cub with a stick.

Every month, when Google updates its index and its mix of algorithms, it rakes a disruptive claw across the optimizers' systems. In the industry, the monthly shuffle is known as the Google Dance, and Brin doesn't mind letting on that if Google ends up dancing all over the optimizers, so much the better. "When we change and improve our technology, things get shuffled around," Brin says, "and sometimes it has a disproportionate effect on optimization sites."

Consider the case of Bob Massa, a former solid oak dining room furniture salesman who lives in Oklahoma City and runs SearchKing, an optimization company he started in 1997. Last summer, Massa received a rare gift from Google in the form of the Google Toolbar, a software program that lets users perform searches without going to Google.com. More important for Massa, the Toolbar shows the approximate PageRank, on a scale of one to ten, of whatever page a user is visiting. It was the first time since Brin and Page were in grad school that they'd shared so much technical information. After years of watching Google's every move like an Etruscan high priest trying to augur divine intent from cloud formations, Massa had a piece of the goods. On August 9, Massa started selling optimization based on PageRank.

After the Google Dance of September 20, most of Massa's customers suddenly found themselves in a heap at the very bottom of Google's 3 billion site index. It seems that the improvements Google had made included a severe downgrade of sites with links to SearchKing. Massa's customers, needless to say, were very, very unhappy. "Everyone thinks I'm the biggest idiot in the world for making Google mad," Massa said in October.

He filed suit a few weeks later, charging that Google downgraded his customers' scores in a deliberate attempt to put him out of business. The suit asks for an injunction forcing Google to restore the scores to pre-Dance levels, and seeks $75,000 in damages. "It's a classic good versus evil thing," says Massa, turning Brin's framework back on Google itself. "I knew they wouldn't like it. I didn't think they'd go so far as to wipe out all these little people."

The day Massa's suit was filed, the reaction from the Slashdot crowd and most other forums was predictably vociferous, with posters stumbling over themselves to craft metaphors painting Massa as a criminal suing his victim. But gradually, a surprising number of people, while careful not to look as though they were defending Massa, began tagging the search engine as a Google-opoly. It's hard to sympathize with a David as parasitic as Massa, but Slashdotters tend to be uneasy with Goliaths of any stripe, especially when their methods are kept secret.

And the real problem with Massa is that he's simply the termite Brin is able to see. There are thousands more behind the wall, invisibly boring away at the very structure of Google's house. "It's easy to become overly obsessed with those kinds of things," Brin admits.

It would make things a lot easier for Brin if the world's webmasters would just act as though his site didn't matter, but that's not human nature. There's no way around it - as long as Google remains the search engine of choice, the arms race between Google coders and the hordes of optimizers will go on.

-- [Wired]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]

Time: The Joy of Text

There appears to be a lot of resistance to wireless marketing in the US, however here in the UK it is being embraced by marketers, and even to a point by users. My strong advice is not ignore the potential of this medium, or right it off, until you've seen it in action. Done well, it can deliver very impressive results.

Companies are increasingly desperate to get their messages across in a media- saturated marketplace. SMS marketing, combined with conventional ads, gives advertisers an edge because mobile phones are nearly always with their users, allowing them to immediately respond to what they see on TV, billboards or in-store campaigns. Global brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, L'Oréal and Stella Artois have all discovered that SMS is an efficient and cost-effective way to reach the high- spending 14- to 35-year-old demographic. And SMS marketing will become even more compelling as mobile phones with color screens allow for the transmission of images as well as text. "2003 will be the year that any global brand trying to reach the 14-to-35 market won't be able to do without SMS," predicts Cyriac Roeding, chief marketing officer and a co-founder of Germany's 12snap.

[MarketingFix]

 

The New York Times recently published a (surprisingly) thoughtful piece on how Google is making us all familiar to one another.

There are side-effects from all this information, and our growing ability to access it. Increasingly we can no longer be strangers to one another.

I gave someone a taste of this recently when I got a cold call from "theoptingroup" of Florida. A fast-talking salesman identifying himself as Tony wanted to talk me into something (I wasn't sure what) and I finally told him to just send me an e-mail. The e-mail showed me what he was selling - e-mail marketing services. So I did a quick Google Groups search on Tony's operation. I then sent a response noting that I don't do business with spammers, and added his URLs to my "spam" filters. I haven't heard back.

E-mail marketing is a tough business, but it needs to get a lot tougher. My own e-mail marketer, Whitehat Interactive, comes in for some fire, but for me the key data point is that the SpamNews Digest also uses Whitehat. My own experience with Whitehat has also been nothing but positive.

The important point the Times downplayed, and which I just illustrated, is that in the Googling of America few things are black-and-white (other than accounting). I just did a Google search on the phrase ""Dana Blankenhorn" wrong" (the quote marks keep me from getting David Blankenhorn's backwash). After some effort I found this . (I was also surprised at how much of my old Newsbytes stuff is still rattling around, but that's another story.)

The point is everyone has critics. The answer isn't to become anonymous (as the Times advocates) or hope your name is common (I'm glad mine's unique - I have yet to find another Dana Blankenhorn). New times (and new millennia) demand new skills. Skills like balancing, and reasoning, and being skeptical about what you read. Skills like the ability to do sound research (so you don't create a dossier on the wrong person) and forgiveness (for wrongs of the past, and alleged wrongs).

Americans love to reinvent themselves. They move, change their names, and build new lives. We celebrate the victims of spousal abuse who manage to do this, and when we approach this issue we always think of ourselves in that way. But we always need to hear both sides of the story. Con men (and women) reinvent themselves. Bad guys hide.

-- [A-Clue.com]

[Elwyn Jenkins: googlology]