Category: Online Marketing

Who should read this: Though it’s title is guruji.com but it is a small analysis of Search engine working. Anyone who is interested in search engine optimization can analyze it and understand SEs working. Small keyphrases and small data sample give bigger clues. Interesting factor is DMOZ listing and Content value. If you want me to do something with the sites let me know I may do it to help you analyse.

I was contacted to review guruji.com supposedly an Indian replacement for Google.

Here is my small analysis for different search engines,

1. Google.com/search?q=aji+issac
   I searched for “aji issac” and it gave me www.idealwebtools.com/blog/  and idealwebtools.com as first 2 results. It doesn’t have 0catch site in top 10.
2. Yahoo.com
   www.ajiissac.0catch.com and www.ajiissac.0catch.com/Aji.html followed by idealwebtools.com blog and all my other articles.
3. MSN
   idealwebtools.com above idealwebtools.com/blog/ and then some forum topics followed by one blog aimk.wordpress.com where my name is only mentioned once. Many other topics where my name is only mentioned once.
4. Ask
   idealwebtools.com , no blog URL in top 10, followed by ajiissac.0catch.com
5. guruji.com
   No Trace of idealwebtools.com and have all the blogspot blogs where my name is only mentioned once (blogroll).

What did I expect?
I expected idealwebtools.com/blog/ to be at #1 followed by idealwebtools.com domain and then forums and articles from other sites. Also in between 0catch and ajiissac.blogspot can also be adjusted. I am active on idealwebtools.com blogs for over 1 year and I have not touched 0catch for almost 3 years now. I did some keyword optimization on 0catch as those were my early days of SEO.

Analysis

1. Google is very intelligent it checks the traffic, activity, content is not than important as that on links, what ever has more links is on top. Active status is also helping it. 0catch a keyword rich site is not in top 20 says it all.
2. Yahoo believes in Content as it value content over anything else. 0catch is on top which does not have even one visitor in a month and hardly any links.
3. MSN gives value to main domain over internal pages, idealwebtools.com coming before idealwebtools.com/blog is surprising. Rest is low quality forum pages for me, I do not know why is it ranking.
4. Ask have no blog URL, very surprising. It does not value links at all, it focuses on content and keywords.
5. Guruji needs to improve it is just showing all the links from blogspot, is it a blog search. Very surprising, they need to improve a lot.

One big factor
0catch has a DMOZ listing (check Mathew, Aji Issac), I use to love DMOZ before I started helping Hedir to devour it.

I think I should spent some time and do a better analysis as I know what I did with all these sites. Also I know that there is no Aji Issac who has a better online presence. You too can do some analysis and put your expert views here.

There have already been some raised eyebrows over my excessive blogging about orkut, here is some oil to the fire. India has a new version of orkut, goyaar.com (“Yaar” means friend in Hindi).

Also orkut.com is banned in many Indian offices due to excessive misuse of office bandwidth and office time. Goyaar can act as a replacement for orkut for few days before it gets a ban. Orkut helped me study few things about social networking and web 2.0 marketing. Looking forward for goyaar.com.

Todays eco times covered the following story which may be some interest to our blog readers,

The government proposes to put its stamp of authority over one chunk of hitherto unregulated cyberspace: internet telephony offered by companies like Yahoo, MSN, Skype, Mediaring, Packet8, Dialpad, Amazon, Impetus, Euro, Net2Phone Bandtel and Euro.

Internet telephony, so far a saviour for millions of Indians with kin abroad, is set to become costlier, once the government finalises a proposal to bring internet companies like those mentioned above under the ambit of the country’s Internet Service Provider license.

For consumers, this simply means a rise in tariffs as a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or a net telephony call on Skype or Yahoo will soon attract a service tax of 12.24%, in addition to a revenue share of 6%.

More details at economictimes.indiatimes.com

It covers about a typical orkut problem, a community which says, “I Hate India”. We had already run a campagin against this group, Google should be deleting this community from orkut. Echo times says,

This comes on the heels of similar attempts to regulate the services offered by global online giants in India. Google should know, or it will, once the Maharashtra government follows the Bombay High Court’s order to issue the company a notice on allegedly spreading hatred against India through a community called ‘I hate India’ on its social networking site Orkut.

I wrote a keyphrase analysis document at webmasterworld which is now available in the library, http://www.webmasterworld.com/libraryv4.cgi?viewforum=8 (the first one, a guide to keyphrase analysis) , at webproworld there were discussion about this document.

You can directly access it from http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum8/1560.htm.

This is just another excuse for not writing an useful post today. I am coming late and then GYM session is draining my energy off. Tomorrow I will be coming a little early to compensate for it. I am working on P3P (Privacy Preferences Project) as myblogplanner is getting blocked when used with IE. There is a problem with third party cookies and IE’s medium level privacy (default these days) setting.

I know how to fix it, I will be doing it in a day or two but before that I wanted to read more about P3P and its implications. Also I studied about Microsoft Phishing Filter Add-in for MSN Search Toolbar (which will be a head ache with IE 7). I have done my studies now need some practical checking. Hopefully on Saturday I will spend some time with it.

Good night people.

Marketing Pilgrim has launched a contest to give away a search engine marketing scholarship prize worth more than $5,000. We want to help one lucky winner to either start their career in search engine marketing or improve their existing skills further.

more at http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/search-engine-marketing-scholarship.htm

Interested people can take part. I may write about evangelistic marketing. Only catch (if it is),

Your article can be about any topic related to search engine optimization, paid search or social media, but remember the winner will be chosen based upon popularity, so the more original and engaging your article, the more likely you will attract readers and win.

What do they mean by popularity? Is it another SEO competition? or a way to build more links? I see that they have already got many links due to this competition. This is another way of building links. If I get time I might write.

Will you be writing one? What topics are you planning to write?

Who should read it: All SEM interested people along with ones who track online business. All people assosiated with Hedir.

Is Google to trying to imitate Hedir’s idea? This is a question asked by one of Hedir’s reputed member Google Junky. Hedir is the oldest and the most established human edited directory (much more than a plain directory, this is web 2.0 community based review system) which scans the websites for its,

1. Services
2. Products
3. Vision
4. Policies
5. Overall customer reputation

Not on the basis of

1. Web Contents
2. OBL and IBL (outgoing backlinks and incoming backlinks)
3. Page Rank
4. Keyword optimization

The best thread which explains about Hedir is at webproworld.com, a six page discussion.

Hedir is a complete Human based ranking system which has its own limitations and disadvantages. New patent application (System and method for supporting editorial opinion in the ranking of search results) Google is going Hedir’s way. Let’s see what does this patent say,

1. Look for the words “an editorial opinion parameter). It shows a shift from focusing on algorithm-based changes to the integration of a human editorial process. The patent page says
   

   Other search services have attempted to improve Internet searching by compiling static lists of web pages on specific topics. Directory listings, such as Yahoo! (www yahoo.com) and Open Directory (www.dmoz.org), are examples. These services map a search query against the editorial comments accompanying each web page that was reviewed by an editor of the service, and optionally the full text of the documents, to generate a list of results. The scope of these services is limited, however, to the set of pages that has been reviewed by the search services’ editors.

   AskJeeves (www.ask.com) generalizes the application of editorial opinion to a collection of pages. Their editors identify a set of pages that share a common theme (e.g., home pages of airports) and associate this set of pages with specific trigger words (e.g., the word “airport”). When one of the trigger words appears in the query, they present the user with a concise representation of the associated set of pages, allowing the user to choose one. Again, the scope of this technique is restricted to the set of pages that were reviewed by the editors, which tends to be many orders of magnitude smaller than the set of useful pages on the World Wide Web.

   Therefore, there exists a need for a system and method that improve Internet searching.

   SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
   A system and method, consistent with the present invention, address this and other needs by providing a mechanism that enhances the ranking of search results by integrating editorial opinion.
   
   In accordance with the purpose of the invention as embodied and broadly described herein, a method that provides search results is disclosed. The method includes receiving a search query, retrieving one or more objects in response to the search query, determining whether the search query corresponds to at least one query theme of a group of query themes, ranking the one or more objects based on a result of the determination, and providing the ranked one or more objects.

   In another implementation consistent with the present invention, a method for determining an editorial opinion parameter for use in ranking search results is disclosed. The method includes developing one or more query themes, identifying, for each query theme, a first set of objects as being favored, identifying, for each query theme, a second set of objects as being non-favored, and determining an editorial opinion parameter for each of the objects in the first and second sets.

   (Nothing new to the people who are in Google as they know it is already implemented, ask if Matt can deny it).

2. Categorization: The patent says
   

   In a second way, the editors may establish categories/topics from a directory that may be compared to the search query to determine if the query satisfies a particular query theme. For example, a set of topics could be the topics in an online hierarchical directory (e.g., a Web Directory), such as Open Directory, Yahoo!, or Google (www.google.com). For determining sites that help in finding accommodations, a query theme could be expressed as a set of topics in Yahoo! as shown below:
   Recreation: Travel: Lodging;

   According to me a better categorization can be done using a mix of tags, Hedir suggests the solution at http://www.hedir.com/remove-addoption.html . Here Hedir has suggested a mix of taxonomy and folksonomy. Another area for Google to imitate.

This is good that Google is going this way. At SEO conferences we all expected that such a move when,

• Yahoo acquired del.icio.us
• Google and Yahoo stated manual scanning. There were few more threads but I lost the reference. Also read Matt cutts comments on when asked the same question.
• When Wink hit the market.
• When Hedir started getting publicity.
• “TrustRank” has been being “quietly” implemented through several algo changes starting back maybe as early as the “Florida” update on December 3, 2003. Subsequent updates including “Jagger” involved new “TrustRank” implementation layering including ranking of IBLs and OBLs (inbound and outbound links).

If I get back to my original question Is google to trying to imitate Hedir’s idea? May be yes as Hedir is growing popular and many people are watching its growth rate. Google Analytics have also copied few features from other existing analytical products and some of them were copied from Visitlab for sure. http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js See how it is using image file for tracking (if it needs more explanation, you can contact me 🙂 ).

Google Vs Hedir

starts

Who should read this: Anyone serious about Blogging and want to try a desktop tool for it.

These were the tools I tried with few of my friends sometime back. These desktop tools makes your life easier for sure. Check them out.

1. Ecto – A copy of ecto costs $17.95. (not used yet)
2. MarsEdit – Only for Mac and $24.95 single license
3. wbloggar.com – Free (Used), it is simple and usable.
4. qumana – Free (Used). I have used it and it is a cool with an integrated ad system.
5. blogjet – $39.95 single license (not used yet)
6. Elicit $59.00 with life time updates. A 30 day free trail is available.

Firefox extension
Firefox users can try http://performancing.com/firefox. This started as a small project but these days they are offering everything that is needed for blogging. I used to use it.

My Current Desktop Blogging Pet
I like to explore new things, so these days I am try out with Windows Live Writer (beta)

I will write about my experiences with Live writer, I am liking it as it drafts it with ease. Also because it checks the spelling in a simpler way. MS is trying to support free systems, a list can be found at http://ideas.live.com/. Also there are many plugins available for Windows Live Writer.

One of the problem that I face is with the slug. I am not able to post the slug with this tool, either I need to explore more or MS needs to develop it.

Who should read it: Anyone who wants an easy solution for social bookmarking on their blog/site taking the minimum space. And all the Hedir fans :).

USP of this tool: Simplicity. Visible web space is expensive and Hedir saves it for you.

I am a big fan of Hedir from the time it started challenging DMOZ. It is as young as a one year old baby and growing as faster as a lover boy wanting to marry his little lover girl. Hedir is desperately going after his lover girl aka success covering milestones with every hop.

(my favorite avatar by Google Junky)
It is growing faster with so many add-on features. Why I support it over DMOZ? The answer is simple,

• growth rate when compared to DMOZ (for that matter any other directory)
• the concept, this is working exactly on web 2.0 concepts.
• the community, the people are so great. Initially I was inspired by Winterfrost and now the list goes on and on with ADAM, Baggeroli, Google Junky, Francesco, Brett, writergrrrl, Anthony, Bret, Josh, Norah, Lakhya, … (The list is too big to be added under one post). Great community.

Also read Norah’s post on how hedir is different from other directories at http://norah.hedir.com/2006/01/17/how-hedir-is-dif…

Last week under their Friday-release class we saw another great tool, web 2.0 bookmarking. http://www.idealwebtools.com/blog/googlebot-cache/, with the blog post you will be able to see , this allows you to bookmark the page to your browser (typical unavoidable web 1.0 and web x.0) and to all the social bookmarking (social sharing) sites.

The best part is the management, it is easy to use.

1. Go to http://www.hedir.com/web2.0/ ,
2. choose the sites of your preference and generate the code.
3. Paste the code to your website/blog.

It starts working for you, it checks multiple browsers and adjusts its bookmarking accordingly. Great tool. Keep watching for next Fridays :).

I have also decided to donate my wordpress work to Hedir community. I am talking to few people at Hedir. I will donate the code and let the community generate money for further development. I will be honored if they accepts it. Love you all at Hedir.

I am sure that one-day myblogplanner will become a must for all the blogs. So keeping the faith I decided to buy the domain myblogplanner.com. I bought it from godaddy for $9.2 per annum.
Currently in myblogplanner.com I am using three blog planner boxes to arrange the content. I need to spend some time tomorrow. Also this is a good opportunity to earn $1 per referral. I am looking forward to earn some good money through referral system this month. Valerie was working it out with AmPmInsure community Innovation center. Hopefully you can get the first phase product tomorrow with working referral system.