The Optimizer SEO News

Izea Privacy Leak Plugged

2008-01-28T15:09:00.000-08:00

In yesterday's article, I pointed out a privacy leak in Izea.com's support system that allowed anyone that clicked on their Contact Support link to view all other guest user's support tickets revealing usernames, passwords and real names associated with their Izea accounts. Five hours later, Peter Wright, Vice President of Izea.com left a comment explaining the issue and stated that they intend to fix the leak right away.

Peter Wright kept his word. As of today, the My Support link has been removed preventing anonymous users from clicking their way into your private data. You can now feel safe submitting a guest support ticket without your privacy being compromised.

Yesterday

Today

Massive Privacy Leak at Izea.com?

2008-01-27T08:42:00.002-08:00

Some say a picture tells a thousand words. The one below has two that stand out for me: Email & Password.

( Click thumbnail for full screenshot )

This blatant disregard for user privacy makes me lose trust in having my blog associated with Izea.com. Although, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if they fix this issue quickly. We'll see how things pan out.

John Chow is Popular How?

2008-01-26T23:19:00.000-08:00

I was viewing Sir Chow's blog which I don't do that often due to my loyalty and interest in many other blogs. As many of you know by now, John Chow has a blog entitled "I make money online telling others how much money I make online" As clever as that is, I wonder how much of it is self proclaimed and hype and how much of it is actual.

I'm sure he's made money especially with the plaster of ads he has on his site, but how much of that is due to him? He seems to have a following of wannabe millionaires who think they will make it out there if they only follow what he says. But what's he really saying? I came across one of his latest posts, and the comment from the Ohio Realtor is gripping. *Insert smile here*

Top Wordpress SEO Tips for Top 10 Rankings.

2008-01-15T16:53:00.000-08:00

This article shows you how to optimize your Wordpress blog for search engines so you can capture those coveted top 10 search results.

SEO Tip for Wordpress Titles

Your PAGE title should include your keywords in order to be optimized for search engines. Your POST title should be catchy and written for your visitors. How do you accomplish this in Wordpress?

Get the SEO Title Tag Wordpress plugin. It allows you to have separate titles for your posts and your pages.

Advanced Tip: You'll also want to check your post template (single.php) and make sure your post titles are using H2 tags and are linking to your Permalink URL.

This will give your post titles more prominence in the search engines. An example code:

<h2 class='post-title'><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

SEO Tip for your Wordpress blog name.

Make sure your blog name is wrapped in the <H1> html tag.

Check your header.php (Presentation > Theme Editor) and make sure your code looks something like this: <h1 class="blogtitle"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></h1>.

Don't forget to use keywords in your blog name! If you want to rank for SEO News (like i do :D), then put SEO News somewhere in your blog name title.

Wordpress SEO with Permalinks.

The default structure for your permalinks is: http://www.yourblog.com/?p=123

For SEO purposes, it should be like this: http://www.yourblog.com/your-post-title/

The main reason for this is? You want your keywords in your URL to be bold when someone is deciding which link to click in Google search results.

To change this in Wordpress admin, go to Options > Permalinks, then select Custom and enter
/%postname%/ in the text field.

WARNING: This is for new blogs only. Do not do this step if your blog is already established. It will break all the links coming back to your blog. There are ways around this by editing your .htaccess file to redirect your links correctly using a 301 redirect but it is not for the technically challenged.

Backlinks are votes for your blog.

Getting backlinks to your posts is the most important factor for getting higher rankings in search engines. Think of links as votes for your blog. The more votes you have, the more search engines believe that your page is relevant to the search query. There are many ways to get backlinks, the most important is creating content that people will want to link to. Once you've done that, encourage them to link to it.

You want your backlinks to contain the text that you want to rank for. For example: If I want to rank for SEO News. I try to encourage people to link back to me with this code: <a href="http://www.increased-online-traffic.com/seo-news.asp">SEO News</a>.

Here's a Wordpress plugin I found today that encourages your visitors to link to your posts using your post titles as the link text: Link to Me Textbox Wordpress Plugin.

Follow these steps and I guarantee you will get increased traffic to your Wordpress blog from search engines. If you have any questions about any of these tips, leave a comment and I will try to answer them as quickly as possible.

10 Entrecard Traffic Tips for Success

2008-01-05T13:25:00.000-08:00

About Entrecard

Entrecard is an advertising exchange network for bloggers which holds the promise of boosting blog traffic through the use of a simple widget which a publisher can add to his or her blog.

By adding the 125x125 Entrecard widget to your blog, you can publicize your blog on theirs, and they on yours, for free for 24 hours at a time. The time limit ensures that your blog will receive wide rotation through your network of connected Entrecard users.

This advertising is paid for through Entrecard credits, which are earned when you "drop your card" through a simple left-click on their widget, or when they drop their card on yours.

10 Entrecard Traffic Tips for Success

1. Drop cards, lots of them. The number one way to increase your Entrecard exposure is to "drop" your card often. The strategy? Drops cards on active users. Start with your inbox, if they are dropping cards on you, you know they are active. Drop cards on the popular Entrecard users, go to Campaign and drop on the top users per category or find other active users through the Most Popular tab. I also like to drop on the Most Recent users, this helps the new users and shows them that you are active as well. Don't forget the forums as they are loaded with active users as well.

2. Advertise often. If you follow step one above, you will have lots of Entrecard credits to advertise with. I try to make a point of advertising with at least 5 blogs a day. I pick the most popular users I can find and advertise with them. If they are very popular it means they are getting a lot of drops per day which means that more people are going to see your ad, thus increasing your own exposure and click-throughs.

3. Get an attractive ad. You want an ad that is compelling and stands out from the crowd. If you don't have design experience there are plenty of Entrecard users in the forums or in the Entrecard shop that will design a card that fits your brand.

Technet's Entrecard ad evolution: The first two ads, I designed myself. The one on the right is my present ad. Thank you Affiliate Lounge for the attractive design.

4. Entrecard Widget Positioning. If you want people to advertise on your blog or drop cards on your widget, they need to be able to find it! Place your widget in a prominent position on top of your blog.

5. Post in the forums. The first step is to introduce yourself and let people know that you plan on being an active member of the community. Post a few times a day and get involved in the Community section. Don't blatantly advertise yourself. Just be involved.

6. Use the Entrecard mail system. If someone advertises with you or let's you advertise on their blog, thank them for it! This is the best way to get to know other Entrecard users and let them know that you are an active member of community.

7. Watch Statistics. Find which ads are doing the best for you and continue to advertise with users that give you back the most number of clicks.

8. Blog about Entrecard and Entrecard users. When you blog about Entrecard, you are not only stopping other Entrecard users in their tracks to read your blog, but you are also helping the whole Entrecard community to grow which will help your blog grow in return.

9. Participate in Entrecard contests. This is a great way to get extra Entrecard credits in order to advertise more or to hold your own contests. There are tons of contests floating around EC. You can find them in the forums under Promotion and Events or by browsing other blogs and searching their posts for contests as well.

10. Recommend other users. On the top-right of every Entrecard user's detail page is a link that says "Write a recommendation for this site". When you recommend someone, odds are they will recommend you as well. You're not only helping your neighbors, but you're increasing your exposure in the system as well. Check out the site and find at least three things you like about it. While you're there, leave a comment on a post or two and subscribe to their feed.

London 2007 New Year Fireworks

2008-01-01T01:32:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! The London, England New Year's fireworks show was the most spectacular fireworks show I've ever seen. The 'works' were launched off the 135 meter London Eye.

You must see this panoramic view of the London 2007 New Year's show.

Some incredible Photos of the New Year's 2007 event.

Before Google: Larry Page's "Backrub."

2007-12-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

In the Age of Darkness... before SLi... before 1 terabyte hard drives... before the iPod... yea, verily, even before Google, there was Backrub.

Led as a search engine research project by Larry Page in the computer science department at Stanford in 1996. "Backrub" might have been a reference to the algorithm that counts backlinks as votes, similarly to the current PageRank system.

As of August, 1996, Backrub's accumulated URLs had reached 75 million, with 30 million pages downloaded by Backrub's crawler. Written in Java and Python, the engine ran on Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums driving Linux.

The Backrub home page sported acknowledgments from Larry Page to the assistance of Scott Hassan, Alan Steremberg and Sergey Brin, as well as Page's personal contact information for users who had questions not addressed in Backrub's FAQ.

Backrub later became "the Google Search Engine" (pictured), where searching Stanford still took priority over searching the web. Early on, Page and Brin found that they had gathered 1.7 email addresses via crawler -- fortunately, any sinister application of these gathered addresses was shunned in favor of the search ads model adopted by Google in 2000.

You can find more of Google's history here.

Whiteboard Friday - Changing Context

2007-12-21T23:51:00.001-08:00

Stephan Spencer, CEO of Net Concepts talks to Rand Fishkin, CEO of seomoz.org, about conditional redirects. He explains a Google friendly white hat method of detecting search engine spiders in order to redirect them to different URLs than the user sees in order to keep duplicate content out of Google's index.

Tafiti Source Code Launched As Windows Live Quickapp

2007-12-19T16:40:00.000-08:00

Earlier today, Microsoft released the source code for its Tafiti search engine on Windows Live Quick Applications.

To recap, Tafiti (which means "do research" in Swahili) is an experimental front end for Windows Live Search which enables users to gather information across multiple search queries and sessions as well as visualize, store and share the gathered results.

For the developers among you, it's well worth a look. For those who are still unfamiliar with Tafiti, head on over for a test drive.

Google Knol: Encyclopedia, Not Wikipedia

2007-12-18T15:07:00.000-08:00

Expanding on our coverage of Google's Knol encyclopedia, there arises a critical but subtle difference between Knol and its most immediately recognizable sibling, Wikipedia:

In contrast to Wikipedia's contribution system, which is overseen and moderated by anonymous committee, Knol's articles will not be continuously editable. In theory, Wikipedia's model should have been superior, allowing information to be continuously updated and accurized; however, as anyone who's ever spent much time browsing Wikipedia can attest, the theory often fails when put into practice.

Knol's model of data collection fits with the more traditional, more professional and more authoritative model, where the data is collected from expert sources, fact-checked and verified. Rather than being the end of Wikipedia, however, Knol may very well improve and reinforce the accuracy and verity of Wikipedia's articles by providing easily found, higher quality source and reference material.

Another crucial difference for Knol is that its contributors will not be anonymous -- authors will be bylined as well as compensated from a share of ad revenue. This compels authors to compete to have their work featured on Knol, and this competition should further ensure that articles of the highest quality will appear there.

We also have our first screenshot of the service:

If you are looking for more information, there's a nice community forming at http://knolstuff.com

It's a click! No, it's a hit! No, it's GOOGLEMAN! Google London dons costumes for causes.

2007-12-17T09:36:00.000-08:00

Batman... Superman... Spiderman... all these men are well known round the world for deeds of heroism surpassing the ordinary -- or even the physically possible. Recently, however, Londoners were treated to sightings of real

heroes, courtesy of Google's London office.

The superheroic staffers busted out their secret identities last Friday to come together and help raise funds for two local charities: Kids Company, which establishes educational and therapeutic programs for at-risk youth, and Refuge, which offers shelter, support and counseling for women and children affected by domestic violence.

Way to go Google London and Googleman!

Year-End Zeitgeist 2007: Search Top 10

2007-12-14T03:21:00.000-08:00

As some of you may know, and many may not, the folks over at Google keep a clinically interested eye on the searches that pass most often through their wise and loving hands. In point of fact, doing so has become something of an institution at the search titan, so much so that it's heralded, near year's end, with a global search popularity tally known as the Google Zeitgeist.

This year's Top 10 winners -- and losers -- according to global search popularity are:

WINNERS:

iPhone
Badoo
Facebook
dailymotion
youtube
webkinz
ebuddy
second life
hi5
club penguin

LOSERS:

world cup
mozart
fifa
rebelde
kazaa
xanga
webdetente
sudoku
shakira
mp3

What does this tell us? Well, there are a multitude of conclusions we could reach from these results, really. Consumer electronics buzz is up, so is social networking. Sports are down, along with classical composers and peer-to-peer file sharing sites. No big surprises there, but here's a holiday gift surprise for you:

Taken from the Google, Inc. Zeitgeist web site is this handy hint for heftier result pages:

"Operator: Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to "fill in the blank" by adding an asterisk (*) at the part of the sentence or question that you want finished. Then hit the Enter key or click the Google search button to see you results."

Happy searching, and happy holidays until we meet again.

Google Knol: Encyclopedia Extraordinaire

2007-12-14T02:58:00.000-08:00

Google announced today the launch of their own Encyclopedia. Called Google Knol (a Knol being a unit of knowledge) the work is designed to attract, and collect articles from, authorities in a diverse range of technical fields of knowledge.

According to Google, "Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it."

The project has only been active with a select group of participants beginning earlier this week, and is still in its first phase of testing; however, look for updates here as they become available. We expect great things with Google Knol, and you can expect to hear about them here.

FOLLOW-UP Post: Google Knol Encyclopedia Not Wikipedia

Survey Says: Changes May Be In Store For Live Search

2007-12-09T12:42:00.000-08:00

Sometimes product team surveys pose more questions than just those meant to be answered by the participants. Surveys like this one, which contain the usual questions relating currently implemented vertical search engines contained in Live Search, such as Health, Video and Shopping, but also alludes to possible functions to come:

searching online to plan for a trip or vacation
searching online for news
what tools could a search engine provide to enhance the look and feel of the initial search page and the layout of the results page?

A travel vertical search engine would be intriguing, especially if combined with the new image and video search, which would provide stunning, powerful results.

A real time news search would be no less startling. Though news search is available, the current incarnation dates back to MSN Search and just isn't up to the same game as, for example, Google News, which is itself by no means perfect. If Microsoft can put a News search in place that's on par with the rest of Live Search, they stand a good chance of one-upping Google... at least, for awhile.

The next Live Search update is projected for early '08, so it's a case of wait and see. But what we see so far makes us think the short wait will be worth it.

Google: Of Paid Links And PageRank

2007-12-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

Matt Cutts has some good advice over at his blog on paid links and PageRank, and why the two do not blend.

Where monetized linking is permitted, the basic things to have in mind for any reciprocal or monetized relationship with a web site or contributor are:

Legitimate, honest and ethical
Professional in their presentation
Knowledgeable in your industry as well as their own

The problem, as Google tends to see it, seems to be that maintaining these standards is problematic, when an effort to do so is even put forth. Matt gives an example involving a search for clean and unbiased information on a serious medical issue, then goes on to show how paid links corrupt the results with advertising litter. He sums it all up rather nicely with the following, "If you put your user hat back on, I hope you'll agree that you wouldn't want a serious medical search for brain tumor treatments to be affected by inaccurate or uninformed posts. In fact, if you stumbled across these entries on the web, you might not know whether someone got paid for writing these posts. In the same way that a regular surfer would want disclosure to know if a post were paid, all the major search engines also want to make sure that paid posts are adequately disclosed to search engines as well. Google's documentation for webmasters gives examples of how to do that. I believe the vast majority of our users don't want our organic search results for something as serious as brain tumors to be affected by links in paid posts."

I agree wholeheartedly. There's nothing more irritating for the end-user than to be dragged off course during serious research by advertising copy - not to mention poorly constructed and thinly-veiled advertising copy - or worse, half-formed opinion posing as educated scholarly review.

Keeping your links clean and ethical means not only keeping your PageRank but keeping your readers' trust.

Hakia: Search Plus Community

2007-12-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

Another new kid on the Search block is strutting his stuff, and he goes by the name Hakia. Hakia, with results and sponsors powered by Ask.com, integrates an interesting new feature into the end-user experience: Community. Say, doesn't that look familiar?

After searching a question, phrase or keyword, the user's results appear along with a linked icon reading, "Meet Others Who Asked The Same Query." Clicking this icon after a search currently invites the user to start or participate in a forum topic regarding the query, allowing users to create communities based around popular topics.

Does this make Hakia's search results inherently better? Not any better than Ask.com's. What it does do, both for the showrunners at Hakia and for webmasters, is use community (the C word rises again!) to create loyalty both to the products under discussion and to the search engine which hosts the discussion.

Will it pay off for Hakia? I'd put my money on yes. Will it benefit the user? I'm giving good odds on that, too, but time alone will tell. Stay tuned.

Google Experiment: Flagged Search Results

2007-11-29T10:37:00.000-08:00

Google has launched an experimental feature which allows its users to influence search results by adding, moving and removing their search results. The user's alterations to the results are persistent across search sessions. A reminder: this feature is experimental, so it may or may not become permanent.

coComment Harnesses Facebook To Drive Your Site Or Blog Traffic

2007-11-28T20:42:00.000-08:00

coComment, a leading provider of online conversation management solutions, announced the launch of two Facebook applications for owners and users of web sites and blogs. The applications will allow Facebook users to share comments and conversations, drawing from the Facebook networks to drive traffic to the source material.

"We think this will be a tremendously popular service for Facebook
users, as well as bloggers or site owners who want to share what they are
saying, or what is being said on their site," stated Matt Colebourne, coComment CEO. "People who spend a lot of time on Facebook and a lot of time commenting on blogs and sites will especially love this -- it's a great way to share your thoughts and bring friends and groups into the topics and conversations that interest you -- while adding a level of
personalization to your home page -- through your views and opinions,
whenever you make a comment anywhere on the Web."

coComment plugins for WordPress, Movable Type, LifeType, Drupal and other blogging platforms are already available at the company's web site, http://www.cocomment.com.

Google Stock Finishes at 666... Time For A New Corporate Motto?

2007-11-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

Uproar! Pandemonium! Mismatched cufflinks! Google's corporate slogan is, "Don't Be Evil" - it was perhaps an omen, then, when the stock market finished out with the entirely-not-evil corporation's stock embracing The Darkness.

"Don't be evil!" their motto admonishes - you can almost picture the waggling finger and wry half-smile when it's read aloud. And while we could ponder the profundity of that sagacity -- and probably throw more multisyllabic words around just for the gee-whiz of it -- let's instead take a moment to consider the ramifications of... oh, why wait, here's the belly-laugh-inducing pictorial goodness.

While the Sign Of The Beast is no more unknown on Wall Street than on the mailbox of the scary lady who lived down the street from you when you were a kid, it's a particularly tasty tidbit of irony for a company who apparently feels it prudent to remind its employees not to, for example, hunger for world domination, tie naive blonde damsels to railroad tracks or talk at the theater.

So for the True Face Of Evil (eVil?) to be so shockingly and suddenly revealed is surely a ray of hope in this age; it proves that somewhere, somehow, someone is twirling one end of a thick black moustache and lamenting that he was Foiled Again.

Of course, he would've gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those meddling stock tickers.

SEO Tip: Getting Backlinks From .edu And .gov Domains

2007-11-23T21:09:00.001-08:00

I'm sure most of you know, backlinks from .gov and .edu sites have a higher value in the major search engines than .com, .org or other toplevel domains. Finding backlinks from these coveted domains can be difficult if you don't know where to look.

Question: How do I get backlinks from .edu and .gov domains?
Answer: Search for them using Google!

Use following Google searches (without the quotes):

1. "blog site:.gov"
2. "blog site:.edu"
3. "suggest url site:.gov"
4. "add url site:.gov"
5. "add site site:.edu"
6. Get specific; if your site is about real estate, try searching for "real estate blog site:.edu"

Please don't go spamming all the .gov and .edu sites with your URL. If you are submitting to government or educational blogs, keep your comments about the subject matter or they probably won't get posted at all (Most comment systems are moderated).

Happy Googling.

Google Dominates In The Clash Of The Search Titans

2007-11-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

Google once again flexes its search muscle, continuing to increase its lead over its closest challengers Yahoo and Windows Live/MSN.

For October alone, according to ComScore, Inc., Google Sites increased its lead atop the core search ranking with 58.5 percent of U.S. searches, gaining 1.5 share points versus the previous month. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 22.9 percent, followed
by Microsoft Sites (9.7 percent), Ask Network (4.7 percent) and Time Warner
Network (4.2 percent). Let's go to the numbers:

comScore Core Search Report*
October 2007
Total U.S. -- Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore qSearch 2.0

Share of Searches (%)
Point
Change
Oct-07 vs.
Core Search Entity Sep - 07 Oct -07 Sep-07

Total Core Search 100.0 % 100.0 % 0.0
Google Sites 57.0 % 58.5 % 1.5
Yahoo! Sites 23.7 % 22.9 % -0.8
Microsoft Sites 10.3 % 9.7 % -0.6
Ask Network 4.7 % 4.7 % 0.0
Time Warner Network 4.3 % 4.2 % -0.1

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and
cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and
user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five
search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

We Americans love our searches, and we just keep getting more and more passionate about it. In October, we conducted 10.5 billion searches at the core search engines, up 12-percent from September. Google got most of that love, 6.1 billion core searches during the month, up 15 percent, while Yahoo! Sites recorded 2.4 billion, an increase of 8 percent. Have you hugged your Google today?

Live Search Webmaster Portal Launched - Try It Now

2007-11-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

At Searchification 2007, Microsoft showed off a Webmaster portal designed to run side-by-side with the new Live Search, and it is now available in beta. The portal first asks you to setup a profile for the website you want to analyze, which unsurprisingly includes a verification step; you can either upload an xml file or insert a meta tag. The service seems to pick up the meta tag update immediately, which means you can get right to work.

The summary page is basic but functional, showing when your site was last crawled (or if your site is blocked) and how many pages are included in the Live Search index. For webmasters experiencing problems with a site, this should be your first port of call. The domain rank graphic is a nice touch, though breaking it down into five levels seems insufficient for really being able to gauge performance. For comparison, Google Pagerank goes up to 10, and we're rated 6, how this equates to a Live Search 5/5 we don't know.

Additionally there is a keyword analysis tool, showing how you would perform on Live Search for certain search queries. Again the lack of granularity in the rating system hurts here, to improve your SEO you have to do badly at something! To wrap it all off there is an inbound and outbound link analysis, which if you run a proper website (i.e.: not a blog) will help see where you site is being promoted.

Overall the beta of Live Search Webmaster portal does an OK job, offering nothing stellar if your website is being indexed regularly but offering a good starting location for those having problems.

All that said, you can try out Live Search Webmaster Portal at http://webmaster.live.com

And the latest release of Live Maps also added a new portal for business owners who want to update their listings on the service; check it out at http://llc.local.live.com.

SEO Tip: Adding Custom Blogs to Facebook

2007-11-18T22:54:00.000-08:00

Social media sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Youtube can be very lucrative for SEO efforts. From link building to increasing online traffic to branding, social media sites are getting more and more popular amongst all age groups.

One way to drive traffic from social sites is to show off your blog.

Here's how to add your blog to your Facebook profile:

1. Register and login to facebook.com

2. In the top-left corner, click "Edit" (next to Applications)

3. At the top-right click "Browse More Applications"

4. At the top-right type "blog" or "blogs"into the search box to the right of Application Directory and press enter.

5. Now just choose an application that will post your blog or RSS feed to your Facebook profile and click "Add Application" on the top right of the application's profile.

Note: If Facebook does not recognize your blog or the articles don't link correctly, then try signing up for an account on Feedburner.com to "burn" your feed. Then paste the new burned feed ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/YourFeedName ) into the applications settings.

Will Google Be The Wireless Game's Next Heavy Hitter?

2007-11-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

Rumors of Google stepping onto the wireless field have been whispered for a long time now, and with the internet giant now making moves for a small-capitalization spectrum auction with the FCC, those whispers are growing into a roar.

The real question now seems to be not "If", but "When?" Google has reportedly put its money where its mouth is, setting aside $4.6 billion to push in the FCC’s direction for the 700Mhz spectrum. Another question to ponder is: If Google takes that piece of the airwaves, will it be brokered to hundreds of smaller companies, or will it become the stomping grounds of the much fabled and long-awaited "Google Phone"? Most observers hold that Google is shaping up to build out a broadband wireless infrastructure, which both fits into its existing business model and fills an underserved area in the U.S. market.

And as hungry as Google is to see the mobile broadband truly take flight in the U.S., wireless network equipment providers are drooling over the potential new player. According to Craig Mathias of The Farpoint Group, a consulting company in Ashland, MA, "Someone is going to make a lot of money on equipment, but we don't know who that is."

But beyond market expansion, Google may be doing it to drive home a principle. According to Michael Disabato, Vice President and Service Director for Network and Telecom Strategies at Burton Group, "Google's proving a point. They want to open the networks and allow any device to attach to them. They want to break the locked handset model and show that the business model can work."

Yet another possible motive for the expansion into the wireless game is as protection of their business model against the possibility that "net neutrality" may go out the window. Should that happen and future competitors like AT&T or Verizon begin to charge for access to their customers, Google having its own network operator will give them an alternative they don't currently hold. All of these are strong, compelling reasons for Google to take this step.

The technologies most likely to be employed in such an infrastructure are WiMax or LTE (Long-Term Evolution); narrowband technologies such as CDMA and GSM aren't nearly as neat a fit with the company's existing model of flat IP networks and not as appealing with regard to how the networks are sold.

So why now? Perhaps because the 700Mhz spectrum is just so tasty. Why is it so tasty? It's easier and less costly to establish a nationwide network on compared to higher bands such as the 2Ghz band, which requires 4 times as many base stations for the same geographic coverage. But there's one very serious challenge, too.

"To get to the real kind of model Google wants, the size of the spectrum doesn't really support it," said Alan Pritchard, vice president of account development at Nortel. "When you want speeds similar to what you get at your house, you need a 20MHz channel up and down, but 12MHz up and down is what's in this auction." At the same time, the FCC is holding onto part of that 12Mhz and reserving it for public safety traffic. Another, more technical, challenge would be preventing interference with neighboring frequencies in the lower bands of the spectrum.

These challenges, however, appear to be facing a very serious and determined force headed by Google; odds are that the kind of network equipment providers lined up to help build such a network are going to consist of the best and brightest. The question, then, remains, not "If," but "When"... Or perhaps more accurately, "How long will it take?"

Content vs Community: Which Is King Now?

2007-11-16T14:58:00.000-08:00

It's a maxim as old as the art: "Content is King." Well, brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, because there's been a shakeup in the Kingdom. Let's talk about the deposed ruler for a moment.

Content has been royalty from the first days of SEO, when the sum total of the science was fitting the right keywords to your page and hoping for the best. The end user could pretty much fend for him- or herself, take what the engines put at the top and be happy with it or keep scrolling.

Over time, we learned the hard way what advertising and marketing geniuses had known for decades: it isn't the fisherman with the quickest wrist that gets the bites, it's the one with the best bait. Getting your link to the top of the hits is great, but unless your visitor sees something there he likes, and plenty of it, that click doesn't mean much.

So we got the message... and got it, and got it some more. Right? Well, here it is again: a recent study by OPA and Nielsen/NetRatings shows that content-based sites still draw the most attention:

Content - 49.6%
Communications - 32%
Commerce - 13.8%
Search - 4.5%

The numbers seem to reinforce Content's claim to the throne, but let's not go back to bowing down just yet, because those numbers don't tell the whole story. While the increased power and presence of blogs and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook has driven the growth of online readership, online commerce has actually decreased 2% from a year ago.

And let's consider that while reading content -- well, good content, at least -- is time consuming, the goal of online marketers is to do all they can to decrease the distance between Point A - the page hit - and Point B - the sale. Compare the average social networking site user profile, between two and four minutes of reading, to the average few seconds worth of reading time for a product blurb on an ecommerce site.

So if Content has lost its grip on the ecommerce throne, let's look at Community for a moment. Many vendors have wisely adopted the strategies of building fan communities, forums and blogs. By creating an environment where consumers can interact with the company and fellow consumers of that company on a more personal level, ecommerce providers can build brand recognition and customer loyalty, a combination that thoroughly unseats Content as King and leaves Community at the top of the heap.