Media Press Release Threatens to Sue
Awhile back, I posted about a press release company that posted what looked like a fake trackback to my site.
Apparently, they’re not happy about that post.
SES New York
I’m taking off tomorrow for Search Engine Strategies in New York. For those of you who will be attending, here is a quick rundown of the panels I’ll be speaking on:
Session: Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues
Day: Tuesday, February 28
Time: 11:15 am
Session: Linking Strategies
Day: Wednesday, March 1
Time: 9:00 am
Session: Buying & Selling Links
Day: Wednesday, March 1
Time: 11:00 am
Session: Link Building Clinic
Day: Thursday, March 2
Time: 10:45 am
And of course, I’ll also be attending all the evening networking sessions as well. 
Brand Building and Technical Ineptness
According to Nielsen//NetRatings, Google handled close to 2.5 billion search queries in December of 2005. When it comes to search infrastructure and scalability, they rewrote the book.
So how is it that a company with such technical prowess could launch yet another service that crashed and burned do to "extremely high demand?" Is it really possible that such a smart group of people are completely incapable of accurately assessing the potential demand for a new product?
Or could it be that Google has invented yet another clever strategy to build their brand? I mean think about it. There isn’t anything exciting about launching an "invite only" 6 month beta test program for a new product. Both Yahoo and MSN did that with their respective ppc/contextual programs. And neither one of those programs has been able to maintain a reasonable level of buzz during their testing period.
On the other hand, people continue to write about Google Analytics on almost a daily basis. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was an actual functioning service. I think a good part of that buzz comes from the fact that they didn’t use the old-school strategy of inviting a specific number of users to beta test the product before releasing it. Instead, the launched as a "ready-for-primetime" product and then were "forced" to shut it down due to "unexpected high demand."
Sure, the hard-core tech crowd is going to be a little upset over such technical ineptness. But who cares? In the end, Google ends up with their beta testers and at the same time their shareholders/brand evangelists are left with a warm fuzzy feeling because Google is so damn popular.
msn-ff.jpg
On Wednesday, Brady Forrest announced that MSN had launched a new UI for MSN search.
He also mentioned that they’ve made a lot of improvements to their algorithm lately.
I’m not going to spend any time talking about the algo comments because there are already plenty of people handling that.
Instead, I thought I’d restrict my comments to just the UI.
Push Button Marketing 101
Comment spam isn’t something I get extremely worked up about. I just look at it as a by-product of the environment we exist in. Until search engines can get past "the person with the most links wins" comment spam will be around.
That said, I fully understand that my point of view is probably part of the minority. There is a huge segment of the blogging world that devotes a great deal of time and energy to fighting the war against comment spam. Unfortunately, many of the rank and file soldiers are pretty clueless when it comes to understanding how it really works.
Why Big Brands Should Spam Search Engines
Imagine for a moment that you are the VP of marketing for one of the world’s most recognizable brands. One of your responsibilities as VP of marketing is to make sure that your brand shows up at the top when the thousands of daily Internet users type your brand names and model numbers into the little white box.
On the surface it sounds like a fairly simple task. But it’s actually much harder than it appears.
Looking For a Few Good People
Interested in living and working in sunny Southern California?
We’re going to be moving into new office space at the end of March. The new place is quite a bit bigger, so we’re going to need some new people to help fill it up.
Specifically, I’m looking for a couple new programmers, a designer (a CSS guru) and an additional SEO who can handle complex consulting assignments.
The majority of our work is performance based. That means if we don’t perform, we don’t get paid. But if we do perform we get paid really well.
If you think you might be a fit, send me an email telling me about your experience and skill set.
The Power of a Brand - Perception vs. Reality
"Survey: Advertisers Say Search Ads On Google Better Than Yahoo, MSN"
That’s the headline from a MediaPost article about a recent survey of 1200 PPC advertisers conducted by Outsell.
