After reading about Lisa Barone’s laptop being stolen, I got into a bit of a discussion about how I use cloud computing for part of my backup and disaster recovery plan. Since a few people started asking details I think this post might be useful.First a bit of history, anyone who worked in IT in 2001 probably heard the phrase disaster recovery plan. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it a  disaster recovery plan is basically an offsite hardware/software backup that allows you to store all of your documents, programs, applications, databases or information that you can bring online and have access to with a minimum of fuss and as quickly as possible. Onsite backup are quicker, easier and cheaper to put into place, but offsite backups give you an added level of protection should something make your primary location non functional. For example since most people keep their external hard drive next to their computer it’s likely that if your computer is destroyed in a fire the external drive sitting under the desk will be too.

Cloud Document Storage
First off you need to classify and separate your documents into sensitive and non sensitive data. Anything that’s non confidential can be stored in the cloud. I like google docs, but you can use zoho or any service. This allows you to reduce the amount of hard disk space you’ll need on your computer and backup. Articles or blog posts you are writing or authors are writing for you can go here. They don’t really contain “confidential” information, and they are really only secret until they are “published”. If someone does manage to gain access to your “7 Ways Make Brocolli Lasagna” before you push it on Digg it won’t be the end of the world … really.

File Server
We have multiple computers in my house, so it just makes sense to backup all of the documents in one location. Every night between 3am and 6am a syncback job executes wakes up each of the computers and does a backup of all documents on every computer. Your file server doesn’t have to be powerful or fast, you just need to have a lot of storage space, I’d recommend using an old computer with 500GB or a Terabyte hard drive, they are cheap enough at this point. So you store your client documents on each computer and they get backed up every night. If you keep this in place you’ll never lose more than a days worth of work.

NAS or External Drive
Because your file server is computer like every computer it can break down, if this is your only backup you have a single point of failure. So the next recommendation is to backup the file server. You could use a NAS (which is what I use) or an external hard drive. Usually this type of hardware comes with some automated backup software, make sure it’s running.

Offsite Storage and Disaster Recovery
If you use a reliable cloud document service you may have to deal with the occasional outage, but you don’t have to worry about backups. However you don’t need to be concerned about someone breaking into your house when you announce you are going on a two week vacation to Outer Mongolia on twitter,your house burning to the ground, or any other event that completely destroys any onsite computers, files servers and NAS devices. The simplest and easiest to use of these services are Carbonite and Mozy. Both of the services run in the background automatically backing up any folders you specify (I put mine on the file server). Your initial backup may take several days or weeks depending on how much data you need to backup. I accidentally deleted a whole year’s worth of photos and carbonite saved my butt, so they get a thumbs up in my book.

NetBooks and Folder Synchronization
Not everyone likes netbooks but I love mine, it’s small lightweight, easy to travel with and has awesome battery life. However the problem with using two computers is keeping the folder’s documents in sync. If you have a home/office setup you have this problem as well. If you’re on a windows machine you can use Folder Share, it works in the background and keeps any folders you specify in sync whenever the computers have an internet connection. It’s awesome and free.

Password Synchronization
If you do any amount of work on the internet chances are you have a lot of passwords to remember. If you practice bad security, you use a handfull of passwords on all your accounts and shame on you. If you’re clever you use a complex password scheme. If you’re old and your brain has turned to mush, you use a password manager like Roboform. If you use more than one computer you can use goodsync to keep your roboform passwords in sync on multiple computers.

Airports and Travel
If you do a lot of travel in and out of the US you run the risk of having customs seize, search or confiscate your computer. If this fits your situation, and you travel with confidential documents, your might want to partition and encrypt your hard drive, or travel with a netbook and use an extremely secure cloud storage solution. However for most people the challenge is not lose their laptop at TSA screening (did you know over 1200 laptops are lost each week at LAX … YIKES!!!!). My advice is to get yourself a TSA checkpoint friendly bag

Click here to view the embedded video.

The TSA likes them … really, I’ve had mine for a few months and have never had a problem, and I go thru super busy airports like JFK, LAX, and LAS. It’s really a relief knowing that my laptop isn’t laying in an open been while I’m stuck on the other side of metal detector behind the family with a stroller, 4 kids, and grandma with a walker, who haven’t been thru an airport in the past 5 years and all need a hand screening (don’t judge me … you know you think the same thing when it happens to you)

I also have a travel bag that has backup power cords for my computer, iphone, camera battery and charger, SD card and USB stick. After leaving several of these items home over the years and having to pay a premium to have them rush delivered, I bought duplicates from eBay. I have a seperate bag for family trips with gameboy and nintendo DS power cords, because they never forget to pack them.

Email, Calendar, and Contacts
I’m really a big fan of Google Apps for domains, it gives me all the features of gmail, google docs and calendar under my own domain. Because it all sits in the cloud I don’t need to worry if my computer gets lost or stolen I still have all my data in the cloud. Now that they allow your to sync with your iPhone, you won’t lose that data.

Google Voice
Google voice is really one of my favorite google products. It gives you one number you use and you can route all your calls anywhere. So if I lose my iPhone or leave it somewhere I can log into google voice and temporarily route all my calls to new number without having to notify everyone my number changed.

Presentations
Anytime I speak at a conference or do some in-house training, there is usually a power point presentation involved, so I want to make sure it doesn’t get lost. First I’ll upload it to google docs, this does have the potential of putting sensitive data in the cloud but as long as you delete it after the presentation you give yourself a safetynet, in case something goes wrong. I also email myself a copy so it’s sitting in my inbox as well. One USB key with the presentation goes in my pants pocket during the trip, a second one goes on a second USB key in with a metal ring attached to a carabiner in my backpack. I’d have to be having a really really bad day for all of those things to fail at once.

Wordpress
I use wordpress as a CMS on a lot of websites I run, and I use the Wordpress DB backup to back up each and every one every day. I have the backup sent via email to a dedicated gmail account. Once a month I archive the backup from the 1st and the 15th and delete the previous month. If my blog gets hacked with a trojan I have daily incremental backup and can roll back to any date I choose. I also backup my uploads directory of images, and thesis custom folders once a month, so I don’t lose the design if something gets borked. That backup goes onto my laptop and gets backed up there.

Hacking
One of the dangers of using cloud computing, document storage, and backups is hacking. The sensitivity of your documents can run from mild to extreme depending on who and what you are working on. You may need to choose a more secure cloud storage option, which will inflate the price. However it’s a balancing act between security and losing the data. If you are using  cloud computing you are probably in better shape if your documents are in the cloud, and your laptop gets stolen. There’s not much data they will be able to extract from your machine. You are however at the mercy of the third party who stores your documents and thier security procedures, so choose wisely. The only way to make your computer 100% hacker proof is never to put it on a network or the internet.

To sum things up, the more you eliminate single points of failure from your disaster recovery plan the better off you’ll be. Some redundancy and duplication in your backup plan is a good thing and gives you a little extra insurance. Operating with all your documents in one place on one computer leaves you incredibly vulnerable to a single unfortunate event taking you and your business offline … not something you want to experience if you can avoid it
photo credit: rust.bucket

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How I Handle Backups and Disaster Recovery

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The economy is in a rut because of Big Risk – beyond just the subprime housing market.

First, it was Big Finance – AIG and company. Second it was Big Media – the NYTimes and friends. Third, it was Big Auto – GM and gang. It’s quite plausible that the next victims will be Big Advertising – WPP et al.

What’s the relation?

-> Each of them has profited from heaping risk on their customers … when they should have been the ones taking risks.

The Web learned this lesson starting in 2001 on to 2003:

The Dot Com Bubble and Burst happened because:

• Dot-coms’ business plans stated: (i) Get lots of users (then aka “eyeballs”) (ii) Sell ads on a Cost-Per-1000-impressions (CPM) basis
• Humans don’t like interruption advertising – like CPM ads – and they ignored most of these CPM banner-ads
• The measurably poor Return-On-Investment (ROI) led advertisers to stop buying these ads
• As a result, the dot-coms’ business plans broke. And the dot coms went broke.

Since 2003, however, companies operating on the web learned the lesson of risk distribution.

They measured the risks of buying ads, compared them to their ROI and priced the ads accordingly. This was done largely by virtue of the widespread adoption of web analytics software, which enabled advertisers to precisely measure their Return On Ad Spend (ROAS, an ad-centric version of ROI).

Thus a transparent market developed where both parties went in with their eyes wide open, making precise cost-benefit analyses.

One company in particular learned the lesson and applied it thoroughly: Google.

This transparent market led Google to shift from selling banner ads on a flat-CPM basis – where all the risk remains on advertisers’ shoulders – to selling their now famous cost-per-click (CPC) ads. With CPC, advertisers only pay for clicks they get, which shifts some of the risk away from the advertiser and sends it over to the media publisher (Google, in this case).

Furthermore, rather than dealing only with advertisers who could afford a “minimum-spend” in the tens-of-thousands of dollars – a common practice in Big Media – Google opened its doors to anyone with $5 to open an account and a few cents more to spend on ads. This obviously makes trying out the ads a lower-risk proposition than news-media advertising.

If that weren’t enough, Google combined this with a simple math formula that rewards the most efficient advertisers – those who can generate the highest ROAS and are thus able to pay Google more for advertising.

Unsatisfied, Google has continued to help its advertisers become more efficient, by offering advertisers:

1. Decent quality web analytics for free,
2. An ad platform that lets them test one version of an ad against another to see which performs better,
3. Programming goodies (APIs) that let third parties write ROAS-maximizing-software (facilitated by the trend making data a commodity),
4. Fancy testing software to improve the selling efficiency of their [the advertisers'] own websites,
5. Numerous filters and targeting mechanisms to only buy those ads that work for the advertiser.

Of course, we all know that by empowering its advertisers to cut the fat in their advertising programs, Google has gone near to the edge of bankruptcy become the world’s first $100 Billion Brand. That should tell you something about building a brand with word-of-mouth vs branding via advertising [your own wares], ironically enough…

But this hasn’t just been Google’s story – most of the web economy as a whole has integrated this risk-distribution lesson as a fundamental operating principle.

Others took this redistribution of risk even further with the cost-per-action (CPA) model, where advertisers only pay for a specified result. Thus the majority of the Internet Retailer 500 – the web’s largest ecommerce operations – now pay commissions to CPA publishers who refer them sales.

This is particularly profitable to expert media publishers who test their advertisers’ efficiency against each other to maximize their net yield. Numerous pieces of software and companies have emerged to facilitate this. Read this for more on Yield Optimization.

Now let’s compare that to housing, finance, news media, cars and non-search advertising… The NYSE dropped 7000 points over the past 2 years.

Big Finance pushed credit in varying forms and descriptions at consumers who could ill afford it. The loan sharks who offer “cash advances” and “payday loans” continue this practice as we speak.

It’s clear therefore that TARP is a bailout for the wrong people, unfortunately. It deals with the symptoms – the failure of risk made Big by centralization in a handful of large companies.

The problem, however, was that the risk was made Big by having it aggregated amongst a few financial companies.

In other words, the risk for the economy as a whole was terrible because it was poorly distributed. Half of the problem lay with those who couldn’t afford the debt, while the other half lay with the centralizing, the aggregation of this risk in Big Finance.

Additionally, Big Finance has been resistant to innovation, which is perhaps the worst risk you could possibly take!

For one obvious example, peer-to-peer lending of the type covered regularly on Jim Bruene’s NetBanker, hasn’t quite been welcomed by Big Finance. Why haven’t any of the big banks adopted Prosper.com’s technology and offered to facilitate their customers’ investments in other people’s loans for a simple monthly fee?

There’d be a wider distribution of risk, fewer [opportunities for institutional] crooks, and smart financial management generally.

Big Media forced advertisers to take all the risk upon themselves, for decades.

Via Recovering Journalist

Perhaps ironically, traditional ad agencies priced their services partly on the size of the ad spend, or “media buy,” that their clients made. Yet they never optimized this spend by tying it to sales metrics, because then advertisers might cut the ad spend that was just “fat” and not producing revenue!

For why this thinking is short-sighted, see Google for what advertisers do when they successfully cut unproductive advertising dollars…

The most successful segment of offline advertising today is direct response advertising. Direct response advertisers built their own measurement, testing and segmentation tools. Gurus like Clayton Makepeace, Michel Fortin, and Gary Bencivenga and hugely successful companies like Agora Publishing have grown by measuring their risks and optimizing them.

If you know what a Bowflex is, you’ve seen direct response advertising. The fact that it’s still around today speaks to the efficiency of its creators marketing risks.

Of course, advertisers tried to shift the marketing market’s risk balance and transparency by experimenting with different formats and styles. That’s how viral marketing campaigns, publicity stunts and others arose.

Those experiments tried to shift the risk. They sometimes succeeded, but not on a scale large enough to affect the media market. That’s why ad dollars fled to the web when the web brought media-measurement to the masses.

The news media need to understand that their ad divisions are in the sales business.

Their purpose is not to sell exposure but to sell sales. Web 1.0 was about exposure to eyeballs, and look where that got the dot-com soap-bubbles.

The news media’s ad arms need to adopt more risk in the ads they publish, whereby they’re paid for performance. They need to build inhouse direct response teams and test ads aggressively. For one obvious example, I was browsing a travel section on a Big Media site that was super enthusiastic about a given destination. But rather than show affiliate ads for travel packages, I was shown credit cards ads.

Otherwise, Big Media will keep rotating crappy ads from free credit score sites that amount to Virtual Blight, because those ads lead visitors to landing pages for scams…

Big Media has also bet against innovation.

Various newspapers are cutting their budgets for investigative journalism. Yet that’s the very core of innovation in news. That’s like Big Pharma saying that they’re going to stop doing R&D and just copy each other’s most popular drugs. Oh wait a sec…

From an internet marketing perspective, the existence of linkbait shows that people love feature length investigative reporting. And as Cosmopolitan magazine’s monthly “101 Ways to Have a Romantic Sundown Date” articles show, people will pay for it. As I wrote here:

I wouldn’t pay for the P.o.S. newspaper handed to me free in the subway bc the content is all wire stories + ads, and the wire content reads like it was written by a soulless monkey. It’s 100% generic.

My family still subscribes to a print newspaper, and I get much greater satisfaction reading it than the metro paper. It’s the difference between a full meal and swallowing a Hershey’s kiss.

The path to saving newspapers’ subscription business is more journalism, not less. More soul, less wire crap. More research, less rehash.

Big Auto sinned by pushing risk to the environment and trying to fight the ecological culture that has become mainstream in today’s America. GM are known for trucks and SUVs. Honda is known for the Civic and hybrids. You tell me who bet on the past and who bet on change and R&D.

Additionally, regulators failed by letting Big Auto get to the sizes they did. Detroit became a [3-]company town. The result has been homes selling for under $10,000. [Source] This is similar to the centralization of risk in Big Finance’s case.

As an aside, I’d like to note that new laws need to be made for situations like this. While the current recession is terrible, imagine what might happen if Wal-Mart went bankrupt tomorrow. These obese firms are a risk to the whole economy.

There need to be caps on the percentage of a population that can be employed in any given industry. This will minimize the risk of any company’s failure, as well as encourage competition and thus, innovation. By the number of mom-n-pop shops that Wal-Mart has destroyed, it’s clear that mega-corporations do more to hurt the economy than to help.

History shows that betting against change is a sucker’s bet.

You can flip a fair coin 100 times and get 100 heads in a row, but keep flipping and you will eventually get tails. Here’s hoping the economy learns that lesson, and changes to better distribute risk. Following the lead of the internet marketing industry would be a good start.
photo credit: Steve Montgomery

Gab Goldenberg is an SEO professional. He wrote this on his own behalf and on behalf of PromotionalCodes.org.uk, a CPA site known for using voucher codes to drive incremental revenue to its advertising partners, such as Apple Computers.

Gab is on the agenda to speak at the next Search Marketing Expo, in Seattle.

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

After Taking 3500 Point Olympic Dive, Web Says: “Follow My Lead!”

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So if you happen to do a search on the word [Ferrari] you’re greeted with this SERP.

Having “undefined” or “tolks” as your description is IMHO less than optimal (ok I really think it says you lame and asleep at the wheel). Looking at the PPC copy, click enticing is probably not the way I’d describe it. Now of course when you are Ferrari and have a decades old brand with a strong offline presence you can overcome mistakes like this, when you are a web 2.0 startup not so much …

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Does Ferrari Need SEO and PPC Help

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Does Your website have a squeezy top? Is it designed and laid out with the ruthless goal of facilitating conversions, or is it series of compromises that barely accomplishes it’s true goal.

Find someone in your organization who isn’t part of the web development process, people in accounting, bookkeeping or HR usually make excellent test subjects. Put them down at a computer on your website, and ask them to purchase your most popular item or fill out your most used lead generation form. Can they get there from the home page? Does it take them more than 2 clicks? Are your lead generation forms cumbersome with dozens of questions or even worse multiple pages? How many pages is your checkout? Have you tried adding or subtracting one, do you know how it affects conversions?

More often than not websites end up not being designed to accomplish the main goal, such as facilitating transactions or gathering information for a sales follow up, but instead end up a compromises to appease the ego’s of corporate infrastructure. Case and point here’s an excellent article from Online Spin Marketers: Beware Of Blogging Simply For SEO. Want to make a comment on the article you’ve got to slog through a 3 step registration process … yeah good luck with that … way to discourage interaction with your readers.

This process of mucking things up is usually gradual, someone adds something here, some one else wants something over there, and eventually you end up with an unusable unmovable blob uselessness, kinda like a wide receiver or running back who’s fattened up during the off season eating nachos and cheese whiz. So spend some time and re-evaluate your core functions and looks for ways to streamline them, do it regularly, trim ruthlessly and keep only what you need to survive.

So where did the squeezy top reference in the post title come from? While I was on vacation last week we changed hotels mid week. One hotel had squeezy top shampoo bottles, the other had screw top. I’m sure the cost difference from one to the other is trivial on per bottle level but over a years worth of guests the screw cap shampoo bottle’s will probably result in some cost savings. However for the customers using them there’s a benefit to the squeezy top bottle’s. If you’re saving costs and inconveniencing your customers make sure it’s for something trivial, like washing your hair, and not for core functions like completing a transaction.

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Does Your Website Have a Squeezy Top

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Full admission I’m a pretty difficult person to buy a gift for, my tastes are somewhat bizarre eclectic and seemingly random to almost everyone. So when it comes time for relatives to buy me a gift I get a lot of gift cards. For my birthday earlier this summer I got a $50 gift card to Borders Books. This was a great gift I could go pick out a book, some music or a DVD.

I had my eye on a few things but was really looking for a boxed set of DVD’s on the American Revolutionary War or World War II (the fact that I want to buy history DVD but hated history in school says something about our education system but I digress). One that I had my eye on was “The Revolution” a 5 DVD series from the history channel

I could purchase the item from Amazon for $27.49. So knowing what I wanted and how much it should be I got in my car and drove the 20 minutes to the nearest Borders Book store and eventually found someone to open locked glass case (because treating your customers like criminals is always a good thing). However I was shocked to learn the exact same box set of DVD’s was $49.99. So not only had a wasted an hour of my time (20 minutes there 20 minutes back and 10 minutes finding a sales person) I was getting charged an additional $20 for it. I could just as easily have stayed home saved the time, aggravation, gas, mileage and $20. The only person who benefited in that part of the equation was the offline store. That is the exact type of treatment that makes me never want to set foot in a mall or other offline store again.

However the story doesn’t end there it gets a bit more interesting. Since I’m now video iPod equipped I also had the ability to purchase the exact same item through iTunes for even less I could get it on Amazon!

For arguments sake let’s assume I wasn’t using a preexisting gift card, but was paying with my credit card, would I choose to save even more money and get it from iTunes? The answer is unequivocally no. Assuming I had a method to watch iTunes purchases on my TV it’s still not the best choice. Call it what you want but iTunes method of copyright protection is just as restricting as DRM from major record labels. If I purchase through their system I’m locked into their format. If I buy the discs I can rip them into my iPod or any other device and watch them where/when and how I want. As a consumer I get to consume in the way that’s most convenient for me. When you free consumers from the burden of DRM, copy protection, locked phones, closed networks, incompatible data formats, or any other walled garden you are limiting them and yourselves. If you set them free they absolutely will consume it in ways you didn’t intend, expect or anticipate, but here’s the kicker they will consume more of it.

If you’re an online store you better think hard and be honest if you are providing a real value that can’t be beaten online. If you’re going to charge me more, and inconvenience me you might as well close up shop now and find something else to do, because I don’t think you’ll be around much longer. If you are providing goods or services online remove as much friction from he process as possible. Slippery service providers, who enable me to do what I want quickly and easily are the ones who are going to get my business.

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Why Offline Stores are Doomed and Letting Consumers Consume

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I’d like to announce a new sponsor here on my blog AvivaDirectory.com.

I wasn’t very familiar with the directory however they did send a nice bit of traffic my way in 2006 (Graywolf’s SEO Blog the Year in Review 2006 ). Aviva Directory comes from the same people who run the SevenSeek Directory. One of the more interesting aspects is in addition to a listing in your category once you’ve passed the review you also get a full page listing with more details about your website. So if you’re looking for another directory to list your site check them out.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Graywolf’s SEO Blog Sponsor – AvivaDirectory.com

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Part of the fun and danger of the blogosphere and things moving at the speed of the internet, is quite often things get misinterpreted. Many times I intentionally leave questions unanswered, hoping to generate a little buzz with speculation to fill in th gaps. In this case however I’m goingto do the opposite, I’m actually going to give you the inside scoop.

Timeline: April 22, 2005
I was checking out the new google search history feature in a cleverly titled post called Google Dashboard. However unbeknownst to almost everyone about 15 minutes earlier I registered the domain name GoogleDashboard.com. A sweet and catchy domain name to be sure. My head was filled with dreams of cyber-squatting riches. I figured in a few years someone at the ‘plex would decide they wanted it, and for my clevernes and 15 minutes of work I’d end up pocketing a few thousand dollars.

Timeline: November 25th 2005
I attended Las Vegas Pubcon Domain Name and Legal Issue’s Panel. I first became aquainted with the terms WIPO and UDRP. I also met Jeff Libert and Monte Chan. Who I’m sure don’t remember it but were nice enough to answer a few of my questions after the session.

Timeline: April 18, 2005
Boston Pubcon I attended the Affiliate Microsites and Niche Marketing which is actually a really dangerous session for creative people. Ted Ulle, Chris Ramondi, and Jeff Libert are three clever people. I registered three or four new keyword domain names that afternoon. Owning quite a few more names with tradmarks in them I mentioned this to Jeff later in conference and he did a really good job of planting the seed that I was looking for trouble.

Timeline: April 22, 2006
Despite registerfly having the most cumbersome, byzantine, unnecessarily overly complex domain renewal system I somehow managed to complete the domain renewal for GoogleDashboard.com. At this point I started to wonder what could I actually do with the domain. I knew that if I wanted to keep it I really should do something soon to show that it wasn’t a registration made in “bad faith”. I thought about making it a parody site, a tongue in cheek site poking fun at every “newsworthy” thing Google did. Sort of a GrayHatNews with stories fictionalized to the point of absurdity, so much that it was the search engine version of the Weekly World News. However I realized that with the rate Google does things, I would be starting another high maintenance project, not something I needed.

Timeline: August 2006
I received my first pending legal action threatening domain name email. After doing some research I realized my [brandname]-reviews.com website was squarely in the sights of a legal team with more firepower than I had so I quickly folded.

Timeline: September 2006
I received my second brand name domain pending legal action email. After examining the firepower on the other side I folded a second time.

Timeline: October 2006
My third brand name domain issue where I was again out matched. At this point I came to the conclusion that Jeff was indeed correct I was looking for trouble having trademarked names in my portfolio, and it was just a matter of time before someone actually wanted more than the domain. I shut off auto renewal on all of my trademarked domains.

Timeline: October 19, 2006
I still had the domain GoogleDashboard.com but wasn’t sure what to do with it. I emailed a few friends who came back with the exact same response to get rid of it ASAP. Now I could have just let it expire and fall into the drop however, that would be knowingly allowing someone else to pick up a domain I knew was trouble, and in my mind that would be professionally irresponsible. So I decided the best course would be to contact Matt and see if he could point me in the right direction on how to transfer it to Google. Just so we’re clear I volunteered to give the domain to Google of my own free will, without compensation monetary, or otherwise, now or at any other future date. There were no black SUV’s or helicopters outside my house, no big goons who said “hey fuhgetaboutit”, or no Armani wearing suits twisting my virtual arm to capitulate to their demands. The decision was mine and made specifically to decrease the likely hood I might experience any negative growth at a future date. After working out the details the domain transfer happend last week.

Timeline: October 28, 2006
ZDNet posted the following:

» GDrive domain transferred to Google

Another interesting transfer on Wednesday was GoogleDashboard.com — it was previously registered to someone in New York. The only thing I can imagine this domain representing is Google ramping up development for Apple’s Dashboard on OSX — they already have a few dashboard widgets, maybe we will see more soon?

I have emailed the author to give him the truth behind the transfer.

Moral of the Story
1) First don’t buy any trademarked domains, no really I mean it don’t!

2) The real value of going to conferences, engaging and networking with other people is so you have a support group who can help you when you need it. So if someone asks you for help it’s a good idea to create some good karma whenever possible.

3) Remember speculation is just that, speculation. It’s fun to let our imaginations run wild with ideas, but try to remember what’s real and what’s not and not let things get out of hand.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

GoogleDashboard.com the Truth Behind the Speculation

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After reading some comments from SES in San Jose it looked like Ask.com was looking for suggestions on ways to improve. I was working with Rand of SEOMoz.com trying to get other SEO bloggers to participate. While we didn’t get the level of participation I hoped for it still seemed worth while enough to go through.

• One of the things you’ll often hear me complain about with Google is there over-reliance on authority. IMHO Ask.com doesn’t place enough value on authority. For example looking at [lost tv show] I’m glad to see a fan site ranking that high, however I think the ABC site should be above it. The same thing is true for [big brother all stars] and [survivor cook islands], the result for [emmy awards] is more i line with what I expect to see.
• Looking at the above SERP’s you’ll notice there was an editorial listing at the very top of every page. However we’ve all been trained to thinking those top results are paid listings. If you’re not searching to buy a product or service, mentally you skip right over it and look for the organic results. I’d swap those listing down below the paid listings.
• Yahoo recently nixed blog listings on their news SERP’s. The main reason they gave was spam, this leaves vacuum to be filled. Why not implement the feature, but use number of subscribers to a blog as an authority filter.
• Go deep, looking at some big sites who should be well crawled I don’t see numbers I expect for example [go.disney.com] only has 27,000 results Google thinks [go.disney.com] has almost 3 times as many pages. Look at [apple.com] only 60,000 pages compared to Google’s 1.7 million [apple.com] pages.
• Lastly a big part of Google’s success was the grass roots movement. Go out of your way to court the tech set and the bloggers, they are the sneezers who can help you grow the most. People may see your commercials and they may try your search engine, but chances are they will ask their “computer friend” what she or he thinks of ask.com first, and most of them aren’t recommending you, at that point it’s game over.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Suggestions for Ask.com

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I’ve had to cancel my trip to SES San Jose. Nothing bad, I just have some business development stuff going on locally that is time sensitive and if I let the momentum break will fall apart.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

SES San Jose

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There’s been quite a bit of noise in the SEM space about some of the recent changes made by the Google Adwords Quality Score. I thought it might be interesting to take a more in depth look at some of my site statistics.

The following data is from one domain that was running three different adwords campaigns. The domain has existed since late 2003, and has been running adwords since early 2004. About 90% of this site’s traffic came from the adwords program. Here is a shot of the traffic for July 2006. The black bar is July 11th the date of the quality score change, the red line is July 15th when I pulled the plug on the campaigns.

The graph shows that trying to stay within my budget I was getting less clicks and less traffic (duh!). When I changed my landing page there was minimal increase in average time on site and number of pages viewed. My original landing page had a zen-like brevity to it,consisting of the following elements a top graphical banner, a product description, a product image, and a “buy button”. The page was an island with no way in or out to other parts of the site. After speaking with some Adwords reps on the phone it was suggested I “improve the user experience” some suggestions were add alternative navigation, add more information and customer testimonials. So I took the main website template and set the landing page inside of it. I lengthened the product description, and added some reviews. After calling and requesting a re-review nothing changed. I called again and was given little or no help. Here’s a look at average CPC and profit for the same time period The blue line represents the division between profit and loss:

So what happened? Well I increased my bid, my thinking was with less competition I might get more conversions and afford to be able to pay more (Although tripling the price overnight is clearly excessive). In an effort to regain my lower price I made some changes to increase the “user experience” the customers now started meandering all over the site without purpose, they lost the plot. To make an analogy I paid triple price for my farm animals and threw open the fence and let them wander off into the sunset. Gee thanks Google, I have to say improving the user experience pretty much sucked!

I have yet to hear of anyone who requested a re-review have their prices lowered and adjusted down. So stop hoping for a miracle and stop the hemorrhaging. Move on and try something different, you may learn something if you don’t think like an engineer …

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Profits Murdered By Google Adwords

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