The Yahoo! Search Blog announced a new “open approach to search,” that looks somewhat similar to the recommendations I gave Yahoo! for “improving” their company in January – except I called it making search more exclusive. It looks like me and Yahoo! might have different opinions about the meaning of “open.”
The blog doesn’t [...]
Monthly Archives: February 2008
Yahoo! Open Search: Closed is the New Open
February 27, 2008 – 12:40 pm
Yes We Can Twitter: Barack Obama Supporters Use Social Media to Show Their Support
February 22, 2008 – 10:51 pm
Last night, I watched the Democratic debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Like thousands of other Americans, I felt compelled to twitter this action. Twitter is a free online social media site that allows members to post short updates, or tweets, to their online profile and to others who have signed up to see [...]
Influencing Users with the Campaign Contribution Form
February 22, 2008 – 3:11 pm
Radio buttons, by their very nature, have only one option selected at a time. For the sake of consistency, it is important to have a default option when presenting the user with radio buttons. The current four candidates for U.S. president all have contribution pages on their websites that let users choose a contribution amount [...]
Improve your conversion rate - with one click!*
February 20, 2008 – 1:12 pm
*If you’re opted into Google’s content network, that is.
The Content Network is a pretty good product, but it’s challenging to understand and use. As a result, it’s a source of major waste for PPC beginners. Almost without exception its clickthrough rates and conversion rates are uniformly lower than the Search Network. For most advertisers, the [...]
5 Must Have SEO Plugins for WordPress
February 19, 2008 – 3:41 pm
When I first started building sites in WordPress a year ago I was disappointed in the quality of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugins available. During that time I put several plugins to the test, and here are the five I use exclusively to optimize my WordPress sites. Remember website optimization still takes that personal [...]
Getting to know our clients - Arbor Teas awakens Pure Visibility’s inner tea party
February 14, 2008 – 3:15 pm
The gang at Pure Visibility enjoy a Tea Party courtesy of Arbor Teas
We love our clients. We are passionate about helping our clients grow, and in the process of learning how best to help them, we often become almost as passionate as our clients are about their own products. We’re particularly passionate, might I say, [...]
The Modern Command Line Interface
February 14, 2008 – 1:12 pm
Command line interfaces are the wave of the future.
Aza Raskin does this subject justice in the latest issue of Interactions (January+February 2008), envisioning a linguistic command line that figures out what you want rather than requiring a structured syntax.
Still, I find myself typing all the time rather than using the mouse. When I starting using [...]
Observations about keyword rich anchor text and Google rankings
February 13, 2008 – 3:26 pm
Back links are of serious importance for getting good Google rankings. They establish site authority and boost your site’s perceived importance to particular search engine queries. I’ve seen sites that weren’t at all targeting competitive keyphrases in their page copy, but were able to rank for them by virtue of keyword rich text [...]
Search engines improving rankings for general queries
February 10, 2008 – 3:03 pm
One difference between natural search engine listings and paid search listings is the use of IP addresses for locating users to determine what paid listings might show. To understand what I mean here are Google search results for the term “orthodontists.” Click on the thumbnail to get a larger image:
I live in [...]
Professional skeptics test everything - a culture of $5 Canadian bets
February 7, 2008 – 5:45 pm
At Pure Visibility, we have a culture of $5 Canadian bets. Our $5 Canadian bets mean that we find ways to test our own assertions and those of our team-mates. In the word of search marketing, testing is important. The landscape changes, the strategies evolve, and what worked in the past may no longer hold. [...]
