April 30, 2004
Google Crawls Flash?
The rumor of the day is that Google has started crawling Flash objects. People with flash objects in their websites have been reporting this week that text existing only in the flash part of the website is being 'found' on the Google SERPs.
If the rumors are indeed proven correct then this is the most important revolution in search engines for a long time. This wil give authors the opportunity to bring back flash into their websites as most people were too frightened to include any flash at this stage.
On the other hand search engine optimizers (amateaur or professional) will have to learn the ways that flash files are indexed and use it for their websites.
For more information, watch this space...
April 29, 2004
A Search Engine Comparison
You can find a very interesting tool (I should say toy) in http://ranking.thumbshots.com/
Apart from giving you a quite pretty graphical represantation of the comparison between the results of the search engines it provides some very interesting statistics concerning the overlapping and unique links.
The results show small percentages of overlap between the search engines - fact that is actually not unexpected. The differences in the first 100 links in the search engine results pages are both due to the different algorithm used by search engines (and the fact that most pages have been optimized only for the Google algorithm) and the size/type of the database between search engines.
April 28, 2004
Business Innovation
This is an excellent article on Business Innovation by Dave Pollard. The following is a summary list of the ideas mentioned:
1. Listen broadly for ideas.
2. Listen to "pathfinder" customers, competitors, and colleagues.
3. Listen to the front lines.
4. Understand who your actual and potential customers are.
5. Understand and respect what end-consumers want and need.
6. Understand what immediate customer will need.
7. Understand why these wants and needs aren't already met.
8. Organize those with a stake in solving the problem.
9. Organize the program for solving the problem.
10. Organize the resources needed to solve the problem.
11. Create an environment an capability for innovation.
12. Create lots of alternative solutions.
13. Exeriment: Try many things, learn fast from failures, tinker, iterate, combine, transfer.
14. Listen to potential customers and help them imagine.
15. Listen to acceptance criteria -- the "if"s.
16. Listen to "what could go wrong."
17. Design: Consider customer-valued attributes, cost, intuitive ease of use, ease of change, ease of enhancement.
18. Make the final go/no-go decision, then implement.
This is exactly how your software design should be like. Dont look for ready made solutions. Look for the new way of dealing with your product and customers.
April 27, 2004
Submitting your software and web site.
One of the key initial points in setting up your software business is arranging your submissions. You want people to be able to find your website through the various search engines and to find your software through the many download sites. Chosing what to do about your submissions is actually not the easiest decision. There are various options to this that include submitting to the millions of search engines and to the millions of download websites. In shareware-marketing.net we have very strong opinions on this, which we apply in our shareware marketing projects - and we modify only in case of request from our customers.
Submitting to search engines.
Concerning the search engine submissions of your website it is important to remember that You do not really need to submit to ANY search engine. Search engine crawling and indexing is a pretty much automatic process and it is done simply by establishing strong (and many) backward links to your website. Submitting to the millions of search engines has really no effect at all. In our projects we do submissions just to the major search engines (like Google, the all Important Inktomi and others), we make sure that strong backward links exists and we assure you: All the other search engines will follow fast.
Submitting to download sites
On the other hand we believe that your software should be placed in all download sites, even the small ones. There are three things to be gained from this which, we believe are worth the time it takes to do all those submissions i) Your software will be available in all those sites so it will be accessible to even the most obscure possible buyer ii) All those presences of your software can open up reseller / hub points which can boost your sales through various reselling channels and iii) You can get many backward links to your website through all the websites that include your software which will make your website indexed fast and frequently by search engines and will help the overall visibility of your website at the initial stages of your software.
April 23, 2004
Massive Growth in Search Engine Advertising
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have released the Internet Ad Revenue Report including final figures for Q3, Q4 and full-year 2003. The overall industry revenues rose nearly twenty-one percent, ending 2003 at just under $7.3 billion. In February 2004, the IAB announced that the estimate for revenue in Q4 2003 was a record-setting $2.2 billion and the full-year 2003 was estimated at $7.2 billion.
Internet ad revenues broken down by ad formats for 2003 full year revenue are:
| 2002 | 2003 | |
| Display Ads (Banners) | 29% | 21% |
| Sponsorship | 18% | 10% |
| Classified | 15% | 17% |
| Slotting Fees | 8% | 3% |
| Keyword Search | 15% | 35% |
| Interstitial | 5% | 2% |
| 4% | 3% | |
| Rich Media | 5% | 8% |
| Referrals | 1% | 1% |
The 35% growth in Keyword Search is definitely worth noticing. It is an immediate result of all the advancements in the market segment (including Contextual advertising).
http://www.shareware-marketing.net
April 22, 2004
Blogger and Gmail
The news is that if you are an active Blogger user there is a chance that you will be one of the selected few to join the Gmail beta team. You may want to try this if you have a Blogger account.
As we had a Blogger account in the past I can confirm that this is true. I just got my Gmail invitation so I hope I will be able to review it here for you.
April 21, 2004
Bull Market 2004
The good news of the days is that shareware-marketing.net has received the honor of being one of teh very few companies that can carry the 'purple bull' seal:
This is a mark of excellence based on the Seth Godin book 'Purple Cow', and has been given to companies that are here to make a difference to their customers.
We are very proud of this distinction and we plan to continue to make an impact in our customers lives. We can make a difference for you.
April 16, 2004
Yahoo! with a sense of humor
For the first time in a long time Yahoo! tries to show us a sense of humor. Simply search for 'What is my destiny?' and you will get a result similar to this:
This comes a few days after the Onion article on Soul Searching through Yahoo!.
April 14, 2004
Page 23
This Meme from Franck Patrick's Focused Performance
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chminey-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
From the 5th sentence of page 23 of T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems
Here is what the meme suggest you do
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open the book to page 23.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
At least the closest book wasn't something embarassing...
The End of Directories...
The recent changes in Google included a rather important change that was barely mentioned: the exile of the Open directory results in the deeper pages of Google. The open directory is not part of the google first page, its categories are not listed any more in the Search Engine Results Pages and pretty soon I am willing to bet that it will dissapear from the Google toolbar as well.
Google is slowly removing all the weight it had placed on the open directory and according to spokespeople from Google this was a result of the fact that people were not really using the Open Category much anymore.
This is certainly a sign of the times. Directories are relics in the history of the internet that are hardly used these days (when was the last time you searched a directory for results?). Their fate is more or less obvious at the moment and unfortunately Google is simply adding another nail on their coffin. At the moment their only real use is the link popularity that they offer at 'reduced price'.
Actually, software / shareware download sites are nothing but specialized directories as well, so does the same apply for their future? Quite possibly. At the moment search engines are rather monolithic in their searches, but a 'future Google' that would offer themes and personalization may eventually eliminate those - and other special - directories as well.
Google sets a very interesting trend with this.
April 13, 2004
Adwords Record pay-per-click
For those wondering which is the highest click value in adwords it is for the search 'Mesothelioma' a rare case of cancer caused by Asbestos. Lawyer companies pay up to $90 per click for this... (I am sure I saw a couple of companies trying to benefit from Adsense clicks on this...).
April 08, 2004
Google Updates PageRank Values
Google has just updated the PageRank values of the websites along with the realted backward links which are registered in its database. This usually does not have immediate effects on the ranking pages but it is a good idea to keep a very close look of your software sites as you may experience changes over the next couple of weeks.
April 07, 2004
Yahoo! paid Inclusion. Safe or not?
A recent announcement from Yahoo! warns website business that if the chose to follow SiteMatch - the Yahoo! paid inclusion program - they better be careful on what they are submitting! As each of the pages that are submitted in SmartView are screened by humans, there are far more chances that a site will be banned from Yahoo! due to spamming, cloaking or any other 'non-organic' technique.
Google, at the same time, has promised us that the next Google update will be very strong on ban filters and we are soon going to witness many websites being dropped due to illegal techniques in search engine optimization. It is not enough to mention for your software website that only 'legal' and 'organic' search engine optimization should be used in order to achieve your rankings. If you do not know how to do it yourself, ask an expert, but only an expert you can trust.
Software marketing and promotions
April 06, 2004
Hello Fellow Bloggers!
I got a greaty sense of accomplishment yesterday as I happened to check a few of the blogs I have in my RSS reader feed and I noticed that the shareware-marleting.net weblog is at their blogroll. It is great to feel that people with common interests and ideas are interested to hear what you say. A word of thanks to all of you 'out there'. As we are changing our setup at this stage we will be offering many more services (and ideas) through these pages.
Stay tuned.
April 05, 2004
Web(Trends) Position Gold
NetIQ the company behind the succeful web analytics software Webtrends has announced that they have come into agreement to acquire WebPosition Gold (and FirstPlace Software) the famous page analysis and search engine optimization software.
NetIQ is targeting itself into becoming a leader in 'search engine analytics' and provide information both on the visitors of websites and the way they are acquired through search engines. The integrated approach that they will follow from now on wil llead to a new generation of integrated products.
In my opinion WebPosition Gold is definitely an overrated product and there is a lot more to search engine optimization than simply following recipes and 'counting numbers'. However, NetIQ is doing the right thing in this acquisition since this integration is the natural way forward. I am very curious to see the offspring of this marriage.
April 04, 2004
Google launches Gmail
The problems we had with our blogging tool left us a bit behind with developments. It is probably old news to everybody that Google has decided to attack Yahoo! (and MSN) head on by launching a revolutionary mail service that is bound to stir the mail waters a bit.
Gmail is - allegedly - already under beta testing and will bring a free 1GB mail account to all subscribers. The mechanism behind gmail will be the google engine so that users can search for their mails and retrieve the whole list of mails associated with each one. Google believes that this is a change of mind in web mail status. For the first time users will never need to delete their mails but will use the powerful Google engine to manipulate them and find exactly what they are looking for. Nice going for a free service...
Of course there is no such thing as a free lunch. Users will have to sacrifice a bit of their privacy in the gods of Google, since the mails will be 'scanned' by the Google contextual advertsing robot (Adsense) and 'related' contextual ads will be served next to the account. There have been quite a few voices of concern raised about this 'scanning' and about how far this will go - now and in the future - but in spite of the Google re-assurances it is a rather frightening issue which we will need to keep our eyes open for.
Of course the implications for marketers is that the contextual ads impressions will start exponentially increasing with the launch of the service. Naturally this will also mean an increase in the clicks and the marketing expenses for the Adsense campaigns. Whether this will mean an increase in ROI is something that marketers will need to study for their campaigns.
April 02, 2004
Friday comment. On thinking
Lets be a bit different this Friday and talk in general about thinking. From an article on Darwin magazine by John Baldoni (On the value of thinking) I copy the following:
We live in a culture with a strong bias for action. This is good; it is what has propelled American enterprise as the engine of global commerce. But in the process, it has chewed up good ideas and good people. While ideas are not in short supply, thinking them through is not valued enough. Too often we jump the gun with half-baked ideas, not because we are half-baked but because our management system rewards us for doing, not thinking.
Our work culture is so much based on mindless action that it is good to remember that if you ran your business in the Taylorian spirit of 'managers think workers act' you are soon going to hit a wall of stagnation.
How do you run your software business?
First Post, new blog
Unfortunately we have to start posting from the beginning as we suffered some serious problems with Radio Userland, our previous publishing tool. We have had great experience with Movable Type before and we hope we will stay with it for ever.
An apology to all our readers about the inconvenience.