The Momentum (J1.5/1.7) template has been updated to version 1.1 which fixes an error with rokgallery during the Gantry feature's check.

Momentum, the October 2011 template release, combines an intricate graphical design with the intuitive dynamics of RokGallery or RokStories, providing for a full scale background image, rotatable and configurable via the module, RokGallery and Gantry administrative interfaces. RokGallery is elegantly styled and featured, in addition to several other popular RocketTheme Extensions such as RokTabs and RokNewsPager. Additionally, the standard selection of features, such as the Gantry Framework and mobile support are also present.

The Radiance (J1.5/1.7) template has been updated to version 1.1 which fixes an error with menu separate alignment.

Radiance, the September 2011 template release, features an advanced Color Chooser setup, supporting a Background Picker, allowing you to load a background image from RokGallery or the Joomla Media Manager with ease, alongside the standard array of color options. The template's stylistic versatility rests on a foundation of other features, with integrated styling for RokTabs, RokGallery, amongst other RocketTheme extensions, as well as the Gantry Framework, iPhone/Android support and more.

The Crystalline template is now available for Joomla 1.7.x

The MixxMag (J1.5) template has been updated to version 1.5.6 which fixes an error in the com_content overrides..

The Reflex template has been updated to version 1.5.2 / 1.6.2 which fixes some minor cosmetic bugs in the template and some major bugs in RokGallery, plus errors in com_content and the custom typography. It is strongly advised that you update at least RokGallery from the extensions bundles in the download

Modulus, the June 2011 Joomla Template release, has been updated with a RocketLauncher for Joomla! 1.7.x.

Reflex, the July 2011 Joomla Template release, has been updated with a RocketLauncher for Joomla! 1.7.x.

The Camber Joomla 1.7 template have been updated to version 1.1 with fixes for RokGallery, RokAjaxSearch and for the frontpage/component template parameter. A RocketLauncher is now also available.

RokGallery has been updated to version 2.1 for both J! 1.5 and 1.7. This update addresses some minor issues.

RokNewsPager for Joomla! 1.7 has been updated to version 1.3.

RokGallery has been updated to version 2.0 for both J! 1.5 and 1.7. This is a major version update with some key new features as well as some important bug fixes. New features include manual and random ordering, content plugin for adding RokGallery images into articles, Slice Navigation, Slice linking to Joomla articles, and much much more.

RokBox has been updated to version 2.8 (Joomla! 1.5) and version 1.2 (Joomla! 1.7) which adds a rokbox.refresh() functionality to refresh and reparse RokBox media after an Ajax call completes.

RokNavMenu has been released at version 3.2 for Joomla! 1.5 and 1.6 for Joomla! 1.7

RokTabs has been updated to version 1.5.

RokNewsPager for Joomla! 1.7 has been updated to version 1.2.

RokGallery has been updated to version 1.4 for both J! 1.5 and 1.7. This version fixes some key issues with Joomla 1.7 and some problems reported in the forums.

RokGallery has been updated to version 1.3 for both J! 1.5 and 1.7. This version fixes some key issues with Joomla 1.7 and some problems reported in the forums.

RokGallery has been updated to version 1.2 for both J! 1.5 and 1.6. This version fixes some issues.

Radiance, the October 2011 phpBB3 club release, features an advanced Color Chooser setup, supporting a Background option, allowing you to specif your own background image, alongside the standard array of color options. The style's stylistic versatility rests on a foundation of other features, with integrated styling for RokTabs, as well as the RokBB3, different forum layouts and more.

Camber, the September 2011 phpBB3 club release, features Color Chooser stylistic controls, allowing you to easily and swiftly modify the color scheme of the style in just a few steps. Select from an assortment of 15 presets with varying colors, overlays and patterns. The template includes the latest version of the RokBB3 administration module, which provides such features as customizing extensions options, Google Web Fonts, Loading Transition and others.

All of the RocketTheme phpBB styles have been updated to the latest phpBB 3.0.9 release and are now available in their respective style download sections.

Reflex, the August 2011 phpBB3 club release, concentrates on elegance of design and styled extensions. The visuals are subtle, making the appearance suitable for many different types of forums, as well as providing a base for extensive changes. The template includes the latest version of the RokBB3 administration module, which provides such features as customizing extensions options, Google Web Fonts, Loading Transition and others.

The Nebulae phpbb3 style has been updated with some important bug fixes.

Modulus, the July 2011 phpbb3 club release, features ease of stylistic choice at its core, with the Color Chooser —an intuitive interface inside the template manager— that facilitates the swift customization of the template style. An impressive array of features in conjunction with the standard and advanced controls provided by the RokBB3, creates a perfectly designed template to develop a beautiful online presence.

Nebulae, the June 2011 phpbb3 club release, combines visual sophistication with functionality and power. The style offers a range of unique and stunning variations, with distinct colour schemes complimenting their detailed and beautiful background counterparts. 

The theme supports integrated styling for numerous phpbb3 sections, adapting to whichever style variation or module suffix you seek to use. The RokBB3 forms the core of the template with the standard and advanced features that accompany it.

The Vertigo phpbb3 style has been updated with some important bug fixes.

Entropy, the May 2011 phpBB3 club release, is a truly artistic piece, segregating its layout into distinctly designed panes, that are independently styled and configurable. The separated nature of Entropy allows for a visually enticing appearance, as well as catering for a more conservative look, simply by unpublishing or moving module positions. Standard RokBB3 features apply, such as the user friendly administrator interface, perfect for swift and extensive customization.

The Tachyon phpbb3 style has been updated with some minor bug fixes.

I'm happy to inform that all of the directory-naming issues are now resolved, and that it's again safe to use the WordPress updater to update your version of the Gantry Plugin. From now on every time we release the new version of the Gantry plugin, it will be added to the WordPress.org plugins directory so everyone can easily stay up-to-date. In order to make the update process easier we've decided to place the Gantry plugin in the WordPress plugins directory, so everybody can easily update it like any other plugin. Unfortunately it didn't go as well as we expected. Because of the naming mistake WordPress isn't replacing the files in the old plugin directory but creates a new one. We're working on fixing that ASAP so everybody can safely and easily update their Gantry. Please DON'T update the gantry framework via the WordPress updater until the naming issue has been resolved. If you already updated your plugin, the solution is to FTP to the wp-content/plugins/ directory and change the directory's name from 'gantry-template-framework' to 'gantry', go back to the Plugins menu in the admin and reactivate the Gantry framework or remove it completely and install the version from the http://gantry-framework.org or the one found in your theme download directory. I'm very sorry about that and hope that we'll be able the sort this out really quickly. Jakub {rokintensedebate}

Since the launch of RokGallery we had an incredible amount of features requests. Although we couldn't satisfy all of them, we are very happy to announce RokGallery 2.0 which includes many new features as well as bug fixes.

We have received a lot of inquiries about the status of our Drupal themes and Drupal 7. I posted an update last month on the status of our themes for Drupal 7 and stated that we would begin releasing Drupal 7 themes in August. Well I am happy to announce our first Drupal 7 theme - Crystalline.

I wanted to give everyone an update on our progress in converting our themes to Drupal 7. As stated in some of the threads in the forums, this is not a trivial task. Drupal lists 62 core things that need to be updated when converting from a D6 theme to a D7 theme. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our themes.

Although the plan was to release on July 5th, we are going to push back the release of our July Joomla Template and our new extension, RokGallery, to Thursday July 7th. This delay is because there are just too many features and functionality we feel must be in the initial release. We want to get at least IE9 support for the administrator, some minimum requirements checking, translation strings sorted, some polish on the jobs manager, and an assortment of critical bugs. We have updated all Joomla and Joomla Developer memberships and extended them again so anyone that was expiring near the 1st has been given another full week of membership. We apologize for the delay but we just don't want to ship a ground breaking extension such as RokGallery that is not up to our high standards of execution. We appreciate your patience and understanding. If you have not heard of RokGallery yet, you can read more about it In our "Intro to RokGallery" blog post

For the past few months we’ve been hard at work on a radical new gallery extension that will be debuted next month for Joomla 1.5 and 1.6. RokGallery is a ground-up revolutionary extension that will over time grow to be hugely flexible and customizable.

We have been internally discussing the possibility of hosting a RocketTheme User/Developer Conference. The idea is that we would organize and host a 1 or 2 day conference in a that we could use to cover a variety of topics. To start with we will probably focus on Joomla as it's the most popular CMS among our members. Topics we are bouncing around include: Customizing Existing Club Template - How to take an existing design and modify it completely for your clients Design-to-Template - Workshop on how to take a custom design to finished Joomla template (multiple part full day workshop covering all aspects of the process) Cross-Browser Testing and Gotchas - How to debug and fix browser bugs and issues Gantry Framework Tutorial - The ins-and-outs of the Gantry Framework including how to implement and extend it RocketTheme Extensions - How to use, modify, and implement a wide-variety of functionality with our array of extensions MooTools Development - Core concepts, differences compared to other JS frameworks, developing cool mootools based scripts, how to upgrade scripts from version 1.11 to 1.3 Advanced Q&A - Ask the team anything! If you have any ideas for a session that would be beneficial to a large portion of users, please reply to this thread with your concepts. What we are interested in is how many people would be interested in attending a conference like this? We are not certain on any exact details (location, price, schedule) at this point, but if we get a decent amount of interest we may proceed with planning and development of this idea. If this idea is successful and popular, we could have multiple of similar events in a variety of locations. Please provide us your best 'honest' answer to if you would be likely to attend an event. Please answer without regard to location at this point. We're trying to gauge the validity of the 'idea' not specifically an event in a certain locale. Voting is open to all past and current club members on our forum, so please vote now! Cheers! {rokintensedebate} {rokstyle} .rt-blog-listing ul li strong {color:#333;} {/rokstyle}

I've spent the last couple of evenings reading over the latest Magento books from Packt Publishing - namely their Magento 1.4 Development Cookbook and their Magento 1.4 Themes Design - which they kindly sent me review copies of after discovering RocketTheme "while searching for professionals with Magento development experience". Considering I've spent the best part of the last 2 years working exclusively with Magento - both developing extensions and constructing themes - I guess I'm pretty well versed in the ways of Magento, but as Magento is such a large system, I figured I'd likely learn something new, so I took them up on their offer. So, in case anyone is considering purchasing some Magento study guides, I'm going to give you a quick review of each book. First up, it's the "Development Cookbook".

Over the past two months we've been diligently working on the process of converting our Joomla 1.5 framework, extensions, and templates to Joomla 1.6. As we've explained in previous blog posts, this is not a trivial task and on top of our existing heavy development workload, this has taken more time than we had originally anticipated. However, we are now making great progress, and the last few major hurdles have been tackled. Today we released 9 Joomla 1.6 extensions, and we have at least 8 more that are very close to being packaged and released also.

We are pleased to announce the release our first beta of the Gantry Framework for Joomla 1.6. This was a major update and large portions of the admin were re-written to be more usable and also to better integrate with the Joomla 1.6 API. Please download and test this version with your Joomla 1.6 installations and let us know any issues or bugs that you find. You can participate in conversations with the developers via our new Google Groups-based mailing lists.

The Momentum (J1.5/1.7) template has been updated to version 1.1 which fixes an error with rokgallery during the Gantry feature's check.

Momentum, the October 2011 template release, combines an intricate graphical design with the intuitive dynamics of RokGallery or RokStories, providing for a full scale background image, rotatable and configurable via the module, RokGallery and Gantry administrative interfaces. RokGallery is elegantly styled and featured, in addition to several other popular RocketTheme Extensions such as RokTabs and RokNewsPager. Additionally, the standard selection of features, such as the Gantry Framework and mobile support are also present.

RokGallery has been updated to version 2.1 for both J! 1.5 and 1.7. This update addresses some minor issues.

RokNewsPager for Joomla! 1.7 has been updated to version 1.3.

Somaxiom, the September 2011 Club release, concentrates on elegance of design. The visuals are refined and conservative, making the appearance suitable for many different types of sites, as well as providing a base for extensive customization. A Drupal 7 version will be made available soon.

We're pleased to announce that the Moxy template for Magento has now been updated to 1.6. Please see the Moxy downloads page for a full changelog.

We're pleased to announce that the Kinetic template for Magento has now been updated to 1.6. Please see the Kinetic downloads page for a full changelog.

I'm happy to inform that all of the directory-naming issues are now resolved, and that it's again safe to use the WordPress updater to update your version of the Gantry Plugin. From now on every time we release the new version of the Gantry plugin, it will be added to the WordPress.org plugins directory so everyone can easily stay up-to-date. In order to make the update process easier we've decided to place the Gantry plugin in the WordPress plugins directory, so everybody can easily update it like any other plugin. Unfortunately it didn't go as well as we expected. Because of the naming mistake WordPress isn't replacing the files in the old plugin directory but creates a new one. We're working on fixing that ASAP so everybody can safely and easily update their Gantry. Please DON'T update the gantry framework via the WordPress updater until the naming issue has been resolved. If you already updated your plugin, the solution is to FTP to the wp-content/plugins/ directory and change the directory's name from 'gantry-template-framework' to 'gantry', go back to the Plugins menu in the admin and reactivate the Gantry framework or remove it completely and install the version from the http://gantry-framework.org or the one found in your theme download directory. I'm very sorry about that and hope that we'll be able the sort this out really quickly. Jakub

Mercado, the September 2011 release, is the epitome of elegant eCommerce integration, sporting the ecwid shopping solutions; in addition to its refined visuals, style and structure. The theme has a unique design with a dedicated sidepanel, with more prominent styling, perfect to act as a focal point. Built on the Gantry Framework, Mercado features a whole range of controls over its layout and design elements, allowing for easy use and swift modification.

We're pleased to announce that the Quasar template for Magento has now been updated to 1.6. Please see the Quasar downloads page for a full changelog.

The User Article Manager (UAM) gives users the ability to create, edit and publish items from a list of articles displayed in the front end of a Joomla! Installation. The project has been forked from the popular Frontend User Article List (FUAL) extension written for Joomla! 1.5 by Felipe Quinto Busanello (the details of which can be found at http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/news-production/content-submission/8656. ------------------------------------------------ Release v0.06 is now available. The following functionality has been added: Auto-populates options on install - UAM now runs 'out of the box' Users can now optionally 'feature' articles - newly featured articles are placed at the beginning of the featured list Users can now optionally 'trash' articles Optionally show article content in a tooltip - hover over the article title to display content Release v0.05 - same functionality as FUAL v2.0b ------------------------------------------------ Briefly: in Joomla! 1.5 Authors were able to create and edit their own articles (in any category); Editors could, in addition, edit articles created by other users; and, finally, Publishers were the only users who could publish or unpublish articles. From version 1.6, article categories can grant a mixture of ‘Edit Own’, ‘Edit’ or ‘Edit State’ permissions to the defined user groups. A user may have ‘Edit Own’ permissions for some categories and full ‘Edit’ permissions for others. ‘Edit State’ can be distributed to yet a third combination of user groups and categories. The full range is decided by the site administrator when setting up categories and user groups; readers should refer to the Joomla! documentation for the full details. The UAM aims, for any given user, to collect the editable articles and present them in a straight-forward list. The list can be filtered by category, author, published status and title. The user can edit, copy, publish/unpublish and trash articles depending on the backend permissions and configuration options.

The first you need press on the button name is "insert Gallery" then adjust the plugin just select a folder image then its automatic created a syntax e.g. {jvgallery folder="images" theme="1" height="100" width="120" cols="0"}image.png="title|desc" {/jvgallery}. Thank you to "Slimbox" (developed by Christophe Beyls). Chang log: v1.6.1 Fixed a small bug!

With this extension you can do a fully working implementation of Servired/Sermepa ('la Caixa - CaixaBank') payment gateway system 'virtual POS' (TPV Virtual in spanish) with VirtueMart electronic store Joomla! component. Sermepa is a very common POS in Spain and its used by several banks. It takes 15 minutes do the right installation. The archive vm_tpv_lacaixa-1.0.0.zip contains the files that need to be uploaded, and screenshot guide of the installation in english, spanish, catalan and galician. We include in the package several PDF documents with detailed installation instruction (see 'installation_en.pdf', for instance). This is an excerpt: 1. Upload by FTP (or another similar method if you prefer) the files according to the detailed PDF installation instructions: 2. Modify the language archive/s. 3. Create the new method of payment in the VirtueMart. 4. Configure it with your POS data. 5. Insert the POS secret key. 6. Copy the contents of the tpv.txt file and paste it in the textarea 'Payment Extra Info:' of the new payment method created. 7. Save the configuration and we will have yet available the new payment method (make sure it is activated so that will be appear in the front-end of the on-line shop in the payment methods list). 8. Finished this process the buyers of your virtual shop will be able to pay his orders through the virtual POS with their credit cards. Languages: English, Spanish, German, Catalan and Galician. Please do not use the reviews to post support issues. Use our forum for that. Thanks.

JUNewsUltra is multifunctional module for display your article in your site. In one module, a greater functionality, which replaces a number of modules. The module has the ability to create different patterns (templates), thus you can change the type of modules as you like and use the module on the news portals, on the portfolio or personal site. Note: Please translate language file into your language and send to denys [at] joomla-ua.org Thanks!

Ohanah app is a Joomla extension to easily create and manage events online. Ohanah is fully compatible with Joomla 1.5, 1.6 and Joomla 1.7. And allow you to quickly manage multiple categories, venues and locations of your event. With ohanah you can manage unconferences, sport and adventure events, business conference & meeting, live music events and personal events. Easy to use: Event creation and event management has never been so easy. NEW: Ohanah is now Joomla 1.7 Ready! NEW: Frontend Event submission, editing and moderation. Allow your users to submit events directly from the frontpage of your site. You can enable moderation so that events need to be approved upon submitting or new modifications. Administrator will receive an email notification about new events or updated ones. Two new views can be created in the frontend: add new event & my event to keep track of your submitted events and quickly edit them. Beautiful: Save precious time by blending out of the box with most templates, adapting automatically to your existing design and layout without having to deal with css or html overrides. Multilingual: Ohanah is Available in 23 languages: en-EN nl-NL fr-FR de-DE it-IT pt-BR pt-PT es-ES sv-SE af-ZA ar-SA bs-BA et-EE el-GR fi-FI hu-HU nb-NO sl-SL tr-TR bs-BA ru-RU, uk-UA and iv-LV Social: Events are social gatherings! Engage with attendees, by sharing and commenting stories about your events, thanks to the ohanah built-in social commenting system. Geolocated: Don’t get lost! Easily map your events in less than a click. No long forms to fill ohanah does it for you. Modular and Flexible: Modules displaying: Qwiki, Attendees, Trip Advisor, Wikipedia, Panoramio, Venue Map, All events Map, Flyer, Upcoming Events, Past Events, Live Now Events, and take advantage of the many views you can generate to display your events: from calendar to category view, from single event to events shown by venue, and much more Integrated APIs: Communicate with attendees through Mailchimp integration, create communities around your events using CB and JS. Ohanah is builded upon Nooku Framework, flexible, secure, fully compatible with Joomla 1.5, Joomla 1.6 and Nooku Server. UPDATE 4.10.2011 - V1.0.16 Just released http://app.ohanah.com/release-notes

JMS Multisites extend joomla with Multi Sites and user sharing. This allows multiple domain names or sites to have their own joomla configuration file using the same joomla installation. Possibility to share the users, and extensions like VirtueMart, Community Builder, JomSocial, ... With this new feature you can share the joomla files and folders to create totally independent web sites. This simply the maintenance of Joomla as you have only one instance to update for all the websites. With JMS you can both create website from the back-end and from the front-end. You can use website as template to create new slave site. When you decide to propose the creation of websites from the front-end, you can add a plugin to create a bridge with your own system to process the payment or whatever else. As each website has its own joomla configuration. You can decide to use: - One database for all the websites. In this case, you must specify different database table prefix for each websites. - Two databases (One master database and One slave database). This architecture is advised when you want to install JMS on an existing website and you are limited in the number of databases you can create (or disk space). - As many databases than there are websites. This is the most flexible architecture where each websites works with its own database. This is generally the architecture adopted by joomla when you create multiple websites. The content of each website is totally independent. This means that the content (articles, news, forum, users, ...) are NOT shared. The setup of each configuration site consists in using the standard joomla installation mechanism. In the administration of a 'Slave' site, you can re-install/uninstall extension previously installed on the 'Master' site. The 'Master' site is the one where you have installed the Joomla MultiSite component and where you manage the 'Slave' sites. Additional controls are performed during the installation/uninstallation of an extension in a 'slave' site. Before executing the standard joomla installation, it is verified that the extension you request to install has exactly the same name and same version number to avoid inconsistency between all sites. This additional control is performed to ensure that you will overwrite the current installation with identical files that you originally installed. On 'slave' site, uninstalling an extension consists in a joomla standard cleanup of the database. The files present on disk for this extension is not deleted to avoid disturb the other sites. You can also replicate a website into the same database or in different DB to avoid re-installing the extension in each slave site. On Unix platform, it is also possible to deploy a slave site into a specific folder. You can also share user and a limited number of extension. It is also compatible with Joomla! 1.6 AND Joomla 1.7

Protect your Joomla website from dummy emails made up by your users. With this plugin every time users change their email address in profile, they will be required to activate/confirm it by using a link from an activation email. Available translations: English (GB), Polish, Russian (thanks to Alexander Pozlevich), Dutch (thanks to Gerard van Enschut), German (thanks to Daniel Gudzik), French (thanks to Mirko Okrim), Spanish (thanks to Roger Rommel) This is simple. Features: - Works with Joomla 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7 - Supports Community Builder 1.7 and above (as of version 1.1.0) - Uses your standard Joomla mailer to send activation link (no configuration required) - No new database is required. - It is secure! Should you wish to test it, please login on demo website as demo using password demo and try changing user's email. Parameters: 1. Do not require activation from selected groups: - Users of selected groups will not be required to proof their new email. No email will be sent (Default: Super Administrator). 2. Redirect after activation: - Redirect to specified URL after new email has been activated (Default: Frontpage) 3. Block user account after change: - User account will be blocked until they activate new email (Default: No) 4. Force user logout after change: - User will be logged out after his email has been changed.(Default: No) Release History: 1.0.3 - First Stable Release for Joomla 1.6 and 1.7 1.0.6 - Stable Release for Joomla 1.5 1.0.7 - pl-PL Polish Translation added 1.0.8 - Fixed: Activation email was sent to old address. 1.0.9 - Added: Show the email address a confirmation has been sent to. 1.0.10 - ru-RU Russian Translation added. Thanks to Alexander Pozlevich 1.0.11 - nl-NL Dutch translation added. Thanks to Gerard van Enschut. Fixed: Small typo in English translation. 1.0.12 - de-DE German translations (neutral - default, formal and informal) added. Thanks to Daniel Gudzik. 1.1.0: Added: Support for Community Builder 1.7 and above Added: Option to redirect to specified URL after new email has been activated (Default: Frontpage) Removed: Redirect to Joomla's user profile after email change. Fixed: Activation link doesn't work on 1.7 if users is blocked Change: More detailed explanations for some advanced options 1.1.1 - fr-FR French translation added. Thanks to Mirko Okrim. 1.1.2 - es-ES Spanish translation added. Thanks to Roger Rommel. Additionally: Any translations are welcome!

100% MVC structure follow. User can add your stories in K2 items Front end: User can add stories into the K2 item. Admin and users get mail after user adds the story. Admin approve than show up in front-end. CAPTCHA code feature is available in front end side. User can upload images into the K2 item images. “Accept Terms & Condition” page are configure form the K2 items from the back-end that is display on front-end. Back end: Admin can configure the category and email address. Also admin can select the category whatever they want. Admin email format also user email format setting from back-end. Easy to make or change email format using wysing editor. Admin can disable and enable the category selection option. Features:- - Admin can configure the category and email address. - Easy to make or change email format using wysing editor in the back end. - User can add story in K2 items. Admin and users get mail after user adds the story. - Putting the CAPTCHA code for security. - User can upload images from front end into K2 images. - Admin approve than show up in front-end. Please add review about our extensions after download. New features in Version 1.2 - Now display the dynamic field as per k2 category. - Save that dynamic filed into database same as k2 component. New features 1.3 Version :- - Set the permission from the back-end. - Register group permission set in k2 category as per that display in front-end. - New captcha code added. New features in Version 1.3.1:- - Register user now add,edit his submitted data from the front-end. - Available now in joomla 1.6 and joomla 1.7 also

An excellent and highly customizable gallery for Joomla. Features: - Full-screen mode - play/pause buttons - auto play - pan full image - customizable thumb and full image sizes - plays swf files - Set thumb panel top /bottom - customizable thumb bg color - customizable thumb highlight bar color - UTF characters support - full image description - scale thumbs/full images if they are bigger. - All font sizes and colors can be customizable Available image effects --------------- - fades in - zooms out - Elastic Zoom In - Blur Zoom Out - Elastic Slide - Squares - Triple Squares - Horizontal Stripes - Vertical Stripes - Waves - Scales Bars - Bounce Slide - Iris - Alpha Mask (New in V 4.14)

This is a Joomla module that displays your Facebook album into your website. You just need to get the public URL (found at the bottom of your Facebook album page) and put it as a parameter. Configure some other parameters and you'll get a nice looking photo album in your website. ============================== Important: ============================== Your php host must have cURL enabled This module shows album from the public URL at your Facebook album page (found at the bottom of the album page This module only grabs the thumbnails and full-size images only. Don't expect this to grab other elements/info from Facebook (i.e. comment, description, tag) ============================== What's new in version 1.1 ============================== 1. Ability to include multiple facebook album in one module 2. Option to shuffle images 3. fixed some issues ============================== Why use it?: ============================== You don't need another gallery admin just for your website. Use Facebook to manage your album and just give the link to grab that album As your album is hosted on Facebook your webhost doesn't run out of space or bandwidth Stylish Sliders to present your album You can configure the total number of images You can configure the layout and popup style It reflects any update you make to your Facebook album, just after the time interval you set

This plugin is meant to clean and prepare front and back end for the use of jQuery, alongside the Mootools libraries. Features: - no jQuery or jQuery UI libraries are hosted in Joomla (calls to Google API libraries and jQuery CDN websites), - no coding is necessary in front or back end (no need to add code into template or mess with Joomla! core), - places jQuery calls AFTER MooTools calls for perfect compatibility, - adds the noConflict() code, - sets up the 'jQuery' variable to 'true' at the application level, - strips out all other jQuery, jQuery UI library calls, including the noConflict() calls added by other modules or plugins, - choose jQuery UI basic styling or specific theme.

Global Social Submit is an intern addon to publish JomSocial activity to social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, and Ping.fm). It requires obSocialSubmit, http://foobla.com. obSocialSubmit is all you need to publish your Joomla contents (K2, FLEXIcontent, DocMan, VirtueMart, Eventlist, ... it's extendable). obSocialSubmit's extendable. So, we've extended it to support JomSocial. obSocialSubmit is a great hub to integrate your social network with the world. We've developed the elements to integrate JomSocial and obSocialSubmit: * JomSocial plugin (jsprobsocialsubmit-plugin.zip) * Joomla User obSocialSubmit plugin (obsocialuser-plugin.zip) * obSocialSubmit intern addon (prjomsocial-addon.zip) --- Features --- New User Event / First Login On Event Create On Profile Status Update On Group Create On Group Join On Friend Approve Event Create Template Profile Status Update Template Group Create Template Group Join Template Friend Approve Template SEF URL Debug IP Address TIP: Ping.fm is not a social network. It's an online hub to integrate more social networks (MySpace, Ning, GTalk Status, AIM Status, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Identi.ca, Brightkite, FriendFeed, Plurk, Jaiku, Blogger , Plaxo Pulse, Bebo, WordPress.com, Custom URL, Delicious, YouAre, Multiply, Yammer, Flickr, StatusNet, TypePad, StreetMavens, myYearbook, Photobucket, Yahoo Profiles, and Tagged). Recommended versions: * Joomla 1.7, or superior * JomSocial 2.2, or superior * obSocialSubmit 2.1, or superior PD: It also works with joomla 1.5 and obSocialSubmit 1.7.4

Description : ------------- Joomla! 1.5 extension ( component ) which allows to display , on your website , a customizable Flash set of interlaced sliding menus , whose submenus are animated by a "rocking" movement . You can set different options : ------------------------------- _ Dimensions and position of the flash component _ Menus movement main features _ Menus settings _ Submenus settings ( Thanks to see its documentation for more information ) Technical constrainsts : ------------------------ _ No more than 10 menus by settings group . _ No more than 10 submenus by menu . _ No more than 30 characters for main title or subtitle . _ No more than 20 characters for a menu name . _ No more than 30 characters for a submenu name . _ For compatibility reasons with XML processing, title and subtitle are converted intotext without accents . _ Colors values are hexadecimal ones --------------------------------- _ Version : 1.0.0 _ Copyright © 2011-2012 David DONISA _ License : GPL 2.0 _ Author Web site : http://www.donimedia-servicetique.net/ _ Author e-mail : donimedia-servicetique@orange.fr

Description : ------------- Joomla! 1.5 extension ( component ) which allows to display , on your website , a customizable Flash set of looping and sliding menus , whose submenus are animated by an "elastic" movement . You can set different options : ------------------------------- _ Dimensions and position of the flash component _ Menus movement main features _ Menus settings _ Submenus settings ( Thanks to see its documentation for more information ) Technical constrainsts : ------------------------ _ No more than 10 menus by settings group . _ No more than 10 submenus by menu . _ No more than 30 characters for main title or subtitle . _ No more than 20 characters for a menu name . _ No more than 30 characters for a submenu name . _ For compatibility reasons with XML processing, title and subtitle are converted intotext without accents . _ Colors values are hexadecimal ones --------------------------------- _ Version : 1.0.0 _ Copyright © 2011-2012 David DONISA _ License : GPL 2.0 _ Author Web site : http://www.donimedia-servicetique.net/ _ Author e-mail : donimedia-servicetique@orange.fr

AdsManager Carousel Slider Module will help you show ads of a selected category with a nice horizontal sliding effect. Module is very easy to install, use and customize. We also give support if you need any help during installation and customization KEY FEATURES 1. You can set the WIDTH of the module 2. You can set ANIMATION DURATION from module back-end 3. You can change IMAGE SIZE from back-end 4. You can change IMAGE BORDER COLORS from module back-end easily 5. You can change VIEW AD text from back-end 6. You can DISABLE JQUERY library if already loaded by another extension 7. You can use css file to make changes regarding your needs 8. Simply install and add parameters at the module back-end and it is ready to use.

Ads Manager Google Map Module will help you to show Ads Manager Ads on Google Map. Module is very easy to install, use and customize. We also give support if you need any help during installation and customization KEY FEATURES 1. Clean and bug free code. 2. It has no script conflicts and we give support if you have any conflict when you are using in your template. 3. Light Code, easy to use and manage. 4. You will be able to show any selected category ads 5. When user click on sign they can see short description and ad title with View Ad link. 6. Very Easy Customization via Module Back-end and CSS File 7. PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO CONTACT TO MODIFY MODULE FOR YOUR SITE NEEDS. 8. Simply install and add parameters at the module back-end and it is ready to use.

Store Locator for Joomla is the best available Store and dealer locator application for Joomla. Its the Apple Style Store Locator module, where you can define the store locations, store details and that store will automatically show on the google map on its side. Very very handy module for ecommerce websites, service websites, corporate websites, etc. Comes with a lot of options and highly customizable . Compatible with all the modern browsers and also compatible with all versions of Joomla. You can also select the font for the store details and store title from the admin backend, which comes with 22 professional web 2.0 fonts. Features : Best available Store and dealer locator application for Joomla Apple Style Store Locator module Define unlimited the store locations Define Store Details Automatic Store Display on Google Maps Handy addon for ecommerce websites service websites, corporate websites, etc. Comes with a lot of options and highly customizable Multiple Web 2.0 Google Fonts Support jQuery on/OFF feature to avoid script conflict Compatible with all the browsers Compatible with all the Joomla Versions

HTML5 Video Gallery is a great module to showcase your videos in a nice sliding manner. All you need to do is, define the video URLs, thumbnail URL and title. Then you will have a nice vertical sliding video playlist with an uber cool HTML5 Video Player to play the videos. Features : HTML5 Video Player Compatible with iPhone/iPad Define your Video URLs Define Video Title and Thumbnail image Multiple Web 2.0 Google Fonts Support jQuery on/OFF feature to avoid script conflict Compatible with all the browsers Compatible with all the Joomla Versions

Fancy RSS Tabs is the best RSS Newsfeed module for Joomla, where you can define multiple tabs in a nice manner. It comes with 26 pre built styles and you can simply choose a style and get the layout on the frontend. You can define the different RSS feed URLs on each tab and on each tab, all the rss feeds will be pulled and displayed in a nice listed manner.

This module is based on the original Virtuemart module "topten", but improves and enhances it in many respects. BIT Virtuemart TopX Pro lists the most popular products of your Virtuemart Shop where you can choose to either display the bestselling or the most viewed products. Alternatively you can show the least propular products to direct the attention of your shoppers to these products. In contrast to the original module BIT Virtuemart TopX Pro handles products with child products. Child products can either be listet separately or their sales and views are summed up. By default all selected products are displayed statically, but it is also possible to present them with a scrolling effect. Parameters that can be set in the backend include: - number of listed products - handling of child products (list them separately or sum up their sales and views) - selection of products according to sales or views - selection of product features which are displayed (numbering, product name, image, price) - use of Virtuemart thumbs or use of individual image sizes - parameters for the scroller (direction, size, duration etc.) Apart from the parameters in the module's backend, the layout can be further styled with the CSS files included. The structure of the module is MVC, so that you can write an override for the output. Supported languages: german, english

The September installment of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! Here are the stories in this issue: Editor's Introduction Our Joomla! Conjunction, by Paul Orwig Feature Stories Ten ideas on how to get involved in the community (part 1 of 2), Peter Martin Joomla!: The Symphony, by Jon NeubauerCelebrate Joomla's 6th Birthday at your September JUG, by Jen Kramer Summit Up: Interview with Allen "Gunner" Gunn, by Alice Grevet Website Case Studies Joomla! at the University of Haifa, by Eden Orion Did you know...? How to insert your logo into a print and PDF page, by Alireza Take full control of your Twitter profile with Hootsuite Dashboard, by Huyen NT Leadership Connections Open Source Matters August 2011 Report, by Alice Grevet Designers Studio From an Idea to Polished Pixels, by Peter Bui Developers Workbench Site Builders can Build Custom Joomla Components, by Amy Stephen Joomla! Events and User Groups Getting Down in Cape Town: Joomla!Day South Africa, by Jacques Rentzke Software Freedom Day 2011, by Jacques Rentzke The Joomla! Haikus Post your haikus for September, by Paul Orwig Help Wanted The Joomla! Project Wants You - September 2011, by Paul Orwig Joomla! in the Press/Media Joomla! in the Press/Media - September 2011, by Mark W. Bender In our next issue We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!

In October 2010 Joomla! Press, an alliance between Open Source Matters and Pearson Publishing, was announced to the community. The Joomla! Project is proud to announce that the Joomla! Explained, the second in the series of publications, has been released for sale at Amazon and InformIT. The book is available in both Paperback and e-book formats.  Click here to buy a copy of Joomla! Explained and help to support the Joomla! Project. About Joomla! Press Purchases of Joomla! Press books are a great way to help support Joomla as proceeds from books, including The Official Joomla! Book, go to the Joomla! project.  To learn more about Joomla! Press please click here. About Joomla! Explained Master Joomla! 1.6 and 1.7 hands-on, step-by-step, through easy, practical examples! Joomla! Explained teaches everything beginners need to know--and nothing they don't need to know! Joomla! Explained requires absolutely no experience with Joomla! content management, website construction, programming, scripting, or even HTML. Stephen Burge has taught thousands of beginners--and thousands more who've experimented with Joomla! but haven't mastered it yet. Nobody knows more about guiding Joomla! users up the learning curve--from confusion to results! You'll master Joomla! one easy step at a time, through a complete hands-on case study. Burge presents crystal-clear visuals, explanations, and analogies--all extensively tested with real Joomla! beginners. This book covers Joomla versions 1.6 and 1.7. The book's quick, easy coverage includes: Understanding what Joomla! does and how it works Installing the latest version of Joomla Navigating your site's visitor and administrator areas Mastering workflows that make site creation easy Adding text, images, links, and formatting Creating efficient, usable navigation Providing contact forms, ad banners, and link directories Using modules to enable site registration and search Adding voting and other smaller "plug-in" features Quickly changing site designs with Joomla! templates Finding, choosing, installing, and using extensions Building both business and personal sites, step by step Giving customized access to different types of users Managing site versions in multiple languages Efficiently administering, backing up, and updating sites Click here to buy a copy of Joomla! Explained and help to support the Joomla! Project.

The August installment of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! Here are the stories in this issue: Editor's Introduction The Road Forward..., by Dianne Henning Feature Stories Summing Up the Joint Summit, by Alice Grevet What I learned at the Community Leadership Summit, by Paul Orwig Join the Joomla! Tweet Team, by Hagen Graf Joomla! in South African government, by Phehello Mofokeng Website Case Studies Website Case Study: Joomlagov.info, by Team Joomity Did you know...? 5 Great Reasons to Become a JCM Author, by Milena Mitova Nine Questions When Preparing Clients for Joomla 1.8, by Jen Kramer Infographic: Joomla CMS Development Strategy, by Sander Potjer Search Engine Optimization and Public Relations: The New Brotherhood, by Sandra Ordonez Leadership Connections Open Source Matters July 2011 Report, by Alice Grevet Designers Studio Praiseworthy Joomla User Experience, by Kyle Ledbetter Joomla! Events and User Groups Joomla!Day Events around the World, by Jacques Rentzke The Joomla! Haikus Post your haikus for August, by Paul Orwig Help Wanted The Joomla! project wants you - August 2011, by Paul Orwig Joomla! Books Download the Joomla! 1.7 - Beginner's Guide and save money!, by Hagen Graf Unlimited Joomla book resources in multiple languages, by Anh Tuan Bui Joomla! in the Press/Media Joomla! in the Press/Media - August 2011, by Mark W. Bender In our next issue We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!

The July installment of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! Here are the stories in this issue: Editor's Introduction Happy first birthday, Joomla! Community Magazine!, by Paul Orwig Feature Stories Joomla! 1.7 - Division or Fission?, by Hagen Graf Outsider's View of Joomla!, by Chad Windnagle Website Case Studies Website Case Study: Shark Zone, by Hilary Cheyne Did you know...? Joomla! 1.7 Highlight - Batch Processing, by Michael Babker Leadership Connections Open Source Matters: June 2011 Report, by Paul Orwig Designers Studio Free Joomla! 1.6 Templates for Joomla! Community, by Anh Tuan Bui IE6 and IE7 can see ghosts or validate before your cross browser test, by Anthony Olsen Joomla! Events and User Groups JUG Highlight: Joomla! Cape Town, by Jon Neubauer A Summer of Joomla!, by Jon Neubauer Developers Workbench Navigating the code development process (part 2 of 2), by Paul Orwig The Joomla! Haikus Post your haikus for July, by Paul Orwig Joomla! Books Book Review: "Joomla! Explained" by Steve Burge, by Milena Mitova Joomla! in the Press/Media Joomla! in the Press/Media - July 2011, by Mark W. Bender Help Wanted The Joomla! project wants you - July 2011, by Paul Orwig In our next issue We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!

The June installment of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! Joomla! is a huge, worldwide community, encompassing many languages and many cultures. When we are able to work and collaborate together, we can do amazing things with incredible results. When we bring our joy into what we do, it is shared with all. In this issue: Editor’s Introduction J is for Joy...   Feature Stories   Unconference about taking Joomla! Forward at J and Beyond 2011 Happy Birthday, JPeople! Discover over 1800 government sites built in Joomla! Website Case Studies Website Case Study: Glenora Farm The Joomla! Haikus Post your haikus for June Help Wanted The Joomla! project wants you! Leadership Connections Open Source Matters: May 2011 Report Designers Studio Mission Control: Taking the Joomla! admin to new heights Joomla! Events and User Groups JAB11 - An International Joomla! Conference Developers Workbench Navigating the code development process (part 1 of 2) Construct Template Development Framework Did you know...? Extending Joomla! 1.6 Add a Session Timer Joomla! in the Press/Media Joomla! in the Press/Media - June 2011   In our next issue We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!  

IN THIS ISSUE:A special thanks to the members of our Joomla! community who contributed articles to this month's issue: Merav Knafo, Anh Tuan Bui, Paul de Raaij, Abolhassan Firoozmandan, and Meta Krujis!Editor’s IntroductionLessons about openness and transparency from a budget discussion, written by Paul OrwigFeature storiesNicholas G. Antimisiaris shares his thoughts on how to best move our project forward in Push me, pull you....Anh Tuan Bui summarizes key features of Helpful E-mailMarketing Components for Joomla! Powered Websites.Robert Vining gives a shoutout to all of the Joomla! Voices Heard Around the World.International storiesAbolhassan Firoozmandan has submitted an article written in Farsi for this issue.Opportunities are now open for community members to submit articles in 22 different languages.Website Case StudiesRobert Vining reveals how Joomla! powers the CMS Expo (this major event is happening May 2-4 in Chicago).Leadership ConnectionsAlice Grevet shares updates on what OSM has been doing during April on behalf of the Joomla! project.JUGs and EventsMeta Krujis shares some secrets of success in Organizing Dutch Joomla! days and back to life again.Hagen Graf talks about the Awesomenimity at J and Beyond 2011.Developers WorkbenchCristina Solana invites you to join her with your pail and shovel in The Sandbox Manifesto.Merav Knafo counts down the 5 ways to document your Joomla! extension.Paul de Raaij shares the benefits of using an Object Relational Mapping framework in Using Doctrine ORM in Joomla!.Designer's studioAnthony Olsen sparks the flame in How to put more love into your Joomla! dates... The Joomla! HaikusProlific poets,punsters and word masters too,spread the Joomla! love...Post your haikus for May!Joomla! BooksBo Astrup reviews "Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook".Joomla! in the Press/MediaMark Bender bring us Joomla! in the Press/Media — May 2011.On the lighter side...Yepr has contributed another Jane Beyond & friends cartoon.In our next issueWe want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!

The April issue of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! IN THIS ISSUE: A special thanks to the members of our Joomla! community who contributed articles to this month's issue: Eric Lamy, Dmitry Strizhov, Andrew Eddie, Hagen Graf, Sean Redfearn, Victor Drover, Jarrod Nettles, and Chad Windnagle.Editor’s Introduction Get Open, written by Cristina Solana Feature stories Andrew Eddie provides updates on upcoming Joomla! releases in The Source April 2011    Hagen Graf shares insights about Multi-Language Websites with Joomla! 1.6 core Sean Redfearn points to two key questions for sitebuilders in Convincing the Skeptics about Open Source and CMS International stories Community members have submitted two articles in two different languages for this issue. Opportunities are now open for community members to submit articles in 21 different languages. Website Case Studies Dianne Henning knits up a sweet sounding case study in For Rocker Samantha Farrell, Joomla! Rocks. Leadership Connections Alice Grevet shares updates on what OSM has been doing during March on behalf of the Joomla! project. JUGs and Events Victor Drover invites you to submit your nominations for The J!OSCAR awards - recognizing excellence in the Joomla! community. Developers Workbench Jarrod Nettles shows how get more out of templates in Rapid Development Techniques – Templates Within Templates! Chad Windnagle shares about the importance of Documenting Documentation. Arlen Walker introduces us to Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos in The Joomla! Setup. Designer's studio Anthony Olsen shares How to become a css detective with CSS Edit. The Joomla! Haikus Prolific poets, punsters and word masters too, spread the Joomla! love... Post your April 2011 Haiku here! Joomla! Books Milena Mitova reviews Joomla! 24-Hour Trainer - the new A to Z book for novices. Joomla! in the Press/Media Mark Bender bring us Joomla! in the Press/Media — April 2011. On the lighter side... Yepr has contributed another Jane Beyond & friends cartoon. In our next issue We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!

The March installment of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! IN THIS ISSUE: Thanks to the members of the Joomla! community who are contributing authors in this month's issue: Abolhassan Firoozmandan, Hagen Graf, Grigor Mihov, Denys Nosov, Nick Savan, Joe Sonne, Jeremy Wilken, Mehmet Yazici. Editor’s Introduction: Inspiration, and the Winds of Change.. . by Dianne Henning Feature stories Alice Grevet sits down for an Interview with Matt Lipscomb - Broadcasting Joomla! Joe Sonne offers up some Friendly Advice For Your Joomla! Adventure Hils Cheyne did it! Turning the Table on Brian Teeman International stories دیتابیس جوملا 1.6  - Abolhassan Firoozmandan, Farsi Joomla! 1.6 für Einsteiger ist da und es ist KOSTENLOS lesbar! - Hagen Graf, German Etkili Backlink (geri bağlantı) Çalışması Nasıl yapılır? - Mehmet YAZICI, Turkish Створення документації по Joomla! українською мовою, Як забезпечити повну безпеку сайту? and Особливості Joomla 1.6 та міграція з Joomla 1.5 на Joomla 1.6 - Denys Nosov, Ukranian Opportunities are now open for community members to submit articles in 20 different languages. Leadership Connections OSM board member Alice Grevet shares some updates on what OSM has been doing during February on behalf of the Joomla! project. JUGs and Events Jon Neubauer takes us to Suffolk, UK for some JUG highlights. Developers Workbench Jeremy Wilken asks, Is it me, or is this a bug? Did you know…? Milena Mitova shares 5 Quick SEO steps that will help you get better rankings and more traffic to your Joomla! site. Nick Savov shares Joomla 1.? and how to gain some hands-on experience Designer's studio Kyle Ledbetter gives us the lowdown on the February Template Club Roundup. Administrator's toolkit Grigor Mihov gives us a few pointers on how to Increase your site's speed dramatically. Join the Jimericks The Joomla! mag team in Skype said limericks were just not their type of rhyming for a reason but, in the spirit of the season, they submitted their sanitized hype! Share your Joomla! Limerick! Joomla! Books Bo Astrup reviews Joomla! 1.5 Site Blueprints Hagen Graf has written a PDF for Joomla! 1.6 Beginners and offers a free download! On the lighter side... Yepr has contributed another Jane Beyond & friends cartoon. In our next issue We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!

The February issue of the Joomla Community Magazine is here! IN THIS ISSUE: Thanks to the members of the Joomla! community who are contributing authors in this month's issue: Manolis Markatselas, Peter Bui, Jarrod Nettles, Anh Tuan Bui, and Nicholas Dionysopoulos. Editor’s Introduction Coming together to announce a new era... by Paul Orwig   Feature stories Dianne Henning introduces us to a developer who is equally talented and helpful in her Born to be wild: An Interview with Chris Marinou. Alice Grevet unveils how all the great Joomla! 1.6 launch content came into existence in Kyle Ledbetter: King of the launch room. Jon Neubauer highlights the crucial work being undertaken to simplify migrations from Joomla! 1.5-1.6 in Developing jUpgrade: An interview with Matias Aguirre. International stories Manolis Markatselas has submitted an article in the Greek language for this issue. Opportunities are now open for community members to submit articles in 17 different languages. Leadership Connections OSM board member Alice Grevet shares some updates on what OSM has been doing during January on behalf of the Joomla! project. CLT member Matt Lipscomb takes us behind the scenes one final time at Joomla! Day West 2010: The 2010 Video Interviews - Final selection. Website Case Studies Peter Bui invites you to pass judgement on the Joomla! solutions implemented on the High Court of Australia website. JUGs and Events Alice Grevet shares her experiences in connecting with Joomla! 1.6 celebrations all over the world in Let Them Eat Cake!. Developers Workbench Jarrod Nettles shares with us his perspectives on how to maintain your sanity by keeping your code in a single library across multiple projects in Rapid Development Techniques: Removing Mootools. Did you know…? Anh Tuan Bui shares some really helpful links in Good resources for Joomla! beginners. Designer's studio Anthony Olsen shares a lot of great ideas in Fourteen secrets of Joomla! templating. Administrator's toolkit Nicholas Dionysopoulos asks some hard questions and reveals some possible pitfalls in How off-line is Joomla!'s off-line mode?. Joomla! in the Press/Media Mark Bender bring us Joomla! in the Press/Media — February 2011. On the lighter side... Yepr has contributed another Jane Beyond and friends cartoon. The Joomla! Haiku: Share yours! Prolific poets, punsters and word masters too, spread the Joomla! love... Post your February 2011 Haiku here! IN OUR NEXT ISSUE We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!

Joomla!® 1.6.0 is now available for immediate download. This new version of Joomla includes more power, more control, and more options than ever before. Rebuilt from the ground up in much of the application, this latest Joomla release will delight the casual site builder while helping small, medium, and enterprise businesses succeed in delivering web sites, intranets and applications to their respective markets. Delivering power through simplicity, Joomla 1.6 ensures its place as the popular CMS of its kind. Joomla 1.6 delivers new features to end-users and site administrators including: Finer access controls for viewing and editing content with configurable user groups and viewing levels A user-defined category structure, from simple one-level to complex multi-level categories Installation improvements allowing for multiple extension installations in one package, updatable with a single click Expanded language support for easy production of multi-lingual sites Start and end publishing times for modules with more control over where they display, Fresh new templates and semantic markup to please the eye as well as the search engines More creative control through template styles Hundreds of additional features, streamlining workflow and productivity With Joomla 1.6 developers will build extensions faster through all phases of design, deployment and updates. Advanced and rich API’s will provide new opportunities to integrate, compete and expand into existing and new markets. Style improvements give graphic designers more control and more flexibility to create the perfect effect for any web site and audience. Designers can now override virtually all output from the Joomla Administrator giving rise to new opportunities for functional, accessible or even mobile-friendly Administrator areas. Individual Administrator templates can be assigned to individual users allowing web masters to address any special needs. To learn more, or to get started building your own Joomla 1.6 web site visit joomla.org/16 and download one of the world’s most popular free Open Source content management systems. We invite you to join the entire Joomla project in celebrating the arrival of Joomla 1.6. Most importantly, congratulations to the hundreds of volunteers whose enormous effort contributed to its final release. Discuss this announcement on JPeople   The following translations of this Announcement are available: Spanish: Joomla!® 1.6 ¡ya ha llegado!  Thai: Joomla! 1.6 มาแล้ว!  Norvegian: Joomla! 1.6 er utgitt  Swedish: Joomla!® 1.6 är här!  Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia): Joomla 1.6 Telah Datang!  Turkish: Joomla!® 1.6 Yayınlandı! French: Joomla!® 1.6 est arrivé ! Serbian: Izašla je Joomla!® 1.6.0 Catalan: El Joomla!® 1.6 ja és aquí! Dutch: Joomla! 1.6 nu beschikbaar! German: Joomla! 1.6 fertig! Hungarian: Megérkezett a Joomla!® 1.6! Italian: E' arrivato Joomla!® 1.6.0! Lithuanian: Joomla!® 1.6.0 išleista Estonian: Joomla! 1.6 on saabunud Romanian:  A apărut Joomla!® 1.6 Macedonian: Joomla!® 1.6 дојде! Albanian: Mbrriti Joomla 1 pik 6 Japanese: Joomla!® 1.6 が届きました！ Persian: joomla! سری ۱.۶ می رسد Slovak: Joomla 1.6 je tu! Polish: Joomla 1.6 wydany Traditional Chinese: Joomla!® 1.6已經到來！ Russian: Здравствуй, Joomla 1.6! Arabic: الإعلان الرسمي لإطلاق جوملا! 1.6 Portuguese: Joomla 1.6 já chegou! Greek: Το Joomla 1.6 Έφτασε !!! Ukrainian: Вийшла Joomla!® 1.6 — нові ідеї та ідеологія Joomla! Khmer: Joomla!® ១.៦ បាន​មកដល់​ហើយ! more to be added Thank you to the Translation Teams for their help!

Dear Mighty extensions customers and users, We know that you impatiently wait for new version of Resources for Joomla 1.7. I am glad to say that we are working on it. I cannot promise that we will release it very soon, but if God bless we will finally release it. Right not, during development process we decided to change some things in Resources. We do not want it to be slow. We do not want hosting companies block accounts with Resources because it consume to many server resources. We want to make it light and as speedy as possible. We already have technical decisions. But would with pleasure listen to your opinion also. You are welcome to join discussion here.

Today we released Resources 1.5.9. This is very important update. You have to really think if you want to update. This update have basically SQL query optimization. It does not reduce number of queries much only 15%, but it increate queries speed. Especially when you do text search through section or apply filters. It has all new query styles. On some tests it reduce query time from 48 seconds to 3.5 seconds. It is very significant in some situations. But on pages that are loaded for less than 5 seconds, the speed increase may not be noticeable. Although we tested this version very seriously, this may produce unexpected errors. We recommend to try it first on test sites or wait till 1.5.10|11. Update instruction Update available only through Mighty Assistant. If you do not see it there, then wait, it will appear in nearest 12 hours. 1. Install SQL patch 1.5.9 2. Install Resources update 3. Install all new fields and filters 4. Install tools plugin 5. Go to tools and run 1.5.8 to 1.5.9 tool We will be online and listen for reports. If you got error after update urgently report it here and we will fix everything as soon as possible.

Our first mobile Windows Phone application for AngelDesk feedback, customer support or helpdesk is a piece of art! You know that this playform itself has great potential and has very beautiful concept. It helps to create beautiful apps easy. Whatch this cool video!

As you perhaps know that there is a possibility to connect your AngelDesk project to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. So we did for our support.mightyextensions.com.  And here is come results. Average speed to download page is 292ms!Average page size is 2Kb! The unique technologies we used developing this service enables this very speedy work. New techniques of monitoring DB queries allowed us optimize queries speed. And now longest query in 0.005 second. Not more than 5 queries per page. Plus cache system. It is unbelievable convenient service. We use it only few days but it is already visible how it is greatly better than simple forum. Events system is rock! You get events notices  just like in Facebook or on iPhone. Very hard to miss topic or any event related. We will apply this technologies to all our new extensions and updates. Not fully at a time but definitely some improvements from release to release.

At 1st July 2011 all Commercial Encoded components will be provided with Open Source. It means that you’ll don’t need ionCube and license file any more. But all Commercial components will stay as Commercial and could not been downloaded from MightyExtenstion web-site without payment.It means that if customer wants to overview and gets to know components it will be available at Demo site only. Also Support will be provided to those only who has purchased especial Support Subscription. Through after purchasing a component this paid support will be provided for 14 days automatically. So, everything described above means that we’ll change Subscription plans policy. Here will be next types of Subscriptions: Purchase component + 14 days support Purchase support per component for 1 week or 1 month Personal online support by Skype and other chatline systems dedicated to customer directly. Support will be sold separately for each Component (irrespective of version) with period 1 week and 1 month. For web-masters we’ll offer later Ultimate support plan for all components and 6 or 12 months. All customers who have purchased Encoded Commercial component before going to GPL will be granted with 3 month (till 30 September 2011) official support service for components which were purchased by them. Since we’ve moved our Support Desk/Feature Request/Testimonials sections to AngelDesk service the VIP status is kept for priority support as it’s been before. The new Support Desk will transform to Public Community. We guarantee that each VIP customer’s topic will have official answer from Mighty Extensions team. Other non -VIP or no name (public users) postings will not be ignored by us at all. But these users should understand that we will pay attention to their topic if timeframe allows it.

We’ve taken decision to improve our Support Desk and change it for AngelDesk service. It makes additional features for our customers, new clients and entire Mighty Extensions community overall: Improved notification system Multilanguage support Faster content delivery Merging topic of the same subject Improved search and filtering Independence from availability of The Mighty Extensions web-site Global Information Centralization of all Mighty Extensions Tutorials, Videos, Support topics, Testimonials etc. More open for public community It’s available from Mobile devices with iOS, WP7, Android and other Java supported systems as built-in FREE applications. From 22 June 2011 new topics could not been created at Support Desk. Submit Link will redirect to AngelDesk service. New URL for Support Desk will be http://support.mightyextensions.com Certainly all created and not solved topics will be maintained at old Support Desk/Forum. Then that section will be archived for Read-only mode. That innovation will affect to Feature Request section, Testimonials. status for paid customers will have been maintained at AngelDesk service also. 3DP developers are welcome to create their own Projects and Products connected with Mighty Extensions or even independent of our components.

Perhaps somebody remembers situation with MightyExtension website when it was down very often. So, today they have opinion that site is not stable still. But I should dispel it. If you see that Uptime Statictic of MightyExtensions you can see that downtime periods less than 99%. Also, yesterday (12 June 2011) downtime issue was due hosting company. And it was lasting 1 hour 25 minutes just. So if you feel problem with opening MightyExtensions site, please, be sure that site is realy offline by link http://stats.pingdom.com/it3nmvbfyz0y/290701  Thanks.

Priority Important Product Message Item Type Component, Module Link to file 1 com_jsinbox.php5.v.1.0.5.Build.6232.zip (Size: 943 Kb | Hits: 2384) Link to file 2 com_jsinbox.php4.v.1.0.5.Build.6232.zip (Size: 905 Kb | Hits: 777) We are pleased to announce that made the new version of the component Mighty Message Notice: In order for the new changes in the component Mighty Message to work correctly, we recommend you first upgrade the Mighty Resource components. Fixed bugs of previous versions Option "Groups allow to send to all groups" have been transferred to the components of People Touch.

Priority Important Product Touch Item Type Component, Module, Plugin, Template Link to file 1 com_community.update.php5.v.1.0.to.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 882 Kb | Hits: 1267) Link to file 2 com_community.php5.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 893 Kb | Hits: 6862) Link to file 3 com_community.php4.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 865 Kb | Hits: 1478) Link to file 4 people_touch_modules_all_in_one.zip (Size: 46 Kb | Hits: 2021) Link to file 5 people_touch_plugins_all_in_one.zip (Size: 158 Kb | Hits: 4066)   We are pleased to announce that made the new version of the component People Touch Notice: In order for the new changes in the component People Touch to work correctly, we recommend you first upgrade the Mighty Resource components. A lot of work has been done to correct the errors and adding new features, such as: Added  to the configuration  added new option that allows users to choose templates for the group. Added new option "Groups allow to send to all groups", which was transferred from the component Mighty Messages. This setting allows you to select a group of users who will be allowed to send messages to all groups in the People Touch component Mighty Messages Fixed the creation of private categories in the group. Now each member can only create their own private category in the group, and other group members can no longer edit them. Fixed logic of joining users to a group Fixed join the group of users via e-mail notification Fixed module events, friends, group members and others Fixed plugins visited articles, user tags, rated articles, personal categories, favorit articles, created articles and other

Priority Important Product Resources Item Type Component, Module, Plugin, Template Link to file 1 com_resource.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 63711) Link to file 2 com_resource.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 2 Mb | Hits: 6787) Link to file 3 com_resource.templates.v.3.4.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 4283) Link to file 4 plg_resource.searchbot.v.3.2.zip (Size: 5 Kb | Hits: 2950) Link to file 5 mightyextensions.mediapack.v.1.1.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 1465) Link to file 6 advance_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 41 Kb | Hits: 419) Link to file 7 free_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 38 Kb | Hits: 1519) Link to file 8 fields_advanced.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 6291) Link to file 9 fields_core.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 557 Kb | Hits: 13636) We are pleased to inform you that the new version of the MightyResource. Changes and updates have taken place in other Mighty Extensions components and it took a long time to adjust all of them. Now we are confident that the new MightyResource can work with a huge amount of articles and categories. Bugs were fixed: Fixed ordering of articles Fixed bug with new_router, when creating a comment Fixed bug in modules: Content Viewer, Content list Fixed logic storing downloaded files, in fields that have a uploader etc: files, picture, gallery2, media, video, audio etc. Fixed bug with plug-in toolset Fixed bug with lug-in searchbot Fixed templates added new Plug-in for translating resource category with Joom Fish. You can download here added the ability to select display of categories - a list or tree

Inge Sandin whose username Mediamighty at MightyExtensions website has extensive experience in the Mighty Extensions Support and he  is Sales Partner in Sweden.He works with all components Mighty Extensions such as, Mighty Commerce, Mighty  Resource, Mighty Member,  Mighty Touch and Mighty Invoice. He helps you to install Joomla with these components.And He can offer much more about this. You found more information on website

Priority Regular Product Membership Item Type Component, Plugin Link to file 1 com_jcs.php4.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 392 Kb | Hits: 2256) Link to file 2 com_jcs.php5.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 413 Kb | Hits: 12220) Link to file 3 com_jcs.php4.update.from.v.2.0.to.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 388 Kb | Hits: 1202) Link to file 4 com_jcs.php5.update.from.v.2.0.to.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 404 Kb | Hits: 3925) Link to file 5 com_jcs.sql-patch.2.5.4.zip (Size: 934 B | Hits: 265) Link to file 6 plg_rbk.v.1.0.zip (Size: 11 Kb | Hits: 29) Added ability to edit subject alerts; Added a new template for displaying a list of plans. With this template, plans to show in columns; The ability to create coupons with fixed amount; New step-by-step membership, Choose Plan -> Login/Register -> Select Payment method -> Payment; Added a new plug-in payment for the Russian payment system RBK

We are pleased to inform our users that we have a new  payment plug-in of the Russian payment system RBK for  component Mighty Membership. Plugin has the following settings: Eshop ID Currency Shopname Secret Externall keygen url - special setting "Externall keygen url", which allows you to run an additional URL, after the successful payment. In this url you can insert  e-mail user id and subscription plan. The plug-in you can download here

Priority Regular Product Resources Item Type Component, Module, Plugin Link to file 1 com_resource.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 2 Mb | Hits: 6787) Link to file 2 com_resource.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 63711) Link to file 3 advance_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 41 Kb | Hits: 419) Link to file 4 free_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 38 Kb | Hits: 1519) Link to file 5 fields_advanced.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 6291) Link to file 6 fields_core.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 557 Kb | Hits: 13636) Link to file 7 filters.UNPACK_FIRST.zip (Size: 47 Kb | Hits: 1358) Component: Fixed bug in group settings field "Access by Group": Submit Restriction and Edit Restriction; Fixed problem with displaying categories and subcategories; Fixed problem with "Publish/Unpublish" button; Fixed problem with displaying group settings of "Customers Settings" in the configuration section for Commerce; Fixed other bugs from previous version; Field plug-ins: Added new field "LikeDislake" - this field allows to display two buttons for voite - "positive" and "negative" button. After clicking on the button, displays the results of voting; Fixed mail field; Updated audio, video, picture, file, files, gallery2 fields; Updated Relate Parent/Child3 fields; Updated Product Suite field for Commerce. Modules: Fixed bug in the module Users Categories; Updated Content List module; Updated Last Commenter module; Updated Tag cloud module; Updated Filters module. Plug-ins: Fixed Filter Range plug-in. Now field price can be displayed in the Filters module as: To and From

Redevelopment general MightyExtensions started development of resources for Joomla 1.6. At the beginning we though that we just make few change and let it work on Joomla 1.6 and later modify it to fit better for renewed Joomla 1.6 MVC pattern. But it turned out that it is almost impossible. So we started redevelopment all extension. It means that Resources v. 6.0 will be developed again. Of course we will use some of the code from version for Joomla 1.5 but that will be only logical parts. All rendering parts will be changed.  What to Expect? I know that most interesting question is "What are we going to expect of new version? Will there be new features or changes?" I would write a list of new features here with great pleasure. But as Resources will have 6 generation version, I have to admit that we almost do not have new ideas to implement in new versions. It means that current version already have everything possible. There is very little new feature list but features are not global. Something like ability to add alias to related record in Relate field, mail send counter for mail field, ... Main changes will affect UI.   

Priority Regular Product Touch Item Type Component, Plugin Link to file 1 com_community.update.php5.v.1.0.to.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 882 Kb | Hits: 1267) Link to file 2 com_community.update.php4.v.1.0.to.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 854 Kb | Hits: 677) Link to file 3 com_community.php5.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 893 Kb | Hits: 6862) Link to file 4 com_community.php4.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 865 Kb | Hits: 1478) Link to file 5 people_touch_plugins_all_in_one.zip (Size: 158 Kb | Hits: 4066) Fixed bugs from previous version; Update twitter  plug-in; Fixed bug with sending messages to groups using  Mighty Message.

Priority Regular Product Resources Item Type Component, Module, Plugin, Template Link to file 1 com_resource.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 2 Mb | Hits: 6787) Link to file 2 fields_advanced.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 6291) Link to file 3 free_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 38 Kb | Hits: 1519) Link to file 4 com_resource.templates.v.3.4.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 4283) Fixed bugs from the previous version; Fixed bugs in the module Content List; Updated Relate Parent/Child3 plugins; Updated advanced templates v.3.2.

Priority Regular Product Touch Item Type Component, Module, Plugin Works only with component Resource version 1.5.0 Fixes: Error on group creation page when no category is created yet; Error on profile page when user does not have any friends; Fatal error with Resources component integration on friends list; Resources Integration plug-ins problem with SEF URLs; Problem with Anonymous user activity; mod_community_filters module. Was not showing anything; Translation feature for the title for the plug-ins in the group community. It they can be translated via language file; Avatar width and height in the user list template; Event module was applying some filters on the activity page. Added Group category description and image; Ability to disable editor selection in the Edit profile page. People Touch 1.1.9 to 1.2.0 Update Instruction 1.Install update; 2.Update modules and  plugins; 3.Open resave People Touch global configuration; 4.Open and save all plug-ins. Update available only through Mighty Assistant

Priority Important Product Resources Item Type Component, Module, Plugin, Template Link to file 1 com_resource.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 2 Mb | Hits: 6787) Link to file 2 com_resource.sql-patch.1.5.zip (Size: 2 Kb | Hits: 700) Link to file 3 mightyextensions.mediapack.v.1.1.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 1465) Link to file 4 plg_toolset.v.1.2.zip (Size: 66 Kb | Hits: 1181) Link to file 5 advance_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 41 Kb | Hits: 419) Link to file 6 free_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 38 Kb | Hits: 1519) Link to file 7 fields_advanced.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 6291) Link to file 8 fields_core.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 557 Kb | Hits: 13636) Please, read list of all new features here and developer notes for those who has custom templates. Please understand that update may result in unpredicted result. Please make backup before update and try to update live sites on test installation first. Mighty Resources 1.4 to 1.5.0 Update Instruction 1. You have to make DB backup before update from 1.4.x to 1.5.x 2. Install update, sql patch 1.5 and media pack. 3. Update all modules and field plugins. 4. Open resave resources global configuration. 5. Read about changes in templates and change your custom templates accordingly 6. Open and save all sections 7. Open and save all types8. Open and save all fields plug-ins.9. Install and publish Toolset plugin and run File Relocation tool. Migrate Relate Fields There are new relate parent3 and relate child3 fields along with version 2. You have 2 options. 1. Update Relate fields version 2 to enable compatibility with Resources 1.5 2. Migrate to Relate 3 fields. For that, edit field and change type to version 3, reassign all parameters and save. As saving format the same for Relate2 and Relate3 that should work good. And if you meet problem you may change field type back to Relate 2. Update available only through Mighty Assistant

Priority Important Product Analytics Item Type Component, Plugin New version have fatal bug fixed.  Update available only through Mighty Assistant

Priority Regular Product Touch Item Type Component, Plugin Link to file 1 com_community.v.1.2.5 Build 7357.zip (Size: 678 Kb | Hits: 29) Link to file 3 com_community.update.v.1.0.to.v.1.2.5 Build 7357.zip (Size: 668 Kb | Hits: 2) Link to file 4 people_touch_plugins_all_in_one.zip (Size: 158 Kb | Hits: 4066) Fixed - search in the list of users on the front-end; Fixed - plug-in integration plg_community_juser and some other minor bugs.

Priority Regular Product Resources Item Type Component Link to file 1 com_resource.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 63711) Link to file 2 com_resource.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 2 Mb | Hits: 6787) Fixed - error when deleting articles on front-end; Fixed - search on the value of fields; and some other minor bugs.

Priority Important Product Resources Item Type Component, Module, Plugin, Template Link to file 1 com_resource.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 63711) Link to file 2 com_resource.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 2 Mb | Hits: 6787) Link to file 3 com_resource.sql-patch.1.5.9.zip (Size: 1 Kb | Hits: 79) Link to file 4 com_resource.templates.v.3.4.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 4283) Link to file 5 filters.UNPACK_FIRST.zip (Size: 47 Kb | Hits: 1358) Link to file 6 advance_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 41 Kb | Hits: 419) Link to file 7 fields_core.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 557 Kb | Hits: 13636) Link to file 8 plg_content.glossary.v.1.0.zip (Size: 2 Kb | Hits: 70) Link to file 9 plg_toolset.v.1.2.zip (Size: 66 Kb | Hits: 1181) This update have basically SQL query optimizationWe recommend to try it first on test sites or wait till 1.5.10|11. Updated - text, radiobutton, select-relate, html, mail, email, relate parent / child 3, the field Updated - advance filters Updated - templates for articles Fixed - Error in module article details Fixed - Error in module article details Added - a new plug-in Glossary. Using it, you can create a glossary. Fixed - changed the logic of the option "Prolong", when option "Prolong" is closed  the subscribtion. If the setup type  in option "Extended date" = 0, and if the option "Prolong" is closed  the plan, then Date extended = Date expired subscription plan. install instruction here

Priority Regular Product Resources Item Type Component, Plugin, Template Link to file 1 com_resource.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 63711) Link to file 2 com_resource.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 2 Mb | Hits: 6787) Link to file 3 com_resource.templates.v.3.4.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 4283) Link to file 4 plg_resource.searchbot.v.3.2.zip (Size: 5 Kb | Hits: 2950) Link to file 5 fields_advanced.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 6291) Link to file 6 fields_core.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 557 Kb | Hits: 13636) Fixed - bug in previous versions Fixed - bug with display the fields in the module Content List Fixed - bug when displaying a field of closed subscription in the plugin searchbot Fixed - bug when displaying articles, if the author has expired subscription; Fixed - displaying the menu to add an article. If the submit of articles in any category is prohibited, then the menu "Add new" does not appear in this category; Fixed - bug  in the article templates; and other bugs

Priority Regular Product Membership Item Type Component Link to file 1 com_jcs.php4.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 392 Kb | Hits: 2256) Link to file 2 com_jcs.php5.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 413 Kb | Hits: 12220) Link to file 3 com_jcs.php4.update.from.v.2.0.to.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 388 Kb | Hits: 1202) Link to file 4 com_jcs.php5.update.from.v.2.0.to.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 404 Kb | Hits: 3925) Added new feature for the option "Discount". Now you can specify the period during which the discount will be applied bug fixes from previous versions

Priority Regular Product Registration Item Type Component Link to file 1 com_juser.php5.v.2.9.33.Build.6309.zip (Size: 928 Kb | Hits: 22044) Link to file 2 com_juser.php4.v.2.9.33.Build.6309.zip (Size: 904 Kb | Hits: 5343) Link to file 3 com_juser.update.php5.v.2.7.0.to.v.2.9.33.Build.6309.zip (Size: 920 Kb | Hits: 5271) Link to file 4 com_juser.update.php4.v.2.7.0.to.v.2.9.33.Build.6309.zip (Size: 926 Kb | Hits: 1377) Added a new field "Multiple Select" Fixed bugs from previous versions

Priority Important Product Message Item Type Component, Module Link to file 1 com_jsinbox.php5.v.1.0.5.Build.6232.zip (Size: 943 Kb | Hits: 2384) Link to file 2 com_jsinbox.php4.v.1.0.5.Build.6232.zip (Size: 905 Kb | Hits: 777) We are pleased to announce that made the new version of the component Mighty Message Notice: In order for the new changes in the component Mighty Message to work correctly, we recommend you first upgrade the Mighty Resource components. Fixed bugs of previous versions Option "Groups allow to send to all groups" have been transferred to the components of People Touch.

Priority Important Product Touch Item Type Component, Module, Plugin, Template Link to file 1 com_community.update.php5.v.1.0.to.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 882 Kb | Hits: 1267) Link to file 2 com_community.php5.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 893 Kb | Hits: 6862) Link to file 3 com_community.php4.v.1.2.5.Build.6348.zip (Size: 865 Kb | Hits: 1478) Link to file 4 people_touch_modules_all_in_one.zip (Size: 46 Kb | Hits: 2021) Link to file 5 people_touch_plugins_all_in_one.zip (Size: 158 Kb | Hits: 4066)   We are pleased to announce that made the new version of the component People Touch Notice: In order for the new changes in the component People Touch to work correctly, we recommend you first upgrade the Mighty Resource components. A lot of work has been done to correct the errors and adding new features, such as: Added  to the configuration  added new option that allows users to choose templates for the group. Added new option "Groups allow to send to all groups", which was transferred from the component Mighty Messages. This setting allows you to select a group of users who will be allowed to send messages to all groups in the People Touch component Mighty Messages Fixed the creation of private categories in the group. Now each member can only create their own private category in the group, and other group members can no longer edit them. Fixed logic of joining users to a group Fixed join the group of users via e-mail notification Fixed module events, friends, group members and others Fixed plugins visited articles, user tags, rated articles, personal categories, favorit articles, created articles and other

Priority Important Product Resources Item Type Component, Module, Plugin, Template Link to file 1 com_resource.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 63711) Link to file 2 com_resource.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.5.9.Build.7348.zip (Size: 2 Mb | Hits: 6787) Link to file 3 com_resource.templates.v.3.4.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 4283) Link to file 4 plg_resource.searchbot.v.3.2.zip (Size: 5 Kb | Hits: 2950) Link to file 5 mightyextensions.mediapack.v.1.1.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 1465) Link to file 6 advance_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 41 Kb | Hits: 419) Link to file 7 free_modules.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 38 Kb | Hits: 1519) Link to file 8 fields_advanced.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 6291) Link to file 9 fields_core.UNPACK.FIRST.zip (Size: 557 Kb | Hits: 13636) We are pleased to inform you that the new version of the MightyResource. Changes and updates have taken place in other Mighty Extensions components and it took a long time to adjust all of them. Now we are confident that the new MightyResource can work with a huge amount of articles and categories. Bugs were fixed: Fixed ordering of articles Fixed bug with new_router, when creating a comment Fixed bug in modules: Content Viewer, Content list Fixed logic storing downloaded files, in fields that have a uploader etc: files, picture, gallery2, media, video, audio etc. Fixed bug with plug-in toolset Fixed bug with lug-in searchbot Fixed templates added new Plug-in for translating resource category with Joom Fish. You can download here added the ability to select display of categories - a list or tree

Priority Regular Product Membership Item Type Component, Plugin Link to file 1 com_jcs.php4.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 392 Kb | Hits: 2256) Link to file 2 com_jcs.php5.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 413 Kb | Hits: 12220) Link to file 3 com_jcs.php4.update.from.v.2.0.to.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 388 Kb | Hits: 1202) Link to file 4 com_jcs.php5.update.from.v.2.0.to.v.2.5.5.Build.6289.zip (Size: 404 Kb | Hits: 3925) Link to file 5 com_jcs.sql-patch.2.5.4.zip (Size: 934 B | Hits: 265) Link to file 6 plg_rbk.v.1.0.zip (Size: 11 Kb | Hits: 29) Added ability to edit subject alerts; Added a new template for displaying a list of plans. With this template, plans to show in columns; The ability to create coupons with fixed amount; New step-by-step membership, Choose Plan -> Login/Register -> Select Payment method -> Payment; Added a new plug-in payment for the Russian payment system RBK

Strict - send to those who confirmed e-mail address with MassMail component through newsletter with Confirmation link created by [CONFIRMATION] place holder. Also those who have confirmed e-mail address after registration if Mighty Registration component was set to 'Background (Confirm email)' at 'New User Account Activation' parameter. Soft - sent to those who have conformed e-mail address like Strict rule and who was registered by admin or with standard activation method through e-mail. None - sent to those who have not confirmed e-mail address yet Strict + Soft = Soft logic Strict + None = Exclude from mail list those who have activated account though e-mail or were registered by admin. Soft + None = Exclude Strict rule Strict + Soft + None = Same as you didn't select anything.

Some Mac OS images are recognized by GD library as broken one. To avoid that we can activate gd library jpeg warning ignoring within php directive "gd.jpeg_ignore_warning": - change value of one php directive "gd.jpeg_ignore_warning" from 0 to 1. You may ask hoster to help you with that. OR. - you may add following piece of code "ini_set ("gd.jpeg_ignore_warning", 1);" to front-end and back-end index.php scripts.

First of all I want to say that we used logic of world wide websites like Amazon and eBay to build coupons and gift certificate logic. Coupons logic completely differs from gift certificate logic. Gift certificate is fixed sum of money which grant to certain user. This is not discount item like coupon. If you set gift certificate on $100 for 2 users and one user uses $80 then the second user gets only $20. So if you need provide gift certificates on $100 for 2 users then you have to create 2 gift certificates on $100, i.e. total is $200.  You need use coupons to provide discounts for all users or certain plan subscribers. If you need make $10 discount for the first purchasing of any subscription plan then you need create coupon for each subscription plan depending on subscription plan cost. If you have some ideas or suggestion about changing of coupons and gift certificates logic then please add topic to Feature Request section.

mod_jscacl_menu module was developed to extend functionality of joomla mod_mainmenu module. if you need hide menu links from user groups which have no permissions to access certain page then you just set permissions for certain menu link (url) in Mighty Permission component and use mod_jscacl_menu instead of mod_mainmenu module.

Secret Word is using by Mighty Membership payment plugin "Pay Bill" to strict some subscription plans to be paid by bills and allow other subscription plans. Secret word works this way: - set secret word in Invoice configuration; - install and publish Pay Bill Membership payment plugin; - edit subscription plan which you want to allow paid by bill. Just insert the same secret word to plugin Pay bill under subscription plan settings - see tab "Payment Bill" parameter Secret Word. After this users may use pay bill to purchase subscription plans which has the same Secret Word in "Payment Bill" plugin parameter as Secret Word is set in Invoice configuration.

Please make sure that - you place right url to iDevAffiliate location in Mighty Membership component configuration, iDevAffiliate URL should looks like http://www.yourdomain.**/idevaffiliate/ - CURL library support is activated, check php configuration.

1. Make uncategorized article in joomla article manager, article should contain list of tems and conditions. 2. Set new terms and conditions article for parameter "Registration Policy" under Registration configuration. See tab Registration Form.

Permissions section contains a list of components permissions of which you can change. By default, the list has only few components, but you can modify the list by adding or deleting components(refer to Adding components to Permissions' list of components). Clicking on one of the components in the list, takes you to a page with a table where names of the rows indicate the actions the component can do and columns’ names indicate existing user groups. The cells of the table are boxes which can be checked or unchecked. If the box is checked that means that the respective action is allowed to users of the respective user group. For example, if you click the "Joomla Banners" component you will see a table the rows' names of which indicate actions possible to do with Banner component. All the boxes are ticked by default – each user can perform any action provided by the component. Now, if you untick the box under ‘Registered’ column of the "Add a banner" row and under "Publisher" column of the "Remove banner(s)" row, users of "Registered" user group will not be able to add a banner and users of "Publisher" user group will not be able to remove banners.

Each user that registers at your site via the front-end is associated with the user group specified in joomla--> Global Configuration-->System-->User Settings-->New User Registration Type. In order to assign Permission user group to a user, you need to edit user details via User manager: Navigate to Site-->User Manager or Components-->Mighty Registration-->User Manager Select the user whose user group you want to change Click the ‘Edit’ button Select the group from the ‘Group’ list Save the changes Note that you cannot change user group of more than 1 user at a time.

Permission section lists components that you can set permissions for.  By default there are only few components listed. You can add components to the list or delete them. To add a component take the following steps: Navigate to Mighty Permission->Permissions Click the ‘New’ button Enter some name into the ‘Name of the file’ field. This name will be used for the xml file that will be created for the component Enter some name into the ‘Name’ field. This name will indicate the component in the Permissions section. Enter com_component into the ‘option(com_something)’ field. Com_component must be replaced by whatever wording that goes after the ‘option=’ in the URL to the component.For example, com_juser, com_resource, com_content,  etc The rest of the fields can be left empty, but you can fill them in if needed. Save the changes made.

Components Member, Resources, Bill Language Swedish Length 00:43:00 Size 24 Mb

Components Member, Resources, Bill, Commerce Language Swedish Length 00:50:12 Size 29 Mb

Components Member, Resources, Touch, Bill, Commerce Language Swedish Length 02:26:30 Size 75 Mb

Components Member, Resources, Bill Language Swedish Length 00:20:00

Components Member, Resources, Bill, Commerce Language Swedish Length 01:16:33 Size 39 mb

Components Resources Language Swedish Length 00:20:24 Size 14 mb

Components Resources Language Swedish Length 00:30:24 Size 16 mb

Components Resources Language Swedish Length 01:39:24 Size 56 mb link to rellate parent http://www.mediamighty.se/index.php?option=com_resource&controller=article&article=146&category_id=177&Itemid=105

Components Member, Resources, Bill Language Swedish Length 1:11:10 Size 39 mb the link to the section with create meber ship http://www.mediamighty.se/index.php?option=com_resource&view=list&category_id=179&Itemid=105

Components Assistant Language Swedish Length 13:50 Size 11.51 Mb Nu har vi gjort en video om hur du använder Mighty Assistenten. Ta dig tid och titta på denna film och du kommer att se hur mycket tid du sparar genom att använda assistenten

Icon Version 1.0 Encrypted No PHP Any Description This plugin allow you to turn Mighty resources section into glossary. In Mighty resources you create section and add articles there, that will be glossary list. Then in this plugin you select that section    and all words will be highlighted, linked and tooltiped. Good is you can have public glossary list on the site, and even allow other users to submit new glossary elements. Download plg_content.glossary.v.1.0.zip (Size: 2 Kb | Hits: 70)

Icon Version 1.5.9 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_resource.sql-patch.1.5.9.zip (Size: 1 Kb | Hits: 79)

Icon Version 1.0.5 Build 6946 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_jsinbox.v.1.0.5 Build 6946.zip (Size: 580 Kb | Hits: 12)

Icon Version 3.1 Build 6947 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_defender.update.v.2.5.to.v.3.1 Build 6947.zip (Size: 342 Kb | Hits: 19)

Icon Version 3.1 Build 6947 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_defender.3.1 Build 6947.zip (Size: 382 Kb | Hits: 33)

Icon Version 2.1.4 Build 6953 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_jsbill.v.2.1.4 Build 6953.zip (Size: 224 Kb | Hits: 24)

Icon Version 1.2.5 Build 7357 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_community.update.v.1.0.to.v.1.2.5 Build 7357.zip (Size: 668 Kb | Hits: 2)

Icon Version 1.2.5 Build 7357 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_community.v.1.2.5 Build 7357.zip (Size: 678 Kb | Hits: 29)

Icon Version 2.9.34 Build 6948 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_juser.update.v.2.7.0.to.v.2.9.34 Build 6948.zip (Size: 714 Kb | Hits: 17)

Icon Version 2.9.34 Build 6948 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_juser.v.2.9.34 Build 6948.zip (Size: 718 Kb | Hits: 99)

Icon Version 1.2 Encrypted No PHP Any Download com_commerce.update.from.v.1.0.to.v.1.2.zip (Size: 1 Mb | Hits: 5)

Icon Version 3.0 Encrypted No PHP Any Availability For Members only Description Mighty Analytics Reports for jSeblod component are plugins for Mighty Analytics component. With these plugins you can analyze the content items of jSeblod. Reports allow to see: Top articles by sections (based on hits) Relationship articles by sections (based on hits) Relationship of articles by types Section articles relationship Categories records relationship Categories records progress Progress articles by categories (based on hits) Progress articles by sections (based on hits) Progress articles by types (based on hits) Progress of articled by field values Progress of articles by types Relationship articles by categories (based on hits) Relationship articles by types (based on hits) Relationship of articles by fields values Section articles progress Top articles by categories (based on hits) Top articles by types (based on hits) Top authors Words amount of text field values Download reports3.0_com_jseblod_pro_UNPACK_FIRST.zip (Size: 66 Kb | Hits: 3)

License Other Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

Mighty Membership Persian (Farsi) Translation [FrontEnd & BackEnd] Version v1 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

Mighty Registration Persian (Farsi) Translation [FrontEnd & BackEnd] Version v1 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

Mighty Message Persian ( Farsi ) Translation [Frontend & Backend] Version v1 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

Mighty Touch Persian (Farsi) Language[FrontEnd & BackEnd] Version v1 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

распаковать в директорию /public_html/administrator/language/ru-RU Version 1.0 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

Version 1.0 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Plugin

Random Item module - a module shows a randomly selected item from Mighty Extensions Resources category. A module has more then 40 parameters that allow you to tune your module css-style without knowing any css-styles! These parameters are: width, height, color, border, image, tooltip an so on.  You can place an item title and item description above and below item image. It's conveniently to use one with a commerce, listing site to show random items from different categories. Features: -  Module title -       allows you to link a module title with ME Category -  Item title -          allows to use an item title or selected field as an item title - Item category -    allows to link with ME Category - Item image -       allows to use picture or gallery field,  main picture or thumbnail, link an image with an item or show it in rokbox/squeezebox - Item description - allows to use an item description and set length of it - Tooltip -             allows to use description tooltip with an item image - Debug messages system for tuning the module Version 1 License GPLv2 or later Type Commercial Extension type Module

French ZIP database for distance calculation in Registration/Touch. Note the following: Only metropolitan France + Corse In conformance with writing rules, name of towns use standard typographer apostroph -’-   but not english tick -'- Orthograph of town is regular orthograph, with corect hyphens - apostrophs, and accents. To do: add Belgian and Swiss ZIP database add overseas zips extand to whole EU Installation: Like any Joomla component. Be patient, rather long.   Jacques Version 1.0.0 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Plugin

Hi Guys,   for complete integration of jomsocial please: 1.: set in configuration of com_resource "Community Integration" to "com_comprofiler" 2.: hack the com_comprofiler.php file (.../components/com_resource/library/php/community/com_comprofiler.php) <?php defined('_JEXEC') or die('Restricted access'); ?><?phpclass MRCommunityCom_comprofiler{ function userName($id, $name) {$jspath = JPATH_BASE.DS.'components'.DS.'com_community';include_once($jspath.DS.'libraries'.DS.'core.php'); $user_profile_link = CRoute::_("index.php?option=com_community&view=profile&userid={$id}"); $out = JHTML::link($user_profile_link, $name); return $out; } function userAvatar($id, $params, $prefix = '') { $db =&JFactory::getDBO(); static $users = array(); if(array_key_exists($id, $users)) return $users[$id]; $sql = "SELECT avatar FROM #__community_users WHERE userid = ".$id." AND avatarapproved = 1"; $db->setQuery($sql); $fname = $db->loadResult(); if($fname) { $avatar = '<a href="http://www.mightyextensions.com/'. $link .'">'.JHTML::image(JURI::base().''.$fname, $user->get('username'). JText::_('Avatar')).'</a>'; return $users[$id]; } else { $users[$id] = JHTML::image(JURI::base().'components/com_community/assets/user_thumb.png', JText::_('Avatar')); return $users[$id]; } }}?>   3.: have fun!     cheers Jan   Version 1.5.8 Build 6285 License Other Type Non-Commercial Extension type Special

Hi guys, attached you will find the integration for jomsocial avatars and linking for com_resource 1.5.8 Build 6285 HowTo: File Url: components/com_resource/helpers/community.php Backup your actual community.php create a new community.php Copy all of the code above into new community.php have fun cheers jan     <?phpif(MECommunityHelper::isEnabled()){ require_once JPATH_ROOT.DS.'components'.DS.'com_community'.DS.'api.php';}class MECommunityHelper{ function isEnabled() { static $result = null; if($result !== null) return $result; jimport('joomla.filesystem.file'); require_once (JPATH_ADMINISTRATOR.DS.'components'.DS.'com_resource'.DS.'controllers'.DS.'config.php'); ResControllerConfig::initialyze(); if(!defined('RES_COMMUNITY')) { $result = FALSE; return $result;    } if(substr(RES_COMMUNITY, 0, -4) != 'com_resource') { $result = false; return $result; } if(JFile::exists(JPATH_ROOT.DS.'components'.DS.'com_community'.DS.'api.php')) { include_once JPATH_ROOT.DS.'components'.DS.'com_community'.DS.'api.php'; $result = true; return $result; } $result = false; return $result; } function loadApi() { static $loaded = false; if( !$loaded && MECommunityHelper::isEnabled()){ require_once JPATH_ROOT.DS.'components'.DS.'com_community'.DS.'api.php'; $loaded = true; } } function getKarma($user_id) { if(!MECommunityHelper::isEnabled()) return; if($user_id == 0) return; $karma = JSCommunityApi::getUserCarma($user_id); return $karma; } function increasKarma($user_id, $amount, $increas = 1) { if(!MECommunityHelper::isEnabled()) return; if($increas == 0) return; if((int)$amount === 0) return; if(!$user_id) return; JSCommunityApi::increaseKarma($user_id, $amount); } function registerActivity($param, $client) { if(!MECommunityHelper::isEnabled()) return; $icon = 'components/com_resource/images/activity/'.$param['icon']; if($client) { $gicon = 'components/com_resource/images/activity/g.'.$param['icon']; $mode = 'community'; if(JFile::exists($gicon)) { $icon = $gicon; } } else { $mode = 'user'; } if(!key_exists('user_id', $param)) { $user = &JFactory::getUser(); if(!$user->get('id')) return; $param['user_id'] = $user->get('id'); } JSCommunityApi::registerActivity($client, $param['text'], $param['user_id'], $icon, $mode, null, 'com_resource', '', $param['type']); } function getAvatar($id, $params = null, $prefix = ''){if(!$id) return JHTML::image(JURI::root().'/components/com_resource/images/avatar0.gif','avatar');$db = & JFactory::getDBO();$avatar = JHTML::image(JURI::base().'/components/com_resource/images/avatar.gif','avatar');$user = JFactory::getUser($id);$dir = JPATH_ADMINISTRATOR.DS.'components'.DS.'com_juser'.DS.'avatars'.DS.$user->get('username');//HS for JomSocial Begins$jspath = JPATH_BASE.DS.'components'.DS.'com_community';include_once($jspath.DS.'libraries'.DS.'core.php');$link = CRoute::_('index.php?option=com_community&view=profile&userid='.$user->get('id'));if(is_dir(JPATH_ADMINISTRATOR.DS.'components'.DS.'com_community')){$sql = "SELECT thumb FROM #__community_users WHERE userid = ".$user->get('id')."";$db->setQuery($sql);$fname = $db->loadResult();if($fname) $avatar = '<a href="http://www.mightyextensions.com/'. $link .'">'.JHTML::image(JURI::base().''.$fname, $user->get('username'). JText::_('Avatar')).'</a>';}//HS for JomSocial Endsif(file_exists($dir.'.gif'))$avatar = JHTML::image(JURI::root().'/administrator/components/com_juser/avatars/'.$user->get('username').'.gif', $user->get('username'). JText::_('Avatar'));if(file_exists($dir.'.png'))$avatar = JHTML::image(JURI::root().'/administrator/components/com_juser/avatars/'.$user->get('username').'.png', $user->get('username'). JText::_('Avatar'));if(file_exists($dir.'.jpg'))$avatar = JHTML::image(JURI::root().'/administrator/components/com_juser/avatars/'.$user->get('username').'.jpg', $user->get('username'). JText::_('Avatar'));return $avatar;}}?> Version 1.5.8 Build 6285 License Other Type Non-Commercial Extension type Special

Hi, Attached a custom template I created for the Filter Module. It filter layout to a whole new level, with javascript selection lists.Click at the 'demo' link above to see a working version of this template at the frontpage of my site. RestrictionsPlease not that there is some restrictions to this template and PHP might be needed to implement it at certain sites. I don't have time to test it extensively, but still want to share it with the community because some people here might be able to develop it further. It has been custom made for my site and I do not know if it will work on any other site straight away. Work to be doneSome further work that others could do on this: - include selection buttons that will determine the list template of the landing page (e.g. possibility to choose between viewing results on a google map or viewing results as a list). Layout for this is already in /images. - make the template work in list templates instead of only as a module - improve layout of popup screens SupportI'm sorry for those who might require support: I do not have extensive programming skills and am also very short of time, so won't have the resources to give support or anything similar. Hope it will help some though! Kind regards, Koen Version 0.1 beta License Other Type Non-Commercial Extension type Template

With this content plugin for Resources, you can markup the records in order their rating is shown in Google, Yahoo (and others) pages. Interesting feature for 3 reasons:   User can see rating on the search engine page, and will be attracted by high ratings. Increase your SEO page Is incentive to users to vote.   See this link for an overall view. Features:   Choice of markup formats: Microdata, Microformats, RDFa; Choice of max rating value (but Google will normalize to 0 to 5 anyway, not Yahoo); Output mode choice (integer or decimal); Choice of minimal number of votes below which rating is not shown to the search engines (required by law in many countries, since it would be easy to trackback how this user voted if too few votes are recorded); non invasive: will only show for robots, so it won't make your pages heavier when seen by a human interface browser.   Installation: Like any Joomla Plugin. Then, one installed, go to Plugins. Choose joomsuite_contents for filter. The plugin is named Resource-VoteSEO. Open it, and choose your settings. Don't forget to publish it! Save Test: On back-end, set parameter Test mode or regular mode to Test Only. Apply. On front-end, choose a record or article that has been rated. Copy its URL. Then, paste this URL in this google Tool . It will show you how your record header will appear in Google. Once happy with it, set parameter Test mode or regular mode to Regular. Save the plugin. You're done! Version 1.0 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Plugin

Traduction française complète (Backend) du composant Mighty Assistant. Décompressez l'archive (l'archive contient les dossiers structurés ), et copiez les fichiers dans le correcte dossier de votre site joomla!. Merci de laisser des commentaires si vous avez des questions. Full french translation (Backend) of Mighty Assistant component. Just unzip (the zip contains the folder structure), and past the files in the correct folder of your joomla! website. License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

Traduction française complète (Frontend et Backend) du composant Mighty Message. Décompressez l'archive (l'archive contient les dossiers structurés ), et copiez les fichiers dans le correcte dossier de votre site joomla!. Merci de laisser des commentaires si vous avez des questions. Full french translation (Frontend & Backend) of Mighty Message component. Just unzip (the zip contains the folder structure), and past the files in the correct folder of your joomla! website.     Version 1.0 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

Slovak language front-end and back-end Version 2.5.3.1 License GPLv2 or later Type Non-Commercial Extension type Language

This module displays images from your Joomla articles as a 3 dimensional Flash slideshow, with clickable links to the articles - a great way to enliven your Joomla site.Unlike many Flash extensions, these are fully integrated into the Joomla content management system, so there is no messing about with XML data files, you just choose the articles to display in the module administration. The modules will automatically detect the article images and display them in the slideshow gallery. You can choose to display selected articles, the most recent or randomly selected articles from a category or section, or many other combinations.The module is also search engine friendly, as the content is initially rendered on your site as html, with the slideshow constructed from this, so search engines can follow the links to your articles as normal.As well as being compatible with the Joomla core content component, the module supports Mighty Extensions Resources, and the K2 content component. They can integrate with social components such as Community Builder, Mighty Touch and JomSocial, to show images from articles by the currently profiled user.The display is customizable through the module parameters, it is fully resizable, there is a color picker for the display colors. You can also set the gallery rotation, and have fun experimenting with the 3D effects this produces. Version 1.0.0 License GPLv2 or later Type Commercial Extension type Module

This module displays images from your Joomla articles as Flash slideshows, with clickable links to the articles - a great way to enliven your Joomla site.Unlike many Flash extensions, these are fully integrated into the Joomla content management system, so there is no messing about with XML data files, you just choose the articles to display in the module administration. The modules will automatically detect the article images and display them in the slideshow gallery. You can choose to display selected articles, the most recent or randomly selected articles from a category or section, or many other combinations.The module is also search engine friendly, as the content is initially rendered on your site as html, with the slideshow constructed from this, so search engines can follow the links to your articles as normal.As well as being compatible with the Joomla core content component, the module supports Mighty Extensions Resources, and the K2 content component. They can integrate with social components such as Community Builder, Mighty Touch and JomSocial, to show images from articles by the currently profiled user.The display is customizable through the module parameters, it is fully resizable, there is a color picker for the display colors, and a choice of transition effects. Version 1.0.0 License GPLv2 or later Type Commercial Extension type Module

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We are proud to announce the release of the first stable version of Xmap for Joomla 1.6 and 1.7. Many bugs have been fixed since our RC released a few months ago. 

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Xmap 1.2.12. This is a security release and does not contain any improvement or new features. It is strongly recommended that users upgrade immediately if using Xmap 1.2.11 or older. We strongly suggest you to upgrade ASAP to keep your site safe.

Author List is our new component for Joomla 1.6 to manage your content authors so you visitor can go to their pages either in a blog or a sortable table (list) layout. Once you have properly created your desired author instances (each attached to a specific user) in the backend, you can create different types of Author List menu items:

Today we are releasing a new module for Joomla 1.6 frontend news You can use this extension in order to show articles from your favorite categories grouped in separate category boxes. You can choose how many leading articles with or without introtext & image and how many secondary items with only the title Download

We are proud to announce the release of the new version of Xmap - The sitemap generator for Joomla!. This is the first release candidate of Xmap 2.0 and hopefully the only one before the stable release. 

Recently our site got jeopardized and Xmap's installation package was infected with malicious code. We replaced the infected file as soon as we received the notification from the Joomla Extension Directory (JED) team about the problem. The infected installation package was online for two days (Feb 21st - Feb 23rd) so if you downloaded it between those days we strongly suggest you to uninstall and reinstall it as soon as possible, and perform a full site scan to find any possible malicious code.

We are sharing our new WordPress Posts Module for Joomla! 1.5 & 1.6. You can use this extension in order to show your latest or most commented posts from your WordPress website. Of course, it requires the right Database Credentials (DB Name, DB Username, DB Password and DB Host) otherwise you will only get an error message. These are the same Database credentials you are asked for when you start installing WordPress. If you didn't install it yourself, maybe you will need to get them from your hosting provider. Additional Features: Show/Hide Posts Titles Show/Hide Some Introtext Show/Hide "Read More" text Specify WordPress Category ID(s) Order by latest, modified, most commented or by title

We are proud to announce the release of the new version of Xmap - The sitemap generator for Joomla!. This version fixes some small errors from the previous one, updates some extensions, adds new functionality and introduces four new extensions.

We are proud to announce the release of the new version of Xmap - The sitemap generator for Joomla!. This version fixes a problem with the XML sitemap being recognized as a Image Sitemap by Google and being rejected by others Search Engines and some other small bug fixes in the component itself and some extensions.

We are proud to announce the release of the new version of Xmap - The sitemap generator for Joomla!. This version fixes an incompatibility problem with Joomla's Mootools upgrade plugin introduced on Joomla 1.5.20 and some other small bug fixes.

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On September 28th, Google rolled out Panda 2.5. Yet again Youtube is the #1 site on the leader board, while even some branded sites like MotorTrend were clipped, and sites that had past recovered from Panda (like Daniweb) were hit once more. In the zero sum game of search, Google's Android.com joins YouTube on the leader board. It doesn't matter what "signals" Google chooses to use when Google also gets to score themselves however they like. And even if Google were not trying to bias the promotion of their own content then any signals they do collect on Google properties will be over-represented by regular Google users. Google can put out something fairly average, promote it, then iterate to improve it as they collect end user data. Publishers as big as MotorTrend can't have that business model though. And smaller publishers simply get effectively removed from the web when something like Panda or a hand penalty hits them. Worse yet, upon "review" search engineers may choose to review an older version of the site rather than the current site! With that level of uncertainty, how do you aggressively invest in improving your website? Over a half-year after Panda launched there are few case studies of recoveries & worse yet, some of the few sites that recovered just relapsed! If you look at search using a pragmatic & holistic view, then this year the only thing that really changed with "content" farms is you can now insert the word video for content & almost all that video is hosted on Youtube. To highlight the absurdity, I created another XtraNormal video. :) References for the above video: early Google research about ad-driven search engines being biased toward the interest of advertisers & a post about Youtube counting their ad views as editorial views Google bought YouTube *then* rolled out universal search image of Google's internal "change copyright" propaganda strategy recent Google advert showing Youtube as the #2 search engine Compete.com's Google downstream search traffic stats are available with a premium membership to their site, & they do a good job of showing the actual traffic impact of the aggregate algorithmic changes. YouTube's growth is also well reflected in numbers from firms like SearchMetrics Here is an article about the Google $500 million fine for ads promoting sketchy pharmacies & here is an ad I just saw on Youtube warning against fake Viagra Categories: googlepublishing & media

So here we are, aren't we? It's 2011, SEO is still not dead (despite a decade of claims to the contrary), but the landscape is very, very different in this post-Panda world. Most sites that have been hit by Panda (inclusive of all iterations) are still on ice some 7 months after the initial roll out. Businesses have been destroyed, livelihoods ruined, and the future of a once thriving business is seemingly on the ropes for newcomers and seasoned veterans alike. Seems like a good time to dial this up: This all appears to be just fine with Google. As Eric Schmidt once said, "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool". How very elitist of you Mr. Schmidt. What exactly is a brand anyway, to you? Is it content factories ranking for medical queries like "How to survive a heart attack" and other assorted medical terms? Or maybe you think an article that is in the running for queries around avoiding heart attacks, written by a guy with an English degree, is something that isn't part of a cesspool? Matt Cutts has highlighted health issues as a great example of why selling links was "evil." What his post didn't disclose at the time was that Google had built a half-billion Dollar enterprise selling illegal drug ads! I don't know about you, but I sure don't want to read an article on a medical topic that could have life or death implications which is written by a guy with an English degree! The point is that the lines continue to become extremely blurred and the algorithm "adjustments" continue to become more and more severe. The combination of those two attributes must give an SEO pause when thinking about short, mid, and long term strategies for their business model. One mistake or one algorithm update (completely out of your hands) can have devastating consequences for your business. Talk is Cheap Now we can queue the white hats (whatever the heck that means) who will now wax poetic about building "brands" the right way (whatever the heck that means) and begin to play the "I told you so" game as you struggle to survive. Keep in mind that salespeople will use your uncertainty against you, and try to calm your fears by telling you "everything is ok if you do things the right way". Problem is, what is the "right" way and why aren't "they" doing it? There is no "right" way, rather, just all sorts of shades of gray. Don't buy into the hype and save yourself a bit of sanity. The same people who will whip out their white hats at the first sign of algorithmic shifting are the same people who want to sell you something that, at its core whether it's a tool or product, is designed to give you information on how to manipulate search results (irrespective on how they frame the language). Bottom line is that folks in the industry are confused, scared, nervous and it's easy for salespeople to prey on the scared and the informationally-poor to enhance their bottom line. Keep this quote from Voltaire in mind when you are searching for answers or guidance in these times of uncertainty: The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor. The best defense is education, experience, and information. The Shrinking Google SERP It's getting harder to breathe in the SERPS. We routinely point this out in various blog posts, but I thought now would be a good time to revisit this problem. As it continues to appear as if Panda was less about content farms and about something a bit more sinister the incredibly shrinking organic SERP is cause for concern as well: Here you see one site with extended AdWords and organic sitelinks: If you're not in the top 3, well then you're pretty much not in the game: So much for SERP diversity: A few key takeaways when looking at these results are that: Competing and monetizing just on search traffic is probably not a good long term strategy (but can work short-mid term) Google continues to layer on Google "stuff", becomes another competitor that is almost impossible to beat You might want to explore PPC a bit more than you have in the past for more visibility, if the margins are available It might make some sense to start evaluating the cost of your SEO efforts and figuring out how they could translate into getting your foot into other areas of traffic acquisition online via targeted advertising, media buys, monitoring blogs and forums for discussions about your market, keywords, or products. Spread the funds out to get maximum exposure in multiple areas (for both short term and long term positioning) As you can see from the images, the long term viability of just relying on search engine traffic is likely to be a losing proposition. Leveraging Your SEO Skills SEO has long been more about marketing than making sure your title tags are perfect. A good SEO is a good marketer and it's been said on this blog over the years that SEO really should be part of a more holistic approach to an overall marketing strategy. However, many of you reading this might be in affiliate or Adsense camp rather than a full service SEO agency. The good news for the SEO agency is that you have all sorts of ways to leverage your SEO skills. You can get into things like: conversion optimization email marketing online media buys and adverts analytics services social media services the venerable "design and development" market offline advertising and tracking local SEO and Google Places SEO as well as Yahoo! and Bing local The options listed above are all items that can quite easily come up within the context of an SEO proposal or discussion and should make for fairly doable cross-sales or up-sells. The problem with just selling rankings or traffic is that it's all too easy for the client to dismiss you after you've achieved rankings. What's worse, even if you achieve rankings there are no guarantees of results and going back to the client 4 months in to up-sell conversion optimization is usually a non-starter if the stuff you've delivered thus far is of little value ROI-wise. No matter how effective your performance is, as an SEO you are working in someone else's ecosystem. Google may extend the AdWords ads or insert their own product search or local search or video search results right at the top and push your work down. Part of your SEO career planning, if you are in it for the long haul, should involve you starting to take a serious look at some level of client work and/or refine your product offering to a more holistic one rather than one with a singular focus. Affiliates Feeling the Squeeze Since Google has clearly shown its true colors with respect to how they view affiliates on the AdWords side is it that hard to believe that is how they view affiliates on the organic side? In fact, one of our members received this email when applying their AdWords credit: Hello Aaron Wall, I just signed up for the Get $75 of Free AdWords with Google Adwords. After receiving an e-mail stating that I was to call an 877 number of Google Adwords, I was told in my phone call that affiliate marketing accounts were not accepted. I guess I confused by this statement. Is this in error? Or am I not understanding the Tip #3 for setting up an account for Google Adwords for promoting a website? Thank you in advance for your time. Sincerely, Carole Do you remember this video where the body language suggests AdSense is ok but OMG YOU'RE AN AFFILIATE (at approximately 0:38)! Diversity, Diversity, Diversity To counteract being viewed as a "thin affiliate", I'd suggest reading up on SugarRae's blog, specifically her affiliate marketing section. Clearly you can build a quality affiliate site that is quite profitable, but how many can you reasonably expect to build out into thick, market leading sites without scaling high on internal costs to the point where margins become an issue or until Google monopolizes your SERPS? Diversity is still key with respect to revenue streams but diversity between different revenue types (affiliate, adsense, client, product) is what you should be aiming for rather than just your garden variety diversity in revenue (just different sites of the same monetization method) Where Do You Go From Here The best thing you can do for your business is to stay out of debt. This is much easier said than done, especially if you live in the US where debt slavery is the norm and gets pretty ugly before you even have a chance to earn real money. Being mostly debt free with some savings put away not only puts you in a better spot than most consumers but it also allows you to be less subjected to the whimsical nature of Google. Also, you can afford to be more patient, invest in new opportunities, and be less stressed out if some of your stuff turns down for a bit. I'd venture to say that debt is probably a major reason why some folks went out of business after the Panda update and being debt free with some backup savings and income diversity helped keep some folks in the game. Taking the First Steps I would suggest that you take stock of your personal financial situation, your current revenue streams, your skill sets, and your feeling on the overall landscape of the industry and then start to make some decisions on the future of your career. With any update or change there are usually new opportunities that arise from the ashes of Google's scorched earth policy (or policies). Now that Google is overtly spamming their own "organic" search results to try to capture the second click, riding as a parasite posting content on their own parasitical platforms is likely going to be an extremely profitable strategy in the coming years. You might not make as much money posting content to Youtube as you made posting it to your own site, but you NEVER have to worry about Youtube disappearing from the search results. The barrier to entry is getting much higher and rising fast. You need patience, capital, reliable/trusted information sources, and a bit of luck to succeed going forward. Within the span of a couple years it's gone from (mostly) the wild west to survival of the fittest. How do you plan on surviving? Categories: internet

Useful Links: SMX Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/searchmarketingexpo Twitter # activity for the conference: http://twitter.com/#!/search/#smx Another successful SMX East is in the books. From all accounts, the event seemed to go through flawlessly and without a hitch. Kudos to Danny Sullivan, Claire Schoen, and crew as the caliber of speakers, sessions, and attendees was top notch, as always. Judging from the event, search marketing is alive and thriving more than ever before. There was a healthy mix of industry experts, consultants, large corporations, agencies, and small businesses. The sessions covered a broad range of topics from beginner link building fundamentals to more advanced technical SEO sessions covering site architecture, technical coding optimization and everything inbetween. A huge thank you goes out to the organizers for a job well done. It seemed there were two themes that surfaced regularly - Panda and Google Plus/+1. Clearly, there are still many webmasters struggling with Panda and how to properly handle content in the new post-Panda world . The search engines are addressing this and giving webmasters and SEO’s more tools and information to organize their websites correctly. After some of the presentations, it seems Google is very dedicated to their Plus and +1 initiatives which will have a large affect on SEO should end user usage continue to increase. Below are tidbits and takeaways from the conference, from an SEO perspective. Enjoy! Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging For 2012 Panelists: Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo http://twitter.com/#!/janetdmiller Topher Kohan, CNN https://twitter.com/#!/Topheratl Jack Menzel, Google http://twitter.com/#!/jackm Microformats where the original snippet format, however, they have been replaced by the new and evolving standard, microdata (which is Schema.org/Google/Bing are developing for and placing resources towards). Some notes from the presentations: General consensus is rich snippets can greatly help in getting your content noticed. In one example given, Eatocracy added the hRecipe tag to their pages, and immediately saw a 47% increase in their recipes being picked up and indexed into Google (which does support this in their recipe search). Additionally, they saw a 22% increase in their recipe traffic. CNN started using Yahoo SearchMonkey / RDFa, and saw a 35% increase in their video content on Google Video search, and saw a 22% increase in overall search traffic. However, they removed the additional code from their site as it increased their page load time. The take away on that is that you should think to integrate this into your down dev cycle, your cms, or your template. Per Google, their studies show that sites w/ rich snippets have a better CTR as well. Rich Snippets Engineer at Google, RV Guha noted, “From our experiments, it seemed that giving the user a better idea of what to expect on the page increases the click-through rate on the search results. So if the webmasters do this, it’s really good for them. They get more traffic. It’s good for users because they have a better idea of what to expect on the page. And, overall, it’s good for the web.” Rich snippets only work for one site (no cross site references). Sites like LinkedIn and Google Profiles still use microformats. Google has also provided a tool in WMT, but it is a bit buggy and may throw false errors. If you don’t see your snippets show up in the SERP’s, it’s likely caused by longer than preferred latency load times, errors in your code, or a random Google bug - (per Google). The current types of rich snippets: reviews, people, products, businesses & organizations, recipes*, events, music Session - “Ask the Search Engines” Panelists: Tiffany Oberio - Google http://twitter.com/#!/tiffanyoberoi Duane Forrester - Bing http://twitter.com/#!/duaneforrester Rich Skrenta - Blekko http://twitter.com/#!/skrenta One audience member asked how to handle ‘subcategory’ pages that are often created in ecommerce sites such as “Sort Prices $0-$5”, “Prices $5-$25” etc. The question was whether or not to use the “rel=canonical” tag and point the pages back to the main page. The panelists agreed that those pages should be blocked completely and should not use the canonical tag. The Google representative said not only do these pages not add value to the engine’s index, but they also eat up the sites crawl budget. If you see the warning "we're seeing a high # of URL's" in Webmaster Tools, most times its a duplicate content issue. One audience member asked: do you look at subdomain as part of the main domain? Blekko - no inheritance from main domain Google - "it depends". Sometimes it is inherited, sometimes not. Bing - we look and try to determine if subdomain is a standalone business/website and will get treated differently based on that determination One question touched on removing URL’s from Google’s index. Google advised that a removed URL may or may not stay in the index for a period of time, and that to expedite removal of a URL one should use Webmaster Tools remove-url tool Duane from Bing was adamant about keeping your submitted sitemap clean. The threshold is 1%. If there are issues in your submitted sitemap >1%, Bing will “lose trust” for your website Panelists advised to make your 404 pages useful to the user It may not be breaking news, but Bing and Google both said unequivocally - duplicate content does hurts you Google commented they are big fans of HTML 5 technology At this point it seems Google will crawl a page if +1 is present, regardless of the robots.txt. This could possibly create issues with trying to not crawl certain pages to avoid dup content. More information found here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4358033.htm Panelists advised to spend a lot of energy “containing urls” on your website and to be thoughtful about which URLs you are getting out there Bing and Google confirmed that “pagerank sculpting” is misunderstood and not effective. For example, if a page has 5 outgoing links and link juice is spread 20% to each of the 5 links, if you no follow one of the links, the link juice distribution will not become 25% to the remaining 4 links. It will remain 4 x 20%. In essence, you have just evaporated potential link juice Google Plus and +1 These were hot topics at this year’s SMX East. Multiple session covered Google Plus and +1 in depth. Speaker Benjamin Vigneron from Esearchvision covered the basics of Google Plus and +1 . He noted a +1 to a search result will +1 the ppc ad/landing page, too. With PPC, +1 could have a significant affect on Adrank by affecting each of the Quality Score factors including quality of the landing page, CTR, and the ad’s past performance. Interesting that Adwords could conceivably add segmenting on all information in Google Plus (similar to FB) ie males, ages, etc. Christian Oestlien, the Google Product Manager for Google Plus, spoke about Google Plus features and fielded questions. He mentioned Google is testing and experimenting with celebrity endorsements +1'ing and showed an example SERP with a +1 annotation under the search result (for example “Kim Kardashian has +1’ed” Brand X or search result X). He noted Google is seeing much higher CTR with the +1 annotation and that usage for the “Circles” feature is relatively high. Google software engineer Tiffany Oberoi was also present on the panel. She noted +1 is NOT a ranking factor, but social search is still of course implemented in search results. She confirmend Facebook likes have no impact on rankings but also noted regarding social signals, “explicit user feedback is like gold for us". She also touched on spam with +1 and said she is currently working with spam team. Regarding +1’s and spamming, she said to think of +1’s similarly to links. The same guidelines could apply. Google wants to use them as a real signal. Using in an unnatural way will not good for you. Hardcore Local Search Tactics Panelists: Matt McGee - Search Engine Land Mike Ramsey, - Nifty Marketing Will Scott - Search Influence Panelists here gave an encore presentation of the session these folks put on at SMX Advanced in Seattle. The content was excellent and definitely deserved another run through. Here are the notes: July 21st, Google removed citations from their Places listings. While they have been removed for public viewing, they are still used. Sources like Whitespark (link: http://www.whitespark.ca/) can be very helpful in uncovering citation building opportunities. Citation accuracy is among the most important factors in getting your business to rank in the O or 7-Pack. Doing a custom Google search of “business name”+”address”+”phone number” will help determine what other sources Google sees as citation sources. Average number of IYP reviews of ranked listings vs non ranked listings showed to be a large gap, indicating that IYP reviews do in fact provide quite a bit of listing weight. Offsite Citation’s / Data appear to be the no. 1 ranking factor in Places listings Linking Root Domains appear to be the no. 2 ranking factor in Places listings Exact match anchor links appear to be the no. 3 ranking factor in Places listings Links are the new citations for local in 2011-12 Building a custom landing page to link your Places Listing to appears to be a huge success factor. Include your Name, Address, Phone (NAP) in the title tag Design that landing page to mirror a Places listing on their site w/ a map, business hours, contact data, etc. If needed, submit your contact/location page as your Places URL/Landing Page which will create a stronger geo scent When trying to understand how users are searching for your client, Insights for Search is a great tool as you can find Geo targeted data w/ KW differentiation (ie Lawyer vs Attorney, which is used more in that area) Local requires a different mindset from traditional SEO Optimize location (local SEO) vs Optimize websites (traditional SEO) Blended search is about matching them up PageRank of Places URL does NOT seem to affect Local ranking -(source: David Mihm) Multi-Location Tips Flat site architecture beginning w/ a “Store Locator” page Great Example, lakeland.co.uk/StoreLocator.action Give each location its own page Great Example, lakeland.co.uk/stores/aberdeen Cross link nearby locations w/ geo anchor text Ensure the use of KML Sitemap in Google WMT Encourage Community Edits - Make Use of Google’s Map Maker Include Geo data in Facebook pages and article engines Panda Recovery Case Study - High Gear Media Speaker Matt Heist from High Gear Media covered their experiences over the past 8 months with recovering from Panda. High Gear Media is an online publisher of auto news and reviews. Heist walked through the company’s strategy pre-panda and explained their contrasting new post-panda strategy. The original strategy was many auto review niche sites across a broad range of auto makes, models and manufacturers. The company originally had 107 sites and 20+ writers and dispersed content amongst all the sites. The content was "splashing" everywhere, unfocused. The “large network of microsites” strategy was working and traffic was climbing each month. Then Panda hit - hard. Traffic plummeted beginning this past Spring. Leaders at High Gear was forced to reevaluate their strategy and concluded that a more focused approach was better for users and consequently would help search traffic recover. High Gear took the following actions: Eliminated most of their properties completely (301'ed) and pared them down to 7 total sites with 4 being ‘core’: FamilyCarGuide, Motorauthority, GreenCarReports, TheCarConnection. Properly canonicalized duplicate content Aggregated content with strong user engagement was KEPT, but not indexed The made the hard decision to eliminate content that could be making money but not good for the long term Dedicated significant resources to redesigning each of the 7 sites remaining sites Their strategy seems to be working. Heist noted traffic has ‘flipped, plus some”. According to Heist, here are the learning's: High Gear Media believes that premium content will prevail and that Panda will help that Advertisers like bigger brands - it is now easier to sell ads and for more $ with fewer, more powerful sites With evolution of Social (joining Search from a distribution perspective), premium content that is authoritative AND fresh with flourish Raven Tools We were able to meet up with the friendly staff over at Raven Tools, sit down with them, and learn a bit more about their product. We personally have been using Raven for about a year now, and highly recommend it. There are several features in the works that will make this even more of an incredible product. If you haven't used them, we would HIGHLY suggest giving the tools a run. They are partnering with new companies constantly, and as such, are building out a best in class seo management product. Upcoming Features: A new feature they are working on is a Chrome Toolbar to compliment the current Firefox toolbar Another feature coming is “templated messaging” for link requests and manual link building which will include BCC’s back to records. Templated Messaging will be built into our Contact Manager, but they are working on making that functionality available in the toolbar. Another upcoming features is file management. RavenTools engineers are looking at integrating Dropbox into the system to allow files to be associated with other data and records. The Co-Founder Jon Henshaw alluded many times to the idea that link building and consequently their toolset will continue to become more and more based on relationships in the future. He also alluded to the idea that traffic can or in some cases should be associated with PEOPLE as the referrer, rather than a website (ie x amount of traffic came from person A, whether it be their facebook, twitter, blog, or website). In other words, a relationship management system looks to be a integral part of the future of Raventools. For future updates, Raventools takes explicit user feedback greatly into account. If you have a feature request or a software integration request, please contact: http://raventools.com/feature-requests/ A new feature called “link clips” was released last week just before the SMX show. You can find details about this powerful update here; http://raventools.com/blog/new-feature-raven-link-building-with-link-clips/ Regarding MajesticSEO and OSE/Linkscape, they will be more fully integrating it into the Research section of Raven. That means they’ll be adding as much functionality into Raven as their APIs will allow. In addition to getting more full access to that data, users will be able to easily add that data to other tools, like the Keyword and Competitor Managers, Rank Tracker, etc... Speed is the number one priority right now. They have full-time staff that are solely dedicated to speeding up the system. The goal is to make it run as fast as a desktop app. Long term - 3rd party integration will be a constant (and should accelerate) for the platform for the foreseeable future. Screenshot of "Social Stream" prototype design http://cl.ly/1b2h0u3P3U441w000o1K/o AdWords Insights: Flagged Pages: http://cloud.raven.im/9v8d Link Clips link checker results with historical results: http://cloud.raven.im/9zgK/o Other Notes Regarding Panda, one panelist referenced what he called a website’s “Content Performance Ratio” referring to the % of content on a site that is good versus bad or ‘performing vs non performing’ and using that as a gauge as to the health of a website. Panelists also noted in his experience it takes 3-4 requests on a 404 before search engine believes you and removes it from the index. Panelists in the “Ask the SEO” session said to pay close attention to anchor text diversity and human engagement signals Author bio: Jake Puhl is the Co-Founder/Co-Owner of Firegang Digital Marketing, a Local search marketing company, specializing in all aspects "Local", including custom web design, SEO, Google Places, and local PPC advertising. Jake has personally consulted businesses from Hawaii to New York and everywhere in-between. Jake can be contacted at jacobpuhl at firegang.com. Categories: conferences

"To thine own self be true" In a word? Prescient! 10 links in a single AdWords ad unit! Then more ads below it. Then a single organic listing with huge sublinks too. And unless you have a huge monitor at that point you are "below the fold." Negative advertising in AdWords is not allowed. So long as you build enough brand signals & pay the Google toll booth, public relations issues & reputation issues won't be accessible to searchers unless they learn to skip over the first screen of search results. While it is generally against Google's TOS for advertisers to double dip in AdWords (outside of the official prescribed oversize ad units highlighted above), Google is doing exactly that with their multitude of brands. BeatThatQuote is back yet again. The line between ads & content is getting blurry. Mighty blurry. Is it time yet for a new slogan? Google: the sales engine! Categories: google

Another friend sent me a message today: "just got a whole swathe of non-interlinked microsites torched today. Bastard! Just watching the rank reports coming in..." I haven't seen his sites, but based on how he described them "whole swathe" I wouldn't guess the quality to be super high. One thing you could say for them was that they were unique. Where putting in the effort to create original content falls flat on its face is when search engines chose to outrank aggregators (or later copies) over the original source. The issue has got so out of hand that Google has come right out & asked for help with it. The big issue is that Google is often the culprit. Either indirectly through their ads programs & algorithmic biases or more directly through the launch of new features. When Google launched Knol I was quick to flame them after I saw them ranking recycled content on Knol ahead of the original source. The Knol even highlighted similar works, showing that Google allowed Knol to outrank earlier sources of the same work. In a recent WebmasterWorld thread Brett Tabke stated that Google is putting serious weight on Google+: Some Google+ SEO factors now trump linking as prime algo ingredient. Google+ is already and clearly influencing rankings. I watched a presentation last night that definitely showed that rankings can occur from Google+ postings and photo's with no other means of support. As Google+ grows - so will Google's understanding of how to use it as rankings signals. We are not playing Google+ because we want too - we are playing Google+ because we have to. I read that sorta half hoping he was wrong, but know he rarely is. And then today Google hit me across the head with a 2x4, proving he was right again. Business Insider is not some small niche site that Google can justify accidentally deleting from the web with 2 clicks of a mouse, yet when I was doing a *navigational* search, trying to find a piece of their content I had already read, guess what popped up in the search results. Yup. Google+ What's worse is that isn't from a friend, isn't from the original source, is the full article wholesale, from Google Reader, and the source URL has Google's feedproxy in it. If Google wants to add value to the ecosystem & insert themselves as a new layer of value then how can we do anything but welcome it. However, when they want to take 3rd party content & "wrap it in Google" it is absolutely unacceptable for them to outrank the original source with their copy of it, even if they feel the deserve to outrank it & have made multiple copies of it. On large complex system I get that some advice will be self-serving and progress often comes with bumps and bruises. But Google's dominance in search coupled with their dominance in display (from owning DoubleClick & YouTube) has led competing portals to team up to try to compete against Google with display ads. And, if the big portals are struggling that much, then at the individual publisher level, how do you profitably produce content when Google takes your content & ranks their copy ahead of yours? Categories: google

I recently got put in a test bucket for Google's new layout with a "search results" bar near the top of the page. Generally this impacts the search results in a couple ways: First off, it is a much better looking design. In the past when the search results would move up and down with Google Instant it really felt like a hack rather than something you would see on the leading internet company's main website. Now with the results fixed it feels much cleaner & much more well put together. The more stable basic layout of the SERP will allow Google to integrate yet more vertical data into it while making it still look & feel decent. Google may have localized search suggestions & the organic results for a significant period of time, but the combination of them with this new layout where the search results don't move feels much more cohesive. To get the white space right on the new layout Google shifted from offering 5 Instant suggestion to 4. The Google Instant results don't disappear unless you hit enter, but because the interface doesn't change & move there isn't as much need to click enter. The search experience feels more fluid. The horizontal line above the search results and the word "Search" in red in the upper left of the page is likely to pull some additional attention toward Google's vertical search features, helping Google to collect more feedback on them (and further use that user behavior to create a signal to drive further integration of the verticals into the regular organic search results). On the flip side of this, in the past the center column would move up & down while the right column would remain stationary, so I would expect this to slightly diminish right column ad clicks (that appeared at the top even when the organic results moved downward) while boosting center column clicks to offset that. In the past, when Google Instant would disappear from view, that would pull the center column organic results up a bit. This always-on bar shifts the pixels above the first search result from about 123 to 184...so roughly 60 pixels downward. As a baseline, a standard organic listing with no extensions is about 90 pixels tall, so this moves the search results down roughly 2/3 of a listing, which should drive more traffic to the top paid search ads & less to the organic results below them (offset by any diminished clicks on the right column ads). This is a much cleaner way of taking advantage of white space than some of the cheesy & ugly-looking stuff they recently tested.I tried to line up the results pretty closely on the new test results to show what they look like with Google Instant results showing & after you hit enter. Scroll over the below image to see how the result layout doesn't really change with Google Instant hidden or extended. And here is an example image showing how the location is sometimes inserted directly into both the organic search results and the search suggestions. Here is an image using Google's browser size tool to show how end users see the new search results. Note that in this example I used a keyword where Google has comparison/advisor ads, so in markets where they do not yet have those you would move all the organic results one spot up from what is shown below. Categories: google

In the past doorway pages could be loosely defined as "low-quality pages designed to rank for highly targeted search queries, typically designed to redirect searchers to a page with other advertisements." The reason they are disliked is a click circus impact they have on web users as they keep clicking in an infinite loop of ads. This would be a perfect example of that type of website: However, ever since Google started to eat their "organic" search results, the definition of doorway pages has changed significantly. A friend of mine told me that the reason CSN stores had to merge into a "brand" was not just because that was the direction of the algorithm, but also because they were hit with the "doorway page" penalty. I don't know if that is 100% accurate, but it sure sounds plausible, given that... (UPDATE: SEE COMMENTS BELOW) recently multiple friends have told me they were hit with the "doorway page" issue on WebmasterWorld there are multiple threads from small ecommerce players suggesting they were hit with the doorway page issue "Today we received messages in our webmaster tools account, for all but 1 of our 20 domains, indicating that Google considers them doorway pages. We have also lost all of our SERP's for those sites." - Uncle_DK "I was rather disappointed to see that before banning the site the rater visited a very drab and ordinary page on my site. Not a smoking gun of some incriminating evidence of a hacker break-in or some such I was looking for. Also disappointing is the fact that they visited one page only." - 1script another friend today told me that one of their clients runs numerous websites & that ALL of the sites in the Google webmaster tools account blew up, getting hit with the "doorway page" label (and ALL the sites that were not in that webmaster tools account were missed by the Google engineers) Like almost anything else Google offers, their webmaster tools are free, right up until Google changes their business objectives and one of their engineers decide that he should put you out of business. I *knew* the point of the Panda update was not to kill content farms, but to use content farms as a convenient excuse to thin the herd of webmasters & consolidate markets. A couple obvious tells on that front were: the update taking so long to happen the first version of the Panda update embarrassingly missing eHow the update hitting so many small ecommerce websites, even as it somehow missed eHow Part of the brand bias in Google Panda allowed corporate branded doorway pages to rank higher than ever. Google's solution to this problem is, once again, to punish the victim - wiping independent webmasters off the web. What is the new definition of doorway pages? Pages on non-brand websites, that are not owned by a fortune 500 company, which aggressively monetizes web traffic without giving Google a piece of the action. If you are not a brand you can be wiped out at any time with absolutely 0 recourse unless you can damage Google's brand or harm their standing before market regulators. If you want to be an independent webmaster you better study public relations. Start here, with Edward Bernays. Wal-Mart has received a bad reputation for how their dominant control of the supply chain sucked most the profits out of some markets & drove some of their suppliers into bankruptcy: Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat." ... Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. "The Wal-Mart guy's response was classic," Young recalls. "He said, 'Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off.' " Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy. Such strong-arm business negotiation tactics might be sleazy, but you know one thing Wal-Mart does do? They tolerate multiple brands from a single manufacturer. In fact, many leading manufacturers are creating down market brands to compensate for the economic malaise we are going through: P&G's roll out of Gain dish soap says a lot about the health of the American middle class: The world's largest maker of consumer products is now betting that the squeeze on middle America will be long lasting. As far as publishing business models go, if Google starts calling ecommerce sites that are part of a network "doorway sites" then Google isn't really allow that sort of testing, unless the content comes from a fortune 500 or is content conveniently hosted on Google.com. As a publisher or merchant, how do you ever grow to scale if you are not allowed to test running multiple projects & products in parallel & keep reinvesting in whatever works best? Even the biggest publishers are breaking some of their core brands into multiple sites (eg: Boston.com vs BostonGlobe.com) to test different business models. If you have scale that is fine, but if you are smaller that same strategy might soon be considered a black hat doorway strategy. Meanwhile... Categories: google

The "Best" of Big Media Large publishers who lobbied Google hard for a ranking boost got it when Panda launched: “A private understanding was reached between the OPA and Google,” an office assistant with e-mail evidence told Politically Illustrated. “The organization is responsible for coordinating legal and legislative matters that impact our members, and one of the issues was applying pressure to Google to get them to adjust their search algorithm to favor our members.” At the same time, said "premium publishers" were backfilling their websites padding them out with auto-generated junk created by companies like Daylife, where some of the pages offer Mahalo-inspired 100% recycled content. My suspicion is that Google did not care about the auto-generated "news" garbage for a number of reasons it helps subsidize the big media interests they don't want to hit big media & cause a backlash it is quite easy for Google to detect & demote whenever they want to it gives Google more flexibility going forward when deciding how to deal with issues (if everyone is a spammer then Google has more flexibility in deciding how to handle "spam" to maximize their returns.)It is the exact same reason that Google says link buying is bad, while tolerating "sponsored features" sections on large newspapers: Machine Generated Journalism Where Google winds up in trouble on this front is when start ups that create machine generated content go mainstream. (Unless Google buys them, then it is more free content for Google!) The leaders of Narrative Science emphasized that their technology would be primarily a low-cost tool for publications to expand and enrich coverage when editorial budgets are under pressure. The company, founded last year, has 20 customers so far. Several are still experimenting with the technology, and Stuart Frankel, the chief executive of Narrative Science, wouldn’t name them. They include newspaper chains seeking to offer automated summary articles for more extensive coverage of local youth sports and to generate articles about the quarterly financial results of local public companies. Official sources using "automated journalism" is a perfect response to Google's brand-focused algorithms: Last fall, the Big Ten Network began using Narrative Science for updates of football and basketball games. Those reports helped drive a surge in referrals to the Web site from Google’s search algorithm, which highly ranks new content on popular subjects, Mr. Calderon says. The network’s Web traffic for football games last season was 40 percent higher than in 2009. How expensive cheap is that technology? The above linked article states that "the cost is far less, by industry estimates, than the average cost per article of local online news ventures like AOL’s Patch or answer sites, like those run by Demand Media." Once again, even the lowest paid humans are too expensive when compared against the cost of robots. And the exposure earned by the machine-generated content will be much greater than Demand Media gets, since Demand Media was torched by the Panda update AND many of the sites using this "algorithmic journalism" were given a ranking boost by Google due to their brand strength. The improved cost structure for firms employing "algorithmic journalism" will evoke Gresham's law. This starts off on niche market edges to legitimize the application, fund improvement of the technology & "extend journalism" but a couple years into the game a company that is about to go under bets the farm. When the strategy proves a winner for them, competing publishers either adopt the same or go under. That is the future. Across thousands of cities, millions of topics & billions of people. Even More Corporate Boosts Just because something is large does not mean it is great across the board. Businesses have strengths and weaknesses. Sure I do like love shopping on eBay for vintage video games, but does that mean I want to buy books from eBay? Nope. Likewise, Google's friend of a friend approach to social misses the mark. Do I care that someone I exchanged emails with is a fan of an athlete who promotes his own highlight reels? No I do not. In a world where machine generated journalism exists, I might LOVE one article from a publication while loathing auto-generated garbage published elsewhere on the same site. Line Extension & "Merging Without Merging" At Macworld in 2007 Eric Schmidt said "What I liked about the new device and the architecture of the Internet is you can merge without merging. Each company should do the absolutely best thing they can do every time, and I think he's shown that today." If you don't have the ability to algorithmically generate content to test new markets then one of the best ways to "merge without merging" is to sell traffic to partners via an affiliate program. Google has no problem promoting their own affiliate network, investing in other affiliate networks, or inserting themselves as the affiliate. Google is also fine with Google scraping 3rd party data & creating a content farm that inserts themselves in the traffic stream. After they have damaged the ecosystem badly enough they can then buy out a 2nd or 3rd tier market player for pennies on the Dollar & integrate them into a Google product featured front & center. (It is not hard to be better than the rest of the market after you have sucked the profits out of the vertical & destroyed the business models of competitors). Others don't have the ability to arbitrarily insert themselves into the traffic stream. They have to earn the exposure. But if other people want to play the affiliate game, they need to have "brand." Affiliates Not Welcome in the Google AdWords Marketplace At Affiliate Summit last year Google's Frederick Vallaeys basically stated that they appreciated the work of affiliates, but as the brands have moved in the independent affiliates have largely become unneeded duplication in the AdWords ad system. To quote him verbatim, "just an unnecessary step in the sales funnel." In our free SEO tips we send new members I recommend setting up AdWords and adCenter accounts to test traffic streams, so that you have the data needed to know what keywords to target. But affiliates need not apply: Hello Aaron Wall, I just signed up for the Get $75 of Free AdWords with Google Adwords. After receiving an e-mail stating that I was to call an 877 number of Google Adwords, I was told in my phone call that affiliate marketing accounts were not accepted. I guess I confused by this statement. Is this in error? Or am I not understanding the Tip #3 for setting up an account for Google Adwords for promoting a website? Thank you in advance for your time. Sincerely, Carole The same Google which allows itself to shamefully carry a "get rich quick" AdSense category considers affiliate marketing unacceptable. Non-AdSense Affiliates Classified as Doorway Pages, Not Welcome in the Organic Search Results? The exact same thing is happening in the organic search results right now. Maybe not on your keywords & maybe not today, but if you are an affiliate, the trend is not your friend. ;) I have heard recently from multiple friends that some of their affiliate sites were penalized for being doorway & bridge pages. At the same time, another friend showed me some BeatThatQuote affiliates ranking thin websites. What is worse, is that in many instances, Google considers networks of similar sites to be spam. Yet at the same time the quickly growing Google Ventures is investing in companies like Whaleshark Media - a roll up currently consisting of 7 *exceptionally* similar websites in the same vertical. Larger companies like BankRate can run a half-dozen credit card affiliate websites & an affiliate network. And they can create risk-adjusted yield by buying out smaller competitors, largely because Google won't penalize them based on the site being owned by a fortune 500. However the independent affiliate is forced to sell out early due to the risk that Google can arbitrarily decide they are a doorway site at anytime. The absurd thing is that if independent webmasters don't include revenue generation in their website then they don't have the capital *required* to invest in brand & further improving their website. How do you compete against automated journalism when Google gives the automated content a ranking boost? And if you want to do higher quality than the machine generated content, how do you hire employees if you are not even allowed to monetize? I suppose there is AdSense. Even though AdSense publishers are Google's affiliates they are still welcome to participate in Google's ecosystem. Risks to Small Businesses Small businesses not only have to compete against algorithmic journalism, Google's algorithmic bias toward brands, arbitrary "doorway page" editorial judgements cast against them by engineers & significant algorithm changes, but they also have to deal with loopholes Google leaves in the system that allow them to be arbitrarily removed from the ecosystem. Google showing you "closed in error" wouldn't be such a big deal if they didn't copy code, violate patents, deal in patents to spread their ecosystem, aggressively bundle & advertise, engage in price dumping, and behave in other anti-competitive ways to put their "incorrect facts" in front of billions of people. The big issue Google is facing on the content quality front is the incentive structure. They have got that wrong for a long time now. They may think that these big changes are motivating people to improve quality, but realistically the lack of certainty is prohibiting investment in real quality while ramping investment in exploitation. How can anyone invest deeply over the long term in a search ecosystem where Google... competes against advertisers in the ad auction hosts content that they automatically preferentially insert into their search results actively invests in companies that arbitrage their search results, and considered running an SEO firm?Google would spin Performics out of DoubleClick, and sell it to holding firm Publicis. Only one major force inside of Google hated the plan. Guess who? Larry Page. According to our source, Larry tried to sell the rest of Google's executive team on keeping Performics. "He wanted to see how those things work. He wanted to experiment." The problem with that is that most honest economic innovation (eg: not just exploitation) comes from small businesses. Going into peak cheap oil where food riots are becoming more common & pensions are about to blow up, we need the kings of information to encourage innovation, rather than relying on doing whatever is easy & trusting established old leaders while retarding risk taking from (& investment in) start ups. In some markets being successful means staying small, building deeper into a niche, and keep adding value until you have a strong position. However some ecommerce sites that were not associated with big brands were torched by the Panda update. Betting on Brand As Google has tilted their algorithm toward brand, some ecommerce companies that focused on winning relevant niches are now watering down their competitive advantages by betting the company on brand: CSN Stores is today consolidating its 200+ shopping sites into a single ecommerce website under one brand: Wayfair.com. ... So why the change to Wayfair.com? Primarily for obvious branding reasons: the company has long been spending a huge amount of money on marketing a lot of separate websites, and now they can focus on advertising just one. ... Other reasons for the consolidation of the separate shopping site are search engine optimization – which was apparently much needed after Google’s recent Panda update – and the fresh ability to make recommendations to shoppers based on their collective purchase history. But, as some brands abuse Google the same way the content farms did, is that a good bet? I don't think it is. What is so Bad About Content Farms? low quality headline over-promises, content under-delivers anonymously written written by people who are often ignorant of what they are writing about add nothing new to the ecosystem, just a dumbed-down reshash of what already exists done cheaply & in bulk, in a factory-line styled format contains frequent spelling and grammatical errors primarily focused on pulling in traffic from search engines exists primarily to promote something else (ads or the above-the-fold ecommerce product listings) etc. etc. etc.Such behavior is *not* unique to the sites that were branded as content farms & is quickly spreading across fortune 500 websites. Big Brands Become Content Farms A friend sent me an email which highlighted how a well-known brand was ordering thousands of pieces of "content" in bulk for their branded site. Here is the email, with blurring to protect the guilty. The only difference between the "content farms" and the branded sites engaging in content farming is the logo up in the top-left corner of the page. The business process from how the content is created, to who it is created by, to what they are paid to create it, to the interface it is ordered through, on to how it is published is exactly the same. Many of the same authors who had some of their eHow "articles" deleted are now writing dozens of "articles" for fortune 500 websites. When Panda happened & I saw corporate doorway pages (& recycled republished tweets) ranking I hinted that we could expect this problem. I thought it would start with parasitic hosting on branded sites & maybe a few opportunistic brand extensions. Then I expected it would likely take a couple years to go mainstream. But with the economy being so weak (and back in yet another undeclared recession, actually honestly never having left the last one) this shift only took 6 months to happen. At this point I expect it to spread quickly, especially as the economy gets worse. The above fortune 500 company is one that got a strong boost from Panda & as their downstream traffic from Google picks up over the next month or 2 you can expect many of their competitors to copy the strategy. This isn't a US-only phenomena. A community member sent me the following, from another fortune 500 company. Now that fortune 500s are doing almost everything that smaller players could do (but with more capital, more scale, more algorithmic immunity, requiring smaller players to link to them to be listed & in some cases while replacing humans with algorithms) AND get the Google brand boost the future is growing more uncertain for independent webmasters that lack brand, relationships, and community. Big brands are basically pushed across the finish line while smaller webmasters must run uphill with a 80 pound backpack full of gear - in ice & snow, naked, while being shot at. What's worse, is that brands are now being bought, sold & licensed - just one more tool in the marketer's toolbox (presuming you have the cash). disclaimer: I am not saying that all content farming is bad (I am fairly agnostic...if it works & people like it, then it works), but the above trend highlights the absurdity of Google's notion of whether something is spam based not on the offense, but rather who is doing it, especially as big brands just quietly turned into content farms. Categories: publishing & media

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson Not only do they monetize via AdWords, but Google has 6 listings in the "organic" search results. Any Google search engineer care to have a public debate as to the legitimacy of that search result set? If an SEO gets half of the search results (for anything other than his own brand) he is an overt spammer. If Google eats half of the search results with duplicating nepotism across their own house "brands" then it is legitimate. Making the above even worse, smaller niche brands are regularly disappeared from Google's index. Google has the ability to redirect search intent to one that is easier to monetize & more along a path they approve of. I was searching for a post John Andrews (webmaster of johnon.com) wrote about Google censorship & what did Google do? They used their power over the dictionary to change the words I searched for on the fly & then promoted their ebooks offering yet again. Note that listings 1 & 2 promote the exact same book. Google just lists the content they scraped into multiple categories that deserve to be showcased multiple times. How many ways did Google screw up the above search result? they auto-corrected the search query to an unwanted alternate search in spite of auto-correction, they still allowed their other verticals to be inserted in the results inline right near the top (when rare longtail searches are auto-corrected, one would expect them to be more adverse to embedding such an aggressive self-promotion in the search results) they associate content hosted by them as being about their brand simply because they host it (even though that piece of content has no relation to them outside of them scraping it) they list it not once but twice, right at the top of the results (even though it is duplicate content available elsewhere & both pages are the same on Google, with the exception of one promoting a recent version of the book & the other page promoting a decade older version of the exact same book)As a publisher you are *required* to keep spending more money on deeper editorial to avoid being labeled as spam or tripping some arbitrary "algorithmic" threshold. And as you do so, Google is humping you from the backside to ensure your profit margins stay low, scraping whatever they can within the limits of the law & operating the types of websites that would be considered spam if anyone else ran them. Once regulatory pressures or public opinion catch on to Google's parasitic behavior, they buy a brand & leverage its content to legitimize their (often) illegitimate enterprise. :) Oh, and how about a quote from the Censored Screams book: "censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but, unlike charity, it should end there.‎" Categories: google

Is there such a thing as "passive" income? Generally no. A person can cash out existing brand equity and exposure, but if they cash out too aggressively and/or do not reinvest enough then they are ultimately cashing out their market position and will eventually fade. Does Google Make "Passive" Income? Online there are some network effects that are hard to beat. MySpace had them over Facebook & only lost due to years of systematic incompetence & mismanagement. But if you are boastful about your business model competition will come and eat your lunch. Look at all the Groupon clones. And even Google has to claw and fight for every percent of search marketshare. A person could say "well Google makes passive income" and I would counter that with "not really." So far this month Google has made about a dozen search interface changes or tests & the underlying relevancy algorithms have likely had at least 3x or 4x as much change. Keeping Google's Marketshare Costs Big Money The propaganda Google spreads include statements like: "users keep coming back to Google even though they have a choice of a search engine every time they open a browser" While Google maintains that their monopolist marketshare is due to user appreciation of superior technology, a ton of their exposure is paid for. I was helping a friend set up a new laptop and the amount of Google added to the machine made me feel like Google is the new Norton or Symantec. If you use the Internet Explorer browser to access the web it comes with a Google Toolbar. That toolbar defaults to enhanced features enabled. Google also pays for Chrome to be installed in the laptop. If you are curious enough to click on the pinned Chrome logo then when it opens they try to set it as your default browser. If you do use Chrome regularly you see Chrome store ads bundled right int he browser. Even if you don't use Chrome or the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer then whenever you use Google they suggest setting it to your home page. And even if you don't change your homepage, Google paid to be the default search box on Toshiba's default start page! If you manage to somehow avoid all the above Google payola then they wait for browser plugins to have security issues & then do a bundled cross-promotion there, thus turning competing browsers into ads for more Google crap. And when you go to update Flash, look where they tell you to search from If your default search provider isn't Google when you install Chrome they use an option screen to help you change it, with Google being the first choice Either Google is fibbing when they state how much of their existing marketshare is due to superior quality service, or they are hedging a risk of losing marketshare to Bing by buying placement everywhere they can. And to me this really highlights one of the big issues with truly "passive" online income. In spite of Google's success (& the great network effects they enjoy), even Google feels the need to spend hundreds of millions of Dollars a year buying exposure for their own browser, buying default search provider exposure in 3rd party browsers, and ensuring new computers are filled with promotional Google crapware. This sort of cross promotion is everywhere, from ads on Youtube promoting Chrome to Gmail ads highlighting featured Youtube videos and Google+ games having Chrome ads integrated as special items in the game right on through to Google buying display ads promoting display ads. Facebook realizes how powerful this cross-integration is & thus buys ads on Youtube as well. But if you want to leave Google's ecosystem it takes a lot of effort, as Google is willing to advertise the Google alternative aggressively wherever they can. Google recently extended their ecosystem of cross-referencing further by automatically adding Google Related to Google Chrome & the Google Toolbar, which recommends Google content within the browser no matter where you are on the web. Google's bundling not only follows users around the web & personalizes ads, but it also bakes right into the core of their relevancy algorithms. Eric Schmidt stated "the internet would be better if we knew you were a real person rather than a dog or a fake person. Some people are just evil and we should be able to ID them and rank them downward." Either you sign up for a Google Profile or you suffer the consequences! Forbes published (then quickly pulled) an alarming article titled “Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Dies.” Wired followed up spreading a similar message & a new Google trusted stores rating system for merchants was also spotted. With so many attempts at lock-in there is no surprise that some other browsers which have partnered with Google are considering moving on. This is not to say that Bing doesn't do marketing as well. They just are not as slick about it. Policing Advertisers Costs Billions In addition to evolving their core relevancy algorithm, Google has to police advertisers who are willing to be deceptive, market counterfeit goods & use the lowest common denominator. When Google is too loose that can cost them a pretty penny: they just paid a $500 million fine to the US government for ads from Canadian pharmacies. The DOJ claimed Mr. Page knew what was going on: Mr. Neronha said those efforts amounted to "window-dressing," allowing Google to continue earning revenues from the allegedly illicit ad sales even as it professed to be taking action against them. Google employees helped undercover Justice Department agents in the sting operation evade controls designed to stop companies from advertising illegally, he said. "Suffice it to say that this is not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own," Mr. Neronha said in an interview. "This was a corporate decision to engage in this conduct." Likewise, it costs Google a lot of money to deal with lawsuits that arise due to their business practices & lack of respect for copyright with photos, books & videos. They eventually had to develop an expensive video footprinting technology to adopt DRM features on Youtube. And building the partnerships Google has to run Youtube isn't easy. They pay something like a half-cent per video view & if you create a site with a "no soup for you" message (like the above Google page) for markets where the finances do not work out then you are violating their search guidelines by cloaking, whereas Google overly-promotes YouTube in the search results and is free to count ad views as video views (once again, against Google's guidelines). New Niche? New Lawsuits Eric Schmidt highlighted how the lobbyists write the laws & then Google went out and hired over a dozen lobbyist firms. Anything that disintermediates search costs Google a cut of revenues. While Groupon is still unproven as a business model, Google was willing to spend $6 billion to buy it in order to avoid the risk of missing out on a new form of local ads. Mobile search now represents 12% of the search market. To look in their dominant search position onto the new devices Google: build a new operating system to give away for free paid carriers a revenue share (in addition to giving it away) likely violated Oracle patents (that will likely cost them in the B's) had other patent issues which required Google to spend $12.5 billion buying Motorola (that is nearly 1/3 of the cash Google has built up through their IPO & saved profits in the 10-year history of the company) Sneaky ISPs Redirecting Search Traffic What is worse for Google, is in spite their default status, their huge ad budget, and being large enough to be sued regularly, even all that isn't enough to keep all the traffic they pay for, as there is widespread hijacking of search traffic by ISP providers. Google Isn't Passive, but ___ Is Google may have bit off more than they could chew & are certainly doing anything but being passive. But maybe some other companies that make great money are doing so passively. Offline that is certainly true in many instances, but online passive companies tend to disappear. Look at all the work Yahoo! has done with their news box & their sports vertical, yet when you back out the cash on the books & the foreign investments the company isn't valued at much above $0. AOL has also cratered. In spite of their huge traffic streams they are not growing with the market due to search bypassing them & niche players picking them apart one vertical at a time. Running a portal profitably & sustainably is anything but passive. Even deep into the long tail at the other end of the equation the profits may be every bit as scarce. Demand Media's accounting techniques show that they were far better at growing revenues than growing profits & the company may never be profitable. The Limits of "Search" Google & Bing keep eating more of the value chain through content scraping & a more interactive search experience that include new ad formats, like coupons & product ads with pictures. In addition, search companies are challenging the boundaries of search by creating vertical media & ad networks that compete against a wide array of publisher websites. The Huffington Post Autonomy / Fast Search Groupon BankRate MapQuest + TomTom The Yellow Pages Dell / HP That "Shady" Competitor When Google talks about "protecting users" one of the case studies / angles they push is the health angle: The paid post at the top happens to be about brain tumors, which is a really serious subject. If you are searching for information about brain cancer or radiosurgery, you probably don’t want a company buying links in an attempt to show up higher in search engines. Other paid posts might not be as starkly life-or-death, but they can still pollute the ecology of the web. While Google was using the life-or-death approach to policing link buying outside of their AdWords ad network, Google was knowingly selling search ads to Canadian "pharmacies" providing illicit drugs in the US. The official settlement document lists how Google insiders knew work-arounds to the automated systems & were working directly on managing the ad accounts associated with the illegal activities. Google had done so for over a half-decade & only changed their approach *after* they knew a sting operation was underway. For those scoring at home, this has been Google's approach to the health vertical: 3rd parties buying links that *could* influence search results for important health topics = morally reprehensible Google selling links *within* the search results for important health topics to criminal organizations = totally reasonableGiven the above investigation, it is not surprising that they shut down their health records initiative. They had already spent all their credibility. Google may protect you from some third parties, but Google can not protect you from Google. :D Not only can Google hardcode the algorithms toward promoting certain websites (while editorially discriminating against other webmasters for doing the exact same thing), but Google also actively invests in the publishing ecosystem, which pits them directly against anyone who doesn't receive their largesse. Webmasters are told that having networks of similar websites is spammy. And yet, Google invests is a company that owns about 7 copies of the exact same business model in the exact same niche as a roll up. As we saw with BeatThatQuote, Google owned-and-operated websites get penalized for a shorter duration of time for the same offense that other websites get penalized for longer periods of time for. It was only through *repeated* exposure of the absurdity on SEO blogs that Google decided to treat their own property like they treat a typical webmaster. You can also do nothing wrong, but have your model undermined by looking too similar to a company that is exploiting Google's relevancy weaknesses & forces Google to apply retribution. A lot of small ecommerce sites were purged in the content farm update. What is so sad about that is that if not for accounting games & selling stock as a business model a lot of the biggest "success" stories in the content farm might not even exist. While the above section focuses on Google, it could be about any competing business that touches the web...a bank which uses bogus accounting driving smaller banks out of business, a company that receives no bid government contracts associated with bribes & uses those "profits" to price dump in related fields, an ISP redirecting your traffic, etc. No matter how clean a business model looks at a glace, there is some gray area where businesses meet & exceed the numbers quarter after quarter. Look, for example, at the sorts of links NetZero puts in some of their customer emails And those links point at the illegal "fake news" styled $1 trials (with endless unstoppable recurring billing). Look closely at any mainstream media site & you will run into those ads. Are Passive Revenues Impossible? It really comes down to how you define passive. If your site doesn't evolve & isn't aggressively marketed then eventually a search engine or another competitor will pick away at your advantages until you are soon found ranking #2 then #3 then #7 then #20 then invisible. Or you might get clipped by an algorithm all at once in a sudden stop torch job that makes your site essentially invisible, or it may be a slow & painful debt by a thousand cuts. This is one of the reasons I generally prefer to have a site with a 30% or 50% profit margin over one with a 90% or 95% profit margin. Sure high margins are great while they last, but if you don't reinvest enough over time an algorithm or a competitor will eventually torch some of those high margin projects. When it comes to online income, passive and reliable are not synonyms. If you saved the margins you made while they were there then you are lucky, whereas if you adjust your lifestyle to that level of income & don't save anything then dark times have appeared. It turns out having passive frugal spending habits & active savings habits are crucial if your lifestyle relies on "passive" income. ;) Categories: business

Is Paid Search Incremental or Cannibalistic? Earlier this month Google referenced a "study" they did which showed that 89% of AdWords ad clicks were incremental (meaning that they were clicks that the website would not have received if they relied on organic search results alone). As part of that "study" they stated that "indirect navigation to the advertiser site is not considered." Why did they chose to exclude that segment of traffic? Because they advertiser would have got almost all of it anyway. They never really defined what indirect navigation is though, so you are left to guess as to what qualifies as being part of that segment. The "study" also stated: A low value of incremental ad clicks may occur when the paid and organic results are both similar and in close proximity to each other on the search results page. This increases the likelihood of a user clicking on an organic result as opposed to a paid result. Close proximity occurs when the ranking of the organic result is high, placing it near the paid results. Organic results triggered by branded search terms tend to have a higher ranking on average and this may lead to a low IAC value. So which keywords should you advertise on? And which keywords are buying the milk when you already have the cow for free? According to Google: A low IAC value does not necessarily suggest a pause in search advertising is in order. In fact, for many advertisers with a low IAC, it is still profitable to invest in search advertising. To evaluate the economic benefits of search advertising, an advertiser must run a calculation incorporating their individual IAC, conversion rates, and conversion revenue. The below equation can help determine whether search advertising is worthwhile on a case by case basis. Is an Experiment Required? Google later suggests that a more rigorous test would include a split test experiment that compares a control group against an ad group with paid search ads held back. They then suggest that "many advertisers are adverse to conducting such experiments due to the setup costs involved and the potential revenue impact from having a hold-out group." What I don't buy *at all* is the suggestion that such studies need to be rigorous & expensive. On the organic search front, Google Webmaster Tools already offers organic search CTR stats by ranking position & ranked page: And since Google is heavily promoting adoption of the +1 button, they also offer A/B split data for how that button impacts search performance. If Google provides this data for free for organic search then why (other than protecting their own revenues) do they suggest this data is hard to attain for paid search? If Google respected their advertisers & wanted the advertisers to advertise based on complete data they would make this data available automatically, like they do with the +1 button data. No "Study" Required Here is my big problem I have with Google suggesting that I need a quantitative study to know if I should buy my own branded keywords: I know I am going to get almost all the clicks anyhow (Google removed "indirect navigation" from their study for a reason, and 3rd party studies have shown how directly cannibalistic these ads are) the whole point of building a brand is increased affinity with users & not needing to pay for incremental distribution driven by brand demand. To spend money to build brand only to have to keep rebuying the existing brand equity is quite a futile exercise. in the bid auction Google sets arbitrary pricing floors at the keyword level to squeeze advertisers (almost nobody is bidding on "seo book" but if I do Google will want $2 or $3 per click) even if I go through said "quantitative study" I end up needing to re-test it every so often as Google arbitrarily juices the ad prices to increase their revenues when Google offers the enhanced long sitelinks they are doing so because they think the search query is primarily navigational, yet they still put ads above the organic search results, which IMHO is pretty dirty and the dirtiest bit of it all (that smells the worst) is that competing against you in the ad auction is not only arbitrary pricing floors, but also Google itself, which buys keywords against your brand (using their own monopoly money) Larger Sitelinks Drive Down Competition Google recently expanded sitelinks in the organic search results to make them take up a huge portion of the above-the-fold screen real estate, driving down attempted organic search brand arbitrage & negative reputation issues. Driving Down the Search Results Using features like Google Instant, a Google+ promotional bar & longer AdWords ad copy, Google has been aggressively pushing down the search result set so fewer listings appear above the fold. Each month there is another test of some new feature that pushes the organic search results downward. Zero Moment of Burning Ad Budget Google promotes a concept called "the zero moment of truth" suggesting that you need to advertise just about anywhere late in the conversion cycle to "be there" and reinforce your messaging. However, with enhanced organic sitelinks, the brand owns so much of the search real estate that it will lose limited traffic to competitors if it doesn't buy AdWords on its branded keywords. Further, given the ability to block certain sitelinks & edit the page title & meta description you should be able to control the copy on your branded organic listing to make it look and feel like the ad copy you would use in AdWords. There are some nuanced exceptions though, as brands are not always well aligned with how people search... When You Should Buy Your Brand Keywords Short Term Specials & Promotions If you have an event coming up that you need to promote for a short duration of time then running AdWords ads is a great way to instantly get exposure for that campaign. Certain Misspellings In the past if you misspelled keywords Google would put the spell correction right at the top of the page. More recently they have decided to put it below the AdWords ads. So on this type of ad (where Amazon already ranks #1, but has the organic search results pushed down by the ad & then a spell suggestion) I think that ad is burning money. In other cases, like where you don't rank high in the organic search results, buying AdWords ads on common misspellings is a much smarter idea. For instance, I think this is a smart ad buy by Agoda. However, in the longrun, if I ran Agoda, I would point a few misspelled links at my website to boost my rankings for common misspellings. One way to reach misspellings and longertailed searches for your brand is to use an embedded match, where you bid on agoda and then use -[agoda] as a negative keyword. Brand is Shared By Multiple Companies Mercedes Benz is burning a bit of their ad budget by advertising where they are irrelevant. Certainly it makes sense for them to buy exposure for the branded keywords, but in the above examples they should put -kingston as a negative keyword. When Google Runs Negative Ads In some cases Google ads promote negative messaging. For instance, while using Gmail I saw an ad suggesting that I should "uninstall McAfee" in a computer that did not even have it. Buying branded ads in those cases would likely make sense, if for no other reason to compete with & block out risky negative ads that could go viral. Whether Google should even allow such ads is another question for debate. Big Money Markets Full of Spam Google was recently clipped by the DOJ for a half-BILLION Dollars for running illicit ads promoting Canadian pharmacies. The DOJ went so far as highlighting that Larry Page knew what was going on & intentionally allowed these ads to run: Mr. Neronha said those efforts amounted to "window-dressing," allowing Google to continue earning revenues from the allegedly illicit ad sales even as it professed to be taking action against them. Google employees helped undercover Justice Department agents in the sting operation evade controls designed to stop companies from advertising illegally, he said. "Suffice it to say that this is not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own," Mr. Neronha said in an interview. "This was a corporate decision to engage in this conduct." After the above instance, Google is perhaps going to be "guilty until proven innocent" where they are running sketchy ads. In the short run it is likely appropriate to still run branded keyword ads while the issue is getting sorted out, but if you see anything like the following on your branded search results it probably makes sense to fight it on the public relations front in the background while opening the wallet to protect the brand publicly. And since most major pharmaceutical corporations are routinely fined for running illegal ads, I don't understand why these pharma corps don't have a black hat SEO (or 3) on staff to help manage the search results. If Google wants brand then give it to them in spades. ;) Categories: pay per click search engines

Smart SEOs have been preaching brand for years and years now (& so has Google if you read between the lines). For some time Google has appended prior search queries in AdWords. In some cases they also show ads for related search queries, append your location to the search query for localization, spell-correct search results based on common search trends, and (as the Vince update showed) they can also use search query chains & brand related searches as a signal. As far back as 2008 Google sugested previous query refinements for organic search, but they haven't been very prevalent thusfar IMHO. While researching another article, I was searching for some browsers to see how search engines were advertising on various keywords, and after searching for Firefox I later searched for SEO & saw the following: This is yet another way brand familiarity can boost rankings. Not only are you likely to score higher on generic search queries (due to the Vince & Panda updates), but having a well-known brand also makes Google more likely to recommend your brand as a keyword to suggest in Google Instant, makes people more likely to +1 your site, and it now also can impact the related organic search results further if people search for that brand shortly before searching for broader industry keywords. Categories: google

Have you ever seen a naked robot? If not, you can at least hear one, as the Salty Droid tells all in a 59 minute interview. Droids do not talk longer than an hour. ;) Topics discussed include get rich quick, get poor quick, marketing, community building, .info domain names (s'rsly?), the wrath of robots, and a few surprises. Download the MP3 here Like reading more than listening? Transcription below. An Interview of the Salty Droid Interviewer: Today we're going to interview not a person, so much as a robot, or maybe a person behind a robot. Who is the Salty Droid? Jason Jones: Is that the first question, "Who is the Salty Droid?" Interviewer: Yes. Jason Jones: All right. Well, the answer is, Jason Jones. Interviewer: Jason Jones. OK. Why did you decide to create a robot for your website or what was the idea behind that? Jason Jones: Well, I like robots first of all, because everyone likes robots. I was just using that as my online persona, and then the whole Salty Droid project developed underneath it. The robot just came out of nowhere, out of the blue. Interviewer: When you are writing or talking or compiling, everything you do is the Salty Droid? Do you view that as an extension of yourself? Or do you view that as something that separates yourself from what you're doing? Or how do you think of it that way? Jason Jones: I think of it definitely as separate. I try to keep it completely depersonalized or keep a layer in between it and me, because the robot is really angry and aggressive, but those aren't healthy emotions to take on personally. The robot is the character and the blog is the project. And it's more than just me. It's more than one person. There's a whole community there. I'm just one piece of it. I definitely don't think of myself as that, as the robot. Interviewer: That leads to two questions. One, you built a community around this, but then, two, you said that it's not good to have the anger and negative emotions. Do you view the community as being full of negative emotions? How can you create a community that revolves around a character that has stuff you wouldn't describe as good? Can you build a community that is separate from the traits of the founder of it? Jason Jones: Well, the hyper-aggression and the bad attitude are mostly communiqué. And I think most of the people in the community. All the legit people in the community are really caring, good people, who get that the aggression is a joke. The targets of the aggression the things that are going on that we're pointing to are really serious things that people need to stand up and say something about. It takes an aggressive tone that I don't think anyone really tries to personify the robot's charms. Interviewer: One of the things that's an issue online is it's really easy to point to what's bad or what's wrong. It's really easy to be cynical. But do you think there is enough good resources for people to find what will help them and what's good with the site mainly being focused on staying away from what's bad? Or can you focus on one too much or if you did both would it cause problems? Jason Jones: Yeah. I think mixing them up would be a terrible idea because of the specific thing I'm talking about. I'm totally sure that I don't know what is the good side of making quick money online. Interviewer: Right. Jason Jones: How can you find the right help to do that, because that is not a real thing. You can't make quick money online. It's really hard to make money online. That is the reality of the situation. As far as how people get help in accentuating the positives. I really don't see, what are the positives? Interviewer: From that perspective I think you hit on one of the things, is that a lot of the people have the mindset. Like, I got an email today, where the person said that they want to make something. They've been buying all these network-marketing things and they want to be able to make money really quick and easy without needing a PhD. I've had other people say that they'd be willing to pay me a portion of the profits for whatever I taught them but nothing upfront. There's even been a person, he's offered me to pay me. They wanted me to rank someone else's page lower, a competitor. And offered to pay me after the fact.[laughter] Interviewer: The big thing there is there's a lot of mindset where people try to take whatever they can get and take. And the thing is a lot of them end up running into a roadblock by the view of the need fast, easy, cheap, free or placebo cost, but need it to be automated and make a lot. Do you think the big problem is the vultures or the mindset of people? Jason Jones: The vultures. No, it is the vultures. It's not people's mindset and people's weakness and people's vulnerability, and people's desire to have a life that's different from the life that they have. That is just how humans are. And there's certain ways you can capitalize that that are seedy and not very respectable, but then you can prey on it. You can become a predator. And that's a fallback excuse that people use is trying to characterize the victims like that, so that it feels less painful to think about. That they are also exploiting this idea of like, "Hey, let's make the world a better place." That is exploited just as much as this greed tactic. It exploits good people, greedy people. Anyone who has human weaknesses is exploitable. Interviewer: What are the emotions you would say are most commonly preyed upon the "get rich" people? Jason Jones: In the "get rich" thing, greed is a part of it. For instance, I listened to a huge batch of boiler room calls. OK. I won't mention anything specific about, but 100 hours. And it's overwhelming. I heard a few calls where it was greed and it is this stereotype person of this chaser who wants to believe the impossible. I don't think that's the majority. I'm not sure how big of the portion that represents, but it's not that significant. It's people who are afraid, people who want a brighter tomorrow, people who things are falling apart for and who are at a moment in their life where they are particularly vulnerable.And it's not the same people over and over. People get ground out and pushed out and in comes a new batch. They're always looking for this new batch of vulnerable people. Interviewer: This is maybe a bit abstract or wide-reaching, but in the same way the monetary system is setup as being debt-based. To where if you have an income inequality and some people have savings, there's got to be some other people that are in debt or living right close to the edge. Do you think how we structure our political and economic system, feeds into the people being vulnerable and desperate? Or do you think no matter how it was structured people would always be that way no matter what? Jason Jones: No. I think part of what's making people vulnerable is they're thinking that they don't have enough. And this constant buy-buy culture and the credit, lending. And it's not just personal. Everything is based off on debt. Debt is our currency. People's weaknesses and personalities develop inside of that. It's a microcosm, the scammy end of the spectrum what I'm writing about. It's done very basely down at the bottom, but it's a reflection of exactly how things go all the way to the top. It's in the political structure. It's in the financial system. We're structured like this. Interviewer: Some of the patterns of the stuff you particularly don't like, is preying on people's emotions. Some of the stuff you do on your blog comes down to sleuthing and what Dereby called "investigative journalism", in a world where there is almost none. How do you get so much of the data? Is this building the community help pull on to that stuff in for you? Or are you really technically savvy? How are able to dig so much stuff up? Jason Jones: Yeah. That's a human groundwork. It's a beat work. It just takes time. I started writing it and people started coming. And the more people come, the more people come. And then I keep quiet about who I'm talking to and I keep my sources confidential. You'll see in the writing style I never say, "So and so says", or "This anonymous source." I never mention ever where anything is coming from. I just do it and if you read long enough you just have to come to rely on the fact that there is stuff going on behind the scenes that I'm not going to talk about. People don't want to talk about it, because it's a really cagey, dark situation. And people have their own interests and they don't want to. But it started happening almost immediately. People started to come talk to me and I just talked to them. Keep it going. At this point I have this never-ending stream of information that just comes at me and only a tiny, tiny percentage of it ends up on the blog. Interviewer: You did a lot of interesting graphics stuff. Did you find that hard to do? How were you able to tie in the image and audio? Let's say you put up a five-minute video or a three-minute video and you make all you custom graphics, how much work goes into that? [laughter] Jason Jones: A lot. Interviewer: It looks like it. Because I do the basic videos of like, "Here's the screenshot of this, and here's how it works." I make a three or a five-minute thing and I always screw-up in the middle. Then I get ticked off with myself, and start cursing on myself. I can imagine how hard it is to sequence all that together. Have you gotten more efficient with that over time? Or what did you use? Was it just a lot of hard practice till you get used to doing it? Jason Jones: Yeah. It was just practice, because the first time I had no idea. I had a reason, a motivation to do it. I just would do it. But that big epic video they were talking about Jeff Foster and Andy Jenkins. They were talking about the Syndicate and telling me to go fuck myself. That video took 36 hours, probably. Interviewer: Wow. Jason Jones: It was just a long time. Interviewer: What takes more time? Is it cutting up the audio, or creating the graphics? Or figuring out what pieces you're going to use? Jason Jones: Yeah. Everything goes wrong, and the audio formats don't match. You just have to get a few parts in. You restart, because you feel like your idea was idiotic. Interviewer: Have you thought about making videos about some of the stuff you do? There's one site I subscribe to. Financial advice where the guy is totally low-key, he's always questioning himself. His website's called iTulip." And he makes these amazing graphs comparing different asset classes over time. Sometimes he's like, "Yeah, I did this pretty quick," but he's taking a long time for most of it. Have you thought about some of the stuff you do, like creating tutorials on how to do some of this? Jason Jones: No, definitely not. Because one, that reach was the thing I'm talking about. And I don't want to do anything even close to that. Just to keep the line totally clear. Two, I have a hard time explaining the things that I'm doing to people who aren't me. It's hard. I know a lot of different little tricks. I don't know. You've got to figure out your own. Figure out your own little tricks. Interviewer: With the stuff you're doing, if the site gets more popular, if you ever decide to do so many years down the road, so many months, so many years. At some point do you think you're eventually going to lose passion for the project? or do you see yourself doing for years to come? Jason Jones: I don't know. I like it right now. No. I see myself doing it for a while, because no one's doing it. If I stop doing it, then what? It's something different is gone. I don't want that to happen. I'm a fan of the site. I like it. I love the site. Interviewer: What's the hardest part with running it? Is it doing the stuff yourself? Dealing with how other people interact with it? Or dealing with what people do away from it? Or what's the hardest parts with it? You were struggling with like stuff like people taking down social media accounts. Jason Jones: Yeah. That's the hardest part, because that's disappointing. When I first started, I expected that this project would have the support of the Internet community. Because it's the Internet community, that's creating the distribution system for this vicious scam. And people don't like it. It's not popular. Things that these people do aren't popular with the normal people you want using your websites. I thought people would be behind me. Plus, that's how it's supposed to be. In America, there's this like illusion that you can say whatever you want. And it's all just like Wild West speech around here. But it's not like that at all. The Internet companies don't support you. It's way more work than it should've been just to keep the site existing. That's not fun work to try to keep it up. That doesn't do anything for the cause. It doesn't help anyone. It's not helping me. It's a waste of time, and it's totally unnecessary. I'm obviously not going to lose. They're not going to be able to get rid of me, so it's a waste of their time. I think that's the most disappointing part, getting banned from all these different social networks, getting banned from hosting sites, having to resort to... Part of the trap is that you go onto YouTube, and you think it's an open forum where there's multiple voices. If people are getting scammed, they're going to be making YouTube videos, just like these scammers are making YouTube videos. And those two will weigh each other out, but that's not it. If someone wants to take your content down more than you want to keep it up, it's pretty hard to keep it up. Interviewer: You mentioned something about that being an illusion. Well, you mentioned part of it being technical stuff related to that, but you also mentioned it being an illusion. Do you see that as a pattern that's always been that way in society across all cultures? Do you see the Internet making that better or worse? How do you feel about that? Jason Jones: Well, this particular thing that's dangerous about the Internet is that there's a perception, more so than ever before, that dissent is available. When you could only distribute through the paper, you knew it wasn't open. It was incredibly limited by whatever the publication medium was. You could think about that as you were looking. But now you get the idea from everything in the media and from most of the stuff on the Internet, that the Internet is the voice of the little guy. But then when you go and look, you find out, "No, the little guy gets silenced still, and his voice is not there" But now there's holding out that his voice is there, and he's just not saying anything. So, he must be happy about it. He must not have just got his credit card maxed out and had his wife leave him. And suddenly drinking a fifth of Scotch a day.It's not that those comments never pop up. It's that whenever someone gets that boldness, they get slapped right back down. And they're not in a position to fight back. I'm speaking about it in my own personal experience from this scam area , but it's obviously like that across the Web, too. You want to talk about gas frack explosions in your back yard, like you can bet there's dozens of people who put up things. Then some company's hack lawyer came along and demanded they take them down. They didn't know their rights, and they can't afford to be availed to seek any counsel on those rights. It's just easier to take it down. Should not be like that. Interviewer: There's also the extreme of false complaints and sites like Ripoff Report that have been called a variety of things. I don't even know what words I could use without availing myself to a lawsuit. [laughter] Jason Jones: I'll say it, extortion racket. That's what people accuse them of, of running an extortion racket, because it looks a lot like that. Interviewer: How does the consumer separate out? You think people are falsely confident that they have a full spectrum; how can they become more aware of stuff they should trust versus stuff they shouldn't? Jason Jones: That is a good question. I don't know. Knowing who to trust is a hard thing to do, especially on the Internet, because of how many different channels and how many different voices there are. Because right now, at the moment, as we speak, things are running wildly out of control. Interviewer: Things are running wildly out of control, what does that mean? Jason Jones: If you don't know, if you're not sophisticated on the Internet, it's dangerous. It's dangerous to spend money on the Internet. It's dangerous to put your credit card on the Internet. Yeah, it's hard to tell. You can't go to Ripoff Report and trust what's there, when you know that sometimes the complaints are false. And that no one's editing them, and the person in charge isn't at the wheel. Or is running a corporate advocacy program where he's taking the side of people who are known scammers. The Internet is turning things seedy. Interviewer: Yeah. Part of that is that the Internet naturally has network effects built into a lot of different things, like the first person in the search result's going to get the bulk of the clicks. The leading search engine's going to get the bulk of the search traffic. And you see that with systems like.... I'm talking to you on Skype now, and it's got tons of users. Isn't it, though just how businesses run? A lot of businesses start off pure, and then grow. They get larger. Get dysfunctional through their size. Then they just have to keep making the numbers? Jason Jones: Yes. That's clearly what's happening. Interviewer: It's not really just a web-only phenomenon. Jason Jones: Oh, no! Interviewer: It's just that on the web you feel you're getting more diversity when maybe you're not. So one thing on the web... Jason Jones: That's the big difference I'm pointing to on the web, is that there needs to be a disclaimer, so that people have the idea. But that won't work either, so there's just no way. Interviewer: Yeah. I think the key is building good internal filters for who to trust, but anyone who's new has a hard time with that. It's almost like you have to get struck down once or twice somewhere to... Jason Jones: Exactly. It's hard when you come right on. The sites that I trust, and the things I trust on the Internet are the ones where I can smell the person behind it. Once it gets out the point where it's so big you're not sure what you're looking at reported, like Huffington Post. It's like at first, it was a thing. Then at the end, it's just this big goulash. Then it's like, "I'm not going to look at this anymore. I can't relate to it." Interviewer: Right. You think that it's having the character and a voice of an individual or a small group of individuals that you've learned over time is valuable. The more depersonalized it becomes, the more mushed, the less you can trust it. I had an interesting thing along that lines, when Google recently did an update called the Panda update, and a lot of larger sites from big brands got a big boost. But then, a lot of the independent sites actually end up getting crushed out that didn't have the brand. It sounds like the relevancy algos are going in the exact opposite direction of what you're saying is best for the web? Jason Jones: Towards the bigger? No. That is bad, right? That's the old-school way. That's the thing that is so not working. Let's not put that on the Internet and do it again, where it's even easier to scale up to an irrational size, become unreasonably big and useless in all of your ways. Interviewer: Have you seen my weight scale that posts to Twitter, is that what you're saying? No. [laughter] Interviewer: Let's see. Jason Jones: Although I used to like Google more, before I started reading your blog. Because then I saw them more as a heroic force, and then the way you talk about it. Yeah, I can see how so many of their tactics are little guy squeezing, which is really not what I want to see happen on the Internet. Interviewer: It seems that offline, there's growing income inequality. And maybe technology only speeds that up as well. Jason Jones: No. That's reflective of the offline world, too. Everything is way too big. Big groups are the worst, most unreliable. It's one of our worst human inventions, forming giant groups. And the bigger the group is, the stupider it is. Yet our whole economy is about building out the biggest possible things. I'm not an expert on this, so I don't know why I'm running my mouth about it. Interviewer: There's a book I read called "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History." I will admit that the reading was deep and beyond my level when I first started. But it was interesting, so I stuck with it. And one of the things he said is that it seems that we've always sacrificed variety in favor of homogenation to increase yield, as a general piece of capitalism. Online, some people will come, to your blog and say, "F*ck you, you stupid robot!" or stuff like you would never see people do in person. Where they're really enraged. Do you deal with a lot of that? Or do you think people view you in that way? Or how do you get the humor angle across without turning people off? Jason Jones: Well, the blog is supposed to be complicated, so it's not easy to understand. When you first get there, it's not supposed to be totally clear what's happening. Because I like it like that. Part of the message, like this looks like it's coming, this looks bad. When you just first glance at it, you're like, "Oh, this! I'm not sure this guy should be doing this, Geez! Does he have to go that far?" But then you stay for a while, and then it's really easy to figure out. I don't think it's just like a mystery to anyone. But the trolls, that is rage. The site doesn't really get that many trolls in a traditional Internet sense, where it's like someone who's just popping in and they're just trying to get a rise out of a group. And then they thrive off of that. There is some of that, obviously. But much more what happens on the blog is people who come to try to defend their own financial interests without disclosing that. And because this transparency and jokes, especially affect their day-to-day numbers, they have some massive overreactions. I get that in public and in private every day. Also, people who have an idea about something that they think is possible, and it's not possible. Then they start to figure out that it's not possible. Then they want to lash out at someone about that. A lot of times, that ends up being my robot, which is a good thing to lash out at, actually. Interviewer: What do you mean by that, that they find out something? What are you saying, are you saying like making money quickly, or having some system? Jason Jones: Well, the specific stories I'm writing about, it follows a much more cult-like pattern, where they're trying to disrupt your normal way of thinking. They're explicitly doing that. And they're filling you with this other thing, which is convenient for them. Which ends in giving them your money and most of your time and part of your life for a while. Then they just dump you out at the end. When you're in that process, it's like a very deep, dangerous process to mess with people's personalities like that. When you wake up out of that and you see, "Oh, I've been kind of semi-delusional here. I've been lying to my family. I've been being aggressive to my friends." "This is affecting my life," and just, "This is not as advertised," it's hard to face up to that. Lashing out at the Salty Droid is often... And I also get, along with the death threats, I also do get a lot of apologies. Interviewer: Do you have any way of gauging how much you help people at all? Do you get thank-you emails every day? Or do people tell you that they were in a like crappy spot, and then they came across your stuff, and it changed their way of thinking? Jason Jones: Yes. I get those always, all the time. And it's much more in private than on the thing in public. Interviewer: Yeah, because I would imagine people might feel a bit embarrassed to admit that they were getting ripped off or something. Jason Jones: Yeah. A lot of the stories I hear are so personally tragic, and they contain so much just like horror that people don't... Talking about them more is painful, and people definitely are uncomfortable talking about it in public. I'm sorry, what was your question? Interviewer: Well, continuing from where you were, is that largely what drives you to keep going with the site? Jason Jones: Yeah. Definitely. Without that, it would be too hard, because there's not a lot. Sometimes I wonder why I'm doing it, but families especially like in the James Ray situation. Well, all of the situations. For every outrageously stupid comment, threat, or whatever that I see or get, I get 10 from the other side. Interviewer: You mentioned a group called The Syndicate. Jason Jones: The Syndicate. Interviewer: What is that? Do you think there's five or 10 or 20 or 50 different groups that are aligned similarly to what you mention? And you just honed in on one group? Or do you think that one has more reach than the others? Or why so much focus on this one group? You also mentioned that it seemed like some of this stuff weaves together. Can you describe how that is? Am I making any sense or not? Jason Jones: Yeah. You're right. It's that I focus on The Syndicate. But the idea is that this white-collar fraud that's going down in all different formats, not just the Internet, in all different transmission methods, they're using these cartels. The cartel system is one of the key features in lots of different scams that you can look up. You get close enough and you look close at it, a key feature is cartels, false testimonial, keeping people out of the market. Having an in-group and an out-group, and a secondary tier, lieutenants. If you look close, the organizational structure is there to see across all different forms of people.But I just focus in on The Syndicate because that's where I started. I like to say things that I have public, that I have proof of that I can put out there. That's just hard to come by.I want to finish that story. The Syndicate is a big. They did big-time damage. They're on these audios that I have all over the website. Like just talking openly about violating the laws, and there's 1000s and 1000s of individual stories of how these people have wrecked lives and taken millions of dollars. And I'm going to keep on it until something changes. Interviewer: Why would they record those calls? Or how would those calls end up recorded then? Like we're recording this one. Jason Jones: Yeah, they record. They like to. They're narcissists. They like to hear the sound of their own voice, and they record their calls. They record all kinds of things they should not be recording. Even after I get some of those recordings, they keep on doing it, because they don't learn any lessons. Like the last one I released, which was that boiler room call. The boiler rooms, they record their calls, because that's what boiler rooms do. Interviewer: Do you sometimes feel like a man trying to hold back the Sahara Desert in a way, because this stuff's everywhere? Or do you think if you make a big enough difference in one area, people will carry on and help in other areas? Like it spreads out in circles? Jason Jones: I don't know. That's what I want to think about when I'm in a drum circle. I don't know how realistic that is. I hope that's how it is. I hope there's all these magical, beautiful butterflies being born, because of what I'm doing. Interviewer: Part of media has always been if you go to other forms of media, stuff spreads out, and then it reconsolidates. Like there's a bunch of people experimenting. And then ultimately, a lot of that comes down to social signals. Like people trust what they think other people trust. You did a good job marketing your site, especially on a very small budget. What were keys to getting well-known exposure, spreading your ideas? Jason Jones: I don't know. I try not to think very much about that. Because if you're going to start a blog, and if you want to start a real blog. Not the way people I talk about, talk about starting a blog. But if you have something to talk about and you want to start a blog, then you start it. People aren't going to comment first. And you want people to read your writing. They're not, so then how do you stay motivated to keep writing? It seems like a trap. The key is to focus on the thing that you are writing about, and have that be the thing that you care about. Because the thing that was clear immediately is that it didn't matter how big of an audience I had. If it was zero or 1000, 10,000, it didn't matter.From the very first word, sound I made on the Internet, the people who I was talking about, they heard. That's it. You have to focus on the audience or the thing that you're talking about, and the Internet can allow you to interact with them.If you stay focused on building a quality thing and caring about the thing that you're actually writing about. And being a responsible advocate for that thing in whatever form it is, obviously not my crazy format, but that's the important thing.How you end up like getting popular. Now I'm popular, but I really don't know. You tell me how that happened. I don't know. Interviewer: Did you make the number one most popular robot? Or, number two most popular robot online behind GoogleBot? Get you a little plaque made up? Three years down the road, you decide you have a great idea, or you think you could really help people. It's not big, bureaucratic, dysfunctional, large company, but you eventually want to start doing something where you think you help people. But it's going to be more of a money-making enterprise, rather than something that you're just doing for free.Do you think the marketing lessons you learned from building the Salty Droid help you, more than any of the bad karma from people hating Salty Droid? Some of the people who you've exposed hate that obviously. And whatever you do going forward, there's going to be some connection, right, between them? In terms of people will try to connect them up? Jason Jones: Between this project and my next project, you mean? Interviewer: Yeah, I'm not saying that you're going to go from Salty Droid to SaltyMillionaire.com. What I'm saying is like whatever you do next, the web has a way of tying people or things together. Are you worried about that at all? Or do you never really plan on trying to make much money online, just do what you're interested in mostly? Jason Jones: Well, I don't believe that you can make money online, number one. And no one's ever been able to convince me by showing anyone who's doing it. Interviewer: Well, we'll do a sidebar after this. Jason Jones: First of all, it's like an art project in my opinion. Once I'm done with it, hopefully it'll still be up. It'll be there forever, and that's one of the cool things about the Web. I'm really proud of it. I don't plan to be haunted by it in my future endeavors, although I really don't want to stop doing it. I don't have some aversion to making money from it. I don't think it's evil to make money off of the Internet. And I'm kind of getting close now. Now I have a big audience, and if I wanted to try to do something non-exploitative, I have some ideas that I think could work. And I'm definitely not against turning it into something.It'll be weird now if I make money online, because my primary message is that you can't make money online. But it is like that. It's like, "Yeah!" If I end up making some money doing this it's because I built up a mass audience.But that's almost impossible, so much that you should not be thinking about that. If that's one of the specs in your business plan, "Build up mass audience," then forget it. That's not a realistic goal. Interviewer: Unless you can keep the cost structure low while you're doing it, and you're having fun doing it. If you're having fun doing it and you don't have too high of a cost structure, then you can stumble into a business that way, because you've already built up all this leverage already. I think what harms a lot of people is they say, "Hey, I got online yesterday. I need to make a bunch of money tomorrow." It's just like a new person to the stock market that's probably going to get served and lose all their money.But if you keep a cost structure low and do what you're interested in, it helps. You mentioned how it attracts people that are similar. And you build a community around it. That's how I started. When my blog came out, or when I first made my blog, it was a default web template. Three months in, I could afford to buy a $99 logo. Jason Jones: Yeah. Well, that's the way to do it. And I'm not saying that. Obviously, some people have success, too. But it's not going to be instant, and it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be any of those things. And then, you don't know exactly why you're successful. Maybe you think you know, but I don't believe that you can know. Stuff is too complicated to be extrapolating out such specific details, and there's so much chaos that surrounds you and the things that you do. Trying to predict things like that or plan for them, you've got to have some core value that you're about and focus on that. Then you can hope that it gets really successful and big. But maybe you're being useful in the interim period if that doesn't happen, or if that takes a long time. Interviewer: A friend of mine, a close one,, I always tell him, "Hey, do something you're passionate about." They're like, "I don't want to do something I'm passionate about. I just want to make money." And then it's like, "Hey, have you been working at all on that?" and they're like, "Nah." I'm like, "That's because you're not passionate about it." Jason Jones: Sure. Although that advice about being passionate about it, I guess that's good when you're trying to pick something to try for yourself, but most people are kind of like slaves and they're forced to, and there's not that much you can do about it. I want to do something I'm passionate about. Interviewer: Why did you choose a .info extension? Outside of Germany, there's like three legitimate .info sites in the world. Salty Droid being one of them. What made you choose this? Jason Jones: Yes! Because Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss registered all our domain names. Interviewer: They registered all your domain names? Jason Jones: Yes. There's a post about it, it's called Deiss and Belcher's Big Mistake. I was flashing my teeth at them about it, but I really didn't care. Because it was just stupid, I just got .info. And it's worked out just fine. Interviewer: Yeah. Have you ever made any posts that you'd later regret? For example, you saw someone doing something that was kind of shitty, crappy? And later you saw like them do something decent. And then like, "Maybe I went overboard on that." Or do you think that by the time you collect enough, that you're pretty certain that someone is what you think they are by the time you write it? Jason Jones: Exactly. Like at the first, there at the very beginning, I was just winging it a little bit. But then I was just poking small holes at people anyway, so I don't regret any of that. Once I got going, I don't talk about someone until I know their position inside of the system. And I have to have heard someone telling me a story that's just like, "Ugh!" Otherwise, I would never speak to someone like the robot speaks. I'm doing that on purpose, and I'm careful. Hopefully I never make that mistake.Like someone will tell me about someone, and I'll watch them for six months before. Because you can't go off, that is a responsibility I have. You cannot do what I'm doing to just an average citizen. I wouldn't accept this kind of behavior in a different situation. Interviewer: You think in some way ignorance is bliss? Do you think you would feel better if you didn't know all this stuff? Or do you think you feel better knowing that maybe you helped some people? Jason Jones: Ignorance is bliss if you're ignorant and you remain ignorant of all things, so that you can't tell. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. There's bull crap going on all around, so there's plenty of reason to be depressed. I don't find this particularly depressing, because everything's depressing. Tsunamis are depressing, too. If you're reading about the world, there's lots of stuff that needs to be better. That's just the perpetual state of everything. Interviewer: You're not going to know how you're going to become successful? When were the points when you thought that what you were doing was some little side thing, to where you really believed in it? Were there steps where you said, "OK, this was?" Do you look back where you say, "These are the five things that really made 80 percent of the difference?" Or do you think it's just going to bat every day? Or how would you describe it? Jason Jones: I could tell from the very beginning, which I didn't know before I started doing this, but was was really clear right from the start. That what I was doing, was agitating the bad guys. It doesn't matter if I'm popular or not, this is agitating the bad guys, and that's helping. Like the way I'm doing it, I'm doing it in a particular way. And it's helping. I also could tell right from early on that this is helping victims. This gives victims a zone to think about what's happened and like gives a chance for reasonableness to leak back in.The people who are involved, the parties to the thing that you're talking about on the Internet, this is true. From my experience so far, no matter how small you are compared to the thing that you're talking about. If you're going to complain about YouTube's policies, then the people at YouTube are probably not going to hear that. But there's not very many settings where if you say something about someone on the Internet, they're not going to hear it.That's powerful by itself. It doesn't matter if no one else reads it, you can talk. If you see something you don't like, some problems, you can talk about that thing. People who are involved in that thing, you can talk to them, so that isn't dependent on getting a big audience. Interviewer: Do you think that's because people realize how things can snowball? And they want to see what's going on and try to minimize it early? Jason Jones: Yeah, because people are like narcissists. Like you send someone something and say, "I wrote this about you," they're going to go read it. Only people who have massive information overload where they're getting so much in that they can't process it, which is how all the gurus pretend like they are. But once I started to get popular, I could tell, "What lies!" It's hard to know when you first get to the Internet, but it's not that. I'm popular. I'm not overwhelmed. I can keep up. I read all my emails. If you sent me an email, then I have read it. And I think almost everyone is like that. And if you've said something about me on the Internet, I saw it, because that's just how it works. There's not that many people talking. Like I mentioned that James Ray's PR guy, who's also the PR guy for Goldman Sachs. I forget his name now, Mark Fabiani. Interviewer: All-around good guy, obviously. Jason Jones: Yes. And he came. I know he saw it, because people can't not come see their own thing. That's really powerful, right there. That was the "Aha!" moment. Right as it started going, I could just tell right away. Like, "Oh, my gosh! They hate this so much!" That makes it worth doing it. Interviewer: Did you actually send the people emails, like, "Hey, I wrote this about you?" When you first launched, were you doing that? Jason Jones: Yeah, right. At first, yes. Interviewer: OK, That was key to getting it to spread right there, because you were going to write... Jason Jones: Not really. Because I only did that right at first, after that, I could tell. Well, because I thought I needed to do that. The way the web works now, you don't need to do that. I never do it now, like I say something about it. Interviewer: I don't think that the web changed so much as your website's authority and reach changed. Jason Jones: No, because this way predates that. It goes way before you ever came to my website. If you look, the video's taken down now. But there's this video of Perry Belcher complaining about me. He calls me an "asteroid asshole" from the stage at this Austin Internet marketers event. And that was like 10 days into it. It's not because I was important at that time. No one knew me. And the tone I was taking made it seem like no one will ever listen to him either, because you can't talk like that. Everyone knows you can't talk like that. Interviewer: Do you think that there's...? Jason Jones: He was complaining in front of the marks in the room, just like he was that disturbed that he would say something about it from the stage just a few days into it. The web is powerful for talking directly to people. If you have something to say to someone other than Barack Obama, put it up on the web, and they will see it. Interviewer: Why is Barack Obama so much harder to reach than W.? Jason Jones: Well, because... [laughter] Interviewer: I don't know if you realized it, but a lot of what you're mentioning is actually just a lot of marketing concepts. You're talking about do something you're interested in. Find people that are relevant. Find people that are kind of egotistical, not saying that you have to feed in and kiss people's asses. But feed into knowing who will respond and how they'll take it. Then you also mentioned something else. Like, "You're not supposed to do this. You're not supposed to do that. Most people wouldn't do that." A lot of times a lot of rules and concepts of rules are set up to keep existing market leaders in their place and prevent others from disrupting them. That's a lot of the point of how Eric Schmidt famously, "The lobbyists write the legislation," When you talk about all that stuff you're doing, when I hear you I'm like, "OK, this is a marketing step. Be relevant. Be interested. Know your market. Connect with them, have a point of differentiation." Do you see how a lot of this stuff you mentioned? You didn't mention it using particularly marketing words, but it almost sounds like a marketing plan? Jason Jones: No. Blogging is like a marketing thing. I'm not denying that. I don't put out art on every post, because I'm just so passionate about art. It's because that's an effective way to communicate. I am trying to do a good job of being an effective communicator. I am trying to build my audience. I'm not saying that's not one of my goals, or that that's not important or fun. I hope I'm a good marketer. Although they say that to me in the comments all the time as like an insult. Interviewer: You're just a marketer. Jason Jones: I'm a marketer. Oh, that's great. This is great marketing, bud. Interviewer: Well, I think that it's hilarious, because a lot of bloggers do that with SEO, too. Like if I write something, they, "Oh, more SEO bullsh*t!" And then like a couple years later, after the same guy said all SEOs are a scam, he'll say, "Oh, yeah, that was one of my link-bait efforts." [laughter] Jason Jones: Right. Interviewer: It's like, "You transparent jackass! Why would anyone trust you now?" Like that, "Hey, I was full of sh*t a couple years ago, but you can trust me now." Jason Jones: "Remember when I was a liar? Those days are in the past." Interviewer: "Well, I think they're in the past, but I wouldn't bet on it." Or, "I'd like to bet against my own." Pete Rose style. Jason Jones: I hedge! Interviewer: Goldman Sachs, "We're sort of long this..." Define "sort of" and "long". In English or French? No! If you had to start over from scratch today, what are things that you would avoid doing that you did? Jason Jones: I would not use Twitter. Interviewer: Not use Twitter? Jason Jones: Because it started on Twitter. It started as like a Twitter character, and then I put a lot of effort into this Twitter character. And I thought Twitter was a really cool way. That dynamic I'm describing, it's particularly real in social media. If social media platforms were actually there for open debate, like I could go onto Twitter and talk to Perry Belcher. Not only could he hear it but he had the sense that everyone else heard me. That made the things I was saying, even if at first I had five followers, but it doesn't matter. It's still in search, and people could still hear me talking to him. That seemed really powerful. And I spent a lot of time building that thing, and then they take it away. They can take it right out from underneath you. They don't have to tell you why. You don't have any rights to the things you're creating. I hadn't backed it up or anything, so it's like that whole period is just gone. They just took it. And they never said a word to me about it.I'm careful about that now, and not just Twitter, either. If you're building something controversial, do not build it on the cloud, or else you can lose it. Interviewer: OK. It seems like there's almost two marketing things in there. One, it's important to have autonomy and control of what you're doing, right? Jason Jones: Yes, definitely. Interviewer: And then the other would be you can maybe get a bit of attention with those, but it's not worth putting too much effort in the social networks. Because it's better to be a big fish in a small pond, or to build your own pond, rather than swim in an ocean where the current... Jason Jones: If I was going to build something new now that wasn't like...The Salty Droid is a special exception. I don't think people are getting booted off of Twitter left and right. But if you're trying, if it's some form of dissent, then you're just wasting your time building it out on someone else's platform where they're probably going to take it away. Interviewer: And what about that other thing, about like the big fish in a small pond? Do you think that it matters? It's better to be really relevant and focused and niche than to be on something bigger and just be one of many? Or how important is it to have some level of differentiation? Like a focus on building your own thing? Do you think that you ran your own blog was really important relative to being a participant in some forum? Jason Jones: Yeah. Ultimately, I regret spending all this time where I was building something for someone else. Like I was building Twitter's site out. I was adding something to Twitter, but they don't care about me. I'm not looking back, why? And I worried that once my Twitter account got banned, because I was using that primarily as the main part of my voice. The blog posts were actually much shorter back then, because I spent so much time working on Twitter. Once I was gone, I thought, "Well, now, you know, that's going to really hurt my popularity. Most of my clicks came from Twitter, and like I wonder if this is the end of it."But I could tell, within a few days it's like, "No, now I'm over here, and this is the place to hear me now. Over here on my place, and now this is where people are coming. Maybe this is what I should've been doing the whole time.And then if Twitter wouldn't have banned me, I would actually be less popular, because I'd have spent more time. I would've stayed there, because I was having fun, because real-time baiting is fun. And that ultimately is like is a waste. It's not anywhere near as powerful as holding the keys to the thing yourself.When you can see the back-end, I can watch, too. What happened to the clicks, and where they come from, and where they go. I just control. I get so much more information if I'm holding the keys, so... Interviewer: How do you use Twitter? Jason Jones: It is an afterthought. If you're spending more than half of your time on Twitter, that seems to me like a waste, any of them. Interviewer: Have you ever thought about creating the ultimate guide to online baiting? Not "debating", but "baiting?" Jason Jones: No, I could. That is something I have expertise on. No. Because what I'm doing, not to be immodest but it's for professionals. You have to be careful talking like that. If you're good enough at baiting, you can destroy someone. That's not very nice. You should keep that mostly to yourself. Interviewer: Do you ever find yourself reading comments on YouTube or anything, like to perfect your craft? Jason Jones: To pick up like gibberishy bits? [laughter] Jason Jones: No. YouTube comments suck. Most people are really bad at baiting. You've got to be... Interviewer: Yeah. Well, your mom! Jason Jones: Oh! You destroyed me. [laughter] --- Thanks Salty. Categories: interviews

Why Analytics Are So Important With SEO the most important thing to track is performance. Of course the bank account (& its growth rate) is a high level tracking mechanism, but it is the result of the combination of many ideas & efforts, the combination of multiple marketing strategies & traffic streams. To dig in further on what's working web analytics are your bread and butter. They don't give you aggregate data or could be data, but precisely and exactly what is happening on your sites: separating out what is working from what is not. Without analytics you are flying blind. Which is, of course, dangerous! Redundancy for the Win Most web analytics tools are either good for realtime tracking or offering granular historical data. Few tools are available at a reasonable cost and great at both. For that reason, I prefer to always use at least 2 web analytics tools. The other major reason to use 2 tools is to have a stable baseline in case something changes. For instance, Google announced a change to how Google Analytics tracks sessions & only a few weeks ago they also changed how image search is reported, merging it in with core search. Either of those 2 changes could at first make a webmaster think that maybe they had recovered from the Panda algorithm, when the only thing that changed was an arbitrary forced change by their analytic tool provider. Many webmasters have complained about the changes, but can't force Google to change their ways with a product that is provided for free. Did the above site recover from Panda or was it a data anomaly from Google changing web analytics? If you are using 2 tools it is far quicker to know the answer to that question. Ok, so you like the 2 tools idea, but what tools should you use? Primary Web Analytics     If you don't mind Google tying you to your website (or want to integrate data that is only available in Google Analytics) then Google Analytics is an easy starter choice. If you don't want to give your data & identity to Google then Clicky is a great primary analytics tool. If you love Google's feature set but want to host your own data they still sell the Urchin software for $10,000. It offers additional features like logfile analysis, robot & spider reports, individual visitor drilldown, server errors, works on intranets, and so on.     There are many other high end providers like Omniture, but I haven't really played much with them as most of our sites tend to be affiliate sites. If you do have a complete customer loop on your site & a sign-up process then services like KISSmetrics & ClickTale further allow you to dive in on how individual users use your website. Back-up Web Analytics My general goals & preference with a back-up analytics tool are: light weight (doesn't use significant server resources) low cost provide a general overview baseline to compare primary analytics against offers realtime data (as some of the primary analytics tools have a delay to them & having realtime data allows you to see how, where & why your content is spreading, which can help you further engage in conversation and help to spread it further)     As for the back-up web analytics tool, I typically go with Mint because it is quick and easy & only costs a one-time fee of $30 per site. Installation takes about 5 minutes, you upload it & then it just sits there and does its job. I have also tried Piwik & Open Web Analytics. Of those 2 I prefer OWA because it is more lightweight (Piwik may have more features, but has a lot of files). OWA also has a cool screen recording option baked into it. Be aware that if you have a high traffic website & use OWA that you may create too many MySQL connections and cause the server to be less responsive. If you are fine with tying some of your websites together but do not want to have them tied together in Google Analytics then you can have one install of OWA or Piwik on a dedicated server & set up multiple profiles for different websites. Be aware that if you have things like screen recording turned on then you are going to be eating significant server resources! Your Turn What are your favorite web analytics tools? Categories: seo tools

The Big Portals Can't Grow Ad Revenues In spite of the transitioning of print Dollars to digital dimes for print media, TV advertising remains healthy and robust. Much like the decline of print media, the flow of brand ad Dollars online is skipping over even some of the largest players, leaving them out of the growth from the shift to online media. While Yahoo! is still a leader in many categories they are struggling to sell their ad inventory directly & are selling more of it as backfill/remnant inventory. This issue has also hit AOL pretty hard. In spite of acquiring Huffington Post & being willing to sell ads at a bogus $1000 CPM, they are still losing money and their ad revenues were only up marginally. The Stock Market Values Big Portals at Next to Nothing Some of the bigger portals are hoping that TV-styled web ratings will lift their ad sales, but I am skeptical & so is the market. AOL's stock was down about 50% over the past month before the recent rally (and half of what was left was cash on the books). Part of AOL's recent stock price recovery is from them announcing a stock buy back. Yahoo! is basically valued at $0 when you back out their cash on hand & investments in foreign assets. Why Can't the Portals Grow? Part of the lack of growth in ad budgets for the large portals comes down to hype around mobile (which is now ~ 12% of search ad clicks), Facebook & social media. The brand ad Dollars that are being spent to "look cool" are riding the new fads & trends. Riding the social hype, now even AdWords ads have a social element to them. Three other big issues that are impacting the portals (discussed further below) are ad retargeting, custom integrated media buys, and the mixing of traffic quality. As a baseline to consider how significantly these trends are impacting the big portals are, consider that... Demand Media's eHow was hit by Panda eHow removed 300,000 pages... yet their quarterly traffic was roughly flat compared to Q1 & revenue was up 32% year over year. In spite of having a search-first distribution strategy, getting hammered by Panda, and removing tons of content, Demand Media is still growing far faster than AOL or Yahoo! are. Thus it is no wonder that Yahoo! & AOL are not highly valued by the investment community. 1. Ad Retargeting Between contextual ad targeting & ad retargeting advertisers have many options to reach their audience without paying premium ad inventory rates to show up where they are less relevant. At first I thought ad retargeting would lift CPMs as another ad channel to compete for inventory. For smaller sites about knitting or celebrity gossip it probably does, but for "premium" media that is way overpriced, it does the opposite. At first this hit some of the sorta b-list sites but not the big portals, then over time that trend grew and it eventually even consumed the big portals. Google took ad retargeting mainstream. At first advertisers bid artificially high for this traffic, based on its perceived value, but since these advertisers were largely only competing/bidding against themselves & these ads can appear anywhere, many have now figured out that they can significantly cut their bids & still get plenty of exposure. Some ecommerce websites not only do ad retargeting to people who visited their website, but some go so far as to target the individual products you looked at or put in your cart. You may not notice the trend if you are shopping for things you purchase (as a reflection of our identity we generally tend to perceive the things we like as being normal & as being more widely popular than they are), but if you shop for something out of the blue then the ads that follow you are far more noticeable. Sometimes I buy a gag gift to give away before the real gift so as to sorta mis-set expectations & see a range of responses. :) When I was buying a 4th anniversary gift for my wife, while shopping online I joked with a friend about how ugly & over-the-top some of the Zales items were. Those items then started to follow me around the web in banner ads! What is more valuable than seeing a person putting an item in a shopping cart is seeing the actual items a person has already purchased. Amazon suggests related products on their web pages, sends personalized "you might like" email recommendations, and is leveraging their data to build a distributed ad network: Amazon will now use its huge supply of data to pool consumers into buckets based on the products they looked at or purchased on the retailer's website. The company will help advertisers reach these consumers with targeted media, using behaviorally targeted display ads to drive them to any URL. There are many other technologies & business models built off of retargeting: some businesses try to rent a pixel on 3rd party websites, some analytics services respawn cookies, Akamai's CDN offers pixel-free tracking, Facebook's like button collects data even if you do not click on it, and 3rd party social media "add to" buttons collect & sell similar data. The shift to mobile will only further improve ad retargeting. Digital receipts are becoming more popular and Eric Schmidt wants to be in your pants. 2. Integrated Media Buys WebMD WebMD has sponsored sections where you go from information to self-quiz right into integrated custom ad channels tied directly to the disease. Blog Sponsorship Pay Per Post sort of took the low road in their marketing approach with getting exposure on blogs. ReviewMe (which I co-founded & sold my share in many years ago) intended to take a somewhat higher road, but perhaps didn't attract as much brand attention as we had hoped for, at least not initially. More recently many of the online blogging communities have become custom ad networks. Want to reach moms? P&G did a deal with BlogHer & it was popular enough that there are blog posts and videos about it. YouTube Shortly after watching a Youtube video about sugar and insulin I soon saw the following YouTube experience, with an ad over a video & another related ad unit off to the right Taking the "be the content rather than the ad unit" one step further, YouTube has done custom ads for Nintendo, where the entire Youtube website interface reflected the game. Tipp-Ex also had a popular viral YouTube ad. Google's Nikesh Arora gave a speech where he mentioned that WillItBlend blends in product placements for $5,000. 3. Watering Down of Network Quality Some of the ad networks backfill with scam "inventory" (like Yahoo! Search or Looksmart were famous for doing with "search" ads). That mixing in of slop traffic only further drives down network pricing, but that only becomes such a big issue because of the other above changes. Part of why the fraudulent "inventory" on ad "networks" is appealing is that there is likely a far higher markup by the ad agency than there is when buying premium ad inventory. "We just got u 34 trillion ad impressions...and these are 1/5th the cost of the other ones" sounds efficient & appealing. They can mystery meat up the margin a lot higher on the junk than they can on the premium & they can mix in enough ad retargeting into the aggregate buy so you don't know where the performance came from, but it looks ok in aggregate (so long as you don't look any deeper). This is no different than email co-registration & incentivized leads being mixed in with quality SEO & PPC driven leads. Backfill with junk to increase volume, but mix in enough of the good stuff to keep the aggregate performance high enough to still make it worth doing, all the while arbitraging the value of existing brand strength & the additional yield from retargeting. 4. Search Engines as Stealth Web Portals Want local? Use Google Places. Want video? Watch Google's YouTube. Looking to buy something? See the item listings in the search results. Need a stock quote? Its right in the search results. A lot of the general purpose generic traffic that helped subsidize the large portals is now being ate by search engines like Google & Bing that are putting more data directly into the search results. This trend is even more significant than it appears on the surface when you consider investments in 3rd party companies that are arbitraging the search results (like Whaleshark Media), the inclusion of custom ad formats & lead generation funnels in the search results, and tests of vertical refinements currently being built out (in travel, deals, games and social networks like Google+). 5. The Next Big Issue? Author Identity & Retaining Talent Services like Klout aim to create a currency out of a person's influence, which helps advertisers figure out who they should pitch. Google's weighting on domain authority to some degree locks authors into their current jobs by making it hard for a new site to build up the initial momentum needed to become profitable. Google has implemented rel=author as a way to experiment with creating an author ranking system. If they are successful with it (and share author ratings publicly) that will give the most successful individual authors more leverage over the networks they write for, which in turn would only further weaken the big broad portals by making it easier for authors to jump ship and do their own thing. As online advertising technology continues to advance, on the next leg down a lot of the of the big media companies will see talent flea. They saw what was coming, but couldn't change. "They [AOL] absolutely have some core assets, but I think you would have a hard time finding someone who would describe them as a 'must buy,'" says Craig Atkinson, chief digital officer at PHD, the media-buying unit owned by Omnicom Group Inc. - source Categories: internet

Affiliates Are a Dying Breed Being an ecommerce affiliate keeps getting harder & harder unless you have a strong brand and/or are selling things with a complex sales cycle. Portable air conditioners is a pretty niche category, but when I look at it I simply don't see any opportunity on the SEO front unless you take on the significant risk of carrying inventory & drop hundreds of thousands to millions of Dollars on branding. The Corporate, The Bad & The Ugly Head keyword: note the brand navigation, the extended AdWords ads & the product search results that drive the traditional search results below the fold Tail keywords are every bit as ugly, with Google product ads sometimes coming in inline, further driving down the organic search results. And it is nastier when Google Instant is still extended. 10% of browsers can see a single organic search result! Corporate, Corporate, Corporate As ugly as that looks, not only do the larger merchants have an advantage in AdWords (getting their product ads on a CPA basis while smaller merchants have to pay on a CPC basis), Google product search (more reviews), inline search navigation options (featuring the same brands yet again), but most of the organic results (that are generally below the fold) are also the same big brands after the Panda update gave them a boost while torching their smaller competitors. The Chicken vs Egg Problem of Scale For online pure-plays (outside of Amazon.com, eBay & a few others) the "no opportunity anywhere" problem in search also harms the ability to be competitive on pricing because without the ability to rank you don't have the leverage over the supply chain the way that the big box stores do from winning everywhere in the SERP & having offline distribution. There is little opportunity to organically grow to scale over time unless you enter the market with some point of leverage (like going so far as creating the product right on through to marketing it to consumers), sell something totally different than what is already available in the market (and hope it doesn't get cloned), buy out an existing company that went bankrupt, and/or build significant non-search distribution channels first. I suppose the last option on that front would be to promote your stuff on a large platform that is already doing well in Google (say eBay, Amazon, or Facebook), but doing that gives you limited control over the customer experience & forces you to keep chasing new one-off sales rather than building & deepening relationships with customers. Killing Off Diversity As Google collects more usage date (mobile is already 12% of search) these big box stores will have an even bigger moat between them & smaller competitors. The "big box stores only" search results also create an experience that is bland & uniform. At first glance things may look different, but it is the same type of sites again and again: a lot of the brands cross hire, have similar "politically correct" cultures & have roughly similar customer experience sets. When you buy from Walmart you are not going to get that caring email from a founder offering hands on tips & advice. Scale requires homoginization, which generally kills of personality & differentiation. Killing Off Innovation The problem with the "be huge or die" approach to search is that most legitimate economic innovation comes from smaller players that challenge the existing power structure. Set the barrier to entry too high and you might have less spam to fight, but you certainly will have less economic innovation & more of the would-be innovators will be stuck working dead end job at dysfunctional corporations. Now You See it, Now You Don't Most people can't see what they are missing out on so they won't know, but (as Tim Wu put it so eloquently in The Master Switch) the same was true for AT&T when it held back innovations like the answering machine & what ultimately came to be the WWW. What sort of price do you put on email taking a decade longer to launch? How many other disruptive changes built off of incremental improvements will never appear because they simply weren't large & corporate enough to compete on Google's web? The web was great because it offered something different. Unfortunately you have to search using something other than Google to find it. Categories: business

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat Business Ethics vs Sustainability The concept of business ethics is usually a self-serving approach to marketing. Some people would rather make money dishonestly than honestly, getting satisfaction out of screwing people over (hi Andy), but gray is a broad spectrum. To focus on "ethics" is to allow relative justifications & miss the broader issues. Likewise, additional layers of complexity promoting more rules & incentives over wisdom ultimately destroys the skills and will to develop legitimate leadership. Rather than adding additional layers of complexity, what we should ask is: "Is what we are doing sustainable, or is it not?" That which can not be sustained won't. Eradicating Poverty Opportunity As the world has grown richer poverty should eventually disappear, however it isn't. The public claims from the US of supporting & spreading democracy are inconsistent with blocking the ability of a Hatian to earn a livable wage. "The Obama administration pressured Haiti not to raise its minimum wage to 61 cents an hour." How is THAT for left-leaning altruistic behavior? While funding a large imperial army that blows trillions of Dollars on fraudulent wars (and jails those who tell the truth) the government also helps bankers grift a large % of GDP through outright malicious fraud (which is never prosecuted). To embed that much corruption into the core of a political system you can only really have "democracy" over here so long as you fund exploitation elsewhere. However, even that system of imperialism seems to be falling apart as Dollar depreciation not only caused the overthrow of many middle east governments, but inequality is also sharply rising in the US. The "recovery" happened for the investor class as we collectively as a society throw more people under the bus daily: The structural problems is that way to much of our productivity (and all our increased productivity in the past 3 decades) is going to the investor class. Any solution to our structural problems must, therefore, contain an element of redistributing wealth from rich to poor and middle class people. Wearing Political Blinders? One thing I like about SEO is it forces you to view systems & attempt to understand ecosystems. If you don't learn many valuable lessons about society the online market is so competitive that it can & will wipe you out. Some market purists might cringe at the word "redistribution" but ultimately covering the losses of the banking class was exactly that. Except it worked counter to the free-market ideology those same bankers preach to everyone else. I have been called right leaning & I have been called left leaning. But I see both "labels" as missing the broader point of what happens in reality. When a right wing president was in charge the bankers were allowed to commit endless crime without punishment. Based on disgust toward that fraud a left wing president was elected one the promise of hope & change. He then proceeded to screw the general public while fellatiating the banking class. He is a sell out. Money > Human Life One thing I question the legitimacy of is why capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than normal wages. Is a person's blood, sweat & tears worth less than compounding interest on money? There is some theory that the capital markets are more efficient if they are taxed lower & that makes the rest of society more efficient, but that theory fell flat on its face when the US government shoveled trillions of Dollars into the banks & none of the bankers went to jail (even though some of them have stated before congress that they knew 80% of their "product" was defective). Go Long Fraud, The Government Is! AIG was nearly bankrupted from insuring mortgage-backed securities that were misrepresented (which was, of course, yet again, fraud & thus illegal). AIG, facing bankruptcy, was not allowed access to a taxpayer-funded bailout unless it waived its rights to sue the banking criminals which destroyed their company. What dirtbag in government decided that AIG (and taxpayers) should have their rights waved so that they can funnel money into criminal banking enterprises? Does it matter that many government "regulators" were former employees of AIG's counterparties? If a certain class of individual is inherently destabilizing, then why (other than fraud) do we keep "doubling down" on hoping that group of people will eventually change their approach (even as we shield them from the negative consequences of their own actions by making everyone else foot the bill)? We block them off from the market feedback mechanisms we pride ourselves on pushing on everyone else. Yet if their failure causes anyone else to fail we claim that it was a combination of "free market forces" and an individuals lack of performance that is to blame for their own plight. Sure some industries get disrupted, but when one industry goes down another rises up. Not with the banking fraud though, it is just an across-the-board kick in the nuts to almost every non-banker at the exact same time. Since our monetary system is a debt-based system, one person's savings is backed by another person's debt, thus most people are *required* to live pretty close to paycheck to paycheck. Yet it is considered totally reasonable for the Federal Reserve to destroy their store of wealth AND their ability to earn at the exact same time: Deflation and outsourced jobs is creating a loss of purchasing power at the bottom and middle income strata. Housing wealth destruction and job stability are exacerbating this. MEANWHILE in monetary land….inflation is being injected into the system by the Fed who lend money to rich people who then buy commodities, driving up prices, who buy bonds which lower savings rates and borrowing costs, and stocks which drives down dividend yields and increases cap gains. That hand is *anything* but invisible. Adam Smith wouldn't call that a "free" market & anyone who does is one or more of the following ignorant a liarSince those who lost trillions of Dollars through intentional malicious fraud can't accept the "free market" forces that they suggest everyone else should be subject to, the only solution is "more debt, please." The same banking criminals who caused the mess are paid interest to loan the government its own money, so that the banks may "earn" their way out of the bankruptcies they earned through their fraudulent activities. 2 Groups of Citizens, 2 Books of Law Some bankers were caught bid-rigging to rip off the government. Those who they committed bribery with are now in jail. The bankers once again have nobody in jail, even though they were engaged in the exact same crimes! Those same bankers got a slap on the wrist for laundering hundreds of billions of Dollars in drug money & then commit perjury before the courts by manufacturing robosigned documents to replace the ones they had to destroy to hide their mortgage fraud. If we are intellectually honest, how is it that a person can go to jail for using a fairly soft drug like weed when the people who push hundreds of billions of Dollars of drug money (tied to much harder drugs & global violence) go unpunished? But the drug money isn't enough. Now they are trying to figure out how to steal social security funds that already withdrawn from you check into the abyss. The nationwide decline and austerity are already so obvious that the Oakland police publicly issued criminals a laundry list of crimes that they won't even bother responding to: burglary theft embezzlement grand theft identity theft required to register as sex or arson offender dump waste or offensive matter pass fictitious check stolen license plate extortion vandalism etc etc etcIf Markets Are Efficient... There is no commodity in the world that is as commoditized as money is. Most of it doesn't even require actual printing, but is just digits on a computer screen...much like the digits I am typing right now. And yet the banking criminals have captured so much of governance that it is not uncommon to see them take 30% of corporate profits (and then shift the subsequent mirroring losses onto the public at large). To claim that those huge profit margins (during fraud-driven bubbles) are reasonable AND that they deserved to be bailed out whenever they get things wrong is intellectually dishonest. If the taxpayer is capturing 100% of the downside risk, then why (other than fraud) are these banking criminals paid a single cent more than a person enlisted in the military? Global Instability Internationally we are at least as screwed up as we are domestically. Does outsourcing make the world more efficient? In many cases absolutely. But the global imbalances create unsustainable current account issues. Can look to technology to solve the problems? Maybe not! Even The White Horses Have Bloody Hooves Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world. At the other end of that supply chain is a factory where harsh chemicals give employees nerve damage & people keep committing suicide. And as soon as those people get any aspirations at all, suddenly even the 3rd world slave wage labor is too expensive & over the next few years a million people working for Foxconn will lose their jobs to robots. If even slave wage labor isn't competitive with robots then what does that mean for labor in countries with a higher standard of living, where the labor is far more expensive? Eric Schmidt famously stated that laws are written by lobbyists & then Google quickly hired a dozen lobbying firms while significantly increasing their political donations. The lobbyist comment was a sneer at the system, until Google followed suit and started buying the political process. They make the same claims toward patents, yet they are investing billions of Dollars there as well. Where Legitimate Innovation Comes From Historically most valuable economic innovation (the legitimate kind, not the fraudulent financial engineering of the past decade) comes from individuals & smaller groups who challenge existing industries & powerful companies with creative destruction by making markets more efficient. The AT&T monopoly did a lot of great research, but anything that they thought could cannibalize their current business model did not see the light of day - sometimes for decades. If we are moving into an ideas & technology driven economy (and that is where most of our growth will come from) then diversity should be cherished & encouraged. Unfortunately, the software patent wars lead to smaller developers being driven out of the ecosystem & innovation is slowed while the 800 pound gorillas & patent trolls engage in an arms race. These sorts of "legislate away the future" that aim to keep existing powers at the top of the food chain are literally everywhere - from the food supply right on through to a proposed law that would harm the ability for whistleblowers to even highlight the pervasive epidemic corruption. And Now On the Auction Block... "US congressional parties now post prices for key slots in the lawmaking process." The system of fraud is so unsustainable that the US got a credit downgrade. The criminal mortgage probes are fizzling out, but Fannie Mae needs more money! Those responsible for the downgrade (who committed fraud & then sold their junk to the government at above market values) are warning the US about the risk of it losing its worldwide reserve currency status. To make the bankers whole, everyone else must lose, at least up until that no longer works. Exponential Growth in a Finite World? We have a debt-based monetary system which requires exponential growth to prevent collapse, an oligarchy-based political system that punishes innovation & success while rewarding failure, and it exists in a finite world where we are reaching the peak production in key base-level economic inputs: like energy. The same criminal banking organizations that forced you to eat their debts are now hoarding the physical commodities you need to live. And yet, our worldwide finance-first economy (where we put derivatives & abstractions before reality) is so dysfunctional that even the banks are engaging in massive layoffs. The parasite ate the host & now the host has nothing left to give. Manipulation vs Fixing The Problems It is thus without surprise then that the government invests in manipulating the perception of reality (rather than fixing actual problems) and society has an issue with mass psychosis. That which can not be sustained won't. Dylan Ratigan's Mad as Hell on msnbc

We live in a culture where it is far more profitable to solve symptoms than it is to solve problems. As such, the disappearance of ripoffreport.com from Google's index probably has retainer-based reputation management firms like reputation.com singing the blues. Ed Magedson, the owner of Rip Off Report, has been charged with RICO in the past and managed to come through unscathed, but he has never tackled an opponent as media savvy or powerful as Google. He is pretty savvy with the legal system & the media, so it will be fun to watch how he responds to this one, as his business model relies relied on top Google rankings: Attorney: So what I've gathered from all of your testimony, Dickson, is that Ed Magedson has indirectly told you that he is responsible for making posts about companies. He will make these posts. Mr. Woodard: Yes. Attorney: And then he will manipulate the search engines; is that true? Mr. Woodard: No question about the search engines. That's where the money is made. A new take on Will it Blend: can a vampire suck blood from another vampire? Vampires have often found it advantageous to maintain a hidden presence in humanity’s most powerful institutions. In the 1600s, it was the Catholic church, and today, as you all know, it’s Google, Fox News. Update: adding intrigue to the situation, it looks like the site was removed due to a request inside Google Webmaster Tools, but the folks from ROR claimed they didn't make the removal request: "Ripoff Report did not intentionally request Google to delist the website, and we are still investigating what occured." Update 2: Looks like they are back ranking in Google again. Perhaps someone found yet another loophole with Google's URL removal feature. Categories: publishing & media

Not many spy tools out there do what MixRank does. MixRank is a tool that gives you the ability to peek into the contextual and display ad campaigns of sites advertising with Google AdSense. Uncovering successful advertising on the AdSense network can give you all sorts of ideas on how to increase your site's profitability. Not only can you uncover profitable AdSense ad campaigns but you can pick off AdSense publisher sites and leverage competitive research data off of those domains to help with your SEO campaign. With MixRank own your competitors in the following ways: Obtain the domains your competitor's ads are served on Swipe your competitor's ad copy Watch ad trends to target your competition's most profitable campaigns and combinations of ads Another great thing about MixRank is how easy to use it is. Let's go step by step and see how powerful MixRank really is! Step 1: Pick a Competitor to Research MixRank makes is super easy to get started. Just start typing in a domain name and you'll see a suggested list of names along with the amount of ads available: Here we are going to take a look at Groupon as we consider building a niche deals site. Keep in mind that MixRank is currently accepted free accounts while in beta so over time we can expect their portfolio to grow and grow. MixRank breaks their tool down into 2 core parts: Ads (text and display) Traffic Sources We'll cover all the options for both parts of the MixRank tool in the following sections. Step 2: Working with Ad Data (Text and Display) Let's start with text ad options. So with text ads you have 3 areas to look at: Active Ads Ad Reach Best Performers Here's a look at the interface: As you can see, it is really simple to switch between different ad research options. Also, you can export all the results at any time. The image above is for "Active Ads". In the active ads tab you'll get the following data points (all sortable): Publishers - maximum number of AdSense publishers running that particular ad Last Seen - last known date the ad was seen by MixRank Frequency - amount of publisher sites on which the ad appeared Avg. Position - average position of the ad inside AdSense blocks Here you can export the data to manipulate in excel or do some sorting inside of MixRank to find the ads earning the lion's share of the traffic. The Ad Reach tab shows up to 4 ads at a time and compares the publisher trends for those ads. To spread the love around let's look at a couple ads from LivingSocial.Com: Here you can see that one ad crashed and fell more in line with an existing ad. You can compare up to 4 ads at once to get an idea of what kind of ad copy is or might be working best for this advertiser. The Best Performers section compares, again, up to 4 ads at a time (use the arrows to move on to the next set) which have recently taken off across the network. Needless to say, this report can give you ideas for new ad approaches and maybe even new products/markets to consider advertising on. If the advertiser is running Banner Ads you can see those as well: With Banner Ads, MixRank groups them by size and you can see all of them by clicking on the appropriate size link. When you click on a banner ad you'll see this: This is a good way to get ideas on which banner ads are sticking for your competitors. Also, it's a great way to get ideas of how to design your ads too. A little inspiration goes a long way :) So that's how you work with the Ads option inside of MixRank. One thing I dig about MixRank is that it's so easy to use, the data is easy to understand and work with, and it does its intended job very well (ok, ok so 3 things!) Step 3: Traffic Sources Now that you have an idea of what type of text ads and banner ads are effective for your competition, it's time to move into what sites are likely the most profitable to advertise on. MixRank gives you the following options with traffic sources: Traffic Sources - domains being advertised on, last date when the ad was seen, average ad position and number of days seen over the last month Reach - total number of publishers the advertiser is running ads on The traffic sources tab shows: Uniques - estimated number of unique visitors based on search traffic estimates Last Seen - last date MixRank saw the ad Days Seen - number of days over the last month MixRank saw the ad Average Position - average position in the AdSense Block A winning combination here would be recent last seen dates and a high number under the Days Seen category. This would be the advertiser has been and is running ads on the domain, indicating that it may be a profitable spot for them to be in. You can also pull these domains into a competitive research tool like our Competitive Research Tool, SemRush, SpyFu, or KeywordSpy and find potential keywords you can add to your own SEO campaign. Another tip here would be to target these domains as possible link acquisition targets for your link building campaign. The Reach option is pretty self-explanatory; it shows the total number of publishers the advertiser is showing up on: Another good way to evaluate traffic sources is to view the average position (remember, all the metrics are sortable). A high average position will confirm that the ads are pretty well targeted to the content of that particular domain. Combine the high average position with Days Seen/Last Seen and you've got some well-targeted publishers. You can export all the data to excel and do multiple filters to bring the cream of crop to the top of your ad campaign planning. MixRank is Looking Good It's early on for MixRank but so far I like what I see. The tool can do so many things for your content network advertising, media buy planning, link building campaigns, and SEO campaigns that I feel it's an absolute no-brainer to sign up for right now. For now it's *free* during their beta testing. Currently they are tracking about 90,000 sites so it's still fairly robust for being a new tool. Categories: seo tools

Bing's Webmaster Tools recently got a nice refresh and update. There is a lot you can do inside of the tools so we figured you'd want to know all about it :) Also, we've included some free advertising coupons at the end of this guide to help get you started. Account Dashboard Bing's webmaster tools are fairly easy to use and the interface is quite clean. On the main account dashboard page you can select whatever site you want, in your account, and see quick stats on: Clicks Impressions Pages Indexed Pages Crawled The percentages account for the net gain or loss from the week. For more specific site data, and more historical numbers, you would want to get into the site's dashboard which we will cover in the next section. This initial account dashboard shows all the sites you have in your account and the associated metrics. The data is from a test site I created awhile back and kind of forgot about until they updated the tools over at Bing. From this page you can: Add sites Remove Sites Export data Click on a site to get to its dashboard See any account specific messages from Bing A snapshot of all your sites in one place is a good way to immediately spot any recent issues with ranking, indexing, or crawling on your sites. Once you are ready to move on into a specific site, just click on the site name under the heading "Site". When you click the site's name, you'll be brought to the site's dashboard. Site Dashboard Each site you have in Bing's webmaster tools has its own dashboard (not to be confused with the account dashboard). Once you get into a site's dashboard you see the data we talked about above at the top of the dashboard and then a 30 glimpse of the following metrics for the selected site: Traffic summary Index summary Crawl summary (and a separate chart for crawl errors) Here is what my test site's dashboard looks like: For established sites with steady traffic (if for tracking ongoing campaigns) these 30 day snapshots are good ways for you to get a read on recent site activity and/or issues with traffic, crawling, indexing. These types of reports can also be very helpful to watch when you are doing site re-structuring or complete site overhauls (changing CMS, url structure, and so on). Each section has its own place within your site's webmaster tool profile. You can get more information on traffic, indexing, and crawling just by clicking the approriate link and we'll discuss each of these sections below. Traffic Summary Inside the Traffic Summary tab you have 2 options: Traffic Summary - 6 month history of traffic and search query performance Page Summary - Same as Traffic Summary except the data is broken out by page with the option to click through to the page's search query report On this page the second chart listed is one that you can slide back and forth to shorten or lengthen the history of the data you are looking at. The lines are color coded to show overall impressions versus clicks. Bing does present the data in a clean and easy to understand way inside of their webmaster tool reports. The second chart on the traffic summary page shows search query performance. You'll see keywords you received traffic for as well as ones that you gained impressions (but no clicks) for: This report is in conjunction with the first report of overall traffic/impressions from a time view. If you shorten the report this report will adjust as well. You'll see the following data points in this report (all sortable and exportable): Keyword Impressions Clicks CTR The Average Position your listing was in when the impression was gained Average Position of your listing when a click was earned This is a good way to evaluate how you might be able to increase your CTR. By showing you impressions versus clicks (the average positions) you can guesstimate on which keywords could use a bit of freshening up on the title tag and meta description front. Page Traffic Report The Page Traffic report shows the same charts as the Traffic Summary page with the exception of the bottom chart, which shows page level metrics. Here's a snippet from yesterday: You can click whatever page you want and get the following keyword summary, similar to the initial chart on the Traffic Summary page but on a per page level on whatever time frame you selected (the above was a day so when you click through, that date carries into this report): You can do the same thing here with average impression and average click position (and CTR) to evaluate pages which can use a refresh on title tags and meta descriptions for possible CTR upswings. Another tip here would be to export the queries and see if there is potential to build out the page's category further with content targeted to specific queries. So if a query is "chocolate truffles" and you are seeing some data for "white chocolate truffles" you might want to consider building out this section to include content specifically for those related but separate queries (if you haven't already) Index Summary The index summary page shows the index rate of your selected site, in Bing, over (roughly) the last 6 months. The index summary chart is similar to the other charts in Bing's webmaster tools, which all the interactive sliding parameters that let you expand the report out over 6 months or drill down into a really tight, specific time frame. Index Explorer Bing's index explorer is a helpful tool that can alert you to HTTP code problems or confirm correct implementation of things like 301 directs. The interface is easy to use: With the index explorer you can check the following HTTP status codes that Bing has discovered over your selected time period (all time, last week, last month) and over your selected crawl range (all time, last week, last 2 weeks, last 3 weeks): All HTTP codes HTTP codes 200-299 HTTP codes 300 HTTP code 301 HTTP code 302 HTTP codes 400-499 HTTP codes 500-599 All other HTTP codes You can also search for pages where the Bing bot has identified malware as being present as well as choose to show pages that you've excluded in your robots.txt file: Below the options listed above, are where the pages that meet your filter requirements will show. It breaks the site down into categories and pages. When you hover over a page you'll see the following details: If you click on a page you can also see a couple of additional data points: Document size Inbound links to the page Block cache and block URL options for that particular page Using this in conjunction with internal link checking tools like Xenu Link Sleuth (win) or Integrity (mac) can really help you get a good peek into the potential on-page technical issues of your site. A couple of tools that give you valuable data about your on-page optimization are our Website Health Check tool (web based) and Screaming Frog's SEO Spider (mac/win). I hope Bing adds some export functionality here, as they do in other areas of their webmaster tools, but the filtering options are solid enough to drill down into key issues for now. Submit URLs So this is a pretty straightforward option. Bing gives you the option to submit URLs (can be ones that are or are not in their index now) that you would like to request a recrawl or an initial crawl on. The URL allowance is pretty limited so it's best to save these requests for more important pages on your site (their crawl section has a spot for sitemaps). Block URLs You can also select pages, directories, or an entire site to block from indexing and/or Bing's cache: One area for improvement here, I think, is to be able to input or upload individual pages. As of now, you can only input 1 page per click, or select a directory to block (site.com/directory/), or block the entire site. They do offer export functionality which is helpful when doing site audits, but a way to mass upload or input URLs would be nice (though you can tackle some of this with their URL normalization feature that will cover below). Inbound Links Bing will also show you the links they know about (in their index) that point to specific pages on your site. Much like the charts above, you are presented with a historical chart which you can adjust with the slider below it (just like the Rank and Traffic stats shown prior). Below those charts Bing will show you the pages on your site which have external inlinks and how many links they know of per page. Once you click on a page, you'll see the linking URLs and the corresponding anchor text: You can export page-specific links as well as the overall breakdown of pages with links and how many links those pages have. The export functions offer a nice way to get a high-level view of the overall link depth of your site. While it's still a recommend practice to invest in a paid link research tool, supplementing your paid research by getting free link data from search engines is a no-brainer :) Deep Links Bing's Deep links are basically the same as Google Sitelinks. If you have been blessed by Bing, you'll see them in the Deep Links section of your site. Bing's official statement on Deep Links is: These Deep Links are assigned to websites which are seen by Bing to be “authoritative” on the topic which they target. The best way to influence whether you are chosen to have Deep Links displayed for your website is to create unique, compelling content that pleases searchers. Sites receiving this feature do an excellent job of delivering what visitors want, and keep visitors coming back time and again. URL Normalization If your URLs encounter parameter issues that can lead to duplicate content (e-commerce sites, CMS functionality, etc) then you might want to take a look at Bing's URL normalization feature. Google offers a similar tool called Parameter Handling (great write up on this from Vanessa Fox) This is a section where you need to be really careful as to not unintentionally boot out relevant URLs and content from the site. Combining this with use of the canonical tag (which Bing uses as a hint) is your best bet to ensure that there are as few duplicate content, link juice splitting issues on your site (with Bing). Again, make sure you or your programmer(s) know what you or they are doing so you do not do more harm than good. With Bing, you basically just add whatever parameter you want to ignore so make sure that parameter or parameters do not crossover to other areas of your site that you would rather not have Bing ignore: You can export all your inputted parameters as well. Crawl Summary The Crawl Summary section shows similar charts to other category charts inside Bing's Webmaster Tools on the landing page (6 month charting with interactive timeframe filtering). You can check total number of pages crawled as well as pages with crawl errors off the landing page for this category (no exporting unfortunately) and dig into specific sections like: Crawl Settings Crawl Details Sitemaps Crawl Settings Bing let's you set up custom crawl rates on a per site basis: You may have situations where a custom crawl rate might make sense: You want the bot to visit off-peak hours rather than when customers are visiting You might be running special promotions or season promotions at specific times on an e-commerce site and want to limit bandwidth usage to visitors rather than Bing's bot You might be doing a live stream or interview of some sort, and are expecting large amounts of traffic Maybe you are doing some heavy content promotion across the web and social media and you want to avoid having any site load issues You can use the timeframes given to line up with your server's location to make sure you are hitting the hours correctly (base time on the chart is GMT time). You can also allow for crawling of AJAX crawlable URLs if so you choose. They recently rolled this out and their help section is weak on this topic so it's unclear on exactly how they'll handle it (outside of #!) but it's an option nonetheless. Crawl Details Bing's Crawl Details page gives you an updated overview of what's covered in the Crawl Summary. This feature doesn't require you to do any filtering to find issues, you can simply see if any of your pages have notable HTTP information, might be infected with Malware, and which ones are excluded by robots.txt. If you have any pages pop up, just click on the corresponding link to the left and a list of exportable pages will pop up. Another helpful, exportable report for site auditing purposes. Sitemaps (XML, Atom, RSS) This is where you'd submit your sitemap to Bing. For XML sitemaps, double check your submission with the Sitemaps.Org protocol For a site that's going to be a fairly static site (like this one) I'd pay more attention to proper site architecture rather than relying on a sitemap, I might even skip the sitemap unless I was using Wordpress where you could just have it auto-generate and update with new posts and such. You can add, remove, and resubmit site maps as well as see the last date crawled, last date submitted, and URLs submitted. Bing Webmaster Resources Bing's recent update to their Webmaster Tools added a good amount of value to their reporting. Here are some additional resources to help you get acquainted to Bing. Bing's Recent Updates to Webmaster Tools Bing Webmaster Tools SEO Starting Checklist SeoMoz Interview with Duane Forrester of Bing Webmaster Tools Bing's Resource Center for Webmasters Free Microsoft Advertising Coupon While you are over at Bing, signing up for Webmaster Tools, feel free to use these Microsoft AdCenter coupons for your advertising account :) Categories: marketing

We recently interviewed Branko Rihtman. He started working in the industry in 2001, doing SEO for clients and properties in a variety of competitive niches. Over that time, he realized the importance of properly done research and experimentation and started publishing findings and experiments at http://www.seo-scientist.com. How did you get into the SEO space? Completely by accident. When I was done with my compulsory army service, I knew I would rather work in an internet based company than, say, dig ditches. So I went into a local internet portal and searched for “internet companies in Jerusalem”. One of the replies was from an SEO company. They offered me a job with flexible hours and a possibility of working from home. Since I was about to start university, working from home looked particularly interesting. I ended up spending 8 years in that company. When did you know you were going to "make it" in SEO? Ummm never? I don’t think any of us ever “makes it” in SEO. Yes some people are more popular than the others and some get invited to speak at more conferences than the others but that is most certainly not a measurement of “making it”. SEOBook forum is full of people that are more succesfull and savy than the majority of SEOs out there, yet very few of them are well known in the general marketing circles. One of the things I like about SEO is that it is constantly “making” you and “breaking” you. If it wasn’t like that, we wouldn’t be constantly learning and adapting. What is the most exciting thing that has happened to you while in the SEO field? Do you still get a rush of excitement when a new project takes off? Getting a site into a top 5 for [mesothelioma] on Google. Kidding. One of the more appealing qualities of the SEO field is the puzzle cracking. You are constantly presented with puzzles – why did Google penalize this site, why is this site ranking above me, what are the parameters considered in the new update… For me, cracking those puzzles is the most exciting part of my work. I really have to remind myself sometimes that I should be thinking about potential profitability of these conundrums because to me a puzzle is there to be solved and that is all that matters. Once I crack it, I kinda lose interest in it so I have to make sure that 1) solving the current SEO puzzle is worth my time in terms of profitability and 2) I can get action items from possible solutions. I think the best example of these puzzles is Google overoptimization filter. I kinda developed a knack of getting sites out of it (which landed me my current job as well). Another exciting thing would be implementing extensive structural changes to large sites and seeing the positive effect in SERPs. As for new projects, I have seen so many of them die off miserably that I find it hard to get excited at the beginning. First jolts of traffic and first rankings get me excited and then I turn the engines on. How would you compare biology to SEO? Oh dear, this could be a whole blog post. There are several aspects that are very similar. Mainly, and this is especially true in molecular biology, we are making changes on a system that is a black box. We have a whole bunch of (presumed) parameters to tinker with and very limited list of observable outputs. So we make deductions which can, but don’t have to, be true. So if I am changing a certain ingredient in my bacterial culture and observe a change in growth rate, I cannot be sure what exactly the base cause of the increase was. Maybe the element I have added is actually poison and my bacteria are trying to multiply on reserves of food, hoping that one mutant will be able to overcome the adverse effects of the element I have added. Similarly, when we add a link pointing to a website, we don’t know whether it was that link that caused an increase in ranking or someone in Bangladesh created a valuable link that is pointing to one of the pages that is linking to our new linking page and we enjoyed some of that juice. Another important similarity (and then I will shut up about it) is the arms race between the search engines and SEOs and SEOs among themselves. Evolutionary theory and ecological sciences are full of very important lessons that can be applied to the world of SEO. I have written on my blog in the past how some evolutionary theories can be applied to understand and foresee the relationship between Google and link buying. Another metaphor from the evolutionary theory I like to use is the Red Queen Principle – in evolution, competing organisms have to invest all their efforts in improving and adapting so they can remain at the same competitive point relatively to their enemies. Like with the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, they have to run their fastest to remain in the same place. The same can be said about websites competing in lucrative niches – it is not enough to get to the first spot. Your competitors are constantly aiming for that place too and you have to put in maximal efforts (linking, site speed, trimming indexing fat, QDF hunting etc.) to remain in the same place. You are a big proponent of applying the scientific method to SEO. What parts of tests are easy to do? What parts are hard? SEO tests can be easy from the beginning till the end if done right. The hard part is asking the question in a “testable” way. You have to keep in mind the limits of your testing system and constantly be aware about what you can measure and what you can’t. You have to make sure you have taken into the account all the possible outcomes of your test and what each of those outcomes is telling you. Otherwise you can find yourself spending valuable time, just to end up with a highly ambivalent result that is not teaching you anything about the issue you are researching. Deciding what controlling factors you are going to implement and doing it in a way that doesn’t interfere with your test can also be challenging. What do public SEO "studies" often get wrong? Mostly, people get the order of steps that make up the test wrong. They usually start with a pre-made conclusion and then build the test (and, I suspect, not rarely the results themselves) around it. They want to show that, for example, text surrounding the link will pass the relevancy to the target page, so they go out to prove that. That is the exact opposite of the scientific process. Now many people say that trying to approach SEO questions with a scientific process is an overkill, but science is more a state of mind then a set of tools. It exists so that minimal bias enters your decision and conclusion process, therefore people should not approach it as something that involves a lab coat and chemicals, but rather change their mindset from “what do I want the results to be” to “what the reality is”. What percent of well-known fundamental "truths" in SEO would you describe as being wrong? I would say that 100% of absolute, definitive statements about SEO are false. Recently, Joe Hall has written about becoming a “postmodern SEO” when realizing that every conventional truth in SEO can be 100% right and 100% wrong, depending on the context. I very much identify with this sentiment. It very much rubs me the wrong way when people in the industry come out against a certain SEO technique (and it rubs me even more when I know they were the biggest abusers of it until yesterday) or when they make a strategy X an “absolute prerogative and whoever doesn’t do X should be fired by their clients and sued for dishonest practices”. Keyword tags can be useful in some cases, rank reporting can be useful in some cases, forum signature spamming can be useful in some cases and increasing keyword density can be useful in some cases. It all depends on the context. In the forums sometimes when I read your contributions & think "classic whitehat consultant view" and then on other entries I think "aggressive affiliate in gaming." What allowed you to develop such a diverse range? I am very flattered that people think this when they read my ramblings or talk to me about SEO. What allowed me to develop a diverse range of experiences in SEO is not being judgemental towards SEO techniques. Continuing from the previous question, understanding that they are all tools that should be put in the right context and used responsibly, enabled me to try and see all the advantages and disadvantages of all SEO techniques and apply them accordingly. Had I taken “holier than thou” approach towards any end of the SEO spectrum, I would have been a worse SEO. I also consider myself lucky to have had an opportunity to work in a wide range of niches - from legal, ecommerce, travel and financial, all the way to porn, pharmaceutical and gaming with a lot of niches and business sizes in between those extremes. Once you look at link profiles of sites that have been ranking for years in some of those extreme industries, you understand how preposterous divisions to hats of different colours really are. As a second part to that question, how do you decide what techniques are good for some of your own websites & which are good for client websites? Again, it is all in the context. I make a big differentiation between our sites and clients’ sites in a way that whenever I want to use a riskier SEO technique on a client site, I make sure to educate the client to all the risks and benefits of going down that road. I make sure the client understands the possible repercussions and I try to offer a cleaner alternative. There are clients that are not interested at all in organic promotion and there are clients that enter the project knowing that the site we work on can be burnt in a matter of minutes. When it comes to our sites, it depends on the profitability of the site, obviously. Then there are sites I test stuff on that I wouldn’t click on without wearing my lab gloves. Do you believe Google is intentionally tilting the search game toward brands, or do you think there are many other signals they are looking for that brands just happen to frequently score high on? I don’t think we need to speculate about that much – they have openly said in the past that the brands are the solution to the cesspool of the internet. They are rewarding brands with SERP enhancements. They are creating algorithmic changes in which brands are apparently being treated less harshly than run-of-the-mill sites. On the other hand they are making sure to stress in their PR announcements that brands are not treated differently than anyone else. As I don’t believe they openly lie about these things, it seems to me they are just doing doublespeak and being intentionally obscure about it. I can say that I don’t discriminate against tall people on busses and I will be factually correct since no one goes over the bus line and takes out people over 180 cm tall and sends them back home. However, by making the legspace very uncomfortable for these people, I may as well kick them out of line and save everyone the trouble. So while there is probably no checkbox next to certain websites marking them as brands, the ranking algorithms can theoretically be tweaked so that the brands surface to the top of a lot of the money queries and I think that is what we are seeing here. Possible signals for this can be percentage of links with URL for anchor, certain number of searches for the brand name and others. By the way, reliance on these signals can be used to explain the relative advantage that exact match domains have for their keyword. Both the relevancy algorithms & webmasters are in some ways reactive. I believe that frequently causes the relevancy algorithms to ebb and flow toward & away from different types of sites. Do you generally have 1 sorta go-to-market plan at any given time, or do you suggest creating multiple SEO driven strategies in parallel? It all depends on the client responsiveness levels. If I see that the client is willing and allows us to become part of their marketing team, then we both aim for harnessing every marketing activity for SEO benefits, while also trying to diversify and reduce the dependency on any single traffic source. In cases when, for a whole lot of different reasons, we cannot establish a network of sites that will use different strategies, we try to work with a whole lot of subdomains, trusting how Google treated subdomains historically. I have to admit that in the majority of cases, the responsiveness of the deciding ranks (or the lack of thereof), together with a constantly growing list of more basic, day-to-day tasks, prevents us from making these strategic marketing decisions for the client – it is hard to talk about holistic approach to marketing when their homepage doesn’t appear on first 3 pages of the site: query or when their IT department decides to 302 every product page to homepage while they are moving servers for 3 months. When major algorithm changes happen they destroy certain business models & eventually create other ones. How many steps ahead / how far ahead do you feel you generally are from where the algorithm is at any given time? We are all over the board with this. Luckily (or unluckily) none of our clients were affected by Panda. I say “unluckily” because the scientist in me would want nothing more than to test different theories about Panda on an affected site. The marketer in me is stabbing the scientist in the back with a long sword for having such blasphemous thoughts. I would say that we usually “hang around” where the algorithm is at any given moment and if we stay behind, we manage to close the gap in a reasonable period of time. At least that has been the case so far. In some other cases, we have benefited from sites getting hit by algorithmic changes. This only means we are lucky, because I don’t think there is any single strategy that is 100% working all of the time in every level of niche competitiveness. Had such strategy existed, someone would have cracked it (Dave Naylor most probably), used it to their own benefit and Google would have changed the rules again, rendering the “perfect strategy” less than perfect. How far behind that point would you put a.) the general broader SEO industry b.) SEO advice in the mainstream media? One of the major revelations I discovered in SEOBook forum is that the public SEO community is really just a small tip of the iceberg that is this industry. There are so many skilled people working on their own sites, being affiliates or working in-house professionals that do not participate in the SEO Agora that any attempt to characterize “the general broader SEO industry” would be wrong. There is no way of judging where the industry is, other than by what they write about and talk about in social media and I don’t think that is a fair judgement. This is the industry of marketers and people do not write to dispense knowledge most of the time. Vast majority of the content put out there is created with the purpose of self-promotion and/or following some invented rule that “you must write X posts per week to keep your audience engaged”. It is very similar to the whole “Top X” lists format in which it is obvious that a significant percentage of items on the numbered list were forced in there so that the number X would be round or fit some theory of “most read top X articles”. While I do believe that someone will find value in anything, when looking across the board, there is very little you can tell about the actual knowledge of the people in this industry from what they write. I hope. I will tell you that I do see a general difference between the European and the US SEO crowd – I have seen (percentagewise) a seemingly larger amount of UK, Dutch and German SEOs that are more daring and questioning in their writing than the US SEOs. Don’t ask me why this is so, that is beyond my scope of expertise (or interest). As for the mainstream media, living in the Middle East, I have learned to automatically distrust the mainstream media on issues much more important than SEO, therefore I usually treat mainstream SEO articles as a comic relief. Or a tragic one. Many times when the media covers SEO they do it from the "lone ranger black hat lawbreaker" angle to drum up pageviews. Do you ever see that ending? Nope. Nor do I ever see people in our industry not taking the bait and responding to that kind of coverage, thus contributing significantly to the mentioned drumming up of traffic. Even if the advertising industry moves away from impression-based pricing, more attention will always mean more links and that is just a different kind of opiate. From a scientific standpoint, do you ever feel that pushing average to below-average quality sites is bad because it is information pollution (not saying that you particularly do it or do it often...but just in general), or do you view Google as being somewhat adversarial in their approach to search & thus deserving of anything they get from publishers? I consider as below average anything Google would not allow Adsense on. Maybe someone really doesn’t know how to drink water from a glass and for that person eHow article is the best fit. On a serious note, just like with hats, I try not to be judgmental when it comes to content. If lower quality content that does not rank anywhere is used to push high quality content in very popular SERPs, I think it all levels out at the end. The bigger problem for me is rehashed, bland content, which you can see that was written according to a mold: Start with a question, present some existing views on the issue and end with asking your readers the initial question so you encourage comments. Or numbered list articles. Or using totally unrelated current events AND numbered lists in combination with a tech topic. I have just seen an article titled “5 things Amy Winehouse’s death teaches us about small business”. Spamming forums is Pulitzer worthy material compared to this garbage. Yet Google constantly ranks this crap and rewards it with a cut from their advertising revenue. And what is even worse, the crap ranks for head terms (ok maybe a bit less after Panda) while forum or comment spam does not appear in my SERPs. So who is polluting the web again? I don’t think a scientific approach is relevant here. One thing that exists in the world of science and doesn’t in SEO is peer review. So if something gets published in a scientific journal, it was reviewed critically by the experts in that field and was deemed worthy in every possible aspect by some rigorous standards. Had this kind of system existed in the world of SEO, we wouldn’t have a below-average-quality content problem. Can Bing or anyone else (outside of say Naver, Yandex & Baidu) challenge Google & win a significant slice of the search marketshare? Only if Google does it for them and drops the ball completely. I don’t believe in homicide in the world of hi-tech companies (Facebook killer, Google killer, iPad killer) but I definitely believe in suicide (Myspace). The ball is constantly in Google’s court since they are the biggest kid on the playground and they have managed it fine so far. It is ironic how they have to deal with bad press on so many issues, almost making MS the underdog and a company people turn to when they want to boycott Google. Right now Google is the innovator and a trend setter in many fields beside the search (Documents, Analytics, G+, Adwords) so having all those eyeballs and improving integration of all those products into search and vice versa will make them an impossible act to follow in any foreseeable future. Which is something that was said about ancient Rome too. A lot of SEOs are driven by gut feeling. With your focus on the scientific method, how much do you have to test something before you are confident in it? How often does your strategy revolve around gut feeling? There are things that I know that work without everyday testing. Keywords in anchor will pass relevancy in the majority of cases and I don’t need to test that every time that I place a link somewhere. I am also aware of the exceptions to that rule (second link doesn’t count, for example) so when I see unusual or unexpected response from search engine, it gets my attention and I start testing. I also like to test extraordinary claims by people in the SEO industry, because they usually go against common knowledge and that is always informative. I will usually not let the testing process stand in the way of work. If there are several possible outcomes to the test that takes a long time to perform, I try to run with the project for as long as I can without making the decision, leaving all future direction possibilities open. Gut feeling is something I usually use to assess trustworthiness of the people I listen to. I rely a lot (maybe more than I should) on other people’s knowledge. As I mentioned, I haven’t had the chance to test how pandalized site responds to different changes so I had to trust other people’s reports. Gut feeling is very helpful here to save time reading mile-long posts of people that I suspect do not even practice SEO on daily basis. If a friend of yours said they wanted to get into SEO, what would you tell them to do in order to get up to speed? To read the free guides from Google and SEOMoz. To pick a niche and create a site from scratch. To learn how to code, how to delegate, how to measure and how to hire and fire people. To read at least one SEO article every day. To read no more than one SEO article every day. To invest their first profits into SEOBook Training Section and to submit their site for review in the forum. The value they get from the advice there is going to be the best investment they made at the early stage. After their site is making money, to repeat that process in a different niche with a different strategy. Diversification is the best insurance policy in the ever changing algorithm world If you had to start from scratch today with no money but your knowledge would you still be able to compete in 2011? Yeah. Competing is about picking the battles you can win with what you have at the moment. There are still niches that can be monetized with relatively low effort (especially in non-english markets) and I think I would be able to monetize the knowledge I have and leverage it to create revenue in a reasonable amount of time. Luckily, I don’t have to test that claim. If you had $50,000 to start, but lacked your current knowledge, what do you think your chances of success in SEO are? Very low. Part of the knowledge is knowing what to spend the money on. Without prior knowledge, I would probably think that I can take on this SEO thing all by myself and $50K would be gone before I realized my mistakes. I would probably fall into the trap of buying links from some link network or torching my new site with 200,000 forum signature links all created in 2 hours And, saving a tough one for last, in what areas of SEO (if any) do you feel science falls flat on its face? First, I would like to reiterate: science is not a tool, it is a way of thinking and approaching problems. So under those definitions, I don’t think that science can fall flat on the face at all. I do see a problem with the abuse of the word “science” for marketing goals and a lot of those “approaches” fail because they lack the scientific way of thinking. Mostly they lack self-criticism and are so blinded by tagging their work as “science” that they will not adopt some of the humility and self doubt that is present in the majority of scientific work. The lust for hitting that Publish button, especially if there is potential financial benefit in publishing a certain kind of results, is the most unscientific drive in our industry. There are some areas of SEO that scientific thinking should take a back seat to other approaches. One that instantly springs to mind is link building. To me, link building is the true art of marketing – recognizing what drives the potential linkers, leading them to linking to you while all along they are thinking that they came up with that decision themselves. There are some measurements involved and any testing should be planned and executed with a scientific rigour, but the creative part of it is something where science is of little use. --- Thanks Branko! You can find him rambling at @neyne on Twitter or the SEOBook Forum & publishing findings and experiments at http://www.seo-scientist.com. Currently, he is responsible for SEO R&D at Whiteweb, agency that provides SEO services to a small number of large clients in highly profitable niches. His responsibilities at Whiteweb are to gather, organize and expand the company's knowhow through research, experimentation and cooperation with other SEO professionals. In addition to being an SEO, he is currently writing his MSc thesis in environmental microbiology at HebrewU in Jerusalem. Categories: interviews

I was just checking out the ongoing strategic meltdown in the value of the Dollar & noticed an AdWords ad with an extended headline & a 150 character ad description. Currently I believe the above extended description is a limited beta test, but if Google starts mixing that in with Google Advisor ads & ad sitelinks there might not be a single organic result above the fold on commercial keywords. The above image is even uglier when Google Instant is extended. Using the 150 word ad descriptions would drive everything down one more row per ad. Adding another line to each of the AdWords ads would push the "organic" search results down another listing. Of course one response is to operate in the tail of search, but just look at DMD to see how well that worked for them. They are so desperate that they sent legal threats at a site flaming them. Humorously, that site also runs AdSense ads. And that desperation is *before* Google has finalized a legal agreement on the book front & started aggressively pushing those ebooks in their search results with full force. In 12 months ebooks will be the new Youtube...a service that magically keeps growing over 10% a month "organically" in Google's search results. Your content isn't good enough to compete, unless you post it to Youtube. In addition to uploading spammy videos in bulk to Youtube, maybe SEOs should create a collective to invest in "an oversized monitor" in every home and on every desk. :D Alternatively, switching the default search provider on every computer you touch to Bing doesn't seem like a bad idea. Categories: pay per click search engines

Yet another problem with Google's brand first approach to search: parasitic hosting. The .co.cc subdomain was removed from the Google index due to excessive malware and spam. Since .co.cc wasn't a brand the spam on the domain was too much. But as Google keeps dialing up the "brand" piece of the algorithm there is a lot of stuff on sites like Facebook or even my.Opera that is really flat out junk. And it is dominating the search results category after category. Spun text remixed together with pages uploaded by the thousand (or million, depending on your scale). Throw a couple links at the pages and watch the rankings take off! Here is where it gets tricky for Google though...Youtube is auto-generating garbage pages & getting that junk indexed in Google. While under regulatory review for abuse of power, how exactly does Google go after Facebook for pumping Google's index with spam when Google is pumping Google's index with spam? With a lot of the spam on Facebook at least Facebook could claim they didn't know about it, whereas Google can't claim innocence on the Youtube stuff. They are intentionally poisoning the well. There is no economic incentive for Facebook to demote the spammers as they are boosting user account stats, visits, pageviews, repeat visits, ad views, inbound link authority, brand awareness & exposure, etc. Basically anything that can juice momentum and share value is reflected in the spam. And since spammers tend to target lucrative keywords, this is a great way for Facebook to arbitrage Google's high-value search traffic at no expense. And since it pollutes Google's search results, it is no different than Google's Panda-hit sites that still rank well in Bing. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. ;) Even if Facebook wanted to stop the spam, it isn't particularly easy to block all of it. eBay has numerous layers of data they collect about users in their marketplace, they charge for listings, & yet stuff like this sometimes slides through. And then there are even warning listings that warn against the scams as an angle to sell information But even some of that is suspect, as you can't really "fix" fake Flash memory to make the stick larger than it actually is. It doesn't matter what the bootleg packaging states...its what is on the inside that counts. ;) When people can buy Facebook followers for next to nothing & generate tons of accounts on the fly there isn't much Facebook could do to stop them (even if they actually wanted to). Further, anything that makes the sign up process more cumbersome slows growth & risks a collapse in share prices. If the stock loses momentum then their ability to attract talent also drops. Since some of these social services have turned to mass emailing their users to increase engagement, their URLs are being used to get around email spam filters Stage 2 of this parasitic hosting problem is when the large platforms move away from turning a blind eye to the parasitic hosting & to engage in it directly themselves. In fact, some of them have already started. According to Compete.com, Youtube referrals from Google were up over 18% in May & over 30% in July! And Facebook is beginning to follow suit. Categories: google

You need links to rank, period. We can talk all we want about great content, social signals, brand signals, and all that jazz but quite a bit of that is subjective. If you practice SEO, and have success with it, then you are well aware that a claim of "you need links to rank" is an objective, true statement without a bunch of false positives. The gray areas come in to play when we talk about things like anchor text, quality, volume, and so on but the overarching truth is without links you are largely invisible in the SERPS. Ok, enough of what you already know. Wordtracker recently updated one of their core tools with some cool new features and functionality. What is Link Builder from Wordtracker? Link Builder is designed to address a most of the core, key functions of a link building and prospecting campaign. Locate potential link partners via competitor backlinks or based on specific keywords Setting up a link building campaign and sorting your links properly (blogs, directories, social media, etc) Tracking the status of your link campaign's efforts Wordtracker uses Majestic SEO's Fresh Index by default but you can use the Historic Index as well. I might opt for the Fresh Index initially, because Majestic tends to have dead links in the historic index (thanks to the significant churn on the web) but if you can't find enough decent prospects in the Fresh Index, using the Historic one isn't a bad option. There is a lot I like about this tool and a few things I'd like to see them add to or improve on. Step 1: Setting Up a Campaign I'm a fan of clean, easy to use interfaces and Wordtracker definitely scores well here. Here is the first screen you are presented with when starting up a fresh campaign: Researching competing link profiles is not enough with respect to link prospecting, in my opinion. I really like the option to not only research multiple URL's at once but also to research keyword-specific prospects. You can research lots of countries as well. Below is a snapshot of the countries available to you in Link Builder: Step 2: Prospecting With Competitor URL's I am craving some chocolate at the moment, as you can tell from my selected URL's :) Here's a good example of my decision making process when it comes to using the Historic Index and the Fresh Index. My thought process usually involves the following information: The bigger/older the link profiles of the URL's the more likely I am to use the Fresh Index to avoid lots of dead links If the site is a well known brand I will be more likely to use the Fresh Index given the likelihood that the link profile is quite large Smaller link profiles, newer link profiles will probably benefit from using the Historic Index more In this example the sites I'm researching have big link profiles and have been around for quite awhile in addition to being large brands, so I will use the Fresh Index to cut down on potential dead-ends. I selected the "Edit Sources" box because I want to make sure I pick the URL with the most links (or you can just go with both) but I wanted to show you the options: I'll leave all selected just to maximize the opportunities. Sometimes you'll find pages ranking for specific keywords you might be targeting, rather than just the homepage ranking, so you can use both or one or the other if that's the case. In this scenario I'm looking at the URLs ranking for "chocolate", and they all happened to be homepage's anyway. Wordtracker is pretty quick with getting the data in, but while you're waiting you'll see the following screen: Step 3: Working with the Analysis Tab In order to keep the results as targeted as possible, Wordtracker automatically removes the following links from the results: Image Links Redirects No-follow links One thing I'd like to see them do is let no-follows through because even though they might not pass any juice they certainly can be decent traffic sources and link building isn't just about passing juice, it's also about brand building and traffic generation. I'd even say let image links through. I understand they don't want to be a pure link research tool but image links can be valuable for some of what I just mentioned as well. I would say, give us the data and the ability to filter it rather than just taking it away completely. Here is a snippet of the result page and a description on what it represents: On the left are pre-designed buckets that Link Builder groups your links into. This is helpful but I'd like to see more flexibility here. They also offer a tagging feature to help you group links in another way. The tagging can be helpful for things like assigning links to specific people within your group or really any other custom setup you have going on (maybe stuff like grouping keywords into priority buckets or whatever.) The prospect tab gives you the domain (chow.com in the below example) the link sits on, the page it links to on a competing site or sites, and the page the link is actually on from the linking site: All you have to do is click that "links to" button to see where the link is pointing to (in this case chow.com is only linking to 1 of the sites I inputted). The column to the right shows the page on the domain where the link is originating from and the number in the middle is a measure of how important that particular prospect might be. The furthest most right column shows columns that tell you whether the domain is also linking to you and how many other sites, out of the sites you inputted, that domain is linking to. The idea being that the domain might be more likely to link to you if they are linking out to multiple competing sites as well: The grayed out button to the right of the co-link count is the "target" button. This is the button you'd click to let the tool know that this is a prospect you'd like to target. You have the following toolbar available to you in the Analysis tab: These are generally self-explanatory: Delete - removes selected prospects from the campaign Export - export your results to a CSV file Copy to - copies prospects to another campaign within your account Tag - allows you to tag selected prospects to help create custom grouping fields Filter - filters Top Link by "contains" or "does not contain". An example might be if you wanted to target a link prospect or prospects which contained the word "chocolate" somewhere in the URL You can also click on any of the groupings on the left to view those specific groups only. I find that the groupings are fairly accurate but I personally prefer the ability to customize fields like that rather than being boxed in. I created a sample tag titled "for eric" that contains 2 links I want a team member named Eric to work on: Step 4: Working with the Contact Tab The Contact tab has most of the same toolbar options as the Analysis tab with one exception: Find Contact and About Links - click on the links you want to find contact information on and/or find the about page on Link Builder works in the background to find this information and you can continue working in the application. There is a notes option as well. There's no specific way to leave multiple, time-stamped notes (for team environments) but the input box is expandable so you can leave an ongoing contact history. You have the same contact flag on the right and to the left of that is an email icon that turns yellow if you click it and is designed to let you know contact is in progress or has been initiated. When the contact request comes back (just refresh the contact tab) you'll see the following, new fields within the Contact tab that denote the contact/about pages for the prospect: Step 5: Reporting The Reporting piece of Link Builder has the following reports: History - options for the Fresh/Historic Index of Majestic SEO via cumulative and non-cumulative views for the chosen domains Spider Profile - the link category breakdown (the aforementioned pre-defined link sources Wordtracker assigns your prospects to) of each domain Target Summary - number of targets, number/% of targets contacted, number/% of targets not contacted, number/% of targets linking to you This gives you a quick overview of the growth of competing link profiles, current link building rate, types of links they have, and your own Prospect metrics. All the reports are exportable to PDF. Here's the History report: Here's the Spider Report: Here's the Target Summary: Additional Campaign Options As we discussed earlier, you can either input a list of domains to search on a specific keyword. If you search on a specific keyword to start you are able to select URL's to include in your prospecting search. Everything else, in terms of options after the URL selection is the same as if you were to have started with domains. Having a keyword search to start a campaign is helpful in case you are looking to go beyond competitors you already know of and get a real deep look into link prospects across that keyword's market as a whole. Also, right next to your campaign name you can sign up to be automatically notified of new links and prospects for your campaign: Firefox Extension Link Builder also has a Firefox extension that allows you to grab all the external links from a page and save them in your Link Builder account. I find this is helpful on directory sites (for gathering a list of topic-specific URLs), as an example. The extension is really easy to use. You can install it here. Once you arrive at a page you want to use it on you just click on the LB logo in your toolbar: Then once you click on the option to gather the links, you get the following interface: You can save the chosen links right into your Link Builder account. What I Like The features that I like in Wordtracker's Link Builder tool are: Ability to prospect by multiple URLs or by choosing a specific keyword Option to use Fresh or Historic Index via Majestic SEO Simple ways to keep notes and contact information Ability to search for contact and about information on selected prospects Robust selection of countries Initial, intelligent link grouping Exporting capabilites Fast results and a really clean, easy to use interface What Could Be Improved On I think Wordtracker could do some things to make this tool even more functional and useful: More flexibility with the naming and assigning of link types Have profile-wide settings to include all links (no-follow, image, etc) or exclude some rather than excluding without a choice to include More filtering options around the data points they offer and whether a prospect has been targeted or not More robust link tracking (if the status of links change send me an alert). Though I realize that is getting into link tracking versus link building, it's still a nice option A bit more flexibility with notes and timestamps for a more defined contact history (especially if teams use this) A Solid Link Building Product Overall I think this tool does a good job with its intended use, link building. I think some users would like to see more done to make it more team friendly but I think you can accomplish a lot with their tagging feature. As stated above, I'd like to see some more done with notes and such but as a link prospecting and building tool Wordtracker's Link Builder is worth your time to try out. You can grab a free trial over at Wordtracker. Categories: seo tools

Authoritative, but Often Wrong Trusting a powerful authority is easy. It allows us to have a quick shorthand for how things work without having to go through the pain, effort, & expense to figure things out. But it often leads to bogus solutions. This video does a great job of explaining how nothing replaces experience in the SEO industry. A combination of numerous parallel projects, years of trial and error experience & a deep study of analytics data is far superior to having the God complex & feeling 100% certain you are right. Change is the only constant in SEO. Grand Plans Big plans often get subverted before they pan out & the more obvious something is the shorter its shelf life. By the time everyone notices a trend then jumping on it at that point probably isn't much of a competitive advantage. You might still be able to make some money for a limited time (or for a longer time if you apply it to new markets), but... investing in exact match domains was generally far more profitable in 2006 than it would be today. after Wired's The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model article in October 2009, the business model was torched within 16 months even the current "brand" trend that is in place now will peak out within the next 24 to 36 months. (more on that in a future post) It is the contrarian investors who are taking (what is generally perceived to be) big risks who are allowed to ride a trend for years and years. Options & Opportunities When Panda happened a lot of theories were thrown out as to what happened & how to fix it. Anyone who only runs 1 website is working from a limited data set and a limited set of experience. They could of course decide to do everything, but there is an opportunity cost to doing anything. Making things worse, if they have limited savings & no other revenue producing websites there are some risks they simply can't take. They can still sorta infer some stuff from looking at the search results, but those who have multiple sites where some were hit and others were not know intimately well the differences between the sites. They also have cashflow to fund additional trial and error campaigns & to double down on the pieces that are working to offset the losses. Success Requires Failure A lot of times people want to enter a market with a grand plan that they can follow without changing it once the map is made, but almost anyone who creates something that is successful is forced to change. Every year in the United States 10% of companies go under! And due to the increased level of competition online it likely separates winners from losers even faster than in the offline world. Those who stick to a grand plan are less able to keep up with innovation than those who have an allegiance to the data. Sometimes having a backup plan is far more important than having a grand plan. Incremental Investing, Small & Large Almost anything that I have done that has been successful has started ugly & improved over time. This site was an $8 domain & I couldn't even afford a $99 logo for it until I was a couple months into building it. Most of our other successes have been that way as well. If something works keep reinvesting until the margins drop. But when the margins do drop off, it is helpful to have another project you can invest in, such that you are not 1 and done. The earliest Google research highlighted how ad-based search business models were bad & the now bankrupt Excite.com turned down buying Google for under $1 million. It turns out everyone was wrong there. One company adjusted & the other is bankrupt. Overcoming the God Complex We don't control Google. We can only influence variables that they have decided to count. As their business interests and business models change (along with the structure of the web) so must we. The God complex always look a bit interesting from afar, no matter how reasonable it sounds to the true believer. Categories: publishing & media

Want a good example of Google's brand-bias stuff being a bunch of bs? Niche expert value-add affiliate websites may now lack the brand signal to rank as the branded sites rise up above them, so what comes next? Off-topic brands flex their brand & bolt on thin affiliate sections. Overstock.com was penalized for having a spammy link profile (in spite of being a brand they were so spammy that they were actually penalized, counter to Google's cultural norm) but a few months later the penalty was dropped, even though some of the spam stuff is still in place. Those who were hit by Panda are of course still penalized nearly a half-year later, but Overstock is back in the game after a shorter duration of pain & now they are an insurance affiliate. prnewswire.com/news-releases/oco-launches-insurance-tab-125739128.html And this "fold the weak & expand the brand" game is something the content farm owners are on to. Observe: When TechCrunch was redesigned they folded a couple other sites into it. (Nice sponsored deep link Dell, yet another brand advantage!) AOL has folded 100 brands down to 20. Some of the smaller AOL brands that focused on celebrity stuff were killed, the Huffington Post over the past year has been adding categories like divorce, doing tie-ins with BET & most recently added sections for culture and celebrity.While most the content farms were decimated, that left a big hole in the search results that will allow the Huffington Post to double or triple the yield of their content through additional incremental reach. And, yes, this is *the* same Huffington Post that is famous for aggregating 3rd party content (sans attribution), wrapping a Tweet in a page & ranking it, and gets mocked by other journalists for writing 90's-styled blocks of keyword spam: Before I go on, let me stop and say a couple of more important things: Aol, Aol Acquires Huffington Post, Aol Buys Huffington Post, Aol Buys Huffpo, Aol Huffington Post, Huffington Post, Huffington Post Aol, Huffington Post Aol Merger, Huffington Post Media Group, Huffington Post Sold, Huffpo Aol, Huffpost Aol, Media News. See what I did there? That's what you call search-engine optimization, or SEO. If I worked at the Huffington Post, I'd likely be commended for the subtle way in which I inserted all those search keywords into the lede of my article. And, of course, AOL is a company with the highest journalistic standards: I was given eight to ten article assignments a night, writing about television shows that I had never seen before. AOL would send me short video clips, ranging from one-to-two minutes in length — clips from “Law & Order,” “Family Guy,” “Dancing With the Stars,” the Grammys, and so on and so forth… My job was then to write about them. But really, my job was to lie. My job was to write about random, out-of-context video clips, while pretending to the reader that I had watched the actual show in question. AOL knew I hadn’t watched the show. The rate at which they would send me clips and then expect articles about them made it impossible to watch all the shows — or to watch any of them, really. Doing fake reviews? Scraping content? Putting off-topic crap on a site to monetize it? Those are the sorts of things Google claims the spammy affiliates & SEOs do, but the truth is they have never been able to do them to the scale the big brands have. And from here out it is only going to get worse. We highlighted how Google was responsible for creating the content farm business model. Whatever comes next is going to be bigger, more pervasive, and spammier, but coated in a layer of "brand" that magically turns spam into not-spam. Imagine where this crap leads in say 2 or 3 years? It won't be long before Google is forced to see the error of their ways. What Google rewards they encourage. What they encourage becomes a profitable trend. If that trend is scalable then it becomes a problem shortly after investors get involved. When that trend spirals out of control and blows up they have to try something else, often without admitting that they were responsible for causing the trend. Once again, it will be the SEO who takes the blame for bad algorithms that were designed divorced from human behaviors. I am surprised Google hasn't hired someone like a Greg Boser or David Naylor as staff to explain how people will react to the new algorithms. It would save them a lot of work in the long run. Disclosure: I hold no position in AOL's stock, but I am seriously considering buying some. When you see me personally writing articles on Huffington Post you will know it's "game on" for GoogleBot & I indeed am a shareholder. And if I am writing 30 or 40 articles a day over there that means I bought some call options as well. :D Categories: google

I am not sure how many people were holding off on updating to Firefox 5 because of our SEO extensions, however we made versions for Firefox 5 quite a while ago for Seo for Firefox, Rank Checker & the SEO Toolbar. When you first go to update it there might be a message that the extensions are not compliant. If that is the case, upgrade to Firefox 5 & then after you get Firefox 5 installed it has a check for updated versions of extensions. Our newest extensions no longer support Firefox 3 (we get some complaints from people using 3.6) and some early versions of Firefox 4 (like 4.0.1) may not be supported either. If you have an older browser & try to install our extensions you will get an incompatibility message, likeso: If you like the extensions as they are then there is no need to upgrade, however if you are having any issues with them (not being able to install them, not being able to pull Bing rankings, blank CSV export, etc.) then an upgrade should fix the problem. Firefox stated that the version 5 update is a security one, so I did it right away. If your Firefox version is high enough you should see an "allow" message box, likeso: Shout out to Brad McMillen, who had a support request & donated $20 to charity: water to receive a response. He was the first person to do so after months of us making the suggestion on the help desk area, even with 10 daily freetards (who are too lazy to read installation instructions) send us support tickets every day, flaming us because they "paid" for Firefox years ago & such. ;) I have been losing weight recently and working out a decent amount every single day & working a bit less. I even had time to go see my mom, see my sister, and visit my favorite childhood park. As an added bonus we dusted off the Nintendo & found a store selling vintage games that had my favorite pinball machine ever - Medieval Madness. I felt like a genuine escentric when trying to explain to my wife how buying a pinball machine for the house was reasonable. Even more eccentric, she didn't counter the idea. Who knows where that will lead...but it could add extra incentive to buy vs rent, if only California real estate didn't start at 7 figures on up. :D Extra time for reading, exercising & playing has led to a higher level of personal happiness, even as my fear of crushing state debts & banker fraud leading to a new wave of fascism the world over grow daily. Probably the single best business move I made over the past couple years was deciding that freetards were worth less than nothing and just deleting them. Part of what helped me do that was I actually had an employee answer tickets & after less than a week of doing it he was miserable & had a health issue. Since discarding freetards entirely I have seen 0 business impact and a huge lift in quality of life. If you are trying to please too many people and are showing signs of an unbalanced life for it (things like lacking sleep, high stress level, gaining weight, etc.) then a change is in order. I am still pretty chubby, but have already lost about 30 pounds. Sometimes I think it makes sense to lean into living a somewhat unbalanced lifestyle to build leverage, but after you are doing well for a while at some point it makes sense to live a bit more balanced life & enjoy it a bit more (or else the hidden health issues will become unhidden in short order). :D I think sometimes if you just read the blog posts things can be perceived to be more cynical and negative than they actually are. One of the bigger things I struggle with is having inspiration to keep making new posts after having published thousands of them. As I read more about the history of communications & how monopolies come to control information it is easy for me to write about some of the parallels between that and the current market. It is much harder to have something new to write about marketing though, as so much of it is just a repeat of history. Sure we can say everything is changing and hype everything new to try to pick up some links from people who want to cite quasi-research, but beyond understanding broad stroke philosophical stuff, a lot of what is new is either just hyping what is new for the sake of it or a regurgitation of what was old. The Google <3's brands theme is something that has been playing out for about a half-decade now. And if you look at every other major established ad driven media model, brand is there as well. Other big components of the ad ecosystem? Classifieds = local/mobile/deals retail = ecommerce/deals/payment processing channel segmentation = ad personalization & social media platforms that you reveal your tastes & interests onWhat areas are Google pushing into? Those exact same areas. Just look at this 2007 slide from Hal Varian... ...or see what Larry Page is pushing on Google+ I think about our products in three separate categories First, there is search and our ads products, the core driver of revenue for the company. Nikesh and Susan are going to talk more about ads later in the call Next, we have products that are enjoying high consumer success--YouTube, Android and Chrome. We are investing in these in order to optimize their long-term success Then we have our new products--Google+ and Commerce and Local. We are are investing in them to drive innovation and adoption The other hard bit with blogging is that of course sometimes there are some really delicious bits to SEO that most the market is unaware of. If you blog them there is a good chance the idea dies. Sometimes valuable tips are shared though, like in Rae's latest link building group interview. Categories: seo tools

Search is political. Google has maintained that there were no exceptions to Panda & they couldn't provide personalized advice on it, but it turns out that if you can publicly position their "algorithm" as an abuse of power by a monopoly you will soon find 1:1 support coming to you. The WSJ's Amir Efrati recently wrote: In June, a top Google search engineer, Matt Cutts, wrote to Edmondson that he might want to try subdomains, among other things. We know what will happen from that first bit of advice, in terms of new subdomains: billions trillions served. What are the "among other things"? We have no idea. All we know is that it has been close to a half-year since Panda has been implemented, and in spite of massive capital investments virtually nobody has recovered. A few years back Matt Cutts stated Google treats subdomains more like subfolders. Except, apparently that only applies to some parts of "the algorithm" and not others. My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site. Even though subdirectories were the "preferred" default strategy, they are now the wrong strategy. What was once a "best practice" is now part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Not too far before Panda came out we were also told that we can leave it to GoogleBot to sort out duplicate content. A couple examples here and here. In those videos (from as recent as March 2010) are quotes like: "What we would typically do is pick what we think is the best copy of that page and keep it, and we would have the rest in our index but we wouldn't typically show it, so it is not the case that these other pages are penalized." "Typically, even if it is consider duplicate content, because the pages can be essentially completely identical, you normally don't need to worry about it, because it is not like we cause a penalty to happen on those other pages. It is just that we don't try to show them." I believe if you were to talk to our crawl and indexing team, they would normally say "look, let us crawl all the content & we will figure out what parts of the site are dupe (so which sub-trees are dupe) and we will combine that together." I would really try to let Google crawl the pages and see if we could figure out the dupes on our own. Now people are furiously rewriting content, noindexing, blocking with robots.txt, using subdomains, etc. Google's advice is equally self-contradicting and self-serving. Worse yet, it is both reactive and backwards looking. You follow best practices. You get torched for it. You are deciding how many employees to fire & if you should simply file bankruptcy and be done with it. In spite of constantly being lead astray by Google, you look to them for further guidance and you are either told to sit & spin, or are given abstract pablum about "quality." Everything that is now "the right solution" is the exact opposite of the "best practices" from last year. And the truth is, this sort of shift is common, because as soon as Google openly recommends something people take it to the Nth degree & find ways to exploit it, which forces Google to change. So the big problem here is not just that Google gives precise answers where broader context would be helpful, but also that they drastically and sharply change their algorithmic approach *without* updating their old suggestions (that are simply bad advice in the current marketplace). It is why the distinction between a subdirectory and subdomain is both 100% arbitrary AND life changing. Meanwhile select companies have direct access to top Google engineers to sort out problems, whereas the average webmaster is told to "sit and spin" and "increase quality." The only ways to get clarity from Google on issues of importance are to: ignore what Google suggests & test what actually works, OR publicly position Google as a monopolist abusing their market positionGood to know! Categories: google

Am I the only one who gets a warm, fuzzy feeling from a well-crafted, super-targeted landing page? Right, I didn't think so :) Landing pages tend to suck more often than they inspire. Local landing pages are even worse in many cases; with hapless advertisers throwing Google AdWords coupons away by simply sending you to their home page for every single ad :( Why Local PPC Matters I firmly believe that local PPC (and SEO) is still an untapped resource for those looking to make client work a part of their business portfolio. It's quite hard enough for a local business owner, specifically one who has little experience in web marketing, to be expected to get a 75$ AdWords coupon and magically turn that into a quality PPC campaign that lasts. Google tried that mass approach to marketing and failed. The result of that failure has brought about things like: Google Engage for Agencies Google Offers (with some of the Groupon fail mixed in on this one) Google recognizes the market for helping small businesses reach customers on the web as do Groupon, Restaurant.Com, and all their clones. Local PPC, especially when used in conjunction with local SEO, can really make significant differences at the local business level and many of those businesses need help to do it. Landing Page Quality Matters I really dislike hitting a generic landing page after I make a really specific query. It's kind of like going to Disney and asking where Space Mountain is, only to be told that "we have lots of attractions sir, here is a map of the entire resort". Generally speaking, I believe most people like being led around by the nose. People typically want things yesterday so it's your job to give them exactly what they are looking for; after all, is that the point of search? I think anyone who's worked with PPC campaigns can attest to the fact that targeted landing pages are quite high on the importance totem pole. Tailoring your landing pages to your target market matters a lot. Solid Local PPC Landing Pages Designing a good landing page for local queries is not hard at all. There are many different layouts you can use and you should test as many as is practicable, relative to your traffic levels, to understand which ones will work for you. One area where local PPC is ripe for local business owners is insurance. I'm going to share a good example of a local lander below but if you are doing local PPC, before you get to the landing page design, utilize Google's address links like this advertiser did (green arrow mine) The above can help you stand out from the crowd where you are one the few local advertisers and it helps create that local experience right from the start. So I came across a couple of examples of good ways to tie in local content with your landing page design. Here's one from the insurance industry targeting terms around "wisconsin car insurance" followed by some tips on why I feel it's a good example (green arrows are mine): Why is this a good example? Use of the local modifier in key spots (doesn't appear stuffed) The Wisconsin Badger college football team's main color is red (not sure if that factored in but it helps to tie stuff like that in) Icon of the state in the main header Good use of badges to display authority in the insurance niche Lack of other navigation options, focused on the offer and the benefits of using their service I might have bolded "we only do business in Wisconsin" though In the above example you see a problem with many insurance agents locally though, quite a few do not have the ability to offer live quotes so they have to use a contact form. In a web of instant gratification this is something that can be an issue. Any good example is in another area where local customization works well, travel!: This was for a search around the keyword "boston hotels". The imagery is great here. A couple things I would have done would have been to eliminate the left navigation and make the main content area more bullet-point oriented rather than a set of paragraphs. Overall, they have a set up here where they can do the same approach across a bunch of different locations. Not So Solid Local PPC Landing Pages While searching for the above examples I also found some that were examples of being really untargeted approaches to local keywords. Here's an example of a brand just throwing out a really basic lander: Absolutely no local customization at all. Good landing page basics though (clear CTA, clear benefits). Perhaps bigger brands don't need to, or fail to see the value in, making landing pages local-specific on local queries. Liberty has no excuse not to either. They have local offices in every state, they could easily make their pages more local but they, for whatever reason, choose not to. In keeping with the same theme, I found this landing page for "boston hotels" to be underwhelming at best: It's a list of information in an otherwise coldly designed table. Perhaps this works well enough, just give people the info I suppose. As a user, especially if I'm traveling, I'd like to see pictures, brief info about the area, why choose here over the hundreds of other providers, etc. Quality Landing Page Foundations Typically, I would recommend starting out with a base layout and designing the page according to your market and then layering on local criteria. If you look at examples of good landing pages the layouts themselves don't change all that much. Some local elements you can include are: Local imagery Locations and hours Integrated map with directions Proximity to local landmarks (good for things like hotels, bed and breakfasts, etc) Local phone number and contact information Membership in any local group (rotary club logo, Better Business Bureau, chamber of commerce logo, logos of local charities or events you are involved with, etc) As discussed before, design should also speak to your audience (more tech savvy or less tech savvy, age, gender, market, and so on). Consider these 2 examples of landing pages for online invoicing. This is a market where design should be fresh, modern, "web X.X" if you will (like market leader Freshbooks). Here's a win for good landing page design: I really like the free sign up bar at the bottom. Your call to action is always available if you have to scroll or not. Good use of headlines, solid list of benefits, and super-easy sign up. Compare that to something like Quickbooks which requires quite a bit of info to get started: Then you have another example of, usually, what not to do. Too many navigation options here, run on paragraphs, lack of bullet points, outdated design for this market in my opinion: So the layouts don't change drastically and I'd recommend coming up with a layout first, a base design, and base copy. Then you can easily turn any landing page into a targeted, local page pretty quickly with small design and copy tweaks. Landing Page Resources A few places I have bookmarked for landing page references are: PPC Blog's landing page section of the blog Unbounce's write up on 10 landing pages that don't suck (their landing page section is good as well) Copyblogger's section on landing pages Not a bookmark, but a recommend Tim Ash's book on landing page optimization A couple of tools to help you with cranking out solid landing pages would be: Unbounce (hosted) Premise (Wordpress plugin from Copyblogger which comes with a ton of custom graphics and built in copywriting advice + tips) It's not that difficult to create awesome, locally targeted landing pages. It's a really simple process: Check out the resources linked to above and make a swipe file of nicely designed landing pages (design and layout) Incorporate the base layout and copy layout (headings, graphics, CTA's, etc) into a wireframe Minimize distractions (focus on getting the clicker to complete the desired task) Get the UI and graphics in order Think about all the ways you can sprinkle in a local feel to the page, like we talked about above (colors, locations, hours, local connections, imagery, and so on) Add in the local components to your base page What are some of your best practices when putting together landing pages for local PPC campaigns or landing page tips in general? Categories: marketing

The SEO tool space is a pretty crowded one (and growing one!). Tools are helpful, there is no doubt about that. However, tools are generally only as good as the person using them. We'd love to know what tools you use and why, so please let us know in the comments after the post :) I am not "house" handy by any means, I can barely hang a picture frame straight. So if you gave me the best construction tools in the world I'd still make extra holes and screw something up. Even if I managed to get the picture hung correctly, it certainly would not look professional. You can buy as many guides, tools, and accessories as you like but in the end it is your skill that determines the success or failure of a project (building a deck or building a website). Skills can be harnessed, but tools do not overcome a lack of skill. SEO Tool Fatigue SEO tool fatigue is a real issue for some folks. Some people spend a good chunk of their productivity on testing or trying out new tools, or even using so many tools that their implementation and interpretation of data suffers a great deal. One tool says this, another says that, and yet another says 1 or the other or both or neither :) . The first thing to realize is that most of the data from tools (excluding analytics and such) are basically estimates of estimated data, or are directly from Google's various estimation-type tools (Keyword Tool, Trends, Insights, and so on), or driven off what the tool builder thinks are important or reliable metrics to build your research off of (there tends to be some swings and misses with that type of approach). You are not going to fail miserably if you decide not to do days and days and days of keyword research with multiple tools and then spending more days comparing different datasets. Research is important, but there is a limit. Picking a Core Set of Tools From a cost and time standpoint I've found it really helpful to pick a core set of tools and stick with them rather than bouncing around to get an extra feature or two. It's good to peek around from time to time but using mostly similar tools can lead to a "needle in the haystack" approach; where you spend most of your time digging a time-suck hole rather than building websites and adjusting strategies based on analytics and/or AdWords data. Again, research is important but there is a sweet spot and it's a good idea to get some kind of system down so you can focus on doing "enough" research without doing harm to the time it takes you to get sites up and running. Evaluating Tools I'm going to highlight some of the tools I've used below, most of which are considered to be market leaders. I'll point out why I use certain tools, why I don't use others (yet) and I encourage anyone who's dealing with tool overload to do the same for the tools you use. The areas I'll be focusing on are: Keyword Research On Page Criteria Rank Checkers Competitive Link Research Tools Link Monitoring Keyword Research There are many keyword research tools that pull data from the sources listed below (like our free keyword research tool, which pulls from Wordtracker). Google AdWords Keyword Tool Google Trends Google Insights Microsoft Ad Intelligence Wordtracker's Keyword Research Tool SeoBook Keyword Research Tool Wordstream These tools use their own databases (although in Wordtracker you can ping Google's tool as well). I use all the Google tools as well as Ad Intelligence and Wordtracker as well as the SeoBook Keyword Tool. Sometimes I use Wordtracker just via our keyword research tool and sometimes I use Wordtracker's web interface (I like being able to store stuff in there). Our keyword tool also links in to most of the sources listed above. A big reason why I like our keyword research tool is that it's super easy to hit the major data points I want to hit on a particular keyword from one location. Ad Intelligence is solid as (Microsoft claims) they incorporate actual search data into their results, rather than estimating like Google does. I should also note that I mainly use Trends and Insights for comparing similar keywords and looking at locality (in addition to the history of keywords). Sometimes you run across really similar keywords (car, auto) and it can help to know which one is most relevant to your campaign. On-Page Optimization For the on page stuff I'm mainly concerned with large scale, high level overviews. I use our toolbar for specific on-page stuff but when I'm looking to diagnose internal linking problems (not maximizing internal link flow, broken links, http status codes, and so on) or issues with title tags and meta descriptions either missing, being too short, or too long, or duplication then I use a couple different tools. Screaming Frog (Mac/Win) Xenu (Win) Integrity (Mac) Website Auditor (Mac/Win) Since I'm on a Mac and I don't care to run Windows for anything other than testing, I use the three listed which work on Mac (though I don't use them in every situation). I use Screaming Frog's SEO Spider pretty frequently as well as Peacock's Integrity. Integrity is a broken link checker while SEO Spider incorporates other SEO related features (title tags, H1/H2's, anchor text, and a ton of other important elements). WebSite Auditor offers most, if not all, of what SEO Spider does but also incorporates white-label reporting, Google Page Rank, Yahoo! & Google Link popularity, cache dates, and so on. For some of those features in Website Auditor you might want to either outsource the Captcha inputting or use their Anti-Captcha service so you don't have to sit there for hours entering in captcha's. In my regular workflow, SEO Spider and Integrity get used a lot and Website Auditor comes in to play for some of those other metrics and for white label reporting. Rank Checking Here's a crowded space! So I think the right choice here really depends on your needs. Are you a solo SEO who runs multiple sites, or maybe you run your own sites and client sites, or maybe you are a client-only shop. Here are some of the main players in this space: Advanced Web Ranking Link Assistant's Rank Tracker Raven's SERP Tracker SeoBook Rank Checker SeoMoz Rank Tracker & Web App Authority Labs Even if you have reporting needs, you can still do a lot for free with our free rank checking tool (scheduled reports, stored reports, multiple search engines, and so on) and Excel or another spreadsheet program like OpenOffice.Org or Google Docs. Some good tips on creating ranking charts with Excel can be found here. There are a couple differences with the software players, Advanced Web Ranking and Link Assistant's Rank Tracker (both have multiple levels so it's wise to check the features of both to see if you need the higher end version or if the lower priced versions will work for you). Some of the key differences are: Rank Tracker integrates with Google Analytics Advanced Web Ranking has a variety of ways to track local rankings, including maps and a local preview engine Advanced Web Ranking has more, easier to customize reporting options I find that the interface with Rank Tracker is much easier to work with If all you are looking for is rank checking, then Link Assistant is a bit cheaper overall (comparing enterprise versions of both). While noting, AWR has more local options at their higher price point. You can see AWR's pricing here and Link Assistant's here. Note, it's worthwhile to check out maintenance pricing as well (Link Assistant and AWR) AWR let's you assign a proxy per project, which can be really helpful if you have clients all over the map. AWR automatically pulls in the top ten sites for a keyword, and their last position compared to current, and let's you add that site to your tracking (at any point) with all the historical data saved and updated within your account. One tip with software tools is to run them on a different machine, perhaps even behind an IP off of a private VPN service like WiTopia, and think about utilizing multiple proxies from a service like Trusted Proxies and/or using an anti-captcha service with Link Assistant's tools. The idea is to not get your IP banned and to let you continue to work as normal on your main machine while another machine is handling the automated queries. If you don't want to fuss with that, you might want to try a cloud app. The Cloud and Scalability The 3 main services, that I've used anyway, come from Raven, SeoMoz, and Authority Labs. Authority Labs now powers Raven's SERP tracker too. My biggest concern with cloud-based rank checkers is that the keyword volume can be (understandably) limited. Now, Authority Labs has unlimited checking at 450/month but the other two have limits. Let's just look at the highest plans for a second, Moz allows 30 campaigns and a total of 3,500 keywords. Raven's highest plan allows for unlimited domains and 2,500 keywords total (and 200 competitors). If scalability is a concern for you then you might be better off with software solutions. Once you start running multiple sites or are responsible for reporting on multiple sites (and you are working the long tail and your analytics) then you can see how restrictive this could become. Of course, comparing just the rank checking options of a tool set like Raven and Moz (which both have other useful tools, Raven more so for full on campaign management) doesn't do the pricing justice. So what you could do is still use the many other tools available from each company and use a software solution once your rank checking scales beyond what they offer. Both Moz and Raven integrate with Google Analytics, and Raven's campaign integration with GA is quite nice too (beyond just rankings). Link Research Free tools like Yahoo!'s Site Explorer, search query tools like Solo SEO's link search tool and Blekko's link data are nice but at some point in your SEO career you'll might have to get on board with a more advanced link research tool or tools to get the data you need to compete in competitive SERPS. A good chunk of software-based solutions pull link data from search engines but if you want a more, way more, comprehensive view of a competing site's link profile (and link history) you do have a few options. Majestic SEO Open Site Explorer Advanced Link Manager Majestic was originally known for having a much deeper database, with the caveat that they keep a lot of decayed links, and their UI wasn't overly impressive. Well, as noted in a recent blog post (which includes 20% off coupons) on Majestic's new tools, most of that isn't the case anymore. Though, I still feel Open Site Explorer has a better and smoother UI. Advanced Link Manager's strength lies in their ongoing link management and reporting but they also have some decent link research tools built in and they can connect to SeoMoz's API to gather link data, so that kind of sets them apart from those other software-based solutions. Again, Moz offers other tools as well so it's hard to really compare price points. What I like about OSE is that you can get a really solid, quick overview of the anchor text profile of a competing site. Also, you get unlimited look ups and up to 10k links per query on their pro plan (in addition to other Moz tools). You can get a 30 day free trial of all the Moz tools as of this writing. Majestic's New Tools Majestic, now with their new site explorer and fresh index, rival OSE's UI and freshness a bit but there still are limits on usage. You can check out Majestic's pricing here and don't forget about the 20% off coupon mentioned here. Typically I like to use both Majestic and OSE. I like the new tools Majestic has come out with and their historical data is solid. OSE, for me, is great for getting some of a site's top metrics quickly (anchor text, top pages, etc). If I had to pick one, I'd go with Majestic mostly because Moz gives a decent amount of data away for free (being a registered user) and because Majestic has really good historical + deeper data. Link Management Building links, especially if you have a team, can be a cumbersome process unless you have collaborative tools to work with. Even if you operate mostly on your own, you might want to track links you've earned or built directly. Every once and awhile i like to download a report from Majestic SEO and add any links that are not yet in my tracking program into the program. Some people like to just track paid or exchanged links and let the natural ones sort of come and go naturally. There are a couple of tools out there that I've used, and one I haven't but I've heard good things about it from reputable sources so I'll include it here. Raven's Link Manager Buzzstream Advanced Link Manager Raven's Link Manager is probably their flagship tool. It has received really high praise from experienced SEO's and is easy to use. You can easily add links, assign them to employees, and let Raven worry about the automatic checking and reporting in case something changes with a link. Advanced Link Manager has many features built in but you can use it just for tracking links you want to track by uploading the links into the program. It's software based and you can set it to run whenever you'd like, automatically. I personally haven't used Buzzstream, but reputable people have told me it is a solid program, and they have a free 14 day trial here. It's a dedicated link building and management tool (and also has a PR and social media tool) so chances are if you are looking for a specific tool to fill that need, this one might be worth a shot. If you don't have a ton of links to manage or a team to manage, you might be just fine with an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Doc. To me, it's just one more thing to think about and Raven and Buzzstream have low priced plans if you don't need enterprise-level storage. What's in Your Toolbox? So there's an overview of what I feel are the best SEO tools out there and one's that I use frequently (or infrequently). I'd love to know what you are using and why (or why not?) :) Categories: seo tools

Posted by randfishI'm constantly recommending thought leadership as a marketing strategy and, frequently, getting a lot of pushback. It started when I was a consultant, but continues to this day. It usually goes something along the lines of: Other Person: It's easy to be a thought leader in the fields you just showed, but what are the rest of us ordinary businesses supposed to do? Me: Actually, I'm a strong believer that there's virtually no such thing as an industry or niche where thought leadership, interesting/share-worthy content and great inbound marketing can't work. Marketers said personal finance was boring until Mint. They thought online dating couldn't be a thought-leadership play until OKTrends. They said elevator installation couldn't have anything good, then Grant (an Australian firm) launched their great news section including awesome infographics like this one and earned #1 rankings for "Home Elevators." Other Person: But those fields all have existing examples to draw inspiration from; I bet you can't name anyone in my particular practice of XYZ Me: That's the best part! If no one else has risen up to claim the mantle of thought leadership; it's an even greater opportunity. The early adopters in thought leadership and content marketing often receive a disproportionate quantity of attention from links, social media, press, etc. ROI may take elbow grease, time and patience, but if you find a way to earn the attention of the web, you have a chance to build a truly amazing brand. Other Person: There's no way we can invest that much energy and budget in thought leadership for marketing. We'd need to build a platform to host the content, we'd have to do design/artwork, we'd need to brainstorm and research the ideas, run them past layers of management for approval and Me: In five minutes, you can have a Wordpress installation running in a subfolder of your site. You can do the brainstorming and execution by yourself at first - let's dream up three ideas together right now; I bet we can do it. If you really need design work, look how Cyrus did it here (for under $500). If you can't get executive approval; create your own blog/site, show them the success you're having and then 301 it over. Other Person: Well, OK, maybe. Me: Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful marketing story. Other Person: Umm... My name is Steve. Me: Oh. Sorry. I recently gave this talk on the Death and Rebirth of SEO at Webcam in Bend:  The Death & Rebirth of SEO And right after the talk, had very similar conversations to the above with several folks in attendance. To be fair, I completely understand how challenging the process of building thought leadership on the web can appear. But when you get into it, it's fun, addictive and surprisingly effective. There's no better way, in my opinion, to create a great brand on the web and simultaneously supercharge your social media, SEO and traffic-growth than thought leadership. p.s. I've been enjoying a lot of shorter blog posts from folks like Brad Feld (whose post on thought leadership partially inspired this one) and Fred Wilson, so I thought I'd try my hand at slimming down my usual 1,000+ word count posts. Hopefully it's just as impactful/useful. Oh, and slide 65 in the deck above is a duplicate; sorry 'bout that.Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by PhilNottinghamWhen the iPad first came out, like many people, I didn't really get it. My initial thoughts were something along the lines of "Steve... what the hell?! You've produced a giant iPod and are somehow trying to claim its some sort of brilliant new product." I resolved never to buy one, considering it simply a folly for overly wealthy businessmen or an iPod designed for the visually impaired. 18 months later, a lot of words have had to be eaten with very little garnish or dressing. Now the proud owner of an iPad 2, I consider the tablet to be the coolest gadget ever made and the piece of technology I use most at home and when out and about. My belief is that the form-factor of the tablet PC will become the primary device for personal computing over the coming decade and will form conduit for the bulk of consumer search queries. While this “tablet revolution” may end up meaning very little for the classic SEO model, unaffecting the nature of link-building, keyword targeting, on-page optimisation, content creation or social media; It will form a catalyst of change for the world of CRO, analytics and offer new vertical opportunities so far mostly untapped... In this post I hope to scratch the surface of things that will need to be considered by the SEO community going forward. Why the iPad? Tablets have been common-place now for a over year and a half. Yet, the world as a whole, still seems relatively baffled by them. Where do they fit in relation to the notebook and the smart-phone? Are they a mobile device or a static home-based device? Are they more useful in a personal or a business environment? The answers to these questions remain somewhat elusive as we see tablet devices used creatively and strategically in numerous different arenas for multiple different purposes, but without a singular, uniting core function. Some of these uses have been inspiring in their creativity and originality... Some of these have amused us with their breathtaking ill conceived stupidity.....(fast forward to 0:24) In beginning to question the exact USP of the iPad, it becomes clear that the mutually exclusive definition of “personal computer” and “mobile device” is broadly defunct, false dichotomy. By displaying multifunctional appeal, eluding concrete definition, yet morphing its value and form to fit the subjective perspective of the user, the Tablet PC defines itself as a post-modern tool for personal computing - doing nothing particularly new, but a number of things much better, than any other device. The defining feature of the tablet is clearly its UI. While the touch screen technology used in smart-phones and tablets is essentially the same, the way that translates to end usability differs considerably. The size of tablet allows for multiple fingers to be used simultaneously, allowing for a wider frame of user interaction with content previously viewed primarily on laptops or desktops; made navigable through the integration of a full two-handed QWERTY keyboard. The touch-screen tablet interface on the iPad is extremely intuitive, feeling responsive, flexible and mutable to the chosen behaviours of its user. Using the device feels effortless compared with the computing via a keyboard and mouse, requiring considerably less mental investment or formal effort. When we are on a desktop/laptop computer, we are normally entirely using a computer; unable to be simultaneously cooking, brushing our teeth, watching the television or walking to work. The same is not true of a tablet device, where the “pick up and play” nature of the hardware and operating systems allows for genuine multi-tasking and partial engagement with technology. As such, the tablet perfectly fits the frame for what the PC always felt a bit forced into, casual web usage and content consumption. Most of the time we use the web in a personal frame, it is for an immediate task - be that finding the answer to a question, reading the news, communicating with our friends or making a necessary basic purchase. Last week Amazon announced the Kindle Fire, a tablet with a similar 7inch 16:9 form-factor to the Blackberry Playbook and the original Samsung Galaxy Tab. The fire looks to be an incredible product and an un-missible bargain at $199 (£130), but while the eBooks, music, movies and gaming functionality on the Fire may be superb, I do not think it will prove to be a viable or productive device for mobile computing and therefore search. I played with the original Galaxy Tab for a while when it was released and found it the screen far too small and restrictive, with too low a resolution to be used effectively as a tablet computer. It was not large enough to be more functional than a large smart-phone, yet too cumbersome to be used instead of one. I expect the same to be broadly true of the Playbook and the Fire. For my money, the 9-10 Inch 4:3 screen will push forwards and the main tablet form factor for years to come, with screen-size slightly expanding to 11-12 inches, - increasing when technology allows for smaller, lighter batteries and even thinner devices. Until the Android UX improves and the App store expands dramatically and a hardware manufacturer is able to produce a device with design quality on par with the iPad for significantly less cost, I can’t see Apple’s sales figures or market share slowing down anytime soon. Even if the iPad doesn’t gain users, it probably won't lose many due to the core Apple ecosystem i.e. those with iPhones, Macs etc will probably not switch to Android. According to technology research firm Gartner 69.7 million tablets were sold his year, of which a vast 68.7% were iPads. While Microsoft may eventually produce an exciting iOS competitor with Windows 8, this release is still a way off and with the luke-warm consumer reception to Windows Phone 7, one does have to wonder whether Ballmer and co will enthusiastically turn up just a bit too late for the party, arriving to discover the revellers have long-ago passed out drunk on Steve Jobs’ sleek, minimalistic, unibody aluminium sofas. Therefore, I think it’s worth putting time and development resource into optimising for the iPad form factor, treating it as the only current tablet device worthy of consideration for site-optimisation. The iPad, what is it good for? absolutely nothing The iPad crosses the boundaries between mobile and desktop, being of particular value in the following locations and situations: In front of the TV The iPad is great for finding out the names of actors, undertaking research alongside informational programming or casually engaging with twitter while keeping up to the date with the latest sit-com. As a TV This morning, I could not be bothered to move into my living room to watch the Rugby World Cup matches at 8am GMT, so kept up to date with all the action without leaving my bed. This felt awesome, even if it was just laziness on an unprecedented scale. As a complementary device for meetings & conferences. In an age of earth shatteringly boring powerpoint presentations, the iPad is a welcome visitor to help liven up even the dullest of boardroom presentation. You can easily pass round presentations, videos and images with the rest of the room. Travel Trains and planes are not designed with laptops in mind. The iPad’s shape, size, weight and battery life take away the cumbersome hassle of trying to do work on the move. Reading Not only books, but also reports, PDFs, articles and newspapers are a breeze to look through while on the move or multi-tasking. In and around the home Particularly for casual browsing and quick enquiries, where the effort of loading up a PC seems unwarranted - the Tablet is the go-to device. Collaboration Happiness is best when shared and the iPad works really well for watching Youtube videos with friends, reading articles together or sharing holiday snaps. Which sites are likely to get the most traffic? My hypothesis is that sites in certain niches are likely to see more growth from tablet devices than others. Everyone who has currently bought an iPad will have tethered it to a personal desktop or notebook pc. While this will change going forward, with the introduction of iOS 5, most tablet owners will still have access to a desktop or laptop and probably a smart phone too, meaning they have an option for devices to search from. Due to usability factors such as screen-size, technical incompatibilities, typing efficiency and to the poor integration of tabbing within the native Safari Browser; the iPad is not suitable for heavy or sustained internet usage, the kind of which you are likely to do at work or when undertaking serious research. Where the iPad comes into its own is with quick, frivolous tasks and I think this nature is beginning to manifest itself in the sites generating the most tablet traffic. The graph below shows the percentage growth of access from iPads for Distilled clients in a variety of different niches. TV & Media A Distilled Client in the TV & Entertainment Niche has had considerable growth of traffic from iPads over recent months, while maintaining a steady level of traffic across the board. Year on year for the month of august, traffic from iPads has grown from 0.47% of total traffic, to 2.52% of total traffic. While this may sound like only a small fraction of overall traffic, this growth represents a 400% increase. Meanwhile traffic from Windows devices reduced considerably over that time frame, by about 9.5% from 82.49 to 72.95%. The further development of excellent TV & media apps such as TVguide, Sky remote record, Netflix & IMBD should be increasing the amount of traffic driven to entertainment and media sites via the iPad, as people choose not to switch devices in order to find out the name of that actor, or when the next episode of a certain program is on. Travel & Tourism If you’re going abroad, a tablet is great way to keep up with your communication and computing on the move, without worrying yourself over luggage allowance or battery life. Ticketing sites, restaurants, hotels and activity planning businesses should start to see sustained growth in visits from tablets. Leisure E-commerce If you’re making a major purchase, such as a car, business insurance or an engagement ring you’re going to want to meticulously check through different options, from multiple providers and make copious notes on all the actions as you go. This sort of purchase is unlikely to be undertaken from the armchair with iPad in-hand, however smaller, more frequent purchases often are. The touch screen interface can be a fantastic way to browse through the kind of items that don’t require as much research and planning. For example, when searching for a gift for a friend, people will often browse a store on a sofa while perhaps taking into account other's opinions. News & Information Resources We have all been in the situation where in the midst of a heated argument one side reaches for the last resort: Wikipedia. Alongside the smart phone a tablet is the ideal device for quick information retrieval on a particular topic of reference. Tablets also provide a great way to consume journalistic content as demonstrated in this recent article from Net Magazine. If you run a content aggregation site, a popular blog or a news resource – prepare for a shift in the devices comprising your overall traffic. Social For some reason everybody, when amongst friends and family, usually groans when somebody reaches for their mobile phone or laptop to access a social network. This stigma has so far managed to find itself inapplicable to tablets, their users and their peers. The pedantry associated with social network browsing on a phone isn’t applicable and the giant expedition that requires setting up a laptop with charger doesn’t make it seem like too much of an aside from maintaining the current real-life social setup. A tablet is a complement to a group trying to include, perhaps talk about or explore others who aren’t in their immediate vicinity. Technical Optimisation Flash The iPad doesn’t support flash and from the vehemently stubborn quality of the comments made by Apple on this matter, I think it’s pretty safe to assume the iPad won’t be supporting flash anytime in the future either. The SEO world have been pretty negative on flash for some-time, given Google’s inability to crawl it, but if you need another reason to take it down or convert your content to HTML5, here it is. Creating flash-style HTML5 content sounds extremely daunting to those of us without a front-end development background, but it really needn’t be. Check out Tom Anthony’s post on how to fix common issues with HTML5 and these sites for good tutorials: HMTL5 Rocks W3 Schools Hype, a program for Mac OS X program allows even layman’s to create smart looking interactive HTML5 content and costs only $29.99 on the Mac App store. Site Speed Most of the time, tablets will run off reasonably speedy Wi-fi connections in homes, offices and coffee shops. But on trains, buses, cars, in airports and in meetings at other offices, iPads with the capability will often rely on their 3G connectivity to provide internet services. The BBC recently conducted a comprehensive survey of 3G availability around the UK, which showed patchy connections in many areas outside of the major cities. Despite an often advertised speed of 7.2Mbps for 3g connections, the BBC found most UK users get speeds of about 1.5Mbps, if stationary. In moving vehicles, connections can slow to a sloth like 284kbit/s – not enough to consistently stream video from YouTube. For iPad users opting to tether their device to their phone’s 3G connection for mobile browsing, the same sort of connection speeds apply. This data simply reinforces the value of a fast loading, well constructed site, most easily achieved through: Ensuring your images aren’t bigger than they need to be Combining External Javascript Minimizing DNS lookups For tutorials on how to achieve these and more hot site-speed tips, check out Craig Bradford’s guide Make an iPad friendly site, but not a duplicate Mobile websites create unnecessary duplicate content, which can have bad consequences for your crawl bandwidth and keyword targeting, yet most desktop sites are not ideal for use on either smart phones or tablets. The best solution is to serve different versions of the same site, perfectly optimised for each device, through changing CSS. Check out CSS zen garden to see how the same content can be delivered in totally different visual styles. If you have built a mobile version of your website which you automatically serve to mobile devices, ensure this does not happen for users on an iPad. Although I can’t find any research to back this up (I’d be interested to hear if anybody else can), I expect that the vast majority of web browsing on tablets is done in landscape mode, where most full-sized sites can be navigated without any difficulty. The only reason I can see for supplying a mobile site to an iPad is if the full-sized site contains heavy elements of flash, which you are reluctant to lose. Conversion Rate Optimisation Simplify the check-out/conversion process Using the keyboard on a tablet is a little bit arduous. In small doses, it’s not a problem, but typing stuff in does often require the user to put down the device and engage two-hands on the keypad. If you’re looking for a simple conversion to purchase, try to minimise the amount of content a user has to manually input. This can be achieved by: Only forcing the user to input the minimum amount of data you require Using cookies to store data from previous visits Automatically matching addresses from postcode/zipcode inputs Allowing payment through paypal Create an App My iPad has a folder on it labelled “Shopping”. If I have something i wish to buy, then my first port of call will be the two clicks required to open up one of the apps in this folder, rather than the lengthy process of searching Google then trawling the results. Ebay, Asos, Amazon and Ocado have all done really good iPad apps which are worth taking a look at for anyone with an E-commerce focus. Apps allow you to permanently store your payment details and ensure you can produce a graphically rich online store without the concern of page loading times. While an app will likely provide conversions in its own right, they are also valuable tools for generating brand-trust and can act as fantastic bits of linkbait for improving overall domain authority. Pagination Scrolling through lengthy pages is a breeze on a tablet, requiring only a casual flick of the finger to move the page down. Clicking through to another page, however, can be time consuming – especially if the clickable icons are difficult to locate and the page contains heavy graphical content. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t paginate content when serving tablet devices, providing your “next” and “previous” icons are suitably tablet friendly, but simply that the visual impact of long pages is not such an issue. Tabbing While there are decent third party browsers available for the iPad; particularly Opera Mobile, Diigo Browser and Dolphin HD, the vast majority of users (around 96%) use only the native Safari browser, which currently offers an inelegant solution to tabbing. If you’ve set all your external links to open up in a new tab or window in order to keep users on your site, beware that this may have an adverse effect for iPad users. Clicking back on the iPad is not nearly as dull or time consuming as going back to a page in another window. Scrollers & multitouch Smart use of HTML5 and CSS3 allows you to integrate scrollers and multitouch into your site delivery, as seen in Google tablet search and the upcoming BBC site redesign, currently in beta testing. The best of use tablet UI and architecture is where traditional vertical scrolling is combined with horizontal navigation, to allow a great deal of content to be delivered on a single page. This lessens the need for tabbing and 3+ click journeys to deep pages; which feel irksome on the iPad, while allowing users to locate content without spending a long time finger-flicking through giant pages. Check out the way my previous company, LocateTV, integrated horizontal navigation, and the way the extremely pretty Sky News App displays big pages of rich content. Button Size Fingers are bigger than cursors and therefore require more space to be clicked. Having to zoom-in in order to make a selection gets extremely tiring, so nip this issue in the bud by making small adjustments to your CSS. Downloads for Quality Content One of the most useful and natural functions for the iPad is as a portable eReader. The iBooks application contains an extensive bookstore, offering a wide variety of both paid and free content. The iBooks App also works as the primary PDF reader on the iPad, allowing you to bookmark places, zoom in and out and store the content in an extremely visually appealing library. One way we can utilise this functionality as website optimisers is to ensure quality content is PDF downloadable, giving users to option to store our content on their tablet device for viewing in environments absence of an internet connection. With many iPads only offering Wi-fi connectivity and frequent usage in internet free areas such as the London Underground, having offline readable content can improve long-term user engagement. Two ways to make effective use of this would be to ensure that any HQ content you produce has a PDF download option as per the SEOmoz Beginner's Guide or hitting mail subscribers with PDF versions of your new content so they can quickly upload it to iBooks in the morning before beginning the train journey into work. When building the acrobat files, carefully consider the formatting of your document. The standard PDF looks like this: An iPad in portrait mode has a width of 728px , considerably less than the average 15 inch laptop monitor screen, which clocks in at about 1440px. It’s best to test out your PDF document on an iPad so you avoid the need to excessively zoom in and out in order to make the text legible. With the introduction of Apple’s reading list into the latest version of Safari on OS X Lion, expect iOS 5 on the iPad to provide an integrated system, which may open up more possibilities in off-line downloadable content. Analytics Google Analytics make it very simple for you to work out how much traffic your site is getting from iPads, by treating the device as an operating system entirely separate from iOS on the iPhone or iPod touch. Just go to Visitors > Browser Capabilities > Operating Systems to see a basic report. However, I think setting up an “Tablet” Advanced Segment is the best way to go with this, so you can include the appropriate Android versions and other tablet devices in overall analysis. You may notice unusual referrers coming in through GA, ones which don’t drive any traffic from other devices. These will most likely be Apps and if you’re getting significant traffic off the back of these, it’s well worth delving a bit deeper to see if you can leverage further opportunities in this area. The vast majority of traffic on the iPad will come through Safari, with small amounts through Opera mobile and other niche browsers. However, there are also a few other quasi-browsers that may pop up their heads. The Twitter app for the iPad contains an integrated webkit based browser, which should show up in GA as “Mozilla Compatible Agent”. Don’t be immediately alarmed if you see higher than normal bounce rates coming through from tablet traffic, it may be that many of these visits are coming in via social references and through apps such as twitter, Facebook, iReddit and Flipboard. The things to be wary of are low times on site, low conversions and any pages which may contain iPad hostile flash or aspx server-side scripts. The Future of Tablets TV Companion Devices One of the major futures for tablets will be as the “Second Screen” for home-based broadcast media. When watching sport, meta-data will be pushed live to the viewers phone and tablet, allowing them to browse through statistics, replays, commentary and static shots. Users are already beginning to make moves in this direction, with the plethora of Sky Apps released for the iPad. The current function of “The Red Button”, will be replaced by content wirelessly pushed to an App on a tablet. For marketers, there will be opportunities within these integrated broadcasts systems; be it ads, creative content or affiliate recommendations. For example, imagine seeing the outfit a character is wearing in a TV show, then being provided with an image and a link to an E-commerce seller for that outfit on your tablet device. The tablet will fulfill the main role as the TV companion device, as it’s informal, flexible nature makes it much easier and less cumbersome to use than a laptop while curled up on the sofa with most of your attention focused on your big screen. Content Creation The thing currently limiting tablets from becoming realistic content creation devices is not the hardware, but the creative software. I can foresee voice-activated document creation coming back into the fray with tablets. While this technology has been around for a while, the speed and accuracy of dictation software has held back any wide ranging adoption. Tablets may become mainstream devices for illustration and design, video and music creation once innovations in UI take the next step and cloud syncing systems have been properly established to allow heavy processing tasks to be shared with more powerful computers. However, I do think it’s unlikely that heavy multitasking or database creation will find a mainstream form within the tablet functionality. 4G Within the next few years, along with phones, tablets will take advantage of the 1Gbps 4G networks, improving the ability to watch HD videos on the fly and edit large documents stored in the cloud. Operational Remotes – Media Libraries Apps already exist to allow the iPad to be used as a remote mouse for Mac computers or Apple TV and if you have the money and the tenacity to set it up, it is possible to use a tablet device as a control for a large home-media library stored on a static disk. I expect this functionality will improve and expand going forward, with fully integrated media control across devices, service providers and screens. Cloud Computing The upcoming iCloud service will allow users to edit documents and content originally created on their larger personal computer, while also allowing access to their full iTunes library anywhere they have an internet connection. Full cloud integration will lessen the need for large hard discs and for users to pair any tablets with a desktop/laptop personal computer. We will start to see more individuals having a tablet as their only personal computing device and people in the same household having personal tablets, while sharing the use of a larger desktop/laptop machine. I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the possibilities the tablet world is bringing to search marketing. If there are any areas I’ve raised that you would like to delve practically into, let me know in the comments and I’ll see if I can find some good resources. Many thanks to John Warnes at http://www.transparency.org who helped me with this post and my girlfriend Kim for making me a brilliant cake while I was typing away. Follow me on twitter @philnottinghamDo you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Aaron WheelerIt's often pretty difficult to make a short title for a webpage that offers a lot of varied or super-specific information. At SEOmoz, we say that the best practice for title tag length is to keep titles under 70 characters. That's pretty pithy considering that the title also includes your site or brand name, spaces, and other nondescript characters. So, does it matter if you go over 70 characters? How important is it to strictly adhere to this best practice? Cyrus Shepard does SEO for us here at SEOmoz, and he'll answer that very question in this week's Whiteboard Friday. Think title tags could or should be longer? Shorter? Let us know in the comments below!   Video Transcription Howdy SEOmoz! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Cyrus. I do SEO here at SEOmoz. Today we're talking about title tag length. How long is your title tag? Bad title tag joke. For years, we've been telling people, the length of your title tag should be 70 characters or less. That this is best practices. But what does this really mean? Is it absolutely true? What happens if your title tags are longer than 70 characters? For example, the title of today's post within the meta description is 77 characters. Not this title, but the actual HTML title tag, if you look at the source code, you'll find that the title tag of today's Whiteboard Friday is 77 characters. We're actually over the 70 character title tag limit. Is that bad? Are we going to go to SEO hell for that? What does that mean? Well, recently people have been doing some experiments to see just how many characters Google will index within a title tag. For years, we thought it was 70s. It's fluctuated. But recent experiments have shown that Google will index anywhere between 150, one person even showed that they will index over 1,000 characters, and I will link to these experiments in the post. But does this mean that you should use all of those characters to your advantage? Can you use them to your advantage? Well, I got really curious about this. So I decided to perform some experiments here on the SEOmoz blog with super long title tags. We're talking extreme title tags, like 200 characters long, 250 characters long, just blew them out of the water just to see what would happen. Experiments On the first experiment, I took 10 posts that did not get a lot of traffic, but they were pretty consistent traffic from week to week. I kept the old title tags and I just extended them with relevant keywords up to about 250 characters long. The results blew me away. In that first experiment, my traffic, over about a 12-week period, rose 136%. You can see, I'll try to include a screen shot in the comments below of the Google Analytics. It exploded. I got really excited. So, I tried a second experiment. (Correction, the experiment took place over a 6 week period, not 12 like I stated in the video.) The second experiment I tried with existing successful pages, pages that were already getting a fairly high volume of traffic, that were getting a consistent level of traffic every week. On that experiment, over about the same 12-week period, traffic rose 8%. Cool, but overall site traffic rose 9%. So it was actually 1% below the site average. For a third experiment, I tried again on a completely different site, a personal site. I changed a few pages, title tags. Traffic actually went down over a 12-week period 11%. On that site overall site traffic went down 15%. So, in one of these experiments, the long title tag seemed to work really well. In the other two, it just seemed to be a wash. Why did this happen, but not here? I am going to get to that in a minute. Title Tags less than 70 Characters Now, what are the arguments for short title tags? The best practices that you always hear about, keep it less than 70 characters. There are reasons why this is best practices and why we recommend it time and time again. The first reason is that Google will only display the first 70 characters, in general, in their SERPs. After that, they're truncated. Users aren't going to see them. So, if you are writing title tags longer than 70 characters, you're basically writing it for the search engines, and time and time again we've found that if you're doing something specifically for search engines and not for users, there is probably not a lot of search engine value in it. There might be some, but probably not much. The second reason is our Correlated Ranking Factors, a survey that we perform every couple of years. Our highest on page correlation value for keyword specific usage was if it is found, if the keyword is found in the first word of the title tag, that was a 0.09 positive correlation. It is not a huge correlation, but it was our largest on page keyword factor. Year after year after year when we perform these correlation studies, we see a direct correlation between the position of the keyword in the title tag and how important it is in the query. So, the closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title tag, the more likely it is to be important in the query. You're going to see this time and time again. It's very consistent. Hundreds of webmasters know this from personal experience. You want your keywords at the beginning of the title tag to rank for those keywords. The further out you do it, at 220 characters, those keywords aren't going to count for very much. Now the third reason is kind of new in today's world, and that is the rise of social media. Twitter limits characters to 140 characters. So, if you have a 220 character title tag and you're trying to share it on Twitter through automatic tweets or Facebook or whatever, they look spammy, they're not shareable, people don't want to share them. Shorter title tags, snappy, work really well. For all these reasons, and for most of the time we found that longer title tags don't help you, we say that less than 70 is best practices. Now, people get confused by when we say best practices what that means. Does it mean an absolute rule? No. It just means best practices works most of the time. It's going to be your best bet. All other things being equal, it's going to be what you want to implement, what you want to teach people to do, and generally how you want to practice. So, what happened here? Why did this experiment rise 136%? Well, if you remember, these were low volume pages, pages that weren't getting a lot of traffic anyway. The reason it rose, we suspect, is because those title tags were poorly optimized in the first place. They didn't match the content. When we added a few keywords to the end, Google interpreted that as, hey, these match a little bit better to the content, and that's why it rose. It was a fluke. If we would have wrote the title tags better in the first place, we could have seen this traffic all along. So, with this in mind, I have some suggestions for your future title tag use, and best practices is going to continue to be less than 70 characters. Best Practices are Guidelines, Not Rules The first rule is always experiment. Like I said, if we would have tried something else, if we would have written different title tags in the first place, it could have helped us. What did it cost us to change those title tags? Zero. If your pages aren't performing well, you can always try something different and you should try something different. I still see sites all the time, large eCommerce sites, that on thousands of pages they have their brand name, the first 20 characters of the title tag in places where they shouldn't necessarily do that. SEOmoz did that for a number of years up until a few months ago. So, always experiment, not too much, but always try different things to see what title tags are going to work best for you. Second is write for users. Here at SEOmoz our title tag is the same as the title of our post on our blog because we think it is important to meet users' expectations. When they see a title tag in the SERP and they click through to your page, you want them to feel like they've arrived where they thought they were going to arrive. So, it doesn't always have to match the title of your post, but something similar, something to make them comfortable, and something to talk to the users. Third, remember to keep your important keywords first. Putting your important keywords out here isn't going to help you much unless your titles are so poorly optimized in the first place that you really should rewrite them. So, put your important keywords, they don't always have to be in the very first position, but as close to that first position as you can. Lastly, what happens if your title tag is over 70 characters, such as the title tag of today's Whiteboard Friday post at 77? Don't sweat it. In our web app, in our Pro Web App, if you go over 77 characters, we issue a warning. It is not an error. It's a warning. We just want you to know that maybe if your title tag is over that limit that it might not be the best written title tag. You might want to have a look at it, but here at SEOmoz we have thousands of title tags that go over the 70 keyword limit, and for the most part, we're going to be fine. Best practices means that it's best most of the time, but you can go outside of best practices if it's warranted. Remember, experiment, try different things out, find out what works best for you. That's it for today. Appreciate your comments below. Thanks everybody. Video transcription by Speechpad.comDo you like this post? Yes No

Posted by iPullRankBefore I even start saying anything about keyword research I want to take my hat off to Richard Baxter because the tools and methodologies he shared at MozCon make me feel silly for even thinking about bringing something to the Keyword Research table. Now with that said, I have a few ideas about using data sources outside of those that the Search Engines provide to get a sense of what needs people are looking to fulfill right now. Consider this the first in a series.   Correlation Between Social Media & Search Volume The biggest problem with the Search Engine-provided keyword research tools is the lag time in data. The web is inherently a real-time channel and in order to capitalize upon that you need to be able to leverage any advantage you can in order to get ahead of the search demand. Although Google Trends will give you data when there are huge breakouts on keywords around current events there is a three-day delay with Google Insights and AdWords only gives you monthly numbers!   However there is often a very strong correlation between the number of people talking about a given subject or keyword in Social Media and the amount of search volume for that topic. Compare the trend of tweets posted containing the keyword “Michael Jackson” with search volume for the last 90 days. "Michael Jackson" Tweets   "Michael Jackson" Search Volume The graphs are pretty close to identical with a huge spike on August 29th which is Michael Jackson’s (and my) birthday. The problem is that given the limitations of tools like Google Trends and Google Insights you may not be able to find this out until September 1st for many keywords and beyond that you may not be able to find complementary long tail terms with search volume.   The insight here is that subjects people are tweeting about are ultimately keywords that people are searching for. The added benefit of using social listening for keyword research that you can also get a good sense of the searcher’s intent to better fulfill their needs.   Due to this correlation social Listening allows you to uncover what topics and keywords will have search demand and what topics are going have a spike in search demand –in real-time.   N-grams Before we get to the methodology for doing this I have to explain one basic concept –N-grams. An N-gram is a subset of a sequence of length N. In the case of search engines the N is the number of words in a search query. For example (I'm so terrible with gradients):     is a 5-gram. The majority of search queries fall between 2 and 5-grams anything beyond a 5-gram is most likely a long tail keyword that doesn’t have a large enough search volume to warrant content creation. If this is still unclear check out the Google Books Ngram viewer ; it’s a pretty cool way to get a good idea of what Ngrams are. Also you should check out John Doherty’s Google Analytics Advanced Segments post where talks about how to segment N-grams using RegEx. Real-Time Keyword Research Methodology Now that we’ve got the small vocabulary update out of the way let’s talk about how you can do keyword research in real-time. The following methodology was developed by my friend Ron Sansone with some small revisions from me in order to port it into code. 1.  Pull all the tweets containing your keyword from Twitter Search within the last hour. This part is pretty straightforward; you want to pull down the most recent portion of the conversation right now in order to extract patterns. Use Topsy for this. If you’re not using Topsy, pulling the last 200 tweets via Twitter is also a good sized data set to use. 2.  Identify the top 10 most repeated N-grams ignoring stop words. Here you identify the keywords with the highest (ugh) density. In other words the keywords that are tweeted the most are the ones you are considering for optimization. Be sure to keep this between 2 and 5 N-grams beyond that you most likely not dealing with a large enough search volume to make your efforts worthwhile. Also be sure to exclude stop words so you don’t end up with n-grams like “jackson the” or “has Michael.” Here’s a list of English stop words and Textalyser has an adequate tool for breaking a block of text into N-grams. 3.  Check to see if there is already search volume in the Adwords Keyword tool or Google Insights. This process is not just about identifying breakout keywords that aren’t being shown yet in Google Insights but it’s also about identifying keywords with existing search volume that are about to get boost. Therefore you’ll want to check the Search Engine tools to see if any search volume exists in order to prioritize opportunities. 4.  Pull the Klout scores of all the users tweeting them. Yeah, yeah I know Klout is a completely arbitrary calculation but you want to know that the people tweeting the keywords have some sort of influence. If you find that a given N-gram has been used many times by a bunch of spammy Twitter profiles then that N-gram is absolutely not useful. Also if you create content around the given term, you’ll know exactly who to send it to.  Methodology Expanded I expanded on Ron’s methodology by introducing another data source. If you were at SMX East you might have heard me express the love that low budget hustlers (such as myself) have for SocialMention. Using SocialMention allows you pull data from up to 100+ social media properties and news sources. Unlike Topsy or Twitter there is an easy CSV/Excel File export and they give you the top 1-grams being used in posts related to that topic. Be sure to exclude images, audio and video from your search results as they are not useful.   "Michael Jackson" Social Mention   One quick note: The CSV export will only give you a list of URLs, sources, page titles and main ideas. You will still have to extract the data manually or with some of the ImportXML magic that Tom Critchlow debuted earlier this year.   So What's the Point? So what does all of this get me? Well today it got me "michael jackson trial," "jackson trial," "south park" and "heard today." So if I was looking to do some content around Michael Jackson I'd find out what news came to light in court, illustrate the trial and the news in a blog post using South Park characters and fire it off to all the influencers that tweeted about it. Need I say more? You can now easily figure out what type of content would make viral link bait in real-time.   GoFish So this sounds like a lot of work to get the jump on a few keywords, doesn’t it?   Well I can definitely relate and especially since I am a programmer it’s quite painful for me to do any repetitive task. Seriously am I really going to sit in Excel and remove stop words? No I’m not and neither should you. Whenever a methodology like this pops up the first thing I think is how to automate it. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to the legendary GoFish real-time keyword research tool.     I built this from Ron’s methodology and it uses the Topsy, Repustate and SEMRush APIs. When I get some extra time I will include the SocialMention API and hopefully Google will cut the lights back on for my Adwords API as well.   I seriously doubt it will handle the load that comes with being on the front page of SEOmoz as it is only built on 10 proxies and each of these APIs has substantial rate limitations (Topsy – 33k/day, Repustate 50k/month, SEMRush-I’m still not sure) but here it is nonetheless. If anyone wants to donate some AWS instances or a bigger proxy network to me I’ll gladly make this weapons grade. Shout out to John Murch for letting me borrow some of his secret stash of proxies and shout out to Pete Sena at Digital Surgeons for making me all-purpose GUI for my tools.   Anyway all you have to is put in your keyword, press the button, wait for a time and voila you get output that looks like this:   The output is the top 10 N-grams, the combined Klout scores of the all users that tweeted the given N-gram vs the highest combined Klout score possible, all of the users in the data set that tweeted them and the search volume if available.   So that's GoFish. Think of it as a work in progress but let me know what features will help you get more out of it.   Until Next Time… That’s all I’ve got for this week folks. I’ll be back soon with another real-time keyword research tactic and tool. if you haven’t checked out my keyword-level demographics post yet, please do! In the meantime look for me in the chatroom for Richard Baxter's Actionable Keyword Research for Motivated Marketers Webinar.Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by chadburgessThis post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc."I know before the cards are even turned over..." - Mike McDermott, Rounders When Mike McD was called by Teddy KGB in a huge No-Limit Hold'em poker pot, he didn't have to see his opponents hand to know that KGB had two aces, the only hand in the deck that could beat his nines full of aces (if you have seen Rounders, feel free to skip over the video below, if not, you probably should get on that). This was the same feeling I had when we got "SERP a DERPd" via accidental noindexation of 9,000 of our most important pages....   Contents: What happens when pages are accidentally noindexed Tactics for getting pages into the Google index quickly How noindex impacts SERP rankings (note that I am focusing on Google in this post)  Background: I am an in-house SEO and customer acquisition marketer at SeatGeek.com, a NYC tech startup. Our site is a ticket search engine for sports concerts and theater tickets (i.e. "a Kayak for event tickets"). On Monday 8/1, I was searching Google for 'mets tickets' and saw that SeatGeek had slipped from page 1. Worse, we weren't even on page 2. I tried a few more queries that I knew we should be on page 1 for and still nothing. My heart was beating. Had we been Panda'd? It didn't make sense, but I was panicked. Then it hit me. I opened up our New York Mets page, but, just like Mike Mcd, I knew before I even clicked view source...content="noindex" on all of our product pages. I have only been doing SEO for ~2 years, so I had never directly experienced an accidental noindex situation. So even as I read reports of these not having an impact on rankings and knew this wasn't as bad as an accidental canonicalization problem, I couldn't help but envision the worst case scenario...9,000 of our most important conversion driving pages would be out of the index for weeks and would not have their same rank when they got back in.  What happens when pages are accidentally noindexed This is a chart of incoming organic traffic to one of our key pages right when the noindex hit. Obviously organic traffic ceased to exist. Interestingly though, Google Analytics still reported some traffic to these pages. This might be the one instance where having less frequent crawl frequency can be beneficial (assuming bandwidth isn't an issue). The pages that got noindexed are recrawled every 4-6 days, which would have given us a buffer if we caught this sooner. Unfortunately, Google waited until Saturday to crawl these pages and we didn't catch the problem until Monday.  Reindexation Plan and Tactics: The first course of action was to remove the noindex tags, which one of our pop star engineers did within five minutes. This was right around the time I sent out my first plan of action email which I have included below in case you ever have to write the same email:  All, So I was doing a daily scan of SERP positions and started noticing team band pages had dropped. At first I thought we got Panda'd, but it looks like the noindex tags that are supposed to be applied to search pages and filtered navigation recently got pushed into production, but because those pages only get reindexed every 3-6 days there was some delay in the traffic impact, which you can see if you filter by team/band pages. We are currently: Noindex already removed in production Writing blog posts that link to all major sports teams to get these reindexed (more difficult for bands) Launching social media campaigns to support this cause Forcing update on .xml sitemap (hopefully to help with concerts issue) Investigating additional techniques Going to look into the current traffic impact / which pages got impacted the most (hopefully some deeper artist type pages never got recrawled before the fix) http://www.webmasterworld.com/webmaster/3601620.htm Here's to hoping this is true "My experience is that "noindex" is quite harmless when it comes to ranking. As soon as you change it to "index", the pages should pop up at nearly the same positions in the SERPs as where they were." I will keep you all posted. -Chad  Even if rankings would come back, we wanted this to happen as quickly as possible. I had a plan, and fortunately some great interns to help me out. So this is what we did (excuse any repetition from the email)... Removed noindex tags We ran social giveaways and campaigns generating strategic social shares Internally, we set up a Google doc with our most important product pages as rows, and everyone's names as columns and had people +1 and Tweet various pages from the list, checking off as we worked through it (read more from Rand about the power of social shares for SEO) Wrote / published blog content that linked off to all the pages that had been removed from the index Examples of the previous bulletpoint: NFL 2011-12 Season: Average Ticket Prices, Weekly MLB Price Rankings, A Sneak Peek at NBA Ticket Prices, First Look at NHL Prices and 3473 Artists Ranked By SeatGeek's Popularity Score (yes I know Google doesn't go beyond ~+100 links per page...) Used our relationships with NY Daily News and Business Insider to get some content up linking back to our most important pages Resubmitted our XML sitemap index file via Google Webmaster Tools Manually submitted select pages via Google Webmaster tools 'Submit to index' feature All of the above was completed within one hour of us discovering the issue, except for the guest posts and contest which were done over the next 1-2 days. And then we waited...  Reindexation Metrics: It took 1-2 days for our most important pages to get back into the index, which we were really happy with. Some of our deeper / less important pages took up to 5 days to come back or longer in some cases. Fortunately we had followed advice from other Mozzers and introduced multiple XML sitemaps earlier in the year with all our product pages in one XML sitemap we were able to easily track indexation of these pages via Google Webmaster Tools. Indexation and traffic were on their way back up by the next day, but as you can tell from the graph below traffic didn't return to previous levels to about 2-3 days from when the noindex tag was removed.   Rankings Impact of Noindexation: Now let's look at how this impacted our SERP rankings. The example above, was a truly interesting case because our Mets page returned to the index the night of the fix and I emailed my bosses to check it out as a good example of a recovering page, but by the time we got into work the next morning it had left the index again and I looked like a clown shoe. Fortunately, the page came back (again...) into the index the next day and was back up to its previous ranking by the end of the week. This is an example of a trend I noticed that many pages would come back into the index first and then return to ranking for their target terms a day or so later. The example below is one where we returned to the index but without the same rank as we had before. There isn't really a way to tell if this was impacted at all by the noindex situation, I suspect it was just a random Google dance related to the more frequent shakeups I have seen in event "tickets" related queries. Overall, our page 1 SERP positions have completely returned to prior levels. Conclusions: If you accidentally noindex pages on your site, of course they will stop getting traffic from organic search, but this will be dependent on the crawl rate of the pages (in our case it took ~5 days for them to drop out of the index) and 2-3 days for them to return to normal levels If you have a blog that gets crawled quickly, use that as a tool to help drive spiders back to the pages that were noindexed with strategic internal linking (of course wait until you have removed the noindex tag) Take advantage of friends & family to help with social shares and pump this up with a social giveaway Use Google Webmaster tools: 1) XML sitemap resubmit 2. Manual 'Submit to Index' 3. Sitemap indexation tracking You should have Multiple XML sitemaps set up into logical buckets for indexation tracking to faciliate the indexation tracking mentioned above Although your rankings might see short-term "dancing", an accidental noindex will not have a negative impact on them Lastly, don't be too worried, just follow some of the tactics above and you should be back in the index with the same rankings (have your boss email me if they are giving you crap - chad@seatgeek.com) Ok so that was probably too much information for just an accidental noindex situation, but when it happened to me it was scary and there wasn't a solid documentation on what to expect, so I wanted to produce this for the next person in my situation. Thanks for reading. Connect with me on Twitter if you are so inclined.Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Cyrus ShepardGood news to all you link builders out there. SEOmoz just updated the PRO SEO Web Directory List. The long overdue update includes over 400 directories (up from 180) separated into three categories – Web, Local and Social. Wait, aren’t link directories dead? The practice of obtaining links from online directories has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. The stereotypes of the past are both true and dangerous. Spammy, low quality directories flood the lower cesspools of the Internet. An unbridled strategy of obtaining links from these non-discriminate directories can actually hurt your SEO. But times have changed, and strategies have become more evolved. Rethinking Directories We can move beyond thinking about directories as nothing more than paid links. For webmasters who use this approach, the links they obtain may not be worth the effort. An intelligent directory strategy provides depth to your SEO campaigns and offers tangible benefits including: A more diverse link profile Qualified referral traffic Citations for different vertical ranking algorithms Trust/Authority Signals … and, of course, the link. If you use different directories for different purposes, you can achieve this and more. A. Web Directories If links were easy for everyone, they would be less valuable for all of us. In general, the lower the bar of entry into any directory, the less inclusion into that directory is valued by the search engines. Some editorial directories raise the bar by charging a high cost of inclusion (Yahoo, Best of the Web) and being somewhat selective about whom they include. Three hundred dollars is a lot to pay for “inclusion review” but the truth is that for an established business, these links are like bread and butter. Other directories focus on a particular area, and thus are harder to get into. Examples of these “niche” directories include sites such as: Designflavr – CSS / Design Gallery Chart Porn – Infographics Blog Listing – Blog Directory Engineers Edge – Professional Directory Donations 4 Charity – Charities When pursuing directory links, keep the following tips in mind: Not every directory link is right for your site. Be selective and don't go for every link out there. Pace yourself. A good hint I got from Ian Lurie's Fat Free Guide is the 2:1 rule: for every two directory links you build, make sure to build one genuinely natural link. This helps to keep your link profile looking “natural”. Research. Understand where your link will be placed before you go after it. Check Google’s cache of the page to make sure they are indexing it. Large directories are often plagued by bad SEO, and not every link carries the weight it should. Seek relevancy. Ask yourself if this link has the potential to send qualified traffic to your site. Even if it's a small amount of traffic, it's probably worth the effort. I’d often rather have a hard-to-get link from a smaller niche site that an easy-to-get link from a larger well-known directory. B. Social Directories We know that the rise of Social SEO means sharing your content on sites like Facebook and Twitter can have a positive impact on your site’s traffic. But far too many people limit sharing to the big three (Twitter, Facebook and Google+) without considering other social sharing sites. The plethora of specialized social sites offer several benefits. 1. Member Profiles – Here’s a random profile from Mister Wong, a social bookmarking site. (thank you rgonzalo!) Mr. rgonzalo appears to be an authority on the site. Any content he shares will carry weight with the Mister Wong audience. 2. Content Publishing – Instead of a single website listing, social sites allow you to promote individual pieces of content. Using the above example, whenever Rgonzolo shares a URL, that content is likely linked to and noticed by search engines. 3. Increased participation increases visibility. You probably can’t participate in every social site out there. For web marketers, focusing on a few sites where you can devote your time, like Quora or CrunchBase, may be a good strategy. Those who become trusted authorities within their community are often rewarded with increased visibility of the content they share. C. Local Citation Directories Using local directories requires a shift in thinking for many webmasters, because it’s not always about the link, but about the citation. As David Mihm points out, the search engine’s local ranking algorithms work much differently than the search algorithms. For local SEO, search engines trust verifiable information from local portals such as Superpages and Judy’s Book. In most cases, if you are a verified business, gaining a citation from these sources is worth the effort and time. For more on local SEO directories, I highly recommend reading Mike Blumenthal and Andrew Shotland (and David Mihm, of course.) Directories = Diversity in Your Link Profile Just as you shouldn’t rely solely on directory links, you shouldn’t ignore them either. The goal is a diverse and blended link profile. Many webmasters have abandoned directory links due to the bad reputation they have gained over the past years. In truth, the variety and quality of the directories available today offer unique opportunities to expand your SEO reach and diversify your link profile in future-proof ways. I encourage you to check out the new PRO Directory list, it's an awesome resource. That said, any SEO can take advantage of the tactics in this post. Even with a curated list, using Web directories takes time and research. There are no shortcuts in link building, but the effort is worth it.Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by dohertyjfI love using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics. Sure, you can export a big chunk of data to Excel and then use some Excel wizardry to clean up the data and display it in different ways, but what if you just need to get a quick snapshot of certain traffic or trends, but the default segments don't go far enough? I've put together a few of my favorite Google Analytics Advanced Segments for you, so that you can add them to your own Analytics and use them as you need.Segment 1:  1 word keywordsThis first segment will just give you all of the one-word keywords that are driving traffic to your site. Sometimes there are crap keywords, but I am increasingly finding it interesting how sites can rank for one-word keywords because of personalized results. ^s*[^s]+(s+[^s]+){0}s*$ Segment 2: 2-3 words This next statement gives you all of the two and three word keyphrases driving traffic to your site. These are normally the important terms for you, because 2-3 word phrases have been shown to drive the best targeted traffic. For example, "vouchers" might be too general too really bring you good traffic but "voucher codes" or "quality voucher codes" will probably give you better traffic. ^s*[^s]+(s+[^s]+){1,2}s*$ Segment 3: 4+ words This segment is like the statements above, but instead gives you all keyword phrases that have four or more words in them. This is all you need for segmenting down to your longtail keywords quickly and easily in Analytics. ^s*[^s]+(s+[^s]+){3,}s*$ Segment 4: Social Media TrafficSometimes you need to see the easy breakdown of your referral sources, and even more often it can be helpful to see just your Social Media traffic. Here is how we have our Social Media Advanced Segment set up in the Distilled Analytics account:Segment 5: Traffic to Blog (where URL is http://www.site.com/blog)If you have a separate blog where you write and try to generate both links and traffic, it can be helpful to have a way to easily segment out the traffic to just this section of your site. Sure, you could just use the Filter section, but why do this when you can set up an Advanced Segment and have it forever? A little more work in the short term can save some big headaches. Note: this is really only helpful if your blog articles have the URL structure of http://www.site.com/blog/(post-url) Here is how I have set up an Advanced Segment to do just this:Segment 6: Google as SourceSince SEOs often care mostly about Google traffic (for better or for worse), since it is where the bulk of our traffic comes from in almost every case, I also have an Advanced Segment set up to show me the traffic where Google is my source. Here you go:Segment 7: Twitter Traffic Segmenting down to just Twitter traffic is a chore, because so many different Twitter clients show up differently in your Analytics. This has become less of an issue recently, since Twitter changed to putting all shared links shortened with the T.co shortener (which Tom wrote about here), but we still need to account for all Twitter clients when segmenting out back traffic.Here is the Advanced Segment I use. Have I missed any?How to set up Advanced Segments for any section of your site. Much like the "/blog" example above, if your site is broken into areas (for example, my site is broken into /category/search-engine-optimization and /category/social-media), you can also create advanced statements for these.Here is how I set up an Advanced Segment for my SEO category:Finishing UpThese are the most useful Google Analytics Advanced Segments that I have in my arsenal that can apply over almost any client. Others have written about more specific Advanced Segments in these posts: Charting 'Unique Keyphrases' Using Advanced Segments Guide to Setting up Advanced Segments in Google Analytics for Complex Brand Names Segmenting Important Data through Advanced Segments I suggest you read those as well. Please add in your favorites (especially ones involving RegEx) in the comments!Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Benjamin EstesRecently I had a client who (generally for the enlightenment of their executive branch) wanted traffic information reported in an easy-to-digest format. The idea was that while they had consistently used Google Analytics for some time, there were people in the company who had an interest in knowing certain traffic data, but were too far from the day-to-day running of the website to be spending a lot of time sifting through Analytics reports. Enter the Dashboard. It sounded like the perfect solution: a screen full of nice, big numbers! Lines going up and to the right! Charting all the things! But lo! my dream was short-lived. There were so many solutions to choose from, and each had different integrated services and custom data reporting methods. Most of them were explained quite well through documentation, but it was all so time consuming. I would have to trial services, only to determine one-by-one that they were somehow not a match for the client's needs. So here I am to save you some time by letting you know some of the pros and cons of various services, as some insights I had along the way. There is probably a service out there that's right for you, but it may or may not be the first one you look at. I should point out that my concern here is with monitoring organic traffic data specifically. There are many services apart from those listed here which excel at reporting ranking data, and of course some services which walk a line between the two. There are several services which revolve primarily around ranking data instead of traffic, such as Authority Labs and Conductor Searchlight; I can say from experience that these are both great products (NB: Searchlight does provide Analytics integration but I'm not personally familiar with that aspect of their service). With services that revolve around tightly-integrated analytics data, the pain point is usually getting actual lists of keywords sending traffic reported back to you. Google Analytics For monitoring organic traffic data, my instinct is always to go straight to the source. For most of us, that means Google Analytics. And indeed Google Analytics has built in dashboard functionality. The crucial factor which favors Analytics is that, unlike other solutions I have assessed there is no need to depend on a service providers integration of the Analytics API or to have your own dev team spend time building out a custom solution. I mentioned above that some solutions have problems reporting keywords sending traffic; obviously Analytics is not among these, because its dashboard will report just about anything you care to know. Breakdowns by country, for instance, are quite easy to set up in Analytics but are hard to come by outside of the proper Analytics interface. If all you want is traffic data, you really can't go wrong with sticking to Analytics. The only management issue I've run into is that you can't share dashboards across user accounts at the moment. On the other hand this is a very robust service; there is never a concern about about whether or not a certain report can be integrated into your dashboard. All available traffic information is at your fingertips. Plus, Analytics is free as in beer, which is the best kind of free. PRO: It's got all the traffic information EVER. CON: No other SEO related info... SEOmoz PRO Campaigns Disclaimer: This is being written on SEOmoz's blog (duh). I don't work for the 'moz, but you could say we're buds. Regardless, I promise the following represents only my own opinion. Hopefully you're all familiar with SEOmoz's toolset. I'm usually using SEOmoz's campaign tool anyway for clients, so it isn't much of a stretch to start using their Analytics integration to look at traffic data. The three metrics that SEOmoz's Analytics integration reports are the three that I find myself lost without: Organic Visits, Number of Organic Landing Pages, Number of Organic Keywords. It's a sparse set of metrics to be sure, but in my time at Distilled these metrics have been the three that we always return to and those that we most commonly report to clients as an indication of a site's health. If I wanted to share this information directly it might be awkward, but if I was advising the client on setting up their own monitoring solution I think that this would work out fairly neatly. And of course, there are any number of other benefits to using SEOmoz's campaign tool (competitive analysis, rank tracking, etc.) but that's a bit beyond what I'm looking at here. No custom data reporting like StatsMix and Geckoboard (below), but then again those services don't hold a candle to SEOmoz in terms of ease-of-use and built-in analysis. PRO: Super-relevant traffic data, awesome supplementary metrics. CON: No customization, no keyword specific Analytics integration. StatsMix StatsMix has the capacity to store data over time that you submit to it, which is unique amongst all of the dashboard solutions. This can be easily accomplished in any number of contexts; the service provides examples in various programming languages, but all that you need to do ultimately is make a POST request to their servers with the information you want to submit. It will be stored in a table that is even manually editable through the web interface. This obviously requires a certain amount of dev commitment, but it really is pretty neat, and it allows you to do things that no other dashboard service does. External and internal metrics can be brought together. But the Analytics integration that your team would have to do to monitor organic search related metrics is non-trivial, so unless your company is going all the way, this service might be a little too much for SEO-related monitoring. Also, all metrics must be "number-over-time" in nature, so no keyword-based metrics! I can also say that I've talked to the StatsMix support team and they've been exceedingly helpful in helping me with any questions I might have. PRO: Awesome customization possibilities. CON: No intrinsically relevant SEO widgets, everything must be built ground-up. Metrics must fit number-over-time format. Geckoboard Unlike StatsMix, Geckoboard does not have the capacity to store your data over time; custom information that it retrieves from your data sources must be presented exactly how you want the information to be displayed. There are many built-in widgets that are very handy, including server monitoring and Analytics widgets, but some of the defaults are a wee bit underpowered when it comes to customization I think Geckoboard's strength lies in its powerful custom widgets. As I said, these require you to either locate or more likely build an API to deliver data. Distilled has done this internally and has been very pleased with the results. One consequence of this extensibility is that with the proper Analytics integration in your infrastructure it would be possible to report a list of top organic keywords or similar data, which is impossible with, for instance, StatsMix. PRO: Great customizability in its own way, cool built-in widget set. CON: Not necessarily SEO monitoring friendly. Needs a custom API on user's end to explore full potential. GinzaMetrics GinzaMetrics seems to strike a fairly good balance between keyword tracking and traffic assessment. There is definitely some cool stuff going on with funnel monitoring, especially as you can filter the data by tracked keywords. Ultimately I find that the data provided by the service is somewhat less useful than SEOmoz's. GinzaMetrics' graphs present a lot of information, but it isn't necessarily actionable or diagnostic in the format in which it is presented. I mean, there are some freaky graphs you can find in here. They would give me data-nightmares, but I can see that they might turn some data-folk on. I do appreciate that GinzaMetrics pulls in Analytics data for tracked keywords, but as I've been consistently lamenting throughout this post, I wish it were the other way around; that the service would discover keywords based on the traffic they were sending your site. Overall a good service, definitely SEO-centric without much customization outside of that. PRO: Pretty OK mix of keyword tracking and analytics. CON: OMG numbers everywhere.NB: After publishing this Ginzametrics brought to my attention that their service does provide for keyword discovery. Might be worth chatting with them if this is on your radar. Closing Thoughts I'm not going to declare a winner. I'm using one solution for a client today, and when another client comes along with their own needs, I'll use one appropriate for them. But digging through the many alternatives and learning what is possible really helps me be flexible to respond to these requests when they are made. I've mentioned that some of these services benefit from a certain level of customization. For anyone interested in building an "API" or automated tool to push data to a dashboard, I highly recommend brushing up on your Python skills and checking out Google App Engine or a Django-based solution (they function very similarly). App Engine probably isn't the most secure solution, but it's dead easy and ridiculously fast, as Will Critchlow demonstrated in his brilliant post on automated link building tools (which I inevitably cite in every blog post I publish). This is hardly a comprehensive, just my meditations on the services I've run into. So, any of y'all have your own methods or tools? Dashboards? Generated reports? Let's hear about it 'em! Follow @BenjaminEstes Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Bryce Howard**Latest update: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 9:30am PDT**Updated: Monday, September 26, 2011 11:30am PDT**Update Friday, September 30, 2011 8:10am PDT: We are activating the front end of the crawl service today after working through a small hiccup last night due to the missing historical data in campaigns. This was resolved last night and we should be able to turn crwal service back on today. The back end crawl service has been working properly the past few days so campaigns will see their most recent data, however, historical data will be spotty and will filter in over the next week. **Update Friday, September 30, 2011 10:36am PDT: CRAWL SERVICE IS LIVE! We have turned on crawl service in the PRO app and the Test Crawl tool. Campaigns will have the most recent crawl data, however, historical data will be spotty as it filters in over the next week. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR PATIENCE! The SEOmoz community is truly amazing!  Howdy folks! I wish I was writing you with better news, but in the spirit of TAGFEE, we want you to be as informed as possible about your PRO membership:  Due to a major PRO web crawler service outage that occurred on Friday evening, crawler-related PRO features (link analysis and crawl diagnostics) are currently disabled. However, rankings, on-page optimization, and all tools except Crawl Test are functional. It's our best estimate that we will have all service functionality restored by Thursday, Sept. 29., however full historical crawl data will not be available until Monday, Oct. 10. We will be doing our very best to beat these estimates. So what the *bleep* happened!? Amazon turned the lights out on us. Well, not exactly—I’ll explain. We host a number of our web applications from Amazon Web Services (AWS). For many of these hosts we pay a fixed rate per hour, however AWS offers an alternative billing model called spot instance pricing. Spot instance pricing is a method for purchasing excess computing power from AWS at a respectable discount. Everybody wins, we get a great price for the hundreds of computers we use daily while AWS is able to sell a resource that’s otherwise just sitting around idle. But the use of spot instance pricing comes at a risk: the computers hosting your services are only allocated to you as long as there is still excess capacity and that no one else is willing to bid more for those hosts than you are. If someone comes along offering to pay more, then AWS may revoke your hosts without any warning, leaving you to rebuild your services from scratch. This is not so bad if you can ensure you have enough computers left to still service requests… and therein lays the problem.  Our Mistake The contract of spot instance pricing is quite clear: your servers may be arbitrarily taken from you, so you must be strategic about its usage. We unfortunately did not apply good strategy to our PRO web crawler configuration. Almost all of our service hosts were spot instances allocated with a dangerously low bid price (e.g. $2.00/hour), and they were all clustered within the same AWS availability zone (more on this later). So we put ourselves at risk with a low bid price, excessive use of spot instance pricing, and a poor distribution of hosts across AWS availability zones. We bet that there’d be little to no chance that AWS would reclaim our spot instance hosts but we bet very wrong. At approximately 6 PM PST, AWS terminated approximately 50% of our active spot instance hosts in the PRO crawler service cluster. Around this same time, the going spot instance price shot up to $2, our maximum bid price, which triggered this culling of our service hosts. Losing half our hosts wasn’t entirely catastrophic, however bad. In fact, it was a salvageable situation but then it got much worse. At 9PM PST we lost all of our service hosts that were spot instances (> 90%). The going spot instance price had jumped to $2.51/hour at this time, and given most of our hosts were bid at the price of $2/hour we effectively forfeited all rights to our previous claims. Our service wasn’t broken; it was just plain gone! This pretty graph from AWS accurately documents the spot instance pricing timeline for the day in question: How We Could’ve Prevented This Three practices that could have prevented this from occurring: 1) Use a spot instance price that is commensurate with the value of the service. If a host was very critical to service functionality, we should’ve bet a much higher price than the $2/hour. Using the spot instance pricing chart as a guide we should have at least used a bid of $3/hour or more to ensure better chance of avoiding host reclamation by AWS. Could we have predicted this optimal bid price? Likely not. Regardless, we should’ve bid what we thought the continued functioning of our service was worth. I think it’s easy to appreciate we now find that value much higher than the $2/hour we’d originally bid. 2) Distribute hosts across multiple availability zones. The initial increase in spot instance price occurred in one availability zone (us-east-1c), with the secondary increases in us-east-1c and us-east-1d. Had we spread our bets across multiple availability zones, we could have weathered this price volatility with at least half of our service hosts intact, even at the bid price of $2/hour. Although we were aware that prices could vary by availability zone, we did not use this to hedge our bets more effectively. 3) Use a mix of on-demand and spot instance pricing. On-demand priced hosts use a different pricing strategy where you agree to pay a fixed amount per hour to AWS but in return you get certain guarantees about your host claim, most notably it won’t be arbitrarily taken from you due to demand. Had we diversified our portfolio between on-demand and spot instance pricing we could’ve ensured at least minimal functionality of our service in the worst case while enjoying some good amount of cost savings in the best case. As with any critical investment you have to be strategic about minimizing your downside; we will do this moving forward. So where are things? To be frank, we are absolutely mortified that we’ve had to disable such an indispensable product feature as crawl diagnostics, especially when this service outage was otherwise avoidable. We are literally working day and night to re-enable the PRO app crawler service. Currently, we are rebuilding the API servers, the underlying NoSQL data store (Cassandra), and the various processing and crawling hosts. We are being very careful as we do this to avoid the previous mistakes, being strategic about diversifying pricing type (on-demand vs. spot-instance), distributing across availability zones and using a very competitive spot-instance bidding price. Most of the aforementioned service components are pretty easy to restore, but we have one unfortunate problem that will somewhat delay full restoration of the service: the terabytes of data generated by the hundreds of thousands of crawls we’ve executed over the last nine months. We must load this data from our backups (securely stored in AWS S3) into our NoSQL data store, something that by no means can be done quickly. Being perfectly transparent, this is an operation that could take the full duration of a week. We certainly don’t want to make anyone wait a full week just to see data that’s already a week out of date, so we plan to be a bit more clever with this service restoration, choosing the most optimal path to populate our database while also ensuring we preserve our weekly crawl cycle. Do we have all the solutions in place to achieve these goals? Not immediately, but we are making great progress and I’m very confident we will have more optimistic projections about service restoration in the next several days. Ok, so how exactly does this affect me again? As a PRO member you can still: Create new campaigns Check your rankings Manage keywords Check your on-page SEO Run reports Check your backlinks & traffic data Use Open Site Explorer Watch webinars Ask & answer questions in PRO Q&A For the next week you won't be able to access: Crawl diagnostics for any of your campaignsPRO Dashboard will show 0 pages crawled SEO Web Crawler in Research Tools Also as a reminder, none of the data is lost, we just need time to rebuild so we can access it. In the meantime, rest assured that we are doing everything we can to get your PRO functionality back up and running like it’s meant to be. We realize that many of you rely on this data to optimize your company’s and clients’ sites, and want to return service ASAP so you can continue to do what you do so well. Thank you for hanging in there with us as we learn from our mistakes.I'm sure you're all wondering about your data - here are few answers to those burning questions:What happened to my data? No worries - your data has not been lost and is safe. You'll be able to see your full historical data by October 10.What has been affected, exactly? When can I use those features again? Crawl Diagnostics is currently unavailable. You'll be able to access the feature and new data by September 29 (but historical data will be unavailable until October 10).  Do you like this post? Yes No

New versions of  Award-Winning iJoomla Ad Agency for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7 have been released. These new versions have a few bug fixes. Version 3.0.7 (Joomla 1.7) Change log: Fixed: bug that caused the folder "ad_agency" to not be created after installing Fixed: ijoomlanews plugin bug Fixed: JavaScript bug that affected saving zones in the backend Version 2.0.18 (Joomla 1.5) Change log: Fixed: JavaScript bug that affected saving zones in the backend If you're an Ad ...

We're happy to annonce the releaes of a new version of Guru, the latest Joomla LMS (Learning Management System) extension from iJoomla. This release has many bug fixes reported by our beta testers and includes support to all the main SEF extensions: Core SEF sh404 SEF Advance AceSef To view a full change log for this release, click here. Till we confirm this is a stable version, it will be available for purchase at a $30 off price of $149.99, you can purchase it here. ...

A new version of iJoomla SideBars for Joomla 1.7 has been released as beta. To download it, simply visit our downloads page.

A new and exciting version of iJoomla SEO has been released! In this version we've added a bunch of usability improvements and a few new features. Read more about this release here.

Guru, the latest Joomla LMS (Learning Management System) extension from iJoomla, has been released as beta. Hundreds of interested Joomla users have signed up to be beta testers and over 250 of them have downloaded it. The beta version also is available for purchase at a $30 off price of $119.99, you can purchase it here. ...

A new version of  Award-Winning iJoomla Ad Agency for Joomla 1.7, version 3.0.6 has been released.This version has a few bug fixes we found while it was in beta. Change log: Fixed bug with missing countries Set alternating backgrounds for packages Modified the copy on the "my campaigns" page Removed image preview and size for Standard banners when no image has been uploaded If you're an Ad Agency with a valid license holder, you get this upgrade free of charge!  You can d...

We're happy to announce  that 3 of our extensions are ready for Joomla 1.7. These are: iJoomla Ad Agency iJoomla SEO iJoomla Surveys You can download the Joomla 1.7-ready extensions today on your "my downloads" page. ...

We've just released the first beta version of the Award-Winning iJoomla Ad Agency for Joomla 1.6, version 3.0.0.This version is almost identical to the Joomla 1.5 version, with some minor cosmetic changes. If you're an Ad Agency with a valid license holder, you get this upgrade free of charge!  You can download it here. Remember, this is a beta version, and may still contain bugs, so don't use it on a production sites. If you encounter any bugs, please report them on the forum or p...

We've just released a new version of the Award-Winning iJoomla Ad Agency for Joomla 1.5, version 2.0.13. In this version we've fixed a few minor bugs Change log: Fixed 'fcbkcomplete' bug for standard, flash and text ad types (bug occurred when geo targeting was on, and user tried to select country or something else) Fixed a problem with text editor when mtupgrade enabled for the following ad types: transition, floating, popup. You can view the entire change log here. Visit our ...

In a last minute change before the release of our newest extension, we've decided to use the name "guru" instead of "iJoomla LMS", we feel like guru reflects the extension better. The idea is that everyone is a guru (expert) at something, and can use that knowledge to create training and teaching programs to generate income. We hope to release guru in July 2011. If you'd like to get a free beta copy, please register on the guru site. ...

We've just released a new version of the Award-Winning iJoomla Ad Agency for Joomla 1.5, version 2.0.12. In this version we've eliminated the usage of MooTools in order to avoid conflicts with different MooTool versions (especially with the new Kunena forum extension) Change log: Changed MooTools scripts to jQuery  - no more  conflict with any version of Mootools Changed the "dom ready" function for the rotation feature on the zone modules (using a small 4kb function inst...

Just yesterday Twitter has released its new follow button and today, the Joomla community get to enjoy a twitter follow button! iJoomla has just released the first version of this module for Joomla 1.5 and the Joomla 1.6 is soon to follow (due June 2nd) You can download this free Joomla twitter follow button module here.  ...

We've just released a new version of the Award-Winning iJoomla Ad Agency for Joomla 1.5, version 2.0.10. In this version we've fixed quite a few bugs and added a few new features and enhancements. Change log: Enhancement: URL & website fields can be optional on advertiser registration New Feature: Now you can limit the amount of ads on campaigns New Feature: Now you can compress expired campaign stats on backend New Feature: MetaMod compatibility to the zone module (Thanks Matt...

We've just released 2 new versions of iJoomla SEO for Joomla 1.6, version 2.0.4 and 2.0.5. On these versions we've fixed a few minor bugs: Change log: Version 2.0.5 Made some changes regarding correct keywords ranking Solved some bugs on internal-links on back-end and front-end Version 2.0.4 Fixed: When an article was edited, meta titles were getting deleted Keep in mind this is still a beta version, so it could still contain bugs, if you find bugs, please report them on bugs ...

We've just released a new version of iJoomla SEO for Joomla 1.6, version 2.0.3. On this version we've fixed a problem with support for Zoo extension. Keep in mind this is still a beta version, so it could still contain bugs, if you find bugs, please report them on bugs forum. You can download this version on "my downloads" page, as usual, it's included in the package. For full change log of iJoomla SEO, visit our change log page. ...

We've just released a new version of the Award-Winning iJoomla Ad Agency for Joomla 1.5, version 2.0.9. In this version we've fixed quite a few bugs and added an upgrade alert to let you know when a new version comes out! Change log: Added menu items for Ad Agency links & created a menu and a module for them Modified the SH404 extension for the Itemid change Changed the "get ip" function name Fixed the flash problem when rotating enabled (+ colors problem) Fixed - Some packages d...

Just a couple of hours ago, we were thrilled to receive an award for the "Best Joomla Commerce App" for iJoomla Ad Agency. We've received this award at the Spotlight Awards ceremony, in Hotel Orrington, in Avenston, IL, where the CMS Expo took place. This was a great ending for another great CMS expo! ...

We've just released a new version of iJoomla SEO for Joomla 1.6, version 2.0.2. On this version we've added support for Mosets Tree and zoo, for Joomla 1.6. As other 3rd party extensions are released for Joomla 1.6, we will update iJoomla SEO to support these extensions. Keep in mind this is still a beta version, so it could still contain bugs, if you find bugs, please report them on bugs forum. You can download this version on "my downloads" page, as usual, it's included in the package. For ...

multiple vulnerabilities

several vulnerabilities

several vulnerabilities

several vulnerabilities

privilege escalation/denial of service/information leak

denial of service

compromised certificate authority

several vulnerabilities

several vulnerabilities

several vulnerabilities

buffer overflow

privilege escalation/denial of service/information leak

missing input sanitization

denial of service

compromised certificate authority

several vulnerabilities

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2.Codenamed “Oneiric Ocelot”, 11.10 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle fixing bugs and introducing a couple of new features as we polish [...]

VirtualBox is a free, open source, cross-platform application for creating, managing and running Virtual Machines (VMs). You’ve heard a lot about Linux and you’d love to try it out, but you don’t know enough to take the plunge and install it alongside Windows - maybe you’re worried you’ll wipe all your files off in the [...]

This paper examines how to smoothly transfer content, users, interface, and metadata to Drupal. Drupal’s advantages for running enterprise web sites are well established by such companies as FedEx, The Economist, and The White House. But many who would like to use it hesitate because they fear loss of assets now managed by their current [...]

Linux is the fastest-growing Java development platform because it saves money and time by serving as a platform for both development and deployment. But developers face significant platform-specific challenges when managing and deploying Java applications in a controlled production environment. Written for Java and Linux developers alike, Java™ Application Development on Linux® is the hands-on [...]

When you try to configure trunk port you might see following error An interface whose trunk encapsulation is Auto can not be configured to trunk mode To fix this you need set encapsulation to 802.1q using the following command conf t int gi4/10 switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q This should fix your issue

The indispensable start-to-finish troubleshooting guide for every Linux professional. Long Description: Now, there’s a systematic, practical guide to Linux troubleshooting for every power user, administrator, and developer. In Self-Service Linux®, two of IBM’s leading Linux experts introduce a four-step methodology for identifying and resolving every type of Linux-related system or application problem: errors, crashes, hangs, [...]

Few frontline system administrators can afford to spend all day worrying about security. But in this age of widespread virus infections, worms, and digital attacks, no one can afford to neglect network defenses. Written with the harried IT manager in mind, Open Source Security Tools is a practical, hands-on introduction to open source security tools. [...]

An indispensable ebook for every Linux administrator! Instant access to precise, step-by-step solutions for every essential Linux administration task from basic configuration and troubleshooting to advanced security and optimization. If you’re responsible for delivering results with Linux, Linux® Quick Fix Notebook brings together all the step-by-step instructions, precise configuration commands, and real-world guidance you need. [...]

This guide will introduce you to the world of Software Architecture. This 162 page guide will cover topics within the field of software architecture including: software architecture as a solution balancing the concerns of different stakeholders, quality assurance, methods to describe and evaluate architectures, the influence of architecture on reuse, and the life cycle of [...]

This 158 Page Guide will cover the basics of Ubuntu 10.10 (such as installation and working with the desktop) as well as guide you through some of the most popular applications. This guide is simple to follow, with step-by-step instructions and plenty of screen shots, allowing you to discover the potential of your new Ubuntu [...]

Solarflare delivers management flexibility and application acceleration for Redhat Linux KVM with unique Single-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) support. Solarflare 10 Gigabit Ethernet Server Adapters enable IT managers to consolidate more guest operating systems over fewer physical servers by providing scalable network I/O bandwidth and removing I/O bottlenecks in virtual server environments. Solarflare has released support [...]

This tutorial will explain how do I check ProxySG Hardware and Software Uptime through the CLI or GUI Using GUI Navigate to https://ProxySG_IP_Address:8082/sysinfo/version Version: SGOS 5.4.4.1 Release id: 45872 UI Version: 5.4.4.1 (45872) The current time is Wed Mar 2, 2011 05:05:47 GMT (SystemTime 478587947) The ProxySG Appliance was last hardware rebooted 44 minutes, and [...]

Learn the top 10 reasons why customers are choosing Talend. Software vendors will assure you that their product is the one you need but, in reality, the proposed solutions may or may not be appropriate. To help you evaluate various solutions and technologies available on the market, and to compare the leading open source data [...]

TweetDeck is your personal real-time browser, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more. Step 1: Installation of Adobe Air. a. Get Adobe Air via this link: http://get.adobe.com/air/ b. Choose the .deb package under the select version to download drop box c. Go to the Terminal d. In [...]

As an IT Professional, try this FREE download to monitor your network devices for congestion and bandwidth issues. PacketTrap IT Community Edition is a comprehensive solution that solves problems with bandwidth, connectivity and network performance quickly and easily for your 10 most critical devices. PacketTrap can monitor traffic on any device, prevent network congestion and [...]

Encryption is the process of protecting data by using an algorithm to scramble it. This manual will be talking about local file encryption - that is, encrypting files on a hard drive (or encrypting the entire hard drive; more on that later). The files are safe as long as they are kept in the encrypted [...]

What’s a live CD? It’s an entire operating system, on a CD. This manual will list many of the things you can accomplish with a live CD, from data recovery to virus removal to trying out cool operating systems. There are two ways you can use this manual. The first, of course, is to read [...]

The GNU/Linux systems have reached an important level of maturity, allowing to integrate them in almost any kind of work environment, from a desktop PC to the sever facilities of a big company. In this ebook “The GNU/Linux Operating System”, the main contents are related with system administration. You will learn how to install and [...]

lubuntu is a faster, more lightweight and energy saving variant of Ubuntu using LXDE, the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. The lubuntu team aims to earn official endorsement from Canonical. Features * Based on the lightweight LXDE desktop environment. * Pcmanfm 0.9.8, a fast and lightweight files manager using gio/gvfs. * Lxdm, a lightweight GTK display [...]

In around 15 minutes, the time it takes to install Ubuntu Server Edition, you can have a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) server up and ready to go. This feature, exclusive to Ubuntu Server Edition, is available at the time of installation.The LAMP option means you don’t have to install and integrate each of [...]

I always had problems when i upgraded my wordpress. So I made ​one script that automatically does this for meRead the Rest...

Parted Magic is a small live CD/USB/PXE with its elemental purpose being to partition hard drives. Although GParted and PartedRead the Rest...

The installation is similar to that of Lenny, with the following differences: There are different versions of the Linux kernelRead the Rest...

Pico is an easy-to-use text editor on the CNS Logon Server that is designed to work in tandem with PineRead the Rest...

In this post i will show you what steps  I followed to adapt RAID1 on an existing installation of DebianRead the Rest...

Running phpMyAdmin On Nginx (LEMP) On Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.04 The phpMyAdmin package from the Debian/Ubuntu repositories comes with configuration files for Apache and Lighttpd, but not for nginx. This tutorial shows how you can use the Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.04 phpMyAdmin package in an nginx vhost. Nginx is a HTTP server that uses much less resources than Apache and delivers pages a lot of faster, especially static files.

Ripping An MP3 CD On Linux Mint 11 This article describes how to rip music off an audio CD in acceptable shape with a moderate bitrate and in MP3 format on Linux Mint 11. There are are numerous ways of ripping a CD on Linux, but not all of them provide the standard comfort one should have, for instance a fairly high bitrate for your music, so that it does not sound like hammering on a trashcan with an iron spoon, or automated fetching of disk and track information from the internet, so you do not have to do it all manually. The way I describe should provide all these things, however it may be that if you are ripping a rather unknown audio disk, there is no data about it on the CD database.

Installing Nginx With PHP5 (And PHP-FPM) And MySQL Support On Fedora 15 Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can install Nginx on a Fedora 15 server with PHP5 support (through PHP-FPM) and MySQL support.

Android Smartphone USB Tethering (Linux Mint 11) This article is about how to tether your Android smartphone with Linux Mint 11 and similar operating systems via USB, meaning how to use your smartphone's network to access the Internet on your computer by linking them with a USB cable.

Serving CGI Scripts With Nginx On Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.04 This tutorial shows how you can serve CGI scripts (Perl scripts) with nginx on Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.04. While nginx itself does not serve CGI, there are several ways to work around this. I will outline three solutions: the first is to proxy requests for CGI scripts to Thttpd, a small web server that has CGI support, while the second and third solution are very similar - both use a CGI wrapper to serve CGI scripts.

How To Install Repcached (Memcached Replication) For High-Availability Over 2 Nodes On Ubuntu 11.04 This is a short tutorial based on MarcusSpiegel's howto found here. This how to will cover the missing parts for installing Repcached on Ubuntu server 11.04. This is a copy/paste friendly tutorial so using putty will make this a lot easier. This how to will show you how to install and build memcached with replication, create a startup script and configure PHP to use memcache for sessions rather than storing them as files. This tutorial assumes you have set up 2 servers to replicate the information over.

The Perfect Server - CentOS 5.7 x86_64 [ISPConfig 3] This tutorial shows how to prepare a CentOS 5.7 x86_64 server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, BIND nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more.

Lessfs 1.5 On CentOS 5 For this HowTo I used a VirtualBox with CentOS 5.7 x86_64. I attached a separate 20GB Data drive mounted to /data. This will hold the lessfs DB and data. The lessfs mountpoint I put at /lessfs. This is a very basic setup, just to get it running. There is plenty of tuning to be done based on volume size, file types, and compression choices. The latest lessfs required more recent versions of fuse and tokyocabinet than was in the CentOS repository, so I chose to install most of this from source.

Setting Up ProFTPd + TLS On Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) FTP is a very insecure protocol because all passwords and all data are transferred in clear text. By using TLS, the whole communication can be encrypted, thus making FTP much more secure. This article explains how to set up ProFTPd with TLS on an Ubuntu 11.04 server.

Creating A Bootable USB Device On Linux Mint 11 This tutorial will show you how to make your USB hard disk device a bootable Linux system. Linux Mint 11 needs about 4.7 gigabyte of free space on your hard drive, so make sure your device has at least that much space available. I am using an 8 gigabyte stick which is enough to install Mint on it and additionally have some space left to save data. In my case, I will install Linux Mint 11 on my USB device, but it should work similarly with other systems. To create a bootable disk, you need either an iso-image of the desired Linux system or a real Linux DVD.

IAB PwC Half Year H1 2011 Adspend Study

Google is aiming to compete with broadcasters by putting up $100 million (£65 million) for the creation of original content for new channels on YouTube, it has been reported.

September sees Weetabix Chocolate Spoonsize dance itself to first spot in the IAB UK Ads Chart.

IAB Affiliate Marketing Council (AMC) unveils its first ever advertiser survey to gain insight into value of the medium.

IAB Network Council forms to help brands and agencies use networks more effectively.

Google opens it first physical store in London to introduce the public to its new Google Chromebooks.

This one day course will ensure you leave feeling knowledgeable and confident when using search as part of your or your clients’ marketing campaigns.

This new one day course is the definitive practical training to enable you to harness the power of this growing medium. Incorporating the latest IAB research, case studies ,talks from industry leading specialists and practical workshops which enable you to get going as soon as you get back to your office.

Entertainment Conference

The IAB, together with the multichannel video agency Adjust Your Set, are hosting an event on 13th October 2011 to reveal exclusive research that aims to understand industry reaction to internet-connected TVs.

For Adobe, the rise of mobile, and the iPhone and iPad in particular, has been bittersweet. Yes, the company most recognizable to consumers for its Reader and Flash products, has plenty of new opportunities thanks to mobile, but exploiting them has required the company to look at a number of Plan Bs. The primary reason: Apple doesn't like Flash. Adobe tried to persuade Apple that Flash isn't so bad, but that wasn't going anywhere, so the company has been increasingly betting its mobile future on other technologies, like HTML5.Adobe's investment in HTML5 continued yesterday when the company announced that it was buying Nitobi, the creator of the PhoneGap mobile development framework. PhoneGap enables the development of mobile applications across multiple mobile platforms, including iOS and Android, using HTML and JavaScript. Through PhoneGap, developers can access native functionality, including the accelerometer and filesystem, and then build their PhoneGap creations as native apps that can be submitted to marketplaces such as the App Store and Android Market. Concurrent with the Adobe acquisition, Nitobi announced that it is donating the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation, meaning PhoneGap will remain freely available as an open source product. Adobe will operate PhoneGap Build, a hosted service that allows PhoneGap users to upload their PhoneGap projects and automatically have them built into apps ready for submission to the various app stores. On the surface, the acquisition makes sense. Adobe has seen the writing on the wall vis-à-vis Flash's role in the mobile ecosystem, and is shifting its mobile investments to technologies like HTML, JavaScript and CSS -- technologies that obviously have a place in quite a few Adobe products, and which many of its customers use regularly. But digging a little deeper, it's not clear that Adobe is getting something it can work with long-term. PhoneGap is essentially a tool for 'wrapping' an application built with HTML, JavaScript and CSS into a native app. In effect, the app is a web browser running a web application on the phone. PhoneGap's APIs allow access to some native functionality, but PhoneGap doesn't really create a native app. In some cases, this is quite satisfactory. But the question for Adobe is how big the market will be for this type of solution in a year or two. At one end of the spectrum, you have cross-platform mobile development products like Corona and Appcelerator, which produce truly native apps. On the other, you have solutions like jQuery Mobile and Sensa Touch, which help developers create better browser-based mobile web experiences. And, of course, efforts are under way to make hardware-level functionality more greatly available to mobile web apps, meaning you increasingly won't need solutions to bridge the gap between the hardware and your web apps. It's unclear where PhoneGap and Adobe fit in this landscape. Other tools create true native experiences, while the mobile web itself is getting more and more capable. Adobe may find that there's a market for a tool that wraps the mobile web in a native app, but that market may not exist for very long as the sophistication of native apps and the mobile web demands more of developers.

Mobile is now driving an average of 10% of visits to e-commerce sites, but there is much work to be done to optimise conversion rates, according to a new study.  The study by e-commerce agency Screen Pages looked at more than 1.5m visitors to 30 non-optimised websites, and found that conversion rates were an average of 41% lower on mobile.  Whether retailers are prepared or not, mobile users are accessing their sites, and this study gives some idea of how mobile users interact with standard sites on mobiles. A few highlights from the study 10% of visits are from mobile devices, although for premium brands targeting a more affluent demographic, there is evidence that this figure can approach 15%. 81% of all mobile visits are from Apple devices (47% are iPad & 35% are from the iPhone). Again, this may be a function of demographics, but clearly shows the popularity of Apple products. Average bounce rates are lower by 5% (40% vs 35%). Bounce rates are a measure of engagement and show the % of visitors who arrive on a page and leave. Driven by smaller screens and possibly the more demanding mobile user, websites must work harder to engage. In terms of sales, e-commerce conversion ratios were 41% lower overall, ranging from 13% to 73% lower. However, one luxury brand showed an increase of 30%. Average order values (AOV) were slightly higher on average, with half the sample showing an increase (10 of the sites showing an increase in AOV of 10% or more). Those showing a decrease posted in the range 10-30% less. A few thoughts on the stats There are few surprises in the stats on conversion rates. You would expect that a standard website would deliver a slightly poorer experience on a mobile, and perhaps the surprise is that conversion rates are not much lower.  There are exceptions though, and one retailer found its conversion rates actually improved. The study included an expensive florist, a lingerie store and others which may actually appeal to mobile users looking for last minute gifts.  For example, one of the better converting sites was the Real Flower Company. It doesn't look that easy to use on an iPhone 4:  A lot of zooming and manipulation of the screen is required to browse the range, view product details and add items to the basket, which would suggest that the nature of the product is a factor in the relatively high conversion rates. Also, a simple checkout process helps. Even though it isn't optimised for mobile, it doesn't require registration, forms work well, and little things like a postcode lookup help users: The iPad The presence of iPads in these stats may well be distorting the picture. Since Screen Pages has several 'luxury' retailers in its client base, the proportion of iPads is higher than normal.  Though there are still some usability issues, Apple's tablets are far better internet shopping devices than smartphones.  Other stats have shown that average order values and conversion rates on tablets can be even higher than that of desktop sites, mainly due to the likelihood that iPad owners have a bit more cash to spend.  What can retailers do?  The answer is obvious. As I saw quoted on a tweet by @AllisonDNO recently: "Every company has a mobile website whether they like it or not." People are accessing the web on mobile phones and tablet devices, and a decent proportion are prepared to make a purchase, mobile optimised site or not.  The answer, of course, is for these retailers to optimise their sites for mobile. If they can achieve higher average order values, and something like 60% of the desktop conversion rate on sites that are tricky to use, then how much better could they do with a proper mobile site? 

Google has jumped into the trustmarks game by launching Trusted Stores, in a bid to allow consumers to “shop online with confidence”. At first glance it may seem like this is a standard issue trustmarks scheme, but there’s much more to it than that. E-commerce companies need to take note.How it works Participating merchants need to display a badge on their site, in common with other trustmark schemes, but they also need to “voluntary share data about shipments”.  Google will also offer consumers purchase protection. It said: When a shopper makes a purchase at a Google Trusted Store, they have the option to select free purchase protection from Google. Then, if a problem arises with their purchase, they can request Google’s help, and Google will work with the merchant and customer to address the issue. As part of this, Google offers up to $1,000 lifetime purchase protection for eligible purchases." In the event that Google wades into the fray on behalf of an aggrieved customer it will “collect customer service metrics”. That alone could be a game changer, depending on what it might affect. Here's the official Google on the product release: So what are we looking at here exactly? There are three clear aspects to Trusted Stores, which is: A trustmarks scheme.  A consumer protection programme.  A benchmarking operation (shipping and service data). It’s a bold move and coming from Google we should consider what this might mean more broadly.  Experience as a search ranking factor I’m in no doubt that Google is seriously paying attention to ‘experience’ as a ranking factor for search. Trusted Stores suggests that Google is moving beyond the ‘user experience’ and into the more complex, multichannel world of ‘customer experience’.  Measuring certain aspects of the user experience is comparatively straightforward. Google has recently embarked on a mission to “make the web faster”, launching tools that will go as far as rewriting web pages to help web companies. As such we know that page speed is a ranking factor. There are many others. Measuring the customer experience is a far more difficult task, not least because it requires the participation of merchants and customers. With Trusted Stores, Google has managed to do exactly that. By accessing third party data it can make sense of the customer experience, and it can benchmark retailers (against themselves, and against one another) and identify trends.  How will the data be used? This is the $1,000,000 question, or potentially a big multiple of that amount if you’re a major retailer that takes little pride in the customer experience.  In time we’ll find out more about how Google uses data from the likes of Trusted Stores, and how negative scores (lousy customer service ratings / late shipping) might affect search results and Adwords Quality Scores.  I can’t believe that it wouldn’t have an impact on search results, in some shape or form. Otherwise what’s the incentive to take part in the scheme, or the disincentive not to do so? Moreover, why wouldn’t Google want to use this data as a ranking factor? Pros and cons We can look at this from two angles. On the one hand Google is single-handedly demanding that merchants improve service and satisfaction. That’s something I’ve been banging on about for years and as such I warmly applaud the effort. But on the other hand, merchants may be required to participate in Trusted Scores in order to optimise organic and paid search. Sharing data and metrics with Google could become compulsory in that respect. Where will that end? Thoughts? Like most new Google products, Trusted Stores is currently in beta. You can apply to take part here. We’ve talked about trustmarks in the past and my own view is that they’re not essential. Trusted Stores could become the exception to the rule. There are more questions than answers at this stage, but I’m interested in thinking about how this might play out. I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Launched earlier this year, Linking Mobile aims to move the affiliate marketing model onto mobile.  I've been speaking to co-founder David Fieldhouse about the company and its plans, as well as the challenges of tracking affiliate sales via mobile. In one sentence, what is Linking Mobile? We are the first UK based global mobile affiliate network. We connect mobile advertisers with customers wherever they are in the world.  What problems does Linking Mobile solve? We solve two problems. The first removes the problem of risk for advertisers by only charging them when they achieve a sale, sign-up, download or lead via mobile. The second removes the problem of unsold mobile inventory within a publishers’ mobile site or app. We help them monetise their inventory with blue chip mobile advertisers. Our competitors in the affiliate spaced are companies like Commission Junction and Trade Doubler, but we are the only company in the UK offering a mobile affiliate service.  Why have other affiliate networks been slow to move into mobile?  It’s mostly to do with the technology and the knowledge to implement it. These companies are well aware of the importance of the mobile channel, but simply don’t have the tracking technology in place.  We have been in mobile for eight years, and are aware of the various nuances around mobile that aren’t an issue for the online affiliate model.  Also, I think there is a skills and technology shortage in affiliate networks around mobile.  In addition, big businesses can take time to move, and when you consider that mobile revenues are a fraction of those made on desktop, this must have an effect on how much emphasis the big affiliate networks place on mobile.  When and why did you launch it? We launched the company in May 2011, because we saw there were no cost-per-acquisition (CPA) deals available in the market.   This was driven by client demand, and seemed an obvious area to address. Our mobile tracking platform is built from the ground up unlike other web hybrid solutions so we knew it would deliver better results for clients. I knew that clients wanted this, but there was nothing out there that fitted the bill. I did find a couple of firms offering something like this, one on the US, and one on France, but they were very country-specific.  Who is your target audience? We work with the UK’s largest agencies and brands already. Essentially any client who has a mobile presence and wishes to drive results at no risk are our audience  What are your immediate goals? To build a respected, innovative and profitable mobile business. I think we have all three right now. Do you have many clients so far?  We launched in May and now have 32 advertisers on board, including Peugeot, Kelkoo, Mazda and O2, with eight others coming soon.  There are large companies, and they have seen that mobile can provide incremental sales and leads, it isn’t cannibalising their existing online audience.  The exciting bit is the updates we have planned in the near future. From our point of view, the more we do that is relevant to mobile, the better it is for our business.  What were the biggest challenges involved in building Linking Mobile?  The technology and platform development was the most difficult challenge. We worked on LinkMAX for six months before launch, a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into making it work well for publishers and advertisers.  What are the major differences between the affiliate model on mobile and desktop?  At the moment, we are concentrating on display, so people will click from ads to go to mobile sites like Peugeot’s before signing up for a brochure or test drive. The publishers get paid, and advertisers can track.  We will be launching SMS campaigns on an affiliate basis soon, as well as QR codes.  When clients asked me about QR a few years ago, I told them it wasn’t worth it, but that’s changed now, with more awareness. Publishers will soon be able to run QR campaigns on an affiliate basis, which effectively takes affiliate marketing out of digital and into offline advertising.  In traditional affiliate marketing, affiliates are digital publishers, but by using QR, The Telegraph and other offline publishers can use our platform. This takes affiliate marketing into a new area.  Six months down the line, we’ll be looking at in store redemption of vouchers and barcodes served by our affiliates. Retailers can enter the code or scan the voucher as the point of sale, and pay our publishers once it has been redeemed, thereby tasking affiliate marketing into stores.  Will your model depend on brands opting for mobile websites instead of apps?  I think many started with apps, thanks to the popularity of the iPhone, but that is changing. Brands are realising that browser-based solutions are better for sales, while apps fit more into the CRM category.  Why has the price comparison model not translated to mobile yet?  There is the tracking problem, and that can be solved, but many of the big players have failed to launch mobile sites, so people are using Amazon and other retail apps for mobile comparison.  How will the company make money? We already have significant revenues. We see thousands of actions every month and we take a small commission on each action. We don’t charge advertisers fees however.  Who is in the team and what does it look like? I co-founded Linking Mobile with David Phillipson, Commercial Director, and Phil Jones, Chief Technical Officer. Phil developed our bespoke LinkMAX platform, and is developing further technology which we will be launching soon. We also have a fantastic account and marketing team.   Where would you like to be in one, three and five year’s time? We will be the largest mobile acquisition network within three years.  

If your business is local with absolutely no reason to make a global presence, it is better to use local SEO and get maximum output from the local customer base. However, businesses selling products or services internationally need to plan well in advance regarding their marketing strategies. Global SEO means making your website accessible, readable, comprehendible, communicable, and appealing to a large customer base – the whole world!When you think of global SEO, a certain uncertainty creeps in – this is generally because analysing the trends of such a big customer base is difficult! Let’s concentrate on a few standard Global SEO techniques that will help you with optimising your webpage for global customers. Once these steps are followed, you are almost there, just a few customisations to suit your business, and you should be at the top of global search results and attract quality traffic to your website. To start with let’s look at some basic steps: Website content must be of a superior quality. Do not spam the page with keyword repetitions. For global search engine optimisation, the content must be written in a comprehensible language, such that customers over the world can interpret easily. Avoid flashy language (whereever possible), as well as jargon. Avoid targeting keywords with local references. This will categorise your website into the local market and affect your global ratings. Always have a “translator” option. Customers over the world need not know the language of your website. You need to customise your website to reach the maximum number of global customers. Avoid using automatic translators where content of your website is concerned. Translate it manually, review it thoroughly and then place it on your website for customers to read.  Use webmaster tools to further optimise. Buy a domain name, with your local extension, and host your website in the targeted country. Optimising for your global presence does not mean that you hide your current location. It means, that make your services, products available and accessible to all types of customers, all over the world. Also remember that search engines have an option for customers to search products either locally or from all over the world, or even by languages. Do not stop when you get a good ranking. Global SEO is an ongoing process, with the ever changing market trends, new technologies and algorithms adopted by various search engines. There are even new search engines launched.

For many brands, Facebook Pages are seen as a channel through which a community of fans and customers can be built and engaged. To facilitate engagement, Facebook provides a number of tools, ranging from the Wall to Photos to Discussions.Discussions, which function like a threaded message board, may not be the most popular tool used on Pages currently, but nearly 22m Facebook users interact with Discussions each month, and nearly 1m interact with Discussions on a daily basis. That makes it an interesting tool for brands, but brands using Discussions will soon have to find an alternative means of creating a discussion space as Facebook has decided to eliminate the Discussions functionality. As noted by Inside Facebook, The Facebook Help Center states: We've found that the best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your Wall. We've removed these tabs for now as we work on tools to help you moderate and filter content. Our goal is to help you can manage everything from one powerful place. Stay tuned. While many brands don't make use of this functionality, some, like Tesco, do, and its removal does highlight one of the challenges of building a community on Facebook: Facebook thinks Facebook knows best. That means that the tools you have today could be gone tomorrow if Facebook decides to ditch them. As Inside Facebook notes, it recently removed its 'Send an Update' functionality for Pages as well. Needless to say, the removal of functionality is usually frustrating to those who use it. While there's a strong argument to be made that Facebook shouldn't keep functionality that isn't effective simply because it doesn't want to frustrate users, the removal of functionality so crucial to so many online communities over the years (threaded discussions) serves as a reminder that it isn't exactly the easiest platform on which to build a community. Driving meaningful engagement using Facebook Pages is hard enough without Facebook constantly rethinking what tools it offers. Given that, brands would be wise to consider that for certain kinds of community tools, relying on homegrown and/or hosted platforms may be a better, more reliable approach.

Last Wednesday, Google rolled out a new update, dubbed Panda 2.5. As is customary when Google releases a notable update, all eyes were on which sites gained the most in the SERPs, and which ones lost the most.According to Searchmetrics, some of the notable losers were PR Newswire, BusinessWire, Today.com, Technorati, Motor Trend and Entrepreneur.com. The winners? Perez Hilton, AOL, Zappos, FOX News and the Wall Street Journal gained saw gains of 7 to 29% as measured by Searchmetrics' SEO Visibility metric. There was also another big winner: Google's own YouTube. Its Searchmetrics SEO Visibility rose 10%, which is raising some eyebrows given that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was grilled on Capitol Hill about Google's search neutrality less than a week before Panda 2.5 was launched. A couple of comments left by SEO Book's Aaron Wall provide an interesting perspective on this: Before the first Panda update happened Youtube was capturing just over 3% of downstream Google traffic. Now they are likely up to [around 9% or 10%]. That means Google is sending YouTube hundreds of millions of referrals every single day. If content farms are bad, then why is it that virtually nobody is questioning why Google’s content farm keeps going up and up and up and up? He goes on to suggest: It has to be planned for Youtube to grow as a % of overall results. That sort of growth isn’t accidental or driven by an unbiased algorithm (after all, only one site has seen that sort of explosive growth in the SERPs since Panda). I wonder if Google search engineers feel just a tad bit sleazy, or if they are just ignorant of what’s in the search results? Certainly, YouTube's rise post-Panda (along with the rise of another Google-owned domain, Android.com), are bound to lead to this sort of criticism. After all, nobody outside of Google really knows why YouTube has done so well, and nothing Google can do, short of making its algorithm completely transparent, will eliminate questions about how Google might be favoring its own properties. Needless to say, questions like these will continue to dog the company, particularly as it comes under antitrust scrutiny. At the same time, focusing on YouTube's SERP success might mask an even more important observation: Google's recent algorithm updates appears to creating a lot of volatility for some publishers. According to Searchmetrics' data, one of the publishers hit hardest by Panda, HubPages, has not only recovered -- its SEO Visibility is now at its highest point ever. In other words, in the span of about seven months, it has gone from the worst of times, to the best of times. Such volatility is intriguing, and suggests that Google is having a difficult time dealing with content farms and spam. If that's indeed the case and Google can't get itself together soon, the least of Google's worries may be questions about its neutrality.