After a week of being online less than an hour a day, there's a lot of news worthy of coverage around the industry. Let's take it from the top:
- I get lots of questions asking - "how do I know if my site is news-worthy or link-worthy." The Time.com List of 50 Coolest Websites is a great place to get ideas about what the press considers deserving of attention.
- Think linkbait has to have immediate press? Think again - as my fellow SES panelist Neil Patel proves with his excellent comparison of analytics providers, which made Digg & Del.icio.us last week.
- Yahoo! queries on links are getting re-routed to Site Explorer. It's a smart move and a timely one, though I'm not yet seeing all of my requests go that way.
- The release of the AOL data last week caused quite a stir, particularly when the NYTimes did a bit of research to identify a woman, prompting some to speculate that laws could change in the near future. Luckily, some good also came of it, as Donna pointed out this nifty tool which uses the data to predict search query volume. My personal feeling is that companies like Yahoo! and Google shouldn't be storing this data after 90-120 days. As protected as they believe it might be, if the NSA comes to the door with a court order, any "protection" is null+void.
- Yahoo! Search Builder looks like its worth a peek, as does Eurekster, which I believe is a very cool service. I think the SEM industry is actually ripe for a vertical search like this.
- Barry's roundup of coverage from SES San Jose 2006 is up. It's always sad to me that he has to leave the sessions before the Q+A, though, as I find a lot of the best material during the last 20-30 minutes.
- Loren Baker makes a good case for Video being the future of Google, though I still think their core business will always be search and someone else (a YouTube or MetaCafe) will manage entertainment content and verticals more successfullly.
- This post from Mr. Cutts makes me really sad... And while we're on the topic - did anyone blog about Matt outing himself as GoogleGuy during SES? I believe his exact words were "I backed into that position."
Anything huge I missed this time? (there's probably a lot).
Rand, thanks for the info on SiteExplorer. I was directed there a couple of times and thought that it was a bug.
Have you seen anyone publishing a guide to fun queries at SiteExplorer yet? I'd live to see that - might be good for a few links too.
>Would that be a violation of Google's trademark, though?
While I'm no lawyer I think as long as you were clear you weren't trying to make anyone think you weren't google and that it was really a parody I think you'd be ok. Although they could crush you under the weight of superior legal firepower if they wanted to.
I think that a person could post an informative article that explains things like the linkdomain query, etc. and not have any problem. Lots of people post similar articles, or even books on "how to get the most out of xxx software or xxx website".
>googleguy Is actually quite similar to the Dread Pirate Roberts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Pirate_Rob... Roberts was actually a series of different men. Each time the current holder of the name was rich enough that he wanted to retire, he chose a member of his crew to bestow the name upon. Everyone except the successor was then released at a convenient port, a new crew was hired, and the former Roberts stayed aboard as first mate. The constant reference to "Captain Roberts" established the new Roberts' persona. After the crew was convinced, the former Roberts departed the ship and retired in splendor.
>made me sad Yea...that is a pretty sad state of affairs. I decided to update the disclaimer on my picture with my non-endorsing acquaintence - https://www.stuntdubl.com/about-stuntdubl-todd... Glad Rand still vouches for me (I think) :)
Very tasteful, man :) but the aspect ratio on some of those shots are skewed - wanna spend the few seconds to not make my eyes hurt? ;)
I am a GoogleGuy!
The domain WhoisGoogleGuy.com is still available. If I had the time I'd create a nice voting site, and maybe a video shot in the style of the old TV show To Tell the Truth where at the end they say "will the real john smith please stand up". Maybe even sell some CafePress shirts with "I'm the real GoogleGuy" or "I'm not the Real GoogleGuy" or "I'm With GoogleGuy" T-Shirts. Maybe you could even grab the "sound-bite" like quotes of GoogleGuy and put them on mousepads.
Rand, I didn't take the question as "Are you GoogleGuy?". I took the question as "How did you end up doing a bunch of webmaster communication duties?". Maybe I misheard the question though.
Haha - I love semantics. I didn't read into that one either, though. Are you "the Google guy" or "GoogleGuy"?
Matt - could be our mistake. Danny and I both were chatting about it later and thought there was a definitive say on the issue...
Of course, it doesn't really matter either way, right?
stonecold - Is Greg "MSNDude"? I didn't get that confirmed from the source. He certainly did seem quite animated and very serious. I wish I had gotten a chance to talk to him.
lol - when Matt joined DP, I suggested an alternate personality so that he didn't get bombarded by all the Cuttlets there. I posted "I hear GoogleGuy is available" (as a username).
"Time.com List of 50 Coolest Websites" Well, not all of the sites are worth a look, i think.
MySpace being one of them. It's definitely worth the mention, since it squarely targets and audience and successfully meets it's target... but for most of us I think it's just a mess.
BTW Rand: I really enjoyed your work on the Wikipedia/Tagging session. Great stuff. I'll certainly continue to monitor the developments surrounding value spam.
A couple of things caught my attention:
1. The hour long discussion between Matt Cutts (aka GoogleGuy) and Greg Hullander (MSNDude) at the meet the engineers session at the Google Dance.
They were intensely discussing all sorts of algorithm specifics.
2. The RSS functionality that is a part of the upcoming release of IE7. This could really boost RSS usage. I talk about it a bit here: IE7 and RSS.
By the way, I saw the re-routing to SiteExplorer too. It is a drag to have to login, simply because it's an extra step. Hopefully, they will take up the idea of improving the functionality to include ranking and exportable link data as you talk about in your earlier post about: Search Engine Scraping.
Cheers,
Eric
I'm finding it annoying that they now require me to log in to do a site: query - even if only because that darn Yahoo cookie doesn't last anytime at all :(
He did! Wow, I hadn't read that anywhere! I had kinda figured... :)
Thanks, Rand!