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Which
pronoun -- "I" or "we"?
The internet has been an invaluable opportunity as a level playing field for both
large companies and self-starters. Many freelancers and entrepreneurs have taken
to the web for their marketing.
The
Blog Marketing Explosion
There are literally thousands of blogs by eBusiness insiders. This has changed
the landscape of guerrilla marketing. At first it was seen as just something cool
to do ...
How
to Pitch Into the Long Tail News Curve
In a report (PDF) published last month, Morgan Stanley analysts Mary Meeker and
Brian Pitz discussed the impact of the long tail of content on the news cycle.
They compared this to a similar phenomenon that occurs on eBay.
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Blogs On Target: Missing The
Point?
For a few days now, the latest Internet goof-up being linked by news sites and
IM'ers alike has been focused on Target.com. Since early last week, people have
been finding questionable products featured on Target's website. As links to these
pages make their way around the Internet, the blogosphere was quick with its commentary.
However, did some bloggers jump the gun when criticizing Target?
Do bloggers influence other entities? Do their breaking news stories accomplish
the intended goal? Discuss at WebProWorld.
The pages that brought attention to Target.com were for products that some might
not expect to see available from a family-oriented business. One such page intimated
that Target.com was offering illegal
drugs, while another had more of an adult theme associated with it. Links
to these pages have been showing up on a number of popular blogs, like BoingBoing.net;
and news sites, like Fark.com.
 Because
word travels around the Internet at an incredible rate, it wasn't long before
a number of notable blogs began taking Target to task for featuring this type
of content. WebProNews contributor and blogger extraordinaire Steve Rubel had
this comment about Target's
oversight, "Dear Target, a PR
crisis is brewing for your company in the blogosphere. Please tell me you're
listening." Steve's blog entry was not the only
one either.
The reason why Target's online inventory may contain questionable content is because
Amazon.com powers Target's site. This means that two companies share databases,
and therefore, inventory. These "questionable" products appearing on Target.com
are a result of Amazon.com's inventory (the product in the "illegal drugs" link
above is a book). A better explanation appears on NoahBrier.com,
courtesy of Adam Kalsey:
"Apparently this isn't a test data problem. It's a problem with not enough product
details and the way the ecommerce system's back end works. The item in question
is a book
that Amazon carries, but Amazon has no details on the book. Since Target.com
is managed by Amazon, many of the products sold by Amazon can be forced to show
in the Target.com design; just tack the ASIN from Amazon onto the Target URL.
For instance, you buy
Isaac Mizrahi cashmere gloves from Target.com even though your local Target
[doesn't] carry this item.
When the book is shown on Amazon, it's obvious that Amazon is selling a book entitled
‘Marijuana,' but when shown through Target's interface it just looks like they're
selling pot."
Blogger Jeremy Zawondy took issue with what he perceived as jumping
the gun and devoted a blog entry toward explaining his position. The entry,
called Are bloggers really that dumb, says, "It's a stupid mistake. Are we too
screwed up to realize that companies are composed of people and that people sometimes
make mistakes?" Jeremy continued with, "I suspect that if someone bothered to
tell them about the problem instead of using this as an opportunity to blame their
PR folks for not reading blogs, they probably would have fixed it and gone on
with life. Making fun of them on your blog is all well and good, but calling this
a crisis strikes me as being over the top."
 This
led to a bigger disagreement across quite a few blogs over the influence of the
blogosphere. Some believe, with some justification, that bloggers do have an effect
on company procedure. This train of thought would be supported by the blogs started
by the search engines. Since it's inception, the MSN
Search Blog has been used as a good source of public feedback for the company's
search engineers.
However, there are those believe that the blogosphere has no influence. This is
evident by many of the comments accompanying Steve Rubel's blog entry. Concerning
Target.com, Robert Scoble, commenting on Steve's site, had this to say:
"With every hour that a representative of Target doesn't come here or any of the
other blogs involved at this point it just demonstrates they don't know how to
do searches on their company name on PubSub, Feedster, or Technorati and that
they haven't dedicated anyone to watch what people are saying about them online."
Although, the fact that they haven't reinforces the belief that bloggers don't
have as much influence as they think, according to the people who disagree with
Steve and Robert. How much influence do you think bloggers have?
Comment on this article
in WebProWorld.
Chris Richardson
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13,165 |
Contributing
Authors: 2,328 |
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Search
Engine Spider, Index, And Ranking
 By
Shari
Thurow
Reader question: I think my site has been banned in Google. It used to have all
of these top positions for the past three years, and it suddenly disappeared.
Can you help?
Answer: In search engine optimization (SEO), there are many terms that are confusing.
For example, many firms that specialize in search engine advertising claim that
they are search engine marketers, even though search engine marketing encompasses
a wide variety of skills (search engine optimization, directory paid inclusion,
search engine paid inclusion, vertical search, and search engine advertising).
In SEO, the terms spider/crawler, index, and rank have three completely different
meanings. This article will address the different meanings, and why each term
is important in the optimization process.
Search engine spiders
Search engine spiders are also known as crawlers. Search engine spiders find and
fetch Web pages, and build a list of words found on each Web page.
 Read
the Full Article
About the Author:
Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service
search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted
from her book, Search Engine Visibility (http://www.searchenginesbook.com)
published in January 2003 by New Riders Publishing Co. Shari can be reached at
shari@grantasticdesigns.com.
Shari
Thurow Answers SEO Questions |
Google's New Update
Today's post comes from DriWashSolutions.
They have noticed that Google has updated
their directory again, and it appears that they have gone back to an older
version. Their site was steadily moving up in rank before this happened and now
they have slipped back
down. Think you can help DriWashSolutions out? Tell us your
thoughts at WebProWorld.
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Google
Directory "Update"
By DriWashSolutions
It appears that the Big G has "updated" their directory again. This time, it appears
as though they've reverted back to where they where before they reverted back
the last time!
So, all the ground that my site made up was lost with the previous "update", and
my rankings went down accordingly. Now, hopefully I can get back to where I was
before the last "reversion". Most of this was due to the fact that I was in DMOZ
(which also updated) and the with previous reversal, I wasn't listed.
Anyone else experience this type of fluctuation?
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"Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then
you can let go when you want to."
- Josh Billings
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I've had both msnbot and googlebot get 406 errors when they
access XML newsfeeds generated by a Moveable Type blog. Not sure why...anyone
seen this problem before?
-alienzhavelanded
Comment
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User: OtitO
Rating: WebPro Poster
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