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Google
Contest May Jam Up Coders
Google's Code Jam Europe wants to find the best and brightest among European Java
and C programmers, but its scheduling leaves something to be desired.
Lauren's
Right Knee And XML
Tim Bray co-edited the XML specification, and also crafted one piece of software
called Lark, which was the first XML processor; until recently Bray had kept Lark
under wraps.
Today
Talking Xbox, Tomorrow Terminator
So uh, it looks like somebody has found a way to let your Xbox 360 blog about
you. The…machine…will blog…about you. I'm gonna need a rope,
a chair, and somebody to blog my last words; it's time to go.
Microsoft's
Controversial Good Deed
Starting in July, Microsoft will be sending African teaching organizations a lower
priced version of the Windows OS that is supposed to work on the cheaper machines
it's supplying.
FIM
Picks Up A Two-For-One
The latest trophies from Fox Interactive Media's (FIM) shopping spree are online
karaoke joint kSolo.com and social media/topical news/ content aggregator thingie
Newroo Inc. Yes, I used the word "thingie." It's Monday.
Google
Suggest Has News For You
In the spirit of the one-touch automatic car window, Google software engineer
Jon McAlister has brought the Google Suggest function to Google News so news seekers
can save the carpel tunnel and put their impatience to better practice.
Typos
Spell Google Cash, eBay Discounts
Depending on one's usage, misspelling a term on the Internet can land a surfer
in a nest of advertising pages or a sweet price on an eBay auction.
Spam
King Pinched; Out-Narc'ed By Hackers
The Department of Justice detained the so-called "Spam King," Alan Ralsky,
and is pressuring him for information that could bring down a huge network of
spammers. News of Ralsky's arrest was quick to reach hacker networks and send
them running for cover.
Sifry
Speaks On Languages And Tagging
In part two of Technorati founder David Sifry's State of the Blogosphere notes,
we find the blog search engine tracks a couple million more blogs than it did
two weeks ago.
Yahoo
Takes On CNet With Gadgets
Yahoo's latest website, Yahoo! Tech, debuted with a heavy focus on consumer electronics
and a dominant advertising display on the front page.
The
Strange Case Of Lance Dutson
A Maine-based blogger has been sued for copyright infringement, defamation, and
libel for posting complaints about a Maine tourism campaign.
Microsoft
Tool Enhances New York Times
Through the Windows Presentation Foundation technology found in the forthcoming
Vista operating system, Microsoft's "Times Reader" will improve the
newspaper's online readability across multiple platforms.
Del.icio.us
Tastes Flickr
Some new additions to the Delicious bookmarking service, now owned by Yahoo, has
incorporated a couple of new features for its users. Yahoo's social media aspirations
led the company...
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Tuesday May 02, 2006 |
Reality show contestants don't vanish into fictional poofs at the show's conclusion.
They're not the cast of Friends; there is life after the show. Chip Arndt,
half of the winning duo of Amazing Race 4, left reality stardom to set
up Merchant Advantage, an e-commerce company small businesses need to know about.
Editor's Note: Online feeds can be crucial for the e-marketer.
Do you outsource your feed management or do it in house? Is Merchant Advantage
worth a look? Discuss at WebProWorld.
Chip got in touch with us to talk about Merchant
Advantage's Channel Management, a hosted solution to help small and medium
sized businesses (SMB) deal with managing their feeds to shopping comparison sites,
measuring click performance and return on investment (ROI).
Contacting an e-business publication to hock your product is not unusual. If you saw my inbox, you'd cringe at the almost spam-level deluge of press releases. Arndt's reality celebrity status got my attention, but it was the relevance of his company that kept it.
The price didn't hurt either: $245 per month for a service bigger companies drop thousands for; a service that throws your marketing team, drowning in catalogue minutia, a lifeline so they can create.
Or better for some, it keeps information and analysis in-house. The tool is designed to cut out consultants and middlemen by automating certain tasks while bolstering the seller's decision-making ability.
Mechant Advantage boasts partnerships with eBay, ProStores, Become.com, Shopzilla, Gifts.com, and PriceGrabber, among others, all of whom have their own feed submission processes, informational and technical requirements. Merchant Advantage has addressed this time consuming (and difficult to measure) issue by allowing clients to upload product information and specify the desired channels in Channel Management using a dashboard.
And, well, from what Arndt says, that's it. They manage and configure those feeds for you, measure profitability by channel, performance by product, and report to clients what's doing best, where, and why. Though they do all that, Arndt still calls it a "do-it-yourself tool for merchants."
For example, let's say you decide to feed your house appliances to PriceGrabber. People are clicking, but not buying. Instead of pulling the product, it may be better to redirect it to another shopping destination site after deciding what is working and not working.
"You can outsource that to someone to analyze," said Arndt. "But why don't you have the power to do that yourself?"
It may be the sheer volume of competition on a site like Yahoo Shopping, and not your product, he suggested. "You might do better at Become. If you're one of the only ones listed for you product there, you may have a better conversion rate"
The tool allows testing products in smaller places, rather than doing huge product launches, to gauge effective placement. If it's not working at Shopzilla, pull it down, and try another site.
Channel Management allows sellers to be very selective and targeted with feeds. Instead of sending a whole catalog, a merchant can send select items to specific shopping sites, with pricing and colors, and set it to update, say, every three weeks.
Merchant Advantage emails clients when feeds aren't working. A Froogle listing, for example, may be dumped because of the words "free shipping" in the description tag. If they don't support a certain feed, Arndt says they can add it.
One of the goals, he says, is to take on the online consultant by creating a tool that makes simple feed maintenance, well, simple." You wouldn't hire an electrician to come in and change the light bulbs in your brick and mortar store," said Arndt.
In fact, says Chip, that it's complicated is the main selling point of companies you would normally outsource feed management to. Arndt advises to take out the complications and save money.
"We've found that people say, 'Wow, this is really easy. It's just a matter of learning the tools.'"
About
the Author:
Jason is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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In a report titled "Online Banking 2006: Surfing to the Bank," the Pew Research Center declared that the number of Internet users who bank online is on the rise. Unfortunately, their most recent in-house data appears to be from December of 2005.
From that poll, Pew concluded that "fully 43 percent of internet users, or about 63 million American adults, bank online." In 1998, only 13 percent, or "about 10 million American adults," said they paid bills or banked online. However, something about the phrasing of their 1998 findings doesn't sound quite right.
The official report says that "in 1998 . . . the Pew Research Center switched to asking all internet users . . . ." The italics are mine - I find the word "all" to be a sticking point. I'm an Internet user, and I haven't ever been contacted by Pew. Neither have any of the other people in this office (or at least those without shouting distance).
Read the rest of the article.
About
the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news. |
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A Look At Linking Strategies
One of the many benefits of running an increasingly popular ebusiness forum is
some of the various experts who become members. Take, for instance, Bill Hartzer.
I'm sure I've said a number of complimentary things before in this or other WPW
sections about Bill, but that doesn't mean they don't still apply. He is a veteran
of the Internet marketing conference circuit, with a great deal of knowledge when
it comes to SEO/SEM.
In today's issue, Bill provides us with an important approach to link campaigns
and how they can affect your site. The information provided here almost makes
Bill's latest apart of the required reading list for beginning search marketers.
Take a look at what's being said below.
|| Chris||
Linking
Campaigns Lead to Increased Online Visibility
A linking campaign is a necessary step in the overall success of your website.
You can put up a website, have great web design, and have great content; but without
other websites linking to your website no one will know about it. Furthermore,
the search engines rely on links in order to find new websites and new web pages.
A proper linking campaign will not only increase your website’s online visibility
and traffic, it will allow the search engines to find your site and help your
website get indexed.
Back in the early 1990s, when there were no search engines (way before Google
even existed), we "surfed" the web. We relied on other websites that
had "link lists" that pointed to other websites that were "worthy
enough" of being linked-to or were simply recommended. When we "surfed"
the web we went from one website to another to another based on links. And if
you had a good website you could typically get links from other websites that
would ultimately bring you more "hits".
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WebPro Question: |
I have recently started a new SEO job and the company meta tag structure has a
no archive tag in it... Can anyone tell me if adding a no archive meta tag is
a good thing or a bad thing?
- inertia
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