Does Speed matter?
Absolutely, speed matters. Google have whole hydro electric dams dedicated to speedy delivery of search results. Browser developers burn out trying to load info faster than ever, and users spend a lot of money per month subscribing to ISP plans.
As a guy, a webmaster and a former educator and businessman, the speed of internet access is a major deal. The easier you can get online and the faster you can search for and find what you need, the more functional you are. And on a national scale, a speedy internet network, makes for a speedy and efficient work force with access to untold amounts of useful information to make you smarter and more productive and more alive.
Read more about this at Speed Matters, a very cool almost whistle blower type site, revealing just how backward the greatest technological nation on earth really is. Sorry, America, but it is true!
I am on a Verizon USB "high speed" modem right now, and that drives me potty. It is so bloody slow, and demoralising at times. A real disincentive to do stuff - and to think it is much faster than dial-up.
How fast are the visitors to this blog?
In Google Analytics you can see a breakdown of your visitors' profile, including their internet connection speeds. How fast are visitors searching, surfing, connecting to your site and heading out? It looks like the majority are still on doddery dial-up networks, but there is everything in between too, right up to insane mainframe connectivity.
OC3 - the fastest ever visit to this site
According to this definition OC3 is the fiber optic backbone of the internet. So an OC3 hit is like a visit from God! In my case however, they stayed 0.00.00 seconds, so I wasn't exactly blessed by their presence.
Optical carrier levels (OCx) start at OC1 and are planned to go up to OC48 2.4GHz per second. Visitors will be leaving before they even arrive.
Let's hear it for T1
T1 was the first digital service of use to man and beast, and like all good things, it is still in use today.
The T-carrier system, introduced by the Bell System in the U.S. in the 1960s, was the first successful system that supported digitized voice transmission. The original transmission rate (1.544 Mbps) in the T-1 line is in common use today in Internet service provider (Internet service provider) connections to the Internet.
Yet again, I guess I was pinged or they felt some bad vibe and left before they arrived, because the visitors clocked up zero seconds.
Cable connection
Now we are talking.
Coaxial cable was invented in 1929 and first used commercially in 1941. AT&T established its first cross-continental coaxial transmission system in 1940.
Three cheers for DSL
Here is the perfect balance between speed and discerning readership. Fast connection, and the patience to read a couple of articles per visit. These visitors, I like! And this is another succinct explanation of what is going on with this type of internet connection.
ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) is the form of DSL that will become most familiar to home and small business users. ADSL is called "asymmetric" because most of its two-way or duplex bandwidth is devoted to the downstream direction, sending data to the user. Only a small portion of bandwidth is available for upstream or user-interaction messages.
POTS would drive me potty
DSL leads us on nicely to dial up or Plain Old telephone system. The biggest percentage of visitors to this site come proabbly via dial-up. They spend hours on the site, because they have no choice, with it loading at 2 words per minute. They come back for more, too. Thank you, I salute you.
What speed are you searching the internet at? Let me know.
btw Here is a full set of possible data rates available in the world today.
Wordtracker keywords: the key to good copy.
A Small Orange web hosting offer fantastic customer support for website owners.
Need a hot friend to take your mind off those burning search engine issues? Check out Adult FriendFinder
.
Sarah Palin hit the big time when she was put forward as the right hand woman to the POW they may soon be calling PRES. Interestingly, SarahPalin.com does not produce any search results worth a vote, unless you think a forbidden result is a positive thing.
As the Search Marketing Gurus point out, the Republicans are missing out big time on this Sarah Palin internet search marketing opportunity. It is only the internet here, a place where millions find all the info they need to make up their minds about anything from Presidents to prostitutes to polish!
Searching for people by name
John Chow, one of the bigger names on the internet, (if you are into making money online - which I am not), highly recommends the use of your own-name domain. Once you become famous, or infamous, people search for you by name and your personalised site name should appear near the top of the Search Page Results. (That is the theory, this is the practice if you try to become famous on Google on the back of questionable popularity building!)
Poor Sarah Palin dot com is way down the list when you search for her by name. She probably hasn't been optimising the site with abundant link love. Although, perhaps we are making a mistake and forgetting she is a woman of the world, and she has an alternative domain, SarahPalin.eu? Or, maybe this dearth of online search success is toughening her up, making her learn the hard way that her party has no clue how to use the internet? This internet flop may be giving her a sense of how it feels when you fail to attract the demographic you have been planted to attract. So many questions, so many answers awaiting you, if you would only Google.
Obama's online dirty work unnecessary
It could be quite funny if one of Obama's team actually had the nouse to hijack the Sarah Palin domain name and fill it full of educational information - with a slight twist, of course. But somehow, Obama doesn't need to hijack Sarah Palin's dot com name and plant despicable ideas in the minds of his people now dithering and wondering if they shouldn't change camp at the 11th hour. No, Obama can relax and stay squeaky clean, because people with no affiliation whatsoever to his cause are already doing a good enough job of discrediting her with long tail keyword cramming.
If you search for Sarah Palin supports, there is no mention of her choice in bra, but there is a hail of bullets from sites ripping into her history of bear shooting from helicopters, creationist education and eloping. What other loosely connected phrases will emerge from the barrel of politically motivated search engine marketers who actually know how to harness the power of the internet? Beyond "Sarah Palin nude" an attempt to get votes for McCain's right hand woman by playing on the right hand of men, we must wait and see.
Meanwhile, as a person who is allowed to pay taxes but is not allowed to vote in America, I will stop searching for Sarah Palin dot com and leave her to float on merit to the top of the search results.
Do you read, and more importantly, believe what you read online about Sarah Palin? Let me know the strangest search result you found.
Wordtracker keywords: the key to good copy.
A Small Orange web hosting offer fantastic customer support for website owners.
Need a hot friend to take your mind off those burning search engine issues? Check out Adult FriendFinder
I run my RSS feed through Feedburner, and as a result I get to see a lot of traffic-related stats. The most interesting for me is the number of bots crawling the site. It has grown steadily from Day one, and yesterday this was a list of digital visitors.
Looking at another stat on Google analytics, there were more bots than real visitors to the blog yesterday! Luckily though, I have around 20 visitors who have subscribed to the feed so far, so I feel I am still writing predominantly for humans!
If you read this post on the homepage and want to keep up with regular posts from your Google reader, feel free to subscribe too.
Wordtracker keywords: the key to good copy.
A Small Orange web hosting offer fantastic customer support for website owners.
Need a hot friend to take your mind off those burning search engine issues? Check out Adult FriendFinder
.
Another week, another 6 posts added to the pile of human knowledge of search and search engines. On the 7th day it is time to step off the gas and take stock of what other bloggers have written.
Flower etailers have some pretty impressive conversion rates, according to Invesp in their article entitled Analysis of the Top Converting Online Retailers: Best of Ecommerce
In May, ProFlowers also made it to the number spot on Neilsen’s Online Marketing Charts with a whopping 35.7% conversion rate.
When you forget your wife's birthday, there is no choice but to do a search for flowers, and buy whatever plant life looks alive enough to get you out the shit. No need to cost compare, no time to procrastinate, perfect customers for internet-based retailers.
Interestingly, though, real-world flower businesses are way more successful in terms of revenue and pure business. A lesson to all who forget the millions without internet access or no interest in navigating the e-commerce world on a dial-up connection.
Shankri-La has posted a video of Google reader in Plain English, or more succinctly, the idiot's guide to Google Reader. Maybe idiot is a bit strong, but when you see the approach by the producers, Common Craft, you may be forgiven for thinking that every other presentation you ever saw was made by idiots with no concept of the "simplicity is genius" concept.
Money-Making Mike knows that everyone loves free, and bloggers should love all the help they can get with keywords. So, The Free SEO Keyword Tool post is a masterpiece in matching demand with supply.
Bang in a topic and the machine will give you a list of keywords to die for. In his opinion, based on plenty of success, it is the long tail keywords (terms that are loosely related to your main topic) that attract considerable search engine traffic. That is true in my experience too. Ursula Martinez and Chinese Porn have been stellar performers on my neglected Pisstakers site. Who would have thought!
And as a closing line, please check out the answers provided by Mr McGrath to 5 SEO questions that have been niggling me. If you care to add to / expand on any of them, feel free to share the knowledge.
Wordtracker keywords: the key to good copy.
A Small Orange web hosting offer fantastic customer support for website owners.
Need a hot friend to take your mind off those burning search engine issues? Check out Adult FriendFinder
.
There is a saying that the more you know the less you know. Therefore, the reality is, I don't know what I am doing with search and search engines, I blog by the seat of my pants, I am not an authority, I have no answers to these 5 questions. Help.
Can you help please? Over the course of running this blog on search and search engines,I surf around the web on a manic voyage of self-discovery in order to better pass on what I have learnt. I come across concepts and points that I don't fully understand. For the most part I try to find the answer myself, googling like a good 'un, scratching my skull, convincing myself that it must be so easy I can't see the point... but here are a few questions that have been niggling away at my gray cells, driving me nuts. Do you know the answers?
What does it mean? "companies will keep buying up their own search terms" I understand the words, but what is the search marketing concept being referred to here? Taken from this post on search engines and search marketing in Canada by Techvibes.
Why do some affiliate marketing companies not accept new blogs? Surely there is no extra work for them, and from little acorns large oaks grow...
What is the general dynamic behind why Feedburner subscriber numbers fluctuate daily? Is it the title of the content you post, or the schedule of your subscribers, or just the way it is, get over it?
Why is there such a discrepancy between Awstats and Google Analytics visitor numbers? Surely a visitor is a visitor is a statistic that could earn you money?
Does Google place all labels and tags from Wordpress etc in the Supplemental Index, or is it just an incestuous anti-Blogger thing?
Any constructive input would put me (and plenty of readers too, I suspect) on the right track with a fuller appreciation of the search world. If that isn't incentive enough, I will of course be your grateful beeyatch for life.
The problem with so much info on a blog, is ensuring that users can find what they are looking for. You need to integrate search options into your blog. Luckily there are a few in-your-face ways of doing just that. And remember - top right for your main search box!
Integrated Google search
Google do a search bar that can search the web and / or your site. I had one on The Pisstakers and it worked well. In fact sometimes it was easier for me to find a post from the search bar than to go to my blog editor.
Google custom search is finding new ways to integrate search for Blogger, which is quite useful.
Configure this widget on your Blogger blog and you can immediately search not just your blog posts, but across all the link lists/blogrolls you've set up on your blog and the links you've made from your posts.
Yahoo's new search platform could help blogs
Yahoo do a site search builder tool, you have to pay for it. Fortunately, they are discontinuing this idea in October 15th 2008! Good idea. I am not a believer in paying up front for search-related software. Not because I don't think people should be financially rewarded for their software, but because that pay-up-front business model is dead. In fact, what were they thinking, when you realise that Yahoo gets some pay per click or similar revenue every time you perform a search. Idiots, but not for much longer.
Search Monkey to the rescue with a whole new realm of options for search applications that no doubt will make their way onto a blog platform near you.
Search Flickr
To Yahoo's credit they also provide search results for your Flickr account. So if you enter your Flickr user ID into the Yahoo Images search box, and then copy the final URL and place that link somewhere on your blog, your users can search all your Flickr photos. Thanks to Loren Baker for that hint.
Swicki search integration
The Swicki search tool is a cloud-based search reference. You can add your own keywords, or if anyone else inputs a search term in your blog's Swicki search bar, Swicki will keep a record of it. If the keyword is relevant to your site, you can add it quite easily to the cloud. As in the Funny Tech Terms swicki, other people can contribute, which makes it a more valuable resource yet.
You can also make a bit of money from a Swicki by adding Adsense and receiving 50% of the income from a results page coming from a search on your site. And for fun, they value your Swicki based on number of searches. What's not to like.
Labels
Keyword clouds are a glorified tag or label list, a long time accepted way to fill your side bar and help visitors find items on your site. I am still unsure of the SEO implications of tags, as Google are still indexing new tags on this blog in the Supplemental Index. Up to 23 now!
Integrate RSS feed search?
RSS feeds are all the rage for searching the entire internet for relevant bloggers. At the moment you can share lists of feeds by offering your OPML files (the one that modern feed readers will generate for you under Export subscriptions options) for download.
That is a bit cumbersome and I was wondering if you could create an iFrame on your blog and link somehow to the search bar in your personal RSS feed reader? Or a clever mashup web 2.0 solution, maybe? Then your blog visitors could search for posts from all your favorite blogs using certain keywords - straight form your blog.
Twitter search results
Twitter is like a search engine these days. I have never tweeted in my life, but I know of people who do. They seem fairly balanced individuals. With a big enough following, you can ask a question and get a lot of answers. Those answers, aka search results, can be displayed on your blog.
That is the extent of what I can think of to integrate search directly into your blog. Got any more?
I have a few ideas coming up for other search options that could be placed just outside your blog.
Wordtracker keywords: the key to good copy.
A Small Orange web hosting offer fantastic customer support for website owners.
Need a hot friend to take your mind off those burning search engine issues? Check out Adult FriendFinder
.
I am afraid I have never been to Canada, or, is it, I am afraid, therefore I have never been to Canada. Whatever the philosophical angle, I thought I would mention the topic of Canadian Blog Search Engines. (CBSE's)
Google first brought CBSE's to my attention via Analytics. It was the most searched-for keyword phrase of visitors to my site. Surprising, seeing as I haven't adressed this particular niche. Soooo let's take this one bit at a time.
Canada
As I said, I have never been to Canada, so what do I know, but this guy has a good opinion of the country - and Canada's attitude to search.
Canada for my money is the greatest nation in the world. We have the beautiful Rocky Mountains, prairies, lakes, rivers and streams. (We have one third of the world's fresh water supply.) We have hockey, we created Superman and we invented the telephone. We take care of the old and the sick and each other. We use search more than anyone else, someone just forgot to mention that to the advertisers in Canada.
OK, so I see references that could apply to Britain in that eulogy, (was the greatest nation on earth, beautiful rocks, priories, Lake District, the Thames, my mother played hockey as a girl, the NHS and they IM like nobody else on earth) but I get the idea about Canada being a cool place where the internet plays a major role in daily life. In fact...
Canadians use the Internet more than anyone else in the world. We perform more sophisticated queries, are more focused in our online behavior, and do more searches. So why then if you were a Canadian business targeting the Canadian marketplace would you not use search to reach your audience?
Wherever there is internet, there is a need for search, but there is a criticism leveled here that commercial sites don't harness the likes of Adsense search engine driven ads. Who knows why this is so. Perhaps the profitability of online businesses in Canada doesn't suffer because of this aversion to search marketing? Perhaps they don't see the sense in taking on search-related expenses just to grow a business to pay for those expenses. It wouldn't be the first time Canadians looked at things differently from their neighbors.
Canadian Blogs
If a company wants to educate itself on a topic, there is a wealth of blogs out there from specialists in the field. You just have to find them. I am of no use to anyone as a resource for Canada specific search blogs. For what it is worth, I read McGrath.ca on a regular basis, and used to peruse John Chow, till I grew sick of Chinese Canadian food shots and the insane amount of money that guy is making. So ends my library of blogs, north of the border.
But doing some search of my own, I see there is a whole raft of top Canadian blogs going for awards. I haven't read them, sorry. Looking through, however, I couldn't see much about tech in there. So perhaps the above criticism of commercial sites being search marketing averse is true, due to a lack of local info? Let's delve further in the Canadian blogger gene pool.
Canadian blog search engines
What where how why when tech blogs are there in Canada that talk about Search and search marketing? This Canadian blog search engine is somewhat sparse on the ground with its list of Canada blogs.
Moving on, Acrosscan, clever name for a Canadian search engine, but a bit of a dead end looking for Search marketing blogs, and Canadian search engine blogs wasn't much better. Frankly, I gave up and resorted to Google.ca.
The only trouble with the 250 strong list of search related blogs is - despite asking for Canadian web pages - this excellent Google result isn't Canada specific. So what am I to conclude from this quick meander into Canada?
Basically, I need to sharpen up my search skills, and / or Canadian companies really are struggling for a Canada specific pool of search related info. Anyone with a handle on this situation care to shed some light?
Wordtracker keywords: the key to good copy.
A Small Orange web hosting offer fantastic customer support for website owners.
Need a hot friend to take your mind off those burning search engine issues? Check out Adult FriendFinder
.
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