Jeff's Online Marketing Thoughts

A Potential Rival For Google

Here is an interesting idea on a project in the works. The founder of Wikipedia is working with Amazon.com to create a new Search Engine to take on Google. Their idea is based on the same concept that  has made Wikipedia  so successful, thousands of human editors. The thought is that humans can create more relevant search results than the computer algorithms at Google and others.

There are obvious flaws with Google, but their rise was due to the relevance of search results. But in recent months, there have been more issues of people exploiting the holes in Google. With thousands of humans checking sites and saying if it is relevant or not, that could easily become the missing piece that Google is lacking.

One of the interesting things with this is Amazon's involvement. Earlier this year they shut down their search engine, A9.com, because it wasn't seeing any growth. Amazon is obviously still looking to get into the space, and they understand what the future of the Internet is search. However, they don't want to rely on Google, they want their own piece of the search pie.

This is going to be very interesting to watch in the coming months to see how it develops and how others like Google and Yahoo respond.

Official word from those starting the company can be read here.

Career Manifesto from gapingvoid

Great post at gapingvoid, The Career Manifesto.

They are all great, but if I had to pick one as the best to give you a taste it would be #4:

4. Although your title may be the same, the job that you were hired to do three years ago is probably not the job you have now. When you are just coasting and not thinking several steps ahead of your responsibilities, you are in dinosaur territory and a meteor is coming.

Read the whole thing, then print out a copy and tape it up where you can read it every day. Then send it to 10 friends or co-workers. Everyone should read this and take note, if everyone followed this, imagine what work would be like then?

Redesigning Your Site - Think About SEO

Every couple of years, you should think about redesigning your site. With the Internet, there is always new technology and fun gadgets that can make your Web site much more engaging for your users. Often a redesign doesn't take into account the work you have done to this point to get your site ranked with Google and friends. Top Rank has a great post on things to think about when changing the design of your site.  The big thing you need to consider is that pages have names and identities to search engines. When you change, you need to help the search engine to go from your old pages to your new pages. This will ensure all of your rankings are maintained, and hopefully improved.

Google Is Evil To Some, But Good For Partners

I've posted in the past that Google is making a lot of enemies because they are very secretive in some of their practices and they seem to be more about making money then their search results relevant. There is a good article by Kevin McArther where he talks about some of the good things Google is doing with partners like MySpace where they have helped both companies become more successful. There are going to be a lot of changes in the search market in the coming months and years. Best source for the latest information is at John Battelle's Searchblog.

4 Seconds To Make A First Impression

There is a great article on eMarketer.com that everyone should look at about Web characteristics that annoy users most. It is a great look at things not to do on your Web site, like pop-up ads, dead links and ineffective site search. The most interesting thing is how people's attention spans are getting shorter. If a page takes longer than 4 seconds to load, they are gone. That isn't a lot of time to dynamically generate all the interesting and targeted messages you want to create. It also speaks to people having shorter attention spans, which leads to the importance of good site search, clean navigation and a usable/pleasing design. First impressions are hard to change, and on the Internet, if you don't capture it first thing, they will never come back.

Are We Too Busy?

If you don't read Kathy Sierra's blog, her posts are great at making you stop and think about the simple things in life that make a big difference. I just read a great post of hers about Twitter, for those that aren't familiar with this site, people basically just post what they are doing every day. Seems stupid to me, yet thousands of people are on this site posting and reading. The connection that people have with wanting to be plugged in is remarkable. Phone isn't fast enough, we have pagers, cell phones, email, IM, and Text Messaging. We have so much going on that we never really reach a productive point in our day.

I think this ties into any type of business, and the example recently where Google shut down their Google Answers project is a good example why. It wasn't working and it caused more of a distraction instead of focusing on what they are really good at. I applaud Google for this because it doesn't happen enough today. Business and life is about making decisions on what you do, because in business you can't be everything to every customer and in life you can't do everything you want, because there are only so many hours in the day.

Two things I want everyone to do on Monday.
1) Pick one thing to stop doing. Is there a product that doesn't perform? A project dragging on? Something you have been wanting to do for a while but just haven't got to it? Stop it today. Quit pretending that it is important yet watch it move down the priority list for everything else going on.
2) Pick one thing and finish it this week. There are some projects that have been dragging on and are still important, but can't seem to get done. Give yourself a deadline, stop checking email every 10 minutes. Don't answer the phone when it rings, in fact turn the ringer off. Give yourself 2-3 periods in the day that you will check email and VM, and get that project done.

Stop using the excuse of interruptions because people don't interrupt you, you allow them to be interruptions.