Trending and Tracking the Blogosphere and Newsosphere

Feedback Loops:

Most searches occur at the main search sites and portals (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, etc.), but some people also search for temporal information, looking to find what is hot right now, or seeing how ideas spread. Not everyone can afford WebFountain, but we can all track what people are searching for or how stories are spreading using:

Feed Readers :
Subscribe to your favorite channels (or topical RSS feeds from news sites)

Blog Search:
search for recent news posted on blogs

Blog Buzz Index:
search for stories rapidly propagating through blogs

General Buzz & Search Volume:

Product Feedback:

News Search:

Test Ad Accounts & Test Media:

  • Google AdWords
  • Yahoo! Search Marketing
  • write press releases and submit them cheaply to see how much buzz & news search volume their is around a topic, using sites like PR Web or PR Leap
  • post on a topic
    • see if it spreads
    • check referrer data
    • Sometimes stories emerge out of the comments. The Save Jeeves meme that spread originated around the time the person who created that story commented on my post about Jeeves getting axed.
    • Don't forget to have friends tag your story on Del.ico.us and submit it to Digg.

Tagging:
Some are busy tagging what information they think is useful.

  • Delicious - personal bookmark manager.
  • Wink - tag search
  • Flickr - image tagging hottest tags
  • Tag Cloud - shows graphic version of hot tags
  • Furl
  • Technorati Tags
  • Digg Top Stories
  • Reddit
  • Ning
  • Squidoo
  • My Yahoo!
  • Google Search History (you can't see what others are tagging, but I bet it eventually will influence the search results - Google is already allowing people to share feeds they read)
  • more tagging sites come out daily...lots of others exist, like Edgio, StumbleUpon, Shadows, Kaboodle, etc etc etc
  • also look at the stuff listed in Google Base...there may or may not be much competition there, and Google Base is going to be huge.

Track Individual Stories and Conversations & Trends of a Blog:

Bloggers typically cite the original source OR the person who does the most complete follow up.

Blog Trends:
See if a blog is gaining or losing marketshare and compare blogs to one another

Overall Most Popular Blogs and Stories:

Did I miss anything? Am sure I did. Please comment below.

Here are earlier stories from this series:

Syndication and How News Spreads

A while ago I started publishing bits of an article that I intended to finish quickly, but life slowed me down. Here were the first parts

Why Bloggers Hate SEOs
Why SEOs Should Love Bloggers
Dynamic Sites and Social Feedback
Controlling Data and Helping Consumers Make it Smarter
Small vs Big and Voice in Brand

I am going to see if I can finish up the article today. Here is the next piece:

How News Spreads:

News has to start from somewhere. It doesn't really matter if it comes from blogs or traditional media. A few things that are important with both publishing formats are

  • both have incentives to get the scoop or report on stories early
  • both have audiences who can further spread your message
  • both are fairly viral
  • both have lots of legit link popularity
  • getting viral marketing via blogs or news coverage is something that most people will not be able to replicate

Eventually if the story spreads the feedback network becomes the next round of news. If one or two well known reporters write your story other journalists and bloggers may feel like they are missing out if they do not cover it.

The story about me getting sued was picked up by another blogger, then BusinessWeek, then the WSJ. About a few hundred blog citations followed that. Sometimes news that goes a bit national comes back local, and even then you get a bonus links. A Pittsburgh paper mentioned I was sued. That story was syndicated on a Detroit paper, and even got a mention in the blog of the local paper.

Newspapers love to syndicate content from each other to lower costs. Sometimes they even syndicate things that don't make sense because they need fill to surround their ads. I have even seen an Arizona column featuring local Rhode Island bloggers.

Google Adlinks: Selling User Trust on Bait and Switch Targeting

I have not tested Google Adlinks on many of my sites much, but there are other sites that talk about me in threads.

I was sorta curious how Google picked "Aaron Wall SEO Book" as a link topic and wanted to see what ads they display for it.

I have so many relevancy points for those types of searches:

  • I rank #1 for either phrase or them both together

  • My conversion rate for those searches is amazing and I have Google Analytics enabled so they know how amazingly high the conversion rates are.
  • If you search for either of those phrases (or the phrases together) I am at worst #2 on AdWords (am typically #1).
  • I have AdSense content ads enabled with a wide variety of those types of terms in it and am nowhere near my daily budget on that ad campaign

and yet when I clicked that Aaron Wall SEO Book adlink I did not appear in the ad search results. I also clicked the SEO Inc. adlink and their ad was #9 for their own trademark name.

I realize to Google it is all just math, numbers, money-in-the-bank, yada, yada, but if it is wrong for competitors to use trademark terms in ad copy how wrong (and perhaps even a bit unethical really - since search engines want to push the bullshit ethics angle) is it for Google to create adlink searches using trademarked terms to drive them and potentially not list the trademark sites or any editorial search results?

Is that legitimate comparative advertising? What would Sony think if Google delivered Playstation adlinks that delivered ads for nothing but XBox games. What happens if Yahoo! sells a link named Google that leads to transexual porn ads? Where is the line drawn in the sand?

Is everyone that develops a legitimate brand forced into paying Google through the nose for Adlinks on their products or brands so they don't have Google flush their brand equity down the toilet?

I bet if you search around there are probably some interesting adlinks that are complete bait and switch on trademark terms. Is there any cases associated with the liability of doing that? Should there be?

I am a big believer in aggressive advertising, but is it deceptive for Google to use a trademark term in a link to drive a query to a bunch of ads that may have nothing to do with that topic?

How is this Google adlinks technique any better than typosquatting?

Google Movies OneBox

Not sure if this has been mentioned anywhere yet, but Google created a movies Onebox

Google Movies Onebox.

Philipp also noticed them testing drop down home page navigation.

Johnny Cash Biography AdSense Targeting on Amazon.com

Recently there was a biopic by the name of Walk the Line featuring Johnny Cash's life. The movie is so popular that the soundtrack and 2 of Johnny Cash's CDs are on the Amazon top 25 CDs list.

Johnny Cash's autobiography is a top 500 selling book on Amazon and yet the page had the following ads:

Off targeted AdSense ads.

I thought AdSense was better at targeting than that? Especially for such currently commercially popular and in the news topics? Hmm.

That certainly shows Google still has a long way to go to improve their targeting and profits from contextual ads.

As a special bonus, if you like music you really ought to watch this video.

PPC Spam Eating Soul of Web Content

"I sold my soul for a quarter a click"
- a closet millionaire

Brett Tabke recently posted in his blog a definition of web spam:

So much graphical and textual noise that you can't determine whether you are clicking on a paid advertisement or an actual old-fashioned honest link. When ads are so thick, that you must study the page carefully to determine where the content is at.

That is probably a good secret to highly profitable affiliate marketing or contextual marketing of any type: put the ads where people are thinking they are going to find content. That is what Google teaches people to do. It makes more money. Who can fault us for doing it?

Eventually web users may adjust, but there is some serious CPC to be made until they do.

Brett also mentions that building better authority allows you to get away with being even spammier:

There is a point where ads become so pervasive, that they over power the content and hurt the credibility of a site. If you have a authoritarian site, then that point is much higher than most would believe. I know of one site that has over 25 ads on the page right now and is still considered a top site in it's field.

Which is a great reason why it is worth buying older highly trusted sites, or being lily white off the start. Get the trust. Then get the money.

A while ago I posted that there was a noticable trend where it seemed like there was a shift away from content optimization to content creation. It seems many sites are founded upon the principal that the only purpose of content is to get ads indexed.

It is amazing how much control search engines have over the viability of many publishing business models. As long as I still have at least one or two high quality channels I don't think I will feel guilty creating a good number of low quality spamesq ones. If Google wants to fund content pollution does it make sense to by a hybrid car? ;)

How do Flash Sites Rank Well?

SEO Question: As a long time SEO myself, there is one thing that has me mystified. If you do a search in Google under "chocolate", Godiva comes up #1, Hershey comes up #2. Yet, if you look at their home pages, they have almost no text there. In fact, Godiva has no real text at all. Yes, they have PR6, but still, how is it that these "big boys" come up on top with a home page devoid of any SEO or real text? Is it all links?

SEO Answer: For competitive queries Google's relevancy algorithms are probably about 99% linkage data. Those brands are so strong that their linkage data means they do not need page copy to rank for general relevant terms. Should Starbucks rank for coffee? Few sites are more relevant.

Google does not aim to show the most optimized content. They want to list the most relevant content.

By having limited page copy they may end up missing out on ranking for longer related queries since it is a bit hard for search engines to make documents relevant for long multi word phrases that don't occur in the anchor text or page copy, but for general queries they can still do great.

This is not 100% bright here, but about a year ago I moved the host for one of my sites prior to fully uploading the site at the new location. The files were rather slow to upload and Google cached the home page while the site was not there and the site still ranked #6 for search engine marketing.

Sometimes you will hear some SEOs whine about the updates and others claim that their techniques are more effective because the clients see more stable results. In hyper competitive markets many times the result stability of a particular site has as much to do with client selection as the skill level of the SEO. The result stability in competitive markets has a lot to do with how strong the brand and traditional marketing a company has. Ultimately the search engines aim to emulate end users. Those brands that have significant mindshare in the real world should rank well in the search results as well unless the relevancy algorithms are crap.

A few tips for using flash (if you must use it):

  • Create descriptive useful page titles and meta descriptions.

  • Embed the flash into HTML pages and use regular text links on the page if possible.
  • If it does not screw up the design too bad add HTML text to the page.
  • Create textual representations of what is in the flash using noembed tags.
  • Instead of including everything in one flash file it may make sense to break the content into different flash files so you can create different HTML pages around the different ideas contained in it.
  • Macromedia has a search engine SDK, although I think most sites are still best off using texual representations of the flash files on the HTML content of pages
  • Mike Knott also recommended this JavaScript plugin for flash detection. It is XHTML compliant, and, so long as you use it properly, it is better than the Noembed tag.

Donating to Charities for Link Building

SEO Question: I read your book and it said you could get links from charities. Do you have a list of the best charity websites to get on or ones you have gotten on? It feels kind of awkward to ask a charity if they will give you a link back if you pay money, that's why I want to contact ones you have already contacted.

SEO Answers: Not sure how good of an idea this is to answer this one publicly, but why not, eh.

There is a thin line with the etiquette to it, so its really something you need to research and feel out. It is not something you just want to work off a list with.

Search for stuff like

  • sponsors

  • donors
  • donations
  • please visit our sponsors
  • thanks to the following donors
  • etc

After you find a few websites that are leveraging the donation angle
you can follow their paths by doing a Yahoo! linkdomain search for their domain and text that would indicate they were working the donor angle (for example linkdomain:www.site.com sponsors).

A few things I would also say about the donation angle:

  • If your site is high profile and the donation cost is far less than the value of the link then quickly others will follow where you have been to lower the value of that link.

  • If you do not have many legitimately earned quality links and most of your links come from spammy bits of the web (like junk web directories and scraper sites) and donation pages then that might mess up your link profile (since your co citation data will put you in the neighborhood of a bunch of spammy sites).
  • The best donation links to get are things that are a one time occurring event AND on topic. After the one time events have passed you do not have to worry about the page becoming filled with thousands of spammy links. If it is on topic it is icing on the cake as well. Here is a great example: a cat site or pet site helping buy the new server for the Kitten Wars site.
  • Sponsoring newsletters and the like can be cool as well, as those tend to get less links per page. Our link suggestion tool may help you come up with a variety of other link getting ideas.
  • Donations that do not look like donations are great. The more abstract your donation the better off you are. So for example if you donate an information product you made that might be hard for others to find and replicate that link (or know why a particular person linked at you). The same is true for those who donate hosting, web design, or logos to great causes. Some people even work eBay auctions into their donation angle.
  • Even if search engines do not count the donation links for a long time they still are usually cheap enough that the ROI should be there if your business model is sound. Again though they should only be one part of your overall link profile.

More Free SEO Tools

I added a bunch more SEO tools to the free SEO Tools page. Most of the new tools are geared toward beginners and are perhaps a bit boring, but
I like some of them, including:

Some of the tools could be quite a bit better, but I bought a bunch of them for cheap, almost just for the heck of it because they were cheap. Let me know if you find any of them useful. I already know some tweaks I want to make when time becomes available.

The next build of Backlink Analyzer is coming along slowly but surely. Am hoping to have a cross platform version of it with a few more features before the month is out.

Couple New SEO / SEM Seminars

Jim Boykin is hosting a free SEO gathering on January 18th in Troy NY. Rumor has it Jim is buying the beer as well.

Dan Thies is hosting an 8 week linking teleseminar from January 18 to March 8. It costs $895 to attend. Dan provides personal access and good value for money in his teleconferences.

Perry Marshall is hosting a 3 day seminar focused on AdWords. It will be in Chicago on April 7-9 and costs $1795.

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