Guest blogger for Yoast Andre Scholten has come up with what I think is the best filter ever created for Google Analytics. He has given us a way to track keyword rankings!
The filter is so good it even has options of how deep to go, a choice between word rank by number or page number. Click now - rush to this one - everyone has to read this.
Guest blogger for Yoast Andre Scholten has come up with what I think is the best filter ever created for Google Analytics. He has given us a way to track keyword rankings!
The filter is so good it even has options of how deep to go, a choice between word rank by number or page number. Click now - rush to this one - everyone has to read this.
Hackers usually are smart, but can be really, really stupid. The person who hacked Twitter - not the Direct Message phishing expedition that started over the weekend - could have picked pretty much anyone else on the planet and be less concerned of being tracked down.
This person hacked President-elect Obama's Twitter account! There has to be Secret Service people - like the Diane Laine character in Untraceable - crawling through the internet tracking him/her down. That is if the person has not been quietly killed already (for my conspiracy theorist readers).
Barack's account was one of 33 hacked, according to the Twitter blog.
"This morning we discovered 33 Twitter accounts had been "hacked" including prominent Twitter-ers like Rick Sanchez and Barack Obama (who has not been Twittering since becoming the president elect due to transition issues). We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue. Rick, Barack, and others are now back in control of their accounts," the site stated.
If the Secret Service kill the person during the arrest, I have a nomination for the Darwin Awards.
It's a New Year, but we've got that same old economy from 2008. If you find yourself looking for a job in search, these five resources should be the foundation of your efforts:
Indeed.com - Culls results from a variety of jobs sites as well as job listings from company web sites. Searching here keeps you from having to go individually to a variety of sites. You can pull an RSS feed of your job search into your news reader, making your search process even faster. You'll find results from:
SEMPO
Monster
HotJobs (owned by Yahoo)
CareerBuilder
Dice
TalentZoo
Twitter Let your followers know you're looking for a job. I once did and had three leads in 24 hours. I got offers from all three. The Twitter community is generally a very compassionate bunch, raising money for good causes. Helping people find jobs is something I think we'll see a lot of in 2009 - 2010.
LinkedIn Not only does LinkedIn have its own job listings, but here you can many times find the people who are doing the hiring or at least work in Human Resources at the company you're interested in. Use your network to get introduced and create connections.
Craig's List Answering an ad for a Search Marketing Copywriter on Craig's List is how I got my start in search. Well, that and the great Marketing Don taking a chance on me.
Search Engine Watch Board - Rounding out the list is a completely shameless plug for our very own jobs board.
What resources do YOU recommend? Leave a comment and let us know!
Execs from Google and Microsoft are ponying up big time for President-elect Barack Obama's big day. On January 20, the former junior Senator from Illinois will become the 44th President of the United States.
Who from search is giving big for the shindig?
From Google:
Eric Schmidt (CEO) $25,000.00
Larry Page (Co-founder) $25,000.00
Marissa Mayer (Vice President, Search Products & User Experience) $25,000.00
Richard Costolo (former Feedburner CEO) $25,000.00
Chad Hurley (YouTube co-founder) $25,000.00
David Drummond (Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer) $25,000.00
From Microsoft:
Steven Ballmer (CEO) $50,000.00
Bradford Smith (Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, Legal & Corporate Affairs) $25,000.00
Craig Mundie (Chief Research and Strategy Officer) $25,000.00
Steven VanRoekel (Senior Director, Windows Server Solutions Group, Microsoft) $50,000.00
So far from Yahoo, one lone donation, from an attorney:
The reason this time is concerns over pornography. Of course, search engines don't host pornography on their sites, they simply provide links to searchers. If China feels it has a pornography problem, the origination of that problem begins with the searcher, not the engine.
Web sites and search engines that ignore their new found regulations will face penalties and possible closure.
Last week, Frank Watson reported to you that Steve Jobs health was in question. If you read a bunch of tech blogs, you've seen the rumors. Jobs once had cancer, and bloggers, journalists and Wall Street analysts have been wondering if it had returned because Jobs had lost a lot of weight.
The good news is that the cancer is not back. According to Fox Business (which I have on in the background, sorry no link yet, but check out the screen shot below) Steve Jobs has released a letter to shareholders acknowledging the weight loss and explaining that the doctors have finally determined that it is a hormonal imbalance. He is being treated and expects to gain the weight back.
This morning, I received a direct message from one of my Twitter friends. It was a very strange message. Check it out:
I clicked on the link, which lead to this:
I checked the Tweet stream of the friend who sent me the direct message. She said she had been fooled into following a phishing scam.
She wasn't the only one. Originally, the blogspot page directed people to another site which looked like the Twitter homepage. They signed in, giving away their user name and password. Of course, this helps spread the phishing scam via direct messages.
These phishing scams hit MySpace pretty hard once it got popular. Now, it looks like we have to watch out for them on Twitter.
Phishing schemes kind of took the shine off the once popular MySpace. Looking back, I think it's one of the reasons I stopped hanging out on the social network. I saw so many messages that weren't from my friends even though it looked as though they were. I haven't noticed the same on LinkedIn or Facebook yet.
If phishing hits Twitter consistently, then it might just be their demise.
What do you think? Did you get an unusual direct message? Think phishing could ruin Twitter? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts!
With six weeks to go before SES London 2009, it?s time to build a business case for going to the definitive event for UK and European marketers, corporate decision makers, webmasters and search engine marketing (SEM) specialists, including pay per click (PPC) advertisers and search engine optimization (SEO) consultants.
Yes, yes, I know there?s a recession on both sides of the pond. I read The Economist. (I loved the article in the print edition on December 30, 2008, which reminded us that Alfred Kahn, one of President Jimmy Carter?s economic advisers, was chided in 1978 for using the ?R? word. So, Mr Kahn, in his next speech, replaced the offending word, saying, ?We?re in danger of having the worst banana in 45 years.?)
So, how do you make the business case that you need to go to an SEM conference during the worst banana since 1978?
I would argue that it is penny wise and pound foolish to miss SES London 2009 just because we?re in a recession. In fact, it?s probably more important to go now than ever before.
So, what makes Search Engine Strategies London a not-to-be-missed industry event? And what makes it particularly important for people who have attended in the past to make a return visit this year?
First, SES London 2009 is the place where the search industry gathers to chart the year ahead. The pace of change in this industry hasn?t slowed down. This search industry keeps reinventing itself at an amazing pace and last year's cutting-edge program already is dated in some areas. You can?t afford to be left behind.
Second, it?s where you can learn how to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts from top search experts. Now, I?m just one of the 48 conference speakers who will be making presentations at SES London 2009. And I plan to share some case studies of how optimized press releases generated:
? $200 million in B2B leads for Symmetricom?s chip-scale atomic clocks,
? More than $2.5 million in ticket sales for Southwest Airlines, and
? Almost 1.3 million searches for ?florists? on SuperPages.com.
I?ll also explain how combining blog outreach with press release optimization generated:
? A record 450,000 unique visitors to The Christian Science Monitor in 24 hours,
? A record 88,000 entries into Parents magazine?s cover kid photo contest, and
? A record 1,100 attendees to the Wharton Economic Summit.
Now, I think I?m supposed to say, ?Past performance is no indicator of future success.? And I should disclose that SES became a client about 14 months ago.
But check out the list of speakers who will be presenting at SES London 2009. I know most of them. I?ve heard many of them speak at previous Search Engine Strategies conferences. And I know they have similar success stories to tell.
So, can your organization really afford to skip SES London 2009 just because there?s a recession? Missing a not-to-be-missed industry event would be penny wise and pound foolish. Skipping the event because you went last year would be ?bananas.?
Now, you could simply cut your print magazine, print newspaper and other offline advertising budgets. But that isn?t going to grow your business online and it isn?t going to help you weather the storm any better than your competitors.
The only way you can do this is by learning the SEM strategies, PPC tactics and SEO tips that generate a measurable marketing ROI. And then you need to keep learning what's coming next in the constantly evolving world of search, and how you can profit from those changes.
And where can you do that? You already know where I?m headed. You can learn all this by going to SES London 2009.
Another group at Stanford may have come up with the next big thing. Zunavision is a way to embed video inside video and could lead to true successful video monetization.
Okay it has been out there since midNovember, but it really does have some of the slick tricks needed to ultimately help the video industry develop a working revenue generating model.
The insert can be placed into the background of a video - and people can walk in front of it - so if you had a video and put it on the wall in the background it renders into the video and allows foreground action to continue.
Once they have a clickable solution, video advertising will be officially scalable to true monetization. In the meantime, play with it.
If you want to take some of the same courses the Google and Yahoo founders took, nows your chance and they are even free. Part of the Standford Engineering Everywhere initiative, the courses include all needed sylabi, handouts, tests and access to reading lists.
"For the first time in its history, Stanford is offering some of its most popular engineering classes free of charge to students and educators around the world.," the Stanford website explains.
?We are excited to extend our teaching and learning opportunities worldwide through SEE,? said
Jim Plummer, dean of the Stanford Engineering School. ?We hope SEE will enable a broad range of people to learn, to share their ideas and to make their own contributions to knowledge.?
The 10 courses, arranged in three subject areas, include one of Stanford?s most popular
sequences: the three-quarter introduction to computer science. SEE also offers three courses on artificial intelligence and robotics, and four on linear systems and optimization. The address for SEE is http://see.stanford.edu - the university press release explains.
I'm not the first to ponder this, but I would never have given it true consideration until today's earlier speculation about Google Android netbooks. Should Google head in that direction, it would make the company not just a search engine but an operating system provider. Simply competing in just the mobile handset market isn't enough, but getting on mini laptops - that's an
They would be the opposite of Microsoft, which was first all about operating systems and later about search.
That would leave Apple and Yahoo, one an operating system provider and computer manufacturer and the other the second place search engine with a wealth of solid web properties (finance, sports, news, etc.)
Apple has built its business on providing the awesome alternative to existing products that are already quite decent. The iPod, iPhone, and all of Apple's laptops weren't the first, but they were an impressive addition to existing markets. In the case of the iPod and now the iPhone, they took the markets they entered into a whole new level.
Search is waiting for the next level. Apple is noted for its great file search on its laptops, though iTunes search sucks so bad, it needs some definite help. Apple has the corporate culture to innovate search. Perhaps what it needs is talent.
Yahoo has that in droves, but management has been holding it back.
If Android hits the netbook market, how could Schmidt legitimately remain on Apple's board at all?
Another caveat is that if Apple were to acquire Yahoo!, the brand Yahoo! would likely cease to exist. This would become more acceptable if Yahoo!'s stock drops to $2-3 a share, which is the only likely scenario in which Apple would actually pick up Yahoo.
At that point, they would very likely have to fight Microsoft to do it. Microsoft's cash reserves are deeper than Apple's, and Microsoft would want to beat out Apple on both search and operating system fronts.
But almost no one sees Yahoo as thriving under Microsoft. The second and third search engines would be consolidated, but increasing search market share would be a big IF.
Apple right now is the only viable, visible shot search has at innovating - unless there's another genius building the next great thing in a dorm room at Stanford. But they'll have to be very forward thinking and beat Microsoft to the punch at just the right moment. With their increasing share of the pc market as of late, they might just be able to pull it off.
Specifically, Kumar and Macherey talked about the Minimum Bayes Risk (MBR) criterion in how to determine which translation to return to a user. It's best explained in their own words:
Essentially, we look at a sample of the best candidate translations (the so called n-best list) and choose the safest one, the one most likely to do the least amount of damage (where 'damage' is defined by our measurement of translation quality). You might want to view this as choosing a translation that is a lot like the other good translations instead of choosing that strange one that had the good model score.
Kumar and Macherey went on to say that they improve the diversification of MBR by adding candidate translations. They build lattices (a mathematical set, not a fence, though the fence is a decent visual) of translations which the MBR uses to search for the n-best approach. The more languages added to the lattice, the more diversified the search is.
Have an idea to improve a Google Mobile product? (Like the ability to edit Google Docs on the iPhone? Just sayin.) Now you have a way to suggest it.
Or vote for it, if someone else has suggested it.
Google Mobile has launched its Product Ideas site and once you're signed in, you can suggest and/or vote on ideas you want to see implemented - or taken away. Click here to access the site.
Thought Android was just for mobile phones? Think again! VentureBeat has taken an Asus Eee netbook and thrown Google Android on it as the operating system. It took them four hours to configure and they expect to see the first Android Netbooks in 2010. Keep in mind this is purely speculative and not at all official from Google.
Yes, yes, I know there?s a recession on both sides of the pond. I read 
