Archive for August, 2007
Using a nice little keyword tool I stumbled upon a keyword that gets a few hundred searches but nobody is bidding on. Things like this are rare and I quickly placed my adwords ad for such keyword.
I got a Great quality score, and it returned a minimum bid of $0.04. I copied another ad campaign, so I left my max bid at 35 cents.
A quick search for the keyword showed ONLY my ad - no others.
The problem is, I received 2 clicks on it today totaling 46 cents in cost. That’s 23 cents/click!!
If the minimum bid is 4 cents, and I’m the only person bidding on this keyword… why wasn’t I only charged 4 cents?
August 29th, 2007
In a story that’s surprisingly not showing up on any of the major news sites, online betting site Bodog.com has lost it’s domain name. I’d have linked to the site here, but there’s no site there to link to.
It seems that Bodog failed to show up in court to answer an infringement claim filed by 1st Technology. As a result, the judge gave a default judgment against Bodog for the amount of 48.6 million. Unable to seize any assets, 1st Technology took the Bodog.com domain name.
Bodog quickly moved their site to newbodog.com, however the loss of the domain name will be a major problem for their business. The fact that this story isn’t seeing major news means that many players will be left in the dark not knowing about the new website.
Even worse, is the affect on their traffic from the domain loss. Bodog enjoyed very favorable search engine results - including being #1 in Google for the term “betting.” Having lost control of the domain, they will be unable to do a 301 redirect to their new site or anything similiar. In the eyes of Google, Bodog went from being an authority site to being a brand new gambling related domain that has 0 inlinks - and lots of duplicate content.
Basically, they’re fucked.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
August 29th, 2007
In his recent book, fark.com founder Drew Curtis talks about seasonal news stories. You know, the news stories that seem to pop up every year around the same time.
That’s why most journalists love the first week of September. We can just sit back and let the stories write themselves. Open up word, change the date, submit, drink beer.
We love this time in particular because many seasonal articles overlap.
With school starting, the backpacks are too heavy stories are starting to show up now, and any day your local newspaper should be running the “traffic will be heavy this weekend as Americans travel for labor day” articles they love to print.
It’s also about the time parents are getting their first college tuition bills, so you’ll soon be hearing about tuition increases as well.
After our vacation we’ll all hurriedly write articles about celebrities and finally air those feel good humanity stories we’ve been saving up before diving headfirst into a 4 month long political frenzy. (which seems to come earlier and earlier every year)
This week though, we don’t have to do anything but serve up the same tired old articles we did last year (and probably wrote 5 years ago).
I’m writing this one so that next year all I have to do is change the hyper links before heading up to the lake for the week.
Speaking of the lake, I’m taking the rest of the week off to go play disc golf and drink beer. I’ll see you guys Tuesday.
August 28th, 2007
If you were one of the first to get an iPhone, you may have experienced a little bit of shock when opening your first phone bill since switching. Personally, my bill was 20 some pages long - compared to the 3 pages Cingular used to send me before becoming AT&T.
The reason for killing an extra tree? It seems that AT&T itemized all my data usage. Since I constantly checked out websites on my phone at work, in the car, on the toilet, in bed, etc, I had LOTS of data line items with a charge of 0.
I laughed when I got my first bill, and thought “wow, I wonder how many trees the iPhone is killing” before dropping it all in my shredder.
The good news is, it’s going to stop! I just got a text message from AT&T saying that they’re going to remove item detail on my next bill, and if I’d like it to get it online or call 611. That’s a change in the right direction. Now if only they’d actually offer that $5 unlimited texting they talk about on TV instead of hiding the required “data plan purchase” away in the small text.
August 22nd, 2007
I just did a post over on shoutwire called 10 endangered ideas. Basically, it’s a look at 10 things that exist today that our grandkids (or kids) won’t be familiar with. In other words, dying technologies. Go Check it Out. It’s a good read.
If you’d like to see some of my other shoutwire feeds, you can subscribe to their RSS feed below:
RSS URL
Or you can view them all at this link:
www.dotcult.com/shoutwire.php
Depending on how long I decide to stay at Shoutwire (their advertising is pissing me off) I may or may not integrate that with this blog.
I’m just posting here because I feel a little guilty. Most of my better posts have been going over on Shoutwire, but I know some (or all 3 even) of my readers would enjoy reading it.
August 20th, 2007
Update: Google added the word excessive in front of the passage I mentioned today (8-16-07). It clarifies a little bit, but still begs the question: what’s excessive?
Google recently updated it’s webmaster guidelines with some information that’s causing a big stir on the internet. If you look under the examples of “link schemes” you’ll see this little tidbit:
Link exchange and reciprocal links schemes (”Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
Am I to understand that one can now be banned from Google for having reciprocal links? If so, there’s some serious implications that come to mind:
- What about all of the sites that pre-date Google? Reciprocal linking happened way before Google was around. You can’t expect all these websites to suddenly change.
- What about sister sites? Example: On Noslang.com I link to my drug translator, and on the drug translator I link to my slang translator. I don’t do this for pagerank, I do it because my visitors may be looking for a slang term that the other dictionary includes. It’s proven useful. Am I to get banned because both sites are relevant to each other and helpful to the user?
- What about press mentions? It’s very common for a website to link back to a news article that mentions them. You want your visitors to see your press accolades. Are these seen as reciprocal links and bad for my website?
- What about blogrolls or blog networks? Even Matt Cutts had a blogroll at one time, and many of these people linked back in their blogrolls. It’s helpful to users because they can read similiar content. Is this a penalty?
There’s got to be a better method than “banning” that the guidelines mention. If Google can detect reciprocal links, they can just as easily not give them any weight in the algorithm. This way, users still benefit and the search engines aren’t “gamed.” Maybe it’s just a clarification issue on the webmaster guidelines page, or I’m reading it wrong.
Either way,I think we still need some clarification on this new update from Matt and Adam - because as it’s written I’d venture to say that about 90% of sites are in violation of the new guidelines. Of course, banning everybody who uses reciprocal links would certainly save on bandwith and allow Google to index the remaining web with near real-time updates. Isn’t that what we’ve all been pushing for?
August 14th, 2007
Today is the day many football games have been looking forward to since April’s NFL draft. We’ve been dreaming of new rookies, new animations, new moves, and end zone celebrations. I’m talking about Madden 08.
Like a child eagerly heading downstairs on Christmas morning we’ll all be heading to the stores (or the mailbox) today in search of gaming greatness. This Maddenolidy though, it seems as if we’ll be opening up a big pink bunny suit instead of our red rider B.B. guns. (sorta like how you’re reading tired cliches here instead of insightful commentary.)
This year’s version of the game offers little else other than improved rosters, and new animations - except for the increased product placement. Now, things like the coin toss are actually sponsored. Just what I needed!
I’ve never understood why EA doesn’t approach video games from a “software as a service” model. The main reason I buy new versions of the sports games every year is for the updated rosters. My Wii is online, so why not offer me a continually updated roster service? I’d gladly pay a yearly fee to be able to have it automatically update with the newest version of the game and rosters (or just the rosters for my old version.)
I’ll still buy this year’s version, (it should already be waiting at home in my mailbox) and I’ll still play it for hours - not because it’s so much better than last year, but because it’s the only one out there to feed my football fix.
August 14th, 2007
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