A brief look at Google Buzz

Category : Marketing, Social Media

So Google has finally decided to merge their mail service with user profile pages in a way that allows content to be fed in and named this Google Buzz.

I’ve probably over simplified it, but essentially you now have the option on your Google Profile of sharing information from your other websites with people you frequently email. This allows your Google Profile to work much like FriendFeed in that you can include your feeds from Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, a Blog, etc. In addition, the people who you email most often can choose to “follow” your profile and you in return have the option to “follow them back”.

So why is this added into Gmail’s interface instead of Orkut’s? I have no idea.

What I can tell you though is I’m already annoyed that Buzz needs to open everything I click on in a new window or tab. I log into Gmail, click Buzz, a new tab/window pops up, I want to check one of my friends links or posts, a new tab/window pops up, I want to edit my profile, a new tab/window pops up…

While neither Gmail or Google Profiles are new, Buzz is and while it has given me a desire to make sure I take the time to update my Google Profile to include correct and shareable information on the web, I can’t help but feel I didn’t really need this from Google unless they were going to merge these features in with Orkut.

Of course I just opened up a whole new question with that, what are Google’s intentions for Orkut moving forward. With this revamp to Profiles and Gmail, are they giving up on Orkut or will they eventually merge features into each other?

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Bing Observance

1

Category : Marketing, SEO/SEM

This week while reviewing my GA’s information I noticed that an old site of mine, www.lasvegascrenews.com had suddenly began receiving more traffic of late from Bing, so much so that is surpassed traffic sent to it from Google and is now the number one source of traffic for this site.

The odd thing is this site hasn’t been updated since it finished its purpose in June of 2009. I had originally created the site as a means of conveying to the board of directors and managing partners of Colliers Parrish International that we should look into syndicating their real estate feeds out to local blogs, as well as take a more active role in social media. The site worked well as an example, after its launch in April 2009, with little SEO and no real promotion, it had 300 unique visitors the first month and about 400 in May. Everyone involved with the project was delighted and it helped push forward a few other internal initiatives at CPI.

The site was no longer needed after July, and when I left in October, I continued to keep site ownership, though I have not decided what I wish to do with it. So I simply have left it alone, contemplating selling off the domain and the site.

So imagine my surprise when I see that the site is suddenly receiving a fair amount of traffic from Bing these past couple weeks of January, after all this is a site that has not had content updated in over 6 months.

I pull up my other sites, most notably the two primary ones I own and manage: www.michaelghurston.com and www.morbidgames.com. While my personal blog and portfolio of sorts here isn’t really a traffic go-getter, according to GA it hasn’t had a single user click through from Bing. Site traffic for this website is generated first by direct users, and secondly by Google.

Now Morbidgames is a different beast, as a site that has a larger community base with near 600 Facebook friends, multiple Twitter accounts nearing 2,000 followers and a host of online retailers that carry its products. The primary source of traffic to MG is by referring sites, with Google being a strong second and Twitter being third. However, GA reports that Bing is 5th on the list under direct visits.

So I’m curious.

Here we have Morbidgames, a site that’s index page uses AJAX to constantly feed in new content to the home page, and whose site is built around a WordPress backend that is updated at least every couple weeks if not more. Yet Bing isn’t really sending it traffic.

On the other hand, we have a site that hasn’t been updated in months and is getting a ton of traffic from Bing. Lastly we have a site that is updated every few days, with little SEO ever done that hasn’t received any traffic from Bing, but a trickle from Google.

So what’s the deal?

Is Bing prioritizing archived and older content over new content, seems unlikely with the push by search engines like Google and others who are looking into live search and value new content over old.

While it’s all just observations at this point, I think it’s worth looking into. Especially since I know that Morbidgames is by far more SEO’d and active than LasVegasCRENews.

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My disgust for DMOZ

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Category : Marketing, SEO/SEM

I don’t usually like to flat out bash web services or sites as it’s not professional, but it’s the holidays, I’m stressed and I really hate DMOZ. I suppose the fuel for this fire started when I received an email this morning from esitesecrets.com a site that I signed up to receive news from, but am finding myself more and more disappointed with their lack of useful and current information. I don’t know what it is, perhaps they hired a retired SEO expert from 10 years ago who just hasn’t taken the time to update his knowledge of current trends. Bottom line is that I just cringe as I read most of their articles and think to myself, “that’s so 2003.”

This article in question really irked me, mostly because it was highlighting a nemesis of mine as a site that should be placed on a pedestal, and while it rang true in the early 2000’s, the site in 2007 lost all methods of credibility when they began to have a volunteer force made up of people who destroyed what the site was designed for. In its current incarnation the site has gone to the dark side with “The age old stuff still works at DMOZ, you need to know a friend of a friend of a friend to get your site listed fast” as many webmasters, SEO specialists and internet marketing professionals have found.

Because of this, DMOZ has not been a relevant tool for SEO for the last couple of years, and to say the site “powers Google and Bing” is a flat out exaggeration and lie.  DMOZ links have been devalued significantly over the last couple years as search engines have gone the route of making current content king, significantly valuing sites such as Wikipedia and AboutUs.org as well as well written site content. Current content is king and DMOZ listings are rarely ever updated or changed, regardless of submission editions because of its volunteer staff that will update or add sites they are familiar with at a professional or personal level, but procrastinate considerably on anything else. But you don’t have to take just my word for it…many other popular and better web tip sites agree with me.

http://www.dmozsucks.org/

http://searchengineland.com/10-useless-seo-worries-part-2-12650

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-a-link-from-dmoz-isnt-worth-what-it-once-was

http://www.newswriter.us/ShowAdminArticle-17.htm

http://www.webproworld.com/insider-reports/18846-dmoz-isn-t-open-after-all-18.html

And these are just a few, you can find more in depth articles on sites like Mashable, WebProNews, SiteProNews and others.

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