MarCom Professional

I was reading a blog post about the next big Google algorithm change on Conversation Marketing which states that searcher behavior is going to drive search rankings beginning in 2009. The post (unusually for an SEO blog) gave some evidence to back up this assertion, but frankly, this is one of the most patently obvious things I've read since I got started in this industry.

Let's look at the facts:

1. Google published a patent in 2005 saying it was working on this
2. Google has started to personalise search results if you're signed into a Google Account
3. Google recently launched SearchWiki asking users to vote sites up and down and leave comments as to why
4. Google has been complaining about people trying to game inbound links to make their sites look more popular since, oh, about 2003 with very little ability to stop it
5. Google has been trying to tell us that "content is king" since, oh, about 2003, with very few automated ways to differe

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I read something on Search Engine Roundtable earlier in the week that got me steaming mad. An industry expert allegedly said the following to a roomful of people at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago:

"Yes; he buys links, but buys them for large .com's with lots of quality incoming links. That's a big difference from the small to medium who are buying those links. If Todd buys 5 links for someone like amazon.com, I call that buying paid advertising. NO risk at all."

Excuse me? So it's one rule for big business and another rule for everybody else?

Exactly how is it advertising if Amazon.com does it but if I purchase a link to my widget shop from Bob's widget enthusiast blog, I'm gaming the system? Surely that paid link is still advertising seeing as how people who like widgets will visit Bob's blog and see my link about my widget shop and those same people might want to buy one of my widgets. More...

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C has finally released the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, after years of haggling over the initial draft versions.

The WCAG 2.0 Guidelines are meant to help web designers and web developers build websites that are accessible to everybody no matter what device they use to browse the web and no matter what level of skill.

 WCAG 2.0 had been contentious from  the start as WAI committee members haggled over the best way to outline their recommendations and define various terms of the document and most people felt that the original draft was unclear and hard to understand - especially as it had a document explaining the guidelines and the a document explaining the document that explained the guidelines - hardly accessible itself. More...

I followed the recent debates over the value of live blogging with a bit of amusement. Live blogging, however, is innocuous and easily ignored. If you're not interested, just don't read it (and wait for the post-event summaries).

Live Tweeting on the other hand....

I've noticed an increase in the number of people who update their Twitter feeds from events with a minute-by-minute account of what's happening from various events - which only have interest to limited numbers of their followers.

In fact, just this morning I received around a tweet a minute for around half an hour from one culprit giving sentence fragments about a lecture. More...

I hate online video. In fact, I don't just hate it, I loathe it.

I find nothing on the internet more annoying than going onto a website or blog looking for information and discovering not a handy article I can quickly scan to see if it contains the information I'm looking for but rather a video which I will have to stop and watch and listen.

Video means, if I'm at home, turning off the hi-fi, turning on the computer speakers and sitting through 2, 5 even 10 minutes of some stranger waffling on at a camera. If I'm at work it means finding my headphones, untangling them, plugging them in and sitting in the office with 15 people talking in the background while trying to concentrate on some stranger waffling on at a camera.  If it's written down I can get an idea of whether it's worth taking the time to read the article in 30 or 60 seconds (or even less). More...

According to an article in Marketing Vox, a judge has ruled that having a "fake avatar" or online alter ego, sock puppet, fake social media profile, etc., is now a criminal offense, thanks to the case of Lori Drew, who was convicted of computer fraud after creating a fake MySpace persona to torment an acquaintance of her daughter - an activity which supposedly contributed to the girl's suicide.

As Lisa Barone of WeBuildPages points out, should it really be illegal to hide behind an online persona just because some people are bullies? Yes, fake avatars are often used for online bullying, but  having a fake avatar does not automatically make one a bully. More...

Yesterday's Technology section of The Guardian published an article about a church being sued by Getty Images over unlicensed use of 2 images on its website. A volunteer designed and built the website without any thought to copyright - if the images are readily available on the internet they must be ok to use, right?

Sadly, this is a common misconception about not just images posted online, but content in general. Many small businesses building a website for the first time may not realise that unless they have created images on their website themselves they will most likely be liable to pay for a license to use the image. More...

Yesterday's 2.5% decrease in VAT may have far reaching effects on e-commerce sites across the UK. With the reduction to 15% VAT effective on Monday, 1st December 2008, e-commerce websites will be scrambling to change their prices.

For many e-commerce retailers this means editing every product across their sites individually in order to reflect the reduction in price so they can avoid customer complaints that they are taking advantage of the VAT reduction to boost profits without passing savings on to consumers.

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When you work in the internet business it is amazing how many times you get asked for advice on websites from family and friends. This week was no different when a friend and I were approached by an acquaintance asking some questions.

He is one of the many millions of people around the world who have no background in computers, no technical knowledge, no design knowledge and certainly no search engine optimisation knowledge who set up a simple site with Yahoo! The reason he did so was he felt under pressure from customers who kept asking for his website address.

Now, you may ask if his business needed a website, and the simple answer is not as a sales and marketing tool. More...

I was doing a bit of research earlier and noticed the following ad appearing for the search term "injury caused by an animal":

The SERPS look something like this:

Presumably, as shown by Google's organic results and the top 3 sponsored results, somebody searching for information about injuries caused by animals either wants a solicitor to advise them on filing a compensation claim or statistics about the numbers and types of animal injuries. Certainly the searcher is not looking to buy an animal - even for a charitable cause.

In this instance, only four ads appear which suggests that the offending ad will be shown every time this search result appears - and is unlikely to get many clickthroughs. More...