Search Engine Tigers

Lisa Barone over at the Bruce Clay blog recently posted about why “Your Boss is not your Friend“. She talked about why you shouldn’t connect with your boss, and how you should avoid it – “deny, deny, deny”. I’m going to disagree with her, and explain why you should at least accept that LinkedIn request from your boss…

LinkedIn is a much more professional social site, that allows professionals to link up and recommend each other (I’ll have a more comprehensive overview up on RBDRodeo later this week). When you link with your boss, you can see all of their connections (unless they’re sneaky, and have hidden them). Whenever your boss adds a new connection, there’s a notification that goes up on your LinkedIn page to let you know. Simply clicking on that link allows you to see who your boss is linking with… it can give you an idea of future strategic partnerships, new investors, prospective employees, recruiters, etc. So by friending your boss, you can get somewhat of an insight into what’s happening at your company. Yes, you’ve got to be careful who you link to as well, but in my experience LinkedIn is a nice spying corporate information resource. Heck, you can always accept your bosses friend request, then remove them… there’s no notification, and they may not notice…

I was reading my feeds tonight, and I came across a post by Gord Hotchkiss about bad implementations of site search. This made me recall how poor the Search Engine Watch search used to be. Given that they, and the ClickZ network, released their redesign the other day, I thought that it may be worthwhile me giving their site search another go. What to search for? Well, since Danny Sullivan used to be the guy over there, and should probably have more results over there than anyone, why not his name?

So with the first result being a page called null, it’s not looking promising, especially when it says that page has 100% relevance (which in actuality it does, given that it leads to a listing of all of his articles). The second result is even worse, there’s no title displayed. Is the actual page relevant? Who knows because the title is the clickable element that takes you to the page; no title = no href. The third result is his contact form, that’s pretty relevant, the fourth is an interview he did with Barry Diller, again relevant. The fifth result titled “test”? It’s a blank page.

So, to sum it all up, 2 out of the top 5 results are good, the rest… not. Maybe it’s just because it’s Danny, after all he’s not involved with SEW these days. Let’s try searching for some of their current columnists and contributors:- Jessica Bowman, Duane Forrester and Kevin Newcomb…

Well, I guess it’s not just Danny…  it looks like SEW needs to have someone go through their pages and make sure that they all have title tags.  If you want to replicate this, just don’t try the search from their blog (not the best 404 page I’ve ever seen).

Yesterday the Yahoo Developer Network released a new Firefox plugin – a web site performance tool called YSlow. This tool measures and compares the web site against 13 different performance indicators, providing a grade for each indicator. The grades are then totaled and an overall grade is presented, along with suggestions for improving the performance of the site. These 13 performance indicators are those identified by the Yahoo Exceptional Performance team as the biggest factors in improving site performance. As you can see, it says that Search Engine Land has some areas for performance improvement.

Don’t feel so bad though Danny, CNN had an even worse score than you, and they’re doing ok. Also, this site got the exact same score and grade as SEL, but besides me who cares about that.

Google Universal Search has killed SEO, well ok, it hasn’t, but it has changed it. Universal Search places different types of results in with the regular search results. So a search for “Lindsay Lohan” gives you the following results. Note the pictures, and the news results talking about how her friends fear for her life. Very up to date, considering she was arrested for DUI last night.

Of course, everyone must see those very same results when they search on Google right? Well, not if you have a co-branded search site, such as those set as the default on new Dell desktops. In fact, here’s the very same search done at the very same time. Note, no pictures, no news (outside of the paid ad), and a large difference in the total number of search results returned.

I have no idea as to the usage of Dell co-branded Google searches as opposed to actual Google searches, but this just goes to prove that you shouldn’t assume that everyone is on the same page when it comes to new functionality, as they’re quite clearly not!

(note: Firefox co-branded Google searches return the exact same results as regular Google).

Tired of not being one of the ‘cool kids’? You read all over the internet about these new, invite only, closed Social Media beta sites, where it seems like everyone bar you already has a login? Well here are 2 solutions to your non-invite woes.

InviteShare is a site that allows users to share invites. If you happen to get into an invite only site, then you can go there and invite other people who are interested in playing with that site. The more people you invite, the higher your name goes on the priority list for invites to other sites. They currently list 44 different sites from Pownce to iwantsandy. You may have to wait for a while to get an invite to a popular site, but you should still be able to get in faster than if you hadn’t used the service.

BugMeNot is a site that you use when you don’t want an invite, but still want to get in.

People provide the site with a login and password, which then becomes communal property. Of course, when these sites detect the same login being used on many different IP addresses at the same time, they tend to shut down that login, so don’t expect them to always work.

Anyway, I’d better go and play with these new social media sites that I just got invites for, just like all the ‘cool kids’.

My friend OldSchoolSEO let me know today that he received and accepted an exciting new job offer.  It’ll be a big change for him, he’ll be in-house, working on only one site, and he’ll be moving to the other side of the country, but I’m sure he’ll do a great job.  Congratulations again.

On Friday night, Debra Mastaler, Li Evans, Bill Slawski, Meg Walker, myself, and several family and friends, went out for dinner and drinks in Alexandria, VA. Good food, liberal alcohol, and great conversation led to a really nice night.

The next morning most of us met at the hotel, and walked down to the Union Street Public House for the scheduled VA SEM meeting. Debra, Li, Bill and myself were joined by Jacob Wolfsheimer and Dave (sorry didn’t catch the last name, or a url). Again, nice food, good conversation, and great company. Thanks for all those that attended, especially those that drove multiple hours to get there.

…and while I’m in a thanking mood, I do have to thank Mike Grehan, Lisa Barone, and Lydia (also from Bruce Clay) for entertaining me out in Simi Valley last week.

Yes, just like David Beckham, I’m heading out to LA.  Only I’m going for the Bruce Clay Toolset training, while he went for $150million over 5 years.  No offense Bruce, but I’d switch with him if I could.   I will be back in VA on Friday, all ready for the Virginia Search Engine Marketing meetup meeting in Alexandria on Saturday July 21st at 11.30.  If you’re planning on attending, either respond to the meetup group, or just drop me an email.

According to metro.co.uk, Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of the English Premier League Champions – Manchester United has banned his players from using Facebook because

Ferguson is worried they will be stalked by girls and get themselves into trouble with revealing photos or wall messages

Interesting that Facebook is the only site that he appears to have banned. I guess that’s where all the female stalkers are…

Just in case you’re interested, my first article on Search Engine Guide went live yesterday. The topic was Lead Generation Services for Small Businesses.