Bing : Different lipstick, same pig.

Microsoft has put out it’s “new” version of a search engine in hopes of taking on Google. At the risk of sounding like a nay-sayer from the start and a contrarian, can I be blunt?

They do not stand a chance of eating into Google’s market share lead. Seriously. Is E-bay getting serious erosion from others in their class? Nope…they are THE garage sale of the internet.

Craig’s list, the same. They are THE classified ads for the internet.

And Google is THE search engine. Google is now a verb. Note to Steve Ballmer. Get over it.

More importantly, BING is more lipstick on M-soft’s pig of a search engine. Maybe a different shade, but it does not change the overall spammability of the engine itself.

Yes, they now have added LOCAL search and have 10 packs (or 7 packs or whatever) ala Google. The difference? Go to BING and type in your city followed by Homes…

You will often see the local search that contains Funeral Homes, Home Depot, a real estate website (maybe), and even sometimes group homes for wayward youth.

Nice.

Search engines are entirely about relevance. Bing has clearly in my mind not made enough of an improvement to change ANYONE”S behaviour to use them instead of others. And that is the acid test.

Will their modest imrovements from the old MSN, Live, etc make enough difference to sway user behavior? Not in my opinion. To do that you would really need to change who you are or more importantly how the game is played.

That goes well beyond changing the shade of lipstick.

The Family Business grows…

One of the cool things about having a business is that you get to make decisions that affect the growth of it. It is also one of the tough things. How fast do you grow it? What do you choose to take on and which do you not?

Eric On Search is no different. From the start, I have told myself that the business is there to serve our family and our family is there to grow it, nurture and feed it, and together all will be better off for its existence. That is the purpose of Eric On Search: To serve our customers and to be profitable for us as a family.

Lately our family has been giving much thought to how best to do that. We have Joint Venture projects underway, along with the day to day coaching customers and as well with the Autism related projects and then there is being the Technologist for a large real estate office (hugely important to me). We want to be world class at all of those endeavors. We will accept nothing less.

I think all entrepreneurs, business people and people in general have been here. I am fortunate though.

Up until today, I have thrown odd projects to my two oldest sons, Cam and Craig. They are young. But they are smart and they care. They do a great job and work hard to live up to the Blackwell family name. I am proud of them. (as I am Jamie, my daughter and Jordan our youngest son (who will likely be assisting Craig in some of this fun!).

I guess I am just letting folks know publicly how jazzed I am that Cam and Craig will be helping me with the behind the scenes maintenance that makes Eric On Search well…Eric On Search. (Yet another name for them to live up to. Yikes.) They will be working as time allows.  You won’t likely see them or hear them.

But like their old man…(grin) you are gonna feel the impact of their results.

Fellas…it is time to get busy. We have some stuff to build! I cannot think of anyone I would rather build stuff with than the two of you.

I mean that.

Ours is a family business in the truest sense of the word.

Online Reputation Managment: The link aging conundrum affects it.

I have a couple of friends. Good people. Both run mid-size companies in the US. Both called me recently. Furious. When you Google the name of their company, a blog or a post from a blog either a) making a disparaging remark (and untrue opinions) about their company or b) apparently taking a controversy from years ago and bringing it up again.

Upon looking it over more closely, there seem to be a NUMBER of these popping up. Old controversies and old untrue posts floating their way back up to the top 10. In my opinion, much of this arises because of what  I call the link aging conundrum. It is described in this post by Jason Lee Miller, to an extent.

Google, in particular, has a tough time in evaluating how much weight to give links based on the age of the link. to wit:

1) To keep longevity in the search engine and maintain the already relevant status of MOST searches for companies, and basic search terms, weighting an older link as MORE valuable helps. It also stops people from looking at others’ links and simply trying to build the same relationships (to an extent).

2) Yet FRESHNESS is a factor as well and recent controversies or news for a company is relevent. (You want your companies press release to get wide coverage and have some longevity as well).

Jason adds into this conundrum the factor of link velocity…I like that idea and concept…but it to has its limitations. How does that apply to a small company or medium company brand…do they have do be on a constant link building binge to avoid getting out ranking by an unfavorable but popular news story about them?

So back to my two friends. They want that CRAP off of the front page. And they have a right to…in one case it is just a bunch of ranting  that a number of other bloggers linked to. It is two year old news even if it was true which it is not. In the other case it is something that was true but is surely no longer relevant, yet my CEO friend has a problem, she cannot get a CURRENT, and legitimate news story about her company to outrank it. Even by linking to legitimate news posts below the old irrelevant story, the aging of the links from the old posts are strong enough (they are from sites that are now authority sites) to make it tough.

Are you smelling what I am cooking?

That is a VERY tough problem to fix algorithmically speaking! It is also an incredibly large problem for Bldg 43 on the Google campus IMO. (I do feel for those guys.).

There is a fine line between accuracy cop and censorship…and the Google folks do a great job balancing that, GIVEN the size of their library stacks and the ever changing nature of their volumes.

There is a REASON that they try to eliminate this irrelevant stuff via algorithm. Can you imagine the volume of calls if they were to take calls from people about which posts in the top 10 to eliminate for whatever reason. Yikes.

So, who are my friends? I am not telling you at this point. (They have not given me permission…) but I will share with you some OTHER MAJOR COMPANIES that are dealing with similar issues.

To my friends: This make or may not make you feel better. You are in good company.    Google the following and check out the Top 10:

Walmart: Union folks mad at ya?

Gillette: RFID? Good grief, that’s been out for a while now Still hatin’ on ‘em for that?

Starbucks: They have their share of haters.

Fritos: Government recall from 2007 still makes news today? That is a lot of corn chips ago!

Speaking about 2007…Aquafina and Dasani (Google either or both!) had a controversy about them being tap water then. Old news..look at those SERPS. Yikes. What is the statute of limitations on this. Aging again.

Sorry Charlie! Google Starkist and you will see how long an internet rumor can mess up SERPS…My guess is that Charlie is gonna be sorry for quite a while…

To my two CEO friends again: If it makes you feel any better, in BOTH of your cases, it does not APPEAR that the folks that own the blogs / sites with the bad stuff are actively building links…Google is likely just giving ‘em a little extra credit for the longevity and that combined with more inbound links to the pages that are linking to THEIR pages naturally over time seem to be doing the trick. THEY MAY BE TOTALLY UNAWARE THAT THEY ARE RANKING THERE. THAT ISSUE MAY BE DEAD AND GONE FOR THEM AND YET YOU STILL DEAL WITH THE EYESORE.

One of you, I advised to build ten or fifteen STRONG pages to make it harder for this to happen (from ANY source..not just the current ones) and to drive away wannabe negativity, and that that simple investment of time would (help) protect you down the road as well. It is still good advise. There is always going to be controversy. Some of the examples above are pathetic in terms of how outrageous and without base they are. And yet (at least in part) they will persist due to the link aging conundrum. Dogs bark…the caravan needs to move on…

I hope that helps. It is the best advice I have for you.

If you’d like me to publicize your individual cases, please let me know. No charge at all for my time. I think you are both getting a raw deal…

Think about what I said though…the best defense is often REALLY good DEFENSE, when it comes to online reputation management.

MIBOR and NAR need an internet education

I have watched a situation unfold that disturbs me greatly. MIBOR and NAR (that would be the National Association of Realtors and Metro Indianapolis) have turned a complaint (apparently from a competitive REALTOR) against several other REALTORS into a decision in Indianapolis that could change the shape of online real estate marketing. To wit:

Agent Genius broke the story (written by one of the affected realtors, Indianapolis REALTOR Paula Henry).  Please read the story before continuing. It is  important. Please read the comments by Jay Thompson. I totally agree with his take on this. NAR and MIBOR are tying the hands of REALTORS whilst freeing 3rd party lead aggregators to take over. Joe Lane echoed those thoughts about NAR and MIBOR on Active Rain.

Further details were added by Morgan Carey on his blog about his conversations (as the webmaster of two of the sites RedDoorIndy and HometoIndy)with NAR and MIBOR. (see that link as well). There were other borkerage sites affected that are not sites that Morgan’s company created. In Morgan’s post  I found NAR’s  misuse of the word scraping to be par for the course, sad to say. Google is NOT a scraper, Google is (essentially) the librarian of the internet. Morgan did a great job of explaining it and (in my opinion) NAR simply does not get it. Scrapers TAKE content. The librarian (Google) simply indexes it. (think: card catalog)

To force members of your organization to deindex pages from the internet library in my estimation is not unlike the decision to burn books at the real library because you find they are offensive to your beleifs or you are afraid of what they teach.

I don’t beleive in that.

Further, it is also bad for business. Google is going to ALLOW quality information to be published. AS THEY SHOULD. As Joe Lane indicated in his post, this will leave NAR members vulnerable to the likes of Trulia and Zillow for internet control of many of the long tail searches that people search for. Why? For the sake of ‘fairness”? Please.

Trulia and Zillow must be smiling while they watch the idiots at MIBOR try to legislate fairness by giving away the store to one third party after another.

In the comments on the AgentGenius post, NAR’s social media person, Todd Carpenter indicated that “maybe it wasn’t so bad for NAR to make it harder for the non listing agents site to rank for these terms.”

Special note to Todd. I have 110 agents (in the office where I work as a technologist) that pay dues that pay your salary. 50% of the deals they do are the selling side and NOT the listing side. If you are gonna be the NAR social media dude…PLEASE realize that buyer’s agents pay for 50% of your salary. Please let NAR in on that little secret as well.

Todd if you do not understand that concept, please resign before stepping on half of the people that pay you again. It is infuriating that you apparently do not get this. You are a nice guy, but favoring 50% of the REALTORS over the other half?

NAR is now left with no good choices.

Perhaps the best choice for the real estate industry as a whole is to do away with them (NAR). Google is a much better librarian than NAR and MIBOR EVER were at being judge, jury and executioner.

Bloodhound Blog Unchained Notes

Heckuva day…

I landed last night in Phoenix and was immediately met by all of the usual Bloodhound Blog suspects Greg Swann met me at the airport and off we went to the hotel. (and we talked there until way too late..and even later EST).

The trip has been great so far.

I just finished teaching a 3 hour SEO class that was a blast. High energy stuff.

I have met a ton of new friends. I am currently listening to Kelley Kohler (aka HouseChick) on the subject of PPC and long tail optimization. I am sitting next to Terry Smith, a Fort Worth REMAX Realtor who I just met.(BTW- Special Thanks to Kerry Melcher of Phoenix Real Estate Boutique for the turkey sandwich!)

The bottom line on this is that it is fun, there is a lot of learning going on and I am having a blast. More updates later tonight.

The case for original content…

Long post ahead, beware. It’s worth reading.

Recently, someone asked on a real estate forum about a specific insurance site and how much use of duplicate content is allowed before (essentially) affecting things.

I noted that indeed the forum that even the forum that we were on at the time was strictly moderated for original content. And for good reason. But the question was raised that once a site became an “authority” site in the search engine’s eyes, then was more leeway granted as far as duplicate content.

My answer to that will be a non answer. Not because I don’t want to address the question, but rather because I think it is the wrong question to ask. I think the right question to ask is, “How important is orginal content to building the overall asset that is my site vs. the time and expense of doing it?”

I’d like to correlate that question with a previous post of mine about publishers going to Google and requesting preferrential treatment. These guys are primarily newspaper sites, and since the site I was asked about was an industry related news site, I think the comparisons are applicable.

The Newspaper sites claim that they are the ORIGINATORS of the news and thus deserve to be the canonical references to it online and that SEO’s are usurping that by posting an article (on an ad filled page) about it and systematically linking to it to get it to rank.

First off, most newspapers are not the SOURCE of news and therefore should NOT be the canonical reference. Most times they are regurgitating rip and read news off of the wires.

On that basis, how can they claim to be the most relevant? (i.e., the most worthy for the top spots?)

So my answer for any type of news or business related sites? Have a take. Have an angle. Spend (errr…INVEST) the time to post unique information. This does TWO very important things.

1) It makes it of more value to your readers. Plain and simple.

2) It encourages links to the story on YOUR site. Links to a news story ONLY come from being the first on the scene with a powerful microphone or having a FRESH take on a situation. (This is the money quote of the post here. Read it twice. ). Second place is TRULY first loser.

So based on the above, posting a news story and having a unique take on it from a site that is already AUTHORITATIVE is the ULTIMATE. You can RANK for it. Generate new readers. Generate more links. And your unique content will do ALL of those more effectively than “rip and read”.

Is this approach worth the time. YES. Is it expensive in terms of time / money? YES. Is it defensible? YES!

If you are going to succeed long term in the search engines, you MUST be willing to invest in a quality product that provides relevance. Search engines crave that and they reward it.

Duplication of someone else’s work can NEVER (in the long run) be considered RELEVENT. It simply can’t. Can you scam the search engines short term with it? Yes. But we here at EricOnSearch are into building assets…and building lasting authority. Spamming for short term gain? Not so much.

HomeGain widgets vs Trulia Widgets – explained

Several months ago, Trulia’s agressive widgetbaiting program caught the attention of many of the blogging crowd in the real estate sector. Here is a Google search of the relevant posts.

I too posted about their efforts and what I thought was wrong with them. I specifically pointed out a couple of flaws in their program. #1) The aggressiveness of their techniques to get the widgets on unsuspecting REALTORS blogs / sites in the very city where they were competing with them and #2) (and most importantly) where they even slipped them into internal pages of sites where the owners did not know that they put them there, but the (in my opinion) unscrupulous action of their website builder Number1Expert played a game of “hide the link” with their own customers.

Folks suspected privately that there HAD to be some sort of a payoff between the two companies, which was denied.

After all of the furor died down, the main thing to come out of it was that Number1Expert folks were given three choices: No widget, a different widget, or the Trulia widget.  The fact remained that Number 1 Expert customer had had a widget added to their site that strengthened their competitors search results without their knowledge.

Well, today HomeGain has announced that they are releasing widgets as well. So you would think that I would jump all over them, right? I mean widgets are evil, right?

Ummm, no.

I write widgets for part of my living. Writing great widgetbait is NOT a bad thing…when done and distributed CORRECTLY. (For transparency’s sake – I had NOTHING to do with the writing of the HomeGain widgets…no am I their “homer”.

I simply thought that this would be a good time to explain what I mean by that because in HomeGain’s effort, I see some things done right.

Step One: They are “Opt-in” vs “Opt-Out”.  This is crucial because Opt Out widgets rely on the inertia of the website not to take them out. BESIDES, to do an Opt-out widget, you MUST have complicity with someone who can “hide the link” or “hide the widget” in the site. Usually this is a webmaster who is counting on less than savvy site owners NOT to notice. (Can one REALLY do this to paying customers? Yes. If the terms of service allow it or if the customer does not rise up and say “Knock it off.” It can and does happen.

The HomeGain widgets are opt-in, meaning that a person wanting to deploy them has to initiate it. Not HomeGain.

Step Two: HomeGain went to another step. Check this out. That is their newsletter where they spell out CLEARLY who the widget is intended for and where it is best used. It is clear, concise and not intended to confuse or take advantage of the less than savvy.

So, before you ask, I will answer: When is it OK to put widgets on my site?

Fair question. All pieces of software included in a blog or site that come from an author can and do deserve to have some form of credit back to the author if requested by them. Widgets included, themes included.

Some widgets are good enough to warrant it. Some are not. Some WP Themes warrant it. Some do not even ask for it. What it really boils down to is will the amount of traffic that the widget brings in offset the value of the link(s) to the site…

The step that HomeGain took was to give the potential customer of their widget the information AND ability to make their own decision. I applaud that. They work in a sector where far to many agents are less than tech savvy and can be taken advantage of.

Trulia (IMO) took advantage of that lack of understanding and tried to get over on REALTORS. HomeGain has not.

LILO – the new internet startup model

A few weeks back, my friend Glenn Kelman over at RedFin posted about how much it cost to startup a real estate site that would have lasting impact. I countered in the comments that I thought the number was much lower and that much of the MBA-izing of the site was not needed.

I like Glenn. He’s had the courage to do what a few other have doen before him as well. Namely the dot.com 1.0 guys. They have cut down tons of trees to forge a wide path. It is essentially unprofitable to cut down trees but that’s OK by me. It IS profitable to drive a truck down the road they’ve created. That’s my business model. Driving the truck of profitability up the roads created by others.

I commented about it here on EricOnSearch a while ago.

Now the guys at Time have created an acromyn for this type of business. LILO startups. Little in / Lots Out. I like that. Great article.

It fits SO well with phrases like Sweat Equity. And Earned Media. And Stephen Covey’s “Begin with the End in Mind”.

I’d like to add something to Mr. Covey’s profundity. Or maybe take something away.Here’s my corollary on creating online businesses:

“Begin with the end.”  – Eric Blackwell

Seriously.

My friend Jon Karlen refers to “beginning with the end” as not being an “Underpants Gnome“. There’s a ton of insight from South Park on that.

There are a whole bunch of low cost / revenue producing sites out there. Bootstrap it. Don’t have enough search engine experience. PARTNER.  You don’t need an MBA to do this stuff. You do need a work ethic, an idea, some savvy, and some would claim copious quantities of Diet Mt. Dew….

Do you have examples of great bootstrappers who have made it online? Send their examples / stories to me! I will be happy to have you guest post on EoS about them.

I want people to see how possible this really is.

Seriously.

HomeGain – I’m there in August

I promised myself that I was going to get out and do some teaching this year. I have wanted to help REALTORS successfully build their online marketing programs and I am going to do it.

I am not sure what the name of the conference is that Louis Cammarrosano invited me to, he just indicated that it was going to be a conference for Home Gain customers, so on my calendar it just sits there:

HomeGain

Here’s the fun part. I will be going to the Real Estate Webmasters conference in beautiful Nanaimo, BC. Then I plan to hit the ferry to Seattle and fly down to San Francisco for “Home Gain”. (Louis, what’s the official title of this thing?)

With the Bloodhound Blog Unchained event in Phoenix and the training I do here in Louisville, this is shaping up to be a pretty good year.

Anyway, Louis. Thanks for the invite, my friend. Invitation accepted! Happy to have some fun, teach correct basic search engine marketing principles and get to know a LOT of REALTORS and make some new friends along the way.

I am also looking forward to seeing California again. It is where I grew up, and I have not been back in a long time. Will be good to drop in for 48 hours or so!

Google Publishers Advisory Council – My take.

So. It came to light this past week that Google has been inviting the BIG adsense publishers and other big media folks to an advisory committee.  And others did as well.  And here. And here. And Ad Age even called us little guys “parasites” here. There…that’s a pretty good reporting of the issue.

Much of the “little guy” publishing world (bloggers)  is up in arms about Google meeting with BIG TIME adsense publishers and the fact that those big time publishers are crying in their beer and asking for a little (cough–a lot)  preferential treatment over the little guys (us) in the Search Engine Results. The little guys are crying “foul”.

HERE’S my take:

First off, I have ZERO problem with the big guys talking with Google. I think Google SHOULD talk with them. Matt Cutts and the rest of the webmaster liasion crew at Google have provided much insight and communicated better than any of the other search engines with Webmasters big and small. Talk is good. Communication benefits EVERYONE.

Now for my take on preferential treatment for big media. (here’s where it gets fun, kids…grin). This is more of a challenge to big media than anything…who died and appointed you God? On what basis should you be afforded preferential treatment?

Search engines crave RELEVANCE. That is what they MUST have to survive. What gives them this RELEVENCE?

Journalism Degrees?

It isn’t a J-school diploma hanging on the wall. I can show you PLENTY of crappy, slanted, inaccurate stories written by big, mainstream media guys with a J-school diploma. Ummm…remember Dan Rather? It was bloggers who blew the whistle on him over years ago. Are you saying a Journalism degree makes you relevant because you are objective? or even Fair and Balanced? Please…

National vs Local?

So are you saying that a New York Times writer who posts about how bad the real estate market is currently should have precedence over a local REALTOR who posts about their current market conditions? Which of these examples is more relevant to a Louisville area searcher on Google, hmmm?

Timeliness?

One of the things that the blogger world kicks the Mainstream media’s rear end on day in and day out is  the timeliness of their media. Timeliness IS a component of relevance! One of the reasons that newspapers are going down is that there IS NO NEWS CYCLE anymore.

One of the main traffic builders for Google and the other search engines is to quickly find the BEST articles on a given hot news subject and get them to the top. That’s what I did for this post! You do not have a corner on that market big media. And you are typically slower to react than most bloggers. Welcome to the concept of an Army of Davids. Get over it.

The Bottom Line

Might does not make right. Right makes right. You publishers are asking for an unfair advantage in a world where you are used to being able to be in control by buying ink by the barrel.

I think it’s great that Google is talking with you. I think it is great that the conversations are taking place. BUT…At the end of the day, you folks need to compete in the same arena of ideas, facts, opinions, and points of view that we all do. And you do NOT deserve “extra special” treatment because you are ummm….well..you. Ad age? Parasites? Please. Fact checkers. Opinion shapers? Yes. Parasites. Please.

ONE LAST POINT.

If you Google “Google Publisher Advisory Council”, you will be directed to many of the same links that I linked to above. WHY? Because the mainstream media simply isn’t writing about this. You want your credibility, but IMO you want it selectively. Again…who died and appointed you god?

I challenge you to make the case that you are, in fact, more relevant. I cannot see that you are.

Next Page »