Category: Change Management

Change Management, Culture Optimization

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SES San 2007 Jose Day 1 – Universal & Blended Vertical Search

Moderator:
Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose
Search Engine Marketing Speakers:
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst online
Bill Slawski, seobythesea.com
Erik Collier, Director of Product Management, Ask.com
David Bailey, Engineer, Google
Tim Mayer, Vice President of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Quite likely the busiest session of the day to the fullest house. One can’t help but notice that if Greg Jarboe had gone to Google and designed Universal Search himself he likely couldn’t have designed it to play into his strength areas in news and pr related issues. The implications and transformation for universal search are still evolving, but they are clearly changing the landscape. One other thing that became clear from this event was that Ask is becoming a serious contender in this marketplace.

Greg Jarboe –

Universal search is the biggest event since “Florida” update. 70% of what I used to know is now obsolete. The patterns are not yet clear in personalization.

News results ranked #4 if you searched for the term iPhone on June 29

In the #8 position, was a Youtube video. We don’t know if it was done on purpose.

July 17, Rupert Murdoch – news with image – brings up a whole new reputation management – be prepared to optimize images.

Early chapters of Henry Potter were leaked, the blog results are on page one of results

Investor relations now is moving to the front page of Countrywide. Few companies have complete control of their brands now on Google.

Unflattering images of Hillary Clinton and that vast right wing conspiracy is building links to unflattering results.

Blogs on Hurricane Dean already on front page. Images will likely come next.

All of the rules have been rewritten – how do I research this? Focus on the upper left links. News seems to be on the top left all the time. Search remains #1 way journalist find information about a company.

Newsknife and Google News Report – be checking this. Your PR people aren’t ready for that yet. If you are not giving a jpg file in a release, start now.

Google News right now doesn’t do video news. Likely to create that.

Social mapping tools can help identify most influential bloggers. In certain categories they show up.

A couple of years ago there was vertical creep session here at SES – I now rank for that term. Not a good thing.

You can’t afford to ignore Universal Search Today

Google is making specialized or vertical content more visible through Universal Search

Sherwwod Stranieri, Catalyst Online

This throws a lot of  curves into the theme. Ask 3D and Google cut new paths.

Conventional web pages that once rank well are going to move around maybe down. Other things will move updates.

Number of videos is significant in the Youtube world. Are the search engines using comments as an indicator?

We are looking at it as search marketers. Showed client example.

How to look at it: Google PR, Y! Page links, keyword phrases in tags.

Videos ranking correspond well with views, comments, etc.

Bill Slawski

Why does news, images and video show up there.

I’m not sure I see this all as a revolutionary concept. How do we get out content into our results.

Showed examples of screen prints from each engine for the word spider.

Showed the Google patent, oddly looks quite different than Google’s universal search does now.

Google acquired several Infoseek patents.

Discussed Onebox and log file data.

Ranking in Vertical databases – how do you rank for that vertical?

User behavior – key value pairs, be certain definition and being defined. Questions and Answers work the same way. Html formatting may play a role.

Enhancing the user experiences.

David Bailey – Google
Technical lead for the vertical search.

What are our goals?

Make google.com the search box of first resort.

Display special features for special results

Keep it fast. Keep it simple. Above all, keep it relevant.

Showed example: origami crane

This will continually improve and extend to more result types.

It’s still about the web.

But: think about creating quality content in other forms. Expect similar SEO guidelines to apply.

Create quality content, describe it well and we’ll see what happens.

Tim Mayer, VP Product Management

We are transitioning to a better optimized user experience

Freshness and user intent became relevancy issues.

News, local and other verticals – the possibilities are infinite. Federation plays a role.

Some implantation examples:

Music Artist Shortcut

Movie Shortcut

Hotel Shortcut Inline

Consumer Electronics Shortcut

As we go forward, it’s going t be more about the intent of the searchers.

Eric Collier, Director of Product Management

“We are the scrappy innovator of search.”

Ask.com 3D: SERP Design

We moved the content up top and removed the top links.

Large jumps in user satisfaction seen in both the site analytics and surveys

Increase in vertical channel usage

Starting to see a reduction of multiple query sessions around the same keyword term.

Expect to see a larger percentage of SERPs with blended results

User location will play a larger roles in SERPs

Expect to see fewer web results in SERPs

Blogs, Images and Video results will take online reputation into account when ranking

Pay attention to other search drivers

Other coverage of this important session:

RB Digital Boots

Rustybrick

AIM Clear Blog

Lee Odden’s Toprankblog

Bonus coverage:

Lee Odden interviews Tim Mayer

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Death of Blog Search Part 2 – Sifry Leaves Technorati

Techcrunch, Alarm clock and even Jason Calacanis weighed in on David Sifry’s departure. Jason extrapolated into some things that I don’t agree with completely, except with his suggestion that Web 2.0 companies try to make a profit, but I’ll leave that alone for now.

David Sifry today announced that he has stepped down as CEO of Technorati. While the search for a new CEO continues, Teresa Malo (CFO), Dorion Carroll (VP-Engineering), and Derek Gordon (VP-Marketing), will manage the day-to-day operations of the company. Sifry will become “Chairman of Technorati’s board”. What does it ultimately prove? It again clearly demonstrates that Internet experience is not the primary indicator of Internet executive future success.

Hello people. Technorati did a redesign that refocused on mainstream media as I noted in my earlier post the death of blog search. Then Technorati used tags to grow traffic from other search properties. As Arrington asked in early June “When will the Technorati traffic party end?” Apparently Google and others took notice of this and the party ended in July based on Alexa data – I’m surprised Michael did not discuss this at length today in his post actually. This dip exposed the payday to payday advertising dollar budgeting leading to the departure of Sifry and 8 others. It should be noted that this followed the dismissal of several other employees during the July 4th holiday.

Looking at a May 9th Mashable post, it seems that around $1 million was raised when it expanded a round of funding from 10.52 Million to 11.52 Million. It appears that Technorati was spending more cash than it was taking in, even before the traffic decline in July, based on the early July layoffs. The traffic decline in July only made that situation worse.

This leaves Technorati in the unenviable position of needing to generate new advertising dollars at a time when the engineering needs an overhaul it can’t afford. Repairs such as Typepad blog overcounting, flawed link metrics and many other flaws can not occur at this time.

In fact, someone suggested to me in a phone conversation today that perhaps they should shut Technorati off completely now and just sell it’s likely most valuable asset – a 301 redirect of the Technorati domain. The talk of taking Technorati public via IPO will likely be nothing more than that talk in David Sifry’s previous blog posts.(URL REMOVED)

So where is a blog searcher to go now?

Ask – They have recently revamped their offering dramatically and comment search is now combined with post search. It is an offering that is available directly on their front page.

Google – They should move blog search to the front page as I suggested previously and ideally should build and option to show it mixed with news sites.

Other players like Topix, if they were to index the blogosphere fully, could also emerge as an alternative that would properly mix news and blogs together demonstrating that most news is being lifted from blogs by the mainstream media.

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Bloggers – Where are the C-Level People?

Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post, introducing good bloggers and the companies that hire them points out some interesting issues. It just leaves out one extremely important point! Having a series of blogs being managed by non-bloggers is a recipe for one or more of the following: ineffective blogs, unhappy bloggers, internal corporate strife and/or worse, serious pr problems in the blogosphere.

How does one avoid this? Simple. Integrate blogging into your C-level management team. Don’t have any bloggers in your C-level management team or board of directors? Maybe it’s time to consider a new approach altogether with fresh faces. Is a highly educated and experienced person who is a blogger, with startup and innovative company experience mutually exclusive? No. But it’s a requirement if you are going to win in today’s increasingly complex world that requires broad generalist thinkers to navigate not only the blogosphere, but the constantly changing world we live in everyday. Stop building organizational pyramids from 1975 and start building effective organizations that look more like tree trunks! An informal survey at Blogher07 showed that are almost all self taught people and therefore innovators of the future.

So, where are your C-level bloggers? I know where you can find more than a few that understand that blogging is about living the Peter Drucker principles of innovation and customer listening.

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UPS CEO States “Someone Else Might Have a Different Fresher Approach”

UPS Celebrated Its 100-Year Anniversary recently. In it United Parcel Service, CEO Mike Eskew was quoted as stating the following:

“”At some point you think, we all think, it’s time to let somebody else do this,” said the 58-year-old. “Somebody else might have a different, fresher approach.””

No kidding! I’ve stated previously that UPS is not customer service focused and I’ve advocated major changes in the way UPS does business for a long, long time! If that board of directors ever wants to build an efficient company that package RECEIVERS love, my contact info is on my bio page.

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Mobile Phones Causing Memory Loss?

According to an article in the Telegraph that seems to be the case. It’s thought provoking to ponder these effects on non-usage, much like how some people who have never learned how to do math manually as well. The article stated:

Professor Ian Robertson, a neuropsychology expert based at Trinity College Dublin who carried out the study, said: “People have more to remember these days, and they are relying on technology for their memory.

“But the less you use of your memory, the poorer it becomes. This may be reflected in the survey findings which show that the over 50s who grew up committing more to memory report better performance in many areas than those under 30 who are heavily reliant on technology to act as their day to day aide memoir.”

Professor Roberston, who oversaw the research to mark the launch of Puzzler Brain Trainer Magazine, said that a series of five simple exercises a day can help to increase memory capacity.

As many as a third of those surveyed under the age of 30 were unable to recall their home telephone number without resorting to their mobile phones or to notes.

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Marc Freedman’s Linkedin Question

Wow. Marc really lays out what he thinks about the current state of Linkedin:

1) NO SERVICE.

2) BUSINESS MEMBER? – STILL NO SERVICE.

3) BAD DESIGN.

4) RELEVANCY.

A little bit too harsh perhaps, but I’ll I’d add some constructive suggestions to his list:

A) Data cleansing – Linkedin should make it a priority to combine duplicate accounts as they are disrespectful to a user when they are forced to view and interact with dead accounts. They should also make the last login date viewable for the same reason.

B) Explain and put focus on the value of endorsements and competencies over company brands and job titles and prioritize them accordingly. I was at a dinner party recently and overheard a woman say “those endorsements don’t mean anything who knows who wrote that stuff.” Linkedin has failed to promote what I thought was it’s most valuable asset and make it a driver of usage, this is unfortunate.

Linkedin needs to take drastic action to improve it’s customer service and data quality. They should also leverage it’s most valuable assets like endorsements of former co-workers more wisely amongst users who do not currently utilize them.

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Turning Towards My Inflection Point

I can start to feel that I’m nearing my inflection point! It feels real good to be reaching the inflection point. Inflection points truly rock! I wonder if you reach more and higher inflection points along the way once you hit your first inflection point? I look forward to finding out! Thanks for being a part of this journey with me towards and past my inflection point!

It wouldn’t be possible without you…