Musings For A Darkened Room

So I’ve got to be honest with this one, this week did not have a slew of tweets or plurks to choose from.  Plurk was filled with mainly pointless banter and the occasional blog push, and with Twitter imploding from the lack of replies you didn’t get a lot of the usual back and forth or amusing comments.  This weeks selection comes from Audrey Seiberling, and though the follow up comments don’t have much strength the initial plurk is golden.

AnAudieMous shares something she said to advancedbourland…

As I mentioned in last weeks Social Media Moment, this is going to be a weekly feature on the blog and since I can’t obviously be on Twitter and Plurk 24/7 (though I wish I could) feel free to send me submissions.  You can direct message me on Twitter or shoot me a private plurk

So I’ve decided to start a new feature on my blog highlighting some of the funniest, most interesting, or most influential posts I find on the various social sites I participate in.  So much goes on with some of these sites that it is easy to miss funny posts or happenings so I am taking this opportunity to share some of my favorites with the masses.  Each week I will note throughout my day various topics or post that catch my interest and on Friday morning I will pick my favorite from the collection.

This week I chose a Plurk thread that I started, not because it is my own, but because of one of the responses in it.  The post started when I unintentionally came up with an incredibly amusing nerdy pick up line while talking with a colleague.  The follow up comment from Melanie Nathan was just icing on the cake.

If I could add people you would be in my favorites, be de.licio.us, and I’d digg you.

Having not participated in the first Google Webmaster group chat I really didn’t know what to expect when I signed up for today’s session. A few of my colleagues at the office had participated in the first chat earlier this year, and felt it was quite beneficial so I decided this time to give it a try.

The sign up and sign in process were painless, but unfortunately Google had some troubles starting the session. After about ten or fifteen minutes of listening to what sounded like Darth Vader raping a cat over the phone, the session began.

Today’s session consisted of three main topics. John Mueller talked about Personalize Search, Maile Ohye discussed case sensitivity in the robots.txt file, and Jonathan Simon talked about how to remove indexed content from Google. The presentations were solid, but as a search marketer there really wasn’t too much take away from the 3 presentations. Perhaps the most useful and sometimes amusing information came from the Q&A section. With that said I have decided to outline the good and the bad from todays event.

The Good

• Maile clarified that the way you present your data in the robots.txt file can make or break your site. The directories and filenames in the robots.txt file ARE case sensitive. By not paying attention to case sensitivity you risk duplicate content problems because as Google crawls your site it will see pageA.html and PAGEA.HTML as two different pages hosting the same content. I figured this might be a useful tidbit since the room was split in the poll 111-70 as to whether or not case sensitivity matters.
• It was clarified that new websites are being crawled by the spiders usually within a week of existance, however linking can speed this up. Also mentioned was that Google’s index is refreshing about once a month.
• The .com vs .everything else conspiracy was cleared up. Matt Cutts explained that .edu’s and .gov’s do not actually pass on any more authority than other domains. Also, .info domains have not be devalued as a lesser domain. Essentially Google says all TLD’s shall be created equal.
• PR plays a critical role in how often your site is crawled. They went on to say that some news sites are crawled every 2 minutes by the search engine spiders.
• Matt Cutts gave the “official” word on whether or not Google thinks that SEO has a future, and the answer is, “Certainly, as long as the SEO is whitehat.”

Here are some of the Questions and answers that stood out that I felt offered some good information or at least piqued the interest of the panelists:

Q: Hi Matt, Are there any guidelines available on keyword density we have pages that are about 1 single subject and the keyword density is quite high

Matt Cutts - 2:27 pm

A: Antony, you may not believe this, but we tend not to think much about KW density here at Google, b/c our algorithms handle it pretty well. My advice is to pull in an innocent/non-search friend and have them read the text. If they raise their eyebrow, …

Q: Does google differentiate between searches in lower case and searches with proper capitalization?

John Mueller - 2:28 pm

A: We may take this into account if we can recognize that it is relevant to the query.

Q: Will Google consider giving any incentive to webmasters/users who helps google to fight spam? Maybe some sort of point based system would be interesting..This will certainly motivate all the webmasters to come forward and help google to Keep Spam out..

Matt Cutts - 2:30 pm

A: Saad, I do like that suggestion a lot. Something for us to think about.

Q: Does Google support or plan to support hCard microformats?

John Mueller - 2:42 pm

A: I’m not aware of changes in that regard, but we are always open to new ideas!

Q: Why don’t you include actual search numbers in trends or kw selector tool?

Matt Cutts - 2:52 pm

A: I think we’re worried that some people could scrape or abuse that information. Personally I think it would be cool to offer better/more numbers or stats though. We’ll think about ways that we could offer crunchier numbers to people.

The Bad:

Here are some of the Q&A follies for your enjoyment.

Q: whats matts cats name?
A: I have two cats. One is Emmy (she’s a scaredy cat) and the other one is Ozzie. He’s a handful.

Q: I’ve got 3 cats,.. cindy, caty and penelopy..
A: cute

Q: Matt, I was going to ask you about your cat - I’ve got two Persians - is that cat grooming tool you posted on your blog as good as you make out?!
A: Pete, I wouldn’t recommend the tool unless I thought it was really good. I think it would work well for Persian cats, esp. because they have very long hair.

Q: Hi Matt! It’s me Zafar
A: Howdy!

Q: I just want to know since I am not breaking any rules anymore, is there a chance that I can expect a increase in my PR again? or would Google ignore it in the next update?I am not really a PR fan, btw.
A: Zafar, a reconsideration request would be the best place to do that.

Q: Mariya, I’m in Brazil and listening to the conversation via my cell phone - who’s paying for this international call???
A: Hi Wall-E, WebEx provides toll-free numbers for most countries. I hope you dialled the toll-free number and not the regular number (-:

Q: what does googlebot like?
A: milk and cookies!

Q: spam?
A: no thanks

Q: IS there a problem with URLs that end in .0 like example.com/seo2.0
A: I think this has been resolved.

Q: is position SIX a penalty?
A: Position 6 is always between 5 & 7. One site has to be at #6.

Q: Has Maile been on the Cranberry and Vodka yet today?!
A: Maile looks sober to me, Pete.

The unfortunate part of the Q&A was that a lot of the time was spent answering bogus bonehead questions that basically just wasted the time of the panelists. There is no such thing as a stupid question, but there is such thing as the proper time to ask a question. If you want to talk to Matt Cutts about his cat, see if you can catch up with him at a conference about it. Don’t waste the time of over 400 other people!

Sadly my question wasn’t answered.  I asked, “Is there a rule of thumb to consider when thinking about PR vs the number of links on a page and how many of those links will get some of the link juice passed on?”  This inspired by last Friday’s White Board Friday where Rand discussed how many links you should max out on based on it’s PR.  As a follow up I mentioned in the survey sent out by Google that they should answer the remaining questions in a blog post or group so that everyone gets a chance.  Obviously they could weed out any duplicates to shorten the list.

In conclusion I would say that the chat was a success and thanks to the Q&A actually offered some good information for SEM’s. Google announced that they intend to do more of these based on the success of the first two, and hope to hold them on a quarterly basis.  I hope they do.  While I didn’t feel this one was that informative, it definately has some great potential.

So many of us who are testing the waters of Plurk were greeted by an interesting Plurk page today featuring our friends from the A-Team.

The site was down for over 30 minutes and just recently came back up. Unfortunately Plurk’s blog gives us no insight as to what the downtime was about. Are there new features? Improved features? What did this downtime provide us?

Perhaps the most interesting thing was the lack of outcry on Twitter regarding the downtime. Following recent downtimes on Twitter, Plurk users would fill their timelines with gripes about Twitter outages and the incompetence of the service. In this instance I saw maybe two comments on Twitter about the outage. Aside from that the Twitter timeline was business as usual.

Clearly users have not built up a reliance on Plurk the way they have with Twitter. I think it goes to show that Plurk still hasn’t reached the point of being a big information source like Twitter. Users aren’t looking to Plurk for the latest in industry news and information like they have with Twitter.

I still believe that Plurk has a lot of potential, but the buzz surrounding today’s outage, or lack thereof, seems to show that most people haven’t climbed aboard the Plurk bandwagon just yet.

My mother-in-law recently became Craigslist obsessed. She has always been a sucker for a bargain or getting something for nothing, so naturally Craigslist makes tons of bargains and free goods available at the click of a mouse. During one of her browsing sessions she stumbled across one of the funniest ads I have ever seen. Since the ad has already been taken down I will share the whole thing here on my blog. Needless to say the items went quick, and a lot of it I’m sure had to do with the ad copy.

FREE! $10 Bill (We’ll throw in a couch and chair too!)

Date: 2008-05-29, 3:31PM

That’s right, we’re giving away a free $10 bill! Too good to be true? Not at all! This is a real, non-counterfeit bill, made in here in the USA and usable all over the world! (*but only where US currency is accepted).

How can you get this free $10 bill you ask? I’ll tell you. This $10 bill has two good friends named Couch and Chair, and they must all go to a good home together. If you can come and take Couch and Chair home with you, then $10 bill would love to join. Sorry, the $10 bill cannot be taken to a new home without BOTH of its friends because it would be lonely.

**For those who haven’t caught on, we’ll pay you $10 to take our couch and chair…**

What would you do with these new great things? Here are some suggestions for Couch and Chair: sit on them, lay on them, spoon with a friend on them, watch tv on them, take a nap on them, read on them. Really, your options are endless.

But what about $10 bill? You could buy two gallons of gas and a slurpee, a ten dollar gift card at your favorite store, ten items at a dollar store, a burrito with guacamole and chips and drink at Chipotle, two lunches at McDonalds, etc. Or, you could just go for a free walk in the park with $10 bill tucked safely in your pocket.

Below are pictures of all three items for your viewing pleasure. The couch and chair are tan leather. The $10 bill is greenish and made with whatever materials bills are made of. Though they don’t show in the picture, the couch has a hole on the seat cushion part where it meets the back that we covered with blankets or pillows and no one ever knew. The chair may have a rip or two as well. Other than that, they’re in decent shape and perfect for those in a new home or apartment, college students, rec rooms, or people who like $10 bills. Please understand their condition before you come. If you don’t want a couch with any rips, this just isn’t the deal for you, but we wish you the best in your search! But really, any rips are easily coverable. Or you could just put the $10 towards a slipcover.

If you’ve read through everything and think your home would be the perfect place for these items, there’s one last thing to know. You’ll have to come pick these up yourself. We’ve fit the Couch and Chair together in a minivan with the back and middle seats removed, but they wouldn’t fit into anything smaller. They aren’t very heavy and are easily lifted by two people. We can help you carry it to your car, but can’t do it for you while you just carry the $10 bill.

This is probably some of the most inventive and amusing ad copy I have read in a while. And it just goes to show that with the right marketing technique you can sell just about anything; even a ten dollar bill and some torn furniture.

If you’re like me then you probably jumped on the Plurk bandwagon last week and have spent countless hours wasting the day away in hopes that it will eventually provide you with the same kind of gratification that Twitter gives me when searching for industry news and updates. Sadly the Plurk universe has failed to deliver that same gratification I have come to love with Twitter. Though there are still those few updates here and there that hold some industry relevance; I find that the majority of the information on Plurk is made up of random musings and life updates.

Following some office politics that damn near shutdown much of our Twitter and Plurk use last week, a number of my colleagues and I discussed the differences between the two services and the potential that Plurk holds over Twitter if it takes off for SEO/SEM’s new and old.

Perhaps the most intriguing argument I heard, in favor of Plurk, came from Kristina Sanchez. She had mentioned how many of the updates on Plurk quickly turn into something that simulates a group IM or chat room. She brought up how this would provide a great opportunity for SEO/SEM’s to communicate as a group and share ideas. People from all walks of life, backgrounds, and industries can easily chime in on the topic at hand, and respond to something on your timeline even if the update or subject matter did not originally involve them.

This concept really got me thinking. Imagine if some of the key players in SEO/SEM were as active on Plurk as they are on Twitter. That would open an incredible opportunity for those in the SEO/SEM industry to interact and bounce ideas off of one another. SEO/SEM’s could easily interact and comment on each other’s posts in an environment that often feels like a chat room. And because Plurk groups responses with the original plurk people can follow the updates with ease. Often on Twitter you will see an update and a handful of responses from people, but you don’t always get the whole conversation and a lot of time the update is overlooked completely.

As of right now I still see Twitter has done a great job at providing people with a means of finding out what is going on with the industry and those involved. But Plurk opens the door for a whole world of opportunity. A way for the industry to openly and easily communicate what is going on in the industry and the chance to bounce ideas off one another or ask questions in a real time environment. Twitter provides an opportunity for similar interaction, but not in a community format like Plurk. I still feel Plurk is a huge time waster with a poor UI, but there is clearly a great opportunity that if taken advantage of, could make a huge difference in the SEO/SEM industry.

Following the lead of a friend I decided to give the St. Andrews Face Transformer a whirl. The tool morphs a photo of a person into various nationalities and art styles. I’ve decided to post the best out of my batch for your viewing pleasure. The others were omitted simply because they didn’t look as realistic and you could see the photo effects over the picture.

East Asian Mike

Feminized Mike

Old Man Mike

West Asian Mike

While searching to see what people were saying about Plurk last night I discovered an early addon for Firefox to make the UI of Plurk a little bit easier to follow. The Plurk Firefox Sidebar puts the Plurk timeline into a vertical text format similar to that seen on Twitter. Upon first introduction to the addon I was thoroughly impressed, however this morning I was introduced to the plurk/m page. A mobile format of the Plurk timeline. The Plurk Firefox Sidebar is simply a compressed version of this page displayed in a Firefox sidebar. Disappointment aside I decided I would outline the pros and cons I have found with both the mobile timeline and the Plurk Firefox Sidebar.

Pros:

• The Plurk Firefox Sidebar conveniently puts Plurk and all your updates in a sidebar in Firefox allowing you to easily navigate the web while still seeing what is going on in the world of Plurk.
• Updates are much easier to follow in the vertical timeline and don’t require tons of clicks to see what is going on with your fellow plurkers.
• After a day of hampered productivity yesterday, this tiny addon at least cuts back on some of the clicking tediousness in the regular UI.

Cons:

• Rather than being a standalone app the Plurk Firefox Sidebar is nothing more than the Plurk mobile page compressed; meaning that it is limited to the features available on that page.
• Because the timeline in the mobile page does not seem to automatically refresh you are forced to click on ‘my profile’ to get the latest series of plurks and responses.
• The time in the plurk/m page does not follow the time based on your local area and runs on a 24 hour clock. At 8:44 this morning the mobile timeline read 15:44.
• It’s ugly…One of the most appealing things about Plurk is the visually appealing UI. Since it is the mobile based interface you lose that beauty.
• Because the Plurk Firefox Sidebar is nothing more than a compressed page any links you click on open within that small sidebar, and right click does not work anywhere within this page preventing you from opening links in a new tab, new window, or anywhere else for that matter. You have to copy and past the link into Firefox to properly view the link.

Clearly we are still in dire need of an addon or app that provides a similar functionality to things like Twitterfox and Twhirl, which have shined so brightly with Twitter users. Without them I feel that Plurk is going to lose a lot of it’s users solely based on the fact that they don’t have enough hours in the day to keep up with the busy timeline.

Nearly a week after finding out about Plurk.com, the latest in a series of Twitter clones, I decided I would finally give it a try. The service which defines itself as, “A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, and follow the events of the people that matter to you, in deliciously digestible short messages called plurks.” works in a similar format to Twitter. 140 characters, you follow people, people follow you, yada, yada, yada. But I’m not here to talk about it’s pretty interface or how it works. There are a TON of other blogs that have come up over the last 24 hours about Plurk and how it works. I want to discuss the pros and cons of Plurk and who I think will come out on top in the battle Twitter vs. Plurk battle.

First off I want to point out what Plurk has done right. Plurk has clearly developed their system to handle an an increase in new users. I can’t imagine how many new subscribers the site got today with the huge influx of SEO/SEM professionals, including myself, that quickly swarmed the site earlier this morning. Plurk has also done a great job at creating a visually appealing interface; using various themes, a horizontal scrolling timeline, and a series of karma creatures to grace your profile. Plurk has also introduced karma, an incentive to get users to plurk regularly and invite their friends.

However, Twitter still has a lot to offer over the glitz and glam of Plurk. While Twitter has clearly had it’s share of issues lately you can quickly and easily find out what’s going on with your fellow twits in a clearly defined and easy to navigate text based timeline. The tedious task of checking updates, followed by checking replies, then clicking on messages to scroll through a series of replies is extremely tedious in Plurk, especially as your timeline grows in size.

A colleague of mine had an insane number of updates and responses this afternoon after stepping away from Plurk for a while. How many clicks did it take to get to the end of all the plurks? I don’t even think Mr. Owl has an answer to that one.

Twitter also has a number of desktop apps and browser addons that puts tweeting and receiving updates right at your finger tips. Not to mention the ability to tweet from your cell phone.

Finally Twitter still keeps the micro blogging feel to it. While you clearly see people tweeting back and forth to one another, you never get the feeling you are in a chat room or a group IM. Many times today while using Plurk I watched responses turn into a massive group discussion like you would see in a chat room or IM.

So who do I think will win the war? I think it’s still to early to say. If things stay the course and we don’t start seeing some third party apps and addons that give Plurk a more simplistic Twitterlike timeline and interface, then I think people will slowly resort back to their good friend Twitter. Productivity slowed to a halt today for many people that I followed and plurked with. Staying on top of updates, responses, and plurking is just too tedious and too time consuming of a task. Both myself and a number of colleagues at work had to pry ourselves away from the Plurk timeline just to make sure that we were somewhat productive for the day.

Also, until Plurk implements a text based plurking option many people who regularly micro blog by phone will continue to use Twitter. In fact a few of those I plurked with today said they were still using Twitter solely for the texting ability.

In the meantime those of us who swore by Twitter and are now experimenting with Plurk are forced to hang in limbo and hope something good comes of all of this.

For those of us in the SEO/SEM industry we are definitely having to keep an eye out on both timelines for now since I noticed some people were posting from conferences on one and not the other. We also don’t know what kind of value, if any, Plurks links may provide in the future. We are just now starting to see the value of links and trends on Twiter; how long, if at all, will it take to see these results on this relatively new network. And finally, how many of the key players in the industry are actually going to jump on the Plurk bandwagon? And if they don’t are we really going to spend our time balancing both Twitter and Plurk in our day to day schedules?

I have the feeling this battle is going to drag out for a while and in the meantime those of us using both will just have to suffer through it. Let’s hope that in the meantime I don’t miss anything important!

I’ll let the picture do the talking…

This is a screenshot from the ad that just popped up while listening to my Iris Pandora station. Why is this ironic? Read the Criss Angel Is A Douche Bag and Zotfish Experience.