TouchGraph: A Creepy and Interesting Application

Posted on November 13th, 2008 by Rick Maggio

So, I was listening to my very first podcast the other day (yeah, I’m pretty slow with anything Apple. A technology geek was being interviewed about a set of applications that he created, one of which is called the TouchGraph Facebook Browser. This is a facebook application that analyzes your friends and how they’ve tagged you in photos to create a graph of your relationships. Based on the photo-tagging patterns and frequency of tagging, the app creates a graph that, in theory, should display relationships of your friends.

Here’s what mine looks like (click, it gets bigger, I swear…):

Just so you know, I’m Rick, the goofy-looking guy in the middle. The app displays my various friends around me. You’ll notice that, using different colors, the app creates ‘neighborhoods’ of my friends. It also selectively displays certain friends closer to me than others. My observations:

* The people who display closest to me on this graph are mostly people whom I spend the most time with and are closest to.

* The color breakdown fairly accurate separates my family members (peach) from my close friends (red) from friends whom I don’t see too often (other colors).

Why I think this is creepy

Considering the limited amount of data used to create this graph (image tags), TouchGraph has drawn a chart depicting my relationships with decent accuracy. When I think about how much more data Facebook, Google and other data-whores has about me, I’m pretty sure that they know more about me by now than I do about myself. Since I know that they’re warehousing all this data, I hope that they put it to good use someday. Maybe they can send me a report that tells me more about me. Or, when I die, at least give my loved ones a summary about my life. Hell, if they are going to use this information to sell me shit (targeted advertising) my whole life, I think I should get something for it at some point.

If you want to be creeped-out as well, login to facebook and get the app here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=3267890192.

Tags: facebook, targeted advertising | Category Rants

Did You Know?

Posted on November 13th, 2008 by Rick Maggio

This video was sent to me this week by my good friend Al D. It basically spews out a bunch of global and technology stats which are pretty interesting. Definitely one of the most interesting things I’ve seen on YouTube in a while. Thanks Al!

Tags: technology, videos | Category Rants

Your Reputation Online

Posted on October 23rd, 2008 by Rick Maggio

What shows up in Google when someone searches for your company’s name? Or better yet, when someone searches for your own name? More and more, we turn to the Internet for answers. I recently heard a story of a guy who, while being interviewed, was Googled by the interviewer only to expose an embarrassing profile page on one of the popular social networks. Whether this event prevented him from getting the job is hard to say. It certainly didn’t help, though.

It’s becoming more and more important for businesses to monitor their reputation these days. Consumers regularly use Google and a number of consumer review sites to evaluate companies, products and people before interacting with them. A single bad review online could mean a lot of lost business and the cause often go unnoticed.

For most major brands, there is at least one angry-consumer website dedicated to making life difficult. For example:

* dontuseuhaul.com ranks #6 for the term uhaul

* walmartwatch.com ranks #6 for the term walmart

Additionally, several consumer watch-out websites provide a means for consumers to speak out:

* Ripoff Report

* Scam.com

Additionally, there are several industry-specific only communities where customers and potential customers talk back and forth and offer each other advice.

Don’t kid yourself. Every company, no matter how good or bad, has unhappy customers. Most of these customers, to some degree, will take their complaints to the web. The key is finding and responding to these complaints.

Tools used for monitoring online reputation – The following tools are useful is identifying instances where your reputation may be at stake.

* Google Alerts – When you setup a Google Alert for a keyword phrase, Google will send you an email each time it finds that keyword phrase. Setup an alert for your brand name and variations of in “quotes”. You may have to tweak the terms based on the results you get back.

* Google Custom Search – With Google Custom Search, you can easily setup your own search engine that searches only a select group of sites. So, if Google Alerts was returning too many erroneous results, try setting a custom search engine which looks for your brand name only on sites where your customers may be making comments, such as industry forums and online communities.

* Technorati – Technorati is one of the top blog search engines out there. While it’s a little hard to get clean results, Technorati is great for uncovering mentions of your brand name in the blogosphere.

Depending on how generic your brand name is, how strong it is, and how many people know about and use it, the best tools for monitoring your reputation will vary. Once you’re able to setup a good monitoring program, the benefits will outweigh the time investment.

What’s a business to do when negative comments are posted?

First off, any business with a customer-focus should take every negative comment found as an opportunity to improve. The best approach for any business to take is to respond in a professional manner to any negative comments with an aim to turn unhappy customers into happy ones, where doing so requires a reasonable amount of effort.

For example, let’s say a customer of yours has posted a negative comment about you on scam.com. You could start by posting back in the forum and attempt to prove the customer wrong. Or, you could respond to the issues by reaching out to the unhappy customer. By showing readers of the forum that you’re making an effort to resolve the issue will usually make you look better. Arguing with a customer can make you look like the big bad business that you don’t want to be. Consumers expect a reasonable effort to be made. Remember that there will always be customers that you cannot please.

Keeping an eye and responding to things that your customers say about you will not only help improve your image, but will also help you improve your business. Ignoring the issues won’t make them go away.

Tags: reputation management | Category Internet

What’s in a (Domain) Name?

Posted on October 19th, 2008 by Rick Maggio

I don’t get it. All to often too often, clients dream up big ideas about how to re-invent their business by radically redesigning their website. Whether it’s because they think their website is out of date or because the executives are bored with the current website, they rarely seem to ask themselves whether they will better serve their customers with a fresh look on the website.

Sometimes, the changes businesses seek are not a design change at all. Some clients, after years on web, decide they need a new domain name. They always cite a creative reason for doing so. Some businesses have a domain name that’s hard to remember or spell. This makes it tough for customers to remember after hearing an ad on the radio or TV so they want to make it easier. Others are convinced that their search engine rankings will improve if they switch to a more keyword-rich domain name. Some just want to change because they managed to registered a new clever domain name and want to move their site to it.

No matter what the reason, I want to briefly talk about why it is an absolutely terrible idea, 95% of the time, to ever change your domain name.

Why your current domain name is already valuable

First off, your current domain name probably has more value than you know. What I mean is that, in the eyes of the search engines, a domain with age and reputation is instantly more valuable than any newly-registered domain. Why? Because the web is full of SPAM. Since the search engines work hard to reduce SPAM, they give priority to trusted domains. A domain with history is more trusted than a new domain. If the search engines have been crawling your domain for several years, you’ve already earned a level of trust that cannot be bought by hiring any SEO company or building any number of quality links.

Reason: Your search rankings will suffer like a chronic dieter at a Chinese buffet

No matter what you do, changing your domain name will negatively affect your search engine rankings and traffic in the short and medium-term. There are many technical things you can do to minimize the negative impact of a domain name change. Included in these are using 301 redirects, updating links and building links to the new domain. No matter what you do, there will still be negative impact. Maybe your search engine traffic will drop off for a month and maybe they will drop for several months. Either way, you’ll miss out potential customers during this period.

Besides age, what else do I lose by changing domain names?

Links for one. Over the years, many websites have been linking to yours. When you move your website, you’ll need to use permanent redirects on the old pages so that users clicking on old links still make it to your website. However, search engines will not respond as kindly. You’re new domain will not likely receive full credit for your old links, even with redirects in place.

But my SEO consultant told me that I need keyword phrases in my domain name to rank highly for those terms…

While a keyword-rich domain name helps search engine rankings, the loss of age and reputation from changing to a keyword rich domain name will often do more harm than good. Granted, I’d choose a keyword-rich domain name for any new project. But I’d almost never change to a new domain from an established domain just because it is keyword rich.

What do I do if I want to market an easier to remember domain name?

This is easy; just 301 redirect you new domain name to your existing. This way, your customers will reach your website no matter which domain name they type. The search engines won’t care that you are pointing another domain name at your website so there will be no penalty there.

So, what’s in a domain name? Age, trust and value. Don’t risk losing all three on whim.

Tags: domain names, features | Category Organic Search

Search Engines that You Haven’t Tried

Posted on October 13th, 2008 by Rick Maggio

According to recent Hitwise stats, the estimated breakdown of search volume by search engine is as follows:

* Google: 71%

* Yahoo: 18%

* MSN: 4%

* Ask: 3.45%

Chances are, over 70% percent of the people who read this blog post also use Google for most of their search queries. Without a major development in search or a radical new search method, chances are that Google’s share of search won’t likely decrease in the near future. This is partially because search habits are habitual and partly because Google still seems to provide the best results.

I’d like to dedicate this post to shedding light on a few search engines other than Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. While many of these engines don’t have the resources of their larger competitors, many have taken a more creative approach to helping users find what they are looking for on the Web.

Dogpile is a meta search engine that evaluates the results from all the top search engines (Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search, Ask.com, About, MIVA, LookSmart, and more) and returns the best results after removing duplicates. The search engine results pages (SERPs) mix sponsored listings in with organic listings, although the sponsored listings are labeled as such. Overall, there’s nothing too unique about this search engine or the display of its results.

Mahalo is a human-powered search engine/directory where editors review various web resources and build search results phrases for various topics. When you perform a search on Mahalo, a pre-built search results page will appear displaying information and links to resources on that topic. In the event that a results page hasn’t yet been created for the topic searched, a results page appears with similar searches terms that Mahalo does have information on.

iRazoo is another human-power search engine that relies on user ratings and recommendations to improve search results. When users click to view a website, they do so in the iRazoo frame. Users can browse the website and select whether or not recommend a particular website. What’s more, iRazoo offers incentive for users to help rate websites. Users earn points by helping provide recommendations. The more points a user has the better that user’s chance is to win gift certificates and prizes. I personally think the search results aren’t great and the site looks a little spammed.

ChaCha is a human-powered search engine that is only available through test messaging on your mobile phone. All you really do is text any question that you can think of to 242242 and you’ll get an answer back in anywhere from a couple to ten minutes. After you send your question, it’s sent to a community guide at ChaCha who is the most knowledgeable in the particular category. For my test of ChaCha, I asked, “What are five other human-powered Internet search engines?” The answer came back about 5 minutes later and said, “I couldn’t find anything about other human powered search engines, so you’ll just have to keep asking.” I should note that, In the past, I’ve had a better luck with ChaCha.

This is a pretty short list of search engines. In the past, I’ve also written a bit about Curl. There are a ton of other search engines out there, although none that were much better to mention. Comment back if you can think of any outstanding SE’s.

Tags: search engines | Category Internet