Mar 10
Highlights from the SEW Blog: February 18-22, 2008
in Search Engine Watch
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Featured posts to the Search Engine Watch blog in the past week, along with recent search-related headlines from around the Web.

Mar 10
Four Social Media Lessons from SXSW’s Mark Zuckerberg Interview
in Search Engine Guide
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by Jennifer Laycock

If you read technology and marketing blogs or follow Twitter, chances are good you’ve heard some of the fuss about Sarah Lacy’s interview of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at yesterday’s South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin. I spent the afternoon watching Twitter users unleash an absolute tirade against Lacy during the interview, which left me wondering what was going on. After having read numerous blog posts, news stories and watching several video clips, I realized what the fuss was all about. As always, there’s something to be learned from failure.

In this case, that something is four valuable social media lessons. After all, what is an interview if not social media being acted out in real life? As I read the critiques and complaints on Lacy’s performance as the keynote interviewer, I noticed many of the same mistakes I see popping up in poorly executed social media marketing campaigns.

With that in mind, here are four key mistakes Sarah Lacy made during her interview, each summed up with a valuable lesson you should take to heart before embarking on your next social media marketing campaign.

Mistake #1 - Not Being Interested in What People are Saying

It’s interesting to watch the video clip of the interview at Austin360.com. Lacy’s body language makes it pretty clear that she either suffers from RLS or spends most of the time Zuckerberg is talking waiting for her chance to talk again. She plugs her book multiple times and makes mention of her TV show. Lacy rarely looks interested in what Zuckerberg has to say; she fidgets almost non-stop, strikes quite a few “I’m bored” postures and generally gives off a fairly impatient vibe.

We see this problem repeated by companies online when they barge into social media sites in the hopes of selling rather than listening. They see social media as an opportunity to talk themselves up. To make themselves look witty, intelligent and “cooler” than the audience they’re trying to reach. Companies often forget that social media (like an interview) is about fostering conversation and providing the opportunity for someone else to be the center of attention.

Lesson: Social media is about asking the right questions and planting the right seeds, then stepping out of the limelight and letting other people have the conversation

Mistake #2 - Acting too Familiar with Your Audience

Throughout the interview, Lacy made multiple comments designed to make it sound like she and Zuckerberg were old friends. She said things like “one thing a lot of people don’t know about Mark” and “so you still do this, right?” preceding questions. On more than one occasion, she shared fairly embarrassing stories of the first time she interviewed Zuckerberg. Caroline McCarthy of CNET writes:

Lacy went into a mildly humiliating story about the first time she interviewed Zuckerberg and was surprised to see how socially awkward he was, and related that he’d said, “That’s really hard” when she asked him to say more than two words at a time. It was the first of several “embarrassing story about another time when I interviewed Mark” anecdotes that Lacy went into throughout the talk.

This can work if you actually are that close with your audience, but it comes off as disingenuous when you do it with someone you aren’t actually close with. Sure, Lacy has intereviewed Zuckerberg on multiple occasions, but it’s not like they’re best buddies. To many in the SXSW audience, it came off as condescending and rude.

Lesson: While social media is about being social, assuming too familiar of a relationship too soon can turn off your target audience.

Mistake #3 - Speaking For (and Over) Your Customers

One of the biggest complaints about Lacy’s interview was how much time she spent talking. One highly blogged moment came when she spent several minutes talking about how Zuckerberg keeps hand written journals of his ideas for the company. She described the process in great detail, as if to lead Zuckerberg into conversation. Unfortunately for Lacy, she made the mistake of telling so much of the story there was nothing left for Zuckerberg to tell. When she prompted him to talk, he responded “Well you have to ask a question.”

Zuckerberg’s response got a huge round of applause. Quite a few bloggers reported audience members were buzzing at how frequently Lacy interrupted Zuckerberg while he was speaking. On one occasion she spoke right over him, then stopped, noting the look on his face.

Attendees were also upset Lacy didn’t allow more questions from the audience. After all, SXSW attracts a fairly savvy, intelligent crowd every bit as capable of asking probing questions as a journalist. Had Lacy thought ahead, she would have used a service like Twitter or (duh) Facebook to gather up questions from people attending which would have ensured she’d be asking questions of interest to the audience.

Lesson: Listen more than you talk. In fact, listen a LOT more than you talk. Assume your customers know as much (or more) as you do.

Mistake #4 - Failing to Admit When You’ve Screwed Up

Lacy showed up on Twitter not long after the interview with this gem.

sarahlacy.jpg

Shortly before writing this, I stumbled across a video interview of her on YouTube that was taken at SXSW after the now infamous interview. Listen to the tone of her response and the spin she tries to put on what happened:

Lacy makes a common mistake in that clip. She refuses to acknowledge she made a mistake and she spends time trying to spin the incident to place the blame on other people. She cites her credentials and experience over and over again, mostly in an attempt to discredit her critics and to convince the viewer she did everything right.

This is exactly what we see happen with many companies when it comes to their first social media screw up. When Sony was caught using a fake blog to market the PSP, their initial reaction was to try and deny the accusations. Doing so made them look even worse, because now the public saw them as fakers and liars.

I wrote about the need to own up to your social media mistakes back in my Hide and Speak series. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if YOU think you screwed up. If the audience thinks you screwed up, you did. Their perception becomes your reality.

Lesson: If the majority says you screwed up, you screwed up. Admit fault, apologize sincerely and work to remedy the problem.

When it comes to any type of conversation, be it a social media conversation or an interview of the youngest billionaire in the world before an audience of techies, it’s essential to remember where the focus should lie. Stop worrying about talking yourself up and start worrying about how to spark conversation in others. Then sit back, be quiet and listen.

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Mar 10
Daily Search Forum Recap: March 10, 2008
in Search Engine Roundtable
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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Mar 10
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 10, 2008
in Search Engine Land
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Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:


  • Search Biz: Google Stock Hits New Low; News Corp Says No On Yahoo
    Today in Search Biz: News Corp isn’t throwing Yahoo a life preserver to fend off Microsoft. Ask loses (a small) paid search partner and gets competition for those women it now says it’s not really that focused on (sort of). Google’s stock hits a new low, but will it…

  • New Search Engine Land Column: Search Biz
    There’s a lot of business news in search that we think is important for both searchers and search marketers to know about. But we don’t want all the search business news to drown out other things we post on Search Engine Land or get lost in headlines as part…

  • Keyword Intent: Tidy Campaigns Avoid the ‘Dump and Chase’
    Another bundle of advertising flyers just landed on my front porch, only to go straight into the recycle bin. Although I merely dream of the distant day when such lazy and wasteful advertising methods will be punishable by death or a day spent shopping with Paula Abdul, I hold…

  • Search Month: Feburary 2008 Search News, In Review
    Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It’s also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from February 2008, then a major story for various search topics along with…

  • February 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
    Below are Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from Feburary 2008:…

  • Google Pitches Media Buying “Dashboard” To Skeptical Ad Agencies
    Many people think that Google is a search engine. That’s true, but it’s only part of a much larger story that Google is developing. Indeed, the company increasingly sees itself as a diversified media buying platform. Already print newspaper ad buying, radio and TV are integrated, to varying degrees, into…

  • Search Engine Billionaires & Yahoo’s Decker Boosts Her Salary
    Forbes is out with the latest billionaires list, and Google executives are well represented. Plus Yahoo president Susan Decker saw a 63-percent increase in her salary, with a 29-percent bonus increase from last year….

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Local, Maps & Mobile

Link Building

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Video, Music & Image Search

Other Items

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

Mar 10
Search Biz: Google Stock Hits New Low; News Corp Says No On Yahoo
in Search Engine Land
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Search Biz - A Column From Search Engine Land

Today in Search
Biz: News Corp isn’t throwing Yahoo a life preserver to fend off Microsoft.
Ask loses (a small) paid search partner and gets competition for those women it
now says it’s not really that focused on (sort of). Google’s stock hits a new
low, but will it plunge below $400? Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says maybe
Facebook was "ahead of itself" in calling its ads so revolutionary — but you
might have missed that in the hoo-ha over the interviewer’s style at SXSW. And
no, Digg’s not selling itself to Google or Microsoft.

Click to continue reading…

Mar 10
New Search Engine Land Column: Search Biz
in Search Engine Land
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Search Biz - A Column From Search Engine Land

There’s a lot of business news in search that we think is important for both
searchers and search marketers to know about. But we don’t want all the search
business news to drown out other things we post on
Search Engine Land or get lost in
headlines as part of our
SearchCap newsletter. That’s why we’re debuting the Search Biz column today.
It’ll be listed on our columns page shortly, and you can subscribe to it as a
newsletter or feed that way. It’ll come out roughly daily — whenever we think
there’s enough business news of importance to warrant doing a post. Hope you
enjoy it! You’ll find the first issue
here.

Mar 10
Keyword Intent: Tidy Campaigns Avoid the ‘Dump and Chase’
in Search Engine Land
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Paid<br /> Search - A Column From Search Engine Land

Another bundle of advertising flyers just landed on my front porch, only to go straight into the recycle bin. Although I merely dream of the distant day when such lazy and wasteful advertising methods will be punishable by death or a day spent shopping with Paula Abdul, I hold out some hope that search marketers will soon learn to clean up their acts, guided by less draconian incentives.

Click to continue reading…

Mar 10
Digg’s Algorithm Cut Front Page Promotions by 38%
in Search Engine Roundtable
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Do you all remember Digg’s algorithm change in January? Well, it looks like I was right when I claimed that Digg jumped the shark. Pierre at Social Alerter actually provided an in-depth analysis of how the algorithm impacted the popularity of front page stories. In his post, Digg’s Algo Change Cut Promotions by 38%, he shows data that supports this statement. Then he asks, “The question is, was the change worth it for Digg? Did the quality of promoted stories go up? Did it increase the number of users? Only Digg the company and the Digg users can answer those.”

Let me give you a short answer: Digg became less of a tech-centric site and more of a mess of random junk. For example, did this story need to hit the front page? Thank you, captain obvious, but I like informational news, not junk.

As some people notice, however, the Digg stories that do get promoted get a lot more traffic. (Not from me, though.) And at this point, I think that Digg can’t really have a “fan base” because it totally killed user morale–at least to some like yours truly.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Mar 10
What You Should NOT do a Search Conferences
in Search Engine Roundtable
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Todd Malicoat wrote a funny post about the 15 ways to be a SEO conference douchebag, that is, what you should not do at the search engine conferences to upset other attendees. His list includes being a pushy salesperson, soliciting people to write for you for free, drinking too much, asking questions that have already been answered during the session, stalking women, blog everything you overhear in confidence, and more.

What irks me as a liveblogger? The people whispering in the first few rows when I’m trying to liveblog a session. If you’ve chosen to sit near the front of the room, it’s hopefully because you’ve intended to listen to what the people have to say. I also find it annoying when people run to the front of the room to get a front row seat and end up surfing Facebook. You don’t need to sit in the front of the room for that. Go to the back and give those seats to people who actually need to work.

So uh yeah, now you know Todd’s pet peeves and my own. Behave at the conferences and give the front row to the livebloggers. We already try to get there early enough. ;)

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Mar 10
Search Month: Feburary 2008 Search News, In Review
in Search Engine Land
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Search Month is a
monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on
Search Engine Land over the past
month. It’s also available by feed
here. Below, news
about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from February
2008, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories
related to those topics since our last monthly newsletter through today.

Click to continue reading…

Mar 10
February 2008: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories
in Search Engine Land
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Below are
Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular
stories from Feburary 2008:

Click to continue reading…

Mar 10
Google Removes Military Installations off Street View
in Search Engine Roundtable
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Because of a threat to national security, Google has removed imagery of US military bases from Street View, according to InformationWeek.

The Pentagon said that Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Street Views is a threat to national security and made Google pull images taken on streets near U.S. military bases. Google complied with the governmental order, even though the images were taken from public streets.

Was the government too hard on Google? As one forum member puts it, if it was taken from a public street, why should it be removed? If the government finds that there are security concerns, they should have added a gate or wall to prevent people from seeing it. Why would the government let the big Googlemapsmobile even take photographs around the place if this was a concern to begin with?

What do you think? Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Mar 10
SES New York 2008 Conference Coverage Schedule
in Search Engine Roundtable
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The big SES New York show starts in just one week from today. Tamar and I plan on traveling back and forth each day to the Hilton to cover the conference, in fact, I hope to be there as early as 6:45am each day, traffic permitting, so I can blog other items here and at Search Engine Land.

We are covering about forty sessions, basically in live format. Yes, our style is to type as fast as we can, and click the post blog entry button as soon as the session is over. The raw form is likely to have typos, errors and major grammar issues but that is our live blogging style - there are other blogs that post a day or two later in a more legible format.

We have two new comers to our live blogging coverage schedule, they include Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People and Marshall Sponder of The Analytics Guru. We also have our veterans covering the sessions, including our very own Tamar Weinberg, Chris Boggs of Brulant and Debra Mastaler of Alliance Link and of Link Spiel - of and I will be covering a bunch of sessions.

Here is our conference coverage schedule for SES NY 2008:

Day 1 - Monday, March 17, 2008
9:30am - 10:45am
Redefining the Customer covered by Marshall Sponder
Organic Listings Forum covered by Tamar Weinberg
11:15am-12:30pm
How to Build Investment Interest in Your SEO/SEM covered by Jeff Quipp
Analytics: Data Into Action covered by Marshall Sponder
Igniting Viral Campaignscovered by Tamar Weinberg
Video Made the SMB Star covered by Barry Schwartz
2:00pm-3:15pm
Web Analytics: Measuring Success covered by Tamar Weinberg
Auditing Paid Listings and Click Fraud Issues covered by Chris Boggs
Network Neutrality is for On-Line Marketers too! covered by Marshall Sponder
3:45pm-5:00pm
Orion Panel: Getting Vertical Search Right covered by Barry Schwartz
5:00pm-5:30pm
SES Awards 2008 covered by Chris Boggs

Day 2 - Tuesday, March 18, 2008
9:00am-10:00am
Conference Welcome and Opening Keynote: Nick Carr covered by Tamar Weinberg
11:00am-12:15pm

Converting Visitors Into Buyers covered by Marshall Sponder
Why Local Is Different covered by Chris Boggs
1:30pm-2:45pm
Orion Panel: Universal Search covered by Barry Schwartz
3:15pm-4:30pm
Do You Know the Breakdown of Your Competitors’ Paid and Organic Traffic? Hitwise does covered by Chris Boggs
What’s new with Google Analytics and Website Optimizer? covered by Barry Schwartz
Optimizing Search Marketing Campaigns covered by Debra Mastaler
4:45pm-6:00pm

Earning Money From Contextual Ads covered by Tamar Weinberg

Day 3 - Wednesday, March 19, 2008
9:00am-9:45am
Morning Keynote: Search Has Changed Everything… And So Can You covered by Tamar Weinberg
10:15am-11:30am
Social Media Marketing - What is it and What is it Good For? covered by Tamar Weinberg
Widgets and Gadgets are taking over, but what are they? covered by Barry Schwartz
1:00pm-2:15pm
Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization (SMO) covered by Barry Schwartz
Big Brand Search Strategies: Build Connections and Fuel Online Promotions covered by Chris Boggs
2:30pm-3:30pm
Afternoon Keynote: Jason Calacanis covered by Tamar Weinberg
4:00pm-5:15pm
Dealing With Affiliates covered bt Chris Boggs
Social Media Research: Informing Search Strategies covered by Barry Schwartz
SEM Small Business Blitz covered by Tamar Weinberg
5:30pm-6:45pm

Social Search: The Next Step covered by Chris Boggs

Day 4 - Thursday, March 20, 2008
10:00am-11:00am
The Sempo Survey: 2007 State of the Market covered by Chris Boggs
Podcast & Audio Search Optimization covered by Tamar Weinberg
Staffing Up for Search covered by Jeff Quipp
11:15am-12:15pm
OldTimers on Search covered by Barry Schwartz
Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions covered bt Tamar Weinberg
12:45pm-1:45pm
Video Search Optimization covered by Chris Boggs
My Search is Better Than Your Search covered by Barry Schwartz

Mar 10
Google Pitches Media Buying “Dashboard” To Skeptical Ad Agencies
in Search Engine Land
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Many people think that Google is a search engine. That’s true, but it’s only part of a much larger story that Google is developing. Indeed, the company increasingly sees itself as a diversified media buying platform. Already print newspaper ad buying, radio and TV are integrated, to varying degrees, into AdWords. And last Thursday Google’s Tim Armstrong outlined a provocative and much larger vision for the company that would incorporate it more centrally into major ad agencies’ media buying and planning processes.

Click to continue reading…

Mar 10
Search Billionaires & Yahoo’s Decker Boosts Her Salary
in Search Engine Land
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Forbes is out with the latest billionaires lists, with Google executives being well represented. Plus Yahoo’s President, Susan Decker saw a 63-percent increase in her salary with a 29-percent bonus increase from last year.

Click to continue reading…

Mar 10
Which Google Data Center Am I On Now?
in Search Engine Roundtable
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A very common practice when discussion Google search results changes is to list the data center you are on when viewing Google results. But how do you do that? How do you know which IP address Google is using to serve up your results?

One of the best methods is to download the ShowIP Firefox extension into your Firefox browser. After you restart Firefox, at the bottom bar, you will be able to see every IP address of every web site you navigate to or query. So when it comes to searching at Google, where the IP address may change frequently, this tool gives you the IP right away.

For example, here is a search I did for mp3 players at Google:

ShowIP Firefox Extension

The arrow I added points to the ip address that ShowIP adds to the status bar of Firefox. You can easily see that at the time of my query, I hit the 64.233.169.103 Google data center. Not only that, you can also quickly dig up more information on the IP address you hit by clicking on the IP address:

ShowIP Firefox Extension

This is a useful tool for many reasons. What if you can’t download the ShowIP extension? Well, there are other ways to try to get the ip address but they don’t work as well. You can try pinging Google.com before searching, but the search may trigger a different IP address. Some suggest you can look at the cache URL’s IP address, but that may not be 100% either.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Mar 10
Google Once Again Says Toolbar PageRank Score To Be “Abstract”
in Search Engine Roundtable
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Have we beaten the Google Toolbar PageRank value dead yet? If not, here is yet another reason not to take too much insight to the value displayed in the Google Toolbar.

Googler, Berghausen, said in a Google Group thread, and I quote:

The other thing is that the PageRank shown in the Google Toolbar is only updated periodically, usually every few months, and is only an abstraction from the constantly updated number our algorithms use. In the time between updates, any number of things can happen to the other sites that link to you, and the sites that link to them (and so on) so it can be hard to predict how the little green bar is going to move.

So instead of all the craze PageRank update threads which we actively promote here because they are discussed more than any other topic in the forums, we should probably focus on other things? Why? Let me pull out points from Berghausen post, which I quoted above:

  • Toolbar PageRank is only updated periodically
  • Toolbar PageRank is only updated every few months
  • Toolbar PageRank is only only an abstraction from the true PageRank score

Forum discussion at Google Group.

Mar 10
Google Sends Out More TV AdWords Beta Invitations
in Search Engine Roundtable
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On March 6th, Google seemed to have sent out a boat load of invitations to the AdWords TV ads program, to current AdWords advertisers. Google has been beta testing TV ads for a while now but it seems like they are ramping that up.

A WebmasterWorld thread from late last week reports many other advertisers receiving invites to the program. The program is fairly cool actually, take a look at Pinny Cohen’s post with all the cool screen captures of the reporting you get. Here is a text outline of some of the reports:

Some of the data you get includes:

  • Campaign Name
  • Campaign Status
  • Creative Type
  • Network Airing
  • Market
  • Play Time
  • Impression Share
  • CPM (based on ad views)
  • Impressions
  • Cost
  • Percentage Viewed Until Ad End
  • Most Common Tune Out Time
  • Average Viewing Time

Those are some of the statistics Google gives you for your TV ads when you run them through the Google TV Ad beta.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.