Microhoo: Back on the Table
As reported on NPR and everywhere else, game on!
Compared to last time, I think the odds of a deal going through now are much better.
As reported on NPR and everywhere else, game on!
Compared to last time, I think the odds of a deal going through now are much better.
Lee Odden is running a poll on search marketers' favorite keyword research tools.
I do use and/or recognize most of those listed therein... A couple of them I've never heard of despite how I normally keep about 30+ tools on-hand for keyword research and analysis specifically.
I don't have a hard favorite, but the one I'd pick if I were limited to using only one (I normally don't settle for that for any given project), that one is in there... I won't say which it would be but I will say it's not the one leading in the poll, also it probably won't be the one to win which is kinda how I'd like it. Though many tools have redundancies in between my opinions here are pretty strong. On one hand I'd love to see certain tools get more developed, on the other if all SEOs were standardizing on them that would ruin some of the fun.
Anyway... Right now what I could really use would be a great keyword research tool for Chinese engines. Short of Baidu's popularity checker, Google Trends and Adwords, and the Chinese version of the Yahoo / Overture DTC it's still slim pickin's out there on that front as far as I can tell.
Wo bu hui jiang jon wen.
About a week ago a lot of bloggers were up in arms about Yahoo of all people committing a bit of cloaking.
When things like this happen, sometimes it's just a reminder that nobody's infallible, even those who set the guidelines against which many marketers work.
However, sometimes it's something else. With the complexities of search, advanced work sometimes comes down to consciously committing certain acts that would otherwise normally be flagged as worst practice. N00bs should note that "Do as I Say, Not as I Do" comes up in search marketing from time to time, in association with this.
Take for example this image. It's from this page from the site of SMX, the new event series kicking off next week in Seattle.
Looks like a classic mistake: text as an image needlessly, right?
Wrong. It's not walking out on a weak limb to assume this most likely a very conscious site building decision.
The giveaway is in the site itself, and who it's catering to: Advanced search marketers. So of course, the team building this site wouldn't be caught with their pants down doing something like this. Calling them on it would be like the first-year music theory student who struts into class one morning proclaiming
I found a mistake that Bach made!
only to find the professor's reply is
Bach was one of the people who pioneered and wrote what eventually became the rules. What you found was not a mistake, but part of that process playing out.
Having this bit of text as an image helps preserve a bit of confidentiality and/or juice exclusivity. Unlike how content related to speakers and sponsors is presented, it helps avoid passing casually content love between the SMX brand and those of the attendees.
Simple, subtle, effective.
Regarding to-day's Valleywag:
Google reported serious profits last quarter.
For a while now Microsoft has been called a big old giant getting left in the dust trying to reawaken (lots of $ in the bank left, just not enough to buy Google). Apps are moving off the desktop (they traditionally rule) onto the 'Net so they need to be able to evolve with that, if it's going to really be the future.
Yahoo posted unfortunate numbers from last quarter. There was a time when Yahoo could've bought Google, but Yahoo's CEO at the time particularly - a veteran not of Silicon Valley but of Hollywood - reportedly balked at Google's asking price. That move that may go down in infamy on par with the legend of the disinterest HP showed in Steve Wozniak's early prototypes for what (after he left HP to start Apple with Steve Jobs) eventually became the first Macintosh computer.
Google's eaten both of their lunches in search and has other strategic developments well underway:
The idea of Microsoft and Yahoo in potential merger talks again hardly sounds illogical. Bring it, I say!
Predictions, anyone? Remember if you place any serious bets on it, there's always the option to do it in Second Life instead of meatspace... because it's also not so illogical that this could be bullshit (with one or more agendas behind it). 😉
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