Jon Henshaw, the SEO guru (among many other things) at the web-development firm, Sitening, says some very nice things about the online strategy displayed on the Hammock Inc. company website, Hammock.com. (Yes, I do have a job.) Thanks, Jon. I feel like Sally Field.

There are subtle things about the site that Jon notes — simple things that took me years of blogging to figure out and that took several people at Hammock (not just me, but thanks for the credit, Jon) nearly a year to think through. Again, it’s a simple strategy that any business or association, large or small, could implement. But for some reason, very few do — perhaps because the “content” commitment such a strategy requires appears daunting once you start scratching the surface. (Another promo: Helping companies and associations do such things is our business.)

Jon observes one of things I’m very proud of (in a geekish way), but something no one else has written about: Every employee at Hammock has a “blog” designed to look okay even if it’s never updated. I’ve often said that if they weren’t called “blogs,” more people would have one. So internally, we decided to have a page for each employee, but to not use the B-word (or, come to think of it, any letter followed by “-word”). Internally, we call them People pages. On the site, at first, we didn’t call them anything. They were just pages for each employee that contain work-related contact info. Officially, they reside in the “About” category. Each of these pages have an easy-to-remember URL, like mine, Hammock.com/RexHammock. But as Jon noticed — and we have now acknowledged — each of these pages is also a blog built on Moveable Type with all the bells and whistles you’d expect on a blog — even a stealth blog. Recently, we did add them to the “blogs” category and put the word “blogs” at the top of each page. The first (and for several, only) “post” on each page is a bio that has another easy-to-remember URL, like Hammock.com/RexHammock/bio. Some employees have never made a second post to their page, but by design, such a page doesn’t look like a blog that hasn’t been updated — just something that provides helpful contact information. Some employees use them like a phone message — “I’m out of the office until Sept. 2.” Others do use them like a blog. Those who study online behavior would recognize the pages’ versatility in serving dual roles for identity and expression. As each “people page” (it’s a stealth blog, remember) has an RSS feed, it’s easy for them to be integrated with other services. For example, I have mine feeding into my FriendFeed page.

In Jon’s post, he speculates about the SEO mojo that our strategy generates. I’d share the before and after data (we have about nine months of data) but I’m not yet a true believer in all that radical transparency stuff. Let’s just say, it’s working.

In a future shameless self-promotional post, I’ll explain how the Hammock.com website embraces a variety of social media services in nuanced ways (APIs, RSS, etc.) and how we’re working with association and corporate clients to do the same.

Technorati Tags: hammock, SEO, strategy

Philipp Lenssen has a post that displays some hilarious image results that are occurring on Cuil.com, the heavily financed new search engine that all those mean bloggers are ganging up on.

Philipp’s results are so amusing, I thought I’d do another ego search on my name to see what happens. And whoa, the screen-grab below is what I found. While not me, the guy on the left is my friend, Joi Ito. He’s taken my photo a few times, and I his. So, other than him living in Japan and me in Tennessee, I guess I see the relation. As for that photo on the right that accompanies a Nick Bradbury post that mentions me, if it looks like a pregnant man, well, it is. Huh? Oddly, the pregnant man image shows up on a Google Image search for me, as well — thanks to this post related to my annual warning before April Fool’s Day. I guess the April Fool’s joke was one me.

Earlier today, I out-sourced to Danny Sullivan a review of the new search engine, Cuil.com. In a comment on that post, Bob Sacks (BoSacks) observed that he uses an ego search to decide if a search engine is any good. That makes sense to me. If I want to find out about someone, chances are the first thing I do is Google them. So I did as Bob suggested and ego-googled “Rex Hammock” — and this is what I got on the first search engine results page (SERP):

1. My Blog (RexBlog.com)
2. My Personal Tumble Log (RexHammock.com)
3. My Flickr account (Flickr.com/rexblog)
4. A photo of me at a BBQ restaurant taken by Dave Winer
5. My Company (Hammock.com)
6 My FriendFeed account (friendfeed.com/rexhammock)
7. My MyBlogLog Profile Page
8. My Twitter Page (twitter.com/r)

Pretty good job, Google, except perhaps, I’d kick that Dave photo to page 2 or 3. From that SERP, you can one-click to about anything you’d ever want to know about me — and way more.

Compare that to the results you’ll get on Cuil.com:

My Jaiku account — that I forgot I had
Several links to Techmeme posts that are two years old
A 2004 interview Steve Ruble posted on his old blog
Some posts on Dave Winer’s & Nick Bradbury’s blogs
Some other even more random links

Bottomline: Cuil is not going to be a go-to source for people who want to find information about other people — or themselves.

Bonus link: Rafe Neddleman writes how Cuil shows how not to launch a search engine. I couldn’t agree more.

Later: I just saw that Chris Brogan did the same thing with his name and discovered the same results. Says Chris, “Call me egotistical, but if you can’t find yourself in a search engine after a decade of littering the web with your presence, I’m thinking it’s not much of a search engine.” Okay, you’re egotistical. And you’re right.

Bonus video: Ouch! The WSJ’s Digital Daily puts Cuil through the meat-grinder. Title of video: How do you spell Cuil? F-A-I-L.

This will be my last comment about Cuil. I think the response is looking like “piling on.”

[Later: I posted this early Monday morning. Now, it's mid-afternoon. After using Cuil a little, I've decided they should shut it down and give any money left over back to the investors. All it has done for me is make me realize how wonderful Google is.]

When I see a new online service announced, say, Cuil, a new search “challenger” to Google, I typically go to the site and click around. Seeing what it is, I seek the insight of someone I know follows closely the developments in that category. For instance with anything related to search, I look for what Danny Sullivan has written. Sure enough, sometime in the middle of the night, Danny has posted his quick review of the Google killer.

Because Danny is a professional guru of how search works, he has a battery of tests he can immediately run a new search tool through. From reading Danny’s, I have learned that having benchmarks can help someone compare any “new” thing with some valid comparisons, rather than some knee-jerk opinion.

Read Danny’s review for a real review. As for my personal review of Cuil, I’ll say this: I have five words and phrases in my benchmark tests that I know get the results I have learned will appear on page one of Google’s SERP (search engine results page). These five searches involve words and phrases related to my work, so I track them very closely. The results I expect to see don’t show up on Cuil — they look more like Microsoft’s results. I know the information found on the sites I expect to see will be more helpful to someone searching for information about the topic. So, at least for this morning and for me personally, Cuil is not doing well against my benchmarks.

My friend Jon Henshaw, who is a search-engine marketing strategist (of the Nashville-based company, Sitening), is thinking (and blogging) about how Google knols* will affect search-engine-optimization. Jon considers Knol from a completely different perspective than I did in my earlier post on the topic. He sees both an opportunity and, perhaps, challenge in the new product.

Quote:

“As Google increasingly enters the content space — no longer scraping other sites, but actually producing and delivering the content themselves — they stand to overtake their own search engine results (SERPs). The introduction to Universal Search and the increased Google Web properties will almost certainly ensure that the above the fold search results will be from Google entities or those closely aligned with Google. If that becomes true, and users continue to flock to Google’s search engine for information, Google will not only become a target for influencing SERPs, it will also become the next target for content manipulation.

*I’m still not sure how to refer “knol.” Is a knol just a single post or is it also the name of the service with which I’ll create such “content units”? I’m going to refer to all of it as “Knol” until I learn what’s correct. Also, I’ve been slow to figure out (and I’m not sure even now) that the word is pronounced “naahl” instead of “noll” as in the first syllable of the word, “knowl-edge.” Of course, the early wiki folks will tell you that that word is pronounced “wee-kee” instead of the way everyone in the world pronounces it, so what does it matter how it’s supposed to be pronounced — it will be pronounced how people think it should be pronounced.

Sidenote: I’m especially impressed by the integrity of Jon’s approach to contemplating the impact of the service, when I see someone in a dark-corner of the Internet make a post on an SEO blog (which will get no link from me) with the subject line, “7 Ways to Use Google Knol” (for SEO purposes) that includes such advice as “Create a Knol using your competitor’s business name and your competitor’s product or service name.” That type of advice — even before the service is launched — is what makes it hard for the reputable white-hat guys to convince folks they’re offering a legitimate service.

From the Google Earth/Maps “Lat Long Blog” comes an explanation of how they are adding more layers of information (departure times, lines serving specific stations) if you click on one of the little bus or tram icons that show where stops and stations are located. They source the information from several services but are also providing a means for local transit authorities to provide information to them via “Google transit feeds.” This type of data is already showing up for a very few transit systems and what can done with such data can be demo’d on this transit trip planner that works exactly like a highway trip planner on Google maps.

Search blogger Tara Calishain points to a new feature (she’s guessing it can be called a “name mining” function) on the website whitepages.com. It allows you to sort their database to discover statistical information about specific first or last names — or both. For example, here’s some information from the whitepages.com database about the people in Tennessee with the first name Rex. Tara thinks it may help someone doing genealogical research, but suspects it likely will be more of a “timesink” tool for most people. I can think of another usage: for soon-to-be parents considering names for a child and wondering how many other people “out there” have the same name.

Here’s some timesinking on my part: A map of the distribution of people with the first name “Rex” across the U.S. I can’t believe it, but there are 26,693 of us (the 448th most popular first name, right between “Clara” and “Tonya”). As you can see — as I’ve always suspected — there are more Rexes in Texas than anywhere else.

Later: And I just remembered: Each March, the Texas population of Rexes grows by two.

Chart: Since I activated “Google Search History” exactly two years ago, I have used Google for 9,973 searches. I have a day-by-day record of every search and where I clicked after the search. The chart above shows my personal “trends” related to when I search. (From 10-11 PM is my “prime time.”) Starting today, Google will allow a user to record not only their search history, but a history of every website visited.

[Note: Before you read any further, let me assure you. The feature you are about to read about is something you must sign up for and activate. You can pause and resume it with a click. And you can delete it if you decide you don't like how much information is being collected about what you do on the Internet. Okay, with that assurance, you can proceed.]

In addition to renaming “Froogle,” Google also renamed “Search History” today — as announced in the Google Blog, it’s now called Web History. (Also, Danny Sullivan explains it here. Later: A great review and some historical perspective from Anil Dash.)

I have had Google’s Search History activated since April 20, 2005 (when I read about it here), I now have a history of the 9,973 Google searches I’ve made during the past two years. When it was merely “Search History,” it detailed every search I’ve made, including the websites I chose to visit after the search. I can navigate that data in a number of ways, including a calendar view or segmented by the type of search I was making: for a map, an image, news, etc. I can view all sorts of “attention” data that show the sites I have clicked on the most following a Google search, or the times of day and night that I have made Google searches (10-11 p.m. is my biggest search hour of the day, Wednesday is my biggest day and December is my biggest month).

The newly renamed service goes beyond chronicling merely what I’ve “searched” for via Google, but now maintains a history of every site I visit — complete with a time-stamp of when I visited. And, perhaps the most significant feature of all — if it truly exists — is speculated by Gary Price: that Google is caching a version of the page you visited, so that when you search across your history, you can find the site as it was when you visited. Yes, that is truly amazing, if it works, and is a feature that could make one overlook all of the creepiness of being shown the reality of everything Google knows about you when you use one service for searching, mapping, comparing products, sending email, and then, embed a tool of theirs in your web browser.

I would find it helpful to hear from some of the folks associated with AttentionTrust.org, as this type of data — and the belief that we, as users, “own” this data — is their focus. While I can see how to activate, pause, edit or delete the data stored in my “Web History,” I haven’t seen yet if I can “export” the information. If a user can export such data, it becomes more than a “feature,” it becomes the basis of an economy where I can exchange such data about myself for something of tangible value beyond the transaction I have engaged in with Google by exchanging my attention for the value I derive from the efficiency and productivity they provide me through such a service. If I can export that attention data, not only will Google be rewarded for knowing exactly what type of car I am shopping for at the moment, I will also be able to benefit from it in the marketplace.

Something about all of this makes me think of a song by Police.

Every move you make
Every breath you take
Every bond you break
Every step you take
Ill be watching you

Bonus links:

In the early 80s (as I’ve mentioned on this blog before), I worked in a congressional office on Capitol Hill. One of the amazing resources available to members of congress and their staffs is a group of very smart people who work at the Library of Congress who pull together research on policy issues. The Congressional Research Service issues a constant stream of reports on topics related to practically any policy issue you can imagine. When I was a hill staffer, one of my favorite wonk-hideaways was a reading room in the Madison Building of the Library of Congress where CRS reports were distributed. Back when I worked on the Hill — over 20 years ago — a member of Congress would freely distribute a CRS report to constituents who knew what to ask for. Some really smart high school students working on term papers seemed to have figured out this source back in the pre-Web days.

While occasionally, I see links to PDFs of certain CRS reports, I’ve always wondered why that incredible material from the Library of Congress has never made it onto the Internet as a body-of-work, or organized resource. Now (via a link from Susan Crawford), from this essay by Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy & Technology, I know: Some powerful Members of Congress don’t think that would be a good thing. Boils down to “information is power” issues. Simply stated, there are key members of Congress who don’t want CRS reports (and other information from CRS and its policy experts) disseminated because they include unbiased research that may contradict their political stances.

The law of information physics in a free society* dictates that for every power to shut off people from information there is an equal and opposite power that will open it up. Therefore, I should have deduced that some group would have conceived and developed of an idea like The OpenCRS project.

According to their website, OpenCRS is a project of the Center for Democracy & Technology through the cooperation of several organizations and collectors of Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports. Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS Reports.

While certain CRS reports are already available in different places on the Web and from commercial services that re-sell them, the OpenCRS project is an effort to pull them all together in one location.

This is good.

*Which I just made up, but I’m sure exists somewhere.

[Pre-apology: I apologize if this post seems insensitive to anyone who knows any of the people mentioned in it. I also apologize to anyone who may be offended by any of the words used in it. Indeed, if anyone, anywhere is offended for whatever reason, I will be happy to remove the part of the post that offends them and will also be happy to suspend myself from blogging for whatever period of time I feel necessary to teach myself that I should never make a mistake.]

I guess it proves false my claims of not being a geek when I start thinking of news events in terms of how they affect Ineternet search engines. Take, for example, a word that I never use outside of a garden, but that has appeared prominently in the news over the past week, “ho.” Not since Ken Jennings’ famous Jeapordy answer in the form of a question, “What’s a ho?”, have I seen the word appear so prominently in my newsreader. Obviously, the week was filled with Don Imus-related news that included the term. Then, last night, the iconic Hawaiian singer, Do Ho, died of heart failure. As of this morning, a search of the term “ho” on Google news revealed that all of the first-page results were about the singer, except one, an article by a Chicago Tribune writer that has the headline, “Talking about the word ‘ho’: So when did this coarse term become mainstream?“

Stranger still: The search terms “Don” and “Ho” used together could one day lead to results that will require, as they say on Wikipedia, “disambiguation.”

Technorati Tags: search

When I saw a link to John Battelle’s post titled, “A Modest Proposal To YHOO and MSFT: Spin Out A Search Company,” I thought surely it must be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Jonathan Swift’s bitingly satiric essay (1729) from which the term “Modest Proposal” comes. Quick version of Swift’s satire: his “modest proposal” of preventing poor people from being burdened by their children was for (again, this was satire) poor parents to sell them as food. (Sort of an 18th century Soylent Green.)

But then I read Battelle’s post and I think he’s serious — I think the term “Modest Proposal” in his headline is not a nuanced reference indicating to the reader (granted, a literate reader) that his essay is satirical, but, rather that he is actually proposing that Yahoo and Microsoft spin off a search company in which both companies would own 50%.

However, now that I think about it, Battelle’s post works both ways: It probably does make sense (the straight version). Or, is John Battelle recommending to Yahoo and Microsoft that they sell their babies in order for them to be eaten for breakfast by Google (the satirical version).

Later: John responds (see comments) to suggest it can be read either way. So I will.

Ask.com is not the search engine I first think of when doing local searches or stuff with maps. However, the Google-maps-clone, AskCity has a new feature described in their blog today that sounds, well, pretty amazing. You can draw a square on a map and then search is constrained to that area. I’ve only tried it out to search the company where I spend my day. It didn’t work. However, the company is listed on Google’s local search. Cool feature. Just needs a little beefing up of that database, apparently.

(via: Search Engine Land)

Technorati Tags: search

Here’s a press release about SuperPages.com adding a “Reviewer of the Week” as a “step towards providing local content within a trusted social networking environment” along with local search.

However, if what you’re wanting is local content within a trusted social networking environment along with local search, you might also look at iBegin.com. They have just launched a Nashville.iBegin.com version to go with their other Ottawa, Toronto and Kalamazoo versions. (Seems like very logical roll-out strategy to me.)

Now, if I could just figure out why they named it I Be Gin.

Technorati Tags: search

I’ve been inspired by this insightful post* from Nicholas Carr to use the “nofollow attribute” when linking to sites I’d prefer not to reward with link love. I really enjoy the way the post displays his deep understanding of how incoming links play a role in web status. I especially like how he is such a student of the nuances of something he declared dead last year.

*<a href=”http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/01/is_wikipedia_a.php” rel=”nofollow”>this insightful post</a>

From Search Engine Journal and SEOmoz Blog comes this news: “As of now are all outbound links from the english Wikipedia Site using the NOFOLLOW attribute, no exceptions.” If you have no idea what this means, that’s a good thing — as many of the people who know the ins-and-outs of the nofollow attribute are obsessed with getting around it. This new Wikipedia practice is supposed to discourage link-spammers from uploaded links to Wikipedia for the Google-juice that may accrue from the link appearing there. Without getting too technical, the search index “bots” of the major search engines do not “count” links that fall within “nofollow” tags, thus making “comment spamming” and “Wikipedia link spamming” of little importance in moving a link up in their results. Again, if that makes no sense, congratulations. You have a life.

I’m not so sure this decision by Wikipedia regarding the NOFOLLOW attribute is very beneficial. Why not? It is a feature of most blogging platforms’ comments tool (links appearing in comments are not “indexed” by search engines, in other words) but that does not seem to slow down the attempts by link spammers to clog comments.

Also, from my experience of maintaining a rather large and robust wiki, I think one of the reasons individuals participate in helping to create such resources is to pick up some link-love. In other words, I won’t be instituting the nofollow attribute on any mediawiki sites with which I am associated. However, we will continue to be vigorous in several ways already used to block link spam from our sites. (In is a massive understatement to say our challenge is nothing on the level as that faced by Wikipedia.)

I don’t know how this may be related, but I think Akismet is a modern marvel as it has nearly obliterated comment spam from this blog — something the NOFOLLOW attribute did not even make a dent in. Perhaps Akismet can come up with a version that plugs into the MediaWiki platform.

Bonus link: One of the people I respect most when it comes to all things wiki, Ross Mayfield of Social Text, does not like the nofollow decision by Wikipedia.

Technorati Tags: akismet, search