Google hearts SE Spam

Was just listening to this podcast by Nick Wilson, where he talks about why Google is not doing something about SE spam. This is something I have been thinking about for a while - There are SEOs and there are SE spammers. Google is putting both in the same category and punishes legit SEOs when they decide to punish spammers, but more importantly, Google is letting spammers spam it’s index because 90% of SE spam is made for adsense, a.k.a made for making Google money.

Same with paid search arbitrage, isn’t that a complete and absolute waste of time, energy and resources for Google users who hope to find something useful by clicking Google ads and are led to a page with more google ads and nothing else - which sometimes leads to a page with even more google ads.

Whats most annoying is that searchers don’t seem to mind all this. Google’s usage keeps on growing despite all the evil they are doing. People have developed some sort of an immunity to spam - just like those using Microsoft products are used to their software freezing and crashing just before they are about to save some important work and don’t mind doing all of it all over again.

A couple of weeks ago there was a post somewhere in the blog-o-sphere (don’t have a link handy - I think it was on the digg homepage for a while) that Google is all set to become the new Microsoft; The post talked about how Google is developing Monopolies in so many areas and all that. I don’t think that’s so much of a problem, the problem is that Google is getting as annoying as Microsoft - and Google’s user base is getting as immune to all the annoyance.

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No more CAPTCHA at Linkshare

That’s right!

Linkshare is no longer asking the famous “Are you Human?” question - and they also won’t require users to change their password once every three months.

The CAPTCHA was originally introduced to stop Revtrends/Afftrack - a stats aggregation tool for affiliates - from gaining access to what linkshare claims is data they own - but many affiliates have been complaining about this annoying way to log into the system and wanted the CAPTCHA check removed.

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Over two million people use StumbleUpon

According to this press release, StumbleUpon is now over two million users strong.

I’ve been reading many bloggers write about how stumbleupon makes up such an important share of their traffic referrers pie.

It’s too bad I haven’t been active at stumbleupon yet - hopefully, this piece of news is enough inspiration for me to go and check out the service and make some use of it’s mammoth potential as a source of traffic.

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Shi(f)t Happens…

Totally mind-blowing video I spotted at Crunchnotes a while ago..

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Social Marketing - web 0.0

I was reading iCon, a Steve Jobs biography, have only read the first few pages yet, but having already read so much about apple - something passed my mind that I guess is worth sharing here.

There is all this hype over social media, and social networks etc., as if it is the one true way to successful business and brand-development. The way most people are taking this, is they are taking niches and turning them into communities and social networks.

What Apple did, however (and Sony, and BMW, and Reliance and even Microsoft to a certain extent), is that they carried on their business the traditional way, yet they were heavily engaged in what can be noted as “Social marketing”.

How exactly they did this, I am yet to grasp an understanding of, but they did not host social networks, that’s a certain fact.

Let me end this post with a Guruish comment:

Social marketing is not hosting a social network, nor creating one, it is building a sense of community within all those who use your products.

That, IMO is the sure-shot technique of building any business and REAL social marketing - Creating a sense of belonging and passion towards your product in the minds of everyone who uses it, that way, they start bonding with all those who use the same product. This creates a sort of missionary inclination into your users - who try and “convert” more people into using your product.

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“The Trouble with India” meme

1. My Blog post about how I lost my blogging armour at a shopping mall in India
2. The Trouble With India - Businessweek article about how businesses just can’t do business the way they are supposed to in India
3. Om Malik Replies to the businessweek article, says: One man’s traffic jam, is another’s opportunity. That is exactly what I take away from Business Week’s latest cover package

Wile the first post in the meme talks about the problems for individuals running small and very small businesses and the cultural and security problems faced, the second and third posts talk about infrastructure and other issues.
The bottom line, however, is that there are two Indias - one at the very top and another exactly opposite to that place - the problem, is when these two Indias clash, it’s quite a mess.

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Mac got stolen :( … may not blog as much as I used to for a while

Was out shopping last night at the mall, sat at a coffee shop, had coffee/sandwich, paid the check, got up to see that my bag with a macbook, an ipod, two earphones (shure E5C and apple) disappeared!

Apparently, the coffee shop where we were sitting was the only place where no security cameras were installed yet, but the police seem confident of recovering my bag and everything in it.

Anyway, This means, I won’t be blogging as much as I used to; at least, till the time I either get my mac back or I get accustomed to working on windows machines .

I am not going ahead and spending another two thousand dollars on a new mac and stuff as of now(I seem to have rather strong intuition that the stolen goods will be recovered, somehow - besides, I take this as punishment for being careless) which means I will be on windows - which sucks. having to work on XP is like being thrown via a time-machine accident into the 12th century or something.

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Zappos reduces commission - now pays only 12% per sale (down from 15%)

Got this bit of bad news in the email just now

Dear Pranav Chavda,

Thank you for your participation in the Zappos.com affiliate program. We are contacting you to inform you of an upcoming change in the commission rate within the Zappos Associate program. Please note that new program terms with a payout of 12% will be pushed out 3/19/07. Affiliates will have two weeks to accept the new terms before they automatically become effective 4/1/07. All current performance incentives tiers will remain in place.

As a customer service focused company, we invest a great deal of money into improving the customer experience. The recent introduction of free overnight shipping and the growing product offering are part of that effort. As a result of some of these things, Zappos.com has already seen a 30% increase in affiliate sales over last year. This is great news for everyone. Affiliates will continue to benefit from our growing inventory of quality products and our belief in providing customers the best service possible.

We hope you will remain a valued associate, and continue to develop and monetize your sites effectively to help us create a great user experience. We feel there is tremendous opportunity to increase revenue through the program. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. We value your input and suggestions.

Sincerely,

Zappos Associate Program
associates@zappos.com

Translation: You sold 30% more zappos shoes this year than last year, As thank you, we would like to give you the gift of a 20% pay-cut.

…Zappos was among my top 5 performers for the past few years now, but I guess I will be paying more attention to promoting Shoebuy (pays 17%), Shoes.com (pays 17.50% to 20%), the mason shoe brands that all pay 15% - all of these have similar EPCs as zappos, smaller inventory but that’s okay - Zappos didn’t have this big an inventory when they started making me money - their conversions have actually dropped since they started focusing on selling items that are not shoes. Might even check out the onlineshoes.com program over at linkshare.

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Google Desktop 5 Beta launched

Google just released the Google Desktop version 5 beta. Desktop search includes a new preview feature. Many new security features have been added. The latest version also sports a completely new look that blends with the desktop wallpaper.

Source:  Inside google desktop

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Browse goods at the Shopwave mpire

“visual shopping” web-apps are mushrooming around the web; with a hope to offer a better and more unique shopping experience to online buyers (and make money in the process too).

Browsegoods, for example and lets users browse products on amazon as if they were browsing a map on google maps - you can zoom in and out of product category maps. The more you zoom in, the more products you get to see, once you have decided upon a product, zoom into the product to see more information about it. Very interesting concept, if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth a look.

Other visual shopping apps worthy of a mention include BlackDogAir (lets shoppers browse through Books movies and music as if they were browsing a windows explorer window for files) and of course the already popular Like.com that recognizes stuff people are wearing in photos and displays similar products available to buy on various stores in their database (which, it seems is populated with datafeeds from affiliate networks etc.).

Today, yet another “Visual shopping experience” has launched, this time built on top of the shopping.com API, from the labs of mpire, called Shopwave.

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