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Sabtu, 12 Mei 2012

Google’s Bigdaddy about to take control

When you’re a search engine that accounts for over 46% of all searches on the Internet, you are a bona fide Big Daddy. But for Google, it’s more than a nickname—it’s the future.

For months now, the 7-year-old search engine has been testing new crawling and indexing systems with the hopes of making web searches more intuitive and accurate. The project, called “Bigdaddy,” is much more than a software update. It’s a total refit of the search engine’s infrastructure and software.

“…It’s not just a data push or algorithm update,” says Search Engineer Matt Cutts of Google. Three data centers have so far been updated with new ones coming online every 10 days, a pace that’s expected to increase. Web users can access the updated Google search by typing in the IP address of the updated servers in their address bar: 66.249.93.104, 64.233.179.104 or 216.239.51.104. All of Google’s reported 85+ data centers are expected to be updated around the end of February or early March, and the closer we get to that time, the odds increase that your Google search will hit a “Bigdaddy” data center.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ addresses

The biggest issue “Bigdaddy” will fix is hijacking redirects of URL requests—what happens when someone redirects a request for one website to another though illicit techniques. These kinds of redirects are called “302 redirects.”

“Bigdaddy” will also add something Google calls “canonicalization,” which will instruct a search engine how to decide which of a series of URLs is the proper one to insert into the Google index. For instance, most people would consider these the same URLs:

www.example.com
example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp

In reality, these URLs are different and could conceivably return completely different content for each request. However, Google’s “canonicalization” will pick the URL that best represents what the user is likely asking for.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ does

“Bigdaddy” will also bring different crawling and indexing criteria, the groundwork for more advanced algorithms, larger databases and faster, more effective indexing of content.

Additionally, Google will be able to index new kinds of content. Testing is underway on a new search engine spider based on the Mozilla browser that can read links within images and even within Flash video.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ means to you

Brand Identity Guru has spent the past week researching what the implications of “Bigdaddy” will be for our Boston Search Engine Optimization clients. By comparing the results, we found that “Bigdaddy”-powered keyword searches returned improved rankings for 77% of our clients while 17% stayed the same and 6% (mostly those without a good number of incoming links) experienced a decline.

“Bigdaddy” data centers also reported much higher numbers of search results: searching for “landscape software,” the non-“Bigdaddy” search engine returned about 30 million results while “Bigdaddy” returned over 60 million. We’ve concluded, then, that sites ranked well because of solid on-page SEO techniques and inbound linking will benefit from this update. But there are still many unanswered questions about the implications of “Bigdaddy.” However, Google (as usual) is remaining mum on specifics in the hopes of preventing people from taking unruly advantage of the system.

Kamis, 11 Agustus 2011

Viral Buzz Blogs Launches Toothbrush Entrepreneur

Austin entrepreneur, Richard Trocino had a great product idea. And, like thousands of other innovative inventors with a new product concept, bringing that idea into a marketplace dominated by long established brands with deep links and dominance in the retail outlets is challenging. In these days of mega corporations and Walmarts, VCs and small business defined by the government in the land of opportunity, one entrepreneur with a grand idea or product may be considered by any of those groups as irrelevant and insignificant. Another challenge faced by small businesses in today’s marketplace, like in Trocino’s case, is getting an idea produced and generating sales.

In spite of impossible odds, Trocino’s invention sells almost faster today than his factories can produce and distribute all over the world. The established companies that were given the opportunity to brand and produce it, now may be wishing they had not dismissed the popular product so readily. Not when the blogosphere is broadcasting around the globe faster and with more range than a speeding bullet; comments appearing include; “OHSO gets my nod for the most stylish and futuristic toothbrush/toothpaste contraption on the market today”, “The Coolest Toothbrush Ever”, and “World’s Most Elegant Travel Toothbrush”.

Trocino received micro level funding to get the prototypes built and into limited manufacturing through friends and family after attempts to license the product to both toothpaste and toothbrush companies fell on deaf ears. Similarly, Trocino found his innovation locked out of normal channels of retailing without the benefits of an established proven brand in the marketplace.

Discouraged, but undaunted Trocino abandoned efforts to take the product to market using traditional marketing methods. Instead, like entrepreneurs who have met with unexpected success throughout business history he proceeded by seat of the pants and gut instinct. Acting on a hunch, he put it out there exclusively in the world of the internet and ignored the traditional “wisdom” of standard marketing techniques—no phones, faxes, or printed paper junk mail—nothing but net. A guerrilla marketer does not have the luxury of the corporate behemoths who can afford (since it’s investor’s and stockholders money not their own) to throw 98% of their marketing dollars away on a numbers game in a business model that justifies and covers its inherent wastefulness by overcharging those sold customers the expenses of marketing to everyone else.

Trocino decided to be a “Swamp Fox” marketer, like General Francis Marion who befuddled the British in South Carolina during the Revolutionary war, and break all the rules of modern marketing warfare. Marketing is a form of warfare and many entrepreneurs have discovered the reality of today’s business battlefields. The corporations and financiers have in today’s market reality stacked the deck against upstart competition by raising the ante into the game of commerce. One unnamed entrepreneurial internet advice columnist estimates the cost of entry to even be considered for funding by an angel or VC group at between $25,000 and $250,000. That is merely for the development of the business plan, and pre-start up consulting, general expenses and to purchase access to their secretive inner circle. Trocino decided to wander into the unknown swamp of the internet and blogsphere and see what people would do when offered his innovation directly.

Trocino, like most entrepreneurs, is a risk taker, but like most smart business persons likes to reduce risk wherever possible. He knew a good concept poorly executed had little chance of success in the market, so he took his idea to a locally based but internationally known design firm called “Design Edge” and negotiated a co-marketing partnership for assistance in ‘packaging’ his innovation. Trocino knew that people who travel a lot would naturally respond favorably to the concept of an integrated toothpaste dispensing toothbrush in a self contained case that protects clothing in suitcases as well as keeps things neat and sanitary. With the co-marketing partnership with ‘Design Edge’ the product took on a new personality within a sexy futuristic design that takes the basic utilitarian idea and wraps it in fashionability and elegance.

Then with a few well chosen words, a friend with a good photographic eye and a smattering of html code, Trocino put up a website at http://www.goOHSO.com, and invited a few friends through http://MySpace.com to look at his new line of toothbrushes. MySpace would become the testing ground and ultimate launch pad for the rollout of his product.

With its stylish modern design and elegant photography, the buzz it generated in cyberspace was somewhat unexpected. In fact, it was explosive!

Driven by the dynamics of blogosphere where coolness and fashionability become badges of personal taste and sophistication, the OHSO toothbrush rapidly found its way onto the personal blogs of graphic designers, and jet setters as the coolest thing since crystal ice. When Josh Spears, the blogger’s blogger posted his rave of the sleek product, sales and global visibility exploded. Even the legendary Steven Wozniak, the cofounder of another innovative product, Apple computer, is counted among the OHSO toothbrush users and fans.

Today the product is available in high fashion boutiques in the swanky Beverly Hills bastions of elegance and among the cappuccino makers and executive toys on the shelves of Brookstone stores around the country. Blogs have elevated the sensible, functional, practical toothbrush for harried travelers into fashion statements that provide high status and cool despite it’s less than $20 price tag.

Not a bad state of affairs for the beaming Trocino who is today expanding the line with even more designs to satisfy the market demands. OHSO is a product that owes its success to a seat of the pants approach to beat the corporate gorillas with a bit of his own guerilla marketing. He simply put it out there in the vast uncharted cyber world where the old MBA strategies have no more influence on the hip youth market than the full color fall outs in the increasing unread Sunday paper.

Today freedom of the personal press in the global Blogsville rules a small voice with a message, or product like the OHSO toothbrush, can be magnified into a global phenomena. When people like what they see, they tell their friends, who today are everywhere. Just like Richard Trocino’s classy and well designed toothbrush.

Selasa, 03 Agustus 2010

Is Branding a Legitimate Internet Marketing Strategy

Internet marketing is all about hard results, not generic concepts of branding. Still, there are ways to go about branding your product or service on the net without spending a fortune.

Is Branding a Legitimate Internet Marketing Strategy

Branding refers to the vague notion of creating an identity for a product, service or name with consumers. The classic example, of course, is Coca Cola. Being first on the scene, the company has been able to create such a strong name brand that most people use the word “coke” instead of soda when ordering. This is true even when they prefer Pepsi. In the world of marketing, we all bow before the marketing team that accomplished this branding. The Internet, however, is a different beast. That same marketing team would be crushed if they went after a similar strategy on the net.

The Internet is so large that branding is an expensive and difficult goal unless you are the first major presence in a niche. Sites like EBay and Amazon were the first major money players in their fields, giving them a huge advantage over subsequent competitors. Unless you are coming to a field with a lot of money and no current dominant site, your branding efforts are going to meet with failure or limited success at best. If you want to stick with it, the only cost effective and ultimately successful strategy is to pursue a width search engine optimization campaign.

Search engine optimization is simply an effort to get pages on your site ranked high in search results on the three big search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN. To establish your brand, the best Internet marketing strategy is to identify every single phrase your prospects use to find services or products in your business area. You then build optimized pages for every single phrase and get them ranked.

This strategy has two benefits. First, it will produce free traffic to your site. If you build 200 pages and each gets 50 visitors a day, your site will receive 10,000 visitors a day. The second benefit is your brand becomes established. Regardless of what the prospect searches for, they keep seeing your site. This creates both recognition and credibility with the prospect as they tend to equate high rankings with quality. As they visit your site over and over, they will also become readily familiar with your unique selling position as presented on the site.

If you want to establish a brand, avoid wasting your money on banners and such unless you are in a niche that isn’t dominated by any single site. Instead, use the width search engine optimization tactic to establish your site and pick up free traffic.