SEO Blog

Guy Kawasaki is an Internet evangeliest. He has been a booster of computing and online business since the mid 80’s when he first was immersed in tech working for Apple. Flash ahead twenty years and several successful start-ups later, Guy Kawasaki heads a highly respected venture capital firm, Garage Technology Ventures, a technology investment firm he helped found in 1998. Today he is best known for his lectures, keynote speeches and his series of Internet business related books. He is currently promoting his latest book, The Art of the Start which, as he wrote yesterday, “… reflects my experience as an evangelist, entrepreneur, investment banker, and venture capitalist.”

Guy posted an interesting essay on his blog yesterday, one that should be read by anyone involved in the website design and search marketing sectors. Titled, “Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption“, the post points out several common items found on sophisticated websites that turn visitors away.

In the post, he mentions a few obvious things such as limiting contact options to Email and writing code that works in IE but fails in Firefox, Macintosh browsers, Safari and Opera. He also mentions a some subtle user-annoyances like difficult to read confirmation codes and ultra-long URL strings.

So often we notice horrible customer service. Rarely do we point out great service.

A year and a half ago, I purchased a Bose LifeStyle 48 system for a house we’re building. It’s (finally) nearing completion, and I went to unpack it. It had been opened in the store, and resealed. The store where I purchased it has since gone out of business. I pulled out the components to test that I had wired everything properly, and discovered that the remote control was missing. I ought to have checked sooner.
Last week, I was in NYC and popped into the Bose store to purchase a replacement. Strangely, they don’t sell replacement units in the stores. They told me to call technical support instead. Today, I did so. I told the fellow on the line what had happened and explained that I wanted to purchase a replacement. He quickly looked me up, (I’ve also purchased their Quiet Comfort 2 headphones - they are fantastic on planes), pulled up my information, and cheerfully let me know that Bose would send me out a replacement at no cost; it should be at my door within a week!

Google has moved to close a hole in their ranking algorithm known as Google or Link Bombing. The technique allowed webmasters to produce results based on numerous incidents of links pointing to the same document sharing the same keyword-charged anchor-text across as wide a number of sites as possible. Once a critical mass of sites ran the link with the same anchor text, the miracles of algorithmic search would do the rest and produce a top ranking prank. Well known examples included the phrase “Miserable Failure”, “Talentless Hack”, and “Drinks for Links”.

According to a note posted by Matt Cutts yesterday afternoon to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Google has improved on the way it analyses the link structure of the web. “Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead,” he writes.

In comments to a Danny Sullivan article (Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs) at SearchEngineLand.com, Bill Slawski points out a section of a patent application (Phrase-based indexing in an information retrieval system) written by Anna Patterson of San Jose Ca.

Yahoo beats the Street! (Link to Q4Results - .pdf)

This was an important day for Yahoo as it released 4th quarter financial figures that beat Wall St’s expectations, effectively putting to rest anxiety over their dismal 3rd quarter results.

According to Susan Decker, Yahoo’s page views increased 22% in the period between October 1 and December 31, 2006. She also warned investors that the first quarter of 2007 will be the slowest of the year but said she was “cautiously optimisitic” about Yahoo’s overall performance in 2007.

Revenues were up 13% over the same period in 2005 showing $1.702 billion compared to $1.501 billion last year. Gross profit was also up in the 4th quarter with Yahoo reporting 1.012 billion, a 12% increase over last year’s gross of $906 million. Overall, Yahoo achieved reveues of $6.426 billion in 2006, a 22% increase over 2005’s figure of $5.258 billion.
For Yahoo, showing a profitable quarter to the Street and to wary investors was critical, especially after they lost ground in Q3-2006.