Archive: March, 2008

Get ready to read some disturbing news in the next few weeks. Though not a fortune-teller or psychic, my gut-sense tells me that the search and mainstream media is going to get all apocalyptic over a perceived downturn in ad-spends in the major PPC networks. I am almost certain it is going to happen and just as certain the reports, though numerically correct, will be factually wrong.

Next week marks the end of Google’s first quarter in 2008. As with the comScore report issued in late February that showed a .3% decline in click-throughs on the AdWords network in January 08, we are bound to read about lowering numbers of clicks and subsequent worries about Google meeting the often over-hyped and unusually under-informed expectations of Wall St. analysts.

Google has seen a minor decline in clicks but that is mainly due to Google’s own diligence. Google is moving to clean-up its click-stream by making it more difficult for searchers to make mistaken clicks. It has limited the clickable area in AdWords and is better filtering bad clicks. Both actions serve to lower the overall number of clicks recorded and billed for, thus slightly lowering Google’s perceived ad-audience and very real revenues.

The emails went out last night stating that the PPC Summit scheduled for next week in Vancouver has been canceled due to lack of commitment from vendors. Having just returned from the highly successful Search Engine Strategies conference in New York, the cancellation of PPC Summit came as a shock and a disappointment. Metamend had planned to send a small delegation to Vancouver to learn in the sessions, help the hosts with our local knowledge and contacts and to network with other search marketers.

I am especially disappointed because our new Pay-per-Click guru, Mark Johnstone was going to attend and I wanted to introduce him to some of the people who run the paid-advertising networks at Google, Yahoo and MSN. I was looking forward to listening in on the conversations and questions Mark would engage in and ask.

The cancellation of the PPC Summit demonstrates how difficult it can be to organize international events in a Canadian venue. Though Vancouver is situated on the border, scant minutes north of the 49th parallel, it is in a different country than the predominantly US based conference circuit. That makes a difference as the vendors and many attendees question the quality of the market north of the border.

“Google Earth is still a relatively new technology. As more people learn to use it, I think they’ll find more use out of it.”

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b8b5dMAGAk&autoplay=1 300 300]

That’s the clip. I’m not even sure it was a complete thought but it was the part of the ten minutes of video the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) taped in our boardroom ten days ago used on the National news program “The National” last Wednesday evening.

The topic was Nanaimo British Columbia’s use of Google Earth in making virtually every piece of civic data available to its citizens and the world. You can learn more about this initiative by watching the clip, listening to the discussion during the Webcology show I co-host on WebmasterRadio.fm, or reading the post I wrote in this blog the day the CBC came to visit.

So when the CBC called, I obviously got all excited. It felt like being on the cover of the Rolling Stone so I naturally called my mother and told her to watch the newscast that night. I was having a party at my place that night and we all stopped to watch the newscast. Nothing. There was a segment on the Canadian songwriter Dan Hill, (including one of those melodies that NEVER leaves one’s head after hearing it, arg) but nothing about Google Earth, Metamend or the city of Nanaimo. I was obviously terribly disappointed.

Yahoo appears to be looking to the cloud for its future. As covered by Search Engine Watch, editor Kevin Heisler today, Yahoo is using the 4th largest super-computer in the world, (owned by Mumbai based Computational Research Laboratories) to facilitate research in cloud computing.

Cloud Computing is a term that refers to software packages housed and run from a remote server. Another term for the concept is “server-side software”. Google Docs is likely the most prominent example of cloud computing in action.

While Yahoo’s announcement only covers “research”, the move is very important as Yahoo positions itself to either fend off the Microsoft bid or raise its own value in the face of the bid. Yahoo is developing yet another thing Microsoft needs for its survival.

I am writing and thinking about cloud computing this morning because of a few experiences I had at search engine strategies in New York last week. I spent a lot of time speaking with some of the folks from Microsoft and Google and hanging out with mobile search expert Cindy Krum. There was one conversation between Cindy, myself and Enquisite President Richard Zwicky that particularly stands out in my mind about the future of personal computing and the future of search.