Archive for December, 2006

Just found a really cool new search engine that lets you visually search for a term: Quintura. The technical term is called “Latent Semantic Indexing”. And there are actually many search engines incorporating this technology into their algorithms. You can navigate through the cloud of related terms and refine it by clicking words on and off, the cloud will then update your results. (that is where the semantic word relationship comes in). Here is an excerpt from their site:

“While viewing the Quintura Cloud, you can visually navigate and easily refine in order to find relevant information faster and more efficiently! ”

“The map shows only those words that have close contextual relationships with the keywords in your query. Click a word to change your query and get relevant results that will comply with your new query. The size of a word shows its significance in relation to the query. The larger words have a strong contextual relationship with your query while the smaller words do not.”

I would bookmark this one and keep an eye on them. They are using some new technology that really makes searching easier. If you get a chance, play with it for a minute or two. Once you get the hang of it, it really makes searching faster as you can find things rather quickly without much effort.

Have you ever tried to search for something but just didn’t know what terms to use? The context cloud method makes things a snap, as it is basically teaching you which terms are related.

Now all they need to do is clean up their interface a little, and they will be a serious contender for quality search…

The obvious question is, when/if Quintura does strike it big, will they offer sponsored results? How do you optimize to score high in their results? Will we need to start rethinking our SEO efforts based on the new latent semantic indexing technology? Maybe we will start thinking more in terms of keyword context and term relationships as opposed to single keyword phrases.

The successful SEO guru will learn how to adapt.

A famous man once said: “Blessed are the flexible”

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time…Have you heard of Second Life yet?  Here is a link that will help: wikipedia.

It is basically a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), with a few differences.  2L(second life) gives you ultimate creativity to do and create almost anything you want.  The primary difference with 2L is the ability to own the items you create.  This includes real estate.  Once you purchase property on 2L and build on it, you own the structure, and the design.

From their site:

“Land in Second Life is your blank canvas. Build a dream home, a club, a shopping center, or plant some trees and construct a secluded retreat in the pristine virtual wilderness.”

Here are the ways you can purchase land:

• “First Land” (where available you can purchase your first piece of land at a discounted rate, usually one L$1.00 per meter.
• Buy Land from Residents
• Auctions
• Buy a Private Island

The most fascinating thing about 2L is the economy.  There is a real market for what are called Linden Dollars within the game.  The exchange rate usually ranges from around $300-$350 Linden Dollars per $1.00 (real dollar).  This allows a person that wants to buy something in the game to actually purchase virtual money.

A quick look on ebay shows multiple listings for purchasing Linden dollars for real money claiming that they beat the normal exchange rate.  I even found a 2L advertising firm that will advertise your real world business in the game.  They claim that Dell, Addidas, and Nissan are all advertising already within the game.

Just recently, the first virtual millionaire was announced: Anshe Chung.  This means that she has somewhere between $300-$350 million Linden dollars which she can convert to around 1 million real dollars on the LindeX Currency exchange.

Can you guess how she made her millions of Linden Dollars??  REAL ESTATE!  She buys and sells land and real estate property within the game.  She even sets her own zoning rules.  She has become the Donald Trump of 2L.

Anshe now owns 400+ servers worth of land, and was featured on the cover of Business Week

Are there any real world real estate agents trying their hand at this virtual real estate market?  Will we soon see real estate websites that have video tours for property in 2L as well as in the real world??  I guess only time will tell…

One thing is for certain…. things can get a little strange when you’re visiting Second Life!!

I’m sure you’ve already seen this cool tool that lets you spell things with buildings… but it’s just so fun to play with!!

Here is a link for a puzzle game called “Houses”

TouchGraph.com visually displays your links and pages related to yours in a crazy visual spider web of information.

Fear Factor Mystery candy… no thank you.

This speaks for itself…

Via PRweb I read an interesting press release about Casey Margenau Re/Max’s #1 agent worldwide for 5 years straight.  It caught my eye because it’s always helpful to look at the best agents to get marketing ideas and inspiration.

Casey just recently started using a service called mobilepricecheck.com.  Here’s how it claims to work:

1. Stick a sign in your yard with a toll free 800 number.
2. The “drive by” customer can call this number and enter a special code that is specific to each listing.
3. Then they receive a text message telling them more about the listing.
4. The agent receives an email report giving them the cell phone number of the person that requested the info, and the property address they were interested in.

• Bonus Feature: allows you to catalogue all the cell numbers on one address and send out a mass text message to all the customers that originally requested information.  This could include: price reduction, open house announcements, etc.

I see a few problems right away with this service.

• Why would you need to request a text message when there are probably flyers by the sign?
• Verizon and Sprint both limit text messages to 160 characters.  How much information about a property can you actually put in such a short text message.
• Will it be confusing to non-tech savvy customers?

I definitely love the follow up idea.  It is probably the most useful feature of the service.  Being able to snag customers in a way that is not “pushy” has some value.  The press release also talks about the opt-in feature which requires each customer to agree to receive text messages, and mentions that each text message has an opt-out feature.

It looks like this company has thought of everything, but the bottom line is: do you need it?  Does it add value?  Or is it just overkill?

As I see it, the primary value in this service has to do with the follow up text messages.  That could be helpful.  But really… how many people actually use the text messaging feature on their phones.  I maybe use mine 2-3 times per month.  I don’t know anyone over 20 years old I would consider to be a “heavy” text messaging user.

Is this technology actually making any headway?  I would guess that the next big thing will be a video tour that can be sent in a text message to someone’s phone.  To my knowledge, you can’t send video messages with Sprint or Verizon…  But that would be cool.  I’d pay for something like that.

Is anyone as sick as I am of receiving reciprocal linking requests in the form of spam emails?  I read a fantastic article by Mike Banks Valentine of SearchEngineOptimism.com.  Yes the article is a bit controversial, but that’s what makes it a fun read!  The title is: “Reciprocal Linking is Dead”

Here are some excerpts that I thought were excellent:

“I will link, but I will not “swap links” with anyone now. I require content in the form of articles, press releases and news, quotes, testimonials or some form of content.”

“What was it that ruined strict reciprocal links for me? It happened when I received a polite link request from an apparently well-meaning reciprocal link partner and, as always, clicked through to his requested linking URL. I was forwarded immediately to an affiliate program page which this scammer hoped to slip by without my noticing.”

This part was great… he has a form letter that he uses to reply to those spam emails:

“I’d be happy to link to you, but my current method of linking is through articles, not links pages. If you’d like to contribute an article for publication, I’d be glad to link to you through the resource box.

Take a look at those articles I currently use and send your own articles for linking consideration. Be sure to include a resource box with the linking text included within it.

The articles are the only way I link to anyone now. If you don’t have any, consider writing a couple specifically for this purpose. I’m sure you also know the value of distributing well written articles for use by other web sites and ezines.”

I totally plan on using a letter like this to reply to those reciprocal link requests.  Who knows, maybe a motivated spammer will start writing some good content for me!

Lately, I’ve been getting a few link requests that claim to have a 3 way linking strategy that are supposed to guard against reciprocal link penalties and give a decent backlink.  The one problem is that most of the links in the requests are completely unrelated to my services.  People just don’t get it that a link from a casino website to a real estate website isn’t going to help your ranking.  In fact, it may even hurt your ranking if you have too many unnatural links from unrelated sites.

Bottom Line: If you’re going to use reciprocal linking… don’t do it just for the sake of getting more links.  Do it because you think your customers will find value in that link.  And for goodness sake, don’t spam people for reciprocal links. And finally, make sure to only accept links from sites that have content related to yours.

Here are some other helpful links on the subject:

Healthy Website Linking Practices

Threadwatch.org

SEW thread

eZine Article

Links arguing that reciprocal linking is still alive and well:

easywebtutorials.com

1stSearchEngineRankings.com

I was so excited when I heard about the new group feature release Sunday night.  I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet new people and be able to filter blog posts for content.

I was all set Monday night to set up my group centered on internet marketing when Tuesday hit… I was just swamped all day.  When I logged on later in the day, to my dismay I discovered that there were groups with 40+ members already!!  Sheesh.  I dropped the ball.

I’m not sure if anyone else noticed this, but I’ve started seeing a strange phenomenon with some of the groups.  I started receiving tons of emails today from AR about posts I had subscribed to that were being updated.  I didn’t understand why so many old posts were being updated on the same day.  It didn’t make sense.  But when I noticed one popular group that had 25 posts already I made the discovery that in order to populate the new groups with posts, people had been going back all day and editing their old posts and checking the new group box.  Kind of a funny thing that I doubt Matt and the gang foresaw when designing the new feature.

Anyways, after playing with it, I absolutely love this new feature.  It was the next natural step for AR in the evolutionary ladder.  And as always, the roll out was well timed and well executed.

2 quick suggestions: 

• The posts under the group pages have times but not dates.  Adding dates would really help.
• Is there a way to change the order of your groups in your profile?  If not, this would be a useful addition.

Warning… you are about to read a brazen self advertisement for a new group!!Ok, I couldn’t finish this post without at least mentioning my new group.  Here is the link and the info:

Online Marketing - Tips, Advice, Wisdom

http://activerain.com/groups/seo

“Whether you are a savvy web guru, or an online marketing “Newb”… In this group you will find timely advice, tips, and news served up fresh from some of the best marketing minds in the Active Rain network.”