Recently a local business owner (who I won’t identify because it would make things worse) was referred to me about how to remove an autocomplete result in reference to his business. eg. ‘Long Island Tennis Tournament Referee Bribed’

How does autocomplete work? Google claims that it is mostly driven by actual user searches but may have a combination of actual user searches, past search history and rising popular searches. We have evidence that it combines terms that are not necessarily adjacent and does filter out terms like ‘scam’. For more information on how autocomplete works, see this Search Engine Land article.

Some factors:

1. Volume of searches
2. Click through rate (CTR)
3. Volume of results of nearby searches

First of all, be honest. Is the autocomplete actually referencing the truth? eg. Was a referee for the Long Island actually bribed? If not, then go find out what the sites that are showing up for that term are actually using for content. Is it computer generated garbage? Is it a forum of disgruntled customers that you need to deal with? If so, then it is a bit tougher.

Can I manipulate Autcomplete results? Yes. But it will cost you. Last year Brent Payne, former Chicago Tribune SEO, used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to manipulate a search term of his own and got himself banned from autcomplete mostly because he pissed off Matt Cutts (Google’s head of Web Spam) for good reason.

Reputation management firms are quick to fix the problem by burying the bad term with artificially boosting a nicer term by using similar methods and writing content for it. The problem is that (much like Rogaine) you have to keep paying to keep the bad term away.

Sometimes the term is replaced by a more recent or popular term naturally. Other ways to accelerate this effect can be publicity stunts or viral marketing.

What is Google doing to help?

Despite some legal requirements in various countries, Google has apparently had enough of business owners freaking out over suggestions and has removed ‘scam’ in some autocomplete results and has removed piracy related terms like ‘bittorrent’. For a time the term ‘lesbians’ was blocked too.

Second, ask yourself what you are willing to do. If you have the resources to write multiple versions of content about a replacement phrase and distribute it cleverly across multiple domains that have pagerank and actually have ‘dofollow’ links, then maybe it is worth the time. It could be the online marketing kick start you should have done years ago.

If you don’t have those crazy resources, hire them out, but ask important questions. Reputation management firms will most likely have a two prong approach 1) They will tell you, or hopefully write themselves, a lot of content for the web that creates a new phrase that will hypothetically (and temporarily) bump the bad phrase down with a bunch of innocuous phrases that don’t alarm prospective customers. 2) They will get these phrases popular on the user side by making various users and robots (like Brent Payne did above) do the preferred search term that will be corroborated with the content they wrote. This simulates a ‘trend’ and will hopefully replace the nasty suffix. This will not be permanent as they need to keep the search volume up and the content fresh by continuing to write about this artificial trend to keep ahead of the offending theme.

Be sure to get complete answers to the following questions:

1. What happens after the campaign is complete? Are the effects permanent and why or why not?
2. Does this run a risk of having my site penalized by Google?

Third, deal with it head on. This is more of a PR strategy than an SEO straegy, but time and time again we see that SEO and PR cross paths at the worst times. If the suggestion has a drop of truth to it, you may wish to work on the SEO for that term. Get to the top of the results for the high CTR nasty term and do your best to control the message, explain what happened, how you fixed it (hopefully you did), and why it isn’t an issue any longer.

Other reading: http://www.beattheautocomplete.com/

How have you dealt with Google Autocomplete?

Comment below!

Nothing drives people up the wall than having to watch a poorly targeted video ad prior to the real video they were linked to, let alone a 30 second one. 30 seconds online is like 30 minutes on TV. That’s why the future of web advertising in the video sphere will be micro length ads like this Adidas ad for the New Zealand All Blacks.

It’s brilliant because it loads quickly, gets to the point and is on-brand. First there were books, then there were magazines, then there were blog posts, and now there’s Twitter. Video works the same way and making your point in 5 seconds or less is probably the future.

I’m not alone:

MTV Finds Most Effective Video Ad Unit is 5 Second Pre-roll

What is your favorite short ad?

The ever-updating Twitter board at AJ Bombers

So why would I bother to write about a bar/restaurant? Especially since I despised this neighborhood when growing up here.

AJ Bombers is the mecca of social media. They get it. The owner says that their popularity was built almost entirely on Twitter and Facebook, a fact that the employees love to tout. Plus, they’re unusually friendly and upbeat, which is rare in this neighborhood considering how friendly Wisconsinites are reported to be.

If the World War II bomber theme doesn’t hit you right away, it might be the elaborate peanut dispensing flying bombs with targets along the wall. Or it could be the stenciled phrases on the walls and doors. Or the beer bottles hanging from parachutes above the submarine periscope-like silos of peanuts (spelled p-nuts on the sign.)

The 40″ flat screen displaying the latest tweets and retweets from the owner (@AJBombers) is pretty neat too. But before I even got my award winning (Travel Channel) cheeseburger, the Milwaukee Burger, I found out that I was already second degree friends with half the staff. By the time my drink arrived, I had 3 new followers, all of whom happened to be standing in front of me.

The P-Nut delivery system at AJ Bombers via WWII era bombs

Just take a look at the activity and prowess that AJ Bombers has on social and you can quickly dismiss the more uptight naysayers of social media, if there are any left.

Steve, an employee at AJ Bombers says that they are different because they interact with locals in a personal way before, during and after they come in for burgers and beers. It is well exhibited too, I knew of the place well before moving back to Milwaukee via the Tweetup notifications all being held at the bar/restaurant. It’s not just mantra, it is the way these people operate. Even the bartender is a PR graduate and stated openly she was quite happy working at such a PR savvy place.

Even the wifi network SSID is “DontForgetToCheckInOnFoursquare”. Brilliant.

Most restaurants just blast out specials like ASCII diarrhea but in the parallel universe of social, it seems that being more human, not less, builds business relationships. Not anything new to people on Twitter at all, but it is still rare in the restaurant business.

Congrats, AJ Bombers, you get it.  And yes, the Milwaukee burger is worthy of the hype.

For those of you that do not follow such nerd-dom, it is worth restating that  in mid September Google changed the way the Adwords Keyword Tool compiled data. Simply put, the end result of your PPC campaigns did not change, but the estimate of the data from the Keyword Tool will now be significantly reduced. This is because the search volume estimate is  now coming from google.com results only, not the included partners like ask.com and aol.com.

This is significant because certain people use certain search engines. I have noticed for  years that Yahoo is used by older generations and depending on your keywords, and ad copy, your click through rate will show that.

It is always important to get a second opinion with other tools like wordtracker and using your own analytics. At the least, update your projections based on the new data.

Overzealous lawsuits are common in the US, especially by those with cash and no brains, but there is an interesting effect with lawsuits other than your secret mansion being exposed: Links. I know it sounds ridiculous, but they tend to be juicy back links. Everyone loves to point out ridiculous lawsuits like chubby girls suing McDonald’s for their food choices and robbers suing their victims for injuries, and naturally they get passed around quickly.

That is why I was not too surprised to see SEO Book list Suing Google as their #62 link building suggestion. Yes, it works, but they rightly put “Proceed with Caution” nearby.

It seems that useful, relevant content would be the way to go. I say grow up, stop externalizing your link building efforts to the courts and learn to take responsibility for your decisions. If you do get those links, I hope you spent just as much money on content, if not more.

But many people are suggesting the treasure trove of social networks as a source of links. This comes with a major caveat, NOT ALL SOCIAL NETWORKS CREATE LINKS EQUALLY.

Twitter has been pressured (probably by Google) to attach ‘nofollow’ tags to outgoing links on tweets. What does this mean? It means you can post nonillion (yes, that’s a real number) links from as many Twitter accounts as you can marshall and it won’t count as a back link. Sorry.

The 'nofollow' tag, the link killer

Facebook does the same. In fact, Facebook has a function called UntrustedLink, which essentially is an anti-spamming tool. It adds the ‘nofollow’ tag so that search engines do not follow the link. This means no link credit.

What it can help you with is getting traffic through those tweets and hopefully those will get indexed by the search engines. So once again, build links by doing something remarkable. Then links will come to you, and of course you can always supplement that with traditional link building. But remember, if it’s too easy, you’ll get penalized, or no credit at the least.

Digg and Delicious are still search engine and link friendly, but it appears that Reddit is not. Any other updates on link friendliness? Comment below!

I couldn’t agree more:

The Last Advertising Agency On Earth from FITC on Vimeo

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It appeared that the entry was pretty blatantly copied from a piece called Waterfall Transforming Into White Hooded Monks.

Here are the two pieces below:

Needless to say there are some striking similarities in the waterfall section. Similar direction and an almost identical pattern.

The real give away is where the ‘milk’ breaks mid stream in some rocks, and the placement of the hoods and ‘monks’ is pretty much unforgivable. See close up below:

Plagiarizing works is nothing new, but in an almost admission of guilt, Sinead has apparently deactivated her Facebook page, probably due to the sheer amount of criticism she may have been receiving.

The real loser here is Cadbury though. Crowd sourcing is a great way to engage consumers for local markets and build a reputation, but crowd sourcing also involves the public and their apparently devilish ways.

Cadbury may have seen some advantage in the fact that any publicity is good publicity (hence this post) but it seems that the disheartened other designers who hopefully have not done such work, may have lost their enthusiasm for such a campaign.

Cadbury did respond with this though:

In Cadbury’s defence, they do have a rule that entrants “must ensure that:  (a) The entry is the entrant’s original creation and has not been copied, adapted or amended.”

Is it plagiarism? And how does Cadbury come out of this?

UPDATE: The term that should be used is spec work, not crowd sourcing considering there was no intention of collaboration between designers. Credit to David Airey for catching my mistake.

UPDATE: Cadbury had this to say:

Congratulations Paul!

]]> http://www.benjaminroyce.com/2010/02/cadbury-ireland-facebook-contest-shows-crowdsourcing-drawback-plagiarized-works/feed/ 19 http://www.benjaminroyce.com/2010/02/3-buzzwords-phrases-and-search-engine-myths-that-need-a-bazooka-reality-check/ http://www.benjaminroyce.com/2010/02/3-buzzwords-phrases-and-search-engine-myths-that-need-a-bazooka-reality-check/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:40:14 +0000 Benjamin http://www.benjaminroyce.com/?p=250 Adam Ostrow (@Adam Ostrow) said it best on Twitter:

You know how politicians often break out the “tax ax“?
I think I’m going to coin the “buzzword bazooka“

If ‘pride goes before the fall’, then buzzwords go before pride.

If you work with search engines, you should probably know a few languages including HTML (I know it’s only markup!), PHP and Javascript. You don’t need to be fluent in PHP or Javascript, but you should at least know how to order dinner and find the toilet.

The fact is that search engine theory is just that, theory. Only a very few number of people know exactly how Google, MSNbot and Yahoo (soon to be Bing/MSNbot) crawlers work in a scientific sense. They’re not going to tell us anytime soon, just like Coca-Cola isn’t going to be tweeting their famous recipe any time soon. You have a whole industry based on theory, and rarely is it scientific enough to pass any muster. Buzzwords and phrases thrive in such areas. So let’s break down some fallacies.

1. Content is king: Flat out wrong. The conversion is king. How you define conversion is your own choice, such as a sale, a newsletter sign up, or a lead. What ever it is, if you have millions of visitors, and the site hasn’t generated anything for you but server load, you can talk about content all day and it won’t matter. The fact is that your website has a goal, perhaps monetary or just collecting data. Content is a part of getting conversions, and helps bring that data in, but if you have a store full of browsers and no buyers, you really can’t show that to an investor.  New buzz phrase that won’t catch on, but should: Content is a high ranking military strategist.
2. It’s all about links: Frustrating. This is like having 1,000 acquaintances and no real friends. For every link that you make a visitor/customer jump through you have a loss of about 9%. Considering all your customer has to do is literally lift a finger, that’s quite alarming.
   Yes, link building is important. Content more so, but if you have a background in marketing, you probably know how to make content compelling, and conversion friendly already. In a world of exponential social media growth, why link to your twitter account when you can integrate live streams getting the content AND the link search engine credit? Why link, when you can INTEGRATE?
   New buzz phrase that won’t catch on, but should: Linking is the poor man’s integrating.
3. We don’t have time for Social Media. Oh really? I suppose you don’t have a customer service phone either then. Customer service doesn’t generate much revenue, it prevents lost revenue. Business has made it so hard to get something fixed in the name of cost cutting that The Oatmeal sums it up best. If I have a product that doesn’t work as it is supposed to, I have a 50% chance that I will ebay it, just so I don’t have to deal with a non-tech savvy dotard reading from a HTML wizard.
   Social media, when used socially and not a one way sales push pipe, can transform your target audience’s perception of you. Imagine actually being able to create a quick custom check list of things to check for on their own time for each person because you have a record of their issue and statements. Who would call then?
   I know what you’re thinking. Ben we don’t have the resources for that. If I learned anything as a teenager, it was that I can have 5 simultaneous conversations online as opposed to 1 on the phone. By that measure, for every 5 of your phone reps I need one social rep. Sounds like a money saver down the road considering more than half the world population is under 30. Plus it is SEO friendly provided the link shorteners are 301 redirects.
   New buzz phrase that won’t catch on, but should: Social is the new survey/customer service hybrid.

Yes these are all parts of the search engine system, but take a step back and realise that it is a dance. You can’t dance with one leg, and you can’t get to the top of the page rank with just links. Spending too much time on SEO and not on being better for your customer is only the marginal gain you could have from actually just being better than your competitor.

So, what other buzzwords and theories need a bazooka reality check?

So what was their point? They were just gate keepers, and sites like Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia along with direct to consumer campaigns by hotels and airlines opened the gate to the masses. I know what you’re thinking though: Orbitz and such are the travel agents now. Yes, they are if you consider bundling hotels and flights together, but now Kayak just takes your straight to the airline site if it is cheaper. In either case, we are more informed and pay less for the access to information. If you ask me, travel agents were the epitome of segregated information elitism. They could have done things to prevent themselves from being here now, but their inability to adapt to new media killed them.

And now advertising agencies are doing the same thing. Ad Agencies don’t own the product or brand, they don’t own the connection to the media and they don’t have any tools us regular folk have either.

Social Media is the thorn in ad agencies sides. They call it snake oil for two reasons:

1. The mindset of a traditional marketer is the exact opposite of what is needed on Twitter or Facebook. You can’t repeat the same message without being interactive and expect people to read it, or care, or not get frustrated. Why hire people that usually blare one way messages to your customers to run the interactive communication?
2. The magic behind the campaign is transparent. There is no glamour in being a top social media worker. It’s like having the title Best Conversationalist With An Agenda. You are going to have to love your product, your customers and your product category. Agencies can’t love them all at the same time.

So run your own social media campaigns. Set up multiple Twitter accounts, get your fan pages and groups up and running on your own. Encourage your employees to use those sites, with some scrutiny, to build more content than the next guy. Sooner or later, you’ll start to see the swell of a community that is a perfect marketing opportunity and by then you’ll know more about them than any agency could figure out.

The best thing about social media, is the instruction manual is in the medium itself. You know your products, customers and their quirks, why trust it to some agency that doesn’t know what you know?

Other agency services are up for grabs too.

Need a logo or graphics you can’t do yourself? Why get 3 to choose from in a agency and pay thousands when you can pay some $200 and get 221 to choose from at contest based hatchwise.com. The logo at the top of this page was produced there and I’ve used it for 3 other company logos. It’s great, cheap and gives me WAY more options. I can collaborate with the designers, message them directly and get really specific on what I would like and designers are more than happy to help out if that means they win the prize.

Need an ad produced? Crowd source. The best performing ads at the Super Bowl this year were ideas from customers, or produced by customers and in some cases written, produced and starred customers. With iMovie, Adobe Premiere and other easy software to use, a little bit of research and some time you can pretty much do anything an agency can, for less, without the attitude.

Why do you think agencies in special niche agencies pop up like new media and interactive marketing? It’s because most other agencies drop the ball in these areas. If you really don’t think you have the skill, then hire a specialized agency in that field.

Finally, we are seeing a tilt towards the small business owner. And that’s the way it should be.

Why? Because those big agencies have not adapted their vision, or their staff, attitude or their mission. And they better if they don’t want to become the next travel agency.