Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Pilgrim’s Picks for June 20 Posted: 20 Jun 2008 09:10 AM CDT Congratulations! You made it through another week! As your reward, you get to enjoy these great Picks: It seems AP is no longer pursuing the Drudge Retort for copyright infringement, but it still sounds like its not ready to give up on licensing AP content to bloggers. The Huffington Post is putting its recently raised capital to good use. It plans to expand into local news across the US, starting with Chicago. Microsoft is once again making claims about its acquisition plans. To be honest, I’ll believe it, when I see it! Do you have a strong brand? Aaron Wall shares some tips on protecting it from opportunists. Google really wants you to use Website Optimizer. So much so, it’s pimping the Authorized Consultants who’ll help you get set-up. Clearly Carl Icahn feels like he’s not dominating the news enough so he’s started his own blog. SEOmoz has announced an "expert" Pro Training Seminar for August 19th and 20th. Space is running out, so don’t miss your chance to learn from some of the top experts in the industry–Rand Fishkin, Danny Sullivan, and Stephan Spencer are among those teaching.

Brits Use Google Earth to Crash Residential Swimming Pools; Two Found! Posted: 20 Jun 2008 08:57 AM CDT I have to chuckle at reports teenagers in England are using Google Earth to locate residential swimming pools, then organize illegal late-night dips and parties. Here’s the vision that came to mind: Seriously, we’re talking England here, not California. Residential pools are very rare, with most homes more likely to have a kiddies "paddling pool" than anything useful for an adult. Still, you have to admire the creativeness of the kids–even though their actions are illegal, so do not attempt. If they can find swimming pools in England, maybe we should recruit some of them to help us find Osama Bin Laden. Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!

How Do You Save Yahoo from Sinking When the Crew Abandons Ship? Posted: 20 Jun 2008 08:36 AM CDT "Most people who don't get the decision see Yahoo as merely an abbreviation on the NASDAQ ticker. The people who have poured their blood sweat and tears into building that brand do not." Terry Howard. Marketing Pilgrim reader Terry Howard had a valid point, when commenting on my post about what Yahoo had given up, when it opted for Google over Microsoft. He actually had me thinking–maybe a deal with Google really does favor the employees, who’ve worked their butt off to get where they are today. Then? Then those same employees started leaving Yahoo–in droves! Brad Garlinghouse - author of the infamous "Peanut Butter Manifesto" memo. Vish Makhijani - general manager of Yahoo’s Web search business. Qi Lu - the top engineer for Yahoo’s Panama search marketing platform. Jeremy Zawodny - developer network evangelist. Jeff Weiner - executive vice president of Yahoo’s network division. Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake - co-founders of Flickr Those are just the ones we know about, or are high-profile enough to make the news. Of course, Yahoo is spinning this into a major (positive) reorganization: "We have a deep and talented management team across all areas of the company," Yahoo said in a statement. "We continue to recruit outstanding talent." Yeah, but in the meantime your top talent is leaving faster than you can recruit. I’m about out of answers for Yahoo. It almost feels like I’m kicking someone when they’re already down. If you see a light at the end of the tunnel, leave a comment and let me know. Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

Dear Mainstream Media, Ziggs.com Does Not Tell You Who Searches Your Name on Google Posted: 20 Jun 2008 07:58 AM CDT You know that just about any mention of "reputation" and "Google" is going to get my attention, so I was eager to hear about Ziggs.com. My local CBS affiliate WRAL, teased me that the new service will tell you who is searching for your name on Google. No way! No, really. There’s just no way. You see, whether WRAL has been misguided by Ziggs or just a victim of its own naivety, there’s just no way that you can know about everyone that searches for your name on Google. Boy, it would be nice though, wouldn’t it? So, does Ziggs even come close to the claim? Almost. You see, Ziggs will create a profile for you and host it. If that profile makes its way into Google, then Ziggs can provide a few details on who landed on your profile. They also offer a $4.95 a month option, which adds a Google AdWords ad for your name. It looks like this… As you can see, you’ll get an alert anytime your ad is clicked on. Big deal! Here’s the truth about Ziggs.com: It cannot tell you who is searching for your name on Google. It can only provide basic details–such as browser, location, keyword–of someone searching your name, ONLY IF the person clicks on your Ziggs profile or AdWords ad. Searchers rarely click on paid ads, when researching your reputation on Google. The same service has been around for years, thanks to Naymz.com. Add Google Analytics to any web page you publish and you can get the same information. Save your $5 and set up your own AdWords accounts. 99% of people will spend less than $2 a month on AdWords–it’s not a competitive term and it will rarely get clicked. I’ve not tested Ziggs’ profile pages for their "Google visibility" so they could well end up being a valuable addition to your Google reputation toolkit. Maybe Ziggs pushed for a perceived value that it knows is pretty limited, or maybe mainstream media is just easily confused. Use Ziggs as an additional place to present a positive online reputation, but don’t expect it to provide you with much information on who’s searching for your name on Google–it simply cannot live up to that claim. Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!

Linky Goodness, June 19 Posted: 19 Jun 2008 03:30 PM CDT In college, Thursday was always like “practice Friday.” Don’t you miss that? Google isn’t the only one trying to forestall government intervention in the latest big deal: Yang Goes to Washington for the same reason, though he has yet to meet with noted Google-deal-curmudgeon Rep. Barton. Nobody’s perfect. Good on Compete for admitting it and for recalculating their data, finding that Yahoo Traffic Better Than First Reported. I’m sure Yahoo’s happy to be at 18.6% now. Hakia announced in March that they’d license their semantic search for third parties; now they’re Hakia Launching Syndication Web Services, which sounds a lot like semantic search + RSS. (Actually, it sounds like a lot of BUZZWORDS, but whatever.) Oh, THIS is what it means: Hakia Announces Semantic API. Thanks, RWW. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com - Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

When AdWords Users Get Phished Posted: 19 Jun 2008 03:16 PM CDT We’re all familiar with phishing schemes: an email urging you to login to your PayPal account at this URL (which doesn’t turn out to be PayPal or eBay at all), etc. Most of us have seen enough of these—and enough horror stories circulating on the web or the nightly news—to avoid these scams. But not everyone has. A post on Google Blogoscoped details the aftermath of one such phishing expedition. After receiving an official-looking email apparently from Google AdWords, one AdWords account owner clicked through on the link and entered his login information. The email had urged him to renew his account before it was deactivated, but he couldn’t find anywhere to do that once he was logged in. A few weeks later, this AdWords owner noticed some strange things while checking his AdWords account. Considering he only had one campaign set up, it probably wasn’t hard to notice the dozens of other campaigns that had suddenly popped up in his account, which included campaigns for such things as “fast cash” and “pay day loans,” all with a max CPC of $6.25. Fortunately for this account owner, all of the campaigns had been stopped even before he’d discovered them. He says the response from Google on this issue was that “they have several systems in place which Flags [sic] any ‘unusual account activity’ which immediately stops all ads running until they have the time to check into it.” In this case, the filters certainly saved the account owner some serious money. But now we have to wonder what it would take to trip these filters, and whether your average user (or average power user) could accidentally make Google stop their campaigns until Google has the time to look into it further. Good on Google for preventing scammers from taking advantage of this guy—but do we have something to worry about now? Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

I’m Hosting an Online Reputation Management Workshop - August 7th Posted: 19 Jun 2008 03:06 PM CDT If you have any interest in online reputation management, then you need to be in North Carolina on August 7th–that’s when I’ll host my first ever Online Reputation Management Workshop. I want to keep the event small, so that I can spend quality time sharing the online reputation management tactics I’ve developed over the years. The workshop is open to just 20 people. If you’re responsible for your company’s brand/reputation, or perhaps you want to offer online reputation management services, then you’ll want to secure your spot–it may be the only time I offer this workshop! Register today and you’ll save $400. All the details, agenda, and registration can be found here. I hope you’ll join me! Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!

Men More Likely to be on LinkedIn, Flickr Posted: 19 Jun 2008 12:20 PM CDT Last month I posted about patterns between men and women and their patterns of making friends on social networking sites. Rapleaf has another study that gives more insights into which sites are popular between the sexes and across age groups. People on social media sites are usually in the age range of 14 to 24 years old. Rapleaf’s study focused on 49.3 million people in their database who are aged 14-74. They found a total of 120 million profiles on social networking sites and most people average having profiles on 2-3 different sites. Here are some findings: Women are more likely to be on Myspace and Facebook. Especially the younger crowd, age 14-24 (the 14-24 year old demographic represents 65.5% and 66.25% of total users respectively). Men are more likely to be on LinkedIn and Flickr, especially men aged 25-34 years old (the 25-34 year old demographic represents 51.0% and 38.1% of total users respectively). Myspace users peak at 17-18 years old and then greatly drop off where Facebook takes over. They “theorize that once Myspace users graduate from high school, they switch over to using Facebook.” Overall MySpace has the most people. The press release has a lot of data about who’s on social networks and it should be interesting for marketers. I was surprised to see that MySpace has the most people over 65. Here’s one of the charts that shows the breakdown of people by age group. Social Network Age Groups Number of Total Members 14-17 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65+ Bebo 30.88% 37.75% 21.16% 6.22% 2.54% 1.05% 0.41% 5,806,867 BlackPlanet 14.97% 47.28% 25.74% 8.50% 2.55% 0.66% 0.30% 1,201,687 Classmates 6.82% 29.10% 38.32% 14.98% 7.24% 2.78% 0.76% 3,051,761 Facebook 19.77% 46.38% 24.07% 6.34% 2.35% 0.76% 0.32% 5,920,236 Flickr 6.63% 27.21% 38.06% 17.20% 7.50% 2.70% 0.71% 2,068,097 Flixster 21.57% 38.41% 24.99% 9.29% 3.98% 1.36% 0.40% 17,647,399 Friendster 10.89% 41.13% 34.49% 9.40% 2.80% 0.89% 0.39% 5,260,380 Hi5 16.90% 44.44% 26.27% 7.96% 3.15% 0.99% 0.29% 14,679,615 LinkedIn 1.06% 10.72% 50.98% 24.66% 8.91% 3.07% 0.61% 841,209 Multiply 12.58% 45.39% 28.80% 8.45% 3.31% 1.08% 0.39% 1,354,647 Myspace 26.78% 38.69% 22.11% 7.73% 3.20% 1.05% 0.43% 31,845,954 MyYearbook 38.30% 36.39% 15.39% 6.21% 2.57% 0.78% 0.36% 2,449,251 Perfspot 13.07% 41.06% 30.37% 10.19% 3.81% 1.17% 0.33% 1,159,539 Ringo 17.66% 42.33% 26.53% 8.67% 3.43% 1.06% 0.32% 9,770,151 Tickle 17.33% 40.25% 26.65% 9.58% 4.38% 1.40% 0.40% 6,481,601 Pilgrim’s Partners: Learn More From Your Web Form Submittals. Collect valuable marketing data w/ each submittal. Best Contact Form - Recommended by Andy Beal!

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