Tag: Searching

The SEO mess on joining blog aggregators

 

Mug shot of Paris Hilton.
Image via Wikipedia

 

If you are an analytics blogger who writes, and is aggregated on an analytical community- read on- Here’s how blog aggregation communities can help you lose 30% of all future traffic long term, while giving you a short term.

The problem is not created by Blogging Communities (like R-Bloggers, or PlanteR, or Smart Data Collective or AnalyticBridge or even BeyeBlogs )

It is created by the way Google Page Rank is structured- you see given exactly the same content on two different we pages- Google Page Rank will place the higher Page Rank results higher. This is counter intutive and quite simple to rectify- The Google Spider can just use the Time Stamp for choosing which article was published where first (Obviously on your blog, AND then later to the aggregator).

How bad is the mess? Well joining ANY blog aggregation will lead to an instant lift of upto 10-50 % of your current traffic as similar bloggers try and read about you. However you can lose the long term 30% proportion which is a benchmark of search engine created traffic for you.

So do you opt out of blog aggregation? No. It’s a SEO mess and it’s unfair to punish your blog aggregator, most of whom are running on ad-supported sponsors or their own funds on dry fumes to publish your content. Most of the fore mentioned communities are created by excellent people I interacted with heavily- and they are genuinely motivated to give readers an easy way to keep up with blogs. Especially Smart Data Collective, Analyticbridge and R-bloggers whose founders I have known personally.

You can do one thing- create manual summaries in the excerpt feature of your blog posts- it’s just below the WordPress page. And switch your RSS feed to summary rather than full. It avoids losing keyword rank to other websites, it prevents the Blog Aggregation from gaining too much influence in key word related searches, and it keeps your whole eco system happy, Best of All it helps readers of Blog Aggregators- since most of them use a summary on the front page anyways.

An additional thought on Google Page Rank- something I have sulked over but not spoken for a long long time.  It ignores the value of reader- If Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and 500 ceos from Fortune 500 companies read my blog but do not link to it- it will count daily traffic as 500. Probably it will give more weightage to Paris Hilton fans.

A suggestion-humbly- you can use IP Address lookup of visitors to see if traffic is coming from corporate sources or retail sources -Clicky from GetClicky does this. Use it as feedback in Google Analytics as well as Google Trends.

And maybe PageRank needs to add quantity and quality of visitors as additional variables . Do a A/B test guys some Chi Square juice- its not quite Mad Men Adverting but its still good fun.

 

PageRank
Image via Wikipedia

 

Related Articles

and the world is one big community as per xkcd


Microsoft Online Games

No, this is not about the X Box kind of games. It is about Microsoft ‘s tactical shift in the online space from going it alone, and building stuff itself, –to partnering, and sometimes investing and exiting business.

In Blogs- It recently announced a migration of MS Live Spaces to WordPress.com – It gives Automattic 30 million more users- no small change consider there were 26 million existing WP users.

Microsoft Messenger, which is the oldest online app in the suite, now provides instant messaging services to about 350 million users, and from now on Windows Live Writer works specifically with the WordPress.com blog service by default. Hopefully Skype, and Google Voice will show MS the way to monitize that business app yet.

Google buying blogger-blogspot seems to have done little, but given Biz Stone room to create another content disruption-Twitter.

With the round of lawsuits by proxy, in Android -Motorola, or for acquisitions – MS is just doing what Marc Anderseen (who’s apparently a better VC than Paul Allen was), Sun and co did to it in the nineties.

Google seems to be regretting putting a spade in the Yahoo acquisition- that would have tied up a big chunk of Idle MS cash- leaving it little room for niche investments (like the 250 mill that helped Facebook ramp up in time).

The real surprise here could be Apple- it has shown little interest in cloud computing- and it seems to be testing the waters with Ping. But Apple sure smells competition- and Android is doing to Iphone what Windows did to the Mac in the early 1990’s.

Google lacks presence in online gaming (despite it’s own Zynga investment)- and needs to start monetizing properties like Android OS (say 10$ for every phone license ??), Google Maps (as an app for GPS) and Google Voice. Indeed it may be time for the big G to start thinking of spinning off atleast some products- earning better returns, while retaining control (dual stock splits) and killing those anti trust lawyer fees forever.

As the Ancient Chinese said, May you live in interesting times. Fun to watch the online games people play.

 

 

Red Hat worth 7.8 Billion now

I was searching for a Linux install of Revolution’s latest enterprise version, but it seems version 4 will be available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux only by Decemebr 2010. Also even though Revolution once opted for co branding with Canonical’s Karmic Koala, they seem to have ignored Ubuntu from the Enterprise version of Revolution R.

http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/why-revolution-r/which-r-is-right-for-me.php

Base R Revolution R Community Revolution R Enterprise
Buy Now
Target Use Open Source Product Evaluation & Simple Prototyping Business, Research & Academics
Software
100% Compatible with R language X X X
Certified for Stability X X
Command-Line Programming X X X
Getting Started Guide X X
Performance & Scalability
Analyze larger data sets with 64-bit RAM X X
Optimized for Multi-processor workstations X X
Multi-threaded Math libraries X X
Parallel Programming (Single Workstation) X X
Out-of-the-Box Cluster-Ready X
“Big Data” Analysis
Terabyte-Class File Structures X
Specialized “Big Data” Algorithms X
Integrated Web Services
Scalable Web Services Platform X*
User Interface
Visual IDE X
Comprehensive Data Analysis GUI X*
Technical Support
Discussion Forums X X X
Online Support Mailing List Forum X
Email Support X
Phone Support X
Support for Base & Recommended R Packages X X X
Authorized Training & Consulting X
Platforms
Single User X X X
Multi-User Server X X
32-bit Windows X X X
64-bit Windows X X
Mac OS X X X
Ubuntu Linux X X
Red Hat Enterprise Linux X
Cloud-Ready X

and though the page on RED HAT’s Partner page for Revolution seems old/not so updated

https://www.redhat.com/wapps/partnerlocator/web/home.html;#productId=188

, I was still curious to see what the buzz about Red Hat is all about.

And one of the answers is Red Hat is now a 7.8 Billion Dollar Company.

http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2010/Q2_2011.html

Red Hat Reports Second Quarter Results

  • Revenue of $220 million, up 20% from the prior year
  • GAAP operating income up 24%, non-GAAP operating income up 25% from the prior year
  • Deferred revenue of $650 million, up 12% from the prior year

RALEIGH, NC – Sept 22, 2010 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced financial results for its fiscal year 2011 second quarter ended August 31, 2010.

Total revenue for the quarter was $219.8 million, an increase of 20% from the year ago quarter. Subscription revenue for the quarter was $186.2 million, up 19% year-over-year.

and the stock goes zoom 48 % up for the year

http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1285505944359&chddm=98141&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=INDEXDJX:.DJI;NASDAQ:ORCL;NASDAQ:MSFT;NYSE:IBM&cmptdms=0;0;0;0&q=NYSE:RHT&ntsp=0

(Note to Google- please put the URL shortener on Google Finance as well)

The software is also reasonably priced starting from 80$ onwards.

https://www.redhat.com/apps/store/desktop/

Basic Subscription

Web support, 2 business day response, unlimited incidents
1 Year
$80
Multi-OS with Basic SubscriptionWeb support, 2 business day response, unlimited incidents
1 Year
$120
Workstation with Basic Subscription
Web support, 2 business day response, unlimited incidents
1 Year
$179
Workstation and Multi-OS with Basic Subscription
Web support, 2 business day response, unlimited incidents
1 Year
$219
Workstation with Standard Subscription
Business Hours phone support, web support, unlimited incidents
1 Year
$299
Workstation and Multi-OS with Standard Subscription
Business Hours phone support, web support, unlimited incidents
1 Year
$339
——————————————————————————————
That should be a good enough case for open source as a business model.




Using Facebook Analytics (Updated)

People sceptical of any analytical value of Facebook should see the nice embedded analytics, which is a close rival and even more to Google Analytics for websites. It has recently been updated as well.

It is right there on the button called Insights on left margin of your Facebook Page

Like for the Facebook Page

http://facebook.com/Decisionstats

You can also use Export Data function to run customized analytical and statistical testing on your Corporate Page.

Older View———————————————————————————-

see screenshot of Demographics of 213 Decisionstats fans on Facebook ( FB doesnot allow individual views but only aggregate views for Privacy Reasons)

fb