Yesterday Google publicly rolled out their plus 1 box to the world wide web. This functionality I previously introduced just over a month ago when it was a BETA opt in option. Today not only is Google's +1 box available for all Googlers to see, it is also now available to be placed on web pages everywhere > I want a Google +1 Button for my site.
As you may imagine I was very excited to find a place where I could be among the first to deploy and test this new Google functionality. I quickly turned my attention to Freestyle Factory where I could quickly get in, manipulate code and launch. I added the Google +1 snippet to our global footer just before the close of the body: <script src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js" type="text/javascript"></script> You can also add this tag to your head if so inclined.
Once I completed that I then also added <g:plusone></g:plusone> to each Product Description to provide a placement for each button to render. You can see the Plus 1 Box in the screen shot below under 'Quick Overview'.
Over he next few months it will be very interesting to collect engagement data as well as user adoption for the +1 Box. It will also be important to gauge what if any SEO value this +1 feature creates.
In efforts ensure that we are collecting as much data as possible, I also added the following custom Google Analytics variable to allow me to track each +1 as an Event.
</script><script type="text/javascript"> function plusone_vote( obj ) { _gaq.push(['_trackEvent','plusone',obj.state]); }
You may have seen this used on other top networks as a ‘Like’ button or perhaps a ‘Thumbs’ up. Today we add +1. I imagine in a few short months many content and product based websites will be rushing to integrate this +1 button onto their site. After all, I can see how important it will be to ensure products and links are receiving +1’s and thus getting ranked accordingly by Google. Benefit to the +1 box include: allowing people to recommend your site to their friends and contacts, Personalized annotations to show your customers which of their friends have recommended your content (helping your site stand out in Google
search), and soon you will be able to add the +1 button to your site to give users more chances to +1 your content.
So how does all this work? Let’s say you own a Jet Ski shop in Chicago. Mike recently had a great experience with Freestyle Factory. The next time Mike is signed in and surfing on Google and searches for product and sees a Freestyle Factory ad, he is able to recommend or +1 this ad. Once Mike has recommended an ad, contacts from his network will then see search results pages with a +1 next to results that their friends have recommended.
Every once in a while I like to hop in the Way Back Machine, and take a look at some of my first web projects. Those first seemingly crazy ideas that many early web entrepreneurs had, but few acted on. After all, who actually uses the Internet for entertainment? Isn’t that what TV’s are for? At least that is what everyone asked my in late 1998 when I announced my idea for PWC Action, a site that would follow the then very popular and televised IJSBA PWC National Tour, and air video segments immediately following each event on a website where competitors and fans would have an opportunity to speak with each other discussing the weekends big events. In the spring of 1999 with the help of Co-Founder Khan Funk and a video streaming partnership with Interspec, we launched PWCAction.com and began to solidify advertisers in the form of product placement. This was the first web project that I actually began to monetize.
Looking back it is hard to imagine a time before cookie based web analytics, or even Google for that matter. YouTube wouldn’t be invented for a few more years and the speed of dial-up was only one of the many hurdles. Yet as each episode aired, we would find viewers packing the chat room hoping to see or hear news that would have otherwise taken upwards of a month to get. After all, though the tour had television coverage, it was not live. It was in fact time delayed, sometimes many weeks, and could only be found on obscure local cable networks.
The initial site was built with Web Studio and had only basic functionality, not unlike 90% of the all websites back in 1999. While the video streaming was a bit ahead of its time, the concept of the action sports lifestyle video was timed quite perfectly. The original Twangled would make its first appearances in the marketplace as a VHS in the following spring, comprised of much of the content that we shot for the previous summer’s web project, the VHS was targeted for a broader less technical audience. Back then the Crusty motorcycle series were flying off shelves like hot cakes and only a few PWC videos had really been created. Most notably would be All My Crazy Friends, a lifestyle video that would set the stage for acceptance of all of the videos that would soon hit the PWC market.
Though the first run of Twangled would sell just north of 150 copies, this was the product that would ultimately get me started. With a distribution agreement from Impact Video, North America’s leading extreme sports video distributor, Fountain man Films was off and looking for start up capital. In August of 2001 I met Greg Brock at the Chicago Air and Water Show, where I had gone to ride and continue filming. Ironically Greg was there with his own video crew working on a project that he was calling S.L.A.M. – Stand Like A Man. Greg was the President of a real estate holding company in Chicago. He and his partners were looking to diversify their group by creating a media company. After a few months of conversation, Fountain Man Films was acquired by Flight 19 LLC, and renamed Det-Chi Video (Detroit – Chicago) after the Founders places of origin. Just a few months after closing the deal, I moved to Chicago and Twangled Remaster was commercially distributed throughout North America. Twangled Remastered was nominated for an Extremmy that year, and quickly became the foundation of more than half of Det-Chi Video’s future video projects and would also launch an eCommerce effort that continues on a fourth generation platform today.
As I look back over some of the brands and websites that I have impacted, it sometimes amazes me that it all started with a little idea like PWCAction.com.
Link to PWC Action Homepage - Vintage 1999
Link to Video Stream Page on the Way Back Machine
Article by Gary Burtka
]]>Let's jump ahead to the more recent JCPenny SEO issue, which like Decor My Eyes, was also broken by New York Times. JCPenny got caught with over 2000 links on sites that are being considered link / content farms. A Google search for JCP links results in About 3,360,000 results in less than 1 second. What is interesting here is how a few thousand links on irrelevant sites with page ranks of 0,1 or 2 would outweigh over 3 million other links on legitimate sites.
Most recently Overstock.com got pinged by Google for their .edu back link building strategy. While I understand Google's view on placing links on irrelevant sites based on marketing initiatives, it does leave one to wonder how are SEO's for major brands supposed to patrol where customers place links. Overstock has About 5,920,000 inbound links. I wonder how many were actually .edu.
It is interesting to note that as Google looses search market share, they have become more public about speaking about algo updates. The Google of yester-year was always closed lips about any updates or tweaks to their natural search results, which incidently is not something that Google monetizes like their ad sense, ad words or affiliate programs. Old Google would have rolled out changes to improve results without publicly calling out major brands, and SEO's all over the world would be working to uncover the secrets behind recent updates. Instead today we have all out PR and media involvement. Hmmm.... I wonder if Google is getting more traffic from all of this New York Times attention?
So what does this mean to an SEO at a major brand or top eCommerce site? For me it means scrapping any thought of EVER testing a paid link strategy, which admittedly has come up as a possible tactic with our agency of record. Once popular SEO link partners, like Conductor, are now forced to make changes to their business models while the SEO counterparts rebuild their annual marketing plans in hopes that they are not next on Google's SEO hit parade.
Article written by: Gary Burtka
]]>I was recently reading InternetRetailer.com and came across an interesting article about large brands removing themselves and their products from Amazon.com. Gap, Macy's, and Buy.com have all removed their products from Amazon's virtual shelves. Why would major brands pull their products from a now steadfast and prominent organization?
Internet Retailer reports: "Ever since Amazon.com Inc. started letting other retailers sell through its e-commerce platform as third-party sellers, there has been a “swinging pendulum of support and pull-back” from major retailers concerned about the ability of Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, to use marketplace retailers' sales information for competitive purposes, says Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor Corp., a company that helps retailers sell through their-party e-marketplaces."
IR also cited lack of product control and poor customer service as potential obstacles for online marketing departments at deporting brands.I cannot personally say that I have ever been party to a poor customer service experience by any member of the Amazon team, or by their process overall. What I have noticed is that Amazon does have their own set of rules, and for some major brands this may be a hurdle moving forward. One major issue that I could envision a large brand having an issue with would be the brand's inability to message an Amazon customer once they have made a purchase. That is right, a brand cannot email market a customer that has been acquired through Amazon. With Amazon boasting new customer acquisition rates of 40-50%, one can see the inherent value in these email addresses.
I also noted that Amazon has an average order value below other like online acquisition channels. It is 30% lower than search and affiliate and 25% lower than comparison shopping engines. Many online marketing groups overlook the steep fixed revenue shares and low average order values so that they may acquire the niche customer that Amazon seems to attract - the ONE stop FREE SHIPPING mega shopper. Just don't ask about those rebuy rates...
It will be interesting to see if this is an emerging trend and if other large brands will follow suite; or if we will see Gap and Macy stores again by the holidays.
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After 1 month I took a snapshot of our traffic from Google Analytics dashboard. The goals for the initial launch were to improve bounce rate to 50%, Pages per visit to 3, and average time on site to 3 minutes. When comparing November 2010 year over year with November 2009I see that we greatly under estimated the power of the optimizations that we had deployed. After 1 month we have seen a reduction of nearly 40% in bounce rate, down to 40% from 66%.
The average time on site is also higher than we had anticipated averaging 4 minutes and 12 seconds per visit during November. This is an improvement of over 210%.To other engagement metrics had very large improvements as well. Average pages viewed per visit increased from 1.69 to 4.52 while overall pageviews increased by over 325%. Visits were also up nearly 60%.
Improved functionality, look and feel were among the leading enhancements driving the performance increases. While this platform also includes such eCommerce trophies as product ratings & reviews, a related products feed and wish list, these features have yet to establish themselves fully. Their true potential will be realized a year from now.
]]>LOS ANGELES, CA. November 29, 2010 - FanPrice, Inc., the ticket exchange that lets fans set the price they want to pay for tickets; announces the re-launch of their revolutionary service, FanPrice.com. After a brief hiatus, FanPrice.com will re-launch on cyber-Monday, November 29th with a new and expanded customer offering.
Customers visiting FanPrice.com will still be able to use FanPrice’s revolutionary ‘Make Offer’ service to get bargain prices on tickets; while now having the option to ‘Buy Now’. This new ‘Buy Now’ feature comes with the addition of expanded inventory and a fresh new look to the interactive maps. “After speaking with our customers we learned that although they love saving money by placing offers on groups of seats, there are times when fans want to be able to choose their specific seats and buy them immediately. We are happy to add this feature to FanPrice for them,” said Scott Daniel, COO and Co-Founder of FanPrice.
In addition to all of the technological enhancements that have been planned for FanPrice.com’s re-launch; Gary Burtka is also joining the senior leadership team as a Co-Founder and will be involved in the strategic development of FanPrice’s marketing plan. "Gary brings invaluable experience of customer acquisition / Multi-channel marketing in the secondary ticket industry. We are pleased to have him on board," states Jaseem Masood, CEO/Co-Founder of FanPrice. Burtka has received extensive start-up experience in his ten plus years online; most notably working for TicketsNow prior to, during and after the Ticketmaster acquisition. “I have been watching FanPrice.com for a few years now. Their market position with the ‘Make Offer’ option is a unique innovation in the secondary ticketing space,” said Burtka.
For additional information please visit http://www.fanprice.com
About Fanprice, Inc.
Founded in 2007 and launched in 2008, Fanprice is a revolutionary ticket exchange that lets fans set the price they want to pay for tickets. The company has created a unique ticketing experience linking fans and sellers in a truly fair market ecosystem. Fanprice's assembly of subscribers and users offer tickets for a full spectrum of events, including sporting events, concerts and even theater. Fanprice, Inc. is headquartered in Petaluma, CA and has its creative offices in Los Angeles.
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Google rarely contacts Gmail users via email, but we are making an exception to let you know that we've reached a settlement in a lawsuit regarding Google Buzz (http://buzz.google.com), a service we launched within Gmail in February of this year.
Shortly after its launch, we heard from a number of people who were concerned about privacy. In addition, we were sued by a group of Buzz users and recently reached a settlement in this case.
The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users' concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.
Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before December 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on January 31, 2011. This email is a summary of the settlement, and more detailed information and instructions approved by the court, including instructions about how to opt out, object, or comment, are available at http://www.BuzzClassAction.com.
Overview Of The Proposed Settlement
In re Google Buzz User Privacy Litigation, Case No. 5:10-cv-00672-JW
A class action Settlement has been reached with Google Inc. ("Google") that resolves litigation about privacy concerns arising out of Google’s social networking program, Google Buzz. The Plaintiffs allege that Google automatically enrolled Gmail users in Buzz, and that Buzz publicly exposed data, including users’ most frequent Gmail contacts, without enough user consent. Google denies the accuracy of Plaintiffs’ allegations and denies that it violated any law or caused any harm by the launch of Google Buzz.
Under the Settlement, Google will establish an $8.5 million Common Fund to fund organizations focused on Internet privacy policy or privacy education, as well as to cover lawyers’ fees and costs and other expenses. Google will also do more to educate users about the privacy aspects of Google Buzz. Since the inception of this litigation, Google has also made changes to Google Buzz that clarify its operation and users' options, including, in particular, changes regarding user information and control over Buzz's privacy settings.
The Class includes all Gmail users in the United States who were presented with the opportunity to use Google Buzz before November 2, 2010. Your legal rights are affected whether you act, or do not act.
Buzz Press Release
Google Buzz Settlement
Mountain View, Calif. -- On October 7, 2010, federal district court Judge James Ware preliminarily approved a class action settlement related to the launch of Google Buzz last February. The Settlement resolves a lawsuit filed by Gmail users who alleged that Buzz's launch violated their privacy.
“We are satisfied with the agreement and are glad to move forward,” said a Google spokesperson. “We have always been committed to offering users transparency and choice in Buzz and all our products, and will continue to work together with users to provide the best experience possible.”
Immediately following the Buzz launch in February of this year, Google moved quickly to make significant product improvements including increased visibility, an updated start up process featuring auto-suggestions, and adding Buzz to the Google Dashboard. In April, Google rolled out a "second chance" encouraging Buzz users to check and verify their privacy settings.
The Settlement Agreement acknowledges the important changes Google has made to Buzz. As part of the Settlement Agreement, Google will create an $8.5 million fund, the majority of which will go to organizations focused on Internet privacy education and policy, and will make additional efforts to educate users about the privacy aspects of Buzz.
Gary E. Mason, counsel for the Plaintiffs in the litigation, said, “We feel this Settlement provides many benefits to Class Members, including providing a significant amount of money to non-profit groups committed to educating users about Internet privacy and ensuring that Buzz users can join this on-line community without compromising their privacy.”
The Court will consider final approval of the proposed Settlement on January 31, 2011. Full details on the Settlement are available in the Notice.
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Freestyle Factory announce's the launch of their new online retail marketplace at FreestyleFactory.com. Some of the new features include Ratings & Reviews, Product Comparison and a (soon to be added) larger curated product assortment. Freestyle Factory has signed agreements with a number of top distributors and high-quality manufacturers to bring to market a new Online Action Sports Superstore. Products will be coming to the shelves as they are vetted and approved. New additions will be made daily.
“The purpose of FreestyleFactory.com is to bring a combined grouping of niche action sports products to market. I realized that there are many high quality products being built by small shops which simply cannot afford to have aggressive marketing plans; and that there are also many products that cross over to support other niche sport needs. This left us with the opportunity to create an action sports commerce network that could be socially insightful and boast of a high-performance curated product selection. Our products as are rider tested and mechanic approved” Said Burtka Co-Founder and Board Member.
This most recent eCommerce platform is the fourth solution to launch as the company’s online storefront. This enterprise is built on the Magento eCommerce platform, a project that began more than a year ago. This most recent effort was a large-scale collaborative effort and could not have been completed without Jeremy Wagner, whom served as the lead technical consultant, and Jessica Wiebesiek whom served as the lead creative consultant.
FreestyleFactory.com is a subsidiary of Det-Chi Video and was Co-Founded by Professional Freestyle Jet Skiers Gary Burtka and Greg Brock in June of 2002.Pictured below is the last homepage prior to the update. Click on the image to see the new homepage.
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I continue to follow what I have always consider best SEO practices by completing the META keyword field. This is important to organizations that have multiple content owners or multiple resources making page level updates. Storing the keywords that copywriters and content owners need to target on the page streamlines the entire content development process as well as alleviates any unnecessary confusion. For me, this is enough to keep this as a best practice.
I have heard from so many SEO's that this is essentially a bad practice because competitors can see what keywords we are targeting. Once again I do not agree with this rationale. For small scale competitors or very small start ups it may be the case that hey are looking at your META keywords and attempting to copy your target words. I do not believe these companies to be at the crux of this conversation though, and as I attempt to delineate the numerous ways that a competitor will monitor or base what keywords a company is targeting, it seems a bit redundant attempt to try to hide what keywords one is targeting by not placing them in the keyword field. After all, any players that have enough natural search traffic to worry about probably already have an SEO manager or an agency keeping track far more data than META keywords.
In closing it is important to remember that even the most rudimentary SEO function like META keywords can have profound effects on the organization and internal processes. Simply placing META keywords into the container they were meant to be in can remove unneeded documents and processes from the execution team and will aslo ensure that the correct words are being targeted. This can have a nice halo effect on the SEO program as a whole.
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