Salmon Protocol Endpoints & Canonicalization

This blog post mainly comprises of a message I just sent to the Salmon Protocol mailing list, but I have expanded on it a little.

Salmon Protocol is actually one of the most exciting things that will be used by Google Buzz & theoretically could dramatically make huge changes to the way communication flows around all kinds of web content, whether comments on blog posts, votes & likes on Youtube videos, maybe blog posts themselves, video replies etc.

It designates the way notifications are sent “upstream” just like Salmon swimming up a river to a specific end point.

Many pundits are looking on Google Buzz as some kind of final application, whereas in many ways it is purely an introductory interface to many information protocols that in many cases are still being roughed out by programming geeks who will define how the web will work (the way various apps talk to each other) for the next decade.

I believe what I have stated about end points is important, but might need an example.

  1. Someone comments about one of my blog posts on Buzz
  2. I write a blog post linking to someone
  3. That person has a video from Youtube embedded in their post
  4. That YouTube video is a reaction to someone else’s YouTube Video
  5. That YouTube Video was just a syndicated copy of a video originally posted on a blog post as a mp4

If that comment on Buzz is a “Salmon” how far up the stream should it flow as a final destination?

In theory the chain might never end, wheras the one definitive end point is a profile owned by the person making the comment.

Here is what I wrote last July which might give you an enhanced perspective about what I feel is exciting about “buzz”.

The Future Of Commenting And Aggregation

An even more radical approach would be to totally get rid of “comments” as a unique entity, and many other social sites for that matter, and have only unique personal streams of media, long or short form, video, pictures, text or a mixture, and what appears on other sites, whether on a blog as a comment, or on Twitter, Youtube or an social site would just be a syndicated copy of your original content. Just one permalink for the original content, with full ownership and privacy controls over who could see it.

In many ways Youtube is just a video feed reader where you syndicate your unique video, and you should link back to the original source, and get the original source ranking :)

It is not just “Salmon Protocol”, there are all kinds of other things going on underneath that need to be understood, and to be honest my own level of understanding of many of the intricacies is a little vague.

Here are a few reference links

Salmon Protocol
Magic Signatures
Activity Streams

Here is what I posted to the Salmon discussion group (I will add a link if it gets through the moderators)

I noticed this Self-Salmon proposal

http://code.google.com/p/salmon-protocol/wiki/SelfSalmon

From a content ownership perspective, the default endpoint should be SelfSalmon and all other endpoints should be for syndication purposes, under user control.

If a user migrates from one endpoint to another, say from a Google service to a Facebook/Yahoo/MSN service, their Salmon moves with them.
A user may even access their Salmon through multiple interfaces of interlinked IDs

I would also like to reference a few conversations from the search community

http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/social-aggregation/
http://www.google.com/buzz/118122556596388698587/Djy7DNLaE41/twitters-140-character-limit-is-useful-theres-no

Do content creators own the comments?
How about the people the content creators link to?
Or the people they link to?
Or the YouTube Video that they embed that they are all discussing?

Salmon could flow upstream with no logical end point.

Ultimately the only logical primary endpoint is the reference that is unique, the comment creator = SelfSalmon

There is in many ways also an issue with multiple identities & privacy which I discovered from user complaints about Disqus

I am not sure whether this is still an issue, but Disqus was tying together anonymous comments based upon an email ID and displaying them in public, thus it was possible to tie comments on a Political blog under one pseudonym with those on a tech blog using another.
Thus a need for personal end points being able to provide anonymous private notification keys for each interaction.

I realise that Magic Signatures is intended to address this problem, but can it also in some way be extended as a unique permissions mechanism for email delivery?
If an email address was actually a unique Magic Signature, it could also then easily be revoked by the owner similar to providing one-time disposable email addresses.

From a purely email context, a Magic email address would work for only the designated sender to the designated recipient. If sent from a non-designated sender, such as a replyall to a CCed email, there would need to be some kind of authorization/permission & update layer.

These thoughts come from looking in some way to use the provision of email addresses by Facebook through the API and the onerous need to update sending permissions on multiple email service provider platforms, whether correspondence, sales messaging, transactional email or just a comment subscription.

Within the offical spec for Salmon there is effectively a canonical reference for the comment originator

POST /salmon-endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: example.org
Content-Type: application/atom+xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
    <entry xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
    <author>
      <name>John Doe</name>
      <uri>acct:johndoe@aggregator-example.com</uri>
    </author>
    <content>Yes, but what about the llamas?</content>
    <id>tag:aggregator-example.com,2009:cmt-441071406174557701</id>
    <updated>2009-09-28T18:30:02Z</updated>
    <thr:in-reply-to xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0'
       ref='tag:example.org,1999:id-22717401685551851865'/>

    <me:provenance xmlns:me="http://salmon-protocol.org/ns/magic-env">
    <me:data type='application/atom+xml'>
    PD94bWwgdmVyc2lvbj0nMS4wJyBlbmNvZGluZz0nVVRGLTgnPz4KPGVudHJ5IHhtbG5zPS
    dodHRwOi8vd3d3LnczLm9yZy8yMDA1L0F0b20nPgogIDxpZD50YWc6ZXhhbXBsZS5jb20s
    MjAwOTpjbXQtMC40NDc3NTcxODwvaWQ-ICAKICA8YXV0aG9yPjxuYW1lPnRlc3RAZXhhbX
    BsZS5jb208L25hbWUPHVyaT5hY2N0OmpwYW56ZXJAZ29vZ2xlLmNvbTwvdXJpPjwvYXV0a
    G9yPgogIDx0aHI6aW4tcmVwbHktdG8geG1sbnM6dGhyPSdodHRwOi8vcHVybC5vcmcvc3l
    uZGljYXRpb24vdGhyZWFkLzEuMCcKICAgICAgcmVmPSd0YWc6YmxvZ2dlci5jb20sMTk5O
    TpibG9nLTg5MzU5MTM3NDMxMzMxMjczNy5wb3N0LTM4NjE2NjMyNTg1Mzg4NTc5NTQnPnR
    hZzpibG9nZ2VyLmNvbSwxOTk5OmJsb2ctODkzNTkxMzc0MzEzMzEyNzM3LnBvc3QtMzg2M
    TY2MzI1ODUzODg1Nzk1NAogIDwvdGhyOmluLXJlcGx5LXRvPgogIDxjb250ZW50PlNhbG1
    vbiBzd2ltIHVwc3RyZWFtITwvY29udGVudD4KICA8dGl0bGUU2FsbW9uIHN3aW0gdXBzdH
    JlYW0hPC90aXRsZT4KICA8dXBkYXRlZD4yMDA5LTEyLTE4VDIwOjA0OjAzWjwvdXBkYXRl
    ZD4KPC9lbnRyeT4KICAgIA
    </me:data>
    <me:encoding>base64url</me: <me:alg>RSA-SHA256</me:alg>
    <me:sig>
    EvGSD2vi8qYcveHnb-rrlok07qnCXjn8YSeCDDXlbhILSabgvNsPpbe76up8w63i2f
    WHvLKJzeGLKfyHg8ZomQ
    </me:sig>
    </me:provenance>

    <title/>
</entry>

The canonical ID for the content would be

tag:aggregator-example.com,2009:cmt-441071406174557701

The problem comes when destination sites lay claim to ownership of a particular comment and control how it is syndicated.

From many of the code examples I have seen, if someone originated a comment whilst visiting my blog, the above tag would be.

tag:andybeard.eu,2010:cmt-441071406174557701

Effectively content is “owned” by whichever platform is being used to create it, rather than a stated intent that the comments are somehow portable owned by the creator of the content, and published under license.
All my “tweets” on Twitter currently exist on a Twitter permalink. There isn’t an effective method to migrate that content to a different platform, though it is extensively syndicated.

The thing is, as an active participant in conversations across the web, I want to be able to control things from a single “web cockpit” which currently ends up being tons of email notifications in Gmail, many of which end up in spam folders.

It could well be that I don’t understand the implications completely, or the geeky side of programming this, but it seems Salmon isn’t yet user centric but portal centric.

User centric would allow:-

  1. Migration between interface platforms
  2. All content interactions possible, but not restricted to a single interface platform, thus I might start an engagement posting a comment on a blog, but continue all the discussion from within my current web cockpit of choice
  3. Complete control over syndication – if I don’t want my “Salmons” travelling upstream, possibly out of context, I should have complete control over that – I should be able to limit who can display my content on an individual Salmon basis, with the possibility to revoke access to individual sites
  4. Complex threading, not just branching within the interfaces – a single “salmon” whilst in response to one piece of primary content, such as a blog post, might also link through to 3 or 4 other pieces of content.
    Imagine what you can do with a blog post and pingbacks/trackbacks with interlinking with other blogs. In theory that capability should be within every salmon created. In some ways that is a possibility within forum software, as in the past I have received multiple pingbacks or trackbacks from mentions of my blog posts on forums.
  5. Email effectively gives me a universal notification method, and in some cases even a method to respond, such as Posterous, Disqus comments, even some WordPress plugins. Salmon & whatever platforms are used to interface with it needs to have the same level of flexibility.
  6. Visible canonical links within the code whereever a comment is displayed, either for humans or search engines – if I happen to be commenting on a blog post, that is linking to another blog post, which embeds a YouTube video, there needs to be some kind of visible notification of the reason my content appeared where it did.

Within all of this what I don’t really get… is the “scope”.

Salmon appears to be intended for content reactions, but ultimately even blog posts and videos are often reactions. Blogs notify each other using trackback & pingback, and Salmon is in many ways the next stage.

You wouldn’t expect a whole blog post to be imported as a reaction to someone else’s blog post, thus the same could be true for a long comment, or any comment.

Surely all that is needed on a destination site where a comment is left is a link to the canonical source of any reaction with the data displayed using Ajax.
From an efficiency point of view it wouldn’t make sense to have to poll 100 different canonical storage locations for the comment information they contain, thus there is a need to store a referenced comment locally or at a hub, or to have some level of caching, but that doesn’t mean an endpoint should have a permanent copy of whatever content they choose to display from their upstream and downstream, whether it is a direct comment reaction, a blog post or video.

With a service such as Seesmic (the video service not the Twitter client) a comment reaction after all is in many ways just as valid as a tweet or a direct comment.

Any XML data structure or feed attached to a piece of content possibly shouldn’t consist of much more than a list of permalinks where the canonical version of the reaction is held.

Search?

The overall implications for search, based on what is currently within the Salmon Protocol are probably complex enough without adding my input above to confuse things even more. My hope is that we will end up with one canonical version of all content, controlled by the content creator, but with Salmon we might end up with the same comment on 100 different sites with no onus on the sites to display any edited updates, and the possibility through moderation for further editing of content.
Google might be able to work out what is happening, but comment authors probably won’t.

Ideally I would love to see (at a code level) reactions just a bunch of links to their canonical location (owned by the authors with a real permalink), and Javascript/Ajax used to pull in some or all of the content depending on length.
I think what we will end up with is just a bunch of javascript for user generated content, or mass duplicate content with comments stored locally (e.g. current situation with Backtype)

Also I hope long-term it will be possible to upload a video to Youtube and then define the canonical version as a video on a domain I own, and pull in reactions, but that isn’t necessarily in Google’s interests.

That is the end of my brain dump, your head can hurt just as much as mine now.

(p.s. if you get a white screen when you leave a comment, the comments are going through I just have to track down a bug somewhere)

Here is also a link to any discussion on Google Buzz for this post

Posted in Google, SEO Blog, web 2.0 | 16 Comments

Twitter’s 2M+ Indexed Search Results Pages

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For some reason when I was editing we ended up with a much smaller image than before, but as I have more videos coming uploading and publishing as it is. The sound is a little poppy as well as I boosted it maybe too much.

To be honest those 2 million indexed search results pages are just a drop in the ocean compared to the total number of pages, & what Google tells you externally, whether .com or .co.uk rarely are the same as what they tell you in Webmaster tools.

Another interesting point of reference are the 48,000 pages on Twitter indexed discussing Viagra and where to purchase it, though some of those probably point to malicious sites.

Current linking structure helps rank porn pills and casino spam accounts that have been around for a year – who’s commercial interest?

Please note: With the next 2 videos I am going to take it up a gear, look at the linking structure of individual profiles and how to maximise your Twitter SEO.

Posted in Google, SEO Blog, marketing, web 2.0 | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Twitter Has Alzheimers

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  • Have you ever had a thought and shared it on Twitter without writing it down?
  • Had a disagreement with someone over something they tweeted?
  • Shared a link through a retweet but didn’t yourself bookmark it?
  • Forgot to note down who has shared your content a lot in the past who might deserve some reciprocation?

I can remember when Friendfeed was first introduced and one of the primary reasons to use Friendfeed was as a searchable backup of what you said on Twitter.
Unfortunately it still isn’t very good at finding every mention of one of your blog posts.

I don’t believe Twitter has the resources to come up with a better search engine than Google for their content.

As you will see in later videos, Twitter has barriers in place that actually prevent indexing.

At time of writing, Google’s indexation of tweets only goes back as far as Mid October 2009 – here are 2 searches on tweets from that period.
Example 1
Example 2
Go back to the beginning of October and valuable tweets aren’t even picked up on my personal Blogcatalog pages, but they still appear on tag pages for long-tail terms.
Example 3

I am glad my content gets syndicated (with permission) by Blogcatalog, otherwise it wouldn’t exist any more.

It is not just Blogcatalog – here is one only Favstar remembers

10 Tips to Optimise your LinkedIn Profile http://bit.ly/FKU0n

I am going to give my Andy Beard profile there a boost with a link as otherwise content might get lost.

My 7 Day Ultimatum to Twitter is deadly serious – many people effectively use Twitter as their only sharing/bookmarking service.

On a daily basis I find myself searching Gmail often for information from 4 years ago – Gmail has never failed me, and one of the advantages of Google Buzz (my profile), despite the “noise” (mainly from tweets & Friendfeed cross syndication) is that any contribution you make will be findable a year from now.

Here is a link to any conversation for this post on Buzz

Posted in Google, web 2.0 | Tagged , | 21 Comments

Twitter Nofollow – My 7 Day Ultimatum

Unlike many people in the SEO, Tech or Marketing community, I don’t write posts just for linkbait & traffic, and when I make up my mind about whether I want to continue being involved in a community, that decision is final.

But I am giving Twitter a chance… 7 days


@andybeard account deletion
19 days, 12 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds ago

Last time I decided to leave a community where I was highly active was actually 2 years ago when I left Sphinn over moderation issues – at the time I was in the top 3 users. I haven’t been actively involved there since.
(note: I will be releasing the premium content I was discussing for free sometime in the next few weeks as those I told have had a nice 2 year window to exploit it – I never charged for the info)

2 years ago Sphinn was pretty much my default “misc” feed reader – in some ways Twitter has replaced it – you know… that place you go to read cool stuff you wouldn’t have otherwise seen because you can’t cope with reading everything.

The Final Straw For Twitter

Twitter have been progressively screwing up their SEO for a few years, but sometime early this morning they took it one stage too far.
It was first noted by Jeff Bentley
who is a dodgy search marketer so obviously I trust linking to him a lot more than linking to Twitter where you can’t trust the links.
Twitter Nofollow Discovery
It was also spotted by Malcolm before I published a few other tweeters – he wasn’t going mad, but I probably am.

What Twitter are saying in this most recent change is that the people I associate with and have regular conversations with on Twitter are not to be trusted, and that all juice should go to their blogroll icons in the sidebar which are the people I most recently followed – really funny with accounts that autofollow people back is that most of the blogroll links on their accounts are to spammers.

Twitter Nofollow Example

There are people I follow purely for competitive intelligence or communication – some of them I would never link to from this blog or would nofollow, but on Twitter it is just too inconvenient to use other methods.

I realise Twitter content when syndicated can result in followed links, after all I have been pimping my Tweetglide blog (which has 6x as many tweets indexed in Google as my Twitter account) and if I was to feed tweets to my account on Google Buzz, they would be clean links there as well (though maybe they don’t pass juice)

I also realise now content is being piped directly to Google from Twitter, that whether it has nofollows in public might not have any negative effect on the ranking benefit of any links to content, because Google is gaining clean data.

However I find Twitter favouring the links in the sidebar over the links to people I talk to insulting.

Twitter Google CacheThe thing is now Twitter are giving data to Google, Google have no interest at all in crawling Twitter in a traditional manner.

A cache date of over 10 days ago for a PR6 site is quite frankly laughable.
You can see very clearly that in that screenshot the links between people I am talking to don’t have a nofollow.

Every time I look at the Twitter website all the nofollow links make me want to vomit.

Deletion?

I have thought about it for the last 8 hours and it is the only viable solution – if I maintain the account then people will use it to contact me, it is prominently in the SERPs and I have close to 8000 organic followers (I never autofollowed, offered incentives etc)
I will probably leave the account live, but I will delete all the people I am following and all the tweets and then post something generic pointing people to appropriate pages such as my contact page.

All Or Nothing Twitter

If Twitter want to nofollow, it should be all the links or none of them – yes all those “blogroll” links and links to lists need to be nofollowed as well. They could go all the way and nofollow everything with nofollow in the header, but that would be extreme.

The alternative is to remove nofollow completely and let Google sort it out by themselves… they are good at that.

2 very simple acceptable options


@andybeard account deletion
19 days, 12 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds ago

Most likely you may want to follow me on Google Buzz, as I expect my Twtter account to become an empty corpse in 7 days

Twitter Nofollow conversation on Buzz

Testing

Here is a link to a public Buzz indexing test I am running – I have others running in private

Posted in Google, marketing, news, web 2.0 | Tagged , , , | 44 Comments

I Use Aggressive Hype & Obnoxious Tactics To Fool People

I just read a sales page for an information product

  • You had to read the words carefully to find the guarantee
  • No terms of service
  • No privacy policy
  • No mention of confidentiality expectations but suggestions of sharing candid information
  • No contact form, just a company name in the footer
  • No trust marks of any kind
  • The Third Tribe is a published book by Rob Chidley – maybe a brand/trademark conflict

This is the exact premise of the sales letter

One tribe is called the Internet Marketers. They use aggressive hype and obnoxious tactics to fool people into believing there really is a “get rich quick” magic bullet.

The other tribe is the Social Media Cool Kids. They reject hype and aggressive sales tactics in favor of relationships, community, and value . . . and yet seem to have taken a vow of poverty along the way.

Whilst some parts of the sales letter resonate, I am more internet marketer than cool kid, but my bank balance suggests the vow of poverty (not counting equity), at the same time I feel insulted… to the core of my being.

I am also in favour of being candid in public

Lets dissect the words:-

  1. aggressive hype
  2. obnoxious tactics
  3. to fool people
  4. “get rich quick” magic bullet

I am going to deal with these out of order

3. Fooling People

I don’t know anyone, certainly anyone I have promoted who sets out to deliberately fool people, no matter how much they are picked apart by R2D2’s cousin.

There are certainly various client problems

  • People don’t take action (raises hand)
  • Product fit
  • Time constraints
  • Not making use of communication channels provided to get problems sorted
  • Bright shiny objects (move onto the next one)
  • Ignoring what is taught and trying to take too big a step
  • Time management (my first blog post for a month… damn)

I realise evil marketers convince people to buy stuff who really shouldn’t – I like to encourage people to only spend a percentage of their earnings from their business.

On the producers side there is also:-

  • Failing to deliver most of what was promised (very rare) – there is talk of the occasional marketer who just took the money and ran, but there are often 2 sides to a story – there is an inherent risk in any purchase you make, online or offline, which is why you should use a credit card where possible – my builders still haven’t delivered on everything they were meant to do and I have been living in this house 2 years
  • Worthless content – products are aimed at various audiences – I ripped apart an SEO product in private which received testimonials from some of the Third Tribe trainers – I don’t know whether things were corrected in the final product – worth is relative
  • Technical issues – most notable among what I have recently promoted was part of the Stompernet package, Stomper Storm – I even took down my review pages as delivery dragged out and they eventually switched to another supplier – I don’t know the specific issues, but 5 months later a replacement is in beta testing.
  • Poor customer service – not too long ago I specifically told someone who purchased a product from my affiliate link to ask for a refund. His billing had an issue, and he just wasn’t going to renew as he didn’t have time to implement anyway. If he hadn’t asked for a refund, I might have still received $400 of the $1000 comission I was expecting. Obtaining a refund generally isn’t a problem
    There has also been one product I recently purchased that I almost promoted but felt had too many issues – I was refused a refund and fought tooth & nail behind the scenes to make sure anyone who wanted a refund could get it – it turned out to be a lack of communication behind the scenes, and one partner trying to “save the sale”.
  • Payment issues for affiliates – it hurts, but you learn who you can afford to buy traffic promoting – that being said if it is a choice between paying affiliates, and having the resources to deliver what is promised to the people who bought on my recommendation, I can wait in line, the English are good at that.

1. Aggressive Hype?

I spent a long time in the games industry – I have lived through over a year of initial development, then 2+ years of PR just to get a product sold to a publisher and another 2 year battle to get the product finally launched and get the money in after a legal battle.

I know hype… if the product delivers within the expected timeframe, fans eat it up – then there is Duke Nukem Forever…

I had a love/hate relationship with product launches even before I began marketing online in the “internet marketing” space, and there are real advantages with the efficiency of most launches compared to the games market, at least what I remember of it.

Many of them also provide significant “results in advance” if they are done right – you could call that a “freemium” model, “paying it forward” or “moving the free line”, but ultimately it isn’t too dissimilar to marketing of new software, online or offline.

What is the lead conversion rate for most blogs?

0.1% – 0.5% – maybe some get as high as 1-2% – certain pages might be much higher.

A squeeze page during a product launch which offers valuable information even before asking for an email address can achieve opt-in rates of 20, 30, 50… even as high as 75% – potentially the same free information.
I am not a fan of video squeeze pages that give you 15 minutes of promises of what is on the other side of the opt-in.

I suppose deliberately constructing an inefficient lead acquisition process has some benefits.

2. Obnoxious Tactics

I honestly have no idea what they are inferring to here

  • Email Bombardments? Guilty of having a successful affiliate program which lots of people want to promote?
  • Email Spam? – there are a couple of marketers out there who are almost impossible to get off their lists, but it is very very rare and just requires a single gmail filter, though they end up in spam anyway. Most marketers are using services like Aweber, Getresponse or Infusionsoft – if you don’t get value from what they send you, unsubscribe – it is called permission based email
  • Price Scarcity? – the price is going to go up very very soon… lets be honest, to a customer seeing a sales page for the first time, whether the price scarcity is true or not doesn’t really matter, though it does matter from a legal perspective, and long-term trust – price scarcity is being used on the sales page in question, so I don’t think it is meant to be one of the “obnoxious tactics”
  • Quantity Scarcity? – This could either be a high price to make it seem “exclusive” or a true/false limit on the quantity available often for a digital product. The FTC and other government organizations have rules about this
  • Testimonials – I have seen most of the trainers at one time or another giving testimonials of one kind or another for information products, and whilst how they are used has come under recent public scritiny by the FTC, I can’t see this being the “obnoxious tactics”

So what “obnoxious tactics” are they referring to?

Maybe I am lucky being in Poland I never get “telemarking” pitches to “fleece” me of all the money I can draw on a credit card as I have heard some people claim on various negative opinion sites. I am also an affilaite of most products I buy (or at least I join the affiliate program and don’t necessarily promote), thus I might get filtered to not see such offers.
I know people who have gained significant value from some of the high-end coaching that gets offered, thus the fault is either the person pitching misrepresenting, or the customer in some way misunderstanding, misrepresenting to themselves the benefits etc.

4. “Get Rich Quick” Magic Bullet

This part of the sales letter is actually quite subtle, in an apples to oranges manner.

  • They are clearly not trying to target “Joe Sixpack”
  • There is no system on offer, just a series of training of an unspecified nature
  • Whilst there is mention of “make money online” this clearly isn’t a “make money online” product

Ultimately it seems to be a different product for a different audience, not necessarily a “better bullet”

Emotion In Sales Letters

Emotion is very powerful in any sales letter, and in this case it is a huge spiked trap

The line I highlighted is meant to grab the attention of anyone who has a gripe about anyone, whether it be a customer support issue or receiving one too many emails pitching something.

For some reason the only emotion I felt was… revulsion – a strong negative that I didn’t want anything to do with the marketing message, and a strong enough emotion that I wanted to write something about it.

There are tons of sales letters that include words along the lines of “if you have bought tons of products and never had success, this will be the answer”, but none went as far as claiming that other product producers had deliberately used “Aggressive Hype & Obnoxious Tactics To Fool People”.

It is quite possible the sales letter is intended to appeal more to “Social Media Cool Kids” who haven’t worked out how to make money from their online activities, and not to someone “somewhere in the middle”, though most certainly not the target audience.

I am not saying everything is perfect in “internet marketing”, in fact there are some serious issues, and customers often need to know their own budget and learn to say no to offers they can’t take full advantage of.

That being said, many internet marketing products don’t try to cherry pick their audience, and try to provide “systems” that can be followed by people of varying backgrounds and skillset.

A marketplace like Clickbank has a certain level of quality control, policing sales lettters and delivery process, and of course holds the cash and issues refunds.
Refunds do happen – in the “make money online” niche I have seen numbers quoted in the 30-40% range on occasion for Clickbank products – refunds are high because people know they can, thus they do, and often they also purchase with their own affiliate link.
Refunds on products sold via merchant accounts also happen, and new terms from the merchant account providers will make that progressively easier. Why? Chargebacks – it only takes chargeback percentages above a fraction of 1% to face significant penalties.

My Problem Is With The Sales Message

Sorry Brian, Darren, Sonia, Chris & anyone else involved, but the sales message is wrong.

The Third Tribe

In the past I have defended the sales message of Teaching Sells, despite harsh criticism.

When it came to finally buy Product Launch Formula (some might claim that is the source of much of the agressive hype and obnoxious tactics) I used Brian’s link, as I thought the high end copyrighting course he was planning would be an ideal leverage point… whatever happened to that?

I can’t fault the Third Tribe product, I haven’t seen the content and it comes with “pedigree” – it is effectively the method I was defending – guest experts or partners, you don’t have to create all, or even any of the content of a membership site yourself. I might not agree with the product but that is irrelevant.

I have also promoted similar products that I believe added value.

I do realise you have to have paying customers to get complaints and no one stays in business if every customer complains and asks for a refund.

Who Isn’t Going To Join?

Just like a call for volunteers and everyone in the room takes a step backwards, who is going to be the person who still calls themselves an “internet marketer”.

The silly thing is the online marketing space isn’t fragmented into just a few distinct groups – if I put my mind to it I could probably come up with at least 100 significant but overlapping groups, many of which have a very poor opinion of their colleagues.

I am still an Internet Marketer, but I don’t belong to any tribe

Posted in marketing, news | 44 Comments

MyBlogLog R.I.P Long Live Blogcatalog

I have long been a supporter of MyBlogLog and in many ways it was the many articles I wrote about how they could improve their site that led me to doing some limited consulting with Blogcatalog.

So news of MyBlogLog possibly departing saddens me, and will affect the web materially.

In many ways the only reason I still have a Yahoo account is MyBlogLog as I still log into their stats daily. The other reason is for Site Explorer and other webmaster tools – I don’t do paid search advertising with Yahoo.

The silly thing is MyBlogLog whilst it has never lived up to it’s promise isn’t in decline among people who actually use the site so much as it has been in decline in the mediasphere.
There might be a reduced number of widgets installed, but that is something hard to measure externally.

MyBlogLog-Blogcatalog-Technorati

Using a comparrison that ignores widget installations such as Alexa clearly shows that in many ways MyBlogLog has been growing – even their search traffic has been pretty stable.

It is important to ignore widgets, as for instance with Compete it throws the numbers off totally giving Technorati some semblance of growth due to advertising widgets. (look at Quantcast for real measured numbers)

Technorati MyBlogLog Blogcatalog Compete Data

At the same time I would ignore Quantcast numbers for MyBlogLog, as they are not Quantified.

The Read Write Web article on the demise of MyBlogLog discusses the possibilities of the MyBlogLog API which has always been very feature rich – Blogcatalog has had one as well, though it probably needs a way to pass data back to a hosting page based on a visitor, and social graph data exposed.

The news doesn’t surprise me, the last post on the MBL Blog was a year ago. The next post is most likely to say they are shuting down.

APIs are important but ultimately you can get most of the demographic and social graph data you need without it as Tim can happily demonstrate.
I am not sure whether Tim ever used the API in anger for his commercial clients, but it had huge possibilities.

From a search context the loss of MyBlogLog will be missed – it was a good source of links from members of your community, and the pages in some ways were more favored than Technorati’s (more pages in primary index) but ultimately MyBlogLog has been infested with spam for years.

For me the biggest mistake by MyBlogLog was their implementation of user generated tagging.

Here is the user generated tag page for this blog – MyBlogLog tag pages have been infested with web vermin for 2 years.

The tag pages were introduced whilst the original founders were with the company.

Update From Yahoo

Yahoo on the YDN Blog have posted an update on the future of MyBlogLog. Nothing decided yet.

Hey YDN team – if you do finally axe MBL, can we get access to Yahoo Web Analytics instead?

I also find it a little strange that the post was on the YDN blog, maybe they forgot the MyBlogLog blog login?

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Vimeo – Remove Your Videos & Links Now

vimeo-commercial-use-2Paul had a nasty Christmas present, an email notifying him that his training videos were in breach of Vimeo’s no commercial use policy.

You could believe his shock, with so many popular tech, web design & SEO blogs being allowed to flaunt the rules.

A couple of months ago I pointed out that Vimeo isn’t for commercial use, but that message seems to be largely ignored.

To me it seems that any large commercial undertaking using Vimeo fits one of the following scenarios:-

  1. Walking a tightrope with a demand to take their content down imminent
  2. In some barter arrangement for link juice worth far more than any blogger has probably ever received for a paid post – I wonder what the FTC would think? It certainly influences a lot of businesses to use something they shouldn’t
  3. Blindly walking a path of ignorance having not checked terms of service before signing up

The most prominent I have seen using Vimeo are Read Write Web, Techcrunch and in the SEO community Seomoz

There are tons of commercial funded startups who use Vimeo on their home pages.

Over the Christmas quiet spell I would suggest taking your videos and links away from Vimeo, and let Vimeo stagnate in a non-commercial world.

I have never really understood why anyone creating public facing videos would use Vimeo anyway, their primary saving grace are their privacy controls which would be ideal for membership sites if not for the commercial use barrier.

Posted in SEO Blog, Video SEO & Marketing, marketing | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Warning: Amazon Blogger Integration Broken

Blogger (Google) and Amazon it seems have collaborated and introduced a way for people using Blogger to monetize their blogs using Amazon.
I wonder if Google is making some money as a 2-tier affilaite referring so many affiliates to Amazon

Anyway the implementation is broken for average users

This is what the interface looks like

amazon-blogger

Seems very simple

  1. You search for something
  2. Click buttons
  3. Code is inserted into your post

Perfect… not!

Average Users

An average blogger blogspot user will see

This as a nice text link

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)

This as a nice image link

Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, Global Wireless, Latest Generation)

This as a nice text with image

Update: it doesn’t get stripped out the same way with WordPress but leaving it “broken” here anyway (in the feed)

Oops!

If your readers are reading from an RSS Feed that nice text with image gets stripped out, and the same would be true of emails created from an RSS feed.

This is just the same as happens with Javascript, which is why Google had to implement Adsense in a different way for RSS feeds. Amazon & Google need to do the same for Amazon ads, or use an alternative method such as flash embeds.

This is the code they currently insert


<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=freeadver0cef-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0015T963C&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;" align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Which is meant to appear like this

amazon-kindle-iframe-image

Blogger & Amazon should really get rid of the link+image option, or code it in such a way that something appears in the RSS feeds, even if it is just a link back to the permalink of the post to suggest clicking through – better would be a dynamic image which Google certainly know how to create for Adsense for Feeds.
At a minimum tell bloggers that it won’t appear in feeds and they might need to include alternatives of their own.

If you see someone using this code on Blogger / Blogspot, warn them about this as it might be costing them revenue

You can link to this post with the following code

<a href="http://andybeard.eu/2609/amazon-blogger.html">Warning: Amazon Blogger Integration Broken</a>

Update: hopefully code fixed in my RSS feed

Update 2

I have just received this comment from Rick Klau formerly of Feedbirner and now Program Manager for Blogger

Andy – you make a valid point, namely that if a large number of your readers read via feeds, then the iframe will not render in the feed reader. But “broken”? This is how Amazon’s Associates program has worked from day 1. That is, these are the same options an Associate has had from Amazon directly for incorporating Amazon links into their content. And it’s not at all hard for the blogger to insert a link (or image) independently of the iframe so that it will show in the feed.

–Rick Klau
Blogger PM

I have major problems with this logic

Google have their own very well known Adsense product – it is javascript based either direct calls or in the case of Adsense for search, divs which are replaced on page load using javascript.

For years it was known that you couldn’t include Adsense within the body of blog posts unless it was limited to only display on a blog, and not within a feed. WordPress has lots of special plugins for inserting Adsense code specifically to address this problem.

On Blogspot you don’t have that option with Adsense, you have 2 options for Adsense

  • Within template areas, which can include at the top or bottom of a post, but not within the actual content, in the sidebar etc
  • Special Adsense for feeds via Feedburner which is image based, as was Feedburners own feed monetization platform before it was purchased by Google 2 years ago.

A button to insert Adsense within post content would be broken functionality, but in some ways the Amazon integration is worse.
Adsense is never the focal point of a blog post, in fact you are not allowed to encourage people to click Adsense.

If someone was writing a book review, they would want to include an image and/or link to Amazon to hopefully make some money. If they chose the link+picture option, anyone reading from a shared review isn’t going to even see a link to buy something, or even that there is one on the page if they click through to the blog.
This is not only when the content appears on Blogger, but when it gets reposted maybe to Facebook, other syndication, shared with friends, in emails etc.

Blogger is mass market – the average blogger user wouldn’t have a clue that when they inserted an Iframe within a post, it wouldn’t appear within the feeds and emails.

Anything that works contrary to what an average user might expect is broken and either needs to work a different way, or to have the functionality limitations explained clearly in the interface.

Posted in Google, blogging tips, marketing | Tagged , | Comments closed

Google Real Time Search Too Personal?

I think Google have got their priorities wrong with Real Time search, though I haven’t seen this on other “ego search” terms. I checked with Danny Sullivan and Michael Arrington to start with.

andy-beard-realtime-search

As I have mentioned before, I could understand and even encourage Google to somehow decide to pull in my most recent blog posts as part of their real time search. Most people searching for me it is most likely a regular reader doing a navigational query looking for my latest blog posts, not my latest tweets.

I see this with both a UK and US search, personalization switched off in the query, and logged out

http://www.google.com/search?q=andy+beard&pws=0&gl=US
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=andy+beard&pws=0&gl=UK

This is an “Anytime” search – no need to select “latest”

andy-beard-anytime

Update – Chris Brogan Too

chris-brogan-realtime-search

I wonder where Chris would prefer the traffic to go, blog or Twitter?

I can’t track search traffic to Twitter

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Blindsided By Chris Cardell

chrisbgLiving as an expat, you don’t always have the benefit of exposure to a complete marketing ecosystem, thus when you hear of a marketer who seems to be “doing things” for the first time, with a huge following, it can shake you up a little.

Up until a week ago I hadn’t really heard of Chris Cardell, thus I have been a little blindsided.

He seems to be supremely confident about what he teaches though I think this claim (from an email newsletter) would require a huge amount of supporting evidence.

I am, modesty aside, Europe’s leading authority on Pay per Click Advertising and Website Conversion

You see in my mind just because someone teaches the most amount of people about a topic doesn’t make them a leading authority.

Here are some more quotes from a seminar sales page

Europe’s Leading Authority on Entrepreneurial Success

I am Europe’s leading provider of Marketing, Internet, Sales, Business and Advanced Thinking information to Entrepreneurs.

I believe this video was intended for a squeeze or sales page, and then syndicated on Youtube

Chris Cardell Presentation

Chris Cardell Reviews

Chris Cardell – A client’s view
A review from a happy customer who also works with Lee Duncan, a guy I met through the Stompernet forums.

Chris Cardell Essential Profit Strategies Review
A review of one of Chris’ products by Paul Simister – Paul comments here on my blog fairly frequently and we follow each other on Twitter – in many ways Paul is one of my competitors in the SERPs for many products and product launches, but I trust his reviews without question. He has mixed feelings about the value proposition for someone experienced in online marketing.

Chris Cardell PPC Expert

My initial research regarding Chris on his PPC expertise came up a little blank, as for instance I didn’t see him advertising on terms that would be best suited for his coaching program, or his own name.

That being said he does provide a module for Parry Marshall’s Adwords training on the difference marketing to a UK audience, so I would assume by inferral he does have some significant experience,

Innovative Offline Marketing

From what I have been able to track down from internet sources it seems Chris takes a very much Offline >> Online approach to direct marketing with great success.

Beermat Advertising

Small business owners love the odd tipple
chris-cardell-marketing-guru-1

Conferences

Chris Cardell seems to run yearly conferences with headline speakers such as former & current “Dragons” from the popular BBC TV series “Dragon’s Den”

Summit5sm

Here is a link to his conference in 2009 – I don’t know whether they are high content or a pitch fest.

He was also a recent speaker at the Glazer-Kennedy Info-SUMMIT

Jackie Ewing had some nice things to say about his presentation

Chris Cardell As Seen on TV (inc BBC)

This is something I haven’t been able to verify – there are constant messages about being featured on TV, possibly as a “halking head” subject matter expert but I haven’t been able to find any video clips.
If you search the BBC archives for Chris Cardell there is no mention at all.

Chris Cardell In The Sunday Times

There is mention in much of his marketing about being featured within the Sunday Times. Searching The Times Online I did find one mention of Chris Cardell in a resource post covering online resources of wannabe entrepreneurs. Paul did mention half-page adverts in the Sunday Times which may be his more visible presence.
I have been cited in The Guardian once, so maybe we are on a level footing ;)

Chris Cardell on Twitter

There is a Chris Cardell twitter account and at first glance I wasn’t too sure whether it was legitimate.
Whilst I haven’t confirmed directly, various recent references certainly seem to tie up with his offline activities, so whilst it could be faked, I am currently looking on it as being legit, though not heavily promoted.

Chris Cardell V.I.P Club

Paul reviewed this extensively, but I took interest when looking at the sales copy to the Chris Cardell V.I.P. Club which included something about new PageRank updates and penalties about paid links.

The phrase I take exception to?

New This Month: December 2009

Click image to see full size screenshot of December 2009 Chris Cardell sales page

Click image to see full size screenshot of December 2009 sales page

My personal opinion is that if something is stated as new information, it should be new information.

On first glance Chris doesn’t seem to have blocked internet archive crawlers, but here is the last captured version of his sales page from August 2008. Maybe the crawlers have determined that the page hasn’t really been updated in a year.

Most of the content is exactly the same.

I have no problem with continual continuity sales models and access to his V.I.P program is using a fully upfront free plus shipping trial offer with continuity, though the continuity is forced and refer to Paul’s review if you want to cancel.

The offer as you might expect if you have seen similar offers is compelling offering a huge amount of value up front.

When I take exception is the expectation that the content is brand new. The paid link PageRank penalty fiasco was October 2007 – I was right in the middle of it. Chris might be using a variation of Ryan Deiss’s continual launch model, but it is also possible all the material is available as soon as you sign up.

This doesn’t invalidate the information, it isn’t new information (though it might be for new members)

I haven’t joined the program, but this does taint it for me.

Chris Cardell Affiliate Program

Before writing this post I did hunt around for an affiliate program – Chris seems to be using 1ShoppingCart so there is an affiliate program built into the platform, but I couldn’t see any evidence of him using it proactively – it could well be that it is used as a private program, especially when he is speaking at public events, or as an affiliate for himself to add an extra layer of tracking. There are currently no affiliate links in this post.

Chris Cardell Overall

Chris seems great at presentation, he used to work for Capital Radio thus if he can present information to people in a way that help them understand it better and take action, that is a valuable skill.
That would make him a “leading source” in my mind, not “the leading authority” though maybe I am picking up on something which is more semantic.
The value provided by a “business guru” is being able to communicate and teach, and Chris Cardell seems to be able to do that with distinction. It seems what he teaches is a cross between Stompernet (inc their F5 taining with Paul Lemberg) & Rich Schefren, though claiming “leading authority” status in the vast range of topics covered is in my mind probably stretching things a little.

Chris is doing great with authority by association – Perry Marshall, Frazer – Kennedy, various BBC Dragons, and I believe he is now doing a PPC teleseminar with Jay Abraham (Wed 16th December & Thurs 17th Deccember 2009).

That is the current state of my research, I thought I would publish it for the benefit of others and as stated this overview doesn’t contain any affiliate links, I just found it interesting as an industry observer, and I thought in publishing it my UK readers could add some further perspective. (I would love a scan of the half-page adverts run in The Sunday Times for instance)

p.s. This doesn’t seem to be the same Chris Cardell who was formerly Jupiter Media President & COO. Jupiter Media is now known as WebMediaBrands. I spent a long time trying to work out if there was a connection.

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