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  1. Promoting Your Blog
    2. 7 Apr 2007 at 4:04am
    div class='snap_preview'pA few days ago Andy Beard wrote a very in-depth post entitled a href="http://http://andybeard.eu/2007/04/blogcatalog-slam-dunks-mybloglog.html" title="Blogcatalog slam dunks mybloglog"Blogcatalog Slam Dunks MyBlogLog/a on his a href="http://andybeard.eu" title="Niche Marketing"niche marketing/a blog./p pI finally had a chance to have a look at a href="http://www.blogcatalog.com" title="Blogcatalog"Blogcatalog/a today. From Andy#8217;s post I gather this site has been around for a while but has recently added a number of new features such as neighborhoods (aka communities), personal profiles and blog rating./p pstrongGood Points/strong/p pOne of the things I like about Blogcatalog is that the blogs are classified and tagged. I think this really helps when looking for blogs on a certain subject, and is one of the main advantages Blogcatalog has over a href="http://www.mybloglog.com" title="MyBlogLog"MyBlogLog/a. But I#8217;m a classification / keyword nut (which probably stems from the fact that I run a a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="Business Directory"business directory/a)./p pSimilarly, you can browse via country (a href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/2007/02/11/australian-blogs-hosting-and-search-re view/" title="Blog search review"which I love/a), language or user and search by tag and category which makes it much more functional than MyBlogLog in this respect. Incidentally there are 1,362 a href="http://www.blogcatalog.com/country/australia" title="Australian Blogs"Australian blogs/a listed/p pThe ability to vote for a blog, and leave a review also adds value over MyBlogLog (although MBL does have comments)./p pEach blog and update is manually reviewed (in my case it was done within an hour), so this should reduce the incidence of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_blog" title="Spam Blog"splogs/a./p pstrongBad Points/strong/p pI think they need to be a little more transparent about how blog rank is derived - I#8217;m still trying to work out what#8217;s better - a higher rank or a lower one (though I suspect if they are giving brownie points for adding widgets then higher is better)./p pOn the subject of widgets, as Andy points out;/p blockquotep#8220;A huge amount more needs to be done in promotion - viral marketing can fizzle if people don#8217;t notice the benefit of including a widget.#8221;/p/blockquote pHaving a free WordPress blog means that I can#8217;t incorporate the #8220;recent visitors#8221; widget, and yet I can with MyBlogLog. That#8217;s something they really should address, as there#8217;s a big market there./p pThe following graph shows that Blogcatalog is picking up some traction (but still quite away behind MyBlogLog)./p pa href="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/blogcatalog.png" title="Alexa Rank for Blogcatalog"/a/p p style="text-align:center;"a href="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/blogcatalog.png" title="Alexa Rank for Blogcatalog"img src="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/blogcatalog.png" alt="Alexa Rank for Blogcatalog" //a/p pAnyway, that was my first impressions - head over to a href="http://andybeard.eu/2007/04/blogcatalog-slam-dunks-mybloglog.html" title="Blogcatalog slam dunks mybloglog"Andy#8217;s post/a for a full rundown./p pAnd if you are looking for some more ideas, check out Dan#8217;s analysis - a href="http://thewrongadvices.com/2007/04/03/six-alternatives-to-mybloglog/" title="Six alternatives to mybloglog"Six Alternatives to MyBlogLog/a. It#8217;s a good read./p /div


  2. Our New TV Ad
    3. 10 Apr 2007 at 5:21am
    div class='snap_preview'pPretty in Pink - and lots of it! I#8217;m happy to present the latest dLook TV advertisement for our a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="Australian Business Directory"Australian Business Directory/a./p pspan style='text-align:center; display: block;'object width='425' height='350'param name='movie' value='http://www.youtube.com/v/LPg4jYA1dTs'/paramparam name='wmode' value='transparent'/paramembed src='http://www.youtube.com/v/LPg4jYA1dTs' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='transparent' width='425' height='350'/embed/object/span/p /div


  3. dLook.mobi - Mobile Search
    4. 24 Apr 2007 at 10:58am
    div class='snap_preview'pOur a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Business Directory"dLook business directory/a turned one today! What a crazy year. I could bore you with statistics, but I won#8217;t. Instead, I#8217;ll tell you what our birthday present was!/p pTo celebrate we have launched a new application for a href="http://dlook.mobi"mobile search/a, so next time you#8217;re out and about and need to find a number or address, you can by-pass the expensive directory calls and simply do it yourself./p pThe address - couldn#8217;t be easier!/p pdlook.mobi/p pThat#8217;s it - 10 little characters. Save it to your bookmark and it#8217;s there for good./p pa href="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/dlookmobi.gif" title="dlook mobi"img src="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/dlookmobi.thumbnail.gif" alt="dlook mobi" //a/p pI#8217;ve been searching for other dot mobi sites for the Australian audience, and I know that they#8217;re out there, but I#8217;m really having difficultly finding them./p /div


  4. Supporting the Keiretsu Model or Synergy
    5. 31 Mar 2007 at 6:00am
    div class='snap_preview'pCameron Reilly has just written about a a href="http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/03/31/building-an-aussie-online-sta rtup-keiretsu/" title="Building an Aussie Online Startup Keiretsu" target="_blank"concept called #8220;keiretsu#8221;/a, which he loosely defines as #8220;#8230;a group of non-competing businesses with a strategic relationship#8221;. In doing so he has put an official sounding name on a concept Theo and I have discussed in depth, are working towards and wholeheartedly support./p pAt the a href="http://sydney.stirr.net/index.php?title=Main_Page" title="Stirr Sydney" target="_blank"Stirr Sydney meetup/a the other night one of the buzz words in the Keynote Virus game was #8220;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synergy" title="Wikipedia - synergy" target="_blank"synergy/a#8220;. This is particularly important to this concept - where two or more #8220;#8230;agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents#8221;. The old #8220;the whole is worth greater than the sum of the parts#8221; adage./p pIn terms of synergy, the decision for a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Business Directory"dLook/a to form a strategic alliance with a href="http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com" title="The Podcast Network" target="_blank"The Podcast Network/a (TPN) was an easy one. TPN is a network of around 50, amazing quality a href="http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/what-is-a-podcast" title="What is a Podcast?" target="_blank"podcasts/a, that combined have an audience of over 500, 000 consumers (listeners or viewers) worldwide. TPN was also the world#8217;s first podcasting businesses, and as such are the market innovators./p pPodcasts are organised into 10 categories which include educational, sport, gaming, general, entertainment, comedy, business, lifestyle, tech and science and radio drama - in other words something for everybody img src='http://blogpond.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' / ./p pThe alliance with TPN is the first of a few alliances that dLook is currently working towards, and it#8217;s something that we#8217;re excited about./p pCameron writes insightfully:/p blockquotep#8220;#8230;We can support each other to build big audiences for our respective services. The more successful we all are, the stronger Australia’s startup community becomes which, in turn, will improve funding opportunities, accelerate revenue models, and generally strengthen the Aussie online market.#8221;/p/blockquote pSo we#8217;d like to publicly show our support for Cameron#8217;s initiative and extend our own invitation to like minded Australian Startups./p /div


  5. Google PageRank Update Underway
    6. 27 Apr 2007 at 8:12pm
    div class='snap_preview'pFor those of you interested in the Google PageRank metric, you#8217;ll be pleased to know that the a href="http://natewhitehill.com/pagerank-update-underway/" title="PageRank Update Underway"PageRank update/a is in progress (this happens about four times a year)./p pGoogle a href="http://www.google.com/technology/" title="Google PageRank"PageRank/a is a measure of how important Google sees a particular page on a website, and is determined by the number of websites linking to a page and also the authority of the originating website.br / You may not see the new rank automatically as Google has a number of data centres that update independently. So depending on which data centre you access will depend on the number displayed./p pIf you are curious, you can a href="http://livepr.raketforskning.com/" title="Live PageRank"check your PageRank/a according to various data centres. So far no change indicated for a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Business Directory"dLook/a (currently a PR4), and Obits (PR3 to PR4)./p pThis is my first update since starting this blog (so currently PR-0), but it looks as though I#8217;m going to have a PR5./p pFrankly, I#8217;m surprised that such a high initial PageRank would be given (in comparison to dLook say), but I guess Google have their algorithm and a PR5 certainly isn#8217;t atypical for a blog. I#8217;ll take it img src='http://blogpond.wordpress.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' / /p p align="center"a href="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/prupdate.gif" title="Google PageRank Update"img src="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/prupdate.gif" alt="Google PageRank Update" //a/p /div


  6. Alexa.com Makes Great Changes
    7. 16 Feb 2007 at 7:58pm
    div class='snap_preview'pFor all the #8220;Alexaholics#8221; out there, I noticed that a href="http://www.alexa.com" title="Alexa.com Traffic Rankings" target="_blank"Alexa /ahave made some a href="http://awis.blogspot.com/2007/02/alexa-traffic-improvements-galore.html" title="Alexa Traffic Improvements Galore" target="_blank"great changes/a./p pWhat is of great value is that it reports your traffic rank in different countries. So for a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a, for instance, whilst our Alexa rank is 25,388 it actually shows that we rank strong176/strong in Australia! It will be a much more effective way of comparing two sites in Australia - to see where each one ranks in Australia./p pa href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/alexachanges2.gif" title="Alexa Changes dLook"/a/p p style="text-align:center;"a href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/alexachanges2.gif" title="Alexa Changes dLook"img src="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/alexachanges2.gif" alt="Alexa Changes dLook" //a/p pAnother change is that reach is now reported as a percentage of total web traffic. So a href="http://www.myspace.com" title="My Space" target="_blank"myspace.com/a is attracting 4.5% of all internet users, 2.1% of its traffic is from Australia and it is the 6th most visited site in Australia./p pHint: If you can#8217;t see the country you are looking for in the top 5 there is a #8220;more#8221; link at the bottom of this list which expands the list out to the top 25./p p align="center"a href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/alexachanges3.gif" title="Reach Changes - Alexa"img src="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/02/alexachanges3.gif" alt="Reach Changes - Alexa" //a/p /div


  7. dLook Business Directory Reinstates Free Advertising
    8. 27 Feb 2007 at 6:26am
    div class='snap_preview'pDue to popular demand, a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a today has reinstated strongfree business directory/strong stronglistings/strong for Australian businesses./p pSo if you currently operate a business in Australia, mosey on over to our a href="https://www.dlook.com.au/signup/signup-step1.php" title="dLook Business Directory Sign up Page" target="_blank"sign up page/a and if you decide that a premium listing isn#8217;t for you, you can click the drop down box, select #8220;free listing#8221;, and add your basic business details for free./p pa href="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/dlook-business-directory-free-listi ng.gif" title="dlook-business-directory-free-listing.gif"/a/p p style="text-align:center;"a href="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/dlook-business-directory-free-listi ng.gif" title="dlook-business-directory-free-listing.gif"img src="/files/2007/02/dlook-business-directory-free-listing.thumbnail.gif" alt="dlook-business-directory-free-listing.gif" //a/p pWhat a great way to get free advertising for your Australian business./p /div


  8. Cloning - the Sincerest Form of Flattery?
    9. 3 Mar 2007 at 4:08am
    div class='snap_preview'pWell, this is the second time I#8217;ve seen one of these type of posts about a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a. Why bother spending hundreds of thousands developing a website, when you can get a cheap clone for between $300 - $1,500? Yep you too can have a a href="http://www.takereal.com/blog/index.php/2007/02/28/listing-system/" title="Cloning dLook" target="_blank"dLook clone/a. This request was posted bya href="http://www.getafreelancer.com/users/332053.html" target="_blank" title="Cloning dLook" kcashion from Townsville./a/p pa href="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/dlook-clone.gif" title="Cloning dLook"/a/p p style="text-align:center;"a href="http://blogpond.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/dlook-clone.gif" title="Cloning dLook"img src="/files/2007/03/dlook-clone.thumbnail.gif" alt="Cloning dLook" //a/p pWhat gets me curious is #8220;I only require the back end be cloned and I will provide the artwork…#8221;. Perhaps that explains the 18x increase in #8220;401 unauthorized#8221; errors in February./p pWow, 21 bids already - be quick, only 36 hours left#8230;.  iframe src='http://digg.com/api/diggthis.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digg.com%2Ftech_news%2FIs_Cl oning_the_Sincerest_Form_of_Flattery' height='82' width='55' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 5px; padding: 4px 0 2px 4px; background: #fff;'/iframe/p /div


  9. Google Webmaster Tools Now Reporting Anchor Text Links
    10. 15 Mar 2007 at 10:56pm
    div class='snap_preview'pAnyone that knows a little about search engine optimisation will recognise the importance of anchor text (the written words that link to your URL). John Chow certainly does, with yet a href="http://www.johnchow.com/make-money-online-review-my-blog/" title="John Chow" target="_blank"another #8220;evil#8221; scheme/a to rank highly for the phrase #8220;make money online#8221; (no, I#8217;m not going to play)./p pToday I read via a href="http://searchengineland.com/070315-221747.php" title="Google Now Reporting Text Anchor Phrases" target="_blank"Search Engine Land/a that a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/" title="Google Webmaster Tools" target="_blank"Google Webmaster Tools/a are now a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/get-more-complete-picture-ab out-how.html" title="Google Webmaster Central Blog" target="_blank"reporting the top 100 phrases that link to your website/a./p pTo access these sign into Google Webmaster Tools, click on #8220;statistics#8221; and #8220;page analysis#8221; and there you have it./p pI#8217;m an a href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/tag/google-webmaster/" title="Google Webmaster" target="_blank"avid user/a of the Webmaster Tools, and I think this is a very valuable addition. What I#8217;ve looked at for a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="Australian Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook /aand a href="http://www.obits.com.au" title="Australian Obituaries" target="_blank"Obits/a is very interesting so far#8230;/p /div


  10. Firefox vs IE in Australia
    11. 13 Feb 2007 at 3:08am
    div class='snap_preview'pa href="http://northxeast.com/general/ie7-hits-11-market-share/" title="IE7 Hits 11% Market Share" target="_blank"This post/a from North x East quotes a href="http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox50-microsoft-internet-explorer-7-us age.html" title="Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Usage" target="_blank"figures from Onestat.com/a which indicates that Firefox has almost a 27% market penetration in Australia/p p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin:0 0 0.0001pt;"#8220;emThe most popular browsers in Australia are/em:/p p class="MsoBodyText" style="margin:0 0 0.0001pt;"nbsp;/p table border="0" width="100%" tr td width="7%"nbsp;/td td width="24%"nbsp;/td td width="20%"January 2007/td /tr tr td width="7%"1./td td width="24%"Microsoft IE/td td width="20%"65.71%/td /tr tr td width="7%"2./td td width="24%"Mozilla Firefox/td td width="20%"26.68%/td /tr tr td width="7%"3./td td width="24%"Opera/td td width="20%"4.28%/td /tr tr td width="7%"4./td td width="24%"Apple Safari/td td width="20%"1.77%/td /tr tr td width="7%"5./td td width="24%"Netscape/td td width="20%"0.24%#8221;/td /tr /table pAustralian IT (also mentioned by a href="http://blog.andrewpascoe.com/2007/02/link_roundup_12.html" title="Andrew Pascoe Link Roundup" target="_blank"Andrew Pascoe/a) had a a href="http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,21176120%5E15318%5E%5Enbv%5E153 06,00.html" title="Firefox claws away at explorer" target="_blank"recent article/a saying that a href="http://www.nielsen.com" title="Nielsen" target="_blank"Nielsen/a found, in 2006, that Firefox accounted for 22% of the Australian browser market./p pFirstly, I love Firefox and use it 98% of the time. Even with the new tabs I don#8217;t think Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) can match Firefox for speed, ease of use or functionality./p pWhat confuses me is where do these statistics come from? As you may well know I run two Australian websites. We have both server statistics and a href="http://www.google.com/analytics" title="Google Analytics" target="_blank"Google Analytics/a to monitor visitors to the site. Google Analytics tracks #8220;Web Design Parameters#8221; (under the #8220;Content Optimisation#8221; tab, if you#8217;re looking for it) which includes browser versions./p pNow I had a look at these statistics for a href="http://dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a - an Australian Business Directory, which I imagine would attract a broad cross section of Australian users (and 98% of visitors to the site are Australian). For the year (2007) to date, Analytics tells me that strong86.5/strong% of visitors to the site use strongInternet Explorer/strong and strong10.15/strong% use strongFirefox /strong(and Safari 2.61%)./p pOn closer examination, IE 7 has achieved a market share of strong18.87/strong% of the total visitors (and 22.09% of all IE users). Looking at 2006 at no stage has Firefox crept over 10% saturation. The back end stats are roughly the same for IE vs Firefox (although it doesn#8217;t drill down to version number)./p pI#8217;d be really interested to see what other website owners (particularly in Australia) are showing for browser usage in their backend stats? Am I alone in showing that Firefox has nowhere near the Australian penetration reported?/p pOn another note, you might see a couple of banners now in the sidebar. This is my shameless attempt at self promotion (and also the only form of advertising on this site). If you#8217;re in Australia and you haven#8217;t checked out a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a - why not give it a go?/p /div


  11. Enterprise Search and Matthew Cave - Spammer of the Month
    12. 8 Apr 2007 at 3:43am
    div class='snap_preview'pWe have just received a few complaints from businesses listed on our a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Business Directory"business directory/a./p pMatthew Cave, Business Development Manager of Enterprise Search, has been sending unsolicited mail to businesses listed on our dLook directory. The email is below:-/p blockquote p style="background:#e4e4e4 none repeat scroll 0 50%;"strongFrom:/strong a href="mailto:mattcave@enterprisesearch.com.au" title="mattcave@enterprisesearch.com.au"Matthew Cave/a/p pstrongTo:/strong [dLook listing - business name removed]a href="mailto:info@ridgeback.com.au" title="info@ridgeback.com.au"/a/p pstrongSent:/strong Sunday, April 08, 2007 3:10 PM/p pstrongSubject:/strong [Norton AntiSpam] I found your business in dLook.com.au#8230;/p pfont face="Arial" size="2"span class="125541004-08042007"Hi/span/font/p pfont face="Arial" size="2"span class="125541004-08042007"/span/font/p pfont size="2"span class="125541004-08042007"font face="Arial" font size="3"I would like to draw your attention to our Freespan class="328480809-22012007" Australian/span Search Engine / Business Directory. Enterprisesearch.com.au received over 30 000 page impressions in March 2007 and is growing at an average rate of 32% per month.span /span/font/font/span/font/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"font size="2"font face="Arial" size="3" /font/font/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"font size="2"font face="Arial" size="3"Enterprise Search is great way for businesses to gain more online exposure. Please feel free to add your business to our directory. In exchange for this exposure we ask for a link to /fontfont face="Arial" size="3"www.enterprisesearch.com.au/font/font/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"font size="2"font face="Arial" size="3" /font/font/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"font size="2"font face="Arial" size="3"To add your business to Enterprise Search please click the following link/font/font/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"font size="2"font face="Arial" size="3" /font/font/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"font size="2"font face="Arial" size="3"http://www.enterprisesearch.com.au/free-search-engine-listing/index.php/font/ font/p p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"font size="2" /font/p p align="left"font size="2" /font/p p align="left"font size="2"font face="Arial" size="3"Kind Regards/font/font/p p align="left"font size="2" /font/p p align="left"font size="2" /font/p p align="left"font size="3"font face="Arial"Matthew Cavebr / Business Development Managerbr / font size="3"Enterprise span class="125541004-08042007"Searchbr / www.enterprisesearch.com.au/span/font/font/font/p/blockquote pSo I went over to the site to have a look, as you do. Oh, not only do they have a #8220;business directory / search engine#8221; they also run a marketing solutions business #8220;Enterprise Marketing Solutions#8221;./p blockquote p class="style10"The team at Enterprise Marketing Solutions specialise in promoting businesses online. We have the IT skills and the marketing know-how necessary to deliver our clients business leads at a lower cost than any other form of advertising./p /blockquote p class="style10"Uh-ha - and the example they are setting is a one page website with not enough traffic to have an Alexa rating. Not particularly inspiring./p p class="style10"Oh - they have a blog too. Let#8217;s have a look - enterprisemarketing.wordpress.com (please excuse the lack of link love in this post)./p p class="style10"Most recent post (October 14, 2006) #8220;Search Engine Marketing Muscle#8221;/p blockquotepRecommendation 2: Start a blogbr / Blogs are good from an organic search engine marketing standpoint for a number of reasons. The main reason is that blogs are regularly updated with timely, current information./p/blockquote p class="style10"Did you miss the irony? #8220;#8230;blogs are strongregularly /strongupdated with timely, current information#8221;./p p class="style10"Oh and a post on email marketing (#8221;Connect with your Potential Customers using Email Marketing#8221;) - this should be insightful./p blockquotepfont#8220;What is email marketing? #8230;#8230; This list must be an “op-in” (sic) list, meaning that these subscribers have given u (sic) permission to send them marketing materials via email.#8221;/font/p/blockquote pA-hem. Back to the directory - #8220;About us Page#8221;/p blockquotep#8220;20 000 page impressions in December 2006 and is growing at an average rate of 32% per month.#8221;/p/blockquote p class="style10"Is it just my maths or should we be at circa 46,000 if they are still growing at 32% per month? Tsk Tsk. (by the way a href="http://www.alexa.com" title="Alexa"Alexa/a rank 764,163. Rating in Australia 28,067./p p class="style10"Please excuse my rant and a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_war" title="flame war Wikipedia"flame/a. I don#8217;t like to be mean, but this person should know better./p p class="style10"Matthew Cave, step away from your keyboard and use your own frigging database./p p class="style10"iframe src='http://digg.com/api/diggthis.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.digg.com%2Fbusiness_finance% 2FHow_NOT_to_Sell_well_pretty_much_anything' height='82' width='55' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 5px; padding: 4px 0 2px 4px; background: #fff;'/iframe/p /div


  12. My Week in Review
    13. 9 Feb 2007 at 10:16pm
    div class='snap_preview'pWell it#8217;s been an interesting week - typical rollercoaster week in the life of a startup. Sometimes I just want to stop the ride, and hop off. But that#8217;s just *not* going to happen./p pA couple of important meetings this week, outcomes still pending. I#8217;ve learned not to hold my breath, or devote too much energy in sweating on an outcome. If it pans out - then all good and well./p pI realised that I#8217;m really not getting out much when my car battery was flat - again. Had it replaced less than six months ago, because it kept going flat. Have to be more diligent in taking it for a ride./p pEarly hours of Wednesday morning, we awoke to a high pitched scream. The power was out, and the alarm system was letting out it#8217;s periodic #8220;beep#8221;, much to the horror of Nikki, who#8217;s three, and sleeps right next to the alarm pad. Three in a bed, and the little one says#8230;. well, anything she wants to at 4.00 am. Set the phone alarm for 7 am (I am NOT an early morning person, and yes, I consider 7 early)./p pUp in the morning, get the kids ready, discover that the internet is down. Ring the ISP. Am unable to order a technician as I#8217;m not #8220;authorised#8221; on the account. AARRGH! Get the #8220;account holder#8221; to authorise (both the technician#8217;s visit and ME on the account). No one available for 24 hours. Stuff around for two hours trying to get connection to work, trying to set up unwired connection on my pc and discover I don#8217;t even have a dial up modem. We resort to an Unwired connection on another pc, rationed between everybody. Actually get A LOT of work done, and resolve not to waste so much time on the internet. (Resolution didn#8217;t last long). Have a long, leisurely dinner with the family - no one was rushing off. Son comments that the #8220;Internet Gods#8221; decided we needed some family bonding time. Smart kid. Internet spontaneously reappears at 8.30pm. Cancel technician. Ironically missed a href="http://speakingfreely.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/five-things-to-do-with-a-pc-when -you-have-no-internet-connection/" title="Five Things to do With a PC When You Have no Internet Connection" target="_blank"this post/a./p pJessica#8217;s first full week of school. Nikki#8217;s still missing her big sister, but has been getting up early and making sure Jessie#8217;s up and ready, so she#8217;s not late for school. Conversation between sisters in the car #8220;Nikki, you missed me so much that you insisted on coming to school to pick me up. Now don#8217;t start arguing with me before we#8217;re even home#8221;./p pOne of the highlights of Jessie#8217;s week was a tour of the school. She commented #8220;we had to stand in lines and hold hands, because strongone/strong wouldn#8217;t want to get lost#8221;./p pHeard from Google that our Trademark violation complaint had been reviewed, and that all offending ads containing our a href="http://www.ipaustralia.com.au" title="IP Australia" target="_blank"registered trademark/a #8220;a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a#8221; had been removed. So now all those businesses trying to cash in on that search term (namely, Mylocal, Yodel and Companions), are not able to. Small victory, but a victory nonetheless./p pOut for dinner amp; dancing on Friday night. A drunken strong*%@#/strong stomped me on the foot with lethal stilettos actually drawing blood, but amazingly NOT breaking the pantyhose. Fought back tears, quelled first instinct to slap said strong*%@#/strong (who hadn#8217;t even noticed), applied ice and managed to dance on#8230; Pretty bruise - funky shades of blue./p pGetting ready for another week#8230;/p /div


  13. Australian Local Search - it’s all a bit Incestuous
    14. 29 Jan 2007 at 7:20am
    div class='snap_preview'pIt#8217;s probably well known that a href="http://www.truelocal.com.au" title="TrueLocal Australia" target="_blank"Truelocal/a (which is owned by a href="http://www.news.com.au" title="News Limited" target="_blank"News Limited/a) acquired a href="http://www.australianlocalsearch.com.au" title="Autralian Local Search" target="_blank"Australian Local Search/a (for a rumoured sum of around $12m) around 12 months ago prior to launching their business directory. It is stated on TrueLocal#8217;s pages that their search and data is powered by Australian Local Search./p pa href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/truelocalals.gif" title="TrueLocalALS"/a/p p style="text-align:center;"a href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/truelocalals.gif" title="TrueLocalALS"img src="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/truelocalals.gif" alt="TrueLocalALS" //a/p pAustralian Local Search indicates, however, that TrueLocal provides it#8217;s listings as shown in the following from a Google search/p pa href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/alstruelocal.gif" title="ALS TrueLocal"img src="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/alstruelocal.gif" alt="ALS TrueLocal" //a/p pIt seems that until recently Australian Local Search has been maintaining their own website, search facility and directory listings and even provided a href="http://localsearch.yahoo.com.au" title="Yahoo! Local" target="_blank"Yahoo! Local/a with their listings as well./p pa href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/yahoolocal.gif" title="Yahoo! Local."img src="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/yahoolocal.gif" alt="Yahoo! Local." height="320" width="640" //a/p pBut here#8217;s the really strange thing. Now clicking on the above link in the Yahoo listings directs you straight to TrueLocal.com.au. And ANY attempt to go to the Australian Local Search (ALS) website takes you to TrueLocal as well. Below is a cache of ALS taken on the 10th of January./p pa href="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/cacheals.gif" title="Cache ALS"img src="http://blogpond.wordpress.com/files/2007/01/cacheals.gif" alt="Cache ALS" height="330" width="697" //a/p pPardon me if this isn#8217;t all a tad confusing. Yahoo! Local is being powered by ALS which is in turn being powered by TrueLocal, which is being powered by an entity (or at least a website) that no longer exists?/p pOr, if you prefer we have one directory providing their direct competitor which their listings? It#8217;s all very strange./p p(disclaimer: I run an a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"Australian Online Business Directory/a which is in direct competition to TrueLocal and Yahoo! Local)/p /div


  14. Australian Internet Startups Wiki
    15. 5 Feb 2007 at 1:00am
    div class='snap_preview'pVia a post entitled a href="http://raveaboutit.blogspot.com/2007/02/42-cool-australian-internet-startups.ht ml" title="42 Cool Australian Internet Startups" target="_blank"42 Cool Australian Internet Startups/a on the a href="http://raveaboutit.blogspot.com" title="Rave About it Blog" target="_blank"Rave About it blog/a I found out about a a href="http://buggerall.com.au/blog/42-cool-australian-internet-startups-and-counting/ " title="42 Cool Australian Internet Startups and Counting" target="_blank"terrific Australian initiative/a being undertaken by Jon Yau at a href="http://www.australianblogs.com.au" title="Australian Blogs" target="_blank"Australianblogs.com.au/a. Building on a post by a href="http://vashistvishal.blogspot.com/2006/10/top-web-20-apps-in-australia.html" title="Top Web 2.0 apps in Australia" target="_blank"Vishal Sharma/a (later a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/australia_top_web_apps.php" title="Australia Top Web Apps" target="_blank"reproduced and edited/a by Richard McManus at a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com" title="Read Write Web" target="_blank"Read/Write Web/a), Jon has created an a href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au" title="Australian Wiki" target="_blank"Australian wiki page/a and writes #8220;font size="2"emAustralianWiki.com.au is the wiki of the a href="http://www.australianblogs.com.au/" target="_blank"AustralianBlogs/a group of websites. An Australian-centric wiki, it is hoped that it can be another platform for local collaboration and interaction./em#8220;/font/p pThe purpose of the wiki, which is showcasing Australian Internet Startups, is to give local startups the opportunity to introduce their product or service, and a bit about the people behind them./p pJon writes #8220;emI was just keen to continue the thread by providing a wiki to act as a ‘rolling’ register of local web startups#8230;#8230;what I had in mind was that by creating this wiki page eventually some journo would stumble onto it and pick up the scent/em#8220;./p pI think this is an excellent initiative, and really hope that it helps to promote local Australian talent (including a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a of course ;))./p pSo far the sites (47 by my count) listed are :/p ul lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=28"3eep/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=48"88 Miles/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=7"Atlassian/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=38"atmail/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=45"b5media/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=19"babbello/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=11"bluepulse/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=42"Buttonator/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=36"buzka/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=31"Campaign Monitor/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=26"Developers Portal/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=49"dLook/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=34"FactBites/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=37"Feedity/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=17"FindIt/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=41"Fullasagoog/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=15"FWDitOn/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=25"Gamespot/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=8"Gnoos/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=35"mecanbe/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=21"Minti/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=33"NationMaster/a/l i lia href="http://www.nook.com.au/"Nook/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=5"Omnidrive/a/li lia href="http://www.oneowner.com.au/"One Owner/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=14"PerthNorg/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=43"RaveAboutIt/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=40"Realmap/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=10"Remember the Milk/a/li lia href="http://www.servlance.com/"ServLance/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=47"Scouta/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=32"ScribbleHere/a/l i lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=27"Smooth Budget/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=29"Spyk/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=22"Studentface/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=18"Suburb View/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=16"Sukk/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=13"Tangler/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=24"The Australian Index/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=12"The Podcast Network/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=23"Tin Finger/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=6"Touchstone/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=39"Whooiz/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=30"Wyacracker/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=20"Zapr/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=44"Zipphy/a/li lia href="http://www.australianwiki.com.au/wiki/index.php?viewArticle=9"Zookoda/a/li /ul pGreat stuff!/p /div


  15. Google Webmaster Tools
    16. 7 Feb 2007 at 11:42pm
    div class='snap_preview'pI only became aware of a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/" title="Google Webmaster Tools" target="_blank"Google Webmaster Tools/a about six weeks ago, and I think it is a really valuable tool./p pWe currently use Google Analytics to monitor traffic, Google Adwords and more recently Google Adsense and have found all these service to be really terrific (only negative is the occasional a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/02/google-flatlines-again/" title="Google Flatlines Again" target="_blank"delay of Analytics/a, but then it IS free)./p pThe Webmaster tools has four tabs, #8220;Diagnostic#8221;, #8220;Statistics#8221;, #8220;Links#8221; (new) and #8220;Sitemaps#8221;. Below is an overview of what I have found most useful in administering our websites (a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a and a href="http://www.obits.com.au" title="Australian Death Notices, Funeral Notices and Obituaries" target="_blank"Obits/a)./p pstrongDiagnostic/strong/p pThe diagnostic summary tells you when Google last crawled your site and crawl errors it came up with. This is really handy for finding #8220;page not found#8221; (404 errors), analysis of your robots.txt, and any pages restricted by the robots.txt. It also shows #8220;crawl rate#8221; over the last 90 days - the maximum, minimum and average number of pages crawled./p pstrongStatistics/strong/p pCrawl Stats - tells you about the distribution of PageRank (high, medium, low, PageRank not yet assigned) across your site, and the page with the highest PageRank per month./p pQuery Stats - I love this page! Rather than repeating search after search to see where your site is ranking for a specific search term, this page links you to various Google domains (e.g. you can see where you are in Google.com or Google.com.au). The results are displayed in a table which shows terms that are the most searched after, which are most clicked through, and where you rank. It#8217;s really rewarding to see the terms you have been targetting getting (closer) to number one - eg a href="http://www.google.com.au/search?q=funeral%20noticesamp;hl=en" title="Google Search Funeral Notices" target="_blank"funeral notices/a and a href="http://www.google.com.au/search?q=death%20noticesamp;hl=en" title="Google Search Death Notices" target="_blank"death notices/a./p pIndex Stats: provide quick links to #8220;site:www.domain.com#8221;, #8220;link:#8221;, #8220;cache:#8221;, #8220;info:#8221; and #8220;related:#8221;/p pa href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/02/discover-your-links.html" title="Google Blog - discover your links" target="_blank"strongLinks (new)/strong/a/p pExternal Links - This shows you how many backlinks are pointing to various pages on your domain and has a handy .csv download function. This is a really great function and shows you more links than you would have imagined you had./p pInternal Links - This shows what pages your domain is linking to within itself./p pSo if anyone is administering a website, I#8217;d urge you to have a look at the webmaster tools, as there is a wealth of information which could assist you with your search engine optimisation - I know it has for me./p /div


  16. Local Search Frustration
    17. 22 Mar 2007 at 1:32am
    div class='snap_preview'p class="MsoNormal"People often complain about the results when they search on an a href="http://www.dlook.com.au/" target="_blank" title="dLook Australian Business Directory"online directory/a. When I say online directory, I am referring of course to a business directory, such as a href="http://www.yellowpages.com.au" title="Yellow Pages Australia" target="_blank"Yellow Pages/a, or a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a (a site which I co-founded). Not to be confused with a search engine like a href="http://www.google.com.au" title="Google" target="_blank"Google/a. I make this distinction because, whilst we are becoming a href="http://blog.tangler.com/?p=83" title="Google Good Unknow Product Unsurprisingly Lame" target="_blank"more specific/a with our search engine searches, and the results are rewarding, we are often being frustrated by the results returned to us in local searches./p p class="MsoNormal" Sometimes it#8217;s because the directory is flawed, other times because the search is ill defined. This is, to an extent, the fault of the searcher. Searchers are often too general with search terms, for example if a user searches for a #8220;car#8221;, does that mean that they want to buy a car, rent a car, or service a car. We can throw results back at the user, but chances are they won#8217;t be the right one. Hence the opportunity to refine search results./p p class="MsoNormal"Another common complaint with directory searches is what happens if the user is a bad speller? You would honestly be surprised at the number of misspelling there are for the word #8220;restaurant#8221;. Try searching for #8220;restrant#8221; or #8220;doktor#8221; in some online directories and more often than not you won#8217;t get a result./p p class="MsoNormal"A while back Cord at Marketing Hipster had this to say about the a href="http://www.marketinghipster.com/2007/03/09/the-customer-experience/" title="The Customer Experience" target="_blank"customer experience/a;/p blockquote p class="MsoNormal"emI do not believe that any of the online yellow pages nor local search has really hit any critical mass when it comes to giving users a great customer experience. It got me thinking, how many millions of dollars does it cost these companies to create, print and ship all these paper phone books all across the country? If one of these companies took a third of that cost and focused on developing a true experience on the web, how many millions of dollars could they save in the future by not having to print and deliver all these books?/em/p /blockquote p class="MsoNormal"At dLook we don#8217;t print and distribute books, and we have only a small percentage of the budget of some other directories, but we automatically receive feedback about the searches performed on our site, and are continually tweaking the results as a consequence. I don#8217;t think that you can have that level of intimacy on the larger sites./p p class="MsoNormal"To this end I have written a tutorial on a href="http://dlook.wordpress.com/2007/03/21/how-to-search-dlook/" title="How to Search dLook" target="_blank"how to get the best search results/a for the dLook directory on our news blog. Seems like obvious stuff, but I strongknow /strongit isn#8217;t. (And don#8217;t forget that you can a href="https://www.dlook.com.au/signup/signup-step1.php" title="Free Australian Online Advertising at dLook" target="_blank"list your Australian business for free/a)./p p class="MsoNormal"How about you? What#8217;s your beef with local directories? What frustrates you? What would make a directory search a better experience for you? Where do you go to find a local business, especially in Australia?/p /div


  17. Sydney Stirr Startups
    18. 30 Mar 2007 at 4:16am
    div class='snap_preview'pLast night I attended my first #8220;tech#8221; function - Sydney Stirr. What a great night! The evening was organised by a href="http://www.martinjwells.com" title="Martin Wells"Martin Wells/a and hosted by a href="http://www.tangler.com" title="Tangler"Tangler/a, a href="http://www.omnidrive.com" title="Omnidrive"Omnidrive/a, a href="http://www.tvp.com.au" title="Technology Venture Partners"Technology Venture Partners/a and Atlassian. Many thanks guys for a the opportunity and fun evening./p pIt was great to actually meet (or at least put a face to a name) some of the people whose websites (or blogs) I visit./p pa href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Business Directory"dLook/a was fortunate to have a display on the night, and also our #8220;60 seconds#8221; (strictly enforced!) in the spotlight./p pOther Australian startups presenting were;/p pa href="http://www.raveaboutit.com.au" title="Rave About it"Rave About it/a - the Australian online review site, currently in Beta.br / I managed to have an interesting chat with a href="http://raveaboutit.blogspot.com" title="Rave About it Blog"Mark/a, about some of the day to day challenges we face and plans for the future./p pa href="http://3eep.com" title="3eep - Your Sports Community Online"3eep.com/a - a new online sporting community site, released earlier this year./p pa href="http://www.bookingangel.com" title="Booking Angel"Booking Angel/a - which provides a booking service for restaurants integrated into other websites like a href="http://www.eatability.com" title="Eatability"Eatability./a Restaurants receive an automated phone call with reservation details, which they can accept or reject by pushing a number on a keypad - a bonus for the busy restaurateurs who can#8217;t always be at the computer. The details are then emailed to the restaurant, and the reservation confirmed or rejected to the customer./p pOther reports on the evening - a href="http://blog.tangler.com/?p=90" title="Tangler Blog"Mick/a (nice to meet you) and a href="http://panyam.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/kabookiwater/" title="Sri's blog"Sri/a./p /div


  18. Utilising Social Media for Australian Websites
    19. 8 Mar 2007 at 3:47am
    div class='snap_preview'pAt the risk of stating the obvious, unless you have a really large budget, driving traffic to your website can be quite a challenge. This year I#8217;ve been experimenting more with social media, as a distraction, an outlet and, to a lesser extent, as an advertising vehicle./p pBelow is a summary of some of the things I#8217;ve tried./p pstrongBlogging/strong/p pI#8217;ve been blogging for two months now - my how time flies! I don#8217;t think it#8217;s getting any easier (and I#8217;ve been a bit slack lately), but I#8217;m hanging in there. I#8217;m not sure how particularly appealing this blog is, or even how widely read it is. I only have the basic statistics that come with WordPress amp; I think my feeds are split over two places (i.e. some from WP and some via FeedBurner)./p pNone-the-less building up a huge readership was never really my goal, and when people land at this blog, I#8217;m still pleasantly surprised (and grateful for all comments). WordPress tells me that in the last 2 months I#8217;ve had over 5,577 visitors and my best day was 373. Small potatoes./p pVisitors to this blog have directed about 150 visitors (via hyperlinks) to a href="http://www.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Australian Online Business Directory" target="_blank"dLook/a, a href="http://dating.dlook.com.au" title="dLook Dating - for Genuine Singles" target="_blank"dLook Dating/a and a href="http://www.obits.com.au" title="Australian Funeral Notices, Death Notices and Obituaries" target="_blank"Obits/a, with an average of 3.5 page views. Clicks on the banners are not counted./p pstrongMyBlogLog/strong/p pI joined MyBlogLog on the 11th of January. I#8217;ve had a lot of fun, met some great people and discovered some terrific blogs. I have 3 communities - one for this blog (118 members), one for dLook (24 members) and one for Obits (16 members)./p pIn terms of traffic, it#8217;s great for getting people to a blog, and many are returning. Networking can be time consuming, but the more you do, and the more communities you join, the more successful it is in terms of traffic dividends. I haven#8217;t been very active (either blogging or networking) in the past week, but MyBlogLog basic statistics show 154 visitors to my blog in the last week./p pIn terms of traffic to my other sites - it#8217;s directed 81 visitors to dLook (2.2 page views each) and 73 to Obits (at 1.4 page views each). So, it#8217;s obviously more geared to blogs./p pstrongStumbleUpon/strong/p pI was reading a a href="http://www.johnchow.com/harpzoncom-thats-one-way-to-get-my-attention/" title="HarpzOn that's one way to get my attention" target="_blank"post by John Chow/a the other day (yep, still hanging in there), and he mentioned a guy by the name of a href="http://www.harpzon.com/" title="Harpzon" target="_blank"Mitchell Harper/a./p p#8220;Harpz#8221; is an Australian, so I thought I#8217;d have a look at his blog. It looks promising. A a href="http://www.harpzon.com/articles/14/1/Using-StumbleUpon-To-Build-Your-Blog/Page1 .html" title="Using StumbleUpon to build your blog" target="_blank"post/a he had written about a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com" title="StumbleUpon" target="_blank"StumbleUpon/a had me particularly interested./p pI#8217;ve been slowly familiarising myself with this service (? add on, tool bar#8230;.) since 25th Feb. It#8217;s a little tricky to navigate, but pretty unobtrusive and if you#8217;re into randomly browsing it#8217;s a really good way of finding out about unfamiliar websites, and other users (fast approaching the 1.9 million mark), and there seems to be quite a few Australians using the tool./p pReading Mitchell#8217;s post, and previously at a href="http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=4470" title="The Why, How and Who of Marketing in StumbleUpon" target="_blank"Search Engine Journal/a and a href="http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/02/27/how-to-buy-stumbles-from-stumbleupon-not/" title="How to Buy Stumbles from Stumbleupon NOT"ShoeMoney/a, made me think about a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads" title="StumbleUpon Advertiser Sign Up" target="_blank"paying for some traffic/a to dLook. At 5c US, it#8217;s certainly cheaper than many a href="http://adwords.google.com" title="Google Adwords" target="_blank"AdWords/a./p pIt#8217;s funny that Obits has actually had a fair bit of unpaid traffic from StumbleUpon, whereas dLook hadn#8217;t prior to paying. So far Obits has had 68 visits from this source, with average page views of 2.91. dLook has had 227 visitors (paid) at 1.31 page views each, and dLook Dating has had 33 with 3.4 page views per visitor./p pWhen setting up a campaign, what I find limiting about StumbleUpon, is that you can only pick one category (or topic) per campaign. Initially I chose #8220;advertising#8221; for dLook (and it is thus shown to Stumblers who have an interest in advertising), but this was really too limiting to get any sort of traffic volume. I subsequently added another campaign with the topic of #8220;internet#8221;./p pWhilst setting up a campaign is really quick and simple, and it#8217;s great that you can target your market by age, location and interest, the ability to add different topics at once would be handy. Having said that, I just noticed that if you go into #8220;edit campaign#8221; you can elect to #8220;duplicate#8221; the campaign for a different topic. But again, your campaign must wait for approval (granted they are very quick at approving these)./p pI#8217;ll give it a few more days, but I really think that the nature of the site isn#8217;t what stumblers are looking for./p pstrongOther/strong/p pIncluded in #8220;other#8221; is traffic generated frombr / 1. Posts on other blogs (thanks particularly to a href="http://www.alistercameron.com/2007/02/03/beating-the-big-boys-at-their-own-game /" title="Alister Cameron, Blog Coach" target="_blank"Alister/a, a href="http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/02/02/gday-world-195-theo-tsiamis-d look/" title="G'day World - The Podcast Network" target="_blank"Cameron/a, a href="http://www.cyberdesignworks.com.au/blog/2007/02/get-yourself-listed-australian- local.html" title="Cyberdesign Works" target="_blank"Luke/a, a href="http://hugh-martin.blogspot.com/2007/03/local-search-and-review.html" title="Hugh Martin - Local Search and Review" target="_blank"Hugh/a and a href="http://www.clarkescott.com/Web+20+Conversations.aspx" title="Clarke Scott Web 2.0 Conversations" target="_blank"Clarke/a)br / 2. Comments on other blogsbr / 3. Forum posts, either via comments or a mention from a forum member/p pThe traffic from these sources, whilst valuable (and I note that the average number of page views are higher), doesn#8217;t amount to an earth shattering amount. Unless of course you get profiled on a really highly trafficked site like a href="http://www.techcrunch.com" title="Techcrunch" target="_blank"Techcrunch/a, but then that a href="http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=367" title="Crunch Notes - Destroying Sites on Launch Day" target="_blank"has its problems too/a./p pAt the end of the day, traffic is traffic, and exposure is great. What is not measurable is the word of mouth (or email) referrals that are potentially generated from each visit, and unique opportunities that may arise from the additional exposure. With the exception of the paid StumbleUpon traffic, mostly the cost is the time and effort you are prepared to put into each experience. But I do wonder if we will see a significant increase in businesses harnessing social media to seed their products./p pa href="http://behindthebuzz.com/?p=78" title="Honesty and transparency in Social Media" target="_blank"Transparency/a, is really required to be successful in the social media arena./p /div


  19. Google tests free 411 business telephone directory
    20. 10 Apr 2007 at 10:11am
    in which I test 1-800-GOOG-411


  20. Google tests free 411 business telephone directory service
    21. 10 Apr 2007 at 10:10am
    in which I test 1-800-GOOG-411
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