Yesterday, I enabled revenue sharing on my YouTube videos within the YouTube ad network. Today, those videos are now displaying both video ad overlays and ads above my text description. Here are screen shots:
My very popular iPhone Popcorn Trick:
A relevant ad in my last weekly search video:
I guess I can potentially now make money from my videos? :-)
YouTube began pushing their YouTube Partner Program to Google News publishers, which the Search Engine Roundtable is part of. So I signed up today and was approved.
I then hooked up my AdSense account to it and then agreed to the terms of service, which was actually a hoot - the way they took you through the rules and made sure you read the copyright rules over and over again.
In any event, I am now fully set up and I can now "enable revenue sharing" on my videos. The cool part is that you can pick and choose the videos you want to enable the revenue sharing on. Here is how to do it.
(1) Go to my videos
(2) Click on the "Enable Revenue Sharing" button under the video(s) you want to enable it on:
(3) Fill in a description about the video and read those terms again. Do note, if YouTube reviews the video and it has legal issues (copyright, etc), they will completely remove it:
Then you are done. YouTube may eventually add ads to it or they might remove your video.
How do you know if the video is enabled with revenue share? Two ways:
(1) You no longer see the "enable revenue sharing" button on the my videos page.
or
(2) You see a "Tube" Partner logo on the video view page:
Example, see my iPhone Popcorn Trick video page, and look for that tube logo.
Last night, at about 4:30pm (EST), thousands of servers went offline due to Rackspace's Dallas data center having a major power management issue. The issue is not 100% clear yet, you can read what Rackspace had to say at their blog.
When my sites and servers went down, I first went to Rackspace to login to my account. But I couldn't access the site. So I then tried calling, but I was getting a busy signal, due to the volume of people calling. I then tried Twitter and found @rackspace there. There were no updates yet, but I followed @rackspace and waited.
I then saw the first tweet that read "We are having an issue that is affecting part of our DFW data center. No details yet. Will update as we get more information." More followed. Twitter Search was swarming with mentions of [rackspace], so it was good to know I was in good company. I noticed people began to say there sites were coming back up, which meant mine was coming up soon also. I assume they began flipping on the power to the servers slowly until all came on.
The most incredible part was that @Rackspace doubled their twitter followers. Before the outage, they had about 1,300 followers and now they have over 2,300. Like I tweeted yesterday, "Expensive way to get @rackspace more followers ;-)." That tweet was when Rackspace had about 1,300 followers.
In any event, I always find it interesting how my customers react to outages. We haven't had an outage in a really long time. But when this happened, some emailed, some IMed, some called. Some of the ones that called were not happy. I wasn't happy either, but I told them what I knew and sometimes that is not good enough, sometimes it is.
The outage, I believe, lasted about 40 minutes or so. Was it the end of the world? No, but it wasn't something that should be accepted. Will I switch from RackSpace? Probably not. They have been the most stable and most responsive company in this space I have ever dealt with and trust me, I have been with many and I spend a fortune on this stuff.
BusinessWeek wrote a piece named Saving Face Online, which I believe is in the paper magazine this week. It really covers me a lot, and also Andy Beal, but mostly me. ;-)
In any event, it is basically about when I had a Twitter impersonator. It also covers how someone tried to use Gmail to impersonate me also.
I'll have to pick up the print edition, if I don't get it already. I think I normally get BusinessWeek delivered, we will see.
Lots of good press for RB over the past week or so.
That is it, I am now able to retire. I have hit over 5,000 followers on Twitter.
Hmmm... Where should I retire to?
I know prospects and clients read my personal blog, even though I go out of my way to not tell most of them about it. In fact, I blogged about the risks of blogging when clients or prospects read my blog.
I did not tell you that I found out, that over the past months/years, that kids are reading my blog. Not just any random kids, but my nephews, nieces and kids in the community.
When I hear stuff like that, I first thing --- I hope I didn't write anything not kid appropriate. There is a lot of risk knowing what you write can be seen by kids, and not just any kids, but family and kids you know.
I guess if there was anything I said that was not appropriate it would be more up to the parents to know about it and stop their kids from reading my blog or any site that they don't feel is appropriate. But at the same time, then I have parents and family thinking that what I do or write is not kid appropriate, which can be bad.
All in all, I don't think I have that issue on any of my blogs - so keep on reading!
Over the weekend, several people, including myself, was hit with fake retweet spam. I should probably step back and explain what a retweet (RT) is. On Twitter, if someone likes what you say, they may retweet your tweet. The way it works is that you copy what the person said and say RT @rustybrick either before or after the copied Tweet.
The issue with this is that retweets is that there is really no way to know quickly if the person being retweeted really said what was being retweeted. I guess this is the same issue in real life. When you say, person A said XYZ about something, the only way to know for sure is to find what person A really said about it in writing or ask him directly. On Twitter it is a bit easier, cause you can basically look at that person's timeline and see if he said that or not.
So some spammer went ahead and retweeted something I and others did not tweet. It lead to some spammy site selling something. Danny captured screen shots of it for the sengineland Twitter account:
I then saw people asking me on Twitter if I said that.
For example, @doc_haliday said:
@rustybrick I really hope you are not responsible for all the douchbags RTing your tweet about some scheme and spamming trending topics.
No, I did not.
It appears like Twitter killed those accounts and the spam has been removed. But with real time services like Twitter, the damage has already been done.
Not sure how many of you know about Aardvark (aka vark.com) but it is basically one of those tools to find answers from real people quickly. It has a very interesting approach, very interesting. In any event, I have been playing with it for a few months and it is very neat. They actually sent me a t-shirt today, so I wanted to blog about it.
The T-Shirt is from American Apparel and it is all black. The logo is tiny tiny. Here is a picture:
The logo is 3 centimeters on the shirt. Here it is blown up:
Want an invite to Vark? Leave a comment with your first name, email address and a topic or two you are smart at.
I think we may have figured out the blog issue, so I am testing to see if it is fixed with this post.
Sorry for the test post. :)
As you know, I disabled comments on this blog and also my search blog. I am not sure exactly what is wrong, but it has nothing to do with comments.
It appears that when a blog post is rebuilt (published as HTML), it doesn't always produce the full html anymore. Every time a comment or blog post is added/edited a page is published in html. So by disabling comments, I can control if a page is republished as html, which helps me make sure the page's content is always visible.
I use MovableType which runs off CGI or some sort. It is hard to debug. If the issue doesn't fix itself, it started itself, then I think we will spend the next several days building out a custom CMS.
No, I won't use WordPress. I have dreams of how I want my blogging CMS to work and we can do it internally here at RustyBrick.
I'll keep you all posted on that. The main issue is that the new CMS would have to work across several blogs. There will be a lot of work.
This is a quick technical note that I had to disable comments. I am not sure what is going on, but starting this morning, when comments are added, the post's contents would disappear.
So I have disabled comments for now.
I'll try turning them back on later to see if it was a temporary issue. If that doesn't work, then I might have to switch to WordPress or something custom.
An hour or so ago, I Tweeted a question, "Am I a Twitter Snob?"
People then asked me how would I define a Twitter Snob. Well, here is how I would define a Twitter snob, and please don't take offense (I classify myself in some of these categories):
I might classify myself as a Twitter snob because I sometimes think twice before following people and replying to people.
Maybe "snob" is a strong word. More about "hoarding" Twitter followers, like one would with Google PageRank.
Are you a Twitter snob?
Last night I was thinking about my life and how I blog a lot (yea, very deep stuff) and it occurred to me that my wife married a blogger. I was blogging well before we got married. Not many bloggers I work with can say that.
My blogging obsession (including my work obsession), was something she was aware of before we got married. Some spouses can say, you weren't like this when we were married. Not my wife. ;-)
I was justing thinking of the married crew at Search Engine Land and the majority of them were married before "blogging." I think Danny was a journalist before getting married, but there wasn't such a thing as blogging back then. Chris Sherman, Greg Sterling, even Matt McGee, I think were all married before blogging. So it is cool if their wives complain about their constant need to post things to a blog.
But my obsession was pre-marriage, so no complaints. ;-)
Honestly, like I have said time after time. I am a lucky man. My wife is extremely patient with me, extremely good about my obsessions and very supportive. I am not suggesting that my wife complains, she never does. It was just a deep thought by Barry Schwartz from last night.
And since I am a blogger, I had to blog it.
(Oh, the picture above is from me blogging while driving, which I have done many times.)
This is too funny... If you forgot your iPhone and you needed to Tweet. So you decide to yell out our Tweets, how would it look...
Via Gizmodo.
Last night I tweeted the following:
Bloggers love Twitter b/c they aren't afraid of blogging in it, but they are afraid to blog on a blog. I'll explain tomrw.
Let me know explain what I meant...
Back in the day, when blogging was blogging, bloggers (for the most part) wrote as longer Twitter messages. Most first generation bloggers didn't proof read their blog posts, they didn't care about spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes, they were carefree about the blog posts.
A blog was a personal place to write what is going on in your head. It didn't have to be about your personal life, but it could have been. You could have started a blog to keep track of your SEO notes, like I did at the Search Engine Roundtable. You wrote and did it without worry or care.
At some points, blogs turned more into real media (although real media would argue that). Professional journalists started blogging and they even created blogs on their main sites. It happened with the Wall Street Journal and even happened to Search Engine Watch (i.e. www.searchenginewatch.com versus blog.searchenginewatch.com).
Danny Sullivan is a trained journalist. I did okay in English classes in high school. I think I took one or two college classes in the English department in business school, but nothing on Journalism. The last thing I thought I would be well-known for (at least in my niche) is for writing. But yet that is what I do for a few hours each day, I write. I don't write like a Journalist - just read my posts versus Danny's - you cannot compare. Danny's words basically rhyme, I just write the bland old facts and leave it at that. I also write like I talk, it is basically like a conversation from me to you - so it comes off a bit weird reading it, but also a bit personal.
At some point, when blogs became more part of the media, bloggers began to become more official and structured. They started creating media calendars and creating blogger budgets. Don't get me wrong, I am to blame also.
Blogs are now held to a higher authority. People expect more. But should they? I miss the old days of blogging, which were more care free.
That is where Twitter comes in. Bloggers who are stuck feeling they cannot make mistakes in their blog posts come to Twitter are rant all day. Twitter has so much quality blogger material, that could be on blogs but is not, due to how blogging has changed.
Can we set our blogs free again? I do miss the old days of blogging.
I have been on Twitter for over two years, but I have been annoying my Facebook friends for only about 10 months. Towards the end of May 2008, I connected my Twitter updates to Facebook via an automated manner. Then, I had 430 friends, now I have 730 friends. Yea, I am popular. ;-)
Seriously, I am the worst Facebook user on the planet. I go to Facebook once a day to accept friend invites. In fact, I turn off all notifications and I simply go to facebook.com/reqs.php almost every day to accept all friend invites and ignore everything else. I don't upload pictures to Facebook, I don't chat with Facebook, I simply don't use Facebook like I am suppose to. Instead, I feed my Twitter replies to Facebook and my Facebook friends have no idea what is going on.
But starting right before Passover, I downloaded the new TweetDeck, which I love, and it has given me the option to specify what I want to send to Facebook from here or not. So I completely disconnected the Twitter to Facebook stream and will now manually post things to Facebook that I think are more relevant. It doesn't mean I will use Facebook right, it just means I will annoy my Facebook friends less.
Here is a look at the new TweetDeck with the "FB" or "Facebook" check box that will send specified Tweets as Facebook status updates.
I know many people will appreciate this.
Wow, it has been just over two years since I first started using Twitter. I signed up for Twitter on March 2007, just about 25 months ago. Twitter has become incredibly popular since then, and yes, I take full credit for Twitter's growth. ;-)
I have been a steady user of Twitter. I never really stopped Twittering or let it sit idle for too long.
When did you sign up for Twitter?
Do you write about search, SEO, Google, social media, and so on? Do you want to be included in my daily recaps on Search Engine Land's daily email digest named the SearchCap? If so, please let me know what your blog URL is.
There are two ways to notify me.
(1) Add a comment on this blog post
(2) Send me a Tweet on Twitter via @rustybrick
Also, if you want extra commentary on the search stuff (and some stuff from my personal life), follow me on Twitter.
I am a fairly well connected person - not as well connect as the big names, but for the average person, I am pretty well connected. That comes with pros and cons. I get a lot of prospects interested in talking and eventually some sign up.
What I have been noticing more often these days is that both prospects and clients are asking me things that they learn about me on my personal blog or on Twitter. Two days ago, a client asked me how my cold was going. Today, I spoke with a very nice prospect - who might read this, who had tons to talk to me about in regards to my immediate personal life. He knew I have a cold, he knew I was in Israel last week and he knew more. As we were talking, I was wondering, did I say anything nasty recently? I am not often a nasty person - just not my nature - but I do say things that I regret sometimes.
Like today, I tweeted:
Many SMOs, imo, don't understand the true value of social media --- there, I said it!
If this guy was an SMO, he may have been insulted.
So I wonder, if I ever say things that might hurt my business and earning a living. I know that I am a horrible sales man and it doesn't help me on closing deals or impressing prospects. But do you think my blogging helps or hurts my overall bottom line?
I am honest here. I say things here that I would say in person. In fact, sometimes I am talking to people about something personal and they tell me, "I know, you blogged it." Thing is, I don't often remember blogging it and I thought that instead, I actually told this to a friend not on my blog.
You see my writing style here. Totally fast, quick, tons of spelling mistakes and grammar issues.... I write here like I would talk to a person.
I believe I am a good guy and I believe most people think I am a good guy. So I am thinking that this blog likely helps me earn trust and eventually close more deals. Would you agree?
What is with the picture? I guess most of you get it...
Today is April 1st, also known as April Fools Day. Did you do anything special for the day?
You know what, go to Search Engine Roundtable and read some of the things we saw. Just go, please click, I beg you, please!!!
Last year, on April 1st, I received 7,000 visitors just from Google. I wonder if I can expect something similar this year? I doubt it.
Last night I went to the Israel Consulate in New York City to meet with the planners of the Blogger Delegation to Israel.
When I arrived in the building, the guy in the front lobby asked who I am here to see. I said the Israeli Consulate. He then told me, I should talk to a different guy who is standing at the end of the hall. So I did. I felt like I was going through El Al security. He asked me why am I here, can I see your ID, do I have a gun, did I pack my bag, who am I here to see, etc. He then let me go upstairs.
Then I go upstairs in the elevator and I come out and see a bench on the left and a mirror like window on the right. I look around a few times and see doors on both sides of the glass mirror, so I walk up to the mirror and wait. I then here a "hello." So I slide my ID under the glass mirror and the guy then asks me more questions. I get the gun question again. He keeps my ID.
Then a security guard comes out and I am asked to go through airline security. They take my laptop bag, keys, coins, phone, etc. I go through a metal detector and then he goes through my bag. He turns on my phone, my camera and I turn on my laptop. He then says, he has to keep my phone and computer and bag with him.
I am now a blogger without an iPhone or computer or camera! I felt naked and very unstable. But one thing you learn from being in Israel, you don't argue with Israel security. So I smiled and said okay.
I was without my iPhone and computer for about an hour, for the meeting. I guess that was good, because would I be focusing on the meeting if I had my iPhone? ;-)
The meeting at the Israeli Consulate was pretty cool. Not sure if they wanted me to blog about it, but that is what I do. The people we met, were nice. I am not sure if I should name anyone, so I won't. But they are incredibly friendly, hospitable and patient. I am looking forward to this trip. Big thanks to the Israel Consulate of New York!
IsRealli blog wrote about the Blogger Delegation to Israel, so I guess it really is official. We (bloggers) should be arriving this Sunday, to spend a week in Israel, blogging about our experiences.
Honestly, I don't know much about what to expect. I know my flight information and the Tel Aviv hotel we are staying at, but that is about it for now. Tomorrow afternoon, we are told we will learn more about our schedules and plans. Many of us will meet at the Israeli Consulate in NY to meet the trip organizers and learn more about the trip.
I do know the other "bloggers" who are going to be on the trip. They include:
Looking forward to spending time with everyone in Israel.
Twitter has added a flash widget. Here is the "full" version. I will try to see if I can customize it and replace what I have on the right hand side...
I have been producing video recaps of the search news on a weekly basis for a year now. You can find the feed at this location and subscribe via iTunes or your feed reader or my YouTube Channel. But recently, it seems like I have been getting a lot more than my typical hundred or two views on YouTube.
Now, I have about 200 iTunes subscribers. There are then some who watch the video source file (hard to track those numbers) and then there are people who watch it on YouTube. The YouTube numbers are typically between 100 and 200 views per video.
Recently, I noticed I have been getting thousands of views on my YouTube videos.
Now, either I have turned into the next YouTube Phenom or something fishy is going on. Either way, make sure to watch or just listen to the videos - I am get feisty in the newer ones.
Yes, you do not have to "watch" them, you can just listen on your iPod since we have an iTunes subscription.
Sometimes I feel like I am creating content just to create content. Yea, I write a ton - a ton - every day about search. Typically no less than 10 articles per day on search topics, but often more than that. Yea, I complained about spewing stuff out before, but now I am focusing on search content.
Is it useful? Does it help the search community?
The content is very routinized. Well, the content isn't but the process in which I discover and distribute that content is done in a very organized and routinized manner.
Often people miss what I write and find it months later on smaller blogs that write much less. Yea, it bugs me when this happens but it doesn't happen all that often, plus I make the mistake of missing information on other people's blogs as well.
But I believe this happens due to the sheer volume of what I produce every day. Take a look at yesterday, here is what I wrote at the two blogs I manage:
Search Engine Roundtable Topics:
Search Engine Land Topics:
That was just yesterday. Did you read all of them? In six-months from now, will you remember I or someone else wrote about these topics, if you stumble upon it in the future? Likely not. In fact, I get emails from several people asking me if X has been blogged before or not.
In addition, I hand off topics for others to write about, causing more content. And let's not forget the daily SearchCap and Forum Recaps that include all the topics on search I saw, but didn't write about.
(1) Do I cause information overload for the search industry?
(2) Is that a bad thing? I mean, I try my hardest to only write things that I think would be useful.
Many of you know that I am a very fast story writer. Sometimes too fast where I make mistakes, but often, I do an okay job. At least I think so...
In any event, I just wrote a 2,500 word help document for the iPhone Siddur. I wrote the whole document within about 30 minutes.
The document covers pretty much all the features in the Siddur. From the Zmanim, Siddur, Luach, Minyanim and location features.
Hope there arent too many grammar or spelling mistakes...
Oh, I also marked it up in HTML.
While I sit here waiting for Verizon to install triple play, I was thinking, when did blogging become respectable?
I mean, in the past, maybe when I first started, I was a bit embarrassed to say, I blog. I use to say, I write in a very specific niche, on a specific topic. But now, I proudly say, I blog about a niche topic.
I can't remember when I stopped saying, "I write," and began saying, "I blog." But it did happen at some point.
Blogging use to be consider child's play, a diary, a game. But now, blogs can be just as authoritative, or more, than an industry news site. That message has really been learned and understood over the course of the years and I am happy to have been part of that.
Of course, this blog, is just fun and games. :)
I have been struggling on if I should write a blog post on the feeling I get that I am losing the deep connection I once had with the SEO industry. I know many of you might feel that even implying this, that you think I am crazy. But honestly, I use to know almost every little thing that was taking place in the industry that was public (and most non public) in nature.
As the industry grows, I have to take on more to be able to properly cover the growth of the industry. The more blogs I subscribe to, the more forum threads I need to read, the more stuff I need to write - leaves me with less time to "participate" in the industry I help document. Not participating as often as I like is sad. Heck, I don't even have the time to reply to most the comments left here or at the Search Engine Roundtable.
So why am I writing about this now and not a week or two ago? Well - Louis Gray wrote a blog post named Bloggers' Interactions With Readers Decrease With Prominence and showed this chart:
I would not classify myself as an "industry legend," I am extremely well read in the industry, but the only "legend" in this industry would likely be Danny Sullivan.
But I honestly feel like I just don't have the time anymore to do be "in the communication," like I once was. I now feel more like I am "reporting on the communication," without always being a part of it. Well, I am a part of it, but not as much as I once was. In the past few weeks I have been trying to be more part of the communication and I will continue to do so.
Louis Gray documents what are "interactions:"
Okay, I am not that bad where I do not allow comments - I do. But I am not always good with responding to them. I try so hard to comment at FriendFeed but I rarely do, I do have it set up to auto post to FriendFeed (but most people do that). I automatically Tweet my blog posts, and I do Tweet a few times a day outside of that. I only Digg my blog posts when they come up on my reader (yes, I subscribe to a site command on Digg). I never use Stumble, never. I rarely "pimp" my blog to individuals.
What I think I have learned from Louis's post is that I am currently a stage three blogger but I am just border line stage four. Louis says, "Two characteristics of Stage 3 bloggers also emerge: The sheer volume of readers makes keeping up with all of them impossible. A new kind of reader shows up, people who exhibit troll-like behavior."
Am I at that point, sometimes I do feel that way. "It's these two dynamics that cause some bloggers to head onto the next stage," explains Louis. But I do not want to head to the next stage - I do not want to lose my connection with the industry. I want to communicate, participate and be like it was three years ago. But is that even possible these days with the volume of bloggers, forums and social networking sites/apps out there?
Is it that there is too much? Or just different methods of participation then in the past? Or maybe it is both. Or maybe I am just crazy and I am participating more then most people and I should not worry about it.
I joined Plurk just about 3 weeks ago. Over the course of those three weeks, I invited over 50 friends to join, through this link and I have earned the "red" star.
Plurk says they reward special stars to users that get their friends to Plurk." You can earn up to three stars, gray for 10 invites, yellow for 25 invites and red for 50 invites (the max). So I finally got 50 invites, I see the red star on my profile, but only a few others do.
So why can't others see my star? It should look like this:
I suspect it has to do with a bug in the system. Right now, only if you are on my timeline, can you see it. Otherwise, no - you cannot see it, at least now. So what is the point? I want people to see the star when they are on their own timelines (that is how it works, you don't spend your Plurk time on other people's timelines.
I want my red star. ;-)
Last October I joined FriendFeed, since then, I really never told any body about it. But I have been using it more and more since then. It is really a great way to follow people around the whole web. For example, why subscribe to someone's blog, photos, Twitter and so on, if you can simply subscribe to their FriendFeed account and get it all in one place. One subscription as opposed to ten or more.
So, if you love me or hate me, subscribe to me at http://friendfeed.com/rustybrick, just click on that subscribe link.
I have subscribed to about 100 people, if you want me to subscribe to you, just comment with your FriendFeed URL.
My Friends' top sites:
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Don't forget, subscribe to me at http://friendfeed.com/rustybrick and let me know if you want me to subscribe to you.
I cannot tell you how many people email me that are clueless on how Google Ad Manager works. Well, from now on, I am going to simple forward them to ScribeFire QuickAds. Any blogger, with almost any technical know how, should be able to get these ads going and start making money on their blog, almost immediately.
Here is Patrick's demo:
Here is a huge poll, very fun to read and participate in. Go to Chris Hooley's blog and give it a vote or twenty.
Here are the categories I am listed in:
- SEO Most Likely to Succeed
- Most Athletic SEO
- Best SEO Blogger
- Biggest SEO Nerd
- SEO Social Media Addict
- SEO Most Likely to Become President
- Mr / Ms Congeniality
Funny stuff...
Wow wow wow. I posted screen caps of Google Ad Planner and now I decided to see who you guys - yes you, reading this blog, are.
(1) You are mostly male
(2) Mostly between 35- and 44
(3) Mostly educated
(4) All sorts of income brackets
Whoo are you? :)
Beu notified me that he spotted someone who stole Cartoon Me (Barry). His alias is Mohamedimran and if you visit his StumbleUpon profile you will see this:
How crazy. Makes me mad, upset, kind of makes me feel violated!
He is 21 years old and from AN, India. Now, the crazy thing is, this is not the first guy from India to steal my trademark or name. There was an India SEO Company Impersonating RustyBrick back in October of 2006.
So what is up India? Is this common practice?
Update: On June 20th he replies to me saying:
Hi Rustybrick, thanks for the message,i have to tell you onething, i'm not using yours friend, i saw this pic in a website, it appears good and so cute, it seems like me. so i decided to use it as my avatar in my Social Network Pages.... thats all...
Yes, he is still using my avatar.
Update 2: He has now changed his avatar to something else. He said:
sry friend, i didn't understood, now its ok, i'll change as soon as possible.... Once again i have to say "I'm Really sry"be my friend....!
Thank you Mohamedimran.
About 24 hours after complaining about Google making it hard to get to the original entry of a item in Google Reader via the iPhone, Google added it back.
The link is no longer on the footer bar, instead it is added below the body and above the footer of the item. Here is a screen capture:
I am a happy camper. Without this, my weekend would have been a pain. :)
Thank you Mihai Parparita.
This is the most annoying interface I have seen, but I am on it. I joined Plurk today.
Add me as a friend by clicking here.
Sweet, check out the TwitterCounter site. You can now add this to your site to show off how many followers you have. Here is mine:
Feel free to follow me.
Last night I said that Google removed the "original item" link from the Google Reader iPhone version. Well, I was partially correct. They removed the link from the bottom but enabled the circle/chevron image next to the title of the entry as a hyperlink to the original entry. In fact, a Google Reader Engineer pointed this out to me.
To be honest, I tried that out before even complaining, but my finger had issues clicking on the tiny icon. So after Mihai Parparita of Google told me that is the link that takes you to the original entry, I tried harder. If I use the corner tip of my index finger, I can trigger the link to open to the original entry - but it isn't easy. Here is a video of me trying to do it:
This is the icon you have to click on: 
On the iPhone, it is really really tiny.
Maybe Google can make the title a hyperlink also?
I am so upset. (1) My AC stopped working again and (2) Google Reader for my iPhone dropped the "see original" link.
Here is what the new links look like:
Notice there is no "see original" link!!!! How do I see the original article and the original site?
Here is an image from Google from the version before, notice the link is there:
Give it back, please!
Update: The Google Reader folks are on top of these things, as expected. They picked up on this blog post and commented. So I wrote a new entry named Google Reader for iPhone Makes it Harder To Get to Original Entry with a video demonstration.
To many of you, I have been blogging forever. But I have only been blogging since 2003. Jeremy Zawdony started blogging in 2002 and he was probably my first favorite blogger. I have been following his blog since then for years.
So, when today, he announced he is leaving Yahoo to work at a "smaller company." Yes, we all know a lot is going on with Yahoo now, and we hear rumors of a major announcement in 30 minutes from Yahoo, but Jeremy says he is not leaving for any of those reasons. 8.5 years at Yahoo and now on to bigger but smaller things. :)
In any event, Jeremy has been a role model blogger to me. I personally learned a lot about blogging from him. In fact, it was an honor to speak on a panel with Jeremy at PubCon, the panel was named Blogging For Fun & Profit. Here is a picture, although you can't see Jeremy (look for arrows pointing him out), he is hiding behind the podium when I was speaking:
Anyway, I wanted to wish Jeremy best of luck in his future ventures. I am sure whatever it is, it will be successful!
You know I do these video casts weekly. Basically, 10 minute video of the search news for the past week. In any event, Sam from Ohnuts made me this intro. What do you think?
I am personally not into the American Idol music. But other then that, it is cool.
This Sunday night is the start of the Shavuot (שבועות) holiday. That means that I will be offline, no blogging, no email, no phone, for a 50 hour period or so. I am offline Monday and Tuesday - so please don't email me or call me and leave a voicemail. Also, please make sure there is no news during those two days. ;-)
What is Shavout? Um, I talked about it last year, so go read it here.
For those of you celebrating - good Yom Tov. For those of you not - have a happy Monday and Tuesday.
My wife and I are having my parents over, so that should be fun.
Don't expect any blog posts here during those days. We do have scheduled blog posts for the Search Engine Roundtable.
Oh, what is with the picture? It is from Noyaart.com, I found it at Flickr.
It use to be weird for me to see people reading my blogs. But now, not so much.
Just a few minutes ago, I caught the person on my left and on my right reading blog posts I wrote hours before. Not only that, the person on my left was reading both SER and SEL.
Here is a picture for proof:
SERoundtable:
SELand:
Thanks so much for reading!
I find this funny. Sam from OhNuts did a "re-mix" of my May 25th video recap. Here it is:
Awesome job Sam!
To watch and subscribe to my weekly search video recaps click here.
This has been an interesting weekend. Often when I write here, I don't actual think of who will be reading it, outside of the search people. Yea, when I started this blog, it was really a place for my search marketing buddies to learn more about what is going on with me, on a more personal level. My other blogs were more business focused and I couldn't blog about personal matters. So I started this place to do so.
But over time, I learned that many others began reading this blog. Like who? Family of course, also current friends. But not only those people. Over this weekend, not only did I find out family and friends read it, others do also.
I have found out that possibly, soon to be family is reading my blog. I have found out that friends of my family also read it. I have found out that friends I have not seen in years are reading it. I have found out that friends of my wife's family children read it.
How do they find this blog? Word of mouth is the most obvious. But many are now finding it through my annoying Facebook updates. Others are finding it conducting random searches and landing on my blog, one such example is the [ashar fire]. Plus, I get a ton of random people who have no idea who I am but are very afraid of worms (trust me, if you haven't seen that post, click over, it is a hoot).
Anyway, this blog has turned out to be more then a personal log of stuff I like to document or a place for my search industry buddies to chat with me. It has turned into a family and friends newsletter and sometimes a community newsletter.
I am curious, how would you classify yourself. Take my poll below that asks you how you know me.
Please take the poll. I am very curious.
I currently have 430 friends at Facebook. I am a friendly guy, I guess. Honestly, all I use Facebook for is to click the add button when I get a friend request.
But I have been recently getting these friend requests from old friends, outside of the search industry. Like people I grew up with and went to school with. Also, some family members have been friending me, so they are on the list.
What I totally forgot about is that my Twitters have been automatically posting to my Facebook status section. So whenever I post to twitter, it is updated on Facebook.
Not only that, I automatically post my personal blog posts to my Twitter account. Which then will automatically post that twitter (my blog post title and URL) to Facebook. It seems I am a very very active Facebook user, when in all honesty, I only login to Facebook to accept friend requests and decline everything else.
What is pretty funny is that when I first added the Twitter to Facebook application, I wrote about it. I named the blog post Another Way to Annoy People Using Twitter. So, I knew it would annoy people on some level.
This weekend, I spoke to a few of these normal Facebook users (non-SEOs) and they mentioned (two of them did) that I am very active on Facebook, but in a weird way. I.e. I post these short things, often with URLs at the end, and sometimes I tell people I am going to the bathroom. I then remembered that my Twitter account is hooked up and it might be annoying real Facebook users who don't understand that.
So I asked both of those people I was talking to. One on Friday night the other one last night at a nice BBQ if I was being an "annoying Facebook user." They both said no, but I think they were being nice.
People are much more frank via comments. So go ahead, be deadly truthful. Am I an evil facebook user? Feel free to be anonymous with your comments.
Google announced that YouTube added demographic data to the video stats (aka YouTube Insights). It is really awesome, at least until I looked at one of my search videos and noticed that 90% of my viewers are male and 10% are female.
Come on!
How depressing is that!
Here is the chart:
Very depressing! Well, I assume there is a skew here, but still.
It also shows age groups, here is my break down:
But you can see what ages each gender is by clicking on the pie chart. My 10% of women are between the ages of 25 and 35.
Neat stuff. How about my most popular video?
25% female, with a wide range of ages.
Ask.com: We're Not Dead from Andy at Forbes discusses the recent news that Ask.com Buying Dictionary.com Parent.
In Andy's interview with IAC's Jim Safka, he called my worries about Ask.com's future in search horsesh!@#@. He said that in response to to Danny, Lisa and my thoughts on them cutting staff. Okay, so they bought Dictionary.com - good. Let's see search algorithmic improvements. Let's see a better search index. Show us something outside of UI changes. You can have a nice UI, but without the index to back it, then you are nothing.
And I quote the Forbes:
Safka has a response: "It's horseshit," he told Forbes.com in an interview. "It's categorically not true. We're more committed to our algorithm and engineers than ever."
Give me a break. Show me index improvements. Show me algorithmic improvements. I have been hearing excuses since 2002, let's get serious. Core search, core!
Last night I was thinking... Wow, how do I come up with about 2 - 4 things per day to write at this blog. In fact, I have written over 1,800 blog posts here since I started the blog on July 20, 2006.
Honestly, I think I write too much here. Heck, I barely even write about search stuff here - I write dozens of articles per day on search at the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land.
On top of that, I write about the most random stuff here. Yet, I continue to spew this stuff out on a daily basis, with virtually no "bloggers-block." Lucky, I guess. Not so lucky for you, who subscribe and read it. ;-)
Maybe this is a good time to share my top pieces of content on this blog since January 1st:
Here is to another two years of spewing out this stuff here. :)
I finally got around to adding both the Yahoo Buzz and Sphinn buttons to the Search Engine Roundtable.
I only added the icons under the entries, and only on the individual entry pages. I.e. you should not see the large buttons on the home page, category pages, or date pages. You should see them when you view the specific article at the article URL.
For example, check out one of my latest articles on Getting Married: How To Change Your Google AdSense Payee Name. If you scroll down to the bottom of the article, you should see these icons:
Clicking on them should submit and/or vote the story up at the respective social news sites. So give them a try. I think Yahoo Buzz might be a bit buggy on my end, so if you notice issues, please let me know.
Oh, why didn't I add Digg? Well, (1) I have it in the text links where it says "Stumble It! • Digg This! • Add to del.icio.us". (2) Digg traffic isn't something I am looking for right now.
Like any good online personality, I do my best to keep up with the online reputation management of myself and the brands I manage.
In this case, I track via RSS the revisions to the Search Engine Roundtable's Wikipedia article.
At 18:54 today, some guy from the IP address of 199.20.26.98 made a change to the page. In short, he felt that the Search Engine Roundtable "is by far tha gayest site i have ever seen wikipedia sucks!"
I did a reverse IP address lookup on this user and it turns out he/she goes to Bishop State Community College, or at least made the revision from a college computer. The change was reverted by Philip Trueman, who seems to specialize in killing Wiki vandalism.
So either this Bishop State guy things the Search Engine Roundtable is spam or he hates the article on Wikipedia about the Search Engine Roundtable OR he just is bored in class and needs to keep his time occupied.
I just created a group in LinkedIn for Search Engine Roundtable readers. To join the group, click here and sign up.
Curious what features we can play with over there, so let's give it a try.
Surprised? TechCrunch compiled a list the other week of the top tech bloggers based on a historical analysis of Techmeme.
The thing is, it doesn't look like they took into account all the blogs I write at, and only processed data based on one blog.
Heck, I'll take position 54, even though the "list doesn’t take into consideration authors who write for multiple publications."
There is no surprise that TechCrunch completely rules the list. They can't write about cats drinking koolaid and it would make it hot to Techmeme. Alright, so maybe cats drinking koolaid is kool...
Greg Sterling and Danny Sullivan also made the list from Search Engine Land. Other search related bloggers on the list include Ionut Alex Chitu and Philipp Lenssen.
Listen up, it is going to get very quiet here until Tuesday.
Saturday night is the first day of Passover, so that means I will be offline, unreachable, until Monday night.
So no need to stop by here until Tuesday. I hope to have a bunch of stories then, but nothing until then.
What are you going to read? Don't panic! I got ya covered...
(1) We have scheduled five blog posts at the Search Engine Roundtable for Monday, many of them are pretty good.
(2) You can spend the time catching up on my 11 videos, each about 10 minutes long.
(3) Greg will be running the show with Danny at Search Engine Land (note, I will not be checking feeds until Monday night, so I hope the news coverage goes well).
(4) You can read some of the billion blogs I have listed in my link farm, which I seriously need to update...
(5) If you are Jewish, why not celebrate Passover?
(6) If you are not Jewish, prep yourself for Earth Day, we got a theme that should rock that day.
Alright, that should be it. If I may be so bold to request you to avoid calling or emailing me when I am gone. I expect thousands of emails to flow in when I get back online Monday, and I am so not looking forward to digging out from them.
Happy Passover!
Here are all my video blog entries for the weekly recaps I have been doing at the Search Engine Roundtable in one YouTube player:
YouTube has a vblog feature but it kinda stinks. Subscribe to my real video feed for iTunes or other updates.
Someone, unnamed, asked me where I get my blogging ideas from. The person asked if it was from that Daily SearchCast. Honestly, I was a bit taken back from that.
Why? Well, all the topics discussed on the Daily SearchCast typically come from my research. I spend a good chunk of my time, compiling news, blog posts, images and forum threads on topics related to search. I then organize them in RustyBudget and we work of that for the news we post at Search Engine Land, the SearchCap and what goes into the Daily SearchCast.
That being said, I also want to keep the Search Engine Roundtable unique and have its own perspective. So how do I not let what I find via my research for Search Engine Land, interfere with my work and research for the Search Engine Roundtable. Although my system is not 100% foolproof, it tends to have worked very well for years.
Before doing my morning rush of reading my RSS subscriptions, as you can see, it spikes at about 8am. I always head to the forums first. Why do I go to the forums first? Well, I honestly don't want the "news" and "blogosphere" to interrupt my objectivity of what is important to the inner core of our industry. How do I determine what news or features or subjects are the most important to the industry? Like I said time and time again, and have written in the Search Engine Roundtable's purpose statement, I let the industry decide. By that I mean, I mine the search forums - look for the most discussed topics and then write about those topics based on the discussion. I do the forum research before the other research, so that I can avoid writing about something that honestly is not that important to the average SEM.
Let me show you a recent example... [heads off to find an example...] On April 11th, I covered news at Search Engine Land that Yahoo's new minimum bid formula will go live sometime this week. SEMs didn't really care for the news in the forum and there was no thread at that time. Today, at the Search Engine Roundtable, I finally wrote a story about it, five days later. Why today, because today is the first day SEMs and advertisers actually noticed a change in how Yahoo is actually determining the minimum bid. Yes, we warned advertisers that this was coming a few times months ago, only because the SEMs in the forums cared and had threads on it. But I did not cover last week's announcement, because advertisers were kind of sick of the warnings - they want to see if the quality changes they implemented will hurt them or not and today is that day for some.
Hope that clarifies a few things for my readers on how I differentiate between the Roundtable and the Land.
Andy Greenberg interviewed me for his latest Forbes piece, Microsoft Plays Both Sides Of The Ad Game. Besides for the article laying out the issues with Microsoft owning AvenueA/Razorfish, it also makes me look brainy - I think...
Here is one of the quotes:
It would show that Microsoft is really interested in competing with Google. And it would show that they understand that the perception of an unbiased algorithm is just as important as having an unbiased algorithm.
Yea, the line, "the perception of an unbiased algorithm is just as important as having an unbiased algorithm."
It is. Really. There were studies done (can't find them now) that show if you slap on a Google logo to a Yahoo search results page and then slap on a Yahoo logo to a Google search results page, people would find the results from Google to be more relevant, simply because of the brand. Ah, found it, when I was at SEW, I wrote Is Google Search More Relevant Or Is There A Brand Factor?
Anyway, the line is cool to read. Didn't even realize I said it, until he quoted me.
Few days ago, Danny blogged on Tracking Your Twitter Growth With Twitterholic, TwitDir, Tweeterboard & Others, so I figured I blog it also.
According to Twitterholic, I am the 922,011st to sing up for Twitter. I actually signed up for Twitter over a year ago and been using it ever since.
I now have 984 followers, 381 friends and 3,766 updates. I guess I need more followers and friends, so sign up with Twitter and go to my profile and follow me, NOW!
:)
I wish there was a way to export all this data, so I can make cooler graphs with it... Oh well.
Okay, I feel like I am wasting time. At least I got my laptop. But there is only so much you can do in a car. Anyway... I did a small video in iMovie while in the car. But I really would love to work on the video recap for the week now, but I just don't want to freak out my driver... Here is my quick video:
Hollywood, here I come!
That was quick! I arrived at 10:30ish, presented at 11ish, finished at 12ish and left at 12:15ish. Now, in the car, I caught up on feeds. Wrote a YSM story at SEL and reviewed Tamar's posts at SER.
Replied to some more emails, reviews SER's tax day theme (it rocks) and IMing with a few people. So I decided to then take some pictures of myself blogging in the car...
Black & White:
Color:
Regarding Jim's thing... I can't speak much about it. I honestly came in, did my presentation and left. I have no idea if my presentation was good or not. The questions were good. My slides rocked cause of Apple Keynote. The content, well, I have no idea. :)
I am sitting in the back of this car, typing away on my computer, writing this blog post, as I am being driven from Suffern, NY - two hours to Troy, NY to speak at Link Ninja's thing for Jim.
My battery has a little over two hours left, so by the time I get there, I should be all dead. I do have a spare, fully charged for the two hour trip back. I also plan on presenting on this machine, using Keynote. So it will be charging during my one hour presentation.
I need to talk for one hour? No idea if my presentation is even that long. I have almost a 100 slides on Universal Search and how to take advantage of it. But I talk fast. Anyway, it should be fun. A lot of other SEMs that I am friendly with will be there.
I love being able to work while commuting, this is the only way to travel!
I just got my USB Microphone, the Samson C01U mic. I plugged it in to my Mac, and presto, it showed up in the list of input devices under my audio settings. I decided to scan the owner's manual and it had three full pages on how to set up this Microphone with a Windows PC. Mac? Just plug it in and it works. Too funny.
Anyway, here is me testing out the mic:
More details on what I am doing with this microphone can be found over here.
Yesterday, I officially launched a weekly video cast that I will be producing on search news and SEM advice. It basically is a video recap of the text recap we prepare in our Search Buzz section.
I have been experimenting with them for about four months and honestly, I am enjoying doing them. I keep them under 10 minutes, so they fit on YouTube and I get to interact more with my readers with these video recaps. The good news is that I asked search companies and SEM companies to provide schwag for viewers to win by watching the video and already received many responses with yes! So we are going to have some really cool schwag to give away in the near future, if you watch!
How do you watch? A few ways:
I am also very excited to be receiving a new microphone to help with the horrible built in microphone quality of the MacBook Pro. I purchased the Samson C01U Mic, which has great reviews. So that should increase the volume of my voice, which will enable me to add some elements to the videos.
This mic is coming today and I hope to use it this Sunday in my new video. So make sure to subscribe to our video podcast and you can not only get a quick 10 minute recap of the past week in search but also, you can win prizes and awesome schwag!
It has been over a year since I switched to Google Reader and 11 months or so since I posted my RSS reader trends. So I thought I take a look back and see if my RSS reading habits have changed over the course of the year.
The green bars 
are my new RSS reader stats and the redish bars 
are old stats.
Note: Overall, I am reading a lot more posts per day, tracking more feeds and subscriptions. The charts overlay nicely because they are normalized. So I am using them to show a pattern - it will make sense as you read:
Time of Day: It seems like I am viewing less feeds closer to midnight then I have about a year ago. I guess I am going to sleep earlier? Ah, I now consume a lot of my RSS on my iPhone, so I have less to read when I get back home late after basketball. That explains it, I think...
Day of Week: Looks like, although I am reading more feed items per day, the pattern of the number of feeds on a daily basis is the same. I.e. I read the most amount of feeds on a Tuesday, like I did a year ago. Not sure why...
Last 30 Days: This chart doesn't really show much, except that I didn't take a day off this month.
Have your RSS reading habits changed over the course of the year? Mine really haven't, in terms of when I read. I do consume more, about 200 more feed items per day more (if I read the charts correctly).
The blogsphere is buzzing about Flickr Video, so instead of writing about it, I thought I show a video in a video of how to use it.
Watch me watch myself upload a video to Flickr and then embed it here:
LOL - I crack myself up in a weird way...
I write a ton of blog posts a day. Typically about 3 or so here, 5 or so at the Search Engine Roundtable and 4 or so at Search Engine Land per day. So about 10 - 20 blog posts per work day.
One of my tricks for getting so many blog posts done per day is not proof reading them. For this site and the Search Engine Roundtable, I don't even bother running grammar check with Microsoft Word on the posts. With most my Search Engine Land posts, I run them through Word - but I don't really proof them by giving them a once over before posting.
I type and click "submit" at the bottom of the blog software. I rarely ever skim or read over my blog posts before submitting and I rarely ever read them once they are posted.
I am sure I mess up on spelling and grammar all the time but I rarely ever get complaints. So, I am not asking, should I spend the time proofing the blog posts or spend my time finding more news and content to write about and less time proofing?
Feel free to comment anonymously - no need to be mean, just be honest. Asking for "constructive criticism," please.
I just switched the ad delivery program from Open Ads to Google Ad Manager a few minutes ago.
I have been testing Google Ad Manager on the forums and it has been working out well. So today, I had an hour, so I moved all the ads on the main blog to Google Ad Manager.
Why did I do this?
(1) So I don't have to host my own ad software.
(2) Less load on my server.
(3) No worries about patching the software.
(4) Slick reports
(5) It does what I need
I loved Open Ads, but numbers one through three are good enough reasons for me to switch. And it is free!
I am glad I wrote my Google Ad Manager Tutorial, because I had to reference back to it several times as I set up the news ads.
If you see any bugs, let me know...
Today, I decided to finally expand the query list (keywords) that would trigger Google 'subscribed links' to show up when you do a search. Did I lose you? Let me explain...
For example, if you subscribe you and search for doubleclick, you will see the latest Search Engine Roundtable articles related to DoubleClick. It looks like this, within the search results, probably in the fourth organic result:
It, by default, shows the last three articles that match that keyword. How does it know which keyword to show up for? I tell it. It used to be just my categories, plus some added keywords based on the categories. But today, I decided to enhance that and use the over 1,500 tags from the site. Yes, I try my best to tag each piece of content with keywords that describe the content. I decided to pull from my tags database to add more keywords to the list.
I also decided 1,700+ were too many, so I made a rule that if the tag is used in three or more articles, then it should be part of the keyword list that triggers the Google Co-Op. If it is two articles or less, then it won't trigger a Google result.
So if you are looking for pages on robots, slurp or matt cutts, I likely have recent content that will interest you.
If you haven't subscribed, you might want to now, because the content is fresher and richer then every. To subscribe to the Google Co-Op, click here, you can always unsubscribe easily at any time.
I received a surprise in the mail today, schwag from Google. Specifically the Google Ad Manager team. In the box was this card:
No way did I expect Google to send me stuff for my How To Set Up Google Ad Manager On Your Site or Blog. Heck, I write about Google all day, every day, and I don't expect presents from them. It was really nice to get the schwag, even though I have two of the three items. Like people say, "it is the thought that counts," that line is so true.
What came in the box?
(1) Google Hot Cup:
(2) Google Black T-Shirt:
(3) Google Black Duffle (I didn't get one of these duffles yet):
One day I should do an inventory of all my search related schwag. Only issue is that they are spread out between my office, home, car, other family members and who knows where.
Thank you the Ad Manager Team!
Kevin Heisler wrote at the Search Engine Watch News blog that I left Search Engine Land and joined Search Engine Journal based on a piece of scraper content. Scraper content is basically a robot that steals content from several sites and combines them to try to make them unique. In short, it put my name on content stolen from Search Engine Journal, so Kevin either thought it would be funny to say I now work at Search Engine Journal or he was fooled by a scraper site.
Either way, I am not working for Search Engine Journal, even though I have the utmost respect for Loren Baker, I am just not writing for him.
Even though Kevin added "corrections" to his post, I think it is still confusing people. I received and noticed tons of twitters this morning, not understanding the SEW blog post or the correction.
Again, I am still writing at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land. It is honestly a shame to see that post on SEW, a shame.
I am sitting on the plane, going through blogging withdrawal at the moment. So to satisfy my addiction, I decide to pull out my laptop and open TextEdit. While listening to "The Trail" I look up at the airplane TV screens and think, what should I write about.
I then think back to how funny it is that I am writing this and thousands may read it. I write, and people read what I write. I am not a professional writer - far from it (thank goodness for blogging, where it is okay to use poor grammar), but yet people read what I have to say on a daily basis. Not just my friends and family but professionals.
I then drift further back towards my Junior year in high school. Dr. Masters, a small lady who taught us drama. I enjoyed the class, but after taking it, I thought to myself, no way will I ever become a writer. I used to write, in fact, I expressed my thoughts much better on a laptop then I could using my mouth. But I was never an "English student," I always much preferred the business side of things.
As I look back, how did I get here? I blogger, sudo-writer, with a readership? Never in a million years would I have thought...
One day, I'll have to write how I actually started writing at SEW and now SEL. Maybe a history of the progression there.
I'll admit it. I have been receiving emails from some of my readers at both this site and the Search Engine Roundtable that their comments are not coming through.
In the past, I use to check the comment spam folder much more actively. But now I get about two hundred comments in an hour that makes it into the junk folder. It takes forever to scan through all of them. So I normally just delete them without looking. Honestly, I rather find new comment that sift through thousands of junk comments to find a handful of false positive (real comments).
So, if you ever see your comment not being approved automatically then you can be pretty sure that it will rarely make it to the blog. In that case, I would email me right away with the blog, your name, and the time you placed the comment - so I can approve it. My email? Well, just use this form to reach me...
Listening to Danny on WebmasterRadio and they are experimenting with Live Yahoo.
I should be visible in real time when I am at my desk here:
I'll start this channel soon at http://live.yahoo.com/rustybrick.
After a long day of standing at SphinnCon Israel on Tuesday, I was fairly tired that night. In any event, I knew I wanted to document the day and upload pictures on my extremely slow Internet connection in Israel. So when I woke up, I began my morning stuff, email, RSS, forum research. Then when I was done, I began blogging the conference at both the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land (Danny then told me, he would have blogged it at Search Engine Land).
I told my wife to go shopping while I blogged away the AM. She found a Michal Negrin store nearby and bought some jewelry. She then met me back at the hotel and I finished up my blog stories for the morning. A little after 1PM, we left to do more shopping in Geula. Yes, I am a great husband for going shopping even though it makes me ill to shop. I don't think we bought anything that day, I may be wrong - it is all turning into a fog right now for me. But we did stop at a tile place. My wife has been really wanting us to get a backsplash for ournew house but I have been trying to push off that decision.
In any event, she found two styles she liked here in Israel. Note, she hasn't been able to find anything in America yet - but she found two styles she liked in Israel. The one above, is one that I think we both like and will work well in our kitchen. Thing is, I guess it would have to be shipped from Israel and we would have to convert the measurements somehow - all doable. Not that we are going to do this anytime soon. The above backsplash looks a lot like Israeli stone, which is why we like it.
After the backsplash bit, we went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner with my brother and sister-in-law. Skipping some parts....
We go together to some restaurant that tells us they have no room for the four of us. My sister-in-law does her smooth talking and gets us in. We eat well. It turns out the waiter was a taxi driver that took my brother somewhere, so they chatted a bit about that. In any event, the food was good and the convo was good. Although, I prefer not to talk and be distracted when I have food in front of me ;-).
After that, I think the day was over - we had to rest up for the big day tomorrow. My nephew's bar mitzvah.
Talk about a busy morning, before the morning begins...
Starting at about 6:30 and finishing with this post at about 9:30 am.
(1) Set up new advertiser on blog.
(2) Handled some SMX Israel stuff, not much.
(3) Sorted through dozens of emails.
(4) Scanned over 300 new items in my RSS reader.
(5) Researched several forums for content on the Search Engine Roundtable
(6) Posted four items at the Search Engine Roundtable
(7) Organized 50 topics for Search Engine Land within RustyBudget.
(8) Blogged 4 items that are now live at Search Engine Land and blogged one item scheduled to go live at 12 at Search Engine Land.
(9) Reviewed one of the four stories Tamar has written at Search Engine Roundtable.
(10) And wrote this post.
I had misc phone calls and more emails during those ten items, just not sure at what steps.
I am running into a long long meeting in less then 30 minutes, so I had to get this all done prior. I doubt I'll have time to do the video recap today, so I might be holding off on that for the next few weeks until after I come back from Israel.
I love the rush of speed blogging. Oh, that picture is of me blogging while in car to NYC.
An Ask.com feature I have been craving for a while is finally done. Here it is:
You too can customize your Ask.com home page, more on how over here.
Hey, Google Fiance, I want to be able to embed Google Finance charts on my blog or web site. I want the option to copy a snippet of code and paste it on my blog for others to view. Yes, I know - you will need to give an option for dynamic updates to those charts or keep the chart as is on a specific time/date. But you can do it, and it would be used.
For me to show the drop in price of Google and Apple relative to the NASDAQ, I need to steal a picture of your chart, throw it on Flickr and embed it that way here.
Give me an option, like you have with Google Maps, to embed it!
You already give us a link to address, so I know the embed feature is easy. And it will save me so much time...
I have been on Pownce for a while now, but now it is public, so anyone can sign up for Pownce if they like.
Basically, it is a Twitter like blogging thing... I use Twitter all the time and love using it.
But for me to really use Pownce one or two things must happen...
(1) Twitterific must add support for Pownce, one UI for both would be killer.
(2) Everyone I know must switch from Twitter to Pownce.
So Twitterific, can we get Pownce integration?
If you are on Pownce, friend me at http://pownce.com/rustybrick.
If you are a blogger and have yet to try RustyBudget out yet, you are missing out. I honestly can't describe how much time I save every day by using it. Of course, it was my idea and RustyBrick built it, so I am biased, but at the same time, I built it around my specific needs. FYI - Danny Sullivan lives and dies by it every day as well, maybe one day he will blog about it.
In any event, I am often on the road and want to be able to add items from Google Reader directly to my various budgets. Based on watching the using delicious on your iphone, I had one of those "Doh!" moments. Just add the bookmarklets I need to my Safari browser, and then sync my iPhone. Presto - I can add items from Google Reader directly to the budget I want.
Here is me showing that off:
Step back!!! What is RustyBudget? Well, I wrote about it over here and over here. I am honestly shocked more people have not gotten on the bandwagon. Only 337 authors? Only 12,500+ topics added. Maybe it is too confusing?
Anyway, give it a shot at RustyBudget.
I noticed a lot of my fellow bloggers were part of the Power 150 AdAge blogs. So I politely asked the editor of the Power 150, if they can include the Search Engine Roundtable and he said yes.
The Power 150 is a ranking of the top English-language media and marketing blogs in the world, as developed by marketing executive and blogger, Todd Andrlik. It's really as simple as that, except that the name isn't strictly accurate: It currently ranks more than 500 blogs written about all types of media and pretty much every imaginable marketing discipline.
So now I am number 9 on the list of the AdAge top media and marketing blogs.
Google PageRank is one of the calculations used to rank these blogs. I wonder what my rank would be if Google showed my original PageRank of 7... Would I be closer to #3?
Anyway, it is nice to be listed in this space.
You often see how I use these high-quality images of products I use on my Mac, when describing those products. Here is how I get those images uploaded to Flickr.
(1) Go to the application in the finder window:
(2) Highlight the application and select "Get Info" or Apple I.
(3) When the info screen comes up, click on the icon at the top left of that small window. Then when the icon is highlighted, select "Copy" from the edit menu or click Apple C.
(4) Then open Apple's "Preview" under your Applications folder. In Preview, select "New From Clipboard" in the File menu.
(5) It then should open up as so:
(6) Go to "Save As" in Preview's file menu and select the JPG option (the Gif option will make it an animated GIF, so don't pick that one).
(7) You should then get this single image, which you can upload to Flickr or use on your blog as you see fit.
Here is a video of me going through the steps in real time...
It's not enough you scrap my forum posts, my blog posts, my articles and my web site content but you also have to scrap my Twits!
Just kidding... There is this SEO who does reverse Twitter to Blog automatic posting. You got me. Whereas I do Blog to Twitter posts, RKF does Twitter to Blog posts.
His blog is at Created Wonder and you can clearly see, his posts from his twitter alias RFK, is being published to his blog.
Example: He replied to a twitter of mine saying:
@rustybrick I’ve tried replacing batteries, but usually end up with a new UPS. The price is pretty close, look for trade-in rebates
But, check his blog post on that over at this URL.
Too funny.
An SEO technique? Playing with my mind? Just bored one day? Loves APIs?
I like Twitter, I use it fairly often. I even automatically post my blog posts to Twitter.
Pause.... If you want to follow me on Twitter you can via these two Twitter accounts:
- http://twitter.com/seroundtable
- http://twitter.com/rustybrick
In any event, since I automatically post my blog posts to Twitter. People have been, more often then not, 'commenting' or 'replying' to my blog posts via Twitter and not leaving a comment on my blog posts.
Here are some examples of this in action:
I wrote a blog post about my new backup solution and I got this reply via Twitter. "adamap @rustybrick superduper is indeed super duper."
I wrote a blog post about this cool curved monitor and I got three twitter responses and one comment on the blog. Lee Odden twittered "@rustybrick Re: TV - I do watch sports on a "secret" TV in my home office. Shhhhh :)." Jennifer Laycock twittered, "@rustybrick drool. That's incredible. Robert would step on kittens to get that." And Brian Mark twittered, "@rustybrick I'll send my address so you can have a monitor shipped to me. :)." Yea right!
So, instead of having a total of 4 blog comments, I now have one blog comment. Would they have spent the time commenting at my blog? Who knows.
I just feel Twitter is stealing my blog comments. Twitter Cannibalization.
There is just something I really dislike about getting emailed search news. Maybe it is because I have email OCD or maybe it is because I hate PR releases and most of those emails are PR related.
I so much prefer to get that news via my RSS reader.
The whole push vs. pull mentality.
I don't want to be pushed information, I want to pull that information when I am ready.
Is it just me? I don't think so, but I know it is a lot of people.
Am I missing out on finding news? Um, I don't think so but I am sure there are things here and there I miss. You tell me...
Wanted to thank you all for voting for me and my blogs, as per my request, it was really appreciated.
We manage to win two awards at the Search Engine Roundtable and three awards at Search Engine Land.
Search Engine Roundtable Won:
Search Engine Land Won:
It is nice to come away with all those wins and being a part of each of those.
Unfortunately, I did not win the Most Giving Search Blogger award. Rand Fishin of SEOmoz won that one. He has proven time and time again, not only to give up some of his most valued SEO/SEM strategies but has also given over his financials for his company for all to see. If that isn't giving, then I don't know what is.
Honestly, I was really hoping to win that award. I came in third place again this year. 5 votes behind Rand, and 1 vote behind Danny Sullivan. It is honestly a bit discouraging not to win. Why? Well, posting well over ten blog posts per day for the search industry. Rarely do I ever miss a work day for posting news. Waking up at 5:30am each day to be able to give this to the industry and also do my day job at RustyBrick. Tracking thousands and thousands of your blogs and linking to dozens of them each day on Search Engine Land's SearchCap.
But at the same time, I understand why Rand won. Where he provides deep insight into SEO techniques he uses at SEOmoz, I rarely would provide something in that much detail. Rand literally showed us his profit and loss statement, I would never do that. Rand asked for our advice on bring in a venture capitalist. Rand gives so much time to those who ask him and plus he has a very strong community at SEOmoz.
I am so delighted we won five awards, I feel greedy for being disappointed in myself for not winning that one award.
I have posted more details about the awards at the Search Engine Roundtable.
Update: Well, there is a Sphinn Thread with some awesome comments supporting me on this. Which I appreciate but I honestly feel horrible taking anything away from this awesome award earned by Rand. Rand won it, I did not. He is a good guy.
Thank you Pratt, Lisa, Tamar and everyone.
Did you know that Elvis was born today? I am not a big Elvis fan, but I am a big Led Zeppelin fan, and we all know a lot of their music stems from Elvis's work...
In any event, live at the Search Engine Roundtable, today, and only today, is the Elvis theme. Here is a snapshot of a portion of that theme.
Sweet!
Dan Perry is running a Google Fridge Giveaway contest.
If you want to win one of those mini-Google-fridges, you got to blog!
How do you win?
Just write a blog post outlining what you’d do with it if you won, and link to this post.
You have until Monday, January 14th, 2008. Who decides who wins? I do! Well, I and three other judges. Tamar, Matt McGee and Dan Perry are the other judges.
Good luck and keep cold! ;-)
If you want to see me beg, you have to read my Vote Search Engine Roundtable on 2007 Search Blog Awards.
In short...
I would really love for you guys to vote for the Search Engine Roundtable. To vote, click here.
A 5 vote is the best you can give, a 1 is actually less than a 5. So vote 5, if possible.
The Search Engine Roundtable is up for five different nominations. I am personally nominated at the bottom of the survey, so please vote for Barry Schwartz over there.
Also, vote for Search Engine Land, ResourceShelf, Techipiedia and Tamar Weinberg and everyone else you feel deserves it. Trust me, it is not an easy vote.
Hope my efforts pay off, I really do.
If you want to know why you should vote for us, please read this explanation. Otherwise, you can vote here.
Thank you!
Li Evans has this great series of articles named Women of Internet Marketing at her Search Marketing Gurus site.
In her last column, she interviewed Vanessa Fox. Vanessa earned her popularity when she worked at Google to create what is now known as Google Webmaster Central. She was one of the most influential people on bridging the webmaster community and Google together. Since then, she worked at Zillow to launch some sweet projects and now she is at an entrepreneur in residence for Ignition Partners and also the Features Editor at Search Engine Land (yea I write there also).
In any event, besides for Vanessa being incredibly popular and fun to work with, she said something really cool about me in her interview. And I quote:
Q: What's a typical day like for you, since you are also an editor at Search Engine Land? A: I don't think I've had a typical day yet! I normally check in on what's going on in search in the mornings. Barry is amazing at news coverage. I don't think people realize just how hard he works at making sure he knows absolutely everything that goes on all over the web. When I have time, I pitch in on news coverage.
And...
Q: You are in charge of recasting *drum rolls*... BUFFY! *going to go with Season 3 here*, which SEO's do you cast as the following? Xander: I think Barry's a bit like Xander. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think people realize just how much he does, but his contributions add a lot. Sort of like Xander in "The Zeppo" when he managed to save the school from a bomb created by the zombie football player, Walker, Texas Ranger fans and no one ever knew.
Now honestly, you know you have watched at least two episodes of Buffy!
Thank you so much Vanessa - comments like these really make it all worth while! Those words are even more special coming from someone like you!
Wanted to wish all of you who are celebrating the upcoming holidays a happy holidays!!!
We have a special theme live at the Search Engine Roundtable and it looks like this:
If you missed it, we had a theme up this past weekend for the Boston Tea Party:
This was the Chanukah theme:
Both Yahoo sent gifts as did Google.
Last year, SERoundtable had this theme:
You can more logos for this year's season and last year's season, how about 2005, 2004, ok last one, I promise, 2004.
Facebook user? Do you like me? If not, do you at least like the Search Engine Roundtable? If so, why not join the fan page for the Search Engine Roundtable at Facebook?
How do you join? Go to: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6977229701 and click on the Become a Fan link.
Thank you in advance!
Search Engine Journal has their call for nominations for the top search blogs in 2007. The Search Engine Roundtable has won many awards over the years, I cannot express how much these awards me to me personally.
The award categories are as follows, here would be my nominations:
Honestly, I so hope I win the "Most Giving Search Blogger." I give my all, every single day, to blogging about search. I rarely ever miss posting less than 7 posts per day at SEL and SER. I have been doing this for over 4 years. I hope I win that. :-)
When I am writing up the daily recaps, either at this blog or at Search Engine Land or at Search Engine Roundtable I like to listen to crazy quick finger music. The faster the music, the faster the beat, the faster I can crank out the recaps. The repetitiveness of the recaps are boring, but I automate most of it. So any none automated aspect, the music helps me along. A recap typically takes me just minutes.
What music do I prefer when 'capping it' out? The Extremist by Satriani!
Here is The Extremist by Joe Satriani on YouTube:
See what I mean?
I basically have two ad positions on the Search Engine Roundtable site. The ad units look like what you see in the top right picture here.
Ever since day one, I set up each ad to run in the same position. So on every page refresh, ad box 1 would have the same banner in it, every time. It wasn't really fair to my advertisers. One would have a top right ad, while another would have an ad in the bottom left (possibly under the fold). So finally, I set it up to rotate the ads randomly.
Using OpenAds, it is easy to configure.
(1) Set one on single zone.
(2) Link all the banners you want to see in that zone, to the zone you set up above.
(3) On the "Invocation code" section of that zone, select "Yes" for both "Don't show the banner again on the same page" and "Don't show a banner from the same campaign again on the same page."
(4) Select the JavaScript code from that page.
(5) Copy and paste that JavaScript code for each ad spot on that page. In my case above, I inserted the same ad code six times.
Now all my advertisers get a fair shot and the premium - premium spot. Plus, I never have to rebuild the site for those premium ads.
And a big welcome to Compete, who has launched a new analytics package named Compete Search Analytics!
I just hit a major milestone today at the Search Engine Roundtable. I posted my 5,000th article over the course of just under 4 years.
So of the 6,570, I wrote 5,000 - over 75% of the articles there. I average just about 5 articles per workday since starting writing at the site back on December 2, 2003.
5,000!
I have a longer write up on it at My 5,000th Post at the Search Engine Roundtable.
I have tons of schwag, tons. Not the type of stuff you get from exhibit halls, but the stuff search engines give out.
Today, Google sent me a Google Lava Lamp, Google Coffee Mug, Google Frisbee, Google Hat, Google Shirt & Google Notepad because I helped out on a usability thing.
Ronnie is going to set up the lava lamp in the office, ill take a picture of that when it is up and running.
Thanks Google.
You want free Google Schwag? Sign up at http://www.google.com/usability/ and enter referral code MV1.
Some of you know how much I hate press releases, so I prefer you don't send them.
But if you must... Please include a link to the release. I hate having to search the web for brand new news that is yet to hit the PR wires.
If I can't quickly find a release that I can link to on the web... Then what do you get from me? Nothing. I won't link to it in the SearchCap...
Should I be following you on Twitter? If so, please let me know by adding a comment below with your Twitter name...
I have been using and watching Twitter much more these days. I suspect it is because Twitterific finally updated the piece of software that lets me watch Twits as they happen.
So if you are Twittering, please let me know by commenting below!
I am at http://twitter.com/rustybrick and the Search Engine Roundtable twits at http://twitter.com/seroundtable.
Follow us!
I have one line for Tamar's continuation of a meme: Hi, My Name is Tamar, and I am a Media Snacker.
Here it is:
Errr.
Seems like Akismet, my comment spam filter, is marking all comments on all my blogs as spam.
I installed back in May for all the blogs. It has been wonderful, but it is a pain when things like this happens.
So if your comment is not published, I will try to manually publish it myself. If I miss completely, I apologize!
I have been using Twitter for a while now, but I really never really got into Facebook. I wanted to leverage something that I use often to constantly bombard people on Facebook with my facebook profile.
So even thought I installed the twitter facebook application, I never authorized it to automatically post my Twitters to my Facebook status.
Today is the day I did that.
You can do it to, start here, click on that link and then add it.
Once it is added, you should see this:
Click it and it will take you to here:
Check the check box and click "Authorize Twitter." You can also annoy hundreds of people in a single Twitter. Heck, this post should automatically be sent to Twitter, which is automatically sent to my Facebook status.
My brother-in-law and wife work in NYC. So I convinced them to drive in, instead of taking the bus. Why? So I can then get my brother-in-law to drive, while I sit in the back seat and blog.
Here is a picture of me blogging while in the back seat. We were on the Palisades Parkway, almost at the tolls to the George Washington Bridge.
I get nervous about hard drive crashes, when I hit a large pot hole. Just paranoid about shaking the computer while it is on.
You say what? I said, http://friendfeed.com/rustybrick. You can subscribe via ATOM/RSS or go directly to that URL. Here is me embedding my FriendFeed results on this page:
Give it a try, its not bad.
I just found out today that I posted my 1,000th post at Cre8asite Forums, my most favorite forum... So they created a members only thread to note the 1,000th post, which one reason why the forum rocks (so personable).
Bill called me a vortex, but Rand called me the "Energizer Bunny of search industry news." I didn't think up a way for me to dress myself like a vortex easily, so I went the Energizer Bunny (or Barry) route. Not bad, eh?
Figured it was a good time to update my post counts across blogs and forums:
Blog Posts:
Search Engine Roundtable: 4,845
Search Engine Watch: 1,137 (may be a bit more)
Cartoon Barry: 1,259
Search Engine Land: 1,005 (Since December 2006)
RustyBrick Tech Blog: 63
Estimated Total Blog Posts: 8,309 up to right now.
Forum Posts:
Search Engine Watch Forums: 2,744
SEO Chat Forums: 2,642
Search Engine Roundtable Forums: 1,597
Cre8asite Forums: 1,002
DigitalPoint Forums: 291
WebmasterWorld: 244
HighRankings Forum: 124
JimWorld: 100
Sphinn: 42
Estimated Total Forum Posts: 8,786
Twitters:
Barry Schwartz: 1,660
Search Engine Roundtable: 954
Total Twits: 2,614
Total online communications minus email, IM, commenting, and many other places, just including the ones listed above...
Total: 19,709 (so almost at the big 20,000 number)
Wow, this is awesome news. Practical ECommerce interviewed Jakob Nielsen, one of the most cited people on web topics.
They asked Mr. Nielsen to identify his favorite blogs. Of the four blogs he identified, one was Search Engine Land. The blog Danny, Greg, Chris and I manage on a day to day basis. He said:
Extremely detailed coverage of search and search engines. In fact, it’s too detailed, because they obsess over the smallest detail, which can be too much. I wish this site would abandon the linear blog format and use a more prioritized layout and information architecture to make it easier to focus on important stories and those columnists that interest me the most. Still, this is the place to go for info on the most important channel for reaching new prospects on the web — the search engines.
OK, so it wasn't all positive, but positive enough. We will take from that, maybe adapt the site a bit to make it easier to use and find content.
But it is really nice knowing that something you put so much into (over 40% of the posts on Search Engine Land are mine, but I know Danny's articles make people read there), is appreciate not by just people in your direct industry, but people who are outside your industry. Especially people as well known, cited and respected as Jakob Nielsen.
This is awesome, a tool named Sketchcast.
It basically allows you to record yourself sketching something on your computer screen. You can add text and voice to the recording.
Ever wonder if I can draw? Just watch me:
Now, I would use this almost daily if you were allowed to embed images or videos. Imagine, uploading a video of a football play. Then you can circle areas and draw Xs and Os and lines. Plus for me, product demos, to demonstrate how they work, as I use them, that would be cool.
OK, so I stink and drawing. But Phillip, one of the brains behind Sketchcast (Also Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads), can draw like a mad man. Check this out:
Sweet!
The other day, I noticed new icons and links across Flickr. They were these "Share These Photos" and "Share this photo" links. These are not the same as guest passes in Flickr, they do not give people access automatically to private photos (that is important).
Let me walk you through it.
Here are the various places you can find these new "share photos" links:
Your home page to share all your photos:
Your sets pages, to share just specific sets:
Individual photo page, to share just one photo:
Important: If you click a share link on a photo with limited viewing rights, you will be prompted with this message:
To share photos that your friends do not have access to (because they are just too lazy to sign up or remember their user/pass) you can use guest passes in Flickr.
This new feature is just to remind your other friends, who don't use RSS to get notified of my new photos.
After you click on the share photos, you are taken to a page that looks like this:
You basically enter email addresses into the box. As you type, it may prefill the emails in. If not, just click add and it will dynamically place the emails below. Here is an example of that:
Click send and the emails go out to your friends. The emails also look pretty.
People don't believe that I would actually 'live blog' a concert. Why not?
There is proof. I had to plugin my computer, so I turned it around and someone took a picture of me.
Is it that crazy? Don't answer that.
I enjoy documenting things. Heck, in 500 years, I can show this to my great-great-great-great grandchildren. Heck, maybe Buffetts great-great-great-great grandchildren will find this blog post in 500 years and laugh. Or maybe not.
Anyway, here is last night's set list:
1. On the Road Again
2. Fruitcakes
3. I Will Play For Gumbo
4. Weather With You
5. Son of a Son of a Sailor
6. Come Monday (The Beach Band)
7. Elvis Presley Blues
8. Changes In Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes
9. Bama Breeze
10. Cheeseburger in Paradise
11. Grapefruit - Juicy Fruit
12. Fins
13. Brown Eyed Girl
Intermission
14. Scarlet Begonias
15. School Boy Heart
16. Boat Drinks (solo)
17. It's My Job (w/ Mac)
18. Hula Girl At Heart
19. It's Five O'Clock Somewhere (w/Mac)
20. Volcano
21. A Pirate Looks At Forty -> Redemption Song (Bob Marley Cover)
22. One Particular Harbour
23. Margaritaville
First Encore:
24. Everybody's On The Phone
25. Southern Cross
Second Encore:
26. In My Room (Beach Boys cover)
27. Tonight I Just Need My Guitar
I think he played an extra song...
Yet another social networking site...
I am not on Yahoo Mash at http://mash.yahoo.com/rustybrick so friend me up.
I didn't really customize all that much yet. Who knows if I will use it. But I am on it.
I am on a bunch of other ones, all linked up via the about barry page. See those icons at the top right of the page? Those are link to my various profiles online. Feel free to connect to all of them.
You guys know I blog a heck of a lot... That is one of the reasons I launched RustyBudget, to help me keep things organized. I personally live on that software. In any event, when I actually go and blog an item, can I mix things up?
Like just before, I wrote at this blog, my personal blog, B-52 Bomber Accidently Carries Nuclear Warheads. I actually started writing that post in the backend of Search Engine Land. Imagine if I hit, "publish" on that post and it went live on a search blog...
I guess I can always try to spin it back to be somewhat search related. Like, I did a search for B-52 Bomber and I found that video using Google Universal results. OK, maybe not.
So far, I have never actually published a blog post on a blog I did not intend to publish it at. But I have started writing the blog post in the wrong blog software.
Why? Well, I use exactly the same software at the Search Engine Roundtable that I use at Cartoon Barry and that I use at Search Engine Land. It is all Movable Type blogging software, all with the same backend. So it can look a bit the same and be confusing.
Any bets on how long I can go without mixing up a blog post? It has been years so far and not one slip up yet!
On April 5th, I officially switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. But recently the new Bloglines Beta was released, so I thought I give it a new shot.
I always liked the Bloglines Mobile version over Google Reader Mobile. But the iPhone Bloglines is even sweeter.
Now with Bloglines Beta, I get a lot of the nice functionality that makes feed reading fast, as I would have with Google Reader. So I will pin the two against each other for not just the first time and not just a second time, but this will be my third time.
It is a good thing it is quick to switch back and forth. :)
I hope to make a decision in a week or so.
It seems like every day a new SEO blog is created. Now, I can't possibly subscribe to each one... well maybe I can. But why don't you help me.
If you want me to subscribe to your blog and I have not yet, then please comment below with your blog URL. In fact, if you want to make it faster for me, just include the add blog URL for Google Reader....
If I see your blog, it has a better chance to get covered at Search Engine Land and be included in the SearchCap at Search Engine Land.
So, please help me - help you. I think that is the slogan.
How do you know if I read your blog already? Well, if it is in my link farm, then I do read it. If it is not, I still may read it, but not have updated the link farm - but feel free to submit it just in case below.
Only SEO blogs please.
I believe all links in comments are nofollowed, not that the nofollow will prevent comment spam. :)
Tamar just can't get enough blogging. She has her Techipedia, she blogs at Search Engine Roundtable and now, because she needs to blog even more, she is blogging at Lifehacker.
Tamar is Lifehacker's "new guest editor," one of her first articles was on Bloglines Beta.
But she has already written about five articles.
Congrats Tamar!
I was just notified by Answers.com that the Search Engine Roundtable is now an official Answer.
Check it out over here.
Note: The Search Engine Roundtable is already included in Answers.com as a Wikipedia entry.
Also Note: I am personally also an answer because they source Wikipedia content...
I am a huge Flickr user and this AM I noticed a new way to upload pictures... So I skipped over to the Flickr blog and saw a post named Improved Web Uploading.
Here are screen captures of the new process:
New upload start screen:
Add pictures form:
New Uploading status form:
Upload now complete status:
Update Picture title, description, set, and tags form:
Pretty cool...
I create a list of "holidays" or events that I want to create special themes and designs at the Search Engine Roundtable.
I have had themes for Thanksgiving, New Years, Hot Dot Day and so on. I pull these holidays from sites on the web, that categorize them for me.
I honestly, don't think when I collect these dates and have my design mock things up.
So today is "Atomic Bomb Day." The day America bombed Hiroshima in 1945. More about the day at the BBC.
But when I had the theme designed, I didn't put the horrible event together with it being an "event" on the list of events from that list. When I added it to the list, I thought it was the day they invented the bomb, not the day they used it. But then I looked it up, after I put the theme up.
I put the theme up at SERoundtable.com for literally two minutes before I then realized what I have done. I quickly pulled the theme down thinking that it is really bad taste.
Lesson learned, think before acting.
If you want to see what that theme looked like see here:
Yea, when you think about it, I can't believe I went this far with it.
Last November, I counted up all my blog posts and forum posts and provided some statistics for your all, mostly for myself. I figured it was time to update those numbers.
Blog Posts:
Search Engine Roundtable: 4,684
Search Engine Watch: 1,137 (may be a bit more)
Cartoon Barry: 1,114
Search Engine Land: 834 (Since December 2006)
RustyBrick Tech Blog: 63
Estimated Total Blog Posts: 7,831 up to right now.
Forum Posts:
Search Engine Watch Forums: 2,729
SEO Chat Forums: 2,642
Search Engine Roundtable Forums: 1,528
Cre8asite Forums: 983
DigitalPoint Forums: 280
WebmasterWorld: 226
HighRankings Forum: 124
JimWorld: 100
Estimated Total Forum Posts: 8,612
Twitters:
Barry Schwartz: 1,422
Search Engine Roundtable: 625
Total Twits: 2,047
Total online communications minus email, IM, and many other places, just including the ones listed above...
Total: 18,490
It is enough already!
My blog is being hit by tons of comment spam pointing at the WashingtonPost.com. These links go to pages like these.
Then there are Google ads on this page, yes Google is profiting from this. In addition, there is a text ad pointing to http://buygenericviagr.forumlivre.com/.
Here is a screen capture:
The good news is that it looks like Google has not yet indexed this page as of yet.
Yes, they are targeting "biagra," because the "b" and the "v" keys are right next to each other.
But the comment spam is just so annoying!
WashingtonPost, please stop these pages from being generated!
This weekend, some guy I know came over to me and told me he was at a testing conference.
He explained that a Google Maps person was up on the stage giving a presentation on how they add test case scenarios to find bugs in Google Maps. He then told me that the person giving the presentation mentioned my name for a bug I reported...
I said it was possible, but the first thing that came to my mind was a real bug. Yea, remember when I reported about a serious Google Maps bug? See the image at the top right? It was a bug that got caught between a glass plate and the film during the scanning process. So, a real outer-space bug did not overtake a portion of Germany.
He said, it wasn't that bug, but rather a bug that had driving directions go in circles. So I just looked it up and found the 200+ U-Turn Google Maps bug. That was probably it.
I blog so much that even my family members and friends want to know if they will be on the blog soon.
If I am with friends or family and we are doing something interesting or even ordinary, they joke. "So will this be on your blog today?"
In fact, this happened a few times in the past week. Once when I was at a "guy's night out" last week, they asked if I would blog about it. I did not, but I guess now I am. It also happened with family this weekend, where one family member asked if I would blog about the meal I ate.
So although I decided not to blog about those two events, I am actually blogging about those two events.
Makes you wonder...
As many of you know, we created a *revolutionary* new software product for bloggers and editors named RustyBudget.
Today, Ronnie added a new feature that helps Danny and I stay off each other's toes.
Sometimes Danny will add something to the budget for headlines and then I will add the same story, not seeing that he added it already. Sometimes it happens where I add something and Danny dups me. We are human.
So we added a duplicate content detector. Basically, if you have added a story to the budget in the past and try adding it again with the bookmarklet, it will warn you.
Here is an example of the warning:
I cannot tell you how excited I am about this feature. It not only tells you that you are stepping on someone's toes. It tells you whose toes and also gives you clarity into when it was added in the past.
Note: This only works if the URL matches, we are not matching on story titles. Also, this only works on a budget to budget level, so if I add something to SEL and the same thing to SER, it won't prompt me - which makes sense.
I am not going to blog here today. Why? Today is Tisha B'Av תשעה באב...
I like to introduce new software we built here at RustyBrick. It is called RustyBudget, in short it allows bloggers and authors to easily manage the stories they want to write about at their blogs or publishing sites.
Duncan Riley did an excellent write up on it.
RustyBudget is essentially “a writers or editors budget”, where a blog owner and blog writers can manage story leads, including author allocation, story notes and overall task management.
Why did I build it? Because I spend a ton of time blogging and managing the topics that should be covered at the blogs I write at. As many of you know, I write at both the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land. Both blogs are extremely active in terms of traffic and the number of posts we write each day. On both blogs, I help manage what topics we cover and what we don't cover. We manage which authors writes what and what stories they should bring in with it. As you can imagine, the larger the blog, the more authors the more topics, the more confusing things may get.
This software helps organize these tasks and also helps the task more efficient. And efficiency is something I am all about. So initially we built something internally, and then built it out to make it for anyone.
Some people don't like the colors, which is not a big deal, because you can customize the look and we are planning on adding an API. But the bottom line is, that without this tool, I would be spending a heck of a lot more time managing the blogs as opposed to writing at the blogs.
I made a quick intro video on how it works:
For additional demos, go here.
It is free for anyone to use. We only charge if you invite three authors or more to collaborate with you. And then it only costs $4/user/month.
Please let me know your thoughts. We can add features as you see fit.
Today, according to EarthCalendar.net, is Hot Dog day! More information at Hot Dog.org.
We have a theme at the Search Engine Roundtable and here is a screen cap of the top.
Thing is, religious Jews do not eat meat today.
Ask.com has launched a iPhone version of Bloglines...
It is available at i.bloglines.com. Here are some screen caps.
The Home Page:
Feed Summary View:
Viewing a Feed Item:
Pretty cool.
Maybe it is time to switch back to Bloglines now?
I actually wrote a pretty detailed write up on Comparing Google Reader to Bloglines: The Mobile Edition, maybe it is time to amend it.
Happy Blogiversary from the Wall Street Journal reports that blogging is now ten years old. Hmm... Ten years old.
We are approaching a decade since the first blogger -- regarded by many to be Jorn Barger -- began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: "I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis," and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word "weblog."The dating of the 10th anniversary of blogs, and the ascription of primacy to the first blogger, are imperfect exercises. Others, such as David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron Barrett, who started CamWorld, were alongside the polemical Mr. Barger in the advance guard. And before them there were "proto-blogs," embryonic indications of the online profusion that was to follow. But by widespread consensus, 1997 is a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence of the blog as a distinct life-form.
Video from Cory Doctorow and David Pescovitz of BoingBoing.net:
Ten years.
You guys know what I mean. If you get an email all in CAPS, then you know it was written by a novice. If you get a blog comment written in all CAPS, you know it was written by a novice or written to show some form of expression.
I just never get the reasoning behind the all caps writing style.
Is it that some people just have their caps locks key stuck? Is it that some people think you are more likely to read their email if it is all in caps? Is it because people like the style of all caps? What is it?
This is my first blog post written completely on my new iPhone. This phone seriously rocks
I was not able to do this on my treo.
Hey, I am also listening to the ipod!!!!
According to a 13 question test I just took, I am 98% addicted to blogging...
Give it a try yourself at mingle2.com/blog-addiction.
But notice how they want you to link to <a href="http://mingle2.com">Online Dating</a>
I removed it, I am sorry.
Like I said in the past, we are in need of server upgrades and new hardware. A bulk of the stress on the servers come from the blogs we have on the boxes. The largest blog by far, is the Search Engine Roundtable.
So we need to upgrade the operating system, streamline the software on the boxes and then move over applications, such as this blog software, on new machines. This all costs a ton of money. So like my buddy, Shawn, did with his donate page, I thought I can take some ideas from him.
I have been writing on search since 2003. We do accept ads, but they don't cover all the costs, especially of this major server upgrade. So I am hoping to earn more money from a special Search Engine Roundtable Donations page.
Like Shaw, I am giving an advertisement on that page for anyone who gives $500 or more.
I also added a FeedFlare button to go directly to the donations page, so look for it on the main site under each post, or in the feeds.
Thanks for your support!
I was chatting with Caydel and he commented that he noticed the Search Engine Roundtable doesn't get as many comments has he would have expected. We get about 10 - 20 comments per day, which is a nice amount, but not like some other blogs - even like this one, that can get 10 or 20 comments on a single blog post.
We have a section that shows the most recent comments, it looks like this:
But to address his question, why don't we get a ton of comments? I believe the main reason is because since day one, I didn't want the forum owners and moderators to feel that I am poaching on their communities. The whole premise behind the Search Engine Roundtable is to report on the most interesting and popular search marketing threads. We did not want to take away from that discussion, but rather point people to it.
Virtually all our articles start with a link to the forum thread and then end with "Forum discussion at [Forum Name Goes Here]." The last piece of advice we give, is go to the forum thread, read it and debate the topic there. Of course, we have comments open at the Search Engine Roundtable, but we do not want to take away from the discussion at the original forum thread.
I hope that clarifies that question a bit. Does it?
The July 2007 edition of Wired Magazine has me on the cover. No Kidding... Here is a scan of the front page.
Still don't believe me? Here is a picture from an angle on my camera.
Now you believe me?
To be honest, it is no big deal at all. Why? Remember the Make Wired Your Own campaign I mentioned back in March? No? Well, they had a promo, for the first 5,000 people to send in a picture and had a subscription, they would put your picture on the cover of Wired.
So, I am one of 5,000 people.
The picture I sent them was a cropped version of me visiting Mini Israel.
I have this awards page on the Search Engine Roundtable where I put the various awards the blog has one, and some select testimonials from those people in the search industry that have a name.
Tim Mayer, of Yahoo, the Vice President of Product Management at Yahoo! Search, just gave me a testimonial to use on the blog.
Search Engine Roundtable is one of the very few blogs I check several times each day for search industry news. Barry's timely news posts and accurate, concise insight quickly keeps me up to speed on all things search. Whether you’re an SEO, SEM, search engine employee or just someone who follows search, I highly recommend you read Search Engine Roundtable.
Wow - thanks Tim!
More about Tim? Well, he is an old man, when it comes to search... A great bio is at PubCon:
Tim brings over 10 years of search experience to Yahoo! with previous roles at Overture, FAST Search & Transfer, Inktomi and Thomson Corp. Tim was previously Vice President of Web Search Products at Overture where he led the product direction of the web search product as well as managing the major web search affiliate partner relationships. Prior to Overture, Tim was Vice President and General Manager of the FAST Web Search division including the core search technology and the alltheweb.com search destination. Before FAST, Tim spent two years leading product management and product marketing in the web search division at Inktomi. Before entering the web search area, Mayer worked at Thomson & Thomson as the project manager of the SAEGIS and NameStake search platforms.
Other testimonials I have are from Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land), Brett Tabke (WebmasterWorld), Gary Price (Ask.com & ResourceShelf), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), and Andy Beal.
Who knows, maybe Matt Cutts of Google would give me a testimonial? Maybe?
An other cute little widget to add to your blog... Bubble Guru, provides a little interface to easily record a little video of yourself that you can place on your site. It basically pops open a bubble, when activated, and speaks and shows your message.
To record, there is a built in interface that allows you to record and edit your video.
Give mine a try by clicking...
Nice find Andy!
Removed because it keeps popping up.
I get this strange handwritten envelope, that appears to be from the U.K. placed on my desk this afternoon. I cautiously open it up, finding it strange to be getting a handwritten letter from Europe and notice it was a letter from Glen at Viper Chill.
Instead of emailing me, he sent me a physical letter via the post.
How weird? A blogger sends a snail mail piece instead of email? Well, it caught my attention, enough so to blog about it. :)
Why did he thank me in the letter? Well, I answered a question for him on how RustyBrick got started, which he posted on his blog.
Your welcome Glen and thanks for the letter.
FYI - I believe Glen is a young one - but that is cool.
Judah, who comments here often, is a client of mine. He does sales at a family run diamond shop, where I actually bought my wife's ring.
In any event, I just love the work they do. They invest a ton of time and resources into their content and site and value their brand name and customers as much as I do.
A couple weeks ago, he and I were looking into video editing software. He wanted to use video to help demonstrate the value of the diamonds they sell. He went with Vlog It from Adobe and it looks outstanding.
Check out this video he just made on how to buy diamonds online:
I wish they had this software for a Mac. I know, I can use other forms. I may give some a try.
You can see more of Judah's content at their blog at Diamond Vues and more videos at YouTube.
Great work Judah -- do you do weddings and bar mitzvahs?
Normally, I would get up the theme the day of the special day. But I typically forget to do it until late, if the day falls out on Sunday.
So I just put the theme live at the Search Engine Roundtable. Here is a preview.
Ever since Google bought FeedBurner I have been receiving many more ad requests. FeedBurner powers my RSS feed, the big orange icon that looks. In fact, if you are reading this blog and 14 other blogs and you are not using RSS, you should be shot (just kidding).
In any event, FeedBurner manages my RSS feeds. Part of that is that they manage the ads, the annoying ads, that you see in my feeds. Note, I don't put ads in my Cartoon Barry feeds, just my Search Engine Roundtable feeds. The ads look like these:
I get to approve all submissions. I select which ads to approve based on the dollar per CPM.
More about FeedBurner ads at http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/advertising.
You can see how they look in your feeds over here.
Anyway...
Ever since Google bought FeedBurner, there seems to have been a surge in the number of advertisers on the system. This is not surprising. Google can make any company extremely popular overnight.
Also, FeedBurner's ad stats are pretty damn cool.
Yesterday Insomniac gave me a tip on a Google Video security problem via chat. I told him it sounds very interesting, but I wanted him to start a thread in a forum, this way I can blog about it at the Search Engine Roundtable. I.e. I didn't think it was Search Engine Land material, but I thought, with a thread, it would be good Roundtable material. He went ahead and posted the thread under his second alias, Entriple, at DigitalPoint Forums and I had Tamar keep an eye on the thread development. Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal got a tip of the thread and blogged it up before I had a chance. Side note: I give Loren kudos for getting to it before me, you win some and you lose some - and Loren is a standup guy!
Now to the point of this blog entry...
Loren hit Digg popularity with his blog post. He probably received at least 20,000 unique visitors from Digg on the story.
So I asked Tamar to tip off Slashdot with the story, she did and they actually covered it at Google Privacy Quickies. We received about 3,000 visitors so far from that link on Slashdot. Slashdot historically has not sent that much traffic to us. I did document once in the past another /. we got and that only sent a bit over 3,000 visitors.
Digg totally blows away Slashdot for traffic, based on the numbers I have seen. Some Diggs get us over 70,000 unique visitors and the traffic then keeps coming.
I have been very active in many discussion forums in the search industry over the past several years.
At the SMX conference, Danny joked in the last session that I may go into a forum, under an alias, spill the beans on that session, so that I can blog about it. I.e. I won't blog about things that are not public, more about that at my Search Engine Roundtable Code of Ethics.
Just in case some people didn't think Danny was joking, I want to clarify my position on creating multiple aliases to disguise myself.
I have never created multiple aliases to hide my name at these forums. I never plan on it either. I only participate under one alias, and that is under the name "rustybrick." I have created other accounts to protect other names, such as my personal name and blog name, but I do not post under them. In addition, I have set up test accounts at my own forums, but those are just test names for testing purposes.
There are many people I know that set up aliases in forums so that people won't know who they are. I have nothing against people doing that. But I have never done that, nor do I ever plan on doing that in the future.
Side note: how about use of that image for a post like this. ;-)
Not sure why I didn't add this earlier. I am always counting up and down to figure out what time it is in California and Israel and London and many other places.
So I finally added several world clocks to my dashboard on my Mac.
I have seven of them across the top of my dashboard, but I broke them up in two here so you can see them all.
Don't know how I lived without these clocks.
I.e. I get news stories that are embargoed at 9PST or 9EST etc, this makes it a whole 5 seconds faster.
The last session of SMX is named Give it Up. The deal is, no one is allowed to blog the session until a month has elapsed.
Anyway, see the front row?
Well, those are some of the live bloggers.
Start with Tamar on the left in pink, then Matt McGee, then Lisa Barone, then skip, then Vintage Tub guy, then Matt Cutts, then Chris Sherman and then Vanessa Fox (hiding behind projector).
If you click on the picture, I added notes to the image, so you can mouse over it to play with those notes. Feel free to add to the image.
My Dad sent me Growing Up in Public from the Wall Street Journal (used Google News link so you can see it for free) just minutes ago. This is me.
Watch Jason Fry's video on his article. I love the ending that talks about how an HR person now finds it more out of the norm for a person not to come up for a Google search than to come up for one. In fact, some HR folks would consider it a bad thing.
Recently today Google confirmed that they bought FeedBurner. I was asked to join a conference call with Susan Wojcicki, Vice President, Product Management, Google and Dick Costolo, CEO and cofounder of FeedBurner on the acquisition.
So I did.
I am not going to explain what FeedBurner does, the Google Blog did, so I will quote them...
For those of you who aren't bloggers, podcasters, or feed creators, Chicago-based FeedBurner is a leading provider of feed distribution and management tools. A web feed is a way for online publishers to syndicate their content and deliver it straight to readers. Each day, FeedBurner delivers feeds to millions of users around the world and offers unique and useful tools for publishers to analyze, optimize, and monetize their content. Further, FeedBurner offers a feed advertising platform for advertisers to reach engaged feed readers through targeted in-feed ads and innovative techniques like RSS feed-driven ads.
Now, I know Google pretty well from both a business and technical standpoint. I also know FeedBurner pretty well, mostly from a technical standpoint (since they don't talk much about money, being private and all). So I had many questions, all pretty technical on how the two will be integrated. How the branding will be changed, if at all. How this may impact not just advertisers but also current publishers. I was thinking privacy issues, with controlling so many feeds and also the Internet. I was thinking, how this will change the AdWords interface and the AdSense interface. How might Google Analytics bring in FeedBurner stats. How much deeper you can get on the stats if you know their readership from feed to feed then to site to site and then from ad to ad and then from Google Checkout to Checkout.
But then I started to listen to the questions from the other "press" on the call. People from this and that publication, I believe even the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, etc. were all on the call. All the questions were focused around money, revenue, timing, you know all things that will impact the stock.
So I scaled back my questions to just a feel. I think Dick Dick Costolo appreciated my questions. But many, they could not answer yet, because it was just too new to even put down on paper, I assume. Anyway, it was interesting to ask or even think of questions that were a bit too technical for an acquisition briefing conference call. But I am looking after the small/medium advertiser and publisher, not the people who buy the GOOG stock.
Benjamin Pfeiffer of RankSmart.com and the Senior Editor of the
Blogging My Life...
