Marketing Tom - Internet Marketing

Seth Godin on Blogging

Clickz have just published an interesting article on Seth Godin and blogging - Questions for Seth Godin - which coincides with the launch of his latest book, All Marketers are Liars. Here is one of the questions that they asked in their 'interview' with him

Q.What sorts of lie do you think interactive media is great at telling? Which lies does the Web fail at?
A.The key word is "interactive." The Web is particularly bad at the vernacular of solidity and trust. You can't do with pixels what you can easily do with marble and pillars and arches. On the other hand, when the Web connects one human to another, it's quite powerful. Send an e-mail to a powerful blogger or author or executive or politician and get a note back in ten minutes... that has an impact that will last forever.

Interview with John Zagula of Marketing Playbook

The Marketing Playbook is one blog that I keep coming back to - probably since its launch last year. It offers a good mixture of interesting, marketing-related articles but there's more to the blog as the Marketing Playbook is also a widely read marketing book – both are written by two very successful and very readable, marketing guys: John Zagula and Richard Tong. Here is an overview of the book (in their words):

"Every company needs to figure out the best way to beat the competition. What do you do if the other guy is already dominating the market? Should you challenge them head on or lie low for a while? Should you offer your customers high-end features or a low-end price? Or both?

During their years at Microsoft, John Zagula and Rich Tong answered such questions so effectively that they helped Microsoft Office and Windows grow from a 10 percent market share to 90 percent market share. As venture capitalists, Zagula and Tong have continued to test and perfect their system with hundreds of companies of all sizes and at all stages"

Their blog is a great example of how blogs can evolve: initially, it was used as a brilliant PR tool – giving people details on the book, John and Richard’s signings, interviews and even information on the book’s ranking on Amazon; whereas now it discusses a multitude of business issues.

I was so interested to see how the closely linked the blog and the book were, that last month I emailed John Zagula and invited him to take part in a question-and-answer session for Marketing Tom. John kindly agreed and I think that people will find his answers very illuminating and educative. Let me know what you think.

How did you get the idea of building a blog?
From people much smarter than me. Being a blogger started before we wrote the book.  I was turned on to blogging by my colleague and co-author Rich Tong and colleague John Ludwig.  They both have very cool blogs in their own rights The Ludwigs and Tong Family They also created a blog called Geek Fishing .  This is an informal site for the people in our company, Ignition Partners,to share interesting technical things they are finding out about.  The name of that blog came about because another colleague Adrian Smith built his own wireless web camera to check his crab pots from the shore.

My first blog was actually just an ongoing pile of stuff that interests me www.zagula.com It was only after we discovered not only that we were getting addicted to blogs as sources for our info but also that all of a sudden we had become recognized web authorities on topics like bike sprockets and the obscure German designers that we thought maybe we ought to use a blog in concert with our upcoming book.

Did you start a blog basically to promote the book or was there some other reason? Marketingplaybook.com was definitely started in concert with our book of the same title.  We started it though even before we had finished editing the book.  It was a great way to put down an outline of our basic concepts – the 5 plays, the ABCs of the playing field, and the XYZs of positioning, etc - and then to start tracking how current events related to these. 

One of the most fun things to do was to watch the plays that companies in all kinds of industries were running now and how they were running them. Since then the thing has taken on a life of its own. Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void had a great way of describing this whole process – that the book itself was just the beginning. That all products are conversations. And this was of course true with the book.  One of our fundamental goals is that the whole idea of a marketing playbook is that it is YOURS and that you use the basic principles to build your own playbook for your own playing field. Well, Hugh saw this as:

"a marketing book whose main message is transmitted through the actual marketing of itself… It's not just that the medium becomes the message, it's that the message also becomes the medium… the book project was conceived not primarily as a commercial enterprise, but a way to "spread pollen" and start conversations with all sorts of people. No different than blogging."

How powerful a tool has the blog been in helping to spread word of the book?
Terrifically helpful. It is really cool to see blog entries from places like Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, and China talking about the book and its concepts.  Clearly it is a super simple way to give folks a summary of the ideas in the book and keep them up to date on what we are doing, thinking about, and what folks are saying about the book. And it has been great to see all the interesting marketing blogs out there share their opinions. Oh yeah, and it doesn't hurt that having a blog helps lift your rank in search engines either.

I will offer another of instalments of John's answers in the next few days.

Read Part 2 of the Interview with John Zagula

 

Have You Heard of the Long Tail?

If you haven't heard about the Long Tail, then you probably soon will - as it is one of the most bandied-about business phrases of the moment. The idea of the "Long Tail" was first coined by Wired's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson in a Wired article October of last year and refers to:

"how the mass market is turning into a million niches. The term refers to the yellow part of the sales chart [above], which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to services. The vertical axis is sales, the horizontal is products. The red part of the curve is the "hits", which have dominated our commercial decisions to date. The yellow part is the non-hits, or niches, which I argue in the article will prove equally important in the future now that technology has provided efficient ways to give consumers access to them thanks to the "infnite shelf-space effect" of new distribution mechanisms that break thought the bottlenecks of broadcast and traditional bricks and mortar."

The long tail doesn't refer to the hugely popular 'hit' books, CD's and DVD's which the large retail stores sell to cusotmers (usualy at hugely discounted prices) but the niche products which sell many times less. In a Guardian article on the Long Tail - entitled A Miss Hit - writer Jack Scofield highlights how the average American cinema has no tail, whilst things change greatly with DVD rentals and dramatically with online sales of DVD's:

"Sell movies on DVD, however, and the economics are different. A movie that wouldn't fill a local theatre can still sell 1,500 copies across America. And instead of making a couple of hundred movies available, like a cinema, a typical Blockbuster can stock 3,000 titles. Most sales will still go to the big Hollywood hits, but at least we can see the start of a tail.

Sell movies online and the equation changes again. On Anderson's figures, for example, Netflix offers 25,000 DVDs. The 24,000 or so titles in the tail may not sell many copies each, but they add up. (Most of Amazon's sales are of titles the average bookstore just doesn't have room to stock.)"

The Guardian article cites Amazon, eBay and Google as good examples of the Long Tail in action - the latter due to its Gogle Adsense programme. The Internet has proved to be a great enabler of niche markets and those products that appear at the other end of the tail. Here's a great example of the long tail in action (again from the Wired article):

"To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.

Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a "power law" demand curve that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for thetop tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the mount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.

The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country."

Dan Farber, writing about PC Forum - PC Forum buzzword alert: Long tail and Ecosystem - goes as far as to say:

"The longtail captures a key phenomenon enabled by the Internet that is the equivalent to the impact of the transportation system in the mid-20th century. The ability to expose and access all forms of data in a friction-free, low-cost manner via the Internet permanently alters hierarchies that ruled over the last millennium."

It still sounds like there's a place for the little man in online sales - now that can't be bad, can it?

Interview with Blake Ross of Firefox

Over at Red Couch, Shel Israel has a really interesting interview with Blake Ross, one of the key Firefox pioneers. It's hard to believe that he is still only 19! There are some pretty neat insights into how Firefox was able to gain so much global popularity from 'humble' beginnings. From a blogging perspective, it is interesting to see how he used the blog - first, as a tool which "chronicled our work on the fledgling browser" and, more recently, the blog has "served as a hub for a series of marketing activities."

Blake Ross describes in the article what he calls the buzz pyramid:

1. Long before the mainstream or the mainstream media heard about Firefox, the blogosphere was buzzing about it daily. The blogosphere, of course, represents just a tiny fraction of Internet users, so this is the apex of the pyramid.

2. The “intermediate media” hears the buzz at the apex and reports that “everyone’s talking about Firefox.” These are outlets like c|net that sit between mainstream media and personal websites, and indeed from their tech perspective, “everyone” really is talking about Firefox-.

3. The mainstream media hears the buzz among the intermediate media and again carries the story that “everyone” is talking about Firefox. “Everyone” is still the blogosphere, but in the context of ABC, USA Today and other mainstream outlets, people interpret it to mean, well, everyone. ....

4. Word spreads throughout the mainstream and mainstream media continues to cover the story, propagating the word further. A growth cycle is created that Firefox has yet to break out of as the pyramid’s base grows ever larger.

It's interesting to see how a small minority of people could influence the many millions (26 million at last count) to download this browser. There are a number of keys to Firefox's success, but one of the main ones is its ability to give its community a number of tools that they could use to sell the product for them. The Spread Firefox website allows users the ability to download Firefox buttons, logos and other marketing tools; invites them to come up with the most original dipslays for Firefox and even offers them a free blog, where they can discuss the pro's and cons of the service.

It would seem that the company has truly embraced the Open Source Movement, from Open Source Software Development to Open Source Marketing.

Related Links
The Rise and Rise of Firefox
What is Open Source Marketing

Weatherbug uses Blogs to Gather Customer Feedback

I came across an interesting link today from the excellent weblog of Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba - Church of the Customer. They relate how the blog of WeatherBug invited its users to let them know how they used the application. For those of you who don't know about WeatherBug here's a brief overview (take from their About Us page):

WeatherBug is the number one weather Internet software application that streams live local neighborhood conditions and severe weather alerts to more than 60 million registered users. WeatherBug is ad supported, which keeps the application free. In addition, an “ad-free” version of WeatherBug, called WeatherBug Plus, is available for users for only $19.95.

On its posting - Why do you use your WeatherBug? - the company asks its users:

Why do you use your WeatherBug?  Is it deciding what to wear in the morning, scheduling your weekend plans, checking on vacation locations.....While you are at it, let us know what else you would like to see in WeatherBug and ask us anything.

It's actually great to go through the posts - 216 at last count - and see how much value the programme is actually giving to people. At the same time it is a fantastic marketing tool for WeatherBug which can be fed straight back into the development, and other relevant, teams at the company.

Yahoo! Set to Launch 360° - their New Blogging Tool

It looks like Yahoo! is set to launch a new blogging tool within the next month. Yahoo! 360° will initialy be made available to a restricted number of users from March 29th, having extensively tested the product in-house since last year. The new service will bring together Yahoo!'s existing services like IM Messaging, photo albums, local search and groups. The service is being touted as a 'Web log and social networking' service. Julie Herendeen, vice president for network services at Yahoo!, had this to say about the service:

"It's really about keeping connected to people you know," she said. "Yahoo 360 allows consumers to conveniently connect with the people they care about by creating and sharing blogs, photos and other content across Yahoo."

Herendeen said Yahoo had no immediate plans to add advertising to the service. Given the number of people who have Yahoo! accounts - 165 million - the company could bring blogging to a far wider audience. At present, though, it is unclear whether they will be pitching the product at the 'teen' market or at older users. Here is Michael Liedtke's take on it in the E-commerce Times:

Expanding into social networking and blogging marks another significant step in Yahoo's push to make its Web site even more essential to the personal and professional pursuits of its users.

The service is also meant to encourage Yahoo's most frequent visitors to create and share more content, a process the company hopes will attract even more people to its site. If it can increase its audience's size and give visitors more reasons to stick around longer, Yahoo would become an even more attractive marketing vehicle for advertisers.

If you'd like to take part in the public beta test, fill in the Yahoo 360°beta test form.

Via: Online Marketing Blog

Related Web Articles
Yahoo Tests Blend of Blogging, Networking (E-Commerce News)
Yahoo 360 takes spin through blogosphere (CNET)
Yahoo Gets Social (Red Herring)
Yahoo Finaly Hits Blog Scene (Internet News)

'State of the Blogosphere' from Technorati

Technorati boss David Sifry is writing an interesting series of reports called ‘The State of the Blogosphere’, on his Sifry’s Alerts blog - he posted on this subject in October at the Web 2.0 conference and, due to the dynamic nature of the industry, felt it was time for an update. Here are some facts gleaned from Technorati:

• 7.8 million weblogs on Technorati, and 937 million links
• this figure is double the number in October 2004
• the blogosphere is doubling in size around every 5 months
• in 20 months it has grown 16 times
• 30-40,000 new blogs every day!!

The article spends a fair bit of time discussing the impact that spam blogs have had on the industry and how Technorati is tackling the issue - the comments to this article also raise some interesting issues. The second instalment from David Sifry focuses on posting - here is a flavour:

It is interesting to note that posting volume suffered a decline during the months of November and December, 2004. A large part of this decline is the reduction in postings about US politics after the election in early November.

I must say I had a very positive user experience from Technorati last year. Unlike Search Engines Technorati, and other blog search engines, offer visitors real-time results. Post now and your article will be listed within a quarter of an hour. Within a short time period of having written an article about Technorati for this blog, I received an email from David Sifry thanking me for writing about his company and advising me that my site didn't work in Firefox (it does now!). Bloggers can be such nice people!

Making Money with Google's Adsense

USA Today posted an interesting article this week about the Google Adsense programme. Google's AdSense a bonanza for some Web sites lists a number of cases of people who have successfully used Adsense to generate a decent income, like Eric Giguère who is now writing a book about his experiences and Chris Pirillo, of Lockergnome, who reckons he is clearing more than $10,000 a month. This example is very much in the minority and tales of people making such large amounts are rare.

There remain others, like Search Engine Watch’s Danny Sulivan, who are a lot more cynical about the Adsense programme:

"This is a program that rewards people not for creating the best content, but for how to create sites to attract more advertising," says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch online newsletter. "AdSense has nothing to do with search. It effectively turns the Internet into a billboard for Google's ads."

 As with many other Internet phenomenons, like blogging, Google Adsense has also sparked interest amongst those looking to make a quick buck and “click fraud” is getting more of a problem for both Google and Yahoo! Click fraud ranges from getting your mates to click on adverts to programmes, called “clickbots” or “hitbots”, designed to click all day. John Batelle, professor at the University of California, blogger to boot (Searchblog), says that Adsense has:

built a "growing, extremely sophisticated offshore industry."

"There are more of these sites than you can imagine," he says. "The robots click on the ads and then none of the clicks turn into leads for the advertisers. That's not how it's supposed to work."

Comment Spammers Getting Smarter

One of the great things about blogging is that it allows you to share your knowledge and easily develop a network of contacts, often relating to the subject you most blog about. Tools such as comments, which let people know what you think about what they've written; trackback, that let other bloggers know that you have written about them and blogroll, which is simply a list of links to your favourite blogs, make blogging a great social and business tool. Jennifer Rice on her blog, What's Your Brand Mantra?, says that people on her Blogroll had one of 3 charactersitics:

[Number 1] "They participated on my blog through comments and trackbacks. They already established themselves as part of my community, and I thought they had some smart things to say. I've met many of them in person, and have probably had email exchanges with almost all of them. (or even hired them, as was the case with Johnnie)."

Unfortunately, blogs have also become havens for those looking to improve their search engine rankings the unethical way. Following the principle that Google likes links from websites with high PR's (5 or 6 and above), they are now leaving comments across the blogosphere. Initially, I had all manner of comment spam from porn, poker and peddlars of Japanese cars. It was obvious to spot them as their comments usually consisted of strings of keywords or incoherent nonsense.

Recently though, I have been receiving comments which actually comment on the article in question. Here are two examples:

Marketing Tom Article: How People Read Google Search Results
Author - Online Degree
Comment: Finally some real scientific results!  While many of us who have multiple websites at various positions on Google's pages 1 and 2 felt some of this to be true, seeing it confirms the theory.  Great Stuff!

Marketing Tom Article: Developing Links - part 2
Author - Dolphin Gifts
Comment: We should also mention that there are tools that facilitate this process of determining who is linking to your competitors. I won't mention any by name but they can be very useful.

Aside from the URL, the clear indicator that it was spam came from the fact that both the above had the same IP address and both were posted within a few minutes of each other. The worrying part of this is that these people are now taking their time to read articles and leave messages which seem to be legitimate. Which begs the question of whether their comments should be deleted. I took the view that they should.

Is Yahoo! Testing Rival to Google Adwords?

In the blogosphere this is actually quite old news (it appeared a couple of days back) but I just didn't have time to write about it. It looks like Yahoo! is testing a product to rival Google's Adsense. Silicon Valley Watcher reckons that this information came from an "informed source at Yahoo!". Furthermore, Andy Baio on his blog points visitors to the blog of Yahoo! product manager, Ken Rudman, which features contextual ads.

"His homepage shows the vertical two-ad format, monthly archives show a three-ad horizontal format, and individual entries show another variation of the horizontal format.  The ads have decent relevancy, especially considering its early state."

Andy has identified that the ads are served from a Overture server - further proof that Yahoo! are tesing the market?

How People Read Google Search Results

There's an interesting story on Search Engine Watch about how people view the search results on Google. The actual research itself was carried out by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools. The result shoudl certainly make marketers sit up and take notice.

It would appear that most searchers see information in the shape of an "F", with people's eye movements starting from the top-left of the search results and moving down, then jumping across to the right (where the first Google Adwords appear). Here are some of the results:

Organic Search Results Viewed:
Rank 1 - 100%
Rank 2 - 100%    
Rank 3 - 100%    
Rank 4 - 85%    
Rank 5 - 60%    
Rank 6 - 50%    
Rank 7 - 50%    
Rank 8 - 30%    
Rank 9 - 30%    
Rank 10 - 20%

Chris Sherman points out that though Organic Search Engine Marketing is far more popular with web searchers, many firms are ignoring its potential in favour of Paid Google Adword listings.

Original Source
Eyesite (Seth Godin)

On March 11th Arrange a Meeting

March 11, 2004. Ten bombs exploded on four trains during the rush hour in Madrid. More than 190 people died, almost two thousand were injured. It was one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in Europe in recent history. As in the United States of America on September 11 2001, it was an attack on freedom and democracy by an international network of terrorists. One year on, Madrid will be the setting for a unique conference, the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security under the High Patronage of His Majesty the King of Spain.

One year on Madrid is holding the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security (March 8th-11th). Aside from the King of Spain, its Prime Minister, Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton and other illustrious former world leaders, some well-known bloggers will also be taking part - people like Dan Gillmor, Joi Ito and David Isenberg.

On March 11th, people across Madrid and other Spanish cities will be marching to remember those who died.

The organisers of the event are also inviting people to hold meetings:

"Sit down with friends, family or colleagues, and reflect on what happened at Atocha station, what happened in New York, and in Bali, and in Baghdad."

If you hold an event, you are asked to take notes and send them through to the event organisers.

"After your meeting, we want to hear from you about what you talked about, what you think is really important in opposing terrorism and what you think of the Madrid Agenda. You can send us an email or fill in the form on our website. We will present those views to the Club de Madrid as part of the process of refining the Agenda over the coming months. Doing this will help make the Agenda relevant to people’s lives, and it will also make it clear to political leaders that the Madrid process matters and that the principles expressed have to be taken seriously."

Their downloadable pdf document offres quite a few suggestions as to what you should discuss and how to go about organising a meeting.

Why don't you get involved? Simply, go to the website and fill in the registration forms. Alternatively, let all your friends and peers know about the event .

Here are some thoughts: set up a blog, Skype friends and family, have a chat on Yahoo! or MSN Messenger, even do a podcast of the meeting you hold. Feel free to add your thoughts and should anyone wish to arrange a meeting, where people from Madrid could be present, please let me know. 

Harvard Business Review Cites Blogs as a 2005 Breakthrough Idea

Here's another recent article which focuses on how blogs are gaining power and influencing people. The Harvard Business review identifies 20 breakthrough Ideas for 2005 and in at number 10 comes Blog-Trolling in Bitstream. The article is written by Mohanbir Sawhney, from the Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and looks at the grassroots nature of blogs and how the rules of the blogosphere are different to those of traditional media. He eludes to the fact that marketers will find it "difficult to navigate this complex blend of advertising, content, dialogue, and public relations."

He's certainly right there and I believe that it will take tradional PR and Marketing people a while to adjust to this new medium. There are so many of them who are so unsuited to marketing online that they may never grasp, and/or be able to use effectively, this exciting new marketing channel anyway. Much like search engine marketing blogging requires site owners to focus on their target market and speak in their language.

Mohanbir identifies 3 areas which corporate marketers have to deal with:

"First, they must realize that the blogosphere is not just a place in which to advertise; it is a medium in which to participate. Marketers can join the conversation on influential blogs realted to their products or companies -or, even better, they can become bloggers in their own right by hosting blogs for customers.

Second, companies must try to cultivate bloggers rather than control them. Instead of making ham-handed efforts to influence bloggers, marketers should attempt to win them over by sharing information openly with those who write about their companies and by responding to the issues that are raised, even - especially - if they are negative.

Third, the blogosphere is fluid and ever changing. Ad buys will become more dynamic, as new technologies and modifed contract terms let marketers shift rapidly from blog to blog in pursuit of customers' fickle attention."

Effective use of RSS Feeds by Morgans Hotel Group

Whilst searching for hotels in New York, I was pleasantly surprised to see one hotel group, Morgans Hotels, making good use of RSS feeds to keep guests up-to-date on latest offers. Their 'Special Offers' page invites visitors to sign up to their RSS  Feed.

Not sure what a RSS Feed is? Well, here's how the Morgans Hotel group clearly put it:

"A news feed (also known as an RSS feed) is a listing of a website's content in a news-headline format. It is updated whenever new content is published to the site. News readers "subscribe" to news feeds (websites that provide the service), which means they download lists of stories at an interval that you specify (every 30 minutes, for example), and present them to you in your news reader."

And the objective of this RSS Feed?

"Morgans Hotel Group uses this method to make our users aware of the latest special offers, often exclusive to our site, as soon as they are released. There is no cost to receive the news feeds from Morgans Hotel Group."

Great stuff! Judging by a recent article on Robert Scoble's blog, he would be well pleased

Wall Street Journal says: "The Blog as Business Tool has Arrived"

There has been a huge amount of press recently about the rise of the blog. The Wall Street Journal is probably the most respected financial newspaper in the world and a couple of days back it featured an article titled: "Blogs Keep Internet Customers Coming Back". The story takes a look at blogs from a business perspective, describing them [rightly] as a new marketing channel and showing how they  can be used to "engage in direct dialogue with customers".

The article has a few good examples of effective blogs and they all seem to have one thing in common: their ability to humanise a company and give it personality. It would also seem that they have ALL contributed to increasing their company's bottom line.

Original Source
The blog as business tool has arrived (Larry Bodine)

Partial Indexing on Google

Every so often you will find that some of your web pages have not been listed fully by Google, this is called 'partial indexing'. And it happened to me this week. The Marketing Tom blog has around 253 pages listed on Google and yesterday it reported to me that around 60 of these pages were partially indexed. Let me explain the difference. This is a 'fully' indexed page:

Whilst this is a partially indexed page:

I don't want to go into great detail about the issues that relate to partially indexed pages but suffice to say that searches on Google will find the first example, but not the second. For me, this could mean that around 25% of my pages are redundant on Google.

What's the solution? Well, I could wait until Google indexes these pages again (don't forget it does have the URL but not the content) or I could try and help Google find the page again. In order to do this I need to create keyword links to these pages. Given the very nature of blogs I know that Google will firstly index my home page (www.marketingtom.com) within a day or 2 and it will later index the articles as their own individual pages with their own page titles. So, let's put some keyword links down:

The Curious Tale of Seth Godin, His Toyota Prius and Google Adwords

If you're a Google Adwords Advertiser, it would be worth your while popping over to Seth Godin's blog to hear about a recent experience he had with Google Adwords. It starts off like this:

I lost the keys to my Toyota Prius (actually, someone stole my shoes when I was skiing on the snow-covered bike path, and my keys were in my shoes, but that's another story altogether--why would someone steal my shoes?)

In order to solve his dilemma he thought he'd turn to Google. Typing in the search words "replacement key toyota prius", it appeared to Seth that one of the AdWords matched his criteria. However, his relief at finding the right match was soon tempered by the fact that the Toyota parts site he ended up at had no keys for a Prius!

Seth believes there are 2 problems here:

The first is that the company is too lazy to buy just the right keywords.

The second is that the web guys are probably not the same people as the folks who are buying the ads. If they were, the entire online buying experience would be centered around me and my need for keys, not them and their need to accurately describe the hierarchy of their store.

I'm sure we have all had similar experiences with Google Adwords and other forms of banner advertising . The truth is that both advertiser and visitor lose out from such an experience - the advertiser loses money through a wasted click and the visitor wastes their time and are forced to retrace their steps to find what they're looking for. As Seth points out in his article - it's not rocket science and Google even offers people advice on how to go about it: Google AdWords Support: What are keyword matching options?.

Put simply, when you enbark on a Google Adwords (or similar) campaign, you must succeed in taking your visitor to the destination page that matches their search criteria. Looking for Apartments in Sienna? Then take visitors to a page that has Apartments in Sienna and NOT to the Tuscan Apartment Page.

If you can't exceed people's expectations, you should at least match them.

Interestingly, it would appear that this Adword is no longer being displayed on Google. Ah! the power of blogs.

Technorati's Top 100 Blog List

If you want to know what is going on in the world of blogs, you should make your way over to Technorati. Technorati is a "real-time" blog search engine, which measures the pulse of the blog world every few minutes. Unlike Google, where the spider will index your site every 24 hours (at best), Technorati's search engine will update your blog listing within minutes of posting.

Here is the Top 10 from Technorati's Top 100 List of "most authoritative blogs, ranked by the number of sources that link to each blog."

1. Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things    18,705 links from 11,822 sources
2. Instapundit.com  14,336 links from 9,351 sources
3. Gizmodo  9,802 links from 7,595 sources
4. Photologs and MoBlogs: Buzznet  97,049 links from 7,485 sources
5. art  10,406 links from 7,438 sources
6. Davenetics* Pop + Media + Web  7,547 links from 7,390 sources
7. SuicideGirls > Girls > Ciel  8,052 links from 7,160 sources
8. Penny - Arcade  7,873 links from 6,844 sources
9. Daily Kos  9,869 links from 6,825 sources
10. eBaum's World - Media For The Masses - funny videos, flash games, jokes, clean humor, hilarious flash, funny pics, office humor  9,290 links from 6,347 sources

Hell, in the time it has taken me to write this article, Technorati has already  updated this list!!