“We tend to take our time signing deals with stadiums as there just isn’t really any competition in the blimp messaging business,” says Bill Pmilb, Director of Dirigible Marketing at Goodyear, “We just never saw this coming – especially from an internet-focused firm like Google. They really caught us with our pants down on this one.” 

Google’s new mobile advertising delivery platform, or gBlimps, as they are being called, promise to offer clients even bigger audiences for their AdWords campaigns. If you already have an existing AdWords account, you don’t have to modify your listings at all, as gBlimps are designed specifically to display your existing text ads in their original format.

Google isn’t limiting customizability options either. Just like with other display ads, you can specify the height and location of the blimp, as well as the time you want the ad to run. You can even target special events like football games, outdoor concerts, meteor showers, and more.

While this may be great news for advertisers, Goodyear is contemplating a lawsuit. “I just don’t know why they would do this to us,” says Pmilb shaking his head, “We’re a good client of Google’s – we pay for ads and listings and everything… It may be the end of an era here at Goodyear.”

***UPDATE***

The Goodyear Blimp has come out with an official statement: “Contrary to some reports (cough, cough, Captico), we welcome the search giant to the aerial advertising world we pioneered more than 85 years ago. There are more events than we can cover. Colorado, for example, doesn’t see many blimp visits.”

To learn more, visit the Goodyear Blimp Facebook Page or Twitter account.

Here’s a sample of the code:

require 'speech'
audio = Speech::AudioToText.new("i-like-pickles.wav")
puts audio.to_text.inspect
# {"captured_json"=>[["I like pickles", 0.92731786]], "confidence"=>0.92731786}

Let us know if you have some interesting ideas for how to use this.

• Google & Bing said: Facebook public shares and Twitter tweets directly impact search engine rankings. An individual users influence also affects this.
• SEO is still under-invested. SEO surfaced links (organic listings) get 82% of clicks from the 1-2 billion searches on Google every day. Much more than PPC terms which only get 18% (People are ignoring the “ads” or paid listings). Yet 85% of budgets go to PPC campaigns, and only 15% on SEO (firms, consultants, software, etc.)
• Human beings search for really weird stuff. We really are unique snowflakes. The top 12,000 keywords only account for 18.5% of searches! 70% of searches are long tail odd terms.
• According to Google, 25% of searches that occur every month have never been seen before, have never been typed into Google before (10+ years).
• Google has happy searchers – despite what critics are saying. “Noise” or irrelevant returns are people’s biggest complaint. When asked, “How well do search engines help you find information?” 47% said Excellent. 42% said Good. 10% said Fair. 0% said Poor. 1% said Not Sure.
• Key SEO Principle: Accessible, good quality content.
• Avoid all-flash intros. They are the WORST thing to do for SEO. Search engines will not find you.
• Key SEO Principle: Keyword research & targeting. You have to target things people are searching for, and optimize your titles accordingly.
• Key SEO Principle: Link Building.
• Key SEO Principle: Social Sharing. Engage users on your site (social). Utilize social media and viral marketing.
• What Matters in Search Engine Rankings: 24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain. 22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page. 20% Anchor Text of External Links. 15% On-Page Keyword Usage. 7% Traffic and Click-Through Data. 6% Social Graph Metrics. 5% Registration and Hosting Data.
• Be Cautious: Don’t get jaded if junk ranks higher than you. Being the best knowledge source does not mean you will rank highest. Popularity is a big factor in SEO. You may not be best or brightest, but if people like you, you’ll do well.
• Remarkable SEO Tactics: Own and control your Link Juice. Google’s “nofollow” is a no-go now. (Rand mentions the #whatsnextdc website as a stellar example of consolidation and using link anchors wisely.)
• Take advantage of 301 repoints and Rel Canonical. (Rand recommends putting it on every page.)
• Find and fix the errors on your page! Save your SEO juice! There are free programs that can help you do this.
• Be a Link Magnet. Build a platform where users contribute on your site and give users an incentive to contribute. (Example: Quora.) Get influencers to guest blog for you. Use Embeddable content to make linking a default behavior. (Example: Vimeo.)
• You can “Skip the Normal Rankings”. Videos rank higher easily (submit video xml sitemaps). Get included in Google News. Images. Blogs. Social Circle. Rich Snippets.

Stay Engaged:

Follow the #whatsnextdc hashtag conversation on Twitter
Follow the Twitter list of attendees/speakers/sponsors/etc
Follow Captico’s Twitter Account
Connect with Captico’s Facebook Page

Related Articles:

• What’s Next DC Conference 2011 – Wrap Up: Marketing Best Practices and Social Media Takeaways
• Actionable Steps to Better Inbound Marketing Success by Brian Halligan, Hubspot
• The Future Shopper, How Offline is the New Online from Bryan Eisenberg
• A Project Manager at What’s Next DC: The Good, The Bad and My Hopes for Next Year
• What’s Next DC? Tomorrow’s Conference hopes to address that.
• #DCWEEK 2011 Dates and Registration Announced

• Takeaways from the Government Video Expo 2010 in DC
• Recap of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s “Tour and Tweet”
• Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference Keynotes by Beth Kanter, Allison Fine, Wendy Harman
• Digital Capital Week 2010 – “A Slice of DCWEEK”
• Digital Capital Week 2010 – Quotes from DCWEEK Gov & Org 2.0 Day
• Digital Capital Week 2010 – Quotes from DCWEEK Media 2.0 Day
• GoPromoIt.com – Discounts for sharing with your social network.

How Do I Get To In-Page Analytics?

To get to the new feature, Log-In to your Google Analytics account, select the website you wish to view analytics for (in this case I have chosen Captico.com), click “Content” in the left hand navigation, and then click “In-Page Analytics“. It takes a minute to load, but once it does, your website’s home page pops up with percentages all over it.

Features of In-Page Analytics

A cool thing about In-Page Analytics is that it can be viewed while browsing your site. The percentage bubbles shown all across Captico.com show what percentage of clicks each link on the page has generated. Hovering over a link with your mouse gives more information. If a bubble is dotted, it means that there is more than one link going to the same page, so those numbers will be the same. In-Page Analytics cannot currently distinguish between two differently located links on a page linking to the same destination, but they hope to add that feature in the future.

Just as regular Analytics can be broken down to show different sources of traffic and how those users interact with your site, In-Page offers visualization of advanced segments as well – broken down by keyword or source for example – allowing you to discover how different market segments navigate your website.

If you are logged into your sites analytics account, you can also view In-Page Analytics outside of the Google Analytics environment. Simply visiting your website in your browser opens up the same data:

What Is In-Page Analytics?

Google says: “In-Page Analytics is a report available from the Content section of your Google Analytics account. It enables you to visually analyze your website pages in order to assess how users interact with those pages, and helps you understand the answers to questions such as:

• Is my page layout optimal for what I want users to accomplish on the page?
• Are my users seeing the content I want them to see?
• Are my users finding what they’re looking for on the page?
• Are my calls to action motivating or visible enough?
• Which links are users clicking?

Beginning with your site’s homepage, you’ll see which links users clicked. In-Page Analytics can be navigated much like your site — that is, you can click on any link from your homepage. Once the new page is loaded, the corresponding data will be shown for that page.

• Additional benefits of this report include:
• support for image maps, where each linkable part within a single image can be tagged independently
• support for advanced segments
• availability of page-level information
• complete list of outgoing links”

Trevor Claiborne, a product marketing manager, warns users “In-Page Analytics is still in beta, so some things in the report may not work perfectly yet.”  Also, “In-Page is currently available for all English users of Google Analytics.”

Below is a video walkthrough of In-Page Analytics from the folks at Google…

Now, no offense to the famous, cancer-beating cyclist, but ranking number two in a search for ‘twitter’ strikes me as odd.

Lance Armstrong is a twitter heavy hitter (boasting 2,639,690 followers as of this posting) but he’s not the biggest or most well known twitter-er. Actor Ashton Kutcher, an infamous user, has more than double that at 5,669,290 but even he has been publicly knocked off his long-held-throne by pop stars Britney Spears with 5,813,523 and Lady Gaga with 5,995,300 rabid fans. Lance actually ranks 26th in the competition for Most Followers on Twitter! So what is it thats pushing him up so high?

There isn’t anything unusual about the return itself, its the same as what anyone’s profile would be if it showed up on a Google search result-

• The title: “Lance Armstrong (lancearmstong) on Twitter” — Lance uses his full name in the “name” section of his bio so that is reflected here, as well as for his twitter handle. Lance also has whats called a “Verified Account” meaning that the folks at Twitter have manually investigated and confirmed that this is indeed Lance Armstong – not some imposter- so this may help in his prominence, but I’m not sure…
• The description: “Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information. It’s easy to stay updated on … Love the ‘stache. about 3 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® …” — The description begins with text from twitter (a brief comment on what twitter is) which is located on the home page of Twitter which you see if you are not logged in (as pictured to the right). It then goes into an excerpt from the last tweet from Lance that Google has indexed, tells you he sent it from his Blackberry and that he posted it 3 hours ago (in reality it was 19 hours ago)

So I am left to believe that this ranking must be a result of popularity index and external linking. A lot of people are linking to Lance’s twitter page outside of Twitter, thus boosting it in Google’s ranking. Content on the web linking the two entities together and reliable sources sending traffic to one location is what Google looks for in determining relevance.

For example, check out this June 2010 article from CNN Entertainment - Conan starts Twitter feud with Lance Armstrong. The words “twitter” and “lance armstrong” are both in the title of a heavily trafficked blog as well as in the URL. The article links to Lance’s twitter page, and was spread across the web by readers, thus creating MORE links to Lance in MORE locations.

Also, Lance is well known for his “LIVESTRONG Foundation” and work with cancer research. Google gives more weight to .org .gov, and .edu websites so referral links from www.livestrong.ORG will boost a site more than a link from a .com site.

The team here at Captico ran the URL twitter.com/lancearmstrong through SEOMoz‘s tools and this is what I learned from their Advanced Link Intelligence Report:

• Lance’s Twitter account is linked to 31,506 times. Thats a lot of links!
• 1,938 different root domains (websites) link to his twitter account.

Moral of this story? Build links! Comment on other peoples websites and link back to your site, get yourself listed in directories around the web, post GOOD CONTENT that people want to share and will perpetuate for you, get involved in social media to make it easy for you to disseminate your information, and make sure you are optimizing the content on your website for search engines…

…or win 7 Tour de France’s and start a non-profit.

You may have heard about or come across the darkly funny (and fake) BP Twitter accounts that have been popping up since the April 20th, 2010 disaster occurred and hijacking and proliferating the #bpcares hashtag…

• BPGlobalPR is by far the most infamous (and actually ranks ABOVE the real BP account -which is verified- in a people search for “BP”) posting such tweets as: “We have begun the process of collecting our crude oil in biodegradable spill-proof containers: pelicans. #bpcares” and “Cleaning up oil spills is expensive. Buying judges so we can keep drilling? Relatively cheap. http://ow.ly/21W3b” .
• Then there is BPCares with regularly entertaining tongue-in-cheek commentary including: “There are rumors that people are upset with #BP. We would like to dissolve those rumors at this time. #bpcares” and “We will remove the oil from the ocean once we find a use for it. #bpcares”.
• BPcleanUpCrew is in the same vein, and there is even an account dedicated to poking fun at CEO Tony Hayward - Real_BP_CEO sharing things like, “For the record we did not hide information about the oil leak. We never bothered to gather the information in the first place.” and “Had a rough week so to cheer myself up I bought a Ferrari”.
• But not all of the BP accounts run by people other than BP are satirical. There are several protest accounts as well, including: BoycottBP, BeyondBP, and Boycott_bp_oil.

As it stands now, fake account BPGlobalPR has 175,533 followers, dwarfing the official BP Twitter account, BP_America, who has 15,713.

So how is BP responding to all of the “Twitter BP” competition? While many companies (and celebrities) might shut down a false twitter account (as it is a violation of Twitter’s terms of service), BP (knowing that the last thing they need is negative press for spending time and resources prosecuting a twitter user instead of focusing on oil cleanup) seems to be letting the whole thing slide. A BP spokesman simply commented, “It’s a shame, but obviously people are entitled to their views,” adding that the company is taking the spill “very seriously.”  Toby Odone, a spokesman at BP, told Ad Age: “I’m not aware of whether BP has made any calls to have it taken down or addressed. People are entitled to their views on what we’re doing and we have to live with those. We are doing the best we can to deal with the current situation and to try to stop the oil from flowing and to then clean it up… We’re looking at it and it seems to have a different logo on it now [formerly @BPGlobalPR used the standard BP logo, but then changed to a Black and White version]… People are frustrated at what’s happening, as are we, and that’s just their way of expressing it.”

To follow BP’s official Twitter news outlets, you can view: BP_America and Oil_Spill_2010. BP and others are using the hashtag #oilspill which you can also use to follow updates from anyone utilizing the tag (though at the moment, the top tweets containing #oilspill are all about dead birds…).

Suggested Reading:

BP’s internet response: the good, the bad, the ugly

Don’t Blame BP for Advertising on Google

The Oil Spill and BP’s Marketing Response

1. Go to Google Maps

2. Type in your field of industry and zip code and click “Search Maps” (For this example I have typed in HVAC and 21146 for Severna Park, MD) If I worked in HVAC in MD, I would now be looking at a list of my competitors on the left and a map of their locations on my right.

3. Click on a competitor. (In this example I clicked on “All State Plumbing Heating”) An info box appears over the location on the map where that company resides.

4. Click  “more info” located below their name and to the right of “Write a Review” in the info box. You are now taken to what amounts to a free website from Google for this company. [Be sure you have YOUR company listed like this!]

5. If you scroll down you will find a section entitled “More About This Place”. Here you see links where this company is listed on the web. The more links, the higher their ranking on Google. By clicking “More” I can view all of the relevant links that Google has found on the web about All State Plumbing Heating. This is your gold mine. You want to make sure that your company is listed on all of the sites your competitors are. Sometimes its as simple as claiming a listing on a public directory or submitting your company to one. Other times, asking your customers to review your services on certain websites will give you the boost you need. (In this example, HVAC companies who want to better compete with All State Plumbing Heating will want to get listed on:

• www.airconditioningpages.com/maryland/
• www.localconstruction.net/maryland/severna-park/
• www.constructionscope.com/maryland/severna-park/
• yellowpage.hirby.com/building-contractors_building-home-construction_maryland_severna-park,664532
• www.superpages.com/bp/Severna-Park-MD/

If this sounds like too much for you to be hassled with, don’t worry! Captico actually does all of this and more for our clients. Feel free to give us a call or stop by for a free consultation!

The Small Print: Writing User Interface Instructions
http://understandinggraphics.com/design/writing-user-interface-instructions/

• People assume certain things about the functionality of a website.  Generally, these can be noted as common interface elements (button rollovers, selected states, etc…)
• Mental models are “general ideas about how things work.”  Think of them like muscle memory in sports only with interactions on a webpage.
• Following common mental models prevents user frustration.
• Know your audience and tailor the user experience accordingly.
• Be precise without loosing anything important.
• Descriptive words on call-to-actions improve user experience.
• Avoid passive wet noodle writing.  State what should be done don’t ask.
• Margins and padding help define content grouping
• Be a font nerd.  Don’t deviate from your site guidelines.  Make fonts readable.
• A picture is worth a thousand words to the less savvy (illustrate how to’s in less obvious situations).
• Whenever possible make calls to action “personal” targeting your user directly.  When possible I would also use personal information that you have available.  Example: “Hey [username], welcome back”.
• Instructions should be freely accessible to anyone (508 compliance?).
• Always test your instructions with those who haven’t used your product.  Do they make sense?

How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/all/1

• Google is the web’s leading search engine, but they’re still making improvements to stay ahead of competition.
• Bing capitalized on Google’s shortcomings by getting access to things not directly crawlable by spiders (example: Flights by Faircast).
• Google is remains at the top for “public search.”
• Google has ability of contextual search and recognizes patterns (example: mike siwek lawyer mi).
• Google is more than just pagerank and includes: new algorithm, local connectivity analysis, constantly updating indexes, personalized results, updated web crawling, image/news/book/universal search, and real time searching.
• Pagerank is the process of establishing authority based on inbound and outbound linking.
• Holy grail is matching meaning and understanding the question being asked not just keyword combinations.
• Google is massive and hard to compete with due to scale and technical hurtles involved with search engines.

I started to think about this after scouring the web on behalf of a Client. I recently discovered that English to Latin Translation APIs do not exist. I checked Google, Systran, and Wardlingo and searched numerous blog posts related to the subject. Naturally me being curious like a cat, “I have a couple friends that call me whiskers” Will Ferrell-Harey Carey, I asked WHY! Why would anyone spend countless hours developing a translation API when Google either offers it for free or will in future!

This may open a can of worms, but with Google offering services for free (i.e. docs, apis, etc.) they appear to be blocking external innovation across multiple spectrums, especially vs. competitors. I say external because Google is by nature an innovative company, pushing web applications forward. I’ve heard software developers fear getting into a product war with Google, not because of technical merit and launching a great product, but because competing against a company that doesn’t have to charge anything is downright stupid.

So how can Google give away it’s products? It all comes down to online advertising. In most cases, individual Google apps rely on funding from the adsense division of Google. In their struggle to “Not be Evil” Google uses advertising revenue to push the cost of other products and services way down… to nothing.

I call this practice a Googleopoly , as they can price fix and go directly after competitors by offering a similar or superior product for Free (ex. Microsoft Office Suite vs. Google Docs). This is slightly different than traditional monopolies. Monopolies generally have the corner on a market, being the soul producer of a good or service. This monopolistic power, allows monopolies to set costs, below market value to drive away competition. Monopolies are also characterized by two factores: single seller, and market power. Google is not a single seller in the web application sphere, but it’s market power is undeniable.

Have a great idea/product? Is Google working on it in parallel? What value do you have in seeing it through, when you will have to compete against a free product. Yes, I agree that consumers are the beneficiaries of this, but in essence I feel that the business principals in play need to be discussed more. Long ago, I was taught, “the market sets the price ” but in Google’s case they are setting the price at nil and are unintentionally (or intentionally) destroying their competitors. All big companies can do this. They pick a competitor, highlight weaknesses then attack.

What do you think?

1. Get Listed in Google Local Business Center - Go to following URL and get your business listed in Google. Submission process is easy, follow Google’s steps and our steps below. Await verification code via phone or postcard and GET Listed!
2. www.google.com/local/add
3. Use Keywords in Company Description – Develop a list of 5 keywords that best describes your business and incorporate words into your company description. Do not spam it! Make content coherent and consistent.
4. Add Photos – Add as many photos you can to your listing and your company logo. When uploading files, be sure to optimize name of the file to match one of the main keywords you developed in Step 2.
5. Encourage Customer Reviews/Add Links Back – Get real customers to post reviews on your listing about products/services. Provide a link from your website for visitors to post reviews on your Google Local Business Listing page.
6. Add Coupons – Add coupons to your Google Local Business Listing and you are sure to move up in rank.
7. Add Videos- If you have videos, upload to YouTube and post a link to it in your Google Local Business Listing. Great way of increasing rank.
8. Enter as Much Detail Possible – Hours of operations, payment options, other additional details, etc. More detail equals better rank. Google’s local business center algorithm will view your listing as credible and serious.

You may also be interested in: A Tip for Better Google Local Business Optimization

Traditional Economic theory states that the reason a consumer acts or doesn’t act is incentives.  Incentives entice, bait, and give the user a reason to act or abandon.  Incentives also help a user stand out where all options seem the same.

One simple way for businesses to create incentives is by creating coupons through Google’s newly redesigned Local Business Listings.

For one of our recent clients, Denny Hamlin’s Speed Wash, we added basic information, location, hours, and pictures to create a great consumer experience.

Doing so lets the consumer trust the site, see the business for themselves, find directions, anything possible to get the user to visit.

To give the consumer and extra nudge, we created a coupon with the listing

.

A user now has an added incentive to visit the business!  We can even A/B test different aspects of the coupon.  The amount of the discount, the call to action, and many other variables.  A simple coupon can help your business stand out and drive consumers to your business.