One Compromise, Two Systems

Hong Kong: A fine place to shop, buy jade, and deny contradictory systems. I wonder if Google likes jade, too.

Dear Product Manager: Use. Your. Words. Open Letter Number 1.

Ever few weeks, I have one of the following 3 conversations about keywords with a product manager:
1) "My words should be doing better"
2) "I don't want to use those words"
3) "Oh, I forgot about those words when I updated the content"

Let's start with number 1. Usually this is a fantastical choice of words, like 'software' or 'productivity' or 'do more with less'. These words have no bearing the specifics of what the product does. So please pick the Goldilocks words - not too competitive, not too low in volume. Not something filled with .edu and .gov results, if you domain is new, etc. Are you really chasing reasonable keywords?

Then there's how well this word is meant to do. Sometimes people think a category term (think task, basic function, how you describe something in 5 words without using the word; isn't there a game show for that?) should drive 30% of their total traffic. Or that an unlimited amount of keywords can drive to the same destination page. Or they think the traffic should come from search 90% of the time. What if the algorithm changes? Isn't there a little thing about chickens and hatching that reminds you not to do that?


The best approach is to either commit to reasonable keyword research or trust someone who knows how to do it. Don't pick them from the air, or your SEO will be bawling in a corner. Next, pick your favorite of a baker's dozen and use it ruthlessly for several months. Only aim for 2 if you felt like you might be low-balling against the competition. Aim higher once you get more links. Iterate. Adjust. It's evolution with words.

Google Gives China the Hard Word, May Cut Google.cn

When I lived in Australia, a friend of mine introduced me to the phrase 'give the hard word'. It's shorthand for the relationship ultimatum, usually when the woman tells a guy that if they don't get married, she's gone. It seems like that's pretty much what happened with Google and China today.

It's been a rocky dating relationship. In early 2006, China agreed to censor its search results, but decided it would message that the results are censored - a demonstration that they did not agree with the policy. According to yesterday's blog author, who spoke on NPR today, they felt that their presence in the company would cotnribute to overall progress, and that eventually these silly rules would go away.



However, the couple got in a very big fight in December, the equivalent of tearing through all the bills, emails, and personal accounts: a cyberattack that looked suspiciously like the Chinese government digging up details on human rights activists. Ironically, the news couldn't be found on China's current top search engine, Baidu, today.

And now we come to the part that reminded me to put a 'my views are not the views of my company' on this blog: I think this is an excellent decision. It's ethical, even if it doesn't represent a highest revenue choice that clearly was reflected in the stock trading today (Google down, Baidu up). While it's much more likely that China will listen to a corporation than another government, it seems unlikely they will stand for this embarassment. But in my mind, and in the minds of hundreds of Chinese fans who put flowers in front of the Google China office today, it's one of the best things I've seen a company do for brand admiration.

When I worked for the Tibetan government-in-exile, you would see people arrive across the board and see how handing over an email address can result in grave harm. That's not something to be weighed against revenue potential.

Official Google blog post: "A new approach to China"

Breaking an Email Addiction

It's 10:30. I've been up for more than 2 hours, but something's completely different. I'm slightly twitchy from withdrawal. I haven't given up caffeine (I'd be sweating and glossy-eyed by now if that happened). But I haven't opened up email yet today, and that's a little odd for me.

As I cleaned out my email before the holidays, I thought the 0 inbox was as far as I'd go for my new year's resolution. Instead I've decided to finish 3 tasks before allowing myself into Outlook this morning: read a whitepaper, create a core team survey, and write this blog post.

A month ago, I would have switched browsers 5 times in the midst of this. I'd have written 10-20 emails by now. But today, I have all 3 target tasks done and I feel focused. Which, when you're not a morning person, is quite a lot.

I'm hoping I can keep this email delay habit up despite the usual triggers - waiting in line for casual carpool, arriving at my desk in the morning, whenever someone else checks email in front of me... let's see how it goes.

Universal Personalization: Now There's a Rollout Name

Google made a stealth announcement on December 7: the rollout of personalized search results. Google will now track individual search behavior for 180 days via cookies (previously held for 30 minutes) and feed historical site clicks into all new searches, regardless of whether you are logged into a Google account.

The implication is that Google search results will be increasingly different on individual browsers. To respond to this change, we’ll plan to evolve our SEO success measures to look at traffic and conversion in addition to cookie-free search rank results. I’m in the process of updating relevant guidelines.

A history-free rank order can still be tracked, but you might have less data on its percentage of total. New queries become more important because follow-on Google responses are built from previous click choices. Being #1 won’t mean as much; traffic & conversion become more relevant measures than rank. For known brands, I would expect to see more qualified SEO traffic over time. Less preferred players will probably spend more on paid search, which has fewer personalization rules.

More details:

· Google universal personalized search announcement (Google)

· A more in-depth review & detailed instructions on opt-out (Search Engine Land)

What To Do, Kathmandu

Since most of this month entails airplanes and Asia, I only have two things to say. One, I love that I can use search to find user ratings & locations of vegetarian restaurants in places like Hong Kong, Madrid, and Buenos Aires. Or maybe I just love combining search, travel and food in the best way possible.

Here’s the view from the road to town, next to the guesthouse where I stayed Nepal:

I’m still waiting for the images of the best Engrish-language menu ever (includes groupings like Chow Mein: What About It?).

Why Search Is More Important Than Social (For Now)

I sometimes forget to include basics about search in a lot of my documentation. I have to remember to add it back in later. I figure after years of babbling about the difference it makes, and showing people the traffic increases, I might not have to go back to the basic business case. But this is foolish, because whenever I have to explain the anatomy of a search page and clarify paid vs. organic search, I’d better back it up with the reason the listener should even care.

For any company, you should care because more than 15 billion searches are performed every month – just in the US. You should care because 80% of web visitors start with a search engine in their browser. You should care because Google is always the top web site globally.

For Autodesk, the reasons are the significant percentage of global traffic that arrives through search. Tons of users looking for tasks, not just brand – the long tail for SEO counts for millions of keywords and millions of visitors. As much as I love social, these types of numbers make a difference: