Competition Sparks Questions

I decided to do a competitive analysis of related sites in the market. I was a little amazed at some of the findings.

Granted this is preliminary and requires further research, but based on some of the text ads I cannot believe these companies are even in the running.

In the Top 10 results on Yahoo! for a select keyword 2 of the top 5 had bad punctuation, incorrect capitalization, and pretty bland ads.

Another placed this claim: The Truth about Search Engine Marketing /
Is Search Engine Marketing for you? Read our honest review and...

A little forced maybe? It draws questions in my mind that the others did not immediately. Questions such as, who are you to say what's honest? Why should you be trusted? Just who wrote this "honest" review? What credentials do you have to even give such advice?

My belief is that an ad should intice wonderment, not skepticism and doubt. Sure these are questions to be asked once on the site and evaluting the company about their services, but to ask them before even seeing the site or speaking to anyone seems like they've missed their mark.

This one provides an interesting quarantee.


Get top rankings in 28 days... OK, but these must be PAID rankings, right? And at what cost to the client?

This one blows me away. I had to go to the website to see if it explained further and, yes, they do mean doorway pages.


I guess they are suckering people into believing doorway pages are still OK practice and reaping the benefits. I just hope most consumers are smart enough to do a little research on the products and/or services they shell out big bucks for prior to purchase or signing the dotted line. It would save a lot of us some grief. Especially since practices like creating doorway pages and hurting client sites leads to a bad wrap for us true SEMs.

July 5th Update

After a long holiday weekend it's back to work. What a brilliant concept it is for taking off Monday before a holiday. Working retail in years past and for a medium sized company the last few years I've never known the concept. Taking days off just because there's a holiday near? Odd, but I'll indulge!

In the news:

Germany has announced it is worried about the reign of power search engines, Google in particular, have in their market. The Big 3 hold 90% of all searches in Germany, Google shows it displays 70% of results. German government is being sited as the rightful regulator, however thus far search engines have voluntarily censored neo-Nazi and x-rated sites.

Marcel Machill, a journalism professor at the Leipzig and Dortmund universities, stated:

In the classic media sector this kind of concentration would be unthinkable. It is important not to let this power develop unobserved.

For more on this story read here.

Microsoft has announced it's delaying the release of Office 2007 until after the new year. Originally set to release prior to the holiday season Microsoft has opted to wait until the beginning of 2007. For a full line of features and an inside look at Office 2007 click here. I, for one, cannot wait to get my hands on this.

Oh, and in case you're not following the World Cup like the rest of the world, Italy beat Germany Tuesday to lead Italy to the Finals. This was Germany's first defeat in that stadium, but not surprising because Germany has never beaten Italy in the World Cup. It was an incredible game lasting 120+ minutes with no score until the 2nd overtime. I just wish Americans would get into the game like the rest of the world. What's our holdup guys?

Yet another Google lawsuit. This time KinderCare is crying over it's lost ranks in Google search results. Filing a lawsuit based on the lost results is no new feat. Hopefully this will pass. If all of us could file suits based on results we didn't like Google would be tied up forever and they wouldn't have time to do the important things, like better their search engine results so we can all climb happily to the top once again. Not exactly what I would illicit as a "top story" but CBS5.com believes it is newsworthy enough.

And in other news:

Clearwater fireworks were beautiful last night, as were Dunedin's and the rest of the Bay area displays visible from the Dunedin Causeway. Perhaps my favorite was sitting on the roll bar of my Jeep, with top down listening to the firework accompaniment provided courtesy of our neighboring viewers while they set off a display that must have taken weeks to create and hundreds if not thousands of dollars to pull off. Thanks guys. Watching the fireworks burst over Tampa Bay was amazing enough, but prior to the fireworks show we actually witnessed a water tunnel forming in the near distance. That probably took the cake, but it was an amazing night of festivities. I hope everyone else had a great celebration. I know my dogs are happy it's over though, not big fans of exploding vessels or tubes warning of flaming balls.