EightBlack.

Well, there goes that opportunity. I don’t know who I am going to bag now.

You see, all those over priced digital agencies who were primarily responsible for those completely irrelevant SWF (Flash Files) are now no longer an easy target. No more lack of total respect by the SEO fraternity.

Those files are now able to be seen by Google (and Yahoo!).

Most SEO practitioners treated flash files with the contempt it deserved. But no more.

Being seen is one thing. Being ranked is entirely another. But at least its a start.

Techcrunch has more here and Adobe’s official line is here.

Bravo.

Not that any serious website owner should take note of it anymore, but PageRank is one of those “vanity” things. Reassurance to your own self that all your hard work has paid off (if you’re a blogger) or a webmaster.

That little green indicator at the top of your browser (which by the way you have to install) causes more arguments and blog posts in the blogosphere and forums than you’d care to count.

A high PageRank number alone has little to do with traffic, engagement and total content.

It’s also no indication, if you’re an advertiser, that you should pay more on a site with high PageRank.

Having said all that, I smiled just a little this morning when I discovered this humble blog growing by one more peg on Google’s radar.

Means nothing to you. And will mean nothing to me once I’ve had lunch and something alcoholic to drink.

The only numbers we should be looking at are the numbers that our web analytics interface shows us. Period.

Singapore is a wonderful place. I should know. I lived there for 5 years. An innovation hothouse though it is not.

Apparently, a very eccentric arm of the all encompassing government - the Agency for Science, Technology & Research has offered a US$100K prize for the individual or team who can deliver the “mother of all algorithms” to the Lion City within 8 months.

The task is pretty simple really. From the agency website…

Contestants are required to create a search engine that can identify search terms found not only in text within websites, but in music and video files as well.

How hard could it be? You could probably even post the project on Elance or Rent-A-Coder.

What a croc.

Last week the Singapore Government just sent US$5 billion to Merrill Lynch to give them a bit of a hand with their balance sheet. That’s a gamble not even the most hard core punter in a casino would take now, given the blood on the floors of every trading room on the planet over the last 24 hours.

But it’s the sort of figure that would be needed in todays term to get anywhere near Mountain View.

If any government wants to get serious about the search space, $100 grand wont buy the meals and coke (ie the drink) that the programmers would need.

And anyway, after all of 13 people have submitted something, what the hell will the government do with the code? Look at it. Maybe play with it for a bit.

Lets be serious for a moment. The government (any government) has no business being in the search space. They cant possibly expect to compete. Or win.

If Singapore allowed free speech and had a free press, this would make great material for tomorrows comic strip.

In the meantime, I’m off to hire a group of coders from a small middle eastern country and a little town in India somewhere…I’ll let you know how I go.

I always get a chuckle when I look at Google’s annual compilation of “most searched topics” or most popular themes for the year. While the “zeitgeist” is far from representative of the global population, it just shows that there are way too many people with way too much time on their hands.

For example, I’m not sure why people are searching for the term “Chinese New Year” when it’s a safe assumption that it is exactly what it refers to. Anna Nicole Smith - (and I know we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead), but seriously, she was yet another small slice of what’s wrong with America.

It baffles me why people are searching for the “IRS”, the US equivalent of our ATO (Australian Tax Office) when in fact, all we try to do for most of our working lives, is avoid them altogether. It’s a bit like searching for “prostate exam”. You know it’s painful, why confirm it in writing?

I could go on. But I’m starting to lose the will to continue typing…

From the Google Zeitgeist home page:

Zeitgeist Explained

zeit·geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-”gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

The 2007 results must have put a smile on Steve Jobs face. The most popular search term, both in the US and globally was the ubiquitous “iPhone”.

Here’s the fastest rising list - both US and global.

The reference to social networking and video sites should be no surprise. But it should also prove to you that both mediums are no longer “fads”. Ignore at your peril.

As a parent, I can understand the “transformers” listing - and I reckon my 7 year old son was responsible for half the queries to come out of Australia alone!

You can check out the Zeitgeist in all it’s glory here. I’m actually writing to Google now as we speak, as I am convinced they’ve made a monumental error.

There was no reference to the Collingwood Football Club. Maybe they ran out of server space…

* All images courtesy Google 

Fast is one of those companies that a lot of us probably have never heard of.

One, they’re based in Oslo, Norway. And second, they’re essentially in the “enterprise search” space, meaning they want customers who are big public companies with big budgets and who won’t collapse when they receive their first bill for services rendered.

Ok, I’m being harsh. By all accounts, Fast are a very slick outfit.

And as of yesterday, the founders and shareholders are now US$1.2 billion better off. Because that’s the amount they just accepted from Microsoft.

For some strange reason, I would have thought they were worth more. Their intellectual capital, human capital, sheer focus and global coverage is extremely impressive. Maybe there’s not much to spend $1.2 billion on in Norway…

Anyway.

Fast is the same company who built the search engine technology for Sensis.com.au.

Good on Microsoft for getting this deal done. It’s a perfect fit given Microsoft’s firm grip on the corporate and enterprise market and it’s probably Redmond’s most important search related acquisition to date.

And shame on Google for not getting in there first.

I gotta say first up that I actually really enjoyed this session. I’ll also say straight up that I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft nor Steve Ballmer, only because I think that after 30 years of making software - they still can’t get it right. With 80,000 employees and $23 billion in the bank, it just shouldn’t take 5 years to release a new version of software. And it certainly shouldn’t be hard to use. Think about it logically - to shut Windows down, you have to go the “start” icon.

And maybe, unfairly, through several parts of the media - Steve is portrayed as an arrogant prick. Which he can be.

Not all billionaries are though. John Doerr is a perfect example of a guy who is so passionate and endearing, that he redefines charm and charisma (more on him later).

If the majority of us, whether we be corporate or personal users, only use 10% of what a Windows application is capable of (like Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint), then why can’t Microsoft make a “Windows Light” version. A version which doesn’t crash, which doesn’t require one whole gig of RAM to operate well and one that’s as intuitive as any Apple application.

Anyway.

John Battelle jumps straight into the interview and asks Ballmer how’s the financing going for Facebook. He deflects the question like a seasoned pro, obviously knowing a whole lot more than he’s prepared to let on in front of 1200 rabid industry folk. Apparently, according to multiple blogs, there’s an all hands meeting at Facebook tomorrow (Tues US time) where it’s rumoured that an announcement will be made re the next step at Facebook as far as funding is concerned.

Something just tells me that Google has to be involved somehow - and it’s got nothing to do with the fact that I was at Google late Friday afternoon last week and heard a few whispers. Sadly, the whispers were about something else.

Back to Steve. He was relaxed, even as Battelle started to probe about search. And this is when, while he erupted, he erupted in excitement and flair, which is classic Ballmer. It’s also where respected news agencies such as the Associated Press got it all wrong and had to retract a story, whereby they indicated Ballmer referred to Google as a “precocious tot”.

In fact, he was referring to his own set of kids at Microsoft. Not Google.

It was a little funny, as Battelle started to talk about search and Steve’s “one trick pony” comment, Ballmer still refused to actually refer to Google as Google. He’d rather just say “the leader in search”.

Battelle went on, “Let’s talk about search. Is it one of those kids who you privately take out the back and smack on the back of the head and say “Do better in school, Jimmy…”"

Ballmer’s response caused the audience to cheer wholeheartedly. Even the harshest of critics would have had a smile on their face. The footage is here - at the 21 minute mark of the Battelle/Ballmer interview. It’s worth watching.

Click To Play

I will say this about the whole interview. Ballmer is good. He’s insightful, he’s determined beyond what’s normal, he’s got a solid grasp of what’s going on in his own company (even at 80,000 strong employees) and he wants to win at all costs.

Because of the interview, my perception of him and of the company has changed. And that’s a good thing. Not that anyone should care. But this interview has gained a lot of exposure. And if you previously vowed that Microsoft would be the last place on earth you would want to work, given all the options open today in the tech sector, maybe, just maybe after watching this, you might change your mind.

It strikes me that Ballmer would have you convinced after 20 minutes in a one on one interview.

So let me ask you this, after watching the interview from Web 2.0, would YOU work for Microsoft?

This piece courtesy AdNews. It just shows how big the gap is for Yahoo! and Microsoft Live to close if they want to compete with Google at “vanilla” search. In some respects, it’s the very reason Mahalo, MyLiveSearch, ASK and others are pursuing completely different models.

Jerry Yang at Yahoo! has got to be doing some soul searching and you can bet Ballmer at Microsoft threw another chair at the wall when this latest Comscore report came out. I’m looking forward to seeing Steve next week speak live on Day 2 of Web 2.0 in the US. I personally think John Battelle is going to go easy on him for fear of him blowing a valve in public. Or something like that.

Anyway, back to search. Here’s some data that puts Googles’ massive share into perspective.

(Data courtesy Comscore)

My ignorance in looking at this chart is that I wasn’t even aware that Korea had its own search portal. Nor did I realise that the Chinese search platform, Baidu, had so much critical mass - given the censored content it provides.

Of the 61 billion searches conducted in August this year, Google had 37 billion of them (60%), 4 times that of Yahoo! and over 18 times more than Microsoft. Sixty per cent share of any market is massive, some would say too dominant. My take is that Google is just getting started.

When Battelle wrote “The Search” I remember a quote by the 2 founders of Google stating that they thought that the whole “area” of search was only 10% solved. Now, 2-3 years on, they might say that they are closer to 20%. But there’s still a long way to go.

There’s a lot of money being spent on local search - for good reason. It’s essentially the domain of the printed directories, like Yellow. And Google knows this, knows what money is at stake, and wants a piece of the action.

I don’t think the average person switches search engines easily. The advantage Google has is that its now a part of our DNA, our dictionary and vocabulary.

My question to you is this. What would make YOU switch?

Stephen Ellis writes an excellent piece in the Australian today. He’s far more polite than I am capable of being. Previous posts are here, here and here in case you missed my previous rants.

I think Ellis makes an excellent point here,

“The ACCC is going into battle using claims and tactics that show scant understanding of advertising on the internet, and hence is likely to do little for its reputation or international perceptions of Australia’s regulatory regime”.

Exactly. I think I’m going to put a call into Mr. Ellis and ask him for a chat.

And finally, the comic above is by Hugh McLeod from Gapidvoid I thought appropriate.

Microsoft has just pulled back the curtain on a new release of its Live Search Platform. I took a quick look this morning.

I will say this - the interface is clean and it has some neat features - such as a nifty feature within the “images” tab which when you hover your mouse over the thumbnail, the image expands and you can see further details.

According to the Live Search team blog, here’s the essence of what’s been included in this update:

• • Relevance, relevance, relevance. We’ve quadrupled the size of our index, which means we can return the right results for your searches. Improvements like enhanced ranking algorithms, auto-spell correction and better stop word handling help us return the best results.
  • Speed. Pages load much faster than before.
  • Streamlined look and feel. We focused on the end-to-end experience from the homepage throughout the site. For example, search results are now easier to read thanks to work on typography, contrast, colors and spacing.
  • More high-interest content. You asked us for more in Entertainment, Shopping, Health, Local and Video search and we’re happy to deliver it.

I’m not sure if the average user gives a rats toss about “an enhanced ranking algorithm”. And they say that they have quadrupled the size of their index - but they don’t give us a baseline of how big the index was in the first place. And then “speed”. Allegedly the search app now runs on premium gasoline - whereas before it ran like an old dog. Or something like that.

But what I don’t get though is why make it a clone of Google. Yahoo!’s already the same. Now the big 3 all treat the “sponsored link” area exactly the same. If it’s all the same, then the average user is going to gravitate to what he knows best - Google. Always will.

I think if Microsoft want to stay in the race, they’re going to need to place a much bigger bet. Take more risk. I’ve said this before - along with a lot smarter people than me and it’s this. Microsoft need to spin off Live Search and make them a separate entity. Entirely. Steve Ballmer shouldn’t be allowed in the building. All he should see come across his desk are “Capital Request Authorisations”. For shitloads of money.

Because unless MS start to differ in the search space (like Jason Calacanis with Mahalo), then all they can hope for are tiny increments of growth in a space that Google continues to thrive in.

Oh, and one last thing. The folks at Redmond should quietly tap Jerry Yang on the shoulder and get a deal done. Before someone else does.

And if that’s too cryptic for you, let me translate. “Steve, get off your arse and pick up the phone and talk to Jerry Yang at Yahoo!” And bring your cheque book.

Here’s a video I strongly encourage you to take the time to view. Grab a glass of wine, shut the door to your home office, threaten to flush the kids Nintendo DS down the toilet. Just ensure you have some peace and quiet.

The content is important because it’s about the critical nature of web analytics. And it features Avinash Kaushik, probably best known as the author of “Web Analytics, An Hour A Day” and also the Analytics Evangelist for a little search outfit based in Mountain View, California.

This video is part of the “Authors@Google” series and was taken at the Googleplex. In front of a lot of “Googlers”. And it’s no mean feat to hold a couple of hundred very smart search folks attention for an hour.

We rate his book so highly that we give a copy to all our clients.

And we rate Avinash so highly that we pleaded with him to do some consulting work with us. Which he did. And still does.

If you missed the interview I did with Avinash, you’ll find it here.

To me, the crux of web analytics is understanding “the conversation” that takes place at your website. Not “what” happened - that’s the easy part. But “why” it happened.

If you have a website that’s responsible to shareholders, or more importantly, responsible for putting food on a table and paying bills, then web analytics should keep you awake at night.

And the best part about it - getting started is relatively quick and easy. And free. Google Analytics is the best place to start…take the tour right here.