Marc Ohmann’s Blog

Everyone knows about the most common search engines such as Yahoo, Google, AltaVista and Dogpile.  These are considered generalized search mechanisms.  They gather all kinds of content from the internet and reference said content using keywords.

But – there are literally thousands of search engines available to web users that specialize in topical content.  It would be impossible to list all of these search engines, especially as new ones are added on a daily basis, but let’s review a handful:

• Entertainment Searches.  You can use Media Channel to find Internet Television and Video sites.  Find that YouTube video you’ve always wanted to watch or the latest internet television schedules.

When meeting with clients who want to get started taking advantage of some of the latest new media communications formats, we are consistently asked the question, “How often should we publish a new post or podcast“.

Generally this depends on the audience, content and resources available.  But most importantly is should depend on content.  New media is not television or radio.  It can often work better to not create a strict schedule to try an follow but instead publish when quality content comes to you.

Yesterday I was in a meeting with a partner from a mid-sized insurance firm here locally.  We were discussing all the exciting aspects of Internet marketing, social media and most importantly public relations online.  Jeff Rabkin from Wowza was in the meeting also and was discussing his recent experiences with Mattress Giant.

For anyone who doesn't want to read the article.  The gist is that a Google search for Mattress Giant displays a negative review from epinions.com as the second organic result.

In our meeting the insurance company partner was amazed that negative results could show up and that Mattress Giant was trying to improve their image online. 

Since I will never have time to read all of Lee's 256 Must Read Blogs (which leaves me with 330 in my reader), I figured to put all this knowledge to best use all the sites should go into a custom search engine.

Creating the CSE would have only involved a quick Perl script on the OPML file but thanks to Feedburner, it's not that easy.  So anyhow incase anyone wants it, here is the file listing every site included .

Here is the link to the actual search engine page or you can make use of a search box like the one below.

Last month I accidentally typed the letter 'i' twice when writing ZoomInfo on the 'About ' section of the blog so it appeared as ZoomIinfo.  Through the analytics I discovered quickly that I was ranking for this misspelling and quickly corrected the spelling on the site.  However, before I could get it changed I had already had 15 visitors from Google due to the misspelling.  It gets better, those 15 visitors ended up with an average of 4 pageviews each!  Oddly enough due to the misspelling it seems those visitors still found something they were looking for on the site.  Long live the long-tail-of-search.

Now my wife will attest that I am not the most observant person so this may have happened a couple of days ago I just didn't notice.  But today I have been seeing a Google map link included in the search results for some businesses — such as the listing below.

Just another reason to make sure your business is included in the Google Maps (Local) database.

Popularity: 10% [?]

With web searches constantly craving better search results, there is a large trend in search towards vertical searches (searches refined to a specific industry, location, etc).  As with anything in search these days, the Google juggernaut is making aggressive moves in the area.  One particular product Google is offering in the area is Google Base.  From the Google Base info page:

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. And basically it allows readers to subscribe to information they are interested in receiving. Although RSS has been around since mid 1999, it has only recently gained popularity as a mainstream business tool.

Here we will run through some of the reasons you should consider implementing RSS on your site to help your business.

Have you ever sent out an RFP for a web project and been amazed at the wide range pricing in the proposals that come back? It is not uncommon for us to consult with a company who has received proposals that vary by an order of magnitude or more in price. It’s not that one company is wrong or one is right. It’s simply that there are so many ways to attack a web project and really your results are generally only controlled by how much you invest — as long as you are investing in each of the 6 areas below.

Ever wonder what your site looks like in a mobile device?  If your site doesn’t display well on a mobile device and is located through Google search, the site will often be sent through the Google transcoder before rendering.

You can view your site through the transcoder at www.google.com/m

Popularity: 7% [?]