Soy jarabesco.

Y lo fui desde hace décadas.

La música, la letra, y el espíritu de Jarabe De Palo siempre me ha encantado y el fallecimiento del cantante del grupo, Pau Donés, en el 2020 de cancer, me emocionó de una forma muy profunda.

Annus horribilis

Aunque los últimos dos años de mi vida, entre síntomas, admisión al hospital, diagnostico, cirugía, recuperación, complicaciones y quimioterapia* - todo me ha puesto de prueba, recuerdo que durante esos días y noches larguísimas en la UCI de abril 2023 tras la cirugía, la música fue parte de mi salvación.

En aquellos momentos escuchaba mucho Bach. Y veía videos de Robby Naish, otro héroe de mi juventud.

*Pronto publicaré otro post con detalles de mi año que me ha cambiado la vida.

Recuperación

Cuando salía de cada sesión de quimioterapia del edificio del hospital del día el año pasado y hasta noviembre cuando tuve que abandonar el tratamiento de forma prematura, escuchaba la música de Jarabe de Palo de Depende.

Dentro del recinto del hospital se oía por altavoz del colegio cercano y me llenaba el alma.

El colegio lo ponía a toda regla al patio para notificar a los peques de volver a o salir de clase.

La letra y el significado de la canción me inspira.

Al igual que la letra de Déjame Vivir, una canción que esta bien interpretado aquí que se centra en la libertad y expresión.

Filtro perro globo ✨

Cuando observe que además se había pintado el exterior del colegio por un muralista con un perro globo estilo Jeff Kroons, me alimento la imaginación y decidimos en Everywoah de colaborar y aumentarlo por la camera en las apps de Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, y Snapchat produciendo un filtro de realidad aumentada.

Apuntas al perro globo con la camera del móvil y con un toque lo liberas del mural y lo envías al cielo.

La letra de las canciones de Depende y Dejáme Vivir combina con el mural y la idea y realidad aumentada de liberarlo.

Tambien me hablaba a mi las letras de esas canciones a mi condición y tratamiento.

No sabía que ponerme y me puse feliz

Esa frase estaba escrito en la fachada del cole y encajaba con el espíritu del arte.

Aquí lo explico.

Espero que los alumnos y viandantes de la zona, tantos pacientes oncológicos que cualquiera que disfrute de su imaginación y que quiera disfrutar de la felicidad le inspire la obra al igual que lo ha hecho para mi.

Porque tal como dijo Pau:

No tengáis miedo, no odiéis, la vida son cuatro días, y tres pasaron ya. No estemos aquí de mala leche, estemos aquí de buen humor....Sean felices, la vida es urgente, la vida es una y ahora, y hay que vivirla a tope.

Porque vivir es urgente.

The lettuce won - that’s how every person and their dog shared the news last week of the resignation of Liz Truss as the UK PM.

What started out as a healthy LOL about 10 days ago for me when the live cam was created, rapidly turned into a work sprint to serve up a googly eye official augmented reality Instagram filter after the Daily Star formally commanded Everywoah to rustle something up.

At times of gloom and woe, and yes political hellfires, people continue to fiercely enjoy shared experiences and healthy humour, and there’s plenty of reasons why remixable video, aka AR filters, compliment video live streams, chats and tweets, with copious amounts of bantz all week long.

Tip of the Lactuca sativa var. capitata

When you end up walking into a meme with an AR filter it can take any sort of direction, these video clips in this compilation are literally the tip of the iceberg.

As trite as silly face filters may seem, they appeal to our innate sense of escapism, of acting, of playing up -  sort of like momentary fancy dress without too much of the hassle of the apparel and physical makeup.

And it’s notable how many people feel free and safer when their true identity is partially concealed yet they can still exasperate and express themselves through a daft mask. 

The Daily Star bantz big time

Congrats to the Daily Star who sparked a cultural phenomenon as the story gained widespread participation and coverage from UK and global media.

In doing so they have ensured that the humble 60p lettuce follows in the tradition of british satire entering the hall of political fame and folklore, forever destined to rank highly among other revered foods joining the likes of the tub of lard (Roy Hattersley), eggs (John Prescott, et al), milkshake (Nigel Farage, various), custard pies (Ann Widdecombe, Rupert Murdoch), and that more contemporary morsel, the bacon sarnie (Ed Miliband).

And whilst many astute observers around these parts have noted that the Daily Star staff are closet Economist fans having taken editorial inspiration from their “iceberg lady” and “shelf life of a lettuce” quips, there’s another deeper conspiracy story worth digging up that may explain the head start the lettuce genuinely had.

Grocery Gazette spills the beans

You see back in sunny hot September, the esteemed publication Grocery Gazette, announced that UK supermarket Tesco had relaxed the required specification of its Iceberg lettuces, allowing growers to harvest them quicker so they retained their crispiness.

The new sizing specification meant that lettuces  - mostly exported here from Murcia, SE Spain from where I compile this piece - were permitted to be harvested up to two days earlier than before, ensuring they didn’t wilt in the fields and stayed crisper for longer.

So now you know, global warming and the risk of crop failure ultimately impacts political life.

And people love to dress up as a vegetable.

Try the filter at everywoah.com/filters/liz-lettuce on Instagram or TikTok.

Last week: unexpected vegetables, this week, reptiles loom large.

It’s some 44 years since Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” was composed.

Released in December 1975, it only took a few weeks to become a hit in ´76.

It has endured as a classic song marking the end of a significant relationship.

The drum intro alone has been much sampled and the song interpreted by many acts in homage to the songwriter.

It’s some 44 days, or thereabouts, since Arno Partissimo released the What Disney? are you Instagram filter that has since kicked off a craze.

It’s been much copied, and rehashed by many since, with little regard to the originator.

Whilst imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it’s a welcome change to at least see things remixed a little, yes?

If you’re wondering how, perhaps the problem is all inside your head.

Because there must be fifty ways to remix, to improve, to create filters that engage an audience.

The answer is easy if you take it logically.

The what sort of... randomiser filters succeed, in part, because of their simplicity.

They invite a momentary lapse of reason for everyone, to escape from reality.

They appeal to being free. 

I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free.

To consider fifty ways to finesse your filter.

Be visual

The language of filters is predominantly visual.

You don't need to discuss much.

Your filter doesn’t need text to thrive.

Infact, if your filter contains excessive text, you’re likely to be denied publishing approval from Instagram.

Make a new plan.

Think audio

Filters need not be silent.

You don't need to be coy.

Include ambient audio in your filter or facially triggered audio fx.

Just listen.

Rear is here

It's not all self.

Rear camera face filters don't have to be identical to selfie filters.

Filters on rear camera allow detection of objects, placement of augmented ones.

Mix it up.

Just slip out the back.

Delight more

Everyone likes a surprise.

An Easter egg perhaps?

A raise of eyebrows, a tilt of the head, a pucker up.

To make you smile again.

Unlock to play

A Russian Doll reveals more within it.

Reward filter behaviour with more filters.

Maybe a time sensitive coupon code?

Just drop off the key, in backchannels.

And get yourself free.

Filters offer creative freedom in abundance

Form yours or hire a filter fanatical team to finesse further

It's really not my habit to intrude

I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued

But I'll repeat myself at the risk of being crude

There must be fifty ways to leave your filter.

An awful lot has happened since I last blogged.

A lot that has happened since I last blogged has been awful.

Those assertions could of course be true for many and the few.

Since starting up Everywoah, the vision has remained to evoke a feeling, to elicit a woah, through augmented and virtual reality.

Communicating feelings that transform into positive actions is the goal that follows from a woah.

There is an innate series of reactions that people experience when they interact with augmented reality and exude a woah.

No matter how short lived the moment, the pure fantasy, and escapism that accompanies that momentary lapse of reason of a woah is a joy to behold.

From joy and woah comes action.

Realities are questioned.

Assertions are challenged.

What if it wasn't virtual?

What if the augmented were mixed?

What if we didn't have to mix our reality?

The clock is ticking.

The UK Parliament is revolting.

People are entitled to a final say 🗳️

Press the 🛑 Stop Brexit button.

Press it on Facebook

Press it on Instagram

Record a video.

Tell the world.

Made for Best For Britain by TFUK supporters with ❤️ at Everywoah.

So last week, I had a moment where I thought out aloud.

I tweeted this:

pic.twitter.com/o3MGtqNcBZ

— Paul Gailey (@paulgailey) June 14, 2016

@paulgailey beautiful photo, captured by?

— Becky Kelway (@RKelway) June 15, 2016

@paulgailey the referendum?

— Becky Kelway (@RKelway) June 16, 2016

..we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us' - Jo Cox, MP

We owe it to the French.

When I retorted with this tweet to the statement about Morton Heilig's Sensorama:

@zillahwatson what about Antonin? pic.twitter.com/lDuExOW8yZ

— Paul Gailey (@paulgailey) April 5, 2016

I was referring to Antonine Artaud (1896-1948), a french theatre director, widely recognised as one of the major figures of twentieth-century theatre and the European avant-garde.

The Arrival

Be it the early works of Auguste and Louis Lumière and the The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station,

to the fabulous efforts of Damien and David to persuade Larry of the delightful viability of Cardboard, that post-modern day plastic, VR aka, réalité virtuelle bleeds tricolore more than anything.

Live VR video

And if we're talking about the continuation of the #avralance then note how those leading the field for many years now, and about to step into big Facebook and Google pursued limelight, is Video Stitch, the company behind the newly launched Orah, a 4k Live streaming camera for prosumer usage that streams to your HMD and your soon your social feed.

Yes, Orah is lead by the French Nicolas Burtey and a team of Parisians. (Ed. seriously thinking of getting one of these!)

And yet in some ways, that narrative of film making in VR is still very much in it's infancy, in a sort of Lumière moment, as story tellers grapple with how to craft a story with new fandangled  tools.

Ghosts and Characters

I recommend digesting Devon Dolan's VR thesis around the The Four Different Types of Stories in VR as modified by Kent Bye. It's a fascinating take on the art.

This piece (in Spanish) from one of the VR creator's of Ministerio del Tiempo for RTVE, goes into more detail about the film and post production techniques in VR to achieve viewer immersion. The notion of cuts and edits is an eternal one in VR that is touched upon:

To change from scene to scene, there's always some elements that allow a transition, an envelope is handed to you, and you have to deliver it to someone...

Para cambiar de escena a escena, siempre hay unos elementos que hacen de transición; te dan un sobre, se lo tienes que entregar (a alguien)

Master story tellers

And yet, those very same story telling techniques and film hacks, that are now flexing a new generation of VR maker's minds, are not too disimilar to the ones that tested yesterday's great directors:

How Alfred Hitchcock hid 10 Edits in ROPE from Vashi Nedomansky.

Vive la revrolution!

Sometimes you discover, quite by chance, that touching piece of writing or video, that no one else seemingly has.

And it comes at just the right time, when the mood calls. 

Maybe you're not feeling at your absolute best and need a pep talk. 

I did not give you permission to quit!

I confess.

I dropped a howler.

Last time I mentioned Walter Brooke, as in the actor,  who played the wise family friend to Benjamin (played by Dustin Hoffman) in The Graduate, I made a mistake.

In that infamous scene by the pool, where Mr McGuire gave the upstart graduate a single word of wisdom - plastics - I incorrectly spelt his name in my previous blog post.

Materially wrong

Alas if Mr McGuire were choosing his words and materials at any point since 1967, he may well have reasonably uttered silicon instead of plastics, or perhaps graphene.

In any case, I still assert that filters is worthy, if not more so than in 2010 when the abstract term crossed my mind and I spontaneously blogged much like now.

Yet today, the material that avidly evokes inspiration in me is cardboard.

Cardboard is a start, and as Joey "The Lips" Fagan, the Trumpet decrepit extraordinaire, recalled in The Commitments ....I believe in starts.

"Once you had the start the rest was inevitable. The Lord made sure of that."

Cake, nails and Pita bread

So what do this assortment of food and objects have to do with cardboard and Cardboard?

Well, it so happens I've lately been somewhat busy with Cardboard and VR ever since last summer at Droiders we combined Glass with VR during some wearable surgery.

You see, the thing is, where as Oculus is tricky, and Glass is misunderstood, watching 360º is a piece of....

even if filming 360º is hard as

and editing 360º is a

So hands up who doesn't like cake?

And now, due to a whole confluence of factors, cardboard and cake is getting real.

And Cardboard

I'll be talking more Cardboard and VR, online and in person in Manchester on Friday 12th June, 360 degree deciphering those culinary and steel metaphors.

The real Mr McGuire is unlikely to show up, other than perhaps as a bit part in a deck, but you are most welcome to try Cardboard* if you pop down to SASCON for the wearables session.

*Supplied with free cake. While stocks last.

I do enjoy this music.

I selected it to match a video I made recently and it was a really challenging exercise.

Recently I've become far more tuned to sound in films and acoustics all around me.

I think the impact that sound editing has on mood is huge.

The blog post with it's accompanying video is published on vaso.me.

Google make hundreds of changes each year to their underlying algorithm.

However, not only are the query processes altered - aka Hummingbird - and the ranking methods adjusted, but their display is also subject to huge flux and continual experimentation.

Here is an interactive, tablet and fat finger friendly version of Dr. Peter Myers', Mega-SERP as featured on Moz.

Want to use it? Grab the embed code from Thinglink.

Whilst strictly speaking this SERP result is a blend of ingredients - just like our humble taco - it's a fascinating illustration of the wider complexity that we now face as marketers, and paradoxically the accuracy, relevance and richness we encounter as users.

In a lot of ways peak keyword has long since passed, even if conversations about keywords in the boardroom may not have.

Peak taco though?

I suspect that's a whole different byte.

A veces me mosqueo, aunque suele durar poco.

Viralidad fuera de la red, reclamo de los bares, no todo va a ser #redessociales #relaxingcafeconleche (El Burgo) pic.twitter.com/xGsshiOls6

— Angel Peces (@AngelPeces) September 12, 2013

No me refiero al relaxing cafe con leche. Muy a menudo me preguntan ¿y tú? de donde eres?...

Pues de aquí, ahora vivo en murcia...

Si pero, pero es que con esa pinta, pareces que eres...

¿..un guiri?

...bueno, es que no tienes acento de extranjero. ¿Donde nacistes?

En Londres.

Y aveces doy las explicaciones pertinentes o toreo la pregunta y seguimos por otro camino.

Y es que el mosqueo aunque parezca una tontería, no es porque será la milesima vez que se me hace la misma pregunta, sino porque siempre acabo diciendo Londres en vez de London.

Por mucho que el idioma nos fascina también nos marea

No cabo de entender porque, por ejemplo los españoles, que al menos coinciden, por si fuera poco, con el nombre de Gibraltar tanto en inglés que en español, no puedan llamar la capital de inglaterra de la misma forma. Como London en los dos idiomas.

Vale, que la pronunciación del peñon varie en cada idioma lo entiendo, pero al menos lo escriben igual. Pero si yo hubiera nacido en Boston por ejemplo, no tendría que vivir ese mosqueo inútil tan amenudo.

Y no creo que London tenga tanto variación de pronunciación entre un inglés y un español. Se entiende y eso es lo esencial.

Esa adventura de los extranjerismos hoy en día en españa continua a un ritmo extraordinario y en todas direcciones. En el campo de marketing (¿ ó bien debería decir el mercadeo o mercadotécnica? - ¡no  basta!) uno de aquellas contaminaciones lingüísticas que me irita sigue siendo el tuit en vez del tweet por muy oficial que sea la versión que no se suele usar en la red española.

Por mucho que los catedráticos o instituciones intentan fijar un uso correcto del idioma, la calle siempre gana la batalla del argot hasta que el nuevo vocabulario, por muy sacudida de anglosajismos este, sea reconocida con un uso cotidiano por todos.

Otro gran ejemplo:

Y tu eres ¿Community Manager o Gestor de Comunidad? "En inglés, todo suena mejor #postureomarketing" http://t.co/62FaFe8iBz

— Gabriel Suárez (@SenorCreativo) July 12, 2013

In a few hours time some 59 million URLs will vanish from the web.

Thousands of hours of personal pensive endeavours will disappear as blogs and content go to the digital graveyard.

Posterous is closing on April 30. The Posterous backup tool will continue to be available until May 31 so you can download all your Spaces.

— posterous (@posterous) April 26, 2013

Posterous was acquired by Twitter last year.

I'm feeling a tad nostalgic, as personally I've not only used Posterous a great deal  - it powered this blog for a long time - but it provoked a good many people to express themselves easily online without all the hassle of setting up and maintaining a blog.

At one point Posterous and Tumblr were constantly pitched against each other in the tech press, probably as reluctantly as Blur and Oasis in their day.

They were infact quite different, mechanics apart, because the audience that each platform attracted were different.

Posterous content was perhaps less visually outlandish than Tumblr which continues to part of the temporal web of memes.

Posterous however, I found was home to a great deal of fantastic content from all walks of (online) life.

I read countless blogs from founders of companies, journalists, marketers, writers, that all wrote with real thought and devotion.

It was very easy to whack out a post, it's ease of use was initially just writing an email and clicking send to have it published even under your own domain in an instant.

You just didn't need to really worry about all the ins and out of running a blog. Alas, things have changed now.

There is still real value to be had in writing on your own domain, despite the ease and attractions of participating and writing in social chambers, albeit large ones like Google Plus or niche places like ADN.

5 days until 59 million Posterous URLs disappear from the planet. My only solace is to keep coding. posthaven.com/ourpledge

— Garry Tan (@garrytan) April 26, 2013

Fortunately, there are still alternatives for easy, light blogging. This blog, despite maintaining the personal domain, is currently powered by Posthaven - a phoenix service headed by one of the original founders of Posterous.

And Posthaven allowed a brilliant method to easily import your Posterous data into it without data loss. Alas Twitter decided not to tell anyone about this in their last emails:

@posterous How churlish & mean-spirited of you not to recommend #posthaven as a replacement for #posterous in your last email. Disappointed.

— Stephen Daniels (@sdonline) April 26, 2013

A beloved raspy throated entertainer, Jimmy Durante, affectionately know as Schnozzola for that trademark nose, once said:

Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.

It's true.

Some of the most grounded marketers, commentators and successful people in all walks of life out there, are at the top of their game because they listen to all people no matter what their rank.

You see you need to be reading content that is relevant, fresh, and unheard.

Unheard?

Why how absurd?

You see when it comes to finding great advocates about inbound marketing, there's little to compete with the thousands of inbound.org members.

Yes, there's nearly some ten thousand members in a little under a year of full activity.

The least active and lowest influential users also have karma and upvotes assigned to them and in some cases they score negatively.

Now you might, for a split second, dismiss low scorers from the depths of any league table, or infact any social network as made up of bots, spammers, charlatans, trolls, chancers, snake oil, MLM, and other assorted bottom feeders.

However while scraping the barrel of karma it occurred to me that such users are possibly misunderstood.

I did a little - actually a lot - of digging into their online presence, and here's what I found.

Well in a kind of hippie utopian way of looking at things, I think there's a little bit of beautiful magic in everyone and yes, sometimes the numbers do actually lie.

So here's a not so scientific closer look at some of the lowest of the low.

You decide if that adds up.

The lowdown on the Inbound.org low

as of November 5th, 2012

Nº 9065. Paris Childress | 0 Karma | 0 Upvotes | Web: hop-onilne.com | Twitter: @parischildress | Google+

The magnificently named and not unlike Seth Godin looking Paris, is a Bulgarian based New Orleans native CEO of an SEO agency in Sofia. Paris' firm is listed as an SEOMoz recommended company and counts the Everywhereist as a trusted client.

I particularly admire how he uses the lesser used but wholly valid LinkedIn technique of embedding Linkedin cards to display the credentials and connectedness of his staff.

Paris uses a live Skype button on his contact form and eschews captcha's to detect spam instead prompting users to multiple choice the definition of SEO with false answer choices such as Silent Elephant Oozing. 

Oh and Paris' first link on his agency homepage is to inbound.org.

Not too shabby.

Nº 9064. Jamie Steven | 1 Karma | 1 Upvotes | Web: seomoz.org | Twitter: @jamies | Google+

Jamie is the VP of marketing at SEOMoz. He has dabbled in some WBF's in 2010 and recently whipped up a deft post about Google Analytics and Google Docs mashing.

He has admitted on Twitter that he inserted an F-bomb into a Moz press release and he is the possessor of a couple of Cameroonian short URLs.

Jamie has an illustrious online career with some nearly four years as a product manager at Microsoft in the halycon days of Encarta.

Nº 9055. Kipp Bodnar | 0 Karma | 0 Upvotes | Web: b2bsocialmedia.com | Twitter: @kippbodnar | Google+

Kipp was promoted to Director of Marketing at Hubspot six months ago after spearheading the content at their eponymous blog during nearly three years, and we all know that Hubspot is the spiritual other half of the origins of Inbound.org.

Kipp is the co-author of The b2b Social Media Book and one of his last posts on his personal blog a few years ago stated how he wanted to change the world.

From 2008 to 2010 his own blog was a hive of activity and his tenure at Hubspot seems to have put a brake on his non Hubspot output ever since.

You can hardly blame him for that though, in this video he explains how Hubspot publish marketing materials up to three times a day.

And with a $35 million in a fresh funding round of investment for international expansion just announced, Kipp and crew are due some huge congratulations.

The Inbound chunky middle

At this point, I should stress that the selections that continue were on the basis of a random finger in the air of who's next that has the slightly less least amount of karma, whereby if the above hadn't yet neither upvoted or accumulated karma then what would be of the bunch that had been bestowed with a unit of at least 1 karma point.

And it turns out that until I paginated to upper eighteen hundreds, everyone was pretty much on the same score of double zero karma and upvotes.

That's a lot of marketing inertia right there in the middle Inbound dot org managers. People who signed up, had a quick peek and perhaps a vote and were never to be seen again.

I waded in deep and pushed on for something of note, and came across Chris.

Nº 1798. Chris Gilchrist | 1 Karma | 2 Upvotes | Web: hitreach.co.uk | Twitter: @hitreach | Google+

Chris is the MD of the Scottish outfit Hitreach.

Like many a mid town SEO agency - hey no offence to people of Dundee - Chris has mulled how to attract the attention of fellow SEOs from afar.

So most recently his agency produced a match the SEO tatoo to the person competition, and featured a host of SEO hotshots and their own body ink.

Chris also lobbied recently to uncover the avatar of fellow linker James Agate on Inbound, but alas was not as successful as a bloke called Jon from Florida who managed it this week in between lectures and classic blog posts.

Hitreach are also prolific Wordpress plugin makers and released an allow PHP in Wordpress plugin two years ago.

The blog post about it has recieved over 414 comments to date, including some tireless support from Jamie Fraser of Hitreach, and the plugin itself has been downloaded more than 68,000 times.

Nº 909. Ani Lopez | 5 Karma | 2 Upvotes | Web: dynamical.biz/blog | Twitter: @anilopez | Google+

Ani Lopez is a Spanish marketing strategist based in Vancouver, Canada.

Ani is a fine proponent of multilingual SEO and advanced Analytics with a host of SMX speaking gigs to his name and is now the inhouse analytics advocate of the delightfully named 1-800-GOT-JUNK? claiming his role involves mastering "Garbage in, Insights out."

Ani previously translated and published a spanish eye tracking and SERPs study into English on his blog which was warmly received, proving that advanced SEO abounds not just in English.

Nº 734. Chandra Clarke | 7 Karma | 9 Upvotes | Web: chandraclarke.com | Twitter: @chandraclarke | Google+

There is a huge pool of talent within the member pages of Inbound irrespective where you look.

And whilst the pareto rule most probably applies to the karma and upvotes across the board, it doesn't really tell the full story.

Numbers cannot evoke

It doesn't really tell the full story because numbers may indeed indicate but they can't evoke, like words do, like stories do, like story tellers do, like people do.

So next time you're evaluating marketing effectiveness, be it rank, score, grades, DA, PA, Likes, Tweets, the whole shebang of metrics, and the left hemisphere is in full swing, remember to counter balance it with some right brain evaluation.

Marketing and persuasion are inextricably linked and persuasion is a powerful force. Only right now, two men are putting that to the test in a $5.8bn gamble.

Maybe they should just cop an ear to the vaudeville Schnozzola before it's game over.

ps. with thanks to Mark Traphagen of Virante for the inspiration of this post.

History will teach us nothing....so sang a Geordie teacher who long since donned a yellow and black jumper.

Indeed I was equally intrigued as Christian Payne, aka Documentally, of the parallels that Matt Locke - founder of the outfit named StoryThings - spoke about during a lecture about the History of Attention.

Loving the mention of Claquers,en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claque ..the black hat SEO guys of French theatre. Mentioned by @matlock #mfc12

— Documentally (@Documentally) May 15, 2012

Of course attention and applause is an elusive goal that all publishers and companies strive for.

Matt explains that during the 19th Century opera era, aplause was a metric of attention for the business of opera, something that is not too removed from percieved marketing success metrics of today.

Claque Monsieur?

Claque agencies sprang up in Paris some two hundred years ago to serve up large dosages of canned enthusiasm with neatly defined roles for the chef de claque (leader of applause), the commissaires (officers/commissioner), the rieurs (laughers), the pleureurs (criers), the chatouilleurs (ticklers), and the bisseurs (encore-ers) all intent on generating ROI for their clients.

It's tempting to cruelly draw parallels with a SEO agency job positions or indeed any marketing specialists but that would be perhaps a cynical step too far.

Listen below to an excerpt of an interview Christian did with Matt.

In the audio clip below Matt explains:

the economy around content in that era was built around applause, because it was economically important there were ways of cheating it, there were ways of gaming the applause, just as there was payola around radio and TV, around music...

Can hollow content echo?

So technology apart, not much has really changed since then.

Marketers still yearn for big breakthroughs and crave attention as much as the chef de claques and their paymasters did then.

Whilst the lacey bonnets of yesteryear may have been replaced with racey miniskirts of today, in essence the motives and human methods have not really shifted.

During the last World Cup in South Africa a Dutch brewery avoided official sponsorship by deploying a classic guerilla advertising tactic of ardent blonde applause in minimal attire.

However with the advent of the Games this summer, the inexorable proliferation of content, spam, and competition for attention it's getting ever harder to succeed.

If you are a marketer you face stark choices.

Run the Olympic risk of incurring the wrath of the legislation and branding regulation around the Games by going guerilla?

Continue deploying outdated SEO practices that fuel the myths and misunderstandings of SEO and risk the severe penalties that are being handed out?

The fat lady is seoing

Over time the evolving concert etiquette of opera rendered the Claquers obsolete and the art moved on.

And these days, despite protests by the SEO all too often navel gazing community, the search updates by Google, most recently Penguin - attacking thin links, and before that Panda, taking out sites with thin pages, the search results have generally improved for the wider public.

Despite the scaremongering about negative SEO and complaint about effects of business being wiped out because of sudden deindexation, there is little celebration of the counter side of the recent changes that have equally rewarded business who have flourished as a result of dramatically changed rankings.

Marketing is moving on.

It's not all about claque nowadays, the truth is if you plan to succeed your marketing needs more than just a sting.

What's in a name?

Quite a lot I would say.

Thankfully when they decided against Backrub as it was initially called, the Google founders choose well.

Since then, they have flirted with all sorts of naming conventions for Google products, but I do not regard yesterday's choice of Google Drive as the zenith of product naming inspiration.

Take Dropbox for example, it does what it says on the tin. The analogy works for most people.

Even for non english speakers.

And that is where my beef of contention is with Drive.

It reeks of geek. Yes I know we all have a C: Drive and assorted other alphabetical ones but even my non geek english speaking friends cannot relate to a Drive.

@paulgailey @fdelpozo @angeldominguez es como se refieren en inglés a unidad de disco duro (Drive C:), tiene su lógica, disco en la nube

— Rafa Merino (@rafamerino) April 25, 2012

@paulgailey @fdelpozo @angeldominguez Agree. Supongo que irán buscando la rima con "Wave" <guiño guiño>

— Rafa Merino (@rafamerino) April 25, 2012

When Google launched Wave, some argued it was a peculiar name to give it although the product was so ahead of it's time and regular users that it defied easy definition anyhow.

A soul of silicon and the logo of a british bank

But Drive? I mean even Microsoft have used Sky as in SkyDrive in some way making that, heaven forbid, fashionable association with the Cloud.

Why not Disk Google? Surely even that name is more universal than Drive, or would it infer a too much of a physical item or be a remanant of CD Discs or even floppy disks from yesteryear?

So Folder is not a contender because that way of thinking is the anti-thesis of search and carries far too much MSOffice connotations.

The people at the Plex have done everything to distance themselves from the Folders ways of thinking in the hope users would follow suite. Remember it's dubbed collections in Docs.

So how about Space?

Everyone wants space, more space and space is far more multilingual than Drive.

Was space given the elbow because of fear of association with MySpace?

And while we are on the subject of design, please don't get me started on the logo. For the brits among us, Google Drive has the logo left overs of a famous high street british bank.

What would your mum say?

You see my mum, that acid test of computing, well she is spanish and even Maria Josefa Alburquerque Lorencio, Fifina to you and me, cannot emote with Drive.

I talk with her about stuff, places, spaces, boxes, folders, and hey even computers and stuff I do on the internet to make money for a living.

Mostly in spanish, and not just limited to that simple vocabularly. You get my gist.

Directories I try to avoid and Drive I reserve only when referring to the Renault or the Fiat on the parked on the driveway.

Here's one Google Drive however I do want and could readily emote with.

Lastly, if like me you have tried your level best to emote with Drive and have been greeted by such a cryptic message like so, then there's a Google Group for that - which of course you are welcome to join.

With your Google Account of course.

Vroom, vroom.

If you've ever asked two SEO professionals a probing question, you're likely to have recieved at least three different answers.

Search is never truly a precise science, because it's conditions are set, not just by the mighty G force, but also by the behaviour of everyone else using their services.

And because neither Google or its' users are never still, it makes for a compelling adventure, intellectual headscratching and a fair amount of good ole detective work when things don't pan out.

And in some quarters recent Search events have not panned out as expected.

7 lessons I learned while being banned in Google for 12 hours - seerinteractive.com/blog/7-lessons… if you missed the drama.

— wilreynolds (@wilreynolds) April 20, 2012

How could it be that a highly respected SEO agency from Philadelphia would succumb to some sort of Google search maelstrom that would result in it being obliterated in search results so suddenly?

Every half decent SEO pro possesses an inate curiosity and of course this statement by Wil set off a whole chain reaction from SEO people as to the cause and remedy for Seer Interactive's plight.

Was it a result of the parked domain slip up recently admitted by Matt Cutts?

Was it the result of nascent Negative SEO?

Heaven forbid, an over optimised title tag or the velocity of link acquisition?

It could be some or none of those, one of the equal joys and frustrations of Search is that it's not straight forward to conclusively prove a theory either way.

Wild goose chases and red herrings are all par for the course.

And often that leads to drastic action being taken.

So what did Seer Interactive do?

They acted fast and reading between Wil's blog lines and comments we can definitely see two actions Seer took to specifically combat the situation.

• A 301 redirect from the previous company name of Seer Interactive was ruthlessly severed, taking with it years of legacy backlinks, of all sorts.
• And a link to a client site was also removed from Seer Interactive.

Forgive me if I have a rummage with some SEO tools to delve a little more.

Using Link Detective the classification of links to Seer are itemised for the current domain and their legacy one.

Previously, the back links to Seer were very much SEO keyword focused, and what looks like the deliberate departure of that tactic is evident with a very different proportion of anchor text links for seerinteractive.com

Let's be clear though, this is only one of probably a plethora of checks and tools that evidently the Seer lieutenants and close pals would have used to diagnose matters.

After all, three eyes are better than one.

Baggage and ties

In severing that 301 redirect, in one swoop Seer may have disassociated themselves from their baggage and simultanesouly removed the effects of a mixture of probable quality and lesser quality links.

Some of the quality of those legacy links may well have deterioated over time and with the advent of an algorthmic change by Google recently, may have tripped a certain threshold, and possibly an attempt by Google to penalise abnormally low volumes of branded anchor keywords.

Put another way, there may have been insufficient naturally worded links to the Think Seer domain in the past, using the keyword term Think Seer.

Thin links to big sites

The other action Seer did was remove this page from their blog.

This screenshot cache is a quick blog entry with a link to a prominent client of Seer Interactive.

During the intial frenzy of SEO excitement many friends of Wil were looking up if seerinteractive was ranking for it's own name.

Yet often it's worth looking at things from another perspective all together.

That famous supplier of email marketing software has on the face of it, a huge link profile with some of the highest scores possible.

Is the SERPs for email marketing software as obtuse of that for SEO companies?

At that point I've not dug any further. Others will do so.

However I find this particularly fascinating that Seer chose to remove this somewhat thin link.

And yet in some respects, Seer have with immediate effect and by (mis)fortune of circumstance, actioned of much of what SEOMoz's latest white board friday video championed, that is:

1. Use Authentic Titles
2. Avoid manipulative internal links
3. Forget crappy footer link stuffing
4. Don't cram irrelevant text with links on the page
5. Avoid links from penalty likely sources
6. Get links from distinct pages not near clones

To rename or to rebrand, that is the question

One of the most significant wider issues to rise from this SEO event is the implications for marketers with respect of any rebranding exercise.

Too often the term rebrand is substituted for the the word rename, when they are wholly a different order of magnitude.

It's something I have raised with SEO agency colleagues and I do question how effective or risky any such exercise is in future.

A mere name change of your domain with classic 301 redirects in place, may not be enough, indeed it may, subject to your link profile be somewhat risky, compared to a full scale true rebranding exercise where you do amass branded keyword links.

Of course, Seer could revisit and cherry pick modification of the most significant legacy backlinks with a view to preserving some of their weight to the power of their domain, but that is a huge exercise with questionable outcome.

It's an interesting dilemma that far from begs of a formulaic answer.

Negative SEO or The Perfect Storm

Of course speculation, informed or not, never ceases online and even more so when SEO is involved.

Wil refers to Negative SEO as something to be aware of in his blog post, but does not infer this was directly a cause in Seer's case.

I'm less inclined to believe Seer were explicitly a target, but perhaps if anything, an inadvertent victim of the same effects of Negative SEO rather than any malicious intent.

In any case there are other targets, including ones cited on this page openly courting attempts to bowl them.

If SEO navel gazing industry talk about Negative SEO does one thing, it is to disproportionately steal attention of the positive Search successes that have come out of the last few weeks and reassociate marketing minds with shady SEO practices yet again.

That is not to say you should turn a blind eye to it.

Of course if you are convinced of the adverse effects of Negative SEO, you'll speak up and show the evidence, much like Seer did with their heads up sharing of their short lived predicament.

And forget not what Peter Falk did in his pre Columbo days when playing baseball as recounted to Cigar Aficionado magazine.

"I remember once in high school the umpire called me out at third base when I was sure I was safe. I got so mad I took out my glass eye, handed it to him and said, 'Try this.' I got such a laugh you wouldn't believe."

Some people really have to see it for themselves.

So if you have overwhelming evidence about Negative SEO, bring it on.

That's when Search marketers can revel in the detail to test theories and prove/disprove notions.

Oh, just one more thing...

I've detected a Columbo spirit in many SEO characters and a penchant for detail.

Take this last quote from the actor Peter Falk himself:

"I have an obsessive thoroughness. It's not enough to get most of the details, it's necessary to get them all. I've been accused of perfectionism. When Lew Wasserman (head of Universal Studios) said that Falk is a perfectionist, I don't know whether it was out of affection or because he felt I was a monumental pain in the ass."

The Search marketer is an intellectually restless animal.

Don't ya think?

I am melancholy.

My wife and I just took the decision at the veterinary clinic to put down one of our two cats.

Maasai was a fantastic Seal Point Birman.

Like many cats of his breed, at the age of twelve, Maasai had developed a kidney dysfunction which had rapidly reached a chronic stage, and after two days under care it was apparent his condition was irreversible.

Regardless if you are a dog or cat person the loss of a pet companion is a wrench. If you've gone through similar with your pet, you may know how awful it is. 

This pic is when he was only a couple of months playfully old at the start of the millenia.

That second picture is Mara - the titanium hip plated sister to the 6+kg Maasai - atop a hot router.

Children and the idea of death and renewal

It's not my first time I have experienced this situation, as I unhappily recall the moment as a child, however this time the ordeal was as a parent which was even more testing with a nine and three and half year old accompanying my wife and I at the vets.

My son Alexander (9 years) was old enough to comprehend the situation yet evidently sad about it. I feel it important that the notion of death is not concealed in his upbringing.

He is at the age where curisosity abounds in anything he learns and is immediately pondering and querying aspects of the cat's final moments.

He has developed logic and yet can be abstract in thought and exercise wonderful imagination.

My daughter Olivia, at three and a half years old, was expectant we would return home from the vets with Maasai and naturally was bewlidered, upset and yet equally rapidly distractable.

Guilt about guilt

The relationship between human and animal is a strange one. We develop affections for a pet animals while they depend on us during their lifetime for food, shelter and attention and yet the majority of us, myself included, comfortably remain meat eaters for example.

What has played on my conscious though has been putting this episode into perspective in the midst of far greater difficulties that afflict our life and that of many others in these times.

I know that family health of other relatives is more important and recent news has certainly reminded me of that.

It can seem absurd to mourn yet as the vet explained, you've spent all that time being attentive to an animal who devotes and seemingly adores its' owners and the loss evokes memories of past stages in your life that you cannot easily dissociate.

Today I feel guilty about feeling guilty. I am confused. Is that wrong?

Children are your love

Can you really love an animal?

Language carries a lot of weight and whilst a bond is developed with a pet, it never surpasses a human relationship.

If there was one moment of joy today, it was the indefatigable inadvertent humour that a three and half year old brings to your world.

As I talk spanish with my already bilingual daughter, I explained that Maasai was sadly not coming back home as he was going to heaven.

And heaven in spanish is cielo, meaning sky.

Alas, Olivia nonchantly replied to me:

Maasai is not going to heaven, he doesn't have wings papa.

No papa, Maasai no puede ir al cielo, no tienes alas.

This picture was snapped just moments after she convincingly told me that.

Love family.

El pasado noviembre tuve el placer de acudir al Congreso SEO - también conocido como el SEO Pro - como ponente invitado en el Hotel Olympia de Valencia, aquí en españa. Prefer English?

El organizador, Miguel Lopez, de Marketing Online Valencia casi el solo, organizó con un esfuerzo tremendo, un evento fabuloso que reunio la mayor peña de los mejores talentos SEO españoles para machacar ideas y fortalezer amistades durante tres intensos días.

No voy a detallar las presentaciones. Eso ya se hizo en su momento tras el evento por varios otros ponentes y asistentes de todas partes del mundo.

Basta con decir que el nivel era altísimo y las presentaciones fueron todos un éxito. Ya lo ha confirmado más que uno quien viajo desde lejos para vivirlo.

Been incredibly impressed with #seopro & the Spanish SEO community. Very open, great stuff shared. Learned more here than any UK conference.

— Samuel Crocker (@samuelcrocker) November 12, 2011

Por suerte mi trabajo y mis raices hace que amenudo viajo entre españa y inglaterra y como siempre caigo en la tentación que comparar lo bueno y lo malo de cada uno, me atrevo aquí hacer una comparativa de los eventos SEO entre españa y el Reino Unido.

¿Realmente importa o no si hay muchos eventos para elegir? En el Reino Unido el panorama SEO es más grande. Bueno, no voy aquí a indagar en estadísticas, comparando empleados por agencia, ingresos o métricas de Search o PPC, pero si me arriesgo en algo, me atrevo a decir que el SEO como una profesión está más establecida dentro del mundo del marketing en el Reino Unido que lo está en España. ¿Y que? Pues, al tratar de la magnitud de conferencias, el aforo, y frecuencía de eventos, el Reino Unido tiene un montón para eligir. Desde lo gratis, a lo muy marchoso, hasta el precio VIP y eventos SEO que forman parte de un mayor evento de marketing, hay mucha variedad.

En cambio, españa tiene menos eventos pero no quiere decir eso que sea una desventaja ya que todo depende como cada evento le saca partido, ¿o no? Durante el Congreso SEO en Valencia, los setenta o asi asistentes tuvieron más que suficiente tiempo para verdaderamente hacer enlaces estrechos profesionales y reforzar amistades.

En cambio en el Reino Unido, yo por lo menos me he encontrado debido al tiempo limitado, que he tenido que investigar con mucho cuidado de antemano los asistentes y empresas al que quisiera hacer networking para que pudiese desvirtualizar a todos los SEOs a tiempo. Lo cierto es que existe un buen rollo entre SEO españoles que aún recuerda aquellos tiempos de SEO en inglaterra antes de la época de Google.

Y seamos claros, solo porque seas es primero en inventar algo, no te confiere el título de ser el mejor practicante de ello. Los Ingleses ya conocen esto a tope, el futból por ejemplo...err ¿Quién coño gano el último Mundial?

Inglaterra golea de un tiro libre con un rebote algo chanchullo

El marcador a los 20 minutos: Inglaterra 1 España 0

Organización del Evento

Por supuesto un evento de gran envergadura requiere bastantes recursos para garantizar que todo transcurra bien y esto inevitablemente contribuye al precio de la entrada.

Durante el SearchLove en Londres de Distilled, hubo un montón de gente para llevarlo todo a cabo, el audio visual, toda la grabación y lo todo lo demas que exige sacar adelante el evento.

No es solo el evento en si, sino todo su promoción previa y despues que pone a prueba a los organizadores y sus capacidades promocionales.

El SearchLove de Distilled hizo bien en generar interés antes del evento en octubre y crearon un librillo para los asistentes repleto de entrevistas con los ponentes.

En españa Miguel Lopez del SEOPro sin embargo armo un buzz varios meses antes con un uso listo del blog y Feedburner poco a poco enviando correos de entrevistas con los ponentes durante los meses previos.

Esto mantuvo un hashtag hilo continuo durante las semanas previas al evento. Los asistentes no se marcharón sin cosillas mientras que algunos asistentes y empresas ponentes repartieron regalos y mas importante códigos e invitaciones a pruebas gratuitas de herramientas SEO y lo demás. No fue una versión cualquiera de shitforlinks.

Es cierto que SearchLove punteo bien repartiendo los PowerPoint poco despues del evento, con la grabación de video de las ponencias - eso si a la venta -  en cambio SEOPro solo repartio los .ppt entre los ponentes de forma privada y sin audio o video.

Como ya han pasado cinco meses desde que di mi presentación (Representación de datos para SEO o Infografía para atraer enlaces) Miguel ha permitido que lo publique.

Puedes pillar todos los enlaces de la presentación o leer y comentarlo en una versión foto albúm Google+. Descargatelo entero desde mi Dropbox pero ojó desafortunadamente los videos de YouTube no se reproducen en Dropbox.

Relativo al tema del networking y la marcha, diría que Valencia triunfaba por encima de Londres.

A pesar de que tanto SEOPro y SearchLove montarón el evento continuo en una sala, de presentaciones con una duración de 45-60 minutos (y no de forma multi-canal), el horario de Londres era brutal con menos opciones para hacer networking comparado con Valencia.

Es cierto que hubo una fiesta networking despues del evento principal en Londres, pero no todos atienden ya que hay que desplazarse del local de la conferencia al bar.

Claro, la cultura del sandwich, o tapear de pie en Reino Unido se considera normal, y no es para declarar que la comida no estaba bien -  ¡que va! - y al fin del cabo la gente no viene para la gastronomía, sino para las ponencias, pero aún así, la comida en Valencia durante los tres días era de gloria.

Asistentes se sentaban en un restaurante, con amplias oportunidades para conocerse uno a otro y las ponencias volvían a empezar a las cinco de la tarde y acababan a las ocho.

Ese parón de medio día permitía que asistentes SEOPro pudiesen ponerse al día con sus temas de trabajo o tomarse una siesta bien merecida.

¿De que otra forma vas a recuperar esas horas perdidas de marcha hasta las tantas? Basta con decir que Valencia gano cualquiera comparación de marcha nocturna.

Centrocampistas españoles deslumbran con un tiki taka de muerte y un toquecito de película para marcar un empate merecido.

Marcador a los 45 minutos: Inglaterra 1 España 1

Champion & Premier league SEO

Entonces, vamos al grano y preguntamos ¿como compara la calidad del SEO entre los dos eventos?

Ambos eventos pueden presumir de una calidad de presentaciones muy altas.

La gente había hecho sus deberes, y compartía sus datos y trucos aprendidos, al menos parecío que los asistentes de SEOPro y SearchLove salieron en ambos casos muy satisfechos.

Ambos eventos han sufrido críticas de gente quienes malinterpretaron comentarios que se difunden por Twitter o que se convierten en medio mentiras, gente quien juzgan el evento sin haber asistido en persona.

Por supuesto en ambos eventos, el tema del Panda dominaba aunque en españa el elemento más común fue un homenaje casí mítico al scraper.

Edit: una mención de Panda merecida fue la coincidencía que seleccione una infografía para mi presentación de una empresa llamada AttachMedia. Sin saberlo de antemano, el autor de la infografía estaba presente en la sala y se introdujo despues. ¡Había venido desde Peru solo para el evento!

Los ponentes SEO de SearchLove en Londres, incluían nombres destacados de EEUU y Brítánicos, en contraste en Valencia con alguna excepción eran casí todos de españa.

Creo que hubo varias ponencias en Valencia que se merecían una mayor audencía como por ejemplo, las presentaciones de navegación de facetas avanzadas de Fernando Macia y Rodney Cullen. Me gusto especialimente la charla de SEOcial media de Jose Llinares.

En españa la gente no tenía pelos en la lengua a la hora de hablar en alto de técnicas del lado oscuro, en comparación cuando algo parecido ocurre en Reino Unido viene con advertencias de no probarlo a solas, de no retweetearlo y todo se habla en voz baja. ¡Ssssh!

En cambio en españa hay mucha soltura del tema, quizas porque tampoco las declaraciones se amplifican fuera del entorno SEO comparado con el Reino Unido.

Yo no soy partidario de lo gris/negro aunque no puedo denegar que a veces sea éxitoso, pero eso si, desde noviembre del año pasado algunas ventajas de las técnicas mencionadas en Valencia han disminuido con los cambios algoritmicos de Google, incluso diría que algunas ya son contraproducentes.

El año pasado me alegre ver que renombraron la descripción del puesto de Matt Cutts, al ser reconodico como un ingeniero distinguido en vez que el Jefe de WebSpam en Google.

Imagínate si llamaramos al equivalente del mundo de Marketing Directo como el Jefe de correo basura. Vaya.

Bueno, lo que quiero decir es que mientras que el SEO en mercados anglo-sajones madura, la disciplina es cada vez más aceptada como una práctica típica de marketing y su definición engloba el inbound marketing, denominado tambien en castellano como el marketing de atración.

Hay un esfuezo colectivo por líderes del SEO en el mundo anglo-sajón de posicionar el SEO más como una práctica normal de marketing en vez de continuar sufriendo una mala reputación e evitar una percepción de una imagen del SEO en crisis.

Incluso el debate de la definición del Inbound marketing se ha acelerado desde noviembre del año pasado y poco probable se calme en adelante.

Is there a phrase (besides "inbound marketing") that describes combined processes of SEO, Social, Content, CRO & Analytics to earn traffic?

— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) March 9, 2012

Si contrastamos con la situación en españa, yo siento que la profesión del SEO está aún algo más lejano del centro de marketing online a que debería estar.

Parece haber un roce entre la comunidad SEO en españa y su equivalente de Community Managers tan ruidoso.

Los esterotipos contienen algun grano de verdad, el Community Manager tiene que demostrar el valor de sus acciones y los SEOs tienen que practicar más acciones sociales.

Hubo un momento en Valencia durante las ponencias que se vio una diapositiva contrastando los salarios web 2.0 y se producio alguna reacción de alarma y algo de irritación en la sala.

Esto fue a pesar de que diapositivas previas de casos de éxito habían demostrado el valor disproporcionado comercial que el SEO había ortogado a las organizaciones.

Incluso hubo un evento más orientado al Community Manager en Sevilla ese mismo fin de semana (EBE) y se sentía algo de resentimiento mientras se cruzaban algunas palabras sueltas entre ambos campos por Twitter.

Un clásico repetido

Quizas no sea justo comparar eventos SEO en cada país. Creo que SearchLove y Congreso SEO fueron igualmente un éxito y si tienes alguna oportunidad de acudir, deberías ir a cualquiera. En serio.

A mi me resulta muy raro a la hora de comparar paises y decantar por España o Inglaterra en estas circunstancias. Incluso cuando los equipos nacionales compiten en algún deporte, suelo respaldar al que pierde en ese momento más que nada para que haya más competición.

...a la selección española le niegan un penálti en los últimos instantes e Inglaterra pilla un gol en el minuto 93!

Marcador final:

Inglaterra 2 España 1

Of course this post is also available in English.

La conferencia Distilled de Linklove fue la semana pasada en Londres y Boston. Aquí hay un resumen (en inglés). Si te lo perdistes, habran videos SEO de la conferencia a la venta.

El Congreso SEO se celebra este año en Madrid, el 6 y 7 de julio 2012. Las inscripciones con descuentos se acaban muy pronto.

¿Que opinas?

¿Inglaterra triunfa a españa en conferencias SEO o al revés?

¿Tarjeta amarilla para mi juicio o qué?

Last November I had the pleasure of attending the Congreso SEO - also referred to as the SEO Pro - as an invited speaker at the Olympia Hotel in Valencia, here in Spain.
¿Lo prefieres en español?

The organiser, Miguel Lopez from Marketing Online Valencia, had made a herculean near solo effort to put on a superb SEO event that united a devoted bunch of the finest Spanish SEO minds to knock heads and hearts together for three days.

I won't delve into a detailed round up of presentations. That was already done in the afterglow of the moment by several other speakers from Spain and attendees from around the world.

So Search is changing, what's new?

SEO is ever more morphing to inbound marketing.

Sometimes advantages in Search last only as long as the professionals privileged to have tested their thesis, discovered a prize technique, exploited a flaw, escaped punishment of one, or preferably gained a massive reward for successful inbound marketing efforts.

And before not too long, often the cat is out of the bag and that advantage becomes standard fare.

Step forward Rich Snippets.

Rich Snippets are the prized gold stars and descriptions a search result can boast of adjacent to the URL in Google's search results.

Last week, Joost de Valk, aka Yoast, blogged about rich snippets everywhere in a self fulfilling post detail, since Google started applying seller extensions more liberally in the search results in recent weeks.

The original GoogleBlog Spot post about Rich Snippets infact seemed to garner less attention or engagement than the post from Yoast.

Search Engine Land reported the videos in a quick post, but miserably failed to cast any analysis on the matter.

Star Wars, the next frontier

So the theory is that seller extensions, to you and me, gold stars, help users separate the wheat from the chaff when we Google.

And welcome that they are, in that we demand ever more social proof of content on the web, they are worthy of caution.

do you trust a starred result because the publisher has earnt it through merit or because they have managed to have it display through ingenuity?

Yes, seller extensions - gold stars - are also a superb device for publishers to display collective social proof of customer reviews, ratings and so on, irrespective of the sector they compete in.

And the click-through rate of results with stars is no doubt higher than those without.

But are they infallible? I mean do you trust a starred result because the publisher has earnt it through merit or because they have managed to have it display through ingenuity?

The truth is at the moment, there is little way to verify the authenticity of those stars, and indeed Google do not appear to, as of yet, pre-vetted the search results that sport them.

In those snippet video tutorials Google hint at reserving the right to control the display of starred results, however the initial results of webmasters' efforts suggest this is a worrying loophole that has no discrimination in place.

The plain fact is that publishers can fabricate them and just mark up their pages with technical precision, just as they have embellished customer testimonials since day one.

Google has just made it easier for site owners to display stars for all their results

In many instances starred reviews link to 3rd party sites of the publisher so that is acceptable, but the difference now is that Google has just made it easier for site owners to display stars for all their results, on all pages if they so choose.

There are services for Business Owners that can assist you to garner verifiable reviews such as TrustPilot which I recently trialled for a client with great success. Therein lies the crux of social proof, it must stand up to scrutiny to really offer you legitimate long term advantage.

I suspect the whole Schema bandwagon, which is really in it's infancy in some ways, is likely to be a real differentiator in the future as publishers and aggregators scramble towards a more meaningful web.

If anything, 2011 has professionally taught me that it's now less about rank anymore than richness and trust of search results.

Part of me cannot believe there is no Mountain View checks and balances in place for this. Yoast concludes in his blog that he "very much doubts whether this will continue to be as easy as it seems to be now though".

It seems we'll all be seeing the stars soon even if some of us are not.

Are you star struck when you view search results?

ps. I read this Dr Seuss story to junior Gailey probably every week to his delight, here's the full version 12min video of the The Sneetches. 

Actually, I'm being serious.

I started the relationship because I thought we would both get something out of this, but alas no, you: email marketing manager, just bundled me into a huge list, and this is your nemesis.

Don't worry, email marketing manager, there's plenty more like you out there and with cool services such as Unroll.me I can also bundle you up with your cohorts, and one-click-unsubscribe from all of you.

Boom!

Hey, I don't want to sound ungrateful, keep those unsubscribe gift links coming!

Happy marketing Christmas.

When people postulate what web 3.0 will be like, or talk about the Internet of Things, they typically prescribe it's creation to men in labs with white coats producing web enabled devices for giant corporations to churn out of factories.

Your power to connect stuff.

This is different. Twine is exciting because it honours that same creativity that propelled web2.0 - enabling consumers to be publishers - by putting the power into the hands of the end users and not the intermediaries or manufacturers.

If there is one aspect that really surprised me this week at the SearchLove Distilled event in London this week, it certainly was not the:

• quality of the speakers' insights, or the
• diversity of online marketing subjects related to SEO, or the
• high level of skill among the audience, or
• the general excellence of the event

Infact I don't pretend here to offer comprehensive coverage of SearchLove like Samuel Crocker magically served up moments after each talk ended.

And I cannot compete with the superhuman Human Level's Fernando Macía's prolific tweet rate, or fellow visiting spanish speakers such as the charming Aleyda or the affable Gian Luca, aka the Moz Oracle, or indeed the succint actionable roundup blog posts of Koozai's Mike Essex.

The speakers' discourse was peppered with fashionable references to Bamboo and ingenious ways to combat Pandalization, leaving a vocabulalry legacy of bewliderement to possibly many a marketeer who does not breathe the daily nuances of the Search industry. Hey, every vertical has it's own lexicon, right?

I certainly found myself nodding and quietly yaying in awe of Wil Reynolds nail on the hammer delivery and admiring the pragmatic link-building competitive success of Branded3's Patrick Altoft.

And yes whilst I applaud and signed Martin MacDonald's keyword transparency initiative (he continues to bask in the afterglow of tweet chit-chat with MCHammer), I still cannot but help think it's somewhat crying over spilt milk.

new era of freemiunsation of search...

Distilled did indeed accommodate the audience's interest in hearing a panel discuss the freshly vexed issue of Google's defacto keyword search query removal. This effectively is regarded by the industry as Google's thin edge of the wedge of a new era of freemiumisation of search data.

If you're interested in the background of this, Go Google Paloma Gaos for a litigation lowdown.

All that said, the real elephant in the room this time, was neither, the oh so last year's issue of hat colour and SEO ethics, nor was it the effects of Google's latest iteration of a search quality algorithms affectionaly labelled as Panda by the search community, or indeed the ritual announcement of the deathknell (or not) of the efficacy of exact match domains.

No, that looming metaphorical elephant in the room, at least for me, was the cookie monster - yes, the wider issue of the implications of the impending EU privacy legislation that without intending to sound dramatic, threatens the very existence of the internet economy.

As Ciarán Norris explained in his introduction to his deck: "if you don't pay for the service you are using on the internet, you are effectively the product"

Ciarán cogently argued how our collective usage of the services effectively surrenders our privacy so the mega sites can monetise them for advertisers prepared to pay for audience access. He also exemplified interactive gesture controlled TV services that personalise the viewing experience and ultimately how compelling this is for the end user and advertiser alike. He's touched on this before.

And the reliance on cookies, perma-logged in social services, javascript tracking and more, are the essential ingredients in the mega internet economy and the real enablers of for the personalisation bandwagon to roll on.

site owners are stymied to monetize...

However, if site owners are compelled to display landing page explicit opt in notices interstital nuisance style, then as Ciarán rightly argued, they may as well thereafter display a blank screen to users who decline to opt in to data collection, because without consent, site owners are effectively stymied to monetize and it's Game Over for everyone.

Ever wondered how some services recoup the massive effort it takes to offer a global service?

For example, the AddThis button, installed on some 1 billion domains and 9 million users?

Ever mused for a moment how they make money, without charging you; the widget installer who happily benefits from the enhanced site functionality it offers?

Well, AddThis happily drop you a cookie which allows adverts to be displayed to you, on other sites you visit thereafter. You get the widget, they get you targeted, advertisers sell more stuff, no one gets hurt and it's a good deal allround right?

Except some people don't like it or just don't get it and lobbying of the legislators is where the real battles are being fought right now.

Fast forward to a time if/when such EU cookie legislation comes into force in 2012 and such services would not work so silently: your user experience might become a journey through optin hell, with endless repeat questions each time you opened a tab and so much as looked at anything interactive.

Don't even think of cookie cleaning, you'll probably make it even worse for yourself ultimately. Oh and want to casually Like something? Well before you do, step this way, let me read you your rights and confirm you might want to like something before you Like something. Go figure.

So when the SearchLove audience was polled for a show of hands about their awareness or action taken on this issue, the reaction seemed to be one of nonchalance at best and resigned ignorance at worst.

what surprised me was how unbothered people seem to feel..

OK, so maybe I got the wrong end of the mood stick, please correct me if so, but the impression I got was as if SEOers were instead itchily awaiting some golden insider nugget of ...ok, so now do this neat little tweak and you'll get page one rankings in 3 days...

And that's what surprised me: just how unbothered people seem to feel about the cookie monster.

Joanna Lord from SEOMoz also presented a fascinating look at how retargeting worked for SEOMoz at SearchLove. It's a whole marketing discipline that the cookie monster issue threatens omniously.

I raised the issue in person with @JoannaLord during the Mozcation in Barcelona and she confessed that at worst it would manifest itself at the browser vendor level, if at all.

So if SEO community truly want to earn the respect of the wider marketing community, it's time to collectively articulate the cookie monster concerns, query and challenge thought leaders on the subject, and support efforts to lobby for a functioning internet economy that benefits everyone.

And people, this is more important than your Klout score. Really.

If only we saw that same passion that was applied by SearchLovers to engaging MC Hammer, gently goading him to attend London or NYC SearchLove, now applied to this critical cookie issue, then it's the best chance over the coming months that we have to influence the outcome.

The message to send to policy makers is, mess with the internet economy at your political peril.

put another way, this is the internet, you can't touch this.

In New York? You should go to NYC SearchLove. Check out the #searchlove vibe or Follow the London searchlovers on this unofficial Twitter list: http://mmkt.in/searchlovers

Postscript: Econsultancy have published an in depth article about the EU cookie directive. Monday, 31st October.

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Image credit: Jonathan Mak

First off, I don't have the answer. Maybe you do.

Familiar with this message?

If you are a Google Apps user and have tried to access Google Plus, or use the +1 button, that image will have haunted you a plenty.

There are great deal of benefits from being a Google Apps user. It's essentially like having Gmail acount and more but instead of @gmail.com having @mycompany.com

However for many months now, the gap has been widening between the Google services available to Gmail users versus Apps users.

The reason the new Google + and the +1 button is unavailable is because those services are dependant on creating a Google Profile and as Apps users and Admins know, Google Profiles are not yet available.

Coming soon?

There is a Google blog post from March 2011, that hinted the functionality would be enabled for Apps users 'soon'. Alas the comments steadily grow.

Since the launch of Google + and +1 button the clamour on other networks from Apps Users has been getting louder:

And the demand is only going to continue.

So why the delay?

The truth is no-one really knows or is not openly saying.

Here is a thread on Quora Why aren't Google Profiles available for Google Apps users? that hint at the extra challenges of Profiles for Apps users and some high profile bloggers have enquired why but don't shed light on the motive for the delay other than caution from Mountain View.

Too important to fail

So Google have a proud record of products that never really exited beta, technologies that we never quite liked (Sidewiki) or understood (Wave) or embraced (Buzz) and the tradition will long continue.

Except this time around, the revised efforts at cracking social for Google are possibly just too important to fail.

Generally speaking the reception to Google+ has been pretty positive and almost universally understood by those who have meddled with it. That bodes well for Google.

The invites window period was brief enough to recruit an enthusiastic army of testers that will implicitly supply enough feedback for Google and publicly appraise or berate the service so it can be refined.

Buzz me not

In contast when Buzz was launched it was quickly exposed at having shortcomings that despite being rectified, created a wave of antipathy against it and a provoked a legal and regulatory headache for Mountain View.

A Federal Trade Commission settlement and compliance for Google has now resulted in a comprehensive privacy program that will be audited for 20 years.

Basically dogfooding Buzz at Google was insufficient to detect the risk that manifested itself in the early public phase.

And this is where I can understand the cautious approach winning at Mountain View over the prevalent Silicon Valley tendency to fail fast and iterate.

Apps users are different

So Apps users are not a homogeneous bunch. From vanity domain personal users to small businesses upto major organisations, corporates with many thousand of users and multinationals, the only aspect that really unites them is not being an individual gmail user.

Not all Apps users pay, but those that do, pay because they earn, and if their earnings can be affected by Google mistakes in their adventures in social, then Google and the rest of the world will soon know about it.

Individual Gmail users engaging in lawsuits against Google because of an obscure loophole in their new social suite? I doubt it.

A corporate or an organisation doing the same with all the reputation consequences? Possibly.

Early adopter dogfooding

So only hours after the window of Google invites is now closed, we already see a frenzy of activity about Google+.

The critical acclaim has been generally good.

People seem to latch on how it works quickly, at least there is not the initial bemusement akin to the welcome of Wave, although bizarrely enough +1's don't display within Google+  as Search Engine Land observed.

More importantly, already there is a sufficient army of testers who can implicitly through their usage, and publically through their blogging and tweeting, supply enough feedback for Google to refine matters.

And refinements are sure to happen.

Already the Financial Times' observation about a privacy flaw have been amplified by the tech press and other issues about Google+ spam bots are gaining attention.

This early phase testing is a protective period for Google as much as it is for Apps organisations.

Because the risk of getting it wrong this time around or not quite getting it absolutely right for Google is just too high.

Ask any Google employee, their salary is now tied to the social success of Google.

The challenges of Profiles for Apps Users

The background to Profiles for Apps Users and other Google services was the legacy around the different infrastructures in place at Google. If you had a Google Profile before setup with an Apps email and now cannot access it, you may have been be one of those who Google has earmarked as having a conflicted account. 

You might be waiting and wondering what to do next. Wait for Apps to get Profiles and start +1 content out there on the web under that identity? Or succumb to opening a Gmail account to use Google+ instead?

And what happens when Apps Users finally get onboard? Will they have a Profile used in Gmail and another one with their Apps email just add to the confusion.

More importantly will there be some portability function to allow migration of account information between a Gmail and an Apps account including that all valuable digital footprint. What if I join company XYZ and then move on, can I haz my data?

The greater the delay between the launch of Profiles for Apps and now, the more socially messy things will become.

There are probably a lot more issues at stake for Profiles for Apps users. Preventing +1 abuse from same domains or IP ranges so to quash efforts to manipulate computing of SERPs? Surely that's on the agenda.

I'm sure there are more reasons, let me know.

Why do you think Apps Users cannot access Google+ or +1?

Receive Notification of Profiles for Apps
You can receive notice formally from Google once Profiles is launched for Apps users and thus know when your organisation can use Google+ via this official form: https://spreadsheets4.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEc2TjBVanQ4ckNVZGJsTHJYWjBTUWc6MQ&ifq

I don't remember a time when I never wondered: How does that work?

Equally I cannot recall a moment when I have not wondered: and what if?

I fondly recall, how avidly as an eleven year old, I read through my first hardback, proudly bought with my own pocket money, entitled 1000 questions and 1000 answers.

Except I was never really satisfied that the answers were the whole story because invariably more queries would arise from tales of science, history, fables of the reconstruction, and assorted factoids.

I've often found the downside to a curious mind is dissatisfaction at the endless pursuit of knowledge because the more you know, the more you know that you don't quite know.

The upside to being mentally wrestless are those times when you can actually exercise your imagination, experiment with stuff, be it physical or virtual and enjoy the results like the admen above or the band below.

So if I rewind back to the time that I was preparing for my final degree exams when the album cover of Green adored my bedroom, I devised a set of weights and pulleys, connected to rope and various pieces of windsurf kit, a kettle, the record player, the duvet and the curtains, that were all wired and set for the daily call of the maid alarm.

The Maid Alarm

Every morning without fail, the maid would knock hard on the door of every student in the dormitory.

Normally I would ignore the loud knock at the door, emit a murmur, continue asleep and typically be late for a lecture, but in an effort to awaken for exam week my convoluted dorm setup worthy of applause by Rube Goldberg, was sensitively set so that the mere stroke of a welsh knuckle at the door would set off a frenzy of interconnected wires, rope and weights that would immediately begin the begin:

• slam open the door
• lift the duvet off me at it's four corners to the ceiling
• start the record player at What's the Frequencey Kenneth at max volume
• whoosh open the curtains for a full blaze of Gower sun
• drop a brick onto a switch to boil the kettle at full steam

It was a system, that according to my engineering dorm mates was technically described as "effing brilliant" - I did not major in engineering - but one which my philosophy friends just queried with a dismissive "why effing bother?"

Well, if I had a photo of the contraption now, it might fit somewhere more at home in the pages of the delightful blog post that goes to the soul of the service called IFTTT. Sadly I don't so I'll shamelessly display the modern classic of Cog by Honda. If you like that you'll also like The Making of Cog.

IFTTT to put the internet to work

If this then that, IFTTT is a joyfully created service that allows you to meddle like a mad student in an informational internet kind of way that helps you do stuff.

If IFTTT had a object hero it might probably be a straight bit of wire, bent into a shape that binds paper together - aka the paperclip. (Is it paper clip or paperclip?)

I work with programmers, infact I'm sometimes guiltly of programming myself and often I find they, programming minds, revel when you can articulate what you need to happen when such a such thing is entered, or done here, to make that stuff get sent there and so on.

Be it with a whiteboard stuffed with arrows, an ugly mockup, a set of sentences or a load of yellow posticks on a huge sheet of paper the great thing about working with software developers is not developing the software but developing the ideas that power it.

You see software is not always just task driven steps to addressing functional needs, it should be fun, like this:

IFTTT is a service that allows you to control the input and the output.

Similar to Yahoo Pipes, but with an even more unambivalent interface and simplicity to boot, IFTTT really is Automatic for the People.

IFTTT can really be part of your internet filter. You're only limited by your imagination ma boy.

Want something to happen for you when something else happens on the internet? Yep, step this way.

So maybe that sounds vague? Well how about if you - the decisive non programmer - define the something and the happen?

Want your Dropbox to Tweet you when someone shares or amends a file? You can do that.

Get a text message when it comment is left on a blog you moderate? Yep.

There's a tonne of cool IFTTT ideas out there, some are listed here.

You just start imaging and think out aloud as you point click and paste your wishes on the pigeon step simple web page of IFTTT.com

Given how unfashionable and how repeatedly dead RSS is declared to be, with IFTTT you'll defintely redevelop an orange crush on the sites that sport it because RSS really allows you to weave all sorts of magic together.

And with RSS you don't always need any old monkey to help you, but it can be useful.

You can sign up to use IFTTT by invite only at the moment but as I have a few spare you won't have to lose your religion to get one.

How do I get an IFTTT invite?

Just tell me which musical titles of what band are referenced in this blog post.

I'm all ears. Comments or tweets welcome.

And if you're still not feeling inspired....

Last week I attended the brilliant SEO seminar about Link Building by Distilled otherwise known by #linklove among the 300 or so attendees in London.

Many a blog has already effused and poured over the topics and professional speakers who shared their experiences and expertise.

And since the event, the reaction has been very positive. On the whole.

However there continues to be people who misunderstand SEO.

So allow me to introduce you this video. It propelled my career interest in advertising and open thinking from an early age, and like all timeless communication, it's still relevant now.

More than one hundred of the seminar attendees are unofficially listed on Twitter here http://bit.ly/linklovers.

If you're in the USA you can still attend the imminent New Orleans Link Building Seminar on 25th March or buy the video of the London event. I highly recommend it.