|2 GO 2| Marketing - Internet, Search and Marketing


We would like to conduct an experiment based on Markets, Value, and Speculation. The design for the experiment will need to include at least a class of 30 children in the elementary school age. What the experiment will entail is 3 boxes of baseball cards or roll playing game cards like Magic The Gathering or something to that nature. The experimental subjects (the children in the class) will all be given the same amount of the packages of cards and will be told to open them. They are allowed to trade the cards if they are not satisfied with the players on the trading cards they have. Most of the children will go around and compare what they have with the others. They shiny or more gloss cards will be considered more valuable then the “regular” cards. This is the first part of the experiment which is analyzing the behavior of humans and how the look to see what others have prior to getting something, The “Keeping Up with The Jones’ Theory”. This represents the “value” part of the experiment. Assessing how much things will be worth based on scarcity of the commodity.

The second part of the experiment is watching those who are weak in the desired trading cards desired, to take advantage of the less intelligent or weaker minded subjects. The stronger subjects will try to convince the weaker subject to give up their good card for a bad card. The stronger subject will probably go after the shiny cards or thinker cards, not any of the “regular looking” cards. This represents the “markets” aspect of the experiment.

The next step  is the speculation part of the experiment. The teacher, who represents a “trusted advisor” or what may be known as a stock broker or government regulator  in the adult world, is going to implement a new variable. Originally, the market or the subjects who are children, assessed the value of the of the cards based on observing each others collection and then assessing the value based on scarcity. This took time because each person needed to interact personally with each other to compare their cards. After that value was assessed, the stronger business minded subjects, convince the weaker subjects into trading less valuable cards based on the market level value making their portfolio of cards better or more valuable. The teacher now comes in with a card valuing system, something like Beckett Magazine, and tells all the subjects that the shiny cards are worth less than the regular cards. After the teacher does this, they should leave the classroom and observe the children and what they do next. The weaker minded subjects now have the power, which would be similar to what self governing would be like and the minority stronger business minded subjects will start using force or debunk the magazine’s claims with regard to the values of the trading cards. The would be the speculation phase of the experiment. The subjects are all believing one sources claim and therefore chaos has ensued, until those who are stronger minded realize that the magazine’s claims may be false and they want to hold onto the more scarce gets. This leaves both parties satisfied. The weaker minded subjects will believe they have the greatest cards because the “magazine says so” which is similar how the media works in the united states. The stronger minded subjects will challenge the magazine’s claims and hold on to the more scarce card. We see this in the current 2008 elections process. If you talk to most people they like Barack Obama because he is the answer that give power to the masses, but the stronger minded people are not following Mr. Obama, and possibly not John McCain. Most likely it is a third party candidate they have faith in.

In short, the market should be the medium tht determines the value of a good, not the media, speculators, or bullying businessmen. The market works and always will work efficiently and safe in a traditional supply and demand format.


The browser wars have been going on for years. I remember in the dawning days of the internet, Windows 3.1.1 and using AOL or CompuServ to connect to the internet. Now we get our access to the internet through MSO and cable companies with high data transfer rates utilizing a host of different browsers available Safari, Firefox, Opera, Internet Exploder (IE), and other less know browsers like Konquerer. The theory in the late 1990’s was that whoever owned the biggest percentage of browser usage, controls the masses. Afterall the browser is the basic way users connect to various websites.

Along came Google and the browser became less relevant because people were now using search engines to find the information they wanted, making the browser only useful as a medium to get to that information. The search engine wars have gone on for some time now. Early on Hotbot, Yahoo, and MSN were the popular search engines. Then along came Google and people were amazed at how “relevant” the search results were and what a great mass of content that was indexed. You could literally type in a word and a perfect sarch result would show up.

Fast forward  to 2008 and now we have a hybrid of the two past markets emerging. Google has just announced that they are launching a new browser. If Google can’t get a large portion of the browser market, they will control the masses access to how information is found and how information is presented to the consumer. This is a hige feat for Google and a scary reality for it’s competitor and privacy advocates.

It is going to be interesting to see how Google moves forward within the next year and how other search and software related competitors of Google like Microsoft and Yahoo, react to this blitzkrieg attack of the market.


Normally we don’t put too much on our blog about politics or foreign policy, but with the upcoming United States Elections fast approaching us, I figure it would be a good opportunity to try new things for our site. The first thing I want to make clear is that we endorse none of the two major party candidates running for the 2008 elections. I feel America has been let down far too long with these parties and it is time for the axis to be tilted with more than two parties gaining popularity.

Recently I came across a great article that was posted on an awesome site called, “Reddit”. The article was in regard to America and “The oil crisis” that politicians are trying to feed us with, but in fact is not a crisis and never will be a crisis. The article was titled, “An urban legend to comfort America: our massive reserves of unconventional oil”. As I grow older, I am starting to realize how politics work and what makes them successful. The two factors in the political variable I have come up with is creating a “fear or crisis” and immediately or shortly following the announcement of that fear, a solution or remedy to the crisis or problem.

We only need to look at past topics that politicians talked about as “a crisis” or “a solution” to our problems in the United States. Taxes and the “lowering of them” is another past topic politicians have used as a crisis for Americans to vote for them. I came across a great article about why taxes are a lie to Americans and how the consumer is the only person who is truly harmed by taxes, not the business or corporation.

Now the government with the help of mainstream media is doing a push to “Go Green”. Everythin we see on TV has to do with alternative energy sources and getting off the dependence of foreign oil. But as some have pointed out, this “doomsday” scenario is being pushed by an elite few who have an ulterior motive. A few weeks ago a story broke about T. Boone Pickens and why he is so concerned with wind farming and our push for it, when it will effect his Golden Egg business of Oil extraction. An article was soon after released that detailed Pickens’ plan to hijack land in the name of wind farming for access to one of the world’s most precious natural resources, nope not oil… but water.

The bottom line is with a whole host of other energy sources available and only the select few rich who are touting a few of the possibilities available, we should question those select few and analyze the best option for America, then proceed down that course. There are always other options for getting energy, but what politicians tell you and what is really available to you are two separate things. The politicians want you sucking on their teats and coming to them for your problems, not figuring those problems out for ourselves.

Business Week recently release a really great article on blogs and blogging. On a daily basis, information is getting to people and things faster and more efficiently. Internet speeds, data recall, and data organization is creating a huge library of virtually anything people could think of. Eventually this amount of data will be so great, humans will never be able to hold the capacity to complete with it. We will virtually be reliant upon of data and technological advancements due to our natural thirst for information. Today’s blogging and information world will be our blueprint for survival.

Blogging will (and currently is) be used in strategic ways, some even conforming to the business variant of The Art of War. Rather than have strategic battles with weaponry as we know it in the modern era; bots, bloggers, and deceptive data will coerce success in the business world.Because information will move so fast in such vast amounts, things will happen much quicker creating an intricate and dynamic marketplace. This strict competitive regime will create a new type of warfare, Business Warfare.

During this course we have reviewed the SEO basics; things you shouldn´t and things you should definitely do to get more traffic such as blogging, using site maps and hiring the right SEO specialist. This is SEO for dummies #8, and today we will talk about SERP, Web crawling and Indexing.

What is a SERP?

SERP is a list of web pages returned by search engines as an answer to a keyword query.  Usually, SERP results include several characteristics: they contain a link to the page along with a brief description of the content highlighting the keywords used during the search, and of course, the page title.

The SERPs for major search engines include different listing types, such as definitions, images, search refinements, and organic search listings.

Search engines update the SERPs frequently to adjust the rankings accordingly and to refresh all the pages content; this could take some days or even weeks which can result into inaccurate data. The reason why they don´t use live results is to improve the performance.

What are Web crawlers used for?

Web crawlers are used to provide quick searches by creating copies of visited websites, which will be indexed afterwards by the search engines. Web crawlers are bots that start with a list of URLs to visit called seeds; they browse the Internet in an automated and methodical mode.

Web crawlers follow a series of policies such as: selection, re-visit, politeness and parallelization policies. These policies help them to perform a balanced and quality work.

Web crawlers only download a small fraction of the webpage, it should download the most relevant pages, not just random ones, this is called “Selection Policy”; another main policy is the “Revisit Policy” that takes into consideration which pages change more frequently to visit more often and re-visit pages regardless of their rates of change; the “Parallelization Policy” intends to prevent downloads of the same pages and maximize the download rate and in this process; and “Politeness Policy” designed to avoid overloading websites with requests.

Crawlers usually identify themselves to allow administrators to let them know they are not malicious crawlers or to contact their owners in case they are overloading servers with request or if they are trapped.

What do I need to know about Indexing?

Indexes prevent search engines from scanning every single document on the websites, which is a waste of time and power. Indexes not only optimize the speed but the performance while searching queries. There are several types of indexes; you and your SEO expert need to discuss what types are the most convenient for your needs:

- Suffix tree: Structured like a tree. The main disadvantage is that the storage of a word may required more storage in the tree than to store the word.

- Inverted indices: Used mostly when evaluation a search query to locate data that contains the words in a query quickly and next rank by their relevance.

- Compression: Is a measure of cost. Many search engines use some form of compression to reduce the sieze of the indices.

- Tokenization: Computers need to be programmed to identify what constitutes an individual or distinct word. These programs are usually known as parser or tokenizers. These parsers will also identify URLS, phones, email addresses, etc.

- Language Recognition: This is a common step during tokenization when the search engines supports and recognizes different languages.

- Meta Tag Indexing: Meta tags contain keywords included in the index; usually, they contain the name of the author, description, keywords and language.

Mobile communications are amazing now days. I just purchased the Blackberry Curve 8300 with the unlimited data connection. Just the fact you can use a Blackberry to login to a blog and post while on the road is a great incentive, but some sites have tools for your Mac where you can use the data connection to login to you blog on your laptop via bluetooth from you Blackbery Curve. This makes your office location available virtually anywhere! You can also download Pocket Mac for your Blackberry which allows you to gain the free software tools that windows desktop users use with their Blackberry. This use of technology is what will drive the future of the internet. I foresee the blogosphere getting bigger and more personal, with posters updating their blogs from various locations throughout the day making content more personal and viral.

This is our 7^th release of “SEO for dummies”.  You now know most SEO basics; from the concept of SEO to how to hire an SEO specialist. We have also learned what NOT to do, what tools are good for your site and the benefits of blogging. Today, we will explain the importance of Site Maps.

What is a Site Map? Site Maps are a key tool for webmasters as they help visitors and bots (robots) find pages located deep within your webpage. These bots are sent by search engines like Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ask to find pages in your site that are relevant.

Why are Site Maps useful?  Two main reasons: Visitors and Search Engines.

 Site Maps are a guide that helps your visitors to better understand the structure of your webpage and will offer an overview of all your pages so that your visitors know where to find the data they were looking for in the first place.

On the other hand, we have Search Engines; Site Maps are definitely optimizers because they ensure that all pages can be found. Search engines are limited to a number of links from a page; leaving aside the rest of links that they couldn´t read.  By using a Site Map you make sure that the four biggest and most popular search engines worldwide have all your information up to date.

Site Maps are the best shot you have to educate search engines about your site. This protocol will enable you to inform them what URLs are good to for their spiders to crawl within your site and help spiders to do a better job by crawling your website in an efficient and smart manner.

Site Map software is usually free, easy to use and a terrific tool to spot errors. Some of these errors will make it really difficult for your website to get indexed by Yahoo, Google, MSN and others. And, most probably you will notice a considerable increase in search engine traffic promptly after starting to use them.

There are two sitemap types: XML and HTML.

HTML refers to page listing that helps users to find the information that they need. It is usually categorized in sections.

XML refers to a list of your website URLs collected to give the search engines valuable data about your site. Additional info will be included for each of the URLs such as: the importance of your page in relation to the rest of your URLs, last time when it was updated and how often this happens.

 Make sure that your SEO expert is using this tool, as it´s free, easy to use and a key to success with search engines.

This is SEO for dummies #6. During our first 5 releases, we learned the concept of “SEO”, how to use it; the tools used; learned to recognize “Black Hat” SEO techniques, the 7 “NO-NO rules” for beginners and the benefits of blogging for SEO. Our 6^th release is about learning how to hire the right SEO for your company!

First of all, you need to know WHEN you need to hire an SEO specialist: if your traffic is languishing, your website is brand new or you only get traffic from people who already know your URL, it is about time to hire an SEO company to get attention from search engines. The higher your company ranks in user´s searches, the highest the possibility of them visiting your website.

Getting to the first pages of the results takes time and a good SEO. Even though some entrepreneurs learn how to do their own SEO, it makes more sense for them to focus on their business while a professional takes care of their site´s optimization to the search engines and the internet marketing plans.

Your SEO candidate companies should have a proven method for achieving high rankings; should NOT use “Black Hat” SEO techniques; be clear and honest at all times; focus on making your site user-friendly, not only search engine- friendly,  fully explain what their plan is and never make your site a “copycat” of other.

If you hear your candidate affirm their company will have your website in the first page of the search engines in few weeks, distrust them; if they say they have connections with the search engines, distrust them, no SEO works or has connections with them; if they offer some sort of “magic” adding you hundreds of search engines or using spam link campaigns, STOP. Magic does not happen in SEO and will only hurt your company in the long run.

Your SEO firm must be crystal clear when explaining everything they do, the strategies, changes applied, and most importantly, why they do it. You want to maintain a sincere relationship with the company hired, the communication must be fluid and you must feel comfortable with them, your common sense should guide you on this.

Make sure they plan to work hard on your website content and on making it user-friendly. Good content makes your site credible and reputable. If your website is not easy to navigate, doesn´t fully describe the products/services you offer, is unclear or too brief, users will use to your competition in a heartbeat. 

Your goals and the message you want to transmit to your potential customers should be kept in mind at all times. If your intention is to buy a product, they should not only focus on bringing traffic to your page, but on converting those visits into sales. In any case, the reason why you are investing your money on the website is because you plan to increase your return on investment (ROI).

Another important thing that you must do prior to selecting your SEO candidate is to ask them to provide you with some references or to show you other sites they have previously worked with to give you an idea of their performance. However, discourage “copycats” at all costs. Your site should be completely different from any sites this company has developed in the past. Each page has different functionalities, marketing plans and messages, keywords and “looks”.

Look for a company that has numerous marketing strategies that are not limited to SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a Marketing tool, not the other way around. Consider a company that helps you gain and retain customers with instruments such as blogs, web forums and refer a friend structures. Also, look for companies that help you build your brand and your rankings all together.

Hiring an SEO Specialist will be a great investment, if done correctly. Do your homework, investigate and educate yourself. Oh, I was about to forget, they should give you a FREE quote for their internet marketing services!