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By Greg Hluska
I had the opportunity to watch a very interesting documentary on the rise of Google. Those of you who know me (or those of you who follow this blog) know that I have an unhealthy a mild obsession with Google. That search engine, more than any other web site, completely changed the way that I use the web. Prior to Google, I used to use a combination of Yahoo, Webcrawler and Alta Vista for all of my searches. Neither engine worked terribly well and sorting through crap was a big part of my online experience.
Google has expanded since those innocent days when they were just a very good search engine. One of their stated goals is to index every single piece of information in the world. They have expanded into email, online (cloud-based) word processing/office productivity software, photo sharing, social networking, and many other areas. Because of this omnipresence and the sheer amount of information that Google collects, the company has several privacy advocates up in the air.
In response to privacy concerns, Eric Schmidt (Google C.E.O.) made a very interesting statement in the Doc Zone documentary (which you can watch online). Echoing free market ideals, he talked about how Google has to be in the business of protecting its users privacy because if it fails, the marketplace will find out, people will stop giving Google their personal information, and Google’s revenues will drop accordingly. Read more »
By Greg Hluska
Yesterday, I wrote about a young business leader named Rhea Drysdale, who waged a war to keep a fellow named Jason Gambert from trademarking the term ‘S.E.O.’. Well, I have a bit of a follow up – it appears that Jason Gambert has completely lost his mind.
Check out his web site. It is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen.
By Greg Hluska
This story has been buzzing through search marketing communities for a spell, but I’m not sure there is much awareness of it outside of search communities. In a nutshell, some guy who nobody had ever heard of attempted to trademark the term ‘S.E.O.’ (a buzz-acronym for ‘Search Engine Optimization’). Jason Gambert claimed that wanted the trademark because he wanted to impose standards upon the SEO industry – he said that he would let people use the term, but only if they played by his rules.
Trademarking a buzzword like SEO was clearly anti-competitive and the usual suspects in search lined up to oppose Gambert. One particular person named Rhea Drysdale stuck it out. Despite rapidly soaring legal costs, and several setbacks, Drysdale kept fighting Gambert’s application and won her case! On March 11, 2010, the United States Patent and Trademark Office terminated Gambert’s application for a trademark.
You can read Drysdale’s story here. – even if you are not into search, it is an inspiring story about young people getting active in public process.
By Greg Hluska
Over the last few weeks, I have tried to write something of an introduction to web site marketing. I tried to teach you how a search engine ‘thinks’, showed you the basic tools you can use to drive search traffic to your site, and wrote an article on some tools you can use to research various keywords.
Today, I am going to write about a topic that will especially interest people who have just started a web site. The sandbox refers to a probationary period that all new sites must go through with major search engines. I am writing about it because it is a topic that very few new webmasters know about it, despite the fact that it should play a huge role in how they plan and administer their web sites. Read more »
By Greg Hluska
Canopy - June 2009 Issue
While this site currently runs Wordpress only, we have some serious changes waiting in the wings. What you see is a default templated version of one small section of the larger dream for reginastreets.ca. My plan is to eventually adopt dual Content Management Systems (CMS) to run this site – the magazine will be run on Wordpress, but the rest of the site (the business directory, the event calendar, our Guide to Regina Downtown, and the associated Google Maps tie-ins) will run on a CMS called Joomla. Complex? Yes. A cool experiment and learning experience? Definitely.
I know much more about Joomla than I know about Wordpress and the Joomla forum is one of my serious online hangouts. Joomla was actually a big factor in the formation of my open source for non-profits concept, but that is another topic for another time. A very interesting topic came up in the Joomla forum and this article was born moments after reading it. Read more »
By Greg Hluska
In my previous installments, I have introduced search engine optimization and the three most important optimization tools at at your disposal. This is an oversimplification, but if you want to get good search rankings, write good content, get good links and write good titles for your articles. But what does this have to do with the Regina Streets Magazine?
The RSM is a street publication, founded in the tradition of great street publications like the Nashville Contributor and the Edmonton’s Our Voice. I helped start the magazine and remain heavily involved – I write articles, edit articles do the layouts and work with/recruit our vendors. So, once again, why am I writing about search engines? Read more »
By Greg Hluska
Yesterday, I introduced the topic of search optimization and attempted to illustrate how search engines work with a simple analogy. To learn to think like a search engine, imagine that you are working on a research project in a massive, poorly indexed library. To find the right resources, you would likely look at titles, ask people you trust and flip through books to make sure a particular book is of interest and on topic.
So what does this have to do with search engines? Read more »
By Greg Hluska
When Stacey and I first started talking about going online, I decided that I was going to write about what I doing behind the scenes of this site. My goal was to write about my strategies and tactics in real time so that others could learn from my failures and successes. This site was going to become a repository of best practices and horrible comedies of errors.
This post is both a culmination and a beginning. The culmination of months of dreaming and planning and the beginning of (hopefully years) worth of material. The last few weeks have had rather similar impacts upon the world of search, so that is where I will begin. Read more »
