I had the pleasure of meeting Tim Converse in the rotating bed room of the Hugh Hefner suite at the Palms at YPN’s party during Las Vegas Pubcon this year. He is definitely a witty guy, but has a stern way of saying things sometimes that leaves you wondering if he was being serious or simply having fun with you. ;-)

Taking opportunities as they come, I asked Tim for an interview and he said yes. I didn’t know at the time that the interview I would end up doing would be an “exit interview” days after he announced leaving Yahoo! for a new start up he names in the interview below. He also gives us his background, his reasons for leaving Yahoo, what he thinks of the hype surrounding recent Yahoo! departures and a few tidbits of information on his new position.

Q&A with Search Engineer Tim Converse

RAE: First, for people who might not understand the term “spam czar” (ok, so maybe that’s not the official title on your business cards), can you tell us a bit about what you did for Yahoo?

TC: Heh – no, not official, and kind of a joke. Also an exaggeration … but I can’t really explain that without describing how we were organized, so I’ll leave that there.

Anyway, I was an engineering manager, and my team worked on spam and other kinds of relevance issues. All pure-algorithmic stuff and all focused on web search. The goal for web spam fighting is always: don’t let the efforts of spammers interfere with the user experience. So we worked on algos in that direction. (Yes, I’m being vague.)

Toward the end there, I started to attend more external conferences, both academic and biz-side, which is the only reason I’m known at all externally, and the only reason you’re interviewing me rather than any of the thousands of other people from Yahoo!.

Most of the engineering and management talent at big companies is completely silent to the outside world, which I think is too bad, although you’re beginning to see that fragment with the rise of blogs and the encouragement of tech evangelism. Yahoo! is unusually open about allowing that kind of thing these days, which you can see just by looking at some of Jeremy Zawodny’s blog posts. ;)

RAE: How did you end up working for Yahoo to begin with?

TC: I worked at Excite Search for a couple of years starting in 2000, mostly on the crawling team. It was an interesting experience to work for a public company (Excite@Home) that failed so completely.

If you’re ever driving in Silicon Valley on 101 near Redwood City, look for a big “Ampex” sign on the west side of the freeway. (That’s a Silicon Valley landmark, and can’t be removed, apparently, because it commemorates the company that invented the VCR.) Right behind that are three large buildings that you can still see through, because they’ve never been re-occupied since Excite@Home ceased operations in early 2002. A monument to Bubble 1.0.

Yeah, working for a public company in the middle of a death spiral is an experience that everyone should have exactly once in their life. Or maybe at most once, I’m not sure.

Anyway, while I was still working at Excite, a friend of mine from grad school realized that he had two friends who both worked at web search engines, and he thought that maybe they should meet each other. So I had lunch with his friend from Inktomi, and we had this very wary conversation where we both tried to extract information about the other company while revealing nothing ourselves. :)

Then after Excite@Home went out of business the Inktomi guy got in touch, and eventually hired me and became my boss and mentor. Yahoo! acquired Inktomi a year or so after that.

RAE: What made you decide to leave Yahoo?

TC: Mainly just that I’ve never worked for a startup-sized company, and I wanted to try it. The new company also was a nice combination of my current life (web search) and my previous life (AI grad school), with people I knew from both phases, and I think the technology is really promising. But it was a pull thing, not a push thing.

RAE: In recent months, there has been a lot of talk about the “defection” of Yahoo’s senior management. Your departure will likely fuel that fire. Care to comment?

TC: Oh geez, it’s all a bit overblown. Yahoo! is a well-managed company, and part of good management is making the company robust to particular people leaving. These things tend to go in cycles also, with periods of stability and periods of flux where a lot of people change jobs.

But look at all the very high-profile talent that Yahoo! Research in particular has hired in the last couple of years — it’s a Who’s Who of web research. I’ll reveal my biases: I think that hiring the best engineers and scientists is more important in the end than biz-side VPs coming and going, which is what most of the stories have been about. (But I’m a geek that way — I’m sure that people with business-school training see it the other way around.)

I also think that journalists move in herds, and they tend to pursue angles of reportage that are in vogue at the moment. The reorg and personnel flux seems to be the angle of choice right now about Y!; in the spring it will be something different, like new products, or monetization wins, or whatever it happens to be. Don’t believe the anti-hype.

RAE: What will you miss most about working for Yahoo?

TC: Um, lots of things. The scale of the work, the huge datasets, the massive computational power of all that gear. The opportunity to help millions of people find what they’re looking for. The people I’ve worked with, my team, my friends. The corporate culture of not being a jerk. The free espresso drinks. ;)

RAE: Who is taking over your now empty position at Yahoo? And if you refuse to “uncloak” (yep, I so stole that from you Tim) the new spam czar, care to at least leave us all with a warm, fuzzy feeling (or a cold and steely feeling, depending on which side of the fence you’re on) about his (or her) capabilities?

TC: Nope, I can’t talk about individuals unless they want to be talked about, but believe me, everything is in good hands. Really extremely competent hands. I was mostly redundant already there, toward the end (shhh, don’t tell anyone!).

Again, the work that really matters is done by all the people you never hear about or talk to, not by people like me who go to webmaster conferences.

RAE: Do you have any parting advice for those looking to optimize for Yahoo without pissing your successor off?

TC: Yes. Create original content that people love. (Sorry, you’ll probably find that unsatisfying, won’t you?)

OK, I’ll try again: in addition to the above, make sure your titles and internal link text are pertinent. Test your pages in a vanilla browser with JavaScript and images turned off, to make sure that all crawlers can see all of your content. Make sure you can get to every page by following links from the root page of your site.

It really helps engines if you provide a way to crawl your site that doesn’t depend on cookies or session IDs. In fact, this is one case where it’s OK to show the crawler something different than you show users – go ahead and strip those session IDs for the crawlers (at least if the URLs will still work without them).

Check out your site at siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com to figure out what Yahoo! has crawled (and whether they’ve crawled it successfully) and to see who is linking to you. (That last recommendation is not just because I worked at Yahoo! – at the last SES, my co-panelists from other engines pointed people to SiteExplorer too, because it’s the only search-engine tool that shows you inlinks.)

RAE: So, we all know you’re a talented guy, but no one’s perfect. What was your biggest anti-spam failure? What was you biggest anti-spam success?

TC: I have a really good example of each of these in mind, and it’s unfortunate that I am not going to tell you about them, because they’re really good examples. ;)

RAE: You’ve been to several conferences in the search engine marketing realm. What was your favorite and why? Are there any industry people you’ve met over the years (non-Yahoo) via the conferences that you’ll miss no longer seeing on a regular basis?

TC: I’ve gone to WebmasterWorld (PubCon) and Search Engine Strategies, both of which I like, although they have slightly different vibes.

As for people, I’ve enjoyed meeting and hanging out with the Google folks, though I’ll name no names. Believe it or not, the reps from different search engines actually don’t sit around glaring at each other at conferences. We all work on similar stuff, and even though we can’t really _talk_ about it, it still gives you a feeling of common ground.

On the academic side, I enjoyed working with Brian Davison (from Lehigh University) and Marc Najork (from Microsoft Research) on the AIRWEB workshop that Brian started a couple of years ago. Studying the interaction of search engines and spammers is becoming a respectable sub-discipline, partly due to Brian’s work. The academic buzzphrase for it, by the way, is “adversarial information retrieval” (and if there are any fans of the movie “Brazil” out there … no, that’s _not_ what it means. But it *is* information retrieval, not information dispersal. :) )

Another person I got to meet, if only briefly, is Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro. I’m a fan of his eye-tracking studies – everyone who is interested in search usability ought to buy a copy of his latest one. ;)

RAE: Can you tell us a bit about your new company? The name would be nice for a start…

TC: Sure – I’m going to Powerset, which is also in the web search space. The focus is on applying natural-language understanding technology to web search. They’re still pretty stealthy, so I’ll stop there.

RAE: What will you be doing there and what are you most looking forward to as far as challenges in your new position?

TC: It will be very different I’m sure – I won’t be managing, at least at first, so I’ll probably just be desperately trying to remember how to do hands-on work and prove that I still can. :)

RAE: What did you see in this company that made you decide you simply had to be a part of it?

TC: A really, really nice demo. ;)

RAE: If the planets align in a “best case” fashion, where do you see yourself in five years?

TC: Working at the best search engine on the planet (Yahoo! Search) three years after it merges with Powerset, and two years after it becomes the dominant search engine on the planet in terms of market share, and 13 years before it becomes the official search engine of the lunar colony in 2024. (There’s no spam on the moon right now, and we want to keep it that way.)

RAE: Rumor has it that a young Tim Converse used to hustle pool in Chicago bars. Care to leave us with an interesting story?

TC: Where _do_ you get your information, Rae? That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry… we’re going to have to stop this interview right now. ;)

LOL, I can assure you my information is accurate guys. ;-) But, I really appreciate Tim’s candor and I know that he’s well respected by many members of the search engine marketing community and that many people will continue to follow him in his new career via the press and his blog. I wish him the best of luck in his new venture.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Search Engineer Tim Converse

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Search Engineer Tim Converse

I normally start out my interviews with a nice little professional sounding intro. Not this time – partially because I hate doing it, and partially because the BOTW boys (pronounced bot-wah boys for those who have never had to say it outloud) are too cool and laid back to need it.

If you’ve been to any internet marketing show (or even glanced through pictures from them) you’d think BOTW had 100 employees working each event, because their swag is on everyone’s backs. So how do the acknowledged kings of guerrilla marketing in the search engine marketing world work their magic? That’s what I got CEO Brian Prince to answer some questions about.

[Note: I had no idea Brian would be so candid, lengthy or downright funny as hell during this interview. This is seriously a great read and if you never read anything else at my blog, make this the post. Secondly, I already offered him free alcohol, but he must have been aiming for champange with some of his responses. ;-) I laughed after so many of his comments that I could have interrupted the entire interview with my banter, but lucky for you guys, I chose to make this note instead.]

Q&A with Brian Prince of BOTW

RAE: Thanks for doing this interview for me – I promise to take you out and get you liquored to say thanks in Vegas. ;-)

BP: Wow, that’s quite an introduction – I hope I can live up to the hype. Guerrilla marketing is responsible for a lot of our success to date, so this is a topic that I am passionate about and enjoy discussing. So thanks for having me. And yes, getting liquored in Vegas – yeah that sounds like a good idea…

RAE: First, for someone who’s been under a rock since 1994, why don’t you give everyone a little bit of background on Best of the Web?

BP: Sure thing – I’ll give you the BOTW elevator pitch. Best of the Web (BOTW) was founded by graduate student Brandon Plewe at the University of Buffalo in early 1994. The original concept was to have the nascent internet community collaborate and vote upon the web’s best sites – thus making BOTW the first “Web 2.0” company before there was even a Web 1.0. Best of the Web recognized and awarded many of the early industry pioneers, even attending the first W3C Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland to present the first ‘Best of the WWW’ awards to the lucky recipients including such industry notables as Marc Andreessen, Eric Bina, Kevin Hughes, and Lou Montulli.

Best of the Web categorized and recorded the annual ‘web award’ winners from 1994 through 1998; and BOTW was even referenced in the original Google paper on The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine as a pioneer in recognizing the best web navigation services available online. Alas by 1999, as the rise of algorithmic search engine took hold, the allure of the “web awards” model as voted upon by the community faded into the sunset. At least until web 2.0 got it’s groove on, ya Digg?

My business partner, Greg Hartnett, happened across the botw.org site one day and we immediately saw an opportunity to take this site that had pioneered the original web award directory model and expand it into an authoritative human-edited directory of the web’s best sites. We transformed the original Best of the Web directory from a few dozen top level categories into a comprehensive general directory that currently includes more than 70,000 categories and growing, but still remains intently focused on recognizing quality, content-rich web sites across all reaches of the web.

RAE: How long have you been doing tradeshows and conferences to promote yourselves?

BP: It amazes me when I think about it, because it really hasn’t been very long at all. Greg & I have been heavily involved with internet marketing since the beginning, but we maintained a low profile and flew under the radar for a long time. We sent the Director of our reseller program, Jared Del Prete, out to the November 2004 PubCon in Las Vegas, but it wasn’t until June of 2005 that Greg & I decided to attend PubCon in New Orleans.

That was our first industry show as attendees, and the energy, the people, the knowledge share, and the parties from the conference all combined to blow us away. I came home from New Orleans and couldn’t talk for two days – no joke. My wife might say that is a good thing, but I say it’s Nawlins – that town sure can party.

We then signed-up as attendees for the SES San Jose 2005 show, and by the end of the conference we were also “Trade Show Exhibitors” thanks to our good friends at Go Guides who were kind enough to share their conference booth with us – which was very cool of them. This act of goodwill actually afforded us the opportunity to test the power of BOTW swag in a large scale environment without the upfront capital cost of a full-scale exhibitor – viva la guerrilla marketing! The feedback during the show was fantastic and we were officially hooked on the conference tour and haven’t looked back since.

Now we’re at a trade show of some sort every 6-8 weeks but we love it. The conferences drive business and keep us tapped into this very dynamic and opportunistic industry that we compete in. The fresh ideas, industry advances, and networking contacts that I take home from every show are priceless. My only regret is that we waited about 10 years before we decided to come out of our shell and engage – I’m sure we missed a bunch of fun parties.

RAE: Everyone brings swag to the events, but no one seems to get anywhere near as many people as you guys do to sport it. Why do you think you have had such success with it?

BP: That Rae, is the BOTW secret sauce in action. I could tell you, but I’d have to off you afterwards ;-)

The short answer is a bit of strategy, some good fortune and some incredible friends. The long answer is rooted in comfort – the BOTW shirts were originally designed by us, for us. We’re a pretty loose crew (go figure) and we thought that as long as we dress in t-shirts at the office daily, we might as well dress in Best of the Web t-shirts and promote our brand. Mix in the wide-spread distribution opportunities that the conference trade shows give you, and boom – you get inertia.

The key for us was the day we sat down to strategize the t-shirt marketing effort and realized the unthinkable – One size does NOT fit all; AND, Women are people too! It’s been my experience that most trade show attendees come home with a bunch of x-large, short sleeve vanilla-style t-shirts that are printed en masse and distributed the same way. We realized that perhaps if we gave different sizes and different styles for men versus women, that we might get lucky and actually get people to wear the t-shirts out and about. That was the holy grail for us – not to just give the shirts away, but to actually get people wearing them and thus reinforcing our brand. Now when we attend a trade-show we give away a full line of BOTW shirts in various styles, colors, and size options – it’s our version of personalized one-to-one marketing. So far it’s been working out well for us, with thanks going out to some industry VIE’s (Very Important Evangelists) like Sugarrae, Jim Boykin, Daron Babin, Roger Montti and other industry notables who have supported our growth and helped to strengthen our message.

People seem to like the gothic look of the shirts, and I think the term ‘Best of the Web’ is easily recognizable and transferable to others, and so embraced. So when people see Sugarrae wearing a Best of the Web tank top, they get it – Rae is very successful and involved with the internet – she must be “Best of the Web.” Hence, instant rapport and understanding through a common ground. If only our world leaders were all sporting BOTW shirts, perhaps we could all get along……

RAE: Did you plan to go the guerrilla marketing route at tradeshows or was it something that just happened?

BP: Guerrilla marketing is in our blood. We got our start in the industry by raising a small amount of “friends and family” capital and then living frugally while reinvesting every cent back into the business for years. Guerrilla marketing was, for us, the only option available to market and compete with the industry titans. So that’s where we’ve earned our stripes and today that is our core competency.

We had high hopes of starting something a little viral at the trade shows, but the overall reception within the search industry has been overwhelming. We never expected to be embraced by our peers as much as we have been and we’re very grateful for that. There are some amazing people working in this business – it’s fantastic.

RAE: Do you plan out your efforts now in regards to guerilla marketing at both the tradeshows and in the online community? Is there an ideal timeframe to pull off your campaigns?

BP: I am very privileged to be surrounded by a team of exceptionally smart and creative people at BOTW. We do a lot of outside-the-box thinking about new promotions, new products, and new marketing initiatives, and we try to create a framework for success to happen if the ideas are executed properly. I don’t think there is an ideal time-frame for a particular campaign; each is launched with a certain strategy and objective in mind. For example, one of our goals last summer was to increase awareness and adoption of our category sponsorship program – so we launched a 60 Day Free Trial and now our monthly sign-ups are twenty-fold what they were before the promotion. So we keep at it, try new things, and measure success one initiative at a time.

RAE: What is the craziest thing you’ve done in regards to marketing your site? Was it a success and which member of your team are you going to give credit for the idea?

BP: This is an easy one. We’re pretty socially conscious, so we decided to mix our guerilla marketing efforts with our philanthropic nature, and have begun a program of distributing our long sleeve BOTW t-shirts to our less fortunate brethren whenever and wherever we can. I’ve done my part here and there, but my partner Greg has taken the torch and run with it, handing out Best of the Web shirts to the homeless in and around San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It’s a noble effort and we believe it to be unique within the industry. Needless to say, the shirts are even better received by the homeless than the trade show crowd.

So next time you’re in San Francisco strolling down Haight Street looking for a good time, don’t be surprised to see a circle of BOTW friends helping to spread the good word about Best of the Web.

RAE: You guys are well liked by everyone I know in the internet marketing community – do you think trust has had anything to do with your success?

BP: That’s a very nice compliment that we take to heart – thank you. I think we try to be genuine, and people feel that from us. To quote an old proverb, we try to “say what we mean and mean what we say.” At our essence we’re a handful of internet geeks who like to snowboard and live the “work hard, play hard” mantra to the core. As a result, it makes me happy to think that we’ve built a certain amount of trust or respect within the industry, if for nothing else than just being honest and direct.

RAE: You run promotions on your blog a lot – have you found them to be successful towards your end goal?

BP: Yes – part of our marketing strategy is to keep people interested and engaged with our products. We sell a nuts and bolts type of service – a Best of the Web directory listing review. It’s a fundamental part of any internet marketing strategy, but admittedly, it’s not very sexy. So we try to engage both current and new customers alike by offering frequent specials, discounts, contests, or giveaways.

This month, as you mentioned, we’re running the Plasma HDTV and Massage Chair giveaway. We try to run contests for items that are of general interest, highly coveted, and generally elicit some-type of a “wow” reaction. We always like to give away items that we would want to win ourselves – who doesn’t need a new 42” Plasma HDTV and massage recliner in the den?

We’ve found incentive-based marketing to be very powerful if managed effectively. Marketing to an existing base of loyal customers can be one of the most productive marketing efforts a business can target. The users are already familiar with the company and the product, so the goal is to simply stimulate and drive demand – and incentive marketing works very well towards that end.

RAE: How important do you feel branding is within our industry and how much do you think it has contributed to your success?

BP: Branding is huge – it took me a while to grasp that concept, but even in an anonymous business environment like ours, the power of the brand is unrivaled. We actually compete in both the “branded” and “unbranded” marketplace so I have experience with each. Greg and I started online in the highly competitive online travel industry, building a network of travel and hotel reservation web sites. Most of our sites are “white-label” sites targeting the higher traffic, keyword-driven, organic search results. Every day we wake up and try to generate new sales from scratch. It’s a tough business, with very little customer loyalty, dominated by industry giants. It’s a lucrative business, but a grind nonetheless.

In contrast to that, we have been hard at work building the Best of the Web brand via trade shows, interviews, conference speaking, t-shirts, reseller program, press releases, etc, and cumulatively this has afforded us the opportunity to build an eco-system of industry evangelists and distribution partners that furthers our reach and solidifies our brand. It has also offered us the opportunity to launch additional products and services like the BOTW Blog Directory and the BOTW Enterprise Software Directory. Each offering extends the BOTW brand and allows us to present users with a consistent quality experience in new mediums.

We believe so strongly in branding, and particularly the Best of the Web brand, that we just went out and spent an ungodly sum of money to acquire the Bestoftheweb.com domain name and remove any confusion in the marketplace. Now we have a new platform available to develop an innovative and integrated Best of the Web portal weaving our various products and services together in one centralized destination. So keep your eyes peeled – it should be an exciting 2007 for the Best of the Web team.

RAE: What are some of your favorite books, websites or blogs on the topic of marketing?

BP: Books: “Blue Ocean Strategy” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Maugorgne, “Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing The Way Businesses Talk with Customers” by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, “See you at the Top!” by Zig Ziglar, “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell, “Guerrilla Selling” by Jay Conrad Levinson, Bill Gallagher, Orvel Ray Wilson , “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie and “Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing” by Harry Beckwith.

Marketing Sites: Marketing Profs, Trend Watching, Pew Internet, ClickZ, Inc.com and Cmoresource.com.

Marketing and Technology Blogs: Marketing Pilgrim, Seth Godin, Battelle’s Blog, Top Rank Blog, Micro Persuasion and Scobleizer.

Additionally I subscribe to many of the top industry technology and SEM blogs like yours – too many to list.

RAE: What do you think you’ve done to set yourself apart from other directories out there? What do you think website owners can do in general to set their own sites apart from the pack?

BP: We were fortunate to already have a successful travel business in place when we started Best of the Web, and this gave us a tremendous competitive advantage during our start-up mode. Contrary to popular belief, the directory model is not a “get rich quick scheme” and it is a long, hard, and tedious road to successfully build, operate, and grow a comprehensive general directory from scratch, let alone try to turn a profit while doing so.

So as a result, we never felt the need to push the commercial model and instead spent the better part of three years assembling a team of paid editors to build the directory out using a set of quality criteria guidelines to create a deep and useful informational resource. We were able to focus on building an authoritative database of quality web sites and let the revenue model solidify after we had a top-notch product to offer.

We’re very proud of the fact that everything on Best of the Web was custom created, in-house, and from scratch. We employ excellent programmers and editors, and it shows. The BOTW software, and our blog and web directories were all created by hand; from the initial top-level nomenclature and taxonomy down to the individual listings and additional search features available within each category. The BOTW reseller program was created in house, as was our category sponsorship program, thus providing us with a proprietary database of the internet’s top marketers. We don’t run any third party advertising on the site, and we think that makes us unique and somewhat exclusive.

My advice to site owners looking to separate themselves from the pack would be to analyze your marketplace and seek out small, but sustainable strategic advantages. Look for the low-hanging fruit that offers efficiencies or speed to market opportunities. Adding a synergistic or ancillary product or service into an already existing traffic stream is a great way to increase revenues, as well as to diversify and grow your business. That is the beauty of this industry for entrepreneurial people – low barriers to entry and unlimited long-term potential across a global marketplace. Awwwww yeah.

RAE: What’s coming up for you guys? What can we expect to see from you in the next six months?

BP: Well, we just announced the hiring of your co-mod on the Link building forum over at Webmasterworld – the revered and renowned Roger Montti of martinibuster fame is now a BOTW Guy, so look for big things ahead for us. Roger is going to head up our BOTW Verticals initiative focusing on B2B lead generation, and we’re very excited to have one of the premier minds in the search industry join our management team.

Additionally, during the next few weeks we will be exhibiting at the Ad:Tech New York and Webmasterworld Las Vegas conferences, where both Roger and Greg are scheduled to be conference panel speakers (as well as the legendary sugarrae I believe?) So if you’re attending one of the trade shows, please be sure stop by our booth and say hello – I’ll do what I can to send you home in some sweet new BOTW swag.

I would hope to have some progress on the new Bestofhteweb.com portal during the next six-months as well, and if history is any sort of indicator, I would imagine that we’ll pull another rabbit or two out of our hats as well.

After that, things get a little murkier as I start to see some significant *snowboarding* in my future as the winter months wear on……and that’s what it’s all about……

RAE: I know from personal conversations that you keep a lot of the pictures people send into you of them wearing your swag – it’s even been rumored there will be an eventual “Hall of Fame” for them. What are some of your favorite pictures and why?

BP: Yes, the often spoken of but never before seen “BOTW Hall of Fame” is a work in progress. My tech team almost had it live after the SES San Jose show, but then we ran into a technical glitch and I believe the project was shelved a bit on the priority list. But fear not – we will get it live for all the world to see, and in the meantime, I have attached a few of my favorite shots for your readers enjoyment:

The Best of the Web softball team coached and managed by Text Link Ads founder Patrick Gavin

Best of the Web’s Greg Hartnett and his long lost twin brother Ron “The Hedgehog” Jeremy

Robert Scoble, the self-described “Tech Geek Blogger” and author of “Naked Conversations” sports his BOTW pride with his son at an industry trade show

The one and only Sugarrae shows some prime-time BOTW attitude

Kat Ortland, formerly of SEOmoz fame, shows her stuff with BOTW’s Greg and Brian at the 2006 Google Dance in San Jose

This picture is NSFW, I repeat, not safe for work!
An unnamed BOTW Evangelist claims that whenever he puts his BOTW shirt on, women nearby take their shirts OFF!

[Note: Brian wasn't sure if I'd want to publish this one or not, but, I think we all know my attitude in general is "bite me" - but I did at least make it a link for those of you at the office.]

RAE: Thanks for sitting down with me and doing this. I’m sorry I couldn’t fly up to wine and dine you like some of the bigger news companies have (sorry ladies, he’s a happily married family man) but I’ll be happy to sport a shirt as always at the next event – even if you don’t have me blogrolled. ;-)

BP: My pleasure – I enjoy talking shop and as you can see from the length of this interview, I am not short on words. I appreciate the opportunity to pontificate on BOTW and the search industry at large, and I thank you for the time, forum, and thought-provoking questions. I personally enjoy reading your blog daily and I hope we don’t bore your readers too much with this interview. See you in Vegas!

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Brian Prince of Best of the Web (BOTW)

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Brian Prince of Best of the Web (BOTW)

I recently did an interview with Michael Ferguson, the Senior User Experience Analyst at Ask.com about their rebranding campaign. I also took the opportunity to ask questions in regards to rebranding a website in general so that regular webmasters could learn from Ask’s experiences (and budget).

The interview ended up being almost three thousand words and contained a lot of interesting information, so I allowed it to be published (in two parts) over at Search Engine Watch. If you’re into usability, you’ll definitely find some good information in them…

Rebranding Ask.com, Part One
Rebranding Ask.com, Part Two

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Michael Ferguson of Ask.com

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Michael Ferguson of Ask.com

So, back at Boston PubCon I was at the bar, introduced myself to two guys while grabbing some shots and it happened to be Joel Lesser and Doug McGaughey, the guys behind LinksManager. When I saw that they had gotten a patent on their linking system, it made my ears perk up a bit since this is the first I’ve heard of a link system grabbing a patent and a quote about auto-rotation in their press release made me curious enough to ask Joel some questions, which turned into an interview about the patent and their intentions for it, along with their system in general. So, here ya go.

Q&A with Joel Lesser of LinksManager

RAE: Thanks for doing this Interview Joel. I normally don’t interview companies I haven’t had “personal experience” with, but because I’m so heavy into the “link development world” your latest developments have interested me and I think others will find them interesting to. There is a thread at webmasterworld on the subject, but I wanted to get a bit more in depth.

JL: You are welcome! I am happy to discuss this especially with someone like you who has so much experience in the world of link building.

RAE: First, can you briefly tell us about LinksManager?

JL: The LinksManager concept was conceived in the late 90’s when we realized a great way to build traffic was through link exchange. However, we realized quickly that the data management challenge of managing a quality link exchange campaign was overwhelming. We tried spreadsheet solutions and other methods to manage the data which were too cumbersome and time consuming. We knew we had to automate some of the tasks but we wanted to maintain quality control so we knew an editor based system was going to be needed.

We started scripting some of the processes and early on, decided that the system would have to be editor-based for quality control. Editor based meaning that each webmaster would decide who they will and will not link to. 12 months later, the first version of LinksManager was completed and launched in the year 2000. This was before Google went online so it’s important to refute the myth that LinksManager was designed to affect link popularity. It was not. LinksManager was designed to manage linking with like minded sites.

We conducted some research and realized our editor based method of managing links was original and we could not find “prior art” in the patent database. It was then when we decided to file for patent protection as we had a hunch that our system would probably be the target of cloning with features that may not benefit the betterment of the Internet.

As the Webmasterworld discussion forum archives will reveal, our initial link checking bots were far from perfect and we used webmaster input to improve the system greatly. We revamped the link checking system in 2004 and now it is much more web friendly. LinksManager’s bots behaves very similar to how search engine bots work. For more information see this page.

RAE: Your press release says you’ve been awarded a patent for an “Ethical Link Management Solution”. But no where on the patent is the word “ethical” used. Why did you choose to add that to the title of your press release?

JL: Great question. The patent does state: “The practice of automatically linking the web page of the first Webmaster to the web page of the second Webmaster, without any intervention from the first Webmaster, is not believed to always be in the best interest of the first Webmaster.”

Of course it is difficult to convey this ethical concept in a short headline announcing a patent. Every idea we ever had for LinksManager, every potential feature and module has always been judged against a single standard: Does this benefit the Internet and its end users? If the answer was yes, the feature went in. If the answer was no, it didn’t.

So to answer your question, because LinksManager is an ethical link management solution, we felt that the word made sense in the headline.

RAE: Are you aware of any other links management programs that already have a patent on their system?

JL: There are issued patents on other linking methods. Some are specifically referenced at the top of the LinksManager patent However, we have not been able to tie many, if any, of those referenced patented methods to commercial services available on the web today.

RAE: What makes your system different than others to the point you felt the need to patent it?

JL: The combination of methods and most specifically, our editor based method, is what makes the LinksManager system unique. We applied for 15 claims and we were awarded all 15.

Back in 2000, we felt the need to apply for a software method patent because we were concerned others would copy our editor based model and most likely add features that do not better the web. It was a hunch. We weren’t sure. But we were right. In the past five years, over 100 competitive alternatives have been devised and have been placed online that have many similar features as the LinksManager model . 95% of those alternatives are thought to offer features which we do not believe better the Internet community. We believe at least some of those products have given reciprocal linking a bad image and are believed to have made things tough on search engine engineers.

We have always believed links should be obtained using editorial discretion. The search engines also appear to share the same mantra. Some of the claims of our patent relate to our editor based model.

There are also independent claims in the LinksManager patent related to spidering to check for link reciprocation and dead links as well as claims directed to autorotation of links from a set of links. But the principal reason we pursued patent protection in 2000 was a particular interest in editor based link management.

RAE: How long did it take you to get the patent – how long has LinksManager been working towards this goal?

JL: It took almost a year to research and prepare for filing. We then filed in June 2000. We went back and forth with the examiners for years. As you can imagine, they had a lot of questions! And the patent isn’t easy reading unless one is familiar with the technology or pays particular attention to which entities represent an Account Owner, an Administrator and a Webmaster. We received the patent on July 25, 2006.

RAE: Will you be attempting to “take aim” at any other link manager type companies who appear to be in violation of LinksManager’s patent?

JL: Probably. However, this type of research takes time so don’t expect that to happen next week. A lot of research needs to take place first. We have over 100 sites bookmarked that appear to have at least some similar features. We expect we will make a determined effort to decide which companies we will address in what order in the near future.

When we filed for patent protection, it wasn’t because we want to get into the business of suing other companies. It was originally done to protect the Internet against unlicensed companies that we believed may have copied the LinksManager model. However we realize the only way to enforce a patent may be through legal avenues . We will look to our attorneys for their guidance and advise as to how to proceed.

RAE: How do you determine if a links management program is “whitehat” or not? Since the industry as a whole can’t seem to agree on what is white, black or grey, how do you plan to make that interpretation when possibly granting licensing agreements?

JL: Excellent question. And I agree there is no exact scientific measurement. So we tend to revert back to what search engine engineers have publicly stated in their guidelines: Obtain relevant links with editorial discretion. Most of the search engines don’t specifically state “editorial discretion” but that is in their own patents and whitepapers.

We also determine whitehat vs blackhat based on how services offer features that influence search engines that also have their own patented technologies to consider.

Google’s 2005 patent publication # 20050071741 is a good example and states:

“… A typical, “legitimate” document attracts back links slowly. A large spike in the quantity of back links may signal a topical phenomenon (e.g., the CDC web site may develop many links quickly after an outbreak, such as SARS), or signal attempts to spam a search engine (to obtain a higher ranking and, thus, better placement in search results) by exchanging links, purchasing links, or gaining links from documents without editorial discretion on making links…”

Getting back to your question, when considering granting licensing agreements, we would base our interpretations on how the service being considered for licensing operates. A service that allows you to obtain links quickly without editorial discretion could be considered black-hat in our opinion. A service that offers features that do not violate search engine guidelines would obviously be more likely to be considered white-hat.

RAE: It is possible for a user to use the system in a less “ethical” way than you intended? Do you plan to police the use of your system by your own users?

JL: We do not think that it is possible for a user to use LinksManager in a less ethical way because of the safeguards we have in place.

Keep in mind: LinksManager is a tool. A hammer is a tool. A hammer can be used to drive a nail or it can be used to smash a window. Any tool can be abused.

We do have a number of thresholds and detection devices in place that monitor our users. We also rely on webmaster feedback and investigate all reports from webmasters and end users. We take appropriate action as needed. And as we noted in our blog recently, potential customers are not always right, ie, we do not allow just any webmaster to use LinksManager. For more on that see the following blog entry.

We have always policed the system and our users are very helpful in alerting us if they see a problem. Some problems are easier to deal with than others. For example, if a user who sells candlesticks creates a link category to loan consolidation companies, that’s not technically against the law or in violation of any specific search engine rule or guideline. Search engines state to keep linking relevant but the site who sells candlesticks and is licking to a loan consolidation site may have a responsible reason to do so. Each case is different so we have to be fair and give all situations a fair examination.

We find that the best way to police the system is through education and we have really ramped that up in the past 2 years. There are now dozens of articles about proper link exchange on the LinksManager website.

RAE: The patent on auto-rotation of links – does that refer to auto-rotation within your system, within any automated system or does it even cover lone webmasters doing it automatically with a home grown script for their own use (an example would be that you can rotate anything with a simple cgi script automatically on a page that is totally static and hand built otherwise)? I think it’s fair to say that webmasters have been using auto-rotation for many years.

JL: That’s a great question. It would be difficult to envision us spending resources to pursue a webmaster who has produced a home grown script to rotate links unless that script also offered additional specific features which appear to be protected in the LinksManager patent. It all depends on the features that the product offers. For obvious legal reasons, I can’t make any guarantees but I can say the targets we have in mind are companies who have used our service in the past, and then blatantly ripped off the majority of features in the LinksManager model and are now marketing derivatives of it. Unfortunately, we may have our hands full pursuing just these types of competitors.

RAE: Where do you see LinksManager heading now and how do you see the patent helping you to accomplish those goals?

JL: We believe this patent helps show webmasters that LinksManager was first online with our patented method of editor based link exchange. We definitely think of ourselves as the good guys and innovators. Webmasters who want an ethical link management solution should consider LinksManager based on the quality of our products and our innovative services which continue to evolve at what we believe to be the forefront of this technology.

While we think we were the first to market with this type of product, we also have been busy continuing to produce dynamic new ways to output link data that enhances the end user’s experience. Once such product released in 2005 is Linklets™ which allows webmasters to output their link data in virtually any format. So if the webmaster doesn’t want link data published in the legacy format that the search engines use (title, description, line break), they can use Linklets to output the data in any format they choose. For more information see this page.

Another new LinksManager product waiting in the wings is LinkBlogs™ which combines the power of linking with blogging. It’s a concept never before seen on the Internet and it should revolutionize how webmasters think about linking. Linkblogs is currently in final testing. We hope to release it by the end of August 2006. For a sneak peek…

RAE: Thanks a lot for doing the interview. It’s nice to get some explanations in plain English in regards to your patent. I wish you the best of luck.

JL: I enjoyed doing this interview. Thank you! I would be happy to answer any other questions you may have in the future.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

LinksManager Gets a Patent – Interview with Joel Lesser

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

LinksManager Gets a Patent – Interview with Joel Lesser

So, I’ve met some of the people from the Sitemaps team a few times and when I was in Boston I had a chance to grab lunch with two of the Sitemaps engineers where I shamelessly asked for an interview and they agreed.

I wanted to kind of do a different spin on Sitemaps information by looking at what about Sitemaps was different for and specific to bloggers. Of course, I asked some general questions to be nosy. ;-) Read on to find out what the differences are for bloggers, whether or not using Sitemaps can hurt your indexing (as claimed by some) and to find out why Fiesta Giles is hanging out at the Seattle Google offices.

Q&A with Google Sitemap Engineer Vanessa Fox

RAE: Thanks a lot for doing this interview. I know from meeting you in person several times now that you, as well as your team, are dedicated to making Sitemaps the best product possible. Let’s start off by assuming not everyone knows what Google Sitemaps is all about. Why was the Sitemaps project created and how does using it help individual site owners as well as Google and how do you see Sitemaps developing over the next year or so?

VF: Google Sitemaps helps us communicate better with webmasters. Overall, this two-way communication between Google and webmasters can help improve sites across the web and make them more accessible through Google, which ultimately helps Google users get the best search results.

This service was launched just over a year ago as a way for webmasters to tell us about all the pages on their sites. Webmasters can submit all their URLs to the Google index using the XML-based Sitemaps Protocol or by submitting a simple text file, RSS or Atom feed. The first step to getting your site’s pages into the Google index is to make sure that the Googlebot can crawl your pages. Sitemaps is an easy way to make sure Google knows about all your pages right away and that those pages are crawler-friendly. This is especially useful for new sites that don’t have a lot of external links pointing to them or for sites with pages that are difficult to find through regular crawling (for instance, pages that are dynamically generated). Without a Sitemap, we wouldn’t know about these pages until we crawled links to them.

Since our launch last year, we’ve expanded the service to 17 languages. We’ve also added detailed and helpful site statistics (such as, the top Google search queries driving traffic to your site) and troubleshooting tools to help webmasters make their pages more crawler-friendly. We are regularly adding new features. Some examples of recent features include:

• Robots.txt analysis: Quickly see if you’ve accidentally blocked your home page with your robots.txt file and test your robots.txt file against Google’s user agents.
• Crawl errors: See what pages Googlebot had difficulty crawling. You can see at a glance if you’ve accidentally blocked your ome page or if you have pages that redirect to themselves.
• Common words report: See what words we most commonly find on your site that and external sites most commonly use to link to you.

We spend a lot of time looking into what information we can provide that would help webmasters, and we listen to the feedback we get. In the next year, you can expect us to continue to do that and launch features in response to user needs.

RAE: Specifically, how does Sitemaps help a blog owner in general as well as a blog owner vs. a “regular” webmaster?

VF: Blogs change regularly. Bloggers can submit their RSS or Atom feeds as Sitemaps and as that feed changes, we’ll pick it up to learn about the latest pages. A blogger doesn’t need to resubmit the feed when it changes; we regularly rescan the feeds automatically.

Our information on search queries may be particularly interesting to bloggers. You may not realize, for instance, that some obscure post you wrote is bringing you a lot of traffic or that a particular post comes up in search results a lot, but no one clicks on it. You could use those opportunities to write more about what people are interested in.

The crawl errors we report are also very useful for bloggers and other webmasters. Many times, pages from a site aren’t in the index because we weren’t able to crawl them. With Google Sitemaps, we report the specific URL we couldn’t crawl and the reason (including the HTTP status code we got from the server, if applicable). Some reasons we can’t crawl pages includes:

• There are two many redirects in the redirect chain or the page redirects back to itself (this can sometimes happen with a chain of redirects)
• We receive a network error or server timeout
• The server doesn’t allow us to access the page (because the page is blocked or password-protected)
• The server returned a 404 (page not found)
• The page is blocked by the robots.txt file

The robots.txt analysis tool is handy. You can see the status of the file, test what is blocked and allowed, and test changes to the file. A lot of people are hesitant to use a robots.txt file, and this tool takes the guesswork out of it.

RAE: When we talked at Boston PubCon, I expressed some difficulties I was having with verification on a site or two. You had mentioned at that time that you were coming out with Meta tag verification to help blog owners using public sub domains (like http://Sitemaps.blogspot.com) as well as those having verification problems for other reasons. Can you give a bit of detail on that for those who may not have heard the news?

VF: For your privacy, you have to verify that you own a site before we show you most of the information available in Google Sitemaps. Our original verification method asked you to upload a file with a unique name to your site. However, not all webmasters can upload a file. Many bloggers, for instance, use web-based blogging software that doesn’t allow this. We now provide a second option for site verification that asked you to place a unique meta tag in the index page of your site. We chose this method because most webmasters who can’t upload a file can edit their index page and we were able to implement it in a secure way. We have many checks in place to ensure that no one can claim ownership of your site. For instance, you can’t post a comment that contains the meta tag on someone’s blog to verify site ownership.

The meta tag we ask for is unique for each webmaster and must be placed in the section of the page. The page can include only one section and it must be above the section.

Rae: Are there any special precautions or things to be done if a blog owner has their blog residing on a subdomain or in a folder off the root directory (like http://mattcutts.com/blog/) as far as Sitemaps goes?

VF: You can see the greatest variety of information for sites at the root of the domain, so I would suggest that blog owners with blogs in a folder add both the root domain and the subfolder as sites in their accounts. Once you verify the root domain, the subfolder is verified automatically, so you don’t need to verify it separately. Adding both lets you see all the information that’s only available for root-level domains, but also lets you see specific stats and errors for your blog folder.

If you submit a Sitemap, keep in mind that it can contain URLs only at the Sitemap location and lower. So, for instance, if you have a Sitemap in your /blog/ folder, it can’t list URLs in the root directory. If you submit a syndication feed, this won’t be a problem, since the feed won’t reference URLs that aren’t at the feed location or below, but if you want to submit a Sitemap that uses the protocol and you want it to list all the URLs in your site (not just your blog), you should place that Sitemap in the root directory.

RAE: So, you’ve submitted to Sitemaps and have verified – what can a blogger expect at that point? What will Sitemaps help them learn about their blog? What statistics are the most useful and do you have plans to add more with a specific thought of bloggers in mind?

VF: Once you’ve verified, you’ll see the Diagnostic summary page, which gives you a quick snapshot of your site. This page tells you if pages from your site are indexed, when we last successfully crawled your home page, if your site has violated the webmaster guidelines, if we aren’t able to crawl your home page, and if we experienced a large number of errors crawling your site.

From the Diagnostic tab, you can also view specific crawl errors and try out the robots.txt analysis tool. The Statistics tab shows you the query stats I was talking about earlier. You can see search queries that returned your site in the search results, and what the average top position was for your site for each query. The crawl stats show you a quick view of the percentage of your site crawled successfully and the PageRank distribution of your pages. It also lists the page on your site with the highest PageRank, by month. Page analysis shows you how Googlebot views your site: the content type, the encodings, the common words on your site, and the words commonly used to link to your site. Index stats are handy links to advanced operator queries that many webmasters use regularly.

RAE: In your late April update, you introduced a feature that would notify webmasters of violations in Google’s guidelines (most of them anyway). As I’m sure you know, it was recently reported that you must admit to wrongdoing to submit a re-inclusion request. I’m assuming there is a reason behind it and wanted to know if you’d care to share why Google Sitemaps is doing this (if they are) and what you’d suggest to webmasters and bloggers who are not willing to admit to wrongdoing, but have corrected any “issues” and are ready to request re-inclusion.

VF: Webmasters and bloggers should only use this form is their sites have violated the webmaster guidelines and they’ve fixed the issues. We say that as the first sentence of the form: “Complete this form if you reviewed your site, found that it violated our webmaster guidelines, and you have made changes to your site so that it adheres to the guidelines.” The rest of the form simply confirms that. Webmasters with sites that haven’t violated the guidelines shouldn’t use the form.

In the past, webmasters whose sites were blocked from the index for violating the guidelines had to know to send Google an email and guess at what information would be most helpful for those evaluating the site for reinclusion. Webmasters who read Matt Cutts’ blog knew that, but not everyone did. This form makes filing a reinclusion request easy. It explains exactly what information is needed for a reinclusion request.
Sometimes, webmasters think their sites are blocked but they haven’t violated the guidelines. They think they need to request reinclusion, but then hesitate because they see that it means they need to admit to violating the guidelines (and they haven’t). There’s no need for these webmasters to fill out this form. The webmaster should look at other issues the site may be having. Check the crawl errors to see if we’re having trouble crawling the pages. Use the robots.txt analysis tool to make sure you’re allowing access to your pages. If the trouble is that the site isn’t ranking for particular keywords, check the common words on the site and in external links to the site. Are they the words you want to be ranked for?

We’re always looking at ways we can improve communication with webmasters, and as we’ve received a lot of feedback on this issue, this is one area we are looking at.

RAE: Several of the more recent posts on the Sitemaps blog have been aimed at answering questions relating to affiliate site content, site queries and canonical issues – how involved is the Sitemaps team with the algorithmic side of things and spam prevention issues?

VF: The Sitemaps team works specifically on the Sitemaps project, but we work closely with all the teams involved with organic search for every feature we launch.

RAE: There have been several rumblings on the Sitemaps Google group about submitting a Sitemap having some correlation to site pages dropping from the index. I know from years in this industry that speculation isn’t always fact. Is there any risk to a website or blog who submits or verifies with Sitemaps?

VF: No, participating in the Sitemaps program (either by submitting a Sitemap or verifying ownership of a site) can’t harm your site in any way. One of the goals of Sitemaps is to help webmasters improve their sites’ coverage in the index and while sites may see fluctuations as their sites change, new sites are added to the web, and as our algorithms change, we hope the tools we offer help webmasters through these changes.

RAE: Stories of the Google Campus are passed around a lot by those who have attended the Google Dance at the campus each year during San Jose SES as well as those who have been there for business reasons during a regular workday. (It certainly has the best “cafeteria” I’ve ever seen by a longshot.) Sitemaps is based in the Seattle office – are they keeping you guys comfortable there?

VF: Google works very hard to maintain its culture throughout all the offices, so while I definitely take advantage of the cafes when I’m in Mountain View, Seattle Googlers are very well taken care of, with massages, free food, foosball tables, and many of the other great benefits that all Googlers receive.

RAE: Ok, you knew I was getting to this one. ;-) I request a picture from each interviewee and rumor has it that you’re possibly a bigger Buffy fan than I am and that your desk proves it. Care to share?

VF: I don’t have all my Buffy stuff here, but Fiesta Giles with a Chainsaw is my favorite, so I have to keep him around. I think that’s season one Buffy. She has a heart pattern on her pants. I don’t know what she was thinking.

(Thanks to Vanessa for the pic of Fiesta Giles and Buffy)

RAE: Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer some questions for bloggers of the world that haven’t had time to keep up with the latest and greatest happenings with Google Sitemaps. It’s a busy world in the blogosphere these days and it’s nice to have the advantages specifically for bloggers (be it personal or professional) summed up.

Note: Since these interview questions were initially answered, Sitemaps did a release of some new features that may have a particular interest to bloggers including that they now show query stats at the subdirectory level, so for instance, if your blog is at mattcutts.com/blog, you can add that as a site and see query stats for that directory. Hopefully I can get Vanessa to comment about that a little more in the comments here. ;-)

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Vanessa Fox of Google Sitemaps

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Vanessa Fox of Google Sitemaps

Ever since Michael told me about FeedBurner I have been thoroughly addicted (if you are not using this service, I highly recommend you start – there is a free version, though I use the paid service myself). I love the service and thought, hey, why not grab an interview with them.

So, I fired off some questions to their CEO, Dick Costolo and he graciously answered and even included some unexpected information about some of their upcoming additions. So snuggle up with your favorite blog feed and see what FeedBurner can do for you both. ;-)

Q&A with FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo

Dick Costolo is CEO at FeedBurner, which he co-founded in 2003. He’s worked with the same group of cofounders for the past 13 years and the group have started and built several successful companies, including Spyonit, which was sold to 724 Solutions in 2000.

Google searches may also reveal Dick’s theater experience which includes, among others, numerous roles and performances with Chicago’s Annoyance Theater, television appearances in the UK, and several years of improv shows at international comedy festivals in Edinburgh, Montreal, and Australia.

RAE: Why is it so important for a site to know how many feed subscribers that they have? What does a blogger miss out on without this information and what do they stand to gain if they know it?

DC: Publishers of all sizes are interested in their traffic and subscription metrics for different reasons. Commercial publishers need to understand subscription trends and growth/popularity metrics so that they can manage their businesses and provider the data to advertisers. Many bloggers like to understand how many people are following their writing, what sorts of posts cause gains in popularity, how their audience is growing, etc. Publishers want to know how many people are paying attention either for personal gratification or economics.

RAE: How accurate are your stats? Are there any known weaknesses that occur (such as auto-discovery issues) and what will you be doing over the next few months to address them?

DC: We think our statistics are by far the most accurate in the business. As with any statistics tracking, there are always areas in which there is room to innovate (for example, companies continue to find new kinds of metrics and analytics to provide for web stats). We have lots of plans to enhance the kinds of statistics we report , in order to give publishers a more 360 degree view of usage patterns. For instance, many publishers have asked for the ability to label our charts, so that they can “tag” spikes or valleys in usage patterns – maybe a big day for subscriber growth corresponds with an article being linked to someplace, etc.

RAE: In early February you took some heat for what some called aggressive marketing tactics which you promptly accepted responsibility and apologized for (kudos). What did you learn from that experience as a company and has it impacted your internal training?

DC: As a small company with an entrepreneurial culture, these things are going to happen… the issue, as you hint, is what you learn from them and how you deal with them. We can be a company that is a cult of personality in which decisions are made by a few for the many, or we can try to be as productive as possible by hiring the most enthusiastic and intelligent people we can find, try to quickly help them internalize the company’s “be open, honest, and human” approach to business, and turn them loose. As we grow, we need to be sure that all of the directors and managers in the company help their teams understand our values and what that implies in terms of do’s and don’ts as early in their employment as possible.

RAE: Your “Uncommon Uses” feature looks pretty interesting. Can you explain briefly how it works? And more importantly, what should bloggers do when they find uncommon feed uses – especially if it is confirmed the use is indeed for spam?

DC: We think of uncommon uses as an interesting look into all the irregular places your content might go. As many people discover, most of these uncommon uses are not only valid but enterprising and often ingenious means of consuming a publisher’s feed. What I usually suggest people do is just check out the locations that are referenced in uncommon uses and see what they think. In the case of blog spam, it almost never behooves you to try to contact the spammer, since they likely don’t care. Rather, contact the advertising network that the spammer is using on the page where they’re republishing your content and let the network know that the content is yours and that there may be a violation of the ad network’s Terms of Service.

RAE: You’ve recently added a lot of features that allow a user to “pimp their feed” such as adding a logo, social bookmarking and email this post. According to the blogosphere (and my own difficulties), some of these new options have some bugs to be worked out. What are you aware of as far as problems with these new features and what is your basic hope as far as a timeline in fixing them?

DC: The only issue we’re aware of on FeedFlare is that “Email this” doesn’t work in some versions of Internet Explorer, or perhaps it’s more correct to say that you get inconsistent behavior in IE. We’re just using a simple ‘mailto:’ link from within javascript, and we just haven’t found a standard universal way of making this work for IE users. It seems to work universally for Safari and Firefox users. Obviously, one solution is to go to a Web-based mail system so that the FeedFlare unit could just point to a Web page and that would work for IE users, so we’ve wanted to leverage a partner for that but haven’t found anything we love. We’ll probably build it ourselves at some point. If you have any other issue, you should email us or post in our support forums, as we have literally tens of thousands of publishers now using FeedFlare and aren’t seeing or hearing about any issues outside the email link.

RAE: What is the coolest feature you offer and how did you come up with the idea to add it to your suite of services?

DC: We love everything in the FeedBurner toolbox, but I’ll say a few things about some of the special tools. There are capabilities we’ve rolled out for which we haven’t yet fully exposed the ultimate variety of uses. BuzzBoost lets you to style your feed content for promotion on a web page, and FeedFlare is something of a universal activity/community plug-in for your content in that it allows you to integrate what the world is saying or doing with your posts. Both of these tools are cool in and of themselves and they’re wildly popular. However, this fall we will roll out a major enhancement to the FeedBurner suite that we are just crazy about, and both of these tools will play a major role in this new capability. In many ways, we feel like all the pieces of FeedBurner will be brought together this fall, and it’s absolutely the simple tools that will play the biggest role in this next phase of the company. On a much lighter note, an all-time favorite is our FeedCount chicklet that highlights the live number of subscribers to your feed as a widget that can be incorporated on any web page. It is one of those things we just immediately recognize and love when we visit a site and see it. That’s a simple simple widget, but we love the way it looks and how it’s been so widely adopted.

RAE: Your headline animator is an awesome feature, but the “look” can be a bit much. Do you foresee offering a way to either customize the look of this or offer one that is a little more vanilla?

DC: Yes. We have wanted to come back to this for months, maybe over a year now. The brushed metal is a bit heavy for a lot of people. We have had a Premium version of headline animator mocked up for well over a year, but we keep on discovering pieces of the broad platform where we want to make life easier for publishers (FeedFlare, ping, etc.) and we want to get stakes in the ground in these areas. Having said that, we have a major push on a few different fronts that we are trying to bring to market this summer, and then we hope to cycle back through the existing feature set and rev a few capabilities like Headline Animator and general Feed Splicing.

RAE: After your success and sale with spyonit.com, how did the idea for FeedBurner come about? What were the challenges you faced early on and who was the biggest cheerleader in terms of keeping everyone motivated and focused on the end result in the early days? And where do you see FeedBurner twelve months from now?

DC: I think FeedBurner was really Eric’s (Eric Lunt, CTO) idea. His initial notion was that there were all these sites promoting this version of a feed or that version or this other version, and if this really became popular, how would publishers start to be able to track their subscribers, know who was getting what feed, etc. The more we talked about it, the more obvious it seemed that there would be a variety of reasons publishers up and down the tail would want such a service, and of course, as we started to work on FeedBurner, it became one of those things where we were building this cool hammer and everything started to look like a nail. About four months into the development, before we launched, it became obvious that there were going to be far more uses for FeedBurner than we would ever be able to get to build out, and that was very exciting for us. Twelve months from now, I hope FeedBurner will still feel like the same kind of company to publishers. It will undoubtedly feel like a different company to the broader market. The publisher services that we launch this fall will create a much more broad and ambitious position for us in the media landscape. But we really want to make sure that we still feel like the same kind of people to our publishers as we grow.

RAE: You guys obviously spend a lot of time at work and with the success of the company has surely come a fast growth in staff. Who would the staff say has the coolest desk in the office and why?

DC: We all have the exact same desks! But here’s a picture of the entire office. There are no personal offices, only two conference rooms, so you are really seeing the entire operation here.

The FeedBurner office (Thanks to Traci and Rachelle for the picture)

RAE: Thanks again for taking the time to do this interview. I really enjoy your service and admit it’s a bit addicting, so it was nice getting to hear a bit more about the “behind the scenes”.

DC: Thanks for the interest and stop by anytime. We always love hearing from our vibrant user community and we’re excited to roll out more addictive services for feeds.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview With FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview With FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo

There is a ton of buzz surrounding the YPN beta program. As a beta tester, I tend to frequent the forums a bit and saw the same questions often being asked over and over again. So, I decided to ask YPN for a chance to ask the questions and get some answers – and being the sports they are, they agreed to do it. From international challenges to ways publishers can achieve better targeting, I asked and they answered. Read on to see what we discussed and figure out what a mechanical bull has to do with contextual advertising. ;-)

Q&A with Josh Siegel of Yahoo! Publisher Network

Josh is responsible for the overall business operations of the Yahoo! Publisher Network online program including account management, customer support, payment, and partner management functions. He also manages the overall policies and business requirements for the program.

RAE: One of the bigger issues surrounding the YPN beta program is the targeting of the ads (and as a result, low click thru rates) based on feedback at forums and my own experiences as a beta tester. Can you tell me a little bit about the targeting process and what you’re doing to improve the experience? Can publishers do anything on their sites to help improve targeting?

JS: I’m glad you bring this up because we’ve found that the majority of our publishers have been very happy with the ads served on their site. We do find typically that sites that have little content are harder for our crawlers to find matching ads to serve. Additionally, if your site has terms that we deem sensitive then we will serve generally targeted ads. My suggestion to help improving the ads targeted in your site is to use our Ad Targeting feature (which allows the publisher to influence the type of ad category) and make sure your content is well described and updated regularly.

RAE: How do you obtain feedback from your publishers and what have you learned about what is working and what isn’t as a result?

JS: We use a variety of means to get feedback from publishers. First, we take customer service very seriously and have multiple ways to get data from actual customer calls and emails.

In the publisher interface, we also have a number of features that encourage publisher feedback either via a poll, the email support form, or our support number.

Lastly, we talk to publishers literally daily either through our product marketing efforts, industry conferences, or through our account team.

So far, the publishers have been really receptive and pretty clear about what they like and what we need to improve.

RAE: It has been widely reported that Google had inadvertently mentioned a lower forecast for their contextual advertising revenues re: their Adsense program. What is the opinion of the YPN team in regards to their own forecast for growth in the contextual advertising space?

JS: We think the growth of publishers and social media is a big opportunity for both contextual and other advertiser and targeting products. Yahoo! will continue to focus on helping publisher’s and end-users engage with social media whether it’s Flickr, Delicious, the Yahoo! Developer Network, or enabling market-leading monetization through content ads from The Yahoo! Publisher Network.

As to specific market guidance, we are not able to provide additional information at this time.

RAE: What types of sites does YPN value most in their publisher network? Do those types of sites get more customization options, better payouts or other benefits? Do you see yourself creating a program for “elite” publishers in the future?

JS: The Yahoo! Publisher Network has a broad range of service offerings both a self-serve offering as well customized strategic offerings for very large publishers like Cnn.com, Espn.com and various Viacom sites and we really value all relationships.

As the complexity of a publisher’s business grows, a different level of engagement is often required to properly service their business needs.

Smaller sites need simplicity, business term flexibility, and basic configuration and reporting options. As the Yahoo! Publisher Network grows, more products and services will be available to all publishers.

If your site generates more than two million searches or 20 million page views monthly, you may be eligible for a customized program featuring a full range of Yahoo! products and dedicated account management. Premier services include potential access to Search, Content, and other monetization products. I would encourage anyone reading to visit http://publisher.yahoo.com for more information about our specific offerings.

RAE: Your absence in the International space is largely noted in forums with International publishers wanting to know when YPN will become available to them. What are you expansion plans for rolling out your contextual product internationally? What difficulties do you face when entering the International space?

JS: Our plan has been to begin with a beta in the United States, learn our lessons and perfect the formula, and then rollout more broadly. I can’t reveal details on when we’ll roll out to other markets but we’ll be sure to keep you posted.

The challenges associated with entering international markets include localizing the product including the interfaces and underlying web services for language and other market specific needs. Additionally, we need to ensure that operationally, we can support customer service, payment, and other publisher services to the market.

RAE: What are some of the common mistakes you see publishers making in regards to ad integration? Is there an internal listing of bad implementations, color schemes or other things that you see happening time and time again? Do you plan on providing tips and advice to publishers to help them maximize their earnings?

JS: Generally speaking, we see a lot great implementations, and others that do not optimize the opportunity as well as they could.

For any publisher to be successful long-term, they need to provide content and services that allow them to aggregate and reach a meaningful set of users. So, a focus on who your users are and what is of value to them ultimately will help build sustainable value.

For implementation tips, we recommend the following:

• Place ads above the fold, in non-banner format

In some cases, Yahoo! has seen publishers significantly increase the revenue generated by their sites simply by moving ads from top banner placement to placement within the article. In general, ads in a non-banner placement perform better than traditional banner implementations.

• Create ad appearance based on ad placement

To improve the performance of your site, it’s important to consider the placement of an ad when creating its appearance. In general, inline listings perform well when they are blended in with content. Ads in a banner placement perform well when they stand out to the user. We advise publishers to keep this in mind when choosing the font type, font color, font size, shading, color, border, etc. of the ads they place on their sites.

• Target the ads on your site to your audience

You as a publisher know your audience best. While a contextual crawler can generate ads that are relevant to the content on your site, it cannot identify and target ads to other interests your users may have. Tools like Yahoo! Publisher Network’s “Ad Targeting” feature enables publishers to guide the types of ads that appear on their sites by telling Yahoo! which other subject categories might be of interest to their users. This allows publishers to engage their users more deeply through more tailored advertising.

• Keep close track of your site performance, especially when experimenting with ads

As you make changes to your site and experiment with different ad formats, it is important to keep close track of your site performance. Yahoo! recommends that publishers keep tabs on their site performance by URL or by channel and review their reports regularly to assess the results of their changes.

RAE: I know from meeting several members of your staff that you’re a hard working bunch and that you guys really give it your all to improve your program. How do you guys deal with the day to day pressure of entering the contextual advertising space and how do you reward yourselves for hitting important milestones and jobs well done?

JS: Great question! I think the team is motivated to really do something special in the industry. Yahoo! assets are second to none when it comes to publishers and social media, so over the next year or two, the possibilities are really exciting. I think that attachment to the vision of what the Yahoo! Publisher Network can ultimately be enables us to get through the day to day realities of running a business of this scale.

We do take the opportunity to celebrate our successes when we can. I hope I am not telling any company secrets, but one of our outings for a major milestone was meeting up at restaurant that had a mechanical bull. Can you imagine a bunch of Internet geeks riding a bull? Good times…

RAE: As with many dedicated companies, the office becomes like a second home for many people on the team. What is considered the “favorite spot” of the office and why do employees like it?

JS: We actually just moved to a brand new campus in Burbank that has a great coffee bar (featuring free coffees). So if anyone was curious where our team energy comes from, the secret is now out.

The Yahoo Coffee Bar (Thanks to Kristen for the picture)

RAE: Thanks for taking the time for this Q&A. I know you guys are extremely busy and it is good to know that you’re willing to take time out and answer questions on many publishers’ minds.

JS: My pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity.

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Josh Siegel of Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN)

This post originated at the Sugarrae online marketing blog, home to online marketing consultant Rae Hoffman.

Interview with Josh Siegel of Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN)