I have an expensive HTC Thunderbolt Smartphone from Verizon. The phone is great outside of the fact that it comes with a battery that dies within 3 hours when not connected to a power source, but that is another subject. I visited by local Verizon store once I noticed that, after about 5 months, I had only once had access to a 4G network -- and that was in Philadelphia. They advised that north of a City here in New Jersey called Perth Amboy, everything is 4G and that it is coming this way "soon".

So there I am at Newark Airport (yes, north of Perth Amboy) and I still only have a 3G connection. My Verizon representative would likely have told me to "reboot".

When the plane landed in Austin, TX -- and I took the phone out of "Airplane Mode" -- wow, a 4G connection for only the SECOND time since I have owned this phone! On day 2 we traveled to San Antonio, and the whole way there we had lighting fast 4G connectivity. It was amazing, and even more amazing was the fact that for the first time something was as good as Verizon marketed it to be! The 4G connectivity was consistent throughout all of our travels in and around the greater Austin area.

Upon arrival back in the greater NYC area, sure enough back to 3G -- and spotty 3G connectivity at that. To add insult to injury, when we turned on the radio the very first series of commercials included a Verizon classic, trumpeting their greatness as evidenced by their lighting fast 4G networks -- in over 130 cities!

If only their 4G coverage was as broad as their marketing. Oh and about the battery. When I mentioned this to my Verizon rep, he said "well you can buy the enhanced battery for about 50 bucks -- it has twice the milliamps and doubles duration for you", to which my response was, "oh, so I will get 6 hours instead of 3?" -- he just kind of looked at me, and nodded his head in agreement.

Do you think they calculated some percentage of those battery sales into their profit margins when they launched the product?

]]>http://www.coreandmoretechnologies.com/community/rss-comments-entry-13390160.xmlAndrew YoungTue, 06 Sep 2011 20:08:34 +0000http://www.coreandmoretechnologies.com/community/2011/9/6/article-is-a-great-summary-of-changes-in-technology-that-hav.html489212:5681323:12752860http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/story/2011-09-05/Moves-by-HP-Google-further-marginalize-the-traditional-PC/50266334/1

Granular - a buzzword - yes, perhaps. But it is a favorite word of mine nonetheless. Picture the pile of sawdust swept into the corner where a stack of 2x4's have just been cut. Take each individual piece of that sawdust and spread it out on a table. Examine one piece at a time and identify characteristics that differentiate that one from the others. Repeat the process for all. Why would anyone ever want to do this? Well, they wouldn't. It is about as exciting and productive as watching grass grow. But when it comes to traffic to your website and the measurement of your SEO efforts - you MUST demand this level of granularity out of your vendor. As a matter of fact, it should not be a demand, it should be part of the reports being supplied to you on a monthly -- if not on a bi-weekly basis.

Case in point for a new customer recently: We incorporated a key term into our SEO ideation process for which they now rank #1 on Google and #4 on Bing. At the outset, they ranked #11 and #29 respectively. But what does that mean in terms of: a) gains in traffic, and b) lead generation? Here is the free secret to help you find out: You need to measure the total amount of traffic over a three month period before and a three month period after attaining this level of visibility. With this information in hand, you run the same comparison against traffic to the site limited to that term and across the same date ranges. With this data in hand, you can then define the EXACT percentage of additional traffic that this term has driven to the site, and what percentage of the broader gain that this percentage comprises.

With this process completed, you then look at the number of leads generated before and after the aforementioned point in time, and across the same date ranges. Why? Because if the increase in leads is not similar to the increase in traffic, then you may not be attracting the right visitors. You must repeat this process for all terms that you include at the outset of your project. THIS is the level of granularity that the true SEO must get to in order to ensure that the customer is getting the highest value on the terms that they are targeting. And it is not bad to re-route the ship. Some terms may simply prove less valuable than first thought. It is bad to waste customer dollars on terms that are either: a) proving not to drive much of a gain in traffic despite top 3 ranking on Google and Bing or b) are not driving an increase in leads.

At Core and More Technologies, this review process is standard for all of our customers.

The new Google Chromebooks will be offered by Samsung and Acer. The Samsung model is $429 for Wi-Fi only, 3G version is $499. Acer is priced starting at $349 and up.

If the OS is as fast and reliable as the browser, it will present a serious challenge to Microsoft. Read more here!

For all those leveraging Google Analytics to measure their results and who use advanced segments to differentiate their paid, non-paid, direct and referral traffic -- you may have experienced a minor heart attack when it appeared that you had a significantly lower amount of traffic then expected. You probably noticed a message in a small yellow horizontal box that reads "This report is generated in fast-access mode. Learn more". But clicking the "learn more" link leads to a page that tells you that you are looking at sampling data since the site you are managing had in excess of 500,000 visits. But what if you know the site did not have that number of visits?
Do not fret. See the Google Analytics blog via the link to the right for more information. The issue has been acknowledged and is being addressed... ]]>http://www.coreandmoretechnologies.com/community/rss-comments-entry-11418797.xmlAndrew YoungFri, 25 Feb 2011 22:56:41 +0000http://www.coreandmoretechnologies.com/community/2011/2/25/did-someone-say-oh-no-not-again.html489212:5681323:10607267Yes they did.  This time it was Overstock.com getting snagged gaming Google search results!

See the full story on the Wall Street Journal website. 

In this case,  JC Penney, a leading worldwide retailer -- has been exposed.  It does not appear that the consequences will be as severe on this one...with Google's reknown spam "Chief of Police" Matt Cutts stating that Google is simply taking "corrective action".  What ensued was a methodical series of demotions across a number of terms critical to the online marketing success of the company.

Whether Penney was aware of the violations that were occurring to gain them this high level of visibility is not relevant to me.  I would like to believe that they were "in the dark" on it.  And it is likely that they were indeed outsourcing this portion of their marketing portfolio.  The true concern here is the willingness of the provider to purposefully and knowingly break all the rules to make gains.  I admire people like Matt Cutts and we should all support and help strengthen in any way possible the sovereignty of relevant search results! 

YouTube has revolutionized the way that you can demonstrate what you do through inexpensive video productions.  That this medium is increasingly preferred to standard text and static image ads has been statistically proven.  Add to this the fact that you can quickly create compelling AdWords campaigns with high quality score tied directly to your YouTube videos, and the opportunity becomes even that much more appealing. 

However, there are two immediate challenges that arise here:

1. How do you position your YouTube promotions so that they do not compete with traffic to your primary website?
2. If your website requires a login for access to video content that is now openly available via your YouTube channel - how do you handle users circumventing the process by simply visiting your YouTube channel and viewing the content there instead?

The answer to both questions are somewhat one in the same - and it requires some uneasiness. 

1. Accept that you are not going to be able to prevent people from viewing the video(s) unless you make them unavailable to the public...
2. Next, accept that you must promote your YouTube channel for the reasons aforementioned. 
3. Finally, you must accept that there will be instances where users visit your YouTube channel and never make it to your primary website.  Not every prospect will make a purchase.

The idea of keeping your YouTube channel "in your back pocket" to be distributed on a discretional basis is not the answer. 

YouTube now offers the ability to create a "call-to-action" overlay for your video.  The overlay - similar to an AdWords ad, allows you to create a title and two descriptive lines of limited advertisement - along with a link back to the desired page on your site.

Following the steps below will prove to be the best approach to addressing these challenges:

1. Set your latest or most compelling video to play automatically upon visiting your YouTube channel.
2. Apply the "call-to-action" overlay to this video:
   
   • Do not build a YouTube "call-to-action" around a signup for collateral such as videos...as this would be redundant.  Build the call to action around another way to create a "conversion" - whether you define that conversion as a sale, a data capture, or a phone call. A data capture to schedule an online demonstration would be perfect here.  If the user is interested enough to watch your video, they are likely to be receptive to this invitation
3. Carefully promote your YouTube channel through AdWords with an emphasis on one specific aspect of your vertical market strategy.  For example, if you are concentrating on selling cellphone accessories to college students - limit the demographics to those of college age and within regions where there are college campuses.  Limit the spend to something minimal at first, and if possible set the bidding strategy up to focus on conversions.

Measure the total amount of views to your targeted YouTube video.  Measure this against the number of users who are reaching the "call-to-action" overlay target page on your website.  This will provide for a percentage of user who are coming to the site as a result of the YouTube promotion.  Take a look at the number of conversions resulting from this traffic.  You will likely find that your tangible ROI exceeds what it was beforehand, and you now have a select group who are asking to be contacted for a demonstration!           

Yet here we are - still breathing.  When Google releases new products or forms of innovation, they are typically very forthright about what it means to the industry and to their long-term vision and product strategy.  Unlike many other global behemoths, there is clearly no gag order.  Top to bottom and side to side - Google employees who are "in the know" are blogging and being quite interactive with the outside community on the product in question.  It begs the question - why does everyone buy into the speculation?  Why not just take it from the source?  Has Google given us reason to disregard their public statements?  I am and have been very critical of the likes of IBM, Microsoft and others.  Not Google though.  Google is the entity that brought the inverse relationship between control and trust to life.  

Let's think this through.  First, Google Instant only works when entering a query through the Google homepage.  What is the percentage of users who actually go to the Google homepage to perform a search at this point?  No one I know.  It is almost always via the Google toolbar or iGoogle.  Therefore the true reach of Instant is very much marginalized - and knowing Google, that is likely by design.  Think about that.

Instant will only make top 5 results on Google that much more valuable.  If anything, the advent of Instant increases the value of good SEO and top 5 results.  Results beyond the top 5 are soon to be - dare I say - significantly devalued.

I was talking to a prospect today about the subject of SEO.  She asked me about all these companies that claim to offer top 10 results within a week.  Her question was quite valid..."if companies x, y and z can all deliver top results within a matter of weeks, then why isn't everyone simply doing this on their own?  And if I can setup a company and, almost immediately, rank top 10 on search terms that are highly coveted and relevant to my industry - isn't the product (organic search) that made Google great severely flawed"?

Bingo.  It is simple logic.  If some company can emerge from their garage and manipulate Google results with such ease, then the product must be flawed!  This is a very dangerous way to think about SEO.  Instead of seeing Google search results as an obstacle that you are helping customers to overcome and to manipulate, SEO businesses should be helping companies to build their message.  The best search engine is the one that returns the most relevant results on a given term - results that cater to the needs and wants of the masses effectively and efficiently.  It is up to SEO companies to support this goal, not circumvent it.  Google has changed a species.  We are no longer living in our own little worlds isolated from those who do no live on our block or work in our office.  We are all connected and sharing dynamic and evolving content on a global scale with distribution channels that increase exponentially every day.  If this spawns a parallel industry of evildoer SEO companies whose only interest is in their own minimal revenue gains and not the shared goal of helping strengthen the quality of choices being returned via search results, it is unfortunate and CMT will not be part of that problem.  And if they do meet with some success, well even a broken clock is right twice a day.

For those who might not have been aware as yet, on August 24th the Bing search engine indexes officially began powering Yahoo search results.  If you are skeptical, just do a search via Yahoo and note that it says "Powered by Bing™" in the bottom center of the results page.

According to latest Hitwise release "In the first five days of its search alliance, Bing and Yahoo! combined to hold 24.15% market share for the week that ended on August 28th — reflecting five days of combined search results. Individually for those five days, Yahoo held 14.28% and Bing 9.87% of all U.S. searches."

Google accounted for 71.59% of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Aug. 28, 2010.  They remain firmly in the drivers seat.