Scott Fish

Here’s some of my favorite stories for today…

Andy Hagans has some great ideas to Triple your Conversion Rate.

Jim Boykin isn’t getting penalized for selling links, find out why!

ICANN has published a “San Juan to Los Angeles” newsletter to all those subscribed to ICANN meetings updates.

CNN has a great new story about the Marchex story.

John Andrews has some interesting stuff on Healthcare Search Marketing.

Tony Hill has some great ideas on how to get around Smart Pricing.

 Happy Birthday Google!

About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.
And if you’ve got a problem, don’t be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby).

The hyphen has been squeezed as informal ways of communicating, honed in text messages and emails, spread on Web sites and seep into newspapers and books.

“People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they’re not really sure what they are for,” said Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, the sixth edition of which was published this week.

Another factor in the hyphen’s demise is designers’ distaste for its ungainly horizontal bulk between words.
(more…)

Get ready to have your marketing dollars fly across the internet as you eat up the the new interactive ad format that Google will run on their content network.

Now I know that you’re probably thinking that google already has graphic ads and video ads, but this is the fist ads offered that can be built using HTML or Flash. And even better is the models that they follow: CPC & CPA.

Google has already built out several ads with clients such as Honda, Sierra Mist, and Six flags, all with great success.

Honda is quoted as saying “Rich media functionality in the gadget ad is very capable, but its greatest value was portability - letting people take a part of the Civic Tour with them. Greater interaction with all content occurred after users added the gadget to their iGoogle pages.”

I’m really excited to see how well this will take off in the advertising world!

Sedo.com has just released their results from their live auction in Hamberg, Germany at the Domainvermarketer converence from last week.

Roughly 50 domains were sold producing a total of $360,400 for the three-hour event. The top sales from the auction included three International Domain Names (IDNs); ärzte.de (“doctors” in German) for $77,000, and reisebüro.de plus reise-büro.de (“travel agencies” in German) at $70,000 (for the pair).

Go IDNs!

Barbara Roe, bobcat breeder and owner of Bitterroot Bobcat and Lynx, of Stevensville, MT., sold the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats her Bobcats.com domain name.  She has held out on selling the name since 2004 and recently has decided to sell it for a decent amount, $50k.    I think the Bobcats got a really good deal on this one.  They have been using BobcatsBasketball for years and realized that they were loosing some traffic due to the longer name.  I think Roe should have gotten atleast $100k for the name.

Good buy!

Celebrated Trail Blazers rookie center Greg Oden, the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, will miss the 2007-08 season after undergoing knee surgery Thursday.

Doctors found cartilage damage during an exploratory procedure, and team physician Dr. Don Roberts performed microfracture surgery to repair the damage.

“There are things about this that are positive for Greg,” Roberts said in a statement posted on the Trail Blazers’ Web site. “First of all, he is young. The area where the damage was is small and the rest of his knee looked normal. All those are good signs for a complete recovery from microfracture surgery.”

(more…)

I was just informed by my friend in the UK that does SEO work for Casino.com that the company has re-branded their website and they have changed business models.  Previously Casino.com was simply a casino game and online casino website portal - they were making money off of affiliate referrals.  Casino.com has a brand new business model with the redesign of their website comes a full fledged online casino.  Rumor has it that the site redesign cost nearly $500k.

MANSION Online Casino Limited, a Gibraltar gaming company has rebranded the site and will be managing the new casino operations of casino.com.  Boss Media sold the CASINO.COM domain to Mansion in 2003 for a sweet $5.5 million.  At that time, it was just the domain, and it appears that Mansion Online Gaming is now capitalizing fully on their domain purchase.

I recently returned from my honeymoon in Hawaii and got a new place in Northwest Portland with my wife. We’re really excited to be living in our condo in downtown Portland in the NorthWest area because there are so many great places to go grab a bite to eat and just hang out! After moving into our place and getting everything organized we had a second wave of “stuff” come when we brought down a bunch of wedding presents (thanks everyone!) so we’ve been busy getting things organized lately.

I also had the great opportunity recently to get involved with a Portland search marketing company called EngineWorks. I am really excited to be brought into this growing company as the Director of Search Engine Optimization where I will be working with EngineWorks’ world-class clients. This is a great opportunity to work with Search Marketing industry alumnai Sean McMahon whom was a founding member of the management team at TrafficLeader, Inc, which was later sold to Marchex. Also on the Management team is Kent Schnepp whom was founder and president of a successful online media agency and now is an expert at creating search marketing services that keep clients coming back for more. As you can tell, I am really excited to work with such a fast paced and quickly growing company that exceeds its customer’s expectations.

That’s about all for now, I have a great wife and a great new job, so I’m staying very busy and will try to post more frequently as things settle down.

Today is my wedding and I will be heading off to Hawaii until August 31st!

We’ll be staying in Maui and Oahu so it should be a lot of fun!

I’ll have some great details and pictures to share when I get back - I also have some great career news to share with everyone, more to come soon!

I was doing some “domain” keyword research today and I found a site doing some good ol’ cloaking.

- I guess it still works very well!

http://www.google.com/search?q=domain+football+myspace.com

It’s the 2nd result (”domainsponcer.com” [which happens to be a typo of parking company DomainSponsor.com]) - you’ll see that when you click on it, it takes you to an adultfriendfinder.com affiliate site, but if you click the cached version in google, you’ll see the cloaked page.

So here’s whats happening for this page to be cloaked….The website serves 1 page to search engine crawlers that is loaded with keyword spam and links to other inner pages. Then when the site is indexed, 1 different page is served to the visitor, and that happens to be an affiliate link. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed. There has been lots of discussion over how to use cloaking legitimately such as displaying paid content in full to a SE spider, while the user only sees a summary of the content.

I wouldn’t doubt that this site gets a nice amount of traffic and makes quite a bit of money, but sooner or later google or yahoo may figure this one out and ban the domain.

Creditcards.com has filed an S-1 filing with the SEC to start the process of an IPO.

The company wants to raise around $115 million with this IPO.

In October 2006, we paid approximately $133.8 million in cash (including approximately $350,000 in transaction fees and expenses) and issued approximately 2.1 million shares of Series A-1 convertible redeemable preferred stock at a price per share of $7.82 to the owner of the Predecessor in exchange for substantially all of the assets of the Predecessor.

Some very interesting information can be gleamed from the filing including their sources of traffic as well as the number of visitors that they receive per year. During the last year they increased revenue per visitor by 46% - Wow!

Imagine owning a business that generates $43M in revenues and has net income of $18.4M last year, and you have no inventory, no real “service” that anyone has to perform, and no big sales team hitting the streets. Thats exactly what CreditCards.com had in 2006.

Some of the risk factors that are ourlined in the filing highlight their reliance on PPC as a business model:
“We spent over 80% of our total online advertising expenses in 2006 with Google and Yahoo!. Competition for paid search advertisements on these search engines is intense. The prominence of the placement of our name and website is determined by a combination of factors, including the amount we are willing to pay and algorithms designed to determine the relevance of our paid advertisement to a particular search term.”

Additionally, SEO is addressed:
“If we are unable to maintain high rankings in Internet search results, traffic to our website and our revenues will decrease.”

This looks like a very interesting IPO to watch, it appears that they have had plenty of investors along the way, including Austin Ventures, which manages nearly $3 billion worth of assets. This may be the start of companies that have built a company around a domain name seeking IPO filings.

More coverage of this story.

My good friend Tim Germer  recently told me about a really cool company that he found out about while on his trip down to California, called RippleTV.

At the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf coffee house in California Tim saw a TV screen with some ads mixed with news, stock quotes and MLB baseball scores.  Well, this was exactly what Alex Nocifera had envisioned in 2004 when he founded RippleTV with some Friends.  “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was something for me to look at while I was waiting, like the Internet on a big-screen TV?” Said Alex back in 2004 while standing inline at the Manhattan Beach Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf coffee house.

Nocifera, then an executive with a firm that helped companies such as Microsoft and Sony with Web operations, decided to pursue his idea. He persuaded the regional Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf chain to test it.

His company, Ripple, puts flat-screen TVs into businesses, pumping in news, information and advertisements for local merchants. Ripple’s launch reflects the growing trend of in-store TV networks at gas stations, airports and Wal-Marts, but with a twist. Ripple’s customers can run their spots on the entire network, or target a specific store.

Greg Sterling, a noted market intelligence researcher, was quoted recently in an interview saying “This is the most fully realized micro-targeting I’ve ever seen. If you’re a dry cleaner or contractor and do a lot of work in a particular area, you can reach out to exactly the clients you want, without the broad reach of traditional media.”

Growth comes quick when you have a great idea!

RippleTV is already in over 200 Coffee Bean stores and 100 Jiffy Lube stores throughout California.  Jack in the Box has reportedly added the service to several newly remodeled restaurants.

Ripple’s deal with businesses promises a free 50-inch LCD flat-screen TV and entertainment for customers. The Ripple network shows information from CBS, E Entertainment Network, ESPN and Yahoo.

The businesses also share in the advertising revenue, and dictate which kinds of companies can be promoted in their stores. For instance, Jack in the Box asked that rival hamburger chains be excluded.

Ripple’s challenge is making money. The company isn’t yet profitable, and its rates are so low, it will take some time to turn a profit.

The company plans to begin offering consumer video “Shout-outs” with “I Love You” and “Will You Marry Me?” ads for $1 daily per store.

“It’s a great way to build awareness for the brand,” says Ali Diab, the former Yahoo vice president who is co-president of Ripple.

Tami Clark, Coffee Bean vice president of marketing, says she was intrigued with the idea of in-store entertainment and advertising. “We thought our customers would appreciate catching up on news,” she says. “It also gives us the opportunity to talk about our brand in a different way. This is a great way for us to spend a little time with our customers.”

In the future, Nocifera says, he can imagine his screens everywhere, especially travel-related locations such as airports, rental car outlets and hotels.

“If I’m landing in Boston, why wouldn’t I be interested in hearing about the best Italian restaurant in town?” he says.

Here’s an Example of what Ripple looks like:

We know what web 2.0 is, so what is web 3.0?

From Search Engine Land -

In the upcoming weeks, Google will be releasing an updated algorithm to determine the ads that are displayed in the top ad spot, above the organic search results.

The updated algorithm will continue to use the quality and cost-per-click (CPC) figure but will be slightly tweaked for that top ad location. Now, instead of using the actual CPC, Google will use the advertiser’s maximum CPC, in the overall equation. In addition, Google will be applying a stricter threshold on the quality component for the top ad positions.

The whole story is here.

Senator Betty Little, R-Queensbury, is sponsoring a law that will make it illegal to register a domain name that is similar to or the same as another living person or business. Any one living in New York will be subject to this law which is aimed at domainers that have purchased a domain with the intent to sell it to a business or person. One of the biggest questions in my mind is yet to be answered, and that is “how far will this law reach?”

How many permutations away from a business will this law reach?

Is Mike.com a typo of Nike.com? - It may be in New York!

“An Internet presence is a must for almost all businesses today,” Little said in a prepared statement issued Tuesday. “An essential part of attracting and keeping customers is having a web address that is easy to remember and helps point people, searching the web, in the direction of your business.”

Governor Eliot Spitzer approved this law on August 1st and it will go into action in 120 days. The law apparently wont punish accidental registration of a name that is confusingly similar, however those that are found in violation will be subject to upto $1,000 each day for the violation.

New York Based Registrars Pay Attention!

The bottom of the bill states the following:

“IN A CIVIL ACTION COMMENCED UNDER THIS SECTION, A DOMAIN NAME SHALL BE DEEMED TO HAVE ITS SITUS WITHIN THE STATE IF THE DOMAIN NAME REGISTRAR, REGISTRY, OR OTHER DOMAIN NAME AUTHORITY THAT REGISTERED OR ASSIGNED THE DOMAIN NAME IS LOCATED WITHIN THE STATE.”

- This is going to be a big headache for any registrars that are based in New York.

* Update * Quite a Few People Have Written About This Story.

* Update 2 * New York Bill S03814 & Summary & Elliot Spitzer’s WIPO to get EliotSpitzer.org

I thought this was an interesting post over at torrentfreak.com.

Google has been filtering its search results for years. That’s proven very useful for the Chinese government, and of course content owner representatives like the MPAA and RIAA. According to Google, the filtering of torrents from the search results is a response to the DMCA complaints they receive.  (More)

Apple Inc. updated its iMac computers Tuesday with a slimmer design, faster chips and glossy screens, hoping to further propel sales that already outpace the rest of the PC industry.

The all-in-one desktop computers now have aluminum casings, replacing the white plastic facade that has defined the computer lineup for years. The new iMacs will come in only 20-inch and 24-inch versions.

It wasn’t long ago when Apple was getting their beginnings.  On April Fool’s Day in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak  introduced their first system, an encased circuit board known as the Apple I (previous computers consisted of circuit boards and switches which produced flashing lights) and sold for $666.66 at the local electronics store. By the time the Apple II and the Mac rolled around, Jobs and Woz had popularized the personal computing revolution, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The success of the iPod, Apple’s retail stores and the company’s switch to Intel-based computer chips have all helped boost the Macintosh maker’s computer sales and profits to record levels. In recent quarters, Apple’s sales have been growing three times faster than the rest of the PC industry.

“The iMac has been very successful for us and we want to make it even better,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in announcing the new products.

pple also upgraded its so-called iLife suite of applications, with a host of new features for its photo management and video creation programs. It also updated its iWork productivity software to include a new spreadsheet program called Numbers — filling a void and perhaps providing some of its customers one less reason to have to buy from rival Microsoft Corp.
Many Mac users often buy Microsoft’s Office for Mac software to be able to use Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet program, said Michael Gartenberg, a JupiterResearch analyst.
“They’ve raised the bar again in terms of functionality,” Gartenberg said of Apple.

Manchester United have signed a gifted nine-year-old after his grandfather sent the Premier League champions a DVD showcasing the boy’s talents which has become a YouTube sensation.

Rhain Davis, who was born in England but has lived in Australia since the age of four, was hailed by the British press on Thursday as the next Wayne Rooney after the United striker.

The boy’s dribbling and goalscoring prowess for an Under-10 side in Brisbane, Australia, feature in a four-minute YouTube clip, already viewed more than 800,000 times.

United confirmed the signing but played down the hype around Davis, who has moved back to Cheshire in northern England with his father, near the club’s training ground.

“He’s a member of our academy and we don’t comment on individual members,” a United spokesman told Reuters.

He added that the club sign about 40 players of Davis’s age every year and, as is standard, will decide annually whether to renew his contract or release him.

What was so unusual in Davis’s case was that his skills were brought to the attention of United’s youth scouts by the DVD submission, which could inspire other hopefuls, the spokesman said.

“We’re bracing ourselves for a whole series of DVDs,” he added.

Davis has been thrilled at the chance to rub shoulders with some of his idols.

“The best part has been meeting lots of players like Wayne Rooney,” he told British newspapers.

I found this website the other night and it has 1 really cool trick - Scrollovers.

Scrollovers are a way to quickly and easily add flare to your web pages, giving your users an experience they weren’t expecting.

Integration of Scrollovers into your web site couldn’t be easier, even if you’ve already built the site that you want to include Scrollovers on. In just minutes you will be able to have them appearing on your own pages.

A major advantage of Scrollovers being created using standard HTML and Javascript is the option of applying CSS styling, just like you would on any other Hyperlink.

So how long would it take you to visit 171 Starbuck stores?

It took Mark Malkoff just one day to do it in Manhattan. Check out his movie about the project here.  His video has every single Starbucks visit cut into a 10 minute crazy marathon!

.MOBI has announced that they will be creating a top level directory for the .mobi extension.  The Mobile directory should be available by the second half of ‘07 and will incorporate several important factors of each site.  The directory won’t just contain .mobi sites, though these are designed and optimised specifically for mobile handsets, but also country specific, .com, WAP, and other mobile-friendly content. It claims it will be the most accurate and in-depth mobile content database in the world.

“We have already started delivering on access to the database at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona with our dotMobi Research Note on GSM Association members, which shows one of the first-ever reports on how ‘mobile-ready’ the operator community may or may not be. Data-services related to mobile content is naturally the next step for dotMobi after launching the mobile content standards and developer tools,” said Neil Edwards, CEO of dotMobi.

ParkingPanel.com will be announcing a few more eCommerce templates very soon, thats the word on the street.  They are pretty cool, and they incorporate a heavy CPA vs. CPC model.  Infact they look a lot like some of the mini-sites that I used to build out using some of the affiliate programs out there.

Take a look at a few examples:

Cameras - DVDs - iPods

“Sáákryš!” — (doh!) as a Czech Homer Simpson might say.

As The Simpsons Movie hits BitTorrent from a Czech source, it’s being claimed that the Czech Republic’s international reputation has been damaged by the leak. At the same time FOX turns up the rhetoric saying that measures will be taken by the ‘tightening up’ of movie distribution in the country.

Dubbed in Czech, the leaked version of The Simpsons Movie has hit BitTorrent very quickly - Most likely due to the Czech movie-goers being some of the first people to see the movie in the world.

As for quality, it’s a typical CAM version. People who have already seen this copy are saying that sound quality is satisfying for a CAM version. However, English speaking citizens are likely to be disappointed, its dubbed in Czech and there are no subtitles.

Representative of Bontonfilm Kristina Maixnerová said: “We’ve received an announcement from Czech Anti-Piracy Union that there has been made a recording of this movie directly in the cinema. At this point, it’s still unclear in which cinema, or who made the recording. As far as we know, this is the first case of this type of leak whatsoever in Czech Republic.”

Apparently, the guys at FOX international didn’t like the work of this unknown Simpsons fan either. As Maixnerová said: “Foreign reputation of Czech republic really suffered due this case. As FOX International stated, this will means tightening the security measures in Czech movie distribution.”

The Simpsons Movie is making waves upon its release, last week the owner of TheSimpsonsMovie.com was sued and forced to turn over his domain name via a WIPO decision.

When AT&T was broken up into 7 independent telephone companies in 1982 they created the “baby bells.” Before long these smaller companies formed into little partnerships and started to come back together.

The Free Press has a really cool visual representation on how the progress of all the 7 companies came back into their current companies AT&t, Verizon, and Quest.