Mahalo Commits to SEO Customer Service and Gets Social

Written by Pablo Palatnik on March 20, 2008

If there is one guy there is buzz around in the online industry right now, it’s Jason Calacanis, CEO of human powered search engine Mahalo.

I have to admit, everytime Mahalo comes up in a conversation, I think to myself, “where the hell does this guy think he’s going to go with this? Does he think he can really compete with Google, Yahoo, etc. Are those really his intentions?”

After hearing him speak yesterday at SES New York, I have a whole new outlook on Mahalo. I don’t think its trying to compete against any search engines, I think it will provide a new type of search for searchers.

It is DMOZ 2.0. It is a complex directory that will, what I think, become not a replacement for Google, but a new hub and authority directory that will be spam free. He announced very cool things that we will see out of Mahalo.

SEO WILL BE TRANSPARENT. Mahalo will provide customer service to SEOs to answer why you’re site isn’t ranking, ranking worse than other sites, etc.

Mahalo is aiming at creating an engine/directory of semantic relationships between people and objects. Mahalo will in fact be a social hub for search, making search a lot more personal in terms of what your “friends” on Mahalo think.

Jason stated the future of search if part machine, part human, and part social. Mahalo has some VERY interesting tools (social hub for submitting links) I never saw until yesterday so I really suggest you check it out and play around with it. It also seems like a place where you can make some money on the side by taking on accepting projects (making pages) for the directory.

Universal Search Killing the Google Business Model

Written by Pablo Palatnik on March 18, 2008

I attended the Orion Panel at SES New York today and I have to say, it blew my mind as far as what I heard and thought about. For the first time, I thought about the impact on search marketing (both organic and paid) universal search has had on searchers behavior.

(not a PalatnikFactor.com image)

The panel consisted of:

• John Battelle, Founder/Chairman/CEO, Federated Media
• James Lamberti, Senior Vice President, Search and Media, comScore, Inc
• Lyndsay Menzies, Managing Director, Big Mouth Media
• Jack Menzel, PM for Universal Search, Google

The session started out by James Lamberti of Comscore showing statistics that have only been shared for the first time ever today at SES about the impact of universal search on the Google SERP’s and how people are interacting and clicking on with video, images, and so fourth now showing in the SERPs.

What is happening? People are clicking on videos, images, and other universal search results in increasing numbers and paid search ads are showing less and less. John Battelle was very controversial in his thoughts and I would say had some great arguments to Jack Menzel of Google about how universal search is changing not only search behavior, but the way Google monetizes its SERPs and where it will go with less paid search ads showing.

John Battelle argued that the Google business model, “10 blue link page” giving searchers results and driving them to pages around the web is now changing to a hub of video, images, and more. Maybe true, but as Mike Grehan commented (moderator along with Kevin Ryan,) said it is just how Google, going from a SERP with 10 blue links, would eventually evolve, its how the web is evolving and how search behavior is evolving.

The organic game is changing and you, as a company who is trying to rank organically, have to adapt to universal change because it is not going anywhere. Are you doing anything with YouTube? Google Video?

Will universal search hurt paid search? Are universal search results relevant or mostly made of crap with user-generated content uploading crap on the net?

These are all questions that are coming to question and will be more and more transparent with time.

Another Quality Score Slap: Slow Loading Landing Pages

Written by Pablo Palatnik on March 13, 2008

So, if you thought you had everything figured out with Google’s quality score and they wouldn’t be making any changes anytime soon, think again.

Inside Adwords announces sites with slow loading time will be penalized by its quality score algorithm.

“As part of our continuing efforts to improve the user experience, we will soon incorporate an additional factor into Quality Score: landing page load time. Load time is the amount of time it takes for a user to see the landing page after clicking an ad.

Why are we doing this?
Two reasons: first, users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.

When are we making this change?
In the next few weeks, we will add load time evaluations to the Keyword Analysis page (we’ll notify you when they are available). You will then have one month to review your site and make necessary adjustments.

After the one month review period, this load time factor will be incorporated into your keywords’ Quality Scores. Keywords with landing pages that load very slowly may get lower Quality Scores (and thus higher minimum bids). Conversely, keywords with landing pages that load very quickly may get higher Quality Scores and lower minimum bids.”

One way to put make sure your page loads quicker then it does now is to make sure your images aren’t too large in size. There is software that makes image files smaller for faster loading times.

Finally! I’m on Twitter…Follow Me.

Written by Pablo Palatnik on March 11, 2008

So, after ALL the buzz and actually, this is a site where the buzz about it keeps increasing, I decided to join Twitter. Many online marketers are on Twitter, well, I think now people actually like it but many have joined it to see how they could “game it” and see how it could work towards our benefit or the benefit of clients.

I see why it could work towards generating traffic and buzz now. People can know what you’re doing and can actually see your interactions with others. It seems like a great tool for big companies to keep close interaction with their followers, or even better yet, seems like a VERY powerful tool for bloggers.

Barak Obama has a Twitter account, what a smart move.

Hit me up on Twitter HERE or leave me a comment with your twitter address. If I can figure something cool on it (game it =) somehow) I’ll let you know.