eCa$hTalk

Today, I found the best torrent search engine, yet - Speckly.

Tags: torrent, bittorrent

Twitter has always been sort of a random assortment of stuff to do… I never had a good way of finding people… that is … until I found Twellow today…

Tags: Twitter

My good friend and fantastic SEO, Bill Ross, just got back from SMX Seattle.  Bill kept up with the information he was learning at SMX on his blog at SeoWebsiteAnalysis.com.  Very insightful stuff.

Check it out.  And, if you don’t have his blog bookmarked, you should.   You are missing out on some valuable information.

The new Google Adwords Editor was released today.  Very cool and with some good new features.

Google Adwords Editor

I came across this really great list of resources, showing what people are searching for today. This is a good, comprehensive list:

http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&topic=po

Tags: seo, searchengine, Google, Yahoo

Frequently, I am asked … “do I need to pay to be in directories?”  I think that there is a lot of confusion on this one… I mean, why not?  You have Google on one-hand saying “NO, whatever you do, don’t buy links.”  And, then, you have other people saying… “You HAVE to be in the Yahoo Directory”.

Bottom line, being in the right directories is very important.  On a practical level, directories put you in a “good community”.  It enables you to be displayed on a page with great sites - sites like yours.  So, which ones do I need to be in?… you might be asking.  Here’s what I would do.  You need to start out with one phase of paid directory placement and later come back and do more directories.  But, here is where I would start:

• Yahoo Directory
• Business.com
• Best of the Web (BOTW.org)
• Joe Ant (You have that already… I believe.)
• GoGuides.org
• Gimpsy.com
• stpt.com
• Directory.v7n.com

In case you have not seen the new “Going Natural” Stompernet video, you should check it out. It definitely is a different approach to Adwords. I sort’ve cut my teeth on Adwords, via Perry Marshall and the other Adwords gurus. Most of these guys would tell you the same thing. Land yourself in an average position of 4-6. Why? Because, these searchers are “hard-core”… meaning, they will buy your product, for sure - I guess, because they worked harder to get there. Logic that makes sense, right?

Well, in this new Stompernet video, they tell you to throw that advice out the door. Go for the #1 position, cut Google’s recommended bid in half. Bid that. I was thinking “#1???? What????” Reason being… they have done quite a bit of testing and found that the individuals with greater commercial intent only look at the first couple of ads. That’s it. This also makes sense. But, it may not make sense, based on your product. If you are an affiliate marketer in the stroller category (which I am)… it may not make sense for you to be paying $2-3/click for that #1 position. I am not buying it for every situation. But, if your margins are good in your business it might work.

Most people don’t realize the true potential of Wordpress. You can do SO MUCH with it. It would blow your mind to know the number of cool sites that are built using Wordpress as a content management system. I came across these really cool themes . They are called Revolution Wordpress Themes . They are paid themes. But, if you were to get a site customized like this, there is no way you could get something done this cheap . And, I have also located a promotional code for you to get 25% off.

Use "rev25"

I was registering one of my sites this weekend on Best of the Web (BOTW.org) . I don’t know about you. But, when I ever I see a box for "Promo Code" or "Promotional Code", I know that since someone/somewhere has that promotional code, I am going to find it. And, I did! Use this code at BOTW to get 40% off a directory registration:

LPROCKS

Enjoy.

This week, the world got the unique opportunity to peak ever so slightly under the hood at Google.  According to Eric Lander of Search Engine News, one of his associates noticed some numbers that just appeared under a sponsored search ad:

The Google Adwords Quality Score pictures looked like this:

As Eric and team point out, the 3 numbers represented are “Pscore”, “mCPC”, and thresh.  I don’t think that anyone is exactly sure what to make of this, yet.  Pscore is apparently a mathematical term which:

represents minus logarithm of the P-value. P-value measures the probability of achieving the same or better quality of match at a chance, i.e. at random picking the structures from the database. “Quality of match” is a complex characteristics, which accounts for RMSD, number of aligned residues Nalgn, number of gaps Ngaps, number of matched Secondary Structure Elements and the SSE match score. The higher P-score (the lower P-value), the more surprising, or statistically significant, is the match.

mCPC is likely “Max Cost Per Click”.  This would make sense.  Look at how high the mCPC is on the Honda ad, versus the smaller dealer.  OUCH!

Though this information doesn’t provide us significant insight into Google Adwords, it does give us more clues about Google’s system.