Archive for December, 2006

A New (and mysterious) PPC Research Tool

Of all of the blogs that pop up with new posts in my Bloglines reader every day, SEOmoz is one that I never miss (and I know that the new version of Google Reader is supposed to be great, I just dig the Bloglines Notifier way too much to part with it).

I’m ultra-sensitive to the idea of people just regurgitating information that they find on other blogs, but this application is pretty wild, and AWS made into the post (just because of the ppc we do internally), so I thought the topic qualified for a post here.

The post on SEOmoz was about the KeyCompete.com application. The app allows you to enter a keyword, and discover what domains are bidding on the word. Subscriber-level functionality includes the ability to “watch” competing domains, discover what keywords a company is bidding on, and additional keywords that a domain’s competitors are bidding on that they aren’t.

Rebecca’s post was mostly about the lack of credibility that the site exhibits (which is being corrected, per the company’s CEO). I was surprised that she didn’t take issue with the Google Adsense ads that are displayed on the results page that you see after performing a search!

We need an OLD SEO, and a YOUNG SEO!

So maybe that’s more along the lines of a “Black Hat SEO Exorcism,” but what we have here is not far off.

Awecomm has been cursed for a little over seven years now. It’s one of those things that you forget about from time-to-time, and then you’re suddenly reminded of.

If you work for Awecomm, you will crash your car. It’s an undeniable fact.

I walked out of my office about an hour ago, and there were about five people gathered around our receptionist desk talking and laughing. Two of them had just gotten back from lunch, and well, the picture really tells it best:

I continued past the group with a slight smirk on my face as I listened to the Awe-veterans explain to Jacque (the latest victim) about the curse.

In this post I’ll try to recap as many instances that I can remember, and the comments that follow from the Awecomm staff will fill in the gaps.

So here’s the short list (I’m sure it will be expanded upon):

  • During a power outage in 1999 or 2000, a transformer exploded in our parking lot, and a power line landed on one of our employees car’s, lighting it on fire.
  • One of our developers from 1999 to 2003 suffered from slight narcolepsy and would routinely find himself rear-ending cars on the way to work, and waking up while driving through corn fields, etc. It might not be curse-related, but I’ll included it anyway.
  • Last summer, after just purchasing a new car, while sitting at a stoplight, the woman behind me apparently forgot that she was driving a car, and lifted her foot off of the break. No major damage; an $800 repair and a bullet-point on a blog post.
  • Eric, our lead developer lost control on an icy highway and did donuts until his car eventually stopped spinning (and was totaled by the impact).
  • Mark, another one of our highly talented and exceptionally motivated :) developers backed up into a dumpster a few weeks ago, completely smashing his driver’s side car door.
  • Ellen, our receptionist and up-and-coming PPC specialist recently backed her car into one of her relatives car’s.
  • My business partner (Awecomm’s Pres) was rear-ended two years ago, destroying his bumper and leaving it hanging awkwardly off of his car (his new car is still ding-free; cross your fingers, Brent!).
  • Jimmy, our Director of Sales, somehow passed the curse onto his wife. While borrowing his car one day, she was sitting at a stop light and was BACKED INTO.
  • Most recently, Kwi, our new design intern (who started less than three weeks ago), got into some type of accident. I don’t know the details, but I’m sure someone will expand on it.

I’m positive that this is less than half of the incidents that have happened, but you get the idea! At least our rankings aren’t cursed …

PR’s my Vocation, and I’m a Sensation

I happened to watch two videos today on WebProNews.com, both related to Google PageRank, and both with somewhat conflicting perspectives.

The first was an interview of Google’s Vanessa Fox by Rand Fishkin. In the interview she alludes to the fact that the PageRank that one sees in Google Webmaster Central (if the site is verified), is more accurate than the PR values that appear using the Google toolbar.

The next video that I saw was Andy Steggles of SitePRTracker.com being interviewed by Mike McDonald. In that interview, Andy says that he’s had instances where the Google Toolbar has shown higher PageRank values for pages within a site (when compared to the homepage), and the Webmaster tool continued to show the homepage as having the highest PageRank, over a 12 month period. I hung out with Andy for a decent amount of time at SES, and he seemed to be very knowledgeable on PR.

I’ve never considered the measure to be terribly valuable, but it was interesting to see these two conflicting videos in the same day! I’m going to have to do some research on some of our sites, and see what I come up with.