September
29, 2004
In
This Issue:
1. Design Inspiration
2. In the News - What's Google Up To?
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Why do ads show up top on Google?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Design Inspiration
There's so much I want to cover in this newsletter every week,
but quite regularly not enough space to do it. I want to continue
writing small articles about building better web pages, as we did
back in newsletters 15 and 17 when we talked about the <TITLE> element and meta
tags. I want to keep talking about where search is going
in terms of personalization (A9.com) and localization (Yahoo
Local and Google
Local). And I also want to talk about design, which
is what I'm going to do this week.
If you've worked with OWT, you know we're big on simple, elegant
design. Gratuitous graphics, animations, sounds, etc. -- that's
not what we believe in, and not what we do. However ... just
as authors suffer occasionally from "writer's block",
I occasionally suffer from "designer's block." And when
that happens, I need inspiration of ANY kind -- whether it be
simple and elegant or loud and flashy. When I'm looking for inspiration
elsewhere on the web, some of the best ideas often come from
sites
that I wouldn't build or recommend for our clients -- because
Designers (with a capital 'D') often don't care about search engine
rankings,
but my clients and I do. So in cases like that, the job becomes
a matter of taking that flashy design idea and turning it into
something unique and original for our client, a new idea that
looks great (simple and elegant) and can help our client rank well
in search engines.
With that in mind, here are some sites I use for design inspiration.
- Style Gala
- CSS Zen Garden -
this is a collection of web pages all with the same content but
each with a unique
CSS-based design. Follow the links under "Choose a
Design."
- Minimalist Web
Project - this hasn't been updated in about two years,
but still links
to
some good web sites with attractive, simple designs.
- CSS Vault
Mosaic - The web site that hosts the CSS Vault
is a Bay Area web design shop called Stop
Design,
which has one of the most stunningly gorgeous web sites
I've ever seen.
Perhaps those links will be beneficial to the designers who
are reading, as well as anyone who just generally appreciates
pretty
things.
_________________
In The News
What's Up With Google?
You know already that Google is becoming more than just a search
engine. There's Gmail to compete with Microsoft's Hotmail service
and Yahoo Mail. And there may be more ahead.
It's been reported in various search industry web sites and magazines
that Google has recently hired away a handful of former Microsoft
employees, including one who was working on the user interface
for the next version of Windows and four who helped create the
Internet Explorer web browser. It gets even more interesting
with the news that Google registered the Gbrowser.com domain back
in
April. The pundits say this points to Google planning to release
a Google web browser, another move into Microsoft's turf.
Trust and Respect, Courage and Leadership
This is a must-read for any business owner, online or offline.
Marketing genius (in my opinion, and many others') Seth Godin
writes about the problems with how marketers treat customers
today.
"Somewhere along the way, marketers stopped acting like
real people. We substituted a new set of ethics, one built around "buyer
beware" and the letter of the law. Marketers, in order
to succeed in a competitive marketplace, decided to see
what they
could get away with instead of what they could deliver."
Full article: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2004/09/trust_and_respe.html _________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Linking is about reputation
September 27, 2004 - ISEDB.com
People look at links as if they are all the same, and often they
go for quantity over quality. That's not the way to do it.
Submitting a Site to Web Directories
September 24, 2004 - OWT
A longer version of an article that will appear in the October
or November issue of the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business. More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Matt,
We advertise on Google with their Adwords program. I've noticed
that sometimes our ad appears on the right side of the page with
the other ads, and sometimes it appears up top, horizontally
across the page above all of the search results. Our competitors'
ads also show up above sometimes, too. We're not changing our
ad budget, or how much we bid on these keywords, so why would
these ads sometimes show on the right and sometimes up top?
David
Hi David --
There are two factors that help determine where your ad appears:
the amount you're bidding, and the relevance (or success) of
your ad. Google doesn't just list ads based on how much the
advertiser has bid on the keyword. If you bid 50 cents on a
keyword, and
your
competition bids 75 cents, your ad might still show up above
the competitions if users are clicking on your ad substantially
more
often than your competitors. In other words, if users say your
ad is more relevant to the keyword by clicking on it, your
ad can show above ads that have higher bids.
Now, when an ad does REALLY well in terms of combining a high
bid with lots of clicks from searchers, Google will sometimes
push
the ad up above the search results to a "premium" position.
This is sort of like a bonus for ads that are performing very well;
you have no control over whether or not your ads shows up top.
When it does, it's just something to smile about. (Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Don't have a whole lot to say in this space this week because
we are swamped with work right now and I better get back to it.
Talk to you next week (when I'll be equally busy!).
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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