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Awe Does Not Survive Arrival

October 19, 2006 by Leave a Comment

An obtuse title to be sure — I just love doing that 🙂 — but this really is about SEO and Internet Marketing. I was once in awe of Michael Campbell, Stephen Mahaney, Marlon Sanders, John Reese, etc. They were all somehow larger than life.

Earlier today, yesterday by the time you see this, I sent out the personal story of my association with the person who is now "the most famous OptiLink customer", and for good reason, given the amount of money he makes and the stir he has caused! You might be in awe of Brad, as I was once in awe of others.

So now let me tell you "the story before the story".

Before you get to be a "guru", gurus appear to be cast in marble and somehow slightly taller and better looking than anyone else. That’s all PhotoShop. Once you get to be one, and that notice arrives some considerable time after you actually become a guru, you suddenly notice that they (my God, you!) are not marble after all and sadly 🙁 are not all that great looking either!

It’s not that gurus are not gurus. That’s not how "awe" dies. It is that all gurus were first people, did a few ultimately simple but not easy things that anyone can do, and yet still remained after the fact more-or-less the unchanged pre-guru people they were.

You might be wondering what the whole point of being guru is in the first damn place. As it turns out, not much!

Ultimately, awe is fully and simply the result of not having done it yet. Once you yourself have done it, is it still awesome? Enjoyable? Yes. Worth doing again? You bet. But is there awe? No, there’s identity, understanding and comradeship. The bond that exists between, more-or-less, peers that have all had to overcome very similar challenges.

Rejoice, as I have, in the death of awe! Embrace in its place gratitute for your teachers; your connections to others of like mind; and your new found opportunity to guide others on that path you have followed. All of it way better than awe.

Oh yeah, and about Brad: he’s just this guy! But… he is a guy who has actually "done it". So unless you’ve already done what Brad has done; or are getting the straight scoop from someone else who has; you might consider trying to hook up!

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Adwords + Organic = Law Suit

October 2, 2006 by Leave a Comment

If you are not subscribed to SE News, then you should be. I read every issue in the first few days of the month. This month’s articles on Supplemental Results and Google Sitelinks are top notch. Mostly I agree with their articles and that’s more-or-less true this month as well, with a couple of exceptions.

In the list of "Top 10 Quality Indicators" there are a number of items presented as fact that I can not back up with actual measurements. Conversely, I don’t yet have the data to disprove them either, so I’ll let all that slide for now.

But there is a non-technical issue that keeps coming up that I will take issue with today. The referenced article [subscribe to read the whole thing as it does provide some good information and food for thought] claims:

"Now that Google has a spider to determine page quality for sites in their ad program, it won’t be long before that data is folded into Google’s organic search results."

In my opinion, this is just plain incorrect. Here’s why.

 

As one of several forms of actionable "anittrust" or "unfair trade practices" the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has identified the "tying arrangement" whereby use of one product or service is predicated on use of another. This is a very complex area of law loaded with judicial discretion and balancing corporate rights and "public policy" so all bets pre-trial are pretty much off, but I’ll give you mine anyway.

The FTC case against Microsoft vis-a-vis Windows and IE was precisely a "tying arrangement" case where the FTC claimed that Microsoft improperly used its market influence in the PC operating system market to create an (unfair) advantage in the browser market. While this is a classic example of unfair practice, it is not the only one.

With respect to Google, if the paid advertising programs — either Adwords or Adsense — impacted organic ranking in a positive way, this would create a tying arrangement between their "free" search and their paid programs seeking to coerce webmasters to buy advertising in exchange for better ranking.

Conversely, if participation in paid advertising programs created a negative organic ranking influence compared to non-participants, this would constitute contract fraud in as much as a material aspect of the advertising contract was non-disclosed. The FTC might or might not act on this as an unfair trade practice, but you can bet some large firm of attorneys will be happy to take it as a class action lawsuit.

This also came up in my recent review of VEO for OptiSmarts subscribers where the author of VEO claims various similar effects with Adsense. Again, same problem, undisclosed contract terms and tying arrangements.

In all cases, when it comes to tying organic and paid programs together, "there be dragons."

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