Orz and other considerations

Sorry. Busy month.

=Sorta Table of Content=

Triggering Google AI via SEO pages
Measuring global clicks in Google time
The mythical 2,000 keywords mark
Moving keywords - not operator error
Biz.com
Made-up news
Small people need shirts too
More oars in the water
Orz!

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SEO pages - triggering Google AI testing

I must say one of the most interesting things that I have noticed with the SEO exercise is the interaction with the Google adwords program.

SEO (search engine optimization) pages are suppose to help a particular set of web pages show up in higher ranking for the corresponding set of search terms. So, say I want to drive traffic to people who search for "panda bear adoption", I can hire an SEO company that would produce a set of web pages that are designed to have a lot of information on panda adoption and therefore when somebody searches on yahoo for "panda bear adoption" one of these pages would show up as the #1 page. That is the theory anyway.

So, I rolled out a set of SEO pages for the corporate site. And, yes, I definitely see these SEO pages climbing the organic search result ranking. But, what is not expected is that somehow it also triggered the Google AdWords engine to re-consider some of my adwords keywords and ad's.

In all fairness, this is a conjecture in my part, but frankly, I cannot see another explanation. Basically, because my organic search/corporate site has this infusion of new content that target specific service that my corporate site has been relatively weak on, somehow, Google noticed the change in the organic content and activates the AdWords engine to try out some of the existing keywords that have been relatively dormant.

Let me give you a made-up example. Say that I have a set of keywords in AdWords related to New York Taxi. However, due to a number of reasons, none of these keywords have good performance and, as a result, Google's budget auto-optimization gives these keywords low bid prices which, in effect, renders them rarely used. Then, with the SEO pages on New York Taxi added to my corporate site, suddenly, Google noticed the difference and started to experiment on these same keywords to see there is a change in click-thru rates.

Okay, I suppose this does not need to be a coordinated efforts between Google organic search and AdWords as Google has always maintained an official separation between the two operations. And, I suppose it is possible that Google adwords simply found the new content and decided to experiment with those dormant keywords. But, I think that kind of separation is kind of artificial.

Anyway, the SEO pages are out and we are seeing a nice increase in our web hit rate. This is actually a bit problematic as I use to scrub through the daily web hits to get new keywords. But, with the longer list, I do not that kind of time to eyeball all the entries...

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How long does it take for Google adword's conditions to proliferate around the world. How do I know?

I noticed a term that seem to invite quite a bit of click-spam. So, I removed it from my list of keywords and, as an added security, I added the term as a negative keyword to indicate that I definitely do not want it.

Guess what, two days later, I noticed in my daily web hit log, the exact term was being used by a click-spam-er from Japan.

Naturally, I reported this to Google and asked for a refund. And, this also proves that it takes a while for the Google data centers around the world to sync up with the central servers.

Interesting, huh!

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Oh, this is kind of exciting. I have reached the mythical 2,000 keywords mark with one of my AdWord group. I remember reading about it in a forum a while back about the problem of reaching that limit and wondered when I'll hit that number myself.

Basically, when you hit the 2K mark for the number of keywords, Google AdWords tells you to par it down because it impacts the server performance. And, there are certain things that it no longer do such as providing estimates on the budget auto-optimization engine.

But, upon further investigation, the 2k limit is artificial and you can request to have the limit increased. Which I did. It took a bit of back and forth to get the limit increased, but it is do-able.

Of course, this is only the first half of the story. I'll need to break down that monster list into smaller chunks for different campaigns and groups. With 2K+ keywords, however related they are, there are ways to make divisions into smaller groups. I just dread the task. Scrubbing through 2K+ keywords is not exactly a fun thing.

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You may have heard about the google adwords function of copy/move keywords between groups. A pretty nifty tool for those of us that works with thousands of keywords. The problem was that I could never get it to work.

Being the noisy type, I was never shy on asking Google for help. The first inquiry yield a rather unsatisfactory result as the reply basically quoted the information available in Help. Gosh! I know how to read and I have read the darn thing already.

Second time, I asked again and told them not to give me the run-around this time. And, interesting enough, there was a perfectly good reason that I was not able to use the tool and it was not even an user error. Basically, it does not work with the budget auto-optimization engine turned on! Who would have guessed? I have included the actual text below for your info. Hopefully this info makes into the AdWords Help section soon.

Google reply
The reason why you are unable to locate keywords in campaign 'XYZ' using this tool is because that campaign has the Budget Optimizer enabled. In order to successfully use the Copy/Move Keywords and Ad Text tool, I would suggest that you temporarily disable the budget optimizer while using this tool.End Google reply

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I think I have mentioned that I recently contracted with business.com for their PPC program. I heard about them via a conversation with a potential VC investor. After all VC is suppose to be smart money. Right?

Wrong.

I must say that biz.com's performance has been rather dismal since day one. I am paying good money but it is not driving any meaningful traffics. In particular, the conversion rate is nil! So, I am paying for the clicks without getting the benefits of conversion.

The account manager is nice enough but that does not compensate for the lack of performance. The other thing is that biz.com makes it difficult to adjust and retrieve information vis-a-vis Google.

Finally, and this is not biz.com related (I do not think), my biz.como traffic is not showing up in GA(N). Don't ask me why. I just got a reply from GA claiming that they can see it. So, I promptly asked them where they saw it! Hope to have the mystery resolved in a few more days.

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Creating news is a funny business. But, it is important when there is general market interests but people are not looking to you for information. So, in the spirit of shaping public opinion, I have commissioned a consultant to conduct a study that links to the business concerns over Sarbanes Oxley. We'll see if anyone bites on the topic.

And, the beauty of this exercise is that it can become a living thing itself. First with a PR piece on the study. Then, another PR piece on the result of the study. Then, a whitepaper or a webinar on the study. And, if I keep pounding on the issue, maybe somebody would think that I know what I am talking about...

It is all very sinister. And, I am not even left handed.

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Oh, so that t-shirt saga has come to a good conclusion. I found a vendor who was able to do it in Silicon Valley. I also found the contact of the co-worker who was most interested in the project. Very good news for my poker event.

The interesting thing is that I am out of the L size already. It seems like that is a rather popular size for the company. Alternatively, maybe we are a company of small people...

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Not sure if you remember the old saga on how we could not get sales people to show up. Our fortune must have changed. Two new sales people just came on-board. I do not know much about them yet but it is good to have more oars in the water as the saying goes.

Maybe one of them will make it into this blog one of these days?

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Finally, on a completely unrelated front. do you know what is "Orz"? Apparently, this is a popular term for text message in Asia.

One hint, it is similar to the idea of the smiley ":-)" but on a large scale.

Still not sure, that is okay - I never got it myself. It is a pictograph showing a person bowing down on all four. Kowtow, I think that is the technical term. To deconstruct the expression - "O" represents the head, "r" represents the shoulder/arm touching the floor, "z" is the butt, leg, knee on the floor.

Orz!

How cool is that! It is too bad that I do not use text message. But, I am using it here! I do wonder how long it would take for Orz to make it into an auto conversion symbol like ":-)" by MSFT?

Oh, Oh! How about finding Orz in ODE? Actually, I do not know if :-) itself is in ODE - I should check.


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Accounting for GAN and GAW, t-shirts, and an endorsement for filth

I think I am a fairly ethical person. I have my shortcomings, for sure, but when somebody drops a wallet, my first instinct which I usually follow through is to let the person know that he dropped his wallet. My point is that for a reasonably ethical person, I hate those "company values" and "mission statements". When was the last time these values or missions said anything interesting? And, I have never felt any of my actions in a particular company is guided one way or another by stated values and mission. Neither have I seen any of my co-workers from CEO on down, follow these ideas.

(Oh, don't get me started on this one time that a CEO insisted that I use some ill gotten data set from the competitor. Welcome to the real world.)

Anyway, the reason I am reminded of these observations is that Mr Proper recently wanted everyone to come up with an agreed list of company values in a corporate meeting.

We want to be (in no particular order):
* Accountable
* Patient
* etc.

You get the drift. And, half way through the process, I was already in my semi-fetal position. On one hand, I really have nothing against these values, nobody is going to argue against being accountable after all. On the other, this does not seem to be something that anyone, with the possible exception of Mr Proper, would remember after the discussion.

To my surprise, Mr Whupass started to challenge the whole idea as well as the individual statements. For example, what is being accountable? Is it a way to pin fault on people? Why cannot we just use common sense to tell whether somebody is being accountable?

I loved it!

Being the CEO, when Whupass showed his cards, the people fall into line rather quickly then. (We may try to be accountable, but we also know how to kowtow to the big boss.)

This kind of got me thinking though. Why are these company values important and who cares? I still maintain that these values are not worth more than the material that they are printed on. This is basically, my conjecture, a global conspiracy by marketing and HR people to create work and production opportunities. Having said that, having a list of company value can also be interpreted as a sign of being a real company since "real" companies have those silly lists. Do you think that is what Mr Proper wanted? A bit artificial, wouldn't you say?

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I finally got my acts together to poke around the Google Analytics Help forum. So, the first thing is that it is not Analytics or Urchin (the original vendor/product name for the product). It is call "GA". Logically enough, but how about Google AdWords? It would seem that to avoid confusion that AdWords would be known as GAW where as Analytics should be called GAN.

Yeah, you've probably guessed it, I have not learnt much on how to use GA yet so I can only make these tangential observations.

I poked around my GA numbers on a daily basis to get more familiar with them. Man! They are not intuitive to decipher. And, there is not an easy consolidated source that would serve as the user manual. Technically, there is a help section which I am in the process of reading through. But, this is nothing like AdWords where you can print out a 400 page tome on how to use GAW.

Is Google turning sloppy? The wind is not favorable.

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I must confess that I have not watched any TV program in an organized fashion, meaning having a fixed time or a favorite show, for years. So, it is only logical that I have no cable. And, in any case, I have only heard of the recent popularity of poker games - I think I read it in an article while waiting in a doctor's office a while back.

So, imagine my surprise that one of our partners is hosting a poker tournament as part of the product/vendor program - come for one hour of sales pitch and you get to play three hours of poker.

I love that idea, mixing business with sinful pleasures. (Disclaimer, I have nothing against gambling. In any case, I am for anything that would help to shock the sensibility of some segment of the civic society. So, please take my use of "sinful" in that tongue-in-cheek spirit.) So, I quickly signed up for the program as one of the vendor "acts". In addition to the sales pitch, I will also be hosting a blackjack table for those who are not playing poker or got eliminated from the tournament. Finally, I will be handing out t-shirts to all the participants.

Nobody can fault me for not being able to spend money in the name of marketing. :-)!


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So, this comes to the latest saga on the t-shirt making front. For several months now, one of the field support engineers told me that he has a friend who can make t-shirts. I am all for routing business to people we know. So, I have been asking for more information so I can make a batch.

Nothing.

Anyway, with the poker event looming, I really need to get my acts together. So, I quickly sent out a bunch of queries for local t-shirt guys and got a few quotes going.

Not sure if you ever made t-shirts in the 80's. It used to be a pretty simple operation. I used to go to a photo copier with the image I want silk screened and make a photocopy onto a thick transparency. The transparency goes to the t-shirt maker and, a few days later, a batch of t-shirts. A good way to make a little spending money on the side.

Well, things have changed. I was asked for an EPS format file for the company logo. I said, sure, I've got exactly what you needed. Then, when I talked with the graphic designer, she informed me that the EPS file that I had was in pixel format as oppose to vector format. Now, you have to bear with me on this point as I am not clear on the details. Basically, a pixel format cannot scale easily since the images are in pixel, i.e. when you blow it up, the gaps between the pixels become visible. On the other hand, vector format, being of mathematical (vector) expressions, can be scaled to whatever size since these expression are robust unless you go into the imaginary plan (okay, I add the conjecture about the imaginary plan but it is probably true.)

Being the good marketing executive, I told the graphic designer to come up with a new logo that is close to the current one but in vector EPS format. It does not need to be perfect for the few people would really notice the discrepancy in a t-shirt.

Then, there is the issue of size. This is basically a statistical question and I have no data to go on. So, I talked with one of the t-shirt making guy and gave him the instruction that I would like to make 50 shirts for a population that is mostly male (90%). The triangulated recommendation is: 2 Small, 8 Medium, 20 large, 18 XL and 2 XXL. I think there is a surcharge for XXL. I may stick with 20 XL instead.

I wonder what kind of sizes I did in the 80's.

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This is not exactly marketing related, but I just want to say that I enjoyed documentary films. And, the most interesting one that I have seen in a long time is "The Aristocrats". It is not, by a long long shot, family friendly, but it exposes a side of the entertainment world and American psyche that are often considered taboo to explore.

The film retells the same joke by many famous comedians each with his own ways of telling it. I won't ruin the fun for you by telling you the joke here, but suffices to say that the whole point is to shock and disgust the listener. In a way, it is sort of like the "my brother can beat up your brother" game to see who can top each other in the category of shock and disgust. And, that in and of itself is fun aplenty.

What I also find fascinating is that the joke really allows a person to explore the notion of taboo and boundaries in the American context (since the jokes are told by American comedians.) Wouldn't it be fun to tell the same job around the world and see what are the taboos and boundaries that people have?

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