Marketing Pilgrim

If you’ve ever watched TV in England, you’ll know that soft porn is pretty easy to find - Channel 4 on a Saturday night should be your top target. So it’s not entirely surprising that those porn-obsessed Brits having driven Flickr to the #1 spot for UK photography sites.

As HitWise explains…

A quick analysis of Flickr’s clickstream and search terms led me to the conclusion that Flickr has grown through good SEO and specifically searches for soft-porn…the top terms sending visits to Flickr are searches for the brand (”flickr”, “flickr.com” and “flicker”) and soft porn terms (”boobs”, “transvestite” and “nudity” to name a few tame terms).

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I still contend that my Top 10 ways to generate blog traffic is all any blogger needs. But, if you need some more ideas, Rand has another 21 that you should consider.

I still think asking your family to add your blog name to the church bulletin, can’t be beat!

Poor Robert Scoble, he’s a little concerned he may have lost his Scoblizing powers. Here’s what he said at his blog…

Anand M., in India, asks “has Scoble lost his blog power?� (I linked to him and he didn’t get many visits). My read? If I ever did have blog power, it’s gone now. Digg and TechMeme have all the power now.

Don’t worry Robert, you’ve transcended to a higher place. Sure your blog is still a huge traffic generator to any site you happen to link to - any site, like this one for example (hint, hint) - but you’ve become a “connector” in true Gladwell “Tipping Point” style.

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If you think those embarrassing photos of you at the office Christmas party - that you uploaded to that page on your site that you’re sure no one knows about - are safe because you added a “noindex” meta tag? You might want to think again.

Matt Cutts conducted a brief, non-scientific experiment to see how each search engine handles the command. Here’s what he found…

So based on a sample size of one page, it looks like search engines handle the “noindex� meta tag:

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What do you do if you upload Google AdSense to your site and don’t get an ROI? Here’s the plan..

1. Click on your own ads as many times as you can, after all, you need to make sure that the advertisers are still there. 2. Keep clicking.
3. Have your AdSense account suspended for invalid clicks. This is a key component of the plan.
4. Sue Google for $250,000 for lost ad revenue!

How simple is that?
Think that’s crazy? Well, that’s exactly what one website owner did and JenSense has the full details.

Kevin Newcomb analyzes Google’s recent distribution deals and, with the help of the marketers he spoke to, concludes marketers are not wowed by the deals.

I beg to differ. Too many marketers look at how these distrubution deals will help increase “click” inventory, when they should be looking at the bigger picture. It’s not just about how many more clicks advertisers will receive from these deals - although that is important - but these deals allow search marketers to reach channels that were previously closed to them.

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ClickZ reports that real estate agents may be looking for a new home for their advertising budgets.

…it may come as no surprise to learn that real estate agents are reducing their print newspaper spends, as was reported yesterday by Classified Intelligence.

While Realtors are reducing their offline spend, the report shows there is no clear winner for online ad spend.

But I know the answer. Want to know where real estate agents are investing their online efforts? Blogging! Yep, I lose track of the number of new blogs that I see each day that relate to the real estate industry. But don’t just take my word for it, take a look at these charts…

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Some of you may have just experienced a deluge of new posts via my RSS feed. My apologies. When I switched servers last week, I forgot to update the path for the RSS feed, so none of you were getting any updates.
That problem has since been fixed.

In case you’ve still not subscribed to the search industry’s excellent Search Marketing Standard magazine, you’re missing the Fall issue.

BetaNews has details of Microsoft’s plans to offer a Google Pack alternative, complete with useful programs such as Windows Live Messenger and Live Mail Desktop.

Called Windows Live Essentials, the program also features a new application called Windows Live Dashboard. The Dashboard would show the user what Live programs are installed and what is available for download.

Microsoft has announced their own version of Google Answers and Yahoo Answers - Windows Live QnA.

According to ther Windows Live blog, some of the features include:

* A smooth interface that enables you to ask, answer and vote on a question.

* A free-form “tagging� system that allows you to attach your own keywords and phrases to your question to make it more discoverable by other users. With QnA, you tell us what the question is about, not the other way around!

* Integration with Windows Live Spaces via modules that show off questions you’ve asked and questions you’ve answered.

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Barry’s uncovered a forum topic that discusses how some content thieves are inadvertantly stealing Google Analytics tracking codes, along with a page’s content.

For those of you that use Google Analytics, you should be aware that if someone steals your source code and leaves your “UA” code, the unique identifier for Google to know what site the traffic is from, that your traffic may be inflated.

I’m hoping that either Robert Scoble or Michael Arrington get into the scraping business - boy would my traffic jump then!