Marketing Pilgrim

Two weeks ago, it looked like Google might have been . . . well, fibbing. Back in June, the search engine announced that they would no longer redistribute “link juice” around nofollowed links, effectively deprecating the practice of PageRank sculpting. But late last month, it looked like the technique was still effective when SEOmoz published some research to that effect.

Not so much, it turns out. Today, Mozzer Danny Dover revisits the tests he used in the original post and shows that the results were, in fact, inconclusive.

The short reason is that the test didn’t include enough data to be statistically significant. He’d have to repeat the test with 168 domains (instead of the 20 he used) to assure that the results were meaningful and not merely a fluke.

It looks like Deutschland has a bee in its bonnet about Google. Apparently it is using the dreaded M word “monopol” which, according to Google’s own translation tool is the German form of the English word monopoly. The Germans are concerned that Google is looking like Microsoft and they are not happy. Somebody needs to get in their Mercedes and take a ride on the Autobahn to cool off, maybe?

We learned of the Reuters report from Search Engine Land. Apparently the German justice minister is upset that Google isn’t transparent enough. I thought monopolies are about cornering markets and not transparency but maybe I am missing something in the translation.

Here’s her thoughts from Reuters

Maybe you can have too much of a good thing. As the Internet allows advertisers to slice and dice large segments of desirable markets into thinner, more defined slices it also creates something that is much less desirable: smaller profits.

How is that you say? How is it possible to make less on my advertising spend when I am advertising directly to the group that most needs or wants my products? Well, it’s simple supply and demand. While you are targeting a much more defined market you are not going to be alone in that quest to advertiser to just the people that will buy. Remember those pesky competitors? They want those people too because their claim is that they are better than you. Now you are going to find a price war that drives up costs for advertising and makes customer acquisition costs rise which in turn hurt the bottom line. So maybe there is too much of a good thing after all.

The Marketing Executives Networking Group is a group of 2000 marketing executives (10 points if you already guessed that ) at the VP level and higher. Recently, the group’s leadership asked members to name their favorite blogs by non-MENG members—and guess who was part of the top 20?

Oh, I guess the title kind of gave it away, didn’t it? That’s right, Marketing Pilgrim .

Seth Godin’s blog took top honors, with 59% of execs naming that as a favorite. Mashable was second with 38%. Tied for third were Chris Brogan’s Community and Social Media and Guy Kawasaki’s How to Change the World (30% each). One in five named Tom Peters’ blog, tied with Duct Tape Marketing to round out the top five (with six blogs ).

Back in November we talked about AOL’s need to trim their headcount by some 2,500 people. At the time the hope was that enough would walk away from their positions to avert the need for playing the bad guy and actually firing anyone. Well, according to All Things Digital the numbers didn’t quite add up with that plan and now AOL needs to start the proactive force reduction. Call it what you will. Here is some information from the ATD article

In November, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said he needed 2,500 “volunteers” to give up their jobs, but not enough of them got the message — only 1,100 walked away on their own.

Now Armstrong is entering the second phase of his corporate slimdown, and is firing some 1,000+ employees.

As marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and Mark,” or, more specifically, “Are we all just toiling mightily to make a bunch of rich nerds (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his employees and investors, Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams and their employees and investors) richer, while we impoverish ourselves?”