Lately, Digg has been trying a lot of new things with advertising (see Digg-fed Content Ads and Digg Ads announcements) The thing about Digg users is the loyal ones, like me, are there everyday….  The non-loyal ones are there briefly to check out a link a friend sent them and are gone.  In the past couple months, Digg has had over 40 Million Unique Visitors (Compete), and those Visitors have averaged 3 Visits a month.   The challenge is hitting us loyal users over the head enough to notice an advertisement, since we become desensitized and blinded to the normal ads.  Hit us up enough with a repeated ad, and we will bite.  Additionally, the challenge for those quick in-and-out users is to make an ad noticeable enough for them, too.  Take over the entire page, including the background, and loyal users and quick in-and-outers alike can’t help but notice.  Check out the latest full-page spread seen running through the sub-category PC Games:

Great branding for EA BioWare and memorable enough that I might just have to go buy a copy of Dragon Age.  Good move for Digg, too, very targeted placement and although it’s obnoxiously large, it’s unobtrusive and interesting enough to where I’m not bothered.  Great that the 728×90 and 300×600 are not competing but advertising for EA, as well.  Do you agree? Would you buy this placement? Consider buying a product from viewing this placement?

Is this the first time this sort of spot has appeared on Digg? (It’s the first time I’ve seen it, for sure).

When I think dashboard, I think snapshot of all my most-used tools and the data within them…. I imagine the ability to customize the dashboard for what I want…. maybe I’m thinking iGoogle .

Google Dashboard doesn’t make me drive easier.

Is it repugnant? Flagrantly arrogant to think that they can offer a measly $25 to people to take down carefully crafted, precious food porn? Do they think there’s only room for one great food site on the Web? Methinks no.  Instead, I’m almost certain some smart bloke over at Eater knows exactly what they’re doing… starting a buzz, a stir, a melee of sorts… resulting in lots of comments, lookiloos and links around the net.  Pretty brilliant, I might add.  It could go very sour.  Piss off enough bloggers on the interwebs, and you may be blacklisted, but I predict with this one, the opposite will happen.

Results so far:

• I popped over to backtweets.com and checked how many tweets happened mentioning their redesign or the $25 post since their first tweet 22 hours ago:
  80 (not that astonishing) and most echoing an equally WTF sentiment:
  
• Inlinks referencing the post (according to Yahoo):
  20
• Diggs:
  13

So, the numbers aren’t so great, yet… but I suspect this one will still pick up some steam and some more links, just like the 2 I’ve just given them.

Good job, Eater – love the creativity and your Spartacus bravery for taking a risk. Lookout for Matt Cutts, though, someone might say you’re paying for links!

1. Address a common problem
2. Encourage interaction
3. Give users a reason to come back

One of the oft overlooked drivers of success in the Social Web is: COMPETITION

Every game, be it sports or Monopoly, has an element of competition.  Humans, in nature, are competitive – hunt or be hunted, fight or flight, but even more than that, there’s an adrenaline rush that is just plain FUN that drives us to compete.  The competition is also rooted in our desire to be famous – that Inner Celebrity screaming to come out, no matter how much of a wallflower we claim to be.

So that’s where my new addictions come into play.  These 4 apps offer a chance for me to let that inner celebrity out a little, flex my game muscle, and satisfy my greater-than-most need for everything I do to be layered with adventure:

1. Urbanspoon

[my profile: @claire-hawley]


Mundane Problem it Tackles: Stuck in that let’s-eat-at-Marix-for-the-4th-time-this-week rut.  Sure, we have our favorite haunts, but I live in Los Angeles – which is possibly one of the top 5 places in the world to try foods of all cultures, at both hole-in-the-wall joints and fancy-smancy spots imbibed with celebrities, so there’s no excuse for being a Food Bore.

How it’s a Game: Get the iPhone app.  Grab a friend to keep you accountable (Hollywood Homemaker is one of my favorite gals to grab for this game).  Decide how many “shakes/spins” you’ll try – or just do one.  Then, shake away and choose the best of 3 (idea here is also to try places you’ve never been).  You have to agree ahead of time that you’re going to go to that place no matter what… so if you want to spend a little or a lot, or are not in the mood for Chinese, be sure to lock in what you’re in the mood for.

Why I Keep Coming Back: Urbanspoon has a couple of cool features that keep me interested.  They have a wishlist – where you can add the restaurants your friends’ favorite restaurants.  This becomes a game in itself, as you try to check off as many of your wishlist restaurants as possible.  You can also upload photos and reviews straight from your phone.

2. Waze

[my profile: @eclaire]

Mundane Problem it Tackles: Los Angeles traffic.  ‘nuf said… but in summary, Waze tackles the problem of predicting traffic and anticipating hazards in real-time, by using the GPS of your phone and relying on users to report the issue as they come across them.

How it’s a Game: Users get points for driving and increased points for driving down roads that no one else has traveled – the car in the app actually turns into a Pac-Man-esque creature that chomps away at the points as you drive.  This makes it enticing to try and drive different routes, even in your usually mundane morning commute.  The downside to this may be that it encourages increased mileage and thus, doesn’t lend itself to being very green-friendly.

Why I Keep Coming Back: There are a growing number of users of the app, and you’re ranked against others.  If you don’t turn it on on your phone, you’ll quickly see your rank decrease.  It’s still pretty new and the userbase, although growing, is still small, so the usefulness of it isn’t that great yet, but somehow I feel like I’m helping the greater good by using it, so as any good addict would, I turn it on every time I’m in a moving vehicle (including my scoot).

3. Foursquare

[my profile: @eclairebears]

Mundane Problem it Tackles: Foursquare is a location-notification tool like Loopt, but it takes it one step further.  When you go to a place, you can leave a tip or a to do for other people, so it makes everything, from the trip to the grocery store to the raucous night out, a little more entertaining.  Plus, if you’re bored and unsure what to do for the evening, you may very well find a friend who’s out and join them.

How it’s a Game: Like Urbanspoon, you can make a game out of reading other people’s tips at a location and doing them.  Also, you get badges for the different things you do.

Why I Keep Coming Back: It’s fun to get new badges and to see how many points you can rack up – with a little effort to get out and go places, you can get to the top 100 leaderboard during the week.

4. DailyBurn

[my profile: @eclaires]

Mundane Problem it Tackles: Counting calories and exercising in order to watch your weight.

How it’s a Game: You can enter challenges or just challenge yourself to stay within a particular calorie range or do a certain amount of exercise activities.

Why I Keep Coming Back: Actually, I don’t yet.  This post inspired me to look at several sites to see if any peeked my interest.  I think this is an area that still hasn’t been fully tapped for social apps.  For instance, DailyBurn.com has groups and challenges, yet the iPhone app doesn’t integrate them yet.  However, I’m going to give it a try and maybe join one of the challenges.  Speaking of challenges, I happened across a site taking a completely unique approach to it – Weight Loss Wars – which uses a money pool as the motivator for the challenge.

In conclusion, if you’re creating a social site, I’m living proof of what works – you have to make it fun, challenging and insert a dose of competition.  Plus, it’s important to make it available on a variety of different platforms, especially a cell phone.

So, friends, do you have an addiction to a social site you’d care to admit to?  Or, do you think there’s a gap or need out there that hasn’t been fulfilled by an existing app?

Walter Cronkite Passed Away Today and His Death Was Shown Immediately thereafter in Twitter Trending Topics

But had it been around in 1985, could it have better predicted this?

I attended a Citizen Journalism panel discussion for Social Media Club on Monday which talked a lot about Twitter and Citizen Journalism. What the discussion scraped the surface about – and I truly find most fascinating – is the ability for Twitter to take a pulse on society (which Twitter management was on to in the documentation recently released by Techcrunch). This pulse is great for gathering current sentiments about what is happening around the globe and particularly great for getting breaking news.

What I’d love to see is some new tools made that do in-depth analysis and attempt to make predictions about the future. I imagine there’s a lot of things that can be predicted by listening to the constant chitter and chatter.  Albeit, it’s not likely anyone could predict Michael’s obsession with plastic surgery would end in his latest appearance (or possibly even death), but at minimum, noting rising tensions or sentiments about a topic may lead to predicting a future major event.

Thanks to San Francisco Sentinel and Chicken Crap for the inspiration (and MJ photos).

Maybe. But not for a long time. At least that’s my speculation and here’s why:

1. Large Un-Tapped Volume of Searches

In my day-to-day interactions, it seems there is still a huge gap between the early-adopter-Web-influencer group and the average Web user. Where my instinct to every question in life is to run to Google, most people still leave their “I wonders” unanswered. So, that leaves a huge amount of search volume that has yet to be released on the engines. My guess is that there’s at least 100% growth opportunity in search volume in the next few years.

2. Growth in Smart Phone Purchases, While Also Large, Won’t Be Greater

According to the below graph from a recent ChangeWave phone study as reported by Electronista, more and more people are planning to buy a smart phone in the next 90 days:
If 14.4% of people buy smart phones in the next 90 days and that number grows to 25% over the next year, the number will likely still be smaller than growth in volume of searches.  Not to mention, that not all new smart phone users will wholeheartedly embrace all the cool apps and may just stick to the basics.

Fellow SEOs, not to worry, job availability will only continue to grow; however, it will always be wise to take a more holistic approach to website development.  Think about that huge percentage of people using mobile phones and apps to do their searching, browsing and discovering – and be sure to make your content consumable and useful for them, no matter how they want to access it.

This post is purely a prediction, but it’s made me think it would be really wise to keep historical search volume data.  Most of the major keyword tools (Google, Keyword Discovery), don’t show year-over-year volume, but the last 12 months.

What do you think? Did I overlook some big factor?

First off, if you’re not familiar with Twitter Trending Topics, they’re the links you see on the right side of pages (like your home page), that track commonly occurring words in tweets.  Clicking on them takes you to a search result page that displays all the latest tweets about that topic.  Naturally, these pages get a lot of eyeballs, as curious people look to see what people are saying about the Trending Topic.

Spammers, being great at finding opportunities to get clicks, have infiltrated this space:

Notice how Nicelyu1045 has cleverly added “Tehran Transformers 2 iphone AT&T Spain Iran” to the end of her tweet?  While this might get some clicks, by it’s very spammy nature, it probably won’t have high returns and is a blight on the whole purpose of the Trending Topics to display true tweets about the topic.

I don’t recommend mimicking this spammy behavior, but we can learn from the spammers and find ways to get traffic while also adding value to the conversation.

Here are 3 non-spammy ways to get traffic from Twitter Trending Topics:

1. Try to anticipate hot topics before they happen

My team recently decided to anticipate the launch of Transformers 2 and get ready with an article about it.  Anticipation works pretty well for things like movies and hot product releases, but is a little more difficult for things like breaking news (especially when many news stories are now first broke on Twitter), which is why I recommend #2:

2. Monitor hot topics regularly and write content around them relative to your site’s niche

With a little creativity, nearly every Trending Topic could be stretched to something related to your niche.  Take the Transformers 2 example: 8 Transformers 2 Cars to Snag Megan Fox – pretty far stretch to tie the movie back to insurance (the site’s niche).  However, the article is effectively accomplishes this goal.  The window of time the topic will be in Trending Topics can be short, so you have to act fast when you see a new trend appearing.

3. Reply to users in the Trending Topics timeline, referring them to your related content

Once you have some content around the the trending topic, if you think it’s valuable to a person’s tweet, interact with them.  One thing to watch, though, is if your topic is a far stretch, your tweet may come across spammy.  If done with tact, however, you may be able to pick up some new followers, in addition to get some good traffic.

Do you have other ideas of how you could use Trending Topics for traffic?  Let me know with a comment or tweet!

Here’s the affiliate trick:

Sign-up for SSP with Yahoo (or one of their preferred providers).  Tell them you are an authorized agency for the website (or don’t tell them anything, as they probably won’t ask).  Then, use your affiliate ID as your destination URL in the SSP feed (same as you would with a PPC account).  Optimize your feed for your target keywords, and better yet, for the brand/domain name.  What this means is that if someone searches for the brand name of your offer, you are most likely going to rank #1 on Yahoo.   I would never recommend someone actually do this, because it’s dishonest and takes advantage of others.  If you’re an affiliate and you try this, shame, shame.

However, if you’re a website owner and you have affiliates, be very aware of your affiliate traffic sources. If it’s Yahoo, and appears to be organic, you may have a problem – that affiliate could be purposefully stealing your 100% gross-profit traffic and charging you for it.

Here’s how to tell if a listing is Yahoo SSP:

1. Look at the source code. Does the url around the link appear to have a couple of redirects?  If so, it’s probably SSP.
2. Look at the Title on the SERP. Compare it to the title on the page itself.  If they’re different, then it’s most likely that they are using SSP.  However, keep in mind the title may also be coming from the Yahoo directory listing.
3. Does the url contain an affiliate ID? This is not always an indicator of SSP, because Yahoo often grabs affiliate ids in urls and displays them in search results.  However, it might be a sign of some foul play.

Example: A search for “Acai Juice” returns Vitaminshoppe.com as the Number 1 Listing.

First, by looking at the source code, I see that there are multiple redirects (and the url string is longer than the others).  Note: if you’re using Firefox, you have to copy the code into a text editor and wrap the text, because Yahoo doesn’t have any wrap and it’s difficult to look at the code.

Also, you can see that the url it references in the redirect is http://booyahnetworks.com/ ; which upon further inspection, is a Yahoo SSP provider…

Next, take a look at the title: Acai Juice – 32 Fluid Oz | VitaminShoppe

Then, take a look at the browser bar title when you click to the site:

Different = Yahoo SSP. Now, if I was VitaminShoppe, and I paid affiliates for sending traffic to my site, I’d want to make sure that this particular agency / affiliate was actually authorized to use SSP by me; otherwise, they’d be cheating me out of free organic traffic.

Finally, you can see there is an ID appended to the url – if that affiliate doesn’t have permission to be using Yahoo SSP, they’re busted . (But keep in mind, if the first 2 checks don’t reveal SSP, this could be happening by another issue… and you should be using 301 redirects or at minimum, canonical tags, to remove IDs from your URLs to prevent this).

That’s not to say, however, that you shouldn’t use Yahoo SSP.  As much as I’m not a fan of such a sneaky manipulation of what is supposed to be the “best results” for a query, I have and do use SSP for certain websites.  If you don’t, someone else will, and it may just not be worth the competition.

I like to reserve dots for file types (.html) and domains (.com), so I will not be making the switch to use dots in place of hyphens.  Unless I need someone to remember the url (clairehawley), I will continue to use hyphens; however, now I’m kicking myself for not trying to use claire.hawley on Facebook… maybe I’ll contact the other Claire Hawley’s and we can do an experiment to see if they’ll outrank me for a search for “Claire Hawley”.

Anyone else care to test this and share the results?

If your response code is 200:

You need to implement a redirect.  If you’re on an Apache server (UNIX), this is really easy to do using .htaccess.FTP to your site’s root html folder to see if there’s an existing .htaccess file.  If so, open it using a text editor (I like Textwrangler for Mac and EditPlus for PC).  If there isn’t an existing .htaccess file, start a new text document and save it as “.htaccess” (without any extension, like .txt).Add this snippet of code to the file, changing yourdomain.com to the url of your site:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Upload the file to your domain at the root.  That’s it!  Now, run the check again in the server header checker, and if all goes well, you should see a 301 response code.

If your code is 302:

Most commonly, it’s because you’re on an iis server (microsoft).   You can tell what type of server you’re on using the server header checker, as well.  If you’re on iis or nginx, it’s a little more complicated than updating your .htaccess file, and it’s more than likely that it will be easiest to accomplish by contacting your webhost (at least that’s how I’d handle it ).  If you’re up to tackling it, Google “301 redirect iis”.

If you’re on Apache, follow the same steps for adding a redirect to your .htaccess file, as detailed above in step #1 for the 200 server response code.