Cuil.com Struggling

Well looks as though Cuil.com as launched with loads of coverage, the former Google employees are striving to topple their old pay masters.

Well looks like its been a success, well with regards popularity. 8 searches before i eventually got results, looks like the servers are too hot...one of boast is they don't need as many computers as Google....looks like they will have to correct that one pretty sharpish.

Me like millions of other have been doing what Jeremiah calls "ego searches" and Cuil.com, (pronounced cool apparently) fledgling engine has been toppled.....

That said i have now tried a few searches on the site and i am reasonable impressed, more so with it top navigation. i have typed in the word Wednesday and along with the categories Ash Wednesday and big Wednesday, i get Sheffield Wednesday!! -Top Results in my book.

Still most common message today....

No results because of high load...

Due to excessive load, our servers didn't return results. Please try your search again.

Still give it a chance, the results layout make a change and make SEO option for cuil a real interesting challenge. Results make full use of the onscreen real estate, optimal for widescreens, no obvious leader of the pack.

www.cuil.com


I also have a serious question with regards the images attached to the listing having done my ego search for the company i work for i was suitable unimpressed with the images associated with my term, no relevance, and images i have never seen on our site!!!!
Plus cuil.com seems to be ignoring the "no index no follow" text judging by some results....

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You Tube a land of Brand Opportunity

You Tube marketing is not new, but the potential of you tube is massive. If you sell a product that lends itself to being on film then why not give it go? The ease of setting up an account and promoting your video makes it accessible to all.

I recently revisited an experiment I ran over year ago with my team at a old company and was pleasantly surprised that 1.52 min short video of the LG Shine had received in excess of 225,000 views, a rating of 4, 195 comments and more importantly comments had been made within 11 hours of me checking, over a year since it was posted!!

This video had a brief post and pre roll of the company logo, not a bad piece of cost free branding. But of course it was not free, as there was an opportunity cost involved along with the time and effort taken.

From a marketing perspective though the key consideration is what return on investment will this action take. And it is there where expectations should be set up front.

So here is some advice on winning approval for a You tube marketing action plan.

1. Don't go trying to convince your boss that You tube is a free marketing channel, it's not, it will requires time – your time, a designers time to edit the film and possibly the right kind of software. The very least appreciate this fact, but explain how your time will be repaid.
   
2. Consider the best option of in video advertising for your product. Is it pre-roll, post-roll or both? Continuous scrolling or placement. Decide which option complements your film, and which option will not put off your audience.
   
3. In film advertising is acceptable, but remember the person watching the video you have posted will in all likelihood be interested in what's in the film and not who it belongs to, being over aggressive will provoke a negative response or worse still abandoned views – make this point to prevent over aggressive advertsing
   
4. Set out KPI's for the activity and benchmark it accordingly – believe me unless your product is completely new there will already be film out there on the subject.
   
5. Key metrics to consider should be:
   Number of views /videos watched
   Frequency of views – Trend
   Video Ratings
   Number of comments (if feasible why not think about measure the negative / positive ratio of comments?
   Comment recency
   Connections
   
   
6. Benchmark these by looking at the level achieved by your competitors, actual or in film on You Tube
   
7. Further to this check out site referrals from you tube and monitor any improvement, and of course track sales if you are tacitly asking or not by using the most appropriate source available.
   
8. But set out that this in effect is a branding exercise. If you have the information set it against the cost of achieving your predicted level of views to that achieved through a TV campaign
   
9. Monitor brand searches before and after, see if there is any growth – obviously be sensible and be aware that not every increase can be easily squared with your You Tube campaign.
   
10. Don't forget to mention the Community marketing opportunities and generation of back links and new traffic to your site!
    

Looking at setting up a you tube channel, check out this post by Masternewmedia.org or this You Tube Marketing forum

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Call Me Crazy, but is something not working on Google Adwords or being Tested?

Ok today, I typed in a popular keyword on Google to see who was competing on the terms, only to be presented with a google search result with no Adwords on it! I took a double look at the page and pressed search again to see to the result reappear. Then I started out again and pressed search a few times sure enough every 4^th or 5^th refresh no adword results. I asked a colleague to do the same and on the 3^rd refresh no adword results. I tried a few keywords with similar results.

I flagged this up to our agencies and to Google themselves with associated screen shots. So far only explanation was maybe some click fraud feature etc....Which to be honest I can quite believe. By the way no one got the same view on the computers, maybe a data centre thing?. I am still waiting to hear back any official confirmation that it is in fact just me being stupid. But then I come home and within two clicks I get the same results, and again on another keyword I get the same. See screen shots below for evidence.

The first response I did get from Google is the recommendation to use the adword preview tool to see my ads, to which I responded, it not my ads I was asking about it was everyone's ads.! My concern was the fact that when i first came across this it was my first SERP rotation...one for the X files?

I will post if there is indeed something spooky going on!

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Blatantly Talking To Myself

Wow slowly getting to a nice pace on this blog, still not many visitors though, but for the moment i don't care. Just enjoying publishing ramblings......

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IAB New Search Centre

So the IAB have finally launched their search help center. It is an interesting online centre that gives a good basic introduction into a number of core areas in search marketing. The IAB is aiming for this "centre" to become the number one source in the UK for search marketing. I must admit is it a welcome tool for those recruiting new staff who are either converting from traditional marketing to online, or are very fresh to the intricacy on online marketing.

The new search centre can be found here

Of course along with the IAB centre there is of course the great resaerch papers and guides produce by e-consultancy.

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Facebook Stats Part 2 – Demographics UK – More Females are on Facebook

Did you know that the makeup of the UK Facebookers was in fact dominated by Females? Females represent almost 55% of all users located in the UK over 18!

Actually delving deeper into this stat if you look at age group in blocks of 4 years after the age of 21 more female profiles are recorded on Facebook...but then here comes the shock, this rule changes when you look at the 61 to 65 age group, and 65+, the only segments in my analysis where Males out rank females, with nearly 53% of that age group being Male in the 61 – 65 group and 54% in the 65+ group.

It is not quite a ratio of 2 to 1 females to every male but it close, 1.8 females to every male online, the ratio is at its highest between the age groups of 36-40.

Marketing in the social media space is still a new medium, with many companies only dipping their toes in the water. Facebook gives you access to an absolute goldmine of information, but it is an arena where a marketer MUST respect the users. It is also a medium in which you can hyper target to the extreme, as you will see from later posts, but this does lead to some important question to be asked and answered in your marketing departments.

1. The ROI of such actions to explore the potential of Facebook as an advertising opportunity
   
2. The scalability of such niche targeting
   
3. The range of your product and does it fit to this type of marketing
   
4. Potential negative impact from your targeting
   
5. Over CPA, Revenue and profit expectations
   

Here is a great piece of research from Forrester from back in October well worth flicking through

| View | Upload your own

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Giving Speed Dial another Go!

Right I was reading a pals blog ... Chewie.co.uk and he blogged about Speed dial a great Firefox plug-in...well I thought it looked a good online tool and I went ahead and downloaded...

Well my first few weeks to be honest I hated it, then I decided to give it another go and believe me I am addicted. It is perfect for my habits I always go online to and forget the sites I wanted to check in the first place, but now there slap bang in front of me... and it grown on me...

Basically speed dial allows you snapshot 10 of your most visited website on your homepage and then you can click into them you can also have them updated whilst listed...you can set up tabs to group sites accordingly plus a few other cool features... but take a look at the original article that alerted me to this great feature...Speed dial for Firefox

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