1. It did have an effect on my Alexa ranking. Now it is likely that this may be completely coincidental because by looking at the Alexa graph the traffic had been going up anyway - but there is about a 150,000 point difference in the Alexa score that I had before being Dugg and after. My initial thought was that it wouldn’t have any effect because the Digg audience tends to be very technically informed and the liklihood of them having the Alexa bar installed is smaller. This leads me to believe that Alexa has another way of tracking data.
2. The first day was good, but so were the second and third. Naturally the bulk of the traffic came in on the first day, but it only dropped by about 20% the next day. The effects of the front page view didn’t die down until about the 3rd day. From talking with a couple of other people I have found out that if I had been Dugg on a weekday that traffic would have been double what I received.
3. Social Media at work. There is almost a direct correlation to how Digg and Del.icio.us work. The main factor being speed. The post made it to the front page of Digg within 45 minutes. After that the number of people that bookmarked the site grew at about the same rate as the number of people who clicked the Digg button. If you don’t know anything else about Digg you should know that the number of Diggs doesn’t matter nearly as much as how fast it is being Dugg. Afterall it is a news site. As it turns out Del.icio.us works esseentially the same way.
4. The blogosphere effect. I think the thing I noticed that was most interesting was the how the traffic changed as time passed. The first day 99% of the traffic came either from Digg or Del.icio.us. This is easiest to tell by the comments on the first day. They were made primarily by people commenting on the list or asking that something be added. After the first day nearly all the comments were trackbacks. The traffic data supports this. A good portion of the traffic on days 2, 3 and 4 came from people who originated on another blog that had a trackback to my original post. The point I am trying to make here is that the trackbacks helped support the traffic once the post fell off the front page of Digg and Del.icio.us. Sidenote: The post was also added to the social surfing site StumbleUpon. Now I don’t know what effect a site like StumbleUpon could have on traffic if people really like it, but it would make an interesting item to track.
5. I avoided the dreaded Slashdot effect. My blog (powered by Wordpress) actually did very well performance wise. No really big blips in performance. A lot of people have had their sites crash by being Slashdotted or Dugg. Of course it was a weekend and I may not have gotten the full force of being Dugg.

Those are just some of my observations. If you have any questions let me know.

1. The API is no longer free
2. Anyone using the service for commercial purposes must not intermingle it with another service. That means no single interfaces. It also means that companies like AtlasOnePoint, KeywordMax and Omniture are sort of screwed.
3. It means that agencies and small SEO/SEM companies might have to start building their own internal applications to avoid extra cost and to be able to combine services from Yahoo and Google.

Of those I think the 2nd point will have the biggest impact. A change like this has the potential to shift not only this industry but every industry that has sprung up around the notion of mashups. What if other companies supplying APIs were to start charging? What if god forbid Google starts charging for access to Google Maps? This is likely to cause a lot of debate in the SEM industry, but my fear is that it will lead other companies to charge for access to their APIs as everyone plays follow Google again.

For more details on these changes see the Google Blog.

Update: It was pointed out to me that this could also have a negative impact on Google in the highly competitive search engine market place. This is very true, but what if others follow suit? Back when I was at Prodigy the dial-up market was highly competitive (yes this was a few years back). AOL decided to raise the prices from the average $11 dollars a month. Through a growing MSN dial base into the mix and pretty soon before you knew it, everyone was raising their prices. You would hope that the others (MSN and Yahoo don’t follow suit). This is however the first time in a many years that Google has done something in which people are not that thrilled.

Congratulations to Jeffrey Veen and the team at Adaptive Path.

Did I mention that it is yet another Ruby on Rails success?

Most of the larger players in Interactive and online marketing in Houston are members of this new organization. Rather than hash through all of the members here you can see them on Ed Schipul’s post about HiMA. Our president Gene Mccubbin is on the steering committee, but I suspect I will spend some time filling in for him as the organization moves forward. Anyway, there are a lot of excited marketers out there because in general there’s lots to be learned about the truths and myths of online marketing in the Houston area.

BTW. If you really like the logo, lots of kudos to Kirky Kana from Idea Integration for her great design.

The service is intended to answer day to day subjunctive questions like “Where can I find� or “How do I build�, so don’t expect it to figure out what you are going to do with your life. You can get more nitty gritty detail on the Yahoo Search blog.

On another note, you know I will rant later about the trend of attaching the word beta to everything to take advantage of Web 2.0 glow.

• A Technology Manifesto
• Web 2.0: The Web as a platform
• An Introduction To RSS Feeds

I am a little surprised that more people in the search marketing community have not taken more notice of what’s going on with Web 2.0. Some of the expected changes in consumer behavior that we can already see with services like Rollyo, 43 Things and Consumating have the potential to drastically change the search marketing landscape. Three things in particular demand close attention: RSS, tagging and AJAX.

The Impact of RSS feeds

As mentioned in An Introduction To RSS Feeds – RSS allows publishers to syndicate their content making it available for publishing on other sites and in news readers. This presents a tremendous opportunity to expand the reach of your content, but it also introduces an obstacle. With RSS you can’t be sure that the person reading your blog or web site content will be reading that content on your site. I personally use a plug-in called Attensa to pull feeds directly into Outlook so that I can read and react to new information without disrupting my normal daily activities. So while a visitor may find your site through a Google or Yahoo search, you will need to track them differently once they “subscribe� to your content.

Tagging

Back in the “olden� days when Yahoo first introduced the concept of Web directories, everything was based on “Taxonomy� or divisions into ordered groups or categories. The emerging theme in new types of search engines and applications is to base information collection on “Folksonomy�. Folksonomy is the practice of collaboratively organizing information using freely chosen words or “tags�. This basically means that instead of a pre-determined categorical structure the users of a search engine or application would cooperate to organize information into categories. This allows people to quickly group things without really having to worry about the underline structure. This idea produced the service TagCloud. TagCloud is an automated Folksonomy tool. TagCloud searches any number of RSS feeds you specify, extracts keywords from the content and lists them according to prevalence within the RSS feeds. In other words, it determines what information you might want to see based on what you and other people feed it. Tagging is an emerging paradigm but as more people “get it� and use it, tagging will change the way we classify and discover information on the Web.

AJAX - A New way to browse the web

If you want to learn about the origins of AJAX check out Jesse James Jarrett’s AJAX manifesto – AJAX a whole new approach to Web Applications. For real world examples check out Google Maps or Virtual Earth. If you are in the search marketing industry you should really, really familiarize yourself with Yahoo Instant Search and Google Suggest. These are all examples of a new way to build websites called AJAX. The technologies behind AJAX have been around for a while, but with browser standardization (almost) and increased bandwidth availability these applications are more feasible. An AJAX application removes the back and forth interactions required by a traditional Web application, thus making it act like a desktop application. The user doesn’t have to wait for a page to load, and in many cases, the application can be built to run on a single web page with very little screen refresh. This presents a huge opportunity and challenge for search marketers who will have to contend with information that is pre-filtered or possibly not shown because the visitor chooses a different search term from a pre-populated dropdown.

If you have ever sat in one of my training classes you have heard me say – “Nearly every single successful human innovation is driven primarily by our need for social interaction�. These changes are a direct result of behavioral changes that have already happened or changes we expect to happen. People’s social behavior will drive lots of the innovations over the next few years. Those of us in the search marketing industry need to sit up and take notice. It has been a while since I have felt that there was a disruptive technology on the horizon for the search marketing industry. Paid Listings was the last. Could Web 2.0 give us the next one?

P.S. In case you haven’t already noticed, the major search portals Google, Yahoo and MSN are at the heart (well close to it anyway) of these changes. It is more likely than not that in the next year more AJAX and Web 2.0 features will find their way onto these search engines. Stay tuned.

Contrary to what you may believe your Web site should not be designed to your own particular tastes. What you think is certainly of interest, but it is more important to build the site for the customer…unless you will be the only one visiting. Almost 50% of a site’s visitors could go elsewhere due to poor navigation, slow downloads or confusing content. This is what I call “selfish marketingâ€?. Pointless animations and music, unnecessary pop-up windows and annoying Flash pop-over ads block visitors from getting what they really want — to buy something or gather information. Whether you design the site yourself, or outsource the task to a design firm, a well designed, customer focused website will be a successful one. From Mistakes People Make with Their Web sites

Design for the users, not for yourself. Andy Rutledge wrote about this in his post Give Your Website Away. This is an incredibly hard concept for people to grasp when they enter into a web development project. After all this is their baby - their brand. Believe me when I say if you ignore what you users are really looking for, your web projects will fail.

Mistake #1: You’re not doing anything

It amazes me how many people still think that all you have to do is a set up a Web site and be done with it. This common misconception like so many failed dotcoms may sound great, but it is completely naive for Internet marketing. If you are one of the masses that think “Hey I’ll just pick-up a copy of Web Sites for Dummies and build a web site on a free service next weekend�, it’s time for a wakeup call. The website itself is a great marketing tool, but for the web site to serve a purpose there needs to be visitors. If you don’t have good content or work to build traffic you could be missing out on ten of thousands of dollars. So if you really want to succeed remember you have to do something

Mistake # 2: You start at the end instead of the beginning

I have a secret to tell you. When it is all said and done actually making money from your website will be the easiest thing to do. That bears repeating. Making money from your site will be the easiest part of being online. Do you think Wal-Mart or Target worry about cash registers and shopping carts before they figure out if they are in the right location to get people into their store? The hardest part of any business is generating interest and traffic. This should be your first focus. While a merchant account, shopping carts and catalogs play a vital part in ecommerce, they are not the reason people come to your Web site. If you start at the end, all those people you think are waiting to buy from you are not looking for you. In fact they won’t even know you exist. Start with your content, build your traffic and the rest will follow.

Mistake # 3: You Don’t Have a Domain Name

Yes, people actually make this mistake. If you don’t own a domain name (like http://www.abc.com) people will not take you seriously. The potential involved with having a domain name for your web site is staggering to say the least. Even if your business is a hobby you don’t want people to think it is. Having a domain name should honestly be one of your first expenses, and with many full service hosting providers, it’s included. Having your own domain name gives your business its own identity and authenticity, instead of just being a user of a free web hosting service. Remember, a Web site gives you credibility, and having a domain name is where that starts.

Mistake # 4: Hit or Miss Marketing

You can’t be everything to everyone. If you have pipe dreams of building the next multi billion dollar seller, I’m sorry to tell you that no matter how great your product is, not everyone wants it. You would be doing your business a huge disservice by not focusing on the people who do. A huge key to successfully marketing your products and services online is niche marketing. In other words you have to focus. Studies have shown that small businesses with focused marketing plans experience a 24 to 30% improvement in sales over those without. Unfortunately, most businesses learn this the hard way. They launch their online efforts without exploring which venue might be right for them and who their target is. On top of that, they don’t test any of their marketing. Online marketing without focusing on a niche and measuring the results is like going on a diet and never checking to see if it works! None of us would ever do that, would we? Then why market without focus? Your return on a focused campaign will always be greater than one without focus. You won’t know if you’ve received your money’s worth, and worse, you may have caused your own profit loss. Remember, your target market will not come to you unless you go to them first.

Mistake # 5: Your Web site is Not Customer Driven

Contrary to what you may believe your Web site should not be designed to your own particular tastes. What you think is certainly of interest, but it is more important to build the site for the customer…unless you will be the only one visiting. Almost 50% of a site’s visitors could go elsewhere due to poor navigation, slow downloads or confusing content. This is what I call “selfish marketingâ€?. Pointless animations and music, unnecessary pop-up windows and annoying Flash pop-over ads block visitors from getting what they really want — to buy something or gather information. Whether you design the site yourself, or outsource the task to a design firm. A well designed, customer focused website will be a successful one.

Mistake # 6: You don’t follow-up with Web site visitors

Did you know that it takes at least 7 contacts with a prospect to maximize the number of sales possible? Is your web site so focused on sales that you aren’t learning enough about your customers and visitors to provide them with meaningful, beneficial information? If so, you could be missing out on 70% - 90% of your potential Internet profits. After the sale or after the visit contact is just as important as contact prior to the sale, especially if you expect to make repeat sales or get people to refer you. For many businesses, having good back end follow-up determines whether the business succeeds or not. You have to follow-up because many times the most profitable sale is not made on first contact.

Mistake # 7: You don’t seek appropriate help

Most entrepreneurs do an extraordinary job at what they specialize in, but are not really that proficient in all of the aspects of running a business. They may be lacking the skills in people management, strategic planning, accounting, marketing, or operations and it is this lack of expertise that could ultimately lead to the demise of their business. There are a lot of talented people out there with failed businesses. Chances are these people did not seek out proper support. So instead of seeing accountants, bookkeepers, marketing reps and, yes, web professional as an expense, view them as investments in the success of your business. When it comes to online success, why try to be a Web professional? Focus on your core competencies and get the best to do the rest. Otherwise you are limiting the true potential of your business.

Mistake # 8: You don’t know who you are

Don’t worry about price. Don’t worry about features. If you do not know what makes you better more importantly unique, you are missing out on a key to business success. You have to have a USP. Your USP is your Unique Selling Proposition or, as I like to call it , Business DNA. It’s the one thing that makes you…you. Preferably, your USP should be something that is not easily duplicated by the competition. Remember, your “uniqueness� does not have to be product related. There are many ways to set your company apart; the key is to find that difference and use it to set up and communicate a benefit for your customer.