Google Shakes Up Management

Any book written since 2005 on VC startups or funded dot com ventures or even enterprise angel funded corporations with bricks and mortar realities behind a new Internet presence has a different story today.The next page has been turned for Google (Earth), with a juggle king, veteran Page again newly crowned at the top of the biggest new media empire since, well , Microsoft, Ebay or Apple. Sergey Brin will turn to other projects.

Larry Page, coming back from semiretirement at thirty seven, will take up the reins as Google Czar at the company he helped found in 2000. Just as Google and many other flexible flyers in the new Internet race a decade ago flashed ahead of the huge titan companies still trying to grasp what the Web could mean, it now will muster new (old) leadership when products are most at stake. Google’s online apps, email and evolving omnimedia in Internet life needs a courageous hand at the tiller.

As Silicon Valley has ebbed and flowed in the last decade and then gone back out with the tide, dynamics like those posed with respect to FaceBook in the Social Network and other dotcom stories have never touched the giant that is Google. Ebay, IBM, Microsoft, Apple Computers, Yahoo, and other online behemoths have settled into their respective territories. Google is generally regarded as valuable rather than on the cutting edge among anaysts.

But this was the year FaceBook roared, in 2010 and probably louder in 2011 as well. Google, whose footprint currently is stamped in SEO, Android and online apps, will cement a possible social networking presence online soon. They’ll have to, with so many age rank and indexing players getting into the game (Yahoo, Bing). And if Google sees which way the wind is blowing, it might want to get into the domain business. Before Facebook does.

Domain Niche Markets in 2011

Big Domain Opportunities in 2011: The domain markets have shifted and slanted but reformed into the same structure they started 2010 with. But domain growth and site development will happen apace, especially in markets where organic domains can be exploited for end user traffic in organic wares, organic consumer product ideas, organic and environmentally friendly lifestyle coaching and tutorials. Niches like insurance (child insurance) financial products( reverse mortgages), and technology devices (Androids, Ivos, Windows 7, etc. continue to offer domain revenue potential.

The pivotal monster domain and website market for 2011 is gaming. Recreational gaming has become bigger better broader and better implemented worldwide. Universals of multigame, multiplayer, multiuser, online destinations attract more users every day. Veteran users exit one game and look for the next game title. Traffic from these end users come from a player looking for a strategic screenshot or playthrough. Any site with a bot, (skill advancing program), hints for gaming playthrough, game reviews, physics tips, scoring cheats, leveling tips & codes, and storyline summaries will find search engine results.

Google Wants Your TV Names

There is a burgeoning hybrid opportunity for Google and TV domain names. The possibilities for names that Google can use, or that customers of home televisions with Google search capacity can see, opens up a new range for end users for websites, portals, and TV calendar listings. Names with “TV”,3D, set, “watch”, screen, home, channel, and other tech keywords are in demand.

Video plays a new role in ever more congruent SEO to domain name partnerships and value building online. Sites with “best of’ lists and video links will be fun home entertainment, family fun instead of programmed network shows stuffed with commercials. Websites composed of programmed TV viewing that families or niche watchers want can win the SEO wars. Nostalgia TV and cable viewing from video uploads and film segments has already made Hulu.com and Guba.com popular sites.

How does this change the business model for site development? Movie content makes search engine optimization the new driving force for website development. Articles and links to other TV based sites can also bring up the searchability quotient for these names and the sites behind them. Fansites becomes destination viewing with the new Google home TV site model. Your email list can start the home viewing wave and help get the word out.

This gives the SEO campaign for any TV name new legs. Given that entertainment is already a huge market for domainers and name auctions, and even deleting names and drop list auctions, domain developers should have at least one television name in the launch works with Google home-TV potential. Do fans want to blog or chat the shows while they watch? You bet they do. This is social TV networking.

Site managers and webmasters can formulate affiliate strategy to reach the home consumer. As home television and computer driven apps converge, a website with video and Google SEO matrices plugged in, wins. Because home viewers can surf your YouTube channel and maybe move on to your site if the spirit moves them. The webmaster without YouTube sinks in the SERP.

Chrome TV-searched visits to your site could be the elusive end user your sites has been waiting for. Google-owned YouTube connected sites will have a little more depth in the Google SEO than random video sites. All those domainers holding TV names and HDTV names and 3D names, as well as the Dot-TV extension of any relevant television or big screen tech name, there is a new focus for your end users and resale customer buyers.

Yahoo Steers New Road Forward

Three years into the future, Yahoo Inc of Sunnyvale, California plans to be helming a company with the largest digital media content, search engine,  and communications business in the world. The three year roadmap of Yahoo under Carol Bartz was delivered by Chief Product Officer Blake Irving. The division between the projected goals of media and the concrete focus on products perhaps tells the tale.

Yahoo wants to be innovative, but has yet to master Twitter and Facebook. Yahoo News is trite and often misspelled, but Yahoo aims to keep people at its sites longer. Yahoo.com is stuffed with ads and Java code on loading, but it is strangely losing email customers to other vendors.Yahoo has middle ground presence in the domains business and its hosting offerings are not competitive among first tier web hosts, yet is splashes web hosting offers to bargoon domain sale buyers.

A fitting prescription to Yahoo’s vaulting ambitions might be Physician: heal thyself. The chief strengths that made Yahoo.com a leader, (remember sites by Homestead!) were its early adopter user base, frist to market search engine vibe, and broad free-Web appeal. Yahoo now suffers from Google-itis, the wish to be Google without harnessing its resources of business model. Yahoo is not aging well.

Yahoo intends to recapture search engine utility. Reality check to end users: When was the last time you searched Yahoo first? The SEO space is dominated by market leaders. Some might argue Google is already there, but Google has not entered the content space, and with the purchase of Associated Content, Yahoo has. The usual noise regarding Twitter and Facebook integration was heard.

Yes Google is global, a T-Rex of Internet monoliths. Yahoo was sort of the friendly Triceratops with the bristly head who was a herbivore but left a big footprint, as well. But Yahoo has suffered declining ad revenue and inroads of spam and email problems, and Gmail remains successful. Leaning on an Apple user base may also be a waste if the Windows 7 Phone takes off, because foremost on the “product runway” at Yahoo is Android apps.

But Yahoo doesn’t make or produce the consumer electronics it hypes. There are several other channels for consumer to go for that. With 17% market share, Yahoo’s web search engine is hardly the main attraction, now although it once was. The journalism of its home page leaves much to be desired, (part CNN and part OMG). Yahoo features are blogospheric in strength, with sports the best in a readability drilldown.

The only faintly new thing Yahoo is doing is fashioning a geo-specific Starbucks login page, (Which will still be heaps better than what Starbucks brews up).  Heading up Yahoo news this last weekend was how to save money at a Starbucks, an interesting marketing approach to a partner’s goods. But if Associated Content can groom its new model for Yahoo News, then supply-side content writers can enter the Yahoo journalism fray.

One spark at the end of a long tedious tunnel is Yahoo’s refreshed domain offer at $1.99 per dot-com name. Touted as a Small Business offering, the web hosting attached does approach the Godaddy similar pricing available at present. For hobby site makers and bloggers and one domain owners who never plan to go the third party development application route, this is a steal. But Godaddy’s Hosting Connection still rules those waves.

For domainers looking at the recent dot-com and renewal price markup, with a Yahoo $1.99 name their Paypal will say Yahoo! Although the renewal is $35, many Yahoo email users may prefer a short lightbulb-to-login web hosting and domaining click path. Full DNS control at Yahoo.com domains makes exporting to the hosting of your choice more smooth than before.

From the Crystal Ball: If Yahoo ever got their hands around the 99 cents domain coupon like Godaddy’s recent campaign, they would be looking at 5,000 new domain owners an hour looking for fresh content.Those are new email account holders, new Android holders looking to manage their websites or blog while in line for a latte. Starbucks is a partner, correct?

Developing those sites tutorials could be the pages that Yahoo wants ts readers to hang around at. And a limited time domain-establishing SEO content  package, with link wheeling advice and promotion tips, as well as material piped from Associated Content partners (on a select basis, of course) could bring Yahoo into the white-hot Internet domain development scene.

Attracta SEO Disappears from Hostgator

In a startling, development, this Hostgator customer was surprised to see the much-touted Attracta SEO tool disappear from the Cpanel overnight. Two accounts are/were doing very well there.The space in the SEO tool area has a free consultation offer unrelated to Attracta. The space in the featured “Free SEO” tools section has something called Boostability. I don’t remember Boostability being there before.

No message from Hostgator, regarding this nor any announcement as to the destiny of the account profiles with said service,was in the Hostagtor Cpanel interface. No alert was nigh, pending, forthcoming or in existence. The Attracta site is still up. Any idea what happened to the profiles and the work completed for our domain and site SEO accounts? Bueller? Bueller?

to Dmoz or not to Dmoz?

To DMOZ, or not to DMOZ-That is the question. Friends, Domainers, name-countrymen, lend me your bandwidth. The topic at hand is the much-ballyhooed DMOZ directory inclusion which has come under speculation by many domainers of late as to relevancy and utility.

Domainers worldwide are looking to find a level playing field. Yet long term domain owners want historic DMOZ values when it can help them market a name sale. Is it fair to webmasters and domainers that the inclusion of Adsense or Google (or any ads) is a mystery factor that is a variable for each application?

Long before Google flexed its monopolistic muscles, the DMOZ set the standard for relatable, categorically indexed links in the big-brutha of all directories. Yet today even many former editors debate the relevancy of the DMOZ. The foul whiff of corruption taints the purity of the DMOZ resource.

Many newb and career domainers offer differing opinions. Some domainers barely know what it is, while others dismiss it as a one-shot task amid a laundry list of other, value-establishing domain activities like link building, blogging, community hosting, social networking, article posting, and advertising.

This has become a philosophical topic in the realm of domain name buying and selling. Insofar as many domain name estimators use the DMOZ inclusion as a factorial in the valuation, the cementing of its value is of interest to all. Furthermore, the possibility of obtaining paid DMOZ link attainders by committing e-commerce with DMOZ editors has reared its ugly head.

Paid link directories are all over the internet and dozens if not hundreds arise daily. Just as many erode due to lack of interest, poor SEO ranking, little or no active promotion or marketing, and/or failure of hosting or webmaster resources. It seems DMOZ may be in Wiki development stages, where free unpaid editors and contributors have moved on in bulk.

Since the model of the DMOZ assumes the same level of attention to contemporary applications as historic inclusions, do today’s rejections operate on the same benchmarks as yesterday’s DMOZ inclusions? is the archived out of SEO relevancy? And do domain estimation sites and evaluators for domain name resale amounts take that into account?

These are hard-hitting question that will hopefully be answered either by policy changes in SEO and page ranking sites or implied in the continued inclusion of archival DMOZ listings when traffic, density, and SEO value are measured up for a domain name evaluation and resale value estimates.

Food Truck Race Burns Servers

The Yahoo ads and food network site for the Great Food Truck race has been down for some time, which must mean record demand has blown a fuse at the NOC or that someone forgot to recharge whatever Iphone it is running on. Nevertheless, the Great Food Truck race pits seven food trucks, three of them from Los Angeles, against hot and cold ice cream competitors.

The American TV road trip Odyssey taps the hot food truck trend. Coverage form a Google search the day of the premiere renders results not from the source. News is everywhere from TVsquad to the LA Weekly to Entertainment Weekly, just no originating domain bandwidth is available. Pity. Usually getting information about a TV premiere is a bit easier, especially online.

What a waste of SEO and active links! Looks like whomever blogs a website about this will get plenty of hits.

It’s a gutsy move using Yahoo banners and prominently displayed advertising online to promote a that-night series premiere of a roach-coach reality show, and then not have servers or links running when the click on the banner loads. Could this be the start of “un-advertising?” Either that or whomever hosts the Food Network site has some competition worries from any web hosting company that can form a service offering quote.

Entrepreneur Magazine Slips Up

Blog worthy blog applications don’t reach millions of downloads an hour by accident. WordPress has thousands of sites just for free template downloads, because so many people use WordPress it has created a WordPress accessory traffic market. Many online domainers can feel confident they can easily develop a name from a WordPress typo or other related site, just due to the constant global end user churn in WordPress blog site development.

Anyone using the blog engines and CMS managers knows that pretty sites are a result of design, templates, plugins, taste, content and more. To illustrate the case with one clueless website client is an eye opener. Scores of Joomla users (like myself) are very happy with the results we get. No mention in the article of the Joomla polls, sponsor tools, banner and ad plug and play, or news flash and other nifty publishing tools are made.

The article lists Posterous.com as a leading CMS which I had never heard of and never used. WordPress and TypePad were listed as thought they were competitors of equal rank, a fact every blogger knows is false. WordPress is global because it is plug and play and very SEO capable. Drupal is a horribly unwieldy and the best successor to Joomla, DotNetNuke, is not even mentioned. To say that Joomla is on a “power par” with Drupal is laughingly uninformed. Except this is Entrepreneur magazine.

more at

http://www.domainowl.com/entrepreneur-magazine-slips-up/

Sports Name Fiesta in 2010

Look for sports TLD domination this year, says an insider. Sports domains in 2010 will become more valuable as with all quality, generic domains.  With more and more people/companies  understanding the need for a converging quality domain, the solidifying effort to increase their brand and online presence becomes more efficient. Sports fulfills the need for fresh dynamic content and a solid audience searching daily for new results.

If there are sports domains that include year numerals in the domain name, those domains have a shorter ‘shelf life’ of value.  But promotion can make the years matter.  Witness the success of all the Nostradamus 2010 domain search result traffic. Hybrids of key niches, like gaming and sports, take place with a site like www.Gamingwizz.com.

This insider goes on to say “Obviously, the shorter, commerce related, and easiest to remember/type are the top names to go after.  The best thing with sports is the amount of fans around the world with so many different sports and teams.  All in all, there is pretty good potential in 2010 for sports niche domains.”

Bing has SEO Fling, Twitted on Facebook

 

 

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