This is a quick post since I’m in a busy period right now, with projects and all that, so I don’t have the energy or the time to write as much as I’d like here. However, I’ll try to post at least twice a week.

In other news, I am now a certified Project Manager. Visit my Linkedin page for more details. (under education)

Click here to go to the article about Google.

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Recently Gleb of SeoQuake has been kind enough to offer me a 30-day trial to their rather interesting AdsSpy new service. What that is they’ve built an index of sites and are searching through them by AdSense IDs. So basically if your competitors use AdSense ads on their website you can search and see which other sites they have ads on and basically spy on their different domains and ways of content distribution.

I personally find it really interesting since it gives you an idea as to what channels your competitor uses to spread his message. This is really useful when you want to see if a competitor has more than one site and if that’s true what he’s doing with it. Some of the things you may be missing out on by not knowing this are things like the competitor launching a new offer on a different site (targeted at a specific group of customers) which you may miss since it’s not on the main site. Or perhaps they are making a new site to replace the old one with high end SEO and launching it on a different domain. It’s a useful tool with really a lot of uses which I can’t really think up right now…

It’s a great tool for advertisers as well to see what other sites you could put your ads on if that particular content creator appeals to you. It’s also a great tool if you’re interested in doing a bit of research on making money online, try to see what works and what doesn’t without spending cash on it.

A fair bit of criticism is in order, or you’ll think it’s an ad, and since I’m not a referrer who’s making any cash on this, it’s not The index is still being added to so not all websites will be listed yet (it seems about 15000 sites a day enter the index, mostly the big players. For example, my old blog ( about smashing a nokia :D) isn’t indexed yet and that’s probably because of its few hits. But the index is growing and most serious sites are in the index.

However, there’s a bit of a suggestion here as well. I was thinking this tool probably works by scanning the homepage of websites and looking for AdSense IDs. That’s cool all in all but why not go as far as to search for different identifiers which are a bit more common? I mean stuff like Google Analytics codes (UA-xxxxxxx-n) or any other such identifiers. And then put them all together and really create an index that’s not dependent on that person using AdSense…

Anyway, it’s a great piece of software and well worth the fee if you know what you’re needing it for. It’s a nice toy too (I found an alternate website for the local railroad ticket searching service and it’s a bit more feature-packed than the one everyone uses). So enjoy AdsSpy

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I’ve just finished viewing untraceable, which is a movie about a rather crazy teenage hacker who gets his kicks out of killing people and, yes… a kitten. It’s a pretty gory movie so if you don’t like to see blood or people pretending to be boiling to death, it’s not for you. It’s also a pretty stupid movie, in that its storyline is cut way short (by the slow way it starts you would expect a lot more) and the characters are pretty stupidly sketched as well.

But what’s really interesting about this is how well it portrays human nature, and the very psychological reason behind viral videos. Also, the killer made a website that controlled the speed at which the people died. Without going into any detail, basically the more viewers tuned in, the faster it all went down. And it’s pretty brilliant, aside from the fact that, well, he has killing people (I actually felt the worst about the poor kitty ). Think about it, it gives you interactivity, and fuels your curiosity, gives you something new every now and then, and fuels your thirst for entertainment.

Part two about what he did was the fact that he let people comment on it, which brought people closer to the whole thing. He gave the whole website a social theme and let the people who were watching comment on it. However he was the one pulling the strings, closing off the whole thing himself with one comment about his victim.

Part three was that the whole thing was live. While I’m not sure how well that would work in the real world with different time zones and so on (I get most visitors from the USA, UK, Germany, India and Australia so imagine…), the simple concept of live and interactive is mouth watering for most internet viewers. We’re so used to news streaming almost instantaneously that we want everything as it happens. Some say 9/11 was the most watched TV event ever and I agree. Everyone I knew was watching it. I thought it was a joke at first but the incredulity of it all made me watch for hours. And seeing that second plane plunge into the tower was in a way so appealing to my inner curiosity. We were all engulfed by the sheer terror of it but still, the fact that it was live, happening in front of our very eyes… It was hypnotizing, we simply couldn’t stop watching… Important events happening live are what we want. And if that’s not possible for us, we want them available at some other time. which is where YouTube comes in, offering the ability to relive memories. Instantly and on-demand.

The whole movie ends with a very interesting comment, looking on the whole animality of social networks, where there’s someone who asks: “where can i download this from?”. It’s not over, it circulates, people want to see people suffering, people want to send this incredible thing to their friends, and they want to have it with them.

Social networking is in its infancy and only when mobile devices will fully develop and offer bandwidth at affordable prices will we have a true network of people, giving twitts about what they’re doing at that moment, with streaming video and audio, and social interaction. And as every other technology on the web, its main uses will be military and pornographic.

So, what have we learned?

• interactivity is key to online social experiences, and the sensation that you can control something via the web
• commenting and discussions in general should be encouraged, let people express opinions so they can feel important
• live feeds are a very interesting to the web which never sleeps because it allows people to be part of the experience as it happens in some other part of the world
• offer downloads for people to take that video with them, so they can put it on their mobile phone and show it to their friends and so on

Oh, and by all means, don’t kill people and put them on YouTube. It’s actually not funny anymore, there were these girls who beat up some other girl to put her on youtube, just for the “fun” of it. People are so sick sometimes… Thank God they’re stupid too (posted the vid on youtube so they could be arrested…).

The movie trailer after the break.

There have been some comments from the opposers of SEO that it’s only a trend, that it’s going to fade because it’s artificial. But there are two arguments against those opinions.

The first is that SEO is definitely not artificial. Actually, I’m not sure if you know this but SEO aims to create ORGANIC search results, whereas the artificial way is the old interruption marketing way… SEO aims to build content and make it popular, make websites soar through simple tactics that require lots of skill. In a sense SEO is like a blacksmith in our days. It doesn’t take the most imaginative person to think and even learn how to pound on metal, but only a professional can make a sword… It’s finesse and it’s knowing how to step on a minefield and it’s making sure the people who search for you find you…

As for the second one, that is actually the object of this article. The SEO trend. The phenomenon that has recently picked up momentum and is a web site’s worst enemy and best friend at the same time. Why? Because SEO is the trick up the sleeve of small businesses to outperform millions of dollars of ad campaigns by corporate giants. Some don’t care about their website, some don’t know SEO even exists, but the point is many people are missing out on the web, and there are people like myself who aim to put them on the right track.

But enough advertising, look at the graph below:

You can clearly see how the SEO phenomenon is rising, it’s becoming more and more significant, and you can see that it really picked up in 2008. Also, on the lower part of the graph is the news volume, and you can see that has increased as well. SEO is a field of promise, and the fact that it’s picking up speed is proof that it’s good stuff.

Also, as the field has grown, the number of jobs in that field has also grown. Just take a look at the graph below from indeed.com:

It’s been a long steady growth here as well. And it keeps growing, a trend unbeatable. The market is still young and there are still many many new customers out there just waiting to be asked about SEO.

The truth about SEO is that many customers don’t know what it’s for. There are innumerable firms out there which build a website just for the sake of it… And in a sense it’s ok, have people search for you online… But rather than enter the web without a clue and mess up your brand image I say stay offline and call yourself traditional. The web is an exciting medium, a medium of much promise and potential, but there is also a lot of damage that can be done.

More about this tomorrow

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