SOMEWHAT FRANK

Filtrbox Launches Hot Twitter Influence Tool

How important is influence on the Web? My friend Micah Baldwin recently called Influence the New Hotness. I agree, Influence is hot and it is nothing new though the currency has changed. Just a few years back the most important currency was incoming links to your website, now it is real-time re-tweets via Twitter or "likes" on Facebook's news feed. The social tools today are enabling people to influence the Web via real-time communications.

With Twitter being a hot tool that is empowering people to influence others, I was curious to see just how influential I am on Twitter. Thanks to Filtrbox you can now answer that very question by simply entering your Twitter username and clicking submit. Filtrbox just launched the Twitter Influence Checker today and I got chance to give it a try. It turns out my Twitter account @frankgruber has a Twitter Influence score of 8 out for 10.

AboutUs A Wiki For Organizations

AboutUs, a Portland, Oregon based startup, which launched in 2006 is focused on creating "about pages" for every domain name and organization. AboutUs offers a community approach to finding out information about an organization or website as it is built on MediaWiki which is the same collaborative wiki platform as Wikipedia which celebrated its seventh birthday this week. AboutUs was critized for building a business around companies about information without their knowledge as they partnered with domain registers to pre-populate website information. For example, check out the Somewhat Frank AboutUs page. AboutUs has come a long way since their initial launch and recently announced some updates which point to a more clear business model.

Naymz Helps To Track Online Reputation

Naymz, a web profile aggregator that I highlighted previously, offers some interesting reputation metrics services. While you could setup web alerts via a number of services Naymz aggregates these services into one dashboard.

The Web Profile Aggregators

With the flood of new products that have been developed as part of the web 2.0 movement,  I have signed up for loads of products and services. Besides Flickr, YouTube, AOL Pictures, Digg and LinkedIn, I have too many profiles to even remember without really searching around the web. Several products have emerged in an effort to help users better manage and display all of their profiles in one place. This article will showcase these web profile aggregators more closely as we look to unify our online identities & stay updated with all of our contacts online.

ClaimID is a a service, created by a well-educated duo, that lets you claim the information that is about you online. The idea is that you will be able to claim back some control of your online identity rather than leaving it up to the search engines. ClaimID's "power to the people" approach supports OpenID and offers users the ability a single page to pull in links, photos and other web profile links to classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information, so that users are able to see the identity you want to present. ClaimID offers a bookmarklet that allows user to easily post links to their ClaimID profile page - this makes it extremely easy to keep your profile updated. Check out the ClaimID profile I set up here.

FindMeOn.com offers users the ability to create a record for just about any type of account possible. Unfortunately, I found FindMeOn.com’s design extremely unintuitive and though it strives to be so easy to use your Mom could use it, I would beg to differ. It was not easy to figure out how to add the various types of accounts and really reminded me more of a MySQL database console than a consumer facing web application. If I were FindMeOn.com I would put more emphasis on the "Locate" search which offers users the ability to search for people by email, screen name, real given name or URL – since this feature is easy to understand and could really be useful!

Lijit recently launched to offer users the ability to aggregate and add utility to their web profile information. Like many other web profile aggregators Lijit makes it easy to pull all of your accounts into one profile page like the one I created here. Lijit offers a number of profile options which makes the product more powerful as an aggregator solution. Lijit takes it a step further by then allowing people the ability to search all of their personal aggregated networks. The search functionality is run by Google Coop, a custom search offering by Google. I decided to add my personal network widget or “wijit,” as Lijit puts it, to the “About Frank Gruber” page on Somewhat Frank.

Mugshot is an open source web profile project sponsored by Red Hat determined to create something fun, social and entertaining on the web. Mugshot offers several product profiles options (i.e. Flickr, Del.icio.us, etc) but didn’t seem to offer as many options as other products, which could put it at a disadvantage as web profile aggregator. Mugshot does include its own social networking hooks which enable users the ability to find and interact with active people and groups. Mugshot offers a widget called the Mugshot Mini which can be placed on any blog or web site in a number of configurations. Mugshot provides users an optional download which enables users to display what music they are listening to via a Music Radar application which is similar to another product called MOG. The download also offers users the ability to share items with friends via a product called Web Swarm.

Naymz is a Chicago-based startup which I highlighted previously in this article on TechCrunch. Naymz offers a simple, textlink-based approach to display a number of profile links on a single page. Naymz offers a number of pre-configured profile options as well as the ability to add just about any type of profile you can think of as long as it has a feed or web site URL. Naymz also goes out of its way to make sure you are found on the web by buying your name as a keyword on Google so that when people search for you they find you either via a Google text ad or by organic search results. My Naymz profile can be found here.

Profilactic calls its profile aggregation a "mashup" as it pulls together everything about you into a single stream of information from each of your profile sources. Profilactic makes it easy to add all of your favorite social networks or any other individual site that offers a feed. Profilactic’s user-interface is clean and lays out information in easy to read oversized fonts. Profilactic’s includes some social networking hooks which allow you to add friends and share your mashups with one another. Another interesting feature is the "Clippings" feature which allows users to add links to articles or pictures that you are in that are not accounted for in other profiles. Check out my profile as a sample of what the profile mashup looks like.

ProfileLinker is another profile aggregator that takes on more of a social networking approach of its own though its user-interface reminded me more of an enterprise application. ProfileLinker seemed to be the most complex of the web profile aggregators mentioned in this article as it offered a number of pre-configured web profile options to aggregate into your page. Though I must admit adding profile options was not clear at first glance since ProfileLinker hides them in an auto-complete text field that populates as you type which makes it difficult to quickly add a number of web profile options. ProfileLinker enables users to find friends in a wide array of social networks by offering a comprehensive social network search. Aside from basic web profile aggregator functionality, ProfileLinker also offers a mobile experience which allows users to opt-in to text message updates when another user interacts with your profile. My ProfileLinker profile can be found here.

Spokeo creates a social network around aggregating the latest items from all of the users’ web profiles – think of it as wrapping all of your various site updates into one place. Upon entering the information from your online profiles, Spokeo provides users with three different web profile aggregator views which allows users to see all of their most recent updates to each of their own accounts. Secondly, Spokeo takes a very voyeuristic view by allowing users to switch over to see what all of their contacts from their web profiles are doing online. Users can see all of my contacts updates in one stream or filter them by profile type (i.e. Flickr, Digg, etc.). Finally, Spokeo displays updates from a group of featured users. Additionally, users can then add comments to aggregated content and recommend content to others within the Spokeo network.

Ziki provides a similar simple, single page approach to that of Naymz. Ziki also gives users the ability to buy text link ads to help ensure people find their Ziki profile when searching in MSN, Yahoo or Google. Users are open to add just about any service to this single profile and even can go as far as to add feeds or updates which can then be exported as an OPML file to be viewed from another feed reader or start-page product. Interestingly, Ziki has extending its profile pages to allow companies and groups to create profiles as well. You can check out my profile as an example here.

Interestingly, AIM 6.0, the latest version of AOL instant messenger, offers a number of features which leverage something called buddy updates to give users the ability to aggregate and share updates with contacts as part of the AIM experience. If you are an AIM user you can configure your account to give updates to your buddy list within the instant messenger product. Every time a  buddy takes action on one of their web profiles an exclamation point icon appears in the AIM product which, upon clicking, displays their buddy updates. AIM recently launched a product called AIM Share which enables users to share links with everyone else in their network via the AIM buddy feed similar to Mugshot's Web Swarm offering.

Summary
With the large number of social networking and community sites the ability to manage all of your web profiles in one area is going to become increasingly difficult. In looking at all the options, I found Spokeo to be the most interesting web profile aggregator. Profilactic offered the best looking user interface and I liked the way it creates a sharable “real-time” mashup of all of your profiles. Lijit’s layout and network search emphasis offers great utility – I even added it to Somewhat Frank. Though Mugshot seemed to fall a little short in the number of profiles a user could aggregate, I have to give it a gold star for its open source effort. AIM is innovative in its leveraging the power of its existing AIM buddy network to provide web profile updates – it is extremely powerful. Naymz, ClaimID and Ziki are the most open to configuration options for added profiles to the most obscure networks while ProfileLinker buried the most pre-configure profile options behind a tough user interface. With all these web profile aggregator options you either need to pick one or a new niche for "an aggregator of the web profile aggregators" may need to emerge.

UPDATED (February 1, 2007) to include ClaimID per comments below.

Disclosure: I am an AOL employee but have not worked on the AIM Buddy Update product.

2007 Web 2.0 & Tech Conference Outlook

It is time to start planning which conferences are going to attend in 2007. To make it easier  I have compiled a list of some of the best web 2.0, technology, design, marketing and innovation conferences and events scheduled in 2007. This is meant to be a working list, so if you think I have missed a conference or event please feel free to comment on this article or send me an email and I can update the list.

JANUARY
Consumer Electronics Show
January 8-11 ~ Las Vegas, NV
With four decades of history, the International CES reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive. This show is filled with innovations in technology, gadgets and lots of big TV's!

MacWorld Conference & Expo
January 8-12 ~ San Francisco, CA
Immerse yourself in five revitalizing day’s worth of the largest gathering of Mac industry experts, pundits, and enthusiasts. Cultivate fresh skills, nurture new acquaintances, and harvest indispensable tools in which to further feed your imagination and fuel your Mac soul.

DLD
January 21-23 ~ Munich, Germany
DLD (Digital, Life, Design) is one of Europe's freshest conferences covering digital innovation, gaming, arts and science, bringing together thought leaders from Europe, the Middle-East, America and Asia.

Search Engine Watch LIVE!
January 25 ~ Dallas, TX
This informal, half-day event offers attendees the opportunity to meet editorial staff, Search Engine Strategies speakers, and members of the Search Engine Watch community in person, network with local peers, and discuss the hottest topics and latest news in the search industry.

DEMO
January 30 - February 1 ~ Palm Desert, CA
The premier launch venue for new products, technologies and companies. DEMO has established a reputation for identifying and presenting to an elite audience the products most likely to have a significant impact on the marketplace and market trends in the coming year.

FEBRUARY
Brave New Web
February 7 ~ Boston, MA
Designed to bridge the gap between the current practitioners and the business and financial communities that are crucial for innovation and new business creation. Innovation happens at the intersections of different industries and disciplines.

Digital Hollywood Media Summit
February 7-8 ~ New York, NY
The Premier International Conference on Motion Pictures, Television, Cable & Satellite, Broadband, Wireless, Publishing, Radio, Magazines, News & Print Media, Advertising and Marketing.

CommunityNext
February 10 ~ Palo Alto, CA
The premier conference on how successful online communities and social networks build, grow and monetize.

Adaptive Path San Francisco: MX
February 12-13 ~ San Francisco, CA
Design has emerged as a strategic force in business. Managers building the next generation of digital products are confronted with an increasingly demanding set of challenges. MX San Francisco brings together thought-leaders in design & business to address these challenges.

Search Engine Strategies UK
February 13-15 ~ London, UK
The industry converges for a week of spirited discussion, high-level learning and attendees leave with actionable battle plans to go forward with for their companies.

Future of Web Apps
February 20-22 ~ London, UK
Three days of inspiration and insight where speakers will be discussing the future of the web industry, Web 2.0, emerging technologies and standards, and how it will change the way you build applications. 

MARCH
South By Southwest Interactive
March 9-13 ~ Austin, TX
Attracting digital creatives as well as visionary technology entrepreneurs, the SXSW Interactive Festival enables you to connect, discover and inspire your link to the cutting edge.

VON (Voice, Video and Vision)
March 19-22 ~ San Jose, CA
A conference founded by Jeff Pulver, VON has built a community on the evolution and convergence of IP communication technologies. Find out the latest industry news about VoIP, IPTV, Fixed Mobile Convergence, IMS and much more.

AJAXWorld
March 19-21 ~ New York, NY
The most comprehensive meeting on the most significant technology subjects of recent times: AJAX, Rich Internet Apps & Web 2.0.

Information Architecture Summit 2007
March 22-26 ~ Las Vegas, NV
A premier gathering place for information architects and for discussion about information architecture. Everyone who touches on IA is welcome to share and learn. Last year's IA Summit attracted over 500 attendees, including beginners, experienced IAs, and people in a range of related fields.

An Event Apart
March 26-27 ~ Boston, MA
Hear from the top people in the field as they discuss best practices in web design and development. Not only design and coding, but usability, accessibility, and more.

APRIL
Search Engine Strategies NY
April 10-13 ~ New York, NY
The industry converges for a week of spirited discussion, high-level learning and attendees leave with actionable battle plans to go forward with for their companies.

Web 2.0 Expo 2007
April 15-18 ~ San Francisco, CA
A companion event to the Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 Expo is the first event specifically designed to help teach Web 2.0 techniques and best practices to people in the trenches directly involved in the design, development, engineering, marketing, and business of second-generation internet technology.

Gel 2007
April 19-20 ~ New York, NY
Gel ("Good Experience Live") is a conference and community exploring good experience in all its forms -- in business, art, society, technology, and life.

CHI 2007 Reach Beyond
April 28 - May 3  ~  San Jose, CA
Computer/Human Interaction or CHI for short is the premiere conference in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Every year, it is a venue for 2000 HCI professionals, academics, and students to discuss HCI issues and research and make lasting connections in the HCI community. In addition, 40-50 industry exhibitors attend CHI to showcase their user experience products and departments and to recruit professionals to enhance their business.

MAY
World Wide Web Conference
May 8-12 ~ Banff, Alberta - CA
The World Wide Web Conference is the global event that brings together the key innovators, decision-makers, technologists, businesses, and standards bodies shaping the Web.

Streaming Media East
May 15-16 ~ New York, NY
Covers both the business of video on the net and the technology of streaming, downloading, IPTV and mobile video delivery. Covering both b2b and b2c business and technology issues in the enterprise, advertising, media and entertainment, broadcast and education markets.

Where 2.0
May 29-30 ~ San Jose, CA
Brings together the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry. A great place to meet the people behind the mash-ups and platforms, and the folks looking ahead to the future of geospace.

Mesh
May 30-31 ~ Toronto, Ontario - Canada
Hear from thought leaders, connect with peers, and get a better understanding of the impact of new developments online. mesh brings together people who are passionate about the potential of the Web to change how we live, work and play. Meet the next generation of Web ideas, leaders and companies at mesh.

JUNE

 The Next Web Conference
June 1 ~ Amsterdam, Netherlands
A must attend for every forward thinking CEO, Internet Entrepreneur, Strategy Planner, Top Notch Consultant and Venture Capitalist in Europe and a great networking opportunity. This event has an all-star cast of speakers as well.

Digital Hollywood Spring
June 11-14 ~ Santa Monica, CA
The Premier Event for Transforming Entertainment, Technology & the global communications network: TV, cable, telco, mobile, broadband, consumer electronics, search & email, VoIP, RSS, blogs and web sites.

Search Engine Strategies Latino
June 18-19 ~ Miami, FL
The industry converges for a week of spirited discussion, high-level learning and attendees leave with actionable battle plans to go forward with for their companies.

Supernova 2007
June 20-22 ~ San Francisco, CA
Challenge your insights and predictions for the connected future with some of the top technology and business influencers, leading investors, visionary entrepreneurs, and provocative thinkers debating the major emerging trends in computing, communications, and media. Here is a sliver of coverage from Supernova 2006.

JULY

CommunityNext
July 14th ~ Palo Alto, CA
The premier conference on how successful online communities and social networks build, grow and monetize. Go viral!!!

AUGUST
Gnomedex 7.0
August 9-11 ~ Seattle, WA
Hosted by Chris Pirillo this technology conference pulls together the leading bloggers and social media industry leaders. Attendees from years past have grown accustomed to this experience - finding it refreshing and genuine. They created a conference that seemingly broke ALL the rules.

Search Engine Strategies San Jose
August 20-23 ~ San Jose, CA
The industry converges for a week of spirited discussion, high-level learning and attendees leave with actionable battle plans to go forward with for their companies.

Adaptive Path Washington: UX
TBD ~ Washington, DC
User Experience Week 2007 with all new material full of indispensable training, stimulating discussion, and fantastic networking opportunities.

SEPTEMBER
euroGel 2007
September 6-7 ~ Copenhagen, Denmark
euroGel is a European version of Gel ("Good Experience Live") conference and community exploring good experience in all its forms -- in business, art, society, technology, and life.

TechCrunch20 Conference 2007
September 17 - 18 ~ San Francisco, CA
Twenty of the hottest new startups will announce and demo their products over a two day period. And they don’t pay a cent to do this. They will be selected to participate based on merit alone.

Digital ID World 2007
September 23-26 ~ San Francisco, CA
A source for the straight talk, hard-won lessons, and practical insight derived from real-world deployments. Our focus is simple: putting enterprise IT professionals onstage to give you their unvarnished views on what it took to achieve success with their identity deployments. Digital ID World is the industry event for learning how to help manage your business with identity.

Podcast & New Media Expo
September 28-30 ~ Ontario, CA
Event that brings together influential audio and video podcasters, digital media creators, and bloggers to cover the complete range of creation techniques, business objectives and future trends.

OCTOBER
Web 2.0 Summit
October 17-19 ~ San Francisco, CA
Focuses on emerging business and technology developments that utilize the Web as a platform and defines how the Web will drive business in the future. 

NOVEMBER
Streaming Media West
November 6-8 ~ TBD
Covers both the business of video on the net and the technology of streaming, downloading, IPTV and mobile video delivery. Covering both b2b and b2c business and technology issues in the enterprise, advertising, media and entertainment, broadcast and education markets.

DECEMBER
Search Engine Strategies 2007
December 3-6 ~ Chicago, IL
The industry converges for a week of spirited discussion, high-level learning and attendees leave with actionable battle plans to go forward with for their companies.

Happy conferencing in 2007!

A Look Back At 2006

It has been a great 2006, as Somewhat Frank has offered up over 400 articles which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. I thought it might be interesting to reflect on some of the best of 2006 as we look forward to 2007. Here are some of the most popular articles:

1. Facebook Redesign Angers Students Over Invaded Privacy (September  6, 2006)
2. VideoJug: The Online 'How To' Video Site (December 28, 2006)
3. Why Isn’t Internet Access Free For Travelers? (November 27, 2006)
4. The History of the Personal Homepage (September  3, 2006)
5. Widgets Live! Everywhere (November 11, 2006)
6. Philanthropy Through Technology (October 18, 2006)
7. Kiboze: Group Text Messaging Made Easy (August 12, 2006)
8. RunFatBoy.net and Get In Shape (September 26, 2006)
9. 37signals Preaches "Less" For Success (April 29, 2006)
10. PlentyofFish.com the Craigslist of Dating (March 25, 2006)

Most of the traffic to Somewhat Frank came from:

1. Google 
2. Digg
3. Direct or RSS feed
4. Yahoo
5. Technorati
6. MSN
7. Techmeme

The top web 2.0 keywords which brought visitors to Somewhat Frank were:

1. web 2.0 directory
2. web 2.0 compliant
3. web 2.0 widgets
4. wine web 2.0
5. how to start a web 2.0 company
6. web 2.0 aggregator
7. web 2.0 sites
8. web 2.0 techniques
9. web 2.0
10. learning web 2.0

Some of the top overall keywords that brought visitors to Somewhat Frank were:

1. frank gruber (no big surprise here)
2. plentyoffish.com
3. green monster games
4. moobella
5. goodsearch
6. like.com
7. somewhat frank (another shocker)
8. devilfinder
9. myheritage
10. chalksite

Finally, let's take a snapshot look at where Somewhat Frank readers came from (click the map to see a larger view):

Alas, Somewhat Frank is a global destination. Thank you all for reading and interacting with Somewhat Frank in 2006 and be sure to tune in for more in 2007.

Happy New Year from Somewhat Frank!

Somewhat Frank Nominated For Best Web 2.0 Blog Award With Elite Class

Somewhat Frank has been nominated by Search Engine Journal as the Best Web 2.0 Blog of the 2nd Annual Search Blog Awards. The awards highlight a number of great blogs focused on search but have been expanded to include awards for Best Social Media Blog, Best Web 2.0 Blog and Best Search Related Podcast.

I am elated to have Somewhat Frank nominated with such a solid group of Web 2.0 Blogs.  The competition includes, Mashable!, Read/Write Web, CenterNetworks and of course TechCrunch, a blog I have had the opportunity to contribute to throughout the year. These are some of my favorite blogs on the web. So to be frank, Somewhat Frank is the underdog in the competition, but you gotta love an underdog. :)

The best part is that the voting process is that you can rate more than one blog in each category so vote for all your favorite blogs today!

Search Engine Marketing Glossary: Online Marketing Resource

A few month's ago a friend of mine took on a new online search marketing job which called for extensive keyword purchasing experience. She asked me for the best search engine marketing resources and I pointed to a number of search marketing sites, podcasts and resources. Unfortunately, I did not realize that Aaron Wall, a well respected search engine marketing guru, had pulled together a glossary to help online marketers with this very question. Search Engine Marketing Glossary is a wonderful resource for online marketers and business folks alike as it offers easy access to a plethora of web marketing terminology.  For example, if you are looking to find the definition for the word "keyword" you can jump to the letter "k" and find not only a definition of the term but also a number of terms related to the word as follows:

A word or phrase which implies a certain mindset or demand that targeted prospects are likely to search for.

Long tail and brand related keywords are typically worth more than shorter and vague keywords because they typically occur later in the buying cycle and are associated with a greater level of implied intent.

It is also worth noting that each term in the glossary is an anchor on the page so it can be linked to directly, like I have linked to the word "keyword" here. The Search Engine Marketing Glossary is managed by Aaron Wall but users can suggest updates or feedback.

Editor's note: After turning down the first four ReviewMe requests, I finally found a product I wanted to write about in the Search Engine Marketing Glossary. This is a sponsored article.

Washington Post Blogrolling Link Ads

The WashingtonPost.com, under the direction of Jeff Burkett, is offering an interesting blog link ad unit on its homepage by rolling out Blogroll. Jeff talks about the Blogroll program on his blog.

Blogroll offers bloggers an opportunity to have their blog linked to on the WashingtonPost.com homepage without offering a nofollow attribute. This means that sites that are linked to should see search engine optimization benefits. According to coverage on TechCrunch:

"The advertising system seems most like Blogads, where blogs are grouped by topic and advertisers can purchase space on the blogs in bulk. The revenue split appears to be 50/50."

As a blogger this could be an extremely attractive offering. However, some search engine companies many not like the fact WPost.com is basically participating in link swapping operation. Barry Schwartz explains in more detail here.

Interestingly, I shared a limo ride and a conversation with Jeff Burkett a few months ago on the way to Laguardia airport following a conference in New York. Jeff explained how he had started his blog Media Landscaping and he was urging his staff get involved. Citing Somewhat Frank as an example, I explained how blogging is a great educational tool. He agreed and explained how he was pushing his team to really embrace blogging so that they could better understand the industry landscape they are doing sales in. I am happy to see his blog is still going strong and his team at WashingtonPost.com is trying some new blog related ideas out. It would appear the blogging experience is paying off.

Socialmeter: Do a Quick Link Count

Socialmeter aggregates how many links are being counted in several of the social search web sites. Currently, Socialmeter is tracking del.icio.us, Digg, furl, Google, Jots, Linkroll, Reddit, Shadows, Spurl, Technorati and Yahoo MyWeb.

Socialmeter could be a decent tool to get a quick idea of how many people are linking to a site. The number that is returned could be considered a measure of the popularity of a site. However, a link count as a measure of popularity can be slightly misleading since newer sites may be very popular but since they are new may not have as many links as older sites.

Social Search Web 2.0 Sites Categorized

With the evolution of social media, social search has been taking a shape of its own. There are a number of social search products that have emerged and become very powerful in a very short period of time. Search Engine Watch recently published a two part series written by Chris Sherman which first describes social search and its history and then introduces all the various types of social search products currently available. The second article breaks the social search products into six categories:

Shared bookmarks & web pages
        Del.icio.us, Shadows, Yahoo's MyWeb, Furl and Diigo

Collaborative directories
        Prefound, Zimbio and Wikipedia

Taggregators
        Technorati, Rojo and Bloglines

Personalized verticals
        Eurekster, Rollyo and Yahoo! Search Builder

Social Q & A sites
        Yahoo Answers, Google Answers, Answerbag, Wondir, Yedda
        and Live QnA

Collaborative harvesters
        Digg, Netscape, Reddit and Tailrank

I would highly recommend checking this article out for more detailed analysis of each of the six categories. 

AOL Search Data Put To Good Use

The release of AOL search data last week was an admitted mistake by AOL which prompted them to apologize and express anger for its release. With the NY Times identifying the first person, AOL searcher 4417749, based on her search query data AOL representatives once again apologized. I like the way AOL handled the situation. With the damage done, the event can be leveraged into a wonderful lesson as it brought to light the fact that search companies have personal and identifable data that could be released to the public at any time.

So the question is, what should search companies do with search data? Should they hold on to it? Or should it be deleted after a few months? It is a debate that I am sure will take some time to determine the correct course of action. In the meantime, web users should realize that when using the web a footprint is being left that can be traced back to your foot - or in this case your search history.

Focusing on the positive, Lee Odden pointed me to an interesting tool called the AOL Keyword Analyzer. It offers keyword search information and domain name popularity derived from the AOL search data that was released. I think this is the type of useful resource AOL had in mind when they released the search data in the first place so I am happy to see someone followed through and created it.

SEO of Technorati Tags and Flickr Photos

Technorati, the blog search engine, has made some changes to the way that they have optimized portions for search find-ability (SEO) in web search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Steve Rubel's recent post pointed out the new title being used by Technorati to catch the attention of a searcher and potentially draw them into the wonderful world of the blogosphere. Here is an example of what the old and new titles would look like in a search result for Technology:

OLD TITLE:  Technorati Tag: Technology

NEW TITLE:  Technology - See what people are saying right now on Technorati.

Obviously, the new title is more catchy and intuitive since the mainstream searcher may not know what Technorati or a Tag is. In performing the search for Technology on Google, I found that the Google has yet to index the page with the new title format. However, it is only a matter of time and I think it is a super improvement.

Flickr, the online photo sharing repository site, has a similar SEO (search engine optimization) strategy that places the user generated title of a photo as the title tags for search engines to index. I noticed this last week so I am unsure as to how long Flickr has been optimizing its photos based on user generated titles but I would not be surprised if this has been the case since its creation. To better explain the SEO of Flickr I performed a search on "My New Coffee Mug" on Google since I know I have a photo in my Flickr account that has a similar title. In performing the search I found a Flickr photo from my account as the first item that appears in the search results since my search keywords are in the title of the photo on Flickr.

So if you want your Flickr photos appropriately indexed by search engines you should be sure to create a descriptive title that search engines can index. However, if you do not want your photos not to be found you should make them private or make sure to not title your photos - most likely the search engines will then ignore your photos.

Quintura for a Visual Search Experience

Quintura, a Moscow-based company with an office in Alexandria, Virginia, markets a line of search products for the visually inclined. Quintura Search is slick desktop client for searching the web. It renders search results from just about every major search engine and even some of the blog search engines.

Quintura has a unique two pane layout which provides a cloud or web of related search terms in the left pane and the actual search results in the right pane. Upon hovering over a search term in the left pane the search results dynamically change to match the new search term in the right pane as shown in the screen-shot above. Quintura layout draws parallels to Visual Thesaurus which is a thesaurus product review previously on Somewhat Frank. Some other interesting features wrapped into Quintura include the ability to save searches which could come in handy for common searches as well as the ability to remove individual search results items, bulk search result items from the same domain and add a search result to favorites. All of these features could come in handy at one time or another. I could see Quintura being very helpful to anyone doing search engine marketing or search engine optimization.

Yakov Sadchikov, Quintura Co-founder, Quintura communicated that they had just launched an online version of the service in Russia. If you speak Russian you can check out the now live online Russian version of Quintura here. Yakov also said that they are in the process of  beta testing the English online version of the product as well. If it is anything like the desktop version it is going provide an excellent search experience for a visually inclined searcher.

Quintura Search is pretty slick - check out the live Quintura demo or download the desktop client. For future updates check out the Quintura blog.

Yahoo vs. Google Search Comparison App

I just found an interesting little application that compares the search results of Yahoo and those of Google. Once a search term is entered the application maps the common URLs of the two searches back to each other with lines and dots to show the difference between the two result sets. The result mapping functionality could be very helpful when checking your search placement for search engine optimization purposes.

The application also can compare Google China to the Google results in the United States which could be an interesting comparison with the recent news  that Google is censoring China search results.