Look, you’re the CMO. You don’t have time for the Google or the Facebook or the Twitter. You have time for reading the iCrossing Great Finds blog, that’s about it. And LinkedIn? You’re not unemployed. Come on.

However, effectively managing your online identity is good insurance against negative content surfacing in search results targeting your name. If somebody writes a blog post about how you “suck,” it sure would be nice for that not to show up on page one of Google. What then do you do?

Find a body double – somebody with your same name – and make him your Saddam Hussein-style body double on Google. If your body double is on Facebook, sign him up for Twitter. If he’s on LinkedIn, get him on Squidoo. Create a Wikipedia page for him. Hell, create a custom home page with an optimized domain name about how great this guy is. Optimize the shit out of everything. Build links like crazy. Buy some AdWords and some 300×250 displays. Create YouTube videos about how your body double is totally awesome, and curate a Tumblr blog of his favorite images. Consider releasing a sex tape. Negative press targeting you won’t have a chance.

Or you could actively manage your own search presence. But search is just a fad anyway. Real business is done on paper.

Paul’s traveling the country as a digital nomad. Keep track of him, his wife, and their minivan home on drivinginertia.com.

The other day I was on a call with Phoenix search engine optimization guru, James Constable, and he realized the audience was daunted.  They needed inspiration.  They needed encouragement.  They needed motivation …  They needed propaganda posters, James decided.  Something like: Keep Calm and Optimize.  SEO Needs YOU!

That’d do it.  SEO isn’t rocket science.  We can all do this.  Let’s all do this.  Post these in your offices immediately.

Sure, there are better-spec’d phones in the market, but the difference between the top-of-the-line and the entry-line is getting smaller by the day.  Apple is going to have a tough time responding to this new reality.  The Apple mystic is one of exclusivity and luxury.  That brand promise is tough to balance when you need to go after mass-market success with lower-cost products.  Sure, there are rumors about some sort of lower-end iPhone Lite, but I don’t like their odds of pulling this off.  iPhones are already becoming ubiquitous and boring, while Google’s multi-handset approach allows buyers to better identify with their purchase. Virgin Mobile’s Motorola Triumph is youthful and fun.  Sprint’s EVO 4Gs are high-tech and fast.  There’s the HTC Status on AT&T, an Android-powered phone that plays off Facebook updates.  There’s the Droid Pro, a business-focused phone from Verizon.

photo credit: antwerpenR

Honestly, I don’t see how Apple wins this.  They need to keep “innovating” — but how long will it be before we realize all they’re doing is using bigger, gee-wiz touchscreens on more products?  It took them about 3 years to start falling behind in the phone arena.  It’ll be a surprise to me if the iPad is able to hold off the competition as long.  The end of the Apple era is here (and here).

Update: There are issues.  Bummer.

1. Yes, CloudFlare, you tanked my search traffic.  I thought maybe that was my fault.  But then Debbie and Anurag complained too.  Three times is a pattern, buddy.  You break sites.  It may be temporary, but that’s not good enough for me.
2. I don’t really have the bandwidth problem you solve.  I host at DreamHost where I get unlimited bandwidth.  I just wanted to be nice and use less.
3. You stopped working one day.

So I turned you off, CloudFlare.  If I had a bandwidth problem, maybe I’d do some slick sub-domain setup where I’d set you up to serve images while my primary domain’s DNS remained unchanged.  Maybe.  Until then, I’m going back to never thinking about this again … because before you came around, I never had to.

Sprint’s been on the Android bus for a while.  Their EVO was a big deal.  Their full network Google Voice integration is a big deal.  The Optimus V on their subsidiary, Virgin Mobile, was a big deal.  The 4G Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be a big deal.  Sprint is doing a lot of things right.

And methinks all this makes my prediction of a higher-end Virgin Mobile Android phone a little more likely.

Traffic is back

I don’t think I can honestly blame CloudFlare for this one.  Yeah, it happened after I turned them on, but it didn’t happen immediately after.  Google seems to have recalculated my blog’s value a little after I switched over, and I wasn’t ranking as highly for some of my higher-traffic terms (increasing AdSense revenue, updating your 2WIRE router to use WPA2, and pre-paid Android phones).  Honestly, I hadn’t touched on those topics for a few weeks, and that probably hurt me.

Performance is good

As measured by Pingdom, response times are still under a second for most requests.  They’re not as low as before CloudFlare, but they’re plenty good.  And bandwidth usage is still way down, which is phenomenal.

Conclusions

I’m happy with CloudFlare.  They have a great product and have seen impressive results.  I’m using them on other blogs, but I’m still a little hesitant about switching over Dappered.  We’ll see what the future brings.  If Dappered’s traffic keeps growing like it has been, we’ll have to do something.

Update: Here’s a chart showing my drop in search traffic and its recovery.  This is Traffic Sources > Search Engines in Google Analytics.  Good question, Debbie.

Search Traffic Drop and Recovery

Update: I added the [don't] in the headline.  I’ve turned CloudFlare off on this site.  And check the comments — Anurag is having the same problem as Debbie and me.  That makes the traffic drop a pretty serious, pretty consistent issue.

Blekko (the new-kid-on-the-block search engine) stumbled across my consciousness again yesterday with this article from TechCrunch.  Turns out, Blekko has banned content farms like eHow.com and Encyclopedia.com from its search results.  I used to work for the company that ran Encyclopedia.com and I’m fascinated by Google, so this caught my eye.  I went back to Blekko to see what’s going on (I had visited before, but I haven’t been a regular user).

First thing I did — I Blekko’d myself.  And my blog was right there on page one.  Well played, Blekko.

Second thing I did, I performed one of their suggested searches: cure for headaches.  And my first thought was, “Wow, this looks really good.  WebMD, Mayo Clinic … these are some really solid results.”

Then I tried Google for the same query, and I got WikiHow, home remedies, and shit sites.

My immediate response was: That’s not fair!  Blekko rigged the test.  So I searched for just headache.  Again, great results from Blekko — National Library of Medicine, WebMD, Mayo Clinic.

And I did the same on Google — National Library of Medicine, WebMD … Wikipedia, and some news articles.  I’d call this one a draw.  They both knew what a headache was.

And then I added one more word to my query — headache cure.  Blekko was still high-quality — WebMD, Mayo Clinic, National Library of Medicine, UK National Health Service.

Google jumped in the shitter — WikiHow, targeted domain sites, an ‘artist’ blog, home remedies, junk sites, and made-for-TV offers.  Google seriously failed, and all it took was one word.

So what’s it mean?  Google is still great, don’t get me wrong, but the bad guys are winning on the long-tail terms.  And the long-tail starts a lot sooner than I would have guessed — in my case, Google’s results shit the bed after adding a second search term.  Google has some work to do.  Sorry, Matt Cutts — it’s good you don’t copy Bing, but you’ve got something to learn from Blekko.

Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content. We take pride in Google search and strive to make each and every search perfect. The fact is that we’re not perfect, and combined with users’ skyrocketing expectations of Google, these imperfections get magnified in perception. However, we can and should do better.

What seems to be happening is that independent bloggers are uniting against the big content mills like Demand Media and Associated Content.  Content farms rely on Google rankings for nearly all of their money.  In a clever move, instead of trying to beat these big guns on the results page, they’re going after Google to change the game.  I like the strategy.  I’d much rather read an interesting blog post that solves my 2WIRE WEP/WPA problems than read some crap on eHow.  But all this chatter is obscuring the real problem: Facebook is starting to get lame.

Facebook is just not as interesting as it once was.  Previously entertaining friends have fallen off the wagon.  Updates that used to ignite a lively discussion now just get a few ‘likes’ as they sink their way down the news feed.   My parents have joined Facebook along with everybody else and now it’s boring.

I miss the old Facebook.  And if I still operated in the old Facebook fun-iverse, I’d create a Facebook page to rally around.  Instead, I’ll wait for somebody else to create it so all I need to do is ‘like’ it.

]]> http://www.pauldavidolson.com/blog/2011/googles-not-getting-worse-facebook-is/feed/ 0 http://www.pauldavidolson.com/blog/2011/why-the-traffic-drop-after-cloudflare-google-hates-me/ http://www.pauldavidolson.com/blog/2011/why-the-traffic-drop-after-cloudflare-google-hates-me/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:18:36 +0000 pdo http://www.pauldavidolson.com/blog/?p=768 CloudFlare is an interesting beast.  On one hand, I love it because I like the bandwidth savings.  However, CloudFlare is tanking my traffic.  Why?  Google doesn’t like something.  Here’s a chart of Google organic referral traffic to this site:

Goodbye, pageviews.

The annoying thing is that it didn’t happen right away.  It took a bit.  So now do I wait it out or switch back?  No idea.

UPDATE: I’m happy with CloudFlare.