I’ve been thinking more about the future of the web, and I’m convinced what’s coming is not just another phase or version, but finally the real deal. Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 are going to be looked back on as alpha and beta versions of the real Web which is finally upon us. Techies refer to it as the semantic web, which is going to be a big part of it, but ultimately it’s going to come down to making money for businesses. Every enterprise out there is finally understanding the importance of engaging the online medium and utilizing the communities and tools built over the past decade that have captured the attention and time of the consumer. There’s a really cool site I’ve found that’s seeming to capitalize on this opportunity… fittingly enough it’s called Local.com

Local combines the worlds of the big local sites out there, namely Citysearch.com, Yelp.com, Superpages.com, Yellowpages.com, all of which Local.com is partnered with. It’s essentially a 1 stop shop for finding local businesses and services.

The Local.com experience is incredible. It acts like a local yellowpages, and yet so much more. It automatically picks up what city you’re in based on your IP address and then generates a list of local restaurants, local reviews, local coupons, local favorites, and even local traffic and local weather. I find it to be incredibly valuable, especially for anyone moving to a new city. The local search feature is awesome too, as it brings up a list of nearby brick and mortar businesses. I typed in ‘groceries’ and got a great list of small hole in the wall grocers in my area.

This stuff is fascinating to me because it’s paving the way for a real business model on the Internet. With local businesses beginning to build a web presence, new web services will be able to track all consumer purchases, not just those made online, and evolve the Internet from the CPC (cost per click) model Google pioneered to a CPA (cost per affiliate) model in which web services monetize by taking a cut off consumer purchases. To make this work, however, local businesses are going to have to integrate their system in with a player like Local.com so that consumers can easily generate coupons and redeemable points. When this occurs, coupled with the proliferation of mobile technologies, the process will be seamless. You’ll find discounts in real time on your phone as you walk around through whatever web service you use. Then’ll you show up at the store, pick out what you want, and validate at the checkout counter with your iPhone… and boom you get your discount that easy.

Portals like Local.com, as well as the obvious Google, Ebay, Amazon, soon to be Facebook Marketplace, and the one everybody is ecstatic about… Twitter (check out CheapTweet and TwtQpon… wow!), is what will pull local businesses into the mix, incentivizing them to offer deals, because they know it’ll result in more long-term converting customers. And the more local businesses interact and engage with the community, the more popular they will become and the more feedback they’ll gain on bettering they’re products. And consumers who engage will win big by finding discounts and deals constantly.

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For those of you out there who are Search Engine marketers, you may have been having some frustrations lately with the google search engine wiki.   Typically, I keep several browsers running at once so I can be logged in to multiple google accounts (personal, business, client, adwords, analytics, etc..etc..).. so having to log out to see natural results has been quite frustrating.

What I have found really frustrating is that every once in a while, a stray mouse click has a detrimental effect on the virgin google results that I am looking at by clicking on one of the google search wiki buttons, and “BAM” a result disappears to the bottom of the page.  This gets especially frustrating when I’m looking through the SERPS and I am not sure if the results I am looking at reflect those of the general population… or our clients.  While I’m excited to see google search wiki, and I expect that at some point it will effect google search rankings, the inability to disable it seems appalling for usability.

In a desperate search for an answer it was found that adding “&hl=all” (without the quotes) to the end of the URL of your google search will disable the search wiki during your browser session.  This means that if you close your browser and open it again, the custom google search engine wiki tool returns.

A pain in the ass to do this evertime you want to turn it off.. yes
Confusing as to why google doesn’t have a link to let you do this.. yes
A possibility this may do something in addition to turning off the wiki.. yes
A way to turn it back on without closing your browser… yes …”&hl=0″

I hope you find this helpful.  If you have any idea as to what other google options this may have an affect on, please let me know.

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Keyword Discovery and Analysis:
This is the first step to a proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Campaign.  The goal of the Keyword Discovery and Analysis is to determine the keywords that will provide the best Traffic on Investment.  We start off by developing a list of “seed” terms, which are the words/phrases that best represent the results you wish to optimize your site.  We use these “seed” terms to generate a comprehensive list of alternatives which may also be used by your target audience in searching for your site.  After developing this list of keywords, we analyze them individually to determine not only the quantity and quality of the traffic they currently and historically generate, but also the competitiveness of these terms.  We conclude by providing you with the list of Keywords, and our recommendation on those we feel would provide your best return on investment.

Onsite Performance:
How your website is designed and deployed plays a large part in how well your site ranks in the search engines.  When conducting our Onsite Performance Analysis, we evaluate your site from a search engines perspective and provide you with specific recommendations on how to correct the problem areas.   Our Onsite Performance Analysis addresses the following major areas of your website:

• Meta Information
  • This is the descriptor information that you are able to give to the search engines.  It is important that the Titles and Descriptions you provide are concise, unique, relevant. This is one of the most common starting places for onsite SEO.
• Site Content
  • How well is the content of your site written?  Is it unique page to page?  Is it unique to your website? Do your pages contain the best keywords, proper density, and best placement?  Are you using the image descriptions in your site as a means to further provide “guiding” information for the search engines?  We answer all of these questions and more.
• Current Incoming Links
  • It is important to understand what type of links are pointing to your site.  There are many types and qualities of links that can benefit, or even sometimes hinder, your search engine rankings.  We evaluate the number and source of the incoming links to your site, including the anchor text currently being used.  This helps in obtaining a greater understanding of your current situation, and provides insight for linkbuilding.
• URL Structure
  • How are your URL’s formed?  Do they include random strings of text, and characters that would be meaningless to any human reader?  This portion of the analysis addresses URL canonicalization issues, query strings, and other items that will help your pages display as more relevant to particular terms.
• Server Settings
  • This analysis takes a close look at your DNS settings to ensure you are using the proper CName and A records for your domain and subdomains (www.), MX records, and similar items.

Offsite Performance:
There is only some much that you can do onsite to optimize your search engine rankings.  The final, and one of the most crucial tool for SEO is linkbuilding.  If done properly, it can be a valuable tool for increasing your search engine rankings.  If done improperly however, it can be extremely detrimental to your rankings, and possibly even cause permanent damage to your domain name.

• The Logic of Linkbuilding
  • Modern search engines place extensive value on the quantity and quality of links to your website for several reasons:
    1. Each link provided to your site acts as a vote of credibility.
    2. The anchor text used for that link gives contextual reference to your site
  • Some types of Links are better than others:
    1. Links that come from sites relevant to yours
    2. Links that are used in context to your site
    3. Links that come from higher PR sites
    4. Links that contain anchor text relevant to your site
    5. Links that can be followed by the search engine crawler
    6. Links that come from .edu or .gov domain names
  • Some types of Links can hurt your website:
    1. Links that come from link directories
    2. Links that come from penalized sites
    3. Links that appear to be spam (no context)
    4. Links from sites associated with spam
    5. Links that are built to quickly
• Our Method of Linkbuilding
  • GrapeThinking has developed a large network of bloggers across many industries who write about lifestyle, travel, wine, technology, products, financial advice, family, holistic health care, and more.
  • When we are contracted for linkbuilding, we check the bloggers in our network against the criteria mentioned earlier to ensure that we build only the highest quality of links.
  • We then pay these bloggers to write articles/reviews about your products or website, using specific anchor text (determined through Keyword Discovery) for their links to your site.
  • This method not only generates the links that we need for SEO, but can also generate traffic and clients to your site from the articles.

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Anybody that knows me, knows that I’m a huge supporter of Mozilla, especially Thunderbird. However, after 18 months of wishful thinking, I had to make a change this week; out with Mozilla (Thunderbird) and in with iGoogle and Gmail. I stuck with Thunderbird for a long time because of its unbelievable ease of use, consistency, and open source upgrades all driven by its non-profit culture. I also hoped that they would merge Firefox with Thunderbird and create the all in one application suite they’ve always talked about. Got so pumped up last year when they finally released the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird. However, waiting became too inefficient and switching to iGoogle/Gmail this week has been nothing short of a spiritual experience. Of course, I still use Firefox, but with the new Google setup, I don’t ever need to close the browser.

Here’s how my web worker life has transitioned:

Before the switch I used:

1) Thunderbird – email, RSS, calendar

2) Microsoft Office – document creation

3) Firefox / iGoogle – customized browser homepage

4) Skype – chat and rare calls to London

Now, it’s as simple as this:

1) Firefox Browser / iGoogle Homepage

a) Gmail

b) Calendar

c) Docs (unbelievable for collaboration)

d) Reader (RSS)

e) Gchat (in both Gmail and Docs)

Congratulations to Google for growing from their link expert roots into functional and aesthetic UE geniuses. The only thing that seems to be missing is a SVN dev environment, which I’m sure is in the works. I still have big hopes for Mozilla, but it’s going to take some time before they have the unified personal agent for the consumer — Google is there and is about to take over the world for real. Don’t count Mozilla out though; with all the suits moving into Google corporate and Mozilla having their clever 501(c)(3), look for some interesting things from them in the new creative capitalism.

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My search returned the following result.

I was behind a proxy for Canada.. but.. does this mean Canadians aren’t allow to look at the news?

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