Personalized Search Versus Personal Choice

May 18, 2008 – 4:33 pm

Personalized search is a especially since ! and have announced they are aggressively developing this service. Most likely, people will be leery of personalized search if they think that this is just be another way for companies to market to them. research has shown that there are typically two types of : and buyers.

If personalized search is to work for the , then instead of lots of targeted , the personalized had better offer targeted information that the person can use. A better information without having to bypass a of commercial sites would appeal to the .
Buyers
What if you already have the information you need or don’t want any information, but just want to make an online purchase? For buyers, information-only sites are something to be by-passed in the ’s. If personalized search can deliver the products and services the buyer wants, and not just what the want to push before them, then buyers may find some value in personalized search.
Personal Choice
Personalized search must involve personal choice if it is to succeed. The and need to be held to a minimum. Personalized search needs to be an option that can easily be turned on and off as desired. Personalized search should not be equated with limited . The person needs to feel that they are in control and not the . They also need to see real in using this service.
What if a person is sometimes an and other times a buyer, or in the matter of seconds they switch ? How will personalized search accommodate this person? Will the person have to toggle back and forth between a couple of different or click on and off a to switch between these two different forms of search? These are questions the SE’s will have to address in personalization.

has a beta personalized at: http://labs.google.com/personalized/profile.html that is pretty interesting to test. You’re told to click on Health, then the General Health and search for “stanford.” When searching for the word “bob” instead of “stanford” at the Minimum Personalize setting the first three results are “Bob the Builder,” “Bob Marley” and “Bob Dylan”. The rest of this page has no health related information on it as well. But, when the slider is pulled to Maximum Personalize, “Dr. Bob” has the first two positions followed the other results mentioned above. Its obvious has a ways to go in developing this.
Personal Privacy
If personalized search is to succeed, then personal need to be addressed and concerns held to a minimum. Will personalized search involve searching your hard drive to see what your interests are? Will your interests be stored in a cookie on your computer? What happens when multiple users share a computer - will someone else get hit with all sorts of Preparation H because of the hemorrhoid treatment searches you wanted to keep private? And will children be affected by adult personalized searches?
These are all questions that the SE’s need to address so that people do not feel that their privacy is being violated or put at risk. The more control and choice the user has over personalized search the more likely it has in succeeding for the .
Copyright © 2004 Resource
SEO Marketing Consultants
Kevin Kantola is the of Resource, a California optimization company, and has published many articles over the past 20 years.

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Promotional Tools That Work For Online Businesses!

May 10, 2008 – 2:35 pm

… also known as selling. Not an easy task in today’, but with the you can succeed. What I know is what I have learned in promoting a.k.a. selling my web site, spiritwhole.com, and trust me, I could write volumes by now. But, to make it short and sweet, here are some tips that you can use to get your business purring like a that actually work:

Your . Yes, they love you, and most of them are more than happy to help you out. What I did was design a killer flyer and asked them to distribute them to their co-workers and the like. Now that’s cheap labor.
I wrote a few articles that interested me and tied them in with my business then, approached various sites that I thought would be genuinely interested. Most of them that I approached were interested and, guess what, people are reading my articles with my tagged at the end.
Donate a percentage of your to a good cause that interests you. This generates tons of interest in your business by and by association with the company that you are donating to. And hey, you’ll have better karma too.
Send small inserts with your . Yes, with your bills. to my site doubled after I began doing this. The people that you pay to are opening the envelope and depositing the that you sent to them. Why not add a small insert with your payment….they promote like crazy with inserts when they send you the bill. You’re just returning the favor.

About The Author
UW Graduate, 1989, Bus. Admin.
Owner, www.spiritwhole.com

Published Poet
info@thespiritwhole.com

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Promote Your Website: Search Tools

May 10, 2008 – 2:34 pm

Many companies after spending a substantial amount of on the
development of their websites assume that once the website is
published on the Internet, people will flock onto it and, therefore,
do not take website as seriously as the development part
of it. Today, with millions of websites around, no matter how great
your website is, if you don’t promote it effectively, you will not
get the that your site deserves.
Effective of a website starts with of the site
to various search tools available on the Internet. There are two
different types of search tools: and directories.
index their listings based on the information
retrieved by their that crawl through the Internet following
links constantly looking for new websites. The
are compiled by from the URLs submitted to the
directory. If your website is listed in the directories you can be
sure that the of different sooner or later
will index your site. That’s why you should start submitting your
website first from .

Among all the available on the Internet, !
and are the most important ones.
or
is the second largest human compiled on the
Internet after ! is a huge web directory
of . All to the directory is evaluated
by . There is no fee to be paid to get an
in the directory. As a it might take more than
a month to get your site evaluated. Once you are listed in the ,
within two weeks to two months your website will start appearing on
like AOL Search, Teoma, HotBot, , Lycos,
AllTheWeb, Excite, and a number of regional .
At present around 354 different and portals use data
from . This is one of the main reasons why
you must consider submitting your website to .
Submitting your site to directories is a bit trickier then submitting
to .
Following rules are common for almost all directories:
- Check to see if your website is already in the directory
- Write an objective description of your website
- Search out the specific subcategory from the directory hierarchy
- Follow the rules of as specified
Make sure you follow these rules while adding your website in .
This will improve your chance to get your website accepted and reduce
the processing time.
!
! is by far the number one destination for Internet surfers.
Although the search results for ! is provided by , many
people still prefer to browse through ! directory to find
whatever they are looking for. This makes an to !
directory quite valuable for ecommerce sites. ! presently
charges yearly fee of US $299 for each web site submitted. The fee
is nonrefundable, which means if for some reasons ! declines
to add your website in its directory you will not get your
back! The only thing ! guarantees is that the editors will
look at your within seven days and send you an answer.
Should you consider submitting your site to !? It all depends
on the kind of business you are in. Some sites receive an
overwhelming number of from !, others hardly receive
anybody. My suggestion: list your website in ! directory for
a year and see the outcome. If you feel comfortable with the result
you are receiving - continue. If the result is not satisfactory you
can always cancel their service after one year.
LookSmart
Although it is the third largest directory on the Internet as a
search portal LookSmart is not that popular. However, it provides
to search, About.com, Infospace, Inktomi
and others. It is probably still the best way to get high ranking
in search. LookSmart is a fee based service. You pay US $49
fee for the site review by their editors and 15 Cents
for each click through. Pay per click minimum monthly payment is
US $15.
For noncommercial sites LookSmart has a partner directory named
“Zeal”. Zeal is a community directory for Internet surfers. To
submit a site to Zeal you first have to become a member by passing
a quiz test. The reason I am mentioning Zeal here is - you can
actually submit noncommercial portion of your site to Zeal and
receive an in all of the places that LookSmart listings
show up, without paying a pay-per-click fee.
Other Directories
Other small but notable directories that you should consider are
joeAnt, GoGuides and Gimpsy. Don’t expect large from
these directories; however, they will help enhance your link
. Link is a concept which means- how many
sites have links pointed towards your website. Link
is important because your website’s rank in the search results
depends on it in a big way.

use special programs to crawl the Internet and
index . These programs are called “Bot” or “”.
crawl up the Internet using links. That’s why it is so
important to have back links to your website. When you make a search,
the show you the results that are retrieved from
the servers, where all the indexed are cached. Only
when you click on a link from the search result you see the real
.
The most important are , Altavista, AllTheWeb,
Teoma, Lycos and , HotBot, AOL Search, etc.

No doubt that is the best available on the
Internet today. According to , they have indexed over 3.5
billion pages up to now! More Internet surfers are prone to use
because it has great search enhancing functions, and you
can always expect relevant and quality search results.
You can submit your link using Googles Add page located at http://www..com/addURL.html. However, if you have links
pointing towards your site on other websites, you can be sure
that ’s , will eventually come and index
you site. Contrary to popular believe once your site is indexed,
there is not need to resubmit your pages to , even if you
updated the pages. If, although it is not necessary, you submit
your website to , submit only the , it will find
the rest of the pages using the links anyway.
Altavista
Once powerful, Altavista started to loose grounds to other search
engines in a big way. Submitting to Altavista is fairly simple!
From the home page click on the “Submit a Site” located at the
bottom of the page. There are two for you: either you
can choose the “Basic Submit” service, which is free or for an
immediate , you can choose the “Express ”
service.
To prevent automatic of URLs, on the page
Altavista added code that has to be inserted manually
along with the . The Express service costs US $39 for
the first for six months.
AllTheWeb
This is becoming quite popular lately. It has a very
large database. AllTheWeb has very sophisticated search functions
like searches for pages linked to a given page, searches within
URLs or page titles, and searches limited by page size. It provides
search results and technology to Lycos and Ebay. to
AllTheWeb is quite easy. Use the following link page to submit
your : http://www.alltheweb.com/add_URL.php If you need an
express , you have to use “Lycos InSite” service of
Terra-Lycos. The rate is US $35 for a full year .
Teoma
If you care about Teoma, a much hyped , which is
actually an additional of Ask Jeeves, you can use
its paid program located at http://ask.ineedhits.com/sitesubmit.asp?id=30270.
It charges US $30 per year for first and US $18 for additional
each.
Inktomi
You may not heard about Inktomi, but many popular
use the results from Inktomi such as AOL, Excite, Go.com, HotBot,
IWon, Overture to name a few. For secondary search result even
uses it! ! recently bought Inktomi. Which means that
very soon even ! might give to the search results
coming from it. Inktomi provides a paid service.
Inktomi sells its service exclusively through its
reseller partners. You can find them over here: http://www.inktomi.com/products/web_search/submit.html The fee
is US $39 per for a year and US$25 for subsequent URLs.
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present
of Rusbiz.com - a Global B2B Exchange with solutions to
create e-catalog, , business process management and
other features to run a business online. You can read various
articles written by Nowshade Kabir at http://ezine.rusbiz.com.

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Secret PopUp Technique - Can Drive Thousands Of Targeted Visitors To Your Web Site

May 10, 2008 – 2:33 pm

I think you all know that buying in bulk is a pretty useless way to get targeted to your website. You know the ads 10,000 hits for 30 bucks.
Buy here is a very effective way to turn those useless banners into a targeted machine!!
This will takeabout to do but will send some serious targeted to your website, for your .
Step one: Sign up for 5 or 6 . Such as http://bannersgomlm.com
Step two: Build a simple blank with just the code for the banners of your and upload it to your server or build it on something free like freewebs.com
Step 3:Buy the cheapest , crappy you can find. This can easily be found by going into and searching for buy hits,buy ,buy and so. Just find the cheapest one.
Step4: Send this to your with all the banners from the .
See where this is going… now instead of just getting untargeted hits to your site from those terrible you are building up thousands of credits on your which can have pretty targeted !! Thus creating much more value for your pop up purchase.
I hope you try this out, and have great .
is the creator and editor of http://www.nicetodobusiness.com and is a in the area of .

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Promote Your Website Using Newsgroups

April 27, 2008 – 12:01 pm

At present there are over 3.3 billion pages indexed by ,
and that definitely does not cover the entire Internet. With so
many competitors around, you sure have to use every conceivable
method available to promote your website.
can be very in your web
if you use them actively.
What is a Newsgroup?
A newsgroup is a message board on the Internet where users come
to discuss topics of . Each newsgroup is
dedicated to a particular subject of interest and consists of
messages posted by participants. You can find several ongoing
discussions surrounding various topics within a single newsgroup.
These topics are call threads. As a user you can start a thread,
to a thread and make responds to other .
Before the Internet era, the way you know it now, back in
and early nineties people used to connect to electronic
bulletin boards (bbs) through and post for
others to read and answer. Usenet was started as a
collection of these bulletin boards. Along with the Internet,
have also started to grow rapidly. Thanks to the
Interface introduced by in 1995 use of
became simple and convenient, which also gave enough to
this growth.
Today, Usenet or indexed by
comprise over 800 million messages, which is around a
of information! It is calculated that over people
have regular access to !
Each newsgroup is formed with a certain purpose. This is
described in its charter at the time it is started. Normally
every Newsgroup has its own single subject. However there
could be many dedicated to one subject.
There are of on every subject you
can possibly imagine. The subjects in are
hierarchically structured. Some of them are moderated, means
somebody controls the , most don’t.
How to use ?
Since there are so many , whatever your interest is
you will most likely find a newsgroup which will suit you.
Although, most readers have built-in features to
subscribe the most convenient way to read
today is to use “ Search”. Once you are on the search
page of the , Click on the Groups from the menu. This
will take you to Groups search page with a directory of
under the headline ‘Post and read comments in Usenet
’. The most common subdirectories for
businesses are located in alt, biz and misc. For example: If
you are in import and export business you might try alt.business.
imort-export, which has several groups within it.
Run a search using a keyword related to your online business
that you would like to promote from the groups search page of
. The result will appear chronologically, the most recent
one being at the top. Check out the most relevant
from the results. If your search produces a very big list of
results, try the advanced search option. Try reducing the time
frame of . By default searches within all
messages posted from 1981.
For really worthwhile information I’ll suggest to use moderated
groups. Most which are not moderated easily fill up
with spam and you really have to wade through them to find
something interesting.
Did you notice that has a new paid service under the
name “ Answers”? For a fee nominated researchers
will get answers to your hard to find questions. The service
is located at http://answers..com. If you go through the
questions that are already asked, you will be amazed to see
that by searching you will find answers to many of
them without paying a dime. are indeed a gold mine
of information!
Benefits of using
As an online business you can rip varieties of benefits from
effective use of .
Establish yourself as an expert of your chosen field
People will prefer doing business with you if they know that
you are an expert in your field. Post important and relevant
information in your chosen Newsgroup, answer to the questions
posted. Very soon, people from the Newsgroup will start
considering you as an expert and you will be amazed to see
quantity of new visitors checking out your site.
Conduct market survey
can be a great source of information. By
asking questions in relevant you can find a way of
figuring out what people think about your product, your
website, etc.
Get new clients
There are , which are formed with the sole purpose of
various announcements and . Prudent use of these
along with your relevant will definitely
increase your site and get new clients.
Promote your site
In relevant groups you can post announcement about your site
launch, , product information, etc. Participation
in the discussions in your subject matter with your
file, which should include your , will help
getting new visitors and increase the quantity of backward
links to your website.
Get answers to your questions
You can’t be an expert in every thing! Often, you will need
answers to various questions. Ask them in relevant
along with your file. Not only you will have answers
to your questions, along with this you will also promote your
site.
Make friends
can be a great place to find like-minded friends
and partners.
Posting do’s and don’ts
You have to be very careful with what you post in a Newsgroup.
Before making your first post, go through the FAQ and posting
rules of the Newsgroup and read some of the . You want
to position yourself as an expert not an idiot! Some
users are pretty aggressive. If they feel that you are spamming
their precious Newsgroup you will be flamed in no time.
Here are some basic rules:
- Don’t post commercials, or press
releases; unless the newsgroup specifically mentions that it
endorses these things.
- While posting a respond, stick to the original topic.
- Quote only the portion of the message you are responding not
the whole message.
- Don’t cross post. This means, do not post same messages in
several relevant .
- Never post unrelated messages to . This is considered
as spamming!
- While posting a message be specific and concise in the subject
line.
- Post your file with each and every message. This is
important for your web !
- Check your spelling and grammar before posting a message.
The idea is to make valuable contribution to the and
by doing so at the same time promote your online business. Ask
questions that you perceive useful to you and others. Post
responds to messages, which are informative, thought-provoking
and of high quality. Soon you will build among your
fellow Newsgroup members and start receiving a flow of loyal
customers.
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present
of Rusbiz.com - a Global B2B Exchange with solutions to
create e-catalog, , business process management and
other features to run a business online. You can read various
articles written by Nowshade Kabir at http://ezine.rusbiz.com.

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Benefits of Website Localization

April 21, 2008 – 1:23 pm

Benefits of
Maximising profit today involves reaching beyond . Accessing an is vital if a business wants to expand and participate in .
‘Localization’ relates to the act of modifying a product to make it both usable and suitable to a market. therefore refers to the process of taking an English, western-orientated, website and it to conform to a foreign .
The World Wide Web, as its name suggests, is a means by which businesses can reach an international . Companies are now recognising that a key step in successfully approaching and selling to is through .
brings with it numerous benefits. The three main benefits of localization are:
crosses
32% of around the world are non-. With PC ownership and access to the internet most rapidly increasing outside of North America and Europe, this figure will increase even more. breaks and opens doors to other .
Companies are now waking up to the fact that English is no longer ‘the’ but one of many including French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. With the number of companies now realising the benefits of , there are more pages in than ever before. This means if your company’s site has not undergone the localization process yet, it will be playing catch up in the future.
builds
If your company only has a site in English and your competitor in all major languages, which one will gain more ? Localization of your website demonstrates that you are a truly . In addition, through localization it shows that you understand, value and have respect for that particular country or region.
increases revenue
Billions of dollars, pounds and francs in potential revenue are lost each year due to lack of investment in . Most will naturally feel more comfortable and understand a company better if their information, products or services are presented in their native language. By undergoing the process you access potentially millions of new customers.
It is clear that is a must for any truly international business. In addition to the technical and programming elements of many cultural factors must be borne in mind.
For example, has language been translated properly and cultural variations in terminology, , metaphors and sayings been taken into consideration? Have symbols, graphics, pictures, colours and general layout been viewed for their cultural applicability?
is a huge investment and should not be viewed as a straightforward process. When localizing your site, ensure you get the expertise of both a website designer and a cross cultural communications consultancy to ensure your site has maximum impact on the .
Neil Payne is Director of cross cultural communications consultancy
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk
Permission is granted to reproduce the article in full on the condition I am made aware of any intention to use it. npayne@kwintessential.co.uk

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Outsourcing Website Services - Can Your Business Benefit?

April 21, 2008 – 1:23 pm

Would it surprise you to know that ? ?
How about ?? ??
Yes, even the ?!
I have been involved with projects involving each one of these companies.
They all outsourced specific portions of their projects.
Even Hyperformance Media out-sources requirements!
Every business does not know every other business.
What I mean is, your business can not know everything there is
to know about printing (for example). Therefore, in certain
situations, it would benefit your company to outsource this
service to some . It could save you time,
, and benefits, leaving your employees their time to
continue to do what they do best, their job - with minimum
!
In this simple example you can begin to see the many benefits.
* You have professionals creating the desired product.
* They will do a better job in less time.
* No need to buy or software.
* No set-up, no training, no lost time.
* No payroll, benefits, or accounting headaches.
* Your employees remain focused on their goals and your
!
These are just a few of the many reasons used to justify
the outsourcing of some projects versus attempting to do
everything in-house.
Your is a mission-critical tool.
Used properly, your website should be your most outspoken
. Your business should be getting more business
from the Web, if not doing business on the Web.
The successful of your should NOT
be taken lightly. Yes, your company now has a webmaster on
the payroll full-time, not to mention the design and development
staff, but is your working? Are you achieving
results besides just looking good?
Outsourcing the services of your website gives you
the experience you desire and the results you need. Your
business needs to be found yesterday! Your business needs
customers to grow, not just survive! Who has your market share?
Let’s talk about getting some of that back! Let’s talk about
what changes can be put in place to GET BUSINESS from your website.
Today, tomorrow, and every year going forward!
Thanks - and good luck with your !
Scott is the Founder and Sr. Internet Specialist for
Hyperformance Media, Inc. a website firm located
just outside of Chicago, IL. since 1996. Specifically, he
has over 24 years of sales and experience and
accomplishment in the computer industry.

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4 Simple Tips for Targeted Traffic

April 21, 2008 – 1:22 pm

Here are 4 of the most easiest and to implement into a site for a very generous boost in . These can all be implemented within a very . Of course depending on the you most likely will have to wait for them to your site, but when they do,… the Targeted will come.
– Tip 1 –
It’s a good idea to insert a link to a sitemap into your at the bottom, if this is the page you paid for with.
Why?
This is so, when the crawl your site they will ALSO your sitemap thus indexing ALL of your other webpages via the sitemap. Thus, indexing your whole site into the (s). And having each page in the engines is very good and beneficial for ya, thus giving you more coverage with your site.
– Tip 2 –
Try to restrict your website to a of directories as possible.
Why?
like to see a or of like:
http://www.yoursite.com/page.html
NOT one that looks like
http://www.yoursite.com/this_dir/that_dir/another_dir/page.html
So try to restrict your site to as few directories as possible and try to put your most important pages as close to the as possible too. So the don’t have to “ through” directory after directory to find your pages.
– Tip 3 –
When creating your website, implement a “reverse ” construction.
Why?
like to see a broad to specific layout. Your , would be your broad or wide theme about your whole site, and your interior pages should focus in or “zero-in” to a specific interest. For example, if your site is on dogs, a more specific area or page would be and/or etc.
and finally
– Tip 4 –
When submitting your website to the engines, do a bit of research and seek out the (s) that “feeds” the other and thus submit to the one or ones that feed the most to other engines.
Why?
Many get their results from other . For example, , supplies results or feeds results to AOL, Netscape, and iWon. So, if you get indexed within , you will most likely get into the indexes of AOL, Netscape, and iWon since these other engines get their results from . You get the idea? So even though you might only be submitting to one engine, you are “indirectly” submitting to many more.
These 4, small but very powerful ideas implemented into your site will bring you a big boost of Targeted . Because don’t forget are THE most largest source for Targeted online today.
This is because, whoever goes searching on a is looking for one thing and usually one thing only. So if your site is present within the top pages of the or topic that visitor/searcher is looking for, you are the most likely candidate and for him/her to hit by having your website right there in front of them.
Burke holds both a BSc. degree in Computer Science as well Certification in Optimization and Strategies. He also regularly publishes The ACE! , in which he shares his experience, methods, and ‘what works’ with others. Burke can be contacted by
http://www.the-ace-ezine.com or
http://www.altacanweb.com

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