One of the more interesting features of AdWords that advanced PPC marketers have been using is Google Dynamic Keywords. This allows you to insert the search query that the user typed in directly into your ad. How to Use AdWords Dynamic Keywords In your title or description lines, you can enter a little bit of code that will insert the users query into your ad. The text should be formatted as follows:

{KeyWord:Alternate Text}

The KeyWord: is the query that the user typed in. The Alternate Text is what the ad will display if for some reason the query cannot be shown (such as if the query string is too long, etc.).

For example, let’s say we have “Larry’s Lamps”. Larry is bidding on the keywords “brass lamps”, “brass lamp”, “quality brass lamp”, and “brass lamps sale”. The ad is set up in AdWords as follows:

If the visitor searches for “Brass Lamps”, they will see:

If the visitor searches for “Quality Brass Lamp”, they will see:

This is brilliant, because whatever the user types in will appear exactly in the ad. The ad will be properly bolded, and will appear more relevent to the visitor.

You can even control the case of the ad:

Buy {keyword:Car parts}  Buy car parts
Buy {Keyword:Car parts}  Buy Car parts
Buy {KeyWord:Car parts}  Buy Car Parts
Buy {KEYWord:Car Parts}  Buy CAR Parts
Buy {KeyWORD:Car parts}  Buy Car PARTS
Buy {KEYWORD:Car Parts}  Buy Car Parts

Lots of folks talk about search and never delve into the content network. In the search network you choose keywords based on which ads will be shown in search results. In contrast with the content network, you choose locations, ie, web-sites and individual pages within those sites, where you would like to see your ad.

The content network is the set of sites, blogs and other web products that networks like Google and Yahoo push to publishers that have agreed to publish ads in exchange for a fee per click through an advertising program.

The owner of the website which publishes the ads chooses one or more locations where they will appear, and receives a commission for each click received. The first thing to understand is that, unlike search engine searches and resulting ads, advertisements in the content network are not geared for keywords, but by the content of websites that they occur.

David Szetela’s new book Customers Now: Profiting From the New Frontier of Content Based Internet Advertising shows exactly how to use the networks, set up ads and optimize the platforms for better ROI. Googles content network and  ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ Exchange is also reviewed but does not have the reach of Yahoo or Googles network.

1 – Go to Google Blog Search.

2 – Do a search for your business.  For example, I’ll do a search for my blog, Boston Media Domain.

3 – Notice the Results 1 – 100 of about 2,280 for Boston media domain.  These results can be sorted by date, down to the last hour.  Ok, now I have a list of results for what people are saying about me now.  But I want to continue to access this list, and when Google receives a new result, I want to know about it without coming back and doing a new search.
Look down at the left sidebar.  See the subscribe section?  There I can set it up to either send me an email alert every time Google gets a new result for “the viral garden”, or I can set it up as an RSS feed that will send the results to my feed reader.  Since I already use Bloglines as my feed reader, I will click RSS

4 – Since I have set up this search as an RSS feed that will be delivered to my feed reader (Google Reader) automatically, I am now set.  I’ve also done the same with Google Blog Search for the term “Jeff Selig” as well.

5 – Now let’s do the same thing with Google Blog Search to alert us when someone links to your blog.  Go back to Google Blog Search, and type in link: http://www.yourblogsURLhere.com  This will show you what sites are linking to your blog, and how many there are.  Results 1 – 100 of about 1,600 for link: boston media domain Here’s the results for when I searched for sites linking to my blog.  Now you can either set up this as an email alert, or add this to your feed reader as we did in Step 4.

6 – You are now good to go and your reputation management efforts will be greatly rewarded.  Anytime anyone mentions your business in a blog post, or links to your blog, you will know about it, thanks to Google.  I have feeds set up that give me the results anytime a blogger mentions me, my blog, or links to my blog, on their site.  Take the time to monitor your business on the blogosphere

fangphone.com

A revolutionary new design for a tooth implant which receives digital signals from radios and mobile phones will be on show from 21 June until November at the Science Museum London. This unique prototype is part of the new ‘Future Product’ awards, a collaboration between the Science Museum and the Royal College of Art that is supported by NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts). The awards aim to increase the public understanding of science, technology and the arts by showcasing young talent.The tooth implant was designed by James Auger from Derby whose work was chosen from the Royal College of Art’s renowned annual summer exhibition. The Show 2001. James was helped by fellow RCA graduate Jimmy Loizeau from Rhyl.

The design builds upon the current form of replacement surgery, such as artificial joints, to produce the first commodity based in-body product. A micro-vibration device and a wireless receiver are implanted in the tooth during routine dental surgery and sound is transferred from the tooth into the inner ear by bone resonance, converting digital signals to audio. Sound reception is totally discreet enabling information to be received anywhere and at anytime, whether it is City traders receiving stock market information in the cinema or spin-doctors sending information to politicians as they are interviewed. Sven Goran Erikkson could keep his customary cool during a match by issuing instructions to individual players without even having to raise his voice.

Stories of tooth fillings acting as receivers to pick up radio signals has long been debated as a possible urban myth. James’ tooth implant design communicates with an array of digital devices, such as mobile telephones, radio and computers. Either a mobile phone or a dedicated device is used as the long range receiver, this can fully customise the users set up to meet their personal requirements.

James’ design is meant to be a talking point only, exploring the possible social and cultural impact of in-body technology. This could have the potential to rewrite Darwinism, as future advantageous mutations will not be random, they will be chosen by the individual.

Question: So what is a domainer and domaining? It’s a pretty hot subject with everything that’s going on on the internet right now.

ERIC: I think that we’re still working on an exact definition, but a typical domainer has some of the following attributes: They register a lot of domain names and in some cases they register them on an automated basis. Typically they create a very light content site onto that domain name. They will typically have some sort of ad platform that will generate revenue from that particular page. So the typical domainer has a large portfolio of domain names with content attached to their websites that’s mostly ads.

Question: What would make a domainer different from a cybersquatter then?

ERIC: Well, that’s one of the issues that we’re wrestling with in the field is whether domainers are cybersquatters and there’s been a strong split of opinion about that topic. In the late 1990’s and even earlier than that, we had a very strong and relatively clear definition of cybersquatters. These are people who would acquire a domain name for the profitable resale of that domain name. Typically they would identify a trademark owner or a well known person register the domain name before that person could register it or that company could register it and then play a hold up game. Tell the company or person that if they wanted the domain name back, they would have to pay an extravagent amount of money and that is that and it’s gotten so out of control that a couple of different types of regulations were introduced to squelch it which they’ve done pretty well. However, domain name isn’t quite that. Often times the domainers are not particularly interested in profitable resale and, in fact, in my experience many times when domainers get complaints about domains, they’ll just hand the domain name back, no questions asked and no money charged. They’re not looking to make money from the resale of the domain names, they’re looking to make money from the traffic that flows from the visitors who come to those particular domains and the sites that has them. So, we’re not entirely sure if domainers are really just new and slightly different variation of cybersquatters or if they are really a new class of activity that wasn’t contemplated by the problems we saw in the late 1990’s.

Question: So, by listening to the psuedo definition of it is it can’t really be nailed down at this point. It’s more like a land speculation deal where you think this person may go up so you buy into it now?

ERIC: Well yeah, I think you’re on the right track. In other words, think about when a city or a county builds a new stadium and because of that there is gonna be all these people who are gonna be driving to that stadium and from that stadium as part of going to a game or fair or some festival. So all the real estate along that route are gonna be suddently more valuable as there is more traffic coming to and from the stadium. Certainly domainers take advantage of the fact that people are trying to get to a particular place and they’re using the technology of domain names to try and get where they are going and along the way domainers hope to make some money from these people on their journey.

Question: With typo squatting, which would be the missed-typing of something you are looking for that would direct you to a domain name that was set up by somebody who thinks that while somebody is automatically gonna drop a G when the type this, is this such a huge business as there is such a flow of this that this has become the new, how do I put it, has this become the new Starbucks, this is the new franchise business of the world, this is the next business opportunity for everybody… is that what’s causing such a huge issue that anybody can go out there and register a bunch of domain names and generate traffic to them and then possibly either generate revenue or hold somebodies name or trademark hostage for blackmail. You give me this much money, you can have your name back? This has become the new franchise business then?

ERIC: It’s become a very large business and it’s in some ways has low barriers to entry. You don’t need a whole lot of equipment or plan to build a business like this. On the other hand, the barriers to entry have gone up significantly because there has been a general rise in domain name valuations due to all the speculative activity of people trying to find juicy domain names that will have significant traffic. I think the broader question you are hinting at is, where are these people coming from? And how much of this is driven by people with fat fingers who miss-type domain names or can’t spell and miss-spell that domain names. Or how much of this is caused yet something else? I think that’s one of the magic questions we don’t really understand when it comes to the domain name business. The working theory is that there are a lot of people with fat fingers or bad spelling, and therefore, domainers know they don’t intentionally register domains that are typographical errors of some famous trademark. Nevertheless, the’ll do that as part of their automated registration processes. So they’ll pick up all these things that in effect are the equivalent of a typo squatted domain name. So in the past, back in the glory days of cybersquatting…. now these people do that deliberately. Here it’s intentional, but still it has the same effect. But I’m still wondering, and I still have an open investigation into how many people are really coming to these sites, not because of their fat fingers or their bad typing skills, but because of the fact that these sites are also indexed in the search engines. I’m still trying to figure out how many people are getting to these sites because of good search engine placement as opposed to typing in the domain names into their address bars. There’s a couple of reasons why I’m suspect about the long term viability of people typing in domain names into address bars. First of all, so many people got starred doing that because if they mistyped things back in the old days, they would get pop ups and porn. And so a lot of people I think learned not to type in domain names into the address bar. The other thing is that . . . . many people use search engines as the first step in their navigation process. So, they will actually type in domain names into the search engine as a way of getting where they’re going. So, instead of using the address bar in their browser, they will use a search tool bar or they will use the field at a search engine to type in the exact same text. So, I’m not entirely clear where these people are coming from, but to be a clear understanding is that this is a multi-billion dollar industry today, so it is now an integral part of the internet economy.

Question: Good afternoon. Welcome back to the VTalk Radio Tech Spotlight. I am Damien Allen, in for John Bentley. We are joined via phone in the studio by Professor Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University School of Law; specialty in high-tech law disputes, cyberspace law, intellectual properties. And today, we are discussing the domainer issue. We have been talking about what a domainer is and, before the break, we were talking about how people will use search engines as the way to get to where they are going and what they are looking for by typing in an entire domain name. And, Eric, my question to you is, when we go to these sites, say I’m looking for damienallen.com and I go there and somebody owns that domain name, I see a lot of Google ad bars on there. Everyone’s up in arms about the domainers taking all these sites up, buying these sites up, but Google, which is probably the number one search engine in the world at this point, tends to do an awful lot of business through these guys, so are we looking at the search engines being in cahoots with domainers or cybersquatters? How does this work?

ERIC: Well, there’s no question that a domain name is inextricably tied with advertising, and in particular the self-service advertising programs that have been offered by people like Google. So, if you look at when a domain name has really taken off, it’s not an accident that it’s about the time that Google made it so easy for people to put ads onto their websites. And, there’s no question, I think, also, that the search engines generally, and Google in particular, derive significant economic value from their role in domain names. And, so, if we think about the drivers of the domain name industry, we could literally starve the business, cut the wind out of its sails, if the advertising was cut off from business. In other words, if Google turned tail and said we don’t want to participate in the domain name business, then that would likely put a huge crimp in the business, if not shut it down entirely. Google’s role in the domain name business has not been ignored. In the middle of this year, they got sued by a company called Vulcan Golf for their role in the domain name process. Google has a program for what they call domain name parking. Basically, a business that has registered a domain name can simply hand off the domain name to Google and then Google will build the web page containing its ads from there, so the web business doesn’t really have to do any more than register its own domains and toss them over the wall to Google, and Google runs from there. And, a plaintiff in a lawsuit obviously says that Google is really in the domain name business; it’s not the people registering the domain names, because Google is the one handling all of the work after the domain name registration.

Question: So, at this point, they are renting the space from the original domainer and they’re both making money off of it, is that my understanding?

ERIC: Yeah, I mean, basically, the idea is the domain name owner has an asset, but they hand that asset over to Google, and Google then exploits the asset and they share the revenue from it. That’s the argument that the plaintiff has made, and certainly the facts could tell that story.

Question: In your opinion, how many domainers are there out there right now? Of course, as we have been discussing, this has been a booming business. I’ve seen ads, articles, blogs, Pacific rim, Europe,Germany; everybody’s getting into this now. Where do they come from? Why are they coming? What’s the legitimacy of this? What makes this a legitimate thing?

ERIC: Well, lets break those questions down for a moment. So, with respect to the number of domainers out there, I don’t actually have a good sense about the number. There are a few large and well-known domainers. My guess is that they have the lion’s share of the market, but I don’t have a good sense about how many others are in this industry; it could be that there are dozens or hundreds of participants, but my guess is, like many other industries, it’s fairly concentrated and there’s a few big players and they’re really the drivers of the industry. But, maybe we could talk a little bit about the legitimacy of domaining, because this is definitely the crux of the matter from a litigation standpoint, and I think it’s also the crux of the matter from thinking about how we want to build an information architecture for the internet generally. I can tell two stories with respect to domain name legitimacy. Let’s look at it from the trademark owner’s perspective. The trademark owner says if someone is typing in my trademark into their address bar, they are looking for me, and if somebody interposes between the consumer and me, and offers that user the ability to go somewhere else; for example, to my competitors; that person is stealing business from me. And viewed that way, domaining is an illegitimate business. All it’s doing is taking people who want to make a match, the user trying to find the trademark owner and the trademark owner who wants to find its customer, and having those people diverted away, sent off to a place that they really may not want to go. But, there’s another way of viewing domaining that I think takes a much more consumer-centric view; which is, from a consumer . . . assume for a moment that you mistype a domain name into the address bar, what is the best user experience you can have at that point? Well, we know some things that you don’t want to have happen. Typically, users don’t want pop-ups and porn with a mistyped domain name. But what should happen then? In the old days, it used to be that we would get 404 pages. If you mistyped a domain name, you would get a 404, saying you are at the wrong place; figure out what you did wrong and try and go somewhere else. And, in theory, domainers are saying we know that you may have typed in something and we are going to try and help you figure out what you are looking for. We’ll give you a range of options that might be responsive to your needs. That way, perhaps domainers are actually helping consumers get from where they try to go to their ultimate destination. So, we have two very different stories about the legitimacy of the domaining business. The trademark owner view is that it’s just stealing their customers. The consumer . . . view is maybe domainers are helping me get where I want to go faster than a 404 page would.

We all know that content is king and that lively, pertinent content is best for keeping your visitors coming back for more. It is also a fact that even a king needs to reach out to his subjects occasionally, not least to ensure they do not forget his face. This is also true of websites. Rather than just relying on a loyal following coming to your site repeatedly, it helps if you take some measures to guide them back to your site every now and again. 

Imagine your site has only been online a couple of months. Chances are upwards of a hundred people will have visited during that period of time. Of that hundred, perhaps 50 arrived by accident and leave immediately. Of the other 50, perhaps 25 look at the site and find they were not particularly interested in what it offers, while another 10 might visit it once or twice and then stop. The other 15 though represent the start of a regular audience that takes an active interest in what your site offers.

If you were in a bricks and mortar environment, you would want to in contact with those people. If you were running a club, you would at least want their addresses so you can send updates on club activities. Particularly if you were a business, you would certainly want to keep in touch with these 15 people. Why should it be different if you are running a website?

Getting access to everyone who ever visited your site is highly unlikely and if it were possible, might not benefit you. As we have suggested, those who arrived at your site by accident would probably think you were spamming them (sending unsolicited email) and probably not appreciate it. How though do you keep in contact with the visitors who would appreciate it?

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Newsletters

No matter how good your content, your visitors’ attention might be drawn elsewhere and they might temporarily stop visiting your site. An email in an inbox can prove very difficult to ignore and can offer a gentle reminder that your site still exists.

Newsletters represent the lifeblood of many a website, and for some, become so popular they become the focus of revenue generation. For the uninitiated, newsletters are emails that provide text and graphics rather than just text. You have probably seen one along the way – the emails you receive that ask you to ‘Download Pictures’ are very probably newsletter type items.

Generally, newsletters provide a ‘taste’ of what is current on your website. The newsletter might provide the first few lines of an article or news item and then ask people to “Click here for more” and be taken to the full version of the article on the website if they are interested in it.

OK – great… but how do you get your visitors’ email addresses? This issue has to be handled well because people generally feel very sensitive about the way their email addresses are used.

First, create an ‘Opt In’ form on your site. This can either be part of elaborate advertising, or a simple little banner-sized item which requests people sign up for the newsletter by giving their name and email address.

Another way of generating email addresses is through email forms. Your site may have an email form that visitors use to contact you should they wish to order a product or express an opinion. At the bottom of the form (but in clear view) you can place a tick box which suggests “I would like to join the (your website name) mailing list and receive (current updates), etc.”

The courageous amongst us keeps the box ticked, meaning visitors have to “untick” the box NOT to be included in the mailing list. The cautious leave the box “unticked” so people have to make an effort to join. Either way, when you receive emails you must act on instructions and, either dynamically (using programming), or manually, add emails to your mailing list when requested to do so or not as the case may be.  

Once you have the emails, you are ready to send a newsletter. It is very important that the newsletter you send is NOT regarded as being spam. People may sign up for the newsletter and forget they have done so. Likewise, people may forget to untick a tick box at the foot of an email form. Either way, when they receive your newsletter, they might not appreciate it.

One of the best ways of managing this situation is to ensure people have the option to ‘unsubscribe’. This means they will be removed from the newsletter mailing list and not receive future editions. Make sure that you have a polite notice in a dominant position – something similar to this will suffice:

“If you have received this newsletter in error, or no longer wish to receive it, please click here to be removed from our mailing list”.

Most newsletter software will automatically remove an email from a database. If you are doing things manually it is your responsibility to ensure you receive a notification from people who want to be removed from your list and that you remove their email addresses.

Spamming is serious, even if unintentional. In some parts of the world it is a criminal offence, punishable with fines and prison. At a minimum, if someone thinks you are sending them spam, they can contact your ISP and ask your site be brought down. Most ISPs will comply with such requests without hesitation for fear of getting a bad reputation themselves.

People who have genuinely signed up for your newsletter will though get fed up if they start receiving it at times they did not expect. If this is a daily newsletter, make sure that people know that when they sign up. Likewise monthly, yearly or occasionally! Most importantly, have something to say. Make sure that your newsletter offers variety – receiving basically the same newsletter day after day or week after week can soon demote your newsletter to spam.

Certainly do not, under any circumstances, start adding emails you find along the way to your mailing list, regardless of whether you think people would appreciate it. People have lost their websites and livelihoods for doing so.

Although a lot of newsletters start life as an Outlook email, when a newsletter grows, webmasters need to transition to a more powerful and robust solution. For those with a server a number of programs can be used to send a newsletter. PHPList (http://www.phplist.com/) is an Open Source solution that people rave about. Being Open Source it is free. Likewise, there are countless commercial newsletter software solutions out there. You will have to plough through what is available and see what suits your purpose.

All ‘on site’ solutions though need managing – you need someone to install them and take care of them. If that person is not you then costs occur. Likewise, sending out thousands of newsletters can put massive strain on your server, and you might need to upgrade it at further cost. A possible alternative to this is a commercial newsletter service.

Online newsletter services are generally cost effective and hassle free. They take all the responsibility for sending your newsletter, freeing you to concentrate on core competencies. There are a number of good ones. YourMailingListProvider.com is a great one – I have used it for years. There are though several options and it is well worth doing a proper investigation to find out what is best for you.

2. Forums

To some, forums are the residue of the 1990s and strictly Web 1.0. To others, they are a way of life. To a sad few, they are life.

If you have not seen a forum, you must have been living under a rock. If that is the case, here it is – forums are basically pages where people can leave comments on topics of interest set up by a forum owner. If your website is about travel, your forum can offer topics such as “My best overseas adventure”, “Budget flights to the US”, or even “Carbon Offsetting”. People then leave comments on their opinions or experiences of the topic. For example, “I went to the US on Rockbottom Airways and it only cost $14” – that sort of thing. Most forums operate by allowing people to reply to other people’s comments and so discussions take place and your visitors start creating content for your website – a significant perk.

Some forums take over the websites they are part of; others fall flat on their faces. They can be difficult to get going depending on the topic. Many forum operators have a number of accounts where they simply add topics and comments to “talk” to themselves until someone takes the bait and starts a proper discussion. However, if they do take off, that can be a problem too. People can leave offensive comments that need removing and spam is a problem on forums, too – how often have you seen an advert for Viagra on a pet forum?

You need people to manage a forum. You will start by deleting unwanted listings and banning unwanted members who have broken the forums rules (make them public) yourself, but most forum software allows ‘moderators’ to do the same. Moderators are people who have permission to delete and ban people on certain forums and not others, or on all forums, as their permissions are granted by the website owner.

Why though is a forum important for someone trying to keep hold of a website audience? Well, aside from the obvious ‘stickiness’ of a forum, most forum software allows ‘Private Messages’, or ‘PMs’. This option allows members to contact other members. More importantly, it allows a forum operator to contact forum members. At sign up, forum members have to provide an email address that PMs are sent to. Although email addresses are not usually available to a forum operator, it is of little consequence – a PM gets the message to forum members, so you can advertise your latest promotions or let them know when the next club dinner is using this function.

One thing that is important to remember about forums is that people quickly generate a sense of ownership. PMs sent for advertising purposes might not be received well if not expected. Make sure that you explain exactly what you are going to do before people signup. Most forum software provides a sign up page where people have to tick a box to indicate they accept the terms and conditions of forum usage. Likewise, software usually allows webmasters to change the terms and conditions on the sign up page. Ensure that your terms and conditions state that you will at times send PMs to make members aware of current promotions, or the advertising of other websites or businesses if this is what you are planning. So long as it is very clear how you intend to operate your forum at the outset, people cannot really complain. They have a choice as to whether they join or not.

Again, there are a number of forum options. Popular commercial software includes VBulletin and Invision. Free Open Source offerings include phpBB. Many web hosts offer a forum solution as part of their packages. However, as with newsletters, forums need managing. They have to be installed, and someone needs to maintain them. Once again, if that is not you there are costs aside from often expensive license fees. A viable alterative then is online forums, which are often free (paid for by third-party advertising) or provided at a moderate cost. FreeForums.org, HostMyBB.com, and InVisionPlus.net are examples for free options. Again, there are many to choose from, and some offer the ability to move forum content to your own site if it a forum proves successful. Choose the one that meets your needs.

3. Mail Server Groups

In fact, Mail Server Groups is probably an old-fashioned term these days – I think most people just call them Google or Yahoo! groups these days, regardless of the fact other options are available. Like a forum, Mail Server groups are based around a particular topic or theme and attract people interested in that topic or theme. The difference is, rather than the asynchronous postings delivered to a forum, Mail Server groups are real time. When you make a comment to Mail Server group, it is delivered to the inbox of all of the group’s members. Replies are delivered to all group members too, prompting genuine, real time discussion.

Of course, the prospect of having a community discussing issues important to your site / business has obvious advantages. You can contact your users or customers and get immediate feedback on activities or initiatives. You might learn a few things important for the improvement of your business, but most of all, you will have access to those who have visited your site. The possibilities are endless, but for the purposes of our discussion, they certainly help you keep hold of your visitors.

4. Blogs

Blogs these days are ubiquitous. Very similar to forums, blogs provide interactive discussion. Like forums, your visitors will have to register for to join your blog, enabling you to keep track of your active visitors. WordPress is an Open Source (and therefore free) blog solution and recognized by some as a leader. However, as with the other solutions we mentioned, there are numerous free alternatives. Blogger.com (owned by Google) provides a very useable and highly customizable alternative to managing a blog yourself. Many highly respected and high profile companies have their blog here, so do not feel yours would be out of place on a free solution. You need simply provide a link to your free blog to get things rolling. Consider all options available to you first though WordPress.com offers an online version of its Open Source solution.

As we said at the outset, content is king, but webmasters these days have a number of tools to help them keep hold of their audience. However, the options are not just restricted to those outlined above. Consider all aspects of Web 2.0. Social networking sites like Facebook, Live.com, MySpace, and even YouTube could also prove to be the solutions you need for your particular situation. Be creative, and keeping hold of you audience using noninvasive and respectful approaches means you visitors will come back to your site time and time again!