In Anchor

Jeff Gerstmann’s negative review of massively promoted Eidos title Kane & Lynch: Dead Men may have contributed to his dismissal as gaming editorial director from CNet’s Gamespot.

Bloggers have been asking the same question: was Gerstmann fired for giving Kane & Lynch a less than positive video review. Though neither Gerstmann nor CNet will discuss his change in employment status, the Internet has plenty of people who will do it for them.

A Kotaku tipster said Gerstmann offended Eidos with the “tone” of a video review he did of the game. CNet allegedly fired him on the spot.

However, a Joystiq post said a CNet spokesperson provided a general comment that the company does not terminate people “based on external pressure from advertisers.” The company would not comment on Gerstmann’s specific circumstances.

Considering the opening minute of Gerstmann’s video, where he derides the characters and gameplay of Kane & Lynch, one would expect the game publisher to be less than thrilled with their huge ad campaign being undercut by the 21st Century version of the boy who points out the emperor is really in a state of undress.

But as the Rock, Paper, Shotgun blog noted, “there must be more to it” than what the flying rumors suggest. Unfortunately, Gerstmann isn’t talking yet.

Jeff Gerstmann, Gamespot, CNet, Kane & Lynch, Eidos, Gaming

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Found in the search marketing forums: Major Site Exclusion Failure; Reciprocal Links Are (Still) Not Dead; Tips or Tools for Viewing Location-Specific Ads; and more.

Posted by great scott!

As promised, here’s a bonus edition of Whiteboard Friday, Part II of Rand’s interview with the one, the only, Danny Sullivan.  Part II covers what Danny would like to label "Search 3.0," that is to say Vertical Search, Universal Search, Integrated Search, Blended Search, etc (of course, most of those are trademarked, hence the need for a generic term like Search 3.0).

Beyond 3.0, the guys go on to discuss what may evolve in the future into Search 4.0, 5.0 and beyond. Oh, and Danny makes a colossal effin’ mess of the whiteboard.

We’ll bring you the rest of this interview (parts 3-5) next week, as we’ll all be at Pubcon. I may also hit you with some other video content throughout the week because what happens in Vegas, stays on video

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Want someone to take you seriously?  An effective (if inelegant) way of getting attention is to flash some cash.  That practice may also, as it turns out, get you a link from Google.

Send $2,000 to Dell, which both manufactures and sells the Google Search Appliance, and you’ll get a yellow piece of hardware in return.  You’ll also likely be listed on a page of “Mini Customer Success Stories.”  Some of the companies named there obviously aren’t in it for the link - what does the Arizona Federal Credit Union care about search engine rankings? - but others probably are.

Barry Schwartz points to Neutralize, which is in the business of search engine marketing.  And more than one company’s name ends in “.com” - it’s hard to believe they didn’t notice what they were getting into.

That’s not to condemn this practice - I find it more odd than objectionable, and Schwartz doesn’t believe any nofollow tags are necessary.  He points out, though, “I think Matt would think otherwise.”

Whatever anyone thinks, a change in the near future is unlikely - Schwartz also points out that Scott Woodard documented this practice about six months ago.

Tags: Google, Search Appliance, Links

This year, you’ll get about 4,351 spam messages, and by 2010, aggressive spam filtering technology from email providers will have that down to about 4,403.

Your math is right; that is more. But according to experts, it’s a good kind of more, if you’re stretching to remain positive about spam.

After all, that is 4,403 more spam messages than you’d like to have.

But if you deal in numbers and stats, that projected extra 50 or so represents a leveling out, or potentially a decline in the number of spam messages sent. Wired, after talking with Google and Jupiter Research, suggests that could mean spammers are getting discouraged.

Spam fighters take a lot of the credit, as do law enforcement in many countries, but I think also as people get savvier to spam, the less effective it is at drawing customers.

But if Gmail would like drop that number (or increase it by fewer), they might come up with a way to notice that all my messages are in English, and if the filter can’t differentiate between Roman letter-based languages, then at least, with all the sophistication they say they have, maybe they could find a way to block messages in Russian, Greek, or Chinese.

Much appreciated. 

spam

More than 95 percent of email marketers measure their campaigns but many do use the results to support their budgeting goals, according to EmailStatCenter.com’s "State of Email Metrics," sponsored by Campaigner.

When asked how often they measure results, 57 percent said they measure results 24-48 hours after deployment. Only 18 percent said they measured results on an annual basis.

"One thing that I find noticeable is the lack of revisiting campaigns and their metrics on a more frequent basis,"Luc Vezina, vice president of marketing at Campaigner, said.

"In order to truly use email metrics for the betterment of your campaigns and gather key learnings from them, marketers must continually evaluate and benchmark their campaigns, in addition to looking at them immediately after the send."

Email campaigns were usually measured for success, but just half of email marketers said they used metrics for budgeting or forecasting.

Respondents had a range of email marketing budgets, but the largest number of markets (31%) budgeted less than $50,000 annually.

Simms Jenkins, founder of EmailStatCenter.com said," It is clear from these responses that there is a strong need for metric definition and standardization across the email marketing industry and that metrics are a very valuable tool in measuring and maintaining success."

Email Marketing

Google has taken steps to remove malware websites from its search results, according to a ComputerWorld article released Wednesday.

Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software Distribution Inc released the news Monday that Google had removed more than 40,000 malware sites from its search results. While Google refused to either confirm or deny this, spot checks by Sunbelt researcher Adam Thomas did not turn up any malware sites.

While Google would not confirm the purge, or even if the sites existed in the index in the first place, a Google spokeswoman said in an email: "In our search results, we try to warn users of potentially dangerous sites when we know of them. Sites that clearly exploit browser security holes to install software, such as malware, spyware, viruses, adware and Trojan horses, are in violation of the Google quality guidelines and may be removed from Google’s index."

A combination of "malicious" and "software", malware is used to install unwanted software the may cause damage or unwanted behavior on the infected computer. Even if these malware sites have been removed from the search index, hackers tend to find ways to get their malware back in the path of internet users one way or another.

Keeping your operating system and virus protection software up to date can help reduce the risk of becoming infected, but following a few simple tips is also recommended:

- Avoid file sharing applications.

- Never open an email attachment unless you are certain you know what it is.

- Avoid free software downloads unless they are from a trusted source.

Comments

Tags: Google, malware

I spoke at the Gilbane conference yesterday (you can download my slides on semantic search).

I fielded a number of interesting questions, but the one that made me stop and think for a minute was this one, "What’s the hardest objection you ever overcame to sell a company on enterprise search?"

I was glad the other panelist answered first, because it took me a moment to think of something. It was several years ago, but I remember it like yesterday. (OK, OK, I’m old. I remember it a lot better than yesterday.)

A very well-run company had an unusually sane way of making technology decisions. They developed real business cases based on improved revenue or reduced cost, and they actually tracked whether the projects delivered on the promise one and two years later. (It was not great for your career if they didn’t.) So, they wanted to subject their decision to license an intranet search engine to the same scrutiny.

They asked a simple question: "How can we prove that this search technology will increase revenue for our company?" It was a simple question, but the toughest one I’d ever gotten. There would be no productivity savings business cases here. No "If we assume that we save just six minutes each week for every knowledge worker…" No! This one needed a real business case. I promised the customer I’d put on my thinking cap and get back to him. (Since then, I’ve decided to wear my thinking cap all the time, despite all those snarky comments about my appearance.)

But how do you claim that anything you do to improve employees finding information will generate revenue? At first, I couldn’t think of anything. I mean, if the HR people save some time, would a nickel roll in under the door from a customer? What about the executives? Or the accounting department? I couldn’t come up with how I could stitch together revenue stories for every different usage of search across an entire enterprise full of employees on the intranet.

So I took a different approach. I started to ask myself which employees really did have an impact on revenue. Of course! It’s the sales force. But how could I justify revenue based on making sales people more productive? I needed to go back to the customer for more information.

So, I asked my customer how they had justified that spiffy sales force automation package they used. And their spanking-new customer realtionship management system. At first, he was puzzled about why I wanted to know, but he showed me the studies they’d done that showed how their sales people spent their time (18% was finding information) and the revenue impact of saving time for their sales people.

That was all I needed. I put together a business case that showed that the extra revenue stemming from the increased productivity of sales people more than paid for the search facility for the entire company. In fact, making information available to busy sales people on smart phones (where search is one of the few effective interfaces for a small screen) was enough to justify the search investment all by itself.

It was a tough question, but it had a good answer. You can’t always justify technology investments based on revenue, and search is one of the toughest, but if you think about it a little bit, sometimes you can pull it off.

Comments

Tag: enterprise search

A lot has been written about the odd things you can buy online, and this particular listing’s been radiating around the blogosphere for the past couple of months. Available through Amazon "used and new" for just $22.95: uranium.

Just to get it out of the way, no, it’s not weapon’s grade. It’s uranium 238 ore, which is in abundant supply in the ground all over the place and is relatively safe. (Try not to inhale or injest the pieces that splinter off, though.) You’re thinking of uranium 235, the dangerous kind, which is not available on Amazon, unless you count a band that goes by that name.

Of course, if you know how to fire a neutron at it you can make plutonium. Add a flux capacitor and you’re on your way to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance with Marty and Einstein the Dog.

There are apparently lots of places to buy uranium online – you know, for educational and scientific purposes – including eBay, where photos show it looks a lot like Kryptonite. You can also find a nice array of uranium "Depression glass" products there as well.

Yes, there are other uses for uranium than blowing stuff up.

Paulo A. Nuin Suano provides the first of several tongue-in-cheek product reviews:

"This product is great, I was waiting for something like this since Amazon was on telnet only. The only bad thing is that the Red October Sub is backordered and we won’t have in time for a Xmas party in the Arctic."

Ah, sarcasm.

But if you came into this article hoping for some disturbing news, we’ve got you covered. People that bought a tub of uranium ore also bought an electromagnetic field meter, a copy of The Complete A**hole’s Guide to Handling Chicks, a lot (A LOT) of kinky lingerie, and the Ultimate Anal Douche Hygienic System.  

Enjoy your dinner. 

Amazon eBay ecommerce uranium 238