Payday Loan Blog - SEO

Next in our series of acquisition report cards for “search” companies, we turn to IAC. Previously we scored Google and Yahoo. How will IAC stack up to these two search powerhouses?

Reading further, we come away thinking that IAC is more similar to Yahoo than it is to Google, with a spammier feel, but a stronger domainer brand focus.

To understand the future, we once again need to peer into the past. With the help of the IAC’s major holdings page, the following is an attempt to score each holding. A “good” or “bad” acquisition is based solely on whether IAC has done anything useful, to date, with that holding, in terms of integration with the rest of the network. Since we have no real insight into the depths of IAC, in terms of key engineers that might have floated from one project to another, it is conjecture at best. But hey, we hope you enjoy the analysis anyhow.

Judging IAC might be best on a per sector basis first, and then as a whole. As a whole, I’m actually surprised…before the research began, I didn’t realize to the extent they have stretched their corporate tentacles; their good sectors prop up their weaker sectors in a very intelligent way.

Retailing = Mixed
(mostly weaker brands that are pushed through some pretty good sales channels)

Aggregator = Good
(a lot of brand reinforcement and complimentary sales)

Subscription = Good
(mostly due to the dating sites)

Media = Good
(they have the opportunity to tie together their media properties into something to rival Yahoo at the very least)

Emerging Biz = Mixed
(Gifts.com alone makes it good, but some of the other services could be more miss than hit).

The aggregator market is actually better than it appears because aggregation markets prosper when they have access to a lot of consumer information, which they would have due to the retailing market…very clever. The same trend continues throughout their business model.

What is the strength of having a dozen 2nd tier retail sites? Consumer information. How can that consumer information be best used? Dating, mortgages, more consumer products. This Diller guy seems to know what he’s doing. If Yahoo ever gets its act together and ties together the various networks it owns, then the value of that one yahoo account to control everything climbs exponentially. For IAC, a renter that buys a pair of pants online might be in the market for a house, and then in the market for some home improvement. Is the person single? Sell some dating services. What if that person came through on the HSN? Well, send them to iwon and smileycentral, pushing Ask.com brands all the way.

We have not heard the last of IAC; my prediction is that Diller will continue to quietly purchase mid-brand consumer goods companies/sites, premium domains, and build/buy strong aggregator brands. How long until they own a couple travel aggregators beyond their current deals with Hotwire? If I were in IAC corporate strategy, I’d be bristling with excitement right about now. With that much consumer information, the world is theirs.

JoeSinkwitz

Based on the feedback received from a few social media sites, Digg especially, there was certainly interest in seeing how other major search companies fare in comparison to Google, on an acquisition basis. Well before Google started buying everything in site, Yahoo was the major acquirer of everything digital. How do these acquisitions measure up, in terms of helping to create an economic moat?

To understand the future, we once again need to peer into the past. With the help of the wiki article on Yahoo’s past acquisitions, the following is an attempt to score each acquisition. A “good” or “bad” acquisition is based solely on whether Yahoo has done anything useful, to date, with that acquisition. Since we have no real insight into the depths of Yahoo, in terms of key engineers that might have floated from one project to another, it is conjecture at best. But hey, we hope you enjoy the analysis anyhow.

Remember that Google was rated at roughly a 3.5 GPA based on its “good”, “bad”, and “mixed” scores, so it was a tough task to measure up to. How did Yahoo do? To say that they’ve had a peanut butter strategy is an understatement – an outsider with no understanding would have a tough time figuring out core competence other than to say “they do something online;” however, the possibility does remain that especially with the sheer number of communities purchased, a simple and effective solution to tie the Yahoo brand and networkability back and forth could create a very powerful company…search at that point almost becomes an afterthought since a consumer of information can become a consumer of goods simply by virtue of connections.

So far, most of the purchases, from the outsider’s point of view, were made…well, simply because they were available. One would hope that an acquisition is made to bolster core search technologies, or expand advertising reach (given that Yahoo is more of a media company than a search company), or perhaps to extend web accessibility value chains and make sense of all the data. Unfortunately, this just didn’t happen, since Yahoo’s strategy, just looking above, has been to buy first and ask questions later. At the time of some purchases the ideas seem fantastic, but the execution has been horrendous… purchasing a key widget maker in 2005 but then not doing anything with it and thus having to purchase another widget in 2007 is unacceptable; given Yahoo’s strategy, I would not be surprised to see them acquire more search technology that never gets integrated, more social networking sites that don’t share information among a standards-based architecture, and the occasional completely unrelated purchase for the sake of spending money that could be spent overpaying a CEO 900+% against peer average (I kid… sort of.)

Does this mean that Yahoo isn’t likely to ever rival Google for online dominance? Most likely. While Yahoo gets more eyeballs to the entirety of its network, the network is so fragmented that its power doesn’t conform to Metcalfe’s law, and thus is underutilized.

It is only a matter of time before the Yahoo brand is purchased by a very smart media/tech company, with pieces spun off at top dollar, and the rest properly integrated to extract true value… IAC or Microsoft? eBay or Amazon? We’ll be watching.

JoeSinkwitz

You've probably been reading more and more about Google's recent acquisition binge, what it means to privacy, monopolistic concerns, etc. Unfortunately, I haven't been seeing enough of what it means to Google as a business.will they allow Google to grow more profitably in the future, will they create some sort of economic moat?

To understand the future, we need to peer into the past. With the help of the Wiki article on Google's past acquisitions, the following is an attempt to score each acquisition. A "good" or "bad" acquisition is based solely on whether Google has done anything useful, to date, with that acquisition. Since we have no real insight into the depths of Google, in terms of key engineers that might have floated from one project to another, it is conjecture at best. But hey, we hope you enjoy the analysis anyhow.

The Google Report Card

Google's Boosting Resources

So far, most of the purchases, from the outsider's point of view, were made to either bolster core search technologies, expand advertising reach, extend web accessibility value chain, or help to make sense of all the data. Even then, the acquisitions marked "mixed" or "bad" may have synergies we simply can't see right now, or as theorized above, were made more to acquire talent than any specific technology.

The Future Of Google

Does this mean the pending transactions of Doubleclick, Feedburner, and possibility Salesforce are a good idea? Most likely. Doubleclick could be used to once again expand that ad network, Feedburner would bring access to even more user information, and Salesforce would be a mixed opinion, likely used as a compliment to Neotonic.

I want to know when Google is going to stop holding back though; buy Apple and Nintendo, just to get it out of the way.

JoeSinkwitz

We’ve all heard the phrase that it isn’t what you know, but who you know. I personally encountered this saying multiple times back during my undergrad years when I was interviewing with guys like Deloitte, Compaq, and KPMG. A person could be brilliant, but lose out to someone with better connections (i.e. nepotism); it was usually the difference between an offer and an interview elsewhere.

As we get more ingrained in our respective industries, especially true in affiliate marketing, it isn’t just who you know, but who knows what you know, and who they know. Yes, it is a mouthful, but worth understanding.

My mother-in-law and my mother are both heavily connected in medical communities; as a proxy relationship, I know a lot of “who” individuals. However, it doesn’t do me much good because they really have no concept of what it is I do for a living, yet alone why my firm is better than company X, etc. If I were a newly minted doctor, it'd be striking gold, but I'm not (and I hear about that decision at least once a week).

That takes care of the importance of the first two pieces, and now the final. Let’s say that you know a lot of “who” individuals in your respective industry since you’re ancient, but they also understand what it is you know that makes you so special. This is a fantastic step, and if you are at this point in your career, you’re bound to be successful…now for the clincher and the whole point of social networking (the kind that mattered, before the likes of Digg): it is all about who they know. Metcalfe’s law is very, very important and will open up a sea of opportunities if you know how to use it to your advantage.

Below are some people in our industry that you should get to know for connections, that you should aspire to show off your unique talents to, and whom can probably connect you to an unbelievable amount of other contacts you might not even be aware of. Did I leave a lot of people out? Yes, but mainly because by connecting to these individuals, you are likely to run into the rest due to the size of their respective networks.

Affiliate Programs

Linda Buquet

Blackhat SEO

Quadszilla

Community Development

Lee Dodd

Domaining

Frank Schilling

Insanity

Chris Hooley

Link Building

Jarrod Hunt

Organic Search

Aaron Wall

PPC

Jeremy Schoemaker

Social Media

Michael Gray

Whitehat SEO

Rand Fishkin

If you can impress just one of these people and can show that you are worth doing business with, it’ll make all the difference.

JoeSinkwitz

Initially the plan was to talk about where search engines might be in 10 years, who the big players might be, etc. I still want to do that, but I wanted to broaden the discussion to touch on more topics relevant to the affiliate community, since I believe other topics will significantly influence how the game is run. Below are a collection of some thoughts on the subject.

1. SEO and domaining will converge leaving zero distinction between the two; it makes far too much sense for SEOs to understand that as search evolves, the exact match (non-hyphenated domain) will have the highest likelihood of being the most relevant, everything else being equal. For domainers, to ignore a channel as big as search is silly…because of this I expect to see quality search agencies getting gobbled up by large domainers and large search agencies buying small to medium-sized domain portfolios.

2. Unsolicited commercial e-mail will shrink. As the intent understanding increases, and the message can be determined on the fly to be commercial versus non-commercial, a series of AI elements should be able to figure out whether you wanted it or not. Consider that the three most popular e-mail addresses are held by the three biggest search engines, and you'll see that the necessary AI advances will have to be produced anyhow. White listing services will be worth their weight in gold.

3. Search will remain an oligopoly, with 4 major players and little else outside of it. Google, Microsoft, eBay and Amazon. Google remains primarily due to their current status and edge, developing algorithmic solutions based on the world's content and historical linking data, with relevancy that varies the way that slot machine payouts vary [and for the same reason]. Yahoo will continue to purchase social media and community-centric networks, eventually showing more and more signs of financial stress, resulting in the company being unable to quickly tie the networks together; Microsoft will help ease the transition by purchasing them outright…the Yahoo/MSN brand is up for grabs, but Microsoft will slowly pull the data together, determining relevancy across and breadth and depth of user data that Google will not have (though they'll be close). eBay's purchase of Stumbleupon, integration of Skype and Paypal, and increased understanding of global markets will make them the number 3 player in search, as the premiere shopping engine; future purchases of shopping agent technology may also be necessary. The number 4 player will briefly be IAC, but after years of trying to make ASK a success in its own right, the technology will be sold to Amazon, who integrates the small but growing community into its own network, competing more head to head with eBay than either Microsoft or Google is capable of doing.

4. Text-messaging, IM, and E-mail will converge; the choice of communication will either be instantaneous or delayed, largely due to when a person is willing to carry on communications - they will grow to become a commercial communications platform, complete with voice and video. A person will have the ability to communicate hidden or in view, silent or aloud. Privacy and unconnected time will be but a flutter of a memory.

5. Affiliate networks will be replaced with affiliate platforms, which make it easy for offline companies to create boxed solutions complete with CRM, the benefit being it will be harder and harder to distinguish between the ultimate retailer and the actual affiliate, especially among the savvier affiliates that corner market after market. While the easy money will likely have disappeared much in the same way it disappeared after each Internet gold rush, there will still be a wealth of riches to be made by those capable of thinking differently and pushing limits.

6. Television and streaming online video will be essentially the same thing; leaders like Comcast will attempt to tie up the cable line monopoly, but intelligent distribution companies like Google, that have been buying up dark fiber and wireless distribution rights, will be able to circumvent the strict scheduling process that the outdated paradigm currently upholds. Entertainment will be real-time or it will be on-demand; product placement and internal advertising will replace commercials; Youtube and its future peers will replace ABC, NBC, CBS, et al.

7. Word of mouth will still be the most effective way to gain mindshare and build a lasting brand.

JoeSinkwitz

For those of you not intimately involved in social media, there was quite an event unfolding this evening on the popular social news site Digg.

It began with a story containing a HD-DVD key, which according to the DMCA is illegal. Digg, as a business, acted to remove that post.

Cue Russell Crowe yelling "unleash hell" because that's exactly what happened. Posting multiple stories and voting them up as quickly as possible, under the pretense of a revolt revolving around free speech and rallying against censorship, many Diggers made their voices heard.

Where do I as a person stand on this issue? Well...Digg is a business, Digg.com is owned by Digg, and the DMCA, while arguably an inane law, is still a law. Digg did what was right, and now Diggers are showing the world what many outside the cynical community already knew: it is time to grow up.

Does that mean that dissenters should have their accounts deleted? For simply dissenting, no. For posting illegal material? Yes. Hopefully this will all blow over soon so Digg can go back to just hating us SEO types and burying useful information without actually reading the content.

JoeSinkwitz

Update: Digg decided to ignore the C&D, for better or worse. Personally, I don't think it was a good idea to take that stance, and think it is even worse that he publically took that stance, given the ammunition the opposing lawyers will now have.

The Internet continues its constant churning, with heightened deal-making over the past few weeks. What do you make of the following?
eBay acquiring StumbleUpon?
CLEAR CHANNEL in advertising deal with GOOGLE?
Google to Buy DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion Cash?

Now, not everything above is a done deal and is certainly subject to change, but it reminds me of a different time, one that looked like:
eBay acquiring Paypal?
Ask Jeeves in advertising deal with Google?
Google to buy Pyra Labs (Blogger)?

Every few years in business there is an expansion, followed by rampant consolidation and excess VC funding, and then ultimately digestion and contraction; these business cycles aren't really anything new, and because of that, it can be possible to use them to your advantage.

In years of expansion we see little fishes get their start, among a sea of bigger fishes that don't pay them much mind. Why not? The larger fishes are a battled scarred from previous cycles, not paying much heed to these new nuisances; the larger fish are really only concerned with the other larger fishes. Time passes and those little fish start to bulk up a bit, maybe swimming faster and further than some of the bigger fish…suddenly, one of them gets eaten. At that moment, one of the larger fish just got a bit larger than the other fish, which frightens the others, fueling a furry of ferocious fish feeding. After that frenzy finishes, the remaining fish are bloated and lumbering, barely able to move…many die. Time passes and new fish come along.

While a bit cynical, that analogy isn't far from the truth, where companies at some point begin to buy anything and everything remotely related to the buzz phrases of that particular business cycle. Just 8 years ago it was a search for more eyeballs, without concern for profits. After the consolidation and digestion period, purchases were slower and the companies of the time that launched were uninteresting (read: profitable). Now the cycle is in full swing again with bubble 2.0, with the bigger fish again snapping up a variety of unprofitable companies that have a large number of social eyeballs.

Okay, okay. How do you make money in all of this craziness?
Selectively adapt.

I don't advocate ignoring your core business because that business is likely the reason you are even in business (convoluted enough?). Instead, it might make sense to spend 10-20% of your time on a new buzz-related concept, building a tiny fish that looks like it might just be something a larger fish would eat…granted, the original larger fishes would likely sniff that venture and pass on for something more substantial, but the newly larger fishes that are on an eating binge generally don't taken into account true value - the logic seems to be that if it looks sort of like food, even if it isn't, chomp. Hook. Line. Sinker.

Just make sure your 2.0 clone is easily spun off from your core assets so you can go back to really growing your business in the wake of the feeding frenzy, and if you don't actually get eaten, don't worry. Why not? Most acquisitions have a negative combination value, meaning that your venture at some point very well could have a value greater than the originators of the concept; by the time the next business cycle is coming around, you could be one of the first to be eaten.

JoeSinkwitz

I struggled for a bit on the title because the point of this post isn't to come of as pompous or boastful; rather, it is to instruct on a general way of thinking. A while back, I drew a rather simplistic view of what a search engine is, comparing it to a single data table with a few columns (scoring variables) and a few rows (some URLs). Based on that simple concept, hopefully at least a few people began to realize that the goal of what search professionals do is to try to anticipate what variables will be most heavily weighted, and build sites around those variables. In time that variable mix may be quality content that is appropriately viewed upon by its true peers as important relative to other documents, but that mix just isn't there yet.

So, if the variable mix isn't to the point where quality content that is viewed as quality by its true peers, what is the goal of a search engine? To get there.

How do they get there? Incremental changes usually. We've all seen the changes as search engines evolve, chasing that relevancy perfection that provides the optimal blend of paid advertising and pure unadulterated content…from content to votes, from votes from really authority sites, to votes from really authority sites, etc; the engines do and will continue to evolve.

So, how do you outthink a group of PhDs? By not trying to outthink them.  Are you confused? It is slightly counterintuitive, but you'll see what I mean.

With all the A/B testing that goes on, tweaking filters, employing re-ranking tactics, constantly shuffling and reintroducing data, there can be a whole lot of things to track in your attempt to stay on top of the game. Try not to focus too much on that for the time being though - instead, I want you to develop a list of phrases to track on a fairly regular basis, completely independent of each other. Track historically spammy phrases in the male enhancement pharmaceutical arena to dog biscuits, civil war action figures, to the bicentennial - track a lot of competitive and non-competitive phrases because I want you to be able to see what happens when changes occur. Every week, run through your list of phrases and just look for a few things:
1. Top 10 players, their top 10 incoming links according to Yahoo, and total # links
2. Those that fell out of the Top 10, their top 10 incoming links according to Yahoo, and total # links
3. On each phrase, is the current mix more relevant or less relevant [score 1 for yes, and 0 for no]

Whenever you want to know what the engines currently like, just compare the two sets of data…really, that simple usually. When I say compare, that becomes a bit more nebulous because what I personally look for isn't always the same…sometimes I may notice a keyword phrase within the URL being given more weight, sometimes it might be keyword density, age of site, co-occurrence of related phrases, etc. Usually though, in our current environment, it has been links. How many, how powerful, how relevant? If the score is higher than last week, and you were being honest, expect the changes to stick; if it was lower…a lot lower…you can probably go back to doing something else.

Now, a room full of PhDs would probably assume that some people are going to try to reverse engineer their algorithm and filter sets by looking at a large grouping of unrelated data; thus, what you just did isn't all that earth shattering to them, and I have a hunch that they wouldn't really care, given that for most search professionals, the next logical step is to provide the engines with that they are trying to reach: relevancy.  Yes, holes will be exploited, but so long as their A/B testing shows a measurable increase in overall relevancy from their own grouping of unrelated keyword phrases, that change is likely to stick.

If you can see a certain variable weighting change that would improve relevancy, plan for it occurring; build a site just for that purpose if you have to.  For instance, I think social media marketing will get filtered down a notch in the upcoming year, due to its rampant use, either by taking into account how quickly the links are added (already there, but just tweaking that) and by taking into account more differences between root domain theme / page theme, root domain authority / page authority, inlink theme. Who knows though, the A/B testing may show that the end results of social media marketing actually produce more relevant results.

Have a pleasant weekend.

JoeSinkwitz