Levi at Wordze is giving away a list of over 100,000 keywords that are popular Google searches. It's an excel file with each keyword and it's rank.
Click here: for Google Keywords list and you'll be asked for your email. Then you'll be mailed the list.
The mail will also have a subscription activation link for wordze, which you don't have to click or complete. See my review of Wordze here - it's a valuable service for building keyword lists.
¶ 2/28/2008
This renews my faith in American education. Plus it's hilarious.
http://www.photobasement.com/41-hilarious-science-fair-experiments/
I'm serious, there are some great experiments in there... ("Crystal Meth: Friend or Foe?" is not one of them however.)
Labels: randomness
¶ 2/20/2008
There's a lot of press out there predicting that the incipient Microsoft takeover of Yahoo is doomed to fail. It's the dominant meme.
However, one set of potential users is rooting for it: People who buy search ads.
Andrew Goodman estimates at the London SES conference, attendees are for the merger at a 7-to-1 ratio.
When you look at it, it makes sense, and I've highlighted the key reason before:
Google market share in search is something like 60-65%, and in Europe, it's higher.
Yahoo's share is currently around 25%, and Microsoft is about 10%.
Put together Microsoft and Yahoo, and you have a decent #2 at 35% share.
Simply put, PPC buyers want to go to fewer places, and want a more viable alternative to Google.
Microsoft could throw away most of Yahoo, except Mail and the front page, and have hopes to turn this acquisition into something useful - simply because search is where the money is! Sure it's expensive just to compete with Google in search, but when you are Microsoft, you need to protect your cash cows from incursion by Google.
I think Ballmer's best option and natural tendency is to go after Google's cash cow. Yahoo's really the only way to do that.
I'm still pretty sure Microsoft's current management isn't the team to do it, but at least you can understand why it makes sense from a PPC buyer point of view.
Labels: microhoo, microsoft, yahoo
¶ 2/20/2008
If you don't know, Helmut Newton is a world famous photographer, who mostly takes sexual pictures of beautiful women. Anyways, here's how he describes his childhood:
I was sickly and fainted a lot and I masturbated like a world champion! My mother was always fearful of my health so I was driven to school by a uniformed chauffeur to avoid germs. I was not allowed to touch a railing or to handle money. I was spoiled, unbearable, and an awful coward.
He's from a time when people lived a bit more...
When you were 18 you fled Nazi Germany on a ship to Singapore. Yet your recollection of that time in history is “I screwed through the Mediterranean. I stuck with married women around 30 years of age.”You must understand that for the Jews that ship was an island paradise because finally no-one could hurt us. Every evening there was dancing, drinking, f***ing. But I always found 17 year old girls less exciting than older women who were glamorous, sophisticated, and had sex appeal!
When you arrived in Singapore you had five dollars to your name, which you immediately spent in a brothel.
My sound financial sense told me there was no difference between having five dollars and being completely broke.
Note that he's been immensely successful in life:
Your about to be published autobiography stops in 1982. What have the readers missed?Nothing! People who reach their goals are very uninteresting. What could I have written about the last 20 years? I met a lot of awfully boring Hollywood bimbos. I earned a lot of money. I fly only first class.
You don’t make it sound like much fun.
It would have been fun to say I f***ed her and I f***ed her, but my wife June and I have an agreement not to talk about such subjects.
Upshot: Don't worry too much about how much your kids masturbate.
Labels: randomness
¶ 2/16/2008
This post is the first in an irregular series.
Seminal site of the day: here.
Feel free to suggest other historically important classic internet sites in the comments. Thank you.
¶ 2/16/2008
Henry Blodget has been en fuego with his coverage of the Microsoft / Yahoo deal. Today he adds this little nugget:
Because of the overlap of Yahoo and Microsoft shareholders, many of Yahoo's largest shareholders also own even larger stakes in Microsoft. It is in the economic interest of these shareholders to have Microsoft keep its bid exactly where it is. Their interpretation of what is "best for Yahoo shareholders," therefore, may be different than that of shareholders who don't also own huge stakes in Microsoft.
You aren't reading that kind of stuff anywhere else.
¶ 2/11/2008
Even though Yahoo's board may try to reject the Microsoft takeover, there is no resisting the borg. Microsoft will buy Yahoo.
If you haven't tried Microsoft adCenter, they have a great promotion for US customers: they give $50 in free clicks when you sign up for a Microsoft adCenter Account.
I've griped about usability in the past, but for many of my campaigns, AdCenter has the highest conversion rates, more than Google AdWords or Yahoo Panama. The problem is low volume.
In all likelihood, Microsoft will buy Yahoo, and AdCenter will eventually have 35%+ search market share.
So get ahead of the game, and get started learning adCenter today.
Labels: adcenter, coupon, microsoft, yahoo
¶ 2/09/2008
I just woke up from a dream where I met with Steve Ballmer. I told him how to make PPC search advertising much more profitable once the Yahoo deal closes.
In my dream I kept my sentences short and to the point. I pounded the table a few times. I speak Ballmer-ese, at least in my dream.
Here's what I said:
Me: Steve. You can make your $53B acquisition of Yahoo work!
SB: It's $44.6B, actually.
Me: It'll end up at 53 when all is said and done.
SB: OK.
Me: Here's what you do.
Me: 1. Focus on search monetization. That's where the profit is. That's where you can attack Google.
SB. I'm listening.
Me: 2. Throw away the Yahoo search marketing interface
SB: Good.
Me: 3. Build a fat client interface for advertisers.
SB: I like that... on top of .Net!
Me: No! - it can't be on top of .Net!
SB: Why not?
Me: It has to run on Macs, too.
SB: Crap.
Me: OK - focus, here's the important part.
Me: It must look and feel like Google's AdWords editor.
SB: OK, we know how to copy look and feel.
Me: Right. And it must export data into Yahoo Panama and AdCenter.
SB: Why?
Me: That way people can instantly buy on both from one interface.
SB: What about the web UI?
Me: Well, once you have the fat client it won't matter much, but you should just copy (and I mean exactly copy) Google's.
SB: I kinda like this.
It went on from there. I told Steve that Google is pissing off advertisers left and right with all of their quality score BS. I told him that Microsoft could write the AdWords Editor equivalent right now, and people would love it.
I also gave Steve the names of projects he should cancel at Yahoo - he really liked that. Integrating display and search is a waste of time. Just sell, sell, sell. He ate that up.
But then I went too far - I told him that he's ruining MSFT with his army of non-technical bureaucrat VPs, and he just got up and left (taking his chair with him). I don't think he's gonna follow any of my advice now.
Oh well. I, for one, welcome our new Google masters.
Labels: ballmer, microsoft, yahoo
¶ 2/04/2008
Microsoft's buying Yahoo. A ton of early reactions. Here's what comes to my mind:
Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Labels: matthew arnold, microsoft, yahoo
¶ 2/01/2008
