CloudBurst Consulting

You’ve heard of PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns, well Microsoft is introducing one that I will call “P4S” or Pay For Searching. Yes, they are trying to beat Google again by paying people to use their Live Search. For some reason, I’m having a hard time understanding that approach – instead of going to all that trouble, why don’t they just create better search results? If someone paid me to use their services, they better deliver a great service.

Apparently the “Live Search for Cashback” program gives the searchers a percentage when they use Live Search to find (and hopefully buy) certain retail items. Of course there is always a catch – you don’t receive payment until after 60 days just in case you might decide to return the items you purchased 🙂 Amazing – do you really think people would do that? Even though some of their retail partners include Office Depot, Sears and Home Depot, I’m still having a problem with this incentive. If it didn’t work for Microsoft before, why should it work now?

Based on our current situation, I’m think that a better offer would have been for Microsoft to partner with gasoline companies!

For some time now there have been reports of Google creating an online health database that stored and tracked all of a person’s health records in addition to health care news and other content including drug interaction information and health tips. This is clearly a whole level above other online health portals such as WebMD that have typically offered but is similar to what Microsoft is attempting with their HealthVault portal (although WebMD now offers something similar).

According to recently released screenshots over at search engine land there appears to be an “Import medical records” feature which could allow Google’s system to act as a central repository for all of a person’s health care. It even appears to go so far as linking Google Health with other online personal health services such as Beth Israel’s Deaconess Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic’s MyChart, Longs Drug Stores and Medco.

Apparently Google claims that health records stored on their system are kept more secure than their own search logs and that users can delete their complete profiles at any time. Personally, I wouldn’t have a hesitation about making this my central health care dashboard as opposed to having to use three different websites to manage medical, dental and vision. I do, however, agree with Greg Sterling when he states that

“The potential issues with Google Health aren’t really about Google Health itself, they’re about the larger healthcare system in the US, which makes profitability the paramount consideration and quality patient care a distant second.”

It’s a valid fear that the information stored on Google’s system could be used against someone by their health insurance company to deny coverage under their beloved “pre-existing condition” clauses. On the positive side, maybe people will need their profiles optimized for search engines.

What do you think? Is this the future of medical record keeping or too much of a potential liability, impeding mass adoption? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Update: Google Health Beta is live and ready to collect your info.

I have just returned from a short but very enjoyable trip to Sonoma County, California, where I spoke at the Sonoma County CVB‘s Trends in Tourism forum.

Sonoma County is located about 30 miles north of San Francisco, and is the southwestern county of California’s Wine Country region. Boasting 250 wineries and numerous farmers markets, Sonoma County has an embarassment of riches for food and wine lovers.

During our stay, the CVB staff took the forum presenters out for a meal at Zazu, an acclaimed restaurant that is delightfully unpretentious and focuses on farm-fresh and locally grown produce. Chef and co-owner Dustie Estes explained to me that one of her motivations in establishing Zazu was to provide an environment in which her two daughters could learn and appreciate where real food comes from. The flavors and appeal of fresh ingredients were evident in our meals – so different from chain restaurants where a facsimile of food arrives pre-measured and pre-prepared in Sysco trucks.

Sonoma County CVB has discovered that increasing numbers of visitors are using web features on their cell phones and iPhones to access information about lodging and restaurants while in the destination. In a foward-thinking move, the CVB has just released a mobile-friendly version of their website that provides visitors with an easy and convenient way to book a restaurant or accommodation directly. It’s a great example of using technology to connect the region’s visitors with local businesses, and encourage “foodies” to spontaneously savor more of the flavors that this region has to offer.

It’s not too late to vote for “Doodle 4 Google,” a nationwide competition that Google launched this past February.  From kindergarteners through high school seniors, Google asked for students to design a Google logo inspired by the question, “What If … ?”   The winner of the competition will have their artwork placed as the Google logo for a day as well as other great prizes.

Even if you don’t vote for your favorite finalist, just take a look at some of the most inspiring and creative “doodles” from students throughout the United States!http://www.google.com/doodle4google/vote.html 

Have you ever wondered when Mobile Marketing was going to take off? Companies are talking about it, but I personally haven’t seen much fanfare from consumers. Until now …

I just changed my tune when I saw the "Visual Search Engine" application from Evolution Robotics ViPR coming out this June to iPhones. With ViPR, you can take a photo on the iPhone of a CD, movie or book, send it to a server and voila, you receive an email back with all the information and links to YouTube videos or iTunes Music Store links about that photo. Take a look:

[youtube][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COqGIM5dkXw [/youtube][/youtube]

Of course, this has taken off in Japan in a huge way. Through their network, it works like a traditional search engine without having to type any search words – take a photo of a wine label and get expert reviews and recommendations sent to your phone!

Now it’s easy to understand why mobile marketing is projected to grow to $24 billion worldwide by 2013 (Source: ABI Research).

Here’s a great quote about Web Analytics:

Web Analytics is good at the ‘What.’ It is not good at the ‘Why.’ The ‘Why’ can only come from the customer.

-Avinash Kaushik

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your website data or don’t even know where to start, it’s easier to keep things in this perspective as you can find you’re just chasing your tail sometimes when attempting to understand why website visitors did what they did on your site. We can rarely determine the ‘Why’ with absolute certainty, but by using what we know conclusively from the data (e.g. 60% of visitors left a certain page) we can begin to make steps in the direction of reversing negative trends or enhancing positive ones.

As an example, we worked with a client who’s website stats indicated a 40% bounce rate for their home page. What this meant was that of all the users that visited the client’s home page, almost half of them left the site without visiting any other pages. We weren’t sure why users were repelled by this home page at first, but after only swapping the main image that appeared on the home page for another one, the bounce rate dropped below 20%.

Needless to say, this increased the amount of people moving through the website and the more full their funnel of prospective buyers became. All by only making one minor change based on only knowing what the visitors were doing, not why they were doing it.

Of course through several exercises like this, the mindset of the website’s visitors and the ‘Why’ became more concrete but without testing, analyzing and refining and performing things like usability studies will it ever be possible to more fully understand the ‘Why.’

Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but Adobe released the beta of Photoshop Express the weekend prior to the Photoshop World expo, held here in Orlando a couple of weeks ago. I was fortunate to be in the audience when Adobe Sr. VP John Loiacono demonstrated the new application, which is entirely web-based. To “oohs” and ahhhs” from the audience (a tough crowd to impress) ordinary snapshots were converted into creative and attractive photographs – all online, and all within just a few keystrokes.

Express isn’t meant to replace Adobe’s flagship product Photoshop CS3, but instead makes a set of features immediately accessible to people who want to do basic photo-editing tasks such as cropping, removing red eye, color correcting and – for the teen and college crowds- removing visible signs of newly-acquired body piercing before sending snaps to Mom and Dad via email.

John Loiacono said that during the first weekend of its release, users had uploaded several terabytes of image data – indicating that there is a potentially huge market for this easy-to-use web-based photo editor. The beta release of Photoshop Express is currently free to users and provides 2GB of storage.

With Flickr providing a social network community of photographers, and Photoshop Express providing powerful editing tools online, the future of digital imaging looks ever more collaborative and accessible, which has to be a good thing.

Over on Search Engine Land, one of my favorite places to keep up with all things search marketing, they received confirmation earlier this month from a Google employee that they have indeed made a significant update to their algorithm. Although we’re seeing reports of all kinds of different changes to listings on Google (SERP = Search Engine Results Page), where we’ve seen changes in our clients’ rankings they have been for the positive.

Similar to how one of Google’s most significant and famous updates was nicknamed “Florida,” webmasters and Google themselves are referring to this one as “Dewey.” Get it? Like Dewey Cox of Walk Hard fame? Anyways, hopefully your rankings are seeing a better response to this update than that joke might see.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE[/youtube]

This is from last year but I was just re-visiting it now and I still think it’s one of the best examples of the idea of “Web 2.0” or “Social Media” as we prefer to call it now. It also touches on the separation between content and format which is so essential to building websites for SEO and usability these days.

It’s essential for any website to use coding that provides the raw content the search engines need but is also attractive and engaging to people. Adobe’s Flash can’t do this, well not very well anyways, and so much on the Web needs to be converted to a combination XHTML (the actual content of a website) and CSS (the style the content appears in).

All of the points from the video are becoming a mantra and rightfully so as the Web shifts to a medium controlled by users instead of machines. Although it may be off-putting to imagine allowing our customers or users to control the conversation about our products or services, it’s becoming so commonplace that if you’re not doing it, there will be a time in the not-so-distant future that your brand or message will be much less credible without it. Indeed this is already happening as users have now grown accustomed to things like Amazon product reviews or Travelocity user ratings.

Anyways, just some things to consider for those that may still be reticent to embrace the new ways the Internet and its users are shaping business currently and into the near future.

Over on Page 1, the daily e-newsletter put out by Sarasota’s SRQ Magazine, they have put up a few choice pieces of online marketing advice from our head honcho in case you happen to be looking for such advice. Although I’m posting this about a week late (shhh, it’ll be our little secret) it does contain some timely wisdom about the power of online marketing with regards to International markets. It’s hard to believe the statistic about what percent of Internet users aren’t using English when they’re searching online but it’s been confirmed by several studies now.

So, why aren’t you reaching out to International markets?