Google’s old page design:

Google’s new page design:

I was still able to pull up the old design in Chrome.  I was checking some cookie tracking, and right after I removed all cookie data from Firefox, I noticed the new design.  And I’ve been clearing my cookies frequently the past couple of days to re-test tracking, so this is a very recent update from Google.

Search Filters

Google is now putting a column of filters on the left of the SERPs – but they are the same as the ones along the top-left.  They have, however, added a “recommended tools” section below that that allows users to choose page images, or fewer or more shopping results.  Users can then click “more options” and filter by timeframe, geo-location (you set your location just below the search box), standard view and timeline (very odd), or a few more standard page options.

Geolocation Filter

When I searched for “shoes” and used the “nearby” filter, Google pulled out the top results and replaced them with local listings – mostly superpages and citypages.  But there were a few results from local stores in my area that would not have come up on page 1 without this filter.  And after I chose “nearby”, options to refine my location filter even further appeared, including the ability to choose a custom location, or my default location.  I could also choose to filter by city, region or state.

Timeline filter

The first thought I had was “useless”.  Unless I’m doing some research for a mid-term or my thesis, I don’t want to get the complete history of shoes because I’m probably looking to buy some new ones.  Here’s ascreenshot below, and let’s see how long this option lasts:

Recency Filter

Google’s options to filter by time looks like their big answer to integrate comments and social conversations.

More filter options

The other two filtering options of note are the Page Images (showing thumbnails of images on the page) and Page Preview (shows a preview of the page to the right of the Title & Description).  Both of these features are not new for a search engine.  I consulted with a startup-search engine that had a good implementation of the page preview feature in early 2007.

Google Page Images

Google Page Preview

The big picture for Search Engine Marketing

What I did notice is that each time I chose a new filter, the ads reloaded, meaning a new pageview for each advertiser on the page.  And Ads were not filtered; they were either reloaded or removed on certain filters like the timeline.  This means every advertiser received another impression each time, without further filtering the ads.  Unfortunately, might mean lower Click Through Rates and lower Quality Scores.  I’ll be watching my campaigns closely to see if there are any changes as more Google users are switched to the new interface.

There are two domains that have been sitting in my registrar account for quite a while now, but I haven’t done anything with them.  The finished sites are BassOutfitter.com and FanChair.com – they are build using the same process, so don’t expect much difference (it’s just a splash page, rememter).

So why should you take the time to set something like this up?  Several reasons:

• Domain age – the age of a domain is considered to be a small factor for SEO.  All things equal, take two domains targeted for the same keyword, and the older domain will rank higher.  Of course all things are never equal, but every little bit you can do helps when your are trying to rank well in the SERPS.
• Content – I can provide a small amount of targeted content on the site.  It’s just the domain name in an H1 tag, META info, and a couple of paragraphs, but that’s all I need right now to put three good, targeted keywords on the page several times.
• I am collecting email addresses.  Opt-in email lists are a great way to increase revenue for your site.  By building a targeted email list, you can greatly increase your profit per visitor by gathering long-term, repeat customers.
• I’m too busy right now.  Yep, but one site is an extension of work I’m already doing… the next evolution, if you will.  The other is a business idea that I’ve been thinking about for years, and am very excited about once I can get to it.

The Rundown:

Here’s a quick step-by-step to tell you exactly what I did.  Hopefully you can put this to good use on some of your dormant domains.

1. Install Wordpress & do the standard config stuff (permalinks, blog name, analytics & other basic stuff)
2. Install a Theme I like – I chose one that would have a good, strong content page with a wigitized sidebar and footer.
3. Build my “Action Page” – Create a new page and put a little content telling users that visit the site what is is about, when it’s coming, and a call to action.  Mine was sign up for an email when the site launches.
4. Set Static Page – Go to Settings > Reading and set the front page to your Action page.
5. Remove Navigation – You don’t want any other pages on the site – only the one with the call to action.
6. Install Opt-In Plugin – Set up one widget that can collect email addresses.  MailChimp has a good Wordpress plugin.  Then set this as the only widget in the sidebar.

That’s it. Now you have a great looking placement page that will work for you collecting email addresses while you build your site.  Check mine out here:

BassOutfitter.com - Bass Outfitter will carry the stuff that we use personally and recommend. Great fishing gear, killer lures, awesome accessories, and all the stuff you need to catch a lunker.

FanChair.com – Fan Chair will bring you the best stadium seat available.

1. Changed jobs
2. Built & launched 3 WordPress blogs and 2 Magento stores.
3. Working on a rebuild of 2 ecommerce sites I own & building a brand new ecommerce store for a great domain I picked up.
4. Incorporated my business and built a corporate site for that.
5. Managed a ton of advertising spend for my clients
6. And a spent a ton of time with my family – both happy and sad situations.

But MattMauldin.com has been neglected.  The first nine months of 2009 went pretty well, and I like writing because it keeps me on the lookout for interesting topics when I would otherwise be playing Brickbreaker on the Blackberry.  Even my twitter account was quiet.

Here are a few New Year’s Resolutions I have for MattMauldin.com:

• On good post per month – “good” is subjective and the only point of view that counts is mine.
• 5 tweets per week minimum – because a list of tweets are posted here weekly, as you can tell for the previous several pages.
• Finish the Wheel of Time posts by Spring – This post topic was leading up to A Memory of Light (see here), but I didn’t complete all the posts. I did, however, read all the books (yay for me).
• Updates on MattMauldin.com – Find a replacement plugin for Simple Tags unless it is updated in the next week or so because it doesn’t work with WP 2.9; and find a replacement plugin for Twitter Tools because it skips weeks or double posts for a single week.  Any suggestions?
• Begin sharing a little more about items 1 through 5 above.  Sorry, #6 is all mine.

OK, now the goals are specific, written, and measurable.  We’ll see how they go.

Here’s an excerpt from the local news that I had to share with you:

Fort Worth police tell NBCDFW that when the 71-year-old man saw the female deputy coming toward him he dropped the trimmer and ran into the house in the 9800 block of Watercress Drive.

The man came back outside in shorts, that were unzipped, and told the deputy he’d done yard work in the buff before and thought his yard was private enough that no one could see him.

The deputy pointed out that the problem was some privacy slats were missing from his chain-link fence and he lives across the street from a park and along a busy road.

That’s freakin hilarious.  It doesn’t stop there, though.  Here’s part of the actual police report:

Since CIT1 had the weedeater in front of him, Deputy Rowland did not observe CIT1’s genitalia; However, upon CIT1 observing Deputy Rowland he took off running toward the south door of his residence.  Upon CIT1 turning around to run Deputy Rowland observed CIT1’s buttocks.  Deputy Rowland yelled at CIT1 to stop.  However, CIT1 sat the weedeater down and ran into his home.  Deputy Rowland observed that CIT1 did not appear to lock the door as he simply opened the screen door and ran inside.  Deputy Rowland remained at the East Gate and yelled for CIT1 to come outside to speak to him.  In a few moments CIT1 exited the residence.  He had hurriedly put on a pair of tan shorts which were unzipped, revealing the fact that he was wearing no underwear.

OK, that’s awesome.  The police then had to check the man’s record to see if he was a sex offender.  It turned out negative, so the naked man received a Class C misdemeanor citation.

The Texas penal code 4201 A-10 states that a citation should be issued for exposing “his anus or genitals in a public place and (being) reckless about whether another may be present who will be offended or alarmed by his act.”

I’m still trying to find out what makes me laugh harder?  This story or the Texas “penal” code?

(And yes, I have to admin that dove season did open on September 1st and I was out for about 24 hours on a fishing/hunting trip.  But can you blame me?  I’m a Texas boy – fishing and hunting are almost like a requirement.)

Now it’s back to business…

I logged into my old Microsoft AdCenter account earlier today because I’ve seen some decent traffic coming from Bing.com lately.  In fact, over the last three months Bing has surpassed my Yahoo organic traffic on at least three different sites.  I haven’t used this old account for well over a year because I wasn’t able to generate jack crap worth of traffic for my niche.  That’s ok, it really doesn’t fit the Live.com demo.  But with Bing.com, the traffic was coming in organically and some of it was converting to sales.  Light bulb, people! Let’s get more traffic from Bing.com using PPC.  And what’s better than an old account that is already set up?

I log in and notice the account is on Credit Hold because my old card on file has been expired for months.  So I updated the card, and was notified that my new payment method needed to be assigned to my account before I could use it.  No prob.  I go to the account settings page and get a “payment method not in db” error or something.  Expected. I change the default billing and save. Done… but no change to the account.  I access the account settings and get the error again. ok, what can I do now?

After digging around a little more I called the customer service and found that my account is dormant and there is no way to reactivate it.  Well crap.  I have to open up an entire new account now.  But why was I able to access add new payment methods to a dormant account?  Who knows?  I was able to take Campaigns and Adgroups active (of course this didn’t show ads because the entire thing was on hold).  It’s a little weird.

It’s just a small setback at this point because I’ve got a good keyword list, ads, tracking URLs, whatever.  So I set up the account, everything is going great, say “ok” to the $5 charge, and BAM!!!! I get this:

Seriously?  I just signed up after not using these guys for well over a year and here’s my first experience.  Let’s hope once they get their errors in order I can generate some converting traffic or I’m out for another while.

I think this effort is a great idea, because all the politicians in DC are liars and thieves.  We need to send them packing.  And don’t get me wrong, I’m not just talking about the Democrats.  All of the Republicans are completely spoiled brats, too.  The entire bunch of politicians view us as line-items on their own personal budget – sources of income (e.g. taxpayers) instead of citizens of this country.  I wrote a short post about it here.

Grassroots efforts like this are popping up all over the place.  Just Google search for keywords like replace congress or remove incumbents.  These organizations are a natural progression of the underlying feelings of many citizens of this country, and they are best demonstrated by the recent reception many politicians have received from their own constituents.  Here are a few examples:

Lloyd Doggett’s meeting on Obamacare in Austin, TX – 1 Aug 2009

This guy is in Austin, Tx, one of the few blue counties in Texas.  Look at his face -he doesn’t really care about any of these people.  In fact, as you will see in the video, he just quits the meeting and tries to leave.  We don’t want quitters for our elected officials.

Russ Carnahan Gets Laughed At

This one is great. Here’s an idiot spouting off the lines he’s been spoonfed about saving money by spending money on healthcare, and his own constituents just laugh.

Obama Goes Off on a Heckler! (my personal favorite)

Footage of Barack Obama handling a few hecklers.

• Rebel Aes Sedai found
• Birgette is in the real world now
• Morgase abandons her throne and flees her country
• A huge battle with tons of Aiel against each other
• Mat displays his exceptional ability at strategery
• Rand Egwene and Avienda fighting with the One Power
• Three Forsaken dead. One captured
• Caerhein and Camelyn are now under the Dragon Banner

Wow – this book was action packed. And you know what the best part was? No Perrin!  Sorry man, but your storyline sucks right now.  In fact, it has sucked since the beginning.  In The Eye of the World, Perrin learned he can communicate with wolves, and soon after he was forced to kill a couple of men in self defence.  Since then, he has whined and moaned about everything he’s been forced to do.  I’m glad he wasn’t in this book because it would have added suckiness to a great addition to the Wheel of Time.

Beyond that, this was just a fun book to read.  The Rand, Mat, and Nynavea/Elayne plotlines moved forward quite a bit.  It was odd that Egwene was not involved in more of Rand’s plotline, but as I mentioned in my post on the last book, her path is much different even though she’s physically in the same location as Rand.

Looking ahead, I can see why she didn’t take too much of a part in this book.  Elayne and Nynavea needed to get to Salidar before Egwene’s next actions can happen – and I’m really looking forward to that.  In fact, I remember the maneuvering in Salidar as one of the most well-written pieces in the entire series.  Can’t wait to get there.

On to the next one: Lord of Chaos.  And oh man, I’ve only got a few short months to finish the series before A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm is released (slated for November 3, 2009).  I better get reading.

But what can I say?  Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book, but there was very little that really moved the story forward.  And by story I mean Rand.  He’s in it for a chapter or two in the beginning and a chapter or two at the end and that’s it. (ok, maybe a little more than that, but come on)

The real page hog was Perrin’s story line.  It was good, but I don’t see how it relates back to Rand.  In fact, when I think back to the other read-throughs I’ve done, I don’t recall when his storyline ever makes a real difference for any of the other major characters we started with in tEotW.  The entire middle of the book was dedicated to Perrin, and it was really nice to see so much of one plotline in one place instead of jumping back and forth after only a couple of chapters.  There was only one major break where Jordan took us to visit Elayne and Nynavae, but overall it was good to sit down and read Perrin’s part straight through.

This is probably the fourth time I’ve read this book over the past ten years, and for some reason each time I get to Tanchico where Thom, Julian, Elayne and Nynavae are, I seemed to skip over a few pages.  Can’t tell you why, it just happened.  Either that or I’ve drawn a blank.  But this time I slowed down and deliberately focused on comprehension. (Remember, the 12th book comes out this fall, so I want to be completley refreshed on all points of the story by then.) As it turns out, I didn’t miss much.  Ha ha! Eagenin, the Seanchan, made an appearance.  I always liked her because she’s one of the only Seanchan that has any sense at all.

Egwene also has a good amount of time in this book.  Although she’s with Rand’s group in the Aiel Waste, her storyline is quite different.  It’s here where she really begins to grow in power and knowledge and I am looking forward to following her story throughout the rest of the books.  Egwene’s growth from a simple farmgirl to the XXXXXXX (no spoiler, sorry) seemed like one of the most natural progressions of any character in the book.  She moves around the world map and interacts with many of the other plot lines quite often.  And in the later books (unlike Perrin) her actions have the potential to greatly affect Rand and the other characters.

Overall, the overall theme of The Shadow Rising is advance-the-side-plots-while-barely-touching-on-the-main-plot.  But that’s ok – you’ll enjoy the read.  If nothing else, it makes you anticipate the coming story even more.

It’s just a reality that you have to deal stupid people now and then. I’m not talking about their mental capacity. Instead,I mean the actions that customer service people take to “serve” the customer. I see three distinct levels of customer service stupidity:

Level One: Glorified Receptionists

Some companies hire a bank of chair-warmers for low wages, title them customer service (my favorite is the “customer advocate”), skimp on training, and expect them to give good customer service to you and I, the customer.

Here’s a good example.  I am currently looking for a pair of Levi’s Carpenter Shorts.  I’ve owned several pair over the past few years. They are comfortable, affordable enough so I don’t feel bad working in the yard or fishing in them, and  shorts

Poor guys – I’m civil and ask them to transfer me to the manager.

Level Two: “My Hands Are Tied”

Sometimes the rare company gets the items in #1 right, and then management screws it up. They put so many rules, regulations and procedures in place that the customer service person has no authority to actually help out.

Oh, you can’t do anything? – Again, I’m civil and ask them to transfer me to the manager.

Level Three: The Customer Service Prima Donna

The worst level of customer service stupidity, though, must be the person who can actually help the customer and refuses to.  These people are usually rude and condescending, and they use “customer” as an insult.

Idea Seed

I really don’t mind dealing with stupidity in the form of #1 and #2.  But dealing with #3 makes me want to chew my own toes off.  I’ve even posted about some of my ridiculous  encounters here and here.  Each time I talk to a prima donna, I am left feeling completely unsatisfied and all I want is sweet revenge.  That’s right, you are intentionally a jerk to me, and I’ll intentionally be a jerk back.  But my recent epiphany came from a hoax email I received last week from a family member.  It’s the Free Sony Ericsson Laptop hoax that has been around for years.  Here’s the email:

Use This Email as a Template to Mess With Stupid Customer Service People

Ha ha!  It’s so easy.  All you need to do is follow a few steps and you’ll cause Inbox Hell for the customer service punk who is trying to bend you over.  Here we go.  I’ll use Direct TV for an example since they are idiots.

DirecTV Example of a Revence Email

1. Use the company’s product/service to create a completely ridiculous offer that will get the attention of everyone who receives the email.  The big word to focus on is “free”.

Attention: Direct TV is offering a free promotion to expand their business with your help!  All you have to do is forward this email to twenty people.  Be sure to copy John Doe, Direct TV’s head of concept, so they have a record of you and can offer you the free service.  Here’s what you get:

• FREE service from Direct TV for 2 FULL YEARS.
• FREE installation. Free equipment.
• FREE premium movies and HD service

2. Grab a photo or two just to make it look good.

3. Here’s the most important part: insert the real email address of the idiot customer service people you want to mess with.  Most customer service people, especially at the prima donna level, will have ad email address to contact customers.  The best way to get this is say something like “Can you send that to my email address so I have that in writing?” regarding something fairly innocent, so you can capture the email address.

4. Send this email to everyone you can – email contacts, social networking contacts, etc.

Over the next few days, this email has the potential to spread like wildfire.  When the stupid customer service person is copied on all the forwards, their email inbox will get filled with a ton of crap.