Click - New Book by Bill Tancer

Bill Tancer is general manager of global research at Hitwise. He just wrote a book called Click, What Millions of People Do Online and Why It Matters. He was featured on Good Morning America and 20/20 yesterday, Aug 28.

The book sounds interesting and it's written by a data analyst which is a plus. I found this humorous, you can read the first chapter, (PPC) Porn, Pills, and Casinos here. He talks about the prevalence of Porn in daily users habits, does a comparison of the search histories of 'online poker' vs. 'sportsbook' and the blue pill.

Global Page Load Time and Browsing Habits

I looked for this data a couple months ago and it was not easy to find. ClickTale, the hosted, live analytics company compiled usage data of their subscribers to come up with a pretty good overview.

Both posts are worth a read, but here's a summary:

Part 1:

• There is a good graph of main country average pageload times
• Graph of on page time per country
• Countries with slower load times, users spend disproportionately MORE time on each page
• China has the lowest speeds
  
• Dutch and Israeli surf the fastest

Part 2:

• Pageviews per country
• Overall average time spent on 1 site per country

Web Habits Across the Globe Part 1 and Part 2.

Googler Comments on Links at Google Groups

JohnMu added this comment to a Google Groups discussion about a site owner who thinks his t-shirt website has been penalized. It's looks like the site is indeed suffering from a penalty of some sort and does not rank well for 'Web Site' or 'WebSite' or 'WebSite Product', but does return a #1 result for 'WebSite.com'.

JohnMu's response is enlightening, especially reading though a bunch of rambling theories from various commentors.

It might be that the links to your site are not counting the way they
might have in the past. In general, it is important to us that links
are not just exchanged, bought/sold or otherwise used in an attempt to
manipulate rankings, as we have detailed in our help center article at
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

If you find that your site has issues with regards to our Webmaster
Guidelines that can be resolved, I would recommend doing that and then
submitting a reconsideration request, detailing the changes that you
have made.

These guys seem to have a failry large % of links with similar link text, in sidebars, sitewides, and on blogs. It also seems that they have a large amount of paid posts with very targeted link text.

'not counting the way they might have in the past' is a general way of phrasing that I have seen Google use before as a response. I think most have taken this to mean that the links have been 'devalued' in some way and maybe the act of devaluing really is a penalty. This must be algoritmic in other words there is a threshhold that is passed.

But what acutally happens? Is it that these links really are devlaued for their anchor text and the other top phrase search terms for the destination site? Is it an 'upper limit' ceiling which is imposed on the site, it can't rank above a certain level no matter what they do for a certain period of time?

If it was basically a 'devaluing' of the specfic links, a site owner could get around that by simply working hard to build new links for their brand terms. However, JohnMu's suggestion to file a reconsideration request seems to imply that the whatever has been imposed on the site can be 'lifted'. In other words, they can't get out of the cellar until they clean up their act.

Paid Link Reports in Google

There has been much speculation about what happens to paid link reports that are filed in the Google Webmaster Tools. Eric Enge of StoneTemple just interviewd Maile Ohye, Tech Solutions Engineer from Google who worked on Webmaster Tools. I think this is pretty clear:

Eric Enge: Right, so then next question for paid links that get reported in Webmaster Tools. I think it’s fairly well stated that the primary thing you do with it is use it to improve your algorithms. But, if you do confirm a link is a paid link when you get the report, is it normally disabled from passing PageRank?

Maile Ohye: Yes, we do disable such links from passing PageRank.

and a bonus tidbit from the interview, with Google now indexing some Flash text:

Eric Enge: So, will a link embedded in Flash pass PageRank?

Maile Ohye: Yes, it functions as a regular link.

Russia 4th in the World for Mobile Internet Useage

Another reason to market to Russia. From the QuinturQ Blog:

"11.2% of Russian mobile users accessed the Internet on their mobile devices, trailing only the U.S. (15.6%), UK (12.9%), and Italy (11.2%) and ahead of Spain, France and Germany,..."

That's 17 million users!

Paris Hilton - The SEO's Wet Dream

It is amazing to me how Paris still has it, man can she drive traffic. Google Trends has been lit up all day over this one.

John McCain came out with a new TV commercial campaign comparing Obama to a no-substance celebrity. The intention was to paint Barack as a candidate who does not have the experience to lead. (apparently the ad has been highly successful as the poll gap has narrowed to nil)

In the ad the McCain camp shows shots of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears juxtaposed with images of Obama. You can see the ad here; TV Ad; Celeb.

Paris came back with an ad of her own today, a mock Paris for President satire bit that is really good (she even sounds intelligent). FunnyorDie.com is hosting the video and I can't even imagine the traffic they have seen today. Awesome piece of linkbait. Paris for President Video.

Check out a slice of Google Trends from about an hour ago:

1. funny or die

2. danny mcbride

3. tampa tribune

4. paris hilton commercial

5. mauritania

6. good morning america

7. msn.com sign in

8. sarah pender

9. elance

10. elizabeth pena

11. tom waddle

12. tuatara

13. gma.com

14. paris hilton mccain video

15. joey cheek

16. www.msn.com

17. funnyordie.com

18. steven curtis chapman

19. mountain lion

20. amanda beard peta

21. jennifer ertman

22. paris hilton political ad

23. gma

24. michigan election results

25. tampa bay bucs

26. simple jack

27. paris hilton site youtube.com

28. elizabeth pena 16 and jennifer ertman 14

29. my.msn.com

30. american solutions

31. who won i survived a japanese game show

32. elance.com

33. x tube

34. darth nihilus

35. paris for president

36. olympic soccer

37. team darfur

38. funny or die paris hilton

39. steve harvey morning show

40. indiana state fair

41. heather mitts

42. espresso gone wild

43. olympics 2008 tv schedule

44. msn home page

45. kohls

46. goodmorningamerica.com

47. ann arbor news

48. mary lou mcfate

49. magnavox progressive scan dvd recorder

50. washtenaw county election results

51. funny or die.com

52. yge

53. good morning america steven curtis chapman

....

94. derrick o brien

95. laugh or die

96. kem kimbrough

97. hiroshima

98. idledale colorado

99. ks95

100. space camp