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Webby Award Nominations

webby awardsAs some of you may know, I’m a Judge for the Webby Awards (think Oscars for the Internet). As a judge, I’m encouraged to submit nominations for sites that I’m not affiliated with. I do a pretty good job on keeping up on many of the best websites, but with the growing plethora of great sites on the Web, there’s a good chance I might miss some.

If you have any favorite websites that I may not be aware of, feel free to comment on this post for possible inclusion. Here’s a list of categories to help you think of recommendations. I’ll review every site commented except porn & spam and determine whether or not I find them worthy of a nomination. It’s a great opportunity for a site to get massive exposure in, undoubtedly, the most prestigous award available to websites.

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Google Closes at 666 – Perhaps They Are Evil

Google’s corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil.” Ironically, their closing stock price today was 666 to the penny. You can take a look yourself any any stock quote tool (use GOOG for the ticker symbol), or check out the Google Finance screenshot below:

Google 666

I doubt it is the first time a stock closed at 666.00, but it is certainly more rare as most stocks over the past couple decades split long before they reach that number. Even gold closed at 666.00 early this year. I’m not superstitious, but I’m sure a number of investors taking a look at their stocks tonight will be a bit unsettled. Read this article about google posting benefits too.

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I Read You, Little Pilgrim

Don’t worrry, I’m not quoting John Wayne. I’m simply stating that one of the search marketing blogs I read is Marketing Pilgrim. Andy is having a little “readership survey” that pays survey takers with a free link, plus a free entry to win $500 cash (hopefully USD). I figure I have a 1 in 50 chance in winning. It also means Andy is paying about $10 per survey taker.

The reason I use MarketingPilgrim.com is because they tend to cover stories quickly and deviate just the right amount from your standard search marketing publication. If I look at my feeds related to search, I have about 5 that are what I’d call news filters and Marketing Pilgrim is one of them. I love these news filters because it saves me a lot of time (much better than reading through hundreds of blogs and pubications).

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Omniture Buying Visual Sciences for $394 Million

Say it ain’t so. Omniture (Nasdaq: OMTR) is buying Visual Sciences (Nasdaq: VSCN) for a reported $394 million. The combination of the two best-of-breed analytic providers can’t be a good thing for companies using web analytics solution providers.

Omniture states that they will rapidly and grow their technologies, but I don’t see a near monopoly being a good thing for most companies. Competition is good. I’ve been a customer for both companies and felt they really were by far the two best offerings in hosted analytic solutions.

It will be interesting to see if regulators allow the purchase because it feels like it will be too close to a monopoly to me. I assume Visual Science stockholders will approve the purchase as the company has been riddled with problems, losing many key employees to Omniture. The acquisition is expected to close in mid-2008.

Congrats to Omniture. This news shows just how strong Omniture has become, especially after purchasing Offermatica last month.

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Google’s PageRank Drop – SEOs Dissapoint Me

There’s been a flood of activity in the SEO community talking about PageRank drops and every assessment I’ve read continues to ignore the bigger question. Did the affected sites lose search engine ranks?

My fellow SEOs have long been preaching how Google Toolbar PageRank (PR) is fairly inaccurate and that PageRank is only one element, among hundreds, of Google’s algorithm. Then when Google dials down the PR on a number of sites our industry goes nuts. Wait a minute – didn’t we say PR isn’t that important? Maybe it really is. Or maybe it really is for a certain set of sites: those who sell links based on PR.

From the list of the sites affected, it appears the PR drops targeted mostly sites that sell links or were strongly interconnected with these sites. For all we know, it is simply a simple visual adjustment – a very effective tactic to hit link sellers where it hurts most, but without hurting innocent sites in the cross-fire. Though an innocent site might be concerned that their PR dropped, if their SERP ranks haven’t changed then it doesn’t really affect them because they aren’t selling links based off their PR.

So among the list of site that have been affected by the PR dial-down, regardless as to whether they sell links or not, I must ask: have any actually seen SERP rank drops?

For example: Search Engine Guide is reported to have dropped from a PR 7 to a PR 4, but when I do a Google search for “search engine,” I see them ranked #8 (ironically, Google doesn’t even rank itself on page 1).

If you work at, or have been tracking keyword ranks for any of the following affected sites, please report whether or not you have seen actual drops in rank:

Washington Post (PR7 to PR5)
Forbes (PR7 to PR5)
Seattle Times (PR6 to PR4)
Charlotte Observer (PR6 to PR4)
Sun Times (PR7 to PR5)
San Francisco Chronicle (PR7 to PR5)
New Scientist (PR7 to PR5)
Engadget (PR7 to PR5)
Copy Blogger (PR6 to PR4)
AutoBlog (PR6 to PR4)
problogger.net (PR6 to PR4)
www.tuaw.com (PR6 to PR4)
www.seroundtable.com (PR7 to PR4)
www.searchengineguide.com (PR7 to PR4)
www.searchenginejournal.com (PR7 to PR4)
www.johnchow.com (PR6 to PR4)
andybeard.eu (PR5 to PR3)
www.blogherald.com (PR6 to PR4)
(or other sites affected)