With merely a bad service or product, we might push for a discount or refund, and write some negative reviews about a company at various ratings sites like Yelp. But, when it’s an actual scam artist, it becomes a question of how to reach them in the first place, and then how to do anything that they’d even feel.

In the local search marketing world, many of us have noticed a spate of bad actors who are setting up fraudulent business listings (perhaps even operating under bogus names), and once they’ve lured people into doing business with them, they abscond with fees in return for shoddy service or no service/product whatsoever. So, there are some basic issues around how they are operating with impunity, promoting themselves online (sometimes out-ranking bona fide established local businesses), and then taking consumers’ money with zero accountability.

So, here are some tips we’ve made to help you REACH LOCAL SCAM ARTISTS and even thwack ‘em!  You may not be able to get your lost time and money back, but you may get a little justice or you might be able to declaw these bad guys just a bit so they can’t prey on other consumers as easily.

Tips To Reach Local Scam Artists & Thwack ‘Em:

• Get them de-listed! Is it a bogus local listing in a directory or search engine? In other words, if you drove up to the street address they’re listed under, is there an actual company office there where you can talk to an employee of the business? Bogus listings have been a dire problem where some services like locksmiths are concerned. If there’s no business representative at the place where their online address is listed in Google Maps, Bing Maps, Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, etc — then, that is a bogus listing. For these cases, contact the search engine or directory site and inform them that it’s a bogus listing.
• Narc on ‘em! If someone is dishonest in one thing, chances are they may be doing other bad stuff, too! Look critically at their website — are they using someone else’s copyrighted text or images? If so, inform the people they’ve lifted content from, and this could get their sites delisted from search engines like Google if it’s reported properly.  The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or “DMCA” law) allows owners of copyrighted material to demand that sites take down content which has been taken from them.
• Reveal who they are! In times past, all sorts of conmen would set up websites pretending to be someone they weren’t. But, people can’t always hide behind a webpage any more — you should familiarize yourself with looking up domain name registration information. The URL domain name of the website of a scam company might, just might, let you discover the name of the person who set up the business. You can look the URL domain name owner information up at many different “WHOIS” services out there, although I prefer the Domain Dossier provided at Hexillion’s Central Ops. Go there, type the domain name (“example.com”) of the bad company into the search box, then hit return. Under the Domain Whois record, see who it is that is listed under the Registrant information. In some cases, the bad guys will have obscured the info by using some front company to hide who they are. Even so, you can see who is providing the domain registration service for them, and you could use that info to contact them through an attorney’s note and demand that they tell you who is behind a site so that you know who you’re dealing with.
• Complain to their website host! The Domain Dossier also reveals where the website is being hosted. Using this, you can figure out who their ISP (“Internet Service Provider”) is, and you can call them up and complain that the website is fraudulent/criminal. Some ISPs may then determine that the scam company has broken their terms and conditions, and this might result in them pulling the plug on the scam website.
• Check out the IP address of their website’s domain, too! Websites are often co-hosted on a server along with many other websites, so if you search to find out what other domain names may be associated with the same IP address, you might discover other sites and other businesses that the scam artist may be using as a front. Tread carefully with this, though, because they could just be using cheap hosting, and other domains on the same IP address may be completely unrelated to your bad guy.
• Reverse search on the web and in local search engines by the company’s phone number. This may further reveal other businesses that the bad actor is using to take advantage of people.
• Discover the business owner through the local tax office. In many localities, con men obscure their identities through using “doing business as” or “DBA” names, and these may be required to be registered with local tax offices in order for bank accounts to be set up. Contact local tax offices to see what they have filed on business names in order to help you reveal the persons responsible.
• Thwack ‘em with negative reviews! Be sure to rate them negatively in Google Maps, online yellow pages, Yelp, and at the Better Business Bureau. When searching for their type of business or by their business name, carefully look at what pages and sites are ranking. Any page which lists this business might be an opportunity for you to go in and disclose how they treated you and what your experience with them was. In one widely-reported, egregious case, a reprehensible online merchant received numerous bad reviews online, resulting in coverage in an article on the New York Times, and ultimately the owner was arrested and will likely face criminal charges.
• Blog about ‘em! If you already have a blog, write a post with the title begining with the bad business’s name and describe your interactions with them. Honest description of what they did to you could really hurt their bottom line! There are many cases out there of how individual bloggers have taken even major corporations to task, resulting in serious impacts to a company’s business.
• Report them to the authorities! If what they did to you was illegal, report the company to your local district attorney’s office, and to the state attorney general. Ask your local police for suggestions, and report the company wherever they may be operating.
• Take away their phones! In some cases we know of, locals complained to the phone company about a local scam artist that set up multiple, bogus online listings for their business, and the consumer complaints resulted in the bad guys losing their phone numbers. The phone company might be a good resource for getting info on the real names of owners behind the scam company, too.
• Take ‘em to small claims court! Assuming your total dollar amount isn’t too big, file suit against them in small claims court. You might not be able to get them to show up, or even pay, but it can be useful to you if you go through the process to get a judgement against them. You’ll need to’ve found a way to indentify the true company or individual’s name behind the scam company already, though.
• Form a mob! Know others targeted by the same scam artists? Get them to join you in reporting the offenses. There’s not only safety in numbers, but believability and priority. If enough people report the same company, it becomes progressively harder for the complaints to be ignored or neglected.

Using these tips should help you to actually reach the local scam artists, and thwack ‘em where it hurts!

If you have additional ideas for thwacking the bad guys, please add them below in the comments.

The rating service and talk about it reminded me that I actually did a sort of rating via a blog post here back in 2007 entitled “Some Top In-House SEOs“. In that post I sought to list out the cream-of-the-crop of search engine optimization experts working within major companies.

The main difficulty of attempting to rate SEOs is that it’s quite hard to know precisely what they’ve recommended or done to optimize a company’s websites. For instance, you could be an absolute genius at SEO, but if the company is lethargic or incompetent programmers oversee their sites, none of the SEO expert’s talent might be reflected in the actual site. That’s an extreme example, and in most cases some degree of the expert’s recommendations will be properly implemented. But the point is that site configuration may not really be used to reflect an expert’s actual ability, particularly if compared with other colleagues.

Back when I wrote “Some Top In-House SEOs”, I wasn’t really prepared for the large amount of attention it received. I was immediately pressured by a lot of people who wanted to be added to the list, but didn’t meet the criteria I was using. Quite a few people asked me to update the list over time as well, and I quickly saw that it would be necessary if this was done ongoing to be open about the rating criteria I was using — else people would question why so-and-so was listed while so-and-so was not.

The criteria I used back then was very basic. I wanted to list only people who were employees of top companies that performed organic search optimization of one sort or another for those company’s websites. I wanted companies which were readily-identifiable by a majority of people in the U.S., so they had to be MAJOR brand names: top-50 websites, Fortune 500 companies, and Internet Retailer 500 companies. Finally, I had to be able to find/identify the SEOs who worked for those companies, which usually meant that they’d have to self-disclose what they did (many SEOs operated somewhat anonymously behind corporate walls). So, the SEO needed to blog or speak at conferences, and disclose who they worked for. In one or two cases, I discovered individual’s names through news interviews or press releases. I also mined the list of top-linked SEOs from LinkedIn (apparently no longer in operation? formerly: http://www.linkedseo.com/).

I made a number of mistakes, of course. I didn’t feel I had time to write to and receive confirmation from each person. In some cases I just “outed” people from behind the corporate curtain for the first time!

For the most part, people loved the attention and recognition! I felt a bit stressed from those who clamored to get in, and I pretty much stated that I wouldn’t add any until I updated a year down the road. In quite a lot of cases, I think that headhunters mined the list in order to lure people away to other companies, so many benefited from the exposure.

Here it is, about three years after the fact, and I thought it’d be interesting to see where are they all now? So, here’s the list once again, with individual’s former companies listed from back then, and who they work for now. Nothing scientific – I merely base this on what their LinkedIn resume or website states. It’s been neat for me to revisit this list! So many of these folks became friends and close acquaintances since I wrote this up! It’s also fascinating to see how many of them have moved on to advanced titles and to owning their own companies.

Some Top In-House SEOs – Where They Are Now:

Amr Awadallah:
Then: Director Product/Business Intelligence at Yahoo! Inc.
Now: Founder, CTO, VP Engineering. at Cloudera, Inc.

Aidan Beanland:
Then: Regional SEO Manager at Yahoo
Now: Regional SEO Manager at Yahoo

Jennifer Blamy:
Then: SEO Manager at LendingTree.com
Now: VP – Digital Marketing at Bank of America

Jessica Bowman:
Then: Director of SEO for Business.com
Now: Principal at SEMinhouse.com SEO Consulting

Michael Brito:
Then: Search Marketing Manager at HP
Now: Vice President at Edelman Digital

David Carberry:
Then: Director of Search Marketing for Advertising.com
Now: Director of Digital Sales Baltimore-Washington at Radio One, Co-Founder at Local Roll Call

Steve Carrod:
Then: Search Marketing Manager (EMEA) at Hewlett-Packard
Now: Website Marketing Manager at Snapfish

Gene Chan:
Then: Search Marketing Manager at Imaging & Printing Group – HP
Now: Senior Account Executive at MySpace

Michael Cheung:
Then: Search Marketing Lead at Marchex
Now: AVP of Business Development at PT Kreatip Komunikacitra

Kathleen Coughlan:
Then: Strategic Alliances & Search Marketing at Lexis Nexis
Now: Director, Global Brand Marketing at LexisNexis

Terry Cox:
Then: SEO/SEM Manager for Walt Disney Parks & Resorts Online
Now: Search Engine Marketing Director at Walt Disney Parks & Resorts Online

Christopher Curtis:
Then: Associate Manager, Search Engine Marketing at Shopzilla.com
Now: Senior Director, Traffic Operations at Shopzilla.com

Darren Dalasta:
Then: Search Marketing Manager at WhitePages.com
Now: Search Engine Marketing Manager at WhitePages.com

Rudy DeDominicis:
Then: Search Marketing Specialist at Time Inc Interactive
Now: Associate Director Audience Development- Search Marketing Specialist @ Time Inc

John Ellis :
Then: Online Marketing Manager, Search for ResortQuest / Gaylord Entertainment
Now: Independent Search Engine Marketing Consultant (SEO & PPC)

Matt Evans:
Then: SEO Manager at Monster.com
Now: SEO Manager at Monster.com

Duane Forrester:
Then: Manager, Search Marketing at Sports Direct Inc.
Now: Senior Program Manager of SEO at Microsoft

Derek Fulford:
Then: Search Marketing Manager at The Weather Channel Interactive
Now: Search Marketing Manager at The Weather Channel Interactive

Jason Hall:
Then: Director, Search Engine Marketing at Shopzilla.com
Now: Search expert w/ international experience, currently exploring Brazilian Internet market

Seth Hammac:
Then: Search Engine Marketing Media Manager at CNET Networks
Now: Sales Engineer at Microsoft

Julie Handleman-Baerwald:
Then: SEO/SEM Manager at Citysearch
Now: SEO & SEM Director, Citysearch

Liz Keller:
Then: Manager of SEO Strategy at iVillage, Inc.
Now: Head of Search Engine Optimisation (UK) at Razorfish

Mia Kemp:
Then: SEO and Sr. Project Manger – Marketing at Kaplan University
Now: Manager, Marketing Analytics & Strategy at Sapient

Imran Khan:
Then: Chief Marketing Officer at E-Loan
Now: VP, Worldwide eCommerce Marketing at Symantec

Vic Kuzmovich:
Then: Director Online Marketing at Expert Realty
Now: VP Search Marketing at BodyLogicMD

Rob Lenderman:
Then: SEO Architect at LendingTree.com
Now: AVP Interactive Product Development at Interval International – IAC

Jeff Leong:
Then: Sr. Online Marketing Specialist at Symantec Corporation.
Now: Web Consultant

Laura Lippay:
Then: SEO for Yahoo!
Now: Online Visibility (Social Media & Search/SEO) Consultant

Paul Low:
Then: Search Marketing Manager at JCPenney.com
Now: Account Director at Camelot Communications

Bill Macaitis:
Then: VP of Traffic Generation and SEM / SEO for Fox Interactive Medi
Now: VP of Online Marketing at Salesforce.com

Philip Maher:
Then: Director of SEO at LocalLaunch
Now: Founder at Intuitive Investments

Matt McGee:
Then: SEO for Marchex
Now: Self-employed Marketing Consultant

Sean McGinnis:
Then: Manager, Search Engine Marketing at Findlaw
Now: Director, Online Bar Review at Micromash

Andy Mihalop:
Then: Head of Search Marketing at Reed Business Information
Now: Search & Performance Media Director – Global Clients at Aegis Media

Melanie Mitchell:
Then: Director, SEO/SEM at AOL
Now: SVP, Search Marketing Strategy at Digitas

Mike Moran:
Then: Distinguished Engineer / Product Manager of IBM’s OmniFind Search Product
Now: Chief Strategist at Converseon

Iestyn Mullins:
Then: SEM Manager at SHOP.COM
Now: Director Managed Services at Logic361.com

Michael Nguyen:
Then: SEO Strategist at Shopzilla
Now: SEO Strategist at Shopzilla

Paul O’Brien:
Then: SEO for HP
Now: VP Marketing at Outright

Giovanna O’Grady:
Then: SEM/SEO Manager at Intuit
Now: Consultant, Customer Acquisition & Retention at AboutAirportParking.com

Paul Pedersen:
Then: Manager Search Engine Marketing at E W Scripps
Now: Manager Search Engine Marketing at E W Scripps

Dan Perry:
Then: SEO Producer, Cars.com
Now: SEO Director at Turner Broadcasting

David Perez:
Then: SEO/PPC Manager for eHarmony
Now: Cofounder at Convertro

Robert Pettee:
Then: Search Marketing Manager at LendingTree, LLC
Now: Director, Search Marketing at LendingTree, LLC

Amy Pickwick:
Then: Web Communications Manager at USinternetworking, an AT&T company
Now: Senior Project Manager, Go Forward Media

Antonella Pisani Vernier:
Then: Director of Search Engine Marketing & Optimization at ProFlowers
Now: VP, Acquisition Marketing at Provide Commerce (ProFlowers / RedEnvelope)

Roni Raulwing:
Then: International Program Manager – Mobile & Devices at Adobe, Inc.
Now: Web Project and Globalization Manager & Int’l SEO/SEM at a Silicon Valley Company

Greg Reitman:
Then: Manager, Search Marketing at Barnes & Noble .com
Now: Director of Marketing at [x+1]

Jennifer Wood (Rodriguez):
Then: Online Marketing Manager at The Seattle Times
Now: Online Marketing Manager at The Seattle Times

Thomas Shaffer:
Then: Sr. Search Media Analyst at Microsoft
Now: Product Manager – Analytic Services at Microsoft

Aaron Shear:
Then: Global Director of SEO for Shopping.com
Now: Partner at Boost Search Marketing

Marshall D. Simmonds:
Then: Chief Search Strategist for New York Times
Now: Chief Search Strategist for New York Times

Scott Skurnick:
Then: Director SEO (Search Engine Optimization) at Edmunds.com
Now: Executive Director of Search Engine Optimization & User Insight at Edmunds.com

Chris Silver Smith: (Huh! I listed myself in this list! Narcissistic much?!?)
Then: Head of the Technology & Development Department, Idearc Superpages.com
Now: Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance

Jenn Mathews:
Then: SEO Manager at Classmates.com
Now: VP of Interactive Marketing at Obvio.us

Julie Sun:
Then: Senior Manager, SEO at MTV Networks
Now: Director, Digital Marketing at MTV Networks

David Temple:
Then: Search Marketing Consultant at FindLaw
Now: Regional Digital Director at OgilvyOne Worldwide/Soho Square

Patrick Terrell:
Then: Affiliate and Search Marketing Manager at PETCO
Now: Director, Marketing at SurfStitch

Mike Banks Valentine:
Then: Senior SEO Manager at Fox Interactive Media
Now: Director of SEO at Demand Media

Julie Kosbab:
Then: Team Lead, Search Marketing at FindLaw
Now: Online Marketing/Strategy at Plaudit Design

Tanya Vaughan:
Then: Search Engine Marketing & Optimization, Web Marketing Hewlett-Packard (HP)
Now: VP Internet Marketing at Bodybuilding.com

Alfonso Veggetti:
Then: Senior Marketing Analyst at Washington Mutual
Now: Senior Marketing Analyst – Washington Mutual

Meg Walker:
Then: Online Marketing Manager at Network Solutions
Now: Online Marketing – PRWeb at Vocus

Frank Watson:
Then: SEM Manager at FXCM (Forex Capital Markets)
Now: CEO Kangamurra Media

Anthony Ziehmke:
Then: Search Marketing Strategist at Microsoft
Now: Manager – ASG Search at Microsoft

Sandra Zoratti:
Then: Director, Marketing and Strategy at IBM
Now: Vice President, Global Solutions Marketing at Ricoh IBM InfoPrint Solutions

If I’ve made some error as of the date of this blog post, or if you don’t wish me to list your name, feel free to contact me.

* See also my commentary about this post and rating methods at my personal blog: “Top In-House SEOs Reprised“.

The Long Tail, if you don’t already know, refers to a theory promoted by a book by Chris Anderson titled “The Long Tail”, which describes a sort of niche strategy of business, such as employed by Amazon.com or Netflix, that sell a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities. The idea is that while you can obviously sell large numbers of a few popular items (the “head”), the cumulative, smaller number of sales of all your many less-popular items (the “tail”) might easily add up to a far greater total amount.

“Head” items shown in red, “Tail” items shown in blue

Here at Netconcepts, we’ve been promoting the Long Tail concept in relation to natural search marketing for quite some time, since we’ve witnessed how its application can directly improve a business’s overall sales numbers. Indeed, businesses often get the most sales per item for their most popular products, but those products are also often the most competed on the internet, and sometimes the hardest to promote as a result. Even in the cases of top online retailers, we’ve seen that greater bulks of traffic and associated sales may often come from the bulk of less-popular Tail products.

Elberse’s findings are based only on a limited study of music and home-video sales, so it seems quite possible that her study might be true only for the companies and industries from which her data originated.

At the end of the day, theory is all well and good, but actual sales figures are far more important. Netconcepts has working formulas, methodologies and software (GravityStream) which have worked time and again to help improve internet retail sites’ traffic and associated sales. The Long Tail approach has definite applications for Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”), and understanding the concept and making use of it in a search marketing plan effectively will result in increased profits.

For more information on how the Long Tail can positively influence online business, read our white paper, “Chasing the Long Tail of Natural Search“.

(See also mentions of this study by Greg Sterling and Rafe Colburn.)

I was really surprised and flattered to’ve been invited to contribute – I’ve long been a fan and devoted reader of the folx who worked upon SearchEngineWatch.com and now SearchEngineLand.com. I’ve also been a longtime reader of articles by Sterling, along with many others in my company, Idearc Media. I think I’m in really august company, and I know it’s going to challenge me to try to put forward work that’s worthy of appearing under their masthead along with others in the same space.

I’m not a professional writer or reporter by inclination or training, so I can’t turn a phrase as fluently as Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. But they’ve been very cool about opening up their new site to other contributors (I’m by no means the first), and they’re apparently aiming to try to retain the writers’ voices as much as possible with generously lite editorial policy/guidelines. I think their openness and friendliness in inviting in so many interesting voices to build SearchEngineLand will be a cool thing, and will add to how dynamic the space will be.

I could actually do here and there with some significant grammatical “intervention”, shall we say, so I might run my words past a friend of mine who’s helped mitigate my worst English offenses in some past projects. (I have a tendency to use “that” and “which” indiscriminantly at times, for instance…) I’m not trying to sanitize any unique voice I might have — I’m not embarrassed about using colloquialisms or even my sometimes-quirky spellings. (I really like saying “folx” and “thanx”! Do you *know* how many times I’ve saved my poor fingers from spelling “ks” over the years?!?) I’d just like to avoid really gratingly-bad grammar. I know the SEL editors might fix the worst of my offenses, too (they certainly helped catch a blatant factual error in my first go!), but I’d like to save them a leeeetle bit of work if I can. (Did you catch that purposeful, colloquialized spelling?)

In this my first article, I’ve related how Google’s Sketchup contest for college students could be part of a broader strategy to further build out the Google Maps product. Google’s been aggressively building out their Maps and Local Search services, and I think campus maps are a prime area needing work.

As an interesting tangent, I heard various people around the industry opining that SearchEngineWatch.com would significantly suffer after Danny declared his intention to leave it. I just glanced this weekend at Alexa, and it seems like there’s some evidence in support of the theory. Alexa shows that after Search Engine Land went live, Search Engine Watch rapidly began losing some significant Reach and Traffic Rank:

(click to view larger graph)

Search Engine Land’s traffic rapidly went up after launch, and they’re both now running somewhat neck-and-neck. I think I’d put my money on SearchEngineLand.com at this point, just based on the trends alone.

However, others pointed out some irony in my criticism — after all, self-promotion is by nature supposed to be beneficial to one’s self, and it’s not at all unusual to emphasize a bit of controversy to make press releases more interesting to readers. Further, Maher’s responses and comments to my blog posting were well-written, wonderfully mild, and professional — leaving me to wonder if I’d been unreasonable in my attack of the press release.

So, I bought the book before Christmas from Amazon and have now finished reading it. I find that I agree with Maher’s book far more often than not, and I feel I should now apologize for my attack. While I believe in the value of online advertising and still will defend its viability, Maher’s book doesn’t attack it in an unqualified manner, and my attack on the man versus his ideas or statements was unjustified and just low. I prefer debating ideas in a logical manner, and I can’t understand why I also stooped to attacking the person in my post. I’m sorry about that, Barry!

As for the book itself, I found it to be very valuable for small businesses, particularly newbies who’ve never done yellow pages advertising before. Even the business owner who thinks they already know it all ought to read this and check some of their assumptions. Read on for a further review of the book.

The book does a really great job of briefly outlining the history of yellow pages directories, and segues nicely into describing how yellow pages ads work. Most people may not realize it, but a yellow pages ad is an instrument — it’s a machine for educating a user about your business, and persuading them to come to you instead of going to your competition. Fine-tune the ad correctly and you increase your customer base and profits. Slap the ad together in a haphazard manner and you’ll needlessly waste money and lose out to the competition.

For a great many businesses, the yellow pages was and is the first doorway through which customers arrive. Many small businesses are skeptical of the worth of various types of advertising, but for many types of outfits (like plumbers, contractors, auto repair shops, etc) the yellow pages ad is a life-or-death necessity. Nearly every year, there are newspaper stories from around the US about how some entire category of businesses or individual companies have accidentally been dropped from appearing in that year’s edition of their core yellow pages directory — just read those stories or ask those business owners whether this negatively affected their business and they’ll tell you that it had a major impact.

Maher’s book, Getting the Most from Your Yellow Pages Advertising: Maximum Profits at Minimum Cost, provides a detailed education on all major aspects of advertising in the yellow pages.

The book has some great advice on how to choose what size of ad for your directory. Ad size and type are the two factors that play most heavily into the cost of YP ads.

It provides advice on how to handle your directory sales rep, and how to get them to assist you with choosing your ad by getting them to bring a few previous years of directories with them when they come to call.

The book further describes how to choose in which directories for your area to advertise, and how to design your ad to function best for you. Where should your ad appear on a page? What copy and visuals should appear in the ad? What text is vital for seducing a potential customer to choose you?

This information is the classic grand-daddy of search optimization! “Local Search” was originally when consumers picked up a yellow pages hardcopy book, began thumbing through it to find a business that would fulfill their need, and then selected one from the listings. Optimal ads will attract more attention, and convert into more customers.

Some other surprising stuff found in the book:

• Bigger ads are not always better nor worthwhile for ROI;
    
• Using directory ads of competitors to gauge what might work for you;
    
• How to spy on what works well or badly for your competitors;
    
• How to choose an ad which is nearly the same size as a larger, more expensive ad;

So, what does the book actually say about advertising in online yellow pages or with local search? Maher says that online usage is growing while print is declining. He says that it’s worthwhile to have an online presence, and to make sure your listing info is correct with the major listing aggregators which power the data for online directories and local search engines. He says to get a good website and submit it to the search engines. He also says that one should advertise online if the numbers from the sales rep look good.

The basic message Maher has regarding online advertising and advertising in general is that small businesses should do what works, and reduce expenditures for stuff that doesn’t work. (I agree with this philosophy whole-heartedly.) He provides cautions and recommends conservatism about online advertising based upon research that indicates large numbers of consumers still use print, compared to numbers of consumers using online.

I still don’t like comparing online usage metrics with offline usage metrics, because the stats are each arrived at by very different means — comparing their separate numbers is a bit like comparing apples with oranges. I think most of his basis for his stance is correct, however. Print directories still have a large usership and will for some time longer. I may quibble some on the comparative numbers of users, but this isn’t Maher’s fault — I think he used some of the best stats available. Anecdotally I can agree to some extent — I can see loads of people in my city who don’t have ready access to the internet — travelors who don’t carry laptops, less-affluent people who don’t have computers or internet connections, consumers away from their homes without quick internet access, etc.

I do think that travel-related businesses and businesses targeting the middle to affluent classes will enjoy greater success with online advertising than some other types of businesses, though, and they likely have already clued-in to understanding the need for online marketing. Maher doesn’t disagree — he basically just says experiment with it, and use it if it works for you. Good advice for anyone, for any type of advertising.

He further says that the advice he gives in the book on ad design and ad copy should also apply to online. And, he’s right — much of online optimization is based on the classic ad optimization techniques found in the legacy print product.

I could wish that the book had a much larger section on how to optimize ads for local search and online directories, but it’s entirely valuable to small businesses as-is. Perhaps Maher will expand out this section in a future edition.

I highly recommend this book as a guide to businesses considering how to optimize their yellow pages presence. The book contains priceless information on how to tune advertising to get more converting customers for a business. At less than a hundred bucks, it’s much cheaper than paying an ad agency’s rates!

If you’ve done any whois queries in hopes of setting up a new domain name, you’ll already know the frustration of being denied the names you’d like to have most. It leads one to wonder how many common names are already snapped up. Dennis has done a bit of interesting research presented in his article on some common name permutations, and what percentages are already registered or parked until someone pays fees to the companies which have speculated by snapping them up.

I’m betting that if he took a database of common dictionary names and ran similar analysis, he’d also find 100% of those already taken by the same speculators. Interesting reading, though.

• The World Wide Web contains 167 terabytes of Web pages on its “surface” (i.e. fixed web pages); in volume this is seventeen times the size of the Library of Congress print collections. Plus another 91,850 terabytes of data in the “deep web” (from database driven websites that create web pages on demand)
• Email generates about 400,000 terabytes of new information each year worldwide.
• The amount of new information stored on paper, film, magnetic, and optical media has about doubled in the last three years.
• Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. Ninety-two percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks. Five exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the information contained in 37,000 new libraries the size of the Library of Congress book collections.

What I found even more amazing (and depressing) is the degree to which we consume this data. We are a society of
information junkies. Witness this from the same report:

Published studies on media use say that the average American adult uses the telephone 16.17 hours a month, listens to radio 90 hours a month, and watches TV 131 hours a month. About 53% of the U.S. population uses the Internet, averaging 25 hours and 25 minutes a month at home, and 74 hours and 26 minutes a month at work — about 13% of the time.

I can’t imagine sitting in front of the ‘idiot box’ for 131 hours a month. What a terrible waste of one’s life. For an average person, that’s something like 7 years of your life — gone.

Dave of the excellent PassingNotes.com blog looks at it this way:

IF you were all of those things, then of the 720 average hours in a given month, of which you should be sleeping circa 200 (give or take a few hundred), then you’d basically be occupied by media (in some form) for over 330 hours per month – and since we spend about one-third of our lives ‘waiting for something to happen’ (bus, phone etc) and about another 20-40 hours per month in a bathroom (much higher for ted kennedy), then discount sleep, and you’ve got about 80ish hours to be a genuine, sentient human being…sad, sad world…