The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog The GottaQuirk blog is a great resource for information about internet marketing. It’s an up-to-date resource on the happenings in the fast-moving eMarketing industry. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 5865

Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

Wiki Wiki 2007-04-20 06:34:45 Reading a recent post, written straight from the Web 2.0 Expo in America, I was exposed to some very interesting statistics with regards to our dear friend, Wikipedia. Just a few of these statistics state that: Wikipedia visits outnumber Encarta visits 3400:1 Younger visitors view Wikipedia, whereas older visitors are the editors of Wikipedia Contributors to Wikipedia are predominantly male While these are all very interesting points, the one thing that stood out for me the most is the fact that Wikipedia, a newer initiative than Encarta, has 3400% more viewership than its older counterpart. My guess is that people like to be interactive rather than being dictated to in the old-fashioned schoolroom kind of way that most encyclopaedias are accustomed to doing. They do it because that is, and has always been, the way to teach. Do the research, become the expert, and then tell people what they assume to be accurately correct. This has worked before, but times have changed. ...

Who's on Facebook? 2007-04-20 03:58:51 Happy Friday Everyone! Carlos blogged about Facebook’s insane numbers a while ago, then Rob’s mom invited him to become one of her Facebook contacts, now we have the age breakdown thanks to FastCompany.com: 100,000 age 64+ 310,000 age 45--63 380,000 age 35--44 3 million age 25—34 Phenomenal isn’t it? A real indication that social networking sites are not just for the youngsters. Also listed in the article and featuring some big names are a few of Facebook’s Employee Networks which includes IBM, Time Inc. and McDonald’s. We are growing our own network at the mo – Friends of Quirk, check it out! If you have a mo read this article on Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, very interesting stuff! Comment on "Who's on Facebook?" ...

Why SEO is really not very much like porn 2007-04-19 09:37:50 Two weeks ago, I spotted two posts comparing SEO to porn. Jeff Atwood, of Coding Horror wrote a post called “SEOs: the New Pornographers of the Web“ and Rich Skrenta wrote, “Early adopter pilotfish: pornographers vs. SEOs” (I guess this is me taking the linkbait then) Intrigued by this unlikely metaphor, I’ve spent the past 2 weeks feverishly researching the issue at the local Adult World store. Most of what my research has taught me I cannot share with you here. What I can share with you though is my conclusion. Porn, for all its virtues, is nothing like SEO – here’s why: Doing SEO on a site that’s younger than 16 years old is completely legal In SEO, the older and bigger your site the better You’re encouraged to exercise your SEO habits at work You never get tired of SEO The joy you get from a good rank has a lasting effect When SEO is done right, by an ethical service provider, no-one should be getting s ...

Money can't buy you link love 2007-04-19 08:32:53 “Yes, if you sell links, you should mark them with the nofollow tag. Not doing so can affect your reputation in Google.” - Matt Cutts after a controversial comment where he stated that he did not add a link onto his Blog, because the person did not pay for the link. Well, interesting… So why would paid links damage your reputation on Google? Before we get into that let’s start of with the definition of a no-follow link: Some say that it’s an indication to search engines about the relationship you have with the link: “No, I can't vouch for its quality” or “I don't have editorial control over this link”. Either way you’re telling SE’s that you don’t want to associate yourself with the target page. But why does Google not approve of paid links? Is AdWords not just another form of paid linking? (On this note I have a sneaking suspicion that AdWords does have a part to play in your organic rankings.) Might Google ...

Print presses on 2007-04-18 10:05:51 A common opinion among the online community is that the print medium is dying – at roughly the same rate as the Internet is growing. While this is a distinctly catalytic topic of conversation to whip out just about anywhere (it often leads to heated debates) it’s all too easy to extrapolate a few facts and figures into a bigger, but smudged, picture. Advocates of print will tell you that print will never die because: The pleasant aesthetics of physically paging/browsing through a newspaper are irreplaceable. The Internet is far from pervasive in the third-world thanks to slow economic growth and insufficient telecommunications infrastructure. Reaching a point where everyone can access every bit of information they need on the Internet is an idealistic approach which can never be attained in reality. You can’t exactly start a fire, or line a bird cage, with a computer monitor. Advocates of the Internet will tell you that print will cease to live be ...

Social Newtorking for Kids 2007-04-18 03:13:33  As more and more horror stories surface about children being exposed to unsuitable content on the Internet, parents are finding themselves in two minds as to the extent to which they let their kids access such an indispensable – yet treacherous - tool. The good news is that web developers are wisening up to child safety on the Internet. Concerned parents should take heart in the standard being set by Club Penguin, a social networking site for kids.                         On Club Penguin, each player is a penguin that interacts with other penguins and plays games. Members who sign up and pay a monthly fee (at $5.95) earn ‘coins’ with which they can kit out their penguin in clothes and all sorts of goodies for their igloos. The penguins also have social spots where they can interact with other members who are online, like the coffee shop or nightclub. What sets Club Penguin apart from most o ...

INDABA embraces online 2007-04-17 06:27:11 Tourism is one industry that lends itself incredibly well to all things online, in fact I’d be so bold as to say that without some kind of eMarketing strategy in place travel related businesses should just pack up and go home. This is particularly true for search marketing as online travel bookings are mainly driven by search. For a long time it seemed as though the South African tourism industry itself didn’t really appreciate the importance of online marketing, but it looks as though times they are a changing. The tourism industry is in for a treat at this year’s INDABA which is to be held at the International Convention Centre and the Durban Exhibition Centre from 12 - 15 May. With 11 691 South African and international representatives visiting the event last year and with reported registration for 2007 already up by 7% it looks like it’s going to be a bumper year. At this years INDABA a new initiative will be introduced – the South African Tourism On ...

The bots are back in town 2007-04-17 03:40:13 If you remember we moved away from CAPTCHAs in December and replaced them with two techniques discussed in this post: An alternative to irritating CAPTCHAs. Well in the last week or so those techniques have started to come up short. Now I am not 100% sure whether it is due to the fact that the bots have gotten smarter or whether it's due to manual spam submissions, but more and more spam comments seem to be getting through. It's not like the methods we applied are not working at all, they still block more than 95% of our spam attacks, but its that last 5% of spam comments that come through that really drive me up the wall. It seems like I might have lost a round in my ongoing fight with the spambots, but the war is not over yet! Enter my new secret weapon (well not so secret actually): Spam checking via distributed approaches. Let me explain: Basically there are services out there (like Akismet and LinkSleeve) that allow you to check the posted comments via their spam verification ...

Conducting the Freedom of Speech 2007-04-16 07:38:49 Little could have stirred as much controversy in the blogosphere as Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales' recent statements that a code should be adopted to steer behaviour for online commentary in a more positive direction. No matter what the contents of the code (of which a proposed draft can be found here), one cannot imagine the vast majority of bloggers accepting it. The notion of a code, of rules, of guidelines, of imposed structure goes against the very nature of your typical, everyday blogger. However, the recent death threats to O'Reilly's friend, Kathy Sierra, have added great impetus to his argument. Sierra is a well-known figure, and a code which might have been immediately discarded a few weeks ago is now giving rise to some very serious debate. And yet Sierra and Chris Locke (who at one stage seemed poised like mortal enemies in the turf surrounding the death threats) published a joint statement declaring that “it would be tragic if this incident were used as a weapo ...

Easy come, easy go 2007-04-16 04:45:02 After asking readers what they think of the comment text editor (Should it stay, or should it go?), speaking to a few tech people and looking at other blogs we came to the conclusion that it has gotta go. I can just hear the blog purists screaming "Horraaaai" after reading that line, but all is not lost for those who want to make use of bold and italic text. Enter the new GottaQuirk comment editor... It allows you to use bold, italics and links as well as automatically inserting line breaks for you. So how does it work? For those of you who are familiar with wiki markup this will come as second nature and for those who aren't it will soon. To bold text simply wrap it with two ** like this: **make this text bold**. To italicise text wrap it with two // like this: //make this text italic//. To create a link just wrap it with two __ (it might look like one underscore, but it is actually two) like this: __www.gottaquirk.com__ (you don’t need to add the http: ...

OpenCoffee comes to Cape Town 2007-04-16 02:40:40 Since the first OpenCoffee Club in London on the 1st March this year, Saul has been trying to get me to start one in Cape Town. Unfortunately I’ve spent so much time travelling and running around on both work and thankfully holiday missions over the past couple of months that the opportunity never materialised. Fortunately Eric is a proactive chap and has organised Cape Town’s first OpenCoffee meeting for this Thursday. The OpenCoffee club it seems was the brain child of Philip Wilkinson but is driven entirely by ex-Skype Marketing VP (and South African!), Saul Klein. It began in London as an open forum for networking entrepreneur’s and investors in a way that reminds me of First Tuesday except with a far more open source or unconference vibe. I remember chatting to Nic about the first one which he attended and the feeling then was that it really had potential to grow into something great. Turns out he was right and thanks to Saul, after only 6 weeks it has already s ...

Ubuntu 101 2007-04-15 07:00:28 According to this South AFrican site, ubuntu is a Zulu word that roughly translates as "humanity towards others”. In South Africa we hear it used all the time… “the spirit of ubuntu”, “philosophy of ubuntu”, “the ubuntu way”. Well my basic understanding of the concept is that it means working together to achieve common goals no matter your race, religion or creed. Ford illustrates the meaning of ubuntu in this ad. Comment on "Ubuntu 101" ...

Michel Gondry's Levi's Commercial 2007-04-14 06:27:02 Another one from Levi's. Michel Gondry is a pretty famous music video director, having done some well known work for Bjork and a large number of other left-of-centre artists over the past 20 years. You might know him better as the director of the awesome Jim Carrey flick, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Bearing these mind-bending works in mind you just know that any commercial that he's going to make is going to be very heavily stylised. And this one doesn't disappoint. Playing on the old urban legend of the young man visiting the chemist for his nocturnal supplies it rolls out to a great tune. “Pretentious” and “awesome” seem to be the most used words to describe it. But love it or hate it, with well over 114 000 views on YouTube in the past week it's getting the job done.  Comment on "Michel Gondry's Levi's Commercial" ...

Levi's 2007 Collection 2007-04-14 06:10:07 Well after that annoying, mandated bunny clip that I posted last week we're back on track with this cool Levi's ad. Talk about getting it right. Aside from the really hot chicks and the scary looking blonde I think this ad is pretty notable for identifying its target market so successfully and getting their undivided attention. On top of this it uses a clever idea to take the viewer through the brand's history and make an emotional connection. Yes, yes, blah blah. After all is said and done it again boils down to the old saying “sex sells”, but as long it's done this well who cares? Comment on "Levi's 2007 Collection" ...

Attack of the Scraper Bots 2007-04-13 06:51:59 There’s no sleep for the righteous. Or so I found out recently when we noticed a drop in the rankings of one of my clients. I started off with the usual checks. When last was the site indexed? Any new error messages on Google Webmaster Tools? Checked for any broken links? Back link audit? Any new Google Algorithm updates? Ok, so with 5 check marks what could have caused the downwards curve on the ranking rollercoaster? At first I thought that it was merely a weekly fluctuation, but then I notice every strategist’s nightmare - un-indexed pages. (Noooooooo!!!) Through further investigations, I uncovered a nightmare for any site owner – we’ve become victims of Scraper Bots. Scraper Bots Software that scrapes the internet to find competing sites, then ripping the source code with the intent of duplicating the entire site on a different domain. The question is, how would this benefit anybody? Imagine adding fresh new cont ...