This is some of the latest information we know regarding Austin Taylor’s condition.
Current Condition as of the 27th
1-He remains in a drug-induced, paralyzed state to protect him from himself
2-Still on the ventilator, which is participating in 70% of Austin's breaths.
3-He has a slight fever but is receiving antibiotics.
4-CAT scans lead doctors to believe there is no brain damage due to loss of oxygen.
5-Surgery for his leg tenatively scheduled for Monday the 2nd.
We know that your hopes and prayers are with Austin and his family. We will try to keep you up to date on his condition as soon as we hear more.
In our continuing study of DealTime.com, we have found the following informative articles and resources covering DealTime. More coming soon.
Terra Lycos Taps Dealtime (10/3/2001):
http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/2001_896361
The Bottom Line on Online Shopping Bots (7/13/2001):
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/11999.html
It's DealTime for iWon.com (7/11/2001):
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/8471_799591
The Rise of E-Brokers (4/13/2001):
http://www.clickz.com/aff_mkt/aff_mkt/article.php/840351
The Missing Link in Comparison Shopping (10/5/2000):
http://www.clickz.com/mkt/onl_mkt_comm/article.php/830181
Sprint PCS Adds DealTime Comparison Shopping (7/10/2000):
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/411181
Bertelsmann Sells Evenbetter.com to DealTime (5/22/2000):
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/376701
DealTime Upgrades Its DealAgent Technology (5/2/2000):
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/352401
DealTime.com Adds New Shopping Categories, Buying Groups (10/19/1999)
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/220921
DealTime Secures $20 Million in Financing (9/17/1999):
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/202961
DealTime Raises $20 Million, Moves to NY (9/17/1999):
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/249521
Reviving the Promise of Bots: DealTime Adds a New Dimension (3/5/1999)
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/247771
Friends,
We feel it necessary to inform you of a recent complication at MarketingExperiments.com. Austin Taylor, our Chief Search Analyst has been injured in a serious car accident. He is currently in the intensive care unit at Shands Hospital, Jacksonville Florida.
These are the injuries, as we know them:
1. His spleen ruptured and has been removed.
2. Several ribs are broken.
3. One lung has been punctured and has collapsed.
4. His left leg is broken in two places.
5. His kidneys are seriously bruised (and there may be other complications).
Austin is on a respirator and is experiencing difficulty with his breathing. Major surgery on his leg has been postponed twice. Please pray for him.
Sincerely,
Flint McGlaughlin
We're currently working on an experiment which will examine DealTime.com, one of the leaders in comparison shopping. A major part of the experiment will focus on answering this question:
- What is the most effective way to set up a DealTime campaign?
Thus far, we have discovered a few points to help optimize your listings on DealTime.com:
1. Have a point of difference – either a lower price, niche products that few merchants are selling, free shipping, strong service which will come through in user reviews, or a recognized brand.
2. Optimize your DealTime program by deleting products with poor margins and/or conversions. Focus on higher converting products to improve traffic, conversion, and profitability.
3. Start your bids low and increase them over time. This will allow you to measure conversions at different pricing levels to maximize your profit margins.
4. Track conversions from click to sale that occur following the initial user session. Some merchants have dramatically increased their profits from DealTime once they began to cookie users to take into account sales resulting from DealTime clicks that occurred outside the first user session. This enabled them to improve their placement on DealTime – and therefore their traffic – at a slightly lower margin.
5. Continue to optimize your bid listings over time. The DealTime user base is constantly changing (and growing) over time, so don't expect what works one month to bring you the best profits in the next.
For more information on DealTime's Merchant Program, see https://www.dealtime.net/welcome.html. Stay tuned for the full report, which will feature our comprehensive data and analysis of DealTime campaigns.
A Guide To LookListings:
Questions:
Who Are LookSmart's Users?
Why Would I Want To Be Listed On LookSmart?
Is It Worth The Money To Become Listed On LookSmart?
How Can I Create An Effective LookSmart Campaign?
Who Are LookSmart's Users?
LookSmart estimates that they have 69 million users per day. LookSmart's results are used by affiliated top portals and ISPs, including Microsoft's MSN, About.com, AltaVista, InfoSpace, Time Warner, and RoadRunner.
In LookSmart's search results, you will first see the paid advertisements, and then you will see the directory category listings. If there are no direct matches in the LookSmart database, then the results default to Inktomi results.
Why Would I Want To Be Listed On LookSmart?
A LookSmart listing can spur many of the search engine spiders to crawl to your site. Users claim that they don't even have to submit anywhere else (including Inktomi) once sites are listed in LookSmart. This is certainly something to think about.
Unrelated links to your site are only minimally helpful to achieve high search engine rankings. They may have worked in the past, but from my understanding of how the engines currently rank sites, unrelated links won't have much effect on rankings these days. What DOES seem to boost rankings in many search engines is having a good ranking in the major directories.
LookSmart cares that its Directory has good sites in it that will be helpful to its visitors.
LookSmart results are placed above Inktomi results on MSN. So if you're hoping to get a higher position on the page you will want to go with LookSmart.
No preference is given to one company over another inside the LookSmart directory. If you are a small company that has to compete in bidding wars on the other PPC search engines, then this might be a good place for you to advertise.
If your company's name starts with a "z" you might be out of luck on large listing categories.
LookSmart has an editorial policy that does not accept porn, hate, or spam pages.
Is It Worth The Money To Become Listed On LookSmart?
LookSmart is a closed directory, meaning you must pay to be included in the directory. There is a $49.00 set-up fee and a minimum $45.00 refundable account deposit for new customers. There is a fixed price of $0.15 per click, so you do not have to worry about bidding for a position. Anyone serious about having a presence on the Internet must be found in the top directories.
How Can I Create An Effective LookSmart Campaign?
LookSmart does not rely on Meta Tags, keyword density, etc. LookSmart is a human edited directory.
Make sure you have no broken links on your site. This includes broken image links. Xenu is a free link checker that will analyze your site for broken links.
LookSmart is concerned with giving their users information they need. By making sure your website is rich with content, your listings and results with LookSmart will be good. If your site has little information or content, you run this risk of being very poorly listed on LookSmart.
If you have a large amount of graphic content that causes your web page to load slowly, you may have a chance of getting dropped from the directory.
Selecting Keywords:
1. Do select product-specific, targeted keywords and phrases that are directly related to the products, services, or content available on your website. For example, if your site is for a luxury resort and spa in Miami Beach, keywords like "spa" and "Miami Beach resort" are more targeted than "hotel" and "Florida." "Audi S4 Quattro" is a more targeted keyword phrase than "car." The more targeted and specific your keywords are, the more helpful they will be in generating traffic to your site.
2. Do use keyword phrases when appropriate. Suggesting keyword phrases of two or three words can increase your site's search relevancy. For example, if your site sells camping gear, the keyword phrase "sleeping bags" is more targeted than using "sleeping" and "bags" as individual keywords. Keyword phrases on LookSmart are limited to three words in length.
3. Do use alternate spellings and acronyms. Some users may misspell product names, brand names, or other keywords when doing searches. By including alternate versions of commonly misspelled words in your relevancy keywords, you can increase the likelihood that those users will find your listing.
4. Do consider using geographic references as appropriate. The use of geographically targeted keywords can increase search relevancy for your listing. Examples: "Dentist in Seattle" is more targeted than "dentist;" and "coffee from Kona" is more targeted than "coffee."
5. Do use all 10 keywords or phrases per listing. Each specific keyword or phrase you suggest will increase your site's relevancy and the chances of driving targeted traffic to your site.
6. Don't choose superlatives as your keywords. Remember that your potential customers are searching for specific products and services, not for words such as "best" or "cheapest."
7. Don't include punctuation marks in your keywords or phrases. These will not improve your relevancy and the search algorithm will ignore them.
8. Don't infringe on the trademarks or copyrights of other businesses. Do not choose a company name unless you are that company and do not select brand names that you are not authorized to sell.
9. Don't include keywords that are pornographic, violent, or hateful in nature. Keywords that are pornographic or sexually explicit, or those that promote hate, violence, or illegal activities, will not be accepted.
10. Don't repeat keywords. Repeating keywords more than once will not improve the placement or search relevancy of your listing.
Suggested keywords are subject to verification by LookSmart editors, so make sure to select keywords that are relevant to your business. LookSmart does not guarantee that your listing will show up in search results for your selected keywords, nor does it guarantee priority placement.
LookSmart places importance on keywords in URLs as well, so if you are a payphone merchant a URL of www.payphone-marketplace.com might work well for you on LookSmart.
LookSmart representative did tell me that if you're not happy with your listing after it's in, they will listen to your reasoning and may be willing to revise it.
Good optimization means your rankings will get better over time. Your hits will increase, and your ROI will increase.
Submitting to LookSmart:
LookSmart gives you two different listing options. The Small Business Option requires a $49.00 setup fee and $15.00 per month minimum. The Large Business Option has a minimum charge of $2500 per month.
After you have chosen to submit your site you will be asked to submit your relevancy keywords. You must keep the keywords that you choose to be relevant to your site or they will be disapproved. You also must choose the category that you wish to be in, but you may also leave that decision up to the editor that will review your site.
After you have completed the two steps above you will create a username and password.
Once your account has been created you will want to go into the account management center and add any other URLs or relevancy keywords that you think you will need.
Next give your credit card information, which will activate the account. A new account can take up to five business days to become active.
If your site is a not for profit, you may choose to be listed on the Zeal directory which powers much of LookSmart. This is a free service for non-profit companies.
Google will syndicate your ads on its various affilitates. On their website they list their affilitates. But your ads will also show up on various other sites. Here is a current list of affiliates that I have found that google is getting to show their ads:
http://www.google.com
http://aolsearch.aol.com
http://search.dogpile.com/texis/search
http://www.dogpile.com
http://search.earthlink.net/search
http://www.bizrate.com/marketplace/search
http://msxml.infospace.com/
http://www.attbi.com/cgi-bin/websearch
http://www.att.net/cgi-bin/websearch
http://www.worldnet.att.net/cgi-bin/websearch
http://att.dealtime.com/dt-app/SE
http://www.ucs.att.net/cgi-bin/websearch
http://www.ask.com/main/askjeeves.asp
http://services.ask.com/shop2.asp
http://www.dealtime.com
http://dealtime.com/dt-app/SE/
http://coolsavings.dealtime.com/DealSearch/GDS.cmp
http://aol.dealtime.com/
http://iwonshopping.dealtime.com/DealSearch/GDS.cmp
http://www.att.net/cgi-bin/websearch
http://search.dogpile.com/texis/search
http://msxml.excite.com/
http://dpxml.webcrawler.com/
http://www.searchalot.com/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi
http://www.searchalot.com/texis/open/metathin
http://websearch.cs.com/cs/cs_results.adp
http://search.netscape.com/nscp_results.adp
http://www.bonzi.com/bonziportal/index.asp
http://search.metacrawler.com/texis/search
Title Bar With Keywords
-Keyword Rich Text. Make sure it is relevant
-Keyword proximity
-Keywords frequency
-Keyword Density
-Keyword Prominence
-Multiple page site: The more properly interlinked Sites the better your rank. the more the better you will do
-Have keywords inside filenames
correct file naming convention
-Treat google as if it were your girlfriend... very unpredicable and can change on a moments notice
-Freshness of page content
-Inbound anchor text relevance
-Presence on marked authority pages
-Navigation - clear paths and logical links
-The Category of backward links in Open Directory
-Correct html and use of on page elements improper HTML syntax can affect rankings
-A site can be at top spot without being in dmoz. But if it is in dmoz the competitors can hardly stay above your pagerank
-Inflow of PR score should be kept within your site. If you have a lot of outging links from you site to others than the PR inflow (contribution from your inlinks) will flow out (due to misplaced outlinks and bad site structure)
-Link text to be your most important phrase
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copyright © 2002 jim winstead jr. • contact us • privacy policy • view source
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weblogs.com and blogtracker and blogrolling.com are "directories".
The most popular blogs are built around a practical theme rather than a person.