aaron dalrymple dot com

I’m not sure what to say about this… The picture in my head is pretty funny though. So maybe the airlines will figure out how to be profitable after all; remove the seats!

Cash-strapped airlines consider standing room only

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Tagged as: Travel Marketing, travel, airlines, airbus,

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Well, I’ve had my new Blackberry 8700g for just two weeks now and I love it. I moved up from a 7100t and I gotta say, it was a great move. The beauty of Blackberry is the user interface, both from a hardware and software standpoint. I’m just not geeky enough for a Treo I guess, I had one for a while and I could not get used to it. Palms are great devices on their own, the phone/communication functions seemed like a bad after-thought to me. I know they work for a lot of people though.

The BB does email great and has a decent web browser. The 8700 has EDGE speed (sufficient), beautiful screen (that can be viewed in any lighting condition), better integrated phone functions than previous BBs, good keyboard, instant messaging and PIM that sync with Outlook. It feels like a well integrated communications device worthy of 007. No camera you say? Who cares! I’ve never snapped a camera phone photo that was worth a darn. I’d much rather carry my Canon Digital Elph around and have decent pics if I want them. The novelty of camera phones wore off a long time ago in my book.

It’s rugged as hell too. The Treo seems “fragile” in comparison, but that may or may not be true in reality. My last BB was abused though and held up great. My main reason for the upgrade was to get the full keyboard and bigger screen.

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Tagged as: Gadgets, blackberry, 8700g, phone, gadgets

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Hmm, Forbes says that travel is facing more competition from search engines, but they don’t really expand on that point in this short piece…  A couple of interesting points from the article though:

• Unique visitor traffic to online travel sites was down 6% year-over-year on average in the first quarter, with traffic to Orbitz down 16% and Cheaptickets up 1%.

• However, page views at Cheaptickets and Orbitz were up 42% and 6% year-over-year, respectively.

I would like to hear if there is concern from the online agencies about Yahoo’s Travel Portal and them mixing their own offers in with search engine results.  Or Google’s mixing Google Base offers in with its results. It could demand some changes in how agencies and direct suppliers market on search engines.  It makes good sense to familiarize your self with Google Base and Yahoo Travel Submit, as well as Yahoo! Search Submit.

Here’s the full piece from Forbes.com:

Online Travel Faces Search Competition - Forbes.com

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Tagged as: Travel Marketing, Travel, Marketing, Google Base, Travel Submit, Forbes, Orbitz, Cheaptickets

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Matt Cutts, Google employee/blogger, is reporting that Google will begin notifying SOME webmasters of penalties they may be receiving from Google for spammy content, thus keeping their sites out of the Google index.

I think it’s a great idea from Google. And they way Matt explains that some, not all, sites will be notified makes perfect sense.  I would imagine, though, that there are so many unintentional mistakes that webmasters make that it will be impossible for Google to actually notify all well-meaning webmasters and/or police who gets notified and who doesn’t… It’s technically just a “test” right now and it’s a great move in the right direction.

The notifications will come via the Sitemaps interface, which has evolved from a simple submission tool into a full-blown webmaster toolkit.  Matt and some folks from the Sitemaps team did a great presentation on Sitemaps at Pubcon last week in Boston.  If you’re not already using the Sitemaps interface, you ought to be.  Note, however, that Matt states that this is just a test and, “if you don’t see a message in Sitemaps, it doesn’t mean that there’s not a penalty. Right now, we’re not telling every site that has a penalty about it. If you bought the site 3 months ago and still aren’t seeing any pages in Google, it’s possible that it does have a penalty.”

Here is Matt’s post:

Notifying webmasters of penalties

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Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, SEO, SEO Tools, Google, Matt Cutts, Sitemaps, Google Sitemaps, Pubcon,

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I attended the Webmaster World conference last week in Boston. By far it was the best search conference I’ve been to. Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink, the New Yorker) gave the keynote and was great. I really enjoyed the focus on the social aspects of search, communication and the web; which was kicked off with Gladwell’s keynote and seemed to carry throughout the sessions. I think it’s a nice compliment to the more technical side of this business and gives the technology a context to exist within. I also thought that there were some fresh faces on the panels this time, which was great.

I also enjoyed the blogging session, which included Matt Cutts, Robert Scoble and Jeremy Zawodny. All of these guys have great blogs and it inspired me to re-tool my blog a bit as well. You’ll notice a new look, new subjects and that I’m now using Word Press instead of Blogger.

I had a heck of a time getting home to Minneapolis from Boston though. I had booked a ticket on AirTran because I could get a business class ticket for the same price as coach on Northwest (which I avoid at all costs). I made it to Boston with no problems; I had a quick stop at Midway in Chicago.

Coming home, however, I was connected through Atlanta (I wasn’t paying attention when I booked). Atlanta was having “weather delays” and the plane from Boston to Atlanta was scheduled to leave 2.5 hours late, which would mean that I would miss my connection and be stuck in Atlanta overnight. The AirTran desk was EXTREMELY unfriendly as well, which didn’t help… Then it hit me, I bought a refundable ticket in business class! I can cancel and try to find another flight home.

I visited the Northwest counter and was quoted almost $700 for a one-way back to Mpls. Well, my refund was worth almost $400, if I stayed in Boston another night it would probably be a wash. Then I had my second epiphany! I was the holder of a shiny new Visa Signature card with its own travel concierge service, of which my wife and I were just joking that nobody ever actually uses. I called them up on my new Blackberry 8700g and was able to book a flight home on United for $40 less than my AirTran refund and got home 1.5 hours earlier than originally scheduled!

Wow, I used up some good karma on that trip. I was glad to make it home. Since the conference I’ve started reading Gladwell’s Blink. I read The Tipping Point a couple of years ago as well. I tend to read them from a more sociological point-of-view than with a business perspective (I’m not sure why or if it’s any different than most??). I know both books have great business applications too though. I will write up a review on Blink as soon as I am finished. I also plan to post some notes/tips from Pubcom in the coming days.

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Tagged as: Search Engines, WebMasterWorld, Blogging, Pubcon Boston, Malcolm Gladwell, AirTran, Northwest, Matt Cutts, Robert Scoble, Jeremy Zawodny, blog

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Here’s a great article by Ian Lurie on Five Big Online Marketing Mistakes. I think he hits the nail on the head when he says, “one must approach online marketing with a holistic philosophy that recognizes the interrelatedness of, say, the structure of a website and its ability to rank highly in search results.”

Many clients and individuals that SEMs deal with don’t see the connection between web design, usability, and search engine marketing. Having a site search-friendly is usually an after thought. In a lot of cases, this is too late to do it well without a major overhaul, which is usually out of the question. Very seldom am I consulted to help with SEO while the design is still at a concept stage. Most of the time it’s a last minute item after the site is scheduled to go live.

From a search marketer’s point-of-view, this is extremely frustrating. Often times our success is judged upon results that could be vastly improved if we were involved in every step of the process. In my business this has fueled the microsite strategy. If we are going to be successful, I must have more control over the site and can’t get stuck into a queue that is 24 months long (which has happened). Unfortunately, I don’t think that microsites work very well for mainstream (or wannabe mainstream) businesses.

Fortunately, though, more website owners are starting to “get it.” It’s usually the real savvy ones with their own money on the line.

Read Ian’s piece here:
Five Big Online Marketing Mistakes

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Tagged as: Search Engines, Marketing, Online Marketing

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It seems a like a slight stretch to come to that conclusion from these little bits of information, as the author of the following article does. But it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were true either. Google does have account managers that work in the travel “vertical” already on the AdSense side… Is this just a posting for one of those, or something more? What do you think?

From ZDNet:
EXCLUSIVE: Google appears to be building travel portal- maybe with Orbitz?

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Tagged as: Google, Travel Marketing, Search Engines

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I was just reading a newsletter with tips for generating website traffic and it mentioned using Yahoo to check incoming links by using the old “link:” method in the search bar.

This works great, but, Yahoo also offers another great tool (in beta) that gives you a little clearer picture with a lot more flexibility.

With Yahoo! Site Explorer you can view a list of all of the pages indexed on your site and filter by subdomains, AND view a list of all of the incoming links to your site with the ability to filter by domains, subdomains, URLs or combinations of those variables. You can even export your results to a TSV file, view Yahoo’s cache of each page or drill in further by individual page/URL. It’s a great tool that I don’t hear much about.

If you use Firefox, you can even download an extension that allows you to right-click any link on the web and plug it into Site Explorer - launching a new tab with the results.

Check it Out:
Yahoo! Site Explorer

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Tagged as: Search Engines, Yahoo, SEO, SEO Tools

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Here is some more info on Google Base from ClickZ. It’s good piece on who is using it, how, why and what’s coming of it. I think Google Base has the potential to have a pretty large impact on search engine optimization for the travel industry, lead generation for auto dealers, as well as job sites, etc. The key will be: can they keep the content valuable and credible, instead of turning into Monster or eBay Travel, where, I feel, you have to sift through a lot of garbage to find the pearls? Also, what happen to Froogle, haven’t heard much about that one in a while… It’s been in Beta for a long time now.

From ClickZ:
As Google Base Builds, Local Advertisers and Vertical Sites Get on Board

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Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, SEO

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iProspect and Jupiter Research have released the findings from a January study of search behavior. The study finds that searchers are growing more impatient than ever when conducting a search. They’re more likely to click on a first page result, quicker to change their query or even the engine that they are using. Some of the findings include:

• 62 percent of search users click on a link within the first results’ page. This is up from 60 percent in 2004 and 48 percent four years ago.
• 36% of search engine users believe that the companies whose websites are returned at the top of the search results are the top brands in their field.
• 90 percent click on a link within the first three pages, up from 87 percent two years ago and 81 percent in 2002.

Read the entire release here:Search Engine Marketing Firm iProspect Study Reveals Increase in the Importance of Attaining Top Natural Search Results

Here are some other references to the study:

MediaPost Publications - Study: Two-Thirds Of Searchers Click On First Results Page

62% Of Searchers Click On Links On First Page Of Search Results

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Tagged as: Search Engines, Marketing, SEM

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