Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

I headlined earlier this week: Kelsey: You’ll Still Have Yellow Pages To Kick Around Some More. Kelsey CEO Neal Polachek now underscores that yes, Yellow Pages will live another day, or two.

Polachek’s Scrooge worthy “Christmas Story” of his car being rammed, his house being infested by vermin and his commode refusing to perform, has a happy Yellow Pages ending. Polachek shares that he turned to his “phone book” NOT to the World Wide Web to find eager, ready to serve auto repair, pest control and plumbing professionals.

BUT, what about the Polachek family’s Festival Of Lights? WHERE did Neal turn to search for how to spend his Hannukah gelt on toys, apparel, dining out…? Typical searchers do their everday “look ups” at Google, as Yellow Pages know all to well.

Recession Hits AT&T Online: Kelsey Local Search Advertising Predictions Too?, however, I analyzed earlier this week, underscoring the persistent roadblocks that continue to thwart en masse online advertising adoption on the part of local businesses.

Nevertheless, Kelsey analysts’ 2008 predictions echo persistent conventional local wisdom of a seemingly preordained inevitablity of “big increases in local search inventory” and an unstoppable victory of the new, (purportedly) more rational Web model over the old, (supposedly) frustratingly irrational print directory framework:

In the past, small and medium-sized businesses have protected their print Yellow Pages investment at the expense of other media. Given the structural changes in the local ad market, we believe the next downturn will favor media choices that are more flexible and provide a lower cost per lead than print directories, which would signal a profound shift: the Kelsey Yellow Pages point man, Charles Laughlin.

In the long term, we remain bullish that online and mobile products will bring in better than one-to-one conversion rates because of their superior return on investment: the Kelsey online verticals evangelist, Peter Krasilovsky.

BUT, are the Google inspired claims that an online ad spend is structurally inherently better than an offline one bankable? NO, not for the legions of single store, owner/operator local merchants that comprise the long and challenging sales cycle bulk of the ever elusive, but big, local business advertising opportunity.

Google’s superiority is clear on one front: Its ability to envelope a Google-centric, non-transparent, advertisers bid up their own rate cards, not marketer friendly, black box GOOG fuel money making machine in claims of irreproachable “accountability” and unbeatable “pay (only) for performance,” which even analysts willingly succumb to.

The big, bad Google “performance” ROI myth is that the “performance” being sold is a click, NOT a sale. The supposed impending holy grail of Pay Per Call products also is based on “performance” ROI myths: Advertiser costs are driven up for the extra perceived “accountability,” but the “performance” being sold is a call, still NOT a sale.

A call may be more valuable than a click, BUT it is also not a true performance metric for the only advertising result that counts at the end of the local merchant day: A local sale.

The Kelsey Group continues to hail the power and potential of call tracking: Polachek seized his Yellow Pages to the holiday rescue adventure to plug the up sell service to a Yellow Pages advertiser. Here at Insider Chatter, however, I WARN local merchants of the perils of call tracking as it is currently packaged and sold.

1-800 Pay-Per-Call: Marchex Buys VoiceStar, $4 billion Local Advertising Bonanza? I anlayzed in August.

The big, bad ”secret” dark side of the pay-per-call opportunity is that local advertisers often loose exposure of their REAL phone numbers by accepting call-tracking with random vendor supplied 800 numbers, as the Citysearch specs for its Pay For Performance-Calls product indicate:

Merchants are charged a fee per call and when an advertising cap is reached the toll free number (which appears throughout the site) is removed and replaced with the local, non-metered number…Citysearch provides a toll free number wherever the local merchant’s contact information appears: PFP ads, search results, merchant information page, and/or Best Of Citysearch listing.

LOCAL MERCHANT ROI PROBLEMS?

Customers jot down the toll free number to call another time, but end up unable to reach the merchant because the “ad cap” has been reached?

Customers print out the merchant info page for an out of town trip, but end up unable to reach the merchant because the “ad cap” has been reached?

Customers want to call the merchant a year later but don’t have the merchant’s real phone number…

The REAL bottom line local advertising problem? Old media or new, from Yellow Pages to Google, media companies spend their money and their energy in trying to PROVE to local merchants that their ad products are good for their businesses, rather than making sure they actually are.

MORE: Frugal Google.org: How NOT To Save the World On $159,000 a Day and
Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers and
Yellow Pages Trash Talking: The SEO Dog in the Google Local Fight and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and
Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS 
Google Beware: Facebook Takes Local Advertising Gloves Off, ILM REPORT and
Judy’s Book: What’s On Sale? WE ARE! Ten Reasons Why and
Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Who needs the standard obsessively glowing Michael TechCrunch Arrington Web 2.0 startup co-hype machine! NOT Jimmy Wales. After all, Wales underscores Wikia Search “is not being built for him.”

It is indeed ironic to read Arrington decry of the alpha launch:”Jimmy Wales hype machine promised a human powered search engine that could take on Google”:

The search results are poor and thin, as would be expected if not for the huge expectations that have been set.

Really? Wales disclaims the alpha launch quality of the search results, front and center:

Wikia is working to develop and popularize a freely licensed (open source) search engine. What you see here is our first alpha release. We are aware that the quality of the search results is low..

Wales also goes on to solicit humans for help with his “project to build a human-powered search engine”:

Right now, the most important thing you can do is help with the “miniarticles” that appear at the top of popular search terms.

Arrington nevertheless dismisses Wikia Search’s request for participation:

Beyond the poor search results, there is really no “human” element to the engine at all.

Eventually, users will be able to edit and improve results for searches they are interested in. But currently, all users can do is add keywords to their profile that they might someday be interested in, and/or contribute to a “mini-article” that appears at the top of search results for queries.

BUT, how is functionality enabling individuals to contribute content NOT a human element?

Wikia Search’s solicitation for mini-article contributions is similar to Arrington’s TechCrunch 40 partner Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo, self-branded a “human-powered search engine.” Mahalao has benefitted from Arrington hype from the get go, along with search startup contender Powerset–supposedly launched at TechCrunch 40 four months ago, although still not open for searching. The latest non-existent search startup to get the Arrington hype stamp of approval: Rich Skrenta’s puported “Blekko.”

(SEE: Mahalo: Will Calacanis Win the Billion Dollar Startup Lottery in 2008? and Rich Skrenta: Blekko ‘Absurd’ Search Startup Disses King Google)

Powerset on its supposed TechCrunch launch:

We realize that most companies wait to launch until they have a completely usable beta version. Because Powerset is a natural language search engine, the earlier we have input from the best natural language processing units on the planet – the brains of humans – the quicker our search engine will improve.

Mahalo is also a work in human progress. A search at Mahalo for “reverse engineering” yields a page of search engine results, courtsey of Mahalo’s arch enemy Google! Plus the disclaimer: “We haven’t written a result page for ‘reverse engineering’ yet,” but be sure to request one. Better yet, Calacanis’ Mahalao solicits “Be the first to recomend a link form ‘reverse engineering’.

Arrington is nevertheless firm, about Jimmy Wales :

Wikia search would be a disappointment even without the massive hype we’ve had to endure. And taking that hype into account, this product is an inexcusable waste of time.

Such an accusation could be levied against many of the massively hyped Web 2.0 “cool apps” paraded by TechCrunch daily and “endured” by all. After all, Tim Web 2.0 O’Reilly believes TechCrunch faves to be “completely unimportant”:

TechCrunch is the #1 site on the Techmeme leaderboard, yet most of what it covers will be forgotten not merely in years but in months, and have proven to be completely unimportant: the froth of me-too company creation around ideas and trends that as yet are quite immature and poorly understood. (Michael Arrington himself told me that most of the companies he’s covered since starting Techcrunch “have just faded away”.)

(SEE: Web 2.0 Startups: Will Geek Chumby ‘Fade Away’ in 2008? and Digg: TechCrunch Bails on Arrington Web 2.0 Fave and  Edgeio Web 2.0 Bomb: Michael TechCrunch Arrington Cheers $5 million Startup Loss)

Google’s Matt Cutts giddily jumps on the blogosphere’s who needs Wikia Search bandwagon, cunningly goading the SEO community–which bows to King Google–to tear the Wales initiative apart.

Cutts ought to look within, though. For starters, he can read my primer on how Google Search is on the endangered species list: Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia 

PLUS, Cutts can learn about how Google is behind the image search times by reading my exclusive scoop: EverNote Beats Google: AIR Search Inside Images, NOW!

ALSO, Cutts may want to know Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008, despite Jeff Jarvis’ Google religion.

MORE: Is SEO the New Internet Porn? Lessons From Ning and Google and Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers

PLUS: Data Portability ‘Magic’? Australian Faraday Media Pushes Web Agenda in U.S.

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Who needs Aristotle, Socrates, Plato…when Google offers “Our Philosophy.”  Heck, who needs Moses’ Ten Commandments, as Jeff Jarvis continues his ludicrous public cry to join him in worshipping God Google, really.

Google concurs: “To fully understand Google, it’s helpful to understand all the ways in which the company has helped to redefine how individuals, businesses and technologists view the Internet.” 

On the eve of the New Year, when learned men and women generally reflect on how, as individuals, we can help make the world a better place, Jeff Buzz Machine Jarvis doubles down on his inane campaign to negate thousands of years of spiritual yearning with an ode to a ruthless, $200 billion market cap corporation with the unholy mission of obtaining and controlling all the “information” in the world as its own private, for-profit property, aka Google.

What is REALLY scary, is that Jarvis is undoubtedly evangelizing his personal, one-corporation G worship to the nation’s future journalists as an instructor at the City University of New York, and MY tax dollars are helping fund the irrational, and dangerous, Google exuberance!

How IS Google God? Google has encapsulated all its Googley “ways” in a “Ten Things Google has found to be true” handy cheat sheet.

I repost them below (in italics), along with my Insider Chatter translation (in bold) of how Google is REALLY redefining how individuals, businesses and technologists are impacted by the Internet, Google’s Internet.

1) “Focus on the user and all else will follow”

There is NO escape: We follow the user all over the World Wide Web, and into the cloud.

2) “It’s best to do one thing really, really well”

It’s better to do dozens of things ad hoc, keeping our Googley fingers crossed that some will work out OK.

3) “Fast is better than slow”

We control YOUR data: Caching content owned by everyone else within Google’s server farms keeps US in control.

4) “Democracy on the Web works.”

Here’s the (Back)Rub: Google Democracy is for sale to the highest, non-transparent bidder.

5) “You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer”

We know where you live, work, play…what you think, dream…

6) “You can make money without doing evil”

A little evil is good for the bottom line, a lot of evil makes us GOD.

7) “There’s always more information out there.”

Resistance is futile, we WILL control the world’s information, all of it.

8) “The need for information crosses all borders.”

Who needs the United Nations! YouTube is the only electorate that matters.

9) “You can be serious without a suit”

It won’t be any fun to watch GOOG on the way down, but there is always the free lunch.

10) “Great just isn’t good enough”

Thanks to our Fuzzy Logic, Google is always great! Just Google-It, or ask Jeff Jarvis!

Jarvis’s new found G religion apparently worships dominant corporate market share which crushes all competition, oversized corprorate profit margins garnered at the expense of millions of businesses worldwide and defacto corporate control of the World Wide Web.

Fortunately for the sane Internet world, however, Jarvis’ spiritually misguided G yearnings may soon haunt him. While Jarvis revels in rattling off Google’s mighty corporate dominance stats, keen Wall Street analysts have a keen eye on the one-trick, rich pony that is GOOG.

YouTube may hope to move the elections, but it is NOT moving GOOG. Tech bloggers may swoon over Google Apps, but corporations are shunning it. Google Checkout may succeed in garnering free PR media puff pieces, but Google can’t buy its way to success…

Google Gears, Open Social, Android…so little, so late.

BUT, the biggest, baddest Google problem of all is the GOOG cash machine itself, Google.com. Read all about it in: Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia 

ALSO: 2008 Social Media Warning: Beware Google AND Facebook and
Browser Flack: Will Google Ever Escape Microsoft Rule? and
There Is NO Google Apps Love in the Enterprise and
Lost On Google Maps! What Merry Christmas? and
Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
Google Ignores Hanukkah, Again: Festival of Lights Dark on Homepage and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! 

ALSO: Rich Skrenta: Blekko ‘Absurd’ Search Startup Disses King Google

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

“Become a knowledge management ninja with Google Reader”? 

If 2007 was the year of Facebook’s “social graph,” Google hopes 2008 will be the year of Google Social. From Open Social, to Google “shared stuff,” to Google Reader “sharing,” Google hopes it can simply “share” its Googley way to Facebook extinction.

I have often underscored, however, that sharing Web 2.0 social media style is NOT really caring.

SEE: NewsFriends? Facebook Anti Social Utility: Real Friends DON’T Share and  YAY? Weblo Cheapens Facebook ‘Friendship,’ Whales Rejoice! and Twitter and Facebook: The BIG Illusions of Friendship and Influence

After all, Old Chinese proverb says: “You can hardly make a friend in a year, but you can easily offend one in an hour,” i.e. Facebook Beacon and Google Reader “sharing.”

Nevertheless, Steve Micro Persuasion Rubel wants more sharing in 2008, especially the Google kind:

Be a ninja in 08. Go forward and good luck.  have been using various RSS readers for nearly five years now - I’ve tried them all. However, none matches the power of Google Reader. I have found that if you tap into all of its features, it’s the Holy Grail of Personal Knowledge Management.

Rubel’s buzzwords dazzle, but where is the real knowledge that he claims to be managing?

I encourage you to throw as many feeds as you can at the Google Reader just so you can capture and mine it. This should include relevant feeds that you never have any intention of reading or even scanning.

Sound familiar? Facebook whales “throw” up to 5000 “friends” around, with never any intention of ever being their friends.

Rubel nevertheless believes his own custom searchable database makes him a knowledge “ninja”:

With the recent addition of search, the Google Reader becomes much more. Like Gmail, Reader should be viewed as a database that you can build from scratch and continually hone.

The end game? Rubel can do his own search for all mentions of employer Edelman’s client Microsoft’s Xbox in Techmeme!

YAY? For Google! Google is the one becoming the knowledge ninja, all knowledgeable of Steve Rubel’s every personal and professional interest and need.

The end of the year privacy brouhahas over Google Reader “sharing” and Facebook Beacon were but charades, feel-good “outrage” with no meaningful privacy effect.

What privacy transgressions were Facebook and Google accused of? The enabling of “sharing” of users’ information with users’ own social graph. The real privacy danger of Google and Facebook continues to be ignored by users, however, as I often underscore here at Insider Chatter.

SEE: Google Reader: Naughty or Nice? Santa Safe! and
YES! Facebook IS Scarier Than Google! and
Facebook is ‘Sorry’? Savvy Users Will Forget, NOT Forgive, Mark Zuckerberg and
Beacon Privacy Solution: STOP USING FACEBOOK! and
Dear Facebook, Beacon Tracking STILL Evil: Will Zuckerberg Partners Repent?

Why have I deemed facebook to be scarier than Google? Each Facebook user knowingly and willingly provides an interested corporation with the intimate details of their daily personal and professional lives to enable persistent data records for the unique data mining profit advantage of the corporation. Because Facebook as “Big Brother” is consensual, there is no redress.

Google has now tied Facebook for scary honors, however, due to how it profits from users’ personal genetic materials obtained by Google under false pretenses via GOOG 411. SEE: Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers

Bottom 2008 line? Use Google and Facebook accounts at your own risk.

ALSO: Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Yay Google? While the world continues seeking to bask in the Googleplex’s all mighty SERP glory, all is NOT well in Google land.

Google begins it homepage doodle countdown today to mark Christmas, even while Google dissed Hanukkah, once again this year. Even more extraordinary, Google Maps is dissing every holiday merry maker around the world, thanks to Google’s BAD Maps.

Today, Google wishes “happy holidays” on its homepage. Yesterday, though, the $200 billion market cap number one search engine acknowledged that it could NOT be relied upon for holiday assistance.

The incredulous Google Maps homepage admission:

HELP HOLIDAY GUESTS FIND YOU: FIX YOUR ADDRESS ON GOOGLE MAPS.

Right! Prepare the chimney, and help Google get its product straight.

GOOGLE OUGHT TO FIX ITSELF, before consumers rely on it. Google is off the map if it is basing the integrity of its Maps experience upon individuals volunteering to help the company out.

Google is telling the world that the ballyhooed Google Maps actually send people to the wrong final destinations, even those seeking to party with Googlers! Hoping for mass citizen corrections of Google Maps to make them meaningfully better for the masses is a long shot.

John Hanke, Keyhole founder and Google Maps & Earth Director, was the closing keynote at the Kelsey Interactive Local Media conference in Los Angeles last month; I followed Hanke on the closing panel of the conference. I predicted that the Hanke keynote would be but a razzle-dazzle Google Maps demo, and it was. How much razzle-dazzle will Google Maps actually have in the mass market, though, I analyzed on the closing Kelsey panel.

Hanke concurred with my evaluation of the shortcomings underlying Google Maps data and even acknowledged that local businesses are NOT lining up to “correct” their location pointers on Google Maps.

Holiday party goers also have a lot more important things to do then help Google build a valid map. Instead of relying on inacurrate Google Maps, consumers ought to use a better map product.

PS: To all using Google Maps on the holidays, GOOD LUCK!

PLUS: Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers and Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia and Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam 

MORE: Google Ignores Hanukkah, Again: Festival of Lights Dark on Homepage and Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Beware Google, really. I oft underscore how the GOOG secret weapon is a four letter word: SPIN. Google is now wreaking havoc with another four letter word: GOOG (411).

I also often warn how Google Services’ Privacy Policies enable Google to do whatever it likes, for as long as it likes, with users’ private information that consumers willingly hand to Google on a (free) silver platter. The nefarious results of “whatever Google likes,” is now rearing its ugly head, thanks to Mountain View’s devious GOOG 411.

Google hawks GOOG 411 to consumers as its “new 411 service”: “With GOOG-411, you can find local business information completely free, directly from your phone. You can access 1-800-GOOG-411 from any phone, anywhere, at anytime.”

YAY Google? Once again to the FREE consumer rescue?

NO, IT IS GOOGLE TRICKING USERS ONCE MORE, TO THE SOLE ADVANTAGE OF THE $200 BILLION MARKET CAP CORPORATION. 

Why has Google been spending money to advertise GOOG 411 to consumers when the Googleplex prides itself on never spending a penny on marketing?

Google’s best friends at Search Engine Land cheered their sightings of GOOG 411 billboards, hailing GOOG 411 billboards as “a bona fide effort by Google to expose the service to people and generate usage”

What’s remarkable with this is that Google is actually doing consumer marketing (a first) for a product and not relying entirely on word of mouth.

NO, what is really remarkable is how gullible many are willing to be, for the sake of Google!

AND, what really matters, is the sake of consumers duped by Google into using GOOG 411 under false pretenses.

A call to GOOG 411 begins with an announcement: “The call is recorded for quality,” BUT THAT IS A GOOGLE LIE.

Marissa Mayer, Google VP, Search Products & User Experience, on the real reason GOOG 411 records calls, as cited by InfoWorld in October:

The reason we really did it is because we need to build a great speech-to-text model … that we can use for all kinds of different things, including video search.

The speech recognition experts that we have say: If you want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of that. 

So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of different speech samples so that when you call up or we’re trying to get the voice out of video, we can do it with high accuracy.

GOOG 411 is NOT a touchy, feely, free Google consumer service, it is a ruse to trick people into giving Google their own personal genetic materials, for free, so that Google can profit from the proprietarty human (very) personal property of millions of innocent consumers.

NOW MORE THAN EVER, USE GOOGLE SERVICES AT YOUR OWN RISK. HERE’S WHY:

Google Privacy Trap: Consumers Beware and
Google is WRONG On Consumer Privacy and
Google is NOT Your Friend 

BEWARE FACEBOOK, TOO: SEE: YES! Facebook IS Scarier Than Google! and
Facebook is ‘Sorry’? Savvy Users Will Forget, NOT Forgive, Mark Zuckerberg and
Beacon Privacy Solution: STOP USING FACEBOOK! and
Dear Facebook, Beacon Tracking STILL Evil: Will Zuckerberg Partners Repent? and
Facebook STILL a Danger to Children: Zuckerberg, Attorney General Cuomo in PR Push

MORE GOOGLE DEVIOUSNESS: Google Has Insomnia: Mrs. Manber Beats 21,300,017 SERP and AdWords! and
Google Zeitgeist: $200 University Payola AdWords Scam and
Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN