Earlier this month numbers became available for search engine company performances in the second quarter of the year. While the money Google, Yahoo, MSN and others made might not be of interest to you, if you are active in the CPC (cost per click) business for your web site, it should be. Google changed its strategy and processes in Adwords earlier this year, and the second quarter performance was the first indicator following those changes.

In case you missed the news, Google has dropped the number of advertisements it will place on a search results page. The average number of ads per keyword shown on Google in the US has declined from 6.5 to 4.0, a nearly 40% drop. That could reflect on our poor economic environment at the moment, but it’s more likely the result of Google’s ongoing efforts to improve the quality of its ads. The theory is not dissimilar to the evolution of search results over the past five years.

Remember a time when Google and Yahoo took great pride in telling you, at the top of your search results page, that it had just presented you with 3,700,000 results for your search? Did you notice how over time that number dropped significantly? It was not because there were fewer web sites - on the contrary, as that number now is well over 110 million. Rather, it was each search engine’s effort to present a higher quality of results, results that were deemed to be more relevant to the search.

It’s the same philosophy Google is employing with its new practice of presenting fewer advertisements in its Adwords program. Google believes it will place more pressure on advertisers to prepare a higher quality advertisement and landing page for the chosen keyword, thus making the sponsored results more relevant to the searcher.

What about money, you ask? Fewer advertisements placed in the Sponsored Results space would mean lower revenues, you say? Google doesn’t think so, and in fact Google believes that because the results will be arguably more relevant to the search, an advertiser’s conversion rate will be better, and therefor would justify higher bid prices. Conversion rate refers to the number of clicks it takes to generate one transaction - - whatever that most desired response might be, whether a sale, a telephone call, a contact form submission, an email address. The quality scoring Google employs in the advertisement and the landing page is something those who have a CPC campaign underway (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing) will need to watch closely.

As for those of us who concentrate on web copy writing and search engine optimization for better organic rank, it means the same thing. It will be important to monitor changes as they occur and their effects on both the paid and the organic results as Google strives to provide the better results they’re targeting through paid search now but at the same time improve their revenue.

There’s one other point worth mentioning here, and that is how one views sponsored results vs. SEO. In earlier columns, I’ve recommended SEO over sponsored results when a web site owner has to choose just one. Sponsored results should be viewed as a temporary means of promoting your web site, and not a permanent solution. The reason is a pretty simple one: once your web site has achieved a good organic rank, it becomes less necessary to spend money on a CPC campaign. So, temporary in the sense that it might be necessary only until you’ve made it to the top 20, or better still, to the top 10 on your Google and Yahoo.

The thing about bought traffic (your CPC campaign) is that it stops when you stop buying it. However, when you’ve become ranked well organically as a result of your SEO efforts, that traffic just keeps coming, or at least it keeps coming so long as you maintain the practices that got you ranked well in the first place.

KISS has launched a new web site in the form of a Political Blog for our client, Harrison Lives. The name of the site, appropriately, is Harrison Lives, and it’s full of columns he’s published on Political and Social Commentary. Although he seems to have something of an edge, a bite, to his writing, the columns are entertaining, informative, and thought provoking. His take is a little outside the main stream of political talking heads, although his writing has fed some of the cable political pundits with some good lines.

We wish Harrison well with his writing. While KISS does not necessarily endorse the political opinions expressed on the site, we nonetheless support his right to write what he wishes. Check it out - you might be mildly amused. Oh, and you’ll have to visit the site to learn where the name comes from.

KISS is pleased to announce the launch of a new web site. Philip Baler is a recently retired Mutual Funds manager with Smith Barney. He and his wife, Cynthia, decided to write about their three favorite things - finance, food and travel. Thus became their new web site, Wall Street Explorer, launched this month.

The web site includes the customization and seamless integration of a Blog for the publishing of their columns on those three subjects. With a long list of friends still in the world of finance, a friend who is an executive chef, and their travels all over the world, we do not expect Phil or Cynthia to run out of columns to publish to their blog. The site has been monetized with a Google Adsense campaign, appearing in the right side bar of the site. Also, they will use an Amazon Associates account to promote and recommend gadgets and books appropriate to their exploration of finance, food and travel.

We wish them well and good luck, and hope they will have fun with their new enterprise.

KISS has added a free resource to our site for downloading, a booklet entitled “The Evolution of Writing - a Primer on Web Copy Writing and Search Engine Optimization.”

We’ve helped numerous clients rise in natural rank position on the top Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, following very basic rules of web site content creation. This Booklet is a solid Primer on those basic rules, and will help you understand what needs to be done to help your site’s rank position.

It’s an easy to follow guide that provides not just the fundamental concepts, but also do this/do that instructions. It also includes a half dozen past columns on the subject of SEO and web copy writing.

You’ll find it on our Marketing page in our Services section. We hope you will find it useful.

Don’t you hate waiting for some web site’s home pages to open? You’ll see the header open, maybe some of the content, but then those annoying advertisements in the right or left side bar, or even in the middle of the page’s copy seem to take forever. I know I do.

It seems now that Google does as well. In the very near future, Google will begin instituting new policies and practices with respect to advertisers in its Adwords program. No longer will it necessarily be the highest bidder who gets the top spot on Google search results pages. Rather, ad quality will become a bigger issue, as Google plans to subject advertisers to landing page load time assessments. Speedier pages, which will mean those without lots of plugged-in third-party content, will receive better ad quality scores. It’s those plugged-in, third party advertisements that cause home page load times to suffer.

Web site owners and designers will have to take load time into more of a major consideration if those sites also maintain a Google Adwords campaign for sponsored results. Google wants those it refers to sites to be pleased with their search results by sending them to sites that won’t annoy with lagging load times. On the one hand, I might consider this worthy of applause, because I really do hate waiting for those pain in the neck advertisements to render and display so I can read the news or sports pages. In fact, there are sites I now refuse to visit simply because of it. As Billy Crystal used to say in those old Saturday Night Live skits, I hate when that happens.

On the other hand, though, it is a testament to Google’s sense of self that it believes it can get away with this. In essence, Google is telling web site owners and designers how to build and monetize their sites. Fill them with third-party content that loads slowly at your peril, apparently, as Google will penalize your Adwords campaign for doing so. That’s a pretty powerful statement.

Nonetheless, it bespeaks the daily interest and intrigue that is the Internet today. We’ll see how it turns out in actuality, but Google rarely changes course once its charted.

I’m willing to bet that no one reading this column can list the twenty-five top ranked web sites in the world. No cheating allowed, either, so don’t look it up. Put your list together, make your best guesses, and then read on.

Before we get to the list, let’s chat about the Internet. The book “The World is Flat” postulates well the notion that the Internet makes the world a smaller place and levels life’s playing field to a great extent financially, politically, culturally. But just as we have difficulty truly grasping the size of the planet we live on, or the true value of $1 billion, we also have difficulty truly grasping the size of the Internet. We also find it hard to think of ourselves as different than everyone else, and assume we are all the same when it comes to the Internet.

We know what sites we regularly visit for our news, our weather, our online searching, our online shopping. We know how we ourselves use these web sites, how we find them, and what we like and dislike about the sites we visit. We assume every other person’s observations about and experience on the Internet is the same as ours. We know what we do, what our workmates do, what our friends do, what Internet stories we share with everyone, and we glean from that what we assume is universal experience.

So, there’s me, the family, the three people I work with, my friend Harry, the guy next door . . . . okay, then, that’s at least 20 people. “Everyone” I know thinks what I think about the Internet and we all do things the same way. It works for me, so it must work the same way with and for everyone.

In the United States today, there are an estimated 215 million of us who are regular Internet users. Your 20 people as against those 215 million represent 0.00000093%, a share that does not rise even to statistically insignificant. When you add in the rest of the world’s numbers, we have an estimated 1,407,724,920 regular Internet users (according to Internet World Stats). This puts the U.S. number at roughly 15% of the user share.

To really “get” the Internet it is necessary to grasp these concepts. Individually, we are not necessarily representative of the “average” Internet user, and I’m not sure it is even possible to calculate “average.” Collectively, we in the United States are not necessarily that average user, either.

Let me get to that list now and then offer just a few comments about what it means:

1. www.yahoo.com
2. www.google.com
3. www.youtube.com
4. www.live.com
5. www.msn.com
6. www.myspace.com
7. www.wikipedia.org
8. www.facebook.com
9. www.blogger.com
10. www.yahoo.co.jp
11. www.orkut.com
12. www.rapidshare.com
13. www.baidu.com
14. www.microsoft.com
15. www.google.co.in
16. www.google.de
17. www.qq.com
18. www.ebay.com
19. www.hi5.com
20. www.google.fr
21. www.aol.com
22. www.mail.ru
23. www.google.co.uk
24. www.sina.com.cn
25. www.fc2.com

How many did you get right on your list? How many of these sites have you visited, or even heard of? Eight of those top twenty-five reflect traffic from Japan, India, Germany, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and China(2).

What’s it mean? I’m just one regular Internet user, and although KISS has a quarter million unique visitors’ worth of monthly data to crunch among the web sites we host and manage, my insight extends not much beyond that, and certainly not into India or China or Japan. Here’s what I think, though.

The world is flat, and the Internet makes it a much smaller place. From an e-commerce standpoint, though, it does so without in any way diminishing the size of the marketplace. With over a billion folks in it, we can’t know everyone’s experience or Internet observation. But, then again, why do we need to? With over a billion folks, one needs only a very small market share to make a living online, and for the e-commerce small business entrepreneur, that is very encouraging. It doesn’t matter where you find that market share from, either. The Internet makes commerce easy, including fulfillment.

From a practical standpoint, it means you follow SEO best practices to rank well, and then let the marketplace tell you if your web site and your product work well. You measure performance regularly and adjust accordingly. You accept the fact you aren’t necessarily representative of the average Internet user, and instead let that data guide you. And, when you find that market share, you tend it well and wisely.

Interesting list, eh?

We’re pleased to announce the launch of a new website for our client, Metro North Regional Employment Board. The Metro North REB was established in 1995 by its Director, Nancy Brown, and services twenty communities north of Boston, MA. The website is intended to serve as a resource repository and news source for its board members and their efforts in those communities. As such, the site was built with a dynamic calendar and the integration of a blog for the posting of REB news and announcements. The Resources section of the site holds important white paper and report resources in PDF either for reading on line or downloading for later reading. Each purpose is merely a single click away, whether it be to check the time of a meeting or directions to it, or to read the most recent news, or to download one of the meaty PDFs available.

We wish the Metro North REB well and good luck with its site. KISS will be staying with them for the coming months as a technology resource for site maintenance and assistance with site updates via the blog and the calendar.

KISS has recently developed a strategic alliance with a talented development company with offices in Maine, California and Romania. Clarisoft Technologies is a group of programmers with varied skill sets in the latest technologies of software and web site development, including PHP, AJAX, Java, Visual C++, Visual Basic, MS SQL Server, MySQL, and Macromedia Flash. Their core competencies, though, are in programming and functionality system creation.

KISS’s team of inhouse programmers have served double duty in the past that included both the original development of systems, and their subsequent maintenance and enhancements. Our alliance with Clarisoft Technologies expands our capabilities in the original development of custom software, though, and allows our in-house programming staff to concentrate on maintenance and modular enhancements. It also enables us to concentrate on our own core competencies of design, user interface development, site production, web copy writing/SEO and marketing, and Internet consulting.

Clarisoft has developed a software system of its own and brought to market in August of 2007. The product is iMonitorPC, a wonderful tool allowing businesses to monitor their staff’s productivity. Businesses have the ability to define and implement their own policies for its use, and thus establish how staff may use their company-provided computers while on the clock. Millions of dollars are lost every year as a result of reduced productivity from staff who spend a part of their work day surfing the Internet, emailing friends, online shopping and online chats with friends. iMonitorPC helps companies get a handle on that, curb abuse and cut losses.

iMonitorPC also has a home version that serves as the equivalent of a digitial surveillance system for their family computers. The software monitors children’s’ use of the home computer, and runs behind the curtain to record all online and offline activities to track programs used, web sites visited, social networking site usage, and the entire history of chat room activities and instant messaging conversations. Today’s news is filled with instances of children lured via online chats by dangerous people into sometimes lethal rendezvous, and iMonitorPC can be a valuable tool for parents to know what their children are up to in their online lives.

KISS is so impressed with this software, both for business and home use, and want to recommend it. We are building an affiliate site for its online promotion, and will be assisting in its online marketing. If you are a business wanting to keep your staff on target, or a parent wanting to protect a child, iMonitorPC is the perfect tool.

KISS is pleased to have developed this alliance with Clarisoft, and even in the first two months together are benefitting from the expanded capabilities.

In the same way ignorance of the law is no defense at trial, neither is ignorance of the Internet and Internet technology a defense in one’s business practices. It’s time for businesses to step up to this reality and take responsibility for what is becoming, if it already hasn’t, an integral part of their business practice.

Any business that relies upon the Internet for a part of their existence and daily life, such as online sales or the use of email either to communicate with customers or to market their wares, must have as solid a working knowledge of Internet technology as they have with every other aspect of it. No carpenter uses a table or miter saw without learning how to first; no plumber uses a soldering iron to meld joints without first learning the tool; no heavy equipment operator takes an earth mover to a job without knowing the equipment first. Tools of one’s trade are mastered as an integral part of their craft, and the Internet should be no different for those businesses who rely upon it for any part of their trade, too.

I’ve written about expectations on the Internet in a past column, which you will find here. The launch of a business’s web site is not the end of the project, and frankly, it’s barely the beginning. Web sites need to be worked every bit as much as any other aspect of a business’s operation. The content needs to be measured and refreshed regularly, and should never be allowed to remain static. Content needs to grow, too, whether it be a newsletter archive, a blog and regular post frequency, or new sections. SEO best practices are essential to an e-commerce website’s success, and never should be an afterthought.

I’ve also written about email in several past columns, its use in daily communications with customers, and its use in marketing efforts. With over one billion pieces of spam sent daily around the world today, email practices are changing frequently, and businesses need to keep pace with those changes. For instance, ISPs are changing their mail server practices on a regular basis to confront the spam issue, blocking message delivery for the merest suggestion of impropriety:

- - - Large file attachments to a message, or HTML elements in the body of a message, give that appearance and will likely get your message blocked.

- - - Using Outlook to send email broadcasts to multiple addressees will give the appearance of a spam relay station and likely get your messages blocked, no matter how innocent they otherwise may be.

- - - System infestation is something like carbon monoxide - - colorless and odorless. Every computer owner whose system has been taken over as a spam relay station is unaware of the hijacking and is clueless to the fact their machine is sending out tens of thousands of spam messages.

I’ve a few suggestions for businesses to consider based upon this Internet reality we all live and work in today, and urge all who are reading this to take them to heart.

First, work your web site the same way you work all other aspects of your business. Don’t launch it and leave it alone. An e-commerce web site is a perpetual work in progress, just as your business is, and you need to treat it that way. SEO is an essential component to any business plan today.

Second, find an alternative means of delivering large files other than as email attachments. FTP (file transfer protocol) was developed a long time ago as that means, and should become a tool for every business’s use in transfering files. Your web site hosting company can help you set up the necessary account and system for this. Assured delivery is at stake, and if that is important to your business, you’ll need to learn the technology.

Third, use a service bureau for broadcasting emails. We have used Constant Contact for seven years, and continue to recommend its use to all of our clients. If you use Outlook to send emails to more than a dozen addressees, you’re likely to be viewed as a spammer and your messages will be blocked by ISPs on the other end. Again, assured delivery is at stake, and if that it is important to your business, you should take the advice.

Finally, you need to learn and stay current with Internet technology, no matter the size of your company. If a dedicated IT staff person isn’t in the budget, that responsibility falls on owners. A generation in technology is about 18 months, and major changes are occurring regularly. Businesses that don’t understand that, that don’t stay current, will suffer or worse. It’s that crucial.

Businesses need to step up. It is well beyond the “coolness” of having a web site and seeing your name online.