Author Archives: Scott Markman

Amazon “Buys” Zappos

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From a recent post / tweet from the CEO of Zappos, Amazon has purchased all the share of Zappos:

http://blogs.zappos.com/ceoletter

 This morning, our board approved and we signed what’s known as a “definitive agreement”, in which all of the existing shareholders and investors of Zappos (there are over 100) will be exchanging their Zappos stock for Amazon stock. Once the exchange is done, Amazon will become the only shareholder of Zappos stock.

Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say “Amazon acquires Zappos” or “Zappos sells to Amazon”. While those headlines are technically correct, they don’t really properly convey the spirit of the transaction. (I personally would prefer the headline “Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree…”)

I’m a huge fan of Amazon & Zappos, but if this is a trend for Amazon it could be dangerous for the world of small business e-commerce. Amazon holds a lot of power in e-commerce and it doesn’t help that it just purchased one of the largest e-commerce sites out there. I’m noticing more and more Amazon is floating to the top of search results in Google (which controls over 60% of search queries). The monopoly police should be on alert.

The Power of Google (People are Scared)

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Article about the power of Google. Here’s my favorite quote from the article:

 Imagine, if you will, that the entire Internet is contained within a single continent. That continent is filled with countries, states and cities. Each jurisdiction is autonomous, relying on visitors to cross on to their turf to engage in commerce. Now, imagine if the only way to get into this continent involved just two methods: SEO and SEM. Let’s further imagine that the borders to this continent were controlled by a single company. Let’s also hold that the rules for search engine optimization listings and search engine marketing were not only defined but were completely controlled at the whim of this single company. Of course, we all realize that word-of-mouth marketing and viral marketing also contribute to traffic to individual websites. That said, the primary methodology for all users to reach any individual website destination is still search, of either paid or organic listings.

Google’s power is growing even more, with the announcement of Chrome OS. Trying to tear away at Microsoft’s stronghold on the packaged operating systems in 85% of the homes using Windows.

Operating System % of Total
WINDOWS 85.85%
MACINTOSH 13.36%
LINUX 0.78%
OTHER 0.01%
Browser % of Total
INTERNET EXPLORER 61.39%
FIREFOX 21.12%
SAFARI 10.78%
AOL 4.58%
CHROME 1.43%
OPERA 0.38%
MOZILLA 0.17%
NETSCAPE 0.13%
OTHER 0.02%

The Power of Inbound Links

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One of the best ways to improve your ranking in natural search is to receive inbound links to your website. This means outside websites linking back to your website using “dofollow” links. In the very complex algorithm of a search engine, the inbound link shows that your website is an authority on the hyperlinked word. Example of how your html link should look:

<a title=”marketing consultant” href=”http://www.scottmarkman.net/” >marketing consultant</a>

When constructing a link, you need to have the URL you want optimized and make sure the title tag is included and matching the hyperlinked word.

The more inbound links using your hyperlinked word, the more “street cred” your website will receive.

Myspace Fading, Twitter Peaking, Facebook still Growing

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Google Trends Traffic Analysis

social media analysis

The Twitter band wagon is at its hightest point right now, but how much longer will it sustain its popularity. Twitter gets about 61,000,000 monthly uniques, but the lifespan of a ‘tweeter’ is about 3 months.  And numerous reports continually talk about Twitter becoming obsolete.
Traffic statistics
All traffic statistics are estimates.
  Country Worldwide
Unique visitors (estimated cookies)
 31 M 61 M
Unique visitors (users)
 15 M 31 M
Reach
 6.3% 2.4%
Page views
 1.4 B 2.5 B
Total visits
 160 M 310 M
Avg visits per visitor
 11 10
Avg time on site
 13:10 11:50
 
 Myspace is just in rough shape. More layoffs will be had in the near future. Their exclusive Google search contract ends soon. Unless they start charging all spammers money for all the fake profiles out there, Myspace will be going the way of Friendster.
Facebook is still the top social media player, with few signs of slowing down. As a true American ready to move onto the next thing, what social media website will be the next top dog? I’m seeing nice signs of growth from Ning and once WordPress figures out a better way to join all the people that host websites using their software.