Keywords are Overrated, Inisghts for Search Rocks – The Monday Feb 22nd Roundup

From the warm sunny location of the Winter Olympics, it’s another Monday Roundup. This week we have sunny +8 weather (highs of +12!), why keywords are overrated, using Google Insights for Search, and why the iPad(/pod/phone) will never have Flash.

• Keywrods are over-rated. Or at least, “ClickEquations” seems to think so. Well, not entirely. Rather they argue that we spend too much time thinking about keywords and too little thinking about the search queries that those keywords are supposed to capture.
• There’s been a lot of talk about Facebook over the last few months, but “Retail. Shaken, not Stirred.” has a slightly different take. Ignoring privacy options, instead they discuss 3 steps to a more effective retail Facebook presence.

• Neither I nor SixRevisions should have to tell you this, but there are rules to follow when saving images for the web. PNG’s, JPEG’s, GIF’s, they all have their uses (GIF’s a little less so), and there are right ways to save each. SixRevisions covers how to make sure that your iamges are small enough but still look good, maximizing your look and your loading speed.
• Yeah, the iPad doesn’t have Flash support. It likely never will. Over at “Roughly Drafted” Morgan Adams explains that the problem with Flash on multitouch devices is much more complex than battery life or crashes. Flash applications inherently rely on mouse-over, a function that doesn’t exist on multitouch devices, and the solutions for solving this simply aren’t functional.

• Avinash is back, this time with 7 Competitive Intelligence Data Sources.
• This topics always fascinates me. “Kaizen Analytics” has how to measure offline events with insights for search. IfS is a pretty awesome tool, giving you the ability to mine the zietgeist for all kinds of information and search data.

• Google Buzz. Seems an odd topic for the usability section. However this BBC article admits something damning about it: Buzz was only tested internally. Google, the creators of Google Website Optimizer, did no user testing on Google Buzz. The effect? A bug that produced damning PR, and severely hurt their launch. Yes folks, this is why you test.
• UX Matters has a case study on rapid desirability testing.

• Oh my god I can do it I can do it. I can do keyword bookmarking with Chrome. Truthfully this is the one thing that was holding me back from switching, since the lack of a second search bar made it hard to, say, quickly look something up on dictionary.com, or Wikipedia, or WolframAlpha. Now I have “=” set to Wolfram (so I can type “= (16(32+64+128)*15^6)/7” into the awesome bar and have it spit out 5.832 x 10^9) “def” set to dictionary.com, and “syn” set to thesaurus.com. This, plus adblock, is really making Chrome a serious contender for me most used browser.
• So you might know the ACTA internet chapter, a global law (well, treaty) to combat unauthorized file sharing is in talks and has leaked online. After three (is it 4 now? I don’t remember) failed attempts to push a new copyright law through Canada, it looks like the legislative system may be circumvented entirely in favour of setting law through international trade agreements. Michael Giest looks at the law and breaks down some of the reasons that this is a scary prospect. These include:
  • Notice-and-Takedown: Companies who want to maintain safeharbour status (can’t be sued for the actions of their users) would have to change from their current self-imposed “notice-to-notice” system (where they have to contact alleged infringing parties) to a notice-to-take-down system (where they have to immediately take down any media/block access to infringing material).To understand why this is scary, look at the abuse of Google’s notice-to-take-down system in regards to perfectly legal Youtube videos. Now this would be applied across the board.
  • Anti-Circumvention: Makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection. This includes ripping a CD to your hard drive that contains DRM, or ripping a DVD so that you can play them on a media PC. This isn’t “oh they could sue you”, it would make it [em]criminal[/em].
  • 3 strikes: While not a defined part, the agreement promotes it as a way of preventing your company from losing safeharbour provisions. The effect of it? If you’re accused (not found guilty, accused) of infringement three times you’re banned from the service.

  Now you might think “oh well, make some hassle for the silly pirates.” Nope, this extends well beyond music and movies and includes pharmaceuticals, agriculture, biotech, and pretty much everything else.