Vanessa Fox. Nude.

I just did a post at Search Engine Land about the most awesomest feature ever of Google’s Webmaster Tools. You can now tell them the geographic location of your site.

Check it out.

This just in. A lot of user-generated content sucks. As it turns out, not everyone makes a living as a writer, journalist, videographer, or director precisely because most people aren’t very good at it. And those people who are good tend to do it professionally. Ergo, the promise of leveraging the content of the masses to propel your online business is a myth. Or, perhaps it’s not so much that people produce crappy content, it’s that they don’t create content at all. They create profiles perhaps, but not content.

So, let’s forget this whole “user-generated content” fad, stash it with the mood rocks where it belongs, and start spending time on something that’s actually valuable. Like making zombies out of our Facebook friends.

First, this isn’t really a startling revelation. We all know that most content on the internet is blinking text and cat pictures (and not the awesome lol kind). The web itself started as user-generated content and there’s a reason we’re all glad that Google ranks results and doesn’t just assume all sites are equally good and show them in a random order.

Second, most YouTube content may suck, but that’s not really the point. YouTube’s business model wasn’t to get people to upload videos of stellar quality that YouTube could then charge people to view because of the awesomeness. YouTube’s business model was to get a lot of people to upload videos of any quality so it could get lots of users and page views as a means of getting acquired by Google.

Chuqui notes that a small percentage of a community create the content for it, and while that’s absolutely true, that’s missing the point a bit as well. Which is that the larger percentage who never create still show up. And in these days of ad-based monetization, you need people to show up. Profiles may not technically be content, but again, they keep people showing up and interacting with each other (and with the site’s brand). Do you create content when you throw a sheep or write on someone’s wall? Maybe not, but each sheep hurled at someone’s virtual head builds the community just a little more, and to a large extent, that is the point.

Community is perhaps the greatest value in user-generated content, but there’s other worth to be had. We (as a collective whole) may be bad at writing, singing, and videotaping ourselves dancing, but we know what we like. I can’t imagine planning a vacation anymore without checking out reviews online. I may not trust the judgement of one person, but if 400 people hated a hotel, I figure I can trust a least of few of them. If your site draws a community and aggregates this information for me, you’ve got another visitor, even if only 1% of your users contribute and they’re mostly pretty bad at it.

I’m selling one!

It’s a great experiment for me, because I’ve implemented a redirect from a page on this site (with Google Analytics) to the real estate agent’s page and am going to see what links get the most traffic. I actually first tried something like this back in the late 90s. I was selling a house in Dallas, TX and created a web site for it. However, it was difficult to get search traffic for something so specific back then. How about now?

The first question is, does anyone search for homes for sale directly on Google or do they do all searching from a real estate vertical? Will it even do me any good to rank well? And then there’s the fact that I don’t control the web page that my real estate agent has up. The title tag has just her name in it — no mention of Redmond or real estate or house for sale. The address isn’t in an H1. And all the description text is embedded in the images. There’s little HTML text to pick up. Maybe I can get this blog entry to rank well instead. Or, perhaps optimizing for the various vertical real estate search engines is the way to go. Only the traffic will tell.

If I do a search for [homes for sale in redmond wa], I can see what vertical sites to target. Clearly, I want to add my listing to Google Base. After all, Base shows up before the search results and clicking through, I’m told that “Over 56% of all Internet searches on “real estate” and related terms are conducted on Google and our partner sites, and the majority of those searchers are actively looking for listings or referrals to brokers and agents. You can make sure that they can find your listings by submitting them to Google Base — quickly, easily and free.” Sadly, I don’t see a way for a homeowner to add a listing, so I’ll pretend to be my agent.

I also flagged the house for sale on Zillow and added some pictures, then created an ad on Zillow to display in nearby zip codes.

I also added the listing to craigslist and found that if I edited the ad after I created it, I could edit the href tag for the link. This was great not only because I had been worried about showing a vanessafoxnude.com URL for those who might be scared off by it, but also because craigslist adds a nofollow attribute that I handily deleted. Sadly, craigslist added it back as soon as I republished.

A lot of the sites that rank well for the terms I want require MLS listings or payment, so I’ll stick with these to start and see how well they perform.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

• The redirected page with pictures and information about my house for sale in Redmond, WA
• Craigslist
• Google Base
• Zillow
• Flickr Photo Set

As with all optimization efforts, traffic (whether through links or search) is only the first step. And in fact, getting links (or ranking) is only the first step to getting traffic from those links. The link or search result has to be compelling enough for people to want to click on. And then, the resulting page has to keep the visitor interested. In my case, I need good pictures, headlines, and copy. Do I have them? Probably not as I did this all really quickly, but I can always go back and change things if it’s not working. This is all an experiment for you. I don’t even know if I can get analytics data in the way I have things set up. I suppose the best way to measure results if if someone makes an offer. After all, search marketers and advertisers are ultimately looking not for page views and visitors, but for conversions.

How else can I optimize this listing and get it seen by people who are looking to buy?

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Buffy night. Tonight, we’re watching one of my all-time favorite episodes, The Dark Age. It includes this classic exchange:

Willow: I’m in Florence, Italy. I’ve rented a scooter that’s parked outside, and I’m in a little restaurant eating ziti, and there’s no more tables left, so they have to seat this guy with me, and it’s John Cusack.
Buffy: Very impressive. You have such an eye for detail!
Willow: ‘Cause, with the ziti.
Xander: What are you two up to?
Buffy: Just having a quick game of “anywhere but here.”
Xander: Oh. Amy Yip at the waterslide park.
Willow: You never come up with anything new.
Xander: I’m just not fickle like you two, okay? I’m constant in my affections. Amy Yip at the waterslide park.

Clearly, I’m making ziti tonight for dinner.

Speaking of Buffy, surely you all saw how the touring show of the Buffy musical episode: “Once More With Feeling” was shut down for so-called copyright infringement. You can sign the petition to voice your outrage. Or order some musical kits from the uncoolkids site and hold your own Buffy musical party. Having attended the touring show before it was so cruelly shut down, I can tell you that the kit and an assorted group of friends who will loudly (and badly) sing along are worth every penny.

This has been your regularly scheduled Buffy blogging. Tune in every random Tuesday for more Buffy goodness. Bonus Buffy mention at Search Engine Land.

ETA: True story that I just was recounting to a coworker and meant to include originally but clearly I haven’t had enough Diet Coke today. I was talking to Eytan, who you may have seen around, and I was saying that I wasn’t sure what we should munch on during the Buffyness. And he was like, ziti! ‘Cause the cheese! And yum, who doesn’t like cheese. And then I started thinking about how the episode we were going to watch featured ziti, as evidenced above. Only I didn’t mention that at the time since I figured knowing a random Buffy quote about pasta might be a little frightening for someone who I think still is a little scared every time he comes to Buffy night and quite possibly pauses at the door and wonders if he really wants to brave the kooky intelligent and insightful Buffy crowd. However, CLEARLY if he was thinking ziti for the same night we were planning to watch the ziti episode, he must, deep down, be a fanatical Buffy fan. He just doesn’t know it yet.

This is a test of the Vanessa blogging system. This is only a test. If this were a real blog post, it would contain interesting words and witty banter. Maybe some cat pictures. Instead, it merely contains links. And a few questions. Please stay tuned for your regularly scheduled blogging. Tomorrow when I’ve had more sleep. Or at least more caffeine.

Ahem.

First, the questions:

1. I know a lot of guys who have iPhones, but I don’t know of any girls who have one. I know I haven’t been so nice about the iPhone before, but if you admit to having one, I promise I won’t mock. Much.
2. What Facebook apps do you find to be the most valuable? I’m thinking Facebook could be much more useful if only I had something installed other than a way for people to send me virtual cocktails. Not that I don’t love the cocktails and I hope everyone who has sent me one knows I’m cashing them in for the real thing the next time we’re in a bar together. But still.
3. What should I set my DVR to record? Right now, it only records Scrubs reruns, but I’m assuming there must be something new that I’m missing out on.

Now, the links. I’ve done lots of writing at Search Engine Land over the last few days:

• Google Goes Dark for Lights Out San Francisco
• Facebook Opens Application Pages to Indexing By Search Engines
• Flickr Wants To Show You The World Through Pictures
• Google News Launches Facebook Application

Bonus blogging: In a sign that there remains a least a small amount of good in the world, I arrived at the parking garage this morning one minute after 9am. This may not seem of consequence; however, if you arrive before 9am, you pay $12 for one day and if you arrive after 9am, you pay $24. Sadly, my ticket was stamped 9:01. I lamented to the parking attendant that I sadly arrived just a moment too late and he grabbed my ticket and scribbled on it, critically turning back time. I may not have that mythical and longed-for time machine, but at least I have a nice parking guy.

I’m usually really good about keeping up on what’s going in in the world around me through my RSS feeds. Lately though, with all the travel and work and sitting on the balcony watching the seals, I’ve been getting behind in my reading. I seem to be keeping up OK though, just by skimming Sphinn, Techmeme, and my Facebook newsfeed. And surprisingly, I seem to get a lot of news lately from Twitter.

The Twitter-Only View
So, I wondered, what if I only got news through Twitter. How lopsided would my world view be? I suppose this experiment would be very different for everyone, because unlike a similar experiment with something like Sphinn, the news you get depends very heavily on who you’re following.

As I mentioned the other day, I recently started having some Twitters sent to my phone, but I primarily still keep up using the web interface. Twitter by phone is great for random messages from close friends (”we’re having dinner at my house, who wants to come over?”), but the web seems to work much better for following everyone else. For one thing, it’s much easier to click on links people post when I’m not driving in my car at 60mph.

So what does the world look like through Twitter? Actually, pretty comprehensive! Sure, maybe what people are having for dinner and where they’re shopping isn’t exactly news, but here are things I learned in just the last few days:

• Cornel West’s musical attempt is not all that
• The new Firefox update might be a bit buggy
• Radiohead’s experiment in online album distribution appears to be working
• The micro startup is hot in Seattle
• I went to Natala’s for dinner last night — oh wait, I probably would know that without Twitter
• Jason Calcanis feels lonely even on stage and needs people to call him
• There’s great librarian resources I may not know about which should be great for the writing I do for Information Today magazine
• Web 2.0 Summit was attended by a lot of people in suits
• SMX Social Media had lots of great tidbits
• Nashville had a tornado scare
• China started redirecting searches to Baidu
• Email wants to compete with social networks (although I don’t really get Yahoo’s “friend finder” idea that calculates who your real friends are based on your email patterns. Don’t I already know what friends I email a lot?)

All in all, not a bad view of the world. I like that the people I follow aren’t reading the same sites as I am so I get much more variety the types of news than I might if I just read my feeds.

A Facebook Perspective
My Facebook news feed has potential too (particularly if enough people add the new Google News Facebook application). My current feed is:

• telling me about those ridiculous Dallas Cowboys who thought they were paying $275 rather than $275k for cowboy.com and want a refund
• showing me new pics from the DMA conference
• pointing me at this super cool visualization of the Gonzales testimony
• letting me know that a friend of mine is setting up his slingbox (so maybe I can ask him how it went and get help setting up mine!)
• breaking the news that it’s not Christmas
• explaining how I can get site visitors from posting a comment on Reddit
• describing how to measure user engagement
• alerting me that a lot of people want me to be a vampire

Augment all that with Sphinn hot topics and Searchcap to keep me up-to-date on search, with a little Techmeme tossed in for good measure, and I’m set.

In a world of information overload, with everyone jumping on the crowdsourcing bandwagon, why not take advantage of others to do the work of sorting through it all for you!

Likely most of you who read this blog know that until recently, I was responsible for Google’s Webmaster Central — I helped put together the blog (that we originally developed as a way to keep everyone informed about changes to Sitemaps, and that evolved into so much more), the discussion forums and the help center, worked with the absolutely fantastic engineering team on what tools we released, what they should look like, and how they should work, and pulled it all together into google.com/webmasters as a handy place to access it all. I still think of Webmaster Central as my baby, so I love to see it growing up. (You may not realize just how many people have been involved in helping making Webmaster Central what it is — from the user support team who field emails helping gather a list of topics for the help center, to the Sitelinks team helping with the feature launched just today. At every step, there are amazing people working throughout Google in all kinds of ways to make it all happen.)

It made me happy to see the Webmaster Central blog listed in the recent interview on Search Engine Land with Google Blogger extraordinaire Karen Wickre as the 5th most read Google blog and that it has produced two of the posts from all the Google blogs with the most page views. The entire team worked really hard putting that blog together initially, then later enabling comments, and it was a great way to start to get information out to webmasters and get involved with the conversation about search.

I also always get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I see features released that we worked so hard on when I was there. And it makes me even happier to be surprised by new things. The latest Webmaster Central release has a little of both.

Sitelinks
The first addition is information about sitelinks. Sitelinks appear below the first search result for some searches. They were introduced to improve search quality. The overall goal of all the major search engines is to provide the searcher with what they’re looking for as quickly as possible.

The idea behind sitelinks is that the searcher no longer has to click through to the result and then click again to get to the specific page that answers the query. Rather, the searcher can quickly skim a set of links to the site and click directly on the most relevant one. Why can’t the search result simply list the best one? Well, queries tend to be pretty short and it can be difficult to extract searcher intent. For instance, if I do a Google search for [duke's chower house seattle], am I looking for directions? Hours? A menu? Google doesn’t know, so they offer up several suggestions. (Quality aside: a link to the menu shows up in the sitelinks, but if you do a search for [duke's chowder house seattle menu], that same link doesn’t show up on the first page. In fact, no pages from the Duke’s site show up.)

Google autogenerates the list of sitelinks at least in part from internal links from the home page. You’ll notice in the Duke’s example that one of the sitelinks is “five great locations” which also appears as primary navigation on the Duke’s home page. If you want to influence the sitelinks that appear for your site, make sure that your home page includes the links you want and that those links are easy to crawl (in HTML rather than Flash or Javascript, for instance) and have short anchor text that’ll fit in a sitelinks listing. They’ll also have to be relevant links. You can’t just put your Buy Cheap Viagra now link on the home page of your elementary school site and hope for the best.

As noted by Search Engine Land yesterday, the number of sitelinks that appear can now be up to eight. So choose your eight internal home page links carefully.

Not all searches trigger sitelinks. This only happens for searches that Google thinks might benefit from them. For instance, if they think the query has enough inherent intent (such as the addition of “menu” in the previous example), they figure the listings alone are likely the one-click answer for the searcher.

And not all sites have sitelinks generated for them. Your site has to both have sitelinks generated for it and appear as the first result for a query that Google feels could use sitelinks in order to have the elusive sitelinks display.

How can you tell if Google has generated sitelinks for your site. Well, as of today, you can see it in Webmaster Central. Simply go to the Links section, then click on Sitelinks. If you’re me, you’ll see something like this:

(Although Barry notes that this seems to show up even for sites with sitelinks for now, which is probably a temporary glitch.)

However, if you have sitelinks, you’ll see the generated list. You might want to change this list — the URLs themselves or the anchor text used for them. But you can’t. Not for now anyway. It would be a cool thing to add. What you can do is remove listings. But why would you want to do that? Well, a couple of reasons. If you totally hate the anchor text, like say for some reason the menu link said “this menu sucks”, you might want to suppress that. No, I don’t know what that would be your anchor text, but I suppose anything is possible. Surely you’ve seen weird titles and descriptions coming from external links and things like ODP. The more likely reason you’d want to kill a link is if it 404s. If someone clicks on a 404 link, they may come back to the search results and try an entirely different listing rather than another of your sitelinks. Ideally, you’d just 301 redirect this broken link over to the correct page, but that may not be something you can do quickly, depending on your infrastructure. If this will take you a while, you can suppress the link, implement the redirect, then unblock it once everything is working.

Historical query stats
Webmaster Central has also added historical information for query stats. Previously, it showed you aggregate data over 7 days. Now you can see the most recent 7 days or you can choose an earlier week (up to 6 months ago). Right now, you can’t see the trend over time unless you export the data to excel and run your own numbers. They’ve also added a percentage next to each query, which I guess helps you determine not only which queries you show up for most, but what percentage of the time you’re showing up for that vs. something else. In my case, “vanessa” accounts for 78% and most everything else rounds down to 0%.

No more ratings
I don’t know exactly when this happened, but the rating smiley faces are gone. I’ve also noticed (probably this happened with the UI changes not too long ago), lots more is AJAXy and you no longer have to click buttons once you make choices.

Looks like they’re ramping up on using the message center as well. It is kind of nice to have a record of changes you’ve requested.

Search Engine Land is reporting that Webmaster Central will also let you know if they see high URL counts that might indicate lots of duplicate content, but I’m not seeing that in my account. That’s definitely a surprise feature for me, so I’m eager to check it out. I’ll report back once I’ve seen it.

On a related note, I was equally happy to see Microsoft roll out their version of webmaster tools recently. I love to have been part of such a positive trend for the industry. Search is really cool. Brings a happy tear to my eye.

I’m live blogging the SMX Social Media conference in NY for Search Engine Land. Both days are now covered, except for the last session, which is a Wikipedia clinic (surely some of the other live bloggers will have coverage, but unfortunately I had to run to the airport):

• Social Media Marketing Essentials
• Linkbait: Chumming For Traffic On Social Media Sites
• Social Media News Sites (Barry blogged this one for me; he said that he didn’t know much about the whole live blogging thing, but would give it a try)
• A Marketer’s Guide to Social Networking and Tagging
• Keynote Q&A: Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon

Day two!

• Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
• Evangelist: The Marketer’s Role in Social Media Marketing
• Micro Communities (I had to head out to the airport, so Rebecca covered this session)

Conference is kick ass so far. You are totally missing out.

I have been making some changes to my feeds, which I clearly should leave alone as now Feedburner is openly mocking my lack of feed skills and questioning my decision to be involved in technology or the web at all. In any case, I’m trying some new things and am thinking I need a new post to restart the whole feed process.

So, here’s something different. Has anyone else noticed changes in the Google SERPs? Particularly, I’m wondering if they’re now bringing in Blogsearch as either an addition to universal search or as a new signal in the web results. As you might recall universal search launched with five verticals: news, local, video, images, and books. Adding blogsearch would make sense, as it’s fresh, relevant content.

When you do a blogsearch, related blogs sometimes appear at the top of the results. For me, you’ll notice that the Google Webmaster Central blog appears. Blogsearch still associates it with me, even though I haven’t posted there since June.

I noticed an interesting thing yesterday when I searched for name using web search (er, yes I’m very vain). The Google Webmaster Central blog shows up as the second result, even though my name doesn’t appear anywhere on the page. Now, if I click the cached link, I’m told that my name appears only in links to the page, so possibly it’s solely the anchor text that’s propelling the result to #2. I don’t remember seeing it there before though, which is what got me wondering about it.

More likely is that I didn’t notice it was there before, or other random changes have reordered my results. But it’s fun to wonder.

What’s not to love about Twitter? It’s nowhere near the commitment of a blog. You don’t have to dodge people chucking books and sheep at your head like you do with Facebook, and it captures the brilliant laziness of a Christmas letter — why send personal messages to your friends when you can send an instant message to all of them at once?

Until yesterday, I only used the web version to update my status and browse through what my friends were doing. If I was traveling, I used the mobile web version (which is to say, mostly, I’ve used the mobile version). As with many things, I never used it in the way it was originally intended. I think the idea is that you find out what your friends are doing via text message and then you text back what’s going on with you. I would think this concept falls apart with more than a few friends, not only because you wouldn’t have time to do anything except check your phone, but also because you’d eventually run out of money paying your text messaging bills.

But everyone I know is on the Twitter-by-text bandwagon, and I was feeling a little left out. Natala said that the fastest way to get in touch with her was by Twitter. And I’ll never forget having dinner with a bunch of fellow geeks after Gnomedex, with everyone’s phones on the table, vibrating every few seconds with Twitter updates.

So yesterday, I decided to give it a try. First, I checked over the list of people I’m following. If I was going to start getting text messages about every waking moment of someone’s day, I figured they should be from people I actually know. Then, I hit the switch and on came the texts.

First thing I noticed? That you feel very popular and surrounded by friends when you’re getting texts from them every few minutes. Twitter messages on my phone make me feel warm and fuzzy in a way that scrolling through a web page just can’t measure up to. Yay Twitter. Send me more!

I also noticed that sometimes I would get a Twitter text long before it made it to the web version, and in some cases, the web version didn’t show up at all. I need to keep text messaging on just so I don’t miss anything!

Next, I realized that my phone really doesn’t have much storage space. Things filled up pretty quickly. I have an unlimited text messaging plan, so I wasn’t worried about costs, but I need to hit that delete button more quickly.

And then I found a fatal flaw with the direct messages coming to my phone. It’s difficult enough for me to keep up with and reply to regular email. When someone sends me a direct message via Twitter that then goes to my phone, how can I possibly remember to email that person back if I don’t have time at that very second to reply?

My next problem was that I didn’t actually read the directions and wasn’t sure how to send Twitters from my phone. So, my ability to Twitter each new moment was a bit hindered.

But the biggest problem? Robert Scoble. I was overloaded with Scoble Twitters that piled on like that downpour of salt following around that girl with the umbrella. Ironically, he was Twittering to people who were complaining about his barrage of Twitters.

@jbb tells me I’ve broken Twitter’s unwritten rules again and that I should go back to my blog. Listen: there’s a little unfollow button” in Twitter. Just use it. Why try to make me feel bad? I have a lot to say. If you don’t want to listen, unfollow.

I totally agree. What kind of whiner subscribes to what someone is writing and then complains about the frequency of that writing. Dude, unsubscribe.

Indeed, it’s ridiculous for me to complain about getting his Twitters on my phone.

Except.

I’m not following Scoble on Twitter.

Because he’s so prolific and I have such little time, I much prefer to scroll through his blog or Twitter feed when I have time. His is pull, rather than push, content.

As you can see, when I look at Scoble’s profile, I see the “follow” button.

Compare that to Baratunde who I am following, whose profile shows a status of “following”.

So why am I getting Scoble’s Twitters on my phone? I don’t see them in the web version of Twitter. He is following me, but I don’t get the Twitters of anyone else following me who I’m not following in return.

I turned off phone notifications while I figure it out. I might try following him, then setting his notifications to off, although that seems like a bit of a hack. (I do need a way to get back that feeling of all my friends keeping me company with their texts though, so it might be worth it.)

A while back people were talking about Scoble hijacking the newsfeed on Facebook. I have my account set to “less of the Scoble” and I still get him there too.

Maybe social networks just operate now with default Scoble, whether you sign up for him or not.