XHTML no good?

When Dreamweaver MX came out, and gave the option of creating pages in XHTML, the new, stricter, better version of HTML, I jumped right on the bandwagon. Of course, it didn't seem to make much difference about anything, but I religiously checked "Make page XHTML Compliant" with each new page. What an eye opener the below article was for me!!!

I subscribe to the Sitepoint newsletter and I gotta say, it is definitely one of the better ones for a guy in the web development biz. The below quote is from their newsletter but I couldn't find it at their site to link directly to it. Go ahead and peruse their site for the whole article.

The case for avoiding XHTML was pointed out to me by the author of SitePoint's upcoming DHTML book, as I tut-tutted his use of HTML (as opposed to XHTML) for the book's sample code.

Here it is in a nutshell:

Browsers decide how to handle a file based on the MIME type that the server sends with it.
HTML Web pages are identified with a MIME type of text/html.
Pages written in XHTML that are sent with a MIME type of text/html don't benefit from any of the features of XHTML.
To benefit from the features of XHTML, pages must be sent as application/xhtml+xml.
The most popular Web browser (Internet Explorer 6) cannot view pages sent as application/xhtml+xml.
From this, it follows that you cannot benefit from using XHTML without breaking compatibility with Internet Explorer 6. So you might as well just use HTML.

Trials and Tribulations Setting up an Overture Account

I read that Overture is persnickety about approving ads in their pay-per-click service. This had not been my experience since I had sat down and written up an ad for my Costa Rica real estate company and that ad had effortlessly turned up on Yahoo and elsewhere a few days later. So, feeling cocky, I analyzed the ad and decided that I needed to improve it. So I modified the ad. Boy do I ever wish that I hadn't!

Since I modified the existing "approved" ad, it was taken off of the indexes, I no longer appeared for my desired search term "costa rica real estate". What I should have done was created a new ad and left the old one is it was. Lesson 1.

Then, right about that time, Overture was "Experiencing some difficulty with their editorial review" and so there would be some delays in getting ads approved. They gave me the date when it would be reviewed, about a week down the road.

When I received my link to see their response to my ad, this is what I found: "Declined". The reason?

Site Ownership
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are unable to accept your listing because your Web site does not have sufficient personalization. Web sites with affiliate relationships must take the user to a personalized page. Personalization must include your name or your company name and keywords submitted for this page must have a clear relationship to the content on the personalized pages.

Please check that the page you submitted meets the requirement above and resubmit your listing.

This is for an ad, for the same site, that had effortlessly passed earlier. Notice that the reason for the declining of the ad has nothing to do with the ad, but with the contact page, which had not been touched since the first ad's approval.

It almost seems like the guys there at Overture are so fat and sassy that they delight in making life a little bit tough for us internet marketers. But hey, there are a few issues more important in life than getting all bent about a pay-per-click companies vagarities.

They gave me a link to a pop-up window reference that details all the reasons that they will reject an ad. I have copied and put a link to those rules here.

I'm off to "personalize" my contact page.

Is your marketer "sophisticated"?

Most likely not.

I thought that this article was truly unique in it's use of the terms "sophisticated" and "unsophisticated". At first I didn't know what the heck they were talking about, then as I read on, it became clear, and the message was actually quite enlightening.

Report: Most Search Marketers are Unsophisticated: "Based on its latest Survey of Search Marketer Behavior, JupiterResearch considers three quarters of search marketers currently using unsophisticated search engine marketing (SEM) tactics. 'Only one in four search marketers bids and measures intelligently,' said Scevak.
To segment 'sophisticates' and 'unsophisticates,' JupiterResearch looked at the methods search marketers use most frequently to determine the amount of money to bid for a keyword and the most detailed level they usually use to look at metrics to quantify the effectiveness of search marketing."

So as I read it, an unsophisticate is a marketer that takes his marketing seriously and actually measures the effectiveness of his programs, namely, pay-per-click.

Sophisticates bid on more paid listing vendors, increasing the number of clicks they generate. For example, 96% of sophisticates work with Google, 91% with Overture, 44% with FindWhat.com, and 39% with LookSmart. In contrast, only 80% of unsophisticates work with Google, 68% with Overture, 21% with FindWhat.com, and 21% with LookSmart.

Sophisticates currently bid for more keywords with more than a third bidding for more than 1,000 keywords. In contrast, only 14% of unsophisticates bid for more than 1,000 keywords.

Sophisticates are more likely to change bids, select keywords, change ad text, or change landing pages. Unsophisticates are less likely to optimize SEM campaigns regularly.

Of course, the problem with this is that to find all those possible keywords takes time. Time that many don't have, or don't know what to do even if they have the time. The sophisticates are using the measuring tools available to track their efforts and, the point that I find most telling...

Sophisticates are happier with SEM and plan to increase the amount of money they spend on search marketing by greater percentages in the next 12 months.

I'm off to track conversions.

MSN Search: A Unique Search Approach?

It is difficult to imaging that anything unique could be added to the world of search. MSN's new search service is not necessarily unique, but it's underlying principles are, as the below quote demonstrates. It is interesting to compare the behemoth struggle of Google and Microsoft, both of which are dominant world powers of our age.

Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL all Moving Towards Convergence: "The full introduction of MSN to the search scene is likely to spur competition in unexpected ways. First of all it is important to note that all the major players are taking long-term views on competition and being the oldest kid and largest kid on the block, Microsoft already has a long-term history. It is not trying to change a world it naturally dominates; it just wants to continue to control it.
While Google is focused on search as a means of ad-delivery, Microsoft is focused on search as an extension of function. Gates has had one consistent focus over the years and that is the integration of computers and the Internet into daily life. Successive versions of Windows have moved towards this integration. His previous attempt to control the mechanisms of convergence was the half-hearted .Net strategy that failed to gain mass acceptance. "