Of late I have heard a lot of people saying that it’s getting harder and harder to get good SEO off a new, thin site, especially after Google’s May Day Update.

Recently I have been looking for ideas for a new bathroom renovation. For a project like this, the visual element is important and flicking through images is easier than reading through descriptions, so I started off by looking in Google Images.

It was interesting to note that ALL of the images I clicked through to were from a Blogspot site that didn’t have any textual content except for tags and headings –  only images.

The site was http://kitchenbacksplashes.blogspot.com/. It’s covered with Google Ads and already has over 700 posts in 2010.
I think this would be a good, profitable venture for whoever created the site. I know from past experience how much traffic well-SEO’d images can generate.  I was surprised how a site without text, especially good structured paragraphs, could rank so well and dominate the Google Images results.

What I don’t know is how much Google prioritises Blogger. My guess is that Google doesn’t – it’s just that Blogger marks up its images well for consumption by Google.

Ultimately this site was of limited use for me as a buyer because I could see something I liked but I couldn’t work out how to source the components.  I also don’t know if the publisher has the copyright for these images or whether they are taken from elsewhere (really nothing to do with me).

As a business idea to make money, it’s good. My guess is that Google focuses on getting rid of these spammy sites from the normal index because they don’t really offer solutions or answer questions. But if you’re searching for images, then this site gives you exactly what you’re looking for, so why would Google get rid of it from the image index? This site has lots of relevant images which helps if you are purely looking for images.  Where it doesn’t help me is that I am searching for those images as a connection to content, products, and services. I did find some copper tiles that I liked but there is no way for me to get more information about them or buy them.

Ultimately if this publisher wanted to make money out of more than just Google Adsense and if they had the traffic (why would they have 700 posts if not?) they could start to look at a real lead generation/advertising business for suppliers.  If you pickup any kitchens/bathrooms magazine you can see how much is spent on advertising.

It is always a delight to see how developers play with others product offerings.

One of these is MapEnvelope.

You can now use their service to create great DIY envelope creations with a custom map and message inside. Ultimately none of this would be possible without great free services like Google Maps.

I lent my handheld GPS to some friends a couple of years ago and recently got it back. Haven’t things moved far in just a couple of years! Mobile phones now know where I am. Some micro cameras have GPS built in.

Recently I saw a small SD memory card (32 mm × 24 mm × 2.1 mm) that can store 4GB AND geocode your photos AND wirelessly upload your pics as soon as you get near your wireless router at home. In the USA Google is giving away these little cards when you sign up for a service to store your photos online. This card doesn’t use GPS through…and it shows a difference in technology, which means that the iPhone is out-performing Google’s Android for location-based services.

GPS uses a triangulation of satellites. This isn’t much use indoors or when walking among the skyscrapers of New York City, or among the trees of the Blue Mountains for that matter. You need a good open sky for GPS to work well and it can take a while for your device to lock onto the position of the satellites it can see. I remember the times with my old GPS of asking Bianca if we could stand in the open for a few minutes in India so that I could geocode a photo (I know I’m a nerd). I wouldn’t have that patience now to find a local ATM, pizza restaurant or laundrette with my iPhone.

Some other systems find out where you are by looking at the wireless networks close to you. Each wireless network has a unique number. Most wireless networks don’t move around nor do cellular towers for your mobile phone. So if you have a list of wireless networks and cellular towers and where they are in the world you can quickly say ‘your device sees this wireless network(s) so you must be here’. Skyhook is one company that has been building the database of wireless networks to locations on the planet. If you go to their website with a wireless device (laptop, mobile phone) you can give it a go and see how well and how quickly it locates you…no GPS involved. The iPhone finds you fast as it uses the fast Wi-Fi positioning system (WPS), along with cellular tower location and GPS.

You can see how pure GPS and android works compared with this integrated system on this video.

So if geolocation can fit onto an SD memory card that Google is giving away it means that this technology is now very accessible, easy to integrate and is cheap. I would love to integrate these kinds of ‘locate me’ services into Hotfrog.com and nospuds.com.au as users are now expecting sites, services and devices to know where they are.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43105570@N03/3972458266/ with GPS receiver taped to the top.

I always find it interesting when sites miss obvious dead-ends that can be turned into real $, engagement and product sparkle.& nbsp;

A couple of months back I was looking at Etsy.com – a website where people buy and sell handmade arts, crafts and a range of other products. I found some art that I really liked that was done by someone living in the US. [Check it out and buy some now!]

I had got near the end of the purchase process when I found out that the artist would not ship to Australia. Bum :(

I sent an email to the artist and said how much I liked her work and was sad that she wouldn’t post to Australia.

Here was her response:

I’m really glad you contacted me! To be honest, I wasn’t sure who was checking out my work from where, and when I first set up the shop, I COMPLETELY forgot to add in shipping costs for other countries!! Now that I know people are checking out my work from more than the US (yay Australia!), I’ll definitely begin shipping worldwide. My shop should update within the next 24 hours and you’ll be able to order whatever you’d like!

There are sooo many cool things that Etsy could do with this:

• Engage the artist:
  • report on who’s looking at what
  • provide easy postal quoting – ok, it’s hard to collect this data but you must be able to give guestimates based on all the data you have :)
  • Direct Marketing (DM) and Call To Actions (CTA) to encourage User Generated Content (UGC) on postage and descriptions
• Engage the buyer:
  • show where the product is deliverable
  • encourage buyers to poke the sellers into adding postage costs through simple tools and CTA’s

Closing loops on flows like this can have a big impact. I have had the ‘not available in your country’ situation happen to me so many times on so many sites, especially with postage or licensing items (ebooks, audio books are standouts for me). What I would like is for a site to let me know as soon as possible in the purchasing process if some of the stuff is available and some isn’t!

Just come across some pages from Microsoft’s new search site in Googles index. I dont think that will last long! The links in googles index didnt work in Australia anyway. Dont know if they work else where.

Around 5 years ago the pump on my swimming pool stopped working. The first thing I did was write down the make and model number and googled it. I also wanted a new bathroom heater, so I tried searching for the same heater as we have in another bathroom as it worked really well.

Many people will search for your old brands and model numbers, so make sure that you keep your customer relationships alive and have details about your past brands and model numbers on your site. If they have had a good experience with one of your older models, they may upgrade to the new model. Make every search count to hook new business and grow your brands.

Our household has tried to make a few eBay purchases recently. It’s been an interesting study of how building a good system can get people ‘hooked in’ to the game of the purchase, rather than simply trying to buy something cheaply.

Buying is a game for many people. On eBay, the competitive streak really comes out. My wife, Bianca, was bidding on a second-hand baby sling. These slings are popular, and while there are always a number of them on eBay, the bidding is fierce. Bianca kept increasing the bid, even though she could have bought the same sling, new and post-free, for the same price (when you include the postal costs). The intensity of watching the bidding process and the small increases (slow boiled frog) seemed to egg her on. I had to step in.

I nearly did the same thing on a second-hand Bose headphones cable. I was bidding internationally for a second-hand cable, which soon surpassed the price of a new cable from the Australian Bose store, which included postage. Crazily, there was no price difference between the second-hand cable and the new one direct from Bose!

Buy It Now was used by a neighbour recently and I have done the same thing because I kept losing purchases and I am not good at waiting to find out if another will come along, even if it is a regular item. It should be called ‘I Want It Now!’ ;)

A couple of business models come to mind.

1. Arbitrage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage would make for an interesting model, what with these insights and foreign exchange fluctuations.
2. Postage and packing is always grief to first work out the price as a seller, and then packing it up safely. Sometimes I don’t sell stuff for the postage hassle. I know a guy who bought a load of vinyl records and spent $2k on postage! Courier and postal services must do well out of eBay. It would be good to have a holistic postal service with price quote built in.

So with all this in mind, I would consider the user’s emotional responses when building systems. People like to win!

Thought this was a cool pic on flickr too:

I built a new site a couple of months ago for a client & I was pleasantly surprised to see that 6% of the traffic was generated by Google Images. It highlights the importance of high resolution images with good mark-up to get good traffic. A friend at WebDU said he saw a great flash image interface & I asked how often he searched Google Images for resources & he said 20 times a day at least.

I haven’t yet researched the best way & would welcome any thoughts/links. I image that thumbnails that link to high-res images with a good JS library to give good navigation would be the best way for current browsers.

I was very impressed with image navigation using the webkit CSS transitions on the iPhone. You could create coverflow style photo navigation using CSS transition…v.cool. It would be great if transitions & some of the other webkit markup got into standard HTML markup. This would give great navigation/presentation with great SEO. If you have an iPod touch or iPhone check out zflow to see it work.

It’s going to be interesting to watch how YP deals with its ‘fat cat’ status with the pay-for-performance online advertising biting at its heels and the credit crunch upon us.