A while ago (really, a while ago) I pointed out GenieKnows and how they were hiding links in blog comments using a smile emoticon.

So yesterday I ran into some news about how they had relaunched, were doing a lot of traffic, and so forth. I was very surprised myself when I saw that Compete.com showed them with 2.3 million visitors a month – not bad! Even more impressive was that all the traffic began a few months – what a spike!

Of course, things were not as they seemed. Compete is nice enough to show us a breakdown of traffic by subdomain – in this case, it seems like feed.genieknows.com was their main traffic conduit. And some simple searching brought light on their methodology: annoying spyware that hijacks your URLs.

Just wonderful stuff.

Integrating Facebook & Twitter logins on your site are not newsworthy.

I’m looking at you every single local site out there. голова болит секс голова болит секс download Dead Like Me голова болит секс

I’ve been talking about shifting away from local search to local – and it boggles my mind how wasteful local is.

My favorite example are blogs for businesses. Say I like Cafe X nearby. They have a blog (or even a website). They realize that getting their information is a good idea – and so they use RSS. They may not fully get it, but they realize that RSS lets me access their information more conveniently.

Now what boggles my mind is how many of them do not use full feeds. While the real goal is to get me going to their business, because it is the web, they seem to think the ‘target’ is getting me to their website. I was already on their damn website – that is why I subscribed to the RSS feed in the first place! You damn fools – give me access to the full content immediately.

This of course extends in other ways – as an avid NBA fan, it boggles my mind that NBA.com does not use full feeds. I am going to guess they would do better to keep me more engaged (not having to click on the link), and thus more likely to attend an actual NBA game (and with the economy hit as badly as it has, it is something they are desperate for).

I can understand a professional blogger who makes his money by driving ad-views on his blog – fine. Otherwise? Use a full feed! какие виды секса порно фото лесбиянок на компьютер смотреть бесплатно порно зрелых порно фото групповуха Gary Oldman Carnegie

One of the things I enjoy about Canada is that our reliance on the SIN is far less than the US and SSN. Applying for a place to live? No SIN required. Cell phone? No SIN required. Bank? No SIN required. Etc etc.

In the US, the SSN is almost considered your ‘password’ – name, address, and SSN = access granted.

So I read this article on reverse-engineering SIN numbers daybreakers ethan hawke

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and found it to be absolutely mind-boggling. The essence was using an algorithm and a botnet of 10k servers (not that большие сиськи бесплатно порно секс ебли many), they were able to deduce the SSN of people at 47 SSNs a minute. At 24×60 minutes a day – that means over 65,000 SSNs decoded a day.

I wonder how long until some organization manages to do this on a large scale (who needs to steal laptops with sensitive information?)

So in my previous post I talked about one of my favorite companies – LDC.

Next up is Yipit. But this isn’t just about how awesome Yipit is. No no – today they launched profile pages, and in the process, further convoluted their home page. So this post is about how I would look over their site, and improve their UI and SEO.

To me, SEO is about giving the user what they want. In the case of a local search site, that relates to what they want (fishnet stockings, lava lamps, Company X, etc) and where they want it (New York City, Greenwich Village [neighborhood], 10015 [zip code], or some other informal space). It is also very possible that the user has a general idea of what they want but do not know how to exactly define it.

So – off the bat, the home page for Yipit is rather confusing. We have 1 2 3, where #1 is a non-standardized (in general UI terms) breakdown, #2 is slightly more confusing (it is pre-filled as NY – which doesn’t match either of their three criteria), and #3 is … something that should not need to be defined. Under it we have a list of Top Furniture and Top Discount Furniture stores, with a crap-ton of ‘popular searches’ that somehow relate to each business (but how?) On the right is a quick description of Yipit that seems stuffed with keywords, then twitter updates, then more popular searches, and then popular business searches.

What in God’s name of stuffing is this?

On a slight tangent – the English language can be hard. What may be X to me may be Y to you. Taxonomy is not an easy business. But the complexity in taxonomy is far simpler for Yipit – by focusing on furniture (more later), the verse of words people could be possibly looking for is greatly narrowed. Instead of a drop down – just have a box saying ‘What kind of Furniture?’ Best of all – this lets them generate a list of keywords based on what users are searching for. Eventually they may learn that 75% of people use ‘fold-out bed’ while 20% use ’sofa bed’ and 5% use ‘bed that opens up’. Sure they may miss it the first few times someone searches for it (as it would not be in their taxonomy) – but over time they would have this incredibly rich database of words people search for relating to their own internal category. Back to the topic – replace ‘Near’ with ‘Around (optional)’ and have it pre-filled with New York City. Then a simple search submit. All of them next to each other, no #s, and maybe a few examples under the two input boxes. Forcing their categorization on me was an unsatisfying UI experience.

On a related note – the ‘definitions’ link looks like it is clickable – but it sure ain’t. Confused me there.

So – now we have greatly cleaned up the main search part – no forcing a user to figure out what you think they want – let them define it, and no need for the ‘duh’ 1 2 3 #s.

Next up – we have a bunch of ‘Top Furniture Stores’ under it. First off – all the profile page links go to the generic /furniture__ny/ page – I assume that is a bug. Second of all – why do we have 900 keywords stuffed in there? Having ‘new york’ stuffed in every single result leaves me with a bad taste. You have tags for each business. You should be using those.

But never mind the tags even. You guys have two objectives here – get people to use the Yipit code, or get people to find Yipit when searching for a popular key phrase / store. At the same time, Yipit’s authority in the eyes of search engines is still weak – it is new, and does not have a few links. So – instead of 12 businesses across two categories, list 4. Two are your advertisers, and two are either the two most popular furniture stores in NYC, or two advertisers. Ideally this would let you track how effective the home page is in getting people to use the coupon, and thus the value it generates. Furthermore, just list the tags you ahve for each business. No need to put in all these extra popular searches.

Now to the right side. The first paragraph is nice, the second paragraph throws me off with all that red text for links. Is it really needed? You already have popular searches – leave it at that. As for the twitter updates – honestly how many people care about that? You have a blog link in the footer – leave it at that. Leave those popular searches and popular business searches (though really rename it to ‘Popular Businesses’) – so your right is now a quick blurb on how Yipit does furniture (but should be slightly more fleshed out), and two quick lists on Popular Searches and Popular Businesses.

And bring the nice little footer image to the top please

So – now we have a home page much nicer and cleaner.

Next up – the directory pages in the footer. They are employing a Neighborhood directory, a Zip Code directory, and a Business Directory by alphabet. The Neighborhood directory expands into a bunch of pages for every category for every neighborhood, the zip directory the same, and the business directory just straight links.

Down the road this may work. But as I said before, personally I think that is stretching it too thin. Trying to run before you can walk. If I could run things, I would nuke the zip code directory, nuke the business listings, and only use Neighborhoods. The neighborhood-specific page would then have a list of just the businesses found in that directory. They have 337 in total – no worry of having too many in one neighborhood

The profile page I cannot complain about much. I would get rid of that Search Yipit drill down they have, and replace it back with the simple What/Where search box (with the Where pre-filled with that neighborhood). And instead of Other Searches of Interest, I would simply list the 5 closest Furnituer stores. Too many keywords (at this time) seem to be spreading yourself thin.

So we finally end up with the super confusing (to me) /d/xxxxx pages. Before I get started on it specifically, I noticed some links where /d/xxxxx_ny and some were /d/xxxxxxx_NY. That is duplicate content in the eyes of some search engines.

Now – the idea is smart. Search pages or tag pages – both are the same to Yipit. But that UI is just ‘what the fuck’ to me. At 1024 res that map on teh right is so squished. And way way too much information.

For example, I am looking at Murphy Beds. I fail to see why I care what the popular searches are on that page. I want to know name, info, and yes knowing their amount is nice. But popular searches are out. They could easily wipe out that entire blue box, giving the map a lot more space. Plus – you have a map – no need to put in the intersection. I think it should be just Name, Price (clickable with a tooltip to say exactly what $$$ means), address, phone, # of pieces, and a ‘more details’ link to their profile page! (profile pages are found nowhere on the search results page).

And as I said before – please just use a free-for-all input box for what.

I know I am not the only one confused by this page – the breadcrumbs lead to nowhere.

I would also slightly tweak the