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CrossEngine, A Swiss Army Knife for Search

This is the most comprehensive, well designed and seriously useful Search tool I’ve used, ever. Checkout CrossEngine.com, for bloggers, journalists and hell, pretty much anyone who cares about finding information it’s an absolutely killer bit of kit!

The site is owned by Jaun C. Sosa, and no financial motive was apparent, but I really hope he gets some traction with it and the various services he’s tapping for info (results are in a frame..) dont get all shitty about it.

Found via the excellent Small Business SEM Blog, thanks Matt!

To Linkbait, or Not?

Brian is holding a vote on the term linkbait. Despite being largely credited with inventing that term, I have to agree with Brian, and others that it absolutely sucks in terms of image. It gives all the wrong impressions and as I recenlty wrote in my article for Danny Sullivans SearchEngineLand: 2007 Guide to Linkbaiting the SEO industry in general needs to step up to the plate and stop continually sabotaging any chance it might ever have of a good reputation.

Get over to Brian’s and vote it down!

The Return of YOUR Blog

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve reenabled the long missing “my blog” link on the right — Once again, members can blog here at Performancing, and this time, that service wont be stopped.

It was a mistake to stop it, as we had some great contributions coming in via the blogs, and iwth the enabling of Akismet, we shouldn’t have to worry too much about spam either.

Best blog posts to the homepage as usual, though I am still due to announce a call for Performancing Authors, who’ll have free reign to post directly to the homepage.

If you’re interested in that, catch me at [email protected], the new email address for tips, general contact and link suggestions.

Optimizing for Feed and Blog Search

Im doing a little research today, to see if much has changed since the last time I did a little blog/feed search engine optimization for a blog — I have to speak on this at SES London in a few weeks and need to make sure I have my facts up to date, and straight.

So I thought it might be useful to have a general discussion on how you optimize for Technorati, Google Blogsearch, Bloglines and other engines.

Do tell. Comment, link to articles you’ve written and discuss — lets see if we can work out the definitive guide to blog search seo!

Wow, what a start to the year

Well it’s been quite a ride so far for Performancing. We’ve had to close down Metrics, but have promised to help release it as open source this year, we’ve just announced the closure of our blog advertising program, though behind the scenes some interesting discussions are being had with friends of the companies regarding that and briefly, I resigned as CEO and we had Chris takeover.

Im sad to say that Chris has decided he’s better off working on his ongoing projects , though he will remain a part of the community and will certainly remain a good friend of the company’s.. If you’ve not caught it, I highly recommend a subscription to his personal blog at Chrisg.org. Chris ‘ formal departure will be a huge loss for us, and I in particular will be at a loss when in need of advice regarding the community here — hopefully he’ll still feel compelled to add his 2c occasionally 🙂

Farewell Chris, and thankyou for everything. It was an honor.

I dont know about you guys, but even im a fed up with the constant news and announcements coming out of Performancing recently — so apart from to say that ongoing Partners obligations will be met according to plan, I’ll leave you with these thoughts:

  • We are still interested in talking to potential partners that could help us relaunch our adnetwork – there is a ton of functionality never released and I’d love to have conversations with serious players re the possibilities.
  • ScribeFire also needs some help. Jed Brown has gone MIA and we need some hlep talking it further.
  • We still plan to open source Metrics, but there is no firm time frame
  • And lastly, but by no means least. I intend to correct some of the mistakes I’ve made with community functionality and management here at Performancing, and again, am entirely open to suggestions and partnerships that will take us forward in 2007
  • Many of the changes you will see in the coming weeks will be done without fanfare or fuss — enough with the BS

You can catch me at [email protected]

Did I miss anything?

Performancing Partners to close

I’m sad to tell you that Partners has to close. While I have every faith it could have worked, it wasn’t going to happen fast enough. Without more money invested it wasn’t going to happen at all.

Any ads currently in the system will continue to run until the end of the month at which time the ad code will stop working. Please take your ad code down from your templates then. Remaining ad time will of course be refunded.

This news is surely not going to be popular. All I can say is thank you to all the publishers and advertisers who tried the service and to all the people in the forums who provided feedback and ideas. I am gutted I couldn’t have some time to act on your suggestions.

Why Do You Blog?

Darren Barefoot is asking the question and it is one I would like to know the answer to

Why do you blog? Why do I blog? Why does anybody? As the medium enters its pubescence, it’s a question that I wonder about all the time. I’ve talked about it with a lot of different bloggers, and everyone offers a different reason.

In February, I’m giving a talk called “Why We Blog” at Northern Voice here in Vancouver. In preparation, I’m launching this ad hoc survey to gather more opinions and voices from the blogosphere.

If you have the time please go over and complete his survey – you might win a prize but more importantly Darren might publish his findings so we can get a picture of why people are blogging right now. Interestingly he has gone for free text replies so I am not sure how the survey results will be formulated.

In my experience there are many reasons people blog …

  • Personal diary/journal
  • I just like writing
  • money
  • fame/attention
  • sales
  • get a new job
  • make friends/network
  • …

When I started blogging there were many names for the activity but “blogging” wasn’t one of them. Back in the late 90’s people would have personal sites and just throw “stuff” up, links, pics, jokes, resume/CV, etc. A couple of people had sites with diaries or personal journals and I thought I would follow suit. While it took me some time to work out what I was doing, and the whole thing was hand coded seeing as there was no wordpress at that time, I got a taste for it and have blogged ever since. My first true blog was launched Friday 5th February 1999. Don’t bother going to wayback machine and reading the lousy first post, it’s embarrassing (makes a reference to a Red Dwarf character and our new fridge freezer – not exactly Shakespeare!).

My reasons for sticking with blogging are many and complex but I think one reason that stands out is I find it so rewarding. When we stopped blogging at Performancing towards the end of last year I really felt a loss. I still had my personal blog but it’s nice to have the Performancing blog back.

It’s a fascinating topic for me why people get into this and more importantly stay with it. This is one of the many talks I will be sad to miss at Northern Voice this year. I have my tickets but too much Performancing stuff going on now to make it. Maybe next year. I wonder if I still get my t-shirt if I don’t attend?

Why did you start blogging and why do you keep at it? Let me know in the comments …