Software Marketing News Blog by Dave Collins, SharewarePromotions

We’ve been writing our blog since May 27th 2004. Two years, five months and 26 days ago. 909 days in fact.

And look how things have changed in that time. How retro!

Pay Per Match

Oh wait a minute. Nothing’s changed at all.

As a promotional vehicle, the blog served us well. But now it’s time to move on.

One of the reasons that we’re killing the blog is our Competitive Edge newsletter. The bottom line? Competitive Edge is a newsletter to help software developers make more money. Really.

It’s also 100% unique content. We’re not linking to other articles, and everything is written by members of the SharewarePromotions team.

We also make each issue available online, and an RSS feed is in the works.

But… here’s an important note: Every now and then we’ll be releasing time-sensitive information.

And here’s the catch. (There’s always a catch.) If you want to read our fantastically useful content as soon as it comes out (and believe me you really do), then you need to subscribe. And don’t pull a face. We’ll only send you one issue per month, and will never share your email address with anyone. Ever.

The RSS feed and website will only be updated a week after the email newsletter is sent.

Not convinced? Take a look at some of the issues we’ve covered.

Through the Eyes of your Customers and Selling Abroad, Wherever You Are

The Top 50 Ways To Sell More Software and SEO Guarantees

When Google AdWords Fails and The Top Three Website Mistakes

Shareware Industry Conference 2006 and Growth of an Industry

The Keywords Issue: Google AdWords and the Long Tail

Web Log Gold & Can People Trust Your Website?

Taming Google AdWords & First Impressions That Sell

It goes without saying that the Competitive Edge newsletter is free. And did I mention that it’s really very good?

So subscribe now! And see you there.

Competitive Edge

Note that our Google AdWords News blog is also still alive and well.

When Google purchased YouTube, everyone said it was only a matter of time before the lawsuits started appearing. With serious Google money now behind the video sharing, it was widely predicted that there would now be complaints about the illegal sharing of music videos, among other things.

Universal Music Group is leading the pack. According to the BBC:

“Universal’s lawsuit, lodged in a US district court, claims that MySpace “encourages, facilitates and participates in the unauthorised reproduction, adaptation, distribution and public performance”. In a statement it added: “Our music and videos play a key role in building the communities that have created hundreds of millions of dollars of value for the owners of MySpace.”

MySpace have dismissed it as “meritless litigation”.

MySpace sued by Universal Music

I bring this up every now and then, and it’s also a discussion I frequently have with new clients. Meta tags are not dead  - instead, some of them are actually incredibly useful. A posting over at SEOmoz brings up a few of the key reasons why you shouldn’t dismiss or ignore all meta tags.

If you’re interested in (possibly) avoiding the supplemental results, or increasing the clickthrough rates for your organic results, you want to read this.

Revenge of the meta-tag!

A Google user recently noticed two small buttons in the organic results for a search he did on Google. “Was this link useful? Yes No”.

Others have reported seeing similar things in the AdWords ads, but never in the main search results. The current theory is that Google are simply testing out a new functionality.

Hmmm. I’m not sure whether this is a good idea or not. Imagine how many people will be tempted to get everyone they know to vote No for their competitors’ listings.

I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what happens. Click on the link below to read more and see a screenshot.

User feedback in Google Search

Ars Technica reports on a hitherto relatively unknown Vista feature:

“One of the new features of Vista that hasn’t gotten much attention is Microsoft’s new “Computer Name” feature, which extends Windows XP’s Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP) service. Simply put, Computer Name allows users to identify their machine by a unique name, rather than an IP address, from anywhere on the planet.”

Why? Because otherwise we’ll soon be running out of IP addresses, since there’s a limit of 4.3 billion. PNRP, on the other hand, allows up to 3.4 x 1038 unique addresses, which means that none of us should have to worry about it for a very long time.

Click on the link below to read more, and find out about the naming options you’ll have!

Every Vista computer can have its own domain name

Very nice! Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have announced joint support of the Google sitemaps, to make it easier for webmasters to get their pages indexed.

“Yahoo is apparently already accepting submissions, although this is not clear from their Site Explorer submission screen. Microsoft is still testing sitemaps internally.”

Yahoo not being clear? Microsoft still testing? Who would have thought!?!

No, seriously: it’s great to see them all working together.

The big three search engines announce joint sitemaps support

Matt Cutts has been busy. If you’re constantly hearing new rumours about the Real True Failsafe Way to Great Google Rankings and you’re likely to believe them even when they’re ridiculous, you want to read this.

First, there is absolutely no truth to the suggestion that a link sent to a Gmail account equals one link on one page. No kidding.

Second, it’s fine to run your website using your DSL connection at home. As long as Google can load the pages, it doesn’t matter if they take half a second or five seconds to show up.

Who would have thought?

Myth busting: Links in Gmail

Myth busting: Delays in page loading

Last week we wrote about Wordze, a new keyword tool that might give WordTracker and KeywordDiscovery something to worry about. Yesterday, we had a play with it ourselves - and we were impressed enough to decide to sign up for a month and give it a serious go.

Personally, I love having access to as much data as possible when I’m doing keyword research. None of the keyword tools out there are completely (or even remotely, in some cases) reliable, so using several of them is a great way to get a good idea of which phrases are worth targeting. I don’t know how reliable Wordze’s data is yet, and it doesn’t go back very far, but there were some additional features that really impressed me.

I absolutely love WordRank, a patent pending tool that analyzes the leading sites for a given keyword and estimates how difficult it will be to rank for it. Wordze also gives you access to Historical Keyword Data (even though it doesn’t go back very far yet), which lets you see how popular a keyword is on a yearly, monthly or daily basis.

Like I said, I still don’t know exactly how reliable the actual keyword data is, but so far I really like what I see. A one-day trial is only $7.95 - why not give it a go and see what you can discover?

Wordze

If you still believe that Google penalise (or penalize or penalice?) virtually hosted websites, then don’t.

“Links to virtually hosted domains are treated the same as links to domains on dedicated IP addresses.”

There you have it. Straight from the horse’s mouth. No offence Matt.

Myth busting: virtual hosts vs. dedicated IP addresses

You’ve been blasted with hype, you’ve waded through articles, you’ve heard the name mentioned more times than you could even begin to remember. But with Windows Vista finally around the corner, you still don’t really know what to expect.

If you want to know what real people think, head on over to News.com. They’ve asked a panel of ordinary readers to share their opinions, and reveal what it is that they really, really like about Vista.

Not surprisingly, most of them mention the way it looks - Aero Glass is mentioned several times. But they also delve deeper into the functionalities, praising things like enhanced security, the new Windows Media Center, and the new Explorer.

Well worth a look if you’re itching to try it yourself.

Final version’s cool features