After reading more blog posts on the latest Google outrage against its Toolbar Page Rank (TBPR) score and reading everything from “Danny warned us” to “Matt Cutts has confirmed” to “Nobody cares”, I had this image of the game, “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”.

Yesterday, I wrote two blog posts addressed to Google, that I didn’t post.

One was called “Do You Think My Blog is Too Fat”, in which I visualized standing in front of Google’s mirror. For me, a woman of pre-Dove self-esteem, a mirror is a weapon. As a web site owner and woman, I view any of my attempts to please Google as a total and complete lost cause.

The other post I wrote, that will never see the light of Internet, is “Ten Reasons for Escaping the Google Regime”. I started out by cracking jokes:

2. They’re control freaks. Even the ice cream they serve their employees had to be reformulated before being approved by the Google Founders. (It was cute when I thought it was because they cared about nutrition. I no longer believe that fantasy.)

By the ending, my blood pressure had soared, as evidenced by,

Does the damn score have importance or not?

Round and around and around we go. Where we stop, nobody knows.

At first, especially after asking questions in public forums, at the risk of sounding “stupid”, I felt stupid. I felt like an ass. There’s been no positive vibe like I’m a hot blooded two year old racing mare on the racetrack of success kind. Who wouldn’t want THAT one?

I toured Google. I’ve met some of its people. I’ve visited the Google Tribe and wished to be initiated into It. They could have my body and soul if they’d wished.

But after one of my sites was punished for something I didn’t realize was a threat, because there’s not a shred of evil under-handed ego-guided greedy belly button worship energy in me, I’m not feeling that nice, cozy, thing I had going on there.

Google, may I just say, you got the wrong girl.

So, to cheer myself up and deal with the ongoing confusion over how to please Google, potential advertisers, web site visitors, other search engines who don’t scare the hell out of me and maintain world peace all at the same time, I now think of Google as a donkey.

We may never be able to pin the tail on their butt because they keep spinning everyone around to keep us from getting things just right, but they look a lot less annoying in this position.

I was encouraged by my first submissions to Catalyze.org, the new social networking site for business analysts and user centered design folks. As an early fan of the site (still in BETA), I’ve been getting to know it (very informative), how it works (some usability hoops), and finally, I got up the nerve to start contributing (I was shy).

First, I sent them my podcast interview on usability. Then, once I figured out their procedure, I submitted two of my usability articles. I chose two popular ones. One serious and the other one, funny. With a cordial nudge from a staff member, I learned I was contributing something valuable and was welcome to keep it up. If you’re a user centered web site developer, this site is starting to get its groove on. For those looking to meet their peers online, I’m hoping Catalyze opens new doors.

Cre8pc Blog Makes “Top 100 User Centered Blogs”

While I was in NYC, I was emailed by Rich McIver that my blog had made the Top 100 User-Centered Blog. Their list hit a nerve. I saw it referenced every day in my surfing travels. Thank you for the honor and most importantly, introducing me to still more blogs from the usability industry.

We Understand You People

Bravo to Colleen Jones for her excellent UX Matters article this week, Marketing Isn’t a Dirty Word. She had me at hello, with this:

Think you’re not into marketing? Think again. As UX professionals, we share much in common with our close cousins, the marketers.

and later…

More and more, if we’re creating content for the Web or any interactive channel, we’re dealing with marketing issues.

She writes about how “marketing concepts complement user experience by emphasizing consistency, customization, and credibility.” With so much writing coming from me about usability and search engine marketing, it was a real thrill to see someone step up from the user centered industry to talk about the topic. She’s new to me, but I’m an instant fan and look forward to more articles from her.

The End of SEO is Not Near

SEO’s had lots of opinions about Jakob Nielsen’s latest future projections for their industry noted in Bright SEO career prospects could dim . SeobytheSea owner, Bill Slawski, conveyed his usual calm during a thread of comments in Sphinn, with thoughts like:

Funny thing in that interview is that he suggests a shift in search paradigms at the search engines from information retrieval approaches to a popularity based one (which is what PageRank was about). That happened with the introduction of PageRank almost ten years ago. He’s a little late to the party. From a lot of what I’m seeing, there’s a strong shift back towards an information extraction and retrieval approach, and towards a strong use of data mining, machine learning, and the use of statistical models based upon user searching and browsing activity. PageRank, which we’ve probably talked about too much lately, is increasingly becoming less valuable these days.

And while he insisted in that interview that personalized search will never work, the search engines are trying their hardest to prove him wrong.”

Brand New and Still Valuable to You

Sometimes someone will ask me how they can come up with user personas when their business is brand new and just starting out. They haven’t gathered enough information or conducted user testing to truly get an idea about who uses their web site or who responds to it. Bryan Eisenberg uses personalities, which I rely on too, when I create personas using the “storytelling” technique. It’s not difficult to design for certain behaviors.

Bryan uses “Methodical”, “Spontaneous”, “Competitive” and “Humanistic” behavior patterns to help site owners understand what these folks will do on their web site.

A great example of this is his latest article, How Start-Ups Can Build Effective “About Us” Pages.

His article reminded me of when I first started out. I had sent out a poorly written press release to several local newspapers. One newspaper reporter was unusual. He emailed me back and explained where I went wrong in writing the press release, but regardless, I had managed to make him curious about my work as an SEO. (This was in 1996, when little was known about search engines.) He scheduled an interview and came to the tiny apartment I had back then. He literally had to sit on my bed to interview me because I had no chairs in the bedroom, which is where my “office” was.

He wrote a human interest story about the single mom who worked to get web sites into search engines and had a web site where she taught people how to do it too. His story captured my passion, as well as my quaint working conditions. The interview made the local newspaper, where it was seen by employment head hunters and someone looking to fill a position at Unisys, a rather large company. Shortly afterwards, I was working as a sub-contractor to Unisys in web design.

Bryan is absolutely right to use “Humanistic” as an example of people to target. I didn’t do it intentionally but it became a kind of personal theme for me. The more “human” I am, the more accessible I appear to be to prospective clients and later, when I launched this blog, I knew enough to keep “The Kim” intact.

Search Marketers Who “Get it”, Hire Usability Consultants

I supply web site usability reviews, audits, and functional testing of Internet-based applications to companies largely coming from the Search Engine Marketing industry. These companies offer packages that include SEO, social media marketing, web design services and with the addition of my part, usability reviews to make sure their clients’ sites are ready to handle the impact of their marketing investment.

This week I welcomed my new friend, Brendan Picha and his New York based company, Squareoak, to my partnership family. He’s part of the next generation of high energy Internet companies that have an intuitive understanding for what Internet-based businesses need to survive.

Daniweb Rocks!

Finally, here’s a shout out to Dani Horowitz and Daniweb.com, “a massive community of 224,077 software developers, web developers, Internet marketers, and tech gurus who are all enthusiastic about making contacts, networking, and learning from each other.”

I think I met Dani in NYC last week, in a most incredibly complicated Lucille Ball kind of way.

And thank goodness for silly ways of finding new web sites.

I’m now a member of Daniweb and am completely blown away by it.

I may be a minority squeak in the thunderous outcry from the search engine marketing industry towards Google and their sudden, unexplained mass drop in “PR score” applied to web sites. I never bought into the hype over PR scores. Regardless of all the reasons to jump on the scoring bandwagon as a way to determine web site value, I refused on the grounds that I wanted genuine worth, not forced.

There’s many easy ways to take advantage of Google’s methods for deciding which web sites are the most valuable. When they created algorithms based on link popularity, they devised the means to manipulate and play upon our “human-ness”, such as self esteem and personal attachment.

Nobody likes metric values placed on something that may be an extension of who they are.

Business owners will do whatever it takes to get their web properties on top of search engine results. Search engines know there’s nothing worse than that feeling of being “ugly”, “unworthy”, “unimportant”, and “not worth linking to”. Several rank solutions are offered such as paying for inclusion. This is advertising and it’s not free. An inexpensive alternative, especially for startup sites, is networking via links. When done with integrity and logic by skilled experts such as Debra Mastler and Eric Ward, reciprocal linking produces positive results.

When the linking process became automated and later evolved into paying for links based on a site’s “PR score”, Google apparently woke up. Why did it take them so long? Why is Google suddenly waging war on web site owners who “wheeled and dealed” to promote their web sites? It’s not as though paying for search engine exposure is something new. Search engines have been taking money from corporate sites for high SERP placement, behind the scenes, since search engines were first invented.

Small and medium web sites have been forced to resort to all sorts of tactics, creating the search engine marketing industry as a result. It’s hard to believe any search engine would punish SEO’s, when it’s they who bring in tons of revenue by connecting their clients to Internet search.

Not every web site owner chooses the search marketing “fast track” to rank. Some remain organic because it suits them. I’m one of them, which is why I never did link exchanges or cared about PR scores. It takes longer to be noticed when you take your time and “do good”, one on one, day by day, heart to heart, soul to soul.

Much, much longer…and I’m not saying it’s the right choice for a business. If I was just starting out now, as opposed to 1996 when I came online, I’d be making different marketing choices.

Wanting to Hold On to the Genuine

I feel that my web sites and business services are an extension of myself. I can’t be something I’m not. I’m unable to use other web sites to make me look better by paying to be on them.

Search engines have a unique way of judging and analyzing web sites. I don’t happen to believe they do this well or accurately.

Take Cre8asiteforums, for example. It was slapped by Google too. For some reason, our PR score went down. We’ve never purchased links, paid for ad space or paid for inclusion. We host ads from two places - Google and Text Link Ads. We don”t earn much money from Google or TLA, but what revenue we have earned, we turned around and gave it away to educational facilities to help fund internships or those who needed financial aid to study with.

How can an algorithm understand intent?

How can any search engine gauge and measure truth, honesty, and those moments when people interact, site to site, link to link, with good intent? Can search engines monitor comments and place value on sites this way? I wouldn’t want this. Everyone knows it’s far easier to complain on the web. Site owners know web site feedback is largely negative, rather than “Hey, great work!”. Should algorithms put more weight on user generated content in determining site or page value? How would we control that?

I’ve come to think I have this idealist view on Internet technology and “bots” that decide the worth of web site properties. I stubbornly believe they can put me into this tiny box and give me any label they wish, but, search marketing or no search marketing, I’m not going to let them change who I am.

If I’m a “PR 0″, I’m not any less of a human being worth getting to know, link to or do business with.

Sure, I’m not an “A-List blogger”. I’m not one of those top usability companies. I’m not a famous conference speaker. I have a terrible habit of volunteering my time, rather than being paid for it. My sites rank well because of years of being out there, being who I am, and not pretending to be something else. I can be shy at first. Definitely klutzy. I’m terrible at remembering names. But when I do my work?

I’m worth every penny.

A tool bar will never know this about me.

Yesterday I wanted to use my car but couldn’t find my car key. The last I’d seen it, I was handing it to my daughter, two days ago. We have 3 cars, plus the boyfriend’s mini-van (with the broken muffler), and since he practically lives here, that makes 4 vehicles jammed into the driveway. But I wanted mine.

I did the usual. First, I “texted” her in school, so she wouldn’t get into trouble for having a cell phone on her. She had no idea where the key was. Then, I called my husband, who was using my car and his car over the weekend. His OTHER car, the tiny Miata he uses for his commute to work to save on gas, was rear-ended on Friday by a young woman who wasn’t watching the road. Nope. Husband has no idea where my car key is.

Fortunately, I had a spare key and of course, later on in the evening, my daughter found the original key sitting by her computer, which is buried in the world’s scariest Teenager’s Room.

It took all day to solve the missing car key mystery. I stuck with the search because I like my car and like to drive it.

Do you ever hope your web site visitors feel the same way about your web site? Have you driven it around the countryside before offering them the keys to it?

I’ve Come to Drive Your Web Site

I recently visited a web site that was redesigned. It looked professional and attractive. It was ready for visitors, but maybe not me. My goal was to find out where the products were and secondly, how to order them. However, the first big whammo! object on the page was a video of a person talking about a product.

This isn’t a bad thing. But I’m new. I’ve just sat in the homepage car seat. I want to look around, play with the radio, adjust the rear view mirror, figure out where they’ll let me put my coffee mug and by golly, is that a sale item over there?

I don’t want to watch a video yet and their’s takes up a huge chunk of homepage real estate, above the page fold. I’m sure it’s very nice and I’m sorry for scrolling past it. I came with a mission in mind. Did they build a site for me to carry it out?

Farther down the page, I finally discover the Way To Our Products click path. I click the link, which takes me to another page with a search function and after a few tries at getting the right search criteria down, I finally arrive at a product I’m interested in. It’s been 10 minutes, but YES! I’ve made it down their web site driveway.

It’s a good thing I want to drive their web site because after 10 minutes of figuring out where they put everything, I’m thinking I want to drive a sports car.

Navigation for web sites, especially large sites, is never easy to map out. It takes planning and consideration for visitors’ goals. It has to help visitors complete a task. On this particular web site, which was very attractive, they didn’t put a “How to Order” button or link on the product page.

I had no car key. I couldn’t start their web site engine. All I was able to do was play “pretend driver” and imagine I was doing something on their web site, because that’s about all they designed it to let me do.

The moral of this story?

The next time you design a web site, its okay to take it for a joy-ride. You’ve earned that right. But, make sure you throw the keys to other drivers and let them take it on the highway or down the street to Starbucks. These people are your user testing hero’s.

Trust me when I say that many of them crave bumpy roads and purposely love to drive web sites like maniacs, just to see what that baby can do.

Just remember to get your keys back when they’re finished.

On October 12, Eric Enge, of Stone Temple Consulting, interviewed me about web site usability. His interview series typically features search engine marketing people and topics, but his personal interest in user centered web design inspired him to branch out into related fields.

Listen here: Kim Krause Berg Podcast

I’m in good company. Eric has interviewed Danny Sullivan, Avinash Kaushik, John Marshall, Jim Sterne, Jakob Nielsen and many others.

Eric writes about the interview at Kim Krause Berg Podcast, Usability and SEO

The podcasts are under 30 minutes and include a written transcript for those who don’t wish to listen to the audio version. The transcript for mine is Kim Krause Berg Podcast Transcript.

While the interview is largely on web site usability, I was able to tie some of the discussion back to search. When discussing eye tracking and how our eyes go first to what we understand or make a connection with, I used search engine results pages as an example:

…if a (page) description is chunky and I can’t even get a full sense (of what the site is about) in the search results, I am more likely to skip that website and go further down till I get to a description that’s logical and speaks to me, even if that site is lower down on the page. Everybody says you’ve got to be at the top of the search results pages. But, if you are not making any sense while you are sitting there, there are people like me who are just going to keep on going and probably make a connection (farther down in the results).

For my very first podcast experience, this one went fairly well. These interviews are different from email interviews, where I can fuss over and edit the dialog. Eric Enge put me at ease. I think the audio makes more sense than the transcript because I tend to run ideas and thoughts together like a traffic jam.

This whole experience provided me with a better understanding on why actors dislike watching themselves on screen.

…………………………………………..

Cre8asiteforums discussion on the podcast is here.