After blogging on how to save a step with Ping-o-Matic and use it for multiple blogs, Denise Wakeman and Arnoud alerted me Pingoat, a competing ping service.

So far, it’s been a great experience.

ss Blog ConsulFirst off, it’s much faster than Ping-o-Matic. It pings about 50
different services, categorized into General, Non-English &
Special.

The site is clean and fast-loading. It’s got a blog, a community forum, and even a Google sitemap generator, if you’re so inclined.

But perhaps best of all, it appears that Kailash Nadh, the site owner and a recent high school graduate from Kerala, India, is adamant about keeping spam blogs from using his service! He regularly blacklists blogs that appear to be automated, with no original content.

He even has a section of his Pingoat forum
dedicated to people who have been blacklisted feel they have been
wrongly accused. It makes for great reading, even when you should have
gone to bed hours ago. Here’s a typical rejection slip:

First i would like to welcome you to the pingoat.com community forums.

After reviewing your blog, and reading your dispute statement in detail, we have come to this conclusion:

Your blog will remain blacklisted. your blog is very blatantly fed via
a content generator, however if this is truly not the case, this would
be required to be proven on your end, it may not be fed via a content
generator, however it strongly appears as so, please re-evaluate the
blog and adjust whats needed

Our suggestion to getting your blog removed from our blacklist:

If it is spam and you have no intention upon creating your own
unique content, then i am sorry to tell you, that pingoat will not
allow you to ping the blog

And last but not least, stop spamming

That’s just great stuff.

Many of you bloggers may already be familiar with Ping-o-Matic. It’s an online tool that lets you ping several news aggregators at once. For me, it’s become part of my posting routine; once I’ve saved my latest post I just visit their site to let the world know.

But there’s some cool ways to get even more out of Ping-o-Matic, especially if you have more than one blog.

Instead of bookmarking the home page, bookmark the results page.

Ping-o-Matic, as cool as it is–or maybe because it’s so cool–often suffers from slow downs. I’ve waited sometimes 30 seconds or more for the page to load. (OK, so I’m part of the "Now" generation.) By bookmarking the home page you’re doubling the amount of time you need to wait for your pings to be sent out.

The other benefit of bookmarking the results page is that this allows you to save multiple ping blasts…one for every blog you contribute to. For example, the ping for my blog, flyte: what works online, is:

The ping for Business Blog Consulting is:

By bookmarking the results page, I can quickly ping all these resources for either flyte: what works online or Business Blog Consulting. Now, if I could just find a couple more hours in the day to blog the way I want to….

One last thing I would recommend: occasionally check to see if Ping-o-Matic has added new sites to the list they ping; I only discovered they added News Is Free and Topic Exchange while putting together this post!

If you’re looking for an entry-level/introductory article on search engines for blogs, check out the Personal Journal section of today’s Wall St. Journal (9/7/05). Alternatively–for the next seven days–you can follow this link to read New Search Engines Help Users Find Blogs online.

The article focuses its attention on blog search engines such as Technorati, IceRocket, Feedster, DayPop and Bloglines. It looks at how they differ from traditional search engines like Google and Yahoo, and how they differ from each other.

Since this article appears in the Personal section of the WSJ,
its focus is on how this affects you…personally. It’s not an in depth
look at the marketing strategies of these companies, their business
plans, or target audiences.

There are, however, some good
examples how current event searches–such as "William Rehnquist" and
"video music awards" pull better results at the blog search engines
than at Google.

One thing that does seem to be overlooked is the
impending entry into this arena of Google, Yahoo and MSN. Once these
three giants jump in, it’s hard to know if there will be room in the
pool for some of these upstarts. More likely, some or all of these
companies will be acquired as these new media giants look for new areas
for expansion.

Although there are plenty of tools for checking the popularity of your blog, for many of us Google provides much of our blog traffic.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger reports that Google’s currently updating their backlink and PageRank. What does this mean to you?

Backlinks, also known as incoming links, are the number of links from
other Web sites or blogs that point to your Web site (or blog.)
PageRank is Google’s rank from 0 – 10 of the value of incoming links
and is part of their algorithm for determining how your blog ranks.

To determine your backlinks type "link:www.yourdomain.com" into the
Google search box. (Do I really need to say "without the quotes?") As
you may know, the number and quality of incoming links effects how your
blog ranks at Google and other search engines.

(In case you’re interested, Business Blog Consulting has 3,260 incoming links and a PageRank of 7.)

Darren goes on to talk about one of my favorite page rank tools, Keyword Tracker.
With this tool you can find out how your blog ranks for specific terms,
such as "business blog" or "blog marketing". Darren says you have to
run the report each time you want it updated, but if you have access to
a cron you can have your server run the request for you.

A while back I wrote a Keyword Tracker tutorial that will walk you through the setup process.

The anti-blogging blogs (or the reality-check blogs–take your pick) continue. This one is from Jim Logan and his post The Temptation and Reality of Business Blogs.

Jim rightly points out that blogs are probably not the tool a small business and solopreneurs should use to immediately grow your revenue. He also gives a list of some marketing endeavors that might have a more immediate impact on your company.

However, I would argue that business blogging should fall into Stephen Covey’s second quadrant: important but not urgent.

I don’t think many people would argue that a business blog alone is
enough marketing for any company…even a business blog consultant.
However, it can be a great, long-term investment for companies and
businesses looking to have a conversation with their prospects and
clients.

Where do you rank business blogs in importance when it comes to your company’s marketing?

The August 15, 2005 issue of BusinessWeek has an article on podcasts going mainstream and the impact Apple’s iTunes is having on indie shows and media giants in Podcast: David vs. Goliath.

As podcasts become a more common tool in small businesses’ Web
marketing toolbox, (as business blogs already have,) how will they
compete against media giants who can just reuse or re-purpose existing
content?

The article suggests a few things such as joining more informal networks (away from iTunes) such as Techpodcasts, the Association of Music Podcasting or Podcastoutlaws.

Small businesses may need to focus on their niche rather than a broad audience to begin. If Seth Godin is right in All Marketers Are Liars, finding an untapped niche that shares your world view might lead to something bigger…like a top 100 ranking on iTunes.

In the most recent issue of Fast Company (August, 2005) Jory Des Jardins interviews Elizabeth Albrycht and Andy Lark in a small piece called Business Blogging for Beginners.

The conceit is that creating a business blog is like hosting a cocktail party. Based on the amount of navel gazing that goes on in the blogosphere, the metaphor is helpful.

The advice isn’t about what platform to use, or pinging, or marketing your blog, but rather good, basic advice on how to improve your blog, all couched in the cocktail party metaphor: "a good hosts connects guests…be authentic…dress business casual…."

I also liked Lark’s term "blinking": posts of snippets of commentary with links. Hadn’t heard that one before.

First off, can I just say how stoked I am to be included in this list of blogorati? This must be how Lupus felt taking the field in The Bad News Bears.

And yes, I just said "stoked" with no intended irony.

As a supplement to a blurb in its UpFront section, BusinessWeek interviews Technorati’s David Sifry online. The print version (check your local news racks) describes him as a "serial entrepreneur"; is that a good thing or a bad thing?

In reading the beginning of the interview, it’s hard to know if Sifry is trying to kid the readers or himself. However, he finishes strong talking about the purpose and possible future of Technorati.

As has been noted elsewhere, some people are already reporting the
death of Technorati due to the upcoming competition from Google, MSN
and Yahoo into the blog search arena. Of this competition, Sifry says,

Is
it really competition?….You go to Google and type in wine, and it
will tell you the best places to buy wine. But if you really want to
find out what the world’s leading wine experts are talking about,
Google isn’t really built to do that.

Ummm…being a
bourbon drinker I’m not overly concerned about what wine experts are
saying, but I’m guessing that after a couple of Google searches I could
uncover it.

Even if what Sifry [thanks, Peter!] says is true to a degree, I find it hard to believe that Google couldn’t figure this out in about a week if they put their collective mindpower to it. Plus, they have server resources that few companies on earth could compete with. (Those companies include MSN and Yahoo.)

Near the end of the interview, Sifry talks to the mission [statement] of Technorati:

Hey we’re a Web site, [but] we also have to be providing some real value to people, because that’s what being of service is really about. And that doesn’t mean controlling or owning, because when you’re of service, you’re supporting. If you’re providing people with something that they like and that they value, with that value comes money.

B.S.? Maybe, but I bought it.

Sifry finishes up with a couple of ideas that might keep him ahead of the more established "traditional" search engines, at least for a little while. He obviously "gets it"; let’s hope this serial entrepreneur cools his heels for a little while and figures out how to continually improve an already cool service.

[Hmmm…I must be nervous. I always blog a lot when I’m nervous.]