Brian Feener

Sorry I’ve been slow on the upkeep around here. I’ve been torn between my 9-to-5 and Vinny The Bull (WHICH by the way has a new post today AND a crappy bull I drew in Photoshop).

So today, excuse me for my brevity,but today I had to learn about the difference between hyphens and underscores in Google.  I’ll never explain it better than Matt Cutts does in his blog, so I’ll let him explain…

Lots of computer programming languages have stuff like _MAXINT, which may be different than MAXINT. So if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even “word1 word2″.

Easy as pi, right?  Do yourself a favor and read the full post.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

It’s the difference between web design and web architecture.

Design= what you see

Architecture= Form+Function

For the comments, what did you learn today?  Anything at all.

Speed metal, hip-hop, cool jazz, and salsa all employ different rhythms to sound the way they do.

The thing that they have in common is that each typically has a drummer to keep the beat.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKQgDY0pZ68]

The fascinating thing is that each has a different style of drumming, each has a different set up for the drums, each keeps different time, but they all work.

What if your rhythm is off?

What about your business? Can you survive a missed high-hat or a errant snare? Would it be worth changing the rhythm to make things sound different than the rest of the pack? How about if you put salsa rhythms in your hip hop song? Do you want every song to sound the same? Do you want every song to stand on its own?

Rhythms are predictable. That’s why you can clap along to them. Customers like to clap along.

On the web, there’s usually a choice between free and custom. I can launch my own website within a Blogspot or Wordpress format, or I can spend a ton of time making my own custom webite.

The most important thing, in my eyes, is making sure that your objectives are met. if your objectives can be met with a free blog, why not just use that? Minimal resources, maximum return.

If you’re releasing a podcast, you can either go through Podcast Alley to get a free cast up on their site, or you can build a custom XML feed for the casts on your server.

Sometimes the path of free is better than the pay-for path. Sometimes it isn’t. The important thing is to recognize the difference.

Heck… even lolCats started out as a regular blog… now it’s an profitable company.

After you launch a product, what’s your mind-set?

Do you think “Whew!  Done.”

Or - “Whew! Time to start over.”

After launch, it’s time to get into the minutae of the product that you may not have had time for before.  What ways can you make the product easier?  How can you make that 6-step process 5 steps?  4 steps?

Is the font the right font for the product?

How do the images make you feel?

When you’re done, it’s really time to get started.

Are people really paying $20,000, $100,000, $150,000 for URLs?

The answer is yes, but WHY!?

The obvious answer is so that the URL comes up in search.  Rather, The Great Almighty Search (TGAS).

To many companies, TGAS is the end-all and be-all of internet commerce.  To many companies, having a great URL is the secret to generating traffic and loyal users and money and repeat visitors and this and that and everything else.

Wrong.

Your URL is a lot like the sign on the front of your business in the biggest strip mall in the world.  Without it, people aren’t going to be able to figure out which store is yours.  But, just because your sign says “Tax Help.com” people are not more likely to go to your store, especially if it’s next to “Turbo Tax.”

Want to build your business? Then build your business.

Google knew this.  Amazon knew this.  Facebook knew this.  They made up a word and now it’s a noun AND a verb.  (The correct spelling for the 1 followed by a hundred zeros? “Googol.”)

You know who doesn’t know this?  The guy paying $7,500 for “automobiledealer.com.”

Some $9.99 suggestions from GoDaddy.com…

• FeenerAuto.com
• SmellTheLeather.net
• LongLineOfCars.com
• Elibomotua.com (Automobile backwards! Srac.com is not available.)
• DrivewayPrize.com

The quote at the end of the article says that that small businesses need to work harder to get some great domain name.  Wrong - - small business just needs to work smarter.

Check out this site, touting its “Word-of-the-Day” - http://wordsmith.org/awad/.

That’s the front page and you are correct - - there is no word-of-the-day on the front page of a word-of-the-day page.

The lesson here is that you need to give your customers what they want, instead of giving your customers what you want them to want (in this case, a newsletter).

(BTW: The word-of-the-day is “carbon-neutral.”)