Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

Well, the day has finally arrived.
Google transit has finally answered my plea.

The result? Pretty nice actually. You can accomplish everything on my checklist:

1. Finally get a map.
2. Find local businesses near your destinations
3. Share the maps with others, either via link or on your website, as below.
4. Although transit chicago’s interface, since being redesigned, is actually pretty nice, Google’s is a little more intuitive for anyone using the mapping interface.

Here’s a map from my office to O’Hare:

View Larger Map

Today, Yahoo announced an open API for their search results which allows third parties to edit results as they appear in Yahoo search listings. At first glance this may sound appealing in that meta data and additional links can now be provided to give the user additional information regarding restaurant listings, election information, product prices, etc. However, by allowing third parties to customize your search results, you run the risk of abuse as well as an unusable interface.

I’m not sure what safeguards are going to be put in place to avoid people from dumping unrelated information or banneriffic images into Yahoo’s results. And for more vague phrases such as “Chinese restaurant” or “lcd tv”, what would the search results look like if one website customizes their results to be product prices, while another has product ratings, while another has product information. The reason that people use these engines is that you get a top-down perspective of search results with very little clutter and then if they are enticing, you can drill down into them to get more information.

In this scenario, more information is brought up into the search results which may make certain results more appealing, but most likely the interface will become overloaded.

From an advertiser and media buyer perspective, this is not a welcome announcement. Whereas before, users would click into a site to learn more, now that information is being separated from the content site and given directly to the search engines. Who’s the big winner here? At least right now, the search engines. It means that less users are going to end up at your site and more users will simply get their information from search results. I know I previously wrote about the Ask.com interface and how it was better than Google’s, but I think all of these “integrations” are approaching a slippery slope where information is completely disassociated with the original content owners and the advertising platforms become the search providers.

I’m interested to see how it nets out, but as a content provider these days jockeying for search results, what choice to do you have?

Although not the most recent of news, but I just found out about Google Website Optimizer, which is what I’m sure lots of marketers have been looking for to optimize landing pages for their ad campaigns. This is a great little tool that allows you to set up an “original” campaign landing page and set variables to test against, such as: copy block 1, copy block 2, headline 1, headline 2, image 1, and image 2. These are then thrown together randomly into combinations 1, 2, 3, and so on and provide metrics for you to judge against. Maybe you had your campaign ideally optimized using your original combination or maybe something will come out of left field that you completely overlooked. The Website Optimizer will provide metrics for each campaign and how it compare to your “original” test campaign.

One cautionary word when using the website optimizer, make sure to set limits on each campaign so you have standard data across each and also to make the budget small enough so as to not waste ad dollars, but large enough to ensure a valid test sample. My recommendation is to set aside 5-10% of the total budget for testing purposes.

Enjoy!

A list apart (which I highly recommend you read, both for the good and bad articles) just published another article about branding in relation to whitespace. In case you haven’t noticed, whitespace has come into its own with many new web applications and sites: Flickr, 43folders, Backpackit, etc. And even major news portals have started to implement the “less is more” approach to design.

To boil the article down quickly, the net effects of a whitespace overhaul are:

1. Improved legibility and readability.
2. Creates a sense of lightness or airiness within the page itself, making your brand seem less intrusive and more passive (this may or may not work for all audiences and brands).
3. Creates a sense of playfulness if used creatively.

Some of the things to watch out for though are:

1. Creating additional length to each page, which increases scrolling, but as we have seen in the past, vertical scrolling is not really a problem anymore.
2. If overused, your content can look disjointed.

So tread softly with whitespace and always remember to try it out in different browsers and platforms. PLEASE!

I’m not sure how many people have seen these, but I stumbled across it today on CNet.com and it instantly took me back to my Edward Tufte days. Both of the methods below are EXCELLENT uses of information visualization methodologies. They instantly allow the user to understand what stories are related and how they are changing in real time. It additionally draws the users attention from their current story to related or additional news on the site, which then drives more page views per user, and more ad dollars for their advertisers. Bravo CNet, Bravo!