I wrote some thoughts last month about how we choose to communicate URLs to people — what’s essential to getting the message across, what’s not, and what may be changing with time.

Tonight, while waiting for Gary Indiana to finally give the Clinton campaign the coup de grâce (Updated: OK, not quite, but really close), I saw a spot for a certain flower company. It is almost Mother’s Day, after all. “Which flower company was it, qwerty?” I hear you ask.

It was this one. And there’s the URL, right in the logo (assuming you ignore the flower growing out of the dot). You can read it out: “one dash eight hundred dash flowers dot com.” But you watch the commercial and there’s the founder of the company and his daughter (shades of Frank and Jim Perdue?) referring to it as “one eight hundred flowers dot com.” No dashes. Why are there no dashes? In my line of work, I advise people not to get domains with dashes, and a big reason for that is because it’s harder to communicate. But in this case, the dashes are there in the branding. Are they assuming people will think of the logo and know that when they think of “one eight hundred flowers dot com” they should remember that there are dashes in there? No, that can’t be it.

This is from the site’s About Us page:

Jim McCann, founder and CEO of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, INC., opened his first retail store in 1976 and successfully built his own chain of 14 flower shops in the New York metropolitan area. In 1986, he acquired the 1-800-FLOWERS phone number and continued to grow his business under the 1-800-FLOWERS® name. His immediate focus was to create a reliable brand name built on trust, and over the next few years he achieved this through his understanding of his customer base and market. The next logical step was expansion, and McCann successfully expanded his business into other retail access channels-going online in 1992 and opening a web site in 1995. Today, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM® has a well-known web site (www.1800flowers.com), and maintains strategic online relationships with a number of online services, including America Online, Microsoft Network (MSN), and Yahoo!.

So whatever they were called from 1976 to 1986 doesn’t matter much. In ‘86 they branded the company based on that phone number, 1-800-flowers.

The way we communicate phone numbers has certainly changed over the years. I believe everyone in the US has been on a system that requires them to dial 1 at the beginning of a long-distance call since the 1970s. We no longer say “area code” before announcing an area code. And it’s probably been thirty or forty years since one would identify an exchange (the first three digits after the area code) with two letters and a number, which was itself a streamlined version of naming an exchange for a place, followed by a number. Wikipedia notes that the Ricardo’s phone number on I Love Lucy was MUrray Hill 5-9975, which would later be referred to as MU5-9975, and later 685-9975. I remember this commercial from my misspent youth (spent in the glow of the eye of hell):

There was another hotel with ads that included a phone number with a full on “Murray Hill” exchange, but I couldn’t find that one.

But I digress. The point is, we know how to say a phone number. Even with all the changes that have taken place over time, we’ve never had to actually say “dash”. The hyphens were in there just to make the printed version of the number easier to parse. So if we know that 1-800-flowers can be read “one eight hundred flowers,” the people marketing the web site feel that we can look at that logo with its hyphens and hear the domain name spoken as the phone number with a “dot com” tacked on the end, and not have our heads explode.

Beyond that point, here’s the real point, courtesy of my pal the WebBug:

If I request http://www.1800flowers.com, the server returns the following:

HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved
Location: http://ww21.1800flowers.com/

A “temporary” redirect, but I end up at a domain without any dashes.

If I request http://www.1-800-flowers.com, the server returns the following:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 05:31:28 GMT
Server: Apache
Cache-Control: no-cache=”set-cookie,set-cookie2″
Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=0000UzUSX5tGcqe8AriacpxKyf7:120mbebeh;Path=/
Set-Cookie: ShopperManager/enterprise=d7b1c7dc-1bf6-11dd-b18b-cbe10af70195;Expires=Mon, 25-May-2076 08:45:35 GMT;Path=/
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
X-Powered-By: 1800Flowers web server
X-AspNet-Version: 1.21.366
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

No redirect. So both versions get me to the site, but excluding the dashes from my request does require the server to take an extra step. Should I take that to mean that the version with the dashes (the one that the logo looks like the domain name would be) is the default and the one without them (the one that you hear when they say the name) was set up to catch errors and keep the competitors from getting control of mistyped traffic?

One last thing to note, now that Clinton’s “apparently” won Indiana, according to MSNBC: In the footer of the site’s home page they’ve got links to other sites they run. Among them are 1-800-Baskets and 1-800-Greetings, with links anchored by “Greeting Cards” and “Gift Baskets” respectively. And the targets of those links? 1-800-Baskets is at http://www.1800baskets.com/ and 1-800-Greetings is http://www.1800greetings.com/. And just for fun, what happens when you add the dashes so the URLs match the company names on those two?

http://www.1-800-baskets.com/ returns a 301 redirect to http://www.1800baskets.com/ and http://www.1-800-greetings.com/ returns a proper 200, but the news isn’t quite as good as it appears. If I request http://www.1800greetings.com/ I get a 301 to http://1800greetings.cardways.com/cp001/clientinterface/creategiftcard.asp?cltid=121&returnid=0 (an affiliate deal, apparently), which looks like this:

And yes, a request for http://www.1-800-greetings.com/ returns a 200, but it looks like this:

The wrong site.

I received a piece of mail a few days ago — old fashioned, analog mail, that is. It was a bright yellow postcard from a local company that provides a service to homeowners. I don’t want to give their name away, but it’s three words: an adjective expressing a quality of service, followed by a noun (the thing they work on), and a noun based on the action they perform. Let’s say it was Best Floor Refinishers, just to make things easier.

So… Best Floor Refinishers sent me (“RESIDENT”) a postcard offering a $30 “off-season” discount rate. (Yes, I know floor refinishers don’t have an off season. The name is just an example. Pay attention.) The postcard also displayed the logo of some apparently authoritative national agency, implying that they have every right to use that “Best” (or something like that) in their company name. There was a toll-free telephone number, along with three other numbers for specific towns in the area: Cambridge, Needham, and Medford (say it with me: “Meffa”).

The postcard also contained a message addressed to “Dear Past Customer or Current Resident,” about the importance of refinishing my floors (or whatever) for safety’s sake. “BE SAFE, CALL TODAY!!” Moreover, I needn’t worry, because my “satisfaction is GUARANTEED !!!!!!”

Fascinating as all that may be, the thing that really caught my attention was right under the company’s name and logo: It was the word “Google” in a font very similar to Google’s own logo, but in all black letters, followed by a colon and the first two words of their company name, mashed together into one word and intercapped. Sort of like this:

Google:
BestFloor

OK, fine. I ran the search, and here’s what I got:

Well, no Google. I meant “BestFloor,” because that’s what the postcard said to search for.

At any rate, the top result for both [Best Floor] and [BestFloor] was the same site: bestfloor.com, which happens to be the site of Best Floor Refinishers. Pretty impressive, eh?

No! It’s not impressive at all. What are they trying to tell me — are they bragging that they rank #1 for the first two words of their company name? That they rule the SERP for their domain name? Wowzers.

I think they just wanted to let me know where to find their site, but rather than just telling me the URL, they tell me to search for the domain.

I’ve known plenty of people who navigated around the web this way. If they wanted to go to Qwerty’s Qoncepts and they knew the URL, they’d go to Google or Yahoo and search for qwertysqoncepts.com. This is what we in the search marketing business refer to with the technical term “stupid.”

It’s doubly stupid for a company to promote itself by telling people to search for its domain name, especially without the TLD. What would happen if their competitors over at bestfloor.net got to work on improving their site and took the top spot for [bestfloor]? Our postcard pals would be sending their potential customers straight to the other guys.

A word to the wise: if you want your print material to let people know where they can find your website, give them the damned URL. A one-step hunt for it is one step too many. At best it’s stupid. At worst, it’s an advert for the competition.

I was a finalist for a SEMMY. See? Down there.

→  ←

You could say I was a “SEMMY finalist,” but that would be pretty confusing, and not particularly amusing.

It wasn’t for a post here at qwerty’s qoncepts. It was for a little something I wrote for isos, called “This Just In.”

Did I win? Did you look at the title of this post? No, I didn’t win. In fact, if you look at the results for my category, you’ll see that I tied for last place among the finalists.

I’m over it, though. It was an honor just to be nominated…dammit.

Besides, with the WGA strike going on, the awards weren’t televised, so it’s not as if I had to rent a tux to find out I’d lost.

An old college chum of mine is a fairly well-known leftie political (and sex, religion and knitting) blogger. She also writes for Crooks and Liars, so yeah — she’s pretty big in that pond. About a week ago, she published a post announcing that she was joining a googlebomb associating the phrase “Liberal Fascism” (the title of Jonah Goldberg’s latest screed) with the word “fuckwad.”

Smarty-pants SEO that I am, I left the following comment on her post:

Sadly, googlebombs don’t work anymore. If they did, I’d be telling everyone to do this: lying sack of shit.

Anybody who follows these matters knows that Google modified their algorithm a year ago to diminish the chances of a googlebomb succeeding. Right?

Well, all I can say is that I’m glad I don’t have a hat, or I’d be eating it. In spite of the fact that, as liberals, their concerted effort wasn’t all that concerted — they didn’t all link to the same URL — it looks like they’ve pulled it off. Check out result #8 in the SERP below.

Go ahead. Take a look at the page and its source code. No sign of either “liberal” or “fascism” in there, much less the exact phrase. Have a look at the page’s backlinks — left-wing political blog after left-wing political blog.

Go figure.

Update, January 13

As of this morning, the Urban Dictionary page is at #1 for the search. However, someone has edited the page to include two instances of the keyword phrase, so sadly, it doesn’t really count as a bomb anymore.

I noticed today that someone came to my site recently via a Google search for [how to seo my site]. I’ve never checked that one before (and I sincerely doubt it’s ever brought me any business), so I ran the search myself, and found that my site is in fact number one, showing up before a couple of pages from Webmaster Guidelines. Pretty cool, apart from the fact that it’s a search just about nobody ever runs, and I’m not likely to ever earn a penny from any traffic it brings me.

Then I noticed something else about the SERP. Have a look:

Did you mean: how to use my site

Who do they think they’re fooling? Suddenly Google’s forgotten that “SEO” is a word? Sure, the acronym isn’t usually used as a verb, but I’ll bet more people are curious about how to seo a site than how to use one. After all, sites can be used in lots of different ways. The question is terribly unclear. You’d think that a search on [how to use my site] would bring up Did you mean: how to seo my site. It doesn’t.

I for one find this a bit insulting. I know Google doesn’t have the utmost respect for people in my line of work, but to pretend we don’t exist? That’s cold, Google.

Let’s look at Google’s competition. Maybe one or two of them will be more respectful.

• Ask has no problem with the query. In fact, they put a couple of videos about SEO in the right column, and a link to “Seo Tips” in the left.
• MSN doesn’t seem to be having any difficulty figuring out what the user is looking for.
• Yahoo has the gall to ask, “Did you mean: how to see my site.” Duh. People really ask that? You’re looking at a browser right now, genius.

Worst of all, my site doesn’t show up on any of the SERPs apart from nasty, disrespectful Google. So am I better off with an engine that ignores me, or one that recommends me while pretending I’m a typographical error?

Narrator: In A.D. 2007, war was beginning.
SEM: What happen?
Webmaster: Somebody set up us the PR drop.
Designer: We get signal.
SEM: What!
Designer: Main screen turn on.
SEM: It’s you!!
CUTTS: How are you geeks!!
CUTTS: All your paid link are belong to us.
CUTTS: You are on the way to a penalty.
SEM: What you say!!
CUTTS: You have no chance to profit make your nofollows.
CUTTS: Ha Ha Ha Ha ….
Designer: Captain!!
SEM: Take off every ‘AD’!!
SEM: You know what you doing.
SEM: Move ‘AD’.
SEM: For great link juice.

No, I’m not talking about relationships between the company and any political figures. I just want to point out something I noticed regarding Google suggesting other searches when I look for information about a politician.

Let’s start with the names of the leaders of the two major parties in the US Senate:

• Harry Reid – Democratic Leader
• Dick Durbin – Democratic Whip
• Mitch McConnell – Republican Leader
• Trent Lott – Republican Whip

I was planning on writing a post that would serve to mock Mitch McConnell’s minuscule mouth, so I ran a search on his name and then clicked “Images”. What did I see? This:

Why is Google suggesting I try searches for Durbin and Lott? And why are they leaving out Reid, who is (at least officially) the most powerful of the four? I doubt it has anything to do with the relative size of their mouths — only McConnell’s is comically tiny.

If I run an image search for Harry Reid, Dick Durbin or Trent Lott, I don’t get a recommendation to look at other people. It’s as if Google is telling me to avoid looking at pictures of McConnell, which is totally unnecessary. I know he isn’t pretty, but I can handle it.

I was doing some research for a blog post earlier today. I needed to get some information on a member of Congress who’d officially come out as an atheist, so I ran a Google search for [atheist in congress]. Look what I got in the onebox:

It seems my mother has been speaking with Larry and Sergey. They’re all in cahoots, trying to get me a date even when I’m not looking for one. A word of advice: I’m not going to date someone all the way down in DC, even if she is an atheist. I’m sure there are plenty of perfectly nice atheists right here in Boston, so stick that in your algorithm and smoke it, Google.

CIALIS is indicated for the treatment of erectile dysfunction.

CIALIS IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. Tell your doctor about your medical conditions and all medications, and ask if you’re healthy enough for sexual activity. Don’t take CIALIS if you take nitrates, often prescribed for chest pain, as this may cause a sudden, unsafe drop in blood pressure. Don’t drink alcohol in excess (to a level of intoxication) with CIALIS, as this may increase your chances of getting dizzy or lowering your blood pressure. CIALIS does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

The most common side effects with CIALIS were headache and upset stomach. Backache and muscle ache were also reported, sometimes with delayed onset. Most men weren’t bothered by the side effects enough to stop taking CIALIS. As with any ED tablet, in the rare event of priapism (an erection lasting more than 4 hours), seek immediate medical help to avoid long-term injury. In rare instances, men taking prescription ED tablets (including CIALIS) reported a sudden decrease or loss of vision. It’s not possible to determine if these events are related directly to the ED tablets or to other factors. If you have a sudden decrease or loss of vision, stop taking any ED tablet and call your doctor right away.

Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, CIALIS was shown to improve, up to 36 hours after dosing, the ability of men with ED to have a single successful intercourse attempt. CIALIS has not been studied for multiple sexual attempts per dose.

When taking CIALIS, under no circumstances should you attempt to have sex before taking a walk through the wilderness and locating the tandem outdoor bathtubs.

I saw a couple of new adverts for Ask.com on the eye of hell Tuesday night. I’m pretty sure this makes five different campaigns in the past 18 months or so. We had…

• One that took place in a café full of animalistic searchers, and that one Ask user who evolves, plus one with some scientist types being described as “animals in pants” by an ape. These, I’m sure, were massive hits with the intelligent design crowd.
• The series with Apostolos Gerasoulis himself (founder of Teoma) pointing out what a “pimped out” search engine Ask is.
• Two or three spots involving people talking about “the algorithm” and yucking it up over their friends who just didn’t get it.
• Those god-awful singing and dancing “I got what I was looking for” ads, featuring searches for [Kato Kaelin] and [chicks with swords].

And now we get a couple of new ones. In these, the only sounds are a few musical notes at the end and the sound of a user clicking (must be using IE, so how smart a searcher can it be?) as s/he shows us the beauty, the splendor, the majesty, and the usability of Ask’s GUI. One of them shows how a search for San Francisco offers lots of options, such as different media — images, maps, images from news stories, or the Wikipedia entry on the city, direct information — the time and weather in SF, or the opportunity to narrow or expand the search.

In the other, we get to learn about how we can make our searches more pleasant by choosing wallpaper (they refer to it as a “skin”) from a dropdown list:

• AskX - the Web 2.0-ish interface they introduced a few months ago
• Azul - a bench, ostensibly in London in front of a blue backdrop
• Cartas - a mail slot on a red door
• Flower
• Golden - wheat
• Pink stripes
• Polka dots
• Rotunda - Sorry, I don’t know what building’s rotunda it is
• Timber Brume - A forest in a bit of fog, which is apparently what a brume is
• Western Sky - at sunset, of course, and
• Default - that boring interface we all hate so very much.

The thing is, the “skin” only appears to skin ask.com. Run a search, and it’s gone until you go back to the home page. So… big deal.

Are these ads going to help Ask? Maybe the one involving how useful the engine is might bring them up from a distant fourth to a close fourth, but the skin ad really doesn’t strike me as a reason for anyone to switch.

I guess I’d like it if Google had a bit more competition. All three of the other supposedly big four are on the eye of hell, trying to get the public to give them a try. Big old Goggly Gogol has yet to stoop to advertising on the tube, and I’m still waiting for the day when Paris Hilton looks out at me from the dreaded eye and says, “iGoogle. Do you Google? Wanna Google with me?”