世論 What Japan Thinks

WJT will be getting reformed round about the New Year, so there’s a few changes in the pipeline I’d like to inform my readers of, and I even have a mini poll on one proposed change.

A New Logo

I’ve recently commissioned a new logo for the site, and with the help of a few regular readers we’re choosing a new masthead for the site, which hopefully will be ready and unveiled next week. This logo will become the What Japan Thinks brand identity; I’m excited to see what will happen with the new corporate identity, and I hope you all like it. I’ll be going as far as opening a T-shirt (and other knick-knacks) online store should you feel the need for some brand shopping.

New Advertising Opportunities

Despite a recent post where I pooh-poohed WJT’s Google-slap, I have reconsidered my position and come to a completely different conclusion.

The Google-slap is perhaps 80% the spreading of fear, uncertainty and doubt, but there is also perhaps 20% that flags the penalised site as having lowered trust, so it is a penalty not just on the site itself and the pointed-to sold links, but also on the genuine editorial links. The text link market model is no longer sustainable, and there surely will be an impending price crash. Therefore, by continuing to sell links, I am not supporting the sites I like as much as I can, so I have resolved to phase out my paid-for links.

To compensate for this, and to provide new and hopefully better value-for-money options for my advertisers and perhaps even to forge new alliances, I am going to add two new graphical advertising slots to the right-hand side of the header (nofollowed to keep Google happy), using these 125 x 125 buttons that seem to be all the rage these days. I plan to write to some of my existing advertisers, but if any other readers are interested in a commercial relationship, please do not hesitate to contact me. I’m still working out the details, including sweeteners in addition to just the advertisement, but I’m looking at a price range of $1.5 to $2 CPM depending on length of contract, from one month to six months. Current traffic is around 65,000 page views per month, with 32,000 unique visitors, so a price range from $75 to $100 per month would be a ballpark figure.

Note that I am open to offers for other kinds of banners too.

A New Poll

Despite being the internet’s leading source of free market research and other polling and survey information from Japan, I’ve never actually conducted a poll amongst my users. Let me rectify this now.

With the new logo mentioned comes a decision. Up to now my logo has effectively been 世論, seron, the kanji for public opinion, but what do people think of it? Please indicate your opinion below, and add a comment if needed.

It’s coming to the end of the year, so let’s have a vote to find out who my readers think are worthy of winning the first annual Japan Blog of the Year competition. First, I need to gather nominations. From today until Monday 17th December 2007, please either leave a comment here or email me at the usual address with up to three nominations in the following categories:

Best serious blog on Japan
Best humourous (or look at the lighter side) blog on Japan
Best culture blog on Japan
Best technology blog on Japan
Best personal blog on Japan

I’ll add all up the nominations then put it to the vote. I discover a new blog about every other week, so please share your favourites in the comments for us all to enjoy. The plan will be to select the top four or five from each category and put them to a public vote. To encourage you all to nominate yourself, I’ll try to publish reviews of as many of the nominees as possible, even if they don’t make it to the final round. Also feel free to nominate one blog in more than one category, and any language is acceptable.

Note: I reserve the right to reject nominations from sites with under 10 posts this year, adult sites (Danny Choo and Japan Sugoi are about my limit), mainly subscription sites, or other sites with objectionable content.

Following on from a post a couple of weeks ago about this site getting Google-slapped and me highlighting that Japan Today had prominent paid links on its front page, I now see that Japan Today too has been hit by a three-point penalty, down to PageRank 4 from PageRank 7. As it has recently changed hands, I wonder how much the PageRank 7 figured in the evaluation of the sales price?

Additionally, I’ve had a question from one of my friends about what to do, as they have noticed a drop in traffic. First off, I have not noticed a drop myself; indeed Google Images and Yahoo! traffic are both up whilst standard Google search is holding steady and the keywords I want to rank for have been if anything improving, but as with all search engine issues the changes are usually subtle and take a few weeks to manifest themselves. However, my AdSense earnings have halved in the last month, but I don’t know how much of that is due to being Google-slapped and how much is due to other factors. Another friend in this niche who hasn’t been selling links has also mentioned their AdSense revenue has died.

If you have been slapped, one measure you can take is to remove all sold links and ask Google for a re-evaluation of your PageRank penalty. However, I am yet to see any definite evidence that the PageRank penalty is anything more than a cosmetic change; most Search Engine Optimisers judge displayed PageRank to be nothing more than a rough estimate of relevance and the slap is not a change to the core relevancy calculations but merely a tweak upon an output estimate.

My personal opinion (based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever!) is that Google is wanting to stop link dealers and paid post dealers using PageRank as part of their equation when evaluating what price to sell links or posts at. Here’s a good post from Twenty Steps on why he thinks Google did what they did.

However, if you want to get your PageRank back (but there’s no promises that this will work) you should drop all paid links, then through the Webmaster Tools at Google request reinclusion or re-evaluation of your site, and hope…

Looking at the Google Webmaster Guidelines, they say:

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

I stand by my links as they are relevant to the theme of the site; if someone wanted to advertise printer ink or used cars I’d reject these links for a lack of relevancy.

The Japan Times, as part of their Blogroll feature, decided to interview me! To answer one email question, the shop where the photo was taken is Konig’s Krone, a very nice and reasonably-priced tea and cake shop based in Kobe but with branches in many big cities. The particular one I was in is located in the underground passage from Hanshin Sannomiya to Mint Kobe. When they asked for a photo, it was rather surprising to realise quite how many of them featured me and some cake, and that was the one with the least amount of cake and the most amount of me.

So, welcome to all my new readers, and I hope you stick around and please feel free to subscribe to my news feed.

Thanks to an interesting post on establishing your brand on Facebook by Robert Sanzalone at blognation Japan, I stuck a stake in the ground for this blog. Please visit the 世論 What Japan Thinks Facebook page and feel free to befriend me or whatever, and if you like the idea, say thanks to Robert by visiting the blognation Japan Facebook page too. If you’re not a member, you’ll not see much more than a URL, however!

I also learnt from him about the impending Web 2.0 conference in Tokyo from tomorrow, and a booze-up/launch party in a Tokyo pub on Friday. Sadly, the WJT travel budget doesn’t extend as far as a shinkansen to Kanto.

Just a quick heads-up about a new static page I’ve added; purchase your very own genuine Swarovski Crystal decorated USB Flash memory necklace. As usual, I do get a cut on all sales.

We now return you to your scheduled blogging.

Following recent news that Google has been not just updating PageRank in the normal fashion, but also applying penalties to certain web sites, specifically for selling links for PageRank, and more specifically, for using Text Link Ads to do the selling. I noticed that Japan Probe, previously PageRank 5, is now PageRank 3.

Of course, in the big picture, PageRank in itself doesn’t really mean much, but for us second, third or fourth tier sites, PageRank provides a quick and dirty way of evaluating our worth.

Out of interest, let’s look at the top sites tagged with “japanese” and with inventory for sale at TLA’s web site, sorted by value. The TLA Current PageRank has not been updated recently. I’ve not published the names of sites I recognise so as not to point fingers at them. This table is sorted by PageRank order.

If your PageRank has changed, please leave a message on this thread. See Dig PageRank for a tool for doing mass checks.

After this point, most of the web sites became too difficult to recognise.

Just yesterday I launched a new web site, brainscannr.com. To explain what it is, here’s what my average visitor looks like:

Oops, my readers look none too happy…

There’s a couple of Easter Eggs hidden there (that’s not one of them, honest!), with more being added as I think of them!

Just a quick round-up of a few things happening here recently:

Excuse the strange code in the post title, but I’ve recently signed up for FeedM8, a mobile feed provider thingie, so the wierd string is an authorisation code.

I’ve noticed a new blog Nihon Hacks which has interesting money-saving tips for Japanese residents from a foreigner perspective.

I’ve also joined up with joblet.jp for displaying jobs available in Japan; both part-time and full-time positions are available, and it’s not just in Tokyo. You’ll find them in the left-hand column below the AdSense. What I should do is hack it so that for Japan visitors the ads appear above all the other adverts. Once I get time to do that, I’ll document it in my What Japan Thinks newsletter.

I’ve also signed up with BlogRush; the widget is hidden away down at the bottom of the right-hand column as I’m still not sure whether it is a good idea or not.

September’s been my best month for traffic so far, so I’d just like to say hello to any readers who have found their way here from my recent digg front page.

Oh, and on the 8th to 13th of October I’ll be heading to the Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles for the Trusted Computing Group’s members meeting there. If on the off chance that you’re going to be going (I know I have a few readers from Nokia, for instance) drop me a line or buy me a drink in person!

Following on from last month’s post on the top twenty or more sites in English on Japan, I decided to add some code from Quantcast that allows collection of reader demographics.

Now, after running it for a bit I see that my statistics suggest that my readership tends towards the 45-54 year old age band, is predominantly Asian and male, is more likely to be a graduate from further education, yet earns a salary of under US$30,000.