世論 What Japan Thinks

You may remember the Neko-punch Google-slap I got for running Text Link Ads that I reported on last year. Having seen my income die horribly in AdSense then slowly wither through Text Link Ads, I finally decided to ditch TLA, then use Google’s Webmaster Tools to beg for my PageRank back. I did this on Sunday, and checking today I noticed I’d got my two lost ranks back. I’ll watch to see if this has any significant effect on my AdSense, although talking to another who was in the same boat I don’t hold out much hope.

I would say thanks to Bloomberg, but I don’t think they deserve it. I posted on Sunday about Shane’s tale of the poison gas recipe, and I see they’ve now updated their story to remove the unnecessarily-detailed information of how to make the gas.

Oh, and the animated neko punch (cat punch) gif above is doing the rounds of Japanese mobiles. I’ve set it up as the backdrop for all the various mail exchange actions on my phone too, so please feel free to steal it off me!

Just as a note to my readers (and as a prompt to the search engines) I’d like to highlight that I’ve started a news round-up blog on the topic of trusted computing. It’s a subject I’m interested and involved in, so it’s useful for me as an archive of news and developments in the world of trusted computing.

I just noticed a visitor coming via The Guardian (a UK daily broadsheet), and it seems that on their Japan page, down the left-hand column is a list of useful Japan-related links, where I find myself in the company of not just political parties and the serious press, but also fellow bloggers at Observing Japan and Digital World Tokyo, and even the Whale Marketing Council Institute of Cetacean Research.

You may have noticed that my sidebar has changed – I’ve ditched BlogAds which was just not performing for me at all, and also killed a Google skyscraper that was suffering from Google’s squeeze on the little guys, and I’ve instead joined up with AdToll to provide advertising services. I currently have available two slots; one of size 125 x 125 above the fold (usually), and one at 468 x 60 at the bottom of each post, available at a quite reasonable cost – at the moment it’s standing at about 40 cents for a projected 15,000 impressions. Please consult my rate card below for the latest prices.

In addition, my fellow blog publishers may like to take advantage of AdToll’s services, with a key feature being a modest 30% cut compared to many other advertisement brokers who charge a 50% premium for their services. If so, please click here to sign up.

One of my blogging New Year Resolutions is to network more – indeed just network full stop – so one way is to give something to the community of Japanese bloggers that doesn’t quite exist yet, despite some action towards that goal.

Some of you might have heard of JapanSoc, a digg-like social bookmarking thingie for Japan-related news stories, but it seems to be suffering from a lack of readers. So, in order to spread awareness of its existence and to increase the number of stories posted and therefore voted on and clicked-through to, I’ve written a small FeedBurner FeedFlare that puts a “JapanSoc It!” button at the bottom of each post.

If you as a blog publisher want to use it, sign up to both FeedBurner and JapanSoc if you haven’t already done so, then from your feed’s FeedBurner menu select the Optimize tab along the top, then the FeedFlare option on the left. Look for the edit field with the “Add New Flare” button beside it, and type into the box and press the button. Now, everyone who reads your feed will have the opportunity to submit your stories to JapanSoc.

This is an unofficial add-in and I’ve only previously hinted to Nick that I was doing something for his site! If you want to know why you should use it, Nick posted today on boosting traffic with JapanSoc. Oh, and perhaps Nick might like to make this suggested change to the submit.php page to handle resubmissions, or even do something like this.

If you as an RSS feed consumer want to use it, sign up to JapanSoc and whenever you see the “JapanSoc It!” button on a good story (like this one?) in your RSS reader, just press the button and submit it.

If you don’t use an RSS reader, try Google Reader for size.

Note that another similar site, TokyoGraph Link, doesn’t seem to support automation, so I cannot provide a widget for that.

Apologies to anyone who tried to access the site yesterday – just before bedtime I updated a plugin without testing it, and it broke my blogging software, making the site bascially unavailable for the whole day.

Normal service has now (hopefully) been resumed.

With the end of the year approaching, let’s look back at another year of What Japan Thinks and highlight some of the more interesting facts and figures I have learnt about this year through the many surveys presented on this blog. So, without further ado, here are 26 statistics from 2007. Click through the link after the data to view the original post.

Advertising

Almost a third of those who have seen a search term on a television advertisement have actually performed a search for it.
Source

from Greg Palmer at flickr

Billy Blanks

Over 99% of women between 20 and 49 has at least heard Billy Blanks’ name.
Source

Cinema

Star Wars is men’s all-time favourite movie, Pirates of the Carribean women’s.
Source

Dialup

Just 1.4% of surveyed users access the internet from home via a bog-standard telephone analogue dialup line.
Source

Earthquakes

27.6% of Japanese keep a full bath-tub of water just in case of earthquakes.
Source
Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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.

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.