We are all aware of the importance Google has been placing on local search over the last couple of years, we touched on it in a recent blog post.

Google also has some interesting statistics on local numbers pertaining to small business stats and Google's local stats (20% of searches have local intent).

As a local advertiser, starting an SEO campaign in your local market is typically built on the strength of your keyword research. Say you are an insurance agent, do more people use car or auto when searching for auto insurance? Do people use "city/town keyword", "city/town, state, keyword", "zip code keyword"?

Some of these questions can be answered using a tool like Google Trends. Here you can see the results for "Texas Doctor" versus "TX Doctor":

So here you can see that it's pretty close, and volume is pretty close in Google's keyword tool as well:

However, when you get into phrase match the volumes separate a bit:

Overcoming Keyword Tool Volume Concerns

The other thing you'll want to keep in mind is that sometimes these tools can be off on volume, sometimes a lot and sometimes not so much. How do you solve this? You can do a PPC campaign to test a few things like:

• actual search volume of your chosen keywords
• conversion rates on keywords
• additional keywords that trigger your ads via the Search Term Report in Adwords

The beauty of starting your campaign with PPC is that you can not only keep it running if it's profitable for you, rather than it just being a proving ground for keywords, but you are able to discover keywords and keyword groups that are profitable and have enough volume to where an investment into SEO is worthwhile.

Local search, by definition (since it is roughly a quarter of the search market), is on the lower end of the volume pole but in comparsion to a local business's resources and reach the volume is typically relative to that of keywords for a national company pursuing non-local keywords country wide.

Thinking About Campaign Structure

In addition to finding juicy keywords and keyword themes to build on, you can eliminate the poorly performing ones or the ones which have close to no volume from your PPC campaign and remove it from your SEO planning. This not only helps your PPC account grow and mature but also helps you avoid wasting time and resources on chasing irrelevant or unworthy keywords.

As we discussed, sometimes local keywords can use a variety of modifiers like the city or town name, the state name, and the zip code in conjunction with the keyword(s) so making sure you are targeting the right mix from an SEO perspective is really helpful in getting quicker and better results. There is no point in optimizing your on-page content and targeting your link building plans on your keyword(s) plus a zip code if your market is searching by city/town and state (and vice versa). In the interest of time and better results, it makes sense to nail down the correct keywords upfront.

Starting off with Research

Generally, my initial research process goes something like this (we are assuming you've got a live site already):

• look in analytics to find keywords that you are already receiving traffic for
• see if there are any trends in that data in terms of language (car vs auto insurance for example)
• begin broad keyword research to find terms related to the market (exclude local modifiers for now)
• use free mindmap software or free site planning apps to visualize the main content areas of the site with those keywords
• use google trends and insights, in addition to the google keyword tool and the free seobook keyword tool to compare data points on core terms (again, like with car/auto insurance or home versus homeowners insurance)
• make a list of competitors in my area and check the volume on their brand name

So now I should have a good idea of which keywords I want to look at locally and some notes on any glaring differences in volume between closely related terms.

Going Local

Now it's time to "localize" the data. I like the local keyword tool over at PPCblog.com because it does a really good job of working in all the different local modifiers that can be associated with your local PPC campaign.

That is a paid tool, as part of the PPC blog community and training membership (along with a lot of other quality PPC tools), and it's quite robust and easy to use.

If you are looking for a free tool along those lines, with less on the functionality front, you can use this free tool from 5minutesite.com.

Then I move into searching on some of the core terms in Google's keyword tool and the SEObook keyword tool (powered by Wordtracker). Many times you'll find nothing for some of your local searches, in terms of volume, but you should still keep them around for testing in PPC because keyword tools can be off on local searches based on their traditionally lower volume sets. Also, most keyword tools don't or can't allocate resources to capture every single search.

So now I should have a list of locally modified terms where the keyword portions were driven by non-local keyword research and local modifiers were added via a local keyword tool.

In addition, I should have notes and screenshots of data from Google Trends and Insights showing any language differences (of substance) both nationally and locally (locally when available, sometimes no data exists in the tools). I also should have notes as to any language or keyword trends I found in my analytics or tips I received by talking with employees who deal with customers as well as my own knowledge of the industry.

Working with AdWords

There are different ways of attacking your campaign in AdWords. Initially, I am just doing this for testing on an SEO campaign but if you decide to stick with the PPC campaign you can get into removing the local modifiers and bidding on those broader keywords while targeting searchers geographically.

Google has a few different ways of targeting users based on location:

Locations and Languages offer you the ability to target in 4 ways:

• Bundles - mostly specific countries (United States, Spain, Canada, etc) and regions (North America, Central America, East Asia, etc)
• Browse - essentially goes country - state - metro area - specific city or town
• Search - search for and add just about anything (country, state, town, zip code to find towns or cities)
• Custom - a nifty point, click, drag interfact where you can isolate a specific area where you want your ads shown

You also have some advanced options like the Targeting Method:

Google has a really helpful chart on this here, and below is a screenshot of the information:

I like to leave both on as it helps with gauging not only the potential of your keywords but also the overall level of activity for your services (via keywords) in your market. Plus, the search term report can help you breakdown keywords that trigger your ads and this kind of PPC can help you show for broad SEO terms that you might not have the resources to compete for.

Another advanced targeting option is the exclusion method:

Google has information on this method here and here's a chart showing the relationship:

I like to use this in some cases where there may be towns that overlap. For example, you could live in Maine and be targeting "Augusta" as a modifier but you'll probably want to exclude Georgia from your targeting as that is another area which can produce searches for that modifier. You can also get around that by adding a state modifier, Augusta Maine Insurance or some such, but you may find many folks use just the city or town name. That is when exclusion methods can be helpful.

Starting off on the Right Foot

Now I'll start to build the PPC campaign and pay attention to some of the core principles of trying to obtain a good quality score and good overall performance for a new account:

• tight ad groups with keywords that are relevant to the ad group and the query
• quality landing pages which speak specifically to the intent of the query (don't use a generic insurance template for all the different kinds of insurance you sell)
• starting off with a managable amount of keywords to help focus on quality of traffic rather than quantity, and to help promote good keywords and remove or isolate bad ones

As an example, you might be selling life insurance in a few different towns. I would consider using town-specific ad groups -> keywords -> landing pages as my structure.

You can use helpful landing pages for a specific town by talking about things like average family size in the town, average income, and so on to help residents get a more customized experience when shopping for life insurance.

You can also build product-specific ad groups and group your town/city modified keywords in there if that makes more sense for your specific campaign.

Waiting for Results

In about a month or less I should have a pretty good idea of:

• search volume for my proposed keywords
• new keywords that I didn't find initially
• which keywords convert and which don't
• will PPC fit into my ongoing marketing efforts?
• what type of SEO investment does my search volume call for?

We live in a world and business environment where we want things yesterday and sometimes it can be tough to play the patience game. In my opinion, lack of patience is a leading cause of SEO and PPC failure these days.

If you take the above approach with a new campaign or a new idea, you will thank yourself in the short, mid, and long run. There are few sources of advice better than hard data, whether it tells you what you do or don't want to hear.

Free Google AdWords Coupons

Google is advertising a free $75 coupon for new AdWords advertisers, and offers SEM firms up to $2,000 in free AdWords credits via their Engage program.

We have certainly seen a trend over the last one to two years where Google is focusing on more personalized search and an increasing focus on providing local results. As you know, a searcher does not even have to be burdened with entering a local modifier anymore.

Google will gladly figure out, for you, whether or not your search has local intent. :)

Google's Investment into Local

Late last year Google moved one of their prized executives over to local services, Marissa Mayer. Moving Mayer, fresh off Google Instant and a variety of other high profile areas of Google's search development, to head up local is a real strong reinforcement of how much attention Google is putting on local and local result quality (or perceived quality).

If you are a business owner who operates locally, say a real estate agent or insurance agent or really any other consumer-based service, then this presents a huge opportunity for you if you can harness the targeting and tracking ability available online.

Merging Offline Marketing with Online Marketing

A lot of small businesses or larger businesses that operate locally still rely quite a bit on offline advertising. It use to be that business owners had to rely on staff nailing down exactly how a lead came to them (newspaper ad? radio ad? special discount ad? and so on).

While it is still good practice to do that, relying solely on that to help gauge the ROI of your advertising campaign introduces a good amount of slippage and is not all that accurate (especially if you sell something online).

As local businesses start to see the light with SEO and PPC campaigns versus dropping 5 figures on phonebook advertising, a big selling point as a service provider or an in-house marketing staff member will be to sell the targeting of online campaigns as well as the tracking of those results.

If your a business owner, it's equally important that you understand what's available to you as an online marketer.

Types of Offline Advertising to Track

Locally, you are essentially looking at a few different types of advertising options to work into your new found zest for tracking results:

• Radio
• Television
• Print
• Billboards

Print is probably the most wide-ranging in terms of branches of advertising collateral because you can get into newspapers, magazines, flyers, brochures, banners, yellow pages, and so on.

While your approach may be different to each marketing type, the core tracking options are basically the same. You can track in your analytics program via:

• Separate Domains
• Custom URL's
• Custom Phone Numbers

The beauty of web analytics, specifically a free service like Google Analytics, is that it puts the power of tracking into the hands of a business owner at no cost outside of perhaps a custom set up and implementation by a competent webmaster. All of these tracking methods can be tracked in Google Analytics as well as other robust analytic packages (Clicky.Com as an example, is a reasonably priced product which can do this as well, save for maybe the phone tracking).

Structuring Your Campaigns

With the amount of offline advertising many businesses do, it is easy to get carried away with separate domains, custom URL's, custom phone numbers, and the like.

What I usually like to do is use a good old fashioned spreadsheet to track the specific advertisements that are running, the dates they are running, and the advertising medium they are using. I also include a column or three for the tracking method(s) used (custom URL, separate domain, special phone number).

In addition to this, Google Analytics offers annotations which you can use to note those advertising dates in your traffic graph area to help get an even better idea of the net traffic effect of a particular ad campaign.

How to Track It

Armed with your spreadsheet of ads to track and notes on how you are going to track them, you're ready to set up the technical side of things.

The tracking is designed to track the hits on your site via the methods mentioned, once they get there you'll want to get that traffic assigned to a campaign or a conversion funnel to determine how many of the people actually convert (if you are able to sell or convert the visitor online).

Custom URL's

A custom URL is going to be something like:

yoursite.com/save20 for an advert you might be offering 20% savings on
yoursite.com/summer for an advert you could offer a summer special on

You may or may not want to use redirection. You can use a redirect method if you are using something like a static site versus a CMS like Wordpress. With Wordpress, you could create those url's as specific pages and just no-index them and ensure they are not linked to internally so you keep them out of the search engine and the normal flow of navigation. This way you know any visit to that page is clearly related to that offline campaign.

A redirect would be helpful where the above is not possible and you need to use Google's URL builder to help track the campaign and not lose referral parameters on the 301.

So you could use the URL builder to get the following parameters if you were promoting a custom URL like yoursite.com/save20:

http://www.yoursite.com/savings.php?utm_source=save20&utm_medium=mail&utm_campaign=bigsave

Then you can head into your .htaccess file (Apache) and insert this code:

(should be contained on 1 line in your .htaccess file)

RewriteRule ^save20$ /savings.php?utm_source=save20&utm_medium=mail&utm_campaign=bigsave [L,R=301]

When you test, you should see those URL builder parameters on the landing page and then you know you are good to go :)

If you are worried about multiple duplicate pages getting indexed in the search results (with slightly different tracking codes) you can also leverage the rel=canonical tag on your landing page

<link rel="canonical" href="http://site.com/folder/page/"/>

Separate Domains

Some companies use separate domains to track different campaigns. The idea is the same as is the basic code implementation with exception that you apply any redirect to the domain rather than a sub-page or directory off the domain as we did in the prior example.

So you sell snapping turtles (snappingturtles.com) and maybe you sell turtle insurance so you buy turtleinsurance.com and you want to use that as a part of a large campaign to promote this new and innovative product. You could get this from the url builder:

http://www.snappingturtles.com/?utm_source=national&utm_medium=all&utm_campaign=turtleinsurance

The .htaccess on turtleinsurance.com would look like:

(should be contained on 1 line in your .htaccess file)

RewriteRule .* http://www.snappingturtles.com/?utm_source=national&utm_medium=all&utm_campaign=turtleinsurance [L,R=301]

This would redirect you to the home page of your main site and you can update your .htaccess with a sub-page if you had such a page catering to that specific market.

Custom Phone Numbers

There are quite a few ways to get cheap virtual numbers these days and Phone.com is reliable service where you can get a number for roughly $4.88 per month.

I know companies that implemented custom numbers for a bunch of print ads and it was pretty eye-opening in terms of which as performed better than others and how much money is wasted on untargeted print campaigns.

There certainly is a somewhat intangible brand equity building component to offline ads but it is still interesting to see ads which carry their weight with traffic and response rates, as well as being really helpful when it comes time to reshape the budget.

Here are a couple handfuls of providers which offer phone tracking inside of Google Analytics. Most of these providers will require the purchase of a number from them to tie into a specific URL on your site or just right into the domain + help track those calls alongside the pageviews generated.

Some campaigns are wide-ranging enough to where you may want to target them with a custom number or two and a custom URL or domain. Using a spreadsheet to track these measures along with using Google Analytics annotations to gauge traffic spikes and drops offers business owners deep view into the use of their marketing dollars.

Custom Coupon Codes

If you run a coupon code through Groupon you of course know where it came from. But other channels are also becoming easier to track. Microsoft Office makes it easy to create & track custom coupon codes. There are even technologies to allow you to insert tracking details directly into coupon codes on your own website (similar to online tracking phone numbers via services like IfByPhone or Google's call tracking). Some online coupons offer sophisticated tracking options, and Google wants to get into mobile payments to offer another layer of customer tracking (including coupons).

Finding a Reputable Provider

If you are a business owner who thinks "wow this is awesome, how the heck do I do it?", well here is some advice. If the field of web analytics is mostly foreign to you I would suggest finding a certified Google Analytics provider or ask if your current web company can do this for you. Certainly there are plenty of competent people and companies that are not part of the Google Analytics partner program.

If you are interested in a Google Analytics partner you can search for them here. There is also quite a bit of information in the self-education section of Google Analytics.

I would recommend learning how to do this over a period of time so you can make minor or major changes yourself at some point. Also, it helps to establish a business relationship with someone competent and trustworthy for future tasks that may come up, which you cannot do on your own.

If you are a service provider, start implementing this for some of your local clients and you'll likely be well on your way to establishing yourself as a sought-after marketer in your area.

Humility

When I graduated high school one of my teachers gave me a card stating how they appreciated my humility. My mom read that and was proud, and I felt a bit embarrassed because I didn't know what the word meant and had to ask. It turns out it is easy to confuse ignorance for humility! :D

Marketing is chuck full of humbling teachable moments. One of the most important concepts is the importance of humility. When Lady Gaga spoke at Google she came off as being totally humble. I don't care for her music, but have a lot more respect for that sort of marketing than the "rapper who has more money than Bernake" sort of approach.

Exploiter Dirtbags

A lot of well known online marketers are the exact opposite of Lady Gaga's approach: anything to be heard & and I am the best, etc. Some people are into that approach, while others find it distasteful. Of course in any market there will be competition with winners and losers as SEO is a zero sum game. But some folks work to build value & monetize, while others aim to exploit & scam.

Because there are eploiter dirtbags working the market, you have to pay attention to what the market is saying about your stuff in real time. Even if you pour 20 hours into creating something that is useful, relevant, engaging, interesting, etc. some people will think it is spam just because it uses a format that spammers have exploited. Notice how in spite of our collateral damage piece being fairly well received across the web some spots that referenced it immediately raised the "spam" concern simply because it is an infographic!

Every Profitable Company is in the Gray Area

Part of the reason you need to track viral stuff in real-time is because people are tuned to think that anything in online marketing that is successful has some layer of deception to it.

In spite of how many marketers love to wear the white hat label, the truth is that almost anyone who is profitable operates somewhere in the gray area. Google has something like $40 billion in the bank, and yet they still have an AdSense category for "get rich quick." They proudly claim how they took down the get rich quick scammers that were trading on the Google brand, but they still have an AdSense category for "get rich quick."

White Hat? Probably a Liar

The problem I have with those who love the white hat label is that many people who claim to adhere to algorithmic best practices are often willing to crap on real people to get ahead. Jason Calacanis claimed to be white hat precisely because he was aware of how dirty and exploitative his Mahalo junk was. You can't really get away with flagrant spamming if you call it what it actually is, so you have to preach righteous virtues while doing it.

That "scammer exploiting a loophole" approach can work for your thin affiliate site that isn't tied to your name & brand, but if you are using that sort of stuff on your client projects or on your own main brand site you build contempt in the marketplace. Which is precisely why so many SEOs were happy to see Mahalo get torched in the content farm update.

The recent "advanced" link building conference brought about 2 teachable moments on that front.

How to Breed Hate & Animosity in Your Marketplace!

Before the conference Will (from Distilled) asked me if I would be ok with him writing a post here. We have tried to be fairly neutral in the marketplace (reviewing tons of competing sites and products and whatnot), so I said sure. He handed me something that I found to be pretty offensive. To which, when he asked for a follow up, I replied:

Generally I felt that suggesting that post was sorta a smack in the face. It was like an ad inside an ad inside an ad. Ad for seminar + ad for your seo services + laundry list of links to client sites.

That you would suggest that made me feel like you think I am stupid or that you were trying to disrespect me. I didn't reply right away because I was a bit angry at the time & didn't want to respond that way. And then all that tech crap happened. Anyhow I think you are savvy and are a great SEO, but a post like that (ad in ad in ad) is better fit for say like John Chow's blog than ours ;)

He responded with how much of a fan he was of mine & that if he knew of anything cool on the news front down the road he would try to help us break it & such.

At the conference he highlighted his "appear authentic, but be driven by a script" type of approach.

Advanced!

But what he *failed* to disclose (until his brother disclosed it during the conference as part of the conference) was...

• that they had been hired by a competing SEO site to try to outrank us for SEO tools
• that they suggested the site they were working on to use 301 redirects to game Google
• that the site they were working for outed our site for using 301 redirects & got it toasted in Google

In other words, where a person who is truly ahead of the market, and does something to create a competitive advantage it must be black hat spam and you should complained to Google to get it torched. Then years later when the people who claimed the technique was spam do the same damn thing it suddenly becomes clean and innovative (cutting edge advanced stuff even).

Then they want the person who was ahead of the curve to be a free conduit for spreading this trash! It is so bad that you couldn't even make this stuff up.

Consider the brand damage they did to themselves & the bad karma they earned in the marketplace with the above stupidity. If they are willing to do that sort of stuff to their own brand, would you want them working on your brand? I wouldn't.

Those who claim to be algorithmically white hat, but are fine with lying, being deceptive, failing to disclose conflicts, etc. are saying that they put the algorithm ahead of how they treat real human beings in their marketplace. It is fine to be exploitative if that is your approach, but be honest about it ... because it is dumb to do it in a way that causes damage to your brand.

Spam vs Junk Trash Garbage That People Hate

Some people also complain about domain names (a clear signal of relevancy) shouldn't count, and yet some of the same folks create software to automate spamming up public communities. Any competitive disadvantage they have is spam, any competitive advantage they have is not spam. ;)

Enter Russ Jones!

On the Virante about page it highlights that "Russ has assisted in the creation of new search marketing technologies. This includes the venerable LinkSleeve Spam Link Verification system, which currently blocks thousands of links spam messages across the web." Yet at the "advanced" link building conference he gave away software to help people spam the crap out of Reddit.

Once the people on Reddit highlighted it he was quick to backpedal, stating: "I don't openly promote spamming. If you think creating highly viral content and submitting it to a social network to let them decide if it is good is spamming, then you have been seriously misled."

Here is the deal though, if the goal of that sofware was to do ANYTHING other than spamming, then it would be promoted to the core audience (so it could reach more people) rather than hunting out old subreddits & spamming them up with links.

Yet again, advanced!

There is nothing new or advanced about that link building "technique." It is just an extension of guestbook or comment spam. The above image links to a Vimeo video which highlights what Matthew Haughey thinks of the SEO industry after he found out someone was selling an info-product on how to spam up Metafilter by dropping links in old posts. Slapping the label "advanced" on old spam techniques makes them neither new nor advanced. The clock moves in one direction. Unfortunately it is not 2003 anymore.

There are a bunch of exploitative douchebags that paint themselves as white hats while destroying the ecosystems we all must work in by undermining basic human decency principals & trust in the marketplace. I don't care if someone wants to be a spammer, but to do so and claim that you are white hat and ethical (and thus that others are somehow inferior) is garbage.

Even Ghetto Rappers Stand for Something

The most important lesson in marketing is consistency. Make promises that you can consistently deliver on.

Rappers are successful. So are folks like Thom Yorke. But they pick their markets & their approach and stick to it. Bouncing back and forth just makes a person look like a dishonest douchebag who stands for nothing.

It's not standing for much, but least the rappers have their drugs, booze and hoes.

What do these internet marketers stand for?

It seems the folks teaching "advanced" internet marketing still need a bit of work on "basic" social interactions & common sense. But I guess those are harder to sell. ;)

We would all like to sell more, be it SEO services, leads, or goods and services. Here are a few ideas for prospering in a down market, by increasing sales.

Review Your Pricing

When times are tough, everyone is under pressure to cut spending. Most of your customers will likely fall into this camp. What do you do if your customers are using price as a means to pick your competitors over you?

One way is to cut your pricing, too.

Whilst this may work in the short term, it is likely to be a poor long term strategy for a small business. It's a poor long term strategy because there will always be someone else prepared to undercut you. Your margins shrink, and only the most ruthlessly efficient or largest operator, who can scale on tight margins, is going to survive.

Another way of looking at this problem is to increase value. Think about ways you can offer your customers more whilst retaining your cost structure. If the customer is made aware of your extra value, then you price may look cheap compared to your competitors, even though you haven't been forced to drop it.

Deliver

Delivery is everything. Say what you'll do, then do it, then tell them you've done it. It's probably one of the most effective sales methods there is, as it invariably leads to repeat business. Getting repeat business is much cheaper than getting new business, as you already have an open line of communication.

By delivering what you said you would do, your value to the customer has increased. They no longer have to spend time comparing and contrasting the offers made by your competitors. Even if they do, the customer still faces the risk of dealing with someone with an unknown track record. That risk is an added cost.

Partner Up

To extend your customer base, you often have to advertise and market. Expensive, obviously.

However, you could "acquire" someone else's customer base simply by partnering up. For example, if you sell SEO Services, it might be a good idea to partner with web designer agencies. You get access to their client base, and they get access to to an add-on service they can sell. They may even sell your services for you, giving you more time to focus on SEO, rather than selling.

Hire Sales People

Are you good at sales? Good at closing deals? Personally, I hate doing it.

Sales is a bit of an art. The people who are good at it tend to have a mix of qualities that take a long time to develop. They have built up a reputation, a network and trust. They work on deals all the time, knowing how to handle objections, and make the deal.

Given we're in a down-market, there will be a lot of good salespeople looking for work.

Why not look into hiring one? Are there sales people available who will work on commission for you?

Network

The next best thing is to build your own personal network.

Someone knows someone who needs what you've got. It's easier to sell to them if they are already aware of you. Hustle. Social media, conferences, speaking at conferences, meeting up with people, attending events indirectly related to your field of business, etc.

All good.

Good business people also tend to be good networkers. Business really is mostly about who, not what, you know.

Guarantee It

A friend of mine uses the following guarantee.

He says if the customer is not happy with what he does, they can walk. At any point, no questions asked. They don't owe him anything.

This may sound generous, until you realize this is merely a reflection of what would happen anyway. He operates a small business, and he works with large government clients. If the clients think his work is unsuitable, after they've signed, they would likely view it as a breach of contract, and put their lawyers onto him. He knows he would be unlikely to win such a legal fight, nor could he afford it.

His guarantee sounds very reassuring to the client, however. It sounds to the client like there is no risk for them.

This is why guarantees work wonders. At the back of every clients mind is the fear they'll be ripped off, or fear they will look foolish if they buy from you. A guarantee helps eliminate this universal objection, and close the sale.

Firefox 4 was just released. It is much smoother & faster than prior versions of the browser. And the persistent memory leaking issue seems to have been tamed, even with many extensions installed. Overall an awesome upgrade. I can see this once again becoming my main web browser while also remaining my primary SEO research browser.

With the upgrade I only had 2 major issues

• I needed to install the newest version of Roboform
• By default there is no status bar in Firefox 4. So if you want to use Rank Checker or SEO for Firefox you would need to do so through the Firefox menu system (a bit slowish + lame IMHO), OR you can download the Status 4 Evar plug-in to get your status bar back again ;)

In time we will likely think about moving the icons for Rank Checker and SEO for Firefox out of the status bar & into the upper menu, as it is not great for us to create extensions that are reliant on another extension which is then reliant on a browser that changes too ... too many moving parts.

But for now stuff works well enough again if you download the Status 4 Evar plug-in, something over 10,000 people a day are doing!

We also just updated the documentation on the plug-in download & upgrade pages for our extensions such that those who do not read our blog still know what they need to do in order to keep everything going smoothly. It also prevents us from having to read too many support tickets like these gems a crazy gave us today, which helps us maintain at least a bit of hope for humanity. :)

In moderation such messages are humorous...but you just hope that the person isn't crazy enough to hunt you down and shoot you because they think Yahoo! is a superior browser to Firefox. Not for the least of reasons because Yahoo! isn't a web browser! :D