Blog

Retaining SEO Value in Syndicated Content and Partnerships

Posted by Laura.Lippay

Link exchanges vs. partnerships

Six years ago, Yahoo! was called out (on this very blog!) for buying text links. Being the lone SEO at Yahoo! in the US at the time, training, teaching, guiding and policing all of the people involved in over a dozen Yahoo! Media websites, my heart stopped when I saw this post. The thing is, though, I knew the biz dev team at Yahoo! had absolutely no concept of link exchanges for SEO (that said, I have no idea about Great Schools – those were some nice anchor text links).

While most SEOs work on link relationships, most biz dev folks, especially in mid to larger sized online companies, work on business relationships. Every Yahoo! property had biz dev folks who were actively making deals to work with other sites for things like:

  • Access to complimentary content that Yahoo! didn't have on the site (like the partnership between Yahoo! Real Estate and Great Schools in that example).
  • Exchanging content or links in hopes of getting more visibility and traffic, like the links to partners Heavy and Bleacher Report at the bottom of Mandatory.com's site.
  • Syndicating content to other sites for more visibility, like Eventbrite's events syndicated out to distribution partners, or receiving syndicated content in order to provide more content to the visitors, like mom.me's content from SheKnows or StyleList.

Most biz dev at Yahoo! was done horribly wrong in the SEO sense actually, with links in JavaScript or content in iFrames, or linking out to more SEO-savvy partners who were nofollowing their links back. So I set out to educate Yahoo! biz devs with the powerful opportunities they were missing with this guide to retaining SEO value in partnerships (updated for today's biz devs). I still use it often for the larger companies I work with, and I hope some of you find it useful for your clients or yourselves as well.

Note that it's very important, whether you're an SEO working with biz devs or you're a biz dev working on partnerships, that the things mentioned below are thoroughly considered before writing and signing a contract with a partner, since some of these things will need to be spelled out in the contract, and oftentimes negotiated.

Any additional ideas are gladly welcome in the comments!

The importance of SEO in partnerships

Search engines follow links across the web to discover and classify content. The content and context of pages linking to each other is taken into consideration in classifying content and surfacing it in search results.

Consider these factors that contribute to a site and/or page's ranking:

Links = votes

Links to a site are treated like votes to the site/page. The quality, quantity and context of the links from one page to another are used by search engines in classifying and ranking a page.

Links = relationships

Any pages linking to each other are related to each other. This can include links in articles, in footers, in content modules and in comments among others. This can be helpful when related content links to each other (on the same site or across different sites). This can be damaging when receiving links from low-quality, spammy sites (typical in link-building) or linking to low-quality or spammy sites (typical in UGC comments).

Syndication = content duplication

Any time the same or very similar content populates the majority of more than one page on the internet, there is a good chance that the duplicates will be hidden from search results. The search engine will attempt to pick/choose the best version of the duplicate for searchers and hide the rest so other content options can appears in the search results.

Search engines can't always determine content source

When there is more than one version of the same content, search engines will try to determine the source and provide that in search results. Oftentimes when content is syndicated, the source does not actually rank first, especially if a small or newer site is syndicating out to larger, older and/or more popular sites with more activity.

Best practices for linking to partners

This depends on the nature of the partnership & competition. Consider what should be written into the contract ahead of time.

  • Options for linking to competitive content on partner sites (you are trying to rank for/drive traffic for the same thing as the partner):
    • Don't link: If you don't need to link to the competitive content on the partner site, don't do it.
    • Add Nofollow: Adding a nofollow tag on the link (in the code) tells search engines that you may not trust what is on the other end of that link, so you're not officially "voting" for it. Not linking to/voting for the partner content can potentially help in preventing it from outranking yours. This may need to be negotiated, since it's possible both parties will want links without a nofollow on it.
    • JavaScript Links: You can link to the partner with the link in JavaScript code. Search engines often pick up on JavaScript links today, but still more often ignore it (so far).
  • Options for non-competitive content (you are not trying to rank for/drive traffic for the same thing):
    • Link freely and naturally, in ways that work best for user experience.

Best practices for getting links from partners

For any inbound links from partners (in articles, content modules, on the site, etc), check how the links will be treated, and make sure the treatment specifications you want are written in the contract. Here are suggested options:

  • Require a link: Require that the article links back to the original on your site. This can be text link "[Article Title] originally appeared on yoursite.com", with the article title being the hyperlink back to the original article. Make sure the link goes to the original article URL on your site, and not to the home page.
  • Check the links from their site to yours:
    • No nofollow tags on links from the partner site to yours: This may need to be negotiated (for the same reasons as we're saying to add nofollows on links from your site to partner sites above). Nofollow tags typically don't pass value to the destination page.
    • No links in JavaScript: Since links in JavaScript typically aren't crawled and/or utilized in ranking by search engines, links to your site from partners that are in JavaScript wouldn't provide the value to your site/page that a regular crawlable text link would.
    • No links as images: The best link is a keyword-rich link. A linked image (even if the image is of text), may not be interpreted the same and will often not carry as much weight as a text link. Images may have alt attributes that describe the image (which search engines take into account) but that does not carry as much weight as a regular text link.
    • No 302 redirects on links: When Google encounters a 302 redirect it keeps the original page in the index and doesn't pass PageRank onto the destination URL (since a 302 redirect is technically a temporary redirect). Do not allow partners to send the link through a 302 redirect to your site.
    • Keywords in links: When possible, try to have partners link to your page(s) using relevant anchor text. The anchor text of a link provides context for search engines and can help a page rank for that text. For example, if a partner is linking to your article about The Best Geeky Books of 2011, make sure they use the title of the article The Best Geeky Books of 2011 (or something similar and relevant) as the link text rather than something vague like click here or visit our partner (that's not what you want to rank for).
    • Linking 1:1 relationships: Make sure that links from partner pages go to the most relevant pages on your site. Do not just have them link to your home page. If possible, link to related articles or similar content. This helps provide context for search engines, provides a better experience for users, and can help bring visibility to deeper pages on your site.
  • Check canonical tags: Check the canonical tag in the head section of the code on the articles you've syndicated to partners. Make sure that canonical points to the article on your site. Otherwise there should ideally be no canonical tag.
  • Specify linking and redirect rules: Specify rules for what domains should and should not be linking and redirecting to your site. A partner may want to redirect some old domains as part of a package of sites in their network that can send traffic to your site, but this might actually hurt your site's performance in Google. Rankings and traffic should be tested any time a new domain is redirected to the site.

Content sharing/syndication best practices

For content syndicated from your site to a site on another domain or subdomain

Important considerations

  • Deep linking within your content: When possible (and user-friendly), provide links in your article/blog content to other areas on your site that are referred to in the content. For example, in an article about The San Francisco Giants Suspension of Guillermo Mota on a sports site, link the first mention of Guillermo Mota in the article back to the Guillermo Mota page on your website. Do not overdo it – only provide links where readers might want more information and only the first instance. User experience should always come first.
  • Absolute URLs: Make sure links in your content that is being syndicated are absolute (full URL) not relative (partial URL). Relative URL links in syndicated content will link back to the partner site, whereas absolute URL links will link back to your site.
  • No parameters: If possible, do not add parameters onto links in content you're syndicating out. Search engines see parameters as a different URL. If you must use parameters, make sure the correct treatment of parameters is specified in Webmaster Tools.
  • No link stripping: Make sure the partners are not stripping/removing links that are in your content once it's on their site.

Highly Recommended Considerations (that may need to be negotiated)

  • Rel=canonical: Require that the partner add the rel=canonical tag to the head of pages specifying the article URL on your site as the canonical. This tells search engines that of these duplicates, the one at your site is the canonical, or primary version.
  • Publish first: Publish the content you'll be syndicating on your own site before allowing partners to publish it. This can help identify your site as the source (and also generate more links from other sites and social networks).
  • Limited text syndication: You can allow partners to show a limited amount of text and then have the readers click to view all/more, bringing them to your site. This allows the full article to only live on your site and is also a better traffic driver.
  • Noindex: Allow the partners to syndicate the content on their site but they must add a noindex tag to the header of those pages on their site. This will allow their site visitors to view and share the content, but the content will not be crawled by search engines.

Links in blog and editorial content being syndicated

  • Editors: Editors can link straight to the end destination in blog posts and articles (whoever they're linking to has earned it). No special linking rules to follow.
  • Developers:
    • Absolute URLs: Make sure all links in content being syndicated out are absolute URLs (the link is the full URL). This way when the article is picked up in other places the link is not broken, and it links back to your site.
    • Parameters: If using parameters on links (not recommended unless necessary), make sure to specify how Google should treat those parameters in Google Webmaster Tools.
    • No nofollows: Do not add the nofollow tag to links in content you're syndicating out (if you control the HTML).

Links in user generated content (UGC) on your site

This depends on the nature of the UGC content.

  • Comment links: Links are ideally not allowed in comments because of the potential for comment spam. If they are allowed they should always have a nofollow tag (placed on the link in the code).
  • Options for profiles and other UGC content:
    • If content is not moderated, allow links as text only (not hyperlinked) or not at all.
    • If content is moderated, links should be ok, but moderators should be trained in how to recognize and combat link spam, as it can easily look like natural linking.

For more information

Cross-domain canonical tags:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html

Nofollow tags:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569

Absolute vs. Relative URLs:


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

By |August 6th, 2014|MOZ|3 Comments

7 emerging trends in software design

Most end users put little time into thinking about how software design affects their experience of mobile and desktop devices. Attractive, easy-to-use applications achieve their intended effects in that they perform the desired tasks and make individuals' lives easier, more connected, and more entertaining. However, none of these tools would be possible without constant innovation in software design.

To adapt to the mercurial nature of consumer technology, software design trends are emerging more quickly than ever. Designers work tirelessly to produce new techniques that push the limits of users' imaginations while keeping companies ahead of their inventive competitors. As a result, brands and consumers alike benefit from better design.

From back-end undertakings to user-facing innovations, 2014 software design trends run the gamut of functional and aesthetic considerations. Read on to learn which techniques to expect to see more of over the next few months.

The Year's Most Compelling Software Design Trends in 2014, software design trends to watch include:

1. Prototyping apps. This “hot new thing” in software design allows designers to approximate what their end users will experience, from aesthetic to navigational components. Users of these applications, such as InVision, perform design work in the program of their preference. Then they easily transfer it to a mobile or desktop browser.

Prototyping apps present myriad benefits to users, including simpler collaboration, more realistic mockups, comparison analysis with previous versions of pages, and overall ease of use for individuals with varying levels of technical know-how.

2. Physical object integration. Anyone following the technology world is likely familiar with the term “Internet of Things,” which describes the incorporation of items such as phones, medical devices, vehicles, and virtually anything else into a wirelessly-connected environment. Experts expect this development to continue as companies find innovative ways to connect everyday objects with computers and one another using the power of Big Data.

The Internet of Things is not unique in that it combines hardware and software design to achieve a technical goal. However, the onus will be on hardware designers (as well as product designers) to create objects that perform an application's desired functions.

3. Increased use of translucency. Although remaining a point of contention among software designers, translucency appears likely to remain a popular visual tool for the foreseeable future. This approach allows users to view multiple pages or components of their screens simultaneously by layering one over the other.

A common use of translucency is in Apple and Windows Menu bars, which remain available to users while the underlying content stays visible. Some developers argue translucency creates too much “visual clutter,” distracting users rather than improving their productivity.

4. Lower content density. This seemingly paradoxical development comes as the amount of content on the internet grows more extensive than ever. Perhaps to lower the visual “noise” for users, software design is facilitating cleaner, simpler interfaces for mobile and desktop users alike.

Applications such as Tweetbot 3.0 and YouTube exemplify this trend towards lower content density. The number of individual content pieces fitting on the screen at any given time has decreased consistently with each version, presenting fewer options to visitors. As long as the available options adequately reflect the interests and needs of users, such simplification may prove beneficial.

5. Buttons masquerading as text. Particularly in mobile environments, the demarcation between text and buttons continues to become increasingly subtle. This allows for greater integration of links with surrounding text, arguably making the overall design of a page more attractive. However, designers must understand the difference between subtlety and perplexity in designing buttons; otherwise mobile users will have trouble determining which text represents buttons and which text is only text.

6. Tiles/cards. From Windows 8 to Pinterest, “live tiles” represent one of the most dynamic aspects of software design in use today. These structures respond to the activities of a user to present tidbits of information – from images to videos to news stories – based on their demonstrated interests. Also referred to as cards, tiles provide timely and relevant tools personalized to each user.

7. Theming applications. From the iPhone 5C Series to Android offerings such as the Moto X, smartphones are beginning to come in a spectrum of colors based on users' personal tastes. This is creating a need for applications that customize screen color schemes to match phones.

Third-party applications have risen to the occasion, from Dribble's stark-white aesthetic to the more customizable theming apps such as Tweetbot 3.0 and Fantastical. However, these apps offer limited functionality. Going forward, developers of various types of apps will likely place a greater emphasis on theming based on the colors of users' phones.

Whether users are seeking greater simplicity of options, more attractive interfaces, or deeper integration of physical objects with their virtual systems, 2014 continues to deliver impactful design solutions. Over the next few months, those paying close attention to the tech industry will continue to be dazzled

Which current software design trends do you find the most compelling or useful?

Main image credit: abduzeedo.com

The post 7 emerging trends in software design appeared first on Technorati.

By |August 5th, 2014|Web Design|0 Comments

7 creative ways to improve your content marketing strategy

By commons.wikimedia.org/

Since you're probably familiar with content marketing, it's time to focus on making your blogging, email marketing and social media efforts cut through the noise. That may sound difficult considering the competition and the massive amount of content flying around everyday, but if you think just a bit outside the box, you'll be on your way in improving your content marketing strategy in no time.

1. Follow the 80-20 Rule

Before you can begin rolling a content marketing strategy, you need to know exactly what kind of content to create and how to promote it. This idea phase is kind of a big deal too – apply the Pareto principle and you'll realize that an effective content marketing strategy relies on 80% of a successful idea and 20% in the execution.

This means that you need to generate killer ideas from the get-go. Where do you get these ideas? Well, they're essentially everywhere. They're in books (like from Edward de Bono), over coffee with a colleague/mentor, in what's trending around the world and even from previous campaigns from other niches (here's an Old Spice parody from First Round).

By commons.wikimedia.org/

2. Let's Get Visual

You've probably heard that visual imagery and videos are the big thing right now. After all, who doesn't enjoy a pretty picture or hysterical video? But, there's just a little bit more to using visual imagery.

On top of compelling photos, have some fun and create memes, photobombs, employees having fun or even before & after images. Other unique images would be cartoons, comics and of course infographics. If you want to include videos, then consider conducting interviews, capturing live events or streaming/posting a presentation/webinar.

Besides capitalizing on imagery, you're providing your audience with a variety of content that they can take something away from. Keep in mind that it was discovered by MarketingProfs / CMI that the brands who are effective at content marketing use 14 different ways in creating content. So offer a variety of content.

3. Recycle

Believe it or not, there are multiple ways to recycle your content. For example, if you have popular YouTube video, you could simply convert that content into an infographic for people to share on Facebook. You could also share a timeless blog over and over again on Twitter by grabbing the Revive Old Posts plugin for WordPress. We do this a lot with our customers content to help their keep up their content strategy.

Another way to recycle content is by expanding on previous pieces of content that earned you a lot of traffic. For example, if you wrote a blog post about “10 Things You Didn't Know About Pepperoni,” then you could write a follow-up like “10 More Things You Didn't Know About Pepperoni.”

4. Don't Follow The Pack

If everyone in your industry are busy creating and sharing the same content, then how do you expect to stand apart from competitors? Take a look around and see what's going in your niche. If everyone is sharing pictures of kittens using their products, then make an informative infographic for your product. In other words, don't merely follow the pack. Do something different that makes you stand-out.

5. Tick Everyone Off

This doesn't mean calling your customers names or bad-mouthing competitors. What it means is being able to create content that gets under the skin of viewers. Why? Because it's an extremely powerful trigger. So, let's say you're in the financial industry. One idea would be to create an infographic or list that highlighted the worst financial scams within the last year.

Another way to do this is by creating a common enemy. Remember that iconic “1984” from Apple? It made PC's the enemy. Apple used the same tactic years later with the “I'm a PC” ads.

Just as you would in a bar, however, stay away from politics, race, and religion as they are topics which you will never win.

6. Hire a Copywriter

Just because you have a brilliant idea doesn't mean that you're going to be able to create incredible content. Copywriters do this for a living. They know how to write attention-grabbing headlines, press releases, ads, page descriptions, SEO and content that establishes you as an industry leader.

Until you've mastered the art of copywriting, it's probably in your best interest to hire a pro. In fact, check out HubSpot's list of “10 Companies That Totally Nail Copywriting” to give you a better understanding of how important this is for your content marketing strategy.

7. Have Plenty of Tools in the Shed

Throughout every stage of your content marketing strategy you'll need lots of tools to develop, execute, share and analyze your content. Here are some tools that may have gotten overlooked.

  • Ubersuggest – Helps with keyword suggestions for blog posts, PPC campaigns.
  • Toluna – Creates surveys or polls so that you data and feedback for future content.
  • Trello – Helps keep you and your team organized.
  • Followup.cc – This tool helps you to remember to follow-up with loyal customers.
  • Linkdex – A powerful tool that will make you more visible in your niche.
  • SEO Engine – Higher end tool that helps you know exactly how to scale SEO with data.
  • Rapportive – This neat app allows you to view social profiles and location all from within Gmail.
  • SocialBro/EdgeRank – These can help you find the best times to reach your niche on Twitter and Facebook.
  • Followerwonk – Can assist you in finding influencers in your field.
  • Outbrain – One of many locations where you can share content.
  • Moz Pro – You'll need an arsenal of tools to measure, track and analyze your content online. Moz is a solid one-stop shopping destination for these tools.

What other tools have you found that help you grow your business online?

The post 7 creative ways to improve your content marketing strategy appeared first on Technorati.

By |August 5th, 2014|Social Media|0 Comments

7 creative ways to improve your content marketing strategy

By commons.wikimedia.org/

Since you're probably familiar with content marketing, it's time to focus on making your blogging, email marketing and social media efforts cut through the noise. That may sound difficult considering the competition and the massive amount of content flying around everyday, but if you think just a bit outside the box, you'll be on your way in improving your content marketing strategy in no time.

1. Follow the 80-20 Rule

Before you can begin rolling a content marketing strategy, you need to know exactly what kind of content to create and how to promote it. This idea phase is kind of a big deal too – apply the Pareto principle and you'll realize that an effective content marketing strategy relies on 80% of a successful idea and 20% in the execution.

This means that you need to generate killer ideas from the get-go. Where do you get these ideas? Well, they're essentially everywhere. They're in books (like from Edward de Bono), over coffee with a colleague/mentor, in what's trending around the world and even from previous campaigns from other niches (here's an Old Spice parody from First Round).

By commons.wikimedia.org/

2. Let's Get Visual

You've probably heard that visual imagery and videos are the big thing right now. After all, who doesn't enjoy a pretty picture or hysterical video? But, there's just a little bit more to using visual imagery.

On top of compelling photos, have some fun and create memes, photobombs, employees having fun or even before & after images. Other unique images would be cartoons, comics and of course infographics. If you want to include videos, then consider conducting interviews, capturing live events or streaming/posting a presentation/webinar.

Besides capitalizing on imagery, you're providing your audience with a variety of content that they can take something away from. Keep in mind that it was discovered by MarketingProfs / CMI that the brands who are effective at content marketing use 14 different ways in creating content. So offer a variety of content.

3. Recycle

Believe it or not, there are multiple ways to recycle your content. For example, if you have popular YouTube video, you could simply convert that content into an infographic for people to share on Facebook. You could also share a timeless blog over and over again on Twitter by grabbing the Revive Old Posts plugin for WordPress. We do this a lot with our customers content to help their keep up their content strategy.

Another way to recycle content is by expanding on previous pieces of content that earned you a lot of traffic. For example, if you wrote a blog post about “10 Things You Didn't Know About Pepperoni,” then you could write a follow-up like “10 More Things You Didn't Know About Pepperoni.”

4. Don't Follow The Pack

If everyone in your industry are busy creating and sharing the same content, then how do you expect to stand apart from competitors? Take a look around and see what's going in your niche. If everyone is sharing pictures of kittens using their products, then make an informative infographic for your product. In other words, don't merely follow the pack. Do something different that makes you stand-out.

5. Tick Everyone Off

This doesn't mean calling your customers names or bad-mouthing competitors. What it means is being able to create content that gets under the skin of viewers. Why? Because it's an extremely powerful trigger. So, let's say you're in the financial industry. One idea would be to create an infographic or list that highlighted the worst financial scams within the last year.

Another way to do this is by creating a common enemy. Remember that iconic “1984” from Apple? It made PC's the enemy. Apple used the same tactic years later with the “I'm a PC” ads.

Just as you would in a bar, however, stay away from politics, race, and religion as they are topics which you will never win.

6. Hire a Copywriter

Just because you have a brilliant idea doesn't mean that you're going to be able to create incredible content. Copywriters do this for a living. They know how to write attention-grabbing headlines, press releases, ads, page descriptions, SEO and content that establishes you as an industry leader.

Until you've mastered the art of copywriting, it's probably in your best interest to hire a pro. In fact, check out HubSpot's list of “10 Companies That Totally Nail Copywriting” to give you a better understanding of how important this is for your content marketing strategy.

7. Have Plenty of Tools in the Shed

Throughout every stage of your content marketing strategy you'll need lots of tools to develop, execute, share and analyze your content. Here are some tools that may have gotten overlooked.

  • Ubersuggest – Helps with keyword suggestions for blog posts, PPC campaigns.
  • Toluna – Creates surveys or polls so that you data and feedback for future content.
  • Trello – Helps keep you and your team organized.
  • Followup.cc – This tool helps you to remember to follow-up with loyal customers.
  • Linkdex – A powerful tool that will make you more visible in your niche.
  • SEO Engine – Higher end tool that helps you know exactly how to scale SEO with data.
  • Rapportive – This neat app allows you to view social profiles and location all from within Gmail.
  • SocialBro/EdgeRank – These can help you find the best times to reach your niche on Twitter and Facebook.
  • Followerwonk – Can assist you in finding influencers in your field.
  • Outbrain – One of many locations where you can share content.
  • Moz Pro – You'll need an arsenal of tools to measure, track and analyze your content online. Moz is a solid one-stop shopping destination for these tools.

What other tools have you found that help you grow your business online?

The post 7 creative ways to improve your content marketing strategy appeared first on Technorati.

By |August 5th, 2014|Content Marketing|0 Comments

ESRI UC 2014: Notes from the floor [#esriuc2014]

TouchShare_Attack Density vs. IED activity

This ESRI Conference was just amazing, it was very difficult to slow down and look at the vendors closely, so many of them were so interesting, but for you dear reader, no effort is too great, so I took the time to smell the roses and see what the scope of this conference was. I thought since it was a GIS conference, I would clock how much I walked the vendor show in a day. 3.1 miles!

If ESRI could make them cheaply enough, a pedometer would be a cool item to add to the conference bag, but I digress.

There's an unbelievable amount of things you can do with this GIS data. The thing to keep in mind going in, is that this isn't like a static Google Map (although a lot of companies will overlay data on to Google Earth). This is GPS location coordinate data that you can then use to render a map. The military applications were the most fun to check out, although they probably have the least amount of generic use.

One example I saw was from TouchShare, a leader in geospatial collaborative solutions. Their are multiple layers to their software stack.

The first thing you notice is that you can share a screen, so you have these giant touch tables that you can easily navigate and apply lenses to, or draw on, that will remind you of a show like 24. You could, in real time, have a command center going and people out in the field, on a map, where you are feeding data to it, like enemy deployments, and redraw the soldiers incursion map.

The “lenses” allow you to have a layer view that you can drag over an area, say for example a map of IED explosions, if you don't care about the whole map, but a particular area, the lens will just show those IED marks in the area it is active. You can overlay different lenses to intersect datasets in a geographic region, so in the IED example, you could have a Poppy Field lens overlay it (or even just activate both for the entire map), and then look for a high frequency of IED attacks that is geographically close to a Poppy Field under the assumption that terrorists are protecting an income source. It can then pull up biographic data of known terrorists that are known to be in that area.

In a similar vein was in the law enforcement community. I saw an example from Snaptrends that was almost scary. They provide real-time, location-based social intelligence.

Their SaaS software identifies relevant, open/public social media content within a specific geography to enable organizations to more effectively: Prevent, Identify, Respond to and Investigate crimes, threats and emergencies. you can see icons popping up on the map of people sending a Tweet or posting on Facebook (assuming geotagging is enabled), as well as cross reference in the police report data. So for example, suddenly you see a bunch of tweets popping up on a corner, you can click on them and see what they are, could be a bunch of people taking pictures of a fight or something.

That can tie in to the police report data to see what kind of incident is getting reported. You can start to know about events before they get reported, verging on Minority Report style crime divisions. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.stmapping

What I found most useful however, was the application within government infrastructure, especially in smaller to medium size cities that typically have smaller budgets and are more cost conscious (the larger ones should be, but don't seem to be). The ability to track and monitor assets and predict maintenance schedules was sweet. You can also interface with your citizenry to report information back to you. For example, if there's a dead animal in the road that needs to be picked up, or you are walking at night and see massive overwatering or a broken sprinkler.

Speaking of watering, with all the various water shortages, especially here in California, we are constantly talking about conservation, but if you look at the waste in landscape watering, you can see huge potential for savings, but no one bothers to do it. The three main players I saw in this space were Trimble, Cityworks and Cartegraph, the latter seeming to be the most recent entry in this market and the former two have a co-opertition relationship.

There is a lot going on in this space and it all starts with getting an inventory of your city's assets. This is streets, lights, sprinklers, parks, sidewalks, fire hydrants; what you have and where it is located. You need to inspect the condition of your assets, set their value, assess their performance, at what point do they fail, and at what point it makes more sense to repair or to replace the asset. Once you have everything in place, then you are able to really manage your work and do predictive analysis. If you've got an item that is failing now and it turns out the same item, like a fire hydrant, is due to be replaced around the corner in a month, you might as well consolidate the work and have it done at the same time. It is less expensive to make a single trip than multiple trips, so you start to reduce costs.

What I really like is tying this in with a service like SeeClickFix that allows citizens to report non-emergency items in a city, like broken sprinklers, a street light that is out, dangerous sidewalk cracks,dead animal in the street, that kind of thing. These should go in to the cities intake system where you could let some items get automatically routed to service tickets or maybe they are reviewed before they are routed.

It is a great way for a city to make things easier for their citizens, they don't need to know which entity manages which asset. Maybe there is an HOA for the landscape watering, or the county manages the traffic signals and the city does the street sweeping. If the city took it on themselves to do the routing, then the citizens can just make the reports.

The possibilities for automation, improving responsiveness and cutting costs are really very exciting, at least to me. ESRI has a huge array of developer options as well, pretty much any modern language and platform you care to name, even scripting languages like Python. The array of options is just massive. One thing that struck me is the responsiveness of all these vendors parsing through what has to be massive amounts of data.IMAG0777

I ran across one of the old product reviews I'd written about 25 years ago, and I was gushing at the amazing performance of *only* taking 15 minutes to churn through 20,000 lines of source code, just crazy. The “at a glance' guide for the conference was over 80 pages. There were so many breakout sessions and tutorials that I had to just focus on the vendor floor. ESRI even went so far as to make the tables in some of the areas whiteboards, so you could brainstorm while you were sitting and chatting, I saw a good number of tables with ideas on them, I just had no idea what they were talking about.

To wrap up all too soon, you gotta check out this Twitter page:

Geoawesomeness  geoawesomeness  on Twitter

I was ready to grab 20 pictures off of it for this story, but then I thought about it and the important take away is that just about all data that occurs is being stored, the challenge for these vendors is primarily finding interesting, useful and innovative ways to provide it to you. A little out of the box thinking and you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish.

The post ESRI UC 2014: Notes from the floor [#esriuc2014] appeared first on Technorati.

By |July 22nd, 2014|Social Media|2 Comments