Take a look at Complete.com’s graph of the top 20 US websites.  Do you notice a common element between them all?

Every single one of these websites offers a way for users to be interactive with the site.  Interactivity allows visitors to become engaged in the website, not just passive bystanders. 

It’s not just the US that’s producing popular interactive websites.  Holding the #1 spot on the Alexa Mover’s and Shakers list is a Spanish language photo sharing site called flodeo, up 1496 spots on Alexa from 1781 to 285.

The take-away?  Add some interactivity to your website and start engaging visitors rather than just talking at them. 

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As covered by Google Blogoscoped, the new “iGoogle” logo refers to the personalization of Google. I use Gmail and have customized home page with my favorite RSS feeds, but when is too personal too much?

I was surprised to find out a few months ago that Google Web History had been tracking ALL of my search history under my profile – not just for their own stats, but for anyone logged in under my profile to view! That’s when I thought things had gone a little too far.

Think about it… if you’re sharing a computer in the house, Google will collect and make readily available all of the searches you and anyone else has made while logged into your profile.

You may have given someone your Gmail password – if so they can now see much more than just your email.

Also, I sometimes log into client’s Google Analytics accounts – If I don’t log out and they have Search History enabled, I can see all of the things they were searching for and they get a record of all the searches I made until I remembered to log out.

Luckily, you can turn search history “off,” and clear your history, but like everyone else that I’ve talked to, search history was enabled and collecting data long before we ever realized it.

Google spins the search history feature differently. They highlight the benefits of being able to search through your OWN history to find things that you may have forgotten to bookmark, or didn’t know you wanted to bookmark until too late. I think there are other checks and balances for that, like my browser’s history tool and the results page link color change from blue to purple that shows which links I’ve clicked on in the past.

Google search history just seems a little TOO personal – what do you think?

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Real estate is one of the most competitive industries in the search engines.  Maybe it’s time for a different approach?  When people are shopping for real estate, they’re not just looking for a house, they are looking for a lifestyle – and that requires a lot of information from schools, to recreational activities, to average neighborhood incomes, and so much more. 

Want some examples, check out these successful real estate websites that are really bringing in the traffic and generating buzz for their usefulness. 

There are two ways to accomplish this.  You can hire a team of people to research and update information and post it on the site.  Or you can pull the information in dynamically with a custom software application. 

Trulia for example uses custom programming to scrape real estate sites and brings all of the information into one place in a way that is extremely useful.  Almost all of these sites incorporate Google maps in their searches to give users a perspective of where exactly homes are located.  Zillow even offers satellite images of the neighborhood right on the search page.   

While smaller real estate agencies may not be able to, nor have the desire to, compete with these big competitors, adding useful web applications to local real estate sites can certainly help them gain the lead over local competition.

What are your customers really looking for when shopping for a home?  How can you provide it in a way that is informative and fun to use?  If you can imagine it, there is most likely a way to make it happen. 

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In my previous post, I talked about how sociability was likely to be one of the reasons that the online ecommerce shoe store Zappos was a success. This got me thinking about ecommerce sites that have been popular among search engines and visitors by implementing features like user comments, reviews, and other user generated content.

Ecommerce stores, especially resellers, typically have a difficult time gaining search engine ranking. Why? Because often the products and the product descriptions are the same as the 999 other sites out there that are selling the same thing.

This duplicate content can kill a site in the search engine rankings. Also, when there is nothing different between one ecommerce site and another that is selling the same product, winning customers becomes all about offering the lowest price.

Adding some custom modules to your website that allow for sociability can make a huge difference in your search engine visibility and in your ability to attract and retain customers.

Need some ideas about how to make this work? Here’s a list of some highly successful ecommerce sites that win customers and rankings through user generated content:

Think Geek – (One of my favorites!) The customer comments and photos of customers enjoying the products are fun and way more interesting, enlightening, and addicting to read than the stock product info.

Trip Advisor – Every hotel looks awesome in the pictures and the descriptions sound luxurious. But what’s it really like? Customer ratings and reviews tell all.

Amazon – When I look for anything on Amazon, I scroll right past the publisher’s or manufacture’s description on down to the customer reviews – what about you? Other site’s may have cheaper prices (which they reveal), but I always buy from Amazon because by the time I’m ready to buy, I’ve invested so much time there and already have things added to my cart, that I might as well!

Threadless – This is cool – Users vote on designs and decide what gets printed. So much fun, you’ll forget that it’s an ecommerce site.

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Social media is the big buzzword on the internet today.  Not just because it’s the latest “fad,” but because it taps into the one of the core purpose of the internet itself, connecting with other people. 

Social networking sites have seen a 47% growth over the past year, the leader being MySpace with a 367% increase.  I don’t know about you, but just about everyone I know has a MySpace profile, including my friend’s 80-something year old grandmother. 

Sociability is not just for blogs and dating sites.  Adding social elements like blogs and comments and shared profiles can really bring a website to life, boost its popularity, and grow a fan base. 

I spoke with the owner of an online shoe sales company once who wanted to find out why his competitor Zappos ranked so well in the search engines. 

Comparing the two sites, his was a basic e-commerce site with the same stock content as every competing shoe store on the internet.  Zappos on the other hand, was loaded with user generated comments – the kind of unique content that search engines love.

These comments also offered an interesting read and kept me browsing around the site for quite some time.  Reading about other people’s experience with a product you’re thinking about buying really cuts down on the anxiety of buying online. 

After the analysis, we suggested a custom comments module and a few other changes to make the site livelier and search engine friendly.  We didn’t do the job because of the company’s budget constraints, but I did find Zappos – my new store of choice to buy shoes online!   

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