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10 Funny 404 Error Pages


A good way to get through tough times is through laughter. When a user encounters a 404 error on a website, try to minimize the anger with some giggles. Here are some sites that have pretty funny 404 error pages. Take a look!


If you know of any funnier ones, please feel free to post the links here.

Brought to you by the 404 error-crazed people at Errorlytics

This Weeks Must Reads in Search Marketing

Another quick business week comes to end as does February – I know it’s a short month but where did the time go? This week our industry featured numerous great posts, check out this week’s must reads in search marketing below:
Search Marketing

Web Analytics


Enterprise Search Marketplace Stabilizing

Enterprise search vendors have spent much of the past year digesting acquisitions and stabilizing their offerings, according to new research from CMS Watch, an independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies. While in the past, search and information access technology buyers faced vendors and technology both undergoing rapid change, the choices are now more stable.

“Stability in the search technology market hasn’t brought about serious consolidation, but we’ve finally arrived at a point where there’s plenty of easy-to-install and relatively well-performing solutions,” points out Adriaan Bloem, Analyst for The Search & Information Access Report 2009. “In our 2009 Cross-Check(tm) chart, many vendors moved into the ‘Balance’ sector or migrated to the quieter, bottom-left of the chart. But enterprises in need of search technology still have a wealth of choices — in some cases, several from the same vendor.”

Some signs of the stabilizing search market include:

  • Microsoft spent much of the past year honing and recently debuting a new strategy for its multiple search offerings, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Search and FAST ESP, while the products themselves changed little
  • Many vendors’ “new features” added in the last year are well-tested and licensed content type filters, connectors, or natural language processing components from 3rd parties
  • Few search vendors debuted major releases in the last 6 months, instead choosing to focus on refining existing offerings and improving marketing

The Search & Information Access Report 2009 provides a comprehensive overview of 23 search technology products and identifies current best practices. The Report is available for purchase online from CMS Watch.

Hitwise: Multi-Word Queries Growing in Popularity

According to Hitwise: The length of search queries has increased over the past year. Longer search queries, averaging searches of 5+ words in length, have increased 10 percent comparing January 2009 to January 2008. The same time period showed that shorter search queries, averaging those 1 to 4 words in length, have decreased 2 percent.

Percentage of U.S. clicks by number of keywords

Subject

Jan-08

Dec-08

Jan-09

Year-over-year percent change

1 word

20.96%

20.70%

20.29%

-3%

2 words

24.91%

24.13%

23.65%

-5%

3 words

22.03%

21.94%

21.92%

0%

4 words

14.54%

14.67%

14.89%

2%

5 words

8.20%

8.37%

8.68%

6%

6 words

4.32%

4.47%

4.65%

8%

7 words

2.23%

2.40%

2.49%

12%

8+ words

2.81%

3.31%

3.43%

22%

Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Jan. 31, 2009; Dec. 27, 2008; and Jan. 26, 2008) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.

Source: Hitwise, an Experian company

New Enterprise Content Management Maturity Model: ECM3

Enterprises striving to align their business and technology efforts for improved Enterprise Content Management (ECM) can now assess their existing readiness and guide their ECM roadmap going forward, using the ECM Maturity Model (“ECM3″). The model was jointly developed by leading consulting firms Wipro Technologies, Hartman Communicatie, and Smigiel Consulting Group, along with independent analyst company CMS Watch, and released under creative commons today.

Enterprises must manage ever-increasing volumes of content and address related challenges such as: mitigating legal and compliance risk; following storage, archiving and disposition policies; reducing paper usage; and more. This requires planning and developing a comprehensive strategy for effectively deploying of ECM systems. However, CIOs typically have difficulty juggling the complex human, information, and systems aspects of ECM.

The ECM Maturity Model provides a structured framework for setting priorities to address these challenges. “Like all maturity models, it is partly descriptive and partly prescriptive,” notes CMS Watch Principal, Alan Pelz-Sharpe. “You can apply the model to audit, assess, and explain your current state, as well as inform a roadmap for maturing your enterprise capabilities.”

Shridhar Rajgopalan, Global Head of the Portals and Content Management Practice at Wipro says, “In today’s cost-sensitive environment, it is important to follow a model which helps enterprises identify, prioritize, and implement the initiatives that give them maximum value for money. This maturity model will help organizations in achieving this.”

The model suggests graded levels of capabilities ranging from rudimentary information collection and basic control, through increasingly sophisticated levels of management and integration, finally resulting in a mature state of continuous experimentation and improvement.

Key features of the model include:

  • ECM3 proposes thirteen dimensions of maturity (ranging from “IT Expertise” to “Content Findability”), across five maturity levels
  • ECM3 provides detailed descriptions of the five maturity levels, along with hypothetical narrative examples of organizations residing at each level

The Enterprise Content Management Maturity Model can be downloaded at http://www.ecm3.org/ under a Creative Commons license.

BackTwounds.com – Custom Twitter Background Service

We’ve stepped into the Twitter Backgrounds space and have launched a brand new site called BackTwounds.com. With Twitter being one of the hottest applications on the Internet right now and growing at a blistering pace we thought it would be useful to add some uniqueness to Twitter by helping design Custom Twitter Backgrounds (or what we like to refer to them as: Back Twounds) for businesses and individuals.

For only $40 USD we will design you a custom Back Twound to help you build your brand, generate leads and look cool in front of all your friends. In addition to our custom backgrounds you can download one of our Free Twitter Backgrounds in JPG or PSD versions.

Follow @BackTwounds to get updates on BackTwounds.com

Coremetrics Impression Attribution

Coremetrics, last week announced the launch of Coremetrics Impression Attribution™, the first solution to analyze the value of online marketing campaigns that occur outside a company’s website. Impression Attribution effectively connects online behavior to the many marketing campaigns people are exposed to across the Web, even if that exposure includes un-clicked campaigns. For the first time, a company will receive an integrated view of exactly what combination of display ads, widgets, syndicated videos, microsites or other online campaigns drove people to the company’s website and/or to complete a transaction. Impression Attribution will be available Feb. 23.

Previously, the impact of un-clicked online marketing has proven difficult to measure, and therefore, difficult to optimize. However, with visitors and buyers taking longer than ever to complete an online transaction or purchase, they are being exposed to myriad online marketing campaigns before converting. Businesses are under extreme pressure to measure the efficacy of their online marketing campaigns, justifying investments based on results and adjusting accordingly. With Impression Attribution, companies will now be able to obtain a complete understanding of online visitor behavior and conversion patterns by tying online marketing exposure to website behavior.

Although the algorithm behind Impression Attribution is complex, the solution is fairly simple for customers to implement. Coremetrics clients tag their display ads, widgets, syndicated videos, micro-sites and other content with the Impression code, which then maps the visitor’s impressions to activity on the Client site. This mapping forms the basis for multi-session attributed metric calculation and analysis, such as sales, orders, conversion events, and page views.

“Users of Web analytics tools constantly struggle with the question of attribution,” said Bill Gassman, Industry Analyst at Gartner, Inc. “New approaches are needed to increase the visibility of how content that is delivered off-site, such as advertising and video clips, drives behavior on-site.”