Google acquired a company this week that specializes in visual search.  Just when you were getting comfortable with keywords, it seems visual search is looming over the horizon.  Read on for what this could mean for lawyer marketing online and the internet itself.

Visual search

Plink, the UK company Google acquired, specializes in visual search.  Their first product was PlinkArt, an application that identified famous art work from pictures snapped on mobile phones.

The founders of Plink say they will continue working on visual search with Google Goggles, which is like the art concept expanded — the idea is for users to search by taking mobile pictures of businesses, flowers, products, land marks etc. instead of typing in keywords.

Here’s a video further explaining Google Goggles:

What does this mean for legal marketing online?

If you look at the big picture, visual search is just one more step in a larger trend away from keyword-based search engines, a trend that started with advent of Google itself.

Before Google SEO was all about stuffing your web pages full of your desired keywords.  Google threw a monkey wrench in that by introducing the “links as votes” concept (although keywords are still important).  Today, Google continues to dilute the importance of keyword selection with things like stemming and synonyms.  In the future, visual search is just another way people will find what they want without having to type in the magic keywords.

Visual search applied to lawyers

Visual search is still in its infancy, so there’s not really anything you can do about it now, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see how this could easily mesh with lawyer marketing:

- People taking pictures of damaged cars after accidents.

- People taking pictures of injuries.

- People taking pictures of medicines or medical devices.

- People taking pictures of legal documents they don’t understand.

- People taking pictures of recalled products.

The possibilities truly are endless.  Add in GPS and it gets really interesting (or scary)…

The internet changes fast

Although people searching online by snapping mobile pictures may seem like science fiction, this stuff could happen surprisingly fast.  After all, just think about what the internet was like only 10 years ago:

- Less than half of Americans had internet access.

- Only 6% of Americans bought airline tickets online, and the Transportation Department had to force airlines to tell callers about the internet.

- Retailers selling online was so controversial that some malls prohibited stores from encouraging people to visit their websites.

- People were calling Amazon.com a “money-losing behemoth” and saying that selling anything more than books and CDs online “smacks of desperation.”

- Google was an unprofitable startup operating off $25 million in venture capital.

- Online music piracy was a novel concept brought about by Napster.

The future

It’s virtually guaranteed we’ll be reminiscing in 10 years about how quaint the internet was in 2010.  Maybe it’ll be because of visual search or something else (this wouldn’t be the first Google product to go nowhere), but you can bet it will be very different from now.

So perhaps the big takeaway here is that online marketing isn’t a quick fix you can find in keywords, pictures, links, blogs  or anything else.  It’s a fast evolving art/science that mutates just when you think you’ve got it figured out.  Luckily, that means opportunity for those who keep up.

So don’t get too comfortable.

Since we launched Avvo Pro just five months ago, it has already garnered over 1000 users.  Avvo Pro sets you apart, maximizing your advertising effect by customizing your profile, eliminating competitor ads, prioritizing your contact options, featuring your best client reviews, and allowing you the insider option of tracking your own impact on Avvo.

Best of all, when you advertise with us, Avvo Pro is free.

So how can you make the most of your Avvo Pro experience?  Here are tips, tricks, and quips straight from your own Avvo Account Management Team.

• Track Avvo’s client-generating power.  Avvo Pro allocates you a local or toll free “tracking” number by which your potential clients can contact you.  When someone calls this number, it rings straight to your office contact number.  Why do we offer this?  So that you can track the return on your Avvo advertising investment, and we can work together to measure and increase your influence with Avvo advertising.
• Direct your dashboard. With Avvo Pro, you have the opportunity to access and evaluate the channels of contact we provide.  Once you are logged in, click the “Dashboard” tab at the top left of your screen and peruse your “Analytics.”  You can see who has seen your profile, how many of those people have contacted you, what vehicle they have used to contact you, and much more.

• Control your contact. Avvo Pro also generates a contact module on your profile.  This contact module, located at the top right of your profile, displays your customizable tag-line, your tracking number, an email window, and a link to your website.   As a user scrolls down your profile, the contact module remains in line with the cursor, and always in view.

• Providing an ad-free experience for your profile visitors. The contact module also keeps the focus on you, and ensures that your profile is free of any other advertisements.

• Sync your professional networks. Avvo Pro allows you to link and live-feed to Facebook profiles, Twitter accounts, blogs, and websites.  Your viewers will have more ways to get familiar with your practice and personality, thus breaking down the barriers between consumer and attorney, and facilitating comfortable contact.

• Illuminate your accolades.  With your Avvo Pro subscription, you can create a custom intro for your profile, including an original headline and highlighted client reviews.  Tell your prospective clients about your commitment to your practice, and let your existing and former clients prove the professional reputation you have built.

Avvo Pro is your tool to complete mastery of your Avvo account.  We are proud of its effect and overjoyed at the benefit it provides to you.  Questions, comments, expressions of sheer excitement?  Your dedicated Avvo Account Managers are standing by to help you amplify your impact with Avvo Pro.

Last week we launched a redesign of Avvo.com and several new features for lawyers and consumers. Most notable is improved search functionality, a “Claim by Phone” capability for lawyers and video Legal Guides. In fact, check out all the video Legal Guides that have been uploaded in the past few days!

So in case you missed it, or have any questions, here is a video demonstration that highlights what’s new. Please let us know what you think!

The concept of code ownership is not new.  It seems that everytime I interview a Software Developer they regale me with all the systems that they “owned” at their prior employers.  They are also prone to ask, “If I start here, what will I own?”

Now I love it when people “own” things. I love it when engineers own livesite issues regardless of whether they caused them or not.  I love it when they own the root cause of a bug by relentlessly hunting down the issue through countless layers of abstraction.  But the verb “own” seems out of place when applied to software components.  If the engineer leaves the company, do they take the components they worked on with them?  No, they don’t.  The business keeps them because the business owns them.

Organizations seem to drill into engineers the concept of ”ownership”.  They do this, presumably, to ensure that for every moving piece there is an engineer that is assigned to it.  Ownership implies responsibility.

Unfortunately, the formalization of Ownership also implies the existence of lack of ownership.   Meaning, it implies “You own this and I don’t”.

The introduction of this belief makes room for two dangerous mindsets:

1. “I don’t own that, so i don’t need to know how it works and if it breaks it’s not my problem.”
2. “I own Component X and I don’t share your priorities or what you’re proposing to do to my code, so I’m going to be a road block for you.”

#1 is not good.  If all the engineers have the mentality that “it’s someone else’s problem” you’ve got a big problem.  Every single task will need to be assigned to a specific person.  Nothing will get done on it’s own.  Inevitably, all the tasks that no one wants to do will go undone.  And why should they do them… they don’t own them.

#2 doesn’t usually happen until there are multiple teams working on different objectives.  See if this sounds familiar: Team A needs something done in Team B’s area of ownership.  For whatever reason, Team B disagrees with Team A’s proposed changes.  Egos flare and now there’s a big pissing match that requires a couple layers of management to sort it out.  Now, there are frequently good reasons for disagreeing with another team’s design, but it’s easy for egos to get in the way. Ownership fans the ego-flame.

Have you heard this one? “Its a bug in X and Team Y owns X. So, it’s their problem. I sent them an email, but other than that, there’s nothing I can do about it.” Ironically, this is an engineer playing the Ownership card to get out of actually “owning” the problem. He/she is motivated to wiggle out of “owning” the problem because in Ownership-based organizations, it’s very difficult to get other owners to do anything (See problem #2 above). It’s too much of a pain, so the engineer plays the trump card: “I don’t own it. My hands are tied.”

It may be counterintuitive, but Code Ownership empowers developers to pass the buck. And the buck-passing mentality is poison to any kind of org.

Here’s the thing:  Good engineers will organically take responsibility for the components they work on frequently.  They will identify potential pitfalls of new changes.  And they will be less likely to feel threatened when others suggest improvements if they do not consider themselves the “owners”.  They will also not be blocked by artificial ownership boundaries when designing new features or fixing bugs.  As a result, they will get exposure to more of the code base. That makes them capable of maintaining more components.  That makes them more valuable and makes the Development Org stronger.

——

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no scientific evidence to back any of this up.  But In my (limited) experience, it seems Ownership is a management tactic that, though it may sound great in theory, causes more problems than it solves.

We’re here to provide you opportunities to connect with prospective clients. Once you’ve optimized your free profile, you’ll want to get the word out that you’ve got a profile on Avvo and start attracting new leads. This video will walk you through some easy ways to get started.

We’ll be continuing this series of how-to videos. Let us know if there is a topic you’d like to see covered. Thanks.

Over the weekend Google updated its PageRank importance score for websites. Avvo’s score remained a 7/10.  Do you know your score? If not, learn how to find out your website’s PageRank and what it means for your business.

Three kinds of PageRank

PageRank is a term that can refer to three different things which are often confused.  Here’s an explanation:

1)    “PageRank”

When Google was founded it had a novel way of ranking websites.  Rather than just searching for keywords on a page, it treated the internet as a democracy, where links between websites counted as votes.  Google co-founder Larry Page called this democratic score of your website’s importance “PageRank.”   There is no way to know a web page’s real PageRank.  This score is updated all the time and is kept secret by Google.

2)    “Toolbar PageRank”

Although Google won’t tell you your website’s real PageRank, they will give a glimpse into it, on a page-by-page basis, with toolbar PageRank.  To see this, you have to download the Google Toolbar for your web browser.  Once you do this, you can see the 0-10 toolbar PageRank score of any web page on the Internet.  No one is sure what exactly this score means or how it’s calculated, but we do know it’s “Google’s view of the importance of [a web page].”  This score is updated every few months.

3)    “Page rank”

Sometimes people refer to “page rank” to mean where a website ranks in Google for a given keyword.  This isn’t a term of art.  It’s just a common way of describing how a “page ranks”in Google.  Unfortunately, “page rank” is often confused with PageRank.

How to find out your website’s Toolbar PageRank

To find out your website’s toolbar PageRank, you need to download the Google Toolbar for your browser.  Once installed, just make sure that you have the toolbar turned on in your option settings.

Then, to see the PageRank of a given web page, go to it in your browser and hover your mouse over the PageRank green bar.

So what does Toolbar PageRank ultimately mean?

Some people argue toolbar PageRank means nothing, since it doesn’t necessarily translate into high rankings, satisfied users or money in the bank.  But in my opinion, and apparently in Conrad’s, toolbar PageRank isn’t meaningless.

Although imperfect, it’s one of the few metrics we have directly from Google’s mouth.  And in the SEO world full of voodoo and conjecture, having an objective, authoritative way to measure your website’s importance and your competitors’ is a useful thing.  It just shouldn’t be obsessed over.

After several weeks of Avvo Lawyer Madness it came down to the final round between the University of Minnesota Law School and University of Washington School of Law. And after all the votes were counted the winner is:

University of Washington School of Law

Thanks again to everyone who voted! Lawyers who graduated from the University of Washington School of Law can now call our sales team at 800-441-3596 and get signed up for 3 months of Avvo Pro for free!

Back in my associate days, I would often reach a point with a suit (this is when lawyers wore suits . . . everyday . . . to the office) where it was simply time for a replacement.  Maybe styles had changed a bit; maybe it was losing its shape; maybe I slept in it one too many times.  Whatever the case, I would simply look at my aging suit and think, “Time for a new one.”

Now, buying a new suit was not a venture I undertook lightly (especially when I was working for the federal government).  Buying a suit cost time and money.  So I would make sure to do some consumer testing beforehand – especially with female friends – asking, “Should I retire this suit?”  If anyone even hesitated, a new suit was on its way.

When I found the right new suit (with solid tailoring to go with it), oh it was the best.  I would put on my new threads and just strut all the way to work – or at least to the subway where I would wedge-in with my fifty closest friends (which reduces strutting).  Still, that new suit made me feel great.  It allowed me in some weird way to be more effective.  It’s the old “confidence breeds success” I guess.

Well today, Avvo got a new suit; and yes we are strutting a bit.

Come take a look, just so we can give you the model-quality turn at the end of the catwalk.  What’s great about Avvo’s new look and feel is that it is the product of the tried and true “should I retire this suit” consumer testing.  Over the past couple of months, we’ve been asking our loyal users (both consumers and lawyers) whether it was time for new design or features.  And, rather than hesitating, our users dove right in and gave us all sorts of tailoring tips.

Even though we tinkered with Avvo’s look and feel, it is largely the same old Avvo under the hood – the same well-oiled machine.  But our users did lead us to some interesting product enhancements.  At the top of my list is our improved search functionality.  Both through our homepage and deeper-page navigation, it is now easier to find what you are looking for, including filtering lawyers by neighborhood. Do a search for a divorce lawyer in South Boston, for example.  Pretty neat stuff for someone who needs a lawyer close by.

We have also expanded the Avvo Legal Guide template to allow lawyers to free-form a bit more and add video.  Actually the video legal guides are really cool and potential clients love them.

See this video about trademark infringement. Thanks to our new partnership with the folks at TheLaw.TV, we already have hundreds of videos in our database covering a range of legal topics. Upload your video legal guide today!

I should also mention our new “Claim by Phone” functionality.  Previously, lawyers could only claim their profile by requesting a claim key via email or by inputting a credit card.  Now lawyers, can claim their profile with an easy three-step process where a computer calls you (it’s really slick) and asks you to input a claim key.

Thank you to the Avvo product team who built our new “threads.”  Thank you also to everyone who helped us with ideas and suggestions – we couldn’t have done it without you.

Mark

We’ve made it to the final round of Avvo Lawyer Madness! Thanks to everyone who has participated thus far – making it a fun and unpredictable tournament.  It’s now down to University of Minnesota and University of Washington.

Remember, alumni from the winning school at the end of the tournament will receive 3 months of Avvo Pro for free. Now go vote and then check back here tomorrow to see who wins!

U of Minnesota Law School vs. U of Washington School of  Law — VOTE

Average Avvo Rating:

Minnesota: 7.25
Washington: 7.57

On Tuesday, April 6 at 10:00AM PT,  we’re excited to have Carolyn Elefant and Nicole Black joining us to share insights from their brand new book:  Social Media for Lawyers: The Next Frontier.

Hot off the presses later this month, their book explores why lawyers should embrace social media, provides a strategy for how lawyers can implement this new medium and covers several case studies that demonstrate best practices for success.

It will be an hour of great information and a unique opportunity to ask your questions directly.

Sign up for the FREE webinar here!

Nicole Black is a lawyer, legal writer and avid blogger. The founder of lawtech Talk, a company that educates lawyers regarding technology issues and provides legal technology consulting, she runs the law and technology blog Practicing Law in the 21st Century.

Carolyn Elefant is the founder and principal attorney with the Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant (LOCE) in Washington, DC. A prolific writer and avid blogger, she is creator of MyShingle.com, the first and longest running blog on solo and small firm practice.