Advertising Gone Musical

The lengths some advertisers will go to!

Santa Monica ad agency RPA decided music was the way to sell Honda Civics and cut grooves into a quarter mile strip of highway in Lancaster, CA. The grooves were placed so that when a Honda Civic drove over them at precisely 55 miles an hour, the air would be filled with the sounds of the William Tell Overture.

Clever but does it work?
While this is clearly a clever idea, will it sell cars? What does the William Tell Overture have to do with whether or not a Honda Civic is the right choice for car buyers? The ad was scheduled to run in September and has not shown up yet. But YouTube apparently has plenty of clips from drivers enjoying the tune.



Sadly, if you were inclined to buy a Civic so that you could drive the road and enjoy this classical piece, it's too late. The stretch of road has been paved over. No one considered that the quiet neighborhood nearby might get tired of the Lone Ranger theme. :o

The Truth About Links Straight from Google

If you've been trying to learn about linking, or if you've had someone tell you links are "old-hat" or "the most important thing on the Web," and you're confused by the conflicting opinions of various SEO "experts," then this is the topic you've been waiting for.

The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog launched "Links Week" today with this post "Links information straight from the source."

Today's post (Day 1), defines the types of links on a site (internal, outbound, and inbound) and gives a hint at additional information to come throughout the week.

Rather than guessing at what Google wants regarding links or trying to wade through all the opinions on this subject, get it straight from Google.

Happy Birthday, Google!

Google is 10 years old. Officially launched in September 1998, the seeds may have been sown as early as 1995 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford. The date they celebrate "has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake."

Follow the development of Google — who said in July 2008, "Our indexing system for processing links indicate that we now count ONE TRILLION unique URLs (and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day." (emphasis added by me -Wow!)