AJ Kohn

"Like a lot of your personal pieces this resonates with me. I think of these thoughts as dark gremlins. They sit there snidely and insist that things are a certain way. They're just there in the back of your mind, chattering away. Not literally (thinking of Rob Lowe on Parks and Recreation) but ... it's a material thing. I've spent a fair amount of time identifying these dark gremlins, identifying the negative thinking. For me a perfect example was getting over the fear of speaking at conferences. Because the dark gremlins start telling you that no one really wants to hear from you, that people are going to hate your deck, that they're going to laugh at you, that they're going to think you look bad etc. But that's pure crap. You think back to how YOU respond to people when they present. Or course you might have an opinion but it's rarely that polarized and you usually give them a ton of credit for trying - for DOING. Even more though is the fact that you're thinking less about you and..." - AJ Kohn

"What IS with the December numbers Danny? I got the numbers from the cache version of the page but ... it makes me wonder if comScore may correct them or something. Until then I can release my next graph with does tell an interesting story. And when exactly are we going to get a reliable - or at least a consistent - measure of mobile search. It's clearly a major area of growth but is it bigger or smaller than a breadbox?" - AJ Kohn

"You build a whole lot more trust when you say "I don't know" rather than try to manufacture and stitch together some half-ass answer. If you're an expert, it actually helps your credibility because people are more likely to trust you when you DO know the answer. The person who seemingly knows everything all the time quickly loses trust and is tuned out. Hey, and nobody likes a know-it-all, right?" - AJ Kohn

"I have no in-depth knowledge of these activities so they could be as horrible as they are described. But ... the Yahoo! culture she inherited was absolutely poisonous and everyone in Silicon Valley knew about it. People might work there for a year to get a 'name' on their resume and then they were gone. Sort of a double-whammy of awful. So I can understand doing some unconventional things to shed the company of those who continue to promote that old culture. Is it being done nicely? Probably not. But then again, is there really a nice way to do it? Particularly when you're under the gun from 'the street' to produce? Turning Yahoo around is a titanic task but Tumblr, Summly, Aviate, Vizify and Flurry (among others) point to a strategy to capture mobile content attention through better formatted and recommended content. Then toss in the five year deal Yahoo signed with Firefox (new search default) and think about whether Yahoo might decide to get back into the search game for real and..." - AJ Kohn

"Thanks so much for including me in your list of top 20 social media articles for 2014. It's great to be among such great company." - AJ Kohn

We count the visits from each country and calculate the percentage of visitors browsing with JavaScript disabled. This is done by counting the requests for the JSPixel image, which increases the liklihood that requests are from real users rather than Bots or Spiders. - AJ Kohn

"I'm so sorry to hear about your daughter. That's got to be gut wrenching to see her go through that type of chronic ordeal. But your positive attitude is inspiring and your message that you can take action to make things better are important. In the face of so much chaos being able to do something is not only good for your family but good for your own mental health. Support from your friends, family and community is also huge. I've felt that myself. And it is a great reminder that acting locally - helping that person just a little bit - can make a huge difference. I knew that before my diagnosis but seeing it in action - whether it's relatives researching doctors for me, my parents babysitting while I go for tests or a neighbor picking up our daughter for school in the morning when my wife and I were just spent after another night in the ER ... those small things are so powerful. So I too am grateful for all that I have - and I have an abundance - no doubt about that. I wish you and..." - AJ Kohn

"Humm, I don't quite subscribe to the two wrongs model of thinking. And why wouldn't I get the most out of all of those channels? Or decide not to and go with Yahoo, Vimeo, Firefox, iOS and iTunes. Should NBC Universal be penalized for having cable, broadcast, digital and film divisions? I haven't written specific blog posts railing against these things but I've mentioned them in posts. And my most recent piece isn't exactly sunshine and flowers (http://www.blindfiveyearold.co.... Google's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I don't fault them for being aggressive in conducting their business and innovating in multiple verticals." - AJ Kohn

"Doesn't seem like this is going to be a productive dialog. But I'll give it another go. I didn't say Microsoft should be regulated and fined did I? And I'm not sure how Google is regulating online marketing by others. They are a marketing channel that you work to get the most out of. But it's their channel. Just like on TV, CBS might have some rules like - you can't have an ad in the middle of a show that hides the actual show in progress. Or maybe even that they don't promote shows on Fox. You want to poke at Google then lets talk price floors of CPCs during Q4 and dark patterns in their AdWords product." - AJ Kohn

"No, the comment was solid as is, thanks. Your interpretation seems to be that marketing should be regulated. Should we ban Google from marketing their search engine? Sure, Google did everything they could to break up the browser monopoly. What would you have done if you were at the helm? But even with that 'choice' crap they figured out the best way to disrupt it was to simply offer a better browser. Remember, Microsoft could have outbid Google for the Mozilla contract. They just didn't. And you can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink. So if all the marketing muscle leads to a poor experience then those people won't stick around. (See #scroogled campaign.) So Yelp and these folks are more than welcome to try this approach. More power to them. It's a free country. But in the end they're focused on the wrong things, the things that won't change their business or their reliance on Google. Marketing and product innovation FTW. http://www.skrenta.com/2011/09..." - AJ Kohn

"So we should ban Google from doing biz dev deals and exploring other ways to go to market? We're saying we should tie a hand behind Google's back because they've been smart about how they've built their business? Didn't some other search engine have a supposedly unfair advantage with a browser bundle default? But ... that browser kinda sucked and so did its search engine so when exposed to alternatives people switched. I can see it now. A landscape where Google wasn't the default in Firefox and for that reason Firefox never really caught on (money being an issue for them) and no Chrome because that's just unfair to have ... you know, what the other guys have going for them. Yes, a world still on IE6 searching fruitlessly on Bing 0.5. Funny, Yelp may not have turned into the bland monster it is if this happened so maybe you're onto something. Don't hate the player, hate the game." - AJ Kohn

"Right, because Yelp is SO under-represented in search results as it stands. I always want 4-7 Yelp results when I'm looking for a local search result. https://www.google.com/search?... And the number of reviews is a specious argument. More is not better. Better reviews and a better way to find the best reviews, the ones that are meaningful to me, are what matters. Yelp fails there too IMO. Finally, stop focusing on search and start focusing on retaining your visitors and getting them to come back directly. Maybe the reason they're searching on Google is because they don't think your sites are all that and a bag of chips." - AJ Kohn

Choose obvious over clever every time. - AJ Kohn

"No problem. Glad I could help point you in the right direction. Lots of fun stuff you can do with the data and I'm hopeful that some Excel gurus out there will start playing with it and contribute additional ideas." - AJ Kohn