Thanks for the thoughtful post. We were kind of surprised that the reaction was not, "Hey thanks a lot for contributing."  Data trumps opinions. Even if one does not like the questions our study asked, the data does answer the questions. 

VisitDuluth is flat out incorrect about the usage of search modifiers "-," "+," etc... We included Google's documentation of same in the study. VisitDuluth did not mention the Facebook data at all.  In private I heard that it's not fair to compare Duluth's reputation to better known places....ummm...that's exactly the point.

Wowie ... That Marty is sooooo nice, giving his free advise to lil' ol Visit Duluth. Kinda makes me think why didn't he get hired by them in the past? Has he sent them his card? Seems like a dead sure thing. BTW, I heard that Marty doesn't use paper...props for him! Could make potty time difficult but hey to each his own!

I have had my own AWFUL experience with Visit Duluth, when I wanted to give a Duluth author and his local publisher **national** exposure. They basically told me to fuck off. Terry Mattson told me he didn't give a damn who I worked for, I didn't suck up to him so no goodies for me.  I told a colleague at the national magazine I write for the long and sad story, and he said, next time that happens, you call New York and we'll take care of it. I told my colleague the day I call New York to get something done in Duluth, Minnesota is the day I quit my job. 

Terry Mattson is provincial and loves being "big fish in small pond." If Duluth is going to become the premier city in the Midwest like Mayor Ness envisions, Terry Mattson's got to be read the riot act or be told to pack his bags and move over, he's yesterday's news.

Because the aim is not to get people from there to come here. It's to get people from here to go there.

Vegas is a much more marketable destination in, well ... pretty much any season ... than the cold snowy North Shore.

Sure, we may love it here, but most people from Vegas ... not so much.

I do agree though. There should be more cross marketing that would benefit Duluth.

Visit Duluth came off as lazy in the report about the lack of marketing in cities with direct access by air to Duluth. Plenty of ways to market oneself without spending buckets of money, it's called guerrilla marketing and takes time and energy and savvy -- as well as taking the time to develop relationships in those other cities. It's harder than simply buying advertising and spending gobs of money on marketing materials, but just as effective. Like I said previously, Terry Mattson prefers being big fish in small pond and really has myopia when considering the possibilities open to him and his staff if they would just make the efforts.

There are a couple of salient points here. SEO, and really any web metrics for that matter, are useful in generating part of a picture, largely in the area of trend analysis. As stated in the KBJR story, the "quantifiable" metrics derived from these efforts have to be taken in a greater context and alone cannot give an accurate indication of the more important qualitative aspects of web content and web-based perceptions, in this case about Duluth. 

Frankly, this is an area where PDD shines! While there may be some web metrics which indicate PDD gets X number of page views, that says nothing about the context that PDD creates and the vibrancy that it supports in our area. When you boil it all down, as Tangier 57 says, it is people!. 

While important, especially for clients, SEO has been oversold. Search engines rely on the fact that people use them to find authentic answers to authentic questions. Google will do whatever is required to insure that results of searches respond to this truth. It's how they make money selling the real estate around the results. It's their bread and butter. 

Waving hands and crafting cyphers will always only go so far in insuring eyes on a link. People who pay money for websites, made by online marketers, want to justify the budget for online marketing, they retreat into a single analysis metric like "hits" or search engine ranking ... web traffic and SEO are "quantifiable" evidence. Truth is, it's hard to assess qualitative results objectively, it always has been. 

I do appreciate Marty's attempts to create discussion and place Duluth on the map in the tech sector. Frankly, I see this as the current greatest opportunity for economic development in our region. Growing tech/creative jobs here is a win-win. Tech workers appreciate the QOL we have. While search-engine placement is important, getting undies in a bunch about Duluth's digital footprint, or lack thereof, is a bit overboard. Let's focus and communicate about our substance. They will come.

Is it any wonder Visit Duluth is skeptical?  Mr. Weintraub wrote "We did this research and created this post to create a dialog..."   

Meaningful change starts with dialogue, not public dialog.  It doesn't matter if the organization is public or private.  

There's no report of aimClear first contacting Visit Duluth.  Step one was publicly posting an unsolicited study.  Maybe the best way to get aimClear's business is by publicly announcing its deficiencies and your suggested improvements.  Most people prefer you at least start with "Hello."

Visit Duluth:  Creators of a coupon book made intentionally difficult to locate because (they say) it is expensive to produce.

Visit Duluth:  Its own website links to a Fresh Duluth video (remember that?), or actually, it links to the website that used to house that video, now a placeholder website.

Visit Duluth:  Funneled extra tourism dollars to Spirit Mountain for advertising when "Terry Mattson's wife is executive director of Spirit Mountain."

Read more of that blog, one of the best blogs in Duluth history, to discover that VisitDuluth members think that the tourism tax is "voluntary" on their part, rather than a subsidy for the tourism industry. (It is a subsidy for the tourism industry; I no longer imagine, as I once did, that it has much positive economic impact beyond the tourism industry.)

Visit Duluth:  I'd like to see its budget.  That's all that needs to be said.  I'd like to see its budget.

 (not so) Fresh Duluth  from PDD 2009.