Posts tagged Finds
SEO Recap Amazing Finds On Twitter This Week 10/28
Oct 28th
Well, we had another great week finding links on Twitter. I also added a new category this week VS. They are two opposite opinions and I would love to know which one you agree with. Also, if you see two articles with opposing opinions let me know via Twitter and I will give you credit in the recap.
VS
- Should You Care How High Your Klout Score Is? vs Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Klout Score
SEO
- Google Removes The + Search Command – Search Engine Land
- How do you measure the success of your SEO work? – Jill Whalen
- Why Google Really Turned off Keyword Referrals for Logged in Users – MakeItRank.com
- Authority vs. Popularity in Search Engine Rankings – Bill Slawski
- How Users Search For Local Businesses + 5 Tips To Optimize Local Listings – SEL
- Why Aren’t You Using Twitter To Build Links – Seer Interactive
- 16 Insights into Google’s Rating Guidelines – Dr. Pete on SEOmoz
- A Framework for Site Reviews (with Examples) – Rand Fishkin
Local
- Google Places Adds a Range of New UGC Features – Mike Blumenthal
- It’s Time for Google Places to Treat Reviews Like a Grown Up – Mike Blumenthal
Social Media
- How To Create Facebook Subscription Lists – AllFacebook.com
- The Social Media Handbook – 57 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs – Neil Patel
- 60 Social Media Marketing Tips for the Holiday Season – Kerry Jones, BlueGlass
- 10 social media trends that agencies should know – Raven Tools
- 8 Great Twitter Tools That Will Get You Tweeting Like A Pro – Jeff Bullas
- 7 Money Saving Ways For Local Businesses To Market Themselves On Facebook – AllFacebook
- Why we’re not using Google+ to reach consumers, so far – GeekWire
- 50 Kloutless Ways To Get Value From Twitter – Outspoken Media
- Privacy Fail: Klout Has Gone Too Far? – Tonia Ries
- 27 Twitter Tools To Help You Find And Manage Followers – Dainis Graveris
- A More Accurate, Transparent Klout Score – Klout Blog
- Klout’s scoring changes incite a riot of complaints – TheNextWeb
PPC
- Heroview – The Secrets Behind a Successful PPC Management Process with Crystal Anderson – PPC Hero
- Retiring support for Internet Explorer 6 – AdWords Blog
Video
- Video Marketing Process Breakdown – Nick Stamoulis
- Google Hides Search Referral Data with New SSL Implementation – Emergency Whiteboard Friday
Marketing
- 4 Steps to Understanding the ROI of Your Newsletter – Bruce Clay
Design
- Rotating Offers – the Scourge of Home Page Design – Wide Funnel
- ABC’s of SEO: J is for Javascript- Site Visibility
- 67 Elegant, Effective and FREE Website Graphics for Serious Online Publishers - Copyblogger
- Five Easy Ways to Improve Your Homepage – Kim Krause Berg
- Export your sites blocklist from Chrome to your Google Account – Google Search Blog
- Google Hates Affiliates – SEOBook
- Opinion: Peering Behind Google’s Privacy Screen – Jonah Stein on SEL
- Google Transparency Report Now Shows User Data Requests – SEW
- Google Invests in Privacy for Profit - Rhea Drysdale
Humor
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Google Plus Finds Sweet Spot Between Facebook & Twitter
Oct 27th
Google Plus got a few more fun features today in addition to workplace ones. There’s a new feature called What’s Hot that surfaces popular posts (don’t call them “trending”), and a very cool visualization tool called Ripples that lets you watch Plus conversations flow out across the network. These are neat ways to track social activity that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer.
Google Plus is very proud of its photo features, especially the instant uploads from Android phones, and today’s Plus update also adds new photo editing tools called Creative Kit. It has basic editing tools as well as filters like everybody has these days.
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What’s Hot On Google Plus
What’s Hot appears underneath new posts inside the main stream as well as in the Sparks area on the left sidebar. It’s a new way to discover content on Plus that makes a nice algorithmic complement to the right-now real-time search tool. Discovery on Plus is now nicely positioned between the ways Facebook and Twitter work.
Ripples: Watch Sharing Happen
Ripples is a sexy feature that lets you visually follow the flow of a conversation. It even incorporates some analytics. That’s much more data than other social networks give casual users about their posts. Very Google-y. Visual representations of data are catching on at the Googleplex. The Google Analytics team also recently introduced a flow visualization tool.
Creative Kit for Photos
Google touts 3.4 billion photo uploads as its favorite metric of the success of Plus. When Android users (who have turned on Google Plus) take a photo, it uploads automatically, so that’s sort of cheating. The photos are kept private until a user decides to share them on Plus, which then makes them visible instantly. If Google talked about how many photos were shared, then we’d have a real sense.
Today’s update gives Plus users some tools to spruce up their photos, which may increase sharing as users get more excited about photos. Trendy filters and Halloween gimmicks aside, Plus users can do much more with photos now.
The editing tools are desktop-only for now, but I’d put money on them coming to mobile apps soon.
What do you think of these new Google Plus features?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
SEO Recap: Amazing Finds On Twitter This Week
Oct 21st
There were some fantastic and very important articles around the web this week. Here are some of our favorites. Happy reading!
SEO
- 7 Technical SEO Wins for Web Developers – Distilled
- The Meta Keywords Tag Lives At Bing & Why Only Spammers Should Use It – Search Engine Land
- Social Signals & SEO: Focus on Authority – Eric Enge on Search Engine Watch
- Google Questions & Answers from Matt Cutts Live Q&A – Sept 2011 – StepForth
- 5 SEO Issues That Can Affect A Link Campaign – Search Engine Land
- A Writer’s Guide to Working With Keywords (Without Tearing Your Hair Out) – Nicki Porter, Copypress
- HTML5 and SEO: New Strategies for Optimizing Code – Vertical Measures
- 7 notes from the inhouse SEO to agency SEO’s – State of Search
Analytics
- Making search more secure: Accessing search query data in Google Analytics – Google Analytics Blog
- Google Whores Out Users With False Privacy Claims – Yoost de Valk on SEOBook
- Google To Begin Encrypting Searches & Outbound Clicks By Default With SSL Search – Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land
- SEO Under Attack – The Google Analytics Keyword Data Apocalypse – Alan Bleiweiss on SEJ
- Now We Will Need To Pay To See Keyword Referrer Data? – Shaun Anderson
- Google Turning the Lights Out on Organic Data – Opinion by Tony Verre – Tony Verre on SEJ
- Dennis Goedegebuure’s Thoughts on Changes in Google Analytics – SEJ
- Discussion: Impact of Google’s Encrypted Search? – Sphinn
- Dear Google, This is War – Ian Lurie on Search News Central
- What Google’s encrypted search means for Raven – Raven Tools Blog
- SEOs Strike Out as Google Encrypts Signed-in Search Data - Jonathan Allen, Search Engine Watch
- Say goodbye to branded vs. non-branded SEO analysis? – Hugo Guzman
Internet Marketing
- 3 Tested Email Marketing Templates You Can Use Right Now – Copyblogger
- Mastering The Content Workflow – Lee Odden, TopRankBlog
- The Do’s And Don’ts Of Infographic Design – Smashing Magazine
- The 60-30-60 Framework: A Non-Writer’s Help Guide – Search Engine People
Social Media
- Beta launch of bitly’s search platform and reputation monitoring service.- Bit.ly
- HOW TO: Get More Twitter Followers [INFOGRAPHIC] – AllTwitter
- 7 Ways Universities Are Using Facebook as a Marketing Tool – Mashable
- The 5 Crucial Rules of How to Handle A Social Media Crisis, Search Engine People
PPC
- 25 Tips For Giving Your PPC Campaigns a Boost – Search Engine Watch
- PPC Secret Weapons & Brand Cannibal Combat with Melissa Mackey – aimClear
Design
7 Blog Design Tips from a Content Strategist – Six Revisions
News
- How the US government and Google will watch you – Elevate Local
- The Fed Plans to Monitor Google, Twitter, Facebook – Search Engine Watch
- Google Hands Wikileaks Volunteer’s Gmail Data to U.S. Government – ReadWriteWeb
Humor
- Matt Cutts Capturing Baby Pandas! – Search Engine Roundtable
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Hacker Finds Quora-like Q&A Features in Google Plus Code
Sep 27th
A curious hacker named Matt Mastracci was diving into the Google Plus code yesterday, trying to turn on access to the new circle-sharing feature, when he uncovered several new features apparently in the works. One, referred to in the source as “Google Experts,” appears to be a Quora-like question and answer feature with the same posting, commenting and sharing features as regular Plus posts.
Mastracci also uncovered Google Voice integration, which will not require phone numbers, new photo browsing options including photos from Messenger, new, clearly labeled privacy presets and a feature like Facebook’s wall, letting users post on each other’s profile without showing up in others’ streams.
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Mastracci is co-founder at a social customer service site called gri.pe, and he’s a former StumbleUpon employee. He’s also the developer of a Chrome extension for Google Plus called Replies and more. He shared his discoveries in a blog post and several subsequent posts on Plus. He was able to turn on the privacy and photo features and post UI screenshots.
The new privacy presets range from “Public on the web” to “Lockdown,” with two intermediate options. They’re not optimal for all users, but the menu Mastracci discovered includes clear explanations of what each preset does. For users who don’t feel like painstakingly adjusting privacy settings, these four choices are clearly labeled and can be selected with one click.
If Google does launch Experts as a Q&A service, it could have interesting implications for Quora, who just announced threading, voting, images and editing to its comments yesterday. These are major overhauls for the preeminent Q&A site, but they only bring it up to par with Google Plus’ commenting features. If Google Experts has the same posting mechanics as Plus, it will launch with Quora’s conversation features right out of the gate. Quora has excellent topical browsing and tagging, but Google’s pretty good at identifying and serving up relevant search results. This would be a neat move for Google Plus, especially considering Facebook Questions’ failure to fly.
If Google launches Experts as a Q&A feature in Google Plus, would you use it?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
IPad Magazine Zite Finds Perfect Home, Acquired By CNN
Aug 30th
Personalized iPad magazine application Zite has confirmed that it has been acquired by CNN. The sales price is rumored to be in the $20 to $25 million range. Zite will not be branded exclusively to CNN and will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the news network.
It is an interesting play by CNN. Zite is a powerful news reading iPad app with a lot of excellent functionality. It operates almost like a “Pandora for news” that gives users serendipitous resources based on inputted interest and usage. Yet, outside of being a cool iPad app, Zite is driven by some interesting technology that could be of great use to CNN.
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Zite takes many things into account when surfacing news. It integrates Facebook and Twitter along with inputs that readers are presented within articles. Yet, Zite is not just a feed reader or social aggregator the way Flipboard is. Zite’s backend is built off of Worio, a social search “discovery engine” designed for serendipitous content discovery. As such, it crawls content as much as it uses direct feeds from users’ social accounts.
Worio, as its own stand-alone product, did not taken off. Yet, Zite pivoted from the search engine to Zite with now-CEO Mark Anderson as an advisor. Anderson will stay on as CEO and run day-to-day operations from the company’s office in San Francisco while founder Ali Davar will remain the executive director and Mike Klass the CTO in charge of research and development. Anderson will report to KC Estenson, general manager of CNN Digital.
“When I became CEO of Zite, I was faced with a difficult choice: take venture capital and race to build Zite into a viable business or join forces with a large company and work with a larger pool of resources,” Andserson wrote on Zite’s blog today. “Despite many attractive paths in both directions, Zite chose to be acquired by CNN. We found a partner who shares our vision and our passion for building an incredible discovery platform.”
To Remain Content Agnostic
Anderson also said that Zite will in no way feature CNN, Turner or Time Warner (which owns CNN) content in any way. The platform will remain content agnostic.
“We see a trend developing here, one that is about the future of content discovery, and we believe that increasingly people will come to learn about new types of content based as much upon their personal interests and passions as they do the news of the day,” Estenson said in a open letter regarding the acquisition.
In the history of news media, CNN seems to be the perfect candidate to take over a digital startup like Zite. CNN disrupted traditional TV news by launching the first ever 24-hour new network and CNN.com has been at the leading edge of technology and website design for the last several years. CNN now has a wing in its digital division solely dedicated to mobile apps, starting with the iPad and likely coming to other mobile platforms.
Zite had a little controversy upon its launch in March. It was sent cease-and-desist letters from a plethora of media companies that because of the way it stripped ads out of aggregated content. It rectified the situation shortly thereafter and Anderson was brought on board to be the CEO, replacing Davar.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Buffer Finds Tweet Scheduling Can Increase Clicks by 200%
Aug 23rd
Knowing when to post content to the Web can feel like a black art. It’s always procrastination time somewhere. But understanding one’s audience can yield simple and scientific insights about the best times to reach it. Balancing work and scheduling is still a lot of work, though, so Web services have cropped up to handle that effort algorithmically, letting publishers concentrate on publishing.
Buffer, a service that stacks up one’s tweets and publishes them at the best times for engagement, has analyzed its user data and found some promising results. Buffer’s developers report that clicks on tweeted links increased by 200% on average after two weeks of using the scheduling app, and retweets doubled.
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Buffer examined a sample of 2,000 users over six weeks of Twitter usage, three before joining Buffer and three after. The study only looked at users who had tweeted at least 20 links with Buffer and 20 links before joining to ensure they were measuring link performance for active Twitter users. Co-founder Leo Widrich says a Buffer developer queried the Twitter and Bit.ly APIs for click information for users before they joined Buffer. They compared an “on-tweet average” number of clicks on Bit.ly links prior to joining Buffer with the average clicks after.
Buffer handles tweet scheduling automatically, using its data to determine the best time to publish for the user’s audience. Other research has shown stark patterns in the daily routines of Web users, and services like Buffer and SocialFlow exist to handle these patterns on the publisher’s behalf. Manual tweet scheduling is an option on many Twitter clients and other third-party services, but outsourcing the effort of timing posts is not a bad option when detailed, audience-specific data are not available.
How do you time your tweets, posts or other Web publishing activities?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Federal Judge Finds Cloud Music Lockers Do Not Violate Copyrights
Aug 22nd
A federal judge in New York ruled today in the defendant’s favor on a copyright infringement case brought EMI and 14 record companies against cloud music locker service MP3tunes. Judge William H. Pauley III found that cloud-based music lockers are, for the most part, legally in the clear. The judge found that “MP3tunes did not promote infringement” by offering an open cloud storage service for music, meaning that it, as well as big-name services like Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive, are on the right side of the law.
The record companies claimed that services like these duplicate files in ways that violate copyrights, that they don’t do enough to stop repeat infringers, and that playing back songs from a locker constitute a “public performance,” which would require a license for the material. The judge rejected all these claims, finding that MP3tunes is protected as a service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The plaintiffs also argued that works recorded prior to 1972 were not protected by the DMCA, but the judge overturned this charge as well.
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The record companies alleged that MP3tunes was responsible for 33,000 copyright violations, but Judge Pauley’s ruling reduced that number by 99% to only 350 works. The violations are specific, involving MP3Tunes’ technical failure to distinguish authorized copies of some songs, given away during “viral” marketing campaigns, and unauthorized copies that were still protected. The ruling found that these arrangements “contributed to the unauthorized use of EMI’s copyrighted works,” though MP3tunes founder/CEO and main defendant Michael Robertson says MP3tunes is “prepared to continue battling for the last 1%” of works cited in the case.
Overall, this is a resounding victory for cloud locker services and their users, though, as Robertson says, “it was not a complete victory[, and it was] not a final ruling,” because some elements can still be appealed. EMI’s case relied on several misconstructions of the nature of these services, and the judge turned those aside. EMI claimed that these cloud services host a “master copy” of a file within their service, so that users who upload the same song are just playing one digital copy hosted by the service. Playing that file would constitute a “public performance” that would require a license. But in reality, cloud locker services store individual copies of a user’s own music, so they are merely service providers, and they can’t be held accountable for copyright violations.
A victory for consumer choice
When it comes to Web-based music services, the alternative to cloud storage is a subscription-based streaming model, many of which have gained in popularity this year. These services are dependent on licenses for the material, though, so if they don’t have the music a user is looking for, that user has to listen to it elsewhere. Alternatively, cloud lockers agnostically host whatever music a user wants to upload, and both Google and Amazon offer services like these, as does MP3tunes, the defendant in this case. Though record labels have accused these services of promoting piracy, today’s ruling finds that they aren’t responsible for the content uploaded by their users, and that’s a victory for consumer choice.
Do you use Web-based music services?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
HTML5 Shows Promise, While Android Tablets Confuse, Developer Survey Finds
Aug 3rd
Appcelerator & IDC’s new mobile developer survey is out now, with details on a wide range of development trends including platform choice, developers’ future plans and mobile industry challenges. Notably, the companies have now added HTML5 as a new option to rank among mobile development platforms, and its middle-of-road showing indicates that mobile websites are increasingly a complementary requirement for today’s mobile developers.
Meanwhile, despite seeing a slight jump back to Q1 levels of interest, Android tablets remain a platform with a number of challenges, developers report. Explains Appcelerator, these tablets are in somewhat of a “no-man’s land” in terms of developer priorities right now, as developers aren’t sure what to make of the overall Android Tablet picture.
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Ranking the Platforms
One of the big questions the survey always asks developers is where each platform ranks in terms of developer interest. As expected, iOS (iPhone, iPad) are doing well, with 91% and 88% of developer interest respectively, as is Android (Phone), with 87% interest. The Android Tablet platform still ranks high, too, with 74% saying they’re “very interested” in developing for that platform. HTML5 comes in 5th (66%), above Windows Phone, BlackBerry, webOS, Symbian and MeeGo.
But even though Android Tablets rank well here, Appcelerator says that mobile developers are confused by the Android Tablet space, which remains fluid in terms of the changing nature of the OS itself, the hardware and the form factor requirements. This confusion is reflected in the historical chart (below) which tracks developers’ interest over time.
In January, prior to Android OS’s launch on commercial tablets, developers said that pricing was the most important issue to consider. And indeed, Android tablets that were priced higher or equivalent to the iPad have not sold well, it seems.
But now, developers see other issues as even more important than price, including the need for user interface improvements, phone to tablet portability, fragmentation problems, increasing the size of the app catalog and more.
These can be seen in either a positive or negative light, depending on your particular viewpoint. For example, Appcelerator says that these suggestions could now indicate that in developers’ minds, it’s a question of “how” Android Tablets will succeed, as opposed to an “if.”
More details on the survey results can be found on Appcelerator’s website here.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Google Finds, Slaps Malware Found via Search Signals
Jul 22nd
Google has taken many steps to help users avoid malware, with anti-malware services including blocking infected sites on the SERP, adding new levels of security to Chrome, and giving Chrome users a warning when they’re trying to download malicious software. Now Google has taken this a step further. After detecting strange search traffic signals during routine maintenance, the company found a way to detect malware based on user signals on the search page. Users who give those signals are notified and given directions on how to kill the malware.
Details on the Malware
The malware seems to have been distributed through fake antivirus software. It’s hard to find if you have it, though, because the fake antivirus program goes by hundreds of different names. Google, though, can detect some of its behavior: It attempts to “send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called ‘proxies,’” according to the Official Google Blog entry on the topic.
Users shouldn’t mistakenly think this is the only impact of the malware, however. Fake antivirus programs often spy on the computer and slow its access. A system with this software loaded should be considered compromised. This proxy behavior is important, though, because it’s detectable. That allows Google to give users a notification that they may be infected, and then provide the user with a link to details on removing the malware themselves.
Google Malware Notification
Most of what’s described in those directions is common sense. Steps include getting an antivirus program and running a system scan. You can check out the full directions here.
Helping Users Help Google’s Self
While this is a kind thing for Google to do, the company is certainly getting several advantages through helping users. Beyond the obvious “making people love Google more,” eliminating the malware also reduces stress on Google’s proxy servers. The malware-generated search signals were likely impacting those servers for the worse, especially considering that Google found “hundreds of thousands of users” that were infected.
[Sources include: The Official Google Blog]
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Google Finds, Slaps Malware Found via Search Signals
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Android Jobs to Surpass iPhone Jobs by Year-End, Report Finds
Jul 22nd
According to data recently released by online job board Freelancer.com, Android jobs are on pace to eclipse iPhone jobs by the end of 2012. Despite what the company describes as “solid growth” in iPhone jobs – they’re up 9% from Q1 to Q2 this year – Android jobs have increased by 20%. If this same growth rate continues, there will be more Android work available by the end of the year, says Freelancer.
Another area also seeing massive growth is HTML5, which saw a 34% increase during the same time period.
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The data for this report comes from Freelancer.com, which serves as an outsourcing marketplace for small business, so these trends are more narrowly targeted than those that come from a wide variety of sources. That said, the data involves thousands of job postings, so it is a notable window into one area of mobile development.
Android, HTML5 Big Gainers
According to the current figures, iPhone jobs increased from 2739 to 2985 by Q2 and Android jobs increased by 1419 to 1702. This places Android in the top 5 “absolute movers” on the company’s “Fast 50″ list. Overall, the mobile phone category has also seen strong growth, and is up 12%.
HTML5 was another area that saw major growth, going from 604 jobs in Q1 to 807 in Q2. The 34% increase puts it at the top of the company’s “Fast 50″ list. A related trend appears to be the decrease in Flash jobs, with work in that area dropping 10% to 3095 jobs.
Also seeing downturns were BlackBerry (down 6% from 526 to 497), Windows CE (down 42%), Windows desktop (down 30%), Windows Mobile (down 16%) and .NET (down 7%), all of which do seem to reflect ongoing industry trends.
The complete list of changes in job listings is below.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
