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Google Caffeine Update
January 31, 2010, 11:53 pm
On Jan 27, Google promoted its social searching algorithm from the laboratory to “beta,” which means it’s now a regular search option. Reactions so far are mixed. Social searching has been praised by those who care what their friends on Twitter think of the new iPad, and criticized by those who wonder how anyone could care what...
Google Analytics Adds Six Languages
January 31, 2010, 11:13 pmGoogle Analytics is now available in six additional languages. They are: Bulgarian, Catalan, Greek, Lithuanian, Slovak and Vietnamese. The total number of languages available in Google Analytics is now 31.
If you wish to switch languages in Google Analytics, simply look for the language menu in the top right corner of the login page.
20+ Reasons Why You Need to Start Guest Blogging
January 31, 2010, 4:53 pmA great list of 20+ reasons every blogger should be guest posting.
Step-by-step Approach to Contacting Link Partners for Authoritative Links
January 31, 2010, 11:35 amStep-by-step plan to contact and convince potential high-authority link partners to link back to your website...including the exact words you might want to use.
Old Street View Lawsuit Allowed Another Gasp
January 31, 2010, 6:30 amAbout 22 months ago, Google was sued over its Street View program by a couple named Aaron and Christine Boring. The entire suit was dismissed a little while later. Now, the Borings have made a small bit of headway with an appeal, but it doesn't appear that Google has much to worry about.
The United States Court of Appeals for the...
Making Facebook Work For Your Business
January 30, 2010, 8:45 pm"WebmasterWorld members discuss how to make Facebook work for a business." (-subscription required)
Online Video Viewing Soared In 2009
January 30, 2010, 10:30 amThe media sector performed well in 2009, recovering $200 billion of value, or 63 percent of what it lost in 2008, online content providers and distributors made up more than half of these gains, according to a new report by consulting firm Oliver Wyman.
The largest gains were in China, where the media sector market value increased by 200 percent....
Intel Shows Off Interesting Way to Access Content
January 30, 2010, 6:30 amAt the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month, Intel had a lot of things going on. For one, they introduced a whole new family of Intel Core Processors. They also had a cool proof-of-concept device on display. This was something they call the Intel Infoscape.
Infoscape is a giant display featuring cubes of information,...
Cup of Joe: Strategize With Pretty Pictures!
January 30, 2010, 5:17 amSo the other day, I was talking to a client about a new project they want to begin in the next couple of months. From their mindset this project is going to be huge and may redefine their organization in the coming years. As part of this new project they want a sophisticated web presence. They read off a list of different social networks and...
Do SEO and Link Building In-house, or Outsource?
January 29, 2010, 10:27 pm
Search engine optimization (SEO) and link building are two of the most important things that determine the success of your website. You may wonder if you should work the SEO in house, or if you should outsource it from the start. There are a couple of situations in which you would be better off outsourcing from the get-go:
You know little or...
Google To Phase Out Support for IE6 From March 1
January 29, 2010, 9:52 pm"The firm said from 1 March some of its services, such as Google Docs, would not work 'properly' with the browser."
Identifying And Preventing A Web Site Hack
January 29, 2010, 8:33 pm"WebmasterWorld members review a web site hack and discuss solutions and prevention."
Bathroom Scale Now Connects To Google Health
January 29, 2010, 3:26 pmWe know, we know: many individuals will view this as an invasion of privacy, or at least a potential cause for embarrassment. Still, you may find it interesting to learn that a bathroom scale is now able to inform Google Health (along with users' Twitter followers) of a person's weight.
No one's kidding around here. According to an...
Delicious Launches New Features, More on the Way
January 29, 2010, 3:08 pmDelicious has introduced some new features. These come in the categories of bookmark display options, tag options, and bookmark browsing.
Bookmark display options have been combined into one place - just to the right of the Tagbar, and just beneath the bookmark count. New features here include a privacy filter, a send recipients option, and an...
Laws Banning Cell Phone Use While Driving Have Little Impact
January 29, 2010, 2:05 pmState laws that ban cell phone use and texting while driving fail to reduce accidents, according to a new study by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI).
HLDI researchers calculated monthly collision claims per 100 insured vehicle years for vehicles up to 3 years old during the months immediately before and after hand-held phone use was banned...
Facebook Wants To Be Your News Source
January 29, 2010, 1:48 pmWe recently discussed how social media complements the news industry, and how a study has even found news to be a top priority of Twitter users. Facebook wants to let users know that it can also be used to keep track of news, when you set up a news list.
This isn't so much a new feature, as it is a way to use the social network that you may or...
Chrome OS Touch Rumors Restart
January 29, 2010, 1:11 pmGiven the way in which the iPad's dominated this week's tech news, rumors about all other sorts of touch-sensitive technology were bound to spread. Still, there may be something to the excitement about Chrome OS responding to touch, as a Google employee sort of set off the hubbub.
Here's a disclaimer: what was said today didn't come near a...
Google Publishes 5 Privacy Principles
January 29, 2010, 1:08 pmIn honor of yesterday's International Data Privacy Day, Google published its five privacy principles. They are:
Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services. Search history informs personalized search, but users can opt-out.
Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices. For example, you can...
Free Cash: Find a Bug in Google Chrome
January 29, 2010, 12:59 pmEverybody wants free money, right? Well, here’s one way to get it: find a bug in Google Chrome or Chromium, the open source code database behind the browser. Google is offering intrepid developers from $500 for pointing out “select interesting and original vulnerabilities.” The maximum award is $1337—no, seriously. You guys...
Delicious Updates Viewing Options; Adds StumbleUpon-Like Feature
January 29, 2010, 12:33 pmSocial bookmarking site Delicious has updated the ability to filter viewing options - plus added a new way to browse your bookmarks that is very StumbleUpon-like.
First up, there's a new display options menu tucked into the top right corner of your bookmarks display. This is for when you're viewing "My Bookmarks" - not on the main page. Here's...
Google Makes Apps Script More Widely Available
January 29, 2010, 12:31 pmGoogle has launched the Google Apps Script in Google Apps Standard Edition, meaning that it is much more broadly available now. Previously, it was only available in Google Apps Premier and Education editions. It was released back in the summer.
Google Apps Script starts in the spreadsheets of Google Docs. It lets you create sheets to read and...
Google Pulls Out Checkbook To Secure Chromium
January 29, 2010, 12:01 pmSecurity experts who either weren't inclined to do Google any favors or actually wanted to cause a little mischief now have good reason to help the search giant out. Google's implemented a rewards system for finding bugs in Chromium.
People who report an eligible bug should receive at least $500 from Google by way of thanks. ...
Customer Connections Now Important for Google Results
January 29, 2010, 11:59 amIf you are one of those people still skeptical about the business uses of social media, you may be interested to know that Google's Social Search is no longer just an experiment. Though it does have the beta tag on it, it is now mainstream. This is something we've all known would come sooner or later, but now it's here.
Have you established...
Polaroid Talks About Lady Gaga's Role with the Company
January 29, 2010, 11:28 amEarlier this month, Polaroid announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Lada Gaga, which will see the pop superstar serving as the company's creative director for a specialty line of Polaroid Imaging products. This was highlighted at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, which WebPronews attended.
While we were there, we had...
Microsoft’s Q4 Good, Bing’s Not So Much
January 29, 2010, 11:07 amMicrosoft saw Windows 7 carry them to a strong fourth quarter last year—but its Online Services division (home of Bing) didn’t see a boost, according to the official reports. Microsoft emphasized Bing’s growth and the fact that their search advertising somewhat offset other losses, but the division still operated for a...
How to Find Valid Affiliate Program Reviews (by Real People)
January 29, 2010, 11:01 amFinding your perfect affiliate program is tough: more often than not this is done by plenty of testing. However the only problem with that method is lost time: you can't test each and every affiliate program that seems to be related to your niche because this means that you will spend months in testing before you start accumulating income.
FCC Writes Letter To Google Over Early Mobile Termination Fees
January 29, 2010, 10:49 amThe Federal Communications Commission recently began an inquiry into exorbitant early termination fees in mobile phone carriers’ contracts. The investigation began when Verizon raised its early termination fee to $350 (from $175) for smartphones. Now the FCC is making the inquiry formal and full-blown—they’re asking the four...
Key Stats Show Slump In Twitter Use
January 29, 2010, 10:46 amHere’s are some metrics that should concern those inside of Twitter:
The number of new users per month is down 20% since its peak in July 2009.
The average Twitter user has just 27 followers, down from a peak of 42
80% of Twitter users have tweeted fewer than 10 times
The percent of active Twitter users is down to just...
FBI Takes Down Cable Modem Hacker
January 29, 2010, 10:30 amThe FBI has announced it arrested a man on Thursday for allegedly selling hacked cable modems that provided free Internet access.
Matthew Delorey, 26, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of wire fraud. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence on each count of 20 years in...
Does the Facebook Application Dashboards Hurt Privacy?
January 29, 2010, 9:35 amUpdate: According to Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook, there is a "slight privacy oversight" (which he also says is "not a minor bug") that lets users view the latest apps that their friends have been using. He notes that Facebook will probably resolve the issue before full launch.
Original Article: Facebook will be...
Does the Facebook Application Dashboard Hurt Privacy?
January 29, 2010, 9:35 amUpdate: According to Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook, there is a "slight privacy oversight" (which he also says is "not a minor bug") that lets users view the latest apps that their friends have been using. He notes that Facebook will probably resolve the issue before full launch.
Original Article: Facebook will be...
GoDaddy Back in the News for Super Bowl Ads
January 29, 2010, 8:57 amDomain name registrar and web hosting provider GoDaddy appears to be really making a name for itself based on controversial Super Bowl ads. In fact, one could ponder whether or not the general public would have such a distinct idea of what GoDaddy even is, if it were not for its Super Bowl controversies. Something tells me that's just fine with...
42% of Americans Have Googled Themselves; None Have Gone Blind
January 29, 2010, 8:44 amA new study commissioned by Microsoft is about, of all things, googling yourself. I guess that if someone had used the phrase “binging yourself” there may be laws about that in many states but the irony of this is not lost on me. At any rate, the study shows that there aren’t as many people keeping an eye on what their personal online...
Tagged.com Now Fighting Spam, Instead of Sending It?
January 29, 2010, 8:07 amIs this a case of the pot calling the kettle black, or a heart-warming story of a bad guy that’s now fighting evil?
Social network Tagged.com has been the subject of many email spamming complaints in its life. Now the company has been awarded $210,975 in a default judgment against a spammer.
In a ruling issued earlier this week, a U.S....
YouTube Getting Serious About This Video Rental Thing
January 29, 2010, 7:55 amYouTube recently started experimenting with renting video content as a potential new way for content producers to make money, which led to the question: will YouTube be the place to rent movies in the future?
YouTube kicked this initiative off by offering a few independent films from Sundance, an experiment which some saw as a failure, but...
Online Gaming Revenue To Hit $5 Billion
January 29, 2010, 7:49 amAmericans who play online games like "World of Warcraft" and "EverQuest" generated $2.8 billion in subscription revenue in 2009, and are on track to pay an annual $5 billion in game subscriptions by 2015, according to a new report by market research firm Pike & Fischer.
The number of online gaming paid subscribers, which...
Google Introduces Click-To-Call Numbers In Ads
January 29, 2010, 7:39 amThe best ad - from the perspective of both users and advertisers - is often something that will immediately let the two sides connect. Google's taken an intelligent step forward, then, by allowing businesses to include clickable phone numbers in their mobile ads.
This should save people who want to call companies a fair amount of time they...
Google Gives Mobile Users a Link to Popular Images
January 29, 2010, 7:30 amGoogle has introduced a new feature for its mobile Image Search offering. The feature is "Popular Images," and lets Android and iPhone users browse popular images (go figure).
The Popular Images feature comes in the form of a link just under the search box on the Google Image Search page. When clicked, it brings up a categorized list...
Google Analytics Annotations Now Available to All
January 29, 2010, 7:06 amUpdate: Google has announced that annotations are now available for all accounts after a phased roll-out.
Original Articles: Google announced a new set of features for Google Analytics at SES Chicago. New features include annotations, custom variables in advanced segments, custom variables in custom reports, a new analytics tracking code...
Online Collaborative Writing: How Blogs And Wikis Are Changing The Academic Publishing Process
January 29, 2010, 4:16 amIs online collaborative writing the recipe to change the academic publishing process? Are blogs and wikis going to subvert the way academics publish and distribute their work?
Photo credit: Tecnologia Pyme.
Academics have long operated within a system of peer reviewed scholarship. The research process is seen as incomplete until a group of...
Microsoft Posts 60PCT Increase In Earnings
January 28, 2010, 11:31 pm"The company said net profit came to $6.7 billion, or 74 cents a share, up from $4.2 billion, or 47 cents a share, a year earlier."
How About A Non-Commercial, Not For Profit Search Engine
January 28, 2010, 11:13 pm"Is it now time for a not-for-profit or government funded SE to be created that could "organise the World's information" in an unbiased, objective way?" (-subscription required)
Business Analytics Gets Social at SAS
January 28, 2010, 10:14 pmIf you are aware of SAS, a company located in Cary, NC then you understand or have a need to understand business analytics. As the largest privately-held software company in the world, SAS often flies under the radar because what they do isn’t sexy. Instead, it is necessary.
Necessary business functions don’t get the same attention or play...
Goojje Launches In China
January 28, 2010, 5:56 pm"A new search engine and social network provider called Goojje has appeared online in China."
Cracking the Google Algorithm, and Understanding Search Patents with Ted 'tedster' Ulle
January 28, 2010, 5:51 pmI'll bet this is one of the best SEO reads you'll see for a long time. Some real great information and ideas on things like algorithm changes, penalties/filters, Google sitelinks and so much more.
Poor Logic: Letting Your Competitors Hold You Back
January 28, 2010, 4:30 pmby Miriam Ellis
Being satisfied with as little as possible may be an excellent strategy for enjoying a simple life, but it's a recipe for disaster when it describes your approach to promoting your presence on the web. One of my favorite aspects of my job is conversing with new prospective clients about the nature of their businesses, their...
Microsoft Reports Great Quarter, Credits Windows 7
January 28, 2010, 3:26 pmDon't be shocked if one or more shrines to Windows 7 are erected in Redmond today. Microsoft released its quarterly earnings report this afternoon, and thanks in large part to the new operating system, the company's numbers look quite good.
Analysts thought Microsoft might report something like $17.84 billion in revenue and earnings per...
Amazon Posts Strong Q4 Results
January 28, 2010, 3:19 pmAmazon.com today reported strong fourth quarter profits that beat Wall Street analyst's estimates.
The online retailer said its net income increased 71 percent to $384 million in the fourth quarter, or 85 cents per share, compared with $225 million, or 52 cents per share in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Net sales increased 42 percent to $9.5...
Facebook Relays Politicians' Views On Privacy
January 28, 2010, 2:09 pmPoliticians are perhaps not the best people to talk to about privacy; they intentionally thrust themselves into the spotlight, and can be responsible for annoying commercials and phone calls that bother the rest of us at home. Still, Facebook arguably accomplished something today by discussing privacy with six politicians and the CEO and of...
Consumers May Not Hate Social Media Ads After All!
January 28, 2010, 1:50 pmWhat do you know? Dynamic Logic’s 2009 Ad Reaction (PDF) survey shows that consumers may not hate social media ads after all. A series of surveys took a look at the popularity of social networking as well as ad reception across various media.
The December 2009 survey of 2000 US adults found that 59% were involved in social networking and...
Google Announces Unicode Progress
January 28, 2010, 1:10 pmGoogle's made an announcement regarding Unicode, and believe it or not, there's something for everyone here. Programmers should be interested to know that Unicode is becoming more popular at a rapid pace. Normal Google users, meanwhile, will be happy to learn that searches should now turn up additional useful results.
Let's start with...
FCC Lumps Google with Mobile Carriers in Termination Fee Inquiry
January 28, 2010, 12:48 pmThe Federal Communications Commission recently began an inquiry into exorbitant early termination fees in mobile phone carriers’ contracts. The investigation began when Verizon raised its early termination fee to $350 (from $175) for smartphones. Now the FCC is making the inquiry formal and full-blown—they’re asking the four...
Introducing the Li’l Engine Certified SEO Banner
January 28, 2010, 12:35 pm
Lil Engine Announces OSC Certification for SEO Companies
Lil Engine, an established resource of information on SEO and internet marketing, is excited to release OSC, Organic Search Certification, as a way to verify and recommend professional SEO companies.
January 27, 2010 Winston-Salem, NC Furthering their ongoing effort to provide useful...
Bing Now Offering More Finance Information
January 28, 2010, 12:28 pmBing said today it has added new features to make it easier for users to search for and find financial information.
Bing says it has developed a "stock and funds pages" which covers most U.S. stocks and funds.
The Bing Search Blog offers more details. "To see the stocks and funds you are interested in simply enter a ticker in the...
Motorola Making Another Direct-From-Google Phone
January 28, 2010, 12:04 pmAlthough Nexus One sales estimates haven't exactly blown everybody's minds so far, it seems that the cell-phone-you-can-only-buy-from-Google experiment is going to continue. Motorola's co-CEO announced today that his company is working on device for it.
According to Scott Moritz, co-CEO Sanjay Jha said while discussing Motorola's Q4...
The Newest Oldest SEO Tool
January 28, 2010, 11:11 amThe latest SEO tool is not an automated submission device or some web page analyzing script. It’s the thesaurus on your desktop. No thesaurus? Better get one soon. Google has just announcedthat it has made great advancements in reading synonyms.
Privacy Search Engine Offers Anonymous Web Browsing
January 28, 2010, 10:41 amSearch engine firm Startpage, and its E.U. brand, Ixquick, has released a new proxy service that allows Internet users to surf the web in privacy.
The proxy lets users browse websites anonymously, without sharing any private, personally identifiable information to the websites they view.
When users conduct a search on Startpage they will see a...
How Search Engines Find Your Content
January 28, 2010, 10:21 amDiscovery; where SEO starts…
Long before you start to worry about actually ranking content, you need to get it into the index. And of course, to do that, your content needs to be found. In the world of information retrieval this is, appropriately enough, known as ‘discovery’. This in itself can be known as a few things including ‘data...
Yahoo Search Launches On Arabic-Language Site
January 28, 2010, 9:51 amMaktoob may not be a site with which many American search experts are familiar, and similarly, Yahoo's name probably isn't something Arabic-speaking individuals are used to seeing on a daily basis. But an introduction of sorts has occurred, as Yahoo Search is now powering Maktoob, which is the largest online Arabic-language community.
Yahoo...
Win Copies of Tamar Weinberg’s “The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web”
January 28, 2010, 9:21 amIf you know Tamar Weinberg, you know, she knows, social media.
If you don’t know Tamar Weinberg, then when I tell you she’s the community and marketing manager for Mashable–the #1 social media blog in the world–you’ll believe that she knows social media.
So, you’ll probably want to jump on this opportunity to...
The Latest Revolution From Apple, The iPad
January 28, 2010, 9:16 amAward winning BBC comedy personality, Peter Serafinowicz, has released a video in which he shows the “latest revolution from Apple, the iPad”.
What did you think of the video? Let us know.
I’m sure by now you’ve figured out this isn’t the real iPad… well I guess it could be as this one doesn’t...
Online Shoppers Have Little Patience For Slow Websites
January 28, 2010, 9:13 amOnline shoppers experience more website slow downs and other problems completing transactions during popular shopping periods when traffic to retail websites peaks, according to a new survey by Equation Research conducted on behalf of web performance firm Gomez.
At stake is the $1,050 that each online shopper spends annually, according to the...
Wikipedia Dos and Don’ts: How to Improve your Chances of Maintaining Incoming Links
January 28, 2010, 9:06 amSimply put, there are no shortcuts. If you want to get Wiki links for yourself or your clients you have to put in work. Here are some great examples of how (and how not) to get yourself sniffed out.
Study: Only 17% of Twitter Users Are Active; New User Accounts Down 20%
January 28, 2010, 9:03 amHere’s are some metrics that should concern those inside of Twitter:
The number of new users per month is down 20% since its peak in July 2009.
The average Twitter user has just 27 followers, down from a peak of 42
80% of Twitter users have tweeted fewer than 10 times
The percent of active Twitter users is down to just 17%
The data comes...
Canada's Privacy Commissioner Probes Facebook Again
January 28, 2010, 8:50 amLast year, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada investigated Facebook as a result of several complaints. Then the Privacy Commissioner made some recommendations, Facebook followed them, and all in all, both sides remained quite friendly. Only now another probe's been launched, and the privacy advocate sounds less patient...
Barnes & Noble Says It Does Not Share Data With Discount Clubs
January 28, 2010, 7:33 amBarnes & Noble has acknowledged it has received a subpoena from New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for information concerning an investigation into online retailers who link customers to discount clubs that charge hidden fees.
The world's largest bookseller said it wants to stress to customers it is not one of the retailers who...
Google Celebrates Data Privacy Day
January 28, 2010, 7:27 amToday, January 28th, is variously recognized as the Feast Day of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Julian's Day. It's Data Privacy Day, too (or Data Protection Day in Europe), and to celebrate this last occasion, Google has published its Privacy Principles.
Google has five Privacy Principles, and does indeed consider them important enough to...
Q4 Results Show Things Looking up for Yahoo
January 28, 2010, 7:10 amThings might be looking up for Yahoo, which just posted its best quarter since Carol Bartz took the reins a year ago. They earned $153 million (11 cents per share) in Q4—a huge improvement over the same quarter last year, where they saw a loss of $303 million (22 cents per share). And Yahoo might have even done better, if it weren’t for...
From Lab to Beta: Google’s Social Search For All
January 28, 2010, 7:04 amIt’s rare that Google gets trumped on news but with all the Apple iPad (insert your favorite disgusting nickname here) hoopla from yesterday the announcement that Google’s social search is now in beta for all to use kinda slipped by. After a little reading on the subject there may be a good reason for this. In other words, Google maybe...
Readers Hit New York Newsday Paywall Then Turn Around and Walk Away
January 28, 2010, 6:04 amAll of the talk of paywalls for online content that gets the bulk of the attention by the ‘press’ is focused mainly on large publications like the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. These publications have international readership and have significant influence when it comes to coverage of the major events in the world as well as in...
How To Tell If Your Interested Buyer Is A Strawman For A Bigger Player?
January 28, 2010, 6:01 am"If you're the master of your domain or website does the buyer's identity even matter?"
SEO 101 - Part 4: Everything You Need to Know About Headings and Alt Attributes
January 28, 2010, 5:32 amby Stoney deGeyter
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products...
Google Rolls Out Social Search (Beta)
January 28, 2010, 4:51 am"Clicking on "My social content" lists your public pages that might appear in other people's social results."
…and the winner of #distilledwhisky is
January 28, 2010, 4:16 amTo celebrate Burns Night, we ran a little competition on Twitter to give away a bottle of whisky (Ardbeg to be precise) along with a Distilled hoodie.
All people had to do in order to enter was follow @distilled or tweet the hashtag #distilledwhisky.
We had well over 100 entrants (including a few people trying to enter more than once –...
Traffic Trends Between the Search Engines
January 28, 2010, 2:12 am"...it would be interesting to get an update on what people are seeing in their stats programs when comparing Google to Bing."
Why Marketers Don't Need to Care About the iPad
January 27, 2010, 9:56 pmby Mike Moran
It's hard to look up without reading about the iPad. I am sure that it is a wonderful device. And I know nothing about it that you can't read and see in all the usual places. But if you are wondering what you need to know about it for your business, the answer is probably "nothing." And that is a good thing.
For all the hype...
5 Reasons Why The iPad Fails To Impress
January 27, 2010, 4:20 pmOn January 27th Steve Jobs unveiled Apples latest “it” product, the iPad. Essentially the iPad “fills the gap” in between smartphones and laptops. One question remains to be answered, is there a need for a device to bridge the gap in between the two technologies? We're not sure yet, but there is one thing we know, the iPad...
Twitter Excited About Ducking Censors
January 27, 2010, 3:25 pmTwitter claims not to be taking an active role in the dispute, but it's definitely applauding developers who try to make Twitter.com available in China and Iran. Ev Williams endorsed workarounds and rejected compromises while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
According to John Gapper, Williams said, "We are partially...
NY AG Investigating Online Discount Clubs
January 27, 2010, 3:20 pmNew York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said today his office is investigating 22 online businesses that deceptively link consumers to fee-based membership programs that charge unauthorized fees for discount offers.
The investigation found online shoppers are unknowingly directed to a membership program seller's website that is separate from the...
Google Makes Social Even More of a Search Factor
January 27, 2010, 2:39 pmIf you are one of those people still skeptical about the business uses of social media, you may be interested to know that Google's Social Search is no longer just an experiment. Though it does have the beta tag on it, it is now mainstream. This is something we've all known would come sooner or later, but now it's here.
Have you established...
Bing Gets Localeze To Augment Local Biz Listings
January 27, 2010, 2:05 pmThanks to a new deal, Bing's results for local businesses should soon get much better. A report's indicated that Localeze, which specializes in local search, is going to provide something like 14 million business listings for Bing Local and Bing 411 to use.
Leena Rao wrote earlier today, "As part of the deal, Bing will use Localeze's...
Bing Gets Localeze To Augment Local Business Listings
January 27, 2010, 2:05 pmThanks to a new deal, Bing's results for local businesses should soon get much better. A report's indicated that Localeze, which specializes in local search, is going to provide something like 14 million business listings for Bing Local and Bing 411 to use.
Leena Rao wrote earlier today, "As part of the deal, Bing will use Localeze's...
Personalized Suggestions On Google Maps Introduced
January 27, 2010, 1:10 pmPeople with perfect memories and/or senses of direction are excused from reading this article. Everybody else may be pleased to know that Google's introduced a version of personalized suggestions on Google Maps.
Can't remember exactly what street your father's favorite cigar shop is on? Forget the last couple digits of a casual...
Facebook Planning Conversion Tracker Tool
January 27, 2010, 12:54 pmThe value of social media to business and Internet marketing is often hard to determine. But Facebook would like to help. Yesterday at OMMA Social, Facebook’s direct response solutions manager Brian Boland announced a conversion tracker tool from the most popular social network. Designed to complement Facebook Connect, the tool is already in...
Apple Finally Unveils Much Anticipated Tablet - the iPad
January 27, 2010, 12:14 pmSteve Jobs took the stage in San Francisco today to announce what he referred to as a "magical, truly revolutionary product."
After talking up Apple's history and how many iPods they've sold and apps they have in the app store, Jobs began talking about the need for a product between the laptop and the smartphone - something that would...
Chrome Wins Browser Speed Test
January 27, 2010, 11:56 amTwo years ago, Google's Chrome browser didn't exist. Now, it might be the best browser available. New test results claim that it beats all competitors by a significant amount, at least in terms of speed.
Lifehacker's Kevin Purdy recently put Firefox 3.5.4, Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4.0.249.78 (which is considered stable), Google...
Internet Use In Hotels Up 50%
January 27, 2010, 10:39 amInternet use by both business and leisure guests at hotels increased more than 50 percent in 2009, according to a new report by iBAHN, an Internet service provider for 2,200 hotels globally.
Hotel guests spent 60 percent more time online and downloaded 50 percent more data, based on tracked packet and session length information. This confirms...
Ford Shows You Can Have Your Office in Your Truck
January 27, 2010, 9:49 amAs we discussed before, Internet-ready vehicles were one of the more interesting themes throughout the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. One vehicle in particular that WebProNews got an up-close look at was the 2011 Ford Super Duty, which the company refers to as a "contractor's dream."
Checking out the truck, it's...
Social Media: What It Is, How To Use It, and Where To Begin
January 27, 2010, 9:38 amSocial media is an all-encompassing term used to describe any of several online channels that utilize the technology to facilitate social interaction through written, visual, or audible communication.
Twitter Goes Loco on Local
January 27, 2010, 9:15 amTwitter is making sure that they are not left out of the year of mobile / local / smart phone etc, etc by announcing a new trending service that helps users figure out what might be the buzz about things in their neck of the woods. More and more we are seeing people getting drawn back to their lives on the move rather than behind the computer...
Yahoo to Be Default Firefox Search Engine on Ubuntu
January 27, 2010, 9:09 amRick Spencer of Canonical, which distributes the Ubuntu version of Linux, revealed that Canonical has formed a revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, which will see Yahoo become the default search engine in the Mozilla Firefox browser in the upcoming 10.04 version (aka "Lucid Lynx") of the operating system.
Spencer shared the information via...
Is The Viral Video “Pants On The Ground” A Ripoff?
January 27, 2010, 8:20 amWe’re sure you’ve either seen or heard about “General” Larry Platt’s American Idol audition, Pants On The Ground. Not sure how you could’ve missed it, as it’s been everywhere… it was even sung by the Minnesota Vikings after they defeated the Dallas Cowboys during the NFL playoffs.
Pants On The...
Google Gets Letter from FCC Over Controversial Fee
January 27, 2010, 8:04 amUpdate: The FCC has sent letters regarding early termination fees to Google, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. In its letter to Google, it says:
...where new options may subject consumers to substantial ETFs, potentially from more than one entity, the Commission has a special interest in ensuring that consumers have a clear and complete...
Yahoo Calls On Grad Students To Improve Internet
January 27, 2010, 7:52 amYahoo said today it is holding its second annual Key Scientific Challenges Program, which is open globally to any graduate student enrolled in a PhD program at an accredited institution.
The Key Scientific Challenges Program focuses on a number of issues, from developing algorithms that make information more personally relevant, to finding...
Yahoo Halts Search For International Boss
January 27, 2010, 7:50 amMost estimates agree that there are almost 7 billion human beings on this planet, and even the biggest misanthropes must admit that a few of them are smart and capable. Yahoo apparently wasn't able to encounter any keepers, however, as it's stopped searching for someone to lead the company's international division.
This position opened up...
Holy Cow, Pick Up The Phone! Or Blow Your Sales Leads
January 27, 2010, 7:32 amby Sage Lewis
You will want to pay attention to this article: "Kiss Your Phone Leads Goodbye"
Delaying your first-dial response time from when you receive an online form from 5 to just 30 minutes decreases your chances of qualifying the lead by 21 times!
Check out our small business news site.
China Won't Stand in the Way of Google's Android Business
January 27, 2010, 7:31 amSince the widely publicized turbulence between Google and the Chinese government erupted, there has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Google would continue to do business in China in any capacity whatsoever. The company stopped censoring search results in its Chinese search engine, and threatened to pull out of China before it would...
Real Time Search - What It Means To You
January 27, 2010, 7:26 amby Sage Lewis
Real time search is the hippest topic on the search marketing landscape right now. Here's a rundown of what it is and how you potentially could use it for your business.
Check out our small business news site.
50% of Marketers Shifting Funds From Traditional to Online; Social “Top Priority”
January 27, 2010, 6:56 amWe already know that 84% of marketers plan to shift some of their direct marketing budgets to social media. Now, a new report from the Society of Digital Agencies suggests that 50% of marketers will shift budgets from traditional to online media.
Not only that, but the highest priority for this newly allocated budget is social networks:
Now,...
Twitter Launches Local Trends for Everyone
January 27, 2010, 6:30 amFor a week or so, some Twitter users have been seeing a new feature called Local Trends. This feature shows users things that are being heavily talked about at the city and state levels. Twitter has now announced that the feature is live for all users.
"Twitter trends began as a way to shed light on popular conversations. It's interesting to...
Apple iPad Tablet Is Launched
January 27, 2010, 5:53 am"It's official, it is indeed called the iPad."
Is Facebook Becoming a Lock?
January 27, 2010, 5:26 amFacebook is getting to the level of ubiquity that is only afforded a few things in this life. It seems as if everyone is on the service to one degree or another. If someone is not on it they have heard about it and have likely gotten some ribbing about not being involved. Very few people leave (although a friend of mine recently did because he...
General Opinion On .pro Domains
January 27, 2010, 3:13 am"I've recently bought a few .pro domains and was wondering what everyone's thoughts were on the extension."
Social Media Meets Online Television: Social TV Brings Television 2.0 To Your TV Set
January 27, 2010, 3:10 amSocial television is an emerging new media term used to refer to a new form of television technology that supports and integrates social interaction, recommendations, ratings, reviews and interactive participation among viewers via text chat, audio or even video-conferencing.
Photo credit: Michele Piacquadio
While the social element of TV is...
Google Chrome Extensions 24 New SEO Plugins
January 26, 2010, 8:19 pmChrome Seo for modern search engine optimizers, search engine marketers and webmasters. Now more than ever seo is tied directly to the live web and real-time actions. Blog farms and scrapers, gave way to mass social spam and vote rigging. Brokering links was safe, then unsafe for Google whitehat seo, and everything in between. Page rank was...
Newsday Pay Wall Nets 35 Subscribers in 3 Months
January 26, 2010, 3:31 pmThere has been a lot of discussion about the fate of the online news industry lately, particularly since the New York Times announced that it will be going the paid content route next year. Another New York-based publication, Newsday, already charges for its online content. After three months of doing so, it has reportedly only managed to attract...
Yahoo's Q4 Financial Results Draw Smiles
January 26, 2010, 3:26 pmYahoo's fourth quarter earnings report has been released, and it seems that people who were preparing for some sort of drastic response - whether it would've involved either pitchforks or confetti - will have to wait for another day. Although the confetti folks might win out, as Yahoo did all right, more or less in line with...
Consumers Shopping Online For Valentine’s Day
January 26, 2010, 3:15 pmNearly a quarter (23%) of consumers plan to shop online for Valentine's Day gifts, with nine percent reporting they will spend more money online for gifts compared to last year, according to a new survey by eBillme and Javelin Strategy & Research.
Javelin surveyed 1,200 consumers to measure projected online spending for the quarter and found...
How to Identify New SEO Keyword Trends
January 26, 2010, 2:39 pmIdentifying new search term trends before they get really competitive is an easy way to get traffic. Here are a few ways to spot them:
First, you might come across something noteworthy in your day-to-day life. For example, let’s imagine Kanye West was wearing orange fluorescent high-top sneakers when he stormed the stage at the...
Google Launches Cost-Per-Call Tracking for TV Ads
January 26, 2010, 2:24 pmGoogle has launched a new feature for Google TV Ads, which lets advertisers automatically receive cost-per-call data through the service for TV campaigns that utilize Google supplied toll-free phone numbers. Google says the feature is designed to give TV advertisers access to richer performance data, which allows more effective optimization based...
New Twitter Stats Highlight Lack Of Stickiness
January 26, 2010, 2:15 pmNew statistics regarding Twitter have been released, and there's good and bad news for the site. The good: it's attracting lots of new users every month, and some of them become very devoted fans. The bad: Twitter's growth rate is declining, and a ton of people seem to establish an account and then never return.
Let's just get the...
Possible Outcomes Of The iPhone Becoming A Non-AT&T Exclusive
January 26, 2010, 2:08 pmThe folks at Apple just need to wake of in the morning to create news of all sorts that could shape the online world in many ways. First, there’s the talk about some profits in Q1 that would make any company happy (The company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share)....
Using Social Media To Get Work
January 26, 2010, 2:04 pmIf you prefer to live in the real world you will agree that the job situation in the US is not getting better any time soon. If there are any political pundit types out there who want to duke it out about the what’s and why’s of this situation that’s fine. I’m just stating a fact.
This reality of the times we live in is...
AOL Loses Key Staff After Short Time Away From Time Warner
January 26, 2010, 2:01 pmSo you are the new unencumbered AOL that has pushed its ship away from the Time Warner dock back in January. You are underway on a new journey that is supposed to reposition the company and put new life in the once iconic running man’s engine. In order for that to happen one would suspect that having the right people on the ship who plan to...
The Pope Urges Priests To Get On The Blogosphere
January 26, 2010, 1:58 pmPope Benedict XVI has been the Holy See for almost five years, and during that time, he (and the Catholic church along with him) has become more and more involved in social media. Last year, he launched a YouTube channel, social media outreach initiative, and apps for Facebook and the iPhone. And now he’s urging parish priests to follow his...
15 Million People Have MySpace Mail Accounts
January 26, 2010, 1:40 pmBack in the summer MySpace launched its own email service called MySpace Mail. The company has now announced that it has surpassed 15 million accounts for that service.
"Adoption by our users has experienced phenomenal growth, well exceeding initial expectations," says MySpace's Rajit Marwah. "At launch we set a goal of 10 million...
Facebook Most Popular Mobile Social Website
January 26, 2010, 12:58 pmFacebook has become the most-visited social network on the mobile web, according to Opera's State of the Mobile Web report.
Unique users of Facebook grew more than 600 percent during 2009, helping the site surpass Russian property VKontakte, formerly the most popular social network among Opera Mini users. Twitter saw its usage increase more than...
LinkedIn to Roll Out Changes to Address Book
January 26, 2010, 12:55 pmLinkedIn has announced some upcoming features related to the way users browse their connections. The company says users will start seeing the changes over the next few weeks.
There is a new browse panel, which allows users to browse their connections by their current companies, locations, and industries. They can also search connections by...
Marketers Identify Social Networks As Top Priority
January 26, 2010, 12:21 pmSocial networks may become home to a lot more marketers this year. The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) surveyed a number of senior marketing execs, and found that many of them have made social networks and applications their top priority in 2010.
Indeed, a whopping 45.4 percent of the people involved in SoDA's Digital Marketing Outlook...
Here We Go Again: Another SEO Trademarker?
January 26, 2010, 12:18 pmThat’s right, folks, you’re all once again about to lose your right to use SEO to refer to . . . well, anything. Back in 2008, one “intrepid” “SEO” decided he’d trademark the term and impose standards on the rest of us. That didn’t pan out, so someone else has taken up the case.
Or not. Apparently...
eBay to Make Changes to Seller Fees
January 26, 2010, 11:51 ameBay announced today that starting March 30, it will be lowering the cost of selling for sellers of all sizes. The company will introduce its lowest insertion fees ever. Here are the new options for sellers, as described in eBay's announcement:
Option 1: "eBay Everyday" Standard Rates
- List up to 100 items a month Auction-style...
Balmer Calls Google's Decision to Leave China - Irrational
January 26, 2010, 11:37 am"Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, in a speech to oil company executives in Houston on Thursday, criticized Google for its threats to leave China after cyberattacks allegedly launched by Chinese hackers."
Affiliate Marketing Explained (infographic)
January 26, 2010, 11:28 amA great visual guide detailing the various apsects of affiliate marketing.
Google Goes for Browser-based Voice for iPhone
January 26, 2010, 10:32 amSix months after Google said that Apple rejected a Google Voice app for the iPhone (Apple maintained that the app was merely under review, a process which usually takes about a week), Google has finally decided to circumvent the ban. VP of mobile apps engineering Vic Gundotra told the Crunchies Voice would get on the iPhone “one way or...
Feds Ban Commercial Drivers From Texting
January 26, 2010, 10:14 amU.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today federal guidelines to prohibit texting by drivers of commercial vehicles such as large trucks and buses.
"We want the drivers of big rigs and buses and those who share the roads with them to be safe," said Secretary LaHood.
"This is an important safety step and we...
YouTube Movie Rental Experiment Fails (So Far)
January 26, 2010, 9:50 amOn Friday, YouTube started a movie rental experiment involving five motion pictures from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance Film Festivals. Now, although the trial run is several days away from being over, it's starting to look like the word "failure" will have to be applied.
Ryan Lawler took a look at how many views each of the Sundance...
Google Voice Makes Way to iPhone, Palm WebOS
January 26, 2010, 9:38 amGoogle is launching the Google Voice app for both the iPhone and Palm WebOS. It is an HTML5 app, which the company says provides users with a "fast and versatile" mobile experience, because of its use of the latest advancements in web technologies.
"For example, AppCache lets you interact with web apps without a network connection...
New Google Reader Feature Can Create a Feed for Any Site
January 26, 2010, 9:01 amGoogle has launched a new feature for Google Reader that lets users create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don't have their own feed. In other words, you can follow changes to any site.
"These custom feeds are most useful if you want to be alerted whenever a specific page has been updated," says Google's Brian Shih....
25 Tips from 25 PR Experts
January 26, 2010, 8:22 amI always love reading what other PR experts are saying, and I think it’s important to get outside opinions and to learn from others. With that in mind, I present you with 25 tips from 25 PR experts. Enjoy.
17 Important Things to Do After Starting Your Wordpress Blog
January 26, 2010, 8:06 amExcellent post by a 12 year old wiz-kid. 17 important things to do after starting your wordpress blog!
Has Google Begun Changing How it Indexes the Web?
January 26, 2010, 8:05 amLast summer Google announced a new project called "Caffeine", which was described as a re-write of Google's web search architecture. Around that time, Matt Cutts discussed Caffeine with WebProNews, comparing it to the "Big Daddy Update" of 2005, which consisted of changes to the way Google crawls and indexes websites. It...
Teens Use Facebook To Improve Existing Friendships
January 26, 2010, 7:46 amWhile parents often have concerns about allowing their teens to use social media sites like Facebook and MySpace, a new study by University of Virginia psychologists indicates that well-adjusted youth with positive friendships use these sites to improve the positive relationships they already have.
However, they cautioned teens who have...
How do synonyms in Google results affect your rankings?
January 26, 2010, 7:36 amGoogle has announced a major change in the way that they handle search results by including synonyms for some words that may be used in queries. How does this affect the position of your web pages in Google's search results?
Facebook Investor Promises "No Near Term IPO"
January 26, 2010, 7:35 amBelieve it or not, the stock market's not looking too terrible these days; the Nasdaq's risen almost 12.5 percent in the last six months, and just shy of 50.0 percent in the last year. Still, it seems that Facebook absolutely will not go public in 2010.
Accel Partners and DST are two of Facebook's biggest financial backers, and at the...
3 Smart Google Search Tips to Hunt for Guest Post Opportunities
January 26, 2010, 7:17 amGuest posting is one of the most effective ways to promote your blog, meet new audience and build valuable contacts. Therefore most A-list bloggers guest post and that’s why if you are a blogger, you should too.
This post will help you to start: it lists some useful, yet lesser-known Google search tips that will let you find valuable guest...
Taking Front End SEO to the Next Level
January 26, 2010, 7:11 amGreat article written by Alan Bleiweiss. These methods that can be applied to any site that involves drill-down navigation.
AOL’s Mutiny on the Bounty?
January 26, 2010, 6:44 amSo you are the new unencumbered AOL that has pushed its ship away from the Time Warner dock back in January. You are underway on a new journey that is supposed to reposition the company and put new life in the once iconic running man’s engine. In order for that to happen one would suspect that having the right people on the ship who plan to...
Google Now Showing Suggestions for "Islam Is"
January 26, 2010, 6:43 amUpdate: Google is now showing suggestions for "Islam is". They can be seen in the screenshot below.
Original Article: Every now and then, someone spots an oddity in Google's suggestions. Some are funny. Some are disturbing, and some are just weird. Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web has discovered an interesting behavior in Google...
Google Reader No Longer Just for RSS Feeds
January 26, 2010, 6:27 amAttend any of my presentations on the topic of competitive intelligence and you’ll hear me recommend various tools for keeping tabs on changes your competitors make to their web pages.
Now, Google Reader has entered the page monitoring business:
For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org’s latest products, just type...
Google Toobar Spying on Whitehouse.gov (and others)?
January 26, 2010, 6:16 amNow he’s an interesting discovery by Ben Edelman: disabling the Google Toolbar doesn’t actually prevent it from sending data back to Big Brother Google.
He ran some tests, with the Google Toolbar disabled and closed from view, and sure enough, the toolbar still transmitted URL information back to the search giant.
In his example,...
Be Careful Who Your Friends Are
January 26, 2010, 5:36 amAs more and more layers of the Google v China spy activity and accusations continue to get peeled back this onion really is starting to stink a bit. It appears as if the victims of “Googlegate” (you like that one?) were not just those labeled as human rights activists. In fact, it has been discovered that friends of employees of many of the...
SEO 101 - Part 3: Everything You Need to Know About Meta Description and Keyword Tags
January 26, 2010, 5:32 amby Stoney deGeyter
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products...
Apple Reports First Quarter Results
January 26, 2010, 3:10 am"The Company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share."
Google Reader Can See Updates On Any Page - A Website Scrapers Dream Tool
January 26, 2010, 2:49 am"...a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don't have their own feed."
Will Widespread iPhone Availability be a Festivus for the Rest of Us?
January 25, 2010, 7:47 pmThe folks at Apple just need to wake of in the morning to create news of all sorts that could shape the online world in many ways. First, there’s the talk about some profits in Q1 that would make any company happy (The company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share). There’s all...
Will Tweet for Work
January 25, 2010, 7:15 pmIf you prefer to live in the real world you will agree that the job situation in the US is not getting better any time soon. If there are any political pundit types out there who want to duke it out about the what’s and why’s of this situation that’s fine. I’m just stating a fact.
This reality of the times we live in is played out all the...
Bill Gates Sides With Ballmer, MSFT On China
January 25, 2010, 3:25 pmAbout 10 days ago, Steve Ballmer indicated that he didn't share Google's views with regards to China; Ballmer said that Microsoft would continue operating in China regardless of recent hacks and a policy of censorship. Today, Bill Gates more or less echoed those sentiments.
Some free speech advocates might have hoped Gates would feel...
Cost Of Data Breaches Continues To Climb
January 25, 2010, 3:11 pmData breach incidents cost U.S. companies $204 per compromised customer record in 2009, compared to $202 in 2008, according to a new study from the Ponemon Institute and security firm PGP.
Even with an overall drop in the number of reported breaches (498 in 2009 vs. 657 in 2008), the average total per-incident costs in 2009 were $6.75 million...
Google Explains Recrawling for Updated News
January 25, 2010, 2:56 pmGoogle has a post up on the Google News blog today talking a little bit about how it recrawls news content in order to provide the most up to date content and eliminate dead links.
"How do you balance looking for new content against the need to update older content? How can you make sure the content is fresh, doesn't link to dead pages or...
Google Adds GeoEye Layer to Earth, Zoo to Maps
January 25, 2010, 2:30 pmIf you are not familiar with GeoEye, it's the company behind the GeoEye-1 satellite. This is a satellite with a very high-resolution camera on it that takes pictures of the world, and Google uses imagery from that in Google Earth and Google Maps.
Back in September, GeoEye announced the one-year anniversary of the launch of the GeoEye-1. Since...
Price, Dates Of First Twitter Conference Announced
January 25, 2010, 2:24 pmA couple of important questions regarding Chirp - AKA the first Official Twitter Developer Conference - have finally been answered. Would-be attendees now know which dates to be in San Francisco (April 14th and 15th) and how much money they'll have to spend ($469).
These facts were posted on the official Chirp homepage today, and the first...
Holy Blogosphere, Batman! Pope Urges Priests to Blog
January 25, 2010, 1:37 pmPope Benedict XVI has been the Holy See for almost five years, and during that time, he (and the Catholic church along with him) has become more and more involved in social media. Last year, he launched a YouTube channel, social media outreach initiative, and apps for Facebook and the iPhone. And now he’s urging parish priests to follow his...
It's A Watch, But It's a Phone
January 25, 2010, 1:26 pmThere were plenty of cool things on display at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month. The Waveface stuff from ASUS was proof of that. Another example would be the cell phone watch from Kempler & Strauss - the W Phonewatch.
According to the company, it's the world's smallest full-function GSM unlocked cellphone...
AOL Hires Google, Microsoft Veteran As Head Of Tech
January 25, 2010, 1:11 pmThe Google-ization of AOL continued today as Jeff Reynar, who used to work for the search giant as an engineering manager, joined the company. AOL's appointed Reynar Head of Technology for Engineering and Products in New York.
We should note that Reynar didn't head to AOL straight from Google; he spent the last 18 or so months as the CTO of...
The Top 100 SEO & SEM Resources by Sam Tilston SEO
January 25, 2010, 12:58 pmIf you are wanting to learn about SEO & SEM then the following resources collected by Sam Tilston may come in useful.
FDA Warns Of Fake Diet Drug Sold Online
January 25, 2010, 12:50 pmThe Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers about an unsafe, counterfeit version of the weight-loss drug Alli sold online.
FDA lab test found the counterfeit Alli has a different active ingredient, a stimulant found in prescription weight-loss drug. People using the fake Alli may be taking three times the usual daily dose of the...
Looking at Polaroid's Photo Sharing Service
January 25, 2010, 12:38 pmA couple months ago Polaroid launched a new online photo and video sharing service called Polaroid Studio. It didn't initially receive a whole lot of buzz, but WebProNews stopped by their exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas earlier this month, and got a look at just what Polaroid Studio's all about.
You can use the service to...
Google, PayPal, Mozilla Help StopBadware Go Solo
January 25, 2010, 12:01 pmThanks to Google, PayPal, and Mozilla, the anti-malware organization borne out of Harvard's Berkman center has become an independent entity. StopBadware.org is now a non-profit known simply as StopBadware.
This change should be viewed as more evolutionary than revolutionary; like before, StopBadware will work to minimize the threat of...
Internet Explorer Losing its Luster in Europe?
January 25, 2010, 11:48 amAccording to data released by the AT Internet Institute, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has fallen to under 60% of visits in Europe. The firm suggests that with widely publicized news of a major security flaw and moves being made by competing browsers, IE's fall may not be reversed in the very near future.
"Out of the 23 countries that were...
Android Set To Be The Fastest Growing Mobile OS
January 25, 2010, 10:32 amBy 2013, IDC estimates the global shipments of smartphones will surpass 390 million units, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.9 percent for the 2009-2013 forecast period.
The smartphone market has a constantly shifting mobile operating system (OS) landscape. In a market once ruled by BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile,...
Chinese Govt Denies Involvement in Hacking; Did US Govt Help Instead?
January 25, 2010, 10:22 amChina has officially, adamantly denied that the government played any role in the recent hack attack against Google and dozens of other firms (with the objective of account info for human rights activists in China). However, another government may have played a part in the attack—the US.
From their first official statement on the matter,...
Google Launches New Chrome Version
January 25, 2010, 9:42 amGoogle is launching the latest stable release of its Chrome Browser for Windows. This version comes with the heavily requested extensions and bookmark sync features.
"Bookmark sync is a handy feature for those of you who use several computers — say, a laptop at work and a desktop at home," explains product manager Nick Baum....
How To Share En Mass On StumbleUpon in 3 Simple Steps
January 25, 2010, 9:08 amAs most of you already know, StumbleUpon made some significant changes to the interface last year that weren’t received very well by the SU community. Besides changing the look and feel of SU, they made other major changes, including taking away the ability to share en mass to all of your StumbleUpon friends with only a couple of clicks...
Canada Gets its New Yahoo Home Page
January 25, 2010, 8:50 amYahoo has announced the launch of a new homepage for its Canadian users (an effort the company says will bring together the "best of the web with the best of Yahoo”). The home page lets users add apps, much like the current US version.
"The Web is an indispensable part of Canadians’ lives, it's where they socialize, stay in...
Google’s Brin & Page Tap Into Their $2.75b Emergency Fund
January 25, 2010, 8:31 amWhat do you do when the economy is in the tank and you’re only making $1 a year in salary?
Well, if you’re Google’s Sergey Brin or Larry Page, you dump 15% of your company and pocket a cool $2.75 billion–each!
How does that compare to your emergency fund?
As many places are reporting, Brin & Page aren’t exactly...
Planning a Customer Loyalty Program? Forget Social Media!
January 25, 2010, 8:02 amIt’s not often that you’ll hear the advice to NOT bother with social media, but a new CMO Council report suggests that when it comes to customer loyalty programs, social media just doesn’t make sense.
While 60% of the 600 marketers polled, planned to make better use of the web and social networking tools, consumers say...
HP Launches Music Service In Europe
January 25, 2010, 7:53 amHewlett-Packard said today it is launching a subscription-based music service in Europe in partnership with Omnifone.
The service called MusicStation will be pre-loaded on 16 HP models across 10 European countries. The service will provide access to songs from all four major music labels and independent labels.
MusicStation will be available on...
Brin, Page To Sell 10 Million Shares Of Google Stock
January 25, 2010, 7:45 amSergey Brin and Larry Page are going to become much closer to their financial advisors over the next five years. Google disclosed in a regulatory filing late last week that the cofounders each intend to sell about 5 million shares of the company's stock during that period of time.
To address one possible concern: This is no way signals that...
Minimalist Internet Marketing: My Personal Guide
January 25, 2010, 7:41 amMinimalism seems to be a hot topic these days and rightly so. People like clutter-free living and getting things done. After listening to a recent podcast between minimalist Leo Babauta and problogger, Darren Rowse, I started thinking about how I could apply minimalism to my internet marketing operations.
Email Users Grew by 100 Million in 2009, 81% of Them Were Spammers?
January 25, 2010, 7:39 amWeb site uptime monitoring service Pingdom has put together a nice list of internet stats for 2009. Most of them are from studies and surveys already floating around the web, but Pingdom adds in some of its own metrics.
I had a lot of fun applying my own fuzzy math to a number of the startling statistics.
For example, the number of email users...
Building A Well Rounded Backlink Portfolio
January 25, 2010, 7:36 amEveryone in the SEO industry knows and understands that most websites cannot live by on-site optimizations alone. After you perform your keyword research, complete your analysis of competitors who rank well for the terms and phrases you want to rank for, and highly optimize your site for optimal search engine placement, you are left with the...
Some SEO Advice For Bill Gates
January 25, 2010, 7:10 amDanny Sullivan provides some free advice for Microsoft's Bill Gate regarding his blog and it's less than stellar rankings in the search engines (including Bing).
AOL Acquires Video Creation/Distribution Company StudioNow
January 25, 2010, 6:41 amAOL has acquired a video platform company called StudioNow. The company says the deal will allow it to integrate a "fully functional video creation platform" into its newly launched content management system, Speed.com. StudioNow will also continue to operate its existing business as well. This includes online video creation, management,...
Content Farms - The Who, What and Why
January 25, 2010, 6:39 amWhile we all like to believe the mantra "build great content" there's no denying that content farms are playing an increasingly important role in content of the web. Here's a nice overview of how it's being used.
Firefox Prefetch Security Loophole - Your Malware Prefetched
January 25, 2010, 6:03 amThe prefetch functionality in firefox is a security loophole. It can get your machine to download malware from websites you have not even visited.
Burns night giveaway – win a bottle of whisky and a Distilled hoodie
January 25, 2010, 5:31 am
Update: This competition is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. You can read about the winners here
We try really hard (OK, not that hard) to hide our love of whisky and any possible influences it might have had in the naming of our company. But there is one night of the year when we don’t even pretend. January 25th is Burns...
Have You Heard Of The Product Launch Formula
January 25, 2010, 3:48 amby Sage Lewis
If you haven't maybe you should. It's a distinctly different way of going about marketing. Understanding the concepts of this could significantly change how you think about marketing your products or services.
Check out our small business news site.
Beginning with Paid Search
January 25, 2010, 3:41 amby Charles Lumpkin
Sure we all want to dive right into keywords, but perhaps you should start your SEO strategy with research using paid search techniques. In this video, Charles Lumpkin tells you why and how.
Check out our small business news site.
Ruud Hein: SEO: Why Google Can't Take It Away From You
January 25, 2010, 3:40 am"Michael "Graywolf" will use #lavalamps and #beanbags in half of his Google related tweets. Sugarrae might curse, possibly.""Matt Cutts still won’t be talking for Google.""the essence of things will stay the same"Just some quotes from an absolutely fabulous post by Ruud Hein. Must read!
Another Domain Name Appeared on My Dedicated IP
January 25, 2010, 2:09 am"I have had a dedicated IP for years. Suddenly another domain name has appeared on my IP (using whois reverse IP lookup). The domain was redirecting to my site until I set up a 301 on my server in an effort to resolve canonical issues. I don't know how the domain name appeared to begin with, since I am paying for a dedicated IP. "
Bing's IIS SEO Toolkit
January 25, 2010, 1:03 am"The free IIS SEO Toolkit gives you an easy way to improve discoverability and user experience for your Web sites."
Kaspersky Blocking Google AdSense, Affecting Publishers Revenue
January 25, 2010, 12:03 am"According to reports, Kasperski is blocking Google AdSense as a result of the false detection of Trojan.JS.Redirector.ar virus."
Mahalo SEO Spam Case Study by SEO book.com
January 24, 2010, 1:40 pmOriginally when launching Mahalo, Jason Calacanas claimed that it would be spam free and that SEOs would have to pay.
Top 5 Misconceptions about How Social Media traffic Converts
January 24, 2010, 6:26 amSocial Media and conversion is one of those questions I think about all the time. The foundation for my analysis lies within the presentation I held at Searchmeet in 2009. It is all about baby steps, looking for small conversions leading to the final goal of a financial transaction.
Google Cranks Up Number of Sitemaps Allowed
January 24, 2010, 6:00 amGoogle has at some point quietly increased its sitemaps limit from 1,000 to 50,000. In a discussion on a Google Webmasters forum thread back in April of last year, Google employee Jonathan Simon said that each sitemap index file can include 1,000 sitemaps.
Just recently, however, David Harkness posted to that same thread, pointing to official...
Goog Tops Search List Of Course, But Numbers of Searches Surprise
January 24, 2010, 2:31 am"The global search market continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with both highly developed and emerging markets contributing to the strong growth worldwide," said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president
OS Software Revenue Up 35%
January 23, 2010, 10:30 amU.S. retail operating systems boxed software revenue increased 35 percent in 2009, but it was not enough to lift non-games software into positive territory, according to new research from The NPD Group.
Total retail non-games software revenue fell 7 percent in 2009 to $2.4 billion. That is an improvement over the 10 percent decrease in...
Do Facebook and Twitter Threaten or Complement the News Industry?
January 23, 2010, 6:38 amFive reporters from radio stations in in Canada, France, Belgium, and Switzerland are going to spend five days locked in a French farmhouse with only Twitter and Facebook to get their news. It's not a lame reality show, but an experiment looking at the quality of news from social media.
This experiment may be flawed from the start. One can...
Android Tops iPhone In Mobile Trends Report
January 23, 2010, 6:30 amMyxer, which is behind an eponymous mobile entertainment destination, issued the first of what's supposed to become a monthly report this week, and its stats favor Android. Indeed, the Android operating system apparently showed up the iPhone in several respects.
According to the report (which is called BoomBox), Android pulled far ahead of...
Cup of Joe: Your Business Needs To Be Like a Wet Noodle
January 23, 2010, 4:57 amAs I write this post, it is my birthday, and there is a White Russian with my name on it, after this post is done. So you will have to excuse me if today’s column is a bit short, but I have a party to go to!
Even though all of the data says something different it is clear that the life span for most small businesses is incredibly short. Yep...
Google Adds "Answer Highlighting" to SERP's
January 23, 2010, 1:49 amYou may never need to visit a website again. "Answer highlighting helps you get to information more quickly by seeking out and bolding the likely answer to your question right in search results."
How to Avoid Bloated Performance Expectations from Google's Keyword Tool
January 23, 2010, 12:55 amby Jeff Howard
Google's keyword research tool is an excellent resource for generating keyword ideas and also trending which keywords deliver a higher volume of searches. But, note the use of trending in the last sentence. The tool can't tell you how many website visitors you'll receive from a #1 ranking. Experience has shown on average it is...
What’s in your SEO Toolkit?
January 23, 2010, 12:55 am
Face it: even if your website is a personal blog on a topic that you are passionate about, and isn’t an e-commerce site, it’s still dispiriting to look at your stats and find that only half a dozen people have visited. Everybody wants their site to get noticed. And there are enough web users that no matter what the topic of your site,...
Directory Submission: Waste of Time, or Great Easy Back Links?
January 22, 2010, 11:47 pm
Submitting articles to article directories is what is known as “off page optimization.” Off page optimization is doing what you can to drive traffic to and create back links to your actual web pages. The best search engine optimization involves both on page and off page optimization. Submitting articles to directories won’t help...
Google On Caffeine: Performance Enhancements
January 22, 2010, 10:30 pmGoogle Announces Another Android Device Giveaway
January 22, 2010, 3:26 pmGame developers - or at least the game developers who attend the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco - are likely to hold Google and Android in much higher regard after March 9th and 10th. Google's announced that it will give away quite a lot of Android devices on those dates.
Google's employed this strategy to build hype...
Big Changes on the Horizon for Digg
January 22, 2010, 3:09 pmDigg Founder Kevin Rose did an interview with The UK's Telegraph, and revealed that Digg has some big and "drastic" plans for redesigning the Digg experience. A couple of quotes from the piece:
"We're making some drastic changes, but they're much-needed drastic changes," he told The Telegraph. "People are going to be...
Twitter Going To The Dogs
January 22, 2010, 2:15 pmToy maker Mattel said today it is set to roll out a new product in the fall called "Puppy Tweets" that will allow dogs to send tweets to their own Twitter account.
Puppy Tweets is a plastic tag with a sound and motion sensor that attaches to a dog collar and connects to a USB receiver in a computer. The pet owner creates a Twitter...
Can Journos Live by Twitter & Facebook Alone?
January 22, 2010, 1:45 pmAnd news.com.au proves it’s clueless
If you read the headline “Reporters put Twitter, Facebook, to ‘Big Brother’ test,” what would you assume:
Intrepid journalists will show just how much the Internet knows about individuals by scouring those social media sites for personal details about strangers and assembling a...
Google Highlights Answers in Search Results
January 22, 2010, 1:37 pmGoogle has launched a new feature for search called "answer highlighting." This is based on Google Squared, Google's structured data project announced last year at the company's Searchology event. What it does is highlight answers to applicable queries within the search snippet.
For example, if the query is "empire state...
A Markup That Could Have Big Implications for SEO
January 22, 2010, 12:23 pmRDFa, which stands for Resource Description Framework in attributes, is a W3C recommendation, which adds a set of attribute level extensions to XHTML for embedding rich metadata within web documents. While not everyone believes that W3C standards are incredibly necessary to operate a successful site, some see a great deal of potential for search...
Yelp Adds 'Check-Ins' To Reviews
January 22, 2010, 12:17 pmThe review site Yelp has been interesting to watch over time. It gets a lot of interest from different businesses like Google who was interested buying it. Then it gets more investment from VC’s when those deals don’t pan out. It has been vilified for business practices and then has worked to make the service more...
YouTube Gets Makeover (Again)
January 22, 2010, 12:12 pmToday, YouTube is rolling out its video rentals program (maybe it’s a good thing Blockbuster is already closing all those stores!). And just in time for the Sundance rentals, YouTube is trying out another stripped-down version of its video viewing page.
The most noticeable improvements are in the video player. The player now offers more...
European Commission Clears Joint Venture To Fight Google
January 22, 2010, 12:03 pmFor some time now, a sort of "Google vs. Everybody" situation has been developing in Germany. The bad news for the search giant is that, as four online marketing agencies have prepared to team up, the situation's continuing to take shape, and the European Commission is fine with it.
G + J Electronic Media Service, IP Deutschland,...
Google Still Rules The Global Search Market
January 22, 2010, 10:23 amThe U.S. remains the largest search market worldwide, while Google holds on to a commanding position in the global search market, according to a new study from comScore.
"The global search market continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with both highly developed and emerging markets contributing to the strong growth worldwide," said...
Do Facebook and Twitter Threaten or Compliment the News Industry?
January 22, 2010, 9:38 amFive reporters from radio stations in in Canada, France, Belgium, and Switzerland are going to spend five days locked in a French farmhouse with only Twitter and Facebook to get their news. It's not a lame reality show, but an experiment looking at the quality of news from social media.
This experiment may be flawed from the start. One can...
NASA Astronaut Sends First Real Tweet From Space
January 22, 2010, 9:14 amNASA said today astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have received a special software upgrade that allows access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the "ultimate wireless connection."
Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made first use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update...
Pampers’ Reputation Crisis Has P&G Crapping Itself
January 22, 2010, 8:58 amEvery couple of months, we can reliably count on a big brand to help us learn a lesson about online reputation management. Today, we give thanks to P&G for today’s lesson:
The conversation starts when your customers say so, not you!
As AdAge reports, P&G has launched what it considers to be the most significant improvement in its...
Motorola Offers Baidu Search To China Mobile Users
January 22, 2010, 8:07 amMotorola is allowing Internet users in China to use Baidu or other search engines on its handsets with Google's Android operating system.
Baidu is Google's chief rival in the search market in China. "Users will be able to select their search experience from a number of providers including Baidu and others, with whom Motorola has signed...
Google Has a Great Q4 but Suffers at Hands of Secret Society of Whispers
January 22, 2010, 8:04 amWhen you’re Google, having a great quarter is not good enough. Apparently, there’s a secret society of Wall Street Analysts that quietly hold Google to a higher standard, says MarketWatch:
However, several analysts maintained their bullish long-term view in the wake of the report, noting that Google missed higher "whisper"...
Hitwise: Social Networks Neck And Neck With Search Engines
January 22, 2010, 7:30 amAs a group, search engines appear to be in the process of losing bragging rights in Australia. Social networking sites and forums (also taken as a group) topped search engines in terms of market share over Christmas and are poised to assume the lead on a permanent basis.
Hitwise's Alan Long wrote this morning, "The chart below confirms...
Twitter's Suggested Users Now More Personalized
January 22, 2010, 7:15 amWe knew it was coming. It was only a matter of when. Back in November, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told a crowd at a conference in Malaysia that the current suggested users list would be going away, and that it would be replaced by something "more programmatically chosen, something that actually delivers more relevant suggestions."...
How Voices.com Increased Their Conversion Rate by Over 400%
January 22, 2010, 6:24 amA 400% increase was obtained from a total of eleven experiments, which were carried out at five different stages of the conversion funnel. Some of the changes made were very specific to Voices.com’s business, but others tend to work for most businesses.
Yelp Gives Its Reviews a Location Twist
January 22, 2010, 5:32 amThe review site Yelp has been interesting to watch over time. It gets a lot of interest from different businesses like Google who was interested buying it. Then it gets more investment from VC’s when those deals don’t pan out. It has been vilified for business practices and then has worked to make the service more ‘balanced’ as well....
Social Network Visitors In Australia Briefly Overtake Search Engines
January 22, 2010, 4:11 am"during the week of Christmas (week ending 26 December 2009) the Social Networking and Forum industry category overtook Search Engines share of visits for the very first time."
Using Firebug for SEO
January 22, 2010, 4:07 am
Firebug is a Firefox plugin that lets you inspect the code on a webpage, giving you a quick way to check if best practice, SEO-friendly coding has been used. The ability to edit page code and content means you can create ‘before and after’ images of changes that you suggest to a site.
Something that I didn’t mention in the...
Rankings, Competitors and Analytics in One
January 21, 2010, 11:40 pmby Manoj Jasra
Search Engine rankings may not be as meaningful as they once were, however they still do hold some value, and if they are combined with things like competitive data and web analytics, search engine rankings can be quite useful. We have had our share of demos of search engine ranking software over the years, but the latest one...
C Level Social Media Action from Ted Rubin
January 21, 2010, 10:30 pmI have been talking more to the people who are doing the work of social media so the readers of Marketing Pilgrim can step back from the news and the theory to get some feet on the street perspective. More and more those feet on the street are C level executives who are embracing social media to brand themselves and their companies. Kent Huffman...
The art of localization
January 21, 2010, 9:53 pm
There’s an old adage in international marketing circles that says to go global, businesses really have to think local.
Apple recently launched its ubiquitously popular iPhone in China and after more than two months, it had shifted a mere 5,000 handsets. Whilst it is a product that will be unaffordable to many people in China, in a country of...
How do Majestic and LinkScape get their raw data?
January 21, 2010, 7:53 pmI'm not trying to create a reputation management nightmare for SEOmoz by submitting this pamphlet with a title like "Why LinkScape and OpenSiteExplorer must die", but both tools would certainly deserve it. Under the hood they're downright shady. Sorry for being that blunt.
13 Tips for Getting More ReTweets
January 21, 2010, 3:39 pmHow to create snowball effect with your Tweet and get plenty of Retweets
Wall Street Turns Nose Up At Google Earnings Report
January 21, 2010, 3:24 pmGoogle's latest earnings report is out, and the search giant did well during the fourth quarter of 2009, beating analysts' expectations. The unfortunate thing (at least for shareholders) is that a lot of people must have wanted it to do better still, because the stock has taken a bit of a plunge in after-hours trading.
Let's start with the...
Facebook Apps and Games Dashboards On the Way
January 21, 2010, 3:17 pmFacebook will be launching the Games Dashboard and the Applications Dashboard in the coming weeks. The company says these will make it easier for users to interact with their apps, and will provide new communication channels from the home page.
"Once launched to users, the dashboards will serve as a personalized destination on Facebook for...
Shipping Sites See Surge In Traffic In December
January 21, 2010, 3:15 pmRetail sites, shipping sites, and greeting cards sites all saw surges in traffic in December due to the holiday season, according to a new report from comScore.
"December proved to be a strong month for the retail category with Tuesday, Dec. 15 ranking as the heaviest online spending day of the year - and of all time - at $913 million,"...
AdWords Adds Targeting for Mobiles with Full Browsers
January 21, 2010, 3:09 pmWhile Google has been trying long and hard to corner the mobile search market as much as it has the landline one, they still have a lot to learn about mobile search advertising. Just yesterday, they added the option for AdWords advertisers to target only mobile users with full browsers, such as the iPhone and Android offer.
Advertisers will also...
Watch This: Flexible Notebooks, TVs, and Smartphones
January 21, 2010, 2:46 pmOne of the coolest things the WebProNews crew saw at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas was the proof of concept display set up by tech company ASUS. On display was what is being referred to as Waveface technology.
In a pamphlet handed out at the show, ASUS says it believes that the future of information technology will be rooted...
Facebook's 2009 Scorecard Shows Huge Gains
January 21, 2010, 2:05 pmSimply put, Facebook had a terrific 2009. This afternoon, comScore provided some statistics that cover the entire year, and the easiest way to sum them up is by saying that double- or triple-digit growth occurred in an impressive eight out of ten categories.
According to comScore, the total number of unique visitors to Facebook increased...
YouTube Makes Changes to Where Users Spend Most Time
January 21, 2010, 1:25 pmYouTube has unveiled a new version of its video pages. They are not rolled out as the default at this point, but users can opt-in to view them in the new format (they can easily opt out as well).
"In the coming weeks, we'll be eager to hear what the community thinks and, as with many things in this newly designed user experience, we'll...
Gmail: Now Serving Ads Based on Other Emails
January 21, 2010, 12:46 pmIf you’ve used Gmail, you’ve probably noticed the ads running along the right-hand side of the screen when viewing an email. And you’ve probably noticed that these ads . . . well, sometimes they’re not to relevant to you, the email, or . . . pretty much anything else.
Gmail is admitting their shortcoming—and...
Street View Spreads To Denmark, Sweden
January 21, 2010, 12:22 pmGoogle Street View has taken in a couple more countries. Today, coverage of Denmark and Sweden was introduced, and there are new photos of many especially interesting places in England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and other areas, as well.
The pics of Denmark and Sweden are more or less standard Street View fare - high-resolution shots (with...
Coca Cola Teaming Up With Posterous For NCAA B-Ball Tournament Event
January 21, 2010, 11:31 amWhen I saw this ‘announcement’ I really wanted to check into what was going on because it involved a brand I have been a lifelong fanatic of (Coca Cola) and one that I have recently started to really enjoy, Posterous.
While I sometimes wonder why people get so attached to brands and think it’s a little weird, I have to admit...
Twitter Not Ready For IPO Fortunes
January 21, 2010, 11:27 am"We’ve raised all this money. We’ve created this global brand…Now we have to go build the business that lives up to that valuation."
Twitter COO, Dick Costolo, January 20, 2010
And that, my friend, is why we won’t see a Twitter IPO this year. That, and this really obscure New Yorker reference:
“My view of...
New York Times Releases Details Of Online Payment Model
January 21, 2010, 11:24 amAfter a long debate, the New York Times has officially settled on an online pay model and and implementation timeline. The meter system will be introduced at the beginning of next year.
The model will allow users to access a certain number of articles free each month. After the set viewing threshold, users will be required to pay. Print...
Mozilla Says New Firefox 20% Faster Than Last Version
January 21, 2010, 11:22 amMozilla has launched the latest version of its popular Firefox web browser - version 3.6. They say this version is a whopping 20% faster than version 3.5. New features in Firefox 3.6 include:
Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart
...
Star Trek Online Has People Tweeting In Klingon
January 21, 2010, 11:20 amTwitter…the final frontier. These are the voyages of game-maker Atari. Its 2-month mission: to explore strange new social networks, to seek out new geeks and new game players, to boldly go where no ad campaign has gone before!
[Cue intro]
If you’re a Trekkie, you’re probably already well aware of the pending February 2nd launch...
YouTube Renting Sundance Film Festival Movies
January 21, 2010, 11:17 amAccording to the YouTube blog, YouTube has partnered with the Sundance Film Festival to make five films from the 2010 and 2009 festivals available for rent for U.S. users on YouTube starting this Friday and running through Sunday, January 31.
These are early days and in the coming weeks we'll also invite a small group of partners across...
ICANN Urges Adoption Of IPv6
January 21, 2010, 10:12 amThe available number of unallocated Internet addresses using the older IPv4 protocol has dropped below 10 percent, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
ICANN says there are just 24 address blocks (each block is about 16-million IP addresses) that it has not yet allocated to the Regional Internet Registries...
Facebook Page Owners Getting More Stats
January 21, 2010, 10:07 amIf you run a Facebook Page, you may be very interested in some new features that are rolling out for admins. Eric Eldon at Inside Facebook has discovered that some admins are starting to see impression counts for each post, as well as the number of likes and comments for each impression.
Eldon spoke with BrandGlue.com's Jeff Widman , who is one...
US Government Wants China to Investigate Google Attack
January 21, 2010, 9:31 amUpdate: In a speech today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called upon China to investigate the attacks on Google and the State Department will reportedly file "a formal protest over the complaints."
Original Article: Google may try to continue with operations in China, even if it shuts its search engine down due to...
New Data on Twitter Usage Can Strengthen Your Twitter Outreach
January 21, 2010, 9:23 amby Jennifer Laycock
HubSpot has released their Third Annual State of the Twittersphere report and for those of us who keep tabs on Twitter from both the marketing and social interaction perspective the results are interesting. HubSpot analyzed the more than 5 million Twitter accounts and 6 million Tweets that have been collected by Twitter...
GOOG Q4 Just In. Surprise: Google Continues to Print Money
January 21, 2010, 9:21 am"Revenues for the full year ended up being $23.65 billion, up from $21.8 billion in 2008. Net income for 2009 was $6.5 billion."
Amazon Opens Kindle to Third-Party Apps
January 21, 2010, 9:09 amAmazon announced that it is inviting software developers to build and upload "active content" that will be available in the Kindle Store. In other words, look for something like an app store for the Kindle in the future.
The company is releasing a new Kindle Development Kit, which gives developers access to APIs, tools, and...
Hulu (Again) Considers Monthly Fee
January 21, 2010, 8:51 amHow much is the experience of watching certain old shows online worth to the average person? Well, Hulu's hoping the answer is "at least $5 per month." A new report indicates that the site might try to charge a monthly fee for access to episodes that aired a while ago.
Dawn C. Chmielewski and Alex Pham wrote this morning,...
84% of Marketers to Shift Portion of Direct Marketing Budgets to Social Media
January 21, 2010, 8:31 amAccording to its 7th annual survey, Alterian suggests that 66% of marketers plan to invest in social media over the next 12 months, but only 36% plan to monitor and analyze the success–or failure–of their efforts.
In fact, when you look at the breakdown, 40% of the 1,000 marketers surveyed plan to steal 20% or more of their traditional...
SEO being trademarked, AGAIN!?!
January 21, 2010, 8:07 amWell peeps... it's that time again! It seems that Jason Gambert has competition in the race to trademark the term; SEO... Give it a read.... An interesting tale for sure.
Twitter…The Final Frontier for Star Trek Online’s Marketing Campaign
January 21, 2010, 8:03 amTwitter…the final frontier. These are the voyages of game-maker Atari. Its 2-month mission: to explore strange new social networks, to seek out new geeks and new game players, to boldly go where no ad campaign has gone before!
[Cue intro]
If you’re a Trekkie, you’re probably already well aware of the pending February 2nd launch...
Nokia Now Offering Free Map Navigation
January 21, 2010, 7:53 amNokia said today it's releasing a new version of Ovi Maps for its smartphones that includes walking and driving navigation for free.
The move by Nokia to offer free navigation on its smartphones is widely seen as a way for the handset giant to boost sales and better compete with the likes of Google, which already offers free Google Maps...
Google Turns to Your Past Emails to Make Ads More Relevant
January 21, 2010, 7:49 amGoogle has made some changes to the way ads shown to Gmail users are selected. If you use the service, you have probably noticed that Google often shows ads that are somehow related to the content of whatever piece of email you are currently reading. If you have noticed this, you have probably also noticed that sometimes the ads don't seem to have...
Facebook Gets Into Customized Data Centers
January 21, 2010, 7:45 amIt's always a big deal when a company like Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft begins to build another data center; the move proves that they've got a fair amount of cash on hand and are growing at an impressive rate. More significant, though, may be the idea of a company first getting into the DIY data center business, and Facebook appears to have...
Will YouTube Be the Place to Rent Movies?
January 21, 2010, 7:33 amYouTube has made a couple of big announcements. First of all, they are going to start renting movies. They are kicking off this initiative by partnering with the Sundance Film Festival, making five films from 2010 and 2009 available for rent for U.S. users. This starts Friday and will run through Sunday January 31.
In addition to those five films,...
How To: Get Your Twitter Account Suspended Or Banned
January 21, 2010, 7:32 amSeems the person in charge of Twitter’s suspension button has been a little trigger happy lately. You have all seen the messages of panic flow through the streams just as I have. With all the spammers still busy tweeting away, the Twitter staff must have something that is triggering these suspensions. Makes you wonder what each suspended user...
Get Your Breadcrumbs in Google for More Links in Results
January 21, 2010, 6:59 amLast summer it was discovered that Google was testing breadcrumbs in search results (breadcrumbs being the hierarchical display commonly used in site navigation. For example: Home Page>Product Page>Product A Page). Then in mid-November, Google announced that it was rolling out the use of breadcrumbs in search results on a global basis. What...
SEO 101 Common Mistakes
January 21, 2010, 6:53 amIf you’re a web designer who thinks that “good CSS = SEO”, a writer who thinks that “good content = SEO” or a developer who just thinks “SEO = bullshit” then here are a few pitfalls to bear in mind if you’re considering using SEO as a way to bring your products to market.
Oracle's Sun Microsystems Acquisition Approved by EU
January 21, 2010, 6:47 amUpdate: The European Commission has reportedly approved Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Now the deal only needs approval from Chinese and Russian regulators.
Original Article: Oracle is acquiring Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in cash at a rate of $9.50 per share in cash.
"We expect this acquisition to be accretive to...
New Software for Facebook Pointed at Hackers and Spammers
January 21, 2010, 5:54 amThe complaints pile up daily about the amount of spam and malware that proliferates the social media world. It even reaches the highest levels such as the recent takeover of the FCC chairman’s Facebook account that resulted in e-mails going out to all of his “friends”. While I know I shouldn’t, I have to laugh at that one. Maybe that’s...
SeoQuake 0.4.2 for Google Chrome is released!
January 21, 2010, 5:22 amGood news! Those who use Google Chrome can now enjoy all the awesomeness of the best SEO plugin!
YouTube Video Rentals on Tap
January 21, 2010, 5:21 amYouTube is always on the prowl to find ways to make money off the gazillion gaziggawatts of video that it already has and is always collecting. As with most online services this quest for revenue is an ongoing battle that requires considerable creativity as well as a lot of experimentation. On Friday YouTube will roll out its online video rental...
US calls for China Google Probe
January 21, 2010, 3:33 am"The US has called on Beijing to investigate the recent cyber attacks on Google, which have prompted the search giant to threaten to leave China."
YouTube Experiments With HTML5 Supported Videos
January 21, 2010, 2:01 am"Our support for HTML5 is an early experiment, and there are some limitations."
Yahoo Search Marketing Adds Network Distribution Attribute
January 21, 2010, 1:40 amDo I need to know Blackhat SEO?
January 21, 2010, 1:13 amRishi Lakhani asks the question of a group of well known SEO's - brilliantly written and a great list of Black Hat SEO resources for the curious bookmarker...
YouTube Opens Movie Rental Service
January 21, 2010, 12:00 am"Video-sharing site YouTube is taking its first steps into the online movie rental business."
Opera Buys Mobile Ad Startup AdMarvel For $8M In Cash Plus A $15M Earn
January 20, 2010, 10:26 pm"...Opera Software announced that it has agreed to acquire AdMarvel, a small privately-held mobile advertising company based in San Mateo, California."
Press Release Websites for SEO
January 20, 2010, 9:46 pm
Press release websites can be one of many search engine optimization tactics for your website. They give you back links, and will reach people that you wouldn’t reach otherwise. There are a number of paid websites like PR.com, Marketwire, and PRweb. Just as an example, PRweb (shown in the first screen shot) offers two levels of visibility,...
24 Hours With Google's Nexus One
January 20, 2010, 7:26 pmby Miriam Ellis
Tech reviewers are praising the Nexus One and tech reviewers are bashing the Nexus One. Predictable, of course, but I'd like to bring a different perspective to the rollout of Google's headlining smart phone.
Are you a sophisticated tech reviewer? I'm sure not. In point of fact, buying the Nexus One yesterday represented my...
Bing Adds News and Current Trends to Auto-Suggest
January 20, 2010, 4:28 pm"...recently incorporated breaking news and hot trending queries within autosuggest. Updated every 15 minutes, trending queries balance timeliness and relevance to connect you with the most prominent or topical events happening now."
Motorola Slates 20-30 Android Phones For 2010 Releases
January 20, 2010, 3:26 pmPeople who like to try new cell phones on a regular basis should brace themselves; this year, Motorola's going to do its best to make it rain Android devices. In an interview today, one exec committed to releasing something like two dozen smartphones based on the mobile operating system.
Spiros Nikolakopoulos, Vice President of Mobile...
eBay Sees 16% Revenue Increase for the Fourth Quarter
January 20, 2010, 3:18 pmeBay has reported its financial results for the fourth quarter, and with revenue for the quarter at $2.4 billion, up 16% from the same period in 2008. That includes revenue of $112.0 million from Skype for the period that eBay fully owned it. Excluding Skype from the fourth quarter of 2008 and the fourth quarter of 2009, revenue growth would have...
Boston Logan Airport Offering Free WiFi
January 20, 2010, 3:05 pmThe Massachusetts Port Authority Board has voted to allow free WiFi for travelers at the Boston Logan International Airport.
"One of the most frequently asked questions from our customers is: 'Why don't you have free WiFi at Logan?' said Thomas J. Kinton Jr., CEO & Executive Director of Massport. "Well, we are pleased to be able to...
How Do You Get Breadcrumbs in Google Results?
January 20, 2010, 2:42 pmLast summer it was discovered that Google was testing breadcrumbs in search results (breadcrumbs being the hierarchical display commonly used in site navigation. For example: Home Page>Product Page>Product A Page). Then in mid-November, Google announced that it was rolling out the use of breadcrumbs in search results on a global basis.
Do...
Video Advertising Takes to the Highway
January 20, 2010, 1:40 pmIf you're interested in new trends in advertising, you may be interested in the possibility that you will be seeing trucks driving around playing full HD videos. Hopefully you won't be so interested that you stop paying attention to the road.
Flick Studio is making these trucks with the hopes that companies will be interested in purchasing them...
Google Narrows Down Mobile Ad Targeting
January 20, 2010, 1:13 pmGoogle announced that it is now making sure that ads linking to mobile app downloads automatically appear only on devices that actually offer those apps. In addition, the ads will display a "download" link rather than a URL.
"Simply include 'itunes.apple.com/' or 'market.android.com/' followed by the app name in the ad's visible...
Broadband Users Less Likely To Abandon Job Search
January 20, 2010, 12:49 pmAmericans who use the Internet are more likely to continue active job searches and less likely to drop out of the labor force than those without Internet access, especially among those who user broadband services, according to a new study by the Phoenix Center.
The study found broadband Internet users are at east 50 percent less likely to give up...
Boing Boing Bing: Was Bing Up or Down for Dec?
January 20, 2010, 12:46 pmTwo out of three online measurement firms agree: Bing lost ground in December. Experian Hitwise and Nielsen saw Bing’s search share decrease from November, while comScore saw it grow.
comScore saw Bing grow 4% from 10.3% to 10.7% (and Yahoo, Ask & the rest lost some). Hitwise, however, reported that Bing saw a 4% decrease in December...
White House Releases iPhone App, Mobile Site on the Way
January 20, 2010, 12:27 pmThe White House has announced the release of the official White House iPhone app, as well as a plan to launch a mobile version of WhiteHouse.gov. With the app, iPhone and iPod touch users can access content from WhiteHouse.gov.
Content that is accessible includes live video streaming of events such as the President's upcoming State of the Union...
Inactive Twitter Usernames Scheduled For Recycling
January 20, 2010, 11:56 amIf you're not happy with your Twitter username - or if you are, but don't love Twitter and haven't logged in for a while - listen up. The usernames attached to inactive accounts may soon be made available for the taking.
In fact, the release of idle usernames is almost sure to occur. The cutoff regarding inactivity has probably been...
Facebook Letting App Users Get Notifications Through Email
January 20, 2010, 11:38 amToday Facebook announced that it is giving users the option to receive updates from Facebook applications in their email. This would work similar to how email notifications do, but don't worry, you have to opt in for developers to be able to email you. According to Facebook, they will not be able to access your email address without your consent....
Six highly actionable tips for SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer
January 20, 2010, 11:30 amSEOgadget's top six actionable tips to take away from SEOmoz's latest toy, Open Site Explorer. Powered by Linkscape, OSE is possibly even more powerful than Yahoo! Site Explorer and there are some great tips here on using it to your best advantage.
Privacy Complaint Filed Against Canadian Social Network
January 20, 2010, 10:30 amIt's not just Google and Facebook that are under scrutiny from privacy watchdogs.
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), a consumer advocacy group based in Ottawa, has asked the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to investigate alleged violations of Canadian privacy law by popular teen social networking site, Nexopia.
PIAC's complaint...
New York Times Announces Pay Meter for 2011
January 20, 2010, 10:17 amAfter a long debate, the New York Times has officially settled on an online pay model and and implementation timeline. The meter system will be introduced at the beginning of next year.
The model will allow users to access a certain number of articles free each month. After the set viewing threshold, users will be required to pay. Print...
Possible Google Acquisitions in 2010 and Beyond?
January 20, 2010, 9:57 amFrom the Page: [Dave Wallace] As time rolls on, it is becoming more evident everyday that we are living in a Google world. What began as a search engine in January 1996 has quickly evolved into many additional things.
Get Link Building Query Ideas with Ontolo’s New Tool
January 20, 2010, 9:46 amThe boys from Ontolo have done it again with another awesome tool for link builders.
Opera Scoops Up Mobile Advertising Firm AdMarvel
January 20, 2010, 9:44 amOpera announced today that it has acquired mobile advertising firm AdMarvel. Opera says the acquisition will enable it to expand its portfolio of products and services to include "highly scalable ad monetization services" for Opera branded mobile products and services.
"In our fast-growing industry, mobile advertising represents...
Open Site Explorer: a Yahoo! Site Explorer replacement
January 20, 2010, 9:30 amSometime this year, the agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo will see Yahoo’s web-search replaced with results powered by Bing’s technology.
One of the greatest concerns from an SEO’s perspective, is that we will probably lose one of the more useful backlink analysis tools that exists, Y! Site Explorer. However, our friends at...
How To Write A Killer Blog Post
January 20, 2010, 9:19 amMy article so I think it's great! :) How To Write A Killer Blog Post. I welcome feedback!
Will Google Still Operate in China Without Search?
January 20, 2010, 8:55 amGoogle may try to continue with operations in China, even if it shuts its search engine down due to censorship. You must remember that Google is much, much more than just a search engine, and the censoring search results doesn’t necessarily come into play in all other aspects of its business.
According to the New York Times, Google will be...
More Reporters Using Facebook And Twitter For Story Research
January 20, 2010, 8:51 amThe majority of reporters and editors now depend on social media sources when researching their stories, according to a new survey by Cision and George Washington University.
Among the journalists surveyed, 89 percent said they turn to blogs for story research, 65 percent to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52 percent to...
Twitter COO Effectively Rules Out 2010 IPO
January 20, 2010, 8:46 amThere's almost no way Twitter will go public this year, according to the company's COO, and it may not do so in the next couple of years, either. The focus, instead, is supposed to be on firming up and building out the business side of things.
According to Brian Womack and Cris Valerio, Dick Costolo said yesterday at a Bloomberg event,...
Bing! Is That Apple Calling?
January 20, 2010, 8:10 amYesterday I looked at the idea that Microsoft was playing the nice corporate citizen to a European group by agreeing to purge data from their search engine after 6 months and then asking for their competitors to do the same. How chivalrous. Well, today there are reports that Microsoft is just fine with letting others drive the Internet car for...
Is the New York Times Jumping the Gun on Paid Content?
January 20, 2010, 8:10 amThere has been a lot of talk of late about how the New York Times would probably be moving towards a paid model for its online content. The newspaper has now come right out and said that starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get "a certain number of articles" for free every month, before asking to pay a flat fee for...
What Spammers Can Teach You About ORM
January 20, 2010, 8:06 amGreat piece by David Snyder: This post is not an ethical discussion about the voice of the consumer, it is a discussion of tools available to marketers to accomplish results in online reputation management.
No Twitter IPO Until Whale Season Ends
January 20, 2010, 8:00 am"We’ve raised all this money. We’ve created this global brand…Now we have to go build the business that lives up to that valuation."
Twitter COO, Dick Costolo, January 20, 2010
And that, my friend, is why we won’t see a Twitter IPO this year. That, and this really obscure New Yorker reference:
“My view of our financial...
Bing Might Replace Google As iPhone Search Engine
January 20, 2010, 7:39 amAllow us to save you a couple of moments by verifying that today isn't April 1st and that pigs haven't taken to the sky. Now, there's little left to do aside from break the news: Apple and Microsoft are supposed to be in talks to make Bing the iPhone's default search engine.
BusinessWeek's Peter Burrows and Cliff Edwards spoke to "two...
You Say Potato, Google Says Starchy Tuberous Crop
January 20, 2010, 7:38 amMy mind went numb, digesting Google’s lengthy explanation on how it’s improved its understanding of synonyms.
I’ll spare you the minutes–and brain cells–with my summary of the announcement:
Google knows when two words are semantically connected–such as "pictures" and "photos." It now plans to...
Microsoft Pulls Bing Maps Site Out of Beta
January 20, 2010, 7:24 amMicrosoft has removed the beta tag from the Bing Maps Silverlight site. This means, at least according to Microsoft, that users can expect greater reliability, supportability, and further innovation.
"First off, if you go to the Bing Maps AJAX site and have Silverlight installed chances are you will be redirected to the Bing Maps...
Bing Improves Its Autosuggest Feature
January 20, 2010, 7:19 amMicrosoft has improved its autosuggest feature on Bing to provide more timely results.
On the Bing Search Blog the company says that its research found 45 percent of search queries result either in a user conducting an immediate re-query, or quitting the page altogether.
As an example Bing cites the Golden Globe Awards and says its autosuggest...
Posterous Has a Coke Zero and a Smile
January 20, 2010, 7:08 amWhen I saw this ‘announcement’ I really wanted to check into what was going on because it involved a brand I have been a lifelong fanatic of (Coca Cola) and one that I have recently started to really enjoy, Posterous.
While I sometimes wonder why people get so attached to brands and think it’s a little weird, I have to admit that I am...
Amazon Kindle Publishers and Authors to Get More Royalties
January 20, 2010, 7:02 amAmazon announced details of a new program in which it will provide a new 70% royalty option for the Kindle, meaning authors and publishers can earn more royalties from every Kindle book that is sold. Under this new option, authors would get 70% of the list price, net of delivery costs. The option will not replace the current option of the DTP...
SEO 101 - Part 2: Everything You Need to Know About Title Tags
January 20, 2010, 6:30 amby Stoney deGeyter
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L'Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products...
Google AdWords vs Affiliate Model - The Cold War is Looking Pretty Hot These Days
January 20, 2010, 5:47 am"...I addressed the issues but someone on the Google Adwords forum has said I that I am "obviously" an affiliate."
Apple in Talks to Make Bing Primary Search on iPhone
January 19, 2010, 11:02 pmEric Shmidit was recently shown the door from the Apple board. Now it appears Apple is showing Google the door from the iPhone as well. Is it possible that Apple hates Google even more than it hates Microsoft? ... I have now seen everything!
33% Of Online Pop. Pegged As "Conversationalists"
January 19, 2010, 3:25 pmAlthough you probably guessed as much, people who occasionally update their Facebook status or post something on Twitter represent a significant portion of the online community. And today, Forrester pegged the exact portion at 33 percent.
Forrester's been classifying online people as inactives, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, and...
Online Grocery Shopping Set To Double In The U.K.
January 19, 2010, 3:08 pmAn increasing number of shoppers in the U.K. are going online to buy groceries according to new research by the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD).
The research found 13 percent of adults shopped online for groceries in 2009, an increase of 63 percent over the last three years.
Although shopping online for groceries has become increasingly...
10 Details About How Google Handles Natural Language Search
January 19, 2010, 2:45 pmGoogle has posted a thought-provoking piece to the Official Google Blog, discussing at length, Google's system for understanding synonyms in search. As author Steven Baker says, "An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain...
New York Time's Could Announce Paid Model This Week
January 19, 2010, 1:57 pmNew York magazine is reporting that the New York Times could be announcing its own move to a paid subscription model as early as this week. If this is the case, we may see more of the dominoes fall in this tenuous conversation. It seems that whenever anyone discusses even the threat of paid content online, a hush comes over the room and people...
New York Times Could Announce Paid Model This Week
January 19, 2010, 1:57 pmNew York magazine is reporting that the New York Times could be announcing its own move to a paid subscription model as early as this week. If this is the case, we may see more of the dominoes fall in this tenuous conversation. It seems that whenever anyone discusses even the threat of paid content online, a hush comes over the room and people...
Report Suggests More Revenue, but Less Advertisers for Google
January 19, 2010, 1:30 pmAdGooroo, a competitive intelligence agency, has released a new report, which indicates that there as has been a decrease in active advertisers for Google, despite projected Q4 gains.
"Google experienced a quality purge this quarter and banned what we believe to be more than 30,000 advertisers, accounting for about 5.3 percent of its active...
Internet Users Favor Google Over Newspaper websites
January 19, 2010, 12:47 pmDeclines in U.S. newspapers’ print circulation will continue as consumers increasingly gravitate toward the Internet for news, according to new research from Outsell.
The firm predicts a 3.5 percent annual drop in both daily and Sunday circulation, leading to a low of 43 million Sunday newspaper readers by 2012, compared to more than 62...
33 Copywriting Tips Found on Twitter
January 19, 2010, 12:46 pmWho would have thought that some of the best copywriting advice you’ll ever receive could be delivered in 140 characters or less? I’ve come up with a list of 33 killer copywriting tips I’ve found on Twitter. Enjoy.
Digg Launches New Extensions for Firefox and Chrome
January 19, 2010, 12:20 pmDigg has launched new extensions for the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers.
"A month ago, we announced new capabilities that let developers create writable applications with the Digg API," says Dig's Chris Howard. "We decided to put this to work ourselves and update our original Firefox Extension and also create a new...
YouTube To Experiment With Live Sports Coverage
January 19, 2010, 12:09 pmSorry, American sports fans - there are no signs that YouTube's working with the NBA, NHL, or MLB. But reports indicate that YouTube will soon start streaming cricket matches, and even as this should interest a lot of other people in the world, it might also lead to other experiments.
YouTube is supposed to show 59 Indian Premier League...
Top 5 Crucial Internet Marketing Tips for 2010
January 19, 2010, 12:06 pmCan you believe that it’s already 2010? I’ve been involved with Internet marketing and SEO for over 7 years now and each year has always been more exciting than the previous one. 2010 is looking to be no different.
There are so many opportunities online to make money and make a difference. If you ever wanted to get started in this space,...
Google Postpones Phone for China
January 19, 2010, 12:05 pmIn light of the . . . “difficulties” Google is anticipating in China, they’ve decided to postpone the launch of their planned Nexus One phone in China. The launch was supposed to be tomorrow. (Wait, today? Wednesday. Whatever day that is in China. Stupid international date line.)
China has the world’s most populous mobile...
Twitter Earns Itself a Candy Heart Phrase
January 19, 2010, 11:45 amYou know those candy hearts everybody has around Valentine's Day with the little sayings on them? Showing just how much of a stronghold Twitter actually has on pop culture, this year, one such saying that will appear on these candies is "Tweet me."
NECCO, the company that makes Sweethearts announced today that this (and "Text...
44% of Google News Visitors Don’t Click Through
January 19, 2010, 10:38 amThe third annual News Users report from research firm Outsell has some interesting findings. While more and more people are going online for their news, and fewer people are getting their information from newspapers, it seems that many online news consumers are more like . . . well, “grazers.” And this might actually be good news for...
Kaboodle Adds Real-Time Product Search
January 19, 2010, 10:26 amOnline social shopping service Kaboodle said today it is re-launching its website to improve its product-discovery engine.
Kaboodle says it has improved its end-user experience by offering real-time product search, which provides the ability to see products that are the most popular based on user-set parameters, such as items from a specific...
Microsoft Yahoo Deal Approval Gets Deadline in Europe
January 19, 2010, 9:52 amRemember that proposed Microsoft Yahoo search and advertising deal? It's still awaiting regulatory approval, but it might be a step closer to its destiny soon, no matter which way it goes.
The European Commission has set a deadline for a decision on approval of Microsoft's bid (via Reuters). The date is February 19, or exactly a month from today....
Consumers Expected to Spend $6.2 Billion on Mobile Apps in 2010
January 19, 2010, 9:08 amGartner has released some research findings that indicate consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores. Meanwhile, advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide.
According to Gartner, mobile app stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free. Gartner also...
Click Fraud Rate Spikes In Q4
January 19, 2010, 8:56 amThe average attempted click fraud rate increased from 18.6 percent in the third quarter of 2009, to 25.7 percent in the fourth quarter according to a new report from Anchor Intelligence.
The jump in the attempted click fraud rate in Q4 was due to more activity by click fraudsters looking to take advantage of the increase in holiday ad spend...
HubSpot Documents Decline In Twitter Growth Rate
January 19, 2010, 8:51 amThis morning, HubSpot released a fresh "State of the Twittersphere" report, and in just about every respect, the news for the site is good, meaning growth has occurred since the last time HubSpot checked in. The only potential problem relates to the rate of new user growth, which is rather slow.
Below, you can see a graph of...
Study Confirms: Women Talk a Lot!
January 19, 2010, 8:32 am…and that’s a good thing! At least for marketers.
Forrester Research has updated its two year-old Social Technographics Ladder–adding a new rung for Conversationalists:
These Conversationalists are certainly on Twitter, but, perhaps no surprise, they’re spending even more time updating their Facebook status. Watching my...
Skype Sees Big Jump in International Calls
January 19, 2010, 8:04 amSkype announced that its share of international calling minutes has jumped by 50% year-over-year. This data comes from a new report released by research firm TeleGeography.
According to this report, Skype's share of international calling minutes jumped to 12% from last year's figure of 8%. Telegeography says that the volume of traffic routed via...
Time Buys Personal Shopping Engine StyleFeeder
January 19, 2010, 7:46 amTime Inc. said today it has purchased personal shopping engine StyleFeeder in an effort to expand its ecommerce presence.
StyleFeeder will become part of Time's InStyle family of brands and its ecommerce technology will power shopping on InStyle.com. Financial details of the acquisition were not released.
"Our focus has been on investing...
Google Delays Launch Of Android Phones In China
January 19, 2010, 7:41 amThis morning, Google gave another sign that it's not kidding about cutting its ties with China. The launch of two Android phones in the country - which had been scheduled to take place tomorrow - has been postponed indefinitely.
In some respects, this development could be bigger than any decision to take down the Google China site. ...
Official Google statement: how Google ranks tweets
January 19, 2010, 7:36 amHow does Google rank tweets in the real-time results? The Google engineer who led Google's real-time search development shares some insights.
Microsoft Pulling a Google in Europe?
January 19, 2010, 7:35 amI realize that what I am about to write is a stretch but just go with it for a minute. In the past week we have seen Google act as if they are standing up to the Chinese government by not censoring their search results and thus risking expulsion from the world’s largest market. A market in which they are getting beat. Now Microsoft is bowing to...
Microsoft Changes Bing User Privacy Methods
January 19, 2010, 7:05 amMicrosoft is making some updates to Bing privacy. The company sent a letter to the Article 29 Working Party, notifying them of its intention to make a change to Bing's data retention policy. The company is reducing the amount of time it stores IP addresses from searchers to 6 months from 18.
"Generally, when Bing receives search data we do...
The Evolution Of Social Marketing
January 19, 2010, 6:30 amEvery year closes with summaries of the top stories as well the predictions for the year ahead. Heading into Twenty-Ten, I contributed to several prediction roundups including Junta42, ContactCenterWorld, ZDNet, among others. What I didn’t do however, is write about the endless predictions for the future of marketing, media, business, et al....
Facebook Gets the Attention of the FTC
January 19, 2010, 6:15 amFor those of you who have ever been in sales or were trained to sell you may have heard the expression that it is “better to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission”. Nice pithy little saying that simply means, go ahead and do what you want to do to get the job done and if there are any issues they will be worked out. While that...
Changed My Opinion about Google's Query Revisions
January 19, 2010, 6:07 amIn the past I've been pretty negative about Google's query revisions - especially those of the "user intention" type. My attitude has been "show me what I searched for, not what you THINK I want". Time for me to eat a little bit of crow.
Microsoft Will Purge Bing Search Query Data After Six Months
January 19, 2010, 4:12 amMicrosoft updates privacy policy and makes Google look out-of-touch.
Avast Software Added To Google Pack
January 18, 2010, 3:25 pmAt least in certain parts of the world, Google has revised its approach to connecting people with security products. Avast Free Antivirus is now included in eight different versions of the Google Pack bundle of software.
Try to download Google Pack in Czech, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish, and you'll see...
Google re-ranking and personalized search study
January 18, 2010, 3:16 pmDave Harry: Once upon a time me and a few cohorts wondered about just what levels of flux there were in the Google SERPs. Has personalized search really changed the consistency of rankings? ...Lots of analysis... Conclusion: We shouldn’t be changing how we approach things ultimately…
New Jersey Considers Legalizing Online Gambling
January 18, 2010, 3:14 pmA newly proposed law in New Jersey would allow residents there to gamble online via websites run by the state's casinos in Atlantic City.
The bill was introduced into the New Jersey senate by Senator Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), who also introduced a separate bill which calls for New Jersey residents to vote on a constitutional amendment that would...
Google Makes it Harder to Hide from a Bad Reputation
January 18, 2010, 2:52 pmGoogle is now including reviews from more sources on its Place Pages for businesses. They're no longer coming from just review sites. They're coming from news sites, blogs, and more.
Mike Blumenthal, who writes for the Understanding Google Maps & Local Search blog, has an in depth analysis of this change and received confirmation on its...
Bing Makes Out Well In Search Spend Report
January 18, 2010, 2:06 pmA little bit of data from the Efficient Frontier Q4 2009 Search Engine Performance Report has been made available, and it's completely un-shocking in that it shows search marketers are still more than happy to spend their money with Google. The interesting thing, though, is that Bing seems to have gained a little ground on the search...
Google Bows to Government’s Censorship Orders—in Australia?
January 18, 2010, 2:01 pmGoogle has been criticized for censoring search results, even it was the only way they could get into certain countries, such as China. But as they’re abandoning that approach in China, are they picking it up elsewhere? Search Google Australia for [aboriginal and encyclopedia], and you’ll find an interesting message at the end of the...
Do You Have the "Right" to Link?
January 18, 2010, 1:54 pmIt was recently discovered that search engine/news aggregator NewsNow.co.uk had been blocked by Times Online, a publication from News International, a subsidiary of News Corp. This has been viewed as a possible beginning to what News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has been talking about for quite some time - blocking search engines and aggregators from...
Our borders are now safe: How US Customs is wasting taxpayer money.
January 18, 2010, 1:09 pmThis truly embarrassing to me as an American and an SEO. Please support Lyndsay Walker with a Sphinn.
Is Fear Ruining the Blogosphere?
January 18, 2010, 12:48 pmI sometimes wonder if bloggers in general share enough information openly. I don’t mean that I want them to share all of the deep dark personal details of their lives either. I mean, do we really say what we think? Or does fear hold us back?
German Companies Filing Anti-Trust Actions against Google
January 18, 2010, 12:24 pmSo it only takes one high-ranking government official calling Google a monopoly to have German companies jump on an anti-trust bandwagon, eh? Who’dathunkit?
Yep, after Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said, “All in all, what’s taking shape there to a large extent is a giant monopoly, similar to...
Baidu CTO's Resignation Announced
January 18, 2010, 11:55 amIt appears that not all is well (or at least normal) at Baidu. Last week, the company's COO abruptly resigned, and today, its CTO followed suit. Both men cited "personal reasons" for their departures, and Baidu's made little other information available.
Either exit might have been considered unremarkable on its own. ...
Link Building and Purple Prose
January 18, 2010, 11:49 amPurple prose is a lovely name given to the style of writing that tends to be so extravagantly worded that you really have very little idea of what’s actually being said. I, myself, am very, very guilty of writing in this manner. I have The Smiths, Wuthering Heights, and a tendency towards pretentiousness to blame for it, too.
foursquare: The arrival of the location based business “game”
January 18, 2010, 11:46 amWith the arrival of foursquare, the business of local changes and there is a twist with the "game" element. Local Marketers should take notice at it's potential for some creative ideas.
Do You Still Care About .Gov or .Edu Links?
January 18, 2010, 10:42 amThis video Q&A from Matt Cutts didn’t really reveal anything new about how Google treats links–Google doesn’t follow nofollowed links and that’s the story it’s sticking to.
What did catch my attention was the reference to the weight carried by .edu and .gov links. Matt pretty much debunks any suggestion that a...
Employers Using Social Networks To Screen Employees
January 18, 2010, 10:25 amAs social networking becomes increasingly widespread, more employers are using these sites to screen potential employees.
More than half (53%) of employers reported in a recent CareerBuildere.co.uk survey that they use social networking sites to research job candidates. Another 12 percent plan to start using social networking sites for...
Interview with Chris Brogan, Social Media Maven
January 18, 2010, 9:20 amGood post on how Brogan builds his credibility in the space.
32 Essential WordPress Plugins I Use…And You Don’t!
January 18, 2010, 9:20 amIt’s been little over a year since I shared my super-secret list of WordPress plugins used on Marketing Pilgrim.
You loved it!
So, I’m back with an updated list–simply because I’ve made a lot of changes over the past year–and your blog needs to be just as awesome as ours, right?
I’m sharing this list on one...
Will Apple and Google Have Some Real Smartphone Competition?
January 18, 2010, 9:17 amBack in November, Sony Ericsson announced its new smartphone the Xperia X10. It has been much anticipated by mobile enthusiasts, and is expected to give other popular phones (like the iPhone) some interesting competition.
At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Sony Ericsson was of course demonstrating this device, and WebProNews dropped...
5 reasons anti-SEOs are like climate change deniers
January 18, 2010, 9:13 amThis week we are going to look at some of the key similarities between those that deny climate change and those that can’t stand SEO. I thought it would be really intelligent to irritate as many people as possible in my very first blog post.
Viewer discretion is advised.
1. Both are short-sighted
This is a fairly simple one. We will consider...
Travel And Weather Websites See Big Gains In December
January 18, 2010, 9:02 amDuring December 2009, winter weather hit the country driving holiday travelers online, according to Compete's latest top 50 website rankings.
Six of the top 20 highest growth website categories in December were travel and weather related. The airport travel category attracted 40 percent more unique visitors in December (2.1 million) than...
Content Can Now Go Viral More Easily with Facebook
January 18, 2010, 8:15 amOver the past year or so, Facebook has made a number of moves, which bring more Twitter-like functionality to the social network. Some question why Facebook would want to become more like Twitter given that it is much more dominant in the social media space, but Facebook sees the growing-popularity of Twitter, and likely wants to make sure it...
Hoo Gives a Hoot About AOL’s Owl?
January 18, 2010, 8:01 amDo you like peep shows?
How about a sly peek at what could be part of AOL’s broader strategy to flood the web with contributor-generated content and monetize it?
Well, AOL built Owl as a testing ground for its SEED platform–or, as some people are calling it, its “craptent” platform. The site, according to an AOL insider,...
More Complaints Filed Against Google In Germany
January 18, 2010, 7:48 amLife isn't getting any simpler for the executives and lawyers who represent Google Germany. This weekend, word spread that three complaints against the organization have been filed with Germany's Federal Cartel Office.
Ciao, which is a Microsoft-owned online network for shoppers, is behind one complaint. Euro-Cities, which is a...
Turkey Blocking More Than 3,000 Websites
January 18, 2010, 7:46 amThe Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a human rights watchdog, called on Turkey today to reform or abolish its restrictive Internet policy.
"At present, 3,700 Internet sites are blocked in Turkey, including YouTube, GeoCities, and Google sites," said Miklos Haraszti, an OSCE Representative on Freedom of the...
How In-House SEOs Can Add Value Beyond Search
January 18, 2010, 7:41 amEverett says to be more than just the "SEO guy/gal". Add value across multiple disciplines that SEO impacts and you will become invaluable/irreplacable as an in-house SEO.
Were Googlers Involved in Chinese Cyber Attack?
January 18, 2010, 7:17 amReuters is reporting that Google is now investigating the possibility that one or more Google employees could have been involved in the recent attack in China, but is not offering comment on any details. The news agency reports:
Security analysts told Reuters the malicious software (malware) used in the Google attack was a modification of a Trojan...
New York Times Putting More Bricks In Paywall Discussions
January 18, 2010, 5:58 amNew York magazine is reporting that the New York Times could be announcing its own move to a paid subscription model as early as this week. If this is the case, we may see more of the dominoes fall in this tenuous conversation. It seems that whenever anyone discusses even the threat of paid content online, a hush comes over the room and people...
Google’s China Issue an Inside Job?
January 18, 2010, 5:28 amWe have seen and heard so much in the past week about the cyber attacks in mid-December on Google that originated from China that now the story has shifted. Of course assessing the damage and closing the holes that exist at Google are a main priority not to mention that Washington is pretty interested in putting more detail on China’s digital...
Bulk Backlink Checker
January 18, 2010, 2:29 amMajesticSEO have built a new tool that allows you to use its data to get backlink counts (and domain backlink counts) in bulk and export to CSV.
The Times to Charge for Frequent Access to Its Web Site
January 17, 2010, 11:57 pm"Perhaps what is the top global news online site is looking to charge for access."
Google Indexing Updated Site But Retaining Old Page Titles
January 17, 2010, 11:49 pmMicrosoft Declines To Change China Approach
January 17, 2010, 10:00 amIn case you were wondering, Microsoft doesn't plan to let the whole Google-China brouhaha affect its business strategy. Steve Ballmer recently indicated that his company will more or less stay the course and throw Bing into the regional mix.
Part of the reason behind this decision might be that Microsoft hasn't bought into the theory that...
66% of Government Agencies Use Social Networking
January 17, 2010, 6:00 amA recent study came out this week from the Human Capital Institute and Saba about government organizations' use of social networking and collaboration tools. The study looked at the effectiveness of social networking in conducting government work, how agency type affects the use, and perception of social networking, and the future expectations and...
Google AdWords Display URL Policy Adjustment
January 16, 2010, 7:19 pm"You have to include the subdomain now."
How To Get Backlinks From Optimal Link Targets
January 16, 2010, 4:31 pmThe best types of backlinks come from amidst contextual content published on sites very closely related to the sites you’re getting links to. Adding or getting blog roll or sitewide links provides less SEO value, linkjuice and potential Page Rank “pass-down” than could be achieved with just one article published on the correct type of site....
Majority Of Children Familiar With Video Game Ratings
January 16, 2010, 10:00 amThe majority (82%) of parents and children (75%) who play video games are familiar with the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings system, according to a new survey by The Harrison Group conducted on behalf of Activision.
Additionally, 63% of parents with children who play games consider themselves gamers with the number increasing...
Checking Out Boxee's Version of the Future of TV
January 16, 2010, 6:00 amDuring the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Boxee made the beta version of its free software publicly available for download. Boxee's software brings together video content (and photos, music, etc.) from various web sources as well as your hard drive and circle of friends from social networks all into one interface that you can use to...
Cup of Joe: Wabi-sabi Isn’t that Green Stuff On Your Sushi!
January 16, 2010, 5:52 amIn college I got a minor in Art History, a topic that I wish I could study more. At the time I had no idea that I would one day work in the marketing industry. Now, I see tons of overlapping concepts of art and marketing. I think I will discuss some of these ideas every now and then in this weekly column. In marketing we use artists and designers...
ECommerce: Avoiding Losses By Identifying Patterns Of Stolen Credit Cards
January 15, 2010, 8:09 pm"WebmasterWorld members help to identify unusual patterns of activity over stolen credit cards."
Yahoo Possibly Interested In Yelp
January 15, 2010, 3:26 pmFair warning: this is not a report upon which you should rearrange your stock portfolio. Please don't even bet anyone a significant amount of money. Just the same, Carol Bartz appears to have given a hint that she's interested in acquiring Yelp.
Brian Womack recently interviewed Bartz, and at one point, asked her about buying the site...
With Real-Time Search Comes Real-Time Advertising
January 15, 2010, 3:15 pmReal-time search engine OneRiot announced a new "real-time ad network" today. It's called RiotWise, and the company says its designed to help developers monetize their apps.
"2009 witnessed an explosion of apps and services catering to users of the realtime web," says Tobias Peggs, GM of OneRiot. "RiotWise is the way to...
Online Book Piracy Nearing $3 Billion
January 15, 2010, 2:12 pmPublishers could be losing between $2.75- 3 billion due to online book piracy, according to a new report from Attributor.
Attributor's FairShare Guardian service monitored 913 popular books in 14 categories in the fourth quarter of 2009. FairShare tracked the number of successful downloads completed for each of the 913 titles on four file...
Escaped Convict Taunts Police Using Facebook, Gets Arrested
January 15, 2010, 2:05 pmWe are always looking for new applications for social media outlets right? How can we get our message out to more people? How can we create community amongst customers? How we can get 40,000 people to follow us as we escape from the law? Whoa, wait a minute. That last one doesn’t seem very ‘marketing’ oriented does it? Well,...
MySpace Integrates Facebook Connect Into Website
January 15, 2010, 2:01 pmRumors of MySpace integrating Facebook Connect have circulated since October. And now it looks like they’re coming true: MySpace’s Fan Video site allows users to login with either MySpace or Facebook accounts.
The Fan Video site itself takes professional music videos and inserts your profile picture prominently. The site also features...
Google Talks Open Internet Goals, Files FCC Submission
January 15, 2010, 1:50 pmGoogle filed a submission on its own and one jointly with Verizon to the FCC for its proposed rulemaking docket. Google says its goal is "to keep the Internet awesome for everybody."
"There's a lot of awesome stuff on the Internet: Cats talking LOLspeak. Iranian dissidents tweeting. Live traffic updates. Science experiments,"...
FTC Unsure How to Enforce Blogging Guidelines; May Target Twitter
January 15, 2010, 1:33 pmIn case you’ve forgotten, 2009 was the year the FTC decided to go after mom bloggers (and other bloggers) with $11,000 fines for not disclosing reviewed freebies, sponsored posts or other relationships with companies—or not.
Despite the fervor over the FTC’s new guidelines, the fact is that they were designed to target a specific...
Take the 14 Day Social Media Challenge
January 15, 2010, 1:12 pmTwitter is flooded with the same content from the same two dozen blogs. There's a lot of great info on the web waiting to be discovered. So, I challenge you to find 10–15 blogs that are not ranked in the top 150 on AdAge's Power 150 List, or within Technorati's Top 100. Read more to see the additional rules for the challenge.
eBay Declared '09 Mobile Retailer Of The Year
January 15, 2010, 12:53 pmThe last eBay-centric article to appear on WebProNews concerned mobile transactions during the holiday season; the company was quite proud of its stats and had made some noise about them. Now, there's essentially been outside confirmation of its impressive performance, as eBay was declared the 2009 Mobile Retailer of the Year.
Mobile...
MySpace Adds Facebook Connect—the Beginning of the End?
January 15, 2010, 12:04 pmRumors of MySpace integrating Facebook Connect have circulated since October. And now it looks like they’re coming true: MySpace’s Fan Video site allows users to login with either MySpace or Facebook accounts.
The Fan Video site itself takes professional music videos and inserts your profile picture prominently. The site also features...
comScore Joins Chorus Putting Google Up In Dec.
January 15, 2010, 12:03 pmNielsen, Hitwise, and comScore are all in agreement, so onlookers can perhaps declare it official now: Google had a good December. comScore, the member of the trio that most recently released its search market data, didn't put Google up by a whole lot, though, and unlike the other firms, saw Bing gain ground.
Here are the facts related to...
Gmail and Picasa Storage Can Be Used for Any File
January 15, 2010, 11:57 amGoogle recently announced that it was launching a new feature for Google Docs, which would allow users to upload and store any kind of file. What may not have been clear, however, is that this new storage from Google isn't limited to just Google Docs.
The company is saying that Gmail and Picasa storage can also be used. Google Docs Product...
U.S. Video Game Sales Reach $19 Billion In ‘09
January 15, 2010, 10:32 amU.S. sales of video games, which includes portable and console hardware, software and accessories, generated revenues of close to $19.6 billion, an 8 percent decrease over the $21.4 billion generated in 2008, according to The NPD Group.
Retail sales in the PC game software industry also saw declines, with revenues down 23 percent, reaching $538...
BusinessWire Offers Free Haiti-Related Press Release Distribution
January 15, 2010, 10:02 amPopular press release distribution site BusinessWire, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, is offering its services for free to companies and organizations who are contributing to the aid of victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Such companies can push out free news releases with offers pertaining to supporting services, information, operations,...
Twitter Looks to Connect with More Sites
January 15, 2010, 9:11 amAccording to Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, "multiple sources have confirmed" that Twitter is readying the launch of a new set of tools to let third-party sites easily integrate with Twitter. He calls this the company's response to Facebook Connect.
This wouldn't be the first offering from Twitter that provides functionality similar to...
Yahoo Upgrades Yahoo Finance Search
January 15, 2010, 8:13 amYahoo has made some improvements to its Finance Search interface. Yahoo Finance Search is now including results from the web, and can uncover details on companies and executives, find info on private companies, and help determine what companies are associated with topics, Yahoo says.
Every page of Yahoo Finance has a link that says "Finance...
2010 Predictions From 10 Internet Experts
January 15, 2010, 8:12 amI was one of 10 that got interviewed by Arnie Kuenn (Vertical Measures) including Rand Fishkin (SEOMoz), Dave Wallace (SearchRank), Jeramie McPeek (head of social media for the Phoenix Suns) - along with MANY OTHER amazing marketing minds. The interviews are insightful, and I feel this is worth a Sphinn. Here is the whole set that Arnie did over...
P&G To Launch Ecommerce Site
January 15, 2010, 8:10 amProcter & Gamble said today it would begin piloting an online store this month in an effort to improve brand loyalty and sales.
P&G has tapped ecommerce firm PFSweb to manage the online shopping site called the "eStore." P&G said PFSweb will own and operate the eStore and exclusively feature P&G products to consumers in...
Yahoo Adds Ernst & Young Veteran To Board
January 15, 2010, 7:47 amYahoo's board of directors has gained another member. Sue James, who's spent most of the past 35 years working for and with Ernst & Young, joined it earlier this week, and became Chair of the Board's Audit Committee at the same time.
James's resume is rather impressive, indicating a deep understanding of tech organizations'...
Google Tailors Mobile Search Suggestions to Location
January 15, 2010, 7:26 amGoogle has launched search suggestions based on geographical location for iPhone and Android devices. This is currently only available in the United States.
"Typing a query into the search box on a phone can often be slow and difficult," says Google's Mobile Engineering Team. "For this reason, relevant search suggestions that...
Microsoft IE Hole Used in Google China Attacks
January 15, 2010, 7:01 amUpdate 3: Now the State Department is quoted as saying it will issue a formal "demarche" to the Chinese government. From the Register:
"We will be issuing a formal demarche to the Chinese government in Beijing on this issue in the coming days, probably early next week," US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told...
Nielsen Reports on Top Web Brands and Site Usage
January 15, 2010, 5:33 amNielsen watches just how much time people spend on the sites of the top web brands in the world. It makes for some interesting viewing. Just seeing the numbers from the chart below makes it obvious why some sites have the success they do and raises questions about some others. Here is one of the Nielsen charts (there are a few others not...
Yahoo Adds Feature to Import Google Adwords Campaigns
January 15, 2010, 4:51 amI just scanned the last six posts here at MP and they all have the Google logo attached to them. What’s strange about this story is that while Yahoo is announcing an improvement in their paid search offering it still relates to Google. As for bing? Where are you? The company that is having their search platform replaced by you is making more...
Google Offers Mobile Search Suggestions
January 15, 2010, 4:26 amDespite the early rough sledding for the Nexus One device, Google is moving on and making improvements to local search on your mobile device. Recently the “Near me now” feature was added which helps users learn what kind of products and services are within striking distance of their current location. While not as sexy yesterday Google...
Yahoo Update, January 2010: Paid Inclusion Ending Having Impact?
January 14, 2010, 10:21 pmScammers Taking Advantage of Haiti Earthquake Appeals
January 14, 2010, 8:16 pm"It didn't take long for scams to appear taking advantage of the generosity of people when the Haiti earthquake appeal gets underway."
How Google Rates Links from Facebook and Twitter
January 14, 2010, 3:30 pmThe first Matt Cutts Answers Questions About Google video of the year has been posted, and in it Matt addresses links from Twitter and Facebook, after talking about his shaved head again. Specifically, the submitted question he answers is:
Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a...
White House Sides With Google In China Standoff
January 14, 2010, 3:27 pmDue to a new development, you may be able to either thank Google for getting China to censor less information, or blame the company for starting World War III. The reason: the White House has sided with Google in the free speech and hacking conflict that cropped up this week.
According to John Letzing, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs...
Windows 7 Drives Holiday Software Sales
January 14, 2010, 3:18 pmU.S. software retail sales fell slightly by just over 1 percent for the 2009 holiday season, according to The NPD Group.
Sales for the 5-week holiday period totaled $278 million dollars, up from the 13 percent decline during the 2008 holiday season.
The operating systems category showed the strongest improvement during the holiday season,...
Google's Place Pages Just Got More Useful
January 14, 2010, 2:37 pmGoogle has introduced some new features for its recently launched Place Pages for local businesses. Most notably, businesses can now instantly (close anyway) post data to their Place Pages from Google's Local Business Center dashboard. If you log in, you can post updates, coupons, announcements, etc. that will go live in minutes.
It isn't hard...
Google Surprisingly Dominates Search in December
January 14, 2010, 2:32 pmDid you get the sarcasm in that one? If a picture is worth a thousand words then Yahoo, bing and Ask.com must be saying “Oh crap, not again!” 250 times right now. Experian’s Hitwise shows why.
As we talk about often it’s not even that Google is on top anymore. That’s a given. In fact, its dominance is what makes the uninformed cry...
Google’s Place Pages Get New Features
January 14, 2010, 2:11 pmGoogle Local Business is getting some pretty heavy attention these days. Why wouldn’t it? With 2010 being the “official” year of mobile and with Google having its own phone (although they would like to see other people have it as well) there is much to celebrate. Of course this isn’t without its issues such as listings being hijacked...
Hitwise Puts Google Nearer To 75 Percent Market Share
January 14, 2010, 2:10 pmYesterday, comScore reported that Google performed well in December, and today, Hitwise seconded the assessment. In fact, the two firms also agreed that both Yahoo and Bing lost market share, which has made Google's lead all the more impressive.
Hitwise determined that Google controlled 71.57 percent of the search market in November. ...
AOL Top Ad Network In December
January 14, 2010, 2:09 pmcomScore has released the top 15 ad networks based on their reach among U.S. Internet users in December 2009.
The ranking found AOL Advertising remains the top ad network, reaching 187 million U.S. Internet users, or 91 percent of the total audience, followed by the Yahoo Network (180.9 million) and the Google Ad Network (178.1 million).
The...
Yahoo Sponsored Search Getting New Features
January 14, 2010, 1:47 pmNext week Yahoo will update its Sponsored Search product with two new features, which the company says will provide advertisers with more transparency into and control over their accounts. Yahoo's Network Distribution feature will let advertisers run ads on Yahoo search pages, partners' sites, or both. Those who run ads on Yahoo's entire network,...
Barclays Analyst Predicts YouTube Profitability
January 14, 2010, 1:12 pmIn a financial sense, Google's acquisition of YouTube has never made a lot of sense; the site, which sold for $1.65 billion, hasn't even turned a profit on a quarter-to-quarter basis yet. But according to a prominent analyst, that's about to change.
Doug Anmuth, who works for Barclays Capital, said today in a note, "[I]n 2010 we...
9 Specific Ways Your Business Can Use Twitter
January 14, 2010, 12:47 pmBy now, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the reasons to use Twitter for your business. However, most conversations on the subject rarely offer specific strategies for using Twitter for your business, and instead they consist of vague statements like connect with and engage your audience or build your brand.Today, we’re going to take a look at...
The World's Smallest USB Drive and Portable Hard Drive
January 14, 2010, 12:45 pmThe Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas wrapped up this past weekend, but the experience will be felt throughout the year as the companies that demonstrated upcoming products release those products to the world. One of the companies presenting at the event was Verbatim, and they have some new portable data devices on the way.
WebProNews...
Google’s Nexus One Slow Out of the Gate
January 14, 2010, 12:27 pmWith all of the press in the gadget and Internet marketing world last week around the introduction of the Google Nexus One smart phone you would think that there would be a rush to buy them. Appears that is not the case, at least not initially. My theory is that while there was all kind of chatter amongst the industry, they would be the most...
China Reminds Others: Don’t Get Any Ideas
January 14, 2010, 12:18 pmGoogle has decided to stop censoring its search results in China as mandated by the Chinese government—even if that means shuttering their search business there. The Chinese government has responded, reminding us all that they’re in control of the Internet in China, and nobody else should get any ideas from Google’s...
Researchers Clarify What is Known About Chinese Google Attacks
January 14, 2010, 12:15 pmThere has been a lot of confusion and mixed reporting going on around this whole Google China situation. Verisign, whose iDefense team who has researched the attacks took note of this and put up a blog post trying to clear the air. Read that to get a clear summarization of what the firm knows. Within that, Verisign says:
The attack bears...
Google Says Average AdWords CTR at 2%
January 14, 2010, 10:54 amGoogle seldom comments on click through rates on its flagship AdWords product. It is, after all, where they get most of their income. With millions of searches performed every day, however, the rate doesn’t have to be very high for them to clean up.
And, as it turns out, it’s not. In a thread on the Google AdWords Help forum, Google...
Twitter Helping Haiti Earthquake Victims
January 14, 2010, 10:51 amHaiti earthquake Twitter updates are helping people keep informed about what is going on in the country as well as providing information on ways to make donations.
The American Red Cross said on Twitter that it had already received nearly $3 million for earthquake relief in Haiti. People can help by texting "Haiti" to 90999 and making...
American Idol Hits With "Pants On The Ground"
January 14, 2010, 10:41 amAmerican Idol may be only two episodes into its ninth season, but the show already has a big online hit on its hands. 63-year-old Larry Platt performed a self-written song called "Pants on the Ground" last night, and hundreds of thousands of people are talking about his energetic routine today.
Platt's song pretty much defies...
How to Get the Most out of Facebook’s Insights
January 14, 2010, 10:15 amLove any articles giving solid advice about marketing/analytics/data on Facebook. This is one of them, especially if you have, or are attempting to build and market a Facebook Fan page.
Would Conan Work on the Web?
January 14, 2010, 10:07 amUnless you live under a rock, you are probably at least somewhat familiar with the current controversy regarding NBC's shifting of late night television talk show programming that appears to be leading to an uncertain future for current Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien. I'm not going to get into that whole story here.
While he is not the only one...
Yahoo, Adobe Identified As Victims Of China Hack
January 14, 2010, 9:14 amWhen Google made its big announcement about an attack originating from China, the company also mentioned that "at least twenty other large companies" had been affected. Now, it's become almost certain that one of them was Adobe, and there are signs that Yahoo was another target.
Adobe's status as a victim became more or less...
Google PPC Click Fraud Getting Harder to Detect
January 14, 2010, 8:06 amPerpetrators of click fraud are getting sneakier and sneakier. Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman has uncovered one of the more diabolical click fraud schemes known to be hatched. As he summarizes it:
Here, spyware on a user's PC monitors the user's browsing to determine the user's likely purchase intent. Then the spyware fakes a click...
U.S. PC Shipments Up 24%
January 14, 2010, 8:04 amThe global PC market saw double-digit growth in the fourth quarter, led by strong U.S. holiday sales of low-cost netbooks, according to the latest report by IDC.
The U.S. PC market reached a new record of nearly 20.7 million units shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009 (4Q09), resulting in year-on-year growth of 24 percent. Other regions also...
Google Launches Relief Site To Help Haiti
January 14, 2010, 7:56 amSurvivors of the earthquake in Haiti are going to receive help from Google in a big way. On a new Support Disaster Relief site, Google's released satellite imagery of the destruction to spread awareness, created a list of relevant charities to encourage donations, and promised to contribute $1 million of its own money, as well.
Let's...
Using Real-Time Analytics to Incubate Viral Campaigns
January 14, 2010, 7:15 amGoogle Analytics and Server-Side Analytics programs tend to update daily, leaving you behind the curve on social media promotions that can fizz out in the first few hours of launch without close attention. Here are 3 examples of solutions using free real-time analytics services like Clicky to get extra mileage out of your campaign.
China Responds to Google Situation
January 14, 2010, 6:47 amUpdate: Chinese government officials have responded to Google's proposed actions. As reported by Bloomberg:
"The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular briefing in...
Your Business & Yelp In 2010
January 14, 2010, 6:32 amMatt Siltala lays out the key reasons why business owners need to get on board with the Yelp bandwagon in 2010 once and for all...
Malicious PDFs Roaming, Beware, Macs, Too
January 14, 2010, 5:24 amIt appears that the initial attack vector on Google (and 20+ other companies!) was probably a malicious PDF document.
Using Jquery and Google Analytics events to track form abandonment.
January 14, 2010, 5:01 amYesterday, Sam from SEOmoz posted 11 Conversion rate lessons they had learned in 2009 – along with some traffic stats for their blog.
The 10th lesson that Sam posted really struck a chord with me and I got thinking about how best to implement it. Sam suggests that you track how far people get through your forms by registering a virtual page...
Google Changes Search Results to Favour US Spellings
January 14, 2010, 4:25 amSurely Google should not be changing my search results based on how it thinks folk in the US spell a word? Especially when it impacts the serps to favour US companies.
UK proposal gives copyright immunity to Google
January 13, 2010, 5:18 pmA proposed amendment to a UK bill would give Google and other search engines immunity from copyright claims, basically giving Google permission to copy anything it pleases.
Baidu's Stock Soars Following Google China News
January 13, 2010, 3:26 pmReactions to Google's announcement about a possible withdrawal from China have been mixed so far; there have been objections from individuals who think its absence will deprive the Chinese people of information, while others approve of what they consider a moral stand. But Baidu's investors probably aren't too conflicted, as the company's...
Vevo Attracts 35 Million Visitors In December
January 13, 2010, 3:16 pmOnline music video service, Vevo, was the most visited U.S. website in the entertainment-music category in December with more than 35 million unique visitors, according to comScore.
Partners in Vevo include Universal Music Group, Sony Entertainment and investor Abu Dhabi Media Company. The site is powered by YouTube.
Vevo says its top ranking is...
Keyword Hints Used Now More for AdSense For Domains
January 13, 2010, 2:38 pmGoogle announced today that AdSense for Domains is now using optional keyword hints more often. Keyword hints are provided by the user, who enters keywords into a field to assist Google in the targeting of ads for potentially ambiguous domains. Google's Randy Heath explains:
These keywords are suggestions supplied to Google by domain owners about...
Google Bucking Chinese Censorship After Cyber Attack
January 13, 2010, 2:36 pmGoogle has long complied with the government-mandated censorship required to operate in China, despite criticism from human rights and freedom of speech advocates. However, Google may be changing their tune, based on a blog post yesterday. Google’s new approach to China is far more open—and at least partially because a Chinese cyber...
Google Makes More Search Gains
January 13, 2010, 2:13 pmDecember's supposed to be a month of miracles, and - at least in terms of gaining market share - Google seems to have pulled off a minor one. New Nielsen stats show that the search giant increased the distance between itself and competitors by a considerable amount.
Nielsen put Google's share of the U.S. search market in November at 65.4...
Google Reveals Factors for Ranking Tweets
January 13, 2010, 1:44 pmIt's ok to say "no" to Twitter if that's your thing. There's a chance that it just doesn't fit into your strategy or help you achieve your goals. That's cool. However, if it is your thing, you may be interested in how Google ranks tweets. That is if search marketing is your thing.
Do you see Twitter as important to an effective search...
Realtor.com Launches iPhone App
January 13, 2010, 1:42 pmRealtor.com, the website for the National Association of Realtors, has launched a Real Estate Search iPhone app.
Users can search for every property listed on Realtor.com by price, location, property type, MLS ID number, square foot, lot size, open house events, distance from a user's current location and age.
The real estate iPhone app allows...
Want Your Tweets on Google? Get More (Better) Followers
January 13, 2010, 12:19 pmBack in October, Google was second to the punch, falling behind Bing as they both announced real-time search deals to include Twitter results. (And it didn’t help that Bing was already testing live results and Google was months away from the integration.) But now Google’s real-time results are live—and they’re talking about...
Pingdom Calls Facebook "Most Engaging Social Network"
January 13, 2010, 12:14 pmSome people use their Facebook account like another email address, logging in, checking their messages, and logging out. Others just add a couple of friends, skim a few status updates, and call it a day. But data from Pingdom proves that Facebook does a far better job of engaging people than other social networks.
Pingdom recently...
Pingdom Names Facebook "Most Engaging Social Network"
January 13, 2010, 12:14 pmSome people use their Facebook account like another email address, logging in, checking their messages, and logging out. Others just add a couple of friends, skim a few status updates, and call it a day. But data from Pingdom proves that Facebook does a far better job of engaging people than other social networks.
Pingdom recently...
A Close Up with Sony's New Personal Internet Viewer
January 13, 2010, 11:48 amAt the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Sony introduced a new "personal Internet Viewer", called the Dash. This is a device that you can put on your nightstand or your kitchen counter, and access web content via Flash-based applications.
While attending the show, WebProNews stopped by Sony's exhibit to get a closer look at the...
Escapee Using Facebook to Taunt Police is Caught
January 13, 2010, 11:01 amWe are always looking for new applications for social media outlets right? How can we get our message out to more people? How can we create community amongst customers? How we can get 40,000 people to follow us as we escape from the law? Whoa, wait a minute. That last one doesn’t seem very ‘marketing’ oriented does it? Well, that’s because...
Less Than Half Of Americans Read A Daily Newspaper
January 13, 2010, 10:26 amLess than half (43%) of Americans say they read a daily newspaper, either online or in print almost everyday, according to a new report from Adweek Media and Harris Interactive.
Nearly three-quarters (72%) of Americans say they read one at least once a week while 81 percent read a daily newspaper at least once a month. Ten percent say they never...
Foursquare Goes to School
January 13, 2010, 10:17 amIt looks like Harvard may turn out to be the epicenter of all things from the social web. Urban legend has it that it was there that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg borrowed discussed developed the true beginnings of today’s social networking giant. Now foursquare has struck a deal with the school to have a ‘branded’ version of the...
Google Now Rejecting AdWords Ads Without Proper Display
January 13, 2010, 9:42 amGoogle has made an adjustment to the way it handles display URLs for AdWords ads. This is the URL that appears within the ad itself, that users see before they click on it. The adjustment is for sites that sit on shared or hosted domains.
The idea is to make it more clear to users exactly what they will be clicking on. On the Inside AdWords...
Some Interesting Points About the Google China Situation
January 13, 2010, 8:56 amGoogle's situation in China appears to be the biggest story to hit the tech industry in some time, at least in terms of discussion. If you're not up to speed, we covered Google's announcement here. What it boils down to is that Google may shut down its operations in China, where it has been censoring search results. Google is now taking the stance...
Facebook, McAfee Partner
January 13, 2010, 7:45 amWin-win-win situations don't crop up too often, but Facebook and McAfee seem to have orchestrated one on a very large scale. The two companies announced this morning that they've partnered to provide Facebook's users with free security software.
Any or all of Facebook's 350 million users can now visit the "Protect Your PC" tab on...
Netflix To Be Available On The Wii This Spring
January 13, 2010, 7:36 amNetflix said today it has reached an agreement with Nintendo that will allow Netflix members who own a Wii to instantly stream movies and TV shows directly to their TVs.
Netflix is scheduled to go live on the Wii this spring in the United States at no additional cost to Netflix members who have a plan starting at $8.99 a month, a Wii console and...
Gmail Switches to Default Https Encryption Following Attack
January 13, 2010, 7:08 amAs news of Google's China situation dominates headlines, the company has also announced that it is turning on https access for Gmail as the default (Gmail accounts were hacked in China, in case you haven't read about that yet).
Https, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is used to provide encryption and secure ID. Back in 2008...
Google and China: Maybe They Can’t Get Along
January 13, 2010, 6:10 amGoogle has again shaken the Internet tree in a way that will raise more than a few eyebrows. In a nutshell, Google is reassessing its working relationship with the world’s largest potential market, China, as a result of recent security breaches. How this plays out over time could have significant impact on how China and the world get along...
Google May Quit China
January 12, 2010, 5:18 pmGoogle released a stunning blog post that details a "sophisticated and targeted attack" on Gmail that "resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google".
Google notes that the attack was not just on Google infrastructure but also on more than twenty other companies from various industries. Google states that they are...
How brain-amputated developers created the social media plague
January 12, 2010, 4:06 pmFor example Twitter, where gazillions of bots [type A] follow other equally superfluous but nevertheless very busy bots [type B] that automatically generate 27% valuable content (links to p-nis enlargement tools) and 73% not exactly exciting girly chatter (breeding demand for cheap viag-a).
VMware's Acquisition Of Zimbra Made Official
January 12, 2010, 3:24 pmThe rumors about Yahoo selling Zimbra have finally become fact. Today, VMware announced that it's acquired the open source email and collaboration specialist, and although the financial details weren't disclosed, corporate representatives on all sides of the transaction seem pleased.
Let's start with someone who works for the buyer. ...
Google Phone Faces More Criticism Over Fee
January 12, 2010, 3:13 pmGoogle made big waves in the mobile industry early in the year, and the effects of those waves are being felt quite hard by some users. The Nexus One's release has gotten off to kind of a rocky start.
The issues plaguing customers of the much-anticipated Google phone have been widely publicized. Most of the gripes have dealt with Google's...
Online Shoppers Want More Interactivity From Retailers
January 12, 2010, 3:09 pmConsumers want online retailers to be more interactive and offer more personalization features according to a new a survey from IBM.
The changing economy has led to a smarter consumer who uses technology to make more informed buying decisions, exchange information with others, make purchases on-the-go and shop multiple channels.
More than...
Can Snail Mail Be Part of Social Media?
January 12, 2010, 2:49 pmThe online space is certainly trying hard to cut the apron strings associated with traditional media techniques and practices. It can be hard though, to completely separate from something that may still have value. Think about how nice it was (or still is) to go back “home” and get that meal that you just can’t make on your own. While you...
Google Shows Flu Trends for 121 Cities in the U.S.
January 12, 2010, 2:33 pmMicrosoft is not the only one with some new offerings in the way of health search today. Google has added a slew of new cities to its Flu Trends product. The move is timed well, as the company acknowledges that it is National Influenza Vaccination Week.
"Since the strain of influenza that is active (H1N1) is novel, no one knows exactly what...
Facebook Becomes Sponsor Of Apache Software Foundation
January 12, 2010, 2:10 pmToday, the Apache Software Foundation gained a new sponsor: Facebook. Facebook is a gold sponsor, too, which means that the social network expressed its support for open source software by volunteering to donate $40,000 per year to the ASF.
Cynics shouldn't waste their time looking for an ulterior motive. Facebook won't get much out...
Bing Gets New Health Search Features
January 12, 2010, 1:55 pmToday Microsoft announced some new health search capabilities for its Bing search engine. The "decision engine" is now providing more content from new partners and instant answers with "hard-to-discover data", the company says.
Users can find instant, specialized information about illnesses, treatments, medical facilities,...
Social Media Power Profiles: Is Google In Your Mix?
January 12, 2010, 1:08 pmUsually it’s with some of the most popular social communities like Digg, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, etc. How many social media enthusiasts and search marketers actually stop to consider their Google profiles though?
Advocacy Group Aims To Take On Distracted Drivers
January 12, 2010, 1:00 pmU.S Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and National Safety Council President Janet Froetscher today announced the creation of FocusDriven, a national nonprofit organization designed to raise awareness about the dangers of distracted driving.
The group will be led by Jennifer Smith, who has been an advocate against distracted driving since her...
Cleaning up the SEO Cesspool
January 12, 2010, 12:18 pmHow can we create a better name for ourselves.
Google May end China Operations
January 12, 2010, 12:15 pmGoogle No Longer Willing to Censor Results in China
Respond to Facebook Comments From Your Email
January 12, 2010, 12:14 pmToday Facebook launched a feature that some would consider long overdue. They now let you reply to comments via email. In other words, when you get an email notification alerting you that someone has left a comment on one of your status updates, you can simply type your reply in the email and hit send, rather than having to leave your inbox, go to...
Google Didn’t Lie After All
January 12, 2010, 12:08 pmTwo weeks ago, it looked like Google might have been . . . well, fibbing. Back in June, the search engine announced that they would no longer redistribute “link juice” around nofollowed links, effectively deprecating the practice of PageRank sculpting. But late last month, it looked like the technique was still effective when SEOmoz...
Google Docs Delves Into File Storage
January 12, 2010, 12:03 pmAn announcement related to data storage and the cloud has come out of Mountain View today, and people who've never heard the word "GDrive" may be very impressed by it. It's possible that consumers who are familiar with the term will be extremely disappointed, however.
Here are the facts: Google Docs has received a significant...
Twitter Sees an Increase in Tweeting Frequency
January 12, 2010, 11:45 amEach month we've been looking at Twitter's growth in terms of new user registration and number of Tweets. Last month we saw a decline in the number of new Twitterers in November continuing a trend that began in July.
In December, however, new Twitter user registrations leveled out. Number of tweets grew significantly, and the number of tweets...
IT Spending Set For Global Rebound In 2010
January 12, 2010, 10:31 amAfter a challenging 2009, the technology sector will see a recovery in 2010 as businesses and governments in the U.S. and around the globe begin spending again on information technology, according to a new report by Forrester Research.
After declining 8.2 percent in 2009, U.S. IT spending will grow 6.6 percent in 2010 to $568 billion. Global IT...
Build Links with Better Answers
January 12, 2010, 10:24 amGive people what they really want - Answers. Jennifer's guide on how to research and execute question-based content for link building.
Could Billboard Ads in Google Maps Street View Become a Possibility?
January 12, 2010, 10:02 amGoogle has been granted a quite interesting patent for "Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising". The company filed the patent back in the summer of 2008. The abstract reads:
Techniques for identifying groups of features in an online geographic view of a real property and replacing and/or augmenting...
Germany Cries Monopoly and Doesn’t Even Collect $200
January 12, 2010, 9:36 amIt looks like Deutschland has a bee in its bonnet about Google. Apparently it is using the dreaded M word “monopol” which, according to Google’s own translation tool is the German form of the English word monopoly. The Germans are concerned that Google is looking like Microsoft and they are not happy. Somebody needs to get in their Mercedes...
Yahoo Southeast Asia Seals Deal With Friendster
January 12, 2010, 9:15 amLate yesterday, Yahoo Southeast Asia got what may be a big leg up in the social networking arena. Yahoo Southeast Asia established a partnership with Friendster that will see the two entities doing a great deal of cross-promotion in the near future.
Friendster has over 90 million registered users, and about 90 percent of its daily traffic...
Google Friend Connect Heads to Drupal and Joomla
January 12, 2010, 8:58 amGoogle announced that Google Friend Connect features are now available for the Drupal and Joomla content management systems. This means that content publishers using these platforms can integrate Google's product, which basically turns your site into a mini social network.
"Now that Friend Connect is integrated with these popular open...
SEO is a Brick not a House
January 12, 2010, 8:06 am"So much gets said about SEO and its relevance or even legitamacy. Most of this is purely linkbait, and the SEO crowd is all to quick to fall into the trap. The arguements fall into three basic camps."
Google Hires Communications Chief From McCain Campaign
January 12, 2010, 7:54 amSomeone with a very interesting political background will soon be in charge of Google's corporate communications. The company's hired Jill Hazelbaker, who's worked with both John McCain and Michael Bloomberg in the past, to replace Matt Furman.
A quick note about Furman's departure: according to Jessica E. Vascellaro, he's leaving on his...
Can Search Engine Optimization Survive Google?
January 12, 2010, 7:46 amThe search engine landscape is ever changing. We covered that. However, while there are multiple players involved in facilitating that change, there is one that drives it far more than the rest of the competition. Obviously, we're talking about Google.
Is there a point where adapting to Google's changes becomes impossible? Share your...
PubMatic Extends Platform To Include Mobile Advertising
January 12, 2010, 7:43 amPubMatic said today it would extend its ad network optimization technology to include mobile advertising.
The company said it would use its real-time optimization technology to help publishers maximize revenue from their mobile ad inventory. PubMatic's technology helps online publishers get the most revenue from their advertising space by...
Study: does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords?
January 12, 2010, 7:36 amHow important are the long tail keywords in your search marketing campaign? Does it pay to invest your time in long tail keywords with little search volume? A new study has the answer.
For Ads the More Targeted May Mean Less Profitable
January 12, 2010, 7:31 amMaybe you can have too much of a good thing. As the Internet allows advertisers to slice and dice large segments of desirable markets into thinner, more defined slices it also creates something that is much less desirable: smaller profits.
How is that you say? How is it possible to make less on my advertising spend when I am advertising directly...
How to Predict Traffic from Google
January 12, 2010, 7:23 amGoogle gives you plenty of really good tools at the moment to predict the traffic to your website from Google rankings. In this post I will show you how you can make a guestimation of the %age of traffic that a particular rank will give you
Linking Building, don’t ever do this !
January 12, 2010, 6:37 amDaveN: "This to me is one of the worst things in the industry at the moment, and I really hate it with a passion". Very shady tactic, indeed.
Handling Blank Review Pages for Better Traffic and Conversion
January 12, 2010, 2:56 amFind out how to add value to your blank review pages and ultimately make each page useful.
"Google does not vet Android applications"
January 11, 2010, 10:33 pm"Google doesn't test Android Software Apps for malware or security issues. Report of an online banking phish causes Google to pull 50 apps from their Android marketplace."
Compete Documents Hotmail Dominance
January 11, 2010, 3:25 pmIf you ever set out to collect personal email addresses at a tech gathering, here's a tip: generally speaking, you can save time by typing or writing out the "@gmail" part before approaching people. But Compete provided a bit of a reality check today by showing that Hotmail remains in the top spot overall.
Andrew Pearlman - who is...
More Than Half Of Holidays Shoppers Relied On Cell Phones
January 11, 2010, 3:06 pmMore than half (51%) of holiday shoppers across 11 countries used their mobile phones for in-store activities such as comparison shopping, getting peer feedback, product information and coupons, according to a new study by Motorola.
The survey found 64 percent of GenY (age 18 to 34) shoppers used their mobile phones for in-store shopping-related...
Controversial Gambling Domain Seizure Ruling Expected This Month
January 11, 2010, 2:19 pmBack in 2008, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear announced that he wanted to shut down 141 Internet gambling sites in the state in an effort to stop unregulated online gaming. He filed a civil suit against the domain names and asked the court to force the sites to block access to Kentucky users or give up control of their domain names....
Yahoo Shopping Partnership With PriceGrabber Arranged
January 11, 2010, 2:19 pmStarting in mid-March, Yahoo Shopping will no longer be a solo act. Yahoo announced today that it's arranged to have PriceGrabber take care of some of the technical details, and it'll be able to make one more cutback thanks to the adjustment.
A post on the Yahoo Developer Blog explained, "[W]e have decided to enter into a strategic...
Sports Marketing In The Age Of Social Media
January 11, 2010, 2:16 pmIn an attempt to give our readers some real world application of all this social media theory swirling about we will be occasionally speaking with some real people who do the real work. How about that? Today we look at social media and the sports world.
Regular readers of this blog know that I am a bit of a sports fan. I say a bit because I am no...
Marketing Pilgrim One of Top 20 Most Read Marketing Blogs
January 11, 2010, 2:14 pmThe Marketing Executives Networking Group is a group of 2000 marketing executives (10 points if you already guessed that ) at the VP level and higher. Recently, the group’s leadership asked members to name their favorite blogs by non-MENG members—and guess who was part of the top 20?
Oh, I guess the title kind of gave it away,...
Traditional Media Outlets Dominate Newsmaking
January 11, 2010, 1:57 pmWe in the online world take every opportunity to turn our nose up at traditional media like newspapers because they are so 1900’s. Just take a look over the past year of posts that I have done and I at times can lead that charge. For the record, I do not relish in the fact that newspapers are going by the way side in many ways. I see that...
Dissecting Zuckerberg's Privacy Comments
January 11, 2010, 1:52 pmFor many in the online space these days the words “Facebook privacy” would be called an oxymoron. Then of course there would be the usual calling others at Facebook morons and then it would get worse from there but I digress. Michael Arrington recently interviewed the poster child for the “Privacy? What privacy?” movement,...
The Marketing Worth Of Twitter and Facebook
January 11, 2010, 1:33 pmAs marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and...
AOL's 1000+ Employee Layoffs Looming
January 11, 2010, 1:26 pmBack in November we talked about AOL’s need to trim their headcount by some 2,500 people. At the time the hope was that enough would walk away from their positions to avert the need for playing the bad guy and actually firing anyone. Well, according to All Things Digital the numbers didn’t quite add up with that plan and now AOL needs...
Online Tax Programs Gaining Popularity
January 11, 2010, 1:23 pmMore than one in five taxpayers say they will go online to prepare their taxes according to a new survey by Opinion Research, conducted for CompleteTax.
The survey found sixty percent of taxpayers plan to use an accountant or professional tax preparer. The number of taxpayers turning to online tax programs now slightly surpasses those planning...
News Corp. Blocks Content from News Aggregation Site
January 11, 2010, 1:01 pmAs you may recall, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch began talking about blocking search engines and news aggregators a couple months ago. This escalated discussions that have essentially been going on for over a decade about the online news industry and fair use.
At the FTC's Journalism and Internet Workshop in December, Murdoch said, "There...
"Google" Declared Word Of The Decade
January 11, 2010, 11:59 amIt looks like a certain search giant's scored another victory in terms of its influence on society. Or it's at least half a win, as the American Dialect Society has declared "google" the word of the decade.
Yes, that's "google" with a lowercase "g." The ADS intentionally chose a generic form of the...
AOL Employees to Be “Involuntarily Laid Off”
January 11, 2010, 11:36 amBack in November we talked about AOL’s need to trim their headcount by some 2,500 people. At the time the hope was that enough would walk away from their positions to avert the need for playing the bad guy and actually firing anyone. Well, according to All Things Digital the numbers didn’t quite add up with that plan and now AOL needs to start...
Google Bows to Chinese Authors on Book Scanning
January 11, 2010, 11:34 amGoogle is used to coming under fire from different groups when it comes to its Google Books project. Most recently, the fire has come from the China Writers Association, which has over 8,000 members.
The group complained that Google was scanning and uploading its books without permission from authors. According to a Bloomberg report:
The U.S....
Are You Getting Enough out of Twitter & Facebook?
January 11, 2010, 11:23 amAs marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and...
7 Overlooked Sources of Keyword Data
January 11, 2010, 11:15 amKeyword Research is an obvious first step in researching a niche for yourself or for a client.
Keywords, and their results, make up the terrain of search marketing – and knowing the terrain (and who else is playing in it) helps us navigate up the mountain (and determine when the mountain is maybe too crowded to climb).
Building Social Bookmarking Networks 101
January 11, 2010, 10:58 amSocial Bookmarking sites aren’t a huge mystery. If you think there’s some “special formula” to the Digg and Reddit algorithms, for the most part: you’d be wrong. Sure, there’s an algorithm at work there, but before you make that attempt at the front page, you need to work on the 2 major pieces necessary for success: great content,...
Privacy no longer a social norm, says Facebook founder
January 11, 2010, 10:42 amA dangerous notion from Zuckerberg. From the Guardian "Talking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".
"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but...
How to Back up Your Social Media Accounts
January 11, 2010, 10:41 amThis is a great review of Backupify.com which I've never used but am jumping on today - so much info outhtere and its scary to think a wrong click could make it all go away....also scary how much info is out there :)
CSS techniques to spruce up your blog
January 11, 2010, 10:17 amHappy New Year, and welcome back to the Distilled blog.
Over the holiday season, and with a bit of down-time, many people had the chance to pick up some new skills or look into something that they’ve never had time to before.
Tom arrived back in the new year having learned some basic CSS, and asked me to recommend a few CSS techniques that...
Social Media News Aggregation via Twitter
January 11, 2010, 9:56 amSocial media news aggregation sites help people find great content from their favorite sources without having to weed through all the other sub-par content to find it. This is done by a democratic system of voting and homepage promotion for these stories.
A Print Shop for a New Decade
January 11, 2010, 9:54 amAt the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Encore unveiled a new version of The Print Shop. Yep, that's right - The Print Shop, a time time-honored desktop publishing software that's been around for decades. The company has completely redone it this time around.
At the MommyTech Summit at CES, the company demonstrated the Print Shop...
30 PR Experts You Should Follow on Twitter
January 11, 2010, 9:45 amBe sure to check these Twitter streams out.
Getting Links from the Top 50 Domains
January 11, 2010, 9:34 amWith SEOMoz releasing their top 500 link-receiving domains, I thought it would be interesting to compile a list of ways you can acquire links from the top 50 or so of those domains. Tread lightly though, as there are some pretty black-hat strategies uncovered for getting links from the likes of Flickr and AOL.com
Google Tries to Carve Out its Place in Mobile
January 11, 2010, 9:08 amArguably the biggest news in the tech industry so far this year, has been Google's launch of the Nexus One smartphone. The company rocked the mobile space when it announced that it would be selling the device on its own without the need of a carrier contract (although such contracts are available).
The device has come under fire from some...
Detecting and dealing with duplicate content
January 11, 2010, 8:34 amA guest post on the Trail from Mark Thompson that looks at issues, tools and methods for dealing with duplicate content/scraping and plagerism. A great job, and I especially like the tool round up. Give it a read and a Sphinn if ye please
Zuckerberg Sparks More Privacy Discussion
January 11, 2010, 8:18 amFor many in the online space these days the words “Facebook privacy” would be called an oxymoron. Then of course there would be the usual calling others at Facebook morons and then it would get worse from there but I digress. Michael Arrington recently interviewed the poster child for the “Privacy? What privacy?” movement, Facebook founder...
Enterprises Seeing Increased Complexity at Data Centers
January 11, 2010, 8:06 amSymantec has put together its "State of the Data Center" report, which is the product of a survey of 573 businesses in 26 countries.
"Although mid-sized enterprises tend to evaluate and adopt new technologies at a faster rate than larger organizations, they still face similar data center complexities that are compounded by...
BetOnSports CEO Sentenced To Prison
January 11, 2010, 8:02 amDavid Carruthers, the former director and CEO of online sports wagering firm BetOnSports, was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Friday, the Justice Department announced.
Carruthers, a citizen of the United Kingdom, was hired by BetOnSports founder, Gary Kaplan, in 2000 as CEO of the online wagering company, which was based in Costa...
German Justice Minister Likens Google To "Giant Monopoly"
January 11, 2010, 7:45 amGermany's justice minister is less than happy about the direction Google's headed. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger thinks the search giant may become a monopoly, and she's not of a mind to sit by while that happens behind closed doors.
Germany has often posed something of a problem for Google. It never won the right to the name...
Newspapers and Traditional Media Still Produce Most News
January 11, 2010, 7:31 amWe in the online world take every opportunity to turn our nose up at traditional media like newspapers because they are so 1900’s. Just take a look over the past year of posts that I have done and I at times can lead that charge. For the record, I do not relish in the fact that newspapers are going by the way side in many ways. I see that they...
100 Most Influential Online Marketers of 2009
January 11, 2010, 7:27 amThe list is here: the 100 Most Influential Online Marketers of 2009. Discover the movers and the shakers of SEM in 2009.
Launching SAScon – THE Search, Analytics & Social conference
January 11, 2010, 7:27 amInfomation about the new Search, Analytics and Social Media conference thats taking place in Manchester, UK in April with key note speakers including Joost de Valk, Richard Gregory and Jon Myers.
Google Shows How People Have Been Searching
January 11, 2010, 7:20 amBefore 2009 came to a close, Google provided a look (as always) at the most searched for terms of the year. It showed the top ten fastest rising and fastest falling terms on both a global scale, and in the U.S. Globally, "Michael Jackson" was the fastest rising, while "Beijing 2008" was the fastest falling. In the U.S.,...
Google Fast Flip Goes Mainstream
January 11, 2010, 6:57 amUpdate 2: Google has now placed Fast Flip at the bottom of Google News.
Update: Google announced that it now has 2 dozen more publishers representing over 50 publications on board the Google Fast Flip train (which is still in experiment status). New sources include Tribune Co. newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and...
What You Can Learn From The Most Tweeted Blog Posts Ever
January 11, 2010, 5:00 amYou can make a beautiful, well-structured site that contains excellent content, but it isn’t going to make any money unless it starts getting visitors.
Google Flooding Content Network With Nexus One Ads
January 11, 2010, 4:22 am"...new Google Nexus One phone ads, totally off topic for the site, on my sites and others.... I was actually adding "google.com" into my competitive ad filter."
The Local File – Google Local Business Hijacking Issues
January 11, 2010, 4:03 amIt seems Google Local Business listings have a hole bigger than the Grand Canyon, last week I exprienced one of my clients listings being hijacked and the loss of thousands of visits. In this blogpost I explain what happened, how they did it and how to fix it! In the desperate hope that Google will close this spam hole..
Yahoo! Shopping Discontinues its API Services
January 11, 2010, 3:35 am"After careful consideration, we have decided to enter into a strategic partnership with PriceGrabber to power the Product Submit functionality of Yahoo! Shopping as of March 11, 2010."
Google Merchant Center – Formerly Google Base
January 11, 2010, 1:33 am
Google Merchant Center is for those who want to submit products and sell them through Google. It used to be called Google Base. Google Merchant Center is where you upload feeds, check item status, and get information about how well your listings are doing. Your products uploaded to Google Merchant Center feed the searches that other people do for...
Google Search Suggestions and Derogatory Words
January 10, 2010, 12:46 pmA recent court ruling in France required Google to remove the French word for "scam" or "swindle" from the Google Suggestions for a certain company.
National Weather Service Asks For Twitter Storm Reports
January 10, 2010, 10:00 amIt seems that a lot of government scientists are betting people will turn to Twitter when Mother Nature lets loose. Earlier, we wrote about the USGS's Twitter Earthquake Detector, and it turns out that the National Weather Service has cooked up something similar for storms.
Here's an official description of how the Twitter Storm Reports...
Google Website Optimizer
January 9, 2010, 11:34 pm
Google Website Optimizer is a free Google tool made to help you get better conversions on your website, whether that means signing up for your email newsletter, or buying your product or service. You test different versions of your content to determine what is going to attract the most users and get them to stick around long enough to convert....
Google Becoming "Giant Monopoly" - German Minister
January 9, 2010, 2:12 pmReuters: "...Google Inc is becoming a "giant monopoly" like Microsoft and could face legal action if it does not become more transparent, Germany's justice minister said."
Consumer Technology Holiday Sales Hit $10.8 Billion
January 9, 2010, 10:00 amU.S. consumer technology retail sales fell less than one percent for the 2009 holiday season, according to a new report from The NPD Group.
The report found sales for the five-week holiday period reached $10.8 billion, a big improvement from the 6 percent decline during the 2008 holiday season.
The holiday season had its share of fluctuations....
Set-up and Use of Google Webmaster Tools
January 9, 2010, 9:00 am
Google Webmaster Tools is a free service provided by Google to help new and experienced webmaster check on their indexing and raise the visibility of their website(s). Among the tools in Google Webmaster are those that check the crawl rate, list sites linking to the user’s site, determine what keyword searches on Google bring the...
Cup of Joe: Give Me a Smart Phone With Pink & Purple Stripes
January 9, 2010, 4:04 amSo the other day I logged into LinkedIn and went to my Inbox to view some messages. There I saw a connection request that I had obviously rejected back in November. I don’t like accepting request on LinkedIn unless I have met the said person face to face. So it’s not unusual that I would have rejected someone’s request. However,...
Baidu's COO Resigns
January 8, 2010, 3:26 pmSeveral changes in Baidu's executive lineup occurred today, and fans can take heart in the fact that two of them came about as the result of promotions. The third is a little more troubling, insofar as Baidu's chief operating officer resigned "for personal reasons."
The term "personal reasons" has represented any number...
Once Upon a Time There Was a Business That Needed a Marketing Campaign
January 8, 2010, 3:12 pmThe most powerful marketing campaigns are often the ones that we as consumers can identify with or connect to in some way. One way that businesses invoke such a feeling from potential customers is by telling a story with their marketing. This is called (appropriately) storyteller marketing.
Dana Todd of Newsforce recently sat down with...
Is it OK to Say No to Twitter?
January 8, 2010, 1:56 pmOver the past year or more, you have probably heard your fair share of people telling you that you need to use Twitter if you hope to have business success. It's true that there are a great many opportunities and potential benefits to using the service, but do you have to use it? Well, that depends.
Is Twitter Necessary? Tell us what you think....
Google Applies to Enter Energy Market
January 8, 2010, 1:35 pmIt’s been more than two years since Google’s last big big to enter a government-regulated offline business. They offered some $4.6B for wireless spectrum in an auction in 2008, but it seemed that the multi-billion bid was merely a ploy to get some of their demands for the spectrum met.
But that’s not quite the case with...
Facebook Launches Fellowship Program For Ph.D. Students
January 8, 2010, 12:58 pmFacebook said today it is launching the Facebook Fellowship Program aimed at Ph.D. students in the 2010-2011 school year.
The goal of the Facebook Fellowship Program is to find candidates who can help solve problems surrounding the social web and Internet technology.
The Facebook Blog provides more details. "We are interested in a wide...
A Glimpse of This Year's Upcoming Gadgets
January 8, 2010, 12:22 pmAs you are probably aware, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been going on this week, and will continue to do so through Sunday January, 10. WebProNews is in attendance, and will be periodically posting exclusive video interviews and looks at new products, continuing after the show is over.
What are your favorite releases...
Yahoo to Keep BOSS under Microsoft
January 8, 2010, 11:59 amAnd I don’t mean job security for Carol Bartz. Yahoo’s BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is a popular, free way for developers to access the Yahoo index and to implement Yahoo search for your site. With the pending Microsoft-Yahoo deal outsourcing the search business, there has been some concern over whether BOSS will be...
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz Gives Herself A Grade for Her First Year
January 8, 2010, 11:09 amIt’s hard to believe that it’s already been almost one year that Carol Bartz has taken the top position at Yahoo! She officially celebrates the one-year mark next week but is taking a look back at what was probably a whirlwind event no matter how much experience she brought to the table.
Bloomberg reports that Bartz recently gave herself an...
Analysts Give Google Thumbs Up For Diversifying
January 8, 2010, 10:59 amOnce upon a time, Google was a company that specialized in search and advertising. Now, it's tossing out advanced mobile phones and requesting the right to buy and sell energy. Still, several financial analysts think these not-entirely-conventional moves are a good idea.
Sharon Gaudin spoke to Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group, Ezra...
Yahoo Partners With Electus On Original Content
January 8, 2010, 10:34 amYahoo has partnered with Ben Silverman's production company Electus, in which Electus will develop and produce premium content for Yahoo and its advertisers.
The partnership is aimed at driving creativity in online programming. Electus will develop a number of original video concepts for Yahoo in partnership with advertisers. The specific...
Google Could Sell Energy
January 8, 2010, 9:35 amRemember when Google was just a search engine? We often still think about it that way, yet we are frequently reminded of the breadth of product offerings and ultimately the power the company possesses. Power, or energy rather, is actually something Google could end up selling in the future.
Google recently applied for approval from the Federal...
Gov't Agency Turns To Twitter For Earthquake-Tracking
January 8, 2010, 9:03 amThe fact that reports of earthquakes (or at least messages reading "EARTHQUAKE!!!") are quick to surface on Twitter is a key reason many people first recognized the site as useful. Now, the U.S. Geological Survey has decided to have a closer look, unveiling the Twitter Earthquake Detector.
An official page announced, "[T]he...
Yahoo (Somewhat) Addresses Future of BOSS
January 8, 2010, 7:55 amBack when the Microsoft and Yahoo search and advertising deal was announced, people (particularly developers) were left wondering what would become of such Yahoo projects as Searchmonkey and BOSS. These things let developers build upon Yahoo's search technology.
Microsoft did imply it would be open to keeping them around, but not much has been...
Google Tells What is “Near You Now”
January 8, 2010, 7:50 amWhat’s with Google and their constant upgrades and innovations? What is it with these guys? You would think that they are trying to improve and stuff. The latest, and personally I think one of the coolest, service introductions is the “Near You Now” feature on Google.com for mobile.
It’s pretty simple. Your location is known by Google...
Consumer Electronic Sales To Top $165 Billion In 2010
January 8, 2010, 7:42 amThe consumer electronics (CE) industry is set to generate more than $165 billion in U.S. shipment revenues this year, a slight increase from 2009, according to the semi-annual industry forecast released by the Consumer Electronics Association.
CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro announced the forecast in his opening remarks at the 2010...
Carol Bartz Gives Self A B-
January 8, 2010, 7:37 amCarol Bartz is five days away from her one-year anniversary as Yahoo's CEO, and in that time, she feels she's done a fairly decent job of leading the company. In a recent interview, Bartz graded her performance as B- material.
Bartz indicated to Brian Womack that speed (or actually, a lack thereof) might have been her biggest problem. ...
Bing Needs to Say Something Different
January 8, 2010, 7:18 amIf you are easily the number 3 horse in a three horse race does it do you any good to start saying negative things about how you race? Probably not. In fact, it’s probably better for you to act a little more confident, train a little harder and do something that will move you out of the basement.
This horse I am referring to is Microsoft’s...
Google Simplifies Finding Nearby Businesses from Your Phone
January 8, 2010, 7:01 amGoogle has released what is called the "Near me Now" feature for the iPhone and Android browser. The feature shows nearby businesses by category based on the user's location.
"'Near me now' was designed to address two user problems," explains Google's Mobile team. "First, we wanted to make it fast and easy to find out...
Running Realtime Credit Card Processing
January 8, 2010, 6:08 am"WebmasterWorld members discuss the issues and challenges of running real-time credit card processing."
Three More Groups Rally Against Google Books Settlement
January 7, 2010, 3:25 pmThe odds of the Google Book settlement being approved - at least if the process comes down to a popularity contest - decreased again this week. The National Writers Union, American Society of Journalists and Authors, and Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America objected to it.
As reported by David Sarno, these groups represent over...
Cell Phone Use May Protect Against Alzheimer’s
January 7, 2010, 2:53 pmTalking on a cell phone may actually help to protect against and even reverse Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study by researchers at the University of South Florida.
The study involved exposing mice over long periods of time to electromagnetic waves associated with cell phone use.
"It surprised us to find that cell phone...
Boxee Beta Makes its Appearance to the Public
January 7, 2010, 2:49 pmThe much-anticipated Boxee Beta has now officially come out. It is available for Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu.
"In the past 4 weeks since we announced the upcoming Beta we had the help of tens of thousands of early access users who tested the Beta on all different platforms and gave us great feedback," says Boxee's Avner Ronen....
Tim Armstrong Weighing Search Deal With Microsoft
January 7, 2010, 2:05 pmAOL's current search deal with Google is set to end in December, and when it expires, there's no guarantee that AOL will stick with the search giant. Today, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong implied that he's weighing his options.
Armstrong didn't go about this in a nasty or even slightly negative way. According to Nicholas Carlson, he just said,...
Open Internet Heavily Promoted at CES
January 7, 2010, 1:56 pmThe Open Internet Coalition launched a new "Protect the Net" campaign at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The idea is to build on growing support among technology innovators for protecting the open Internet, the coalition says.
"Many of the hottest new technologies showcased at the CES are only possible because...
For Google Maps It’s Not the Problem but How You Handle It
January 7, 2010, 1:48 pmHow many times have you heard it said in business (or anywhere for that matter) that how you respond to a problem is more important than the problem itself? It’s said over and over again because it’s simply good advice. Well, Google had a chance to practice that principle last night when it began sending out e-mails to those with listings in...
Google’s Beating Apple—But Not Where You’d Expect
January 7, 2010, 1:40 pmIn all the hubbub of the Nexus One premiere this week, another Google milestone has gone largely unnoticed. (Even I saw the headline earlier this week, but opted to cover a Nexus story instead.) While we’ve all anticipated Google coming out with a smartphone to end all smartphones (and start calling them “superphones” ),...
Android Taking over AT&T
January 7, 2010, 12:50 pmThe last domino has fallen: AT&T has announced that they will offer Android handsets on their network. The last of the major US carriers to sign on with the open-source Google OS devices, AT&T plans five Android-based handsets built by Motorola and HTC this year. Of course, AT&T is the home of the iPhone.
Along with the Android,...
Google Adds Chat to Translator Kit
January 7, 2010, 12:21 pmGoogle announced today that it has released chat in the Google Translator Toolkit.
"Collaboration is an important part of translation," says Kartik Singh, Software Engineer for the Translator Toolkit. "Whether you work with editors to translate documents, customers to clarify terms or project managers to meet deadlines, working...
Yahoo Makes Multiple Strides On Connected TV Front
January 7, 2010, 12:02 pmToday, Yahoo proved that it's all about bringing together TVs and the Internet, and also that it has plenty of allies in that mission. The company announced new partnerships, a wide release of the Widget Developer Kit, and a significant range of new TV widget providers and content.
Press releases are often just four or five short...
Samsung Unveils App Store for HDTVs
January 7, 2010, 11:42 amSamsung unveiled its own app store for HDTVs at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. With Samsung Apps, users can download and purchase applications from select 2010 Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray Players and Home Theater systems via the upgraded Internet@TV – Content Service.
"Samsung's goal over the past two years has been to...
Intel Shows Off Whole New Family of Processors
January 7, 2010, 10:05 amIntel has unveiled a whole new family of Intel Core Processors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. These include Intel Turbo Boost technology for laptops, desktops, and embedded devices.
"For the first time, there's a new family of Intel processors with the industry's most advanced technology available immediately at virtually...
What Microsoft is Sharing in Consumer Electronics
January 7, 2010, 9:51 amMicrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote last night was one of the most anticipated events of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It was expected that he would unveil a device to compete with a supposedly upcoming tablet from Apple, but people anticipating such news were met with the unveiling of a different device - the HP Windows 7...
France May Tax Google Ad Revenue
January 7, 2010, 9:35 amFrance is considering a proposal to tax online advertising revenues earned by companies such as Google.
The proposal would extend to other companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo and would put an end to "enrichment without any limit or compensation," newspaper Liberation quoted Guillaume Cerutti, one of the supporters of the proposal, as...
Samsung Unveils First E-Readers at CES
January 7, 2010, 9:21 amAt the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, Samsung introduced its first e-book reading devices. They're called the E6 and the E101, coming in six and ten-inch screen sizes.
"We've used our expertise to create a high-quality e-book with today’s on-the-go consumer in mind," said Young Bae, director of display marketing,...
Netflix-Ready Devices Coming From More Big Brands
January 7, 2010, 8:12 amAt the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Netflix announced agreements with five global consumer electronics companies, to introduce Netflix-ready devices later in the year. These companies are Funai, which distributes the Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania and Emerson brands in the United States, Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba.
Each of...
Fandango Launches App For The Android Platform
January 7, 2010, 7:55 amFandango today introduced a free movie app for Google's Android platform at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The Fandango Movies, Times & Tickets app allows users to find movies and showtimes, view trailers, locate theaters, view fan ratings and buy tickets.
Users can find movies playing in their local area by using...
Google Offers On2 An Additional $26.5 Million
January 7, 2010, 7:31 amSqueaky wheels may get a little grease, but apparently, it's better still to be an angry and litigious shareholder. Following Google's acquisition offer to On2 in August, On2 shareholders complained, and now, they may receive an extra $26.5 million for their trouble.
As we reported earlier, Google offered to acquire On2 for 60 cents per...
Succeeding In SEO Requires Change
January 7, 2010, 6:40 amAs you know full well, the search industry is constantly changing, and that means SEOs and businesses must adapt. This is always made abundantly clear at the change of each year as the previous year is reflected upon, and predictions about trends in the upcoming year are discussed. SEOs know that adaptation and ongoing education are crucial. The...
Social Media and the Future of Sports
January 7, 2010, 5:40 amIn an attempt to give our readers some real world application of all this social media theory swirling about we will be occasionally speaking with some real people who do the real work. How about that? Today we look at social media and the sports world.
Regular readers of this blog know that I am a bit of a sports fan. I say a bit because I am no...
US Holiday E-Commerce Spend Up 4% Year Over Year
January 6, 2010, 10:31 pmThe numbers are in according to one tracking firm, comScore, which tell us just how good, bad or indifferent this past holiday season was from an online perspective. With a 4 % increase over last year I wouldn’t say good or bad and maybe not even indifferent. How about we’ll just take it because let’s face it, the economy still sucks.
The...
Rumor: AOL May Be Buying Mashable
January 6, 2010, 3:26 pmIn mid-2009, all-things-social-media blog Mashable surpassed TechCrunch as the top tech blog in terms of traffic. Now, Mashable is rumored to be on its way to becoming an AOL property.
In late 2009, AOL revealed its new strategy away from Time Warner. That strategy is content, content, content, and that is something there is no shortage of from...
Rumor: AOL May (Not) Be Buying Mashable
January 6, 2010, 3:26 pmUpdate: According to Business Insider, Pete Cashmore had this to say on the matter:
We're very open to partnerships and always talk with those that get in touch. We've certainly spoken to lots of potential partners, some of those conversations more significant than others. But I don't feel that any of those conversations reached a point at...
Hitwise: Vevo Still Dependent On YouTube
January 6, 2010, 3:24 pmDifferent opinions exist regarding whether or not Vevo will ever be a big success; on the one hand, it doesn't offer anything that other video sites don't. On the other, well, music labels' lawyers may work to ensure it's something special. But either way, Vevo owes YouTube its life at this early stage.
Right from the start, everyone...
Warner Bros. And Netflix Reach New Deal
January 6, 2010, 3:10 pmWarner Bros. said today it has reached a new agreement with Netflix to make new Warner titles on DVD and Blu-ray available to Netflix members after a 28-day window.
The move by Warner is an effort to squeeze all the potential profit it can from its new releases. Warner says under the deal Netflix will benefit by paying the studio less for new...
A Look at SEO From 2000-2009 - A Decade of 21st Century SEO
January 6, 2010, 2:48 pmI've got a fairly long "decade of SEO in review" article for you today. I thought about splitting it into 2 parts, but decided it would lose a lot by doing so. I hope you'll make it all the way through because I tried to make it as interesting and humorous (at times) as possible.
Educating Stubborn Clients About Critical SEO Practices
January 6, 2010, 2:40 pmAs you know full well, the search industry is constantly changing, and that means SEOs must adapt. This is always made abundantly clear at the change of each year as the previous year is reflected upon and predictions about trends in the upcoming year are discussed. You know that adaptation and ongoing education are crucial. The problem is that...
AOL Looking to Buy Mashable?
January 6, 2010, 2:13 pmAOL’s solo act may be getting off to an interesting start if this current rumor has any validity. Now, of course, this is a rumor so it will be handled as such. But, hey, if it’s good enough for Gawker and the news remains slow like it is, why not join in, right?
According to Gawker’s Valleywag AOL is courting Pete Cashmore’s project in...
Introducing Sphinn’s New Guidelines
January 6, 2010, 2:03 pmHeads up, Sphinn users: We've just posted an updated set of Sphinn Guidelines. Sphinn began by operating under what Danny Sullivan called his Common Sense Law. In the beginning, the approach was "to have as few rules as possible and build them up organically as they seem to be needed." As the Sphinn community has grown, we've built up those...
It’s Official: Baidu into Video
January 6, 2010, 1:51 pmYesterday’s rumors have proven true: dominant Chinese search engine Baidu has officially announced their entry into the online video market in China. In fact, they’ve confirmed almost all of the rumors floating around yesterday: Baidu is involved, it’s a partnership, they’ll be soliciting content licensing agreements from...
Microsoft: No upgrade pricing for Office 2010
January 6, 2010, 1:50 pmEveryone will pay the same prices for Office 2010 with no reward for customer loyalty.
HD Radio Tech a Big Theme Throughout CES
January 6, 2010, 1:30 pmAt the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, there will be a total of 25 new HD Radio products introduced, making for this technology's broadest product category coverage ever. This year, 15 automotive brands will produce over 80 vehicle types, and 36 of them will include HD Radio Technology, according to iBiquity Digital.
Brands...
.CN domains no longer available outside China
January 6, 2010, 1:15 pmAn announcement in December to crack down on improper registrations of .CN domains has now led to a halting of sales of the ccTLD outside China.
Online Holiday Spending Hits $29.1 Billion
January 6, 2010, 12:48 pmOnline holiday spending during 2009 reached $29.1 billion, representing a four percent increase over the same period last year, according to a new report from comScore.
"The 2009 online holiday shopping season was a positive one as its growth rate slightly surpassed our forecast and returned to solidly positive rates after nearly a full year...
Spam Works for Weight Loss
January 6, 2010, 12:36 pmNo, it’s not the latest fad diet: Marketing Pilgrim. Marketing news, folks. How many of us have stared at the thousands of spam messages and wondered, “Why on earth do they keep sending this crap out? It can’t possibly be effective . . . can it?”
Unfortunately, incredibly, in some industries, the answer is yes. As MediaPost...
Nexus One Sales Of 5-6 Million Units Forecast
January 6, 2010, 12:01 pmGoogle's given its presentation, tech reviewers have had their say, and, after months of buildup, the Nexus One should soon start appearing in the real world. So how - in a sales sense - will it fare? According to a Barclays Capital analyst, the Nexus One will be a rather hot item.
In a note released this morning, Doug Anmuth indicated...
Google Talks to People About Online Auto Habits
January 6, 2010, 11:35 amAre you familiar with "Google on the Street"? This refers to a series of videos Google has put together in which it goes out and talks to people on the street about various online behaviors, to see how responses stack up against their own Insights for Search findings.
The videos are periodically posted on Google's UK Barometer Blog....
DivX Rolls Out Online TV Platform At CES
January 6, 2010, 10:37 amDigital media company, DivX, said today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it is introducing an embedded Internet TV platform called DivX TV, which offers access to online media content streamed directly to any connected device.
DivX TV does not require a PC or a set-top box to access online content. The platform can be supported on...
Use Your BlackBerry to Give Presentations
January 6, 2010, 9:42 amAt the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas, Research in Motion (RIM) unveiled a new device called the BlackBerry Presenter, which is a way for users to wirelessly present Microsoft PowerPoint, PDF, and other image files right from their BlackBerry smartphone. Pretty cool.
"BlackBerry Presenter helps simplify the presentation experience...
Opera Releases New SDKs and New Browser
January 6, 2010, 9:10 amOpera is unveiling three new releases at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. This includes two new software development kits (SDKs), the Opera Devices 10.15 SDK for Linux and Windows CE (WinCE) platforms, and the company's new standalone browser, Opera Devices 10 for WinCE (beta).
"Opera Devices SDKs are built with freedom...
Global Consumers Willing To Pay For Some Online Content
January 6, 2010, 8:57 amMany global consumers are willing to pay for some online content or are open to increased advertising, but attitudes vary greatly by geography, demographics and content type, according to a new survey by Nielsen.
Nielsen polled more than 27,000 consumers in 54 countries to determine attitudes about paying for online content and to gauge what...
Hyperlocal Being Targeted by M&A and VC Crowd
January 6, 2010, 8:50 amSearch marketers are always interested in local marketing and search. It’s where the rubber meets the road for many businesses including the enterprise (i.e. big box stores) whose real representation of their brand is the local store that someone goes into to buy products. If the local experience is bad then the brand is bad in many consumers’...
HP Unveils New Touch Notebook and Some New Minis
January 6, 2010, 8:19 amHP unveiled a few new mobile devices today at CES. These include a new TouchSmart notebook, and a handful of minis.
The HP TouchSmart tm2 builds on HP's existing TouchSmart software, and updates the tx2. "With the convertible tm2, customers can choose the product configuration and input method that is most comfortable and natural, whether on...
Google Reader's Mobile Interface Upgraded
January 6, 2010, 7:44 amGoogle's announcements relating to mobile didn't end with the launch of the Nexus One yesterday. Google Reader received some updates that are intended to work within the world of cell phones (along with one Web interface upgrade), too.
The list of changes is fairly long, and all together, they do a good job of bringing the mobile version of...
Amazon.com Launches Kindle DX Globally
January 6, 2010, 7:34 amAmazon.com said today it is making its larger electronic reader, Kindle DX available in more than 100 countries.
Kindle DX features a 9.7-inch electronic paper display, about 2.5 times the surface area of the original Kindle. Kindle DX with Global Wireless is available for pre-order starting today for $489 and ships January 19.
"Kindle DX...
Social Media Lawsuits: Another 2010 Trend?
January 6, 2010, 7:16 amTweets appear to be a pretty powerful 140 characters in some areas these days. In fact, based on this story there may be a whole new slice of the legal industry that can be created. Imagine the TV ad at 2 am “Has someone tweeted something about you that isn’t true? Have you suffered damage to your life in general because of a Twitter user with...
Cisco Showcases Big Video Plans
January 6, 2010, 7:13 amCisco has quite a large presence at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year. The company is showcasing some interesting new video experiences at the event.
Today Cisco announced new customers, features, and professional service options for the Cisco Eos social entertainment platform. The company also announced that it is providing a...
How to Get More Comments on Your Blog
January 6, 2010, 6:59 amWhat I really like about that post is that Alisa is talking from experience – this is priceless. Therefore I recommend all (especially new) bloggers to give this post some serious thought.
When is It Okay to Remove User-Generated Content?
January 5, 2010, 11:40 pmRebecca Kelley at 10e20 outlines different exceptions where she feels deleting comments, reviews or feedback is justified, then asks "What do you guys think? When do you think it’s okay to remove user-generated content, and when should you leave it be? Share your thoughts below!" Great followup to the article about Domino's Pizza possibly...
Link Building Trends For 2010
January 5, 2010, 6:07 pmWhile 2009 is fresh in our minds, here are our thoughts, observations and recommendations for link building success in 2010 from your four Link Week writers
Advice for the 'New' In-House SEO
January 5, 2010, 4:27 pmCongratulations! You’re hired…
It’s a huge step in your SEO career to be hired for an in-house SEO department. Now it’s time to plan your in-house SEO strategy carefully, so you can secure your position and give your company what they’re looking for: tangible results from your SEO expertise...
Google Increases Lead In Online Video
January 5, 2010, 3:23 pmThere may come a point at which Google's popularity maxes out, but we haven't reached it yet. A new report from comScore concerning online video sites indicates that the search giant's properties attracted considerably more eyeballs in November than the previous month.
In October, comScore counted 126.3 million unique viewers in connection...
Online Music Most Popular Digital Content Among Kids
January 5, 2010, 3:09 pmThe majority (79%) of kids age 2-14 have purchased some form of physical or digital content in the past year, with 31 percent acquiring both physical and digital content, according to a new report from The NPD Group.
Video rental services and online music services were the most popular among kids ages 2-14 in the past year, with 19 percent using...
CES About to Kick Off the Year in Technology
January 5, 2010, 2:54 pmThe Consumer Electronics Association is hosting the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week, and WebProNews will be there to provide coverage. Last year we came away with about 25 video interviews and product demos. This year, our entire video crew will be out there, so expect a lot of good stuff.
Look for a lot of new...
You Can’t Optimize Cardboard - Building TrustRank
January 5, 2010, 2:53 pmRachel looks at how to best build TrustRank in the search engines algorithms. Clearly states what SEO professionals know but rarely discuss
Social Media's Halo Effect on Organic Search
January 5, 2010, 2:28 pmOn December 30th, 2009, Selena Gomez (better known for her role as Alex Russo on the TV show "Wizards of Waverly Place"), visited Daireds Salon and Spa Pangea for a haircut. Later, she tweeted about the positive experience to her 1.3 million followers.
Baidu Getting into Video?
January 5, 2010, 2:10 pmpaidContent reports today that private equity company Providence Equity Partners, one of the backers of Hulu, is rumored to be joining up with Baidu for a Chinese equivalent of the popular professional video content site. While China is the largest Internet population (350M) and a huge market for ad dollars in just about every online arena,...
Google Has No Suggestions on What Islam Is
January 5, 2010, 1:25 pmEvery now and then, someone spots an oddity in Google's suggestions. Some are funny. Some are disturbing, and some are just weird. Alex Wilhelm at The Next Web has discovered an interesting behavior in Google Suggest involving religion.
With most major religions, you will get suggestions from Google when you type in a query like "example...
AdMob Determines Android Is Growing Faster Than Ever
January 5, 2010, 1:12 pmGoogle took the wraps off its Nexus One phone today, and by all accounts, this device will help spread Android further and faster than ever. But new data from AdMob shows that the mobile operating system was already on quite a roll.
A post on the official AdMob blog began by stating that growth has been occurring at an impressive rate in...
USA Today Rolls Out New Homepage
January 5, 2010, 12:56 pmUSA TODAY has introduced a newly designed homepage, the first major redesign for the site since 2007.
The new site offers improved navigation and a cleaner feel with the aim of making it easier for users to find content. The new homepage loads 25 to 35 percent faster allowing users to get to news content quickly. Initially the redesign is...
Across-the-Board Growth Expected In Internet Industry
January 5, 2010, 12:43 pmThe U.S. online advertising industry will shake off the recession's effects and have an excellent time of it in 2010, according to one expert. J.P. Morgan's Imran Khan has predicted that just about every aspect of the sphere should experience significant growth this year.
Let's start with the subject of display advertising. Ground was...
Google Premieres Nexus (Big Surprise)
January 5, 2010, 12:32 pmGoogle declined to go for the fake out as they unveiled the expected Nexus One today at their Android event. First spotted after employees received free phones last month, the Nexus has already created a media frenzy as the “real” Google phone—one that will be sold by Google through their web store (though manufactured, like so...
Google Unveils Nexus One "Super Phone"
January 5, 2010, 12:12 pmAt the Android Press Event today, Google finally unveiled its much-anticipated phone, the Nexus One, which the company says belongs to a new category of phones called "super phones." Details have been leaking about the phone for quite some time now, but Google is now demonstrating what it can do. The Nexus One is of course designed in...
Apple Acquiring AdMob Competitor Quattro Wireless
January 5, 2010, 11:17 amUpdate: The acquisition has been confirmed, and competitor AdMob issued the following statement:
"We believe that Apple’s proposed acquisition of Quattro serves as yet another validation of the vibrant mobile advertising industry and can help accelerate the pace of innovation and competition in this space."
Original Article:...
Google to Add Mobile ‘Click to Call’ Feature to AdWords
January 5, 2010, 10:41 amGoogle is ‘all in’ on mobile. AdMob purchased. Operating systems and devices in place. Announcements out the wazoo on just about everything as of late. Now, there is the ability to have your contact phone number show up on your ads on high end mobile devices and the call costs the same as a click. Earth shattering? Nope but it adds to the...
Microsoft Releases Pricing Details For Office 2010
January 5, 2010, 10:27 amMicrosoft said today it is releasing pricing details for its Office 2010 editions launching later this year.
"Office 2010 will be offered in four versions, to make it easier to choose a version of Office that's best for you - Office Home and Business, Office Professional, Office Home and Student, and Office Professional Academic,"...
Social Media: More Than Meets the Eye?
January 5, 2010, 9:15 amSocial media is gaining greater acceptance across all levels of business from the SMB to the multi-national enterprise. No surprise there. What is beginning to play out though is the fact that the space is new and evolving. As a result, some of the techniques or tactics that seem to be the ‘norm’ are now being seen a bit differently. Why?...
PandaLabs Detects 25 Million New Malware Strains
January 5, 2010, 9:12 amThe past year set a new record for malware creation with 25 million new strains, according to a new report by PandaLabs.
The latest surge of activity included new examples of banker Trojans, which accounted for 66 percent of all new samples, as well as a number of fake antivirus programs.
During 2009, spam was also highly active, accounting for...
Google Shares Proposal for White Spaces Database
January 5, 2010, 9:12 amLast night, Google announced that it filed a submission to the FCC, asking it to designate Google as one of potentially several administrators of a "white spaces" geolocation database. Back in November of 2008, the FCC approved the use of these White Spaces, or unused airwaves between broadcast TV channels, for public wireless broadband...
2010: The Year of Google v. Apple?
January 5, 2010, 8:40 amIt appears that not just the Year of Mobile is being christened this January but new competitive lines are being drawn as well between Internet giants Google and Apple. Yes, it’s time to officially deem Apple an Internet company in my opinion but you are always free to disagree.
According to All Things Digital Apple is preparing to announce a...
Google Gives Alex Over a Million Books
January 5, 2010, 8:25 amSpring Design, the makers of the Alex eReader device, announced it has entered into an agreement with Google, which will see it gaining access to over a million Google Books. Alex users will be able to read these books online or download them using the Android-integrated browser and search applications.
"We are pleased to work with Spring...
Opera CEO Steps Down, Immediately Replaced
January 5, 2010, 7:50 amJon von Tetzchner has stepped down as CEO of Opera, though he will remain with the company full-time in a "strategic and independent" capacity. Opera has appointed Lars Boilesen to take his place as CEO.
Jon von Tetzchner co-founded the company fifteen years ago. Boilesen has held executive positions at Alcatel-Lucent where he was CEO...
Zillow Grows More Than 50% In 2009
January 5, 2010, 7:46 amReal estate website Zillow.com said today it broke multiple records for site traffic and user activity in 2009.
An average of 8.2 million unique users visited Zillow each month during 2009, which is an increase of 57 percent year-over-year.
"2009 was a wild year for real estate, with continued home value declines, government intervention,...
How to get in Google's real-time results
January 5, 2010, 7:36 amLast month, Google started to display real-time results on the search engine result pages. How are these results calculated and how can you get in these results?
Hulu Investor May Help Launch Similar Site In China
January 5, 2010, 7:36 amAn investment group with significant ties to Hulu may now be ready to help a similar site launch in China. A report's connected Providence Equity Partners to both Baidu and a new online video destination.
Let's start with a little history. Once upon a time (or in mid-2007, to be more exact), Providence Equity Partners invested $100...
Apple Said to Be Acquiring AdMob Competitor Quattro Wireless
January 5, 2010, 7:15 amApple is reportedly set to acquire Quattro Wireless for $275 million. This is according to the generally reliable Kara Swisher of BoomTown, who claims to have the information confirmed by several sources.
Quattro Wireless is a mobile ad network similar to AdMob, which is in the process of being acquired by Google. Reports suggest that Apple was...
Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 (Tamar does it again)
January 5, 2010, 7:02 amGreat list of posts once again this year by Tamar.
How Guest Blogging Made Me 5-Figures in 2009
January 5, 2010, 6:55 amA great story by Glen Allsopp sharing how guest blogging earned him money and reputation.
Unlocking The Passion Of People With Your Marketing
January 5, 2010, 6:30 amIn these last few weeks of 2009, one of the things that nearly everyone is doing is getting ready for what is to come in 2010. Like many bloggers, I have already started reading some “predictions” for 2010 - which often take lessons learned for 2009 and project them into the next year. For my own part, I have done these sorts of blog...
Three 2010 SEO Trends to Look Out For
January 5, 2010, 3:07 amAside from the usual real time search and link diversity, take a closer look into onpage stuff from microformats, page speed and first link priority.
Windows 7 "Easter Egg" Feature Found: GodMode
January 5, 2010, 1:29 am"To enter "GodMode," one need only create a new folder and then rename the folder to the following...Once that is done, the folder's icon will change to resemble a control panel and will contain dozens of control options."
Apple To Buy Mobile Ad Network Quattro Wireless
January 4, 2010, 7:49 pm"The announcement of the acquisition might come as soon as tomorrow, upping the ante in the mobile advertising business significantly."
How to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page & Get Lots of Fans
January 4, 2010, 4:14 pmEver since my last year’s post on the differences between the Facebook fan page and Facebook group (which needs an update by the way), people are contacting me with various questions related to the topic.
One of the most frequent questions is about the most effective ways to promote a Facebook fan page.
So here you go: the most effective, not...
Hitwise: Facebook Beat Google On New Year's Day
January 4, 2010, 3:27 pmAs Facebook employees went back to work this week, they may have been smiling more (or at least less frowning less) than most other people returning from vacation. Their site performed admirably over the holidays, actually attracting record-breaking amounts of traffic.
On Tuesday, we documented the fact that Facebook received more traffic...
Consumer Groups Want Antitrust Probe Of TV Everywhere
January 4, 2010, 3:09 pmFree Press and a number of other consumer groups are calling on federal antitrust authorities and Congress to investigate agreements among large media companies to stifle competition for online television programming.
In a report, Free Press details how giant cable, satellite and phone companies and many programming networks, led by Comcast and...
Google Ditches Local Listings for SEOs and Designers
January 4, 2010, 2:57 pmAs 2009 came to a close, Google managed to get SEOs riled up for one last controversial topic. For some time, SEOs and web designers have been noticing that Google has not been showing local listings in search results for queries related to their businesses - even location-specific ones.
Should SEOs and designers be worried about local listings?...
Yahoo Sale Of Zimbra To VMware Rumored
January 4, 2010, 2:09 pmAt the moment, the Zimbra homepage bears a "BUY ZIMBRA" button and a stamp reading "a Yahoo division." But according to a new report, a sale of Zimbra (and not just a Zimbra product) may soon take place, making "a VMware division" a more accurate statement.
Kara Swisher wrote earlier today, "Yahoo is close...
Local SEO Predictions 2010
January 4, 2010, 1:54 pmThought all you Sphinnsters would enjoy some local search prognostication for 2010.
Social Media Tips : Why Should I Help You?
January 4, 2010, 1:41 pmA short, sweet and dead-on article on what it means to deliver the goods in social media. Matt Leonard is one of the most outstanding shining examples of a great human being while remaining truly humble. this article rocks.
ChaCha Closes $7 Million Round of Funding
January 4, 2010, 12:59 pmAnswers service ChaCha announced today that it has closed a $7 million E round of funding. The service lets users go online, call, or text questions on mobile phones and receive answers "within minutes" for free. The service has an iPhone app and lets people ask questions via Twitter as well.
This round of funding might be particularly...
Flixster Buys Film Rating Site
January 4, 2010, 12:49 pmMovie social networking site, Flixster, said today it has acquired movie review site Rotten Tomatoes from IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corp.
News Corp will receive a minority equity stake in Flixster as part of the deal, financial terms were not disclosed.
Both Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will continue to be available to Internet users...
Revving up for the Nexus
January 4, 2010, 12:43 pmTomorrow is the big day: the invite-only Google Android event. While we’ve all pretty much assumed they’re going to tout Android and reveal the Google-sold Nexus One phone, there’s always the possibility that Google will surprise us all.
Google’s Nexus phone was first “leaked” in December after they distributed...
Ping.fm Acquired by Seesmic
January 4, 2010, 11:37 amSeesmic announced today that it has acquired Ping.fm. This is a service that has half a million active users posting daily from various devices by sending email, text messages, and chat.
"Ping.fm is compatible with every single Internet device in the world, which why it has become so successful among thousands of users," says Seesmic....
Optimize ur Twitter Profile
January 4, 2010, 11:18 amGreat News! It is possible to optimize your Twitter profile for search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing! The Article details steps you can take to fully optimize your twitter profile.
Some Facebook Users Get New Design
January 4, 2010, 11:13 amUpdate: Some Facebook users are reportedly now seeing a new Facebook design that looks like the screenshots here. The design is similiar to the one below, with some slight differences.
Original Article: Reports and screenshots have surfaced indicating possible further design changes to the Facebook home page. These changes would include an...
Does Popularity = Social?
January 4, 2010, 10:07 amThe founders of Infegy have used their Social Radar, a social analytics and research platform, to take a look at brands in 2009. They call their report the Top 50 Social Brands of 2009—but I’m not convinced.
On their blog, Infegy says the Social Radar
analyze[d] millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter...
Are Google's Ads So Relevant That People Won't Block Them?
January 4, 2010, 9:51 amA while back, Google launched an extensions gallery for its Chrome web browser. Ad-blocking add-ons are among the most popular for Mozilla's Firefox, so it stands to reason that they will be for Chrome as well. With Google's primary source of revenue being its ads, a lot of talk has surfaced about Google letting people block its own ads with its...
Smartphone Owners Frustrated By Poor Mobile Site Functionality
January 4, 2010, 9:07 amSmartphone owners are more comfortable making purchases from their handsets, but poor mobile site functionality is still a frustration for many, according to a new survey by Compete.
While m-commerce is set for strong growth in 2010, consumers are still more likely to abandon mobile purchasing on sites that are not optimized for the...
Chrome Cruises By Safari
January 4, 2010, 8:59 amLast month, Google acknowledged Apple's importance by releasing a beta version of Chrome for Mac. New statistics show that Google sort of put Apple to shame, too, however, as Chrome passed Safari in terms of market share.
The stats come courtesy of Net Applications, and according to the organization, Internet Explorer remained very much on...
Will Google Phone Bring Spotify to the US?
January 4, 2010, 7:57 amEven if you haven't used Spotify, there's a good chance you've heard of it. The service's description goes: "A world of music. Millions of songs on your computer, on your mobile and available offline. Brought to you ad free."
People in the US have been unable to use the service so far. There has been talk that this may soon change upon...
Googler Could Become Vermont Governor
January 4, 2010, 7:48 amVermont residents may want to start giving a little extra thought to whether or not they like the way Google does things. It seems that Matt Dunne, the Manager of Community Affairs at Google, is trying to become the state's governor.
An important note: Dunne hasn't sworn to turn Vermont into one giant Googleplex. There's been no...
Amazon Customers Most Satisfied Online Shoppers
January 4, 2010, 7:25 amCustomers of the largest online retailers are more satisfied than ever according to ForeSee Results' annual report on holiday shoppers.
The ForeSee Results E-Retail Satisfaction Index (U.S. Holiday Edition) jumped 7 percent to 79 on the Index's 100-point scale, a new all-time high. Websites for Macys, SonyStyle, The Gap, The Home Shopping Network...
Twitter Starts the Year with Some New Faces
January 4, 2010, 7:08 amJust as many of us get back to work after the holidays, Twitter has some new people starting work with the company altogether. Twitter reportedly has ten new people (most starting today), and some of them have interesting backgrounds, which could have interesting implications for the company's future.
The one new hiring that is drawing the most...
Chrome Extensions Include Ad Blockers
January 4, 2010, 6:07 amGoogle must know something that we don’t. Why else would they be SO open in their new move toward transparency as to allow for extensions on Chrome that, gulp, block the very lifeblood of their money printing operation? Well, considering the market share that Chrome currently has (around 40 million users) and the mindset of someone likely to use...
Twitter Adds to Its Ranks
January 4, 2010, 5:15 amIt looks like Twitter is gearing up for a big year as they announce several (as in around 10) new hires to start the new year. While official numbers of total employees are tough to come by (last I saw put it in the range of 150 but I will not stand by the accuracy of that number) it is obvious that Twitter is looking to have a big year. Let’s...
Microsoft Offers 50% Discount To Encourage XP and Office Upgrades
January 4, 2010, 4:30 am"To try and wean users away from older, 'good-enough' releases, Microsoft is introducing a new licensing promotion."
Google Updates and SERP Changes - January 2010
January 4, 2010, 1:17 amIt’s 2010. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid?
January 3, 2010, 10:23 pmFrom Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis January 3, 2010.
Well, hopefully no one out there is this bad off but one never knows. Here’s to a good 2010 to all regardless of what happens with da Google.
Most Stumbled Sites Of 2009 Named
January 3, 2010, 6:00 amToday is, for better or for worse, the last day many people will have off before heading back to work or school and resuming normal life. And if you have lots of stuff to do, good luck. But if you're a bit bored - maybe still stuck at a relative's house or just out of books to read - here are some of the "Most Stumbled Sites of...
Google's One-Minute Guide to Search-Based Keywords
January 2, 2010, 6:00 amGoogle has put together a one-minute guide to using its Search-based Keyword tool. The tool was launched just over a year ago in beta. It lets paid search advertisers see what keywords they may be missing out on based on searches on their site.
"Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various...
Cup of Joe: Congratulations on Failing in 2009!
January 2, 2010, 4:15 am
I have to admit that I spend way to much time at this site. Some may think that I have some sick, twisted obsession with complete losers. But I like to think that it’s my way of appreciating humanity’s potential, by witnessing their lack of success. You see, whenever we fail, we are given a golden opportunity to then rebound and...
YouTube: Rush Limbaugh Says Nothing Was Wrong
January 1, 2010, 4:16 pmRush Limbaugh was released from the hospital today and says doctors found nothing wrong. It makes you wonder if the thousands of hysterical people wishing Rush Limbaugh death on Twitter are feeling a little foolish. Probably not. :)
Below is the video of Rush speaking to the press about his good health:
Taking a look at...
More Media/Ad Trend Predictions for 2010
January 1, 2010, 6:00 amIn a recent article, we looked at some predictions from Nielsen for advertising trends in 2010. These included optimizing media convergence being a top priority, new models emerging to take advantage of smartphones, more cross-media ad campaigns, an increase in commercialization of social networking hubs, and more interesting and interactive...
