Online video is an increasingly populur medium from both users' standpoints and business' alike. When done right, it can be a great way to increase engagement and spread brand awareness. It can also be used for search engine optimization purposes. I'm sure you've noticed videos come up in the blended search results for many queries. WebProNews...

"...Google left a lot of collateral damage. A lot of folks, from tiny startups with high-fallutin' dreams to established industries, have found themselves in the path of the search behemoth."

"For those followers of the green fairy dust..."

"Instead of having a need for information and going to a Search Engine to find a website that provides that information (and maybe browsing the website while there), could it be that more and more people rely on their social networks to point them to web resources?"

Site announcement about Sphinn submissions closing down for the New Year's weekend. All Sphinn users are encouraged to read this and be aware of the downtime.

I just read the news on TMZ that Rush Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital with chest pains while vacationing in Hawaii. The story was about an hour old and didn't have many details so I searched Twitter to see if people on the scene would have more news. I didn't see any further information but I am amazed at how dominant haters of...

Hulu had a good 2009, and to celebrate the end of it, the company's CEO, Jason Kilar, has decided to share some stats.  Here's a quick hint as to just how successful his organization was: to describe Hulu's growth, the word "double" often doesn't cut it. In a post on the Hulu Blog, Kilar started off by relaying some data from...

Google's empire hasn't exactly crumbled, and to be honest, the average person will probably never even realize what's happened.  But what's happened is this: for just the second time in its history, Google's lost a domain name dispute. Google submitted a complaint about a site called Groovle to the National Arbitration Forum (which ICANN...

Google is stirring up buzz to rival Apple’s yearly expectations with an invitation for reporters to an event January 5—yep, just days before the CES show. Apple has made a tradition of big (or not so big) announcements scheduled conveniently upstaging the popular Consumer Electronics Show. So Google will definitely be cutting into the...

Facebook - along with a few other social sites and the developers of games for them - may be in for a great few years.  Certain experts believe that the business of virtual goods is going to take off in a big and very profitable way. Here's the opening line of a new article from the BBC: "Virtual goods such as weapons or digital bottles...

ForeSee Results has issued the results of its annual E-Retailer Satisfaction Index—a survey of 10,000 shoppers at the top 40 retailers—and the results are good—if you’re a big e-tailer. If not, well—let’s just say you’re pulling down the average. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the 40 largest online...

Using YouTube may become a much less passive experience in the near future.  Google's received a patent on a "Web-based system for [the] generation of interactive games based on digital videos," and several facts point to the search giant moving ahead with the idea. Let's start with an overview of the patent.  As explained in...

Google Analytics is one of the most robust offerings by the search giant and it manages to fly under the radar a little bit. It has almost become ubiquitous for a large number of companies that are not prospects for other analytics packages like Omniture, Coremetrics, Webtrends etc. Many will even run it concurrently with these other players that...

In what may be a mini ‘bell weather moment’ in advertising, Pepsi has decided to keep its usual Super Bowl advertising money in its bank account. While they are not exactly saving it they are certainly redirecting it to online opportunities. I say this is a potential ‘bell weather’ moment because it ends a streak of 23...

You don’t have to look very far, especially in the online space, to find a disgruntled AT&T wireless customer. If you would like to increase your likelihood of finding a seething AT&T wireless customer just ask around in New York and San Francisco for iPhone users. This, in and of itself, is not news. As a result though, AT&T...

A couple of the mysteries surrounding the forthcoming Nexus One/Google phone may have been solved.  Information related to the price of the phone and its plan has leaked, and assuming the details are accurate, the device should line up pretty well with the existing marketplace. Here's the bad news: rumors that Google would offer a cheap or...

In what may be a mini ‘bell weather moment’ in advertising, Pepsi has decided to keep its usual Super Bowl advertising money in its bank account. While they are not exactly saving it they are certainly redirecting it to online opportunities. I say this is a potential ‘bell weather’ moment because it ends a streak of 23 consecutive years...

While most of us in the Internet marketing “industry” were all aghast at the Facebook privacy problem of ’09, the rest of the world could have cared less. You know those people, right? The ones who don’t live and breathe this stuff to the point that all perspective is lost? These are the ‘everyday’ Facebook...

Content duplication has been a buzz topic in SEO for a while now. You can read about it til you puke and never have to leave WebProNews.com. It's one of the modern webmaster's favorite things to fret over and has been for at least two years. Google doesn't like duplicate content.  We all get that now.  There is still the lingering...

Online marketers and media planners know that there are a lot of challenges involved with creating a web advertising campaign and making sure that your adds are placed on relevant websites. It is important that you scale your ad campaign’s reach and keep it relevant to your target audience. You know there must be millions of sites out there...

The cat has at least started to come out of the bag with regards to the long-rumored "Google phone"; details about the Nexus One have been leaking for weeks.  It looks like the rest of the figurative feline will soon appear, too, as a T-Mobile announcement and invitation to a Google event were issued today. Let's start with the...

Online tools have played important roles in the Iranian protests; right from the start, the appearance of videos on YouTube and trending topics on Twitter helped spread awareness about the disputed presidential election.  And YouTube doesn't want anyone to forget that it's still doing its part. A blog post titled "Ordinary citizens,...

Bing is eyeing the biggest Internet market in the world—China. Still in beta in China, “Bee-ying” was launched back in June without the marketing push and fanfare enjoyed in the US. Reuters emailed questions to Microsoft today, and MSFT responded that they are “committed to the China market and the search market in China is...

As much time and money as Microsoft's devoted to increasing its share of the U.S. search market, it looks like the corporation has another major target in its sights, as well.  Microsoft acknowledged this week that it intends to expend a lot of energy on China. Succeeding in China will be no easy feat (assuming it's even achievable). ...

While most of us in the Internet marketing “industry” were all aghast at the Facebook privacy problem of ’09, the rest of the world could have cared less. You know those people, right? The ones who don’t live and breathe this stuff to the point that all perspective is lost? These are the ‘everyday’ Facebook users who don’t give a rip...

Now that Twitter employs a Chief Scientist, we will benefit from the ongoing interpretation and publishing of Twitter behavior and activity to better understand how Twitter is constantly evolving. In a discussion with Robert Scoble recently, I suggested that Twitter also consider hiring a digital anthropologist or sociologist, to not only analyze...

Now that Twitter employs a Chief Scientist, we will benefit from the ongoing interpretation and publishing of Twitter behavior and activity to better understand how Twitter is constantly evolving. In a discussion with Robert Scoble recently, I suggested that Twitter also consider hiring a digital anthropologist or sociologist, to not only analyze...

Six months ago, Google launched Google City Tours. A Labs product for Google Maps, City Tours was based around pedestrian sight-seeing, with maps, walking times and sight suggestions. Now Google is continuing to edge into travel (at least pedestrian travel) with enhancements to City Tours. They’ve added more detailed directions and travel...

One of the coolest parts about about my job is the fact that I am always up to speed on the latest and coolest stuff in the world of search, social media and things of that nature. Over the course of the past decade, there have been no shortage of things to keep my eye on. That's one of the cool parts of my job. What makes it interesting however...

According to new statistics from Hitwise, a lot of people may not have done the Norman Rockwell thing this holiday season, gathering around a fire with family members.  Instead, they may picked computer screens and online friends, helping propel Facebook to a new high. A 136-character tweet from the Hitwise_US account announced the big news...

Online retail websites experienced significant growth in November as the holiday season officially kicked off, according to a new report from comScore. Among the top gaining retail sub-categories were toys, consumer electronics, and department stores, each growing more than 30 percent compared to October. Toys sites attracted 27.4 million...

Professionals who both own iPhones and are members of LinkedIn are in for a treat.  LinkedIn for iPhone 3.0 has been released, and the new app (which remains free) represents an improvement over the old one in almost every way. The most obvious change comes in the form of a fresh user interface.  Adam Nash, Vice President of Search and...

Solve our holiday jigsaw puzzle online, get interesting 2009 statistics, learn about Google vs. Baidu and much more.

Great insight and one which really makes sense.

Advertising is morphing and evolving at a rapid pace. That pace still hasn’t moved the online space too far down its own evolutionary road yet. That is at least according to Nikesh Arora, president of Google’s sales operations. In an interview with the Financial Times he gave some insight into how the online advertising world is shaping up and...

Reading Biz Stone’s op-ed in the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper almost had me snoozing. Not that Biz is boring–he’s actually quite fascinating–but the article was just a recap of stuff we already knew. Then I saw these closing statements: ..It can be these things but primarily Twitter serves as a real-time information...

If you massage the stats enough, Hulu's an entertainment giant, hanging neck and neck with this year's most popular movies.  If you adopt a more objective perspective, however, it becomes pretty clear that the video-centric site hasn't exactly achieved blockbuster status. In a report released this afternoon to NewTeeVee, Buzzpoint put Hulu...

To some degree, it's part of a cofounder's job to act as a corporate cheerleader; a pessimist could hurt his company by scaring people away.  Biz Stone appears to have all but literally grabbed a megaphone and shouted "rah, rah," though, as he predicted that Twitter usage will hit monster levels next year. A 600-word document...

If any of your Christmas presents were a bit odd-looking or seemed like impulse buys, it might be because the gift giver did his or her shopping using a small, accessible screen.  eBay reported today that mobile transactions picked up dramatically this holiday season compared to last. The volume of mobile transactions tripled on a...

Companies that need a little help with AdWords may now find it easier to receive some thanks to Google.  Only the help won't come directly from Google, as the search giant's in fact launched a search engine for Google Advertising Professionals. It's not necessary to look far for an explanation of this development.  On the new Google...

Earlier this month, Google announced that its Personalized Search results would come to even computers that weren’t signed in to Google accounts. With the opt-out system in place, many users and public computers can’t help but use personalized search by default—and it may be AdSense publishers paying for it. The logic goes...

Two consumer groups Monday asked the Federal Trade Commission to block Google's $750 million deal to acquire mobile advertising firm, AdMob, on anti-trust grounds. In a joint letter to the FTC, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) said Google is simply buying its way to dominance in the mobile advertising market, reducing...

Mozilla's next salvos in the browser wars won't come quite as soon as the company previously promised.  Firefox 3.6, which was supposed to ship this month, now isn't scheduled to be finished until sometime during the first quarter of 2010, and the release of Firefox 4.0 has been pushed back, as well. Given how heated the browser rivalry has...

When the world looks at areas where the pure numbers are pretty staggering it’s the sheer size and potential of the Chinese market. Let’s face it there are a lot of Chinese folks. So it would only be natural that Google would like a piece of that pie. What is not normal though is the fact that Google is second fiddle by a considerable margin...

Believe it or not, the company that became IBM was founded in 1896, and at the moment, IBM has a market cap of around $172 billion.  So it's not going anywhere.  And IBM's CEO - who has been with the organization since 1973 - doesn't think Google will become nearly the behemoth some people have predicted. Sam Palmisano recently...

I trust you had a great Christmas! As our minds dream of how fantastic 2010 will be, it’s time to look back at the hot topics of 2009. Here are Marketing Pilgrim’s top ten most read posts in 2009. Bing.com; Is it Worth Switching from Google? – A home run for Microsoft? While Bing certainly deserves credit for being the first...

Amazon.com has announced that for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books on Christmas Day. In addition, Amazon said its Kindle reader has become the most gifted item in the company's history. The Kindle Store boasts more than 390,000 electronic books. "We are grateful to our customers for making...

As expected it looks like this week may be a bit light in the news department. That’s fine. Everyone needs a break from time to time. So as I am looking around this morning I come across an op-ed piece in the New York Times that is written by Adam Raff, a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology company. From what I can gather, Mr. Raff is...

Can a family member open an account?

"What concerned me at the time was my site's traffic statistics are way off. Like it showed 16% of my unique visitors! Thinking perhaps it had to be active for a few weeks, I went ahead anyway. I checked back, and the information is still wrong..."

"Google's purchase of mobile advertising provider AdMob for $750 million has drawn closer regulatory scrutiny as U.S. antitrust officials have asked Google for more information on the deal.."

Hello there....... what about get links from social bookmarking? I have already tons of directory (done them by myself) but I have not yet a social bookmarking exposure.... so in order to diversificate..... I'm thinking to purchase some kg of social :-) Basically I was thinking to pay a company (not so much) to make manually some social...

As we did last year, we have gone back through our archives and picked out some of the most noteworthy social media items we have covered since 2009 began. Now that 2009 is almost over, it was worth going  back and seeing what all has happened. If you come across missing items, please feel free to share them in the comments. January In...

Google has recently added a “Report A Problem” Link for reporting business Listing spam & errors from within Maps. The link is available via the business listing info bubble where once you select “Edit” you are presented with a “Report A Problem” link that takes you to a short form.

In keeping with the theme of reflecting upon the year 2009, we thought it would be fun to go back through our video archive and find the ones that were the most popular from this year. It turns out, WebProNews readers (or viewers rather) really wanted to watch Matt Cutts videos. He appears on the list several times. Here are the top ten...

As a follow up to a recent article we ran on how press releases can be great for search, a representative for PRWeb, a press release distribution company, contacted us with another interesting example. This one looks at the shelf-life press releases can have, with regards to search traffic. "A small business called Leatherup.com, which...

Update: Google appears to have removed the "little kids" suggestions. Original Article: Google's "suggest" feature can be quite useful. It can save you time when typing your query if you happen to be searching for something that a lot of others have searched for before you. The feature is even useful for Google itself,...

Update: According to Bing, all of the features that were announced are now live. However, they do not appear to be live yet for me. I am guessing they will be soon at least. Original Article: Microsoft has announced the addition of a number of new features to its Bing search engine. The company says it has been examining the trends in...

I’d like to be among the first to wish you a very Merry Christmas. I’m not sure what Christmas means to you, but here’s what it means to me. Thanks Linus, I couldn’t have said it any better!

Just as we did at the end of 2008, we have gone back through our entire archive for the year 2009 and picked out the articles that received the most conversation from our readers. As we approach the new year, we thought it would be fun to go back and reflect on some of the things that got people talking in the one that's wrapping up....

WebProNews recently covered a study from Chitika, which found that Facebook was the most valuable social media tool for driving repeat readers to content sites. The study was based on 33 million unique users across Chitika's publisher network in September. It compared the number of visitors coming from major traffic sources Digg, Facebook, Google,...

Santa Claus Update: If you’ve not visited the NORAD Santa Tracker, you should head on over there. Google Maps is providing live tracking of Santa Claus–who’s currently in Ireland: You can also track Santa via Twitter! ====== As we’ve done for many years, it’s time to forget about marketing and focus on the...

Update: MySpace has sent an email around to imeem users giving them an update about playlists. The MySpace Music team is working around the clock to duplicate your imeem playlists and make them available to you on myspacemusic.com as soon as possible. In the coming weeks, we will be emailing you with instructions on how to claim your playlists on...

Update: Yahoo has issued the following statment regarding MyBlogLog's future: Frankly, it’s no secret within Yahoo! that we’re actively discussing the future of MyBlogLog. However, it’s also true that we have not made any final decisions at this point. Is a shutdown on the table? Sure, that’s an option. But there are...

Google has issued a statement regarding the company's pending acquisition of AdMob. Google's intent to acquire the company was announced back in early November. The deal was for $750 million in stock. Since then, the Federal Trade Commission has vowed to closely scrutinize the deal. Google had this to say today: As we said when we announced the...

Compete puts together a monthly ranking of the top 250 Web sites in the US, based on unique visitors, and breaks up the data by relevant categories and behavioral segments. The firm is sharing the top 50. "Despite continued concerns surrounding the economic recovery, holiday shoppers flocked to the Web in November," says Compete....

Pepsi will reportedly be skipping its annual Super Bowl commercials, and will instead invest the money it would generally spend on those, in social media marketing. This would make the first time in 23 years that Pepsi will not have Super Bowl ads. Larry D. Woodard, President and CEO of Manhattan ad agency Vigilante writes in an ABC News...

I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath all holiday season to find out which of the made-up online shopping holidays would be the winner—Cyber Monday for the first time ever? Green Monday again? Brown Monday? Purplish-Blue-Like-a-Bruise Monday? Sadly, none of the above. Nope, it was some no name: Tuesday, December 15. Coming from...

According to Opera, Facebook is the most popular site on the mobile web in Africa. In addition, a report from the company shows a 5% jump in global mobile Internet users. Opera Mini has garnered more than 41.7 million users worldwide showing a 5.3 percent jump compared to the previous month, according to the report. The number of page views in...

Facebook has drubbed MySpace on almost all fronts—in the media, with users, in growth, in traffic—except ad revenue. But expect that to change next year, according to eMarketer: “It will surpass its former rival, MySpace, in ad revenues in 2010, when marketers worldwide will spend $605 million on Facebook versus $385 million on...

Google has shared the top retail searches for the 2009 holiday season. These results are based on the company's Insights for Search tool. "Using Google Insights for Search, we can see that the hottest toys over the last seven days include stalwarts like Pikachu and Legos, as well as newcomers, such as the Nerf Marshmellow Shooter and the...

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, otherwise known as NORAD is tracking Santa Claus's rounds this year, keeping up a tradition that has been going on for 54 years. Norad has been working with Google for several years by way of Google Maps and Google Earth. Last year, they started using Google Analytics as well. Google is now sharing a...

Harris Interactive has released the findings of its latest poll on Internet users. This doesn't come as much of a shock, but people are spending more time online these days. According to the poll, adult Internet users are spending an average of 13 hours a week online." Of course, people's usage varies greatly; one in five (20%) of adult...

It’s hard to believe that 2009 is finally coming to an end. As is always a very popular practice the media likes to take us on a stroll down Memory Lane but make sure we take a brief turn onto Morbid Court. Why? Because it is important to recap what celebrities either died or train-wrecked their lives in the past year. I admit that I read these...

Update: Ford announced profits o nearly $1 billion between July and September. This is attributed to increased market share and a successful cost-cutting program. I wonder if the company's social media strategy played a significant role. Original Article: When you think about social media marketing or building your social media presence, you...

I don’t quite ever remember a social network that I at first so loved, and then ultimately, so hated. Fortunately, the bad taste left in my mouth by MyBlogLog will likely go away at the beginning of the year–according to rumors that Yahoo will shutter the service. MyBlogLog had so much potential as a network that connected bloggers...

Shocked aren’t ya? It really is two days before Christmas because there is just not much happening. The folks at Harris Interactive are still working though and reporting that we are spending more time online than ever before. This will surprise no one but the report digs into some of the specifics of age groups which is always of interest....

Twitter has partnered with Telstra to launch Twitter SMS in Australia. "As always, it is free to receive notifications and standard text messaging rates apply to sending," says Twitter's Kevin Thau. "It's the same pricing as sending and receiving text messages from friends." To use the feature, users can simply send...

Yahoo will reportedly shut down MyBlogLog in January. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb claims to have heard from "sources close to the project" that this is the case. "Yahoo! has let the service atrophy for years and will now put it to rest," writes Kirkpatrick. "To think that this service offered publishers and...

Have you lost touch? A question we should all ask ourselves during the holidays. Just kidding. Must be the copious amounts of wrapping paper, ribbons and cards talking. I’m not jaded…What I mean is have you lost touch with your customers? Do you know any of your customers or are you holed up in some brick and glass building away from...

The mobile version of Firefox - also known as Fennec - is almost ready to launch.  Indeed, a Mozilla exec was recently quoted as saying that a release could be "days away," so it's possible that the new mobile browser will appear in time for some tech-inclined individuals to play with it on New Year's Eve or even Christmas. Word of...

As people return home this holiday season, there will be all sorts of hugs and "have you had enough to eat"s.  Then they'll be pressed into service, lifting heavy stuff or perhaps climbing ladders.  And Google would very much appreciate it if visitors install the company's software, too. A new post on the Official Google Blog...

To say that 2009 has been the year of Google Wave might be a stretch. It was introduced this year, and invites have been sent out to quite a few people now. It has been the subject of a fair amount of discussion, but it hasn't reached the mainstream yet. That said, 2009 was the year Google Wave was unleashed upon the world in its most primitive...

Nielsen has shared some interesting findings from its research on how Internet users discover content. The research mainly focused on how content is found through search, portals, and through social media. "In a nutshell, there is a segment of the online population that uses social media as a core navigation and information discovery tool...

Microsoft has lost an appeal in a patent case over Microsoft Word. A U.S. court of appeals upheld a jury verdict against the company for infringing on a patent held by Toronto's i4i. Microsoft lost the case to a tune of $290 million. Reuters reports:   The court also affirmed an injunction that prevents Microsoft from selling versions of...

Earlier this month, Google revealed it was filing suit against Pacific WebWorks (and other yet-to-be-named parties) for infringing on its trademark. Pacific WebWorks was among the companies running a “Google Work from Home” scam, advertising a way to make money off Google, to be learned through an inexpensive kit (and hidden,...

Google's Custom Search turned three in 2009, and it had arguably its biggest year to date. The technology is powering "many tens of millions" of queries a day on millions of sites, according to the company. As many others are doing, Google is reminiscing about the year that is almost over, and reflecting upon some of its...

Just a week after Google launched its URL shortener, Goo.gl, it’s premiering another one, this time for YouTube. And because we can’t stand to learn yet another URL shortener name, they’re going with youtu.be. To use the new shortener, you just append the video ID to youtu.be/, so http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKOTClyVrIc become...

You may recall that a lot of entities -including Google, Yahoo, and Bing - released some top/best of/worst of 2009 lists back in late November and early December, seemingly forgetting about the last one-twelfth of the year.  Bing returned today with more data about search trends, however. As with the list of popular status updates that...

It is often pointed out that the disconnect from those in the social media trenches to those in the C-level corner offices is significant and often damaging to the marketing efforts of many companies. While it can be fun to generalize and then make those at the top of the marketing food chain the culprits in the “Great Social Media...

Motorists who write text messages while driving are six times more likely to crash than those who don't text while driving, according to a new study by University of Utah psychologists. Researchers Frank Drews and colleagues found evidence that attention patterns differ for drivers who text versus those who talk on a cell phone. For those who...

Forget the hype... just the facts.. excellent summary of where we are in search right now and a glimpse into where we need to be headed.

Eight days ago, we wrote about a Google Chrome advertising campaign that's taking place in the UK.  This morning, Hitwise followed up on the subject by publishing some statistics, and the stats indicate that that the campaign's achieved a certain level of success. Robin Goad wrote, "As the chart below illustrates, UK Internet searches...

Amazon.com said today it is offering free one day shipping for orders of its Kindle placed on December 23 and promises delivery in time for Christmas. The company is also offering free two day shipping for Kindle orders placed today. Last week Amazon said its Kindle broke another record with its best sales day. The company did not provide any...

This might or might not be an obvious point, but by unplugging their computers, shutting the lights off, and turning the heat down, people who leave their homes this holiday season stand to save a significant amount of money.  And now Yahoo should, too, as it's announced a decision to close corporate offices worldwide for one week. Except...

Google's Matt Cutts recently suggested that the speed of a web page might become more important in Google's ranking algorithm. How will this affect your website and what can you do to improve the speed of your website?

Forrester recently released a new report tracking the future of US interactive marketing through 2014. Authored by Shar VanBoskirk, with Christine Spivey Overby, Niki Scevak, and Angie Polanco, Forrester predicts that interactive marketing is poised to grow at a 16% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Even though interactive marketing will...

There have been many articles written about why to use Twitter, and we've certainly published our fair share of them. However, the landscape is constantly changing. New trends, ideas, applications, and features come out, and they further emphasize Twitter's place in said landscape. Following are some reasons why it is becoming increasingly...

Personalisation and real-time have been seriously big topics in SEO and social media news in recent weeks.  Prior to Google’s recent real-time search results announcement, my interest in real-time search was beginning to wane, as although it was en vogue and certainly cool technology, there was rarely any real industry-changing news.  This...

Next year, Ford will be introducing it's new version of SYNC, a technology it partnered with Microsoft on. This technology will allow you to have constant Wi-Fi in your car. All an owner of a SYNC-ready car would have to do is plug in a compatible USB mobile broadband modem (or air card), and they will create a secure wireless connection that...

Hulu has a new captions search feature available via Hulu Labs. The feature allows Hulu users to search the captions of videos across hundreds of different shows. Show and video pages now have a "Captions" tab, and search can be found there. "Recently I watched an episode of House, and they made a funny joke about the resemblance...

The Federal Trade Commission has joined an effort to warn consumers about deceptive online marketing related to free trial offers that require people to cancel or opt-out of a recurring charge for future products or services. The Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, David C. Vladeck, along with officials from Visa and the Better...

As you have no doubt heard by now, actress Brittany Murphy tragically passed away over the weekend. As saddening as that news was for many, people wanted information about it. As with any other celebrity death or big news event, people scrambled to find updates. This need for fresh info is really where real-time search has its greatest potential....

Good post sharing a story on a freelancer James Chartrand of Men With Pens announced that he is actually a she.

So much for the idea of December being a quiet month.  First we witnessed the acquisition of AppJet, and now, a new report's indicated that Google's more or less sure to buy a company called DocVerse. The two deals are taking place in the same space, since, like AppJet, DocVerse is focused on allowing people to collaborate on documents in...

Online holiday shoppers have spent a total of $24.8 billion so far this season, representing a 4 percent increase over last year, according to the latest report from comScore. The most recent week got off to a slightly sluggish start, with sales of $854 million on Green Monday (Dec.14) down 1 percent compared to a year ago, but was followed by...

Update: Reports now say that Yelp has backed out of the deal. Original Article: Multiple reports say that Google is in negotiations to acquire Yelp, a site that caters to reviews of local businesses. Mike Arrington claims to have confirmed this with "multiple sources," and says the price is at least $500 million. Yelp has an...

Nearly half (40%) of email marketers plan on increasing their budgets for the channel in 2010 and 47 percent said their budgets would stay the same, according to a new survey by Silverpop. In the coming year, more than half (52%) of email marketers said increasing customer loyalty was a top email marketing goal. Overall, 51 percent of respondents...

Last guest post of the year from Dixon Jones at Receptional. Gives some quick, top tips on how to ensure you're all set up correctly for traffic to start flowing from Microsoft adCenter!

Hello there... I'm submitting to several directories, I have done the same last year, and now I have noted something quite strange, maybe someone more expert can enlight me on the issue. While I'm manually submitting, after the submit click, I have noted this error : <<<<<<<<<< *Title: Title is not unique in the...

It's the time of year when not only does everybody reflect upon trends and happenings from the year past, but they also look forward and make predictions for the coming year. Nielsen has shared its projections for the top advertising trends for 2010. These are: 1. Optimizing media convergence is a top priority. 2. New models emerge to take...

It's no secret that people work harder when given a financial incentive, and that companies also like to make a little money.  Now, the program that YouTube created to capitalize on these facts has turned two years old, and YouTube's having a little celebration. As Shenaz Zack, a product manager, explained on the YouTube Blog, the Partner...

As I've noted in the past, Wolfram Alpha, the much-hyped search computation engine that was supposed to be the future of search hasn't exactly set the world on fire. As of November, Compete data indicates it was receiving under 300 thousand unique visitors in the US. To put that into perspective, Ask.com had over 41 million. However, that's not...

Press releases are not only great ways to spread the word about any announcements your business might have. They can also drive traffic, particularly from search engines. This is not news, but it's a commonly overlooked fact. "Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it...

From the blog: Don’t compare us to lawyers, don’t try to tell us we are selling snake oil, and especially – I mean especially, don’t try to tell us our industry is dead (have you heard of Google?). We have heard it all before, and to be quite honest, we are getting bored of it. Seriously figure out something else to talk about in 2010....

Update: Cisco announced that the acquisition of Starent Networks has been completed. Original Article: Cisco announced today that it is acquiring Starent Networks for $35 per share in cash, bringing the total to about $2.9 billion. Starent Networks is a supplier of IP-based mobile infrastructure solutions. "Cisco and Starent...

Google has joined the IPSO Alliance, which is a group of technology companies aimed at promoting the Internet Protocol for "smart object communications." The idea is that items ranging from appliances to cars, and even factories, can communicate as individuals do on the web. "Google's participation in IPSO is a result of its...

Parameters we are almost sure (with different level of confidence) to be included in the algorithm (for your convenience I linked some of them to our previous discussions on the topic)

MySpace, The Wall Street Journal, and the World Economic Forum, are giving a MySpace user the chance to be a citizen journalist at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. The MySpace Citizen Journalist winner will be chosen by a panel of experts and will join the Davos press corps using MySpace to report on...

David Mihm knows local, and he has a few thoughts on how this deal may affect the landscape of local search as we now see it.

Update: Microsoft has addressed a few issues with the iPhone app that have been discovered. On the Bing Search Blog, Justin Jed of Bing for Mobile talks about three known issues: 1.       Using voice search outside the U.S. crashes the app. We’ve identified that the issue relates to the region the phone is...

The Google Books project suffered a significant blow today in France as a Paris court found Google guilty of copyright violations.  The search giant's been ordered to stop scanning books, remove information from its database, and pay some hefty fines. French publishers brought the lawsuit against Google because they objected to the company...

Twitter was hacked last night, and when users went to Twitter.com, they were presented with a message from someone claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army. TutorialsTips has posted a video on YouTube showing what Twitter looked like as it was compromised. The message...

Amazon.com has announced that December has been the best month for sales of its Kindle electronic book reader. The company did not provide any sales figures or comparisons for its Kindle, but did say it is the most wished for, and most gifted item across all of Amazon. Amazon said it is now offering free two-day expedited shipping for the Kindle...

Multiple reports say that Google is in negotiations to acquire Yelp, a site that caters to reviews of local businesses. Mike Arrington claims to have confirmed this with "multiple sources," and says the price is at least $500 million. Yelp has an interesting page in which it squashes 9 "myths" about the service. Yelp says you...

Twitterers in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands will be happy to know that TwellowHood, the Twellow feature that allows Twitterers to connect with people in their own area, is now available in these areas. Until now, it has only been available in the US, Canada, and Australia. If you are unfamiliar with...

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with nine other privacy and consumer organizations, has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charging that Facebook's recent changes to user privacy settings violate federal consumer protection law. The EPIC complaint wants the FTC to open an investigation into the...

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced an update to its Digital Video Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines. The update addresses digital video content and ads that play automatically when a web page loads, which the IAB says is an increasingly common occurrence. The IAB defines an auto-play ad as a video ad or a video ad linked...

Sony said today it will begin offering subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch on its new electronic reader. In addition, Sony will also offer subscriptions to the digital version of the New York Post on its e-reader. "Sony is a world leader in bringing together content and technology to provide the richest and most...

In a recent article, we looked at a debate over what is better between search engine optimization and pay-per-click. Of course both should be used typically, but on a recent panel at SES Chicago, participants were asked to pick a side to highlight the benefits of each compared to the other. It made for some pretty interesting conversation. Both...

From the post:  To demonstrate the power of long tail search, this blog post today is going to give you a glimpse into how long tail search has helped us attract not only visitors to our website, but has also generated leads for us. As I go through this example, think about how this abstract information can be directly applied to your business....

Ken Lyons (from WordStream) dropped in to guest post on the Trail this week. He is highlighting their new tools and how it can be used to create a system to manage link text diversity. Pretty cool actually.... Give it a read!

By creating an inventory of link building assets, you lay the foundation for a sustainable link building campaign. A linkable asset is a person, web page or other resource capable of inciting a person or organization to create a link. We’ve identified two broad types of assets: the “tangible” link building assets on your website, and the...

Simon Fuller, creator of "American Idol," is partnering with Hulu on an online reality program that follows the lives of five people hoping to make it in Hollywood. The new online program called "If I Can Dream" will launch in early 2010 with each episode streaming exclusively on Hulu. Hulu says "If I Can Dream" will...

Update 4 : Twitter is now supporting the German language. Update 3 : Twitter is now supporting the Italian language. Update 2 : Twitter is now supporting the French language. Update: Twitter is now supporting the Spanish language. Original Article: Twitter announced that it intends to roll out the service in the...

In a newspaper, the most important story is featured on the front page. If it's a really important piece, then it's placed "above the fold," which means you can find it on the top half of the first page — the bottom half is folded behind and isn't readily seen when you first look at the newspaper.The same concept applies to browsers as well....

Join us in welcoming Urchin 6.602 to the world, the long-awaited multilingual upgrade to our "run-it-yourself" web analytics package. This release adds support for all 11 of our supported languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Japanese, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), and Korean.Read...

Experian Hitwise announced that it has found Facebook to be the top search term overall for the year 2009 after analyzing the top 300 search terms for the year. This is the first year Facebook has been the top search term, and it accounted for 0.67% of all searches, according to the research firm. Variations of the term Facebook actually...

Earlier, we looked at Twitter's top trending topics of 2009. They broke it down into several top ten lists based on various categories. Yfrog, a site that hosts images and videos for people to share on Twitter, has shared its top ten image searches for 2009. In other words, this is a reflection of what people are looking for images of on...

Lisa Barone gives an excellent rebuttal to advice given by Robert Scoble to small businesses to ignore SEO.

Three months ago, we launched Google Fast Flip, a service that seeks to make reading articles online as fast and simple as flipping through a magazine or newspaper. It's still early in this experiment, which is why Fast Flip remains in Google Labs. But so far our initial thesis has held up: If you make it easier to read news online, people will...

You know the great thing about Antiques Roadshow? Aside from finding out that grandma’s ugly ceramic cat collection can actually bankroll a Caribbean cruise. It’s the idea that maybe; just maybe somewhere in our lives there are things that, with a little bit of lemon pledge and a new coat of paint, could actually become highly valuable.

About a month ago, WebProNews interviewed Google's Matt Cutts, who suggested that page speed may soon become a ranking factor in the world's most popular search engine. Speed has been a consistent theme with the company over the past year or so, with the release of various tools and announcements. It has become quite evident that Google places a...

Facebook has launched an award system for translators, where those who translate for the social network can get special icons as they accomplish specific milestones. Awards are grouped into into the categories of voting participation, words published, and translations published. "Since launching our Translations application two years ago,...

I had just dropped my daughter off at school this morning. As I waited at a traffic light a woman was making a left turn heading in my direction. I noticed she rolled down her window despite the rain that was falling. Immediately my mind went to “She’s smoking.” I was right. Next I went to the inevitable “She is going to...

Without getting into whether they're right or wrong, it's safe to state that some of Yahoo's critics might say the company needs all the help it can get.  Those same critics might be interested to hear, then, that Yahoo has hired someone whose primary job will be to connect Yahoo with other organizations. Raymond Stern joins Yahoo as its new...

The reason you need to keep SEO front and center during this time is twofold: so that you do not lose your previous traffic, but also so that you can gain additional targeted search engine visitors when the new site goes live. Here are 6 SEO redesign secrets your developer may not know...ignore them at your own peril!

Whether you’re ready to embrace it or not, social media is changing the way we communicate and make decisions. Today’s technology has impacted our daily lives and routines in a big way. If you don’t wake up to Facebook, you probably know someone who does. And good luck trying to escape the world of Twitter – it’s even invaded the nightly...

The Federal Trade Commission has sued Intel, saying it has "abused its market dominance" according to the LA Times. Richard A. Feinstein, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition is quoted as saying: "Intel has engaged in a deliberate campaign to hamstring competitive threats to its monopoly. It's been running roughshod over the...

It's that time of year when all of the big web properties reflect on the year's worth of activity. We already saw Twitter's top trending topics for 2009, for example. YouTube is also sharing its most watched videos and most searched for queries. "This year has been the biggest yet for online video, and for the first time we're sharing our...

Big businesses with huge pageviews fueled by Google have emerged in recent years that exist only because of a unique SEO / Adwords relationship with Google. Google gives them a huge presence in the long tail SERPS and they in turn give Google increased revenue by being a Google Adsense partner. Not just any Adsense partner, but a Google...

Despite a number of positive developments, Yahoo did not have a very merry November according to the latest statistics from comScore.  In fact, as the company's share of the search market dropped again, it hit an all-time low, landing at 17.5 percent. Yes, Yahoo's share of the search market shrunk from 18.0 percent in October to 17.5 percent...

Google announced that it now offering cross-domain support of the rel="canonical" link element. If you are unfamiliar with this link element, Google's Matt Cutts discussed it with us here. Basically, it's a way to avoid duplicate content issues, but until now, you couldn't use it across domains. "For some sites, there are...

There's a microwave that has been getting some attention this week. It's called CastOven, and it plays YouTube videos while you cook your food. Not only does it play videos, but it plays videos specifically catering to the amount of time you have the microwave set for. The CastOven was created by two designers from Keio University in Japan,...

Is onpage optimization necessary? In all honesty it is only one small part of the search engine ranking equation. Optimizing your website as your sole tactic will not help you to get to the number one spot on Google (for anything competitive at least). The good news is that it will help. Think of it as a solid foundation to build on. Would you...

Rand Fishkin tackles some of the recent trends we've been observing from the engines and talk about his personal perception of what's to come over the next 12 months.

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)This year has been the biggest yet for online video, and for the first time we're sharing our official Most Watched lists and some of the fastest-rising search terms on YouTube. Some moments were big (President Obama's inauguration), some small (a Minnesota wedding party erupts into dance), some expected ("New...

Yahoo's got something to offer people who are tired of typing cities' names and zip codes into search boxes.  Today, the company announced improved local business results that will allow users to find nearby places without first providing tons of details. Nitzan Achsaf, a senior product manager, explained all of the details on the Yahoo...

Sree Kamireddy, Bing Program Manager and self-proclaimed "Privacy Champ" has written a post on the Bing blog discussing how Microsoft handles your Bing search history information. More specifically, Kamireddy explains how this is actually in users' hands. Kamireddy explains that Bing Offers the following: - Off/On switch:  With...

New research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that 4 percent of cell phone owners ages 12 to 17 have sent sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images of themselves to someone else on a cell phone. Pew found 15 percent of teens that age have received this kind of image of someone they know personally on their cell phone....

Ask's Dictionary.com has appointed a new President - Shravan Goli. He replaces Doug Leeds, who was named President of Ask.com-U.S., in October.  Goli will report to Scott Garell, President of Ask Networks, and will be responsible for leading the strategy and overall business for Dictionary.com. "Shravan's hands-on operational expertise...

In case you were thinking that Google hadn't made enough announcements this week, they have made a couple more. First, they are adding universal search results to Google Suggest, and second, they have released a new Chrome extension called Google Quick Scroll. Universal search in Google Suggest means that if you begin typing a query, not only...

When you find a business on Google Maps and click "more info", you will be taken to that business' "Place Page." These are the pages that Google introduced a while back that essentially gather content related to that particular business in one place. One might find photos, coupons, reviews, etc. on the Place Page. Businesses...

At SES Chicago, there was an interesting session in which a group of search marketing professionals debated the issue of which is better between PPC and SEO. Participants included Dave Naylor, Chirstine Churchill, Michael Gray, and Karen Weber, and Rand Fishkin. Does PPC have more benefits than SEO? Comment here. Churchill pointed to a...

Despite efforts by many to roll SEO and conversion optimization into a single skill set, they're actually very different specialties.  An important reality check from David Harry on the differences between the two.

Adding a company blog is a great idea for many different reasons: internal links, as a communication channel for your company, to show your creativity, create yourself as an authority in your industry, and for brand awareness.

Paramount Pictures has launched an online service to sell its movie clips to businesses in an effort to combat declining DVD revenue. ParamountClips.com is powered by Digitalsmiths VideoSense platform. Users can search the Paramount library by actor, locations, or lines of dialogue. VideoSense combs through the collected metadata to locate the...

It seems that over the course of the entire year, we've been waiting for Google to get real-time search. Now it's here. If you have ever had a hard time finding a direct relationship between social media and search engine marketing, it doesn't get any more direct than this. Real-time search results (from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other...

Remember when Microsoft's Bing launched and one of the features that really caught people's attention was the interface of its image search feature? It was unique in that you could simply scroll down on the results page infinitely. You didn't have to go to multiple pages to find more images. You just kept scrolling. Google is now testing such a...

Google recently announced that it’s algorithm will factor in page load speed in addition to the other 200 or so ranking factors currently employed. This move, broadly welcomed by web developers and users, means it is now more important than ever to optimize the speed of your websites. Speed optimisation will not only keep Google happy, it will...

This week Facebook will reportedly be rolling out the ability to send status updates to Twitter directly from the publisher box. There are apps that cater to the cross-posting of updates between the two social networks, but this would mark the first time Facebook itself actually encouraged it. The move is an interesting one, considering that...

Amazon.com said today it would start offering electronic versions of books by business author Stephen Covey exclusively in its Kindle Store. Electronic versions of Stephen Covey's best-selling books, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Principle-Centered Leadership" are available in the Kindle Store for $7.99. The...

Google was granted a patent this month that explains how search engines can deal with duplicate content issues. Does your website hvae duplicate content problems?

If You don't think Twitter is useful for business now, new features may change your mind. Twitter announced that it has begun limited beta testing of a new feature aimed at businesses, called "Contributors." The feature allows businesses to have more control over who is posting for their company Twitter account, and to make that...

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)Today, at 8 a.m. ET, a panel of world climate leaders, among them former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and journalist Thomas Friedman, will gather in Copenhagen and answer the top questions that you submitted to the CNN/YouTube Climate Debate channel.You can watch them address the issues that matter to you...

A few weeks ago, we jump-started the holiday shopping season with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Like us, you probably browsed the shops and sites for the coolest products and best shopping deals for your holiday purchases. But if you're a business or an advertiser, you probably know that some of the biggest shopping weekends of the year are...

Over the past few months we've received a lot of great feedback from our developers about what they wanted to see in the Google Analytics API, and it included adding access to Google Analytics newest and most powerful features, such as advanced segments, custom variables and more. Today we want to let you know about improvements to the Google...

Long URLs cut into character limits, are difficult to remember, and simply look awkward.  Quite a little industry has sprung up in response.  Only it looks like a major player is now entering the game, as a URL shortener created by Facebook has been sighted. Ryan Spoon first wrote about links built around the characters...

Most holiday shipping offers are set to expire on or before December 18, according to a new study by Shop.org and BIGresearch. Nearly two thirds (62.3%) of retailers' shipping deadlines for Christmas delivery will fall on or before December 18, with 34 percent of shipping deadlines occurring on December 18 itself. Many of the busiest online...

Google made a couple of announcements today that actually combined for perhaps a more interesting announcement than either of them as stand-alone news items. First, Google has added a new share button to the Google Toolbar, which allows users to share any site on the web via their social network of choice. Second, Google announced that with...

I have been working very hard researching directories over the last couple of months. We know have a well-catogorized list of over 15,000 web directories. Many of the new additions are United States directories. We now have over 1000 USA directory listings. Submissions are always free. Just add a comment on our blog. Advertising is...

2009 has been a busy year for Google in the area of display advertising — that is, the image, video and interactive ad formats that run across the web.Our goal is to improve display advertising on the web for everyone. We're working to help advertisers get better results from their display ad campaigns, enable publishers to make more money from...

An advertising program that gives marketers access to little or no popular content isn't worth much.  Fortunately for Google, Google TV Ads is moving further and further in the opposite direction, and today, an announcement concerning yet another well-known network was made. John Saroff wrote on the Official Google TV Ads blog, "We're...

This morning, we launched updated versions of the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner that offer a new URL shortening service from Google called the Google URL Shortener. We mentioned our URL shortener as a feature in both announcements, so we wanted to say a little more about how this product works and why we're offering it.People share a lot of links...

Hello from the Google Toolbar team! Before we head off for the holidays, we wanted to give you some new features to play with.We've been busy working on even more ways to make web browsing easier and more fun. First off is our new Share feature in Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox. This makes it easy for you to share any page on the web...

Before you even start thinking about link baiting, you should have some goals prepared. If the goals seem to be within reach, you’ll have to decide what kind of link building strategy would probably be the most effective in your situation. And if it turns out that link baiting is the appropriate weapon of choice, you usually have three options.

TVGuide.com has tapped ad firm PubMatic in an effort to boost its advertising revenue. "PubMatic has significantly decreased the operational burden of managing multiple ad networks and simultaneously helped us eliminate inefficiencies in our remnant advertising pricing," said Ian Wallin, Vice President, Online Ad Sales, TVGuide.com....

Last week, Yahoo experienced a small win on the financial front as an analyst gave its stock a "buy" rating and increased his price target from $19 to $20.  Today, Google achieved a rather bigger victory as another analyst raised his price target from $600 to $695. Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali had no shortage of...

Ticketmaster has begun beta testing a new online "Interactive Seat Maps" for a select number of sports teams. Interactive Seat Maps allows users to navigate and choose from all seats and configurations. Ticketmaster's traditional "best available" searches uses computers to search availability one row at a time, the upgraded...

Christmas comes just once a year, but terrible websites can be found all-year long! When it comes to SEO-friendly web design, here are a few practices that will have you asking Santa Claus for a new webmaster this Christmas.

Ann Smarty with another essential list on Search Engine Journal for Local Search.

LinkedIn has launched a new addition to its People Search Experience. It's called "Faceted Search". Faceted search allows you to search for a person and narrow that search down by specific "facets" as you go along, in order to quickly find the most relevant profiles possible. Users are presented with categories under the...

Well, I started off the new year lamenting the general lack of understanding of IR in the greater SEO community. So, hey... why not end it that way? If you're in the SEO game; start off the new year by geekin out! M'kay? Thanks... Carry on.

Amazon has released an iPhone app for the Kindle to over 60 countries. Now users in a total of 64 countries can read Kindle books on their iPhones and iPod Touch devices. "We are excited to make the Kindle for iPhone App available to iPhone and iPod touch users in more than 60 countries, allowing them to access the vast selection of the...

Google is a master of online advertising, and in recent days, has more than ever been vilified as an enemy of the newspaper industry.  People were understandably surprised, then, to find ads for Chrome plastered all over a UK newspaper this morning. The Metro is a free paper targeted at commuters in 16 cities.  It's supposed to be the...

The tech industry was abuzz about a new phone from Google over the weekend. After months of speculation, it was discovered that Google does indeed have a new smartphone, and now more details and images have surfaced. The phone is being called the Nexus one (so far, at least), and will run the Android operating system. The hardware comes from...

Online holiday spending reached $19.9 billion in the first 41 days of the shopping season, marking a 3 percent increase over the same time period last year, according to the latest report from comScore. The most recent week saw above average online spending growth of 4 percent versus a year ago, two days shattered the $800 million mark in...

This fall we've seen lots of government agencies decide to make the switch to cloud computing, joining the many businesses already using Google Apps for email and collaboration at work. Today we'd like to officially welcome another customer to the mix: the City of Los Angeles. Starting today, Los Angeles will be equipping 34,000 city employees...

Although there is still a little bit of time before 2009 is officially over, since many of you are going to be spending a lot of time traveling and attempting to hide from you in-laws over the next couple of weeks, I thought it would be useful to provide this great reading material now.

I already submited to many dir , I was wondering if someone actually noted a better SERP or better RANK or both.....

Hi, I would like to introduce a PR 2 free web directory - (1WebsDirectory) accepting free submissions from all webmasters and site owners. Submit your sites and get listed. Regards, Sriram

European online Christmas shopping season got off to a strong start this year in the U.K., France and Germany, according to a new report from comScore. Visits to retail sites were up 18 percent during the first week of November compared to an average week during the prior two months, and increased even more throughout the month to reach a 41...

The search industry has changed a lot since it was conceived years ago. The rate of change shows no signs of slowing down either. That's one reason why it pays to keep up with the current trends and discussions surrounding the industry. One way to do this is through attending conferences. WebProNews attended and covered Search Engine Strategies in...

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.What a busy week for Google! From the launch of real time, to the addition of universal search features in Suggest, searching on Google just got a whole lot better this week.Real-time...

We’ve always said that a top priority for us is making sure that your search results are relevant, useful and safe. Of course, this commitment to a positive search experience extends to the ads you see on Google too. Earlier this week we took a stand to fight Internet scams, and in recent months, we've also put a new procedure in place to...

Quite some time ago, Google and a number of other companies announced their intent to create something called the Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC).  This week, there was confirmation that the undersea fiber optic project is progressing. Bobbie Johnson wrote today, "The agreement to build the submarine cable was first proposed three...

As you may know, Google's Matt Cutts regularly answers questions submitted by users via videos uploaded to Google's Webmaster Central YouTube Channel. Usually the questions and answers are helpful tips and explanations regarding the workings of Google and how webmasters can better accomplish some goal related to their sites' performance in the...

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.We've been busy over the last three weeks adding new functionality to make communicating and sharing with Google Apps easier than ever, whether you use Google Apps for work, for...

This may be the year of real-time search, but this week alone has captured much of the attention related to the subject. Yahoo is rolling out something close to real-time search today, and of course the big news is that Google has begun incorporating real-time search results right into its regular SERPs. Google has now made another real-time...

Just in time for the holidays, a financial expert has given a sort of present to Yahoo.  Or, perhaps, given everybody else a way to spend whatever cash they receive.  Regardless, Kaufman Bros. analyst Aaron Kessler has upgraded his rating on the search company from "hold" to "buy." Earlier this week, Yahoo CEO Carol...

If you are a Twitter user, you have probably experienced errors trying to use the service a time or two. In fact, Twitter being "over capacity" is so common on Twitter that the "Fail Whale", which is displayed in such instances has something of a cult following. People even wear T-shirts sporting the image. Despite said...

On Monday, when Amit Singhal introduced Google real-time search, he talked about bringing you information at the speed of light. But speed isn't just about the time it takes the results to load, or even the time it takes us to index new information — it's about the time it takes to get you the information you're looking for.That's why this week...

The number of seniors actively using the Internet has increased by 55 percent to 17.5 million over the last five years, according to a new report from Nielsen. Among people 65+, the growth of women in the last five years has outpaced the growth of men by 6 percent. More seniors are also spending more time online. Time spent on the Internet by...

Dave Snyder writes: The citation method of ranking indexed content is flawed. It is based on human aid, and any technology based on the work of humans is always going to have flaws. Links are the product of what elicits an emotion from website owners, and the link builder that can tap these emotions is going to be able to manipulate the most...

Facebook (96%) is now the most popular communication tool, followed by SMS (93%) and email (91%), according to a new survey from Prompt Communications. When consumers were asked which method they used most frequently to communicate, 37 percent said SMS followed by Facebook and the phone at 28 percent. Respondents feel that email is now less...

The Federal Trade Commission released a report today that found minors can easily access sexually and violently explicit content in online virtual worlds. The congressionally mandated report, "Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks," calls on operators of virtual worlds to take steps to keep explicit content away from children and...

PayPal has introduced a new Facebook app for sending money. The app is designed to allow uses to use PayPal to send money to anyone starting from Facebook. Users only need the person's email address. PayPal Director of Product Marketing Heinz Waelchli explains how it works: Visit our send money application page and click on the "Get...

It should now be easier than ever for advertisers to get their videos in front of YouTube users in different countries.  Today, YouTube's Promoted Videos program launched in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. In return for a little money, Promoted Videos allows advertisers to have their clips stuck at the top of...

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)Last week, we announced the CNN/YouTube Climate Debate in Copenhagen, an effort to make sure that your voice is included in the climate debate — and that your questions are posed to decision-makers on an international stage. Today, we want to inform you that panelists will include former U.N. Secretary General...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said today that 13 additional social networking sites, including those owned by Google, Yahoo and AOL, have agreed to remove sex offenders from their sites. The move follows Cuomo's announcement from last week that Facebook and MySpace had removed more than 3,500 registered sex offenders from their...

Reports indicate that Yahoo will be rolling out its own version of real-time search results today. Google of course did this earlier in the week, but Yahoo's offering will not exactly be real-time. Google has access to Twitter's firehose (although everybody will have access next year) because the two companies entered an agreement recently....

The majority (86%) of women are now using popular social networks, a 48 percent increase over 2008, according to a new study by SheSpeaks. In addition, social networks including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, have become drivers of purchase intent among women, with 50 percent of social media users reporting they have purchased products because of...

Whole Foods Market has unveiled a new website aimed at mobile users. The company says it provides users with the same features as its non-mobile site. Visitors to the mobile site can access Whole Foods selection of over 2,000 recipes, store information including hours, driving directions, store specials and a calendar of events for their local...

Hello WPW folk. We launched My Local Services USA earlier this year, so welcome any US based businesses to sign up and take advantage. We have Lifetime Premium Listings which are 100% free, giving you a full webpage to showcase your business with weblinks, pics and text. The Directory is SEO friendly, such as keyword direct links from...

Update: LinkedIn is now in the process of rolling out the new design to all users. More from the LinkedIn Blog. Original Article: LinkedIn is testing a new design. Only a select number of users will see it, however. New features include: -  A global navigation bar at the top of the page that provides convenient access to all...

Google announced that the new version of its Google Mobile app for the iPhone was approved and is now available in the App Store. The new version includes a redesigned search results display that shows more results at once. It also opens web pages from the results within the app. "For those less utilitarian and more flamboyant, we've...

Today, at the International Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, we demonstrated a new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's forests. We hope this technology will help stop the destruction of the world's rapidly-disappearing forests. Emissions from tropical...

Facebook Connect has now been around for a year. In that time it has accomplished quite a lot, and perhaps allowed developers and webmasters to accomplish even more. "From social widgets like the Comments Box, Share button and Live Stream Box to deeper integrations including log in, Facebook Connect is helping developers drive more traffic...

Update: The new AOL, or "Aol." rather,  has launched at Aol.com. Original Article: AOL is re-launching as a whole new entity. Last week, the company unveiled its new logo for its new brand identity post-Time Warner. According to the Wall Street Journal, AOL is reinventing more than just its logo, however, AOL will be...

The advent of real-time search has led to the need for real-time search engine optimization (SEO).   (Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.) Brent Payne, SEO Director, Tribune, said the recent news about Tiger Woods drove over 1.5 million...

Google recently partnered with BabyCenter on a joint research study looking at how moms use search. Google says they arrived at four truths about moms and search: 1. The stork delivers search 2. Moms become black belts in search 3. Search is Mom's GPS to Store 4. Search is Mom's back up brain. "These truths reveal to marketers that motherhood...

Google has extended its personalized search functionality to users who are not even signed in. This goes for Google users around the world, in over 40 languages. What this means is that when you search with Google, it will provide results that are aimed at higher relevancy to the individual user, as opposed to relevancy for the average person....

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)After nearly 35 years on air, PBS NewsHour recently re-launched its broadcast program and website in an effort to provide viewers with NewsHour content wherever, whenever and however they want to access it. As part of this transformation, the nightly news program is starting a major new initiative with...

Update: Pizza Hut announced today that its former "Twintern" now has the official title of "Tweetologist," and now holds a full-time position. From the announcement: For more than a month, Alexa Robinson - Pizza Hut's former summer "Twintern" who was hired as an intern to keep up with Pizza Hut fans through...

Google's share of the search market inched up by 1 percent in November accounting for 71.57 percent of all U.S. searches conducted during the month, according to Hitwise. Yahoo trailed landing in the second position with 15.39 percent of the search share representing a 5 percent decline from October. Bing also saw a dip of 2 percent and ended up...

DVR and online video continue to show considerable growth in the U.S., up 21.1% and 34.9 percent respectively, in time spent in the third quarter of 2009, according Nielsen's latest Three Screen Report. In Q3, the average American watched 31 hours of TV per week, with 31 minutes spending playback mode with their DVR. In addition, each week the...

There are a whole host of strategies that go into managing a major presidential campaign, from using social media to spread a message to developing analytics. (Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.) Dan Siroker, former Deputy New Media Director,...

Google said today it is taking aim at fraudulent companies that uses its name for money scams. Bogus offers such as "Easy Cash with Google" and "Use Google to Make 1000s of Dollars!" has led the company to take a number of measures. Google has filed a lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and several other unnamed defendants for...

Facebook is rolling out new features today to allow users to have more control over how they share content with others. Users will be able to control who sees each individual piece of content they post. Facebook's new Publisher Privacy Control will allow people to select a privacy setting for every post they make at the time they create it. By...

An advertising campaign can have miraculous effects, causing people to feel better about a company and give it more time and money.  Or it can be as effective as burning a pile of cash (on primetime TV, no less).  Luckily for Yahoo, Nielsen data indicates that its "Y!ou" campaign is imitating the first formula. Jon Gibbs and...

MySpace has announced a new set of APIs. These include APIs for real-time streaming, status and mood commenting, open search, photo uploading, and an updated version of the post to/share API. "MySpace sees huge value in real-time data and believes sharing it will mature the socialization of content on the Web," said MySpace COO Mike...

I appreciate it’s a recession, and small businesses haven’t got cash to spend, but there’s a problem here: You'll get what you've paid for: probably a search engine death penalty. If you took out an ad in a local paper for £75 you would get no 2 lines of text on a page that most people won’t read. You will not get into a national...

Communicating is not an easy task. Especially through the website copy. Communicating to our target market is about knowing who they are, what they like, etc… But have we considered the people that we alienate when communicating to our target market? Often times, to make a point or win people over we make fun of or belittle other people....

Blogs, wikis, social networks, YouTube and Twitter are changing how many of us connect with others. Yet within most businesses, especially large corporations, the software hasn't evolved much over the last decade. While traditional business technologies give companies the necessary security and controls, they do so at the expense of rapid...

Do you ever wonder what's going on inside the browser when a webpage doesn't load or respond as quickly as it should? Many developers do, especially when trying to build powerful web applications for their users.But up until now, it's been difficult for developers to identify problems in a slow-to-respond application. So, tonight at Google...

Let's not kick Yahoo while it's down; after a glance at some financial charts, it'd be sufficient to say that the company hasn't done as well as Microsoft and Google in recent months (the three companies are up 6.6, 19.1, and 28.0 percent since September 9th).  But circumstances are likely to change, according to Carol Bartz, who made some...

Google may have busted the "duplicate content myth" a while back, saying that you don't technically get "penalized" for it, but that doesn't mean it is a good thing. Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive says you should care about it so that your better pages are available to rank. Search engines don't always get it...

Early this year, Burger King made waves with a "Whopper Sacrifice" Facebook app.  Google, meanwhile, has achieved Twitter omnipresence with 87 official accounts.  But not every company has tons of free hamburgers and/or employees lying around, so a like-named session at SES Chicago addressed the matter of "Social Media for...

U.S. advertising spending in the first nine months of 2009 fell by 14.7 percent compared to the same period in 2008, according to a new report by TNS Media Intelligence. Ad spending during the third quarter of 2009 was down 15.3 percent compared to last year, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines. There were some...

MySpace announced today that it has completed a deal to acquire "certain assets" of the popular social media music service imeem. imeem is now redirecting to MySpace Music. "MySpace Music and imeem share a common vision and commitment to further enabling the socialization of content across the Web," says MySpace CEO Owen Van...

There's been no shortage of talk recently about the "future of news." Should publishers charge for news online? How do they replace lost sources of revenue such as classified ads? How will accountability journalism endure? And, even more fundamentally, will news survive in the digital era? These are questions we're deeply interested in, and we've...

There was nothing more excruciating for me as a kid than seeing the presents pile up under the Christmas tree but knowing that I couldn't open them until Christmas morning. On the Google Chrome team, we've had the same feeling as we've been working to get betas ready for Mac, Linux and extensions. It's been a long time coming, but today we can...

Officials in the UK have announced plans to require children beginning at age 5 to be taught about online safety starting in 2011. The new initiative called "Click Clever Click Safe" was created by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS). "The internet provides our children with a world of entertainment, opportunity and...

Dell seems to have achieved a very good understanding of Twitter and social media in general.  This morning, a representative shared some statistics regarding the hardware manufacturer's achievements, and by most standards, they're extremely impressive. Back in late June, Dell announced that its presence on Twitter had generated $3 million...

Google's new Caffeine index is going to be released soon. What do you have to expect from this update and how will it affect the position of your web pages in Google?

As marketers, we spend a lot of time thinking about our message, as well we should. Our job is to tell prospective customers how we can help them, so we focus on what we say. The Internet has turned the tables on marketers, however. Time was that marketing messages were conceived by extremely creative people to get attention for products, but now,...

"Use Google to Make 1000s of Dollars!" or "Easy Cash with Google: You Could be Making up to $978 a Day Working from Home!" You may have seen offers like these using Google's name or logo that sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are, and, despite hundreds of consumer complaints and our own efforts to keep these sites from...

Is anyone else getting more searches done by the Yandex and Yahoo bots than by Google? My stats show: Yandex bot 731+10 3.22 MB 04 Dec 2009 - 06:57 Yahoo Slurp 458+22 3.08 MB 04 Dec 2009 - 06:51 Googlebot 257+32 2.23 MB 04 Dec 2009 - 06:59 I'm also seeing 10 direct referrals from Yandex and just 11 from Google. Are the Russians more...

(Cross-posted from the Google Photos Blog)I used to take a lot of photos with the best intentions of sharing them with friends and family. But most of the time they just sat on my camera's memory card, never quite making it to my computer, let alone to my friends and family.Three weeks ago we made extra storage more affordable for Picasa Web...

(Cross-posted on the Google Research Blog)Today kicks off the nation’s first Computer Science Education Week. The goal of this week is to encourage students to learn about the discipline that powers the computers, applications and technology they use everyday. Computer Science Education Week emphasizes that our society's aspirations will be met...

Update: Now the game is really on with Google rolling out real-time search results into regular search results pages. Original Article: Real-time search is still an emerging concept. At this point, using a real-time search engine will bring you results by time/date. This doesn't always cater to relevancy, which is why there is still a lot of...

Search engines are constantly evolving and marketers need to know how to leverage the various aspects of search to have successful campaigns. (Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.) Justin Merickel, Vice President, Marketing & New Product...

Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world's information, and we strive to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices you use to access it.That's why today, at the Computer History Museum, we're excited to share a few new...

As Google's search engine competitors often bring up, searchers want more than just "ten blue links" these days. Of course it has been quite a while now since search results from any of the big three were only ten blue links for most searches. We are well into the era of blended search. Google calls this "Universal" search,...

We all love the holiday season, and so now, here are a few reasons to love it even more! A few weeks ago, we announced a set of powerful, flexible, and intelligent features. Today, at SES Chicago, Phil Mui announced additional features that build on these same themes to make your life as an analyst easier. We hope you'll enjoy them.AnnotationsDo...

Amazon is making some enhancements to its Kindle electronic reader, aimed at improving the reading experience for people who are blind, visually impaired, or dyslexic. "Kindle is for anyone who loves to read—in fact, we’ve heard from thousands of vision-impaired customers and customers with learning disabilities over the past...

Online holiday spending has reached $15.3 billion, a 4 percent increase over the previous year, according to the latest report from comScore. The most recent week saw three individual days surpass $800 million in spending, led by Cyber Monday with $887 million in spending, matching the heaviest online spending day on record. The following Tuesday...

Facebook has formed a Safety Advisory Board with five safety organizations from North America and Europe in an effort to better protect its 350 million global users. The five organizations on the board are Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, WiredSafety, Childnet International and The Family Online Safety Institute. Facebook said it plans to...

Yahoo has launched a tool it's calling "Ad Interest Manager" in beta. The tool is designed to provide transparency and let Yahoo users make decisions about how they want their information to be exposed to interest-based advertising from the Yahoo Ad Network. "Ads tailored to users' interests make online experiences more compelling...

What if you could decide where to shop, eat or hang out, with a little help from local Google users?It might take you a while to ask them all, so to make it easier we've launched a new effort to send window decals to over 100,000 local businesses in the U.S. that have been the most sought out and researched on Google.com and Google Maps. We're...

Social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate genuine personality, instead of an exaggerated identity, according to new research from psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas at Austin. "I was surprised by the findings because the widely held assumption is that people are using their profiles to...

Representatives from around the world arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark today to negotiate a successor treaty for the Kyoto Protocol. This 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) has been called the most important conference in a decade.In fact, in an unprecedented initiative, 56 major newspapers in 45 countries published a shared editorial calling on...

In part one of this post series – introduction to the linkbait concept, I explained the concept of link bait was a derivative of Viral marketing. While link bait campaigns aren’t as resource intensive as viral campaigns; they do still require a creative process of planning, creation and distribution. In part two of link bait your way...

Some people tend to shrug their shoulders when presented with options.  Others know exactly what they want.  For this second set - or at least the members of the second set who work for advertising agencies - a new Video Targeting tool from YouTube promises to be of great use. A post on the YouTube Blog explained, "Video Targeting...

About three months ago, Google Russia lost its CTO to Mail.ru as she became the company's deputy CTO.  Now, it looks like a reunion of sorts may take place, as reports indicate that Google Russia and Mail.ru have reached a search deal. Yandex, the dominant search engine in Russia, has been Mail.ru's default search provider since January of...

This time of year everybody likes to start making predictions about where industries are heading. This is especially true in the search industry. My guess is that we will see quite a few pieces this month regarding where search is going in 2010. These can make for entertaining reads and get the mind going with regards to how we are going to have...

Those new to blogging or article writing have often been told to focus on one very niche topic. One narrow vertical. That has commonly been considered the way to gain credibility, readers, links, and ultimately traffic, which assuming the blog/site itself isn't your primary source of income, could lead to sales of your products/services. But is...

I probably don't have to tell you that many businesses are still struggling with the concept of using social media. Many simply can't find a good reason to use it at all, and many more find themselves using it but struggling to validate that use. They can't find the ROI. They feel that too much time is being wasted. Basically, they're just using...

Google's Matt Cutts, as you may know, frequently appears in videos for Google's Webmaster Central YouTube channel. In these videos he answers questions submitted by Google users. One of the latest ones features a different kind of (and perhaps more fun) question: If you could improve one thing or add a feature to Google Search right now, what...

Update 3: The new FTC Guidelines went into effect this week. A recent WebProNews interview with Wendy Piersall, Founder of the Woo! Jr. Network, looks at some interesting points about them that you may not have considered - some "gray areas" if you will. Update 2:  Now...

Italian prosecutors have - sort of - tried to put several Google executives (and the company's former CFO) in jail.  The prosecutors requested sentences ranging from six months to one year in connection with a case that involved a YouTube video and a disabled boy. In September of 2006, a clip showing several teens making fun of a classmate...

It's easy for businesses to get caught up in Google's expectations for their sites, when trying to market through search. That's certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google dominates the search market by a huge margin. Still, there are other search engines that people are using, and it is also wise to make sure your site is performing to the...

Google CEO Eric Schmidt while appearing on Fox Business made some interesting comments about Google's emergence as a huge Microsoft-like business power. I thought most interesting was Schmidt's statement about Google becoming like Microsoft, "Hopefully, we won't repeat the mistakes that Microsot made ten years ago that ultimately led to...

Update: Google says its new ad formats are "the next chapter in search advertising", and its "AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative" will focus on two themes: Ad extensions offer you the ability to enhance your existing text ads with additional relevant information. Some examples of ad extensions include Ad Sitelinks...

Update: VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick has written a separate piece adding 10 more reasons. Original Article: The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about the evolution of communication technology, chronicling the rise and alleged fall of email to social media. "Email no longer rules," the title reads....

There was an interesting session on online video at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East, which WebProNews attended. The session was called "Video Search Marketing Beyond YouTube". The following tips come from a combination of presentations from that session from speakers: William Leake of Apogee Search, John McWeeny of TurnHere, and Eric...

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.This week, we're pleased to bring you a number of great enhancements to the way you search. From the announcement of our new minimalist fade-in homepage to the new magazine layout of...

Update: Microsoft and Yahoo have closed the deal. WebProNews received an email from a Yahoo representative saying that they have "finalized and executed the definitive Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement and License Agreement in accordance with the letter agreement announced in July." Statements from the two...

If you use Twitter or create content, you have probably figured out by now that it can be a great tool for driving traffic to your site. There are measures you can take to expand this if your content is not bringing in the Twitter traffic on its own. Is Twitter a significant traffic source for your site? Comment here. If you're not seeing much...

Another sign of the importance a certain search giant places on Google Wave came today as the acquisition of a company called AppJet was announced.  AppJet offers a product that mirrors certain aspects of Google Wave, only since it's been around for a little longer, may have one or more legs up. Here are some of AppJet's vital stats: it was...

Come to the windy city next week and catch Google Analytics' fearless Senior Product Manager Phil Mui in action at the Search Engine Strategies Chicago conference. Phil will be presenting at two sessions on Monday at SES: MUST SEE: What's New and Exciting with Google Analytics - Monday at 12:45pm at the networking lunch which we're sponsoring....

It's possible to make hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars in a few minutes.  It's also possible to lose tons of money in a short timespan, however, and this is even more likely to happen when someone's dealing with outdated information.  So from now on, news stories will be streamed on Google Finance as they're published. A...

It appears that it is finally safe to say that if mobile hasn’t completely arrived it is certainly in the room and recognized for its potential. Should we declare 2010 as the ‘Year of Mobile’? Sure, why not. There will be others and honestly it means nothing to hype it. Let’s look at what’s actually going on at street...

Yahoo has released its top 10 mobile searches for 2009 and interestingly only two of the top searches match what people were searching for on their PCs. While Michael Jackson topped Yahoo's overall searches for 2009, actress Megan Fox landed in the top spot of mobile searches.  Those were the only search terms to make it into both the top 10...

Thomson Reuters has introduced a new redesign to Reuters.com in an effort to offer more intelligent content to business professionals. The redesign has been in the works for the past year according to David Schlesinger, Editor-in-Chief of Reuters. "This is our redesign, a year in the making. That's a year of extensive discussions with...

In case you were not aware, Google "reserves the right" to change the titles of your pages in search results. Google's Matt Cutts has released a video discussing why and how they go about doing this. Cutts says Google wants to show the titles that it thinks are most useful. "For example, suppose the title of your page is...

All of the search engines are rushing to incorporate more social media elements into their interfaces. Examples of this are evident in things like Google and Bing's deals with Twitter and Facebook. You can see it in Yahoo's new Twitter tab for news results. You can see it in Google's Social Search lab. Really you can see it in everyday search...

Google does not use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking. Google's Matt Cutts explains this in a Webmaster Central video. This is not breaking news, by any means, but there are a lot of people out there that still put a lot of stock into this. In fact, Cutts mentions that people have sued each other for meta tag keyword...

google website optimizer guide for wordpress Having used Google’s Website Optimizer for client’s before, I thought we would share our experience from this week when we decided to run some experiments for the li’l engine blog -  running Wordpress version 2.8. A quick intro Google Website Optimizer is a free hosted service by...

The mainstream media has its head in the sand again while one of the largest conspiracies the world has ever seen is exposed via Internet media. As most readers have heard by now, years of emails and programming code have been uncovered from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, which is run by the scientists...

Google has announced the launch of a free global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, simply called Google Public DNS. People can opt-in to use this as an alternative to their current DNS provider. You do not need a Google account to use it, and it is an independent service, meaning it does not depend on any other products. Google says...

More professionally-produced, full-length programming (along with a lot of clips) is coming to YouTube, thanks to a deal with a television channel called Five.  Five, which operates in the UK, should bring more than 3,000 hours of content to the table. YouTube reached another agreement with a foreign entity, Channel 4, in October.  The...

iPhones are being used as musical instruments in a new class taught at the University of Michigan. The students who design, build and play instruments on their iPhones, will perform a free public concert on December 9. The course called "Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble" is believed to be the first of its kind. The class is taught by...

We recently reported on the notion that Wikipedia losing editors could lead to a decline in accuracy. Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, tells WebProNews growth in editing has slowed, but the number of editors is just flat, and not declining. Do you think Wikipedia is usually accurate or do you...

Quote from Jon Stewart of Comedy Central: "Poor Al Gore, global warming completely debunked by the very Internet you invented". Stewart continued, "It's nothing, he was just using a trick .. to hide the decline. It's just scientist speak for using a standard statistical technique recalibrating data in order to ... trick you ......

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct...

The Pulitzer Prize Board said Wednesday it is opening its doors wider to entries from text-based online-only newspapers and news sites. A year ago, the Board broadened the competition to include many news outlets in the United States that publish on the Internet at least weekly, but it required that all entered material had to come from outlets...

Update: Google announced today that it will now be rolling out the use of breadcrumbs in seach results on a global basis. They will only be used in place of some URLs - mainly the ones that don't give the added context of a link the way that the breadcrumbs do. Google says: Some web addresses help you understand the structure of the site and...

A study from a couple of NYU Stern professors has found that organic search engine results can play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked. Basically, if this research is any indication, if your business has both a paid result and an organic result appear at the same time, you have a better chance of your paid result getting...

Yahoo has officially shut down Geocities.The company has said that it did not count the property among its priorities, so it is simply getting rid of it. Yahoo has shut down about 20 services in less than a year. We learned that Yahoo would be closing the door on GeoCities back in April, so users have had plenty of time to migrate to other...

As of this week, all the new Google Analytics features we recently announced should be available in all accounts! (And just yesterday, we announced one more - a new, asynchronous tracking code snippet.)If you missed the announcements or are curious about the features you're now seeing, join us in this upcoming webinar, happening next week on...

Perhaps Yahoo has started a trend.  Yesterday, we learned that the company will shut down part of a business it bought two and a half years ago.  Today, there's word that Microsoft's sold some things it picked up while acquiring Fast Search & Transfer in early 2008. It's important to note that this deal isn't going to cripple Bing...

On Thursday, the House Financial Services Committee will discuss legislation introduced by Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) that would regulate online gambling in the United States. The hearing will begin at 10 am EST and will include testimony from leaders in the fields of online security and consumer safety. Experts will describe how current...

Those who have been following the search industry for some time, may recall that Google had some legal issues with the (former) magazine Perfect 10 (nsfw). The company, which ceased publication of its magazine, but still operates on the web, has issued a press release saying that its five year battle with the search giant is "about to heat...

Cyber Monday sales were up 5 percent compared to a year ago reaching $887 million and matching the heaviest online spending day on record, December 9, 2008, according to the latest report from comScore. "We've seen an encouraging start to the online holiday shopping season and it would appear that retailers' aggressive and early marketing...

Duplicate content is a common occurrence on the web and in many cases can hurt search engine rankings. While the search engines may not always technically penalize webmasters for duplicate content, there are still a lot of ways it can hurt. WebProNews is covering the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) East in New York, where representatives from the...

Yahoo said today it is expanding its integration with Facebook to allow users of both sites to share more content. Yahoo said its deeper integration with Facebook will roll out in the first half of 2010. Users will be able to connect with Facebook friends on Yahoo, view a feed of their friends' activity on Yahoo, and share content such as photos...

Have you ever wondered what would happen to your content on third-party sites if those sites ceased to exist? You may own your content on them as it stands now, but what if they went away?  Would you be ok if your tweets or your status updates disappeared? Discuss here. You may recall earlier this year when URL-shortening service...

Disclaimer: This article was originally written before Google made its announcement, and has been updated to reflect that. Google and Microsoft have both inked deals with Twitter and Microsoft has also inked one with Facebook to integrate Twitter and Facebook updates into Bing search results. Google will be adding tweets to search results....

Everyone is talking online ROI these days. That’s Return on Investment for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym. One sure way to increase your online ROI is to focus on what calls to action you are using on your website. (Also known as CTAs.) It is true. Some sites take that prime piece of real estate (front and center on the homepage) and...

Update 2:  Matt Cutts gave WebProNews another exclusive interview, in which he gave some more details about Caffeine (among other things. It's only hitting one data center before the holidays, and it isn't even live quite yet. Google will roll it out to more data centers in January.     ...

Microsoft is either taking the holiday marketing approach or the Twilight/Vampire trend approach with its latest commercial. The title is Bing: Vampire Decision Engine. The company uploaded the new commercial to its (Google-owned) YouTube channel. Accompanying the video is a short description: "When you're looking for a restaurant that is...

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said today that more than 3,500 registered state sex offenders have been removed for social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. Under New York's e-STOP law, which was written by Cuomo, Facebook was able to identify and disable accounts linked to 2,782 registered New York sex offenders, and MySpace was...

Google has quietly gotten rid of PageRank in Webmaster Tools. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a thread featuring an explanation from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa. "We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most...

In most pie charts that feature Google, the search giant dominates the circle, and a new one from the Fair Syndication Consortium follows that pattern.  Unfortunately for Google's reputation, the chart's titled "How unlicensed use of U.S. newspaper content is monetized." According to the Fair Syndication Consortium, newspaper...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a 2-day workshop on "Journalism and the Internet Age" today and tomorrow. Featured at the event are a number of high profile media executives and gurus. The cast ranges from News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington. The event appears to be designed to...

CNBC reports that the deal between GE and Comcast over a majority stake in NBC Universal is complete, and will likely be announced officially Thursday morning. This comes from what CNBC attributes as a "source close to the merger". According to the report, GE and Comcast are waiting on Vivendi to sign an agreement, selling its 20%...

AdSense is an important fixture in a lot of people's lives; it can represent anything from spending money (hey, little splurges do the heart good) to what pays the mortgage.  And now, individuals have a chance to shape it more to their liking, as a new Product Ideas for AdSense page has launched. Try not to get your hopes up; as word spreads...

Yahoo completed its acquisition of Right Media - which cost it about $650 million - two and a half years ago.  Now, it seems that the arrangement's been revisited, as Yahoo's announced that it will discontinue the Direct Media Exchange (DMX) platform. Under Carol Bartz's leadership, Yahoo's cut a lot of products and services in recent months...

Google Analytics now provides a new Asynchronous Tracking Code snippet as an alternate way to track your website!Think of the asynchronous tracking code snippet as a script that uses a "separate lane" to handle part of the processing of your webpage. As the number of cars (or in this case, scripts on your webpage) increases, the asynchronous...

Yahoo has released its top 10 overall searches for 2009, based on billions of queries over the past year. Michael Jackson garnered the most searches of 2009, after his death in June of a drug overdose. Jackson bumped Britney Spears from the top position where she had dominated for the past four years.  Spears still made it into the top 10...

Bing recently published a document about link building. Although it focuses on how Bing deals with inbound links, it can also help you to get better links for Google, Yahoo and other search engines. The most important points of Bing's document can be found in this article.

Watch FTC webcast live Watch the stream live from the FTC 2 day workshop titled ‘ How will journalism survive the internet age? ‘ from Washington DC. Questions will be taken from @ftcnews during the Q & A session. Update 4/11/09 : We will be uploading the archived videos from the webcast shortly. The webcast was a great success...

Salesmanship has always been a little bit about hype. Putting a shine on what you’ve got. Painting it in the best possible light. You get the idea. But when it crosses a line, it becomes fooling your customers. Not only is it unethical, but it doesn’t really work very well anymore. The Internet makes it a lot harder to do than it once...