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Google Blog Search is an invaluable tool for searching news and views off the beaten track. It scans the blog posts of the great and the good, spanning major companies to everyday journal writers.
Today Google have announced some key changes to the service. The alterations should make searching easier, more intuitive and user-friendly. The most notable key addition is the introduction of an RSS feed. This will provide quick updates straight to your feed reader on any number of desired topics.
As with other trending sites, including Twitter and Blogpulse, Google Blog Search now also includes Hot Queries. This will give you a rundown of the most popularly searched for terms, whilst Latest Posts notes the most popular stories being discussed.
No doubt further integration with the likes of Reader and iGoogle will come about, but Blog Search should now be a far more accessible tool. If you haven’t used it before, it’s well worth a look.
Follow this link for the complete Google Blog announcement.
Popularity on Twitter is gauged in the amount of followers you can achieve. It’s a sad fact of life, but ultimately unavoidable.
There are many tactics employed by individuals and businesses to garner more disciples. Of course the organic method of following and re-following is the most widely acceptable. Some will spam the system with messages containing numerous hash tags (# – denotes a trend topic) and wait for people to find them. There are others who employ a robot system to simply follow thousands of people discussing certain topics, in the hope that a percentage will reciprocate.
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The old sporting adage of ‘horses for courses’ seems to have been adopted by Google’s advertising team. Arguably one of the most famous online businesses has reverted to a medium, which many would argue it is helping to make redundant, for its latest advertising campaign.
TechCrunch have been reporting that the search giants are reverting to newspapers to publish their adverts India. Many would probably argue that Google is one of those few companies who probably don’t need extra attention, particularly in the printed press. But readers in the Asian subcontinent will be treated to a very rare sight indeed.
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With the launch of Bing, many website owners have discovered that the description of their site is not all it should be.
Whilst, as most site owners understand, the description on Google is taken from the Meta Description tag, Bing has taken the decision to extract the information from their listing in the Open Directory (DMOZ).
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An excellent article has just been published by eMarketer which summarises the output from the recent DDB conference held in London.
Highlights include the fact that Google is apparently the 8th most popular UK TV channel based on audience attention. Even more scary (if your surname is Grade) is that Google’s revenues are 30x per hour more than those of ITV. Numbers for Setanta were not included…
All in all, a fascinating insight into how the Internet continues to eat in television revenues and how the various players in this competitive market are taking steps to respond.
Read eMarketer’s Delivering Digital Marketing article in full.
The re-launch of MSN Live to Bing has generated a lot of hype across the Internet. Many advertisers who wouldn’t have considered using the Microsoft adCenter before are certainly giving it some thought now.
There are many tools available for new advertisers and also those that have been running paid search campaigns for years.
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Google have long since mooted the idea of adding a real-time element to their search – as highlighted by our May 22 post Is Real-Time Search Really the Future for Google? However, it now appears Bing have beaten them to the punch.
The Bing Community blog yesterday announced the first tentative steps of real-time interaction. Initially this will include the posts of the most followed and influential Twitter account users; however, it appears that plans are already afoot for further developments.
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Illustrate My Name specialise in Personalised Children’s Gifts, they supply Unique Gifts for almost any occasion, from Birthday’s to Wedding’s.
The company realise the potential of the internet and know that it will be key to the success of the business, therefore selecting a highly accredited SEO Agency that specialise in Search Engine Marketing was essential.
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SEO and Internet marketing agencies are often given a bit of a rough ride. As an industry, it is not without its charlatans and is still tarnished by the bad old days of black hat upstarts propelling websites up the search rankings through the shadiest of methods.
Search engines have made it increasingly difficult for websites to cheat the system. Their complex set of rules and finely tuned algorithms ensure a far higher level of quality from any SERP (search engine results page). Modern-day SEO is all about adding quality through a series of multi-faceted processes; not simply spamming select pages full of white text or keywords. It can take time and exhaustive effort to make up a few places in the rankings.
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Now that Google Analytics has the functionality of advanced segments, how and when do you decide if it is right to create a customised segment or create an additional profile?
Once you have logged into your Analytics Account, the advanced segments can be found in the top right hand corner of the account. This functionality allows the data to be segmented depending upon the data you would like to view.
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It might seem a little early to be planning ahead to the festive season, but not so for online businesses…apparently. Preparedness is essential in the competitive world of Internet salesmanship. Despite Britain being bathed in summer sun and with temperatures looking set to eclipse all existing records, Christmas is already at the forefront of some people’s minds.
As highlighted on the Future Now blog, this Christmas is going to be more cut-throat than usual for many retailers. Consumers have less money to spend and will be looking to make it go further. Whilst it may not be the time to be decking the halls or dusting off your It’s a Wonderful Life DVD, e-commerce sites need to be ready earlier than ever with a winning Yuletide strategy.
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Wikipedia rarely escapes the ire of academics or journalists for its purporting of truth in a user-generated environment. Whilst the level of accuracy is usually reasonably good, there are occasional aberrations that highlight the potential misuse of the site.
Earlier in the week Michael Jackson fans became embroiled in a mad scramble to edit and update his status based upon the developing news story surrounding his death. Even before it was confirmed, the singer’s page announced he had passed away, moving some to change it in order to reflect this. Confusion reigned though when fans refused to accept the unofficial news and removed all references to it. This ultimately caused Wikipedia to halt all editing on Jackson’s page until the news could be verified.
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If you have a business blog, whether it serves independently or as part of a main website, you want to be ensuring that your posts are reaching out to the largest possible audience. Keywords provide a vital part of improving visibility on search engines, as such it is essential that you are targeting the optimum terms for your site.
Wordtracker provide an extremely useful service, allowing you to type in words and phrases before providing statistical data on the most popular examples relating to your search. Obviously if you’re in the middle of writing an engaging blog post you probably don’t want to be jumping between sites too often, so they’ve now come up with an incredibly helpful tool called SEO Blogger.
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Google CEO Eric Schmidt has publicly slammed state intrusion determining how civilians use the Internet. In the report by The Telegraph, Schmidt claims that “if they don’t listen to us it is at their peril” – very ominous indeed; which serves as a thinly veiled attack on governments throughout the world, most notably Iran and China, who have decided to step in and filter what can be searched for.
The importance of the Internet in the creation and subsequent proliferation of news has come into focus in recent weeks. Ordinarily secretive states with little or no foreign journalistic contact, have had their barriers smudged by increasing numbers of videos and messages from within their own populous. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have been right at the cutting edge of this distribution; a process that has invariably also involved the world’s most popular search engine, Google.
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Worldwide news stories don’t come much bigger than the death of an icon. The sad news of Michael Jackson’s passing yesterday encouraged a hoarding flotilla of mourning fans and curious web users online to find out the latest reports.
Unprecedented volumes of traffic crippled websites reporting his death, including TMZ and the LA Times websites. Social media, as always, was first on the scene when it came to providing 140 character eulogies and passing respects on. Demand has been and continues to be extremely high, with Tweets and Facebook groups memorialising the singer and his legacy.
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We’ve recently implemented the Disqus (pronounced “discuss”) commenting system into our Wordpress blog.
With Disqus, you create a single account and can then comment easily on any blog utilising this comment system.
You can, of course, still comment using the traditional Wordpress method but if you frequent and contribute to many blogs, this should make the overall process for you far easier and more enjoyable.
Read more about Disqus.
According to a recent report from Bloomberg, the numbers of customers using Facebook advertising within the past year have trebled,. The proliferation of targeted advertisements, which is in stark contrast to Twitter’s stand against paid ads, has clearly caught the attention of businesses and marketers everywhere, as well as the consumers.
By utilising the data that Facebook have on record, including location, age, interests and relationship status, advertisers can hone in on their key demographic and really achieve some eye-catching results. Due to the vast nature of the social networking site’s reach, you can connect with thousands, if not millions of potential customers through a single advertisement. Similarly you can localise your adverts, benefiting smaller businesses looking to trade within a certain region.
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Woolworths is still a name that evokes nostalgia. Its demise at the end of last year left customers, commentators and employees shocked, if not entirely surprised. For years they gradually lost relevance and consumer interest as their diversified range could no longer compete with the specialist stores on their doorstep.
But like a Phoenix rising out of the ashes, along comes a re-vamped Woolworths.co.uk to cast aside the smouldering rubble of its former high street glory. This time though, they are listening to their customers. Offering a far more selective range and reintroducing some of their old favourites, including pick n mix, to show that online business is as vibrant as ever; even for those companies that have failed in the real world.
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Bit.ly have published a new tool this week which allows you to segment bit.ly social media traffic within Google Analytics.
The tool can be found here – bit.ly Google Analytics campaign Campaign Tool. You will be required to download a copy of the tool by choosing ‘File > Create a copy’
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Eco Worrier are a Hampshire based specialist in sourcing and retailing Green and Eco Friendly Household Products, through research and testing they are able to help their customers find only those products that will work effectively around the home.
As people become more concerned about the environment the demand for Eco Friendly Products continues to rise all the time, furthermore with the boom in internet shopping Eco Worrier are more than aware that having a strong online presence will be integral to the success of the business.
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Copywriting is a vital part of the overall SEO process, there can be little doubting that. However, it isn’t necessarily a part of SEO itself per se.
Take, for example, a football journalist. It’s their job to read the game, understand what is happening on and off the pitch and formulate a report as an end product; but that doesn’t make them a footballer. Copywriting, particularly when done online, is exactly the same.
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Addictomatic (Addict-o-matic) is a free service that allows you to search multiple sites on the Internet for news, hot topics, blogs and more.
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A new service has come to light further linking Google AdWords with Google Analytics and meaning that you can now import your Analytics Goals into your AdWords Account.
Goals are the primary measurement of a desired action on a website including:
• Page views
• Contact requests
• Email registrations
• Making a purchase
• Adding product to shopping cart
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If you find the way you search news boring and outdated, you’ll be pleased to know that the good people at Google Labs have created a solution – the beautifully titled, Google Flipper.
Leaving intelligent marine mammal comments aside, Google Flipper has been designed to make the process of searching through Google News far easier. Rather than the usual headline text and short blurb, Flipper will now allow you to see a thumbnail of the front page of each story. Giving you a sneak peak before committing to actually reading it.
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As the world’s attention continues to be drawn by the civil unrest in Iran, two of the Internet’s giants have stepped in to help those voices be heard and understood. Almost simultaneously, Facebook and Google have launched Persian services to accommodate this growing need for communication.
Within their Translate service, Google have added Persian (still showing as an Alpha, so developments may need to be made); allowing messages to and from the troubled Gulf state to be understood with greater ease. Of course, there are millions of people who speak Persian, so this will have a long-term benefit; however, the timing of this addition is probably far from coincidental.
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