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Showing posts from September, 2011

Twitter Revenue Projections: A Mixed Report

According to a recent eMarketer report, Twitter’s 2011 advertising revenues will fall short of the earlier $150 million projection. However, when compared to Twitter’s $45 million of revenue in 2010, the revised 2011 projected revenues of $139.5 million represent a growth rate of 210%. The primary reason Twitter will not meet the $150 million projection is a delay in rolling out a “self-serve” ad platform. Debra Aho Williamson, an eMarketer analyst, said the following of the “self-serve” platform’s role in Twitter’s revenue growth: “Twitter is looking to compete for the same advertisers that made Google and Facebook’s self-serve advertising platforms smash hits. Self-serve advertising accounts for about 60% of Facebook’s ad revenue—that’s a pinnacle Twitter will hope to reach as well.” While the revised 2011 revenue projection shows decreased revenues, the report provided positive news as well. It predicted that Twitter would reach annual revenues of over $400 million by t

Google Fixes Answer For When Rosh Hashanah Starts

Last week, there was a complaint in the  Google Web Search Help  forum that Google's answer to the question [ When is Rosh Hashanah in 2011 ] was wrong. The user said: Google in nice enough to give the answer "Rosh Hashana is on Thursday, September 29, 2011" where is google getting their info from? are they making it up? any one of the results on the page shows clearly that it start on Sept 28th!!! Truth is, the first "day" of Rosh Hashanah is September 29th but the new Jewish day starts at night - so the answer should be the first night of of Rosh Hashanah is September 28th. Google listened and updated the result to read, "Rosh Hashanah starts at sunset on Wednesday, September 28, 2011." Here is a picture: Albert from Google replied to the thread saying: Thanks for the clarification on Jewish holidays! We'll be including a disclaimer saying that it begins at sundown of the previous day when we deliver dates for these d

Tomorrow's Google Webmaster Hangout Details

Google is hosting yet another "Webmaster Hangout" tomorrow. This time it is at 11AM UK time for one hour. Pierre Far from Google posted the details on  Google +  and  Google Webmaster Help  saying: I'm hosting a webmaster help hangout tomorrow (Thursday, 29 September) at 11AM UK time for one hour. For your local time, see this: http://goo.gl/1y84r Join in with your questions about crawling, indexing, Sitemaps, duplicate content and canonicalization, Webmaster Tools, pagination, or anything else webmaster-related really, even if you just want to say hi :) Will be in English. So check back at the thread or Google + for the link to the hangout around 11am UK time, which is 6am EDT. The cool part is that this is not about Google + or +1 button, it is about pure SEO stuff. Forum discussion at  Google +  and  Google Webmaster Help .

Check Payment Details For YouTube AdSense Earnings

There has always been  complaints  about how YouTube AdSense earnings are represented in the AdSense reports. The issue is, the earnings publishers make from their videos are always delayed and thus do not show up on the daily reports. The best way to see your YouTube earnings is to go to the payment screen and click on "details." It will open up the details of how you were paid out. Here is a screen capture: This question was just recently brought up again in the  Google AdSense Help  forums based on Google announcing they are  retiring the old interface . AdSense engineer, Guillaume, explained: YouTube earnings are visible in the payment history of the new interface. You should see the same number as in the old interface in one of the two line items on each month, under the "YouTube" label visible after clicking "details". It's difficult to do better, because YouTube earnings are available only on a monthly basis to AdSense, while t

Google: Parking Your WWW Domain Will Hurt Your Site

I see it way too often... A site where the www of the domain simply does not work. In some cases, the www version goes to a 404 page or a parked domain page, whereas the non www version goes to the proper site. A  Google Webmaster Help  thread has a Googler saying this can be very bad for your site's performance in Google. Gary Illyes from Google said, "it may very well affect your site in a negative way. I strongly suggest you to fix it." Gary was referring to how the non www version of his domain went to a parked domain. Gary said: Do you know why your domain name is parked? http://realclayovens.co.uk/ This is a very bad user experience and may very well confuse our algorithms as well. If you want to serve content only on the www version of your site, it would make sense to 301 redirect realclayovens.co.uk to www.realclayovens.co.uk This may be common sense for most SEOs and some webmasters, but sometimes it is good to have this documented as proo

Google May Drop Keyboard Navigation Arrows

Last October, Google released a new interface and along with that came  blue triangle arrows  used with the keyboard to navigate up and down the search results with your up and down arrow keys. Reports are coming from the  Google Web Search Help  forums that Google may be removing this feature. Some users began noticing the arrows have gone missing, in which Matt from Google replied: We've removed the keyboard navigation arrow from the default search experience. But don't fear! This feature is still available by pressing "Tab" after performing a search. This change is part of the clean and simple redesign of our search results page. Honestly, I still see the arrows and I think Google may have changed their mind and put the arrows back after these few complaints. I am not a 100% sure, but I am pretty sure Google may be keeping them and not dropping them, despite what Matt (not Cutts) said from Google. Forum discussion at  Google Web Search Help .

f8: Facebook Unveils Next Version of Open Graph

The next version of open graph will be a “completely new class of apps,” says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “[We're] going to make it so you can connect to anything you want in any way you want,” he says. Basically you don’t have to “like” everything. You can just read a book, watch a movie, eat a meal, etc. That’s the way he describes it. You’ll start seeing things like: Mark “reviewed” a restaurant. “Last year we added the nouns, this year we added the verbs,” he says. This stuff goes into ticker and timeline, but not the news feed, as to make it less annoying. The new class of apps will focus on helping users fill out their timeline and helping users discover new things through their friends. The three ways they’ll do this, he says, will be frictionless experiences, realtime serendipity and finding patterns in friends’ activity. Apps will be designed around things like music, movies, TV, News, Books, etc. but also around things like Exercise, Fashion, Emoti

Google +1 Button To Influence AdSense & Display Ads

Google is  now bringing  the +1 button to AdSense and display ads within the Google ad network. You will start to see the +1 button on these ads in October. Google said, "+1's will be one additional signal that help determine an ad’s relevance." Not only that, if a friend of yours +1'ed an ad, they will see their friend's face on the ad and maybe, the ad will more likely show up for your friends. Here is a picture: Pamela Parker has a deeper look at this at  Search Engine Land  where she has a nice quote from Google: "When an ad is personally annotated, there's a positive impact on click-through rate," Christian Oestlien, Lead Product Manager for Social Advertising, told me. "You get this great win of users becoming advocates for your product...you can take advantage of social and you don't need to come up with new metrics. All of this is baked into all of your existing ad campaigns." You can block these from showing on a

Share "Cool" Web Search Ideas With Google

Google is actively seeking "cool" ideas for the future of Google web search. Matt Cutts wrote a blog post named  What cool new websearch ideas should Google launch in 2012?  and JohnMu started a thread at  Google Webmaster Help with the same question. John asked: The web-search team is always on the lookout for cool new ideas that you - as a user - would love to see realized. To me, things like search-by-image & voice-search are pretty futuristic (kind of what I'd have expected in 2020), what similarly cool features would you like to see? What feature do you think your parents could profit from? What's something that would have helped you to find something you were searching for faster & easier? Don't be afraid to think big :-). Matt asked, "what cool things would you like to see Google launch in 2012?" One of the cooler ideas I've seen was "Search for the Smell." So share your ideas at Matt's blog or in

Yahoo Bing Transitions In Asian Markets

Yahoo  announced  they have made the transition from Yahoo powered search results to Bing powered results in the Asian markets. These markets include Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam but exclude Korea. Yahoo also said the transition for the organic results in Greece, Poland, Romania, Switzerland (German, French and Italian languages) and Turkey are complete. I am not sure when the paid search side will be transitions, there have been issues on that front - from what I understand. Forum discussion at  WebmasterWorld .

Google Panda 2.5 Hits? Nope!

There are some rumors shuffling around the SEO industry that there is a new  Google Panda  update taking place right now. Update : Google said there is no update taking place right now. Tedster started a thread at  WebmasterWorld  asking, "I'm hearing some reports of site-wide ranking demotions over the weekend that have a similar pattern to what we saw with Panda. That is, lots of keywords affected, but the demotions are not at all uniform the way we often see in a site-wide penalty." One full time member confirmed some major changes, saying: Sustained dip on sites with a local relevance, beginning on the 17th, maintained through today. Sustained 40-50% increase on niche-info type sites, started on the 13th, maintained through today. (on sites I watch, this generic site action/reaction is typical within 4-10 days after a large googlebot crawl) Plus, in ongoing  Google Webmaster Help  thread we have new reports of new sites being hit by Panda. We

Google Wallet launched

If you have a Sprint Nexus S 4G phone, you should see the "Wallet" icon on your device. Other devices will get it soon, but they need near field communication (NFC) built into the device, which many new phones are coming with. What is it? Here is a quick video from Google explaining: There have been rumors about this service since  2005  and now it is finally here. Forum discussion at  WebmasterWorld , where one user said "goog can stay far away from my wallet." Forum discussion at  Google Blogoscoped Forums  and  WebmasterWorld .

The 20-Minute (Or Less) SEO Audit

Sniffing out most of a website’s basic search-engine-optimization problems can be done in 20 minutes or less if you know what you’re doing.  Here are the essentials for an effective and fast SEO audit. I’ll warn you now that reading this guide might take a bit more time than it does to actually perform the SEO audit itself.  But by the time you finish reading, you will be fully prepared to improve a site’s visibility.  Take good notes as you complete the audit; you’ll need them to prioritize optimization tasks. There’s also an easy-to-follow chart you can you or others through the process. This guide is broken into the following components: Adjusting your browser Evaluating your homepage Testing the site’s global navigation Reviewing category and subcategory pages Checking for optimized content Analyzing your site’s off-page SEO The 20-Minute-or-Less SEO Audit infographic Adjusting Your Browser In order to perform a high-powered search audit in 20 minutes,

Google+ opens to all

It's two days before Facebook's developer conference and one before Google Chairman Eric Schmidt gives his testimony on Capitol Hill. So it's good timing for a big Google+ announcement before there's competing big news. Yes, there's the new Hangout features that my colleague Tim Conneally wrote about earlier today. But this is better: Now most anyone can join Google+. Well, damn, there goes the neighborhood. :) Google+ has moved from field trial to public beta, whatever the hell that means. It's a big change for a social network just three months old and already 20-million-plus subscribers strong. The real test of Google's infrastructure comes now -- then there's the question about how the service will demographically change. Looking at my Circles, they're all geek to me. I don't know if there's a normal person on the service. Here they come! Earlier today, Vic Gundotra , Google senior veep of Engineering, blogged about the n