Archive for November, 2011
Bug in Adwords Keyword Tool acknowledged by Google
Users of the Google adwords tool found something peculiar in the recent days. When exact match search was done on certain terms it reported zero. This would have confused many users of the Google adwords tool. Google spokesperson confirms that it’s a bug.
The spokeperson in a statement said that “We’re aware of a potential issue that is affecting the keyword tool in AdWords, and are working hard to fix it”.
The problem has also been reported in Google Adwords help forum as early as November 23.There has not been any clear information on the terms which are affected and which are not as both global as well as local volume are currently showing as zero.
New Facebook Analytics for Businesses
For the past several years Facebook Fan pages have created a positive impact of engaging their brand among the public and especially they have targeted the potential customers. Fan pages are the place for the users to remain attached to their brand and recent comScore report is shows that a page is really just the place where content resides, as fans are 40 to 150 times more likely to consume branded material in their news feeds than on the actual fan page itself.The new metrics “Page Insights” in Facebook are designed especially for the business owners to know what truly maters.
An algorithm in Facebook ensures that relevant content for each user finds it’s away to their particular news feed. This relevancy is determined by number of factors including the number of times it is liked,shared or commented.When user interacts with a particular brand,it can be passed on to their friend’s friends.All brands work in a motive of increasing their fan base and the strategy works when friend of fans visit brand’s store and website.
A new metrics called “people are talking about this” has been added through which set of data counts stories that are eligible to appear in a user’s Newsfeed, such as any likes, wall posts, comments, shares, questions answered, RSVPs to events, Page mentions, photo tagging and location checkins. The metric allows the page administrator to know what posts have proven the most compelling and interactive.
All these metrics are easier to use for the business owners but for those needing something a little more data-intense, there is always the option to export to a spreadsheet.
End of Yahoo Site Explorer and What are the Alternatives
SEO’s and Online Markets will be searching where to go now for free access of invaluable information which yahoo site explorer provided over the past 6 years. There is no longer free alternative and the companies that sell information as part of the marketing tool platforms will be in absolute joy.
Competitor Analysis of sites has also been lost as Yahoo site Explorer will be restricted to sites you own. If Bing wants more people to use their tool instead of Google, they need to include competitor data access which Yahoo site Explorer showed.
It was in the year 2005, Yahoo Site Explorer was launched and lots of marketers were happy at the fall conferences that year. At that Google Webmaster Central was not launched and Site Explorer was the only tool found through paid analytics at the time
A lot of people would be looking for alternatives and in fact people were surprised about the announcement of the merger. Right now there are no tools available for free that covers everything provided by Yahoo Site Explorer. There are few tools available that can give people with fewer funds to start with.
Open Site Explorer from SEOMoz offers the same information but Pro membership is needed for accessing all the features. For people with only five websites or less, monthly fees start at $99. But you get a lot more than link information for that fee.
With the help of SEO Book and SEO for Firefox browser plugin you can get the individual numbers at the top or side of any page. It is free but time consuming. Yahoo site Explorer missed but lets wait and watch if it smart enough to attract all the people.
Recipe and Shopping Features added in Yahoo Search
Now it’s the time for Yahoo to carry out the changes and yahoo has made some promising changes in their search results just in time for the holidays.The new redesigned search results allow users to to do advanced searches for recipes.
Users can also use Yahoo for a quick comparison shopping and get richer updates for entertainment queries.Users now will be able to see rich results at the top of the page while searching for a recipe.Mouth watering images along with star rating of the dishes,the recipe source and links to required ingredients and preparation time are contained in the results.
Users have also the option of using “filter by ingredient” option at the top right.Interesting contents can be shared in Facebook with just a few clicks.Apart from rich results in SERP,the “Recipes” tab allows users to sort and filter content based on star rating, ingredients,prep time and more.
New Shopping Searches
New shopping features were added in Yahoo as buying frenzy of Thanksgiving will kick start in couple of days.New options were added to search where products like like cameras and watches can be easily compared along with the buying guides.
Comparison of five core products is allowed along with the specs,warranty information and more.They can also post the contents in Facebook asking for the feedback from their friends
Verbatim Searching Introduced by Google
A new tool has been added in Google that explicitly searches for exactly and only your search terms.Personalized,corrected,suggested,related search results were removed in this verbatim.
About Verabtim Tool
Users can make use of this feature to the left menu on the SERP and choose Verbatim from “More Search Options”. Clicking on Verbatim will direct the user to a new search results page.
The Verbatim page will display only results that include:
1. Match their exact spelling
2. Include all their search terms
3.Use the same verb from(e.g running and run will be distinct)
4.Use the same plural vs singular from(cap and caps will be distinct)
5.Use same tense(e.g “is” and “was” will be seen as distinct)
Normal results won’t be appearing and some pages that will be omitted in this case would be those that use syanonyms,alternate forms and tenses and use synonyms based on the history and social connections of the user.
The “+” functionality in search queries will be replaced by Verbatim and while entering a phrase in quotes will fetch results that use exact search phrase and spelling.This feature in Verbatim will strip the results to a greater degree.
Mobile Metrics and PDF Exporting added to Google Analytics
It’s yet another announcement from Google and now we can able to see mobile ad performance metrics in Google Analytics.A new toggle has been added to Adwords reports containing tabs namely “All”,”High end Mobile” and “Tablet” ads.
All these features will be available in Google analytics interface. There has been a lot of people using tablets and smart phones,with this new feature the insight information on customers need can be obtained.
PDF export functionality and email scheduling are the new features that will be added in the new interface.In a couple of weeks these changes will be rolled out.
Phil Mui of the Google Analytics team wrote “The old Google Analytics interface as well as all existing scheduled emails will be sunset starting in January 2012,” . “We believe that the new Google Analytics interface provides significant advantages over the old version, including access to Real Time Analytics, Multi-Channel Funnels, Social Plugin Analytics, & Flow Visualization. And hope you’ll find enough value in these new features that you’ll switch to the new version well before then.”
Music Store from Google launching Tomorrow
There has been a lot of speculation going around for the launch of Google Music Store as Google has scheduled a press conference tomorrow. Screenshots of Music Store have also been leaked.
Google Music Store will be competing with iTunes and will be selling songs and albums for digital download.Sources say that Google has yet to secure licensing deals with all the major labels.Sony or Warner have not given any indication of a licensing agreement.
Google has the reach,social capabilities and hardware through Motorola and the Android Os.Both Google and Apple has been fighting fo territory with especially Apple launching the iOS.
This has been a long wait as Google has been working on licensing deals with labels that would allow Google to become an MP3 seller. There has been a new featured called “music locker” that has been rumoured to be included in the Music store.
Music Locker would match user uploaded songs with high quality tracks and when a song matches Google would automatically play back the higher quality version of the song.
Let us wait and watch how Google can match Apple Istore.
Startup Apture acquired by Google
There seems to be no end for Google’s acquistion this year.Google’s 23rd acquisition this year Apture will give the ability to monetize every page on the web.
Founders of Apture Tristan Harris and Can Sar along with their employees will join the Google Chrome team according to the announcement on their company’s site homepage.
Since 2007, all of us here at Apture have worked hard to add new dimensions to the web. We’ve always believed that by transforming flat web pages into interactive multimedia experiences, we could enable readers to see, hear and truly experience the ideas on the page.
After enhancing more than a billion pages with our products, we think now is the best time to expand our efforts with another team just down the road that shares our vision of making the web better. That’s right — we’ve been acquired by Google and will be joining the Chrome team to continue driving innovation and creating a better user experience on the web. The modern web is an amazing platform, so stay tuned for even more enhancements to your Chrome browsing experience.
Apture’s browser plugin has been already removed from Chrome store and all the Apture plug-ins will be shut down in the coming months.Apture’s browser plug in will allow users to highlight words and phrases and bring up results that includes news,videos and images in a small time window.
The users can explore many topics without leaving the page and this feature has also been used in sites like Financial Times and Economist.com.a single line of Javascript is used.
The purchase amount has not been disclosed and with this new feature Google offers enhanced on page search to 200 million active users.
Sites will be penalized by Google for too many ads
Sites that making it life tough for the visitors to find good content and comprising of heavy ads will be penalized by Google.This was said by head of Google’s web spam team during his keynote session at PubCon.
”What are the things that really matter, how much content is above the fold,” Cutts said. “If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it,” inferring that a if a user is having a hard time viewing content that the site may be flagged as spam.
Google has been dropping ranking for sites with too many ads since it has been updating the algorithm over the past couple of months.
Cutts also said all the sites that have been marked as spam should not have been marked as spam and asked the webmasters to report to Cutts and his team.
In the pubcon Cutt responded to audience doubts that there won’t be any threat to SEO and SEO is here to stay.Search will always be getting better and more personalized for each one of us.He also told “Google will be always be striving to get the best results possible while getting fresh real time results”.
Business and Brands can now create Google+ pages
The wait is over and today Google+ officially announced the pages for brands and businesses which the marketers have been eagerly anticipating for months.
If “Create a Page” is visited,it’s likely you will be greeted with this message : “but we haven’t finished releasing them to everyone. Please check back soon.” Currently twenty Google+ pages are available and these numbers will increase making it available to all as part of its worldwide rollout.
Google+ Pages are Google’s version of Facebook pages that allow brands to connect with customers and fans.In Google+ pages you can post updates ,communicate with customers or fans and check your +1 counts.A personal Google+ profile is needed to create a Google+ page and you need to pick one of the five categories for your page.
1.Local Business or Place
2. Product or Brand
3.company,Institution or Organization
4. Arts, Entertainment or Sports
5.Others
Google users will be able to find and follow pages like public profiles via Google’s search results.Also, with a Pages admin account, you can use Google+ circles and take part in video chat Hangouts.