Taking a cue from Google, whose Apps Status Dashboard is showing whether some of their applications are having stability issues, Facebook has launched Platform Live Status, a tool that can save developers a lot of headache.
It shows whether the Facebook Platform is currently working well or not, providing graphs for average API response time and the number of errors, as well as developer updates and top live bugs. Now, when something isn’t right with a Facebook () app, developers know instantly whether it’s their app that’s causing trouble, or the platform itself.
“KGen” (Keyword Generator) is a FireFox extension that allows you to see what keywords are strong on the current web page. Overall, it’s a good way to perform quick on-page keyword analysis that will help you:
To get an idea which words your competitor focuses on;
To get more keyword and post ideas.
After installing the tool and restarting your browser, go to any page and open it: View>Sidebar>KGen. A sidebar should open that will offer you to scan the current page. The tools works pretty fast and in a second you’ll see the table containing the following:
Do you use FireFox but want to make sure your site looks good to the users of other browsers? Well, this is a good move, here are a few basic tools to make this task easier:
Browsershots tool makes screenshots of your web page in different browsers.
When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.
Google has added an element to their latest homepage test that instructs people what to do after they’ve entered a keyword. The sentence “Press enter to search,” now appears under the box where you type in your keywords – where the old submit buttons used to be.
Here’s a screenshot. (Click image for a larger view.)
The “Press enter” phrase was not seen in earlier screenshots of the homepage test. I’ve apparently gotten the test version lately, as I’ve seen the fade-in and the lack of buttons, but this is the first I’ve seen the “Press enter to search.”
Overall, click fraud was 23.2% in Q3, down 14.3% from 27.1% in the second quarter. Anchor Intelligence breaks its click fraud rates into two categories: attempted click fraud, the kind with evil intentions, and innocuous click fraud, like an accidental click. Attempted click fraud was 18.6% in Q3 down from 22.9% in Q2. Innocuous rates increased from 4.2% in Q2 to 4.6% in Q3.
Okay, so Google Flu Trends has been around since November of 2008. But Google has found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity.
Check out the world map below to see how Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity. It is intense in Canada and Norway. It is high in Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.
Each week, millions of users around the world search for health information online. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer.
These deals essentially boil down to Google and Bing getting access to real-time status update feeds. These will be displayed alongside traditional search results in different ways that will likely evolve over time.
This is content that search engines have been trying to get their hands on for months. The growth of the “statusphere” and real-time search have created a content index that is faster to the punch than Google’s own index.
When individuals or companies are new to SEO they often wonder if SEO is a one-time thing, or if it’s an ongoing process. In order to stay on top of your game, you need to keep an eye on your rankings over time and adjust accordingly; but there is a lot of core SEO strategy that doesn’t change much and paying attention to these fundamentals (along with a little upkeep) can go a long way toward future-proofing your SEO strategy.
Today we’re excited to begin testing a new feature of AdWords called AdWords Comparison Ads, which lets users compare multiple, relevant offers more easily. Comparison Ads is part of our continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to our users and to help you, our advertisers, reach the people who are most interested in your products and services.
TechFlash posted a tour of Google’s new campus from Kirkland. “The company has 400 employees at the campus, brought together from two previous locations in the city. Among the features of the campus: a puzzle embedded in the carpet of one room; a very Googley indoor climbing wall; a high-tech wellness center and gym; conference rooms named after UNIX commands and mountain ranges; and tons of inside jokes for geeks, including the FooBar fruit bar as part of the Sudo Cafe.”
SEO is an art. (Hence, the name of my and my co-authors’ brand new book, The Art of SEO). Crafting copy that sells, as well as ranks, is an art. So is link baiting. But SEO is also a science. Crafting rewrite rules, robots.txt directives, and so forth is pretty geeky stuff. The science side of SEO is where I spend most of my time.
Another dichotomy is that SEO is both subjective and objective. The point at which a title tag, URL, or headline is “good enough” and thus moving on to the next task is warranted — that is certainly subjective. Also consider what might comprise the most optimal URL structure? Does it end in / (slash) or a file extension like .html? Again, subjective.
Much has been written lately about the value of combining text ads with display/image advertising online in order to boost visibility and brand awareness. This trend is not necessarily a new one: Yahoo/comScore issued a study in 2006 showing an increase in “online and offline purchasing by consumers who are exposed to integrated campaigns” that combined search and display. It struck me that using only search ads or display ads or even a combination of the two needn’t be the only method by which small businesses tap into their potential customer pool. I would suggest that there are a variety of other products that can also help connect a customer with a business that meets his/her need. Among those: call tracking phone numbers, video ads, and splash or jump pages.
Two rockstars have emerged in the web analytics field to date. We all know who they are: Eric Peterson has demystified analytics for us, while Avinash Kaushik has helped us take it one day, or dare I say, “an hour a day,” at a time. And one of them says web analytics is easy while the other one says web analytics is very hard. So who is right?
A month ago, Twitter said they would be rolling out Twitter lists. That day has finally come and almost all users can create their own lists. Lists are basically a way for Twitter users to create groups of Twitter users into categories. For example, you can find the Search Engine Land team all in one Twitter stream at twitter.com/sengineland/team.
How does one create a Twitter List? The first thing you need to know is that the owner of the Twitter account can make a Twitter list in the format of twitter.com/username/listname. Only the Twitter username can define who goes into the list under their own account.
For years, Google’s discovery of web pages was solely based on links. If a page had no links to it, Googlebot had no way of knowing about it and therefore, would never index it. Along the way, Google provided an option for submitting individual pages, but that wasn’t really a viable option for site owners with large sites. In 2005, Google launched XML Sitemaps, which was a much more scalable way for site owners to let Google know about pages of their site that Googlebot may not otherwise discover through links. Today, a Google Webmaster Central blog post discusses another way Googlebot may discover pages: feeds. They say that using RSS and Atom feeds to discover pages helps them learn about new content quickly.
Google continues to make real estate listings more prominent inside Google Maps, and in doing so, it continues to inch closer to being a full-fledged real estate search engine. The company announced today that a new “real estate” option has been added across Google Maps. It appears under the “More” tab, along with Photos, Videos, Wikipedia, Webcams, and Transit.
When a user clicks on the Real Estate checkbox, Google Maps immediately switches the left column and shows its basic real estate search engine. Users can search by price range, listing type, number of bedrooms and/or bathrooms, and square footage. The “For rent” checkbox next to “Listing Type” is also new — Google didn’t previously offer rental searches in this interface.
1. Use it to promote new pieces of content you or your company create to drive traffic to your site. From online articles to blog posts or from videos to webinars, each time you add something to the Web that is of value, tweet about it and include a link. (Most people on Twitter use www.TinyURL.com to take a long URL and make it short.)
2. Use it for learning new marketing ideas, strategies and techniques. If you follow the right people, and you have to be picky about who you follow, you’ll get pointed to a good amount of useful tutorials, videos, e-zines and other things that teach you about marketing.
Google’s now officially announced “Comparison Ads,” starting with a way for mortgage advertisers to have their products compared against each other but which may expand to other products in the future.
“If you’re looking for a mortgage, you really care about a specific offer. You want to know the APR and based on your specific circumstances, which is something that AdWords doesn’t provide today,” said Nick Fox, director of business product management for AdWords at Google.
In the new system, those search for “mortgage” or “refinance” or related terms may see an special ad from Google itself inviting them to view offers, like this:
) app, developers know instantly whether it’s their app that’s causing trouble, or the platform itself.
