Google adds more emphasis on social media
Today we’re doing a little bit more to bring you all the goodness of Google, plus the opinions of the people you care about. As always, we want to help you find the most relevant answers among the billions of interconnected pages on the web. But relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships. That’s why we introduced Google Social Search in 2009, and why we’ve made a number of improvements since then. Today we’re taking another step forward—enabling you to get even more information from the people that matter to you, whether they’re publishing on YouTube, Flickr or their own blog or website.
First, social search results will now be mixed throughout your results based on their relevance (in the past they only appeared at the bottom). This means you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created. So if you’re thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and your colleague Matt has written a blog post about his own experience, then we’ll bump up that post with a note and a picture:
Second, we’ve made Social Search more comprehensive by adding notes for links people have shared on Twitter and other sites. In the past, we’d show you results people created and linked through their Google profiles. Now, if someone you’re connected to has publicly shared a link, we may show that link in your results with a clear annotation (which is visible only to you, and only when you’re signed in). For example, if you’re looking for a video of President Obama on “The Daily Show” and your friend Nundu tweeted the video, that result might show up higher in your results and you’ll see a note with a picture of Nundu:
Third, we’ve given you more control over how you connect accounts, and made connecting accounts more convenient. You can still connect accounts publicly on your Google profile, but now we’ve added a new option to connect accounts privately in your Google Account. (After all, you may not want everyone to know you’re @spongebobsuperfan on Twitter.) In addition, if our algorithms find a public account that might be yours (for example, because the usernames are the same), we may invite you to connect your accounts right on the search results page and in your Google Account settings:
For an overview of Google Social Search and our new features, check out the explanatory video:
As always, you’ll only get social search results when you choose to log in to your Google Account. We’re starting to roll out the updates today on Google.com in English only and you’ll see them appear in the coming week. With these changes, we want to help you find the most relevant information possible, personalized to your interests and the people you care about. To learn more, check out our help center.
Source: Mike Cassidy, Product Management Director, and Matthew Kulick, Product Manager
Google adds the ability to set or change your location when doing a search | google location
Google always focused on offering people the most relevant results. Location is one important factor Google used for many years to customize the information that you find. For example, if you’re searching for great restaurants, you probably want to find ones near you, so we use location information to show you places nearby.
Today Google is moving the location setting to the left-hand panel of the results page to make it easier for you to see and control your preferences. With this new display you’re still getting the same locally relevant results as before, but now it’s much easier for you to see your location setting and make changes to it.
- Click “Change location” to specify your location preference.
You used to be able to see and control your location settings, but it was a little clunky. To see your settings, you could click “View customizations” on the results page and to modify them you could click “Change location” next to a variety of search results, such as maps and movie listings. As time has gone by, more and more locally relevant information has come online, whether it’s local business listings or a blog from your hometown. Meanwhile, Google has become much better at presenting this locally relevant content—so it felt like the right time to make this setting easier to find.
The new interface is rolling out now and will be available in more than 40 languages soon. We’re not changing anything about how we use location information to improve search, so it doesn’t change our existing privacy policies. To learn more about our new interface and how we use location in search, check out our help center.
Google Reports Earnings Along with Display And Mobile Revenue
Google reported Thursday that profit rose 32% during the last quarter as a result of advertisers spending more on paid search and display advertising. Search ads remain the company’s primary revenue driver, from desktop to mobile. Display ads also continue to pick up. The company posted a profit of $2.17 billion — or $6.72 a share — up from $1.64 billion, or $5.13 a share, in the year earlier.
Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president of product management, told investors during the earnings announcement that display advertising is on an annual run rate of $2.5 billion, which means the company should earn that amount from non text-based ads. YouTube is monetizing more than 2 billion views per week. Videos on the site get about 2 billion views daily. And mobile is on an annualized run rate of more than $1 billion. The numbers were intended to reassure analysts that emerging markets will augment search revenue in the long term.
There are about 90,000 applications on Android, Google CEO Eric Schmidt added. When it comes to mobile, Google plans to make a profit from value-added services and leave the Android app development to independent developers. About 200,000 handsets running Android get activated daily.
Businesses spent more on paid-search advertising during the third quarter. Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and those of AdSense partners, increased approximately 16% compared with the third quarter of 2009 and increased approximately 4% over the second quarter of 2010.
The average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of AdSense partners, increased 3% during the third quarter of 2009 and increased 2%, sequentially. Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenue shared with Google’s partners, increased to $1.81 billion in the third quarter of 2010, compared with TAC of $1.56 billion in the third quarter of 2009. TAC, as a percentage of advertising revenue, came in at 26%, compared with 27% in the year-ago quarter.
Didit CEO and Co-Founder Kevin Lee says Google’s earnings were in line with expectations. “We have seen ad enhancements like PPC Sitelinks and product plus boxes drive significant click volume increases and expect that to continue through the next quarter,” he says.
Google benefited from an increase in paid-search ads in September. Net income rose 32% to $2.17 billion, or $6.72 a share, from $1.64 billion, or $5.13, a year earlier. The Mountain View, Calif. company gained U.S. search market share to 66.1% from 65.4% sequentially, after launching Google Instant, which gives users search results as they type in the query, according to comScore. Google had experienced three months of losses. Google Instant will become available this fall on mobile.
Source: MediaPost
Bing And Facebook Personalize Search
Earlier this week, Microsoft and Facebook held a press event to announce a new module coming to Bing. In essence, Bing is now a true social search engine, using your own Facebook social graph to inform and expand your decision-making process. Looking for a new restaurant or a good movie? The new Bing experience will enable you to see your friends’ experiences as part of the searching process.
This, in and of itself, is big news. Search has been an evolving marketplace, but the searchable content has historically been similar from engine to engine. Whether it is Google, Yahoo or now, Bing, the major Web sites — sites like Wikipedia — have always been prominent on every engine. Image and video inclusion as well as that of news feeds may vary by query, but the general data sources have always been whatever could be crawled and indexed. That is certainly not the case, at least for now, with this deal.
But for most marketers, the implications of this have meaning far beyond search. The strength of search has been in its direct-response nature — the ability to search, find, refine and ultimately act in some way. That way has historically been emphasized as purchase, but more and more brands are considering the intent expression as an important part of understanding who people are and what motivates them either into searching or where they go next on their consumer journey.
Contrast that with social media where, what was once a solitary island for friends to connect with friends has been infiltrated by brands wanting some of the benefits of friendship. Twitter and Facebook are leading a charge to convince marketers that the connections made through their social platforms is a crucial piece of the value exchange between consumers and brands.
What started as artists using MySpace to connect with their audience evolved into Twitter as a new-age customer-service vehicle. It became fashionable for brands to have Facebook fan pages and to tweet deals and information out to customers to help them stay informed. Beyond that, location-based services such as Foursquare have gotten into the act and given another layer of connectivity and currency between consumers and brands. Each of these engagements has a consistent value exchange that brands were giving in exchange for very little. Whether a band was trying to hit it big or Comcast was trying to resolve a disgruntled customer, it was the brand doing the heavy lifting. People use Foursquare to check in so their friends know where they are, but they also hope that businesses are willing to exchange that check-in for some discount or freebie.
The announcement of social as defined by Facebook into Bing both changes and amplifies this relationship. If someone is looking for a good restaurant in New York to eat, a query on Bing not only provides what they find to be relevant but also what your friend network has decided worthy of liking. Suddenly all the Yelp reviews in the world seem minimal in a results page if one friend you trust as your groups “foodie” likes a place. It means that every person who visits, interacts or buys from you can be a part of your sales force and marketing efforts. Or they can be that for your competition.
Brands like Zappos, JetBlue and Apple have grown in popularity because of their authenticity. At the ANA conference this week, I saw a tweet from Patrick Harris of Microsoft suggesting that the early themes for advertisers having success in this climate were “purpose, authenticity, heritage, service through people.” Safe to say the brands I described above adhere to that. But how do small brands with limited resources, and “old” brands, turn the battleship to meet this challenge? The answers aren’t clear, but what is becoming increasingly apparent is that as social and search fuse for consumers, the impetus for change is staring brands in the face. Those that do not provide customers with a sense of belonging, invite them on the journey together, and recognize the importance of “like” and its role going forward, are destined to be dead brands.
Source: MediaPost
Proven Halloween Promos: 6 Ideas for Campaigns
Halloween is coming up! Children will be marching up and down your block dressed as ghouls and goblins in a matter of weeks. You should start receiving party invitations anytime now.
For marketers, the lead-up to the haunting holiday can boost sales before the year-end crunch. And for the last two years the dark day has been a bright spot in a spooky economy.
Halloween retail sales reached a record-breaking projection of $6 billion in 2009, up 4.2% from $5.77 billion in 2008, according to industry market researcher IBISWorld.
Do you have any Halloween promotions planned for your email marketing? Take a look at six proven ideas we’ve pulled from MarketingSherpa case studies and how-to articles for some inspiration.
Idea #1. Make Halloween a month-long, multichannel theme
Using the entire month of October as your Halloween selling season gives you a lot of flexibility. You can develop a month-long marketing plan that mixes different types of promotions and uses all your channels.
That way, you’ll avoid overusing any single Halloween promo tactic, such as sending a rash of email offers right before October 31.
For example, last year the team at baking accessory company Wilton coordinated a month-long series of Halloween promotions that offered party tips, cookie- and cake-decorating ideas, and product promotions in several channels:
- They created Halloween party-planning videos that they posted to YouTube, their blog, and their Facebook page.
- They used Twitter to promote Halloween baking ideas and specific products, such as cookie cutters. Then, on Halloween, they sent a tweet encouraging customers to post photos of their creations on Wilton’s Facebook page.
- They made Halloween the theme of their October email newsletter, offering ideas for cookie, cake and cupcake decorations.
By combining email and social media promotions, they generated a 120% increase in Halloween product views on Wilton.com.
Idea #2. Time email promotions for different customers
When developing email campaigns for October, you’ll want to target the organized Halloween planners as well as the last-minute shoppers. If you’re a multichannel merchant, this means developing different email campaigns for online sales and in-store purchases.
We spoke with Diana Voigt, Marketing Manager, HalloweenExpress.com, about her company’s October email planning. She recommends:
- Emailing ecommerce promos two weeks before Halloween.
- Emailing brick-and-mortar promos during the week of Halloween to capture sales from last-minute customers with no time to have orders shipped.
Idea #3. Offer Halloween-appropriate incentives for purchases
Your Halloween promotions are likely to include discounts and other special offers. But Voigt also recommends testing a free gift for every seasonal purchase.
Find a low-cost product that’s small and easy to ship with every Halloween order — such as pumpkin carving kits. These sweeteners will push more reluctant customers to make purchases, and will help regular customers feel like they’re getting a better deal.
If your company does not normally offer any Halloween-related products, these freebies will lend more credibility to your holiday-themed marketing. Their product shots will also give you additional seasonal imagery to use in your emails.
Idea #4. Encourage user-generated Halloween content
You can also ask your audience to explore its creative side by sending you Halloween-inspired creations.
User-generated content such as photos, stories, drawings and jokes can build excitement among customers, generate search traffic, and give you content for Halloween promos. You can also repackage the content to share with partner sites to earn in-bound links from holiday-related content.
For example, Dan Roberts, Senior SEO Strategist and Analyst, Hearst Digital Media, worked with his team to create a gallery of images on their Good Housekeeping website of pets wearing Halloween costumes. They had enough images to gather them into subtopics, including a “Star Wars” theme.
“Good Housekeeping is not the typical kind of brand that resonates [on sites like Digg]. But if it’s Star Wars, they’ll look at it,” Roberts says.
The team built a page to host the gallery and submitted the link to Digg. The strategy worked, and within a week they were ranking well for competitive search engine phrases around Halloween costumes.
“This was going into the Halloween season. It couldn’t be better. This was like a lightning bolt,” Roberts says.
Idea #5. Tie regular products to the Halloween theme
Running Halloween-related marketing campaigns does not require selling costumes, party supplies or pumpkins.
For example, Thom Pharmakis, VP of Internet, Lands’ End, described how his team created a special email newsletter for Halloween. The newsletter included a feature called “Spooky colors” on how to use Lands’ End clothing as a Halloween costume.
Even if your promotional calendar is filled out to Christmas, you can make slight changes to emails to give them a Halloween spin. This can be as simple as adding a spooky subject line with some supporting copy and a Halloween-inspired image.
If you want to sell a few Halloween items, fun novelty products are fairly easy to find by searching for specialty wholesalers and making a few inquiry calls, Voigt says.
Idea #6. Buck the traditional Halloween theme
Of course, with so many Halloween promotions in the air, you might decide that the best way to stand out is to present customers with an alternative to ghosts and ghouls.
For example, The Greenbriar, a luxury resort, designed an email campaign that promoted a “Different kind of Halloween” for its audience of upscale travelers.
The email featured:
- Rich red and gold autumnal colors, as opposed to the typical black and orange color scheme of most Halloween promotions.
- Imagery of a mother and daughter lying on fallen leaves, and copy that reinforced the notion of a unique family vacation, such as: “Make this Halloween one that the whole family can enjoy. Your kids may never beg for candy again.”
Images and links to fall activities at the resort, including:
- Fly fishing
- Falconry
- Hunting
- Golf
- Mountain biking
Source: Marketing Sherpa by Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter
Dear Freebirds World Burrito
I was just wondering if you have seen your own Web site. I was also wondering if anyone at Freebirds has actually tried to place an online order.
What do I click on? I am not quite sure what is a button and what is not. The brick background makes the site very hard to read.
The way I see it, a restaurant should offer great food and great service….which you certainly do. But a Web site should allow you to connect with your customers and not deter any potential customers from ever visiting a Freebirds. You should also make it easy for your customers to order online.
After what felt like an eternity of trying to order one burrito online, I became so frustrated that I decided to create a Web site that made sense. I think it took me less time to create this web comp than it did to order online.
Cheers.
Your Current Site (in case you have not seen it):
Stylebot – Chrome Extension That Lets Users Change Any Web Page’s Design Instantly
One of our favorite web browsers just got a cool new tool in the form of Stylebot, a new Chrome extension that allows you to access and modify the CSS for any web page from within the browser.
That’s right — users get a completely customized design experience for any page they choose. The changes they make can be saved for later use and synced across multiple devices.
This is great news for you design enthusiasts as well as for end users with specific needs and wants for their browsing experience. For example, the extension makes web pages with small fonts more accessible by allowing users to increase the font size, and it can make browsing the web less commercial by removing ads.
Stylebot generates a sidebar full of basic and advanced CSS options that allow the end user to manipulate how content is displayed. This tool is simple enough to be used by a moderately competent consumer, but it also has options better suited for those with web design skills. Stylebot can be used to change font attributes, remove advertising, move page elements, change colors, write one’s own CSS selectors and quite a bit more.
Googler Rachel Shearer wrote the following today on the company’s blog:
“For example, a Stylebot user with special reading needs might change a webpage by removing images, picking new text and background colors, and even moving blocks of text around. And Stylebot saves the custom style they create, so the next time they access that page the changes will still be there. Even better, they can sync their saved styles across computers so that webpage will always appear with their preferred style.”
Check out this brief demo video to see Stylebot in action:
Stylebot was created as a Google Summer of Code project by Ankit Ahuja, a computer science student in New Delhi, India. Stylebot is open source and forkable; interested parties can check out Ahuja’s source on GitHub. He said he used elements of other open-source projects, such as Aristo and Firebug, in his work.
What do you think of Stylebot so far? Would you use it to prettify the ugliness that is Craigslist (
), for example, or to simplify content viewing on a news site?
Source: Mashable
5 Easy Ways to Support a Cause Through Your Social Network
Collecting money for posting advertisements on your Twitter feed, Facebook wall, and other social media profiles might not be the best way to win friends (or followers) and influence people.
But your network is likely to be more forgiving, and even encouraging, if you are promoting a good cause.
The following five websites can help you collaborate with brands to support your favorite charities by endorsing their products on your social network.
1. Endorse for a Cause
This website can turn your online shopping habit into a fundraiser for the cause of your choice. When you visit one of Endorse for a Cause’s online retailer partners, you can send a tweet or Facebook (
) update with an endorsement of brands or products that you like. You decide exactly what to say in the message, though starter tweets that begin with phrases like “I’m a fan of…”, “Shopping for…”, and “Help me help…” are provided.
When your friends click on your endorsements and make purchases, Endorse for a Cause receives a portion of the money and allocates about 70% to your cause. You can track how much money you’ve raised on Endorse for a Cause’s personal home page and earn badges for participation. Right now there are only about 10 cause choices, and they are primarily large charities like the American Cancer Society and the Humane Society. You can, however, vote to add a cause if yours isn’t yet included.
2. Rec.fm ()
Create a “Rec” for a product you love by telling Rec.fm exactly what you like about it. The site will generate a short URL that you can share on your Facebook or Twitter (
) profile. When your friends click on it, they’ll be taken to a Rec.fm site with more details on the product. If they choose to buy the product, Rec.fm receives a payment from the retailer and more than half of it is passed on to the charity of your choice. You can also add a tab to your Facebook profile that shows your friends all of your “Recs” in one place.
3. SixDegrees.org
The idea behind the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is that everyone in the world, including the prolific actor, is connected by no more than six steps of acquaintance. Although not initially pleased with the name of this game, Kevin Bacon decided to put its philosophy to use for good causes by starting SixDegrees.org.
The website partners with Network for Good to offer individuals the opportunity to create charity endorsement widgets called “fundraising badges.” These badges can be placed on their social networking profiles, blogs and websites. People who visit their sites can donate to the endorsed charity via the widget.
4. adCause
The platform adCause gives you a little more control over the money you can make from Twitter. While structured as a network where publishers (tweeters) and advertisers can sync up and seal an advertising deal, you can decide what percentage of your profits should go to charity and what percentage you want to keep. You can also split your profits between different charities.
Unlike other sites, however, advertisers need to select you based on the tweets you create. These “adspot” profiles include a short description of what you usually tweet about, how long you would be willing to advertise a product, how often you would tweet about a product, and how much you would charge for this service (the site suggests about one penny per follower).
5. SocialVibe
SocialVibe donates money to your selected charity based on participation in branded activities like surveys. A Facebook app encourages your friends to help by completing the same activity. Your friends earn points, and therefore donations for your charity by completing the activities that you post.
You can also integrate a widget into your WordPress () or Blogger () site.
Source: Mashable
Twitter Mouseover Security Flaw
A spokesperson for Twitter tells us “This should now be fully patched and is no longer exploitable.”
A new Twitter (Twitter) security flaw has been widely exploited on thousands of Twitter accounts, redirecting users to third-party websites without their consent.
The bug is particularly nasty because it works on mouseover only, meaning pop-ups and third-party websites can open even if you just move your mouse over the offending link.
The flaw uses a JavaScript function called onMouseOver which creates an event when the mouse is passed over a chunk of text. We’ve seen the flaw being abused to launch simple pop-up windows, redirect users elsewhere (including porn sites), and we’ve also seen it used in combination with blocks of color, covering the true “intention” of the tweet.
For now, the best course of action is using third-party apps such as TweetDeck (TweetDeck) to access Twitter, as the bug only seems to affect Twitter’s web interface. Also, if your Twitter account contains a message abusing the flaw, you can delete it using a third-party app.
Twitter hasn’t yet commented on the incident on any of its official accounts or its official blog (blog). We’ve contacted Twitter about the security flaw but haven’t yet heard from them.
You can see an example of a tweet that launches a pop-up if you move the mouse over it below.
Source: Mashable
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