Google+ For Your Business

Yes, Stop Piraters, but NOT with SOPA & PIPA

This over-reaching legislation to prevent pirated software, music, and IP has too many unintended repercussions. SOPA would likely affect the websites of the IP owners represented by the very media companies that support the proposed legislation.

SOPA Case: Throws Baby Out with the Bathwater

Carrie Underwood is a very well-known American singer and songwriter on the Arista Nashville music label – a label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, an RIAA member. Ms. Underwood’s website includes user-generated content on its forum: http://www.carrieunderwoodofficial.com/us/forum. If a fan posted a link on that forum to a Carrie Underwood song hosted without permission, under SOPA the entire site could be shut down – and Google.com and Bing.com could be punished if they allowed fans to find the site via their search services.

On the other hand, the song pirate – and people who download stolen material – would have no more
incentive to stop than under existing law.

Voice Your Concern.  Write:

The Honorable Lamar Smith

Chairman

Committee on the Judiciary

US House of Representatives

2138 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Thank you Matt Cutts/Google for providing some of the transparency that our search engine marketing agency seeks to help us improve our client’s web page/ website visibility from search engine query results. Below are 10 of the important google algorithm changes from the last quarter of 2011.

10 Google Algorithm Changes 2011 Q4

1) Cross-Language Information Retrieval

This now means translated English pages are provided by Google where limited web content is available in that native language search query.

Specifically for these languages:

Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.

2) Snippets with MORE Page Content & LESS Header/Menu Content

This change helps Google choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As they improve their understanding of web page structure, Google is now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.

3) Better Page Titles in Search Results by De-duplicating Boilerplate Anchors

Google looks at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. They found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so they are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.

4) Length-based Autocomplete Predictions in Russian

This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. They will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already Google’s practice in English.

5) Extending Application Rich Snippets

The “Big G” recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.

6) Retiring a Signal in Image Search

As the web evolves, Google often revisits signals that were launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, they decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.

7) Fresher, More Recent Results

As they announced several weeks ago, Google made a significant improvement to how they rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query. This reinforces the importance for website owners to maintain the freshness of their site with new, updated content.

Refining Official Page Detection

They try hard to give users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, they adjusted how Google attempts to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in the rankings.

9) Improvements to Date-Restricted Queries

New change on how they handle result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.

10) Prediction Fix for IME Queries

This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.

If you’re a site owner, before you go wild tuning your anchor text or thinking about your web presence for Icelandic users, please remember that this is only a sampling of the hundreds of changes made to the search algorithms in a given year, and even these changes may not work precisely as you’d imagine.

Google published these descriptions in part because these specific changes are less susceptible to gaming.

For those of us at CarbonFoot Interactive that work in digital marketing / search engine marketing every day, this stuff is incredibly exciting. If you’d like to see more posts like this, please comment and let us know.

In 2012, marketers will get this concept and realize that their customer is truly “always on.” The customer of 2012 expects customized, value-added interactions across the interactive screens they use, anytime, anywhere.

We predict that in 2012, surging social-local-mobile adoption will serve as a catalyst for interactive marketers to provide customized value to a new multiscreen clientele. We’ll see this shift through marketers’ innovations in how they message across screens, buy media, globalize their programs, and measure success.

This short report examines these changes and their implications for interactive marketers. – Forrester Research,  December 2011

Searching for things to do on your 2011 holiday visit to the Big Apple? You’ll be glad you visited and experienced these great new and old New York City experiences.

1) The National 9/11 Memorial & Museum

Top of the list. It’s a must-see.

As New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg says, the experience doesn’t tell you what happened or what to think, rather; it challenges you and gets you to reflect on what happened.   Watch this video.  It’s an amazing recap of the journey that led to the building of more than an attraction.   It’s become sacred ground on US soil and is both inspiring and beautiful.

Listen to Joe Daniels, President of the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum as he describes the memorial and museum.   It’s worth a few minutes of your time to view this, and certainly worth a visit in person, whether you’re a local or planning a trip there this holiday season or in the 2012 New Year.

2) TIMES SQUARE | 42nd Street – Not Just for New Year’s Eve, But…

If you can make it there for New Year’s Eve, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And what I mean by that, is after you’ve experienced New Year’s Eve in Times Square, you can check it off your bucket list and attend something inside or in a warmer climate next time!

3) Museum of Natural History | Future Space Exploration

Lots of amazing exhibits to see at the Musuem of Natural History (amnh.org) including the special exhbition about the World’s Largest Dinosaurs. A favorite is one of the shows in the Planetarium projected onto the dome above your seats where you can journey beyond the night sky and our solar system to distant galaxies. The shows never cease to amaze and inspire you. It’s Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration (November 19, 2011-August 12, 2012) offers a vision of the future of space travel as it looks at humanity’s next steps in our solar system and beyond.

4) Rockefeller Center | “Top of the Rock”

Rockefeller Center or Rockefeller Plaza is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acre between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

Between 49th & 50th Street, and between 5th Avenue and 6th Avenue is where there’s a high concentration of great sights and activities related to Rockefeller Plaza. You can’t go wrong checking out one of the best views of the city (replaced as a top scenic overview of Manhattan since the World Trade Center Towers Windows on the World is no longer). It’s called Top of the Rock.

Get some exercise and partake in ice skating at the Rink at Rockefeller Center which is under the big Christmas tree (can’t miss it) and then wander down Fifth Ave to check out the animatronics window displays at the big retailers like: Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdoff Goodman, Barneys, Lord & Taylor, or Bloomingdales either displays across the street or nearby.

5) Central Park | Wollman Rink

Head into Central Park from any number of entrances, along Central Park South (57th Street) or Fifth Ave, or the western edge – Central Park West. It’s a treat whatever time of year. Follow any of the roads and paths to the Great Lawn and look around for spectacular views of the NYC skyline with Central Park as your foreground. Head over to John Lennon’s memorial – Strawberry Fields, then meander back outside of the Park toward the Upper West Side neighborhood, then down Columbus past Lincoln Center and end up on the Southwest corner of the park – Columbus Circle.

For you avid ice skaters, a larger rink than Rockefeller Center’s is right in Central Park – Wollman Rink.   Just getting there is the journey you’ll enjoy.   Enter from near the Plaza Hotel on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue or from Central Park West or the Upper East Side (further up Fifth Avenue).

Photo by Allen Skyy

Have a happy holiday season.  Peace!

1) LinkedIn Applications Directory

Before you start populating your profile with your social media content to help differentiate you from the pack, make sure you have the basics covered with a completed profile:

You have a myriad of ways to integrate content from your other social media properties for your LinkedIn profile via applications found in the LinkedIn Applications Directory.

2) Build Your Personal Network – “Personally”

Start with the people you know (see list below).   Then, as those people accept your invitation, look at their network to see if there is anyone with whom you would like to connect.    For the first phase of networking with those that you know,  make sure to personalize each invitation.

Say you haven’t heard from a former colleague in years.   Are you more likely to accept their LinkedIn profile with this message:

“I’d like to add you to my LinkedIn network”

OR

“Hi Frank.  I’ve recently started a new job with Company X  [or - ... just getting up-to-speed on LinkedIn] and was going through my contact list and realized we’d lost touch.  How have you been since … ?”

Send invitations to these people:

• Co-workers at your present employer
• Customers, Suppliers and other relevant vendors for your work
• Old High School & College Classmates
• Friends &/or Family (Only if there’s an expectation that comments are kept professional)

3) Power Networking on LinkedIn

Using LinkedIn to really build your network besides those you already know?  Then engage with the community via the different LinkedIn features such as Polls, Questions or Groups.

Start with a group aligned with your profession (say DMA – Direct Marketing Association).    Whatever group is tuned to your specific area of interest is the way to engage.   As you meet others, include them in your network.

Answering Questions is good exposure if you’re a subject matter expert, or you can choose to put a questions out there yourself.   Others can vote on which is the ‘best’ answer – and if you become the provider of “best answer” confirmed by many others, it’s good ‘cred’.

4) Recommendations

If you’re late to the game and feel comfortable, reach out to old colleagues from prior employers to get a sampling of recommendations to publish on your profile.    I’ve seen profiles with tons of recommendations.   They start to get watered down when they’re a dime a dozen.   Choose carefully whom you would like to ask.

5) Leveraging LinkedIn Networking Potential

• Review the profiles of someone with whom you want to connect. It’s valuable when contacting them to reference a point of interest or commonality
• Share relevant information through status updates, but be careful not to inundate your network with needless dribble.   This isn’t Twitter, or Facebook for that matter.
• Comment on someone else’s posts or updates.   Keep it professional and add useful info when you can.
• Make a point to check-in with LinkedIn regularly (weekly).   It’s easier to do with the Blackberry and iPhone mobile LinkedIn apps.

Happy Networking!

]]> http://www.carbonfootinteractive.com/2011/06/linkedin-ipo-5-tips-to-leverage-the-hype/feed/ 0 http://www.carbonfootinteractive.com/2011/06/chinas-state-run-search-engine-challenges-baidu-gosa-rebranded-jike/ http://www.carbonfootinteractive.com/2011/06/chinas-state-run-search-engine-challenges-baidu-gosa-rebranded-jike/#comments Tue, 21 Jun 2011 21:37:32 +0000 gzola http://www.carbonfootinteractive.com/?p=852 JIKE | China’s New Search Engine

People’s Daily is China’s state-run newspaper.  And now China has it’s own state-run search engine to challenge BAIDU (and to a much lesser degree Google Hong Kong).  The new search engine was launched in beta as Gosa, but has been rebranded as JIKE.  (Jike sounds like ‘geek’ in English – apparently to make it more appealing to to China’s youth.)

Somehow the major internet companies in China have thrown their support behind it, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The big guns that were on hand at the launch as visibile supporters were: Charles Chao, Sina’s CEO; Sohu’s Sogou CEO Wang Xiochuan and Baidu’s chief scientist William Zhang.

Their logo which has blue and yellow geometric blocks that make up a Tang Dynasty puzzle.

Google Voice Search | Computer

I was amazed at the noticeable improvement in the return of my search results when Google Instant launched.  That’s what happens when you do a Google search using Google’s Chrome browser and it finishes your search query for you with the most likely result.  Over time – it saves you lot’s of it (time that is).

Now – it’s time to “type less, speak more”.   Google introduced Voice Search from your computer (vs. phone) on their Chrome browser. Try it. Click on the small speaker icon placed on the right side of the search box.   Fast, easy, simple:

Or are they?

Here is another search to which everyone on this blue little marble we call Earth is inextricably tied. NASA assembles a Carl Sagan inspired video that envisions when the “mother of all searches” pays off.