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We’re all interested in expanding our marketshare. For a lot of businesses with a solid SEO strategy and success that means either expanding into new marketing efforts or expanding your reach outside of your core market. Yesterday on my weekly radio show Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm by co-host Jim Hedger and I decided to host a 2 hour special episode with some great guests on techniques for expanding your reach internationally.The show was divides into 2 episodes. The first hour was spent discussing international SEO from the perspective of marketers located outside the US and the second hour we brought in some new guests to discuss the challenges from the perspective of marketers inside the US. You can listen to both episodes below with a summary of the guests.
Episode One (SEO’s outside the US chat international SEO):
Guests – David Harry and Terry Van Horne from SEO Dojo, Mikkel DeMib Svendsen, Chris Adams from gShift Labs and Tony Hutchcroft from 1st On The List
We decided to call a spade a spade, and Google is paying a fee to keep Bing from being the default search engine on iOS.
The fee is based on per-unit pricing, and not only are there more units than ever, but the per-unit price is also going from $3.20 last year to an estimated $3.50 per unity in 2013!
Given the growing user base these should almost be rabbits?
Since the prices are a guesstimate, one can honestly say that it will cost more for the exclusive right to the default search engine on iOS in 2013.
However there are certain ‘publications’ that have forgone the guessing part and are rather certain that Google will pay up.
In fact, if Samsung, or Google (via it’s Motorolla Mobillity acquisition), can keep one-upping each of the new iPhones, then the cost of licensing to the user-base will be peaking at a point which it will never return to again.
But is it worth the money knowing how much of a search advantage Google has over Bing? Well that depends entirely on who you ask!
Apple pundit:
People will use whatever is the default like pack of blind sheep. Everyone knows this.
Google fan:
If that’s true then why is the Google Maps app on iOS the most popular app on the device? People clearly don’t just use the default apple maps?
.. and really, if we’re talking about users who skipped over the BlackBerries, Nokias, Samsungs, etc.., for a specific device, then perhaps we should give them some credit for also choosing a better search experience?
After all, how many times would you let your phone load Bing before trying to switch it?
I personally would let a ‘Bing’ search happen once at the most, just to get info on “setting default search engine on iOS”.
Two pro-Microsoft posts in one week? I know, Right?!
Clearly we are not masters of fate or IT news, so today’s headline is covering the new modern:IE Test Site setup to assist web developers with creating IE compatible site content.
Wasn’t it like, two days ago that I just pointed out that the big flaw with IE is that the old versions create a web design nightmare? *tap tap* .. Apparently this thing is turned on?
What does it test?
Actually the tool is a suite of tests with some specific test cases for IE browser specific issues.
Here’s a list of categories it will test and report on without setting up a ‘Site Owner’ account:
Fix common problems from supporting old versions of IE:
Known compatibility issues
Compatibility Mode
Frameworks & libraries
Web standards docmode
Help this webpage work well across browsers, across devices:
CSS prefixes
Browser plug-ins
Responsive web design
Browser detection
Consider building with some new features in Windows 8:
Touch browsing default
Start screen site tile
If you plug your URL in the page will test all these areas and report back to you where improvements could be made.
This tool lets you select an image (144×144 pixel PNG) and text for your website when a Windows 8 user wants to ‘Pin’ the site to their start menu.
My experience with the tool wasn’t great, likely due to some caching, but if you test your code against sites that do work properly you can still sort out the needed meta tags quickly enough.
Other Goodies?
Included in the suite is a link to the Internet Explorer Test Drive site to compare HTML5 features and performance with other browsers..
Technically, I ended up short on time to cover more, so if you dive in and start to wonder why we didn’t point out something new/interesting, feel free to let us know, we’re always open to feedback.
I keep seeing people ask for their rank, asking what the best free ranking tools are, etc., like it’s so darn hard to ask Google where your website is in terms of it’s keywords.
First of all, Google Analytics has an ‘Average Position’ column for popular search queries that tells you a lot of great info about your site’s keywords.
This is an example of Search Queries sorted by Average Position
Setup a schedule to execute the php page regularly
Bingo, you now have your own ranking reports tool, and nobody is the wiser, besides Google, and they are usually too busy to care that you’re extra curious about your rankings.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of fine details to explain and not everyone is comfortable installing programs like this or scripting, but I am going to look at getting permission to make this a step-by-step how-to guide with full downloads so even novices can give this a try.
A final point to make is that excessive/automated queries on Google is a breach of their TOS, and could result in annoying blocks/complaints from Google if you were to attempt to use this method for a large set of keyword phrases, or wanted the reports updated constantly.
If you are a ‘power user’ who needs a lot of data, you’ll end up paying someone, and either you pay to use someone’s API key at a premium, or you get your own API key from Google and only pay for what you use.
On January 15th 2013, Facebook planted it’s so called “third pillar” of it’s social network empire, “social search”.
If Facebook *is* all about social media, and they already had a search function, how is this a big change?
Okay, well that *is* some small change..
From what I can tell of the new search feature, it’s an exclusive index of Facebook, powered by Bing. So you get better/different results from the previous search options because it’s been handled by Microsoft’s search methodology.
So, you may be wondering, “Why isn’t Bing offering an improved ‘Social Search’ now that they have access to all this Facebook data?”, and you will be amused to note that today Bing indeed announced an improved ‘Social Search’ to users of their services.
In fact, Bing’s social search results are appended to the Facebook search results, and all clicks stay inside Facebook.
Still, what’s really ‘new’ about this search behavior?
Allegedly if I tack on action words to a search like, “visited by friends” or “popular with friends”, it’s supposed to marry the search results with social data from my friends list.
I gave that a whirl, trying to find various searches that would result in ‘approvals’ or ‘likes’ from my friends and I got very poor results.
Could it be that my tech savvy friends have dialed in their Facebook privacy settings to the point where Bing’s assistance is negligible? Possibly. And I wouldn’t blame them for it.
Then I tried some of the same searches in Google, without engaging any ‘social’ tags or features, and viola, I can see restaurants, pubs, and even retail stores that people in my circles have rated. I also know now to never have lunch with Dave, since he loves all the types of restaurants I try to avoid.
Plus, thanks to Google’s purchase of Zagat, I have a fallback option for accurate/honest feedback if my friends aren’t reviewing restaurants or pubs that I want to try out or are simply closer to my location.
While I’m not seeing a real improvement, FB is seeing a nice reversal of their stock prices, which were on a steady downfall last year, as we mentioned in our May 22nd, 2012, blog post: FB stock drops as SpaceX soars to success!
How long this will bolster their faltering stock value?
Will ‘Social Search’ mature into a feature that entices disinterested users to revisit Facebook?
Clearly that’s anyone’s guess, but at least they are trying to keep the ship afloat, and search traffic could help bolster ad revenue, as it did for Google.
What do you do when your paid columnist wants to write about a product that is the demise of your revenue stream, and give the product an editor’s choice award?
Well that’s exactly what happened over at CNet when the Dish Network’s ‘Hopper’ DVR w/Sling was picked for a ‘Best of Show – Editor’s Choice Award’ by CNet staff.
Apparently the fact that this DVR eliminates commercials entirely, and then lets you watch the recordings from almost any internet connected device, is a big concern for the large media companies.
At one point the new DVR had CBS saying they wouldn’t have anything to do with Dish network if they proceeded with taking this device to market.
It’s enough of a threat that CBS, along with many other ‘major media companies’, have taken legal action against Dish and it’s ‘Hopper DVR’. In fact, this legal action was prior to the addition of the Sling services which threaten to further trample on their corporate profits.
Given this legal action, and the potential risk to bottom line revenue that the DVR implies, CBS directly ordered CNet to remove the Hopper from the running and re-vote on the remaining devices.
This directive allegedly came right from the CEO of CBS, Leslie Moonves, and was given to Mark Larkin, the GM of CBS Interactive News.
Mr.Larkin fought the decision while he could, getting into conference calls with CNet and CBS heads to try and avoid censoring the product.
Ultimately he was forced, against his wishes, to deliver the decree to CNet editorial staff; A task that, according to The Verge, brought him to tears:
“Sources say that Larkin was distraught while delivering the news — at one point in tears — as he told the team that he had fought CBS executives who had made the decision.”
Not only that, but CNET was barred from issuing their own statement about the removal of the DVR from the awards, and had to use a prepared statement from CBS regarding the legal issues surrounding the Hopper DVR!
Here is that official statement:
The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.
Immediately, Greg Sandoval, a regular CNET columnist, offered his resignation and went public on his Twitter feed about the incident.
Lindsey Turrentine, one of the ‘heads’ in the conference call with Mark Larkin, and the Editor-in-Chief of CNET News, took a moment to apologize for the situation, and for not resigning immediately when she had the chance.
Lindsey defended her decision, stating that she didn’t want to abandon her team and she felt she could affect change easier from her current position than if she were to resign.
What if you paid a writer, who specializes in gaming topics, to go cover a Panasonic Toughpad press event and he decided to get drunk and channel Hunter S. Thompson?
Well that’s exactly what Grant from ‘LOOK, ROBOT’ did for his coverage of the Toughpad:
“[January 14, 2013]Panasonic are launching a new tablet computer for the business market. I am not a tech journalist. I have never done this before. I don’t know what’s going on.”
You can read the whole thing here, it’s a lot of fun, and if you’ve ever been to one of these events you should be able to relate to most of his observations in one way or another.
All press is good press?
Well the folks over at Speed-Sew™ certainly seem to think they can get away with anything in promoting their products:
I also keep pulling out the same old tube of Speed-Sew™, pop the cap off, wonder if it’s still good, and then sniff it!
It doesn’t smell good, and it’s not like it gives you a ‘buzz’, it’s as illogical as smelling your shoes when you already know they are going to smell awful.
By doing something in their YouTube video that I can relate to, by making the video down to earth, and funny, I am now motivated to laugh and share.
I want to say this is brilliant social media/video advertising, but sadly it’s a bad example because it has yet to go viral (some adverts never do).
If you’ve become accustomed to seeing your charming mug in the SERPs when you are Google’ing your keywords, it might be rather unsettling to see those images suddenly disappear.
Fear not! This isn’t something you have done, or not done, this is actually kicking up a bit of fuss on the SEO forums/discussion areas today and clearly looks to be an issue on Google’s end.
In fact if you were in need of reassurance, all you have to do is hop into your Webmaster Tools account, and visit the ‘Rich Snippets Tool‘ to get a preview of what your SERPs would normally look like.
If you are sure that you’re not part of the current issue, or you’re just curious what we’re talking about, the Troubleshooting Rich Snippets page is a great resource to tackle possible problems.
Google invests another $200,000,000.00 in renewable energy..
I could have written .2 billion, or 200 million, or even 200 thousand thousands, but why play with such a large sum of money?
Google certainly isn’t playing around; With this latest investment Google’s grand total in renewable/clean energy is over $1 billion US and growing.
This isn’t just charity either, some of these investments are just smart business because the returns are very fixed and low risk.
Being honest about pollution is brave, and bragging about your low footprint is begging for trouble, but Google marches on stating:
“100 searches on Google has about the same footprint as drying your hands with a standard electric dryer, ironing a shirt, or producing 1.5 tablespoons of orange juice.”
You can read more about Google’s efforts to reduce, eliminate, and assist others with power consumption/carbon footprints, over on the Google Green Pages.
It may look like we’ve been loyal to the Mayan calendar, but we’ve just been busy internally over the holidays and didn’t blog.
Google has also been busy in 2013, retiring the old Offline Conversions APIs (both the Javascript and Python versions were retired in November 2012), and beginning a new Offline Conversions import service within the DoubleClick Search brand.
This announcement has been subject to both good and bad press, typically depending on the technical skills/depth of knowledge of the story writer.
Most writers looking for the worst possible scenario chose to doubt Google’s privacy controls, and boldly suggest there will be problems due to data aggregation.
Google’s DoubleClick service explicitly states:
“Advertisers are prohibited from sending personally identifiable information using this feature, as outlined by the Terms of Service for the API.”
Further to that there are lots of assumptions being made about who can supply data, who has access, and what data is relevant. In one article they just tossed in a mention that the data could be ‘decrypted’ by 3rd parties/or government agencies with nothing to back that claim up.
To help understand the role of this service lets look at a typical use case:
You sell widgets.
Your website has online ordering.
You also have a physical store.
Clients are finding items online, but buying them in person.
So if you are basing your promotion efforts on Web based analytics, you will be in the dark as to what promotions drove the clients to come to the store and make a purchase.
Unless Google gave you an interface with which to send them transaction info on offline sales?
Lets see how that would work:
A Google user is searching for widgets.
Google puts a PPC Ad on the page promoting your widgets.
The user clicks on the Ad, and looks up ‘Blue Widget # 42′.
2 hours later, your in-store till sells 2 ‘Blue Widget # 42′s.
The till sends “2 x Blue Widget # 42″ to Google as ‘sold’.
That’s it, Google now can relate the pay per click advertisement as relevant to the sale of the widget, and you have more info on how well that advertisement worked.
This also works very well with telephone based sales, especially if you are in a position to use specific phone numbers, or extensions, to narrow down how the call came about.
So while some folks are very concerned about how much companies will know about them when companies start comparing notes, that’s not the situation here at all.
Companies have been comparing notes for years, without the help of Google. Just think about the shopping trends that you reveal when you use an Air Miles card?
Google only wants to help reduce unwanted/ineffective advertising and reduce the amount of money businesses spend to reach potential clients.
Co-Workers and clients ask me why I stopped using MSN Messenger, like it’s a surprise to them that I don’t willingly sign into an application that spends most of it’s time trying to download videos/advertisements to distract me?
To me the more advertisements I see on a service the more I see that service as coming to an end, with one final attempt to monetize the fleeting popularity of the service at it’s peak of it’s traffic volume.
So clearly then Facebook is signalling that now is the time to monetize and cash out, with executives promising video advertisement opportunities in 2013.
To quote the original article on AdAge:
“By April at the latest, it(FB) will offer video advertisers the chance to target video ads to large numbers of Facebook users in their news feeds on both the desktop version of Facebook as well as on Facebook apps on mobile phones and tablets.”
There’s also some advanced speculation that the goal will be to keep the video adverts capped at 15 seconds, which would help minimize the amount of data transfer that is wasted on content you never wanted to see in the first place.
Additionally, if advertisers have to compete in 15 seconds or less, this could produce ‘light’ video spots that are then re-used on other sites around the web, hopefully just replacing existing clips that are 30 seconds.
To the advertisers out there (some of which are our clients) this means that if you were in the planning/edit stages of a video promotion for your site, and social media was one of your target audiences, then you would do well to plan on a 15 second version of your clip in advance.
Speaking of Video Advertising
What would happen if YouTube paid a handful of the most popular YouTube video creators together to make a ‘popular mashup’?
I think this is what would happen (this is NOT the cheap re-mix you may be expecting):
Felicia Dayand Minecraft? It’s almost like I helped make this.
Nice work YouTube! Clearly, at 28million (and counting) hits since it was released on Monday, people can’t get too much of a good thing, which is shocking considering how overplayed some of those videos are, especially the Gangnam Style remixes.
The end of the clip has some references to the video sources, some of which were fresh links for this old dog.
Afraid of the iOS 6 upgrade because you love Google Maps? Well the waiting is over, and Google Maps is back on the App Store for Free!
Not only is it still free, they upgraded the App to included all the latest features from the current Android version:
Turn-by-turn driving instructions
Live traffic information
Train, bus, subway and walking directions
Transit schedules for nearby stops
Which, when you compare the newer, fresher UI integration of the latest iPhone App vs. Android, makes the iPhone version ‘slightly better’ than the current Android version!
On top of all that, Google’s new Maps App adds API support for using the Maps App in other applications so that developers have the option of integrating Google maps into their Apps.
Google also mentioned that indoor maps support, and an offline maps option are currently in the works.
Stay tuned!
Google is also making certain things harder to find..
In other news, Google Image search just got an update that makes finding porn images more difficult, or at the very least, less accidental.
Personally, when I am at work, say making a blog post that needs an image of cigarette ‘butts‘, or a ‘young asian‘ person, when I don’t include enough search terms, I can appreciate that Google puts less priority on the more abundantly available/popular pornographic images.
… at least for the .COM site.
If you load those URLs and change the .com to a .ca?
Well lets just say that I hope you aren’t at work!
