Monday, November 24, 2014

Microsoft Adds Skype Document Chat To Office Online

Microsoft announced the addition of Skype document chat to Office Online. It’s avaialble when you collaborate with others in real-time in Word or PowerPoint.
To use it, click the Chat button. You can continue chats after leaving the document via Skype from your desktop computer or phone.
“The Office Online real-time co-authoring feature makes it easy for you to work together with others on a document from your browser,” the company says. “Whether you are putting the final touches on a contract with your business partner or collaborating on an essay for a school project, Office Online lets you work seamlessly with others no matter where they are.”
This is rolling out over the coming weeks at office.com.
Last week, Microsoft announced that the next version of Lync will become Skype for Buisness, which the company says brings together “the familiar experience and user love of Skype with the enterprise security, compliance, and control from Lync to create the most loved and trusted communications platform for doing things together.”
More on that here.
The company also announced the beta launch of Skype for Web, which lets you use Skype from your browser.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.


Reference :http://www.webpronews.com/microsoft-adds-skype-document-chat-to-office-online-2014-11

Thursday, August 21, 2014

AdWords Gets New Bulk Editing Features, Conversion Setting

Google announced some new AdWords features for bulk editing and a new conversion setting.
The bulk editing features are aimed at helping advertisers update settings across campaigns more quickly. They enable you to filter for campaigns targeting a specific location, update multiple campaigns with a new targeted location, and adjust other settings like language, campaign end dates, and ad rotation.
“Let’s say you’ve just extended your business operations to Mexico, and would like all of your US campaigns to target Mexico as well,” Google wrote. “You can filter to quickly find all of your campaigns targeting the US, so you can add Mexico as an additional location to those campaigns with just a few clicks (see image below).”
The new conversion setting, Google said, gives advertisers flexibility to choose which specific conversions to include in bid automation.
“Now you can count all the conversions that AdWords ads drive for your business (leads, sales, email sign-ups, etc.), while keeping bid automation focused on driving only the most important conversions,” Google said. “For example, Mark’s Cars can use conversion tracking to measure the number of used car quote requests driven by his ads, and can now set up his bid automation to only optimize for clicks that drive sales and inbound calls-the conversions that matter most to his business.”
More on this here.
Google noted that the Conversions column will continue to report the total number of conversions.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/adwords-gets-new-bulk-editing-features-conversion-setting-2014-08

Saturday, May 17, 2014

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Wednesday, May 14, 2014

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Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Google Analytics Beta Tests Diagnostics

Google has started a beta test with some users on Analytics Diagnostics. This is to find data-quality issues, so users are aware of them, and can fix them accordingly.
The feature scans for problems “frequently,” inspecting site tagging, account configuration, and reporting data for potential issues. It looks for things like missing or malformed tags, filters that conflict with one another, etc.
Google says it will release diagnostics to all users once it collects plenty of feedback, and improves the system. The company acknowledges that this will take some time, so don’t hold your breath.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-analytics-beta-tests-diagnostics-2014-04

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Facebook Is Killing 3 Types Of Content In The News Feed

Facebook announced even more changes to its News Feed algorithm today, aimed at “cleaning up News Feed spam”. Facebook will be targeting three specific types of posts, and stop showing them in the News Feed: like-baiting, frequently circulated content, and spammy links.

If Facebook is actually able to execute this well, then the news isn’t so bad. Organic reach for Page posts is already on its deathbed, and these changes are actually targeting content that few will probably miss from their News Feeds. If it’s not executed well, Facebook could be showing some of your legitimate posts to even less people. 
“The vast majority of publishers on Facebook are not posting feed spam so should not be negatively impacted by these changes, and, if anything, may see a very small increase in News Feed distribution,” the company says in the announcement. Emphasis added.
It’s that “if anything” part that’s a little worrisome. But again, organic reach is already nearly evaporated for most Pages, so it’s kind of like “who cares?” at this point. The real damage is already done.
A little more about these three types of content Facebook is targeting now…
Like-baiting is essentially the type of post that explicitly asks or tells users to like, comment, or share the post. I’m pretty sure Facebook has indicated that this type of thing would get hurt in the past, but I guess they mean it this time.
“People often respond to posts asking them to take an action, and this means that these posts get shown to more people, and get shown higher up in News Feed,” Facebook says. “However, when we survey people and ask them to rate the quality of these stories, they report that like-baiting stories are, on average, 15% less relevant than other stories with a comparable number of likes, comments and shares. Over time, these stories lead to a less enjoyable experience of Facebook since they drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.”
Matthew Ingram at GigaOm makes a good point: “There’s no question that many, perhaps even most, Facebook users would dislike this content intensely and vote to have it removed from their News Feed — except perhaps for younger users, who often enjoy that sort of thing, in part because it irritates adults. But I can think of other examples of content that might be considered like-bait that I saw friends willingly share, including photos of people fighting cancer who were trying to get a certain number of likes, and so on. That kind of thing may not be “high quality” content, but some people clearly enjoy it. ”
The update, Facebook says, won’t impact Pages “genuinely trying to encourage discussion”. Those Pages should still see the minuscule amount of reach they’re already getting.
By “frequently circulated content,” Facebook means instances where photos or videos are uploaded over and over again.
“We’ve found that people tend to find these instances of repeated content less relevant, and are more likely to complain about the Pages that frequently post them,” Facebook says. “We are improving News Feed to de-emphasize these Pages, and our early testing shows that this change causes people to hide 10% fewer stories from Pages overall.”
Finally, Facebook considers spammy links to be those that use “inaccurate language or formatting to try and trick people into clicking through to a website that contains only ads or a combination of frequently circulated content and ads.”
“For instance, often these stories claim to link to a photo album but instead take the viewer to a website with just ads,” Facebook explains.
It says it can better detect these types of links by measuring how frequently people choose to like the original post or share it with their friends.
The publishers being targeted here will see their reach decrease over the next few months, Facebook says.
Like I said, for the most part, people aren’t going to miss any of this type of content if Facebook’s algorithm does its job right. These are mostly shady ways to get engagement. You’re better off posting interesting photos.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-is-killing-3-types-of-content-in-the-news-feed-2014-04

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Google Makes Navigation More Customizable

Google just made its general navigation more customizable. In a Google+ post, the company announced that you can now rearrange the various Google apps that you use in whatever order you like.
If you use Drive and Google+ more than Groups and Maps, or vice versa, you can adjust them accordingly. Simply drag and drop them in the order you prefer.
                                                                                                                                                               
 
 
You can also add others that aren’t already part of the Google Bar, such as Google Keep or Google Scholar. Any of these. Simply click “more,” and then “even more” if what you’re looking for still hasn’t appeared.
Google will be rolling out this new functionality over the course of the next couple weeks, so if you can’t do it yet, just sit tight.

Resource:http://www.webpronews.com/google-makes-navigation-more-customizable-2014-03                                                         

Google Launches Cloud DNS In Preview











Google Launches Cloud DNS In Preview                                                                                                                                                                                 
Google made a bunch of announcements about its Cloud Platform earlier this week, including Cloud DNS, a Domain Name System services to give developers a “highly available, reliable, and inexpensive “way to publish DNS zones and records.
Google previously blogged about some of its other big announcements like price drops, sustained-use discounts, managed virtual machines, expanded Compute Engine support, real-time big data with BigQuery, and some other developer tools.
In a new blog post, Google is talking more about Cloud DNS. Developers can use the Cloud DNS API to manage their own DNS records, and its nameservers respond to DNS queries to help route use traffic to servers and web apps.
“Cloud DNS can be used to name hosts, webservers and other internet resources, including Google Compute Engine virtual machines, and Google Cloud Storage buckets,” writes product manager Surbhi Kaul. “You can also use this service for zones and records for systems hosted in your datacenters and remote offices. Cloud DNS serves from more than 20 locations globally, and is based on the same principles and similar infrastructure implemented in Google’s authoritative service used for all Google properties which services billions of queries daily. Cloud DNS’ global, anycast-based network of DNS nameservers responds to end user queries from an optimal location, resulting in low DNS query latency, thereby increasing the access speed and improving the overall experience of end users.”
“Cloud DNS offers a self-service sign up with an affordable pay-as-you-go model,” Kaul adds. “You pay for the number of managed zones plus records, and for the number of queries serviced for those zones and records.”
Cloud DNS costs $0.40 per one million queries per month for the first billion queries, and $0.20 per hosted zone per month for the first 25 zones.
About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-launches-cloud-dns-in-preview-2014-03

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Google Analytics Gets Video Campaigns Report For TrueView Ads

Google just announced the launch of a new Video Campaigns report in Google Analytics focusing on TrueView ads. Users will be able to use the report to see the “detailed effects” of their TrueView campaigns on their web traffic and revenue.
When it’s available, you’ll be able to find it under Acquisition > AdWords > Video Campaigns. Data will show up in the report after about 24 following your creation of an auto-tagged TrueView ad in AdWords.
 
 
 
 
 
“This report has the familiar look and feel of the other AdWords reports but includes TrueView-specific metrics like Paid Views, Cost Per View, and Website Clicks. There are also new metric groups like Engagement, which helps you understand how users engage with your video and your website,” says Google Analytics Product Manager Jon Mesh. “Using this newly available data, you can fine-tune your TrueView campaign settings to optimize for views, clicks, or goal conversions. You can also segment the reports by Ad Content or Video, helping you analyze the quality of your video creatives in the context of your website goals.”
“In addition, since TrueView ads are often more brand-focused, traffic they generate to your site will often be indirect traffic,” he adds. “In order to analyze this type of traffic, check out the new Google Display Network Impression Reporting pilot, which can help you understand conversions that resulted from unclicked impressions or video views. With this report, it’s possible to see how your TrueView ads are generating value beyond just direct clicks; you can dive deeper to understand how impressions, views, and clicks all contributed directly or indirectly to conversions on your site.”
The new report is rolling out to Google Analytics over the next few days.
Earlier this month, Google announced some upcoming changes to TrueView ads, which will go into effect on April 15th. More on those here.


About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003

 Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-analytics-gets-video-campaigns-report-for-trueview-ads-2014-03

 

Google Apps Admins Can Set Default State For Google+ Profile Discoverability


Google Apps Admins Can Set Default State For Google+ Profile Discoverability

Google announced that Google Apps admins can now set the default state for profile discoverability in their domain through a control in the admin console if they have enabled Premium Features. It is checked by default, making profiles discoverable in public web searches.
At launch, all users with discoverability on will get the admin default, and those with it off will be unaffected by the default, since it had already been set as such.
In the future, changing the admin default will change the user’s setting if the user hasn’t set discoverability. Once they manually set their profile discoverability setting off or on, that setting will continue regardless of whether the admin default is changed.

“In domains where an admin sets profile discoverability to be off by default (i.e., unchecks the setting), users may still want to be able to discover their co-workers in the same domain,” Google explains in a blog post. “To enable this functionality, we extended Google+ to leverage contact sharing. If the admin has enabled contact sharing for services such as Gmail then co-workers will be suggested in autocomplete results irrespective of their discoverability setting.”
The changes affect Google Apps for Business, Education and Government.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-apps-admins-can-set-default-state-for-google-profile-discoverability-2014-03

Friday, March 21, 2014

Google Adds DoubleClick Ad Exchange Real-Time Bidding From Cloud Platform


Google Adds DoubleClick Ad Exchange Real-Time Bidding From Cloud Platform

Google announced that it is now letting marketers conduct real-time bidding on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange right from Google Cloud Platform.
Ad Exchange users hosted on Google Compute Engine will always get 100 milliseconds for bid request processing and free network transit from Google Cloud Platform to all Ad Exchange trading locations (North America – east coast and west coast – Europe and Asia Pacific).
“Real time bidding (or programmatic buying), is one of the fastest growing methods of buying and selling ads online, and is predicted to account for 25% of all display spending by next year,” says DoubleClick Ad Exchange Director of Product Management Scott Spencer. “Marketers are embracing this model as it allows them to connect to audiences at scale quickly and we’ve been making ongoing investments to help them grow their programmatic businesses.
Speed is critical to success in programmatic buying and many exchanges, including the DoubleClick exchange, require that bidders respond to an ad request within a certain time limit in order to preserve the real-time nature of the marketplace,” he says. “Real time bidding transactions typically happen within 100 milliseconds from a user visiting a website.”
Google is offering Gold support for Cloud Platform to customers hosting their bidding infrastructure on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.
About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-adds-doubleclick-ad-exchange-real-time-bidding-from-cloud-platform-2014-03

Report: Half Of Google Paid Search Clicks Will Come From Mobile By December Of Next Year

50% of Google paid search clicks will come from mobile devices by December of next year, according to Marin Software, which has a new report out on the subject. That figure is based on the current growth rate.
The report (via Search Engine Land) is based on data from advertisers who invest over $6 billion per year in ad spend on Marin’s platform. It also found that cost per click on mobile device s increased at a much higher rate that on desktop last year, with tablet CPCs surpassing desktop in some regions.
Conversion rates on tablets and smartphones increased throughout last year as users got more comfortable with mobile commerce, the report says. Conversion rates on tablets even surpassed those on desktops.


Marin CMO Matt Ackley says, “We’re at the cusp of mobile becoming the dominant channel in search marketing. Consumers are becoming much more comfortable using their smartphones and tablets to complete transactions online, and as we see that comfort level rise advertisers will follow suit with continued investment and optimization in mobile.”
A new report from eMarketer finds that global mobile ad spend increased by 105% in 2013, reaching $17.96 billion, and is on pace to hit $31.45 billion this year.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. 

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/report-half-of-google-paid-search-clicks-will-come-from-mobile-by-december-of-next-year-2014-03

Facebook Is Reportedly About To Slash Your Page’s Organic Reach Even More

Facebook is showing Pages’ organic posts to fewer and fewer people as time goes on.
In December, the company pushed out an algorithm change to its News Feed, which severely impacted the organic reach for many Pages, but recent research from Ogilvy shows it was already getting bad before that, and is on a steady path downward with reach as low as 6% of Pages’ audiences by last month.

Now, Sam Biddle at Gawker’s Valleywag is reporting that it’s about to drop even further:
A source professionally familiar with Facebook’s marketing strategy, who requested to remain anonymous, tells Valleywag that the social network is “in the process of” slashing “organic page reach” down to 1 or 2 percent. That would mean an advertising giant like Nike, which has spent a great deal of internet effort collecting over 16 million Facebook likes, would only be able to affect of around a 160,000 of them when it pushes out a post. Companies like Gawker, too, rely on gratis Facebook propagation for a huge amount of their audience.
As Biddle notes, the less likes a Page has, the fewer that number will be. Good lucking getting any visibility if you don’t have many.
This comes just a couple days after Forrester’s principal analyst said brands and agencies are also becoming “disillusioned” with Facebook’s advertising products as well, opting to try out other social sites.
Still, eMarketer is reporting that Facebook is gaining significant market share in the global ad market.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-is-reportedly-about-to-slash-your-pages-organic-reach-even-more-2014-03

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

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What You Should Do For Google On Product Pages For Products That Are No Longer Available

Google has a new “Webmaster Help” video out, which many ecommerce businesses may find useful. Head of webspam Matt Cutts discusses what to do on your product pages for products that are no longer available.
http://www.webpronews.com/what-you-should-do-for-google-on-product-pages-for-products-that-are-no-longer-available-2014-03

He runs down a few different types of cases.
He begins, “It does matter based on how many products you have and really what the throughput of those products is, how long they last, how long they’re active before they become inactive. So let’s talk about like three examples. On one example, suppose you’re a handmade furniture manufacturer – like each piece you make you handcraft, it’s a lot of work – so you only have, ten, fifteen, twenty pages of different couches and tables, and those sorts of shelves that you make. In the middle, you might have a lot more product pages, and then all the way on the end, suppose you’re craigslist, right? So you have millions and millions of pages, and on any given day, a lot of those pages become inactive because they’re no longer, you know, as relevant or because the listing has expired. So on the one side, when you have a very small number of pages (a small number of products), it probably is worth, not just doing a true 404, and saying, you know, this page is gone forever, but sort of saying, ‘Okay, if you are interested in this, you know, cherry wood shelf, well maybe you’d be interested in this mahogany wood shelf that I have instead,’ and sort of showing related products. And that’s a perfectly viable strategy. It’s a great idea whenever something is sort of a lot of work, you know, whenever you’re putting a lot of effort into those individual product pages.”
“Then suppose you’ve got your average e-commerce site. You’ve got much more than ten pages or twenty pages,” Cutts continues. “You’ve got hundreds or thousands of pages. For those sorts of situations, I would probably think about just going ahead and doing a 404 because those products have gone away. That product is not available anymore, and you don’t want to be known as the product site that whenever you visit it, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, you can’t buy this anymore.’ Because users get just as angry getting an out-of-stock message as they do “no results found’ when they think that they’re going to find reviews. Now if it’s going to come back in stock then you can make clear that it’s temporarily out of stock, but if you really don’t have that product anymore, it’s kind of frustrating to just land on that page, and see, ‘Yep, you can’t get it here.’”
He goes on to discuss the Craigslist case a little more, noting that Google has a metatag that sites can use called “unavailable_after”. Here’s the original blog post where Google announced it in 2007, which discusses it more.
The tag basically tells Google that after a certain date, the page is no longer relevant, so Google won’t show it in search results after that.
 About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/what-you-should-do-for-google-on-product-pages-for-products-that-are-no-longer-available-2014-03

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Do These Google Search Changes Go Too Far Or Not Far Enough?

As you may know, Google has been in the middle of an EU antitrust investigation into its search business for three years. Google has submitted proposals for a settlement multiple times, only to keep being told to go back to the drawing board.
The EU finally appears to be satisfied with the search giant’s latest concessions, but the biggest complainants over Google’s business practices – its competitors – still are not satisfied. As a matter of fact, they think what the EU has deemed sufficient to resolve concerns is actually worse than if Google does nothing at all. Go figure.
Google no doubt thinks it’s already going way too far, and these concessions do in fact go a great deal further than the settlement it made in the U.S. with the Federal Trade Commission early last year. By offering these concessions, however, Google will avoid paying a potential fine of $5 billion.
 
Google had already agreed to give content providers an opt-out from the use of their content in Google’s vertical search services without being penalized in web results, to remove exclusivity requirements related to ads, and to remove restrictions on the ability for search ad campaigns to be run on competing platforms.
Google has also proposed to give links to rival sites “much more real estate and visibility,” including logos with more prominent links and dynamic text providing more info about their sites. None of this went far enough for the likes of the FairSearch Coalition, which is made up of Google competitors including: Microsoft, TripAdvisor, Hotwire, Expedia, Foundem, Nokia, Oracle, The Find and others.
Likewise, the EU has, until now, been convinced that Google could do more. Now, the EU says it has obtained “an improved commitments proposal” from Google, which guarantees that whenever the search engine promotes its own vertical search services (products, hotels, restaurants, etc.), the services of THREE rivals “selected through an objective method” will also be displayed in “a way that is clearly visible to users and comparable to the way in which Google displays its own services.” The EU shared a couple of before/after examples to demonstrate:

Before


After


Before


After


As you can see, “alternatives” are clearly highlighted, and in some cases even include logos. Look at the Yelp listing on the second example. This puts Yelp and the other sites that appear next to it at a much greater advantage in search results than they currently have. It seems almost certain that this will drive more traffic to these sites.
EU Competition chief Joaquin Almunia said, “My mission is to protect competition to the benefit of consumers, not competitors,” but it seems like this does a lot more to help competitors than anyone else. Consumers searching on Google are searching on Google because they want Google results. Not Yelp results. If they wanted Yelp results, why wouldn’t they just go to Yelp?
So why do competitors think the settlement is worse than doing nothing?
“FairSearch Europe needs to examine this proposal in detail, but our concern is that the proposed commitments lock in discrimination and raise rivals’ costs instead of solving the problem of Google’s anti-competitive practices,” says FairSearch Europe Legal Counsel Thomas Vinje. “Google now holds a 95 percent market share of search across the European Union and gives preferential treatment to its own services, which damages competition and gives consumers less choice. The Google proposal requires rivals to pay Google for placement similar to that of Google’s own material, undercutting the ability of other to compete and provide consumer choice. This will be done through an auction mechanism that requires participating companies to hand the vast majority of their profits to Google.”
Actually, that statement is a little misleading. According to the EU, in instances where Google doesn’t charge for inclusion in its specialized search service, rivals will not be charged to participate in the “rival links”. The three displayed rivals will be chosen from “a pool of eligible specialized search competitors using Google’s normal web search algorithm.”
In instances where Google does charge for inclusion, the three rivals will be chosen from a pool of eligible competitors based on the auction mechanism. In other words, rivals aren’t simply going to get free advertising where people are already paying to advertise. Wouldn’t that in fact give Google rivals an unfair advantage over other businesses anyway?
Almunia said, “I believe that the new proposal obtained from Google after long and difficult talks can now address the Commission’s concerns. Without preventing Google from improving its own services, it provides users with real choice between competing services presented in a comparable way; it is then up to them to choose the best alternative. This way, both Google and its rivals will be able and encouraged to innovate and improve their offerings. Turning this proposal into a legally binding obligation for Google would ensure that competitive conditions are both restored quickly and maintained over the next years.”
Google’s commitments are to be supervised by an independent monitoring trustee for five years.
It’s not over yet though. FairSearch is expressing disdain for the announcement coming without a market test. It says market tests have been pivotal in the advancement of Google’s proposals thus far. The EU, however, noted in its announcement that it will be informing complainants of the reasons it believes Google’s offer is sound. The complainants will then have a chance to make their views known before it makes a final decision on whether or not the commitments are legally binding.
The question remains: should Google really even have to go as far as it has agreed to go? Can Google truly stifle competition when all users have to do to use a competing service is enter a different URL in their browser or pull up a different app on their mobile phone? Some would say Google’s concessions already go too far. But clearly Google’s opponents don’t think they go far enough.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-search-changes-too-far-or-not-far-enough-2014-02

Google Notifies Webmasters Of Manual Actions Regarding ‘Spammy Structured Markup’


Google Notifies Webmasters Of Manual Actions Regarding ‘Spammy Structured Markup’

Google wants you to use structured data markup on your site to give it better information, and help it make more compelling search results.
“If Google understands the markup on your pages, it can use this information to add rich snippets and other features to your search result,” the company explains. “For example, the search snippet for a restaurant might show its average review and price range. You can add structured data to your page using the schema.org vocabulary and formats such as Microdata and RDF, alongside other approaches such as Microformats. You can also add structured data by tagging the data on your page using Data Highlighter.”
Google doesn’t, however, want you to use this markup in spammy ways, which people have obviously been doing.


Google is now reportedly sending webmasters abusing rich snippet markup notifications of manual actions taken on their sites. Search Engine Roundtable points to a Google Webmaster Help forum post where one webmaster shared a message they received:
Spammy structured markup
Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google’s Rich Snippet Quality guidelines.

The webmaster who posted it said his team couldn’t find the issue. Suggestions from others in the discussion included marking up his name as the author in three different ways on a page, marking up things that aren’t visible on the page, marking up one item as both an article and a blog post, marking up empty space in the footer, and marking up a Facebook page as a publisher of the webpage.
Maybe we’ll get a Matt Cutts video on the subject soon.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-notifies-webmasters-of-manual-actions-regarding-spammy-structured-markup-2014-02

Monday, January 13, 2014

5 Ways to Make Your Small Business Shine on Instagram

Instagram is one of the hottest social media platforms on the internet. When Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion back in 2012 it not only increased the popularity of Instagram, but it also really showed the true value of the company. Smart small business owners in all industries are noticing Instagram and are trying to capitalize on this constantly growing popularity.
Your business may not be worth $1 billion, but you can get closer to that number if you follow these 5 simple guidelines to maximize the potential of your Instagram marketing.

5 Ways to Make Your Business Shine on Instagram

1. Have a great looking profile
Leaving your profile with the stock image that Instagram provides is a bad mistake. It will only take a little time to customize it with your logo, colors and branding. Taking that time will build trust between you and your potential followers that your Instagram account is legit and trustworthy. Do not ever let your potential customers second guess whether or not your account is actually you.
This is a strategy that you should employ across all of your social media accounts. A consistent look and style will go a long way towards building trust and social credibility. Without that trust and credibility you may never be able to get your Instagram account up and running.
2. Use Instagram badges
Instagram badges are the icons provided by Instagram that allow you to link your Instagram account to your Facebook Page, YouTube Channel, Twitter account and Pinterest boards, all with the click of a button. Being able to constantly provide your customers with new ways to interact with you will help keep them on your websites, reading your content and experiencing your brand story.
3. Post your pictures to Instagram with a plan
Randomly posting photos can be fun – for a personal account! Your business account should only have photos posted with the intent of driving traffic and increasing engagement. Anything else is useless or, even worse – spam!
Before posting any photo on Instagram take a moment to think about whether or not it will actually help you reach your goals. If it doesn’t it may be best to hit the delete button and move on to better uses of your time. Good photos are ones which lead naturally to sharing links to your website and creating discussions and shares. Always have that in mind.
4. Use hashtags and mentions to drive new traffic
Instagram borrows from Twitter with their use of hashtags and mentions. They can be used to generate new traffic when used correctly. They do this by helping people find your brand who are not already aware of it.
Hashtags do this by grouping conversations with the ‘#’ symbol followed by a word. You can join in on conversations or start your own. Mentions do this by using the username of other Instagram accounts, these show up on the accounts of the user mentioned and their followers can see it as well.
Always be sure to use proper net etiquette. Don’t use a #justinbieber hashtag just because it’s popular if you don’t have a photo of Justin Bieber, or if you’re in no way related to the music industry. This is how you become a spammer, and becoming a spammer is a quick way to turn people off of your brand.
5. Take your Instagram offline with real world marketing efforts
Instagram, and all of your other online marketing activities, should not be isolated into their own online bubbles. With Instagram you have unique opportunities to create engagement by taking your marketing efforts out into the real world.
How can you take the internet into the real world? Ask your fans to submit photos of themselves with your product in a competition! A few prizes and a little fun can go a long way to creating engagement outside of the online world while also driving people to your Instagram account and, in time, your cash register.
Having a marketing plan on Instagram for your small business doesn’t have to be complicated. The 5 tips above can be implemented with ease. Take these tips, a little imagination, some consistent hard work and your photos may soon be shared more often than a Hollywood celebrity with a wardrobe malfunction!

About Matthew Yeoman
Matthew is a freelance writer currently living abroad. He writes for the Devumi.com blog, several website design companies and frequently guest posts on other websites. He resides in Cape Town, South Africa at this time.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/5-ways-to-make-your-small-business-shine-on-instagram-2014-01