Social media has so many advantages from helping us to connect with friends and relatives, keeping us informed with the latest trends and joinig us together as a community. It’s been responsible for the spread of revolution and contributed to the Arab spring. However it’s my belief if we don’t develop our own social media etiquette it could kill humans as we know them.
Humans need training before its too late
Human are by our very nature social animals we like to interact communicate and learn about each others feeling and points of view. Each region, religion and culture has its taboos and the things we should do. Instilled in most cultures for example is politeness, respect, and how we should interact with each other. Can you remember growing up and your parent saying ” it’s rude to point” “cover your mouth when you yawn” “don’t speak to your elders like that”
It goes so much deeper from what is acceptable to wear at a funeral , dealing with grief, happiness, bad behaviour, love, desire and hate .
When is it rude to use social media?
How we interact with each other from holding the door open for others to dressing appropriately are all learned behaviours . These norms have taken years to develop then comes social media . The fly in the ointment what are the norms what is good behaviour when using Social media? What’s rude , what’s is the social media taboo. None of us yet have a parent or teacher teaching us when, how or what is an acceptable way to use social media. Is it rude to text at the dinner table? Is it OK to talk about grief on twitter?
Save your feeling for people not Facebook
What subjects are taboo on Facebook what should you say face to face rather than mentioning it on Facebook . What are the social media norms? the truth is they are still in development and each generation views them differently. A teenagers use and social media etiquette is without doubt different from mine.
This lack of Social media training or breeding means we are confronted by humans who text at funerals , endure the intrusion of smartphones during conversations, wonder why sensitive announcements are made on Facebook .
Social media addicts give us all a bad name
Social media is creating addicts that are moving away from face to face to technology to social media. The need to interact with technology is it seems the driver behind anti social behavoiur. My guess is that when you are confronted by a persons desire to interact with social media inappropriately you may actually be dealing with a Social media junkie.
Social media is not social! it can be anti social and making us more insular, more self indulgent more selective about who we speak too. Face-to-face conversation takes place in real time, you can’t prepare , edit or control what you’re going to say. Body language is responsible for a huge percentage of our communication. Intonation , mood and emotions are all missed in social media interactions they are not human
What’s more we develop empathy and understanding over time , how will our youth develop with increasing relianc on social media communication?
Is technolgy now your best friend?
Humans are now expecting more from technology and less from each other In the long run, technology is ultimately headed towards creating companionship without the demands of friendship.
Are you really your social media profile?
Social media allows us humans to sculpture who we are NOT! What we publish about ourselves is what you want people to see. You are creating an impression of you that you want others to see. It’s not the real you , it’s the Social media you. This is killing Social interaction , it’s killing true communication.
“Friends are people you talk too, ones you confide in. Facebook friends are not friends they are an audience” Nick Marr
I am not anti social media but I am anti its development without human check on how its changing relationships. Its is now time develop rules on how we use Social media before its too late. On your death bed you will never say I wish i spent more time at work its the same with social media!
In summary Social media has a time and a place in our lives, let it always come second place to human interaction.
Its obvious that as time goes by search engine optimisation has become huge business and automation was inevitable. The SEO industry has numerous companies that will auto run your SEO generating spammy type links in their thousands. Well the time may have come when those employing these techniques will have to run and hide. Google is after you and they have in their armour 40 algorithm changes that could see businesses lose big money.
The official Google blog announced on 27th Feb 2012 not one change but forty changes to its algorithm that selects which sites rock and which sites don’t!
This amount of changes is actually unprecedented and marks a new record for Google war on the SEO spammers .
Google “We continue to improve many of our systems, including related searches, sitelinks, autocomplete, UI elements, indexing, synonyms, SafeSearch and more. Each individual change is subtle and important, and over time they add up to a radically improved search engine.”
Google Algoritm Changes
The Big Change
Announced amongst so many changes is one that I feel could have significant impact on those seeking to be top of their game in the search engines. The change appears to reduce the importance of backlinks that feature keywords
Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
For me it seems that Google is using another signal other than keywords to evaluate your links. I do not see the sense in penalising sensible links that contain keywords but more rather that Google is reducing the value of them. The reason being is that robot link spammers can manipulate these types of links.
Don’t Panic Continue Linking
I always think that if you are playing fair with the search engine competition how can you be penalised? This change is all about catching out those that are over linking for certain keywords or phrases. Keeping it natural is the key and don’t forgot using your site name or brand name is always safer than your optimised keyword.
Keyword Density Check
Its a good time to check your keyword density to ensure that have not been over zealous in your linking strategy we all know that page one positions can help bring money to your door so this change could be very important.
40 Changes to Google Algorithm in February 2012
Here’s the list for February:
More coverage for related searches. [launch codename “Fuzhou”] This launch brings in a new data source to help generate the “Searches related to” section, increasing coverage significantly so the feature will appear for more queries. This section contains search queries that can help you refine what you’re searching for.
Tweak to categorizer for expanded sitelinks. [launch codename “Snippy”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] This improvement adjusts a signal we use to try and identify duplicate snippets. We were applying a categorizer that wasn’t performing well for our expanded sitelinks, so we’ve stopped applying the categorizer in those cases. The result is more relevant sitelinks.
Less duplication in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename “thanksgiving”, project codename “Megasitelinks”] We’ve adjusted signals to reduce duplication in the snippets for expanded sitelinks. Now we generate relevant snippets based more on the page content and less on the query.
More consistent thumbnail sizes on results page. We’ve adjusted the thumbnail size for most image content appearing on the results page, providing a more consistent experience across result types, and also across mobile and tablet. The new sizes apply to rich snippet results for recipes and applications, movie posters, shopping results, book results, news results and more.
More locally relevant predictions in YouTube. [project codename “Suggest”] We’ve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India].
More accurate detection of official pages. [launch codename “WRE”] We’ve made an adjustment to how we detect official pages to make more accurate identifications. The result is that many pages that were previously misidentified as official will no longer be.
Refreshed per-URL country information. [Launch codename “longdew”, project codename “country-id data refresh”] We updated the country associations for URLs to use more recent data.
Expand the size of our images index in Universal Search. [launch codename “terra”, project codename “Images Universal”] We launched a change to expand the corpus of results for which we show images in Universal Search. This is especially helpful to give more relevant images on a larger set of searches.
Minor tuning of autocomplete policy algorithms. [project codename “Suggest”] We have a narrow set of policies for autocomplete for offensive and inappropriate terms. This improvement continues to refine the algorithms we use to implement these policies.
“Site:” query update [launch codename “Semicolon”, project codename “Dice”] This change improves the ranking for queries using the “site:” operator by increasing the diversity of results.
Improved detection for SafeSearch in Image Search. [launch codename "Michandro", project codename “SafeSearch”] This change improves our signals for detecting adult content in Image Search, aligning the signals more closely with the signals we use for our other search results.
Interval based history tracking for indexing. [project codename “Intervals”] This improvement changes the signals we use in document tracking algorithms.
Improvements to foreign language synonyms. [launch codename “floating context synonyms”, project codename “Synonyms”] This change applies an improvement we previously launched for English to all other languages. The net impact is that you’ll more often find relevant pages that include synonyms for your query terms.
Disabling two old fresh query classifiers. [launch codename “Mango”, project codename “Freshness”] As search evolves and new signals and classifiers are applied to rank search results, sometimes old algorithms get outdated. This improvement disables two old classifiers related to query freshness.
More organized search results for Google Korea. [launch codename “smoothieking”, project codename “Sokoban4”] This significant improvement to search in Korea better organizes the search results into sections for news, blogs and homepages.
Fresher images. [launch codename “tumeric”] We’ve adjusted our signals for surfacing fresh images. Now we can more often surface fresh images when they appear on the web.
Update to the Google bar. [project codename “Kennedy”] We continue to iterate in our efforts to deliver a beautifully simple experience across Google products, and as part of that this month we made further adjustments to the Google bar. The biggest change is that we’ve replaced the drop-down Google menu in the November redesign with a consistent and expanded set of links running across the top of the page.
Adding three new languages to classifier related to error pages. [launch codename "PNI", project codename "Soft404"] We have signals designed to detect crypto 404 pages (also known as “soft 404s”), pages that return valid text to a browser but the text only contain error messages, such as “Page not found.” It’s rare that a user will be looking for such a page, so it’s important we be able to detect them. This change extends a particular classifier to Portuguese, Dutch and Italian.
Improvements to travel-related searches. [launch codename “nesehorn”] We’ve made improvements to triggering for a variety of flight-related search queries. These changes improve the user experience for our Flight Search feature with users getting more accurate flight results.
Data refresh for related searches signal. [launch codename “Chicago”, project codename “Related Search”] One of the many signals we look at to generate the “Searches related to” section is the queries users type in succession. If users very often search for [apple] right after [banana], that’s a sign the two might be related. This update refreshes the model we use to generate these refinements, leading to more relevant queries to try.
International launch of shopping rich snippets. [project codename “rich snippets”] Shopping rich snippets help you more quickly identify which sites are likely to have the most relevant product for your needs, highlighting product prices, availability, ratings and review counts. This month we expanded shopping rich snippets globally (they were previously only available in the US, Japan and Germany).
Improvements to Korean spelling. This launch improves spelling corrections when the user performs a Korean query in the wrong keyboard mode (also known as an “IME”, or input method editor). Specifically, this change helps users who mistakenly enter Hangul queries in Latin mode or vice-versa.
Improvements to freshness. [launch codename “iotfreshweb”, project codename “Freshness”] We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.
Web History in 20 new countries. With Web History, you can browse and search over your search history and webpages you’ve visited. You will also get personalized search results that are more relevant to you, based on what you’ve searched for and which sites you’ve visited in the past. In order to deliver more relevant and personalized search results, we’ve launched Web History in Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Morocco, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Kuwait, Iraq, SriLanka, Tunisia, Nigeria, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Bosnia and Herzegowina, Azerbaijan, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Moldova, and Ghana. Web History is turned on only for people who have a Google Account and previously enabled Web History.
Improved snippets for video channels. Some search results are links to channels with many different videos, whether on mtv.com, Hulu or YouTube. We’ve had a feature for a while now that displays snippets for these results including direct links to the videos in the channel, and this improvement increases quality and expands coverage of these rich “decorated” snippets. We’ve also made some improvements to our backends used to generate the snippets.
Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
Improvements to English spell correction. [launch codename “Kamehameha”] This change improves spelling correction quality in English, especially for rare queries, by making one of our scoring functions more accurate.
Improvements to coverage of News Universal. [launch codename “final destination”] We’ve fixed a bug that caused News Universal results not to appear in cases when our testing indicates they’d be very useful.
Consolidation of signals for spiking topics. [launch codename “news deserving score”, project codename “Freshness”] We use a number of signals to detect when a new topic is spiking in popularity. This change consolidates some of the signals so we can rely on signals we can compute in realtime, rather than signals that need to be processed offline. This eliminates redundancy in our systems and helps to ensure we can continue to detect spiking topics as quickly as possible.
Better triggering for Turkish weather search feature. [launch codename “hava”] We’ve tuned the signals we use to decide when to present Turkish users with the weather search feature. The result is that we’re able to provide our users with the weather forecast right on the results page with more frequency and accuracy.
Visual refresh to account settings page. We completed a visual refresh of the account settings page, making the page more consistent with the rest of our constantly evolving design.
Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.
Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
SafeSearch update. We have updated how we deal with adult content, making it more accurate and robust. Now, irrelevant adult content is less likely to show up for many queries.
Spam update. In the process of investigating some potential spam, we found and fixed some weaknesses in our spam protections.
Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.
It’s been quite a while since I can announce a start-up social media service that I really believe has the power to take on the established social media companies. Those who run bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, Digg or Multiply better mind their bank balances!
The new kid is PinInterest.com
Pinterest Social Media Newbie
Pinterest is an online bulletin board for your favorite images, launched in 2010 and is already experiencing wild growth. It has gone thru a soft launch where you can become a member after only receiving an invite. I did this last week and it took about 3 days before i was sent a link to activate an account. I would try it yourself as actions speak louder than words on how it works.
The growth of the service is simply exciting and for small businesses it presents a fresh opportunity. You can post images of your company’s products on your Pinterest board and link them back to your website. It works as a sort of virtual store catalog.
Pinterest site registered more than 7 million unique visitors in December 2012, up from 1.6 million in September. And it’s driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, according to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based content-sharing site Shareaholic.
A New Digg?
Digg : The social news site changed the Internet, Digg’s offers high power authority and a listing in Digg for a site, even if it only has a couple of votes, will rank highly on Google and other search engines for certain terms. I believe that same power and authority is about to be transferred from traditional sites to Piniterest.
Women just love Pinterest!
According to Alexa Pinterest is attracting women by the droves aged between 25-34 years of age , Pinterest is attractive , pictures speak a thousand words and you will find lots of shoes, handbags and pins of good looking celebrities.
Like all these things get in early and establish your brand Google respects old pages and old posts so get your company on Pinterest now and reap the benefits later. A word of warning self promotion will need to be limited as the sites policies does not encourage self promotion. The best way to determine if Pinterest could attract buyers is simply to give it a go
Pinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.
Install the bookmarklet. It lets you add a pin from any website with just one click.
Follow a few more pinboards. After all, Pinterest is as much about discovering new things as it is about sharing.
Pin carefully! As one of the first members of Pinterest, your pins will help set the tone for the whole community. Use big images, write thoughtful descriptions, and pin things you really love. Also, no nudity
Celebrities generate huge audiences that they can sell too
A recent post by celeb gossip blog Richcrib.com highlights the fact that social media has become a promotional play ground for the rich and famous. Its no surprise that with their huge audiences celebrities succumb to selling promotional tweets. The audience sizes beat many TV stations, newspapers and other traditional media. The cost to tweet to an audience of millions must run into tens of thousands all for a tweet less than 140 characters. I have no doubt this extra stream of revenue comes in handy especially when the actual process is not actually managed by the celebrity themselves.
Twitter is a social tool so you need to be social most celebs post updates designed for no interaction, it seems that these tweets are more like a warm up act before the big show. The odd tweet here and there just to keep the account fresh and the audience interested. When it comes to a new film, book or other promotion then we see the celebrity increase tweets and Hash tags.
So excited to announce that I’ll be working with #Hasbro on their new game called Twister Dance. You guys are going to love it! @HasbroNews
We can all learn from celebrities
Over selling in a tweet can be the most boring and unattractive thing you can do! If we watch how celebs conduct their accounts you will see that talking about everything else other than the next promotion keeps an interest by followers. This makes it very effective as when the promotional tweets are launched followers will listen.
Twitter is a Promotional Opportunity
Businesses can access large audiences using the numerous services available to get your message noticed. Here are some services that help you promote to large audiences
More followers means you may be able to sell like a celeb
By attracting more followers to your twitter account you are creating a potential audience that you can promote too. The value of a huge twitter audience can turn into real money as advertisers target niche twitter accounts. Here are some services that may actually buy advertising from your twitter account
Their is a huge range of services that will help you increase followers, some of these services involve fake accounts and robotic follows. These are worthless for social media interaction but good to show others how many followers you have. Those that buy tweets will want to see the level of activity your followers generate so these fake followers are near useless for this purpose.
You will find a host of low cost social media solutions at FiveQuidExpert.com
I am going to predict that Facebook Initial Public Stock Offering will help start ups and entrepreneurs launch new models that will eventually harm Facebook’s offering. The timing and the risks associated with Facebook privacy policies could spell the beginning of the end.
You may be wondering have I lost the plot after all look at these impressive Facebook facts:
845 million monthly active users.
80% of monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada.
483 million daily active users on average in December 2011.
425 million users who using Facebook mobile products
The social network’s expected market value, projected by some to be as high as $100 billion. The IPO will be enough to make about 900 people millionaires from longtime employees to a freelance graphic artist who once painted Facebook’s real walls – instant millionaires, at least on paper.
Why Facebook IPO could be its downfall
Its obvious to me that when a company has reached its peak and all avenues have been explored its time to get out for its owners. The timing of Facebook IPO is no accident and their maybe now a lack of momentum to take the giant any further.
Potential Investors Answer Me This
Does the IPO indicate that those who created Facebook may have lost the will to take it further? Have the threat of increasing demand for privacy by consumers worldwide now too much of a threat to the business? Could new privacy laws in the US kill Facebook? Have they tried everything and failed to find fresh innovation?
Will You Suffer Pain Without Facebook?
My thoughts are that we can all live without Facebook if it died tomorrow its not a necessary feature of my life its an added extra, compared to say search engines, or mobile phones and tablets Facebook does not help me.
New Kids On The Block
The biggest threat is having taken on investors the new masters will want to see increased advertising revenue. Facebook could end up as annoying place to be sold too. Every time you turn on your phone, tablet computer and Smart TV, Facebook could be selling you something. This for me is a huge threat to its future, member will leave in their droves. When the pressure for return on investment increases its not unreasonable to consider a subcription model for membership. Adding a monthly fee for members would satisy the investprs but may eventually kill the business.
Consumers Want Free Internet
This change will allow advertising free services to offer something different. I will give you a real life example that backs up my theory.
MTV Germany changed it business model to offer pay TV, this has resulted in alternatives popping up as consumers avoid the charges. This move marked the first time a German free to air broadcaster moved into the encrypted TV area.
Small time competitor Tape.TV seized the moment and is now busy taking market share in music TV in Germany potentially killing off German MTV’s dominance.
This proves consumers will always vote with their feet and Facebook faces a huge challenge ahead.
Facebook IPO Good For Business
Its without doubt a positive event when such an IPO is launched, its shows the world that 2012 maybe the year of change from the global financial crisis.
This event will help others who need funding get the money they need for rival projects.
“A Facebook IPO will be a mammoth seismic event that will start a small tidal wave,’’ said David Menlow, president of IPOfinancial.com, a Green Brook, N.J., firm that tracks IPOs. “Facebook will embolden a lot of companies to feel that the technology sector is on an upswing.’’
Whatever the result of the IPO Facebook will never be the same
Marr International is behind the celebrity gossip website Richcrib.com . The blog intends to concentrate on celebrity houses, mansions and luxury homes as well as all the latest entertainment news. Richcrib coined from the terms MTV Cribs also has sections dedicated to black celebrity gossip and UK celebrity gossip. The site has its own dedicated team of writers and seeks to employ more writers who love celebrity gossip and are up to date with all the top names in Hollywood .
Working For Richcrib.com
Marr International is encouraging writers to contribute to the site by offering free coaching and SEO training. CEO of Marr International is rewarding good work with work references which can be so important in today’s competitive employment environment.
Celebrity Houses – Rich Cribs & Mansions
Richcrib carries latest news & rumors about celeb homes or celebrity cribs, see pictures & photos that will help you get a view inside celebrity houses. Richcrib will help you understand how the rich and famous live, learn that being rich does not necessarily buy class.
In fact some celebs homes are tacky, cheap, without style or any class at all. Millionaire mansion owners don’t all have style!.
New figures from a leading retail consultancy have found the Brits spent a record amount with online retailers in 2011. 16 per cent more was spent online in 2011 than in 2010 as increased numbers of shoppers bought goods and services on the web.
So, can you afford not to sell your goods and services online?
Online sales expected to increase by 13% in 2012
According to the research by Capgemini, a record £68 billion was spent online in 2011, up 16 per cent on the previous year with online shopping now accounting for 17 per cent of the British retail market.
The Guardian reports that ‘growing numbers of retailers are launching or expanding online businesses, leading Capgemini to predict that total online retail sales will jump by 13 per cent in 2012 to reach £77 billion.’
One analyst said: “Online is such an integral part of the shopping experience now that it generally plays at least some role in most purchases, whether through research and comparison or social media and product reviews.”
Increasingly important to market yourself online
Nick Marr “It seems that only the very rich do not need to sell online , its a low cost method to maximising your returns. Those who who can get free search engine traffic are making huge returns on investment”
If you want to ensure your business is a success it is becoming increasingly important that you market yourself online. This may be through your own website although portals which allow shoppers to access a wide number of independent sellers on one website are becoming increasingly popular.
Sites such as Etsy and Not on the High Street now offer a range of handmade gifts and goods from thousands of sellers in one place whilst you can buy services from professional websites such as Elance and People per Hour.
Another excellent place for you to market your services is on Five Quid Expert. This new site offers a unique service where you can market anything from IT help to translation services to buyers at a price of £5. Five Quid Expert is a ‘one stop shop’ for buyers looking for inexpensive goods and services and offers you a great opportunity to be part of the online shopping boom.
Marr International provide custom mobile app development for businesses with an eye on the bottom line. Our team can provide savings owing to the technology that is being used. Our mobile apps unlike many other providers are made for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Mobile Phone and BlackBerry devices from a single app.
We are helping companies save money with our multi platform mobile apps, no need to shop around having several apps developed by different companies . We can arrange the entire mobile application from start to finish without the need to find separate apps for different platforms.
Mobile Apps For Business
Our digital marketing background results in an app that is designed to create more businesses for you , we have lots of experience and may be able to suggest new ways to help your app become a real business generator.
CEO Nick Marr ” Include push notifications in your app and you can bring your visitors to your business, no longer do you need to be passive and wait for visitors. Create new peak times when you want visitors to see what you have to offer, ensure social media is threaded throughout your app and see your audience grow”
Our apps aim to reduce navigation that the users have to do by taking them directly to the content that they’re want to see.
Any organization that wants to stay connected with their consumers at a very personal level by offering convenience is today venturing into the world of mobile application development.
Iphones Android or Blackberry?
In the world of apps, Apple are king. The apple store has over 350,000 applications available – and there have been more than 10 billion downloads since they launched. In an ever-expanding market place, apple has a huge share and perhaps the simplest and most effective delivery method.
The most popular mobile devices are the iPhone, the Android, the BlackBerry, Symbian and a few others. With so many different OS’s to cater to and with new smart phones on the rise, organizations have to start developing mobile applications for each of these mediums. If you are not present on one handset or one marketplace, there is a chance that your competitor will take the lead and will remain top of the mind recall for a large base of consumers that use the smart phones you are not catering to.
Speak to Us
By speaking to us about your requirements we can help you develop your ideas and to give you a quote for our money saving mobile apps designed for business
Most business dream of building up a business so attractive so unique and so valuable that a huge corporation comes along and makes you a fantastic offer. This sounds like a dream come true, I know if this happened to me I would never see an English winter again . I would put the money I made from the deal to start another fantastic business. I am sure the majority of entrepreneurs dream of the big approach, the sale and the life after.
Well this did happen to Groupon but unfortunately there was no happy ending.
Billions Of Dollars Offered
Google made an offer to buy Groupon for $5.3 billion dollars at the end of 2010. Guess what the people at Groupon rejected it what were they thinking?
Did they think that Groupon’s model was unique and could not be created by another business? Wrong we now have hundreds of discount coupon sites starting up. In fact Groupon clone scripts can cost you less than $300.
Maybe the thinking behind rejection was that they were so big that no other could replace them in the market place. Wrong Google Offers is now backed with all the power money and infrastructure of the world largest search engine, they can match Groupon in a short period of time
Maybe they thought lets upset Google and get some more money out of them. Wrong every business has its price, Google must have known the cost to recreate the model and pushing hard could make the deal not viable.
Google will integrate Google Offers with Google Wallet so you can pay with your smart phone and show the shopkeeper the coupon on it. I’m sure they will eventually integrate Google maps, email, and search as well.
Groupon Profits versus Living Social
Groupon’s gross billings totaled $154 million in November 2011, up 6 percent from the $145 million it collected in October, Yipit estimated.
LivingSocial’s gross billings declined 5 percent to $52 million in November, versus the previous month, Yipit also estimated.
Gross billings are a closely watched measure of how much money Groupon and other daily deal companies collect from the offers they run with merchants. A chunk of this money is shared with participating merchants and excluded from revenue.
What will the story be next year? I predict that Google Offers will be Groupons major competitor taking bigger market share than Living Social.
So you have a great real estate website or do you? One of the mistakes that many real estate agents and developers make is thinking that a great looking website will equal lots of sales. Some web designers are still ignorant of how best to create an effective website from a search engine point of view.
A website is like a brochure that will only be picked up if seen and there lies the problem. Millions of websites are all competing for attentioan and great search engine placement. Implementing SEO services is not really an option its essential.
Search engine optimisation is a long term strategy taking time to see results. It can take months to see results and to see increase in Google Page Rank. However SEO has certain advantages over other types of online marketing.
Its cheaper form than purely Pay-for-performance programs like Google AdWords. .
It can create brand awareness – a property website that has a high rank among search engine listings means that more people will see the company’s name and become more and more familiar with the products as well as the company although they still haven’t made one single purchase.
A recent survey clearly shows that consumers are twice as likely to recognize businesses that are ranked high ( top three ) in the search engine listings in comparison to those that are appearing in the regular banner ads.
SEO services will bring paying customers right to your door step. These customers that we are talking about have entered your websites keywords or phrases into the search engines and the results showed your business.
The SEO services will help you transform regular visitors into real buyers by analyzing their behavior once they locate your site. By utilizing the content of your website you will learn how to transform these visitors into buyers in the most effective and efficient manner possible.
Too many adverts will lead to loss of search engine rankings
Beware! having too many adverts displayed above the fold could mean a stiff penalty as Google tweaks its algorithm. Is this move contradictory to its own recommendations? Will this move see loss of profits for Google as advertisers adjust how their ads and how they are displayed on a page.
We have yet another change in how Google selects which sites rise to the top in SERPS (search engine result pages) . Publishers who rely on search engine traffic to make money will have to stand up and take notice. Google calls the recent change a page layout algorithm improvement
The company wants to make sure that when searchers click on Google search results, they won’t be taken to a page where the content is hard to find. It appears this move is all about Googles determination to provide search engine users with the best sites.
I have always advised my clients that when creating a site or adding content you need to think like a search engine. Search engines think ” is this the best place to send my user? Search engines need to know its a quality page with lots of information this includes external links to more resources , video , images etc. The page payout algorithm will put into line those sites that use top heavy advertising before content read What makes great content
Google ad layout for adsense
Google May Lose Money!
I am wondering if this change will reduce the revenue of Google as publishers change how they display advertising? Google can afford to experiment but the cost to the company could end up being millions. Share holders must be nervous about the move , will the average website lose revenue from this? I am not sure it all remains to be seen.
At small screen resolutions, Google’s own search results page is one of the worst offenders when it comes to advertising clutter obscuring content. That seeming hypocrisy may leave some webmasters wondering what constitutes “a normal degree of ads” and how screen size affects what is defined as “normal.” Sticking simply with what Google has written about the change, copying Google’s search results page is probably not a good idea in this case.
The Change Means Ad Sensibly
Matt Cutts Google
Googles man Mr Matt Cutts said the algorithm tweak looks at the layout of a Web page and the amount of content a user sees on the page once they’ve clicked on a search result.
“If you click on a Website and the part of the Website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience,”
“Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”
Cutts was careful to note that Google recognizes ads placed above the fold perform well for Websites. Accordingly, Google isn’t punishing Websites that place ads at the top of Web pages “to a normal degree.”
Rather, he and his team are penalizing Websites that put what they deem an “excessive” amount of ads up top, or simply make it hard to find content on the page.
Is This A Big Change?
This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally. That means that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page.The algorithm analyzes adverts in fixed positions; the Pagerank for sites using pop-ups, pop-unders or overlays will not be affected. If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly.
Google Page Layout Video
I found this video which also explains the changes hope it helps
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Human are by our very nature social animals we like to interact communicate and learn about each others feeling and points of view. Each region, religion and culture has its taboos and the things we should do. Instilled in most cultures for example is politeness, respect, and how we should interact with each other. Can you remember growing up and your parent saying ” it’s rude to point” “cover your mouth when you yawn” “don’t speak to your elders like that”
