Jason Falls Predicts Google Will Buy Twitter

It is clear that Twitter is a valuable tool for business. WebProNews spoke with Jason Falls, the Principal of Social Media Explorer, who believes the reasoning behind this thinking is a result of the “conversational platform” Twitter provides for business usage. It is for this very same reason that he predicts Google will acquire the microblogging service.

Earlier in the year, Falls predicted that Google would buy Twitter by the end of the year. Although it may not happen within that time frame, he hopes and believes it will happen eventually.

Twitter rose in popularity because people were no longer happy with one-way communication models. They now want the two-way communication that Twitter provides. Falls believes Twitter is evolving back to its original purpose and becoming more of a utility for communications, instead of a platform for marketing. Although Twitter can be used for conversational marketing, Falls said it is more about the actual conversation than it is about marketing a product or service.

On the Twitter home front, it doesn’t appear that the Twitter founders are working to improve the tool and they have yet to find a monetization model. Falls believes they are trying to build a large critical mass in order to sell. He hopes Google will buy it since it is a company that desires to build utilities for people to communicate on.

Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

By Chris Crum


Social Media for SEO is Not Just About Links Anymore


Disclaimer: This article was originally written before Google made its announcement, and has been updated to reflect that.



Google and Microsoft have both inked deals with Twitter and Microsoft has also inked one with Facebook to integrate Twitter and Facebook updates into Bing search results. Google will be adding tweets to search results.

Google's Marissa Mayer says, " We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information."

There is a good chance that Google will be making a similar deal with Facebook, but even if they don't, their deal with Twitter and Bing's deals with both make it all the more important for marketers to be found in real-time searches and Facebook/Twitter in general.



A while back WebProNews compiled a list of five tips for getting found in real-time searches, which basically boils down to staying in the conversation for relevant topics that people are searching for. The tips were:

1. Use keywords
2. Talk about timely events
3. Have a lot of followers
4. Promote conversation
5. Include calls to engagement

I elaborated on each of these in the previous article. Social media is viral by nature, and real-time search is nothing more than putting things in chronological order. You have to keep people talking to stay relevant "right now."

That said, we don't know all the details about how Google and Bing will be integrating its Twitter and Facebook results into the rest of their results yet. Bing has made available a beta tool for people to mess around with for searching tweets with the search engine. "You can now search for what people are saying all over the web about breaking news topics, your favorite celebrity, hometown sports team, and anything else you use Twitter to stay on top of today," says Paul Yiu of Bing's Social Search team.
Bing - Twitter search

A spokesperson for Microsoft tells WebProNews, more specifically, the new Twitter developments in Bing include:

* A real-time index of the Tweets that match your search queries in results. This feature makes it easier to follow what’s going on by reducing the amount of duplicates, spam, and adult content.
* Giving you the option to rank tweets either by most recent or by “best match,” where we consider a Tweeter’s popularity, interestingness of the tweet, and other indicators of quality and trustworthiness.
* Providing the top links shared on Twitter around your specific search query by showcasing a few of the most relevant tweets. Additionally, Bing automatically expands those small URLs (like bit.ly) to enable you to understand what people are tweeting about. Instead of showing standard search result captions, we select 2 top tweets to give users a glimpse of the sentiment around the shared link.



Bing already displays some Tweets for certain people results at the very top of the regular web search results page. That's a good place to appear. Here is a little info about how they rank tweets in their Twitter search.

Google announced a new Google labs project that injects social media into its own search results. This was also announced at the Web 2.0 Summit. Ben Parr with Mashable has the details from Mayer:

- The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr (Flickr) photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results.

- These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.

- They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.

- It will launch in Google Labs in the next few weeks.

The deals with Microsoft and Google make social media marketing all the more important to marketing in general, and specifically search engine marketing. Where social media has generally fit into the SEO equation thus far, has been the promotion of content, which inspires links and conversation, which can in turn help search engine rankings.

Now, if status updates and tweets become directly integrated into search results in Universal Search-type fashion, it will be not only be about promotion and outside links, it will be about direct exposure right in the results, not unlike the importance of online video right now (as you're probably aware, videos are often displayed prominently on the first page of Google results).

Now, forgetting about Google for a moment, pretend that the deals with Microsoft are the only ones that happened. You may also recall that Microsoft has a certain deal in the works with Yahoo. This (if everything goes according to plan) will see Bing results taking over Yahoo's own. Yahoo may still be controlling the front-end of its search, but Bing will be controlling the back-end. Ranking for Bing will mean ranking for Yahoo.



So with Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook deals all in place for Bing, getting found in real-time searches may not only mean getting found in Twitter searches, Facebook searches, and such. It may also mean getting found in Bing searches and in Yahoo searches. That's pretty much the meat of the non-Google U.S. search market.

Now let's bring Google back into the equation. It has a deal with Twitter and may very well have one with Facebook before long. Kara Swisher who broke the news about Microsoft's deals says Google's been talking with both social networks. Still think real-time search and social media are not worth your time?

Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

Tired Of Fighting To Rank On Google?

Google is one of the most valuable and important search engines on the internet, and with that position it assumes a massive significance to any search engine marketer. If you live, breathe, and eat SEO, there's no doubt that you've spent considerable hours fighting tooth and nail to have your website rank up the top of the Google search results. As you'll know, it's not easy, and it's something that certainly attracts its fair share of remarkable strategy, incredible dedication, and masses and masses of work for marketers trying to dominate it.

What if there was an easier way to get that same kind of search engine exposure, without pouring your heart and soul into every hour of optimisation work? While Google is widely considered the most important SEO resource, once you take a step back and view the entire search world from a distance, it begins to seem much less important than many people make it out to be. With other search engines out there occupying a massive amount of the market, it often makes more sense to ignore Google altogether when trying to rank your website.

Doesn't seem like the conventional wisdom, does it? Well, in many cases the conventional wisdom just isn't the one to trust. With search engine marketing moving so quickly, what was once gospel can quickly become outdated. In this case, it's best to look outside of Google for your marketing needs, and focus on the more lucrative demographics that Bing can offer. With less competition, you'll more easily rank for your keywords and have access to a massive amount of searchers.

This free report, written and designed from the ground up to appeal to search engine experts, is packed with information on SEO 'loopholes' and which alternative providers are the best ones to go with. It doesn't matter if you're an absolute beginner, or even someone that's been doing SEO for years and years. You'll undoubtedly find some valuable new information in this free report.

Click Here To Download Your Free SEO Loophole Report

Are you ready to hang up your Google boots and get ready for a more lucrative search engine market? With the many other search engines out there, it's not a smart marketing idea to just target the biggest one. This free report will help you differentiate between the worthwhile and the wasteful, and find the SEO strategy that will produce the best results for your online business.

Click Here To Download Your Free SEO Loophole Report





Tired Of Fighting To Rank On Google?

Ready To Maximise Your SEO Exposure?

Tired of pouring valuable time and money into your Google SEO campaign only to find that it gets your business nowhere, and fast? With Google being the mega-giant of the online search world, it's easy to believe that the world of search begins and ends there. While many beginner marketers spend the majority of their resources on Google, and minimise their commitments elsewhere, the smartest marketers are focusing on the SEO possibilities that other search engines can provide, and actively ignoring Google entirely.

How can this possible help your business? With Google playing such a pivotal role in online search, it's not difficult to think that it's the most important place for your business to be. While it's a highly valuable search engine to rank on, it's not the end of the world for your business to go somewhere else. With Google being so massively competitive, you can often get a better ROI on other search websites, and with less effort and expenses you can easily dominate the online search rankings and maximise your conversions.

Ever used Yahoo and Bing? Or course you have. While they're not the giant search engines that Google is, they have impressive market share and a loyal base of searchers that continually use them. Not only this, the non-Google search engines often have higher converting traffic, significantly different demographics, and an audience with remarkably higher disposable income than most of the Google-sphere. If you want to truly target the most important customers, it's often best to look outside of Google.

This free report explains both the reasons to look outside of Google for your search engine optimisation campaigns, the benefits that other search providers can offer, and the best way to get around search engine loopholes and rules. When you need to build a great SEO campaign, it's often best to be original and remarkable. By pushing your resources outside of Google, you can achieve just that. Don't run with the crowd, have your marketing campaign stand out on its own and lead your business to massive online earnings. This free report explains all you need to know, and is concise and easy for any marketer to read.

Click Here To Download Your Free SEO Loophole Report

These same strategies have been used to gain number one rankings on Yahoo, Bing, and other leading search engines. Whether you're a small time marketer or a giant of the internet marketing world, you can produce massive conversions and long-term customers simply by appealing to different search demographics outside of Google.

Click Here To Download Your Free SEO Loophole Report





Ready To Maximise Your SEO Exposure?

How Google Penalties Can Help Your Site

In this clip, Jim Hedger takes the mic for WebProNews, and talks to Ross Dunn, CEO and Founder of Stepforth Web Marketing about how Google penalties can actually be good for your site.

Dunn is basically talking about the principle - “What hurts can make you stronger.” His point is that when you get a penalty in Google, it forces you to really pick apart your site and figure out what’s wrong. At that point, you can make it better (and perhaps better than ever).

Dunn talks about a specific example in which a client had an issue with a site. There was keyword stuffing going on, and it got penalized by Google. When they went back and cut back on the spam and cleaned it up, they got back in Google’s good graces. Dunn attributes this to the fact that the client had good content (better than competitors in fact), and Google likely recognized this fact when determining rankings after the keyword stuffing issue was addressed.

Dunn says being penalized by Google serves as a wake-up call to webmasters. He says you should get someone outside of the company to look at the site. You can consult with an SEO or a friend with some SEO experience, look for advice in forums, and/or get a site audit.

Dunn and Hedger go on to discuss how you know if your site has been penalized from Google or your rankings have simply dropped. They also discuss Google’s Caffeine update and what this could mean for SEOs. Watch the video to find out what they think about the matter.

How Google Penalties Can Help Your Site

This guys no dick

Oh, RSS Is Definitely Dead Now: Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo To Become Twitter COO

Former Google exec and the cofounder/CEO of RSS service Feedburner Dick Costolo is Twitter’s new chief operating officer, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Costolo, who sold Feedburner to Google for $100 million in 2007, left Google in July. We’d heard he was looking to start a new company, but obviously Twitter swooped in and grabbed him.

Steve Gillmor is going to love this, of course, since he proclaimed that RSS was dead and Twitter was the new messaging protocol bus, or something to that effect. “Rest In Peace, RSS,” he wrote, saying “It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter…All my RSS feeds are in Google Reader. I don’t go there any more. Since all my feeds are in Google Reader and I don’t go there, I don’t use RSS anymore.”

Santosh Jayaram, Twitter’s existing head of operations (and also from Google), will presumably remain with the company and report to Costolo.

Costolo, who is also an early Twitter investor, is someone who has actual experience building scalable infrastructures, which Twitter sorely needs. The company hasn’t launched any new features in recent memory, and continues to have regular downtime. In fact, Twitter’s inability to build features and keep the service live is a serious competitive disadvantage. Costolo can presumably fix all that.

Twitter is actively hiring more senior people, we’ve heard. In July they hired Alexander Macgillivray, Google’s associate general counsel for Product and IP, as their new General Counsel.

RSS Is Definitely Dead Now

Google Expands AdSense Euro Reporting

By Chris Crum

Now Available for More European Locations

Google has expanded the number of European places where Euro reporting is available for AdSense. Users who are in the following locations can now switch to local currency reports to view their earnings in Euros:
- Cyprus- Luxembourg- Malta- Monaco- San Marino- Slovenia- Vatican City
"Once you make this change, any earnings generated from advertisers paying on other currencies will be converted to Euros each day," says Arlene Lee of Google's Inside AdSense Team. "This also means that if you're receiving payments in Euros, there won't be any additional conversions at the end of the month when payments are issued."




Google recommends that users download and save copies of their past reports in US dollars for their own records, before they switch to local currency reports. After that, the company says to look for the green prompt in the upper right-hand corner of the Reports Overview page, and click the link in the prompt, where you'll be asked to agree to a new set of terms and conditions. Google says that it is a good idea to switch to local currency soon, because in the future, it will be a required update. More information about the new reports can be found in the help center. Google also suggests contacting your lawyer if you have questions about the new terms.

Is a Picture Worth 1,000 Clicks?

To get the most out of the images on your site, you have to optimize them. According to R.J. Pittman of Google, good image optimization starts with having the best quality of images that you can have. The next step is to have an expressive title as well as rich descriptive content that explain the image.

Webmasters also have the opportunity to provide topic tags, which are keywords that a searcher might use in a query. As Pittman tells special guest WPN correspondent Eric Enge, the more information that the user provides for the image, the better Google can index and surface the image.





Google is even developing RDFa tag structure, which would allow it to work off of a new language vocabulary that users could embed into their Web pages. The html structure would provide a means for search engines to identify various features of the image and thus provide more accurate image results.

Despite all the additional exposure images could bring to websites, Google is not seeing images being utilized as well as they could be. Pittman encourages webmasters to embrace images since they improve understanding and, ultimately, click-through rate (CTR) once they are indexed by the search engines.

Are you embracing the use of images?

Discover Who Your Audience Is

How well do you know your audience? Many advertisers think they know their audience well, but unfortunately, some do not utilize all the resources that would help them know their audience even better.
Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist with Google, explains how tools such as Google Ad Planner and Google Insights for Search provide data that help advertisers truly understand the demographics of their audience. These tools essentially allow users to build a target audience profile based on actual data and analytics.
Avinash says, “The reality is, you can focus by using data.”
He went on to say that he has found that many advertisers only have opinions on their audience but neglect to run experiments and tests to validate their views. Although experiments and tests take time, they save advertisers from targeting the wrong audience.
Is your advertising campaign working? Can you prove your target audience with data? If not, you may need to re-evaluate and make sure you truly know who you are targeting.

Google Matt Cutts Explains Caffeine Update

Google announced yesterday that it has been working on a project called “Caffeine” that will re-write the architecture for Google’s Web search. As Matt Cutts shares exclusively with WebProNews, Caffeine is comparable to the “Big Daddy Update” back in 2005, which consisted of changes to the way Google crawls and indexes websites.

How much of an impact will Caffeine have on results? Matt says there will, hopefully, not be a big difference. Google will integrate Caffeine slowly and take user feedback into consideration.

Matt says, “If we push forward as fast as we can, double down on innovation and try to do the best that we can, [and] do the right thing for users, everything else will work out.”

This infrastructure modification will lay the foundation for future indexing changes and will also allow for the expansion of website speed and size. Incidentally, it could even provide a stronger architecture for potential real-time and semantic efforts.

If you would like to try Caffeine, you can check it out at: http://www2.sandbox.google.com.

Is Twitter Scaring Google?

There have been multiple reports that Twitter could replace Google. Twitter has quickly risen to become one of the most powerful sources on the Web. In 2008 alone, Compete found that the microblogging service grew 752 percent. Do you think this might make Google, the long-standing Internet giant, a tad-bit nervous or jealous?
Chris Brogan says, “…I think Google is a bit envious. I think they don’t know what to do with it all yet.”
Does this mean that Google is letting their feelings influence how they return Twitter results? There have been some rumors that Google may let the “authority” of Twitter users play a role in their results. For example, a celebrity or a well-known “authority” such as Chris Brogan could rank higher in Google results than an average Joe user.
Do you think Google is jealous of Twitter? If so, what do you think the company’s next move will be?

What’s Killing the Newspapers?

As ironic as it may be, newspapers are currently topping their own headlines. Well-known newspapers such as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times are not only downsizing employees, but are also cutting sections and features from their publications. While the newspaper industry appears to be dying, the news itself is actually flourishing in other forms.

What’s the reason for all this? Some blame the economy and expect the government to bail out the newspapers. U.S. Senator Benjamin Cardin introduced the Newspaper Revitalization Act to Congress, which would allow newspapers to operate as non-profit organizations if they wanted to. This week, Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington State approved a tax break for newspaper printers and publishers.

Some newspapers blame Google for their struggles claiming the search engine is stealing their content. Search industry leader Danny Sullivan disagrees. He believes newspapers actually get “special treatment” from Google. There are news publications that do not appear in Google news, but so many of the complaining newspapers do. These newspapers also receive a tremendous amount of traffic from Google that many other publications would readily appreciate.

Lastly, some even say the newspapers have created their own crisis. Has the newspaper industry embraced the Internet to its full potential? Could they have approached advertising in a different way that could have produced better benefits for them? Are they monetizing their traffic in the most effective manner?

Using Social Media to Boost Search Engine Results

By Lauren Hobson

Most of us are well aware that the search engines frequently change their algorithms to improve search results for users (and foil spammers), which can make it challenging for small businesses just to keep up. But as web technology continues to evolve, it also creates new opportunities for small businesses to improve their SEO strategies and boost their rankings as well. Social media (sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg, etc.) provide an excellent opportunity for small businesses to not only promote their products and services online, but also to gain significant ground in the search engine results.

One of the most critical components to getting top search engine rankings is the number of inbound links and link popularity a web site is able to build. Although there are several existing link building strategies available to small businesses (e.g., press releases, directory submissions, article syndication, etc.), social media can help create additional high-value, on-target inbound links that are essential to achieving top placements in the search engines.

For example, each time you use Twitter to publish a link to new content on your web site, that link gets “planted” on the Twitter page of each person following you, and has the potential to spread even further as your followers share that information with their own network of contacts.

Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)^TM
If you have properly integrated your social networking profiles together, that same Twitter “tweet” could then be fed via RSS to your Facebook business profile, your corporate blog, your LinkedIn account, and any number of other social sites that you have set up for your business. It’s not a far stretch to imagine the link you broadcast on Twitter could reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other places on the web, all pointing back to your web site! By integrating your social networking profiles with each other, with your web site, and with your existing marketing initiatives, you can easily make one single marketing action (such as a tweet) show up in multiple places online, each containing a new, relevant inbound link to your site.

Quantity AND Quality
In addition to the sheer number of inbound links that are created through social marketing, the value of the links that are created is another important criterion that search engines consider. To be valued by the search engines, inbound links must be from relevant, “quality” web sites, and search engines today give social sites like Facebook and Twitter great value. These sites are highly visible to the search engines, and are constantly taking updates from users. Links tend to be shared according to subject matter, which means the search engines will see them as being relevant and on-target. All of these factors combine to create high-quality inbound links in the eyes of the search engines.

Online Visibility and Branding
Creating visibility for your business and your “brand” is really key when using social media for building links. The power of social media is realized when other users see your links or content, then share that information with their own network of contacts. Simply adding a bunch of links to your social profiles is not enough; you need to have a strong reputation and a brand that users trust so they will feel comfortable sharing your content with others. Brand recognition typically leads to natural link building anyway, which means your inbound links will end up coming from bloggers, colleagues, customers, and other people who are exposed to your links and find them useful enough to share with their own contacts.

The Proof is in the Rankings
A recent example from Website Magazine explained somewhat surprising results when they searched for their publication’s name in Google. As expected, their web site came up as the number one listing on the results page. But what was not expected was the number three listing on the results page was the magazine’s Twitter page. They then performed a number of Google searches for the terms “Chicago Tribune,” “Chicago Public Golf,” and “Daily Career Tips,” all with similar results in Google - the Twitter page for each of these terms came up near the top of the search engine results every time.

The conclusion was that given these results, Google must be giving serious weight to Twitter content, and I happen to agree. The search engines of course keep their ranking algorithms top-secret, so there’s no way to know how much weight (if any) is really given to Twitter or other social media sites. But results like those in the example above are hard to ignore!

A Great Opportunity
Social media is here to stay, and small businesses are beginning to use it to effectively promote their businesses, reach their customers, find new leads, keep customer mindshare, and instantly communicate with customers. But maybe one of the biggest benefits of adding social media to your marketing mix is the creation of high-value, on-target inbound links that can help improve visibility in the search engines and boost your business to the top of the search engine rankings.

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Lauren Hobson, President of Five Sparrows, LLC, has more than 16 years of experience in small business technology writing, marketing, and web site design and development. Five Sparrows provides professional web site and marketing services to small businesses and non-profit organizations, giving them access to high-quality services at affordable prices. To read articles or subscribe to Biz Talk, please visit www.FiveSparrows.com/biztalk.htm.

Future of Search

The search industry is always changing as a result of advancement and development. In this video, Anne Kennedy discusses these changes and how they impact the future of search.

Anne has examined the marketplace, researched Google’s investments, and studied how people use and access the Web. Based upon her investigation, she found that customers will look for products and services with video and Twitter. She also discovered that these actions would take place on mobile devices.

According to comScore, the mobile audience in the UK has increased by 10 percent. It has however, doubled in the U.S.

How does Google fit into all this? According to Anne, many people speculate that Google should purchase Twitter, comparing it to YouTube. Anne says that YouTube grew so rapidly that it needed someone like Google to maintain and support its technology. She believes the YouTube acquisition was beneficial to the search giant because YouTube is the television platform for Google to use to develop Google TV as an advertising model.

As a result of its high market penetration, Google has to constantly find methods to sell and reach its customers. If social networks continue to grow and people turn to them for search, and if Google sees that it needs to find more ways to increase its advertising revenue, Anne says that Google may consider purchasing a social network such as Twitter.

The fact that many of the social networks lack a revenue model could be one reason that large players such as Google are hesitant to acquire them. Another drawback for Google at least, is traditional advertisers.

Despite all the questions and speculations, most people agree that the industry has to build new models to quantify spending and determine results. Anne says there is a model that is currently under development called visibility scoring. It looks at the data of visibility outside the site instead of only looking at the traffic on the site.

Although marketers can see the benefits of social media especially in the area of brand awareness, C-level executives have a harder time seeing growth unless they see actual profitability in numbers. With that being said and as budgets continually get tighter, it is even more imperative that models such as that described above emerge.

More WebProNews Videos

Recession Keyword Tool

Google Speaks Out On Recession Keyword Tool and New AdWords Interface

WebProNews has emphasized the importance of keyword research many times. In order to reiterate its power and to share some new offerings from Google, we interviewed Frederick Vallaeys, the AdWords Evangelist for Google.

In this video from SES NY, Frederick first discusses a new tool called the Search-based Keyword Tool. Frederick calls it the recession tool because “it allows you to do more with less.” Specifically, the tool looks at Google’s organic data and determines new advertising opportunities for your AdWords campaigns.

The tool gives you the keyword and the destination url for the keyword. Using that data, you can apply it to your ad groups based on your landing pages and then add it into your accounts. From there, you can monetize the keywords that weren’t performing to their full potential.

This Search-based Keyword Tool is the first time Google has used its organic data in this way. Because there is so much data, you will be able to find missed opportunities. The tool also helps long tail efforts.

In addition, Frederick highlighted the new interface for AdWords. He is quick to point out that “there’s nothing changing on the backend.” There will be no changes in the way the ads run or in the pricing structure.

According to the site, the new interface “makes campaign management faster, clearer, and more intuitive.” As Frederick explains, the new interface was needed as a result of the evolving Web.

For information on both announcements, visit Inside AdWords.

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Google Details Latest Analytics Announcements

Because Google Analytics has made several announcements recently, WebProNews caught up with Paul Botto, Head of Analytics Sales at Google, to catch us up on the latest news with GA. In this video from PubCon South, Paul explains Advanced Segmentation, the Google Analytics Individual Qualification Program, and Event Tracking.

First of all, Advanced Segmentation allows users to segment their visitors according to the specific demographics they want to know. Users can compare segments and key performance metrics side-by-side. It gives a better understanding of your traffic and visitors and could let you know areas that need to be improved.

Just two weeks ago, Google Analytics launched their new skills qualification program, Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ). Google offers an online course that includes Web analytics techniques and GA implementation, administration, and analysis tools. The qualification does require a small fee, but it reflects the knowledge of the analytics user and as Paul mentions, serves also as a resume builder.

The announcement that Paul is most excited about and that directly impacts sites such as our WebProNews Videos site is Event Tracking. Although Event Tracking isn’t completely new to GA, Google has made recent updates to it since its initial release.

As the Internet has evolved, Paul says it is more interactive and provides a movie-like experience. Tracking this performance is more challenging than tracking a typical page-by-page experience.

Event Tracking comes into play here since it allows users to track what is actually taking place on the site. It shows what objects (such as a video on our site) visitors are using, what actions (play, stop, rewind, etc.) they are taking on the objects, and what labels (headlines or titles) they are using the most.

For more information on all these announcements, check out the Google Analytics Blog.

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Google Introduces Google Friend Connect API

Once again, Matt Cutts broke Google news for us. He introduced Google Friend Connect API at PubCon South in Austin, Texas and WebProNews has exclusive details in the above video.

Matt prefaced the announcement by explaining how we are all publishers now due to YouTube, Facebook, blogs, etc. He went on to say how spam should not be large concern because at this point in time, the focus should be primarily on creating good content. After considering those factors, Google released the Google Friend Connect API to help both publishers and users become more social.

Google Friend Connect API provides more participation, comments, interactions, and also less spam. A couple of people on Matt’s own team produced plugins for WordPress, Drupal, and phpBB.

Matt makes no claim of perfection on this and even strongly encourages others to create better plugins since they are all Open Source.

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Google Explains Click Fraud

Click fraud is a very complex issue. Unfortunately, much of the information available has been misinterpreted due to that complexity. In this video, Shuman Ghosemajumder of Google gives some information that will hopefully clear up that gray area.

For starters, click fraud is driven by 2 major incentives:

1. Attacking advertisers - when an advertiser tries to hide one of his competitors
2. Inflating affiliates - when an AdSense publisher tries to fraudulently increase his own revenue by generating false clicks

Methods of click fraud stem from simplistic techniques to sophisticated techniques. Simplistic methods include manual clicks such as when a fraudster personally clicks ads on his own computer. It gets a little more sophisticated when a fraudster organizes botnets and uses them for click fraud. Click farms, which consist of individuals or organizations that try to hire people to click on ads continuously, fall somewhere in the middle of the simple and sophisticated click fraud techniques.

Shuman does point out that: “the impact of invalid clicks at Google is minimal.”

Google detects click fraud through simple rules and statistical anomaly detection. Google’s simple rules consist of certain rules they have already defined as what they classify as an invalid click. Since some simple rules can be easily broken, statistical anomaly detection is more effective because it looks at specific activities on websites and compares the expected behavior to the observed behavior. This data gives Google a better understanding of how to detect invalid clicks.

For advertisers wanting to take proactive measures to prevent click fraud, Shuman advises keeping the return on investment (ROI) as the central focus. Research and gather as much data as possible, test everything, and track all results. If you apply these actions and your ROI drops for no reason, you have a good reason to suspect undetected click fraud and should file a claim.

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Understanding How Net Neutrality Affects Search Marketing

Although network neutrality is an issue that could affect everyone, it seems that people are either not concerned or simply unaware of its potential. One industry that seems to be completely blinded by its capabilities is surprisingly, the search marketing industry. In the above video Cindy Krum of Rank-Mobile discusses what would happen to search marketers if net neutrality is not preserved.

According to the nonpartisan and nonprofit advocacy organization Common Cause, the definition of net neutrality is as follows:

“Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be able to access any web content they choose and use any applications they choose, without restrictions or limitations imposed by their Internet service provider.”

If net neutrality is not preserved, sites that we use and depend on everyday such as Google and Facebook would not be here. If you remember, the Federal Communications Commission recently cracked down on Comcast for throttling content from BitTorrent and ultimately called it a matter of free speech.

Now, how does all this affect search marketing? If you have a lot of rich media content on your site that is being throttled by broadband providers, you will have to pay more in PPC because it will decrease your quality score. Also, if your content is throttled, the load time will be slow. Your load time affects SEO and PPC meaning that it will drive your costs in PPC up and drive your rankings and SEO down. Does it seem relevant now?

Ironically, the Wall Street Journal published a report today saying Google no longer supports net neutrality. While citing undisclosed sources, the Journal accused Google of approaching major cable and phone companies with a proposition to get preferential treatment for both incoming and outgoing traffic from its sites.

The newspaper went on to report that one major cable company “in talks with Google” said it has been hesitant to make a deal in fear of violating the FCC guidelines.

Richard Whitt of Google’s Washington-based telecom and media counsel responded to the accusations on Google’s Public Policy Blog saying the report was based upon a misunderstanding regarding edge caching. The flexibility of edge caching allows broadband providers to implement network upgrades but does not give them the privilege to “hamper user choice, competition, and innovation.” This practice of edge caching does not violate any net neutrality laws.

Whitt wraps up his post with the following statement:

“Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.”

In summary, educate yourself on these issues and support legislation to protect net neutrality.

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GMail Adds SMS for Some

by Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins

Do you have GMail or GChat? Do you have a mobile phone on a major US wireless carrier?

You may be in luck, then. The chat-to-SMS functionality that was rolled out a couple weeks ago, then hastily retracted, has been debuted on GMail and is available to most users.

It’s yet another Labs feature, the experimental feature area of GMail that has been getting regular updates over the last several months. This feature introduces yet another way you can be tethered to those you correspond with electronically.

Quick testing here at Mashable shows that most major carriers are supported, but oddballs like me on regional networks like MetroPCS are not serviced by the new capability, and users who message those on unsupported networks will be greeted with the message indicating as such.

To activate the service, simply scroll down under the Settings >> Labs link until you see "Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat" and select Enable and Save Changes. To actually send a message, when you click on the “search, add or invite” blank in GMail, on the pop-up menu will be an option to “Send SMS.” You’ll be prompted to enter their mobile number, which will then send all chats to their phone.

Other than the minor network incompatibilities, it seems like one of the most convenient ways to annoy the crap out of your friends from Google yet!