I’ll admit, I was a mobile app skeptic. With HTML 5 integration and innovative web design technologies I thought mobile apps would eventually be pushed aside for more dynamic mobile websites. I thought the mobile website route was more efficient since it is less expensive and more nimble from the content creator perspective. However, the marketplace is proving otherwise. According to a new report from research firm Flurry, mobile app use is outpacing Web browsing. This includes both desktop and mobile web browsing. This is a major development.
Read more about mobile app use is outpacing Web browsing on Flurry’s website.
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- Mobile app use outpacing web browsing, says report (news.cnet.com)
- Mobile apps leaving the web behind in usage (tuaw.com)
- Consumers Now Spending More Time on Mobile Apps Than the Web [STUDY] (mashable.com)
- At 81 Minutes per Day, Mobile App Use Tops Web Browsing (readwriteweb.com)
Social Media Cartoons, originally uploaded by KiwiFlitter.
Tags: Facebook, humor, social media, Twitter
Tags: Marketing, social media
Smart phone adoption is supposed to hit 50% by the end of 2011. This will have an enormous impact on marketing (not breaking news obviously). Google recently commissioned a study to get a better understanding of how consumers use smart phones. Here is a video summary:
What stands out to me is how integrated everything is and marketers can not ignore traditional channels in favor of new ones. The smart ones will develop plans that incorporate all mediums and use it for maximum benefit.
Tags: Mobile Marketing, Smartphone
This is how a completely Adobe Flash based website appears to the Google’s search engine spider (your second most important audience segment). The snapshot below is from a real website and I’ve hidden the full URL to protect the innocent.
This means the search engine spider has no way of reading the content to determine what the site is about. The guys at Google are smart, but they can’t read your mind. Additionally, the spider has no way of navigating through the website to index the pages properly based on content. So, all the amazing content about your products, your service, your history, your people, your customers etc. is meaningless to the search spider.
In other words a site that looks amazingly awesome in Flash is rendered as a big old black hole to the search engine. That might be okay for some people but for most it is not and search remains king.
Tags: Adobe Flash, Bing, Google, Search Bot, Search Spider, SEO, Yahoo
I consume a vast majority of content via Google Reader. Most of the sites I’m interested in offer RSS feeds and many of them offer their full RSS feeds – so it’s just the same as going to their websites. I love the convenience of this setup. The only reason I go to any site is based on their content and it is usually to leave a comment. That is why nothing irks me more than subscribing to a RSS feed and only receiving their partial feed. Why? Why? Why? Do this to your readers?
As a blogger I offer full RSS feeds to all my content and I don’t see how I’m losing anything in the process. Even big name, celebrity bloggers and content providers offer their full RSS feed for the most part. So when a small time local dude wants me to visit his/her site for their content, I choose to unsubscribe (for the most part), rather than go through that one last step.
Take Poll
Today I’m not going to give you all the arguments for or against providing partial or full RSS feeds. There was a great debate on this topic a few years ago and you can read up on it here if you wish. Today, I simply want to get a pulse on where you stand today. If you are content provider or content reader vote below and tell me which you prefer, a full RSS feed or a partial RSS feed:
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- 4 Great Ways to Convert Partial RSS Feed To Full RSS Feed (maketecheasier.com)
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- How to Get Full Feeds inside Google Reader (labnol.org)
Tags: google reader, RSS, Syndication and Feeds
The Tags feature on Google Places inserted a yellow tag next to your Places listing on search results (see image). It cost $25 for this feature and when I tried it under a free trial I found it to be pretty useless. For the $25 your paid for this feature you really didn’t get anything in return. Tags didn’t improve your ranking in local listings nor did it improve your visibility any other way. Other than hoping for more clicks, there was no other tangible benefit that I could see.
To be fair there was reason to hope for more clicks, but the clutter that Googles search results pages are turning into – that’s a pretty distant hope. When I compared the stats from the month prior to using this feature against the month when I did use it, I found no difference. So, after a one month trail I stopped using Google Tags. I’m assuming enough people felt this way because I just received this in my inbox:
Google Tags to be retired on 4/29
Dear Google Places user,
At Google, we’re always working to innovate and improve ways for small businesses to get online and reach more customers. At times, though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users and businesses like you in the long run.
In that spirit, we are retiring Google Tags for all users on April 29, 2011. No action is required on your part, and your Places account and listing will continue to work as usual. Effective today, no new tags can be created, but all active tags will keep running to the end of April for free.
In your Places account, you’ll be able to see billing history until July 31st. If your tag is active, performance data will be available from now until May 31st. Historical performance data of inactive tags will be available in your dashboard starting May 2nd until May 31st.
You can visit our blog post and our Help Center for more information. There are still a number of options for you to reach more customers online, including our latest product for local businesses, Google Boost. Through the month of May, we are offering Tags customers like you $100 to try out Google Boost. Call 877-503-0841 Monday to Friday 8am-6pm to redeem your credit.
Thank you for trying Google Tags.
Sincerely,
The Google Places Team
Is anyone complaining about this? Your thoughts?
Related articles
- Google Drops An Ad Product Targeted At Small Businesses (paidcontent.org)
- Google Tags Are No More (webpronews.com)
Tags: Google, Google Places, Search, Tags
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