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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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?
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Tags: Google, Google Places, Search, Tags
Image via Wikipedia
The position preference in AdWords allowed you to target a specific range of ad positions for your keywords. This means you could set a bid price and target positions 3 to 5 for instance for a particular keyword. I have found this feature to be somewhat useful because experimenting with ad position is a fundamental part of optimizing your search campaign. Also, targeting a range allowed me to categorize words and better understand performance based on position. And being able to position preference helped set a particular goal and optimize accordingly.
However, Google economists (who study this stuff for a living) feel that this feature is not that very helpful in optimizing a campaign. So, this feature is getting a boot. Here is the announcement:
More specifically, you can expect to see the following changes in your account:
As of today, April 5th, position preference can no longer be enabled for campaigns through either the AdWords web interface or the API. Campaigns already using position preference will still have it enabled, but if you turn position preference off in one of your campaigns, you won’t be able to turn it back on.
Starting in early May, we’ll begin disabling position preference for any campaigns still using it.
After you disable position preference (either manually or when the feature is retired starting in early May), the manual maximum CPC bids for those campaigns will be the bids position preference used most recently. Position preference tries to raise or lower your bids to target the positions you specify. So using the most recent position preference bid as your manual maximum CPC should minimize disruption to your traffic.
So, bye bye position preference. You were nice but apparently did not deliver the goods!
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Tags: AdWords, bidding, Google, position preference, search engines
Untitled, originally uploaded by @NonprofitOrgs Mobile.
Tags: cartoons, social media
Many brands are now well into the social media world. It’s no longer a new thing for them and for some social media is an integral part of their overall marketing strategy. Brands in the restaurant industry seem to be of the latter category and are making some great strides in leveraging social media to impact the bottom line.
According to the National Restaurant News the nations largest restaurant brands are using social media very effectively. Their social media strategy is to engage prospects on social media as means to driving traffic to their local restaurants. Traffic in this sense is foot traffic and for a restaurant that is critical. The article also discusses the 25 most social restaurant brands. This ranking of brands is provided by a company called Virtue. It uses social media mentions, check-in’s, photo-sharing and inclusion on blogs to determine the most prominent brands on social media.
The main takeaway from this article is not that brands are active on social media but that they are using it to drive foot traffic and subsequently have a direct impact on their bottom-line (ROI anyone). And here is how they are doing it:
“These guys are figuring out how to harness this platform and drive content and communications consistent with what their fans are looking for,” he said. “In that news feed on Facebook and Twitter, brands need to ask their followers questions, create poll questions and basically give them an opportunity to give the restaurant relevant feedback.”
Vitrue has worked with several restaurant brands like McDonald’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and Chick-fil-A to create plug-ins for their Facebook pages and offers that show up in followers’ news feeds through its Wall Apps and Social Relationship Management platforms.
Bradford said the next social-media move for major brands and their software providers is to increase the chains’ local-advertising capabilities with features meant to connect Facebook and Twitter followers to the nearest individual location of a restaurant brand.
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Tags: Bradford, Business, Facebook, Internet Marketing, social media, Twitter
Image via CrunchBase
MyBlogLog connected people before there was anything like Twitter or Facebook (at least not in its current form). It put a face on the blogosphere and made strangers friends. Soon we will be saying bye bye to MyBlogLog. Although this is old news, I wanted to write and say farewell.
Dear MyBlogLog Customer,
You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.
After May 24, 2011 your credit card will no longer be charged for premium services on MyBlogLog. We will refund you the unused portion of your subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. To make sure that your billing information is correct and up to date, visit https://billing.yahoo.com.
Questions?
If you have questions about these changes, please visit the Yahoo! MyBlogLog help pages.
We thank you for being a customer on Yahoo! MyBlogLog.
Sincerely,
The Yahoo! My BlogLog Team
In all honesty this shows Yahoo’s inability to capitalize on a potential social media opportunity and not a reflection of MyBlogLog.
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Tags: Facebook, MyBlogLog, social network, Yahoo
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