Google Business View: Street View Moves Inside

 

Google recently launched a new program that will allow popular businesses to add interior imagery to their Google Place page. The Business Photos program, which will provide Google users with 360 degree views of business interiors, will allow potential customers to "virtually visit" the interior of participating businesses.

 

View full post on Search Engine Journal

How to Create the Best Mobile Device Management Policy

 

Many corporations now allow their workers to bring their own devices such as cellphones and tablets to the office. But this can backfire if the appropriate mobile device management (MDM) policies are not properly enacted. As an InformationWeek Analytics 2011 Strategic Security Survey has found, only one in three respondents deploy MDM as part of a comprehensive security policy, a point also noticed by Forrester Research.

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Intelligence Matters! Win an iPad 2 by Prepping for RWW's Next Live Chat

 

Join us on November 1st for the next live chat in ReadWriteWeb's Solution Series! This chat's topic is spot-on for all of you working with virtualization: Intelligence Matters: Virtualize your Business Critical Workloads with Confidence .

Hosted by RWW enterprise correspondent Scott Fulton and experts from Intel and VMware, we'll be looking at issues related to managing business critical workloads in enterprise environments. To narrow down our discussion, we're asking you to tell us what you want our experts to discuss.

 

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3 Metrics Google Analytics Beginners Should Watch

 

The first login to a Google Analytics account can be daunting. There are so many things to see, and so many different ways to tweak data, that deciding which are the most important metrics to watch can be an insurmountable decision. Ultimately, in my opinion, you are the only one who can decide.

 

View full post on Search Engine Land

How is U.S. in Consuming Real Time Entertainment Stats

 

Sandvine announced the release of their 10th Global Internet Phenomena Report: Fall 2011 which includes new Internet trends and extensive analysis of the implications for communications service providers.

I found this report very interesting because I know in my family entertainment has changed massively from watching regular TV to watching Netflix and Hulu. It appears we are not the only one. So if this trend continues, and I assume it will, our industry needs to pay close attention to what advertising options arise for our clients and be the first to take advantage of them.

Major findings in the  Sandvine fall report include:

• Within fixed networks in the United States, Real-Time Entertainment applications are the primary drivers of network capacity requirements, accounting for 60% of peak downstream traffic, up from 50% in 2010. Rate-adaptive video represents the majority of video bandwidth, with Netflix alone representing 32.7% of peak downstream traffic, a relative increase of more than 10% since spring.
• We have entered the "Post-PC Era", as the majority of Real-Time Entertainment traffic (55%, by volume) is destined for game consoles, set-top boxes, smart TVs, and mobile devices being used in the home, with only 45% actually going to desktop and laptop computers over North American fixed networks.
• Video in mobile networks continues to gain momentum.  In North America, Real-Time Entertainment is now 32.6% of peak downstream traffic, while in Asia Pacific it is 41.8%.  The largest contributor is YouTube, and other applications like peercasting PPStream and Netflix are making inroads.
• Mobile Marketplace traffic accounts for 9.4% of peak downstream usage in APAC and 5.8% in North America, led in both cases by Apple and Google. Applications like Skype and WhatsApp Messenger, that replace the traditional revenue sources of voice and texting, are being installed by growing numbers of subscribers.
• In North America on fixed networks, mean usage remained generally flat at the high end (22.7 GB from 23.0 GB reported in May) and median usage dropped to 5.8 GB from 7.0 GB. This shows that while subscribers aren't using more traffic overall the usage gap between heavy and light users is broadening and that more data is being used during the small peak period window.  In Asia-Pacific fixed networks, median monthly usage is 17.7 GB, which is the largest we have observed.

 

 

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Nokia CEO Stephen Elop: "The Lumia 800 Is the First Real Windows Phone"

 

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop took to the stage today in London at Nokia World to unveil the company's first two Windows Phone devices. Despite the fact that Windows Phone 7 has been available since November 2010, Elop called the Nokia Lumia 800 "the first real Windows Phone device."

He may not really be wrong. Windows Phone has sold poorly since its unveiling and the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft is a match made to turn that trend around. Samsung and HTC, both of which license Windows Phone from Microsoft and have recently released new devices in the series, may not like to hear Elop's proclamation. Yet, the proof is in the sales receipt — or lack thereof. Do the new Nokia Windows Phones excite you? Let us know in the comments.

 

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Groupon Planning IPO in Early November

 

Groupon has announced plans to go public the first week in November.  Although the Chicago-based deal giant had initially expected the IPO to be based on a $20 to $25 billion valuation, the projected valuation is now much lower.

Groupon is planning to sell 30 million shares, which represent less than five percent of the company, at a price point of $16 to $18 per share. The IPO is expected to raise approximately $478.8 million and implies a value of $10.1 billion to $11.4 billion. Even though the implied value will be drastically lower than initially planned, it is significantly higher than the $6 billion Google offered for Groupon late last year.

 

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S. Korea Loses Top Spot According to Akamai's State of the Internet Report

 

Akamai delivers a lot of content around the globe and every quarter they look at overall trends in bandwidth and connectivity. The 2Q11 report is out now and like the last edition, you can have some fun with choosing particular states or countries and graphing their overall trends right on the home page linked above. Akamai carries a lot of the big-ticket Internet traffic across its network, ranging up to a third of overall global traffic.

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Google Puts A Price On Privacy

 

Earlier this week, Google made a significant change purportedly to better protect the search privacy of users. In reality, it specifically — and deliberately — left a gaping hole open to benefit its bottom line. If you pay-to-play, Google will share its search data with you.

 

View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

 

MC Hammer Launching "Deep Search" Engine WireDoo

 

Webpreneur Stanley K. Burrell, better known as former rapper MC Hammer, is working on a new search engine called WireDoo. His plan to enter the competitive search space pits Hammer against Google, Bing, and other established search engines

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

The Holidays: Time For Joy, Laughter & Analytics

 

Ah the holiday season. Time to welcome back apple-picking trips, pumpkin spice lattes and the smell of pine needles. In the retail search space, time to welcome back gruelingly long work days, insane volume spikes, working on days normal people have off

 

View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Why Is Content Good for SEO? [INFOGRAPHIC]

 

Brafton Infographic: Why Content for SEO? explores how content is key to search engine visibility.  They also have a related post which breaks down each area of the infographic. I like this stat – "76% of marketers who have strategic SEO campaigns in place invest in content creation."

 

View full post on Search Engine Journal

How Google's Human Search Quality Raters Assign a URL Rating

 

Google ran over 20,000 experiments in 2010 to come up with the 500 modifications they felt best improved search results for users. While there are over 200 factors, or signals, these constant updates affect their relevance and how they impact search

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

25 Tips For Giving Your PPC Campaigns a Boost

 

Paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can yield substantial returns on investment, but also needs careful control to keep budgets in check.

To make sure you maximize your ROI but minimize your risk, consider the following.

The Basics

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

Bing On Mobile Search & SEO

 

If you read this column on a regular basis, you may think that Google is the only game in mobile search. The fact is, SEOs optimize for traffic, and Google is the mobile search market leader, so it is often the focus of our mobile optimization efforts. But it's not the only game in town.

 

View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Facebook Timeline Profiles May Arrive Soon; But You Could Just Get it Now

 

Facebook's Timeline Profile design has still yet to be officially released to the public due to privacy concerns and a trademark dispute, but the latest rumors are that they will be made public on the 19th of October, according to The Next Web.

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

Why Did Google Ignore Mobile in Its Earnings Report?

 

It was an interesting quarter for Google. The search giant moved into uncharted territory with the launch of Google Plus, bringing its data-driven business squarely into the social realm. The branding of "Google+" is hard to ignore; how do you read that? It's "Google," but it's more. But to make the social network a + instead of a -, Google has to tie it into its core business – advertising targeted to searches – and use the social data to improve it.

Google can't do that without its mobile vehicle, Android, the most popular smartphone OS in the world. Mobile computing is becoming the most important kind. Its use surpassed desktop computing this year, and mobile ad revenue is exploding. Location-powered search is the key to the business, and Apple – Google's mobile competitor – is revving its engines in that space. Google Plus, the big Q3 experiment, is tailor-made for Android use. So where is Google's mobile vision in its Q3 earnings results announced yesterday? Good question. It isn't there.

 

View full post on ReadWriteWeb

Recap: Informative Articles Tweeted This Week

 

SEO

- Google Maps On Right Side Of Web Results

- How I Found 400 Qualified Link Prospects In Eight Minutes

- The Importance of Split Testing a Prospect Conversion System

- 60 SEO tips & Online Marketing techniques for ecommerce Websites

- Google's free Page Speed Online tool has graduated from Google Labs.

- How to Create a Custom 404 Page

- Local SEO Is Like Real Estate: Location, Location, Location

- Are You Tracking All That Happens on Your Website?

- Will Google Think I'm a "Scraper"?

- Google & Bing Disagree On Rel=Canonical Implementation

Online Marketing

- 9 Lessons I Learned from Running a Sweepstakes

- The Importance of Formatting Your Content for the Web

Social Media

- No Fun League? No Longer! The NFL Is Now Embracing Social Media

- Putting social media to work

- Is Social Too Hard For Most Businesses?

- Why Facebook fans are useless

- How to Optimize 7 Popular Social Media Profiles for SEO

- 18 Minutes a Day to Social Media Time Management

- 5 Cool Twitter Search Tricks To Monitor What People Are Saying About You

PPC

- Ultimate list of PPC advertising tools

- The 10 Cardinal Sins of Paid Search Marketing

Videos

- Local SEO Checklist for New Sites

- Google Answers Question About Spelling and Grammar and Site Quality

- What steps can I take to diagnose a drop in ranking?

News

- Does The FairSearch White Paper On Google Being Anticompetitive Hold Up?

- Hacked!

- Google Engineer Publishes, Then Deletes Opinionated Google+ Rant

 

View full post on Search Engine Journal

Hitwise: Google Back Above 66% US Market Share by @mattmcgee

 

Google has inched back above the 66% market share threshold in the latest numbers from Experian Hitwise. And both Bing and Yahoo saw slight drops during the month of September.

Hitwise explains that this is pretty normal: Google's market share has risen for five of the past six Septembers, while…

 

View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

18 Minutes a Day to Social Media Time Management

 

There is a saying that goes something like this: "Are you working in your business or on your business?" Translate that to social media, are you working in social media or on social media? 

 

View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest

Happy Reholidays – Three Ways to Use Remarketing This Holiday Season

 

It's that time of year again for marketers. The holiday season is quickly approaching, and digital marketers are developing their final strategies for targeting holiday shoppers. But, based on my conversations with companies over the past few months, I know there is one tactic marketers are overlooking, or are scared of implementing. Remarketing in AdWords.

If you're not familiar with Remarketing, it enables you to target people across Google's Display Network that you know already visited your website. The Display Network consists of any website that has partnered with Google to provide AdWords ads, and it includes Google properties like YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, etc. The Display Network reaches approximately 70% of internet users globally. Remarketing gives you an important second chance to get in front of prospective customers as they browse the web.

 

View full post on Search Engine Journal