This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks
Facebook Tracks You Whether You’re Logged In Or Out
In news sure to wake you from your ignorant Rip Van Winkle slumber, Facebook invades your privacy on levels previously unimaginable. That previous sentence may include some hyperbole, but the world’s largest social network was recently caught with its hand in the cookie jar, so to speak.
When you log out of Facebook, it apparently “alters,” rather than deletes, your profile’s tracking cookies. A Facebook engineer responded by basically saying “It’s for the best,” a la Kathy Bates in Misery, and “We would NEVER track you…**winky face**.” Obviously Mark Zuckerberg has some more splaining to do.
Source: Techland
Real Time Reporting Integrated Into Google Analytics
“Real Time” reports will now be offered in the Google Analytics interface Dashboard, and will include such data as the number of people that visit the site per minute, the number of current visitors on the site, visitor geo-location, and of course, the keywords driving traffic.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Analytics Premium Is Available…For A Very High Price
In more Google Analytics news, Google Analytics Premium was recently released for customers seeking more advanced data and tools. The service basically operates like Analytics on steroids, including more guarantees of accuracy, more service options, and simply more data collection. It’s available for an annual fee in the U.S. and Canada, and is meant for websites that typically get more than 300 million visitors to their site each month.
Source: Google Analytics Blog
Google News Attaches ‘Standout’ Tag To Certain Articles
Unless you have HTML-ray vision and can see code instead of Google News search results, you won’t notice the “Standout” tag Google is attributing to featured content. The tag is located in the HTML header of a page, and is based on Google’s past tests of “original-source” and “syndication-source” tags to parse out properly sourced, quality content.
The tag is added by journalists or editors to the page they deem “standout,” which then results in a “Featured” label on Google News results for the given article. The idea behind it is to give smaller, useful media organizations credit for breaking an important story. However, organizations have a seven tag cap each week, so editors are forced to pick the absolute best stories.
Source: Wired Epicenter
Google AdWords For Video Beta In Limited Release
The most recent update to Google AdWords is called “TrueView,” which integrates video ads into the interface. Previously, YouTube would host these stats and accounts, and the switch includes formats such as in-stream, in-search, in-display, and in-slate. The feature is available in a limited beta.
Source: Search Engine Land
STUDY: On-Page Audits Are More Efficient When Using SEO Tools
Conductor released the sequel portion of their Unoptimized SEO study, this time focusing on missed traffic resulting from neglected SEO on-page audits. Among the study’s findings:
- Shockingly, a manual audit is the most time consuming and costly form of SEO auditing (it would take four full-time resources to fully audit 500 pages of a site),
- 35-45% of the auditing process has to involve manual use of semi-automated software
- Manual and semi-automatic audits can narrow an SEO’s view of the on-page landscape, and the gap between audit frequency (one to two weeks) and actual changes (once a week) often results in
- 87% of SEOs think auto-audit technology would make their jobs easier (once again, shocking), and 28% would audit pages more frequently if they had the proper tools
Source: Search Engine Watch
Google Chrome Is About To Leapfrog Mozilla Firefox
Since its inception, Google Chrome has been the bronze medal finalist in the browser usage sweepstakes, behind Firefox and Internet Explorer. While IE remains the most used browser, Chrome is poised to overtake Firefox, according to StatCounter. Chrome’s global average usage share in September was 23.6%, Firefox at 26.8%, and IE at 41.7%. This prediction is based on Chrome closing an eight percentage point gap since January 2011.
Source: Computer World
Google + Is Just 750 Million Users Away From Catching Facebook
Approximately one week after its release to the general public, Google + has reached 50 million users. This amounts to a 1269% increase in traffic to the social network, but Facebook’s total visits in that same seven day period dwarfed Google +’s numbers (1.7 billion visits). Small victories, Google, small victories.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Twitter’s Projected Revenue May Not Be As High As Previously Stated
eMarketer released a report that says Twitter’s projected revenue for 2011 ($150 million) will fall short to about $139.5 million, which still equates to a growth of around 210% since last year. The lower-than-expected number can mostly be explained by Twitter’s delayed release of their “self-serve” ad platform. The report also projects Twitter will break the $400 million revenue barrier by 2013, so they have that going for them. Which is nice.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Online Advertising Spending, Revenue Growing Rapidly
In “It’s a great time to work in Internet marketing” news, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers have released a report detailing the spending and revenue habits of online advertising. In short, spending on Search advertising in the first half of 2011 DOUBLED the previous year’s total growth. Search accounted for 49% of online ad spend, which display came in second at 37%.
The trends in online ads have also shifted in the pricing model category, with a 3% shift towards performance-based models.
Source: Search Engine Land
Haters Rejoice! Zynga’s Profits Have Plummeted 95%
If you hated reading about someone’s lost cow on FarmVille or their assassination of a top Yakuza official on Mafia Wars, you’ll enjoy this bit of news about social gaming company Zynga. It seems their 15 minutes of fame are at about 14:30, as the company’s profits are down a whopping 95%.
Part of this drop can be attributed to a lack of a new game since March, and increased hiring over the past quarter. Most notably, Facebook’s new stipulation that all game developers only use Facebook Credits as payment, which gives Facebook a 30% cut, was also included in the company’s explanation for its losses.
Source: GamePro
Google Blogger Introduces Dynamic Views
Blogger now offers seven diverse ways to display your blog to readers. These include a traditional Gmail look, Flipcard (tiled photos that flip to reveal posts), Magazine, Mosaic, Sidebar (looks like an email inbox with fast scrolling), Snapshot (interactive pinboard), or Timeslide (horizontal posts organized by time period).
Source: The Official Google Blog
Fire And Silk: Amazon’s New Path To Tablet Dominance
Amazon’s big news this week was the release of its newest e-reader/tablet hybrid, the Amazon Fire, which will be available for $200. However, a hidden announcement about Amazon’s tablet –specific browser, Silk, deserves its own recognition. The browser is accelerated by the involvement of Amazon’s cloud, and helps to split the task of loading complex content between the tablet and cloud itself.
Source: CNN Money
Bing ‘Tiger’ Aims To Increase Loading Speed Of SERPs
Bing’s latest project, codenamed “Tiger,” involves speeding up search results and ensuring the returning pages contain more relevant results. Tiger works on the back-end of a search, and has been gradually rolled out since August. It should also cost Bing less money, which as we learned last week, is probably a good thing.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Google Eliminates Answering Questions About Celebrity Sexual Orientation
In a move sure to enrage Rick Santorum, Google has announced it will no longer include sexual orientation direct guesses for celebrity queries seeking an answer to that question. These direct guesses to queries containing a question are based on compiled discussions about the topic spanning multiple websites.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Thinks Hulu Is Worth Around $4 Billion
According to Business Insider, recent reports indicate that Google’s bid for Hulu falls around the $4 billion range, which is double what it paid for YouTube. That’s $2.1 billion higher than the next highest bidder, which was DISH Network, and most experts believe Google’s interest in Hulu is driven by the rapidly growing population of streaming TV show viewers, as we as Hulu’s video ad impression totals, which are four times that of YouTube. If Hulu decides to sell, we should start a campaign to dub the new Google product “Goolu.”
Source: Search Engine Watch
Notable Commentary
That Doesn’t Bury The Lead
Googling Google: Lessons About Search Intent
One of the biggest lessons you can learn about user search trends and intent is that your intuition isn’t good. Bill Slawski has a lengthy post that breaks down some of what we know about user search intent, courtesy of Google-collected data.
Analysis By: Bill Slawski, Search Engine Land
Tonight’s Top 10 List: Reason Why You Are Losing Web Sales
QuBit, a research and analytics firm, recently polled 18,000 UK citizens to determine some of the main reasons people bounce instead of buy from retail sites. The list includes some obvious assumptions (Price is number one), as well as some features that are tougher to visualize for customers.
Analysis By: Erica Swallow, Open Forum
STUDY: People Have Three Mindsets Driving Search
Answer me (46%), educate me (26%), or inspire me (28%). Those are the three main mindsets people have when searching on Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Miranda Miller lays out some different ways marketers can connect with each mindset.
Analysis By: Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch
Moneyball As It Relates To Businesses And Talent Recruiters
Despite the high unemployment rates in the U.S., 52% of businesses have reported problems filling vacant positions. This is a jump from 14% in 2010, and Tammy Johns offers an explanation that falls in line with the problems facing small market MLB teams, such as the Oakland A’s.
Analysis By: Tammy Johns, Harvard Business Review
SEO Link Directory Best Practices Waiting To Be Pwned
It’s a common misconception that link directories are six feet under, but in reality, the practice has just changed over the past decade. Cyrus Shepard lays out some of the best ways to utilize different link directories to their fullest extent.
Analysis By: Cyrus Shepard, SEOmoz
Google Analytics Advanced Segments Worth Your Time
Advanced Segments in Google Analytics are great for pulling out very specific pieces of information to provide clients with a clearer picture of conversions, leads, or anything else they may be interested in. This SEOmoz post details a few of the more interesting Advanced Segments that deserve attention.
Analysis By: John Doherty, SEOmoz
INFOGRAPHIC(s): Mobile Marketing Looks Pretty In Visuals
HubSpot stuffs seven cool mobile marketing infographics onto one page. Some of the information is old news, but visual explanations often work just as well, if not better, than a written post.
Analysis By: Jeanne Hopkins, HubSpot Blog
It’s The End Of The World Web As We Know It, And I Don’t Feel Fine
Adrian Short runs down Facebook’s most recent privacy violations, and explains why social networks and search engines are restricting the “open web” in a very dangerous way.
Analysis By: Adrian Short, AdrianShort.co.uk
Hacktivists Like Anonymous Are A Rising Threat
Joseph Menn goes into great detail explaining the origins of Anonymous and other “hacktivist” groups, and how the practice is gradually becoming a serious concern for national security in the Western world.
Analysis By: Joseph Menn, FT Magazine