Google+ Events Today's New Google Feature

Google+, the social network Google is integrating into almost all of its other Web services, is rolling out a new feature today: Events. The idea is to make scheduling events and keeping track of the details (attendees, photos, etc.) a breeze.
Creating an event
To create an event, simply head to your Google+ page. Click on Events in the left-hand side menu to open the details window.
There are a lot of stock pictures with small animations -- called "cinegraphs" -- added by default in the theme section at the top of the window, and they look pretty good. You'll find choices for cookouts, dinners, weddings, nightclubs, beaches, and so on. Pick your favorite or best-fitting cinegraph.

Creating a Google+ Event.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)

Enter a title for your event, like "Cookout and beach time!" then adjust the invite settings so you can control who is inviting people to the event you're creating. Select a date and time for the event, and also a location. If you start typing in the box for location, Google will try to assist you by linking the Google Maps entry. You can add a description in the next text box. This area is good if you need to provide special instructions like what to bring, parking, or dress code. Finally you can add the people you want to invite to your event. Start typing a friend's name and Google+ will auto-complete it for you.
After all the setup, you'll be presented with a beautifully formatted event page.

Google+ event page.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)

Attending Events
When you get invited to an event in Google+, you'll see a drop-down box at the top right-hand corner of the event information that lets you select your RSVP status. Before making your RSVP official, you can hover over the "Are you going?" button (see screenshot below). This will give you the option to check your availability in Google Calendar or see directions on a map that appears.

How to RSVP for an Google Event.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jennifer Guevin/CNET)

On the Google Event page, you and your guests will have the option to invite other people (over on the right side of the page).

How to invite other people to Google Events (click to enlarge screenshot).

(Credit: Screenshot by Jennifer Guevin/CNET)

Sharing photos
This next part is arguably the coolest feature in Google Events, and it's what the company spent the majority of the time on when describing Events at today's Google I/O keynote. During an event, attendees can share their photos in real time. For this, you'll need to download the new Google+ app for Android, then turn on what's called Party Mode. This mode lets you automatically upload videos and photos to the event page, sharing them with all other attendees. You'll also be able to see whatever photos other attendees take and upload.

After the event, you can continue to upload photos to your user "folder" either from your phone or your PC. An e-mail will be sent to attendees not using Google+ to ask them to upload theirs as well. If this feature catches on, it could be the first time in the history of parties that everyone taking photos at an event actually shares photos to one repository.
Whether it's a social event or work function, keeping track of everyone's photos and RSVP status is a snap with Google+ Events.
Check out the other announcements made at Google I/O 2012.

Google: Knowledge Graph Search More

Google revamped its core product — search — in a major way a couple of weeks ago. Now it looks like the change is paying off.
Since the introduction of its Knowledge Graph on May 16, overall search activity has increased, Google representatives told The Wall Street Journal.
The company didn’t offer any numbers, but did say people are interacting more with their search results, and performing more searches.




One Google executive, Amit Singhal, said people were doing more with search partly because the new features were “stoking people’s curiosity.”
The Knowledge Graph (more generally known as “semantic search”) goes beyond matching search terms to pages. In short, it tries to discern the meaning of the phrase a person types in.
For example, if I’m searching for “Facebook movie,” Google infers I’m probably looking for information about The Social Network. It pulls data from open databases such as Freebase and Wikipedia to create a visual block of results to the right of my search results. Thumbnail images of the cast, and the movie poster, are shown alongside basic info about the movie.




Singhal said the increase in use of its product has benefits for others sites as well — if people are performing more searches, they’re visiting more non-Google sites via those links.
Google’s Knowledge Graph is only available for U.S.-based searches right now. Since the feature appears to be popular, however, it’ll likely spread to other English-language countries soon.
The Knowledge Graph and semantic search are tools within the larger trend of evolving search results. Services such as the Wolfram Alpha search engine, interfaces like Apple’s Siri and projects like IBM’s Watson are all designed to steer people to a small — or singular — number of useful results, as opposed to a grab bag of links that may or may not be what you’re actually looking for.
Have you been seeing Google’s Knowledge Graph in your search results? Do you think it’s affected how often you search? Share your experiences in the comments.

New Research Tool in Google Docs Use tips

Whether you’re a student facing final papers or a parent helping kids with research assignments, Google has just made the process a lot easier with a new tool that automates the research process.

 

Simply called “Research,” the tool lets you conduct searches for terms related to your document or search for just quotes or images from a panel that appears to the right of your document. Searching for a location automatically brings up a Google map  that you can insert as is or edit by zooming in or out. Photos can be filtered to include only those that are licensed for free use — a good idea to avoid copyright problems.  For Web page results, hover over the link to see a preview of the page. Like what you see? Click “insert link” to add it to your text.

 

Further, the Research tool lets you insert a citation, automatically formatted, into your document. Here’s how it works: After you’ve inserted a link, click “cite.” Google  will add a superscript footnote number to the link in your text and generate a properly constructed footnote at the bottom of the page.

 

There are three ways to activate the research panel. Within an open document, go to the “Tools” menu at the top of the page and select “Research.” You can also use a keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Alt+R on a PC and Command+Option+R on a Mac.  To jumpstart the process, you can right-click on a word or highlight a phrase to launch a search for your term.

Annoying Things About Your Website That Drive People Away

How many times have you ever visited an internet site and ended up sorely disappointed? Or worse, irritated as all get out? on behalf of me, the solution is a straightforward one: a lot!

So, I place along a listing of the twelve things that annoy me the foremost regarding websites. perhaps you’ll agree; perhaps you won’t.

Let’s see…

12. Music

Music blares the minute I visit your website. that's surprising, disruptive, and downright rude, from a client expertise standpoint. And, in case you weren’t positive, it ticks me (and most people) off over near to something. rouse and smell the coffee! that's therefore 2001. Frankly, it wasn’t cool even back then—but nowadays, music on your web site will mean the kiss of death.

11. Flash

Your “awesome” Flash web site takes forever to load and then blasts me with of these neat-o visuals that need me to twiddle my thumbs and waste precious time. i want data, not entertainment. live through yourselves. Quit taking note of your artistic team (and if they’re recommending Flash, rent a replacement team), and maximize the 3 seconds of attention I’m willing to convey you by telling me one thing i need or have to be compelled to apprehend.

10. Pop-ups

Pop-up ads (and that’s what they are) build me need to kill you. Yeah, i do know they’re effective at boosting click-through rates. I still hate ‘em. Stop it. Using pop-up ads tells me you don’t care regarding my experience—you simply need to sell me crap. It’s like happening a primary date, and having the date say, “Let’s fool around” before dinner hits the table. It’s an excessive amount of. Too soon. I don’t care what the consultants say. Pop-up ads build me need to depart.

9. Walking Ads

[Cue scream here.] Speaking of pop-ups, walking ads stink even a lot of. they're annoying, disruptive, and inconsiderate. I came to your website for data. you simply have one probability to create an honest initial impression, and walking ads don't seem to be the thanks to do it. I don’t care who sold you on it. It’s a foul plan.

8. Contact data

Sure, I actually have lots of patience and free time. i actually need to own to dig through your bleepin’ website to search out your contact data. that produces my life super-easy. Go ahead, hide it! Or higher nevertheless, don’t place contact data on there in the slightest degree. That’s a method to confirm we have a tendency to don’t ever work along.

7. Mystery

Websites that don’t tell me what you are doing, why i want what you are doing, and what it’s gonna value me are downright ineffective. I don’t need to dig for pricing. i need the data, and that i need it currently. Being coy may work when you’re dating, however when it involves business, I’m like Sergeant Friday on Dragnet. simply the facts, ma’am. You’ve got regarding 3 seconds of my time and attention—use it wisely. and replica that’s “mysterious” isn't.

6. Down the Rabbit Hole

Contact pages that build us feel like Alice in Wonderland? Not prudent. And when your contact type leads us to default email programs that we have a tendency to can’t stand, they cause us to right away leave your website. for example, I don’t use Mail; I don’t need to use Mail. And when your contact type automatically hundreds Mail on behalf of me, it makes curse words flow out of my mouth that are terribly unladylike. WHAT are you thinking? Stop it. Please.

5. Black Backgrounds

Black backgrounds and white or gray sort are nearly not possible to scan. With only a few exceptions (there are some sites done all right by those that apprehend what they’re doing, however they're rare), cut it out. Black backgrounds stink. And if your Web-design team thinks those backgrounds are cool, do your homework. raise those that {know regarding|realize|understand|comprehend|fathom} changing the leads that come back to your web site to sales about the performance of web sites with dark backgrounds. After all, isn’t that what you’re extremely interested in—leads that you simply will convert to sales?

4. minute Text

Fonts that are too tiny are often remedied by a surfer; I’ll offer you that. however it annoys me after I need to manually bump up the sort. And I’m thinking that if you actually have confidence what you would like from a website visitor in terms of actions, it’s not creating them do one thing to find out a lot of. Tell your internet developers with young eyes that it’s typically previous people like me who are creating the shopping for choices. The “default” font most internet developers use is sort of continuously too tiny. Bump it up a notch. Or three. You’ll be amazed at what proportion happier your internet surfers are. apprehend who your customers and prospects are; serve them data that's straightforward for them to consume—without the necessity for modifications.

3. An Undesired Delivery

I consume lots of content. And after I realize yours—and i prefer it—I need to scan a lot of. and that i need it delivered to my email inbox, not my Reader, that i exploit for various things. When your blog doesn’t take that into thought, i do know you’re not taking note. and that i apprehend you don’t care regarding me as a client, you’re solely wondering how you wish data delivered. Newsflash: It’s not regarding you. an enormous majority of content shoppers are a bit like me. they require content delivered to their email inbox instead of subscribing via an RSS feed. once you overlook that and once you don’t supply me an choice that suits my consumption preferences, it tells me you’re not taking note.

2. looking for Search

What are you doing to create it straightforward for individuals to go looking your site? You’d be amazed what number sites don’t have an easy-to-find search perform—or that don’t have a hunt function in the slightest degree. That’s simply plain dumb. make certain your web site has an easy-to-locate, easy-to-use search button.

1. Anti-Social

Where are the buttons displaying where to search out you on the Web? I keep running across websites that have social sharing buttons on them, however once you click on the buttons, rather than taking you to mention, for example, someone’s Facebook page, it permits me to share your page of content on Facebook. Seriously? As if i need to share your “About” page on Facebook? No, dummy. What I’m longing for is your complete presence on Facebook (or Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)—maybe as a result of i need to “like” you there and listen to what you’re doing. Not having social sharing buttons confirmed that you’re not collaborating within the social media house (whether that’s extremely the case). And it conjointly confirmed that you simply don't have any concept that I’m judging you—and your level of savviness regarding the digital house and also the importance of social networks—based on their absence. Is that what you want? Really?

Free Ways to Improve Your Business’s Google Ranking

Even if most small businesses don’t understand search engine optimization (SEO), that doesn’t mean they can’t be helped by it.  For those who don’t know SEO from their CEO, it is in essence a means of improving the ranking of your business in the Google search algorithm. This in turn, can help a business move up in Google’s search listing. 

Use WordPress

“WordPress is the most SEO-friendly blogging platform,” Lama said.  “It is also one of, if not the best, content management systems when it comes to SEO. Optimizing your site using WordPress, instead of the outdated website platforms which most local businesses use will help your optimization efforts.”

Keyword Research

“This is the foundation of SEO and increasing your ranking on Google and the major search engines,” Lama said. “Once you created or switched over your site to WordPress, you want to do some keyword research. Look for at least three relevant keywords you want to target.”

 Onsite Optimization

“Once you’ve identified those highly searched keywords, sprinkle them onto your site and spread them around in various places,” Lama said. “You don’t want to stuff them everywhere, though, since this will be considered ‘spamming’ by Google.”

Google Places

“After you have your website properly and effectively optimized for the search engines, you want to claim yourGoogle Places business listing,” Lama said. “You do this adding basic information about your business and being as detailed as possible in each section. For example, give your complete phone number, address, business description, keywords, hours of operation, etc.  You can further improve rankings by adding photos and asking for reviews of your business.”

Back linking

“Finally, once you’ve optimized your Google places listing, you should be ranking within a few days to a week,” Lama said. “Those rankings occur within the local listings (the top portion of Google where you see the red tabs: A, B, C, D, etc.).”  

The job, however, doesn’t end there.  According to Lama, businesses can also boost their ranking in the natural Google search results by back linking. 

“My top methods of back linking for local business keywords range from social bookmarking to profile submissions on high page rank sites among several others,” Lama said. “Each of these methods will allow you to create a valuable link back to your site, which will increase its value and relevancy in the eyes Google.”

Improving Your PageRank How to Improving GOOGLE PageRank

Below are suggestions for publicizing your site — and improving its PageRank — based on our experience getting the word out about Google Guide.

Include useful high-quality information on your site.

Create content that users want and will share with others.

Submit your site to various web directories and reference sites.

A web directory “specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links,” according to HighSearchRanking.com.
Post your site’s URL (web address) to popular web directories including Open Directory Project (ODP), Yahoo!, and LookSmart. Also post your URL to online reference, e.g., Wikipedia, industry-specific expert sites, blogs, etc.

Publicize your site to everyone with whom you communicate.

Add your site’s URL, e.g., www.googleguide.com, to every piece of communication you initiate. The TechSoup (The Technology Place for Nonprofits) article, Publicizing Your Web Site: Getting the message out there, recommends that “your Web address should be listed everywhere that your phone/fax number and mailing address,” e.g.,

• Business cards
• Letterhead
• Newsletters
• Brochures
• Press Releases
• Fax cover sheets
• Email signatures

Write a newsletter and send it out.

Inform people what’s new or noteworthy on your site. The newsletter will remind people about your site and encourage them to visit to find interesting content.

Provide a Rich Site Summary (RSS).

RSS is also known as Really Simple Syndication. JISC describes RSS as “a lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.”
In addition to making it easy for other sites to distribute your headlines and content, your RSS feed will be indexed by popular Blog search engines, including Technorati, BlogSearch, and Ask.com Bloglines.

Ask other high-quality websites to link to your website.

Getting other “good” websites to link to yours usually helps your website’s PageRank and ranking on Google.

Note: If your site links to delisted websites, your website might also be removed from Google’s index.

Provide motivation for highly ranked websites to link to yours.

Getting highly ranked sites to link to yours will improve your ranking more than getting many poorly ranked sites to link to yours.

Note: If Google suspects that you’ve traded links with other sites for the sole purpose of improving your ranking, it might penalize or blacklist your site.

Check out a site before you link back.

When you receive a request for a link, check the site before you link back. Is it a site worthy of your link, i.e., vote of confidence? Would a link be of value to your page’s visitors?

Tell the press about your site.

Telling the press may not get your website publicity. After making Google Guide live, I emailed local, national, and international press and got a poor response to our publicity.
Next I emailed journalists who specialize in search engines, but again few wrote articles about Google Guide.
Then I emailed reviewers of books on using Google. A handful responded. Some wrote that Google Guide was for novices; others wrote that Google Guide was tailored for advanced users. Wanting to make Google Guide appeal to novices and experts alike, I indicated sections that would appeal to particular users, e.g.,

• If you have little or no experience with Google, read on. Otherwise, skip to the next section, titled “Go to the First Result.”
• We recommend that you skip ahead to Part II: Understanding Search Results unless you’re an experienced Google user or you want to know how to use Google’s advanced operators.

After several months of emailing potential users and posting to websites, libraries, schools, and users began linking to Google Guide.
I tried again to get national press coverage by contacting John Markoff from the New York Times. After a few attempts, I was quoted in an article about Search Engine Wars and afterwards Google Guide got over 50,000 unique visitors/day for the following week and traffic has been good ever since.
On the basis of a suggestion from Matt Vance, I created the Google Guide Cheat Sheet and announced it on Slashdot, which generated great publicity, along with a few flames; within 24 hours, the Cheat Sheet went from being ranked so poorly I couldn’t even find it to being ranked #2 (after Google’s cheat sheet).

Keep your website up.

If your website is not accessible for an extended period of time, Google may reduce the ranking of your site.

Give away content.

I publish Google Guide under a Creative Commons License to enable others to copy, distribute, and make derivative works, as long as they give Nancy Blachman credit and link to Google Guide.
If most of your site’s content is commercial — e.g., pages about your business — consider adding other pages with useful information for the public. For example, if you sell bicycles, include pages or a blog about bicycle paths, bicycle gear, or with tips on bicycling. Publicize these and encourage others to link to them.

Translate your website into foreign languages.

If you don’t know a foreign language, find others that do. Erik Hoy, a librarian, emailed me asking if he could use some material from Google Guide on Copenhagen Main Library’s website. I suggested that he translate the whole thing into Danish, which he did.
Recently Google Guide was translated into Hebrew.

Search Google for your website.

Instead of entering your URL into your browser, search Google for your site. Google is more apt to improve the ranking of a site that users seek and visit than one that gets no traffic from Google.
When I first made this site publicly available, Google Guide wasn’t in the first 100 sites on searches for [ Google guide ]. Thanks to the sites that linked to Google Guide and users who clicked on Google Guide in their search results, Google Guide is in the top ten results for many queries that relate to the content of the site. Being listed so highly on Google has improved the traffic flow to Google Guide.

Note: For the top ranked site, Google sometimes includes useful links from within that site.

Avoid devious tactics to improve your ranking.

If Google suspects that you are trying to deceive it web crawler and thus its users by including hidden text, misleading or repeated words, pages that don’t match your sites description, deceptive redirects, duplicate site or pages, or other disingenuous tactics, then Google may delist your site from its index.

And finally…

In addition to considering the number of links to your page and the ranking of the linking page, to compute a page’s PageRank, Google considers hundreds of factors including

• how fast a site is gaining links
• how long the links persist
• when your site acquired the links
• the click through rate (CTR) of Google’s search results, cached pages, favorites on the Google Toolbar
• the stickiness of your site (i.e., the effectiveness of your site in retaining individual users)

These factors and many others are described in the article “Great Site Ranking in Google The Secret’s Out” on Buzzle.com.
Google periodically changes how it calculates a page’s importance, thereby resulting in shifts in rankings, known as a Google Dance. Google Guide’s placement in Google’s search results sometimes changes when Google modifies or enhances their indexing algorithms.
I don’t try to keep up with the latest search engine optimization tricks. Instead I strive to make searching Google easier by educating users about Google services, capabilities, and features. When I am successful, sites link to Google Guide pages and increase their ranks and importance to Google

Google+ Can Succeed at Business Without Really Trying

Google+ arrived last summer armed and ready to compete with Facebook. Yet despite more than 100 million users, the network has failed to slow Facebook’s growth or diminish its market share.
Many have already dismissed Google+ as a failed venture, but it would be premature to write off the network as a social experiment gone awry. Just as Gmail was key to Google’s enterprise play, Google+ is fast becoming the enterprise social networking tool of choice for savvy office workers.
The consumerization of IT certainly plays a role in this. In fact, a Forrester study found that the market for enterprise social collaboration is projected to increase tenfold in the next four years as more traditional services like video conferencing decline. Tools that succeed in this new era will combine communication and collaboration services with social features in much the way G+ does.
This is why G+ truly is Google’s enterprise Trojan horse. As Microsoft Office 365 becomes a viable competitor to Google Apps, G+ is what separates the two cloud-based services. The following are some of the features that make G+ a great tool for social enterprise collaboration.

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Circles

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If you’re familiar with G+, you’re aware of the Circles feature, which allows users to easily segment followers into different groups. That’s a particularly powerful concept in enterprise because a company can create Circles for various departments, clients, partners, and more.
Circles compartmentalize relationships, help save time, and provide a company with a targeted approach to content sharing. By the way, Circles can be shared, so if you just hired a new sales exec, he or she can gain instant and personalized access to your client base.
In the IT department, admins can create custom organizational units and then add users to the appropriate units, depending on what a company wants a given user to have access to. To make it even more useful Google should consider adding the ability to sync organizational units with G+ Circles, which would save time and effort for admins and end users.

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Hangouts

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As a whole, Google Apps is cutting costs for enterprise IT. Hangouts further reduces those costs because it can be used for anything from an impromptu meeting with your satellite office to a customer demo.
Admins should consider eliminating pricey web conferencing services and implement a company-wide Hangout policy for web meetings. For this to happen on a large scale, Google should consider Hangouts integration with Google Voice and the ability to dial into a Hangout via a phone line, much like with traditional web conferencing services.

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Google Docs

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Google Docs is an amazing Google Apps feature. The tool not only provides word processing and editing capabilities, but allows you to share your work and collaborate in real-time with co-workers and other business colleagues.
This March, Google integrated Google Docs into Hangouts, making word processing truly social. Users can now update documents with co-workers who may be on the other side of the world, all while feeling like everyone is working in the same room.

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Search Functions

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The new Search Plus Your World feature added to Google’s search function has received its share of criticism. In reality, it has a lot to offer from a brand marketing perspective. With G+’s integration into Google Apps, employees were given the chance to create separate personal and work networks.
Circles may have helped separate work life from personal life, but G+ for employees actually lets workers brand their pages in the company’s image. It makes for great marketing. Every time an employee +1s or shares, it’s another impression for your business.
It would be great to see G+ give users the ability to switch back and forth between work and personal accounts from the same login. This would help speed user adoption, with professional users creating personal accounts and vice versa.

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Organic Connections

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As with any social network, G+ is a great way to organically build connections that can be meaningful for your career. Check out who your co-workers are following and add them to your Circles. This could lead to idea sharing, a new sale, or even a partnership. Plus, if you’re new to the company, you can quickly get the lay of the land by following important influencers in your company and industry.
That said, creating and maintaining Circles can be tedious. A nice addition by Google would be an opt-in auto-suggest service to populate and create Circles.

Google Search Changes From March by SagarGanatra

Google has rolled out a great number of small changes to the search engine and UI over the last month, and now they have rolled them all into a big blog post for your consecutive enjoyment.
We’ve highlighted a few that seemed more relevant, but there isn’t much here that’s life-changing. All the same, it’s good to stay up on changes like this, just in case you happen to do SEO for a living (scoundrel).

• “+” is now treated as a normal character when that seems to be the intent, along with %, $, \, ., @, and #. Its days as an operator are probably over, though, except when you’re using it in an equation.
• Changing your password now logs you out from all your Google stuff, including Search.
• Better answers and live scores for Tennis, Russian Hockey, and UEFA Champions League games.
• Platform-specific results for app search – so if you search for Angry Birds, you’ll get different results on Android, iOS, and so on. Results are also richer, with stars, download buttons, and so on.
• The “Freshness” update that brought recent and differently-organized results to News searches has been rolled out more generally, apparently as a result of having acquired the “machine resources” to do so.
• Image search has gotten a handful up updates, including relevancy, better ratings for the quality of the source page (fewer trash pages Google-bombing with popular images, presumably), and Safesearch changes.
• The +1 button will show in search results in more countries and domains.

Google Says Google+ Enhanced Ads Are Up to 10% More Effective

As Facebook has proved, the social graph can be a valuable marketing tool. Google’s new social network, it seems, is no exception — the company says ads incorporating Google+ social data have seen an uptick in engagement.
Google Vice President for Engineering Vic Gundotra told the New York Times Tuesday that advertisements on Google sites with “social annotations,” such as thumbnails that indicates someone you’re connected to once clicked a +1 button on an ad, have experienced a 5% to 10% increase in click-through rates.
‘We have been in this business for a long time,” Gundotra said, “and there are very few things that give you a 5 to 10 percent increase on ad engagement.”
This sort of social recommendation is a proven boon to online advertising. After Facebook introduced new features to Sponsored Stories, which highlight Friends’ connections with marketers on each other’s profiles, Nielsen tracked 79 marketing campaigns over six months in order to determine the new format’s effect compared to ads on the platform that don’t include such information.
Ads that told users their friends had liked or interacted with a brand page saw a 55% rise in ad recall.

Gundotra pointed out to the Times one advantage Google has over Facebook in the social advertising arena. Google’s ads, socially annotated or otherwise, are delivered to users when they search for something directly.
What do I do when I’m looking to buy sunglasses? I Google “sunglasses.” That’s a great time to hit me with a sunglasses ad.
Meanwhile, on Facebook, such messages are delivered to me without this information about my intentions. Facebook knows what I like in general, but it would have a hard time pinpointing the exact moment at which I’m in the market for a new pair of shades.
But Google’s 5% to 10% uptick, while impressive, is not the biggest we’ve ever seen. When Facebook announced its “sponsored stories” feature, one study found the format had a 46% higher click-through rate than other ads offered by the site. Granted, the site’s click-through rate was never relatively stellar, but it makes sense that its strategy of implicit social recommendations immediately paid off: It has more than 500 million users who, in the U.S. at least, spend an average of 8 hours per month on its site.
Google+, meanwhile, has yet to prove that it has taken off as a social network. On Tuesday, the company revealed that 50 million people with Google+ profiles use “Google-Plus enhanced products” such as YouTube and Google Search. But that doesn’t say anything about how many people are spending time on the social network itself.
The company does, evidently, have enough active users of its social features to cause a bump in ad engagement. But when users say they spend an average of 3.3 minutes on Google+ itself in the month of January compared to 7.5 hours on Facebook, as they did in a recent Comscore report, it seems there’s potential for a much greater increase.

Google Bigger Growth Area Than Facebook by SagarGanatra

Facebook may have been a hunting ground last year for developers expanding their social mobile programs, but their sights are set on growing with Google in 2012, a new study suggests.
According to a new report by mobile platform company Appcelerator and analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC), developers are more interested in using Google products such as Google+, search, Gmail and the Android Market to implement their social strategies.
The survey — which was conducted among 2,173 developers worldwide — found that 39% of participants said the network effects of Google’s initiatives are more important to their social strategies in 2012 than Facebook’s social graph.

“Google is learning some good lessons from Facebook about what not to do and what to do better,” Appcelerator principal analyst Michael King told Mashable. “We didn’t expect Google to expect to do so well against Facebook, but it puts them at an advantage. Many developers now see Google as offering more opportunities for growth than Facebook.”
The report also found that developers have expressed less interest in developing Android apps this year “due to continued fragmentation of the platform” and are looking to expand their iOS efforts. It noted that HTML5 will play a bigger role in the mobile app development space this year.
About 79% of mobile developers who took the survey indicated they plan to integrate HTML5 into their apps in 2012. Not surprisingly, overall mobile app development continues to grow. More than half (53.5%) said they are focusing on mobile strategies compared to 27.4% in 2010.
Do you think that this is a sign that more consumers could leave Facebook to access app programs on other sites? Do you think Google+ could take on Facebook in the future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Spell-Checker Improves by Google Docs SagarGanatra

 

Google Docs updated its spell-checker today and it didn’t use a old-fashioned dictionary to do it.
Instead, Google Docs will use the web. Documents will be checked for spelling errors and words that are contextually misused such as “see” and “sea” or the all-too-commonly missed “you’re” and “your.” Google Docs will now underline misused words in red.
These improvements help Google Docs, which is free, inch closer to Microsoft Office.
“The neat thing about that system is that it’s adaptive: our suggestions get smarter and smarter based on the words Googlebot sees as it explores the web,” Yew Jin Lim, a Google Software Engineer, said on the Google Docs blog.

Not only will Google Docs save your presentation from embarrassing grammar errors, it will also recognize new words relevant to pop culture and slang talk. Web crawling allows Google to search for words that may not be in the traditional dictionary.
“Suggestions are constantly evolving. As Google crawls the web, we see new words, and if those new words become popular enough they’ll automatically be included in our spell checker — even pop culture terms, like Skrillex,” he said.
The new spell-checker is available in English for documents and presentations. Google will soon roll out a spell-checker update for other languages.
What do you think of the updates? Test it out and let us know if you find words Googlebot may be failing to identify as popular. Tell us in the comments below.

10 Google Search Tricks by SagarGanatra

1. Boolean Search Parameters

To really master the art of Google search, you can follow certain terms and tricks. For instance, rather than simply asking Google a question in the search box, include specific items such as type of file or title name.

2. Public Data

Google has an entire directory of public data, which you can also access to look up trends. Type keywords such as "population" or "unemployment," followed by a state or county.

3. Easter Eggs

Google's developers have a sense of humor -- just type in "do a barrel roll" or "let it snow" to see for yourself. There are a number of other hidden easter eggs as well.

4. Tracking a Package

If you have the tracking number for a FedEx, UPS or USPS package, type it into the search box and Google will provide you with quick updates on your package's status.

5. Calculator

Need a quick answer to a math problem? Enter the calculation into the search box.

6. Unit Conversions

Wondering how many milliliters are in one cup? Google has a built-in converter for different units of measurement, like height, weight and volume.


You can also do the same for currency conversions.

7. Sports Tracking

If you're on the go, but need a quick check on your favorite sports team, enter the team or league name into the search box.

8. Medication

Find brief summaries and descriptions for most generic and brand name prescription drugs in the U.S. by typing their names into the search box.

9. Flight Schedule

Whether you need to check the status on a U.S. flight or book a trip, there are a couple terms that can help you plan accordingly.


Enter the name of the airline and the flight number to check its status. To see schedules to or from specific locations, type in "flights from" or "flights to" along with the city or airport.

10. Sunrise and Sunset

Wondering when to catch a sunrise or sunset? If you type "sunrise" or "sunset" followed by the name of the city, Google's built-in feature counts down to the next occurrence.

 

Google is used by millions of people every single day to resolve any query you could possibly imagine. That being said, it seems there’s a hidden trick or two that even the most skilled in “Google Fu” might not know exists.

Certain tools are built in to Google’s search mechanics to provide quick, reliable answers. For example, if you need to convert a measurement unit, you’ll receive a quick answer at the top of Google search.

To improve your search experience, utilize this list of features to help refine what you’re looking for. We’ve collected 10 quick Google tricks that you might’ve not known existed.

Google’s +1 Button SEO Affects by SagarGanatra

 

Since the days of Google Buzz, the +1 button has been a mystery to users and content producers alike. It’s different from Facebook’s “Like” button, in that it doesn’t directly share content to a user’s social stream. But the cultivation of a social graph has long been the goal of Google, and its connection to search was likely inevitable.
Google defines the +1 as a feature to help people discover and share relevant content from the people they already know and trust. Users can +1 different types of content, including Google search results, websites, and advertisements. Once users +1 a piece of content, it can be seen on the +1 tab in their Google+ profile, in Google search results, and on websites with a +1 button.
The plot thickened last month when Google launched Search plus Your World. Jack Menzel, director of product management for Google Search, explained that now Google+ users would be able to “search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.” According to Ian Lurie from the blog Conversation Marketing, in Search plus Your World, search results that received a lot of +1s tend to show up higher in results.
Google has come out and described the purpose of a +1, but hasn’t necessarily explained the direct effect a +1 has on search ranking. Here’s a breakdown of what we currently know.

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Does a +1 Affect my Site’s Performance in Social Search?

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The +1 has an indirect effect on your site’s search rank. This does not mean the more +1’s a link has, the higher rank it achieves in traditional search results. Take this scenario:
When a Google+ user +1’s a piece of content, he gives it his “stamp of approval.” Then, say one of his connections from Google+ searches for the same or related topic. Because of Search plus Your World, his friend is more likely to click on the same link the original user +1’d (when a signed-in user searches, his Google results may include snippets annotated with the names of connections who have +1′d the content). This is because content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers, according to Google.
This is also true for users who are not signed in to their Google account when they search. When a user searches for the same phrase, the results might display the total number of +1’s a link has received, which is another validation that it’s a relevant link.

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How Does This Relate to SEO?

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Since the +1′d link has a chance at a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR), there is a greater potential the link will be shared, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any social network. An experiment by Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, tested the relationship between Twitter and Facebook shares and search results in Google. He found a positive correlation between the number of retweets and shares a link received and its search ranking. This means, the more the link was passed around on Twitter and Facebook, the higher the search rank of the page. This in turn led to better SEO.

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What’s the Take-Away?

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A Google +1 can indirectly lead to a better page rank. A greater number of +1’s increases a link’s potential for a high CTR, which could lead to increased social sharing, and in turn can increase its Google search rank. What’s important to note here is the correlation, not causation, between +1′s, other social shares, and search rank.
The bottom line is, the SEO effects of a +1 are very indirect, which means traditional SEO practices should not be ignored. SEO methods such as link building, relevant keywords, and URL structure have a more significant impact on page ranking.
The Google +1 feature is still in its infancy of course, and more data needs to be gathered to draw a statistical correlation to search. As Google said, “For +1′s, as with any new ranking signal, we are starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”
SEO experts, such as Erin Everhart from 352 Media Group, have a positive outlook on the future of social search. She says, “I don’t think we live in a world, nor will we ever live in a world, where any social cue doesn’t have influence over SEO.”
Are you seeing the effects of Google +1 on your SEO? Will the +1 eventually have a direct effect on search rank? Share your experiences in the comments.

Google Could Change Search Forever Graph by SagarGanatra

Google has a confession to make: It does not understand you. If you ask it “the 10 deepest lakes in the U.S,” it will give you a very good result based on the keywords in the phrase and sites with significant authority on those words and even word groupings, but Google Fellow and SVP Amit Singhal says Google doesn’t understand the question. “We cross our fingers and hope someone on the web has written about these things or topics.” The future of Google Search, though, could be a very different story. In an extensive conversation, Singhal, who has been in the search field for 20 years, outlined a developing vision for search that takes it beyond mere words and into the world of entities, attributes and the relationship between those entities. In other words, Google’s future search engine will not only understand your lake question but know a lake is a body of water and tell you the depth, surface areas, temperatures and even salinities for each lake.
To understand where Google is going, however, you need to know where it’s been.
Search, Singhal explained, started as a content-based, keyword index task that changed little in the latter half of the 20th century, until the arrival of the World Wide Web, that is. Suddenly search had a new friend: links. Google, Amit said, was the first to use links as “recommendation surrogates.” In those early days, Google based its results on content links and the authority of those links. Over time, Google added a host of signals about content, keywords and you to build an even better query result.
Eventually Google transitioned from examining keywords to meaning. “We realized that the words ‘New’ and ‘York’ appearing next to each other suddenly changed the meaning of both those words.” Google developed statistical heuristics that recognized that those two words appearing together is a new kind of word. However, Google really did not yet understand that New York is a city, with a population and particular location.
Still, word sequences and the meaning they have is something, but not enough for Google or Singhal, who was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

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Big Changes Coming

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Google now wants to transform words that appear on a page into entities that mean something and have related attributes. It’s what the human brain does naturally, but for computers, it’s known as Artificial Intelligence.
It’s a challenging task, but the work has already begun. Google is “building a huge, in-house understanding of what an entity is and a repository of what entities are in the world and what should you know about those entities,” said Singhal.
In 2010, Google purchased Freebase, a community-built knowledge base packed with some 12 million canonical entities. Twelve million is a good start, but Google has, according to Singhal, invested dramatically to “build a huge knowledge graph of interconnected entities and their attributes.”
The transition from a word-based index to this knowledge graph is a fundamental shift that will radically increase power and complexity. Singhal explained that the word index is essentially like the index you find at the back of a book: “A knowledge base is huge compared to the word index and far more refined or advanced.”
Right now Google is, Singhal told me, building the infrastructure for the more algorithmically complex search of tomorrow, and that task, of course, does include more computers. All those computers are helping the search giant build out the knowledge graph, which now has “north of 200 million entities.” What can you do with that kind of knowledge graph (or base)?
Initially, you just take baby steps. Although evidence of this AI-like intelligence is beginning to show up in Google Search results, most people probably haven’t even noticed it.

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Knowledge Graph at Work Today

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Type “Monet” into Google Search, for instance, and, along with the standard results, you’ll find a small area at the bottom: “Artwork Searches for Claude Monet.” In it are thumbnail results of the top five or six works by the master. Singhal says this is an indication that Google search is beginning to understand that Monet is a painter and that the most important thing about an artist is his greatest works.
When I note that this does not seem wildly different or more exceptional that the traditional results above, Singhal cautioned me that judging the knowledge graph’s power on this would be like judging an artist on work he did as a 12- or 24-month-old.
It could be seen as somewhat ironic that Google is addressing what has been a key criticism leveled at it by its chief search competitor, Microsoft Bing. The software giant ran a series of scathing commercials, which while never mentioning Google by name, depicted the search results most people get as comically lacking context. Most people understood that the criticism and joke was aimed at Google, and now Google is doing something about the quality of its results.
When I asked Singhal if he had thought about Bing’s criticism and realized that Bing has long advertised that its results focus more on useful answers instead of links, Singhal deflected, saying he couldn’t comment on what Bing may or may not be doing.
It’s also worth noting that millions of people now believe they already have AI search thanks to Apple’s iPhone 4S and Siri, the intelligent assistant. It uses the information it can access on your phone and through the web to answer natural language questions. Whatever Google’s Knowledge Graph can do, it clearly needs to go beyond Siri’s brand of AI.
Pinpointing exactly how far you can take the”search of the future,” however, is somewhat difficult for Singhal. “We’re building the ‘hadron collider.’ What particles will come out of it, I can’t predict right now,” he said.
On the other hand, Singhal does admit that it is his dream to build the Star Trek computer. Like Siri, you could ask this computer, which appeared on the 1960s sci-fi TV show, virtually any question and get an intelligent answer. “All aspects of computing or AI improve when you have such an infrastructure in-house,” said Singhal, referring to the massive knowledge graph Google is building. “You can process query or question much better, and you get a step closer to building the Star Trek computer,” he said.

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Beyond Search

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Speaking of Star Trek, there is another frontier that might benefit from the power of Google’s Knowledge Graph: Robotics. Singhal is, admittedly, no expert, but noted that robotics, which exists at the intersection of mechanical engineers and computing, struggles when it comes to language capabilities. “I believe we are laying the foundation for how robotics would incorporate language into the future of robot-human interaction,” he said.
It’s an exciting thought. Being a robot geek, I proceeded to paint a picture of the future that Singhal did not disagree with: Future robots with access to Google’s entity-based search engine might be able to understand that the “tiny baby” they’re caring for (What? You wouldn’t leave your baby with a robot?) is small, fragile and always hungry. The robot might even know how to feed the baby because it would know the entity “always hungry” has to be cross-referenced with the fact that it’s a “baby,” which is also an entity in the knowledge graph, and includes attributes like “no solids.”
As we talked, it occurred to me that while 200 million entities is a lot, the world of knowledge is vast. How many entities would it take for the Google’s Knowledge Graph to know the answer to everything? Singhal laughed and instead of pinpointing a number spun the question around:
“The beauty of the human mind is that it can build things and decide things in ways we didn’t think were possible, and I think the best answer I can give right now is that the human mind would keep creating knowledge and I see what we’re building in our knowledge graph as a tool to aid the creation of more knowledge. It’s an endless quantitative cycle of creativity.”

Google Tv Coming In 2012 by Sagar Ganatra

Quick and Easy Ways to Re-package Your Content into a Viral Image by sagar ganatra

5 *Quick and Easy* Ways to Re-package Your Content into a Viral Image

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This is not the first time I am doing a post on content re-packaging in different forms and types. Thus, I have already shared why giving your great articles a new life is so effective for content marketing:
✔ It brings traffic to your old content (and reanimates your old linkbait);
✔ It lets you share your guest post at your own site creatively;
✔ It brings links to both old content and its re-packaged version (which means at least twice as many links);
✔ It spurs your creativity and lets you test different types of content link bait (without the need to create new content and conduct any additional research).
This post looks at one type of content re-packaging: turning your old content into an image (and thus allowing it for download and easier spreading). 

The Evolution of Three Home Pages: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

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I haven’t watched MySpace or Digg evolve, however I can proudly say that I’ve witnessed the three other giants develop: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – and moreover, I’ve been an early adopter.
It’s fun to look back one day and remember how it has started and unfolded. It’s impossible to remember and describe everything that has happened in one post but at least we can watch their designs evolve. The three sites have much in common:

• At the beginning, the home page had to explain the concept;
• The sites are total mysteries for the outsiders (unregistered users);
• They are all user-generated and have been growing (in terms of features and options) together with the user base.

I have got nostalgic and collected the screenshots of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn home page designs through the years and compiled them into short presentations. Enjoy!

Update: Looks like Slideshare decreased the quality of the screenshots (they are a bit blurred in full-screen view), so please preview there and download the original presentations here: Facebook evolution, Twitter evolution and LinkedIn evolution (all .pptx files)

Free Formatting Checklist for Guest Authors and Paid Contributors (Download)

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One thing I have clearly realized while being a full-time guest post editor at SEJ is that most (guest) contributors (no matter how much we love them) are terrible at formatting.
It very seldom happens that a guest blogger will browse your blog for a few minutes and copy your obvious formatting preferences to his own post. Or even that he tries to make the article formatting web-friendly at all.
While your guest post style guide is up to you (by “style guide”, I mean the required article length, preferred topics, writing manner, good article samples, etc), formatting is usually similar across the blogs: we need clear code, readable paragraphs, working links, etc.
A properly written formatting guide won’t let you fire your editor: most contributors will still fail to follow all the steps properly, but you’ll be amazed at how easier your editor’s (or your own) work will become.
A good formatting checklist should be:

• As short as possible (The longer it is, the more chances there are that none of your contributors will follow all the steps);
• As concise as possible (Avoid explaining the reason why you want it to be formatted that way. The more you explain, the less obvious your point becomes. Just list your requirements)
• As easy to understand as possible (Add a few screenshots, bold most important points, etc).

Now, here’s my formatting checklist for guest bloggers and paid contributors. Feel free to download it, edit minor details (like the preferred width of images) and use it to edit your blog. It will be suitable and (hopefully) useful for:

• Guest-contributor-driven blog;
• A blog network with multiple co-authors;
• A business managing multiple paid contributors;
• A business owner outsourcing content to ghost writers, etc.

Attention: This guide requires that your blog contributor has a wp-admin (Contributor) access to your blog. Otherwise, you may ask to send you the articles in HTML.

*Download the formatting guidelines here. Read some explanations below*

 

Special Symbols (Wingdings) for Social Media Branding (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus)

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When I click through the email notifications of my recent Twitter followers, I can’t help noticing one trend: people have widely started using special symbols – Wingdings – to grab viewer’s instant attention.

Wingdings are a series of dingbat fonts which render letters as a variety of symbols.

That being said, a “winding” is a tiny image symbol that looks exactly the same in the source code of the page and in the front end.
While, essentially, there’s nothing new in using them, when it comes to social media profile branding, it appears you could achieve some positive results (there’s no substantial testing behind this assumption, by the way. I only rely on my own impressions).

1. How to Insert Wingdings on Your Social Media Profile

Here are a few noteworthy examples of Wingdings which can be used both in your “Name” and “Description” fields of your social media profile (we’ll see the actual examples of that below).
**** To use any of them in your Twitter description or LinkedIn display name, just copy-paste:

Hands	☚ ☛ ☜ ☝ ☞ ☟
Music	♪ ♫ ♩ ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯
Arrows	← ↑ → ↓ ↔ ↕ ↖ ↗ ↘ ↙ ⇐ ⇑ ⇒ ⇓ ⇔ ⇕ ⇦ ⇧ ⇨ ⇩ ⇽ ⇾ ⇿
Stars	✡ ۞ ★ ☆ ⋆ ✩ ✮ ✯ ✰ ☆
Writing	✉ ✍ ✎ ✏ ✐ ✑ ✒ ⌨
Check	✓ ✔ ☐ ☑ ☒
Smilies	☺ ☹ ☻
Zodiac Signs	♃ ♄ ♅ ♆ ♇ ♈ ♉ ♊ ♋ ♌ ♍ ♎ ♏ ♐ ♑ ♒ ♓
Cards & chess	♔ ♕ ♖ ♗ ♘ ♙ ♚ ♛ ♜ ♝ ♞ ♟ ♠ ♡ ♢ ♣ ♤ ♥ ♦ ♧
Contact! (phone / email)	✆ ☎ ☏ / ✉

Here’s a huge list of them together with their Unicode equivalents. Read on: Special Symbols (Wingdings) for Social Media Branding (Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus)

Do You Optimize Your Title Tags for Twitter?

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I know, I know, that sounds so awfully familiar. But this post is *not* about using your keywords in title tags. We’ve talked enough about title tag SEO (and most of those old tips still apply btw!)
Today’s post is about making your title tags retweet-friendly, about encouraging Twitter comments and making it to Twitter trends.

1. Simple Mathematics

This one is pretty simple and obvious: be short, be catchy.
We only have as many as 140 characters to fit the title + URL + your credit to the twit without it to be stripped. And the more character are left, the more flexibility your promoters have! Read on: Do You Optimize Your Title Tags for Twitter?

The *Working* Guide to Reaching out to Influencers Using Social Media

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I am back.
There are a lot of things going on in my professional and personal life: the main thing, I have resigned from editing SEJ to focus on my own personal projects. I am now a full-time solo entrepreneur!
In the middle of it, I have managed to have an unforgettable time in Paris, contribute to Search Marketing Standard and grow the team of MyBlogGuest.
I am full of inspiration and have plenty of plans – and I am back with my blogging here with my short (but hopefully actionable and useful) pieces of advice.

You may know that I do business from far away, I have no way to meet my business partners and contacts in the real world, but despite that I am fairly well-connected.
So here’s my recipe to building connections online: reaching out to niche influencers through social media.
Whether you are trying to pitch a guest post idea, get a review of your book or discuss a potential partnership, here’s the most efficient way to start a working relationship with your niche influencers: Read on: The *Working* Guide to Reaching out to Influencers Using Social Media

How Blocking Users on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus Works

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I am sure you have noticed that you have an option to block anyone on your favorite social media network.
Have you been wondering how blocking actually works?
Have you ever wanted to know what the person you blocked sees on your profile? Which of your information can he still access?
I’ve been wondering about that too. So I’ve been playing around making some tests and managed to make it more or less clear.