Google on the Prowl for Possible Acquisitions

After laying off workers, cutting back on unprofitable programs, and generally reigning in spending, Google is once again on the prowl for possible acquisitions, Reuters reports.

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Google on the Prowl for Possible Acquisitions

Wolfram Alpha Launches New Updates

Nearly three weeks after the launch of the new computational search engine Wolfram Alpha, the company made live on Monday its first wave of updates as part of its “ongoing, long-term development process,” according to the official blog.

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Wolfram Alpha Launches New Updates

Visitor Tracking 101

If you’re learning about Search Engine Marketing, understanding how analytics and tracking works is an important part of it.

All the decisions you make should be based on the site’s analytics, but in order to understand it you need to know the terminology. Here we’ll try to explain what they mean.

Page Views shows you the total number of pages that visitors load on your site. It’s not the best measuring stick, since pages are refreshed some times.

Unique Page Views show you only one visit to each page, even if someone hit refresh three times on a single page.

Frequently visited pages show you the most popular pages on your site.

Visitors tells you how many people visit your site, but it’s not an accurate measurement as it can include bots and search engine spiders.

Unique Visitors show you every visitor only once in your statistics, so you know the number of people that visit your site, not just the number of visits.

Page Views Per Visit shows you how sticky the site is. A high number of pages per visit is especially important for sites that base their earnings on CPM.

Time Per Visit tells you how much time they spend on your site, measured in minutes usually, the higher the average the better.

Geographic Location tells you where do people come from, so you know if the traffic comes from India or the United States.

Referring URL – this tells you the source of your visitors (ads, search engines, forums or blogs).

Links Clicked On Page – in some cases, analytics programs will tell you what links are clicked by visitors.

Referring Links Anchor Texts – from a SEO point of view, it’s important to know the anchor links of URL’s that people click to come to your site.

Click Through Rate – tells you how many clicks there are per thousand of impressions.

Cost Per Acquisition – this term shows you the cost of each client brought to your site.

Short Explanation of a Social Network

Did you ever try to find an analogy you can use to explain to people what the concept of social network really is? I for one have tried plenty of times.

A lot of people are asking me to explain what Twitter is. The irony here is that Twitter can’t really be explained in under 140 characters. I’ve tried myself to explain it, and I guarantee you that it took me a good few sentences to make my point. You can try though, and I for one have used “it’s like a water cooler, group IM and market research, in a single wrapping.”

But how can you explain social networks to people in a way that will allow them to understand what each one could be used for. The lines between these sites are blurry lately, one example being how Facebook becomes more like Twitter everday.

A lot of people create profiles on every big social network out there, but I only use three sites: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Explaining Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in less than 140 characters
Below you can see how I’ve described each social network so far, with some measure of success:

Twitter is a lot like a cocktail party, Facebook is pretty much like a conversation in a hallway and LinkedIn is like a business meeting.

The most professional network that I’m using is LinkedIn, where I have the possibility to connect with people from my own field of work. Twitter is a much more free environment, while on Facebook you can get both personal and professional with other people.

What I find interesting about them is that they are becoming more and more like each other. For example, LinkedIn has groups and applications, just like Facebook does. Facebook, has the “What’s on your mind?” question that is so much like Twitter. We’ll see in the future how much alike these social networks become.

Mistakes Made in Social Media Marketing

If you’re the owner of a business, you probably know that it’s very important to use regular PR (radio, print and TV exposure) to make sure your name is heard by customers all the time. The latest outlet for your PR efforts is Social Media Marketing and when you combine it with regular PR campaigns, it can give you the chance to penetrate the marketplace easier and faster.

Wondering what Social Media Marketing is? It’s about using different social networks to boost your brand. A social network is just a site where people can meet online. If you know Match.com, a social network is similar, but more towards business people. Such a site has a lot of professionals, looking to find other with interests in the same field as them. Both blogs and social networks have become very important in the last year, overcoming email as the main form of communication that people use. At the same time, the amount of time people spend on sites like these increases faster than the growth of the internet.

The first mistake that some make is that they don’t put a single face online. Basically, the image that people see when they assemble all the information that they get about you online should be coherent. You shouldn’t create more than one Facebook account for example. Only one should represent you.
The second mistake is collecting friends. Create a network of people around your business that are interested in what you have to offer. Don’t add 20 year old people to your network when your target demographic is 30 years old.

The third mistake is giving out messages that are wrong. The messages that you give out should serve your purpose. Don’t tell people that you’re watching movies and eating some popcorn when you’re on the company’s account. They don’t care and it doesn’t help your company one bit. Instead, post great advice and tips.

Is Email Marketing Still Effective?

There was a lot of talk in the last few years about email delivery and email marketing in general. Unsolicited emails (spam) are a major problem right now. A lot of ISP’s are using powerful filters, trying to fight against the problem. The problem is that these powerful filters also block good emails in some cases.

That’s why a lot of online entrepreneurs think now that both campaigns and promotional efforts should avoid using emails. However, even though there are a lot of problems associated with it, email marketing is not dead, and can still be used.

Right now, there are a lot of people that think email has lots of potential and they are using only this method to generate traffic, ignoring PPC and SEO methods in the process. I know a company that used direct marketing when they were in the offline business and now they make over $100 million each year by using only email marketing.

Is Email Marketing Going To Be Replaced With RSS Feeds?

While some people believe this, it’s far from the truth. What is great about RSS is that it brings people the content they need, without being in danger of being blocked by ISP filters and having to visit all the sites to get that information. You also have the advantage of being able to customize the information that you’re getting and on what topics. While RSS is great, it’s not the same thing as email and it can’t replace it.

Some Email Newsletters Have Been Replaced By Blogs

When the spam crisis was worse, a lot of publishers decided to use blogs at the same time with email newsletters and some even shut them down completely, leaving only the blogs. That was one of the reasons why blogs have become popular so fast.

Despite the popularity that blogs have, there are still a lot of people using email marketing as their main source of targeted traffic.

Bing Boosts Microsoft’s Search Performance

Preliminary data from comScore has reinforced earlier findings that Bing is poised to grab a share of the search market from Yahoo and Google.

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Bing Boosts Microsoft’s Search Performance

Commiting Yourself to Blog Marketing

Some marketers believe that manipulating the social media is what social media optimization and marketing really means. What they don’t realize is that gaming a social media site like a blog has short terms benefits.

The better method of approaching these sites is to remember that people are behind all successful blogs. It’s better to connect with bloggers, creating a relationship with them. There are a lot of potential customers visiting these blogs, so a relationship with those blogs can give you more clients.

Leaving the comfort zone

Just pushing doesn’t work as a strategy for bloggers. You need to get out of the usual strategies used offline and get creative, if you want to get the interest of bloggers.

Listening to Bloggers

First of all, you should be active in listening to what people have to say about the marketplace and company. You can use tools like Google Blogsearch, Technorati and Blogpulse to monitor what people have to say about you. This way you can find people with interests that intersect with your company.

Earning your presence

An important first step would be to create content of high quality, that makes bloggers interested in what you have to say and link to your site. Creating a blog and updating it regularly is a great way to share your content with other people. This is especially true if you’re a retailer. If you contribute to the conversation and start your own topics, bloggers will communicate with you. Just make sure that what you’re offering has real value.

Allocating resources

What you need when you want to commit to blogging and be successful is some guidance and training and patience. Building up and marketing a blog takes time and is a long term endeavor that should be used to complement existing PR efforts.

Bing Jumps to Number Two Spot, Overtaking Yahoo

Within days of launching, Microsoft’s new search engine Bing managed to nab the number two spot in terms of market share, overtaking Yahoo in the United States and worldwide, according to data from StatCounter Global Stats.

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Bing Jumps to Number Two Spot, Overtaking Yahoo

Dramatic Increase in Viewership at YouTube

U.S. internet users watched 16.8 billion online videos in April, accounting for an increase of 16% versus the previous month, according to data from the comScore Video Metrix service.

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Dramatic Increase in Viewership at YouTube

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