Google celebrates 11th anniversary with new Google Doodle

If anyone was confused by the extra “L” on the Google Search banner on Sunday, it wasn’t because a designer made an incredibly dumb typo and was probably currently shopping around his resume. The answer was actually quite simple: Monday was the 11th anniversary of Google, so the company decided to have some fun with its name plate and turn the “L” in its name into an “11.”

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Google celebrates 11th anniversary with new Google Doodle

Google incorporates Hot Trends into search results

In an effort to offer real-time search, Google has launched a new web search feature that allows users to track the latest trends on the web. Available in the U.S. and Japan, the new feature is designed to help users focus on the top, most interesting content on any given day.

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Google incorporates Hot Trends into search results

3 Most Important Email Marketing Statistics

Are you using email marketing to reach more customers? If you are here are three most important statistics that you need to look at on each of your campaigns.

1. Open Rate – this is the number of people who opened the email you sent. Most email marketing programs will provide you with this statistic as a number or a percentage of the emails that you sent. One thing to remember is that this number is not extremely accurate. It should be considered as a guideline and for comparison between campaigns. The reasons are that the tracking is most often done using a small script embedded in your email message. Anyone who has turned off scripts or is opening your email offline would not be included. It is also important to note that opening the email does not mean reading the email.

2. Click Through Rate (CTR) – This is probably the most important statistic of any email campaign. The CTR of your email campaign indicates how many people clicked a particular link in your email. This means they opened it and read it and clicked the link to arrive at your website. This is also a great measurement tool to evaluate different call-to-action methods you employ. The higher the CTR the more effective your call-to-action is.

3. Conversion Rate – This is the number of people who clicked the link on your email, came to your website and purchased the product or service. The conversion rate is generally a low number and anything above 2% is considered a good conversion rate. This is a great way to evaluate the success of your email campaign. However, if your email and visitor tracking systems are not integrated you will have to calculate this on your own. The best way to do this is to include a unique identifier in the links on your email and then track how many visitors who came to that link purchased your product or service.

These are the 3 most important elements of your email marketing program. Most email marketing tools will provide you with lots more information, but with a basic understanding of these three statistics you will be able to compare the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Google Unveils Sidewiki

Earlier this week, Google announced the launch of Google Sidewiki, a new feature that allows users to contribute helpful information next to any Web page. The new feature appears as a browser sidebar, where users can read and write relevant entries along the side of the page.

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Google Unveils Sidewiki

Web 2.0 E-Buzz Word For Internet Marketing

We hear a lot of talk about Web 2.0 and marketing in the Web 2.0 era, but what is Web 2.0 and how can it be used for internet marketing? Web 2.0 means including user generated content and social networking. In the early years websites provided information to users. However, in recent times it is all about the content provided by users, their opinions, ratings and how they perceive something. One of the best examples of the use of web 2.0 was the last presidential election.

Marketing in the web 2.0 era provides a host of new benefits for website hosts. A combination of social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon, blogs and other such websites provides marketers with the ability to reach users easily in a cost effective manner. These websites also provide a great source of backlinks and traffic to the websites. Creating a web 2.0 website means that your users will post real reviews of your product or service. These reviews can help you better your product or service and provide something great that will become a huge success. Also, it provides you with a means of interacting with your customers or users on a much higher level than before.

Web 2.0 provides significant benefits to an organization or brand that is hitting the market for the first time. Building awareness is now easier with social networking sites and social media such as YouTube and Flickr. Driving organic, quality traffic to your new website is also made easier with viral marketing on sites such as Twitter and StumbleUpon. Web 2.0 and social media and networks have changed the way the web operates and their benefits are available to everyone.

Podcasts Are a Fun Way to Generate Traffic

Creating your own podcasts and putting them on-line for everyone to download and listen may seem a little daunting at first. What if I sound stupid? What if I am not saying it right? These are the type of questions that keep popping in to your head as soon as you think about creating podcasts. Well, it’s not that hard and it is far less complicated. The challenge is to create your first podcast.

Start with a topic you are familiar with. Don’t drone on for a long time and keep it simple. You can then ask your listeners to let you know what they would like to hear about next. Most people love to know that they’ve been heard and their opinions taken in to consideration. If your listeners request for a podcast in a field where you are not an expert, do the easy thing and interview someone who is an expert. Variations like this will generate a lot of hype and excitement amongst your listeners and they will tell others about your podcasts.

Using podcasts to generate traffic means you need to let people know that you’ve added your own podcasts. So make sure to submit your podcasts to as many directories and websites as possible. You may also want to look at social bookmarking sites like Digg.com, Tagfoot and Lensroll. You can also submit your podcast to Facebook and promote your website further. It is important to ask your listeners to check out your website at the end of each podcast. Have a splash page dedicated to your podcast listeners.

Microsoft and Yahoo! discussing partnership with European regulators

Given its past history with European regulators, it’s not surprising to read a report by Computerworld that Microsoft is proceeding very cautiously in its search engine partnership that will see Yahoo! use Microsoft’s Bing technology to power its search engine while Yahoo! will use its ad sales acumen for both companies.

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Microsoft and Yahoo! discussing partnership with European regulators

Understanding Email Marketing Plans

Email marketing is a recent technique and for most marketers email marketing means spam. On the contrary, if done right, email marketing can be an extremely useful tool for the Internet marketer, spreading the word about his organization, telling people about promotions and keeping people informed about new things that are happening with his company.

Sending out mass emails to thousands or hundreds of thousands of recipients is great way to get started. There are many legitimate websites that offer email marketing services for a small fee. These tools allow use to create email lists, create the emails and send it out to specific list. Under spam rules these tools append a small un-subscribe link below your email. Users who un-subscribe cannot be added to the list ever again. Thus protecting the user and you. Enewsletters are also becoming popular amongst Internet marketers. Enewsletters are used to inform, more often a group who have opted to receive these emails about up-coming events, new products or promotions. If you are serious about starting an Enews campaign, you may also want to think about hiring a professional graphics artist and a professional writer. If you are on a very tight budget you may skip the graphics artist but having a professional writer is a must. No one wants to read copy that does not flow or isn’t grammatically correct. If you are going to enter the field of email marketing, make sure you keep it professional and send out your emails mainly to customers who are interested in your business. This will keep the number of people who report your email as spam to a minimum.

Google Buys reCAPTCHA

Google announced yesterday that it has acquired reCAPTCHA, a company that provides CAPTCHAs to help protect websites from spam and fraud. CAPTCHAs are those squiggly letters that when identified are designed to allow humans in but keep malicious programs out.

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Google Buys reCAPTCHA

Start up search engine AnyClip makes movie clip searching possible

Have you ever looked online for a favorite scene from a certain movie, only to leave empty-handed after a lengthy search session? A new search engine aims to fix that, as Slash Film says that start-up AnyClip is attempting to create a search engine that will allow movie fans to find “any moment from any film ever made.”

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Start up search engine AnyClip makes movie clip searching possible

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