Michael Jackson heads Bing’s list of top trending topics in 2009

With the international interest in his life and death, it is little surprise that Michael Jackson topped the list of top trending topics in 2009 on Microsoft Bing.

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Michael Jackson heads Bing’s list of top trending topics in 2009

Top 5 Free iPhone Apps for Small Online Business

If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur and running a startup business, you will find that there is simply not enough time to do everything you need to. The following five applications will help you perform some important task while you are on the move and can make your life easier. The best common feature among them is that they are all free.

The FedEx Mobile Free iPhone App – If you have had the requirement to perform shipping and receiving tasks from your iPhone then this app fits the bill. The app is easy to use and has a very short learning curve. It features four options: Ship – which lets you arrange

Ground or Express shipping, Track – which allows you to track current shipments, Find – find a FedEx location close to you or in an area of your choosing, and Get rates – which will help you calculate your expenses.

An iPhone Business App from Readdle Storage – This app allows users to read business documents, books or other papers from their iPhone. Its ability to view formats such as MS Word, Excel, PDF, and TXT makes it a powerful and versatile tool for the online business entrepreneur. The current version downloads and storage up to 512 Mb which means that repeated viewing of documents will not require a connection to the internet. The new version also has a flash-based upload engine that supports multiple simultaneous document uploads.

Mocha VNC Lite-Free iPhone Apps – This app lets you access a VNC server on the go. Basically, you can access your Mac OS X or Windows PC just as you would if you were sitting in your office. This app offers an excellent way to stay connected to your business while out of the office.

Free Mobile Apps from PageOnce – Although it requires a subscription for PageOnce.com, it is free like the app. It allows you to organize multiple webpages into a single iPhone display. This is useful if you require instant access to their social networking accounts, bank accounts, investments, etc while you are out and about.

Fring’s Free iPhone App – Fring connects you to your Skype VOIP account and makes free calls anywhere in the world. This enables you to take part in phone conferences on the go and save money while you are at it.

Online Supply Chain Solutions – Comparison of B2B and B2C Website Structuring

Business-to-business (B2B) is the process of commercial transactions between businesses. This can range from transactions between a manufacturer and a wholesaler to a wholesaler and a retailer. One specific area where B2B differs from B2C is in the volume of transactions. The reason for this being that B2B transactions involve raw materials, subcomponents, etc, therefore the number of transactions is higher. For example, a business that assembles and sells desktop computers will make several B2B transactions such as buying motherboards, hard disks, casings, monitors, etc, in order to assemble a computer. The final transaction in this process is the sale to the consumer, a single sale which is also known as a B2C transaction. B2B e-commerce sites typically deal with purchase of services, products, or materials. They sometimes operate an auction platform which helps dissipate excess stock.

In the past, the term “business-to-business” was used to describe electronic communications between businesses or enterprises. Eventually this term permeated the marketing world and generally denoted industrial or capital goods marketing. In today’s terms. it describes all products and services that are used by an enterprise.

Business-to-consumer (B2C), as described earlier, is a single transaction. This is generally a retail transaction done after a product has reached the end of its supply chain. The structure of B2C sites differ clearly from B2B sites in that they are more accessible to the end consumer and typically involve a search function, product catalogue, and purchasing function. Some sites require a membership to access products. This approach enables the business to track customer orders and collect data on customer purchasing behaviors.

Google introduces new search ad formats

In an ongoing effort to produce richer ad formats, Google has been developing and testing a variety of new ad formats over the past few years. The latest of these ad formats are spot ads that include images and prices for specific products.

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Google introduces new search ad formats

Local shopping search engine Milo.com raises $4 million in funding

ilo.com, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based search engine designed to help shoppers research and buy products from local businesses, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $4 million from its first round of funding.

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Local shopping search engine Milo.com raises $4 million in funding

U.S. searches on H1N1 and Swine Flu increased 100 percent in October

U.S. searches on a selection of terms related to H1N1 and Swine Flu have increased 100 percent for the four weeks ending Oct. 31, 2009, compared with the previous four weeks, according to data from Experian Hitwise.

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U.S. searches on H1N1 and Swine Flu increased 100 percent in October

SEO: There Is No Duplicate Content Penalty

Google has long though to penalize websites that duplicate content or produce material that is more or less the same as other websites. This Duplicate Content Penalty is a myth. What happens instead is there is a lessening of pagerank and authority that goes to a page, when the search engine spiders see incoming links to the same page as different URL’s.

There are many causes of content duplication. When tracking features are appended, filtering and sorting options append parameters to the URL, a site does not link consistently by subdomain, print versions generate a new URL, etc, duplication can occur. Home pages are a prime example; while the domain resolves as the home page, clicking on any navigational links to the home page takes you to a different URL.

A lack of canonicalization can also cause duplication of content. 301 redirects are the best way to canonicalize duplicate content, deindex the matching links and consolidate link popularity. Cannibalization occurs when two or more pages from the same site target a single keyword. 301 redirects cannot help you on this one so you can try distinguishing the content so it targets different keyword themes or using a canonical tag which would be used to recommend consolidation of link popularity without redirecting the user.
By using 301 redirects and canonical tags and little common sense, you can easily avoid duplicate content and improve your SEO.

Google plans UI changes for 2010

While Google has been criticized recently for being slow to update their UI, Search Engine Land reports that there are some changes planned for 2010. Google vice president of search product and user experience Marissa Mayer outlined several changes that are being planned to the UI, including adding a permanent left-hand column for search options, allowing the user to switch between All Results, Images, News and more.

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Google plans UI changes for 2010

Ranking the search engines: Google Continues Dominance

September figures released by comScore the Internet tracking firm, show Google’s continued domination of the U.S search market. A whopping 64.9% of the searches conducted are on Google. Google sites also accounted for 9 billion searches. They also led the search market with 12.8 billion search queries. Google’s competitors are not catching up yet, but are putting up a good fight.

Yahoo! sites amount to 18.8% of the searches, a percentage that amounts to 2.6 billion searches. This puts them firmly in second place as Microsoft’s Bing achieved only 9.4% or 1.3 billion searches. Greg Laptevsky, a professional search-engine-marketing consultant had this to say about Bing “Microsoft was bound to run out of its $100 million advertising budget at some point and it’s expected to see a slow down shortly after. The big question remains: Is Bing going to retain its post-ad campaign share and exhibit incremental growth or are we going back to pre-bing query share over the next few months?”

Google increased its market share modestly as it rose by 0.3%, as did Microsoft with a 0.1% increase. This could be a direct reflection of the loss of market share experienced by Yahoo!, which amounted to a loss of 0.5%. On his thoughts on the survey, Laptevsky had this to say, “I would advise merchants to consider leveraging Microsoft’s Live Cashback Program. If Bing continues to grow its market share, you would grow your exposure with it.”

Of the top ten expanded search properties, Facebook (not surprisingly) experienced the largest growth. It showed a 19% increase in query volume to 384 million searches.

Factery Labs gives Web surfers "just the facts"

A new search engine has emerged as a challenger to Google’s throne, but this one is taking a radically different approach to Internet searches. ReadWriteWeb reports that a new API service called Factery Labs is launching today, and as its name indicates, what it cares most about is “just the facts.”

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Factery Labs gives Web surfers "just the facts"

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