Updates from:
"Search Engine Journal" - 5 new articles
- Google Places Police
- Primal: Semantically Driven Keyword Research and Brainstorming Assistant
- Why Guest Blogging Works Better Than Article Marketing
- Mobile Search Battle
- How to Setup a Publisher Account on New Digg
- More Recent Articles
- Search Search Engine Journal
Google Places Police
As Google continues to expand its Local product set and its importance to businesses it must also work towards making its system more transparent. Google Local search results still continue to be the wild west of online marketing with almost zero transparency and zero customer service for those affected.
For an increasing number of local businesses a majority of their search traffic and conversions are generated from their Google Places listings but what happens when the traffic is turned off? There is no email notification to advise the account holder that anything has happened until they log into their accounts, it's only lucky that I try to login once every 3-4 weeks that I noticed the rejected listing.
Recently I logged in to Google Places to notice that one of my client's listings Brisbane Car Services had been rejected because it didn't meet quality guidelines. The problem was that the detail around why it was rejected was so general it would likely confuse even the most intelligent consultants.
While Google makes it clear that your business listing must have all the correct information as they appear in the real world, and yes they reserve the right to suspend access to businesses violating these listing guidelines. The problem is it appears to be making up the rules as it goes along and shifts and blurs the lines to suit larger advertisers. It almost appears that the review team is killing off local listings….
So I took the time to follow the guidelines as to why it's Google Places listing had been rejected following Google's own guidelines. Following each point I checked and found that the listing had not violated anything obvious that I could see.
Ownership
Only business owners or authorized representatives may verify their business listings on Google, and this listing was done with the owner's permission.Business Name
Google Places states that the listing must represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website. Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business into the business name.The business is listed as "Sunnybank Hills Car Care" which matching the trading name registered with Queensland state government. It does not include or try to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or description of the business into its business name. The only question could be that maybe the domain didn't exactly match the business listing, which is likely to rule out a majority of businesses who are unable to secure their business name as a domain name.
Business Categories
The only element of the listing that I could see that might cause the listing to be flagged was the use of custom categories, so I tested by using mainly the suggested categories.Previous Business Categories
Newly updated Business Categories
- Mechanic
- Service Station
- Tyres (not Tires)
- Auto Repair Shop
- Brake Shop
I have seen that Google Places has started to advise limited use of the custom categories but is it really fair that they can reject a business listing based on custom listings. The biggest issue is that many of the suggested categories are based on US English such as "Tires", which can potentially alienate businesses in other countries.
Google doesn't care about small advertisers
Just as Google Places doesn't notify businesses when they have been rejected they also don't proactively contact businesses once their flagged listings have been reviewed. The continuing closed loop points to Google being its own secret police only focused on world domination via its sponsored places at the expense of organic local results.What does Google Places team monitor?
Google Places apparently monitors a variety of terms and formatting which may or may not be appropriate depending on their context, which even they admit because of their ambiguity, they often require a manual review. But even that statement has too much ambiguity to be called transparent.When can my Google Places listing be flagged?
The problem is that your Google Places listing maybe rejected at any point in the future when Google decides to change its listings rules not just when it is first created. If you have optimised your listing it's only a matter of time when Google may consider your business part of the problem and it will burn you from its Local search results.How long will it take for my listing to be reviewed?
More problems for business as Google states that the review time is highly variable and that new tickets are generally reviewed within 4 weeks, but that is enough to hurt a business enough that it would elect to use Google's new paid promoted places. The interesting point which shows it's a possible commercially motivated is that Google has started promoting the promoted places via a 30 day free trial at the top of the Google Places Policies: Quality guidelines page.
It's only a matter of time before your listing is likely flagged for a review or rejected so here is the link to lodge a support request.
Are landing pages allowed?
Reading the guidelines it appears one of the many reasons that might get your Google Places listing flagged for a review is the use of landing pages, we haven't been using them but I'm now considering it. Landing pages offer increased conversion rates and offer a better experience for consumers but it doesn't suit Google, unless you are a big business?
1. Enterprise
2. Avis
3. Budget
The above local listings links were taken from a Google Places result and all make use of landing pages from their Google Places listing, and I even think it improves the result and should be encouraged.Are you allowed to use call centres?
Google has been cracking down on the use of campaign phone tracking solutions and they prefer the individual location phone number is used. For my client that can try calling the phone number listed and speaking with the mechanics direct if they are unsure.Google Places now being policed by big brother!
- Don't use keyword friendly business names
- Don't use names like 1800 Flowers
- Don't use URLs in names like Travel.com
- Don't list if you are in a business park
- Don't list if you have multiple locations
- Don't use phone tracking numbers unless supplied by Google
- Don't use keywords Google doesn't like
Google's Policy of Allowed Terms
While I understand that Google has constantly blocked search agencies from showing in the search results, I did find it interesting when my Google Places notification was updated to reflect that "this listing does not comply with our policy of allowed terms". The notification shown below has disappeared since the screenshot below was taken last night, so great to see once again a complete lack of transparency by Google Places.
So you understand they are only trying to protect the consumer, and its likely that I must have been really pushing the boundaries of all moral and ethical standards and generally spamming the system beyond what a normal person would. The terms that you must ensure you avoid at all costs or risk having your Google Places account rejected is:
- Marketing Consultant
- Marketing Agency
- Advertising Agency
- Internet Marketing Service
- Website Designer
You can see from the list above that there is very little that is not specifically relevant to my consulting services except maybe the website designer, if this is not a clean cut example of Google stomping down business using its free local service. All of the above categories are the suggested categories and are not customised to take advantage of keywords I want to show in Google Local results, but I admit I did recently create a second account using all customised terms for the fun of it both are under review.
What you can do?
There is actually very little you can do besides lodging a request via the support form and wait around 4 weeks, until then apply for a business loan and start buying Google AdWords traffic to keep the local search traffic flowing to your website. Google has plans to dominate the world and if you don't play nice expect to have your hand bitten…Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Google Places Police
Primal: Semantically Driven Keyword Research and Brainstorming Assistant
Primal is a new interesting semantic search assistant that has drawn my attention due to keyword-research potential. It is being promoted as the tool that builds customized pages around your search term (which is not the reason I am sharing it here).
What I liked about the tool is its dynamic manner of generating related terms (as well as related terms of the related terms – are you still with me?). While there's not enough information about the sources behind that technology (are they using Wikipedia to analyze the linked data?), the feature seems pretty much addictive and I spent a good amount of my busy time playing with it and trying various search terms.
Primal Search
The first tool that introduced me to the feature was the search tab that generated the tag cloud of the related data:
If you click through any of the terms in the tag cloud, the search results will be refined to include the new term in them (as well as some closely related terms or derivations):
If you try some very specific search terms (like (brand) names, places, etc), you seem to get a bit better understanding of how the tag cloud is generated: these are not synonyms or more specific / generic concepts: the tag cloud seems to be built upon randomly related terms.
For example, the tag cloud for "Google" term includes:
- Related terms (like Google's services and tools: Google Maps, Google Talk, etc);
- "Synonyms" (If we assume that "Yahoo", "Microsoft" and "Aol" are in a way synonymous to "Google" being all categorized as search engines);
- Some absolutely random words (Those that must have repeatedly appeared with "Google" in the same context – like "2006″, "logo", etc):
Let's not forget though that the purpose of this tag cloud is to help you refine your search results (and not find related terms for the one searched).
Now, the fun doesn't stop here.
Primal Storm
There's another nice tab out here called "Storm" which (according to quite a brief help page) can be described as follows:
Primal Storm is your online brainstorming assistant. Just give Storm a few words to start and it'll suggest related ideas to expand your thinking.
I found it really to be a cool brainstorming assistant. The tool consists of three boxes:
- The first box contains your search terms;
- The second box contains "Deeper ideas" (various randomly related terms we saw above);
- The third box contains "Related ideas" (which seem to be based on the first two boxes).
Let's try to start with our initial term – [Diabetic diets]:
You can see the second column generated immediately while the third one being empty. Try adding a term from the second column (you will like the clean visual interface) and see what changes: both the second and the third columns get new terms based on what you have in column 1 (in my case focus seemed to be shifted to [weight loss] topic):
Looks like some great keyword research and brainstorming assistant – what are your thoughts?
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Primal: Semantically Driven Keyword Research and Brainstorming Assistant
Why Guest Blogging Works Better Than Article Marketing
A week ago, while I was perusing some marketing forums, I found a thread about the effectiveness of article marketing today. Halfway through the thread, there was a post about which one was better – article marketing or guest blogging.
Benefits of Guest Blogging
For me, I have found guest blogging is definitely more effective in getting traffic back to my site, as well as getting links on pages that are usually guaranteed future PageRank. Why is guest blogging more successful for these two purposes?
1) Guest blog posts usually stay on the homepage longer.
Unless you are guest blogging for sites that produce several articles a day, like Mashable, your guest blog post is likely going to be on the homepage for a while. On this site, posts are usually on the homepage for at least two days, whereas sites that only post once a day will likely have your post on the homepage for a week.
Articles on article directories, on the other hand, will likely not make the first page unless it is featured, or the site posts latest articles on their homepages. But chances are, with the volume of articles that a directory receives, even those will not stay on the homepage for that long.
2) Blogs have their own subscriber base.
Most blogs have their own subscribers, meaning there are people that will get every post on that blog delivered to their email or their RSS reader. Plus, there are subscribers who follow blogs on social networks – they will see the blog's latest posts through the blog's Twitter stream, Facebook page, Stumble shares, and so on.
When it comes to article directories, some do offer RSS feeds for particular categories or, if you're lucky, you might have someone who follows your articles directly through your own RSS feed. The latter is likely to have fewer followers than a blog though.
3) Blog posts are promoted by both the poster and the blog itself.
What really separates guest blog posts from articles is the promotion. Whenever a blogger places a guest post on their site, it is in their interest to promote the post to their network to drive traffic to their site. The guest blogger (9 out of 10 times) will likely be promoting their guest post to their network as well. This will drive two different follower bases to the post, leading to much more social sharing (assuming the content is good).
Article directories generally do not promote articles, with exception to featured articles, due to the high volume of articles being posted daily. Many article writers, especially if they are mass producing articles, generally do not promote their articles either.
4) Guest blog guidelines are usually stricter than those on an article directory.
Bloggers typically have higher standards (or guest blogging guidelines) when it comes to what they will allow as guest posts on their site. They want more words, photos, resourceful links, and sometimes even fully formatted posts ready to drop into WordPress. And because they do not receive a high volume of guest post submissions (in comparison to the number of articles entered daily on popular article directories), the blog owner will spend more time reviewing the submission and is likely not to accept anything that does not meet their high standards.
Article directories typically have a shorter article length requirement, and many do not allow pictures, links or other embedded content – just text. So long as your article doesn't set off any automated checks in their computer system, lower quality articles will get approved easily. And, of course, if the article content itself is lower quality, it is less likely to get featured by the article directory or promoted by others.
5) Networking opportunities created by guest blogging.
One major benefit of guest blogging over for article writing is the networking opportunities and relationship you build. If you produce great content for a guest post on a blog, the blog owner will probably be very appreciative, especially if it does well.
How does this help you in your link building efforts? Simple – it the blog owner owns other sites, you have a prime opportunity of getting featured on those as well.
An example of this happened just recently. I was emailing different infographic gallery sites to suggest inclusion of a fun, animated SEO infographic that visually explains quality link building and PageRank value.
One of the infographic sites got back to me surprisingly fast – it turned out the owner also runs a blog that I regularly contribute articles to. They added the infographic I suggested the same day in a new post!
Making Article Marketing More Effective
Now that you know some of the benefits of guest blogging over article marketing, what can you do to make your articles just as valuable as guest blog posts?
1) Write higher quality articles to get featured.
Do a little research to see which articles get featured on the article directory you are submitting to, preferably in your category. Or look at some expert blogs on your topic – Postrank, for example, will give you the top blogs on almost any subject. Writing better content will make it more likely that a directory will find it valuable and feature it on the homepage and even tweet it (which would be great on EzineArticles, since they have almost 60,000 followers).
2) Get involved with the article directory's community.
After providing great content, another way to get featured is to get votes and comments from other members of the article directory's community. Did you know that HubPages and Squidoo allow you to follow other users as well as interact in forums and answers? EzineArticles also has their own forums. Interacting in these forums and with other members will most likely lead to opportunities to promote your article (especially in the forums, be sure that your article answers a question that another member asks before promoting it). Squidoo also offers "Squidcasts" so you can send a message to all of your followers about your latest articles, or lenses.
3) Promote your articles.
Social promotion of your articles on article directories is likely to get your article more exposure, especially if you are networking with other article writers on your preferred article directories. Find people on Twitter and Facebook that would be interested in the topic you write about and connect with them. Be sure to interact with them often (by retweeting their posts, answering their questions, liking their links, etc.) so that they will get to know you better and would be then likely to promote your content with their network as well.
Another way to promote your article directory submissions is by blog commenting – you can either leave the link to your article as your website URL (assuming the site doesn't have a comment policy against deep links) or use blogs that CommentLuv enabled to get a link to your author bio and to your latest article.
4) Build links to your articles.
Along with building links to your articles via blog commenting, there are other ways to build links to your articles.
- There are independent directories where you can submit articles from Squidoo, HubPages, and other site's articles.
- Some Squidoo lenses allow you to add your lens links to theirs – just Google your keyword "add to this list" site:squidoo.com.
- If your HubPage fits well with another, you can leave a link to it in your comment on another hub (this borders link/comment spamming – be sure your hub really adds value to the hub you are commenting on).
- Assuming the article directory hasn't been banned, you can bookmark your article on social sites such as Delicious, Digg, and other social bookmarking networks.
- If the article directory has an author RSS feed, you can submit your author feed to RSS submission sites.
5) Connect with top article writers.
Going back to getting involved with the article directory community, be sure to also try to network with some of the top article writers on the site. Getting in good with other writers may help you get your article get linked in one of theirs as well, giving you exposure on top rated articles on a particular network.
Even a friendly link request to another author can pan out successfully. After writing an article on how to promote Squidoo lenses, I messaged a few related lens writers to suggest mine as a good resource for their readers, which resulted in getting a dofollow link on an existing PR 4 lens on SEO tips.
Using these techniques will help your articles become more powerful in terms of ratings, rankings, and traffic.
Your Article Marketing vs. Guest Blogging Strategy
What do you find more beneficial for driving traffic and building links to your website – article marketing or guest blogging? What other tips can you think of to help promote your articles on directories to make them more valuable?
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Why Guest Blogging Works Better Than Article Marketing
Mobile Search Battle
Mobile search is as big as it has ever been. Nearly 83% of American Adults have cell phones, with 20% of those being smart devices, one can see marketers urgency to grab their piece of the pie. Towards the end of the second quarter of 2010, a turf war has started to develop between everyone's favorite tech giants Apple and Google.
There have been reports Apple has their own search engine in the making, and more recently, they've announced their new ad platform iAd. Steve Jobs announced that the new operating system from Apple will include advertising capabilities (iAd) allowing the developers of the programs available in the App store to have ads in their software. PPC meet Mr. App, have you guys met before?
This sets a scary precedent. I can't wait until the day when I open Yelp and get hit with a restaurant ad from the highest bidder.
Furthermore, why wouldn't Apple try to conquer on the one thing Google doesn't completely dominate? (Mobile Search) iPhones make up nearly 65% of the market in mobile web browsing, almost 8 times the more than the closest competitor; Google's Android.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Apple probably isn't overjoyed with the fact that Google is even competing with them in the mobile sector, let alone that Google search is the preferred search of iPhone users. Gene Munster, top Apple analyst of Piper Jaffray recently stated, "We believe Apple could utilize data unavailable to Google, generated by the company's App Store, to create a mobile centric search engine, which could be a unique offering to Google's search engine."
As everyone knows, mobile search is generally has some sort of local or geographic intention, is Apple taking this into consideration? From my perspective I think Apple needs to act now to have any chance at competing with Google in the local search arena.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Mobile Search Battle
How to Setup a Publisher Account on New Digg
Digg will lift bans on all domains in version 4. A big change in their v4 interface is that Digg is allowing publishers to open official publisher accounts for their websites.
More topics will be covered on Digg. Users will be exposed to content Dugg by the people or accounts they follow. Many media properties with which I work are already acquiring followers having opened their accounts on the new interface.
I recommend people should be posting links to their existing Digg accounts with requesting people to follow them like so: 'Follow me on Digg.' All your existing friends and fans will become your followers. I emailed Erin Ryan at Digg who wrote what were the exact steps publishers should take to open their accounts on New Digg v4. I list the process in the following video.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
How to Setup a Publisher Account on New Digg
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"Gizmos" - 4 new articles
- El iPhone 4 a la venta éste viernes en otros 17 países
- Pronto llega otro modelo de Xbox 360, ahora con 4GB
- iPad clonado por $125
- Filtrada nueva cámara de vídeo 3D de Panasonic
- More Recent Articles
- Search Gizmos
El iPhone 4 a la venta éste viernes en otros 17 países
Éste viernes día 30 de julio el polémico iPhone 4 aterriza en otros 17 países, y entre ellos se encuentra España.
Teniendo en cuenta los problemas generados por el móvil y las críticas recibidas por Apple, resultará interesante ver cómo se recibe el producto entre los usuarios.
Los países elegidos para el nuevo lanzamiento son los siguientes: Australia, Austria, Bélgica, Canadá, Dinamarca, Finlandia, Hong Kong, Irlanda, Italia, Luxemburgo, Países Bajos, Noruega, Nueva Zelanda, Singapur, España, Suecia, y Suiza.
El dispositivo se venderá tanto en tiendas oficiales de Apple como en establecimientos autorizados por la compañía. En Corea del Sur también se esperaba lanzar el móvil, pero las autoridades del país han paralizado su salida por razones reguladoras. Al parecer los sur coreanos van a tardar un poco más de lo previsto en aceptar el lanzamiento del producto.
Actualmente el iPhone 4 se vende en Francia, Alemania, Japón, Reino Unido y los Estados Unidos con versiones de 16 y 32GB. Más países se unirán a la lista en los próximos meses antes de terminar el año 2010.
En Gizmos: Samsung regala móviles Galaxy S a quienes se quejen del iPhone 4 - Apple retrasa el iPhone 4 blanco hasta final de año
Related posts:
- Revelados los procesadores del iPhone 3G S
- Universidad japonesa regala iPhones para controlar a sus alumnos
- El iPad llega a nueve países más éste viernes
- Aliph Jawbone, a la venta con el iPhone
- Alianza de Google y Microsoft
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Pronto llega otro modelo de Xbox 360, ahora con 4GB
Microsoft continúa preparando nuevos modelos de su consola Xbox 360, que se actualizará pronto con otra versión. Además del modelo slim de 250GB mostrado en el pasado E3 de Los Ángeles, la compañía presenta una versión con una capacidad de almacenamiento reducida, de sólo 4GB.
Éste nuevo modelo de Xbox 360 estará a la venta en nuestro país desde el día 20 de agosto.
La versión con memoria flash interna de 4GB es también slim, tiene conexión Wi-Fi integrada en la máquina, y botones de superficie táctil. Además, la máquina vendrá preparada para la tecnología Kinect. Es más, más adelante, no a finales de agosto, se comercializará un pack especial de consola de 4GB, con Kinect y el videojuego Kinect Adventures.
Microsoft quiere que en la próxima campaña navideña exista una versión de su consola para cualquier tipo de público.
En Gizmos: Xbox 360 en su modelo de 250GB llega a España - Microsoft anuncia la Xbox 360 Slim
Related posts:
- Xbox 360 Arcade: sustituta de la Xbox 360 Core
- Xbox 360 en su modelo de 250GB llega a España
- Xbox 360 de 60 gigas anunciada oficialmente
- Xbox 360 Elite: Lanzamiento europeo
- Xbox 360 Elite llegará en Agosto a Europa
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iPad clonado por $125
Sucede con todos los dispositivos que se convierten en éxito superventas que enseguida son clonados, normalmente por empresas de China, pero también por otras compañías de más renombre que, carente de ideas, aprovechan la estela para hacer algo de caja.
El iPad de Apple es uno de estos casos. Varios equipos que os hemos mostrado en los últimos meses han intentado replicar al tablet de Apple, pero no habíamos visto ninguno de estos clones por sólo $125.
El clon que hoy os mostramos tiene una pantalla con una resolución de 800×480 pixels y un sistema operativo que parece bastante útil a primera vista. Este equipo lo veremos dentro de unos meses en el mercado asiático y el precio por el que está siendo anunciado hace pensar que puede tener éxito entre los que gustan de probar estos dispositivos sin tener muy claro si el formato tablet es para ellos.
- Pantalla de 7″. 800 x 480 pixel
- Memoria Flahs de 2GB NAND
- Ranura de tarjetas de memoria SDHC TF (Hasta 16 GB de memoria)
- Wi-Fi
- Webcam de 0,3-megapixel
- Sistema operativo Google Android 1.6 (pendiente de confirmación)
- 2 puertos USB
En Gizmos: China ya tiene su iPad falso. Tenía que ser - Ezy Tablet PC. A por el iPad, pero con Windows 7
Vía | Ubergizmo http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/07/125_ipad_clone_is_powered_by_android.html
Related posts:
- Ya disponibles más de 10,000 aplicaciones en iPad
- El iPad de Apple usa tarjetas Micro SIM
- Apple comienza a trabajar en el iPad de segunda generación
- El iPad debuta con un éxito sin precedentes
- Revelada carcasa de madera para iPad
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Filtrada nueva cámara de vídeo 3D de Panasonic
Parece ser que Panasonic estaba reservando el día 28 de julio para revelar varios proyectos inéditos, pero uno de ellos ya se ha filtrado. Se trata de una cámara de vídeo capaz de grabar imágenes en calidad 3D estereoscópica.
Se la conoce como HDC-SDT750 y se promociona como la primera cámara de vídeo capaz de grabar en 3D.
En base al nombre del producto podemos deducir que no se trata de una cámara de vídeo totalmente nueva, sino de un modelo mejorado de una ya existente, en éste caso la HDC-HS700. Tendrá, respecto a la versión que ya conocemos, lentes de conversión 3D para conseguir grabar en tres dimensiones.
Además, la SDT750 de Panasonic grabará en 1080p AVCHD a 60fps, con tecnología de estabilización de imagen Hybrid O.I.S., y un diseño de cámara ergonómico de color negro.
En Gizmos: Sanyo anuncia sus cámaras Xacti 1080p - JVC Everio GZ-HM550, videocámara con Bluetooth
Related posts:
- Filtrada en la red información sobre la cámara DMX-LX5
- Panasonic GH1, vídeo en Full HD con autofocus
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS2
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT2, nueva cámara todoterreno y sumergible
- Panasonic anuncia un modelo especial de su cámara DMC-GF1
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martes, 27 de julio de 2010
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