I just had a “Bing!” Moment with Bing. I had not used the Bing Search Engine for a few days and for some reason today I was writing some new material this afternoon and publishing it.  I wrote for a few hours, published a couple of blog articles and then went off to go swimming and play with the grand kids for a few hours.  When I got back to my desk, I typed the title of the blog post into my Google toolbar and got a bunch of results, but nothing very useful and certainly nothing like the article I wrote with that exact title.  Even searching the title in quotes, there was nothing there but spam and commercial Made for Adsense (MFA) pages.

On a whim, I pasted the title into Bing without quotes and there it was after only a few hours, #4 in the Bing Search Results.  I just tried the same search again on Google with quotes around the title and the page comes up at #39 in the Google Search Results.

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Technorati Tags: Bing, Bing Moment, Bing Search, Bing Search Engine, Moment, Search Engine, Search Engines

Question:  How do I find which of my pages are listed on Stumbleupon?

Answer:  This is not perfect but gets at what you want easily.  To see which of your pages are on SU run this query:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3astumbleupon%2ecom+evliving%2ecom

The site:stumbleupon.com portion of the query limits the results to pages on the Stumbleupon site and the specific domain search term gets the pages on stumbleupon that include references to the domain evliving.com.

Anyone who wants to see the results for their own domain can use the query
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3astumbleupon%2ecom+
… and after the + sign add the domain name.

From there, you just need to weed out the duplication caused by tag pages, buzz pages, listings in profiles, etc. and you get the subset you are looking for.

By adding &num=100 to the end of the search string, you will get the first 100 listings and can copy and paste them into a text file or spreadsheet to manipulate.

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Technorati Tags: Bill Austin, domain, Social Media, stumblers, Stumbleupon, stumbleupon.com, Stumbling, tags

Did you know that you can edit your reviews and your tags and your reactions on Stumbleupon?

Suppose you change your mind about whether you like (thumbs up) or hate (thumbs down)  a site on stumbleupon.com?  Did you know that you can change your reaction, review and tags by editing them?

If you go to the page and click the review bubble, you will see your review, or if you have not reviewed it, you will get the ability to write a review.  Writing a review if you have not already done so will help the item get more exposure and be seen by more stumblers.

When one of your friends has a blog post or article is running wild on Stumbleupon and they ask for stumbles or reviews, there is something you can do even if you have already stumbled that page.

If you have already reviewed the post or blog article there will be a date when you stumbled the item and a link that says  “Edit Tags or Review.”

If you click on that link, you can modify the review, including adding more tags (up to five) modifying tags, etc.  It also gives you the opportunity to modify the date.

By changing the date, you add one more “vote” to those that are making that post popular and getting it listed high in the “currently popular” listings.

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Technorati Tags: Social Media, Stumbleupon, stumbleupon.com

Stumbleupon FAQ

Question: I don’t know how to change my password and I will never remember the one they gave me.  How do I change my Stumbleupon Password?

Answer:  To Change your password, go to the toolbar and select “Tools”; “Change Password.” You have to know the old one.

Stumbleupon Hints, Tricks and Tips

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Technorati Tags: Bill Austin, Social Media, stumblers, Stumbleupon, stumbleupon.com, Stumbling

Instead of getting the “Ranking received” notice you get a blank dialog box that just hangs there forever.

The URL is not added to the index and it is as if the post was never stumbled.

We have had some success with this bug by asking someone else to stumble the post but that does not always work.

Sometimes just waiting a few days will cause it to correct itself.

It appears to have something to do with the system clock on your machine conflicting with something Stumbleupon is looking for.

It began around the time wordpress.com added the bar at the top of all their blogs.

This is the “quota” that some people refer to when they write that they think they are being punished for submitting too many stumbles to quickly and it behaves exactly that way, appearing to the user that their account has been restricted somehow.

If you have that problem, let us know. Someone else ought to be able to add the initial post to Stumbleupon and after that, you should be able to stumble it yourself.

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Technorati Tags: Bill Austin, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Stumbleupon, stumbleupon.com, Stumbling

The buzz topics from the last hint used to be a different animal from the tags that we all can add (up to five) to our reviews.

Note, for example that the tag for business http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/business/ is completely different from the buzz page for business http://buzz.stumbleupon.com/business/

Buzz topics show up here:
http://buzz.stumbleupon.com/blogs/ (no longer true)
Tags Show up here:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/ and there are Recently Hot Tags plus Most Popular All Time

http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/blog/ is a popular one and this item is number four on that list:

Zingers – Sales Training Stories and Sales Training Aids – Zimmerma…

Zingers monthly sales newsletter

4 reviews blog, blogs, sales, training, business, newsletters

Under the tag jobs, three of the top four are people we know.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/tag/jobs/

FRACAT – Free Resume And Career Toolbox Blog & How To Put 9.3 Hour…

sports rated 3 days ago

“Why does my boss’ poor planning mean I have to stay late?!?”

6 reviews jobs, blogs, time-management, work, career

albajason.stumbleupon.com

MegT rated 4 weeks ago

Some great stumbles here

6 reviews jobs, stumblers, bloggers, blogs, career-tools

JibberJobber Blog & Blog Archive & Security? We Don&8217;t Need…

tigerbw rated 4 hours ago

Read about why you shall do something everyday for your own career.

3 reviews jobs, career-planning, career, job-security, careers

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Technorati Tags: arizona, Bill Austin, Buzz, Buzz Words, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Stumbleupon, stumbleupon.com, Stumbling

These are the topics that have a “BUZZ” page.

You want your post to be in at least one of these topics.

The size of the tag on the buzz page listing on Stumbleupon shows the relative popularity of that topic.

· arts

· bizarre

· blogs

· books

· business

· computers

· design

· food

· games

· health

· history

· home

· humor

· internet

· linux

· living

· mac

· movies

· music

· photos

· politics

· science

· shopping

· society

· sports

· technology

· videos

· windows

Visit the Stumbleupon home page to find the top topics.

It appears that since I originally wrote this there has been a change to how Stumbleupon handles buzz and topics.

<a href=”http://buzz.stumbleupon.com/”>http://buzz.stumbleupon.com/</a> now redirects to <a href=”http://www.stumbleupon.com/”>http://www.stumbleupon.com/</a>

They now list the following tags across the top of the main page:

What interests you?

* News
* Photos
* Videos
* Arts
* Business
* Fun
* Health
* Computers
* Lifestyle
* Music
* Science
* Sports
* Technology

The same principles apply.  The topics above are what the majority of the people who go browse and wander around the Stumbleupon site will see are items within those topic areas / categories / tags.

Happy Stumbling.

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Technorati Tags: arizona, Bill Austin, Internet Marketing, Social Media, stumble, stumblers, Stumbleupon, stumbleupon.com, Stumbling, tags

Twitter Follow Limits – Twitter.com Follow Limits

Every day I see a lot of questions posted on Twitter.com by twitter users.  Because as of today I  have 96,813 Following and 88,839 Followers there are a lot of people asking me questions.  I also get questions on other social media sites such as LinkedIn and Ryse and Facebook.  One of the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) that I see about Twitter is some variation of the following questions:

Why can’t I follow more people on twitter?

Why can’t I follow anyone on twitter?

Why is there a limit of 2000 people that I can follow on twitter?

Twitter has restricted my account and I am only following 2000 people. Why is that?

My twitter.com account is broken. Why can’t I follow anyone? Can anyone help?

The answer to all of these questions is simple and straightforward.  When you get to the point that you are following 2000 people, twitter will restrict your account until more than 1818 people are following you.   Once you reach above that number, your account is always restricted to 1.1 times the number of people who are following you …

So … If you have 2200 followers, you can follow 2420 people. If you have 3826 followers, you can follow 4209 people. … and so forth.

This is one of their spam controls.

They have quite a few others that they don’t usually talk too much about but they have documented them in their help files here.   They limit the number of people you can follow in a day, they limit the number of direct messages you can send in a day, etc. Sometimes they simply stop allowing you to add people no matter what.

The 2000 limit is the least onerous of their restrictions.

Protect your account by using is judiciously.

I hope that helps explain the Twitter.com 2000 following follow limits.

PS:  Have you watched my video on Twitter Strategy and the Top Three Most Important Things about using Twitter?

Thank you,

Bill Austin
Have you submitted a Free Business Directory Listing yet?

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Technorati Tags: Bill Austin, Follow Limits, Followers, Following, Social Media, twitter, Twitter Strategy, Twitter.com

“Claim Your Name” is the name of a social networking experiment being run by Bill Austin for some of the Job Seekers of the Scottsdale Job Network.

We have found that almost all employers use some aspects of social networking, although most of them do not recognize it as such. Recruiters, hiring managers and staffing professionals use online search engines and social networking sites to locate potential candidates (sourcing) and to research job candidates and their backgrounds.

Claim Your Name is actually a social network for job seekers to enable them to take charge of their online identity and make it much easier for recruiters and employers to find them online.

Imagine if you were out of work and were a job seeker and imagine that your name just happened to be

Britney Spears

or

Lindsey Lohan

or

Michael Moore

…

Without a strong social network, you are pretty much out of luck.

No one would ever find you online.

This online program called “Claim Your Name” lets you take charge of your name online and tell your story to recruiters, hiring managers and the rest of the world.

If you need help  to take charge of your online reputation, whether for a job search or for your company or personal online reputation management, you can call Bill Austin at 1-480-998-0246 for short consulting assignments or major reputation management engagements.

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Technorati Tags: Arizona SEO, Bill Austin, Business, Internet Marketing, Online Reputation Management, Reputation Management

The Amazon Associates Program will no longer be paying for traffic and sales that result from paid keyword bidding on various pay per click search engines. The original announcement is below.

I say it is about time.  Some people were making a lot of money using the Amazon affiliate program and a keyword bidding strategy and others were paying out a lot of money and not making a lot of associate sales.   The people who were making piles of money, however, are those who were selling classes, e-books and seminars on how to get rich using a keyword bidding strategy and the Amazon Associates program, clickbank, Commission Junction ( CJ.com ) and other affiliate programs.

Dear Amazon Associate:

We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.

As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.

This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions.

We appreciate your continued support and participation in this advertising Program. If you have questions or concerns, please write to us by using the Contact Us form available on Associates Central.

Sincerely,

The Amazon Associates Program

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Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing, affiliate programs, Amazon, Internet Marketing