Imran ul Haq - Android & Social Media Enthusiast

How to Root Samsung Galaxy Note 2 i605 (Verizon Variant) on Kitkat 4.4

2015-03-30T02:39:00.002+05:00

Guaranteed working! Follow my setup and it will work everytime
Ok guys I was finally able to get my ND7 i605 rooted and its perm.
1. Download Ghettoroot v.0.3.2 (http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-2-verizon/general/root-adb-ghettoroot-v0-1-towelroot-port-t2864125) and extract to C:
2. Download Ghettoroot from here post 27 (http://forum.xda-developers.com/note...t2864125/page3)
3. Extract 2nd ghettoroot downloaded to same folder as the first Ghettoroot folder or Extract it somewhere else and then copy those files to the previous extract of GhettoRoot v.0.3.2
4. You should now have all folders and files at C:/ghettoroot
5. This is where most are getting no device or its not working
6. Plug in the phone and wait until it enters media mode (30sec)
7. Open INSTALL.cmd in ghettoroot folder, but DO NOT press anything else! (Leave CMD Window Open)
8. After you open INSTALL.cmd the phone will ask for PC Authorization, hit yes on phone
9. At this time open GhettoRoot.bat in the folder and run it. It should see the phone and BAM!! start rooting.

Seems that adb from one ghettoroot will not recognize phone, but run together solves this no device problem.

I take no credit for files or such. Post is my personal setup that works everytime.

Credits: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=57677204&postcount=24

Nexus 7 2012 and 2013 Editions + Nexus 10 Android 4.4 Kitkat Download

2013-11-14T15:23:00.001+05:00

Android 4.4 KitKat OTA links for sideloading

If you haven't received your over the air update for Android 4.4, you can download them below and manually upgrade your Nexus device.

You must be on the latest stock Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update. You can be rooted, but you cannot have a modified system partition. You can perform the upgrade if you have a custom recovery.

Nexus 7 2013 - http://goo.gl/Pf58g2
Nexus 7 2012 - http://goo.gl/uyoJM5
Nexus 10 - http://goo.gl/vBt2OC

Please note: These are all direct download links to Google's servers. The links have been shorted to make them easier on the eyes.

Enjoy!

VIA DEREK ROSS

General Motors (GM) Diet Plan

2013-07-11T14:09:00.000+05:00

The following diet and health program was developed for employees and dependents of General Motors, Inc. and is intended for their exclusive use. This program was developed in conjunction with a grant from U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration. It was field tested at the Johns Hopkins Research Centre and was approved for distribution by the Board of Directors, General Motors Corp. at a general meeting on August 15, 1985. General Motors Corp. wholly endorses this program and is making it available to all employees and families. This program will be available at all General Motors Food Service Facilities. It is management's intention to facilitate a wellness and fitness program for everyone.
This program is designed for a target weight loss of 10-17 lbs per week. It will also improve your attitudes and emotions because of its cleansing systematic effects.
The effectiveness of this seven day plan is that the food eaten burn more calories than they give to the body in caloric value.
This plan can be used as often as you like without any fear of complications. It is designed to flush your system of impurities and give you a feeling of well being. After seven days you will begin to feel lighter because you will be lighter by at least 10 lbs. You will have an abundance of energy and an improved disposition.

During the first seven days you must abstain from all alcohol
You must drink 10 glasses of water each day
Day One All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consist of all the fruits you want. It is strongly suggested that you consume lots of melons the first day. Especially watermelon and a loupe. If you limit your fruit consumption to melons, your chances of losing three lbs. on first day are very good.

Day Two All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the raw or cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the amount or type. For your complex carbohydrate, you will start day two with a large baked potato for breakfast. You may top the potato with one pat of butter.
Day Three A mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet. No potatoes today.
Day Four Bananas and milk. Today you will eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. This will be combined with the special soup which may be eaten in limited quantities.
Day Five Today is feast day. You will eat beef and tomatoes. Eat two 10 oz. portions of lean beef. Hamburger is OK. Combine this with six whole tomatoes. On day five you must increase your water intake by one quart. This is to cleanse your system of the uric acid you will be producing.
Day Six Beef and vegetables. Today you may eat an unlimited amount of beef and vegetables. Eat to your hearts content.
Day Seven Today your food intake will consist of brown rice, fruit juices and all the vegetables you care to consume.

Tomorrow morning you will be 10-17 lbs. lighter than one week ago. If you desire further weight loss, repeat the program again. You may repeat this program as often as you like, however, it is suggested that you are allowed two glasses of white wine in addition to the instructions on the program. You may substitute champagne for white wine. Under no circumstances are you to drink any other alcoholic beverages with the exception of beer which is allowed. Any liquor (bourbon,vodka, rum) is forbidden. Cream drinks are especially forbidden. You may have an occasional cordial such as creme de menthe or schnapps, but you must always limit yourself to two drinks. If you wine, drink only wine that day. If you have beer, drink only beer that day, etc. Alcohol adds empty calories to your diet. However, after the first week it will help your digestion and settle your stomach.
G.M.'S Wonder Soup
The following soup is intended as a supplement to your diet. It can be eaten any time of the day in virtually unlimited quantities. You are encouraged to consume large quantities of this soup.
28 oz, Water, 6 Large Onions, 2 Green Peppers, Whole Tomatoes (fresh or canned), 1 Head Cabbage, 1 Bunch Celery, 4 Envelopes Lipton Onion Soup Mix, Herbs and Flavouring as desired.
Additional Comments
Vegetables as may be taken in the form of a salad if desired. No dressing except malt, white or wine vinegar, squeezed lemon, garlic, herbs. No more than one tea spoon of oil.
You have been given a recipe for the WONDER SOUP which can be eaten in unlimited quantities. This soup is a supplement while you are on the program and it should be a pleasure to eat. Not everyone likes cabbage, green peppers, calory etc. This recipe is not inflexible. You may substitute vegetables according to your taste. You may add any vegetables you like: asparagus, peas, corn, turnips, green beans, cauliflower, etc. Try to stay away from beans (lima, pinto, kidney, etc.), however, because they tend to be high in calories even though they are very good for you.
Beverages you may consume while on the program :

Water (flavoured with lemon/lime if desired).
Club Soda is OK.
Black Coffee. No cream or cream substitute. No sugar or sweetness.
Black Tea = Herb or Leaf.
Absolutely nothing else except the fruit juices which are part of day seven. No fruit juices before day seven.

How and Why It Works
Day One you are preparing your system for the upcoming programme. Your only source of nutrition is fresh or canned fruits. Fruits are nature's perfect food. They provide everything you could possibly want to sustain life except total balance and variety.
Day Two starts with a fix of complex carbo-hydrates coupled with an oil dose. This is taken in the morning for energy and balance. The rest of day two consists of vegetables which are virtually calorie free and provide essential nutrients and fibre.
Day Three eliminates the potato because you get your carbohydrates from the fruits. You system is now prepared to start burning excess pounds. You will still have cravings which should start to diminish by day four.
Day Four, bananas, milk and soup sound the strangest and least desirable. You're in for a surprise. You probably will not eat all the bananas allowed. But they are there for the potassium you have lost and the sodium you may have missed the past three days. You will notice a definite loss of desire for sweets. You will be surprised how easy this day will go.
Day Five, Beef and tomatoes. The beef is for iron and proteins, the tomatoes are for digestion and fibre. Lots and lots of water purifies your system. You should notice colourless urine today. Your allowance calls for the equivalent of five "quarter ponders". Do not feel you have to eat all this beef. You must eat the six tomatoes.
Day Six is similar to day five, Iron and proteins from beef, Vitamins and fibre from vegetables. By now your system is in a total weight loss inclination. There should be a noticeable difference in the way you look today, compared to day one.
Day Seven finished off the program like a good cigar used to finish off Victorian meals, except much healthier. You have your system under control and it should thank you for the flushing and cleaning you just gave it.

General Motors Diet on the other hand…The GM diet in variance is initiated in seven day run and can be a cause of fast loss of weight. On that basis, it must be understood that the weight lost throughout the seven days continually inclines to come back if you do not correct your eating routines and exercise. Various individuals have a tendency to end the effort on their weight and eating habits as soon as the first seven days are over. Soon, you will begin seeing all those fats piling back on. Most individuals are into this grouping. An altered point to remember in awareness while on the GM Diet is to watch out for dehydration and drought during the management. Similarly, the General Motors diet is not suggested for individuals suffering from medical illnesses like diabetes.

In conclusion, it is significant to anticipate of that there is no diet that fits to all persons as far as diet are concerned and it is healthier to make a peculiarity for each after asking a professional like nutritionist. We always speak well of that you ask with your doctor or a nutritionist to find out if the GM Diet or any weight loss program is applicable for you before you take part or begin. Each program holds guarantee in the form of a severe training program. It is best to look at a nutrition program or plan as the beginning of a lengthy expedition in the direction of better well-being. Searching for the right nutrition, eating habits and workout routine is very imperative and these healthy lifestyles should turn out to be the practices of a life-time.

Side Effects of GM Diet

Being a fast-paced diet plan, the GM diet has also become known for its side effects. Like many other quick weight-loss regimens, followers of the GM diet may experience conditions such as:
Sudden muscle weakness. This is because the muscle tissues are deprived of adequate amounts of protein during the first few days of the diet plan. This condition can be regulated once the system gets used to the nutrients provided by the regimen.
Incessant thirst and dehydration. Persons following the GM diet also feel incessantly thirsty and even suffer from dehydration as their fluids are used by the body to foster metabolic processes. Followers are therefore advised to take more water to prevent the onset of dehydration and experience a more rejuvenated feeling.
Headaches and malaise. Persons who are in their first days of the GM diet may experience headaches and malaise, as they are still on the process of getting used to the diet effects. These tend to be psychosomatic, as followers are subject to cravings which have to withstand in order to achieve their diet goals.
The side effects of GM diet are likewise similar to those of other diet fads, but these can be effectively managed by

Following the regimen in a sequential and chronological manner. Skipping days and cheating on the food intake may result not only to the ineffectiveness of the diet, but as well as getting extra, unwanted pounds.

Supplementing the diet with proper exercise, rest and water intake. By supporting the body system with regular exercise, water intake and rest, the body would be able to adjust to the diet settings at a faster manner and avoid routine side effects. It would also lead to better effects and easier maintenance procedures.

[How To:] Qmobile Noir A8 Custom Rom - LewaTek Rom

2013-04-04T00:16:00.000+05:00

Hey guyz! I just found a new custom ROM for Qmobile Noir A8. It is called Lewa OS and it's quite different from other ROMS in terms of interface. This ROM is based on 4.0 ICS right now. Below are the links and method for installing the ROM. Give it a try.

1. First you need to Root your Noir A8 phone and install CWM recovery.

2. Download the custom ROM from here and then put it into your SD card.

3. Then you have to go to CWM recovery. Shut Down your phone and wait until it is off. Then press Volume UP+Power to go to recovery mode.

4. Now you will see CWM recovery screen. Now select “Wipe Data/Factory Reset” and this will wipe all data on phone (not SD Card like Pics and Music). Then select “Wipe Cache Partition”. When done, go to “mounts
and storage” and select “format /system”. This will remove your previous software system file.

5. Now you will select “install zip from SdCard” and then “choose zip from SdCard”. Now select the zip file which you have downloaded. Now reboot system and you will be in the Setup Screen of Android.

6. Wait until the ROM is installed and then again Wipe Dalvik Cache and Factory Reset your phone.

Here you go!!

[SOLVED] How to Root Qmobile Noir A2

2013-03-13T18:23:00.000+05:00

first download this archive : http://d-h.st/O9z

1) Getting things read

a) Copy “CWM-SuperSU-v1.04.zip” to your noir a2 sdcard.
b) Install drivers from “MT65x3 USB VCOM drivers” folder.

2) now we will Install CWM recovery

a) Turn off your mobile (remove battery)
b) Open SP Flash tool, click “Scatter-loading” and select file “MT6573_Android_scatter.txt”.
c) Make sure ONLY “RECOVERY” is checked in partition and “recovery.img” file is selected.
d) Press “Download” button, and quickly connect your phone using a usb cable. It will start flashing the recovery.

Once it is done, you will see a notification and a Green Circle.

3) Gain root access

a) Boot into recovery by holding “volume +” and “volume -” and pressing the power key. and press volume up u will se cwm menu.
b) Select “recovery mode” from the options.
Here, it is recommended that you backup your entire system to sdcard. So that you have something to come back to,
incase you mess up.
c) In recovery menu, select “install zip from sdcard” -> “choose zip from sdcard” and select “CWM-SuperSU-
v1.04.zip” file from sdcard, go for YES option. Wait for the flash to complete.
d) Now select “reboot system now” option. Wait for the phone to reboot to normal mode.
YOU SHOULD NOW HAVE A ROOTED PHONE with SuperSU app installed, if you followed the steps correctly.

To backup, go to recovery select “backup and restore” -> “backup”.
To restore, go to recovery select “backup and restore” -> “restore”.

For windows XP user if you are facing problem in installing drivers download this archive Driver_Auto_Installer

NOIR A2 ROOT METHOD HAS BEEN FOUNDED BY Hamza Kazmi

Original Post: http://www.incpak.com/tech/finally-problem-has-been-solved-a2-root/

Nexus S i9020a (crespo) Cyanogenmod 10 loaded

2012-12-28T00:23:00.000+05:00

[Update: Unconfirmed] Twitter has been blocked in Pakistan by PTA

2012-05-20T14:31:00.002+05:00

IMPORTANT: A reliable source has confirmed that PTA has ordered blocking of TWITTER in Pakistan.

The best alternate route is to use Opera Mini mobile web browser as it encrypts your communication. Keep watching this space for more updates.

via: Badar Khushnood

HOW TO: ICE CREAM SANDWICH (4.0.4) update for Nexus S GSM i9020a

2012-04-02T05:07:00.000+05:00

I got the 4.0.4 OTA just now! From my 2.3.6 all stock, no root no unlock nexus s.

the package is 128.6M and I am still downloading it. Here is the method to help you to get it NOW!

Manage APPs -> ALL->Google services Framwork: clear data ->dial *#*#2432546#*#* (*#*#checkin#*#*)->GOT IT!

Heres what I did:
I tried OP's advice, "manage APPs -> ALL->Google services Framweork: clear data ->dial *#*#2432546#*#* (*#*#checkin#*#*)-"

That didn't work, so I tried rebooting my phone and trying it again but it still didn't work. Then I tried to just manually click "check for updates" for 4 straight minutes, nonstop but it still didn't work.

Then I tried to do the OP's same trick again and pressed the the check for updates button in system settings menu instead of the "check in code" in the dialer.- Didn't work.

Now I'm frustrated so I open up the Google services framework screen and the system update screen, so I can easily flip back with multitasking by holding the home key down, and click on the "clear data" button on the Google Services Framework screen and then quickly, the "check for updates" button on the system updates screen.
Doesn't work but i keep trying it and it worked on the 4th time.

[OP is a guy who informed us about this update in some forum]

[Instructions Included] Ice Cream Sandwich Now Rolling Out To The GSM Nexus S

2011-12-17T20:58:00.000+05:00

Well, that didn't take long. Here are the instructions to you your Nexus S rocking ICS right now. Do not try this on the CDMA Nexus S!

Download the OTA Package
Rename it to update.zip
Copy it to the root of the internal storage
Power off the device, hold Volume Up and Power to reboot into the bootloader
Select "recovery," then hit the power button
Once the warning triangle appears, hold the power button and hit volume up
Select "apply update from /sdcard" and choose the update.zip
Once the process is finished, simply choose "reboot system now"

Once it reboots, BAM! You've got ICS. Congratulations!

Good news GSM NS owners - your piece of the Ice Cream Sandwich is on its way! According to the official Nexus Twitter account, the update started rolling out today and will continue for the rest of the month.

Google's Nexus S support page has already been updated to comfort users transitioning from Gingerbread to ICS, offering helpful tips such as how to change the wallpaper, add a widget, and view recently launched apps.
There's no estimate as to when the CDMA version may be receiving its update, but I imagine that it shouldn't be too far out.
Let us know when this update hits your device!

How To Get A Working Amazon Appstore For Android If You ARE NOT American

2011-10-26T14:52:00.002+05:00

This will allow non-Americans to download FREE apps from the Amazon App store. It won’t work for paid apps because you will be using a fake credit card number. However, it WILL WORK for those daily free premium apps, which is one of the major reasons you’d want to use this.
Word of caution, you are best off creating a new Amazon account using a new email address for this, as Amazon are likely to ban your account if they find out Full details after the break!

Instructions are below:

Get yourself a fake email account.
Register on Amazon with your fake email ID.
While registering you’ll now need a US address, US mobile number and a US credit card.
Go to fakenamegenerator to get a fake american name, address, mobile number and a credit card number.
Fill this information for you account, and select this information as default.
Download Amazon Appstore APK and install it on your phone.
Run the app and login with the above created account.
If you get a notification saying that an update to amazon App Store is available ignore it.

[Source]

Root Nexus One with Android 2.3.3/2.3.4/2.3.6 Gingerbread

2011-10-20T00:52:00.000+05:00

After I got Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) updated on my Nexus One, I lost root. It seems there is no easy way to root Nexus One running 2.3.3. I did lots of searches and finally found an effective solution from a Chinese Android forum. I tried it, and it did work! So here I’d like to share this solution with you.

[ Notice! The bootloader should be unlocked before you do the following steps! If your bootloader has already been unlocked, you should see an unlocked lock icon when you turn on your Nexus One. If you don't know how to unlock bootloader, simply search "unlock bootloader nexus one", you'll find lots of tutorials. ]
1. Download su.zip, and put it on your phone’s SD card.
2. Download fastboot.zip, unzip it to C:\. Now you have a folder C:\fastboot\
3. Download recovery-RA-passion-v2.2.1.img, put it in C:\fastboot\
4. Shut down your phone. Then start your Nexus One in Fastboot mode by holding down the Trackball and press the Power button.
5. Connect your phone to your computer. Open a Command Prompt (Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt), and run the following commands:

cd C:\fastboot

fastboot devices

fastboot flash recovery recovery-RA-passion-v2.2.1.img

6. Use Volume +/- keys to choose ‘Bootloader’ and hit the Power button.
7. Use Volume +/- keys to select ‘Recovery’ and hit the Power button.
8. From the menu, scroll the Trackball to select ‘Flash zip from sdcard’ and hit the Trackball.
9. Select the su.zip file you previously copied to your SD card and hit the Trackball. Hit it one more time.
10. When done, restart your Nexus One and you should be all set.
There you go. Enjoy your rooted Nexus One
[ To verify that your have root access, type "su" in Terminal, the prompt should change from "$" to "#". ]

Top Ten Favorite Social Media Tools For Daily Use

2011-05-23T11:09:00.000+05:00

Here’s my top ten tools:

1. HootSuite.com

A fantastic free online tool to manage multiple social media profiles, pre-schedule updates for specific days and times, monitor keywords and analyze statistics. Plus, check and reply to saved searches, Twitter Lists, @ mentions, Direct Mentions and more. Also available as a mobile app which provides an excellent way to pre-schedule your social updates on the fly. Paid version also available with additional features. (See TweetDeck.com as an alternative tool to try that is equally as popular).

2. Bit.ly

The top link shortening service, ideal for Twitter but just as useful for Facebook and even email marketing to track clicks. Copy your long link and paste into your bit.ly account. Easily make custom links and track how many clicks you get. For example, this is a link to one of my most popular blog posts with a directory of Facebook contact forms: http://bit.ly/FBforms.
Check the raw link and stats for any bit.ly link by simply adding a “+” sign at the end, whether it’s your bit.ly link or someone else’s. Plus, be sure to add the bit.ly sidebar to easily shorten and tweet any weblink. Another cool feature is the little popup notification of “trending bits” when one of your bit.ly links receives a number of clicks in a short time.

3. Twitter Lists

Easily build your own source of curated content by making a list of Twitter users in a certain field of expertise. Twitter allows up to 20 lists per account with up to 500 names in each list. Lists can be public or private. Anyone can follow a public list. (See Twitter List instructions here).
You might set up a list for top news in your industry (be sure to add your own name!). I refer to my own Facebook Marketing Twitter list several times a day to stay up to date on breaking news about Facebook. (See also Listorious for a wonderful compilation of lists to find and follow.)

4. Facebook Like Button

Adding a small piece of code to your website and/or installing the Facebook Like Button WordPress plugin allows visitors to your website and blog to share your content with all their Facebook friends. You can change the verb from “like” to “recommend” – great for placing on the top right of an entire website. Also, include the Like Button on all opt-in pages and sales pages for extra viral visibility.
I love the Facebook Like button for social proof and for quickly and easily sharing content with my Facebook friends. However, I must say since the Like Button changed from a one-line story to a full-on story with randomly chosen thumbnail and a description, I’ve actually been clicking on it less often. I liked the one-line as I could click several links in a row and it wouldn’t clog up the feed of my friends.
If you’d like to test the like button, click the recommend button below for my blog – then go check your Facebook profile wall to see what was posted!

5. TweetMeme Button

This is the Twitter equivalent to the Facebook Like Button. Add it to your blog, website, sales pages and anywhere you want to make it easy for your visitors to share your content with their Twitter followers. I love to use the TweetMeme button myself whenever I find great content on the web to share with my Twitter followers – the button is typically already formatted with a short link and the author’s Twitter ID.
You’ll see the TweetMeme button at the top and bottom of this post - that’s the WordPress TweetMeme plugin. (In addition to the Facebook Like Button and TweetMeme Button, be sure to also add the LinkedIn Share button to your website, blog, opt-in pages and sales pages).

Tweetmeme Retweet Button

6. Twellow.com

Twellow is the Yellow Pages of Twitter with tens of millions of accounts listed. Set up a free account, then find and follow targeted people by searching for keywords users have in their bio. Browse categories and also drill down to cities around the world to find top users in a specific location (see “Twellowhood” tab). Twellow is a great tool for building your Twitter following. Be sure to add your keyword-rich extended bio as the search feature also crawls this field! (As an alternative, more automated tool to try instead/as well, see TweetAdder.com).

7. ManageFlitter.com

Easily manage your Twitter following, unfollow inactive accounts, find out who isn’t following you back and more. There are many ways to sort including by profiles with no images, inactive, no bio and more. Free and paid versions available. This is such a fun tool to use and very effective. I haven’t found anything like it out there. (As an alternative, check out the popular tool SocialOomph.com. I use SocialOomph every day to auto follow those who follow me; then 1-2 times a week, I filter and clean up the following using Manage Flitter).

Manage Flitter

8. Echofon

Mobile App for Twitter – I’ve tried many, many mobile apps to manage Twitter on my iPhone and keep coming back to Echofon. The app offers a variety of great features and is always synched with your online Twitter activity. Check and reply to saved searches, Twitter Lists, trending topics, @ mentions, Direct Mentions and more.
Echofon also offers desktop apps for Mac and Firefox. (Plus, a Facebook mobile app! However, I find Facebook’s own iPhone app works just fine.)

9. Disqus Blog Commenting System

A wonderful, user-friendly addition to any blog, Disqus allows users to have their own portable profile for commenting. Comments can easily be shared with their Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Visitors to your blog can simply post a comment using their Facebook or Twitter account with one-click instead if they don’t have a Disqus login. Try out the Disqus commenting system on my blog here – scroll down and leave me a comment!

10. TwentyFeet

An easy and simple way to track and monitor all your social media metrics. You get two social media accounts for free for life. After that, the fee is extremely nominal ($2.49 a year!) for additional accounts. Track your Facebook profile, fan pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube, Bit.ly, Google Analytics and more. TwentyFeet sends you a daily email with activity reports as compared to predicted activity based on past performance. (See also SocialBakers.com to use instead or as well for tracking your Facebook metrics.)

TwentyFeet - Example daily email

I trust you found some nifty new tools here! Let me know what your favorites are – feel free to list them below in the comments. It seems every day there are more and more new tools available to assist in making our social media and online marketing more effective.
Do you tend to stick with the more established platforms and tools? Or are you always on the hunt for the holy grail of social media tools that does everything under the sun? Let me know in the comments below.

A Look At The Size And Shape Of The Geosocial Universe In 2011

2011-05-20T17:17:00.000+05:00

Thanks to Jesse Thomas of interactive design agency JESS3, we now have an updated look at the structure of the geosocial universe as it exists in anno domini 2011. It wasn’t so long ago that the International Astronomical Union booted Pluto out of the solar system or that MySpace was overtaking Yahoo! and Google as the most-visited site in the U.S. Well, a few rotations around the sun later, and the overall shape of the geosocial universe has changed dramatically. New stars have been born and others have been scattered out across the cold recesses of Internet space. Today, Myspace is sputtering, Skype is part of the Microsoft solar system, and LinkedIn is being traded publicly. The whacky flux continues.
As you’ll see, Thomas’ infographic shows the current size of major social networks as well as the other well-known online services we use on a daily basis relative to their peers. It also overlays the present size of each company’s mobile user base. You’ll see Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more. You can also check out the agency’s infographic from last year to see the relative changes. Notable differences include: The rise of Chinese Qzone and Twitter, the fall of Myspace, and the stasis of Friendster.
Some other notable trends in the geosocial universe, courtesy of JESS3:

Mobile: 5.3 billion mobile devices are used worldwide — that’s 77 percent of the world’s population
Smartphones: 21.8 percent of all mobile devices are smartphones. Despite what one might think, Apple does not top the list in sales—Nokia does
Skype: Mobile usage continues to increase thanks to Skype’s wise investment in apps and its mobile platform
Facebook: Now tops 629 million registered users with almost 250 million people accessing the site via mobile
Qzone: China’s version of Facebook, Qzone, is experiencing supernova-like growth with 480 million registered users
Twitter: Broke the 200 million registered user mark with nearly 40 percent of people tweeting via mobile
Email: Hotmail still dominates email, but Gmail is gaining fast
Yelp: Yelp is topping 50 million unique visitors per month. Its move to team up with OpenTable earlier this year will only increase its relevancy
Foursquare and Gowalla: These geosocial specialists are still growing, but growth seems to be slowing down a bit

Facebook 'Likes' more profitable than tweets

2011-03-27T10:37:00.000+05:00

If event registration site Eventbrite's experience is any indication, social media marketers looking for monetary returns on their efforts might get more value from Facebook than Twitter.
The company announced Wednesday that an average tweet about an event drove 80 cents in ticket sales during the past six months, whereas an average Facebook Like drove $1.34.
The study, which used in-house social analytics tools to track ticket sales on the site, was a continuation of a similar analysis the company released in October after analyzing data from a 12-week period.

That study also indicated Facebook drove more sales for Eventbrite than Twitter, although the difference between the two networks' sales per post was greater at that point than throughout the entire six-month period (the "value" of tweets increased).
In addition to each individual Facebook Like driving more sales than an individual tweet, the study also revealed cumulative activity on Facebook was greater than activity on Twitter for Eventbrite. People shared Eventbrite events on Facebook almost four times as often as they did on Twitter. The company attributes this disparity to Facebook's wider reach and greater emphasis on real-world ties.
It's important to note that only a very small percentage of site visitors shared event pages on either network. Just 1% of people who landed on an event page shared it with their friends; 10% of people who had purchased a ticket did the same.
Obviously people are more likely to share events if they are attending. Their friends, according to Eventbrite's data, are also more likely to buy tickets to an event shared on Facebook by a ticket holder than one shared by an uncommitted friend.
But whether these trends, or any of Eventbrite's findings, are relevant to other types of purchases is still a matter of speculation. But Eventbrite is betting they are.
"We carefully track sharing behavior in an effort to help event organizers tap into a new world of distribution for their event promotion," wrote Tamara Mendelsohn, Eventbrite's director of marketing and former senior analyst at Forrester Research, in a blog post about the study.
"But the findings apply broadly to all e-commerce businesses, because the foundations of e-commerce are shifting as the social graph becomes a meaningful influence in driving transactions."

Read the original article here

Build Your Social Media Embassies

2011-03-25T11:07:00.002+05:00

I came across a great analogy over at Zen Habits, and it's got me rethinking how I view social media:

If my personal website is my digital home, then my social networking profiles on Facebook and Twitter, etc. are my embassies. Embassies exist to maintain relationships with "distant lands".

Although the post is really about gaining focus and managing your digital life, I think the idea of social media profiles as embassies in distant lands is fantastic, and I'm going to run with it. My apologies to the author (Tyler Tervooren), who probably didn't intend anything I'm about to say.
Here are 6 ways to build up your social media embassies without an international incident…

1. Declare Independence

Before you can really have an embassy, you need to be a sovereign nation. It's great that your Facebook page has 100 Likes and your band's MySpace profile just cleared the double-digit friend mark, but what happens when the rules change? An embassy isn't a permanent home – politics change, alliances shift, and you ultimately have no control over someone else's territory.
The impact of social media is growing, no doubt, but that doesn't mean you should surrender your entire presence to someone else's site. Make sure you have a permanent online home that you control. Your social media embassies should be an extension of that home.

2. Be a Model Citizen

Your embassy is, first and foremost, your face to the world. You don't see countries set up a lawn chair next to a cooler under an umbrella with "Embassy" written on it in permanent marker. It's ok to create a light profile for some recon – you may decide that a given social network isn't for you – but once you're in, remember that you're representing your home country. Finish your profile, and put a little time into it. Connect with people and participate. Nothing says "poser" (or "spammer") on Twitter, for example, like someone with 1 update, no bio, and an egg for an avatar.

3. Respect the Locals

Being on a social media site is like travelling in someone else's country. If you never plan on coming back, you can play the obnoxious tourist all you want. If you want to set up a home away from home, though, you need to respect the locals, their customs, and even their leaders. Don't assume that what flew in some other country will be acceptable in your new embassy. To put it simply: listen first, and then participate.

4. Learn the Language

This is an extension of (3), but it's important to enough to stand on its own. Every social network has its unique lingo, and talking the talk can really help smooth over any diplomatic missteps. Know your hash-tags from your emoticons, and remember that the slang that can be hip in one country can make you look like a loser somewhere else. I'm not saying you have to talk like you're in high-school or pepper every conversation with "OMG LOL WTF?!", but learn to appreciate the flavor of the local language. It will also help you avoid misunderstandings.

5. Bring Your Credentials

Anybody with an email address can set up a social media embassy, and it's easy to forget that being a stranger in a strange land is a privilege. What do you bring to the table? Can you produce the paperwork, if you have to? Treat this as a thought exercise – I strongly believe that the more you understand your own value proposition, the more effective you'll be in social media. Know why you're there, and you'll be able to back it up with real contributions.

6. Foster Allegiances

Embassies have an important function – to be in the right place at the right time when a crisis occurs and to be near the heart of international relations. Your social media embassies aren't just a place to broadcast your opinions and hurl links at people. They're an opportunity to build relationships. I'd estimate that 60-70% of my current consulting business has come from a combination of blogging and my participation in social media.
Take the time to learn about people – Twitter and Facebook blend business and personal relationships in a way that makes it easy to build rapport (if you're sincere about it). Pay close attention to existing allegiances – who do your allies know, and how many steps away are those contacts from you? Done carefully (without pushing your own agenda too hard), it's easy to broaden your circle of influence, sometimes in just a couple of steps.

How's Your Embassy?

How is your own social media presence like an embassy? Are you on good terms with the locals, or are you teetering on the brink of war? This is mostly a thought exercise, and I'd love to hear what other people think about it in the comments.
Photo borrowed from Bodew.com. It really has no relevance to the post, but I was looking for a picture of a flag umbrella with a lawn chair, found this, and loved it. I'm not even entirely sure what it is, but someone please go buy one.

Tips and Must-Haves for your eCommerce Platform

2011-03-09T11:31:00.002+05:00

Choosing an eCommerce platform can be a terribly frustrating experience because of the options and packages available, the misinformation, the pushy sales reps, the time and money investment, and so on. I want to talk about this decision because of this experience, but I don't plan on making any platform recommendations. No, no. That's really up to you and the resources available to you. But I'm happy to give you a rundown of the SEO elements you'll want to consider in your decision making process.
If you're not in the market for a new eCommerce platform, maybe some of these common platform missteps will convince you that it may be time to consider.

Proper Product Image Handling

Your product imagery can provide awesome conversion benefits and make a strong differentiator in your niche. Unfortunately, a lot of eCommerce platforms don't provide the necessary control and commit a lot of SEO missteps (like generating a new URL when the product images are cycled).

Images that create new URLs is a big no-no. Vat19.com's Giant Gummy bear page passes this test as the URL doesn't change when the delicious image is changed.

Page-Level Control of Head and Meta content

Sure, it makes sense for your title tag, H1, and image alt attribute to default to the product name, but if you don't have the option to create custom meta information you could be in for some frustration. One should be able to edit titles, H1s, image alt attributes, meta descriptions, etc. from every product page in the admin.
Additionally, it's important that the content in the HEAD section of each page is editable. If I want to drop a Google Website Optimizer script onto one product page, it shouldn't be impossible. The same goes for adding a rel=canonical, meta robots, or a page-specific JavaScript snippet.

Product Reviews

Product reviews are awesome for conversion, and it seems like many eCommerce platforms today offer some sort of built-in review system. Reviews can also have a positive impact on your product pages' rankings with the naturally keyword-rich UGC it generates. Unfortunately, tons of product reviews systems utilize JavaScript to call the reviews after the page loads, providing no SEO benefit.

Fortunately for Amazon, this review is seen by the Googlebot because it's rendered in HTML

To make sure your product reviews are search engine readable, view source on a page with reviews and be sure the text appears in the code.

Robust Sitemap and Product Feed Control

Most modern eCommerce platforms submit Sitemaps to the search engines, but there's so much more that can be done. For instance, segmented Sitemaps is an awesome way to monitor indexation of different sections of your website. If your platform doesn't allow you to adjust your Sitemaps, you'd be missing out.
Additionally, product feeds allow you to submit your products to comparison shopping engines like Google Merchant Center, NexTag, Shopping.com, and many more. Google Merchant Center is the big one; an eComm platform that auto submits to GMC opens up more possibilities to appear for queries that trigger products in blended search, as well as product extensions for PPC advertisements.

You want this. Your eComm platform should allow it.

301 Redirects, True 404 pages, and Other Rewrite Control

Some of the hosted eComm platforms allow no control over 301 redirects and URL rewriting, and this is a big problem. Similarly, many platforms don't send a proper 404 status for a dead page, opting instead to 302 redirect to a (status 200) 404.html, or worse, the homepage. As products are removed from your catalog, you should be able to 301 redirect that old URL to a related product, or send a proper 404 status message. Anything else will cause confusion for the search engines AND users. Lastly, and most obviously, URLs should be rewritable to allow for keywords-richness.

Contrary to the friendly message, everything is not ok. This "404" page is seen just like any other resolving URL by the search engines. Header checker courtesy of Andy Stratton's checkmyheaders.com.

Filtered Navigation that Doesn't Suck

Faceted or filtered navigation is a contentious point amongst eCommerce platforms as very few platforms do it exactly the same.
First and foremost, a filtered navigation that relies on parameters and session IDs can be very difficult, if not impossible to build in an search engine friendly manner. In many cases, the Googlebot could waste a ton of your crawl bandwidth crawling in and out of navigational filters. Additionally, it can become a information architecture nightmare, with the Googlebot crawling deeper and further from the homepage to reach product pages.
A more modern approach to faceted navigation is through using AJAX to filter products. Just make sure that there's an HTML crawl path to your products, and you're not hiding any really good organic landing pages within your AJAX navigation.
There's a lot of ways to approach this issue, and its worthy of its own discussion. See Rand's Whiteboard Friday on the matter. The general rules for a search friendly faceted navigation:

Keep the crawlers from crawling endlessly through filters. Remember, rel=nofollow and canonical don't preserve crawl bandwidth.
Don't hide great organic landing pages from the crawlers by using AJAX. AJAX is ok, as long as there's an alternate path to pages you'd like to rank.
Robots.txt can be used as a solution but must be done carefully (for example, creating a rule to disallow access to URLs with 2 or more parameters/filters).

Site Speed

At this point I'm really more concerned with site speed from a conversion standpoint, rather than as a ranking factor, but there's reason to believe site speed will see increased importance in the algorithms' future. An advanced cacheing ability is a must for the modern eCommerce platform.

A few more SEO elements

Automatically generated but manually editable HTML sitemap.
Simple breadcrumbs. Preferably generated in a way that triggers Google's enhanced snippet:
Navigation that non-JavaScript users (and crawlers) can navigate. Image-based navigation should use alt attributes or css image replacement. See Amazon's approach with css, images, and JavaScript disabled visible on the right:
DNS control to allow CNAMEs, content delivery network integration, subdomain usage, etc.
Customizable (or no) file extensions in URLs. domain.com/product/ rather than domain.com/product.php.
Blog integration on a subfolder. If this isn't possible and your blog has to go on a subdomain (or worse, another domain entirely), that could be a sign of even more frustrating control issues.

Some Non-SEO elements

There's obviously TONS of non-SEO related features that should be included in a good eCommerce platform. Here are just a few.

Strength in Numbers and Extendability - At some point your eCommerce platform will frustrate you for one reason or another, and you'll feel a lot better if there's a vibrant community and developers building extensions behind it to help.
Data Portability - Can you export and import all of your data from the admin? If one of your manufacturers makes a change to all of their products that requires a small edit to all of their descriptions, can this be done simply? And what about a few years later when you're ready to move to a new platform?
Internal Site Search - Your platform should definitely have a strong internal site search functionality, or at least allow for full integration of a third party's search solution.
Updated, but Not Too Often! - When was the last time your platform updated? 3 years ago? Well, a lot has changed since then, I'm not sure I'd trust that. At the same time, updates every other week can be extremely frustrating.
Great Checkout Process - We'll leave what "great" actually means to the conversion rate experts. Needless to say, this is a HUGE differentiator for eComm platforms. I'll also lump advanced control of shipping rules, gift cards, and coupon codes in here as well.

That's Everything!

I don't envy the engineers behind today's eCommerce platforms. They're tasked with building a system that's both simple yet robust, 'just gets out of the way' yet 'all-in-one', user friendly yet secure, and so on. No fun. I don't expect that I've covered every bit of must-have functionality either, but I hope I've got most of it. If you've got any particularly frustrating stories from dealing with your eCommerce platform, follow me on Twitter and let me know, or sound off in the comments.

Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday

2010-11-12T16:04:00.002+05:00

Back in February we wrote about Facebook’s secret Project Titan — a web-based email client that we hear is unofficially referred to internally as its “Gmail killer”. Now we’ve heard from sources that this is indeed what’s coming on Monday during Facebook’s special event, alongside personal @facebook.com email addresses for users.
This isn’t a big surprise — the event invites Facebook sent out hinted strongly that the news would have something to do with its Inbox, sparking plenty of speculation that the event could be related to Titan. Our understanding is that this is more than just a UI refresh for Facebook’s existing messaging service with POP access tacked on. Rather, Facebook is building a full-fledged webmail client, and while it may only be in early stages come its launch Monday, there’s a huge amount of potential here.
Facebook has the world’s most popular photos product, the most popular events product, and soon will have a very popular local deals product as well. It can tweak the design of its webmail client to display content from each of these in a seamless fashion (and don’t forget messages from games, or payments via Facebook Credits). And there’s also the social element: Facebook knows who your friends are and how closely you’re connected to them; it can probably do a pretty good job figuring out which personal emails you want to read most and prioritize them accordingly.
Oh, and assuming our sources prove accurate, this explains the timing of the Google/Facebook slap fight over contact information.
We’ll keep digging for more details and will have full coverage on Monday.
Taken from Techcrunch.com

Google Offers Staff Engineer $3.5 Million To Turn Down Facebook Offer

2010-11-12T16:02:00.000+05:00

In September I wrote about Google’s “extraordinary” efforts to stop employees, particularly engineers, from resigning to join pre-IPO startups like LinkedIn, Twitter and especially Facebook. In one case we confirmed an engineer making around $150,000 turned down a 15% raise plus $500,000 in restricted stock and left for Facebook anyway.
That’s all chump change now. We’ve confirmed today that a staff engineer at Google being heavily romanced by Facebook was offered a jaw dropping $3.5 million in restricted stock by Google (this means Google is handing over stock worth $3.5 million based on its value today, and that stock will vest over time). He quite wisely accepted Google’s counter offer. Facebook lost this one.
From our previous post in September:

Sources close to Google told us that about 80% of people stay when they’re offered a counter to a Facebook offer. But some still leave. Part of that may be that Facebook is quietly telling people, never in writing, that there’s no reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation over the next couple of years. No guarantees, yadda yadda, but hey if you get 1/10 of 1%, that’s $100 million in stock. Now it’s a party.
Google isn’t making these kind of counter offers to everyone, but it’s not a one off, either. It seems to me that every Google engineer at least should be taking a personal day to go collect a Facebook offer. Even if it’s just to get a counter offer from their current employer.

However effective these counter offers are, they sure aren’t good for morale internally at Google. Unless, of course, you’re one of the ones winning the lottery.

LDA - Is On-Page Optimization the SEO Secret?

2010-11-11T15:24:00.002+05:00

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
How do I recap the SEOmoz PRO Seminar session on Uncovering a Hidden Technique for SEO? The title is so attractive that it produces Pavlonian symptoms as we salivate at the thought of uncovering a hidden SEO treasure. Ben Hendrickson of SEOmoz presented a model which appears to show how Google may assigning relevance to keyword terms based on context - topical relevance.
Is Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) that hidden jackpot?
1st - LDA is not new nor something SEOmoz invented. The Information Retrieval model has been around for 7 or 8 years, and IR geeks have talked about it before. There are a number of resources, as well as nay saying, about LDA and Google's possible use of it.
2nd - What is new is SEOmoz's LDA Topics Tool that produces a relevancy score based off a query (search term). It enables one to play with words that may increase a page's relevancy in the eyes of Google. It shows words that help Google determine how relevant the page is to a user's search query.
Game Changer?
Kyle Stone tweeted that the LDA tool is a game changer, and many retweeted.

Is SEOmoz's LDA tool a game changer? That's yet to be seen. The goal is to report Ben's research as presented at the Mozinar and how a layman (myself) interprets such. Rand is going to do a follow-up post to explain more.
Why all the hype?
The SEO Challenge
SEOs face the continual challenge of figuring out Google's hidden ranking algorithms. How do we rank higher? Which signals are the most important? We know search engines are "learning models" that attempt to understand "context” of words. Google has said for years that webmasters should concentrate most on providing good relevant (contextual) content.
There are ways to rank higher. Is it as easy as 1, 2, 3?

Create quality copy with keyword(s) on the page along with associated anchor text links.
Get good links.
What Ben talked about in this session.

LDA - Topic Modeling & Analysis
Latent Dirichlet Allocation, in layman's terms, translates to "topic modeling." In search geek terms, LDA is the following formula:

(Did you digest that? Don't worry; Mozzers groaned and laughed at the same time. PLUS: Scientist Hendrickson delivered this session after lunch!)
LDA Simplified - Here is Ben's way of explaining topic modeling:

(Okay, I was once proud that I got an A in Logic and Combinatorics - discrete math/set theory. However, that computer science class now feels like basic math compared to this formula.)
It made more sense when Rand Fishkin joined Ben on stage and when Todd Freisen moderated and deciphered during Q&A. (Manuela Sanches of Brazil was sitting next to me and said that Ben's "presentation needed subtitles!")
The objective of LDA, from my deciphering of Greek, is to understand how Google is using semantic contextual analysis combined with other signals, to define topics/concepts. It's how Google analyzes the words on a page to determine the "set" to which a word belongs - how relevant a search query is to pages in its database.
For example: How does Google assign relevance to the word "orange" on a page? They determine orange is related to the fruit set or to the color set by page context.
LDA Defined:
"Latent Dirichlet Allocation (Blei et al, 2003) is a powerful learning algorithm for automatically and jointly clustering words into "topics" and documents into mixtures of topics. It has been successfully applied to model change in scientific fields over time (Griffiths and Steyver, 2004; Hall, et al. 2008).

A topic model is, roughly, a hierarchical Bayesian model that associates with each document a probability distribution over "topics", which are in turn distributions over words."
Bayesian - ah, a term I recognize!! Bayesian spam filtering is a method used to detect spam. It draws off a database and learns the meaning of words. It's "trained" by us when we mark an email as spam. It looks at incoming emails and calculates the probability that the content of an email is contextually spammy.
I found a PowerPoint presentation about Bayesian Inference Techniques by Microsoft Research from 2004 that presents the possibility of using LDA. Go to slide 54 and read:
"Can we build a general-purpose inference engine which automates these procedures?"
Microsoft has been looking at LDA models. Do search engines use it as one of their primary methods?
Ben sampled over 8 million documents with approx. 1,000 queries. He believes Google is using LDA topic modeling to determine (learn) what words mean by their associations with, relevance to, other words on the page. (Other factors are included.) Ben called the results a "co-occurrence explanation" that use a "cosine similarity."
SEO Takeaway:

Results that are higher in Google SERPs, in general, have more topical content.
Search engines do APPEAR to apply semantic analysisÂ… when indexing a page and determining the intent of the words on the page.

Rand tweeted an explanation (in 140 x 4) as follows:

Dana's LDA Catwalk Metaphor for Topic Modeling:
Imagine the words on your page as walking down the fashion runway in Paris. Your keyword phrase is "dressed" in semantic accessories, words that correlate to and dress up your topic. Associated words bring meaning to and highlight the fashion model's outfit. Adjectives, modifiers and synonyms are like jewelry, hats, and shoes. The combination can transform your base layers (your target terms) from casual or conservative business attire into a sexy night-on-the-town ensemble.
Combinations and permutations of words on a page "dress" your skinny or curvy fashion model. Relevant words provide Google with an image of what she is wearing and the catwalk upon which she struts. LDA refers back to what Google already knows about these "accessories" (words) and their previous association with the topic terms related to fashion.
Enter Topical Ambiguity - I just broke the "rules" for context with the catwalk metaphor by referring to modeling in two contexts on this page:

I used "modeling" terms that relate to the "fashion industry" set.
The catwalk metaphor is irrelevant content that is off-topic for discussing "LDA topic modeling."

Google Algorithm Exposed?
Ben clearly said that LDA is an ATTEMPT to explain the SERPs. His scenario, a quote from his presentation slides, follows:
One of us needs to implement it so we can:
1) See how it applies to pages
2) See if it helps explain SERPs
One-two-three-not-it.
LDA is not LSI.
There were some tweets claiming SEOmoz was bringing back LSI or snakeoil. Ben clarified that LDA is not LSI, which deals more with keyword density. He explained that he is NOT talking about loading keywords on a page but about the relevance of the topics within the page. He said that:
"LSI doesn’t have the same bias toward simple explanations. LSI breaks down as you try to scale up the number of topics."
The LDA tool deals with context, semantic relevancy, not density - in addition to some other random factors. Example:
If SEOmoz has a page all about "SEO" and "tools," and there is another word on the page that can be explained by a word that is more related to SEO topic, then the related word would be used. Meaning, "seo tools" doesn't have to be repeated over and over, and the related word would be interpreted by Google as being relevant.
Ben, who appears to have the brain of a search engine, noted that it "appears" LDA is what Google is heading for in the near future. He said (paraphrased):
If they are not doing it, they seem to be doing something that has the same output. They are probably already using it.
Rand deciphered:
It’s a super weird coincidence if Google is not using it.
Are On-Page Signals Stronger than Links?
Are we heading toward more emphasis of on-page topic modeling? I'm not an IR geek, but I do plan to spend more energy focusing on understanding how search engines retrieve informaton. We are dealing with a semantic Web. LDA may indicate that good old on-page optimization sends stronger signals than links.
SEOmoz's LDA tool attempts to show how relevant content is to a chosen keyword. It computes relevance of queries.
The following shows how relevant SEOmoz's Tools page is to Aaron Wall's SEO Book Tools page.

The score at the top is an indicator of how relevant the content on that page is according to LDA.

Aaron's content is 72%* relevant for the query "seo tools."
SEOmoz's tools page is 40%* relevant.

*NOTE: (I inserted the logos.) You can run the same pages and get different results. The results are similar in that SEO Book always scored as more topically relevant, but the percentage varies. Is this the random Monte Carlo algorithm at work? Ben?
Mozinar Question:
"How do we execute this for SEO?"
Ben's Answer:
"I don't actually do SEO. I write code."
That's up to us, the SEOs, to play and test in our Google playground.
Use the tool to decide if you can win with LDA to optimize your on-page signals.

Use the LDA Topics Tool to return words that could be used on a page for a query.
Then determine who is ranking for that term.
Simply write content that is highly on-topic based off the findings you observe.

If you are not performing that well in the SERPs, think about classic on-page optimization. In the example above, rather than putting another instance of "seo tools" on the page, LDA shows there are better ways to tell Google that you are about that topic. The tool provides a way to measure that.
IMPORTANT: There is a threshold at which too many related words will appear as too spammy. LDA is not something to be used to game Google.
Test the LDA Tool out for yourself, and draw your own conclusions.
***
DISCLAIMER: I'm not claiming this methodology has uncovered hidden SEO treasures. Time, testing and playing around with a new SEOmoz tool while observing the SERPs will reveal the answer. In the meantime, I'm going to dress up my pages and accessorize them with relevant terms that make them dazzle so they look good climbing the Google catwalk.
Taken from SEOmoz.com

Why Most Conference Presentations Suck

2010-11-11T15:23:00.000+05:00

Normally, I tend towards the uncontroversial when I write. I haven't been the author of many posts that have caused debate.
But I've had enough. I need to speak up.

Most conference presentations suck

There. I said it.
I remember being amazed (and, back then, pretty heartened) when I went to my first SEO conference and realised I already knew most of what was being said. Amazement turned to disappointment at my second conference, which was billed as "Advanced" and where the same old basics were trotted out by too many of the speakers.
Since then, I've been to hundreds of presentations. I've learnt a lot, but from a surprisingly small proportion of them. (Thank you to those speakers who consistently turn out the excellent stuff!).

I'm no exception

This is as much a criticism of myself as anyone else. Looking back, there are some presentations I've given that make me cringe now (especially early ones). Early on in my speaking career, it wasn't necessarily that I phoned them in. I was suitably scared / motivated to do a good job - I think I just didn't know how. More recently, I think it's probably happened when I agreed to talk on a subject I didn't really know enough about. I'm definitely trying to learn that lesson.
So before I go any further, if you've had to sit through one of my presentations and learnt nothing, I'm sorry.
If it happens in future, email me and tell me (my contact details are easy to find and always on my last slide).
I'm a strong believer in the idea that you should praise in public and criticise in private so I'm not asking you to tear presentations apart on Twitter. I'd love it if we saw more strong praise of great presentations, and more honest private feedback to speakers and organisers when they haven't delivered the goods.

Basic has its place

Before I go any further, I wanted to point out that I am often called upon to give "SEO 101" type presentations and these wouldn't teach any of you anything. I hope this doesn't mean that they are bad presentations. It's all about knowing the level of the audience I guess. This rant is squarely aimed at "advanced" presentations of one form or another.

Delivery is important, but it's not a substitute for content

If you start googling "how to give a great presentation", you'll find masses of advice on slide design, how to speak at the right speed, the kind of opening line to use, what to wear etc. All of this stuff can help, but I would ~~urge~~ implore you to work harder on the other axis. Make the content kick-ass and I'll listen to you even if you mumble at your feet in a monotone looking like a scarecrow. (Yes, I know I talk too quickly when I present. One day I'll fix that).

I do like listening to great speakers and entertaining presentation does improve things, but there are better places than SEO conferences to go for stand-up comedy, so generally, I'm there to learn things. You can get away with slightly weaker content if your delivery is awesome but please remember this highly scientific chart:

And you know what? I don't even care if it's a sales pitch if you are teaching me stuff. It sets the bar higher and I'm more likely to criticise you if you pitch your own stuff without teaching me anything, but if you do teach me stuff, you can bet I'm going to check out whatever you're hawking.

By content, I mean new stuff

In the past, just to avoid embarrassing myself, I have:

Learnt new things (this was about how to do first touch tracking in Google Analytics):

Carried out research (this slide shows a correlation I established between search volume for the 2006 world cup and the 2010 world cup before this year's competition started - it was part of a methodology for forecasting search volumes that haven't happened yet):

And published data (this is actually one of Tom's slides):

Don't worry about being too advanced

That's what Google is for. Give me the ideas and the data that I couldn't get anywhere else. If there's terminology I'm not familiar with or you skip over something too quickly, I can easily do my own research. But please don't spend half an hour telling a room full of experts what Google Insights is.

Why should you bother?

At the Seattle mozinar, I gave a presentation on "how to pitch SEO". One of my core themes was that the best way to win business is to avoid competitive pitches by giving yourself an unfair advantage. Being known for being smart is one of those advantages. If people get to know you through learning from your presentations, you will find yourself in a disproportionate number of uncompetitive pitches... Just sayin'.

Recipe for success: Speakers

At Distilled, I have been thrilled to see great first-time presentations from our guys - this isn't something that only comes with experience. For example, Sam's Advanced Keyword Research presentation at SMX London was more highly rated than those of many more experienced speakers including mine. In advance of the show, Sam asked Tom and I to run through our secret recipe. It's actually pretty simple - just follow these steps:

Only agree to speak if you actually know the subject and have something new to say
Ask yourself what you can give away in your talk that will be new for the majority of the audience
What action can people take as a result of your talk?
Be prepared to do work / research to discover or demonstrate your new stuff
Unless you are an incredibly gifted public speaker, practice before the event. There's a huge difference between preparing the slides and giving a great talk. Although I truly believe that content > delivery, it's worth working on the delivery at least a bit! Check out Lisa Barone's post last week about How To Rock Your Presentation for more great presentation delivery recommendations.

If you need a little bit more incentive to be awesome, I've found that having a head to head competition and then a vote at the end of your session (thanks Rand!) is a good way to make you up your game.

Recipe for success: Organisers

This rant is mainly aimed at speakers, who I think are the primary culprits, but for organisers, while I realise that larger conferences especially don't want to micro-manage every session the way Rand and I have been for the Pro training seminars, can I beg for one small thing?

Don't invite speakers back if they didn't add value last time

Everyone runs those follow-up surveys and knows which speakers were loved by the audiences and who phoned it in. Please stop inviting people back if they don't want to teach things to the attendees. [Rand wrote a whole post a while back with his thoughts on this from an organiser's perspective].
Rand and I actually tend to harangue our speakers with instructions a little bit like those above asking them to bring their 'A' games. Beyond a certain point, it hopefully gathers momentum because no-one wants to be the guy giving the sales pitch when everyone else's presentation is rocking. At the beginning of September (almost two months before the show), I had a call with every speaker for the London Pro seminar to help shape what they were going to talk about and make sure that they are bringing their secrets. It's not too late to get in on the action and see the result of all that hard work:

There are still tickets left for the London Pro SEO seminar

It's lucky that we have a bigger venue this year. We passed last year's total (sold out) sales a few weeks ago and unfortunately all the VIP breakfast tickets are gone, but there are still tickets left at the time of writing. Like last year, we anticipate that there will be a rush of bookings as the date approaches so it is likely that we will sell out. If you are wanting to come and see me put my money where my mouth is (yes, I'm feeling the pressure a little bit after writing this) don't leave it too late to book:

The Details:
Where: The Congress Centre in London's West End
When: October 25th and 26th
Price: £699 +VAT

Taken from SEOmoz.com

Yahoo is now Powered by BING!

2010-11-10T16:03:00.001+05:00

Finally Yahoo is powered by Bing. Its mean on checking some results on Yahoo you will find search results of Bing Search Engine.On searching “south african fur seal” on Yahoo and Bing following results have been found.

Yahoo Search is Powered by Yahoo

Pics taken from Atif Zain.com

Bing Showing similar results on Yahoo

At the start of this year Yahoo and Microsoft announced their mutual operation for Yahoo Search. In last month Yahoo started showing 25% results from Bing Search in US regions. Now they are showing Bing powered results in more areas as well, like I find it at Pakistan.

Yahoo also mention this collaboration in footer of Yahoo search page where you can find “Powered by Bing” caption. Well its look a like end of typical YAHOO search which is the 2nd largest search engine. Now we have to see what impact will be happen on website like AliBaba.com and others which was well ripped in Yahoo and as compare to it have very low ranking in Bing.com.

How to Turn Google Analytics Into Your Own Rank Tracker

2010-11-10T10:57:00.002+05:00

Today I want to talk about tracking organic ranking in Google Analytics. Previously, we were able to determine the page from which a Google organic click was coming from (detailed on the Distilled blog by Will Critchlow). This was nice because we could append this to the end of our keywords in Google Analytics for some interesting data (André Scholten's post at Yoast.com has a step by step) as seen below.

Image courtesy of Yoast.com
This solution provides limited utility, and if you're like me, you implemented it, maybe checked it out once in a while, but never really turned this into actionable or otherwise meaningful data. I'm going to detail how rank tracking in Google Analytics can be made a lot more useful thanks to custom variables and a change in Google's referring URLs. But first...

Some History

When Google began testing an AJAX search interface in early 2009 there was a flurry of concern that it could mean the end of traditional rank tracking, web analytics packages, and I'm sure someone said SEO was dead, too. The concern wasn't without merit; Google was serving results in AJAX with the URL pattern as http://www.google.com/#q=keyword, and most analytics packages ignored the hash and everything after.
Fast forward to September 8th, when Google introduced Google Instant. The AJAX SERP usage had been steadily increasing over time, but shot up in usage when Instant was rolled out. Fortunately for Omniture, WebTrends, and other third party analytics packages, Google worked out a way to pass the referrer information from the SERPs, rank tracking still works, and I'm still working as an SEO in a living industry.
As it turns out, Google includes even more information in the AJAX SERPs than they previously did, including one really interesting parameter: "cd=". The cd= parameter contains the exact ranking position of the search listing, which makes for some really awesome possibilities, especially when paired with Google Analytics' custom variables.

Why Custom Variables?

Custom variables are a bit of an enigma to even advanced Analytics users. I'll admit that I never really made much use of them in the past. You'll often see examples where custom variables are used to track logged in vs. unlogged in users, which is definitely a great use. Rob Ousbey's 6 cool things YOU can do with custom variables is a good set of examples to get your feet wet.
In André Scholten's example above we're using Google Analytics user defined value, isn't that just as good a custom variable? Well, the difference depends on how you intend on using your data. With custom variables, you're granted much more flexibility within Google Analytics for slicing and dicing data. For instance, through the use of either custom reporting or advanced segments with custom variables, I can pretty easily track how much revenue a keyword has brought in when ranked in the 2nd position, as opposed to the 4th. While this may be possible with the user defined variable, it would require quite a bit of work after an excel data dump.
Now, let's get to business:

The How

Getting this properly set up was remarkably easy for me, and I have so very little programming knowledge, so I would imagine most wouldn't have much issue. I used PHP, as I was working with a WordPress site, but I'm sure you crazy hackers can do the same in most any language.

Step One - Extract cd= Value from Referrer String

I used this snippet to do this.

<?php preg_match("/cd\=(\d+)/",$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], $matches);$str = $matches[0];preg_match("/(\d+)/",$str,$matches);$rank = $matches[0] ?>

Please don't make fun of my hacky coding
This assigns the cd= value to the $rank variable. We'll reference this in...

Step 2 - Call cd= Value in our Google Analytics snippet

Now, we want to insert the custom variable call between the setAccount and trackPageview lines in our Analytics snippet (shown below using the asynchronous code):

var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',1,'Google_Rank','$rank',2]); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);"

We've set the custom variable slot to 1, and the scope to the session-level (the last argument, set as 2). If you are already making use of custom variables, be sure to not overwrite a previously occupied slot. For more information on how the custom variable is formatted, see Google's help page on the topic.

Step 3 - Create an IF Statement so the CustomVar isn't Called Every Time

We only want to include this line when we have a cd= value, otherwise every new click will overwrite the last value. To do this, I used the following IF statement, again coded in PHP. This is the final step, and the complete Google Analytics snippet:

<?php if ($rank != '' ) {echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_setCustomVar',1,'Google_Rank','$rank',2]); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);";echo "\n"; }else {echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);"; }echo "\n";?> (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();</script>

Here we're checking if $rank has a value. If it does, we'll include the custom variable call with that $rank value, if not, we'll print the Google Analytics code as normal. Also included in the above are some line breaks (\n), so that the code formats correctly.

The Most Important Part - Analyzing Our Data

What's the point of going through all this effort if it doesn't provide you with any analytical insight? None, of course. But this rank tracking solution has some added benefits over the traditional rank tracking software that may be really useful to some SEOs. These include:

Rankings by City, Region, Country

Traditional rank tracking software suffers in that its ranking results are dependent on the location of the servers. With custom variable rank tracking and a little spreadsheet pivot table magic it's pretty easy to get your site's rank for any location.

Historical, Definite, Data

Once this is properly set up you've got access to definite rankings within your Analytics data from that point on. So as holiday season 2011 rolls around, its easy enough to review where your site ranked during the 2010 holidays, helping to set budgets, goals, and expectations.

Bounce Rate/eCommerce Data/etc. by Rank

Whatever your KPI, you can compare it against search ranking. Reporting the ROI of link building efforts or on site optimization becomes much easier when you've got rankings included in your dataset.
Some of the quick ideas I had around this include:

Average rank over time for top 50 keywords
Average rank over time for 4+ word keyphrases
Bounce rate for 2nd+ page clicks
Revenue % increase for Keyword X when ranking increases from 2 to 1

I should note that getting averages is a lot easier in Excel with a pivot table, as seen below:

This can also be adjusted to show your minimum rank, as well

Creating Custom Reports and Advanced Segments

Custom variables aren't included in the default reports for Google Analytics, so unless you do all your work in Excel, you'll probably want to create some custom reports or advanced segmentation to work with the data directly in Analytics.
Advanced segmentation is great for this data. Below is the function one would use to track rankings between 11 and 15, which might be strong candidates for on-page optimization that could provide the boost onto the first page:

You can apply this particular advanced segment with this link.

The Downsides

The most obvious downside is that you're only receiving a ranking when a listing is being clicked on, so for very small sites there may be limited utility. Ranking data will be spotty past the 2nd page, as well.
Additionally, the AJAX SERPs are not being served to all users in all locations. Small sample size warning here, but I'm seeing about 40% of organic Google traffic coming from the AJAX SERPs (done through a simple calculation of visits with our custom variable divided by total Google organic visits over the same time period). Michael Whitaker is seeing this number over 50% in his data. This number is likely going to increase as Instant is rolled out further.
The #-pack local listings can really throw things off, too. If a particular query gets one of these to start the SERP, the cd= continues after:

Lastly, there does exist the possibility that Google discontinues its use of the cd= variable for whatever reason.

Go Analyze

I hope some of you can make some good use out of this functionality. I've only had it installed on my sites for a short time, but I've definitely found it interesting to play around with. If you don't already have Excellent Analytics installed in your Excel I would highly recommend doing so, even if you don't implement this tracking, and especially if you do.
I'd like to thank Michael Whitaker of Monitus for his help. He's been installing this setup for his clients for a bit now. Monitus offers proper eCommerce Google Analytics installation for Yahoo! stores, which is surprisingly difficult without Monitus.
If you've got any other ideas for working with this data, sound off in the comments or let me know on Twitter . Personally, I'm really excited to have this data rolling in and the possibilities are nearly endless. I'll be sure to report any interesting ways to manipulate the data in future blog posts. Cheers!
Originally taken from http://www.SEOmoz.com

Content Optimization: Revisiting Topic Modeling, LDA & Our Labs Tool

2010-11-10T10:54:00.002+05:00

Many times as SEOs, we think about the "on-page optimization" process as simply following the best practices for placing our targeted keywords (and possibly, some variations of them) on the page. My previous blog post about Perfecting Keyword Targeting covers this in some detail. But, we also know that search engines aren't nearly naive enough to care only about the individual terms/phrases that the user queries. For years, search engines have been doing work with topic modeling (this paper from Berkeley researchers does a nice job exploring the concept as it relates to IR).
While it's challenging as SEOs to know where this work has taken them, we can certainly assume that the words and phrases you use on a page likely influence its ranking, as well as how and where you use the targeted query term.
For those of you who've been following our blog posts about research into this area over the past few months, you know we've hit some stumbling blocks. Initially, we thought the free LDA Labs Tool had an extremely high correlation with Google.com rankings (higher even than most link-based metrics). However, after analyzing some results from others who ran tests, we saw biasing in our results and went back to the drawing table.
At the PRO Training Seminar in London, Ben Hendrickson shared our latest findings - much more conservative numbers, but consistent with the data and defensible.

As you can see, these numbers are lower than our previous datapoints, and the true correlation of the tool in its current format (which has been re-engineered) is now between the "LDA even vs. odds" and "LDA w/ bias" numbers. This makes our version less predictive than, say, # of links or linking root domains, but more predictive than any other on-page factor we analyzed (save features around exact/partial keyword match domains).
Since this research and the tool was released, people have been asking me "How Do I Use This?" Luckily, this video put together from WebProNews is an excellent resource to help answer that.

More WebProNews Videos

If you've got more questions about LDA, the tool, topic modeling in general or anything else related, feel free to ask below. We're still very excited about this topic, and while Ben is taking a short sabbatical until January (his first vacation in 3 years), I'm happy to help where I can. We hope that sometime in Q1 of next year, we'll have even more work on our LDA model, better correlations, and recommendations of specific words/phrases that may be adding to or hurting scores.
p.s. For those who have been following the posts closely, you may have noticed that a number of individuals who often don't like the work SEO publishes were particularly vehement in criticizing our LDA research. I don't have much that can address those concerns other than to say - as before, we're still in the early stages of work on this. It's very challenging to do from a coding, mathematics and analysis perspective, so more polished results may still be several months away.
We've been excited to have others analyze our work (which is how we discovered our initial error on the correlation numbers) and we look forward to more people experimenting with it. We do feel, however, that despite the criticisms, we're going to continue conducting and presenting research like this, with similar caveats. If you believe our work is wrong, misguided or non-useful, there's certainly no obligation to use it. We can promise that until we feel very strongly about our research, evidence and the value it provides, we won't be making this a formal part of our Web App, PRO tools or best practices. But, in the meantime, for those who like playing on the cutting edge, we feel it's part of our core values to continue working and sharing in areas like this.

An Email from SEOforums.org - Do you want a live Chatbox?

2010-11-10T10:46:00.001+05:00

Thats what i got few days before.

> I've been playing about with a live chatbox for the last few days for the forum - and its ready!
>
> My only concern is whether it will be of use to you, our members - or if it will just degenerate into a spamfest?
>
> I would love to hear your feedback (on Twitter), please follow me on
> http://twitter.com/seoforumsorg
> and mention @seoforumsorg in your comments on whether we should include a chatbox.
>
> IF the feedback is positive, we will try it out for a week or two.
> If nobody is interested, I guess we won't!
>
>
> Thanks for your help guys,

> http://seoforums.org

Posted via email from imranuh's posterous

Linkscape Update, New Stats and an API Dashboard

2010-05-28T20:29:00.001+05:00

Update: Why did my Domain Authority change?
In this index update we re-calibrated our Domain Authority metric to better reflect the relationships between all domains on the Internet. This means that many websites' Domain Authority (DA) changed.
Not to worry! If your domain authority went down, so did all of the other domains that had similar link profiles before the index update. (Don't think about it like something bad happened to your site, think about it like we changed how we view the entire Internet) You can read more about why we did this in the section below.

The good news is, we have an index update for you! And it's a couple of days sooner than previously announced. The bad news is, things were, as you might have noticed, a little rocky this morning. We had more traffic to the API than ever before, and, through the magic of being a scrappy startup, we all jumped into action. Fortunately, through the magic of Amazon Web Services, we've quickly increased our infrastructure and are serving better than ever. I do apologize for any issues this might have caused.
I've got a few things to say in this post, so you can skip forward if you like:

Page Authority and Domain Authority Change

We've gotten a lot of feedback about Page Authority and Domain Authority. We're excited about these metrics and are using them to power a lot of what we do: sorting links, crawl selection, keyword difficulty. But lately, it seemed as if things were getting a little... clumpy. We were packing our numbers too closely together to give a real sense of the spread in authority over the web. I'll defer to Ben and Rand, who are working on this a lot, but just to give you a taste:

As you can see, we've pulled apart a lot of great sites. This spread, for example SEOmoz with a PA of 80 and Amazon.com with a PA of 89, better reflects different authorities.
This will have effects across tools, including Keyword Difficulty. So take a minute to check those out and make sure that what we're showing you matches your intuition.

New API Dashboard

It's actually very fitting that we should have more traffic than ever before, because we've been hard at work on better serving one of our biggest API consumers: You! Today we're launching our SEOmoz API Dashboard.

This dashboard will be the place to go to manage your SEOmoz API account. Right now we're including all of your API usage. This gives you visibility into your API consumption, critical if you're on the paid plan. And if you're on the free plan this gives you some idea of the usage of your tools. As we improve what we offer both in the API and to support application development, you'll see more and more here.

Stats on Nofollow vs Rel=Canonical

Last week I had a great chat with Eric Enge at Stone Temple Consulting. We talked a little bit about the usage of nofollow and rel=canonical over the last year (a big year for both!), but I didn't have anything concrete to share at the time. I dug into it and it's pretty interesting:

As you can see, rel=canonical is really taking off. Since we started keeping really good stats on its usage in our data, it's grown in usage by about 50%, in just six months! We see rel=canonical being used more than either internal or external nofollows. And internal nofollows have fallen off quite a bit about eight months ago, but are reasonably stable since then.
My hypothesis (without supporting data at the moment), is that two mindsets are winning:

use rel=canonical right away
if rel=nofollow is working leave it

I'll leave it to the expert SEOs to debate this (in the comments, please!), but that could well be sound advice.

Index Update Stats

Here are some charts and graphs of the data we've updated since last month.

We're staying on course with our current update rate for pages. We've got updated information for about 43 billion pages.

And we have a corresponding update for links to and from those pages.

We've got two focuses for our data updates:

Get those domains which we used to think about as niche
Get deep on those domains that are highly authoritative

This is actually a big initiative we've been working on this year. And we're already seeing great improvements to our data quality.
I hope you enjoy the data. As always, feedback is much appreciated!