World SMO News, SEO News, Google Updates

How to Add Custom Variables in Google Tag Manager

2014-07-09T23:43:00.000-07:00

If you're an online publisher using Google Analytics, I'm sure you've heard this before: you need to use custom variables so that you can really segment and measure your audience.

You also most likely are currently working on migrating to Google Tag Manager in order to make your life easier.

So how do you implement them together? What follows is a step-by-step guide for installing publisher-centered custom variables using Google Tag Manager.

I am going to assume, that you already have Google Tag Manager installed in your site and that one of your tags is the asynch GA js. If you don't, read this first.

Google's Justin Cutroni recommends adding seven custom variables for publishers. This article will go in detail and breakdown how to install four of them:

Category
Content Type
Publication Date
Author

These four custom variables at the most basic level gets you a good idea of your overall site performance. Once you add these data points, you can also get closer to information that other publisher-centered analytics tools such as Parsely track.

Let's jump in!

3 Things You Need to Know Before You Begin

These custom variables should be implemented on the page level. For all the custom variables mentioned above, the value changes as the user goes from one page to the next. For example, a user might read an article by author one and then click on a link that goes to an article by Author 2. This is true for all the custom variables aforementioned
You're going to need a data layer. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. The best and only way to have these custom variables on your site is via data layer. If you want to read more about this, here's an article that gives a good explanation of how data layers work.
You need the help of your front-end engineer. If you don't know this yet, you will, a good analytics person is always good to his or her front-end engineers.

Ask your front-end engineer to create a data layer that contains the four custom variables we want to add: Content Type, Author, Category, and Published Date. Direct them to the developer documentation on adding data layer for Google Tag Manager. There are two key things to check in the developer implementation:

Make sure that the data layer comes before the Google Tag Manager code (we inserted ours before the /head tag).
I like keeping my values in small caps, this eliminates any potential duplicate entries that could be created due to any weird capitalizations.

Check out the way we set up the data layer in one of our sites. The data layer in the source code for that page will look like below.

Note: pagetype is our data layer entry for content type

How to Add These Custom Variables as Values in Google Tag Manager

1. Create 4 Different Macros

You will need one for each data point that is pushed to data layer. Below is my Author macro as an example. You will need to create one macro each for content type, author, category, and published date.

2. Edit Your Existing Google Analytics Asynch Tag in GTM

You don't need to create a new GA Asynch Tag.
Add the four new custom variables in GTM based on your data layer.
The final implementation in GA Classic Tag should look something like this, the Value is the Macros you created in step 1.

3. Create a New Version of GTM

I like to name my versions based on what changes I pushed in the version.

4. Preview Version to Make Sure the Tags and Custom Variables are Firing Correctly

I love using the preview function of GTM to check if what I implemented will work. You can see the preview button on the top right of every version you create in Google Tag Manager.

5. Publish the New Version of Google Tag Manager

You will start to see your new data points flow through after a few hours.

Once you have completed this setup, here are some examples of additional insights you can now access:

Isolate the Increase/Decrease in Traffic to a Specific Content Type

In the example below, I was able to drill down that it was article content type that caused the decrease in sessions. You can now drill down to # of articles published for the time period and get a better understanding of what may be causing the traffic to decline.

Uncover Pages With Errors by Tracking Your 404 Pages

Uncover More Insights on the Performance of Your Authors

This is where an advanced Google Analytics implementation can get you similar insights you have to get from signing up with other data providers such as Parsely.

You can drill down to the number of articles, each author writes for the month, the number of pageviews per post, and the categories each author is writing about.

This table was derived from using data for author and published date.

This is Just the Beginning...

There are so many other possibilities of additional analysis points once you have these custom variables set up. I'd love to hear your ideas and get more conversations going on publisher specific Google Analytics setups.

Rumor & News- Apple, Facebook, Google Web data centers getting greener

2014-04-03T00:39:00.002-07:00

Apple Inc, Google Inc and Facebook Inc have made significant progress in adopting renewable energy sources to power their Web services, the environmental group Greenpeace said in a report on Wednesday.
But energy-hungry data centers operated by some of the Internet industry's top companies remain overly reliant on carbon-emitting coal and gas, the report said.

Apple Inc, which built an on-site solar panel farm and fuel-cells at its North Carolina data center and has procured renewable energy directly at its other three facilities, earned the highest marks on the "scorecard" of Internet company data centers that Greenpeace issues every two years.
Greenpeace rated Apple's efforts in transparency, renewable energy policy and renewable energy deployment with an A grade in each category, compared with a mix of D and F grades two years ago when the group released its last report.

At the other end of the spectrum, Amazon.com Inc's Web Services business, which Greenpeace said operates at least 18 data centers around the world, was singled out for being among the least committed to renewable energy, earning F grades in three out of Greenpeace's four categories.
Some Internet companies "have refused to pay even lip service to sustainability and are simply buying dirty energy straight from the grid," said the report. "Those companies, most notably Amazon Web Services, are choosing how to power their infrastructure based solely on lowest electricity prices."
Amazon disputed Greenpeace's assessment of its data center operation, saying that the report's data and assumptions were inaccurate. Amazon said in an emailed statement that data centers in two regions in which it operates use "100 percent carbon-free power" without elaborating.

Data centers, multimillion-dollar facilities stuffed with racks of tightly-packed computers, are the heart of the fast-growing Internet industry. The facilities store consumers' email and other personal data, and help deliver popular online offerings such as Netflix's streaming video service and Facebook's photo-laden social network.
A large Internet data center requires energy capacity of as much as 80 megwatts, which would be enough to power about 65,000 U.S. homes, according to Greenpeace spokesman David Pomerantz.
The increasing prevalence of Internet services means growing demand for electricity in the coming years, Greenpeace said.

Six major Internet services companies - Facebook, Apple, Google, Box, Rackspace and Salesforce.com - have committed to making their data center operations 100 percent based on renewable energy, according to the report. Those commitments are putting pressure on utilities to offer wind, solar and other forms of renewable power, Greenpeace said.

The report looked at 19 companies that operate more than 300 data centers combined. Greenpeace used information provided by the companies and utilities to estimate what portion of a company's Internet infrastructure is going to be based on renewable energy, which it refers to as a "Clean Energy Index."
Renewable energy credits, which a company can purchase to meet clean energy goals, were not counted.
Apple's Clean Energy Index was 100 percent, while Facebook and Google were rated by Greenpeace at 49 percent and 48 percent, respectively.

Google has been a leader in committing to renewable energy, with procurement deals to purchase wind power from utilities in several states, Greenpeace said. But with 13 data centers, compared with Apple's four, the company faces a bigger task in shifting its overall energy usage to renewable sources.
Amazon Web Services, which Greenpeace said operates more than 10 data centers in the Virginia area, had a Clean Energy Index of 15 percent, according to Greenpeace. (Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Mohammad Zargham, Bernard Orr)

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Top 10 SEO Tips for a Successful Business in 2014

2014-01-02T23:12:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a year for SEO folk everywhere.

As 2013 shutters its doors and 2014 beckons, it's an opportune time to reevaluate, reassess, and revisit SEO tactics.

In the spirit of a New Year's Eve edition, I'm presenting some of the most popular (according to the US Government) New Years Resolutions through an SEO lens, in the hope of spreading some good cheer and great strategy along with a very happy new year to you and yours!

Without further ado... below are the top 10 SEO resolutions for your 2014 success!

1. Drink Less SEO Kool-Aid

In the SEO world, there's a fire hose of information. It's easy to drink the Kool-Aid of popular industry experts.

Although there are some folks who are worthy of quoting and following, I'd lay off the hard-liquor-high until you've actually tested "expert" recommendations and seen the results for yourself.

It's easy to get intoxicated with the SEO practice du jour, but it's sobering when you're trying to justify a bad outcome to a client by saying, "but [enter SEO expert name here] said it worked for [enter big brand website name here]."

2. Eat Healthy SEO Fare

The Internet is fueled by great content, and the healthiest of content is unique, valuable, authoritative, and share-worthy.

Google's Matt Cutts said recently that 25-30 percent of the content on the web is duplicate. Although that might make you feel a little peckish for some long form articles, you need to focus on the best in healthy snacks; link-inspiring user-generated content, educating prose, expert opinion, multimedia munches and share-demanding content desserts.

3. Get a Better SEO Education

With great resources like Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land,Moz, and Google themselves, there's no reason not to better educate yourself as to the trends and updates in the SEO industry.

Set up an RSS feed of your favorite resources and spend the first 15 minutes of the day reviewing, interacting, asking questions, and learning a little more about the constantly evolving landscape of search, social, display and paid search.

The future is cross-channel attribution, and learning more about more is a sure way to stay on the cutting edge and in demand.

4. Get Your Site Fit, Lose Excess Code Weight

2014 is sure to (finally) be the year of mobile, right after the year of mobile that was 2013. And if your business relies on localized, mobilized, and focalized customers, then a mobile optimized site is a necessity!

To get your site fit, focused, slimmed down, and ready for a mobile push, get implementing responsive web design, a specialized mobile site, or app based experience. Whichever you chose (and Google recommends in most cases a well-engineered responsive site), make certain to trim excess code, optimize images, squeeze scripts, and lighten server loads to deliver the best (and fastest) mobile experience you can.

5. Manage SEO Stress

As SEO professionals, I'm not sure we're ever not stressed with Google updates, client requests, deadlines, and migrations where redirects were "overlooked" by tech teams, but that leads to the best stress management recommendations: stress testing every recommendation and implementation! Twice. At least.

SEO isn't an exact science, but it is something that requires technical savvy, sophistication, and strategy to ensure alignment with search visibility goals.

The best way to manage technology stress is to test, test, and keep testing, everything from user site engagement, to site usability, to server stress tests, to guarantee an optimal onsite experience.

Managing stress is easy... you just have to plan to do everything perfect.

6. Give Up Bad Habits

Everyone has vices, easy "go-tos" when the going gets tough; the link schemes, overseas outsourced content, or short cuts for short-term gains. Now's the time to resolve to "never puff again" by implementing long-term strategies via sustainable tactics to ensure online success.

Go cold turkey and you'll find the world of fresh thinking (and fresh air) opens up, and you can return to the fundamentals of:

Understanding the customer's journey.
Creating content that connects with individual intent.
Leveraging engagement to drive loyalty, visibility and discover-ability.

Give up the bad habits, and adopt a fresher, longer-term outlook!

7. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The popular resolution to "reduce, reuse, and recycle" might very well be made for eco-friendly reasons, but applies equally well to your website content strategy.

Panda bought us thin content awareness, and recent messages in Google Webmaster Tools underscore the need to reduce or remove content that isn't user-focused, user-useful or share-worthy.

As for reusing and recycling, for content that connects with core intent (and context), your focus should be on intelligent repurposing of content copy, content elements, content themes and content ideas, to create unique and aligned articles, rejiggered for different platforms, mediums, formats and audiences.

No piece of written content is an island. If you aren't promoting worthy content in the most appropriate formats across your social channels, then 2014 may not be your year!

8. Save SEO Money

Many folks look to the New Year as a time to be frugal, put some cash away for a rainy day, and generally be more careful where they spend.

The goal for SEO professionals isn't to save money. Rather, it's to leverage data, metrics that matter, and broad analytics to spend smarterand/or justify budgets and efforts.

Although the initial outcome may be more less money in the bank, investing in data-informed areas of opportunity will almost definitely pay off in the long term, through additional revenue, valuable insights and happier customers.

9. Take a Trip to an Industry Conference

I can't put a value on the information, networking or camaraderie I've experienced through some of the great industry events I've attended (including SES conferences!) It's one of the easiest ROIs in SEO to return from 2 or 3 days of intensive learning and impart the knowledge gained to work colleagues and your boss.

Taking a little trip doesn't have to be expensive either. With conferences that offer East and West Coast venues (and everything in between), inexpensive airfares when you book in advance, and advanced conference ticket deals, you'll find the value of taking a learning trip gives you the tips, knowledge, and tools to help both your site or your clients sites succeed.

10. Help Other SEO Folks

It's simple. Give back!

For those starting out in search, you have a unique perspective and valuable insights in the questions you ask. For those seasoned folks, it's important to realize that your experience has value to the industry as a whole.

Some of the best information I've learned has been from both these groups, beginners asking hard questions, and SEO pros sharing a trick I hadn't thought of. In a season of giving, write a blog post, conduct a webinar, share some survey results, or take an SEO newbie under your wing to share the wealth of knowledge!

Here's to 2014!

There's no guarantee you'll keep your SEO resolutions this year. In fact, StatisticBrain.com says that less 10 percent of people actually successfully achieve their resolutions. But that's way better odds than the lottery (which, incidentally, I resolve to win this year).

Happy, safe, and healthy New Year to all!

Twitter IPO is $1B offering on $253M of revenue and $69M loss in first half of 2013

2013-10-05T01:06:00.002-07:00

Twitter finally released its S-1 IPO documentation this afternoon and will be seeking to raise $1 billion. The company has not yet set a price for its stock.

The company currently has 200 million active users, the S-1 says, and 500 million tweets a day, but with only 100 million daily active users, lower than some have estimated. In addition, tweets have appeared on over one million other websites as embedded tweets, and there were 30 billion online impressions of tweets in 2013′s first quarter alone.

“Since the first tweet, our users have created over 300 billion tweets,” Twitter says.

However, even though the company has grown top-line revenue significantly over the last years, from $28 million in 2010 to $253 million in the first half of 2013, Twitter is still not making money. For 2012, the company lost $79 million, and for the first six months of 2013, the company lost $69 million.

The shares that Twitter is offering exclude 44 million options with an exercise price of just $1.82, almost 60 million restricted unit shares still outstanding, plus almost 15 million shares dedicated to the complete of its recent MoPub acquisition, and 8 million shares reserved for future equity-incentive uses. The company’s total outstanding shares total 472,613,753.

Twitter says that 75 percent of its monthly active users come from mobile devices, and 65 percent of its revenue is on mobile, echoing recent reports from Facebook that mobile monetization is growing extremely quickly.

Twitter may be losing money, but it clearly has cash on hand, and cash to expand. The company has $164 million in cash and equivalents, plus another $210 million in short-term investments, and yet another $382 million in working capital, for total assets — with property and equipment — of just under a billion dollars: $964 million.

In its filing, Twitter is telling the world that it can be the “content creation, distribution, and discovery platform for the Internet and evolving mobile ecosystem,” combining the elements of public data, real-time information, conversation tone, and massive distribution. The resulting value proposition for advertisers, the company says, is: unique ad formats (its suite of promoted tweets, accounts, etc.), interest targeting, viral global reach, real-time advertising, pay-for-performance, and the extension of offline advertising, as on TV.

In the future, Twitter will be adding geographical expansion, more mobile apps, and more platform partners to drive the growth of the ecosystem. In addition, the company will be improving its targeting and ad platform capabilities, and adding new advertising formats.

How Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm sets the stage for the future of mobile search

2013-10-05T01:02:00.001-07:00

While Google has changed how it updates its search algorithm over the years, one thing has remained constant: a whole lot of ensuing backlash from search engine optimization (SEO) experts

Hummingbird, Google’s latest update, is no exception. Officially launched last week, the new algorithm represents the biggest change to Google’s search functionality in 10 years — a fact that, perhaps understandably, has gotten more than a few SEO experts worked up.

But Hummingbird is more than SEO — and it’s also more than just search. Here are a few takeaways.

It’s all about mobile

One of the most telling things about Google’s recent updates is that the company chose to illustrate them with images of its mobile app, not its desktop site. That’s no accident. More than anything else, Google over the past few years has been focused on making it easier for you to pull out your phone, ask Google a question, and get your answer as quickly as possible. Hummingbird is just an extension of that.

This, again, is why Google’s focus on voice search is so important, and why it’s so intent on making it easier for users to have conversations with its search engine, Siri-style.This shift in focus comes as a result of some very clear trends. Mobile users need search results faster, and they need them to be immediately relevant. As we’ve noted before, the more mobile and less interface-heavy a form factor is, the less tolerant people are of bad experiences and unhelpful or spammy search results. This is as true for smartphones as it is for upcoming devices like Google Glass.

To sum it up, it looks like this:

Mobile is the future, so Google should be attuned to answering search queries in the most mobile-friendly way.
People tend to be conversational with their mobile searches (“Where can I buy a new pair of underwear?”)
Ergo, the future of Google search is mobile-focused and question-oriented.

It’s about meaning, not just keywords

Core to what Google is doing with Hummingbird is a shift in focus away from keywords and towards intent and semantics, which are infinitely more relevant to users. While the Google of a decade ago was focused on delivering search results based solely on queries, the Google of today is drawing insights from a variety of other signals — location, social connections, and even your previous searches.

In other words, stuffing your webpages with SEO-friendly keywords isn’t going to cut it anymore. Or, as Google search guru Matt Cutts likes to put it, the Google of the future “is about things, not strings.”

It’s a natural evolution in search

Hummingbird is a part of Google’s natural evolution away from pure search and more towards predictive intelligence and natural language processing. If you want to understand where Google wants to go, take a look at Google Now, which pulls together data from all over to deliver you information that you didn’t know you needed.

That idea, coupled with the always-listening, and always-present Google Glass, should give you a pretty clear idea of how Google wants you to interact with it in the future: constantly, quickly, and transparently.

There aren’t any clear losers…yet

What’s funny about Hummingbird is, unlike other recent Google algorithm updates, there aren’t any clear losers this time around (at least as far as people can determine so far).

“No one seems to have generally lost traffic, unlike some other algorithmic changes, which often produce vocal ‘losers’ and silent ‘winners,’” SearchEngineLand’s Danny Sullivan told VentureBeat by email.

Consider the results of 2011′s Panda update, which was all about lowering the rank of so-called ”low-quality sites,” some of which saw their traffic cut by as much as 50 percent. Hummingbird, in contrast, is pretty harmless.

While SEO experts are still trying to figure out whether the arrival of Hummingbird means they’ll have to change their strategies, Sullivan says the general SEO advice remains the same: “Have good, descriptive content, and you should be doing all you can be doing to tap into long-tail searches,” he wrote.

Google offer may end search engine case, says EU antitrust chief

2013-10-05T00:51:00.001-07:00

An offer by Google to modify how it displays Internet search results could settle a long-running antitrust dispute with the European Union, the EU competition chief said on Tuesday.

The world's most popular search engine has been under investigation for three years by the European Commission, which acts as the bloc's antitrust regulator, over complaints it was blocking competitors in search results.

More than a dozen companies, including Microsoft, British price comparison site Founded and German online mapping company Hotmaps, have accused it of squeezing them out of the market.

Google proposed concessions in September, hoping to end a case which could otherwise lead to a fine of up to 10 percent of its global revenue, or $5 billion.

Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told lawmakers in the European Parliament on Tuesday he believed the company's offer made it easier for web users to see results from Google's rivals in Internet searches.

While he said he could not lay out the precise concessions offered by the U.S. company, he said they went a long way to addressing the antitrust authority's concerns fully.

"We have reached a key moment in this case," Almunia said. "Now with the significant improvements on the table, I think we have the possibility to work again.

"I think that the settlement route remains the best choice," The commissioner said, adding that a decision on the case could be made next spring.

Almunia said the Commission would seek feedback on Google's offer from the companies which lodged the complaints.

MOBILES

Almunia said it would be much easier for a user to see competing services in Google search results irrespective of which device was being used. Rival firms had worried that even if concerns around computers were addressed, search results displayed on smaller devices such as mobiles could still prevent them from appearing prominently.

The new concessions would also give companies greater control to opt out of appearing in searches, Almunia said. Firms offering directories had complained that Google search showed too much of their content, making it less attractive for users to visit their site.

Google, which has a market share of over 80 percent in Europe's Internet search market, had previously come up with concessions in April, telling the Commission it would mark out its services from rival products in web search results.

It also proposed providing links to at least three competing search engines and making it easier for advertisers to transfer their search advertising campaigns to rival platforms.

But its competitors were not satisfied, saying the proposals did not go far enough. The Commission asked Google to make a further offer and in September the company came back with more concessions.

Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, said in a statement the Commission had insisted on big changes to the way the company displays search results.

"While competition online is thriving, we've made the difficult decision to agree to their requirements in the interests of reaching a settlement," Walker said.

YouTube Announces the 'YouTube Music Awards' Show

2013-10-03T03:07:00.000-07:00

Lady Gaga, Eminem and Arcade Fire are among the artists who will perform at the first YouTube Music Awards, a new global event that will air live on YouTubeon Nov. 3.

Google's 8-year-old video sharing service announced the 90-minute awards show Monday night, saying YouTube will reveal six award categories in mid-October. Data from YouTube users will drive the nominations, and users will vote for the winners.

Leading up to the live show in November, YouTube will showcase hours of pre-recorded performances taped across the world, including Seoul, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro and London. Those will lead to the live event at Pier 36 in New York City.

"Music is a huge part of what YouTube is and what YouTube has become to music fans around the world," Chelsea Maughan, a YouTube spokeswoman told Mashable.

"The YouTube Music Awards represent the next step in terms of celebrating how big music is on YouTube."

"The YouTube Music Awards represent the next step in terms of celebrating how big music is on YouTube."

The main broadcast will feature mainstream stars as well as musicians who have built significant followings on YouTube, such as violin dub-step artist Lindsey Stirling and the "musical experiment" group CDZA, who have 3.2 million and 215,000 YouTube subscribers, respectively. Music mashups during the show will blend YouTube stars with more high-profile celebrities. Filmmaker Spike Jonze will serve as creative director, while VICE and Sunset Lane Entertainment will take on executive producing duties.

"We're setting out to create a night that's all about making things and creativity in the spirit of everyone that uses YouTube," Jonze said in a statement. "As well as giving out awards, we'll be making live music videos. The whole night should feel like a YouTube video itself."

Maughan said YouTube hopes to show that — without YouTube — people like Psy may never have gotten a record deal.

Danielle Tiedt, YouTube’s vice president of marketing, added in a statement: "From catalyzing careers and pop culture phenomena to propelling a song's rise to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100, our global community’s influence is felt across the music industry."

Google introduces new 'Hummingbird' search algorithm

2013-09-26T23:45:00.000-07:00

Google INC has overhauled its search formula, the muse of the Internet's dominant programme, to higher address the longer, additional complicated queries it's been obtaining from net users.

Amit Singhal, senior vice chairman of search, told reporters on Thursday that the corporate launched its latest " Hummingbird" formula a few month past which it presently affects ninety per cent of worldwide searches via Google.

Google is making an attempt to stay pace with the evolution of net usage. As search queries get additional difficult, ancient "Boolean" or keyword-based systems begin deteriorating as a result of the requirement to match ideas and meanings additionally to words.
"Hummingbird" is that the company's effort to match the which means of queries therewith of documents on the web, same Singhal from the Menlo Park garage wherever Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin formed their now-ubiquitous programme.

"Remember what it absolutely was prefer to search in 1998? You'd sit down and boot up your large laptop, dial a fiat your cacophonous electronic equipment, sort in some keywords, and find ten blue links to websites that had those words," Singhal wrote in an exceedingly separate blogpost.

"The world has modified such a lot since then: billions of individuals have return on-line, the online has adult exponentially, and currently you'll be able to raise any question on the powerful very little device in your pocket."

Page and Brin came upon search within the garage of Susan Wojcicki -- currently a senior Google govt -- in Gregorian calendar month 1998, round the time they incorporated their company. in the week marks the fifteenth day of their collaboration.

Google's 15th birthday celebrated by interactive doodle

2013-09-26T22:42:00.001-07:00

Google is celebrating its 15th birthday with an interactive Google doodle that features a pinata game.

A pinata is a fancy container that is filled with sweets and goodies which is later broken as part of a celebration. Pinatas are popular in Mexico. Friday's Google doodle features a pinata that sports the colours of the Google logo. The alphabets in the Google logo are part of the celebration and the blindfolded, second 'G' alphabet holds a stick with which users have to hit the piñata when it comes close to extract the maximum number of sweets that fall with each hit, in ten limited chances. Users can play with the Space bar key of their keyboards or even with the computer mouse. They can even share the score on Google+.

Last year, Google's 14th birthday was marked with a doodle that featured a cake with 14 candles. The cake transformed into a Google logo, as each candles was blown out.

In addition to the doodle, there's an Easter egg that lets you search on Google's 1998 search avatar. Enter the term 'google in 1998' and you'll see how Google used to look in 1998.

The first time Google created a doodle to celebrate its birthday was way back in 2002, to mark Google's 4th birthday. It's worth pointing out that September 27 is actually not the date of the company's incorporation. Google started celebrating its birthday on this date after 2005 when it made an announcement about indexing a record number of pages. Google acknowledges that the exact date when it celebrates its birthday has moved around over the years.

Google was founded on September 4, 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. At that point in time, the two were Ph.D. students at Stanford University.

To mark its birthday Google has also announced an updated search algorithm called Hummingbird. The algorithm was rolled out a month back and aims at making Google search better at answering long, complicated queries. It has also introduced comparison filters, improved exploration for songs and revamped mobile apps for search.

Web development company in India

View Manual Web Spam in Google Webmaster Tools

2013-08-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

We strive to stay spam out of our users’ search results. This includes each up our webspam algorithms moreover as taking manual action for violations of our quality pointers. several webmasters need to visualize if their sites area unit littered with a manual webspam action, therefore these days we’re introducing a replacement feature that ought to facilitate. The manual action viewer in Webmaster Tools shows info regarding actions taken by the manual netspam team that directly have an effect on that site’s ranking in Google’s web search results. to undertake it out, move to Webmaster Tools and click on on the “Manual Actions” link underneath “Search Traffic."

You’ll most likely see a message that says, “No manual webspam actions found.” A recent analysis of our index showed that well underneath two of domains we have seen area unit manually removed for webspam. If you see this message, then your web site does not have a manual removal or direct change for webspam reasons.

If your web site is within the terribly little fraction that do have a manual spam action, likelihood is we’ve already notified you in Webmaster Tools. We’ll keep causation those notifications, however currently you\'ll additionally do a live check against our internal webspam systems. Here’s what it'd seem like if Google had taken manual action on a selected section of a web site for "User-generated spam":

Partial match. User-generated spam affects mattcutts.com/forum/

In this hypothetic example, there isn’t a site-wide match, however there\'s a “partial match.\" A partial match means that the action applies solely to a selected section of a web site. during this case, the webmaster incorporates a drawback with others effort spam on mattcutts.com/forum/. By fixing this common issue, the webmaster can't solely facilitate restore his forum's rankings on Google, however additionally improve the expertise for his users. Clicking the "Learn more" link can provide new resources for troubleshooting.

Once you’ve corrected any violations of Google

le’s quality pointers, succeeding step is to request reconsideration. With this new feature, you will find a less complicated and additional efficient reconsideration request method. Now, once you visit the reconsideration request page, you’ll be able to check your web site for manual actions, and so request reconsideration given that there’s a manual action applied to your web site. If you are doing have a webspam issue to handle, you\'ll do therefore directly from the Manual Actions page by clicking "Request a review."

The manual action viewer delivers on a well-liked feature request. we have a tendency to hope it reassures the overwhelming majority of webmasters World Health Organization don't have anything to fret regarding. For the tiny range of individuals World Health Organization have real webspam problems to handle, we have a tendency to hope this new info helps speed up the troubleshooting. If you have got queries, return realize United States within the Webmaster facilitate Forum or stop by our workplace Hours.

Review of Google Drive

2013-08-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

As well as providing cupboard space for all of your Docs, Google Drive may be a convenient file syncing and sharing service that just about everybody already has access to. That last purpose is incredibly vital once you simply need quickly share a folder of photos together with your family or some documents with colleagues. Google has recently upgraded all its users to 15GB of free house, that provides some stiff competition for the fundamental packages of the many paid-for services.

As well because the internet interface that Google Docs users are going to be conversant in, there’s a desktop shopper for

Windows and OS X, additionally as robot and iOS apps that allow you produce, access and transfer content. If you utilize Google’s Chrome Browser, you'll conjointly synchronize the contents of your Drive together with your browser for offline writing. The mobile apps area unit wonderful. additionally as lease you read and transfer your keep files, the apps offer you with a whole document writing setting, thus you'll work on your Google Docs files on the move.

In internet interface, your files and documents area unit divided between My Drive, that contains files you created, and Shared With ME, that holds the files to that others have given you access. If you are wont to seeing all the files on that you are operating in one huge list, then there is a probability you will lose track of some if you do not keep in mind to see Shared With ME for the files shared with you by alternative users, though we tend to shortly got wont to this.

Files in Shared With ME area unit sorted by the date on that they were shared instead of the date on that they were last altered, however the Recent tab makes it straightforward to ascertain that files have recently been altered by you or your colleagues. All you wish to try to to is drag the files on that you’re operating to the My Drive tab and they’ll seem among your own files once you access your Drive on-line and synchronize them to the Google Drive folder on any laptop on that you've got put in it.

When you transfer and install the Drive package, it creates your synchronisation folder. By default, all the files you have ever created or uploaded to Google Docs are going to be downloaded thereto mechanically. If you favor, you\'ll select solely to synchronize files that you simply keep in specific folders on Google Docs. once all of your Google Docs area unit synchronous , you'll edit them offline in order that they’re updated once you next hook up with the web, that is Associate in Nursing implausibly helpful perk for those that already usually work with Google Docs.

Because Drive offers you access to Google Docs, you get considerably additional options once it involves writing and viewing your files than you will find in most synchronisation services. this is applicable to workplace documents like applications programme files, spreadsheets and slide shows particularly, you will show preview .doc and .docx files, additionally as their stand out equivalents, however you have got to export them within the Google Docs format if you wish to really edit them. Oddly, RTF files can’t be previewed, however is exported. Google Docs files you produce aren’t mechanically synchronous together with your native Google Drive directories, however you will transfer them to your laptop within the format of your selection or build them offered for offline viewing victimization the Docs Offline app for Chrome browsers.

2 Months of Google Algorithm Updates

2013-07-26T23:53:00.000-07:00

If your organic search metrics are unsteady over usual recently, you’re in sensible company. Google extended four notable formula updates within the 2 months between might twenty one and Gregorian calendar month fifteen, as well as a Panda update and also the much-anticipated sphenisciform seabird a pair of.0 update.

Each of the updates shares attention on up the standard of search results by detective work and removing factors that offer some sites unfair advantage over others within the rankings. This summer’s updates specialize in low-quality link signals, content quality and domain blessings. In every case, Google’s intent is to combat the low-quality or spammy search results that may foul its search results and cause poor searcher expertise.
Penguin 2.0: Next Generation Link Spam Weapon

On May 21, Google discharged a replacement version of its anti-link-spam technology, dubbed sphenisciform seabird a pair of.0. This update has been anticipated for months, with Google warning that it might be a giant one. more or less a pair of.3 p.c of English queries ar perceptibly full of this update. that will not sound like a lot of, however the most important rumored impact to go looking results was three.1 p.c of queries perceptibly affected with the primary sphenisciform seabird update in Apr 2012.

According to Google’s Head of Webspam Matt Cutts, the sphenisciform seabird a pair of.0 update is additional comprehensive and deeper-targeting than the previous iteration of the formula. Sites that have struggled with low link profiles since Apr of last year can possible have additional problems with this update.

In several cases, sites that are around for years have concentrated link profiles that contain links from sites that ar thought-about spammy these days. as an example, article selling was once a well-liked SEO observe. However, sites began churning out low-value articles choked with links simply to manufacture link authority. these days the phrase article selling makes SEOs cringe and also the links inbuilt the past through article hubs are low algorithmically.

It’s vital to know 2 things regarding sphenisciform seabird. First, sites arn’t technically punished retroactively for link building practices that were legitimate in years past and are currently thought-about dodgy. However, the worth that those now-dodgy links provided is removed, that the impact continues to be a attenuate ability to vie in search results. Second, link authority is removed mechanically and algorithmically once link spam is detected. as a result of no manual, human penalty is applied, sites cannot submit for re-inclusion.

To pass though the impact of a sphenisciform seabird update, sites have to be compelled to specialize in return the link authority they lost once those now-dodgy links were low. merely producing new links won’t do the trick, though, as links have to be compelled to be earned naturally to own lasting worth. it should even be useful to look at your link portfolio via Google Webmaster Tools to spot and deny clearly spammy links.
Payday Loan Algorithm: Spammy Queries

In June, Google began targeting link spam on sites ranking for notoriously spammy queries, like those associated with day loans, creative activity, and gambling. These sites tend to own distinctive link schemes that violate Google’s Webmaster tips. These updates are rolling out slowly worldwide over consecutive number of months. In the U.S. only 0.3 p.c of queries can possible be affected. however countries like Turkey with additional webspam problems ar expected to envision as high as four p.c amendment in queries affected.

As with the sphenisciform seabird a pair of.0 update, the key to ill from the day Loan formula is that specialize in earning links naturally.
Partial Match Domain Update

Many eCommerce marketers ar pissed off by the relative ease with which internet sites that purchase keyword domains vie in rankings. In September 2012, exact-match domains were low as a ranking signal. SEO business journal Moz rumored a ten p.c decrease within the range of tangible match domains — like www.teethwhitening.com — that hierarchic within the dataset they track daily.

The partial match update takes things a step additional by devaluing domains that partly match the search phrase. as an example, if the domain computer network.better teeth whitening.com hierarchic for a groundwork for “teeth change of color,” it might be thought-about a partial match domain and will see the signals sent by its keyword name low.

To be clear, the keyword domain formula updates don’t punish sites with actual or partial match domains. like sphenisci form seabird wherever specific links lose their worth, the strength of the keyword signal that the domains send is low in a shot to level the taking part in field. this is often a logical update as a result of the presence of keywords during a domain speaks additional to which internet sites have money to pay on dearly-won domains than it will to the particular worth of the positioning to searchers.
Panda De-tuning

The most recent of Google’s updates includes a more-finely targeted Panda formula. beginning Gregorian calendar month fourteen and rolling out over consecutive number of days, this update reportedly softened or dialed back the Panda impact a trifle. Originally discharged in Gregorian calendar month 2011, Panda’s goal was to break low-quality sites and people with skinny content.

Keeping track of Google’s formula updates and deciphering which can have had a bearing on your website will be terribly difficult. The Penguin Tool is one among the simplest ways that to appear for correlations between your Google Analytics and also the Panda, Penguin, and alternative Google updates. simply log in together with your Google Analytics account and Penguin Tool shows your organic search visits overlaid with a timeline of formula updates. Moz additionally offers a handy list of algorithmic events with links to relevant articles describing every.

Google Launches Gmail compose window full-screen option

2013-07-23T04:31:00.002-07:00

Google's just about overhauled the means Gmail works on desktops and mobile devices, however not each amendment was universally accepted as a shift for the higher.

In specific, the means messages area unit composed in Gmail had been one among the foremost forceful changes, with the choice for a full-screen window replaced by a smaller anchored window with foldaway menus and options.

Thankfully, Mountain View\'s team has taken in many community feedback over the past year and set to revive it.

As addressed on the official Google+ page for Gmail, the compose window for messages will currently be expanded to a full-screen mode, primarily seizing your window with a highlight box:

"When this selection is enabled, the compose window is focused in your inbox and expands to suit on your screen. additionally, the info toolbar is on by default.

You will click on the expand button within the high right to modify to full-screen or set full-screen because the default by choosing Default to full-screen within the a lot of choices menu within the bottom right."

It's a little adjustment, however still a vital one.

Most of you must be seeing the new full-screen choice in your browser of selection future time you log in to Gmail, with the update having extended to most accounts over the weekend.

SEO is Neither Dead nor Dying

2013-07-19T00:04:00.000-07:00

In the past few weeks, the Internet has exploded yet again with the latest round of obituaries dedicated to search engine optimization. The same old questions pop up under a slightly different context. What is left for SEO when Google shoots down each new exploit and tactic? If every useful technique eventually becomes obsolete, what is the point of developing it to begin with?

These laments are heard every time the search engine wipes out another fraction of its search results. The most recent source of woe is Penguin 2.0, which cracked down on the spam backlinks that many still used despite repeated warnings from Google. Besides shuffling a small percentage of pages, Penguin sent a message: The Wild West days of the Internet are over. The law is coming with guns blazing.

It is true that SEO has changed dramatically from its earliest days. In that sense, the SEO of keyword stuffing and link farming is well and truly dead. Arguing that optimization no longer has a place in online marketing, however, is short-sighted and dangerous. There have been many setbacks, but SEO is here to stay.

The Many “Deaths” of SEO

In 2010, Google introduced its newest search feature: Google Instant. Rather than waiting for users to finish inputting a query, the search engine instead began throwing out suggestions while they typed, based in part on their browsing history. The decreased standardization of Web searches had some experts predicting the imminent demise of SEO.

Three years later, having survived both Panda, Penguin and social media, experts are still forecasting its doom. And that only covers the last few years; the gradual progression of SEO since Archie debuted in 1990 has seen many such panics, each as unfounded as the last.

Who Says SEO is Dead?

Although SEO is still a vital factor in Internet marketing, it no longer commands such prominence as in the past. Many still use it as a blanket term to cover more than on-site optimization and link-building, but succeeding online now requires a strong social media presence as well. The old methods no longer work, and in that sense SEO is caught up in a constant cycle of innovation and limitation.

Others making this argument are less nuanced. Some use it for a sensationalist headline, while others claim to have discovered the technique that will fill the gap left by SEO. As with all things in the marketing community, take everything you read with a grain of salt.

Why SEO is Still Going Strong

As long as there are search engines, search engine optimization will be necessary to help worthy websites reach interested viewers. Given the incredible proliferation of websites and pages online, it is reasonable to assume that systems will always need a way to find information that users cannot. The methods, on the other hand, are sure to change, as well as the organizations setting the rules that govern them.

No matter what name it goes by, search engine optimization is simply a means of bringing publishers and companies to readers for mutual benefit. This practice predates the Internet and will outlast it, but until the last search engine shuts down, SEO will remain a vital piece of any website’s business strategy.

Modern SEO

The question, then, is what currently works in SEO? When a so-called expert cannot find an answer that he likes, he declares optimization dead. Those who wish to continue profiting from the remarkable opportunities of the Internet, however, must stop and take stock of what has been left behind.

Link building has not been eliminated. In fact, the need for high-quality inbound links has never been greater. Rather than paying for or spamming links, webmasters must now court recommendations from reputable websites and social media users. It demands effort, helpfulness and cooperation. The quick tricks are being picked off one by one, and real finesse is now needed to bring a page to the top of the rankings.

Adapting to the Future

In a few months, the outrage and despair of Penguin 2.0 will have faded into the background, only to be replaced by a new harbinger of doom. Through it all, Google will keep moving toward its vision for a strong search environment: one free of spam, exploitation and excessive commercialization. Anyone who pays attention to the rumblings of the giant’s press releases and mouthpieces like Matt Cutts should never be taken by surprise.

So, when everything is considered, it is not SEO that is dying, but rather the obvious black-hat methods that have flourished unregulated for so long. Google and its fellow search engines are ushering in a more civilized era in online marketing. Who will pull ahead and who will lag behind remains to be seen.

What are your views? Is there still a place for SEO or is Google systematically killing the SEO industry? Post your thoughts in the Comments section.

A New Google Maps for Smartphones and Tablets

2013-07-10T03:06:00.000-07:00

Today we’re introducing a new Google Maps app for Android smartphones and tablets, also coming soon to iPhone and iPad. It’s a new mapping experience that makes exploring the world and getting to the places that matter to you a lot faster and easier. The app is gradually rolling out globally in Google Play and will be available soon in the App Store.

The new Google Maps for mobile builds on the design we released for iPhone last December and improves on it with a few useful search and navigation features. And it's the first dedicated app for Android tablets and iPads. We’re also retiring Latitude and are making some changes to offline and My Maps which we’ll explain in more detail below.

First, here are a few highlights that make this release stand out:

Explore: Explore is a fast and easy way to visually browse and discover new places without even typing. Simply tap the search box and you’ll see cards showing great places to eat, drink, sleep and shop.

Enhanced navigation: In addition to current traffic conditions, we’ve added two new features to help you navigate around traffic. You can now see reports of problems on the road that you can tap to see incident details. While on the road, Google Maps will also alert you if a better route becomes available and reroute you to your destination faster. This feature is available only on Android and is coming soon to iOS.

Designed for tablets: A dedicated tablet design brings all the features of this new app to Android tablets and iPads, which makes exploring the world from the comfort of your living room much more fluid, smooth and fun.

Reviews, Zagat and Offers: There’s a new 5.0 star rating system that gives you a quick read on how your friends and others rate places like restaurants, bars and cafes. For an expert’s opinion, the Zagat badge of excellence and curated lists are integrated into search results so you can quickly spot the very best places. From “Best Restaurants to meet for a drink in NYC” to “Best Restaurants in the Mission” in San Francisco, Zagat’s there to help you uncover the local gems.

And finally, Google Maps for mobile is a great way to discover valuable Offers from national brands like Macy's, Michael's and Toys "R" Us, labeled right on the map.

One important change you should know about is that Latitude and check-ins are no longer part of the new Google Maps app, and will be retired from older versions on August 9. We understand some of you still want to see your friends and family on a map, which is why we've added location sharing and check-ins to Google+ for Android (coming soon to iOS). More details about Latitude and check-in changes can be found in our help center.

The offline maps feature for Android is also no longer available. Instead we’ve created a new way for you to access maps offline by simply entering “OK Maps” into the search box when viewing the area you want for later. Finally, My Maps functionality is not supported in this release but will return to future versions of the app. People who want to create powerful custom maps can still do so with Maps Engine Lite on desktop.

Helping you find great places is what we love to do. And as more of us use mobile phones and tablets in our daily lives, information that’s useful to you isn't just about what you need, but also where you might find it. Today’s update is an exciting step forward for Google’s maps—one that we hope will make it faster and easier for you to explore and discover places you want to go.

Posted by Daniel Graf, Director, Google Maps

*The new Google Maps for mobile is compatible with Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean Android devices and iOS 6+ when available. Please note some of the features mentioned in this post aren’t available in all countries.
Source

The Difference Between Semantic Search and Semantic Web

2013-07-10T03:01:00.001-07:00

Small businesses have been hearing a lot lately about the semantic web, and how that of course comes with semantic search, which then has to come with semantic SEO. So to make a long story short, if you don’t understand what the term “semantic” means in these contexts, you’ve got some work to do. Fortunately, understanding semantics in relation to the web is actually quite simple, and for many these is already a part of your daily routine. It isn’t a new concept, just one that has recently gained some traction.

How the Terms Semantic Web and Semantic Search Differ and Why It Matters

Being able to understand how these terms differ is important because it can help you better understand how search works and how you can make sure your information is getting in front of a relevant audience. Below explains the differences between these two terms that are often mistakenly meshed into one:
Semantic Web
The whole idea here is to teach searchers about understanding the whole content of a SERP as opposed to just the structure of search engines like Google. Below is the definition according to Cambridge Semantics:

The Semantic Web is a set of technologies for representing, storing, and querying information. Although these technologies can be used to store textual data, they typically are used to store smaller bits of data.

Essentially, the semantic web will include things like numbers and dates in order to be able to answer a very complex question. Semantic search focuses on the text, but the semantic web focuses on pulling data from multiple sources and multiple formats.
Another way to look at it: The semantic web is not going to store one page as just one page. Instead, it works to take each tiny detail on the page and pull those tiny details off every page to find one cohesive answer.
Semantic Search
The idea with this terminology is to offer more relevant results without limiting searches to just keywords (traditional Google search would be called “keyword search” as opposed to a semantic search). The below definition puts it into simple terms:

Semantic search is the process of typing something into a search engine and getting more results than just those that feature the exact keyword you typed into the search box. Semantic search will take into account the context and meaning of your search terms. It’s about understanding the assumptions that the searcher is making when typing in that search query.

For example, if you type in the word “Blackhawks” into your search bar you don’t just want to get listings that have the word “Blackhawks” in them. A semantic search will return listings about the Native American tribe as well as the Chicago hockey. You will also get supporting terms like “hockey lessons” and “Stanley Cup,” even if they never mention anything about the Blackhawks exactly.
So what is Semantic SEO? Of course, businesses can’t forget about semantic SEO. This is simply a way of explaining the strategies you would use to optimize your website for semantic search. In short, it works the same way keyword-based SEO works, except you should be researching more than just keywords. You want to look for supporting terms, modifiers, and synonyms for the terms you have in mind, and then use those in your context, h1 and/or h2 tags, and your title.
Do you feel that the concept of semantic search and the semantic web are only going to grow in popularity? Have you done anything to change your strategies because of these ideas? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.

Tips of SEO Ranking Factor #1

2013-07-08T04:40:00.002-07:00

You know the numbers — Google uses over 200 ranking signals, updates its algorithm over 500 times a year, and employs thousands of engineers. We often get so caught up in the minutiae of the algorithm that we forget all this effort serves a single purpose:
Satisfy the user.
This isn't a touchy-feely post that says "Make great content and visitors will come" or "Delight your customers and magic will happen."
It's not magic. Satisfaction is an actual ranking factor.
Unlike other ranking factors, this one is hard to measure because it's based almost entirely on search engines' own internal data — something they don't share. We do know search engines both measure and reward satisfaction in very significant ways. In fact, I highly suspect satisfaction is one of Google's most important metrics used to judge the performance of its own search results.
It's easy to tweak a keyword. It's much harder to stop visitors from clicking the back button on your website when they don't find what they were looking for. Satisfaction is very difficult to game; perhaps that's why search engines place so much emphasis on it.

How Google measures and predicts satisfaction

User behavior in search results

Stephen Levy’s excellent book In the Plex describes how Google engineers figured out how to improve search results by mining their user behavior data (bold added):

"… Google could see how satisfied users were. … The best sign of their happiness was the "long click" – this occurred when someone went to a search result, ideally the top one, and did not return. That meant Google has successfully fulfilled the query. But unhappy users were unhappy in their own ways, most telling were the “short clicks” where a user followed a link and immediately returned to try again. "If people type something and then go and change their query, you could tell they aren’t happy," says Patel. "If they go to the next page of results, it’s a sign they’re not happy."

Often called pogosticking, this refers to the behavior of users that click on a result, then "pogostick" back and forth between the search results and different websites, searching for satisfaction.

Search quality raters

In 2012, Google released an abbreviated copy of its Search Quality Rating Guidelines to the public. A version of this document is used by Google's small army of Search Quality Raters to evaluate search results.
One of the highest scores a quality rater can assign to a page is "useful" (bold added):

“Useful pages should be high quality and a good “fit” for the query. In addition, they often have some or all of the following characteristics: highly satisfying, authoritative, entertaining, and/or recent (such as breaking news on a topic). Useful pages are usually well organized and pages you trust. They are from information sources that seem reliable. Useful information pages are not "spammy."

The problem with quality raters is they can only look at a few thousand websites at any given time. There are millions of sites on the web, so Google invented a new system:

Panda

Instead of evaluating results after the fact, Panda gives Google the ability to predict user satisfaction — modeled on actual human surveys — and apply it to every site in its index.
Less satisfying pages are ranked lower in search results, and every few weeks the index is updated with new data.
The chart below shows Panda hitting a site again and again.

Site visits with Panda updates via Panguin Tool and Google Algorithm Change History

What can we do?

If search engines measure user satisfaction and employ it as a ranking factor, our goals as search marketers are to:

Create highly satisfying experiences so that users don’t return to search results to pick another URL.
Build sites that meet Panda’s expectation of high quality.
Surprise and delight our visitors so that they seek us out again and again.

5 Tips to improve visitor satisfaction:

1. Google's free website satisfaction surveys

As if to put an exclamation point on the whole satisfaction experience, Google recently released free, embeddable customer satisfaction surveys for website owners.
After installing a line of JavaScript on your site, your visitors are presented with the following questions:

Overall, how satisfied are you with this website?
What, if anything, do you find frustrating or unappealing about this website?
What is your main reason for visiting this website today?
Did you successfully complete your main reason for visiting this website today?

If you'd like to customize the questions, Google allows you to do this for $0.01 per response.
It feels like Google wants to give site owners the same type of feedback Google acquires directly from behavior data. Using these forms won't tell you exactly what to do, but any webmaster using them is sure to get a ton of valuable feedback about visitor satisfaction.

2. Removing barriers

We’ve talked for years about making your site more accessible for both search robots and humans, but we rarely discuss how those usability factors affect rankings.
Imagine if you will, a site that requires registration to view any content, which is otherwise accessible to search engines. We're seeing these more and more all over the web.

What if Moz required registration?

The idea is simple: folks click on a search result, see the form and return to the search results to try another URL. After a few hundred times (or less), search engines start to figure out this result doesn’t satisfy users.
At Moz, we’ve seen sites use similar tactics only to watch their bounce rate skyrocket, and their rankings drop. In fact, there’s anecdotal evidence of sites being hit by Panda after introducing similar barriers.

3. Speed it up

We know that faster websites are good, but page speed has two mechanisms by which to influence rankings:

Directly: Google reps have stated that page speed has a direct impact on rankings for a certain percentage of queries (only 1% in 2010).
Secondary: As page speed affects usage, it can have a secondary effect on user satisfaction. A frustrated user waiting too long for a page to load can often return to search results.

Google obsesses over speed, and scientists at Microsoft have shown that users will visit a site less often if it's only 250 milliseconds slower than the competition.

Source: NYTimes

If you ever need to convince your client or boss to improve page speed, try the comparison tool at Webpagetest.com which allows you to export a slow motion video.

4. Empathy

Empathy as a ranking factor? "Cyrus," I can hear you saying, "you’ve been hanging out with Rand too much!"
Consider this comment on a recent Whiteboard Friday. I've edited the comment below to highlight the important parts:

When you practice empathy, you put yourself in the shoes of your visitor to try to build a satisfying experience. You accomplish this by

Answering their questions
Employing intuitive layouts
Giving them relevant links and resources to click
Surprising them with extras

While it's difficult to prove a relationship between improved user experiences and rankings (because we can't measure user behavior like Google can) there's strong anecdotal evidence that search engines aggregate these factors into their algorithms.

5. Linking out

One of the best SEO articles I’ve read all year is AJ Kohn's Time to Long Click, a great article you shouldn't miss. AJ explains how linking out (and also creating content hubs) can be used to increase user satisfaction (bold added):

What I’m recommending is that you link to other valuable sources of information when appropriate so that you fully satisfy that user’s query. In doing so you’ll generate more long clicks and earn more links over time, both of which can have profound and positive impact on your rankings.

Stop thinking about optimizing your page and think about optimizing the search experience instead.

-AJ Kohn

Think of it this way: It's far better for users to click away to another URL from your site than for those same users to return to Google to try again. In the first instance, you are the authority hub, in the latter, Google is the authority.
Be the authority.

How do YOU improve satisfaction?

There are two types of SEOs: those that try to satisfy robots, and those that satisfy users.
The robot-focused SEOs build pages with just the right keywords and title tags, hoping to attract the bots on relevancy. I say "try" to satisfy robots, because search engines are actually watching the users. If the users aren't happy, neither are the bots.
The user-focused SEOs works with the same keywords and title tag, but then they go one step further and ask their users to try the site. After that, they do whatever it takes to make their users happy.
Have you seen improvement in rankings after improving user satisfaction? Share your story with us in the comments below.

How To FIX Unnatural Link Warning From Google

2013-07-04T23:06:00.001-07:00

In recent times, there has been a rise in unnatural link warning from Google to webmasters and bloggers.

Although it’s not an easy job for an average webmaster to detect all the unnatural links (incoming and outgoing) and recover from Google penalty in a short period of time; with correct approach you can save lot of time, energy and money, for sure.

Basic Facts

Google usually imposes two types of penalties – algorithmic and manual. Algorithmic penalty is generated by computer programs, whereas manual penalty is controlled by human beings or Google engineers.

Unnatural link warning comes under manual penalty. That means a Google engineer detects and evaluate the spammy link/links on your site, and sends a warning message to your Google Webmaster Tools. All things manual.

But in reality, the whole thing is like “arithmetically driven manual penalty.” Google had sent over 700,000 warning messages via Webmaster Tools in Jan and Feb, 2012, alone. The data says everything. Google uses some sorts of algorithm to detect unnatural or spammy links on websites, and sends a pre-formated message to all webmasters. The message is almost always the same as below -

Dear site owner,

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

Google Search Quality Team

What Are The Unnatural Links

Any type of links, with an intention to manipulate a website’s ranking in Google search is spammy. Because it affects the quality of their search results. It includes, both incoming and outgoing links.

1. Buying and selling links that pass Page Rank.

2. Buying and selling of posts with links that pass Page Rank.

3. Sending free products and services in exchange of posts including links.

4. Link exchange with an intention to pass Page Rank.

5. Linking to unrelated sites or spammy sites for money.

6. Building landing pages with a different domain for the sake of cross-linking.

7. Using computer generated programs or services to create links to your site.

8. Text Ads passing Page Rank.

9. Low quality directory links.

10. Widely distributed widget links, like – stat counter and some sort of honor or awards etc.

11. Widely distributed footer links.

12. Links from forum comments with optimized anchor texts.

13. Links from unrelated websites.

14. Links from blogrolls which pass Page Rank.

15. Links from blog networks.

Special Situations…

1. Guest Blogging: DoFollow links from guest blogging is always unnatural. It is some sort of buying links in exchange of content.

Links from article body with nofollow tag is natural. You can put a dofollow link inside the author-box. Google is very efficient to detect dofollow links inside the author-box and give different valuation (usually lower) than the links on the article body.

2. NoFollow Links: NoFollow links, whether incoming or outgoing are never unnatural in nature. Because they don’t pass link-juice.

Webmasters and SEOs usually try to remove or disavow links from spammy sites, despite they are nofollow in nature. This is a misconception. If the link is nofollow in nature – don’t take any action. Just forget it.

Recovery Steps

1. Segregation Of Unnatural Links

Recollect about your recent link building campaign. No matter how trivial it is.

If the links are dofollow in nature and falls under the above list of unnatural links then they are right candidates for removal. For making a list (MS Excel) of spammy links you can take the help of few link analysis tools, like – Google Webmaster Tools, Open Site Explorer, Majestic and Raven Tools etc.

You should start with Google Webmaster Tools: Search Traffic –> Links to Your Site –> Who Links the Most

The other tools are premium in nature but quite powerful and give insightful story about your website links. One more link analysis tool I like is LinkDetox, which helps you to find toxic or suspicious links.

2. Link Removal Process

Contact Webmasters: Make a list of few links which can be removed by contacting the respective webmasters. If you have some goodwill with them, then it really works.

The exchange of messages with various webmasters, whether +Ve or -Ve will also help you by reflecting in the reconsideration request. Which shows your efforts to remove spammy links.

Spammy Links On Your Site: Either remove them, or nofollow them, or simply de-index the pages from Google search results if the links are indispensable.

Use Google Disavow Links Tool: Finally use this tool to disavow rest of the links. But be cautious while using this tool. You shouldn't disavow your precious links from authoritative sites which are natural. And don’t disavow nofollow links. Google as such doesn't process no-follow links while disavowing. But when you inform Google while filing the reconsideration request, it (nofollow links) reflects your immaturity.

3. Filing A Reconsideration Request

Reconsideration requests are always investigated by Google engineers. You should describe your steps and efforts in a crisp and clear manner.

Use a Google Doc (link) and describe – the list of unnatural links you have removed by contacting webmasters, links you have removed by using Disavow Links Tool and links you have removed on your own site.

You should also mention about your recent link building campaign, if you have. Don’t blame any websites or institutions. But you should always mention their names while describing your steps. The process usually takes 1 to 3 weeks, but sometimes longer.

If you receive a negative message, or if you are still unsure about the unnatural links, then you should ask on the Webmaster Forum for help.

Google’s Matt Cutts Gives 11 SEOTips

2013-06-25T23:41:00.000-07:00

During the recent SMX Advanced (Search Marketing Expo) in Seattle (WA), on Jun 11th & 12th, Matt Cutts has revealed few important things for webmasters.

Matt has addressed few existing issues as well as some future developments of Google for better search results, and gave some SEO tips to webmasters to rank higher in Google search.

1. Example URLs for Penalty: Google performs algorithm updates almost 500 times a year with more than 200 ranking signals. But every time it doesn't announce it for webmasters.

You will only receive a message in your Google Webmaster Tools if they take manual action against your site. Google is also planning to include “example URLs” in the notification message. The two or three URLs may not be the exact pages on your site which violate the Google’s Quality Guidelines, but will provide sufficient hints to detect the root cause of penalty.

2. Maximum Penalty Period: Every penalty levied by Google has a self expiry date.

But sometimes, if the website is completely spam-my and doesn't provide any value to web-surfers, then they penalize the domain till its expiry. The penalty automatically expires when the domain expires. If the new owner breaks the rule, then it again gets a penalty.

3. Page Speed On Mobile Devices: Just like the desktop version of your website, page loading speed will be a ranking factor for the mobile version.

Better page speed may not rank your site higher in mobile devices, but slower speed will definitely lower your ranks in search results. This ranking factor will be rolling out very soon.

He also pointed about faulty redirect – In mobile search, when every page of your mobile site redirects users to a single mobile page, instead of mobile optimized versions of each pages.

4. Most Affiliates Are Spammers: In terms of volume, there are very few affiliates who add value to web-users. So most of the affiliate sites are low in quality.

5. Facebook Likes Don’t Boost Ranking: Google doesn’t have a special feed for Facebook Likes. And they are not capable of crawling all the pages on Facebook.

Matt completely disagreed that Facebook data affects ranking. He also pointed out, higher ranking pages tend to get more number of Facebook likes.

What he didn’t tell was – Social media signal as a whole (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc.) helps web-pages to rank higher. Although not individual social data, but a combined social media data is definitely a search engine ranking signal.

6. Category Based Ranking: Google is working on – Ranking websites based on different categories in different industries. Authority sites in a given category will rank higher in future.

7. Bounce Rate: It’s not a ranking signal. It’s more of a user behavior.

8. Google Panda: Google rolls out Panda data about 10 days in every month.

9. Google Penguin: Penguin 1 was affecting the entire site. Where as the Next Gen Penguin or Penguin 2 is capable of affecting individual pages of a website.

So Penguin 2 can affect the entire site, and if, only few pages of a site are spammy; then it can hit at individual page level also.

10. Social Media Hype: At present, the most overrated thing in SEO is “Short-term social data.”In long-term it may be different.

11. Design and UI: The most underrated is – site design and user experience.

How To Get More Exposure For Your Videos On Facebook

2013-06-21T02:58:00.000-07:00

Video marketing is killer, right?

It’s one thing to spend all this time making a video for no one to know about it, let alone view it. What a waste of time! Before I sit down to make a video, I go through a step by step process to ensure that my video will be a success.

What’s in that process?

I do content research, market research, and keyword research. That right there is a time suck. I still have to ‘actually’ create the video and promote it. If you’re not going to promote your videos after you’ve written them, then you’ve wasted lots of time!

Today I want to teach you how to get more exposure for your videos on Facebook.

Mistakes made by video marketers:

You know what most marketers are doing right now? They’re finally realizing that video marketing is more powerful and higher converting than blog articles. It’s because people can see your face, feel your energy, and see your passion in action. Try getting that into a blog post! ;)

Most marketers are uploading their videos to YouTube and then posting those links to Facebook. It’s all fine and dandy, but some interesting research suggests that you could be even more effective in your video promotion. This research shows that videos uploaded to Facebook vs videos that are uploaded to YouTube get more comments. Whoa!

Interesting facts about Facebook and YouTube you probably didn’t know

Not only is the engagement higher, but facebook videos are more mobile friendly and you can view them right in the newsfeed. Notice, next time you click on a YouTube video, watch and see how you’re redirected to YouTube.

My absolute favorite thing about Facebook videos is that they stay in the newsfeed up to 10 times longer than YouTube video links do! Make sure you’re putting this advice into action, as it will increase your video’s effectiveness on this social platform.

Getting additional exposure

If that wasn’t awesome enough, then allow me to share with you a way to increase that exposure tenfold! Don’t stop at just uploading a video, start boosting or promoting those video statuses! (This is only available to Facebook fan page users.) You’ll notice at the bottom of each status it says ‘Boost Post’. You can also boost the post from the Admin Panel.

When you select that option, you’ll be given some options. It looks like this:

The little downward arrow next to $15 gives you all the multiples of 5 from $5 all the way up to $50 per promotion. When you compare the exposure a normal status gets to a promoted post, you’ll notice a seemingly large gap. It pays to promote your posts. Every time you upload a video to Facebook, you’ll be wise to promote it for additional exposure.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve found this post valuable. Learn from other marketer’s mistakes, upload your videos to Facebook instead of using YouTube links, and promote your posts for more exposure.

What questions do you have for me?

Bing Boards- New Search Experiment Highlights 'Inspiring Content'

2013-06-21T02:52:00.000-07:00

Continuing to experiment with ways to change and improve the search experience, Bing has introduced a new experiment called Bing Boards. Resembling a sort of inline image slide show, you find it in the Bing Social Sidebar for certain searches.
Here, you can see the positioning of the Bing Boards area, located in the second column of the search results page between related searches and the side ads.

When you click the Bing Boards area, a modal window pops up atop of the results page. This one contains a link to the blog post that inspired the images in the Bing Board.

So what exactly are Bing Boards?
Quite simply, it's an experiment with putting Pinterest-like boutique content front-and-center in search results, or at least complementing them from a sidebar next to search results. From the official Bing Boards page, it's Bing's way of "trying something new ... to see what happens."
It's quite the interesting experiment. Since its inception, the Bing Social Sidebar was used to connect you with friends and other social network connections to see relevant things your network is sharing and talking about related to your search. Bing Boards are not (necessarily) being created by people you follow or are friends with.
However, this isn't part of the Social Sidebar. It actually replaces the Social Sidebar, presumably only for certain search queries.
Bing is working with a small group of featured contributors, mostly food and lifestyle bloggers who Microsoft considers passionate thought leaders in their respective lifestyle topics. Bing is careful to point out these are individual bloggers, not companies. They even provide a link if you want to signup to contribute to Bing Boards.
At best, this looks like a positive, link-building element rewarding those applicants with unique original content. It could be the silver bullet on Bing for content marketing links. However, will this provide a boost other search engines? Will it help create conversions for the content providers?
In the post announcing Bing Boards, Program Manager for Bing Experiences, Chen Fang, said the content experts creating the boards have helped evolve the Bing Boards experience to its current release.
"As more people create and interact with Bing Boards over time, we’ll evaluate and determine how to broaden and evolve the offerings," he said.
This is clearly an experiment, as it pushes down ads and removes the social sidebar Bing has worked so hard to promote for the past few years. I went through the listed content experts and tried searching for various items from each of their blogs, but could not find additional Bing Boards. Is it worth the time and effort?
"This is the first of several upcoming social and community experiments," Fang stated. "If you see something new, play with it and see what happens – your interest might help make it a permanent part of Bing."

So, if you see it and interact with it, Microsoft may add it permanently. But will you use it? Sound off in the forums below.
Source

Facebook Kills Sponsored Search Results

2013-06-19T04:11:00.002-07:00

Facebook recently announced it was going to simplify its advertising options due to feedback it collected from marketers over the span of a year. Just last week, Inside Facebook revealed sponsored search results were among the features to be cut.
“In keeping with the goal of streamlining our ad products, starting in July advertisers will no longer be able to buy sponsored results,” Facebook told Inside Facebook. “We’ve seen that most marketers were buying sponsored results to advertise their apps and games, and we already offer mobile app install ads and Page post link ads on desktop to achieve these same goals.”

Advertisers can still buy search products with ads on search results pages, according to the report. However, in his post, Justin Lafferty wondered why sponsored results of all features would be cut:

”It’s a little odd why Facebook is eliminating this now. Advertisers have said that the sponsored results offered a high clickthrough rate at a low cost-per-click. Nanigans wrote in September that the clickthrough rates of sponsored results were 23 times greater than those of marketplace ads, with a 78 percent lower cost-per-click.”

Do you use sponsored results, and if so, what do you think about this cut?

All brands need to know about Facebook Verified Pages!

2013-06-18T05:45:00.000-07:00

Facebook has recently launched 'verified pages' feature to help people check authentic accounts of personalities and businesses. afaqs! examines how it can help brands.

Facebook has recently launched 'verified pages' feature to help people find out authentic accounts of celebrities, high-profile people and businesses on the platform. According to the company, verified pages will have a small, blue check mark beside the profile name on timelines, in search results and elsewhere on Facebook (as seen in the profiles of Salman Khan, MS Dhoni and Samsung India).

Some well known public figures and pages with large followings (including celebrities, journalists, government officials, popular brands and businesses) will be verified by Facebook as having an authentic identity. "We verify profiles or pages to help you be sure that they are who they claim to be. Not all authentic profiles and pages are verified and one can't request to have a profile or page verified. You can report fake accounts that are impersonating you, your business or your brand," Facebook says in a blog post (http://newsroom.fb.com/News/619/Verified-Pages-and-Profiles).

Interestingly, Facebook adds that it will proactively reach out to verify accounts but there is no mechanism to request verification. Instead, Facebook recommends that celebrities, public figures and brands and businesses, who believe that they are being impersonated, should report a fake account.

To verify accounts, Facebook says businesses and celebrities need to submit a government-issued photo ID, which Facebook promises to delete immediately after verification. For now, Facebook is taking charge of this task by itself and there is no action required to be taken by page/profile/business owners.

Facebook's verified accounts feature follows a similar service from Twitter, which created verified accounts in 2009. Google+ introduced verified accounts quite early in its own social networking history, back in 2011.

Do consumers really care?

Unlike other social networks, Facebook has a huge number of pages and profiles which are duplicate or try to mimic original brands, businesses and public figures. In the social media world, posts can go viral pretty quickly, which is why it is important to distinguish the authentic from the fake.

However, considering that consumers engage with the content being offered through the pages, rather than the authenticity of the brand page, will they now be bothered to follow only a verified page and unfollow the others?

"Consumers engage with brands on their news feed and rarely do they engage on the fan page as conversations with a brand happen on the user's feed. So, brands being verified or not will not matter to consumers as 80 per cent of interactions are happening on consumers' feed," opines Rajiv Dingra, founder and CEO, WatConsult.

Like celeb pages in India, brands too have a cult following, and there is a lot of duplicity and multiplicity as, for many brands, besides an official page, there will be several community pages related to the brand and its products. However, Facebook allows brands to merge their duplicate communities and that takes care of any duplicate identity for brands created by other fans. For example, Coke's global page was actually started by fans themselves and instead of shutting it down, Coca-Cola allowed the fans to take control.

"Brands and celebrities both tend to gain from this feature as it addresses the issue of duplicity. Besides, consumers will gradually begin caring about following a verified page as they would like to get authentic information from a verified source, rather than reading a rumour. Moreover, in case someone has a complaint about a product, he or she has to file it with the verified page so as to get an assured reply addressing the issue," states Nimesh Shah, head maven, Windchimes Communications.

One too many pages to verify?

Facebook announced this feature last week and till now, quite a few brand pages in India have been verified. But for many brands operating country-specific pages and pages for their sub-brands, the story is somewhat different.

For instance, a search for 'Cadbury' reveals five pages that include pages from its sub-brands. But out of these five, only two have been verified till now. The same goes with Acer, where 'Acer India' is not a verified page, whereas Acer (Global) has a verified tag. Likewise, Maruti Suzuki doesn't have a verified fan page for any of its cars, yet.

"If all five pages have the brand name with some suffix and in a search, if all five appear together and three of them appear as verified, then yes, there could be a deterrence against going to the other two, as it would appear that those two are not genuine. On the other hand, if the five pages have completely different names (even if they belong to the same mother brand), the two that are not verified may not have much of a problem," states Sanjay Mehta, joint CEO, Social Wavelength.

Facebook is understandably rolling out the feature gradually and in future, there could be a verified tag in the above mentioned brand pages as well. Till such time, will the absence of the 'blue tick mark' cause the page to face the risk of losing new followers?

"The indicators of verification are not just the 'tick mark' sign on Facebook, but features like the brand code, consistent messaging, cover photo, design, and engagement activities. The verified 'tick mark' sign is simply a cherry on top of the brand's digital existence," informs Harshil Karia, co-founder and online strategist, FoxyMoron.

For a brand, the consumers will join the verified page. For a celebrity, however, the consumers will join the verified as well as the non-verified page. Content on both the pages will differ since verified pages might have more personal and exclusive content as opposed to generic content posted by user-generated pages merely to fuel popularity. The official pages will keep the consumer updated with all the latest updates and information. So, a true fan will join both the pages, whereas select others will opt for only the verified pages.

It's a celeb world?

At the outset, verified pages seems to be a feature which is more helpful in identifying authentic celebrities rather than brands. It will end up helping celebs more than brands as brands already have a significant following on Facebook and their fans already know the official page.

"It will definitely be more helpful for celebrities and their pages as they have a more strong 'cult' following. Fans keep an eye out for real-time updates daily, on their favourite celebrities. The same cannot be said for a brand that most often advertises heavily across digital platforms to create buzz and establish large-scale presence," states Karia.

As the feature rolls out completely, brands will also need to get their act together and have their brand pages verified by Facebook in the better interest of their fan base. "Consumers won't like to waste their 'likes' for non-verified pages. Moreover, as the consumers get educated about the feature, they would look for a verified tag in brand pages when they want to be a part of any contest run by that brand. Also, this can become a good PR tool for the brands as media messages can be carried out and flashed in those accounts," opines Shah.

All said and done, the feature will help those brands that are prone to consumer-generated reproductions of their pages. Brands can make use of this new feature by segmenting themselves from pages created out of brand love and loyalty. Also, it will help the consumers to identify which page is the original asset, and which one is not. Mehta sums it up by saying that till the time this is an exclusive feature, verified brands will enjoy bragging rights, as being one of the exclusive few that have verified pages!

Source

Google Hangouts Powering the Future of Conferences

2013-06-18T02:04:00.001-07:00

Have you ever been to conference? if not, you're really missing out, and should find one for your industry right away. Conferences provide attendees with access to some of the brightest minds and influence-rs for that industry, and give you an opportunity to re-energize yourself in ways that you cannot possibly do on your own.

The problem though with many conferences is that speakers are limited to those that have existing connections with the selection committee, and of course the fact that the conferences have to be physically located in a conference center someplace, requiring anyone not within driving distance to make extensive (and expensive) travel arrangements.

Last June, Chris Dancy was invited to be part of a Google+ Hangout with some folks in London. Chris has been working in the IT industry for over two decades, and has attended and even spoken at many conferences. At the time, he thought Hangouts would be a great way for conferences to have virtual speakers. A month later, he was speaking in England, and it dawned on him that using Google+ Hangouts, the entire conference could be held virtually, not just portions, and it could have speakers from all over. He could also address some of these other issues with conferences. Chris teamed up with Nick Kellet and started a List.ly list in July to begin to crowdsource speakers. Anyone could submit speaker nominations across timezones and they received 30 submissions, from which they chose 24. This year, they've received over 50 submissions, and you can view the List.ly crowdsourced speaker list here: http://list.ly/list/...

Tomorrow's Future Today (TFT) is a 24 hour content marathon, proving people do have attention for interesting characters, 24 in fact.

They streamed speaker presentations every hour, on the hour. Chris and Nick got together with Wade Foster to use his service called Zapier to help move content around. They wanted to be able to record on YouTube and then send that content to Vimeo and then Soundcloud and then iTunes and then create a deck for Slideshare and a PDF they could return to speakers for their blogs - creating a completely automated content conversion and distribution system. They also wanted to address the issue of people who were unable to attend, so they pushed content to Evernote and Kindle and email addresses.

This year, they have put a sponsorship model onto the conference with $300,000 worth of options. This allowed all speakers to receive a stipend of $500 this year, and they'll receive $1000 next year.

A vendor can buy access to the content, or be live within the hangout and answer questions before or after the hangout. They can also purchase analytics, giving them access to specific data for specific regions and segments, as well as purchase capture of data (email addresses) when content is downloaded.

The next TFT begins on June 18, 2013, 1:00 GMT (6PM EST and 9PM PST) and continues for 24 hours. TFT also has a physical conference going on in London where the first and last presentations will be.

They are running the TFT conference twice a year, and looking forward to helping other conferences and organizations replicate the model and system. In fact, Chris met with Microsoft last month as they're interested in pursuing a similar virtual conference system for their Sharepoint community.

Chris was very adamant that his focus is on allowing influencers an avenue to be influential and actually get paid. He said, "Why spend six months preparing a presentation for a conference where you deliver it to 100 people, when you could spend the same amount of time preparing a presentation that gets delivered to a global audience of thousands?"

Check out the full list of speakers here: http://tomorrowsfuturetoday.com/blog/2013/5/30/lights-camera-platform and also find the many different ways you can connect to the conference. And take a look at the many "firsts" that TFT has

Google Android 5.0 Update

2013-06-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

Facebook don’t give a rat’s behind about the browser – they want exactly what they just released, which is a Facebook launcher.The rest of the OS is untouched because Google allows anyone to go in and do what Facebook did.

Facebook did exactly what Google said is OK – they used public APIs to create their own view of the platform.

Something patently impossible on Apple’s iOS.

We personally don’t think Google cares one bit.

UI != UX. Facebook changed the UX but the UI still uses the same features every other android app or launcher does.

Furthermore, we think is a slap in the face to those who scream “Fork Android, fork Android!” for months on end.

Forking Android is a stupid decision unless you plan on basically making your own platform from the ground up.

Facebook has realized this and has done the wisest thing: they’ve changed the UX and UI without slowing down the advancements of Android.

Forking means slowing down advancement.

Those who fork are basically admitting that A) they don’t care about upgrading their product majorly beyond a few minor changes, as Android will continue to steamroll past their fork or B) they want to take on every single responsibility of developing an OS, so it better be a damned good OS, because once you throw off Google, you’re back at square one in terms of an ecosystem.

Facebook is the best of all solutions.

Do we think it’ll be a success? We doubt it.

But part of us hopes that it succeeds enough for others to see that this is the way forward, to make a unique experience without compromising on usability, functionality or ecosystem.

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