SOCIAL SEARCH
If you’ve done a search on Bing or Google recently, you may have noticed the addition of “social circle” qualities included within the search results. For example, links that have been “liked” by members of your Facebook network may be pushed towards the top of the search results when searching with Bing. Or, if you’re using Google, you may see links that have been shared by members of your Twitter network included within the search results. This new feature of a social search allows a user to view more personally relevant results determined by the user’s social networks, making results unique to each person who has their own network of friends. Traditional search algorithms are used alongside the new social search feature, so search results will still appear normal if not shared or liked by anybody in your social network.
Through research, Bing states in a recent blog post that 90% of consumers look to their family and friends when making a purchase decision, and almost 80% of consumers will postpone a purchase decision until getting approval from a friend. Adding social qualities within the search results creates more of a conversational aspect to the search process, using the collective knowledge of the web as opposed to only facts and inbound links. Your friends, and the global community, can now help you discover information that is more relevant to you.
There was one issue with Bing’s social search that I found misleading when searching for a particular product. After searching for a specific product category, like cameras, it appeared on the search results page that a handful of my friends on Facebook liked some of the camera product pages on certain websites. In reality, that was not the case. My Facebook friends only liked the parent website that the products are listed under, i.e. Overstock.com, and not the actual product page. This may fool some consumers into making a purchase because they perceive they’re friends “liking” the product page when they actually have no interest in the product. Bing claims this will allow you to trust the source from which you are buying your product, but I don’t think users will view it that way.
Now you may be asking yourself, “What about Google?” Google still has a stronghold on the search process with a large following. Although Facebook and Bing have created a partnership to give Bing better access to Facebook’s information for search results, Google can also use your “social circle” to give you personally optimized and relevant results. Google uses Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, and other publicly available sites to show you results that people in your social circle have shared or recommended. It operates in a very similar way to the Bing social search, but without access to Facebook data. Google claims they will soon find a way to access Facebook’s data for similar search purposes, but I wouldn’t expect a partnership to form.
Google is also trying to implement a new social layer, called “+1”, which will allow a user to publicly approve of a link or website. This appears to be Google’s attempt to compete with Bing’s inclusion of Facebook data in their search results. Something tells me that it’ll be difficult for +1 to catch on with users, as there is already a wide assortment of social features and buttons on the web, and adding another might create more clutter for the user. Although, Google has surprised me in the past, so I can’t ever completely count them out.
I recently attended a seminar for the Dallas Ft. Worth Search Engine Marketing Association where they discussed these new social search features in detail. Their was much talk about creating valuable content that will entice viewers to like, share, or repost within their social circles. After all, content is the reason your brand gets shared. Finding the social “influencers” of the net and using them to share your content can help generate traffic and exposure. Conversations are happening right now about your brand, and real-time marketing should be implemented to be a part of that conversation. There is social relevancy in what is being said about your brand, and having a consistent presence in conversations will work in your favor.
How do these new social search feature effect your business? Are you going to have to change your current SEO tactics? Do you need a Facebook page? Will this benefit local search? Contact us today to learn how our team at Globe Runner can help your business adapt and benefit from these changes.
GIT: A BEGINNER’S STORY
My Personal Story
I hadn’t planned on applying for an internship this summer and instead was going to wait until Spring 2012, but I found an amazing opportunity through my university to join the team at Globe Runner SEO. The description of the job sounded exactly like what I wanted to do for my career path, so I updated my resume and sent in an application. After applying for the Internet Marketing/Web internship, I was asked to come in for an interview and technical assessment. It’s hard to express in words how much I was simultaneously excited and scared about this potential new job. When the interview process was over, I was soon offered the position and able to start a week later.
I have never been exposed to Git, the open source, distributed version control system used for source code management. On day one, some might say I was thrown into the Git inferno. Fortunately, I had the help of an advanced Git user and amazing instructor, Chris Lee. He was able to show me the basic commands of Git, and what those commands are used for. At the beginning of the learning experience I was very intimidated by the usage and syntax of Git, but then started to better understand as the processes and uses became more clear.
Step 1: Find your terminal
The first step was to find and utilize a program that I didn’t even know existed on my computer, Terminal. Terminal uses a command line interface to let users interact with the computer, and Git can be run using Terminal.
Step 2: Create an SSH Key
Before accessing Git through Terminal, I had to create a SSH Key that allows for the identification of source code changes and also creates a secure communication channel between my machine and others. After telling Git who I am by using the command git config, I was ready for the next steps.
After setting up my SSH Key and telling Git who I am, the next step was to start using and learning the processes of Git. This was the part where I struggled the most as a new user because there are many commands to learn. There were a few commands that I was using very often, so I will point them out because of their important roles.
Step 3: Create a repository
The command git init will create a repository at the current local directory, and git status will tell me information about the working copy. Using git add will allow for the addition of new files to the staging area, where files are held before they are eventually committed using the command git commit. If I don’t feel comfortable with what is in the staging area and don’t want to commit those files, I can use git reset to clear the staging area. To view changes that were made, the command git log will show me the history of commits.
Step 4/5: Stage your Changes and Commit with Git
Finally, after navigating to the appropriate directory, creating a repository, adding files to the staging area, committing those files to the repository, and checking the status on the working copy, I can now push the changes to a remote repository. I first need to tell Git about the remote repository using the command git remote add origin <remoteURL>. When Git knows where my remote repository is located, I can now push my changed files to that repository using git push origin <branchname>. Now, my files should be located on the remote repository where they can be accessed by other developers if using a central server model.
Overall
As you can see, learning Git takes time, patience, and hard work. I am still extremely new to Git, but I’m very excited to become fluent in the use of it and discover new ways to use it. I’m sure my time at Globe Runner SEO will have me proficient in the use of Git in short time.
WELL PLAYED: LILLY PULITZER’S FACEBOOK FAN STAMPEDE
Popular amongst women of all ages, Lilly Pulitzer has been a long-standing symbol of fun, feminine fashion including their hallmark product- the brightly colored shift. One particular consumer segment received a big gift from the Lilly Pulitzer brand when the company developed a line of bags and accessories in custom-designed sorority prints. Originally the prints were for four national sororities- Delta Zeta, Kappa Delta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and Delta Delta Delta.
There are significantly more sororities than just those four. The National Panhellenic Conference recognizes 26 international sororities, not to mention the historically African-American, Latina, special interest and local sororities found on college campuses nationwide.
About a month ago, the designers at Lilly Pulitzer made an announcement on their Facebook page that they wanted to add groups to their sorority prints, but to decide which groups to represent, they were going to put it to a vote on their Facebook page.
Lilly’s page, which had about 140,000 fans already (being a national brand does have its perks), gained 50,000 followers within a week of the anouncement as girls got their groups together to “Like” the Facebook page and vote for their group. After a week, the groups got narrowed down to nine sororities for the last round of voting.
1,023 likes and 713 comments, all from die-hard brand supporters. Look at that level of engagement. Then check out when they announced the winners:
ALMOST FIVE THOUSAND LIKES. The Lilly Pulitzer Facebook Page now has close to 260,000 facebook fans- almost double what they started out with. And the next time they want to add more
The best part of what Lilly Pulitzer did with this online contest is the human aspect of it- the design team at Lilly would do off the cuff video responses to their fans as the voted rolled in and they reached different stages of the contest.
This accomplished a few things simultaneously:
- It humanized their brand and let people see what goes on behind the scenes at a company they love
- It encouraged more participation among their users
- It crowdsourced opinions on a product they knew they were going to make anyway, quickly identifying needs and and getting a consensus without having to spend time debating amongst themselves- a process which would probably lead to a similar outcome without getting them any new Facebook fans in the process.
By holding this contest on their facebook page, they saved time and money on promotions and R&D while building loyalty within their consumer base.
Well played, Lilly Pulitzer. Well played.
MAY 2011 FACEBOOK PLATFORM UPDATES
If you’re trying to develop a Facebook application. Recently, Facebook has provided a new feature for developers: The ability to create test users.
Having the ability to create test users for your Facebook application will allow you to test your custom Facebook applications.
This is very useful when you’re trying to produce FBL queries or graph api queries about particular users.
The new features allow developers to:
- re-authenticate Facebook users to confirm user identity
- Generate test Facebook users email and passwords via the Facebook Graph API
Facebook Send Button
Along with another recent update the new updates provide developers with the combined like or send button. This feature allows Facebook Users with the ability to send and share links or url’s privately as a Facebook Message.
REMOVING CONTENT FROM GOOGLE
One piece of online reputation management is removing defamatory content from Google. Kenton J. Hutcherson principal attorney Hutcherson Law talks about removing content form Google with a Court Order. Also you can report other types of content that you would like removed, copyright, personal information and the like.
Hutcherson Law specializes in Internet Law
Transcription
Eric: Hi, this is Eric with Globe Runner SEO and today I’m with Kenton Hutcherson with Hutchersonlaw.com. Kenton is fantastic. We just had the pleasure of listening to him speak at DFWSEM. He talked about a lot of really interesting things. He talked about how companies can be harmed by information that’s posted by anonymous users on websites like the Ripoff Report. It was really fascinating stuff. And as a company, sometimes we help clients manage their reputation. Kenton, can you give me a little more insight into that that my clients might be interested in on how they can protect their reputation online?Kenton Hutcherson: Sure, absolutely. One of the key things, one of the most effective things that I’ve found out in terms of my work as an Internet attorney is if I can get a court judgment, a court order saying that a certain posting on a website is false and defamatory, I can take that judgment to Google, and Google now actually has a portal on their website where you can upload that court order. They will honor that, actually remove that link from their search index.
Eric: Wow, wow. That’s really big. But you can’t just go to Google and say, “This guy said something nasty about me.”
Kenton: Right. I’ve had a lot of clients that have tried to do that. And there’s a lot of frustration out there because people are like, “Look, it’s destroyed my business. These things are just blatant lies.”Eric: Right.
Kenton: And Google’s position, I mean I can’t speak for Google but my impression is that they’re not the Internet police. They don’t want to get involved between a speech screen two people about what’s true and what’s not. And so they need something to hang their hat on for them to take action. And it seems to me that they’ve made the decision to defer to the courts, which is what we have to validate these types of issues in our society. And so as long as you have a court that’s already made that judgment for you, Google will honor that.
Eric: So another question that I think clients may have is how do I sue somebody, how do I get a court order when the Internet is such an anonymous place and I can’t put my finger on who it is that made that statement on some random website? I can’t sue the website, you know? I would like to sue the website but they didn’t say it. I’ve got to find that guy, right?
Kenton: A lot of times, yes. There are three options. Number one, a lot of people that have been defamed have a pretty good idea of who defamed them.
Eric: OK.
Kenton: They may have one client that was really unhappy and they’ve already complained. Maybe they have a disgruntled former employee. Maybe they know a competitor that’s doing some things that they shouldn’t be doing. In those cases, a lot of times we’ll file a lawsuit against who we think it is and then in the discovery we can ask them in a deposition under oath whether or not they’re the ones that posted it. We can get computer records about what their activity was. You can also issue a subpoena to the website to verify who it might be.
The second one is to file a John Doe lawsuit and then issue a subpoena to the website to obtain the identifying information and get the IP address, and get the name they used when they logged in. About 50 50, 50 percent of the time that will actually lead you to the actual person.
Eric: OK.
Kenton: A lot of times it doesn’t take you anywhere. Maybe they logged in at a Starbucks cafe.
Eric: Right.
Kenton: Right, where it’s impossible to trace who the actual IP address went to. The third thing you can do if none of those options work, you can file a lawsuit against the name that they used in the posting, the street name. And in that case what you need to do, depending on the local court rules, you can serve them by publication which is where the court gives you the authorization to post a legal notice in the newspaper where the court is located for a certain period of time. And then after a certain period of time in that publication, they are deemed to have been served in a lawsuit.
And so theoretically, they’re going to get notice, they’re going to file, they’re going to defend themselves and the lawsuit will go on as it should. In a lot of cases they don’t show up and so you then essentially win by default.
Eric: Right. So even if you never find the guy, it doesn’t matter. You can get a court order, file that with Google and get the…
Kenton: Well, potentially. Of course you have to have a good faith pleading, you have to prove to the court that you actually have a legitimate defamation claim. But there certainly are options out there if you can’t find the person who made the posting.
Eric: Wow, fantastic. Well, I think that’s some really great information. And you could get really hit hard. If somebody online complains about your company, it can really hurt your reputation. And once you lose it, it’s so hard to get back. It’s great that we have guys like Ken that can help us with these really challenging situations and potentially lose millions of dollars to businesses. And now we have a way that we could recover our reputation if something like that happened to one of our clients or to anybody that we knew. I really appreciate your time, Ken.
Kenton: My pleasure.
Eric: This has been great. Thank you very much.
Kenton: Thank you.
ARE BLOGGERS MORE INFLUENTIAL THAN CELEBRITIES?
A new study developed by BlogHer and Ketchum PR suggests that blogs are more influential than celebrity ads when women make purchase decisions. The popular community for female bloggers has put out studies of online interaction for the past four years, but this one has profound significance and a provocative outcome. According to the 2011 Social Media Matters Study, 20% of women are enticed to learn more about products through blog promotions from bloggers they follow, versus just 13% from a celebrity ad. Given the cost comparison between the two, this is huge! Think of the rise in efficiency if national advertising dollars were spent on blogger promotions rather than celebrity endorsements, and then think of all the american households that could be supported by that income- it’s truly intriguing.
Other interesting figures from the study- Blog usage is up 14% from last year and 55 million women read blogs at least once a month. 24% of the total US population online say they’ve made a purchase decision based on a blog’s recommendation, and that 24% represents 53% of active blog readers. And the 53% of the US online population who trust information and advice from blogs represent 88% of active blog readers.
Why is a blog’s recommendation so powerful? People feel like they know bloggers as if they were personal friends, and in any case with advertising a word of mouth endorsement from a trusted friend is the best commercial you can get. Plus, people are satisfied with previous purchases made on a blogger’s endorsement so they continue to use them as a source for consumer reviews.
So what should you take away from this? If you’re trying to launch a new product or build a brand, look to blogger outreach as a way to attract new customers to try you out!
PAKISTANI CITIZEN BECOMES ACCIDENTAL JOURNALIST
An IT Consultant in Pakistan tweeting about loud noises and a random helicopter unwittingly provided live coverage of the raid US Navy SEALs led on Osama Bin Laden’s that ended in Bin Laden’s death.
Sohaib Althar has become an unlikely folk hero since his tweets about this event were discovered. Overnight, he has gained 45000 followers and been added to over 300+ lists. He’s received calls and emails from all over the world to give his account of what happened in Abbottabad. Althar provided an invaluable insight on an international event just by using Twitter like 200 million users do every day.
Twitter truly proved last night and lived up to its intention as an information-sharing network. I remember when Twitter first began to spread past its early adopters into the mainstream, and several people asked me what the difference between Twitter and Facebook- the main one has proven to be Twitter positioning itself as sharing information rather than building connections between people. This, the Arizona shootings, and the Royal Wedding are just recent examples of events where Twitter users provided excellent news coverage as well as analysis and commentary. A service like Twitter would have been a game-changer on 9/11 and ten years later it has proven itself to be not only helpful in reaching out to new customers and crowdsourcing public opinions and monitoring brand awareness, but as a tool for breaking world news. By the time Obama finally held his press conference, Twitter users were already keenly aware that Bin Laden had been killed.
Twitter has found its special role in the spectrum of online news and social media, and it’s my prediction that it’s become so useful in so many ways that the service will be around for years to come.
TWITTER REDESIGNS ITS INTERFACE
If you are like most Twitter users, you usually access Twitter through a third-party application. Some use browser-based services like Hootsuite, while many prefer desktop applications like Tweetdeck. Still, the majority of tweets come from mobile devices using text messages and mobile apps.
The fact is, that less than half of all tweets are sent from Twitter.com and its web interface. Looking to build up lost ground to many of these applications, Twitter has redesigned its own interface to look more like the third-party apps it competes with.
Some of the newest changes include:
- Reply-all functionality
- Auto-complete when entering someone’s Twitter name for replying and mentions
- Endless Scrolling capability
- “OnMouseOver” – Scrolling over a link to get a preview
Many would agree that the most drastic change in Twitter’s interface is the embedding of content; the days of clicking on a link and having it open in a new web browser are now gone. Now, you can click on a link in a tweet on the left side of the page, and the content – pictures, Youtube video, etc. – open on the right side. With this change, Twitter hopes to keep people on its website longer, and make the experience more intuitive.
However, any other time a social network makes changes to its features and interface, flaws and growing pains are inevitable. For example, On September 21, a security flaw in the “OnMouseOver” feature caused many accounts to be hacked – just by mousing over links in tweets (the issue has since been resolved).
Also, though the design is laudable, things are still a little difficult to find, and some new features don’t work as expected; for example, the fact that you can now reply to all the people in a tweet, but not just to the person who sent the tweet is a confusing misfire.
Most complaints related to the roll-out of the new Twitter. According to Twitter’s then-CEO, Evan Williams, the new Twitter was rolled out completely at random to users all over the world. Many of those who want it have no way of experiencing it yet until Twitter grants them access to the new interface.
So how are people reacting to New Twitter? Initially, the response was overwhelmingly positive, but as users have gotten to interact with the redesign and flaws in the interaction have come to the surface, the redesign has gotten mixed reviews.
Do you have the new twitter? What do you think? Is the redesign enough to make you switch from your third-party app? We want to know!
USER AGENT SWITCHER LIST
Optimizing for mobile devices requires you to be able to test your website against different user agents. A “User agent” is a piece of metadata that describes browser or device that it’s being rendered or viewed upon. It’s a string of text that allows the server/client to figure out what browser, mobile device you are using. Being able to manually switch is very important to allow testing and user agent detection.
Personally, I use firefox for web development user. This isn’t built right into Firefox but there’s an extension that allows you to do this:
Firefox’ User Agent Switcher Extension
Chris Pederick has a lovely firefox extension called the User Agent Switcher for Firefox. It’s great to allow you to change manually user agent and to work on your websites with. This will allow you to easily design locally and test for mobile browsers. This isn’t a 100% failsafe solution but it works for the most part.
Once you’ve installed this lovely firefox plugin you’ll want to make sure your user agent list is updated and contains all the important user agents to test against. I’ve searched far and wide for the best user agent list. I made it easier for you and just linked the user agent list below:
User Agent Switcher List
It’s not the biggest but it has all the devices that you need. If you want a super comprehensive list which contains all the user agents i recommend the one from user-agents.org:
Download: user-agents.org allgents.xml 700kb
The list is the most comprehensive out there. It’s really huge and i’m a bit afraid of importing it into my browser. Firefox runs slow enough with all my plugins!User Agent Switcher Extension for Firefo
The user-agent.org user agent switcher list is the biggest i’ve seen so far on the internet. It contains various different mobile devices and has been updated several times. The devices include the major mobile smartphones like: iphone, blackberry, android.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- Next Page »