The world may be all a-Twitter, but it seems the inordinate amount of time now spent there is costing other places traffic. Given the social aspect of Twitter, it could be a forum killer long before it becomes a serious threat to Google. ...

We're well under way with our five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown, which we kicked off two weeks ago. This week, you'll hear tips from Jack Herrick, the founder of wikiHow.com, about attracting new visitors to your site. As we share more tips over the next two weeks about increasing your revenue potential and attracting more advertiser budget, we hope you'll leave comments with your own suggestions for growing your business. You can also follow the series at www.google.com/ads/speedingup.

Jack Herrick is the founder of wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. wikiHow is a wiki, which means that any visitor to the site can create or edit wikiHow articles. wikiHow is currently ranked as the 100th most popular site on the web by Quantcast, and receives over 16 million unique visitors each month. Today, Jack shares three of his favorite tips to attract visitors. We hope they'll help you come up with new ways to entice visitors to your sites as well.



Tip #1: Produce great content

The first tip is obvious, but it's also the most important. The articles on wikiHow vary widely in quality. We have some of the highest quality how-tos on the net, for example How to Hard Boil an Egg, and we also have some fairly ugly, unfinished drafts we call stubs. Interestingly, the high-quality articles don't get just a little more traffic than the mediocre articles, they get hundreds of times more. When you can produce the single best page on the Internet on any given topic, people will find it and share it with their friends. Don't settle for acceptable content, always strive to produce amazing content that your readers can't resist sharing.

Tip #2: Learn to share

My second tip is more counterintuitive. To attract more readers to your website, consider putting your content under a Creative Commons license so it can be widely distributed. Everything on wikiHow is under a license that allows other websites to publish and even modify or adapt our content for re-use on their sites. In fact, we have a button at the bottom of every article that allows webmasters to copy and paste the HTML right onto their site. Many webmasters are afraid to share their content, because they worry they will only be aiding competition. By sharing, what you are really doing is encouraging your competitors to provide free advertising for you. The more people who see your content on other sites, the more likely they are to eventually come straight to you.

Tip #3: Make your community a team

Finally, I'd encourage you to allow real collaboration on your site. Lots of websites try to create online communities. To use a basketball analogy, most online communities are just groups of individuals shooting freethrows alone. On wiki websites, people play together as a real team. Humans are hard wired to want to work in groups and collaborate. By allowing this to happen, you can create a passionate community of people that will build something bigger than any one person could accomplish on their own. And that will in time attract a large audience.

Hopefully Jack's tips will help you come up with some new techniques to attract visitors to your site. In addition to Jack's tips, here are a few extra resources focused on attracting more visitors.

• Learn the basics of Search Engine Optimization with Google's SEO guide.
  
• Submit your content so that Google can help you distribute it across Google Web Search, Maps, Product Search, iGoogle, and more.
  
• Drive more traffic to your site with programs like AdWords.
  

Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing

Google's new rules affecting PageRank sculpting bring us back to high school. Instead of letting us vouch for our cool friends and disavow the geeks who want to hang out with us, Google is now punishing us for being one of the cool kids. ...

Thursday June 24th was a big news day: details about Governor Mark Sanford’s confession on Wednesday about his liaison in Argentina continued to break, we learned of Farah Fawcett’s death, and then later TMZ broke the news of Michael Jackson’s death. By most reports, Bing did not deliver the best experience for our customers soon after TMZ posted the news on their blog. As Search Engine Journal pointed out, we had the story but it was hidden at the bottom of the main page and even deeper in our xRank result.

 

 

 

 

We know that customers are turning to search when a big story breaks: generally we get more feedback and see more engagement from consumers for bigger news stories, so we pay attention to what we can learn from these events.  In the case of Michael Jackson’s death there was a dramatic rise on Thursday for queries on his name and for details about his death, as well as spikes for the source credited with breaking the story (TMZ.com), his career, and his most famous move (the Moonwalk). The following day strong interest continued and there were new spikes in query volume for names of his friends and family members and for his videos, images, and songs.

 

 

 

 

Interestingly, on Sunday, the queries for his friends and family reached almost the same volume as his name driven by interest in Lisa Marie Presley’s MySpace post about her thoughts on his death. By the way, the most searched for song – by a country mile as my dad used to day – was Thriller.

 

 

 

 

 

While we do want to respond to big events appropriately, our general rule is not to interfere with the normal algorithmic operation and to use what we learn to improve future releases. The only exception is for major news events where we see unusual activity and the results are clearly not being ranked in a relevant way.  In these cases, we can respond more quickly to how we perform the ranking. This was the case when Michael Jackson died, and we quickly rolled out what we call a “news go big” experience to make sure we were providing appropriate coverage for this significant and sad event.

 

 

So what did we learn and what will we do? Our data tell us that when people do queries on entertainers, they are most often interested in seeing images. However in the case of breaking news such as this, we will focus on ensuring that the whole experience quickly accommodates the surge in customers’ interest. We will also think about what people will be searching for in the days following the news and be sure we have the right content and algorithms to help people find this related information. Based on customers’ feedback, it seems delivering the right experience as the story is breaking is the area where we need to improve the most, so we’re on it! We will keep making adjustments and improvements to our algorithms to get it right when big stories break. We appreciate all your feedback, as always.

 

 

Jacquelyn Krones, Senior Product Planner, Bing News

 

There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. We’ve been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space. Today we’re unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres. This includes Tweets from folks from our own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest.

 

 

Starting later today, when you search for these folks names in association with Twitter, you’ll see their latest Tweets come up in real time on Bing’s search results. For example, if you type “Kara Swisher Twitter” or “Kara Swisher Tweets” or even “@karaswisher” as your search query, you’ll see something like the below. (Note this feature will be rolling out gradually over the course of the next few hours so you may not see it right away.)

 

 

 

 

 

The answer will include that person’s latest Tweets, along with an easy link to “See more tweets” from that individual.

 

 

We’re not indexing all of Twitter at this time… just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers to start. We picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets. We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter’s public API to surface Tweets in people search. We’d love to hear your feedback as we think through future possibilities in real time search.

 

 

And while we may not be famous, we are prolific, so don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for all the latest news from Bing!

 

 

Sean Suchter, General Manager, Search Technology Center, Silicon Valley

 

We continue to hear that one the favorite features of Bing is the rich and interactive daily image that appears on the Bing homepage. In fact, one of the questions we get asked the most is whether people can submit their own pictures. And now we can say yes! We've launched our first ever photo submission contest on Facebook. The theme is “summer travel,” and the winner will have his or her photo displayed on the Bing homepage on Monday, August 3rd. To find out more about the contest including photo guidelines, rules and the schedule, visit the Bing photo contest on Facebook. 

 

Ever wanted to know more about the pictures?

 

The images are chosen from a variety of licensed photos with the goal of inspiring a sense of exploration and delight while piquing your interest to learn more. Once the images are selected we create hotspots like the one you see here:

 

 

 

Hotspots are like virtual Easter eggs. If you hover your mouse over the image, you’ll find four of them every day. Each gives you a chance to find out more about the subject of the image for that day. Our goal in creating hotspots is to guide you toward interesting details about the image such as who, what, when, where and why. Sometimes you’ll even see a hotspot leading you to what we consider to be something wacky about or related to the image.

 

 

Want just the facts?

 

If you just want to know where the picture was taken, you can mouse over the copyright symbol in the bottom right corner to see a quick caption about the image, as well as the photographer’s name and agency.

 

 

Did you miss one?

 

If you missed the previous day’s image (or just want to see it again) click the arrows to scroll through the past 7 days of homepage images. You can interact with each page just as you could when it originally appeared. (You need to have Silverlight installed.)

 

 

What about the rest of the world?

 

With Bing, our international markets also get a rich image version of the homepage. And starting next month, a number of those markets (including Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and the UK) will begin customizing the images to suit their unique audience, as well as adding their own hotspots.

 

 

We are looking forward to seeing all the great submissions! As always, keep the feedback coming and don't forget to rate and share your favorite Bing homepage images with your friends on Facebook with our photo sharing app.  Follow this link to try it out. 

 

 

Stephanie Horstmanshof, Bing editorial lead

On a daily basis, paid search managers must balance efficiency and volume in an effort to meet the goals of the campaign. There is no right or wrong decision; there is only what is right for your business at that time. ...

In this four-part article series we will cover a total of 91 tools. Those tools include SEO tools keyword research tools content management systems image search tools ranking checkers analytics tools social media tools online copy writing tools link building tools statistics tools competitive research tools PPC tools related tools and professional development tools. If you re looking for a tool to assist you in your SEO efforts you will probably find it here....
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If you don’t spend all day staring at airfares and hotel rates, you might not know how much they fluctuate. The same trip can vary by hundreds of dollars from day to day. That can make it hard to know whether you’re getting a good deal or not. Luckily, you’ve got Bing Travel’s deal-finding tools to help you out. We can help you find great deals on airfare and tell you when’s the right time to buy. We can help you find great deals on hotels and figure out which hotel to book. We can even help you decide where to go!

 

Now, some people think we have so many deal-finding tools that it can be hard to know where to begin. That’s why I’m here to point you in the right direction. In the coming weeks, I’ll walk you through how to use our super-powerful Flexible Travel tools and our Price Predictor and Hotel Rate Indicator tools that help you make better decisions about when to book your airfare or hotel room.

 

But right now, let’s talk deals.

 

Air deals

 

If you’re looking for a cheap flight, a good place to start is our airline ticket deals page.

 

 

This page shows you the top flight deals, record low prices, last-minute deals and more, all based on analysis of the billions of airfares we’ve collected over the past several years.

 

The default page shows deals to and from all the cities we track. But you’re probably more interested in deals from your hometown. So, to narrow the options, expand “deals from origin cities” at the top right:

 

 

Since I live in Seattle, I’ll click the link for the Seattle page:

 

 

That airfare to San Diego seems good; I could visit my friends Ted and Erin. But two days doesn’t sound like long enough for this trip. Let me click on "View more dates" to see if there are any return dates with an equally good price.

 

 

I can see there’s a Wednesday return that would be much better for me. I click on it, then on “find flights.”

 

 

There’s my deal! And the Price Predictor says “Buy.” So I should probably tell Ted and Erin to clear some space on their couch.

 

“That’s great for you, Joel,” you’re thinking, “but I don’t know Ted and Erin, and they’re probably not going to let a stranger stay on their couch.” That’s why Bing Travel also offers a tool that helps you determine whether a hotel is a deal … or not a deal.

Hotel deals

 

When looking for hotel deals, you’ll need to do a search first. I changed my itinerary back to a Thursday-Saturday trip, because I wouldn’t stay as long in San Diego if I weren’t visiting friends.

 

 

I’m a 4-star-hotel kind of guy, so I click on the 4-star filter on the left.

 

 

And it so happens that I have a collection of Starwood points I wouldn’t mind adding to.

 

The Rate Indicator says there’s a “DEAL” at the Sheraton. Let’s click on that and see the details:

 

 

It looks like the weekend rate is 25% below the typical price I’d pay to stay at this hotel. Sounds awesome. (If you’re wondering about that big ugly red bar in late July, that’s Comic-Con weekend. The red color indicates that the rate for those days is not a deal, though you probably could have figured that out on your own.)

 

Those are the basics. Now go find your own deals and let me know if you find any exceptional ones.

 

 

Joel Grus, Fareologist, Bing Travel

SEO campaigns often become bottled up in silos and never reach their full potential. SEO covers many different areas of your business, so sharing information and strategies across all possible lines is not only preferable, but should be a required part of any engagement. ...

Search advertising is familiar and attractive to budget managers, like a trusted old friend. So how are you going to get some of that PPC budget for your SEO proposal? ...

This is a brief history of search engines and search technology. In this article you can learn the basics of how search engines work and how they got to where they are at the moment. We ll also look at important ranking factors including the historical reasons for why they are important near the end we ll consider what factors may become more important in the future....
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Back at MIX09 in March, we talked about our work with Careerbuilder.com, and today we are pleased to report that at the annual Society for Human Resource Management Conference, Careerbuilder.com announced the availability of Applicant Explorer, a new application built on the Bing API that helps recruiters find qualified candidates in the fraction of the time it once took. Rather than manually sorting through applicant resumes and then searching the web for additional information to fill out a candidate profile, Applicant Explorer uses the Bing API to supplement CareerBuilder’s resume database with online results from public sites including social networking sites, blogs, corporate websites and forums.

 

CareerBuilder selected the Bing API because it enabled the company to help recruiters customize their search criteria and dynamically sift through large amounts of data quickly, providing a more complete picture of an applicant. The end result is great news for recruiters: hundreds of data sources at their fingertips and the ability to do thorough comparisons more quickly and easily. Click here for a video overview of Applicant Explorer or to read the press release here.

 

If you haven’t checked it out yet, we want to make sure you know that the Bing API is free, with unlimited queries, as long as you meet our Terms of Use.

 

We encourage you to use our forums and our newly introduced Bing Toolbox to access tools and resources, and don’t forget to provide your feedback to help us keep improving. We look forward to hearing from you and seeing what you’re doing with Bing!

 

Cheers,

Angus Norton, Senior Director, Bing

If you develop iPhone or Android applications, we're happy to let you know about the beta launch of AdSense for mobile applications. Participants in the beta will be able to display text and image ads in their mobile applications to earn revenue. We've seen positive results in our trials, and we're excited to roll this out to new developers to continue supporting the growth of mobile applications.

You can visit our new microsite to learn more about AdSense for mobile applications, see our beta requirements, or sign up. If you're selected to participate in the beta, we'll be in touch with you shortly with next steps for getting started.

You can also learn more about the program by watching the video below, in which Howard Steinberg, Director of Business Development at Urbanspoon, describes how he tested AdSense for mobile applications:



Posted by Alex Kenin - AdSense for Mobile Applications Marketing

Judging by the amount of media coverage of sites like Twitter and Facebook, a company might think they need to invest heavily in those areas ASAP. They might be wrong. ...

This is the second part of a two-part article on local search engine optimization. In this part we are going to cover how different factors affect local search engine rankings the number of user reviews positive and negative reviews reviews on third party websites the age of the business listing keyword location categories phone number and more....
Download Adobe® Technical Communications Suite 2 Create content once. Publish to multiple channels. FREE 30-day trial + support.

Search engines will reward a site that has quality content with good rankings. For many sites, one of the easiest ways to add that quality content on a consistent basis is by starting a blog. ...

Yahoo! Search logs gave a revealing picture of what the King of Pop evokes for people as they mourned his passing today. Starting last night, searches for his legendary music surged. “Thriller,” “Man in the Mirror,” and “Billie Jean” were among the top lyrics, songs, and videos that people looked for on Yahoo! Search. As details of Jackson’s death emerge, searchers are looking for details on prescription drugs including Demerol, the hospital Jackson was taken to after he collapsed (UCLA Medical Center), and other lingering questions (”why did Michael Jackson die”).

Details of Jackson’s controversial and sometimes disturbing life emerged again in Yahoo! search data as we saw searches for “Michael Jackson plastic surgery”, photos of the singer, and “was Michael Jackson abused as a child.”

Jackson’s death set multiple records across Yahoo!. Our front page story “Michael Jackson Rushed to Hospital” was the highest clicked story in our history, and Yahoo! News saw an all-time record in unique visitors yesterday. Yodel Anecdotal’s post on losing Michael Jackson captures even more details on how the online world reacted to his death.

As fans continue to flood the Internet with questions, we’ll keep being the source for memories, pictures, and news about the untimely death of the King of Pop.

Yahoo! Search

<img src=”http://visit.webhosting.yahoo.com/visit.gif?us1246063186″ mce_src=”http://visit.webhosting.yahoo.com/visit.gif?us1246063186″ alt=”setstats” border=”0″ width=”1″ height=”1″>

Last week, we kicked off a five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown. This week, you'll hear tips from Ricardo Prada, a user experience researcher at Google, about designing for the user. As we continue to share tips about attracting more visitors, increasing your revenue potential, and attracting more advertiser budget, we invite you to share your own suggestions for growing your business by leaving comments on each post. You can also follow the series at www.google.com/ads/speedingup.

Hi, I'm Ricardo Prada. As a user experience researcher here at Google, one of the things my colleagues and I are responsible for is making sure that Google websites are efficient and fun to use so that visitors keep coming back to them. I'd like to share three tips we think about daily as we do our jobs. Ultimately, they all fit into our guiding principle: if you focus on the user, everything else will follow.



Tip #1: Design for the tasks that visitors complete on your site.

Think about tasks on your website first and layouts second. It's tempting to want a flashy design that exercises your CSS skills, but remember that vistors come to your site with specific goals in mind, like reading your essays, or checking out your collection of sports photos. Write down the top three tasks your users might want to accomplish on your site, and design to make those tasks quick and efficient.

Tip #2: Use ads as potential exit paths, not interruptions.

Ads should complement your site, not distract from it. The most natural place for a user to evaluate an advertisement is after they've completed their goals on your site. Instead of interrupting your user's main tasks, try to offer ads as potential exit path for users who were probably ready to leave anyway by placing them at the end of completed tasks.

Tip #3: SEO - only if it makes sense.

Only do search engine optimizations that benefit your users. For example, page titles that are relevant to the page content make it easier for your visitors to understand what your articles are about. On the other hand, there are lots of sneaky strategies out there for improving search engine rank. Most of those don't work anymore, and they might actually harm your site's reputation.

Additional Resources:

• Our Help Center has more suggestions about where to place ads.
  
• The Google Webmaster Tools team shares their design and content tips.
  

Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing

Today, we're kicking off a five-week educational series about speeding up your business in a slowdown. We'll be revisiting the basics of online publishing to help you grow your business, and we'll share tips about using AdSense and other Google products that you can apply to your business now. In the coming Thursdays, you can look forward to tips for making your site more user-friendly, bringing in more visitors, increasing your revenue potential, and attracting more advertiser budget. Along the way, we invite you to share your own suggestions for growing your business by leaving comments at the end of each post. You can also follow the campaign at www.google.com/ads/speedingup.

In today's post, you'll hear from Avinash Kaushik, Google's own Analytics Evangelist, about the importance of understanding your traffic, analyzing how your site performs, and using data to make decisions. Here are a few small to mid-sized ideas that -- in Avinash's own words -- can add up to remarkable results for your website. They're all things you can do today with free web analytics tools, like Google Analytics.



Idea #1: Discover what content and traffic sources keep people coming to your site again and again.

How many times does a visitor have to visit your site to be considered valuable? Use the Visitor Loyalty report in the Visitors section of Google Analytics to pinpoint the visitors who come to your site that many times or more. Put that data into an advanced segment and apply that segment to your core reports to understand things like where these valuable visitors come from and what content they consume. You can then use this information to optimize how you acquire new visitors and the content on your site for loyal visitors.


Idea #2: Figure out which pages to improve on your site.

Many people ask the question: "How do I know which pages on my site to improve?" Take a look at the Top Landing Pages report in the Content section of Google Analytics. This report tells you the first page people see when they enter your site. Sort this report by bounce rate. Bounce rate measures how many people come to your site, only see one page and leave right away (or as Avinash calls it: "I came, I puked, I left"). Once you identify which of your top landing pages are not able to get a single click from your visitors you know which pages need to be improved.


Idea #3: Find out where AdSense performs best on your site.

If you've linked your AdSense and Analytics accounts, the Top AdSense Content report in the AdSense section of Google Analytics will tell you where on your website AdSense ads get the most clicks. This is a win-win for your business and your customers, as it helps you identify what type of content to produce more of based on what content people are most interested in as well as where people most often click on your AdSense ads.


If you haven't already, link your AdSense and Analytics accounts in order to take full advantage of what Analytics can offer. If you don't yet have an Analytics account, you can sign up today.

Additional Resources:

• Read more from Avinash at his blog, Occam's Razor, which has more tips like the above and additional ways to use Visitor Loyalty metrics, or on the Official Google Blog.
  
• To learn more about using Analytics on your website, visit Conversion University.
  
• See great ways to use AdSense and Analytics together by watching this video.
  

Posted by Talia Brodecki - AdSense Product Marketing