When people are looking to research a service or product they will often start with a simple Google search, often using keywords that are relevant to what they are looking for to bring up a list of the top webpages to visit. Businesses that can take advantage of this system by implementing a solid Search Engine Optimization strategy are often ahead of the game in their industries.

If your company has a web page for its customers to view, it does no good if no one can find it. When Google searches for information, it uses a sophisticated algorithm to choose which websites it will list first in the search results. The closer your company is to the top of that list, the more likely it is to be found by a potential client or customer. More views equal more sales in the digital marketing business.

By investing in your brand and partnering with an established and professional Digital Marketing Service like Digital Monopoly, you can establish a successful strategy for your business. Trying to navigate the best routes to take through the digital marketplace can be time-consuming and sometimes confusing. Leaving the digital marketing side to the experts can help you maximize your online footprint and save you valuable time to work on other aspects of your brand.

There is a proven strategy that Digital Monopoly uses to draw clients to your business and connect you with the right audience for your brand.

Consultation

• Introduce your business and set out your vision for the future
• Explain what you are ultimately trying to achieve within your business
• Explore who is your target market and how you can connect with them

Competition Analysis

• Detailed customized research into your market and what your competitors are doing
• Narrow down specific target areas that will yield the best results
• Set up a focused plan that will get you ahead of your competition

Implementation

• Let the experts build a custom plan to promote your brand on your terms
• Design a campaign that focuses on meeting your goals
• Make beneficial updates to your website and social media accounts

Reporting

• Receive easy to understand professional reports  on your site traffic and sales conversion numbers
• Stay in the loop while being able to focus on other business aspects
• Reporting results can help you set goals and plan long-term

As a business owner, your attention is constantly being pulled in many directions at once. For local SEO particularly in Perth, trying to maintain a digital presence adequately takes not only experience but valuable time that can take away from other projects. The web can be a tough place to navigate, but with expert SEO services in Perth, it can be an incredible tool for expanding the business of your dreams.

Firstly, Apple isn’t ready to dwindle its price. HomePod will cost around $350, whereas you can buy a beginner-level Amazon Echo for $50. Amazon’s cheap smart assistant can basically do all the stuff a user could expect from a smart speaker. Of course, HomePod has some shiny, innovative features like scanning your room to configure the sound to the perfect frequency, but again, these are some a few features Apple rolls out in its devices to justify its outlandish prices.

Amazon Echo is better than Apple HomePod because it is far more flexible. You could link Amazon Echo with various smart home devices. You can even pair and integrate it with your car. Apple HomePod offers less flexibility, thanks to the closed ecosystem approach of Apple.

How Much Will It Cost Me?

Price is highly important for any business. It is capable of highlighting if the designer can be considered or not. Price ranges vary a lot in this industry. You can find a logo designer that even charges 500 dollars for one logo while others charge as little as 5 dollars. You want to look at the budget that you have at the moment and see how much you can actually afford to pay for the logo. Such information can be used as a start in your research so you can see what logo designers you want to consider.

What Does The Price Include?

This is a really important question, one that few actually ask. As you think about whether or not the price is warranted, you have to  know exactly what is included. The trick is to basically look for as many options as possible. You do want to be able to avoid any additional charge that can appear in the event that the logo is not actually perfect based on what you need. Most of the professional logo designers include unlimited logo modifications until you have something that you actually like. Also, you want to know if the editable design files will be delivered to you. If not, any future modification would require additional charges as you would have to contact the same logo designer.

What Is The Expected Timeframe For The Design?

You have deadlines that you want to respect. For instance, a product might be launched at a specific date and you need the logo to be delivered before that date. With this in mind, it is completely normal to ask the logo designer when the logo will be delivered. Turnaround time is highly important, no matter who you work with. The designer needs to be able to offer a strict deadline when the logo will be delivered.

What About Final Logo Copyright?

So many companies ended up with huge problems as it was the designer that had the copyright for the logo. Make sure that after the work is done, you are the real owner of the logo. This is something that has to be included in the contract you are about to sign. A failure to discuss this important fact would lead towards huge potential problems in the future. Many of them would be of a legal nature. Avoid this by simply asking the question.

The European Union’s top court ruled today that individuals can demand the removal of links and other information in search results that could threaten their privacy. People “have a right to be forgotten,” the court said.

The case involved a Spanish man who wanted Google to delete a 16-year-old newspaper article about his house being auctioned off for failure to pay taxes. But the ruling, by the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, is binding on all 28 EU member countries and involves all search engine owners, not just Google. EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding called it “a clear victory for the protection of personal data of Europeans.”

Some are angry at this attempt pushing the fact that we shouldn’t go after Google for the results but should instead attack the root source where the information is coming from.  I have to say that I agree with this one, however it is tough sometimes for some companies to respond to data removal, especially when it’s not a legit company.

As a contact wearer, I find this amazing they could do this with the contact.  It appears to have wire leads inside of the lens that monitor glucose levels.  I’m not sure if you can see the wire when they’re in but it’s pretty cool either way!

Now.  If only Google can make contacts that can give me search results, Google maps, and other information!  Forget Google Glasses!

Did you know that Google will make upwards of 500 changes per year to their search algorithm?  This is an ongoing process to optimize search results and deliver a better, more relevant user experience?

It is not very often that we, as the average Google user, get to see very deep into the algorithm that drives the ranking of Google’s search results.

In fact, in the world of SEO‘s and Internet marketers, Google’s brand has become one where their algorithm and ranking methods are like the dark, secret powers of the Jedi.

However, lately Google has been opening up quite a bit more about their search algorithm, PageRank, and what changes are going into their engineering to help deliver better search results to the end user.

According to Yahoo News, Google recently updated their search algorithm with its Panda update (versions one and two).  These updates were downright destructive to many content site owners and to a degree ineffective.

Google’s been continuing to crank out adjustments (500 in the last year) and is (relatively) happy to keep us updated of this progress – but algorithm insights are far and few between.

On Thursday, Google put together a video giving a much deeper look at the search algorithm and the changes that are continually analyzed and implemented.  The video also shows the rigorous process that changes must go through before they are actually implemented.

Here’s Google talking about their search algorithm:

But there’s one area where Google is actually trailing behind both Yahoo and Bing, and that is search quality.  In other words, how much traffic is sent to a website when a search query is made.

According to IBTimes.com, Experian Hitwise states that for July, Bing and Yahoo were actually better than Google when it comes “success rates”, or the percentage of searches that “resulted in a visit to a Website”. People using Google ended up on a website 67.56 percent of the time, while Bing scored over 80 percent and Yahoo topped them all at 81.36 percent.

It’s important to note that Yahoo.com recently (about 1 year ago), inked a deal with Microsoft to allow Bing to power the Yahoo search engine.  So Yahoo.com no longer is, in and of themselves, in the search engine business.  So the marketing, promotion, and quality of the search results that are growing for Bing.com are also having an impact on the Yahoo search engine.

At the end of the day however, and at least for the time being, the money is where the masses are and that’s on Google.com.  Until Microsoft can build a stronger marketshare in the search space, Google will continue to dominate the landscape.

Google states that the move was necessary according to terms reached in a copyright infringement case that was brought by Copiepresse.  However, Copiepresse is fighting back stating that Google removed their site from the index because of retaliation to their suit.

I have to be honest with you here, the concept of preventing your tags and categories from being crawled, indexed, and thus generating PageRank (PR) from Google is ludicrous to me.

Why in the world would any blogger using WordPress want to prevent the crawling and indexing of content pages from their blog.  The more tags and categories that you have indexed, the more exposure you’ll get in Google search results.

Let me give you an example from this blog of the benefit of allowing your categories and tags to be indexed.

Below is an image of the keyword phrase “apple iphone 5”, which drives a fair amount of search traffic to my blog each day.

Notice in this graph that the main pages of my site that are getting the most traffic for the keyword phrase “apple iphone 5” are tags – to be more specific the “iphone-iphone-5” tag and the “apple-iphone-5-images” tag.

In fact, you’ll also notice that the tag “apple-iphone-5” has increased nearly 8500% in impressions and over 13,000% in clicks in Google.

This is something that would have never happened in my blog if I had categories and tags blocked from Google crawlers.

And then there’s the PageRank being delivered from this particular tag. As you can see in the image below, this tag alone carries a PR3 which dramatically helps all of the unique articles within this tag to earn more PR and authority.

Here’s the image of the PR for this tag:

And that’s just an example of one tag within my blog that is driving high levels of traffic.  And this traffic is a result of the PageRank and exposure in Google’s search results.

Then you have categories.

I think this is the easiest part for me to explain because you can verify that all 12 categories along the top of this blog carry at least a PR4.

And the categories themselves, because they are found in Google’s search results, help contribute to the overall traffic coming to my site.

Why this is safe from a content standpoint

The tags and categories within your blog, if you are building them strategically, will have a unique mix of your articles underneath them.  And these articles make up the unique content found within each category and tag.

This mix of articles, which are unique for each category and tag, allows Google to see unique content per category and tag.

Each category and tag is a page within Google just like any one of your individual articles.  This is true because each category and tag has it’s own unique URL.

And Google will see each URL as an individual page that is available to receive PageRank and be ranked for search results for specific keyword phrases.

Again, blocking Google from your categories and tags is something that makes absolutely no sense to me, and in fact, works directly against the whole premise of SEO – and that is, to get exposure in Google search results in order to increase traffic to your blog.

There’s the obvious, that Google dominates the search landscape.

But there’s another interesting take a way by looking at the chart below, and that is, why in the world has search growth seemed to stall?

And I mean, stall completely.

None of the major search engines – Google, Yahoo, or Bing – have seen any substantial growth in search share. And I find it interesting mostly because search has always been the predominant activity online.

And even though social networking is exploding, like Facebook, people are still wanting to search for things.  Google Adwords, after all, continues to see double digit gains in growth year over year.

Yet search as a whole seems to have stalled.

Perhaps this is an opportunity waiting to happen for someone.

Perhaps now is the time to introduce niche search engines, search engines that are designed for specific verticals like sports, news, entertainment, etc…

Just a thought!

Here’s the chart showing the growth of Google, Yahoo, and Bing over the past 12 months:

Google is looking to find new, innovative ways to increase the quality of the search results you see when you “Google” something.

According to Matt Cutts, Google’s lead search engine spam engineer, in 2010 Google made a couple of changes to their algorithm that has dramatically improved the quality of search results.

Primarily the focus has been on spammy content that full of repeating keyword phrases, those that you find in a lot of comments on blog posts.

The focus going forward, however, is starting to shift to content farms.

Content farms are sites designed for one purpose, to harvest content that will rank well in search engines.

Not that the desire to rank well in search engines is a bad thing, but the intentional act of content harvesting to achieve that is what Google is calling spam.

It’s becoming more true today than ever – in order to rank high in Google and build a strong online audience, you must have original content, thoughts, and ideas.

via Google

For some reason, this really caught me off guard. I mean, I know I share a ton of information via my Facebook profile and Facebook Fan Page. Not to mention that Google Reader is my life-line to up to the minute news and information. But I guess I’ve never seen before exactly how Google aggregates this “social” landscape that I naturally create while hanging out online.

If you have a Google account (Gmail), then login and click this link.

What you will see is an alphabetical directory of your connections and how Google’s social search is starting to leverage this data to deliver a more “personal” search result based on your interactions, friend’s recommendations, and your browsing habits.

Thoughts?

This is a guest post from Webprofits.com and is part of SMSEO’s continuing effort to form relationships with other content providers and provide a platform for exposure for online business.

Every now and then Google comes up with something so useful that it’s quite impossible to call it a gimmick. Google Instant was a case in point, and Google Search Preview is likely to be another. The Search Preview is represented by a magnifying glass icon. Click this and you get a snapshot of the site, including highlighting your text. This could be a new frontier for SEO, as well as drastically improving the market for good web design.

One thing that’s notable about Google’s various innovations is that they’re invariably based on tried and true platform technologies. The Google Search Preview is a good natural development of some existing technology, including flip through style windows you can find on various news sites related to searches.

The SEO Angle

The difference is that it’s also about a thousand times more efficient for users than the existing system for searching. Anyone who’s ever really suffered during a search would agree. It looks good, and more to the point, it’s extremely useful.

This is where search engine optimization will really live up to its name, too. Search Preview is a click function, and potentially a mouseover function, unless that’s too messy, but it’s also an instant decision maker for searchers. It will progressively revolutionize SEO and online marketing as it develops. SEO can benefit a lot from this sort of instant visual support. This search shows site content, and it’s valuable content to the user, adding to the search value, and improving the SEO outcomes.

The Web Design Angle

Search Preview is likely to also create a demand for very strong web design values. Web design in this context is also a direct impact on searchers. That means home pages will need to look great, all the time. What happens to all those Flash intros is debatable, because the inference at this stage is that the page only is displayed, not the cosmetic effects.

So the design process is basically back to pages, visual impacts, and above all strong site content, displayed on those pages. That’s likely to cause quite a flurry of reinvention and innovation among designers, even form designers, because a bland looking page, however functional, isn’t going have a lot of impact in this environment.

The good news is that all that page clutter will be on the way out, too. The “classifieds” style web page will have almost zero impact as a preview. It’s a longstanding principle of visual design that clear imagery and strong focus will beat clutter any day, and this is likely to be another case in point. Pages like that are messy, and the average net user’s response to clutter is pretty negative at the best of times. Add SEO and content presentation values, and the result has to be upgraded presentation, to get noticed.

The Content Issues

With all this visual impact will have to come strong content. Web content writers will need to become hybrid copy writers, to take advantage of the previews effectively. Headers and openers will need to be good, strong copy. These previews make banners a lot more relevant than they are now, and the yes/no decisions on page content will be critical.

Whatever happens, it definitely won’t be dull. With any luck, Google may have found a way of taking the whole internet up another gear.

Google has been making large, sweeping changes to their search results lately, and today they have implemented another big change. It was on September 9th of this year that Google introduced Google Instant search, which instantly delivers search results as you type a search query. But today Google has announced Instant Preview into their search results which allows you to preview the website of the search result before clicking and visiting. The intent of Instant Preview is to allow you, the searcher, to preview webpages before clicking and visiting – and hopefully giving you a better search experience.

Here’s a video highlighting Google Instant Preview:

Google posted some impressive financial numbers today for the third quarter of 2010. Google earned $7.29 billion for the third quarter, which is up a whopping 23% year-over-year, and posted a net income of $2.17 billion. Google also reported having $33.4 billion in cash… now that’s a lot of cash!

Currently, Google shares (NASDAQ:GOOG) are up over 9% in after hours trading. The stock price closed down today -2.37 (-0.44%) at 540.93.

In related news, Facebook announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring “Instant Personalization” to Bing search results. This is basically adding Facebook Connect API to Bing search so that you can see what your friends have searched, and what content they are interacted with on Bing.

The problem for Google is that Facebook probably won’t be interested in working with them to provide the same social features. That is, unless Google is willing pay a substantial royalty for the content integration. So I see this move as Bing, finally, gaining some sort of strategic advantage over Google, even though it might not last long.

Thoughts?

via Google Finance

Bing has surpassed Yahoo as the #2 search engine. Of course, Google has a commanding lead in the #1 spot, but still… a big deal for Bing.

Nielsen says that Google’s August share is 65% (and growth is flat) but that Bing and Yahoo have now switched places:

Although Google saw little change in its month-over-month search volume, it still dominates the search market, accounting for 65% of all U.S. searches. Yahoo! followed Google and MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search with a 13.1% share of U.S. searches, falling from a 14.6% share in July 2010 to 13.1% (a 1.2% delta decrease or an 8% relative decrease).

In terms of a year-over-year comparison, Google has seen little change in its share of search while Yahoo! has seen a small but steady decline, going from a 16% share to 13.1% (a delta drop of 2.9% or a relative drop of 18%).  MSN/Windows Live/Bing’s share has grown from 10.7% in August 2009 to 13.9% (a delta increase of 3.2% or a relative increase of 30%).

via SearchEngineLand

Since Google Instant Search launched earlier this week, a lot of people have been concerned with how their Google Analytics reports, specifically their keyword reports, would be impacted. The most common question asked is will Analytics show partial keywords in my reports.

This question is based on the fact that with Google’s new Instant Search, results are triggered as people type words in the Google search bar. So as you’re typing, results are being triggered, and theoretically, your web pages can be viewed and clicked during a partially typed out phrase.

According to Google, your Analytics report will not show partial search phrase queries. Instead, what you’ll see in Analytics is the predictive phrase that was generated in the search bar during the search query.

For example, if a user was typing “web metrics” but got the search result she wanted at “web met” with the predicted term being “web metrics”, then you will see “web metrics” in your Google Analytics reports.

via Google Analytics blog

This is something I’ve meaning to write about all day yesterday, but unfortunately haven’t had the chance. But Google’s search engine is now producing real time searches that are instant, showing results as you type.

It’s called Google Instant search.

You now get search results appearing below the search bar as you type (see video below).

When you have a moment, go to Google.com and just start typing into the search bar. You’ll notice the results update instantaneously.

You’ll also get the same suggestive search that you’re used to with additional words in gray appearing as you type making suggestions for your search.

So check out Google’s real time, or instant search results and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Here’s are the benefits of Google’s instant search, from Google themselves:

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Here’s a video about Google Instant Search:

Google has changed the top sponsored results in the Google search results from a light yellow background to a purple background.

Here’s what I’m talking about – notice the purple background in the top sponsored results in Google search:

Why the change?

Google has officially stated that the change is due to the changing dynamics of their search results. No longer do you get just simple text based results ranking from 1 – 10.

Here’s Google’s official response:

Starting today and ramping up to 100% globally by the end of this week, we’ll be changing the background color for ads that appear above the search results on Google.com as well as our local domains. The ads, which currently have a pale yellow background, will change to have a pale purple background. This change is part of the ‘look and feel’ update to our color palette and logo that we made back in May of this year to keep the Google results page looking fresh and modern. This is purely an aesthetic change to our ads and won’t have any impact on the way we target or serve advertisements on Google.com.

It wasn’t much more than a few years ago when Google search results had a blue background.

Then the change went from blue to yellow, and now from yellow to purple.

Here’s the evolution of the background color of Google’s search results:

And then of course you can see the purple background from Google search results at the top.

So what do you think about the change in Google search result’s background color?

Do you like, or naw…?

sources: Search Engine Land, RimmKaufman

Hold onto your mouse, and make sure your keyboard is stable!

Yahoo announced today that it will use Google technology to power its Yahoo Japan search engine and ad delivery system.

This was attempted before in the US until the government squashed Yahoo’s efforts because of fears over a search monopoly.

But regulators in Japan do not share the same fear factor.

According to HuffPost, the decision by Yahoo Japan, which is largely independent from its California namesake, will mean that the bulk of Internet searches done in Japan will use Google’s search engine, though both companies said enough independence would be maintained to keep the market competitive.

Yahoo is making every effort to find a way to recover in the hyper competitive search market.

I guess Yahoo’s perspective is, if you can’t beat em’, then join em’!

Actually, this is probably a smart move by Yahoo because of their new commitment to focusing on high quality news and content delivery – which Yahoo excels at doing.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares are up +3.51 (0.72%) at 491.81 on the news of the Yahoo Japan deal.

Typically, Justin Bieber steals the show both in Google search and in Twitter trends. But over the last month, nothing – not even Justin Bieber – could come close to comparing to the searches for the World Cup.

Here’s a graph from Google Insights for Search:

As you can see, the search phrase “justin bieber” has dominated the search engines over the past 30 days.

This reflects the changing dynamics and popularity of football (or soccer) both here in the US and throughout the world.

Internationally, search volume was highest in African countries like Botswana, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe. Closer to home, users on the East Coast were the most interested in searching for World Cup related terms, particularly in Vermont, New York, and DC.

Beyond their general interest, searchers were also looking to buy hats, jerseys, flags, and other goods to show their support of their favorite teams, according to Google Retail.

The ongoing saga continues around the Google spies and Google “keyword” cover up story. It’s just this time the story is starting to hit the mainstream of search phrases and people – the people of the web – are starting to become fascinated with the concept of Google removing, or otherwise manipulating search results based on bias and subjective direction from the US government.

Man, what a great spy or conspiracy story this is.

Google, the world’s largest and most influential search engine, purposely covering up (or removing) government bias search results that may reveal potentially damaging information about our country, politicians, or major corporations.

It’s a great story line, but one I’m sure we will never hear Google respond to directly.

Read more about the ongoing Google spies story.

The 2010 World Cup is upon us and people are already scouring the for start times, news, and information about their favorite country and team.

The United States soccer team is already getting a lot of attention in Google as people are searching for us vs england, us vs england start times, and other related keyword phrases.

According to the 2010 World Cup schedule, the United States doesn’t play their first game against England until Saturday, June 13th at 20:30 hrs Johannesburg time.

As a point of reference, New York is (-6) hours – that is, 6 hours behind the World Cup time zone.

So with the United States starting their game at 20:30hrs on Saturday, that would be 2:30pm EST (or 2:30pm in New York).

After Saturday’s game against England, the United States soccer team doesn’t play again until next Friday, June 18th when they will face Slovenia at 16:00 hrs – or 10am New York time.

After playing Slovenia on Friday, June 18th, the United States will play Algeria on Wednesday, June 23rd at 16:00 hrs – or 10am New York time.

Finally, the United States soccer team with face Algeria on Wednesday, June 23rd at 16:00 hrs – or 10am in New York.

Here’s the break down of the United States (USA) World Cup 2010 schedule:

USA vs England – Saturday, June 13th @ 20:30 hrs (2:30 pm EST)

USA vs Slovenia – Friday, June 18th @ 16:00 hrs (10:00 am EST)

USA vs  Algeria – Wednesday, June 23rd @ 16:00 hrs (10:00 am EST)

Does PageRank Really Matter Anymore? I say ‘Yes’

I keep hearing comments from people saying that Google PageRank doesn’t matter anymore. Why doesn’t PageRank matter anymore, you might be asking – well because Google says so, that’s why. But my response is just because Google says so publicly, doesn’t mean a hill of beans!

Check out this question and answer exchange between a forum user and Google:

Question and answer taken from Google Webmaster forum:

Q: My site’s PageRank has gone up / gone down / not changed in months

A: Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.

I definitely understand why people feel that PageRank is not important, however of the “over 200” signals Google uses to determine authority, PageRank is one that is equally made up of hundreds of variables that are all represent authority – and it happens to represent a variable that is visible to us all.

There is, without question, a direct correlation between a site’s authority and ranking and their PageRank. For example, HuffingtonPost.com is a PR8 and #1 in Technorati’s 100.  Mashable is a PR7 and typically #3 in Technorati 100 and dominates top rankings in Google search results for a myriad of high traffic keywords.

I believe Google says “don’t worry about PageRank” as a position and strategy to fight spammy, artificial back linking. No sooner does Google say “Hey guys, PageRank means everything to a site” and instantly the spam cess pool grows.

I definitely understand why people feel that PageRank is not important, however of the “over 200” signals Google uses to determine authority, PageRank is one that is equally made up of hundreds of variables that are all represent authority – and it happens to represent a variable that is visible to us all.

There is, without question, a direct correlation between a site’s authority and ranking and their PageRank.

For example, HuffingtonPost.com is a PR8 and #1 in Technorati’s 100.  Mashable is a PR7 and typically #3 in Technorati 100 and dominates top rankings in Google search results for a myriad of high traffic keywords.

I believe Google says “don’t worry about PageRank” as a position and strategy to fight spammy, artificial back linking. No sooner does Google say “Hey guys, PageRank means everything to a site” and instantly the spam cess pool grows.

What do you think?

Do you think that PageRank still matters in representing a website’s overall authority?

Possibly due to recent problems that the popular social website Facebook has been having with privacy issues ( see for an explanation ) many people are trying to find out how to permanently delete their existing accounts. I mean, ALOT of people. Just try typing “how do I” into Google’s search box, and it will automatically suggest deleting Facebook.

For those who are having difficulty figuring out just how to accomplish this, I offer this link:

http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account

It is important to note that you will have to not try entering your account to see if it worked, as that will cancel the account deactivation.

Personally, I’m keeping my account.  I’d never know what any of my friends and family were doing otherwise (the time my wife discovered my mother was in the hospital by reading it on Facebook comes to mind).

So if you had to realistically predict the future, which they attempt to do on Wall Street each and every day, then you’d need tools in place that helped you accurately predict, calculate, and gauge future decisions and actions.

Welcome the Google search engine!

Google’s search engine can be looked at as the ultimate leading indicator. People are trending in searches based on what’s happening right now, not what might happen a few months from now. So mining the search data can really give you some fascinating insights into the future.

Google Can Predict The Unemployment Rate

One very cool way that people are figuring out with Google is how to do things like predict the unemployment rate.

According to Forbes.com, two researchers think that it has another benefit: the ability to predict the future.

Based on weekly reports of web searches, Francesco D’Amuri from the University of Essex and the Bank of Italy and Juri Marcucci from the Bank of Italy argue that the rate of Google searches for the keyword ‘jobs’ serves as a better leading indicator of the U.S. unemployment rate than traditional methods. Any change in the rate of searches for jobs correlates with up and down movements in the unemployment rate, the professors found. By incorporating Google searches into forecasting models, the researchers were able to outperform predictions conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

How could this affect your wallet? U.S. stocks generally rise and fall on unemployment numbers, meaning that Google may offer sophisticated traders an informational advantage over the competition. For example, a person who accurately predicts that the unemployment rate is falling will be in a position to snag cyclical companies like Best Buy before other investors know that consumers may be more willing to spend money on discretionary items like TVs or iPads.

Source: Forbes.com

Google’s Mobile Search gets new features.

If you use the Google Search bar on your Android handset you might notice a difference in the search results.G

Google has added a few new features for Google Mobile Search for the iPhone & Android. When you input a search into Google Mobile Search you get a drop down menu next to the search bar referring to different search result options.

The new drop down menu will give you results from News, Products & Updates. Google is trying to help users get the most relevant information for their search results.  So what do you think of the new Google Mobile Search?

Source: Google Mobile Blog

Josh Uhlemeyer,

Former Author of Mobile News Now.

After just one week, the Facebook ‘like’ button has already been added to over 50,000 sites and the number is growing.  Many developers and site owners are enthusiastic about the opportunity to integrate with Facebook and take advantage of its 400 million active users.  Using Facebook’s web-wide “Like” button in conjunction with their “Open Graph” allows websites to drive traffic from Facebook’s to their corporate sites.

The button also provides a major opportunity for viral exposure as anyone that “likes” a site gets an update posted on their profile for their networks and friends to see.  An additional benefit to developers, site owners, and web surfers using the button is that anyone logged into Facebook can get a more customized search experience as Facebook searches will show sites your friends like.  There is still debate over privacy issues and Facebook has been known to test the waters there.

Given Facebook’s tools are only about a week old and already gaining a ton of traction, people are starting to ask if this like button is going to take over the importance of links in search.  Facebook calls the like button a form of “social links” explaining that they are actually better than links because of their relation to specific users. If this like button really takes off it presents a huge competitor for Google’s search as it challenges the entire basis of their algorithms.  Essentially, Google indexed the web for its users and now Facebook is showing that it can get its users to index the web for them with their “like” button.   So will “liking” replace the importance of linking from an SEO standpoint? Will social media optimization (SMO) become the new SEO?

For more articles on SMO and Liking as the New Linking please visit The Social-Capitalist or better yet, “Like” the Social Capitalist on Facebook!

Sources:

Pete Cashmore on CNN Tech

Facebook Stats

Is The Wrong Page for KCA 2010

A lot of people are turning to Google right now and searching for

The problem is that webpage does not exist – there is nothing on that page.

Here is what is on the page :

Here is the right page for the Kids Choice Awards 2010:

Updating your blog frequently is critically important for the health, crawlability, and exposure of your content in search engines.

It’s not something people think about too often, but did you know that the frequency in which you update your blog has a lot to do with the authority, rankings, and exposure of your blog?

Authority

Let’s take authority for example.  When I mention authority, I’m referring primarily to Google’s PageRank (PR).  The frequency in which you post new content can directly impact your blog’s authority because new article’s are what attracts the Google crawlers back to your blog.  New articles mean new crawling and indexing opportunities in Google.

So the more Google comes back to your site to crawl and index your content, the more healthy your blog will become in Google’s index.  And a healthier blog (from a technical perspective) typically means more authority and higher PageRank (PR).

Rankings

The more frequently you update you blog, the more authority your blog will build over time.  The more authority your blog has in Google, the higher rankings your content will receive for comparative keyword phrases.

For any given keyword phrase that someone searches, there are typically thousands of pages in which Google can display in the search results.  What determines the pages that will be shown on the front page (the top 10)?  It’s simply a matter of authority.

Ranking in Google is a visual representation of authority for any given query.

So by updating your blog more frequently will allow your blog to build more authority.  This authority will allow for higher comparative rankings for any given search query.

Exposure

Of course, the higher your articles rank in Google for search queries, the more exposure and traffic your blog will receive.

It’s critically important for blog owners to understand that each page (or article) within your blog is an entrance point to your site.  Whatever people see at the top of your blog (the header), and the sidebars of your blog are what is typically seen by every single visitor.

So the more exposure your blog has, the more aware of your sites design, layout, and type of information that is being exposed in the parts of your blog that are present on every single article.

But the button line is that if you want to have more authority, which results in higher rankings in Google, which results in more traffic and exposure, then you need to start increasing the frequency in which you post articles.