Google helps the web to go social

Google has joined the drive to make the web more social by introducing tools to enable people to interact with their friends.

Friend Connect follows plans announced last week by the world’s two biggest social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook.

Data Availability and Connect let users move their personal profiles and applications to other websites.

"Social is in the air," says Google’s director of engineering David Glazer.

During a conference call at Google’s California headquarters, Mr Glazer told reporters: "Google Friend Connect is about being the ‘long tail’ of sites becoming more social."

"Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard."

Charlene Li, principal analyst at Forrester, told BBC News: "Google is tapping into the ‘all things social’ heat of the moment, but it’s adding a different perspective, not as a data source and social network ‘owner’ but as an enabler."

Gamut of uses

At the heart of Google’s service is the use of Open Social which will allow third parties to build and develop applications for the site.

The company says with Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running right away without any complicated programming. This will run the gamut from invitations to member’s gallery and from message walls to review

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Powerset Semantic Search of Interest to Microsoft

There is an article on CNET that speculates that Microsoft may be interested in acquiring Powerset search engine, which is close to publicly rolling out its semantic search engine. The early reviews of the Powerset semantic search have been favorable.

Instead of basing its search results on keyword as Google does, Powerset uses word relationships, concepts and meanings plus other linguistic aids in order to deliver more meaningful results. For instance, if a user types in a phrase or question, they may be directed to part of page where the answer appears and not just the page itself.

During user testing of Powerset, the Powerlabs testers will be able to give search results a thumbs up or down, which will help the developers in refining their algorithms. Google has also experimented with this feature on a limited scale.

However, Powerset may change more than how a search engine delivers results. It may change user behavior in those searches. When Ask.com was AskJeeves.com users were encouraged to type in questions that affable butler would try to answer.

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Hopping on the online bandwagon

If you’ve always loved computers and the internet, have worked in the travel industry and have a flair for the creative and a passion for marketing then a career in online marketing and distribution in a hotel may be just the thing for you.

"As more people get online and become comfortable with applications other than email and occasional browsing, we’re set to see a lot more purchases and bookings via the internet."

The role, often referred to as e-commerce, e-business or online marketing and distribution (though these are quite disparate terms) usually pertains to a growing niche in the hospitality industry.

It’s often confused with revenue management, public relations and worse still IT, but the focus is really quite simple and it isn’t rocket science. Online marketing and distribution would be best described as a combination of traditional marketing, PR and sales taken to a whole new level on the internet platform.

Terminology

It’s necessary to clear up some misconceptions regarding the terms often used to describe the role. E-business is the broad term that usually encompasses the entire value chain from purchasing, supply chain management, customer communication and business to business interactions with the help of automated information systems on the internet, world wide web, intranets or extranets (or a combination of all three).

E-commerce falls under the e-business umbrella and usually involves using the internet or world wide web to add a revenue channel, improve efficiency and interaction with customers or partners.

Often the hotel’s websites are the first "touch-point", where a customer experiences the brand and web 2.0 features are making this interaction more and more sophisticated.

E-marketing on the other hand, involves an electronic or digital marketing focus, using disciplines like search engine optimisation, paid search marketing, banner advertising, email advertising, advergaming and so on.

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Numeric Analytics Combines Online Marketing Services with Web Analytics Consulting

Complementing web analytics services, Numeric adds search engine optimization, paid search marketing, affiliate marketing, and comparison shopping engine feed management to boost clients’ ROI.

Numeric Analytics announced today that it has added online marketing services which include organic search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click optimization (PPC/SEM), affiliate marketing, and shopping engine marketing optimization. The additional services will complement Numeric’s current web analytics consulting offering.

The marketing optimization services will provide Numeric clients with the expertise to best utilize online marketing campaigns while continuously measuring results and optimizing. Pairing marketing services with web analytics expertise, Numeric Analytics can provide integrated marketing data to help its clients reduce cost, increase marketing efficiency and boost ROI.

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Top 5 Non-SEO Ways to Increase Your Search Rankings

SEO involves getting lots of moving pieces coming together in the right way to form a perfect storm of sorts, which equates to better search results for a Web site. Beyond SEO best practices, I polled our SEO team to come up with the top five "non-SEO" tasks that can help support the SEO process and get Web sites consistently ranked for relevant desired terms within the results.

1. Enhance Web Site Usability

Dr. Jakob Nielsen is considered to be a foremost authority of Web site usability factors, and he also has a knack for SEO. In his book "Designing Web Usability" (which many consider to be the "Bible" of usability), he writes that "site design must be aimed with simplicity above all else, with as few distractions as possible and with very clear information architecture and matching navigation tools." From an SEO perspective, this is preaching to the choir. If sites aren’t human-friendly, they are usually even more unfriendly to search engine spiders.

Typically, enhancing usability also involves improving the information architecture of a site, which of course will help the site to be more easily spidered, and will often increase the potential for solid anchor text-rich internal linking. As SEW Expert Carrie Hill said last year: SEO and Usability: Use ‘em or Lose ‘em.

2. Work with Other Marketing Teams

Many SEO projects fall victim to "marketing-in-a-vacuum." SEO teams should work together with other marketing teams to ensure the same message being delivered offline is incorporating its way into the site’s visible text. Also, not combining efforts with the paid search team is a top way to miss out on search ranking opportunities.

It often takes extra "pushing" to become involved in other marketing efforts, or at least well informed of future planning. Fortunately, many of our clients have bought into the idea that we’re their partners in a mutual effort to gain visibility and traffic. Typically, the stronger the in-house SEO team is, the more clout they already have in their organizations, which certainly helps this effort. Every year, Super Bowl advertising gives us insight into how many top companies are combining these two forms of marketing.

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BigFish Online Marketing Reels In Platinum7 Profit System…Creates Online Direct Sales Opportunity

BigFish Online Marketing has added Natalie Stahl’s Platinum7 Profit System to their arsenal of sales and marketing tools. Bettencourt says, “I want my team members to have the very best. With a consultant like Natalie Stahl and a system like Platinum7 Profit System, the very best will be at our fingertips. It’s a system that’s cost effective, efficient, reliable and most important; it’s been proven to work. We’ve created an incredible online directs sales opportunity.”

According to Stahl, “Platinum7 Profits is an exclusive membership site and marketing system that will be available to a select few entrepreneurs. I’ve worked for years “behind-the-scenes” in direct sales and network marketing. My client list includes over 20 top producers and their entire teams, all in a wide variety of companies.” 

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The Top Five Arguments for Using SEO

It happens all the time - an employee spends considerable time researching the benefits of search engine optimisation (SEO) and other online marketing endeavours only to discover their boss fails to share or even understand their enthusiasm.

There are so many businesses out there which are not exploiting the potential of the web - sometimes because the boss’s son built a homepage for his IT GCSE and that is considered sufficient.

Often an employee can have just a few minute of their busy employer’s time to persuade them that they need to invest in online marketing and, as there is often a lack of understanding, there can be a lack of interest.

Fortunately for you frazzled folk, here for your convenience is a list of reasons and research to persuade even the most miserly boss to cough up cash for online marketing.

Reason Number One: The consumers are online

According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2007 15.23 million British homes had web access, which is more than six in ten. Furthermore, above 50 per cent of those used broadband to access the internet at speed. It just makes sense to promote a business through a platform consumers regularly see and - since the vast majority of firms cannot afford the television - the internet is a cost-effective and targeted alternative.

Reason Number Two: Your competitors are online

Employees should explain to their bosses that everyone else is doing it! The world is using the web to shop, bank and socialise and a company is potentially losing a large amount of potential business to their competitors if they are not online. Recent research published by the Internet Advertising Bureau revealed that last year £2.8 billion was spent advertising online. That is a hell of an advantage everyone else has over an offline firm.

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