Monthly Archives: June 2011

Facebook, Twitter and +1 Tracking on Webmaster Tools & Google Analytics

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Google announced on their Webmaster Tools Blog that they are now tracking social media interactions with your site.

Webmaster Tools Plus1 TrackingIn Webmaster Tools you may have noticed a new menu section appear in the side bar.

Search Impact Report shows you how the click through rate of your organic traffic has been affected by +1′s (Click the image for Search Impact Report Screenshot).

Activity Report shows you how many times your pages have been +1′d both on your site and in the SERP.

Audience Report show how many individual users have +1′d your site, as wells as some demographic and geographic information (this information only shows up after a significant number of users have +1′d your site).

Check out our post on adding the Plus1 button to your site if you don’t already have it.

Google Analytics Social TrackingIf you use the new version of Google Analytics you will have seen a new Social menu item is now available with three reports:

Social Engagement Report shows you metrics of visits when users had some sort of interaction with your site. (Click the images for a screenshot of the Social Engagement Report).

Social Actions Report displays the number of each of the social interactions you are tracking on your site.

Social Pages lets you compare social interactions that occur on pages on your site to see which pages have the most interactions.

 

This tracking allows you to track social interactions from Facebook, Twitter, +1, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn and probably many more.

The Google+ Project (Googlebook?)

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Google began testing their new product Google+ today. Only a small number of people were invited for testing… I wasn’t one of them :(

I did however take the interactive tour of Google+ and I’m pretty excited about some of the features it has to offer.

Google+ Circles:

Similar to Facebook friend groups you can add your friends to different “circles” so you don’t share stuff with your parents (or boss) that you don’t want them to know!

Google+ Friend Circles Feature

Just drag and drop!

Google+ Sparks:

Sparks sounds like the ultimate boredom killer (unless you have no interests). You add topics, categories or any other interests and Google+ sparks will find videos and articles it thinks you might like… Cool, but a bit stalker -ish.

Google+ Hangouts:

This is probably the coolest feature of Google+! It allows yo to have video conversations with your friends. You can limit it to particular friends or have an open “hangout” where anyone you know can join.

Each participant has a small video at the bottom and the person who is talking (or talking the loudest) has the main video at the top.

Google+ Hangouts Video Feature

 

There are also some mobile specific features Google+ has.

Mobile Google+ Instant Upload:

Take a photo and it can be instantly uploaded to Google+ into a private photo folder, then you can put it into whatever folder you want later. This is convenient but a bit worrying if you take photos you don’t want to appear on the internet EVER!

Mobile Google+ Huddle:

This is very similar to Facebook chat however, it allows whole Google+ Circles to participate in the chat rather than just single participants. This sounds like a pretty good feature if it works well… I can never get Facebook chat to work on my phone :(

All in all I’m pretty excited about Google+ when I’m finally able to use it :P

What do you think? Were you one of the lucky few signed up to use it? Let us know in the comments!

New Google Black Layout for 2011 – Google turns to the dark side!

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Google has been testing a new black naviagtion bar with a grey search bar background.

As per any change that occurs on the internet users are complaining. They claim that the new black navigation bar ruins their custom Google homepage.

New Google layout 2011
Click for larger image

Google is always testing new positioning, colours and many other slight changes to all their services, this one is just one of the most noticeable visual changes this year.

If you’ve seen it let us know what you think of the new Google layout. Did it ruin your custom Google homepage?

Dot anything the way we use internet will change…. in 8 years time

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OK, the long awaited .anything domains received the green light from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) during their meeting on 20th June 2011. Yes we knew it will be pricey we new it will be available only for corporates and we knew main force behind it is anti-cybersquatting corporate team with HP and Morgan Stanley behind it.

So what about dates and prices? The initial go ahead is for applications from Trademark and Corporate Brands and it will take place between Jan 2012 and Apr 2012. Application cost is $185,000 USD (peanuts) and the first “one word/letter” domain is scheduled to go live by the end of 2012. Yes this is another spin off .anything. The “.” will go (wow!) – sooner or later this same way people no longer use “http” and “www”. This is actually more significant from “.anything” itself because it will have direct impact on our way of searching for data on the web. Marketing will change too.

Google and other search engines may need to decide which domain is more important old stuff like “ibiza.com” which belongs to cybersquatters like fma or simply “ibiza”. This way or another there is a chance if we are lucky we will have domains which simply will be our names with IPv6 assigned to us when we ware born – kind of global passport (What about this idea :-)

Dot anything looks incredibly chaotic at this moment but we are sure we will learn how to use it soon. After few years of strict overlooking from ICANN some rules will be relaxed and some more strict than today when registering a web address.

Try to imagine now you type in word car in to browser and you are served with result page of your preferred search engine (browsers introduced “one box” recently). In the future word “car” can be actually website would this mean back to separate search box in 2013?

Find out more on ICAAN website about who is involved and how .anything will work: ICANN.ORG

Firefox starts rapid releases! (Surprise Firefox 5.0 is Here!)

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Firefox 5.0 Android Do Not Track Feature Today I got Firefox 5.0! You may remember about 2 and a half months ago every one got excited about Firefox 4.0, well now Mozilla has decided instead of having small updates (Firefox 3 reached version 3.6.18) they’re going to have rapid releases of whole new versions.

This may seem like a strange move, but it is probably so their browser appears new and fresh, Chrome’s newest stable release is version 12 and it’s only been around for 3 years! Some users may be led to believe that the version number dictates the usability and level of functionality that a browser provides (that would mean IE6 is better than FF3, 4, and 5 *shudder*). So Firefox is just trying to look cool compared to all the big number browsers out there.

According to their blog Firefox 5 “ includes more than 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements”.One of the main new feature Mozilla is bragging about is built in “Do not Track” feature that is now available on their new Android release. They are now the only browser that offers a “Do not Track” feature across multiple platforms.

Simply FF5 is nothing more than another chapter in “BROWSER WARS” EPISODE 2011

The Chromebook is Finally here!

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Ok so it’s not here right now, but if you live in the 7 selected countries you could get your very own shiny new Chromebook on the dates listed below.

  • US 23rd June
  • Germany 24th June
  • France 24th June
  • Netherlands 24th June
  • Spain 22nd July
  • Italy 25th July
  • UK 1st July

There are two Chromebooks being released, one by Samsung and one by Acer, check out the specs below:

Samsumg Acer
OS Chrome OS Chrome OS
Display 12.1 (1280×800) 300 nit Display 11.6 HD Widescreen CineCrystalTM LED-backlit LCD
Weight 3.26 lbs/1.48 kg 3.19 lbs | 1.45 kg
Memory 2 GB RAM, 16 GB solid-state drive (SSD) 2 GB RAM, 16 GB solid-state drive (SSD)
Battery 8.5 hours of continuous usage* 6 hours of continuous usage*
Processor Intel® AtomTM Dual-Core Processor Intel® AtomTM Dual-Core Processor
Connectivity Built in dual-band Wi-Fi and World-mode 3G (optional) Built in dual-band Wi-Fi and World-mode 3G (optional)
Webcam HD Webcam (1-megapixel) HD Webcam
Audio Built-in stereo speakers, combo headphone/microphone jack High-Definition Audio Support
Peripherals 2 USB 2.0 ports, 4-in-1 memory card slot, Mini-VGA port 2 USB 2.0 ports, 4-in-1 memory card slot, HDMI port
Input Full-sized Chrome keyboard, Oversized, fully clickable track pad Full-sized Chrome keyboard, Oversized, fully clickable track pad

*Engineering specs can change without prior notice. Battery times are estimates, depend on lots of different factors and may decline over time.

The Chromebook is Google’s newest product for those who live only on the internet. Take a look at the video below explaining how the Chromebook works.

You would think that since it’s practically a netbook (with less features) it would cost the same, or less than your average netbook… Think again! The Samsung version with 3G will set you back £399 (£349 without 3G) from PC World or Amazon.

It comes with no programs installed you can only use online apps, which may be fine for some, but what happens when you don’t have any 3G or wifi. The chromebook becomes a very fancy (and expensive) paper weight!

Chrome TV ads – “Browser Wars” Episode 2011 “Attack of the Chromes”

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Chrome is the last from “big browsers” to join the race for market share and since 2009 thanks to consecutive campaign in all sorts of media from 0% it went to 20%. Of course this shows power of Google money and Google infrastructure.

Chrome similar to Firefox picked up first users from web related industries. Based on Safari engine it offered plethora of tools for webmasters in original installation. Without add ons people were able to check uploading times inspect web design elements and code in user friendly manner. Application was lightweight to download, start and offered revolutionary tab system where each tab created separated browser window – when drag and drop is there people like it.

There was no more need for multiple bars and boxes – one bar to search write web address it ticked all the boxes in efficiency and user interface simplicity.
And guess what? – It was good enough to change the way browsers operate – two years on we have Firefox 4.0 and IE9 and they all look this same (Safari of course being Chrom’s “mother and father” always looked similar ):

Lightweight design, one box and more internal tools. Only my lovely Opera suffers – with its 3% market share (unchanged for last few years) loved by hardcore group of nerds and unaware users with once great OperaMini for mobile devices seems to fight back with latest 11 version to regain its status of the most edgy browser.

The latest Chrome Ads in UK TV feature new Chrome logo 2011 and several other services it looks like for a moment Google forgot about OS for PC (they’re happy with Android) and try to launch Chrome as one stop shop for internet users (despite the platform). Apart from Chrome features we see all Google arsenal: YouTube, Gmail, Picassa etc, etc
As a viewer you are taken through the journey of email creation by “Daddy” the Google Way, You may have also seen this ad playing at the beginning of Youtube videos.

Google has also aired ads during the Superbowl in the US featuring Lady Gaga.

With growing importance of cloud services for hi-tech giants we see here modular marketing in its best form

TV Ads for software are a very effective way of Gaming the industry. Among browsers creators the first to realise how powerful it is was Mozilla Foundation in 2006 shifting its market share to about 20% followed by folks from Opera with their Mobile version in 2008. Microsoft as usual “slow burner” regarding web related affairs realised TV is a way to go when Chrome was in still in it’s infancy. But for IE8 the 2009 TV campaign was a battle to keep market share while for Chrome it was start of effective offensive.

It looks like 2 in years on Chrome gained 20% of the market most of this market unfortunately half of this was taken from Firefox and only about half from IE. Apart from TV Ads and great push this advance of other browsers on the market comes from legal action agains Microsoft which resulted in need for Microsoft to offer other browser options instead of forcing all windows users to use IE.

Browser Wars - Windows 7 Browser Choice Window

Choose your side in Browser Wars!

Whatever happens next we are glad to see broader adoption of CSS3 and HTML5 which makes modular online marketing simply easier.

Unfortunately there is also the dark side of “browser wars” (“Microsoft strikes back”). The way Microsoft works removes chance for a lot of people to see web in its latest format. Without automated updates for IE many users experience web as it was back in 2005. IE6 remains the only window to internet for about 10% of users (mostly corporate).

We hope this nightmare will be over soon although with IE7 being better than IE8 we are frightened to see IE 10 :-S

How to add the +1 button to your site!

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Today I received an email from Google webmaster central letting me know the +1 button code is now available!

You only need to add two lines of code to get the shiny new +1 button on your site.

In the head tag, or just before the end of the body tag put this line of code in:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

Place this line of code on the page where you want the +1 button to appear:

<g:plusone href="http://modularinternetmarketing.com/"></g:plusone>

Place the site that you want to +1 in the href attribute.

In a wordpress site if you want each post to be +1′d page the code would be:

<g:plusone href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"></g:plusone>
Size Button With Count Button Without Count
Small

 

 
Standard

 

 
Medium

 

 
Tall

 

 N/A

If you want to use a size other than the standard 24px high you need to add a size attribute, which can have one of 3 values: small (15px), medium (20px) and tall (65px).

To stop the count from displaying put count=”false” into the code. Note that this doesn’t work for the tall size button.