Google Offers 2 New Products to Get You Fit!

Gmail Motion, currently in it’s BETA stage is one of the two new ground breaking products Google is offering today!

Gmail Motion uses your computer’s webcam along with Google’s spatial tracking technology to register your movements and translate them into meaningful commands, phrases and characters, as shown in the image to the right.

This exciting new technology breaks down the currently existing barriers between humans and the restricting input devices we are lumbered with.

Google Motion can increase your productivity by up to 12% whilst keeping you fit.

Google has also said a Google Docs Motion could be available in the next few months as well.

But that’s not all Google is offering today, in keeping with the physical fitness theme Google Chrome has released Chormercise, a workout for your hands!

Google understands that web surfing can be strenuous, and with browsers becoming faster and faster how can you keep up?

They’ve created a workout to give your hands greater strength and dexterity so you can surf the web faster and loose your phalanges flab!

These products are some of the most revolutionary Google has brought out I hope to see them integrated with all the services Google currently offers (Motion Maps?, Google Buzzerobics?).

Click here to find out more about Gmail Motion BETA and Google docs Motion BETA.

To learn more about Chromercise visit www.chromercise.com.

This may be an April fools joke…

Google Doodle Lets you Boil Water with your Mouse

Google Bunsen Burner

If you used Google today (who doesn’t use Google every day?) you would have seen the doodle for today is celebrating Robert Bunsen’s 200th birthday, what you may not have noticed is the mouse control it has.

Move your mouse left or right and the flame goes from yellow to blue respectively, move your mouse up or down and the flame gets bigger the higher your mouse is.

Google Phoned – Changes Made to AdWords Billing System

Today we were called by Google to let us know that their billing system isn’t working properly!

A recent update has caused many user’s cards to be automatically disabled, so you need to click the ‘Enable’ button to re-enable the card.

They’ve had to phone every use to let them know of the issue so if you have an active AdWords account in the UK (or possibly worldwide) you may have received a call from Google as well.

Let us know in the comments below if you’ve been called by Google or had any issues like this!

How to Add Twitter’s Official Tweet Button in WordPress using TinyUrl

It’s very simple to just add the official tweet button to your site, but if you have very long Search engine friendly URLs (see any post URL on this site) it can be a bit difficult!

To implement the tweet button with a short URL I used tinyurl, as unlike bit.ly you don’t need to create an account and the only data it sends back to you is the shortened URL.

The code should be implemented within the loop, you can even include it if you want to keep file sizes low.

//the url you want to make tiny
$maketiny = 'http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url='.get_permalink();

/*Initialise and set options for cURL
(this lets you transfer data between URLs)*/
$ch = curl_init();
$timeout = 5;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $maketiny);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);

//execute and close cURL
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

//You now have the tinyurl stored in $tinyurl
$tinyurl = $data;

Now that you have the tinyurl stored in the $tinyurl variable, you can use it in the twitter button!

You have two choices about how to code the button, either use JavaScript or an iFrame.

For JavaScript you need the following code:

<script src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<div>
   <a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button"
      data-url="<?php echo $tinyurl; ?>"
      data-count="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Tweet</a>
</div>

For an iFrame you need this code:

<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"
src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.html?
url=<?php echo $tinyurl; ?>&amp;counturl=<?php the_permalink(); ?>"
style="width:130px; height:50px;"></iframe>

The following attributes and query strings can be used:

Query String Attribute Description Default
url data-url URL of the page to share HTTP Referrer
via data-via Screen name of the user to attribute the Tweet to none
text data-text Default Tweet text Content of the <title> tag
related data-related Related accounts None
count data-count Count box position (can be horizontal, vertical or none) horizontal
lang data-lang The language for the Tweet Button en
counturl data-counturl The URL to which your shared URL resolves to (only needs to be used if a short url is used in for the other url) the url being shared

For more information on the tweet button see the Official Twitter Tweet Button Page.

Google Algorithm Update Helps eHow

Last week Google announced a search algorithm update which would impact nearly 12% of all queries. The update was aimed to reduce visibility of “low-quality sites” from the SERP (Search engine Results Page). It has only been released in the US so far, but it has already caused quite a stir…

Although Google has never explicitly stated it the new update is an attempt to crack down on content farms like eHow, answerbag.com and other Demand Media sites. However the effect on page rankings in the US alone have been unexpected to say the least.

Many content farm sites have seen their rankings reduced, but they’re not the only ones seeing a negative impact on their search engine rankings. Several sites which create their own unique content were slammed, losing in some cases over 90% of their Google spots.

cultofmac.com, an Apple-focused blog which produces it’s own unique content has seen 96% of it’s Google spots disappear in the past week!

ehow.com has actually seen improvements in it’s Google visibility and search engine traffic, so the update has actually removed some of it’s competition and boosted it’s traffic.

It hasn’t been a very good week for Google, on Monday 0.02% (about 35, 000) Gmail users logged onto their accounts only to find ALL of the emails missing. According to the Google’s Gmail blog the error was caused by an update that created a software bug which infected Google’s online backups of the accounts, so they’ve had to bring in the back-up tapes to restore the accounts.

Let us know if your site has been affected by the update whether it’s good or bad news.

Choose What Sites Google Shows You

Yesterday Google Relesaed an Extension for Chrome which allows user to block selected websites from SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).

This may look like a poor solution to solve Google ‘s content farm result issues, however it is just a tool they are using to help them combat this issue.

The data from this extension will be sent to Google and analysed to create a “potential ranking signal for search results” according to Matt Cutts (head of the web spam team at Google).

The Extension is called Personal Blocklist Extension.

I decided to try it out myself to see if it is any good. It took less than 10s to download and install and no browser restart is required so you can block as you please straight away.

It’s quite simple to use, when you search for anything on Google a link is displayed underneath each result which can be used to block a domain.

Pages from blocked sited no longer appear on the results page. However they can be allowed back into your current results page by clicking the “show” link that appears at the bottom of the page.

A list of blocked sites can be viewed, edited or unblocked by clicking the red logo next to the address bar.

So all in all it’s a pretty good extension, however for Google web spam team to find the data collected useful a lot more users will need to

a) Use Chrome (currently with only 10% market share)

b) Bother install and use the extension

Should you Bother Using Meta Keyword Tags?

As with most SEO queries there is no straight forward answer, so I’ll just go with it depends…

Basically Google doesn’t use them any more at all!

So if you’re only worried about how you show up on Google don’t bother (unless your site search feature uses them!).

However, if you’re concerned about showing up on Yahoo or Bing they are a necessity!

Bing and Yahoo have a combined 10%* of search market share which may not seem like much first glance, however this accounts for 4.6 Billion^ searches per month in the US alone!

Yahoo has claimed in the past that they stopped indexing the meta keyword tag, however they provide advice on improving your search position including:

Use a “keyword” metatag to list keywords for each page of your website. Use distinct lists of keywords that relate to each specific page on the site. Do not use one broad set of keywords for the entire site.

Bing also provides similar suggestions in their head tag optimisation blog.

So if you care about your position on Bing or Yahoo follow their advice, but like any SEO method you will need more than just a good meta keyword tag to position well on any search engine.

*According to Net Market Share

^According to comScore December 2010 U.S. Search Engine Rankings