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Everyone’s Tweeting these days. Name a celeb and we bank they have a Twitter account. Last month, the NY Post reported that Kim Kardashian makes 10K for endorsed tweets. And a quick visit to Twitter’s search directory, WeFollow , this morning confirmed the number one Twitterer as Ashton Kutcher , with over four million followers. But if you’re a Twitter nerd (meaning: you “follow” but no one “follows” you back), listen up. According to Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow: “One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.” Read the full story. Thanks to Google’s ranking system with Twitter, there are strategic ways to turn yourself from Twitter nerd to pseduo-Twitter celeb. You know when you search Google for something and lots of relevant links pop up? Well now Google is including Tweets in real-time searches [the project is led by our man Singhal]. This is good news for Twitterers with business goals and objectives in mind. To rise in the ranks of Google with your tweets, all you have to do is get a few Twitter power players to “follow” you back and you rise in the ranks of Google automatically. It doesn’t matter if you have a gazillion followers. If just one of your followers is someone reputable like Ashton or Kim, you gain the sort of Twitter entitlement of royalty. You get? So now it’s time for you to log onto Twitter and target a Twitterer with superhero powers and somehow get them to follow you. Let us know how you fare. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Rewards Twitter Celebs &
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So, VMware has officially annonunced that it is buying email and collaboration software vendor Zimbra which was acquired by Yahoo in 2007. Although financial terms of the acquisition were not divulged, some observers say that it is actually lower the amount Yahoo paid for the company when it was still a start-up in 2007. According to the Press Release obtained by AllThingsD , VMware will utilize Zimbra to further its mission in simplifying datacenter, desktop, application development and core IT services in the enterprise setting. Although, it might seem unimportant anymore for Yahoo, Zimbra has been leading the open source email and collaboration solution, boasting of 55 million mailboxes with 85% growth during 2009. But the thing is, Zimbra is operating in an environment where one of the major rival happens to be Google with its Google Enterprise solution. Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will still support Zimbra’s existing products and open source efforts while at the same time enhancing it to fit into VMware’s own product infrastructure. The deal also gives Yahoo the rights to continue utilizing Zimbra technology on its Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Calendar services. The deal will close end of Q1 2010. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . VMware Acquires Zimbra from
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Google has issued an official statement regarding its business operations in China, specifically its Chinese search portal – google.cn. Specifically, Google told Chinese authorities that it will stop censoring search results on the Chinese Google site. And dependeing on how things will turn out, Google might later be foreced to shut down the said site. In a long post at its official blog site, Google gave three recent discoveries/incidents that prompted its decision to stop censoring search results from its Chinese site. The first one being the fact, it was found out that recent attacks on its corporate IT infrastructure originated from China and that those attacks were not just meant for Google alone. Some other business companies were also targeted. Making things worsts is that based on Google’s investigation, it was also found out that the main objective of the attackers was to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Although the attackers were not successful in achieving their target, thanks to Google’s high level of infrastructure security on its products, two Gmail accounts were jeopardized although the activity was limited only to non-essential matters and not the content of the emails. And worst of all has got to be the fact that Google also found out that even accounts of U.S., China and Europe human rights activities were accessed by third parties through malware, phising and other malicious activities. Given these conditions, Google has no recourse but to stop censoring the search results on its Chinese site. But that is of course if Google and the Chinese authorities will agree. If not, then that’s the time when Google will be force to close its Chinese site. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Will Stop Censoring Search Results in
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Bing is enhancing its Health search facility by focusing on enabling users to quickly obtaing relevant information and make better decisions related to their pressing health issues/problems. By providing more content from its new partners, Bing is augmenting instant answers with health data that helps users gain more information when they conduct health-related searches on Bing. So now, when you do a health-related search on Bing, it will cull its library of health resources and pull out relavant documents and presents a brief, informative summary above the regular search results. According to the Bing search blog, the search engine derive this information from analysis of index of medical sources and extraction of meaningful data automaticall. So, you can rest assure that the health information provided by Bing are authoritative. This is of course very important for health related information. This new Bing instant answers covers not only the general type of health queries but specific ones as well. It allows users to quickly explore other point of interest relevant to the health search query. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Bing Makes Search
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If you’re an avid Yahoo! user, you probably love the functionality of the homepage. Click any one of their tabs, like ’shopping’, and you’ve got a world of products at your fingertips. Well yesterday, Yahoo announced that as of March 11, 2010, Yahoo! Shopping is partnering with PriceGrabber . Moving forward, Yahoo! shoppers will be asked to sign up with PriceGrabber in order to take advantage of product searches and do what they love best: go shopping! What’s interesting here is that the Bing/Yahoo search deal didn’t cover Yahoo! verticals like shopping, travel, health, finance, etc. Brian Smith of SingleFeed tells us that “Here’s an example where Bing Cashback would have been a very good partner to ‘power’ Yahoo Shopping, but Yahoo decided to go a different route instead and partnered with a competitor to Bing. Not sure if this has happened with Yahoo’s other verticals.” What does this mean? Other Yahoo! tabs will probably start outsourcing their services by partnerning with related sites. Think Yahoo! Travel partnering with Kayak . And Yahoo! Health partnering with webMD . … You get the picture. Read the official letter from the Yahoo! Shopping team. Read more from Comparison Engines about the new partnership between Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Yahoo! Goes Shopping With
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The Iranian Cyber Army has done it again. Their clever team of hackers has taken hostage of Baidu.com , China’s largest search engine. Baidu, pronounced “Bidu” is to China what Google is to the rest of the English-speaking world. Sources say those in China trying to log onto Baidu.com are currently being redirected to the Iranian cyber Army’s splash page, while people in other countries are still able to log onto Baidu. Some are speculating the search engine was targeted due to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Although nothing has been confirmed, we are leaning towards the idea that the Iranian cyber Army is an undercover Google coy, in which case Google insiders are having a field day. After all, Baidu has led the way with a market share of over 77% , but perhaps not for long. The breaking news comes after the “Iranian cyber Army” (aka Google hackers) successfully hacked Twitter last week. So who’s next? Read more about Baidu, Google’s biggest competitor in China. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Bye Bye Baidu : China’s Largest Search Engine
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Google has just added a useful button to its mobile homepage – tagged “near me now”, this feature lets you search by using your location as the query. Currently available for iPhone and Android phone users in the U.S., “Near me now” utilizes GPS for determining your whereabouts and then searches for results near your location. The new Google mobile homepage feature lets you easily search for popular categories of nearby places. Just by clicking or tapping on the “Near me now” link right on the Google mobile homepage, you will find categories of places. And if you want more you can just select the “browse more categories” link. You can also explore the whereabouts of specific locations including reviews or rants of other people about a specific restaurants and their menus and services. To use this feature, make sure that the location feature of your iPhone, Nexus One or other Android phones is activated. Then visit google.com your phone’s browser and you can easily spot the “Near me now” tab. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Adds “Near Me Now” to its Mobile
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