Harvest Business and Internet Blog » seo

Google Rewards Twitter Celebs & Influencers

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:14:24 +0000

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 &

How to Find Your Writing Niche – Even in a Saturated Market

cgseo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:24:37 +0000

When I first started blogging, I made a huge list of topics I knew quite a bit about and could help others with.

Track Your Brand Name Across Social Web with SEJ Tools

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:44:56 +0000

Haven’t I told you SEJ Toolset is a one-stop destination when it comes to all types of your web campaigns? This week I’ll show how to monitor your online reputations from the same handy dashboard. Social Media Monitor is a service which lets you track what people are saying about you, your client, or your brand. It aggregates user generated content from across the Internet into a single stream of information. Step 1: Add a search to track social media

Google Tracks Flu Trends in 121 US Cities

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:04:38 +0000

We all know by now how bad the strain of influenza that hit the world last year was. And if the CDC warning is to come true, we might be experiencing a second spike of flu activity anytime this year. The CDC is basing its warning of course to the similar event that happened in 1957. So, to prepare for this event or any other influnza strike, Google has released flu estimates of 121 cities in the U.S. The city level flu estimates is being carried out by Google in consultation with public health officials. With this initiative, Google is hoping to help people understand the spread of flu. Google’s flu estimates were based from the tracking of popularity of several Google search queries. Through this search queries, Google is able to estimate flu levels in a real-time fashion. The trends is updated on a daily basis and could also detect early signs of flu activity. Although not yet validated by U.S. authorities, the flu estimates are somehow reliable if not more useful than traditional flu surveillance systems which usually takes days or weeks to be collected and processed. In addition, Google’s estimates were created in the same way as the U.S. national estimates were made. So, hopefully, this tool would help cushion the impact of future flu strike. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Tracks Flu Trends in 121 US

Google Will Stop Censoring Search Results in China,

cgseo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:13:44 +0000

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

Bing Makes Search Healthier

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:14:38 +0000

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

Google Makes Google Docs a Cloud Storage Service

cgseo — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:00:15 +0000

It has been quite awhile since Google’s GDrive project has been talked about. In fact it seems that Google may have shelved the project already. But not until now, as Google just announced that Google Docs users can now upload, store and organize any type of file in Google Docs. This may not be GDrive per se, but it could be Google’s baby steps towards launching GDrive or possibly turning Google Docs into it. Users can now upload any file, not just those currently supported by Google Docs, up to 250MB at a time. Free storage is up to 1GB and this does not include the files converted into any of the Google Doc supported formats. If you need more storage, you can purchase additional space at $0.25 per year. So basically, Google is going up against other cloud storage service such as Dropbox, Box and others. And given the popularity of Google Docs, Google just might give those other cloud storage service a run for their money. In addition, those files can be stored in shared folders as well. Hence making it easy to store, organize and collaborate on files. Uploaded files are also easily searcheable just like any Google Docs documents, spreasheets, presentations and PDFs. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Makes Google Docs a Cloud Storage

Yahoo! Goes Shopping With PriceGrabber

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:44:12 +0000

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

Cleaning up the SEO Cesspool

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:52:31 +0000

Boy, don’t you just love to hate my article titles? I know this topic has been discussed numerous times. Seriously though – for all the short term talk that happens every time we take a hit from someone who gives our industry a bad rap, we’ve never yet come to a clear consensus as an industry on how to properly deal with the ramifications. I for one think it’s time we find a way to address it. And I have a proposal on how we can work towards such a seemingly impossible goal… The SEO

Bye Bye Baidu : China’s Largest Search Engine Hacked

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:58:18 +0000

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