Yahoo! is formally making its online notepad service, Search Pad public. This enhanced tool when launched will be accessible to a wider global audience. Unveiled in February this year, this utility tool has had limited availability to people and was in its beta phase. Users all around the world will now be able to work with this handy ‘online note-taking tool’ that allows to collect any information from their search results into a single page. This page can then be used for future reference. The improved Search Pad also can be used to save and share notes, links and website content when users search on Yahoo!

What is Search Pad And How It Works?

In simple words Search Pad is a manual note-taking application integrated into Yahoo! Search. To quote Yahoo! “Search Pad is a note-taking application that automatically tracks and organizes sites you find on Yahoo!”. Yahoo! termed it as an ‘online personal research assistant’ which helps assist people in capturing and sharing information related to their researches. Earlier sharing of those saved contents could be achieved only through emailing, but with this new launch, Yahoo! makes it possible via its own social bookmarking service Delicious and also through Facebook and Twitter.

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A fairly common question I hear from people is whether it is better to create web pages in a subdomain, such as ‘seo.techwyse.com’ or in a subfolder such as ‘techwyse.com/seo/’.

Webmasters, in many cases are not clear on why to choose one way over the other and do not understand that deciding one of these ways can help greatly in ranking better on search engines.

A Little History Of Subdomains & Google

First of all a bit of a better understanding is needed of domains and subdomains.  Pre 2007, Google treated all subdomains like they are there very own domain which is unrelated to the main domain.  ‘finance.gm.com’ was different from ‘gm.com’.  This method was often referred to as host crowding.  Since Google only liked to display 2 ‘finds’ per domain, this would challenge that result.  What could happen instead was that a company like GM could have an entire page of searches dedicated to them.

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It has been rumoured for a little while now that Google was working on developing an operating system, perhaps to compete with Microsoft’s well-known Windows OS or even the freely distributed Linux open source OS.

Yesterday officially in Google’s blog, Google Announces Chrome Operating System.

They call it a natural extension of the Google Chrome Internet Browser. Normally an OS provides the foundation, and utilities like a browser would be extended from there, so the statement seems little strange.  In fact, it seems Google has done it backwards!  Browser first and then an OS!

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In a lot of our postings, we assume the basic premise that you are committed to gleaning the maximum amount of information from your website. Many of the people our sales team speak with, however, don’t even understand the impact Analytics can have on your business.  I thought this would be a good time to take a step back and remember why we are doing this!

Imagine getting in your car without a map, with not only a place to be, but also a time you need to be there. Unless you have a homing-pigeon-like ability then you really have little chance of getting to where you want to go, much less being there in a specific timeframe. You may have an amazing car (website) and a fabulous driving ability (service/product), but you need to navigate to where you want to be (with your services/products being purchased by customers).

Similarly every website has a purpose, it is a tool which should be leveraged to bring you revenue. Analytics provides the map of how to achieve this. Without this you simply leave your online success up to fate.

So how do you create success with analytics?

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In most posts I have written about functions I like in the new AdWords interface - and I still do. But I do have a problem with Google sending out notices that the new AdWords interface is about to become permanent when it still has some bugs to be worked out.  Here is a list of the issue areas that I have identified just days from the Full Release of the new Google Adwords interface.

Data Not Displaying Properly in Firefox

You would hope that the world’s biggest search engine would have tested it’s advertising platform on the world’s fastest-growing market browser. But it appears they did not. Many times, the data to the far right of the chart is pushed out "under" the edge of the chart borders. See the image below. 

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Bing – Bang – Bust.  Bing Opens With A Disappointing First Month

June was supposed to be the month that Microsoft’s new search engine – Bing – was supposed to threaten Yahoo! for market share for 2nd place in search engine popularity.  Bing, for all the buzz, failed in delivering even a moderate threat. 

And here is why.

While Bing came in with a market share of 5.31% it is important to remember that the old search engine ‘Live’ now just forwards to ‘Bing’.  So while the initial traffic seems respectable, when compared with the combined totals of both ‘Live’ and ‘MSN’ in the previous month the real gain was only .59%. 

For all the buzz in the online world, a .59% increase has to qualify as disappointing.

It should be noted however, that some of this increase did come at the hands of Google, who had their worst market share performance since November 2008.

Google has two analytics solutions available to monitor and improve web site usage, online advertising campaign results and conversion reporting. I’d like to explain a little about what differentiates these products and the criteria business owners should use when deciding which tool to implement.

Here is a snapshot of the major ownership differences for Urchin and Google Analytics and how these influence the decision making process.

Data Ownership and Security

Google Analytics data is collected on servers owned by Google. The processing of data is entirely managed and controlled by Google. Google states that they will retain 2 years worth of data for customers. Although, to date there has been no historical limitations imposed at all. In the future, however, Google could impose data/historical restrictions that limit reporting ability.

Urchin is a licensed software that runs on servers owned by you (the customer). Data processing is self-managed managed (but simple) and can be scheduled to run at predefined intervals. The Urchin database is a separate entity that can be rolled back, backed up and restored. The analytics data is entirely owned by and under control of you.

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Many business owners in the service industry understand the importance of ensuring that their time is billed out and paid for properly.  After all, in the service industry ‘time’ is our currency.  If we cannot get paid for our time then we cannot stay in business!

In our own industry we sometimes face this exact issue when we are quoting the time it will take to complete a conversion friendly website or perform regular maintenance on client websites. 

While clients have a need to get something updated online, they sometimes do not understand the time it takes to make changes and often do not want to pay to have it done.

If you can relate to this issue, this blog is for you!

The purpose of this blog is really just to lightly add some context to the topic.

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Sadly the world has lost a Pop Icon today at around 6pm EST.  Michael Jackson has died of a heart attack after being at his Holmby Hills home.  Paramedics were not able to revive him.

While some reports are also telling us that he is in a coma, one thing has quickly grown apparent with this news.

Social media has made its statement.

Michael Jackson’s Death With Social Media Context

If you are a person that spends time online then you more than likely found out about this news through social media.  If you are like me, as soon as you found out you posted it on your Twitter or Facebook account.  After I made my own post  I looked and noticed it was posted by friends many times over.  Some just mere minutes after the news broke.

In the past, this type of news would have taken hours to get out to the general populace.  Now every single person online today has the ability that only news reporters and media had earlier.  Its a phenomena.

No Wait For Information Anymore! 

In Google’s recent Webmaster Tools Update, they have added a neat feature that allows you to tell Google about your domain change, if you are planning to move your website from one domain to another. This has prompted me to write a quick little guide on how to properly move your website while keeping or at least minimizing your search engine rankings.

Domain Change? Notify Google

In your webmaster tools account, there is a new feature called Change of Address.  It is used to tell Google about your new website and URL.

This change stays for about 6 months, while search engine bots re-crawl and re-index your website.

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Right from the early days of search engine optimization content duplication has been an identified issue with search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The task before every web master is to make sure all pages get indexed while not being affected by any duplication issue. A duplicate content penalty can be really damaging as it often leads to the removal of your web pages, and in extreme cases search engines ban your entire site from indexing. This not only reduces your site’s traffic rate but mars your site’s overall online campaign prospects. For any online business this is the last thing they want to happen.

In this post I will discuss the two common types of duplication issues and how they can be fixed:

• Internal content duplication
• External content duplication

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 21, 2009 – Toronto, Canada - TechWyse Internet Marketing is the newest company to receive accreditation as an Urchin Authorized Consultant. The accreditation authorizes TechWyse to offer professional consulting and implementation of Urchin Software. The software is popular for companies that wish to receive many of the benefits found in Google Analytics but ensure the data is stored locally.

For further information on the features found in Urchin and comparison to the free Google Analytics product visit the Urchin Features page.

TechWyse President DJ Kennedy recently spoke about being the first accredited Urchin Consultant in Ontario and only the 2^nd in Canada. “Urchin is a powerful software program which allows companies to take greater control over their data. We are extremely pleased to receive this status from Google and are looking forward to providing unparalleled support for companies using the software moving forward.”

Google is continuing to improve their cross-product functionality.  The latest enhancement released today allows you to use Google Analytics goals as Adwords conversions!  It is an easy configuration that allows more functionality with just a few clicks. This will be extremely helpful for Google Adwords administrators that want to pull in even more valuable information to their account and have it appear right in front of them without any extra clicks.  

How to setup Google Analytics conversions within your Google Adwords account

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As many business owners and webmasters are all aware, spam leads via form mail are a regular issue in the web world. Spammers adopt a variety of novel techniques to achieve their desired aim. But spammers cannot be given a free ride either, and we need to devise adequate strategies to counter their unethical practices. This post is specifically aimed to highlight the methods generally adopted by spammers, and the appropriate strategies to counter them.  Why am I posting about it?  Because I deal with them all the time!

Methods Spammers Use to Hijack a Form

1.  View-Source & URL submission

From the view source of web pages spammers know the field names as well as form action. Mostly this action page is used to send emails. For example, let’s say the action is set to send_mail.php and the field names are name and email_address. Spammers can easily submit the values through a URL like www.yoursite.com/send_mail.php?name=Jeff&email_address=jeff@gmail.com. They will have an automated program to change the name and email and will keep on submitting the URL and mails are sent.

Its ‘bing’ time on the internet.  This month it has been the hot topic of the blogosphere. By making it live two days ahead than expected Microsoft has made a kickstart to its ambitious strategy to get close to Google. This much hyped, much awaited search engine was accessible to searchers world wide recently. Though the initial reports show a positive reaction towards Bing, it will take some time before Bing can escape from the shadows of Live search. It shares some common traits with Live.  Live’s big index is one instance (That would be a major aspect to be considered  by Microsoft for improving). 

What Is New In Bing

Agreed, Bing is good, but how good?

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