Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides digital marketing and web development. He is a co-host of Marketing O'Clock and has been in the digital marketing industry for nearly 20 years. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.
Along with the big announcement of Google+ pages yesterday, a search-specific feature called “Google+ Direct Connect” was also announced. The Google+ Direct Connect functionality will help to give Google+ pages more visibility in the search engine results pages when custom operators are used. What Exactly Is Direct Connect? Last month, Google retired the “+” operator, most likely in anticipation of […]
Today Google announced the integration of two of their most popular products, YouTube and Chrome, into Google+. These enhancements make sharing videos on YouTube easier and brings the +1 button and Google+ notifications to the rest of the web for Chrome users. Google+ YouTube Integration Users have always been able to share YouTube videos on Google+, […]
Add-on commenting systems like Facebook Comments enhance the user experience, but can make it harder for search engines to index content. Most third party commenting systems leverage javascript to display information and add bells and whistles. However, Labnol.org reported that now Facebook Comments are being crawled (and ranking) in Google’s SERPs effectively breaking the mold for third party […]
Today Google announced a flurry of new features for its fledgling social network, Google+. The new additions include popular content on Google+, analytics for public shares called “Google+ Ripples,” creative kits for photos and accounts for Google Apps users. Here’s a bit of info on each of the new items: “What’s Hot” – Popular Content […]
Many users are now seeing a change in the way that Google’s Keyword Ranking tool is providing competition data. Instead of the traditional bars to display competitiveness, Google is using text as the description. Up until now, this tool used small green bars to display the competitiveness of keywords. The more green in the bar, the more competitive the term […]
Last week speculation arose about a new cloud based Google Music Store that could compete against Amazon and Apple. This week more news broke including the social integration that the Google Music Store may bring. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google Music will tie in closely with the Google+ social network. Users will reportedly be able […]
Paid Discovery campaigns on StumbleUpon will be getting smarter as of today. StumbleUpon has announced the addition of something called “interest optimization” that will help advertisers reach relevant audiences. Previously advertisers had the option to choose categories manually, or set up automatic campaigns (where StumbleUpon would choose set categories for you.) With ‘interest optimization’ campaigns won’t […]
In a new whitepaper from Covario, a search marketing firm and SaaS SEO provider, Facebook brands were analyzed and monitored in a quest to find the top brand. Additional stats were provided including brand goals, and key success factors and Facebook search for brands.. Social Media Goals One of the most interesting tidbits in the report was the […]
It appears that Google is listening to feedback on their new social networking site and acting accordingly. Google+ had a bit of a rocky launch with issues around brand accounts, and a total lack of Google Apps support. Even a Google Engineer recently called the service a “knee-jerk” response to Facebook. During the Web 2.0 conference […]
A recent study by InSites Consulting revealed the flourishing global social media scene, how different countries and continents use social networks and the stranglehold that Facebook has in the market. InSites surveyed more than 9,000 respondents about social media usage, tendencies and thoughts. American Social Network Usage The study revealed that 76% of Americans use social network sites, a higher adoption […]
Bitly currently is the leader in shortned URLs, minimizing 80 million URLs each day. Not only is Bitly shrinking URLs, but they are now “crawling & classifying” each shortened URL thanks to a a new social search platform. An index has since been created that will allow searchers to view the most distributed, viral and highest clicked links […]
In May Google launched Google Music, a cloud-based streaming music app that allows for music backups and streaming to phones and other devices. Rumors have been swirling that Google will use this product to create an online MP3 store to compete against Apple and Amazon. The WSJ reports that Google has been in licensing talks […]
Today Topsy Labs, a real-time social search platform, announced the addition of Google+ as a source in its real-time social search index. Topsy features an influence algorithm to display the most pertinent and popular social results. In addition to social posts, Topsy displays shared links with social context within the results. A little over a month ago, […]
Earlier this week Facebook announced features and functionality that were mainly geared toward pages and ads. One of the newest metrics released is the “people are talking about this” for pages. The goal of this number is to track conversations happening around specific pages. However, we have seen more users becoming confused as to what the […]
Yesterday Google Software Engineer Ebby Amirebrahimi announced new features that allow users to lock posts and disable comments. The lock option had previously existed, but could only occur after the share had actually occured. How To Lock Posts Or Disable Comments Before Posting To Stream In order to turn comments off on a post before […]
A recent post from developer Matt Mastracci uncovered a variety of potential features from the Google+ source code. He stumbled upon these findings when scanning code looking for early access to the circle sharing feature. Here are some of the items he found: Google+ Wall One of the smaller features that Matt found was the existence of […]
Back in May, the social bookmarking site Delicious was purchased from Yahoo! by AVOS (a company led by the founders of YouTube) and innovative features were promised for the community. Yesterday, the newest version of Delicious launched, with quite a new look: The new look Delicious features many enhancements, including stacked bookmarks (called “stacks”) and […]
A Google+ post by Paul Allen, founder of ancestry.com and a self-proclaimed “unofficial Google+ statistician, shows significant growth of Google’s social network since opening to the public. These growth rates were only first seen during the first few weeks of field testing when the user numbers were very low. In terms of the current […]
Today’s F8 had it all. A cameo from SNL’s Andy Samberg, glitzy new designs, cutting edge new features and compelling product videos. But what was actually announced? Here are the major takeaways from today’s conference: Timeline For all of those complaining about the new Facebook layout, don’t worry- its days are numbered. Today “Timeline” was […]
In a move that shouldn’t surprise anyone, Facebook is re-organizing users’ homepages. The new look homepage will allow users to “see the things they’re most interested in.” The main elements that will power the new layout are, the revamped Friend Lists, the new Subscribe button, and a real-time ticker. One notable change is that the […]
It has been reported by the BBC, that Facebook will soon be allowing users to sync Twitter accounts with their Facebook updates. Previously only Facebook pages or the use of third party applications had this type of linking ability. Of course, the odd man out in this revelation is Google+. Facebook and Google+ haven’t been […]
This week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Twitter announced Web Analytics to webmasters (and Tweeters) see how their content is being shared and how their buttons are being used. This new platform integrates fully with the new t.co shortener to help see content distribution. During the presentation it was announced that the t.co ‘link wrapper’ is now […]
Today Facebook announced enhancements to lists, including the release of “smart lists.” This new functionality helps to auto-generate lists for users, a task that was somewhat arduous in the past. Smart Lists The new smart list feature gives users assistance in list creation. Facebook will actually be auto-generating lists based on user attributes. for example: […]
Today on Google Plus, Andy Arnt — a software engineer at Google — posted about two Bing “Easter Eggs” that take shots at Google, searches that take digs at Google in the answers that show at the top of Bing’s results. The two search queries in question are more evil than satan himself and hiybbprqag. For each search, there’s […]
Started just 5 years ago, Twitter announced today at the “State of the Union” that they have officially reached their 100 millionth ‘active’ user. Of the active users, 55% use Twitter on their mobile devices. Each month over 400 million unique visitors use Twitter.com alone. Today Twitter is posting a billion tweets every five days, about […]
Over two months in, Google+ has continued to make many changes to the fledgling social site. Here is what’s happened over the weekend and what you will see in Google+ this week! New Suggested Users List Suggested Users were launched this weekend in a very “Twitter-esque” format. The list starts with a generic “picks” list and […]
In a new article from eMarketer and Lab42, information was released around brands and Promoted Tweets. Surprisingly, 89.4% of users polled stated that they follow a brand’s Twitter account. Most users (30.6%) follow 1-5 accounts and 8.2% follow over 50 accounts: Additional information from the report showed promising results about Twitter’s Promoted Tweets product. Overall user sentiment […]
In a recent report released by BrightEdge, an enterprise SEO company, stats were released showing correlation between social buttons and social shares. Data showed that pages that displayed the Tweet button saw 7 times more social media mentions than pages that didn’t feature the button. This data was pulled from the “top 10,000 sites on […]
In a recent study released by comScore, searcher demographics showed some striking differences between those looking for Google+ vs. those looking for Facebook in July. Surprisingly, Facebook had a larger percentage of searchers over the age of 35, while Google+ trended younger. 34.2% of searchers looking for Google+ were under 35 years old and only […]
New Facebook features have been released rampantly as of late, the newest taking aim at Instagram. The New York Times reported that Facebook will be introducing a dozen photo filters, similar to Instagram’s vintage & washed out effects: Instagram is a free app for the iPhone allows users to modify and enhance photos by applying […]
One of the questions that we see a great deal of on our Search Engine Land Facebook Page and LinkedIn Group is “How can we get our Google+ feed to post in Facebook and Twitter?” The correct answer to that question is that no official way exists to have the networks play nice. However, with the […]
A study by PageLever, an analytics tool for Facebook, showed that search engines are major traffic drivers for Facebook pages, making up 34% of all external referrals. Google was the leading search engine sending 27.57% of all external traffic to pages. This study analyzed 1000 pages, with a minimum of 10,000 fans each. Surprisingly, Yahoo! is sending […]
Citing violations to the countries strict privacy laws, the Independent Center for Privacy Protection (ULD) called for all Facebook ‘like’ plugins to be removed in the German state of Schlewsing-Holstein. The ULD stated that the Facebook ‘like’ plugin infringes on the Telemedia Act and the Federal Data Protection Act as Facebook transfers data back to the […]
In March, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Today, which was dubbed as a news source from your connections and peers in the industry. It has quickly grown to drive massive amounts of traffic to popular content. This service works by aggregating news from industries, connections and sources that you follow, then displaying stories in a visually appealing […]
Google and Facebook are at it yet again. Ever since Google+ launched, the two social networks have been trying to out maneuver each other any chance they get. Whether it be Facebook announcing video chat just weeks after Google+ launched with ‘Hangouts,’ Google+ offering Facebook-like games, or Facebook responding to Google+ games the same day… […]
Over the past few years Foursquare has been rapidly evolving, and their newly announced “lists” feature looks like a very promising new addition. Touted as being “super easy to use,” Foursquare lists can be created from a users profile page with assistance from Foursquare, built from scratch or added while browsing Foursquare. Lists can be […]
Up til now, Facebook Ads could be targeted by Country, State/Province and by City. Yesterday Facebook added an additional targeting type, by zip code: This is a big deal for Facebook marketing, as it is now much more attractive for local businesses. Local business owners can now target the exact zip codes where they draw from, […]
When you typically think Twitter, you probably think about text based 140 character updates. New improvements being rolled out geared towards spotlighting user activities and interactions may change this perception. These very visual changes are very “Facebook-esque” in their appearance and could be very appealing to new, less-savvy users. The most dramatic change is a new “Activity” tab […]
Over the past few months, Quora has been rolling out a variety of new features to help improve the experience on the social question and answer site. The newest element is a browse page that joins Shuffle (launched in June) and Topic Pages (launched in July). The goal of the new browse page is to deliver fresh, […]
Today Facebook announced the release of Messenger, an app for mobile devices that allows for messaging to “friends and small groups.” This app allows for messaging to both Facebook friends and phone contacts, something Google+’s Huddles doesn’t do. Messenger acts as an extension of Facebook messages, so you can view your full history of mobile […]