Google Updates Widget Link Scheme Definition

Until recently, Google’s definition of a widget link scheme was pretty broad. However, Google has gotten a lot more specific in an update to its Link Schemes page to clarify what types of links in widgets violate its webmaster guidelines.

As Search Engine Roundtable reported, widget link schemes used to be defined by Google as:

Links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites, for example:
Visitors to this page: 1,472car insurance

Now, Google defines a widget link scheme as:

Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites...

The example Google used remains unchanged.

It seems that Google’s update to its link schemes description was simply done to eliminate potential for confusion and leave a bit less room for personal interpretation.

Furthermore, while the old definition implies that any link in a widget is a scheme, the new definition doesn’t explicitly state this. Instead, it provides some factors that will cause Google to view a widget link as spam.

Google's Matt Cutts recently warned against widgets as a winning link building strategy, also suggesting when it's proper to use rel=nofollow for them.

"I would not rely on widgets ... as your primary source to gather links, and I would recommend putting a nofollow, especially with widgets," Cutts said.

"Okay Eye" - Google Contact Lens

You thought a personal computer was cool, then a laptop was cool, then the smart phone, whoa, Google Glass. Scratch all that, how about contact lenses.

No more, Okay Google or Okay Glass. How about Okay Eye. ;-)

Google announced on last thursday they are testing a new contact lens aimed at helping those with diabetes. This contact lens is "a smart contact lens that's built to measure glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material."

That is just the beginning - what can it do in the future? Google said they are testing this version to use "integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds."

Yea, well, what about Google in your eye, not over your eye like Google Glass but in your eye.

It is not secret that Google's co-founder said they want computing implanted in one's brain. This is the first Google product that is actually inside a person (if you consider contact lenses inside).

Amazing - just amazing.

Google Issues Bad Ads Report: 59 Percent More Ads Pulled, But Fewer Bad Advertisers In 2013

In the ongoing battle to keep its ads ecosystem free of scammers and malware, Google says it pulled more than 350 million bad adsfrom its systems last year, up 59 percent from the 224 million it struck down in 2012.

Looking back at last year’s bad ads report, it appears that for the first time, the number of bad advertisers shrank substantially from over 850,000 in 2012 to more than 270,000 in 2013. In 2012 the number had ticked up just 8 percent from the prior year. Mike Hochberg, Director, Ads Engineering explains, “In part, we attribute this decline to scammers — counterfeiters, for example — being thwarted by our safety screens and searching for less-secure targets.”

In 2013, Google banned roughly 14,000 advertisers for trying to sell counterfeit goods. That’s a drop of 80 percent from 2012. Google says that attempts to push counterfeit goods on AdWords dropped by 47 percent in 2012 and 82 percent in 2013. User complaints about these types of ads fell by 85 percent in 2012 and another 78 percent in 2013.

On the AdSense side, Google blacklisted more than 200,000 publisher pages, and turned away more than 3 million attempts to join AdSense. Some 250,000 publisher accounts were pulled for various policy violations, including 5,000 for copyright policy violations. That’s up over 25 percent from 2012.

Google put added focus last year on the area of downloadable software such as toolbars and the dreaded software that change default browsers and or load malware onto users’ machines. In April last year, the company said they had had over 100,000 complaints about these types of malicious software and toolbars.

Last June, Google responded to accusations from the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) that it was still not doing enough to bock ads from “rouge” pharmacies, even after settling a suit with the Department in Justice over allowing Canadian pharmacies to advertise illegal pharmaceutical sales without prescriptions (i.e., “oxycodone no prescription”) for $500 million in 2011. The internet giant said it had blocked 3 million bad ads from illicit pharmacies in the previous two years. [Update:] Today’s stats show the company blocked more than 2 million bad ads from pharmacies in 2013 alone.

Google Bad Ads Report 2013

Google Releases Official Google Publisher Plugin For WordPress

Announced this morning on their Webmaster Central blog, Google has released an official Google Publisher Plugin for WordPress. While still in the beta stage, this new plugin offers an easier way for WordPress site owners to integrate Google products within their sites.

The key benefit of this plugin is the ability to access Google services without having to leave the WordPress platform. Google asks us to keep in mind that this is a beta release, which means they’re still fine tuning it for the many versions of WordPress websites out there.

At this time, the Google Publisher Plugin supports two Google products, with hopefully more to be added in the future. The plugin offers:

• Google AdSense Support: Earn money by placing ads on your website. The plugin links your WordPress site to your AdSense account and makes it easier to place ads on your site — without needing to manually modify any HTML code.
• Google Webmaster Tools Support: Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google. The plugin allows you to verify your site on Webmaster Tools with just one click.

The Google Publisher Plugin can be downloaded from the WordPress.org plugin directory. Google has also provided a page in their Help Center for those who need some assistance getting started with the plugin.

It will be interesting to see how this plugin evolves, I sure wish it was available when I was getting started with WordPress. It will no doubt prove to be a valuable tool for site owners.

6 (More) Interesting Facebook Tricks You Might Not Know

Back in April, SEJ published a popular piece titled 6 Interesting Facebook Tricks You Might Not Know.  Given that I’m always looking for new tricks and hacks for using Facebook, I thought I would add a few of my favorites in this follow-up post.

If you’re looking for info on making the most of Facebook for your business, see “Effective Ways to Use Facebook for Marketing” and “How to Maximize ROI on Your Facebook and Twitter Campaigns.”

1. View non-public profile photos in full size

You may have run into the issue of trying to find someone using Graph Search, only to discover you can’t quite make out their identity via their teeny-tiny profile picture. If said user has set their photo to private (in other words, if they’ve set it to be visible only ‘to me’), you won’t be able to see the full-sized photo.

The Trick

With this trick, you will be able to view any profile picture as full-sized, regardless of whether or not it’s marked as private.

Attention stalkers: Please disregard everything you’re about to read.

How to do it

1. Go to the profile picture you’d like to see and open it in a new tab or window (on Mac, Ctrl-Click and then ‘Open Image in New Tab’, on PC, right click and then ‘Open Image in New Tab’).

2. Go to new tab or window, to the address bar. You should see a portion of the url that looks something like this:

3. Remove the ‘s160x160’, and hit enter.

Voila! You should see the full sized image in your browser. Note that if the original picture was small, this trick won’t do you much good!

2. Download an entire Facebook photo album

Your brother has just uploaded 500 adorable pictures of his new baby daughter, and you’d like to save them to your computer. How do you do it? One picture at a time! Currently, this is the only way Facebook gives us to download photos.

The Trick

PhotoLive to the rescue! This handy little extension allows you to quickly and easily download entire photo albums from Facebook to your desktop.

How to do it

1. Go to Photo Live and download the extension (please note, while it’s completely free, it does require registration including credit card information, although you will not be charged).
2. Once it’s installed, you will see a button at the top of your Facebook page whenever you view a photo album. Clicking on it will download the album as a zip file to your computer.

It’s as simple as that!

3. Mute a conversation

If you’ve ever been roped into a group conversation on Facebook, you’ll appreciate this one. By default, Facebook will send you notifications on your phone and Facebook page whenever a new response is posted.

Particularly if you’re being messaged as part of a large group, the notifications can get pretty annoying.

The Trick

An easy way to ‘opt out’ of ongoing conversations is to simply ‘mute’ them. This will continue to allow you access to the conversation, however you won’t receive notifications of new comments.

How to do it

1. Go into the offending message, and click on the Actions tab at the top right corner of the screen.
2. Click on Mute Conversation, and all notifications will cease.

If you’re part of a group conversation, you can also choose to leave the conversation, however this would mean you lose access to future replies. By muting the conversation, you can continue to read new replies at your leisure.

4. Post a blank status update

Granted, I’m not sure why you’d want to do this. But should the need ever arise to post a completely blank update, you’ll know who to thank!

The Trick

Facebook doesn’t allow you to post a blank update, so if you attempt to publish a blank post, you’ll see this:

Of course, you could just type in a period or underscore and have an almost blank post, but’s what’s the fun in that? If you’re going to go to the trouble of posting a blank update, you at least want your friends to wonder, ‘How did he do that?’

How to do it

To post a blank status update, simply type the following into your update box:

@[0:0: ]

And if you want to have several blank lines – you guessed it – just copy and paste the code onto multiple lines.

It appears that for some users, a question mark in a black diamond appears rather than a completely blank update. I’m not sure why this works differently for different users, but it may simply be a browser-related issue.

5. Disable Read Receipt

Everyone has a friend or client who messages them just a little too much on Facebook. And by default, as soon as you’ve read their message, they will see a note that the message has been read. This puts the pressure on you to respond to the message quickly, or risk appearing rude.

The Trick

While Facebook doesn’t allow you to turn off read receipts, there are third party apps that allow you to set up this feature, allowing you to go undetected on Facebook messages or chats.

The Facebook Unseen add-on for Chrome ensures no one can see whether or not you’ve read their messages, giving you an added layer of privacy and flexibility.

How to do it

1)      Download Facebook Unseen

2)      Once it’s installed, you should see the Facebook Unseen icon in your brower:

3)      Click on the icon to be sure it’s enabled. When it’s working, you should see the following message:

6. Find out who’s un-friended you

I urge you only to use this one if you have a very solid self-esteem. While Facebook doesn’t give you a way to see who has un-friended you, there are third party apps that will tell you exactly who has ditched you.

The Trick

By using Who.deleted.me you can find out exactly who has un-friended you, and you will even receive ongoing notifications when anything changes in terms of your Facebook friendships.

How to do it

1. Go to Who.deleted.me and login using Facebook.

30 Things You Absolutely Need To Know About Instagram

Over the last three years Instagram has not only become one of the most dominating social media services, it’s also become one of the most popular websites in the world. In fact, Instagram has been listed as the 21st most popular site in the U.S. – 41st globally. But, does that really matter? After-all, the site was Facebook’s largest acquisition, and in case you didn’t know, Facebook is kind of a big deal.

Being under the Facebook umbrella has only increased Instagram’s popularity. After joining the social media juggernaut in April 2012, the Instagram community grew to 80 million users by July. And, that number is constantly growing.

Today, Instagram isn’t just used to post selfies. It’s becoming an assist for brands to reach more visitors (thanks to sponsored photos and videos), researchers to discover the happiest city in the UK, celebrities to post all the hijinks at awards like the Golden Globes and to even get pumped for the NFC Championship Game between the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks by comparing quarterbacks. The point? There really doesn’t seem to be any discrepancy amongst Instagram users. It’s a great tool for anyone to use and enjoy.

Between being able to share Instagram images on your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr accounts, and the implementation of Instagram Direct (which allows users to send photos only to a specific user or group of users, much like Snapchat), it’s a safe bet that the photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking site is only going to get bigger and stronger as time goes on.

If you’re not up to date on your Instagram knowledge, here are 30 things that you absolutely need to know about Instagram.

1. While working at Nextstop, a a trip-recommendation site that was later acquired by Facebook, founder Kevin Systrom came up with an idea for a “HTML5 mobile web app that let you: Check in to locations, Make plans (future check-ins), Earn points for hanging out with friends, post pictures, and much more.” Despite raising $500k from Baseline and Andreessen Horowitz in two weeks, people enjoyed the photo-sharing aspect of Burbn. Today, Burbn is just a footnote with an abandoned Twitter feed.

2. Prior to working for Nextstop, Kevin Systrom was offered a job at Google and interned at Odeo, where Twitter was developed. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg offered Systrom an opportunity to join Facebook. Systrom turned the offer down and later received a cool $500 million after Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in April 2012.

3. Co-founder Mike Krieger was born in São Paulo, Brazil and met Kevin Systrom while both were attending Stanford.

4. Instagram officially launched on October 6, 2010 as an iPhone app. Within one month, it gained 1 million users. It took Foursquare and Twitter 2 years to reach that milestone.

5. As of January 2014, Instagram has 150 million active users, 16 billion photos shared, 1.2 billion likes daily, 55 million photos posted daily and 7.3 daily visitors.

6. To compete with Twitter’s Vine, Instagram released a 15 second video component to their platform on June 20, 2013. Within the first 24 hours, 5 million videos were uploaded. However, Fortune 500 companies have been reluctant to adopt video. Only 4% of adopted video thus far.

7. Thursday is the most common day for Fortune 500 companies to post. However, Sunday is the most effective. The best time to post a video is during off-hours (9pm-8am EST).

8. The 10 most popular brands currently (January 2014) on Instagram are: Nike, Starbucks, NBA, adidas Originals, TopShop, Forever 21, Vans, NFL, Michael Kors and GoPro.

9. The top 10 most-shared brands on Instagram video—which does not count music/TV/film entertainers—with share stats from Sept. 9 to Oct. 9:

• MTV — 134,110
• NBA — 68,463
• Peanuts — 43,227
• GoPro — 35,097
• Miami Heat — 28,465
• Wendy’s — 23,833
• Topshop — 23,347
• Starbucks — 22,035
• ABC — 21,782
• HBO’s Girls — 21,769

10. The top 10 brands with the most account followers.

• National Geographic -  3,726,303
• Victoria’s Secret – 3,640,340
• The Ellen Show – 3,483,363
• Nike – 3,166,010
• Forever 21 – 2,446,839
• Louboutin – 2,062,447
• 9GAG – 2,024,096
• Starbucks 1,919,068
• MTV – 1,916,114
• NBA – 1,777,980 

11. During August 2013, the average Instagram user spent 257 minutes on Instagram. During that same period, the average Twitter user spent 169.9 minutes on Twitter.

12. As of October 2013, 35 million selfies have been posted on Instagram. In case you really had to know, Kylie Jenner is the celebrity with the most amount of selfies. As of October, she had posted 451 selfies.

13. On average, for every 33 likes, you’ll receive one comment. Additionally, there are 8,500 Likes per second and 1,000 comments per second.

14. The most popular filter? No filter.

15. Mayfair was the filter with the most amount of likes and comments.

16. The most-used hashtag of 2013: #love

17. Over 60% of the Instagram community are located outside of the United States. However, the U.S. remains the country with the most amount of visitors with just over 33%. The U.S. is followed by Brazil (5.6%), United Kingdom (3.8%), Russia (3.5%) and Mexico (3.2%).

18. Over 90% of Instagram users are under the age of 35, with 28% of users in the 18-29 year old age bracket.

19. 23% of teens have claimed that Instagram is their favorite social media network.

20. Percent of all US cell phone users on Instagram: 13.

21. 68% of users are female. For overall interest users, it’s 16% women vs 10% men.

23. 17% of U.S. adult residents who live in urban areas use Instagram. 11% of users are in rural areas, with another 11% in the suburbs.

24. Despite originally appearing only on the iPhone, and being named App of The Year 2011 in Apple iTunes, the Instagram app is divided 50/50 between Apple and Android users.

25. Percent of internet users who are on Instagram: Caucasian: 11%, African American: 23% and Hispanic: 18%.

26. 9 out of 10 Instagram video shares take place via Facebook.

27. There is an increase in Likes by 24% if the dominant color of the image is blue.

28. The busiest day on Instagram in 2013: Thanksgiving/Hanukkah.

29. Annual Household Income for Instagram users:

• Less than $30,000 – 15%
• $30,000 to $49,999 – 14 %
• $50,000 to $74,999 -12%
• $75,00o+ – 12%

30. Believe it or not, 37% of Instagram users have never uploaded a photo. 25% of users upload an average of 1-3 photos, while 5% have uploaded more than 50 images.

Whew.That’s a lot of information to store, but it will be worth it when you you want to impress that Instagram find in your life, or during a trivia night.

Which Instagram fact are you going to use the next time you want stump someone?

Keyword Rich Domain Names Improving Search Rankings is a Myth, According to Bing

Duane Forrester, Sr. Product Manager of Bing, claims it’s a myth that keyword rich domain names improve search engine rankings in a post published yesterday on the Bing Webmaster Blog.

This came about after Forrester attended Namescon and overheard people discussing how keyword rich or exact match domain names can make or break your site. Claiming that’s just a myth, Forrester took it upon himself to debunk this theory.

Ten years ago there may have been some truth to that way of thinking, Forrester says, but today rankings depend on so many more signals that domain names alone are starting to mean less and less. This is beneficial from both the search engines’ and the searchers’ points of view because it results in better content ranking higher instead of rewarding those who are trying to manipulate the rankings.

But that doesn’t mean a keyword-centric domain name isn’t still useful, Forrester says. While they don’t necessarily give you an automatic boost in rankings, they’re still valuable because they’re easy to spell, easy to remember, and easy to pronounce. In other words they’re great for branding.

Forrester explains that you can even take irrelevant words, or make up words, and create your own brand around them–like The Onion for example. But to get to that point your site has to provide something of value to the user, such as great content.

This is another familiar argument that correlation does not equal causation. Forrester says it’s not uncommon to see keyword rich domain names ranking high, but it’s more a result of the content they provide rather than their domain name. Forrester stresses that there are no shortcuts, so don’t try to get ahead by keyword stuffing a domain name.

I know many of you reading this have a lot of opinions regarding this topic, and I’d love to hear them! Do you think it’s just a myth that keyword rich and exact match domains get favorable treatment by the search engines?