the new improved google profiles – good or bad?

Filed under: SEO,social media optimisation,social networking — Tags: , , — Felipe @ 30 Apr,09

Google Profiles generated a lot of noise in the past week, the Google Profiles have been around since the end of 2007 and last week Google updated the service so users can add all sorts of information about themselves, like:

  • Their picture
  • Their first and/or last name
  • Your nickname
  • Where you grew up
  • Where you live
  • Where you work
  • Schools you’ve attended
  • A biography
  • Links to web sites you wish to list
  • Pictures from your Picasa, Flickr or other online photo albums
  • Contact information, which can be shared selectively with people

All these new features were added to improve people search, have you ever Googled your name or a friend’s name and was disappointed with the results? With these updates Google hopes to solve these issues.

Your profile is a web page, so far all the links in there don’t have the nofollow tag, so it is a good place to add personal links, for example from your blog or your website, you can also personalise the URL of your profile mine is http://www.google.com/profiles/felipesplinter.

Do we really need to expose ourselves by adding as much information as possible on our Google Profile and could it go against us in a future situation?

will digg really update the diggbar?

Filed under: social media optimisation — Tags: , — Felipe @ 29 Apr,09

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the new DiggBar and Digg’s shorten URL service and how unpopular it became within the Digg community, not so much for the shorten URL service, that seems to be working just fine and Twhirl is now using the same service.

Digg promised to release an update to the DiggBar that would solve all the problems regarding link juice, link credits and indexing of the shortened URLs, so far nothing happened, what a surprise.

The post on Digg’s official blog says that the DiggBar was created to improve user experience and that the vast majority of Digg users find it valuable but if you look at the comments on the same subject posted on Digg you will see that Digg users have a totally different opinion to it.

I’m one those users who don’t approve of this framed content format that Digg is using, this weekend I came across a very interesting post about how to block the DiggBar and here it is, check it out and tell me what you think, will Digg really update the DiggBar?

Volvo Increases SEO and Social Media Marketing Budget

Filed under: SEO,online-marketing,search engine news,social media optimisation — admin @ 29 Apr,09

The car brand has decided to focus their marketing budget on natural search and social media marketing to reinforce its ‘Life is better lived together’ brand positioning.

Last year Volvo spent £19.75m on advertising, excluding paid search and internet accounted for just 3% of this, or £695,500.

Volvo UK’s head of marketing communications, Anita Fox said that while the car company has reduced its overall marketing spend, channels such as natural search and social media have seen their budgets increased.

‘While we’ve always focused on SEO, as we revise budgets we’re putting more focus on the digital area, including natural search and social media.’

Fox said the success of last year’s Creative 30 campaign, in which it partnered with The Independent and Yahoo to look for creative stars of the future and get involved with a younger audience, had convinced Volvo of the effectiveness of a social-media focused marketing approach.

‘This is an area that’s growing rapidly. You can’t get the same reach for the same budgets now as you would this time last year. This year we’re taking what we’ve learned from the C30 campaign and going much wider.’

Volvo’s focus on social media reflects the car brand’s new ‘Life is better lived together’ slogan.

For more information on TH UK’s Search Engine Optimisation services please click here.

Jeeves returns to Ask after a 3 year layoff

Filed under: search engine news — Greg @ 22 Apr,09

Jeeves – The mascot of the Ask.com search engine has been brought out of retirement to help re-launch Ask in the UK. The New Jeeves is now in a new 3d form.

new-jeeves

The results from a ‘YouGov’ poll for Ask revealed UK users found Jeeves had 83% brand awareness, even after retiring three years ago as opposed to Ask.com’s 72% awareness. The Ask team acknowledged bringing Jeeves back to the UK was the right move.

Cesar Mascaraque MD of Ask in the UK says 

“Our users have emphatically told us that they find Jeeves enhances their search experience – adding character to what can otherwise be a very functional experience. They see Jeeves as approachable and trustworthy and, above all, helpful”

To promote Jeeves return, the Ask UK team will backup the new 3D Jeeves character with a major marketing and PR push. Ask say they will be using TV advertisements , radio advertisements, print and online marketing, plus Ask UK will also create a Facebook fan page and Twitter account to continue promoting Ask Jeeves in the social media space.

social networking buzz on digg twitter and more

Filed under: Blogs,SEO,hedgehog digital,social media optimisation,social networking — Tags: , , , , — Felipe @ 17 Apr,09

Over the last couple of weeks a lot of buzz has been coming from the top social networking communities, from framed content to who will be the first to reach 1 million followers on Twitter. Here is a quick a round up of what’s been going on.

digg

Leading the pack we have Digg.com who launched the DiggBar and shortened URLs services. Unlike other short URL services, instead of redirecting to the long url version of the page it redirects users to a Digg page with an iframe wrapper with the DiggBar on the top. From there Digg users can Digg and comment on the story, very handy for Digg users, but not so much for site and blog owners especially from an SEO point of view.

With this Digg is keeping all the traffic and link credit within its own “ecosystem”. This did not go down very well with the Digg community and according to a post from search engine land and Digg’s official blog new implementations are scheduled for next week. Once again Digg’s community showed its power and forced Digg to rethink its strategies. Can you imagine the reaction if Google decided to do the same and frame all the content so users would visit the pages without leaving Google’s domain?

twitter-logo

Meanwhile, in the Twitter realm, there is a competition going on to see who will be the first Twitter user to reach the mark of 1 million followers. Two users are fighting for the title, on the blue corner with 937,977 we have Ashton Kutcher and on the red corner with 957,274 followers we have CNN. Numbers could be higher now as their numbers still keep rising.

It all started with a video posted by Ashton Kutcher promising to “Punk” Ted Turner if he beats CNN to a million followers on Twitter. Since then things went mad in the “Twitterspheare” , Larry King posted a video in response to Ashton’s video. To aid Kutcher EA Games has upped the ante and tweeted out if Kutcher beats CNN it will put Kutcher’s 1 millionth follower in a future EA game. It certainly will be fun the watch the next days as both users are close the 1 million mark.

stumbleupon_collage

On the other side of the web, StumbleUpon has been bought out of Ebay by original founders and investors. Back in 2007, Ebay bought StumbleUpon for $75 million and that was the minimum bid Ebay was looking for but according to market specialists numbers could’ve been lower than the minimum asked.

That is it for now, hope you enjoyed this social media round up and feel free to add your thoughts below in our comments section.

P.S: Ashton Kutcher beat CNN and is the first Twitter user to reach 1 million followers, now one lucky Twitter will have his face featured on EA’s The Sims 3 which is due to release later this year!