• Ubuntu Defaults To Yahoo Search Engine
    Yahoo will become the default search engine for the Firefox browser that ships with the Ubuntu Linux operating system, in exchange for a revenue-sharing deal from that search portal, reports Brafton. The site points to an announcement made earlier this week by Rick Spencer on a public mailing list, which stressed that users would have an option to easily select the default search engine of their choice. Brafton tells us why the move might cause some comments from Google.
  • Google Explains Unicode Strategy
    Google has turned on support for thousands of characters that enable indexing algorithms to find documents that previous searches may not have found. Google does this through Unicode. Mark Davis explains Unicode, why it's important and how it works. He also writes that Google can support nearly half the Web's information through Unicode, though Web pages can rely on a variety of other character codes, such as ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252. Most encodings represents a few languages, but Unicode can represent thousands, from Arabic to Chinese to Zulu.
  • How To Find Tracking Code Errors In Google Analytics
    Richard Fergie provides insight into finding Google Analytics tracking code errors. He explains that it begins with looking at the code and provides three cases where you might want to change the default. These would include tracking visitors across different domain, changing the session timeout, and setting keywords or referrers to ignore.
  • Topic: SEO Topic Pages
    SEO professionals continue to debate whether or not to use topic pages and how to use them effectively. Rand Fishkin asks these questions of Marshall Simmons, chief executive officer at Define Search Strategies, as well as the chief strategist for the New York Times and About.com. Simmons talks about the strategy behind developing content around topic pages, including person, place or thing, and allowing that content to continually change by adding active links, text and graphics. The two also talk about the importance of receiving and providing links.
  • PPC Beats Apple iPad?
    Tongue in cheek, Robert Brandy gives us five reasons why paid search campaigns beat Apple's newly launched iPad. The reasons often stretch the truth or are just plain funny ("iPad - Name could be confused for a feminine hygiene product PPC - Name can be misheard as 'Paper Clip' instead of 'Pay-Per-Click'") but might provide food for thought on the benefits of PPC . Still, if you're looking for facts, don't waste your time.
  • Debunking 5 Social Media Conversion Myths
    The landing page is only about the offer. The shortest way to success remains the most profitable. Jesper Astrom attempts to debunk these two "myths," along with others, by analyzing opportunities that can lead to conversions. He suggests specific key performance indicators to consider, and demonstrates how social media can become the tool to help campaigns convert.
  • Local Twitter Trends
    Last night, Los Angeles and surrounding areas in Southern California received Local Trends, a feature that keeps Twitter users in-the-know about hot topics being tweeted in a specific geographic location. Test the feature and you will likely find the topics in your area trend different than in others. Click on the button "Trending" to change the tweet view from "worldwide" to one of 15 cities, including Atlanta, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. You can drill down by country, too.
  • SEO Tips For Video
    Benjamin Wayne cites a recent Forrester Research study that suggests videos, when submitted properly, are 53 times more likely to generate a first-page Google ranking than just using traditional SEO techniques. So Wayne explains proper submission techniques to help you get search engines to index your video content. He also provides a list of things to ask your video platform provider to help you increase results.
  • SEO: 5 Tips To See Real Index Numbers
    Rand Fishkin says a test done on SEOmoz.org fluctuated about 300% between data centers. No way can an IT manager use that type of data as a key performance indicator (KPI). So, he gives us five steps on getting to the real numbers for a specific topic indexed on Google. He also throws in a few caveats to the process.
  • Google Voice For Mobile
    If you had any doubt Google wants to become your mobile carrier, take a look at this application. Google launched Voice for iPhone and PalmOS. Michael van Ouwerkerk tells us about the features for the new Web application, such as allowing you to display Google Voice number as the outbound caller ID, so return calls come back to your Google Voice number, sending and receiving text messages for free, and placing international calls at Google Voice's "lower rates."
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