Matthew Simiana
Keeping an eye on the Internet!

This morning I logged into my Gmail account as I normally do but to my surprise a pop-up showed up describing 2 new features that have just been implemented by Google developers. Here is a screenshot of the message:

The first feature refers to the change in position of the labels, they’ve been moved upwards, just under the system labels (eg. Inbox). The second feature, which in my opinion is the most useful one,  enables you to add a label to an email in 2 simple ways:

1. by dragging a label onto an email

2. by dragging an email into a label

Personally I find the second feature to be very useful as I am a very fond mouse user

As most of you may already know, market research is very important, especially in the online world. Before deciding on what product or service you are going to sell you should always do market research. At first you might consider it as a waste of  time but on the long term it will definitely save you time, money and will also help you be more efficient. I’m sure that you wouldn’t like to end up in a situation where you finish a product only to learn that you wasted your time because competition is too harsh. To help you start of your market research here are 5 FREE tools that are being offered by Google:

Market Research Tool 1 - Related Searches & Wonder Wheel

When you start typing in the main Google search box you should see a drop down box appear displaying some alternative search terms related to the word you typed. Note these phrases down. They will be useful as part of your keyword list used in the next tool. You will also see more related search phrases after you click search. Scroll to the bottom of the results page and you will see “searches related to:” Note down any new phrases shown there.

Recently Google has released Wonder Wheel which is also a related keywords tool but is shown in a mind map format. You can also click on the related phrases to find more useful search terms. To access wonder wheel: enter your keyword in the standard search screen, then at the top of the results on the left you should see a show options link. Select that and it will reveal a menu. Near the bottom of the menu you should see wonder wheel. Here is a screenshot of the Google Wonder Wheel:

Market Research Tool 2 - Google Adwords Keyword Tool

We all know how important keywords and search phrases are. Let’s face it, it’s what drives the internet. Google has provided us with a tool that tells you what keywords and phrases people are using to find what they are looking for. You are able to search an individual country, more than one if you hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard as you select, or all countries.

The adwords tool is now more valuable due to the fact it shows actual search numbers. Previously you only had a green bar to indicate how much traffic the search term receíved. You can also see how competitive each keyword is amongst adword advertisers, showing us which keywords are commercially viable.

Market Research Tool 3 - Google Trends

Now that you have an idea what keywords your market is using you can use the trends tool to check the history of that keyword / phrase. Google Trends supplies data for the last 5 years, giving you an idea if the search term is consistent. You can also see if the search term is popular at certain times of the year, also known as a seasonal keywords.

Another important function of Trends is the section that tells you the popularity of a keyword by country, city and language - very useful if you are targeting particular countries or even cities.

Market Research Tool 4 - Google Alerts

Alerts is underused by webmasters. If you want to stay in touch with what’s hot in your market, you can by using Google Alerts. All you have to do is enter the most popular phrases in your market. Google will then send you links via email depending on what type you select.

The types are news, web, blogs, video and groups. If you would like a mix of all, you can select comprehensive. You can decide how often you want to be updated by selecting either: as it happens, once a day or once a week. I hope you can see how powerful this is if you want to be seen as an authority in your market.

Market Research Tool 5 - Google Web Search

Finally, we have Google’s standard web search which is not standard in my eyes. It provides a lot of information if you know what to look for. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of running a website. By performing a search of your market keywords, Google will tell you what type of content it sees as important.

If you see videos, blogs or images this gives you another way to reach the top 10 of Google. If you see Web 2.0 style sites such as Digg, that could be another avenue. If there are adword ads on the right side of the screen, that tells you the market is commercially viable and more importantly that the keyword you entered is good enough to pay for, especially if there are 10 ads or more.

As always Google is allowing everyone to share their creativity by inviting the globe to submit his/her own Google Chrome Video. The video has to be about you building the Google Chrome logo in a creative way. They will feature the best submissions. The closing date is the 22nd of July, for more information you may go to http://www.google.com/landing/chrome/ugc/.

Lately I received some questions on how to install Google Analytics on to a wordpress blog. I searched for a video tutorial about it and found a great one at Wordpress.Tv. The video guides you through a simple step by step process of  how to install Google Analytics on to your wordpress blog. Enjoy!

I would like to remind everyone that tonight at midnight EST you will be able to create your own custom facebook URL. I recommend that you try to grab your custom url as early as possible because I’m sure that there will be many people that will try to register the best urls.

To register your custom facebook url go to http://www.facebook.com/username/.

Lately I’ve read lots of discussions and opinions about nofollow links on various websites, blogs and forums. The question that starts the discussion is always:

“How do NoFollow Links effect search engine optimization?”

This question is always followed by many different answers. In this post I am going to write the facts and what I think about the effect of dofollow links on Search Engine Optimization.

So first I will start with the facts. The ‘nofollow’ tag was introduced by Google in January 2005 to help bloggers fight spam. Google had noticed that many blogs were being spammed by spammers to gain links to their websites; by doing so these spammy sites were unjustly ranking highly in search engines. To stop this trend Google introduced the ‘nofollow’ tag. Google states that any link that contains the ‘nofollow’ tag doesn’t boost search engine rankings and doesn’t pass on any PageRank therefore this would nullify the importance of ‘nofollow’ links to spammers. It’s very important to note that nofollow links do not effect a sites ranking negatively, Google just considers them as neutral votes. Other major search engines such as Bing and Yahoo do not consider the ‘nofollow’ tag as yet.

Those are the facts about the ‘nofollow’ tag, now I’ll start off the most interesting part of this post which is my opinion ( hey it’s unique ). I do believe Google when they say that ‘nofollow’ links don’t pass any pagerank but I don’t believe them when they say that they don’t effect search engine rankings. I’m sure that nofollow links aren’t given the same importance as dofollow links but in my opinion they still help search engine rankings.

To proof my theory correct I will run a test. I am going to choose an uncommon keyword that isn’t mentioned on my blog and obtain a few nofollow backlinks to my blog with the chosen keyword in the anchor text. If my theory is correct within a few weeks or a month my blog should start ranking for that keyword. I will keep you all updated

If you have a blog, one of the easiest ways to gain backlinks to it is by submitting it to Blog Directories. Blog Directories aren’t only useful for backlinks but also refer visitors to your site. In general Blog Directories attract more quality traffic than Web Directories.  To help you start off, here is a list of blog directories to which you should start submitting your blog to:

http://www.blogarama.com/add-a-site/
http://www.topbloglists.com/index.php?a=join
http://www.topblogarea.com/add.php
http://www.10xblogs.com/submit.php
http://www.sarthak.net/blogz/add.php
http://www.globeofblogs.com/
http://all-blog-directory.com/sug_url.php
http://www.blogoriffic.com/add_blog.php
http://www.blogged.com/submit_your_blog.php
http://www.bloglisting.net/submit.php
http://www.blogs.com/submit
http://www.lsblogs.com/add_url.php?c=5
http://www.blog-directory.org/add-blog.php
http://www.blogio.net/index.php?topic=
http://www.superblogdirectory.com/submit.php
http://www.myblogdirectory.net/
http://www.mvblogs.com/
http://www.bloghints.com/submit.php
http://www.blogaz.net/submit.html
http://blogstreet.com/bsibin/add.cgi
http://www.blogs-collection.com/
http://www.blogsrating.com/submit.html
http://www.bloglisting.com/addablog.html
http://www.blogshowoff.com/category.aspx?cat=11
http://www.ablogin.com/
http://www.blogmyway.com/beta3directory/submit.php
http://www.blogtrap.com/submit.php
http://www.heliosblogs.com/index.php?do=basic
http://www.blogicas.com/directory/
http://www.blogfolders.com/
http://www.iblogz.org/submit.php
http://www.spreadmyblog.com/
http://www.submit-blogs.com/submit.php
http://www.global-blogs.info/index.html
http://www.bestbloglink.com/submit.php
http://www.blog.instantapprovelinks.com/submit.php
http://blogs.mediadir.in/submit.php
http://www.submitblognow.info/submit.php
http://www.abcblogdirectory.com/inde…tion=meta_pass

As usual feel free to leave a comment

If you think that the time has come to expand your reach and to promote your products to other markets, either within your country or abroad, then you should think about creating a web presence. A website will allow you to appear in front of a wider audience at a much lower advertising cost then other types of media such as TV, newspapers and magazines. There are many New York web design firms that may assist you in building your web presence with many services being offered for building such a presence.

Some New York web design companies are world-known to the public, this popularity brings with it high prices. Paying this high prices won’t lead to a proportional web presence but you should not rush for the cheapest services. If you want to have a really professional website based on a modern content management system, you should always find a golden medium in this question.

If you start searching for a professional web development company you should search through Google or Yahoo! or even Live.com as you will get the best companies in top10. You should read the testimonials of the previous clients and give closest attention to the clients who ordered New York search engine optimization services as this is a long process and will be a proof of their professionalism.

MYTH 1: “You get what you pay for.” Google Analytics is free, which means the system is down a lot.

Google Analytics makes use of the same network of secure and reliable data centers used to power Google.com, making downtime an extremely rare occurrence. Personally I’ve been using Google Analytics for more than 3 years now and I can never recall any major issues. For once a free tool is a reliable tool.

MYTH 2: Google Analytics is basic and doesn’t have any “advanced” features or metrics

Ack, this one is a tough one to swallow! A more frequent complaint is actually that Google Analytics has too much data. The product includes over 90 standard reports with more than 125 metrics and dimensions covering everything from visits to internal site search queries. Google Analytics has much more features than many paid analytics tools out there. Obviously they will never admit that because they want to sell their product.

MYTH 3: Google Analytics only supports third-party cookies

False! Google Analytics has always used first-party, not third-party cookies. First-party cookies are important because they allow Google Analytics to track repeat visitors, so you can see which keyword, referring site, etc is responsible for bringing buyers even when it takes multiple visits for them to convert.

MYTH 4: Google Analytics is not really accurate

If you’ve spent time doing web analytics work, you’ll know the sinking feeling that comes when two sets of numbers don’t match. If you’re experiencing a data discrepancy, don’t panic. There are many others in the same boat. Google Analytics uses JavaScript tags to collect data. This industry-standard method yields reliable trends and a high degree of precision, but it’s not perfect. Most of the time, if you are noticing data discrepancies greater than 10%, it’s due to an installation issue. Common problems include JavaScript errors, redirects, untagged pages and slow client-side load times. All web analytics tools face the same technical limitations posed by JavaScript tags, so if another vendor claims their tool is more accurate, ask for some evidence.

MYTH 5: It’s not possible to export your data from Google Analytics

Not true! You have two options for exporting data. Use the “export” button at the top of each report to export the current view in PDF or XML (up to 500 rows). Or, use the new Analytics Export API to extract large amounts of data in any format you like. Also, if you want to share data with a colleague, you can schedule reports to be delivered directly to their email inbox, or even send regular updates to your own email address.

MYTH 6: With Google Analytics you can’t control your data

You have three options for data sharing in Google Analytics. You can change these options at any time from inside your Analytics account.
- do not share your data
- share your data with Google to improve its products
- share your data anonymously for benchmarking

No matter which option you choose, your data is protected by several layers of defense:
1. Dedicated security and infrastructure teams
2. Multiple redundancies to prevent data loss
3. Network redundancies to keep data accessible
4. Advanced security, firewalling and routing to keep data secure
5. Restricted access and principle of least privilege for personnel

MYTH 7: There is no professional support for Google Analytics

There are several ways to get support: email support, help forums, the help center, and a network of Authorized Consultants. Authorized Consultants speak your language, accept your currency and often share your timezone. More than 80 companies across the globe provide a full range of installation and analysis support for Google Analytics. Some examples of things they can help you with are:
1. Validate and troubleshoot your installation
2. Integrate your analytics data with other data sources or CRM
3. Optimize your marketing efforts
4. Train your staff on how to use Analytics
5. Respond to support tickets, phone calls and provide on-site consulting

MYTH 8: Google Analytics does not support A/B or multivariate testing and isn’t well-integrated with other tools

Google offers a full range of marketing products including a free testing tool called Google Website Optimizer. You can use it to test different page elements and find out which ones yield the highest conversion rate and ROI. You can also use Google Analytics in conjunction with Website Optimizer to create an optimization plan for your site.

MYTH 9: You can’t segment data in Google Analytics

In the fall of 2008, Google Analytics released three new Enterprise Features: Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reports and Motion Charts. Advanced Segmentation lets you segment visits by dozens of metrics and dimensions such as geographic location, time on site, referral site and much much more. You can create segments on the fly and apply them to virtually all the standard reports in Google Analytics as well as custom reports.

MYTH 10: You have to spend a lot of money to get “real” web analytics

Getting a return from your Analytics data does take an investment. The most important investment to start with is making sure you or someone at your organization has the expertise and time to put your data to use. If at that point you still feel you need to pay more for a more complicated tool, that’s OK, but remember that every dollar you spend on a tool takes away from money you could be spending on actually getting results