General29 Jun 2007

Google PageRank Updates July/August 07

The Next Google PR update will start to updating by End of July - Beginning of August 2007 .

I have collected a few tools to check pagerank in various ways, various data centers. Please do note that different tools listed use different datacenters so the result may vary and I suggest you check once in google toolbar . It is normal that it shows different pagerank in different datacenters, In the past it’s usually lasted a few days and then they all gave out the same PR.

PageRank Check
http://www.sr-ultimate.com/pagerank
Ae4r.com Pagerank Checker (AJAX) - Alexa+Google,Yahoo backlinks+DMOZ lookup)
http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/pagerank-dc.html
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-lookup/
Various Datacanter
http://www.mcdar.net/Q-Check/datatool.asp
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker

Google PR Update takes place roughly every 3 months. Estimated date of last update: End of April - Beginning of May 2007

General24 May 2007

Google aquires Feedburner for $100 million

Google aquires Feedburner for $100 millionAround 7 days ago, Google aquired DoubleClick, the advertising gaint, in addition to the popular Google adsense. Quite literally dominated the online advertising industry. While that created quite a fuzz. The recent aquisition of feedburner was quite shock for many. Ofcourse many have reasons to prove their worries.
Of course, nothing new in the acquisition trend, Google takes this trend quite seriously ;).

I noted something funny though ;)

Microsoft on google bought Feedburner

There are some very positive reasons that this is an ideal match and I am going to concentrate on those first:-
1. Existing Subscriber Statistics - Google mentioned that subscriber statistics are part of their calculations for relevance for Google Blog Search in recently released patent details. Whilst I have determined it is not currently a major ranking factor for blog search, Google are moving down a path of providing personal search results and are continually looking to improve Blog Search
2. Integrate FeedBurner With Blogger - Google look to provide useful services for their existing portfolio of products, and Blogger provides them with lots of advertising space. Many of Google’s competitors offer some kind of feed statistics (Wordpress.com), and Google need to do the same.
3. Integrate FeedBurner with Google Analytics - I have seen this discussed slightly, but no one hit the nail on the head. Currently it is impossible to track conversions into an RSS subscriber in the same way you can with email subscriptions. This is a major stumbling block for the future of RSS within marketing.
4. Intellectual Property - lots of the things that Feedburner do such as their advertising system, feedflares, redirects for RSS feeds, and maybe even aspects of their tracking technology could well have a patent pending, though whatever applications they may have made they are keeping the lid on.
5. 422,717 publishers - It is not a huge number, and is very easy to increase with an integration with Blogger. It is certainly many more than any current direct competitor. People are waving around that $100M is a good price based upon 10x earnings, and 10x the VC investment of around $10M in Feedburner. The most important statistic is that probably 99% of feed publishers currently don’t automatically qualify for Feedburner’s advertiser program. Certainly with 1000 subscribers the “monetize” tab is still closed for me.
6. Economy of Scale (Publishers) - it is hard to provide tracking for advertisers over 1000s of blogs, and also to handle the payment infrastructure for smaller publishers. That is probably one of the primary reasons FeedBurner up until now has only had monetization options for popular blogs, or “network feeds”.
7. Economy of Scale (Advertisers) - Google has a massive amount of advertising inventory, it is just a question of adding the ability to advertise on the blog content network, especially with their CPA offers which would be ideal for feeds

General21 May 2007

Adobe Photoshop coming online : Online image editor

Adobe announced that it will be creating an online version of Photohop within the next 6 months. Adobe laid the foundation for a hosted Photoshop product with Adobe Remix, a Web-based video-editing tool it offers through the PhotoBucket media-sharing site.

Like Adobe Remix, the hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe’s more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Chizen envisions revenue from the Photoshop service coming from online advertising.

Hoping to get a jump on Google and other competitors, Adobe Systems plans to release a hosted version of its popular Photoshop image-editing application within six months, the company’s chief executive said Tuesday.Like Adobe Remix, the hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe’s more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Chizen envisions revenue from the Photoshop service coming from online advertising.

(more…)

General19 May 2007

Spotback Wordpress plugin, Rate your posts !

Spotback offers a rating, discovery and recommendation platform that can be easily used for any type of content. Spotback currently supports all major blog platforms and is highly configurable to meet the design needs of different sites. Spotback widgets are free, easy to install and guaranteed to improve your users’ online experience which result in more page loads.

Spotback Wordpress Plugin

The Spotback Wordpress plugin enables simple integration of rating component into your blog. By using this tool, all your users can rate your posts.

This plugin allows you to choose the rating components you like, or even design your own, exactly the way you like them. The custom design can be done by using the Spotback widget designer. Create your own: slider, stars and more

Spotback rating widgets are different from other rating widgets as the ratings are used for creating “Top Stories” and “Personal Recommendations” for your readers, within your blog. The widgets also allow user to tag, and to view other users that rated the same stories. The outcome is a great online experience for your users and more pageviews for you!

The plugin requires no changes in your database or any special install procedures. It works with or without “Wordpress Widgets”.

Features

* Wordpress Plugin. This plugin makes installation of the rating widget on
Wordpress and Wordpress MU (Multi Users) platforms a snap.Check
http://spotback.com/wp-plugin/about for more details.

* Related Content Recommendations. This new feature will instantly connect
stories that people like with other relevant stories. When hovering with
your mouse over the rating widget, a list of related content will appear
exposing users to additional relevant content that other users liked.

* Widget Gallery. The gallery just got bigger and better and the
installation process had been simplified.

General19 May 2007

Google aquiring Feedburner ?

I read in a recent post by vecosys , that Google is buying Feedburner in order to get into the rapidly evolving RSS Ad market. The delay in announcing the deal, I am told is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal.
If true this deal makes a lot of sense for both parties. Today many of us predominately read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never actually visit the original blog source and/or see the sites supporting adverts.

So RSS has effectively eliminated the potential value of AdSense and DoubleClick because the majority of people never view them. This is already hurting publishers who rely heavily on the income generated by people watching or clicking on adverts.

Therefore I think it would be a smart move by Google to acquire FeedBurner, simply because Google could then start to serve their own ads (Adsense or DoubleClick) into the RSS stream.

I remember when people first started talking about advertising appearing within RSS feeds and the enormous backlash but slowly over time I have begun to notice more and more RSS feeds appearing in my reader with supporting adverts.

General14 Apr 2007

Google Acquires Web Advertising Firm DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion

Search engine gaint Google is buying privately held Google Acquires Web Advertising Firm DoubleClick for $3.1 BillionDoubleClick, a top digital marketing services firm, for $3.1 billion, the companies said Friday afternoon. Google (Charts) is buying DoubleClick from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, which bought DoubleClick in 2005 for $1.1 billion in a deal that took the company private.

For Google, the deal will likely help boost its presence in the area of Internet display advertising, ads on banners, videos and other non-text based types of ads.

This is Google’s next big acquisition after the Youtube deal. Google already has a popular Advertisement service “Adsense” which offers pretty much the service.

This new partnership represents a tremendous opportunity for us at Google to broaden and deepen our inventory of available ads and to better serve both our publishers and users. Together, Google and DoubleClick will empower agencies, advertisers, and publishers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively, which will, in turn, provide a better experience for our users.

General31 Mar 2007

MON.ITOR.US: First Mobile Ajax, Website uptime Monitoring Client

MON.ITOR.US new mobile client provides access to the service from any Windows Mobile device. Users will get more control over their server performance at any time and from anywhere, which is a significant advantage for business owners, web marketers, system administrators and webmasters who are often traveling. The client applies Ajax technology for mobile devices and works within Windows Mobile Internet Explorer.The Ajax client doesn’t require any installation, it is immediately activated, and it always runs the latest version. Together, Mon.itor.us Mobile delivers greater convenience, ease and speed over the mobile Java or native phone solutions.

Mon.itor.us provides signup users with the opportunity to watch recent results of their tests within Personal Google, Netvibes or Microsoft Live and also download a widget for Yahoo! or MAC OS X Desktop ! Please click below to add appropriate widget to your personal home page or on your desktop.

The mobile client code will be available as open source, hence allowing the open source community to enhance it or build similar mobile applications on top of MON.ITOR.US backend. The mobile client is accessible from http://mobile.mon.itor.us URL.

General12 Mar 2007

OJAX : Ajax-powered metasearch service

OJAX provides a highly dynamic AJAX based user interface to a federated search service for OAI-PMH compatible repository metadata.

OJAX is simple, non-threatening but powerful. It attempts to minimise upfront user investment and provide immediate dynamic feedback, thus encouraging experimentation and enabling enactive learning.
Benefits of OJAX

  • Provide a single search interface across all the repositories in use in an institution or consortium.
  • Or provide an improved search interface to a single repository
  • Faster resource discovery.
  • Easy to use, and support.
OJAX : Ajax-powered metasearch service

(more…)

« Previous PageNext Page »