Google Gadget Clones Digg’s Core Features

Google has added a new feature to their personalized home page which clones the core features of Digg and StumbleUpon. These core features are embedded into a Google gadget that is accessible from within the web desktop.

This new feature, which Google is now showcasing in its directory, is called “What’s Popular.” Using this Google gadget folks can submit links either anonymously or publicly and vote other submissions up or down.

According to Google, the What’s Popular gadget “uses algorithms to find interesting content from a combination of your submissions and trends in aggregated user activity across a variety of Google services, like YouTube and Google Reader.”

There’s more to it than that though. Clicking on the maximize link causes the gadget to expand into a canvas view which sorts the submissions into different categories - e.g. stories, videos and images.

What NOT to do on Social Networking Sites when Applying for a Job

Nowadays many companies will search online before they interview potential candidates for a job. With social networking being so hot, most people have either a Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace profile. When you create these profiles you want to make sure you are not doing anything on them that will jeopardize your chance of being hired for a position.

Here are some tips to follow on social networking sites:

• Do not make your profile public if you are using your social networking profile for personal use.

• Do not post inappropriate photos that a potential employer might come across if you profile is public.

• Do not vent about your current job in your status updates if your profile is public.

• Do not update your status about how an interview went if your profile is public .

• Do not let your employers be friends or follow you on your personal profile. Create a business profile so they can friend you or follow you from that one.

If you can think of any others, please feel free to share them in the comment section below.

eCommerce Design Must Haves!

When designing your eCommerce website it is very important to keep in mind the follow guidelines to ensure your website traffic converts into customers. Even if your website has a Professional Search Engine Optimization Specialist managing your rankings, if your site is ranking but not converting, no one is going to be happy!

The following are some tips to follow when designing your eCommerce site:

• Highly Visible Phone Number: It is very beneficial to have a 1-800 number at the top of all your pages. This way your visitors know they can always just pick up the phone and call your business for free if they have any questions (instead of them leaving your site!).

• SEO Friendly URLS: Many ecommerce websites do not have SEO friendly URLS. A SEO Friendly URL is keyword rich and does not contain many numbers, question marks, etc. When designing your ecommerce website, make sure you install any modules that are necessary to ensure the URLs will be friendly. If you are going to purchase a CMS to build your site, do some research before you make the purchase to ensure a SEO module is available.

• Clear Photos and Unique Product Descriptions: In order for a visitor to feel comfortable purchasing a product from your site, you want to make sure you have clear photos and unique product descriptions. If you do not provide enough information about your products and your photos are blurry, why would someone decide to make a purchase?

• Easy, Secure Checkout: Make sure your checkout process is simple. No one wants to fill out tons of pages to complete an order. Buy a SSL certificate so that your visitors will feel confident that your site is trustworthy to purchase from.

• Privacy Policy Page: Be sure to have a privacy policy page on your site that states you will not sell personal information to other companies/organizations. Nowadays with an increased amount of identity fraud you want to make your customers feel as comfortable as possible when they purchase from your site.

Google AdWords Now Allows Ad Titles Longer Than the Usual 25 Character Limit

As recently as March you may have noticed that some Google AdWords ads have longer titles than you’re used to seeing. Google has confirmed that in limited instances, the AdWords title can exceed the 25 character limit. There is a thread over at WebmasterWorld about this.

Exceeding the character limit in your ad title is possible by using dynamic keyword insertion in your ad copy; the ad title may show more than 25 characters.

A Googler has stated that there is no guarantee that your ad title will display characters beyond the limit of 25, but that Google may choose to show a keyword with 26 or 27 characters automatically.

So with this in mind, if your ads are looked after by a PPC management company you should notify them about this and play around with your ad title copy but realize that if your ad title exceeds 25 characters the ad simply might not work all of the time, and the ad title might not always match the ad description text too. It is worth noting though that you should test this to find out if it results in any improvements to your click through rate and your quality score.

Twitter Predictions

I know I have been blogging a lot lately on Twitter, but I must say it’s a fun topic to write about because there are so many cool tools available! I have been playing around with some tools today, so I thought I’d share TwitterCounter.com with you if you aren’t already familiar with it.

TwitterCounter.com is a fast way to check up on your competitor’s Twitter statistics or your own Twitter statistics without having to login to Twitter and manually track your followers (or your competitors) each day. Twittercounter.com allows you to type in any Twitter username and then will provide you with a graph that shows activity for either last week, last month, or the last three months. It also shows you a prediction of how many Twitter followers a Twitter profile should have tomorrow, Twitter rank, average growth per day, etc.

Here is a screen shot of Getupdated’s Predictions:

If you are an active Tweeter, give it a try!

Do you ever Google your Name?

Everyone does it. We all can’t help but be curious to see what information we will find on ourselves when we type our name into Google’s search box. But, now Google is changing the results you will find when you type in someone’s name. Google states “To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we’ve begun to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. We’ve also added links so it’s easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn.”

After I read this I typed many names into Google’s search box to see what profile results were available. When I typed in Adam Rosen (I just picked at random a very generic name), I saw two Google profiles and links for the name Adam Rosen on MySpace, Facebook, Classsmates, and LinkedIn. Below is the screen shot for Adam Rosen. (Click for larger image. )

To create a Google public profile page, you can go here: http://www.google.com/profiles. Or, if you are a client of Getupdated, you can ask one of our Search Engine Optimization Professionals to create one for you.

What’s your Twitter Score?

There are many free tools that will score or grade your Twitter profile. One tool that I like to use is TwitterScore.net. All you have to do is type in your Twitter username and within a couple of seconds the tool analyzes your profile.

I tried this tool out for our Getupdated Twitter profile. Since we are new to Twitter, we are still lagging far behind other Tweeters, but hope to increase our score in the upcoming months.

Here is a glimpse of our Twitter Score:

Try this tool out for your Twitter profile. Please feel free to share your score with us in our comments section below!

Ashton Kutcher- Over 1 Million Twitter Followers

Being a huge fan of celebrity gossip, I found this news very interesting. Ashton Kutcher (married to Demi Moore) is the first Twitter user to have over 1 million Twitter followers. To date, he has 1,289,318 followers. Ashton has even beat out CNN and other big celebrities and news portals.

Check out Ashton’s Twitter Account: http://twitter.com/aplusk

Sitelinks Update

There has been a recent update to Google’s sitelinks. Previously, sitelinks only showed up for the first search result and the sitelinks were listed in two columns. Now, Google is showing sitelinks beyond the first result. In addition, you will notice that instead of the two columns of sitelinks, you will see up to four sitelinks above the URL creating just one line.

Google is creating these one-line sitelinks in an attempt to provide site owners with even more traffic and visibility. Below you will find a screen shot of the search results for the keyword pizza. (Please click on the image for a larger view.)

New Adwords Interface

Google Adwords has revamped their user interface. Now when you login to your Adwords account you will see a link to the New Interface (Beta) at the top right corner. Some cool features of the new interface are graphs of your performance data and faster editing of your campaigns.

Check out Google’s video on the new interface:

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