Google Analytics Update (Beta)Always looking to push the boundaries, Google have released the latest version of Google Analytics and opened it up to a select few analytics accounts for beta testing.( If you have not already been invited you can sign up to request early access via this link – Google Analytics beta )Google say the new release will make it easier to find information and share data but also claim the release new will offer some new core functionality…
Social gets serious: Google Social Search Update:Google have recently announced updates to their social search functionality. While social search has been around since 2009 many people are still not aware of exactly what social search is, the impact it can have on the search experience and some of the benefits it can bring to the end user.So what is social search ?The power of referral through social networks, blogs and forums is constantly changing the dynamics of the internet…
Last week Twitter announced changes to its API rules concerning Twitter client apps. To determine usage of different Twitter clients, Sysomos reviewed a sample of 25 million tweets on March 11 – the day Twitter unveiled its new API policy. The data shows that 42% of tweets were made by non-officials apps – more than four times the amount claimed by Twitter. UberSocial and TweetDeck continue to be the two largest non-official app used to post tweets…
In their past study Localytics found that 26% of the time tablet/smart phone users never use the same application again. In this study, Localytics found that another 26% of people become very loyal, repeat customers, using a new application more than 10 timesFrom a previous Localytics study. One time app usage grows from 22% to 28% over the course of 2010.
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Hitwise has released their search market share numbers for February 2011. Overall Google is down 2%, while Bing (including Yahoo) moved up 5%. Additional highlights below:
Today HootSuite launched Social Analytics. This collection of tools are built to give you a better view of your social profiles with powerful analytics tools to measure results and customize reports.
HootSuite Social Analytics from HootSuite on Vimeo.
Track follower growth for each of your social profiles with aggregated views for Twitter and Facebook
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comScore has released their annual Canadian Digital Year in Review report (2010), The report consists of some excellent data which provides an overview of the digital landscape in Canada including Internet usage, video consumption, advertising effectiveness, and social media.Below are some highlights that we found interesting.YouTube accounted for the large majority of videos viewed online with more than 6…
With the release of the iPad 2 today, the Silicon Alley Insider chart of the day was very timely comparing the Motorola Xoom vs. iPad 2. In many areas both tablets are very comparable, however the iPad 2 is lighter, thinner and currently less expensive.
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Perhaps one of my favorite infographics of all time? The Oatmeal put together this hilarious graphic which outlines the likability of all the birds. Apparently they are not big fans of the green boomerang bird 
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Last week Google introduced an update to its index which would try and remove low quality sites from the top of its results. There was a heavy focus in targeting content-farms which syndicated much of their content from other sites via RSS feeds as well as sites which were generally not useful to searchers. A company called Sistrix did an excellent job trying to quantify the results of Google’s update via its ‘visibility index’…
One of the biggest and most consistent concerns within a website measurement strategy is the quality of the data. This is especially a concern for large sites where new content/actions regularly occur and the analytics implementation is quite complex. All of the larger players in the analytics space offer professional services whereby they perform an audit of your web analytics implementation, however this is quite expensive and isn’t always a regular process…
According to eMarketer, the value of mobile transactions will reach close to 1 trillion dollars by 2014. Later in the article eMarketer breaks down the top activites conducted over mobile for US & Europe vs. Asian users.
Great infographic shared by Penn Olson which shows how the different airlines use Twitter. There are over 180 airlines using Twitter who average 4.1 tweets per day – Delta leads the way with almost 64 tweets a day. Jet Blue joined Twitter on May 2007 and now has 1.7 million followers. On a given day 164 tweets are directed towards United Airlines, which responds with 3.3 tweets a day. Over 50% of the tweets about United are negative…
What is the value of a social action in online commerce? This is what a firm called Chompon hoped to answer in their latest study [PDF]. In regards to gross value per action a “Facebook Share” is worth $14, a “Facebook Like” is worth $8, a “Twitter Tweet” is worth $5 and a “Twitter Follow” is worth $2. The values were based on ‘next sale’ after the social media action and not the entire lifetime value of a customer…
SiteKreator, small business website builder, has just released the results of their study in which they analyzed 5,000 random websites through 2010. The results revealed that small businesses who update their site content more often receive more traffic on a monthly basis vs sites who make less frequent updates. Additionally, sites which leveraged social media in their online strategies also received more traffic than sites not using social media…
According to the latest data from Nielsen, online video usage is up 45% from the same time last year. YouTube is still way out in front with 8.5 billion video streams, however it was down 2.6% vs last month. Video rental service, NetFlix was up 37.5% to 200 million streams during the same time.Microsoft sites were the fastest-growing video brand month-over-month, increasing 26.1% to 17.3 million unique viewers…
In their latest report eMarketer estimates that in 2011, 68.2% of US internet users, or 158.1 million people, will be watching video content online each month. By 2015, that figure will increase to 76% of internet users, or 195.5 million people. In the same period, online video advertising spending will surge from $1.97 billion to $5.71 billion.
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According to the latest post on the Hitwise blog, the volume of visits to Quora nearly tripled in January due to considerable coverage from technology news websites. Below are highlights from the post:
Very interesting chart on the Twitter blog which shows the total number of #superbowl tweets across the 5 hour span of this year’s Superbowl. During the 5 hours, the average tweets per second (TPS) was 3,283. There were huge tweet spikes during the packers first and second touchdowns, with the next largest coming at half time when Usher took the stage. At the end of the game, the Superbowl broke the sporting event TPS record with 4,064…
Hitwise announced its monthly search market share data for January 2011. Google accounted for 67.95 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in January 2011. Bing-powered search comprised 27.44 percent of searches for the month. Full highlights below:
YuMe, a video advertising technology company, recently released a new study in which they surveyed 498 viewers over a 6 week time period (U.S. residents, ages 13-54) to better understand their viewing attitudes/behaviours towards TV vs. online video. below are some of the key findings:
In January 2010, Reddit reported they were receiving 250 million page views, 6 months later they were hovering around 450 million page views, in December 2010 it was 829 million monthly page views and last month (January 2011) Reddit eclipsed 1 billion monthly page views! Congrats to the Reddit Team.June 2010January 2011
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The latest article from eMarketer shows the top social media tools used by Inc. 500 companies in 2009 vs. 2010. Facebook and Twitter naturally rose to the top of the list. However when companies were asked what tools they had the most success with, Facebook & Twitter fell behind the likes of: Blogging, Message Boards, and Online Video.
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I recently caught up with John Straw, CEO of Linkdex. Linkdex creates a SEO workflow that organizes campaigns on Google and Bing, as well as local engines with a step-by step task manager. The application aims to draw a solid line between SEO tasks and ROI. During our chat John gave me some insight on Linkdex:[Manoj]: Give us the elevator pitch on Linkdex[John Straw]: Linkdex is a fully integrated SEO toolset designed for small businesses, SEO professionals, and agencies looking to develop their skills in-house, putting process, protocol, and workflow into SEO, making an SEO program easy to manage…
In December 2010, the US visits to Groupon.com outnumber those to LivingSocial by a factor of 10-1. As of last week LivingSocial.com has closed the gap, now with over half the visits of group coupon leader Groupon.com. Source Hitwise.
Earlier this week I sat down with James Gill, CEO of GoSquared. During our chat James was able to give some great insight on their flagship product, LiveStats (real time analytics. Have a read of our conversation below:[Manoj]: Give us the ‘elevator pitch’ on your technology[James Gill]: We’ve been in the real-time analytics space for about a year now, and just released the 3rd version of our flagship product LiveStats…
It’s always interesting to compare the two rivals in a given industry and match them up to see who has the edge. What I’ve down below is run a few of the top online players through Compete and Google Trends (using unique visitors as the metric) to do exactly this. Unfortunetely in the Bing vs. Google.com matchup, Google trends didn’t like sharing data for Google (weird)..Tumblr vs. Posterous Facebook vs…
You're looking at my set of tools. The custom search engine helps me find the answers to questions more quickly. The RSS aggregator keeps me updated with industry news that matters. And, in the near future, I plan on documenting the major steps and considerations used in SEM as a check list (although it will also work well as a list of tutorials).
While I built (and am improving) the above tools for myself, it seemed like a waste to keep them to myself. After all, good will breeds good will, and perhaps you'll even help me find more great blogs to follow.
In the name of good karma, all my outgoing links on this site are followed. Treat others as you wish to be treated, right? Besides, I think the authors who we read daily deserve all the thanks (links) we can give.
I hope you find the SEM News feed and the free SEO search tool helpful.
- Brett at SEMNewsDaily.com
