That’s a wrap! - Friday 16th Nov

Posted by Scott on November 16th, 2007 .

Patrick at Blog Storm is one of the masters when it comes to link bait, he still hasn’t got a subscribe to comments option though but does have some great suggestions and a screenshot on how Google could be improved

Online spending in the UK growing fast unlike tradition retailer spending according to Comscore with the UK online spending growing faster than Germany or France.

The popularity of online shopping is set to reach an all time high this year, as time squeezed consumers - armed with high speed access and experience with the online channel – can be expected to spend more time shopping and buying Christmas gifts online

I think most of us got the email from Google Adsense, they are restricting the clickable area on ads which should reduce the CTR a lot for well blended sites. A good visual representation over at Blogoscoped

via Google Webmaster Central
Google and Go Daddy are holding hands:

Welcome Go Daddy webmasters to the Google Webmaster Tools family! Today, we’re announcing that Go Daddy, the world’s largest hostname provider in the web hosting space, is working with us as a pilot partner so that their customers can more easily access Google Webmaster Tools.Go Daddy is a great partner, and we hope to educate more webmasters on how to make their site more search engine-friendly

DIY.net sold this week for $200,000, it was earning around $3k a month from traffic but an excellent sale and one of the largest public .net sales.

A most enjoyable game I played this week was Fancy Pants which was recommended to me by my son :)

 Andrew reports after Day 1 of SMX London, the Google keynote speech.

  • We’re going to see more from Google Trends - development is largely driven by Tel Aviv
  • Images and Maps have been widely pushed out into Universal Search. Google started rolling Universal Search out across the regions.
  • Book Search outranks Blog Search - we’ll see Book Search in Universal Search first* - *This is due, I think, to authority of author
  • Google changed some elements of openSocial after they got to see some of the aspects of Facebook’s API
  • Google is keen to stress that the privacy issue of openSocial is not theirs. Data does not pass through Google. It’s up to the widget creators to adhere to the privacy policy of the different containers/
  • Google Europe would like a standard privacy policy to exist on the web
  • What you once knew as a website is now a container.
  • There are some hints that openSocial could be used as a platform to a ‘Universal log in’ - Google didn’t say this, this was me reading between two heavily drawn lines.
  • Android is primarily a way to give mobile users better access to the internet
  • Less than 1% of internet content is in Arabic. Google sees an opportunity here.
  • Google has invested hugely in Russian projects but not advertising.
  • This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 and is filed under Miscellaneous . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    RSS feed | Trackback URI

    11 Comments »

    Comment by Patrick Altoft from BlogStorm Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-16 11:23:09

    Your wrap up posts are the only link list type posts that actually have stuff I’ve not seen before. Most other blogs just have a list of posts I’ve already read.

    Subscribe to comments is coming soon I promise.:)

     
    Comment by Matthew from GadgetVenue Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-16 12:52:27

    I think the Google Adsense clickable area’s change is a good thing. I would like to think that the visitors that clicked ads on my site were clicking intentionally and not accidently so that the advertiser is getting a good return for their money. Maybe it will result in higher payouts per click too due to advertisers not worrying as much about accidental clicks.

    Comment by Al from Al Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-16 16:12:11

    It’s certainly good for advertisers and hopefully publishers too in the long run. I’m now off to make sure all my URLs are in a different color to the rest of the text.

    Comment by Matthew from GadgetVenue Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-16 17:08:31

    What colour do you find works best for links? I have heard 2 things. Either blend the link colour in with the rest of the other links or make them #0000FF (the blue colour). I seem to see better results with them being blue. I read this is because of the popularity of blue in the previous years of the internet.

    (Comments wont nest below this level)
    Comment by Al from Al Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-16 17:45:56

    All links on my site are red so I’ve stuck with that for the title and the actual URL is a shade of blue to match the site, I am thinking of changing that to the old fashioned link blue though.

     
     
     
     
    Comment by Justin Cook from SEO Toronto Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-16 13:08:34

    What I’d like to see “more of” from Google Trends is actual numbers, not just relative search volume in line charts!

     
    Comment by Abdul from The Webmasters Tool Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-17 09:23:53

    That new google looks awsome. It would be great if it could be true.

    qulaity game too btw

    You quoted that:
    Less than 1% of internet content is in Arabic. Google sees an opportunity here.

    How can I make use of that? I am a fluent arabic speaker and use it as a primary language?

    Comment by Scott from Scott Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-17 11:45:05

    Arabic speakers will search in Arabic Abdul, that’s a huge market but the competition/websites that cater for Arabic searches is obviously not great, I don;t know what percentage of the world speak Arabic but it is a lot more than 1% so it’s a gap in the market.

     
     
    Comment by Abdul from The Webmasters Tool Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-17 17:09:01

    Come to think of it thats true

    A lot of people in Arabic countries have access to broadband internet (4 people share a 2MbpS connection), and with Microsoft initiatives to provide computers for every student at an affordable price.

    That would acctually be great.

    422,039,637 of the world speak in Arabic (2/6 most popular laguage)

    An ever increasing % of people having access to internet

    Arabic IDN around for a while

    It all means great profit potential

     
    2007-11-18 20:39:03

    [...] [via Self Made Minds] [...]

     
    Comment by Carl from Dension Ice Subscribed to comments via email
    2007-11-29 18:29:27

    Loved the game, spent hours over the weekend on that one…this blog really isn’t good for my productivity!

     
    Name (required)
    E-mail (required - never shown publicly)
    URI (Optional)
    Twitter Name (optional)
    Title (optional, will be used as link text for top commentators)
    Your Comment (smaller size | larger size)
    You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.