Online Marketing News: Twitter Crime, Google Redesign, Facebook Free Fading, Social Media Wave

Facebook Announces News Feed Redesign To Mirror Mobile -�In the coming weeks, Facebook will roll out an update to the News Feed design it introduced last year. More users will be switched from the old News Feed design, with a white background, to a mobile-inspired News Feed with bigger images and a darker background. There is no change to the News Feed algorithm; this is just for aesthetics.�InsideFacebook

Study: Twitter Crime Has Risen 390% Since 2011 -�Crimes linked to Twitter have risen almost four-fold over the past three years, reveals new figures from 25 police forces across the United Kingdom. Since 2011, cases where Twitter has in someway played a role have increased by 390 percent � up from 174 in 2011 to 852 in 2013.�AllTwitter

Millennials Spend 18 Hours A Day Consuming Media � And It�s Mostly Content Created By Peers -�How many hours a day do you spend on Facebook? How about texting friends? Reading magazines? If you’re a millennial, it may be more time than you think. New research by social-influence marketing platform Crowdtap indicates that individuals ages 18 to 36 spend an average of 17.8 hours a day with different types of media. Entrepreneur

Stats: More Than 40% Of Online Adults Are Multi-Device Users -�This comes from a new multi-device study, conducted by Facebook in collaboration with GfK, revealing people�s behavior when it comes to moving across devices (smartphone, tablet and desktop) on a day-to-day basis. Econsultancy

Facebook Launches Public Content Solutions To Help Media Partners With Trend Data -�As more and more people talk about current events on Facebook, developers within the media industry are looking for some way to join the conversation. So to offer companies a solution into the data behind�trending topics�on the social network,�Facebook announced Friday�the launch of Public Content Solutions. InsideFacebook

Facebook Free Reach Drops To 6%, Per Agency Study. 4 Reasons Your Brand Posts Are Fading -�The Facebook news feed is highly coveted real estate with finite space, so something had to give — and it’s brand posts. The social network wants to keep its 757 million daily users active while cranking up its ad business, so brand posts with no spending behind them are getting the squeeze. The posts are less interesting to users and don’t drive any revenue for Facebook, and since late 2012, there has been less and less room for them. AdAge

18-24 Year Olds on Facebook Report An Average Of 649 Friends, Up From 510 Last Year -�Roughly two-thirds of Americans aged 12 and older have a social networking profile, up from 62% last year, according to [pdf] a report from Edison Research and Triton Digital. Facebook remains the most popular site, used by 58% of survey respondents of that age, but was the only platform other than MySpace not to see an increase in penetration year-over-year. Marketing Charts

URL Shortening Giant Bitly Will Provide Click Data to Moz -�Bitly, the Internet�s URL shortening leader, announced today that it will provide data and click-tracking technology to Moz. Moz�s optimization software previously used link data from Twitter to rank web pages� social media relevance but it is turning to Bitly to get a more complete picture of user behavior. Marketing Land

Millennials More Willing Than Boomers to Share Data With Marketers�-�6 in 10 US Millennials claim that they would be willing to share personal information with marketers, while Baby Boomers would be much less likely to do so, according to results from a Mintel study. That gap even extends to those unwilling to share information: at least 30% of Millennials who would not provide private information said they would be swayed by an incentive offer, while only 13% of reluctant Baby Boomers agreed. Marketing Charts

Report: Only 6% Of Buyers Claim Social Media Impacts B2B Buying Process -�According to a recently published B2B Website Usability Report surveying buyers, social media and blogging have little influence on the B2B buying process. Marketing Land

Smartphone Penetration Now Two-Thirds Of US Mobile Market -�Smartphone penetration continues to grow with every passing month, and the latest tally from comScore indicates that during the 3-month average ending in January 2014, some 66.8% of mobile subscribers in the US owned a smartphone. That translates to almost 160 million Americans, and is up from 55% market penetration during the year-earlier period. Marketing Charts

Google Introduces Consumer Ratings Annotations -�Google announced its plans to introduce consumer ratings annotations to Google AdWords in an official company blog post. The search engine giant says consumer rating annotations bring to light industry-specific ratings�such as an airline’s reward program�based on Google Consumer Surveys. Direct Marketing News

Facebook Updates Company Pages Design and Introduces �Pages to Watch� -�One of the most annoying things about working with Facebook Company Pages is that each type of post appeared different when viewed on your Page versus in the News Feed. Because of the way it was all laid out, you were never sure that your posts would look great across the platform. HubSpot

Google: Keep URL Length Shorter Than 2000 Characters -�SEOs obsess about the smallest things, even how long is too long for a URL. A Google Webmaster Help thread has SEOs and webmasters asking how long can they go for a URL. Google actually answered the question. Search Engine Roundtable

61% Of Brands Using Influencer Marketing Have Trouble Identifying The Right Influencers -�According to a recent study from Augure, a reputation management software, the biggest problems marketers have are identifying the right influencers, engaging with them and quantifying the influence. Celebrity doesn�t always equate to influence anymore. In fact, less than 25 percent of those surveyed consider a well-known celebrity an influencer. SocialTimes

LinkedIn Announces Sponsored InMail For Mobile -�LinkedIn announced yesterday that it was expanding its mobile advertising platform to include Sponsored InMail. According to the blog post, the goal is to give marketers an opportunity to reach consumers where they�ll engage most: on their mobile devices. SocialTimes

Twitter Can Tell You When Your Customers Are Happy, Sad, or Hungover -�On Monday, Twitter released the results of its research on the usage of different words and phrases on the platform in 2013, broken down by days of the week and by month. Finding patterns across millions of 140-character posts, the company unearthed some useful information for business owners. Inc.

Twitter Testing Click-To-Call Ad Feature -�Twitter is testing a click-to-call button that would enable mobile users to call advertisers directly. The news was first reported by Digiday. ClickZ confirmed the comments in the story made by Richard Alfonsi, Twitter’s vice president of global online sales, with a source close to the company. The source did not provide any additional details. ClickZ

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Infinite Scroll Search-Friendly Recommendations -�Your site�s news feed or pinboard might use infinite scroll�much to your users� delight! When it comes to delighting Googlebot, however, that can be another story. With infinite scroll, crawlers cannot always emulate manual user behavior–like scrolling or clicking a button to load more items–so they don’t always access all individual items in the feed or gallery. If crawlers can�t access your content, it�s unlikely to surface in search results. Google Webmaster Central Blog

Google Makes It Official: New Search Results Design Goes Live For All -�A day after Google said the new look was still an experiment, it has decided that the experiment was good enough to make for an official change. Now everyone should be getting the new design. Search Engine Land

Study: Which of Twitter�s �Hard Features� Can Drive The Most ReTweets? -�Looking for more retweets? Twitter has released�some data�based on an analysis of millions of tweets sent by verified users in the US. The study looked at tweets that contained Twitter�s �hard features� � photos, #hashtags, links, videos, and tweets containing a number of a digit (such as a sports score) � comparing retweets from that dataset against average retweets from the same collection of accounts (most of which had thousands of followers). Overall, tweets containing photos got the biggest bump � but the results differed by area. Marketing Charts

From our Online Marketing Community:

From our post,�What�s the One Most Important Skill for a Content Marketer?,�Barbara Mckinney said, “I cannot agree more, Lee. Empathy is the most important skill you can practice. It will lead to greater success personally and professionally and will allow you to become happier the more you practice.”

KevinBall added, “With all the emphasis on creating content about trending topics, keyword ranking, social media promotion, repurposing content, branding, etc., it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we’re supposed to be creating content that our prospects, influencers, and customers find useful and interesting. All noise aside, having empathy for the pain points, struggles, and yes, even victories of our customers is the question to which we must always return.”

Chelsei Henderson shared a related article and this though, “Putting this in a marketing perspective, we can become much more productive in our efforts by showing this level of empathy. Putting ourselves in the same place as our audience makes for good marketing. That’s why people who develop products solving a common pain they, too, felt at one point are able to market it so well.�Truly, one of the most important skills for content marketers.”

What were the top online and digital marketing news stories for you this week?

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Top Sliver Companies To Buy For 2014

Top Sliver Companies To Buy For 2014: Brookline Bancorp Inc.(BRKL)

Brookline Bancorp, Inc. operates as the holding company for Brookline Bank, Bank Rhode Island, and The First National Bank of Ipswich, which provide commercial and retail banking services, and cash management and investment services to customers in Central New England. The company accepts various deposit products, including non-interest-bearing checking accounts, interest-bearing NOW accounts, savings accounts and money market savings accounts, certificate of deposit accounts, individual retirement accounts, and other qualified plan accounts. Its loan portfolio comprises first mortgage loans secured by commercial, multi-family, and residential real estate properties; auto loans; loans to business entities consisting of commercial lines of credit; and loans to condominium associations, as well as loans for financing equipment used by small businesses. Brookline Bancorp, Inc. also provides financing for construction and development projects, home equity, and other consumer l oans; and loans to finance coin-operated laundry, dry cleaning, and convenience store equipment and businesses. As of January 25, 2012, it operated 43 branches in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The company was founded in 1871 and is headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By CRWE]

    Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) announced today that it will report third quarter earnings 2012 at the close of business Wednesday, October 24, 2012. Management will host a conference call to review this information at 1:30 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, October 25, 2012.

  • [By Dividends4Life]

    Memberships and Peers: PBCT is a member of the S&P 500 and a member of the Broad Dividend Achievers™ Index. The company's peer group includes: Bank of America Corporation (BAC) with a 0.3% yield, Brookline Bancorp, Inc.! (BRKL) with a 3.7% yield and Westfield Financial Inc. (WFD) with a 3.5% yield.

  • source from Top Stocks Blog:http://www.topstocksblog.com/top-sliver-companies-to-buy-for-2014.html

AdWords Changing Video Advertising Options in April

If you use video as part your AdWords advertising campaigns, you might be interested in Google's recent announcement. Starting April 15, all new video campaigns will have different settings and ad formats. Then starting May 15, all campaigns will be automatically upgraded.

The change will take AdWords "TrueView" video viewing from three formats to two: in-stream and in-display. The change will fold in the former third option, in-search viewing, with in-display. 

AdWords said of the change:

With this upgrade, advertisers can now use the same ad format (in-display) to run across the YouTube Search Network and YouTube Videos Network. The only thing that changes is how you control where your ads show. Before, you told us where to show your ads by using ad formats. Now, you can tell us where you want your ad to run by selecting a network for your campaign."

Google said the new settings include the ability to:

Organize video viewing around how a user interacts with the ad. Choose where ads appear at the campaign level. Deliver more relevant ads on the YouTube search page.

Here's a snapshot of the feature changes that go into effect in April:

And here's what AdWords said is not changing:

Your bids, budget, and historical performance data will not change when your campaigns are upgraded, whether automatically or manually. You will not lose the ability to run ads on the YouTube Search Network, and you will not lose any ads or targeting criteria associated with your existing campaigns.

Starting in April, advertisers can access the "upgrade center" to upgrade "any or all of your existing campaigns to the new functionality."

Yahoo Goes Live With Yelp Local Reviews

Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that Yelp reviews were being integrated into Yahoo search results. This morning Yahoo formally announced the partnership:

Now when you use Yahoo Search to look up a local business in the U.S. on your smartphone, tablet, or PC, you�ll see user reviews, business information, and star ratings from Yelp. We�ve also added a new photo viewing experience to show high-quality photos from Yelp, other partners, and the businesses themselves.

The information is equally available from Yahoo Search and Maps. When you click on “read all �. . . �reviews” or “write a review” (see image below) you’re taken to the Yelp profile or review page for the specific business.�Yelp content is integrated�in a similar way on Bing search results.

Yelp reviews don’t yet appear to be integrated into Yahoo mobile search results. I’m sure that will come shortly.

At one time Yahoo was the local search leader. Few people remember that Yahoo was the first company (after a modest implementation by Verizon’s Superpages) that offered interactive mapping — before Google. Over time Yahoo gave up on the maps arms race.

Now Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is making some encouraging moves to make Yahoo relevant again in search but especially on mobile devices, which means making an investment in improving local and maps content.

The new integration of Yelp reviews and photos, as well as�new enhanced local results�generally, give Yahoo a boost and more utility. However the company is still playing catch-up to Google in most respects.

It will have to move beyond these now “must have” features if it �hopes to restore or regain momentum in local search.

Postscript: I was corrected by Yahoo that the content is now available on mobile. I was apparently just unable to find it in the couple of quick searches I did on the mobile web this morning.

Top Casino Stocks To Buy Right Now

Top Casino Stocks To Buy Right Now: Penn National Gaming Inc.(PENN)

Penn National Gaming, Inc. and its subsidiaries own and manage gaming and pari-mutuel properties in the United States. It operates approximately 27,000 gaming machines; 500 table games; and 2,000 hotel rooms in 23 facilities in 16 jurisdictions, including Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ontario. The company was formerly known as PNRC Corp. and changed its name to Penn National Gaming, Inc. in 1994. Penn National Gaming, Inc. was founded in 1982 and is based in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Patricio Kehoe] the measures taken to balance out revenue in case of headwinds.

    Valuation and Contracts

    One factor that plays in this firm's favor is NASCAR's long-term contracts with major TV networks and radio stations. The most recent deal is set to launch in 2015, and will bind the motorsport brand for 10 years to NBC and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. (FOX), for a total of $8.2 billion (45% annual increase over the current contract). Although a more stable economic scenario may reignite concessionary spending among customers, and cause the motorsport segment to gain popularity again, the non-existent switching costs and alternative leisure choices could be detrimental to this company. Also, ISCA's current $87.9 million cash flow will likely be stagnated by the new Daytona Ring Project, which is expected to cost $400 million over the next five years.

    Furthermore, concerns remain regarding the company's growth metrics, especially given their downward trend. For the fourth quarter in 2013, revenue showed negative growth of 0.5%, a downfall which ISCA has not been able to stall since 2007. Operating margins have also fallen by 9% in the past two ye! ars (currently at 12.8%), in addition to the below average (2.02%) dividend yield of 0.70%. Added to a premium P/E value of 33.00x trailing earnings, compared to the industry average of 22.40x, I feel bearish about this motorsports giant's near-term profitability and see some uncertainty in the long-term future.

    Disclosure: Patricio Kehoe holds no position in any stocks mentioned.

    About the author:Patricio KehoeA fundamental analyst at Lone Tree Analytics
  • [By Lisa Levin]

    Penn National Gaming (NASDAQ: PENN) shares fell 1.71% to reach a new 52-week low of $12.05. Penn National Gaming is expected to report its Q4 results on February 6.

  • source from Top Stocks Blog:http://www.topstocksblog.com/top-casino-stocks-to-buy-right-now-2.html

Matt Cutts Talks Google, Spam & Small Business: Do 'Good Guys' Finish Last in SEO?

When it comes to ranking in Google search, many webmasters in highly competitive markets wonder if it's possible to compete against larger, established sites, especially without using black hat techniques. This is the topic Google's Matt Cutts addressed in the latest webmaster help video.

Matt, Does the good guys still stand a chance? We're a small company that hired an SEO firm that we thought was legit, but destroyed our rankings w/ spam backlinks. We've tried everything but nothing helps. What can a company with good intentions do?
Daniel, Miami, FL

Cutts seemed a bit amused by Daniel referring to himself as a "good guy" after admitting to spamming, despite "good intentions."

"Essentially, you're saying do the good guys had a chance, we spammed, and we got caught, and so we're not ranking. And if you take a step back, if you were to look at it from someone else's perspective, you might consider yourself the good guys but you spammed so the other people might consider you a bad guy," Cutts said. "And so the fact you got caught meant hey, other good guys who didn't spam rank higher. From their perspective things would be going well."

Cutts has a fair point. You can't consider yourself one of the good guys, and take issue with the fact you aren't ranking, when you admit to spamming the search results. And he has issue with webmasters trying to tie the two together because they're two completely separate issues.

"I think the good guys do stand a chance, and we try hard to make sure that the good guys stand a chance," Cutts said. "Given this information, trying to make sure they can get information from webmaster tools, resources, all sorts of free information and things that they can do and lots of the advice.

"But the good guys stand a chance if they don't spam," Cutts said. "So my advice is you might have to go through difficult process of reconsideration request, disavowing links, or whatever it is you need to do, getting links off the web, to clean things up."

He also said Google is doing a really good job separating people who spam from people who don't spam comes to ranking, and advised everyone to avoid "hijinks" and tricks" you'll find on black hat forums.

"Our advice has been the same: great user experience, make sure people link to you because you've got a fantastic site, come up with something compelling," Cutts said. "And the number of people who can push that envelope and get away with it is getting smaller and smaller over time. So I absolutely believe good guys do stand a chance, and small sites and small businesses can stand a chance."

And once again, he stressed the importance of high quality natural links, that link to your great quality content.

"Yes, it can take longer to build those links that are harder to get, but they're more likely to stand the test of time, so I would put a little bit of effort into thinking about how you get those hard links, not just how you get the fast links, the easy links, the spam links," Cutts said.

He ended the video by discussing some things that people should consider when hiring an SEO company. So many sites get penalties because of things an SEO company did to the site to see fast results, such as blog spam or spammy backlinks. And unfortunately, it doesn't matter who is responsible for the spam, a site can be affected whether it was an SEO company that did it or someone in-house to was responsible for the poor SEO decisions.

"Before you sign up with an SEO, ask for references, do some research, ask them to explain exactly what they are going to do," he said. "If they tell you they know me and they have a secret in with the web spam team, you should scream and run away immediately. If they will tell you what they're doing in clear terms that make sense, and it doesn't make you feel a little uneasy, then that is a much better sign."

Unfortunately, until this happens, bad SEO practitioners will continue to get websites kicked out of the search results because site owners don't do due diligence, or they just don't know any better about the type of techniques an SEO is going to be utilizing to help their site rank.

)

Online Marketing News: Twitter Crime, Google Redesign, Facebook Free Fading, Social Media Wave

Facebook Announces News Feed Redesign To Mirror Mobile -�In the coming weeks, Facebook will roll out an update to the News Feed design it introduced last year. More users will be switched from the old News Feed design, with a white background, to a mobile-inspired News Feed with bigger images and a darker background. There is no change to the News Feed algorithm; this is just for aesthetics.�InsideFacebook

Study: Twitter Crime Has Risen 390% Since 2011 -�Crimes linked to Twitter have risen almost four-fold over the past three years, reveals new figures from 25 police forces across the United Kingdom. Since 2011, cases where Twitter has in someway played a role have increased by 390 percent � up from 174 in 2011 to 852 in 2013.�AllTwitter

Millennials Spend 18 Hours A Day Consuming Media � And It�s Mostly Content Created By Peers -�How many hours a day do you spend on Facebook? How about texting friends? Reading magazines? If you’re a millennial, it may be more time than you think. New research by social-influence marketing platform Crowdtap indicates that individuals ages 18 to 36 spend an average of 17.8 hours a day with different types of media. Entrepreneur

Stats: More Than 40% Of Online Adults Are Multi-Device Users -�This comes from a new multi-device study, conducted by Facebook in collaboration with GfK, revealing people�s behavior when it comes to moving across devices (smartphone, tablet and desktop) on a day-to-day basis. Econsultancy

Facebook Launches Public Content Solutions To Help Media Partners With Trend Data -�As more and more people talk about current events on Facebook, developers within the media industry are looking for some way to join the conversation. So to offer companies a solution into the data behind�trending topics�on the social network,�Facebook announced Friday�the launch of Public Content Solutions. InsideFacebook

Facebook Free Reach Drops To 6%, Per Agency Study. 4 Reasons Your Brand Posts Are Fading -�The Facebook news feed is highly coveted real estate with finite space, so something had to give — and it’s brand posts. The social network wants to keep its 757 million daily users active while cranking up its ad business, so brand posts with no spending behind them are getting the squeeze. The posts are less interesting to users and don’t drive any revenue for Facebook, and since late 2012, there has been less and less room for them. AdAge

18-24 Year Olds on Facebook Report An Average Of 649 Friends, Up From 510 Last Year -�Roughly two-thirds of Americans aged 12 and older have a social networking profile, up from 62% last year, according to [pdf] a report from Edison Research and Triton Digital. Facebook remains the most popular site, used by 58% of survey respondents of that age, but was the only platform other than MySpace not to see an increase in penetration year-over-year. Marketing Charts

URL Shortening Giant Bitly Will Provide Click Data to Moz -�Bitly, the Internet�s URL shortening leader, announced today that it will provide data and click-tracking technology to Moz. Moz�s optimization software previously used link data from Twitter to rank web pages� social media relevance but it is turning to Bitly to get a more complete picture of user behavior. Marketing Land

Millennials More Willing Than Boomers to Share Data With Marketers�-�6 in 10 US Millennials claim that they would be willing to share personal information with marketers, while Baby Boomers would be much less likely to do so, according to results from a Mintel study. That gap even extends to those unwilling to share information: at least 30% of Millennials who would not provide private information said they would be swayed by an incentive offer, while only 13% of reluctant Baby Boomers agreed. Marketing Charts

Report: Only 6% Of Buyers Claim Social Media Impacts B2B Buying Process -�According to a recently published B2B Website Usability Report surveying buyers, social media and blogging have little influence on the B2B buying process. Marketing Land

Smartphone Penetration Now Two-Thirds Of US Mobile Market -�Smartphone penetration continues to grow with every passing month, and the latest tally from comScore indicates that during the 3-month average ending in January 2014, some 66.8% of mobile subscribers in the US owned a smartphone. That translates to almost 160 million Americans, and is up from 55% market penetration during the year-earlier period. Marketing Charts

Google Introduces Consumer Ratings Annotations -�Google announced its plans to introduce consumer ratings annotations to Google AdWords in an official company blog post. The search engine giant says consumer rating annotations bring to light industry-specific ratings�such as an airline’s reward program�based on Google Consumer Surveys. Direct Marketing News

Facebook Updates Company Pages Design and Introduces �Pages to Watch� -�One of the most annoying things about working with Facebook Company Pages is that each type of post appeared different when viewed on your Page versus in the News Feed. Because of the way it was all laid out, you were never sure that your posts would look great across the platform. HubSpot

Google: Keep URL Length Shorter Than 2000 Characters -�SEOs obsess about the smallest things, even how long is too long for a URL. A Google Webmaster Help thread has SEOs and webmasters asking how long can they go for a URL. Google actually answered the question. Search Engine Roundtable

61% Of Brands Using Influencer Marketing Have Trouble Identifying The Right Influencers -�According to a recent study from Augure, a reputation management software, the biggest problems marketers have are identifying the right influencers, engaging with them and quantifying the influence. Celebrity doesn�t always equate to influence anymore. In fact, less than 25 percent of those surveyed consider a well-known celebrity an influencer. SocialTimes

LinkedIn Announces Sponsored InMail For Mobile -�LinkedIn announced yesterday that it was expanding its mobile advertising platform to include Sponsored InMail. According to the blog post, the goal is to give marketers an opportunity to reach consumers where they�ll engage most: on their mobile devices. SocialTimes

Twitter Can Tell You When Your Customers Are Happy, Sad, or Hungover -�On Monday, Twitter released the results of its research on the usage of different words and phrases on the platform in 2013, broken down by days of the week and by month. Finding patterns across millions of 140-character posts, the company unearthed some useful information for business owners. Inc.

Twitter Testing Click-To-Call Ad Feature -�Twitter is testing a click-to-call button that would enable mobile users to call advertisers directly. The news was first reported by Digiday. ClickZ confirmed the comments in the story made by Richard Alfonsi, Twitter’s vice president of global online sales, with a source close to the company. The source did not provide any additional details. ClickZ

Google Webmaster Tools Adds Infinite Scroll Search-Friendly Recommendations -�Your site�s news feed or pinboard might use infinite scroll�much to your users� delight! When it comes to delighting Googlebot, however, that can be another story. With infinite scroll, crawlers cannot always emulate manual user behavior–like scrolling or clicking a button to load more items–so they don’t always access all individual items in the feed or gallery. If crawlers can�t access your content, it�s unlikely to surface in search results. Google Webmaster Central Blog

Google Makes It Official: New Search Results Design Goes Live For All -�A day after Google said the new look was still an experiment, it has decided that the experiment was good enough to make for an official change. Now everyone should be getting the new design. Search Engine Land

Study: Which of Twitter�s �Hard Features� Can Drive The Most ReTweets? -�Looking for more retweets? Twitter has released�some data�based on an analysis of millions of tweets sent by verified users in the US. The study looked at tweets that contained Twitter�s �hard features� � photos, #hashtags, links, videos, and tweets containing a number of a digit (such as a sports score) � comparing retweets from that dataset against average retweets from the same collection of accounts (most of which had thousands of followers). Overall, tweets containing photos got the biggest bump � but the results differed by area. Marketing Charts

From our Online Marketing Community:

From our post,�What�s the One Most Important Skill for a Content Marketer?,�Barbara Mckinney said, “I cannot agree more, Lee. Empathy is the most important skill you can practice. It will lead to greater success personally and professionally and will allow you to become happier the more you practice.”

KevinBall added, “With all the emphasis on creating content about trending topics, keyword ranking, social media promotion, repurposing content, branding, etc., it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we’re supposed to be creating content that our prospects, influencers, and customers find useful and interesting. All noise aside, having empathy for the pain points, struggles, and yes, even victories of our customers is the question to which we must always return.”

Chelsei Henderson shared a related article and this though, “Putting this in a marketing perspective, we can become much more productive in our efforts by showing this level of empathy. Putting ourselves in the same place as our audience makes for good marketing. That’s why people who develop products solving a common pain they, too, felt at one point are able to market it so well.�Truly, one of the most important skills for content marketers.”

What were the top online and digital marketing news stories for you this week?

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Google Reviewing “Not Provided,” Withholding Keywords From Organic But Not Paid Search Clicks

When Google moved to secure search in October 2011, it was a blow to publishers, who began losing data about the search terms used to reach their sites. It also opened Google up to claims of hypocrisy, in that advertisers continued to receive the terms. Now, Google says it’s reexamining the issue and seeking a better solution.

Will clicks on non-paid listings go back to passing along search term data again? Will ad clicks have that withheld? Google didn’t say either way, and there could be other possibilities, as well.

Google Looking For Solution

The news came out of a keynote conversation with Google search chief Amit Singhal yesterday at our SMX West conference. I raised the issue of “not provided,” as it’s known as a short-hand term search marketers and many publishers in general.

I wasn’t really expecting much of an answer — in fact, I’ve written so much about the topic, with relatively little response from Google about the perceived inequities and hypocrisy, that I’ve felt like a broken record. I certainly got surprised. Singhal said:

Over a period of time, we [Google's search and ad sides] have been looking at this issue…. we’re also hearing from our users that they would want their searches to be secure … it’s really important to the users. We really like the way things have gone on the organic side of search.

I have nothing to announce right now, but in the coming weeks and months as [we] find the right solution, expect something to come out.

Here’s the complete segment. Note that references to “Sridhar” are about Sridhar Ramaswamy, who oversees Google’s ads.

)

Paid Clicks To Lose Terms? Organic Clicks To Get Them Back?

Google’s looking for a solution?” What’s that mean! After the talk, I saw people tweeting speculation that paid clicks might get terms withheld:

@mattcutts @larrykim – don’t start messing with your paid terms now ;)

� Benjamin Spiegel (@nxfxcom) March 12, 2014

Or that organic clicks might get search terms back:

@5le holy crap, if we get keywords back i’m gonna die… � Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) March 12, 2014

 

Pondering The Possibilities

Which way will it go? Google won’t say, and it could even be that it might go another way. Let’s look at the possibilities, then do some educated guessing. I see it as perhaps up to five things:

Google decides to make no changeClicks may pass only to sites that run secure serversGoogle makes all organic click data available through Google Webmaster ToolsOrganic clicks have terms restoredPaid clicks have terms withheld

The first is easiest — Google might do a review of everything and decide, in the end, it’s happy with how things are going. I think that’s unlikely, but it is possible.

Clicks For Secure Servers?

Another solution would be that Google could restore search term data to publishers who run secure sites. Before Google’s change, when someone clicked on a listing at Google, information about the search term they used to find that listing passed “in the clear” and across the web to the publisher. The publisher would know exactly how they were located.

After Google’s change, terms on unpaid or “organic” listings were withheld. The chief reason for this was that Google seemed to worry that sending a stream of terms in the clear could cause someone to “eavesdrop” on a string of searches someone was doing, which could build a revealing profile about them.

Google continued to send terms in the clear for ad click and never really gave a reasonable explanation why. It also continued to allow actual search terms to be obtained by publishers, for up to 90 days, through its Google Webmaster Tools area.

To me, all this indicated that Google didn’t view individual searches on their own being exposed as much of a privacy issue. So securing ad clicks wasn’t so pressing, since relatively few people click on ads. It’s hard to get a profile just off that data (though over time, even that could be revealing). The Questions Google Refuses To Answer About Search Privacy�is my story from last year that explores all this more.

But if the goal really was to prevent eavesdropping, then providing search term data only to sites that run secure servers is a great solution. It would restore the data flow to publishers, yet a third-party couldn’t easily eavesdrop on the stream of searches from a particular person. It would also have the side benefit of making the entire web more secure.

Another story I wrote last year explains all this more:�How Google could have made the Web secure and failed — again. Maybe that’s a solution Google will go to, as it’s doing this review.

Make All Organic Terms Available In Webmaster Tools?

As mentioned, Google does allow publishers to see how people have reached their sites though its Google Webmaster Tools system. The problem is, that system shows a limited amount of data. You only get the top 2,000 terms (which is a lot, actually) and back for 90 days (which is a real problem, because historic trend data is lost).

Last September, Google announced that it would extend query data in Google Webmaster Tools from 90 days to one year. Since then, we’ve been waiting. This could be another solution — that Google finally delivers on its promise and perhaps goes even better, and makes all search term data it has available for any site available with no limitations.

Organic Terms Passed Via Clicks Again?

Google could also go back to the old system, where a click on an unpaid link once again transmits the search term in the clear to publishers. Personally, I think this is unlikely.

Go back to what Singhal said — Google users find it important to have their searches secure, and that likes how things have gone with the withholding of organic clicks. That doesn’t seem to indicate going back to the old system is likely.

A tweet from the head of Google’s web spam team Matt Cutts yesterday also seems to support this:

@5le Note that Amit said we’re happy with securing searches on organic, but we hear the feedback regarding ads and how that is perceived.

� Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) March 12, 2014Paid Search Terms To Be Withheld

That leaves the last possibility — that clicks on paid links will have terms withheld, just like their unpaid counterparts.

That’s move that would help solve the hypocrisy problem, that Google’s fine with making searches secure except where it might impact its bottom line, something that’s been an issue since this all began. See also:

Google Puts A Price On PrivacyGoogle Puts A Price On Privacy � AgainPost-PRISM, Google Confirms Quietly Moving To Make All Searches Secure, Except For Ad Clicks

It also seems the most likely, again going off what Singhal said, that there are discussions with the ad side. There’s no reason to have discussions with the ad side unless you’re pondering a change that’s going to impact the ad clicks. Nor was that the only mention of talking with the ad side, as you can hear in the entire segment from the show.

Whether this indeed will happen remains to be seen. If it does happen, it’s super important to note that advertisers would continue to get search terms in the other way they always have, through the AdWords system itself. They wouldn’t go “blind,” though not receiving terms directly to their sites would pose challenges for them in other ways.

Google said to expect something in “weeks to months,” so stay tuned. Also, I’m still at our show and writing this fairly quickly during a break, so please forgive any typos. I’ll catch back up to correct any that may have slipped through.

Google Makes It Official: New Search Results Design Goes Live For All

A day after Google said the new look was still an experiment, it has decided that the experiment was good enough to make for an official change. Now everyone should be getting the new design.

Jon Wiley, Google’s lead design for Google Search, said on Google+, “you may have noticed that Google Search on desktop looks a little different today.” Jon is talking about Google rolling out the new design to desktop searchers.

The new design, as Jon describes it has a larger titles, the underlines were removed, and Google “evened out all the line heights.” Jon said this “improves readability and creates an overall cleaner look.”

On the ad side, Google migrated over the “new ad labels from mobile, making the multi-device experience more consistent.” Google is trying to make the mobile and desktop experience unified. Jon explained:

Improving consistency in design across platforms makes it easier for people to use Google Search across devices and it makes it easier for us to develop and ship improvements across the board.

With any change in Google’s design and layout, you hear complaints. I’d expect to hear a lot around these changes.

Here is the design comparison; the left is the new design and the right is the old design (you can click to enlarge):

For more Google experiments on their design, see our Google user interface category.

Best Tech Stocks To Invest In 2014

Best Tech Stocks To Invest In 2014: Computer Sciences Corporation(CSC)

Computer Sciences Corporation provides information technology (IT) and professional services to governments and commercial enterprises. The company?s IT outsourcing services comprise operating customer?s technology infrastructure, including systems analysis, applications development, network operations, desktop computing, and data center management services; business process outsourcing; managing transactional business functions for clients, such as procurement and supply chain, call centers and customer relationship management, credit services, claims processing and logistics. It also offers cloud computing and cyber security protection services. In addition, the company provides range of services in the areas of infrastructure as a service, software as a service (SaaS), business process as a service, platform as a service, and other technologies. Further, its IT and professional services consist of systems integration, including designing, developing, implementing, and i ntegrating information systems; and management consulting, technology consulting, and other professional services, consist of advising clients on the strategic acquisition and utilization of IT and on business strategy, security, modeling, simulation, engineering, operations, change management, and business process reengineering. Additionally, the company licenses software systems, including SaaS offerings for the financial services and other industry-specific markets; and provides a range of end-to-end business solutions. It has its operations primarily in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The company was founded in 1959 and is based in Falls Church, Virginia.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Tom Taulli]

    Innovation: Innovation is a major priority at AT&T. And so far, it looks like the company is making savvy moves, particularly wi! th its push into the cloud. To this end, AT&T has rolled out NetBond, which involves alliances with top providers like IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), CSC (CSC) and Equinix (EQIX). But perhaps the most interesting growth initiative is Digital Life, which allows customers to use their smartphones as remote control devices with homes and cars. All in all, the opportunity could be huge, adding another nice revenue stream — AT&T already has agreements with companies like GM (GM), Ford (F), Nissan, Audi, BMW and Tesla (TSLA)

  • [By Jonas Elmerraji]

    $7.6 billion IT services firm Computer Sciences (CSC) has been doing some consolidating of its own for the last few months. Shares have been stuck trading between resistance at $54 a share and support down at $50 a share since mid-July. But despite its sideways bent, there's a trade to be made in CSC right now.

    Right now, CSC is forming a rectangle pattern, a consolidation setup that's formed by a pair of horizontal resistance and support level at those $54 and $50 price levels. The rectangle pattern gets its name because it basically "boxes in" shares between those two levels. The signal to watch is the break outside of that box. Support at $50 has some extra strength because it's a level that was previously a ceiling for shares back in March and again in May. That's not uncommon for a round number like $50, but it makes an upside breakout a lot more likely from here.

    Momentum, measured by 14-day RSI, has moved into neutral mode in the last week, clearing the way for upside without the risk of shares becoming overbought. If shares of CSC can hold a bid above $54, it's time to buy.

  • [By Reuters]

    Carlos Osorio/APFord CEO Alan Mulally NEW YORK -- Microsoft has narrowed its list of external candidates to replace Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer to about five people, including Ford Motor chief Alan Mulally and former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, according to sources familiar with the matter. Th! e world's! largest software maker also has at least three internal candidates on its shortlist, including former Skype CEO Tony Bates, who is now responsible for Microsoft's business development, and Satya Nadella, the company's cloud and enterprise chief, the sources said. Despite the narrower list -- the company started with about 40 names -- the process could take a few more months, the sources said. In August, Ballmer said he would retire within 12 months. The names of other candidates couldn't be learned, but the search committee is interviewing executives from a wide range of sectors, including life sciences and consumer, the sources said. Microsoft (MSFT) declined to comment on the process and on behalf of the internal candidates. A Nokia (NOK) representatives couldn't be reached immediately for comment late Tuesday. Ford (F) spokesman Jay Cooney said: "There is no change from what we announced last November. Alan remains fully focused on continuing to make progress on our One Ford plan. We do not engage in speculation." Investors have pushed Microsoft's board in recent months to look for a turnaround expert, such as Mulally or Computer Sciences (CSC) CEO Mike Lawrie, to succeed Ballmer. Some investors have also suggested to the board that co-founder Bill Gates should step down from his role as chairman, saying he stands in the way of radical reform at Microsoft. Microsoft remains highly profitable and last month beat Wall Street's quarterly profit and revenue forecasts. But it has lost ground to Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) in mobile computing. Ballmer has focused on making devices, such as the Surface tablet and Xbox gaming console, and turning k

  • source from Top Stocks Blog:http://www.topstocksblog.com/best-tech-stocks-to-invest-in-2014.html

Top 10 Media Stocks For 2014

Top 10 Media Stocks For 2014: Gannett Co. Inc. (GCI)

Gannett Co., Inc. operates as a media and marketing solutions company in the United States and internationally. Its Publishing segment publishes 83 U.S. daily newspapers with affiliated online sites, including USA TODAY, a national, general-interest daily newspaper; USATODAY.com; USA WEEKEND, a magazine supplement for newspapers; Clipper Magazine, a direct mail advertising magazine; bi-weekly Nursing Spectrum and NurseWeek periodicals; and military and defense newspapers. This segment also includes 17 paid-for daily newspapers; approximately 200 weekly newspapers, magazines, and trade publications; and approximately 600 non-daily publications, as well as involves in commercial printing, newswire, marketing, and data services operations. The company?s Digital segment owns and operates CareerBuilder, an employment Web site, which offers online recruitment and career advancement services for employers, employees, recruiters, and job seekers; ShopLocal, which provides multicha nnel shopping and advertising services; Planet Discover, which offers hosted search and advertising services; PointRoll, which provides digital marketing services and technology; and Schedule Star, which offers scheduling solution for high school athletic departments. Its Broadcasting segment operates 23 television stations and affiliated Web sites, which produce local programming, such as news, sports, and entertainment programming. This segment also includes Captivate Network, a national news and entertainment network that delivers programming and full-motion video advertising on video screens located in elevators of office towers and select hotel lobbies in North America. The company has strategic business relationships with online affiliates, including Classified Ventures, ShopLocal.com, Topix, and Metromix LLC, as well as strategic marketing agreement with Microsoft. Gannett Co., Inc. was ! founded in 1906 and is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By Mike Deane]

    Early on Monday morning, Gannett (GCI) had its price target raised to $35 from $34 at FBR Capital. The ratings company also affirmed that Gannett is a “Top Pick.” 

    Gannett, a publishing and broadcasting company that operates in the U.S. and the U.K., currently has a price of $29.76, and FBR’s new target suggests an 18% upside.

    FBR analyst William Bird had the following comments about GCI’s PT raise: “Based on our analysis, we estimate that Gannett’s spectrum is worth approximately $2.2 billion, or $9 per share, roughly doubling in value from the acquisition of BLC (i.e., pre-deal valuation of ~$1.1 billion). Separately, we are lowering our 2014 EPS estimate by $0.07 to reflect the previously announced sale of three stations to MDP (note: an expected midyear close means that the stations will not be in operating results from January 1, but the proceeds will not be received until midyear). We are increasing our price target to $35 from $34 to reflect shareholder accretion from the sale. We like Gannett’s improving business mix, growth profile, and ability to drive growth with its own propeller through higher retrans, synergies, and potential TV acquisitions.”

    Gannett stock was inactive in pre-market trading. So far this year, the company’s stock is up 0.61%.

  • [By Douglas A. McIntyre]

    Traditional media sites did unusually well, given that they are not the core products of their parent companies. Broadcaster CBS (NYSE: CBS) was in 9th place at 80.9 million unique visitors in November. Comcast NBCUniversal was 14th place with 64.4 million. Gannett (NASDAQ: GCI) sites were 16th at 57 million. Viacom had 54.3 million, and ESPN 38.7 million.

  • [By Monica Gerson]

    Gannett Co (NYSE: GCI) is expected to report its Q3 earnings at $0.41 per share on revenue of $1.27 b! illion.

    VMware (NYSE: VMW) is projected to report its Q3 earnings at $0.82 per share on revenue of $1.29 billion.

  • [By Laura Brodbeck]

    Earnings reports expected on Monday include:

    Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) is expected to report third quarter EPS of $0.48 on revenue of $1.10 billion, compared to last year's EPS of $0.13 on revenue of $905.09 million. Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) is expected to report third quarter EPS of $1.19 on revenue of $2.07 billion, compared to last year's EPS of $1.21. W.R. Berkley Corporation (NYSE: WRB) is expected to report third quarter EPS of $0.71 on revenue of $1.57 billion, compared to last year's EPS of $0.61 on revenue of $1.42 billion. Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) is expected to report third quarter EPS of $0.44 on revenue of $1.27 billion, compared to last year's EPS of $0.56 on revenue of $1.31 billion.

    Economics

  • source from Top Stocks Blog:http://www.topstocksblog.com/top-10-media-stocks-for-2014.html

Video Helps Persuade 73% of People to Buy a Product or Service [Survey]

This morning, Animoto reported new survey results that show video has a positive impact on purchase decisions and drives brand engagement. The new Animoto Online and Mobile Video Study surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers and revealed that nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of respondents are more likely to purchase a product or service if they can watch a video explaining it beforehand.

The company also published its key findings in an infographic, which you can view below.

"The business benefits of using video to increase discovery, traffic, engagement and conversion are widely documented, but we were curious about whether consumers actually find business videos helpful," said Brad Jefferson, CEO of Animoto. "The data shows that there's a real power in business videos to help people make confident shopping decisions. Further, consumers develop a more positive impression of companies that use video and even find such companies to be more trustworthy. Businesses that don't embrace video are overlooking a valuable way to reach their customers and will struggle to keep up with the competition."

Videos Play a Pivotal Role in Decision-Making During All Stages of the Customer Experience

Nearly all the respondents (96 percent) find videos helpful when making purchase decisions online – creating a significant opportunity for small businesses to capitalize by offering more video. The findings also show that videos hold tremendous value for driving brand awareness throughout the purchase process as well as post-purchase engagement:

93 percent of respondents find video helpful in comparison shopping.87 percent of respondents find video helpful for researching additional items from the same brand.93 percent of respondents find video helpful for instructions post-purchase.Video Drives Brand Engagement, Leaves Consumers With Positive Impression

According to the study, video helps businesses connect with their customers and leaves consumers with a positive impression of their brand:

71 percent of respondents agree that watching video content produced by businesses leaves them with a positive impression of a brand/service/company.Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of respondents find it helpful to watch videos to learn more about the company they will purchase from.58 percent of respondents consider companies that produce video content to be more trustworthy.Consumers Speak Out About Video Preferences

Longer videos aren't necessarily more effective, with 83 percent of respondents citing the ideal length of a video to inform a purchase decision is five minutes or less.

Respondents also had interesting views on what types of video they would like to see more. From a tour of a restaurant's ocean view to an interview with a conference speaker, people want to watch more video across industries, products, and services:

42 percent of all respondents would like to see more product description or service demonstration videos, such as a 360 view of a product, how to play a game, or use a phone.People would like to see more video content about electronics (57 percent), restaurants (39 percent), travel (34 percent), and exercise/fitness (33 percent).

Interview With Brad Jefferson, CEO of Animoto

Search Engine Watch (SEW) interviewed Brad Jefferson (BJ), the CEO of Animoto. Our questions and his answers appear below:

SEW: What's the biggest surprise that you saw in the Animoto Online and Mobile Video Study?

BJ: We knew that businesses benefit tremendously from using videos to drive traffic, increase conversations and encourage customer loyalty, but after taking a look at the findings from the survey we were most surprised that consumers benefit as well and truly rely on videos to make purchase decisions. In fact, 73 percent of all consumers are more likely to purchase after watching videos explaining a product or service.

This is a huge percentage and a wakeup call for businesses that have yet to embrace video. It's a valuable way to reach their customers and they're behind the competition if they don't incorporate video into their marketing strategy.

SEW: Did you survey a representative sample of U.S. adult consumers?

BJ: Yes, the survey was administered to 1,014 U.S. respondents, aged 18 - 65 or older with an even distribution. 53 percent of respondents were male, 47 percent were female, with the majority of respondents having earned a high school degree or higher.

You'll notice that we included responses from 18- to 24-year-olds and smartphone specifically in the infographic. We found interesting results on usage stats when juxtaposing those specific segments against the greater population.

SEW: Why do you think video helps businesses connect with their customers and leaves consumers with a positive impression of their brand?

BJ: Video really helps to bring products or services to life in ways that stagnant images and text simply cannot. Company overview videos or testimonial videos also help to make companies appear more personable and help to build a more personal relationship between business and customer.

In fact, 58 percent of consumers consider companies that produce video to be more trustworthy, 71 percent of respondents said that videos leave them with a positive impression of a company, and 77 percent of all consumers consider companies that create online videos as more engaged with customers,

Beyond this, video helps businesses stay connected to their customers throughout the entire purchase process. In fact, we found that almost all respondents (93 percent) find video helpful post-purchase for instructional use and 87 percent find video helpful post-purchase for additional items from the same brand.

SEW:: What is the ideal length of a video to inform a purchase decision?

BJ: Overall, 83 percent of consumers find that video shorter than five minutes is most effective when researching or shopping online. This is great feedback for small businesses that often shy away from producing video because they're worried they don't have the resources or expertise to make lengthy, professional-quality videos. They can leverage assets they already have and use a tool like Animoto to make high-quality videos without breaking the bank.

SEW:: What types of video do people want to watch more video across industries, products and services?

BJ: The study found that almost half (42 percent) of consumers seek more product description or service demonstration videos - they want 360 degree views of a product, instructions on how to play a game or use a phone, for example. More than half of respondents (57 percent) wanted more videos for electronics, 39 percent wanted video about restaurants, 34 percent wanted video about travel and 33 percent wanted video about exercise or fitness.

It's clear that businesses that work with very visual products or services have a lot to gain here. Video as a storytelling medium and as an instructional method for consumers will soon grow to be the norm. Businesses that use video will be able to reap the benefits and gain consumers' loyalty and trust sooner.

SEW: How does Animoto make it easy for businesses to create effective, professional videos within minutes with no video editing experience?

BJ: With Animoto, companies can create professional-quality videos by importing their existing photos and video clips, selecting a video "style" and background music and adding text. Animoto has an extensive catalogue of commercially licensed music to choose from.

Companies can also choose to add their logo and a call-to-action button at the end of the video, directing viewers to a website. Then, Animoto's technology does the editing work and in minutes your video is ready to place on your website and share via email, Facebook, Twitter or a link.

12 Types of Evergreen Content That Attract Valuable Links

Evergreen content is a valuable resource for your website. The term "evergreen content" refers to content that won't quickly become out of date or totally incorrect within a short time period, such as a week or a month. You add updates as needed, linking back to it from new related content, and socialize with each change or whenever the topic again becomes timely.

For example, a piece of content on why we should boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics wouldn't be good socializable material in June 2014. But a post about the history of the Olympics could be great evergreen content.

How could such a page be socialized? Well, when the next Olympic location is announced, your new post could mention notable facts from your evergreen piece about the towns where previous games were held, or a celebrity interview with an Olympian discussing an aspect of Olympics history for his particular sport.

Let's look at 12 types of evergreen content and see an example of each.

1. Yearly Posts That Can be Updated

I always want to use this as an example because Rae Hoffman does it so perfectly. Her yearly series "Link Building With The Experts" started in 2007 and there have been five more installments. She's added new people and asks new questions that are relevant to the current climate of the industry, and the last one, not yet a year old, already has a PageRank of 4. Look at how it's all linked together:

Since there are so many of these, I won't go into the links they've generated as a whole, but the last one has 34 comments as of this writing. After the post published, it was being socialized all over the place.

I look forward to this series because it's an honor to participate in it but most importantly, it's a great glimpse into the minds of people who also do what I do. The questions are great, the panelists all have serious chops, and it's something I bookmark and return to multiple times. I can't immediately think of any other SEO piece where that's true for me.

To give you a non-SEO example, look at the Best Books by Goodreads. They link to previous years over on the right, and since I don't imagine anyone's going to stop publishing books any time soon, the potential for this list to be going on for decades is there. Who's going to link to this list? Authors whose books are on it, bloggers who are fanatical readers, anyone who covers literature. Nearly 2 million votes have been cast for this list, so what does that say about their reach? It's big.

2. Posts That Track Something

Macbook Pro noise complaints are tracked on Red Sweater, linking to only their posts.

This is a great example because, instead of having to search the site, you can see all the relevant issues listed and linked to here. They also provide updates of listed issues.

As much as I love a Mac, I can't imagine a day when they don't have problems, like anything else, so that's fodder for this site for as long as there are Macs out there.

3. Interviews

You can interview anyone about anything, which is why interviews are something that I truly love. The key is to find something that hasn't been asked a billion times before, as you'll see in this interview between Madonna and Mike Myers from very, very long ago.

While this interview was published way before we were tweeting everything that mentioned us, it's obvious that the potential for social love is high with interviews. The person conducting the interview wants to get the word out, and the person being interviewed does, too.

4. How-to Posts

I love how-to posts. Recently I found a great tutorial about creating a necklace holder out of a towel bar and shower curtain rings. This is actually two guides (one on making a salad portable and one on the necklace holder).

People will always need jewelry storage so this post has the potential to be referenced for ages. Also, the Pinterest potential is crazy since you could just look at the photos and tell how to make this.

Now, you'll find how-to posts on just about everything so if you do write one on how to do something and that same something has been written about all over the place, figure out how to make yours stand out. Include a video or images, include links to other relevant articles, include variations on the steps, etc.

5. Posts About the History of Something

Historical articles are good because they're educational and have the potential to be updated if/when new information comes out. For example, here's a post about the history of the Christmas pickle.

While I'm not holding my breath for new information to be released about the Christmas pickle, there could easily be a new movie out in which someone gives one to another person and it's a pivotal scene, so there's the possibility of adding a video of that scene to the post. Far-fetched maybe, but hey, it's s Christmas pickle!

6. About Us Pages

You can find "about us" on most websites.  I tend to visit them if I haven't seen a site before.

Many times they'll have good TBPR (Toolbar PageRank) as well, and good backlinks from bios on other sites. A page like this can also be updated as things change, so if your site doesn't have one, this is an easy way to get some evergreen content up on it.

Here's an example of a great about us page that I found when I was searching for (you guessed it) "great about us pages." I've seen a lot of good ones, some great ones, and some really bad ones so take a look at this one:

It's funny. It shows the skills of the person in question by its design. It's exactly the kind of page that, were I shopping for a web designer, would sell me immediately on the person.

7. User Tips

This post about 10 tips and tricks for new iPhone and iPad users is the kind of thing that I'd send my mother if she got an iPhone or iPad. It's easy to follow and has photos.

As there's more info about new tips that come into the author's mind, it can be updated in the form of a new article like "10 More Tips and Tricks..."

8. Testimonials

While a testimonial might change if you mess something up and the person who gave it suddenly despises you, let's proceed with the assumption that once you've been given a great one, it can stand for ages.

For example, this page is a TBPR 4, which is pretty high for a testimonials page. These are great because as you continue to gain satisfied customers, you can add to this content.

9. Reviews

Reviews are similar to testimonials, except obviously you wouldn't want to post anything negative as a testimonial. While you shouldn't post a totally negative review on your own site, seeing something that isn't 100 percent glowing might look more natural to site visitors.

Reviews are also more detail-oriented and have more information about services and products. Here's one for Doc Martens.

Reviews are incredibly useful for something that you're buying online especially, but I will look up reviews of something that I find in a store, too. User-generated content is something that's appreciated because it's not you, the business owner, writing it.

10. Curation Posts

A lot of sites do a brilliant job of curating content, but I'll use the last one that I visited as an example: Ahref's weekly SEO roundup.

I like curated posts in general because I almost always find something interesting that I missed. I like this one in particular because it's not just full of links to articles about link building (my specific area of interest) as I tend to read more about that than anything, so I always like to read about other aspects of SEO.

A lot of sites do daily and weekly posts like this, but some only do monthly, and some just do them when they can. These posts can easily be crosslinked.

11. Personal Biographies

A great example is the writer Neil Gaiman's bio on his website. It's full of info, yet not ridiculously over the top.

I'm sure you've seen some personal bios that go on for pages and pages, and some that barely give you any info at all. I like this one because it's the perfect amount of info.

12. Resources

One example of a great resource page is this one for kids' gardening. I like it because there's a monthly featured resource, there are categories of resources that you can drill down into, and it's all searchable!

Summary

So when you're struggling to figure out what to write about, consider something evergreen. No one is going to churn out 100 evergreen posts a week, nor should they, but it's good to recognize the power of content that isn't outdated within a few days. People like it. They like sharing it, and that increases the odds that you'll attract links.

Live Blog: Head Of Google Search Amit Singhal Keynote At SMX West 2014

Good evening/afternoon (or early morning for our European readers!) from sunny San Jose, Calif., where day one of our SMX West conference is almost finished. We’re wrapping up the Marketing Land Digital Marketing Summit with a keynote conversation between Google’s Amit Singhal and Danny Sullivan, founding editor of both Marketing Land and Search Engine Land.

Singhal has overseen Google’s search engine ranking algorithms since 2000. From the Knowledge Graph, to Google Voice Search, to Google’s new “Hummingbird” algorithm update, no one has better insight into Google’s many methods of trying to make sense of the world’s information than Singhal.

We’re due to begin at about 5:00 pm PT, so stay tuned for our live blog coverage of today’s keynote Q&A.

Okay, a little bit late but we are now getting underway. Matt Cutts hops on stage to bring Danny a t-shirt that says “I heart great content” and then he takes a selfie with Danny and Amit.

Now Google is showing a video detailing some recent Google search products and features. As the Q&A starts, I’ll refer to Amit as AS and Danny as DS.

DS: Let’s talk about Hummingbird. It’s like you took a car engine apart and then re-assembled it but you brought in new technologies. Talk about what’s gone in to Hummingbird.

AS: Hummingbird is a complete rewrite of our search system. The last time we did that was shortly after I arrived at Google in 2000. Over the last decade, numerous new technologies have been built — like Knowledge Graph.

To serve the future, you have to change everything — you have to question every belief you had. One of the old beliefs we had was that people would type two-word queries and you have to give them 10 blue links. Google moved away from that years ago, but the mobile revolution forced us to change how we think.

Hummingbird is about understanding natural language queries, long queries. It’s a ground-up rethinking of how people search in the future. Hummingbird is the foundation that we can build our search on for the future.

DS: Follow-up about Hummingbird.

AS: Hummingbird was like designing our foundation again so you can build a skyscraper on top of it, rather than just adding one extra floor to the top.

DS: Is Google understanding each word as an entity or a concept? If you see “Obama” on a page do you know it refers to the president?

AS: That’s been a huge advance in recent years. With the Knowledge Graph, we started understanding things, not just strings. We built KG to understand documents and things better.

DS: Google was built on an analysis of links. Seems like the rules are more complicated now about what gets counted. Do links still work as a ranking signal?

AS: Links are clearly an important signal about the importance of your content. They’re still very valuable. At the end of the day, we take a holistic look at the value of your site. We’re looking to build algorithms that give users what they want.

DS: Let’s talk about social signals. You’re not using any social signals from Twitter or Facebook, right? If something gets a lot of tweets, it doesn’t matter?

AS: That’s right, we’re not using those right now. We don’t have access to the Twitter data, so you can imagine how hard it would be to build a system that relies on those signals.

DS: You do have access to Google+, but you’re not using that for impacting the unpersonalized results?

AS: Right. We think about it from a user’s perspective. They’re looking for high quality content generated by reputed people. We have the authorship program that allows that to happen. They’re also looking for content from people they know, and we have the personalized results for that.

DS: Why don’t you use more signals from Google+?

AS: We have found that use of social signals in personalized mode is far more positive than using in non-personal results?

DS: Are there other things you would look at to determine a page’s relevance?

AS: (points at Danny) What do you find valuable as a user. We look at it as a human problem. What is relevance? What is high quality? And you figure out what signals produce relevant and high-quality signals.

DS: On authorship, there is no author rank, but could that become a signal?

AS: Possibly it could.

DS: Last time we talked, Knowledge Graph had just launched. How’s that going?

AS: It’s been great. When you have the Knowledge Graph, we are able to answer users’ questions. The answers give people what they want in the circumstance that they need it. KG has been a great addition to our user’s experience.

DS: Are we gonna get to a point where every search gives a direct answer?

AS: If you look at a search engine, the best analogy is that it’s an amazing Swiss Army Knife. It’s great, but sometimes you need to open a wine bottle. Some genius added that to the knife. That’s awesome. That’s how we think of the Knowledge Graph. Sometimes you only need an answer.

The world has gone mobile. In a mobile world, there are times when you cannot read 20 pages, but you need something — an extra tool on your Swiss Army Knife. When you build a better tool, you use it more.

DS: Asks about the Dan Barker tweet and Google scraping content, and how it has 35,000+ tweets. Danny asks how you get the balance right in terms of using other’s content.

AS: It’s a great question and we think about it all the time. We built Google to fulfill user’s needs. Somewhere along the way, people started debating if web traffic is more than users. But keep in mind that we need to keep our user’s trust. We’re part of an open web system. If we lose our user’s trust, the open web would lose its strongest ally (sorry readers, I’m paraphrasing here). If people stop trusting us, then a sinking tide sinks us all.

DS: What about publishers, though?

AS: We deeply care about this. I’ve been in this field for 20 years. The relationship between publishers, Google and users is all one of mutual benefit. We work hard at getting that balance right. You guys (the audience) have been great contributors to the web. The world is changing, and SEO is all about change. Users dictate how the world changes. We are changing so that our users get a lovely product, and publishers get access to our users. (paraphrase again)

(I missed a question/answer here.)

DS: How is search handled within Google? Search doesn’t seem to have a single home — it’s tied into Android and Google+ and Maps. Who’s the boss of search?

AS: As with any real company, you have to collaborate across lines to make beautiful products. Google Now is a strong collaboration between Android and Search, along with voice recognition.

DS: Google has been good with church/state divide between search and ads. But your shopping search engine got turned into paid ads. There are ads in Knowledge Graph? How do those discussions happen about layout and such?

AS: There is a separation between ads and search. You cannot pay Google to improve your rankings in organic search.

The second principle we feel strongly about is labeling, so you “sponsored” and other labels when there’s a paid relationship.

The only way this works is if the head of ads and I get together in a room with our design leads and we decide how we go forward.

DS: Asks about latest SERP display experiment.

AS: We are always testing things. We need to experiment to improve the product. Rest assured there’s a team of PhDs gathering every piece of data we can about our experiments and if it doesn’t benefit users, we don’t do it.

DS: Asks about Google facilitating American Idol voting recently.

AS: It was an awesome experience for our users. (Doesn’t have stats to share, but calls it a “huge success.”)

DS: Asks question from Twitter: Is there a real competitor for Google? Who is it?

AS: Great question. All companies have to ask this. What you observe as your competition today may change. Things change very quickly. We clearly have to keep our eye on the ball, which means build products that users love. If we don’t, we won’t succeed. Competition may come out of somewhere you don’t expect.

DS: Another audience question, asking about “not provided” on search and paid ads.

AS: I’m glad you asked. Over time, we have moved to secure searches. Referrers are not passed to webmasters, but they are passed to advertisers. But webmasters get a lot of information in Webmaster Central.

But over a period of time, we’ve been looking at this issue. We’ve heard from our users that they do want their searches secure — this is really important to users. We like how things have gone on with the organic side of search.

So, in the coming weeks and months, we’re looking at better solutions for this. We have nothing to announce, but we have discussed with the ads side about how we should handle this in the future.

(I missed a question or two here.)

DS: What’s search going to look like in five years?

AS: As the world goes more mobile, and new devices come online, search is going to adapt.

DS: What should marketers be thinking about to survive these changes?

AS: The proliferation of devices will change everything. Technology and information are an equalizer. Devices will get smaller and reach the next five billion people. How will you serve those people on devices? I’m an eternal optimist. It’ll be a world that we will love to live in.

Audience Q&A time.

First question about Google being implemented in car systems.

AS: Nothing to announce here, but it will look like our users want it to look.

DS: What are you most proud of with Google’s search features?

AS: Voice recognition and conversational search. I’m really proud of that.

Audience question asks why Google ranks 5th for “search engine.”

AS: I think people searching for that term are probably looking for something else. They don’t want to find Google.

DS: Do Larry or Sergey ever come in and ask why they can’t find something?

AS: Larry sends me bugs late at night — “why can’t I find it??!!” I say the user is always right, so we must’ve failed you.

And with that, we are finished. Thanks so much for reading along.

Google is About to Penalize Spanish, Italian Link Networks

If you're participating in Spanish or Italian link networks, you might want have a pretty close look at your site and see if there’s anything you clean up now.

Google's Matt Cutts has warned that Spanish and Italian are the next two languages Google is targeting in an effort to reduce unnatural links.

If you have websites in either of those languages, and you bought links in the past, you should be proactive and take Cutts' less than subtle hints and request that those links either get removed or submit a disavow link request to get those links discounted before the penalty comes down.

If you don’t clean up any unnatural back links prior to the penalty, you will likely see the penalty show up in your Google Webmaster Tools account sometime within about a week of the link network being penalized. However it is definitely worth taking the time to make the changes now, especially if you’re concerned about losing traffic after you get penalized but before the reconsideration request is approved.

Google has been making a huge push the last few months to tackle the problem of paid links and link networks in both English and other languages. Links to some of those stories are below.

 Google vs. Link Networks Around the GlobeGoogle Fires First Shot in War on German Link NetworksLink Network Buzzea Calls Google Penalty 'Abusive'Google Torches Yet Another 'Undetectable' Link NetworkDid Anglo Rank Link Network Get Websites Penalized by Google? Short Answer: YESGoogle Busts Anglo Rank Link Selling 'Service'

Top 5 Japanese Stocks For 2014

Top 5 Japanese Stocks For 2014: InnerWorkings Inc (INWK)

InnerWorkings, Inc. (InnerWorkings), incorporated on September 26, 2001, is a provider of global print management and promotional solutions to corporate clients across a ranges of industries. The Company's software applications and database create a solution that stores, analyzes and tracks the production capabilities of the Company's supplier network, as well as quote and price data for print jobs. The Company offers a range of print, fulfillment and logistics services. The Company procures printed products for clients across a range of industries, such as retail, financial services, hospitality, non-profits, healthcare, food and beverage, broadcasting and cable, education, transportation and utilities. Utilizing the Company's technology and database, the Company provides its clients a global solution to procure and delivers printed products. In March 2013, InnerWorkings Inc acquired DB Studios. In August 2013, InnerWorkings Inc. acquired Professional Packaging Services L td. In July 2013, the Company announced that it has acquired EYELEVEL, a global provider of permanent retail displays and store fixtures.

The Company's network of more than 10,000 global suppliers offers a range of printed products and a full range of print, fulfillment and logistics services. The Company's technology is a solution that stores equipment profiles for the Company's supplier network and price data for jobs the Company quotes and executes. The Company's technology allows the Company to match print jobs with the suppliers in the Company's network that are optimally suited to produce a job. The Company's technology also allows the Company to efficiently manage the critical aspects of the print procurement process, including gathering job specifications, identifying suppliers, establishing pricing, managing print production and coordinating purchase and delivery of ! the finished product.

The Company's database stores the production capabili ties of the Company's supplier network, as well as price and! quote data for bids the Company receives and transactions the Company executes. The Company's solution automatically generates customized data entry screens based on product type and guides the production manager to enter the required job specifications. The Company's solution reconciles supplier invoices to executed print orders to ensure the supplier adhered to the pricing and other terms contained in the print order. In addition, it includes checks and balances that allow the Company to monitor important financial indicators relating to a print order, such as projected gross margin and job alterations.

The Company's solution generates transaction reports that contain quote, supplier capability, price and customer service information regarding the print jobs the client has completed with the Company. The Company's solution creates a work order checklist that sends e-mail reminders to the Company's production managers regarding the time elapsed between certain milestones and the completion of specified deliverables. These automated notifications enable the Company's production managers to focus on more critical aspects of the print process and eliminate delays. Some of the Company's clients provided the Company with pricing data for print jobs they completed before they began to use its solution. The Company procures printed products for corporate clients across a range of industries, such as retail, publishing, financial services, hospitality, non-profits, healthcare, food and beverage, broadcasting and cable, education, transportation and utilities.

The Company offers a range of print, fulfillment and logistics services in more than 60 different print categories, which allows the Company to procure printed products on virtually any substrate. The printed products the Company procures for its clients may is printed with an! y of the ! eight types of printing, which include offset sheet-fed, Web offset, digital offset, l etterpress, screen printing, waterless, flexography and grav! ure, as w! ell as several forms of specialty printing. The Company offers a range of fulfillment and logistics services, such as kitting and assembly, inventories management and pre-sorting postage. These services are often essential to the completion of the finished product. The Company also provides creative services, including copywriting, graphics and Website design, identity work and marketing collateral development, and pre-media services, such as image and print-ready page processing and proofing capabilities

The Company's eStores empower the Company's clients with branded self-service ecommerce Websites that prompt quick and easy online ordering, fulfillment, tracking and reporting.The Company's network of more than 10,000 global suppliers includes printers, graphic designers, paper mills and merchants, digital imaging companies, specialty binders, finishing and engraving firms and fulfillment and distribution centers.

The Company competes with Willi ams Lea, Logisource, Cirqit and Noosh.

Advisors' Opinion:
  • [By David Trainer]


    For examples of large investment firms propping up stock prices and fueling large moves, see my recent Danger Zone articles on InnerWorkings (NASDAQ: INWK) and Tangoe (NASDAQ: TNGO). Both stocks had heavy institutional ownership and rapid upward price moves driven by Wall Street propaganda and momentum traders. Soon after we revealed how disconnected the price moves were from the companies’ fundamentals the stocks fell 30+%.

  • [By Roberto Pedone]

    Another stock that insiders are loading up on here is InnerWorkings (INWK), which is a provider of managed print and promotional procurement solutions to corporate clients across a range of industries. Insiders are buying this stock into significant weakness, since sha! res are o! ff by 49% so far in 2013.

    InnerWorkings has a market cap of $357 million and an enterprise value of $425 million. This stock trades at a fair valuation, with a trailing price-to-earnings of 23.20 and a forward price-to-earnings of 23.20. Its estimated growth rate for this year is -75.6%, and for next year it's pegged at 200%. This is not a cash-rich company, since the total cash position on its balance sheet is $19.22 million and its total debt is $91.50 million.

    A beneficial owner just bought 32,000 shares, or about $214,000 worth of stock, at $6.69 to per share. That same beneficial owner also just bought 108,700 shares, or about $727,000 worth of stock, at $6.69 to $6.70 per share.

    From a technical perspective, INWK is currently trending below both its 50-day and 200-day moving averages, which is bearish. This stock gapped down sharply in November from $9.75 to $5.54 a share with heavy downside volume. Following that gap down, shares of INWK have reversed its bearish trend and entered an uptrend, with the stock moving higher from its low of $5.54 to $7.21 a share. That move has now pushed shares of INWK within range of triggering a major breakout trade.

    If you're bullish on INWK, then I would look for long-biased trades as long as this stock is trending above some key near-term support at $6.42 and then once it breaks out above some near-term overhead resistance levels at $7.07 to $7.21 a share with high volume. Look for a sustained move or close above those levels with volume that hits near or above its three-month average volume of 530,297 shares. If that breakout hits soon, then INWK will set up to re-fill some of its previous gap down zone from Novembe

  • [By Monica Gerson]

    InnerWorkings (NASDAQ: INWK) shares dipped 34.83% to touch a new 52-week low of $6.19 after the company reported downbeat Q3 results and issued a weak FY13 outlook.

  • source from Top Stocks Blog:http://www.topstocksbl! og.com/to! p-5-japanese-stocks-for-2014.html

Google Debuts AdWords Consumer Ratings Annotations In US, UK & Canada

Today, Google announced the roll out of Consumer Ratings Annotations in AdWords. The annotations spotlight strongly rated aspects of an advertiser’s business such as customer service, a rewards program or shipping practices in search ads.

Along with Review Extensions and Seller Ratings, Google now offers a trifecta of options for displaying customer feedback in search ads. Though not shown in the example above, a Google spokesperson confirmed that Consumer Ratings Annotations can display in tandem with Review Extensions and Seller Ratings.

Google reports early testing have shown the Consumer Ratings Annotations can increase click-through rates (CTR) by 10 percent on average. In another version, the company is testing a “More ratings” links, as shown below.

Brian Borkowski, Farmers� Director of Digital marketing said in a statement, “Consumer ratings annotations help us stand out from competitors and attract new customers. When we looked at our ads that displayed these ratings, we saw an increase in CTR, which speaks to the awareness, trust and impact from this format.”

The ratings data is pulled from the Google Consumer Surveys (GCS) platform, which launched in 2012. Surveys questions are typically served in pop-ups as paywall alternatives on publisher sites. Each rating is based on an average of 1,000 consumer opinions.

Google points out that using GCS helps sidestep the infiltration of less-than-genuine reviews (both positive and negative) of the sort that Yelp and other self-reporting review platforms struggled with.

Google has been managing the surveys and determined which brands to include. Of course that limits the scope of Consumer Ratings Annotations to those brands that have been included in surveys. That fact coupled with the threshold of 1,000 surveys would seem to skew the newest annotation toward large brands. A Google spokesperson acknowledged that bigger brands will be well represented, but that a range of brands of various sizes will be included even at launch.

Unlike traditional ad extensions, advertisers don’t have any control over how and what information appears in their Consumer Ratings Annotations. In this same vein, Google has begun testing so-called Smart Annotations, which automatically pull in landing page information, typically from left-hand navigation. Advertisers do have the ability to opt-out of both programs.

Consumer Ratings Annotations will start rolling out for several hundred advertisers in the U.S., UK and Canada over the next few days. Interested advertisers can contact Google to request consideration for inclusion.

4 Ways to Avoid Getting Hit by Negative SEO or New Unnatural Links

When helping clients with Penguin or manual actions for unnatural links, it's common for companies to start asking questions about negative SEO. Once clients understand how Penguin works, and how unnatural links could impact a website, they wonder what would stop competitors from launching an all-out attack on their own website. And more importantly, what type of defense strategy could they build to thwart a negative SEO attack?

Beyond negative SEO, unnatural links have an uncanny way of replicating themselves across more spammy sites (without a company actively setting up those new links). So, even if a competitor isn't launching a negative SEO campaign, situations like "replicating unnatural links" could end up coming back to hurt companies down the line.

For example, my column from October explained how a company first got hit by Penguin 2.0, and then again by Penguin 2.1. It ends up they put a stake in the ground, and stopped monitoring unnatural links, so they ended up getting hit twice (versus recovering). Not good, to say the least.

This makes it hard for businesses that dug themselves into a hole to fully jump out of that hole. For some companies involved in unnatural link building over the past several years, it's like being part of an organized crime family. You can't just pick up one day and leave. There will be a price to pay.

Based on what I explained above about negative SEO and replicating unnatural links, defense measures can play an important part of a company's SEO efforts.

This post will give you several methods for monitoring, tracking, and analyzing, new unnatural links. After I cover each method, I'll explain what you can do with your findings (to avoid getting hit). Because when dealing with link problems, analysis is one thing, taking action is another.

Methods for Tracking New Unnatural Inbound Links1. Google Webmaster Tools Latest Links

Many people don't realize that Google provides a separate download for a website's latest links.

If you head over to Google Webmaster Tools and click "Search Traffic" in the left sidebar, and then "Links to Your Site", you will see an overview of your inbound links.

If you click the "More" link under "Who links the most", you will see a list of all domains (top 1,000) linking to your site. At the top of that report, there are three buttons. One of those buttons is labeled "Download latest links".

When you download that report, you can see your latest links by date that Google has picked up. And yes, if you've been dealing with an unnatural links situation, the list might shock you.

You may see new spammy links showing up, which could be the result of older unnatural links replicating, or it could be negative SEO. The good news is that you'll know about the new links, and can take action.

2. Majestic SEO "New" Links

Majestic SEO is my favorite link analysis tool. It holds a boatload of data, provides a ton of functionality, and easily enables you to refine and download your links.

For our purposes today, the main navigation provides a link labeled "New", which will take you to a cool visualization of new links being discovered for the domain, subdomain, directory, or URL.

First, check out your trending. Does that look natural? Is there a spike over the past 90 days that looks strange? Does the trending match up with your content development, campaigns, etc.?

Majestic enables you to highlight any 14 day period in the chart to view the new links built during that timeframe (below the chart). Then you can easily export those links for further analysis in Excel. Also, Majestic provides "First Indexed", "Last Seen", and "Date Lost" fields, which can help determine what's going on.

Note, Majestic doesn't know when a link was actually first placed on the web, just when it was first indexed by its crawlers. There are times you will find a "First Indexed" date that's off. That's why it's important to analyze the links versus just taking the data as-is.

3. Open Site Explorer "Just Discovered"

Open Site Explorer also provides a nifty piece of functionality for finding new links. In the main navigation, there's a link for "Just Discovered" that takes you to a report listing all links the service has recently picked up (and sometimes just minutes after being published).

Using "Just Discovered", you can filter by the type of link (followed, nofollowed, 301, etc.), and select if you want to see new links to the domain, subdomain, or URL. In the report, you can view the URL linking to your site, the anchor text of the link, domain authority of the site linking to you, and the date the links were first discovered. Then you can easily export those results for further analysis in Excel.

4. Ahrefs – New Backlinks and New Referring Domains

Ahrefs is another excellent link analysis tool, and it provides some of the best functionality available when analyzing new inbound links. After entering a domain in the Site Explorer field, you can click the "New" link under "Backlinks". That will take you to the new backlinks report, where you have the ability to drill into the data in several ways.

First, you can select pre-determined timeframes (Today, Yesterday, Past 7 Days, Past 30 Days, and Past 60 Days) for analysis. But Ahrefs provides more flexibility than that. You can use the calendar to select any custom timeframe you want (over the past 60 days).

You can also click the "Graph" link to view a graph of all new and lost links over the past 60 days. If you click on a bar in the graph, Ahrefs will display the new or lost backlinks for that specific day.

Once you select a timeframe, you can view the link information in the report below the calendar. You can see the referring link, its title, how many external links that URL contains, how many internal links the URL contains, its status code, the number of social shares, the destination URL being linked to, its title, the anchor text of the link, and when the link was placed. Yes, that's a lot of data to analyze for sure.

But you can do more. You can further refine your data via the buttons at the top of the report.

For example, you can select all links, dofollow, redirect, governmental, educational, notsitewide, sitewide, and nofollow. The report below automatically updates showing you just the inbound links that fit the criteria you selected.

And of course, you can easily download your links for further analysis in Excel.

What To Do Once You've Uncovered New Unnatural Links

Now that you understand how to find the latest links leading to your site, you still need to know what to do with them. If you exported the results to Excel, then you should have multiple spreadsheets to work with (from each data source). Personally, I like combining the data into one spreadsheet, but still have separate worksheets by data source.

Below are some recommendations for analyzing and dealing with unnatural links you find during your research.

Make it a Monthly Process

I highly recommend empowering someone at your organization to check new links on a monthly basis. Don't check your latest links every few months, only to find out you've got a big problem. Or worse, don't get hit by Penguin or a manual action because you weren't staying on top of your link profile. If you miss the window of opportunity, you'll be dealing with months of recovery (or longer).

In a perfect world, this process should not take a lot of time each month. Most companies won't be dealing with new unnatural links.

Spend one morning each month and go through the process I listed earlier for tracking and analyzing new links. If you find unnatural links, you can immediately deal with the situation, remove the new links, disavow them, etc. And then you can dig in further to find out who is setting up those links, if needed.

Hunting Unnatural Links

Now that you have the latest links by data source, I would start reviewing the links in detail. For example, filter by anchor text, filter by domain name, etc. Then you should start manually checking the links that are suspicious.

If you find new unnatural links that could have been the result of previous link building campaigns, flag them in the spreadsheet. You can simply create a new column where you can flag URLs (Remove, Disavow, Okay, Ignore, etc.)

By creating a new column, you can filter the worksheet by the flags you set up. That will be helpful while compiling a final a list of problematic links.

Manually Remove

One you have a final list of unnatural links, try to remove as many as you can manually. To me, that's always the best route.

Now, if any of the unnatural links are completely out of your control, then you can simply disavow them by creating or updating your disavow file. That said, if you can find contact information, or a way to remove those links, then I would.

Disavowing URLs and Domains

As mentioned above, if you can't remove new unnatural links, then you should disavow them.

First, identify if the domain is ultra-spammy or if it's just the URL that's problematic. For example, a domain that's ultra-spammy that looks completely automated would be one you could simply disavow at the domain level. But if you find a domain that is maintained by a company, or a specific webmaster, blogger, etc., and it contains decent content, then you might want to simply disavow the URLs that contain links to your site (versus the entire domain).

If you're not familiar with the disavow tool, you can either enter a full URL per line or you can use the domain directive (e.g., "domain:example.com" would disavow all links from example.com.

When you have your list of domains and URLs to disavow, then update your disavow file and submit that file via the disavow tool. And don't be afraid to add domains or URLs to your list down the line. It's totally OK, and normal, for that list to grow.

Put On Your Detective's Hat

If you find new unnatural links keep popping up across various websites, try to find out why that's happening. For example, is someone still building links for you? Has all unnatural link building stopped? If you're at a large company, or if you're working with a number of agencies or consultants, has your decision to stop unnatural linkbuilding been thoroughly communicated to all involved?

I've mentioned this during a previous post about negative SEO, but most companies that believe they are being attacked are usually wrong. Upon digging in, it's typically someone tied to the company (an internal employee trying to increase rankings, an SEO agency, PR agency, consultant, etc.) And no, they typically weren't trying to destroy the company. They simply had bad advice, or took the easier (but dangerous) route to increasing rankings.

That said, if you truly believe it is negative SEO, then try to track unnatural links back to the source. Start asking questions, emailing site owners, finding common sites and companies with links on the same pages, etc. You never know what you are going to find.

I once helped the CEO of a startup with Penguin who was waking people up in the middle of the night asking questions. That was awesome, and yielded answers by the way. Be a bulldog and get to the bottom of the mystery.

Summary – Avoid Penguin and Manual Actions By Staying Vigilant

By using the methods listed above, you can stay on top of new inbound links. And if you notice anything strange, you now have a plan of attack for finding, analyzing, organizing, and dealing with those unnatural links.

Again, I recommend implementing a monthly process for checking your latest links (so you can avoid the nasty bite of Penguin, or the shock of a manual action). The good news is that you can start right away. Like now.