Here is the good news for Flash developers. Recently, Google has announced good news for flash developers about SWF indexing technology. Two year ago google announced that collaboration with adobe, google flash index technology has been improved. Also laser year they followed up with a good news that they added external resource loading to SWF indexing capabilities.

Last month again google has expanded SWF indexing technology. So now google robots are significantly better at recognizing and indexing sites that uses JavaScript to embed SWF content. Google has improved video indexing technology also. So, now google SWF indexing technology allows robots to see content from SWF files.

Google is working to improve the ability of indexing deep linking i.e. content with in a flash technology based application that is linked to form the same application and also further indexing technology of SWF files executed through JavaScript.

Well, Google gave happy news to SEO people and website designing people also, now we can expect all our web pages can indexed by Google robots.

Posted By

Ramya

Twitter Co founder Evan Williams had published about Twitter services on Sept 2 and he announced about the use of Twitter in mobile applications such as iPhone, BlackBerry etc. which are becoming very popular because of more mobile users.

So let’s discuss about the mobile application which is becoming a major role in social media to drain more traffic.

Ok first let me tell you what is Mobile Application? Mobile application is a term to describe Internet applications that come on smart phones and other mobile devices. It usually help users by connecting them to Internet services more commonly accessed on desktop or help them by making it easier to use the Internet on their portable devices. A mobile application may be a mobile–based instant messaging client, Gmail for mobile, Twitter for mobile or many other applications.

So, Twitter has got Top 145 registered million users and through mobiles it has increased 62 percent since mid-April and also 16 percent of all new twitter mobile users are using the services on mobile to sign-up for the service instead of going to the website, as opposed to the 5 percent when Twitter launched its first Twitter – branded mobile client.

The mobile clients have helped to bring more peoples into twitter and helping to make more attract and retain active users. So, total 46 percent of active users became regular part of twitter experience.

Now a day’s people are using Twitter in iPhone and Blackberry, which is the most popular ways to access Twitter service.

There are other top ways to use this service. The current top ten application people have used to use twitter in the last 30 days, here it shows the ranking and percents from each service.

1.    Twitter.com – 78%

2.    m.twitter.com – 14%

3.    SMS – 8%

4.    Twitter for iPhone – 8%

5.    Twitter for BlackBerry – 7%

6.    TwitPic – 4%

7.    TweetDeck* – 3%

8.    Echofon*- 3%

9.    Google Friend Connect – 2%

10.  Uber Twitter – 2%

As this Twitter status shows,  Smartphone clients and also people who use Twitter website for tweeting their updates are the strong growthing areas.

Posted By

ML

PPT’s bring huge amount of traffic to your site as users like to watch presentations than blank templates. One of the best ways to present effective PPT’s is SlideShare where millions of viewers can see and comment on your presentation which gains more traffic & new visitors to your site. In your presentation if you have rich title, description, tags and related images or videos of your business may be related to health or any other topic then definitely your slide will come on first page in search engines. So that you can embed this slide in your  blogs or website to get more traffic and also to come on top results in search engines.

Well, now lets learn more on SlideShare as where we can promote our business PPT’s and other info. Mainly it is free for all to open SlideShare account.

SlideShare is a presentation tool, nothing but an online slide sharing social media content site and also known as the “YouTube of PowerPoint”. It is the world’s largest community for sharing business presentations or documents with different files format and professional videos. SlideShare support few formats such as ppt, openoffice, pdf, doc, pps, iworkpages, pptx, docx, keynote & other major video formats.

In SlideShare you can upload, mark favorite, tag, bookmark and leave a comment. Additionally you can download or pick the slides as favorite, joining groups and also we can embed our slides with the provided code to your blogs or website. To upload or share our presentations in SlideShare mainly we should have great ideas or concept, images and background where we can design like a magazine.

Firstly the text should be in big font size (some special and interesting font) to look more attractive. According to your subject or point add image or photo so that visitors can get at first glance itself of your picture on what you are talking. The main important thing is first page & the title of your slide because when visitors browse slideshare.net they notice only about is the thumbnail of your first page and the title. So decorate your first page attractively and optimize the title, it is the main cover of your slide.

Here are the few ways where SlideShare work well for your presentations:

• It allows sharing your info with millions of colleagues and clients and offers users to upload or share their presentation publicly or privately. It is a private distribution tool for your private sites.
• Organizing is easy where you can use to search, download, flag and categorize your other online presentations.
• Increase the audio content by combining your podcasts with SlideShare tools to target the listening audience.
• You can create webinars, slide cartoons and music video presentations by adding audio to it.
• You can make new friends and other professional contacts with SlideShare apps.
• You can start your own group to become expert by managing collections of presentations and also can join other groups.
• Instead of promoting only your work you can see others idea of your field by viewing other countless presentations.
• Add your widgets to emails by sending the URL to your friends, blogs and social sites so that you can drive traffic to your presentations.
• It allows customizing apps and creating date presentation for programmers and developers.

If you have an account in slideshare.net then you can share your slides or presentations with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Sync these three accounts with slideshare then upload to anyone of them and it instantly shows up on all three.

So let’s make use of this SlideShare to upload or share and also to get other kind of info shared worldwide. By using this technique lets drain more traffic towards our sites but it is possible only if the presentations are more effective, attractive and having informative content.

Posted By

DR

Okay, let’s understand how to use this tool and what features helps to provide relevant and fresh updates from social networking sites.

Google has created a new home page for its real time search feature, where users can view the fresh search results from services like twitter, facebook, myspace and many more.

Here it is, http://www.google.com/realtime

Google Alerts: Real Time Alerts helps you to stay informed about topic of your interest. Google alerts allows you to get the email updates of the fresh and relevant search results the moment it appears on the web. You can also manage your email volume by setting alerts to email you once per day or week. The option called “Type” helps you to monitor the search results to find related news, blogs, video, discussion or everything.

Geographic Refinements: Want to know what’s going on around you? Now its very easy to find out through “Custom Location” feature in Google Real Time Search. Geographical Filtering allows you to see the recent updates near you or in a particular city you specify. The below screen shot shows how the Real Time Search Results are displayed for Climate with location Bangalore.

Conversation View: The option called “Full Conversation” which appears near the tweets lets you to see the discussion associated with them. This new feature helps us to view the retweets and replies in a single glance. Here is an example,

Once you click on Full Conversation option, you can see the below thread.

As we all know, Real Time Search Results displays the latest updates by default. This feature sorts the information by date and time. If you are interested in results ranked by their relevance to your search query, then go for “Any time” option in the left panel. This option lists the most relevant updates regardless of date and time. You can also check for only results with image thumbnails by clicking on “Updates with images”.

So let’s make the best use of Google Real Time Search, which helps us to refine and understand the search results.

- Posted by Rajeshwari

To display rich snippets, google needs mark up i.e. HTML content in microdata, micro formats or RDF format. To prepare markups for your business or webpage’s please see Rich Snippets and Structured markup .Once you are done with your markup of your website, you can test you snippet using the new google rich snippets testing tool, which is announced recently.

Once if you added your markup for appropriate pages across the website, google will not display the rich snippets as soon as you added, to show your interest in rich snippet you have to fill this form. If you have any videos in your page, you can mark up that to help google.

Well, Google has announced recently some improvements in Rich Snippets to support Breadcrumbs and Events.

Recently Google has added Breadcrumbs markups format, so that you can tell google how the Breadcrumbs should display, again it is not guarantee to display your markup, but it will increase the chances to display. See this to create Breadcrumbs for your webpage. Same way google added rich snippet for events also.

These three are the new features of Google Rich Snippets, make use of these features to dive more traffic into your webpage.

Posted By

Ramya

Recently Google has added a new service in Google Places called Tags which is basically used for advertising purpose. Now, with the advent of Tags, Google Places is not only providing free local business listing but it also serving as an advertising platform for SMB’s.

Tags are nothing but yellow markings appearing below the business listing. You can make use of these Tags to highlight the uniqueness of your business by promoting specific information about your business such as special coupons, menus, discounts, promotions, photos, videos, link back to your website, custom messages and much more on Google Maps as well as Google.com.

To get Google Tags for your business listing just follow the below easy steps

1. Add your business for free by signing up for Google Places
2. Provide complete information about your business to claim listing and then validate listing with Google Places
3. Visit to your account dashboard, create and activate your Tags (costs a fee of $25/month once after 30-day free trial is up)

You can track the efficiency of Google Tag for your listing on Dashboard. One more important feature of Google Tag is that you can create custom messages Tag, which can be changed at any time based on your business new services and promotions. If you want you can also remove Tag, this will deactivate the Tag from your business listing and you will be charged only for the portion of the month the Tag was active.

Visit http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=171905 and http://www.google.com/help/tags/ links to acquire more information about Google Tags.

Let us see an example for Google Tags. If you search for “Resorts near Napa, CA, United States”, you can see that Milliken Creek Inn & Spa has created Google Tag to endorse their promotional offer Free 75-minute Massage (a $160 value).

Considering the attitude of most of the customers, you can notice that, when you highlight special discounts, offers and promotions directly on the search result page there will be more chances of attracting and making the customers to click over your business listing. However activation of Tags doesn’t have any effect on ranking or order of your business listing in search results but if you rank better it will surely assist in your CTR.

To conclude I can say that if you have your own business, then listing it in Google Places with Google Tags will help to promote features that make your business distinct and also add value to your online presence.

Posted By

Smith

Google Maps has added an awesome feature called “Google Street View”, which provides panoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. This amazing feature which was launched on May 25, 2007 allows users to explore the world through Street View.

Google Street View is not only about finding local business, the functionality of this wonderful feature is one of the fascinating function of Google Earth. Through Google Street View, anyone can see the actual view of the historical places, capital cities, and many more from various positions. It is the easiest way to find any particular area or address with all details on your screen.

Is Street View an  amazing experience? Still wondering, look at the below image.

Diving a bit deeper, let’s understand how we can use this feature.

Using this tool is fun and easy, simply drag the orange “Pegman” icon on the left-hand side of the map onto location of your interest. The navigation controls on the left hand side of the map helps you to customize your view, zooming and tilting.

Take a look at the below image to see the actual view of the street.

Congrats to the Google Team for their fabulous work. Google Street View is no doubt an excellent tool for location views and hope you all enjoy this tool.

-  Posted by Rajeshwari

Yes, we can promote our business and it will help your site to get better ranks in search engines. If you use effective social book marking, you can get indexed by search engines easily and it will boost up your traffic enormously.

There are hundreds of social bookmarking sites providing free book marking options ex: delicious.com, dig.com, and mix.com like that so many free social book marking sites are there. So, use free bookmarking sites, book mark your websites and use potential keywords related to your business, the more keywords visible in search engines. Make sure, that you are placing your book marks in right category. So many people fail to place in appropriate category, there are some book marking sites which will not accept, if the category is not match with business.

The titles and headlines of your book marking should be fascinating, because the title is the first thing notice by readers. If that is not good and not related to your business, then obviously your website traffic from bookmarking will reduce.

Give a brief and vital description of your website or business it should be catchy enough. We often know that people not like to read lengthy descriptions so, better go to the straight point.

By Bookmarking your websites it will not over there only, try to participate in bookmarking activities, add friends and comment their links. Bookmark other sites also. These activities will help to your site for getting index and traffic also.

So, social bookmarking is not complicated thing, but it should be used effectively to drive traffic into your site.

Posted by Ramya

1. Dense Tiled Layout:

Google says: designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for

Actual Experience: Yes, of course you can see many images in a single glance – but as some images has a white background it makes users to mix up two images – couldn’t find the borders easily unless we hover.

Pros: Seeing many images in a single glance serves the purpose of any user.

Cons: As we are used to clear bordered well-organized image results, this output page looks cluttered.

Google Image Search - compare look

2. Larger thumbnail previews

Google says: Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.

Actual Experience: Yes, when I look high resolution images it is more appealing and impressive

No pros or cons as such.

3. A hover pane

Google says: A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”

Actual Experience:

As many webmasters weren’t concerned about image file names in the past, I can see images named 3347367209_0903f5a3be.jpg or as “400_F_13367266_3qpGXFwW0dBwDGgn0p4QStOEtccs9ru2.jpg” where only “400_F_13367266_3qpGXFwW” is shown (we miss to see the file type here) – which means if the image file names are longer, the hover pane will not be able to show you the file type. This could be a major usability issue, as looking at the file type gives a greater understanding.

Google Image Search - Hover Feature

One odd feature I observed and wondered with this was – after hovering over an image if I select the image file name, it keeps selected when I do consecutive image hovers and keeps continuing until I deselect. Give a try yourself I don’t think this could be done for Usability – any thoughts??

"file name" selected once works for consecutive hovers

Pros:

It gives a compelling reason to name an image file SEO friendly. So webmasters in future will make sure the image file names are descriptive and not long.

Cons:

And this hover pane highlights the image file name which will serve as token to impress users. And as SEO experts we all know whichever has the potential to attract visitors will have a SPAM world and now let’s Welcome a new SEO spam world – In future, you can see more and more keywords stuffed into the image file name.

4. A new landing page

Google says: Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.

Actual Experience: A large image context comparatively gives good user experience than what it used to be in older Image Search.

upgraded Google Image Search landing page

And above all if you are not happy with this new Image Search, Google has also given an option to “Switch to basic version” – but again that is just buried right down after several scrolls. It could be good if you can see them on the left menu or at the top (as how usually Google used to offer “switch back” option for any new feature introduced)

But the major improvement (Google claims it as improvement) is the Image Search Ads.

Google says: And for our advertisers, we’re launching a new ad format called Image Search Ads. These ads appear only on Google Images, and they let you include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text.

Oh, yes here comes one more colorful world open for Ads.

“Google Image Search Optimization” or “Google Image Ads Experts” could be the buzz phrases soon.

Posted by:  B

Here are the few free Local Business Directories where we can publish our business locally.

1. HotFrog :
• Submitting your business in Hotfrog – It improves the traffic in google local search listings and also google maps appears highly in listings as a SEO factor for google.
• Submitting press releases having relevant info with certain potential keywords will help to increase ranking on both Hotfrog and search engines.
• Google will not pass PR (page rank) for all the sites, it allows PR to any site as long as google finds its TOS (terms of service) more accurately.

2. Thomson Local :
• It is a UK based directory. Most of all SME’s (small & medium enterprises) do not have websites, so the only way for these local businesses to get them on google is Thomson Local.
• Apart from this Thomson Local no other UK directory is able to offer online exposure for SME’s website.

3. Merchant Circle :
• It promotes your business in few min.
• Merchant Circle online directory & marketing platform allows creating a high landing page, which includes your business blog creation, e-newsletter generator gallery with photos& videos, branded online ads and coupon distribution.
• Local promotions are published through localized Twitter accounts by Merchant Circle.
• To get new visitors we can link with other businesses on Merchant Circle, so that it helps to create your own network.
• Merchant circle gains more traffic compared to Yellowbook.com.
• Where business owners can manage their online reputation by avoiding reviews from other locations through Merchant Circle.

4. Yelp :
• By submitting your business in Yelp the search results will be on top five.
• By listing your business in Yellow page, the chances are high to get more results without any user reviews also.
• We can also upload photos, set price range and share info about business hours & other related info.
• It dislikes the spam content.
• By using Yelp’s social networking features you can connect with more people by boosting your business presence on Yelp.

Posted By
DR