Sunday, January 29, 2012

Google Flip-flops Page Layout



Google’s new page layout algorithm update may force many Web workers to reconsider from where exactly they will receive their next check. The change essentially analyzes the layout of a webpage and the amount of content immediately visible to a user. If you’ve been relying on ad revenue from placements that make it harder for users to find content, then you had better pay attention.  The algorithm modification was made to improve the user experience, according to Google. Websites that do not have much content above the fold (what a user sees immediately upon arriving on a site without scrolling) will be affected by the change.

“If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above the fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”
Google clearly understands that placing ads in highly visible (above-the-fold) locations is common, namely because the ads tend to perform better in terms of clicks. Just look at the guidance for Adsense Publishers on “Where to place Google Ads on pages”, and you’ll see some conflicting information (see the sidebar for an image). The strongest performing locations – featured in the darkest orange – are exactly the location Google might penalize website owners for displaying ads.

There is clearly a lot of room for interpretation with this change, however. Google has said that the algorithm change will not affect those sites that place ads “to a normal degree,” but the search engine will penalize those that load pages with ads to an “excessive degree” or which “make it hard to find the actual original content on the page.” Google isn’t making it clear, and the only loser will be the website owner.

So what should you do? It's pretty straightforward. If you’ve followed Google’s guidance on ad placement all along – particularly as an Adsense publisher – just continue doing what you’ve been doing. Google is taking a hard line in the enforcement of the very ambiguous optimal user experience, but it doesn’t take a usability expert to know that ad-filled pages that emphasize ad clicks over content do not satisfy.

Should you, in the next few days and week, find that your listings have been lowered and suspect that the page layout you are using might be to blame, know that changes will be automatically reflected once Google re-crawls and processes a sufficient amount of pages to assess the layout change. It may take several weeks, however, to see a noticeable improvement (or decline) based on the size of the site itself as well as how efficiently Googlebot crawls content. Google anticipates that the change will affect less than 1 percent of global searches.

The most proactive exercise you can engage in at the moment is to look at your pages just like a user would. Start with Google’s Browser Size tool, or Ben Beckford’s Resolution Test Chrome extension. Both tools provide Web workers with an understanding of what users are seeing on their pages and if they are indeed providing an optimal user experience or need to switch things up in relation to their layout.



How Google Browser Size Works: Google Browser Size is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For example, the "90%" contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger. This is useful for ensuring that important parts of a page's user interface are visible by a wide audience. On the example page that you see when you first visit this site, there is a "donate now" button which falls within the 80% contour, meaning that 20% of users cannot see this button when they first visit the page. 20% is a significant number; knowing this fact would encourage the designer to move the button much higher in the page so it can be seen without scrolling. To view your own Web site with this same visualization overlaid on it, simply type its URL into the "Enter URL here" textbox at the top of the window and click Go. 

Notes:

  • You can change the opacity of the overlay by clicking the gray boxes next to the word "Opacity" at the top of the window.
  • As you move the mouse around the window, you will see a transparent rectangle following the mouse pointer. This feature allows you to interact normally with the page you're examining even though it has a graphical overlay atop it.
  • The sizes represented in this contour are client area sizes, not browser window sizes. This means they represent the size of the browser without the title bar, toolbars, status bars, etc., and thus give a true representation of how much content can be seen by a particular segment of the Web-using population.
  • Browser Size works best on web pages with a fixed layout aligned to the left. If the content reflows as the width is adjusted or it is centered, then the results can be misleading. In this case, you can obtain more accurate results by reducing the browser width to a percentage column, e.g. 90% and seeing what content falls below the 90% horizontal line.
  • We're actively looking to develop and improve the tool. So if you have comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at browser-size-external-feedback@google.com.

Facebook posts have a lifetime ?



Did you know that Facebook posts have a lifetime?

According to Facebook exposure ranking tool EdgeRank Checker, the life of a Facebook post begins when it is posted live on the social network, and it ends when the growth in engagement is less than 10 percent between hourly snapshots.

So how long do posts usually live? A new study from EdgeRank Checker reveals that the average Business Page post lifetime is about 3 hours and 7 minutes, and the median post lifetime is 2 hours and 56 minutes. Meaning that most businesses and brands are experiencing post lifetimes around 3 hours long. It is important to know when a post dies so that businesses can plan how far apart content should be posted.

The study notes that when a post is receiving steady engagement from fans, it is more likely to stay on top of the feed as a Highlighted Story, which makes the content more visible, and can lead to a longer lifetime. However, the study also reveals that having multiple living posts could lead to cannibalization, and actually end up reducing fan engagement.

Keep your content alive on Facebook as long as possible. Here are a few tips for pumping some life into your posts:

Attract Attention. This can be done through unique posts, using actionable words or attaching pictures and videos to your posts. By including eye-catching content, your audience will want to engage with your brand.

Create Contests. By posting a trivia question or a riddle and promoting a free gift giveaway to a lucky fan, fans will have an incentive to interact with your post, and may even share your contest post with their friends and followers.

Be Consistent. Make sure that you are posting multiple times a day, every day, so that your fans can expect great content from you on a regular basis. However, quality content is key – so don’t post just to post, otherwise your fans may think that you are a spammer.

What is a Post doing while it is “alive”?A Post that is alive is typically occupying the News Feed. It may be placed atop the feed as a “Highlighted Story” receiving a continuous stream of engagement. It is important not to post while another Post is alive. Having multiple “alive” Posts will lead to cannibalization, therefore reducing Engagement, which ultimately leads to reduced EdgeRank.
How do I utilize understanding my Post Lifetime?Once you know your average Post Lifetime, it should serve as a guideline for how long to wait before introducing another Post. For example, if you posted at 1:00pm and you know that your average Post Lifetime is three hours, it’s recommended you wait until at least 4:00pm before following up with the next Post.
How do I find my average Post Lifetime?For EdgeRank Checker Pro users, Post Lifetime is analyzed on a hourly basis. This can be found in the Post Grading section of the site, at the bottom of your Page analysis.

Twitter Ironic Recruiting Video



The Best Worst Corp video ever. Great Job!

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Domain Prices Increased :(



The Internet is about to get more expensive, without justification some believe. VeriSign, the company that manages both .com and .net domain name registration, said Thursday that the registry fees for domain names will increase starting Oct. 15. The registry fee for domain names -- effectively the wholesale price -- will rise from $6 to $6.42 for .com names and from $3.50 to $3.85 for .net names. This represents the first registry fee increase since the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) established the fee structure in 1999.

I’ve started to receive emails from domain registrars announcing an increase in the price of .com and .net domain names, “based on the VeriSign and Neustar announcements” of price increases in 2012. The price you pay for .com and .net domain names depends on the domain registrar you use, but I imagine the increases will generally be across the board. You’ll probably receive an email announcing a pricing change sometime in the next few weeks.
Other domain types such as .uk domains will remain unchanged in price as the registry for these domains is Nominet and there are no planned price increases by them. Resellers using "eNom" accounts will get a similar email due to eNom price increases. I just wanted to highlight this today and bring this to attention so everyone can avoid the increase in price and take advantage while we can. On July 1, 2010, VeriSign®, the registry for .COM and .NET, will increase prices. The .COM will go up 7%, and the .NET by 10%. Now this is a good increase and if you have tons of domains, it will definitely make a huge difference. The increase will be passed to registrars like Go Daddy and several other domain registrars and then, to us consumers. As of July 1, the price of domain renewal, registration as well as transfer prices will go up for these two popular top-level domains. Seems like that there is great demand for these two extensions.
VeriSign said the cost increase is necessary to pay for the increased volume of domain name system queries it handles -- up from 1 billion queries a day in 2000 to 30 billion queries in 2007 -- and to fortify the Internet's infrastructure against cyberattacks.
Not everyone buys that explanation, however. "If you look at what Web hosting went for in 2000, compared to what it costs today, the amount of space and transfer limits for a typical account have grown far higher than thirty-fold, and at the same time prices have gone down," said George Kirikos, president of Canadian financial software company Leap of Faith Financial Services, in a post on CircleID.com, an Internet policy discussion site.
In an e-mail, Karl Auerbach, former member of the board of directors of ICANN, former Cisco researcher, founder of an unnamed software startup, and an attorney, said, "The actual cost to VeriSign of providing the service of registering a domain name and publishing it via VeriSign's DNS servers is probably on the order of $0.03 per year per name, or less."
According to Auerbach, the registry prices were established by fiat by ICANN without any review or audit of the actual costs. "If we look at the difference between cost ($0.03) and the registry price ($6.42), we see that ICANN has gifted VeriSign with a built-in profit margin of about 21,400% of price over cost," Auerbach said. "This cumulates over the 60,000,000 names (in .com) to a gift of about $383,400,000 per year granted by ICANN to VeriSign."
Auerbach contends VeriSign's costs have risen because of domain name speculators, or "tasters." The traffic generated by tasters, he said, has forced VeriSign to upgrade its registration systems. These tasters, he said, "get to play in this system at a massive discount that is unavailable to the domain name buying public."
Domain tasting takes advantage of the five-day grace period during which domain registrations are refundable. Tasters use automated methods to register massive numbers of domain names, test them for profit potential in conjunction with online ads, then seek refunds on all but the few that bring in enough traffic to generate a profit.
Auerbach puts the ratio of domain tasting registrations to regular paid registrations at about 200-to-1. In effect, the general domain name customers end up paying for the infrastructure to support the speculators. And come October, they'll be paying more.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Make Your Website More Reachable By Having Professional Way

Eco Site Builder
Today website is term which everybody is well aware of, the business having their website to reach to the existing customers or to the future one. The businesses have preferences to go for the professional websites, the term professional have its own impact. The professional website is always having different and professional looks. The website is a combination of web pages and content, as well as the videos, music, audio, and of images. The professional site can be created by the free website builder tools available online.

The purpose of having the website is playing the major role in building a website. The business requires having a professional one as that looks more reliable. The website builders have the facility for the users to create the professional looking website. The online site builder tool provides the different kind of facilities for the users to create their website.

Those builders usually make the process easy for the non-technical people as well. Making a website using this kind of website builders doesn’t even require having the knowledge of any programming language or HTML. These are the online available software where you can make your website.

What a business requires is the wider reach or the increased number of customers. The website is proves to be the best medium for the doing the business online, even for non online business as well as. For making a website with the help of site builder the user doesn’t even need to spend huge amount money. If you are starting a business the site builder will help in money matters.

To make it simpler for users the website builders like ecositebuilder.com or the doodle kit are having the tutorials available on the site. With that you get the detailed description of the queries like How to make website, how to edit it, etc. Those tutorials are available in video as well as documents sort of ways. You can see and understand or read and understand. There I have found one more blog on Build My Own Website and happy to share it with you. Here I have found easy seven steps to build website. Every one wish to have their website got rank in Google or other search engine. For such position one need to have more attractive website in front of search engine.

The other feature a builder has is that around thousands of templates available which gives the look and a theme to the website. The templates are the basic things of your website it gives a theme to the website. If you are making the website using these kind of site builders you can then choose the templates matching the nature of your business. A business and a website have a direct connection now, if you have a business you need to have a website. The website is now easy to be building.

WordPress Plugins for Loyalty, Reward & Gamification

Here is four plugins you can use to increase engagement, encourage repeat visits and build a loyal following on your WordPress blog. Despite the growing interest in gamification, there are really only a handful of plugins available that are stable enough to provide Wordpress site developers a viable point and reward system to their users. There are definitely some winners:
Incrwd: A loyalty program plugin that uses real rewards to incentivize users to visit the site, share posts on Facebook and Twitter, and comment more often. The plugin comes from blog loyalty platform provider Incrwd, so bloggers can use their own products/deals or those provided by brand advertisers through Incrwd itself.

Achievements for BuddyPress Built for the popular BuddyPress community platform for WordPress, this plugin helps bloggers promote and reward social interaction with challenges, badges and points. The plugin only works with BuddyPress and requires support for several other core plugins. Another option for BuddyPress sites is CubePoints


Punchtab Released mid-2011, Punchtab is a loyalty program plugin enabling readers to sign in through Facebook, and earn points for activities such as visiting, commenting or sharing on Facebook, Twitter and PlusOne's. Readers can also redeem points.


Big Door Quick Gamification Released by gamification technology startup Big Door, this plugin enables WordPress site operators. Big Door's point system is based on activities, earning users experience points and badges

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Sunday, January 15, 2012

Geeky Facebook Timeline Banners


Ron Swanson

Ron Swanson

Angry Birds

Angry Birds

Halo Reach

Halo Reach

Reddit

Reddit

Me Gusta

Me Gusta
Forever Alone
Forever Alone

I Lied

I Lied

Rage Face

Rage Face

Or This...Rage Face

Or This...Rage Face

Y U No

Y U No

LOL Face

LOL Face

Troll Face

Troll Face

Okay Guy

Okay Guy

The Shower Curtain That Looks Like Your Facebook Profile Page



This gives a whole new meaning to “poking.” Vain social media addicts, rejoice! Because soon, for only $23 and what's left of your dignity, you can purchase Spinning Hat's Social Shower Curtain and transform your bathroom into…an outdated Facebook profile page with lame jokes. So when's that apocalypse, again?

Sunday, January 8, 2012

How to Create A Facebook Cover Art


Thanks to Techxt we got a cool tutorial to Share with you on how to Create a Face book Cover art.

Step 1Download the attached PSD file and open it in Photoshop
To ease the process we have already created a PSD file that will come handy for you to create your unique design.
Link: Download PSD
Downloaded 5621 times
Step 2: Get your cover image
In this tutorial I will try to replicate the first timeline cover above. For that I will be using the below image.
I hope you have downloaded the PSD and the above image by now.
Step 3: Open the PSD in Photoshop and click the Slice tool on the Toolbar to see all the slice markers
Step 4: Copy your cover image in this PSD
Open the image that you want to be your cover image and copy the image to this file (simply select all > copy > paste ). For the time being you can open the above cat and fish image.
Step 5: Adjust and resize the image
Adjust and resize image in such a way that the portion of the image that is going to be your profile image falls inside the 3rd slice box. Check the image below. I want to make to two swimming fishes inside the bowl as my profile image. After adjusting the image color rest of the image to match your image background. You may crop the image from bottom and right, but make sure that the image is not less than (851 x 352) px.
Step 6: Save images
Well you need to save twice
  1. File > Save as > Select format as PNG > Save [I will refer this as Image 1]
  2. File > Save for Web and Devices.. > Save [I will refer this as Image 2]
Go to the directory where you saved your Image 2, you will see that there are in fact 5 slices of the above image. Only the 3rd image slice is required. You may delete the rest.
Step 7: Almost done just one more step and you can upload the images
The 3rd image [Image 2] which we will be setting as our profile pic is of dimension (125 x 125)px. But Facebook won’t let you add any image as profile pic which is less than (180 x 180)px. Well its not at all a problem. Just open the 3rd Slice in Photoshop and from menu goto Image > Image Size  and resize the image from (125×125) to (180×180)px and save it.
Step 8: Upload the images to your Facebook account
Login to Facebook and click on your name. Then click on Change cover > Upload a Photo. UploadImage 1 here.
Click on your Edit Profile Picture > Upload a photo. Upload the resized image.

For those who don’t have photoshop

The logic is very simple. You need to cut out that part of the cover image which when place as your profile image will perfectly supplement the background cover. So what is that part.
  • From Left ( X coordinate of the image) – 28px
  • From Top ( Y coordinate of the image) – 227px
  • Width – 125px
  • Height -125px
After you cut out this part of the image, you need to resize the image to at least 180×180 px or else Facebook won’t let you upload the image to your profile.