Asian, Arabic and Russian Characters In Domains Soon: What Does It Mean
ICANN announced it will start allowing domains to be registered using non-Latin characters (English etc.) starting Nov. 16. The news was released during a meeting in Seoul on Friday, Reuters reported.
The news is important as it will see the registration of thousands if not millions of language specific domains. Previously, all domains were basically in English - not quite appropriate for a world wide web.
As the Independent noted:
“Considering it is known as the “World Wide web”, the internet’s reliance on the English language has long been maligned as a hangover from the web’s beginnings as a communications tool for the US military.”
“100,000 new characters are expected to be added, in a multitude of languages including Mandarin, Russian and Hebrew,” according to the Independent.
No doubt there will be a stampede to register domains like the Oklahoma Land Rush of the the appropriatedly named “Unassigned Lands.”
This move also shows a loosening of US control over ICANN and “most striking about the development is the symbolic shifting of power underpinning the web, which comes at a time that America’s economic power around the world is diminishing. With Chinese web users now outnumbering their American counterparts, commentators will see this change as another step in the gradual de-Americanisation of the internet.”
Business Wire Conducts Video Interview of Warren Buffet
Last month, after watching HostingYourParty, which told people how to host a Microsoft Windows 7 House, I asked: If you create something so bad that it goes viral, is it a public relations disaster?
Today, after watching “Warren Buffett is Bullish on America’s Future, but Says That a Full Economic Recovery Will Take a While,” I’ll ask a different question: If you create something so good, is it a video marketing triumph even if it doesn’t go viral?
In the video, Cathy Baron Tamraz, President and Chief Executive Officer of Business Wire, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, interviews Warren Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Okay, so not every company has the “Oracle of Omaha” as its chairman. But every company has a chairman, CEO or president who their customers, stockholders and the media want to hear from.
Yes, yes, you can always insert a quote from Le Grand Fromage in your next press release. But, imagine inserting a video interview as well.
You’ll find the Business Wire press release was posted yesterday. It is entitled, “Warren Buffett is Bullish on America’s Future, but Says That a Full Economic Recovery Will Take a While.”
And attached to the press release is the video below.
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Google Flu Trends Intense in Canada, High in United States
Okay, so Google Flu Trends has been around since November of 2008. But Google has found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity.
Check out the world map below to see how Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity. It is intense in Canada and Norway. It is high in Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.
Each week, millions of users around the world search for health information online. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer.
You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Insights for Search. But can search query trends provide the basis for an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?
Google has found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries are added together.
Google compared its query counts with traditional flu surveillance systems and found that many search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often Google sees these search queries, it can estimate how much flu is circulating in different countries and regions around the world. Their results have been published in the journal Nature.
So, according to the world map, […] Read more »
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Anchor Intelligence Reports Decline in Click Fraud, Identifies New Hotspots
Anchor Intelligence has released its click fraud report for the third quarter of 2009. It paints a different picture than the Click Forensics report that was recently released. Where Click Forensics saw an increase, Anchor Intelligence saw a decline.
Overall, click fraud was 23.2% in Q3, down 14.3% from 27.1% in the second quarter. Anchor Intelligence breaks its click fraud rates into two categories: attempted click fraud, the kind with evil intentions, and innocuous click fraud, like an accidental click. Attempted click fraud was 18.6% in Q3 down from 22.9% in Q2. Innocuous rates increased from 4.2% in Q2 to 4.6% in Q3.
Anchor Intelligence’s data reports attempted click fraud, not billed click fraud. Their ClearMark for Traffic system integrates with ad networks and search engines and identifies fraudulent clicks before the advertiser is affected.
Egypt and Indonesia have emerged as leaders in click fraud rates - percentage-wise. Volume is still highest in the United States:
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How I Use Email Newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money
Yesterday I shared 6 reasons that I find email newsletters to be a more effective way of driving traffic to and making money from blogs than RSS.
Today I want to show you exactly how I do it.
Firstly a word about technology – I use Aweber to deliver my emails (I talk about why here). However you can use pretty much any email newsletter service for the process I outline below as long as it allows you to set up an auto-responder or sequence of emails.
I should also say that the process I’m about to share has evolved over time. It started out very very simple and has slowly developed with time – in fact it continues to develop as I learn more and by no means is where I want to take it…. yet.
Lets start with a visual on how my process looks (click to enlarge) before I explain the elements:
How I Use Email Newsletter to Drive Traffic and Make Money
Yesterday I shared 6 reasons that I find email newsletters to be a more effective way of driving traffic to and making money from blogs than RSS.
Today I want to show you exactly how I do it.
Firstly a word about technology – I use Aweber to deliver my emails (I talk about why here). However you can use pretty much any email newsletter service for the process I outline below as long as it allows you to set up an auto-responder or sequence of emails.
I should also say that the process I’m about to share has evolved over time. It started out very very simple and has slowly developed with time – in fact it continues to develop as I learn more and by no means is where I want to take it…. yet.
Lets start with a visual on how my process looks (click to enlarge) before I explain the elements:
Google Crawls RSS Feeds to Discover New Web Pages; AdSense for Feeds Now Available in Blogger
Google recently launched a new feature that uses RSS and Atom feeds to discover new web pages. This helps Google index new webpages faster than traditional methods.
As a result, you’ll want to make sure that your robots.txt file allows Googlebot to crawl your feeds. To learn more about robots.txt from Google’s standpoint, click here.
In other feed news related to Google, AdSense for Feeds is now available directly in Blogger. You can find the integration under the “Monetize” tab in the Blogger dashboard.
AdSense for Feeds allows bloggers to make money from advertisements that are included in RSS feeds. This is important because not all RSS readers click through to visit a site, where bloggers can make money off of display ads.
Blogger is a blogging platform that was acquired by Google in 2003.
Google Tests Mortgage Comparison Ads, Updates Real Estate Search in Maps
Google is vamping up its real estate search offerings with two new announcements. First up, AdWords is testing comparison ads in the mortgage/refinance vertical. The idea behind comparison ads is to help searchers filter what they’re really searching for when they type in something like “mortgage.” Check out this screen shot of a comparison ad, per the Inside AdWords blog (click for a larger view):
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Google Homepage Test Now Instructs Searchers to Press Enter
Google has added an element to their latest homepage test that instructs people what to do after they’ve entered a keyword. The sentence “Press enter to search,” now appears under the box where you type in your keywords - where the old submit buttons used to be.
Here’s a screenshot. (Click image for a larger view.)
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