According to Nielsen, Bing is the fastest growing search engine. Although Google still leads the pack with a 65 percent share of searches, Bing’s overall search share rose by roughly 22 percent to almost 11 percent of total searches.  

Bing is not trying to grow expedientially – rather, they are trying to build market share one great application at a time. 

Check Out Visual Search! 

Bing continues to tech-up its attractiveness by introducing a visual search feature. When users perform a search and click the ‘visual’ button (left side of screen), search results are arranged into rows of virtual data arranged into galleries. Because most individuals ‘browsing’ the web prefer graphic images over text, this is an awesome solution. 

Take my recent search for ‘movies’ – I am able to view, visually, movies that peak my interest. Or, I can simply refine my search by ratings, genre and more. The only downside to this feature is you will need to have Silverlight enabled. But non-the-less, after using this feature, you have to admit that it’s a great way to search. 

More on Bing:  

Microsoft’s Bing vs.Google: Head to Head Search Results by SearchEngineLand 

Search Smackdown: Bing vs.Google by TechCrunch 

Best

Denice MacDonald

If you are looking for the technology to put your video on the web, the variety of choices can be staggering. That’s because as web video has flourished, so have the number of companies providing the tools to deliver video across the Internet.

Large media companies and individual video bloggers can now choose from among multiple firms when looking for a web video product. Many of the technology providers are quite similar and anyone in the market for a web video platform should 'test the waters' and try out the ones that seem like the best fit.  

Web video technology services can be divided into the following categories:

CONTENT MANAGEMENT: The process of ingesting content, moving it around, converting to different files and organizing video properly before it goes online.

PROGRAMMING AND PUBLISHING: The presentation of the video on the web site, including the player and the playlists.

DISTRIBUTION: Delivering the video across the web, to either the main site or to distribution channels and portals.

MONETIZATION: Making money off the video, by integrating advertising or offering video on a download or pay-per-view basis.

REPORTING: Providing analysis and reports on number of views, length of views and other similar data. 

Check out these vendors and resources: 

Dragonfly (world-class multi-media content delivery network)

Kickapps (great for online communities or any type of 'sharing' portal)

Maven (online video advertising)

Magnify (good for both b2c and b2b)

UPDATED: Video for Mobile, Twitter and YouTube: 

Check out the recent craze for using video in social media campaigns posted October 1st by Adveristing Age: How to Mobilize Your Social Media.

Best

Denice MacDonald

Sharing ideas can become a much easier task when using mind mapping software. Mind mapping allows groups of individuals or participants to formulate relationships between ideas or other forms of information – visually and quickly. 

There are lots of creative mapping tools out there – some are free and some are built in various types of web formats. With easy linking and ‘drop and drag’ functionality, mind mapping tools can allow users to capture and share strategic knowledge in a Web-based visual collaborative workspace. 

Just think – no more lengthy, linear outlines or messy flowcharts. Mind Maps allows the integration of all these components – in real time. 

There are a number of free software packages that allow the creation of, or otherwise support mind maps. Likewise, there is also proprietary and more sophisticated packages available in basic or pro versions with paid subscriptions. 

Mind Mapping Comparison:  

To see a complete list of Mind Mapping Software – comparing all types of features and benefits, download this PDF from Mindmapper.com. 

Mind Mapping and Business Plans:

Freemind provides a gallery of sample mind maps so you can see how others use Freemind to create mind maps. Business Plan Generator is a free business planning template in Freemind's mind map gallery under the Business Procedures mind maps.

Note: The mind map example being shown here is for educational purposes only. Permission should be sought regarding all other reproductions from info@illumine.co.uk. Mind Maps are registered trademarks of the Buzan Organisation.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Company executives always say they believe customer loyalty
is the key to business success. 

However, customer care solutions, CRM systems, and discount programs are not enough and companies are losing customers at a staggering rate. Fostering true customer loyalty and engagement starts at the basic level. 

That being said, the following is a great white paper offering the simplest tactics to get customers engaged to provide you quantifiable feedback on your relationship with them. 

Allegiance_TechPaper_9ideas.pdf (891.88 kb)

Also, the vendor does a great job of presenting the business case for their product here: www.allegiance.com/engage  

I highly recommend that you take a look at this vendor, read the white paper and begin a lasting business relationship with your clients, employees and stakeholders. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Do you need a quick down and dirty way to get transparent usability on your web initiative? Do you need a way to get feedback from clients on early designs? 

Consider using Usabilla – an online web application that offers a fast and simple way to collect visual feedback on any web page, mockup, sketch, or image. 

Ask your users about their opinion or first impression in just a few minutes. You can invite your users to participate and share their opinion. 

Your users answer your questions by simply adding datapoints and notes on top of your web page, mock up, or any other image. 

To get started, check out Usabilla features here or sign up now for a free account.

I would highly recommend this tool!

Best

Denice MacDonald

KeywordSpy^TM - a powerful web-based keyword intelligence system - has announced the unveiling of KeywordSpy Version 3.0. 

What’s so great about this upgrade? Version 3.0 is a compilation of user feedback – elevating the product version to an all new level based on customer interaction and use. 

New features include:

1. Daily scans of over 127 million keywords in our database.
2. Advanced searching options including destination url and ad copy searches.
3. ROI Indicator to easily pinpoint profitable keywords and ad copy combination.
4. Competitor sub-domains related & misspelled keyword results.
5. Support over 80 major affiliate networks for a high-end affiliate research.

 If you are interested in learning more about this great product, sign up now for a free trial.

About KeywordSpy

KeywordSpy currently operates in USA, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Through this keyword tool and keyword software, you can perform advanced keyword research and keyword tracking to study what your competitors have been advertising in their Adwords campaigns and Other PPC campaigns. You can now get complete in-depth analysis, stats, budget, affiliates & ad copies of your competitors. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Dimdim is a simple, free open source web conferencing service.  Dimdim lets anyone deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet - with no download required.   

Dimdim is available as open source software so you can extend and improve it freely. Dimdim already integrates with CRM and LMS software and can be extended easily.

Moreover, Dimdim is extremely flexible, available in hosted and onsite configurations and easily customizable. 

For more information on this new and evolving product, go to Dimdim’s video tour page.

Best

Sensidea, a digital media consultancy, has launched an amazing social monitoring tool called “socialseek.” 

According to Sensidea: “With wide reach, cool charts, comparing topics, and exporting results and charts, socialseeks makes it simple and easy to understand your social status, track against the competition, and make decisions to stay in the scene...and do it right from your desktop.”

The application includes the following features:

>Seek Blogs, Tweets, Videos, Images, and Events 

>Add any site you want to track, no problem

>Real-time automatic updates and notifications

>Track all the chatter by city or anywhere

>Find something interesting? One click away

>Compare topics to see what's making more noise

>Quick charts to see trends and track what's hot

>Export results to CSV & PDF

>Brands Track yourself against the competition

>Windows & Mac Compatible 

Get socialseek here now.

To learn more about Sensidea, an incredible, upcoming digital company, go here.

Best

Denice MacDonald

Google Voice gives you a single phone number that rings all your phones, saves your voicemail online, and transcribes your voicemail to text.  

Other cool features include the ability to listen in on messages while they are being left and the ability to make low cost international calls.   

Your Google Voice number is tied to you rather than a device or a location – so it stays with you as you move, change jobs or switch phone companies. Your forwarding phones may change but your Google number remains the same, so you don’t need to send out updates all the time about numbers to reach you at.  

The best part? You can record custom greetings for your favorite callers or block annoying callers by marking them as SPAM. 

Google Voice is Free - GET AN INVITE NOW! 

To learn more, watch this great overview on how it works or access the Google Voice Blog 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Google Maps is Google’s free web-based mapping application. Google Maps includes photos, videos, and user-created maps along with location searches. Today, Google Maps continues to add functionality at a rapid pace – making it one of the fasting growing online applications worth reviewing.  Here are a few features worth noting: 

MyMaps:  Google has added features to Google Maps that let you save, annotate, and share directions using MyMaps. Users can save driving directions by simply clicking the "save to my maps" link below the directions. 

Your Latest Twitter Status on Google Maps:  The latest Google Maps Mashup takes your latest Twitter Status Update along with your profile location and displays it on Google Maps. The more detailed your profile location is, the higher the zoom level. So if you have a iPhone generated profile location (which is in the form of latitude, longitude) you will get the highest zoom level. Here's the url: (replace mibazaar at the end of the url with your twitter user id) http://www.mibazaar.com/twitstat.php?uid=mibazaar

Mobile: Google Maps is available on mobile devices. The feature is experimental and limits participation to American owners of the 8110, 8120, and 8130 BlackBerry Pearl models.  If you use one of these models, you only need to press "0" to center your map view and then hold the left-side key while you say the name or type of business you're looking for to get some results, according to a post on the Google Mobile Blog. 

Additional Routes: Under the “Suggested Routes” heading, you will now be able to access other routes to the same destination. This is a feature that GPS systems in car, like a Garmin device, have been offering for quite some time so it makes sense that Google would want to catch up. Google says that they choose alternative routes bases on many factors, including distance, travel time, and number of turns. Google Maps boils this data down to what is the lowest “cost” and ranks the routes based upon the “cost.” 

Just for Fun! Google have released a Google Earth plug-in game that lets you drive a Lunar Rover on the moon. The game allows you to drive around the various Apollo moon landing sites. The Apollo 11 site is a good place to start because it also contains a model of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. Get it here: Google Geo Developers Blog: Moon in the Google Earth Plug-in!

Great Resource:

Google Maps Mania (Blog)

TechCrunch (Various search results on Google Maps)

Best

Denice MacDonald

TweetMic is a simple and intuitive Twitter client app for the iPhone that allows you to make high-quality audio recordings or "Tweetcasts" and publish them directly to Twitter.

There is no limit to how much you can record and you don't need to sign up for any additional service to start using TweetMic.

More information here!

For more expanded information on Twitter in general, consider Mashable - The Social Media Guide:

- 6 Twitter Search Services Compared
- 6 Unique Twitter Visualizations
- 20+ Great Twitter Tools for Firefox
- 20 Twitter Badges to Show Off Your Tweets

Happy 4th of July to all you!

Best

Denice MacDonald

Yep, I took the bait from Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” campaign and upgraded to Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8). The compelling campaign touts significant updates from IE 7 including better phishing and malware protection, InPrivate browsing and InPrivate filtering.  

Features like Accelerators, Web Slices and Visual Search Suggestions make IE 8 even more enticing. 

Accelerators help in the retrieval and manipulation of data on websites. It usually involves selected content on a website first and the accelerator to process the content afterwards. This can range from translation services to drawing a map of the location of a restaurant you just discovered or checking the price of an item on a shopping site. 

A Web Slice enables users to subscribe to content directly within a web page - a separate feed file is not required. Users monitor content changes and view the updated portion of the web page directly from the Favorites bar (the improved Links toolbar) of Internet Explorer. 

IE 8 is partnering with top search providers like Live Search, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Amazon, and more to deliver Visual Search Suggestions that provide you with immediate answers. For example, typing "Isaac Newt" with Wikipedia visual suggestions will instantly show you a preview of the results directly in the Search Box drop-down. 

Go ahead – take the plunge and get the install here. If it doesn’t work out, you can uninstall IE 8 and get your old IE 7 back!

Great visual metaphor by CNET on YouTube: Internet Explorer 8 Review

Best

Denice MacDonald

Whether you intend to use SharePoint as a dedicated internal content management system, have a need for forms processing or merely want a platform for social computing, this is not a product that can be simply turned over to the IT department to install and manage. 

Organizations that want to accomplish the most with SharePoint will need to align business and IT teams to constructively design a specific approach or strategy – reason simply, SharePoint seems easy to use, but somewhat difficult to master. 

The first and foremost step, develop a strategy around business needs.

What are your business needs and how can SharePoint help in addressing those needs? The following are examples of business requirements ahead of a SharePoint install:

1. Improve communications and documentation between diverse locations by providing a central repository for production procedures and information
2. Provide a method for documentation change management sharing information
3. Reduce the cost and time of resolving problems by providing a central portal for users (staff or employees) to search processes, procedures and get up to date documentation
4. Provide the ability to work on documentation at the earliest emergence, before interaction with other processes and large volumes of users
5. Project managers can share documents and collaborate with other users on projects; using an integrated set of tools
6. Provide collaboration tools such as wiki’s and blogs within the context of an intranet allowing feedback, surveying and access to versioned documents  

Once these objectives have been defined, it will be much easier to align goals to SharePoint technology.   

LEARN MORE:

From Microsoft

• Topics to consider before deploying SharePoint Products and Technologies

• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Technical Library in Compiled Help format

• Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3.0 x86

• Analyzing Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Usage

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Trial Version

Top 10 Benefits of MS SharePoint Services for Document Management by Positive NPV

The SharePoint Report by CMSWatch

Best

Denice MacDonald

Common Tag is an open tagging format developed to make content more connected, accessible and engaging. Unlike text tags, Common Tags are references to unique, well-defined concepts, complete with metadata and their own URLs.  

Specifically, Common Tag format is based on RDFa, a standard mechanism for placing structured content within HTML documents. The format uses the URIs of concepts defined on the Web as a way of anchoring the meaning of Tag objects. Common concepts can be found, among others, in two big databases of structured content or controlled vocabularies, as librarians call it – Freebase and DBpedia.  

According to the Common Tag web site, "The Common Tag format was developed to address the current shortcomings of tagging and help everyone - including end users, publishers, and developers - get more out of Web content. With Common Tag, content is tagged with unique, well-defined concepts - everything about New York City is tagged with one concept for New York City and everything about jaguar the animal is tagged with one concept for jaguar the animal.” 

Faviki is involved in the development of the  new open tagging format – Common Tag, together with AdaptiveBlue, DERI (NUI Galway), Yahoo!, Zemanta, and Zigtag. This is the first time that this number of web companies have stepped together from day one to introduce a tagging standard.

Resources:

Common Tag - The New Semantic Layer by Website Magazine, June, 2009

Will You Implement Yahoo's Common Tag? by Search Engine Roundtable, June, 2009

Best

Denice MacDonald

A heat map is a picture of a web page that shows where users click when they visit a particular page.  From a techy perspective, a heat map is artificial intelligence that simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals.  

How does it work? 

The areas that are clicked most often appear in red (hot spot), while the areas clicked least often appear in blue or with no color at all.   

Why should you care? 

Heat maps are a tool used by web developers as part of usability testing. Understanding how visitors behave when they visit your web site is crucial to improving its effectiveness – not to mention conversion.  

Looking at the image to the right, it appears that MacDonald Consulting needs to improve image placement on the header and within center copy real estate to increase visitor interaction and conversion. Doing so will encourage visitors to click on header links (top blue area to the right within the graphic).

How to build a website heat map:

Two of the most popular heat map generator applications are FuseStats and CrazyEgg but they charge for their service.  

Feng-GUI, however, offers free access to their service but there are some restrictions.

Best

Denice MacDonald

You finally launched a much-anticipated Web 2.0+ web site and you can’t wait to hunker down and review your analytics. How do you gauge if your analytics for your site are appropriate, measurable and definable? And most importantly, who in your organization would benefit? 

Moving from a silo to a working team 

In the past, most web sites were created and managed within a silo. Now, it is recommended that organizations have a dedicated department or team leader focused to web statistics, watching the performance of various campaigns and then analyzing certain key metrics leading to higher ROI. After keen observation and reporting, useful recommendations are made to the various departments regarding how to increase conversions. 

Connecting the dots 

In many cases, the statistical information from web pages are important to the sales and marketing department as they relate to collaborative online and offline initiatives. The information technology department may find the numbers helpful in determining browser and network bandwidth needs. Web designers would be interested in the numbers to determine if each web page is attracting the number of visitors it should.

If a web page, or the entire site is underperforming, the web traffic statistics will reflect this and specific parts of the web site may need to be re-designed to attract more traffic. Lastly, management will want to see that the ongoing investment in the web site is yielding a definable ROI. Connecting disciplines and/or departments will help the organization perform on all four cylinders - defining and redefining web strategy as necessary. 

Web analytics – the PLAN 

Start with figuring out what you want to do with web analytics. You need to have a plan to have an idea of what your return will be on your investment. Again, this will include collaboration with other departments and disciplines. Then, you will need to select an analytics tool that works in tandem with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the organization resulting in reporting that makes sense to the various stakeholders. 

The right tools

Not all analytic tools are alike. Take time to review and possibly demo various options. Here are a few popular and time-tested solutions worth reviewing.

Google Analytics

IndexTools

Omniture's Site Catalyst

Unica's Net Insight

Web Trends

Coremetrics

For web statistics 'best practices' and more, visit: The Web Analytics Association 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Google has recently introduced "What's Popular," a gadget for user iGoogle startup pages. The gadget displays popular items of interest in the form of links with titles and short descriptions from Google's index on users' iGoogle pages. Similar to Digg, users can interact with the application by voting or participate in polling – but there are significant differences between this application and Digg.

First and foremost, there is no login, username or special account needed to vote, other than already being signed into your iGoogle account. Similar to Digg, you can submit URLs for inclusion in the gadget without any other significant information - meaning you can submit anonymously. This eliminates the worry of being penalized for submitting your own content. If you decide to submit using your Google ID and want to be recognized, you can edit the title and description of the submission.  

Unlike Digg, there presently is no area for commentary or the capacity to make friends. On the surface, it could be argued that this gadget has the potential to be a much more democratic process than a site like Digg, where results are regularly manipulated by networks of "friends"¹.

Not to worry, Google already has a huge user base that can be pointed in the direction of web pages they might enjoy and this should not deter from the application’s overall success.

None-the-less, these types of applications by iGoogle continue to grow and add depth to user interaction to content on the web.

Get it now and try for yourself:

If you are an iGoogle user, you can get the “What’s Popular” gadget here.
If you are not an iGoogle user, a stand-alone URL is available here and a mini gadget URL is available here. 

Sources:

¹Web Magazine May, 2009

Google Rolls Out Digg Reminiscent iGoogle Gadget: What's Popular -  By George Norman - Software News Editor

Best

Denice MacDonald

If you’re a busy web professional like me, you don’t have time to participate in every event, tradeshow or user group.  Moreover, if you don’t care for daily extensive reading and prefer some face time, a video blog may be your answer. 

WebProNews Blog Videos is your home for ebusiness, tech and search video content. They provide exclusive coverage of conferences, compelling interviews with top names in the industry, practical tips, and online news that matters.

You can watch the blog version with actual clips at events with subject matter experts like Bruce Clay, or you can read the blog.

Either way, you will be able to find current information that would take hours to filter through via daily searches or bookmarking. WebProNews provides RSS feeds and archived blogs.

Here are a couple of interesting, if not edgy, posts:

Bruce Clay - SES NY 2009 - Mike McDonald sat down with Bruce Clay for an interview at Search Engine Strategies, NY on a follow-up to ranking being dead, and changes to search results based on behavioral and intent-based data.

SES NY - Twitter Exclusively as a Marketing Tool? - Discussion on Guy Kawasaki's presentation at the Search Engine Strategies, NY.

Best

Denice MacDonald

Wow, this is amazing. For the second year in a row, global news and business publication The Economist took the #1 spot on Adweek’s Top 10 list of consumer magazines with standout track records of advertising revenue and page performance.  

What’s fascinating about The Economist, an authoritative weekly newspaper focusing on international politics and business news and opinion, is how they’ve married their offline print with their online presence.

Offering both print and digital subscriptions, The Economist has nurtured their audience with audio and video, research tools, classifieds and jobs as well as world-wide content. 

Moreover, the organization uses ‘four free trial issues’ to bait print subscribers. If you don’t want to take the plunge into print subscriptions, the web site offers newsletters and topic alerts (RSS or e-mail).

For business professionals, the web site offers a unique knowledge center called “Economist Intelligence Unit” (EIU Online) that offers instant access to a collection of intelligence on 203 countries, eight industries and a range of management topics.

I would strongly recommend that you bookmark or subscribe to the free alerts or take advantage of the four free issues.

This is an amazing print resource and a substantiated business case for a well-developed web advertising presence.

Best

Denice MacDonald

I received a timely e-mail from founder Todd Hogan from Surchur regarding a recent press release announcing a major update to their web site.

Surchur.com gives you a dashboard to the latest social media, blogs, pictures, and videos for a given topic. The new surchur.com adds several additional features:

1 -- The Surchmeter - see just how popular your keyword is on Surchur, in the blogosphere and on twitter - more sources coming soon!

2 -- A more intuitive cleaner design - we think you'll really like it.

3 -- Significantly faster load speed.

4 -- The front page and "catching fire" feature track the hottest topics on the internet via Yahoo Buzz, Google Trends, Twitter Search and more.

5 -- A history for surched topics, so for popular keywords you can see what was being posted on something yesterday, last week or, as our history builds, further into the past.

If you want to learn more about Surchur, visit the homepage, the social media section or their blog.

Best of luck Todd, we love your web site!

Best,

Denice MacDonald