Earlier this year, we reported that 63 percent of companies planned to increase their spending on social media in 2009. Thus, it’s not too surprising that a recent study from the Association of National Advertisers reveal that 66 percent of marketers have now used social media in some capacity in 2009.

Also not surprising, the top platforms being utilized: Facebook () (74%), YouTube () (65%), Twitter () (63%), LinkedIn () (60%). Combined, this usage represents significant growth from 2007, when the same survey indicated that just 20 percent of marketers were using social media.

Although social media marketing is clearly on the rise, it remains a relatively small part of most marketing budgets. ANA reports that the bulk of spending will still go to maintaining a company website, search marketing, and online display ads.

That said, social media (including blogs) remains the quickest growing marketing segment, and as we recently reported, it’s expected to grow to a $3.1 billion industry by 2014. In all, it looks like social media marketing still has a healthy amount of growth in front of it.

See Also: How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business

Top 10 Things the Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal Changes for SEO

Posted by randfish on July 29th, 2009 at 8:56 am Microsoft

 

The search landscape is changing significantly this morning, and SEOs of all stripes need to pay close attention. I'm going to do my best to summarize the impact of these changes based on what we already know and interpret what's going to change for the field of search engine optimization and what we, as representatives of our clients and our companies, need to know and do.

Background on the Deal

First off, a few background snippets from several of the sources on this topic - SearchEngineLand's Live Blogging Coverage; TechCrunch; ReadWriteWeb; and the new MS/Yahoo! website Choice, Value, Innovation.

• The term of the agreement is 10 years
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!'s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms
• Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.
• Microsoft's Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.
• Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.
• Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft's AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter's automated auction process.

In case that wasn't quite clear, the big takeaway is that Bing will now power search on Yahoo! and Yahoo!'s salesforce will sell the premium (non-self service) search advertising for Yahoo!/Bing. Bing also gets access to Yahoo!'s core search technology and can, at its option, leverage that to help create more relevant results.

• Google has 78% of market share of paid search (direct quote on SELand from Microsoft)
• Bartz: Yes there are many Yahoo search employees who will be asked to take jobs at Microsoft. There will also be search employees who we look to help us on the display side. And then unfortunately there will be some redundancy in Yahoo. (Just a quick note; if you work in Yahoo! search, please email me - rand@seomoz.org - we're hiring on the engineering team!)
• Bartz: Notes that when it comes to paid search, Panama is the provider in most international marketplaces for Microsoft already.

• Danny Sullivan: What happens to other things search like at Yahoo? What powered Yahoo News? What happens to the Yahoo Directory? Is Delicious search? And what happens to Yahoo paid inclusion?
  Bartz: We have full flexibility on what to do within our own sites. Paid inclusion, we’ll decide on that later.

• AdAge reports that ComScore shows Bing will now have a 28% market share when combined with Yahoo! search, though.
• ReadWriteWeb worried about this large list of services from Yahoo! that are under "search services." Yahoo! PR called them to say that "this is a consumer facing list of search-related services, like News Search and Map Search, but most of those are not or are no longer formally part of the Search Department." So, probably at least some of them are safe.

Search Query Demand Market Share

The search landscape right now looks like something between:

Market Share from the thousands of accounts served by their hit counter/referral tracking software
(note: I don't know why it says 82% on the left and 72% on the right, but 82% appears more accurate when adding up all the other figures)

AND

Based on data from Comscore's June Release

We're somewhere between a market where Google dominates 65-82% of all search queries. When it comes to referring queries that point out from the engine's properties (Google/Yahoo!/Microsoft not searching or linking to their own content), I believe Google's closer to sending out 80-85% of that traffic.

What's Changing for SEOs?

Note that some of thse are speculative, while others are direct and actionable. However, until the deal actually goes into effect and is publically accessible (which could take some serious time depending on regulators), my best advice is to be prepared (and take those steps that can ensure maximum benefit once the changes go live). Remember that Yahoo! said full implementation may lag up to 24 months (2 years) behind regulatory approval (which itself could take months), so you've got some time.

#1 - SEO for Bing is Worth Your Optimization Effort

Even if the lowest numbers are accurate, 15% of search market share is worth the optimization effort. Bing's algorithm, while certainly an upgrade from Live.com still has a few noticeable preferences, such as concentration on keyword use in subdomains and root domain names (Google loves exact keyword matches, but Bing really likes any keyword placement in the sub or root). Bing's core relevancy sometimes suffers from manipulative link patterns more so than Google & Yahoo!, though, they often do a good job surfacing alternative queries and instant answers.

Bing's results are, by default, "richer" than those of Yahoo! and Google. Although Yahoo! will be controlling the user interface on their end, it's likely much of that "richness" will make its way into the Bing results inside Yahoo!. Bing also surfaces only the top 5 results for many queries, meaning a higher concentration of clicks on those top results.

Bing's traffic is, in general, also more likely to convert and click on ads. Whether this is a result of demographics or of how the engine frames information isn't clear, though we may get more insight on that soon.

We at SEOmoz will certainly be doing more work to provide insight into how Bing ranks results and where it differs substantively from Google. You can go play around with results here or here. I strongly suspect there will be more SEO focus overall on Bing in both R&D and active practice.

#2 - We May Lose Yahoo! Link Data

The largest two providers of link information to SEOs today are Yahoo!'s advanced search queries and Yahoo! Site Explorer. If these go away, which seems likely with Bing, since Microsoft removed the link query operator's functionality a few years back (and Google torched theirs nearly 5 years ago), we'll be left with very few sources of link information. Obviously, SEOmoz itself provides Linkscape, but we'll be likely to offer a slightly deprecated, free version of that tool if/when this happens. Exalead.com still does provide link data, though not as richly as Yahoo!

This change would likely see the rise of more propietary link indices as well as the breaking of a large number of internal and external tools that rely on Yahoo! for their link data. We may not know for sure for some time to come, but it may make have a substantive impact on the link research landscape.

#3 - PPC Consolidation

Right now, many companies and agencies exclusively use Google AdWords. I think both Microsoft and Yahoo! are counting on a lowered complexity and barrier to entry with only two major search engines making a compelling case that one should, at the least, participate in the two leading platforms for search. I suspect more people will buy ads from MSN AdCenter, which is likely to increase ad relevancy, quality and competition. The days of low cost traffic via AdCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing may be nearing an end (unless market share slips so far that they become largely irrelevant, but that seem unlikely, at least in the short term).

#4 - Bing's Webmaster Tools Are Important

If you don't have an account with Bing Webmaster Tools, now is the time. Although not yet as robust as Google's, Bing WMT is working hard to catch up and even surpass their rivals with features that will prove valuable for webmasters on all platforms. The data you get from Bing WMT will also be important for conducting better organic SEO campaigns on that engine and seeing how Google & Bing may view your site differently.

#5 - Yahoo! & Bing Local Become More Essential

We're still not 100% sure of the status of local search - according the ReadWriteWeb piece, Yahoo! may consider this a "consumer service" and not part of core search. However, if Bing is serving up local listings in the search results (as they do now), Bing's local registration is going to become very important for local businesses. Check out Bing Local and their local listing center in the near futuer if this impacts you.

#6 - Bing Will Get more Spam

With greater search share comes greater spam attempts. Google's still a ways out in front in terms of catching and discounting manipulative practices, but Yahoo! has been a close second for some time. I'd expect that Bing will recruit a number of the staff and algorithmic work Yahoo! search has done on this front, but they should also expect serious spammer attention to be focused their way. The loopholes that Google's closed will still likely be open on Bing for some time to come and spammers will use the chaos that comes from a merger to exploit these.

#7 - Bing Will Get Lots more Data

Bing's going to know a lot more about you. Perhaps not as much as Google, but with Yahoo! analytics, Yahoo!'s database of profiles, Yahoo!'s behavioral targeting and their own research, Bing's going to be a close second. This should, conceptually, help improve core search and may pave the way for greater advances on the personalization front, too.

#8 - Important Yahoo! Properties May Dissappear

As Danny Sullivan and ReadWriteWeb noted, we're in some danger of losing stalwarts like the Yahoo! Directory, Delicious (which has often been seen as an alternative search play), Yahoo! Maps, SearchMonkey & BOSS (two of the best search apps out there). It's still speculative, but by watching the activities inside Yahoo! over the next 3-6 months, we'll probably get a lot more insight about who's headed to the chopping block.

 #9 - Yahoo! Maintains UI Control for their Search Experience

This means that Yahoo!'s results ordering, layout, sidebars and searcher focus may continue to be unique from Bing, thus requiring that SEOs still pay attention to the differences in the two engines and optimize accordingly. It will be tough to know the extent of Bing's integration until it launches, but there's a lot of room for variation, which means complexity for SEOs.

#10 - Yahoo! Will Become a More Powerful Content Competitor

With Yahoo! out of the core search business, many people, myself included, expect them to focus even more on the content side of the business. That means properties inside Yahoo! News & Media Group are going to get more attention and more investment. If you're competing with Yahoo!'s content now, that battle may get tougher in the future.

Mega CSS Resource Roundup

In this article you will get access to one of the largest collections ever of CSS Tools, Tutorials, Cheat Sheets etc. You may have seen some of these before but here they are all put together

CSS is a key part of web design and it is really essential for web designers and developers to be comfortable with it. CSS is not too difficult to code and at the same time it is extremely powerful if you know how to master it. On the other hand getting started can be quite hard as you need to understand how CSS integrates with other web technologies and how the most fundamental parts work fx. CSS selectors.This article will give you techniques and tools enough to get started and to also to start using more advanced stuff. New to CSS? First thing you need to do is to pick a favourite cheat sheet and print it for quick reference. There are many details that can be hard to remember in the beginning and this is where cheat sheets comes in handy. Then dig into some of the Getting Started Resources to get yourself ready for the many really useful CSS Techniques found here

HTML 5 Reset Stylesheet

We’ve had a number of people asking about templates, boilerplates and styling for HTML 5 so to give you all a helping hand and continue on from those basic building blocks that Remy talked about last week I’ve created a HTML 5 reset stylesheet for you to take away and use, edit, amend and update in your projects.

Based on Eric Meyers CSS reset, I’ve made a few adjustments from Erics work that we’ll get to later but first here’s the file in full and we’ll then break it down step by step.

/*
html5doctor.com Reset Stylesheet
v1.4
2009-07-27
Author: Richard Clark - http://richclarkdesign.com
*/
html, body, div, span, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
abbr, address, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, img, ins, kbd, q, samp,
small, strong, sub, sup, var,
b, i,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td,
article, aside, dialog, figure, footer, header,
hgroup, menu, nav, section, menu,
time, mark, audio, video {
        margin:0;
        padding:0;
        border:0;
        outline:0;
        font-size:100%;
        vertical-align:baseline;
        background:transparent;
}
body {
        line-height:1;
}
article, aside, dialog, figure, footer, header,
hgroup, nav, section {
        display:block;
}
nav ul {
        list-style:none;
}
blockquote, q {
        quotes:none;
}
blockquote:before, blockquote:after,
q:before, q:after {
        content:'';
        content:none;
}
a {
        margin:0;
        padding:0;
        border:0;
        font-size:100%;
        vertical-align:baseline;
        background:transparent;
}
ins {
        background-color:#ff9;
        color:#000;
        text-decoration:none;
}
mark {
        background-color:#ff9;
        color:#000;
        font-style:italic;
        font-weight:bold;
}
del {
        text-decoration: line-through;
}
abbr[title], dfn[title] {
        border-bottom:1px dotted #000;
        cursor:help;
}
table {
        border-collapse:collapse;
        border-spacing:0;
}
hr {
    display:block;
    height:1px;
    border:0;
    border-top:1px solid #cccccc;
    margin:1em 0;
    padding:0;
}
input, select {
        vertical-align:middle;
}

So what’s new then?

Well firstly, I’ve removed those elements that have been deprecated from the HTML 5 specification such as <acronym>, <font> and <big> (We’ll cover deprecated elements in more detail in another post). I’ve added in the the new HTML 5 elements to the reset, to remove any default padding, margin and borders. I’ve then added the explicit display:block declaration for those elements that are required to render as blocks.

I’ve also removed the :focus part from Eric’s stylesheet. There are two reasons for this; the first is that by declaring outline:0 you remove the focus identifier for keyboard users. The second is that although Eric released his stylesheet in good faith that people would edit it and style :focus, they don’t. You will also notice that I’ve set defaults for <ins> as I don’t think they got updated very often in Eric’s styles either.

Another change from Eric’s stylsheet is that I decided to remove the lines that remove bullets from lists, the reason for this is purely personal. I tend to only add the list style back in when using Erics reset anyway. I have however included nav ul {list-style:none;} to at least remove those pesky bullets from your navigation.

Using attribute selectors

You’ll notice that I’ve included attribute selctors for <abbr> and <dfn>, the reason for this is I only want the style to appear if there is a title attribute to be displayed. The reason for this is primarly for accessibility. For example we use <abbr> regularly on this site but don’t always include a title attribute, that’s because it’s safe to assume all (no matter what device they are using) our readers know what HTML is, however we need to still include <abbr> to make sure screenreaders read the text as H-T-M-L rather than “HTML” which they struggle to pronounce.

What’s that bit about mark?

<mark> is a new element introduced in HTML 5 used to (you guessed it) mark text in a document. The spec describes <mark> as “The mark element represents a run of text in one document marked or highlighted for reference purposes, due to its relevance in another context.”. I anticipate this it will be used for highlighting phrases in search results and similar. We’ll have more on this in a post soon.

Where are all those application elements?

“Application elements” is the term I’ve used to loosely describe those elements such as <datagrid>, <datalist> etc. Basically those that you are likely to find in web apps rather than websites. These have been left out because at the current time hardly any of what was ‘Web Applications 1.0′ has been implemented by browsers. Also this reset is primarily aimed at those serving their pages as text/html not xml.

Go grab it

So that basically wraps it up, it’s released under a creative commons license and you can use it for both personal and commercial work. I thought I’d let Google take care of the hosting so go grab it from Google Code and let me know of any thoughts, queries or improvements you can offer.

You might think a 20-page strategy a bit over the top for a tool like Twitter.

After all, microblogging is a low-barrier to entry, low-risk and low-resource channel relative to other corporate communications overheads like a blog or printed newsletter. And the pioneers in corporate use of Twitter by central government (see No 10, CLG and FCO) all started as low-profile experiments and grew organically into what they are today.

But, having held back my JFDI inclinations long enough to sit down and write a proper plan for BIS's corporate Twitter account, I was surprised by just how much there is to say - and quite how worth saying it is, especially now the platform is more mature and less forgiving of mistakes.

So in case it's of use to others who are thinking of doing the same, I've turned BIS's Twitter strategy into a generic template Twitter strategy for Departments (PDF file) [Scribd version ]

You're welcome to re-use this however you like, be that to adopt it wholesale or remix it to suit the needs of your organisation. Let me know any changes you'd make (I am sure there will be lots) via the comments below or get in touch directly.

For the next version of this document I’d like to set down how and when civil servants should support, encourage and manage Ministers' use of Twitter for Departmental business (and navigate the minefield of propriety this might imply), and add a light touch policy for officials who tweet about their work in a personal capacity.

Finally, some of the benefits I've found of having this document in my armoury are:

• To get buy-in, explain Twitter's importance to non-believers and the uninitiated, and face down accusations of bandwagon-jumping
• To set clear objectives and metrics to make sure there's a return on the investment of staff time (and if there isn’t, we’ll stop doing it)
• To make sure the channel is used consistently and carefully, to protect corporate reputation from silly mistakes or inappropriate use
• To plan varied and interesting content, and enthuse those who will provide it into actively wanting to do so.
• As a briefing tool for new starters in the team who will be involved in the management of the channel

I hope you’ll find it useful too

About one week ago, I introduced the Nice & Clean Sliding Login Panel built with jQuery which was a redesigned of my popular Mootools sliding panel. Today, we will see how to implement it in Wordpress 2.7+. Please note I am not going to cover any previous version of Wordpress in this tutorial.

Before I give you the code, let me briefly explain you what we want to achieve.

If user didn’t log in or register yet, we will show the login and register forms in the sliding panel with a short Welcome Message:

Comparing the old homepage to the new homepage sheds an enormous amount of light on Twitter’s ambitions with its microblogging platform. Here’s the old description text:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

And here’s the new text:

“Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world”

You immediately notice the deemphasis on your personal network – the people you live, sleep, and work with – and the focus on realtime discovery and world events. Twitter’s stepped away from being branded as a social network, or being compared to Facebook (Facebook).

The second big change is search – specifically the trending topics. The company not only makes sure you realize that the Twitterverse is talking about things you care about (whether it’s pitcher Mark Buehrle or Blue M&Ms), but it explains them with a conversation bubble that appears when you hover over the question mark icon.

In the 90s, a big company from up north was extremely successful with a dialect of the programming language BASIC (acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). One of the reasons it was so successful was that the language was easy to learn and use.

Bringing an easy to learn and use language to the mobile world and the Android platform is the goal of the Simple project. Simple is a BASIC dialect for developing Android applications. It is particularly well suited for non-professional programmers (but not limited to). Simple allows programmers to quickly write Android applications by using the components supplied by its runtime system.

Similar to its 90s relative, Simple programs are form definitions (which contain components) and code (which contains the program logic). The interaction between the components and the program logic happens through events triggered by the components. The program logic consists of event handlers which contain code reacting to the events.

Below you find screenshots from two sample applications written in Simple - EtchSketch and a version of Tetris. The source code for these applications can be found in the samples directory of the source code of the Simple distribution:

For more information on writing Simple application see HowToWriteASimpleApplication.

Warning: Even though this project is beyond its initial phase it is still a work in progress. You are very likely to run into bugs as well as into situations were needed functionality is simply not implemented. You can either report an issue or, even better, solve the issue yourself and contribute your solution to Simple!