'Net Features

Flickr Gives Users Space

Allison Howen — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:21:00 GMT

Although Yahoo has been in the news this week because of its billion dollar acquisition of Tumblr, the company has also revealed some big changes to its photo-sharing service Flickr.

The most noteworthy update is that Flickr is now offering its users a free terabyte of space. This is huge, as the Flickr blog states, “We believe you should share all your images in full resolution, so life’s moments can be relived in their original quality. No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat. We’re giving your photos room to breathe, and you the space to upload a dizzying number of photos and videos, for free. Just how big is a terabyte? Well, you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.”

In addition to a free terabyte of space, Flickr has unveiled a redesigned platform. The new interactive design features an Activity Feed that displays a combination of the recent activity on a user’s photos with their friends’ updates. Plus, users can add a customizable cover photo and high-resolution profile picture to their Photostream, as well as leverage the platform’s new Slideshare mode to view a showcase of photos.

It is also important to mention that users can now upload 1080p HD quality videos that are up to three minutes in length. Moreover, the photo-sharing site has added to its mobile application offering, which already includes an iOS app, by launching an Android app that allows users to interact, share and view photos.

That being said, only time will tell if a terabyte of space and new design will be enough to attract more photographers to the site – and along with the aquisition of Tumblr, more people back to Yahoo in the long run.

Avoid Google Penguin 2.0 Slowdowns

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:35:00 GMT

How will Penguin 2.0 affect your website? How will you measure the impact? If you’re like most businesses, you’ll check your site’s search engine rankings and make assumptions based on where it stands. The team at Fruition thinks there’s a better way.

Its Google Penalty Checker tool (registration required) allows website owners to determine if a particular Google update (because Penguin 2.0 won’t be the last) had a positive or negative effect on their website. The tool is easy to use, provides immediate results and is free for a limited time.

Fruition reports that the Google Penalty checker, which requires a connection with your Google Analytics account, is fully compliant with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and picks up even the smallest changes in a Google update allowing website owners to determine if they were impacted or not.

Protect your investment, keep up with Google changes and avoid Google penalization by trying the Google Penalty checker.

4 Backlink Myths Busted

Administrator — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:30:00 GMT

:: Travis Bliffen, Seo Proz ::

SEO is the magic of the digital marketing world with experts promising to pull rabbits out of hats for first-page search engine results. But as search engine providers continuously update their ranking algorithms, SEO success becomes an elusive and shifting science - even for those with all the tricks. So, how can you separate fact from illusion? Let's start by busting four backlink myths.

Myth: All backlinks should be created within content that is relevant to the page being optimized.

When a page or content goes “viral,” it is rapidly shared across both new and established blogs, social networks and the net as a whole. As a result, backlinks are created on a range of sites, many of which have absolutely no relevance to the content being linked. Therefore, even if your content is about, say, puppy dogs, if you create a link on a high-quality site about apples, the backlink is still advantageous for your search engine ranking. This doesn’t mean that spamming links all over the place is a good idea though. Natural link building involves creating backlinks in a manner that does not appear spammy, because the links are relevant in some way, but not necessarily to the content of the page. In our puppy dogs and apples example, perhaps there is a forum post where an apple grower is having trouble with his dog. While the content of the backlink site isn’t about the subject-linked content, the link would still seem natural and relevant.

Myth: All backlinks should be from PR2+ sites or better.

When we look at the nature of viral content yet again, we see links going up in all manner of places. You can’t stop PRzero sites from linking your content any more than you can force a PR9 site to link it. Nonetheless, the PRzero backlink is not going to sandbag your content’s search engine rank. When creating backlinks, the focus should not be the on PR status of the site, but the quality of the link itself. All backlinks should be considered from the perspective of a Web-goer. Ask yourself, if SEO didn’t exist, and all of my links were legitimate, “real” people, rather than crawler bots, would this link be something I’d click or does it look like spam? If you wouldn’t click it, don’t create the backlink. Common sense viewers generally won’t click links within sites that appear to be less than reputable. This may include porn sites, casinos, make-money-fast scams and link farms.

Myth: You should create this many backlinks.

The suggested perfect number of backlinks to improve search engine ranking varies, but more often than not it’s a lot—or as many as you possibly can. Truthfully, though, just how many backlinks you should create is a trick question, because you shouldn’t be creating them all. Viral content does not become viral because the creator links it hundreds of times, it becomes viral because the content is timely, high quality, and useful or interesting. The same way creating backlinks with the same anchor text every time or linking from the same site repeatedly can make a link look like spam, being the only person creating backlinks can as well. Instead of aiming to create backlinks, focus on creating content that encourages other people to do it for you.

Myth: High-link velocity will hurt your search engine ranking.

Falling under the old quality-is-better-than-quantity adage, it’s often suggested that backlink creation should be staggered as rapid link velocity makes a site look like spam. When content goes viral, however, it is indeed rapidly linked from all over the place, so if this rule is true, why aren’t all those pages sinking to the 150 page? While it is true quality counts more than quantity, if your backlinks are being followed and not just created it doesn’t matter how fast they appear. One hundred backlinks in 24 hours that nobody clicks might be seen as spam, but 100 backlinks that are getting active traffic are a seed to viral content. If your aim is to plant that seed, you need to mimic the process by which content becomes viral to the best of your ability. News and social signals play a massive role in the virility of content, so with a viral-style link building campaign, don’t forget to introduce the content to social networks and news feeds.

The truth about launching a successful SEO backlink campaign is just that, dismiss all the rules. Forget about the experts stabbing in the dark at the magic behind scoring the first page, and think like a real human being from the perspective of the people that you want to view your content. After all, it is people that make content go viral, and when content wins the people, it scores the first page of search engine results as a trophy.

Travis Bliffen is the founder of The Seo Proz a search marketing company located near Marion, IL. After working in the industry under the guidance of other search-marketing professionals, he launched The SEO Proz in early 2012. Since then he has worked with numerous local, national and international clients to improve their search rankings.

Move Search 2.0 to the Top of the Corporate Agenda

Administrator — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:25:00 GMT

:: By Simon Bain, Simplexo ::

We all misplace keys, phones, wallets, etc. Generally, when you lose something, it is only when you need it again that you notice its disappearance. Then, confusion, panic or fear may set in. You search high and low, retrace old steps and rack your brain trying to apply sensible logic to the situation, but often search in the most irrational of places. Did I leave my phone in the refrigerator?

All sorts of crazy scenarios go through your head, and then, when you’ve almost lost all hope - success - your keys turn up in the front door. Relief floods over you, bringing a wave of calm and normalcy back into your world.

There is nothing more satisfying than basking in the glory of finding something you lost. What happens when you next lose or can’t find your keys? Panic starts to set in, then your brain clicks into gear and remembers. Instead of going through all the emotions as before, you trace the steps back based on previous experiences and presto, no need for panic, you’re filled with a sense of calm having found the lost item. Why is this? Because as humans, we learn.

In fact if you think about it our entire life is dictated by searching, because without it we would not be ‘doing’ as most searches invariably lead to some sort of action.

But what happens if you substitute something tangible like your keys or wallet, for a document you saved on your computer?

We’ve all been there. You open up a word processor app, after searching for the file on the desktop. You then search for the template to use or the toolbar to click on to, or the file open button. All second nature, but what happens when we can’t find the document?

As with the keys and wallets, you go through the search and retrieval processes, until the familiar sensation of reward and relief comes over you when you eventually find it.

Now if this was to happen again, as mentioned with something tangible, you wouldn't necessarily go through the various processes until you locate the lost item. You've learned your lesson.

However, with computer search applications that is not the case. Unlike the human brain, search applications do not have the capability to learn, but this doesn't mean we can’t put processes into place to make search much more friendly and intuitive.

A revolution in thinking is here when it comes to search bringing Search 2.0.

Let’s take a moment to look at the concept of Advanced Search, which gives the participant a more tailor-made set of results against a request. In practice, this sounds great but we all know that the reality is instead of getting 6,000,000 results you might only get 2,678,988 - not exactly helpful. Imagine however, if a web search only found one result to every query instead of 6,000,000 or 2,678,988, and each answer was exactly what you needed.

That is the potential that semantic search technology holds. Is this a nirvana? A mirage? Or is it something we really need to address in the smart device era where users will simply not tolerate having to search through files, folders, emails and the like while they are on the move.

The drive for mobility is creating a revolution in search. However, we need to be clear that this revolution not only simplifies the search process, it must do so securely.

Online search engines familiar to the average consumer typically deploy so-called Boolean search techniques, in which the key words or phrases the user is looking for must be present in the underlying commands searched for. In Boolean search, the number of results delivered will therefore correspond to the number of instances a particular phrase occurs in the underlying data – in this case the World Wide Web.

This is why the name of a popular celebrity such as Lady Gaga retrieves 456,000,000 results when a more obscure example will achieve significantly fewer. The user has to determine which is the best answer to his query. I would call this self-search or self-filtering. When you are on the go this is simply not an option.

Semantic search technology, on the other hand, retrieves answers based not on specific words or phrases, but on the overall relevance to the query. It seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable database, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results.

As developers, we need to put this into practice, otherwise users will remain frustrated and searching will continue to be a huge pain-point. Map against this the need for a secure search application to see the imperative of delivering a 2.0 solution.

The benefit for users is clear: accurate information at one’s fingertips as needed either at the desktop, or as is increasingly the case, via smart devices securely and safely while on the move.

Businesses embracing this new search culture will benefit from having improved productivity, more effective communication and greater flexibility for employees.

There is no doubt that we are now seeing a radical change in the way people work, communicate, interact and by definition, search for information. Smart device penetration is set to continue unabated meaning that relevant, semantic search has to go mobile as well.

Now these might only be seen as baby steps, but they are steps in the right direction. The key to success is giving back the user those feelings of satisfaction and relief when finding something that was lost. The current processes are in place do provide this, but as technologists we should be striving to make searching that little bit easier.

About the Author: Simon Bain is the company founder, CTO and chief architect of Simplexo Ltd's software solutions.

8 Ways to Create & Portray Brand Authenticity

Administrator — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:20:00 GMT

:: Eric Taylor, Qwaya ::

A positive brand reputation is something that will serve your business well, especially in the realm of social media. Not every brand is going to become a household name with millions of followers, but well-respected companies stand a better chance of influencing who buys from them (and why) and to what frequency.

Developing a brand’s reputation isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight, but there are many different and useful tips to help you improve your own company’s reputation as an authentic, high-value brand.

8 Ways to Create and Portray Brand Authenticity

1: Figure out Your Purpose and Vision and Match Values

Before you begin your social marketing quest to brand your business, you have to start by taking self-inventory. What are your values, and how do they relate to what you want your brand to stand for? Since a brand should be a personal thing, it should be built on your values – on the values of your business. Your brand should be unwavering in this regard, and unafraid to hold that line.

2: Build a Network Using Organic Elements

Paid advertising is OK and, in most cases, actually necessary if you’re using Facebook, but organic reach has its place too. This is especially true when you’re dealing with brand authenticity. Allowing a network of social sites to develop and share organically—at least in part—really pushes a cleaner, more authentic image.

Editor’s Note: Check out “7 Ways to Build Authority on Google+” and “4 Creative Ways to Use Tumblr for Business” as both of these social networks can affect both a brand’s reputation and search standings.

3: Cater to the Right Market

Authenticity in branding is sometimes as easy as catering to the right audience. For instance, if you’re catering to a broader market than you should be in an attempt to develop mass followers, then your advertising and branding methods are going to stand out as a little all over the place, subsequently giving you a fake, inorganic appearance.

Editor’s Note: Today’s brand marketing isn’t about reaching the largest audience, it’s about personalizing the experience for one person to build loyalty, as a result of brand authenticity and personal relevance. Watch your inboxes and mailboxes for our July issue, which covers this hot topic in depth.

4: Learn From Your Competition

Learning about your competitors is always a fantastic way to glean important information about your branding efforts. The more you understand about how others are appearing authentic, the easier it’s going to be for you to tweak things and to come across in a positive fashion. Sign up for your competition’s newsletters, Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter and Pinterest.

5: Ask For Feedback Regularly

If you want to know how the public views your brand, then make an effort to ask. It could be as simple as releasing a status update that asks the question, “What do you think about us?” Asking for feedback is par for the course, but make sure to follow up with each responder, so they know their feedback is heard and valued.

Editor’s Note: Discover the top digital survey solutions.

6: Honesty and Transparency as a Policy

One of the premier ways to ensure your brand is seen as authentic is to be very open about what’s going on behind the scenes and also with what’s coming down the pike. Make it a policy to be open and transparent, not only in your social media branding (e.g. posts, responses, who your brand follows, etc.) but in all of your online marketing. You will benefit greatly from this.

7: Don’t Lower Your Standards

There are many times when you will be tempted to roll around on the floor with the heathens on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, or even in your own comment sections. But if you care to notice, the biggest, most well-respected brands out there that engage with fans on social media only do so when they’re approached with positive intent. In other words, the flame-happy trolls don’t receive any feedback. And this is how it should be. Don’t lower your standards by playing around in the mud. Companies should attempt to take brand “distractors” offline by asking them to email someone within the business, so they can solve the issue at hand.

8: Incorporate an Actual Personality

No brand can remain all business, all the time and actually appear to be personable, transparent and authentic. What are you actually doing for the real people following your brand if you’re not allowing your brand to have its own personality? Your brand is a living, breathing thing that needs to have its own voice and personality. And while that voice should directly coincide with your values and your message, it’s still important to inject personality into it. This could include posting images of a company picnic or publishing notes on how a product launch really went down (e.g. long nights and lots of pizza).

Coming across as an authentic brand will open many doors that were seemingly unavailable. Believe it or not, brand authenticity and brand size have a direct correlation. In other words, those brands viewed as authentic are those brands that become household names and big players. Fortunately, social media and the Web, in general, can even the playing field. But before you go tinkering around with the recipe in order to boost your brand’s reach, look at it from an organic, authentic standpoint.

Author's bio:

Eric Taylor is a social media enthusiast, freelance writer and business developer for a Facebook ad campaign tool - Qwaya. The company also provides extensive information, tools and up-to-date news about social media marketing strategies latest trends, most specifically in Facebook.

Crowdfunding Advice From a Pro

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:00:00 GMT

Entrepreneurs turn to crowdfunding for a variety of reasons, but turning concept into reality certainly tops the list. But where does a company start? At the beginning, of course.

When introducing a project, clearly explaining the "what" and "why" is an imperative step in the launching process, according to crowdfunding expert Kendall Almerico, CEO of ClickStartMe.

"Give supporters a reason to keep reading," said Almerico. "The initial paragraph is not a place to give excessive details or a long, drawn-out back story. It is important to personalize the project and show passion. Most importantly, tell potential supporters why they should be excited about the project, too."

This advice coincides with the rest of ALmerico's suggestions, including "Keep It Simple Stupid."

"Generally you have less than 5 seconds to grab someone’s attention with something in writing," said Almerico. "If your project description introduction isn’t compelling, 75 percent of people will not read any further."

Almerico's Top 10 Tips can be found on the ClickStartMe Blog.

Home PCs are Safer Than Small Business Sites

Michael Garrity — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:00:00 GMT

UK-based Web hosting and domain name provider Heart Internet recently released a handy infographic that compares the state of website security to that of personal computer security, and found that site security “simply isn’t taken as seriously as the measures we take for our home computers.”

The Website Invaders infographic (see below), which playfully adapts its theme from the once-popular arcade game Space Invaders, begins by comparing the percentage of home computers that have an anti-virus software installed (96 percent) with the number of small business websites that use an anti-virus software, which is just 65 percent, despite the fact that 6000 websites are blacklisted by search engines everyday for carrying viruses.

In addition, the infographic also provides helpful tips for both PC and site owners. It warns them both not to simply ignore updates to their anti-virus software (and we’re all guilty of that sometimes, aren’t we?), and to downloaded them whenever they’re prompted to do so.

And when it comes to password protection, easily one of the most common security measures in the tech world, 75 percent of PC users use passwords to protect their data, but only 50 percent of small business sites do, despite the fact that they house a lot of employee and consumer information. The infographic says that passwords that are nine characters long and use a mixture of numbers, symbols and upper and lowercase letters will take over 40,000 years to crack, and that regularly changing passwords helps site owners stay ahead of password hacking techniques.

Heart Internet also discovered that only 45 percent of home PCs and 35 percent of small business websites are protected from phishing, although around 156 million phishing emails are sent every day, and the number of phishing attacks around the world reached 445,004 in 2012, a 58 percent increase from the year before.

And finally, the company found that while 40 percent of small business’s backup their website data online, only 23 percent of home users have secure data backups. The infographic advises PC owners to backup sensitive data on a hard drive with a secure password, and informs small business sites to take regular backups so that they can easily restore their sites to their most recent clean states.

Pinterest Introduces Rich Pins

Allison Howen — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:30:00 GMT

Pinterest has partnered up with some top brands in order to make pins more useful.

The pin-boarding social network is working with companies like Anthropologie, Home Depot, Target, Urban Outfitters, Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping and Netflix to offer rich pins, which are pins that contain additional information and allow members to discover more about content without having to leave Pinterest.

Partners, for example, can include information like pricing, availability and where to purchase items onto product pins, as well as include information like cook time, ingredients and servings to recipe pins. Moreover, Netflix, Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes will be able to include content ratings and cast member information onto movie pins.

In order to see the new rich pins, however, users must first enable Pinterest’s new look, which can be done be clicking the “Get it now” button at the top of the homefeed. Additionally, businesses interested in using rich pins must first prep their site with meta tags, test out rich pins and then apply to get them on Pinterest.

It is also important to note that Pinterest has taken steps to make its social network more mobile, by making the Pin It button available on a variety of mobile apps, including Behance, Etsy, Jetsetter, The North Face and Zulily.

The Popularity of On-Shore Hosting

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:25:00 GMT

Pingdom has released a study which explores the percentage of sites with a given country code top-level (ccTLD) domain which are hosted in that particular country.

According to the Pingdom research, people in Germany, South Korea, and Vietnam were the most likely to choose "onshore web hosting" (hosting your website in the country where you live or conduct business.) Pingdom examined Alexa's top one million sites to determine the percentage of sites per ccTLD that were hosted domestically.

South Korea had 1,750 ccTLDs in the top one million with 97 percent hosted in that country. Vietnam, with 2,260 ccTLDs in the top one million, was a close second with 93 percent of those sites hosted onshore. Germany, with just over 25,000 ccTLDs in the top one million at Alexa had 92 percent, with Japan close on its virtual heels at 91 percent of its 14,188 ccTLD's hosted onshore.

Pingdom also explored the top 10 ccTLDs in Alexa's top one million sites and found that Russia had 43,000 in total, followed by Germany, United Kingdom (17,558), Brazil (16,991), and Poland (14,235).

5 Simple Steps to Set Product Targets for Google Shopping

Administrator — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:00 GMT

:: By Jacques van der Wilt, DataFeedWatch & WordWatch ::

Google Shopping is a great channel for Web shops, but many merchants are still struggling to figure out how to set product targets for their Product Listing Ads campaign.

We've developed a successful standard operating procedure for setting up new PLA campaigns by sticking to these five simple guidelines:

1. Start Simple: Brand & Product Type

If you are creating the first Google Shopping campaign for your shop, keep it simple. You need performance data before you can set any fancy product targets. So start getting that data in a simple way: Set product targets for each brand or each product type or each combination of the two. Don’t worry whether that is the best you can do: get started and get the data you need.

2. Performance Data: Don’t Spread it Too Thin

If your product targets get two conversions per month, your data is too thin. It will be weeks before you have enough statistically relevant data to change your bids and then it will be another month before you can evaluate it.

So it’s great that you set 80 product targets for all 10 sneaker-types of each of your eight brands, but you buried yourself in detail. Set your product targets for brands only or product type only and start collecting the data.

There is one way to get the best of both worlds: create one adgroup for each of your eight brands and put product targets in there for each of the 10 product types. That’s still 80 product targets, but you can aggregate the data on brand-level and get enough data for your first optimizations.

3. Top Performers Get Their Own Product Target

If you have a few products that make most of your sales, you should get them ‘their own’ product target. Don’t do that for the best 100 products because you will bury yourself in data. But if five or 10 products make >50% of your revenue, you want to monitor and optimize the performance of these Product Listing Ads closely.

4. Group by Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the single most important reason for grouping products into a single product target. If all your tennis shoes (regardless of brand) have similar conversion rates, you can group ‘m together. Bidding up or down may affect impressions, but conversions happen on your site, when the customer has already arrived to your store.

So dig into Analytics and find similarities. You may find that tennis-shoe-conversion is not dependent on brand, but that the pink ones convert better than the other colors. That means that you want to create an additional product target for pink tennis shoes (set an AdWords Labels for color) and set a higher bid. You’ll get more conversions and still have a lower CPA.

5. Mind Your Margin

Cash is King. You may have successfully executed the previous four steps, but always keep your eye on your Gross Margin. If your Tennis-shoes and your Tennis-socks have a similar conversion rate, you still don’t want them to have the same product target: With a $20 gross margin on shoes you want to bid a lot more than for the socks with a $2 gross margin. So always combine the wisdom of the first four steps with the financial rationale of step five.

One way of ensuring that there is a fit between your bid and your margin, use AdWords grouping to group all your products based on price (or margin if you have that in your data feed). Then you can set separate product targets, with higher bids for high-margin products.

About the author

Jacques van der Wilt has worked in online media for more than 20 years. He has held leadership positions in both the US and Europe. In the past 10 years he has worked as an entrepreneur and founded several start-ups. He is also a mentor at accelerator Startupboothcamp. As founder of WordWatch (automated bid management) he became an expert in search engine marketing for medium sized advertisers and with its spin-off DataFeedWatch (a web-based tool for merchants to optimize their data feed for Google Shopping and other comparison shopping channels) he established a leadership position in managing data feeds and Product Listing Ads campaigns.

GoECart Glues Together Fragmented E-Commerce Channels

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:55:00 GMT

Sixty-five percent of shoppers in the U.S. currently shop across at least two channels, while 21 percent of U.S. respondents are using four or five channels to shop, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. What does this mean for retailers?

It means online merchants must find e-commerce solutions that meet the demands of the increasingly sophisticated online shopper. In fact, PwC reports that 72 percent of the consumers surveyed consider themselves to be either confident or experts in researching and purchasing online.

“Online merchants face massive competition today, and most of them are feeling stranded by multiple e-commerce systems and technologies,” said GoECart’s founder and CEO Manish Chowdhary. “But, there is a better way.”

GoECart, which provides integrated, on-demand e-commerce solutions, thinks its the solution to streamline processes. This is because GoECart helps clients sell across multiple channels, manage and fulfill inventory across multiple warehouses and process tens of thousands of orders each month without skipping a beat, like it recently did for GameQuestDirect.

GameQuestDirect offers a vast selection of new and rare video games online with more than 10,000 titles for all leading game consoles. In addition to selling via its own website, the company sells its products through 15-plus online marketplaces including Amazon.com, eBay and Buy.com.

Previously to leverage GoECart, GameQuestDirect used three systems to run its multi-channel retail operation: a standalone ecommerce solution, an independent order management system (OMS) and a separate shipping software. Since switching to GoECart, GameQuestDirect has lowered its costs by 60 percent, while increasing order volume by 40 percent.

Websites for Restaurants with GoDaddy & Locu

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:50:00 GMT

GoDaddy's Website Builder, which provides ready-made designs for those looking to establish a Web presence, has formed an alliance with Locu - a technology solution that enables restaurant owners to update manage their menu's and publish that information onto sites including Citysearch, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, TripAdvisor and OpenTable.

Locu specializes in easy menu-management and has hundreds of thousands of menus from all over the U.S. pre-loaded into their database, waiting for a restaurant to claim them. Once claimed, a restaurant can set prices, change descriptions and add photos of their meals. That means menu items don’t have to be entered manually on the website – it’s already loaded.

If a restaurant is brand new or Locu has not collected their menu, the automatic conversion of a document, pdf or image of a menu quickly enables users to have an SEO-rich menu online. Restaurants can print menus on a daily basis, making changes as often as needed for their menu.

“GoDaddy has built a business on serving small businesses and we are excited to partner with them to better help local businesses get found online,” said Locu CEO and Co-Founder Rene Reinsberg. “This integration makes it extremely easy to keep the key information on restaurants’ websites in sync with the rest of the Web.”

Yahoo! Acquires Tumblr in Billion Dollar Data Play

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:45:00 GMT

News broke over the weekend that Yahoo! would acquire blogging platform Tumblr for approximately $1.1 billion.

Many in the business and technology industry believe the acquisition is a smart one for Yahoo! (but it has its detractors too). Tumblr now has more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day. It's not just those raw numbers however, but likely the engagement metrics that Yahoo! was most interested in tapping into.

Tumblr sees in excess of 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes are spent on the site each month. But it gets even better from the perspective of Yahoo, who has its sights set clearly on mobile, as more than half of Tumblr’s users are using the platform's mobile app and do an average of 7 sessions per day.

The deal offers interesting opportunities for both companies. Tumblr will be able to deploy Yahoo!’s personalization technology and search infrastructure to help users discover creators, curators, and content and Tumblr in turn will bring 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences. Expect the two companies to start working on creating advertising opportunities immediately.

Reports from early this morning indicate that Yahoo-Tumblr will have advertising on the network as early as 2014. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer revealed that she doesn't care if Tumblr visitors don't visit Yahoo!, which indicates (at least to me) that, thanks to Yahoo's aggressive behavioral marketing and personalization efforts, this may be more about acquiring an audience (advertising inventory) to leverage its relatively robust advertising technology.

If you're not on Tumblr yet, you may want to check out Website Magazine's 5 Tips for Taking Over Tumblr.

Talking Internet Taxes, Outright

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:40:00 GMT

As one of the first beta testers for Outright, accounting software for small businesses and those who are self-employed that was launched in 2008, Kat Simpson has seen her fair share of changes affecting online sellers. Perhaps no fluctuations as impactful as the one facing Internet retailers today, however.

“We are in the middle of a new era and whether or not the Marketplace Fairness Act passes will make a huge impact on how we proceed,” said Simpson. “Currently my advice is hold and keep an eye on our Senate.”

Simpson, who started her business in 1997 selling household items on eBay for extra money around the house, currently has a branded store, Kat's Boutique, on eBay selling products invented by and used by women. She also sells some of everything on the Amazon FBA platform.

In addition to tax changes, Simpson has seen changes to Outright, a solution she relies heavily on. In 2012, Outright was acquired by Go Daddy, a natural fit as both companies are passionate about helping small businesses grow. Go Daddy helps companies get online, and Outright helps them stay there with bookkeeping needs.

“I use Outright each week to reconcile my books, keep an eye on expenses and prepare for taxes,” said Simpson. “Monthly, I use the Sales Tax Reports to help me file sales taxes in the 10 states in which I have a presence thanks to FBA and at the end of the year I rely heavily on Outright to help prepare my income taxes.”

For those companies needing extra assistance in regard to the impending Marketplace Fairness Act, Priyanka Sharma, Product and Marketing at Outright, says they’ll be there to help.

“Regardless of what happens, Outright is committed to helping small businesses understand their sales tax obligations,” Sharma. “We have easy sales tax reporting so that sellers can see how much sales tax they have collected and submitted. Additionally, our blog, The Bottom Line, provides tips and information for online sellers, including a state-by-state guide to sales tax collection.”

Outright’s sales tax report also shows sellers how much they have collected in sales tax. Its sales-by-state report shows how much they have sold for the year in each state, so that they can determine whether they have met the limits that require them to collect sales tax.

Flash Sale Sites Don't Deliver when it Comes to Shipping

Allison Howen — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:35:00 GMT

Flash sale sites like Fab, Gilt and RueLaLa excel at offering savings to consumers, however, they often fall short of meeting consumer shipping expectations, according to a new study.

Fullfillment and logisitics solutions provider Dotcom Distribution has announced the results of its Facebook Flash Sale Analysis, which took a look at 2,776 Facebook conversations between customers and flash sale sites. The results reveal that one in five (22%) Facebook comments are related to negative shipping experiences with these companies. In addition, 49 percent of all negative comments were related to shipping.

“Flash sale customers are social-savvy, and they are taking to Facebook to express their frustrations, specifically when it comes to issues like delayed orders or shipping issues,” said Maria Haggerty, president of Dotcom Distribution. “If these sites want to improve their social feedback, they need to start by selecting a fulfillment partner that has the scalability to handle the high volume of orders that come with flash sales.”

While most of the customer complaints regarded the speed of delivery, others mentioned the condition of products. According to the report, Fab.com and Gilt.com ranked the best out of the top 11 flash sale sites, with 36 percent of negative comments relating to shipping. Conversely, BeyondtheRack.com, HautLook.com and Zulily.com all tied for last with almost two-thirds of negative comments mentioning shipping problems.

That being said, the report also notes that customers post positive comments on these companies’ Facebook Pages as well, especially in regards to specific products and positive customer service experiences. According to the data, 30 percent of all positive comments are about products. Ideeli.com, for instance, ranked highest among the sites with 57 percent of positive comments relating to its products. One Ideeli customer even posted, “Got my new OTBT ShoShone shoes tonight – even my cat can’t stop admiring them! They’re so comfortable – I don’t even want to take them off to go to bed!”

On the other hand, Facebook comments about customer service were mixed with both positive and negative reviews. One example from a Fab.com customer commended a customer service representative, saying, “I would like to recognize customer service agent, Nicholas. He helped me with a problem on December 6 and was a great spokesperson for Fab. Please give him a giant raise, or at least a giant cookie.”

Other noteworthy findings from the Dotcom study show that out of all the comments analyzed, 44 percent were negative, 29 percent were positive and the remaining 27 percent were neutral. Moreover, OneKingsLane.com and Zulily.com were the only two sites that received more positive comments than negative overall, while RueLaLa.com had an equal amount of positive and negative comments (each at 38%), and the rest of the analyzed sites received mostly negative comments. However, one in five negative comments involved flash sellers’ websites, and many complaints related to login issues. In fact, three percent of all conversations were about login issues or a preference to not login at all.

Check out the list of flash sale sites ranked by percentage of negative comments related to shipping, lowest to highest, below:

1. Fab.com (36%)

1. Gilt.com (36%)

3. RueLaLa.com (37%)

4. JackThreads.com (39%)

5. Ideeli.com (43%)

6. OneKingsLane.com (44%)

7. Plndr.com (53%)

8. Foundary.com (57%)

9. BeyondtheRack.com (61%)

9. HauteLook.com (61%)

9. Zulily.com (61%)