'Net Features : 91509

Video Optimziation: Google Supports FB Share and RDFa

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:20:00 GMT

If you're creating videos, hosting them on your website, and aim to optimize those videos for competitive search engine placement you'll want to pay attention to this one.

Google today announced support for Facebook Share and Yahoo! SearchMonkey RDFa for videos.

These markup formats (micro-formats) allow you to specify information (like titles, descriptions and even preview images) about videos and potentially influence how they are indexed - although it's doubtful that videos utilizing this technique will be given preferential treatment. While Google does pretty well at discovering this information by itself as it stands today, using these format structures enables you to give them some help and guidance.

Google has advised that to maximize the chances they find the right markup on your video pages, you should check to ensure it appears in the HTML without the execution of JavaScript or Flash.

The following is some example code provided by Google on how to use both Facebook Share and the SearchMonkey RDFa for videos:

Facebook Share:

RDFa (Yahoo! SearchMonkey):

What's New With Noah (Classifieds)?

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:05:00 GMT

I've always had a special place in my virtual heart for classifieds. Perhaps it's my frugal nature or how with a caring and careful eye they often reveal many interesting insights into the state of the Web and the world in general.

As the U.S. struggled out of the dire straits it entered starting last September (today is actually the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse), Website Magazine published an article on how to "Roll Your Own Craigslist" - a profile of three exceptional classified software solutions that would enable anyone to start their own targeted classified website.

I had the opportunity to speak with Steve Taylor this week, developer/owner/founder of Noah's Classifieds and one of the software solutions mentioned, about the latest version (4.1.1) of Noah's Classifieds. Some interesting features were added recently but in my opinion they pale in comparison to what's coming up in the future for Noah's Classifieds.

New additions include a WYSIWYG editor (which can be assigned to the admin and the end user), ReCAPTCHA, a PCI-compliant shopping cart in CartManager, and "Send to a friend" capabilities. Taylor also mentioned that Noah's is also more SEO friendly as the titles influence the permalink structure.

Noah's Classifieds has always been on my list of solutions to to watch but its' future enhancement are what will forever separate it from its competitors. Upcoming enhancements include adding Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect and the ability to import classified listings from Oodle through their API. Users will also be able to add new listings from their Noah's installation directly to Oodle - call it "distributed classifieds" if you will. Big things are coming for Noah's and for the $199 perpetual license it's certainly worth considering.

Mobile vs Non-Mobile Ad CTR

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:47:00 GMT

Online advertising network Chitika released a rather telling study of mobile vs. non-mobile Internet usage this week. If you've bought into the potential of the mobile market, you might want to reconsider that position. The study suggests that mobile users are approximately half as likely to click on an advertisement as non-mobile users.

According to the announcement, "Of the 92 million impressions cited in the study, approximately 1.3 million (1.5%) came from mobile browsing. While non-mobile held steady with a 0.83% clickthrough rate, mobile as a whole pulled a mere 0.48% – just over half of the average."

While growth in smartphones might indicate a strong market potential for mobile advertising, users are apparently not receptive to it (or too savvy to click on the ads) perhaps because of the immediacy (find answers quickly) that mobile provides. What I also find interesting is that iPhone users (those with the best UI) have the lowest click-through rates - just 0.30%. This might suggest, especially in light of the fact that Palm (and those from the "other" category) has an atrocious UI and is difficult to navigate around indicating some invalid clicks on some level as well.

Bing The Fastest Growing Search Engine, Yahoo Stumbling, Google Steady

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:26:00 GMT

While Google remains far and away the leading search engine (with a 65% share of searches), Bing, at least according to Nielsen, is the fastest growing search engine.

Bing's search market share in August rose 22.1% to 10.7% of all searches up from 9.0% in July. It is important to note also that these numbers don't reflect Bing traffic alone, but rather MSN, Live and Bing combined.

So if Google (2.6%), AOL (1.8%), ASK (2.9%) and even Local.com experienced month-over-month search growth, was there an engine that didn't fare as well? You bet - Yahoo! - whose traffic in August fell 4.2%. Proceed to make assumptions on the reason(s) why, but it might have been caused by the full-scale introduction of Bing.