“5 Tips on How To Use Google Sidewiki Efficiently”

Google launched Sidewiki on 23rd Sep 2009 as a part of its toolbar. Google Sidewiki appears as a sidebar in the browser and allows visitors to comment on any webpage. Its main aim was to collect useful information on any webpage from people around the world and therefore lead to better user experience.

For example, a person searching for a local restaurant can see its review in the sidebar by the previous diners.

Google Sidewiki comprises of an algorithm which pulls out the most useful and valuable comments from its database. This ensures that a visitor will see the most relevant comments on a webpage. Listed below are 5 steps for using Google Sidewiki efficiently.

1. Get Started With Google Sidewiki

Sidewiki is available in the options tab of the Google toolbar. Simply download the Google toolbar and select the option to integrate Sidewiki using the checkbox. It appears as a blue sidebar in the browser which slides open when you click on it. Google Sidewiki works perfectly well in Firefox. Although, Google’s own browser, Chrome seems to be having some issues in integrating Sidewiki.

2. Add Comments on Useful Webpages

Adding comments in Google Sidewiki is extremely easy. You need to log in to your Google account and click on the “Make an Entry” link which appears at the bottom of the sidebar. Enter your comments and publish. It is advised to add something which ads more value to the content. If your comment is relevant to the topic, then it can be placed on the first page of Sidewiki for that web page, unless you are the website owner.

3. Claim Your Position At The Top Of All Comments

If you want to place your own comment at the top, you need to verify ownership of the website by using Google Webmasters Tool. If verified, as the page owner your entry is placed at the top entry for that page. The top slot can be used to leave a note for anyone who is yet to comment.

4. Share Your Comments With Everyone

Each comment in Google Sidewiki has the option of being shared on Twitter, Facebook or emailed to any user. This enables everyone to read the Sidewiki entries without using the Google Toolbar. This option is very useful if your web page has received some great comments from visitors. Sharing these comments will pull readers from others streams like Twitter and Facebook onto your website.

5. Flush Out Negative Comments By Blocking Sidewiki

Google Sidewiki does not provide an option for blocking or deleting negative comments on a webpage. Many users have expressed their displeasure with Google for not providing an option for this purpose. If your web page is inundated with negative or irrelevant comments which are harming your website, you can block Google Sidewiki. This can be done by switching from normal http:// to secure https:// pages.

Google Sidewiki is not the first of its kind. One of the first commenting add-on, Third Voice was launched way back in 1999. AddATweet and Kutano are plug-ins which can be installed on your browser and let you tweet comments on a webpage.

Despite many competitors, Google Sidewiki has risen to become the most popular commenting tool of its time. Start your week by experimenting with this comment tool.

GoogleApple War: What does it all mean?

For those who have been living in a cave, Google recently bought AdMob, the small but highly innovative mobile advertising company for the extremely inflated price of $750 Million. That is the gross national product of the country of Kiribati, a small country made up of a bunch of atolls. While AdMob hadn’t quite made anywhere around that amount of revenue, Google wanted to gobble it up before someone else did and to have a quick way to access the growing revenue stream available on Mobile Applicatications. Part of this strategy was to be able to access the significant population of IPHONE users. However, recently Apple came out with new developer rules that will prevent ADMob and Google Adsense from being displayed on iPhone applications… and thus a significant issue with ADMob’s revenue stream. However, perhaps things aren’t as they seem…

Let’s make this really clear, Apple is looking to break into the advertising and eventually search market. Google, as the all encompassing leader of search clearly dominates the market. However, they recently also decided to get into mobile market with the Google Android system, which while itself doesn’t make that much money for the company, the offshoots such as the product development, application development, google interfacing and even their own google nexus phone has been a significant success. In fact, according to most reputable reports, the open-source android phones are taking over as the dominant force in the market, pushing out Apple. Apple, ain’t happy about their market share being taken. They saw themselves as dominating the mobile space for a long time to come. Don’t forget also that Apple had actually wanted to buy ADMob, but the $750M price tag was way too high – they bought a competitor with just as much revenue and potential, it seems for a significantly lower price tag of $250M.

While some people might say this is a stab at Google for getting into “their business”, there is much more here than meets the eye. Apple has no reason to actually allow Google Adsense onto their applications – because they don’t make a single dollar from those ads. Since Apple is making their own system, they need to ensure that the only way to run advertising on the system is through them. It’s pretty damn simple – Google already has an extensive database of advertisers, and they would easily overshadow any attempt by Apple to compete with them even on their own platform. This wouldn’t fare very well for Apple, if in a year a report came out that not only was Google Android overtaking Apple iPhone, but that the predominate type of advertising on the IPHONE was actually Google.

What is strange about this mobile advertising war is the investment versus the actual possible revenue being made. Everyone is talking about mobile advertising on applications and application development as if it is the “end-all” of advertising and will take over advertising left and right. However, people ten years ago pushed application advertising and ad-supported applications as the method that would take over interactive advertising. Now it’s almost impossible to find any program that actually does this and the predominate type of advertising is in the browser.

I honestly think that this is a very possible future for mobile also. As mobile devices get bigger, as the web integrates with mobile more and more, there will be a growing seamless interaction between the two mediums. In fact, if you think about it, a great portion of the “internet” users are really “mobile” – laptops are a “mobile” device of sorts, and they have become smaller and smaller, while phone screens have become bigger and bigger. At some point in the near future they will meet in the middle and we will have laptop/netbooks that are nothing but combinations of mobile phones, laptops that do everything. Most people that I know who have android phones and iPhones spend quite a bit of their time, browsing the web using it as a “little computer” of sorts and see all the banner and other type of ads made specifically for the websites.

So, does this war really matter? Perhaps for the short term, but within a few years, I can’t see it will really matter except to corner a very small part of the marketshare. Mobile as separate entity, with its own features (mobile billing, mobile applications) will become part of the entire interactive, internet, web-process. No one actually believes that ADMob was worth $750M, but sees it as one chess piece in a greater strategy that both these companies have to dominate the web. This has little to do with “Mobile”.

The Power of Google Analytics

Internet marketing efforts need to be tracked so you know if you are using your resources wisely. Google analytics is a good, free tool you can use to track traffic sources, conversion rates, etc.

Make sure you have Google analytics or some other type of analytics installed on your website.

- Traffic Sources

You want to know where your traffic is coming from and where it is not coming from. This will help you allocate your resources properly. Google Analytics is able to track where your site visitors are coming from, where they go on your site, etc.

A few examples of where your traffic may come from:

- Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc)

- Pay-Per-Click campaigns

- Twitter, Facebook, etc

- Articles and press releases that include links

- Websites that have your links

- Etc.

Having this information can help you have a more effective Internet marketing plan.

- Easy Come, Easy Go

It is easy to find out where the traffic comes from and what page they leave from. Both of these pieces of information are valuable. Knowing them can help you identify if your Internet marketing strategy is working.

The page people enter your site on is important. You want to make sure they arrive on your website on a page that has a focused message for what they are looking for (most websites have multiple entry points, each focused on a different search term). Pay careful attention to what page your visitors land on and make sure it is well designed and well written.

The page visitors leave your website on is also important because it may identify a problem with your site. If you find that a certain page is the primary exit point you want to see if there are any technical or other issues with that page that make people leave your site.

- Conversion Rates

Though it is important to learn about where your traffic is coming from it is more important to know where your sales are coming from. Conversion rates in Google Analytics are tracked by traffic source. You can see where your actual buyers are coming from so you can put more emphasis on those resources.

Google Analytics is important to add to a website. Learn about your website traffic, conversion rates and more so you can make important tweaks to your Internet marketing strategy. It’s free to use so all you have to do is go for it.

Time Spent In The Google Sandbox: Still Important To Success

Google denies that they sandbox new websites. Yet, webmasters and SEO gurus alike have been frustrated to no end by the sandbox effect noted when a new website is launched. Google does acknowledge that there may be something in the algorithm that penalizes new websites and gives them lower rankings until they have proven their value. The reasons for such a filter are many and include keeping people from putting up multiple sites with links to one another when one website is what they need. Whatever the reasons behind ending up there, time spent in the Google Sandbox is still important to success.

Whether it was a conscious decision on the part of Google owners or not, they have written into the algorithm a set of filters that manage to establish the quality of a website using time-based indicators. These indicators include the age of the web site or domain, the age of different backlinks and inbound links to the site, and other factors. One important feature to note is that not only new sites are found in the sandbox. Older sites that suddenly get a rush of inbound links are often sandboxed while the value of the links is established.

With these points in mind, many who have paid for SEO services and still ended up in Google Sandbox are wondering what they can do to get out. Sadly, the only true way to climb out is to be patient. Time is actually on the side of those who are in the sandbox. There are several reasons for this.

The first reason is that time spent in the sandbox allows the website owner to work on tweaking any problem that is found with the site so that it is 100 percent ready when page rank climbs to a point where new visitors are coming in large numbers. This is the best time to test and fix any programming errors noted.

The second reason is that it allows you to work on the content of your site and any related sites linked to it. On the internet, content is king and Google is no different on that score. New, keyword optimized content appearing regularly with links that go back to a site that has been sandboxed catch attention and increase the odds of getting out sooner. Of course, these links must be relevant to the material on the website to be of any real value.

It gives webmasters time to establish relationships with others that are considered authorities in their fields. These authorities can include links to a site in their own pages. If these individuals are recognized as authorities in their fields, the value of their links increases dramatically.

Trust is an important part of any business relationship. There are some sites on the internet that are trusted more than others. Links from these sites are seen as more trustworthy by the search engine, and can help boost page rank quickly.

Ideally, you should try for a trifecta by seeking out relevant links from sites owned by recognized authorities in the field who have been deemed trustworthy by Google and users doing business with them. These links can combine in an exponential manner to boost a page ranking significantly regardless of the page’s age.

Another trick to consider is not limiting yourself to Google when performing SEO operations. One can be in the Google Sandbox and still get good organic results on other search engines such as Yahoo or Ask Jeeves.

You can also optimize for more long tailed keyword phrases. The sandbox effect only seems to affect sites that use highly competitive keywords. Therefore, if you sell an item that can be described in the keywords, the longer keyword phrases may help increase page rank. Of course, you must choose keywords that users are likely to type into the search engine.

In a nutshell, to take advantage of these time-based indicators, you should:

1. Get links that deliver the most trust, first.

2. Start your website today and also begin your link-building task as well

3. Target quality 4-in-1 links. This means going for links that are Relevant, Authoritative, from Trusted sources and from High page rank pages.

The Google Sandbox is real, despite denials from Google. These filters are part of the algorithm that assigns page ranks and they do penalize new sites that use competitive keywords. They also penalize established sites that enter into link farming agreements and try to manipulate the rankings artificially. The filters are age related for the age of the domain, the age of the links to the pages, and other factors.

The time spent in the Google Sandbox is important for the success of any web based business. To be more precise, what is done during this time is important. This is an opportunity to work out any bugs in your website that could hurt business. It is also an opportunity to establish high quality relationships with other site owners who can provide links to your site that are relevant, authoritative, from trusted sources, and coming from pages that are ranked highly, allowing you to take advantage of their rank until your own comes into being.

Google Instant Means The End Of SEO

Initially, Google’s new Instant Search system could mean a major change in how web surfers look for information online. Instead of typing a search query into Google and then hitting return, and waiting for a list of results, Googlers now see a dynamic list of results as they type. Google considers this a positive step forward in the development of searching. Google claims this new style of response will save between two and five seconds per search query. That potentially means 11 hours are saved every second. but does anyone other than Google really care?

The internet marketing community, however, will never be very enthusiastic about Google Instant. SEO consultants, who try to get sites listed at the top of Google’s organic search rankings, and SEMs, who battle for their clients’ sites to be placed near the top of Google’s Adwords Sponsored Listings, have been blogging and tweeting as if Armageddon is here.

The SEO community is paranoid at the very best of times, and perhaps with good cause as: a small change in the Google algorithm can determine the future of many websites. In this instance, however, the reaction is not necessary, essentially the results are the same, the sole change is you can see potential results of each word as you type it in, so if you are typing in ‘Italian restaurant’ you will observe everything Italian prior to getting to the restaurant results and then you will have to include your location unless you are very flexible about your travel arrangements, so in fact long tail key phrases are far from dead.

And this time round the latest Google scare is ‘much a do about nothing’ or will it be? There isn’t any denying that Google’s original innovation in search transformed how the Internet worked and made the business of finding stuff considerably quicker and easier. It also created an enormous market – one Google still dominates – that allowed companies to market us things depending on whatever we had entered in that box and all was well, for a while.

But something happened. Social networking, social media, whatever you want to refer to it as… suddenly, content was coming right at us, without us even looking for it. We couldn’t escape it. Several hyperactive egotists in each community began curating content and spewing it out to their friends. People were sharing photos, stories and links so we found that we were spending less and less time foraging around for things and increasingly more time sitting back and allowing it to wash over us.

Fast forward to 2010, and we’re being assaulted by more stuff than we could possibly consume. Facebook, Twitter, and email are shoveling pictures and video down our throats more and more quickly. Feedback loops enabled by sharing and retweeting functions imply that each of us has now changed into an over-sharer as well as an over-consumer. If you are not confused and over loaded with information, you soon will be.