Gadgets, Google, PPC, and SEO

Is Google Afraid of Facebook?

2010-02-21T01:09:00.000Z

Social network Facebook, founded back in 2004, has passed Yahoo! and has occupied #2 spot for most monthly unique visitors in US, according to Compete.com. Monthly traffic data for January was published on 17th of February.
Facebook has attracted almost 134 million unique users in January while Yahoo! had little over 132 million unique visitors.

Aaron Prebluda from Compete also mentions that Google "overtook Yahoo as number one, and never looked back."
The good news for Facebook don't finish here. The article also suggests that 11.6% of all time spent online was spent on Facebook while 4.25% of all time online was spent on Yahoo and 4.1% on Google.
But what all those numbers mean? More people visiting Facebook and spending more time there mean two things. First is well done to the Product Department at Facebook, but also means that potentially more page views are generated, more ads are served and more cash in Mark Zuckerberg's pocket.

Going back to the title of this post - Is Google afraid of Facebook? It is hard to answer such question but in my opinion it should certainly be.

Thanks for reading.

Need Traffic? Looking For Twitter Followers?

2010-02-11T00:24:00.004Z

So you have an online business making somehow good money. Or looking to drive more traffic and hopefully convert it to sales. You heard about this social networking fenomena, about Facebook, about Twitter. You heard it all and decided it is time to change.

You set up a brand new Twitter account, carefully selected the logo of your profile making sure people will easily recognize it. And now what?

You did your first tweet but noticed that you have 0 followers. Then how you are going to get all these followers that will hopefully read your tweets, retweet and spread the word?

As TechCrunch reported On eBay, Twitter Followers Are Worth Less Than A Penny Each. Wow great news.

So I thought I will give it a go and check this for you.

You can certainly "buy" these dreamed twitter followers but it seems the price in UK is slightly higher. While TechCrunch reports that "Some of the Buy-It-Now listings include 5,000 followers for $20" the price I found for 5500+ Guaranteed Targeted Twitter Followers is £64.05. But this is not the main point here. The point is what type of followers are these? Are they real people? Are they bots? Are they going to visit your website? Are they going to retweet your message?

Yes Twitter can surely generate traffic for your website. But you definitely need real followers people that will actually read your tweet, visit your website and retweet your posts. This becomes more and more important as it is considered one of the factors that can actually improve your rankings. If someone is tweeting about something then it is probably worth indexing it higher.

Although Brand Republic reported that Public see little point in becoming fans of brands on Facebook it is definitely a source that shouldn't be missed. It will probably drive you less traffic but it is worth giving a try and who knows it might prove Brand Republic wrong.

Thanks for reading.

Google Offers New Keyword Research Tool

2009-09-24T22:50:00.002+01:00

As many websites and blogs announced today, Google is now offering new keyword research tool. To access it you will have to login to your Google Adwords account, under campaign, opportunities and then down left corner will be the keyword tool link.

Once there you should have Beta version link which is new keyword tool.
On first glance it has the new Adwords interface like design which in the beginning could be slightly annoying.

Old keyword research tool:

And the new keyword research tool:

But the new tool offers some really nice features.

I particularly like the Broad, Phrase, Exact match reporting at the same time. The topics to which your keyword may belong is also useful because a particular keyword may be available in different categories and still relevant.

I have noticed some differences between the two tools in terms of Global traffic. The new tool suggests about 5-10% less global monthly traffic compared to the previous version. It also estimates the CPC slightly less.

I will continue playing with this tool in the next couple of days so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading.

Why Blogging?

2009-09-01T23:29:00.000+01:00

Quite a few times trying to find information on how to do one or another thing in Google Adwords or trying to find answer for my PPC question I have ended on places offering Pay Per Click training, certificates and other "helpful" materials.

Therefore I have decided to share my knowledge with all of you.

The blog will also cover news about Google, Yahoo/Bing, Free Search Tips and Gadget Reviews.