SmallBusinessNewz

Google has launched Stats for Blogger, a Blogger feature that was previously available in the experimental version of Blogger, Blogger in Draft. The feaure is fairly self-explanatory in that it provides Blogger users with stats about their blogs.

More specifically, Stats for Blogger provides stats like real-time tracking of each time your blog is viewed, and insights about your audience, such as top search keywords, countries, browsers, etc. The user interface comes with easy-to-read graphs and charts.

Stats for Blogger actually has some improvements over the Blogger in Draft version. For example, it includes self-view exclusion – it will exclude your own pageviews if you turn that option on. It also has more effective bot traffic filtering.

“We’ve extended our list of known ‘bots’ (the non-human visitors, such as crawlers), another measure to provide more accurate pageviews from real visitors,” says Blogger’s Chang Kim.

There are also now rate-limiting visit counts from the same user and internationalization – availability in over 40 languages.

Yahoo and Microsoft announced today that Yahoo advertisers can begin their transition to Microsoft’s adCenter.

“Last week, we completed the transition of the back-end technology for English-language Yahoo! organic search results in the U.S. and Canada,” says Yahoo. “This week, advertisers can start transitioning their paid Yahoo! Search Marketing account, in anticipation of the Yahoo! ad serving transition which we expect to start mid-October. We encourage you to transition your account before the ad serving transition begins, so that you are ready to reach more than 159 million searchers in the U.S. and 15 million searchers in Canada on Yahoo! Search, Bing and our partners.”

Yahoo says there are 3 stages to completing the transition, which are preparing the account for transition, actually transitioning, and continuing to manage the Yahoo account.

“The last stage in the transition process will occur when Yahoo! Search ad serving moves to adCenter, which we expect to begin in mid-October and be completed by the end of October,” Yahoo says. “During this period, you should expect traffic from your Yahoo! Search Marketing account to decrease, and increase in your adCenter account. But until this process is complete, you’ll still need to actively manage your Yahoo! Search Marketing account to have your ads displayed on Yahoo! and our partner sites.”

There is a transition checklist available here.

Facebook may be going through some of the growing pains that Google went through earlier in its life. Google has always had to deal with link farms and link buying, polluting its search results, and has gotten better and better at keeping this under control over the years.

Now that Facebook “liking” is taking the place of linking in many cases, Facebook may have a similar issue on its hands. Like farms and like buying aren’t entirely new concepts, but since Facebook’s developer conference, where it unleashed the open graph and social plugins like “like” buttons all over the web, they have become more of an issue, and will probably continue to do so unless Facebook does something about it.

Why would you buy likes?

When a user “likes” a piece of content, it shows up in their friends’ news feeds. The more friends they have, the more people that “like” will be exposed to. The more friends a person has, however, and the quality of those friends, may place more value on those “likes” from the perspective of those doing the buying. The problem with this, is that those same factors that increase that value may also affect how Facebook provides its search results, and Facebook is going to want to improve that search experience, particularly as competition with Google (in general) heats up.

Farming Likes

A couple months ago, AllFacebook had a pair of articles taking a deep look into the gaming of Facebook search results and the rise of the like farm. The topic has been brought up again this week by Nick Saint at Silicon Alley Insider.

“Basically, these sites are enabling the equivalent of Twitter hash tag jokes on Facebook; people see funny sentences pop up in their streams, and indicate their approval by liking them,” writes Saint. “This is the Facebook equivalent of retweeting, since all of your friends are notified that you liked the blurb. Many of these entries have been liked by tens of thousands of users, all of whose friends see the updates, which links to the sites, so this is no doubt generating non-negligible ad revenue despite requiring zero effort on the part of the sites’ creators. The biggest we’ve seen, Likey.net, is already seeing over a million uniques per month.”

“Once an update has enough likes, it can spread entirely on Facebook,” adds Saint. “But to get the process started, someone has to have gone to the site and submitted it in the first place. It’s hard to say why — unlike on Twitter, the original poster of these updates isn’t referenced or credited in any way. And the sites look and feel extremely spammy. At least one of them has already been flagged as an attack site by Google, though it’s not clear whether the site is itself malicious, or merely the target of third-party attacks.”

Like farms stand to have implications on Facebook’s search functionality, and Facebook’s share of the search market stands to grow along with the proliferation of Facebook itself – not necessarily to Google-like proportions, but for certain kinds of searches – and with Pages becoming more heavily marketed (not to mention the potential of Places), people will search for businesses on Facebook.

“While users are mostly searching Facebook for their friends currently, users will begin to search for more generic topics as Facebook slowly changes user behavior,” wrote AllFacebook’s Nick O’Neill back in June. “Right now, showing up for the phrase ‘discount travel’ won’t necessarily benefit you, however as Facebook improves their search product and users begin to understand that they can search for things other than their friends, ranking high on various keywords will become increasingly important.”

“In the meantime, the numerous ‘like farms’ that are spamming Facebook with random quotes and phrases (like Likey.net, LikeItPage, and others) will continue to proliferate until Facebook develops a system that determine which add value and which are just spam generators,” added O’Neill.

Back to Like Buying

As far as “like buying” is concerned, it’s a similar situation. This has the potential to hurt the Facebook user experience, and if Facebook were to penalize Pages similar to how Google does, it could make a big impact.

Inc. just ran a story about how Google cost Ryan Abood’s GourmetHandBaskets.com $4 million by penalizing the site for link buying right before the holidays. As Facebook becomes one of the main marketing vehicles of the web, much like Google has been for years (despite the differences in how the two sites operate), it is a situation that his going to have to be looked at and assessed.

Right now, it’s unclear what Facebook’s policies are on things like “like farms” and “like buying”. We’ve reached out to the company for comment, and will update when we receive it. The point is that Facebook isn’t just a way for college kids to look at pictures of each other anymore. People are counting on it for business, and how delicate situations like these are handled will be crucial to operations. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t have the greatest track record for handling delicate situations.

Facebook likes and Twitter retweets have replaced links in many instances. That’s not to say that links are dead by any means, but a lot of people will simply retweet a piece of content or “like” it, rather than blog about it and link to it. This “cannibalizes” the link graph from the search perspective, as Rand Fishkin and our own Mike McDonald discussed a while back, and that makes Facebook and Twitter even more important to pay attention to from the marketing perspective – when some of that juice is going away from search engines and into social networks.

Many businesses have probably been wondering just how much Twitter’s Promoted Tweets could help them if they were given the chance to participate. Promoted Tweets is still in beta, and is still limited to a set of partners. One of those partners, Zecco, has been talking about the success it has had with the program.

Zecco CEO Michael Raneri reached out to WebProNews to tell us about his company’s experience with this advertising channel. “Over the past two months, Zecco has seen an average increase of 50 percent engagement with promoted tweets versus our standard tweets,” says Raneri. “In some cases, this increase has been as much as 200 to 300 percent.  We’re really excited to have been chosen as the only financial services company to participate in the Promoted Tweets beta and to work with Twitter and amazing brands like Coca Cola, Disney Pixar and JetBlue on helping shape this key marketing platform.”

“Promoted Tweets are a way of getting interesting and contextually-relevant information to an ever wider audience on Twitter and making investors aware of the unique insights of online financial communities like our own ZeccoShare with 300,000+ members,” he says. “The majority of our tweets focus on financial market commentary, and we also give our audience information on things like new posts on the ZeccoPulse blog, ‘Most Traded’ indicators from the ZeccoShare community and free trade promotions.”

The company plans on continuing to offer contextually-relevant information, insights and tips on its offerings that it thinks investors and active traders will find valuable.

“While we have one of the largest Twitter follower bases in the brokerage industry today, we also hope to use the Promoted Tweets program to further extend our reach and grow our followers,” says Raneri.

“Online communities and social media are all about connecting people and sharing ideas,” he says. “This is especially valuable in the fast-paced investing world, where having quick and easy access to a community of people interested in the same topics is invaluable to any investor, whether they’re just starting out or a seasoned trader.”

Clearly Zecco has a particular niche in the investing world, but it’s easy to see parallels for other industries in how Promoted Tweets will be useful.

Twitter unveiled Promoted Tweets in April, beginning with them appearing in Twitter search results. The ads are based on a “resonance” algorithm. If a promoted tweet doesn’t resonate with users, Twitter will stop showing it.

LinkedIn has launched new search filter features for LinkedIn Recruiter. The company has taken advanced search and refinement filters that have been available, and added them to some new places.

“To make managing large projects and pipelines easier, you’ll now be able to search and dynamically refine any list of profiles – in Projects, on the clipboard, and even within the real-time profile matches we generate with every job posting,” says LinkedIn’s Prasad Gune. “For example, you can quickly filter a large pipeline by past company or refine real-time matches for job postings to show just recommended profiles in a certain location. And if you run a Talent Direct campaign on LinkedIn, you can use the same functionality to pinpoint specific candidate profiles within your results.”

“One other thing you’ll notice when in Recruiter is that you can now view sets of profiles in list or table format,” adds Gune. “The default setting is list format, which enables you to use refinement filters to zero in on specific candidates, but if you prefer the table view you can switch at any time.”

Linkedin has a video about search and refinement filters available here.

Earlier this month, LinkedIn added one-page project management and the ability to set reminders on profiles to LinkedIn Recruiter. More on these features here.

YouTube has announced new video and channel exclusions for advertisers, so they can pick specific videos and channel URLs that they don’t want their ads to appear with.

“Here’s an example: let’s say you run a vegan bakery,” explains Baljeet Singh. “You want to strike a balance between good exposure for your baked goods online, while staying true to your company values in offering items free of animal or dairy-products. Now you can indicate which videos are not the best fit for your audience. Since your customers are probably not watching ‘Homewrecker Hot Dog’, you can provide this video exclusion under the “Networks” tab.”

“Similarly, you might run a keyword-targeted campaign on bakery-related keywords, and exclude whole channels that you don’t feel suit your audience,” adds Singh. “So if FoodNetworkTV has videos centered mostly around cooking meat dishes, you have the controls to prevent ads from showing on that channel.”

YouTube also suggests using the feature to keep ads from appearing on videos they deem inappropriate for the audience or ones that aren’t performing in terms of click-through rate or conversions.

This is only the latest of some advertising features YouTube has been rolling out recently. Last week, the company announced a new feature that lets advertisers age-restrict videos.

Social-minded startups with ties to Y Combinator, a well-known provider of seed funding, will soon get another benefit from the relationship.  Last night, Facebook announced that it will provide support to the startups in a number of ways.

Don’t look for more money to change hands; Facebook hasn’t quite decided to become a venture capital firm.  The organization’s ready to lend just about every other form of assistance imaginable, though.

Carl Sjogreen, a product manager who used to work for Google, wrote on the Facebook Developer Blog, “We’ll provide product, technical and design resources to support new Y Combinator companies interested in working with us to build deeply social products, whether a website or an application on Facebook.com.”

Also, according to Sjogreen, “These companies will have priority access to our technologies and programs such as Facebook Credits, Instant Personalization and upcoming beta features.”

That’s not a bad offer.  And considering that Y Combinator’s funded innovative companies like Dropbox, Justin.tv, Posterous, Reddit, and Scribd, it’s a good bet that Facebook’s assistance won’t go to waste.

Here’s the page through which firms can apply for Y Combinator funding in case any WebProNews readers want to get in on the action.

Google is rolling out some changes to the event page in Google Calendar. The goal is to make scheduling events easier, while making the style more consistent with other Google apps.

The information that is most commonly used is displayed at the top of the screen, the layout is simplified, and they’ve added some other features.

“The old interface for creating recurring events was clumsy and took up too much space on the screen,” says software engineer Nassar Stoertz. “Now you’ll see only a summary of your recurring event on the main event page; if you want to edit it, you can use a window that opens when you select the ‘Repeats’ checkbox.”

“You’ll notice a new tab on the event page that should make it easier to find a good time to schedule an event,” adds Stoertz. “When your friends or coworkers give you permission to see their calendars, you can click this tab to see a preview of their schedules and hover over their events to see what conflicts they might have. This should make scheduling a tad easier, especially for events with large numbers of guests.”

Google Apps users can see data from other calendar services in the schedule preview thanks to Google’s Calendar Connectors API.

Google has also added a “Working Hours” setting and a “Find a Time” tab on the event scheduling page that lets you see coworkers’ schedules and choose meeting times. More on these features here.

Traditionally, small business owners have probably used Twitter as a means to broadcast information, or maybe interact with customers, rather than receive advice.  Twitter’s just too full of comedians and celebrities.  A new list outlines five individuals who small business owners may want to follow, though.

These folks shouldn’t just adhere to the Twitter cliche of describing every meal and complaining about their commutes.  Bianca Male identified them as “really smart business thought leaders and great Tweeters.”

First up, then, is Becky McCray, an entrepreneur who runs a blog called Small Biz Survival.  Business coach Pam Slim, who’s the founder of Escape from Cubicle Nation, also earned a nod.

Next, there’s Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, followed by author Tom Peters.

Finally, Male recommended following Anita Campbell, founder of the Small Business Trends site, “As both an entrepreneur and an expert in everything that’s going on in the SMB world, she’s a pretty invaluable resource.  Her Twitter stream features lots of links to great outside articles for small-business owners, and she’ll often retweet other smart people that you should definitely be following, too.”

Here’s hoping you get some use out of their insightful tweets.

A public relations firm hired by video game developers will settle Federal Trade Commission charges it engaged in deceptive advertising by having its employees post favorable reviews on iTunes on behalf of the developers and not revealing the reviews came form paid employees.

“Companies, including public relations firms involved in online marketing need to abide by long-held principles of truth in advertising,” said Mary Engle, Director of the FTC’s Division of Advertising Practices.

“Advertisers should not pass themselves off as ordinary consumers touting a product, and endorsers should make it clear when they have financial connections to sellers.”

Under the proposed settlement order, Reverb Communications, Inc. and its owner, Tracie Snitker, are required to remove any previously posted endorsements that misrepresent the authors as independent users or ordinary consumers, and that fail to disclose a connection between Reverb and Snitker and the seller of a product or service.

The agreement also bars Reverb and Snitker from misrepresenting that the user or endorser is an independent, ordinary consumer, and from making endorsement or user claims about a product or service unless they disclose any relevant connections that they have with the seller of the product or service.

Between November 2008 and May 2009, Reverb and Snitker posted reviews about their clients’ games at the iTunes store using account names that gave readers the impression the reviews were written by disinterested consumers, according to the FTC complaint.  Reverb and Snitker did not disclose that they were hired to promote the games and that they often received a percentage of the sales.