Facebook opens up to Google search

If you’re a Facebook user, you’ll want to be aware that soon they will be opening up your profile to Google search. The BBC reports …

The function will initially allow anyone who is not registered with the site to search for a specific person.

More controversially, in a month’s time, the feature will also allow people to track down Facebook members via search engines such as Google.

The public search listing will show the thumbnail picture of a Facebook member from their profile page as well as links allowing people to interact with them.

The default setting is that you will be made available to Google and the like, unless you opt out. Of course, this raises privacy concerns…and I’m sure will cause a number of Facebook users to question how much of their information is freely available.

If you want to opt-out of being publicly searchable, you’ll find a tick-box in the Search Privacy settings of your Facebook account - as shown below.

Coffee like you've never seen it!!

Although it's off my normal topics, I just had to share this awesome Coffee art video...


Coffee Art - video powered by Metacafe

Amazing...I'm going to have to practise that!

Google "launches" (shhh) behavioral targeting...or not, as the case may be

Not if you ask Google, that is, since it is trying to distance itself from the term behavioral targeting. But what they are doing amounts to something not a million miles from it though...stitching together different search queries to produce search results that become increasingly focussed, based on the combined terms used in the different queries.

Try searching for Paris and then hotel. You'll notice that on the second search, the ads are for hotels in Paris.

As Enquiro reports, the launch of this new functionality was kept low key. There were a couple of articles written about it on ClickZ and SearchEngineLand.

Is this behavioral targeting? Sounds to me like it is. But as Reuters reported, Susan Wojcicki, Google vice president of product management for advertising is distancing Google from this term. Reuters quote her saying:

"That is not something that we have participated in, for a variety of reasons," Wojcicki told reporters at a briefing at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California.

"We believe that task-based information at the time (of a user's search) is the most relevant information to what they are looking at," she said. "We always want to be very careful about what information would or would not be used."

Although on the face of it, this is a useful technology, I'm sure there are many people out there who will become even more uneasy about their privacy and just how much the mighty Google knows about them.

Stories behind the startups

David Askaripour, founder of the Mind Petals Entrepreneur Network has just released his Entrepreneurship Guide which reveals the real stories behind a range of entrepreneur start-ups. From online wine store bottlenotes.com which gives you hints and tips on wine to suit your personal taste, to bejane.com which gives women home-improvement know-how in a friendly way.

Have a read of the entrepreneur profiles - there's something to learn for all of us. Thanks to all of them for sharing their experiences.

The biggest opportunity on the web?

I was interested to read about uvme.com (as in 'you versus me') which, some say, is one of the biggest opportunitues on the web at the moment. uvme is a new business which pre-launched last month and has since attracted nearly half a million associates (they can't all be wrong!). Its founders, Tom Brodie and Len Fitzgerald, launched the very successful Virtual World Direct Ltd back in 2002 and are set to create an even bigger success with their latest venture, uvme.com.

From their website:

uVme is a fast-moving and unique business that combines three of the most exciting phenomena on the internet: ONLINE GAMES, SOCIAL NETWORKING WITH INSTANT LIVE COMMUNICATION, and Social Marketing.

uvme.com is (will be when it comes out of pre-launch) a skills-based gaming portal. The skills bit is important and differentiates the business from online gambling. The online gaming industry is currently worth around $5.2 billion - and uvme is providing all the tools to enable anyone to share in part of this.

The concept is simple: you join uvme.com and they give you a website with stacks of skills-based online games. As people play these games, you get paid. As well as the website, they provide marketing support, customer service and more.

Effectively, they're providing you with all the tools to build an online gaming business - all you need is a little time to bring players to your website. And when they have fun, you earn money.

During the pre-launch phase, uvme.com is free. The website you get enables you to start building a network of players and associates, in preparation for the full launch around the end of September.

Although I've always been sceptical of 'sounds too good to be true' schemes, this one has caught my eye and I've signed up. With the online gaming industry growing 4 times as fast as the growth in the internet, the potential opportunity is too good to pass up. As the internet is growing up, more and more people of all ages are turning to it for entertainment. And with in-game advertising predicted to grow 70% year-on-year, the big advertisers are banking their money on it too. This industry is set to explode.

If you want to find out more, visit my uvme site here and let's share in some fun...and money.

Google drops supplemental results label

Firstly, I've not been asleep...just on vacation with no web access (a temporary escape from this online world!) and am now back.

When I set up my online gift store it was partly an exercise in on-page optimsation. The site runs on Cafepress' API and therefore (since Cafepress sells millions of products) has the potential for having thousands upon thousands of pages. The site's navigation (not the primary nav!) changes with every search (since it shows latest searches) and so every page is very dynamic. It gets crawled by Google pretty frequently (I'll dig out the logs and post about it sometime).

But...I think I over-did the on-page optimisation and although I got indexed pretty quickly, I ended up in the supplemental results index, which of course wasn't great since these generally show up only if there aren't many relevant results in the main index. I made some changes to the page titles, H1s etc (generally removing over-use of keywords) and watched over some time. Gradually, more and more pages came out of the supplemental results...but this was over a few months.

I recently checked and found that none of the results were in the supplemental index...or so I thought... After a little digging, I found (as reported by searchengineland.com) Google has now dumped the supplemental results label as explained in this excerpt from their blog:

"Since 2006, we've completely overhauled the system that crawls and indexes supplemental results. The current system provides deeper and more continuous indexing. Additionally, we are indexing URLs with more parameters and are continuing to place fewer restrictions on the sites we crawl. As a result, Supplemental Results are fresher and more comprehensive than ever. We're also working towards showing more Supplemental Results by ensuring that every query is able to search the supplemental index, and expect to roll this out over the course of the summer.

The distinction between the main and the supplemental index is therefore continuing to narrow. Given all the progress that we've been able to make so far, and thinking ahead to future improvements, we've decided to stop labeling these URLs as "Supplemental Results." Of course, you will continue to benefit from Google's supplemental index being deeper and fresher."

I guess this is good news in general since it sounds like even though the supplemental index still exists, Google are moving more towards getting rid of it altogether.

Problogger confidential

I just got word of the latest Problogger Confidential series - a call with blogging mastermind Yaro Starak. The call will cover how to make a solid income through part-time blogging.

Register here for the call at 9pm Eastern time on Wednesday

Paid submission...a rip off?

I receive a whole host of search engine related emails and feeds and a common recurring theme from one of them is the old 'Get listed in 48 hours, GUARANTEED'. I've never believed in paid submission to search engines - if you optimise your site properly, you don't need to.

There are some tips & techniques that you can use to get your site into search engines quickly which I'll post on soon. One of them that I've used is to add your site's feed to your personal MSN or Yahoo! page. Effectively, you're telling these search engines about your site...and a short while after adding your feed, you'll start to show up in their results pages. That, coupled with adding a Google sitemap should have you well on the way to being indexed.

What techniques do you use to get listed quickly? Have you ever used a paid submission service? And has it been worth the cash? Leave a comment and let me know.

Choosing the right domain name

Selecting the right domain name for your latest online venture is a major choice you'll need to make...and one which you should spend some time mulling over.

There are a couple of schools of thought worth noting here:

Keyword-rich domains
On the one hand, your domain name could contain search keywords that you are targetting in your niche - for example, www.unique-gift-ideas-shop.com which sells...um...unique gifts. There is some debate over how much having search keywords in your domain helps. From my perspective it isn't the best choice if you're trying to build a brand. After all, flickr isn't called online-photo-sharing.com is it?!

Brand / uniqueness
Another approach is to go down the brand route - build your brand around a unique name (for which, of course, the domain name is available). The down side of this is naturally that when you start out, no one will be searching for your name. But if you structure your site properly from a content hierarchy / SEO perspective and ensure your pages are appropriately optimised (good title tags, keywords in h1 tags etc) people should start to find you. Of course, you'll probably need to work a bit harder to get your brand out there, but once word of mouth starts, you'll begin to pick up inbound links and your rankings in the search results will start to gain ground.

If you plump for the brand route, the next decision has to be a name itself. Businesses can spend (literally) millions on this but it's not necessary to do so. I found a nifty set of domain tools that might at least give you some inspiration - I like the six letter random domain names which have inspired me. The page shows different domains every time you refresh it. Many of them are unpronounceable, but if you persevere you'll find gem or two!

Remember...choosing a domain name is one of the most important things you'll do for your venture. With all that effort you'll put in to building links to it, you'd better make your choice wisely. So take some time.

Let me know how you went about your own domain name choices.

Creating Killer Flagship Content

All bloggers want to be noticed and admired by an active readership...why else spend countless hours writing (ok, well, there is the pleasure of purely recording something, but ultimately without a readership it's a bit fruitless).

So it was with interest that I read Chris Garret's free e-book on Killer Flagship Content. He likens flagship content to the "go-to" stores within a shopping mall...they're the things that attract the mall's footfall...and the smaller stores benefit too with passing trade. In the same way, flagship content on your blog attracts readership, and that readership will generally stick around to see what else you're writing about. It's a nice metaphor - and like most great ideas, it's very simple.

Chris' e-book goes on to suggest 10 ideas for creating flagship content - from tips, to FAQs and more. And then suggestions on how to promote your content. His writing style makes the info-packed 14 pages easy to read so you can devour it in 30 minutes. But go back and read it again to pull out the practical tips that apply to you as a blogger. There are plenty there.

Whether you're just starting out in life as a blogger...dipping your toe in the water...or even if you're an old hack that just needs a few ideas, Chris' book is well worth a read. Grab your copy here.

Right...I'm off to brainstorm some of my own killer flagship content ideas...

E-book image copyright Chris Garrett