How to Claim Your Facebook Places

Interesting article by Tony Bradley at PC World

If your business is a brick and mortar location that customers visit in person, odds are good that it will end up in Facebook Places whether you put it there or not. Even if you don't choose to take advantage of Facebook Places to promote business, you should still claim ownership of your place to ensure the information is accurate.

With half a billion Facebook members, odds are good that at least a few of them are your customers. That means there is a likelihood that someone will "check-in" to Facebook Places at your place of business and your establishment will have a Facebook Places page whether you intend to use it or not.

You don't have to bother claiming your Place. But, if it's going to be there anyway, you may as well at least manage and maintain the basic details. By claiming the Facebook Place you are able to edit the address, business hours, profile picture, contact information, and other settings such as designating admins authorized to alter the Places page.

If your Facebook Place doesn't exist yet, you can use the smartphone Facebook app to check-in at your business to create it. Once your business has a Facebook Place, there is a link at the bottom that says "Is this your business?" Click that to begin the verification process.

Claiming your Place requires some supporting evidence--so random strangers should be prevented from claiming your Facebook Place. Aside from basic information like the name, URL, and address of the business, the Claim Place page also asks for the Federal EIN (Employee Identification Number), and requires that you upload a scan of official documents.

You can choose from articles of certificate of incorporation, certificate of formation, local business license, or Better Business Bureau accreditation. Once you submit the necessary information, the Place still does not automatically become yours. You receive a message stating "Thanks, your inquiry has been forwarded to the Facebook Team." You also receive an e-mail confirming the submission and notifying you to "Stand by as we should be back with you soon."

According to the Facebook Help Center, you can also advertise your Facebook Place on Facebook. The Help Center FAQ explains "To advertise your Place, click "I want to advertise something I have on Facebook" in the ad creation flow and choose your Place from the drop-down menu."

Facebook Places is new to the location-based check-in game. Some elements--like the ability to target marketing at Facebook users who have only checked in to your business--don't exist yet (although I am fairly sure they will be tacked on sooner rather than later). However, you can target specials and promotions at Facebook users who "Like" your Facebook Place page.

I recommend that businesses embrace the location-based check-in concept and use it as a powerful tool for marketing and to build repeat customers. But, even if you don't plan to advertise your Facebook Place page, or target promotional specials at Facebook fans that have checked-in to your business, if the Facebook Place for your business is going to be out there anyway, you better take ownership of it and at least make sure the information it reflects is accurate.

Showing More Results from One Site

On August 20 Google launched a change to their ranking algorithm that makes it easier to find more results from a single site.

“For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site:

Prior to today’s change, only two results from www.amnh.org would have appeared for this query. Now, we determine that the user is likely interested in the Museum of Natural History’s website, so seven results from the amnh.org domain appear. Since the user is looking for exhibitions at the museum, it’s far more likely that they’ll find what they’re looking for, faster. The last few results for this query are from other sites, preserving some diversity in the results.”

The Do's for Website Crawlability

Compliments of Search Engine News

Crawlability is just a fancy way of describing how easy it is for search engine spiders to download your pages, easily access your content, and find the rest of your pages based on how you've linked your site together.

It's very common for sites to put up roadblocks that stop these spiders in their tracks, shutting them out of important areas of a site. Put up a spider speed bump and you might see your page drop like a rock, completely out of the top rankings.

You want spiders to eagerly gobble up your pages and return to dine often, vigorously crawling all the corners of your site to make sure your pages get indexed and, just as important, stay indexed and well-ranked in the engines.

Here's a checklist of the most important ways to make sure your site is crawlable. Let's keep those spiders fat and happy.

The Do's...

Use HTML for content. If you want search engines to index your content, design it in simple HTML text format. Creating content in Flash, AJAX, JavaScript, frames, or other formats will make it harder for search engines to index your content.

Use HTML for links. If you want search engines to follow your links, use the simple HTML format. Just as with your page content, you should avoid using links in Flash or JavaScript format. And, if you must use Flash or Javascript, then you should also employ the use of alternative links in simple HTML format that is rich in keyword anchor text.

Make the most of Sitemaps. Employ both a regular HTML Sitemap and an XML Sitemap. Remember that these files need to be kept up to date so you are accurately listing the files you want indexed.

Use your robots.txt file or the meta no-index tag to prevent search engines from wasting time indexing unnecessary pages. There is typically a limit to how many pages each engine will index on your site, make certain you get the ones that are most important to your site in the index and block the ones that aren't important.

Fix your broken links. Use Xenu Link Sleuth to ensure your site has no broken internal links that search engines won't be able to crawl.

What it Takes to be a Successful “Tweetheart”

Why should someone follow you on Twitter? Getting some traction on Twitter can be tricky, without a plan of action.

There are some things you can do to get more followers:

Provide Valuable Information

Providing valuable information is important. Don’t update your Twitter with what you’re eating or what you’re doing… Instead, provide updates about important information regarding your industry or business that you feel people will genuinely appreciate. Maybe it’s regarding some new medical procedures or new scholarship opportunities for college students; the choice is yours.

Give people a reason to follow you! You can promote on your company/personal website that by becoming a follower they will be the first to receive important information updates. People like to feel that they belong to something exclusive. Mention that only followers will be able to view these updates.

Provide Special Discounts or Offers

Providing special discounts or offers only available to followers will persuade people to connect. We all love deals. Mention on your website that only followers will receive weekly specials or coupons and you will start to see more followers. Even if they don’t plan on buying something now, they’ll know the resources will be there when the time comes.

Use Hashtags

Using hashtags in your Twitter updates can help get your tweets indexed in categories when someone does a search on http://search.twitter.com/.

This is Twitter’s definition of hashtag:

“Because Twitter provided no easy way to group tweets or add extra data, the Twitter community came up with their own way: hashtags. A hashtag is similar to other web tags- it helps add tweets to a category. Hashtags have the 'hash' or 'pound' symbol (#) preceding the tag, like so: #traffic, #followfriday, #hashtag. Hashtags can occur anywhere in the tweet: some people just add a # before a word they're using.”

For example, if you have a restaurant, adding #miamirestaurants after your tweet will allow your tweet to come up when someone does a search for this. This is a way to help promote your local restaurant if someone is visiting Miami and wants to find something to eat. They will be more likely to follow you once they see your tweet and browse around to see what you have to offer.

Google vs. Yahoo: Battle for Popularity

Google sites remained the most visited in the US in June…but it looks like Yahoo is closing in.

Among the top five most popular web properties in the US, Google sites remained #1 with almost 179 million visitors in June. Yahoo edged ever closer with a mere 9 million lag, or 170 million visitors to its sites. Microsoft sites ranked third at 161 million visitors during the period. Facebook came in fourth at 141 million visitors, ahead of AOL sites at 107 million visitors. The most notable gains were those of Adobe properties, which went up 10 positions and ESPN, who won 12 spots as it benefited from traffic generated by the World Cup, comScore said.

Google to be Responsible for 90% of Search Queries Done in Japan

Yahoo Japan and Google will be partnering up to provide algorithmic and paid search technologies across Yahoo’s properties. Google will become responsible for around 90% of the search queries done in Japan, according to comScore… compared to the current 30%.

Poor Bing! Here’s an excerpt from Clickz.com on the situation:

Currently, Japan is one of few global markets in which Google does not dominate the search space, attracting around 38 percent of queries in March compared to Yahoo's 51 percent, according to comScore. However, the relationship will now hand Google control of almost all Japanese searches, drastically increasing its market presence there overnight.

Microsoft's General Counsel Dave Heiner wrote in a blog post, "This agreement is even more anti-competitive than Google's deal with Yahoo in the United States and Canada that the Department of Justice found to be illegal.... It means there will be no search competition in Japan and that Google will end up controlling all personal search information for all Japanese consumers and businesses."

Though he doesn't cite sources of the data, Heiner notes in his post that Google currently accounts for around 51 percent of paid search advertising in Japan, and Yahoo Japan accounts for 47 percent. Combined, therefore, Google will account for over 98 percent of paid search advertising in the country following completion and implementation of the agreement.

Google Led the U.S. Core Search Market in June - No Surprise!

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, released May and June's search engine share percentages.

Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in June with 62.6 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.9 percent), and Microsoft Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 12.7 percent). Both Yahoo! Sites and Microsoft Sites have experienced gains due in part to the continued utilization of contextual search approaches that tie content and related search results together. Ask Network captured 3.6 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.2 percent.

Americans conducted 16.4 billion searches in June, up 3 percent from May. Google Sites accounted for 10.3 billion searches (up 1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 3.1 billion (up 7 percent), Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion (up 8 percent), Ask Network with 584 million (up 1 percent), and AOL LLC with 368 million (up 2 percent).

About comScore

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Advanced Googling

Although you probably won't use these advanced Google search terms often, they are good to keep in your back pocket for more intensive Googling. The site: query is probably the most commonly used advanced search term. Using the site: query is similar to having a regular keyword site search on your website. If you come across a website that doesn't have its own site search, you can always use the trusty site: query to find what you're looking for!

Phrase search ("")

By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.

Search within a specific website (site:)

Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [ iraq site:nytimes.com ] will return pages about Iraq but only from nytimes.com. The simpler queries [ iraq nytimes.com ] or [ iraq New York Times ] will usually be just as good, though they might return results from other sites that mention the New York Times. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.

Terms you want to exclude (-)

Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query [ anti-virus -software ] will search for the words 'anti-virus' but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the - sign in front of all of them, for example [ jaguar -cars -football -os ]. The - sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the 'site:' operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.

Fill in the blanks (*)

The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google's products (go to next page and next page -- we have many products). The query [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

Search exactly as is (+)

Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query [ child care ] (with a space), or California history for the query [ ca history ]. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.

The OR operator

Google's default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS). For example, [ San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005 ] will give you results about either one of these years, whereas [ San Francisco Giants 2004 2005 ] (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)

Punctuation that is not ignored
Punctuation in popular terms that have particular meanings, like [ C++ ] or [ C# ] (both are names of programming languages), are not ignored.

The dollar sign ($) is used to indicate prices. [ nikon 400 ] and [ nikon $400 ] will give different results.

The hyphen - is sometimes used as a signal that the two words around it are very strongly connected. (Unless there is no space after the - and a space before it, in which case it is a negative sign.)

The underscore symbol _ is not ignored when it connects two words, e.g. [ quick_sort ].)

Google Alerts Gives you Everything

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on search terms you select.

Let’s take a look at the old Google Alerts and the new Google Alerts:

OLD

NEW

In June, Google made a change to their alerts that eliminates the “Web” option and defaults it to “Everything.” Google claims that by using the Everything option in the alert filter you will "find the same results"... and goes on to say that by making this change you may get more results than before.

This is the letter Google sent out regarding this change:

Dear Google Alerts user,

We're contacting you because you have an alert of type Web. We've decided to retire Web alerts because (1) they are used by very few people and (2) an alert of type Everything will find the same results.

This week we'll be changing all alerts of type Web into alerts of type Everything. Your alert will continue to include results from all kinds of Web sites.

You may receive more results after this change. If you find that you are getting too many results, you can change the How often setting to once a day or once a week. You can also change your search query. You can do this on the alerts management page (www.google.com/alerts/manage), or by removing the alert using the link at the bottom of each alert email and creating it again with different settings.

We hope that you'll continue to find your alert useful.

More results may cause you to have to sift through non-relevant items and waste your time. However, Google says they changed their algorithm that they use to identify their alerts to provide you with more precise results.

Google Alerts is a great tool to monitor your online reputation. If you are active in social blogging or press release submissions, this tool will be very beneficial to tracking your efforts.

Twitter Places.... sounds a lot like Google Places!

Twitter is coming out with a brand new feature called Twitter Places, which is going to become available to 65 countries. Now when you post tweets, your tweets will be saved according to your location. If someone tweets about studying in the school library, the location of the library will be tied into the tweet automatically.

Each location will end up having its own Twitter page so anyone can go to the location’s page and check out who else is tweeting from that location and what they are tweeting about. If someone tweets about how great the food is at Downtown Subs, you’ll know where to go for subs next time you are in Miami.

There may be concerns about security issues, but as it stands now, you have to manually set your location to show up and can do it on a case-by-case basis.

Use this Twitter 101 for Business Guide for tips on how to utilize Twitter's features for your business.