Google has introduced this very cool new feature imbedded into search results which we will call Scrolling Latest Results.
Check out the search results for the word melbourne below to see the scroller about a third of the way down the page.
The scroller displays from news, blogs, twitter!
We recently developed a mobile version of one of our web sites publishing and treating it as a sub-domain of the main web site. It was actually fun creating this mini version of the web site ensuring everything displayed properly on a mobile phone. We used my LG U990 mobile phone for testing purposes.
A few weeks after its launch we noticed that the mobile content was indexed with many search engines alongside the content of the main web site. While this is good news, the bad news was that the mobile content was being indexed higher than the main content, meaning traffic was being redirected to the mobile web site.
I found a clever script that automatically redirected traffic based on the type of browser they were using but I was only able to do this for our home page. My concerns were, 1. we might get pinged for duplicate content, 2. perfectly good traffic was being diverted to the mobile site unnecessarily, 3, falling Adsense revenue due to the lost traffic to the main site where there are better and more prominent advertisers.
After a few weeks we decided to move the mobile web site to its own domain which allowed me to overcome some of the problems we were experiencing. I slapped a no-index on the web site to stop search engines from indexing the content, which led me to this thought..
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Mobile Phone Content Meta Tag, that search engines would use to display relevant content based on the browser of the reader. If they were searching using a mobile phone, then the results would be pages that were “Mobile Phone Friendly”.
What do you reckon?
Links and sources
Google is celebrating it’s Toolbar’s 8th birthday by announcing the latest release of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, launching out of beta and available in 40 languages.
Here are just a few things you can do with this latest version:
- Add gadgets to your Toolbar to bring content from your favorite websites closer to you
- Synchronize your settings online to access your Toolbar from wherever you are
- Create multiple profiles in AutoFill to keep your business and personal information separate
To learn more about the different features, visit us at toolbar.google.com/features. We’d also love to hear your feature ideas and other Toolbar feedback, so send us a quick note with your thoughts.
Eight candles for Google Toolbar | Googleblog
10/29/2008 09:00:00 AM
If you are like me, you are always on the lookout for new ways of making a dollar, specially where it is automated and seemless!
I pointed out in a recent post Making Money from Publishing that the eBay Partner program coupled with BANS was one very good revenue generator, and now I have found another!
Introducing my new web site: My Xbox 360 Guitar Hero
Another Wordpress backend and an eBay affiliation except this time, the content is magically displayed with phpBay Lite Plugin for Wordpress by WiredStudios.
Google Adsense to the side, plus Xbox 360 Guitar pages for:
Check out My Xbox 360 Guitar Hero and let me know what you think..
First it was books, Google saying they wanted to publish online every book ever printed and now its newspapers.
Google announced today, we’re launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.
For more than 200 years, matters of local and national significance have been conveyed in newsprint — from revolutions and politics to fashion to local weather or high school football scores. Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written. And it’s our goal to help readers find all of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily.
The problem is that most of these newspapers are not available online. We want to change that.
Today, we’re launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives. Let’s say you want to learn more about the landing on the Moon. Try a search for [Americans walk on moon], and you’ll be able to find and read an original article from a 1969 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you’ll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed — photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all.
This effort expands on the contributions of others who’ve already begun digitizing historical newspapers. In 2006, we started working with publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post to index existing digital archives and make them searchable via the Google News Archive. Now, this effort will enable us to help you find an even greater range of material from newspapers large and small, in conjunction with partners such as ProQuest and Heritage, who’ve joined in this initiative. One of our partners, the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, is actually the oldest newspaper in North America—history buffs, take note: it has been publishing continuously for more than 244 years.
You’ll be able to explore this historical treasure trove by searching the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News. Not every search will trigger this new content, but you can start by trying queries like [Nixon space shuttle] or [Titanic located]. Stories we’ve scanned under this initiative will appear alongside already-digitized material from publications like the New York Times as well as from archive aggregators, and are marked “Google News Archive.” Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we’ll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you’ll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well.
This effort is just the beginning. As we work with more and more publishers, we’ll move closer towards our goal of making those billions of pages of newsprint from around the world searchable, discoverable, and accessible online.
In unique Google fashion, the search engine giant has launched its latest product Chrome, with a cartoon that explains the background of the open source browser based on WebKit.
Unlike other modern web browsers, which can only run one process at a time, Google Chrome gives each tab its own process. This speeds up overall performance and saves the entire browser from crashing when one tab causes problems.
The multi-process design requires more memory allocation up front but less memory over time as users tend to multitask. It also prevents your computer from slowing down after you browse for an extended period of time and open/close lots of tabs.
I wont bore you with the technical stuff which is thoroughly explained in 38 comic pages drawn by Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics.
We downloaded Google Chrome, it pretty much installed itself with only a few questions, and we were surfing the web. As with anything new it takes a little while for your eyes to get used to the new tabs and features, but everything including page loading times are noticably quicker than its Internet Explorer and Firefox counterparts.
Understanding Chrome is a Beta version, its only early days but one does get the feeling we have just witnessed the beginning of the end..
AUSTRALIA today became the third country to have its cities, streets and landmarks “scanned into” Google as the search giant unveils its most ambitious Street View project to date.
Google Street View is an online tool that lets users take a virtual tour of landscapes from their computer by perusing an interactive database of millions of 360-degree snapshots.
The snapshots are taken by a fleet of cars fitted with special cameras that drive across the country, capturing images on every street corner and along every highway.
“Google Maps has its origins as an Australian invention so we’re thrilled to bring Street View here as one of the first countries in the world,” he said.
View Street View at interesection of Flinders Street and Swanston Street Melbourne.
One of the easiesy ways of making money from publishing is with the new eBay Affiliate Program.
eBay recently split from CJ (Commission Junction) and now run their own Affiliate Program, but with some mighty powerful tools.
The pitch on the eBay Affiliate Program website says “With just a little effort, you can earn a lot of money in the eBay Affiliate Program. All you have to do is drive traffic to eBay or one of their partners.”
After logging in you are presented with your dashboard of partner tools, accounts, reports and programs.
Link Generator
The link generator allows you to create a trackable link to any of eBay Partner Network’s program pages and is great for all types of business models. Best of all, by using this tool to direct visitors to relevant pages you can significantly increase conversion rates.
Creatives Generator
Choose from a variety of colorful graphic and interactive ads to enhance your site and attract visitors to eBay Publisher Network pages from your webpage.
Widgets
Including Editor Kit, RSS Feeds, and eBay To Go; we offer innovative and customizable widgets to drive traffic and increase user conversions.
API
Leverage eBay’s advanced web services platform to develop innovative applications to tap into eBay’s marketplace. Our API provides tools and services that meet the diverse needs of over 200 million online shoppers. You can use virtually any programming language to interface with eBay Web Services!
Now having said all that, you have to know about BANS. BANS is software that makes the job of adding eBay content to web sites even easier. In fact, we used BANS to set-up 4 totally new web sites in one day, and already they have covered the intial cost and are generating increasingly good revenue.
Our web sites:
BANS (Build A Niche Store) is a website builder which enables you to create a network of traffic pulling, money making niche websites focused around the eBay affiliate opportunity.
You simply choose your niche…build and develop your site…promote…make money…rinse and repeat.
That’s the system and that’s exactly what Build A Niche Store enables you to do!
A New Way To Make Money With eBay
When you hear “eBay” and “money” in the same sentence your probably think of becoming an eBay seller.
You place product listings in the eBay marketplace, buyers bid, you pay your eBay seller fees and what you have left is your profit margin.
There is, however, another way to build a business which still revolves around eBay but which doesn’t involve you selling a single thing in the eBay marketplace.
This “other way” opportunity is based on the eBay affiliate program and a great tool which makes entry into this opportunity not only possible but also super easy. This tool is called “Build A Niche Store“.
Now if you don’t know – an affiliate program enables you as an individual internet entrepreneur to promote the products of a company in exchange for a commission on all sales that you refer.
You are basically operating as an internet middleman and connecting internet browsers to particular products and companies through you own network of websites and marketing methods.
If we return to the eBay affiliate program, eBay actually invites you to promote all of the product listings in the eBay marketplace and in exchange for your efforts will pay you up to 75% of the revenue they make from each sale you refer plus up to $35 for each new active eBay member you refer.
You can have a read about the eBay.com
affiliate program here
What this means is that you can earn up to three quarters of eBay’s revenue simply for connecting people to the products listed in the eBay marketplace.
Not only do you get to partner with the best branded marketplace in the world, you also get access to and control over ALL of the products listed in this marketplace. The eBay product inventory becomes YOUR product inventory and yet you do NOT have to stock items, deal with customers, organize shipping or process refunds.
You are no longer limited to selling only those products which you can buy and sell for a profit margin. You can choose ANY niche market and promote those eBay products relevant to your chosen niche outside of the eBay marketplace, funnelling targeted traffic through to eBay and into your own affiliate commissions.
Golf clubs, sewing kits, laptops, dog collars, diamond rings, Florida real estate…
If you know eBay you know how BIG it is – there are NO limits.
At this point you might be thinking – well this sounds interesting but in reality is there any money in it? Well, here’s the shocker – eBay’s top affiliates make over 1 million dollars a month. That’s right – 8 figures a year without stocking, selling or shipping a single thing!
Now eBay does provide some basic free tools to help you succeed as an eBay affiliate and build an affiliate business BUT it has been the development of a tool outside of eBay that has really opened this up as a legitimate business opportunity.
The tool, as I mentioned earlier, is called “Build A Niche Store” and what it enables you to do is build eBay affiliate
websites targeted to any eBay niche you want. These act as the medium through which you funnel targeted visitors to eBay.
Here are a couple of examples, one targeting Race Cars and the other Golf Equipment:
Race Car eBay Affiliate Website
As you can see, these are professional looking websites that contain all of those eBay products related to their target niche inside a searchable store format, each of which automatically contains your eBay affiliate id.
These stores then automatically update as new products are listed for sale and old listing expire from the eBay marketplace and the software has built in development features which enable you to create new store pages, add content to these pages, create content pages, modify your template etc etc.
Basically, in the space of about 10 minutes (once you are familiar with how the software works) you can create a fully functional eBay affiliate website targeted to the niche market of your choice.
Your store content is all search engine friendly which will provide the foundation for attracting targeted traffic from the search engines and you can then use the development features to attract more targeted visitors which will in turn mean more eBay affiliate commissions.
It really is a brilliant concept and I’ve been hearing great things about the guys behind the project and the member forum which you get lifetime access to when you purchase the product.
Build A Niche Store comes with a step by step user manual which will walk even the most technically inexperienced through setting up their eBay affiliate website, 9 professional template layouts which can be customized (from inside your admin panel) to match your target niche, lifetime member forum access, comprehensive product support and possibly most importantly – an UNLIMITED domain license which means you can build as many of these niche websites as
you want for the small one time fee.
Think about how many niches eBay caters to!
How big could your eBay affiliate business be?!
This product gets my full recommendation – check it out today…
Click
Here To Read More About Build A Niche Store
Google’s Affiliate Network (previously DoubleClick) was launched today.
Google Affiliate Network powers performance-based online marketing and offers you the chance to earn incremental revenue from your visitors. Apply to become a Publisher and access offers and links for Google Affiliate Network’s top-tier, big-name Advertisers.
Complete this online application and get started. It’s that easy!
For anyone wanting to find out what films are showing at their local cinema, you just cannot go past Google’s “Find Movie Showtimes“.
Simply key in your post code or suburb to view every cinema in your area, movies, times, reviews and ratings for today, tomorrow or search for a date.. incredible!
Oddly, Google does not show this search box unless you search for Movie Times or Showtimes, but once you are there, it is simply brilliant.
