Quora Invitation, Sign up to Quora with Twitter, Facebook

On Quora, the Q&A site, you can:

  • Find questions and answers, ranked by Quora’s algorithm, about SEO (e.g. Baidu SEO), PPC (e.g. Google Adwords), search engines that are being regularly created, updated and organized by SEM professionals.
  • Follow search engine related topics.
  • Follow SEO/PPC experts.
  • Interact with search engine experts by asking questions and commenting on answers.

To use Quora, create a Quora account through one of the methods:

  • Sign up with your Twitter login/username.
    Sign Up Quora via Twitter
  • Sign up with your Facebook login/username.
  • Sign up with your email address.
    Sign Up Quora
  • Ask your friends who have Quora accounts to send Quora invitations.

Posted on January 28, 2011
Category: Quora | 4 Comments

Synchronize Sina Weibo with FaWave

To synchronize your Sina Weibo microblogging messages with FaWave, connect your Sina Weibo account to FaWave’s Chrome Addon.

FaWave allows you to:

  • Send Sina Weibo microblogging messages.
  • Read comments and forwards of people who you are following on Sina Weibo.

The developer of FaWave, @QLeelulu, explains:

FaWave, is a Chrome extension supporting multiple microblogging, which can make all microblogs synchronously updating, work seamlessly across multiple microblogs when you switch between them.

Synchronize Sina Weibo on FaWave

Enable FaWave on Google Chrome browser:

    Enable FaWave

Click on options:

    FaWave Options

Click on the “account settings” button:

    FaWave Account Settings

From the list of microblog accounts, add Sina Weibo to FaWave:

    Add Sina Weibo to FaWave

Connect Sina Weibo and FaWave by entering your Sina Weibo account username and password:

    Sina Weibo, FaWave Synchronization

Synchronization between your Sina Weibo account and FaWave Chrome Addon completes.

Other Microblogging Services with FaWave

Use FaWave to improve the efficiency of social media marketing on microblogging. FaWave supports up to 12 microblogging tools/services including Twitter, Google Buzz, Tencent QQ Weibo and Digu.

Posted on January 23, 2011
Category: China SNS | 2 Comments

Quora Site, Questions, Answers on www.Quora.com

Quora.com is a social Q&A community site that has a huge collection of questions and answers.

  • All the content on Quora are user-generated content that are questions and answers.
  • Questions and answers are created, edited and organized by Quora users, mostly industry experts/professionals.
  • Quora is similar to Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers, and Aardvark.

What Can You Do on Quora?

On Quora you can:

  • Ask questions, give answers and comment on questions and answers
  • Edit answers that you have previously submitted
  • Vote up/down answers
  • Follow/unfollow questions
  • Follow topics / unfollow topics, e.g. search engines
  • Follow and/or be followed by other users (similar to the followers and following in Twitter) – You will see the topics of the people you are following coming into your streams/feeds
  • Create a wiki of frequently asked questions (FAQ) about a topic
  • Merge topics that are actually the same, and/or delete topics
  • Organize topics into parent topics and/or child topics

Tips for Using Quora

New users on Quora should follow FAQ and tips.

  • Follow people, questions, and topics
  • Search people, questions and topics with Quora’s search box
  • Vote up and/or vote down answers
  • Give comments on answers when answers require cross-examination
  • Follow Quora’s guidelines on asking questions and giving answers

Quora’s History, Quora’s Progress

Quora, the Q&A site’s brief history:

  • Quora was initially co-founded by former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever – June 2009
  • Quora was launched in private beta where users’ sign-ups were invitation-only – January 2010
  • Quora made signing-up available for everyone – June 2010
  • Quora allowed content to be crawled and indexed by Google and other search engines – August 2010
  • Quora confirmed significant traffic (mostly from search engines) increase – September 2010
  • Quora allowed uploading of images/photos in posts – September 2010
  • Quora’s engineer Albert Sheu confirmed Quora’s huge traffic surge – December 2010 and January 2011

Quora’s Issues

Quora faces growing issues when the user base grow larger and larger everyday, when the social Q&A site’s survival may depend on the high numbers of “quality” answers.

How Quora Ranks Answers

Quora’s ranking algorithm ranks answers that are affected by upvotes, downvotes and credibility of users.

Quora Invitations, Quora Sign Up

Get an invitation, and/or sign up to Quora through:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email address

Posted on January 22, 2011
Category: Quora | 1 Comment

Baidu Analytics Heatmap Report

Baidu has added heatmap report to Baidu Analytics.

Wikipedia defines a heat map as:

A graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors

Heat Map on Baidu Analytics

The heatmap report:

  • Shows graphical click patterns of your website’s visitors when they navigate your site’s individual web pages.
  • Helps you determining how to optimize your landing pages and/or your B2C websites based on visitors’ click distribution.

Baidu Analytics

Baidu Analytics is a free analytics tool:

  • That was initially available to advertisers on Baidu Phoenix Nest, Baidu’s PPC/SEM system.
  • That is similar page-tagging web analytics tool to Google Analytics and Yahoo Web Analytics.
  • That tracks web traffic of your site based on page-tagging technology/method.

Baidu Analytics Setup

Use Baidu Analytics to track/monitor your site’s web traffic if you:

Baidu Analytics now allows free sign-ups. To track web traffic of your site through Baidu Analytics:

  • Sign-up a Baidu Analytics account and add your website’s URL
  • Generate and insert Baidu Analytics code snippets to the footer of all web pages on your site
  • Validate the setup of the code snippets in your Baidu Analytics account

Traffic statistics of your website will start appearing on Baidu Analytics reports within 20-30 minutes, according to Baidu.

Enable Baidu Analytics Heatmap Report

To enable heat map report in Baidu Analytics, email: bang@baidu.com

Posted on January 19, 2011
Category: Web Analytics | 1 Comment

Google Adwords Lowercase Display URL

Google is to enforce advertisers using lowercase in Adwords display URL.

Click-through Rate (CTR) Improvement

Google proved Adwords display URL in lowercase letters could improve Adwords ads’ click-through rate (CTR), one of the important PPC metrics, after tested Google search results pages’:

  • Font sizes
  • Colors
  • Layouts and spacing

Lowercase Display URL

Google Adwords will automatically change the uppercase/capital letters in your ads’ display URLs to lowercase when your ads are served.

  • The domain part of Adwords ad’s display URL will always be shown in lowercase.
  • The sub-directory part of Adwords ad’s display URL can still have the first letter capitalized.

For example:

  • www.Example.com/Subdirectory will become www.example.com/Subdirectory
  • Subdomain.Example.com/Subdirectory will become subdomain.example.com/Subdirectory

Other Changes to Adwords Display URL

Google has previously made policy changes to display URLs:

A/B Ad Testing

If you are using one of the SEM/PPC systems (e.g. Kenshoo Search), run A/B testing on your ads to improve ads’ CTR and/or Adwords conversion rates.

Posted on January 19, 2011
Category: Adwords | 1 Comment

Kenshoo Search

Kenshoo Search is one of the most comprehensive platforms for paid search engine marketing (SEM/PPC). Through API, Kenshoo Search can support automatic bidding, keyword conversion tracking, reporting and management for the major search engines:

To maximize search engine marketing’s ROI and efficiency, Kenshoo Search offers features including:

  • Keyword Expansion
  • Tracking / Reporting
  • PPC Management
  • Crawler
  • Bid Management

Kenshoo Search Keyword Expansion

Keyword expansion in Kenshoo Search system:

  • Create keyword lists related to your industries through Kenshoo Search. Normally you have to use SEM keyword research tools.
  • Keyword expansion automatically adds new keywords to relevant ad groups according to ROI / conversion goals.

Kenshoo Search Tracking / Reporting

Keyword conversion tracking and reporting in Kenshoo Search system:

  • Create customized dashboard reports including all the PPC metrics.
  • Geographical origins of all clicks to your PPC campaigns are monitored.
  • Path To Conversion and keyword conversion attribution – Kenshoo Search’s Path To Conversion tracks the entire click-conversion path (from the first click to the conversion) across multiple search engines. Conversion credit weights are distributed to keywords in the click-conversion path according to your pre-defined keyword conversion attribution setup.
  • Allow reporting of cost-related data in multiple currencies.
  • Search query report (e.g. Adwords search query report – Google is the first search engine to provide PPC search query report)
  • Track multiple conversion goals and then use conversion goal values for rule-based and/or model-based bid optimization.
  • Import Google Analytics goal data into Kenshoo Search for optimization.
  • Universal Channels – Kenshoo Search’s Universal Channels track clicks and goal conversions for non-API enabled search engines (e.g. Tencent’s Soso PPC) and non search engine based text/display advertising platforms.

Kenshoo Search PPC Management

PPC campaign management in Kenshoo Search system:

  • Data is synchronized between Kenshoo Search and the search engines’ systems, including Google Adwords, Bing Adcenter, Yahoo Search Marketing, Baidu PPC and Yandex.
  • Categories and Dimensions – Define dimensions and group your campaigns into categories.
  • Advanced Search – Run add, delete, pause, modify or move operations on campaigns, ad groups, ads or keywords that are automatically selected by Kenshoo Search’s Advanced Search based on your criteria.
  • Download/export campaign data to spreadsheets, make changes and upload/import to Kenshoo Search. Adwords Editor, Microsoft Adcenter Desktop and Baidu PPC Editor offer similar features.

Kenshoo Search Crawler

Crawler in Kenshoo Search system:

  • Crawler – Updates PPC campaign data (e.g. ads, keywords) based on real-time changes to content/inventory on B2C websites. Google offers Adwords dynamic keyword insertion, but is unable to connect with inventory/content changes of your site.
  • Run ad A/B testing to meet conversion goal and/or ROI criteria.

Kenshoo Search Bid Management

Run automatic bid policies on your PPC campaigns:

  • Rule-based bid policy (MBBP) – Submit conversion goal values (ROI) with a set of rules (including cost, clicks, impressions, cost-per-action, revenue) and Kenshoo Search’s auto bidding system will achieve the ROI. Google offers a similar automatic bid optimization tool – Adwords conversion optimizer.
  • Model-based bid policy (MBBP) – Kenshoo Search’s bidding algorithm creates a behavioral model of keywords over time, finds the ideal position for each keyword, and meets requirements to cost and conversion goals. For keywords with low performance, Kenshoo Search uses a different bidding algorithm, principle of similarity.

Kenshoo Search New Feature Releases

Here are the lists of:

Kenshoo Search’s News

Kenshoo Search system’s progress in business and technologies:

Posted on January 13, 2011
Category: PPC | 4 Comments

FaWave, Chrome Addon for Sina Weibo, Twitter, Microblogging

The FaWave extension is a Chrome addon that allows you to manage all your microblogging/SNS messages in one user interface (UI).

Why Use FaWave?

FaWave is not a microblogging site or SNS, but a Chrome extension, that allows synchronization of messages among your many microblogging/SNS accounts.

China’s Internet users communicate and send messages through several online communicating tools. With many microblogging sites (weibo), social network sites (SNS), and sharing sites, managing usernames / passwords and synchronizing messages can be problems.

FaWave can connect up to 12 SNS / Microblogging services / Sharing sites including: Sina Weibo, Tencent QQ Weibo, Twitter, Google Buzz, Kaixin001.com, Xiaonei.com/Renren.com, and Douban.

How to Set Up FaWave?

To set up FaWave:

  • Download and install the FaWave extension on to your Chrome browser.
  • Connect to one or more of your microblogging/SNS accounts that are available on FaWave. You have options to sign in either conventionally (FaWave has to keep your password) or via OAuth protocol (FaWave does not keep your password).

Using FaWave

Enable FaWave on Chrome.

    FaWave's Chrome Extension
  • With FaWave, you can synchronize your “sent” messages among several popular microblogging sites, SNS, and sharing sites including Sina Weibo, Tencent QQ Weibo, Twitter, Google Buzz, Kaixin001.com, Renren.com, and Douban (e.g. Synchronize Sina Weibo with FaWave).
  • FaWave feeds your friends’ and your messages from all the microblogging sites / SNS you have connections with, and allows you to view all the conversations in tabbed/multiple screens.

What is OAuth?

OAuth is a protocol for open authorization. Wikipedia explains OAuth:

OAuth (Open Authorization) is an open standard for authorization.

OAuth allows users to hand out tokens instead of credentials to their data hosted by a given service provider. Each token grants access to a specific site for specific resources and for a defined duration. This allows a user to grant a third party site access to their information stored with another service provider, without sharing their access permissions or the full extent of their data.

About Sina Weibo

Sina Weibo is one of the largest microblogging sites in China. Sina Weibo’s homepage:

    Sina Weibo's Homepage

Wikipedia has this brief introduction about Sina Weibo:

Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging site, similar to Twitter, launched by Sina corporation, China’s biggest web portal, in August 2009. According to Sina, the microblog site remains in beta, though it has tens of millions of users and millions of posts per day.

Posted on January 8, 2011
Category: China SNS | 1 Comment

Optimize Google Adwords Content Network Ads for Conversions

I wrote Adwords content targeting optimization for Google’s content network in 2007:

Since then, Google has made improvements to Adwords content ads optimization and concluded satisfactory results:

What is Google Adwords Contextual Targeting?

Google Adwords offers Contextual Targeting, an ad serving technology, that places ads by matching keywords (including keyword phrases, synonyms and variations) to websites within Google’s content network (or display network). Google analyzes websites’ content and determine a central theme for each website, by considering several factors:

  • Text
  • Language
  • Link structure
  • Web page structure

Adwords ads are served to web pages based on keywords, language targeting and location targeting.

Google Adwords Content Network Optimization

Before running Google Adwords content targeting campaigns, you should:

  • Expect to have low click through rates (CTR)
  • Focus on ROI (return-on-investment) and/or CPA (cost-per-action)
  • Set cost-per-click (CPC) low (i.e. lower than search ads’ CPC)

Brad Geddes, the author of the Advanced Google Adwords Book, explains how to increase your total conversions, how to increase your company’s reach, and how to expand the number of users who enter the buying funnel through Google’s content network:

Adwords Contextual Targeting Tool

Adwords Contextual Targeting Tool allows you to create tightly themed keyword lists for your Google content network (or display network) campaigns.

  • How Google’s content targeting works: Google analyzes all the keywords in an Adwords ad group to identify a theme, matches the theme to related web pages, and shows ads to the web pages related to the theme
  • Adwords Contextual Targeting Tool suggests a set of keywords related to the words or phrases you have entered – Google’s Wonder Wheel tool also suggests related (or themed) keywords to your Adwords content campaigns
  • Adwords Contextual Targeting Tool groups the suggested keywords into themed ad groups
  • PPC Hero explains how to use Google’s Contextual Targeting Tool in 3 steps: Edit keyword list, expand ad groups and predicted placements

Adwords Conversion Optimizer for Display Ad Campaigns

Google offers Adwords Display Campaign Optimizer which is Adwords conversion optimizer for Google’s content network.

The Display Campaign Optimizer is a tool that automatically optimizes both targeting and bidding to find additional conversions for your Display Network campaigns.

To use Adwords Display Campaign Optimizer:

Adwords Display Campaign Optimizer:

  • Takes your CPA goal and budget, monitors campaign performance, learns what work and what doesn’t work for your campaigns, and makes bid updates in real time
  • Increases your campaigns’ conversions
  • Can be opted-out from any campaigns at any time

Google Adwords Remarketing / Retargeting

Adwords Remarketing for Google’s content network is a feature of Adwords interest-based advertising.

  • Adwords Remarketing allows you to serve custom ads to users who have previously visited your website based on users’ cookies.
  • Google’s Remarketing can increase conversions and reduce cost-per-conversion for your websites.
  • BG Theory describes the strategies when creating several (positive and negative) remarketing lists and mapping out Adwords ad groups

Google’s Official Guide to Adwords Content Network Optimization

Google provides an official guide to optimize Adwords content network ads.

Posted on January 4, 2011
Category: Adwords Content Network | 2 Comments

Google Analytics Navigation Summary Report, Entrance Paths Report

After setting up Google Analytics for your website, Content Reports will show Google Analytics metrics and information about your web pages.

Google Analytics Top Content Report

One of the Top Content reports is Google Analytics Top Content Report, which:

  • Lists each web page that receive traffic
  • Shows each web page as request URI (the part of the URL after the your site’s domain name)
  • Shows your site’s home page as a forward slash (“/”), e.g. / = www.gordonchoi.com

Navigation Summary, Entrance Paths, Entrance Sources, Entrance Keywords

Click on one of the web pages (request URIs) while looking at the Top Content report, you will be taken to the Content Detail page. In the Content Detail drop-down box, you will find 4 reports available:

  • Navigation Summary
  • Entrance Paths
  • Entrance Sources
  • Entrance Keywords

Google Analytics Navigation Summary Report

Navigation Summary report shows you which web pages the visitors were from before viewing the specific web page, and which web pages the visitors went after viewing the specific page. The specific web page may also be a landing page (entrance page) and/or an exit page.

  • The number of pageviews of a specific web page in Navigation Summary report match up with the number of pageviews in your Top Content report and Content Detail reports
  • Percent (%) Entrances measure how frequently a specific web page is a landing page to visitors (in percentage)
  • Percent (%) Exits measure how frequently a specific web page is an exit page to visitors (in percentage)
  • Percent (%) Previous Pages track how frequently visitors view a specific web page after viewing other web pages on your site (in percentage)
  • Percent (%) Next Pages track how frequently visitors view a specific web page before viewing other web pages on your site (in percentage)
  • Percent (%) Clicks are displayed for each of the previous pages and next pages for the web page you are analyzing in Navigation Summary report

Example on how percent (%) clicks are calculated for the Navigation Summary report:

  • Say page A received 100 pageviews
  • Page A was a landing page for 30 visits
  • Page A was an exit page for 20 visits
  • Page A was viewed 70 times after the visitors viewed other web pages on your site
  • Page A was viewed 80 times before the visitors viewed other web pages on your site

The results:

  • Percent (%) Entrances: 30/100 = 30%
  • Percent (%) Exits: 20/100 = 20%
  • Percent (%) Previous Pages: 70/100 = 70%
  • Percent (%) Next Pages: 80/100 = 80%

Google Analytics Entrance Paths Report

Google Analytics Entrance Paths report allows you to analyze post-click traffic of your landing pages and figure out your site’s navigation paths after visitors viewed your landing pages.

  • Entrance Paths report shows 2 levels of subsequent web pages after visits to the landing pages: “Then viewed these pages” (first page after landing page) and “And ended up here” (second page after landing page)
  • The number of page views shown in Entrance Paths report include all the entrances to the web page and all page views the visitors viewed after entering the web page
  • Entrance Sources and Entrance Keywords reports display pageviews, unique page views, average time on page, bounce rate, and percent (%) exit as metrics
  • Entrance Sources report: Include entrances from all traffic sources
  • Entrance Keywords report: Include keywords with entrances from search engines (Split SEO and PPC keywords with Google Analytics PPC conversion tracking for better reporting)

Navigation Summary Report vs Entrance Paths Report

Pageviews in Navigation Summary Report do not match up with pageviews in Entrance Paths Report:

  • Navigation Summary report allows you to see which web pages on your site visitors viewed before viewing the current page, but Entrance Paths report shows you what web pages (up to 2 pages) visitors see after the landing page.
  • Navigation Summary report’s pageviews only include page views of the current web page, but Entrance Paths report’s pageviews include page views of the landing page and 2 subsequent pages visitors view after the landing page.

Posted on January 1, 2011
Category: Google Analytics | Leave a Comment

Wikipedia Fundraising, Donation

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online, free encyclopedia / information database that has been collectively created by volunteered editors all over the world.

Wikipedia’s self-introduction to Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is a free web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 17 million articles (over 3.5 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.

Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, ranking seventh among all websites on Alexa and having 365 million readers.

Wikipedia’s Fundraising Campaign

Wikipedia launched a fundraising campaign. The donations keep Wikipedia’s business running and allow users to access Wikipedia’s content free-of-charge and free of ads.

Words about Wikipedia’s fundraising campaign from founder Jimmy Wales:

I don’t get paid a cent for my work at Wikipedia, and neither do our thousands of other volunteer authors and editors. When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but I decided to do something different.

Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn’t belong here. Not in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others. It is a unique human project, the first of its kind in history. It is a humanitarian project to bring a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet.

Wikipedia’s fundraising goal in 2010 is USD 16 million. You can donate to Wikipedia USD 20, 35, 50, 100 or any other amount you wish via Paypal or credit cards. Other currencies are also available.

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikipedia is owned and operated by Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. Wikimedia runs projects that make free content available to all Internet users, including:

  • Wikipedia – a free encyclopedia
  • Wiktionary – a wiki-based open content dictionary
  • Wikiquote – collection of quotations
  • Wikibooks – open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit
  • Wikisource – an online library of free content publications
  • Wikinews – free news source that you can write
  • Wikiversity – open learning resources
  • Wikispecies – a free species directory
  • MediaWiki – a free software wiki package written in PHP

Posted on December 29, 2010
Category: User Generated Content | 1 Comment

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20