Hao123.com New Logo

Baidu’s Hao123.com, China’s largest navigational site, now has a new logo:

    Hao123.com's New Logo

Hao123 officially explained the meaning of the new logo:

  • The green leaf represents dedication and growth.
  • The orange “hao” means passion and quality.
  • The green “123″ represents the Internet journal Hao123 has gone through in the past years.

Hao123′s old logo used to look like:

    Hao123.com's Old Logo

Hao123 as Baidu’s Business

Hao123.com’s business model is based on ad sales, i.e. Many text links (but not all text links) on Hao123 are for sale, especially most text links on Hao123′s homepage that point to other Chinese websites could cost a fortune.

Hao123 may even be already generating 6%-7% of Baidu’s total revenues, making it one of the major Baidu revenue contributors.

Hao123.com Improvements

To improve users’ experience on finding Chinese websites without Chinese search engines, Hao123 has made incremental site layout updates which can be found on older versions of Hao123.com’s homepages over several years.

Hao123 has also recently made improvements to the left side navigation:

    Hao123.com's Left Side Navigation

Posted on December 19, 2011
Category: Hao123 | Leave a Comment

Google Adwords Top Ads, Side Ads, Bottom Ads

Adwords could previously show search ads above, on the right side of, and below organic search results within Google’s search engine results pages (SERP). Now, Adwords may only show top ads and bottom ads, but not ads on the right side.

Showing ads at below organic search results:

  • Provides better user experience, as users’ preference is to scan Google’s search engine results pages from top to bottom.
  • Results in higher ad click-through-rates (CTR) – CTR is one of the major factors in Google Adwords Quality Score which determines your ad’s ranking.

Top vs Other Segment Adwords Ad Report

Use the Top vs Other segment to find out the performance of your Adwords search ads when showing up on different positions (above, below, and on the right side of organic search results):

  • Google Search “Top”: Top ads above Google’s organic search results
  • Google Search “Other”: Bottom ads below Google’s organic search results and side ads on the right side of Google’s organic search results.
  • Search Partners “Top”: Top ads above search partners’ organic search results
  • Search Partners “Other”: Bottom ads below search partners’ organic search results and side ads on the right side of Google’s organic search results.

Reviews for Google Adwords

Advertisers or online marketers who manage Google Adwords accounts should review:

Posted on December 14, 2011
Category: Adwords Reports | Leave a Comment

English Blogs on China Internet, Business, Culture, Travel

I came across several English blogs and community about China that cover:

  • All China-related aggregated topics
  • Leisure, entertainment, food and travel in China
  • Life and Culture in China
  • Business in China
  • China’s Internet
  • Chinese “web” glossary

Aggregated (All) China Topics

  • Haohao Report – China blogs, news, pictures and videos on travel, business, technology, current event, and entertainment topics that are submitted and voted by the Haohao Report online community

China Leisure, Entertainment, Food and Travel Blogs/Sites

  • Lonely Planet China – China tourism and travel information including facts, maps, history, culture, transport and weather in China
  • ChinaTravel.net Blog – Blog of a China travel guide and community, featuring information, reviews, opinions, tips, and photos of China attractions, hotels and restaurants
  • Shanghai Expat – Shanghai city guide, bulletin board and advice from foreign/expat residents
  • Smart Shanghai – Community about nightlife, dining and culture in Shanghai with galleries, guides, an interactive map, events and forums
  • City Weekend Guide – Local listings, events, reviews and classifieds for Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou

China Life/Culture Blogs

  • Lost Laowai – China expat community for expatriates and travelers in China, featuring reviews and information about traveling, living, teaching and working in China
  • Seeing Red in China – Guide to modern China on topics including politics, rural life, Chinese language, traditional festivals, education, and the environment
  • China Hush – Chinese cultures and lifestyles, translated stories, and the latest memes and trends in China
  • Shanghai Novice – Shanghai lifestyle guide for young expats living in Shanghai and China
  • Tom’s China Blog – A honest look at China
  • Moving to China Blog – Information on Shanghai fake markets, TaoBao English, internship in China, apartments in Shanghai, and VPN connections
  • China Snippets – Life in Shanghai and China, observations and comments
  • HK Girl Talk – Fascination to all the interesting cultural phenomena in Hong Kong and China
  • Sascha Matuszak – Chachin ain’t easy
  • Shenzhen Photos – A photographic documentary of Shenzhen, with images of people, places, and life

China Business Blogs

  • US China Today – A student-driven publication by the US-China Institute of the University of Southern California, focusing on economic, social, culture, and political issues in the evolving US-China relationship
  • China Law Blog – Offers China law for business
  • This is China Blog – The trends reshaping China society, economics and business
  • Danwei – A web magazine about China, focusing on translation and research in China.
  • Technomic Asia – China business blog and podcast

China Internet Blogs

  • China Vortex – Views the global business economy and media, and Internet technology from the Chinese perspective
  • China Web Radar – Topics on the next generation web in China
  • Little Red Book – Offers China’s social media, advertising, communication and cultural insights
  • Resonance China Blog – Resonance China’s social media blog on Chinese social media trends
  • Rocky Fu’s Blog – Provides holistic digital marketing and branding strategies, trends, and tactics in digital era with a focus on Asia Pacific market
  • Clickz Asia (China Topics) – Marketing news and expert advice for online marketers in China, Hong Kong, Japan and South East Asia
  • Digital Marketing Inner Circle – Mathew McDougall provides digital marketing news in the Chinese Internet market
  • East West Connect – Online marketing blog by Nanjing Marketing Group focusing in the Chinese Internet

Chinese Web Glossary

  • China Smack – A glossary list of Chinese language Internet terms, expressions, acronyms, or slang most commonly used by online Chinese users in recent years

China Internet on Gordon Choi’s Blog

China Internet related topics on Gordon Choi’s Blog:

Posted on December 8, 2011
Category: China Internet | Leave a Comment

Google Adwords View-through Conversions

Google has Adwords View-through Conversion, a PPC metric for Adwords Content Network, that measures the number of online conversions occurred within 30 days after a user saw but did not click a display ad on one of the websites within the Google display network.

For example, a user sees your Adwords display ad on a Google Display Network placement and remembers the ad and your brand name. Later (within 30 days), the user searches for your brand name on Google.com, clicks on one of your Adwords search ads and completes a conversion (e.g. a purchase) on your site.

  • The original source of interest was an Adwords Content Network ad (Google display ad), but the conversion would be attributed to the Google Adwords search ad.
  • Google Adwords View-through Conversion metric identifies the Adwords display ad as a contributing factor to the conversion.

Google Adwords View-through Conversion Tracking

How Google Adwords View-through Conversion Tracking works:

  • Google Adwords View-through Conversions are only available to display ads in Google Adwords content/display network campaigns. i.e. View-through Conversions are not reported for search campaigns or for text creatives in Google’s display network campaigns.
  • Adwords conversion tracking must be enabled for Google Adwords to report View-through Conversions.
  • Adwords View-through Conversions can help you to understand which websites that the display ad campaigns work well on, even if users don’t click on the display ads.
  • Adwords View-through Conversions are tracked through the Adsense cookie. If a Google display network ad click happens before the conversion, the conversion is attributed as a click-conversion.

How are Google Adwords View-through Conversions recorded, counted, and attributed?

Recorded: View-through conversions are recorded for the date of the associated impression.

Counted: Clicks on search ads do not interfere with View-through conversion tracking reports. Conversions are counted when there’s a display impression on the Display Network. We count all conversions not associated with a click and attribute them back to the last impression in the last 30-days. Consequently, a single impression can be associated with multiple View-through conversion events. In cases where a conversion follows both a search click and a display impression, both a clickthrough conversion and View-through conversion are attributed, respectively.

Attributed: View-through reporting attribution follows the industry standard of last click, last impression attribution. This implies that the conversions are first credited to the last click, and if there’s no click in the last 30-days, then they’re credited to the last impression, preceding the conversion.

View-through Conversions vs Click-conversions

Google Adwords View-through Conversion metric should be used as an indicator to how display ads affect your website users to convert. Never count View-through conversions the same as click-conversions, otherwise you will run into conversion double-counting issues.

View-based conversions are an indicator of banner advertising’s influence on a consumer’s propensity to convert, and the conversions you see being reported on shouldn’t be part of your total conversions – Real conversions should have some sort of source click attached to it.

When you count view-based conversion the same as click-based conversion, you can end up double-counting conversion when you bring all your data together into a consolidated dashboard.

Other opinions on the View-through Conversion metric:

Posted on December 1, 2011
Category: Adwords Content Network | Leave a Comment

Yahoo Site Explorer Shuts Down, Replaced by Bing Webmaster Tools

Yahoo’s exit in search begun with the Bing-Yahoo search alliance. Shortly afterwards, webmasters focusing on both Bing SEO and Yahoo SEO in
the US and Canada were advised to use Bing’s Webmaster Tools.

Yahoo Site Explorer’s Closure

Now Yahoo Site Explorer is officially shut down after Bing’s search algorithm has started to power all global Yahoo organic search results, except Yahoo Korea.

With the completion of algorithmic transition to Bing, Yahoo! Search has merged Site Explorer into Bing Webmaster Tools. Webmasters should now be using the Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure that their websites continue to get high quality organic search traffic from Bing and Yahoo!. Site Explorer services will not be available from November 21, 2011.

Bing’s Search Algorithm Integration into Yahoo

While integrating Bing’s search algorithm to replace Yahoo’s search algorithm, Yahoo had to overcome the technical issues below:

We had to cutover web, image and video search experiences from Yahoo!’s search technology backend to Bing’s algorithmic backend for 40-plus markets, across desktop and mobile devices.

In addition to Yahoo’s owned and operated search experiences, we also had to cut over hundreds of our syndication partners in more than 50 markets, while ensuring a smooth transition for users of our wildly popular Yahoo! Search BOSS service.

Cutting over to the Bing backend was not simply a matter of technical integration through the Bing API. We worked with Microsoft to ensure that Bing’s algorithmic quality in each of these markets was on par or better than Yahoo!’s quality. Wherever we found quality gaps, we worked collaboratively with our counterparts at Bing to provide data driven assessments of quality gaps to help us close the gaps quickly. Only when both teams had established that the quality bar in a market was met, did we green light the cutover.

A very important design principle was to ensure availability of all key user experience elements of the Yahoo! search experience post-cutover. This meant that we had to perform a comprehensive analysis of product features per market, assess which of those would require support from the Bing platform, and which features Yahoo! would have to continue to develop and invest in.

Creating a migration path to Bing Webmaster tools for users of Yahoo! Site Explorer, while continuing to support Site Explorer for international users during the transition period proved challenging.

We had to confirm Bing could handle Yahoo’s capacity across multiple global datacenters, including new ones that were brought online to serve the needs of the Search Alliance. The fact that all the cutovers went remarkably smoothly and were essentially non-events from an operational perspective is a testament to the thorough job both teams did.

For all our major markets, we ran comprehensive bucket tests to compare the Yahoo! search experience going against the Yahoo! and Bing backends. We monitored key user experience metrics to ensure that the product experience post cutover would be on par or better for our customers.

We had to put in place support and customer care processes that ensured user concerns and content issues were handled appropriately between our companies, working through policy differences to ensure the right outcome for all stakeholders.

Yahoo’s Slurp

While Yahoo Site Explorer has been shut down, Yahoo’s spider, Slurp, will still be crawling websites when required.

Although the organic results will be powered by Microsoft Search platforms, Yahoo! will continue to innovate on the search experience beyond the services delivered by Microsoft. In order to provide Yahoo! users with an amazing search experience, our slurp crawlers may continue to selectively crawl websites to help support these efforts.

Webmaster Tools, SEO Reports from Google, Blekko, Yandex

Posted on November 22, 2011
Category: Yahoo SEO | 3 Comments

Google Plus Keyboard Shortcuts

For those Google+ users who prefer using Google Plus Social Network via the keyboard, instead of a mouse, make good use of the Google+ keyboard shorts below:

  • Space: Scroll down the stream
  • Shift + Space: Scroll up the stream
  • J: Move to the next post
  • K: Move to the previous post
  • Enter: Open a post’s comment box, while reading a post in the stream
  • Tab + Enter: Submit the comment after writing a comment on a post
  • Tab + Tab + Enter (press Tab twice, then Enter): Cancel the comment box
  • Q: Go directly to the Google chat box

To mention other Google+ users within a post or a comment, use:

  • + or @ symbols before that Google+ user’s name – e.g. +Gordon Choi or @Gordon Choi

For the the + or @ symbols to work, the name must be already be a Google+ user.

To change the text style in a post:

  • * (asterisk): Bold – e.g. *bold text*
  • _ (underscore): Italic – e.g. _italic text_
  • - (dash): Strikethrough – e.g. -strikethrough text-

Posted on November 21, 2011
Category: Google+ | Leave a Comment

Top 10 Google Search Algorithm Changes in 500 Updates

How Google ranks organic search results is determined by over 200 ranking algorithmic factors in Google’s search algorithms and Google offers guidelines and search technology overview to webmasters. Google makes about 500 organic search algorithm updates in a year and here are the top 10 search algorithm changes in 2011 are:

Cross-language information retrieval updates: For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), we will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles directly below the English titles in the search results. This feature was available previously in Korean, but only at the bottom of the page. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.

Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content: This change helps us choose more relevant text to use in snippets. As we improve our understanding of web page structure, we are now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to use text that is part of a header or menu.

Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors: We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.

Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian: This improvement reduces the number of long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. We will not make predictions that are very long in comparison either to the partial query or to the other predictions for that partial query. This is already our practice in English.

Extending application rich snippets: We recently announced rich snippets for applications. This enables people who are searching for software applications to see details, like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This change extends the coverage of application rich snippets, so they will be available more often.

Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.

Fresher, more recent results: As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.

Refining official page detection: We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.

Improvements to date-restricted queries: We changed how we handle result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. This helps ensure that users get the results that are most relevant for the date range that they specify.

Prediction fix for IME queries: This change improves how Autocomplete handles IME queries (queries which contain non-Latin characters). Autocomplete was previously storing the intermediate keystrokes needed to type each character, which would sometimes result in gibberish predictions for Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.

To better understand Google’s search algorithms and SEO guides/resources for webmasters/beginners, review:

Posted on November 15, 2011
Category: Google SEO | Leave a Comment

Google Plus Experts on Google Plus Social Network

Registrations to Google Plus were launched to users in 3 stages:

  • Google selected a small set of Google account / Gmail users to join Google+.
  • Google+ invitations could be sent from Google+ users to non-Google+ users.
  • Signing up to Google+ was opened to all Google account / Gmail users.

If you have signed up for Google+, then find out how to use it effectively.

Google+ Experts

Google+ has major features including Circles, Sparks, Hangouts and Ripples which have been improving since the initial launch in July. Find out how to make the most out of all Google Plus features and the future development trends of Google Plus, from the Google+ experts:

  • Bradley Horowitz – Google+ Vice President of Product Management
  • Louis Gray – Google+ Product Marketing Manager
  • Matt Cutts – Google’s Head of Web Spam
  • Vic Gundotra – Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering
  • Anne Toth – Google’s Head of Privacy
  • Tom Anderson – Former President of MySpace
  • Pete Cashmore – CEO & Founder of Mashable.com
  • Danny Sullivan – Chief Editor of SearchEngineLand.com
  • Robert Scoble – Chief Learning Officer of Rackspace
  • Mike Elgan – Silicon Valley-based technology columnist and blogger

Bradley Horowitz

Bradley Horowitz is the Vice President of Google+ Product Management and oversees Google’s communications products and social applications including Google Talk, GrandCentral, Blogger and Picasa.

Bradley previously worked at Yahoo in which he drove the acquisition of Flickr and MyBlogLog, and led Yahoo’s advanced development team to develop new products including Yahoo Pipes. Bradley Horowitz once co-founded and was the CTO of Virage.

Bradley Horowitz on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/u/0/113116318008017777871/posts

Louis Gray

Louis Gray is responsible for product marketing of Google+ and owns California’s GOOG+1 motorcar number plate..

Louis has long been the author of louisgray.com, a Silicon Valley-based site focused on social media, technology and innovation, including TweetDeck, Beluga, Social Median, Feedly, and Friendly for iPad. Louis Gray also gives advices to MyLikes, Teens In Tech, SocialToo and Qwotebook.

Louis Gray on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/u/0/100535338638690515335/posts

Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts is one of Google’s software engineers as well as the head of Web Spam team at Google. Matt has been the official spokesman communicating Google’s search algorithms to SEO professionals and webmasters. To understand how Google Plus is related to Google SEO and Google Adwords, review:

Matt Cutts on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/u/0/109412257237874861202

Vic Gundotra

Vic Gundotra is Google’s Senior Vice President of Engineering.

Vic Gundotra on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/u/0/107117483540235115863/posts

Anne Toth

Anne Toth is one of the online privacy gurus and has joined Google to become the Head of Privacy focusing on Google Plus.

Anner formerly worked at Yahoo as the Chief Trust Officer.

Anne Toth on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/109195815313770783778/posts

Tom Anderson

Tom Anderson is the co-founder and former president of MySpace.

Tom Anderson on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/u/0/112063946124358686266/posts

Pete Cashmore

Pete Cashmore is the CEO & Founder of Mashable.com, one of the largest sites dedicated to cover digital culture, social media and technology, including Google+.

Pete Cashmore on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/101849747879612982297/posts

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan is the pioneer and leading search engine guru ever since the world’s first search engine was launched. Danny expertise into how search engines work has helped many webmasters, search engine marketers, website designers and web search users.

Danny is the Chief Editor of Search Engine Land which covers everything about search engine marketing, search engine news and where search engines will be heading in the future. Searchengineland.com is a must-read site for anyone working in the SEM field.

Danny Sullivan on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/113217924531763968801/posts

Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble is the Chief Learning Officer at Rackspace.

Robert is a power user to Google+ with his extremely high frequent Google Plus posts, though he also made many posts about Google+ to help other Google Plus users understanding how to use it.

Robert Scoble has been a geek based in Silicon Valley and started his technology blog, Scobleizer.com in 2000. He worked at Microsoft from 2003 to 2006 as an evangelist.

Robert Scoble on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts

Mike Elgan

Mike Elgan is a Silicon Valley-based writer and blogger who covers technology and culture topics and is one of the columnists on many technology article sites and magazines including Computerworld, Datamation, Cult of Mac, PC World, InfoWorld, MacWorld, CIO Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and The CMO Site.

Mike Elgan on Google+:

  • https://plus.google.com/u/0/113117251731252114390/posts

Posted on November 14, 2011
Category: Google+ | 1 Comment

Google Creative Sandbox Shanghai

Google held the Creative Sandbox show in Shanghai on 11 November 2011. The Creative Sandbox show is Google’s technology event in which Google products including Android, Chrome, Analytics, Search, Geo, Youtube and Google Plus were demonstrated.

Quick Response (QR) code as invitation code was required to enter Google’s Creative Sandbox show at the venue, 800 Show:

    Invitation Code to Creative Sandbox

Creative Sandbox’s venue map:

    Creative Sandbox's Venue Map

Google Analytics offers multi-channel funnel to track assisted conversions alongside goals/conversions:

    Google Analytics

Chrome, Google’s browser:

    Google Chrome

Google Pluses on World Map:

    Google Plus on World Map

Google+ Huddle:

    Google Plus Huddle

Google Search’s “Watch this Space”:

    Image Search

More on Google Search’s “Watch this Space”:

    More on Image Search

The live band at the stage:

    Stage and Live Band

Google’s Bar offers drinks and alcohol:

    Bar Table

Glass of different colors on Google’s Bar table:

    Glass at Bar

The rest area by Youtube:

    You Tube at Creative Sandbox

The 10-pin bowling game:

    10-pin Bowling Game

The maze games:

    Maze Game

Posted on November 11, 2011
Category: Google China | Leave a Comment

SEM, SEO, Analytics Tools on Clickz Asia

Besides blogging on Gordon Choi’s Blog, I have started posting on www.Clickz.Asia as one of the columnists, thanks to the arrangement of Clickz Asia’s Chief Editor Adaline Lau.

Introduction to Clickz.Asia

Clickz Asia is the APAC region version of Clickz.com that focuses in the China, Hong Kong, South East Asia, Japan, Australia, Korea, Singapore, Macau, and Taiwan markets.

    Click.Asia Homepage

Clickz Asia offers topics on:

  • News
  • Search – SEM, SEO
  • Email
  • Analytics
  • Media – Media Planning & Buying, Emerging Marketing, Publishing
  • Marketing Strategy – Trends, Integrated Marketing, Ecommerce, Downloads
  • Social Media
  • Mobile
  • Stats – Tools

The blog posts on Clickz Asia are all original and written by industry experts.

Learn how to create successful Internet marketing campaigns. Focusing on Asian markets, ClickZ.asia has expert advice about online marketing, email, brand and interactive marketing, and search engine marketing. Read the latest Internet advertising news, e-commerce market research, Internet statistics and more.

Clickz.Asia My Profile and My Blog Posts

My profile:

    Gordon Choi on Clickz.Asia

In 2011, what I have posted on Clickz Asia:

In 2012, what I have posted on Clickz Asia:

Posted on November 10, 2011
Category: SEM | 1 Comment

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