Yahoo MyBlogLog Discontinued

Yahoo is to discontinue and shut down MyBlogLog (www.mybloglog.com), a social network site for bloggers and the blogging community, that was originally developed by Cloudspace and was acquired by Yahoo in January 2007.

How to Use MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog allowed bloggers to create their communities and be identified as bloggers.

  • MyBlogLog offered a web widget that can be installed on users’ blogs.
  • Each MyBlogLog user could start a blog community by submitting his/her one or multiple blogs and allow other MyBlogLog users to bookmark/share his/her blogs.
  • Through the web widget installed on the MyBlogLog user’s blog, blog visitors could visit that MyBlogLog user’s blog community page and interact with that MyBlogLog user and other MyBlogLog users.
  • MyBlogLog users could display the snippets of their blog posts on their MyBlogLog community pages through RSS feeds.

Yahoo to Discontinue MyBlogLog

An official email from Yahoo announcing MyBlogLog will be closed in May 2011:

Dear MyBlogLog Customer,

You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.

A note on MyBlogLog’s homepage recommending MyBlogLog users to move to Yahoo Pulse:

MyBlogLog will no longer be in service from 24 May 2011. We recommend Yahoo! Pulse as a service for you to see all your social updates from your favorite networks in one place.

MyBlogLog’s Histories, Milestones

Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable reported on MyBlogLog’s milestones and histories from 2006 to 2011.

MyBlogLog’s Legacy Screenshots

MyBlogLog’s home page:

    Yahoo MyBlogLog Homepage

Gordon Choi’s Blog’s MyBlogLog community page:

    Gordon Choi's Blog's MyBlogLog Community Page

Posted on April 30, 2011
Category: Yahoo | 1 Comment

Baidu Sitemap

Baidu SEO starts with allowing Baiduspider to crawl your site’s web pages and Baidu to place your website’s web pages into Baidu’s search engine index. Webmasters can:

  • Submit site to Baidu through Baidu’s official URL submission page which allows Baiduspider to start crawling your website from the home page.
  • Submit XML sitemaps of your website through Baidu Webmaster Tools.

Baidu Webmaster Tools

Baidu’s Webmaster Tools is in Beta and on official invitation only.

  • Baidu allows selected Baidu PPC advertisers who have Baidu Phoenix Nest accounts to sign up with an invitation code and use Baidu’s Webmaster Tools.
  • Once your Baidu Webmaster Tools account is approved, add your site’s URL.
    Add site to Baidu Webmaster Tools

Submit Sitemaps through Baidu Webmaster Tools

In Baidu Webmaster Tools, you can submit your website’s XML sitemaps to Baidu.

    Submit sitemap to Baidu Webmaster Tools

Your sitemaps have to follow Baidu’s XML sitemap format, which is identical to Google’s and Bing’s XML sitemap formats.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<urlset>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/page1.html</loc>
<lastmod>2011-03-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
<urlset>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/category/page2.html</loc>
<lastmod>2011-03-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.3</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

When submitting XML sitemaps:

  • Suggest the update frequencies of your web pages (URLs).
  • Select which date during the month or the week, the update should happen.

Your submitted XML sitemaps can have 1 of the 3 statuses:

  • Normal: No issue
  • Error: You will have to fix the issues and resubmit
  • Pending: The URLs in your sitemap files are waiting for Baiduspider’s validation

Create XML sitemap of your website with one of the sitemap generators:

http://www.google.com/#q=sitemap+generator&fp=3631e8c8f582e2e6
&hl=en&newwindow=1

Baidu Robots.txt

Block your site’s pages and/or directories with Baidu Robots.txt, if certain web pages and/or directories on your website shouldn’t be crawled by Baiduspider and placed in Baidu’s search engine index.

Posted on April 22, 2011
Category: Baidu Webmaster Tools | 1 Comment

Google Adwords Seller Ratings

Google Adwords Seller Ratings Extensions are reviews about sellers that are submitted by users and will appear on Adwords ads.

  • Seller Ratings (reviews) are matched to Adwords advertisers’ ads through the domain of the display URL of the ads.
  • Seller Ratings allow users to make more informed purchase decisions.
  • Adwords advertisers with good reviews on ads can potentially increase earnings by receiving more qualified leads.
    Google Adwords Seller Ratings Extensions

Google Adwords Seller Ratings by Google Product Search

Google Adwords Seller Ratings Extensions are collections of user reviews aggregated by Google Product Search from:

  • Reseller Ratings
  • Bizrate
  • Viewpoints
  • ReviewCentre.com
  • Google Checkout reviews

About Google Product Search Seller Ratings:

  • Original rating by users are re-scaled to a 1-5 scale before showing up on Seller Ratings.
  • At least 30 seller reviews are required before Google Product Search Seller Ratings show up.
  • Reviews are not added to Google Product Search results in real-time.

Qualifications for Google Adwords Seller Ratings

Google Adwords Seller Ratings can show up on Adwords ads on Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.de, Google.fr, and Google search partners.

Your Google Adwords ads are qualified to show Seller Ratings Extensions if:

  • Adwords campaigns are opt-in to run on Google Search.
  • Adwords ad does not already have Google Adwords PPC sitelinks.
  • You as a business have at least 30 seller reviews and a rating of 4 or 5 stars on Google Product Search.

Other Adwords PPC Experts on Seller Ratings

  • Blogstorm explains Google Adwords Seller Ratings when it was launched in the UK.
  • Adwords Advisor explains how you can opt-out of Google Adwords Seller Ratings.

Posted on April 18, 2011
Category: Adwords | 1 Comment

Google +1 Button Setup, Google +1 on SEO, Adwords

Google has made the +1 Button feature available on web search.

  • Google’s +1 Button is similar to the Facebook’s Like button which allows users to vote up content within Google’s search engine results pages (SERP).
  • Google’s +1 Button allows you to share recommendations to others and receive recommendations from others.
  • Google +1 is one of signals Google uses to identify the most useful recommendations to you, including people you are already connected to you through other Google products such as GMail, GTalk, Google Buzz and Google Reader.
  • Google’s +1 button will initially only appear on Google.com’s English search results.

Google’s +1 is Google’s social search.

Google +1 Button Setup

To activate and use Google +1 Button:

  • Sign-in to your Google account.
  • Go to Google Labs Experimental and click “Join this experiment” for +1 Button.
  • Go to www.Google.com and do a web search.
  • Click on a +1 button next to a web page.
    +1 Button on Google SERP
  • Click “Confirm and +1″ – You’re done voting the web page.
    +1 a web page

Next time when you search on Google and this web page shows up in Google’s SERP, your +1 and Google profile photo with “You +1′d this” will appear.

    You +1'd this

Google +1 Button for SEO

A Quora discussion on how Google’s +1 Button will affect SEO:

  • +1 becomes the new Google PageRank – Google’s search algorithm may eventually rely less on link popularity.
  • Google may give different weighing scale to +1′s from different users. Example, A +1 from Danny Sullivan on Gordon Choi’s Blog may carry much more weight than a +1 from an anonymous person.
  • Google can build the BIG social graphs from your personal social graph (i.e. all the +1 recommendations your friends have contributed) and the +1 graph for a piece of content (i.e. all the +1′s recommended to a single web page).

Google +1 Button for Adwords

Google’s +1 Buttons will appear on Adwords ads, though Google officially announced +1 won’t affect Google Adwords Quality Score.

  • All ads will be getting these buttons.
  • Theres no way for advertisers to turn them off.
  • Clicks on the +1 button next to ads do NOT count as a paid ad click.
  • Advertisers will be able to see stats about which ads are getting the most +1s.

Google +1 Button on Your Site

Webmasters may add Google +1 Button to their websites, allowing visitors to +1 (recommend) the web pages (content) to Google and other users.

Posted on April 13, 2011
Category: Google SEO | Leave a Comment

Sina Weibo Chinese Microblog, t.Sina.com.cn, Weibo.com

Sina Weibo (Weibo.com or t.Sina.com.cn), Chinese Twitter, currently is the most popular Microblogging tool/service for Chinese Internet users in China.

Sina Weibo’s Roles: Following and Followers

Similar to Twitter, Sina Weibo offers 2 major roles to each user:

  • Following: People who you are following. Their messages/conversations continuously show up in your incoming feed and can be seen by other Sina Weibo users.
  • Followers: Your fans, people who have subscribed to your messages/conversations.

What You Can Do on Sina Weibo?

Sina Weibo users can start conversations by creating new messages that:

  • Include images, links to music, links to videos, topics, or smileys.
  • Mention other Sina Weibo users using the “@” sign.
  • Act as polls.

Your incoming feed will show each message posted by the Sina Weibo users who you are following. You can:

  • Forward messages
  • Bookmark messages
  • Comment on messages
    Sina Weibo Homepage

Other things that you can do on Sina Weibo:

  • Create/join groups.
  • Create new tags and/or associate yourself to tags.
  • Get badges. You will have to fulfill certain requirements before receiving badges – For example, post messages in 10 consecutive days to get a 10-day-weibo-qiang badge.
  • View popular topics that are recommended to you.
  • Follow users that are recommended to you.
  • Use third party apps. You will have to first allow the apps to access your Sina Weibo account data through Basic Auth or Oauth.
  • Verify your identity. Once your identify is verified, a red capital “V” letter will appear next to your screenname /username.

Apps for Sina Weibo

For mobile users, Sina Weibo offers official iPhone, Android, Symbian, Blackberry, KJava, and Windows Mobile client applications. Official client application is also available to Apple’s iPad.

Sina Weibo’s API is available to developers. Apply for an AppKey to develop apps for Sina Weibo users.

SNS/Microblogging Message Synchronization

Chinese SNS/Microblogging users may use several SNS/microblogging tools/services including Tencent QQ Weibo, Google Buzz, Kaixin001.com, Xiaonei.com/Renren.com and Douban. To synchronize the messages among your microblogging/SNS accounts, use:

Weibo.com

Sina acquired domain name Weibo.com which was officially launched to the public in April 2011. Wei-Bo is a Chinese synonym for Twitter which makes it easier for Sina to re-brand Sina Weibo.

Posted on April 12, 2011
Category: China SNS | 1 Comment

Blekko SEO Reports

Blekko slashtag search engine offers website’s SEO information to webmasters as SEO reports.

  • The SEO report information offered by Blekko.com is available to everyone to look up through Blekko without having to log onto Blekko accounts – You can look up SEO information of websites that do not belong to you.
  • Blekko made SEO reports available for websites that are in Blekko’s index.
  • The SEO information on Blekko’s SEO reports is similar to the information that is provided in Google’s Webmaster Tools. Webmasters should cross-reference Google’s webmaster reports and Blekko’s SEO reports.

Blekko’s Slashtags for SEO Reports

Start with search for a site in Blekko’s search box.

    Search Blekko /SEO Slashtag

To run your site’s (and/or any other site’s) SEO reports, use Blekko’s slashtags in the search box.

Slashtag for SEO:

  • /seo
    Blekko SEO Reports

Slashtags for SEO on the domain level:

  • /domain
  • /domainduptext
  • /domainlinks
  • /sitepages

Slashtags for SEO on the URL level:

  • /urlseo
  • /duptext
  • /inbound
  • /outbound
  • /internal
  • /sections

/seo

/seo displays a website’s SEO reports. Using the /seo slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /seo

/domain

/domain shows the geographic distribution of your site’s inbound links, number of domains that have duplicate content to your site, number of duplicated sections on your site, and crawl stats (e.g. date of last crawled, number of pages crawled, use of Google Analytics, RSS feed, Atom feed, host whois, DNS IP whois, co-hosted domains). Using the /domain slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /domain

/domainduptext

/domainduptext displays the URLs that have the same content to your site. Using the /domainduptext slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /domainduptext

/domainlinks

/domainlinks lists the websites that have inbound links pointing to your site, with the number of inbound links. Using the /domainlinks slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /domainlinks

/sitepages

/sitepages lists the web pages of your domain. Using the /sitepages slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /sitepages

/urlseo

/urlseo displays the geographic distribution of your web page’s inbound links, number of URLs that have duplicate content, number of sections on your site that have duplicated content, and crawl stats (e.g. date of last crawled, page length, whois, server software, META description, Dmoz title and description). Using the /urlseo slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /urlseo

/duptext

/duptext shows URLs that have content that is the same as that of your web page. Using the /duptext slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /duptext

/inbound

/inbound displays the inbound links to your web page as URLs with anchor text. Using the /inbound slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /inbound

/outbound

/outbound lists the outbound links from your web page to other websites as URLs with anchor text. Using the /outbound slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /outbound

/internal

/internal shows the internal links to your web page as URLs with anchor text. Using the /internal slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /internal

/sections

/sections lists your site’s individual sections of the web page as Blekko breaks them down in the indexing process and sections (some web pages) that are excluded from Blekko’s index). Using the /sections slashtag:

http://www.example.com/ /sections

Blekko’s SEO Report Help

Review Blekko’s help on SEO reports through character strings and/or search commands:

  • Internet browser: http://blekko.com/ws/+/help
  • Search box: /help

Posted on April 4, 2011
Category: Blekko | Leave a Comment

Send Weibo Messages through Baidu Box Computing

For microblogging in China, Baidu offers a way for weibo (Chinese microblog) users to send weibo messages directly from Baidu’s search engine results pages (SERP) through Baidu Box Computing.

How to Send Weibo Messages on Baidu?

Search for “send weibo” in Chinese:

http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%B7%A2%CE%A2%B2%A9

    Send Weibo Messages through Baidu SERP

Baidu displays a box on the SERP for you to authorize and connect to your 3 weibo accounts:

  • Tencent QQ Weibo
  • Sohu Weibo
  • 163 Weibo

Authorize Baidu to Access Tencent QQ Weibo, Sohu Weibo and 163 Weibo

Authorize Baidu to access your Tencent QQ Weibo, Sohu Weibo and 163 Weibo accounts via the OAuth protocol.

    Authorize Baidu to Access Tencent QQ Weibo

Baidu Box Computing does not allow sending messages to Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging tool/service, or the Chinese Twitter.

Send Weibo Messages on Baidu SERP

Baidu Box Computing allows search engine users to send:

  • Text messages
  • Messages with URLs as embedded links

The concept of Baidu’s Box Computing was officially initiated in September 2010. Review a list of Baidu Box Computing examples.

Follow5 and FaWave

Other tools that allow sending messages to multiple Weibo/SNS accounts (so that you can synchronize all your weibo “sent” messages):

Posted on April 1, 2011
Category: Baidu | Leave a Comment

Sogou Chinese Search Engine, www.Sogou.com

www.Sogou.com is a Chinese search engine of Sohu.com, the second largest Chinese web portal.

Sogou’s China Search Market Share

Sogou.com is currently the third largest search engine in China that has search market share far behind those of Baidu’s and Google’s. The search market share of Baidu, Google and Sogou in quarter 3 of 2010, according to market research firm Analsys International:

  • Baidu: 73%
  • Google: 21.6%
  • Sogou: 0.9%

Sogou.com’s Web Search

Sogou’s search engine spider/crawler, Sogou web spider, crawls websites in the world wide web and stores web pages in Sogou’s index with preferences and guidelines:

  • Sogou web spider prefers unique web content.
  • Sogou web spider can crawl web pages stored under several levels of sub-folders/directories, but prefers crawling web pages that are stored closely to the top-level folder/directory.
  • Sogou web spider can handle URLs with parameters, but prefers short URLs with few parameters.
  • Sogou web spider can follow URLs that use 301-redirect and/or 302-redirect, but may run into problems handling URLs that are configured to redirect multiple times. Review 301-/302-redirects in SEO glossary.
  • Sogou web spider follows Robots.txt. Review Baidu Robots.txt for more information on Robots.txt.
    Sogou's Web Search, www.Sogou.com

Review Sogou.com’s web search help documents.

Submit Sites to Sogou.com

If you want your website to show up in Sogou’s organic web search results, submit your sites to Sogou through the site submission page.

  • Submit only your site’s homepage URL.
  • Submit your site only once.

Sogou does not guarantee your site being accepted into the organic search results pages at all. However, if your site’s content is acceptable according to Sogou’s content guidelines, it will show up in Sogou.com’s organic web search results pages within a week after submission.

Sogou Labs

Sogou Labs offers algorithms and experiments including:

  • R-SpamRank: A spam detection algorithm that is based on link analysis by assigning spam values to web pages and semi-automatically selecting potential spam web pages. The algorithm first manually select a small set of spam pages as seeds. Initial R-SpamRank values are propagated through links and distributed among the whole web page set. Download the spam detection algorithm as *.pdf.

After sorting the pages according to their R-SpamRank values, the pages with high values are selected. Our experiments show that the algorithm is highly successful in identifying spam pages, which gains a precision of 99.1% in the top 10,000 web pages with the highest R-SpamRank values.

  • An automatic search engine performance evaluation with click-through data analysis. The evaluation method generates navigational type query topics and answers automatically based on search users’ querying and clicking behavior. Download the evaluation as *.pdf.

Sogou’s Websites

Besides web search, Sogou offers Chinese Internet users:

  • Map search: map.Sogou.com
  • Image search: pic.Sogou.com
  • Video search: v.Sogou.com
  • News search: news.Sogou.com
  • Music search: mp3.Sogou.com
  • Blog search: blogsearch.Sogou.com
  • Answers: wenda.Sogou.com
  • Daohang: Sogou’s “Daohang” site (123.Sogou.com) is an Internet start page or Chinese world wide web’s yellow pages, similar to Baidu’s hao123.com, that offers lists of “URLs/links” of popular Chinese websites for Sogou’s users.
    123.sogou.com

Sogou’s Free Tools

Sogou also made free tools available for users to download:

  • Sogou Chinese input tool (pinyin.sogou.com)
  • Soguo Internet browser (ie.sogou.com)

Posted on March 27, 2011
Category: China Search Engines | 2 Comments

Kenshoo Search New Feature Release Notes

Kenshoo Search is a powerful system to help ppc specialists to manage/run and maximize ROI of global ppc campaigns including Google Adwords, Bing Adcenter, Yahoo Search Marketing, Facebook ads and local ppc campaigns including Baidu Phoenix Nest and Yandex.

Basic features that are already included in Kenshoo Search:

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

Kenshoo search released many new features during system upgrades between 2010 and quarter one of 2011.

Posted on March 25, 2011
Category: PPC | Leave a Comment

AddThis Social Bookmarking, Sharing Tool, Addthis Analytics

AddThis is a free social bookmarking and sharing tool that allows your website’s visitors to share content to social network sites, social bookmarking sites, blogging platforms, instant messaging services and email services.

AddThis also offers analytics to track the sharing / bookmarking activities of your site’s visitors.

Set Up AddThis Social Bookmarking / Sharing

AddThis bookmarking/sharing tool can be set up on:

  • Blogs with WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, MovableType, Tumblr platforms
  • B2C websites with Joomla, Drupal content management systems (CMS)
  • MySpace

To allow content bookmarking / sharing for your site’s visitors, set up and add the AddThis Button or AddThis Toolbox onto your website.

    AddThis Toolbox

AddThis allows your site’s visitors to share your content through over 300 services in which most are social network sites, blogging platforms and social bookmarking sites, including:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • Delicious
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • Google’s Blogger
  • Google’s Gmail
  • Google Reader
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Google Buzz
  • Tumblr
  • TweetMeme
  • Orkut
  • Bebo
  • Diigo
  • WordPress
  • Typepad
  • Xing
  • Friendster
  • Faves
  • Microsoft’s Live/MSN Messenger
  • MSN’s Hotmail
  • QuantCast
  • Fark
  • Kaboodle
  • Netvibes
  • Newsvine
  • Plaxo
  • Plurk
  • Ping.fm
  • Slashdot
  • Reddit
  • Squidoo
  • Xanga
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Bit.ly
  • Mail.ru

Website’s content can also be shared to China’s SNS and bookmarking / sharing sites from AddThis:

  • Sina Weibo
  • Douban – China’s sharing sites on books, movies and music
  • Tencent’s QZone
  • Baidu Cang – Baidu’s bookmarking site

AddThis Analytics

AddThis Analytics offers 5 major reports for you to find out how your website visitors share content:

  • Top Content report: Displays the web pages that have been shared/bookmarked by your site’s visitors.
  • Top Services report: Shows the list of services (including Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg) that your site’s visitors used to share / bookmark your content (web pages).
  • Audience Profile report: Shows counts of influencers and clickers.
  • Top Countries report: Provides geographic trends on where your site’s visitors originated.
  • Sharing Referrers report: Displays the top keywords from search engine traffic and top domains that sent traffic to your website.

To review more traffic details from search engines and/or referring sites, set up Google Analytics on your website.

URL Shortening

When visitors share your content to Twitter, AddThis will automatically by default shorten links that are longer than 40 characters through URL shortening tools/services bit.ly. For customized URL shortening, provide your Bit.ly and/or awe.sm account information to AddThis.

Google URL shortener explains how URL shortening tools work.

AddThis Toolbar

AddThis Toolbar allows your site’s visitors to easily bookmark or share your content and is available for browsers including:

  • Internet Explorer
  • Firefox
  • Chrome

Posted on March 23, 2011
Category: Web Analytics | Leave a Comment

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