Web Optimization News & Articles

This week Google opened a new laboratory. Dubbed Ad Innovations, the experimental space is designed to encourage the exploration of new marketing technologies, and already comes with a load of interesting tools. A remarketing and analytics tool are among the first to be highlighted.   

One of the most important steps to take before speaking to your customers through your web content is learning what they want, and what opinions they have about you and your competition.

But what if you don’t have the budget to pay for expensive research data or conduct focus groups? Targeted market surveys can cost up to $10,000 to reach a sample of just 1,000 people.

It looks like Facebook is still up to its old tricks. Following the announcement of the upcoming ability to "Like" the entire Internet, the world's top social networking platform has set the "Like" functionality to entirely replace the "Become a fan" button on brand Fan Pages. Heads up, marketers! Though this move sounds pretty minor, it implies a great deal.

On Monday Google planted file transferring capabilities into its Web-based chat services. The feature is free of charge, file size limits, and headaches. 

Surprise, surprise! Facebook's making changes to its privacy policy yet again. This time it looks like they foreshadow some of the features and changes to be announced at the f8 Developer Conference in April. Among the most notable--and jarring--is sharing your personal data with select Facebook Connect partners without your consent.  

That's right, folks, rumor has it you'll soon be able to "like" most anything on the Internet. Much like Digging or Retweeting or Buzzing, Facebook's upcoming universal "Like" button will boost the virility of Web content as well as add to the popular social networking platform's audience. 

Lots of news from Microsoft as of late, ey? Their new pilot program, The Microsoft Windows Server License Mobility Pilot, allows customers with Enterprise Agreements to migrate their existing Windows Server licenses to Amazon EC2. This means users can leverage their already-purchased licenses and reduce the cost of running Windows instances in the Amazon cloud.

You may've noticed that Google tends to ride its solutions until the wheels fall off before tossing them to the wayside. Google Bookmarks, for example, isn't that popular, and yet Big G continues to improve it. Earlier this month we saw that cool star thing, and now there are some organizational, list forming, and sharing capabilities to utilize.  

In addition to some sunshine, the next few months are going to see interesting updates from Bing. Microsoft (news, site) previewed several new features for their search engine at the Search Engine Strategies 2010 Conference in New York this week, highlighting foursquare integration and new design concepts.

Today it was announced that Webtrends (news, site) has decided to expand their analytics capabilities for Facebook yet again. The upcoming measurement tools—slated to be released with the next iteration of Webtrends Optimize—will enable both marketers and developers the ability to test, segment and target their specific campaigns inside the popular social network.

As the May 12th release date draws nearer, Microsoft continues to release teaser tidbits of information about SharePoint 2010. The latest to leak is a look at the platform’s new integrated Web analytics service.       

Technology should be embraced when it leads to better decision making. Human experts should not be followed blindly.

In the wake of the Twitter flatline phenomenon (the company’s massive growth rate leveled out between July and December of 2009), it appears we’re seeing what is possibly the most change the platform has undergone since its inception. Their latest development? Digging up the most relevant Tweets rather than presenting them real-time.

What is perhaps an attempt to save a little face after several privacy disasters, Google has announced they’re working on a tool that will let users opt-out of being tracked by Google Analytics.  

Twitter (news, site) announced a tool called @anywhere at this year’s SXSQ event. The new feature enables users to enjoy the Twitter experience (almost) anywhere and anytime, without signing into their actual account.

Are you reminded of Facebook Connect? Yeah. Us too.