“The primary goal of this update is to bring more attention to the things that matter — your data, and how you analyze it. We improved legibility of score card and table data, and refined our color palette to draw attention toward data instead of navigation elements.”

The icons received a more detailed look and is now situated prominently on the sidebar. Aside from that, new thumbnails are added like Home, Custom Reporting, and Standard Reporting. Check out a detailed image of the graph area from MarketingLand.com:

1.) Increased visibility of “compare to metrics” option.


2.) Goals tab is more prominent and easy to use, this is a heavily used navigation option.


3.)The data grouping options (Day, Week, Month…) were brought outside the drop down, making it easier to use.


4.) Better looking graphs: the points got smaller and more linked to the lines. The graphs does not use Flash anymore, i.e. they can be seen also on iPads/iPhones.


5.) The strip with the totals are now below the graph, which is more intuitive.


6.) The types of data visualization above tables are much easier to use outside a drop down.

Among the top trending searches on Google were: Giants, Patriots, Madonna, Tom Brady, and Halftime show. Google’s Jeffrey Oldham says that 41% of searches related to Super Bowl Ads came from mobile devices. Famous Super Bowl ads were being viewed over at YouTube more than 30 million times before the event. M&M’s, GoDaddy, and Acura were the top popular commercial in terms of Google search queries. check out the infographic below by Google for more Super Bowl XLVI online activity.

Image via eMarketer

Google still remains the king of search advertising. It’s expected that Google’s revenues will be the one to increase quickly in 2012 among the top three search sites. While Microsoft’s growth rate is expected to transcend Google through 2014, Google still holds nearly 10 times Bing’s search ad revenue with $20.28 billion against Bing’s $2.21 billion.

The overwhelming trend of Facebook ads and other forms of social media advertising has not affected Google’s hold on the search ad market and will remain firm in the US. Google is expected to improve its engine by the recent social integration with YouTube and Google+. eMarketer predicts that Google will cover 77.9% of all US search ad revenues, and in 2014 will be 79.8% as Yahoo and AOL drop some shares. eMarketer’s study is based from meta-analysis of data from online advertising trends, company reports, and research agencies.

Google aims to provide user more transparency and options, as well as, improve usability with Ads Preferences Manager and Google Analytics Tool. The great thing about the announcement is that Google will not share your personal information without your permission.The Google+ Search Plus Your World initiative last week plays a crucial role in Google’s worldwide privacy revamp.

Google knows how to put a premium on content. Nothing is random in today’s social web. What Google is doing now is a more tailored social search for results, ads, and other relevant things for you. The only thing we’re anticipating is for Google to launch an Open Graph of sorts for developers to be prolific on Google+. With tons of user information in their database, will Google eventually allow Google+ to be more open for marketers and businesses to utilize?

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Save the Internet and your business, sign the petition here: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

Social media is now a bonafide marketing tool for small and medium enterprises. A recent report from Borrell Associates showed how SMEs have adopted social media strategies to enhance their marketing efforts. Most local businesses have contributed to the SME adoption of social media as a marketing boost. It’s not a secret that a social network like Facebook has become a marketplace turning it to a destination-location for merchants and customers.

The report shows that most local businesses between 45% and 70% have already established a social media presence through Facebook and about 60% and 64% of these businesses have a formal presence on social media sites. These aren’t surprising figures, MerchantCircle found that 70% of SMEs are already using Facebook as a means to promoted their products and services. However, Borrell’s report showed that social media marketing was still behind SEO and paid-search last year.

Many local businesses still depend on SEO for potential customers to find them and improve their lead generation. But SMM is catching up in a tremendous way, the report estimates that $6.2 billion was spent on paid-social in 2011. Facebook’s advertising platform has covered 65% of the entire social media advertising last year. With Twitter’s Promoted Tweets and Facebook enhanced advertising platform, it’s a possibility that budget for social media advertising will surpass SEO and paid-search.

SEO pundits might raise their eyebrows with these findings, but it’s a fact that Facebook being more complicated to use with its gamut of changes and the lack of a standard metric for social ROI conversion rates. It’s too early to tell if social media advertising is the end-all and be-all to improve your online marketing. One thing’s for sure, as long as Google’s social products like Google Places and Google+ integrate smoothly with Google’s search engine, search engine marketing is always the old reliable.

So what’s the latest on Google+? Experian Hitwise recently tweeted that “Google+ total US visits reach more than 49 million in Dec-11, biggest month to date & up 55% compared to Nov-11 ow.ly/i/oT3R” It’s remarkable that Google+ doubled its traffic in just a month.” An analyst also said that if Google+ sustain its momentum, it will reach its target of 400 million users by the Q4 of 2012. It’s not far from happening because the proliferation of the Android platform has been on the rise as well. The strong sales of Android mobile devices coupled with its Google integration makes it a lot easier for users to get acquainted with Google+.

Aside from the tremendous growth of Google+, the social network is showing functionalities that can enhance SEO. If you already have a personal Google+ page then try googling yourself, don’t be surprised if your G+ profile page is in the top 5 results. Google+ promotes the use of hashtags as well. Google is known for putting a premium on quality and relevant content so it’s a no-brainer that Google+ wants to generate quality user-generated content using hashtags. Check out the post from Cyrus Shepard of SEOMoz, Shepard also said that Google+ is “incentivizing” inbound links which improves the quality of content online publishers feed the Web.

With these in mind, it’s obvious that Google+ is embracing a personal approach in order to increase its numbers while creating new ways to innovate SEO. So don’t be surprised if clients will ask you to place a Google+ thumbnail on their landing pages. Google+ is just starting to create new strategies to improve your SEO strategies through Social SEO.

So as Google+’s numbers continue to increase, are you convinced to include Google+ to your SEO strategies? What are some ways you can leverage Google+ to augment SEO strategies?

Enough with the figures, it’s more than obvious that people are accessing the Internet using smartphones and tablet pc’s. Ever noticed your Facebook feed? Your friends and contacts are uploading photos, updating their status, and checking-in at a restaurant using a mobile app. In the ’90′s, you’re definitely itching to establish your website on the Web because of the dot-com bubble. Today, we live in the age of “instant” where we all want content and information in a push of a button. And that button is located on your smartphone, your friends’ smartphone, and your potential customers’ smartphone.

So as a business owner, what do you need to do? Start creating a mobile website that looks presentable on any mobile device. It’s a bit difficult but the efforts won’t go in vain. You want to increase ROI and acquire leads? You have to put your website not only on people’s monitors but should appear on their smartphones as well. It’s not a fad, Gartner’s study showed that 2011 saw consumers using their smartphones and mobile devices to access the Internet more than PCs. It’s advisable to check out Google’s GoMo so you can acquaint yourself about mobile websites.

The next thing you need to think of is how you can optimize your mobile website. I know some of you are scratching their heads, how different is traditional SEO from mobile SEO? I’ll write that in a separate post so you’ll be more enlightened. But for now, I think you should be thinking how to make your mobile website appear slick before it can be opitmized. Besides, there’s no use in increasing your mobile traffic if your site looks good in an Android phone but looks off in an iPhone.

Check out the video below for an intro to mobile websites by Google.

Visit his website at:  http://mcmanusfamilydentistry.com/

Newnan dentist offering general and cosmetic dentist services, Dr. McManus serves patients in the Newnan, Sharpsburg and

Peachtree City areas. (770) 254-1134.

Worth a call - very good dentist!