Thursday, October 28, 2010

Dallas home staging by Michelle Lynne

5 Quick Impacts of Google’s New Local Search Results

"Google changed the local search landscape again today. They do this every year or two, it seems. Today’s move is a dramatically new display for local search queries. And what makes it somewhat difficult to grasp is that the display seems to change depending on things like the query, location, and so forth. I’m not seeing the new display yet unless I use this link to get started. Greg Sterling has an excellent recap on Search Engine Land. And here, at first glance, are my quick thoughts on what this means for local search."

5 Quick Impacts of Google’s New Local Search Results:

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Dutch police shut down Bredolab botnet

"Law enforcement officials in the Netherlands have seized and disconnected 143 servers linked to the dangerous Bredolab botnet.

The Bredolab takedown includes an effort to redirect about 30 million infected Windows computers to a special website with instructions and assistance to remove the malware."

Dutch police shut down Bredolab botnet | ZDNet

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Firesheep Exposes the Soft Underbelly of Website Security

FFreelance software developer Eric Butler has released Firesheep, a plug-in to the Firefox Web browser that lets anyone capture cookies from an open WiFi network and possibly steal their owners' identities.

Firesheep is free and open source program available for the Mac OS X and Windows platforms. Butler is working on a Linux version.

Butler wrote that he released Firesheep to draw attention to the longstanding poor state of website security.

Encrypting logins, as many websites do, is not enough, because once the site sets a session cookie, it reverts to regular, unencrypted HTTP for the rest of the session, exposing the user to interception.
Firesheep Exposes the Soft Underbelly of Website Security

Thief Steals $140 Worth of Fake Goods From Facebook Gamer's Fake Home

"What's more pathetic than buying a bunch of fake furniture for your fake Facebook apartment? Stealing the 'furniture' from someone's said 'apartment.' That's exactly what one hacker did to Paola Letizia, a 44-year-old Italian woman and perhaps overzealous 'Pet Society' gamer.

After working his way into Letizia's e-mail and Facebook accounts, the hacker turned his attention to her virtual Facebook apartment, and proceeded to steal all of the digital items from her commodious, seven-room abode. Italy's postal police, for some reason, are now looking for the suspect, who could face up to five years in prison for what the Metro calls 'aggravated entry.'"

Thief Steals $140 Worth of Fake Goods From Facebook Gamer's Fake Home

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Dawn Maire Project - an exercise in search, branding and online reputation management

Dawn Maire is Chief Strategy Officer at Rockfish.
Why does Google consider her name to be misspelled?
Dawn Maire is her real name, and she spells it correctly.
How do you correct a spelling error in Google?
Let's find out.
Follow #whitecoatseo on Twitter for live details of this exeperiment.
How to participate:
Monday - Phase 1 - Tweet "Dawn Maire - www.linkedin.com/pub/dawn-maire/1/a42/202
Phase 2 - Blog about this experiment.
Requirements:
1. Use "Dawn Maire" as the first part of your title.
2. Explain what the problem with Google suggesting another word for your name, your brand or a branded product. Use the screenshot above if you wish
3. use the hashtag #whitecoatseo to post your blog with "Dawn Maire Project - (link to your blog) - #whitecoatseo.

Thank you for participating.




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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Google Instant Coming to Mobile & I Can’t Wait

"Google Instant in many ways is an evolution of a product to keep up with times – today’s faster broadband mean that the search results need to come up faster than one could type. More importantly, Google Instant is a search product optimized for a brave new world where the user interface is touch rather than keyboards, and devices are not your classic computer, but instead mobile and tablet-like."

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Google Webmaster Tools - Links to your site updated

"The 'Links to your site' feature in Webmaster Tools is now updated to show you which domains link the most to your site, in addition to other improvements. On the overview page you'll notice that there are three main sections: the domains linking most to your site, the pages on your site with the most links, and a sampling of the anchor text external sites are using when they link to your site."

Why You Should Combine Your PPC & SEO Strategies

Studies show that organic search receives as much as 70 percent of total clicks from search results. But having both a paid and an organic listing has proven to increase the amount of total traffic by as much as 66 percent and influence a consumer's purchase consideration by as much as 8 percent.


Why You Should Combine Your PPC & SEO Strategies - Search Engine Watch (SEW)

Google's Marissa Mayer Promotion Signals Future of LOCAL SEARCH

"With news breaking yesterday that Google vice president of search products, Marissa Mayer, was taking a new role at the company, focused on ... LOCAL SEARCH"

Facebook and Bing’s Plan to Make Search Social

"Microsoft and Facebook have announced a new partnership that brings “Like” data and profile search to Bing. The deal marks a big leap forward in social search and also represents a new advantage for Bing –- which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared the “underdog” in search during today’s press conference -– in its quest to take market share from Google."

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Dawn Maire - Rockfish Interactive - Full Service Interactive Agency

"Rockfish Interactive is excited to announce the addition of Dawn Maire as its first chief strategy officer. Since 2005, she had been the chief retail officer for North America at RAPP."

Dawn Maire

Dawn Maire | LinkedIn: "As the Chief Strategy Officer for Rockfish Interactive, I am responsible for creating and driving strategic business building solutions for both our clients and our agency.

A strong marketer, I partner with clients to develop brand building digital, social, viral, in-store, and multi-channel strategies all aimed at driving revenue for clients in a diverse and highly competitive environment. I have crafted best-in-class marketing strategies for companies such as Best Buy, Macy's, Sam's Club, Walmart, Toyota, Bank of America, SuperValu, Sears, Famous Footwear and HEB by bringing them innovative customer-centric marketing solutions"

- my boss rocks!

Monday, October 11, 2010

WARNING - New malware could steal your habits - SmartPlanet

"If viruses traditionally spread through emails and attachments or through hacked websites, then it makes sense that the next generation malware would go after someone’s social network."

What is LinkedIn?

Why We Still Need Real Social Media Strategists

"Even though business strategies come from the top down in organizations we still need strategists, or at least strategic thinkers, in every area of business, but especially social media. Not only because so few businesses have direct experience with social media used to deliver on business goals, but because it requires a fundamental shift that the same old evolutionary approaches fail to address."

50 of the Best Twitter Guides, Stats, Tips and Tools of 2010 (So Far)

"While a dwindling number of business executives still dismiss Twitter as a waste of time, recent research suggests it is one of the most valuable social networks for business. Awareness of Twitter has exploded; 87% of Americans said they were “familiar with” Twitter in a poll taken earlier this year, versus just 5% in 2008 and 26% in 2009. Although fewer Americans use Twitter than Facebook, Twitter users “are far more likely to follow Brands/ Companies than social networkers in general. 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks. Twitter users frequently exchange information about products and services.” 71% of business users now say Twitter is a useful tool, up from 59% a year ago. And 52% of journalists say they use Twitter to research stories and discover what’s hot."

Google News SEO Tips

"Doing SEO for Google News is a strange beast, but there are plenty of easy things you can do to make your site improve its chances of ranking well. In fact, Google News tells you what you have to do on their blog. Of course, in true Google fashion, they don’t make it easy for you to find all of the info in one place, so I thought I’d help you all out by publishing some of these tips here"

Social Search Commands for Everyday Use

"Social search engines can help you find just what you're looking for, and go straight to the source in no time flat. Here are a few helpful social search engines and search commands."

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Gradual Engagement Boosts Twitter Sign-Ups by 29%

"Gradual engagement is the process of moving a user through an application or service – actually engaging with it, and seeing it's benefits. With gradual engagement, new users are not just presented with a registration form and then dropped off a cliff (typical process in many Web applications). Instead, registration is either postponed, or handled behind the scenes and the first time experience is focused on giving people an understanding of how they can use a service and why they should care to."

Sesame Street: Smell Like A Monster

Friday, October 08, 2010

Why Follower Count Doesn’t Measure Twitter Performance

"Many people seem to live and die by their follower count, triumphantly announcing when they’ve reached their latest milestone. Certainly, the difference between 1,000 followers and 500,000 is substantial, but all it really indicates is someone, at some point, decided to click the follow button. If you truly want a twitter strategy that works, you need to look beyond follower count."


Thursday, October 07, 2010

Google I/O 2010 - BigQuery and Prediction APIs

Facebook preempts Google Me feature?

"One theory about what Google Me would actually look like involved making sure your social network is segregated. Your church friends probably don’t want to see pictures of you at a wild party you ended up at one night — you have different types of friends, but only one social network. A UX Researcher at Google posted an article that explains some problems with current social networks.

Facebook just released a feature that solves this problem — you can make sure all your groups of friends remain separate. I wonder if this is the feature Facebook has been working so hard to pull off before Google launches their own social network?"

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe

"The domain was seized by the Libyan domain registry for reasons which seemed to be kept obscure until we escalated the issue. We eventually discovered that the domain has been seized because the content of our website, in their opinion, fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law.
This is deeply concerning for everyone, but especially .ly domain owners, because it sets a precedent that all websites running on a .ly domain must comply with Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law in order to maintain their domains. This is especially concerning for anyone running a url shortener or hosting user-generated content on a .ly domain."