WebProNews

Thinking Beyond Facebook and Twitter for Social Relevance

Update: Ford announced profits o nearly $1 billion between July and September. This is attributed to increased market share and a successful cost-cutting program. I wonder if the company's social media strategy played a significant role.

Google Gives Forums More Links on SERPs

Google has introduced a new feature to search results, making it easier to find forum posts related to topics you search for. When forum sites have more than one relevant discussion going, Google will link to them under the main result.

Forums Are Relevant in Social Media Marketing

I have long considered online forums to be an early form of what we now consider to be social networks. They've been around much longer than Facebook, Twitter and the rest, and have allowed users to create profiles and communicate with each other on the web.

How is Google Weighing Forum Results?

There is an interesting thread going on at the WebmasterWorld forum looking at whether or not Google favors forums in search results. Matt Cutts tells me that he can neither confirm nor deny this. The thread is started by someone with the handle "bouncybunny," who posts: Once it was directories, then blogs, now forums... maybe. I have no empirical evidence for this, but it seems to me that Google is increasingly returning results from forum posts...

Google Launches Google Analytics Forums

Anyone whose used the Help Center over at Google knows that it leaves something to be desired in regards to Google Analytics, and other topics. Sure, you seem to always find something related, but not quite enough to help you out.

Google Groups Search Moves To Include More Forums

Internet forums can be invaluable resources; they're where experts on all sorts of subjects gather to discuss problems and new developments, or simply make friends.  So it's more than a little important that the Google Groups site now attempts to return search results from all over the Internet.

Search Frequency Is Meaningless

One of the big misconceptions I see on business forums is the idea: “That the number of documents returned on a keyword search on Google, has a direct correlation with the competitiveness of the keyword.” Once you see people posting examples of their “SEO successes” by use of this measurement, you can easily see that search frequency has little to do with competition - after all, it does exactly what it says on the tin - and simply returns a number based on frequency of the keyword appearing in documents.

Web 2.0 Talks About Car Pricing

A car commercial might last 30 or 45 seconds, and in most cases, only a tiny portion of it will discuss pricing.  I’m not complaining - high-def laps are more interesting than transferable leases - but this is all the more reason to turn to blogs, social networks, and other online resources for financial information.

Craigslist Lists New Job Posting Fees

After deliberation in the Craigslist forums, the massively popular online classifieds site will begin imposing a fee on job postings in a quartet of new markets.

Gmail Disposed To Deal With Bacn

“Bacon” - a crispy, fatty food - is a wonderful thing.  “Bacn” - a sort of, but not quite, spammy message - is less of a joy-bringer.  And although they can’t do much about edible objects, the Gmail Team has now addressed that second spelling variation.