Searching the web can be an overwhelming process, and sifting out the wheat from the chaff an even lengthier process when you are not sure what to believe. Whilst more and more online users are flocking to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to get their daily dose of news, there is wisdom in using more than one source. So we’ve put together three alternative search tools to help you save time and get the best search result in return.

1.Addict-o-matic

Addict-o-matic is a great search tool that pulls real time search results from a number of high profiled sites, including Google, WordPress, Bing, Twitter, YouTube and number of other news websites. The great thing about this site is that you can search a topic or trend over multiple sites at one time and Addict-o-matic will lay out your results across a single three column page, making it much easier to skim for the relevant content.  Whether you require a broad look at a specific topic, or a more refined result perhaps through a smaller number of sources, then addict-o-matic will do that for you.

2.Social Mention

Another real time social media search that also provides analytical data.

Like, Addict-o-matic you can select from a number of sources, although social media has a particular focus on social media sources and will feature a list of relative keywords, hash tags etc. amongst results page.

This site will also allow you to create free alerts on your brand, company, specific search terms, or breaking news story similar to Google Alerts, but for social media.  Once you get going, you’ll find the interface easy to personalize, enabling you to tailor your search to any particular social media source too.

3.Search direct

Search direct is Yahoo’s latest answer to real time image and video search, for the UK. The site went live today, and aims to deliver results before the user completes a search. The new feature will display top trending images from around the web, allowing full size image display; and update each search every 10 minutes to ensure the latest search trends are displayed.

Users can also search the Yahoo! image bank, which gathers pictures from Yahoo news and Flickr, through their Facebook account providing the user has synced their Facebook with the Yahoo stream.

The US search engine giant has also announced a video search results page will also be available, with the ability to filter videos of interest to the user.

Micrositez: Search Engine Marketing

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Google has announced that changes have been made to search algorithms that could impact 35% of searches. The changes were announced yesterday on Google’s blog, and reflect one of the biggest tweaks they have made recently. By comparison, the recent Panda update was estimated to only affect 12% of search queries. The last major algorithm change in February was designed to distinguish between high and low quality websites, and award less authority to sites it deemed to be “content farms”.

The latest algorithm changes have been made in response to the increase of social media use in delivering the most recent and up to date news and events on the web. The search engine giant hopes to compete with Twitter and Facebook as the go-to page for updates on the latest news and events, and redirect some of that social media traffic back to search. In order to do this, Google recognised that it had to amend the algorithm to freshen up some stale searches. Google also need to maintain market dominance over Bing, who already include more Twitter feeds and Facebook updates in their search results.

Google Fellow Amit Singhal blogged: “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.”

In Google’s blog, Amit wrote that changes will affect searches relating to the following:

• Recent events or hot topics – quality content and stories on the latest news and talked about events as they happen.
• Regularly recurring events – relevant updates on annual conferences and events, Olympiad and sporting tournaments.
• Frequent updates – the most up-to-date product queries and reviews (e.g. “best camera” or “ford fiesta review”).

In order to ensure they are not compromised by “freshness spam” (websites re-posting stories to ensure they are the latest word on a topic to boost rankings) the freshness will be determined by the time the page is first crawled. The usual rules of quality and topicality will also apply, so making sure your content is relevant and well-written is key to maintaining rankings.

Micrositez: SEO and Link Building

facebook, Google, link building, search algorithm, SEO, twitter

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo used his platform at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to talk about Twitter’s latest milestones and indicators of success. The company, which defines itself as an “information network”, has struggled in the past to convince some critics that it could attain a business model that would allow it to monetise. Costolo’s interview should put paid to those concerns, after he revealed some startling statistics along with details of the company’s still-thriving ambition.

Firstly, the size and scale of twitter has boomed in a way that even the most optimistic tweeter would have struggled to imagine at launch in 2006. Twitter has 100 million active global users and half of those users log in every day to send a collective 250 million tweets between them. This represents an increase of 150 million tweets a day from the beginning of 2011. The site is still growing too – particularly on mobile which is growing at a rate of 40% per quarter. Since the launch of Apple’s iOS5 for iPhone and its integrated Twitter functions daily sign up rates have tripled. Twitter’s influence on other social networks is tangible too; Google+ even has integrated hashtags and real-time search.

The reach and influence of Twitter are not the only aspects showing growth. Costolo reported enthusiastically on the success of promoted tweets, claiming that they are working “better than we could have ever hoped”. Promoted tweets, which have now been integrated into the timeline, and promoted trends have seen growth since their launch in 2010 and have provided a good source of advertising revenue. Twitter hope to expand this with richer advertising platforms. As Twitter like to shout about their simplicity, don’t bet on movie ads or intrusive graphics. Instead, Costolo is keen to utilise the type of platforms that create themselves organically within the site.

When asked about the future of Twitter, Costolo was certain of one thing; there are no plans to go public. With a valuation of $8billion and plenty of cash in the bank, the company can, and should, continue to grow while still under private control.

Micrositez: PPC and Social Media Marketing.

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There were a lot to take in during last week’s Facebook annual developers conference in San Francisco, and as many users continue to wrap their head around the new layout changes and trends laid out by Mark, and his team.

 There continued to be a steady stream of backlash over Facebook’s new Timeline and ticker concepts. Watching the network’s founder Mark Zuckerberg live on line, you can’t help but get caught up in the charm and innocence of his appearance during the opening with Andy Samberg, which then proceeded to blow everyone away during is passionate and intellectual talk over the future of Facebook.

Despite immediate concerns about user privacy, and the unsure feeling of whether having your whole life on display for all to see was a good thing, or not. It was hard not to be caught up in all the excitement, from what appeared to be an extremely interactive conference. Delegates were able to test out some of the new apps, and features being released by Facebook, which collects and summarises your personal information, from what kind of music you listen too, to what you had for dinner each day last month, down to the place and time you were born.

Whether this will actually take off, and win the hearts of Facebook users remains to be seen. Many industry insiders have expressed their views on the new changes already, claiming Facebook have copied two of their major changes, Timeline and Ticker from rival companies, Twitter and Memolane.

Micrositez: Social Media Agency, SEO Company.

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HP and Dell in colossal social mudslinging match

Michael Dell is a smart man, he built an empire around the notion of quality IT equipment, revolutionised the PC market and it could be argued, presented HP with a platform to become the world’s number one PC manufacturer.

So what then can you read into a series of rants regarding HP’s decision to retreat from PCs? Well it would seem that it all stems from recent comments coming from the HP camp that the world is entering a post PC era where the desktop computer is less essential than ever in recent history.

Presumably the sentiments regard the rise of alternative platforms and more mobile hardware options, but it would seem that Mr Dell either took exception to the notion. Or more likely, he ceased upon the very ruthless opportunity hunting nature which enabled the creation of his company and pursued some easy publicity to present Dell as the loyal PC users number one choice for the future, with the added benefit of being able to slightly devalue his biggest rival into the bargain.

Whatever the intent, the level of publicly accessible mudslinging from CEO level was interesting in that very rarely will such an approach be adopted. Usually, consumers are put off by negative outspoken comments, it remains to be seen if Michael Dell will be subject to any backlash from the online community in general, or whether he might just have pulled off a very clever piece of PR.

Micrositez Digital: Social Media, SEO, PPC, Web Design

Dell, HP, PC, social media, twitter

Retweet makes the Oxford dictionary debut

Retweet Pronunciation:/riːˈtwiːt/

As if it was necessary to point to any event as an indication that social networking isn’t just a passing fad, the inclusion of retweet in the oxford English Dictionary is surely such an event upon which to point if prompted to do so.

Interestingly though while announcing it’s inclusion, Oxford English Dictionary Editor, Angus Stevenson, also paid tribute to the role of social networking sites in promoting new terms by saying

“We’ve noticed that new words come into currency much more quickly as a result of the internet, as people see friends, or friends of friends using new words and copy them.”

In addition to retweet, follower was also included, a noun with specific reference to social media it has been defined as someone who is tracking a particular person, group, or organization on a social networking site

Micrositez: Social Media Agency

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Whilst youths have continued to riot across London and several parts of England over the past four days, media analyst’s record record breaking figures as people flock to find out what’s been going on.

Yesterday, the BBC recorded its second highest traffic levels ever, on the sites website with 6.8million users.  Sky News has also seen a rise in its search term SkyNews, which towered about BBC from Sunday 6^th August, when the riots began.

However, the real source of news and beneficiary of this surge of interest was by far social networking site, Twitter, which saw a record breaking number of searches for ‘News and media.’

The number of people jumping online, in the UK, over these last few days has jumped 14% since the riots began.  Twitter has provided the most up-to-date information platform through-out the events in London city, and was opted more than any other social media site.

As the random acts of violence continue to pour out across the cities, police across the UK continue to rally together, whilst government continue to host emergency meetings. Prime Minister David Cameron and other parliamentary members will meet tomorrow for further discussions.

It is believed smartphone blackberries were used by some looters to organise their next move, and today this was confirmed as the company vowed their allegiance to assisting the police with their investigations. The hacker group, named Team Poison broke into the site, and left a stern message, in which they vowed their support of rioters attacking police and government, but not innocent people or small businesses that have been affected.

Micrositez: Digital Marketing Agency

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In exactly one year from today, millions will gather for the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The games have been launched on Twitter, as the event’s social media strategy kicks off. The official games website launched a tweet competition to discover which country has the most online fans. The page hash tag #1yeartogo will be the measuring tool for the country with the most tweets.

The official social media policy on what Olympics competitors are allowed to tweet during the games, were release last month.

The use of the social network is likely to be an occurring factor in the Games strategy, as the recent Super Bowl Game in America proved tweeting during sporting events was a powerful marketing tool. Over 7, 100 Tweets were recorded per second during the Woman’s World Cup soccer, compared to the 4,064 Tweets per second is a huge and welcoming response.

So far the #1yeartogo has received over 35,000 tweets.

Micrositez: Digital Agency, SEO Agency

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Google drops realtime search from its search product as agreement with social Networking site Twitter is terminated.

The agreement, which expired this month allows Google to produce faster results through a pool of sources, which included Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Quora, Gowolla, FriendFeed, Plixi and Me2day.

The search giant relied heavily on access to Twitter, as its main source of data, which it’s thought to have paid around $20 million for. Although reason for the breakdown remains unknown many speculate the move is all part of Google’s plans; to incorporate the feature into Google+.

Gabriel Stricker, Director of Global Communications & Public Affairs at Google touched on the subject in a recent statement stating; “The Company envisions include Google+ information along with other Realtime data from a variety of sources.”

Whilst a spokesperson for camp Twitter confirmed to tech blog Searchengineland that the contract between itself and Google had come to an end they said; “We continue to provide this type of access to Microsoft, Yahoo! and dozens of other smaller developers. And we work with Google in many other ways.”

Whilst both camps maintain tight lipped on the matter, it is worthwhile noting that Twitter will not be completely invisible from Google search. Any information that is publicly available will be picked up by Google crawlers, and be searchable by users on Google’s site.

Micrositez : Search Engine Marketing

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Twitter is reportedly under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commision.

Twitter’s rapid rise has been supported by a vast inventory of third party companies that build applications and services to make twitter easy to use on mobile devices and PC’s. It is the dealings with these companies that are reportedly under investigation from the US consumer watchdog. Unsurprisingly there was no comment from Twitter.

Industry researchers calculate that the company generated and estimed $45M from their 2010 marketing. Twitter who does not publish financial information are expected to generate $150M this year alone.

Micrositez: Social Media

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Social networking site Twitter has signed, sealed, and delivered a $40million deal upon the purchase desktop application Tweet Deck. Tweetdeck, ‘the personal browser for social network users’, has become one of the most popular applications on Twitter, and used across various social platforms including Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Linked and more.

Tweetdeck connects thousands of social networkers with friends from across the previously mentioned social plaforms, and runs compatible across most operating systems, including Microsoft windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

The news broke across CNN and CNET after weeks of speculation that a deal would be completed soon. Despite offers from UberMedia, who almost sealed the deal. It was Twitter who flew ahead, and clinched the deal with an offer they could not refuse.

Micrositez: Search Engine Marketing

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Today a high court judge issued an order against publication of information on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

The order was given out to all media including, digital, TV, radio and print, and for the first time social media.

Mr Justice Baker put extra emphasise on social network or media imposing a ban on publishing information of children and those involved in court cases.

Today’s news serves an interesting twist for social media, which until now been seen by industry experts almost impossible to police.

Earlier this week, twitter account was set up threatening to reveal identities of celebrities who have paid to cover up secrets with a special injunction.

An industry expert said this to sky news; Social media is “an instant thing. Something that happens in a room up North can suddenly be across America like wildfire. It’s like a fire that spreads at instant speed, and there’s no controlling it.”

A commentator on law, Joshua Rozenburgh added; “The courts are realistic these days, when something’s in the public domain they won’t try to block its publication. When it’s not widely known yes they will issue an order if it’s appropriate to preserve someone’s privacy.”

Micrositez: SEO Packages

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As Twitter opens UK office, Google rolls out new look for search results, just another day in the wonderful world of Social Media. Micro blogging site Twitter has over 200 million users worldwide, with more than 800,000 search queries keyed in each day.

Rumours of a UK base have been circulating for sometime, and it would seem the ball has started rolling Twitter post job vacancies on their recruitment feed.

On the other side of the field search giant Google release two new testing products in a bid to change the way users search for pictures and news.

Similar Images is the name that’s been given to the new feature that matches pictures to your search, instead of text. In addition to Similar Imagines, a newer version of Google Labs has also been released, giving users insight to the current works, of thousands of engineers.

Google’s product management R J Pittman has said the new products would build towards a culture of innovation. The new additions will certainly be geared towards Google’s bid for world domination of all search.

Micrositez: SEO UK

Google search engine, social media, twitter

Many companies, bloggers and twitter-folk have been predicting the end of SEO with the advent of Google’s personalised search. Granted, Google rankings will change slightly according to what the user has searched and clicked on before, but with Google’s personalised search being in effect for quite a while now, we believe that the core of SEO will not change.

That doesn’t mean…

…we believe that SEO companies should ignore personalised search – quite the opposite. At Micrositez we provide our clients with SEO services that are proven to work, and to do this we are always learning. Google’s Personalised Search is no different – we recognise that from a search engine optimisation (SEO) point of view, there will be things a professional SEO Company will need to adjust to, such as:

• Ranking placements can no longer be seen to be as ‘reliable’ as they were.
• As always, the importance of site design and content is vital – they will have a direct effect on your SERPs.
• Continuing to improve user experience is vital – the fact that a single visit will now put you at the top of Google gives even more incentive for a company to have an amazing site design and content.

Whilst it may not be the big change everyone was dreading, personalised search should not be ignored. The best SEO companies will adapt and continue the thrive, improving their SEO Packages all the time.

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