Facebook EdgeRank, Manga avatar and Loïc Le Meur

- Create your manga-style avatar with faceyourmanga.com
- EdgeRank algorithm explained in details (fr)
- Loic Le Meur launches "Build your own brand, 30 days to not suck at social media"
- DropBox, a great (free) tool to synchronize (all) your machines.
- How to become a Gmail Ninja
- Surf secured on Facebook: take a look at your URL address. If you see "http" instead of "https", you do not have a secure session. Go to Account/Account Settings/Account Security - click Change. Check box (secure browsing), click Save.

New & Expanded version of Don McMillan's 2008 YouTube hit "Life After Death by PowerPoint". Enjoy.

Buddy Media Facebook study

- On Facebook, engagement rates are three times those found when users shorten the URL
- People do not seem to spend their time working on Facebook, as the engagement rate is 20% higher for publications posted outside office hours
- On the day of the week when the commitment rate is highest,the sector of the fan page is primordial. But generally, there are peaks on Thursday and Friday.
- Buddy Media: Power tools for Facebook

Download the Buddy Media report on effectiveness on Facebook

First benchmark with Google Analytics

Between 24th of March and 6th of April:

- 77 visits, coming from 1 country (Belgium, 6 cities)
- 25 unique visitors
- 236 page views
- rebound rate : 68,83 %
- new visitors: 32,47 %

Keep your Facebook image clean and safe with Reppler

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Reppler helps keep your Facebook image clean by:

* Making you aware of inappropriate content
* Showing how others could perceive you

Reppler makes sure your Facebook image is safe from hackers by:

* Highlighting your public information that should be private
* Flagging malicious links that could result in malware, spam, and such

The privacy related security problem of my FB personal account identified by Reppler:

Google facial recognition, Google Page Speed Online and Gmail motion

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- SEO starter guide by Google updated
- Google facial recognition application pointed out by privacy experts
- How fast is your site? Measure it with Google Page Speed Online (89% for wideSEO)
- What Google's +1 means for Facebook?
- Google's Gmail motion: a new way to communicate

Google Social Search Service

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LinkedIn now has 100 millions members

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LinkedIn reachs 100 millions members.
According to a personal mail of Reid Hoffman, I'm part of the very first million member, ID #178347.

Come to Brussels to drink few belgian beers and celebrate this with me, Reid !
Your time will be mine ;)

See U soon,

O.

Google AddURL

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I wonder if it will be really useful. Any idea ?

See U soon,

O.

Google Analytics : how it works ?

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As "promised", I created a Google Analytics account for wideseo. Not very complex to implement, even for a rookie.
After creating a personal ID, a personalized javascript, called tracking snippet, must be inserted in the template of the blog, just before the /HEAD tag.
24 hours later, GA has enough data to start to play with.


The Google Analytics javascript code works in asynchronous mode since 2009. In other words, it is loaded in background to reduce the page loading time.
Each time a page of the site is loaded in a browser, the javascript execute its code. It builds a small array named _gac, fill it with parameters collected from the HTTP request (e.g. hostname, referer, language, browser type), the DOM of the browser (e.g. Flash and Java support) used and first-party cookies (e.g. session info).

Once built, the list of parameters regarding the visit is attached to a single-pixel image (utm.gif) request and sent to Google Analytics servers.

FACTS

* The Google tracking snippet is also referred as GATC for Google Analytics Tracking Code

LINKS

* Google Analytics course (video)
* GA Asynchronous Tracking Code Snippet forum
* How does Google Analytics collects data ?

More will come later about Google Analytics details.

See U soon
O.

Search engine, search system, search site, search index or search directory ?

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If I understand well my sources, search engine, search system, search site and search index are quite synomyms.
Soooo, Google can be called a search engine, a search system, a search site or a search index, just as MSN/Bing or Yahoo!
I propose We use the term "search engine" to designate the four synonyms. KISS (1).

A search engine is builded based on a huge database, spread on a large number of computers.
Periodically, softwares, they call them spiders or robots, "travel" accross the web, copy and index information
about websites they "meet" in the database : this is called 'spider crawling'

And that's the heart of the question ! They don't simply copy and index all pages of websites, but according to
(secret) algorithms, they grab only a piece of it, a piece they find relevant to store (mainly 'words in pages' - title,
subtitle, meta tags, links,  ... - and 'where the words were found')

That's why some sites are referenced on the database, and some are not.
And that's also why some referenced sites appears at the top of the list, others at the middle at in the end.
That what they call 'SERPs' : Search Engine Results Pages

So, to be referenced is one thing. To be well 'SERP referenced' (top 10) is another piece of cake...

We need to learn more about these algorithms to build our sites efficiently.
What do spiders search on a website ? What do they "think" relevant ?
What can we do to make our sites relevant for robots ?

A search directory seems to be another structure. It contains information about web sites and not about their web pages.
Soooo, Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) is clearly a search directory. Google and Yahoo!, both known mostly for their search engines capabilities, have
also a search directory 'dark side', which can be accessed by dir.google.com and dir.yahoo.com.

Search directories dot not use spiders or robots to collect information about web sites.
Information, like title or description of the site, is submitted by the site owner.

FACTS
* dir.google.com doesn't create the directory itself; it gets it from the Open Directory project
* The two most important directories are Open Directory and Yahoo!
* Google's name is a variation of the word "googol," which is a mathematical term for a one followed by 100 zeros

RELATED ARTICLES
* How Internet Search Engines Works, by Curt Franklin

(1) Keep It Simple & Stupid

SEO for Dummies and Google Analytics

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I don't know what I'm suppose to do first to improve the visibility of this blog.

So, I decide by myself, using my (legendary) sense of logic ;)

I identify very easily my very first two major issues:

1. My basic skills about SEO are really too low. I need to learn the basics.

2. To follow the progress in the trafic, I have to monitor it

To complete the first issue, I download the free sample of "SEO for Dummies" (3rd edition - 2011) by Peter Kent on my Kindle.

After a first look at the table of contents, it appears that it should be a good start for me (of course, I'm a real dummy).

So, I have now about 400 pages to read about the subject.

I suppose I will write few posts about this book for the next few weeks. You know now my main source of knowledge ;)

As a real dummy, I choose Google Analytics to monitor the trafic on my blog.

I don't know if it's the best tool, but it seems obvious to me for at least two reasons : it's a free tool and my blog is now hosted by blogger.com, a "google galaxy" company. I know, it's some piece of poor argumentation.

See U soon

O.