Google Wants You to Understand How Search Works
Google has released an interactive, next-generation infographic to explain how search works. Viewers are guided down the page, with clickable areas to pop-up text explanations of their visual points. The infographic walks readers through crawling and indexing, algorithms and fighting spam (they fight spam 24/7, it proclaims). Behind your simple page of results is a complex system, carefully crafted and tested, to support more than one-hundred billion searches each month, according to Google.
Pinterest Launches Web Analytics to Allow Marketers to See Referrals to Site
Pinterest is rolling out their new web analytics tool. It shows data on how many people have pinned from a site, the number of views each pin has, and how many users have visited a site from Pinterest. The tool is free starting today for companies with a verified Web site, making good on their 2012 promise to businesses to introduce data analytic tools for companies to track Pinterest traffic.
Interactive Map Gives Insider Look at Twitter Employee Connections
Data visualization pro Santiago Ortiz has created a slightly creepy/cool interactive map demonstrating the relationships between every Twitter employee. The project is visually similar to LinkedIn Maps, which allow users to see their connections and how they are related.
Ortiz built his Twitter version using publicly available information and did so without Twitter’s knowledge at all. Users can click on various profiles to see tweets from that person and which other employees they’ve publicly tweeted in the last week.
“The question is if this network matches the company structure … I believe yes, at least to some extent,” Ortiz told Fast Company’s Co.Design. “For instance, you can see how people from U.K. tend to be clusterized, and the same happens with people from Japan. Also, it’s possible to identify clusters made from people of the same department.”
eBay Study Claims Google Ads a Waste
Google paid search ads are a waste of money, according to a new report from eBay. “Results show that brand keyword ads (where companies purchase ads on searches for their own name) have no short-term benefits, and that returns from all other keywords are a fraction of conventional estimates,” said the authors of the research.
It’s not the first time Google has raised the auction giant’s ire; in 2007, eBay pulled their ads from Google’s network, causing Google to cancel an “offending” party. They had planned at that time to hold a protest party for upset eBay sellers concurrent with the start of eBay Live, the company’s annual conference for merchants.
This Week in the @TopRank Social Community
What were members of the @TopRank social community most interested in this week? Have a look:
News Briefs from the TopRank Team
Mike Yanke: World Laments End of Google Reader – And Possibly RSS
Multiple sources have reported this week regarding the announced retirement of prominent RSS feed Google Reader. Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow, shares the reasoning behind this decision as ‘declining usage’ in his recent post. Other sources, however, are citing this decision in less pragmatic terms – particularly Forbes contributor Eric Goldman – who indicates that this may be the RSS death knell some have predicted for years. While there is no shortage of opinion on this story, the one factual element we can definitively report is that Google Reader will be no more as of July 1st, 2013.
Jolina Pettice: Nearly Two-Thirds of Companies Do Not Use Autoresponders [Study]
Are marketers missing out? This new study indicates nearly 25% of companies don’t have forms on their site to collect visitor information. Only 37% of companies are leveraging auto-responders as a follow-up element after someone has filled out a form. This is another missed opportunity to engage the visitor and call them to an additional action or prompt them to connect socially.
Susan Misukanis: The Memeing of New Pope Francis
With a masters in chemistry, an undeniable resemblance to Woody Allen and a unique Argentinean background the memeing of newly elected Pope Francis is bound to command both personal (& work) time of creative’s world-wide. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Pope Francis look-alikes
- Francis says “hi…“
- Pope Francis joins the cast of Breaking Bad
Next up:
- Francis rocks the Vatican – Harlem Shake Style
- Francis in stealth mode – Hillary Clinton Style
- Francis bites the Lords finger – Charlie Style
Can a meme take off in a day? You be the judge. Create your own heavenly Pope Francis meme with MemeGenerator.
Have Your Say…
Is it creepy to map out public conversations between other people, or a cool insight? Are you excited about Pinterest analytics? Share your thoughts about these and our other news stories in the comments.
