Category Archives: Interests

Search Engine Marketing update: Google Instant

Hello Folks, you may have started seeing the latest update in Google search engine. Its called Google Instant.

Since many companies and professionals have used MyOrbit services for their online business, I wanted to share this with you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/sep/09/google-instant-effect-on-seo

What is clear is that Google wants to offer long-tail keywords to users as early as possible in the search process.

For example, along with the keyword: “Hair Transplant Surgery Cost”, people will also see options like: “how much does hair transplant surgery cost”, and the latter phrase will now receive many clicks too, even though its hardly a keyword in today’s internet marketing book.

Earlier such a longer sentence or question would have received very few direct clicks because people won’t type long text, but people can surely select longer text if its offered as a drop-down like it is being done now, thereby generating more exposure/visits to web content built on long tail keywords than today.

In addition, Google has been working hard to improve “personalization”, which means they want to show you things relevant to your search profile based on past searches, geography, etc.

What does it mean for website owners and SEO? I believe websites that cover their topic thoroughly using all possible keywords and their natural expressions will ultimately come out winners.

We will study this further to see how Google Instant can be used for our work, and will share the learning with you. Meanwhile all basic SEO work should continue because that is essential to get started in the search engine indexing game.

Best Wishes,
Shankar

Online Payment Service Providers – Opportunities and Challenges

As the usage of Internet for business transactions increases, we now have dozens of online payment service providers, of which are specific to a country and some are global.  This wikipedia page has a comprehensive list:

PayPal is the undisputed leader in online payment service providers. Google has tried to build market share for its Google Checkout over the last two years but feedback from my customers and business partners is that Google Checkout is still not their preferred online payment mechanism.

Most other online payment service providers are limited in their appeal, and are used by specific niches of customers. For example, there are some payment providers for online pharmacy transactions and online betting transactions. These are large industries however as the legalities are not the same or favorable in all countries, therefore such payment providers are able to offer a solution that is needed by the companies in these industries. Continue reading

Thoughts On 1000 Point Fall in Dow Jones

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/05/07/business/07trade_graphic/07trade_graphic-popup.jpg

Create a massive fall in the market large enough to trigger stop-losses typically set up at 5% drop, and then buy blue chip stocks at 30% less price before they recover, sell Put Options at 1000% gain, blame it all on computers and trading algorithms. Some person or some company somewhere has walked away with billions in profits after this event. It looks very well planned. This event was most probably an example of higest form of market manipulation, a bold master stroke, though illegal and unethical.

To find answers, we need to check the money-trail. Continue reading

Google Voice Updates – part 1 of n

Remember about a year or two back, Google bought a small online telephone company called GrandCentral… Google Voice is the matured version of it, and stress-tested for large scale usage (hopefully).

Google Voice is an interesting service, very much in the territory of Telecom domain, so we will have to see how it impacts/ complements/ competes with the Telecoms of today.

Just FYI, Telecoms like AT&T, Verizon, Orange, etc are among the largest online advertisers, because they have a lot of money at stake in the face of VOIP, etc, and they are taking anything lightly today, though in the long-run, solutions with better economics will prevail, like we have seen with other technologies in the previous decades.

How does Google Voice work? You get a new Google assigned phone number. Then, you route all of your other phone numbers through that number. So, your office phone, your work phone, your home phone – whatever. Google voice will allow your calls to selectively ring to any of the destination phones you choose. It is a practical and useful concept, which is will be liked by many.

In addition, Google Voice offers bonus features like:
- You can selectively ring calls to multiple destinations.
- You can selectively block and screen calls
- You can send, receive forward and store SMS text messages
- Check your voicemail online, read it via email or text (you can even forward it)
- You can create personalized voicemail messages per contact
- You can group your contacts and manage their preferences on a group level
- Conference calling, call recording, call switching, 411 info