Many site owners dream about adding deep social features allowing users to interact with their friends in external communities. However the cost and know-how required to script against various sites' APIs have traditionally been prohibitive for all but the largest publishers. Google's Friend Connect bridges the programming gap by offering standardized tools to facilitate "richer social experiences" to mid and small size publishers. But what are the benefits to the average site owner? Why does this matter?

Background First
The Friend Connect "preview release" announcement today may foreshadow, in palpable terms, the ultimate street level impact of OpenSocial platform-thinking. Though not fully aimed at data portability objectives," webmasters will download cross-site "widgets" using a wizard starting sometime later today. The "social gadget" engine will generate turnkey code which includes "built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community."

According to the press release any site which deploys Google Friend Connect widgets will be able to "see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more."

Site Owner Benefits
These new tools will engage visitors and drive traffic by offering opportunities to interact with friends who publish their activities to other social sites, a technique many of us practice to various degrees. However Friend Connect offers all of this functionality without hiring a team of programmers...just download the widget, hook it up and rock.

Visualize your users inviting their Facebook and other social community friends (contacts) to "join" them to participate in your site. Users can them "publish back" to other social communities they're active in, making the promotion of your content truly exponential as it ripples amongst friends of friends, etc... While this type of viral propagation has long been in the vocabulary of social media publishers, in past years activity has been largely limited to closed-loop thinking. In other words, what happens in one site stays in the site absent specialized configurations and a lot of know-how.

Already cross pollination add-ons like the StumbleUpon Facebook Application mingle multiple social site experiences to where recommending a site on SU results in publishing the thumbs-up to your FB profile for all of your friends to see. There are many third party widgets which accomplish similar ends including WordPress Twitter Plugs which automates pulling tweets into your blog and creating new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.

It takes a lot of research to put together custom suites of such tools. The excitement surrounding Friend Connect is in regards to standardization, expanding reach and lowered cost to make a wide array of previously unavailable social integration available to mid and small size publishers

On Monday, June 16, 2008, before the start of the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto, Canada, there will be four search engine marketing training classes. While each of the half-day SEM training workshops costs CAD 795, if you register for a full day, the cost is CAD 1,395.

That’s a savings of 195 Loonies – which is worth between 97 and 98 Toonies. (SES Toronto Conference Chairman, Andrew Goodman, has been trying to help me translate American into Canadian, but Search Engine Strategies Global Content Director, Kevin Ryan, thinks it’s a lost cause.)

Seriously, why would you want to take a search engine marketing training class or two – independently or in addition to registering for the SES Toronto?

There are three key reasons.

First, you’ll be provided with “guided, hands-on exposure that puts theory into practice in a highly interactive environment,” as it says on the Search Engine Strategies Toronto website. These SEM training workshops will be taught by Debra Mastaler, Todd Malicoat, Adam Goldberg and Liana Evans, and I can personally vouch for three of them. (While I don’t know Adam Goldberg personally, he’s an ex-Google Insider who started Google’s Inside Sales team in NYC in 2003. So, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

These search engine marketing experts will provide you with the tools and techniques you need to become (or remain) outstanding in your field. (I know there’s a joke about a guy who is out standing in his field, but I forget the punch line.)

In the end, you’ll not only walk away from the search engine marketing classes with the knowledge and skills you need to be a successful search engine marketer, you may also “jump-start your career and enhance your professional know-how,” as the SES Toronto website puts it.

Second, all four of this year’s SEM training workshops are brand new. Compare them to last’s year’s line up of search engine marketing training classes. There are absolutely no repeats.

In Track 1, Debra Mastaler of Alliance-Link.com is teaching “Link Building Tactics, Tools & Techniques” from 8 a.m. to noon. And Adam Goldberg of ClearSaleing is teaching “Search Engine Marketing Metrics and Myths” from 1 to 5 p.m. (I love the use of alliteration in the titles of their SEM training workshops.)

In Track 2, Todd Malicoat of Stundtdubl is teaching “SEO Tools” from 8 a.m. to noon. And Liana Evans of KeyRelevance is teaching “How to Effectively Use Social Media for Search Marketing Campaigns” from 1 to 5 p.m. (Just because they don’t alliterate their titles doesn’t mean their search engine marketing training classes won’t be fun.)

I interviewed Todd and John Marshall of Market Motive at ad:tech San Francisco a couple of weeks back, when Market Motive announced it has teamed with Search Engine Strategies to provide online classes for training in search marketing, web analytics, and web conversion techniques.

Todd also talked about his SEM training workshop at SES Toronto. Check out the video interview below.

Stundubl’s Todd Malicoat's Upcoming Session at SES Toronto

There’s a third key reason why you would want to take a search engine marketing training class or two – independently or in addition to registering for the SES Toronto. (There are always three key reasons to do anything. Hang on a second, I’ll remember it.)

You get a lunch break. (No, that’s not it. The lunches are getting better at all of the Search Engine Strategies events, but that’s not a reason to take workshops covering optimization and advertising strategies, analytics, tactics and best practices.)

Oh, now I remember. Whether you’re a consultant, site designer, website owner, or in-house marketing professional, you can’t afford to miss this opportunity to learn firsthand about the latest developments in search engine strategy. (I thought I was having a “senior moment” there.)

No matter where you are on the SEO or SEM learning curve, you’ll leave these intensive workshops with the necessary skills and tools to improve your business results and take your search engine marketing to another level. “Something that never looks bad on your permanent record,” according to Greg Marmalard in Animal House (1978).

See you at the Intercontinental Toronto Centre Hotel, which is a different venue than the main Search Engine Strategies conference, which is being held at the Metro Toronto Convention Center, which is attached to the InterContinental Toronto Centre Hotel. (Was that clear? Check Google Maps.)

See you at SES Toronto.

If you've wanted to ride the social media marketing wave by adding social features to your website, but the economy has you worried about spending lots of money on apps, then get excited. Google is again coming to the rescue by offering a free service for you to get your social media game on.

After Google's Campfire One event tonight, website owners will be able to utilize Friend Connect (http://www.google.com/friendconnect). Basically, it's social applications for the coding-challenged. Visitors to sites using Friend Connect will be able to "see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more."

David Glazer, Director of Engineering at Google had this to say: "Google Friend Connect is about helping the 'long tail' of sites become more social. Many sites aren't explicitly social and don't necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard. Fortunately, there's an emerging wave of social standards -- OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making 'any app, any site, any friends' a reality."

What do you think about Friend Connect? Plan to add it to your site? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Related Reading:
SLI Systems Joins Bazaarvoice Radius to Help Marketers Execute Integrated Social Commerce Strategies

Matt Cutts is Google's Genghis Khan of Spam. He probably slaughters more search engine spam sites in one week than Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and Napoleon combined killed people in their conquest of the known world.

While we don't have any proof that's true (Google doesn't release spam stats), we can all agree that Matt Cutts is the world's most famous spam killer with more kills to his name than any other search engine spam cop.

Matt's pictured here in a Halloween pic from his blog in full frontal punk rock mode.

So if you want a great introduction to "What Google Knows About Spam" then spend 10 minutes watching Matt's Web 2.0 keynote video.

It will be the best 10 minute investment you make all week.

Don't forget to leave a "thank you" for Matt here or on Matt's blog. Either way, he'll see your comment and respond if he has time.

Has there been a change in the SERPs? You might find out about it first - from Twitter.

Twitter has been breaking all sorts of news lately, from weather events to earthquakes. Now, it's becoming a great source for finding out about possible search engine updates.

This morning, I read the following:

@alscillitani: anyone else noticing their rankings change several times over the last 24 hours in google. Up, down, back to up, ??? weird!!

@danlondon: @alscillitani I am seeing a few rankings bounce around. what is up?

This is a great way for Search Engine Marketers to put social media to use. It's easy to think that social media must be used for marketing and sales, but remember that tools like Twitter are great for networking and keeping up with the industry.

What are your thoughts on Twitter and search engine marketing? Let us know by leaving a comment!

Related Reading:
Is Twitter the New Google Alternative?
Twitter and Search

Nielsen has released data showing the popularity of social networks being used via mobile phones in the UK. Here are three key takeaway points:

• Almost half (44%) of UK mobile phone subscribers belong to an online social network. Of this group, one in four (25%) use their mobile phone for social networking-related activities
• Around 812,000 Britons each month, or 1.7% of all UK mobile subscribers, visited a social networking website using their mobile during the first quarter of 2008
• Facebook is the most popular site for mobile social networking, being visited by over half a million Britons (557,000) from their mobiles, or 9% of all UK Mobile Internet subscribers

Kent Ferguson, Client Services Manager, Nielsen Mobile had this to say about the data: “Social networking is already a global phenomenon, and mobile could be the next big thing in the space. Large numbers of people are interacting with their social networking profiles while they’re on the move. There could be increased consumer demand for mobile social networking driven by the flat fee price plans offered by the leading operators that give subscribers unlimited mobile Internet access.”

So what do you think? Are social media and mobile phones colliding? Leave a comment and let us know!

Who won Survivor last night? Powerset doesn't know.

Okay - maybe that's an unfair question for Powerset since the aptly-named Parvati Shallow only won Survivor Micronesia last night. It might be easier to ask "Who is Parvati? The answer: in Sanskrit, "parvati" means "Mountain's daughter" one of the names for Shiva's wife, the Universal Mother.

So what is Powerset? That's a much more intelligent question to ask.

Powerset is the much-hyped beta natural language search engine metaphor-challenged mainstream media call the Google Killer. That means you can type questions in a search box the way you normally ask them. (Think Ask Jeeves 1.5)

That doesn't mean natural language search or Powerset can kill Google, or even commit assault and battery on Google.

Powerset launched with a smart concept: better search results than Wikipedia's own search box. So the play is a "non-Google Custom Search Engine" for Wikipedia. Let's see about what Powerset can can do..

"What is Powerset?" we asked. Powerset separates results by combining the primary keyword (Powerset) with related verbs and nouns from Web pages and Wikipedia. Here's the answer we weren't looking for from Powerset itself.

Factz from Wikipedia: we found the following about Powerset Powerset opened : community and Powerlabs.

Results for Powerset opened community

Powerset (company) In a form of beta testing, Powerset opened an online community called Powerlabs on September 17, 2007.

Results for Powerset opened Powerlabs

Powerset (company) In a form of beta testing, Powerset opened an online community called Powerlabs on September 17, 2007.

Results for Powerset displayed advertise

Powerset (company) (Powerset is not currently selling or displaying any advertising.)

Results for Powerset searched language

Powerlabs Let's roll, is a prerelease of Powerset's general natural language search.

Wikipedia Articles: results 1 - 10 of 78

1. Powerset (company)
Powerset is a company based in San Francisco, California that is developing a natural language search engine for the Internet.
2. Power set
In mathematics, given a set S, the power set (or powerset) of S, written , P(S), or 2S, is the set of all subsets of S. In axiomatic set theory (as developed e.g. in the ZFC axioms), the existence of the power set of any set is postulated by the axiom of power set.

6. Powerlabs
Powerset Applications Currently, Powerset has released two applications: Powermouse and a beta of its search engine.

Only when you click on the expand snippet (powermouse) miniviewer button, do you find the answer you're looking for (sort of):

Powerset (company)

Powerset is a company based in San Francisco, California that is developing a natural language search engine for the Internet.

The company's stated desire is to build a search engine to compete with Google and Yahoo which would act on a user's questions, as opposed to keywords. For instance, a user who wanted to find out which U.S. state has the highest income tax would enter "Which state has the highest income tax?" at Powerset, as opposed to "state income tax" at Google. The advantage to the user, aside from using questions similar to what one person would ask another verbally, is that a natural language search engine would, depending on its underlying programming, return a result that is more relevant to what the user seeks

Powerset is limited by the poorly-written Wikipedia entry. The comparison to Google doesn't work. If someone's searching for the state with the highest state income tax, they'll type in "highest state income tax." No one would type in "state income tax" in Google if they'd type "Which state has the highest income tax?" in Powerset.

At this stage in beta, Powerset can be considered a search engine survivor.

But unless the technology yields better results -- and fast -- people will think of Parvati and Powerset as "shallow" contestants.

If you're interested in pay-per-click marketing, you've no doubt checked out our Content Advertising column by SEW Expert David Szetela, founder and CEO of Clix Marketing. If you're looking for more advice from David, you can find it via his brand-spanking-new podcast airing on Webmasterradio.fm beginning today, "PPC Rockstars."

The show will be broadcast live on Mondays at 4:00 PM EDT, 1 PM PDT, 21:00 GMT, and available for download soon after. In each week’s show, David will feature a current or future PPC Rock Star, and have a discussion about one particular aspect of PPC advertising. David's first guest is one of PPC’s brightest stars, Matt Van Wagner of FindMeFaster.

Whether you're optimizing a page for the first time or tweaking a page to improve your rankings, it can be tempting to give a page an extreme makeover. From title tags to keyword selection and density to link building, sometimes an SEO may feel the pull to change it all in the hopes of getting a quick return.

But making a bunch of changes all at once is not a prudent process. When multiple changes are made simultaneously, it's difficult to know what is contributing to any changes (declines or increases) in rankings.

Instead, try focusing on one change at at time. So what should your first change be? It can vary from keyword to keyword. Using SEO tools can help you perform competitive intelligence to figure out which metric is most likely to have the greatest impact for a given keyword, as well as analyze your site for strengths and weaknesses within those metrics.

Have an optimization tip to share? Think I'm completely off-base? Leave a comment and show us how it's done!

Related Reading:
SEM Tools of the Experts
SEO Tools Bonanza from SEOValley & SEO Book

Time is money, and these two tips will free up many moneymaking hours for you. In today's Content Advertising column, "Google AdWords Editor a Great Tool for Content -- and for Yahoo/Microsoft!," David Szetela explains how Google has created a tool that will increase ad revenue for itself, but for Yahoo and Microsoft as well.

Yahoo has acquired the assets of the Inquisitor 3 plug-in for the Safari web browser. Mac developer Dave Watanabe created the plug-in, but will not become a Yahoo! employee. Watanabe will, however, temporarily consult for Yahoo.

Inquisitor 3 aids searchers by auto-completing their search keywords and delivers results directly in the Safari browser. When users begin to type in the chrome (you know, that area where the toolbars and menus are), websites and alternative search terms pop up to assist the searcher. Yahoo says the plug-in is similar to their Search Assist-type function, but within the chrome.

Despite all the controversy over Microsoft using Silverlight to take over the rich internet market from Adobe Flash, the software giant seems to be not even trying. In fact, even most Microsoft web sites are using Flash instead of Silverlight.

A quick check through Microsoft properties reveals that only the Microsoft Home Page and the Microsoft Developer Network use Silverlight; MSN Video, Zune.net and the new WWTelescope all use Flash.

Microsoft even appears to be on par with Adobe when it comes to platforms outside of Windows. Silverlight works on Safari for Mac or PC, as well as on Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers. Silverlight even seems to work "unofficially" on Opera (as long you pretend you're not running Opera).

Silverlight isn't supported in Linux, but as an avid Ubuntu fan, I can tell you that Flash does not work well in Linux either. A host of open-source alternatives, like Gnash, have mostly solved that issue. Former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen's fears of Microsoft favoring Windows seem incredibly unfounded.

But if Microsoft is playing nice for a change, why are they afraid of promoting their product -- and why are they afraid of even using it? Maybe "nice" is too novel a strategy for Redmond. It may take some getting used to -- for everyone.

It's speculation Friday, again. And today, the analysts will be pondering whether or not Microsoft will come back for Yahoo, something they haven't been secret about hoping for. But Microsoft is throwing a wrench into those plans by releasing members of its proxy Board of Directors, prepared for a hostile takeover of Yahoo.

Good negotiating is careful business, though, so this could be another negotiating ploy. Or it could be a very real indicator that Microsoft truly is moving on. Speculate away!

Recently, Google announced that landing page load time will become a factor in determining quality score for Adwords. Today, they have launched a landing page load time metric for Adwords users.

The metric can be found on the Keyword Analysis page.

The load time factor will begin affecting Quality Score in mid-June. Need help improving your landing page load time? Google helps you out with, "How does load time affect my landing page quality?"

Related Reading:
Pimp My Site: Tweaking High Traffic Landing Pages
Google Website Optimizer Tool is Out of Beta!

Grand Theft Auto 4 sales topped half a billion dollars during its first week of release, earning about 5 times as much as the blockbuster movie, Iron Man. GTA 4 takes place in Liberty City, a parallel universe of New York, NY. More realistic than ever, many buildings and landmarks in the game are spot-on. The soundtrack rocks.

So how are GTA 4 fans navigating the game? Google Maps is powering the Grand Theft Auto Big Map, a wiki-style map where gamers can update places they've found in Liberty City.

The Google map has proven so popular with the GTA 4 community, moderators have posted the following message:

Note: Due to the sheer amount of submissions from all you pimps, the review process is taking longer than expected. Please do not submit the same marker twice out of fear your submission didn't go through.

Here's an example showing "Missions" and "Services" identified on the Google Map:

There's a helpful outline of the basic controls of the Liberty City Interactive Map system at GTA 'Hood. Yo'u'll also find a detailed guide to help you add new marker location points within the Liberty City Interactive Map.

If you want to explore Liberty City online, you have lots of categories to choose from in addition to "Missions" and "Services." Here's what's currently listed: Clubs, Bars, Cabaret Clubs, Strip Club, Comedy Club, Emergency Services, Police Station, Hospital, Fire Department, Missions, Start, End, Primary Objective, Secondary Objective, NPC, Steps 1-10, Most Wanted, Items, Body Armor, Health Pack, Weapons, Vehicles, Secrets, Hidden Package, Easter Egg, Funny Signs, Multiplayer: Extraction Point, NPCs, Contact Person, Pervert, Pigeon.

How detailed is the Liberty CIty Interactive Map? Here's a screenshot showing all markers:

Of course there are always GTA 4 cheats available, like this one from Playstation Insider, if you want to find the flying rats, weapon locations and half-naked zombies faster.

After the jump, a quick lesson on how to use Google Maps to add your own markers.

Click to read the rest of this post...