Important Notice: No Part-Time Jobs for Watching YouTube Videos. đźš« We DO NOT offer any part-time jobs for watching YouTube videos in exchange for money. Beware of SCAMS! đźš«
Home Blog News
Sundar Pichai

Sundar Pichai Takes Over Google Incumbency

The moment, which had been long overdue, finally surfaced on 10th August 2015, when Sundar Pichai, an IIT-alumnus was announced as the new CEO of Google Minus (a slimmed down version of Google). This announcement was an outcome of re-structuring, which prompted creation of a mother company, Alphabet.

Brainchilded Google Chrome

Sundar has climbed up the verticals in a very short span of time. Started out at Google in 2004, when he was assigned to building the Google Toolbar, which allowed Google to be a default search engine on different browsers, the course of next few years saw him taking over Chrome, Google’s web browser. The introduction of Chrome to the world in 2008 had created waves in the tech world as tech buffs cast doubts on the capabilities of Chrome to stack up against Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Glorious Journey Marked with Glorious Achievements

As the time rolled on, Sundar bagged more feathers to his cap and assumed the role of vice-president. Subsequently, he was promoted to the position of senior vice-president in the year 2013 following his expanding portfolio, when he nailed down Android into his covetous achievements. In the ensuing course of activities, he was placed into the role of Google’s product chief and he assumed the responsibility for the management of affairs of Google software products including YouTube.

Google Tests New Mobile Interface With “Slow to Load” Label

Considering the surge in the number of Smartphone users worldwide, Google treated its visitors with a couple of delightful surprises last week.

According to the CMO’s Guide to Mobile Marketing, over the past 4 years, Smartphone usage had grown by 394% and tablet usage had been up by 1,721%. Moreover, the combined usage of both these platforms was estimated to account for 60% of the entire digital media time of an individual.

Thus, tapping on the vast possibilities of the growth in Smartphone and mobile devices, earlier this week, Google tested its newest features for mobile devices. The new test by Google revealed the Google logo centred atop the search results, with a large search box beneath and a minimalist blue navigational menu.

Apart from the cosmetic change, the red “slow label” test by Google back in February was revived once again. When, a little yellow warning sign was placed next to the websites that load slow on the Google search results.

The explosive growth in mobile device usage has raised the bar for emerging businesses worldwide. And, with Google rolling out new features, it’s time that your organization learns to connect with its target consumer.

Shopping Feed Spec Updates Announced by Google

A few days ago, Google announced a number of changes to their feed specifications for Shopping Campaigns. While some of these changes are expected to affect only certain markets, there are others that may affect advertisers globally.

These changes go into effect from September 15th, 2015. Advertisers can log on to Google to see if their feeds comply with the new specifications mentioned under the Diagnostic tab within Google Merchant Center.

Here’re the highlights of the current update:

Google Shopping Feed Specification

  • Units & Quantity attributes are now available for products sold in bulk for US users.
  • Guiding Principles around the ID Attribute and GTINs have now been tightened.
  • Apparel and Variants will now be available under a new section described as Detailed Product Attributes and Item Groupings.
  • Users can use his ID from the new list of Google Product Category IDS, rather than conventionally having to enter the complete Product Category path.
  • The requirements for GTINs and ID Attributes have been tightened.
  • Shipping requirements which enable the total price to show to users, has been extended to Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and Japan.

Improvements brought to the Product Taxonomy are only recommendations and not rules. However, some categories have been retooled significantly. These include: Arts & Crafts, Decor, Hardware, Sporting Goods and motor Vehicle Parts.

Moreover, many child categories have been eliminated from the list. The full list of 2015 changes is now available on Google Merchant Center Help.

E-Commerce: Mobile Traffic Surges, E-Retailers Look To Improvise User Experience

The last few years have seen a surge in Smartphone traffic. However, conversion still remains a daunting task for most e-commerce sites.

The 2015 quarterly reports of various Digital Marketing companies reflect that there has been a tremendous growth in Smartphone traffic; although saying that the Smartphone transactions remained flat.

According to the reports (drawn from various client bases):

  • Smartphone traffic swelled to 269 percent over Quarter 1, which was 27 percent of the overall traffic received.
  • Additionally, Smartphone orders increased to about 104 percent, accounting to 13 percent of all transactions made online.

Despite the influx of mobile shoppers, Desktop users still spend the most on buying online. The recorded sales on an average for Desktop users amounted to 54.8% in the first quarter, versus 27% for Smartphone and 19% for Tablet-based shoppers.

Improving User Experience

Often users complain about how gruesome their e-commerce experience is – especially when using a mobile phone. They often complain about secure payment gateways.

The idea of asking someone to register, enter personal details and credit/debit card information on a Smartphone is usually not well accepted by customers. To counter this issue, many companies have started implementing the “remember me” feature.

The need for the hour is innovation. If you really wish to scale your e-commerce website up the profit bandwagon, it’s time to switch to a mobile responsive website!

Global Brands to Invest $200bn by Year-End

Recent researches have concluded that global brands and retail marketing activities will reach an estimated value of $200 billion by December 2015, due to the unprecedented growth of mobile users worldwide.

A study conducted by Juniper Research, observed that nearly 70% of the net increase on digital advertising concentrated on mobile and handheld devices. According to this study, brand strategies have evolved over a period of time and now global brands have started to concentrate on advertisement campaigns outside Omni-channel digital environment.

Influx in Digital Marketing Investment

The main factors behind the migration to Smartphones and Tablets include their capability to deliver timely, personalized advertising campaigns. According to Juniper Research, in case of mobile coupons, the redemption rates were found to be significantly higher, when compared to traditional mechanisms such as direct mail or newspaper/magazine coupons.

Additionally, it was observed that the potential for using predictive analytics was high on mobile devices, with the retailers being able to tailor advertising and product promotion as per user’s browsing history.

Digital Marketing: Giving Your Business a Definitive Edge

The beauty of mobile and digital marketing is that, it plays a pivotal role throughout the entire retail lifecycle. Right from product discovery, to purchases and enhancing user experience, digital marketing can help deliver personalized advertisement for greater marketing results.

Will Link Building Survive After Guest Blogging Catastrophe?

If you were relying on guest blogging to gain quality links until now, then you should beware of Google’s dangerous animals, Penguin and Panda.
In a recent blog, Matt Cutt clearly said “Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.” It’s very clear from his blog that Google is currently viewing guest posting as spammy.
However, this doesn’t mean that guest blogging will end altogether. Some great multi-author blogs will continue to be enriching and enlightening for the readers, and guest posts that are not meant for SEO purposes. However, what is currently the biggest concern of online marketers is what would happen to link building now that guest blogging, another link building tactic, has been devalued.
Many link building methods that worked well till recent years are now on Google’s hit list. Google wants everyone to focus on content rather than building links. But what if one can earn link… yes it can boost your online marketing campaign!
This can easily be done by using quality content, which Google loves, as a base for implementing link earning tactics, mainly through integrated online marketing. Any promotional tactic including social media, paid advertising, community forums or organic promotion can’t work without high quality and authoritative content. Creating qualitative content and sharing it with target audience who will share it, will bring links naturally.
You can connect with influential people, and share their views by mentioning their name in your blog, publishing their interviews etc., and attributing your content. Infographics is also a great way to generate interest in your content and make it sharable. You can also use paid social ads on social networking and promotional sites including Twitter, Reddit, and Stumbleupon to promote your content. Last and the most important of all, share it on Google Plus, a sure shot way to get promoted.
Use these, content cum online marketing strategies to earn links. You can still continue guest blogging, as long as it is legitimate and you’re willing to share your knowledge!

Lower TTFB helps in achieving higher Search engine rankings! Learn How

The popularity of your website and its position in the search engine ranking is a very crucial factor that one must take care of. Search engine ranking is based on various parameters such as the header, the URL, the quality of the inbound links and the speed at which the web page loads.

This means that it is directly related to your web performance, which obviously means being related to end user experience. There are various factors involved that determine this. Viz. the code, the backend performance tuning, the tracking scripts on every page.

Research results show that there is a relation between the website speed and the TTFB (Time to first Byte). A faster (or smaller) TTFB resulted in a higher ranking from the search engine.

Understanding TTFB:

So, we need to improve our TTFB! For that lets understand what it is and how it is determined.

When a connection is requested to a particular website, following steps take place. There is DNS Lookup, connection is requested, and waiting time till a connection is received, time to receive the data and finally closing the connection. The time to first byte is the time that is spends in the entire above process that is waiting for the web-server to send back the data.

Determining the TTFB time:

Webpage Test is an open source tool, which shows the website performance by a means of a chart. Select a location from where your end-user would be and website address and run the test. In about half a minute the tool generates a waterfall chart that explains the resources of the website and the response time for each. This also includes TTFB.

Top ranking websites have a TTFB of about 350ms; however an ideal TTFB time would be anything less than 500ms. If the TTFB is found to be higher, (which means the website is slow), it would mainly be because of Latency.

Understanding Latency:

Latency is the time taken to transmit one packet of data from one end to another. If someone complained of lower latency, normally one would suggest increasing the bandwidth. However this does not really help reduce latency time! Owing to the fact that latency is measured on the distance that the packet has to travel. This distance cannot be reduced by increasing the connection bandwidth.

To achieve the ideal TTFB time, the latency time for a website should be roughly 100 ms (data packet travels to the server and back), so that the rest of the 400 ms is spend on comfortably loading the page.

Finally, improving latency and hence improving TTFB:

From the above it becomes obvious that if the distance that the data packet travels is reduced, we can reduce latency time, reduce TTFB and thus increase the website ranking.

A classic manner in which this can be achieved is to use CDNs – Content Delivery Network. One must move all the static data of the website to a CDN, CDNs automatically replicate this data to multiple locations spread out geographically. Thus if a website is published somewhere in North America, it will be replicated onto a server in Australia so that users in Australia have a better experience.