Gone are the happy days for Facebook marketers that will create a Facebook fan page to publish updates as part of his efforts to promote something as the old ruling that it will immediately appear in your fans news feed is gone. And that is because of – Edgerank.

What is Facebook Edgerank?

Edgerank is Facebook’s algorithm that determines which posts get shown to whom in the Newsfeed. Facebook page will be given a score by Facebook Edgerank, and the higher it scores, the higher is the possibility that your updates will reach your fans via their news feed.

The Facebook Edgerank Formula Explained

Affinity x Weight x Time Decay = EdgeRank

Affinity Score – Fans of your page who interacts with content posted in your page is more likely to see updates in their news feed.

Weight – Each interaction made by a user in Facebook has different weights. The one that weighs more gets the better score. I here, commenting instead of liking creates a higher level of interaction. Why is that? Because creating a comment will consume someone more time than hitting the thumbs up button to like something.

Time – The web today is about freshness.  Whoever delivers the news first and regularly, gets the bigger audience.

These elements multiplied to each other is what composes an Edge that will decide the priority of your updates. Once a certain threshold (which no one knows) is reached, your updates will appear in the “Top News” feed.

This announcement was in contrary to their blog post a year ago wherein they said that they will continue its service to the webmaster community.  Now they have realized that having two portals for a single source for organic results will not do any good for them so they have decided to let Bing Webmaster Tools as the replacement for Site Explorer.

Hermant Minocha, Yahoo! Site Explorer Product Manager, blogged: “In a large part of the world, we have not yet transitioned to Microsoft search platform. Hence, it is important that Yahoo! continues to receive your site/sitemap submissions so that search results from Yahoo! are fresh and relevant for markets that have not switched over. In order to continue to receive relevant organic traffic from Yahoo! search results, we encourage you to continue using Site Explorer as you have in the past until we fully switch over to Microsoft search platform for organic results.”

“We anticipate that later this year, Yahoo!’s organic results will be powered by Microsoft’s search platform in all parts of the world. After that point, any optimization that you do on [the] Bing Webmaster Center tool will be reflected in Yahoo! organic search results,” Minocha said.

Key Features:

• Enable visitors to find the right products faster
• Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
• Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
• Increase website conversions and sales
• Boost or promote chosen products within search results
• Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
• Customize, track, and optimize performance

“Search quality is a big factor in changing visitors to buyers online, and in making customers happy too,” Google says. “Visitors spend an average of just eight seconds before deciding whether or not to remain on a website, so having a good search tool is important for turning visitors into buyers. Google Commerce Search is hosted by and uses Google search technology to make online retail searching both fast and customizable — visitors to your online store can sort by category, price, brand or any other attribute.”

Watch this video to see how it works:

For years now, the country has been competing with other countries like India in cornering outsourcing contracts. And the good news is that the country is competing well thanks to the many factors that help the Philippines maintain its comparative edge against other leading BPO providers like India. Here is a listing of the country’s strengths and in what sectors can the Philippines truly prove its mettle.

• · Low Infrastructure Costs. Here is one area where the country can show its edge. Office spaces and real estate properties in the country are minimal if you compare the prices to US real estate prices. Real estate prices in Metropolitan Manila are considered low if compared to other international markets. But if the prices in greater Manila still sting the budget, provincial locations are great choices as well. Real estate prices are significantly lower, like Subic, Cebu and Southern Luzon.
• · Government support is evident. One notable government move is to support 100,000 Filipinos thru scholarships. These scholarships will ensure that there will be a continuing pool for contact centers and BPO centers.
• · American-honed work culture. Since the country has been under American rule for many years, the workforce has assimilated some of the American culture, thus allowing the workforce to know and understand where their American customers are coming from.
• · The literate workforce. Companies that will look at the opportunities that can be provided by the Philippines will benefit from the Philippine’s high quality knowledge workers. The Philippines is the second largest English-speaking country and the country also boasts 94 percent literacy rate. Data suggests that more Philippine students are enrolled in the universities than in most European countries. This suggests the quality of education and the motivation of the students.

More importantly the, the Philippines and the country’s BPO providers is your ideal choice to handle your company’s outsourcing needs because of the ethics of the Filipino employees. Filipino employees can be the best workers as most of the Filipinos have Catholic upbringing. Their innate morals and ethics due to their beliefs manifests well in the workforces’ work functions. The Filipino workforce is known for being patient and accommodating thus making the Filipino workforce an excellent choice for your outsourcing needs.

In this newly rolled-out service by Yahoo!, users will get custom real time reports and graphs that help them slice and dice metrics like sales, page views, and sources of traffic and ultimately identify ways to amp up their visitor satisfaction.

For further info, check out Yahoo! web analytics

I wonder where Microsoft will be placed after this sale, if you don’t know yet, Digg has a 3-year ad arrangement
with them.

Digg has been popular for its voting concept that fascinated Google.

“The court’s erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube,” Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said.

“We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users.”

Viacom recently issued a statement saying it is only out to bolster its case against Google and not to expose or pursue viewers of copyrighted videos.

“Any information that we or our outside advisors obtain will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google,” Viacom said.

“It will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner.”

WHAT IS THIS FOR US?
It’s simple. Viacom will have access to informations about every Youtube video that me and you have ever watched. They will know what username you are using. It’s a breach of privacy!!

I wonder why it says April 24th when details of payment was posted few minutes back, April 26th on Manila time, GMT +8, what I know is that it showed payment in progress on that date.

I’ve read about this feature from a note by Matt Cutts though Google hasn’t announced about this feature yet.

One thing I have noticed is that it only works with top level domains and not with cctld…I wonder why!

Excerpt from the Google Analytics help center:

Benchmarking is an optional Google Analytics service that shows how your website’s statistics compare against other industry verticals. In the beta version of this service, you are able to compare your site’s Visits, Pageviews, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and New Visits data against benchmark data from categories of other participating websites. You can use this data to gain broader context for your site so you can identify additional opportunities to improve your site’s metrics.

To enable this:

1. Log into your account. You’ll see the yellow data sharing settings box on the Analytics Settings page. Click the “More data sharing options” link within the yellow box.
2. Select the second checkbox to specify that you want to share your data “Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service”. You can also choose to share your data “With Google products only” to take advantage of advanced Google advertising products and services as they become available.

See screenshots I have taken:

This is another wonderful tool provided by Google. For more information on the benchmarking service, visit Google Analytics Help Center.