Google Apps For Business To Go Paid From May 10 In India

Google Apps for Business, the browser-based office suite that revolutionised the way start-ups and SMBs use e-mail and productivity applications at work, will soon go paid for any business with more than 10 users in India. Google Apps offers online solutions for e-mail, document editing, spread sheets and calendar management and collaboration with Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs and Sites. These web-based tools are hosted by Google itself and help streamline setup, minimise maintenance and reduce IT costs. Google claims that over three million businesses run Google Apps today.
Earlier, Google Apps for Business offered business users 100 e-mail IDs for free. Now, business users signing up for Google Apps for the first time after May 10, 2011 will be asked to use the paid Google Apps product if they have more than 10 e-mail accounts.
The website has not yet announced the change, but an e-mail message sent by the Google Apps Team reads: “We recently announced upcoming changes to the maximum number of users for Google Apps. As of May 10, any organisation that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users.”
Existing businesses will be able to continue to use Google Apps without being charged. Think of it as a bonus for adopting the cloud service first.
Globally, Google Apps for Business announced that it was going paid in 2009. It charged an annual fee of $50 per user, according to this pricing chart.
How does Google Apps differ from Google Apps for Business? While the former is a free service that allows anyone to activate up to 50 accounts and offers messaging apps, customised e-mail accounts for domains, Google Calendar and mobile access to the services, Google Apps for Business offers an additional set of security and support services.
Features such as Google Video for Business and Google Groups for Business are offered on Google Apps for Business. It also provides 25 GB e-mail storage per user, as well as enhanced support and security features. For example, with more administrator controls, you can enforce SSL, which means when you connect to your e-mail and data which are hosted online, the connection is always secure and hackers or IP thieves will not be able to access and steal company information. Various banks currently use SSL to secure online banking transactions.
By setting the required custom password strength, you will be able to ensure that employees’ e-mail inboxes are protected against information theft.
Google also offers 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee and 24/7 support, besides interoperability for Blackberry and Microsoft Outlook users.
A direct competitor to Google Apps for Business is Microsoft’s Office 365 and the tech giant had recently  launched a public beta in India. Office 365 is Microsoft’s online productivity suite, which combines Office Web Apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online into a cloud service.
Office 365 is a paid service for an average of Rs 270 per user, per month, starting at Rs 90 per user, per month for instant messaging and presence applications. And more than 150,000 organisations have signed up to test it so far, the company has revealed.

Facebook, Google mull Skype deals: sources

Facebook and Google are separately considering a tie-up with Skype after the web video conferencing service delayed its initial public offering, two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions said.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has taken part in internal discussions about buying Skype, according to one of the sources. Another source said Facebook had reached out to the Luxembourg-based company about forming a joint venture.

Google has also held early talks for a joint venture with Skype, the second source said.

A Skype deal could be valued at $US3 billion to $US4 billion, the first source said. Skype's IPO is expected to raise about $US1 billion, several other sources said.

The discussions are in early stages, and it is not clear which option the companies favour, the first two sources said.

Although an IPO is still in the cards for the second half of 2011, Skype remains in discussions with other companies, two of the sources said. If it goes through, a Skype IPO would be one of the most hotly anticipated debuts by a US technology company this year.

Securing Skype as a partner would expand Facebook's user base, help it grow in international markets where Skype is popular, and give its half-billion users another reason to remain active and connected to its online community.

Analysts say a tie-up between Facebook and Skype would make more sense than one with Google, which already has a similar service - Google Voice.

Skype and Google declined to comment. Facebook was not immediately available to comment. The information is not public and the sources declined to be named.

Good timing

With a partnership, Facebook can tack another service onto its ever-expanding menu - a crucial feature given that many mobile devices, including tablets, now come equipped with front-facing cameras.

"This is very synergistic," said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research. "It puts Facebook two steps ahead of Google because of the number of Skype users."

"In your social network, you will now have another very compelling service - Skype," he added.

Last year, Skype had about 124 million connected users every month by the end of June. But 8.1 million were paying customers, using Skype to make calls to traditional phones at discounted rates.

Analysts have said that while Skype's growth has been impressive, investors would be cautious about its prospects for revenue growth due to the size of its base of nonpaying customers.

The company was founded in 2003. eBay bought it in 2005 for $US3.1 billion.

In 2009, eBay sold a majority stake in Skype to an investor group that included Silver Lake, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz for $US1.9 billion in cash and a $US125 million note. eBay retained about a third of the company.

Handicaping the IPO

Last August, Skype filed a registration statement to go public. The October appointment of a new chief executive, Tony Bates, a former senior vice president of Cisco Systems, put the eagerly anticipated IPO on hold until the second half of 2011.

But rivals including Apple and Google have marched into Skype's territory, undercutting the value of the pioneer service.

Now, Skype might again change hands.

Although Facebook and Skype would benefit from each other's large community of users, neither has proven revenue models, said a separate source familiar with the companies.

For Skype, the clock is ticking, as large social media and software companies pour into the public markets.

On Wednesday, shares of Renren, China's largest social networking company, surged nearly 57 percent in its first day of trade.

LinkedIn said on Wednesday it would list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The social networking site for professionals filed to raise up to $US175 million in an IPO expected later this year.

The flood of internet public offerings this year will give Skype backers a clearer sense of its prospects, another source said.

"When a company is not going public and it has been on file for a long time, one way or another something is going to happen," that source said.

Google Introduces Search Globe (3D visualization of searches with Search Globe)

  Google has launched a new experimental search tool. Called Search Globe, it will visualize people’s curiosity with pinpoints related to the volume of searches grouped by languages.

The Google Data Arts Team, who created Google Body, harnessed the modern browser’s ability to generate fast 3D imaging with WebGL to display a colorful globe that represents the day-to-day searches by people all over the world.

“The Search Globe visualizes searches from one day, and shows the language of the majority of queries in an area in different colors. You’ll see a bright landscape of queries across Europe, and parts of Asia for instance, but unfortunately we see many fewer searches from parts of the world lacking Internet access—and often electricity as well—like Africa,” explained Valdean Klump of the Google Data Arts Team in a blog post.

Search Globe is open source, and can be used here. Note that you will need a WebGL browser, such as the latest build of Chrome or Firefox 4, to use the tool properly. The 3D tool that navigates the human body is here.

As a side note, if you have problems getting the Search Globe to work, you may need to update your video drivers. This seems to be a common issue for some users.

Google’s Panda Update Cripples Open Publishing Competition

This is a guest post by HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson. Prior to founding HubPages, Edmondson was part of the executive team at MongoMusic, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, and held group management positions at MSN Entertainment over product management, quality management, operations, and business management.

Search engines are a critical part of the democratization of the Web and none is more important than Google. They provide the critical gateway to information in a meritocratic way that has traditionally rewarded usefulness and quality over name recognition of the content creator, valuing the utility to the searcher over all else.

In parallel, open publishing platforms have provided free tools for creating and sharing information with topical expertise and a voice to anyone on the Web. These platforms feed the search engines and, in return, the search engines have delivered steady audiences. This ecosystem has been lucrative for the search engines, an essential outlet for the information sharers, and a great way for the world to have access to a broad swathe of information, from the full range of political opinions to thousands of ways to barbecue a chicken.

Google’s recent “Panda” update intentionally upends this ecosystem; it doesn’t just lower the rankings of individual pages that the algorithm deems “low quality” (however that may be defined by Google) but, as Google has said publicly, “low-quality [page] content [on the domain] can impact an entire domain.” This means that high-quality content hosted on open publishing platforms like HubPages and YouTube can be negatively impacted in their search rankings simply by hosting contributions of various quality on a single site.

HubPages has seen a negative impact from this change, but so far YouTube has not (Search Metrics Winners). One presumes Google isn’t treating its own affiliated sites differently than any other site, but YouTube’s open publishing environment makes low-quality content as prevalent as on any other moderated open publishing platform. Google shows over 13 million indexed videos on YouTube for lose weight (known spammy area) and over 10 million for forex (another spammy area). Apparently, Google’s Panda update has been punitive only to platforms other than Google’s.

We certainly support and encourage changes to algorithms to provide the public with access to the best search results. We appreciate that open publishing platforms with a wide range of content quality also have a responsibility to moderate their content appropriately. While we understand the need for ordering search results, we also think it is a mistake to broadly impact an entire domain negatively where the content has been contributed by individual people. Bear in mind that a lot of the content on open
publishing platforms like HubPages and YouTube is great, and it is exactly what people are searching for on the Web.

We have reached out to Google seeking feedback and guidance about what elements of an open platform are being penalized by Panda. There has been little response to our inquiries, from questions about site architecture posted on the official Google forums, to personal emails sent to Matt Cutts, the head of web spam at Google.

We, as well as many other operators, are happy to engage in a dialogue with Google on what quality means and how to educate information sharers. It seems that publishing platforms that
are not operated by Google are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to guidance on how to adjust to this latest search algorithm update, as is exemplified by YouTube’s apparent immunity.

Before Panda, Google gave open platforms of all sizes many ways to separate high quality content from poor content without chilling an entire domain. In this respect, HubPages most closely resembles YouTube’s site structure. We send Google signals by how we program the site. For example, we let Google know what we think is the best content by giving that content more internal links from related pages. We also follow the sitemap protocol and give content a crawling priority. It seems these efforts are severely discounted after the Panda update since, despite their application, there is still a domain-wide devaluing being applied.

We are concerned that Google is targeting platforms other than its own and stifling competition by reducing viable platform choices simply by diminishing platforms’ ability to rank pages. Google is not being transparent about their new standards, which prevents platforms like ours from having access to a level playing field with Google’s own services. We want to comply with and exceed Google’s standards. Google has my contact information. Hope to hear from them soon.

Google News is about looks, too

Google News is about looks, too

Getting a site accepted as a Google News source is a very hard task indeed, and it’s not for everyone. If you are targeting Google News as part of your SEO, it’s important to realise it’s not just about content. If you want any hope of success, you have to have the right look.
It might sound strange that appearance can have any effect on your chances of being selected for Google News, but it’s true. Google has been cracking down on the number of non-news sites that have managed to work their way into its news sources, looking at more than content. This is why looking more like a media site helps.

Here’s some changes you can make if you’re targeting Google News as part of your search engine optimisation:
Design
If your site looks like a company website, it’s not going to make the grade. Convincing Google of your newsworthiness starts with the right layout, and magazine layouts are recommended. Talk to us at SEO.co.uk for further advice.
Supplementary pages
Having the right supplementary pages also gives off the signals that Google is looking for. As well as a good About Us page, one which features some meaty content, it’s a good idea to have a featured authors page, listing the names of your writers. This can make your site more attractive to site users as well.
Make things easier with a niche
No business can afford to run a general news site as part of their search engine optimisation campaign. Pick a niche in your industry, and feature news from there. This speciality gives you enough focus to make content writing easier, and give you more of a news drive. Cornering a niche will also increase the likelihood of Google choosing your site for its rare information.

Get Bitten by the News Bug!

Get Bitten by the News Bug!

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has recently released a survey which shows that the amount of people who get their news online has surpassed the number of people who get their information via newspapers. Forty-six per cent of Americans surveyed get their news online approximately three times throughout the week compared to forty per cent who get info through print media.
Getting news and information through televised broadcasts is still the leading platform, with fifty per cent of Americans getting their news from TV bulletins. What’s also incredibly interesting is that nearly half of Amercians surveyed – a fascinating forty-seven per cent – get their news from mobiles, especially when it relates to local matters.

Their report also shows that there is a steady decline when it comes to people getting their information through from traditional media. Every media sector apart from online is losing an audience in some shape or other, and we feel this data is imperative to showing people how important posting regular news items on a company blog or other actually is.
With more people searching online than ever before for products, news, opinion and more, having an up-to-date news blog on your site can help to attract organic traffic as well as keeping your core visitors coming back to your site for more.
But your news blogs should always be original, objective and say something to your readers that no other site does. Your news should be sourced by yourself in-house and be relevant to your industry when it comes to search engine optimisation. The better the quality of your news when content writing, the more relevant it is and if a lot of care’s been taken when writing it, you should win over a lot of fans and followers for years to come if you keep it up!

Snaptu it, Facebook…

Snaptu it, Facebook…

Facebook is, frankly, enormous. Not just in a social networking sense, but also in a brand sense. A commercial sense and recognition sense. Over 30 million people in the United Kingdom currently possess a Facebook account, with that number steadily growing as time goes on.
While quite a lot of people access Facebook via their smartphone, there is still a huge number of people who log on through conventional handsets. Though the smartphone trend is ploughing ahead, a whopping 80 per cent of the global phone market is still taken up by ‘non-smartphones’.

In what many see as a clever move, Facebook has quickly moved to acquire London-based company Snaptu for a price estimated between $40-70 million. The American-Israeli technology firm’s expertise lie in making social networks and platforms accessible through ‘feature phones’. One of Facebook’s key goals for 2011 is to expand in the mobile market – the team at Snaptu seem happy with the acquisition, blogging: “We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development.”
In the past, Facebook’s head of mobile business, Henri Moisinnac, has said: “We want to have every user in every market using Facebook– we’re investing in smartphones and at the same time as in mass market phones because we believe with great features and great integrations, every phone can become sociable.”
Mobile search is becoming incredibly important in the world of website optimization as companies look to harness searchers on the move. With 80 per cent of the global phone market being identified as ‘non-smartphone’, then Facebook are already laying down the foundations to try and corner as much of it as possible. Link building is very important when promoting your website, but keep in mind that a strong mobile presence will also be crucial in the coming years as the medium grows.

 

Facebook Getting Tough on Profiles

Facebook Getting Tough on Profiles

Facebook and other social media websites are a vital part to search engine optimisation campaigns all over the globe. Making proper use of Facebook and similar platforms is a great way to increase your brand’s exposure across the web in SEO – but sadly, like a lot of things, there are people who try to take advantage of social media for quick rankings and to gain an advantage over the competition as quickly as possible.
Facebook has recently clamped down on profiles were they believe the user is underage, and has claimed that they’re currently deleting approximately 20,000 underage users every single day. Users looking to join Facebook have to be 13 or older, but because of the popularity of the medium, obviously a lot of people under 13 are trying their luck and joining the largest social website of our time!

But there are other underlying issues here. If a 12-year-old can create a profile, then anyone can create a profile, whether the reasons are for good or bad. There’s a difference between a kid joining Facebook to share photos with their friends and a company creating a lot of fake profiles to post a lot of fake, positive comments on the wall of their company page.
“There are people who lie. There are people who are under 13 [accessing Facebook]. Facebook removes 20,000 people a day, people who are underage,” says Mozelle Thompson, chief privacy advisor at Facebook. comScore rates that number to be much higher in the US, where their research shows that a possible 3.6million underage people regularly access Facebook.
It’s great to see that Facebook has recognised there’s something of a ‘profile problem’, and that they’re working hard to fix it where they can. How can they solve the problem though in the long-term? Leave us your thoughts below!

 

Twitter – Keep it Private.

Twitter – Keep it Private 

We’re massive fans of social media, and recommend it highly for anybody who’s looking to incorporate an SEO campaign alongside their web presence. But for all the benefits the likes of Twitter and Facebook can bring to an organic SEO campaign, people still have a hard time remembering that it’s a very public platform. Just ask Calvin Harris and Katy Perry…
It’s worth remembering that no matter how bad things get, either in a personal or professional sense, it’d be a wise idea not to air your dirty laundry in public. What’s the point?
Perry and Harris have been generating headlines over the last day or so because the latter has pulled out of the former’s tour around the UK. Harris cited behind-the-scenes issues, but instead of things staying that way and both parties sorting things out amicably, a slanging match erupted between Harris and Perry on Twitter, with thousands watching.

Of course, this is a very high-profile incident between two chart stars, but there’s lessons for everyone to learn here. Many people still, understandably, confuse Twitter as an innocent form of fun. Twitter though, is regarded as a valid form of publishing and can carry all the associated legal consequences – just ask ex-Liverpool FC footballer Ryan Babel who was hit with a hefty fine for his tweets in January.
The tweets between Harris and Perry focused a lot on what many assume were the terms of the deal between the two, with talk of ‘goalposts being moved’. Pretty dangerous when each tweet will be read by potentially millions of people.
Whatever the problems you encounter in your business, deal with it professionally. Twitter can very easily – as the example above shows – turn things into a public slanging match, adding fuel to the fire. Keep things in-house. You not only owe it to yourself, but to the poor souls who follow you and have to read your tweets!

 

Five things you must do when using social networking websites for SEO

Five things you must do when using social networking websites for SEO

It is impossible not to notice the increasing popularity of social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Millions of internet users now use websites of this kind on a regular basis and it is not just those using them for personal and social reasons that are logging in. Online business owners are developing and updating profiles on social networking sites and for some, this is making a big difference to their search engine optimisation campaigns.
If used appropriately, a social networking website can help a business to gain exposure, build trust and respect for its brand and direct traffic to its web pages. These are impressive results and are why so many site owners are becoming interested in what social networking websites can do for them and how these results can be achieved.
If you want to use social networking websites successfully as part of your SEO campaign, there are five things you must do:
1. Be polite. You are representing your company when you interact with others within social networking environments and must remember this at all times. You must always be polite and respectful if you want to show others the professionalism of your business.
2. Provide relevant information. Whilst all the content you create does not have to be about your business, a lot of it should be. This is because this is what a lot of your followers will expect and will be one of the main reasons why they are following you.
3. Be fun. If you are going to keep the attention and interest of your audience, you not only have to provide useful information but you have to make things fun too. There are many ways this can be achieved such as by running competitions, having quizzes, giving free prizes away and other ideas such as this. You do not always have to be serious when using social networking sites for SEO.
4. Be ready to respond to others. When using social networking websites, it is not just about giving information to others but also about reading their responses, communicating with them and learning from the information they offer you. If another user makes a comment, try and respond. Always acknowledge those that show an interest in your profile and try to help bonds between you and them to develop.
5. Be sociable. If you are not ready to be sociable on behalf of your business then there is little point in using sites of this kind. You have to check on your social networking page often, add information, respond to others, comment on the profiles of others and really get involved in the social networking community any way you can. This is how you will gain the most exposure.
We at the-websol.blogspot.com are helping many of our clients to establish themselves within the social networking communities and are seeing impressive results. If you require some help with sites like this or with any other SEO techniques, we are here to offer our assistance.