In case there is anyone out there who doubts the reach and popularity of Facebook the next search insight will provide you with some clear evidence that there is really no contest. Facebook is getting way more traffic / search volume thn MySpace by far. In April 2008 Facebook exploded as you can see by the search volume chart below.
I thought for this post it may be interesting to look at something that spans two parts of my life, hockey and online marketing. This week I asked Google to compare the Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens to try and get a feel for who has the strongest online brand, measured by search volume.
As you can see the Toronto Maple Leafs (red line) are garnering the most weekly search volume out of the 3 NHL teams in eastern Canada.
Some other observations:
- in April as you would expect there is growth as teams enter the playoffs
- significant growth the further teams make it such as Montreal
- very sharp drops as teams get bumped out
- in the case of the Ottawa Senators you can see as their 2008-2009 season goes on and their record worsens they are starting to get less and less searches online
I am also sure if I was to go down to the weekly detail I could map the bumps in search volume to wins / losses, trades or even coaches being fired. Anyhow all pretty expected trends but I was surprised by the strentgh of the Toronto Maple Leafes brand.
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Keep on eye as I build this out!
As some of you know one of my favorite hobbies aside form building online businesses and website is poker, mainly texas holdem poker. A friend of mine recently launch a new poker info portal called Poker Pimpz Poker Info Portal, his goal is to make Poker Pimpz one of the most complete poker resources on the Internet and to build traffic primarily through organic optimization methods. Check out the website if you get a chance and let’s see how he does at building some organic rankings. From what I can see its still under construction with more and more content added every day.
If you are looking for another spectacular picasa templates, check out Tiltviewer from Airtight Interactive. I have blogged about many picasa templates but so far this one is my favorite picasa photo template.
First, it is a free template, customizable picasa templates, a 3d picasa template and provides a very fun and intuitive interface for users. According to the Airtight Interactive it can even be called an award winning picasa template, winning a “Favourite Website Award“.
Have a look at the demo Tiltviewer template for picasa album and play around for a while, I am sure that you will enjoy this template.
Guy Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures and co-founder of Nononina (the owner of Alltop.com and Truemors.com). He is also a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. and has authored eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
In this video Mr. Kawasaki, a passionate and lively presenter goes through various aspects of “The Art of the Start”. If you have a moment and thinking about starting a business or are in the middle of building your company I strongly recommend you watch this video. Thanks to Mr. Kawasaki for making this video available in the public domain!
I guess its time for another post, fresh from a seamless install of Google Chrome.
Well, a Google web browser, what I can I say, some of you will say very cool, Google continues to make my life easier by releasing quality products and others may say, yet another hook for Google into my daily life and begin to quiver.
As I mentioned, I installed Google Chrome this AM and even read through their nice little cartoon that tells the Google Chrome story. The book tells the story being Chrome and emphasizes things like the priority of stability, building for compatibility with today’s web apps, security, and simplicity based on completely open source technology. I think the comic book is a great idea!
Anyhow, I have to get to work, download Google Chrome yourself.
I have recently spoken with a couple different small business in the Ottawa area who are looking to increase traffic from Google. While there are many complex ways to increase traffic from Google, there are also some very simple ways to increase traffic from Google that are often overlooked. In a series of blog posts, I am calling “Simple Was to Increase Traffic from Google” I will profile some of these tactics so that you as a small business owner can easily implement to start increasing your traffic from Google.
The first tactic I will profile is getting listed in the “Google Local Business Center“. Any business with a regional location or focus should consider adding a listing to Google through this service. Why, you may ask? It will help customers and prospects find your website, faster and more frequently and the best part is that it is free.
The Google Local Business Center is an opportunity for you to tell Google about your business and link to your physical location. Google will use this information whenever it shows a map of your area.
A searches for “ottawa consultants” in Google. As you can see a Google map was presented with a series of thumbtacks marking the location of various Ottawa consultants as well as more detail about their listing to the right of the map. The second example of how a user may find your local business listing is to navigate through Google maps. As Google maps usages increases more an more users will go to Google maps before the yellow pages or calling 411. Even I have started to use Google Maps on my blackberry as my new source of business information. To see Google maps and local business center in action searching for “Ottawa Consultants” click here.
Ok, so how do you get started? The first step is to create a Google account if you do not have one already.
Next, hit this local business center login page and sign in to your account.
Next, answer Googles basic questions about your business. (Name, Address, Phone, etc)
Google will then ask you to classify you business and then ask you to validate your business via PIN. You can either have the automated system call you and tell you the PIN for instant verification, or choose the SMS or post card options. Once you are validated your listing should begin to show in search results.
Good luck, this is a very simple ways to increase targeted local traffic from Google.
I have started a new ecommerce and online marketing group on Linkedin to connect all of us who are working in related fields in Canada. If you are working in any of the following areas you qualify for this group:
You qualify for this group if you are working for an ecommerce business, an agency or are an independent consultant.
Joining this group will ultimately allow you to connect with thousands of professionals like yourself. You may be able to collaborate on problems to common problems, stay ahead of new technologies, gain insight into what’s working and what’s not from others and you may even uncover ecommerce employment opportunities.
Click here to join the ecommerce and online marketing networking group on Linkedin today.
I am really not sure if this Picasa flash photo template came as a default in Picasa or if I downloaded it somewhere. If anyone knows who developed this flash photo gallery please email me or comment.
Anyhow, this gallery is a very simple mouseover type photo gallery, when you mouse over the navigation icons the photos will slide in one at a time. Its simple and slick. As far as flash photo galleries go, its a good one.
I deployed it as quick as any of the others by exporting the template. Anyhow, I hope this helps you discover yet another Picasa photo gallery. It seems like many users are starting to find the site and are interested in more galleries so I will try to find a new web template photo gallery every couple of weeks and post it.
Click here to see the Shotel Flash Photo Gallery in action.
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