Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts

Rearrange your Google+ Circles

google-circlesGoogle+ users can now choose any order for their circles. The ability to reorder Google+ circles, was a feature widely requested by the Google+ users. Engineer , working on Google+ project explains that to rearrange you Google+ circles, all you have to do is to move to the Circles Tab and click and drag any of the circles to your desired location.

The best part of this new feature is that, once you rearrange your circles, you will notice the change on the list of circles on the left of your home page. This change will also be visible in the drop down menu, that appears when you are adding someone to your circles.

reorder-circles

This is a minor feature added by Google, but its good that Google is taking customer requests into account and adding features that are widely demanded by users.

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+1s (Plus One) On Sale Online

 1Its hard to imagine that the number of +1s for a post or article wouldn't be one of the factors to determine its search rankings. Specially with the +1 button placed right next to the Google search results. SEO companies have, in the past, experimented and seen positive impacts of tweets on search rankings. In fact the staff at seomoz have already done an experiment to see the impact of Google+ vs Twitter on search rankings.

Various sites, just in the last 2-3 days have stated selling +1 votes at different rates for a set of votes. Just search for “Buy Google Votes” and numerous results will be returned of sites selling +1 votes. manuallinkbuilding.co.uk, googleplus1supply.com and plussem.com are just a few of them.

The sites claim that Google is not likely to know about who is clicking the plus one button. To take plussem as an example—the site states that all of the plus ones will come from 50 different accounts worldwide depending on how many URLs are submitted to them.

It also claims the following:

  • All +1′s come from people with a Google account that has been verified by phone (Phone Verified Accounts).
  • All +1′s come from real people. No bots are being used!
  • All +1′s are being given by manually going to your website and clicking the +1 button.
  • It’s untraceable because the +1′s are being given from different IP’s.
  • All +1′s are given dripped over a couple of days so it looks natural.

One thing is for sure—although, using this approach many will see a positive impact on their search rankings, particularly the early experimenters, but any mistake on the part of the websites offering the service could hamper the search rankings, specially if Google could come up with a system to tackle this.

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Google Plus makes Gender a Private matter

genderUsers no longer need to disclose their gender on their Google Plus Profiles. The new privacy feature was added by Google+ after users requested it. Gender can be a sensitive topic, especially on the internet, says Frances Haugen, a Google product manger working on Google Profiles.

One of the things for which Google+ uses gender related information is picking pronounce. For users that decide to make their Gender related information private, Google will use gender neutral language to describe them to anyone who encounters Gender related information about them but doesn't have the permission to see their gender. For example Google will use “Craig added you to their circles” instead of saying “Craig added you to his circles”, she explains.

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Google Plus could reach 20 Million users by the weekend

Google hasn't revealed any official figures yet as to the size of the current user base of it's newly launched Social Platform: Google Plus.  According to an estimate by Paul Allen, the founder of ancestry.com, Google+ could reach 20 million users by this week end if invites to the network remain open.

google-plusPaul Allen, in a stream update said that he uses a technique called surname-based analysis where he uses the US Census Bureau data about surname popularity in the U.S, and compares it to the number of Google+ users with each surname. Since Google+ is open to users worldwide, he splits the U.S. users from the non-U.S. users.

He suggests that by using a sample of 100-200 surnames, he is able to accurately estimate the total percentage of the U.S. population that has signed up for Google+. Then  use that number and a calculated ratio of U.S to Non-U.S users (1 U.S user for every 2.12 non-U.S users) to generate the worldwide estimates.

“Since I have been tracking this same cohort of surnames from my first day, I am able to accurately measure growth over time”, he says.

There is now doubt that the Google+ user base is growing incredibly fast and it could well be the fastest growing social platform yet.

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Google Plus for brands and businesses expected later this year

Google has announced that it is working on an optimized Google+ experience for businesses and is asking brands to hold off on getting their business identity on Google+ just yet.

In a post accompanied with a video, the product manager for Google Plus, Christian Oestlien revealed that a team of engineers at Google+ is working on creating a unique experience for businesses that includes things like rich analytics and the ability to connect to other parts of Google that business might use, like Adwords,

google-plus-platformThe Product Manager in his post states that: “The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles”

Google, however intends to do a testing prior to launch by selecting and creating profiles for a small group of businesses, brands and other entities and see how people interact with them using various Google+ features. It has also opened up a form, which businesses and other non-user entities can fill out if they wish to take part in the testing process.

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100 Most followed people on Google Plus

Isn't it an irony when your competitor is the most popular person on a service launched by you? Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook invaded Google’s newly launched social network when he signed up to keep tabs on his new competitor.

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