Internet

Foursquare partners with Gnip to sell its worldwide real-time check-in data

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web...

Posted by Dr. Pete The long-awaited Penguin 2.0 (also called "Penguin 4") rolled out on Wednesady, May 22nd. Rumor has been brewing for a while that the next Penguin update would be big, and include significant algorithm changes, and Matt Cutts has suggested more than once that major changes are in the works. We wanted to give the dust a day to settle, but this post will review data from our MozCast Google weather stations to see if Penguin 2.0 really lives up to the hype. Short-Term MozCast Data First things first - the recorded temperature (algorithm "flux") for May 22nd was 80.7°F. For reference, MozCast is tuned to an average temperature of about 70°, but the reality is that that average has slipped into the high 60s over the past few months. Here's a 7-day history, along with a couple of significant events (including Penguin 1.0): By our numbers, Penguin 2.0 was about on par with the 20th Panda update. Google claimed that Penguin 2.0 impacted about 2.3% of US/English queries, while they clocked Panda #20 at about 2.4% of queries (see my post on how to interpret "X% of queries"). Penguin 1.0 was measured at 3.1% of queries, the highest query impact Google has publicly reported. These three updates seem to line up pretty well between temperature and reported impact, but the reality is that we've seen big differences for other updates, so take that with a grain of salt. Overall, the picture of Penguin 2.0 in our data confirms an update, but it doesn't seem to be as big as many people expected. Please note that we had a data collection issue on May 20th, so the temperatures for May 20-21 are unreliable. It's possible that Penguin 2.0 rolled out over two days, but we can't confirm that observation. Temperatures by Category In addition to the core MozCast data, we have a beta system running 10K keywords distributed across 20 industry categories (based on Google AdWords categories). The average temperature for any given category can vary quite a bit, so I looked at the difference between Penguin 2.0 and the previous 7 days for each category. Here they are, in order by most impacted (1-day/7-day temps in parentheses): 33.0% (80°/60°) – Retailers & General Merchandise 31.2% (81°/62°) – Real Estate 30.8% (90°/69°) – Dining & Nightlife 29.1% (89°/69°) – Internet & Telecom 26.0% (82°/65°) – Law & Government 24.4% (79°/64°) – Finance 23.5% (81°/65°) – Occasions & Gifts 20.8% (88°/73°) – Beauty & Personal Care 17.3% (70°/60°) – Travel & Tourism 15.7% (87°/75°) – Vehicles 15.5% (84°/73°) – Arts & Entertainment 15.4% (72°/62°) – Health 15.0% (83°/72°) – Home & Garden 14.2% (78°/69°) – Family & Community 13.4% (79°/70°) – Apparel 13.1% (78°/69°) – Hobbies & Leisure 12.0% (74°/66°) – Jobs & Education 11.5% (88°/79°) – Sports & Fitness 7.8% (75°/70°) – Food & Groceries -3.7% (70°/73°) – Computers & Consumer Electronics Retailers and Real Estate came in at the top, with just over 30% higher than average temperatures. Consumer Electronics rounded out the bottom, with slightly lower than average flux, oddly. Of course, split 20 ways, this represents a relatively small number of data points for each category. It's useful for reference, but I wouldn't read too much into these breakdowns. "Big 20" Sub-domains Across the beta 10K data-set, we track the top sub-domains by overall share of SERP real-estate. Essentially, we count how many page-1 positions each sub-domain holds and divide it across the entire data set. These were the Big 20 sub-domains for the day after Penguin

Sony and Lego research leads to DualShock-controlled minibots

Jennifer Lopez launched a new mobile brand aimed at the Latino market that she describes as the first social shopping and social commerce environment in wireless.

SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 24, 2013

The latest Chrome beta for Android integrates Google Translate support directly into the browser, just like it does with its desktop counterpart. Originally posted at News - Business Tech

Who needs Miracle-Gro when you've got Twitter? The Digital Capabilities garden responds to live tweets by revealing hidden areas of exotic foliage. Originally posted at Crave

Last year at I/O we launched Mobile App Analytics, a re-imagining of app analytics from the ground up, speaking the language that matters to app developers and marketers. Since launch, the insights provided are already helping hundreds of thousands of app developers and marketers create more successful Android and iOS apps and experiences by measuring metrics at all stages: acquisition, engagement and outcomes like in-app purchases. This year at I/O, our team continues to improve mobile analysis with two announcements: Mobile App Analytics Play Integration and Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps. These updates, to be available for all users shortly (with links below to help you get on early whitelists) will let you better measure a mobile world and use your data in more ways to improve the customer experience. Better understand the total picture of your app users with Google Play Integration We’re excited to announce a long-anticipated integration of Mobile App Analytics more deeply with Google Play. It’s especially exciting for app developers and marketers because it’s the first time we’re presenting a complete view of the Play acquisition funnel in one clear, easy to understand report. The data sources you’ll be able to see include: Google Play traffic sources: understand which traffic sources and Google search keywords account for most new users. Campaign sources will help you refine your app marketing mix in order to focus on those campaigns and programs that bring the highest quality traffic. Google Play views: at the very top of the app funnel, you’ll want to understand clearly how many views your app is receiving in Google Play from each campaign or source. Installs: installs simply shows the number of users who actually installed your application from Google Play. It’s useful here to determine which sources are successful at driving installation. New users: beyond installs, new users shows you how many users actually launch your application. This is a key metric to see even beyond installations and tracing the path up the funnel. As this report is using flow visualization, you can also select any path you wish to analyze further which will highlight that path and present useful data points along the funnel such as drop off rate. Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps Ever want to make a small tweak to your mobile application but your users have already downloaded your app? Ever forget to add analytics to a key event until it’s too late? Shipping your app usually means you have one chance to get it right, and that’s not the best way to build a business. With Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps launching in beta, you can dynamically configure your mobile applications on Android and iOS server-side. You can hone your app for various audiences, and you’ll never get caught by old versions or forgetfulness again. Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps uses Google Tag Manager’s sophisticated rule-based serving engine and easy-to-use management interface to make it a snap for developers to make changes to their applications, even after an app has been downloaded by users. Now changing the configuration of your application or rolling out a new feature is as easy as going to the Google Tag Manager web interface, changing a couple of values, and then pressing a Publish button. Changes go live in seconds. You can configure virtually anything in your application: from ad values such as frequency and duration and UI settings like colors and layout, to time-based events such as in-app promotions and special events. Sign up for the whitelist to be among the first to try out GTM for Mobile (you’ll need to first visit the Google Tag Manager site and create an account if you haven’t already). We’re excited to continue to push the envelope with what analytics can do across devices and platforms and cater to developers with to

The roster of companies interested in acquiring a stake in Hulu is growing. In addition to The Chernin Group (in partnership with Providence Equity), Guggenheim Digital, DirecTV and Time Warner Cable — whose bids were reported on Thursday night and Friday morning — Yahoo, private equity firm KKR and talent agency William Morris Endeavor (in partnership with Silver Lake) have also placed bids, according to AllThingsD and Bloomberg. AllThingsD reported earlier this month that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had met with Hulu executives, but after the company dropped $1.1 billion on Tumblr and another several million for gaming platform PlayerScale earlier this week, it seemed that the company might not go ahead with a bid. But that appears not to be the case — and even after the Tumblr acquisition, Yahoo has around $4 billion in cash to spend. Read more...More about Yahoo, Hulu, William Morris Agency, Time Warner Cable, and Directv