Google to Glass Contest Participants: Pay Up

Interested in being a Google Glass early adopter? Submit your application to the contest going on right now. Glass, a mobile device developed by Google, can shoot video, take pictures, and look up information online. It’s worn like glasses and comes with a tiny screen. Glass responds to voice, touch, and head movements.

Folks of voting age, and living in the United States, have until February 27 to participate in the Google Glass competition. There is a social media application to submit — only through Google+ or Twitter, no Facebook applications accepted! — and $1,500, plus tax, to pay. Seems like a pretty steep price, and not very much in the spirit of contest fun, but perhaps Google is trying to weed out the uncommitted (or poor) right from the start.

At least the required application “essay” is mercifully short, it has a 50-word limit, though photos and videos are also being accepted. The prompt is simple: tell Google what you’d do with Google Glass and remember to follow +ProjectGlass or @projectglass.

Incredibly, there are other expenses to incur if you really want to be a Google Glass Explorer/early adopter. The device must be picked up at specified locations in New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. The contest’s substantial expenses jar and are out of character for Google, a company known the world over for its “perks” culture. If price is no impediment, or you’re just curious, read contest details here: http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-to-get-one/.

Read More:

http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-to-get-one/

Google’s New Disavow Links Tool announced at Pubcon

Article by Pierre Zarokian, CEO of SubmitExpress.com

Last week I attended Pubcon Las Vegas 2012, one of the biggest webmaster trade shows of the year. I came back with thought-provoking and entertaining stories to share. One of these involved Google’s new link removal tool, Disavow Links.

Here’s what happened. The day before Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, delivered his keynote address at Pubcon, I ran into him in the hallway of the show. I brought up the difficulty of removing bad links pointing to our company’s clients — even after strenuous outreach, many website owners will not respond to requests to remove such links. I asked Matt Cutts what Google could do about the matter. Matt asked me if I thought a “link removal tool would be good,” and after I mentioned that Bing had had the tool for over six months, and that many in the SEO community were asking for it, Matt said that he would pass on my suggestion to his team.

That was October 15th; on the 16th, Matt Cutts held a keynote speech at Pubcon, and Google officially released its Disavow Links Tool. It is especially welcomed by those adversely affected by Google’s Penguin Update. Still, Google is advising caution: if you disavow the wrong link, it will take weeks to “reavow” it. Google is also suggesting that you try contacting the owners of the links you want removed before turning to Disavow Links. Access the tool by going to http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2648487 and check out Cutts’ video about it below.

Google Penguin Update Interview With Our CEO Pierre Zarokian

Pierre Zarokian, CEO of Submit Express, was interviewed by Murray Newlands at LeadsCon Las Vegas 2012. The interview touched on the Google Penguin update and other trending topics in the world of search engine marketing. See the interview for yourself to get the lowdown on diversifying your lead generation strategies, the uptick in purchases of existing Web sites and expired domain names, and the growing importance of getting the “age factor” into brand-new sites.

Video:

Pierre Zarokian Breaks Down Negative SEO for SEO-News

Today, SEO-News.com featured an article written by Pierre Zarokian, CEO of Burbank’s own Submit Express. The article, titled “How to Protect Your Site from Negative SEO," provided a primer on negative SEO and the ways site owners could escape (or recover from) its nefarious effects. To find out more about how to prevent lowered search engine rankings, go to http://www.seo-news.com/how-to-protect-your-site-from-negative-seo/ to read the full article on the SEO-News website.

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http://www.seo-news.com/how-to-protect-your-site-from-negative-seo/

Details on the Recent Google Penguin & Panda Updates

In a new article published in SearchEngineWatch.com, Submit Express CEO Pierre Zarokian sheds light on Google’s most recent algorithm changes, Panda 3.5, 3.6, and the Penguin update.

Available on May 11, Insights From the Recent Penguin & Panda Updates provides valuable information about the latest algorithm updates through in-depth analysis of the sites that have been affected by the changes. The article also offers useful white hat techniques for recovery after the updates. Valuable and insightful, Zarokian’s article is a must-read for SEO professionals, site owners and web developers.

Google’s Nonstop Social Misadventure

Google’s uneven foray into the social Web has left it vulnerable to thrashings in a remarkable number of spheres. Once unshakable, the giant is currently taking heat from national and international government, employees and market rivals, and from an increasingly discomfited public.

Although people’s wholehearted embrace of Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube, which the company acquired in 2006, is a strong buffer against new vulnerabilities, it’s uncertain how long it will hold up. Individuals, American attorneys general, and the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) have all been expressing heebie-jeebies about Google’s 2012 privacy changes and the social network Google+ was not that big of a splash. People aren’t using it like they are Facebook, and James Whittaker, a top Google engineer who just quit, published a blustery letter singling out Google+ as a failure for the company as product, and as a vision.

Buzz, the company’s disastrous social Web experiment brought in a 2011 settlement with Federal Trade Commission on charges of deceptive practices. Now, the FTC has opened another investigation into possible violations of that settlement after Google was found to have bypassed security settings to track the Web activities of millions by implanting stealth tracking codes into Safari browsers. The newest tracking fiasco originated in the rollout of the +1, a “social layer” added to Google Search last year.

Google already accepted that the violations occurred, but defends itself by saying they were “inadvertent.” If that’s found to not be the case, the fines for the violations could be astronomical: millions were tracked and the cost per violation, per day is $16,000.

Read More:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304692804577283821586827892.html

New Search Tool Out as Social Web Tells Google: “Don’t Be Evil”

Download the “bookmarklet” released today by an ad-hoc group of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace, and you might get better search results from Google.

Last week, Google announced that information from its fledgling social network, Google+, would be surfaced in its search results all while effectively suppressing data from other competing, and much more popular, networks. Google claims the suppression (unfair censoring?) is unavoidable because it could not adequately index data from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn due to their reluctance to publicly share all their data.

Understandably, the folks behind the other networks — which do actually supply a significant amount of public data — were miffed. But they took quick, and pointed, action. The bookmarklet that’s now available, and which has Google’s famous motto for its name, “Don’t Be Evil,” uses Google’s own search capacities to demonstrate how the current setup of data suppression is avoidable, after all, and how the dominant force in search is using its brute force to manipulate results in a way that serves its own interests.

If you want to use the tool, go to http://www.focusontheuser.org/ and download it.

So far, only one name from the group of engineers is known: Blake Ross, a co-founder of Firefox who’s currently Facebook’s Director of Product.

Read More:

http://www.focusontheuser.org/

http://allthingsd.com/20120123/facebooks-blake-ross-leads-dont-be-evil-effort-to-restore-diverse-social-results-in-google-search/

Is Google Stretching Its Monopoly’s Muscles?

Perhaps all that’s missing from the Larry Page photo you see below really is an old-fashioned top hat, a curlicue moustache, and some coattails before the familiar figure of Rich Uncle Pennybags emerges. Since Google’s announcement earlier this week that material posted on its new social network, Google+, will be given a prominent position in the results of its more-than-iconic search engine, peers, observers, and rivals (understandably) have been crying foul.

Critics of Google’s latest move to “socialize” company products have decried what they perceive to be Google’s flexing of its monopoly muscles. That’s because the company has what some term a “natural monopoly” in the area of Web search — its dominance is beyond dispute. Google’s derided and “risky” move is being attributed to company brass becoming nervous on account of the heat it’s currently feeling from Facebook and Twitter — the giants of the new Social Web. Either to thwart its rivals, or because it really doesn’t feel capable of successfully embedding the social material of other networks at the moment, Google will not be “surfacing” social postings from Facebook or Twitter in the same way as it will being doing with Google+’s.

In a statement, Google defended its actions by saying:

“Google does not currently have access to fully crawl the content on some sites, so it’s not possible for us to surface all that information. Ushering in the new era of social and private data search will take close cooperation, and we hope other sites participate.”

Read More:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/google-adds-posts-from-its-social-network-to-search-results/?ref=technology

Britney Spears, Google+’s Ashton Kutcher

Britney Spears has done it again, and this time there’s no need for cloying interjections, the newly engaged singer gained the distinction of being the first person on Google+ to reach one million followers. Ashton Kutcher shares the same honor, but on a different network: Twitter.

There seems to have been a very concerted effort on behalf of Spears’ management to ferry her across the magic threshold because, as many have been pointing out, there’s an enormous section on her official homepage existing for the sole purpose of enjoining visitors to follow her on Google+.

Despite the still-somewhat uncertain merit of making it big on Google+, at least at this particular instance in time, the triumphant score will be something a great many Britney fans will be cheering. The Google+ achievement can certainly also be credited to her enduring popularity, and perhaps, also, to the nostalgia people feel for the era she defined. Critics and skeptics, as if we needed a clue, will no doubt patter on and on about the lack of competition from other major stars that Brit faces in the network that has been out only since the summer.

Either way, seems Google+’s tech adoring users have a soft spot for a singer.

Read More:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397948,00.asp

Britney Spears Beats Larry Page as Google+’s Most Followed Person

Tonight, Katy Perry may be “giving thanks” in grand style with a free concert in L.A.’s Staples Center, but this Thanksgiving Eve, Britney Spears received an unexpectedly special gesture of thanks from her own fans. As of today, they’ve managed to propel her to the very top of Google+ popularity, which means she’s wrested the top spot from Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and CEO. And, that’s not to pile on faint praise on the often controversial singer. Larry Page himself had to contend with taking the top spot from Mark Zuckerberg, his social networking nemesis, a few months ago.

Although this remains good news for Britney, it’s spelling out even better news for Google’s honchos, including Page. As industry writers have been diligently pointing out, riding the high popularity crests of Google+ had been limited to consummate tech-ists like Page and Zuckerberg for a while. Sure, these folks are celebrities, but they’re mostly extolled by the extant and proudly persnickety gaggles of technophiles out there. That these divergent groups are growing at astounding speed no one doubts, but it must be pretty reaffirming for Google that its social network is finally becoming, as some put it, “normal,” thanks to the stronger showing of mainstream celebrity following. Snoop Dog currently occupies third place on Google+.

Read More:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/11/britney-spears-best-thing-happen-google/45374/

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