Local search is more or less similar to web search. Google’s Street View cars follow somewhat similar technology that is followed by web crawler Googlebot. Google Maps collect addresses for associating destinations with government offices, parks, landmark buildings and businesses.

Signals for local search ranking

Google has disclosed that it uses three types of signals for local search rankings. These are relevance, prominence and distance. Relevance refers to the keyword matching of a business with the query of a user. Prominence is composed of signals that Google uses to evaluate overall popularity of your company in comparison to similar businesses. Distance is one of the prime local ranking signals for Google Maps. Businesses that are located close to city centers have major advantage over the businesses located further from city.

Need for correction

There are several areas where Google Maps are prohibited from mapping. These areas include private roads, military areas and sensitive areas. There are countries like China that prohibits use of longitude and latitude coordinates within their country for mapping. Driving directions from local search of Street view may begin with instruction like “go east”. Most of us, who are unlikely to carry a compass while driving in a city, may feel confused with such instruction. If you need to rely heavily on Google Maps while driving then you need to consider these factors.

Updating or correcting Google maps is crucial. There are some businesses that are closed or have shifted locations since last update. If these locations feature in the maps while driving then they are likely to misguide the users. Any user facing such problems wasn’t sure how to report it to concerned authority.

GPS Solution

Google came up with a solution for reporting incorrect addresses that uses Social Networking and GPS. Sending observers for updating locations and places is a clumsy and time consuming process. However, this has been simplified with portable navigation system and online mapping services. Many online mapping services provide options for individual users to make suggestions for corrections of maps. These submissions are reviewed and approved by an expert before getting incorporated. Submissions of users who have a history of correct reporting and gained substantial credibility with the mapping service may be approved without review.

Driving directions as ranking signal

In rhythm with such developments there is a growing possibility for including requests of driving directions as ranking signal for some businesses. This is proposed to be done with the help of a framework that takes into account location of a user along with collection of nearby places as arguments for producing ranking of desired places. The framework generates a range of direction queries that are exploited for ranking. This is followed by an algorithm and accompanying data structures that are able to rank places in response to hyper-local web queries. An empirical study is done with very large directions query logs after this. This gives an insight into the potential of direction queries for ranking of places and proposes the algorithm suitable for real web search engines.

Conclusion 

Position of a business plays a crucial role in local search ranking. Google Maps have several challenges regarding updating. Social networking and GPS is playing important roles in updating locations. There has been a growing possibility for considering requests of driving directions as one of the ranking signal.   

About the Author:

Roxanne P. is a Freelance and Staff writer who writes informative & creative articles on Technology for various technology company. Her expertise are in writing articles related to internet providers, broadband , Social media etc.

Filed under: Miscellaneous by Keith
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Social media optimisation is never straightforward. That’s the whole point. You are trying to get your core audience to do your ranking work for you – rather than paying link farms to stuff your site full of inbound links from heaven knows where, you get genuine, solid referrals from actual humans, plus loads of chatter in the social media streams.

The rules haven’t changed – the more content you have out there the more you get indexed; and the more you get indexed the more frequently you hit those coveted top spots. No, it’s the method by which we get there that has altered so drastically. So here’s my short crib guide to getting ahead in social networking:

1: Who Let the Blogs Out?

Blogging is the core content in social media streams. A blog is where you get to express yourself, provide links of your own to other interesting content and deliver information that enhances your customer’s experience of the products you sell and the services you provide. Tweets are great for analysis but unless they go viral they aren’t so great for raising your profile in the right social spheres.

The key thing to remember about blogging is this: people don’t really like it when companies or corporations blog at them. For a while there, we were all convinced that simply entering the blogosphere as “OurCompany” and spamming everyone with a load of corporate sales messages would be good enough. And we found out that it wasn’t.

Quite right too. If we’re going to work the social circles to get more exposure for our brands, let’s at least realise that we have some proper work to do before we get our rewards. The social stream is not like the internet we used to know. It requires genuine engagement, action, reaction and interaction. Otherwise we fail.

2: Give it Away Now

Businesses have to learn to give stuff away for free if they want to get ahead in the social media universe. The internet is all about free stuff – so if you’re not prepared to toe the line then be prepared to get out of the kitchen. Give away resources, links, mentions of other people and thanks to members of your social circle. The more generous you are with other people’s reputations, the better you will be received. An example: I have recently been blogging on behalf of a building company that got such glowing mentions for its work in the social stream of a heated skirting board manufacturer, that it switched all of its supply to the skirting boards in question.

3: Keep an Open Door

Social media is about exclusivity, sure, but it is also about openness. If you are not open to receiving connection from other people in your social circle, then you will rapidly fall out of the picture. You can see this simply by looking at someone’s Facebook activity. A person who uses Facebook every day is bombarded with conversations and links. A person who does not, isn’t – even though they are in the same social circle.

4: Make a Comment Every Day

And that’s a bare minimum. Comments are your calling cards, the things you leave behind to remind everyone else in your social network that you are around. The more positive, relevant and engaging your comments are the better. Do not use comments to plug your brand or product. Someone else’s conversation is their own. You comment to support them and add something valuable to the discourse. Plugging yourself in someone else’s conversation or in a comment is like responding to an update that your best friend is getting married, by inviting everyone to your birthday party. Unforgivable, in other words – and be advised, the social media stream doesn’t forget half as easily as your best friend.

Social media is a whole new world for rankings. You need to unlearn half of what you know and keep hold of the rest – but use it in a different fashion. At least it’s intuitive! And if you do it regularly and well, it is extremely fruitful.

About the Author:

Roxanne P. is a Freelance and Staff writer who writes informative & creative articles on SEO and Social Media for various UK SEO Companies. Her expertises are in writing articles related to on page and off page SEO, social media activities etc.

Filed under: Miscellaneous by Keith
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Apple Inc has sent out invites to media outlets last week and asked them to join for an education announcement in the Big Apple on Thursday, 19 January 2012. While Apple did not disclose the details of the subject, sources close to Apple believe that the company is going to unveil new tools that can be described as “GarageBand for e-books”. The new toolsets are expected to simplify the creation of e-books and based on now defunct iWeb software. According to speculations in media, Apple may also unveil new textbooks that are optimized for iPad in this event. While speculations and expectations keep growing, you may wonder why Apple is so keen about e books!

The background

According to the information available from recently published Steve Job’s biography by Walter Isaacson, this was the pet project of Job. He set his eyes on e books because he felt that the $8-billion dollar business of Apple was ripe to become stagnant. He believed that expanding the app base and simplification of e book creation would give a new impetus to the company. While Apple would not likely foray into content creation but it would strive to bring more textbooks for its users and inspire their creativity.

Rationale for the tools

Apple has so far used ePub2 standard for its iBooks. It added a large number of HTML5 based extension to this standard for inclusion of audio video and limited interaction. Recently updated ePub 3 standard calls for extensions because in most cases the iBook formatted e books are incompatible on other e reader platforms.

Digital books are believed to boost social learning and enable interaction among textbook users. Digital texts would allow students to interact with information in visual ways like graphs, videos and 3D model. It would also allow users to create links to audio, video and additional text and share them with peers. Obviously, there is a huge market of such potential users. Apple is unlikely to miss this opportunity and decided to unveil e book creation tools.

Concept of “GarageBand for e books”

Creating standards compliant e books is not as simple as creating a Word document. The current state of software tools are complicated and continue to irritate the authors and publishers. Several of them have expressed their frustration and are searching for a simple app. They are expecting an app that can simplify the e book creation and make it as easy as creating a song in “GarageBand” app of Apple.

Professionals and experts in the e book industry believe that such a move is very much in synergy with the business plan of Apple. The company has already sold thousands of iPads to several institutions. However, these iPads don’t have much content to offer and currently not in a position to replace the textbooks. Although, Apple is not likely to provide content directly, it is expected to create a user friendly platform to create and publish them.

Conclusion

Apple has been providing industry leading tools like Final Cut Pro and Logic, for creating content. The company has also offered tools like GarageBand and iMovie that simplified creation of music and movies. With a growing competition from Samsung in the business of tablets and smartphones, it has become necessary for Apple to come up with some unique offers. The new set of e book creation tools may be a turning point in the industry.

About the Author:

Roxanne P. is a Freelance and Staff writer who writes informative & creative articles on Television and Technology for various technology related companies including broadband expert. Her expertises are in writing articles related to internet providers, broadband connections, social media etc.

Filed under: Miscellaneous by Keith
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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Ruben Corbo of broadbandexpert.com.

With today’s high-speed broadband Internet providers, browser games have evolved from simple text-based affairs to fully graphical games that can rival even the most sophisticated downloaded games. The real benefit of these games is that because all of the player information is stored online, they can be played from almost anywhere. In fact, if you have a WiFi connection available for your phone or your tablet, they can be played on the go. Check out these top five browser games to see some of the best browser games available.

1. A Mystical Land

(Picture courtesy of OnRPG)

A Mystical Land is a fully 3D MMORPG contained within the browser. Facebook is needed to access the game since it runs on the Facebook apps platform, but the variety of activities that are possible makes this game one of the best to check out for those who want to play something unique. Several different professions are available, including cooking, tailoring and blacksmithing.

The standard fighting monsters and raising skills are available, so those who are familiar with larger MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft or Aion will feel right at home with character creation within Mystical Land. You can interact with thousands of people within the world and even share your accomplishments on Facebook to encourage your friends to play with you. Mystical Land is free-to-play and is one of the best 3D MMORPGs available for browsers.

2. Minecraft

(Picture courtesy of kenming_wang)

Minecraft is a run-away hit indie game with over 4 million players. The game has simple 16-bit graphics but features unlimited worlds for you to eplore and survive within. Often described as virtual legos, players can build houses and cities, spelunk into deep caves to find treasure and even manage livestock and crops. The game can be played directly within the browser or it can be downloaded for even more fun with texture packs and mod support from the community.

The game recently released after having been developed first in a public alpha and then a public beta. The main appeal of the game is the survival mode, where players can build and explore during the day, but when night sets in monsters will spawn and try to invade. Creative mode is also available, which is an unlimited building mode. Instead of gathering resources for projects, creative mode gives you instant access to everything available within the game.

3. Battlestar Galactica Online

(Picture courtesy of PopCultureGeek.com)

The Battlestar Galactica Online MMORPG is based on the Battlestar Galactica series and remains true to the series as much as possible. There are numerous ships and customization options you can apply to your character with massive battles for resources spread out through the galaxy. The story of the game takes place within the show’s second season and explores an untold branch of the story in which the Cylon and Colonial fleets are both stranded.

Players can join either faction in an effort to claim resources in uncharted areas of space in order to help their chosen fleet gain an edge over the competition and prevail once and for all. The game is managed by Bigpoint games and features astounding graphics for a browser game, but players will need fast broadband Internet providers in order to play since the game relies heavily on player versus player combat.

4. Lord of Ultima

(Picture courtesy of UO Journal)

Lord of Ultima is a 2D city-builder strategy game that is based on the still running Ultima Online world. Players are given control of a civilization and must gather resources, complete quests and conquer their neighbors in order to progress. The game is only won by players in alliances that achieve 8 simultaneous goals, so friends in Lord of Ultima is a must. The player community is rather large since it is an EA-backed game. It is based entirely in Java as well, which makes it playable with a mobile browser.

5. Dead Frontier

(Picture courtesy of Wikipedia)

Dead Frontier is a top-down 3D zombie shooter with co-op elements. Players must survive in a post-apocalyptic world infested with zombies. There are safe zones where players can trade and form groups, though traveling through the streets of the city is dangerous. There are numerous classes for players to choose from that are based on real life jobs, such as police officer, fireman, Army officer and doctor. Each of these professions imparts different skill bonuses.

Overall, the types of games that you can experience are varied. RPG and RTS games are definitely the most popular when it comes to browser-based strategy games, but action games like Dead Frontier are becoming more popular. As technology improves, so will the graphics and mechanics used in browser based games.

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website Broadband Expert where you can find broadband internet providers in your area and compare prices on different deals for your mobile broadband needs.

Filed under: Miscellaneous by Keith
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