I love infographics, for obvious reasons. One, they are easy to scan, read and understand. Two, from a marketing and publishing perspective, infographics are easy to pass around, retweet and can go viral. Here is one I saw today on Darren Rowse’s Twitip on the History of Twitter’s Valuation . This is hot hot stuff 
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Twitter Valuation
To connect its Local Business Center with the millions of people who use Google every day to find places, Google is renaming the Local Business Center to Google Places . Google recently introduced Place Pages to help people make more informed decisions about where to go – from restaurants and hotels to dry cleaners and bike shops. Google Place Pages connects users to the best sources of information across the web – information that include photos, reviews, real-time updates and various promotional offers by business owners. Google was quite successful with its implementation of the Place Page. In fact around 4 million businesses have already used it and claim for their individual Place Page on Google through the Local Business Center which starting today is now labeled as Google Places. Despite the change in the service’s name, Google will continue to provide the same tools offered by Place Pages and the Local Business Center. In line with the renaming of the Local Business Center to Google Places, Google has also rolled out several new features of the service. Service areas : If you travel to serve customers, you can now show which geographic areas you serve. And if you run a business without a storefront or office location, you can now make your address private. A new, simple way to advertise : For just $25 per month, businesses in select cities can make their listings stand out on Google.com and Google Maps with Tags . As of today, we’re rolling out Tags to three new cities — Austin, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. — in addition to ongoing availability in Houston and San Jose, CA. In the coming weeks we’ll also be introducing Tags in Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder and San Francisco. Business photo shoots : In addition to uploading their own photos, businesses in select cities can now request a free photo shoot of the interior of their business which we’ll use to supplement existing photos of businesses on Place Pages. We’ve been experimenting with this over the past few months, and now have created a site for businesses to learn more and express their interest in participating. Customized QR codes : From the dashboard page of Google Places, businesses in the U.S. can download a QR code that’s unique to their business, directly from their dashboard page. QR codes can be placed on business cards or other marketing materials, and customers can scan them with certain smartphones to be taken directly to the mobile version of the Place Page for that business. Favorite Places : We’re doing a second round of our Favorite Places program, and are mailing window decals to 50,000 businesses around the U.S. These decals include a QR code that can be scanned with a smartphone to directly view the mobile Place Page for the business to learn more about their great offerings. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Renames its Local Business Center to Google
As announced a few weeks ago, Google has now included the iPad as one of the devices that you can target specifically with your AdWords ad campaigns as Google has added it to the list of mobile devices that supports ad campaign targetting. The process is pretty simple. Just edit the “Devices” section in your AdWord Campaign Settings and Select the iPad under the “Advanced device and carrier option.” You need to select the iPad as one of the devices even if you have previously selected other mobile devices such as the iPhone or Android. Likewise, if your device settings are set for desktop and laptop computers only, your ads won’t show up on the iPad devices. Google is also reminding apps developers and owners that iPad apps can be promoted by directly linking to the download URL in their ads. This would enables iPad users to download the apps directly from the ad itself. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Officially Enables iPad AdWords
If you visit Facebook or YouTube during official hours while in the your offices, well – welcome to the club. I do that too. And guess what? It looks like everyone else are doing the same thing as study shows that both Facebook and YouTube are getting heaps of traffic from business sites. SC Magazine UK is reporting that according to the study made by Network Box, 6.8% of business internet traffic now goes to Facebook. Google sites grabs around 3.4% of all traffic, Yimg (Yahoo’s image server) gets 2.8%, Yahoo 2.4% and DoubleClick 1.7%. These are based on the analysis of 13 billion URLs used by businesses in Q1 2010. Online video consumption in the workplace is also eating up business bandwith according to the report. YouTube videos is using up 10% of all corporate bandwidth, followed by Facebook taking 4.5% of all bandwidth used. Windows update, Yimg and Google follow with 3.3%, 2.7% and 2.5% respectively. Network Box internet security analyst said that the findings of their study clearly show that IT administrators have more reason to be concern about the amount of social network use in the workplace. ” There are two real concerns here: firstly that employees will be downloading applications from social networks and putting security at risk; and secondly the amount of corporate bandwidth that appears to be being used for non-corporate activity,” said Herron. So, if you’re one of us who consistently check Facebook and YouTube while in the office – hope that our bosses won’t read this news. Or if they do and they decide to ban Facebook and YouTube in the workplace, we can always argue that we’re visiting Facebook for “business networking” purposes and YouTube for the sake of occupational learning . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . NSFW: Facebook, YouTube Are the Most Visited Sites at
Google has again proven its might as it reports its Q1 2010 revenue growth at 23% compared to the same period in 2009. Total reported revenue for the quarter ending March 31 is at $6.77 billion. Traffic Acquisition Cost (TAC) amounted to $1.71 billion or 26% of advertising revenues. Despite suffering from a decline in stocks prices, Google however managed to beat the Wall Street expectations. Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google has issued the following statements regarding their first quarter financial report. “Google performed very well in the first quarter, with 23% year over year revenue growth driven by strength across all major verticals and geographies,” said Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google. Some key highlights of Google’s Q1 2010 Financial Report are as follow: Revenues – Google reported revenues of $6.77 billion in the first quarter of 2010, representing a 23% increase over first quarter 2009 revenues of $5.51 billion. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting TAC. Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated revenues of $4.44 billion, or 66% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2010. This represents a 20% increase over first quarter 2009 revenues of $3.69 billion. Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.04 billion, or 30% of total revenues, in the first quarter of 2010. This represents a 24% increase from first quarter 2009 network revenues of $1.64 billion. Paid Clicks – Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 15% over the first quarter of 2009 and increased approximately 5% over the fourth quarter of 2009. Cost-Per-Click – Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 7% over the first quarter of 2009 and decreased approximately 4% over the fourth quarter of 2009. TAC – Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $1.71 billion in the first quarter of 2010, compared to TAC of $1.44 billion in the first quarter of 2009. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 26% in the first quarter of 2010, compared to 27% in the first quarter of 2009. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Off to a Great Year, Gains $6.7 Billion in