Facebook Growth

Facebook  grew 40% over the last year, while its biggest competitor, MySpace, saw a 6% drop in visits since June 2007. Source

Google Commands 69% of U.S. Search

Google gained market share over competitors yet again now commands more than 69.17% of U.S. searches. Read more

Firefox 3 sets record

Firefox 3 made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with 8,002,530 downloads. Mozilla had set itself a goal of only 5 million downloads. Source

Google’s Ranking Algorithm — Version 2

SEOmoz.com published the second version of Search Engine Ranking Factors, the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the field of organic search engine optimization. This is arguably the industry’s best view into Google’s unpublished ranking algorithm.  Pundits estimate 90-95% of the knowledge required about Google’s algorithm is contained within this study.

Google Now 65% of U.S. Searches, Up 5% YOY

Google now accounts for 65.1 percent of all US searches, while Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 21.2 percent, 7.1 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively, according to MarketingCharts, citing Hitwise.

The remaining 46 search engines it tracks accounted for less than 2.0 percent.

Designing Above the Fold: Does it Matter?

Above the fold design can give you up to a 5% lift, but only if you don’t bend other quality design principles. Below the fold, size doesn’t matter — users will scroll if they are engaged. A scrolling page with clear messaging is better than “squeezing” content above the fold.

The Truth About Page Download Time

A site’s download time doesn’t seem to impact it’s usability. Sites that are easy to use, fun and professional are perceived as being fast, whereas time stretches out like taffy when you have a painful customer experience. Source

Quick Enter a Google Calendar Event

A cool tip I’ve overlooked until recently. While you’re in GCal, press the q key to summon a single field to enter an event. Best of all, GCal understands natural language like “tomorrow at 2PM.” Not using Google Calendar? Get it at Google Calendar

5 Factors for High Performing Landing Pages

Marketing Experiments Journal has made a number of A/B tests on landing pages (the pages people land on after clicking ads or search result links).They found that landing page performance can be improved by the following principles.

Google Fights Paid Links With Pagerank Penalty

In a long anticipated move, Google is now taking action to web sites who provide paid links. Google doesn’t penalize the relevancy of the site in search, but rather, hits the sites in their pocketbook by penalizing their page rank. If the site has low page rank, which is generally a requirement of paid link services like PayPerPost.com, then the site starts to lose out on advertising dollars.