Secret sources from within the bowels of Apple Inc have today leaked plans for an alternative to the Apple Tablet which was launched today.

The Apple Suppository.

Details of the specifications are yet to be disclosed, but there are rumours that it will have vastly more functionality than products released of a similar size, such as the Shuffle or iRing.

However, critics suggest that Apple have gone one step too far, and that despite the advantages of improved security, this new device is much less accessible and will lack the street cred of the iPod.

Only time will tell.

With the start of a new year comes the start of a new article series. There are so many new articles being published each week that we thought it would be beneficial to have a roundup each week of the most important or popular stories. Each week we’ll bring you five of the latest SEO articles from the blogosphere, and maybe a few extra bits if you’re lucky!

In no particular order…

1. A Decade of SEO

It’s no surprise that one of the most popular SEO articles this week would be a roundup of the decade, but High Rankings really pushed the boat out here. From the year 2000 to 2009, a detailed review of what happened in SEO throughout the last 10 years.

EDIT - Also check out A Decade of Search series from iCrossing.

2. Wikipedia Emerges in Google Maps Results

On Monday this week, Search Engine Land reported that Wikipedia has emerged as a major influence in Google local search listings. Google Maps now pull content from Wikipedia for popular places in order to provide more information on the listings. This may influence listings, as places without articles on Wikipedia may not be prioritised.

3. Getting More from Google Analytics

Everyone loves a good refresher course, and Shark SEO this week provided a great guide to help you get more from Google Analytics. Creating custom reports, goals and segments, it is a must read if you haven’t put much time into Analytics.

4. 2010 Link Building Trends

A guest blog post on Search Engine Land this week explored some of the link building trends of 2010. The article includes some of the link building influences in 2009, with a look at some recommendations and advice for the coming year.

5. Google Caffeine Going Live?

This isn’t necessarily confirmed yet, but Search Engine Roundtable yesterday posted that Google Caffeine results may now be going live. Google announced that it wouldn’t happen until after the holiday period, so the release of Caffeine may be imminent.

Favourite Link of the Week

This was doing its rounds on Twitter this week:

How To Do Onsite Seo – Illustrated By Kittens

Is there a popular SEO article that’s been missed off this list? Please let us know in the comments and we’ll be sure to take a look.

Best wishes from everyone at PushON

xxx

An example taken from the Google blog is below:

The above example shows how potentially useful Browser Size could be in determining the best positioning for important information or purchase links. The best value would be to owners of ecommerce websites, to ensure the maximum amount of visibility is achieved for users.

We ran the PushON blog through Google Browser Size:

The data shows that 90% of users are able to see the full width of the blog, and 90% can see the initial paragraph from the latest blog post. For a blog, the articles are the key information you want to get across to your users, so 90% visibility for the first post is a nice statistic.

Minor changes to the positioning of items can make quite a huge difference, as Google provide an example of increased downloads:

…on the download page for Google Earth, the install rate increased by 10% when we moved the “Download” button 100 pixels upward. We can attribute that increase to users who wanted to try out Google Earth, but didn’t see the button before.

Want to try Browser Size out for yourself? Head over to the following link:
http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

If you receive an email asking you to verify that your adverts are running, check the link it points to – as it’s more than likely an attempt to gain access to your account.

Here’s the email that’s doing the rounds at the moment:

Be careful with email, because it’s very easy to fake the sender address, so if any of the companies that you normally deal with emails to prompt you to log in – then visit the site direct rather than clicking on an email link.  It’s one extra step, but it’s a habit that may save you a huge amount of hassle in future.

It has been unclear as to why Google as taken so long to release the feature as its been one of the most requested by SEO’s in recent years. Up until this point we have had to make do with alternatives such as GA Notes. GA Notes is a plugin for Firefox and in fairness does an ok job. The main drawback to it however is that you can’t view the notes on multiple computers. So for example if you add some notes at home you are not then able to see them at work.

It’s clear that Google has taken this issue into consideration when developing there version as they provide this functionality. Anyone with access to an account can add notes and they can be made either private or public. This is ideal as sometimes you wont want to share certain things with clients however its great that they will be able to see when key changes are made.

Google analytics annotations is also going to be a feature that will greatly appeal to large corporations. More and more big corporations are using Google analytics but with so many different departments workings on a site it can be difficult to track things. Annotations will allow people in different departments to see when different things occured and how they effected the site. It will acts as a type of central repository.

Anyway instead of me banging on about it i will leave it to the guys at Google to explain it in this hand video.

Antony Worrall Thompson has a new range of products produced by Breville, and to encourage pre-Christmas sales, we’re advertising the campaign with a mixture of in-stream, text, click to play and promoted video adverts within YouTube and the Content network. The project has been an interesting one, and because of the recognition and how-to format, we’ve had a really positive response so far.

Antony demonstrates his products with a little plug towards the start of each video, then goes on to guide you through simple Christmas recipes. He covers the essentials, for example turkey, stuffing and roast potatoes as well as some interesting alternatives to the traditional Christmas feast, with Salmon Steaks With Parmesan and an Aromatic Cabbage recipe.

The nice thing about the campaign is that it’s gently commercial, and the recipes are in a similar format to the TV shows that Antony normally appears in, so the content is useful and easily watchable. This makes seeding the campaign and encouraging engagement a piece of cake.

Here are some of the videos from the Christmas recipe series:

If you want to see the rest in the series, pop over to the Breville AWT YouTube channel.

Promoted as a way to have “24-hour a day access to a dedicated assistant who is focused exclusively on your site’s analytics”, Intelligence is aimed at making the job of a web master much easier. The basic premise of this technology is that an ‘alert’ is triggered whenever abnormalities occur in the data that is being monitored. This could be a significant change in bounce rate, spike in new visitors, or your page views increasing by 50% – the alerts are comprehensive.

By default, Google Analytics Intelligence creates alerts whenever there is a significant change in data patterns, but these alerts can be customised in a few different ways. The first, and easiest way, is to alter the ‘alert sensitivity’ sliding bar which is the indicator of how often alerts should be triggered. High sensitivity results in less alerts, and vice-versa.

The second option is custom alerts. Below is a quick setup guide.

1. Go to the Intelligence page and click ‘Create a Custom Alert’.

2. Enter a relevant name for the alert, e.g “10% Bounce Rate Increase”.

3. Leave the ‘Apply to’ field alone, unless you want to apply the alert to multiple analytics profiles

4. Select which period you want the alert to be relevant to. Either ‘day’, ‘week’ or ‘month’.

5. IMPORTANT: Tick the ‘Email me…’ checkbox if you want to be emailed when the alert is triggered. Now move onto the next options.

6. Select which traffic source the alert will be applied to. In this example I’m using “All traffic” – which is self explanatory.

7. For the second drop-down menu, you are selecting which metric the alert will focus on. In this example I have used ‘Bounce Rate’, which then generates fields to its right hand side. I’ve selected ‘% increases by more than’ then ‘10%’ compared to ‘previous week’.

The purpose of these custom alerts is not to do your job for you, but helps to easily identify any abnormalities in traffic without having to manually review the data. Intelligence cannot tell you why these things happened, but allows you identify the areas you need to improve upon (or see how well you are doing, depending on the metrics!). An advantage of this new Google Analytics feature is that it has a back-log of alert data, meaning you can see all of the alerts that have happened in the past.

How will you be using Google Analytics Intelligence?

KAI CARPS ON TWITTER

He’s not even a week old but such is the instant fame of Kai Wayne Rooney that there is even a Twitter page (@KaiWayne) dedicated to his every move.

It’s pretty clear, with only the briefest glance at his profile photo – a tiny Shrek figure in a nappy – that this isn’t a Rooney-sanctioned Twitter page but, so engaging and downright hilarious are the tweets, it already (after just two days) has 160 followers.

For sport pundits and aficionados of comedy it is a must read. At this stage there is no clue who the real author may be – that’s a whole other Twitter debate yet to be acted out – but, whoever the pen-meister behind the page, he’s a comic genius.

Try this on for size……..

“Blimey! Just reading mummy’s copy of ‘Hello’ and learn that Fergie used to be married to Prince Andrew. Like Elton and David I suppose.”

or….

“Really pleased my surname is Rooney and not Ropractor.”

If that doesn’t hit the spot what about……

“Nev’s telling me about the Pally & Bruce era of 94. Funny, I saw Mr Bruce on the telly earlier. I wonder why he ate Mr Pallister.”

or……

“I wonder if David Ngog’s middle name is Wash?”

It’s like a written version of Spitting Image and uses all the old comedy tricks to vividly paint a picture of what life should be like in the Rooney household right now, with added comedy bells.

Now, while there are lots of ‘fake’ celebrity pages currently residing on Twitter, I’m hazarding a guess that this is one which won’t be reported as spam by anyone.

If only, when Kai does eventually get his own social media page, it could be as entertaining as this.

The tabloids need to do a bit of digging and get hold of whoever is behind the page and give them their own column. If the Queen’s reading this – give the man a knighthood. It’s the best thing online by a country mile right now.

I’ll leave you with the Kai tweet that had me rolling this morning.

“Dad, why is mum called Colin? Are you like, one of those new couples?”

Class.

Adam Moss
Brazen News Editor