Entertainment Culture Articles & Expert Advice

What’s the Point of Creating a Feed-Generated Online Newspaper?

March 5, 2012 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

Paper.li is an information aggregation site that let’s people create their own online newspapers from sources that they create or choose. Back in September I created my own online newspaper via the paper.li system and watched it for a few days, but then left it alone and forgot about it.

I revisited it today and really like the updates they’ve made to the system. I like the ability to embed the paper into your own site, which I’ve done with My Daily Web Thoughts on this blog. They have also created a Facebook tab app that allows you to create a tab on your fan page that also displays your “online newspaper”. I also like the bookmark feature that allows you to add items to your daily newspaper as you see them while browsing the Web. The main thing that I thought was missing before was an easy way to manually add content to each edition. The + Paper.li button fixes that issue.

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Filed Under: Social Media

Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 234×60 Half Banner

February 1, 2012 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

Image by Stephen Edgar - Netweb via Flickr

As we delve further in this series of posts on Google AdSense ad sizes, we’ll explore the less used and alternate versions of Google AdSense banners. The AdSense 234 x 60 – Half Banner is found in the “Other – Horizontal” category, after the four main recommended sizes. While this ad unit is in the Delisted Standard Ad Unit sizes on the IAB Ad Unit Guidelines, it can be found as a recommended size in the Microsoft Advertising Standard Ad specs. I think the reason for the difference is that the IAB creates standards for agencies and other large advertisers, while AdSense and Microsoft Advertising also provide marketing channels for smaller businesses and publishers.

The 234×60 – Half Banner is very useful in side columns, especially near a navigation menu or under a larger square or rectangle ad unit. I have also seen it used in the footer of a website or blog.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing

Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 468×60 Banner

January 31, 2012 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

Ah, the original banner ad. Now relegated to the description of 468×60 – Banner in the ”Other – Horizontal” category of AdSense, it is the original banner ad that showed up all over the Internet in the late 90′s and early 2000′s. This ad unit is the grandfather of Internet banners. The 468×60 reigned supreme in the days of 640×480 and 800×600 screen resolution, but has given way today to leaderboards and skyscrapers with the advent of larger screen sizes.

When was the last time you saw the small version of the classic banner ad? No, really. I have searched and searched across sites for examples to put in this article, but haven’t been able to find any on major sites anywhere. I did find a few smaller sites that still use the 468×60 banner, but they also plaster ads all over the page – not really the type of advertising you want to be associated with.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing

Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 160×600 Wide Skyscraper

January 30, 2012 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

The Wide Skyscraper works well in a side column

The wide skyscraper is another ad unit that has taken over as one of the most prevalent ad units visible throughout The Internet. This ad size is recommended by all of the major ad networks, including Google AdSense, Microsoft Advertising and the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau). Unlike most of the square ad units, the skyscraper is designed for very specific locations, as it is very tall and thin, although not as thin as its predecessor, the 120 x 600 – Skyscraper. The skyscraper is very useful for small columns, or rails, on your site, under menus, categories, tags or other, similar list-type content.

Because of this, the 160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper has become harder to find, as wider screen have allowed the navigation columns to expand to 250 or 300 pixels, accommodating the larger square ad units. However, a lot of properties are starting to put the Wide skyscraper next to a list or menu in the wider columns that are now found in most modern layouts.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing

Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 728×90 Leaderboard

January 28, 2012 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

728x90 Leaderboard on the home page of WebMD

Ah, the Leaderboard – it is the younger, flashier cousin to the original 468×60 banner and is now widely used throughout the Internet. While the 728×90 – Leaderboard is one of the standard recommended AdSense ad sizes by Google, it is also a standard size recommended by Microsoft Advertising (Bing/Yahoo!) and the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau).

When used in AdSense, the 728 x 90 – Leaderboard ad unit can contain either text ads or image/rich media ads and is intended for the very top or bottom of a site and doesn’t usually fit in the constrained area of a blog content area.

An example of the text version of the AdSense Leaderboard can be found below. Leaderboards typically contain graphic banner ads and not text ads as shown in this example. However, if you click on the text (not the link) in the banner above and move your mouse to the right, the content area should scroll and you’ll be able to see the rest of the text that Google puts into the text version of the 728×90 Leaderboard in AdSense.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing

Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle

January 27, 2012 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

AdSense 336x280 Large Rectangle Example

Google’s second recommended ad unit size for AdSense is the 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle. This ad unit size is not listed in the most popular sizes on the Yahoo! Ad Network, but is on the listed in the Microsoft Advertising PubCenter for ad publishers for small businesses, but not in the Standard Ad Creative Acceptance Policy for Marketers & Agencies. On the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Ad Unit Guidelines, this size is listed in the Delisted Standard Ad Units as of February 28, 2011.

While this size is available in AdSense for both text and image/rich media ads, it seems that this size is used mainly for small publishers and due to it’s size, is commonly used to take up a large area of the content. Google offer examples of the 336×380 Large Rectangle and they are all embedded in or below the content.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing

Exploring Standard Ad Unit Sizes: Google AdSense 300 x 250 – Medium Rectangle

January 26, 2012 By Jonathan Jeter 2 Comments

CNN Web page has 300x250 Display Ad in the right sidebar

This is the first of a series of posts on Google AdSense ad sizes. The main reason I’m doing this is for my own reference. There won’t necessarily be any great insight or advice on how to use these ads. It is mainly a test environment so I can see all of the current AdSense options in action.

Four Recommended Ad Sizes

AdSense has four main recommended AdSense ad unit sizes, which are the following:

300 x 250 – Medium Rectangle
336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
728 x 90 – Leaderboard
160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper

The 300×250 – Medium Rectangle

This ad can contain either text ads or banner ads. This ad unit can be seen throughout the Internet on web sites everywhere and is not only the main recommended size by Google AdSense, but also by the Yahoo! Advertising Network, Microsoft Advertising and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing

Strategic Use of User- Generated Content for SEO

November 15, 2011 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

By Michael DeHaven, Group Product Manager, SEO, for Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice manages User-Generated Content (UGC) for over 1300 brands.

Compared user reviews from the audience for a chocolate caramel square to the marketing text on the package. Some negative and positive reviews.

User-generated content

80%-90% of UGC on major brand web sites is actually written by users.

Language styles – the words that you typically think of (or marketers think of) are totally different than what actual users write when writing reviews.

7 Principles of User Generated SEO

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Don’t forget the fundamentals of SEO – UGC will not fix a site with poor SEO
Search engines get bored – they want new stuff. By leveraging UGC, you can keep content fresh.
The Primanti Principle – a primanti sandwich has French fries in it. You want to have the right amount of fries. The same applies to search.

Filed Under: SEO

Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

November 15, 2011 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

By Shari Thurow, Funder and SEO Director of Omni Marketing Interactive

What is duplicate content? Search engines don’t see layout, just copy. Exclude our site search via robots.txt and meta robots tag to avoid submitting duplicate content to Google. Duplicate content is not considered spam, but it can be penalized. The biggest issue, however, is usability. IMPORTANT NOTE: Duplicate content is not penalized, it’s filtered out of the SERPs.

How do search engines filter out duplicate content?

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Crawl time filters (duplicate URLs)
Index-time filters
Query-time filters

Index-Time Filters

Broilerplate strippings (search engine removes broilerplate elements to determine the content fingerprint)
Linkage properties (# of inbound and outbound links)
Host name resolution (what domain resides on which ip address?)
Shingle Comparison (Andre Broder – Google Scholar and shingles)

Every Web document has a unique content signature or “fingerprint”

Filed Under: Web Development

Technology: Are There Really Any New Ideas?

March 3, 2011 By Jonathan Jeter Leave a Comment

I was recently introduced to “The Machine Stops,” a science fiction short story written by E.M. Forster in 1909. It’s interesting to me that most of the technologies that we take for granted these days, instant messaging, The Internet, television, were written about over a hundred years ago. It also makes me question the patent system, when authors have been writing on possible inventions for years, but then someone comes along later and patents something that is already an idea in the public domain.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against patents, but I am against what the U.S. Patent System has become, where companies buy and sell patents like stocks. Yes, ideas are currency and they should be protected, but patents shouldn’t be issued for things that are expected to occur or have been predicted for years.

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