SEO India, SEO Consultant

Google announced the addition of +1 button data to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. These new metrics can show you how the +1 button actually affects the traffic to your site.

In WMT, there is a Search Impact report, which shows how +1′s affect your organic search traffic. “You can find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out,” says Google software engineer Dan Rodney. “Do this by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations. We’ll only show statistics on clickthrough rate changes when you have enough impressions for a meaningful comparison.”

An Activity report shows how many times your pages have been +1′d, from buttons on your site, as well as on other pages like Google Search.

An Audience report will show you aggregate geographic and demographic data about who is using the +1 button with your content. Google only shows this info, however, when a “significant” number of users have +1′d pages. They don’t say what number they consider “significant” to be.

Users will find a +1 Metrics menu on the side of the page, where each of these reports will be able to be found.

@googleanalytics
Google AnalyticsTrack your +1s in Google Analytics and Webmaster Toolshttp://goo.gl/2547K 1 hour ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

Google is also showing how users share content using other buttons with Social Plugin Tracking in Google Analytics. This includes a Social Engagement report, which shows how site behavior changes for visits that include clicks on +1 buttons and other social buttons. “This allows you to determine, for example, whether people who +1 your pages during a visit are likely to spend more time on your site than people who don’t,” says Rodney.

Also included are the Social Actions report, which tracks the number of social actions taken on your site, and the Social Pages report, which lets you compare pages on your site to see which are driving the most social actions.

“Over the next few days (and if you’re using the default version of the latest Google Analytics tracking code), if you’ve added +1 buttons to your site we’ll automatically enable Social Plugin Tracking for +1 in your account,” Rodney says. “You can enable tracking for other social plugins in just a few simple steps.”

Google has introduced a U.S. Presidents Showcase to map the birthplaces of all 44 presidents to celebrate President’s Day (also know as Washington’s Birthday).

In Google Earth, users can see a progression of the states that voted during each president’s election (shaded in red).

Other features as highlighted in the Google Lat Long Blog include:

*Explore the White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and other historical monuments in 3D and have students explain how architecture is used to honor people, concepts and establishments

*View a 3D model of Valley Forge National Park in Google Earth

*View a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln and map the areas where slavery ended, as well as the areas that were not initially covered by this executive order

*Discuss the famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by German American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze and use the ruler tool in Google Earth to measure the width of the Delaware River

Let the Browser Wars continue unabated!  Google Chrome saw its tenth incarnation delivered in beta format today, and the search engine company — is that even accurate anymore — is boasting about some major speed improvements for the ever-gaining Chrome browser.

Over at the Google Chrome blog, the browsing speed improvements have been posted, and they are impressive.  However, speed isn’t the only thing Google’s excited about.  Synchronization of user information is another big component, as Google’s efforts to be the web user’s one-stop site for damn-near everything continues; not that you can fault them for this approach.

Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft all have similar ideas.

As for the increased browsing speed, especially in relation to Javascript and GPU-related improvements, the entry has more:
With a new speed boost that we previewed in December, Chrome’s JavaScript engine V8 runs compute-intensive JavaScript applications even more quickly than before. In fact, this beta release sports a whopping 66% improvement on the V8 benchmark suite over our current stable release.

This release also includes a preliminary implementation of GPU-accelerated video. Users with capable graphics hardware should see a significant decrease in CPU usage. In full screen mode, CPU usage may decrease by as much as 80%! This means better battery life so you can keep going and going like that pink bunny in the commercials.
The Chrome developers have also introduced some other features, of which, they document in the following video:

Anyone who’s interested in what Bing will do next can perhaps relax.  Rather than make onlookers fight for every scrap of information, the organization seems to be tending towards openness, announcing today that it will back a sort of multimedia series called “The Future of Search.”

A post on the Bing Search Blog explained, “Here at Bing we don’t claim to have all the answers – but we know that together we can dream up something big and different.  To that end, we have teamed with the folks at O’Reilly Radar . . . .  Their editors will be curating multiple themes including social search, natural language, and ‘the web of things’ that explore what the industry sees now, and where it might be headed.”

Then the post continued, “Here’s how it works: every 3-4 weeks, the channel will feature a theme and a variety of videos, writings, and discussions on that theme so as to elevate the search discussion beyond market share, the feature of the week, or dwelling on past trends.”

Important Microsoft employees, including Principal Researcher Susan Dumais and General Manager Sean Suchter, should participate in the series and share their thoughts.

Obviously, this probably won’t extend to sharing corporate secrets, but it should give everyone a good idea of the official Bing stance on different subjects.