Google search is making it more difficult to surface iOS applications using typical user queries, like “Whatsapp iTunes,” “Whatsapp iPhone,”  or searches by app name, for example. In the past, this would return a page of search results where the iTunes URL would be ranked highly. Today, those links are further down in Google’s results pages.

In Whatsapp’s case, the iTunes URL doesn’t even appear until close to the bottom of the second page of search results, when logged in while searching for “Whatsapp iTunes,” and it’s at the bottom of page 3 when logged out. It’s even more difficult to find it using “Whatsapp iPhone,” whether logged in or out.

This is but one example, of course.

The search penalty, or search bug if that’s the case, doesn’t seem to affect all apps to the same degree. And the rankings also depend on what search terms are used, and whether the user is signed in.

For instance, while logged in, a search on Google for “Twitter iTunes” returns the iTunes URL in spot #8, below several links to iTunes Twitter accounts. Meanwhile, a search for “Twitter iPhone” returns the iTunes URL in spot #5 (not counting Twitter images results). Previously, the iTunes Twitter URL would rank much higher – often in the top #1 or #2 positions.

But it’s important to note that the above were how apps were ranked while being logged in, meaning signed into a Google account. Because this has long since affected search rankings, we ran the same search as a logged out user. That returns nearly the same in Twitter’s case – #9 (+iTunes) and #5 again (+iPhone).

Still, Twitter’s iTunes URL still appears on page 1 using these queries, which is not bad. However, not all apps are as lucky.

The app search results are very inconsistent. Appending ” iTunes” to the search query often appears to be necessary in order to see the iTunes URL returned to the top spot, which has long been a trick savvy Google users know to use to get the results ranked higher. It’s unclear then, what, if anything, has changed in that regard besides the high-profile examples involving Whatsapp and Twitter above.

Meanwhile, queries for “app + iPhone” are poorly ranked in some cases, while just the app name alone often leads to no iTunes links in top search results, or even top pages.

For comparison’s sake, here are some sample queries, run both while logged in and out of Google. Obviously, if you run the same queries while logged in, your results will differ.

Some of the odder examples are in bold.

“App Name” queries:

• Snapchat: Logged in or Logged out – can’t find iTunes URL after several pages in; while Logged out gave up after page 15
• Flipboard: Logged in – #5 / Logged out – #6
• Tweetbot: Logged in – #6 / Logged out – bottom of page 4!
• Alien Blue (a popular Reddit app): Logged in – not on first 2 pages of results / Logged out - not on first 2 pages of result
• Angry Birds: Logged in – not on first 2 pages of results / Logged out – not on first 2 pages of results

“App + iPhone” queries:

• Snapchat: Logged in – not on first 2 pages of results  / Logged out – near bottom of page 2
• Flipboard: Logged in – #1 / Logged out – #1
• Tweetbot: Logged in – not on first 2 pages of results / Logged out – bottom of page 4
• Alien Blue (a popular Reddit app): Logged in – 2nd link, page 2 / Logged out – 3rd link, page 2
• Angry Birds: Logged in – #1 / Logged out – #1

“App + iTunes” queries:

• Snapchat: Logged in – #1  / Logged out – #1
• Flipboard: Logged in – #1 / Logged out – #1
• Tweetbot: Logged in – #1 / Logged out – #1
• Alien Blue (Reddit): Logged in – #1 / Logged out – #1
• Angry Birds: Logged in – #1 / Logged out – #1

TNW has posted other high-profile examples here, but it’s unclear from the screenshots whether those searches were performed while logged in or out. (Update: spoke to the post’s author, and he confirms they were performed while logged out). 

For most apps, adding “iTunes” works to deliver the iTunes URL results, whether logged in or out. It’s the other types of queries that are difficult, and it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact time when these changes began. Because Google is constantly refining its algorithms, and many users are on Google while logged in, tweaks to search rankings are rarely spotted immediately, unless it’s a case where a URL has been banned entirely, whether or purpose or by accident. (As was the case with Digg, recently).

However, AppsFire co-founder Ouriel Ohayon says while he only first noticed the issue today, he tells us that he was doing some app research on Google two weeks ago, and the rankings were quite different then. Hillel Fuld of Inneractive confirms he’s noticed the same issue for a few weeks now, with fewer and fewer apps appearing in top results, making it more difficult to find the apps he’s searching for using typical queries.

Ohayon says that the changes do matter. “There are still a substantial number of users who use Google for all kinds of search, including their apps,” he says. “It would affect the way people discover apps.”

We’ve reached out to Google for clarification on this, and will update if it offers comment. Currently it’s too soon to call this out as either a new or significant iTunes penalty, despite some odd results and the comments from app industry pros. Reach out if you have more to add.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

If you thought corporate websites were gathering the equivalent of digital dust as marketers moonlight on social media to lure in the punters, think again. According to a new poll of U.S. marketers conducted by Gartner, corporate websites are ranked as the top digital activity for marketing “success” — beating marketing on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Social media marketing, however, ranked as the next most important activity, equal in importance to online advertising.

The survey, conducted in November and December of 2012, polled a relatively small sample of 250+ marketers from U.S.-based companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue, across six industries (financial services and insurance, high-tech, manufacturing, media, retail and healthcare).

Design, development and maintenance of the corporate website was cited by 45% of survey respondents as contributing to marketing success, with marketing on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter cited by 43%. Digital/online advertising was also cited by 43%.  The survey asked respondents to rank different marketing activities first, second and third in importance, collating all three preferences to get the overall percentage. On first place preference, corporate websites came out joint top with online advertising, cited by 18% apiece as the most important activity. Social media slumped in importance on this measure — cited by just six per cent of respondents as the most important activity (and second only to the company blog):

The results indicate that corporate websites still have a key role to play when it comes to marketing a company’s offerings, despite the big role also played by social media. It’s also notable that mobile marketing is still relatively low down the priorities list, with an aggregated percentage of 24%. It’s still far better than the poor unloved (and doubtless rarely updated) company blog, though, with just 6%.

“The survey results suggest that the corporate website will not be displaced anytime soon by a brand’s social media presence,” said Bill Gassman, research director at Gartner, commenting on the results in a statement.

And while the Facebookification of the Web evidently hasn’t replaced corporate websites quite yet, it does pose a challenge to marketers — in terms of making sure dull but worthy sites stand out. Gassman says marketers should therefore be investing in “measuring and optimizing their websites through Web analytics and testing, paying attention to all aspects — from customized landing pages to compelling content that encourages visitors to be engaged with your brand”.

Corporate websites perhaps have a key reputational role to play in the marketing mix, supplementing and underpining social media marketing spending — by providing reassurance of a brand’s professionalism where a Facebook page can provide evidence of user engagement/approval (or otherwise).

In other results from the survey, Gartner found the majority of respondents are spending between 10% and 50% of their marketing budget on digital marketing activities, with the average being a quarter (25%). While digital marketing spending averages 2.5% of company revenue — but budgets are expected to rise to 9%  in 2013.

In 2012, the survey found marketers allocated the largest share of their digital marketing budget (12.5%) to digital advertising, vs. 9.4% to social media marketing activities (the seventh largest share). Mobile marketing took 7.4% of the 2012 allocation.

The top priorities for increased budgets in 2013 are commerce experiences, social and mobile marketing, and content creation and management, according to the survey.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook is far and away the dominant social networking service in the U.S. — used by two-thirds (67 per cent) of online Americans, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, vs. a fifth (20 per cent) who use LinkedIn and 16 per cent who use Twitter. But in a new research report, entitled Coming and going on Facebook, Pew shines a light on a sense of dissatisfaction some Facebookers feel towards the network that has caused them to cut back the amount of time spend on the site or abandon it altogether.

Pew’s report is based on a telephone survey of 1,006 American adults aged 18+ conducted in mid December 2012. Pew says the margin of error for the whole sample is +/- 3.6 percentage points; for the results from 860 internet users in the sample it’s +/- 3.9 percentage points; for the results from 525 Facebook users in the sample is +/- 5.0 percentage points.

Pew’s study found that one in five (20 per cent) online adult Americans who do not currently use Facebook said they have used it in the past — suggesting they have become so dissatisfied with the experience they have given up on it. The number of respondents in this group was too small to assign percentage proportions to their reasons for abandoning Facebook but Pew lists some direct responses showing a mixed bag of reasons — including:

“It’s a gossipy thing.” … “I didn’t like to talk too much.” … “I’m not social.” … “My account was compromised.” … “I got tired of minding everybody else’s business.” … “Not enough privacy.” … “Got too many communications.” … “Takes my time away.”

The research also found that approaching two-thirds (61 per cent) of current Facebook users said that in some time in the past they have taken a voluntary break from the site for a period of several weeks or longer.

Taking a Facebook break

Pew was able to break out proportional responses from this group asking why they felt the need to temporarily stop Facebooking, and by far the largest group (around a fifth of those in the category) said they were too busy/didn’t have time for it. The next two most common reasons were disinterest/dislike of Facebook, and people finding it a waste of time/content being irrelevant. The (relative) good news for Facebook here is that concerns about privacy do not appear to be a big motivator for people falling off the Facebook wagon. The (relative) bad news is that a relatively large proportion of users is evidently finding Facebook time-draining, boring or annoying enough to have given it up for weeks at a time — still, despite a sense of dissatisfaction, these people ended up going back for more.

The full breakdown of the Facebook vacationers’ reasons are as follows:

Less interested than last year?

Pew also asked Facebook users to assess the amount of time they spend on Facebook and its general value to their lives. While the majority (59 per cent) of users said Facebook  is as important to them now as it was a year ago, and 53 per cent said the amount of time they spend using it has stayed about the same over the past year, Pew also recorded “notable numbers” pointing to a decreasing value and decline in usage over the past year. More than a quarter (28 per cent) of users said the site has become less important to them, according to Pew’s study, and a third (34 per cent) said the amount of time they spend on Facebook has decreased over the past year.

Looking at the demographics who are decreasing their Facebook usage, Pew’s study found that the trend to reduce usage was most pronounced among younger age groups, with approaching half (42 per cent) of users ages 18 to 29 and a third (34 per cent) of those aged 30 to 49 saying the time they spend on Facebook on a typical day has decreased over the last year. This compared to just over a fifth (23 per cent) of users aged 50 and above reporting decreased usage over the same time period.

Facebook usage isn’t all in decline of course. Pew found 12 per cent of Facebook users said the site has become more important to them than it was a year ago, and 13 per cent said the time they have spent on it has increased over the past year. Its data also shows that women are more likely than men to report increased importance and greater time spent on Facebook:

Future usage

On the crucial question of future Facebook usage, a sizeable majority (69 per cent) said they plan to spend the same amount of time on the site over the coming year — but, worryingly for Mark Zuckerberg, more than a quarter (27 per cent) said they plan to spend less time Facebooking in future. Of course planning and doing are two separate things but the intention to reduce reliance on Facebook should raise a red flag in Menlo Park. Just three per cent of users said they plan to spend more time Facebooking in the next 12 months. Zuck and co will be hoping the new Graph Search feature – which lets users datamine their friends and friendships — winds up ensuring more users spend more time within its walled garden.

Although a majority of users across age groups anticipate their Facebook usage will remain largely stable in the year to come, according to Pew, again Facebook dissatisfaction is strongest among younger users. Pew found that more than a third (38 per cent) of Facebook users aged 18 to 29 expect to spend less time using the site in 2013. And just one per cent of this age-group plan to ramp up their Facebooking. Around a quarter (26 per cent) of 30 to 49 year olds said they intend to spend less time on Facebook in future.

Commenting generally on the research in an emailed statement, Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project and co-author of the report, said: “These data show that people are trying to make new calibrations in their life to accommodate new social tools. For some, the central calculation is how they spend their time. For others, it’s more of a social reckoning as they ask themselves, ‘What are my friends doing and thinking and how much does that matter to me?’ They are adding up the pluses and minuses on a kind of networking balance sheet and they are trying to figure out how much they get out of connectivity vs. how much they put into it.”

Despite the report highlighting groups of users who have a sense of dissatisfaction with Facebook, Pew was careful to point out that overall the “vast majority” of social networking site users maintain a Facebook profile (92 per cent according to a separate Pew research report).  It also notes that other Pew Internet survey findings underline the continued growth of social networking in U.S. life — with 69 per cent of online adults now taking part in some form of online social networking vs. 47 per cent back in September 2007. Pew also notes that social networking site users are accessing these sites more frequently than in the past: in  November 2012, Pew research found that 41 per cent of social networking site users said they access these sites several times a day — a “statistically significant increase” from the 33 per cent who said they did so in August 2011.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Microsoft announced today its financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2013, and it was an overall strong showing for the company.

The Redmond, Washington-based software giant posted revenue of $21.46 billion and net income of $6.38 billion, with earnings per share of 77 cents. That’s largely in line with what Wall Street had been expecting, though a bit lower on the revenue side and higher on the earnings side — ahead of today’s financial report, the analyst consensus was that Microsoft would post earnings of 75 cents a share on $21.53 billion in revenue.

Today’s results show a nice gain from Microsoft’s results for the first quarter of fiscal 2013, in which the company posted revenues of $16.01 billion and earnings per share of $0.53.

Here are the results in handy graph form, thanks to TechCrunch graphic designer and illustrator Bryce Durbin:

In a statement accompanying the release, Microsoft said that the past holiday season turned out to be the strongest in the company’s history. Additionally, CEO Steve Ballmer was characteristically bullish about the company’s recent performance and future prospects, especially in regards to Windows Phone 8 and the Surface tablet:

“Our big, bold ambition to reimagine Windows as well as launch Surface and Windows Phone 8 has sparked growing enthusiasm with our customers and unprecedented opportunity and creativity with our partners and developers. With new Windows devices, including Surface Pro, and the new Office on the horizon, we’ll continue to drive excitement for the Windows ecosystem and deliver our software through devices and services people love and businesses need.”

Microsoft’s stock price has been climbing over the past two days, apparently in anticipation of strong Q2 results. However, the stock has started to lag a bit in the aftermath of the earnings report: Microsoft’s share price was down 1.5 percent in after-hours trading within the first minutes of the report.

Breaking out the results in terms of company divisions, the Windows Division posted revenue of $5.88 billion, a 24 percent increase year-over-year; the Server & Tools business reported $5.19 billion of revenue, up nine percent year-over-year; the Microsoft Business Division posted $5.69 billion of revenue, a ten percent decrease year-over-year; the Online Services Division reported revenue of $869 million, up eleven percent year-over-year; and the Entertainment and Devices Division posted revenue of $3.77 billion, down eleven percent year-over-year.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook says it intends to put testing of its mobile ad network on hold while it focuses on developing ad experiences within its own mobile apps.

Beginning in September, Facebook worked with a few unnamed partners to allow its unique targeting data to be used for mobile advertising in third-party apps and sites. This added a layer of demographic- and interest-based targeting to traditional mobile exchanges that bid for placements on mobile ad networks.

As AllThingsD first reported today, Facebook is bringing that test to a close some time this month. Facebook said in a statement:

“We are pausing our mobile ads test off of Facebook. While the results we have seen and the feedback from partners has been positive, our focus is on scaling ads in mobile news feed before ads off of Facebook. We have learned a lot from this test that will be useful in the future.”

In June, we discovered the first hints of a Facebook ad network when Sponsored Stories and other Facebook ads began appearing on Zynga.com. Those are still in place, but a new agreement with Zynga means the developer won’t be obligated to put Facebook ads on its site starting March 31.

The end of these two tests suggest a Facebook ad network similar to Google AdSense is farther off than some expected. AllThingsD sources say the company’s conversations with publishers about delivering ads on their sites in exchange for a revenue split have “paused.”

With so much desktop inventory, it might not make sense for Facebook to launch a display network at this time. Instead, it created Facebook Exchange to bring cookie-based retargeting ads to Facebook.com, filling up some inventory. As users shift to mobile, though, Facebook can’t deliver as many ads in its own apps or mobile site without infringing on user experience. That’s where the mobile network test came into play.

But either the results weren’t compelling enough or Facebook isn’t prepared to make the investment it would need to in order to scale the effort. Earlier this month, AllThingsD and Business Insider reported that the social network was considering buying Microsoft’s Atlas platform, which would put the company in a better position to launch an ad network.

In the meantime, Facebook seems to be putting resources toward ads within its own mobile apps and site. We’ve heard from a source familiar with the company’s plans that a new video ad is in the works. Facebook’s new local search and discovery feature, Nearby, also presents a number of interesting mobile ad opportunities for the future.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Be brave, heroes, for the hour is at hand: Google, in their wisdom, is now filtering – or selectively showing – hardcore porn with a bit heavier hand. This means looking up “boobs” on Google brings far fewer bare breasts than before but looking up “orgy facial sex” will definitely bring up some of the sweet stuff.

The change, aimed at returning targeted results, angered Reddit this morning and CNET, stalwart defenders in the search for free porn on the Internet, reported that Google simply tweaked the results of common searches. This prevents wangs from showing up when you’re looking for wieners.

So fear not: this doesn’t mean you’re going to have to switch to Bing to get solid porn thumbnails. It instead means, as our own Darrell Etherington noted, you have to get a little more creative with your search results. In fact, it may be time for the vast majority of searchers to stop looking for “sexy knockers” and maybe, just maybe, refine their sexual vocabulary to reflect the manifold expressions of love, pleasure, and efforts at procreation.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Social marketing startup Unified is launching the newest version of what it calls its Social Operating Platform, and with it a new application called adMonitor.

Unified President and Chief Strategy Officer Calvin Lui (who joined earlier this year) told me that adMonitor should serve as the “system of record” for social ads — in other words, it’s the dashboard where advertisers can bring data from different ad-buying systems together and compare the results.

These systems exist in other forms of digital advertising, but Lui said they haven’t really emerged yet in social. If a brand or an agency wanted to run a campaign today, it would probably work with several different ad companies and compare the results in a “bake off,” but to get the results, it would have to “call all three of them up or log into them separately,” then export the results into Excel and compare them as a spreadsheet. Not exactly the most efficient way to do things.

With adMonitor, on the other hand, Lui said advertisers should get “real-time, normalized access to data across all publishers, across agencies, across all listening vendors they may be utilizing.” In the adMonitor press release, Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at digital agency Deutsch, said, “Unified gives Deutsch the ability to bring order to the complexities of the social media ecosystem.”

Does it create a conflict when adMonitor is essentially reporting on data from Unified’s social ad competitors? Lui countered that adMonitor is really just providing transparency, but he also acknowledged that some customers might say, “Hey, we don’t want you to be a player in the bake off and be the referee in the bake off.” If some businesses want to use adMonitor but not Unified’s ad-buying tools, or vice versa, that’s fine too, Lui said.

Other new features include the Brand ROI Timeline, which visualizes the results of a company’s various social marketing campaigns over time, and the Amplet Builder, a self-serve tool for creating the Amplets that Unified launched earlier this year. Amplets allow companies to promote ads and content across Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and YouTube simultaneously, and Lui pointed out that they were recently used by the sf.citi group as part of the successful campaign in support of San Francisco’s Proposition E, in particular promoting the group’s tech-focused video. (You can see the Amplet below the video in the screenshot above.)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Personal care company Kimberly-Clark is ready to share some of the results it’s seeing from a campaign for its Huggies diapers that it ran with social marketing company SocialTwist. According to Dan Kasten, who leads shopper marketing at Kimberly-Clark, the campaign resulted in the company’s highest digital engagement rates ever.

The program focused on moms, presenting them with offers on the Huggies website, Facebook, email, and elsewhere. (You can view a sample offer here.) The offers had a clickthrough rate of 56 percent and an email open rate of 55 percent. They drove 630,000 visitors to the Huggies website and resulted in increased awareness among an estimated 3.5 million consumers.

Kasten told me that the results are a sign that “social sharing is one of the next big waves coming through the industry,” and that the only real “speed bump” that Kimberly-Clark faced was having to increase nventory due to high demand for the offers. The company is looking to expand its marketing efforts with SocialTwist beyond Huggies, he added.

The campaign ran from March 24 to May 25 of last year. (So why are the companies only talking about the results now? Uh, good question.)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The new new iPad hits stores Friday, but an early Geekbench benchmark reveals some interesting details. Apparently, at least per this one-off report, the 4th generation iPad uses a dual-core ARMv7 CPU with 1GB of RAM. Not surprisingly, this results in benchmark scores better than those earned by the iPhone 5.

The iPad (4th gen) and iPhone 5 seem to share the same amount of RAM; the CPU configuration is slightly different between Apple’s two flagship devices. The iPhone 5 uses an ARMv6 CPU running at 1.3GHz, which is better suited for a smartphone-type device. Although it’s not clear at this point which ARMv7 is inside the iPad (4th gen), the benchmarks speak for themselves: it’s more powerful.

The latest iPad thoroughly trumps the previously called New iPad, which runs a dual-core A5X running at 1GHz. The 3rd generation iPad scored 791 in Geekbench where the 4th generation earned a 1757, besting the iPhone 5′s 1571 score. Since the iPad mini uses a dual-core A5 of unknown clock speed, its score will likely be around that of the 3rd generation iPad.

[via SlashGear]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Apple is holding its fourth quarter conference call on October 25, according to an announcement from the company. The call will take place at 2:00 P.M. PT/5:00 P.M. ET, and will provide another early glimpse into how the iPhone 5 is doing since the quarter ended in September.

You can follow the conference call live at Apple’s events site, but we’ll also be bringing you the results and a wrap-up of the call.

Already, some analysts have been making predictions about the company’s Q4 results. Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu shared numbers that see around 27 million iPhones being sold in the September quarter, for instance, buoyed by the iPhone 5. He said in the note that despite lukewarm reviews, Apple’s sales tend to be brisk quarter after quarter, and should remain so once again.

Revenues for Q3 totaled $35 billion, and Apple brought in $8.8 billion in quarterly net profit.That led to a $9.32 earnings per diluted share. Apple somewhat under-performed compared to a lot of very high analyst expectations for the quarter, but blew past its own conservative estimates.

iPhone sales that were down compared to first and second quarter numbers had a lot to do with performance coming in under Wall Street expectations. We’ll see if this time around, those sales buoy back up or remain slower overall since the iPhone 5 was only introduced late in the quarter.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch