Google announced several important changes to its product search feed specification this week. If you’re an Internet retailer and use Google Product Search as a channel to promote products, the developments should be top of mind. The changes relate primarily to providing shoppers with more accurate and “fresher” information. Google is now requiring merchants to show availability of products, include the appropriate Google product category, and is making the image link mandatory as well. For retailers selling apparel, merchants will need to include information such as size and color as well as for whom the product is designed (age and…more»

Last week was a busy one for Google, and summer vacationing Webmasters may have missed the global release of +1 buttons to Google search sites, as well as the introduction of the Google+ project. Both are key elements to Google’s social networking initiative, designed to compete directly with Facebook by making it easier for users to connect with friends and colleagues online. The +1 button aims to bring recommendations from friends and trusted contacts into actual Google searches – potentially giving it similar weight for marketers as the Facebook Like button. Google may make up for being late to the…more»

Web recommendation site StumbleUpon has created a new widget designed to help keep users on the websites they visit. Called StumbleUpon Widgets, the new tool involves embedding a small box on a page that will include links to other content on the same site. The company claims that the service refers more traffic to external websites than any other social media organization outside of Facebook. “The widget is a way for us to offer people a better way to see curated content on a specific website that other users have surfaced,” explains Marc Leibowitz, vice president of business development at StumbleUpon. “The…more»

DesignPax is a new on-demand design model that creates websites, banner ads and social media designs such as Facebook and Twitter landing pages for Web marketers in less than 48 hours. Founded by former Advertising.com executive Ayal Ebert, DesignPax is experiencing significant growth in its first year and includes Adroll, Retargeter and MyBuys as clients. The fastest-growing service provided by DesignPax is the company’s seamless creation of Facebook pages for Web marketers, accounting for 15 to 20 percent of the firm’s overall business since launching in June 2010. DesignPax is creating an interface that will allow customers to order the…more»

The people behind location-based shopping application Shopkick are offering local merchants in select cities free installation of Shopkick signal boxes that integrate with its revolutionary walk-in rewards loyalty program. Interested merchants in Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, New York, Seattle and Washington D.C. should apply before July 1. In particular, Shopkick is looking for new retail stores, coffee shops, bakeries and yogurt shops to join its growing network of partners. Sponsored by Citi, the promotion will welcome the first 1,000 small local businesses into a program already being utilized by major retailers such as…more»

LinkedIn, the Web’s largest social network for business professionals, today announced the launch of a new integration with SlideShare which will enable content marketers to share presentations (e.g. slideshows, documents and videos) on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn Share button has been added to SlideShare content, facilitating sharing throughout the LinkedIn network. The content that is shared is then visible to connections in their update stream and across the LinkedIn site, including through LinkedIn Signal. SlideShare has had a formal relationship with LinkedIn for a long time, but this feature certainly carries the potential a great deal of immediate value to users…more»

Google has been focusing heavily on mobile and local search recently and released two features today which help further its prominence in these arenas. Google added new “shortcuts” (see image below) to commonly searched local categories e.g. restaurants, bars, coffee shops, on the mobile Google homepage. Selecting these icons will send the visitor to a results page which displays a map with markers of the users current location and nearby places. Users will be able to scroll through the results while the map remains constant at the top of the page and will adjust to the listing being viewed. Other…more»

Businesses on the Web looking to move beyond their walls and info pages on Facebook now have the opportunity to add custom tabs that reward fans with exclusive brand content. Fan Tabz is a new social marketing application from Fan Appz that empowers businesses to create multiple Facebook tabs with just a few clicks, including campaign-specific tabs for sweepstakes or promotions, custom welcome pages, fan-only wall tabs and more. Key features include the following: •    Ease of Use: Get Fan Tabz up and running with just a few clicks, then use the tab creation wizard to create and launch your…more»

The Time Has Come to Increase Your Time on Site Most online marketers and website owners tend to measure the success of their online business by the amount of traffic they are able to generate (and, of course, revenue). While increasing the number of unique visitors is most definitely important (and something that everyone should be concerned with), it is arguably only half the battle. Unique visitors and visits alone should not be the only means by which you are measuring success. It is easy to understand that there is little in the way of benefit from attracting a visitor…more»

Reposted from Website Magazine. In lieu of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) downtime over the past several days, optimizing websites for high performance in the cloud may seem a bit too risky for many Internet businesses.  Yottaa however believes differently, today launching a new Web performance optimization service which aims to help improve website speed and development through a variety of techniques including domain sharding, CSS spriting, and CDN balancing. “Web-based businesses understand that visitors to their sites have a ‘need for speed,’ but many are held back by the complexity and expense of manual optimization,” said Coach Wei, Yottaa’s…more»