DISC Inc

April US Social Networking Traffic Down 16% from '07\n\nThe market share of April US visits to a custom category of 57 of the leading social-networking websites increased 3 percent from March - but was down 16 percent from April 2007, Hitwise reports - via MarketingCharts. MySpace.com led in traffic, receiving 73.82 percent of the market share of US visits in April.\n\nhitwise-social-network-sites-traffic-market-share-april-2008.jpg\n\n * Facebook ranked second by the market share of visits, with 14.80 percent, followed by MyYearbook, which received 1.33 percent.\n * US traffic to MySpace and Bebo, among the top 5, decreased 5 percent and 13 percent, respectively, compared with April 2007.\n * MyYearbook had the largest gain in market share in April 2008, increasing 475 percent compared with April 2007.\n * Facebook and BlackPlanet followed, increasing 32 and 15 percent, respectively.\n\nNew and Returning Visitors\n\nhitwise-social-network-sites-returning-traffic-april-2008.jpg\n\n * Among the top five social networking websites by market share, MySpace received 95 percent of its visits from returning visitors in April.\n * Facebook and MyYearbook.com followed with 93 percent and 90 percent, respectively, of traffic returning from within the previous 30 days.\n\nTime Spent on Network\n\nhitwise-social-network-sites-time-spent-april-2008.jpg\n\n * In April, the average time spent among all social networking websites increased 73 percent compared with April 2007.\n * Among the top five most-visited websites, MyYearbook led with users spending an average of 32 minutes and 54 seconds on the website.\n * Facebook had the largest growth in average time spent, increasing 57 percent in April 2008, to 20 minutes and 52 seconds, from 13 minutes and 19 seconds in April 2007.\n\nHitwise, a subsidiary of Experian, has issued a social networking report, "The Impact of Social Networking in the US," analyzing which industries are most affected by social n

The funny thing about duplicate content is that you don't really have to have it for it to appear as if you do have it. But whether you have duplicate content on your site or not, to the search engines appearances are everything . The engines are pretty much just mindless bots that can't reason. They only see what is, or appears to be there and then do what the programmers have determined through the algorithm. How you set up your internal linking structure plays a significant role in whether you set yourself up to appear if you have duplicate content on your site or not. Some things we do without thinking, setting ourselves up for problems ahead. With a little foresight and planning, you can prevent duplicate content issues that are a result of poor internal link development. For example, we know that when we link to site.com/page1.html in one place but then link to www.site.com/page1.html in another, that we are really linking to the same page. But to the search engines, the www. can make a difference. They'll often look at those two links as links to two separate pages. And then analyze each page as if it is a duplicate of the other. But there is something we can do with our internal linking to alleviate this kind of appearance of duplicate content. Link to the www. version only Tomorrow I'll provide information on how to set up your site so when someone types in yoursite.com they are automatically redirected to www.yoursite.com. It's a great permanent fix, but as a safety measure, I also recommend simply adjusting all your links internally to do the same. Example of not linking to www. version. In the image above you can see that the domain contains the www., but when you mouse over any of the navigation links, they point to pages without the www. Even if you have a permanent redirect in place, all the links on your site should point to the proper place. At the very least you're making the search engines and visitors NOT have to redirect. At best, should y

I noticed CNN uses some capital letters and sometimes whole words in capital in their URL. Here is what I thought of the advantages and disadvantages and please feel free to share some more ideas. The advantages: # You make the word stand out # Some search engines might put more emphasis on those words The disadvantages: # It makes it more difficult for users to type in the URL or suggest the link via phone. # It may confuse users, making them think URL's like domains are not case sensitive at all. webing #:3652026 6:04 pm on May 16, 2008 (utc 0) i thought urls were not case sensitive? i just tried my domain name in capital letters and it redirected me to the non capital letters so i do think domains are not case sensitive. sorry if i'm completly wrong ^^. pageoneresults #:3652029 6:10 pm on May 16, 2008 (utc 0) You know, its funny you should start this topic. I was just getting ready to do a full blown topic on Pascal Casing and "visual" marketing advantages. I started a topic back in 2007 September here... Domain Names and Pascal Casing http://www.webmasterworld.com/domain_names/3457393.htm No, domain names are not case sensitive. These past 12 months I've been on a mission and changing everything to Pascal Casing when it comes to domain names. Its much easier to read and separate words and it just looks nicer. I've been experimenting with this and it works. Google AdWords is a great place to test the effectiveness of Pascal Casing. What's really cool is that you can literally change your hard coded references to Pascal Casing and when you hover over them, they show lower case. Its a browser feature I guess. I never gave it much thought until this past year when I started my changes. I've also gone one step further and use Pascal Casing in full addresses. We have a rewrite in place that forces lower case so we can do pretty much whatever we want with the URI and file naming. [edited by: pageoneresults at 6:11 pm (utc) on May 16, 2008] ted