Normas de las promociones
Fecha de la última revisión: 1 de diciembre de 2010
Estas Normas de las promociones, junto con la Declaración de derechos y responsabilidades, las Normas de publicidad, las Normas de la plataforma y todas las demás políticas de Facebook aplicables, rigen la comunicación de cualquier sorteo, concurso, competición u oferta similar (denominados "promoción") en Facebook, así como la administración de los mismos. Por “sorteo” se entiende una promoción que incluye un premio y un ganador seleccionado al azar. Por “concurso” o “competición” se entiende una promoción que incluye un premio y un ganador seleccionado por demostrar una habilidad, es decir, a través de una valoración basada en criterios específicos.
Además de tomar otras medidas, podemos retirar cualquier material relacionado con una promoción, o desactivar una página, aplicación o cuenta si determinamos, según nuestro criterio, que se está incumpliendo cualquiera de nuestras políticas.
1. Promociones administradas en la plataforma de Facebook
No se puede administrar una promoción a través de Facebook, sino mediante una aplicación en la plataforma de Facebook. La administración incluye el control de cualquier elemento de la promoción, como la recopilación de participaciones, la realización del sorteo, la valoración de las participaciones o la notificación de los ganadores.
Los siguientes requisitos se aplicarán a cualquier promoción que se administre mediante una aplicación en la plataforma de Facebook.
1. Sólo se permitirá que los usuarios participen en la promoción en las siguientes ubicaciones:
1. En la página principal de la aplicación.
2. En el espacio de la aplicación de una pestaña de una página de Facebook.
2. Se deberá incluir la siguiente información:
1. Junto a cualquier campo de participación en la promoción: "Facebook no patrocina, avala ni administra de modo alguno esta promoción, ni está asociado a ella. Estás proporcionando tu información a [destinatarios de la información] y no a Facebook. La información que proporciones sólo se utilizará para [fines para los que se utilizará la información de los usuarios]."
2. En las bases de la promoción:
1. Una desvinculación total de cada participante con respecto a Facebook.
2. Indicación de que Facebook no patrocina, avala ni administra de modo alguno la promoción, ni está asociado a ella.
2. Restricciones generales
Las siguientes restricciones se aplicarán a cualquier promoción que se comunique en Facebook o se administre mediante una aplicación en la plataforma de Facebook. La comunicación de una promoción implica promocionarla, anunciarla o hacer referencia a ella de cualquier forma en Facebook, por ejemplo, en anuncios, páginas o actualizaciones de estado.
1. Puede solicitarse a un participante que haga clic en "Me gusta" en una página, indique que se encuentra en un lugar de Facebook o se conecte a una integración con la plataforma antes de facilitar toda su información para participar en una promoción. La participación en la promoción no deberá estar supeditada a la realización de otras acciones en Facebook: por ejemplo, hacer clic en "Me gusta" en una foto o actualización de estado, publicar comentarios en un muro o cargar una foto.
2. No se indicará directa o indirectamente que Facebook patrocina o administra la promoción, ni que está asociado en modo alguno a ella.
3. No se utilizará de modo alguno el nombre, los nombres comerciales, marcas comerciales, copyrights, ni ningún otro derecho de propiedad intelectual de Facebookô en las bases u otros materiales relacionados con la promoción, excepto en los casos que se exponen a continuación.
1. Para informar del requisito de hacer clic en "Me gusta" en una página, indicar que el usuario se encuentra en un lugar de Facebook o conectarse a una integración con la plataforma, según lo permitido en la Sección 2.1.
2. Si se administra la promoción a través de una aplicación en la plataforma de Facebook, se puede hacer alusión a Facebook de las siguientes formas:
1. "Puedes participar en la promoción a través de la aplicación [nombre de la aplicación] en la plataforma de Facebook. También puedes encontrar la aplicación en la pestaña [nombre de la pestaña] de la página [nombre de la página] de Facebook."
2. Para cumplir las obligaciones de la Sección 1.2.2.
4. La comunicación de una promoción en Facebook o la administración de la misma está prohibida si:
1. La promoción se ofrece a menores de 18 años.
2. La promoción está abierta a individuos residentes en un país que se encuentra bajo el embargo de Estados Unidos.
3. La promoción, si se trata de un sorteo, está abierta a individuos residentes en Bélgica, Noruega, Suecia o la India.
4. El objetivo de la promoción es promover alguna de las siguientes categorías de productos: juegos, tabaco, armas de fuego, medicamentos con receta médica o gasolina.
5. El premio o parte de él incluye alcohol, tabaco, lácteos, armas de fuego o medicamentos con receta médica.
6. La promoción es un sorteo cuya participación está sujeta a la compra de un producto, la realización de una tarea prolongada u otro tipo de condición.
A continuación se ofrecen algunos ejemplos para ayudar a comprender la aplicación de las Normas de las promociones:
No se puede: Condicionar la participación en la promoción a que los usuarios aporten contenido en Facebook, como publicaciones en el muro de una página, cargas de fotos o publicaciones de actualizaciones de estado.
Se puede: Utilizar una aplicación de terceros para condicionar la participación en la promoción a que un usuario aporte contenido en la aplicación. Por ejemplo, se puede administrar un concurso de fotografía en el que, para participar, los usuarios tienen que cargar fotos en una aplicación de terceros.
No se puede: Administrar una promoción en la que los usuarios participen automáticamente al hacer clic en "Me gusta" en una página, al indicar que se encuentran en un lugar o al conectarse a una integración con la plataforma.
Se puede: Solicitar a los participantes que hagan clic en "Me gusta" en una página, indiquen que se encuentran en un lugar o se conecten a una integración con la plataforma antes de facilitar toda su información, como su nombre o sus datos de contacto.
No se puede: Notificar a los ganadores a través de Facebook, por ejemplo, a través de los mensajes, el chat o las publicaciones en perfiles o páginas de Facebook.
Se puede: Recopilar direcciones a través de la aplicación de terceros de la promoción para contactar con el ganador por correo electrónico o correo postal.
No se puede: Instar a los usuarios (en las bases o en cualquier otro lugar) a que creen una cuenta de Facebook para participar en la promoción.
Se puede: Instar a los usuarios a que visiten la aplicación de terceros para participar en la promoción (tal y como se describe en la Sección 2.3.2.1). Puesto que los usuarios deben disponer de una cuenta de Facebook para acceder a una aplicación de la plataforma de Facebook, al dar esta instrucción, se solicitará a los usuarios que creen una cuenta de Facebook si no disponen de una.
25 de marzo de 2011
17 de marzo de 2011
The perils of being anti-social
"Is social media a fad or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?" asks Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics. Consider these statistics he presents, and my analysis of them, and then decide how connected you should be. Hint: Your company website alone is no longer enough!
As of 2010, Generation Y -- those born between 1980 and 2000 -- outnumbers baby boomers. And 96 percent of them have joined a social network! There was no initiation, no dues, no recommendations. Just a few taps on the keyboard and voila! Instant connection to friends and family, immediate information sharing, finding the child who sat next to you in kindergarten story-time.
As technology improves and changes, it also changes the way we live. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users. It took TV 13 years, the internet four years and iPod just three years.
Perhaps the star of the social media show is Facebook, which added 100 million users in just nine months and now has over 500 million users. Not bad for a company that began in a dorm room. If Facebook were a country, it would have the third largest population behind only China and India. The fastest growing segment of Facebook is women ages 55-65. (The jury is still out on how many of those womens’ children have accepted a "friend" request from their mothers.)
We no longer search for the news; the news finds us. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily. In the near future we will no longer search for products and services. They will find us via social media.
One out of eight couples married in the United States last year met via social media. Generation Y and Z -- the youngest techies, born after 1995 -- consider e-mail passé. In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to incoming freshmen.
For those who prefer their communications in 140 characters or less, a Twitter account is a must. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama. Approximately 80 percent of Twitter usage is on mobile devices people update anywhere and anytime. The apps for Black Friday sales changed the way shoppers planned their retail strategy. On the downside, imagine what an unfavourable tweet means for bad customer experiences.
As a business person, I often wonder how we functioned before LinkedIn. One of the most remarkable employment statistics I discovered while researching my last book, Use Your Head To Get Your Foot in the Door, is that 80 percent of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees. Remember the advertising slogan "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?" That's a little misleading, because it also stays on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, My Space, YouTube or any other social media you use.
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. It contains 100 million videos and receives two billion viewers each day. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles. A whopping 70 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds have watched TV on the web, while only 33 percent have ever viewed a show on DVR or TiVo. And 25 percent have watched a video on their phones in the last month. With a growing number of e-readers, 35 percent of book sales on-line are for the Kindle. Some publishers estimate that eBook sales will reach 50 percent in the next five years.
There are over 200 million blogs, and 54 percent of bloggers post content or tweet daily. Without knowing who or what organization is actually behind the blog, here are some facts to consider:
* 34 percent of bloggers post opinions about products or brands.
* 78 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations.
* Only 14 percent trust advertising.
Successful companies in social media have learned the importance of listening first and selling second. Qualman says, "They act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertisers." Social media represent a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. To stay current -- and competitive -- in business, don't be a "twit." Put on your best "face" and "link" into these tremendous opportunities.
Mackay's Moral: If you want to have the world at your fingertips, brush up on your "social" skills, social networking that is.
Reference: Harvey Mackay's Column This Week
Recommended by Martí Jimenez Novita Capital
As of 2010, Generation Y -- those born between 1980 and 2000 -- outnumbers baby boomers. And 96 percent of them have joined a social network! There was no initiation, no dues, no recommendations. Just a few taps on the keyboard and voila! Instant connection to friends and family, immediate information sharing, finding the child who sat next to you in kindergarten story-time.
As technology improves and changes, it also changes the way we live. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users. It took TV 13 years, the internet four years and iPod just three years.
Perhaps the star of the social media show is Facebook, which added 100 million users in just nine months and now has over 500 million users. Not bad for a company that began in a dorm room. If Facebook were a country, it would have the third largest population behind only China and India. The fastest growing segment of Facebook is women ages 55-65. (The jury is still out on how many of those womens’ children have accepted a "friend" request from their mothers.)
We no longer search for the news; the news finds us. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily. In the near future we will no longer search for products and services. They will find us via social media.
One out of eight couples married in the United States last year met via social media. Generation Y and Z -- the youngest techies, born after 1995 -- consider e-mail passé. In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to incoming freshmen.
For those who prefer their communications in 140 characters or less, a Twitter account is a must. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama. Approximately 80 percent of Twitter usage is on mobile devices people update anywhere and anytime. The apps for Black Friday sales changed the way shoppers planned their retail strategy. On the downside, imagine what an unfavourable tweet means for bad customer experiences.
As a business person, I often wonder how we functioned before LinkedIn. One of the most remarkable employment statistics I discovered while researching my last book, Use Your Head To Get Your Foot in the Door, is that 80 percent of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees. Remember the advertising slogan "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?" That's a little misleading, because it also stays on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, My Space, YouTube or any other social media you use.
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. It contains 100 million videos and receives two billion viewers each day. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles. A whopping 70 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds have watched TV on the web, while only 33 percent have ever viewed a show on DVR or TiVo. And 25 percent have watched a video on their phones in the last month. With a growing number of e-readers, 35 percent of book sales on-line are for the Kindle. Some publishers estimate that eBook sales will reach 50 percent in the next five years.
There are over 200 million blogs, and 54 percent of bloggers post content or tweet daily. Without knowing who or what organization is actually behind the blog, here are some facts to consider:
* 34 percent of bloggers post opinions about products or brands.
* 78 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations.
* Only 14 percent trust advertising.
Successful companies in social media have learned the importance of listening first and selling second. Qualman says, "They act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertisers." Social media represent a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. To stay current -- and competitive -- in business, don't be a "twit." Put on your best "face" and "link" into these tremendous opportunities.
Mackay's Moral: If you want to have the world at your fingertips, brush up on your "social" skills, social networking that is.
Reference: Harvey Mackay's Column This Week
Recommended by Martí Jimenez Novita Capital
13 de marzo de 2011
Pilares de la influencia online
Los pilares de la influencia online
En el mundo 2.0 cuando hablamos de alguien influyente, normalmente citamos una serie de métricas (visitas y suscriptores a su blog, followers en Twitter, etc.), que nos dan buenas pistas de su popularidad, y en base a esto entendemos que tal persona es más o menos influyente.
El problema es que esta popularidad/influencia se puede “construir artificialmente”. No es fácil, pero puedes llegar a ser popular sin realmente aportar valor a los demás. Todos sabemos de la existencia de:
* Blogs con contenidos de baja calidad pero populares, contenidos copiados de otros blogs (citando o no a la fuente), refritos de varios post, etc. y poco contenido propio y de valor. Para encontrarlos solo tenéis que usar una de las herramientas de búsqueda de contenidos duplicados.
* Usuarios de Twitter con 50.000 followers/followings y tan sólo 2 tweets (estas cifras son reales, las saco de un usuario que me empezó a seguir el otro día).
* etc.
Por eso es importante que diferenciemos popularidad de influencia.
Una persona popular puede ser influyente en cierta forma. Su mensaje llega a muchas personas, y aunque solo un pequeño porcentaje de estas le hagan caso, ya ha conseguido cierta repercusión. Pero si sumamos popularidad e influencia lo que tenemos es un líder o gurú (de los de verdad, no los “falsos guruses” de los que nos solemos mofar). Un mensaje de un líder no sólo llega a muchas personas, sino que consigue movilizar masas.
De este tipo de influencia es de la que quiero hablar en este post.
¿En qué se basa la influencia? ¿Qué nos hace confiar en lo que otro dice como para no cuestionar lo que esta diciendo?
A mi modo de ver la influencia de una persona se basa en:
1. Expertise:
Debe ser referencia en un tema determinado. Esto significa no sólo saber de un tema, sino hacerlo evolucionar. Es decir, es una persona que no se limita a aplicar los conocimientos ya adquiridos, sino que investiga nuevos campos, crea y no recicla.
Normalmente la capacidad de influencia de una persona va ligada a un tema en concreto. Os pongo un par de ejemplos para explicarlo:
* Seth Godin es una persona influyente en temas relacionados con el marketing, pero no es nada influyente en deportes.
* Avinash Kaushik es un crack en analítica web, pero no es un referente en finanzas.
2. Capacidad de movilizar:
Los mensajes de una persona influyente no sólo consiguen difusión, sino que provocan que sus receptores hagan algo (son mensajes que llaman a la acción). Desde reflexionar sobre un tema, a comprar algo, pasando por modificar de alguna manera sus hábitos.
En definitiva una persona influyente es capaz de inspirar a sus seguidores.
3. Difusión (reach):
Aunque la influencia es independiente de la popularidad, una alta capacidad de difusión de un mensaje denota capacidad de influir.
4. Comunidad:
La capacidad de difusión de la que acabo de hablar se basa en el tamaño y potencia del primer círculo de seguidores de esta persona. Son la base de la comunidad que esta persona sea capaz de generar.
Esta comunidad además de tener muchos y fieles seguidores, tiene que ser capaz de atraer a mavens o como les empezamos a llamar ahora content curators. Estas personas serán las que ayuden a que el mensaje se extienda rápidamente.
Lo que quiero decir con esto es que la difusión del mensaje también depende de la capacidad de difusión e influencia de cada uno de los miembros de “ésta nuestra comunidad” :-)
5. Comunicación:
Además de cumplir los puntos anteriores debe ser un buen comunicador. Esto significa saber transmitir bien el mensaje y adaptar el lenguaje y su tono a la audiencia (empatía).
Lo fuertes que sean estos cinco pilares, además de ser la base de nuestra influencia, formarán nuestra reputación online.
En otro post os trataré de hablar de las métricas que miden cada uno de estos pilares.
En el mundo 2.0 cuando hablamos de alguien influyente, normalmente citamos una serie de métricas (visitas y suscriptores a su blog, followers en Twitter, etc.), que nos dan buenas pistas de su popularidad, y en base a esto entendemos que tal persona es más o menos influyente.
El problema es que esta popularidad/influencia se puede “construir artificialmente”. No es fácil, pero puedes llegar a ser popular sin realmente aportar valor a los demás. Todos sabemos de la existencia de:
* Blogs con contenidos de baja calidad pero populares, contenidos copiados de otros blogs (citando o no a la fuente), refritos de varios post, etc. y poco contenido propio y de valor. Para encontrarlos solo tenéis que usar una de las herramientas de búsqueda de contenidos duplicados.
* Usuarios de Twitter con 50.000 followers/followings y tan sólo 2 tweets (estas cifras son reales, las saco de un usuario que me empezó a seguir el otro día).
* etc.
Por eso es importante que diferenciemos popularidad de influencia.
Una persona popular puede ser influyente en cierta forma. Su mensaje llega a muchas personas, y aunque solo un pequeño porcentaje de estas le hagan caso, ya ha conseguido cierta repercusión. Pero si sumamos popularidad e influencia lo que tenemos es un líder o gurú (de los de verdad, no los “falsos guruses” de los que nos solemos mofar). Un mensaje de un líder no sólo llega a muchas personas, sino que consigue movilizar masas.
De este tipo de influencia es de la que quiero hablar en este post.
¿En qué se basa la influencia? ¿Qué nos hace confiar en lo que otro dice como para no cuestionar lo que esta diciendo?
A mi modo de ver la influencia de una persona se basa en:
1. Expertise:
Debe ser referencia en un tema determinado. Esto significa no sólo saber de un tema, sino hacerlo evolucionar. Es decir, es una persona que no se limita a aplicar los conocimientos ya adquiridos, sino que investiga nuevos campos, crea y no recicla.
Normalmente la capacidad de influencia de una persona va ligada a un tema en concreto. Os pongo un par de ejemplos para explicarlo:
* Seth Godin es una persona influyente en temas relacionados con el marketing, pero no es nada influyente en deportes.
* Avinash Kaushik es un crack en analítica web, pero no es un referente en finanzas.
2. Capacidad de movilizar:
Los mensajes de una persona influyente no sólo consiguen difusión, sino que provocan que sus receptores hagan algo (son mensajes que llaman a la acción). Desde reflexionar sobre un tema, a comprar algo, pasando por modificar de alguna manera sus hábitos.
En definitiva una persona influyente es capaz de inspirar a sus seguidores.
3. Difusión (reach):
Aunque la influencia es independiente de la popularidad, una alta capacidad de difusión de un mensaje denota capacidad de influir.
4. Comunidad:
La capacidad de difusión de la que acabo de hablar se basa en el tamaño y potencia del primer círculo de seguidores de esta persona. Son la base de la comunidad que esta persona sea capaz de generar.
Esta comunidad además de tener muchos y fieles seguidores, tiene que ser capaz de atraer a mavens o como les empezamos a llamar ahora content curators. Estas personas serán las que ayuden a que el mensaje se extienda rápidamente.
Lo que quiero decir con esto es que la difusión del mensaje también depende de la capacidad de difusión e influencia de cada uno de los miembros de “ésta nuestra comunidad” :-)
5. Comunicación:
Además de cumplir los puntos anteriores debe ser un buen comunicador. Esto significa saber transmitir bien el mensaje y adaptar el lenguaje y su tono a la audiencia (empatía).
Lo fuertes que sean estos cinco pilares, además de ser la base de nuestra influencia, formarán nuestra reputación online.
En otro post os trataré de hablar de las métricas que miden cada uno de estos pilares.
6 de marzo de 2011
Google Forecloses On Content Farms With “Farmer” Algorithm Update
In January, Google promised that it would take action against content farms that were gaining top listings with “shallow” or “low-quality” content. Now the company is delivering, announcing a change to its ranking algorithm designed take out such material.
New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results
The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to rank web pages — starting going live yesterday, the company told me in an interview today.
Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% is the unrounded figure) of its search results in the US , a far higher impact on results than most of its algorithm changes. The change only impacts results in the US. It may be rolled out worldwide in the future.
While Google has come under intense pressure in the past month to act against content farms, the company told me that this change has been in the works since last January.
Officially, Not Aimed At Content Farms
Officially, Google isn’t saying the algorithm change is targeting content farms. The company specifically declined to confirm that, when I asked. However, Matt Cutts — who heads Google’s spam fighting team — told me, “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”
Well, there are two types of sites “people” have been talking about in a way that Google has noticed: “scraper” sites and “content farms.” It mentioned both of them in a January 21 blog post:
We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.
As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.
I’ve bolded the key sections, which I’ll explore more next.
The “Scraper Update”
About a week after Google’s post, Cutts confirmed that an algorithm change targeting “scraper” sites had gone live:
This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.
“Scraper” sites are those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission. Others may aggregate small amounts of content under fair use guidelines. Some simply “scrape” or copy content from other sites using automated means — hence the “scraper” nickname.
In short, Google said it was going after sites that had low-levels of original content in January and delivered a week later.
By the way, sometimes Google names big algorithm changes, such as in the case of the Vince update. Often, they get named by WebmasterWorld, where a community of marketers watches such changes closely, as happened with last year’s Mayday Update.
In the case of the scraper update, no one gave it any type of name that stuck. So, I’m naming it myself the “Scraper Update,” to help distinguish it against the “Farmer Update” that Google announced today.
But “Farmer Update” Really Does Target Content Farms
“Farmer Update?” Again, that’s a name I’m giving this change, so there’s a shorthand way to talk about it. Google declined to give it a public name, nor do I see one given in a WebmasterWorld thread that started noticing the algorithm change as it rolled out yesterday, before Google’s official announcement.
Postscript: Internally, Google told me this was called the “Panda” update, but they didn’t want that on-the-record when I wrote this original story. About a week later, they revealed the internal name in a Wired interview.
How can I say the Farmer Update targets content farms when Google specifically declined to confirm that? I’m reading between the lines. Google previously had said it was going after them.
Since Google originally named content farms as something it would target, you’ve had some of the companies that get labeled with that term push back that they are no such thing. Most notable has been Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who previously told AllThingsD about Google’s planned algorithm changes to target content farms:
It’s not directed at us in any way.
I understand how that could confuse some people, because of that stupid “content farm” label, which we got tagged with. I don’t know who ever invented it, and who tagged us with it, but that’s not us…We keep getting tagged with “content farm”. It’s just insulting to our writers. We don’t want our writers to feel like they’re part of a “content farm.”
I guess it all comes down to what your definition of a “content farm” is. From Google’s earlier blog post, content farms are places with “shallow or low quality content.”
In that regard, Rosenblatt is right that Demand Media properties like eHow are not necessarily content farms, because they do have some deep and high quality content. However, they clearly also have some shallow and low quality content.
That content is what the algorithm change is going after. Google wouldn’t confirm it was targeting content farms, but Cutts did say again it was going after shallow and low quality content. And since content farms do produce plenty of that — along with good quality content — they’re being targeted here. If they have lots of good content, and that good content is responsible for the majority of their traffic and revenues, they’ll be fine. In not, they should be worried.
More About Who’s Impacted
As I wrote earlier, Google says it has been working on these changes since last January. I can personally confirm that several of Google’s search engineers were worrying about what to do about content farms back then, because I was asked about this issue and thoughts on how to tackle it, when I spoke to the company’s search quality team in January 2010. And no, I’m not suggesting I had any great advice to offer — only that people at Google were concerned about it over a year ago.
Since then, external pressure has accelerated. For instance, start-up search engine Blekko blocked sites that were most reported by its users to be spam, which included many sites that fall under the content farm heading. It gained a lot of attention for the move, even if the change didn’t necessarily improve Blekko’s results.
In my view, that helped prompt Google to finally push out a way for Google users to easily block sites they dislike from showing in Google’s results, via Chrome browser extension to report spam.
Cutts, in my interview with him today, made a point to say that none of the data from that tool was used to make changes that are part of the Farmer Update. However, he went on to say that of the top 50 sites that were most reported as spam by users of the tool, 84% of them were impacted by the new ranking changes. He would not confirm or deny if Demand’s eHow site was part of that list.
“These are sites that people want to go down, and they match our intuition,” Cutts said.
In other words, Google crafted a ranking algorithm to tackle the “content farm problem” independently of the new tool, it says — and it feels like tool is confirming that it’s getting the changes right.
The Content Farm Problem
By the way, my own definition of a content farm that I’ve been working on is like this:
* Looks to see what are popular searches in a particular category (news, help topics)
* Generates content specifically tailored to those searches
* Usually spends very little time and or money, even perhaps as little as possible, to generate that content
The problem I think content farms are currently facing is with that last part — not putting in the effort to generate outstanding content.
For example, last night I did a talk at the University Of Utah about search trends and touched on content farm issues. A page from eHow ranked in Google’s top results for a search on “how to get pregnant fast,” a popular search topic. The advice:
The class laughed at the “Enjoyable Sex Is Key” advice as the first tip for getting pregnant fast. Actually, the advice that you shouldn’t get stressed makes sense. But this page is hardly great content on the topic. Instead, it seems to fit the “shallow” category that Google’s algorithm change is targeting. And the page, there last night when I was talking to the class, is now gone.
Perhaps the new “curation layer” that Demand talked about in it earnings call this week will help in cases like these. Demand also defended again in that call that it has quality content.
Will the changes really improve Google’s results? As I mentioned, Blekko now automatically blocks many content farms, a move that I’ve seen hailed by some. What I haven’t seen is any in-depth look at whether what remains is that much better. When I do spot checks, it’s easy to find plenty of other low quality or completely irrelevant content showing up.
Cutts tells me Google feels the change it is making does improve results according to its own internal testing methods. We’ll see if it plays out that way in the real world.
New Change Impacts 12% Of US Results
The new algorithm — Google’s “recipe” for how to rank web pages — starting going live yesterday, the company told me in an interview today.
Google changes its algorithm on a regular basis, but most changes are so subtle that few notice. This is different. Google says the change impacts 12% (11.8% is the unrounded figure) of its search results in the US , a far higher impact on results than most of its algorithm changes. The change only impacts results in the US. It may be rolled out worldwide in the future.
While Google has come under intense pressure in the past month to act against content farms, the company told me that this change has been in the works since last January.
Officially, Not Aimed At Content Farms
Officially, Google isn’t saying the algorithm change is targeting content farms. The company specifically declined to confirm that, when I asked. However, Matt Cutts — who heads Google’s spam fighting team — told me, “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”
Well, there are two types of sites “people” have been talking about in a way that Google has noticed: “scraper” sites and “content farms.” It mentioned both of them in a January 21 blog post:
We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.
As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.
I’ve bolded the key sections, which I’ll explore more next.
The “Scraper Update”
About a week after Google’s post, Cutts confirmed that an algorithm change targeting “scraper” sites had gone live:
This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.
“Scraper” sites are those widely defined as not having original content but instead pulling content in from other sources. Some do this through legitimate means, such as using RSS files with permission. Others may aggregate small amounts of content under fair use guidelines. Some simply “scrape” or copy content from other sites using automated means — hence the “scraper” nickname.
In short, Google said it was going after sites that had low-levels of original content in January and delivered a week later.
By the way, sometimes Google names big algorithm changes, such as in the case of the Vince update. Often, they get named by WebmasterWorld, where a community of marketers watches such changes closely, as happened with last year’s Mayday Update.
In the case of the scraper update, no one gave it any type of name that stuck. So, I’m naming it myself the “Scraper Update,” to help distinguish it against the “Farmer Update” that Google announced today.
But “Farmer Update” Really Does Target Content Farms
“Farmer Update?” Again, that’s a name I’m giving this change, so there’s a shorthand way to talk about it. Google declined to give it a public name, nor do I see one given in a WebmasterWorld thread that started noticing the algorithm change as it rolled out yesterday, before Google’s official announcement.
Postscript: Internally, Google told me this was called the “Panda” update, but they didn’t want that on-the-record when I wrote this original story. About a week later, they revealed the internal name in a Wired interview.
How can I say the Farmer Update targets content farms when Google specifically declined to confirm that? I’m reading between the lines. Google previously had said it was going after them.
Since Google originally named content farms as something it would target, you’ve had some of the companies that get labeled with that term push back that they are no such thing. Most notable has been Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt, who previously told AllThingsD about Google’s planned algorithm changes to target content farms:
It’s not directed at us in any way.
I understand how that could confuse some people, because of that stupid “content farm” label, which we got tagged with. I don’t know who ever invented it, and who tagged us with it, but that’s not us…We keep getting tagged with “content farm”. It’s just insulting to our writers. We don’t want our writers to feel like they’re part of a “content farm.”
I guess it all comes down to what your definition of a “content farm” is. From Google’s earlier blog post, content farms are places with “shallow or low quality content.”
In that regard, Rosenblatt is right that Demand Media properties like eHow are not necessarily content farms, because they do have some deep and high quality content. However, they clearly also have some shallow and low quality content.
That content is what the algorithm change is going after. Google wouldn’t confirm it was targeting content farms, but Cutts did say again it was going after shallow and low quality content. And since content farms do produce plenty of that — along with good quality content — they’re being targeted here. If they have lots of good content, and that good content is responsible for the majority of their traffic and revenues, they’ll be fine. In not, they should be worried.
More About Who’s Impacted
As I wrote earlier, Google says it has been working on these changes since last January. I can personally confirm that several of Google’s search engineers were worrying about what to do about content farms back then, because I was asked about this issue and thoughts on how to tackle it, when I spoke to the company’s search quality team in January 2010. And no, I’m not suggesting I had any great advice to offer — only that people at Google were concerned about it over a year ago.
Since then, external pressure has accelerated. For instance, start-up search engine Blekko blocked sites that were most reported by its users to be spam, which included many sites that fall under the content farm heading. It gained a lot of attention for the move, even if the change didn’t necessarily improve Blekko’s results.
In my view, that helped prompt Google to finally push out a way for Google users to easily block sites they dislike from showing in Google’s results, via Chrome browser extension to report spam.
Cutts, in my interview with him today, made a point to say that none of the data from that tool was used to make changes that are part of the Farmer Update. However, he went on to say that of the top 50 sites that were most reported as spam by users of the tool, 84% of them were impacted by the new ranking changes. He would not confirm or deny if Demand’s eHow site was part of that list.
“These are sites that people want to go down, and they match our intuition,” Cutts said.
In other words, Google crafted a ranking algorithm to tackle the “content farm problem” independently of the new tool, it says — and it feels like tool is confirming that it’s getting the changes right.
The Content Farm Problem
By the way, my own definition of a content farm that I’ve been working on is like this:
* Looks to see what are popular searches in a particular category (news, help topics)
* Generates content specifically tailored to those searches
* Usually spends very little time and or money, even perhaps as little as possible, to generate that content
The problem I think content farms are currently facing is with that last part — not putting in the effort to generate outstanding content.
For example, last night I did a talk at the University Of Utah about search trends and touched on content farm issues. A page from eHow ranked in Google’s top results for a search on “how to get pregnant fast,” a popular search topic. The advice:
The class laughed at the “Enjoyable Sex Is Key” advice as the first tip for getting pregnant fast. Actually, the advice that you shouldn’t get stressed makes sense. But this page is hardly great content on the topic. Instead, it seems to fit the “shallow” category that Google’s algorithm change is targeting. And the page, there last night when I was talking to the class, is now gone.
Perhaps the new “curation layer” that Demand talked about in it earnings call this week will help in cases like these. Demand also defended again in that call that it has quality content.
Will the changes really improve Google’s results? As I mentioned, Blekko now automatically blocks many content farms, a move that I’ve seen hailed by some. What I haven’t seen is any in-depth look at whether what remains is that much better. When I do spot checks, it’s easy to find plenty of other low quality or completely irrelevant content showing up.
Cutts tells me Google feels the change it is making does improve results according to its own internal testing methods. We’ll see if it plays out that way in the real world.
Facebook Is Now Becoming Crucial In SEO Compaigns
Facebook is now playing very vital role in the field of SEO and SMO. Earlier it was considered that only the Search Engine are responsible for affecting any organic search result. But things are changing fast, and other things also began to play vital role like the Facebook and Twitter. Facebook's internal searches has began affecting search results. This has let the optimization strategy give a re-think.
A rough guess says that :-
* More than 500 million active users
* 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
* Average user has 130 friends
* People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
* More than 70 translations available on the site
* About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
* Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
* Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
* Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
* More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
So with such big and massive presence Facebook is bound to draw the limelight in the SEO Arena. Little-to-none of Facebook’s is activity is indexed by Google and other mainstream engines. It’s easy to see why Facebook’s members-only organic search results deserve attention!
In addition to wall posts, think SEO in tendering status updates, links and notes. You never know who will find it, searching for whatever. Wall-post external content like blog posts and news should be optimized for important keywords, especially the content’s title tag. If possible post content where the call to action and/or contact information is actually in the title tag. This gets your pitch to the search results as opposed to requiring a second click through to a profile page.
Remember that it’s not only wider (non-friends) Facebook search that matters. Your friends, friends of friends, networks and networks of friends are likely to trust you a bit more since you’re “local.” It’s fascinating to extrapolate the implications of a “trusted local personal search network.” As a user or searcher, be aware of how Facebook search privacy settings function. Seek advice from other tools Facebook gives us regarding users common social graphs. Lexicon, which is about to get deeper, and the Facebook paid search platform offer cool insight regarding what’s hot. Contribute continually. A good portion of the physical search results are comprised of social graph points generated within the last 30 days.
So what I can figure out by now about facebook is that it is the next big thing in the Search Arena. It has huge potential in itself. Facebok is not only connecting with friends and keeping yourself updated about them. It is also about what new and whats hot in every fields. It can tell you about new business opportunity. It has everything you will need about gaining traffic and visitors.
Keep updated on Facebok Guys. Pass more and time on facebook and stay ahead of your competitors.
A rough guess says that :-
* More than 500 million active users
* 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
* Average user has 130 friends
* People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
* More than 70 translations available on the site
* About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
* Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
* Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
* Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
* More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.
There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
So with such big and massive presence Facebook is bound to draw the limelight in the SEO Arena. Little-to-none of Facebook’s is activity is indexed by Google and other mainstream engines. It’s easy to see why Facebook’s members-only organic search results deserve attention!
In addition to wall posts, think SEO in tendering status updates, links and notes. You never know who will find it, searching for whatever. Wall-post external content like blog posts and news should be optimized for important keywords, especially the content’s title tag. If possible post content where the call to action and/or contact information is actually in the title tag. This gets your pitch to the search results as opposed to requiring a second click through to a profile page.
Remember that it’s not only wider (non-friends) Facebook search that matters. Your friends, friends of friends, networks and networks of friends are likely to trust you a bit more since you’re “local.” It’s fascinating to extrapolate the implications of a “trusted local personal search network.” As a user or searcher, be aware of how Facebook search privacy settings function. Seek advice from other tools Facebook gives us regarding users common social graphs. Lexicon, which is about to get deeper, and the Facebook paid search platform offer cool insight regarding what’s hot. Contribute continually. A good portion of the physical search results are comprised of social graph points generated within the last 30 days.
So what I can figure out by now about facebook is that it is the next big thing in the Search Arena. It has huge potential in itself. Facebok is not only connecting with friends and keeping yourself updated about them. It is also about what new and whats hot in every fields. It can tell you about new business opportunity. It has everything you will need about gaining traffic and visitors.
Keep updated on Facebok Guys. Pass more and time on facebook and stay ahead of your competitors.
26 de febrero de 2011
Google & Bing Have Confirmed That Twitter & Facebook Influence SEO
As of yesterday, both Bing and Google have confirmed (via an excellent interview by Danny Sullivan) that links shared through Twitter and Facebook have a direct impact on rankings (in addition to the positive second-order effects they may have on the link graph). This has long been suspected by SEOs (in fact, many of us posited it was happening as of November of last year following Google + Bing’s announcements of partnerships with Twitter), but getting this official confirmation is a substantive step forward.
In addition to that revelation, another piece of critical data came via yesterday’s announcement:
Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?
Bing: We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.
Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article.
Danny Sullivan: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are?
Bing: Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are. (For example, query for Danny Sullivan)
Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life :-)
Danny Sullivan: Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it?
Bing: Yes.
Google: Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the “Top links” section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.
We now know that those link sharing activities on Twitter + Facebook are evaluated based on the person/entity sharing them through a score Google calls “Author Authority,” and Bing calls “Social Authority.”
We can probably predict a lot of the signals the search engines care about when it comes to social sharing; some of my guesses include:
-Diversity of Sources – having 50 tweets of a link from one account, like having 50 links from one site, is not nearly as valuable as 50 tweets from 50 unique accounts.
-Timing – sharing that occurs when an RSS feed first publishes a story may be valuable in QDF, but tweets/shares of older pieces could be seen as more indicative of lasting value and interest (rather than just sharing what’s new).
-Surrounding Content – the message(s) accompanying the link may give the engines substantive information about their potential relevance and topic; it could even fill the gap that’s left by the lack of anchor text, particularly on Twitter.
-Engagement Level – the quantity of clicks, retweets, likes, etc. (if/when measurable) could certainly impact how much weight is given to the link.
We can probably also take a stab at some of the signals Google + Bing use for Author/Social Authority in the context of the sharing/tweeting source:
-Quantity of Friends/Followers – like links, it’s likely the case that more is better, though there will likely be caveats; low quality bots and inauthentic accounts are likely to be filtered (and may be much easier to spot than spammy links, due to the challenge they find in getting any “legitimate” friends/followers).
-Importance of Friends/Followers – the friends/followers you have, like the link sources you have, are also probably playing a role. Earn high “authority” followers and you yourself must be a high authority person.
-Analysis of Friends/Followers Ratios – Much like the engines’ analysis of the editorial nature of links, consideration of whether a social user is engaging in following/follower behavior purely out of reciprocity vs. true interest and engagement may be part of authority scoring. If you have 100K followers and follow 99K of them, but the engagement between you and your followers is slim, you’re likely not as authoritative as an account with 100K followers + 5K following, but those followers are constantly engaged, retweeting, liking, sharing, etc.
-Topic Focus / Relevance – The consistency or patterns between your sharing behaviors could also be a consideration, using topic analysis, patterns in the sources of shared/tweeted links, etc. Being an “authority” could even be subject-specific, such that when a prominent SEO tweets links to celebrity news it has less of an impact than when they tweet links to a web marketing resource.
-Association Bias – I suspect Google and Bing do a good job of associating social authors with the sites/domains they’re “part of” vs. independent from. Sometimes, this might be as easy as looking at the URL associated with the account, other times it could be based on patterns like where you most often tweet/share links to or whether your account is listed on pages from that site. Basically, if @randfish tweets links to *.seomoz.org, that probably means less than when I tweet links to bitlynews or when someone outside the company tweets links to SEOmoz.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-bing-confirm-twitter-facebook-influence-seo
In addition to that revelation, another piece of critical data came via yesterday’s announcement:
Danny Sullivan: If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?
Bing: We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.
Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article.
Danny Sullivan: Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are?
Bing: Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are. (For example, query for Danny Sullivan)
Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life :-)
Danny Sullivan: Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it?
Bing: Yes.
Google: Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the “Top links” section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.
We now know that those link sharing activities on Twitter + Facebook are evaluated based on the person/entity sharing them through a score Google calls “Author Authority,” and Bing calls “Social Authority.”
We can probably predict a lot of the signals the search engines care about when it comes to social sharing; some of my guesses include:
-Diversity of Sources – having 50 tweets of a link from one account, like having 50 links from one site, is not nearly as valuable as 50 tweets from 50 unique accounts.
-Timing – sharing that occurs when an RSS feed first publishes a story may be valuable in QDF, but tweets/shares of older pieces could be seen as more indicative of lasting value and interest (rather than just sharing what’s new).
-Surrounding Content – the message(s) accompanying the link may give the engines substantive information about their potential relevance and topic; it could even fill the gap that’s left by the lack of anchor text, particularly on Twitter.
-Engagement Level – the quantity of clicks, retweets, likes, etc. (if/when measurable) could certainly impact how much weight is given to the link.
We can probably also take a stab at some of the signals Google + Bing use for Author/Social Authority in the context of the sharing/tweeting source:
-Quantity of Friends/Followers – like links, it’s likely the case that more is better, though there will likely be caveats; low quality bots and inauthentic accounts are likely to be filtered (and may be much easier to spot than spammy links, due to the challenge they find in getting any “legitimate” friends/followers).
-Importance of Friends/Followers – the friends/followers you have, like the link sources you have, are also probably playing a role. Earn high “authority” followers and you yourself must be a high authority person.
-Analysis of Friends/Followers Ratios – Much like the engines’ analysis of the editorial nature of links, consideration of whether a social user is engaging in following/follower behavior purely out of reciprocity vs. true interest and engagement may be part of authority scoring. If you have 100K followers and follow 99K of them, but the engagement between you and your followers is slim, you’re likely not as authoritative as an account with 100K followers + 5K following, but those followers are constantly engaged, retweeting, liking, sharing, etc.
-Topic Focus / Relevance – The consistency or patterns between your sharing behaviors could also be a consideration, using topic analysis, patterns in the sources of shared/tweeted links, etc. Being an “authority” could even be subject-specific, such that when a prominent SEO tweets links to celebrity news it has less of an impact than when they tweet links to a web marketing resource.
-Association Bias – I suspect Google and Bing do a good job of associating social authors with the sites/domains they’re “part of” vs. independent from. Sometimes, this might be as easy as looking at the URL associated with the account, other times it could be based on patterns like where you most often tweet/share links to or whether your account is listed on pages from that site. Basically, if @randfish tweets links to *.seomoz.org, that probably means less than when I tweet links to bitlynews or when someone outside the company tweets links to SEOmoz.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-bing-confirm-twitter-facebook-influence-seo
4 de febrero de 2011
Social Media Flow Chart: Blog vs. Facebook vs. Twitter
This flowchart is from my Social Media Strategy eBook. Getting your blog, Facebook and Twitter to work together is a challenge. I think deciding where an idea should go (and just as important, where it shouldn’t go) can be difficult. That’s why I put together this flow chart for deciding on whether your your idea should be blogged, Facebooked or Tweeted. You’ll notice the arrows going from the blog to Facebook to twitter; these mean that what gets posted on your blog can be posted on Facebook which in turn can also be tweeted. Doing the reverse is a bad idea (ever been annoyed by a ton of someone’s tweets in your Facebook news feed?). I’d love to hear your feedback if you have any…
Click for larger image
Click for larger image
30 de noviembre de 2010
Expedia on how to grow your ADR without impacting occupancy
In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, Expedia identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. This article uses Manhatten as example, but the observations and recommendations can be applied to any market.
By Nick Graham, Expedia Director of Market Management for New York
As the industry recovers from historical lows in occupancy and ADR, I’ve been hearing a common question from many hotels – “How are we going to grow rate?” Occupancy growth has to come first before rate growth, but in markets that are already seeing occupancy come back, hotels have the ability to achieve ADR increases.
In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, I’ve identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. I use Manhattan as an example because it is in many ways leading the recovery among U.S. lodging markets, but these observations and recommendations can be applied to any market that is experiencing even modest occupancy growth.
1. Grow your yieldable channels mix
Adjusting your segmentation to reflect more yieldable business, such as OTA channels, is the best place to start because it’s where rate adjustments can have the most immediate impact. In Manhattan, Expedia ADR has been growing faster than the market’s as a whole. Expedia ADR for Manhattan in June was up nearly 25% year over year, versus market-wide ADR growth of just under 18% . Year to date, the spread is just as pronounced, as the market has grown ADR by 9%, versus Manhattan ADR growth of 14% on Expedia. That means the OTA segment is growing at 57% the pace of the market, and this is due to the fact that the OTA channel is yieldable, as opposed to other pieces of business that were contracted at lower rates prior to the recovery. Because OTA pricing floats off of a hotel’s best available rate, revenue managers can raise or lower rates in immediate response to the market, while with traditional wholesale or contract segments, hotels are locked into fixed rates. In a recovery environment such as the one we find ourselves in now, pockets of demand that allow for rate increases may not become pronounced until closer to the date. In these instances, the hotels that achieve the highest rate increases will be those that can yield up a larger percentage of their business, as opposed to hotels that may already have contracted fixed pricing.
2. Implement a need date strategy
Every market, even in a recovery, has slow periods. But with the right strategy, it is possible to grow rate over these need dates. In Manhattan a prime example is the autumn weekend on which Yom Kippur falls. Corporate travelers check out early, and the locals leave town. Year after year, the market tends to react to the gap in occupancy about three weeks prior to the actual date, and cuts pricing to drive last minute occupancy. But once the 3-week window is reached, not only has the prime booking window passed, but the business in that window is at a considerably lower ADR than in the preceding 4 months. By anticipating need dates, hotels can use advance purchase promotions to fill their rooms further ahead. As long as the dates are identified correctly, promotional rates and the occupancy advantage a hotel gains earlier on will result in a higher ADR than if the hotel waits until the last minute to pick up occupancy. And if you have rooms left last minute, having that occupancy base allows you to discount safely through an opaque channel like Hotwire, as opposed to dropping your retail pricing. To successfully implement this strategy, it is critical to know the booking windows, which for many markets may be further out than expected. For example, in Manhattan, 50% of Expedia’s international package business is already booked 90 days prior to arrival. For international standalone, the average booking window is 60 days. These patterns are examples of the information hotels can use to implement promotional strategies to target the customer during their shopping cycle.
3. Use value ads rather than rate promotions
Once you’ve identified your need periods, the next step is to create an offer that will help shift business in your direction without leaving rate on the table. One effective way to stand out that won’t affect ADR is to use value adds. For example, the best performing value adds we have seen in Manhattan are free breakfast and free upgrades. If your property doesn’t have a managed restaurant on-site or the ability to fulfill a value add at check-in, some OTAs like Expedia will manage the value add on your behalf. For example, Hotels.com’s inline merchandising program recently offered a “free” pre-paid $50 Mastercard with qualifying bookings. Participating hotels saw a lift in their bookings, without an impact on their rate.
4. Turn up the volume on demand during eak compression dates
Every now and then, I hear some hotels talk about “cutting distribution costs” over peak dates by closing out OTAs. But a secret that many successful hotels have realized is that they can achieve higher rates over peak periods by ensuring inventory remains available through their distribution channels, and yielding rate up in response to the significant demand that ensues. We recently looked at one of Manhattan’s highest compression years in recent history. That year, there were 50 days with over 95% occupancy (according to STR). Over those dates, the market ADR was $344 and Expedia’s net ADR was $354. The reason behind this is that Expedia brings a lot of fairly price-insensitive demand at 2-3 weeks prior to peak compression dates, driven by customers that can’t find availability at their usual hotel. By keeping inventory open and adjusting rates up, hotels not only fill rooms at higher rates on Expedia, but also on their own channel through the Billboard Effect. We recently started sharing new peak compression date data with our hotel partners, which provides advance guidance to determine when a hotel has the opportunity to increase rates, or in some cases to revisit and perhaps reduce rates for specific dates. We share a mutual desire with our hotel partners to identify the ideal rate based on what the market can bear.
5. Stop giving away room upgrades
Many hotels offer some assortment of room types, even if it’s just a choice between standards and suites. The trouble is, the lead-in room type is often overbooked, forcing the property to upgrade the guest for free at check in. By applying a promotional strategy for upgraded room types (being sure to target dates or upgraded room types that might typically go unsold), hotels can entice bookings for higher rate rooms and achieve a higher ADR overall. For example, a typical mix of bookings at one hotel I work with in Manhattan was 75% standard rooms and 25% suites. After they began applying a promotional rate just for the suites, they boosted the mix of suite bookings to 33% and grew overall ADR from $226 to $253. They started getting paid for those room upgrades, and it paid off in higher ADR.
Obviously, the hotel industry today looks much different than in years past. As hoteliers navigate today’s landscape, they need to remain flexible and open-minded to using new and different marketing channels in order to adapt and drive demand in the recovering market, and putting the above strategies into practice is a great place to start. In the final analysis, it benefits an OTA and its hotel partners to grow rate and occupancy. Reach out and engage your OTA market manager. Odds are, they’ll have insights and suggestions about your marketplace that you may not have considered before. Working together with OTA marketing experts like Expedia will accelerate the return to improved rate - but only through active collaboration.
By Nick Graham, Expedia Director of Market Management for New York
As the industry recovers from historical lows in occupancy and ADR, I’ve been hearing a common question from many hotels – “How are we going to grow rate?” Occupancy growth has to come first before rate growth, but in markets that are already seeing occupancy come back, hotels have the ability to achieve ADR increases.
In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, I’ve identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. I use Manhattan as an example because it is in many ways leading the recovery among U.S. lodging markets, but these observations and recommendations can be applied to any market that is experiencing even modest occupancy growth.
1. Grow your yieldable channels mix
Adjusting your segmentation to reflect more yieldable business, such as OTA channels, is the best place to start because it’s where rate adjustments can have the most immediate impact. In Manhattan, Expedia ADR has been growing faster than the market’s as a whole. Expedia ADR for Manhattan in June was up nearly 25% year over year, versus market-wide ADR growth of just under 18% . Year to date, the spread is just as pronounced, as the market has grown ADR by 9%, versus Manhattan ADR growth of 14% on Expedia. That means the OTA segment is growing at 57% the pace of the market, and this is due to the fact that the OTA channel is yieldable, as opposed to other pieces of business that were contracted at lower rates prior to the recovery. Because OTA pricing floats off of a hotel’s best available rate, revenue managers can raise or lower rates in immediate response to the market, while with traditional wholesale or contract segments, hotels are locked into fixed rates. In a recovery environment such as the one we find ourselves in now, pockets of demand that allow for rate increases may not become pronounced until closer to the date. In these instances, the hotels that achieve the highest rate increases will be those that can yield up a larger percentage of their business, as opposed to hotels that may already have contracted fixed pricing.
2. Implement a need date strategy
Every market, even in a recovery, has slow periods. But with the right strategy, it is possible to grow rate over these need dates. In Manhattan a prime example is the autumn weekend on which Yom Kippur falls. Corporate travelers check out early, and the locals leave town. Year after year, the market tends to react to the gap in occupancy about three weeks prior to the actual date, and cuts pricing to drive last minute occupancy. But once the 3-week window is reached, not only has the prime booking window passed, but the business in that window is at a considerably lower ADR than in the preceding 4 months. By anticipating need dates, hotels can use advance purchase promotions to fill their rooms further ahead. As long as the dates are identified correctly, promotional rates and the occupancy advantage a hotel gains earlier on will result in a higher ADR than if the hotel waits until the last minute to pick up occupancy. And if you have rooms left last minute, having that occupancy base allows you to discount safely through an opaque channel like Hotwire, as opposed to dropping your retail pricing. To successfully implement this strategy, it is critical to know the booking windows, which for many markets may be further out than expected. For example, in Manhattan, 50% of Expedia’s international package business is already booked 90 days prior to arrival. For international standalone, the average booking window is 60 days. These patterns are examples of the information hotels can use to implement promotional strategies to target the customer during their shopping cycle.
3. Use value ads rather than rate promotions
Once you’ve identified your need periods, the next step is to create an offer that will help shift business in your direction without leaving rate on the table. One effective way to stand out that won’t affect ADR is to use value adds. For example, the best performing value adds we have seen in Manhattan are free breakfast and free upgrades. If your property doesn’t have a managed restaurant on-site or the ability to fulfill a value add at check-in, some OTAs like Expedia will manage the value add on your behalf. For example, Hotels.com’s inline merchandising program recently offered a “free” pre-paid $50 Mastercard with qualifying bookings. Participating hotels saw a lift in their bookings, without an impact on their rate.
4. Turn up the volume on demand during eak compression dates
Every now and then, I hear some hotels talk about “cutting distribution costs” over peak dates by closing out OTAs. But a secret that many successful hotels have realized is that they can achieve higher rates over peak periods by ensuring inventory remains available through their distribution channels, and yielding rate up in response to the significant demand that ensues. We recently looked at one of Manhattan’s highest compression years in recent history. That year, there were 50 days with over 95% occupancy (according to STR). Over those dates, the market ADR was $344 and Expedia’s net ADR was $354. The reason behind this is that Expedia brings a lot of fairly price-insensitive demand at 2-3 weeks prior to peak compression dates, driven by customers that can’t find availability at their usual hotel. By keeping inventory open and adjusting rates up, hotels not only fill rooms at higher rates on Expedia, but also on their own channel through the Billboard Effect. We recently started sharing new peak compression date data with our hotel partners, which provides advance guidance to determine when a hotel has the opportunity to increase rates, or in some cases to revisit and perhaps reduce rates for specific dates. We share a mutual desire with our hotel partners to identify the ideal rate based on what the market can bear.
5. Stop giving away room upgrades
Many hotels offer some assortment of room types, even if it’s just a choice between standards and suites. The trouble is, the lead-in room type is often overbooked, forcing the property to upgrade the guest for free at check in. By applying a promotional strategy for upgraded room types (being sure to target dates or upgraded room types that might typically go unsold), hotels can entice bookings for higher rate rooms and achieve a higher ADR overall. For example, a typical mix of bookings at one hotel I work with in Manhattan was 75% standard rooms and 25% suites. After they began applying a promotional rate just for the suites, they boosted the mix of suite bookings to 33% and grew overall ADR from $226 to $253. They started getting paid for those room upgrades, and it paid off in higher ADR.
Obviously, the hotel industry today looks much different than in years past. As hoteliers navigate today’s landscape, they need to remain flexible and open-minded to using new and different marketing channels in order to adapt and drive demand in the recovering market, and putting the above strategies into practice is a great place to start. In the final analysis, it benefits an OTA and its hotel partners to grow rate and occupancy. Reach out and engage your OTA market manager. Odds are, they’ll have insights and suggestions about your marketplace that you may not have considered before. Working together with OTA marketing experts like Expedia will accelerate the return to improved rate - but only through active collaboration.
25 de octubre de 2010
9 de septiembre de 2010
Sidebar Boxes Will Be Removed From Facebook Pages
Facebook has confirmed that the removal of the boxes tab is a sweeping change that will see the disappearance of all profile boxes on the left-hand side of Facebook Pages.
A Facebook spokeswoman told AllFacebook.com: “These boxes will be removed, just as they will be from profiles, and so the page owners will need to move that info to the info page or a custom tab.”
The changes are to take effect the week commencing August 23, along with a new tab width limit if 520 pixels. However, the Facebook Developer Blog and Developer Roadmap were not explicit on the details, so we asked Facebook for some clarification.
We showed them a few examples and here’s what we found out…
Example 1: On the Coca-Cola fan page, the “House Rules” box on the left-hand panel of the Wall tab will no longer be supported.
Example 2: The privacy policy on the AT&T Facebook page – currently in a box on the left-hand side – will no longer be displayed in its current format.
Example 3: The TOMS Shoes Facebook page will keep the image that says “With every purchase. TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for one”. A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed that this was in a description area rather than a box and would not be going away. She added that Tom’s also had this information on the “Welcome” tab, which was an FBML tab, and would remain.
A Facebook spokeswoman told AllFacebook.com: “These boxes will be removed, just as they will be from profiles, and so the page owners will need to move that info to the info page or a custom tab.”
The changes are to take effect the week commencing August 23, along with a new tab width limit if 520 pixels. However, the Facebook Developer Blog and Developer Roadmap were not explicit on the details, so we asked Facebook for some clarification.
We showed them a few examples and here’s what we found out…
Example 1: On the Coca-Cola fan page, the “House Rules” box on the left-hand panel of the Wall tab will no longer be supported.
Example 2: The privacy policy on the AT&T Facebook page – currently in a box on the left-hand side – will no longer be displayed in its current format.
Example 3: The TOMS Shoes Facebook page will keep the image that says “With every purchase. TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for one”. A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed that this was in a description area rather than a box and would not be going away. She added that Tom’s also had this information on the “Welcome” tab, which was an FBML tab, and would remain.
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