Google Play ‘Supercharges’ Games with New Data, Ad Features at MWC 2015

Google knows gaming is big business. In fact, according to a recent blog post at the Google developer website, the company notes that “of the one billion Android users in more than 190 countries, three out of four of them are gamers.”

Now Google wants to put some premium gas in its gaming tank.

Google has announced new features for Google Play Games and AdMob to facilitate better measurement metrics as well as increased monetization opportunities.

For starters, “Player Analytics” should give developers a better idea of where they’re hitting targets, and where they’re not.

“We’re introducing Player Analytics, giving developers access to powerful analytics reports to better measure overall business success and understand in-game player behavior,” according to the post. “Launching in the next few weeks in the Google Play Developer Console, the new tool will give indie developers and big studios better insight into how their players are progressing, spending, and cunning; access to critical metrics like ARPPU and sessions per user; and assistance setting daily revenue targets.”

Google contends that clients like the Bomb Squad (the brainchild of a one-person game studio in San Francisco) more than doubled its revenue per user on Google Play during beta testing of Player Analytics.

Additionally, three new updates to the AdMob platform are aimed at monetization.

The new features? (Here we quote Greg Hartrell, Senior Product Manager of Google Play Games).

1. Native Ads: “Currently available as a limited beta, participating game developers will be able to show ads in their app from Google advertisers, and then customize them so that users see ads that match the visual design of the game.”
2. “In-App Purchase House Ads Beta: Game developers will be able to smartly grow their in-app purchase revenue for free. AdMob can now predict which users are more likely to spend on, in-app purchases, and developers will be able to show these users with customized text or display ads promoting items for sale. Currently in beta, this feature will be coming to all AdMob accounts in the next few weeks.”
3. Audience Builder: “A powerful tool that enables game developers to create lists of audiences based on how they use their game. They will be able to create customized experiences for users, and ultimately grow their app revenue.”

And don’t forget TV. Google Play plans include an Android TV as a means to bring games to the big screen.

“To make gaming even more dynamic on Android TV, we’re launching the Nearby Connections API with the upcoming update of Google Play services,” explained Hartrell. “With this new protocol, games can seamlessly connect smartphones and tablets as second-screen controls for the game running on your TV. We are looking forward to more living room, multiplayer games taking advantage of mobile devices as second screen controls.”

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Google launches Cloud Pub/Sub, a messaging API for connecting applications and services

Last year Google announced the existence of Cloud Pub/Sub, a managed service on the Google public cloud for sending and receiving data in “messages” — basically, middleware for applications. Today, Google is moving it out of alpha status, which requires people to fill out a form for access, and making it available for anyone to use in beta.

For now, while the service is in beta, it is free, according to a blog post today from product manager Rohit Khare.

Once it’s generally available to all to use, the service will cost 40 cents per million operations of the Cloud Pub/Sub application programming interface (API) operations for the first 100 million operations. After that point, the price drops to 25 cents per million for the next 2.4 billion operations. And after that, the price goes even lower, to 5 cents per million.

Of course, data storage and movement of data from one Google data center to another will cost money, as always.

The beta availability of the tool makes Google more friendly to developers looking to easily build complex, data-rich applications. And that’s important as Amazon Web Services continues to lead the public cloud market, with Microsoft also plays a key role alongside Google.

Open-source publish-subscribe messaging tools do exist. Apache Kafka is probably the most prominent one. But it takes time to implement Kafka yourself. So this tool could come in handy for certain programmers.

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Responsive vs. Mobile Website: Which Is Right for Your Professional Services Firm?

The number of people using mobile devices to access the web has skyrocketed over the past few years, making it increasingly important for professional services firms to make their websites mobile friendly. Even with a number of statistics to support this, many firms have not taken the plunge and implemented a mobile-friendly site.

And with Google’s recent major announcement that mobile-friendliness will be a search ranking factor starting April 21st, now is the time to invest in a mobile-friendly website.

But before you get started, it’s important to know the two main methods for doing this: responsive design and mobile sites.  In this article, we’ll explain the difference between the two and help clear up any confusion around these two approaches.

Mobile’s inital fix

When accessing the Internet via mobile devices was first introduced, web coders developed a way to create a separate version of a website that fit much smaller mobile screens.

When a user tried to access the website from a mobile phone, the site would recognize this and redirect them to a separate mobile site version.  A better solution? At first, yes. While this method allowed businesses to have a good mobile experience, this required the business to manage not one, but two websites.

If a change needed to be made to the desktop version of their website, they had to also make that same change separately on the mobile version of their site.  This caused webmasters to spend more time managing a second website, leaving more room for manual error as well.

In more recent years, web coders have created a solution that allowed a website to automatically resize and reformat a website based on the screen size being used, rather than redirecting to a separate mobile website. This method is called responsive design. Not only does this solution target mobile phones, it also adjusts to the appropriate size of tablets and any device that users would use to access your site.

Which approach is right for you?

So what is the recommended approach for your firm’s website – a separate mobile site or responsive design?

While a dedicated mobile site was initially a good solution, today, responsive design is the preferred approach. In 2012, Google went on record, stating they prefer responsive website design over mobile sites.  Why?

1. Requires a single domain: With a mobile site you’re required to create a separate domain, which can hurt traffic to your main domain as well as search traffic. However, with responsive design a separate domain is not required, so all web traffic is directed to a single URL, increasing traffic and avoiding a mobile site redirect altogether.
2. Works for future devices: Once responsive is added to your website it will continue to work and adjust to future devices without further programming required. However, a mobile site could likely require regular updating to accommodate next generation phones, tablets, and browsers.

Remember, aside from the obvious user experience benefits of responsive design, the absence of a mobile solution for your firm’s website will soon affect your Google ranking.

Let’s recap: in November 2014, Google began testing a new algorithm that gave preferred treatment to websites that are mobile-friendly. Google took the next step in January and began sending mass notifications to websites that are not mobile-friendly requesting they “fix mobile usability issues” or their site will be “displayed and ranked appropriately for mobile users.” And last week, the search engine confirmed mobile usability will be a ranking factor starting in April.

So if you haven’t already invested in responsive design for your professional services firm’s website, now is the time. Consider not only the obvious user experience benefits, but the search engine advantages that are just around the bend.

In a world where our technologies are getting faster and smarter every year, optimizing your firm’s website with responsive design is an investment you’ll benefit from for years to come.

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Advanced On-Page SEO Techniques

Search engine optimization basically provides structure and clues to the content we read on the internet. In this article, we explore the relevance of advanced techniques for on-page optimizations.

Keywords: SEO webmasters gain higher rankings by placing relevant keywords in the title tag, headlines, and in different places of the textual content. This is the fundamental concept of on-page optimization. However, the influence of keywords is waning steadily with changes in Google’s algorithm.

Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF)

This important tool used by Google indexes web pages. It is a measure of significance for keywords. Consider Google’s Ngram viewer for this purpose. “Basketball player” is more significant on a page compared to “basket” as the frequency of the former is less than the latter. Compared with keyword usage, TF-IDF has a slightly better association with higher rankings.

Synonyms

These words are associated with nearly 70% of searches on Google. The search engine has vast numbers of synonyms and close variants of billions of phrases. Consider the query dog pics; its synonym would be dog photos. However, dog motion picture would be totally different, but does the search engine understand this?

SEO webmasters must consider this viewpoint to provide natural language and variations. This would certainly eliminate ambiguity associated with search queries.SEO webmaster may need to exploit Google’s Hummingbird tool for this purpose; it takes into consideration the different contexts of a word and its meaning.

Page Segmentation

Placement of keywords plays an important role in on-page SEO. Content location in the main body of the text gains more wattage than that placed in sidebars of a webpage. But, the repetition of the same text lessens its weighted for higher rankings. Page segmentation has gained sudden importance as we transition toward mobile devices.

Semantic distance

This is the relationships of terms and phrases of sentences, paragraphs with various HTML elements. Search engines would determine the distance between different words with their related HTML elements. Thus, phrases present in the same paragraph are semantically closer compared to phrases located in distant paragraphs.To avoid this guesswork of search engines, SEO webmasters must employ special markup for defining correct relationships.

Phrase-based indexing

Google indexes complete phrases. Google’s algorithm considers co-occurrence of phrases for prediction. Suppose your search query is “Roger Federer”; this phrase would normally occur with “tennis champion” “tennis player.” When a page contains all these related phrases, its content is more likely to focus on “Roger Federer.” Webmaster must link the page with incoming links of pages having related, co-occurring phrases; this ensures better rankings.

Entity salience

Distinct and well-defined terms in a document, termed as entities, are used for building known relationships for pages. Consider an article with the terms Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Pete Sampras, Serena Williams, Approved epas's School, etc.. The phrase “Tennis Champions” bears a strong entity relationship with all these terms. So, even if “tennis champions” appears once in the entire document, it is a very significant entity in the document. On the other hand, the word “ATP Tour” may appear multiple times, but it holds a weaker entity relationship, so it is less significant.

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Seo-Conference.com Provides Latest Updates and Information About SEO Conferences and Events

Seo-Conference.com aims to become the one stop junction for the SEO consultants, internet marketers and SEO freelancers, to find all the latest information and updates about the SEO conferences and events that are taking place across the globe.

St Albans, Hertfordshire -- (Release Wire) -- 02/18/2015 -- Seo-Conference.com is one of the top sites online to find the latest updates about various major SEO

Conferences and related events being held throughout the globe. People who are related to the SEO industry needs to update their knowledge and stay in the loop of the recent events in the world of search engine optimization to provide their clients with the most updated and effective services, and attending an SEO conference can help them get geared up comprehensively. 

It provides the SEO service providers, whether it is an enterprise or a freelancer, the much needed edge it requires to stay ahead of the league and dominate the market by getting useful insights from the leaders in the SEO industry at Internet Marketing Conference.

The site does not only provide the dates as to when they SEO conferences would be held, but also provide a detailed information about where it would be held, who would be attending it, what is the itinerary of the event, and so on. It helps the users to decide whether the event is aligned to their requirements and interests or not, and whether it would be worth visiting the event. People who are looking for information about the Vegas SEO Conference, which is easily one of the top rated events in the SEO industry, can also find useful information about the event at the site.

Starting from when the IM Conference Vegas would be held to understanding why the SEO enthusiasts should visit this event, the site covers every aspect of the event in a detailed manner. Attending these SEO conferences helps the SEO professionals to not only enhance their knowledge in the field, but also helps in networking with various high ranking SEO professionals from other parts of the world. It not only ensures that the users are equipped with the latest information, updates and techniques in the world of SEO, but also helps broaden their business network, which is highly useful for expanding business, providing better services, and lead generation.

About Seo-Conference.com

Seo-Conference.com aims to become the one stop junction for the SEO consultants, internet marketers and SEO freelancers, to find all the latest information and updates about the SEO conferences and events that are taking place across the globe. For people who want to gain firsthand experience and knowledge about the search engine optimization techniques and its future in the world of internet, attending SEO conferences can be useful in widening their market awareness and equipping them with the knowledge and experience they seek. Contact the company through the contact form available at the site, or visit SEO-Conference.com for more details.

www.pixotritechnologies.com

Negative SEO May Be a Trending Topic, But Is It Legit?

Similar to the way boomerang topics such as “advertorial” or “data” have returned in recent years, “negative search engine optimization” has once again spurred concern and interest. Online marketing company Reboot recently found 79 percent of online companies are willing to sabotage another company’s website through negative search engine tactics. Contacting 100 small business owners in London and the South East, the study found a majority of companies either outright agreed to employ negative SEO practices against their top competitors, or they requested more information before making a decision.

Last year, USA Today reported Expedia may have been targeted by a negative search optimization campaign that caused it to rank lower on search engine results pages. The site lost “25 percent of its visibility in Google searches” over the course of one week, according to third-party search analytics firm Searchmetrics. This represents a huge hit for an online business that survives off links and e-commerce.

Although this could be a clear case of otherwise indiscernible negative search, search engine optimization tactics, it could also be the result of a series of bad or outdated search optimization practices that hit the fan late. In this case, the site would only need to go through and clean up its backlinks.

Back in 2012, Google deployed its “disavow links” feature, which tells Google to ignore certain links when assessing a site. A company (such as the one in Expedia’s predicament) that has done all it can to remove spammy or low quality links from the Web could use the disavow link button as its next step. In most cases, however, Google can assess sites without this feature—and without fear there are links causing harm to sites.

“There’s a lot of people who talk about negative SEO but very few people who actually try it—and fewer still who actually succeed,” says Google’s Matt Cutts. According to him, the threat of negative SEO is still little to none.

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Developers see the future of games on the smaller mobile screens

When King Digital Entertainment launched its eagerly awaited follow-up to the popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga, it looked far beyond Apple’s App Store to promote it.

Videos heralding the arrival of the Candy Crush Soda Saga blitzed 100m Facebook Newsfeeds in a single day. TV spots aired in 20 countries and digital billboards were flooded with fizzy bubbles around the globe.

Underlining the transition, Newzoo said in a report that Apple’s forecast $4bn in gaming revenues — made from just hosting and selling other developers’ games, for which it takes a 30 per cent cut — is likely to be almost double Nintendo’s sales this year.The multimillion-dollar launch illustrates that mobile gaming is no longer a poor relation of video games. Newzoo, a research company, forecasts that the mobile games industry, which it says has predicted global revenues of $30.3bn in 2015, is poised to overtake console game sales for the first time.

As mobile games have increased in sophistication, growing numbers of players spend many hours — and dollars — on addictive titles such as Clash of Clans, Minecraft and Game of War: Fire Age.

“The first wave of mobile games was simplistic — the gameplay was there, but the polish wasn’t,” says Julian Farrior, chief executive of Backflip Studios, the mobile gaming company behind DragonVale and Seabeard, which is now majority owned by toymaker Hasbro.

But, Mr Farrior adds: “Over time, the polish has increased, the budget has increased and revenue expectations have increased.”

In the App Store’s early days, barriers to entry were low. But, as it has become harder to be noticed in an overcrowded market, promoting and distributing a hit game has become an expensive but important part of the marketing mix.

“It’s a very competitive market,” says Riccardo Zacconi, King Digital’s chief executive. “The ‘top grossing’ charts are very stable. It’s a handful of developers there and the conditions for succeeding are very hard.”

Despite this, King’s marketing drove Soda Saga to the top of Apple and Google’s app download charts globally for November. In its earnings report, King said it set a new quarterly record of 1.5 Bonn average daily game plays in the three months to December.

But King has an advantage other games makers do not. As well as the external advertising, many people downloading Soda Saga did so because they saw an ad in the original Candy Crush game, which has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times.

Electronic Arts, a veteran console game maker, has franchises that are just as well known as King’s, including John Madden NFL football and FIFA Soccer. Even so, EA is only just starting to find its feet in mobile.

Andrew Wilson, EA’s chief executive, says the company had a “breakout performance” in mobile over Christmas, generating a “record” $121m in sales, up 25 per cent over the prior year.

Its rival, Activision Blizzard, whose Call of Duty and World of Warcraft franchises have dominated console and PC gaming, has been even slower to mobile.

In late 2013, Bobby Kotick, Activision’s chief executive, said there was nothing that had driven any sizeable amount of operating profit in mobile gaming. But in its recent earnings call, Activision’s chiefs admitted mobile and tablet gaming had “moved up on our priority list” after finding success with Warcrafta  spin-off, Hearthstone.

“When you’re thinking about that transition, it isn’t wholly intuitive to console developers who are reliant on publishers for distribution,” says Mr Farrior. “In mobile, you own the distribution and the development of the piece. That’s . . . outside the comfort zone for traditional publishers.”In the console world, developers create games and leave it to publishers, such as EA and Activision, to work with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo on distribution. Mobile games are usually free, with revenue generated from ads or in-app sales.

Another challenge for console developers is that mobile games are created and updated very differently. Console games are typically left unchanged, but mobile games, once on a device, can be updated almost constantly.

King, for example, adjusts the difficulty of Soda Saga’s levels every few weeks. The first “cohort” of players was looking for something more difficult than the original Candy Crush, Mr Zacconi says, while newer players want something easier.

Despite the different dynamics, Mr Farrior says mobile studios such as Backflip are hiring console game developers in much greater numbers. “We’ve had to hire truly talented experience, and the bulk of that experience was in shifting from console to mobile.”

Backflip is planning to use Hasbro’s brands and characters to help its games stand out. But even names that could include My Little Pony and Transformers are not enough to guarantee a hit in the mobile gaming world, Mr Farrior says.

“A brand is important, but a brand alone won’t get you there,” he says.

To succeed, he says, you need an “absolutely killer game”, with high retention and conversion from free downloads to paying customers. “You need to marry the good math with the good brand and have a really talented, aggressive user acquisition team.”

www.pixotritechnologies.com

9 Terrible Reasons for a Website Redesign

Website redesigns are not for the faint of heart. They require a lot of time, energy and patience. Nevertheless, the average business will need to redesign its website every two years or so in order to keep up with changing technology and stay current with modern web design trends. Fast forward to launch day, and the last time most businesses touch their site until the process begins again.

This just isn't the way to do it. A website is a living, breathing, ever evolving machine. Use it to your advantage. Before you decide to kick off your next redesign, consider touching that site you've ignored since you last launched. Just make sure you aren't redesigning for one of the following reasons.

1. Your CEO says it’s time to redesign

When you look at a site two and three times a day for a couple of years, you get tired of it. In fact, it gets really boring. We call this “design fatigue.” Design fatigue is simply internal. Your clients aren’t tired of it yet and new visitors aren't bored at all! They don’t know any different.

Instead of jumping to the conclusion that you need a redesign, ask questions about your current site. What really needs improving? If the site is slow, you may need a technical overhaul, not an aesthetic one. If you aren't converting leads, maybe you need a copy change. As a first resort to these problems, pinpoint the issue and work on that. A total redesign isn't necessary just because one change needs to be made.

2. You want to start a blog

So, you have realized there is something to this inbound marketing thing…and you want to start a blog. Wonderful news, and kudos for  coming to this conclusion on your own. Adding a blog comes down to adding more pages to your website. This is something you are more than capable of doing without a total overhaul. Start creating content and start putting it out there on the platform you are already using. You don’t want to waste valuable time redesigning your site when you could be putting content out into the world.

3. You want to be on trend

Design trends are just that, trends. Yes, we put a lot into researching trends and why they are popular, why they perform and eventually why they move out. If you have a mature brand aesthetic, you might not need a redesign. Keep your site fresh by updating specific elements and trying out trending aesthetics on landing pages and seasonal campaigns, but don’t fix what isn't broken. Your visitors have come to know and respect your brand, so don’t jump ship just because something new came along.

4. You aren't getting enough traffic

Traffic and design don’t exactly go hand in hand, so don’t force them to correlate with each other. Is your site lacking traffic? If so, that is more than likely a reflection on your acquisition strategy and not your site design.

A great website can increase engagement, but the design itself won’t bring them there.

5. Your bounce rate is high

Ok, so you can argue that this is a good enough reason to redesign, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If your bounce rate is too high, try some less drastic approaches. Begin by updating your website copy, removing your navigation (yes, the exact same principle we use for landing page design) or utilizing parallax scrolling to keep users engaged on a single page. If these more minimal changes help with your bounce rate, backburner the redesign.

6. You are getting a new CMS (content management system)

I know this may seem like a missed opportunity, but every time you decide to up the technology ante doesn't mean that you need to up the design ante as well. Moving a site over to a new CMS is technically complicated enough without the hassle of restrategizing your main menu and user-flow, updating personas and revamping on page copy. Leaving things as is will be much less disturbing for your tech team in charge of the migration. If a redesign is ultimately necessary, your team will be better versed on how to execute the functionality portion of the process having understood the new CMS.

7. You hired a new designer

I've been there. As the brand new designer on staff, its easy to be completely inundated in a backlog of projects because, hey, we have a designer. Don’t do this. Slow down, let them settle in and really show you their visual communication chops before you dump a website redesign project on their plate.

Small improvements will allow your new designer to become familiar with your site, it’s platform and your brand. This discovery phase will allow them to identify problems you need help solving.

8. Your competition just launched a new site

If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too? I don’t think a single one of us avoided this speech growing up, but it’s funny how a single one of us didn’t listen.

If you are really worried that you aren’t keeping up with the competition, take a hard look at your existing site. Small, incremental improvements can lead to big results. Tweak a headline, change the color of a button or add a new offer. You may have more edge against the competition than you think.

9. Because a user complained

You are more likely to catch heat because you did something bad than you are to receive praise because you did something good. When a user complains, it sucks. Everyone gets set into a mini panic, trying to make up for a single bad experience. Take a step back and evaluate the complaint. Were they on a mobile device? Are they a new or returning customer? Keep an eye out for a large-scale issue. If there isn’t one, make the small fix and move on. A single customer shouldn't dictate thousands of dollars in redesign costs.

Take Care

Your website should constantly be evolving and growing, feeding on rich content. Eventually, with enough care, that tiny little site you built will grow into an amazing user experience.

Be sure to keep your site updated. If you are using WordPress as your CMS, you will need to monitor your site weekly for both plugin and core updates. Letting your site technology fall behind can be dangerous, as you might miss a vital security patch. A website isn’t a “set it and forget it” tool.

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SEO strategies are vital to the success of your business

If you conduct or promote business online, your SEO strategy is vital to your success, notes Web Vertical Domains, a leading SEO and website design company in the Greater Toronto Area. This cutting-edge business offers the following overview about SEO and its ever-increasing importance.

Best practices for SEO are continually changing due to the dynamic landscape of the Internet and the way information is processed and sourced. Not long ago it would have been sufficient to apply a number of methods to maximize your website’s SEO: good content, effective use of metadata (that is, keywords and phrases), and your site’s navigation structure. Increasingly, however, there’s much more to best SEO practices. With the advent and upsurge of social media like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, along with the forward march of the Internet and all it encompasses, SEO strategies have changed yet again.SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, refers to the methods employed to increase a website’s unpaid (or organic) visibility and ranking to Internet search engines. By example, if your website advertises that you sell hammers, anytime someone searches online for “hammers,” those sites with the most effective SEO will appear on first-page search status. It’s this level of SEO that website designers and developers strive to achieve.

Perhaps the biggest industry-defining influence to SEO strategies, and the reason those strategies change, is due to the weight and influence of Google, the superheavyweight champion of search engines. Google remains the definitive standard on the Internet and for SEO. Its formidable influence makes it the benchmark. As far as SEO goes, part of challenge for all website managers stems from the fact that Google never specifies its ever-changing SEO standards. Google writes upwards of over 500 algorithms every year that constantly change to redefine SEO requirements.

Knowing how best to devise an SEO strategy for your website requires a specialist website design-and-development company that understands SEO. Well-written and informative content on your site is important, so are keywords and the site’s navigation structure, but it doesn’t stop there. SEO has become an increasingly demanding field that requires expert understanding and capabilities.

Every company with a website strives to improve hits and page-views with best-practice SEO. The trends and requirements are ever changing. Understanding exactly what to do and how, demands the input of a company with this knowledge.

Web Vertical Domains is a leading Search Engine Optimization company that provides services to Mississauga, Toronto, Brampton, and Oakville. The business offers website design and development services, including SEO, PPC, Content Marketing, Social Media posting services, Graphic Design, and more.

www.pixotritechnologies.com