We receive this question all the time.  Often it starts with the line, “I checked the website from home and ________ was different…”

Good web designers and developers do a considerable amount of testing before launching a new website — using tools to simulate the view of the website on different computers (various resolutions), different Internet browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera etc.), and different devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile).

Here we’d like to share a few of the FREE tools we recommend for those who would like to simulate the view of your website as others see it:

TEST AT DIFFERENT RESOLUTIONS <- Viewlike.us is an online application that enables you to quickly test your website in different resolutions. Simply enter your website URL in the provided field and click “Submit.” Once the webpage loads, click different resolution tabs to view how the site looks on computers of several resolutions.

TEST IN DIFFERENT WEB BROWSERS <- A link to a strong list of cross browser testing tools. We recommend Adobe BrowserLab (the first on this list), but wanted to include this full list of recommendations, as BrowserLab will switch to un-free shortly.

TEST DIFFERENT MOBILE/TABLET DEVICES <- A link to a strong list of device “emulators” as they’re often called. Your best bet is to simply research which are the top 5 or 10 mobile and tablet devices at the time of your website/project launch, and download the individual emulator specifically catered to those tools. (Emulators that claim to match the view at several different devices typically do not work.)

Testing is important and (shhh — don’t tell!) can actually be fun. Remember to also test the view of social media campaigns, such as your Twitter profile and Facebook landing pages. Happy testing!

Online reviews are increasingly growing in importance (You may be thinking, “duh”!).  But not only are they extremely important for YOUR company, they’re just as important for when you’re not at work.  You want people to trust what’s being said about where you work, but you also want to trust that the restaurant you go to tonight will really be that good!

What if I told you that some online reviews are FAKE?  You may say to yourself, “I could see competitors writing bad reviews for their biggest rival” or “I’ve seen reviews where its obvious the employees write it”.  Well those examples do indeed happen, but the latest craze is actually PAYING for positive reviews.  Not all that surprised?  Me either!

Most recently on a website asking  “What would you be willing to do for $5?”, one man offered to write two positive online reviews for a company.  On another site, one person said they would pay someone to write a positive review on TripAdvisor.

I could probably go on all day, listing off examples of people paying for reviews, but that’s not what I want you to take away from this blog post.  I want to educate you on how to spot a fake review.

A group of researchers at Cornell University studied reviews and developed an algorithm that worked 90% of the time.  Here is what they concluded:

“The fakes tended to be a narrative talking about their experience using a lot of superlatives, but they were not very good on description. Naturally: They had never been there. Instead, they talked about why they were in Chicago (for example). They also used words like “I” and “me” more frequently, as if to underline their own credibility.”

We can only hope that word spreads about these paid reviews and that more people become educated on how to spot them.  We don’t want what was once a positive online strategy, to end badly.

Now you know how to spot a fake review!  Get online and make me proud!

Every business– from local start-ups to international corporations– benefits when they claim their location profiles in the Top 3 search engines’ local listing centers.

The Top 3 local listing centers are:

• Google Places (formerly Google Maps)
• Bing Business Portal (formerly Bing Local)
• Yahoo! Local Listing Center

The larger your business and the longer it’s been around, the higher chances that incorrect or outdated info about your business is displayed by these 3 business centers.  Claiming these profiles ensures you have control over how your business is represented online.  You can correct mistakes and also add marketing assets like photos and coupons!  Each has its own special perks — Google Places offers the Google Dashboard, where you can see visibility numbers for your local listings.  Yahoo does not require any verification step to complete Local profiles.  And Bing offers mobile-marketing considerations and allows you to prioritize your services.

HOWEVER, there is one minor caveat to the simplicity of this process: the dreaded VERIFICATION STEP required by Google and Bing.

This verification step, required before a new listing is published, is vital to limiting spam.  But for those attempting to ethically publish info about their location(s) online, verification can be an inconvenient challenge.  Depending on several factors, Google and Bing require one of two forms of verification before a location’s listing can successfully publish:

1) phone verification – Google or Bing call you, and provide a PIN number to enter
2) letter verification – Google or Bing send your location a letter, supplying a PIN number to enter

There are pros and cons to each method.  When given a choice, phone verification is more immediate.  However, it requires the person who answers the phone at your location(s) to understand the process described above (sometimes a lot to ask during a busy day!).  Good thing both Google and Bing provide multiple attempts before letter verification is required.  Letter verification is no longer a snail’s journey.  The time it takes to receive these letters is getting faster– most companies will find Google and Bing letters in their mailboxes within a week.  And letters can be easily resent on command.

The bottom line is to stay calm during the tricky verification process.  These verification systems are patient and offer several attempts.  And the light at the end of the tunnel is awesome — much-increased visibility of your business to local consumers.

If you continue to have trouble verifying your business in Google Places specifically, search Mike Blumenthal’s blog for solutions.  The actual Google Places forum is a tangled web, and Mike does a great job to synthesize issues business owners face during this process.  Popular user issues covered on Mike’s blog include:

What does “We currently do not support this location” mean in Google Places?
My Google Places listing has been in ‘Pending’ status forever!
Why did I receive the error message that I’ve used a banned term in Google Places?
Why is my business marked closed in Google Places?  I’m still here!

Best of luck, and please comment below with any questions as you verify your business in Google, Yahoo and Bing!

The stat was ingrained in my mind.  That 89% of search engine users clicked a result on Page 1.

But a new study, published recently by Slingshot SEO, debunks that old statistic.  Reported today by thought-leader Search Engine Watch, the number of people who click on results from Page 1 of search results is now proven to be…only 52 percent.

Click here for details and implications of this important study.

In the meantime, we leave you with a chart (courtesy Search Engine Watch) of what percentage of Google users click on results in the first 10 positions:

Eyebrows are raised.

The sheer timing of recent changes to Google Places (reported here) and the introduction of Google+ (reported here) is suspect.  Google strips a considerable amount of information from Places profiles in the same month as they release Google+, which enables rich social interactions for users.  A coincidence?

Local Search experts are reading between the lines.  Previously, Google encouraged all business owners to edit information about their business for free, in order to provide consumers with details on the businesses nearby.  Will Google soon charge business owners for enhanced profiles, data-rich and infused with flashy features from Google+?  Will business owners pay for this?

Previous attempts from Google to encourage local business owners to advertise have NOT been wildly successful.  Products like Google Boost have come and gone, as business owners did not see the benefit of paying to display their hours and photos.  How better to force business owners into advertising, than requiring payment in order to create a business profile at all!

As we anticipate Google Business Profiles (an unreleased product), many theorize that Google Places will become the equivalent of a bare-bones Yellow Pages listing.  Meanwhile, paid Google Business Profiles would become big and colorful display ads with lots of interactive features.  There is certainly a demand for business owners to control information out there about their business.  That is really their right!  If data control becomes un-free, Google seeks to reap considerable rewards.  Stay tuned.

Now more than ever, people are relying on online reviews before making a purchasing decision.

In fact, “84% of consumers said they were more likely to check online for reviews prior to making a purchase compared to twelve months ago”, according to a recent survey by Brand Reputation.

Because of the growing popularity of online reviews, companies have been working hard to encourage their happiest customers to share what they think about their business!

Most recently GetListed.org came up with the idea of “Review Wednesday” where you take a few minutes every Wednesday to write a review on Google Places for a favorite small business of yours.  After you do that, log on to your Twitter account and share it.  Remember to use the hashtag #RWX when Tweeting.

Check out an example on Twitter!

If you aren’t sure how to find direct links (like Mary Bowling’s in the example above) to your Google Reviews, please check out this video:

Google Places listings are looking different from week-to-week, as Google actively tests different profile displays.

Last week, Google axed 3rd party reviews from Places listings (reviews from sites like Yelp.com), and removed the “More About This Place” feature where business citations were listed.  What’s next?

After researching and following these changes closely and anxiously anticipating what will happen in the near future, we stumbled upon a forum post by a Google Places Community Manager (i.e. Google employee) that confirms additional display changes in Google Places profiles.

Vanessa from Google states:

Seeing a lot of questions in the forum, let me just clarify a couple things about the new Place pages. The following info you provide may not appear on your Place page, but it’s all still used to help us understand more about your business:

• Email address
• Menu
• Reservations
• Optional attributes / Additional details
• Service area toggle “Show service area”

So just because we’re not showing it, doesn’t mean it’s not helpful for us to have — it helps our system ensure that your organic listing appears and ranks appropriately on Google and Google Maps when potential customers perform searches related to your service.

At this point, we can only theorize as to why Google would un-display helpful data provided by business owners.  Mike Blumenthal, a known Google Places guru, seems to think Google is making room for more paid local features. Whatever the case may be, we expect more changes to surface.  Until then, as they say: “keep calm and carry on”!

For the second year in a row, hundreds of thousands gathered together to celebrate “Social Media Day”, on June 30th.  This event is a celebration of the technological advancements that allows for everyone to connect with real-time information and communicate with one another miles apart.

In honor of “Social Media Day”. Mashable, the leader in social media news and web culture reporting runs a global event where they ask web users why their city should be considered the most social place on the planet.

This year, thanks to Blair Ward, Cincinnati, OH (the home of Upright Communications) was chosen as the most social city on earth.

Take a moment to see why Cincinnati is just so social and so cool I might add!

#Cincinnati – The Most Social Savvy City in the World

Google+ is a new social platform which many see as Google’s answer to Facebook. There are several components to the free product, launching now and over the next several months:

1) CLICK TO SHARE The first feature (available now to all Google users) is the ability to “+1″ Google search results. Enable this feature, and you will see a +1 button to the right of each Google search result. It’s similar to ‘liking’ on Facebook– when you click the button, other participants in your Google social network will see what you +1 in their own search results. See screenshot:

Sign up for the ability to “+1″ specific Google search results, the new form of social sharing. (Log into your Google account first.)

2) HOOK +1 UP ON YOUR WEBSITE Most likely, Google will eventually factor the amount of +1s a webpage receives as a ranking factor. Currently, the amount of tweets and Facebook shares a page receives is a ranking factor; so this is the next logical step. According to your comfort level, we recommend you add the +1 sharing button to your webpages:

Add the +1 button to your website, to enable visitors to share your webpages and blog entries with their Google networks.

3) ADDITIONAL FEATURES Google has a whole world planned with Google+. For example: ten-person video sharing, management of Facebook-style social profiles, and easy mobile sharing. Currently, only a select few Google users have access to these features. Read one user’s experience of the new features.

Sign up to be notified when additional Google+ features are rolled out to the public.

More to come on Google+ in the coming weeks and months!

We frequently hear advertisers in various industries say, “social media is great, but it really doesn’t apply to my market.” The story of Xceed Financial Federal Credit Union, as reported at Credit Unions Online, might make those reluctant marketers reconsider. Rather than deciding that social media was not relevant for their business, they found a way to make their business applicable to social media.

Financial advice and tutorials might not be the liveliest social media subject matter but Xceed is managing to use a variety of social outlets to gain a broader audience. Is the effort paying off? According to Senior Vice President Kathryn Davis, they see measurable results from promotions like the “BLING-BLING for Mom” message on their Facebook page promoting a discount at Zales using the Platinum Visa. She reports, “posts like the Mother’s Day discount entry produce almost a 200% increase in activity. We get the highest response when we weave a current event or something happening in the news into our offerings.”

For today’s Friday Funk, we’d like to share an episode of “The Cube” a humorous series reminiscent of The Office that Xceed features on their social website, xperienceonline.org. It’s fun to watch, you’ll learn how to calculate your net worth, and you may even be inspired to create your own social media gem!