In this second post of our series, we look at the various popular domains being touched upon by the increasing number of mobile applications.

Let us start by looking at how consumers are using their mobile phones in US, Europe and Japan.

• Clearly we see a range of functional and entertainment areas being touched upon.
• Further, Japan appears to be leading in most.
• 34.4% of the mobile users in US made use of mobile applications as per the survey in the last quarter of 2010.

Between 2008-2010, 300,000 mobile applications were developed. In 2010 these 300,000+ applications were downloaded 10.9 billion times. IDC¹ predicts that global downloads will reach 183 billion⁷ in 2015 and will be worth more than US$35 billion.

A mobile application is a software application that runs in a smartphone, tablet or other portable device.

These are provided by developers by submitting them to app stores, who then retail them online to the consumers.

Popular app stores are Apple’s iphone App store, Google’s Android Market, Samsung Apps, Blackberry’s App World, Microsoft Windows Marketplace, and Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow Arena.

There is also an increasing trend of free third party cross platform app stores which cater to both smartphones and feature phones. The largest amongst these is Get Jar with over 350,000 apps and over 2 Billion downloads. Others are Cydia, Handster, Amazon Appstore for Android, and Handango.

In India we have seen a few players open their application stores. For its 145 million subscribers, Vodafone India on 1st November, 2011 launched an app store named – Vstore⁹. It has a collection of over 10,000 free and paid apps for four major mobile operating systems namely Android, Java,Symbian and BlackBerry.

BSNL, India’s state owned telecom provider has also launched its app store on September 22¹⁰, 2011. Apart from these Bharti Airtel had already had launched its store last year ‘Airtel App Central’ in Feb 2010.

Apart from these, there are other development companies with plans to open App stores of their own. Witness appBazar by Pune based Webonise Labs^12,13.

To get an idea of the present mobile app market, we note that in 2012, the market is estimated to be US$ 17.5 Billion¹⁴ according to a study commissioned by Get Jar. The best app development companies¹⁵ in this marketplace according to SourcingLine¹⁵ are: Intersog (USA, Chicago), CDN Solutions Group (India, Indore), Dot Com Infoway (India, Chennai) amongst others.

In the US, according to Nielsen² (June 2010), the most used (as opposed to downloaded) apps across all smartphones, are Facebook, Google Maps and The Weather Channel (TWC). The most popular categories are games; news; maps; social networking and music.We expect the categories to remain similar at the time of this writing also.

The Facebook App has been downloaded 100 million times from the independent app store GetJar, according to GetJar² (December 2010) (making this the most downloaded app from any app store). The irony is that this is not a download app it’s a short cut to the Facebook mobile site – Facebook is a Web app, available for anyone with any Web-enabled handset.

Demand for app stores is expected to peak in 2013. ABI Research (May 2010) predicts that app stores will slowly decline as subscribers migrate from download apps to mobile Web sites and more popular download apps, such as social networking, are preloaded on mobile devices.

Between Apple and Google, Google has recently overtaken Apple in the number of apps downloaded³. With a 44% share vs Apple’s 31%, Android users are now downloading more mobile programs than iPhone and iPad users combined. This is despite the Android Market only having 319,161 apps at the end of last month³ vs. the Apple App Store’s 459,589. Reason being that Android phones sell twice as much as Apple, hence more downloads.

By the end of 2011, Android market will have as many users as Apple’s App store, as shown in the following graphic, further strengthening the Android platform.

For now, let us have a look at some of the best paid and free apps available for various domains as offered from Apple⁴:

For the iPhone

All-Time Top Paid iPhone Apps

1. Doodle Jump – game

2. Tap Tap Revenge 3 – game

3. Pocket God – game

4. Angry Birds – game

5. Tap Tap Revenge 2.6  - game

All-Time Top Free iPhone Apps

1. Facebook – social network

2. Pandora – personalized internet radio service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites.

3. Google Mobile App – Search Google for free from your mobile phone with Google Mobile App

4. Shazam – music identification – entertainment

5. Movies by Flixster – watch movies

Accounting for nine out of the top 10, video games dominate the paid apps market, while the most popular free apps are more diverse.

For the iPad

All-Time Top Paid iPad Apps

1. SoundHound – instant music search and discovery

2. StickWars – game

3. FlightTrack – Live flight status tracker and flight tracker maps

4. Backbreaker Football – award-winning, visually stunning and addictive football game!

5. Calorie Tracker – search the extensive database of more than 625,000 foods for nutritional information including fat, sugar, carbohydrates, cholesterol and more

All-Time Top Free iPad Apps

1. Pandora – personalized internet radio service that helps you find new music based on your old and current favorites

2. Google Mobile App – Search Google for free from your mobile phone with Google Mobile App

3. Movies by Flixster – watch movies

4. Google Earth – Google Earth application on Ipad.

5. Yelp – to search for places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play then read reviews.

Some other domains and apps5 popular in them are:

1. News Apps

CNN App, The Wall Street Journal, NYTimes, BBC News, The Weather Channel

2. Business

CNBC, American Express, Mint.com

3. Travel

Jetsetter, Tripadvisor, Lonely Planet, Expedia Hotels

4. Sports & Fitness

Nike training Club, Sports Tracker, Men’s health workouts, Yoga stretch

5. Lifestyle

Jamie’s recipes, Weber’s on the grill, Surf report

6. Social Networking

Twitter, Faceebook, LinkedIn

7. Education

iStudiezPro, World Atlas by National Geographic, New Oxford Amercian Dictionary

This 2nd post, concludes our two intial posts, on introducing mobile applications to the reader. In our future posts, we shall evaluate how to test such applications.

References

1. IDC: http://www.idc.com/home.jsp?t=1319977618141, International Data Corporation

2. http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats

3. http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/guy_gear_250/252_android-vs-apple.html

4. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/011911-apple-appstore-iphone-ipad-downloads.html

5. http://www.apple.com/iphone/from-the-app-store/

6. http://www.research2guidance.com/by-the-end-of-2011-android-market-will-have-as-many-users-as-apple%e2%80%99s-app-store/

7. http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/28/idc-predicts-183-billion-mobile-app-downloads-by-2015-rise-of-in-app-purchasing/

8. http://www.getjar.com/about/

9. http://www.themobileindian.com/new-launches/1045_Vodafone-launches-app-store-for-4-platforms

10. http://telecomtalk.info/bsnl-launches-mobile-app-store/77303/

11.http://www.airtel.in/wps/wcm/connect/About%20Bharti%20Airtel /bharti+airtel/media+centre/bharti+airtel+news/mobile/pg-bharti-airtel-launches-indias-first-mobile-app-store-airtel-app-central

12. http://www.theindiangeek.com/2011/02/app-bazaar-indian-android-app-store.html

13. http://contest.appbazar.in/

14. http://mashable.com/2010/03/17/mobile-app-market-17-5-billion/

15. http://www.sourcingline.com/directory/mobile-application-developers

Link juice
The phrase ‘Link Juice’ was coined by Internet Marketer and SEO consultant Greg Boser around 2007 and since then it has acquired a place of its own in the SEO world. It refers to how much benefit a link is passing on. Or, what is the pass through ratio of link equity. Further, it also refers to how much weight a page is perceived to contain. This weight it can share with other pages it links to, internally or externally.

Link juice flow
The amount of link juice available in each web page is indicated by its page rank. For example,  a web page with page rank 6 has 6 times the amount of link juice available compared to a page with page rank 1. The quality of the link juice passed through a web page is depends on the number of outbound links. If we have two web pages with equal amount of web juice but one has 1 outbound link and another one has 6 outbound links. The quantity of link juice released to a third page from the single outbound link page, will be 6 times the quantity of the link juice passed from the web page with 6 outbound links.

As another example, the PR of a page is expressed some what exponentially, so a PR7 is not 7 times better then PR1, it is more likely to be 128 times better. The link juice is split up amongst the outbound links on the page. So if there are 100 other links on a PR7 page, it is more akin to the juice from a sole link on a PR1 page. Means links from a high ranking page is better, but the number of outbound links does dilute the juice passed.

Link juice optimization
When we try to control the flow of link juice in our website, this practice is called link juice optimization. It is the practice by which the page rank flows in a website.

It is also called page rank sculpting.

On many occasions, the highest ranking pages on a site are the privacy policy pages or profile pages instead of their conversion pages. The reason is not that not only are these pages filled with the company and/ or product name, but also they’re getting high quantity of link juice from linking directly to the higher ranked homepage, and similarly from many other pages in the site. In other words, the page rank for such low importance pages is unnecessarily high. This is called link juice leakage. This is corrected using rel=”nofollow” tag.

No Follow Tag
A link on a web page is followed during the indexing process of Search engines. Pages with many incoming links are ranked higher in searches than pages with few incoming links. If there are links on your blog that you don’t want search engines to find, use the No Follow tag to make them invisible in terms search indexing and ranking. A link using the ‘no-follow’ tag will look like this:

<a href=”http://www.anothersite.com” rel=”nofollow”>Another Site</a>.

When a search engine sees a ‘no-follow’ tag in an HTML link, it will not follow it, nor assign link popularity to the destination page.

No follow tags are the method of link juice optimization.

These No Follow tags should used for links like:

1. Login/ Signup/ Register
2. Logo
3. Archives
4. Copyright
5. Privacy Policy
6. Terms of Service
7. Feedback

To read an extended version of this blog post – please visit http://www.grazitti.com/articles/introduction-to-link-juice-optimization.html

The mobile application testing space is complex. The mobile is a significant percentage of primary access to the internet. So we thought it deserves more than a single post – here is the first one.

Why do we need Mobile application testing ?

Consider some statistics:

• 5.3 billion^1,2 is the number estimated by the International Telecommunication Union as the total number of mobile subscriptions in the world by the end of 2010. Growth being led by India and China.
• Smart phone sales accounted for about 22% of total mobile sales in 2010^1,4,5
• 25% of all smart phone users do most of their online browsing on their phone⁶.
• Over 300,000 mobile applications were developed between 2007-2010¹.
• Payments by mobile ‘m-payments’, estimated to be about US$ 240 Billion in 2011¹.

Next we see how the following graphic illustrates that a smart phone user’s maximum time is spent on his Applications. We assume a similar time distribution holds true across other phones.

Again, consider the following chart⁶ for both feature as well as smart phone user. Note feature phone sales still outnumber smart phone sales by 4:1, not to count the existing ownership.

We observe that 44% of cell phone owners use their phones to access the internet. 35% to play games. And similar.

Next, we shall briefly have a look at some image samples of mobile applications and games on mobile phones and how sometimes the applications give us an error.

And then we shall have a look at some manufacturer statistics wrt mobile applications.

Mobile Application

Mobile Game

Error Example

Another Game example

Consider the top smartphone sales statistics for 2010¹:

Nokia has a huge dominance, maybe to our surprise, given the popularity of iPhones and Blackberries in this part of the world.

Similarly consider how the dominant OS platforms in the above smartphones are expected to grow between 2009 -2015¹.

What we can observe is that Android & Windows Mobile are expected to gain at the cost of Symbian.

To summarise, there is clearly a need for a coherent strategy to test the various applications being put out in such a huge marketplace. We propose to show how to go about doing that in part 2 of our series. Do read.

Thanks for reading and we’ll welcome your feedback.

List of Reference sites

1. http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats
2. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/at_glance/KeyTelecom.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use
4. http://www.idc.com/about/viewpressrelease.jsp?containerId=prUS22689111&sectionId=null&elementId=null&pageType=SYNOPSIS
5. http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=pressreleaseviewer&a0=5000
6. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Smartphones/Summary.aspx

The Query Deserves Freshness algorithm is not new. It was first discussed by Google Fellow Amit Singhal in June 2007 in a New York Times Article written by Saul Hansell.

By now it is estimated that other search engines also use it in their search methodology, or similar versions of it.

What we mean by QDF is that the algorithm is able to decide which fresh content should be displayed high up in the search rankings in addition to the content with highest page rank, given the fact that there is a huge rising interest in a particular event or news.

When there is peaking query traffic for a particular search phrase, news, and blogposts about a topic on the internet, then Google (speaking of Google only) is aware that this particular news item is hot.

Eg. If a query is typed in as Libya, the user most likely is interested in the latest volatile situation in Libya.  So optimized results for the fresh content posted on the Libya situation would be displayed above the traditional pages on Libya.

Or say Michael Jackson’s death. Or the Japanese Tsunami and its nuclear disaster challenge.

That is, when there is news about celebrities, events, epidemics or any other news generating huge interest on the net, Google will push fresh content for that topic to the top versus pages that have stood the test of time and are likely to be of better content and higher quality.

QDF takes into account Search Volume, News Coverage, Blog Coverage and possibly Toolbar data. As expected, Google has a patent on its methods for the above data sampling and usage.

This was the explanation part of QDF.

Let us now see how QDF functionality allows us to exploit its functionality, to increase our visibility on the search engines.

First, we shall explore how we can drive traffic to your website and make it possibly rank high. Once it ranks high it becomes a self-reinforcing authority and is referenced by other people looking for the topic.

The idea in this case is, to create and post highly relevant content to your website for a particular topic that is generating huge interest in the internet.

The sooner a post is out, the sooner you can hope that Google will Index your story, and hopefully traffic will come to you.

However there is a catch in this. One, you’re recommended that the post needs to be out for a trend in a matter of hours, not days. Second, if it gets listed, promote your post. Link to it from your existing website pages. Keep adding new stuff to the article. Otherwise the ranking could be temporary.

Further, in writing for QDF, aim for the long tail. Although QDF is great for short, really competitive ‘head’ terms, QDF excels for long tail search phrases. These might not get higher traffic, but can get higher rankings and selected visitors.

Further still, do your site optimization ahead of time. If your site is does not show up in search engines, neither will your article.

The second case where we can use QDF functionality and derive mileage from it is, e.g. in a situation like a product launch.

Let’s assume a corporate is launching a new product. We take the specific example of what Dell did when it launched its ‘Adamo’ range of notebooks in March 2009. Consider the following:

• It generated news around the new product launch. News articles and press releases being one method. So that these would come up in the Google search.
• It bought a new highly relevant domain name www.adamobydell.com, which it knew would give a boost to SEO, since it had the word Adamo inside it.
• It linked all of its blogs and press releases to this new domain.
• Dell connected with tech bloggers on the web, and leaked information about the product early. This kind of jump started the blog mechanism and also created a feel good feeling in the bloggers contacted exclusively, much to the likely benefit of Dell, by getting positive reviews.
• Further, all this blogger community was linking back to the www.adamobydell.com site, since Dell made sure that all the photos and interactive elements were hosted there. Today this domain redirects to Dell.com
• Moreover, Dell leveraged its other web properties e.g. www.dell.com by publicising and linking to this new site for Adamo.

By doing activities like these Dell was able to ensure the QDF algorithm captured its activity spike and ranked its new site at search rank one for its relevant targeted keywords on the very first day of the product range Adamo launch.
That then, was a brief introduction to QDF, and its possible utilization.
Hope you enjoyed reading this post, as much I did, writing it. My acknowledgments in particular to Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOMOZ.org from whom the above Dell example has been borrowed.

Google has launched a new social networking site Google+.

Google+ allows individuals to share photos, messages, videos and also allows them to integrate maps and images into the service. The service was launched on June 28, 2011 and after only two weeks of launch, Google+ had 18 million users.  It has set the record as the fastest growing social networking site.

New Features

Google+ provides many new features over Facebook. The best I liked was that there is no character limit of your post. I was also impressed with Google+ because of its new features:

• Circles: It is  a new feature and also
  very well  implemented. It’s easier to create rather than the friend list in Facebook or Twitter list. Circle allows you to organize your connection according to your social connections like friends, family, work friends etc.
• Sparks: With the help of this feature any individual can connect with the network of others with the common interest.
• Hangouts: It is a key innovative feature of Google+. It is basically group video chat and 10 people can chat at the same time. We can also post YouTube videos on Google+ hangout. This may be the Facebook killer feature. There could also be a “business hangout” for meetings that allows companies to organize, archive text, image, videos conference.
• Huddle: This is group instant messaging service.

These are the new services of Google+, which I liked the most.

My views about Google+

When first I heard about Google launching Google+, I was totally shocked. Do we need another social networking site? But when I watched Google+ demo… I was totally impressed.

I am also happier with the privacy aspect in Google+. Facebook appeared to be compromising my privacy on many accounts. Eg. Facebook’s chat application. Anyone can add me to their group, even every other day a stranger adds me to his group. It is very frustrating. But this is not so in Google+.

What would you think about Google+?
Do you think it will be better than Facebook ?