Bounce rate: a measurement in Google Analytic’s that indicates the number of your visitors who jump away from your website after they arrive at a page, without going to another page. Definitely one of the most useful metrics webmasters or marketers have in their arsenal. One can merely glance at the bounce rate of a page or an average over a section of pages, to derive some idea of how the page is performing.

The post that is linked to as a reference by the official Google Analytics blog as an adequate explanation is called Bounce rate: sexiest web metric ever? I hope that`s it`s referenced because it is an accurate interpretation of bounce rate, rather than because it`s what Google want us to hear.

Is your PPC campaign suffering from low click-through rates and high minimum bids? It might be time to start looking at your account structure. This would, of course, be after scrupulously sifting through your keyword list. We are assuming here that your keywords have been meticulously and accurately selected.

Many experts advise advertisers to keep their PPC account structure in line with their sitemaps, or website structures. This is a great idea if it is possible. It maintains an order that is easily lost when creating targeted AdGroups, but in many cases, it`s just not viable.

Viral marketing has proven to be very successful for many online companies, so long as they get it right. That`s the trick though: to get it right. There are many reasons why viral marketing can sometimes hit the mark, and will at other times slither into underground territory where no one takes any notice of it. Finding the right playing field can be tricky, but once you`ve correctly targeted and researched your market, your viral campaign should be set to go. Only the right target market will catch on to the intent of the campaign, so double check that you are distributing/introducing it into the appropriate social community.

It`s been making headlines in search engine news for some time now, but many people, SEO`s included, still aren`t aware of how big the mobile revolution really is. And it is huge. Smartphone sales are rising and even regular cell phones are starting to incorporate a limited range of smartphone-like capabilities to support internet functions. It`s time that search engine optimisers pulled their noggins out from the sand and addressed the mobile phenomenon head-on.

It`s been a good decade since Google launched itself on an unsuspecting search market and its continuing contributions to the online industry have (mostly) proved to be revolutionary. But with all the advancements that they`ve made, they`re still no match for the human brain and how it thinks and searches for answers. When we look and search for things we tend to look for things that are related, in other words, we look for things that are familiar to us, or that can be associated to things that we know. My dad is a doctor and he refers to this process as associative search because we search along networks for associations between things. He thinks that`s just how they came up with search engines and looking at it closely I guess he is right.

Social Media has positioned itself as one of the most unrestricted forms of online communication to emerge over the last couple of years. It allows members of different communities who have similar interests to participate in conversations with experts and fellow industry affiliates to discuss a variety of topics, which span thousands of issues among the various communities.

With the launch of the new Ask.com kid`s website I know that there will be thousands of parents wondering if this is actually the first real “kids” search engine.

AskKids.com is said to be the best kids search engine so far. They have a fun, interactive home page for children where they can draw and play around with different stickers. This is sure to keep the kids entertained for a while. I even spent a few minutes making some drawings out of my name and creating funny faces.

I think the underlying principle that applies to the success of social network friendly media is that something can always be designed to appeal to a chosen set of people; talent not required.

It`s about as easy to carve a given concept permanently into peoples` minds as it is to shoot comatose fish in their respective barrels, especially with the free technology available today.

Anything that manages to stimulate the senses, has some power over the sensor. Stimulation has to be interpreted, and human kind will often show off talent for total misapprehension, and louse up the message.

Some people don`t like short stories; they think that they don`t tell a complete tale and that the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to read them are a waste of time. I love short stories. I think that there is a lot to be said for brevity, plus it`s very convenient to be able to read a complete story in the time it takes for supper to cook or your better half to finish reading the news on the net. Some enterprising individuals have taken short stories to the extreme, however, as Ryan Paul reports in Ars Technica. These people are using microblogging services - Twitter and Identi.ca - to write short stories in episodes to 140 characters or less. Matt Richtel, a writer for the New York Times, is a pioneer in this field and has dubbed his project “Twiller” writing, as in a cross between thriller and Twitter writing.

Google Suggest has recently been launched (not on Google.co.za yet though). It has many pros and cons, which are already being debated feverishly among online communities. But then, when do online communities (especially marketers) ever keep quiet about their opinions of Google? Some are praising it for its useful hints and time-efficiency, while others see it as a reputation management nightmare. After reading about five or six articles on the topic (quite opinionated ones I might add), the area that interested me the most was the effect that it will have for the industry of online reputation management.