Adam Sherk

DECEMBER 1, 2009

Home About Contact PR Publishing SEO Social Media Subscribe Adam Sherk Does Google News Sitemaps New Format Help Publishers? by Adam Sherk on December 1, 2009 In November Google announced a new format for Google News Sitemaps with several changes including new tags that provide additional detail on each submitted article.

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Adam Sherk

MAY 22, 2009

Home About Contact PR Publishing SEO Social Media Subscribe Adam Sherk Google News Wants Title Tags to Match Headlines? So it appears this tip is intended to make it easier for Google News to understand the correct title for articles, as opposed to being a “must do&# to prevent an issue.

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Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 1, 2009

I personally found that Google Trends tends to be a little more sensationalistic than the others. Real-time Blogroll (via Google Reader) About.com Founder Scott Kurnit Launches Huge New Startup Called "AdKeeper" New Digg Buttons Released - Upgrade Now! Here are some free resources for identifying hot topics and search trends.

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Adam Sherk

AUGUST 31, 2010

In my ongoing look at mainstream media outlets and social media I have done multiple posts on news sites and Twitter, Facebook and Digg but I’ve yet to look at YouTube. The Most Buried News Sites on Digg News Sites on the New Digg: Who is Active, Who is Gaining Followers? Hard to believe mainstream TV isn’t all over this.

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Adam Sherk

JUNE 15, 2010

But Twitter, Facebook in some cases Digg still represent the majority of social media referrals to many news sites, so they continue to be a priority. News Sites on the New Digg: Who is Active, Who is Gaining Followers? There is of course much more to the social media universe than just The Bobbsey Twins. What do you think?

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Adam Sherk

APRIL 26, 2010

So I thought I’d take a look at some early examples of Facebook Open Graph integration on news sites. Not covered in my examples above is the fact that Open Graph protocol can also provide sites with additional reporting data. You can jump to the end for the Takeaways ).

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Adam Sherk

MARCH 16, 2010

Google, Bing and Yahoo are all experimenting with various forms of real-time results now and making deals with Twitter, Facebook and other social sites. In its “Latest results” Google blends results from Google News and Google Blog Search with updates from Twitter and Facebook Pages, offering multiple paths in for news and content sites.

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Adam Sherk

JUNE 9, 2010

I have seen plenty of blog posts and conference presentations on how to utilize Static FBML but I rarely see news sites highlighted among the examples of good usage. There are a handful of examples however that are worth pointing out. The short answer? Not so many. and found that the majority are making little or no use of Static FBML.

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Adam Sherk

JULY 28, 2009

CNN.com places a “Story Highlights” section with bullet points to the right of the headline, for example : While a great feature for users, article highlights are also an effective SEO technique. Related posts: Google News Wants Title Tags to Match Headlines?

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Adam Sherk

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

The Huffington Post is a good high-profile example: Looking at recent posts they appear to have dialed tagging back a bit, but the average post still gets quite a few tags. Related posts: Google News Wants Title Tags to Match Headlines? Does Google News Sitemaps New Format Help Publishers? So use tags, but use them wisely.

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Adam Sherk

FEBRUARY 9, 2010

The recent partnership between Foursquare and Canada’s Metro is a good early example of the potential that exists. While different from my archive idea, this is a great example of location-based opportunities for news sites. Check out The New York Times page on Foursquare to see it in action.

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Adam Sherk

JULY 9, 2009

For example at the bottom of this syndicated LiveScience.com article you’ll see the attribution link: ( 2010 Update: The syndicated article no longer appears on Yahoo News so I removed the link to it. The Yahoo attribution links do not point directly to the original article URLs.

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Adam Sherk

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

In other cases no headline or descriptive text is provided, as in this example from Time : On this Silicon Alley Insider article, clicking the Twitter link in the share toolbar brings up nothing but the full length URL, which is interesting because a shortened bit.ly Related posts: Google News Wants Title Tags to Match Headlines?

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Adam Sherk

AUGUST 31, 2009

For news sites, the publication date and a photo can be added to Yahoo search results for articles and opinion pieces, as shown in this example: To take advantage of the enhanced news results, publishers can either use RDFa markup to embed the news data in their content, or use a NewsML feed to send the data privately to Yahoo.

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Adam Sherk

JUNE 9, 2009

If I’m looking for breaking news on a particular topic I’ll search with queries using that topic, for example “Air France crash” or “Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court.” And if I want to get an overview of the current news of the day I’ll go to Google News or Yahoo! News , or direct navigate to a major news site.

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Adam Sherk

JUNE 9, 2009

If I’m looking for breaking news on a particular topic I’ll search with queries using that topic, for example “Air France crash” or “Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court.” And if I want to get an overview of the current news of the day I’ll go to Google News or Yahoo! News , or direct navigate to a major news site.

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Adam Sherk

JULY 30, 2009

Great Example of a Multimedia News Article from ESPN.com Alicia Keys Facebook Page: I’d Sign Up if She Asked Me All Cool { 3 comments… read them below or add one } Jamie Favreau July 31, 2009 at 1:29 am They sound too formal. Greg Jarboe July 31, 2009 at 6:03 pm Great example, Adam. And you are absolutely right.

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Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 8, 2009

For example a selection of movie reviews (that also exist in the film section) will be duplicated on a different template in a “What’s Hot This Summer” feature. Or for example in photo galleries the first slide may appear on a different URL when you go back to it via the “previous” button. Repurposing content in new packages.

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Adam Sherk

AUGUST 7, 2009

Some sites give this responsibility to a specific individual, others create a persona – @ColonelTribune is good example of this approach. Fortune 100 Need to Get More Creative with Twitter Real-time Search Optimization for News Sites News Sites on the New Digg: Who is Active, Who is Gaining Followers?

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Adam Sherk

MAY 18, 2009

This is a good example of how publishers are attempting to add more value to their official pages on social media sites, which is certainly needed as many of the pages are still fairly one-dimensional. Adam is part of the Define Search Strategies consulting team, which is owned by The New York Times Company.

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Adam Sherk

MAY 18, 2009

This is a good example of how publishers are attempting to add more value to their official pages on social media sites, which is certainly needed as many of the pages are still fairly one-dimensional. Adam is part of the Define Search Strategies consulting team, which is owned by The New York Times Company.

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Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

So I thought I’d take a closer look at what Fox News is doing on its Facebook Page , as well as some engagement examples. Real-time Blogroll (via Google Reader) About.com Founder Scott Kurnit Launches Huge New Startup Called "AdKeeper" New Digg Buttons Released - Upgrade Now!

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Adam Sherk

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

For example making a List for the entire editorial staff is a popular first step right now. I created it, and found this blog through a quick Google search. Real-time Blogroll (via Google Reader) About.com Founder Scott Kurnit Launches Huge New Startup Called "AdKeeper" New Digg Buttons Released - Upgrade Now!

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Adam Sherk

AUGUST 16, 2010

In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo. You may, however, condition entry to the promotion upon becoming a fan of a Page.

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Adam Sherk

APRIL 30, 2009

On newspaper and magazine sites, the main culprit is typically the practice of appending tracking codes to the end of URLs, for example: www.yoursite.com/article ?xid=rss Syndication Best Practices: Reduce the Risk of Being Outranked for Your Own Content Does Google News Sitemaps New Format Help Publishers? xid=rss (or ?xid=topstories

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Adam Sherk

JUNE 30, 2009

Beyond that, there are steps that publishers can take to help reduce the risk of being outranked for their own content: Require partners to link back to the original on every syndicated article, for example: This article originally appeared on Example.com: [direct link, ideally with the headline as the link text]. 5 out of 50?

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Adam Sherk

OCTOBER 20, 2009

Muck Rack and MicroPR are good examples of people using some creative thinking to get the right information to the right people using the online tools available. Real-time Blogroll (via Google Reader) About.com Founder Scott Kurnit Launches Huge New Startup Called "AdKeeper" New Digg Buttons Released - Upgrade Now!

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Adam Sherk

MAY 26, 2009

For example on The New York Times Company’s corporate site, press releases are hosted by Thomson Reuters on [link] URLs: Last year Todd Defren wrote that social media releases are best kept in your company newsroom for a variety of reasons. However long-term it is much better to strengthen your own domain as opposed to someone else’s.

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Adam Sherk

MARCH 2, 2010

I looked at referral data for 2008, 2009 and 2010 to-date and for comparison also included Facebook and Digg. The highs for Facebook and Digg were 2% and 7.2% The Digg percentages varied the most with straight news sites faring best. It is interesting that Digg is trending down this year. Is Digg losing steam?

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Adam Sherk

DECEMBER 8, 2009

Home About Contact PR Publishing SEO Social Media Subscribe Adam Sherk Google Living Stories – Just Snazzy Topic Pages or is Google onto Something? by Adam Sherk on December 8, 2009 Today Google unveiled its Living Stories prototype , showcasing its vision of a new format for presenting news stories online.

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Adam Sherk

MAY 17, 2010

For example when I went to the CNN page by searching “CNN” while on the Fox News page I ended up on this URL: There are multiple combinations that can occur. If you paste those funky URLs into a new browser tab they redirect to a better URL (in the CNN example www.facebook.com/cnn?ref=ts).

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Adam Sherk

JUNE 29, 2010

So I searched PRWeb ’s press release archive for a selection of overused terms, buzzwords and marketing speak using a “site:prweb.com” search on Google, for example: I opted for Google over PRWeb’s internal search because internal search results are not typically very good. I chose PRWeb over PR Newswire, Business Wire, etc.

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Adam Sherk

SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

David Halberstam’s book, The Powers That Be, is filled with examples of how senior editors at Time rewrote Vietnam reporting to meld with Luce’s ideology. Real-time Blogroll (via Google Reader) About.com Founder Scott Kurnit Launches Huge New Startup Called "AdKeeper" New Digg Buttons Released - Upgrade Now!

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