Dave’s Answer:

You’re not alone with this request, and while it’s super easy to click “Pin It” from your browser toolbar, there are lots of Web pages that have images that are very Pinterest unfriendly, especially those where the images tend to be wide and short: Pinterest’s design definitely lends itself to narrow, tall or square much more than a horizontal orientation. The result is that lots of these images can end up tiny, too tiny to even read. Certainly they don’t entice users to explore further!

Problem is, when you upload an image to the service, there’s nowhere you can add a URL that would take people to a specific blog entry or Web page profile. Or is there?

Turns out that you can link an image you upload to a specific Web URL, it’s just a click or two more…

To start out, I have an image and a URL. Image first:

Now to Pinterest. I’m running with the new design, so image upload is located on the main menu:

But where does the URL go? That’s the trick. Refresh your Pinterest home page so that you see your new pinned image, then move your cursor to the top left of the image so that the “Edit” button is revealed:

Done. That’s it. Try it. A click on the image from the main Pinterest board view brings it up larger. Click on that and you’re on your Web page.

And while you’re at it, why not follow me on Pinterest too? I’m d1taylor on Pinterest.

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First off, thanks for the cup of coffee. I’m drinking it now as I type in this answer, actually, an almond milk chai from one of my favorite local coffee shops, Atlas Purveyors. Goodness, for sure.

In terms of what you ask, it’s actually pretty easy to reverse engineer just about any search site because they use what’s called a “GET method” of sending the search parameter to the system after you type in what you seek. That’s really what I tapped into on the Amazon search links that you have already read.

I’ve already written about Google Image Search more than once here, but I’ve never considered the question of building pre-defined searches as simple text links. Still, easily done, and the place to start is to read my previous article on adding a Google Image Search box to your page.

Armed with that information, let’s jump in!

Go to Google Image Search and search for, say, “Michelle Obama”. Your search results link in your browser will look like this:

Ugh, that’s really ugly, with lots going on. But, hmmm… what if I just deleted everything from the URL other than the q=”michelle+obama”, so the URL looks like this:

This sort of live URL hacking is essential to these sort of reverse engineering tasks, and this particular one reveals that, well, this isn’t sufficient for the URL to work: the results are a regular Google search, not an image search. Conclusion: one of the missing parameters tells Google that you’re doing an image search, not a regular one, and we need to restore it for the link to work.

Again, I’ll edit directly in the Web browser address bar, reducing the search down to the pattern plus the two parameters that seem to be related to the type of search:

That works! But I’m curious, so my last hack attempt is to simply remove the “source=” parameter entirely, producing the even shorter URL:

Not sure what “tbm” stands for, but that’s the key attribute, and if you give it the value “isch” (image search, no doubt) the link will work fine.

Now to build the search pattern itself. If it’s just a word or couple of words, that’s easy, simply replace “michelle+obama” with what you’d like to specify. If it’s a more complex search with punctuation marks or other odd characters, my recommendation would be to actually do a search, then look closely at the resultant URL to see how the punctuation (etc) has been encoded.

Then you can do things like this: Look for images of disgraced pro biker Lance Armstrong or, better yet, images of news about Lance Armstrong that doesn’t mention doping.

How did I do those? Pretty straightforward, here’s the HTML for those:

The only subtlety is that since I’m quoting the URL for properly formed HTML, I can’t just use double quotes within the URL itself. Easy enough, simple replace each embedded ” symbol with a %22. Easy.

Hope you find this helpful and sufficiently informative to get you started!

Dave’s Answer:

Since Google announced that they were going to spin down their popular Google Reader service in early March, it’s been quite the discussion online in both Google Plus and Facebook about what to do and what alternatives to explore. I’m in the same boat, actually, I’ve used Google Reader for years and years, and while I don’t read my RSS feedlist every single day, I do at least once or twice weekly catch up on things. Which I’m going to have to do somewhere else.

Fortunately, there are bunch of different RSS readers available, from standalone applications for Linux, Windows or Mac OS X to iPad and tablet apps to extensions for Web browsers like Firefox to, yes, other web-based services that function similarly to Google Reader, albeit with different interfaces. Do a few searches, you’ll see the options. As for me, I’m planning on trying out the slick Mac app Reeder as a replacement.

Which leaves the question: how do you easily export your subscription list from Google Reader?

The answer is that you need to use Google’s “Takeout” service. They probably named it thinking about getting your favorite restaurant food to eat at home but somehow, to me, it always sounds like part of a mob heist film. Maybe that’s just my peculiar bias!

In any case, go to Google Reader and don’t panic when you again see this:

Now click on the gear wheel icon on the top right…

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Then, a few months back YouTube began to allow external links to fundraiser sites like Kickstarter. Now it seems the floodgates are open.

You can create clickable links and buttons from within a YouTube video using their annotations tool.

I created a video, How to Create External Links In YouTube, and put together a step-by-step process outlined below.

First, Associate Your Website.

• Log into YouTube.
• Click on Video Manager.
• Choose Channel Settings in the left hand navigation.
• Choose Associated Websites and enter in your website.
• Note: Your YouTube channel and the Google Webmaster Tools for the associated website must share the same Google Account. If you don’t have Webmaster Tools enabled for your desired Associated Website, go take care of that now.

Second, Connect Your Webmaster Tools.

• Log into Webmaster Tools.
• Select the desired associated website.
• Choose Configuration.
• Choose Associates.
• Add a New User.
• Put in the email address associated with the Google Account.
• Check off YouTube.
• Now you’ll see that YouTube has been associated with this Webmaster Tools account.

Third, Verify Your YouTube Partner Account.

Apologies, apparently I deleted the text for the callout for #3 in the video, and by the time I noticed it, I already had some activity on the video, so I didn’t want to take it down. Next time, quality assurance.

• Head back to YouTube.
• Go to Channel Settings > Features.
• Click on Verify Account.
• Google will either call or text you (your choice) with a code. Enter it into the next screen.

Fourth, Enable External Links.

• Go to your Video Manager.
• Select any video and click on Edit > Annotations.
• When you arrive in the annotations screen, you’ll see a blue bar at the top. Click “Enable” and agree to the terms of service.
• Note: I’ve done this twice and BOTH times Associated Websites wasn’t enabled immediately. I had to go back into the Video Manager page, and then re-enter the video I wanted to create external links for.

Fifth, Link Away!

I didn’t create a #5 in the video, because at this point your channel is enabled for external links to the associated website. Here’s what I show:

• In annotations, select a moment where you want to create an external link. I used the Spotlight annotation, but you can choose Speech Bubble or Note.
• Select the “nearly invisible” box (if you wish.)
• Select “link.”
• Choose “Associated Website” in the pulldown menu.
• Type in your website (or any page at that domain.)
• Click Save and Publish, and your external link is ready for action!

Takeaway

You now have the ability to create outbound, external links from within your YouTube videos. Once enabled, it will work for any YouTube video you’ve put up.

Is this something you can put to use? How would you use it? Let us know in the comments below!

Rich Brooks
YouTube Marketing

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Dave’s Answer:

You’re spot on that the earlier article is indeed out of date because of the most recent changes in the Google Analytics user interface. It’s the way of the online world. Since things aren’t carved in stone (or printed on paper) interfaces become extraordinarily fluid and can change in both subtle and dramatic ways on a daily — or sometimes even hourly — basis. This means that there’s always successive refinement going on, which is really good, but it also means that help sites like mine are a bear to manage because with over 3000 articles, it’s pretty darn hard to know what’s obsolete and what is still accurate, possibly even years later.

Which is why I appreciate you highlighting that the older article is defunct.

Then again, it’s only a little bit defunct because just like how Windows 8 is really Windows 7 with a different layer of frosting, there’s not too much in Analytics that has changed. The tricky part is getting to the right starting spot.

So let’s have a look!

First off, log in to your Google Analytics account:

That’s a gimme, right?

Now you should see one or more entries like this:

Click on the indented URL display link and you’ll get to your usual reports, like this:

As you can see, I’m coyly not showing the actual traffic stats for GoFatherhood! But we can still see what’s going on.

To add another person to my Analytics account for this particular domain, I need to click on the “Admin” button on the top right.

This moves me to where it shows what Google Analytics profiles have access to this particular traffic data:

At this point you may be tempted to click on “New Profile” but that’s not the right move. Don’t do it!

Instead, you need to move to a point where you can add additional users to the existing profile. Which, yes, is confusing. Trust me, tho.

Click on the actual profile name. In this instance, I’ll click on “gofatherhood.com/”.

Now it’ll move into details of the specified profile, including a new bunch of tabs along the top. The one you want is “Users”:

Once you’ve clicked on Users you’ll see a list of all authorized users who have access to this particular profile in Google Analytics:

Now click on “New User” (see how that’s different from “New Profile”? Yeah, confusing) and you can set your colleague up with access:

The most important thing is to pay attention to the Role: Unless you want them to be able to monkey with settings, set them up as a “User”. Then it’s all read-only data with no risk of them changing settings, tweaking things, adding additional users, etc.

Done? Click on “Add User” and they’ll be added to the profile.

Add enough people, and you’ll end up with something like this profile I have configured for a different Web site in GA:

As you can see, everyone but me is just a User.

Hope that helps you out and good luck with Analytics. It’s great stuff but really complicated to figure out. Just look for tutorials here on AskDaveTaylor and elsewhere online.

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Dave’s Answer:

Truth be told, there are a lot of reasons that Facebook continues to have more traffic and a lot more attention in the popular zeitgeist than Google Plus. There’s a lot I like about Facebook, even over Google+. However, Hangouts are one of the very best parts of Google Plus and I too am a big fan of them — to the point where I’m toying with offering up my biz consulting services through Hangouts — whether it’s one on one or a half-dozen people trying to stay on topic and not share their favorite jokes!

As Hangouts have been used, they’re gaining more features and capabilities, tools that take a Hangout from being like a Skype video call or Apple Facetime call to something more sophisticated. Well, maybe “sophisticated” is the wrong word when you can give yourself a snorkel or tiara via a video overlay, but you know what I mean!

When you’re in a Hangout, pay attention to the left side of the screen. There are a number of different groupings of tools available, as you can see in this screen shot of the last multi-person discussion I was involved with:

To share your screen, however, move your cursor over Screenshare to cause a handy tip to pop up:

Since many people want to share what’s in a different window or different app entirely, I find that “Desktop” is the better choice, but if you want to, say, flip to a different tab in your Web browser but keep your desktop private, the latter could be a better choice.

I’ll choose “Desktop” and then pay attention to my self-monitoring small window along the bottom of the Hangout:

If I were to start talking, the main window would switch to my computer screen – rather than my Webcam image – and I could explain to everyone what I was doing on the screen as I shared the information.

Surprisingly easy once you remember that switching doesn’t by itself make you front and center on the Hangout: you still have to get the virtual talking stick by starting to talk!

Done? Click on “Screenshare” again and it’ll revert to your usual Webcam view:

Comments

Dave’s Answer:

That’s an interesting puzzle because generally Facebook is a closed world, a “walled garden”, as they say, so theoretically it should be impossible to just drop someone smack dab into the middle of things after they’ve entered a search on your page. But then again, if you do a search and look at the resultant URL, there’s a tantalizing hint that it might just be possible…

On the other hand, it will require that the user have a Facebook account and be logged in to their account simultaneously (which is hardly a problem since the majority of the billion Facebook users check their newsfeed multiple times each day, so that’s probably not much of an issue. Further, there’s some confusion about how much of the Facebook information is accessible for someone who doesn’t have an account, or is logged out.

Then again, we can test that, can’t we?

Let’s do a basic search box, first of all. And that brings up an interesting point because most people really don’t have a clue about how sophisticated the Facebook search system is and that they see over one billion searches each day. Impressive!

When you are on Facebook, the search box sits unadorned along the top:

Turns out that with a tiny bit of experimentation it becomes clear that the last two name=value pairs are unnecessary, which reduces the URL to the succinct:

Now it’s just a matter of unwrapping it and rebuilding it as an HTML form. Like this:


<form method="get" action="http://www.facebook.com/search/results.php">
<input type="text" name="q" />
<input type="hidden" name="type" value="fposts" />
<input type="submit" value="Search Facebook" />
</form>


It’s not pretty, but it works. Here, try it:

You can clean it up and make it fancy with just a bit of CSS styling, fortunately, so here’s some better code to try:


<form style="margin-left:0.25in;border:2px solid #666;padding:9px;border-radius:6px;background-color:#eee;" method="get" action="http://www.facebook.com/search/results.php">
<input type="text" name="q" size="50" />
<input type="hidden" name="type" value="fposts" />
<input type="submit" value="Search Facebook" />
</form>


Which looks like this:

Better? From this point, if you want to have the search be for public posts, simply change the hidden variable from “fposts” to “eposts”. Easy enough!

Comments

One of the features of Data Highlighter is its ability to tag multiple pages. The algorithm can also pick up the pattern you are tagging and suggest tags to accelerate your work. Once Data Highlighter has enough data to make logical conclusions, it can help user in tagging them. When you are through tagging, you can review a sample of all the event data. If it is correct, click ‘Publish’. From now on, Google crawler will recognize your latest event listings and make these eligible for search results.

Although Data Highlighter is available in English right now, Google has promised to add more data types in the upcoming changes as well as other languages.

Data Highlighter will enable Google to improve search results and Knowledge Graph boxes with rich snippets such as event listings and reviews. Adding metadata to webpages is not always simple and many businesses lack the expertise to add the markup.  Data Highlighter will enable them report data to Google without calling a pro as they will be able to tag the pages without interfering with the code.

Highlighting data won’t guarantee appearance in search results. All it does is to make data eligible to show up. There are several factors that influence it.

This video will explain the process

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Dave’s Answer:

That’s probably the single most common question I see related to Google AdSense, actually. The whole “are my earnings typical” query, and since Google doesn’t make this information available, it’s darn hard to know how to answer it. If you have colleagues or friends also running adverts on their Web sites, you can compare, but even then if you aren’t writing about the same subjects and have comparable ad placement, it’s not going to be a valid comparison anyway.

Worse, you’re not actually supposed to share your AdSense results with anyone else if you read the terms of service closely. So those sites that show you AdSense reports to demonstrate how they have a magic formula to make you millions if you just pay $97 for their report? Yeah, it’s another reason that they’re questionable, at best.

You did share your basic results so let’s do a bit of basic math on the numbers. If you got 130k views and earned $60.00, we can divide by 1000 and get your “effective CPM”, as a rough figure, at least: $0.46 eCPM. Is that low? It depends on three really critical factors:

1. Ad Placement — perhaps the single biggest factor that affects your results is whether you place your AdSense ads (or other ads if you’re with a different network) front and center, “impossible to miss”, or whether you’re more discrete and have it off to a side, perhaps below all the good content, or even lost below the fold in the navigational column.

There’s a direct correlation between making sure your readers must see your ad if they’re consuming your content and having good earnings for all those ad impressions.

In fact, on the right you’ll see a graphic I — cough — liberated from the AdSense site that highlights the critical importance of placement. It’s a “heat map”: the darker the color, the better Google believes you’ll do with your ad block. Notice also that they show blocks, not text link units. Common sizes perform best because there’s the most (read “highest paying”) ad inventory for them.

2. Traffic Sources — the next important question is: where does your site traffic originate? Most advertisers pay for specific countries in their ad buys so if you have tons of traffic from, say, Eastern Europe or Pakistan then even if they click on the adverts, you’re not going to get paid.

There are a couple of reasons for that, actually, only one of which is to do with advertiser preference. The other, sorry to report, is that there’s a whole lot of click fraud that originates in certain regions of the world and Google has learned to ignore those clicks based on the assumption that they’re not because the person’s actually interestsed in what’s being advertised but might be getting a penny for each click or paid $3/hr to click and click and click. Not good.

3. Focus Topic — the third major variable is your topic. If you’re writing about ways to deal with a DUI (driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs) you can easily imagine that the site would attract valuable ads for DUI attorneys who can help readers defend themselves in court. Those are actually super valuable because each client is worth thousands of dollars to a lawyer.

Conversely, if you’ve a site focused on free math sheets for middle school students, even the best ad placement in the world isn’t going to match valuable ads to your content. And even then, the chances that there’ll be something advertised that catches a visitor’s attention and causes them to click on the ad to learn more? Very low too.

This doesn’t mean you should explicitly pick a topic to maximize your revenue, just to recognize that if you’re doing poorly with all three of these factors, that $0.46 eCPM might be terrific. And if you’ve a great design, superb high value content and are getting valuable ads but earning that same rate then you have a problem, I’d say.

The watchword with online advertising is to start and end with great content that excites and inspires readers so that they want to share it on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, their blogs, etc. And to click on the advertisers on the site not because you’re telling them too (a direct violation of their terms of service, as you learned) but because they’re learning useful stuff and the ads are a great match and really are advertising helpful content.

Hope that helps you out. Stick with it, focus on good content and good placement, and you’ll be moving that revenue mark up the charts in no time!

Comments

Dave’s Answer:

Until recently I would have said that the answer was no and that you were out of luck, destined to host your photos and images on a service with more capabilities like Flickr, but Pinterest just announced the introduction of “secret boards” (pinboards) that lets you specify a list of people who can access the board, while it’s hidden from anyone else’s view, even if they look to see what boards you have.

Cool idea, actually, though I kind of like the password idea you’ve suggested too. Still, having any sort of private shared photo and image site is a really interesting one for collaboration or simply sharing family photos with your close friends and family, rather than the entire world at large, including that creepy stalker-y boy from high school who still won’t quite let go of things.

Okay, no stalkers. Still, I do wonder how Pinterest is going to police things because by allowing people to hide their content, it makes things considerably harder to manage and there are indeed certain types of images that are salacious or even illegal. Dangerous.

Of course, that’s not what you seek, and that’s not what I seek either, so with that comment, let’s just proceed and talk about how to create a private / secret pinboard!

For the immediate future, going to Pinterest reveals a big graphic that invites you to create a new board. That’s easy:

Me? I’ll add my sister by typing in her name then clicking on the match:

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