3 Digital Marketing Channels That Work for Every Advertiser

As an advertiser, your core objective is to prioritize investment in relevant communication channels that deliver maximum returns for your business. With plenty of studies proving digital marketing ROI, it makes perfect sense to leverage digital channels for promoting your brand and its products and services.

But with so many online advertising channels available, how do you go about picking the best channel for your business? You must do a fine balancing act between your advertising budget and the costs of using a particular channel. Here are three digital channels that will allow you to make the most of your advertising budget:

1. Google AdWords.

With a lion’s share of PPC market (roughly 67%), the use of Google AdWords is a no brainer. There are plenty of businesses that have driven traffic to their site, marketed their products/services and ultimately increased sales by leveraging Google AdWords.

I know there are some business owners who stay away from PPC because they believe it eats into a large portion of their marketing spend. Unfortunately, they are making a big mistake. AdWords delivers measurable results and is worth the investment. Your ads get viewed right when your target audience is searching for the products/services you are selling. The results are faster than SEO, and you can also set a budget for your campaign, which allows you to control your advertising costs.

Add to that a collection of features like Ad Customizers, Call Out Extensions, Google AdWords Editor, HTML 5 Ads and you have a channel that helps deliver a marketing message the way your audience wants to hear it. What’s more, you can even identify if and when an ad leads to an offline sale. That’s a huge advantage.

The great thing is there are plenty of tools you can use to optimize your returns from Google AdWords. These range from Bidable, which offers quick automation and real-time bidding with no minimum spend for small businesses to Kenshoo, an enterprise-level tool that automates your AdWords workflow and allows you to make bulk changes to your campaigns.

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Real Marketing In SEO: Building Links For Your Audience

Columnist Andrew Dennis reminds us that when you focus on your audience, the links you get will be valuable, regardless of SEO.

You should build links with an audience-first mindset.

In other words, every single link you build should be intended for your audience. If you ever find yourself obtaining links you wouldn’t want your audience to find, you’re likely being manipulative — or, at the very, least building worthless links.

Sometimes, link builders focus too much on how Google values links. I’m not suggesting you forget Google when you build links — everyone is well aware of the power links have in Google’s algorithm — but rather that you pursue links with an audience-centric focus.

There are several tangible benefits to approaching link acquisition with an audience-first mindset:

1. Focusing on your audience creates additional marketing value.
2. An audience-first mentality guides link prospecting.
3. Centering your link strategy around your audience leads to better links.

When you focus on acquiring links for your audience, you’re doing real link building, and real marketing.

Focusing On Your Audience Creates Additional Marketing Value

Implementing an audience-focused mentality into your link strategy will create additional marketing value outside of SEO.

When you build links just for the sake of links, you often only want to get the link and be done. All you care about is link equity, and this often leads to pursuing less relevant and authoritative sites where your audience isn’t truly active. You’re just acquiring another link to help boost your Google rankings and then moving on to the next link.

Conversely, when you focus on your audience and create links they’ll actually encounter, it’s much more akin to real marketing. If other marketing opportunities present themselves, you’ll actually want to follow up, because it represents a real chance to engage with your audience.

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Using Competitive Links To Inform Your SEO Strategy

To beat your competitors, you must first understand their methods. Columnist Casie Gillette discusses the value of competitive link data.

When I was growing up, my parents bought me every Nancy Drew book that existed. I loved the mysteries, the characters, and of course the fact that Nancy was an independent woman — something that I aspired to be. Of course, I also loved Scooby Doo, so I think it was more the mystery part… but, I digress.

Why am I telling you about my childhood reading and viewing habits? Because it might help explain why creating an SEO competitive analysis is one of my favorite things to do. The simple fact is, I love solving a mystery! And, as an SEO, one of the toughest mysteries you can solve is, “Why are they outperforming me?”

Copying your competitors is not the way to grow a business — but learning the whys and whats of your competitors’ marketing strategies can help you better understand the industry and the audience, and maybe even save you time and money.

For agencies, a competitive analysis, focused specifically on links, offers a quick way to get a complete view of your client’s competitors and can help inform your SEO strategy on a singular and broad level. Let’s take a look at how!

Start Gathering Link Data

I’d be remiss if I didn't start by discussing data collection. Back in the day, you could simply perform a site: search and get a full list of links pointing to your competitors’ sites. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case, and tools have become a necessity.

Whether you use a backlink tool like Open Site Explorer,SEMRush, Majestic, Ahrefs, or any other link-specific tool out there, the goal is to collect as much backlink data as you can for each competitor to give yourself the fullest picture.

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5 Ways to Use Your Competitors to Gain SEO Momentum

SEO seems like a solitary endeavor to many people. After all, most companies have one person or one small team dedicated to producing content, making onsite tweaks, and building external links, but the reality is that SEO actually relies on a vast network of relationships for success. Think about it; you rely on high-authority external publications to link to your website in order to pass authority. You rely on your social media followers to engage with your brand online and make your presence seem more valuable. You rely on your site visitors to stay on your pages for longer than a few seconds, and not click "back," resulting in a bounce.

There’s a fundamental piece of this network that most businesses often neglect: your competitors.

SEO is a competitive world. Your competitors are the reason you have to work so hard to build search engine visibility — if they rank even one position higher than you, they’ll likely get a greater share of traffic (assuming you’re both on the first page). It seems crazy to think that you can use your competitors, and sometimes actively work with them to lead your SEO campaign to success, but this is the reality.

Following are just a few of the strategies you can use to gain SEO momentum from your biggest competitors:

1. Link Profile Mirroring

One of the easiest ways to take advantage of your competitors is to learn how they’re building inbound links. These days, link-building is a tricky business — Google is sharper than ever, and its search algorithm is constantly scouting for businesses trying to use deceptive or unnatural links to manipulate their rankings. Finding high-quality sources in your niche can be a daunting task — which is why seeing what your high-ranking competitors are doing that has resulted in their high rankings.

There are plenty of free tools you can use to research the link profile of your competitors. With these you’ll be able to see where your competitors are building links and what type of links they’re building. It’s not a good idea to copy your competitors’ link-building strategies directly, but you can use them as inspiration and borrow some of the same sources for your own efforts. For example, if they are guest blogging for a particular publisher, try reaching out to that publisher to establish a relationship of your own.

2. Content Insights

Similarly, you can look at your competitors’ content strategies and gain new insights about your audience and new avenues for your own content. On a weekly or monthly basis, review the types of posts you see on your competitors’ websites. What topics are they choosing? How well are people reacting to them? Are they attracting lots of comments and shares?

Use these questions to guide you in your own content marketing strategy. For example, if you see a post on summer project ideas on your competitor’s site getting hundreds of shares, considering writing an alternative – and better — version of your own. The key here is not to duplicate what’s working well, but to gain broad insights about your audience and customize your strategy to appeal to that audience. With better topics and more direct writing, you’ll be able to rank higher for more relevant keywords.

3. Local Industry Articles

One of the best ways to gain rankings quickly for long-tail keywords is to write about your industry in your geographic location. With this strategy, you’ll have two major limiting factors — your niche and your region — which will give you a perfect competitive opportunity to rank high in Google. The key is to write objective, truly useful articles about the competitive landscape. For example, you could write a piece titled "The Most Trustworthy Law Firms in Dallas," writing briefly about your own law firm and some of your closest competitors. You might fear giving your competitors the additional exposure, but if your article is well-written, your site and your brand are what are going to come up in the search results.

4. Social Following Mirroring

Much in the same way that you can mirror a backlink profile, you can mirror a social following. Take a look at the demographics that follow your competitors’ Facebook and Twitter profiles, and reach out to them on an individual level. On Twitter this is quite simple; head to your competitor’s follower list and start following some of their followers. Since they’re already predisposed to following companies like yours, they’ll be likely to follow you back, giving you greater visibility and a greater audience on your social platforms. Alternatively, you can take a look at the types of people who follow your competitors and gain insights about your key audiences.

5. Regular Engagement

Finally, don’t be afraid to engage with your competitors directly, especially in a social context. Comment on their blog posts. Share and retweet some of their posts. Make jokes with them. They’ll appreciate the extra visibility, and they’ll likely respond in kind. This is only going to lead to greater exposure for both your brands and greater relevance in search engines’ eyes.

In the context of SEO, your competitors are critically important. They hold new information about your target audience. They allow you to build your authority in your geographic region. They give you a platform for more backlinks, more interactions, and more engagements. The end result is that you’ll have far more domain authority and greater ranks, with a better understanding of who your customers are and how to reach them. You might give your competitors a bit more exposure in the process, but the long-term benefits of these strategies far outweigh that negligible setback.

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How Search Engines Process Links

Ever wondered how search engines crawl, analyze, index, and rank pages? Columnist Jenny Halasz has created a helpful primer on the link graph to answer these questions.

Have you ever wondered why 404s, rel=canonicals, noindex, nofollow, and robots.txt work the way they do? Or have you never been clear on quite how they do all work? To help you understand, here is a very basic interpretation of how search engines crawl pages and add links to the link graph.

The Simple Crawl

The search engine crawler (let’s make it a spider for fun) visits a site. The first thing it collects is the robots.txt file.

Let’s assume that file either doesn't exist or says it’s okay to crawl the whole site. The crawler collects information about all of those pages and feeds it back into a database. Strictly, it’s a crawl scheduling system that de-duplicates and shuffles pages by priority to index later.

While it’s there, it collects a list of all the pages each page links to. If they’re internal links, the crawler will probably follow them to other pages. If they’re external, they get put into a database for later.

Processing Links

Later on, when the link graph gets processed, the search engine pulls all those links out of the database and connects them, assigning relative values to them. The values may be positive, or they may be negative. Let’s imagine, for example, that one of the pages is spamming. If that page is linking to other pages, it may be passing some bad link value on to those pages. Let’s say S=Spammer, and G=Good:

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Google Panda & Penguin Lack Real-Time Updates, Despite Google’s Past Statements

Google had given statements that its Panda and Penguin anti-spam fighting filters were running constantly. Now it says there's still delays between data pushes.

Google has suggested that having to wait months between for Panda and Penguin updates would be a thing of the past, since these were supposed to be happening on an ongoing basis now. But the company flip-flopped about this last week. Both still work on a periodic basis, with months elapsing between updates.

How Panda & Penguin Work

Before getting to the flip-flop, let’s do a reminder of how Panda and Penguin have traditionally worked.

Panda is a filter Google uses to identify low-quality or “thin” content that manages to rank well despite Google’s regular algorithms. To combat this, Google effectively runs the entire web through the Panda filter on periodic basis. Sites that Panda catches will no longer perform as well as before.

The filter hasn’t been run on a regular basis. It hasn’t operated in real-time, nor on a daily or weekly basis. Rather, it’s been a process that’s happened anywhere from a monthly to a quarterly basis. In other words, every month or two or three or four, Google reruns the web sites its knows about through Panda again, to see if any sites have improved, if new ones should be caught and to deal with false positives.

The filter itself also often changes, when one of these updates happens. Google sometimes makes minor tweaks to it, designed (it hopes) to improve the ability to catch what Google considers poor content. Sometimes these changes are more dramatic. When the more dramatic changes are introduced, it’s common that many more sites get impacted.

As for the Penguin, that’s a filter aimed at severe web spam, especially unnatural links. Like Panda, it runs on a periodic basis. Everything described above about Panda is the same for Penguin, other than the type of spam it targets.

The Panda & Penguin Waiting Game

Publishers hit by Panda and Penguin can change their sites all they want to improve, but it’s a wasted effort until the next Panda or Penguin updates happens. Any improvements, if they are the right ones, won’t register with Google’s search results until they are cycled again through Panda or Penguin and new information is “pushed” into Google’s overall ranking algorithm.

For example, let’s say there’s a Panda Update that happens in the month of February, which hits a publisher’s site. The next day, the publisher scrambles to drop content they think is to blame and make other changes. Even if they’ve made all the right moves, they’ll remain penalized by Panda. They won’t have a chance to escape until Panda is run again. Say that happens in April. This means the site has a two month wait until the changes it made will benefit it.

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Google Japan Ordered To Remove Negative Reviews Based On Thin Evidence

Ruling appears to be based largely on affidavit signed by the doctor in question.

Late last week a Japanese court ordered Google to remove two reviews from Google Maps that were critical of a local medical clinic. An unnamed doctor who operated or worked at the clinic and allegedly treated the reviewer-patients signed an affidavit swearing that the reviews were false (and allegedly defamatory).

According to TechCrunch, which first reported the decision, the clinic sued the individuals for defamation. The Japanese District Court is now requiring Google to not only remove the reviews from Google Japan but also from its global results. (As with the Right to Be Forgotten in Europe, this is another example of a local jurisdiction trying to exercise control over Google’s global index.)

The company faces a modest potential fine of roughly ($2,500) if it fails to do so. The fine is obviously not the issue. The larger question and concern is the potential precedent this might set both in Japan and potentially other countries without strong free speech laws. In many countries privacy, religious orthodoxy, “sedition” and other types of values often trump speech.

According to the TechCrunch article, “neither review violates the policies that Google has in place for user generated content within the Maps service.” Google has said it may appeal. 

Little has been reported about the underlying facts or evidence presented in the case. If the case involved the clear presentation of evidence that the reviews were fabricated and defamatory then the removals are not anything to necessarily worry about.

It appears, however, that the doctor-plaintiff simply issued a formal denial and that was enough to support the court’s decision. If that is indeed the case then this decision has potentially broad and very negative implications. Any disgruntled professional or business owner in Japan, confronted with critical reviews, could potentially invoke the decision and follow a similar procedure to get the reviews removed.

Business-friendly courts and the threat of litigation could then be used to broadly intimidate those who might be inclined to write critical reviews of services they receive.

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Chinese hackers target Southeast Asia, India, researchers say

REUTERS - Hackers, most likely from China, have been spying on governments and businesses in Southeast Asia and India uninterrupted for a decade, researchers at internet security company FireEye Inc said.

In a report released on Monday, FireEye said the cyber espionage operations dated back to at least 2005 and "focused on targets - government and commercial - who hold key political, economic and military information about the region."

"Such a sustained, planned development effort coupled with the (hacking) group's regional targets and mission, lead us to believe that this activity is state-sponsored - most likely the Chinese government," the report's authors said.

Bryce Boland, Chief Technology Officer for Asia Pacific at FireEye and co-author of the report, said the attack was still ongoing, noting that the servers the attackers used were still operational, and that FireEye continued to see attacks against its customers, who number among the targets.

Reuters couldn't independently confirm any of the assertions made in the report.

China has always denied accusations that it uses the Internet to spy on governments, organisations and companies.

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Amazon to begin testing new delivery drones in the US

Last month it emerged that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had granted Amazon permission to begin testing a delivery drone prototype for its Prime Air service, a venture that aims to transport packages to Amazon customers in under 30 minutes. But there was a hitch, with the company since revealing the vehicle cleared for use had already become obsolete. Things are now back on track with the FAA giving Amazon the green light to put its current models to the test.

Amazon first took steps to win the blessing of the authorities in July last year, when it petitioned the FAA for permission to begin testing its drones. But the agency's response was hardly swift, finally granting an "experimental airworthiness certificate" to Amazon in March 2015. The slow progress partnered with the now-evident worthlessness of the permit prompted Amazon to carry out testing of its more sophisticated models abroad, namely at a secret Canadian site only 2,000 ft (610 m) from the US border.

By way of a letter to Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president of Global Public Policy, on Wednesday April 8, the FAA has granted the company's request for exemption. This will clear the way for Amazon to begin testing its drones outdoors in the United States.

The exemption dictates that Amazon's drones fly no higher than 400 ft (122 m), no faster than 100 mph (161 km/h) and remain within the pilot's line of sight, among a raft of other conditions relating to safety and maintenance. These rules are consistent with a set of proposed guidelines around commercial drone flight that the FAA floated earlier in the year.

While it marks another step toward the realization of Amazon's ambitious drone delivery plan, there's still a long way to go before quadcopters are dropping parcels in your front yard.

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Google's Android Wear App Could Be Coming to iPhones

Google has been experimenting with Android Wear so that Android smartwatch owners could use them with their iPhones. Apple, of course, would have to allow it in the Apple Store.

Android smartwatches today can only be used in conjunction with an Android smartphone, but that could change in the future as Google continues to develop an Android Wear app for use on iPhones.

Google has been experimenting for several months on running Android Wear on the iPhone platform, according to reports, and now that work is nearing completion. In March, the French technology Website 01net.comreported that the project would likely be unveiled at the upcoming Google I/O developers conference in May.

The development is particularly interesting because Apple Watch preorders opened on April 10 and largely sold out in a few hours, while the first devices will be distributed to customers starting on April 24. Already, there are long waiting times of at least four to six weeks or more to get an Apple Watch, according to the company's Website.

The fledgling Android Wear app for the iPhone so far provides basic functions on the iPhone, such as notifications to the user about incoming messages, emails and more, according to an April 10 report byFoneArena. It also provides Google Now services and other features on iPhones, other reports have stated.
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Good news for Google: Android Lollipop adoption rose over last quarter over 5%

LONDON: Google has released the monthly update to the Android version adoption numbers on its Developer Dashboard, and the slow adoption of Lollipop continues. The good news is that the uptake has risen over the last quarter, and is expected to accelerate with the latest smartphone releases.

Google’s report in January gave Android 5.0 Lollipop a market share that was less than 0.1% market share for the month before. That rose to 1.6% during January, 3.3% during February, and now over 5% in March.

The adoption of Android Lollipop has been limited by the processes and certifications in place with each manufacturer and carrier, and has been a patchwork rollout process at best. This is the nature of Android, with no central point of distribution for bug fixes, updates, and tweaks. I personally think that this is an issue that needs addressed inside the Android world, but with so many stakeholders trying to maintain their personal advantages, I’m not holding my breath.

It’s also worth noting that KitKat has seen a very slight increase in adoption (41.4%, over 40.9% from the previous month), while other variants of the OS maintained or lost share of the market.

The market share numbers are determined by visitors to the Google Play Store, with the analysis taking place over a seven-day period.

I’d expect to see Android Lollipop’s numbers rise during Q2 2015. With a number of new flagship handsets from LG, HTC, and Samsung, all hitting the stores this month with Android 5.0 installed as default. That should boost the adoption numbers and I would expect that Lollipop as a whole will reach 10% before the summer months.

That’s important from a developers point of view. Once Lollipop hits double figures there are enough handsets running the latest version of Android that makes addressing Android 5.x exclusively a viable option, and Lollipop can be considered as its own platform.

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Microsoft Office Remote app now available for Android devices

Users of Office 2013 have been gifted an app which allows them to access Office 2013 from their Android smartphones. This means they no longer have to give presentations or do other such things from behind a laptop or PC. The Office Remote for Android has been released by Microsoft. This is a free app. The app was originally a Microsoft-only one, but this move marks the company's willingness to embrace other users as well.

As mentioned earlier, one of the main uses of the app will be its PowerPoint remote feature. By using this, one can have control over a presentation, view slide notes and 'laser point' at specific points using the screen of the phone.

There is also the option of navigating between Word and Excel documents using a swipe motion. One can also move around Word documents by just tapping.

The app is available for download from Google Play. It is compatible with Android 4.0.3 or later. Its availability for the iOS platform is not yet known.

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iOS 8.3 Problems Reported By iPhone And iPad Users: Touch ID, Battery Life Issues, Keyboard Freezes And More

Apple just released an update to iOS 8 in the form of iOS 8.3 to address ongoing issues with the mobile OS. While the update has fixed some previous problems, users are already reporting serious issues with the update.

Whenever an update for an OS comes out, it generally adds some new features and squashes serious bugs, and, unfortunately, it can also introduce new problems. Apple's latest release of iOS 8.3 seems to be both a blessing and curse for some users, and users have begun to flood Apple's online support forums to voice their problems and report some solutions.

MacRumors is reporting that many users who have updated to iOS 8.3 are experiencing problems with Touch ID not working in the App Store.

"I just updated to iOS 8.3 and it completely removed my ability to use Touch ID in the App Store on my iPhone 6," a post on Reddit reads. "It asks for my password for each and every purchase. Is anyone else seeing this? The option to use Touch ID in the App Store is on. I have already tried turning it off and on again to re-enter my password."

The site claims the issue is happening on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and iPad Air 2.

Meanwhile, some owners of the iPhone 4s and iPod touch 5^th generation are reporting that they are unable to install iOS 8.3 and are stuck on iOS 8.2, although the problem doesn't seem to be a widespread issue.

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Samsung announces Galaxy J5 and J7 with Android 5.1

Samsung's J Series lineup of smartphones will soon be expanding. Two new mid-range smartphones- the J5 and J7 have been announced by the company.  A recent launch in the series was the Galaxy J1 smartphone in February.

Samsung had also trademarked the names J5 and J7 way back in January. A report in SamMobile has revealed the specifications of the smartphone. 

The Galaxy J5 will sport a 5-inch HD TFT LCD display and will also be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor. It will also have 1.5GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, expandable via microSD as well as a 2,600mAh battery. 

Whereas, the Galaxy J7 will sport a 5.5-inch HD TFT LCD display, and will be powered by either a 1.5GHz or 1.2GHz octa-core Marvel processor. Other features will include 1.5GB RAM, 4 or 8GB internal storage, expandable via microSD card as well as a 3000mAh battery. Both devices will feature a 13MP rear camera, and a 5MP front camera.  Although there is a possibility that the rear cameras would be 8MP. Both devices will run on Android 5.1 out-of-the-box. While the J5 will have a thickness of 8.5mm, the J7 will have a thickness of 7.9mm.

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Microsoft Releases Office Remote For Android, An App To Control Powerpoints And Other Office Presentations On PC

New to the Play Store is Microsoft's Office Remote for Android, an app whose name almost perfectly describes its function. While your phone may not be the place to present your latest Powerpoint or show off your Excel PivotTables, Office Remote turns your handset into the command center for these sorts of broadcasts. In other words, it allows you to use your Android device like a "clicker" that happens to be loaded with lots of other features.

Your actions in the Android app will cause a corresponding response on a desktop-based Microsoft Office program that you will connect to via Bluetooth. Right now, only Office 2013 and 2016 Preview on Windows are supported. Presumably, some level of Mac support will come eventually, perhaps with the release of Office 2016 on that platform. You will have to download an extension for the desktop version, but the app walks you through things in a very clear way.
In addition to the ability to do things like advance slides in a Powerpoint presentation, Office Remote allows use of your finger to move a virtual laser pointer on the host computer. That is an awesome feature! You can also manipulate Excel tables, jump to headings and the like in Word, or read the speaker notes associated with Powerpoint slides.

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Pew Research: Facebook Is Still Tops Among U.S. Teens

Facebook is used by 71% of Americans aged 13 to 17 according to Pew Research Center survey. Instagram is used by 52%, Snapchat by 41%, Twitter and Google+ by 33%.

Think the kids are no longer on Facebook? You should think again.

Facebook remains the top social media choice among U.S. teens, by a wide margin, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

The study found that 71% of Americans ages 13-17 use Facebook, defying conventional wisdom that the younger crowd isn’t using the social network. In fact, teens are using Facebook at the same percentage level as U.S. adults, according to another Pew Center study.

Where the kids differ is in their other social media choices. While adults look more to LinkedIn and Pinterest, teens prefer Instagram and Snapchat. Fifty-two percent of the nationally representative sample of 1,060 reported using Instagram and 41% Snapchat. Twitter (used by 33%), Google+ (33%), Vine (24%) and Tumblr (14%) were the only other social networks the survey specifically asked about.

Facebook is more popular with older teens. Fewer than half (44%) of 13 year olds reported using the network, compared to 77% of the 14-17 age group. Household income also plays a factor in Facebook use; 77% of teens from families earning less than $50,000 annually said they use Facebook, compared to 68% whose families earn more.

Instagram is especially popular with girls; 61% said they use the photo and video sharing site. Boys’ reported use is 44%, dragged down by the youngest part of the cohort, only 33% of 13 to 14 year old boys said they use Instagram.

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Google Drops Title & Images From In-Depth Articles

Google drastically changed the interface for displaying "In Depth Articles" in the Google search results by dropping the title and images.

Google has made some significant changes to the In Depth Articles format within the Google search results.

Google has removed the title in the search results segmenting the “In Depth Articles” from the rest of the search results and they have removed photos/images from the snippets of those articles as well.

SEOlytics posted a nice before and after shot of the In Depth Articles. What you see on the left is the old version and what you see on the right is the new version:

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Twitter Is Testing A New Search Experience With More Filtering Options

The experiment cleans up the display and gives the ability to filter by live results, tweets from people you follow and tweets from people near you.

Twitter is experimenting with a new search interface that could give users more options to find and filter content within the social network.

The new look, which Twitter confirms is a test, moves filtering choices from the left-hand rail to the top of the search page and adds new options, including the ability to filter by live results, tweets from people you follow and tweets from people near you. Access to save and embed a search have been added to the interface.

The display also includes a bold title bar, making it very clear that you are on a search page.

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Microsoft to add virtualized containers, Nano Server mode to Windows Server 2016

Microsoft confirms it will have a Nano Server mode in Windows Server 2016, along with new Hyper-V containerization technology.

Although the second test build of Windows Server 2016 isn't coming until May, Microsoft is offering a glimpse at some of the new server technologies that will be coming to Windows Server testers in the coming months.

On April 8, Microsoft officials confirmed earlier reports about a new new Nano Server deployment mode, which will be part of the next version of Windows Server when it's available some time in calendar 2016. The Nano Server technology will not be in the May Windows Server 2016 preview; it will be introduced in a build at some point after that, officials said today.

Nano Server will offer Windows Server customers the option of running Windows Server stripped down to its smallest footprint. Nano Server will be about 1/20th the size of Windows Server Core, and will consist only of the essential components (Hyper-V, Clustering, Networking, Storage, .Net, Core CLR) -- and no UI.

Microsoft officials also shared more details about the new Windows container options coming in Windows Server 2016. Last October, Microsoft officials said there would be new Windows and Linux container support being baked into Windows Server Next. Both kinds of containers will be manageable using Docker, an open source engine that automates application deployment.

Microsoft officials said at that time that customers will be able to create Docker container applications that will run on Windows Server on-premises or hosted on Windows Server Next running in a virtual machine on Microsoft's Azure cloud.

On April 8, officials added yet another container option to the Windows Server Next mix. Windows Server 2016 users also will have the option of running what Microsoft is calling Hyper-V containers. These are Docker-manageable containers that will be powered by Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization technology.

While many describe container technology as obviating the need for virtualization, Microsoft officials said they believe using virtualiztion to add yet another isolation layer to containers may appeal to a number of enterprise customers. Hyper-V will run around the container, not the entire OS, providing more security/sandboxing and overall control, Microsoft execs said. Hyper-V containers also may be useful to those running Windows Server in multitenant configurations, they said.

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Google plots new YouTube subscription service as soon as this year

YouTube will offer all the same videos without ads for a monthly fee, which hasn't been set yet, according to the note

Google Inc. plans to offer a subscriber version of YouTube as soon as this year, letting viewers see millions of videos without having to sit through ads.

Revenue from the new feature, which will put Google into more direct competition with streaming services such as Netflix Inc. and Hulu Llc, will be shared with video creators, Google told them in an e-mail that was obtained by Bloomberg. The service may debut by the end of the year, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public.

“By creating a new paid offering, we’ll generate a new source of revenue that will supplement your fast growing advertising service,” the letter said.

Google has been moving closer to charging users for content; the Web company introduced a subscription-style music service within YouTube in November, and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on talent and production facilities to boost original content on the video website, which has more than 1 billion monthly viewers. With ad-free subscriptions, Google is moving closer to competing with streaming services, including HBO Now (which debuted this week), for people’s attention as they spend more time watching videos on the Web and on mobile devices.

“While we can’t comment on ongoing discussions, giving fans more choice to enjoy the content they love and creators more opportunity to earn revenue are always amongst our top priorities,” Google’s YouTube said in a statement, without commenting on the timing of the service.

YouTube will offer all the same videos without ads for a monthly fee, which hasn’t been set yet, according to the note. The service is also likely to include offline access. Google is alerting content creators because it wants them to agree to new terms that would let it include clips in the subscription product.

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