Check ‘em, give ‘em a +1 if you like, add the authors to your circles, and let me know if I’ve missed any gems:

1. 40 Google+ Tips for Newbies by +Travis Campbell
2. How to Make a Google+ Desktop App by +Christina Warren for Mashable
3. Robert Scoble’s List of Tips for Newer Users of Google+
4. Google+ Tips for Business Owners by +Jason Sadler for Huffingtonpost
5. Google+ Tips and Shortcuts by +Andrew Shotland – Great list of extensions and other tips
6. Google+ Tips and Tricks Facebook Should Use by +Tony Bradley for PCWorld
7. Top 10 Tips on Google+ for Photographers by +Thomas Hawk
8. 10 Google+ Tips for Beginners by +Kristin Burnham for CIO
9. 20 Google+ Tips, Tricks and Hints by +John Brandon for TechRadar
10. Ultimate Google+ Tips and Tricks by +Harshad Sawant
11. 10 Google+ Tips to Get You Off to a Good Start by +Deb Ng
12. 10 Google+ Tips You Should Know About by +Tony Hue
13. Google+ Tips and Tricks by +Janet Fouts
14. 10 Practical Google+ Tips for New Users by +Tony Hastings

I want Google+ to organize my circles for me…. interface is cool, but definitely time consuming!

Add me to your circle! +Claire

Gave me a chuckle, ’cause clearly the guy in the upper left is not someone I’d want to encounter as my bank teller, but rather might turn around and leave the bank if I saw him standing in line with me.  I suppose “bank teller” and “bank robber” might be synonymous in some twisted definition.   Then I saw the guy on the lower right with the ears and clicked on him…. I think he’s some sort of Harry Potter character (perhaps tangentially related to banking?)….

Anyway, it’s fun, but I’m not convinced of how useful it is.  Might be better to be able to select colors + people, etc. like some of the stock photo image searches.  However, it beats Bing’s Visual Search IMHO, which is pretty limited to their preset categories and requires Silverlight.  Surely beating Bing was the goal, so kudos for Google!

Tips – Gray
Tools / Resources – Purple
Tweets – Blue

1. @DerrickWheeler you know it was a good night when you wake up in hotel hallway at 7:30am #pubcon
2. For 404s, try doing an overlay that users close, instead of a custom 404 page (Jill Sampey).
3. @bruceclay if u link to URL A in multiple spots on a page, & nofollow any link to URL A, all links nofollowed.
4. For seasonal content, use constant urls – don’t orphan pages (Jill Sampey).
5. @leeodden: Last year #Pubcon spent $75k promoting conf, This year spent $0, used Twitter (via @btabke) #socialmedia
6. Create a microsite that’s satirical/comical and unbranded, then when u have good traffic, add brand and consider 301 redirect domain back to host domain. Example: Leroy Smith for Nike.
7. @msdanielle Create reputation mgmt dashboard bit.ly/repdash from Michael Gray #pubcon
8. Try to get double listings in the SERPS, they convert better.
9. Topsy – Twitter search
10. Due to block analysis in the algo, in-body content links have 10x the power.
11. Just because Matt Cutts says you shouldn’t do something, maybe you should.
12. @klintoe: Balmer (Bing) is committed to get 51% of Search market (quote from #pubcon) – nice goal! Will they really Bing it?
13. Prune your content – keep it up-to-date and fresh.
14. @lyndseo: 10% of your advertising budget should be spent on analytics & tracking @cknoch #pubcon
15. Image indexing and understanding the text within images is happening – Video and audio are in the works. Get these things on your site. (Bruce Clay)
16. @btabke: PubCon quote of day: @graywolf The first LinkBait was when Moses came down with that Top 10 List. LinkBait is not going away.
17. Keep eyes peeled for image xml sitemap, coming soon from Google (Bruce Clay)
18. @seoadvice: Try 2 link anchor text for same page – test nonsense word – try both and nofollow one and test ranking #PubCon #SEO
19. Google maps spam is rampant – they’re working on it (Matt Cutts)
20. @andybeal: 50 million people worldwide have tried to start an Internet business–96% have failed @bobbrisco #pubcon
21. The 10-pack is now the 7-pack for Google Local.
22. @janetdmiller OH MY GOSH. So tired. Starbucks let us down today. #pubcon
23. Local phone numbers and non-privatized registrar information may help in Google Local.
24. 800 numbers won’t help in Google Local, but they also won’t hurt.
25. Social Mention attempts sentiment analysis.
26. Accentuate the positive – linkbuild to reviews in order to boost rankings above the bad and protect your reputation.
27. For landing pages, keep your forms above the fold with as few questions as possible.
28. @Williet: Use search to stand out, use social media to build loyalty. #pubcon
29. Do not use your homepage as a landing page.
30. Use knowem.com to get your brand’s username.
31. Test, test, test – what works for one, may not for another.
32. @neyne: send stupid reconsideration requests in competitor’s name #pubcon
33. Keep users prisoner and only allow one option may result in greater conversions.
34. Give users navigation choices may result in greater conversions.
35. MajesticSEO has temporal link analysis.
36. @brianpcombs “Reject paid links because they’re not the highest ROI activity.” @randfish #pubcon
37. You can’t jump people further down in the buy cycle when they’re in research phase.
38. Admit that your baby is ugly (Tim Ash).
39. Usertesting.com offers usability testing for $29
40. Must-try usabilty analytics tools: Clicktale Crazyegg
41. @davereynolds_UK: 2010 is the time to speed up your site… do it now or be left behind – web standards around the corner #PubCon
42. Create social media accounts and build links to them to push out the bad stuff.
43. Try wildfireapp.com for facebook apps.
44. Use the facebook friend suggest tool to find friends to build your fans.
45. @DavidWallace: @aaronwall “60% of searchers have no idea what a sponsored link is or not (search engine links).” #pubcon
46. If you use footer links, try to vary them on every page to avoid block analysis devaluing (Aaron Wall).
47. If Matt Cutts is not in the site review panel, it’s ok to out your competitors for spam.
48. @andybeal: 56% of page views on the web are to user generated #content! @bobbrisco #pubcon
49. Paid blog reviews can be difficult to upkeep as a linkbuilding strategy because they start on the homepage then lose value as they get pushed off by newer posts.
50. @jakebohall: #pubcon If you want in dmoz.. find an editor on twitter and ask.. dmoz username is same as twitter username
51. Try operator: site:.edu “keyword” to find .edu sites for links
52. @leeodden Linking to known spam sites will definitely hurt you on @bing
53. Read O’Reilly’s Information Architecture for the World Wide Web book.
54. Better late than lousy. (Ted Ulle)
55. Don’t let your IT department write copy.
56. Read Elements of Typographic Style.
57. Remember CRW: Canonicalization, Robots.txt, Webmaster tools
58. Read collaborative work between Rand Fishkin, Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Jessie C. Stricchiola, The Art of SEO.
59. A shaved head is fair punishment for someone else’s spam.
60. .htaccess is the traffic cop; whereas, robots.txt is the bouncer. (Michael Martin)
61. Try card sorting when trying to figure out your architecture. (Lindsay Walker)
62. Use content stacking to get code in this order: <body>, <h1>, content, related links, navigation (Scott Polk)
63. Sneaky linkbuilding trick – find a site search that is being indexed and search for your url with <a href= and then link to the search result, so that it will be indexed and give you a link.
64. @schachin: Social media. Not about candy, unicorns & how democratic the internet is.. Bout who u know & what you pay them via @oilman lol! #pubcon
65. Don’t monetize posts right away – wait a couple weeks, then add the ads (Aaron Wall)
66. Affiliate sites are ok, but you have to add value or Google won’t like you.
67. Use the file extension to reduce directory depth (Scott Polk)
68. File extension is not so important and makes it harder when redesigning code – php to asp, etc. (Lindsay Walker)
69. @markmedina: man, majesticseo.com totally got pimped at #pubcon. I’ve heard it mentioned in at least 4 sessions.
70. Socialize and find ways to get noticed – you may find yourself speaking at the next PubCon, like Aaron Kronis and DK
71. Quarkbase got a few mentions.
72. Banned? Check GWT dashboard or do site: no links = banned (Michael Stebbins)
73. Not indexed? Check for stupid mistakes, like disallows in robots.txt or robots tag.
74. @blastam: If your landing page call to action is not obvious, you’re losing money! #pubcon (via @tim_ash )
75. Don’t fix your banned site and get it reincluded, then go and redo the bad stuff again (Michael Gray).
76. Even if your domain registrar info is privatized, there are ways to find out the owner of a site, including Adsense and Google Analytics IDs, same email addresses and street addresses.
77. @eclairebears: U don’t want to look like a drug dealer picking people up at the PTA meeting, says @graywolf re: linking good sites w/ bad & sharing adsense
78. Don’t go into crazy ex-girlfriend detail when submitting a reinclusion request (Michael Gray)
79. When buying a domain, check archive.org for any funny business that might give you problems. (Roger Montti)
80. Create a spreadsheet from the links listed in Google Webmaster Tools to see if you have a healthy spread of links.
81. Think you’re in a bad neighborhood? – LinkVendor has a tool to look for shared sites with reputation issues.
82. If you have multiple sites banned and use the same template, submit reinclusion with one domain first, then others after first is accepted.
83. Build quality site first then monetize around it – don’t build a site around monetization (Matt Tuens)
84. Marketmotive.com/free-tools/
85. Look for social sites that allow you to paste HTML into your profile for links (Look at what the pills, poker and porn people are doing to find them)
86. Advertise on your competitors’ sites through adsense – find out how much traffic they’re getting (Michael Streko)
87. Content is still king
88. Confession letter – check Todd Malicoat’s (stuntdubl) presentation for example.  Give the reason why the site has value. Be honest and admit to what you did wrong.
89. @maxchirkov: TUI – twitting under influence. (#Pubcon) <- there seemed to be a lot of this going on…
90. Find niche forums on boardreader.com (Michael Streko)
91. Don’t place ads in upper left column of your site. (Aaron Wall)
    
92. @msdanielle: Code.Google.com/speed to get ideas on how to speed up ur site @mattcutts #pubcon final session
93. Link Adsense to Analytics to see keyword data of what’s making you money.  Then export keywords and run rank checker. (Aaron Wall)
94. Create your own products by looking at your advertisers on your site – if someone is selling ebooks on your site (adsense), create an ebook yourself that is better. (Aaron Wall)
95. Social Media Monitoring tools – Trackur, Radiant6, Visible Technologies, Brandseye
96. Use allinanchor: operator to search for competitors. (Matt Siltala)
97. @tonyadam: Finally, a good use for twitter lists…follow lists around employees of a company…nice tip @andybeal – #pubcon
98. Domaintools.com/registrant-alert/ and /mark-alert/ to look for email addresses of company and find out when they register a new domain (Andy Beal)
99. Look at who’s first to submit your competitors’ content to Stumbleupon, Digg, etc. and who’s voting on it – befriend them
100. Who’s Talkin – Social media search from Joe Hall
101. Steal your competitors’ links – Use incompetence to your advantage – “you’re linking to this site and it’s poorly written, misspellings, etc. Link to us instead.” (Michael Streko)
102. Gravitystream, Wordstream, Opencalais, Google Social Graph, Omgili, Woopra are just a handful of the crazy-long list of tools in Jon Henshaw’s presentation from the Tools session

Which of your faves did I miss?  Leave a comment or send me a tweet:

Lately, Digg has been trying a lot of new things with advertising (see Digg-fed Content Ads and Digg Ads announcements) The thing about Digg users is the loyal ones, like me, are there everyday….  The non-loyal ones are there briefly to check out a link a friend sent them and are gone.  In the past couple months, Digg has had over 40 Million Unique Visitors (Compete), and those Visitors have averaged 3 Visits a month.   The challenge is hitting us loyal users over the head enough to notice an advertisement, since we become desensitized and blinded to the normal ads.  Hit us up enough with a repeated ad, and we will bite.  Additionally, the challenge for those quick in-and-out users is to make an ad noticeable enough for them, too.  Take over the entire page, including the background, and loyal users and quick in-and-outers alike can’t help but notice.  Check out the latest full-page spread seen running through the sub-category PC Games:

Great branding for EA BioWare and memorable enough that I might just have to go buy a copy of Dragon Age.  Good move for Digg, too, very targeted placement and although it’s obnoxiously large, it’s unobtrusive and interesting enough to where I’m not bothered.  Great that the 728×90 and 300×600 are not competing but advertising for EA, as well.  Do you agree? Would you buy this placement? Consider buying a product from viewing this placement?

Is this the first time this sort of spot has appeared on Digg? (It’s the first time I’ve seen it, for sure).

When I think dashboard, I think snapshot of all my most-used tools and the data within them…. I imagine the ability to customize the dashboard for what I want…. maybe I’m thinking iGoogle .

Google Dashboard doesn’t make me drive easier.

Is it repugnant? Flagrantly arrogant to think that they can offer a measly $25 to people to take down carefully crafted, precious food porn? Do they think there’s only room for one great food site on the Web? Methinks no.  Instead, I’m almost certain some smart bloke over at Eater knows exactly what they’re doing… starting a buzz, a stir, a melee of sorts… resulting in lots of comments, lookiloos and links around the net.  Pretty brilliant, I might add.  It could go very sour.  Piss off enough bloggers on the interwebs, and you may be blacklisted, but I predict with this one, the opposite will happen.

Results so far:

• I popped over to backtweets.com and checked how many tweets happened mentioning their redesign or the $25 post since their first tweet 22 hours ago:
  80 (not that astonishing) and most echoing an equally WTF sentiment:
  
• Inlinks referencing the post (according to Yahoo):
  20
• Diggs:
  13

So, the numbers aren’t so great, yet… but I suspect this one will still pick up some steam and some more links, just like the 2 I’ve just given them.

Good job, Eater – love the creativity and your Spartacus bravery for taking a risk. Lookout for Matt Cutts, though, someone might say you’re paying for links!

1. Address a common problem
2. Encourage interaction
3. Give users a reason to come back

One of the oft overlooked drivers of success in the Social Web is: COMPETITION

Every game, be it sports or Monopoly, has an element of competition.  Humans, in nature, are competitive – hunt or be hunted, fight or flight, but even more than that, there’s an adrenaline rush that is just plain FUN that drives us to compete.  The competition is also rooted in our desire to be famous – that Inner Celebrity screaming to come out, no matter how much of a wallflower we claim to be.

So that’s where my new addictions come into play.  These 4 apps offer a chance for me to let that inner celebrity out a little, flex my game muscle, and satisfy my greater-than-most need for everything I do to be layered with adventure:

1. Urbanspoon

[my profile: @claire-hawley]


Mundane Problem it Tackles: Stuck in that let’s-eat-at-Marix-for-the-4th-time-this-week rut.  Sure, we have our favorite haunts, but I live in Los Angeles – which is possibly one of the top 5 places in the world to try foods of all cultures, at both hole-in-the-wall joints and fancy-smancy spots imbibed with celebrities, so there’s no excuse for being a Food Bore.

How it’s a Game: Get the iPhone app.  Grab a friend to keep you accountable (Hollywood Homemaker is one of my favorite gals to grab for this game).  Decide how many “shakes/spins” you’ll try – or just do one.  Then, shake away and choose the best of 3 (idea here is also to try places you’ve never been).  You have to agree ahead of time that you’re going to go to that place no matter what… so if you want to spend a little or a lot, or are not in the mood for Chinese, be sure to lock in what you’re in the mood for.

Why I Keep Coming Back: Urbanspoon has a couple of cool features that keep me interested.  They have a wishlist – where you can add the restaurants your friends’ favorite restaurants.  This becomes a game in itself, as you try to check off as many of your wishlist restaurants as possible.  You can also upload photos and reviews straight from your phone.

2. Waze

[my profile: @eclaire]

Mundane Problem it Tackles: Los Angeles traffic.  ‘nuf said… but in summary, Waze tackles the problem of predicting traffic and anticipating hazards in real-time, by using the GPS of your phone and relying on users to report the issue as they come across them.

How it’s a Game: Users get points for driving and increased points for driving down roads that no one else has traveled – the car in the app actually turns into a Pac-Man-esque creature that chomps away at the points as you drive.  This makes it enticing to try and drive different routes, even in your usually mundane morning commute.  The downside to this may be that it encourages increased mileage and thus, doesn’t lend itself to being very green-friendly.

Why I Keep Coming Back: There are a growing number of users of the app, and you’re ranked against others.  If you don’t turn it on on your phone, you’ll quickly see your rank decrease.  It’s still pretty new and the userbase, although growing, is still small, so the usefulness of it isn’t that great yet, but somehow I feel like I’m helping the greater good by using it, so as any good addict would, I turn it on every time I’m in a moving vehicle (including my scoot).

3. Foursquare

[my profile: @eclairebears]

Mundane Problem it Tackles: Foursquare is a location-notification tool like Loopt, but it takes it one step further.  When you go to a place, you can leave a tip or a to do for other people, so it makes everything, from the trip to the grocery store to the raucous night out, a little more entertaining.  Plus, if you’re bored and unsure what to do for the evening, you may very well find a friend who’s out and join them.

How it’s a Game: Like Urbanspoon, you can make a game out of reading other people’s tips at a location and doing them.  Also, you get badges for the different things you do.

Why I Keep Coming Back: It’s fun to get new badges and to see how many points you can rack up – with a little effort to get out and go places, you can get to the top 100 leaderboard during the week.

4. DailyBurn

[my profile: @eclaires]

Mundane Problem it Tackles: Counting calories and exercising in order to watch your weight.

How it’s a Game: You can enter challenges or just challenge yourself to stay within a particular calorie range or do a certain amount of exercise activities.

Why I Keep Coming Back: Actually, I don’t yet.  This post inspired me to look at several sites to see if any peeked my interest.  I think this is an area that still hasn’t been fully tapped for social apps.  For instance, DailyBurn.com has groups and challenges, yet the iPhone app doesn’t integrate them yet.  However, I’m going to give it a try and maybe join one of the challenges.  Speaking of challenges, I happened across a site taking a completely unique approach to it – Weight Loss Wars – which uses a money pool as the motivator for the challenge.

In conclusion, if you’re creating a social site, I’m living proof of what works – you have to make it fun, challenging and insert a dose of competition.  Plus, it’s important to make it available on a variety of different platforms, especially a cell phone.

So, friends, do you have an addiction to a social site you’d care to admit to?  Or, do you think there’s a gap or need out there that hasn’t been fulfilled by an existing app?

Walter Cronkite Passed Away Today and His Death Was Shown Immediately thereafter in Twitter Trending Topics

But had it been around in 1985, could it have better predicted this?

I attended a Citizen Journalism panel discussion for Social Media Club on Monday which talked a lot about Twitter and Citizen Journalism. What the discussion scraped the surface about – and I truly find most fascinating – is the ability for Twitter to take a pulse on society (which Twitter management was on to in the documentation recently released by Techcrunch). This pulse is great for gathering current sentiments about what is happening around the globe and particularly great for getting breaking news.

What I’d love to see is some new tools made that do in-depth analysis and attempt to make predictions about the future. I imagine there’s a lot of things that can be predicted by listening to the constant chitter and chatter.  Albeit, it’s not likely anyone could predict Michael’s obsession with plastic surgery would end in his latest appearance (or possibly even death), but at minimum, noting rising tensions or sentiments about a topic may lead to predicting a future major event.

Thanks to San Francisco Sentinel and Chicken Crap for the inspiration (and MJ photos).

Maybe. But not for a long time. At least that’s my speculation and here’s why:

1. Large Un-Tapped Volume of Searches

In my day-to-day interactions, it seems there is still a huge gap between the early-adopter-Web-influencer group and the average Web user. Where my instinct to every question in life is to run to Google, most people still leave their “I wonders” unanswered. So, that leaves a huge amount of search volume that has yet to be released on the engines. My guess is that there’s at least 100% growth opportunity in search volume in the next few years.

2. Growth in Smart Phone Purchases, While Also Large, Won’t Be Greater

According to the below graph from a recent ChangeWave phone study as reported by Electronista, more and more people are planning to buy a smart phone in the next 90 days:
If 14.4% of people buy smart phones in the next 90 days and that number grows to 25% over the next year, the number will likely still be smaller than growth in volume of searches.  Not to mention, that not all new smart phone users will wholeheartedly embrace all the cool apps and may just stick to the basics.

Fellow SEOs, not to worry, job availability will only continue to grow; however, it will always be wise to take a more holistic approach to website development.  Think about that huge percentage of people using mobile phones and apps to do their searching, browsing and discovering – and be sure to make your content consumable and useful for them, no matter how they want to access it.

This post is purely a prediction, but it’s made me think it would be really wise to keep historical search volume data.  Most of the major keyword tools (Google, Keyword Discovery), don’t show year-over-year volume, but the last 12 months.

What do you think? Did I overlook some big factor?

First off, if you’re not familiar with Twitter Trending Topics, they’re the links you see on the right side of pages (like your home page), that track commonly occurring words in tweets.  Clicking on them takes you to a search result page that displays all the latest tweets about that topic.  Naturally, these pages get a lot of eyeballs, as curious people look to see what people are saying about the Trending Topic.

Spammers, being great at finding opportunities to get clicks, have infiltrated this space:

Notice how Nicelyu1045 has cleverly added “Tehran Transformers 2 iphone AT&T Spain Iran” to the end of her tweet?  While this might get some clicks, by it’s very spammy nature, it probably won’t have high returns and is a blight on the whole purpose of the Trending Topics to display true tweets about the topic.

I don’t recommend mimicking this spammy behavior, but we can learn from the spammers and find ways to get traffic while also adding value to the conversation.

Here are 3 non-spammy ways to get traffic from Twitter Trending Topics:

1. Try to anticipate hot topics before they happen

My team recently decided to anticipate the launch of Transformers 2 and get ready with an article about it.  Anticipation works pretty well for things like movies and hot product releases, but is a little more difficult for things like breaking news (especially when many news stories are now first broke on Twitter), which is why I recommend #2:

2. Monitor hot topics regularly and write content around them relative to your site’s niche

With a little creativity, nearly every Trending Topic could be stretched to something related to your niche.  Take the Transformers 2 example: 8 Transformers 2 Cars to Snag Megan Fox – pretty far stretch to tie the movie back to insurance (the site’s niche).  However, the article is effectively accomplishes this goal.  The window of time the topic will be in Trending Topics can be short, so you have to act fast when you see a new trend appearing.

3. Reply to users in the Trending Topics timeline, referring them to your related content

Once you have some content around the the trending topic, if you think it’s valuable to a person’s tweet, interact with them.  One thing to watch, though, is if your topic is a far stretch, your tweet may come across spammy.  If done with tact, however, you may be able to pick up some new followers, in addition to get some good traffic.

Do you have other ideas of how you could use Trending Topics for traffic?  Let me know with a comment or tweet!