links for 2009-09-04

Neil Walker, Chief Technical Officer at Just Search: "More than 83 per cent of internet users are likely to leave a website if they feel there are too many clicks to find what they are looking for. Recent studies have shown that the typical user will take four seconds to decide if they will stay at a site or move on."

"This morning I came across a wonderful speech (from the Edinburgh International Television Festival) by Robert Peston, one of the best blogging journalists at the BBC where I headed up the Blogs Network during the trial and immediate post-trial phase."

"Which SEO features should you be shopping for in a CMS? Glad you asked. Here’s my wish list of features, broken down into critical, important, desirable and optional…"

"The heaviest users of Web 2.0 applications are also enjoying benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing. These benefits often have a measurable effect on the business."

"The number UK advertisers running online display campaigns has risen, as companies capitalise on lower ad prices during the recession. The research, from Nielsen Online, indicates that the number of online display ad campaigns grew 11% in the second quarter compared to the same 2008 period. Nielsen put the number of display campaigns at 22,794, up from 20,360 the second quarter of 2008."

"Social networking sites accounted for more than 20% of all display ads viewed online, with MySpace and Facebook combining to deliver more than 80% of ads for the social networking category, according to a June 2009 comScore study of US online display advertising on social networking sites."

"Google News has quietly added a new section that steps back from the ever-quickening news cycle to highlight “in-depth pieces of lasting value.” It’s called Spotlight, and like the rest of Google News, the stories are selected by an undisclosed algorithm."

"Digg has started adding nofollow to some of its links – the idea it to stop people spamming the service to get links back."

"About the same time that 4.3 development started in the US, our Japanese team began a 6-month major undertaking to overhaul the app interface and add many other features that have been requested worldwide."

"Last week PR industry reps and news aggregators accused the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) of a ‘blatant and unjustified attempt to tax the internet’, over plans to charge them for redistributing hyperlinks."

"For what seems like many years I was a lonely voice in the wilderness, whispering at first 'River of News' then speaking more loudly and finally shouting from the rooftops, but people wouldn't listen. Developers patterned their 'news readers' after email programs. Each feed was a box, and like a mail program it would tell you how many unread messages there were. 'This is wrong!' I would say — RSS is not mail."