Internet Data Mining - How Does it Help Businesses?

Internet has become an indispensable medium for people to conduct different types of businesses and transactions too. This has given rise to the employment of different internet data mining tools and strategies so that they could better their main purpose of existence on the internet platform and also increase their customer base manifold.

Internet data-mining encompasses various processes of collecting and summarizing different data from various websites or webpage contents or make use of different login procedures so that they could identify various patterns. With the help of internet data-mining it becomes extremely easy to spot a potential competitor, pep up the customer support service on the website and make it more customers oriented.

There are different types of internet data_mining techniques which include content, usage and structure mining. Content mining focuses more on the subject matter that is present on a website which includes the video, audio, images and text. Usage mining focuses on a process where the servers report the aspects accessed by users through the server access logs. This data helps in creating an effective and an efficient website structure. Structure mining focuses on the nature of connection of the websites. This is effective in finding out the similarities between various websites.

Also known as web data_mining, with the aid of the tools and the techniques, one can predict the potential growth in a selective market regarding a specific product. Data gathering has never been so easy and one could make use of a variety of tools to gather data and that too in simpler methods. With the help of the data mining tools, screen scraping, web harvesting and web crawling have become very easy and requisite data can be put readily into a usable style and format. Gathering data from anywhere in the web has become as simple as saying 1-2-3. Internet data-mining tools therefore are effective predictors of the future trends that the business might take.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Internet-Data-Mining---How-Does-it-Help-Businesses?&id=3860679

Google Wants Content: How To Adjust Your SEO Strategy

SEO strategies have to be at the heart of any business that wants to succeed in the online world in 2014. But SEO strategy means something different than it did one decade ago, five years ago, or even last year. If your SEO strategy places a great emphasis on link building, you may find that your SEO influence has waned recently. While links connecting to your content are important, it is content itself that is becoming the most important aspect of an SEO strategy and what pleases Google the most. Here are a few things that you can do in 2014 to improve your content offering and make Google happy.

Create Content That Answers Questions

With Google’s latest Hummingbird algorithm it has been announced that the company’s focus has moved away from keywords and on to content. This means that picking out keywords that your target audience searches for and stuffing them into any piece of content is not going to work as part of a successful SEO strategy.

Google’s aim is for its search function to behave in a way that is closer to the way that humans behave. Humans do not stuff keywords into their daily lives – they have problems and they find solutions, they ask questions and receive answers. In order for your content to lead to improved SEO, you need to create content that answers the questions of real people. This is not as simple as creating a keyword dense meta-tag but it will be more meaningful to your target audience, and Google will like you more too.

Consider Long Form Content

The world is so focused on the influence of social media that it can be easy to forget that people also like to read long form content. While the power of Twitter and its 140 character platform has grown exponentially over the last few years, so has the eBook market. Contrary to popular belief, our smartphone and social media culture has not completely dominated our lives and we still enjoy getting stuck into a long read. And we are not the only ones – Google really likes it too.

When you create a post about a niche topic that delves into thousands of words, not everybody is going to want to read it – but not everyone needs to. Just like great businesses, all great content operates within a niche. Creating long-form content for a particular niche demonstrates that you can provide useful and meaningful content for an audience, and Google will rank your content more highly as a result.

Create New Content Regularly

Creating long-form content is a great idea, but if you simply post one 1000 word blog on your website every six months, you are going to see very limited SEO benefits. In order to compete with the multitude of content creators on the internet, you not only have to be answering questions, creating genuinely useful posts, and posting long-form content, you need to be doing this on a regular basis. It is a great idea to form a content plan so that you can ensure you are working towards content being posted at regular intervals. Both your audience and Google will appreciate this and you will see improvements in your SEO over time if your efforts are sustained.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/seo/google-wants-content-adjust-seo-strategy-0779493#!wIljJ

Snowden Used Basic Web Scraping Tools In NSA Breach

Edward Snowden, the man behind the explosive leaks on mass surveillance carried out by the National Security Agency and GCHQ, used widely-available web crawlers to grab the data he needed from the US intelligence body.

The reports have caused concern over the NSA’s abilities to prevent insider attacks, as the simple software used should have triggered security warnings.

Whilst working as an NSA contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii, it’s believed he used the crawlers, which usually carry out legitimate searching and indexing of websites, as he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official speaking with the New York Times.

Snowden’s insider attack

“We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the source said.

The insider attack should have been easily detected, especially given Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning) had made off with US government data three years earlier before she handed it over to WikiLeaks. Manning was said to have used similarly automated techniques to acquire files.

Snowden, who used the scraping technique to make off with 1.7 million files, likely benefitted from working at a contractor rather than inside the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, where better security controls were in place.

He was questioned a number of times about his activities, but explained them away by saying it was simply part of his job as a systems administrator to do network maintenance.

In a new book called “The Snowden Files”, by Guardian correspondent Luke Harding, the author claims Snowden actively sought a job at Booz Allen, as it granted him more security privileges than his previous employer, Dell.

Snowden, in a statement delivered through his lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “It’s ironic that officials are giving classified information to journalists in an effort to discredit me for giving classified information to journalists. The difference is that I did so to inform the public about the government’s actions, and they’re doing so to misinform the public about mine.”

It was previously reported Snowden was able to gain access to various parts of the NSA network after he convinced colleagues to hand over passwords.

Source: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/snowden-web-crawlers-nsa-insider-attack-138576